Speaker 0 | 00:09.562

Hi, nerds. I’m Michael Moore, hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m here with Mark Feil, Director of IT at Gecko Robotics. Hi, Mark. How’s it going today?

Speaker 1 | 00:20.245

Good. How are you doing?

Speaker 0 | 00:21.725

I’m doing fantastic. We’re going to start off with a little icebreaker segment called Random Access Memories. I ask a question, you respond with whatever comes to your head first. It’s fun, so just have fun with it. First question goes to you. What app could you not live without?

Speaker 1 | 00:46.267

Probably

Speaker 0 | 00:47.207

Light360. You know, I use that too. I use that too. I absolutely love that app. It’s a great app. Because I was wondering, you know, when my wife goes out to work and she comes back. I’m trying to figure out what time so I can make dinner and stuff like that. And I can just see her coming back. And it’s just a great way to be like, oh, you know, I know where everyone is. And I know that they’re safe and that they’re driving safely. What do you use it for?

Speaker 1 | 01:18.048

Children. I have two teenage daughters. And they’re iPhone users. I’m an Android user. So, you know, buying my iPhone really isn’t a great.

Speaker 0 | 01:29.056

resource related you’re absolutely right too it’s funny because i got two teens and they’re both using apple uh iphones and i got an android myself right and and you’re right it’s it’s real tough uh with the apple sometimes to get to get some of that stuff native um how many monitors is too many monitors four

Speaker 1 | 01:55.184

Four.

Speaker 0 | 01:55.724

How did you arrive at that number? I’m interested.

Speaker 1 | 01:59.145

I’m looking at three in front of me right now. So I’m thinking if I had one more monitor with busy stuff on it, I just might break down.

Speaker 0 | 02:09.108

It’s so true. It’s so true. I’ve got, let me see, I’ve got three monitors here, plus my laptop. And one of my monitors is one of those widescreen monitors. Yeah, I could see how I might be going over the monitor limit at this point. I think I could still add more, though. I think there’s still room. I want to like a full-on Matrix moment where you just sit in front of like a gazillion monitors.

Speaker 1 | 02:37.763

Or swordfish.

Speaker 0 | 02:39.845

Yes, or swordfish. Yeah, that was a year pulling back one from a while back, too. That was actually a really good movie. I enjoyed that movie. um if you could get an implant to control the computer with your mind would you do it no no no that’s where we draw the line right yeah i don’t need ai learning what’s going on inside my head i think it would just it would if they put it in my brain it would just break anyway so i i think it’s a non-starter oh man um you Gecko Robotics. I’m so interested in this. I was reading about this and I was just like, I have so many questions. You know, tell me a little bit about Gecko Robotics. It looks like you’ve been there almost close to a year now, right?

Speaker 1 | 03:32.046

Yeah. Yeah. So I jumped on last December. And, you know, basically this was a start as a college project. Right. So when the founder, Jake, was started during college, he was out. on site at a refinery, I believe, and he was trying to understand issues, right? And how we could make things better. And through that, it’s just grown into a company now to where we’re out there trying to protect the critical infrastructure, right? You know, to ensure that everyone’s safe, ensure that there’s no casualties, right? You know, and that we can help companies really extend the life of their refinery process, right? So what they’re worried about is downtimes, you know, power, oil, gas. You know, when they’re not running, they’re losing money. So we’ve got a great team. We’re developing software. Obviously, we have the robots and everything for it. So, yeah, it’s quite indulging once you step within the company to really see we’re fixing real-world issues at this point.

Speaker 0 | 04:46.412

Can you give us an example of some of the robotics and what they do?

Speaker 1 | 04:53.702

Yeah, so I can give you a little bit. These robots actually have magnetic wheels, right, and they scale on piping, storage containers, pressure systems. And they use ultrasonic technology to actually throw waves into the metal. And the customer will give us a, hey, here’s our thickness, right? We can’t go beneath a half an inch thickness in any spot. So we’ll gather all that data, scan it. asset gathered data, bring it back, format it out for a usable report for our customers, right? They’ll be able to see exactly where they have to do maintenance on that large container or pipeline.

Speaker 0 | 05:42.818

How were they doing this before?

Speaker 1 | 05:45.520

It was all manual. So think of a grid of five by five feet, right? They would have an employee or a contractor come in with a handheld device. they would measure at point A. They would move up five feet, measure at point B. And they do that sporadic. I won’t say sporadic, but it’s gridded out properly.

Speaker 0 | 06:10.131

The term I like to use is periodically.

Speaker 1 | 06:13.392

Yeah. They’re only getting 1%. They’re hopefully landing on a few areas. Our robots gather so much more data. We cover so much more surface of the equipment. Yeah, it’s really interesting to see the results come back.

Speaker 0 | 06:33.610

Wow. Wow. That’s impressive. That’s some really, really cool stuff. You know, I’m interested to understand how you came to join this company.

Speaker 1 | 06:47.620

Well, it was, I’ve got a rather… Long tenure in IT. So I say long, it’s roughly 22 years now. My thought process was do something that you can work anywhere. IT was one of those. It doesn’t matter. So I’ve proven that I’ve worked. I started out a small computer shop, right? Then I worked on cyber school computers. Then I moved on to what was the next year? I moved on to government contract, right? Worked for healthcare, worked for logistics company, worked for retail, worked for American Eagle Outfitters, right, for about five years. Moving on from there, I really started getting fascinated with the high tech coming out. And in Pittsburgh, one of the largest emerging industries is autonomous vehicles, right? So I joined in with a company and… They formed a joint venture and it’s called Motional. You know, so from there is really being able to work with development, research and engineering, turning around a fast product and enabling the users to work with their max capacity, right? Because it’s deadlines everywhere. We’re trying to, it’s a foot race, right? In the autonomous industry. You know, from there, I just started looking a little bit more. I’m like, hey, there’s a lot of other high-tech spaces out there. And I really came across Gecko Robotics and I started looking into them like, wow, that’s that’s a real world issue that somebody is tackling in my front yard. Right. I want to be a part of that. I want to help them. I want to enable them to be successful.

Speaker 0 | 08:35.192

So that’s I mean, it’s amazing. Just the amount of different. industries that you’ve traversed and stuff. I mean, healthcare, I’ve worked in healthcare for quite a long time, and that’s one of the strictest IT-related fields you have next to probably government and financial sector, right? So that’s huge in itself. Atop that with retail and autonomous cars, I mean, it’s just amazing what you’ve been able to which you’ve been exposed to. Now, I’m interested then now in thinking, okay, well, listen, you’re in a field where you’re doing IT for these robotics, right? What’s involved in that IT? I’m trying to wrap my head around all the different possibilities here, and it’s going crazy. So you need to kind of… that narrow it down for me what what what do you do uh within this robotics company uh from an i.t perspective i mean because my brain’s going everywhere and i i i’m i’m so interested so you know we’re coming out of uh

Speaker 1 | 09:56.597

We’ve been coming out of a startup environment, right? So it’s putting in processes, standards, and really setting up the groundwork to enable employees to do their jobs specifically. Prior to me arriving, there was a few other employees. Yeah, they were maybe director of engineering, but they were also handling IT for the company. You know, it was a part-time gig for them. I try to be an enabler. We have engineers and operators that are out. let’s just say they’re just throwing money out there they’re making fifty dollars an hour right um they’re not making fifty dollars an hour to install a new desktop or upgrade their system they’re making fifty dollars an hour to do their job um and i want to be there to enable that for them i i make the reference um it might not be pc or whatnot but uh i call i consider we’re like drug right we’re enabling them we’re giving them the drugs or whatever’s necessary for them to do their job and to do it well um but essentially i’m standing up standardization um you know we just set up a ticketing system for them it’s really allowing people to focus

Speaker 0 | 11:07.798

more on their roles and just say hey we’ve got people to handle your i.t issues is one of the most interesting analogies that i’ve ever heard i.t be related to uh hey hey you want this keyboard first one’s free we all heard it right hey the m.2 processes are out when can i get one hold on i don’t know i mean it it makes complete sense um so when you uh so you really run the gamut when it comes from uh from it standpoint uh i’m assuming you not only do support you do infrastructure uh security all those things right

Speaker 1 | 11:48.449

Yeah, as we grow, we’re separating a little bit of that out. I’m very adamant that cybersecurity should not live inside of IT. You know, there’s always things I do in place. I try to secure my systems and follow procedures. But I need to have that part of the function for the organization live outside of IT department, right? Because I answer to that. Right. They’re the higher power. They would answer to the CEO or the board of directors because what they say, ultimately, we have to figure out a way to make it happen.

Speaker 0 | 12:25.923

You know, it’s an interesting point you make, too, because I’ve seen it both ways. And from a security standpoint, you know, you definitely want the checks and balances. And, you know, in the company that I work for, I handle security, cybersecurity, but I am part of IT in there. Sure. But again, it’s, you know, every company is different, you know, and I understand that. It’s funny because I’ve had this conversation and talk and tossed it back and forth about whether or not cybersecurity should be included in IT or it should be separate. And, you know, I see both sides of this. I’m interested in this. You, coming from healthcare, you must have seen a… a very strict uh cyber security uh setup from a healthcare standpoint right yes yeah so um did the healthcare organization separate out their um their

Speaker 1 | 13:30.963

you know the security the cyber security from id yeah yeah they did so their head of security did not report to the cio they reported to the board of directors now we worked alongside with cybersecurity, we’re tightly integrated, but the reporting structure, you know, you could say the director of security at the time had just as much, if not more power than CIO.

Speaker 0 | 13:56.402

Yeah. This is, it’s just such an interesting concept to me because I’ve seen it happen both ways, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that either way, which way is right. And, and, and it’s, I’ve, I’ve seen it work and not work both ways, you know, and in. I think you’re right. I think it, it, it sort of depends on how the organization is. And, um, I think the best I, and here’s where I think that you and I are total agreement, which is, um, there needs to be checks and balances within the security. Right. And I guess the question, uh, is, is how do you implement those checks and balances? Right. Or is that, um, do we rely on, um, external, uh, sources auditing us to, um, you know, to basically. align RIT with the cybersecurity. I can totally see, you know, having cybersecurity under IT and then going, well, you know. We don’t need to worry about that. And just tucking it under the rug and moving on. I see that too. This is such an interesting debate. This could probably take a whole, you could, you almost probably could take a whole cybersecurity podcast on this whole thing to talk about. But I’m very interested. This is a, it’s one of those things where it comes up and it’s, and it’s hotly debated.

Speaker 1 | 15:22.406

Yeah, typically compliance is the driver, right? you know healthcare you’re meeting hipaa compliance uh you know there’s various other government compliances you have to meet and those are the checks and balances because depending on what compliance you’re trying to meet you’ll either have an internal or external audit or both yeah

Speaker 0 | 15:43.963

that’s i mean so how i would imagine that in your current situation that cyber security is actually a really really really big um big deal Right. I mean, you’ve got probably trade secrets, IP that you need to protect. And I don’t know what else, because I’m not familiar with the robotics, but I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of confidential information that that needs to be kept under wraps.

Speaker 1 | 16:13.831

Yeah, it’s like with anything. IP is huge when you’re one of the only companies out there developing this stuff. Right. But, you know, with anything else. smaller companies are going to do things a little bit different than the larger companies um so how i say i’m adamant that there needs to be separation and responsibility i do some of that falls into my wheelhouse right you know we’re all trying to plug holes in the dam and get the company going in the right direction yeah but yes security is huge um customers um a lot of times are driving security they’re saying hey we’re socked to compliant we want to make sure that everything

Speaker 0 | 16:51.925

coming into our system meets those requirements and so a lot of that’s customer driven as well you’re so right on that i i do um do you ever get uh um you know like rfps or questionnaires and uh uh and stuff that you need to fill out uh from third-party companies uh going through uh all your security standards and all those yeah yeah absolutely It’s amazing to me how many of those come out now. It actually gives me a little bit of hope that we’re moving in the right direction every time I get one, right? But it’s amazing you say that because it’s almost like the companies you do business with help you shape your own internal IT cybersecurity because essentially you need to meet their requirements. uh, to move forward. Uh, it sounds like that’s what you’re, uh, that’s what you kind of see and experience, right?

Speaker 1 | 17:54.835

Yeah. Yeah. I see that. But we, you know, like you said, we have trade secrets, we have things we want to protect. So we, we will be holding a higher standard than most of our customers, right? Some customers may have a higher one. Um, but yeah, it’s, Deco Robotics is definitely on, on the forefront and cybersecurity minded and thinking. trying to think things through both on you know product side right and internal security so it’s it’s comforting because some companies are just like yeah we’ll worry about it later kind of like just dr and then something happens they’re like okay here’s money now fix it i’ve

Speaker 0 | 18:34.039

been in both those situations i think we all have right um i it’s funny it’s why you say this because i just got done not more than a few uh, more than a few hours ago, uh, going through a, um, uh, a cybersecurity walkthrough for our business continuity, business continuity, disaster recovery, and just coupled that with our incident response as well. Um, so I, I literally just had an hour long, you know, a cybersecurity piece. It’s in my head right at the moment. Um, Unix, San, VMware, these are some of the things I saw on your, uh, um, on your LinkedIn when I was, uh, um, uh, you know, looking you up uh but i also saw power systems and i uh chuckled internally to myself because i i spent so much of my time at a company that had a uh ibmi ibm power system uh as 400 i don’t know whatever you want to call it they keep changing the name um is that similar to what you’ve you’ve worked on yeah i would i was focused on ai x right so i never touched the i theory

Speaker 1 | 19:44.981

gotcha yeah but but yeah in healthcare i actually got started with that and even to this day which It’s unfortunate the way the direction power is going. It’s actually going downhill now. I would say you give me an AIX system with Oracle running on it, and I’ll do circles around any other system out there.

Speaker 0 | 20:04.372

They just run and run and run.

Speaker 1 | 20:08.094

You can configure them so well. They run well with Oracle databases on them. And, you know, I think IBM just did it injustice. Just thinking their name could carry that.

Speaker 0 | 20:22.330

solution the whole way through i mean their last dab was uh what watson yeah you don’t hear that name anymore no no it’s been replaced with the uh all the other uh ais of the world now and uh um that thing is no longer uh feasible you know um it’s it’s funny because i had a um you know for so long i had this these power systems and uh i didn’t tried to move them over to X and, and stuff because they were, they were running, uh, you know, RPG apps off, off this thing straight, you know? Um, and, uh, it was, you know, I’m like, we could breathe new life into this thing. You know, we could literally pop this on, uh, you know, give it a, uh, you know, fresh, uh, start and, and, and do some new things. But, you know, it, it’s hard when it’s already in place and, and, uh, and moving sometimes to. to get things uh upgraded and changed and moved out um but it was just interesting i saw those power systems because you you don’t it’s few and far between now on these they some people still have them running but they don’t do much and they’ve been in some of the um cloud-based technology and stuff like that that you see now um i also saw this on your on your uh linkedin which i thought was pretty awesome um i’m a big uh proponent of volunteering um

Speaker 1 | 21:49.262

and i saw that you’re a volunteer fire i.t volunteer fire uh i.t consultant i i’m probably saying that wrong yeah so in the fire department term it’s more i’m an administrative member um and i’ve actually that’s laxed off a little bit now because they’ve just been running you know you train the users they’re good to go i do a lot of that for my local community If it’s somebody just a small business needing help, I go in and I help them out. I mean, I’m not charging them anything. If they need new parts or something, I help them figure it out and just get it going. Because coming from a small community, you know, the people are just not used to going out and spending a lot of money, like at Best Buy or somewhere larger like that. support right you know costing 200 to have their computer fixed whatnot well you can then you’re buying a new computer for that these days so right it’s my way of just kind of giving back and you know you barter right hey i do something for you when i need help down the road they help me out well

Speaker 0 | 23:03.674

don’t go setting your house on fire we don’t need that yeah i’m sure they’ll rush over there but we we don’t we don’t need that all right I’m, it’s just amazing to kind of see all the different things that you’ve gotten under your belt here. Let’s talk a little bit about your health care experience, because it’s something where I know that this is a, you know, this is something that leads to folks having a very, very keen eye for cybersecurity. and data protection and privacy. Um, it’s a huge, uh, it’s just, I’ve, I’ve talked to folks that have worked in healthcare, uh, finance and government, and they all share this same, uh, you know, um, love hate relationship with cybersecurity. Let’s talk about that for a moment. What is your, uh, experience in that realm?

Speaker 1 | 24:10.241

Uh, So that was early on in my career and to be honest a lot of that was set up already by the health hospital system I worked for and you know it’s just being compliant at that point in time. What really got me was when you’re dealing around anything with sensitive patient information like you can’t really walk down the hall having open conversation anymore right? There’s a lot of whispering going on. and such. But I’d say the health system I worked for, they had everything pretty well under wraps, and it was more of auditing and assessment at the point I was in there. So I really didn’t have to build anything from the ground up. much like what I’m starting to do now with Gecko Robotics.

Speaker 0 | 24:57.965

So you’re transitioning now into what I was going to talk about. So now how do you apply that knowledge that you have into the current position that you’re at and help out Gecko Robotics?

Speaker 1 | 25:13.089

Well, being through the assessments for compliance, I kind of know what they’re going to look for. I know what carpets they’re going to look under. I know that we have to have documentation in place. It’s not like, yeah, it’s here, go find it. It’s like, no, you’re sitting a stack in front of them saying, there you go. Come back when you have questions, right? And to be prepared for that assessment makes it so much easier on your organization because nobody has time, right, for an assessment. I have never worked for a company that strictly had a compliance team that handled all the assessments and everything was. you know rainbows and butterflies it’s it’s just if you can be prepared for the assessment have all of your ducks in a row all your documentation ready you set it on their doorstep most of the time they come back with a couple minor things you fixed them and you’re good to go yeah that’s great you’ve

Speaker 0 | 26:10.103

hit the nail on the head i think right there i mean when it comes to this type of stuff have have your have all your ducks in a row like you mentioned then when they come to you, you’re like, here you go. And then if they have any other questions, you can just tackle those immediately. And if it’s something about having to secure something, you can have that conversation from a business perspective. I think that’s a great way to look at it. Have you had to do a lot of documentation writing and policy writing and stuff like that in your current position?

Speaker 1 | 26:40.630

So my current role, yeah, I’ve been starting to get into that deeper and deeper where there’s a few compliance. that we’re trying to meet. And, you know, I’m writing that out. I’m getting started on some items. But the first thing that I’ve actually done for the first time, well, first time I’ve ever done this was a system security plan, right? I’ve never created one from scratch. So that was interesting to me. You know, what does everybody in IT do? They go out and see if they can find a template somewhere online, right?

Speaker 0 | 27:10.585

Exactly right.

Speaker 1 | 27:14.067

You know. And I’m sorry, the only institutions that really put them out there most of the time are educational, right? Colleges, whatnot. That doesn’t pertain to a lot of what we’re doing out in the real world. So there’s a lot of optimization and editing I put in place. That was definitely interesting. Kind of fun. Towards the end, I’m like, okay, let’s get this done and move on.

Speaker 0 | 27:38.888

That’s but that’s so impressive. I mean, that is it. And I’ve had to do it several times. And it’s a tough thing to be like, OK, I know what I’m supposed to do here. Right. I know what I’m supposed to write. But how does it pertain to this business? Because that’s where it gets tricky. Right. It’s not just that I can write up a standard set of cybersecurity documentation and you can go to NIST and all the different websites to try and pull that or. try and pull like one you said like from an educational site uh and then try to rewrite it uh but it doesn’t it doesn’t give you all of the in an ounce of the current uh place that you work at and the current place you work at is so um uh specialized and um unique uh that i just i i like i’m trying to in my head i’m trying to like think of all the different things you have to come across to write a security plan on it and uh you know it’s my head is you know my brain’s going like 10 000 miles a minute to try and think of all these things um what do you wish people knew about uh um uh you know gecko robotics and or you uh and what you do and there that uh that you think that maybe they don’t um one of the

Speaker 1 | 29:06.172

best best things that I get to do is work with a great class of people and the culture is still refreshing at this point in my career because what I can say is I came in to take over IT and my previous place at emotional the autonomous driving they kind of had their own clicks if you say that’s right so Some teams are like, oh, we handle IT our own, and it’s this, it’s that. We don’t want anybody touching it, right? I came into Gecko Robotics expecting kind of a little bit of a fight, like saying, hey, I’m here to do this. Let me have it. Everybody was like, oh, wow, welcome. We’re so happy you’re here. What can I do to help bring you up to speed? Is there anything that I can do for you? And I would just say, hey, you want to buy software? Bring it to me. Let me negotiate that. Let me handle the licensing. Let me do this. You’re like, that would be great. Thank you very much. So they’re open for help. Nobody’s trying to hold on to their own piece of the pie. They’re all working towards the better cause. And I think the culture that the…

Speaker 0 | 30:22.110

company has built i’ve never seen anywhere else it’s unmatched great group of people that’s fantastic that’s that’s the that type of culture uh you know fosters uh great teamwork is able to uh get things accomplished um count on each other um enable innovation i mean there’s so many good reasons why you want to work for a company that does that and uh very similar to the company i work for i’m very fortunate to work for a company that’s very similar in that regard. So let’s now pivot using that, right? Because I want to talk now about company culture and how it drives the success and or failure of IT, right? Because one person can do so much in an organization and you can certainly rally against cultures that will. um, not promote that, right. And try and do your best. Uh, but it does certainly help quite a lot when you have cultures that, uh, um, you know, foster that type of, uh, um, uh, open knowledge sharing and communication and stuff. Uh, let’s talk about that with you and, and your, and, and, uh, your views on the culture. Um, what does a culture of open knowledge sharing and communication and teamwork help an IT organization inside that, an IT department inside of that do for the organization?

Speaker 1 | 32:03.599

So it really allows IT to investigate and get down to the root cause of everybody’s daily headaches, right? One of the things that we try to ask is what can we do better? What can we do for you? to enable you to do better at your job. And being open from the end user’s point of view, sometimes they say, oh, everything’s great. I’ll reach out when I need something. Other times they say, you know what, my computer’s been messed up, you know, and I’m struggling with this or whatever. And it’s the little caretaker that we’ve approached them. Not the other way around. They didn’t have to come to us and say, hey, it’s broke, fix it. We’re going to them and we’re seeking out ways that we can make their daily lives better, right? So it’s kind of a give and take relationship. Once you start getting those alliances within the org, then they start saying, hey, IT knows a little bit about this. Maybe we should bring them in on this call and maybe they can have something to help us out. Another thing on the culture I really want to put out there is that yearly we have a company picnic type event. And this past year is the first time, and they have what’s called an innovation challenge to where you can team up. They have ideas. There was over 15 or 16 ideas. And it doesn’t matter what department you work for. You can join a team, work together, and come up with a new innovative idea. whether it be to fix processes or make something better within our work, a new product, various ideas. And then the executive leadership sits down and judges them, right? And the team wins something, right? Like first place. But what we’ve gotten out of that this past year was like six really good innovative ideas that we’re going to proceed further with, right? And that’s really what sets us aside. We’re trying to be innovative. across the entire org, not just within R&D.

Speaker 0 | 34:15.881

I’m smiling because I did a talk at a conference one time about innovation. And what you just described is almost to the T of what I talked about when I talked about how to foster innovation, which was to allow for people independent, not even, you know, Don’t worry about the department they’re in or anything like that, but allow them to submit ideas for innovation, right? Foster that creativity. And then have those ideas reviewed and prioritized by, you know, a panel. And in this case, it sounds like that panel is your executive team, which is fantastic. And then reward them and celebrate the win when you do it. You know, I mean, it’s amazing to actually talk to somebody that actually sees that in action and actually it’s working. So it was like you, it’s like, yes, I, you know, I gave this talk. And it was, you know, based on something I had implemented. But to actually see an entire organization doing that is just fantastic. I mean, this is a great organization you work for. You’re a lucky man.

Speaker 1 | 35:35.760

Absolutely. And, you know, the co-founders, Jake and Troy, they don’t put their money where their mouth is, right? They gave out. money to use for this innovation, right? They were given a certain amount that they could spend. And, you know, when they say they’re going to do something, they’ll do it. But the key thing about it is, you know, one of our things that we say around the office is master failure. You know, let’s fail fast and move forward. It’s okay to fail. Let’s not fail doing the same thing over and over. But that’s the only way you’re going to innovate. You’re going to fail more times than you succeed. But when you succeed, those are going to be great successes.

Speaker 0 | 36:20.998

That’s a great way to look at it. I think it was Edison, and don’t quote me on this, but it was very kind of a quote that he said, and I’ll paraphrase, was, I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways not to do it. I think it’s a, it’s a great way to approach, uh, um, you know, different challenges and stuff like that. Obviously, if you’re doing something new, you’re, you’re not going to do it right. The first time we do, that’s fantastic. But most of the time you’re going to, you’re going to have, uh, you know, to hit your head against the wall a few times to get it done. I was interested earlier too, you were talking about, uh, you know, um, something and it sounded to me like what you were kind of alluding at was, um, trying to reduce shadow IT by helping other departments and being their enabler from an IT standpoint. Do you want to elaborate a little bit more on that?

Speaker 1 | 37:21.041

Sure, yes. So I’ve definitely been up against major shadow IT operations. The neat thing about Gecko Robotics is nobody is maliciously doing anything. They’re just trying to get their job done. So the nice thing about it is, like, I’m picking up, you know, different engineering managers might have a license portal for a certain software that they use. And I’ll reach out to them and say, hey, you know, is this something that I can take over for you, right? They’re like, yeah, I mean, I know you’re busy. If you don’t have time, I can keep doing it. But I’m like, no, that’s what I’m here for. You know, let me help. I’ll take over licensing. And that way, when it’s renewed, I can start doing future budgeting and all that. And. They’re it’s it’s not about giving them always what they want. It’s about steering them in the direction of best use case for the company. Right. And when they see that your true intention is what’s best for the organization you’re working with, they’re fully on board to be like, yeah, that makes sense. Go for it. Right.

Speaker 0 | 38:27.185

I love that. I love that attitude towards it. And it’s and it’s and it’s true, too. I mean, I’ve I’ve done it and it works. You’re. Interesting, too, we talk about shadow IT and malicious first, just trying to get their job done. More often than not, I don’t see malicious. I see folks trying to get their job done and trying their best to come up with ideas. And I’ve entered into organizations where maybe IT wasn’t doing their best at that time, or they were so overloaded that they couldn’t get to some of these. requests and maybe working on the wrong projects or working on projects that maybe weren’t prioritized correctly. Do you see that as well? And it doesn’t have to be at Gecko Robotics. It can be anywhere really that you’ve worked. But have you seen shadow IT based on misprioritization, too busy, not enough staff, that kind of a…

Speaker 1 | 39:34.752

that kind of a piece yeah yeah definitely seen it like that that’s that’s the more common piece of it um i’ve also seen it at a place where multiple companies were acquired brought into one and you had one section of the company that just didn’t want to work with corporate right um they didn’t want to conform they wanted to buy the you know not the the consumer grade alienware desktops right they didn’t want to buy the commercial line um but that that’s few and far between this is basically one company and it was it was very frustrating um And I don’t feel it was anything intentional against IT. It was more along the lines of like, look, we know what we have works, and we don’t want to take the time to test out something for a percentage. But that has this downstream effect of that’s configurations that IT has to support, right? That’s more testing that has to be done in order for new solutions to go in. So there is that trickle effect of there is a standardization. One thing you can count on is math chaos.

Speaker 0 | 40:48.199

I completely agree. It’s one of the things that I try to do at every place I have is let’s standardize as much as possible and reduce the amount of different technologies and bring it down while not sacrificing redundancies and failover attempts and stuff like that, obviously. But it… I agree with you on that. Standardization is huge. And if you want to, and it’s gotten easier over the years, especially with the clients. You know, I remember how hard it used to be.

Speaker 1 | 41:21.725

I’ll challenge that a little bit, though, with the current issue we have. It’s getting better, but, you know, the manufacturing and the delays in producing desktop computers, laptops, storage kits.

Speaker 0 | 41:35.655

That’s true.

Speaker 1 | 41:37.100

One of the things that I’ve done at Gecko Robotics in response to that is, okay, we’re not just a Lenovo shop or a Dell shop. We are a Lenovo and Dell, right? So you open it up, and if Lenovo’s having delays, order it from Dell and vice versa. That having your secondary option available and creating that connection with the manufacturer, I think, is key. forced to do that.

Speaker 0 | 42:08.772

Agreed. I think that that’s a great option is to be, I think the term there would be vendor agnostic, you know, as much as possible while still maintaining the standards. You know, so if you do bring in a Dell or do bring in a Lenovo, they’re set up fairly similar. It’s just that, you know, one may be a little bit different, you know, model wise. But yeah, no. And, you know, and back. if we go back in the day, right, that was actually very difficult to do. You know, especially if you weren’t using any imaging software and trying, you know, I think you remember probably the days where trying to throw clients together and having multiple different models was just one of the biggest headaches in the world.

Speaker 1 | 42:58.016

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 42:58.136

Looks like. Looks like, though, we’ve moved past that a little bit, and it’s lucky that we have at this point because the ability to use different models is a really, really good thing to have right now, especially when you mentioned that chip shortage and delays in the shipping and the supply chain. So. I’m very, so interesting. You have such a wide array of technology that you’ve been exposed to and a skill set. Over your tenure in IT, how have you seen it morph and change? uh as you know the years move on uh because i know from my experience that you know some of the stuff i used to work on it was so critical like i don’t need to use it anymore okay i might i mean i retain that knowledge but i don’t actively use some of that uh same stuff that i used back in you know uh the early

Speaker 1 | 44:20.353

2000s right yeah so it’s weird um i always say everything’s comes back full circle right um Back in the early 2000s, I worked with more mainframe and on-premise infrastructure, right? And then cloud computing came through, and it took a lot longer than what I want to think people wanted. I really see some of that is going to come back because… let’s face it we’re starting to see you know slack and netflix and all these other companies experience downtime right the cloud isn’t as bulletproof as what everybody’s trying to make it out to be but they’re becoming large targets there’s going to be i think transformation of bringing things back in-house certain services um i do says services have greatly improved but let’s face it our internet pipelines have improved Hardware is faster, cheaper. I believe coding, depending on who you talk to, is getting better. You know, so programming and applications back in the late 90s, early 2000s were heavy, right? Now they’re doing a lot with lightweight coding and things are more efficiently moving through. I think a lot of this has been given out to our advances in internet speeds, right? In our pipeline.

Speaker 0 | 45:53.951

So,

Speaker 1 | 45:55.012

I mean, I’m talking to you on Starlink satellite right now.

Speaker 0 | 46:01.456

I just had a conversation about Starlink today, actually, at the company I work at. Because, you know, we had the, so there’s a good portion of the company that I work for. Not everybody, everyone’s remote. but a good portion of the people are in Florida and as am I. And we went through Hurricane Ian. Luckily, you know, it path changed where I was at. But unfortunately for a good amount of my team members and some of them have experienced lots of damage and stuff like that from Hurricane Ian. They are still trying to get power back. Some of them had to move out of their houses and are trying to rebuild. Um, it’s a, um, it’s, it’s, it’s sad and unfortunate for the, for that team over there. Um, but one of the things that popped up because, uh, it was communication in a disaster, uh, and how poor sales and service was after the fact. So, um, and, and the internet, uh, usage. So the question then was, okay, uh, how do we get, how do we get that, uh, um, service going? And, and Starlink is one of the ones that came up.

Speaker 1 | 47:12.962

you know yeah i mean it’s good stuff um i haven’t experienced any issues but i do want to say yeah it’s definitely difficult times for the floridians that have gone through that and wow i couldn’t imagine couldn’t imagine that so

Speaker 0 | 47:28.686

it’s definitely thinking about uh that part of the world for now yeah it’s it’s tough and and uh you know from an you know it perspective uh unfortunately it’s not much we can do when nobody has internet you know um but you know it to bring it back it’s pretty amazing now to think that um the i.t that sorry the um the throughput that people have at their house the bandwidth that they have at their house now rivals uh you know 10 years ago what people had at businesses you know and and now the you know you know we’re on the edge of uh um you know 5g uh which is now available in my area now again uh um you know where you just need a router and you can connect or starlink like you mentioned where you just need a um you know the the um hardware for it and pay a monthly fee and bam you’re you’ve got internet uh going from space it’s just remarkable to actually think about all that and and to try and rack your mind against it so no go ahead sorry you

Speaker 1 | 48:40.718

I do think somebody needs to do a major overhaul on the internet, though. It’s definitely getting congested because, you know, the speeds, if we had these speeds back in the day, I feel like it would be so much faster. And maybe it’s just so much more content being delivered. But I see our internet as a old rickety fence that is about ready to fall over in certain places.

Speaker 0 | 49:07.570

Well, you know, there’s like, you know, how many IoT devices sitting out there trying to connect as well, just turn lights on and off, as in where I’m at right now. So, um, let me, let me move to our last, because this is the perfect segue. Let’s move to our last segment, which is IT crystal ball, where I asked you, Mark, about the future of IT. And I think on this one, You have a lot to offer because you have, I mean, you’re working for a robotics company. You worked for autonomous cars. You have… uh you know so much experience and you’ve seen uh you know a transformation already happen up until now um usually i limit these things and i try to like uh put you into a um a little spot and give you a um give you something to talk about but i’m not gonna on this one i’m gonna let you just roam free on this question about the future of it because i think you can touch on a bunch of different topics so i’m gonna just I’m going to let you freeform this one and just kind of talk about what Mark Fowle thinks that the future of IT is going to be.

Speaker 1 | 50:30.367

Okay. A challenge accepted, I guess. So, yeah, I mean, our end users are more educated now. You have people that are growing up their entire lives being on a cell phone, a computer, whatnot. So they’re better educated at it. I see IT services transitioning more towards a customer service type role. It’s always been there, but even more so. Take a look at Starbucks, right? Somebody comes in, they want a specific thing with these different shots added into it. I see IT being nimble enough to do that. All the hardware is basically the same anymore. There’s nothing, your differences are Mac and Windows. Right. We’re IT is going to transform to where it’s less, I think, less people that have to be super deep in knowledge on subjects and more people that are like mechanics. They can fix anything on IT and they’re there to really support and give you a better experience and just get you on your way. A lot of people will consider like a going to the genius bar at the Apple store. I see that, but I see it on a whole different level of, you know, soup to nuts, anything, right? Not just a certain brand of products. This is anything. Somebody’s got a need for upgrades or whatnot. You know, that can happen, but that’s happening on a much faster, much more cost-effective way. And it’s strictly based upon customer service, right? I’m trying to think how I can articulate this better.

Speaker 0 | 52:21.552

I think you’re articulating great. The mere fact of taking tasks that are done that may be very, well, automation. I mean, literally, every time I think automation just pops up every time. It’s like automation, automation, automation. I think your Starbucks reference here, I think if I were designing you know, a customer service for Starbucks and everything like that. You know, one of the things I would probably tackle is how to ensure we get the name written correctly on the cup.

Speaker 1 | 53:02.146

You’re assuming they give you the right name.

Speaker 0 | 53:04.107

That’s a good point. That’s a good point. That’s a good point. But no, I mean, I think you’re right. I mean, taking taking these tasks that are done. uh, and, and, and moving them into the realm of, well, we can, we can automate this, uh, really then gives you, uh, and I, and I want to, I want to stress here too. If, if anybody has ever gone and I know you got all have gone into a store and walked over to the, uh, checkout, right. And you see the long checkout and then you see that self-service checkout and you’re like, I can just do that. I can just get this done. Right. And you get over there and you start to, you know, start to ring everything up and then it’s like beep. And you’re like, I, it’s not, now it’s not ringing up. There’s always someone there that comes over and they go, Hey, let me help you with that. Let me get this. Let me work on this and stuff like that. And, and so not only, and I I’ll add on top of it, not only you’re going to need people that are a Jack of all trades, I can fix a bunch of different things. Cause I’ve been exposed to a bunch of different things. let me just let me look at it but you’re also going to need um people to uh assist and bring that personal touch along with the automation uh you know i i can automate reports all day but you need somebody to be able to review the reports and make sense of them you know we can throw numbers and we can automate things all the all the time but you’re going to need some people there to be able to go Let me explain what they’re doing. Let me help you out. Let me, you know, handle the, the, you know, I can automate 80% of it, but 20% of it is going to be have to be handled by someone, you know, because it’s a special thing, you know, or it’s a one-off. You see that as well?

Speaker 1 | 54:58.804

Yeah. Yeah. I definitely see that. And, you know, when I’m looking for talent to bring in, it’s somebody that can do more than just one thing. Somebody that can, I’d say, caress the end user, right? We need them to not be abrasive. We need the end user to feel comforted. okay, it’s not a big deal. We’ll get you fixed up here. Don’t worry. Because they are facing their own problems and deadlines. And, you know, we just need to be their support system. You know, we’re here to help you. It’s going to be all right. We’re going to get you fixed up. Don’t worry about it.

Speaker 0 | 55:33.600

I love it. I love it. Nerds, I’m Michael Moore. We’re hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. This has been Mark Feil, Director… of IT at Gecko Robotics. Mark, thank you so much for being on here. You’ve enlightened us so many different ways here and with so much diverse experience, you’ve just done a great job explaining what you’re seeing and what might possibly pop up in the future. Love to have you on again if you want.

Speaker 1 | 56:10.043

Yeah, anytime. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.