Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 765

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I am a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell (and not just because he is Canadian and also went to the University of Toronto). Last week he kicked off a new Munk Dialogues series focused on the world after COVID19. (The next Munk Dialogue will be with Fareed Zakaria on Wednesday, April 15 from 8 PM to 9PM Toronto time.)

In case you're not familiar with the Munk Debates , they are normally a biannual event held here in Toronto. Their mission is to help people rediscover the "art of public debate" and they do that by convening some of the world's brightest and most creative thinkers. Right now they are doing that online.

In this Q&A with Gladwell, they touch on a lot of the topics that we are all debating right now on Zoom calls with our colleagues and friends. When will we get back to "normal?" What will change forever? Is working from home the new normal? Will people still want to go for Mandarin buffet? I won't spoil it for all of you, but I did want to mention three points that I found myself agreeing with (I guess that is partially spoiling it).

The first is his analogy to weak link sports such as soccer. Here you're only as good as your weakest player. This is in contrast to strong link sports such as basketball. In this case, you're only as good as your best player. If you want to win a championship, you get someone like Kawhi Leonard. Gladwell argues that this pandemic has further exposed us as a complex weak link society. We don't even have the basic PPE and testing in place to fight this virus.

The second is about whether this will create a more permanent shift to working from home. I have said before on the blog that I think it's easy to overreach at a time like this. We might think that everything will change, but we also have short memories. Gladwell takes it a step further and argues that the exact opposite will happen. This pandemic will actually set working from home back a generation . We are going to be so sick of isolating that we will race back to what we had before.

Finally, I like the point that right now is an opportunity for experimentation. This is true of all crises. It's a lot easier to question the status quo when the status quo has already been disrupted. And we are seeing this happen at all scales, from people experimenting and learning new things at home to new companies being formed. Hopefully there will also be lasting benefits to our public health systems.

Anyway, I would encourage to watch the video. If you can't see it embedded at the top of this post, click here .

One of Alphabet's moonshot projects is an autonomous delivery drone service called Wing . As far as I can tell, they're only company offering this kind of service to the general public in North America -- though they are only operating in a few test locations in Virginia, Finland, and Australia.

Specifically:

• Canberra, Australia

• Logan, Australia

• Helsinki, Finland

• Christiansburg, United States

Not surprisingly, demand for Wing deliveries has surged during this pandemic. According to the Verge , the company made over 1,000 deliveries in the past two weeks, which represents a doubling of deliveries in the US and Australia. The most popular items seem to be essentials like toilet paper and coffee.

This is perhaps a good example of the argument that COVID-19 isn't going to change things per se, it will simply accelerate the adoption of things that were already in the process of happening. I was and am of the opinion that drones will become an integral part of delivery logistics. (Full disclosure: I own a bit of Alphabet and Drone Delivery Canada stock.)

There is still a lot that will need to happen. Alphabet/Wing is also working on an autonomous traffic management platform, because you obviously need something robust if you're going to scale this up. How you make this work in dense urban environments is also a whole other kettle of fish, though already people are starting to reconsider how rooftops are used.

For more on Wing, click here .

Image: Wing

Venture capitalist Albert Wenger wrote on his blog today that the road back from COVID-19 could start -- as early as May -- provided we're able to get our act together around three essential things: masks, tests, and tracing for everyone. We have all been talking about the importance of these things over the last few weeks, but I think it's worth mentioning just how quickly some of this is starting to happen.

Both Apple and Google have announced that they are building a voluntary contact-tracing network. By May, they hope to release a set of APIs that other software developers will be able to build on top of. Bluetooth will be what is used to detect when humans are in close proximity to each other. Eventually, both companies plan to integrate contact tracing right into their operating systems.

Here's how it might work:

Of course, we are also seeing new startups emerge, like this one here called Coronatrace.

Similar to what Apple and Google have in mind, the app will be a voluntary contact-tracing network. By using it, your phone will begin to log how you move about, something that is already happening today with many of the apps we already use. Should someone test positive for COVID-19 (they would need to update their health status within the app), it would then immediately notify the network and anyone who might have crossed paths with them.

Obviously it would be far better to simply have a vaccine. But the experts are saying that will take some time -- 12 to 18 months? And in the interim, we're going to need to get the global economy back up and running. Seeing solutions like these being developed makes me hopeful we'll be able to do that sooner rather than later.