Is This Why the Startups Are Eating Your Lunch? Part I

April 21, 2019 Attitude Startups No Comments
Photo by Seth Kane on Unsplash In my history as a Sales Engineer I’ve helped promote nearly 2 dozen different on-prem or SaaS software “solutions”.  When I started at Compuware, for example, we had 7 distinct offerings.  They were integrated, but the Account Executives had a lot to offer to help solve problems. …

Do You Know About These Female Trail Blazers?

March 31, 2019 Attitude 1 Comment
As March comes to an end we’ve gotten to see a lot of great discussions related to Women’s History Month.  It is important to honor the past and better understand women’s contributions to our country and the world.  It also is relevant to acknowledge the young ladies that haven’t yet…

An Example of Poor Domain Knowledge and Analytics

February 26, 2019 Analytics No Comments
While at a recent conference I picked up a professional looking survey summary.  It highlighted the importance of having domain knowledge when compiling research.  Especially later for the Data Cleaning step.  This one appeared high quality, having heavy glossy paper and close to 40 pages.  Unfortunately a few errors made…

So What is Purposeful Learning?

January 28, 2019 Attitude No Comments
In a few of my posts I’ve mentioned purposeful learning. I now realize that not everyone knows what I am referring to. If you’ve ever tried to learn something in theory just for the sake of knowing it you might have better insight.  Especially if you later had a reason…

A Heartfelt Goodbye to PagerDuty

January 15, 2019 Random Notes No Comments
The past year and a half have been more than interesting. As part of that journey, the past 6 months have been spent at PagerDuty. While there I made a lot of new friends, solved interesting problems in creative ways, built some great professional relationships.  I also learned a lot,…

How To Build a System Workbench

January 1, 2019 High Level Tech Intro Startups No Comments
With the growth of the Cloud, fewer and fewer people actually put their hands on hardware.  But there are times that a cash-strapped startup, consultant or a frugal hobbyist/entrepreneur will want to get a MVP (Minimally Viable Product) up and running without having the recurring expense of deploying in the…

Are You Asking Questions the Right Way?

December 28, 2018 Analytics No Comments
I just took a couple of BlockChain courses at edX and was dismayed to see that the test questions were being asked in a way that skewed people’s scores the wrong way.  It also reminded me of one of the companies I used to work for and how they also…