[0:18] Tell us about yourself.

I’m the Director of IT and Data Security at True Velocity Ammunition. We make polymer cased ammo, and running an IT department in an ammo plant is a little different from any other industry.

[0:49] Tell us about your career leading up to where you are now.

My career started strangely. I’m actually an eighth-generation farmer and I loved computers. I worked at maintaining our IT infrastructure and helping end users. After college I was scooped up by the government, and from there I ended up with Monsanto because there are very few people who can speak farmer and IT. Then I went to a small start-up that was working on technology to identify diseases in agriculture, then back to Monsanto, then I worked for the state of Illinois before ending up in Texas at True Velocity.

[03:55] What’s the difference between farming IT and True Velocity IT?

Farming IT is right at the tail end of an explosion of growth and tech integration. At True Velocity, we’re in the middle of changing things up but I can’t talk about it just yet. A lot of our stuff is now being built in more standardized engineering rules compared to the old way it’s been forever.

[07:35] Are you and your team helping to program it or is it more of an industry standard?

A lot of people on the bleeding edge are starting to adopt this. There are a lot of places in Europe doing this and we are the only ones in the US using some of the systems. As for programming, our engineering team is building custom machinery and processes including code from scratch.

[08:50] You are more on the support side than the engineering side?

Yes, I’m more on the ops and security side. We do interact quite a bit with the engineering team, though.

[11:45] In terms of your government work, was that helpful going into this position?

Definitely, I kind of knew what I was getting into, and I didn’t have to start from scratch. It also gave me an intuition for where weak spots could be and how to fix them.

[13:00] Tell me a little more about IT in farming and how that operated.

A lot of the stuff was definitely bleeding edge. We had a way of using data analytics to plant a better field.  We would take soil samples, data points like historical weather, etc and it would tell us how to increase yield.  We were always looking for new ways to improve our systems, which is how we ended up looking at Google Glass.

[16:15] You said it increased your yield by 10%?

Correct, it was an interesting junction between those in the fields and big tech. We had to figure out how to get that data from them. These people have dial-up at best. We had to figure out alternatives, so we ended up collecting USB drives and SD cards.

[21:35] You’re not just talking IT and business, you’re talking about the customer too?

We do have those 3 different parts to consider. You need to know how farmers think and how they are going to use things, or they won’t use them. On the business side, you have to look at how data affects strategy for the next year. It’s critical to work with everyone.

[25:55] What technology did you grow up with?

We did have computers, so I played games on DoS with my dad. That’s where I got started. Windows 95 came out when I was just about in my teens. Internet wasn’t really a thing for us; we just had dial-up.

[32:10] Tell me about the biggest face-palm moment you’ve had.

During the snowpocalypse here in Texas, our facility was out of power for 5 or 6 days. With no power, all of our email systems went down. Most people understood that, but I had one person who just didn’t understand that we had no control over the power.

[36:00] What things have you done that has helped you get promoted?

Being able to communicate with the business, developers, and customers. Also, just plain curiosity. Looking for things that could change your job and company for the better. My parents fostered that curiosity in me.

[45:00] I saw that drones have been used in agriculture.

They were just starting to come in while I was there. It’s really a great way to help the industry.

[48:00] What are you guys working on that you can talk about?

Our composite cases are translucent, and our engineer built a clear chamber to see the entire process of firing a round. It allowed for great optimization.