Joel Eagle, McDonald's Senior Director of Technology and Architecture, started his career in healthcare and logistics before being promoted to technology leadership roles at one of the world's most iconic companies. Joel and his team manage the cloud infrastructure that powers 40,000 restaurants for two million employees... and helps serve happiness in 120 global markets to the equivalent of the world's population every 100 days. The technology that makes McDonald's work is phenomenally complex. Joel makes it sound simple. Hear from the expert. Oh, and stick around to the end for McDonald's fun facts!

Listen and learn...

1. How Joel channels Ray Kroc's vision when architecting systems: "restaurants should run themselves... it should be as simple as a shoebox with money going in and going out." 2. Why Joel says "if it's easier for the crew it's better for the consumer." 3. How AI, wearables, IoT, and AR are all parts of the McDonald's technology vision. 4. Why the shift supervisor at a McDonald's restaurant has one of the hardest jobs in the world. 5. The anatomy of a McDonald's restaurant: "...they're mini factories run by a server." 6. How AI is improving the drive-thru experience and personalizing the dining experience. 7. What's required to support the McDonald's app which generates 16% of the company's revenue and is the world's most downloaded food ordering app 8. .

References in this episode...

McDonald's by the numbersMeta Research is improving NLP accuracy with less training data by using our understanding of how humans learn languagesGiselle Mota • , TEDx speaker and top 100 "Future of Work" thought leader, on AI and the Future of Work