Creating Space For What?

Collecting coffee conversations in a newsletter

I’ve been applying technology to problems for more than 40 years, from a government contractor to Princeton University to Sun Microsystems to major pharmaceutical companies. I’ve benefitted from mentors, sponsors and peers who created space for my new ideas and also pushed me into open spaces where I was able to grow personally and professionally. Sometimes at the edge of abject terror, but always with lessons learned.

I spent the last 12 years working for life sciences companies (Merck and J&J) in various CIO and technology leadership roles. It was invigorating to see how technology reshapes the scientific discovery process, and incredibly meaningful to see patients’ lives impacted indirectly through problems like large graphs, data governance and SQL optimization. I’m returning to technology strategy, fractional CTO, career coaching and market dynamics. I’d like to accelerate into whatever retirement looks like.

My primary interests are very large scale computing (including non-traditional approaches, graphs, quantum processing and vectorization problems), privacy, security, open source software, industry standards and their evolution, creating markets, and resiliency. Outside of consulting work I play bass guitar (badly), dabble in guitar electronics see as much live music as I can, cook, travel, take pictures and play golf (even more badly). Lessons from both hemispheres (Rush pun intended) will make appearances.

I try to focus on creating space for ideas, disruptive or not. Culture is a measure of how ideas diffuse through an organization. Mentoring creates space within an organization for employee growth, and sponsorship of employees creates a different space for them without the organization.

I’ve also adopted the concept of creating space “away from the play.” In ice hockey and football (soccer), players without control of the play move to open spaces to create opportunity. That’s the very essence of applying technology - find those open spaces and rush in, fill them with opportunity, and diffuse the value.

My goal is to publish 3-4 pieces a month, typically one free and the others for paid subscribes. Book reviews, most views on concerts and Jersey dining and the occasional broad reach post will continue to widely available.