I grew up as a big data developer before there was big data and was involved in starting and selling software companies in the anlaytics space. Until recently I was I'm CTO of Uptake Technologies, an IoT company in Chicago, but now I'm working on something new and exciting.
This is my personal blog where I explore technology that's interesting to me, hopefully for some kind of strategic reason. All opinions are my own.
Yesterday I was on a panel about innovation and someone asked me “how to get ideas”. I had to think about that one. If you know me at all, you know that I have tons of ideas. They just bubble up constantly, it’s how my brain works. The question really made me analyze my thought process, and then I started thinking about ideas in general….
I’ve been hyper-focused on attaining crazy speed at Uptake lately within my organization. We’ve got a super-important initiative going on over the summer to build what we’re calling “Uptake 2.0” (somewhat funny since we’re only 10 months old) and we need to get it done fast. So I’ve been thinking a lot about ways to achieve more speed as an organization. The other day I was listening…
Growing up, my sister Christina was always interested in architecture and I wasn’t–at all. She was constantly visiting houses, churches, and corporate buildings for fun. I thought it was the most boring thing in the world. It wasn’t until much later in life that I gained an appreciation for architecture. Only after giving in and promising to open my mind to what was there did…
In 1977, an idea was born that would change computing forever. The world just didn’t realize it yet. It was the heyday of computing innovation—transistor density increased daily, Moore’s law was in full effect, and the power of computing was poised to revolutionize the global economy. Computers were no longer room-sized behemoths, and researchers were gaining access to the computing power that would allow science,…
Every year around this time I start thinking about what I want to accomplish over the next year, and I suspect most people are the same way. Some people I know aren’t interested in setting goals, mostly because they’ve tried and failed to accomplish goals a bunch of times over the years. I’ve done that too. But every new year as I hear about resolutions and…
I’ve been suspiciously quiet the past few months–there’s a reason for that. I’ve accepted a position as CTO of a new company which is still in quasi-stealth mode: so I can’t really talk about everything I’ve been doing yet. I’m super excited to tell the entire story in the next month or two, but until that time I can give you a little info. Uptake is…
It’s no longer even a question that data is a strategic advantage. Every business is a data business now, and it’s no longer sufficient to store and archive data, you need to be able to act on it: protect, nurture, develop, buy and sell it. Billion-dollar businesses are built around it. But many businesses are running into the reality that their legacy platforms are not…
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about blockchains, which is the technology at the heart of Bitcoin. I blogged a little bit about this the other day in relation to distributed proof of ownership. But I’m realizing that it actually enables a much wider range of things than I had first thought, from identity to career paths to programming models. For example, the IRS recently…
Warning: The following post contains moments of wild speculation. You have been warned. Right now is an interesting moment in the history of civilization. In the past technology has molded itself to the needs of society, but we’ve passed that point. In the last 15 years we’ve started to see society molding itself to technology instead. TL;DR Distributed proof of ownership, anonymity, crowdfunding, the subscription…
Big Data has an alluring promise: crunch all of your datas and find out all these very important unknown things you didn’t know before. You will find out all sorts of important things about your customers. You’ll discover what they’re buying, what they’re not buying, what they like, what they hate. All sorts things that sound very strategic and important. It’s all very sexy and…