I haven’t been writing on this blog as much as I have in the past. I resist the urge to switch to Twitter, Facebook, Medium or other publishing platforms.
This past week an executive at one of the big data center companies was promoted to a VP of technical communications. I reached out to congratulate the executive as it has been a pleasure to see him rise at the company.
Having the media role I have made great friends in the industry like GigaOm. Many of the other data center and technical publications. But, I have been getting bored of the data center news. I started writing about Green Data Centers because no one was discussing the topic. Now all the big companies Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, and even Amazon have green initiatives as part of their data center efforts. No one talks about PUE because it is already a standard metric to measure efficiency of electrical and cooling systems.
During the break from blogging I have gone back to what I really enjoy. Solving tough problems. Writing about green data center was a tough problem. Now it is easy. It is boring, but at the time of figuring out how to write about a technical issue it was a challenge. When I started it was hard to get an answer to how much power was used by the cooling system. How much was is used by the cooling system. What drove me is the problems that it was hard to get an answers.
So what am I focusing on now? Two things. Construction processes and Wireless.
10 years ago I worked extensively on the eBay data center and GC Skanska. At first I was hired by Skanska to work on marketing and public relations issues, and they quickly found out that I knew way more technical knowledge. Spending 26 years at HP, Apple, and Microsoft being an industrial engineer working on quality control, manufacturing, distribution logistics, procurement, OEM program management, peripheral product development, System 7 software development, TrueType, Windows program manager, Interactive TV, Windows Technical Evangelism, Windows Server program management, and Systems architecture gives me a broad background to dive into almost any area I choose.
What I found phenomenally interesting is how a GC worked. After working with Skanska, I spent lots of time talking to friends at Turner Construction and gradually understand the world construction and how it worked. And I would talk to friends at Syska and CH2MHill. Many of these conversations would be ones at the conference hotel bars or hallways of the conference. With these conversations I figured out there was a need for a better construction application. The insights of building a construction mobile application with backend AWS infrastructure is a longer post that is complex to explain and probably put most of you asleep. I know when i tell my family the story they go to sleep.
But out of that boredom, realized that is mind numbing hard to do. There is something that needs to be done to make it easier. And that led me to wireless and what could be done.
I hope to write a lot more that I semi-retired the media role and I will write about construction and wireless.
Note: when I first wrote this post I said I was retiring the media role, but after reflecting a bit it is more like semi-retirement. It is no longer a focus to be a media person. I can still do it. More as a hobby. I am spending more of time as an engineer which is what I have done more of my life. Focusing on media gave me a chance to focus on the challenges of communicating.