Musings from a strange week

The past week+ was easily the strangest of my professional life. It was a week that ended in me being named the VP of Engineering for Mzinga. The accompanying are some of the thoughts that have passed through my head this week:

Know your business
Every year, Sam Adams gets everyone in the company to brew beer. The purpose is simple. They make beer, and everyone who works for that company ought to know their core business and how it's produced. We can't expect everyone at Mzinga to write "Hello World", but I do plan to educate the organization on how we make software and why we do it that way.

No Line on the Horizon
I'm fixated on "Magnificent" and "Breathe" this week. Still loving the album...

Truly Transparent Management
Starting Monday AM, the department head conference call is going to be open to all employees at Mzinga to listen in. It's an interesting and radical idea. I don't know if it's going to work, but I really like that we're going to give it a shot.

To be patah
I was doing my homework this weekend and ran into the Hebrew verb patah in Jeremiah 20:7,10. It seems to be used in the context of people who are gullible for (sometimes) malicious intent. But the writings of the prophets is the only place in the Hebrew Bible where Yahweh is the one who "patahs" (Jeremiah 20:7,10, Ezekiel 14:9, and Hosea 2:14). I'm trying to figure out what that means. More on this later.

Roadmaps are BS
As part of my new job, I need to clearly communicate our technology and product roadmap (with my new colleague Jody P - the VP of Products). That is totally appropriate given our roles. That being said, I have always hated goals and plans that project what you will be doing 18 months down the road. It's an illogical concept, as we all know - especially in technology - that your plans today have very little chance of matching up with the requirements of tomorrow. All you can do is build the sort of platform that allows you to meet those needs when they come along. I know we have that, so I'm happy to engage in the exercise of fortune telling.

Boss
Mel won't stop calling me boss. I'm going to throw something at him soon.

It's all about the team
On a similar note, I'm have been and am very, very fortunate to have the team of true professionals surrounding me in Mechanicsburg and Burlington. When I cam back to KP in 2006, I did so with the intention of demonstrating that the people in the Engineering department were the greatest asset of the organization. They continue to demonstrate that day-in and day-out.

More later, but for now...

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango