Robert P. Waters, Author
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A career metaphor in my son's homerun

3/27/2016

 
From: The Only Fields That Matter

Like millions of parents with little boys we signed-up our son to play on his first baseball team at age seven. We liked his coaches and enjoyed watching boys develop the skills of catching a ball, swinging a bat and running the bases. We also entered into the team's family social life supported by the steady flow of correction emails. In Joseph’s first year he was demonstrating good skills and had an inch or two on his teammates; the coach would tell us he’d hit one over the fence some day. His two coaches even allowed me to share in the minor role of third base coaching during the games and helping out in practices which I loved doing. Baseball was a healthy activity for our entire family but in the 2010 season my wife was divorcing me, lawyers were being lawyers and our son couldn’t bring himself to the season for his sport. There would be no baseball in 2010. The following spring we pushed him to get back in baseball and thankfully he complied. He performed well with the machine-pitch method for delivering a baseball to batter. It was such a good season in 2011 that Joseph was selected for the 9 year old's all-star team. The championship game was to occur - of all dates – on his ninth birthday played on Field 9. Let me get to the point, after all, it’s only one game of kid baseball. On his third up-to-bat, taking two strikes, the umpire pulled and released the machine lever and off the ball flew toward home plate. His swing sent the ball sailing over the centerfield fence to the immediate uproar of parents and coaches. The Greyhounds emptied the dugout to join him at home plate with his own look of wonder covering his face. So what’s the big deal for me? Mr. Underemployed, Mr. Divorce, Mr. No-Money, Mr. No-Career, a three year job search failure, humiliated and ashamed, lost for answers and direction in the recession. Simply, his long hit over the fence presented in one instant, a new career metaphor. I can't revive my old job, my old life: it's time to jump the fence: go! Field 9 really mattered to him and me. I had been crushed by job loss, unchartered family issues, financial chaos, yet, a baseball driven off a blue metal bat challenged me to consider looking beyond my own career fences. After re-living my son’s home run repetitiously it dawned on me that nothing good had happened in a long time. Picture it one more time, recall your emotional outburst, this is good this is really good because everything has been so bad, so traumatic. He played throughout the summer of 2011 for the Greyhounds uplifting my spiritual and mental states substantially by hitting ten more home runs.
RPWaters

Future Junkyard for Autonomous Cars

3/7/2016

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 A junkyard. Not on your mind is it? ​

Let’s say it’s year 2029 and the first generation of used autonomous cars are hitting the heap. You’re there because your autonomous car needs a LiDAR interface part. Another fellow is there for a 3D visualizer panel v1.b, another guy is hunting down a stability control part v.1.2.1 and another customer is searching for an Intel chip for his advanced driver assistance system with GPS v2.2.1, the part made in Mexico, not in China.

There are no smells of gasoline or cigarettes in the service areas; that is, where three rows of 10 computer tablets sit atop metal posts, secured. People come in and go directly to a tablet for part-searching. A team of men and women check-in cars also being discarded, each car’s computer port allows a 30 second transfer of software specs and part specs to be uploaded to a cloud database patented by Waymo. The database was innovative, of course; it tracked an internet-of-things sensor installed at check-in. The goal is to keep junkyard lot managers from searching aimlessly through the yard by sending them directly to a car in 4 minutes. Not only that, the 30-second upload captures the full driving behavior history (DbH) of the car’s owner – per month.  Sounds like too much data but in reality cars were built with stress-grouping sensors on axel components which informed the software of driving behaviors predicted per stress metric. In other words, high-stress numbers indicated unpredictable, neural-sensitivity factors associated with driving behaviors. Machine numbers were then translated into human psychological behaviors via artificial intelligence in the cloud.

Another thing; there are behavioral psychologists on-site to counsel people when discarding a car. Their job is to converse openly with owners about their passive driving behaviors (PdB); the activities they did in their car while it drove them around. It’s really more like a neuromarketing interview because answers are directed to marketing organizations. The first question the psychologists will ask a car owner: Do you understand your DbH and PdB data will now be shared, that there is no opt-out and that legal and insurance entities can use it for the betterment of society?

Robert P. Waters Nashville, TN

38 Comments

Ecosystem: a term retired

3/2/2016

 
From: The Prophetic Backbone

Even more critical in support of Sharing Economy ideas: it is efficient when IT implements an internal enterprise social network that feeds data relative to employee behaviors to HR analytics. Due to the complexity and cost associated with enterprise software, the sharing movement is now a massive driver of assessing corporate cultural behaviors. Behavioral data is not always logical and so with its concepts there has to be the data scientists, data analysts, industrial-operational psychologist to integrate within a vast IT structure. The whole context is relative to corporate taking unstructured data into a structured format, a new Shared Intelligence System. SIS replaces that which has been referred to in past decades as an ecosystem. Ecosystems were not intended to capture, track, analyze and integrate daily behavioral data of workers on their social intra-network and in many cases communications to partners’ networks. The clear distinction is behavioral data as compared to all other information. The purpose of ecosystems is to provide essential connectivity for transactional exchanges like supply chains. One thing is clear: SIS integrates company culture which is fundamentally, employees’ behaviors. Now, the business can capture whatever employees have on their minds. Subjects and discussions could be endless but the corporate goal is capturing all such inter-corporate conversation using teams of analysts and psychologists to figure out “cultural intelligence” – yet another term from psychology. Employees can share to their hearts delight. The sharing movement is claiming inroads in HR, always on the search for employee data. Ecosystem, in light of the sharing eco buzz, has hit retirement. Welcome the Shared Intelligence System.
Robert P. Waters
​Author

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