There are some other interesting use cases for smarter energy consuming devices, what they call Cold Load Pickup, where a section of the grid loses power during a blackout, and power comes back. that initial spike kills equipmenton the transmission side, if you are able to delay start some equipment, you spread the load and reduce strain on the grid.
We are working on a not yet announced smart agriculture / agtech sensor, and have contributed to projects on the smart energy grid and also smart/autonomous mining.
Hardware is hard, but IoT is harder. IoT involves bridging the gap between hardware, firmware, networking, security and cloud teams, which makes the challenge that much more complicated. Different teams have different concerns and getting a sense of all these sometimes conflicting concerns is tough.
First time I was brought into a joint venture that was going into the ground as the 2 investors wanted to split. Board meeting 2 weeks into my job, and the decision was taken. They should have never hired my position.
Second time was a clear cultural non-fit, I have very consensus oriented and the founder needed everything for yesterday.
I took the 2 packages I had and went into consulting, I love helping people solve their problems, found a new love for tech, that I had lost in a 15 years of management I had done. I picked up new skills from the teams I was working with.
Since then, I have joined partners, developed an IoT consulting business (with a healthy mix of blue-chip clients and startups) and we are about to launch a product in the Agtech space.
The layoffs were a shock initially, and I had a small burnout after the 2nd, but I love people, so I kept going to network with people I had enjoyed working with and I got a first contract 3 days a week.
In short:
- got fired,
- burned out,
- talked to my friends/network,
- got a small consulting job with an ex-coleague,
- learned to love tech again,
- now my business is growing because I surround myself with good people that I trust.
As I child I remember seeing back to the future so many times on VHS. And now, my kids have seen Moana dozens of times as well Princess and the Frog, Cinderella and many classics.
the back catalogue can keep the children buys for years. Especially thru COVID induced school closures with working parents needing to breath.
To me, minifaction will rename reallyClearFunctionName("string param") to a("string param").
While obfuscation would also encrypt the "string param" and then decrypt it at runtime. Minification's main purpose is to reduce the size, obfuscation will go one step futher and make it difficult to understand what is going on. Side note, it can be obfuscated but "maxified" (if that is a thing).
Side note: the joke goes that Perl is a write only language as it is difficult to read it and understand it. Some twisted souls decided to create the obfuscated perl content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obfuscated_Perl_Contest
- Be nice to as many people as you can. Your interviews start when you communicate to HR, walk thru the door and talk to the receptionist/ security guys. I used to ask them how potential hires treated them.
- Softskill are important, learn how to explain technical problems to non technical people. Try explaining CI/CD pipelines to your non tech friends and see if they understand.
- don't focus on tech all the time, try to understand why people around you are pushing for certain things that "don't make sense" ( there is usually a valid business reason).
- collaborate, don't say no, say "yes but here are the impacts" (it is not up to you/me/or a single person other than the CEO, to know if it is worth it to invest 2 months in what seems like a useless task).
Getting a PR or marketing campaign up must be done in parallel to the dev work.
It can take a few months to find the right journalists in the right publications , get their attention and get their time.
On another note, some product launches are also times with fixed date events (Back to school (media industry), CES (Consumer electronics), any other expo in any other industry). it is key to time the dev deliverables. and if you need to chose between two features to dev, well, you need estimates as in inputs.
Estimates are not perfect, you should not spend 5 man days to plan 2 months of work. Planning can be done with guestimates and best effort and when done right, are super useful.
Have you had experience with non verbal autistic children ?
Would you say this app is geared toward that persona (sorry to reduce it a persona)?
if not, would you know what is missing ?
Seems like an interesting model and platform.
I mean, the digital version is really accompanying the student throughout his/her journey. and if the publisher can not only tap into it, but be part of the ritual of studying. the student will then go back to it.
the publisher can easily upsell extra services (correction, tutoring, exam prep, you name it).
At a very high level the spikes seem to be of equal and opposite value.
You are correct, there is a lot of variance in the diagram, which makes your comment very valid.
My post was very lighthearted and by no means data driven.
I would add to this the following points:
- being 5 minutes ahead of your customer in terms of what is hot and useful (or: the second part is super important)
- constantly ensure that your deliver value to your client ( if they negotiate you on price, bring it back to the value your deliver )
- good communication skills (the capacity to explain your thoughts in plain , concise language)
- good situational awareness (understand your clients problems and solve for that (not the tech that you want to test)
- get your ego out of the way, if your client or someone on their team doesn't accept your solution, raise ) argument once or twice, then stop. Your client understands his/her context better than you. If your solution is not retained, it is not a reflection of how good you are.
- steernaway from internal politics.
- build good personal relationships with people (your client, their employees, other providers / consultants) this will help you build your network and get more work.
Hope that helps.
Personally I had great projects and others were lawyers were involved.
But all in all, switching projects every other month, meeting new people , playing with different architectures ... It keeps me sharp and super happy.
The irony is great.
Readymade art, remade in the 3d printed world. ReadyRemadeAndReprinted art as it should now be called.
All the 3d printers need to do is sign every piece and hang them in a museum .