Banky For President

I met a new friend a few weeks ago. She’s a good kid, so I told her about visiting a comic-book convention a few weeks ago with my brothers. She saw an entry in the local paper that advertised a Superhero Video Contest. So she emailed me to tell me about it and how my “Star Wars buddies” and I should make some crazy freaky sci-fi/comic-book film. Well the rules are as follows:

•Films can be no longer than 60 seconds.

•They may not contain copyrighted music.

Kind of a tall order for a guy who has never made a movie before, let alone a sci-fi/comic-book dealio. So I came up with another idea. Hope you dig it. It was fun making it.

As I grow in age, multiple things have become clearer to me, but the lens that has focused more than any other has been how important it is to have compassion. It’s not important to be compassionate because you earn a special place in some otherworldly kingdom, or because people will think you’re great. It’s important to the people your compassion helps, and of those, look in a mirror and take a look at who it helps the most.

I’m reminded of this because of something i heard the other night. My intellectual homie, Bill Maher, had Cornell West as a guest on Real Time last Friday. And Professor West, a man who respects the positive use of emotion by employing smart thinking, made the following remark. In reference to the current administration’s handling of the Iraq war he said, “Expertise without caring is sounding brass and a tinkling symbol/cymbal . . . it’s empty.”

If we can put aside the argument that this administration applies neither expertise nor compassion effectively, when was the last time we saw our government act with compassion? Do we have to go as far back as the Carter administration? As I mentioned in a previous post, we like our leaders to be strong, forceful and . . . well . . . stereotypically male. The problem with that approach, as we’ve learned over and over, is that it ignores a basic tenet to living a healthy and happy path.

Quite simply, when can we expect and demand that our government exhibit all the same characteristics that we look for out of the healthiest and happiest of us all? As long as our government caters to the most “bitter” of Americans, we’ll suffer the indignity our “best and the brightest” inflict on the world but more importantly, ourselves.

I bought another car.

A few years ago, I was lucky to meet a very smart dude named Dougie-poo. We hit it off immediately mostly due to the fact that I believe he has yet to come to terms with his sexuality and I’m, well, the “man.”

Dougie-poo and I became the best of friends over the years. What I really dug about him is that he would talk about cars the way I like to talk about gadgets and technology. This dude is as passionate as they come. So I REALLY wanted to cash out all my stock from the company I worked for previously and invest in something cool and different.

So I invested in Dougie.

In three years, he brought me a 33% return on my investment and if it weren’t for the fact that I needed my money in a little bit more liquid status, I would continue to invest in him.

You should too actually.

With some of the profits I decided to buy another car. I hate car payments (actually payments of any kind) so with Dougie’s help I found the perfect car for me.

So meet Leia, a 2004 Mercedes-Benz C320 . . . I shall enjoy riding her for years to come. And, no, you can’t drive her.

The most confusing role within an IT organization is the Architect. Most people aren’t really sure what they do. And there is a really good reason for that.

There are lots of really bad architects.

A good architect is part guardian, part ninja, part wizard, part consigliere and usually very very charming (okay maybe only in my case). They act on behalf of IT and the company to keep costs low but capability high. They are the strategy arm of IT and as such, they make recommendations that steer the company’s technical capabilities for the future and beyond.

I work in a fairly evolved IT organization. Part of being enlightened is knowing that you aren’t and, as an organization, we know enough to know our strengths and weaknesses. I recently visited with another IT organization that is a bit farther down the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. They aren’t sure what their architects do. They invite the architects to meetings but they never show up. They visit the architects, ask them to make recommendations on moving forward and never hear back from them. As such, software gets built and there is no governance available to ensure code is re-used, or can be re-used in the future. And there is NO process for the architects to act as a checkpoint as software moves throughout its lifecycle.

So the architects sit around and wonder why won’t anyone listen to them. . .

The best architects don’t sit around and wait for people to come to them. They insert themselves into the process. They are in people’s faces wondering why they coded something one way when they were EXPLICITLY told to code it another. They remind the business to go focus on functionality and to let the architect worry about solutions. They act as counsel to the Account Managers of IT to educate them on what the horizontal solutions for the company are so that they can explain them to the business. The architects also recommend to the CIO where money can be saved and create plans for how that savings can occur for the next 2-5 years.

Remember, respect isn’t given, it’s earned. Just because you have the cool title, doesn’t mean people are going to fall down at your feet and ask for your opinion. If you want someone to hear your opinion, you might try giving it.

In short, Architects need to be the smartest people in the room. And good architects know they are.