A group of us at our Teletrac Navman – Pleasanton, CA R&D location spent some time at the Pleasanton Senior Center in conjunction with the Open Heart Kitchen to prep and serve lunch to the elderly. Was great to spend some time and give back to our community, and we got to meet some great folks in the process.

Big thanks to our volunteer team: Irani Muni, Jennimel Ocampo, Jayalalitha Pallatadaka, Deepthi Kendyala, Gopinath Sundharam, George Chemparathy, James Buxton, Esther Howard, Rishabh Nanda, Vadym Strashkin, Vadim Shiryayev, and Tariq Ahmed.

#fortivecares #TeletracNavman

This weekend a bunch of us from #TeletracNavman (a #Fortive company) joined Habitat For Humanity (East Bay Silicon Valley chapter, #HabitatEBSV) for a Build-A-Thon in Fremont, CA.

With a huge turn out of volunteers, we split up into teams building the core housing units, fence line, and a large brick wall. We got assigned to wall duty, and the team was determined to build the best gosh-darn wall ever!

Learned that the houses aren’t giveaways. The owners pay a mortgage and are responsible for it like any other homeowner, but the amount is adjusted to something affordable based on the family’s income. One of the future homeowners who was there helping on the build gave a moving speech on how much this means to him, as well as a few prior recipients who have continued to volunteer on builds.

Habitat did a great job at organizing, keeping everyone energized, well-fed, and well-hydrated. Thanks to all who participated, it was a lot of fun (and now I know how to make mortar/grout/concrete)!

#BuildMore #FortiveCares

Shout out to our team: Paresh Nagda, Claude-Nicolas Fiechter, Rishabh Nanda, Esther Howard, Nathan Todd, James Buxton, Larry Freeman, and Tariq Ahmed (me).

Added various additional valuable sources of free books, CSS, and programming related items.

http://aftershox.com/learning-list/

Staying informed and continuously acquiring knowledge is key to maintaining one’s value. I’ve added a page where I’ll maintain the master list of knowledge sources that I typically scan through looking for interesting stuff to read.

Dedicated Link: http://aftershox.com/learning-list/

Getting Started:

• The easiest way to aggregate all these sources of content is to use the http://my.yahoo.com portal to source in most of these sites which have RSS feeds.
• Many of these sites have email subscriptions.
• FlipBoard (the mobile app and website, https://flipboard.com/) is also another great way to subscribe to a large variety of sources.

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Background: Recently I completed the CIO Pocket MBA program at Boston University. This was a fantastic experience that I highly recommend to any leader in the I.T space. The insightful and inspiring professors are reputable thought leaders who have spent years researching various aspects of technology, management, business, and financials. Additionally learning from industry peers was equally valuable. During my time there I feverishly took a lot of notes in order to capture and ultimately share the knowledge. Keep in mind – these are raw notes that only scratch the surface from multi-hour/multi-day long sessions. My intent is not to replicate the knowledge as it was presented, but more to quickly disseminate key points that stood out to me. To fully benefit I highly recommend you sign up for the next round of this program (http://bit.ly/1juJEIP).

[su_pullquote]The greatest danger as a leader is believing the past is a prologue to the future. Believing you’ve done it before, and rest on your laurels that you can do it again.[/su_pullquote]

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[box] I received an email from LinkedIn regarding an #IfIWere22 series for young professionals who are graduating this year and what advice would I give.

This is a re-post of my LinkedIn post.

[/box]

Painting the picture

If I Were 22 In my early 20’s the Internet and Web were just coming out. It was really only known to techies, and keep in mind this was an era of dial up modems. Which was an incredible time as a technologist as I could see the tremendous explosion about to happen. From a professional level I’ve personally gone through a transformation in my journey starting as a Junior Software Developer to where I am now as the Director of Technology and Engineering at Amcom Technology in Silicon Valley. If I could send a message back in time to my younger self, here’s the advice I would give.

Stick with your convictions and take risks

Back in those days (mid 1990s) it was the tail end of the era where you go about finding a stable job, work your way up the ranks, and retire with a pension. Which is a completely alien concept by today’s standards.

However I recognized that the Internet explosion was around the corner, so my friends and I took a stab at two startup ideas.

Idea 1: Autobank – an online used car listing

I had this idea when looking for my first used car. I found it incredibly time consuming to go through a newspaper to look at car listings and filter for what I wanted. I felt there’s a need to create a web site where people/dealerships could post their cars for a nominal fee, and users could filter and search.

We teamed up with a business partner whose family owned a number of car dealerships, so that gave us the industry expertise we needed. However the Web was so new, and dealerships were so antiquated and conditioned to spending tens of thousands of dollars in radio, tv, and print ads that the idea of spending a buck a month per car online seemed like a scam to them.

They actually said that the Web/Internet is either a scam (because how could it possibly be so cheap), or a fad and that it won’t last. I eventually gave up not being able to achieve any traction.

Of course, a few years later autotrader.com, cars.com, and other such sites came out.

Idea 2: Spyder Web Hosting

At this point in time the non-techie early adopters of the Internet were signing up with their dial-up modem ISPs. The ISPs would give them an email address and 5 MB of space for a personal http://www.yourisp.com/~username website.

I felt this was unprofessional as a business from a marketing and branding perspective, and teamed up with some friends to create a Web Hosting company.

With our T1 into a friend’s basement powered by a Sun Sparc server (both of which were extremely expensive back then) we began to hustle and market.

We ran into a similar problem – businesses felt that the free 5 MB ~username was good enough for their business site. Whereas I was proposing that we help register their yourcompany.com domain and we host it.

I eventually gave up not being able to achieve traction.

Of course, years later you have the godaddy.com’s and all these Web Hosting companies out there along with fierce legal battles over domain names.

Message to Tariq @ 22:

Don’t give up too early. If you have an idea, or really believe your instincts are right don’t give up.

It may seem daunting to give up a nice secure full time job at a stable company, and of course having a real income stream for the first time in your life is amazing and something that you feel would be crazy to give up.

But trust me, the opportunity and ability to take risks goes down over time as it’s proportional to your debt load (mortgage, car loans) and the responsibilities you have (family).

Not that it ever goes away, but the stakes get higher over time.So take calculated risks now.

1. Try out your ideas, don’t give up on them until you’ve completely exhausted all possibilities.
2. However your time is valuable. Don’t foolishly waste it chasing something that will not manifest. You have to balance your emotions (passion, ambition, persistence) with logic (critical thinking & data driven decisions) in order to be analytical enough to determine when it’s time to move on.
3. Iterate over as many ideas as you can.
4. Take career advancing job opportunities in other parts of the country and even overseas. Moving isn’t permanent, you can always move back.

Recognize time and value

When you’re young it feels like you have unlimited time. You do not. Time is finite.

20 years ago I felt most things were equally important. Think long and hard about every action you take throughout the day, and ask yourself if that activity generates value.

Value could be personal value, and it can be value at work. Focusing your time on the most valuable activities is what will allow you to achieve maximum progression throughout your life and career. When you’re working, just ask yourself if what you’re doing at any given time is really the most valuable use of your time?

Find ways to achieve the same end result in as little time as possible. E.g. a face to face or phone conversation, as outdated as it’s becoming, is often faster than writing a long articulate Email.

Stay focused

Along the lines of value and time is the need to stay focused.

Focused means saying no. Saying no to distractions, saying no to low value activities, saying no to activity instead of productivity. As humans it’s gratifying to want to tackle easy things in order to get a sense of accomplishment.

However the things worth doing often aren’t easy and thus we tend to procrastinate on them. Push yourself to get the real things done. Done is value. The more you increase your value, that’s what your raises and promotions will be premised on.

Speed vs. Velocity

Recognize the difference between speed and velocity.

Speed is just rate of change/movement. Velocity is speed in a given direction.

You can turn your steering wheel in your car to the left, floor the gas pedal and hit 60 mph. You’ll be moving fast, but you won’t be going anywhere.

In your career you want to be moving somewhere. Make sure your activities, projects, and learning have direction.

To use a technology centric example, number of Agile points completed in a sprint, or count of tickets resolved, is just speed. However if those efforts are iterating towards a path or goal, it has direction.

Don’t just create solutions, solve problems

As a young technologist I often viewed technology as isolated and distinct from business activity. Even mature companies today view I.T as such.

Whether you’re into technology, finance, marketing, or anything else – don’t just create solutions for the sake of creating solutions. Solve problems using your skills. This generates value out of your work (and thus increases your value).

The key however, is to define the problem. When working with others make sure this defined problem is published and clearly understood amongst teammates and stakeholders. The problem I’ve found is that when it is not published everyone has a different perspective on what the problem is, and thus efforts are fragmented and folks are solving different problems.

Develop and maintain your professional networks

You’ll meet many people in your professional journey. Starting fresh in your career your peers will all be at the same entry level that you are now. However as all of you grow, the value of your network will compound.

The biggest mistake you make is lose touch with all the people you meet along the way.

Create alumni user groups email lists, LinkedIn Groups, and of course stay connected through LinkedIn and other forms of social media.

Recognize your strengths and weaknesses

This is hard.

It can take years to develop a strong sense of what makes you distinct and unique. Weaknesses are directly related to strengths, as they’re often two sides of the same coin.

Someone who may be ultra-versatile and adaptive probably isn’t going to be an extreme specialist. Nor will an extreme specialist be versatile. A deep methodical analytical long range thinker may not be adept at making rapid high risk decisions.

Knowing what you bring to the table will help you position your career to best leverage your distinctive attributes in the companies you work for.

As you grow even further, recognize the distinct characteristics in others and then learn how the combinations of certain groupings of skills create a whole that is more valuable than the skills individually. This is the value of a team, and you’ll make far more progress creating and working with the right combinations of people than working individually.

Never stop learning

Graduating doesn’t mean the learning is done. The learning never ends. Always keep learning and improving your knowledge. Learn things directly related to your core job function, as well as things that would help complement your skill-set. Learn things that advance your strengths and minimize weaknesses.

In this day and age where everything moves so fast you run a huge risk of becoming antiquated quickly.

1. Attend trade shows and conferences
2. Take classes with industry training professionals
3. Attend webinars
4. Join local usergroups
5. Participate in trade related discussion forums
6. Subscribe to magazines, and read books
7. Present a conference or usergroup any topic – it’ll force you to learn as much as you can about it

Failing is learning

Don’t be afraid to fail. Failing is the process of learning.

No one rides a bike for the first time and just goes. You have to take the risk, fall, and develop the balance in order to move forward.

Failing is only failing if you don’t learn from it. So when you fail at something, evaluate what went wrong and what you would do differently if you could go back in time and do it again.

Therefore failing is an investment in your development.

In Summary

Your career is a journey, and your profession is a craft. Continue to pave the path in front of your career so that your journey continues to flow, while cultivating your craft.

And lastly if there’s anything to remember, remember this. A Roman philosopher by the name of Seneca once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Or as I like to say, “luck is being prepared for an opportunity.”

Good luck!

#IfIWere22

[box] Background: Recently I completed the CIO Pocket MBA program at Boston University. This was a fantastic experience that I highly recommend to any leader in the I.T space. The insightful and inspiring professors are reputable thought leaders who have spent years researching various aspects of technology, management, business, and financials. Additionally learning from industry peers was equally valuable. During my time there I feverishly took a lot of notes in order to capture and ultimately share the knowledge. Keep in mind – these are raw notes that only scratch the surface from multi-hour/multi-day long sessions. My intent is not to replicate the knowledge as it was presented, but more to quickly disseminate key points that stood out to me. To fully benefit I highly recommend you sign up for the next round of this program (http://bit.ly/1juJEIP).[/box]

Topic: Managing Disruption & Change

I.T sits in the middle as a cost center, profit center, growth center, and investment center. How you spend your time will be between the implementation dimensions (cost & profit) vs. innovation (investment and growth).

Back in the old days, I.T was considered a function of X. X being the CFO, COO, or CMO.

Now – every business is a digital business.

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling donuts or making some new whizz bang social app. But to remain competitive you have to constantly be comparing your competitive advantage (what are you strong at, what value add you have to you offer) vs. the competition – particularly disruptors. And thus all CxO’s have a stake in it.

More importantly, what is your core competency today isn’t necessarily what it needs to be tomorrow.

Companies that focus on viewing IT as cost centers (reducing I.T costs through automation, cloud, etc…) and profit centers (maximizing existing core offerings) create a Core Competency gap between what they’re doing now vs what they should be preparing for (aka innovating) in the future.

Classic poster children of companies that created this gap: Blockbuster, Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, etc… All companies that focused only on core competencies.

Where does value come from?

What you think is now obvious may not have been so obvious back then. When Netscape IPO’d with a billion dollar market cap with an open source/free product, it caused a total rethinking of: where does value come from?

Who would have thought Google with a simple search form page would become $250B mkt cap company?

Disruption is now easier than ever

It’s now easier than ever for a company to come in and completely disrupt the market place.

E.g. the TV industry works by vetting a single pilot on TV and measures the initial response from there. House of Cards wanted an entire season to develop the characters, etc… and NetFlix believed in it, and bet big…. and won. They put the entire first season available in one go (vs. what traditionally networks have done).

People could watch it all in one day, space it apart, etc… their philosophy: people want to watch when they want to watch it, and if at a reasonable price, will pay for it.

Kevin Spacey talking about how House of Cards disrupted the market place and how they used data to make an intelligent decision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ukYf_xvgc

Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form that they want it in, at a reasonable price and they’ll most likely pay for it rather than steal it. – Kevin Spacey

It’s all about data

It wasn’t a blind bet for Netflix. They have a lot of data to know what their customers like, what their customers behaviors are, what devices they watch on, when they watch, etc… TV Networks have nowhere near this kind of telemetry.

So it’s all about data. Facebook isn’t about users, it’s about the volume of data created by those users and thus monetizing that data. In the day 1,000 person study would be considered a good sample count, and 10K would be landmark. Facebook did a divorce study based on tens of millions of users. They’re currently developing a network of drones to supply free internet, however they get to monitor everything that you do (aka more data).

The explosion of data

Cars are becoming IP enabled (Ford Sync, GM OnStar, Audi Apple), every GE component will send real time data, proximity marketing sensors that know where you are in a store, Google Glass, etc… is all leading to this explosion of big data.

Be a disruptor or defend against disruptive forces

The ability to be a disruptor, or defend against disruptive forces will rely on how well you can leverage and connect data.

When Google Glass first was announced, many people thought it was just a novelty idea.

JPL: When the technicians are working on an jet engine the spaces can be tight so to look at even an iPad is hard. But using Google Glass they can see the schematics overlaid with what they’re looking at.
KFC: Prototyping putting the food prep instructions on Google Glass so that training is easier and to reduce error.

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

Earlier in April I had the pleasure of attending the CIO Pocket MBA hosted at Boston University.

The classes were fantastic, and if you’re in any kind of an I.T Leadership role I highly recommend attending this class.

It’s intense, fast, and covers a wide variety of topics presented by some of the most amazing professors I’ve ever seen. I was a bit skeptical over how current a university could be as I feel that most tend to lag (when it comes to technology) behind what’s happening in the real world.

Topics included:

1. Managing disruption and change
2. Economic position of the I.T organization
3. Performance KPIs for driving results (a financial analysis session)
4. Creating a customer centric organization
5. Building a strategy for getting things done
6. Leading change and innovation

Apart from the valuable coursework, there was value in the networking component where technology leaders from around the world attending (including Europe and the UAE).

For more information visit: http://smgworld.bu.edu/elc/open-enrollment/cio-pocket-mba/

[learn_more caption=”Context” state=”open”] I’ve been working on a startup that’s in its pre-alpha stages (completely self-funded), and taking cues from the Lean Startup movement conducting a continuous series of experiments in order to validate if we’re going in the right direction or if we need to pivot.  I can’t go into too much detail on what the service is yet, but at a broad level it’s a service to achieve a strong state of health.

In this series I’d like to share some of the experiences along the way.[/learn_more]

Over the last few months we’ve been incorporating feedback from our very early pilot users, and we’re at a point where the software is baked enough that we need to start generating a tighter feedback loop in order to more wisely spend our valuable time.

We initially were experimenting with a paid service just to merely validate if people would sign up, and what they’d be willing to pay (which was understandably a big data point for the CFO). However in mind we have more fundamental questions to ask.

Is our business model right?

• Our initial target market segment naturally lends itself to a supply of potential users that we have access to; we’re merely hooking on to the tale end of an existing use case in the health care industry.
• However can we actually seamlessly integrate into it (from a process perspective)? How much high-touch involvement would be needed as part of the sales and customer on-boarding process, and are we providing enough value at the health care provider end in order to create a win-win solution for both them and their users/patients?
• And if we did, how do we not only get users to sign-up, but remain long term engaged (i.e. active) users.

If the model is right, how do we make it work?

•  If the model is wrong, then we need to pivot and begin testing/validating against other market segments and customer verticals that we have in mind.
• However if the mode is right, then we just need to make it work, and that’s a question about creating enough value to the end user. Even if the service is free, there has to be enough value proposition that they’re willing to part with their time.

At the moment we have an early adopter health care provider who is willing to refer early adopter users which we’re hoping we can transform into an active focus group/steering committee/advisory team/etc… Whatever you want to call it, it’s another source of valuable perspective. Early adopters are good at this stage in the game as they  know what they’re getting into, have a high tolerance for software that isn’t fully baked, and most importantly are willing to provide a lot of feedback.

Get that feedback

It’s all about feedback at this point – we need to transform all our anecdotal evidence and theories into reality. So with this new round of pilot users, we need to go beyond surveys and have actual conversations with users in order to truly capture their perspective, feelings, and reactions.

Discussing value over functionality

What I was advising to the team executing this exercise is that we need to make it more than just about features/functionality, but rather about value and engagement. What are they looking for, are we delivering on it, and what’s missing/preventing them from being a long term active user.

Active vs. Passive users

I keep emphasizing the terms active and engaged, because I don’t want us to end up with a gym member customer base. Gyms thrive on having a large percentage of passive customers who pay for the membership, but don’t actually use it and at the same time don’t cancel because there’s always this procrastinated hope of using it one day.

We actually do believe in our mission of helping people live healthier lives.

Discussion points

So with that said, as we engage these early adopters/pilot users, although we’ll discuss specific functionality, more fundamental discussion points will include:

• What motivates them to sign up?
  • E.g. curiosity, live longer, be healthy for the sake of one’s kids, etc…
• Assessing commitment level towards one’s health.
  • E.g. how much time/effort, factoring in the real world (family, work), do they have?
• Have they tried other services similar to this – what were the results, and if they failed, why?
• What does a service of this nature need to deliver on in order to keep them as an active user?
  • What kind and how much value is needed to make it worth their while?
• What are the concerns, expectations, skepticism about the service?
• If they were to describe to others what service is, how would they describe it?
  • This is to compare what users perceive the service to be vs. what we’re trying to position it as.
• What would be a fair price for this service?
• What price would they be wiling to pay?
  • Which is different than the prior discussion point.
  • E.g. I think a fair price for a luxury cruise is $6000 for a family of 3; but I don’t like cruises, so the price would have to be significantly lower to attract me as a customer.
  • You might need to nudge for some honesty as people feel mean saying “I wouldn’t pay anything” even though that’s what they actually feel. But that is a very valid answer, so if they don’t feel it’s something they would pay for, would they be open to an ad-driven service, or a fremium pricing model?
• What would be needed to make them a long term active user?
  • I think it’s important not to load the question by rattling off a bunch of features we have on our roadmap and backlog as people are likely to just say yes to every cool idea we have in store.

Touching base before they drop off

On-boarding users is one thing, but we know we have a ways to go with this product, so what’s likely to happen is that users will try it out for awhile and once the novelty wears off and reality sets in their usage will wane.

Fortunately we’ve made usage analytics a first class citizen and can easily detect when this is about to happen. This is a key event to intercept as we’ll want to find out the causes/motivators as to WHY their usage is dropping off.

• Too time consuming to use?
• Lack of a support system (e.g. you’re the only one in the family trying to be healthy while everyone else is eating pizza and cake).
• Not real world enough?
• Complexity?
• Don’t really care?
• Too busy/lack of time?
• Usability/User Experience issues?
• Lack of certain features/functionality?
• Etc…

[learn_more caption=”Background” state=”open”] As the Director of Technology, my teams include Software Development, Business Intelligence, and managed I.T Infrastructure services.[/learn_more]

Having recently taken over an existing site, we’re in the process of conducting various house cleaning efforts. We came across a server that had a mis-configured iDRAC card which prevented managing it remotely or to run hardware diagnostics.

One option is to reboot the server, boot into BIOS, and configure the iDRAC while in front of the machine. However this would require a drive out the data center, and the additional maintenance window outage.

We did find a solution to all of this with the installation of Dell DRAC Tools which includes a command line tool called Racadm. When installed on the machine you want to configure, Racadm allows a Systems Administrator to modify the iDRAC settings from a command-line without requiring a reboot.

Here are the commands:

racadm getniccfg
racadm setniccfg –s 172.17.2.124 255.255.252.0 172.17.0.5

 
-OR-
 

racadm getconfig -g cfgLanNetworking
racadm config -g cfgLanNetworking -o cfgNicIpAddress 172.17.2.124
racadm config -g cfgLanNetworking -o cfgNicNetmask 255.255.252.0
racadm config -g cfgLanNetworking -o cfgNicGateway 172.17.0.7
racadm config -g cfgLanNetworking -o cfgDNSServer1 172.17.0.6
racadm config -g cfgLanNetworking -o cfgDNSServer2 172.17.0.5
racadm config -g cfgLanNetworking -o cfgDNSRacName ServerName-DRAC
racadm config -g cfgLanNetworking -o cfgDNSDomainName corp.company.com

[box type=”shadow”]Kudos to Jeremy Moreira for this information[/box]

DRAC Tools, includes Racadm (32bit), v7.1:

The Dell Remote Access Controller (DRAC) console is management station software designed to provide remote management capabilities for the Dell systems. You can remotely connect to the DRAC hardware and access the DRAC features either by using a web browser or the RACADM Command Line Interface (CLI). RACADM CLI is the command line user interface to the DRAC.

Download DRAC Tools (v7.1):  http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/driverdetails?driverid=HR1V5

• Filename:OM-DRAC-Dell-Web-WIN-7.1.0-5304_A00.exe
• Compatibility: Windows Server 2003, Windows 2003 x64, Windows 2008 x86, Windows 2008 x64, Windows 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012

RACADM Subcommand Overview:

The getconfig subcommand allows you to retrieve iDRAC configuration parameters individually, or all the iDRAC configuration groups may be retrieved and saved into a file.

Example:

racadm config -g cfgLanNetworking -o cfgNicIpAddress 10.35.10.110

Sets the cfgNicIpAddress configuration parameter (object) to the value 10.35.10.110. This IP address object is contained in the group cfgLanNetworking.

[button link=”http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/dept/cron/documentation/dell-server-admin/en/idrac1/appa.htm” type=”small”] Learn More[/button]