aaron crews online - my place to share anything I like.

Jan 28

Overcoming the Resistance

Of late I've found myself in the middle of a flood of big ideas, initiatives, committees, and goals. All of these are I think incredibly important. They're important for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is that my future livelihood depends greatly on their success. Others are the manifestations of principles that I hold in high regard or ideas that I believe truly innovate - that is, they improve delivery of business goals (as opposed to making your job easier).

As I'm undergoing this awakening of ideas, I find myself starting to lack focus. Beyond that, I feel a creeping fear that I'm getting spread too thin and that, despite the best intentions, all of these great ideas will just slip away along with the great promises they held.

Serendipitously today at lunch I found myself listening to the 43 folders podcast with Merlin Mann interviewing Seth Godin. The topic? Shipping. That is, the only thing that matters is not your creative idea or your complaint or your ideals but what you actually produce. I totally agree. It's time to (as my project manager says) kill some stuff. After all, it's the only way we reap the benefits.

Now doing this isn't easy. There's a natural resistance to shipping. It's easy to see why - when you finish, you put yourself out there. You invite criticism. You feel like you're effectively saying "this is all I've got," and if others don't like it, well, what's left? How do you overcome this fear and get to that dream you have?

Well, as Seth argues, all the self-doubt and self-sabotaging is just survival instinct, and the first step to overcoming it is to understand that that's what it is. It's your lizard brain telling you to go hide, to get out while you still can, and that the indignity of being a cog in a machine is better than the indignity of being rejected.

Once your realize what's going on, you find that it's much easier to overcome it. You can quell those thoughts knowing that the worst case isn't as scary as your lizard brain thinks it is. This isn't about survival. You're not going to die.

There's more to this idea, though. Consistent creativity and consistent shipping takes a change in mindset. Seth details that change in this talk. This really is an almost systematic approach to projects, and it's one that I'll use as I evaluate and attempt projects going forward.

Thrash at the beginning. Establish the goals and the features at the front end, while everyone's using the proper part of their brains.
There are no changes after the thrashing session.
Make darn sure you want to start.
Everything you start, you finish.

That's an important change. Make sure it's worth starting. If it's worth starting, it's worth finishing. Even if it fails in the end, it's ok. The only way you'll know if it'll succeed is if you ship.

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Dec 17

Andrew Hargadon: Career skills in the new (networked) world

Innovation is about recombining existing resources in new ways and always has been.

via andrewhargadon.typepad.com

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Dec 14

Gaming the System

I read this long but pretty insightful post from Rands about using games to solve your dire problems. I think games are a great way to get things done, especially when you can't come up with another ounce of motivation. I make my own little games in the office to hit my goals sometimes. The geekier and/or more competitive your group is, the more effective games are, obviously. My wife and I are extremely competitive and, by nature, poor housekeepers (although we try our best). Finally, we got to our "grim circumstance" where there was just too much clutter around the house. Our solution? A game. The rules were as follows:

Put a "price sticker" on any item that we believed was not where it belonged. (we did this individually so that the net result was up to both of our standards)
Assign a point value (1-5) to the item depending on how difficult we believed it would be to put it away, and write the point value on the sticker. (we had some things that didn't seem to have any real home in our house)
Any time you put away something, take off the sticker and post it on the scoreboard under our name.
Most points wins

Originally we were going to have a prize for the winner, like maybe we could go buy something we wanted within a budget, or we could pick a restaurant to go to or something. As it turned out, we didn't even need a prize to motivate us - just the competition was enough. I'm not sure what that says about my wife and I and our relationship, but at least we ended up with a clean house :)

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Dec 10

Social Media Marketing and Sustainability

Yesterday during lunch I sat in on a webcast from Jive and Deirdre Walsh, who is community/social media manager for National Instruments. She talked about the success they've had in building a strong community around NI and Labview. I was pretty impressed by the numbers - over 125,000 people are part of the community, and it seems like Deirdre's staying at the forefront when it comes to innovation and success in social media marketing.

Deirdre had some good advice about integrating social media as an ingredient in the other marketing/pr efforts. I think that's a great way to build legitimacy and increase the effectiveness of those efforts. Actually, I just read an article today that lists the same idea as the next big thing.

Anyway, the thing that struck me most about what she talked about was the fact that the NI.com/community site was the centerpiece of their strategy. She mentioned the fact that they didn't want to be chasing and spending energy developing on top of one platform after another, and, although they want to be where their customers are and to help them there, they subscribe to a "2-minute rule," where if they can't handle an interaction/solve a customer's problem in 2 minutes or less then they send them through the appropriate channels.

I think that what NI is doing is actually innovative in that it's a proper blend of traditional and new media, and that it is a thoughtful, sustainable strategy. Of course there's a problem here when it comes to emulating their strategy in the hope of having the same success, and that is that you have to first have built up your home community. That's no easy task. Actually, it's the hardest part - one that (even though NI already had active user forums) required them to dedicate an internal project to with real engineers doing real work providing real source code and resources to the community in order to kick start. It's not just money and resources, either - it takes time to build your own community.

And there's the problem when it comes to social media strategy these days. No one has the time, the money, or the resources to foster real community building in their own domain, especially considering the economic conditions. As a result, marketers put themselves out on the "easy" social media islands, where one person can represent a brand, spreading themselves thin and hunting and pecking for interactions and opportunities. I think that strategy can have some short-term success and that it can build awareness at the wide end of the marketing funnel, but ultimately I think there has to be a clear bridge with resources and interaction every step of the way for companies to convert this awareness into sales. Without that, I think you end up with an off-balance strategy that's not sustainable.

This bridge runs both ways. In Jim Cahill's recent InTech article he talks about bringing experts and employees to the surface of your organization. There are big barriers between the inner workings at a company and sharing your expertise on twitter or facebook. I think by building a strong core community internally and bridging between internal and external communities and then again between external communities and the various social media islands then you are providing a mechanism for the distribution of people, ideas, and expertise. This is a virtuous cycle because as ideas flow out, they contribute to the social media "surface area" you're covering, and they bring innovators and enthusiasts back to your domain, where they can collaborate and contribute with each other and with your experts.

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Dec 1

kung fu grippe : An Incomplete Education

Listen. Hear what she’s saying. Synthesize what you hear in your head, but be slow to offer advice or “solutions.” Women (like many men, including me) often think by talking — or, if you like, by being heard. Shut up and listen. Seriously.

via kungfugrippe.com

Being an engineer and always looking for solutions for things that are just observations (not necessarily problems) is the number 1 thing that gets me in trouble with my wife.

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Nov 19

The Knowledge Management Toolbox

This is a quick mind map of how I think KM tools (in green) might address knowledge gaps and barriers in the organization. My focus for this is on the technology side of the people/process/technology triangle. The idea is to strategically choose the right technologies to introduce based on what barriers to knowledge sharing we identify.

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Nov 18

We Remember 11-18-99

via youtube.com

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Nov 17

The Texas A&M Bonfire Tragedy

Bonfire Letter
by Eric Opiela, UT Student Body Vice President
I had the great privilege of attending the memorial service at A&M tonight and was deeply moved by the events I experienced. The A&M student body is truly one of the great treasures of our State.
As part of the UT delegation, we sat on the floor of Reed Arena, and immediately following the end of the service, I heard this rustling sound behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw the sight of close to 20,000 students spontaneously putting their arms on their neighbor’s shoulders, forming a great circle around the arena.
The mass stood there in a pin-drop silence for close to five minutes, then, from somewhere, someone began to hum quietly the hymn "Amazing Grace". Within seconds, the whole arena was singing. I tried too—I choked, I cried.
This event brought me to tears. It was one if not the defining moment of my college career. I learned something tonight. For all us Longhorns discount A&M in our neverending rivalry, we need to realize one thing. Aggieland is a special place, with special people. It is infinitely better equipped than us at dealing with a tragedy such as this for one simple reason. It is a family. It is a family that cares for its own, a family that reaches out, a family that is unified in the face of adversity; a family that moved this Longhorn to tears. My heart, my prayers; and the heart of the UT student body go out tonight to Aggies and their family and friends as they, recover, from this great loss. Texas A&M, The Eyes of Texas are Upon You—and they look with sincere sympathy upon a family that has been through so much tragedy this semester.

via acct.tamu.edu

I was at Reed Arena then, too. It was the most moving thing I have ever witnessed.

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Nov 17

Tim Kerlee - 12th Man

A hero...
Subject: The Twelfth Man
The twelve young people who died were truly remarkable kids. They were scholars, student athletes, active in Boy Scouts, 4-H, Church groups,they were leaders. If you had to chose a dozen students to represent the best of Texas A&M, you probably wouldn't do much better than these.
I have just learned about Timothy Doran Kerlee, Jr. He was the twelfth student to die, when his life support was disconnected last Friday evening. Let me tell you about this amazing kid.
Tim graduated last year from Germantown High School in Germantown,Tennessee. He was an Eagle Scout, graduated third in his class, and was elected to his High School Hall of Fame. He was a student athlete, and a member of the National Honor Society. He was active in the youth group and drama club at his Methodist Church.
He was actively recruited by Texas A&M, and when he enrolled he tested out of his entire freshman year. That is how this 17 year-old could be classified as a sophomore. Tim's father said that he was thrilled to be at A&M, and especially excited about bonfire.
When the stack collapsed, his pelvis was crushed, his arm was broken, and his (organs badly damaged.)
On the front page of Friday's Dallas Morning News is a large photo of the collapsed stack taken during the early part of the rescue effort. You can see a team working at the base of the logs to save a trapped student. About five feet above the rescue team is Tim Kerlee, reclining on a pile of logs, propped up on one elbow. Unless you look carefully at the photo you will probably not notice that his legs are laying in an odd position.
What was happening,according to the rescue teams, was that Kerlee was directing the teams to other students trapped in the stack. He kept telling them that he was O.K., and he directed rescuers to at least five other students before he allowed them to take him down from the stack.
He was taken into emergency surgery, and when they opened him up they found his organs so badly damaged that they couldn't identify much of what they saw. They closed him up, wrapped him in a sheet to hold him together, and placed on life support. He lived long enough to see and speak to his parents. He was aware that he was dying and asked to be removed from life support. When his parents asked him why he wanted to, he asked them why he should fight for a few more days of life when he could be in Heaven with Jesus right now. Well, he got his wish.
I feel sorry that I never had a chance to know Tim Kerlee, but I praise God for kids like Tim Kerlee. If you had to pick a twelfth man you couldn't do much better.
-- Fred Maddox
J.P. Beato/The Battalion

via texags.com

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Oct 2

The story of USDA, BIOTIC, EDAS, and Smartfield

Update:

Tommy Martin and Smartfield didn't like a particular statement in the original post because it suggested that our ideas were intentionally shared with them by USDA. After some phone and email conversations with him, I have agreed to edit this post to contain verified facts and clearly identifiable opinions only.

This is a story that I've been wanting to tell. It's really something that's been nagging me for years. Finally I have the motivation to go ahead and put it out here. Is it something to be concerned about? to take advantage of? to just be proud of? for which I should claim prior art? Or is it just sour grapes on my part? You tell me. One thing I know is that it's one of the more interesting things that has happened in my life so far.

About a month ago, an article popped up in my Google alerts. Lubbock agritech company Smartfield tries for crop-monitoring system

It tells the story behind an exciting company in Lubbock, TX called Smartfield, whose Smartcrop product uses data from your crops to control your irrigation system/schedule, and hopefully conserve water.

Smartcrop uses data consisting of plant canopy temperatures (using infrared thermocouples) along with other environmental data (rain, humidity) to measure the stress of crops. If a time-temperature threshold is reached, research indicates that the plant is unable to adequately respire and should be watered. The science behind it was developed and patented (attached) by Dr. James Mahan, Dr. Donald Wanjura, Dr. John Burke, and Dr. Dan Upchurch at the USDA-ARS Crop Science Research Lab in Lubbock.

According to the article, Smartfield was founded when one day after church, Dr. Upchurch (no pun intended) proposed an idea about his research to Tommy Martin, an engineer at Accent Engineering who took Upchurch up on his idea.

"He asked what we were doing, and we'd just finished some work with wireless," said Martin, Smartfield's chief executive officer. "He perked up and said, 'We could use your help.' "

Within the week, Martin and McNeill were meeting with USDA researcher James Mahan, who was part of a team studying ways to measure heat stress in plants using infrared sensors.

"We saw a tangle of wires," Martin said. "It was a prototype, and they wanted our help to make it wireless."

It didn't take long before Martin and McNeill saw the potential and pointed out that for commercial use, such a sensing system wouldn't need expensive, research-grade hardware.

"Our background is consumer electronics," said Martin, who first got together with McNeill in 1983 at Texas Industries' Lubbock facility. "We suggested a clean sheet design, that resulted in a product with a more attractive price that could be commercialized."

I remember this time very well. It was the summer of 2001. I was a senior in college working for Dr. Mahan at USDA during the summer. Thomas Mullen, another engineering student who I knew from high school had been working for the previous several summers, and I had joined him as a technician on the BIOTIC research.

Dr. Mahan and Dr. Upchurch approached the guys at Accent to create a wireless thermocouple solution. It wasn't about commercialization at all - it was a solution to let them put thermocouples farther away from the BIOTIC base unit to give them more flexib ility in their research. It's tru e though that at that time, the BIOTIC unit was unwieldy (it probably weighed 75+ pounds) and very expensive. I attached a picture to this post of how it looked back then.

Thomas and I were responsible for most of the technological development behind the unit and its website, where daily crop data was automatically analyzed and posted. We had to troubleshoot it when the data didn't download right, we had to program the various components that comprised the device, and we had to deploy it to various test sites.

With our intimate knowledge of the technology and its issues, Thomas and I came up with the concept of the clean sheet design. We talked through all the details, and decided that this would be a great business opportunity. With that, we established a partnership that we called EDAS, or Environmental Data Acquisition Systems. We both invested our summer money into ordering microcontrollers, integrated circuits, buttons, screens, wire, etc, and started up what amounted to a "garage" business. Thomas worked through the electrical design, I programmed the microcontroller, and together we developed a prototype device. It only had 1 thermocouple input, but that was good enough for proof of concept - and the thing fit in your hand, a startling contrast to the monstrosity that we were lugging around during business hours. I've included some pictures of Thomas and I making our prototype with this post.

Read the article excerpt above a little closer. It didn't take long before Martin and McNeill saw the potential. Well, can you guess what happened between Accent's wireless work and when they "saw the potential?" The proposal, memo, and presentation details are included here. Thomas and I presented our prototype and opened the eyes of the researchers. We proposed a plan where USDA would fund product development (analogous to their agreement with Accent), we would meet certain device deliverables, and in return we would field test our device in the USDA trials. When the device design was finalized, we would commercially release the product.

The response from USDA was extremely enthusiastic, and Thomas and I started making plans about how to proceed. Pretty soon, though, things started to stall out, with sidesteps and ambiguous answers from USDA. Finally, they said no. The reasoning was never clear - there was some mention of a conflict of interest regarding the funding of BIOTIC's commercialization.

Update:

I'm not sure about all the events which occurred between our proposal and the agreement between USDA and Smartfield. What I do know is that a several years after Thomas and I made our proposal, Smartfield (after some prodding from the USDA researchers) secured the agreement with USDA that we had been pursuing, and they developed protoype devices for USDA that offered the same type of integrated design that we had proposed.

Although quoted in the article as saying that the "clean sheet design ... resulted in a product with a more attractive price that could be commercialized," Tommy Martin told me that the use of cheaper thermocouple sensors was the advancement that made it a viable commercial product. I disagree.

Martin and McNeill told me that the integrated design approach was an "obvious conclusion from the state of the project." It may be "obvious" to some engineers, but as I suggest above, the prototype device and the presentation of a more elegant, integrated design opened the eyes of the researchers (who are not engineers) as to how to productize their research. As an example, there are many obvious design changes I would make to Smartfield's implementation of the technology, but since SmartCrop was not created by automation and instrumentation engineers, the issues are not apparent to them.

Martin and company are personal friends with the researchers, but they are also established business partners. Maybe the Accent guys really are just that much better at the business side than us - in an email to me, Martin says that I should have had USDA sign a confidentiality agreement up front. I can see why USDA may have preferred to do business with Accent/Smartfield. I just wish they had taken a chance with some inspired young entrepreneurs instead.

It's really too bad, because I think Thomas and I could have done some great things with the idea.

So what's happened since then? Thomas and I are both now involved in the engineering of huge industrial automation projects. Martin and McNeill spun off Accent to form Smartfield (website), which is apparently about to grow significantly. They've received incentive money from the city of Lubbock to stay there, and are planning on hiring 12 employees (about $650k in salary). Did the researchers make the right decision? Certainly I question their ethics, but I don't know what would have been best. At least I've learned my lesson.

The BIOTIC Patent

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