"But programmers are attracted to complexity like moths to a flame. The more convoluted the systems diagram, the greater the intellectual gratification. Our commitment to resisting that is the key ingredient." ~David Heinemeier Hanson

"I seldom invite people to have lunch or dinner with me. But they're really chosen. Because I can't spend time with people that I don't enjoy. I can't do it anymore as theater. I make choices. That's a beautiful thing about growing up. Learn to say no. In a nice way, but say no." ~Francis Mallmann

Everything we came to hate about cable that streaming initially solved for, we have now brought to streaming services. I revert back to my high school literature and poetry teacher... "Kill your television.". ~David Kleist

You can't help people who don't want to help themselves. For some, the complaining is their truth.

In this current economy, climate, whatever you want to call it, I don't know why anyone would hire in the United States any more. The taxes, paperwork and red tape, taxes, healthcare benefits costs, ...did I mention taxes make it impossible to afford doing business here. States who claim they're wanting to create jobs are literally doi...

Looks like the independent coffee☕ shops are gaining. 😉

I find it ironic that the most successful people I know don't take credit for it. They say it was because of others, or they were at the right place at the right time. They don't call themselves serial entrepreneurs, or act like they need to invent their identity. I also know people that tell everyone they're serial entrepreneurs, take...

Fear causes hesitation ... and hesitation causes defeat.

Decisions = Progress

The key to success in ________ is effective communication.

This recent podcast by 37Signals came a few weeks too late for me. My company issued a press release a few weeks ago. Prior to doing so, I was on the fence about going through with it. I should have listened to myself. We issued the press release through PR Newswire, and the platform fee was somewhere in the area of $3,400. I was told ...

You can have the biggest pile of data in the world, but it's useless for AI until it's classified. When it comes to this "AI revolution" companies are rushing to lead, EVERYONE is starting from scratch; even Google. So if you're surprised by Gemini's results, you need to better understand how AI works. Craig

I find it so interesting that people get hung up on tools at work so badly that they let it define how they run their business. They’re simply not open to anything outside their comfort zone. How you run a business is not a factor of the tools you use. It’s not about practices such as Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, etc. At the end of...

It's hard to find self motivation, especially when those around you give up so easily. BUT ... this what sets us apart from the others. Adapt and Overcome. Let's Go. Craig

I loathe text messaging. I don't really know why, because it is a good form of communication, but I think it's become so abused that now I wish it would just die. When I was medically discharged from the military, I used my communication background in the Marines to begin what would become a 15 year career at Verizon Wireless. I was wo...

(originally published on my LinkedIn "Coffee's On" Newsletter on June 7, 2023 but wanted to add it here) A few days ago Apple gave the world the first look at Apple Vision Pro — their version of a mixed AR/VR experience expected to launch sometime in 2024. Truth be told, I think if anyone will make a success out of this from an adoptio...

This HBR article is one of the best articles I stumbled upon in a long time. I laughed reading some of this because of personal and professional experience. This is not only a leadership decision, but it's also realizing that no matter the age of your employees, and how seasoned they think they are, many of them lack basic team organiz...

Often times, people will create a quick task. They’ll write down a few things and put them in the proper columns in a kanban board, or in the proper lists in To-Do’s, but it never includes a date. Sometimes, we need to jot these things down quickly to get them out of our heads, but it’s exceedingly important that we go back and put dat...

I'm guilty of utilizing marketing tactics to gain traction in the marketplace without knowing the details and how true the statements really are. Early on, I was so new to agriculture, I based comments off of what I heard other "experts" saying. Turns out, they're just in it for the marketing too. For the longest time, many large corpo...

I think it was in 2015 or 2016 this picture was created. It was created by Steve Hyland our then head of design. Back then this was my company Basecamp Networks, which created the intelliSCOUT app. Eventually I sold Basecamp Networks and intelliSCOUT became the company Farmwave. Today, the mileage on this image has been insane. It's be...

Few people know that I was hospitalized in November of 2015 for losing my memory. I was returning from a business trip in St. Louis, and was not feeling well the morning while flying home. I have a few faint memories of the plane landing back in Atlanta, not feeling well and going to the Delta SkyClub to sit for a minute before calling...

What does it take to run a successful proof-of-concept (POC) in artificial intelligence? While my company is most known for the work we've done in agriculture with our Farmwave technology, this principle will apply to any industry you want to integrate machine learning. There's been a lot of discussion lately about what it takes to run...

When I set out to write my thoughts on this topic, I thought I'd search the good 'ole world wide web to see other thoughts. I was actually shocked at how many other, more credible sources, have recently written about this. There's a lot more, but these are the few that I found first. Inc. - https://www.inc.com/the-muse/how-to-write-pro...

I've recently started working on a project that is hitting up against the behavioral side of human intelligence, and how we can program a machine to make these same decisions. Now, this is really only touching the surface as it's pushing the edge on a retail-based decision. And while it is certainly peaking my interest, I'm thinking ab...

We've all had this experience, whether it be a bag of potato chips, or a bag of Doritos like above. You get the party size because you need the most chips for your get together and because it's a very popular snack item. Doritos are always a big hit. Whether you decide to put them into a bowl, or just leave the bag for people to help t...

I was having a discussion with someone the other day about software development, how it's built to add true value and deliver real results, and how it's going to relate to web3, metaverse, AI, or whatever next version of technology someone is creating. He had this to say: "In the software industry we have created a false sense of cost ...

This is an excerpt from Andrew Ng of Landing AI in an article he wrote in Nov of 2021: "Software companies have been successful at getting users to adapt to one-size-fits-all products. Yet machine learning could help software capture and interact with the rich diversity of the physical world. Rather than forcing every city to build str...

The above graphic is from the Shape-Up concept / methodology, as created by several people at Basecamp, but the author is Ryan Singer. Methods Should Drive Your Tools I've written about this in the past, but I've paid high switching costs at my work. I've tried to find the software application(s) or platform(s) that help me get the bes...

Over the course of 7 years building out an artificial intelligence that could add billions of dollars in value to the agriculture industry and building the first known data base of imagery curated for AI in plant pathology, we had to build… a box. Here it is. Our box. The Farmwave Vision System v2.0. This box is comprised of all off-th...

Artificial Intelligence has been around since approximately 1956, when, John McCarthy coined the term during a workshop at Dartmouth College. I’m not a big fan of it today. I think it should be called Automated Intelligence… at least for now. Today, compute power and data are more available and more cost effective than in the 1950’s so...