The Future Of The Future

Have you ever experienced exponential growth? It can get dizzy. How do you go from 3 people to 10? What about 10 to 50? And 100?  Have you seen what happens when you try to do this in a matter of months? Anyone can hire a bunch of people and throw them together in a room or a slack channel. But how do you make sure you build and sustain the right engineering culture? What values matter? How do you...

Have you ever led a Software Development Project? It's hard… Scope WILL change, and with changing scope, there are changes in schedule and cost. And changes in schedule and cost can make stakeholders (specially customers) anxious. What is Sales promising to the customer? What do developers think they can achieve? Where is the truth? How can we get creative to keep everyone happy? Who talks to the...

Technology is changing at an unprecedented pace. And it’s only accelerating. From enterprise to web, to mobile, to blockchain, to VR and AR, to AI. Staying up to date is hard.  If you are buying technology, or customized development, knowing what partner to choose is a difficult and impactful decision. If you are selling software development and related services, staying up to date with the latest...

We are connected. No matter where you are in the world, as long as you have a mobile phone and an internet connection, you can talk to anyone, anywhere, and consume and share content online. Never in our lives did we have access to so many people and so much information. But this interconnected era brings new risks of its own. False news spread and become contagious in a matter of minutes. Discrim...

Technology for greener buildings keeps evolving. From waste reduction, to sustainable materials, from water efficiency and consumption to energy usage and generation, from travel to and from buildings, to smart building automation… Dream a technology, and chances are it already exists. But many times, the public at large is either unaware of the latest developments in sustainability in Real Estate...

What do product management and urban planning have in common? Well… Both require strategic planning, allocation of scarce resources, stakeholder management, communication, and ability to navigate the uncertain. How many stakeholders do you have to keep in mind when planning that new zoning for a commercial area in a downtown residential area? How do you allocate a budget with so many competing pri...

Stay humble and flexible, deliver as promised, repeat. So simple, yet so difficult. The paradox about freedom is that you need to work hard to earn it. I’ve met many leaders in the technology space over the last three years. But Paul Dorney has been instrumental in my career and my growth, ever since I met him early on in 2021. I learned tons about software development, how to build products, star...

Why do people have such a hard time opening up and talking about their drivers, their problems, and how they really feel? Is it because they are shy? Or maybe, they think nobody really wants to know? Or maybe, they feel pressured to show the world they are always doing great? I had an amazing conversation with Scott Bond, a lifelong sales and people first leader, who finds happiness in identifying...

What is the perfect software development process or methodology? Is it Agile? XP? Kanban? Rapid? Devops? TDD? BDD? Other? none? How do you get your team to deliver the best results? How do you manage individuals to get the best results? Should you even focus on individuals? or the systems where they operate? I talked to Francisco Trindade, Engineering Director at Braze, to learn more about the ans...

Being successful is hard, in any line of work. The more you are trying to achieve, the more challenges you will have. The more challenges you have, the more chances of failing. And when you fear failing, or when you get knocked down, the right mindset will make all the difference in the world.  It will first lead you to get in shape and put in the hard work and the investment needed in your skills...

Building and leading relationships with customers is tough. Whatever you do when you are in the frontline, it will affect the fate of the business relationship. So… what do you look for when hiring your frontline employees? What College did they attend? What is their network? Their Title?  Or maybe… if they had experience waiting tables? What can MBAs learn from waiters? What type of empathy and p...

Rewind to March 2023, just a few months ago, and it seemed the AI holocaust was near. I, personally, got very anxious about it. I still get anxious from time to time, but in a more optimistic way. My feed isn’t as packed with AI experts these days. My friends still have their jobs. Some of them are using AI to be more productive. AI engineers are certainly on demand. But where are we now? What is...

Voice over actors engage in what is called voice acting, an art that involves providing voices for characters, narration, or information in various media forms.  Voice acting involves various specific skills, such as creating distinct characters, adjusting tones, and adapting voices to match the roles they portray.  But, how do you become a voice over artist? How do you stay creative? How do you m...

Sales is an art. Closing a deal is an art. Reading your audience, improvising at the right time, adjusting your messaging. There is only so much you can teach about sales. That is why the best sales people don’t want to be bothered with process nonsense and engineering concepts. But… is sales really an art? Or is it a process like any other process we can find within business organizations? And if...

In today’s globalized world, you can find talent anywhere, literally anywhere. But, how do you lead distributed teams?  People come from different backgrounds, share different cultural traits and connect at different time zones… plus you can’t really see them working, and you can only do so many video calls every day.  Are distributed teams better or worse than co-located teams? How do you find th...

When Tim Padgett got started in the Title Insurance Industry, things looked very different to what they do today. He would spend his day driving from courthouse to courthouse, reading through property title files, filling manual forms, recording documents, calling back to the office using a payphone (remember those?)... and then getting together at the local bars where all the industry key players...

He had an idea for a board game. He knew he got something good going on. But for 20 years, he just thought about it.   Then he created a prototype. And he started playing the game with other people. Feedback flowed, and all the moving pieces started falling together.   Why is prototyping so important for the creative process? How do you start? How fast do you iterate? When do you stop iterating?  ...

What does a teacher, a pastor and a product marketing professional have in common? Well, ideally, they all try to make the complex simple. They are all experts in explaining products, in a simple, yet effective and compelling way… Let’s get real. Product marketing is hard. How do you stand out from so many other products out there? How do you create content that is helpful, usable, actionable and...

Some people love traveling internationally and relocating. Some people dread it. Why? For those who love it, what do they love? How do they go about it? How do they adjust to different places, climates, foods, languages and cultures? Do they ever feel homesick?  I interviewed my good friend Mirko Consolascio, to learn the answers to these questions, through his personal story.  He is what I like t...

You have a software product. Money is tight. Investors are nowhere to be found.  All of the sudden, an opportunity knocks on your door. An acquisition opportunity. You start a due diligence. And you get asked about assets. More specifically, about artifacts. Architecture type diagrams. Do you have them? Can you produce them in time? or is all of this in someone’s head? Do prospect buyers care abou...

Augmented Reality is not the same as Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality. All of these technologies are somehow related and provide for many different applications. But they are not exactly the same. AR overlays digital information on real-world elements. AR keeps the real world central but enhances it with other digital details, layering new strata of perception, and supplementing your reality or e...

You are coming out of the ocean after an early morning surf session. You feel energized and ready to start your day. You go to your camper and grab a cup of freshly made coffee and have breakfast looking at the beach, maybe a companion is there with you sharing the experience. You get ready for work, open up your laptop, and get connected. Your clients don’t really care what beach you are in, or i...

Developers should specialize in a few given languages and frameworks.  This will make them more employable. It will also help devs command higher salaries, that will only grow as they continue to accumulate experience and become better specialists. Sounds familiar? This seems to be a common theme for developers.  Open up any job req online and you will see requests for X amount of years of experie...

Running operations is tough. Things are not supposed to break, but they do. Complex operations involve large teams, many moving pieces, and lots of customers relying on you, externally, and internally. Managing time, setting up goals and ensuring the flow of information, keeping track of all your teams,  putting down fires, managing stress, managing customer expectations… It can be a lot. Yet, gre...

William Erbey, or Bill, as I like to call him, is a successful entrepreneur, investor and a retired public company Chairman/CEO.  Prior to his involvement with System 73, Bill’s career included founding and scaling six multi-billion dollar public companies traded on the NYSE and NASDAQ. While the industries Bill has operated in are diverse, the common theme is the use of innovative technology and...