Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Vittorio Viarengo who has more than 30 years of experience in building and leading world-class product management, engineering and marketing teams tuned to succeed in fast growing markets. Vittorio currently serves as the Vice President of Cloud Marketing at VMware where he drives the go to market, thought leadership and demand generation activities for the fast-growing VMware cloud business.
He has many passions - including one as a master baker. Here he focuses on one of his other passions - helping amateur musicians produce professional quality music. More specifically he describes the production of this ensemble which brought together 30 VMware employees playing and singing virtually across 10 countries. The final product presented here looks so easy, but Vittorio describes the effort and passion that he and the team put into producing this inspiring video:
"I am originally from Genoa in Italy and while I got a degree in music from the local conservatory, I ended up with a career in a completely different field - technology. However, music has always remained a passion of mine. I sang in the VMware band, Elastic Sky, in my first stint here from 2009-2012. I returned to the company this April and Sanjay Poonen, the Chief Operating Officer approached me about an idea to inspire, unite and motivate employees during the pandemic quarantine. He plays the piano, he has a huge passion for blues music and wanted to record a soulful version of “This little light of mine” using a virtual band of employees. He wrote the lyrics and recommended the names of the musicians around the world. He knew many of them, and others heard of the project and asked to join us. At the end of the video you see credit to each contributor.
Knowing my musical background, he asked me to coordinate the production. I call it "il mio primo progetto", my first deliverable in my second time back at VMware. This is what he gave me to start (click on the image to enlarge font)
He thought we could do it using a popular mobile app but I knew that would not scale beyond 9 musicians. As I describe to Vinnie in the video below, I ended up using SoundTrap.com for distributed audio recording, Apple Logic Pro for audio post-production and Adobe Premier for video editing.
For the audio recording we used SoundTrap.com, which is a simple cloud-based recording service. To prepare everyone, I wrote instructions and recorded a couple of video tutorials. That's all the prep they had - we did not do any rehearsals.
I put the original song in the top track, which I lowered from the original key. I brought it down to G from B flat. Then each musician and singer added their track and sang/played over it. SoundTrap took care of keeping it all together in one place so that I could monitor progress from afar and download the various tracks for post-production at the end.
For the audio post-production I used Apple Logic Pro, a very powerful professional sound editing tool.
I downloaded the individual tracks that these 30 amateur musicians recorded around the world using their laptop microphone on SoundTrap.com and uploaded them into Logic Pro. Then, I cleaned up the background noises and took some of the voices to create additional third and fifth harmonies. There were multiple people who played the same instrument, so I had to make some choices and tradeoffs, while being fair in terms of exposure for everybody. Finally, I adjusted the various volumes and remixed the whole thing.
I ended up with 47 tracks!! Definitely the biggest music project I have ever produced.
For the video production, I used Adobe Premier.
I had the 30 videos of my colleagues singing and playing instruments recorded with their mobile phones. I used Premier to sync them. Next I followed Sanjay's vision to structure the video, starting with acapella solos, then the band, male voices, female voices, the guitar solos and the final ensemble that features 25 employees all on screen at the same time. I used a fake Zoom screen background to give the whole thing a Zoom call feel.
It was great to see our CEO Pat Geisinger sing the first verse. He works nonstop - wakes up at 4 am and I was so pleased and inspired he made time for this. Sanjay, of course,was very involved as producer, musician and singer, contributing, reviewing, providing feedback throughout the process. All the singers and musician enthusiastically embraced this project and given we were all amateur musicians, distributed across the world, using nonprofessional recording gear, the end result is pretty remarkable.
The passion and participation in this project reflects well on the internal culture of VMware. We launched the video at an all-hands virtual meeting we have been holding as everyone works from home. The video has had thousands of views and we have received a number of complimentary notes. People within and outside the company were touched, inspired, motivated by the team spirit that we exhibit in the song. Everybody who has viewed it has got a "lift".
What I love about this whole experience is that it shows off two things: the unifying power of the universal language of music, and the great collaborative culture within VMware. I am personally obsessed with good corporate cultures and I think this shows.
How can we improve on this performance? As Sanjay said "we will have to do it live." Maybe at the next physical VMWorld event when we are comfortable flying again?
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Tamas Hevizi, Global Head of Private Equity at Automation Anywhere. Prior to that he was in SAP's Private Equity group, and before that led its Value Engineering consulting group. He writes about his passion - turning analog settings like meetings, presentations, design sessions into digital format with participants spread around the world. As we all get "Zoom bombed" we can all learn from his passion.
I recently conducted a video interview with Vinnie as part of my Digital Value Creation series. I was in Philadelphia; he was in Tampa. Here is the end result:
Hope you agree it looks professional, but it reflects technology and technique I have honed over a decade. It all started fifteen years ago, when I took over a team that was completely decentralized, all over the world. I missed all the face to face things I was used to doing, which was sitting down with a team, grabbing a whiteboard, being able to coordinate work, plan out things. I was used to managing teams that were in the same office.
So, my goal became to be able to be as effective as I was when I was one-on-one with a team.
How could I effectively replicate the analog world in a digital world? It's not as simple as just applying technology. If you think about it, most of us do a ton of meetings. In an analog world, you go into a room and you block an hour. You're like, fine, we'll stick through it. However, nobody is trained to run digital meetings effectively. Nobody teaches anybody to do Zoom sessions. Therefore, we all experience pretty brutal Zoom meetings where people spend 20 minutes just talking about their dogs and the weather outside. No wonder, so many of us feel more exhausted these days.
I explained to Vinnie in this 8 minute recording the process I went through (sorry, it is a casual conversation, but you should get a good idea) to re-imagine presentations, brain storming and many other previous in person activities. An added benefit - I was much more efficient over the course of a workday.
My home "TV studio" has grown over the decade. Here are some elements. Fair warning - most items in the graph have become difficult to buy as the supply chain for electronics has been disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, you can start with "good enough" options and keep upgrading. My studio did not come together in a week - it has taken me years of experimentation and substitution. Like I am using Skype, not Zoom. Primarily because Skype allows me to record separate videos and audio channels (multitrack) for better post-production editing. I could go into all kinds of geek-talk to tell you why.
The key components of the setup are:
VIDEO
Main camera (Nikon Z6) that records in addition to a Skype/Zoom session so my side of the video is top quality
Web Camera (Logitech C920S HD Pro) so even Skype/Zoom sessions had better face to face quality over my laptop camera
SOUND
I use an external microphone for video conferencing to approach face to face conversation quality. Laptop microphones produce terrible voice quality
HypeMic is my web conference mike of choice. Superb voice quality
For video recording, I also record my side with a studio microphone (Stellar X2) and an audio recorder (Zoom H4n). Again studio quality sound
SOFTWARE
My primary software for video production is Final Cut Pro (Mac)
I sometime use pro podcasting software for remote interview recording (Squadcast) if I need studio quality sound on both side
Beyond the technology, I have also invested in training. I enrolled in a course with Cornell called The Executive Presence course. It is taught by the theater program and, of course, delivered online.
You record 15 video sessions. The faculty reviews them. In addition, your fellow students critique them. You could have dozens of students, in parallel, comment on your recordings. You get a lot of feedback about how you think you're presenting versus how you're actually presenting. You learn where your voice is, and how you're gesturing because if you don't have a physical experience, and you and I are not in the same room, some of that gets lost. Our ability to persuade or listen declines when you're not using gestures. You're staring at the screen. Maybe you're looking down versus up. All these small things take away from the experience of either being a good listener or being a good communicator.
I don't think anybody is born with a digital presence. I think people assume they can do it just by turning on the video. It doesn't work that way.
The other thing I have worked on is messaging. Most corporate communication gets so over-engineered that it loses its human touch. Messaging has to come across authentic, straightforward, pointed and short. I aim mostly for 5-minute-long videos.
Many businesses struggle with finding a voice that's not typical corporate-speak. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, for example, has an effective style whether he’s live or he's on video. It's really hard for companies to find key executives and have that persona show up the same effective way whether they're in person or whether on video and other means.
We have all seen commercials in last couple of months use terms like "In these difficult times." Everybody was basically using that same two, three phrases in every commercial. It was all engineered and it was not personal. The good news is we can learn from our kids. I have a 16-year-old. She told me once "Daddy, nobody would ever watch your videos. It's boring." That's sort of the point. She is watching YouTube creators as the benchmark. This generation will expect executives to be as engaging as the creators they have grown up watching.
I'm not saying we should all appeal to Gen-Z, but I think the messages that resonate with the millennial and the Gen-Z generation are usually authentic. They are not over-engineered.
I keep improving all the time. None of us was born for TV. But there are so many resources available today to become much more effective at digital communication. The technology, the training and the tone keep getting better, and I will keep evolving my passion to keep analog experiences comparable to their digital twins.
Well, may be not all experiences. You notice the cup of coffee in the graph above. I am not sure the analog experience of that taste, aroma and texture will ever turn digital!
We are going through a period of wild experimentation with so many working from home and presenting/conversing over Zoom, ON24, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and other platforms. I like to ask folks about their virtual backgrounds and related fun facts.
I interviewed Jason Blessing, CEO of Model N and he is a drone photographer in his spare time. He told me his background is of the west span of the Bay Bridge, shot on his Mavic 2 Pro launched from Yerba Buena Island.
Another Bay Area resident, Dave Watson of Health2047 fessed up that his Golden Gate Bridge is a stock Zoom background. But he has tricked others that it is the view from his office in the Marin headlands. He says "It took them awhile to figure out I was spoofing because it was a morning video call but the background shows an evening sunset..."
Alex Shootman, CEO of Workfront, does not need drone or satellite imagery. He routinely bikes up mountains in Utah. This is what he presented at his LEAP conference this week.
No heights for Paul Wright, CIO at Accuride. He has been working from his red barn in Michigan. I can report no farm animals Zoom bombed our session, and the connectivity was excellent!
Brent Leary of CRM Essentials has a real-life office background from his place in Atlanta. I have been on a few calls with him and the rotating fan never fails to mesmerize me. One way to stand out in a Zoom gallery with 200 other participants! More importantly, he is also what he calls a "bedroom DJ". He has a nice following of his virtual shows.
Paul Greenberg of The 56 Group is the Master of Disguise. No, not of the fact that he is a rabid Yankees fan. More in masking tens, may be even hundreds of Smart Home sensors and Alexa pods in his Virginia home. See how many you can spot.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce recently did a joint presentation with Aneel Bhusri, CEO of Workday. In a nice touch, he used the background of a Workday facility.
Aneel Bhusri, in turn, used the background of his favorite pizzeria in San Francisco in a session with me. He hopes the publicity will help them survive this tough patch for restaurants.
HPE had a burst of color in its virtual Discover broadcast this week.
But even better, it was nostalgic to see an industry veteran, John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco talk about leadership during a crisis. He was interviewed by HPE CEO Antonio Neri and John was extremely generous to his predecessor, Lew Platt. The background? Even more color.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Nick Hortovanyi, from Down Under. He wrote 6 years ago in this guest series about his cycling. This time he writes about his new passion - self-driving cars. No, not just turning on Autopilot on a Tesla, he is coding, working with more precise GPS, LiDAR etc. Get ready for some geek talk, but hey, that's his passion. And we can all benefit from how much he has picked up long distance from online courses:
Sitting down one day, having a latte, I had one of those fateful decisions where I’d decided that my cycling startup idea just wasn’t going to work. It was time to start thinking about something new to do. But what? I had decided a while ago, I wasn’t going to get back into the corporate IT world. It was mainly consulting and sales. Most of it had to do with recording data then reporting on the data.
I like to get my hands dirty with technology, I like to code, I like to see the results of own hypothesis & analysis. More importantly I could see that the focus of the future would be analyzing tons of data from sensors using Artificial Intelligence. This data would be collected in real-time, enabling agents to interact with their environment.
The main reason I’d given up on my previous startup idea was that I couldn’t find a large enough market to warrant further investment. So after a European holiday, while I was contemplating what to do, I received an email about the new Self Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree (SDCAR ND) from Udacity. I applied and luckily, I was accepted. The acceptance email arrived on my birthday. So, I was really happy with that present.
The global market size for self driving cars will be likely be in the trillions of dollars. When that generation of car arrives, they will have the most disruptive effect on society, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the arrival of the first automobile. Some say we are today at the same stage as when the auto started to disrupt the horse-centric world of the early 1900s. To me this is really exciting. It represents a lot of potential at so many different levels.
So yes, I have found a massive market. But first I needed to brush up my skills, starting with math. I spent time going over trigonometry, calculus, matrices and Euclidean geometry via the Khan Academy.
When the Udacity course started, I jumped online and joined the Slack & Facebook groups. Everyone was really supportive and vocal on Slack. I loved it. I had found a whole group of people that wanted to learn about using the latest technology. I was in techie heaven. Later I found out that the first few classes were all the over achievers, and the communication died down in later groups. However, I met some amazing people online.
The Udacity Nanodegrees are about learning practical skills through hands on projects. So first off we learn a bit about the theory, and then do a project. Self driving is a really complex area but to get us started, we created our first lane detection algorithm.
After about a year, and three terms, I finished the SDCAR ND degree in the first cohort. It was such a great feeling. I ended up going over to the Bay Area for the graduation ceremony and met people like Sebastian Thrun (founder of Udacity, but more importantly the Stanford Professor whose team won the first Autonomous DARPA challenge and then later formed Waymo, a spinoff from Google). He is the one in blue jeans. David Silver of Udacity is also in the frame.
Encouraged by the SDCAR ND, I wanted to be more involved in this area. So I set up a little side project [sdcar.ai]. Its aim is to use a simulator to train the car's brain. The environment inside the simulator is created from vehicle sensor data. Some of my friends joke that that I’m creating my own Google Maps car ... well I am :).
I knew I needed to know more about AI, Robotics and Sensors. A self driving car, is really just a robot that can carry things like us humans and freight. So in the years since I’ve also completed the Robotics Software Engineer, Deep Reinforcement Learning (think DeepMind and AlphaGo) and recently the Sensor Fusion Nanodegree.
My quest to learn more grows as I learn more. What is frustrating is when you think you are 80% through you realize your are have likely only defined what needs to be done. I’ve heard that this is the time to spend 10x the amount of effort. In this regard it is very different from corporate IT projects.
You can expect to fail often and to have to reapply what you learned to the next iteration. This might involve throwing out a lot of code, and rewriting things when you’ve used the wrong sensors (I started with cheap Chinese ones) or the wrong technology framework. Sometimes things don't move as fast as you thought they would. So you might need a new programming approach and/or hardware. I attempted at first to capture data on a Raspberry Pi. That was a mistake for images (its IO constrained so could only write two to three images per second).
My current in-vehicle data collection system can collect images, with header and nanosecond timestamps at 30 HZ. Following is an example video, where I’ve used a YOLO Object Detector to classify what can be seen in each image.
Another example - not all GPSes are the same. Most are not very accurate. If you plot their data, you often end up on the sidewalk or the other side of the road. Other issues arise about providing live error correction data from a known base station. I have now moved to the much more accurate UBLOX ZED-F9P .
I have now done close to 30 projects via various Udacity Nanodegree courses. I have learnt so much. The majority of my work is available from my github repository.
Recently, I splurged and bought a 16 beam 360 Degree LiDAR from Robosense (LiDAR uses light waves from a laser similar to how Radar and Sonar use radio and sound waves). It is capable of reaching an object at a distance of up to 200 Metres (roughly 650 feet). The Sensor Fusion Nanodegree has given me the confidence to play with that. So that's what I working on next...
The 60-game regular season, during which players will receive full prorated salaries, is scheduled to start July 23 or 24 and end in late September before a standard postseason is played. The usual six divisions will remain intact and interleague play will be limited to the corresponding geographical division in the other league (i.e. NL West vs. AL West). So, yes, that means the Dodgers will face the Houston Astros.
Coronavirus testing every other day for players and coaches. Wet rags for pitchers’ pockets to prevent them from licking their fingers. Masks in the dugout and bullpen for any non-players. And no public transportation to the stadium, communal food spreads, saunas, fighting, spitting, smokeless tobacco or sunflower seeds.
Here are just a few of the many guidance images from the manual. You can download the whole doc here - registration required.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Charlie Bess, a repeat contributor to this series. 11 years ago, he wrote about another of his passions - mentoring youth in STEM disciplines. Here the Polymath writes about woodworking, just one of his passions today:
I have been a technologist for over 30 years, leading large groups of technologists at companies like GM, EDS, HP and most recently Raytheon. I was the Chief Technologist for a number of organizations, a fellow at EDS & HP and a licensed professional engineer.
I’ve known Vinnie Mirchandani for well over 10 years. We even attempted to collaborate on a chapter for one of his books – unfortunately, the lawyers at the company I was working for at the time had other ideas, so that effort could not continue. The material did end up as a Green IT chapter in another book though. Now that I am no longer encumbered by lawyers, I jumped at the chance to contribute in a small way to Vinnie’s blog on pursuing personal passions.
I retired back in 2018 and although I still play around with computers, my focus moved on to ham radio and maker activities like design, computer numerical control and 3D printing. Some people worry about how they will consume all that ‘free’ time when they retire. I have not had that issue since my days are packed learning to accomplishing new things.
Part of the reason for these new development opportunities is that my focus shifted to a creative, tactile and satisfying activity -- woodworking. If you have never had the chance to hand make an object in wood, you may not understand the limitless possibilities to dedicate yourself to the freedom, creativity and skill development required. Whenever you run into a limitation, it is a chance to try something new!
I grew up on a poultry farm in Indiana, so I have always had to figure things out and ‘do things’. As I used to tell folks, “When the tractor breaks down at the far end of the field – you are the only one who is going to figure it out, so just get at it.” Although I had the opportunity in junior high to take woodshop, that and 4-H were about the only experience I had using power tools with wood. I hate to think how the kids today are missing out on even that opportunity.
One thing that helped me shift my focus away from the rigor of work when I retired and develop my skills at woodworking was that I moved to Sun City Hilton Head. That has one of the larger woodshops of any over 55, active adult community. My wife and I are part of a woodworking and model making guild that has over 900 members. Like everywhere else, COVID has had its impact here and we were down for a few months. Our shop just started back up this week.
When I came to this community, I had a basic, ‘hammer and nails’ understanding of woodworking. This woodshop had all the hand and power tools I could dream of, with people ready, willing, and able to help tackle projects of nearly any size and complexity. I started by making some of the ‘standard’ projects that were required to get certified to use the shop – they have a real focus on safety. I then moved on to some furniture, like this joggling bench (a type of bench native to the Lowcountry of South Carolina) that sits on our front porch – I did take some liberties with that design and added cup holders.
Eventually, I moved on to art-oriented projects. The one pictured here is based on an Escher print – Reptiles. I designed the piece in a CAD system and used my CNC to cut the lizards out of bloodwood, curly maple and Peruvian walnut and then used epoxy to add a protective finish. Now I need to determine if I am going to make a tray or a wall hanging out of it. Six months ago, I likely would not have known how to tackle something like this. I’ve made other tessellations resembling sea horses and turtles as well.
Something that always puzzled me is that some artists view woodworking as craft, not art. If they knew how much imagination and creativity went into the process and the design, they would have a more enlightened view. The issue parallels the same discussions I had back in the working world of soft skills and hard skills. I always thought of this as: “If they can’t understand it, it must be a hard skill. If they can’t explain it, it must be a soft skill.” :)
I had the revelation as my skills developed that process and skill development can be more rewarding than the end result. Most of the designs I create I make myself and I model them in CAD tools. This focus on technique would be a valuable asset later on.
After I was here for a few months, tragedy struck and the leader of advanced training at the shop had a fatal sports accident. The woodworking guild needed someone to take over, become involved and help modernize the advanced training process, so with my background I stepped into the breach. I have been learning myself and trying to develop others ever since. Though I came to the group with a solid understanding of computing and computers, merging that background with CAD and computer-controlled machines in the woodworking space led me to develop numerous classes in 3D printing, CNC and other areas related to woodworking for our guild. Granted today almost every topic is covered on YouTube or the Internet somehow, it is not the same as being available to answer questions when they come up. The development of others eventually led to the creation of a technology-oriented special interest group and the investigation of creating a maker space in our community woodshop.
Keeping your passion fueled is not all about process, though. For me, it is about learning new things and expanding your horizons. All my hobbies have nearly infinite development possibilities, with dimensions of capabilities that you do not even know exist until you run into them. My passion is enabled by the exploration of the new, not the reiteration of things I have done before. To me that is part of the joy and responsibility of retirement – to keep expanding and sharing with others.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Life is a journey, not a destination.”
One area I have recently started to develop is latheturning. This involves spinning wood along an axis and cutting away material using various sharp tools. I have started to make bowls and pens, accenting them with epoxy and other finishes. Unlike most of my other woodworking projects, I can create a pen in just a few hours, so this relatively instantaneous gratification has added an incentive to continue to expand my lathe work. The pens shown on left are made out of acrylic, spalted maple and Padauk.
I have mentioned several different types of exotic woods (the end table above is made from the more common oak). In a global economy, it is relatively easy to get almost any species, it just takes time and money since no one can stock everything. Most of what I have shown in this post was actually made from scrap, the leftovers from my or someone else’s projects. A good woodworker knows there is no such thing as scrap. It is just a piece of wood you have not found a use for -- yet. Below is a Christmas display cut into a poplar board with a purpleheart base
Though I do not blog as much as I used to when I was working, I do try to continue to share my experiences when I get a chance on my personal blog so take a look if you are interested in these topics.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Eric Dirst, a repeat contributor to this series. 6 years ago, he wrote about his real passion - hockey. He is a technology and operations executive who figured out how to enjoy the quarantine by teaching his drinking-age sons how to make a few of the classic cocktails.This also allowed him to keep his family and friends entertained. And I mean entertained - check out this three minute video where they concocted the Painkiller. He generously embeds the recipes and images of many of their masterpieces throughout the text.
When Eric isn’t crafting cocktails, he advises small and medium size businesses on their technology strategy, product roadmaps, security and risk mitigation, and talent development. Eric also enjoys his board of director roles at Carrington College, Brent Sopel Foundation, and ThingLogix
The quarantine in March had started to really sink in and the food bills had started to skyrocket from having my three sons back home due to college closing, furloughs and work-from-home requirements. I was thinking how we could inject just a bit of ‘fun at home’ into our family life, while also sharing some of that ‘fun’ with others. Now, my sons had expressed interest in learning more about cocktails, because they were tired of consuming craft (if they could afford it) or cheap beer (really, Natty Light?).
I had recently read an article in Bon Appetit (no I do not subscribe, but somehow got on their email distribution) about the 25 best cocktails you should learn how to make. I suggested we have a Family Quarantine Cocktail Night to try these out, and everyone agreed. Of course, to make it more social, I initially decided to post pictures of the finished drinks on Facebook, along with the recipes. I was quite amazed at the positive feedback I received from friends and family. People told me they looked forward to seeing the posts, and got upset if I skipped too many days in between postings.
Soon, other friends started their own cocktail posts along with drink shot and food pairings. Certainly, leveraging social media and pictures was easy. However, after a couple posts I was asked to up-my-game and add videos showing how we made each drink. I conscripted my sons to help with video prep and sometimes the actual preparation. They also helped me pick out background music for the videos…to match the theme of the drink (e.g. smooth jazz for Manhattan).
I have not moved to FB Live yet, since pre-recording and uploading seems to work just fine. The only challenge was how to upload 450 Meg video files recorded on your phone to FB. If you use the phone-native ‘send to Facebook’ feature it does not usually work with files this big. So, thanks to cloud drives I was able to save it to Microsoft OneDrive from the phone and then upload it easily from OneDrive to Facebook.
Gladly (ok, sadly), due to my profession, I have access to many cloud storage options. I could have saved it to Box.net, iCloud, Google Drive, or DropBox, since my customers use all of these options. Of course, any cloud drive would have worked just fine, since they all integrate well with your iPhone or Android phone.
On a separate topic, I received quite a bit of feedback on how stable the videos were and questions about whether we used a tripod to create the videos. Nope, thanks to technology in the iPhone X we were using, the non-jitter and stabilization tech made it seem as if we were using a tripod. Actually it was my oldest son filming…and he shakes a bit because he is a high-energy young adult. No one ever noticed his shaking, which he certainly thought was cool.
So, overall, it was a fun way to learn new things, share a topic I enjoy with family and friends, and use the power of video and social media to quickly get feedback from the community…even when we had to stay quarantined for our safety.
Finally, here's one that some of you may not have heard about - the Boulevardier.
Plenty of software vendors and systems integrators have amplified their digital transformation messages during the COVID-19 crisis. Understandable - cloud applications have made work-from-home easier, eCommerce has exploded, video has become the killer app.
In the interviews I have been doing with various C level executives and presentations I have recently seen there are plenty of use cases where digital technologies have significantly changed the rules for many sectors
- Dave Watson of Health2047 says during this crisis, the UC San Francisco health system saw 50% of outpatient visits move to telemedicine. It was 2% prior to that.
- Doug Belden of Hillsborough County talks about how driver testing has been transformed by mobile and thermal technology
- Listen to Christian Klein of SAP and Lutz Meschke, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board at Porsche describe in the SapphireNow keynote how the auto industry (more broadly, mobility now) is being electrified and digitized.
- Daru Phirozkhanavala, former CTO of BP had talked about how digital technologies have been reshaping the energy giant. The new BP CEO, Bernard Looney talks extensively in this interview about how digital technologies have allowed for more remote drilling at significantly lower economics (see starting at 28:30) and also about zero-carbon efforts and electric vehicles.
Emphasize digital, de-emphasize brick and mortar would appear to be the path forward. Starbucks has launched a new store format: "Starbucks Pickup is tailored to customers who prefer to order ahead and pay through the Starbucks mobile app for pick-up, or those who want their Starbucks delivered to them by placing an order through Uber Eats". A concern is accountants will see the lower real estate costs (and related hygiene costs) and over emphasize this format. Starbucks could risk damaging its "third place" brand. If all you compete on is your product, the barriers to entry your music, your wifi, your social gathering place, your digital nomad workplace concepts have given you in the past will be reduced. I have already seen it in the behavior of my daughter as she scopes out other coffee shops which allow for dine-in with appropriate distancing. I can see my wife disappointed as Barnes and Noble opens up but does not allow for people to linger or re-open their cafes.
I see, however, plenty of companies which are also re-imagining the physical, brick and mortar experience (some would add the spiritual and social experience) - for customers, employees, suppliers and others. We are already seeing an explosion of experiments blending CX, SCM and HCM disciplines, and adding to that mix medical and automation expertise.
Drive-thrus and store pickups
Drive-thrus have been a fixture of American fast food since they were first introduced in the 1930s. But look how they keep evolving. Today, they are tech savvy with digital displays, intercoms, conveyor belts, bar code scanners and credit card readers. Chick-fil-A is one of the chains that already moved to two lanes of drive-thru at some of its stores. During this crisis, they have taken drive-thru to another level. More of their order takers are "outside" the store. They go up to cars to take orders and process payments. That of course, means much of the hygiene and the technology has also moved out.
A variation of drive-thru is in store pick up technologies. Walmart has giant Pickup Towers in its bigger stores which scan barcodes on your mobile app and deliver boxed products.
Walmart also has a grocery curbside pickup service - you order through the Grocery app, then select a pick up time. There are multiple lanes where they bring your order to the car. The towers and the curbside pickup have helped Walmart's eCommerce efforts significantly during the crisis.
I have tried both options. The Tower is easy enough, but in one case a pack of Starbucks Via could have easily been delivered via the Tower, but I was told I should have ordered it through the Grocery app and picked it up outside. So I had to reorder it, and when I went to pick it up the order had been cancelled. However, while waiting curbside I spoke to a couple of customers and they said they loved the service as they could plan a drive around the pickup time.
Banks and pharmacies adopted drive-thrus a while ago. Now the reach may be spreading. Valvoline allows you to stay in the car for your oil change, and not go to the waiting room. The techs don't come into your car or touch the keys. You can pay via mobile phone. In reverse, Carvana is making the used car purchase and delivery experience much more digital. I have written this post two years ago, but the experience is even more relevant today
Home deliveries
Every time I have left home in the last couple of months I have seen an Amazon Prime truck in the neighborhood. I talked to one of the drivers. He told me his first delivery is often at 5:45 am, his last one at 9 pm. Another driver allowed me to look inside his vehicle - a marvel of using every square inch. Their mobile apps help then navigate, organize their delivery manifest, take photos of delivered items. In many ways, they are remarkable in their simplicity compared with massive investment UPS and Fedex made in the past in automating their trucks. The Prime truck is, however, a small cog in the Amazon distribution network which includes nearly 50 cargo planes, over 20,000 tractor trailers, and 75 massive distribution centers, I had written about the impressive automation at one of the fulfillment centers here. Amazon is spending billions on hygiene in its physical infrastructure during the crisis - see details here.
We have long been used to pizza deliveries. Papa John's and other chains have taken the concept to the next level - contactless delivery
Services like Instacart which shop for you and make home deliveries have been on a tear during the crisis. Their CEO told BusinessWeek “In a matter of a couple of weeks, we were already ahead of our end-of-year goal (of shopping volume). A week later, we were ahead of our 2021 goals, and a few days after that, we were ahead of our 2022 goals. And so, at a certain point, we stopped counting.”
We are starting to see increased interest in drone and autonomous deliveries.
In the meantime, human delivery has to navigate a new set of challenges. With so many people working from home and kids not at school, a postman told me his biggest worry used to be people's dogs - now it is kids playing and people bicycling in their neighborhoods.
Physical work places
As communities start relaxing their lockdowns, offices, plants and warehouses are starting to open up. That is requiring its own version of careful planning. Some providing essential services never completely shut down.
Jeff Robertson of Maxar Technologies described in this interview the reopening protocols he has been factoring as they reopen physical sites. Cushman and Wakefield has come up with their concept of a "six feet" office with temperature checks, distancing, disinfectants. Designers are re-imagining work spaces and surfaces to be anti-microbial and easy to disinfect. Salesforce describes its elaborate office re-opening plans here. They also have a new offering called Work.com to allow customers to formalize their own re-opening protocols.
As someone pointed out - decades ago, the big question used to be whether men should take their hats off if there was a lady in the elevator. Now, Disney's FastTrack concepts and mobile apps are being used to ensure appropriate social distancing in that cramped space.
Vendor virtual events
Most technology vendors have moved their events to a virtual format. Apple's WWDC next week will be one of the largest (over 23 million registered across 150 countries), and likely one of the most innovative.
We are going through an intense period of experimentation. Either as presenter or participant I have been used ON24, Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet and StreamYard. Facebook Messenger Rooms, Zoho Meetings and many others will soon join the party.
On the CRM Playaz show last week, there is a section starting at 55:00 which discusses how vendors events will likely evolve. Paul Greenberg comments they will move from "theatric" to "cinematic").
Continued physical world experiences
Rahul Samant of Delta Airlines described to me contactless check-in, HEPA filters, electrostatic foggers, empty middle seats, masks and other changes in the flying experience.
Sarvesh Mahesh of Tavant described how the mortgage refinancing market has been on fire. But that notoriously paper intensive process refuses to be completely digitized. It has led to notaries using side by side cars in the homeowner's garage and in "porch signings".
Mobile banking app usage has rocketed during the crisis but has led to a FBI warning about fake apps. Don't give up on your coins and notes yet.
Unlike Amazon or Walmart, Costco is still very dependent on brick and mortar and it has been fascinating to watch the subtle and not so subtle changes at the store. Carts being disinfected after every use, signs outside showing out of stock items, masks required inside store, no dine-in allowed in the food court, Plexiglass dividers everywhere including the restrooms, distancing markers on the floor and fobs to pay for gasoline.
Finally, need to point out many tech vendors screaming digital transformation had offices which used to be playgrounds for millennials and many had Michelin quality buffets for them. I hope they now don't end up with a nursing home vibe. If for no other reason than that, I hope folks make re-imagining brick and mortar and omni-channel experiences as important a priority as their digital transformations :)
Thank you to Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary for inviting to me part of their weekly show this week.
My section starts around 23:00 - I compliment them during my comments for keeping the show light-hearted and positive. Much needed during this crazy time.
I talked about the various Zoom interviews of C level executives I have been doing - the growing list is here and I talk about likely impact on the enterprise software market. I also mention the Passion guest series. The Topsy Turvy blog post I mention is here.
Nice to be introduced to yet another video platform I have used in the last few weeks - in this case StreamYard. Others have included Zoom, MS Team, Google Meet, ON24. On that point, it was nice to hear Tom Libretto, CMO of Pegasystems talk starting around 55.00 about virtual vendor events like Pegaworld and have everyone on the show discuss how those events are likely to evolve.
I was talking to a neighbor who owns an RV and he told me Kampgrounds of America (KOA) bookings have bounced back. I did not believe him at first, but yes bookings are far outpacing cancellations. So are new RV sales. People can use them for their summer holidays without having to worry about social distancing on planes or hygiene at hotels and restaurants. But wait - look at the interviews I have done in the last few weeks indexed here.
Hear Jack Barrett, CEO of a community bank tell that local hotel bookings are picking up (btw as impressively his bank grew 25% in a couple of months). So does Joseph Rajadurai of Cognizant Travel. Hear Rahul Samant, CIO at Delta talk about new hygiene at airports and on planes.
Used car sales are up. AutoNation had a good quarter. Why? Hygiene again. Avoiding mass transit and Uber hygiene in that scenario. And gas prices are down. Why is traffic going up on the roads, when so many are working from home and when there are so many stories about downtowns and shopping malls dying? Well, WFH only works for digital, white collar employees. Even there, people are competing for bandwidth with their kids and their spouses. Millennials miss the social interaction. Doug Belden, a County official told me we have not even begun to appreciate the costs of social isolation - suicides, domestic abuse, delayed chemo and other therapies. I have seen in my Zoom interviews and vendor virtual events the reality of spotty bandwidth, basic laptop cams which barely produce 720p resolution. Companies will have to think about souping up and fortifying WFH infrastructure. Telecoms will have to upgrade last mile infrastructure - in most neighborhoods they are already 10-15 years old. Don't get carried away yet with WFH projections.
My conversations have provided me fascinating, contradictory data Aneel Bhusri told me Workday saw a million person payroll. Million paychecks at a private company - let that sink in. In contrast, Brian Sommer told me he saw a recent survey at a HR conference where 0% of virtual attendees said talent acquisition was a priority. (BTW you will hear more from Brian and me about the New Normal for HR - see his column here as a start). While there are all kinds of doomsday scenarios about commercial real estate, Parvesh Mahesh of Tavant tells me residential real estate is on a tear. Home closings have continued with innovative ways to get paperwork signed even during lockdowns. Every Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A we have driven by in the last few weeks has had long drivethrough lines. Our local Costco has a whiteboard outside showing which items are out of stock - a month ago there were 20 items on that list. This weekend it was down to 5. Regular Gas at that Costco was down to $ 1.55 a gallon at its lowest. This weekend it was up to $ 1.75.
William Gibson, the science fiction author, is said to have first said in 1993 "The future is already here - it is just not evenly distributed." That future is definitely here now. And it it is definitely unevenly distributed..
People were amazed the BLS jobs report was so positive last Friday (even after a negative adjustment they had to make the next day). I was not shocked - only a bit surprised that it was a month earlier than I expected. I estimated the July report would show an improvement, then steady gains over the next few months. Lots of reasons for my thinking - partly because I think most media and analysts keep focusing on the ends of the wealth curve and ignoring the middle. I have been collecting a bunch of data for a book on what I call the "invisible middle" - it is alive and well and just needs calming down after the initial shock of COVID-19. I say invisible because it is all around us. Costco has nearly 100 million members. Their annual household income is over $ 90K. That's middle class right there. They were the biggest buyers of 50 million cars sold in the US in the last 3 years. Their retirement and housing assets exceed $ 50 trillion in my data.
And a few more trillion that have been pumped into that with PPP emergency loans and stimulus checks. Protests and concerns of COVID flare ups are keeping them nervous. Protests are needed but let’s do them nicely and cognizant they may contribute to the flareups, then get to some serious work, not keep making consumers nervous.
Most vendor executives I have interviewed realize the world has turned. In contrast, many proposals and presentations I am seeing in the field still reflect a yearning for business as usual. How much vertical functionality written a few years ago is still relevant as is? How many CFOs are likely to sign off on 2-3 year projects? See a perspective from Ed Abbo of C3.ai starting around 16:30. I have a conversation coming up with Brad Keywell of Uptake who has been saying similar for years now. How many companies will allow teams of on-site consultants? See the answer from Sarvesh Mahesh of Tavant starting around 18:14 about newer models likely around delivery of projects.
Could the US economy bounce back like a bungee? Maybe, but even then the gains will be unevenly distributed. It's already clear many agile companies across industries have done well and will likely expand their advantage.
Much better to be prepared for any scenario. As the Disney song goes
Once a year we turn all Paris upside down
Every man's a king and every king's a clown
The problem is it may not just be a day - it could be a year or even a decade.
This is where my analyst training kicks in. Challenge clients to look at multiple scenarios and assign likely probabilities. Not easy - but how often do you find yourself positioned for so much success or risk as much failure?
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Bill McNee, technology industry analyst and a former colleague of mine at Gartner. Bill writes about birding, photography, nature, and his travels near and far:
Thanks for the invite, Vinnie. I prefer to think of myself as both a “birder” and increasingly as a “naturalist.” I’m the son of two avid gardeners. Both mom and dad grew up on the farm during the 1920s and 30s prior to adopting a traditional urban / professional life after WWII. Dad became an economic / urban geographer, who was equally adept in geology as he was in his specialty of location theory analysis. I vividly remember “Professor Bob” teaching us about rock formations, topography and habitats during our many extended family camping trips – often lasting more than a month at a time.
In the mid-1960s, mom and dad were on the vanguard of the modern “environmental movement” – although they wouldn’t have called themselves “environmentalists.” They merely taught us the importance of nature, and the need to have kinship with it. As kids, we composted. We recycled. We would only eat fresh (or fresh-frozen) vegetables. Each fall, we would pick apples and peaches. Mom would organize an amazing canning operation that would supply us for the winter! It was fun learning from them – whether in the car on our many sojourns, or at the dinner table where dad would hold court.
What does this have to do with birding? Again, it traces back to my mother. She had these little 4”x6” Golden Field Guides strategically placed on key windowsills throughout the house to spot check who was visiting our feeders that day. We didn’t have spotting scopes or binoculars back then. It was pure old-fashioned backyard birding.
Fast forward to the late 1990s, and the dawn of digital photography. I was an early adopter, and still have some shots on my hard drive from 20 years ago! Over the years, my digital photography has evolved dramatically, especially as I began to focus on birding fifteen years ago. Luckily, my career allowed me to travel widely – although most of it since 2005 has been in the US and W. Europe. What I would give to have become more active with my birding photography 10 years earlier, when I was traveling extensively in S. America, S. Africa, Australia and Asia! But that’s just water under the bridge now.
I’ve had so many fun birding adventures over the years, whether it be at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival (the largest of its kind), a visit to the Parc naturel régional de Camargue in Provence, the Yum Balam Reserve near Cancun, or Yellowstone National Park, to name just a few.
Luckily, my wife and I live right along the Atlantic Flyway – and we’re able to enjoy the seasonal migrations up and down the east coast. We split our time between Northeast Florida and Rhode Island – each of which has a terrific diversity of birdlife.
Locally in Florida, we have so many cool birds that visit our backyard birdfeeders and community, including a terrific array of Songbirds, Woodpeckers, Raptors, Shorebirds and Waders. In early May, I created a new Facebook group called Birding in Ponte Vedra and Beyond that readers might enjoy checking out. I post fairly regularly – and encourage all to sign up regardless as to whether they’d like to add photos themselves, or just receive the feed. One of my recurring posts lately is called Birding on the Links, with action shots taken while playing golf with my wife, usually later in the afternoon. Here’s a fun shot of one of the dozens of Ospreys that nest in our community.
While there is a rich pallet of birding hotspots nearby, one of my favorite places to visit is the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, in Titusville, Florida – which is two hours south of us right near the NASA Kennedy Space Center. Within the MINWR is the Black Point Wildlife Drive, a special 7-mile route that is one of the best places in the world to see and photograph birds up close. I encourage everyone to visit if they can. I also post to other Facebook birding and photography groups where you can see some amazing wildlife (Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge Photography or Florida Birds and Wildlife).
We also have a diversity of birdlife near our house in Rhode Island. While I’m somewhat active with the local Audubon chapters in Florida, I am much more so with the Audubon Society of Rhode Island (ASRI). It is one of the oldest Audubon organizations in the US. I love going on the Wednesday morning bird walks run by Laura Carberry. I have learned so much from her – not only in better seeing birds but listening to them as they speak their special language of the woods. She has such a sophisticated ear – and regularly IDs birds by their calls 10 minutes before we ever see them on the trail. This has encouraged me to sign up for a Bird Song class through the Bird Academy at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. While they charge a small fee for the course, there are many other resources available for free.
One of my favorite spots is Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge. It has a wide range of habitat (among its 800 acres), including both fresh and saltwater ponds. Its southern boundary is a barrier beach with one of the few nesting sites remaining in RI for Least Tern and Piping Plover. I can’t wait for our planned trip to Block Island in late September to visit the Lewis-Dickens Farm Wildlife Refuge (managed by Audubon) during fall migration, when more than 70 species of migratory songbird can be seen as they fall out of the sky for a brief respite on the journey south.
Over the years, I’ve probably seen more than a thousand bird species. While my trusty Sibley Field Guide is always nearby, a couple of years ago I began using the excellent tools offered by Cornell Lab – including Merlin (bird ID app), the Macaulay Library (with recordings of 18,000+ bird calls) and eBird, which has fast become an online industry standard to track birds. Before that, I built spreadsheets based on hand-written notes! The Audubon app for iPhone is excellent as well. I also recommend using the ABA’s What’s this Bird? Facebook group when in doubt. It is truly amazing how technology has improved the experience and made it much more accessible for the broad public.
The cost of optics and photographic equipment has dropped significantly over the years, while quality has dramatically improved. We now have digital scopes, iPhone clip-ons, and lighter-weight telephoto lenses. My basic kit hasn’t changed much for a few years – so I’m probably due for an upgrade (LOL), specifically a more modern camera (as my Canon EOS 6D is nearly 10 years old).
The primary lens I use for birding is a Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary telephoto zoom (f/5-6.3) – purchased when it first came out 3-4 years ago. It is not only lighter than the Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L zoom that many birders use, but it is a lot less expensive and has a longer focal length. To give the Sigma something to balance on, I often use my ultra-lightweight (< 1 lb) monopod from Manfrotto that collapses to only 16".
Technology is opening up all sorts of new avenues of discovery. The use of light-sensitive geolocators, as well as small GPS transmitters (combined with satellites) have brought breakthroughs in tracking bird migrations. We better understand how weather is impacting birds today, and how climate change will dramatically alter their migratory range and habitat tomorrow.
Going forward, we will continue to see major advances with our smart devices in bird identification (and conservation), as well as the advent of using Augmented Reality combined with Artificial Intelligence to deliver a much more powerful birding experience.
For those interested in getting additional information about the intersection of technology and birding, check out this excellent article published by the Cornell Lab. I also encourage readers to read the excellent pieces by Mary Keith and Jim Caldwell in this Passion guest series.
I don’t consider myself an “expert” birder or digital photographer – I still have a lot to learn (especially in the digital darkroom). Photo editing is so very different from the days I almost minored in photography back in the late ‘70s. Instead, I think of myself as an enthusiastic / advanced amateur. One of the things I love about birding is that it demands that you remain a lifetime learner. To me, it is less about tallying up huge life-lists and more about understanding birds in their natural environment. I’m especially excited to gain a better understanding of bird language. I’m fascinated by their mating rituals and migratory patterns and captivated by their beauty. I look forward to slowing down and becoming more aware and in-tune with nature. Two books I recommend are: How To Know The Birds (by Ted Floyd, Editor of Birding Magazine), and What the Robin Knows (by Jon Young).
In the coming months, I’d like to plug into one of the major conservation organizations, while I continue to work part-time with a handful of long-time clients at McNee Associates. Limiting the destruction of natural habitat and minimizing the impact of climate change is a legacy worth fighting for.
The SpaceX craft took off today on its way to the ISS.
National Geographic describes some of the advances in spacecraft design since the days of the Space Shuttle
"Designed to ferry as many as seven people between Florida’s Atlantic coast and low-Earth orbit, the SpaceX capsule is a sleek, modern vehicle with windows, touch screen control panels, and a large storage compartment. While in orbit, 16 Draco thrusters orient the capsule in the vacuum of space.
Eight larger SuperDraco engines provide a way for Crew Dragon to abort, hurtling away from a malfunctioning rocket during an emergency. This in-flight abort capability is designed to avoid a catastrophe like the 1986 destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, which broke apart shortly after launch, killing all seven passengers."
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Nancy and Jim Richardson who talk about their autistic son Michael and how the joy and challenge of raising him has led them to found Neuro Diverse Living. This nonprofit has focused on creating safe and secure housing, community, and job opportunities for autistic kids after they grow up. As Jim says "Adults with autism and other IDDs, (intellectual and developmental disabilities), is a demographic that is way overlooked. As a nonprofit, our singular mission is to provide safe and sustainable housing to families who are dealing with the very issue we've dealt with: What's going to happen to my child when we're gone?"
As career Fortune 1000 executives and serial entrepreneurs, Jim and Nancy Richardson have created vast network of connections that enable and support their life-long focus of leaving a legacy for their three children and four grandchildren. As active members of the Central Bucks Rotary, they also give back to the community that they have called home for the past 21 years. In their spare time, they love riding their motorcycles, spending time with family and close friends.
Stacey Fish of SAP introduced me to Jim and Nancy. This is what she has to say about them
"I have known Jim and Nancy for 30 years. I had the fortune of meeting them at work and actually saw their love blossom, attended their wedding, and have just been remarkably close friends for 30 years. In that time frame, I had the pleasure of watching them raise Michael along with the struggles of raising an autistic child.
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to babysit several times. I was there when Jim had serious back surgery and stayed with Michael so Nancy could take care of Jim. Again, hands-on, real-time seeing the struggles they were dealing with.
Although we don't live close to one another, we never lost touch and reconnect every time we see each other without skipping a beat. I've always stayed in touch, always wanted to learn what they're doing with Michael in as much that they pushed the boundaries of research and doing what's best for him and being his advocate.
I’m blessed to not have the struggles they do with schools and activities of daily living raising an autistic child. But watching and learning what they have had to overcome and do things on their own has been inspirational. When I heard about then building a nonprofit to address the lifetime needs of autistic adults for those like their now grown son, I was immediately and passionate about helping them."
Here's a young Michael and the wonderful adult he has grown to become
Here are notes from my conversation with Nancy and Jim
Nancy
"Michael has so many skills. He's got empathy and compassion for others that have just really shone through in his development over the years. We are just so thrilled to see his future unfold, which is why we developed Neuro Diverse Living as there are literally no options for these young individuals - a place for them to live, thrive, and develop as great contributors to a community and be in safe hands.
In the right environment, Michael can live independently but is not a great self-advocate and like many with autism, are vulnerable in ways that their neurotypical peers are not. This is a primary driver behind our goal of providing safe and sustainable housing for Michael and felt that if we could solve this for Michael, we could solve it for other families in the same situation. We see technology as an enabler to make independent living more successful.
We're taking this to the next level where not only can these individuals work at companies like SAP and around the state, but where can they live? They truly can grow as independent contributors to society. This is the component that we're focused on is helping these individuals, these unique, beautiful individuals live a happy and successful life."
Jim describes how technologies keep improving to support autistic kids as they grow older.
"Although Michael is my stepson, I've raised him since he was two. I got to see, from the very beginning, the challenges that parents with an autistic child face.
Getting a diagnosis of autism for your child changes everything about your life and you’re pretty much on your own trying to figure things out. We have always been "take charge" people and knew we had to take matters into our own hands.
There wasn't a lot known about autism 20 years ago. Diagnosis and early treatments have gotten much better. Michael is brilliant in his own way but has challenges interacting with others. He's come a long way from socially isolation to a point where he has blossomed into a kind and caring human being.
I believe that individuals with intellectual disabilities like autism have unique gifts. I think it's up to the family to find those gifts and pull them out.
The biggest fear for a parent with a special needs’ child is safety. We live in a world where people don't always have the best intentions and sadly prey on those that can be taken advantage of. Certainly, Michael falls into that category.
As we think about not only about how to ensure he is safe for the rest of his life, change is one of the things that really is not good for someone with autism. We’ve also decided the other issue we need to tackle is employment, because these ‘kids’ can be productive members of society if given the opportunity.
From a technology standpoint, a lot has changed in 26 years since Michael was initially diagnosed. Tools like smartphones that can help them communicate and interact in social environments. From a housing standpoint, having cameras, motion sensors, and instead of physical keys, having electronic key cards or devices so they can get in and out while ensuring people who shouldn't be in the home can’t get in.
The amount of technology that's available today is incredible. There are also technologies that will help autistic individuals who struggle with sound and bright light. I think we've just begun to scratch the surface of how we can introduce technology to ease the transition from life at home to a life with others who have similar traits and characteristics.
We are laser-focused on tackling this challenge head-on. How we accommodate each individual's uniqueness, their idiosyncrasies, their quirkiness, and certainly the issues that they deal with and struggle with on a daily basis is imperative.
Many with autism are non-verbal or they're not great communicators. Imagine having touchscreen technology as a way to communicate with the caregiver to take control of their day. And there’s benefit for the parent in the family home to be able to check-in and communicate with their son or daughter from a technology standpoint provides a sense of safety and comfort.
There’s also immersive technology. One of the things we’ve been looking at is Google Glass, a technology that can help people who don't have the level of empathy. Using technology like Google Glass to sense a person's facial expression - if they're happy, they're sad, they're angry, helps from a social interaction standpoint – an immersive reality.
It's incumbent upon us to figure out the appropriate technology that's going to work for Michael, as well as what’s going to work for Sally, Timmy, or Tommy, and then incorporate that in our personal care homes.
There are systems available today that would allow the parent or family members of the resident let us know in advance that they're stopping by or planning a visit.
There are massive regulations about how the ‘Smart Care Home’ needs to be run and managed, along with the records that we need to keep. Years ago, all those records were maintained manually, but now we can maintain them through systems. It will keep our level of compliance up to date so that when the state does pay an unplanned inspection, our systems and reporting are available so that we can stay in compliance. This also provides additional comfort for the parents as they consider having their son or daughter live in one of our community homes.
We also think that being a nonprofit will allow us to take advantage of leading-edge programs and new technologies and incorporate them into our homes.
We're making great strides and are very excited about opening up our first Neuro Diverse home this year here in Bucks County, PA. As a nonprofit, we will share our model so that others throughout the region, and hopefully, throughout the country can do something similar. The autism tsunami is here and it’s only going to get more pervasive. The government is not going to figure this out, so it's up to parents like us and great friends like Stacey to make a lasting impact."
I encourage everyone to donate to the Neuro Diverse Living center here
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Minal Neuman, banker by day, and an extremely generous host in evenings and weekends. Here she writes about one of her passions, table settings and the lengths she goes to in her quest for the best.
"For years I have enjoyed entertaining and I believe in what I call the 5Gs (no, not the network) that make for a successful gathering. They are good presentation/ambience, good food, good wine, good friends and good conversation!
My passion has always been the focus on good presentation and by that I mean creating the ambiance and presenting a great table setting! Its like fine dining, but at home! Call me old fashioned but someone once said when you make an effort to set the table you are not only making your guests feel welcome and feel special but its also showing them that they are respected. When someone walks into your home everything should be warm, welcoming and charming!
I look at the table as a blank canvas ready to paint and I create as I go. No two table settings are ever alike! Over the years I have amassed a vast collection of dishes, silverware, glasses, tablecloths, runners, napkins, chargers, table mats, napkin rings, vases, candles, etc. And behind each find there is a story to tell!
I have traveled extensively over the years and have “stuff” from various parts of the world! I have lugged (or should I say husband Tom has) heavy terracotta, brass and stainless steel dishes, artifacts etc as hand baggage all over the world for me! I never check in my precious cargo should it get lost or damaged!
To give you an example, I went to India last November to visit family and spent an afternoon with my cousin Reena who had recently started dabbling in mandala art. She was showing me some of her canvases and I fell in love with her work. She showed me a stunning black and white square canvas board that she had painted. I asked her if she could repeat the same design and paint five more so I could use them as place mats. I remembered I had a set of clear glass plates that would work perfectly so that her artwork would be seen through the plates. In a few days she had not only place mats but matching coasters all ready for me! Check out her website on Instagram. She is amazing and so talented. Some of her canvas boards I even use as runners! Makes for a great centerpiece.
When I went to visit a friend in St. Thomas, we bought shells that I use to serve shrimp cocktail. You can also use them for baking seafood.
Needless to say I get really excited when I entertain because it brings out the creativity in me and I enjoy it! My husband Tom has supported my hobby over the years and even though he cringes every time I buy another dish or napkin, I know deep down he is proud of the artist in me!
Whenever I see something I like, I visualize my table and immediately my mind goes into overdrive as I think of all my dishes, table mats etc that would complement what I am about to buy and only then do I purchase it! I find my self frequently at stores plucking things from shelves and doing mini arrangements on various surfaces before I buy it so see how it looks! I am sure I look crazy on security cameras but I don’t care!!!
A few ago when we lived in Dallas, TX I happened to go to a estate sale and saw a set of gold plated silverware. That was one of the few times Tom put his foot down. What do you need that for? Where are we going to keep them? So I relented and have regretted it ever since. This past Mothers Day he surprised me with a set of 8 gold plated silverware. And as he said it was because I never let him forget it. He knows better now! This man has built has three large closets in our garage for all my dishes and I hate to admit it but even that is not enough! Almost every corner of our house is full of dishes, glasses every aspect of table dressing you can imagine.
My friends too are aware of my passion and some of my collections have been gifts from them.
On that same trip, I stayed at my cousin Vikram’s beautiful home in Pune, India. At a dinner party held for me one night, his wife Anjali served the meal in some ethnic terracotta dishes that she had bought several months before. I fell in the love with the dishes so she promised to find some for me. For months she searched to no avail. Years later when she came to visit me in Florida she brought me her the set of serving dishes as a gift from across the seas! She did not forget! I don’t know who I was more excited to see my family or the dishes!
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Sophie, the Lemon Beagle. Here she bays:
Hi, I am Sophie. My humans often call me Sophie Bean. Ask them why, I don't know - I am not very fond of beans to tell you the truth. Let's get a few things straight. I know this series is for human contributors. But I have an inside track. One of my humans, Susanne (who is holding me in the photo. My BFF, Gracie is also there. Beth is missing.) wrote about Stained Glass a few weeks ago. And my walker, Vinnie told me his own dog, Peanuts wrote in this series a long time ago.
I would have liked to meet Peanuts - sounds like a very wise dog, especially in his viewpoint about nasty cats.
Vinnie told me I had to include some technology angles in this column. Yawn. Well, Einstein how do you think this was written? There is an undocumented feature in Amazon Alexa which understands Beagle talk. Then I used Google Translate to convert that to English. I next raided his iPhone and Susanne's Android phone for photos and videos.
There you go, now can I talk about my passion? I want to get on the David Letterman Stupid Pet Tricks show. I mean Gracie and I are so much better than the clowns they usually have on the show.
(Vinnie's comment - don't ruin it for Sophie that Letterman retired long ago)
I am going to talk about 3 tricks. Keep score - at the end I will ask you your favorite I should play for my appearance on Letterman
Trick # 1 - The Butterball
Vinnie lives 6 or 7 houses down from us ( I am not that good at math, so don't be picky). Every morning I eagerly await his arrival.
As soon as I see him approaching, I alert Gracie. Both of us get in about 50 barks to wake up our humans so they can put a leash on me.
I drag Vinnie half way down the street. Then he lets me the run the final 4 houses (or is it 3? I told you I am not good at math).
Why do I run? There's some turkey waiting for me in his garage. I have heard him say Boar's Head is better than the Costco version. I tell him - why not both? Heheh. Anyways, I inhale the turkey, then I run to the door and leap to try and open it. Man is he slow, takes him forever to catch up to me and open the door.
Then there is another sprint into his kitchen to get to the cat's butter. Cat, as in Shadow, who lives 2 doors (or is it 3?) away from Vinnie but seems to be always at his place when he is not lurking around the neighborhood
Shadow is one strange dude, but he has good taste in butter. The Irish grass-fed cow, premium kind. I finish off what he does not every morning. If I am lucky, Vinnie lets me also finish off what's left on the Kerrygold wrapper every few days.
Once I am fed, I am ready for a long walk. I am a FitDog champion. Here are my trophies.
OK, it is Vinnie's FitBit but with my 4 legs multiply his score by 4 (OK, OK by 2 but that is way more than what you can say about Shadow who somehow snuck into the photo below pretending he walks with us)
(Vinnie's note - don't want to bias reader voting but those badges were earned over 6 years. Sophie is only 2. Also Shadow does not walk much when there is light. At night, he likely outwalks Sophie. His owner has talked about putting a tracking device to see where he prowls but is afraid to find out)
Here's Google Maps with the neighborhood we walk every day. There you go - more technology as Vinnie requested.
We have so much water around us I wish he would take me swimming, but he says we have alligators and sharks in our canals. Whatever.
You humans can be weird in other ways. Vinnie used to disappear every few days. I hear he flies a lot. He must be one big bird. Recently though his wings must have been clipped. He has been around a lot. The other thing I have noticed is humans are staying several feet apart. Some of them are even covering their noses and mouths with masks. I mean what's a world without smells? Like I said, humans are weird.
I doubt the Letterman studio will allow me to walk for miles. I will ask him for a treadmill. Now, let's move on to Trick 3
Trick # 3 - Circular Logic
You humans make fun of circles.
You guys have no idea how much fun they are. Here's me celebrating my dinner. EVERY NIGHT. I would like a human to try that without getting dizzy.
So, which one do you vote for - Trick 1, 2 or 3?
I really want to impress Letterman, though honestly the competition above is pretty underwhelming. Thanks for helping me out.
And anytime you want to compete with me around a crop circle, it's game on!
I have interviewed over 25 C level executives in the last month about acrobatics during the COVID-19 crisis, WFH and re-open physical site protocols and the "new normal" in their industry.
Most have done these interviews from their home offices, and I have been fascinated with all the Zoom backgrounds they have been using. Lots of creativity. (The links allow you to watch the complete session with each)
Jeff Robertson, COO of Maxar Technologies, lives in the Denver area. I thought he had a view of the Rockies in his background. It's actually a picture from one of his earth observation satellites of Mt. Fitz Roy in Patagonia in S. America - "taken from the horizon thousands of miles away." BTW, I half expected his twins to Zoom bomb the session. Apparently, his staff have issued them Maxar badges:)
Aneel Bhusri, CEO of Workday, had a background with his favorite pizzeria in San Francisco and hopes it survives the dine-in restrictions most states have had on restaurants
Ray Lane, Managing Partner at the VC firm, GreatPoint Ventures, started his interview from his "man cave" with some of his trophies in Silicon Valley. He then moved to another part of his house with better wifi connectivity for the session.
Mike Ettling, CEO of Unit4 had his corporate green screen as background. He looks charming, but told me they are moving to a more neutral color for future recordings.
Mike Laven, CEO of Currency Cloud, tried to do his session from the balcony of his flat in London. It was unusually bright for London (imagine!) and he moved in for the recording.
The fact they are doing this from all over the country is so calming. It is so different from the doom and gloom in the media - nice to hear and see people on the ground.
Andre Blumberg of CLP Power has been the only interviewee so far to do the session from a corporate, not a home, office. He forgot there was a motion detector in the boardroom in Hong Kong. We had a momentary loss of lighting and you can see him wave his hands to trigger the sensor :)
My wife has set up several different backgrounds for me to use. The one I have mostly used is in the library as in the ASUG Virtual Summit where Tom Wailgum interviewed me. (For a change we used the ON24 platform, not Zoom.)
Eagle eyes will notice that only one small portion of the library has copies of my 7 books. Like I said it's Margaret's library. I am only allowed to periodically use it:)
The ASUG event was scheduled to be in-person in Orlando. I wanted to use my deck and dock as background to provide the Florida vibe. I realized, however, I would only annoy viewers who were watching while a freak May storm dumped snow in their yards.
I have found French Blue shirts show best on these videos so in case you are wondering how fresh they are, here's proof of plenty of reinforcements. My dry cleaner has been pleased to see me even as my travel needs have dropped. :)
Many more sessions coming up so I will likely have more interesting backgrounds to share.
NASCAR is racing at Darlington, SC today, but under dramatically different protocols thanks to COVID-19 safety considerations.
Here are some of the changes:
No fans in the stands
Roughly 900 people have been approved to be inside the gates, all considered essential, most from the 40 racing teams. In their version of WFH, several team members are helping remotely
The Fox Sports broadcast booth team of Mike Joy and Jeff Gordon is calling the race from the studios in another state - in Charlotte, NC. Fox Sports has half as many people as usual at the track and fewer cameras, but they are using a high-speed drone capable of reaching 90 mph to fill in the gaps.
Every one entering has had temperate checks upon entering the stadium. They also have had health questionnaires filled out ahead.
All are wearing masks at all times when not wearing a helmet that covers their faces.
With no fans at the track and infields sitting empty, teams and haulers are being widely spread apart
Teams have brought their own portable toilets
Don't expect to see celebratory high-fives or hugs from the pit crew
With the research I do for this innovation blog, I started to notice beginning in January governments and companies were performing acrobatics defending against COVID-19. Drones being used for disinfection, deliveries, thermal imaging and public information sharing. Auto companies jumping into making ventilators. Last mile logistics getting turbocharged. Construction of pop-up hospitals. Accelerated clinical trials for vaccines. Naturally, I started to blog about them and figured that innovations from the global battle would become the theme of my next book.
Books, however, take a while to publish. I like to include 30-50 case studies in each. Those take weeks to get approved. To polish a book with multiple edits, footnotes, indexes etc takes many more weeks of effort and a village of people who support me. Honestly, that would not reflect the warp speed at which these customers and governments have been moving. I mean after years of slow growth, it took a snap of POTUS fingers to waive HIPAA restrictions and for Medicare to pay for telemedicine and it has taken off. Zoom is generating 7 petabytes (million gigabytes) a day of video traffic as many of us work, learn, play from home. A day!
I said I need to capture the moment on film. I settled on Zoom video interviews with executives in various sectors and geographies. Here is a growing index of my daily interviews.
I wasn't new to Zoom. I have been using the tool for most of my book and other interviews for a couple of years now. But I largely used it as a audio recording tool. Video is a whole lot different.
I got plenty of advice on technology, bandwidth, format of interviews, green screens - all valuable. But try easily getting 1080p HD or 4K webcams in this market (took mine 2 weeks to arrive but the vendor kept me informed of progress. Big thanks) Try to get your ISP to send a crew to fix fiber which has been mangled (they sent 3 different crews over 5 days to do the job while we were all quarantined. Even bigger thanks) Try to convince them to not throttle bandwidth when your entire neighborhood is at home (not much help there, but my Google WiFi pods allow me to prioritize a device for up to 4 hours and deliver most of the bandwidth there). I did ignore couple of pieces of advice - keep video length under 5 minutes. I am interviewing C level execs. They deserve the 20-25 minutes I am giving each. The other was about green screens. My wife has several excellent backgrounds for me - her library, her Egyptian section, her Buddhist section, our deck overlooking the canal in our backyard.
All set? Guess again.
Some interviewees insisted I not use Zoom because of security concerns. So I had to adapt to MS Teams, Skype, ON24. Many vendors had moved their events to virtual delivery which meant exposure to even more tools. Even though most of my interviewees are C level executives, they don't often have the best lighting or bandwidth. Many use their laptop cams which tend to only support 720p resolution.
It hit me we are in the middle of a giant experiment. We are seeing the democratization of the TV studio. Like with many consumer grade technologies, we will live with "good enough" for a short while. Plenty of innovation will make this better.
In the meantime, the good news is all my interviewees have been talking about their agility and acrobatics. There is no script for a crisis this deep and wide. There is authenticity in their voice. These are not cowboys - when they talk about risks of bringing back to work, they are being extremely thoughtful. You may think certain sectors are dead - oil and gas, airlines, hotels. Listen to counter perspectives from execs who have a front row seat.
Here's the even better part - everyone talks about kids and pets Zoom bombing their meetings. I have not had those, but I am enjoying all the variety in backgrounds. One CEO had his favorite pizzeria he hopes survives this phase. One did it from his man cave. One had imagery from his company’s satellites. One did it from his London balcony. One went dark for a split second - his motion sensor did not detect enough activity and turned his light off. I wanted to do one overlooking our canal but that would have been cruel to viewers who had snow this week!
Yes, the videos are not perfect, but they are timely. They reflect the heroics we are seeing across industries. A decade of change in a few weeks. Call it Fail Fast or Good Enough. I call it Agile trumps Perfect.
Over the last year I have been writing plenty about vertical and global applications. The recent COVID-19 crisis has resulted in acrobatics in various sectors, and also opened our eyes to massive changes in new concepts, new entrants, new regulations. A decade of change in two months and accelerating!
To capture the spirit of this unprecedented period of change in each sector, I have been running Zoom interviews with many CIOs, software executives, practitioners and investors to get their perspective on different industries and world regions.
Each conversation below is in the form of a 20-30 minute Zoom interview. I also summarize their key points in each post if you don't want to spend as much time on the videos.
BTW, many of the guests touch on several other industries. Many also bring a global point of view about Europe and Asia/Pac and others touch on leadership and resilience in a crisis, future of work and other topics
I had an early dental appointment this morning and noticed even at 630am the traffic was busier than it has been the last several weeks. Our county is in Phase 1 of its gradual re-opening.
I have been doing Zoom interviews with many C level executives around the country. They are all talking about prudent opening of their facilities. They will continue with work from home wherever possible. Where physical locations need to be open ensure distancing, temperature checks, enhanced hygiene routines.
Ray Lane in one of those interviews said "..look if we are going up the open up our economy again the responsibility now transfers from the government to us...Get out ...get back to work... bring all of these great technologies that we have seen during the COVID crisis ..bring them forward. I think you can operate in the month of May being socially responsible but let's get the economy going again."
We have already seen early signs of changes in workplace routines and hygiene. I wrote about those at Costco 5 weeks ago here. As of today, they have had many other process changes including requiring customers and employees to wear masks in their stores.
Amazon has procured so far more than 31,000 thermometers and 1,115+ thermal cameras, 100 million masks, 48 million ounces of hand sanitizers among other protective measures for its workplaces.
OSHA has guidelines for re-opening manufacturing plants. In an interview last week, Plex executives told me they have been facilitating a number of customer conversations about shop floor level safety protocols.
Cushman and Wakefield has a concept called the "6 feet office" for when people return to physical offices from their work from home settings
The NYC subway is going to be much more sanitary in the future.
Similarly when we start flying again we will find most US airplanes require passengers to wear masks, will reconfigure seats, change boarding processes, disinfect planes early and often. International flights will likely need temperature checks and health certificates. We may also see concepts like Glassafe that Aviointeriors has developed - a Plexiglass like screen to cocoon passengers, to separate them from their neighbors.
Designers like Yves Behar are thinking further ahead. "Providing a sanitary safe environment will become standard in office design, with surface materials that are anti-microbial, security robots like Cobalt (which we designed), daily deep cleans, non-touch gestural interfaces, and more personal space. Office design is always changing, and this is a new opportunity to design for maximum health: a physical and mental wellbeing approach of the most precious asset of any business—its people,"
Salesforce is offering a site called Work.com to allow for collaboration to help safely reopen your workplace.
A final request as we re-open the economy. Focus on your own community, not giving advice to others. I posted this rant in social media on behalf of my state last week
"No other state is more respectful of computer models than FL courtesy of the National Hurricane Center. I have written case studies about the satellites, buoy sensors, Hurricane Hunter flights and other data capture tech and the supercomputers used to create track models.
Floridians are pretty systematic about our evacuations. There are escape routes clearly marked in every town. Toll roads become free. Our utilities start moving equipment to likely where the landfall will happen. FEMA is on standby. Neighbors help each other - they will make sure the elderly are ok. People walk around with chainsaws to help with fallen tree limbs.
If anything, every state should have applied our script in reverse for their CV19 lockdown. We have very few panic attacks unlike the chaos we have seen around this.
Here's the irony. We were told we were fxxked because we were not listening to the IHME and other CV19 models. Now that those models say our peak passed over a week ago, we are being told ignore the models, stay shut down. As of now we are only at 52 CV19 fatalities per million - compare to the NY/NJ/CT area which is at over 2300!
But, wait we have Florida Man so we are country bumpkins - what do we know?"
End of rant :)
Re-open your communities smartly. We all have lots and lots of work to do in the next few months - let's mirror the many smart folks who are working feverishly on vaccines, antibody tests, contact tracing and other innovations which will gradually make us feel safer and safer.
I look forward to the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder letters and I have excerpted from many over the years on this blog. Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor, but I enjoy even more the historical perspective he brings.
So, it was a treat to watch the webcast of the shareholder meeting on Saturday. The travel restrictions during the current crisis worked to the benefit of all of us who cannot go those annual events in person.
Just the fact that at 89 he could present and answer questions for 4 straight hours is inspirational. He also keeps his sense of humor. First time in his life he says he has used slides. And points out his long term partner, Charlie Munger, who is even older at 96 is now a big Zoom user:)
He kept talking about the "American Tailwind" ...how we have bounced back many times, usually much stronger than the stumbles we have had. It was calming to see his slides about the losses of young, productive men during the Civil War. Puts in perspective the mortalities during the current crisis. He also compares how much we have bounced back economically since the Great Depression. And how, since the founding of the country, our wealth, diversity and other metrics have dramatically improved. Here are some of the slides he presented.
I would recommend watching his entire history lesson. It starts around 1:00 in the replay video at bottom and goes for about an hour. The rest is about his investments and procedural stuff since it was a formal shareholder meeting.
Of course, they are also leading to surveillance state worries. My personal opinion - drones are far more visible to the person on the street than satellite or high-altitude, wide area plane surveillance. We would be naive to discount all the other positive use cases drones are showing.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Nancy Murrah, who is President at Raptor Center of Tampa Bay, Inc. She is the past VP of the Tampa Audubon Society and still sits on their Board of Directors. She is a native resident of the Tampa Bay Area and has concentrated her rescue and rehab efforts in central Florida over the past 10 years. She holds a state and federal wildlife rehabilitation permit:
I have loved birds since childhood. As a watercolor artist my first picture was a woodpecker! I have continued to paint birds and animals literally my entire life. After spending 24 years in the Health insurance industry I needed an outdoor hobby. After watching a pair of red shouldered hawk‘s nest in my neighborhood and raise their young, raptors became my passion.
A raptor is a bird that hunts other animals for food. Their diet can include small birds, fish, mammals, lizards, and insects. They are found in every continent except Antarctica and go by names such as eagles, hawks, falcons, kites and owls. Below are a couple of different owls we have rehabilitated
Baby Barred Owl. Nesting in old tree cavities and in swampy areas the Barred owl can be heard asking “Who cooks for you” as its hoot resonates through the forest. This owl was able to be re-nested with its parents in a nest box.
Great horned owl in rehabilitation. These large owls are the apex predator in the bird world. Found throughout North America they can roust a bald eagle out of its nest. Did you know owls steal their nests from other birds, including Bald Eagles?
As an Audubon EagleWatch volunteer, I once got a call saying one of our baby eagles had fallen out of its nest and could I pick it up. “Pick it up?” I thought we were just supposed to watch them! Birds of prey fledge about the same size as their parents. It was a big eaglet! I went and picked it up and took it to the Audubon Center for birds of prey. This began my passion of helping wild birds rehabilitate successfully and return to the wild.
The field of Wildlife Rehab is exciting and just emerging to be recognized for the critically important work we do. In my lifetime, we have seen a 29% reduction of birds on the planet. It is important that we save each one. Our large birds of prey are part a healthy ecosystem. They are nature's rodent control!
Here are a few of the birds I have helped
Dark Morph Short-Tailed Hawk at release. These hawks are one of the rarer hawks in our area. There are also light morph (coloration) hawks.
Osprey juvenile upon admission. Ospreys are found throughout the world, although they are threatened in some places. Osprey abound in coastal areas and inland counties where there are rivers and lakes. Osprey are also called Fish Hawks.
To be able to hold a bird of prey and feel the ultimate power they have in their wings, their feet and their overall anatomy is phenomenal. I am in amazement every time I hold or treat one or see it the air.
Right now my passion is to build a center in the Tampa Bay area to rehabilitate birds of prey. We are closer than we ever have been with an anticipated closing date of May 31 on a piece of land in Riverview to do just this. We are making our vision a reality.
So if it’s a tiny screech owl or a large red tail hawk when you see one in the air and marvel at the sight, there is a chance that it is a bird that we may have helped along its path of life. And no matter how many that I hold in my arms when I see them in the wild, when I watch them hunt, watch them sore high in the sky I am in awe!
Here's an Eastern screech owl juvenile at check up. These owls are very plentiful in urban area as. With a diet of roaches and small rodents these owls they are an asset to any yard.
Here's a Red-Tailed Hawk at release after 6 weeks in rehabilitation. Red Tails are one of the larger hawks found throughout the United States.
Finally, a juvenile Red-Shouldered Hawk
Get outside and enjoy nature! No matter where you are please try to support your local wildlife rehabilitators. It is an intense job and we are all non-profits and rely on donations to help. Being able to rehabilitate and return a bird to the wild where it belongs is the ultimate reward! The value of what we do tirelessly day in and day out to the planet is immeasurable. (Vinnie's note - you can donate by PayPal here)
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Katie Nittler,
Born in the UK, Katie has lived in Northern California for over 20 years after moving to ‘live the dream’ with a start up in 1998. She has been in technology her whole career and is currently SVP Global Alliances for Nokia Software. Katie and husband Mark are about to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary and are very proud parents of 3 and now a grandparents to Mason.
She wrote about Landscape Gardening in 2014. She updates us about how gorgeous her garden looks now, and also how technology helps her maintain it, communicate with the designer and with other gardening fans around the world:
Vinnie invited me to share my California landscape project in 2014 and how I was using technology to help liaise with my best friend Gail who is a garden designer in the UK. The ‘Pause’ in the world gives us all a chance to reflect.
Over the last six years life has accelerated in many ways – different jobs, two years living in England, the middle schooler is now a high school junior and the excitement of our youngest son’s wedding in 2014 is now compounded with a eight month old grandson. And how the garden has grown!
Working with an English garden designer was amazing as I could incorporate many plants that are more common in England into a California landscape. Roses alongside Citrus combines the magic of the climate with the beauty of the English rose. The biggest surprise was the Cardoon. Cynara cardunculus belongs to the artichoke family. In England it will grow to 6’. Ours topped 10’ and started to take over the herb garden and has been resituated.
Over six years, the garden has started to mature. In doing so, it has taken on a life of its own – seeds get blown from one bed to another and plants appear where they are not planned. The exotic plant with purple berries that grew in the corner turned out to be Deadly Nightshade! After the first shock and some desk research we have enjoyed (and respected) the plant as it continues to grow year after year and is quite magnificent!
We moved to England a year after the garden was planted and struggled in communicating with the gardeners in California. That resulted in a very expensive mistake and change in irrigation that had to be replaced when we returned two years later. The new system is not reliant on the gardener and it is all in our control remotely. Rainbird has a great App that allows us to change the settings from wherever we are.
‘Shelter in place’ means so much more when you have a garden that you love. For the garden, this is the most magical time of the year and for a change I was not traveling or commuting. Over the first four weeks, I was able to see the buds open to new leaves on the trees, the fruit trees blossom and show the first signs of fruit, the first roses bloom and after hard work clearing the vegetable garden the first seedlings are coming up. I felt connected to the earth again.
There has also been a reality check. When the gardeners cannot come to tend to the garden we have needed to adapt. That has meant that I have done far more of the preparation for the summer than ever before. Now as the roses are in full bloom I am researching pruning instructions to make sure we have continual blooms until November. I have found I am a "learning by seeing and doing" person so YouTube is a great resource for different teachers including this one about Pruning roses. Many of the main growers have their own videos so you are learning from the experts.
This connection to the garden has also given me time to reflect on the last six years and how technology has changed in our lives. When Gail and I were working together on the garden design it involved email, telephone calls and flights to the US. There was no Facetime or Whatsapp or Zoom to help to show what was happening.
Fast forward to today – real-time video calls, TikTok videos of the garden in bloom (like one below), a Facetime Easter hunt for our grandson. Voice is a given, still photos and video are expected but live footage is still amazing – showing how my garden grows. The experiential aspects of real-time technology remind me of the advances that are enriching our lives.
However, let's be honest - there is no substitute for smelling the roses.
"Medical equipment and financial conduits involve no rocket science whatsoever. At least therapies and vaccines are hard! Making masks and transferring money are not hard. We could have these things but we chose not to — specifically we chose not to have the mechanisms, the factories, the systems to make these things. We chose not to *build*.
You don’t just see this smug complacency, this satisfaction with the status quo and the unwillingness to build, in the pandemic, or in healthcare generally. You see it throughout Western life, and specifically throughout American life."
"Is the problem money? That seems hard to believe when we have the money to wage endless wars in the Middle East and repeatedly bail out incumbent banks, airlines, and carmakers. The federal government just passed a $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package in two weeks!
The problem is desire. We need to *want* these things. The problem is inertia. We need to want these things more than we want to prevent these things. The problem is regulatory capture. We need to want new companies to build these things, even if incumbents don’t like it, even if only to force the incumbents to build these things. And the problem is will. We need to build these things."
"Our nation and our civilization were built on production, on building. Our forefathers and foremothers built roads and trains, farms and factories, then the computer, the microchip, the smartphone, and uncounted thousands of other things that we now take for granted, that are all around us, that define our lives and provide for our well-being. There is only one way to honor their legacy and to create the future we want for our own children and grandchildren, and that’s to build."
While hotel bathroom showers used to have curtains, sliding glass doors, or doors that swing outwards, what guests often find now is a shower with a half curve of glass only, or a shower head and drain that are completely open to the rest of the room. Tom Parker, director of boutique hospitality design firm Fettle, says the designs he sees the most often are crittal doors—big panes of clear glass with black frames, which can be used to either fully enclose or partially enclose a space—or "small openings with no door."
Smaller doors give the illusion of a larger room. “The ones that I've worked on, they just make the bathroom feel a bit brighter and a little bit more spacious,” says Strauss.
A physical barrier, no matter how small, also eliminates the need for shower curtains, which can get pretty icky. “Shower curtains, especially cloth curtains, are more likely to trap bacteria than shower glass,” says DeBoer “Frameless shower doors offer less chance of mold build-up [and] are easier to clean.”
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Chris Selland, the CEO of DipJar, a Cambridge, MA based fintech company. He spent most of his career in the enterprise software space, in marketing, business development and sales leadership roles for companies including Vertica (acquired by HP in 2012 and divested to Micro Focus in 2017) and Unifi Software (recently acquired by Dell Boomi), and earlier in his career was a well-known CRM analyst at the Yankee Group and Reservoir Partners, which was later acquired by Aberdeen Group. He lives in the Boston metro area with his wife and 5 grown kids, and still keeps active - here he writes about how active:
Vinnie and I go way back (no I’m not going to give specific dates - to protect him of course…) and I’ve appreciated his ongoing passion for writing. As a fellow Enterprise Irregular he’s been featuring the passions of some of our fellow “EI’s” on his blog, and when I read Jason Busch’s guest post it really struck a nerve.
Like Jason - though not nearly to his level of intensity - I’m passionate about keeping fit, eating well and (increasingly) sleeping well. These times we’re in and my age group have driven home that, as the adage goes, if you’ve got your health, you’ve got a good life.
I’ve been a gym rat since my teen years, but I’ve also participated in my share of road races (including 3 marathons), triathlons and other aerobic activities. I also had a very enjoyable 10 year men’s soccer resurrection in my ‘40’s - picking up a game I hadn’t played since my teens.
Over the last few years, however, my left knee has decided for the rest of my body that high-impact exercises such as running and soccer were not a good idea anymore. Compound meniscus tear to be specific - and not the type that is repairable by surgery. As 2 different doctors suggested, it’s not about if I want a knee replacement, it’s a question of when. Also other joints have become more balky about my former 7 day per week gym habit.
So more and more, variety has become the norm for me. For the last few years in particular I’ve tried to do more low(er) impact exercise - until my gym shut down, I continued to lift weights but more as a 2-3 day/week thing, rather than 6-7. And I had tried mixing in both yoga and spin classes, but found myself negatively motivated by the formats of these exercises. Working out with large groups of people - many of whom are both a different gender and in better shape than me - made it tough. And my continually-varying schedule made scheduled classes a near-impossibility
My wife Deb, however, is another story. She absolutely loves spinning and is on a 7-day-week plan, which she’s done for years. She belonged to a local spin studio and every morning was out the door in the early hours, but also found adapting to the schedules challenging, especially given our respective work and life schedules.
About 18 months ago, we decided to take the plunge and buy a Peloton bike. While it was “for” Deb - and for everyday use - I started using it too, mixing it in with my every-other-day trips to the gym.
Then came the COVID crisis, and the need to improvise and adjust.
I’ve found the Peloton to be a true lifeline - not just the on-demand “classes” but also the community. Even though they’ve shut down their studios so all classes are now recorded during the COVID crisis - there’s still something about seeing and hearing the instructor, the music and of course the leaderboard that is definitely more motivating. It’s not just exercise - but a connection to the outside world (even if everyone else on the leaderboard is stuck in their homes just like we are).
And the instructors are fantastic - see at the bottom how Denis Morton is graciously managing to smile as I sweat all over him, after our visit to their NYC studios last August (pre- social distancing, obviously…)
More recently, I’ve discovered Peloton Yoga - among the variety of classes in their on-demand platform. While I’m still very much a beginner (and you’ll notice zero pictures of me doing any poses, though here’s one of my “studio”) - it’s a nice break from cycling, and what it (so far) lacks in physical exercise I find very emotionally and intellectually relaxing. I feel calmer, and I’m sleeping better - and I’m sure it is related.
And I just recently picked up a kettlebell to round out my home gym. I’m trying to picture the look on the face of the Amazon delivery person (yes it came in a box) - again not a full substitute for a full-scale gym but based on the workout I just finished not bad either. The king of body-hacking Tim Ferris has been preaching the virtues of kettlebells for years, and I’ve picked up a few exercises over time, but I suspect to be using this atrociously-colored (really Amazon?) but well-built tool to be with me for years to come.
Finally, tracking. As a bit of a data nerd, I was one of the first to have the original FitBit, and have been into wearables and stat tracking ever since. While I haven’t yet made the investment in a Whoop like Jason (not that hard-core, despite some of my investor friends also telling me to make the switch), my Apple Watch does a very serviceable job of exercise tracking.
In addition to my watch, my stats get fed by the Sleep Cycle app on my iPhone and my iHealth scale. Neither are necessarily perfect, but both give me at least a sense of how I’m doing day to day.
Last but definitely not least, a critical part of my weekly routine has been the weekend walks I’ve been able to take with Deb & my daughters (yes social distancing always). My watch tracks those too - and they absolutely count both physically and emotionally. Especially on the emotional scale, the walks are my favorite routine of all.
These past few weeks I’ve found that, despite the COVID crisis and all of the stresses caused by it, I’m actually making progress on most measures - and as frustrating as the state of the world is, I am calmer, feel better and in at least some degree of control. As I often remind myself, if every day you make a little progress - even if it doesn’t feel like much - when you look back over the longer-term you’ll find you’ve come a long way.
Give back with MyDataHelps
Oh, and one more thing - and a way that we can all turn all of this data into something that helps all of us. If you have any type of wearable I strongly encourage you to check out and download the MyDataHelps app. It’s a way to both monitor your own data and also contribute it to a larger study, conducted by Scripps Research, of indicators of health (including but not limited to COVID-19).
Thanks Vinnie for giving me a forum to share - obviously there are a lot of product mentions here and I do recommend every one of them, but realize there are alternatives as well. One of my coworkers heard me singing the praises of Peloton but decided to buy an Echelon bike instead and is at least as passionate as me about it (though I’m not sure he’s as passionate as Jason).
What’s most important is doing something - and starting now. Keep it simple, but keep track - and you’ll make progress. You may be amazed by how much. We’ll get through this - and while we do I wish you all good health.
Wireless sensors connected through 5G could monitor field conditions and detect when crops need watering, pesticides, or fertilizer, experts say. It could also help with tracking livestock and guiding agricultural drones and self-driving tractors.
While major wireless carriers Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are racing to install 5G, they've so far focused only on metropolitan areas because of their high concentration of potential customers. It will take years before their 5G networks are widely available in rural areas, meaning most farmers will have to wait.
Many farmers have already installed sensors in their fields that are connected using 4G, which operates at up to 100Mbps. In comparison, 5G speeds of up to 10Gbps are expected.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is my nephew, Nitesh Mirchandani who lives in Morristown, NJ with his wife, Irem. Nitesh works for Birlasoft, a mid-size technology SI and leads business for their Life Sciences customers. Irem is part of Reckitt Benckiser’s Project Management team in the Supply Chain area. They love to travel and have a long bucket list of countries to visit. They consider themselves foodies! That's the two of them when they visited us in Tampa. We were at Boca, a farm to fork restaurant. With telemedicine, teleschool, tele-everything gathering momentum, they write about their experience with telecooking during our slowdown and lucky us, share plenty of recipes:
With all of us transitioning into and getting used to the ‘new normal’, having a routine is of paramount importance. Helps mentally, emotionally and even physically keep up with the nuances of doing everything from home. This routine has enabled almost everyone I know spending time on hobbies and that has been the case with me as well.
Cooking traditionally has been a hobby for me. An infrequent one. After a business trip or a typical day in the office, I have found cooking to be a great way to de-stress and to even focus and center myself. Inspiration for cooking comes from my mother, Sonu, who is a phenomenal cook. My brother, Alok, and I grew up raving about her meals. Even my father, Sunil, learnt cooking from her! As kids, my mother would take month-long trips to spend time with her ailing mother. My father would take over the kitchen. Years later, via email, they shared a brief cookbook with recipes that he had jotted down (Dhaba translates to a casual, roadside eatery in India)
Another inspiration is my wife, Irem. Besides being my soulmate, she also is the biggest fan of my cooking. Even the lousiest tasting dishes are lauded and complimented endlessly by her, like a cheerleader!
As we join so many others in flattening the COVID-19 curve, Irem and I decided to quarantine ourselves starting March 12th. We also decided to cook more at home. Usually, we only cook once a week or over the weekend. We rely extensively on our fantastic local restaurants in Morristown, NJ – dine in, take out and delivery. We have continued to give as much business as possible to restaurants like South + Pine and The Committed Pig who have converted their kitchen into a marketplace. They deliver groceries to us and leave them at our door – simple ordering process via email or a phone call. Win-win overall. We get fresh and organic produce, dairy and meat. The restaurants make money. Their employees continue to earn salaries and tips. Their suppliers and vendors make money. They have been very helpful with contactless delivery.
Whole Foods (via the Amazon app) and Instacart (Costco primarily) also have been extremely helpful with contactless grocery delivery. In the absence of live sporting events, I have found myself entertained tracking grocery orders, substitutions and additions on Instacart.
Amazon has been a lifesaver for pretty much all non-perishable pantry items. From EVOO to flour to rice to lentils to spices – the selection is endless!
Other technology comes in the form of websites with delicious recipes, such as – Food.com, Allrecipes and Delish . Plenty of inspiration also comes from posts/ videos on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. In addition to the typical kitchen appliances, we have added others that makes the cooking a whole lot easier like Instantpot, Vitamix andDigital Thermometers.
I have also been reading and trying to take a leaf out of several celebrity chef cookbooks – Bobby Flay, Salt Bae and Sanjeev Kapoor among others
With all this support, we have been able to cook healthy with fresh ingredients. Pretty much everything is cooked from scratch. Here are some of the dishes we have cooked in the last month and half that I am proud of. I hope they inspire some of you to try them yourself. I have linked to the recipe for each.
Thanks to all the inspiration, technology and Irem’s taste tolerance, my hobby continues to grow. It could become a permanent passion in the future. Cooking every day has helped de-stress the entire day of ‘x’fh (x’ from home) i.e. work from home; socialize with friends, family, colleagues and customers from home; manage tasks and activities from home; lead people and self from home; sell value from home; deliver CX projects from home etc.
I am confident we all will get through these unprecedented times together and come out stronger. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay positive. And stay well fed.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is John Appleby, CEO of Avantra, the AIOps (Artificial Intelligence applied to IT operations) platform for SAP. Specializing in helping customers move from reactive to proactive operations, Avantra empowers businesses to focus on digital transformation by reducing manual operations and the cost to serve.
Here he talks about how he is modernizing his house which can trace roots back to William Penn:
I often reflect that I'm either the oldest millennial or the youngest Gen X. I could type before I could talk.
When it comes to a house, I'm slightly more old fashioned. The trend in younger buyers is to move into the city but downsize. It's caused a glut of larger houses with large lots in our area, and we were able to buy a classic house at roughly half of what it was listed for in 2008.
We have worked on modernizing the property so that we can behave like millennials. Fascinatingly, we have also managed to reduce operational costs with the automation. Here are a few thoughts for those of you who might be in a similar situation.
Green is the new capitalism
If you focus on the right projects, you can save money and the planet. For example, I spent $1000 on insulation at Home Depot to bring us up to code. That not only made the house much more comfortable, it also fixed a problem with airflow in a fireplace and saved us $1000 on AC and oil in the very first year.
Your local electric company likely has a ton of rebates. I had a problem with my water heater and got a new high efficiency one, for free. It was paid for by a home warranty and a rebate from the utility. In addition, it delivers about $250/year in savings.
They also came around and installed for free over 40 LED bulbs. We have hundreds of bulbs in our house, so this was appreciated!
Don't be afraid of the old
We have older oil-burning furnaces, but we get them tuned every season to keep them in the early-90s efficiency state. If you are to believe people on the internet, oil furnaces are the work of Satan, but the facts don't bear that out.
For a start, oil furnaces are powered by #2 heating oil, which since recent EPA ruling, is now red-dyed low-sulfur diesel. Diesel is exceptionally safe besides being relatively clean. A natural gas leak can blow up your house.
Replacing the oil burners for gas would be switching one fossil fuel for another. When our units stop working, we will consider solar or geothermal.
Automation is awesome
I run an AIOps company so you'd be surprised if I didn't love automation. I'm not as proficient as some of my coworkers, but here are a few things we have done:
We have Phillips Hue bulbs for all the major areas like living rooms and bedrooms, and they turn on and off to a schedule. They are also integrated with the Nest cameras that we use to stay safe. The cameras turn on the lights when they detect activity.
We also have robot vacuums on each floor to reduce dust buildup. I can't recommend these enough. One tip is to buy the cheapest ones on Amazon, not necessarily a $1,000 Roomba.
As you start to add items to the collection, they all begin to work in harmony; for example, the Nest system informs the water heater when we are away, and turns it automatically onto low power mode, saving a few dollars a day.
Renewing the old
There are just as many parts of the house where nothing has changed in the last 50 years. Two years ago, I cleaned up the deck, ruined with neglect and cheap pine boards. I took the cedar back to the grain, replaced the rotten board with new cedar, and stained the cedar to match the property.
We are also in the process of fixing up the old stables. In the 1930s, a trail association in our area was born, called the Bridlewild Trails Association. It looks after miles of trails, which are accessible by horseback. One day we may have horses, who knows?
Cedar roof repair is a painstaking task, and I am in the process of individually positioning and fastening thousands of cedar shingles with two nails each.
What's next?
High on my list is to modernize the swimming pool. We have an old 2HP single speed pump, which costs a fortune to run.
I had planned to add this year a variable speed salt-based system, which should slash the running cost and maintenance required: salt-based systems are more or less self-maintaining, and less harsh on the skin. It will also link into home-automation.
We postponed the swimming pool project due to COVID-19: it would no doubt require several visits to Home Depot to get the correct plumbing fixtures, and I'm going to save that until the current round of social distancing is over.
The summer room also requires some work; it had an old radiant ceiling heating system, which has since ceased to work. We will replace that with some yoga panels to keep that room warm on a fall night.
Final Words
I find peace comes from preserving the history of our culture and yet modernizing our environment. There can indeed be a symbiosis between enjoying our heritage and living in the 21st century.
It's something I often consider while riding up an old pathway on the property on my John Deere. The path was originally used by horseback riders in the 18th century, on property owned by a Welsh man called John Roberts. Roberts met a sad end: executed for High Treason, despite requests for a stay of execution from three signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Perhaps it's a parable for the world we live in: it is possible to modernize without destroying what came before us.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Jim Shepherd who recently retired from Plex Systems where he was Vice President of Corporate Strategy. Prior to Plex, Jim spent 20 years as an industry analyst at AMR Research and Gartner covering enterprise applications and advanced manufacturing. When not building boats he does independent consulting for software companies, manufacturers, and investors.
I have spent my entire career at the intersection of technology and manufacturing. I started out in the 1970’s nominally managing manufacturing operations and supply chain but most of my time was focused on implementing MRP II and plant automation systems. I then went on to spend many years of working for manufacturing software firms and then writing about them as an industry analyst at AMR Research and Gartner. After more than 40 years in the field I am still fascinated by high-volume manufacturing and sophisticated technology. Given that background I suppose it’s a bit ironic that my passion is building wooden boats, at a slow pace, using as little modern technology as possible.
The boats themselves are traditional designs and powered by paddles, oars, or sails. I admit to owning a 32-foot lobster boat with a big V-8 engine but the boats that I build are strictly human or wind powered. I don’t really think of this as rejecting modern technology so much as appreciating the several thousand years of marine propulsion that pre-dated the steam engine. If the Polynesians and Vikings could cross oceans without engines there is no reason that I shouldn’t be able to explore the coast of New England by oar and sail.
I certainly enjoy using the boats but it’s the building process that I really love. I have been a woodworker most of my life, and I have a shop that is well equipped with the usual power saws, drill presses, and planers, but I made the decision when I built my first boat that I would try to use hand tools and traditional methods as much as possible. I build the boats for pleasure, and my only deadlines are self-imposed, so there is no good reason to use a power tool when a chisel or spoke shave or block plane will do the job. Beyond the perverse satisfaction of doing it by hand I have learned to appreciate the quietness of shaping wood by hand and to prefer the curled shavings of cedar and mahogany rather than piles of sawdust.
I have always liked hand tools and I was fortunate enough to inherit some of my grandfather’s (a boatbuilder and casket maker) and my father’s tools. They are generally clever designs with the kind of satisfying ergonomics that come from being conceived and built by people who were actually going to use them. I find that they are particularly well suited to the process of making a wooden boat because it requires so much shaping by eye. Power tools tend to remove wood too quickly and they are biased toward cutting straight lines and square corners - those don’t exist in wooden boats. I still love big cutting tools from table saws to CNC 5-Axis milling machines but there is an amazing tactile pleasure in forming a complex “fair curve” in a 10 foot piece of hardwood using nothing but a bronze and steel hand tool largely unchanged in 200 years.
Another aspect of my love of boat building is the intellectual challenge that it offers every day. I build from a set of plans with rough dimensions but i have found each builder makes their own decisions about process, sequence, and methods. Even the decision to build it upside-down or right-side up is frequently a matter of heated debate. Building by myself adds another interesting dimension to the problem. There are lots of processes that require more than two hands and I will often spend several hours inventing some Rube Goldberg device to hold a long floppy piece of wood in place while I work on the other end.
This was my first boat building project, a double paddle canoe for my wife. It’s obviously way too small for me and it probably wasn’t a great idea to launch it in December in New England:
On top is Tashtego which I spent nearly a year building. Sadly she was destroyed in a Fall storm on Martha’s Vineyard.
Here is the current boat in process. It has turned out to be the perfect “social distancing” project since there is not really room for anyone else in the shop
At some point in the transition from a pile of wood to a boat-like shape I unconsciously gave it a name. Boats, like children and pets, seem to require names even though I’ve never been inclined to name other inanimate objects like cars or houses. This one is called Fetch because it will serve as the tender to our cruising boat named Retriever and it will be used to go ashore for guests and supplies.
Fetch will replace an inflatable dinghy with a small outboard engine that does its job perfectly well but I have never loved it. It’s probably significant that it is the one boat I never gave a name! My expectation is that Fetch will do the job just as well while being lighter, better looking, and much quieter. Being a rowing and sailing boat it should also provide some pleasant exercise and recreation. Like my use of hand tools to build the boat I find something attractive about reverting to a much older boat technology that still works very well (perhaps better.) I think of this as just another example of a new technology (fiberglass boats with engines) that doesn’t really replace the prior generation, it simply expands our choices.
I think that building wooden boats somehow satisfies my need to make tangible and useful things along with some aesthetic desire for them to be beautiful. I love the fact that it has nothing to do with the software business and it is (at least in my case) a solitary activity. Some of the work requires intense concentration but there are also hundreds of hours of mindless sanding, painting and varnishing where I can think big thoughts or just listen to good music.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
It's my turn, and I thought about writing about my other passions - 10K steps a day and travel then realized that hearing and sharing stories, especially positive ones, is so important during our present doom and gloom. That's me with Stacey Fish of SAP who has helped facilitate many of my stories - case studies in my books. I could have included many others like Alan Alper at Cognizant who have similarly helped me plenty over the years.
I recently caught up with a PwC colleague I worked with 35 years ago. He had Googled my name and found my books. He asked 'I knew you as an accountant, when did you learn to write?". So between talk of kids and our travels, I told him of my move at PwC into tech consulting, then to the IT research firm, Gartner where I developed my analytical, writing and presentation skills.
Gartner definitely taught me how to communicate on tech topics. It did not, however, teach me how to tell stories. That has been a skill I gradually acquired at Deal Architect, the tech advisory and publishing firm I started in 2004. It has been a slow process, honed gradually with 6,000 posts on this innovation blog and over 200 case studies in my books. Not bad for a late bloomer, eh? You could argue case studies and blogs about technology are not traditional stories which have heroes and villains. I would respond they actually have plenty of each. Let's come back to that - for now let me just say that hearing and sharing stories is definitely a passion of mine. Let me also add I am still an amateur compared to the authors and movie makers I describe below.
Storytelling has been around since the dawn of civilization. Stories started as cave drawings, evolved to hieroglyphs, then were passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. They moved to papyrus, the printing press, movies and TV. Today's stories are told in social media, on YouTube and in visualization of data. It is said that humans learned to control fire about 400,000 years ago. They would farm and hunt when the sun was out, and relax by the campfire at night and tell stories. That must explain our continued interest in shows on prime time TV, our book reading and our relaxed conversations over a glass of wine at night.
I learned about the soothing effect of stories and lullabies at night when my daughter was very young. The Lion King movie had just been released, and during a visit to Busch Gardens she saw a monkey and called him Rafiki, a character in the movie. Next thing I know whenever I was in town I was the designated story teller about Rafiki. In my stories, that mandrill used to somehow escape from his zoo cage, get on a plane, and generally cause havoc. Amazingly, all that excitement helped put her to sleep. My son used it in reverse. He would wait till I returned home from my trips and make me listen to his fairly accurate recollection of the most recent Sponge Bob episode he had seen. Yes, I slept soundly dreaming of Krabby Patties.
Let's gather around the campfire
If you have joined me at a group dinner (I know that sounds quaint in these days of social distancing), you probably know I like to turn that into a storytelling session around the proverbial campfire. I like to ask people to tell the most improbable story they know. I like to share one I heard from my college mate, David Sugimoto. It is the incredible story of his Japanese grandfather, Tadae Shimoura and his dream of working in the emerging automobile industry in Detroit in the early 1900s. Somehow after a decade of twists and turns across 6,000 miles, he made it to Henry Ford’s house in Michigan and got that coveted job. I led off my book, Silicon Collar, which is about automation, machines and humans with the story. I have told to it countless audiences and still get goosebumps when I tell it. (BTW, click on the images if you want to enlarge the font.)
The Golden Age of story telling
I have pretty high standards for story telling. Let me share two of my benchmarks. I had taken my kids and their cousin to California in 2007. It was a magical trip for them. It included amusement parks, a chance to watch Barry Bonds when he was close to breaking Hank Aaron's lifetime home run record and a chance to stay at a majestic Pebble Beach resort. When I asked the kids their most enjoyable memory from the trip, it was none of the above. They said it was waiting in line at night at Barnes and Nobles to get their personal copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as soon as it was released. One of them stayed up all night and finished it so he could brag about it to the others! I still marvel at how J.K. Rowling managed to get kids to read her 600+ page books in our age of countless digital distractions. Here's another - I must have watched the iconic opera scene in The Shawshank Redemption countless times. I invariably choke up when I hear the Morgan Freeman voice over “To this day, I have no idea what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are left best unsaid. I would like to think they were singing about something that was so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and make your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a Gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away. For the briefest moment every last man in Shawshank felt free.”
In many ways we are living in the Golden Age of Story Telling. Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and so many others in Hollywood have thrilled us. Ken Burns, the documentarian has brought to life so much of American history, music and sports. I marvel at how Michael Lewis can take relatively unknown characters like Billy Beane and Brad Katsuyama and make them part of riveting books and movies. One of my personal treats was to meet Billy and hear him talk about the experience with Michael for Moneyball. It was a nice bonus to get a autographed baseball from him - see photo at bottom. I loved how James Michener could turn history and geography into eloquent stories about S. Africa, Texas and many other places. How Tom Clancy simplified complex defense and surveillance technology, and yes made Jack Ryan such a fascinating movie and TV character. How John Grisham can turn obscure and boring legal nuances into exciting adventures.
I have personally been lucky to be around some very good storytellers. One of them is Brian Sommer, who I have known for three decades. In all that time, I have never heard him repeat a story. He mostly talks about his siblings, friends and his ranch growing up in Texas. We are business partners so have to ration his story time, but, my is he entertaining, drawl and all. I can also spend hours listening to my cousin, Harish Malani who is an engineer and has been to over 125 countries. He has an encyclopedic memory and is full of anecdotes.
Humanizing Technology
Of course, with my career in technology, I find tech people, products and places awe-inspiring subjects. One of my favorite blog posts was about the most planned Space Shuttle flight that, in the end, never took off. Atlantis, coded flight STS-125, was headed to do repairs on the Hubble Telescope in May 2009. Unlike at the International Space Station, there are no docking facilities at the Hubble. As a back up, NASA put on standby at a nearby launch pad another shuttle - the Endeavor as flight STS-400. If Atlantis had run into trouble, there was to be a complicated transfer of crew in space to Endeavor - you can read more here. If Endeavor had also flown, it would have been the first time in decades NASA had two piloted space craft up at the same time. I was relieved along with everyone at NASA that the backup flight was not needed. But what an amazing story - I was happy to spend days researching it!
The underutilized art of storytelling
With all the amazing communication technology at their disposal, I wish tech executives would tell more stories. They mostly talk about their products or their financials. Every once a while they let their storytelling skill come out of hiding. In the late 90s, I had heard Doug Burgum, then CEO of Great Plains (now part of Microsoft) use his entire keynote to talk about the English clockmaker, John Harrison. Harrison beat out far more qualified scientists to solve one of the vexing problems of the 18th century – how to accurately measure longitudes, so important then for sailors and for all kinds of navigation since. I was spellbound for the entire hour. More recently, I was in a meeting with Dr. Hasso Plattner, one of the founders of SAP. I wrote later "He was doing his best Mark Twain describing how young Tom Sawyer had turned whitewashing a picket fence - a punishment for skipping school - into a group activity. He had conned his friends into thinking it was fun and required a unique skill - 'only one in a thousand, maybe two thousand can do it'. So much so that his friends paid him for the privilege of doing that tedious task in the hot sun. The tale has clearly helped Hasso motivate customers and employees over the decades even when he is proposing something radical."
Burgum is now Governor of North Dakota. I wonder if he has continued his story telling. I wish political leaders would use more stories in their speeches. President Ronald Reagan used them very effectively. Lincoln was even better - his Ethan Allen story in the heat of the Civil War is just masterful. I have heard Bill Clinton in a small group setting and he is similarly adept with stories. I have also heard Platon provide glimpses into many world leaders when he has taken portrait photos for the cover of Time or other magazines. Political leaders have the gift of the gab - too bad they don't often use it to tell calming stories
Chisel, sharpen, hone, polish
As with any craft, some of my most satisfying work happens when I take days to curate just a few words. That was certainly true of the research I did on the historic meeting Workday executives had with their first big customer, Flextronics. As you can imagine it some time to get busy executives to recreate a meeting which took place 5 years prior, and that on a Saturday. I am glad they did - it made for a great "You did what?" story. Below is the beginning of that section.
I similarly did extensive research for a couple of pages on Leonardo da Vinci for The New Polymath. Here is a sample.
I am proudest, however, of storytelling I facilitate for others. Over the last decade, I have coaxed over a hundred colleagues and friends to write about their passion in this series. Many of them are not writers, others are too modest to write about their craft, but every one of them beams with pride once they share their interest and watch readers comment their appreciation. Same is true of each of the case studies in my books. Corporate executives are coached on how to communicate but they often use technical and other jargon specific to their industries. My job is to make them comfortable and talk as much as they want. They are incredibly generous with their time, and I pay back by letting them validate their content multiple times before it is published. A village-full of transcriptionists, designers and editors helps polish their words. Readers often tell me they want to hear more of my analyst opinions. I tell them if more than 10% of any book is in my voice, not that of others, I have failed. Besides they can find plenty of my opinions on my other blog, Deal Architect.
More recently, I have been reaching out to a number of executives to talk in a video interview format about leadership during the crisis we are going through. And to also talk about the acrobatics and heroics they are seeing and what they foresee as the New Normal in their sectors. Here is one in the series with Alex Shootman, CEO of Workfront. Several more will follow.
The digital campfire
Delivering stories at scale would be impossible without today's technology. My book interviews with executives around the world are conducted via Zoom and Vonage. They go through multiple transcriptions and edits. My creative firm, 1106 Design uses plenty of Adobe and other software. Print shops have become incredibly sophisticated for producing bulk copies in thousands of units. For small orders, robots increasingly drive the print-on-demand process. And for eBooks, the Amazon Kindle Publishing process has been a game-changer.
My blogs use content management software by Typepad. My iPhone, iPad, Google Drive, various Microsoft tools help me create my content. My video interviews use Zoom, Microsoft Teams, webcams, microphones, editors and more. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram help me promote them all my content.
Ironically, even as we were promised a paperless society, 75% of my books continue to sell on paper. They are easier for companies to order in bulk and hand out at events. Of course, they are also easier to autograph on paper!
Back to heroes and villains
Well written stories have heroes and villains. Technology world also has plenty of both. In my advisory role, I help executives negotiate deals. Trust me, much harsher words than "villain" are used when things get intense. For my books, blogs and videos, however, I like to focus more on heroes.
I want to end this column sharing something on my bucket list. I would like to write a Michener-style book on my adopted state, Florida. Yes it would include some of our morons, but I would mostly show how for countless Americans, a trip to Florida is still one of their best childhood memories. How Kennedy Space Center has made them proud over and over. How many of them have elderly relatives happily living here. How much science and tech we have that few know about in medicine, simulation, green energy, autonomous vehicles, oceanography and space.
My wife, who helps edit my books, warns me very few people these days have time to read a large Michener-class book. She does not know my friend Paul Greenberg, who never lets word count get in the way of a good story. I tell her if J.K. Rowling could make young kids read fat books, I am pretty sure I can make adults do that. Ok, call me naive, they would rather make fun of Florida Man. I did say it's on my bucket list, not something I want to start tomorrow. Besides I need to write about my other passions for this series.
Meantime, back to reality. Please read and share positive, happy stories. The world can use a lot of soothing these days. We need more calm, humorous Lincoln tales. Stay healthy - and yes, look for stories that help you sleep like a baby. Hopefully, no Krabby Patty needed.
Cushman and Wakefield has a conceptual idea The 6 Feet Office to help their clients prepare for their employees for eventual return to the office. Interesting view of the near future of work from Chairman and CEO, Brett White
Next month, human spaceflight will return to US soil after nearly a decade.
NASA announced Friday that SpaceX will launch astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on a mission to the International Space Station on Wednesday, May 27 at 4:32 p.m. ET. Liftoff will be from Florida's Kennedy Space Center — marking the first time a rocket will carry astronauts into orbit from the United States since NASA's Space Shuttle program retired in 2011.
It will also be the first crewed mission for SpaceX since its founding 18 years ago.
Because of Covid-19, however, there will be no crowds of spectators lining the beaches and viewing sites along Florida's Space Coast to watch the craft hurtle toward the ISS, as they have for the launch of nearly every crewed US mission since Alan Shepard became the first American to reach space in 1961.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Bonnie Tinder, who is the Founder & CEO of Raven Intel, a peer review site (similar to Yelp! or Glassdoor) for Enterprise Software Consulting. After spending the past 2 decades in the HR Technology space, she started her business in 2018 to give software customers a way to make a well-informed decision in an implementation partner. She lives in Chicago with her husband, 14-year-old son and dog, Grommet. (Yes, Bonnie is a repeat contributor - a few weeks ago she wrote about Grommet. I am convinced Grommet coerced her to write that, so I invited her to write another.) Her hobbies include traveling, music and figure-skating—which she started taking lessons at age 40, and writes about here:
When I was 10 years old, my parents took me to a production of Ice Capades. Ice Capades was big in the 70s and 80s and the predecessor to today’s modern events like “Disney on Ice”. Part ice show, part circus - it mesmerized me. Maybe it was the amazing sequin costumes or the theatrics or the graceful, athletic nature of the ballet on ice, but I left that night wanting to be a figure skater. It is a dream that has stuck with me to this day. Spoiler alert: I did not become a professional figure skater, but skating has been something that has brought a tremendous amount of joy and importance to my life journey—even now in my mid-40s.
Early Years
Growing up in a family that highly valued classical music, skating wasn’t a hobby my parents were keen on investing in. My mom was (and is still) a piano teacher and each one of us had their musical instrument—one sister played the violin, another the piano and I played the flute. Both flute and skating require a tremendous amount of time and money, and music won out. My parents would say, “music is something you can do your whole life. You can’t skate when you’re old.” (As a parent now, their rationale makes sense.)
But skating was something I could do ‘on my own’, which translated to saving up my allowance money to skate at open public sessions (and learning from friends who took lessons), reading books on skating and watching my idols Katarina Witt and Debi Thomas on NBC Sports. Skating, while it looks effortless when done by a pro, is not something you can learn well DIY or from how-to books. I came home from the rink with many bruises and while I loved every minute of skating, I never felt like I got very good at it—certainly not good enough to join Ice Capades. After high school, I put my skates away where they collected dust for the next 20 years.
Happy 40th Birthday: Figure Skating Lessons
Things changed when I turned 40. I now had a great job where I was working from home with a son that was in school full time. Coincidentally, the ice rink in my neighborhood had public ice hours at noon on weekdays. On a whim one lunch break, I dusted off my old skates and found that I could get some exercise in and had a near-empty rink to practice in. That year for my birthday I gave myself a great gift—I hired a skating coach like I had always wanted and started taking lessons. I also bought myself some decent skates, which is important.
Skating mid-point in my life was an amazing discovery. I found I could ‘change the channel’ and have a great stress break in the middle of my day, while learning something I love and had forgotten. The start was humbling—I was worse than the 9-year-olds, and just as I had when I was young, I came home with many bruises. But, now 6 years later, I am stronger and finally have learned to do the tricks that I had dreamed about.
If you’re going to start a new hobby, here are my top (3) pieces of advice:
Be patient with yourself. As a skater, the first thing you need to do is learn how to fall (I got great at that.) Early on it probably won’t feel good and you’ll want to quit—don’t. Keep getting up and focus on the goal you’ve set for yourself. Nobody cares that you look like a beginner except you.
Get the right tools. For years I skated with dull blades and as a result struggled with some basic techniques. It wasn’t until I got my blades sharpened correctly that things changed almost overnight. You don’t need the top-of-the-line stuff from the get-go, but invest in decent equipment so you’re not fighting with the tools while trying to learn at the same time.
Just do it. Don’t wait. Sign up for that ‘stretch’ event / put a date on the calendar, then go for it. There’s not going to be ‘the right’ time.
Technology and Skating
There have been several technological advances over the past 20 years that have made skating easier and moved the sport forward. One of the tools I didn’t have when I skated when I was young was an iPhone--which makes it incredibly easy to record video and analyze it later. So much of skating is about core balance and precision of the skate blade, and you can’t truly judge what a move is looking like while you’re doing it. There have been many times that I hadn’t realized that my shoulder position was off, or I was on the wrong edge of the blade, until I was able to zoom in and analyze from a different perspective. It’s not easy to watch yourself on film (I always think I’m going a whole bunch faster than the video shows), but it’s been a great way to address errors and make changes. Digital video and replay has also made skating competition / judging far more precise and improved the technical nature of jumps as every turn and landing can be easily analyzed.
Another improvement has been with the ice quality itself. Back when I was young, having the ice cleared before skating sessions took a full 30 minutes and the result was still inconsistent and choppy. The Zamboni machines of today work in 10 minutes and resurface the ice more efficiently. It makes it easier for ice rinks to provide skaters with maximum ice time but still guarantee a perfect sheet of ice for the next session—and as a skater there’s nothing better than stepping out on ‘fresh glass.’
The COVID19 pause
A few weeks ago I went to the rink to find this sign posted on the front door:
While this is a minor inconvenience in light of the severity of the larger situation, it’s been sad to not have skating to turn to as a source of stress-relief. There’s many off-ice exercises that can be done, sure, but it doesn’t replace the joy of gliding on fresh ice. Going to the rink will be one of the first things I do when this quarantine period is over--and I’ll be smiling ear to ear.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Susanne Beck, who was born in Detroit, Michigan but has lived most of her life in Florida. She had a teaching career that spanned 42 years focused on social studies at the middle school level. Now retired, she has lots of time to work on stained glass from her garage workshop in Tampa, Florida.
I got my teaching degree at USF in 1968. While getting acquainted with the campus, I discovered a hidden gem in the basement of the University Student Center - the Craft Shop. I immediately signed up for ceramics, leather working and stained glass. Within a few weeks, I became totally consumed by the vibrant colors and the precision and skill required to create a stained glass window.
These days you can learn just about anything via YouTube - here's one on how to create a stained glass window.
I learned it the old fashioned way. Classes were scheduled for eight weeks, two hours each. The class size was limited to 8 students. We began with the basics: how to use a glass cutter to cut straight lines, circles, inside and outside curves. Grozer pliers and a glass grinder were used to smooth the outside edges of the glass so you fit the adhesive copper foil around each piece of glass. We then assembled our glass pieces on a board using flat sided nails. They held the pieces in place while we applied flux. Surely you know what flux is? It is that lovely smelling (NOT) paste you apply to metal prior to soldering with lead wire.
Our first projects were limited in size. We used only a small amount of glass. This was to help cut down our frustration. Trust me, cutting glass and soldering are not easy skills to master. Sharp objects and glass can be lethal. Soldering irons can reach temperatures of 800 degrees F. They generate fumes which can harm your lungs and your eyes.
I don't know if I was lucky or gifted, but within a few weeks I had fallen in love with this awesome art form. I constantly found myself dreaming of ideas for next projects. On a trip to Winter Park, a couple of hours away, I discovered the Morse Museum. It showcased Tiffany lamps, windows, boxes and even a church altar made entirely of stained glass. Charles Lewis Tiffany established one of the world’s premier luxury brands, Tiffany & Co. His son, Louis Comfort Tiffany earned his own reputation as the foremost American designer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially of brilliant stained-glass lamps and windows.
That trip got me even more interested and I did some research on the history of stained glass. Colored glass was used by Egyptians and Romans to make small colorful animal figures and other ornaments. It became a major art form starting in the 7th century when Christians started using them in their churches. Today, I see it everywhere!
As I aged, the student became the teacher. I started teaching the stained glass class at the USF Craft Shop. I began creating stepping stones embedded with glass designs.
A local school offered adult woodworking classes. There I learned to make frames for my glass window projects.
Vinnie asked me to talk about how technology has changed the world of stained glass. In my little world, I still use basic glass, the cutters, the soldering gun and the flux. Underlying each element, there is plenty of innovation. I would recommend you watch this video from Corning "A Day made of Glass" to see the tremendous progress. Or visit the plant in Germany where one of the best glass cutters in the world, the Silberschnitt BO 100.0 is made. Or the plant in Japan where Hakko makes some of the best soldering irons. Or talk to the chemists at 3M on how flux keeps improving.
If I were younger today and wanted a different career, I may want to work at a company like Judson Studios. They helped create a single window that measures nearly 100 feet by 40 feet at the Church of the Resurrection near Kansas City, Missouri. The video below describes their innovations and technology.
I am happy with my glass projects. Little did I realize when I walked into the Craft Shop at USF five decades ago, I would be introduced to something which would become a life long passion.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Michelle Turman, MA, CFRE, the CEO of Catalyst Consulting Services whose mission is to facilitate positive change for nonprofits in the areas of executive searches, organizational management, and fundraising. In 2018, Turman was recognized as Small Business Leader of the Year by the Greater Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce for her leadership in the nonprofit sector. She is also author of the best-selling book, Jumping the Queue – Achieving Great Things Before You Are Ready which focuses on how young professionals can seize personal and professional opportunities, achieve great things, and get what they want and deserve:
We have all seen or heard the phrase by Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the Change That You Wish to See in the World”, but how many of us truly are brave enough to create or facilitate change? Many of us are not risk-takers, entrepreneurs, leaders, innovators or change agents for fear of failure. I was one of those people in my 20s and 30s. Like many before me, I had a clear, safe path: get an undergraduate degree, gain a few years work experience, go back to graduate school and find a job that hopefully made use of the degree, then work my way up to where I wanted to be. Success meant achieving these goals and building on some personal highlights I had already enjoyed along the way.
Success came early
I was the youngest female to dive the wreck of the Titanic in a deep-sea submersible. At 27, I was the youngest of 12 women in the diving group, with the oldest at 72. I was afforded this opportunity because I was the Chief Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at RMS Titanic, Inc. This opportunity also allowed me to use my creativity, formal training and emerging technology to redefine the museum visitor experience. Whether it was through creating replicas of each room on the Titanic, the exact constellation of the sky on the fateful night or the 28 degree temperature of the icebergs, we brought the ship to life. LED lighting and a self-icing wall helped create that experience. As you walked through the Verandah Café you could smell fresh coffee or vanilla. The ability to create the exhibitions in the United States while managing the conservation in Semur, France, shipping artifacts around the world, and at sea in the North Atlantic were all made possible through technology (back then, mostly via cell phone and laptop). Having this knowledge about how to get things done allowed me to tour the world, provide access to the atypical museum goer, and change the way in which history was viewed. The video below depicts some of the artifacts from the magnificent, but doomed ship.
At age 30, I was one of the few adjunct professors at St. Petersburg College to transition my in-class instruction to on-line instruction. It was ahead of its time - tenured professors believed in-person classes had more credibility. I chuckle when I see that today the e-campus for the College makes up over 70% of their enrollment. I have seen a boom in other on-line degree universities. The current COVID-19 crisis is expected to turbo-charge the trend even more.
At the age of 32, I became the youngest female museum director in the State of Florida. I felt I had achieved all the professional goals I had set for myself.
Now what? Well in 2008, I found out.
Painful pivot
A “dream” job that I had wanted so badly, was poorly run before I came on board. I thought I could save the organization, but it was too far gone. I spent a painful 8-month period, dissolving the first organization I ever led. However, the lessons I learned would not only be the greatest education I ever received in how to pivot in tough times, it was the foundation for a service I created in 2014.
In my heart, I thought my passion for the arts was dead and beaten out of me, but with that death of a dream, came a new passion: the ability to save organizations and individuals the pain I had gone through. I wanted to ensure that all types of nonprofits, not just museums, were set up for success so they could focus more on serving needs in their community. No, the concept was not sexy or exciting. Frankly, no one wanted to focus on the concept of change management, my passion for "be the change". They wanted to focus on capacity building, growth, and innovation. However, if you do not have the basic building blocks in your foundation - the right people, a solid infrastructure, and the funds to implement - you cannot attract partners to collaborate with or fulfill your mission. That is the mantra of the firm I founded, Catalyst Consulting Services.
What made our mission of “facilitating positive change for nonprofit organizations” unique, was that we would teach people how to fish rather than give them the fish. That was fairly radical. At that time, nonprofit consultants were trained to a template that included certifications from BoardSource, John Maxwell’s leadership courses and so forth. I am not knocking these programs, but the reality is few had the scars and experience to share. They have not bought into what author Brene Brown says "I believe that you have to walk through vulnerability to get to courage, therefore . . . embrace the suck. "
One key component to delivering our mission was leveraging other nonprofit consultants who were experts in their fields including software, cybersecurity, grant writing, event management, executive searches and coaching, and social entrepreneurship. Our industry was changing in such a way that the core mission remained in house while many services became outsourced to the experts. Nonprofits were learning the Good to Great model and sticking to what they did well. Additionally, our model leveraged technology platforms to serve nonprofits throughout the Southeast US. With tools like Go To Meeting, Zoom, Dropbox, Google Docs, Blackbaud CRM (on the Salesforce platform) and other cloud-based applications, we could do 80% of the work virtually. This was a game changer in the nonprofit world, and for some not a welcome one. However, we were bringing a new level of efficiency so more money could be invested toward the nonprofit's mission, not on overheads.
So many with the courage to change
Each year, I look at our client list, their testimonials that they freely give, and the over $75 million dollars we have helped to raise and give since 2014 and I know I am being the change every day. I have truly leveraged the God-given talents I was given to benefit many missions, not just one. The budgets range from under a million to $72 million dollars and include the following successes:
Onbikes – Our firm was able to take a small, grass roots initiative in which the main mission was “every kid deserves a bike” and strengthen the infrastructure through policies and procedures, strengthen board governance, and increase fundraising to implement corporate bike builds for companies like Dell and Publix. This ultimately allowed the organization to hire its first full-time executive director. To date, the organization has built and given out over 6,200 bikes and remains one of the most well-branded millennial nonprofits. Here I am with Co-Founder Drew Weatherford and Board Member Ned Pope.
Working Women of Tampa Bay Foundation – Founder Jessica Rivelli realized that she wanted to take her mantra “women helping women” to the next level. Our firm came in and worked to create the Foundation that allows women to pitch their idea to other women. They get seed money and build relationships that will be needed to grow their business through a network of like-minded individuals. Here is a photo from their 10 year celebration.
I could go on an on about so many more nonprofits who sign up for change with us. Here are some of their CEOs - David Fleming of Donate Life America, Frank Wilton of American Association of Tissue Banks, and Jason Woody, of Lions Eye Institute.
The change I want to see grows each day and I feel fortunate that I am living a life of passion and purpose each day. Unlike the goals I had when I was younger, this is how my success is measured these days.
I also spend a good deal of my time mentoring young women and have expanded my reach through my recently published book. It focuses on how young professional women can seize personal and professional opportunities, achieve great things, and get what they want and deserve.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Sandra Lo, who has been working as a corporate communications professional in Silicon Valley for two decades. Currently as the Head of Corporate Communications at Zoho, she leads media, analyst and influencer relations across the company’s numerous regions worldwide. Prior to joining Zoho, Sandra worked at software companies big and small including FinancialForce, Adobe, Xero and Salesforce. Sandra resides in the Bay Area and is a proud mother to two boys and a pug. Here she writes about her superb piano skills:
Is piano playing a passion of mine? Yes, I would say so, but the journey to find that passion has involved a fair amount of both pleasure and pain.
Starting very young
My first exposure to a keyboard was at the age of 1. I was told the keyboard was a small toy. That quickly became my favorite toy. By the age of 3, my parents had enrolled me in piano lessons, and as they would tell me, by age 4, I was playing Minuets by Bach. My parents nurtured my inner performer and trained me to thrive on applause and compliments. I still remember being asked to perform in front of relatives and family friends, sometimes even in public spaces with a piano. I always enjoyed performing as a kid. I sang, danced and played the piano.
As I entered elementary school, my love for playing the piano deepened. Very early on, I knew my favorite composers were from the Baroque and Classical periods. Bach, Scarlatti, and Handel were my Baroque favorites, and Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart were my Classical favorites. I didn’t just play the pieces - my playing had matured into being able to feel the phrasing and emotions as intended by these composers. I learned to appreciate every note and every chord because they were meant to emote. Each time I played a piece, I immersed myself in the music and in the composer’s world during the stage of life where these beautiful pieces were written.
Sandy playing a note from Dear Evan Hansen
The frustrated teenager
By the end of elementary school, I was playing advanced classical pieces and participating in piano competitions. My piano teacher at the time put a lot of pressure on me to place and frankly, I put a lot of pressure on myself as well to bring home a trophy each time. I was expected to practice 90 minutes a day by 5th grade and not allowed to watch TV until I finished homework and piano practice. I felt this was a turning point for me. What I loved about playing piano and performing had turned into a heavy ball and chain that tied me down from being a regular kid for the next few years.
My competition and performance schedule ramped up during my junior high years. Instead of going to birthday parties or hanging out at the mall with friends during weekends, I had to decline those invitations and focus on my piano schedule. I would cry to my parents and lament that I only had piano in my life but nothing else. I hated being tied to the ‘piano jail cell’ at that point in life. The invitations eventually stopped coming - I had friends at school but they stopped inviting me to parties or to the movies. But despite detesting what piano was doing to my social life, I felt the pressure to make my parents and teacher proud, and that meant winning. I won nearly every category I competed in from Baroque Festival, Sonata Festival, to Southwestern Youth Music Festival. While other parents drove their kids to sports games weekend after weekend, my parents drove me to piano commitments all over California.
Sandy playing from The Phantom of the Opera
Was I happy? I was happy that I won, but it was for my parents, not for me. Everyone who heard me play told me that I had a rare musicality talent. I didn’t know what that meant and didn’t really care either. I wanted to be a regular teenager. I wanted to buy cassettes of Top 40 singles and talk about them with my friends. But I wasn’t allowed to even listen to non-classical music at home. I was embarrassed that my weekends were full of piano performances and often lied to my friends that I went somewhere fun instead, just to try to fit in.
The turning point
At this point, you are probably wondering, is this really a passion of Sandy’s? Where are we headed with this column? My insecurity as a teenager with no social life peaked at one point. We moved to a bigger house in a new city, and I needed to fit in at a new school. This year is what I would now call the worst year of my life. I was regularly bullied as a new student, I had no friends. To say the least, I wasn’t fitting into the new environment well. As an emotional teenager, I really didn’t feel like I had anything to live for. Except piano. I knew I was great at it. I drenched my emotions into the music I was learning. I poured in hours of time to not just practice, but playing the pieces to perfection. I would spend hours studying recordings by renowned pianists and soak in their interpretation of each piece, to come up with my own interpretation. My piano resume reached new heights during this time. Not only was I winning competitions, I enjoyed what I was able to create on the piano. I was no longer just playing piano -- I was making meaningful music that was close to my heart. Piano gave me the self-confidence and assurance I needed at a very vulnerable time that things are going to be ok. I felt better than the mean things my classmates called me. It was yet another turning point -- the one that turned piano playing into a lifelong passion.
By the time I graduated from high school, I not only had shelves full of trophies, I was also a ranked in the top 25 piano players in the state of California. I had my choice of college scholarships, but only as a Music major. I loved piano but I knew I wanted to continue playing music on my own terms. So I did not pursue music in college, but it continued to be part of my life and continues to be so today. Whenever I feel sad, I express my feelings on the piano. When I am anxious, I know which songs will give me hope and calm. And when I feel excitement, my exuberance comes through in the music as well. I still love playing classical music regularly but I also play plenty of Broadway pieces now, and since becoming a mom, I play the entire Disney repertoire as well for my kids. To this day, I continue to lead the Christmas sing-along in family get-togethers. Piano music is love, it is human and it is a huge part of who I am.
Sandy playing from Greatest Showman
Pandemic Piano
Since the shelter-in-place order a month ago, I have found myself frequently going to the piano to process my emotions and thoughts. Sometimes we play together as a family, sometimes I sit on the piano bench solo trying out new pieces. On a couple occasions, playing the songs led me to break open the tears I’ve been holding back in trying to stay strong for my kids during this chaotic time. But that was exactly what I needed, and playing piano has allowed me that opportunity.
Across the post are a few clips of me playing the piano while reflecting on the pandemic. Above are a medley of Broadway hits from Dear Evan Hansen, Phantom of the Opera and Greatest Showman; below are a Baroque and two Classical pieces. I hope you also find comfort in these songs. Together, with the help of music and our individual passions, we will get through this pandemic. Stay safe.
Like many efforts underway, Battelle’s project was barely an idea three weeks ago. The company had used vaporized hydrogen peroxide to sterilize sensitive equipment for years. But to develop a large-scale decontamination process, the logistics were hurriedly sketched out on a conference room table by a handful of experts and executives.
Battelle’s West Jefferson site has since received scores of face coverings, double-bagged and stored in boxes marked with biohazard symbols.
Apple and Google collaborate on a Bluetooth enabled contact tracing
Bloomberg reports on work being done in different states
Contact tracing presents its own challenges, requiring armies of trained staff. It’s tedious and time-consuming work to find those who have been near an infected person, direct them to testing or treatment or help them self-isolate, and follow up.
To do so, North Dakota has re-purposed an app called The Bison Tracker, built to help fans of the North Dakota State University Bison football team follow their progress on a 1,000-mile drive to the league’s championship game in Texas.
Tim Brookins, a Microsoft engineer in Fargo, tweaked the Bison Tracker to build Care-19, an anonymous location tracker. It had more than 10,000 downloads in its first 36 hours.
The app can serve as a record for people to remind them where they’ve been if they test positive, and to alert them to possible contacts with infected people. They can choose to share information with state health workers.
Guest column in Fortune by Ryan Madder, the section chief of interventional cardiology at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, Mich
"In 2001, surgeons in New York removed the gallbladder of a patient in France utilizing a remote-controlled robotic system. The Lindbergh operation, as it’s widely known, was the world’s first such tele-surgery.
My recent experience strongly supports the concept of relying on wireless technology to support a heart procedure. I used a 5G connection late last year to complete 36 test remote coronary procedures. In these experiments, I was located close to Boston and used a robotic system connected to a 5G network to manipulate a robotic arm in San Francisco. Despite the robotic signals traveling approximately 3,000 miles, I did not perceive any mechanical latency, or a delay between the moment I made a command and the moment the robot responded."
While most of us dispose of old car parts and unused cutlery at the dump, Aloha, Oregon-based artist Brian Mock turns scrap metal into fantastic outdoor sculptures. He collects use and discarded materials—such as screws, nuts, and bolts—and assembles them into human and animal forms.
Mock has been exploring a number of artistic practices from an early age, but discovered his love of upcycling art in the 1990s. He taught himself how to weld, allowing him to visualize his artistic ideas as metal sculptures. Today, he’s creating an entire zoo of metallic animals—including dogs, cats, and larger-than-life lions—all from 100% reclaimed materials. Mock chooses each piece of scrap metal carefully to fit the forms of his subjects—dog tails are depicted as flexible metal chains, and floppy ears are crafted from large sheets of curved steel.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Jason Busch who lives in Chicago and Gary, Indiana with his wife and 3 boys. He is constantly at the receiving end of family jokes for his obsession over his protocols, although many end up being adopted by those close to him -– the ultimate compliment! In his work life, Jason is the founder of Azul Partners and Spend Matters. He combines his passion for strategy, M&A and technology in his day job, and is also an active mentor, angel/seed investor and entrepreneur.
He is a repeat contributor to this series. A decade ago he wrote about restoring antiquarian books. Now he writes about his amazingly disciplined exercise, rest and therapeutic protocols. He is holding a package of what he calls "Green Goodness":
I’ve had many individual passions throughout my life. When I was young, it was primarily sport. Starting at age 8, it was baseball statistics and baseball cards (and playing the game, up until college, along with “club ball” for a season in university). And adding to this, some moderately serious road riding, as a Cat-3 cyclist during my adolescent years (as a 15 year old boy, it’s not exactly cool to shave your legs, although the girls didn’t mind).
And later, as I got more academic, these athletic passions extended to the mind, with the study of history and the English language in college and graduate school, as well as generally creating significant trouble on campus as one of the editors of a politically incorrect conservative humor and semi-literary publication.
I must say after this time, upon entering the workforce, that management consulting for a couple of years was a passion as well -- it was graduate school on steroids for business and a lot of fun -- as were my early years at FreeMarkets which brought with it some amazing mentors and friends for life (including my spouse, met through the firm).
But these latter intellectual and “pay back the college loan” pursuits came with a price. Paid in pounds, not dollars (not the right kind of pounds!) Around this time, I started to turn to running to attempt to regain my fitness and drop the 20 pounds or so I put on between the ages of 18 and 25. This, of course, would turn into a semi-obsession, with the progression from shorter races to marathons.
But curiously, as I started to actually care about my weight, blood pressure, resting heart rate and cholesterol alongside running, something funny happened -- my metrics were not all going in the right direction, despite focusing on fitness. And I was getting sick more than ever with work travel, work stress (including starting my business), a young family and for whatever other reasons. This was all happening despite running more and running harder (including a marathon personal record of 3:25 six years ago).
As a somewhat analytical person, this made me think -- singular inputs may not be the solution to the outputs desired. But what were those ideal outputs? For me, it was holding off aging, and, ideally, turning back the clock on the data that was causing my alarm in the first place. I also wanted to simply feel better, which I realize is a difficult construct to quantify.
Most important, I could not give up my pursuit of hedonism (another passion!), including seeking out great wine and beer (although I would end up giving up cheese, except when accompanied by good cheer and a vintage claret with friends in the UK).
So I turned to reading. I started consuming everything from medical journals to questionable science. And I started testing, using my body as a laboratory.
In recent years, the addition of a Whoop sleep/fitness tracker (think of it as a FitBit or Apple Watch on steroids - some of the analytics are on right), has helped even more to zero in how inputs drive outputs.
And this helped me develop a protocol which has led to continuous improvements in the primary metrics I look at:
Resting heart rate (down 25% over 15 years)
Heart rate variability (I’ve been able to improve it close to 100% in <3 years)
Ability to rapidly recover from hard workouts, races, etc. (qualitative improvement)
Blood pressure (10% improvement -- from borderline to OK)
Cholesterol (30-50% reduction / improvement)
Number of colds (~80% reduction)
Reduction of allergies in the spring/fall (from needing medication to no medication)
Duration of colds (slight impact)
Intensity of colds (significant improvement)
Emergency room or urgent care visits for whatever reason (from 1-2 times per year to virtually never)
Tiredness (e.g., from needing a nap to get through most days to not being tired in the afternoons)
How did I succeed in improving these outputs? Experimenting and tracking. As all my friends know, I have no medical qualifications whatsoever. But I'm a big reader of science journals and, I admit, pop medicine on this stuff (and even Joseph Mercola, who I consider the Alex Jones of the profession, but who still has interesting things to say). My personal favorite source of hacks and insight is Peter Attia who is fantastic.
So with dozens of research sources, and through trial and error, I’ve developed a personal protocol for the current “shelter in place” time.
Please note, this may or may not help you. And I’m not qualified to give any advice here.
Most important, this protocol may or may not minimize infection risk, duration and severity of COVID-19. I have no idea. But the combination of these inputs have been transformational in my own metrics, including getting sick much less, and the early science I’ve read on certain things (like Quercetin Phytosome) suggest the potential benefits may outweigh the risks in the current time.
Here goes:
Prioritizing sleep and sleep hacks. I stop eating at least 1.5 hours (ideally 2 hours) before bed-time. I aim for 8-8.5 hours in bed (even if I only sleep 6-7). I use very, very low dose melatonin and CBD to help with REM sleep (it improves duration 50% or more for me).I also like my Ooler, a relatively recent addition, essentially an air conditioner for the bed, and can confirm it increases my time in deep sleep duration early in the night, and overall deep and REM sleep quantity throughout out the evening.
A "reasonable" intermittent fast most days -- no more than 18-22 hours, but 16 is fine. Including “cheat days” I probably average 18 hours (with black coffee). No prolonged fasting (24 hours or multi-day right now, which I used to do, and will do again in the future). Read the research on mTOR, fasting/immune system response, etc. Author’s note: fasting is a bear for 2-3 months when you get started, but then you’re simply not hungry during the day after your body adapts. It’s like tea or coffee without sugar; horrible at first, but then even more enjoyable than previously.
Diet - as "vegan" as possible and lots of nuts, olive oil, sesame, etc. No dairy (for me, it impacts congestion of any sort). This last hack has been transformational for me. I try to eat, most days, at least a pound of vegetables (steamed with lots of good fats). Note: you need to find the ones that agree with you in this quantity!
Lots of water. Did I say lots of water?
Easy, zone 2 workouts (averaging 45 minutes per day). I’ve cut back on the 10+ mile runs during Covid-19 (why cause too much stress on the body?) In total, I probably work out in this zone 3-4 hours per week at 60-65% max heart-rate with some actual cardio and intervals at the end of most workouts for a few minutes, but not much. I also do weights or body resistance work once or twice per week (1-2 hours in total); and very high intensity intervals once per week (prior to COVID-19). Note, you can do this inside if running/biking on the road are not allowed now, or weights ... for inside, sit-ups, slow burpees, pushups, military push-ups, jump lunges, jumping jacks, jog in place, pull-ups from porches (see video below) and roofs, etc.
Dry sauna (in image below) followed by a cold shower everyday. I realize this may be impractical for people without a sauna now. But the cold shower is not -- everyone can do it. Read the research on immunity.
Breath holds (3 consecutively) 2-3 times per week. The last one is a 2 minute+ hold. Don't laugh at this one ... Wim Hof has something going on!
Right now, to improve immunity, I take Quercetin (I use Quercetin Phytosome). I also take Olive Leaf extract. If you take supplements, only buy from a trusted source (I like Thorne). I’ll stop taking these regularly after COVID-19. I admit this protocol step is the one I’m least confident in, but both are low risk. I have taken Nicotinamide Riboside for years as well (cycling it) which I will continue post Coronavirus, as well.
Boku Superfood and mushrooms. My kids (and wife) tease me the most about this one, but I swear by both.
Ground flax and vegan (ideally) Omega supplements daily (I like Nordic Naturals)
Meditation -- I don’t do it enough but probably average 5 minutes per day between the days I actually do it and the days I forget. When I got into it, I loved Sam Harris’ app to get me started.
Bonus protocol! Now that I've been using it for over a month, I'm going to formally add the Apollo Neuroscience, to my standard protocol. I was tipped off to it originally from googling new health wearables in late 2019, and I saw an old colleague from FreeMarkets, John Maholtz, had joined the start-up to run operations. Seeing John had joined, I decided to dive in and sign up for the initial waitlist. Since receiving it and using it most days, I can report the Apollo Neuro: has improved my heart rate variability (on days used vs. days not-used), improved my ability to get back to sleep (quickly) during the night, and helped me focus more and stay on task during the day. I also like it's ability to help you unwind with the "relax" mode. It's pretty darn cool as a first general release for a device.
Don’t kill the reason to live! I love high quality red wine and hoppy beer in moderation, but stopping long before any amount or timing of it could impact REM sleep (or deep sleep). I average exactly 2.5 units per day, so I’m not a teetotaler, not even close. But I did give up gin after learning it wrecked havoc with my heart rate variability, one of the metrics I track.
As noted, I track everything religiously with a Whoop (my wife uses an Oura ring, also good) and listen to my body, dialing stuff back if the data says I should. “Permission to rest” as Whoop calls it was as transformational as anything else I’ve done. As one of my friend’s says, some days you need to just “slow it down.”
I also try new things all the time to see if they have an impact. My latest is very low-dose THC (2.5 MG) along with the CBD prior to sleep. It appears to have promise, especially after hard workout days (e.g., 1.5+ hour runs) to lengthen deep sleep time and improve recovery overall, but I don’t have consistent data on it yet, and it’s not “in the protocol” just yet. And besides, I’m limiting the long (and hard) workouts now anyway, until this thing becomes less of a threat.
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Jeff Nolan, who is Global Director Marketing Communications at Coherent, Inc. He resides in the Bay Area with his wife and family, which includes two Vizslas.
Jeff is a repeat contributor to this series. He wrote about his woodworking a decade ago. This time, very relevant for our times, it is about his farming and his concern about our food supply chain and security:
When Vinnie asked me to contribute to his passion series, I started writing about my urban farming. Then a pandemic consumed the world and everything I wrote seemed more consequential yet less important in light of the current global situation. I sat on it for a while, then rewrote this from scratch.
Food security is a big deal, even more so than housing. We can live rough but if we don’t have food we will perish. The emotional toll that food insecurity takes is very real and we don't realize it until we see a bare shelf, empty cupboard, or a store rationing staples like eggs, milk, and bread. These last few weeks have made that very real to all of us.
I have spent my entire career in technology, so what do I know about food supply chains?
Small scale farming start
I originally started gardening as a teenager, I just liked it. I did it on a small scale before meeting my wife and when we bought our house I scaled it up. A lot.
Growing things force you to understand your environment, from the path of the sun to the temperature swings day to night. I had a pretty good rotation of crops that I grew year over year and our garden produced enough food for us to consume, share, and preserve for the off months.
I got religion on organic methods when we added honeybees to our urban farm. Bees do pretty well with common pesticides and herbicides but I figured why risk it. Honeybees travel up to 6 miles a day to forage but for very understandable reasons they prefer to eat local. Fewer chemicals would just be a good thing.
Crop rotation, soil management, nitrogen-fixing cover crops, beneficial insects, and other arcane topics are what I studied. Living in California in a drought (I grew up in the Bay Area… droughts are the history of California) made me sensitive to water consumption. We added a hydroponics system that is amazingly water efficient.
This is a blog about technology and I should add a note about technology in farming. I implemented it in various forms and found it to be a distraction and unnecessary risk to introduce. My hydroponics system depends on a timed irrigation system 4 times a day and when it failed because the water level sensor lost power my entire crop growing in that system was lost. There is little margin for error, unlike in dirt farming, and I found that a daily checklist is a far more effective tool than a network-enabled sensor.
If I were growing soybean or corn on 2,000 acres I might be more optimistic about technology, but even industrial-scale farmers are increasingly disillusioned with self-driving tractors and technology solutions that require a service agreement in order to maintain.
We worked diligently to improve our growing operation and add unique varieties of crops. The seed catalogs from a variety of vendors were nighttime reading. We added a 150 square foot greenhouse to both extend our growing season and have a robust seedling operation. I start seedlings on heated mats in January and by this time of year my greenhouse is lush, humid with the smell of things growing, and producing more plants than I can grow on my own.
We sell seedlings in a farmers market we host on our property, along with fresh produce, eggs, and honey.
I should probably talk about the chickens now. I bought 3 chickens 4-5 years ago and build a small coop and run. Three became five, and well we just kept adding them. Chickens are hardy farm animals but require specific husbandry care and maintenance. Backyard chicken blogs were added to my bookmarks, and as the flock grew a bigger coop was constructed. Fresh eggs aplenty, more than we could consume ourselves.
The Cattle Ranch
By this point you probably realize that we went well beyond simple container gardening with a few tomatoes and some herbs. We had a full-blown urban farm on the Mid-Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our children are growing and we are planning on what to do when they are on their own. The farming lifestyle agrees with us, is healthy, and offer many benefits that impact every aspect of your life.
When a 35 acre plot of land on the Caloosahatchee River in South Florida came across our radar the dream that was living a farming lifestyle became a lot more tangible. A working cattle ranch, this property is in the process of being converted into a family farm that will support livestock and poultry at scale, a growing operation, and a retail and agri-tourism business.
Back to Food Security
The last month has forced me to look at our urban farm through the lens of security and safety. I didn’t realize it until now but a major motivator for me when I first started gardening was to be connected to nature in a way that was both sustainable and independent. Growing your own food nurtures a primal instinct and that people across the board are re-discovering it, which is why Americans have depleted the stock of baby chicks from supply houses.
We also serve our local community through what we grow. And by local community I am talking about our neighborhood and surrounding areas. We have egg and honey customers who come by every week, take what they need and leave money in a green toolbox on a wine barrel (or preferred these days, they Paypal me).
Our farmers market is small scale but we are excited about it. We are selling locally grown fruits and vegetables along with our excess seedlings that encourage people to grow on their own. We offer heirloom varieties of tomatoes, bitter greens, root vegetables and beans which are not commonly available in the produce aisle of your favorite market.
Long term, we will continue to develop our ranch property and expand the livestock business. Given the priorities of the moment, it is taking a back seat while still moving forward. We are entirely focused on having a productive early growing season, replanting and hitting our stride through the summer months in order to serve our customers who are now relying on us.
The American food supply chain is robust and without equal in the world. The weak links are in distribution and at the retail level. A significant percentage of food goes to commercial markets that are no longer operating at the same level. They also rely on packaging that is at odds with retail distribution. We have also seen how retailers are at risk to panic buyers and a just-in-time supply model that is leaving shelves bare.
This is the time when Americans of all stripes need to rethink how we acquire and consume food. Supporting local farmers and producers is no longer just a wholesome thing to do, it is the means through which we achieve a more stable food supply at the consumer level. This is not going to be the low cost or highest yield model but as is the case in any decentralized system, it will be durable and reliable.
Weren't we supposed to be in a paperless society by now? Why have over 80% of my books sold in print versus Kindle format? IDC estimates consumer and office printers still print 3.2 trillion pages a year
Why do so many conferences hand out Moleskins and other journals when we take notes on our iPads and laptops.
BusinessWeek writes about how the device most of us love and hate continues to survive and thrive
By the 1980s, a string of advances in robotics led to HP’s line of inkjet and laser printers, which might as well have been printing money. In the three decades following the company’s introduction of the desktop laser printer, in 1984, the division wrangled in well over a half-trillion dollars of revenue. HP dominated the market by reinvesting billions in printhead physics, color science, and other feats of engineering. Inkjets today are synonymous with frustrating paper jams and empty trays, but their intricate gears and high-precision nozzles were far beyond what many competitors could muster.
The video below summarizes major milestones in the long history of printing on paper
Also is a video by Caroline Weaver who is really passionate about pencils and has written books about their history and their enduring allure
They have invested in an intelligent system for managing the overall tourism experience. Today, they have 15 working cameras, APs and sensors that have been positioned around the town to capture data on people and traffic volumes as well as the frequency of visits to restaurants and shops. With the Parking Space Analyzer and People Counter from Hitachi, Tequila can turn this data into valuable insights around visitor experience, behaviour, and safety.
“We want to help communities around the world create hospitable environments for people to live and work,” comments Sergio Severo, President and Manager, Latin America and Caribbean at Hitachi Vantara. “Our solutions will equip Tequila with meaningful analytics that can used to drive beneficial actions.”
To help gauge the success of its smart city efforts, Tequila uses Smart Spaces and Video Intelligence to track and visualize public sentiment across a range of sources, including social media, public wi-fi, capacity planning for local businesses and traffic montoring across the town.
The FAA is now taking the first steps it believes will reduce the risk of drones to the flying public with a notice of proposed rulemaking that went live last week calling for transponder-like devices aboard all UAVs to identify these aircraft and each individual flight to ATC and possibly other aircraft in the air. The proposal will create a new regulation–FAR Part 89–that expects commercial and recreational UAS operating in the US–with very few exceptions–to be compliant with new remote identification requirements within three years of the effective date of the final rule. The agency states, “The remote identification of unmanned aircraft systems in the airspace of the United States would address safety, national security, and law enforcement concerns regarding the further integration of these aircraft into the airspace of the United States while also enabling greater operational capabilities.” This increased situational awareness, especially to pilots, is expected to become even more important as the number of UAS operations in all classes of airspace increases.
But when Stettler and his team analyzed flight data they obtained of Japan airspace, they found that most contrail warming was caused by just 2 percent of flights. And most of those flights originated in the late afternoon—because as the sun goes down, cooling can no longer offset the warming.
“And the warming effect persists throughout the evening, into the night.”
But what if the contrails that contribute the most to warming could be eliminated? Such a change could be achieved if aircraft avoided flying in the thin layers of humidity where contrails form.
“By changing the altitude only by a couple of thousand feet, either up or down, it would no longer form a contrail. And so what we found in this study was that by changing the altitude of less than 2 percent of flights, we could actually get rid of just under 60 percent of the warming effect due to contrails.”
Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Roy Altman, founder/CEO of Peopleserv, a software/services company. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the MS in Human Capital Analytics and Technology program at New York University. He has co-authored six books on Business Process Management, contributed to publications on HR technology and often presents at industry conferences. Altman serves as Managing Editor of Workforce Solutions Review magazine and on the board of IHRIM:
Over the course of my life I have had a few passions, as I’ve “reinvented” myself several times. Although I have tried several things, a few of them have stuck.
Upon moving to the suburbs from New York City in my mid-30’s, I rediscovered my passion for running. I joined a local running club and got some sage advice from a friend who had run many marathons. I trained and raced distances from 5K to marathon length with my friends in the bucolic lower Hudson Valley, where I live, and won my share of age-group awards. Training appealed to my project manager instincts because it involved setting a goal (completing in a race in a set time), putting together a plan to achieve that goal, contingency planning and executing on the plan. A friend of mine once said that completing a marathon is 90% training, with the remaining 10% controllable or uncontrollable factors on race day. That is so much like HR tech project work. In addition, training methods involve nutrition, VO2 max and targeting specific heart rates for certain workouts play a big part in getting fit. The scientific aspect appeals to me. In the process you learn a lot about yourself, and can sometimes discover that you’re capable of unanticipated levels of achievement. It provides an outlet for the competitive instinct, so we can be appropriately cooperative in a work situation. It teaches patience, and the satisfaction of achieving a goal through planning and hard work. When I raced, I was in a “zone” where I was singularly focused and able to run a distance at a pace that was previously unfathomable.
The best thing about running though was the lifelong friends I’ve met. You learn a lot about people, and have the opportunity to have others learn about you, on a two hour run together. I found distance runners tend to be nice people (probably because of they spend so much time self-inflicting pain). Some of the dumbest jokes I know were shared on a long run. Running is beneficial as a solitary activity also. There have been times I’ve dealt with a vexing problem, then gone for a run, and five miles later had the solution. I continue to be close friends with several of my former running buddies even as we’ve moved on from competing.
Alas, after 20 or so years of training and racing, the ravages of time have taken hold and I no longer race competitively. I do enjoy staying active, cycling, skiing and the occasional jog with my friends.
Which brings me to another passion of mine - music. I can listen to music endlessly. I’m also a keyboardist and composer. In fact, my undergraduate degree was in Electronic Music, which in those days meant composing avant-garde music on a large Moog synthesizer (on right is one I used in college - they have evolved quite a bit since), It was actually good training for my eventual profession, as a knowledge of systems theory is required in configuring the synthesizer to produce the weird music that I heard in my head. I have leveraged principles of systems theory in my approach to solving business problems throughout my career. People have often told me that musicians make good software analysts. I would agree in that they both require abstract thought and creative problem-solving skills.
Post college, I played in rock bands in the New York City music circuit while working as a programmer for financial institutions by day. We gigged and recorded a fair bit in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s and achieved a modicum of notoriety in the NYC music scene. I was surprised to discover decades later that our record from early on was selling for a lot of money on Swedish vintage vinyl websites!
I still play, and my keyboard setup sits in my office next to my laptops (in-between meetings, you can guess what I’m doing). I’m still in touch with several of my old band mates (including Cognizant VP Alan Alper) and other musician friends from “back in the day.” We get together for jam sessions periodically.
Similarly, and differently from running, music is transformative – for me, it’s the most direct form of expression. When improvising on the piano I lose myself in the music and time stands still.
While COVID-19 has given me the opportunity for my fingers to reacquaint with keys, and my feet to reacquaint with trails, I’m going to discuss one other passion – dogs. I’ve had a dog the majority of my life, both growing up and as an adult.
Last December, my Border Collie, Baxter passed away after a full and happy life - she inspired on left an original oil painting by Suzanne Altman. Border Collies are an exceptional breed. They are herders, initially from Scotland, and are characterized by a keen intellect, agility and a singular focus. You may enjoy below the 60-Minutes segment on Chaser the Border Collie, known as the “world’s smartest dog" who was trained to identify over 1,000 toys. Border Collies regularly win Westminster Dog Show agility competitions. I was so inspired by the breed that I published a blog on LinkedIn entitled: “Everything I know about Project Management I Learned from my Border Collie.” As a result, I’ve become acquainted with people worldwide who share my enthusiasm for Border Collies.
Recently in my career, I’ve become an advocate of the agile methodology, applied not only to software development but to organizational management. Observing dogs’ adaptability and quick decision-making have made them for me a model of agile methods – traits that are instinctual. Humans have had a partnership with domesticated dogs for 15,000 years! There is no closer inter-species relationship on earth than between humans and dogs. Dog breeding is basically a eugenics project, and dog breeds are often characterized by their traits. However, I’ve noticed that nature only takes you so far – although they’ve been different from each other, I think the dog’s I’ve had would have had very different personalities in the constant company of other humans. Now that I’m housebound due to COVID-19, my wife and I felt it was a good time to get a new puppy. Say hello to the newest member of the Altman household: Chloe, a 4-month old rescue. Chloe is quickly learning about her new family and environment – it’s amazing to see how quickly she’s adapting. We’re in the early stages of forming a deep bond that will last her whole life.
My first appearance on CRM Playaz
Thank you to Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary for inviting to me part of their weekly show this week.
My section starts around 23:00 - I compliment them during my comments for keeping the show light-hearted and positive. Much needed during this crazy time.
I talked about the various Zoom interviews of C level executives I have been doing - the growing list is here and I talk about likely impact on the enterprise software market. I also mention the Passion guest series. The Topsy Turvy blog post I mention is here.
Nice to be introduced to yet another video platform I have used in the last few weeks - in this case StreamYard. Others have included Zoom, MS Team, Google Meet, ON24. On that point, it was nice to hear Tom Libretto, CMO of Pegasystems talk starting around 55.00 about virtual vendor events like Pegaworld and have everyone on the show discuss how those events are likely to evolve.
June 13, 2020 in Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)