Speaker 0 | 00:09.602

All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today, for the first time, I’m meeting the famous David Park, who has been blocking me on LinkedIn forever. He still does not accept my connections. I understand it. It’s kind of like the… We always have the no soliciting sign up. You’re probably not even doing that on purpose. Or you blocked me years ago because I was harassing you for some reason. It happens.

Speaker 1 | 00:37.392

I figured after you ditched me the first two times.

Speaker 0 | 00:42.435

Oh, that’s what happened. See? See? I’m human. I’m only human. I ditched people. This is terrible. Now the truth is coming out. The truth is coming out. There’s so much to talk about. First of all, you loved computer-aided drafting growing up. And… high school. Why? What was, and first of all, just for the sake of a timeline, because I think we, I do have on my, in my notebook to talk to you about a specific timeline, uh, AKA roadmap, but what was, what did you, what was computer aided drafting? What did that look? What did CAD look like in your high school years? I lost your voice. I lost your techno. Wait, this is, this is a technology show by the way. Did I do something? Maybe I did something. No, I don’t believe so. Okay, we’re back after minor technical difficulties in technology. Zoom’s had many updates lately that have screwed me up. I don’t know about you. It screwed me up a little bit. Do you Zoom a lot where you’re at?

Speaker 1 | 01:45.818

No, we’re mostly Teams here.

Speaker 0 | 01:47.438

Good, good. And we’re on a Microsoft platform, LinkedIn anyways, so we can bash. Well, no, we shouldn’t bash Zoom. They’re close friends of mine. But… I do feel five years from now, many people will be using Teams. Maybe we can figure out a way to all work together and live in happiness. You know, Google will still be around. Anywho, I kind of asked people, how did you get started in technology? What was your first computer? You loved CAD. What did that look like back in the day? Talk to me about back in time.

Speaker 1 | 02:19.212

Yeah, so CAD was in our shop room at the time. Um, so you walked in and you’d have… half a dozen computers with those big, I don’t know if you remember them, but big, like 18 inch pads that had the, uh, each divided up into like four squares with buttons all around it or, um, not buttons, but, uh, little icons all around the edges. And you had to pick a four button mouse and depending on which way you click on the mouse on the icon, it would start the line or do whatever. Um,

Speaker 0 | 02:52.509

no, this is fascinating. I never had that. I wasn’t that cool. I do remember shop class. we didn’t have this in shop class. So you guys actually, like I remember shop class, which was like pull out the book, the paper book and find what you were going to make in that book. And then it never really came out like the way that it should have.

Speaker 1 | 03:09.295

It should have. Yeah. Yeah. So I was actually surprised, especially looking back how advanced that little high school was. Cause it’s just a little town in the middle of nowhere, like a couple thousand people at the time is probably even less now. But for that size, it was actually pretty well. advanced because we had like half a dozen computers and there’s a pen plotter um it literally picks up what year was this i i don’t mean to reveal you but what year was this 94 is

Speaker 0 | 03:38.417

95 okay good okay good so can i take a guess at your age yeah 43

Speaker 1 | 03:49.722

41 see

Speaker 0 | 03:53.284

And I’m just guessing based on the year in high school. I’m not guessed on based on what everyone cannot see right now via Zoom. You can have a guess in mind if that makes you feel better. Maybe I can reveal some of the gray in my beard here.

Speaker 1 | 04:07.034

I’d guess about 40.

Speaker 0 | 04:09.595

Oh, thank you. See, you took a much more conservative approach. I’m 45. And I dye the beard, so that’s probably another reason. Okay. So anyways, advanced high school plotting. How did he get that one? He must have been good at asking for the budget. How did shop teacher get this?

Speaker 1 | 04:33.249

I have absolutely no idea.

Speaker 0 | 04:35.351

This is amazing.

Speaker 1 | 04:36.792

I was impressed.

Speaker 0 | 04:39.194

Okay. So what’d you build?

Speaker 1 | 04:42.797

We drew various parts, like little angles or brackets for… stuff to attach we didn’t actually build the parts that we drew in cad we just drew them um parts We had to go to actual shop class to actually build the parts. Cool. One thing I did build and shop before that was a battery terminal puller.

Speaker 0 | 05:10.705

Okay.

Speaker 1 | 05:11.686

I still have it around here somewhere.

Speaker 0 | 05:13.307

Oh, that’s cool. I can see in the background that you’re a billiards fan.

Speaker 1 | 05:18.931

Yes,

Speaker 0 | 05:19.271

indeed. How long has that table been around?

Speaker 1 | 05:22.434

Since we moved into this house, so about five years.

Speaker 0 | 05:25.116

Billiards took a… Billiards was one of the industries that did not take a hit during COVID. Just FYI, everybody. It is doing very, very well during the pandemic. Go figure. Makes sense. All right, so we have this CAD experience in high school. And for all of the people that listen to this show understand. understand what this means. They understand that age. Everyone can remember back. I can remember 95. Well, first of all, I graduated in 95. So, and I stayed back in first grade, so I probably should have graduated in 94. So everyone remembers the, like when the Pentium came out, everyone knows loading windows with like win.exe. People know DV, like what a CD ROM is and people weren’t able to write. You weren’t able to write CDs. And then eventually you could write on CDs and that was like this amazing thing in high-speed dubbing stuff like this uh people don’t it’s it I could talk about this stuff um for a long time but there was no back then you really were a nerd like you were like if you did all this stuff you were like a real nerd now it’s like a it’s like a praise it’s like a praiseworthy thing nowadays but back then it was like I hope so

Speaker 1 | 06:48.871

I didn’t feel so back then I’ll tell you

Speaker 0 | 06:52.673

I was not a popular kid. I really was not. Believe it or not, I really was not. I walked down the hallways with my head down, terrified. Yes, I was terrified of getting a wedgie. Still, I really was. I remember this one kid got a wedgie, and it was an awful, awful thing. I am going there right now. I shouldn’t have shotgunned that rock star earlier. It’s for everyone to see on LinkedIn. I really did do it. So if you’re in technology and you went through that era, it says a lot because you really believe in… You, you, you really, you have a love for it. It’s not like you chose technology because, Hey, this is a good idea. I’m going to make money in it. There was no, there was no guarantee you were going to make money in this field back then. There was no, there really was no guarantee. So if you’re in it, like, like you were really in it because you like it. So did you have any idea like, this is how I’m going to build my career in technology?

Speaker 1 | 08:05.882

No, honestly. Uh, I did not. So, you know, I went through that. I actually, so I, I did the cat stuff in high school. And then for reasons I still don’t understand myself, I went to college for music education.

Speaker 0 | 08:26.132

Oh yeah. Well, no, we all understand. We all understand that I was gonna be famous. I was gonna be a rock star. Yeah. That was good enough.

Speaker 1 | 08:34.180

You got it.

Speaker 0 | 08:35.701

yeah and then someone tells you at some point you didn’t have a father that was smart enough to tell you like son you’re not good enough that’s stupid i had a yeah that was what my father did i got a full ride have a scholarship no you’re not doing it i had my and luckily i had an older brother that tried to do that and failed miserably and then he went to harvard and became a computer software engineer so there you go anywho All right. So you went to, we all know why you went to do that. Anyone can really, I mean, I mean, come on. So anyways, go, I got to hear the rest of this story.

Speaker 1 | 09:09.896

Yeah. I failed at that. Well, I didn’t say failed. I just didn’t, you know, it helps to go to class instead of play pool. So I moved on to a drafting school. So I was continuing back to CAD again.

Speaker 0 | 09:23.722

Fail forward.

Speaker 1 | 09:25.062

Yep. Pretty much. And then I got my job at the first engineering firm part-time while I was in school. And then I actually never finished that degree. I just started working full time eventually because they kept bugging me. Cool. And that’s really how I got started. And it just took it from there piece by piece. I really got into the process of it and the configuration because one of the things as CAD progresses in age, it gets more and more entwined with IT. People who manage that software are usually part of an IT team or very closely knit with them because of all the things it entails, permissions and files and places you got to save files. So it just kind of grew from there where I was a small shop. And Actually, when I started there, speaking of old stuff, when I first started there, they had a Unix box running an older CAD software that we had to retire.

Speaker 0 | 10:42.466

Excellent.

Speaker 1 | 10:44.347

So, yeah, I just did that. And then. As each job went on after that, I became more and more into technology, better computers. I really like the process part of it and understanding how companies need to use the software or what they’re trying to do with it and then figure out the best way for that to happen. Sometimes it’s using the software as is intended and there’s been a few times where it’s um you just try something out of the box it happens to work and you got to be able to experiment give me an example of that why would we do that and i and i ask from a very skeptical standpoint of

Speaker 0 | 11:32.061

In IT, we shouldn’t make decisions, which is what I was going to get to, which is how do you make a roadmap? Sounds like a dumb question, but really, how do you put together a good technology roadmap? So my skepticism around that would be, why would you ever try a product without knowing first the solution that you need to design?

Speaker 1 | 11:51.309

So it’s not trying a product, it’s using the product you have in a different way to achieve a result.

Speaker 0 | 11:58.572

Which isn’t what we all do. Isn’t that what your end users do? Don’t you give your end users something? You give your end users something and they just, you’re like, whoa, like, no. Yes.

Speaker 1 | 12:12.176

Why did you do that? Because.

Speaker 0 | 12:15.356

Okay. Now I have insight into how humans work. Very scary. We should do a show that’s just things end users do that shock the world.

Speaker 2 | 12:28.360

Okay.

Speaker 1 | 12:30.493

So that would be hilarious. It’s on show.

Speaker 0 | 12:32.835

Writing that down. Things end users do that shock the world. Okay. Where were we? Using a product.

Speaker 1 | 12:42.162

So he talks about creating a technology roadmap.

Speaker 0 | 12:44.124

Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 | 12:45.825

And I guess I could think of a few different scenarios. You’re just talking in general?

Speaker 0 | 12:53.772

Okay. So, you know, sometimes I just pick apart people’s… Okay. I pick apart people’s LinkedIn profile like a recruiter would do and not really like Phil Howard would do, which is thinking, how would this be valuable to other people listening to the show? And what buzzwords is David just throwing out there into the ether? And one of them is, well, two things on here that really stand out. One, you have a highly… highly functioning form of autism, which I would have never guessed. And number two, and you can pick whichever one you want to talk about first, which is I’m developing a technology roadmap, which is one of those buzzwords that we throw out there. Why is that important? And how should people go about it? And is there some kind of like strategy or process behind it?

Speaker 1 | 13:53.136

So the strategy, a technology roadmap, is the path that you take with a company’s technology in order to achieve their overall business objectives. So you have to talk to your leadership and figure out, okay, what is the company doing? Are they, for example, growth? Take growth as an example. They want to add 35 people in the next year. They want to add 100 people in the next two years. In the next five years, they want to be 500 people, right? Well, technology investments are expensive enough and such that you want to use it for as long a time as you can to get your return on investment. So I can’t plan for, hey, we’re going to have 35 people this year and just kind of… be in that little myopic viewpoint and say, okay, that’s all we need to address. We need to look three, four, five years down the road and say, okay, where are we going to be? So that as you work towards that, the technology supports that growth.

Speaker 0 | 15:09.326

uh myopic please please describe what you mean by that sometimes we speak over you know again sometimes when we speak to executive management we need to speak in a way that is less i don’t know short-sighted we should always speak at a fifth grade level i’m told told we should write at a fifth grade level and we should speak at a fifth grade level right because when we when we because I have a creative writing degree, so I can throw out all kinds of words. But then I’ve had people tell me, Phil, no, you need to write at a fifth grade level. I’m like, okay. So I go through and I start crossing out words like myopic because you lost 50% of the people in the room that were too afraid to say, I have no clue what that means. And they just nod their head and they’re like, yeah, whoa, yeah. Yeah, seriously, dude. They make it. Yeah. And yet you are 99% of the way of explaining the most basic, keep it simple, stupid methodology around. First, you need to talk to people. Then you need to find out what they want and they’re trying to accomplish. And then you need to find the technology that is going to last the longest and perform the best to make something happen, which is those goals and aspirations and everything that they want to do. And I’m assuming somewhere there you might want to say, are you sure you want to do that? Or would it be better if we could do this? Or what if we could do this? Is there any of that that comes into play?

Speaker 1 | 16:42.702

Sure. I try to.

Speaker 0 | 16:49.265

Sorry, you can tell that I have, if you have a high, a high level functioning autism, I have a very bad level functioning of like. you know ocd or jumping from just top to topic and and really not staying focused to ask at all so uh let’s go back to myopic what does that mean short-sighted oh thank you ironic um okay okay um so back to the plan um so you you take the you would ask about you know how

Speaker 1 | 17:26.998

You might ask them if they’ll do this or we’re better off doing that. So I try, I’ve done it a few times a couple of different ways. And as long as the solution is cost effective, I try not to give them too many options because I’ll present the best. path that I think works for what they’re trying to do. I may have a backup plan sort of ready in case they just cough up a lung at what I’m proposing a cost wise, but I generally try not to give them more options than they need because then you get into that, like they get drug into the technical discussion of it because it’s really easy for, at least in the industry I’m in, there’s an engineering. Engineers like to get into the detail very quickly. And so you try and stay more broad scope.

Speaker 0 | 18:31.500

Wait a second.

Speaker 1 | 18:32.041

As much as you can.

Speaker 0 | 18:33.321

Are you saying you report to a bunch of engineers?

Speaker 1 | 18:36.443

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 18:37.243

Oh, oh, oh God. Is my fire alarm really going off right now? That’s terrible. Hold on. Let’s pause for a commercial break. This is, I have kids. They burn stuff in the toaster oven. Well, they’re good. you know i can tell you what’s going on right now and i’m not even there they have a broom and they’re fanning what is going on and they are fanning the the um one second we’re gonna pause for a moment i’m gonna mark i’m gonna mark this level i’m marking this area hold on watch or shut them all up that’s so real doesn’t get realer than that um okay still going cool um Okay, so you record. I’m sorry?

Speaker 1 | 19:57.091

I thought you were just censoring yourself.

Speaker 0 | 20:02.994

I found out that, so I record off the board now to an SD card. I don’t use Zoom recording anymore. And I found out the other day that. when I hit mute on Zoom, I should have known this, but the thought came to my mind, wait a second, every time I yell at my kids and I hit mute on Zoom, it’s probably not muting my microphone because I’m not hitting mute off the soundboard. So there’s like 10 episodes out there of me screaming at my kids. They’re just like, be quiet, I’m recording. And one of my, you know, and so someone actually was listening fairly in depth and was like, hey, you know, um did you mean to have like uh hey be quiet i’m recording in the background and i was like oh that was a mild one oh gosh and uh yeah so i did like a little poll the other day like should i edit like the last four listen to like you know 40 hours of episodes and edit out streaming like you know i had to do like a survey and like 73 said you know no like screw it we’ll laugh and like 29 had the audacity to say yes you Go back and edit this stuff.

Speaker 1 | 21:14.238

They must not have a life.

Speaker 0 | 21:15.499

You’re done. And here we are.

Speaker 1 | 21:21.203

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 21:24.466

Alright, so you report to a bunch of engineers. Wait, do you work for Columbia University?

Speaker 1 | 21:29.290

No. I work for a civil engineering firm in the Minneapolis area.

Speaker 0 | 21:33.874

There’s just another David Park that I’m mixing you up with right now. Amazing. So I asked you a bunch of dumb questions. So you don’t have a high form of autism. I do.

Speaker 1 | 21:46.162

No, I do.

Speaker 0 | 21:47.123

All right. So we do have that. So I’m just mixing up all my notes. So this is so loud and disturbing. What is wrong with my kids?

Speaker 2 | 21:56.729

So the,

Speaker 0 | 22:00.111

um, okay. So you report to a bunch of engineers. So the autism helps. I’m assuming there. Uh,

Speaker 1 | 22:06.454

yes and no. It depends.

Speaker 0 | 22:08.796

So a lot of the engineers then might give you arrogant stares. Do you ever get arrogant stares and questions and get grilled?

Speaker 1 | 22:16.942

Once in a while, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 22:18.283

Okay, and I don’t mean that in a way. I come from a family of highly functioning engineers. Like no tunnel vision, like I’m only set on one thing type of… Do you find… Is this true or false? Many engineers have… Kind of like a tunnel vision solution and can’t step out of the box and empathize with other human beings.

Speaker 1 | 22:43.638

I would say there’s higher tendency than other professions.

Speaker 0 | 22:47.139

I’ve had engineers tell me I had to learn empathy. I had to learn how to listen to other people.

Speaker 1 | 22:53.921

Yeah, certainly when it comes to the engineering part and the design part, they’ve got a concept of what they want. It’s hard to convince them otherwise sometimes.

Speaker 0 | 23:03.264

Okay, so this is great advice. If you work for an engineering firm, if you are a head of technology and you need to go to the executive roundtable where a bunch of engineers sit and you need to propose a solution, go with one.

Speaker 1 | 23:21.576

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 23:23.197

It’s great advice.

Speaker 1 | 23:23.777

Otherwise it’s discussion ad nauseum.

Speaker 0 | 23:27.960

I’ve had also before a firm of… IT people, I’ve had this happen on more than one occasion, implementing a new technology, which is also very similar to that. I don’t know if you’ve ever had, like, not just one of you, but 20 of you going through an implementation of a new product. And really, I mean, down to the details. So think of how a normal, let’s just take a, I don’t know, Microsoft Teams implementation. Are you guys on Teams for voice yet?

Speaker 1 | 24:04.541

No. Okay. We’ll come back to that.

Speaker 0 | 24:07.103

Okay. Well, let’s just say we’re doing that as an example, and we’ve got a little minor call center that’s thrown into the mix at the same time, which throws a nice little thing into it. We’ve got 20 IT directors that are not really IT directors anymore. They used to be IT directors, but now they’re running an MSP, and they’re implementing this new call center slash Teams for their own MSP. You better believe they’re going to make sure. every single detail down to the minute little thing of this technology is taken into consideration before they go live date. Whereas if you did that for any other normal company, they wouldn’t even think about 90% of the things that are happening. So you work for a bunch of engineers, you have a technology roadmap, and you are very good at bringing one solution to the table. Talk to me about if you’d like. the highly functioning autism. Sure.

Speaker 1 | 25:05.130

Yeah, no problem. Yeah, so that, earlier on in my career, I would say… Looking back, it definitely, I can see where it posed me problems. Just partially because honestly, I didn’t realize it until I was 30, about 30 actually. My wife knew long before I did, but I didn’t realize until I was about 30. So there were some situations at work where it definitely caused me some issues. But after learning that I… Did I have it? And learning to recognize, you know, when you start to go down some of those rabbit holes with, you know, interacting with people and it becomes a lot easier to manage. Like you said, you wouldn’t have even noticed. It’s taken a lot of work. And it takes a lot more energy for me to. I guess if I have a regular workday, I guess I’d say. So I have trouble. So the saying goes that you’ve met one person with autism, then you’ve met that one person with autism. Everybody’s different. So for me, it’s I have trouble interpreting body language. Okay. Recognize some of that at times. I have trouble. catching um some things like sarcasm once in a while it’ll catch me like how do i put this so somebody will i shouldn’t say sarcasm stating the obvious so someone will will be talking about something um and i’ll make an obvious statement about that like typically something that would just go unsaid um

Speaker 0 | 27:08.596

I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 | 27:09.976

I usually have to, I usually have to play it off as, exactly. That’s what I get. So what I’ve learned to do is play it off as extremely dry sarcasm because then I’m funny and not weird.

Speaker 0 | 27:23.984

I love it, dude. I love it. It’s like, and that’s why sarcasm is a behavioral derailer on page 27 in the Starbucks manual where I’m not, I got dinged on my employee review years ago. 22 decades. Okay. Wow. I should probably get myself tested. There’s definitely some. Go. Yeah. Yeah, Phil. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 27:50.462

you do it, Phil. Go right now. Take a break.

Speaker 0 | 27:54.646

No. All right.

Speaker 1 | 27:56.708

I guess that’s probably, and it takes me a little longer to process things.

Speaker 0 | 28:03.673

How many people are living with this and don’t know?

Speaker 1 | 28:07.268

and don’t know. Um, I guess I’m not sure about the don’t know. Uh, but I, the, uh, rough estimate I think is it’s about 25% of people, um, do have it, but I don’t know what percent of that don’t realize it. Well, that’s the general estimation.

Speaker 0 | 28:25.560

You put it on your profile for a reason. Why? Or you put it, you made it a point to say something.

Speaker 1 | 28:34.046

um, um, because it’s, I think it’s important for people to understand that you can be successful with it, that it’s not. One of the things you come across, quite frankly, is ignorance about it and people joking about things. And so I like to bring a light to it so that. There’s less ignorance. Don’t make jokes about, oh, you’re autistic. Well, there’s no choice in whether or not you have autism. And people with it can be very successful. It’s just a matter of learning strategies and how to deal with situations.

Speaker 0 | 29:34.088

My daughter had a hard time, like first and third grade, like really hard time being made fun of in school. And even the teachers, like even the teachers would kind of like gang up on her. And in a way that… I just, I don’t know. I don’t know why. I mean, I think I do know why, but regardless, I don’t know if you were like any, if you remember any experiences in school growing up where you were like framed. In other words, like there’s like the kid in class that like the teacher loved that was like the goody two-shoes, but it was really like the evil kid that like did everything. And then like would like turn around and look and point at you and like frame you with different things. You know what I mean? Like this is what was happening. And, uh, so this kid framed my daughter one day and like set her up and she ended up getting in trouble with the teacher. It was this big deal. Had to go to like the principal’s office and had to have a note that she had to bring home and had to get signed by her parent with like, you know, basically it was that and her, she was riding home from school and Ben, who was her friend’s brother, with maybe not a high level of functioning autism, was sitting next to her on the bus. And he’s like, let me see the letter. And he takes the letter out, like very carefully, like unseals the letter somehow in this very neat manner, opens up the letter, and for board, It’s gorgeous. Like the parents signature for her covers up, like, you know, covers up something and like gives her like, you know, some of the note and like gives her a sticker. And my daughter has since then become like a really, really good writer. And I was like, that’s just, that would just be like such an excellent, excellent short story. And, uh, It showed such a high level of like care and like love and empathy for like another human being. I don’t know. I’m just sharing it because that’s like my one like experience with my daughter and someone taking care of her. And then you wanting to share with the rest of the audience, you know, your experience in this level. And so thank you. As far as giving back to IT level community.

Speaker 1 | 32:12.970

the what has been the one of the biggest aha moments for you or learning experiences that’s helped you throughout your career so um ironically it was about the same time that i figured out i had autism but it was a implementation of a new system at one of my previous employers so it’s very big it’s a data management system um engineering specific i won’t get into the details but um It’s a big project. I worked like 80 hours a week on it for about six months to get it ready and get it in place. Something I will never do again, but I was young and dumb. So getting that in place.

Speaker 0 | 33:01.766

Just hold on.

Speaker 1 | 33:02.986

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 33:03.967

Okay, so for all the people out there that are about to do that or in the middle of doing that. Why? Why will you never do it again? And what did you do? I guess, what did you do wrong that got you all wrapped up into this insanity?

Speaker 1 | 33:18.772

So I won’t ever work 80 hours a week again to get something like that done. So that was the first part. But part of what I didn’t do that I wish I would change was get more or be more in front of senior leadership. So I was reporting stuff to… I was a CAD manager at that point. So I was reporting stuff to the director of IT and thought that he was pushing that forward, throwing leadership, talking about that because that was what he was supposed to be doing. I’m coming to find out that really that wasn’t happening. And so I was putting in all this work, all this effort and having conversations with people in the different engineering. engineering departments to put the thing together um but there was one particular person who had something who didn’t like the system didn’t like me in particular this person’s voice got heard not mine and it wasn’t until after the fact after the whole thing came you know system was put in place that i uh even realized that because i was so focused on getting the work done i didn’t pull my head out of it long enough to look around and make sure that the leadership was aware of everything going on. And I don’t want to say stakeholder buy-in, but kind of that stakeholder buy-in piece. It’s setting expectations.

Speaker 0 | 34:49.905

It’s a great story because I think there’s a lot of people. Someone made me privy to a, that’s not fifth grade language. Someone made me aware. Someone made me aware of a… maybe it was a Slack group or something the other day of IT burnout that is common. IT guys getting overworked, working 80 hours, working the help desk, whatever it is, burning out, and then just like, I’m done. Sounds similar. It sounds like some people could get caught up. It sounds like maybe a manager could maybe over-delegate a little bit too much or use people to get stuff done. But the golden piece of advice there is to communicate with upper management and stay connected with… How do you do that? How would you do that? So for someone that’s like, Oh man, I’m afraid. I don’t know what to do. I’m just the worker bee. I’m doing all this work. It’s cool. What?

Speaker 1 | 35:50.692

Yeah, at the very least, it would be an email with some sort of just…

Speaker 0 | 35:54.934

short age-long update about what’s going on you know what you’ve been working on how the project’s going just very brief but what if that’s just going to your it director like you were doing back in the day i just go around him okay

Speaker 1 | 36:12.158

include him yeah yeah include him i mean that way he knows you’re doing it he’s aware of it but include him just say hey oh i was just emailing you know upper management so they knew Yeah. Or a brief phone call. I mean, phone calls, I think, are a little more difficult for people to do, a little more scary because you never know what the direct feedback is going to be or questions you’re going to get.

Speaker 0 | 36:34.936

But email is pretty simple. I would definitely say. But I would say, but phone call is an easier way to avoid maybe, why the hell did you send him an email? Because an email is documented. Whereas a phone call might be a little bit more, it might take a little more guts. It might take… what we call stepping out of your comfort zone, which I think is good.

Speaker 1 | 36:56.468

I think it depends.

Speaker 0 | 36:57.408

How about physically walking to someone’s office and knocking on their door, even crazier.

Speaker 1 | 37:02.411

I know. That’s just crazy, Doc. Communication is the single biggest problem in business today. Just kind of internally.

Speaker 0 | 37:19.761

Which is kind of interesting. considering just about all of technology involves communication.

Speaker 1 | 37:26.364

It’s hilarious.

Speaker 0 | 37:28.726

This is very valuable.

Speaker 1 | 37:30.287

So it really depends on the type of supervisor or, I guess, IT director you have and the particular president, CEO, whatever it is. Hopefully you can get a feel for what the right path is there. But it’s… At that time, for me, an email probably would have been better because my IT director really wouldn’t have cared. He didn’t get all caught up in that sort of hierarchy. He didn’t go through me, but I could definitely see how in a more corporate developed hierarchy where either walking down and talking to him or giving him a phone call is probably a better idea if you have the guts. So for sure. I did want to come back to one point because we talked about it briefly because you asked about teams and whether we were on it.

Speaker 0 | 38:23.808

Oh, yes. The voice.

Speaker 1 | 38:26.410

Yes. That plays directly into having a roadmap. So I’ve been here for a little over two and a half years in that position. When I first, about six months before I started at the company. They had an IT consultant they were using who had got them off of an ancient on-premise voice IP system.

Speaker 0 | 38:50.668

Okay.

Speaker 1 | 38:52.888

Then right as I started, like right about the same time I started.

Speaker 0 | 38:55.989

I’m trying to avoid all my personal. I’m trying to avoid everything. Go ahead. Go, go, go.

Speaker 1 | 39:00.951

Five or six months after that, about the time I started, they implemented Office 365 and got rid of their Exchange server and introduced Teams and all that.

Speaker 0 | 39:12.006

Perfect example of technology roadmap issues. Overlaps, missing the boat, years of waiting.

Speaker 1 | 39:22.271

And the worst part is they signed a five-year contract. Fuck it. So, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 39:31.396

If I go blank. If I go blank.

Speaker 1 | 39:36.366

I was dumbfounded.

Speaker 0 | 39:37.267

Where is my… Where did I just print up? Oh my lord. Oh my lordy.

Speaker 1 | 39:44.293

That is the importance of a roadmap, so you don’t do that.

Speaker 0 | 39:53.321

Here’s my article. Let me pull up my article. I’m mid-writing. There’s definitely something in here that addresses some piece of this. I’m a deal.

Speaker 1 | 40:08.503

Worst part about that ring central contract is not actually the length. It’s the fact that once you added a line, it was there until the end of the contract. No matter what you started with, it was there until the end of the contract. So if you started with like, say, 100 lines at the beginning, and then… I don’t know, say a pandemic happens and you go from 130 to 110, you still have to pay for the 130 because you added it and it’s there to the length of the contract. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 40:39.406

Did you, you didn’t read my, the problem section of my profile on LinkedIn by any chance. Did you happen to possibly listen and read that? You tell me if this is accurate. I’m trying to find it in this recent article. that I’m in the midst of going to have someone edit for fifth grade language. Oh my gosh. Where is it? I’m dying. Okay. Well, I’ll just, I’ll go over here. I still don’t know why I can’t find you, but here we go.

Speaker 1 | 41:19.972

I accepted your invitation by the way.

Speaker 0 | 41:21.633

Oh, beautiful. Okay. The problem, you tell me this, tell me this, tell me this, if this sounds accurate. Technology vendors, telecom carriers, telecom, telecom carriers, internet providers and companies delivering applications, Deep Breath, are constantly changing within a volatile marketplace characterized by an unstable mix of mergers, acquisitions, and bankruptcies. And vendors and providers often fall short in supporting their customers and a direct salesperson. typically occupies their position for less than two years, which means your contract will outlive any personalized support. And numbers don’t lie. Carriers focus their efforts into selling and getting you into billing status. Their goals are to show growth, appease investors, and sell the company for a profit. And further, the average carrier contract lacks flexibility or bottom line accountability. And many companies are stuck paying high prices for old products and receive unexpected bill increases and making a bad situation worse. Any toll free numbers or physical bodies, butts in the seat, a.k.a. I just added that in. I’m like I’m flowing now. Providing you support, lack response time, professional training and or inability to complete a simple change request. We call those Mac attacks. Move ad change. That’s just, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg. Someone should be ashamed. They should not be sleeping at night for a five-year contract. A five-year agreement? The audacity. Obama.

Speaker 1 | 43:14.677

Obama?

Speaker 0 | 43:20.062

No, okay. There are ways around this. There are ways around this. But yes. Oh, my lordy lord.

Speaker 1 | 43:27.987

We even tried to get out of it using the pandemic as an act of God because that was in the contract.

Speaker 0 | 43:33.749

Oh, force majeure. Force majeure. Yep. That’s probably page three, line 32.BC. Heck no, buddy.

Speaker 1 | 43:43.794

We were assured by our lawyers and their lawyers, both, that we were not going to be able to get out using that.

Speaker 0 | 43:49.816

Are your lawyers FCC professionals trained? because you better believe. By the way, he’s a valued partner of mine. I am not bashing them. I’m just saying like, I help people make the right, you know, agnostic, you know, decision for whatever provider.

Speaker 1 | 44:07.545

More with the length of the contract followed by the fact that they input a technology that it very well does the same job.

Speaker 0 | 44:14.189

It’s not their fault. Good for them. Good for them, you know, but sorry for you.

Speaker 1 | 44:21.593

Okay. I’m With the aftermath.

Speaker 0 | 44:25.480

Let me ask you a question. How many end users? How many, we would call them seats in the UCAS space. How many seats?

Speaker 1 | 44:34.187

We have 108 now.

Speaker 0 | 44:36.389

Times at least 25 bucks, buddy. Yep. At least. Boom, ba-da-boom, boom. Wow. 108. Good for them.

Speaker 1 | 44:50.160

15 per line.

Speaker 0 | 44:53.406

Man, three grand a month.

Speaker 1 | 44:55.287

Yep. Plus…

Speaker 0 | 44:57.449

Here’s the secret. Here’s a little secret.

Speaker 1 | 44:59.430

Conference rooms.

Speaker 0 | 45:00.952

Oh, Zoom rooms. Oh, here’s a little secret. It’s called… And this is for all those people that would also be dumb enough to go directly to Microsoft and pay $12 for access to the PSTN, plus $8 for your phone system license, plus $12 if you need to make international calling at $30 a pop. Don’t do that.

Speaker 1 | 45:25.312

No.

Speaker 0 | 45:26.854

It’s called direct routing. And you don’t have to do all that PowerShell nastiness either. You can just actually use the software and flip the switch. Pay 25 cents per DID and do the old call path model. We used to call them PRIs back in the day, T1CAS prior to that, fractionalized T1s, analog lines. Pay for the call path at $20. And in your case, that would be, are there more than 20 people on the phone in your building at one time? I’m totally using this as a self.

Speaker 1 | 46:00.745

You could use 20. I mean, that’s probably.

Speaker 0 | 46:02.306

All right. 20 times 20. $400. $100 times 25 cents, $25 plus 25. Let’s add E911 on, let’s say, I don’t know, 800 bucks for E911, just because they’re going to force us, the FCC is going to force you to have that for every single person per line because they might be working from home or driving around in their car, at which point if they dial 911, it wouldn’t even go to the right place anyways, but we’re going to force you to pay that. $1,225 a month versus whatever the heck you’re paying right now plus taxes.

Speaker 1 | 46:37.114

It’s over 3 grand.

Speaker 0 | 46:39.054

Yeah. That’s how listening to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds helps you if you got all the way through 46 minutes into this insanity. After kids get yelling and, I don’t know, the bath running upstairs and little babies and all this other stuff in the background. If you made it to this point, if you made it here, all you did was really want to probably poke yourself in the eye with a pencil because you’re on a five-year agreement. Or a three-year. typical let’s just be honest most of them are 36 months which is still painful enough yeah painful well thank you for that that was that was the highlight of my that was the highlight of my day um let’s see okay okay so no but here’s the real point the real point is you make it about the roadmap. You make it about the company. You make it about your end users. You make it about the goals that you’re trying to accomplish. What are you trying to do with the technology that you’re putting in place? And first of all, what are you trying to do? Then you do a needs assessment. Then you pick apart everyone. Then you ask them what they want and what they need. And then you find out that the company that you might’ve almost bought, that you got sold on by a bunch of guys in suits and ties that came in and sat around their table and told you about Gartner Magic Quadrant. And- Frost and Sullivan and all these other things that don’t talk about what’s going to happen after you sign on the dotted line. And it goes to procurement or butts in the seat project managers that don’t have time to take your calls in between their scheduled call with you. The technology roadmap instead says, what do we need? And now who has it? And what’s the best way to pigeonhole those people into giving us the best? deal and how can we use economies of scale to purchase a product which forces them to give us certain things and where’s the number one telecom lawyer that can give me all these t’s and c’s that can say things like i need an out of contract if i need if we move i need a business down business downturn here’s what would have helped in that situation also the the everyone out there listening again if you’ve made it to this point Ask for a business downturn addendum, which means that you can scale your contract up or down, say, 40%. We got hit by the pandemic. Everyone’s working from home. We need to turn down 40% of our users. That would have helped, maybe.

Speaker 1 | 49:12.257

It would have been extremely helpful.

Speaker 0 | 49:14.418

Also, every time you have a Mac attack, Hey, by the way, HR just called. We need to add on 20 new users by Monday. And can you get me this? Every time you add on… new services that doesn’t renew your contract or make those 20 additional seats go another five years, which is insane. How can people do that? There should be a law against that. There probably is. There probably is somewhere.

Speaker 1 | 49:40.987

My favorite, and I was looking at it again the other day, my favorite part of that contract is the auto renew.

Speaker 0 | 49:48.431

Oh yeah. And if you don’t give us writing here. Via faxed to this particular number within the hours of 1 to 3 o’clock in the morning, 60 days prior to your contract being up. And it’s not signed and sent back to you via certified mail. We are going to auto renew for five years. It’s at least a year. No one does that. I have seen it happen. I’ve seen it happen. It’s wild. Love my friends over. Just want to say, hey, guys. Love you. Worked with you in a past life at a Cisco startup. It was called C Beyond. If anyone remembers that, we were selling Cisco iAds with dynamic allocation and selling it like it was the Star Wars project. Oh. Oh, that was great. Half of them went to, a third of them went to Comcast. I mean, hey, you could be, I’m not going to say it, you could be with someone else. Yeah, it’s great. I’m going to get myself in so much trouble. No one’s going to listen to 15 minutes of this, especially no telecom guy. They’re not, they’re out selling. That really was the true benefits of a technology roadmap. So the cool thing is, you do want to go to teams, you are just handcuffed. Handcuffed.

Speaker 1 | 51:17.674

We got about two years.

Speaker 0 | 51:21.537

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 | 51:22.037

Two years left on it, I think, at this point. We’re in the downhill slide.

Speaker 0 | 51:27.261

You can probably strategize your way around that. Just figure out a way. Be like, I’ve already tried. We’ve sent people fish wrapped up in newspaper. We’ve delivered them.

Speaker 1 | 51:39.935

It hasn’t worked yet.

Speaker 0 | 51:43.378

We’ve offered deals they couldn’t renew.

Speaker 1 | 51:51.705

I think what we might actually do is, and I have doubts as to whether or not this is even worth it, but we are potentially… If we go above that current 108, because right now we’re just below it. We’re still adding back some staff, so we’re just below it. But we may actually just add a second carrier in if we don’t want to add any more lines to that contract that we can’t take back.

Speaker 0 | 52:20.020

Map the extensions and stuff. Yeah, that makes sense. It’s pretty easy. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 52:23.862

that’s one thing I’m considering, how we want to do that.

Speaker 0 | 52:30.786

And this is how we end up with patched together.

Speaker 1 | 52:35.449

That’s why I don’t want to do it.

Speaker 0 | 52:37.271

This is the definition of silo. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 52:43.716

It’s also the reason I’m not going to do call to teams for the other new lines because I don’t need the first hundred people saying, hey, wait, they could do call to teams. Why can’t

Speaker 0 | 52:54.085

I? Well, you can at a price. Yeah, I had my son-in-laws and engineer and uh he’s like what’s a silo everyone’s talking about silos like oh he’s like oh and i explained it to him i had to give up a picture of like silos grain silos because english is not his first language well now i know i was like it’s that thing in the in the company where it like kind of exists in its own environment and everyone has to kind of like you work around it and you have to play all these different things and kind of manage things especially. He’s like, I get it. And then I sent him a picture of some grain silos and now when we’re traveling somewhere, he’s like, look, a silo. Here lies the silo. Next to it is a shorter team’s voice silo and next to that is something called E3. Are you on E3 at least?

Speaker 1 | 53:54.778

Not yet.

Speaker 0 | 53:55.658

We’re good. This is the Business 365 Premium silo. And yeah, this is the AS400 IBM silo.

Speaker 1 | 54:05.445

God, don’t. No, you had to bring up the…

Speaker 0 | 54:09.427

I’m just bragging now at this point. It has been an app… You know, how many people, right? How many dudes that just pretend to know about technology can pretend this well, right? That’s what I do.

Speaker 1 | 54:24.842

Well,

Speaker 0 | 54:25.142

I think you’re talking about me. I’m a highly functioning creative writer that somehow made it into technology. To be told, you write good emails. Don’t write them. Stop writing emails. You write very good emails, but you need to not click send next time. And you need to have sent all of them to me first. I will read them. And you know what it is? What it is, is it’s all those emails that I send to the operations departments, to the people that aren’t answering questions or helping you. You said it was an out-of-the-box API. It’s not even existent. It doesn’t even exist. I know. Why’d you buy that thing? Anywho. Don’t send that email, Phil. Don’t send that email. They’re all going to hate us.

Speaker 1 | 55:20.308

I have learned that in those situations where you want to respond with email the fastest and the most vehemently are the times that you need to wait till the morning.

Speaker 0 | 55:29.432

Yes. I’m going to set up a service. We need an app for that. I want to make an app for that. Anger app. Anger email. We’re going to read. It’s like the translator. Remember the like. Key and Peele, the Obama translator. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that skit.

Speaker 1 | 55:45.462

It’s like the,

Speaker 0 | 55:47.524

it’s the, you know, the, the, uh, the translator. Well, anyways, it has been an absolute pleasure. Um, thank you so much for sharing your. your pre-technology roadmap stories and post-technology roadmap successes and or why, how to avoid, how to avoid. So, you know, there’s pre and post, pre and post, pre and post pandemic and there’s pre and post technology roadmap. And for everyone out there listening, seriously, you need, you need to put together a technology roadmap. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 | 56:26.007

Very welcome.

Speaker 2 | 56:26.932

have a great