The Musings of a Curious Technologist

Father, Husband, Technologist, Runner & Boilermaker, in that order

[technologyplumbing]

Convergence - Fitbit and a Watch

I am a big fan of fitbit and normally wear a watch on my wrist and a fitbit on my belt, but when Fitbit came out with the Force, I went with it allowing me to give up my watch and just wear my fitbit Force to track both time and activity.

Now if they will create an option for the time to always be displayed vs. having to hit the button, I will be even happier!

[technologyplumbing]

Car and Garage Door Integration (IoT)

If you have seen the Liberty Mutual commercials where the driver thinks he is going backwards, but instead plows forward into his garage door, you can understand the problem I am thinking about.  Since cars are now connected to the Internet and garage doors, via MyQ, are connected, MyQ should be able to signal to the car to not hit a closed garage door.  Might also be useful in protecting people from starting a car with the garage door closed.

[technologyplumbing]

House to Cloud (HtC)

Making the Internet of Things (IoT) more applicable. When thinking about all of the things in our houses that connect to the cloud we can use the term HtC to stand for House to Cloud.

My HtC world already includes access to my garage door, thermostat, smoke detectors, water sensors and door locks.  

What does your HtC look like?

[technologyplumbing]

I don't look for problems, they find me just fine. I focus on looking for solutions.

Sometimes the solutions even get created before the problems show up, so we can be fully ready to tackle the problems or perhaps even prevent them in the first place.

[technologyplumbing]

Process disruptions should be looked at as a blessing, not a curse.

It is easy to get too comfortable within the confines of an existing process, but when it gets disruptive, and it will, don't fret about it, learn from and start doing things better.

[technologyplumbing]

Designing processes should never become process bound.

A well designed process requires creativity and cannot be simply following an existing process.

[technologyplumbing]

We are all in sales and we are all teachers.

While we must teach about what we sell, we must also teach our internal and external customers more for all of us to be effective in our roles and lives.

[technologyplumbing]

Is your company's consistency and reliability described as ... Consistently inconsistent and reliability unreliable?

[technologyplumbing]

If pushing the rock uphill seems to be an impossible task, why not break the rock up into pieces and carry each piece up the hill. Even better, enlist others to help you carry the pieces up the hill.

[technologyplumbing]

I have been using this service for 1 month so far,  seems to just work, which is how I like it.

[thinkvr]

Customer experience is the ‘eat healthy and exercise’ of the business world.

Everyone knows it’s important, and why.

When talking to others we probably pretend we do it better than we actually do.

Deep down we aren’t quite sure what we should do – it’s complicated and confusing.

The things we know we should do just aren’t that fun or exciting, so we often avoid them.

Via Megan Burns, Forrester (via ibmsocialbiz)

[technologyplumbing]

Moving beyond Events to Signals

I was so busy trying to figure out how to deal with event management that I almost missed the signal that we should be focused on signals coming from my clients and their data.

While all events are signals, not all signals are events.  Sometimes signals tell us events are about to or have just happened, but by focusing on signals we can do so much more in the ecosystem we operate in.

Think about a car's turn signal, it tells us a car is about to perform an event, such as a turn or a lane change.  If we focus on the event vs. the signal, we are reacting vs. being pro-active.

Of course not all drivers use their turn signals, but their actions often signal that they are about to perform an event, so learning to watch for these signals will make us better drivers as well as better signal processors in other facets of our personal and work lives.

[technologyplumbing]

Blowing the Box Up - BTBU

It is often hard to think outside of the box when you are so close to the existing box.  In those cases, it is best to "blow the box up".

[technologyplumbing]

I never realized how powerful patterns really were. They are certainly not limited to writing code. Finding a pattern that can be repeated for different cases is total amazing, at least to me.

My thinking after discovering that business, technical and operational patterns can be generalized and repeated in a many different areas and ways.  Nature showed us the power of patterns, so it is up to all of us to find those patterns in what we do and then apply them in as many creative ways as possible.

[technologyplumbing]

People just want a hand up, not a hand out.

Quote overheard on NPR and to me really applies to everyone no matter if you are in the 1% or the 99%. After all, how do you think the 1% got to where they are.  The introduction to the right person or idea at the right time is just as much a hand up as is job training or educational assistance.

[technologyplumbing]

[technologyplumbing]