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.
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