Tag: technology

Confessions of a Salesman

So after 16 years of selling e-clinical technologies (technologies used in clinical trials), I felt like I had truly absorbed vast amounts of technical knowledge.  After all, sales is learning some words to say in the right order to demonstrate one’s knowledge.

I know there’s probably more to it than that as there are technical sales people that have done real work and know exactly what they’re talking about.  For example, I can say, yes we’ll provide you your data in a flat ASCII file.  I have absolutely no idea what that means, stands for, looks like and how it happens.  There are some who do know. I’m told it’s a computer file (not a manila folder file) that has rows and columns with info in each cell.

So after those 16 years I go to another e-clinical tech company and in helping prepare a proposal I demonstrate my expertise thusly by writing this:

We need some words here to describe the application architecture.  The CIO is to provide some dazzling descriptions of this stuff.  To help him with it, here is a start from which he can edit my text.

We utilize a three layer approach (see image below).  The integration layer, known in tech language as “the back end” has a persistence layer as well as this really cool feature known as “hibernate”; similar to what bears do in the winter, the data rests in small caves until the proper conditions occur for it to be released.  Herein is also a rectangle labeled DAO and another one that says Resource.

In the business layer, we utilize a spring framework, which resembles a complex set of slinkies going down a never-ending escalator.  This endless loops allows for us to refresh data continuously.

For the “front-end” or presentation layer, also known as the user interface (UI) or graphical user interface (GUI – pronounced ‘gooey’), we have 5 rectangles of different sizes and the components of this layer are listed below:

Application Architecture

Rip Van Winkle aka Advances in Technology

Maybe the title of this should be “the pace of change”.  Recently while starting a company with people much younger than me, I felt like I had missed several years of involvement in the world.

With the accelerating pace of technological change, many of us find ourselves behind in keeping up with new software, programs, and technological processes implemented in the workplace.

A critical part of adapting to the digital advancements is learning and training. Implementing various types of training systems, such as written instructions and live video training to accommodate different work styles and preferences may be helpful.
In order to be effective, we need to identify the technological changes that will enable us to attain the goals of our future projects and avoid those that could jeopardize their completion.

How can we adapt to the rapid, sometimes unpredictable digital advancements? How do we prepare ourselves for the new technology processes? How do you know if you indirectly resist the changes and how can you solve that?

The Uncertainty about future or current technologies might have nothing to do with the technology itself, but instead with how we respond to the changes.

I don’t know if kids still read Washington Irving’s story of Rip Van Winkle.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_Van_Winkle  It’s about a man who fell asleep and woke up 20 years later and it was hard to accept all that had changed.  Well, lately, I feel like I’ve been asleep for 10 years and have completely missed some of the digital advances and even the more mundane.

Let’s address the mundane one first, so tonight I stop in at Staples because I’m all out of “business” envelopes – you know  the type, the long envelope that if you wanted to mail an 8.5 x 11 inch letter to someone, you’d fold it in thirds-ish and put it in this envelope. So I confidently stride to the aisle labeled Envelopes and begin looking for business envelopes.  No such thing to be found.  They had boxes of an envelope with the wording Number 10.  So I look at the dimensions and it seems that they would work.  At check out, to confirm I was buying what I needed, I ask the two 20-30 year olds – one was a manager –  at check out, “are these envelopes the same as what I know as “business envelopes”? They, of course, had never heard that term.  So I explained that I was looking for what I know as business envelopes, they said, well, yeah it looks like that would fit as this is 9 and a half inches wide.

Now  to the digital world – so a client of ours texts us to say he’ll be texting us an image that we’re to take a picture of and save for later use in demo’ing his product at a conference. Those simple 6 words: “take a picture of and save”. So that I know what I’m to do I reply with: “just to confirm – by take a picture of and save – do you mean that I’m to use my iPhone and when I see the image I’m to do that iphone thing where I push a button on the side of the phone and at the same time push the round home button such that it takes a screen shot and then once that’s done I click on the screen shot and select “save to pictures”?  He replied, “yes”.  So you see what’s happening here? 59 words of explanation are needed for me to understand, interpret and act on his 6 words.

You should pray for my colleagues, this type of thing happens nearly weekly.    Quite simple really isn’t it: “take a picture and save it.” *%$”(#*%4”@$(*$*(#@$*(@#)