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Instructor and Student in Machine Shop, McKinley Training School

Mentoring Benefits, Up and Down

June 21, 2020 • Features, Management Practice • • Comments (0)

Once upon a time mentorship meant an informal relationship where the organization’s emeninces gris might take under their wings someone more junior in whom they saw talent or potential. They would provide guidance, connections and some wisdom at key points in a career. The only thing the mentor might get out of it, other than [&hellip...

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Brown Fence and Wire Co.

Insurers Tripping Over the Blockchain

April 13, 2017 • Features, Innovation • • Comments (0)

Insurance underwriters like to think they’re hard-headed and precise number crunchers, when in fact the aspects of their profession they seem most fond of are those where they get to practice voodoo, poking through the entrails, reading the tea leaves...

Applause Sign

Weakness in the Media Distribution Business Model

March 8, 2017 • Business Models, Features • • Comments (0)

No Longer Just King, Content Is An Entire Aristocracy – so Beware of Usurpers While on a short holiday in Mexico last week, I noticed that season two of my guilty pleasure, Better Call Saul, was available on Netflix.  Since I was on vacation in warm...

Postal Boundary, North Katoomba 1922

New Addresses for the Whole World – An Elegant Idea in Three Words

February 22, 2017 • Features • • Comments (0)

I know of two global positioning systems.  One is the GPS your phone uses, but the newer idea is a global.positioning.system.  There are other differences.  One is circling the globe and the other is in the middle of Utah.  The first one is technology...

View from balcony of the lobby of Ann Arbor Bank

Zero-Rate Plans Rain on Net Neutrality

February 17, 2017 • Features • • Comments (0)

We haven’t had a lot of snow in Manhattan this year.  Last Thursday’s dump was a welcome exception.  Most of what has fallen out of the sky this winter has been plain old rain.  So we’ve seen a lot of those folks who spring up on...

Mechanical Turk

Artificial Intelligence: I Have My Robots Worry for Me (Part 2)

February 1, 2017 • Features • • Comments (1)

If anyone can be replaced by a computer (as I implied in part 1), shouldn’t I be worried that I could lose my job to one of Asimov’s heirs?  After all, project management is just a bunch of data gathering, rules, processes and reporting.  I am...

Maestro Electro

Artificial Intelligence: I Have My Robots Worry for Me (Part 1)

January 25, 2017 • Features • • Comments (1)

When I was a communications engineer in the Canadian air force, I occasionally amused myself by telling senior pilots that I felt their jobs could be replaced by a computer.  “Ho, ho, ho, young captain, it’s really not that simple” was...

Knowledge is Power

The Multi-Dimensional Project Mosaic

July 5, 2016 • Features • • Comments (0)

By definition a project delivers a well-defined product, but as a thing itself it’s not so concrete.  There are dimensions, perspectives and vectors: pilot projects, sub-projects and programs; and being an abstract thing that exists in the minds...

I Don’t Know Much About Strategy…

November 1, 2015 • Features • • Comments (0)

The famous, fatuous remark, “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like” has been riffed upon for at least a century.  It derides the dull sensibilities of John Q. Public, oblivious to the richness that is exposed to him in oil daubed on...

Traffic Squad Police

Everything’s Coming Up Cyber

June 2, 2015 • Features • • Comments (0)

Being an IT professional in the insurance industry is a bit like being an engineer on an air base: in the air force, nobody listens to you unless you’re a pilot or a navigator.  In an insurance company, the actuaries and underwriters get the...

MAD Skills in 3D Printing

February 25, 2014 • Features • • Comments (0)

It’s not hard to see the promise of 3D printers in a general way, but I don’t think I ever really grasped the full range and potential of this new technology until now.  If you’re in manufacturing, you probably seized upon it right away for design and...

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