this is ha.rley.org

History's Failure

Harley Young — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:15:14 -0700

History's Failure

Failure can be instructive in the way it equips one to deal with the future. For instance, children touch a hot stove only once. However, in spite of centuries-old books still being available, history seems to have a brittle and porous memory. She's less like the erudite child and more like a fickle mistress who flops into bed with Jose Cuervo mere weeks after being spurned, burned and swearing off men, no thanks to Jack Daniel. Given the state of development in Asia – particularly apropos of China and India – there are a couple of chapters from recent history that are especially instructive:

Air quality
The real cost of the car

Air Quality

Deep beneath Subury [Ontario], thick veins of copper and nickel are mined by international conglomerates Vale Inco (formerly Inco) and Xstrata (formerly Falconbridge). During the 1950s and 1960s, Sudbury underwent rapid expansion. Fueled by rising commodity prices, new mines sprouted like mushrooms on manure, each one adorning its gleaming smelting operation with a filthy smoke stack. Apart from being rich with valuable metals, Sudbury's ore also contained much sulfur. Consequently, smelting it yielded enormous quantities of sulphur dioxide. Apart from being a useful way to preserve dried apricots, sulphur dioxide also creates acid rain, the toxicity of which was certainly not lost on Sudbury's ecosystem. When I started visiting Sudbury in the 70s, the entire city was stark, barren and devoid of colour ¹⁾. It was dead. Recognizing this calamity, mines sought to remedy the issue by ~~doing something responsible~~ sharing the problem. Inco erected what was then the world's tallest smokestack to disperse the sulfur over a broader area, hoping that in diffuse quantities, the sulphur would be less problematic. It wasn't until the 1990s that the mines installed scrubbing equipment to remove sulphur from the exhaust gases. Coupled with the reduction in environmental sulphur, the hard work of Sudbury's residents was rewarded by a slow and gradual return of trees and vibrant colour to the environment. Although Sudbury's mines still have much room for improvement, the SuperStack (which continues to dominate the Sudbury skyline) reminds us of the progress that we've made.

The Real Cost of the Car

As the price of oil winds its way into triple-digit territory – a point from which it's unlikely to ever descend – US consumers continue to buy SUVs, drive nearly everywhere and build (and inexplicably desire) vinyl-sided suburban tract homes, where they can isolate themselves and organize all of their distractions with clever compartmentalized shelving units from The Container Store. The way I see it, a lack of places for all one's things is really more a symptom of having too many things, than a dearth of places to store them. In Wild Ducks Flying Backward ²⁾, Robins writes:

Norman N. Holland…concluded that comedy is deemed inferior to tragedy primarily because of the social prevalence of narcissistic pathology. In other words, people who are too self-important to laugh at their own frequently ridiculous behavior have a vested interest in gravity because it supports their illusions of grandiosity. According to Professor Donald Kuspit, many people are unable to function without such illusions. “Capitalism”, wrote Kuspit, “encourages the pathologically grandiose self because it encourages the conspicuous consumption of possessions which symbolize one's grandiosity.”

Now, given the amount of time that Americans squander sitting in snarled traffic, given the sub-prime funded absurdity of living 60 Km from one's place of employment, and given the relative predictably and calm sense of community inherent in public transit, you'd think that developing nations would strive to emulate the best parts of the US and avoid the earlier calamitous paths that lead to:

Dismantling a previously effective passenger rail system
Sanctioning and encouraging corporate acquisition and destruction of efficient public-transit systems
Endorsing and promoting the corporate-sponsored financial legerdemain that led to the current crisis in capital markets
Subsidizing gasoline prices directly or though military-backed support of fabourable political regimes
Construction of coal-fired power plants without purification/scrubbing equipment

Life's Lessons

Emerging giants understand these things and are profiting from these lessons, right? No, of course not. Determined to be just like the US, whose earlier and initial grow was supported by automotive manufacturing, India is launching a low-cost car so everyone can have a shot at driving. But, wait, you say. There simply isn't enough infrastructure for all those cars. “Not my problem,” says Ratan Tata, whose company will build the car. “That's a problem the Indian government has to deal with.” Nice.

Similarly, smaller economies like Malaysia support consumer-adoption of automobiles by subsidizing about 50% of the cost of gasoline – at substantial cost to the public treasury. Of course, as it always does, interference with market pricing leads to inefficiency. Roads cannot be constructed quickly enough to accommodate the rapid growth in vehicle traffic, so streets in Kuala Lumpur are often snarled with traffic, making driving even short distances an exercise in futility. Coupled with lax environmental standards and lower factor productivity, pollution in the city is atrocious.

China, because it's the largest country, is also the worst for both its own health and for the climate everywhere else on earth. For all the advanced technology incorporated into its manufacturing facilities, China does poor job of incorporating new technologies into environmental stewardship. Like India, China strives to build a robust automotive industry. Also like India, China also struggles with an infrastructure incapable of handling the growth of private automobile ownership. In the January/February issue of Mother Jones, there is an excellent article about the many problems China faces: desertification, soil erosion, air pollution, water shortages and toxic waste accumulation. To a lesser degree, the same issue was also tackled in Collapse, Jared Diamond's followup to his Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel. Anyone grinning smugly should understand that he likely shares in the blame: were it not for the voracious appetites of western consumers, China would not have become the economic powerhouse it is today. In outsourcing our manufacturing to China, we've also outsourced the associated pollution. In the end, I'd argue that for whatever economic benefits are derived by exploiting China's comparative advantage in labour, everyone ends up worse off because we're going to choke to death on the pollution.

In addition to the apparent folly of using automobiles to drive (oh, the pun!) economic growth, two additional crucial differences exist that make the choice to mirror the US seem reckless. First, when the US began its own manufacturing-backed expansion, the world had not yet reached peak oil. Second, during the US expansion, competition for petroleum resources was among fewer than 3 billion people, less than half of the population that competes today for an increasingly scarce, and rapidly vanishing resource.

Although the Mother Jones article and Diamond's book both pointed out reasons for optimism, I'm not especially hopeful. The earth cannot support even a significant portion of India and China adopting the resource-intensive, selfish and myopic habits of the west. Is that fair? Injustice sells, and that's the card Tata played to justify his venture, “India does desperately need mass transit systems… both within cities and between cities. But poor Indian families also have a right to what millions take for granted elsewhere in the world. Should they be denied the right to independent transport?” No, they shouldn't, but I think that's a false dilemma. Owning a car isn't the only way to achieve independent transport. If we hope to thrive together, all of us need to settle on simpler living and more creative solutions to the world's problems. With the kind of not-my-problem thinking being bandied about, the likelihood of widely embraced creative solutions being adopted any time soon seems heart-breakingly and tragically small.

¹⁾ sudburysoilsstudy.com/EN/overview/background.asp

²⁾ The Short Writings of Tom Robbins, In Defiance of Gravity, p 184.

IT as a Strategic Driver in the Public Sector

Harley Young — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:52:37 -0700

IT as a Strategic Driver in the Public Sector

With a few notable exceptions, technology issues in the public sector are not substantially different than those in any other large multinational enterprise. Nonetheless, the public sector appears to have three problems (and one superb opportunity) that distinguish it from most other organizations.¹⁾

Problems

A workforce, filled with institutional knowledge, on the cusp of retirement.
Employment processes that are tragically broken: it’s difficult to move quickly on star candidates, and perhaps even more challenging to terminate perennial underperformers.
Among new graduates, public service suffers from the perception of stultifyingly dull work, with upward mobility being a function of tenure rather than tenacity (and results).

Opportunity

Engaged citizens willing to work (for free) on projects that are both meaningful to them, and useful to others.

In some sense, the problems and opportunity are intertwined: the public sector has a publicity and collaboration problem. Although addressing these problems requires a shift in culture and organizational dynamics, technology can help enable public sector renewal by simplifying processes, encouraging knowledge sharing, and leveraging citizens’ willingness to participate. Start by using technology to enable authenticity, connectivity, visibility and availability.

Authenticity

Many agencies have web sites and glossy brochures where employees glowingly describe fabulous job opportunities and explain how much they love their jobs. Almost no one believes this rhetoric. Instead, agencies need to enable real conversations, where candidates engage with current employees to discuss their own reality, warts and all. If agencies are terrified that employees might just talk about problems, that should be a wake up call: the workplace is badly damaged, and needs help.

Of course, most people can name a few irritants, but they’ll also be able to name things that attract them. If you encourage authentic conversations during recruiting and new hires are likely to start with open eyes, ready to embrace challenges aware of whatever irritants exist. But, don’t stop there. IT can enable authentic conversations on an ongoing basis by providing a platform for staff to discuss their work. One mechanism for this is a blog, the use of which helps publicize things going on within agencies, and demonstrates a willingness to accept input from the community.

Consider a blog run by a software developer who’s describing his use of Ruby on a new project, or by someone looking for help getting memcached to work on AIX. Candidates looking for a role at the agencies will be able to see what’s going on inside, and can share their own insights. That’s a pretty powerful introduction, and certainly a much stronger endorsement than the “It’s a great place to work” rhetoric. Of course, not everyone will blog about their experiences, but that's all right. You don’t need everyone using the tool to make it valuable.

Connectivity

In 2009 and beyond, new entrants to the workforce will not have spent any of their adult lives without mobile phones, text messages, web browsers, email, instant messaging and social networks. They'll have used these tools to research papers for school, to share homework with friends, to collaborate with peers around the world, and to keep in touch with people they met while on holiday. When companies hire executives, one of the most valuable components of the deal is access to the person’s contact list, a source of expertise and new business. The contact list of new hires might not make them rainmakers today (though it might), but it will help down the road, and that contact list most certainly connects them to lots of other smart motivated people today. Sadly, that contact list isn’t in a Rolodex, it’s in Facebook, often maligned by older staff a waste of time.²⁾ Instead of taking advantage of these rich networks, companies destroy them by blocking access.

The public sector needs to build on the conversation platform discussed earlier to enable connectivity among staff across agencies. If leaders feel a need to ban access to Facebook (in spite of evidence suggesting that some personal browsing at the office boosts productivity ³⁾) they must figure out how to preserve an employee’s social graph. Severing access to well-developed networks eliminates an incredible source of expertise, and destroys communication channels through which a lot gets accomplished.

Visibility

Some of the information collected and managed by government is extremely long-lived, so the format in which it’s stored becomes an important issue to consider. While the merits of various formats are debated, current standards that divorce content and presentation can be employed to move ahead. One tool that does this remarkably well, while simultaneously enabling collaboration is a wiki. The wiki is an excellent tool that broadly distributed groups – characteristic of many government agencies – can use to share documentation, promulgate best practices, answer questions about their team, and provide pointers to common documents. As with blogs, wikis won’t be the right solution for all problems, but including the tool in a document management strategy recognizes its value, provides a collaboration mechanism for distributed resources, enables capture of institutional knowledge, and stores data in a long-lived format (plain text). This idea seems to be in its nascent stages with GCPEDIA – a good start – but the success of such initiatives requires senior leaders to recognize the value and pledge formal support.

Because authorship and edits of wiki articles are attributed to individuals through revision tracking, it publicly recognizes contributions, which goes a long way toward addressing a significant problem in the public sector. Allowing staff to contribute and recognizing their contribution is critical. According to an Ottawa Citizen article supported by the APEX survey, 64% of public service executives think of leaving their organization at least every month. More than half want to leave because of lack of recognition.⁴⁾

Blogs can help visibility, too. In addition, blogs provide another benefit: they fight information overload.⁵⁾ This might seem counterintuitive, but consider how blogs work. They attract input from many sources, and through the participation of many people, synthesize various streams into a smaller number of cogent ideas. If public recognition is not reason enough to consider blogs, having a proven way to distill volumes of data into more useful information should be.

Availability

As noted above, an important topic within the public sector is preservation of long-lived data. The fact that government is thinking about the issue is indicative of both the quantity of data and its value. While the government struggles with issues such as health care, education, job creation, financial transformation, taxation and foreign policy, it must necessarily prioritize things and allocate resources accordingly. This means that a lot of things that might be really useful are deferred (or simply not done).

In a recent talk,⁶⁾ NYU professor Clay Shirky discussed the concept of cognitive surplus: the idea that as people no longer have to worry about satisfying basic needs, they have more time to spend on leisure. While some of the surplus is spent on activities such as television, some of it is spent on contributions to projects that turn out to be pretty valuable: Wikipedia, Firefox, and Linux (among many others). Open source impresario Eric Raymond describes this as a “gift culture, an adaptation not to scarcity but to abundance.” No matter what label we attach to it, it has become clear that people are willing to invest some (or a lot) of their time on projects that have widespread benefit. Sometimes this may take the form of suggesting a spelling correction on a government web site. In other cases, the contribution is more involved, as with Halifax software developer William Lachance. Mr. Lachance strapped a GPS to his bicycle and rode around Halifax for 30 hours plotting the locations of all the bus stops. He then used that data to develop a web site that allows visitors and residents to plan trips around the city using the public transit network.⁷⁾ Total cost to the city? $0.

Recent history is filled with similar examples, where engaged citizens have taken data from multiple sources, pulled it into one place and created something useful. The biggest complaint from creators? That the data exists, but it’s not readily available and agencies don’t like to share it. This issue was part of the impetus for Toronto’s recent ChangeCamp: an event format, an open community and a set of tools and ideas designed to give citizens and governments the ability to work collaboratively in new ways to make change and to better address real-world challenges in our communities.⁸⁾ The City of Toronto showed up with lots of senior IT staff, and the mayor pledged to be more open and to make more data available. Other governments can use these examples to liberate their information, too. People are excited to participate and to make things better by working things that matter to them. If people are willing to work on those ideas at no cost, and if their implementation makes government seems more accessible and more responsive, why wouldn’t you open up?

¹⁾ Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elycefeliz/3224486233/

²⁾ In spite of this assertion, the 35-54 demographic now accounts for about 17% of all Facebook users, and grew an astonishing 276% since 2008. Source: http://www.istrategylabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/facebook_demographics_statistics_2009.xls

³⁾ University of Melbourne. Online: http://voice.unimelb.edu.au/news/5750/

⁴⁾ Kathryn May, The Ottawa Citizen. June 16, 2008. Source: http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=cb15ea84-4e40-4524-b7a2-c339dce46101&p=2

⁵⁾ David Eaves, Why the Government of Canada Needs Bloggers. http://eaves.ca/2009/03/03/why-the-government-of-canada-needs-bloggers/

⁶⁾ Clay Shirky keynote at Web 2.0 Expo. Online: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2708219489770693816

⁷⁾ Jennifer Taplin, Metro Halifax. March 24, 2009 The launch of transit planning website, www.hbus.ca Online: http://www.metronews.ca/halifax/local/article/201622

⁸⁾ About ChangeCamp. Online: http://changecamp.ca/about/

Harley on Harley

Harley Young — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:38:21 -0700

Harley on Harley

I’m happiest when I can help clients create solutions that enhance their business performance. While technology often enables me, big success is ultimately comprised of hundreds of small victories that emerge from conversations shared with clients, peers and vendors. I am tenacious, have an insatiable hunger for knowledge, and adore sharing my sense of excitement about what is possible.

I hold an M.Sc. in Management from Queen's University and an Honours Bachelor of Commerce from Lakehead University, where I earned the dean's medal for highest graduating average. During my academic career, I placed first in the information systems category of the Queen's ICBC, an international case competition of leading business schools. I also earned the distinction of Best Student Author by the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada for an article I published about the transformative effects of IT on organizational structures. My professional work has garnered similar acclaim, including two ComputerWorld Laureates, the National Award of Excellence from the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society, and the prestigious Grace Hopper Government Technology Award.

Having traveled extensively (North America, Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and Europe), I currently live and work in the shadow of the Canadian Rockies, where I write about topics such as virtualization, enterprise mobility and the next-generation web, speak about my experiences at top Canadian universities and collaborate with peers at the world's premier consultancies.

You can learn more about my professional accomplishments though my resume and more about my character through this web site. If you'd like to get in contact, I'd love to hear from you.

Resume of Harley Young

Harley Young — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:37:45 -0700

Resume of Harley Young

Harley Young

Calgary, AB
h@rley.org
http://ha.rley.org/
Concise Resume
Detailed Resume

For more than a decade, I have been working with terrific clients in health care, retail, entertainment and the public sector to design award-winning systems that enable collaboration, triage and data analysis. My expertise includes technology strategy, platform architecture/infrastructure, identity and privacy management and emerging technology. I’m happiest when I can help clients create solutions that enhance their business performance. While technology often enables me, big success is ultimately comprised of hundreds of small victories that emerge from conversations shared with clients, peers and vendors. I am tenacious, have an insatiable hunger for knowledge, and adore sharing my sense of excitement about what is possible.

Experience Highlights

Designed and managed deployment of technology infrastructure supporting more than a million end users
Led consolidation, capacity planning, standards development (ITIL/ITSM) and disaster-recovery/business continuity planning within heterogeneous IT environments
Managed multiple complex projects through all phases of the life cycle, including budgeting, project planning, and issue/risks identification and mitigation
Recruited and managed high-performing teams up to 30 members
Helped grow existing accounts to more than $6M in annual billings
Boosted organizational profile by publishing magazine articles and speaking publicly on topics such as enterprise mobility, web services and the design of ICT organziations

Professional Experience

Accenture (Select Engagements 2009)

M&A Infrastructure Integration Lead

With peers from the firm's strategy and insurance practices, I led the infrastructure integration workstream at this large Canadian life insurer. As part of the engagement, I managed client IT staff through assessment and planning for Day 1, and integration planning and roadmap development for the next 18 months. During the project, I developed frameworks that helped technical staff articulate their day-to-day tasks, and identified opportunities to use virtualization to streamline the migration, and simultaneously consolidate and simplify the technology environment.

Storage Virtualization Project Manager

For a large Canadian electrical utility, I managed a team of six through planning, design and implementation of a $5M storage virtualization project based on the NetApp v-Series platform. The project delivered capital and operational cost savings, lowered the firm's environmental impact, enhanced the agility of the IT organization, and laid the foundations for the firm's next-generation data centre initiative.

Deloitte Consulting (Select Engagements 2000 - Present)

Technical Architect & Development Lead

I led design, development and deployment of Pennsylvania's online disease reporting and surveillance software, PA-NEDSS. The system integrated the state's myriad public health tools into a single, web-based solution and continues to garner attention as one of the country's most complete disease reporting and surveillance systems. In my role, I recruited, interviewed and hired nearly all members of the technical team, managed project schedules, wrote substantial portions of the software, and orchestrated delivery of components from various vendor teams: Microsoft Consulting Services (Public Key Infrastructure), Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (data modeling) and ESRI (GIS components).

Code & Configuration Management Process Architect

Using best practices from ITIL/ITSM and CMMI, I led a team through an analysis of the current software configuration management practices at HCSC, a $13 billion health care insurer. Following analysis of the current state, the team worked with the client to develop a future-state architecture and created a road map establishing short term and strategic goals to enhance consistency within the multi-platform configuration management environment.

Data Center Technology Architect & Project Manager

As part of a strategic acquisition, I led this $5 billion regional grocer through post-merger expansion of IT capabilities. To support on-boarding of 14,000 new employees and $2 billion in revenue growth, I coordinated all data center upgrades, including enhancements to an existing disaster recovery facility. Within this heterogeneous IT landscape, I supported upgrades to merchandising, HR and finance applications, expansion of the SAN, enhancements to the Citrix and VMware environments, and design of a redundant MPLS backbone linking primary and secondary data centers to more than 240 retail stores.

ERP Platform Architect & IT Rationalization Project Manager

Working with peers from Deloitte's Enterprise Applications group and members of EA's enterprise architecture team, I led design and development of a platform architecture and sizing initiative to consolidate 5 globally distributed instances of Oracle Applications into a single global master. As part of a broad cost-reduction program, the design included a mix of hosted and SaaS offerings.

Enterprise Platform & Security Architect

Working directly with the CIO of the Pennsylvania Department of Labour and Industry, I led enterprise architecture consolidation and helped align the technology platforms upon which more than $150 million of system modernization activities were being delivered. Key among this consolidation was the establishment of an Enterprise Identity and Access Management framework that spanned two large agencies and supported more than 2 million users. My pioneering work resulted in more than $2 million in direct savings, a service-oriented platform to support future modernization initiatives and recognition by the Computerworld Laureate program as an extraordinary example of information technology being employed in a government setting.

Infrastructure Manager & Security Specialist

Supported by a team of ten, I was responsible for system security, capacity planning and infrastructure design related to CDC's national HIV/AIDS program evaluation and monitoring system (PEMS). In this role, I managed the software build process, performance benchmarking and code distribution/deployment to state health departments across the country. My experience with SoX, HIPAA and frameworks such as ISO-17799 and CoBIT enabled me to guide the project through the Certification and Accreditation process required by all federal information systems (NIST 800-37) and incorporate security vulnerability testing into the system development lifecycle.

Prior Experience

tothedoor.com, Network Architect (2000)

Joining a cadre of other technophiles excited about this startup, I developed a 24×7 data center solution, drafted SLAs, authored an enterprise security policy and developed a comprehensive disaster-recovery plan. I also implemented SNMP monitoring of all network devices, wrote substantial sections of the back-end software and worked with corporate partners to develop an OEM appliance based on BeOS.

ProMIRA Software & Manugistics, Technology Consultant (1996 – 2000)

As a member of the professional services organization, I implemented Manugistics software for clients including iMotors.com, Merial, Goodyear, Lexmark, Pfizer and Seiko/Epson. Each engagement called for different skills including system administration, software development and the design and delivery of technical training. My flexibility, rapid learning and affable nature made me a trusted advisor to clients and a frequently consulted member of the professional services team. The vignettes below represents two of my many successes.

iMotors.com I designed, developed, and implemented a Perl-based suite of tools that used a distributed cluster of servers to collect and process more than 15GB (daily) of HTML from various Web sites. The HTML was cleaned and standardized using pattern matching algorithms before being loaded into a data warehouse, where it satisfied queries by customer-care agents.
Merial I worked with a team at Merial to reduce factory scheduling time from 48 hours to just 2. As part of this engagement, I created Perl scripts to extract, transform and load data from the MRP system into NetWORKS Scheduling and provided advice to optimize application performance. Before leaving, I created and delivered a training program to ensure IT staff could maintain the system in my absence.

Education & Technical Expertise

I hold a Master of Science in Management (MIS) and an Honours Bachelor of Commerce (MIS) from Queen’s University and Lakehead University, respectively. I graduated first in my class from Lakehead University and, during my senior year, placed first in the MIS category of the Queen's Inter Collegiate Business Competition.

Beyond my academic training, I hold an MCSE and have exposure to an array of technology including SiteMinder, Identity Manager, VMware, the Rational Suite, Mercury Quality Center, BEA WebLogic, JBoss, IIS, Active Directory (LDAP), Exchange Server and collaborative technology including blogs, wikis and enterprise content management systems. I also has experience creating ITIL reporting dashboards and developing stand-alone and Web-based software with .NET, Perl, PHP, JavaScript and XML technologies. For customers from the Fortune 500 to the US Government, I have designed and supported platforms running Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL on Linux, OS X and all versions of Windows.

Publications

I have published commercial and scholarly work on a variety of topics such as virtualization, enterprise mobility, web services, electronic social networks, open source software and the transformative impact of IT on organizational structures.

Personal Pursuits

When not traveling – a part of the job I enjoy – I like tinkering with electronics and am an avid long-distance runner.

About Harley

Harley Young — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:36:27 -0700

About Harley

Photo Gallery

Harley Young — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:48:27 -0700

Photo Gallery

This page displays a live thumbnail feed from one of my PicasaWeb albums – probably the one I've updated mostly recently. Over time, the active feed will change, but you can find all the separate albums online:

Clicking on any of the pictures below will take you to the full-sized image, but you'll get a pretty good idea of what's going on just by looking at the thumbnails. If you prefer to skip this whole “checking-in” production, you can subscribe to the the RSS photo feed for any of the albums.

PowerPoint Genius

Harley Young — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:32:48 -0700

PowerPoint Genius

Around the same time I enjoyed a confluence of improbably serendipitous events, I was working with one of my then employer's summer interns. Although she was supposed to have been part of my team, at the last moment, my client slipped the start date of the project leaving me with nothing to assign to anyone. Instead of providing the intern with menial tasks, ~~I had someone else ask her to fetch coffee~~ I asked another team to find her something meaningful, yet stayed involved enough to make her learn Perl.

In spite of being an electrical engineer, the intern was pretty artistic. In fact, when she failed to answer a simple questions about the resistance a component would have were it bearing the same coloured stripes as the hair elastics decorating her wrist, I began to doubt her credentials. That she owned all the trappings required to make silk screens only cast further doubt upon her degree. At any rate, I was glad that she decided to put her silk screens to work creating some t-shirts, and stepped forward to buy one when she pitched the idea to my team. I've always had a fondness for squirrels, in spite of them terrorizing my father's prized bird feeders. In what might have been one of that summer's greatest travesties, the shirts did not feature any squirrels at all. Nonetheless, I handed over $15 for my new shirt, and prepared to leave for an August-long-weekend trip to my brother's cottage. Just then, the intern sent me a text message:

Haha…I am going to miss you next week. You and your twisted delusional psyche. I'm going to donate your $15 to the anti-squirrel cause.

So, like all the best relationships, ours started with some teasing. Over time, though, the intern came around to liking squirrels, regretting terribly that she once suggested donating to an anti-squirrel fund. To this day, we share our mutual squirrel admiration by mailing squirrel-related things to one another.

Apart from making silk-screen shirts, the intern is also super crafty with PowerPoint, using the “curve” shape to make some fabulous drawings – including the squirrel in this post! Whereas most consultants can be fairly charged with abusing Excel, and we probably all use PowerPoint decks too often, she is clearly in a league of her own with her curve mastery. We should all observe a moment of silence to mourn the death of productivity – and celebrate yet another way to spend time during tedious meetings than watching Tivo'd episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia streamed from your home to your wifi enabled iPod via a Slingbox.