Connections Extend Sensibility

People ask me why I don’t post articles on LinkedIn anymore. Well, the obvious excuse is that I got busier but that’s a lousy one. When people say they don’t have time for something, what that really means is that something isn’t as important as other things for which they manage to spend time.?

Not only did I get busier but also was having too much fun working on the things that excite me. Managing automotive software development projects involves a lot of skills including resource and budget management, interaction with stakeholders and understanding or defining business priorities. It’s a balancing act between developing things right and developing the right things.?

What’s not typically expected of the person in the program management role is to actually write software. I understand a few companies merge the role of program management and chief engineer but it’s difficult to manage because they’re two very distinctive skillsets and it will be a challenge to define and fill the role.?

Writing software is very satisfactory practice at any level. It was fun when I first wrote my “Hello World.\n” program and it was even more fun when I fully understood the entire process of my little hello world program getting compiled into machine code, loaded into the memory, executed by the processor, “Hello World\n” string gets sent to the serial port and finally shown on the terminal emulator in the PC. It is an instant feedback loop with a pretty clear definition of what’s right or wrong. A lot of dopamine is flowing around here.

My first experience with Linux was back in college when Slackware had to be installed from dozens of floppy disks. I’ve loved that open-source project ever since. I’ve experienced VxWorks at my first job that happened to use the RTOS for silicon fabrication equipment. I ended up working at the company who made the OS. I knew of QNX for as long but never had a chance to work on it.

Preparing for the CES demo, I couldn’t resist the temptation to have a hands-on experience with the platform so I attended as many daily scrum meetings as I can, participated actively in the software architecture discussions and demo scenarios and I ended up porting and testing some applications myself and boy, it was a lot of fun.?

It’s like Zinedine Zidane retired long ago but coming back to the field of the World Cup only because he loves and enjoys the sport so much. OK, OK, it’s a terrible metaphor. I am not even remotely as good and CES is not a World Cup.?

I met so many old and new faces at CES this year. Meeting old colleagues, friends and foes in person is priceless. I have to admit that the numerous online meetings in the past 3 years did their job and sometimes I got confused if I met and knew this guy in person or not. But once we get into the live conversation, face to face, eyes to eyes, with the gestures, postures, distance between the people, volume/tone of the voice and position of the eyebrows, I sense what that person is trying to convey much better. And it’s that deeper interaction that inspires further ideas to emerge and motivate collaboration to make something really meaningful together.