New Florence. New Renaissance.

Technology and my Passion: Michelle Cuilla and Vintage Jewelry Craft

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 Cuilla, former Morgan Stanley VP of Operational Risk, Balancing & Control, Stock Plan Reconciliation. Here she writes about how she turns vintage pieces of jewelry into amazing shapes and colors:

I have always been crafty, born with an artistic gene that I inherited from my Mother for sure.  Over the years I’ve made my fair share of wreaths, ceramics, painting, needle point, sewing, cork crafts, decorating etc. I am always looking to find that something new to challenge my creative abilities.  When I moved to Florida from New York City 3 years ago, I met a wonderful neighbor, Connie who like me enjoyed making things and is extremely talented.  I knew she was doing a type of craft involving wood and jewelry and I was intrigued to see what that was all about.  From the minute I laid my eyes on this beautiful piece she was working on I knew that I needed to make something similar. 

From there my passion and love for this craft just exploded.  I ordered my 1^st wood shape, a 3 ft mermaid from a lady that Connie introduced me to who draws and cuts them. I had a dilemma - I had no spare jewelry to embellish and create my vision of this mermaid.  It was then that I was introduced to the world of craft vintage and costume jewelry sales and shopping. 

My 1^st shopping trip was full of excitement. I really did not know what to expect or how successful this trip would be. Would I get the type of jewelry I envisioned, the colors of stones, the shapes etc? 

My meeting with a woman who sells this jewelry out of her home was a wonderfully overwhelming experience.  She had presorted bags of every color jewelry, bags of gold chains, silver chains, rhinestones - I was in crafting heaven!  I left there that day with I believe 100 lbs of jewelry and immediately began adorning my mythical sea goddess.

Living in Florida and on the water is my inspiration, my love for the ocean and its creatures are what I enjoy to create.  I now draw my own shapes or trace from other objects onto plywood, my husband Jimmy then cuts them out for me on a wood worker's scroll saw.  Then I use a pair of needle-nose pliers to remove the hardware from the back of each brooch, earring or chain. Next I affix the jewelry onto my wood shape using a good craft glue such as Aleene’s or E6000.

The Art of the Sort: 

It is exhilarating to get my hands on a bag of tangled jewelry. I can sit for hours sorting through it and finding those hidden treasures or what I call my inspiration pieces. These pieces are usually the starting point on my shape and I will build around them giving the piece new life. What I once considered trash is now a treasure. I’ve found new life for these vintage pieces by making a gorgeous handcrafted swoon-worthy piece of one-of-a-kind art.  I see depths of beauty and color that I never observed before. Now my mind goes to all the wonderful projects that can be created, embellished and spruced up with just a few pieces of this jewelry.  This jewelry is one of my passions and even if I’m turning those jewelry pieces into something completely different, I just love working with beautiful things.

Sourcing the jewelry:

Even if you don’t have a ton of costume jewelry on hand, you can find it at thrift stores and flea markets for just a few dollars. Be warned - a few dollars here and there and there do add up! There are even online vintage jewelry auctions and vendors on Ebay and Etsy that you can purchase from.  Or in my case, make an 8 hour drive with my crafting friends Connie and  Donna to buy jewelry from a vendor!

History of this craft:

I don’t know much about the history of about this type of craft, however, my research shows people have been using vintage jewelry to craft for decades. It is quite common to see framed pieces of velvet gilded with old brooches, earring and jewels representing a Christmas tree, a butterfly or a flower. A year ago, I was in a local flag store in Tampa and my eyes were immediately drawn to a large framed artwork on the wall. The piece was a tree of life on a piece of velvet.  It was created by Grandfather of the shop owner in the 1950s.  I was very interested to hear about it and the shop owner explained each piece of jewelry had a meaning in his Grandfather's life: a pin from a tractor which represented his farming upbringing, a thimble which represented his Mother's sewing, patriotic and service pins for his time spent in the military and so on.  It apparently took this gentleman years to finish. His legacy now hangs proud in the business he started decades ago and is now run by his Grandson.

Each one of my creations has a personality of its own. Even if I work on a shape again, I look at each one differently, and try to find the distinctive pieces of jewelry that speaks to me for every individual creation.  Since I became enamored in this craft, I have made around 25 unique pieces of sea turtles, dolphin, starfish, seahorse, mermaid, bunnies, cats and even a Christmas tree. 

My latest undertaking is an Octopus - which is a work in progress. 

Most of the creations adorn the walls of my home. It is nice to receive compliments. I have been told on countless occasions that these pieces should be in an art gallery, which is very flattering to say the least.  My pieces have also made wonderful gifts for special people in my life including my Sister and a few dear friends.  These gifts were made with each person in mind capturing their unique style and character. 

Earlier this year, I was approached by a friend of my Sister’s who had seen a bunny and cat that I crafted for my Sister.  This friend operates a 501(c)(3) Cat Rescue Group and hosts many fundraisers to cover the costs of veterinary bills, food, medicine and general care.  She was so impressed and knew that these items could generate a fair amount of money for the animals at her upcoming auction,  I was asked if I would make and donate a few pieces. I sprung to action right away.  Not only did I commission a few pieces, my friend Connie also generously created and donated a few pieces as well.  The fulfilling feeling of giving back is unparalleled.  I am delighted to be able to help out knowing the money raised by our beautiful designs helped out this charity immensely.

WFH Envy

Fair warning to HCM execs - make sure your employees don't see this - alternatively get ready to approve big budgets for WFH:)

Paul Greenberg gave me a sneak preview into his new home studio

"Brent Leary and I have had a lot of time at home lately - and that's given us the opportunity to regularize our CRM Playaz show - a show on the CRM, CX, and customer engagement industry we have been doing for twelve years.  Because working from home is now what we are doing and will be for the foreseeable future, we decided to upgrade our production capabilities and ultimately, we each built studios that were based on a principle that Don Schuerman CTO of Pegasystems threw at us on the show - "We've got to move from the theatrical to the cinematic."   As a result, thanks to an idea that my wife Yvonne had, I was able to dedicate an 8'X9'X8' room to become a studio and invested thousands of dollars into upgrading the equipment needed to have a professional level studio through the eyes of an amateur - that would be me. I spent hundreds of hours choosing equipment that would not only provide the best lighting and sound possible but would allow me to seamlessly switch camera shots, (I have three, with a fourth possible), and at the same time be able to stream to multiple channels via a single streaming platform. We use Streamyard. With the dual monitors and a pretty hefty machine I can not only record audio and video and but edit both on the machine. I made a point of investing in everything from a professional highly regarded broadcasting microphone (Shure SM7B) to a professional mic arm (Yellowtec) which cost me more than the mic - because a C-clamped boom arm wouldn't work on the desk that was using.  There were hundreds of decisions that were major (the cameras and several different lenses for several different purposes, lighting and sound e.g. acoustic panels) to small (the cables and even the lengths of the cables and the power sources) to table stakes - running an ethernet connection and multiple electrical outlets to the walls and ceilings.  There is still a lot to learn and the investment was hefty and still going - almost $10,000 I would say all in all but when all is said and done, I'll have what I want and a new area of knowledge that I didn't have and Brent with his setup and me with mine will be able to produce a show with extraordinary production quality - and not only is that valuable but its fun. A lot of fun."

Paul and Brent will be starting a regular segment on home audio/video technologies on their show. More reason to watch them! BTW if you want to see their "before" studios watch my interview with them here 

Tamas Hevizi had walked me through his elaborate home studio and described it here

In addition to technology, Tamas has 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."

Jeremiah Owyang's studio is a permanently parked AirStream in his backyard. As he describes with his specs here, his tech goals were a bit different: "I had to research what’s the ideal gear for my setup, in this case in my existing backyard office, to maximize the quality, without filling the 130 square feet (39 square meters) with equipment. Simply put, I’m seeking the best quality for a small location."

Geoff Scott, CEO of ASUG described to me his basement has been turned into what he called a "TV studio". Will have to get him to share more details.

Impressive as each of the setups above is, it will be tough to keep up with Troy Hunt. He describes his rigging in excruciating detail here

I am envious of each of them. But, honestly, I not sure I want to be tied to so much technology in one room. I cannot wait to try out all the other parts of the house, my wife Margaret has set up waiting to be used as backgrounds. I have largely done my interviews from the library (though you see many of the books I have authored, I need to emphasize it's her library - I rent it by the hour)

I must admit I am also enjoying POTS - meetings and calls with plain old telephone service. OK, not the old Ma Bell wired kind, the mobile kind. I like to get at least half my daily 10K FitBit steps walking around the house and talking on the phone.

During breaks, I also like to get steps while watching replays of the Smithsonian "Aerial America" episodes. Below is from an episode on Nebraska - a picture from space of the state's many farms and crop circles. The vast majority of the 72 episodes are shot with a gyro-stabilized camera on a helicopter. That makes for a relaxing set of steps and refuge from the Florida summer heat.

Besides it allows me to TFH - Travel from Home. I find I have less WFH Envy that way:)

An "Event-ful" year

Toto, we are definitely not in Kansas anymore. Every day brings a new reminder of how sports and entertainment are changing in a COVID-19 affected world

Disney World in Orlando has re-opened to a whole new protocol

Aaron Dessner provided a glimpse into the making of Taylor Swift's surprise new record, Folklore recorded in quarantine

"I was excited and honored when Taylor approached me in late April about maybe writing some songs remotely together. I had been isolating with my family but writing a ton of music in the first months of quarantine which I shared. I thought it would take a while for song ideas to come and I had no expectations as far as what we could accomplish remotely. But a few hours after sharing music, my phone lit up with a voice memo from Taylor of a fully written version of a song -- the momentum never really stopped. "

It will be interesting as more details come out on the making of Folklore to compare to how Vittorio Viarengo of VMware described a composition with 30 of his colleagues from around the world

NBA players are in the "bubble" in Orlando to finish off their shortened season. This article shows the hygiene and care that league is taking.

MLB has kicked off the baseball season with a 101 page operations manual - including guidance on how the dugout should look to meet social distancing

Fox Sports is using "virtual crowds and pumped-in crowd noise for its MLB telecasts this season, creating the illusion of full ballparks for MLB games this summer and fall. Fox and MLB tested the augmented reality technology at Arizona’s Chase Field about three weeks ago and decided that the quality was high enough to use on its MLB broadcasts."

I interviewed Max Mueller and Chris Nilson of Daimani and they have a global perspective on sports, rock and other events as they package VIP experiences. They provide a fascinating pov on how events are likely to morph

Technology and my Passion: Vittorio Viarengo and Producing 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. 

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?

Technology and my Passion: Tamas Hevizi and Effective Digital Communication

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!