One sure sign transformation is off the rails

If you ever hear yourself, or others, say that the reason your company cannot transform from X to Y is because salespeople won’t change, you are probably off track with your transformation efforts.

I have had multiple transformation experiences in my professional life. One reoccurring theme is the organization of people into camps for and opposed to change. This happens in the larger “civil” political arena as well, but let’s not digress. In the business arena, the people with a revolutionary zealousness for going in a new direction, at all costs, are…

As long as self-serving hypocrisy prevails, America cannot be unified

As an independent, what I crave is values-based policy, and values-based politicians.

I realize this is terribly idealistic, but don’t expect me to buy-in to empty calls for unity, if they are not backed by values.

We cannot be a unified country if we refuse to hold hearings on opposing party judicial appointments in the last year of a presidency, and then ram through judicial appointments from our own party in the last few months of a presidency.

We cannot be unified if we support violence from our own wing…

The rise of alt-tech

“Alt-tech” is the name that has now been given to various alternatives to “Big Tech” (FB, Twitter, Google,…). In light of recent events, Alt-tech is likely to get more attention, and more usage.

While it is clear that alt-tech takes the form of software services similar in nature to social media (Parler & Gab for example), as I wrote on the weekend, it is not clear whether it will take hardware forms. I doubt that it will, because that is much harder to realize, but who knows; will countries like China pounce on alt-tech seekers all…

Could this mean waves in the tech ecosystem?

The news that Apple has communicated to Parler that it may ban the app from its Appstore, has me wondering about the future of the device ecosystem. Could the right-wing of politics/society create an alternative tech ecosystem? If not, will regulation, at a future time, be its only remedy?

Given all the talk about right-wing social media, I decided this week to sign-in to Parler, and see what content was on the site. There is plenty of the usual right-wing rhetoric, normal stuff. It also did not take me long to come…

Is silence an option?

In 1990 I was a young man. I was touring Europe. One of the stops in that journey was Mauthausen in Austria. The WWII concentration camp in that town shocked me into a reality that changed me for life. The awareness of how people were marched to the pinnacle of a rock quarry and then pushed off, how people were treated while alive, the ovens, and significantly, disturbing questions. What would I have done during such a time? Would I have stood for humanity? If I could not stand tall in the face of small injustices…

Flutter Future Builder Example

The problem of how to execute an async function before the UI builds was vexing to me.

The answer turned out to be quite simple. Use the FutureBuilder option. Using this option itself can see vexing at first, but it is also simple, once you know how.

1. Specify the async function to execute before the build. In the below example, the function is called _doWork().
2. Set the name of the variable that can be tested to determine if work is completed. In the below case “canbeanyname”. …

We must put an end to human trafficking

Image Source: I.am_nah on Unsplash

While I’m sure I should get better at letting things go, the recent news about “Fashion magnate Peter Nygard charged in sex trafficking scheme, including minors” really got under my skin, and I can’t let it go until I get it off my chest.

Truthfully though, I hope I never let it go. I hope I never stop being disgusted at what appears to be a rampant, amoral, hedonistic pursuit by the richest people in the country. …

Or anything really

A recent encounter with writing software has me thinking about high-level takeaways:

• NorthStar
• Lego blocks
• Architecture
• Radical Culling
• Defensive coding
• Testing

NorthStar

Having spent time in strategy, it is probably no shock that the “vision thing” is top of mind for me. Strategy literature is all about that one point of clarity which value propositions are focused on, and value chains self-organize around.

I feel the same way about software. It is too easy to be browsing community ecosystem libraries and see this shiny widget and think “wow, wouldn’t it be cool if that was put in!”. No…