Speaker 0 | 00:10.060

Michael Moore, hosting this podcast for dissecting popular IT nerds. I’m here with Benny Jones, vice president of technology at Huddle 3 Group or Huddle. Not really sure. I asked him earlier if it was Huddle or Huddle 3. See, it’s spelled H-U-D-D-L with a 3 like a backwards E. So it’s the wonder, you know, I was trying to figure out, is it Huddle or Huddle 3? But Benny seems to think it’s Huddle 3. So we’re going to go with that, right?

Speaker 1 | 00:39.536

That is correct.

Speaker 0 | 00:41.317

Welcome to the program, Benny. We’re going to start off with our icebreaker segment, random access memories. Ask a question and then you just respond with the first thing that comes to your head first. Your first question, Benny, is when you make an avatar. Right. For something is a whole bunch of things you make avatars for. Do you model it after yourself or something or someone else?

Speaker 1 | 01:08.795

Usually myself.

Speaker 0 | 01:09.856

Yeah. All right. All right. Sounds good. I know I recently created an avatar for Xbox because I got one of the new one of the new Xbox there. And when I did, instead of making my hair the normal brown color that it is. I went with blue, even though I don’t have blue hair. I just like, you know what, I’m going to go with blue hair because I can have blue hair on the Xbox. And then not that I wouldn’t in real life, it’s just, it just seems like, you know, going through that process would be more of an issue.

Speaker 1 | 01:47.818

Well, at least you have hair. I have none. That’s why I got the cap on.

Speaker 0 | 01:50.518

Gotcha. You’re wearing a hat right now, so can’t tell there. So, well, I mean, see, hey, you know, you could you could add blue hair to your avatar.

Speaker 1 | 01:59.337

Good. I could.

Speaker 0 | 02:03.598

If you were given the power to interact with computers, what would be the first thing that you would do?

Speaker 1 | 02:12.841

Wow. Add additional zeros to my bank account.

Speaker 0 | 02:22.004

For good, right? For good, right?

Speaker 1 | 02:23.484

For good, absolutely. You know, just enough so that I don’t ever have to worry.

Speaker 0 | 02:28.867

There you go. There you go. Then you can do what you want. Then you can really dive into the inner nerd in you, right?

Speaker 1 | 02:36.630

That’s it. That’s it.

Speaker 0 | 02:40.772

What was your most memorable moment in IT?

Speaker 1 | 02:45.574

Oh, most memorable. Ah, gosh. it’s a thinking question here you know what to me i i’d say it’d be y2k y2k for for those that can remember back that far yeah we’re going we’re going back 1999 that’s it that was probably the most memorable for me in it and probably for many people around my age in in it was was that that

Speaker 0 | 03:15.876

Everyone was genuinely panicked that the world was going to shut down during that time. If for any younger listeners that didn’t go through that, the entire world celebrated the new year thinking that every computer was going to go offline and nothing was going to work.

Speaker 1 | 03:33.743

Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 03:34.903

Nothing happened.

Speaker 1 | 03:36.024

And it was probably the greatest years for consultants. It was raking in the dollars for companies willing to pay for.

Speaker 0 | 03:45.664

what turned out to be really nothing and so and i will enlighten the audience again for anybody again that doesn’t remember this and or wasn’t around when this happened right yeah this was where um uh a long time ago uh um someone took it you know a whole bunch of people took shortcuts right mainly because uh the memory at the time i believe uh um restricted uh um adding additional characters and stuff like that. And they were trying to really cut down on their programming costs. So instead of using four digits for the date field, they used two. So, you know, thinking, well, I’ll be fine. We’re never going to make it to the year 2000 where we need four. Otherwise, it’ll just roll over to be a new number. And people that were born in 1901 and people that were born in 2001 will…

Speaker 1 | 04:43.812

i’ll be the same yeah so did you have any involvement in uh in that at all oh absolutely we did i mean we did do a lot of security patches a lot of upgrades uh we replaced some legacy you know legacy systems that consultants basically said hey we’re gonna go offline or we’re gonna be potentially issue you know problems so we went through that whole effort we even staffed up you know the region so that all the all our locations had a body for when that clock turned um and uh in case anything happened so i mean i ended up i had a staff of 35 people out in the west coast you know from So I came out here in 98 and between 98 and 99, I brought 35 people on board to help with that effort from San Diego to Seattle.

Speaker 0 | 05:39.883

Wow. You know, the poor souls that had to ring in the new year sitting there on a computer going, yep, it’s fine. You know what? I feel like, honestly, that was probably a good thing for the computing. uh industry at the time I mean not just from a financial standpoint but from like clearing some of the old systems out of the way right I think we like need another y2k right now yeah we could yes absolutely there are so many systems that just happen to be uh outdated and and just still thriving today that probably shouldn’t be that correct yes definitely a lot of systems that need a lot of

Speaker 1 | 06:25.231

upgrades and and I think it’ll come uh especially as new things come up and all of a sudden things can’t integrate uh I think companies are going to pay a lot more to get those things switched out if the longer they wait but that’s that’s

Speaker 0 | 06:40.355

on them and give it the more customizations they add the more processes they put around it the harder it becomes uh to rip out uh that’s a really really good point Benny um You know, it’s interesting. I was looking at your, because I LinkedIn stalk everybody before they podcast. So I was looking at your page and I noticed the first thing I noticed was, you know, everybody, when they go in, they customize their LinkedIn URL. Right. And the, you know, and mine’s like after my name. Right. So, you know. I looked at yours and it’s, it’s linkedin.com slash in slash solve dash it. Yep. So explain, first of all, I love it. Right. But second of all, like explain the thought process because this was such a great, I mean, I looked at him like, Hey, that’s unique.

Speaker 1 | 07:43.352

Yeah. To me, what I tell my kids is that every problem always has a solution, every problem. And there’s almost. more than one way to get there. Being in IT, that falls in that arena. I mean, there’s lots of ways to solve different problems now, and there’s also a lot of ways to get there. And it all depends on how much you’re willing to pay, how much effort you’re going to put into it, those types of things. So I’m a firm believer that anything we run into from an IT perspective or even a human perspective, we can solve it.

Speaker 0 | 08:19.494

A great answer. Absolutely. Well, let’s talk about solving it, right? Let’s talk about what that means. I looked, again, looked at your LinkedIn. You have a ton of experience in a variety of different things, right? I mean, it just looks like you’ve been busy doing a whole bunch of different things. One of the things I thought was interesting in here is that You have the comprehensive knowledge of a variety of technology platforms and systems that was put into your LinkedIn page. Yeah. And I think that off the bat, people go, yeah, okay, yeah, that makes sense. You’ve been in IT for a while. You’re going to have that. But, like, let’s talk about that for a minute. Because when I… you know in looking into that i’m like okay but what what does that mean like specifically let’s dive in and understand what it means to have comprehensive knowledge of a variety of different technology platforms uh and systems like you know let’s expound upon that and let’s uh if you if you can kind of dive in and figure out your journey and how you you got to uh you know gain that experience because I know there’s a lot of people out here and this is all set this up for you so that you can uh you can run with it there’s a lot of people out here that are are entering this field right and uh um and there’s and they want to know right how to get this experience and how to work through their careers. And they should know that they should understand what the best way to get that is. And I think that comes from understanding how other people got that experience and work through that.

Speaker 1 | 10:15.585

Yeah, sure. Well, I.T. or computers have always has always been a hobby for me as ever since I was a child. I didn’t go to school to get. a computer engineering degree or anything like that my degree is in mathematics um but computers have always again just been a hobby and most hobbies you like i mean people like their hobbies that’s why it’s a hobby and i still enjoy doing what i’m doing that’s why i’m still in it um but i i’ve just always been able to grasp new things when it came out in tech whether it’s on the windows platform mac os platform linux um you know whatever it might be, I can quickly adapt to that specific environment, learn quickly, be able to converse and, you know, tackle any type of situation or issues that might come up in regards to that specific platform. You know, I was never afraid in taking assignments. You know, if my boss said, hey, we want you to try it, I was never afraid. never said no you know i don’t want to do that because i don’t know anything about it it’s because i don’t know anything about it it’s why i want to go do it so that’s a big that’s a big one and i want to interject for a minute so that we stop there for a moment so people understand this um

Speaker 0 | 11:43.386

you know i agree with you i have in my time looked and found uh you know that there were projects where that seemed daunting and i had no idea how to do them uh but after doing them, you know, coming out of that, the experience was, you know, one that just filled you with so much experience going forward that you were able to tackle the next problem. So that’s a big one. And I wanted to highlight that, that you said that, because I think that that’s a really, really big, really, really big point to make is that if you’ve got the, if you’ve got a

Speaker 1 | 12:25.924

a challenge right don’t don’t back down don’t back from down from it uh you know i mean we all we all run into issues we all run into things that are tough we might even fail um but you learn from that and uh you just keep moving forward i mean if your boss knows you’re trying and you’re learning you know they’re going to understand especially if it’s something new if a company is investing money into something new nobody at the company really knows it because that’s why they’re investing in it so if you get thrown into that project hey either one to raise your hand up and say hey i’ll take that on you know i think this is great advice it’s great advice so that’s yeah that’s how i kind of accumulate you know just accumulate that knowledge and then changing industries uh also assisted in that respect you know from working in in print and and manufacturing and going over to government, you know, casinos, and then over to oil and gas now landing in into, you know,

Speaker 0 | 13:32.682

what is it’s interesting that you you lumped, you know, casinos and government together. That was hilarious. That’s where all my money is.

Speaker 1 | 13:44.785

That’s only in the Indian reservation, you know, it’s where you can get away with that.

Speaker 0 | 13:51.407

It’s nice, you know, This is another great point that you make, which is, you know, every type of, it’s one of the reasons why I love to do this podcast, because I get to talk to so many people in so many varying industries, and get to understand and figure out what they do. Every different thing you jump into, from a different industry standpoint, it has its own little knack. and its own little way of working that’s just completely different. The IT feels different because it’s built around different business processes and different ways of doing things. You almost feel like you’re joining a new club, so to speak, right? Right,

Speaker 1 | 14:42.423

but there’s some constant that’s in there. Your hardware is relatively all the same. your laptops, your desktop, your servers, your switches, your Wi-Fi’s, your routers, your firewalls, they’re all the same. They’re just being used for different things. So, you know, changing industries for IT people to me is relatively easy because the only thing that really changes is the process. I mean, you know, Cisco is configured the same way this organization is that organization. You might add additional policies or, you know, processes for dealing with issues. But, you know, it’s going to be the same.

Speaker 0 | 15:21.992

Well, and you bring up a good point because sometimes the. process can be the more challenging part of the entire thing, right? Layering IT down, as you mentioned, pretty standard most of the time, especially when best practices are laid out. Correct. But when you have different customizations because of different business processes and have to take that into account when it comes to security and the way that things are configured and uh especially if you’ve got a system that’s not designed to do something that around a business process um you can run into a lot of challenges yes opportunities opportunities yeah no that’s actually that’s a really good point um i i absolutely love you know we go back to your solve it right the uh it’s the same it’s the same thing any any uh problem any issue any challenge is really just an opportunity that’s not been taken advantage of yet. Right. So it’s a great it’s a great way to look and it’s a great kind of way to look at anything that stands in front of you and accept it. An interesting issue, interesting thought here about about this. But I want to. I want to stop for a minute and I want to jump back to Huddle or Huddle 3 group. I want to understand what you’re doing there at that company.

Speaker 1 | 17:07.723

Right now doing hardware deployments. But my role here is at Huddle 3, we’re the parent company for one, two, three, four other companies. So we’re the corporate organization and we provide the accounting, the IT and the HR shared services for the companies that we own. So I guide and set the standards for all of those businesses when it comes to solutions, to software that they utilize for the business, the hardware, security, those type of things.

Speaker 0 | 17:52.468

Let me ask you a question. Are these businesses roughly all in the same industry?

Speaker 1 | 18:03.116

Different. We own one software company and in the other companies are HR, leadership consulting, and recruiting.

Speaker 0 | 18:15.466

Okay. So now we get back to an earlier discussion that we just had. Right. Which is, you know, trying to apply universal IT, right, to different and disparate organizations and industries. So, OK, so now we have another fun thing to talk about. Right. How are you doing that?

Speaker 1 | 18:44.049

So, you know, I got to create a base standard that goes across all of the businesses and then I tweak them. based on the business or the customer’s demands at each of those businesses. So I work with the CEOs of each of those companies to tweak it, but I do provide the base. You know, there’s a base image that goes on all of the machines. There’s standard set of software that I manage and control and buy and license and make sure that goes, you know, goes. Accordingly to all of the businesses, any requests or any orders, hardware or software, it has to come through me so that they’re not buying things themselves.

Speaker 0 | 19:35.637

If they don’t want that shadow IT,

Speaker 1 | 19:37.998

that’ll pop up,

Speaker 0 | 19:39.940

right?

Speaker 1 | 19:41.080

And if somebody in that organization finds new software or if they go to a conference and they see something cool and they want it vetted, then they contact me and I work with them in vetting out. you know variety of uh vendors potential vendors very nice uh that’s um

Speaker 0 | 19:58.578

And so how does that conversation go? Right? Because someone sees a shiny object, right? Yep. And they come to you and be like, this is going to solve all of our problems. And so what is your method in helping them understand what the implementation strategy would be so that they can understand that, hey, this software, I love the idea because it got you.

Speaker 1 | 20:27.838

thinking right but like right there’s other things to consider here correct um one i get one is i asked them what problem are they trying to solve you know or are or are they is this going to be a new offering that they’re going to have you know they got to fry the business case around that and then i look at the portfolio of stuff that we currently have whether it’s at corporate or in other companies and see if there’s any other software or platform that already does that so that you know if hey if we’re already using it somewhere else let’s just think you know let’s just get additional licensing and let these guys use it over here um and then as we go through that i then reach out to the other companies and say do you guys does anybody else have a need for this type of system or this type of you know process or software. And if nobody does, and it’s still just with that one group, I then research and see if there’s other competitors, and then we’ll put them up against two or three. We’ll do demos, you know, we’ll test it for, you know, two or three weeks, however long we can get licensing for, and then decide from there which

Speaker 0 | 21:55.050

we actually would want to use you know i love that process and it’s such a methodical one that takes and considered so many things um one of the things i saw that was really really smart enough and that was to reach out to the other companies and see if they had a need for that software as well what what a great idea because then you might increase the volume license uh right and or the subscription license which might give you a deal you might solve another one of their issues that they didn’t even know they had. You’re implementing it anyway, might as well implement it for the entirety if that’s the case. That is a really, really smart way to do this. Additionally, it sounds like you also in that process also kind of you’re understanding if there’s a similar software at one of those other companies already implemented that maybe…

Speaker 1 | 22:53.662

they could use as well we can use we can tweak uh to complete whatever they’re looking for you know we’ve had a couple instances that way you know where somebody wanted to buy this software and it was this much and like what you know what microsoft already has a software similar to that we’re already playing for our 365 you know licensing it’s included you know and far be it from them to know this right i mean because this is what

Speaker 0 | 23:23.342

we do, right? So we know what’s going on in the tech industry. We know where the offerings are, and we can’t expect that the users will notice, right? That’s not their forte. That’s not what they do every day. And it’s smart that they lean on you and your team here to be able to give them that advice. It’s very smart. And it’s nice that you have that ability. Some folks aren’t as lucky. And to be able to centralize that type of thinking, even in one business, you could have multiple departments competing over different applications to use, you know, and, you know, it can turn out to be such a, it can turn out to be rough to try and, you know, stick, stick yourself in the middle of it and try and work through that. So I know that a lot of people I’ve talked to have. uh they’ve experienced similar situations i’m sure you have too yeah yeah not necessarily there like other places right other other places there’s yeah bad dreams we should move on no um so uh so let’s talk about um let’s talk about something that uh um this day and age it’s it’s so crucial and And it also has become more complicated a little bit because of these hybrid environments that we’re in, business continuity and disaster recovery. Right. Business continuity, the ability for a for a company to continue operations when an event occurs and disaster recovery, the ability to recover from a long lasting disaster and move over to your disaster recovery plans and your failover to be able to keep moving if it’s deemed a disaster. These are two major components. uh and um and i i speak to businesses all the time and these are not filled out these are not you know not even from an i.t perspective but from like a personnel perspective going a business perspective so um what is your methodology when it comes to working with companies and helping them understand it doesn’t necessarily have to be the company you’re at right now but i mean even in the past right um you know what what is your methodology you’ve used to help them understand and help them get to a point where they are covered from a business continuity and disaster recovery standpoint?

Speaker 1 | 26:09.724

Yeah. Well, one of the first things I do is I have meetings with my boss, the CEO, once a week. And so we go over things that are important to him, and then we go over things that are important to me. And some of the things that come up is security, business continuity, those type of things. So when he asks, when your boss or your leaders ask, well, what is it? Because sometimes they don’t understand what goes into a business continuity plan or a disaster recovery plan. You’ve got to be able to explain that. you know you use some things that you might have seen in the news or you read about you know uh you know when when like aws eastern region goes offline and you know all of a sudden you can’t buy what you’re you’re looking for until you know all of those uh connections get transferred to one of their other data centers and you know pacific northwest those type of things So what I go over with executives is, you know, how long, asking that question is how long can you survive before it starts hurting? You know, before your bottom line starts just dropping, where you start losing money. How long can you survive? You know, what are your pinch points? Is it one hour? Is it two hours? Three hours? Four hours? Can you go for it? What is your IPO?

Speaker 0 | 27:55.411

Yep.

Speaker 1 | 27:55.984

Yeah, absolutely. So you start developing those plans based on service level agreements, your customer contracts, whatever it might be. And then just make sure that, one, you have backups. I hope there isn’t any companies out there that doesn’t have any sort of backups, whether it’s on tape or in the cloud, just at least have them. And that they’re checked every now and then make sure that. they actually are backing up and you can restore from um you know i’ve seen instances where yeah you know it’s backing up and you go try to restore there’s nothing there um you know what i ever checked because the backup software never informed them that you know you weren’t backing up anything that’s a great but it’s a great point your backup is only as good as your latest restore right so and you know from an id perspective you you’ve got to make sure those are in place and that you test you know whether it’s uh once a quarter twice you know once every six months whatever it is you you’ve got to do uh tests on your your whole plan you know i mean you don’t have to do disaster recovery and business continuity every quarter maybe once a year but you want to test your backups uh at least regularly make sure that it’s accessible and you know you It’s there if you need them. I know there’s a lot of companies now, you know, moving a lot of their disaster recovery things online and away from just having on-prem. I mean, here, I move everything online. We have no servers on-prem at all in any of our businesses. Everything is all cloud-based. We’re a complete SaaS organization. multiple clouds, you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket in AWS or Azure. you know from a disaster recovery or business continuity you want to have that you want to have a backup because if microsoft goes down you want to make sure you can get to aws if aws goes down you want to make sure you can get to google or however it might be and testing that is important too exactly exactly you

Speaker 0 | 30:18.020

know it’s it’s interesting because when i leave the house every day right um i go to lock the uh the front door and then uh i don’t just walk away, right? I jiggle the handle to make sure it’s locked. Then I walk away, right? And I’ve done this, you know, for the better part of my entire adult life, right? And because you just have to jiggle that handle once and a door open up that you go, oh, I need to check that, right? I mean, that’s like this most in the most simplest form, what we’re doing with the backups. and your disaster recovery, right? I mean, you’re essentially jiggling the door to make sure it’s locked.

Speaker 1 | 31:01.457

Yep. And if you’re a company that has offices east to west, it’s good to have backups and whatnot, vice versa of your east coast on your west. And, you know, because if the eastern seaboard goes offline, everybody can connect over to the west or the west can continue working. You know, you don’t want to have… just all your data center data and all that stuff in one region and everybody in the other side of the country has to traverse all the way across it’s just you know you’ve got a lot of latency and then when an issue occurs and your whole your whole operation goes down

Speaker 0 | 31:39.179

I agree yeah it’s good it’s a good point very good point yeah so um uh uh these are these are great methods from from the IT standpoint um do you ever help them dive in to the business business related portions of uh business continuity and disaster recovery uh the personnel and uh uh you know and and where they it should be at all or and help guide them in that way way um yes

Speaker 1 | 32:10.520

I’m starting to do a lot more of that uh and right now I’m doing that with our um cyber security cyber response incident response um where you know people are being tasked with certain things because their normal day-to-day is communications, if they’re a communications director. Well, if we’ve got an incident response thing, I’m going to tag them. They’re going to be tagged to communicate whatever information the CEO wants to get out to the rest of the employees. So working with the executive team to help them understand and identify. key personnel for security incidents, a security response team for cyber security. I go, we’re going to need one for disaster recovery and business continuity as well. It could be the same person or it could be a completely different person. Small organizations, you’re going to have a person that’s going to have multiple hats. That’s a given. But in larger organizations, you can have completely different teams.

Speaker 0 | 33:23.168

That’s very true. It’s very true. And sometimes that’s not, sometimes that even isn’t the most ideal spot. They end up competing against each other.

Speaker 1 | 33:35.854

Right. I mean, somebody’s got to orchestrate. I mean, right now I play the role of, you know, CISO as well as CIO.

Speaker 0 | 33:47.280

So there’s just a lot of internal debate going on between myself.

Speaker 1 | 33:53.124

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 33:57.347

I wanted to ask you about this because, and I’m not familiar, and I love learning new things and being familiar. I am familiar with ITIL, right? But then you put in lean methodologies to achieve cost savings and efficiencies in IT and business processes. And now I’m intrigued. I have not been exposed to lean.

Speaker 1 | 34:22.768

you want to you’re familiar with six sigma right yes yes okay and six sigma when you when most people most people know it’s around manufacturing yeah introducing you know your overall cost production based on these principles well lean is a subset of six sigma but it’s geared around i.t related things kind of like what idle is a framework for you know for for it related things lean is taking the principles of like six sigma and refining it for the IT industry.

Speaker 0 | 35:05.093

Well, this, okay. So now we’ve got some interesting things going on. So this is, I had not known this. This is new to me. Obviously, I have a very, very high level viewpoint of Six Sigma and its origin and how it started. But, and the fact that there’s, that they have different belts. I love that. Being a martial artist, I absolutely love they have different belts there. But. but let’s but no let’s talk about let’s talk about lean let’s talk about what that what that means and how you’ve used it to um reduced uh absolutely reduce costs and improve efficiencies part of the the thing yeah i’m sure you’ve probably seen is you know when when most people see a picture of a computer room it’s

Speaker 1 | 35:47.449

just a spaghetti of cables yes nothing’s labeled things just run across well part of what this whole you know with with lean is ensuring that that stuff doesn’t happen, that all those cables are marked, identified, and you know where they’re going, so that it’s nice and clean, so that if there’s ever an issue, you’re not spending four hours trying to track a cable down in a computer room, you know exactly where it’s at. So you’re going to improve your response time in that respect. And then just having one, you know, computer rooms are supposed to be clutter-free. You know, like if you go to a large data center, you’re not allowed any paper products, any of these other things within your page.

Speaker 0 | 36:38.611

You know, I had I had so many data centers and I would and I would go into them. And despite my me telling people not to put boxes there, they would always be. And I’m like, always be. Why is there a box? And when you put in, you know, they go to put a server in, they pop the server and they leave the empty box. Then. the empty box becomes a bin to put other stuff in. Like if you put a box somewhere, someone’s going to be like, well, I need to fill this box up with something.

Speaker 1 | 37:07.395

So you’ve got to take it out. You put it in, you can take all that stuff out. You’re not using, it’s just minimizing.

Speaker 0 | 37:14.478

Not to have the dust, but also the clutter that just, I have to fill something up.

Speaker 1 | 37:22.101

And then having enough spare parts in place so that if you’ve got an issue, you don’t have to to wait and order uh so you know like if you’ve got servers that have multiple fans power supplies you want to have extra parts for those things so that you have them on hand um so that if there’s an issue you can quickly replace them uh without having to send things out so that’s that’s all part of that whole lean mentality is you know keeping everything clean every place has a every

Speaker 0 | 37:56.708

piece of equipment has a place and purpose um and then having you know spare parts for your critical things uh so that it minimizes downtime very nice very nice that’s it and that’s a great a great way to look at it so and and actually that makes some complete sense with the name right run it lean oh that’s that’s a that’s a new uh a new one for me but it but it sounds It sounds like it’s got a sound judgment to it. It makes sense. When you start to put it together.

Speaker 1 | 38:36.019

It’s hard. It is hard for, I don’t know whether it’s a mindset thing. It is hard for IT teams to really stick to it. When you tell your technicians, please label the cables, make sure they’re the right length, and put back the tools where they need to go. it’s it’s difficult you know because they’ll run in and then they’ll just connect it they’ll forget to put the Velcro back on so that it’s you know nice and tidy uh and then the screwdriver is left right there or

Speaker 0 | 39:11.690

whatever it is it’s like it’s it’s difficult you know um why do you think shortcuts happen a lot with uh folks in IT Because it’s not necessarily because people are lazy, because they work really hard. A lot of IT folks I know, they work really hard, really long hours, really tough. Do you think that contributes to the?

Speaker 1 | 39:39.974

You know, I don’t know. I mean, shortcuts in doing your job, I think sometimes, you know, we want that quick. you know knock out the low-hanging fruit that quick solution so if we do it oh it’s done and they kind of just walk away like well yeah it’s done but

Speaker 0 | 40:01.906

it could have been done better you know um do you think that there’s a do you think that maybe there’s a um a a failure to outline what done means uh yes i think there’s ever people have different

Speaker 1 | 40:17.839

definitions for done and clean um and and tidy you know it’s yeah it’s that people have different different meaning it’s interesting so it might be a uh

Speaker 0 | 40:31.014

it might be a subjective thing where if we’re allowing done to be subjective then of course it’s going to be different for every person yeah yeah yeah yeah I’ve had yeah I’ve had IT people that yeah they’re all you hire them and they all do supposed

Speaker 1 | 40:49.689

to do the same thing but when you see it in the sites that they’re in the way they do things is is different some are neater than others um some are better documenters than others you know in the way they document what they’re doing other folks are just one word one word answers or they just don’t document they keep it all in their head um you know we have had some that were knowledge brokers um which are that’s one of my pet peeves i i really don’t like knowledge brokers from an i.t perspective expand on that because i know i think i know what you mean but expand on that so the audience understands It’s someone trying to hoard all of the knowledge to themselves, like making themselves feel more important than they really are, because they are. If you need something, you’ve got to go to them. I go, well, you know that you get hit by a bus. This business has to keep going.

Speaker 0 | 41:45.561

So it’s a way never to get promoted.

Speaker 1 | 41:49.043

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 41:50.664

Like, I mean, I never understood someone. hoarding information and then being like, yeah, this is what I do. I made myself super critical. Yeah. And that one spot, like you’ll never move on because everyone’s going to pass you over going, well, he has all the information, so I can’t, I can’t move him along.

Speaker 1 | 42:10.417

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 42:11.658

So it’s actually to their detriment when, when folks do that. Right.

Speaker 1 | 42:17.082

It is, but there’s still quite a bit out there. You still run into them where it’s like. they don’t want to put it on paper so that they can share it with the rest of their teammates it’s like okay they got to take it home with them it’s like really come on yes they’re knowledge brokers i’m like share the more you share information the better our environment becomes i mean that’s you know one of my things i like training people to know as much as they can including end users because if you train your end users to where they’re self-sufficient in fixing the minor issues you can concentrate on the big things, you know, developing new products, developing new processes, developing, you know, playing with new toys and technology, those type of things, as opposed to trying to help someone, you know, move their icon from this side to the other. You know, you want to be able to train your end users to be self-sufficient and solve their own things, like reboot. Yeah, I mean, how many things does a reboot fix? you’ll get a half a dozen tickets every day but it’s like have you tried rebooting no you know so if you continuously work with your environment and your end users say hey you know if it’s not working go ahead and try restarting your machine and get that through there so then they can fix minor things themselves you

Speaker 0 | 43:39.611

can focus on the bigger bigger picture which is moving the company forward i think you’re right i think empowering the end users to a certain degree is a fantastic way training them empowering them We know that you can do this because it is the basis of security awareness training. And there’s a multitude of companies out there that offer it because it is so effective at making sure that people don’t click on bad links and don’t download things you’re not supposed to and can identify when things don’t seem right. We know that you can provide that training to end users and they improve. So why not for everything else? It makes complete sense. You know, it absolutely does. Let’s talk about and go to our last segment, which is the IT crystal ball, the future of IT. And. I said, this is interesting one because we, you know, we talked about a lot of different things. Um, and we talked about, um, uh, lots of, we were all over the board on this, uh, on this podcast. And that’s a great thing too, because I wanted to cover a lot of your stuff on here. Cause you had had it on here. Um, let’s take your experience that you’ve had in varying different. um uh uh Industries and and and such and knowing that you have a the you know the multitude of different technology platforms you’ve worked for I started work with um where do you think we are headed um when it comes to uh the uh uh varying and different technology platforms that we have out here we have we have aging to I’ll set this up a little bit so you can kind of talk um We have aging technology. We have new technology, a multitude of new technology. Every day there’s a new web SaaS app that just opens the door and it’s the newest thing that you need to see. We’re connecting it in with massive amounts of integrations to both hybrid on-premise solutions that are also connected to the cloud. It just seems like this web of integrated systems just keeps growing and growing. Where is this going? Benny, tell us where is this going?

Speaker 1 | 46:15.863

My my personal thought where it’s going, you know, at some point, I think from a system perspective, you’re going to get a convergence of systems. I mean, when you just take, for example, Windows and Apple, when you look at those two operating systems, they’re beginning to look and feel the same.

Speaker 0 | 46:36.351

That’s very true.

Speaker 1 | 46:37.876

So it’s, you know, at some point down the road, I think, you know, from an operating system perspective, it’s going to come to a convergence and we need one or two, you know, across multiple across systems and systems being able to handle, you know, whether this new OS or multiple OSs. I think there’s going to be a lot of edge computing, moving a lot of stuff to the edge as opposed to being hard ridden in the data center or in somebody’s office. a lot of stuff in the cloud. The one thing that does excite me, I think, from an IT perspective, is encompassing all of the AI stuff. That’s going to be huge. And I’m looking forward to utilizing that as a tool. A lot of people are scared and thinking it’s going to replace me. I go, no, it’s a tool and use it as a tool. If you think it’s going to replace you, then it’s going to replace you. But if you use it as a tool as intended um I think one it can really enhance what you’re providing to your customers and to you know to to your employees uh could make your day a lot easier um you know um and and just a variety of different types of products I mean everything to me is going to be integrated at some point you know from your homes I mean, you’ve got smart homes already, but I think it’s just going to end up getting even more embedded into your homes, your vehicles. It’d be nice if the infrastructure kind of met the vehicles. You’ve got autonomous driving in vehicles, but I don’t think that will really take off until the infrastructure, like the highways and the roads, will also have technology that’ll help guide those vehicles.

Speaker 0 | 48:31.282

And we’ve been lacking in that regard. infrastructure standpoint and connecting to them yeah there has really not been a lot of innovation from the infrastructure side of the house because the infrastructure itself is crumbling so correct and this would be a great time to replace it with with uh you know with roads you know that we’re able to you know identify it’d be nice i mean it centers in there and right

Speaker 1 | 48:59.263

i mean if you’re here in southern california they’re always working on these freeways i mean i’ve been living here since 98. And there’s always construction every year I’ve been here. I’m going, what are you guys doing? You know, I’m thinking, okay, they’re lying. They’re embedding sensors in there for, nope, they’re just digging holes and putting more concrete.

Speaker 0 | 49:20.302

They could be doing so much more.

Speaker 1 | 49:22.403

So much more. But, you know, those types of things, I think, will really integrate. I think the phones, I can’t even call them phones anymore because it’s more. a computer with the ability to call um yeah that’s true you know because it’s it’s more camera you like a phone with your camera uh these days but i think it’s it’s you know that’s going to change because there hasn’t been you know i know iphone 15 like just released you know but there hasn’t been really anything new in in that really in that respect from from a design perspective or even a technology perspective i think that’s gonna go through a change. I think more things will end up on a body. or wearables will kick in a place to where it’s part of you. And yeah.

Speaker 0 | 50:20.604

I think you summed it up perfectly. You’re seeing what a lot of other people are seeing too, which is we’re stalling out in technology in various different ways. And we’re reaching a point where something’s got to give and there’s got to be a new. something new that catapults us forward, right? And I think you said it right with convergence. There’s got to be something with a convergence that’s going to happen that’s going to propel the industry forward. And I think you’re right. I think you’re right, Benny. Nerds, this is Michael Moore and I’ve been hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds with our person here, Benny Jones, who’s a vice president of technology. at huddle three group benny thank you so much for uh joining us thank you and uh i really appreciate it uh i hope you have a uh a wonderful time and uh please come on again we’ll do thanks michael