From the category archives:

Interesting

What is your passion?

by Erik on January 17, 2010

in Business Logic, IBM, Information, Interesting, New Tech, ROI, Sustainability, passion

Lately, I’ve been thinking about “passion,” what drives people and what leads them to be successful. Everyone says that you must do something that you care deeply about, otherwise there’s no chance in being happy. Does that translate to success? I think there’s more to that equation, and it typically involves hard work, perseverance, and attention to results. The last of which I find to be the most important piece.

Lightbulb.

This past weekend I was in DC for work and leisure, and I had the pleasure of meeting a director of a local DC organization whom I found to be incredibly driven and passionate about public health and policy. When he spoke of his passion, it was evident that this man will do wonders to change the world. He has a vision, purpose, and a dozen letters that come after his name. But, regardless of that, his vision drives him to get down and dirty and work hard at achieving his goals.

It’s awe inspiring when I have the privilege to talk to people about their passions. I know that when individuals follow their hearts, and when I hear that they back that up with pure unadulterated hard work and dedication to driving results AND holding themselves accountable to their mission, that they ultimately achieve their goals.

Technology.

What I also gained from this conversation was that I tend to think of things in terms of problem solving. When a system is broken, whether the way patient care is managed, how that information is stored, how that leads to policy issues, late and inaccurate data reporting, and healthcare overload.

Thinking about how technology can be used is innate within me. The way patient care is accomplished, and how a broken system can be restored has to happen with technology. Patients are really clients and clients are managed with CRM software–but how well do hospitals understand CRM? Which interactions do they log? How do they follow up and track progress?

I was excited that my training and background can someday enable me to help out in an area that my new friend was so passionate about.  I will someday be working on engagements that will allow me to influence these very real, and serious issues affecting the private and public sector, and that is exhilarating to me.

My major lesson learned was that having a vision, having a purpose, and being results oriented will allow one person to change the world.

My passion.

Deep down, I know what I am passionate about. I know what I am interested in, but I don’t think I’ve ever fully written down, in list form, what drives me. What is it that I want to accomplish? And how do I plan to get there? What in my professional life makes me happy, and how can I use this passion to accomplish great things for the companies I want to consult with?

  1. I am driven by technology. More specifically, I am driven by “Green Tech” because that is the future of business.
  2. I am driven by innovation, through process or machine.
  3. I am driven by sustainability. Investing now, will save time and money for cities, states, nations, and global enterprises.
  4. I am driven by ingenuity and problem solving. I thrive in fast paced environments that are dynamic and challenging.
  5. I am driven by delivering on results, and setting and exceeding ambitious goals.
  6. And I am ultimately passionate about people. Diverse people with incredible ideas and stories. People that want to change the world.

And this means?

I believe that technology is an important strategic level goal that most companies need to invest in. I believe that even at a local DC health organization, technology plays a major role in quality of care, and these tenants are scalable from fortune 100 to start ups. Technology allows the management of information, and we are in an age where information is key to where we want to go next as a civilization. The future of this industry is in the proper implementation of systems that will support and drive enterprises to the next level.

Green tech and sustainability are key to the future of business. It makes sense to have tech policies in place that can ensure high rates of return, and cost reductions. An eWeek article recently stated “This may be a bit surprising to some corporate executives: IBM figures that for every dollar saved in energy drawn from the wall, a company saves $6 to $8 in operational costs as a result.”

How do you save energy? You implement technology that can modernize the lighting systems. You recover heat from huge data centers to help heat and cool entire complexes. You look to innovation to change business processes and ensure adequate focus is on future change. You solve complex problems, and tackle exceptional issues with smart people, and you hold yourself and your team accountable to delivering results.

The company today will not last in a marketplace of tomorrow. And the thought of being involved in solving those problems within the private sector, well, that drives me also.

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Calculating Consumer Happiness at Any Price

by Erik on December 13, 2009

in Economy, Interesting, Markets, Philosophy

If technology and systems didn’t come so naturally, I really believe that I would have become an economist. I just find it fascinating. The “business information systems” major was such a perfect fit for my abilities, that I didn’t really think twice about selecting it when I was choosing my major at Lehigh. But, as I continue to read up on the current economic climate, work in an industry where consumer confidence greatly matters to our offerings, and I uncover little gems like this article by John Tierney, I realize that my interests run far deeper than technology and design. I wonder if I should have studied more micro and macro economic principles than the 4 semesters I ended up with…

“Maybe, sometimes, old-fashioned economics is just about right,” Dr. Shayo says. “Maybe when it comes to food, people do have reasonably stable preferences. Some people like shrimp and some don’t, even if it’s worth a lot of money.” [via NY Times]

Check out the article. It’s a rather interesting read about consumer preferences and how price affects those preferences. Oh, how I fondly remember those indifference curves and plotting consumer preferences…

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News Roundup

by Erik on October 5, 2009

in Advertising, Apple, Economy, IBM, Interesting, Technology

I.B.M. Joins Pursuit of $1,000 Personal Genome: One of the oldest names in computing is joining the race to sequence the genome for $1,000. On Tuesday, I.B.M. plans to give technical details of its effort to reach and surpass that goal, ultimately bringing the cost to as low as $100, making a personal genome cheaper than a ticket to a Broadway play. [NY Times]

Datacenter energy costs outpacing hardware prices: It’s estimated that the power a server burns over its lifetime will soon cost more than the server itself. A panel of industry speakers discussed a lot of options for saving power, and described how institutional issues can block their adoption. [ars technica]

FTC to Bloggers: Disclose Freebies or Face $11,000 Fine: According to new guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), bloggers who fail to disclose that they have received freebies when they write about a product can now be fined up to $11,000 per post. [NY Times]

Report: U.S. Mac Households Rise to 12 Percent: Nearly 12 percent of U.S. computer-owning households now own a Mac, The NPD Group reports in its second annual Household Penetration Study. That’s up three percentage points from the market-research firm’s 2008 findings. [PC World]

Spending for interactive advertising fell again in the second quarter, making it two quarters in a row that the medium, which had been growing so robustly, fell victim to the economy. [NY Times]

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The Life Cycle of a Business

by Erik on July 25, 2009

in Interesting, Philosophy

What is a business - anyway?  As usual, Wikipedia offers a pretty good definition:  “In economics, business is the social science of managing people to organize and maintain collective productivity toward accomplishing particular creative and productive goals, usually to generate profit.”  Not surprisingly, as is the case for any highly complex system or entity, this is just one of multiple definitions.

In quantum mechanics we learn that questions like “what is an electron?” are meaningless unless one also asks “what is your purpose in asking this question?”

An electron is sometimes best thought of as a particle, and sometimes best thought of as a wave depending on what models or measurements one is after. Similarly, one cannot separate asking what a business is from how one wants to use the answer. But I am actually most satisfied with the people-centric definition Wikipedia gives, because I truly believe it is the most important one.

[via Irving Wladawsky-Berger]

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Lead Us to Tweet, and Forgive the Trespassers

5 July 2009 Interesting

Religious groups from Episcopalians to Orthodox Jews have signed up for Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks with the same gusto that celebrities and politicians have, and for some of the same reasons — to gain a global platform and to appeal to young people. Still, many clerics admit to an uneasiness about the merger of […]

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Long-Distance Drops As Wireless Gains

1 July 2009 Interesting

NPR has an interesting article on the switch from land-line telephone companies to wireless. This reminds me of the AP piece that talked about how cell-only households now outnumber traditional phone households.That statistic points to problem in our current method of landline national polling for elections, which was brought to everyone’s attention in 2008. As […]

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Restaurants finding Twitter a cheap, effective marketing tool

29 June 2009 Interesting

I was having a discussion the other day with one of my employees about the benefit of twitter and how it can be utilized in a business setting as a value-adding marketing tool. He was not so convinced. He could only see twitter as a way to tell people what you were doing at any […]

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SaaS gives SMEs the power to ride out recession

29 June 2009 Enterprise Systems

Software as a service (SaaS) could be the panacea for smaller business, according to research published today.
Investing more in software as a service (SaaS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) could help smaller businesses lower their operating costs and help them grow in spite of the recession.
So claims a report released today by Ardent Solutions, […]

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Boxer scolds Army General for not calling her “Senator”

20 June 2009 Interesting

But what got her most rankled was when she wasn’t addressed properly. It seems that “ma’am” — a term deemed appropriate by a Military Protocol guide — isn’t good enough for the senator. She demands the title “Senator”. So much so that she interrupted his testimony to scold him for the apparent lack of respect.
[via CS Monitor]
Senator […]

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More from Adam Christensen re: IBM Innovation Jam

19 June 2009 Business Logic

photo credit: hugovk
Forward Looking
I can’t get enough of the concepts behind ‘Jam.’ I think it’s remarkable what IBM was able to accomplish and the “forward looking” nature of the values that were adopted through their online brainstorming sessions… Corporate social responsibility is especially important today, and in my opinion, clearly adds value to the firm’s […]

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