Tag Archives: Cloud

Hard… Right… Turn…

15 Mar

This one is personal and introspective. It’s life change time, or as my Army officer son would say, a ‘Significant Emotional Event’.

I have just taken a hard right turn.

TURN:

After 16 years at CIMx Software, 30 years in manufacturing application software, and a lifetime involved in manufacturing, as of March 19, I will be the newly minted VP of Client Success at  Vinimaya.  Vinimaya is a provider of a cloud-based software for turning corporate procurement into an experience more like B2C purchasing (a la Amazon), rather than buyers having to become ERP experts or worse, become someone who’s entire job is fighting their way through endless supplier catalogs, websites, etc.

Yes, my friends, this is about as far from PLM/MES as one can get.  It excites me.  A whole new world.  On the one hand, helping clients succeed with vendor supplied software is pretty much a market agnostic endeavor.  As CIMx’ mentor, T D Hughes, would say, “All business is the same, it just looks different”.  On the other hand, the nuances and peculiarities of e-Procurement are something I will have to pick up, and quickly.

RIGHT:

Is this the right decision?  Only time will tell.  I can say that it feels right.  As former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, stated:

“If you have 40 to 70 percent of the information, you probably have what you need. Take a chance, do something. Go with your gut instinct. Because if you wait for all of the information (to make a decision) you might miss (out).”

That’s where I am.  I’ve turned over more than a few stones since the Vinimaya opportunity came my way, and everything I’ve learned (more than 40%, less than 70%), tells me this is where I ought to be.

HARD:

Is this a hard decision?  Wow.  How do you walk away from a company that you help start?  A company that you help grow from those scary but exciting first days in 1996 to a company that survives and thrives while watching competitors get acquired or go out of business?  Not to mention the camaraderie, the close family atmosphere, the friendships that span decades?   THAT, my friends, is the hard part.

But I have done it.  I have taken that hard right turn.

Never fear, PLM bloggers.  Though I have a new career, I will still be writing about software.  Do not worry, Real Time Rick is here to stay.

OH NO…  I just referred to myself in the THIRD PERSON.

I apologize, it will never happen again! 😉

-RTR

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The Brutality of Search

17 Jan

I have to thank Oleg Shilovitsky for the title.  In a comment in Jim Brown’s blog “A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessiblity?”, Oleg stated:

Think about differences between Google and Facebook. FB provides an additional angle of data access for individuals by trying to reduce “noise effect” created by brutality of search. 

The term set my head spinning.  I told Oleg I would use it (steal it)!

Two events, one historical, one personal, came to mind:

In 1948, Thomas E. Dewey and Harry S. Truman were locked in a battle to become President of the United States.  Truman was elected, and the most famous photograph of the campaign shows an elated Truman holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune, with the headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”.  The trusty pollsters working for the Trib did a telephone canvas and determined that Dewey would win by a landslide.   Truman was elected, predominantly we assume, by people who had no telephones…

In 1960, my baby sister was born.  As she moved from infant to toddler, we noticed that she wasn’t speaking (In a loud Italian family with 6 kids, that could be easy to miss).   After conferring with family doctors, my parents loaded us in the car and we drove down to Baltimore to visit a world renown expert in Aphasia at Johns Hopkins.  He thoroughly tested Cathy, and diagnosed Aphasia.  He pronounced that she could hear, but not speak.  My parents enrolled Cathy in a school that specialized in this condition. 

We found out later that Cathy was hearing-impaired.  She was bright and precocious, and seemed to ‘anticipate’ what the expert was looking for at Johns Hopkins.  I believe this was not difficult, because he already KNEW what he was looking for.  He was looking for Aphasia!

The moral of the story? 

You will find what you are looking for.  Not necessarily the truth.

-RTR

 

 

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