As far as I’m concerned, progress peaked with frozen pizza. ~From the movie Die Hard 2

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I sometimes get inspiration while roaming through stores looking at products. For me it is almost like walking through a park as shapes and colors and items tend to spur on thoughts. The other day while shopping I passed a Hannah Montana lunch box display in the store and it reminded me that I always love to embrace new things, new trends and new ideas, as new ideas are the life blood of the world. Why Hannah Montana reminded me of this I am not sure but I think it had to do something with being a different age and then thinking “what would it be like to be that age again? No I didn’t buy the Hannah Montana lunch box, in case you are asking. Lol. Still it tends to remind me though that through trends, fads, and movements there are times when you look back over history, be it your own or others and say “what was I thinking?” Since I am a gen xer, parachute pants, big hair and other 80’s accoutrements come to mind. Maybe the discussion of fashion is perhaps a good segue way into the subject of today’s blog which is something I have been thinking about a lot: cloud computing. Cloud computing has stirred up its share of controversy and bandwagon hopping and does seem to remind me of telling my mom “oh come on please, everyone else is doing it.” Which of course moms use the classic line “If everyone else jumped off a cliff would you?” I am sorry to say in technology the answer would probably be a resounding yes. With the advent of cloud computing it is more apparent then ever we are not technological super eggheads building the utopian future of the world but a bunch of 10 year old girls swept up in a Hannah Montana frenzy. Now without further adieu Mr Ellison and Mr Gillet on cloud computing.

Now to elaborate a bit here is Frank Gillett, Forester VP and Principal Analyst.

Of course you gotta give it to Ellison for poking some holes in the myth. Still though all of us in the end seem to acquiesce and even Ellison himself rolled out a cloud strategy for Oracle. In some ways as much as we pride ourselves in our field for being computer scientists and propellarheads in many ways we are ten year old fashion driven girls. And on that note I am going to be watching some Hannah Montana and deploy Helix Innovative’s cloud strategy. Oh the humanity!

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An elder Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life. He
said to them, “A fight is going on inside me.. it is a terrible fight and it is
between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret,
greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false
pride, superiority, and ego.The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity,
humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth,
compassion, and faith.”"This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other
person, too”, he added.The Grandchildren thought about it for a minute and then one child
asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied… “The one you feed.”

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Good Morning Vietnam! Lol. Always wanted to say that in a blog. Well technically it isn’t morning anymore but easing into afternoon. This morning I was conducting a training session with a new developer who joined our fold and if you have read any of my previous blog entries the first thing we work on here at Helix Innovative is team focus. During this session we were focusing on the fundamentals of what it means to be in a team, part of a team and how that affects those around you. As we went back and forth discussing what it means to be part of a team I called up an oldie but goodie from Rudyard Kipling. I loved reading Kipling as a kid, and especially loved the animated television adaptation by Chuck Jones, of Kipling’s famous tale Riki Tiki Tavi, which is the story of a boy and his pet mongoose who saves the family from murderous snakes.

I mean, you gotta love the fact that Orsen Welles handled the voice of Nag, the Not to mention the book my Dad used to read to me which was Kipling’s “Just So Stories,” especially my favorite “How the Elephant Got Its Trunk.” I can still hear my Dad’s voice reading to my sister and I…”The great green greasy Limpopo river all covered with fever trees.” Ok I have gone way off track here. So here is Kipling:

The Law of the Jungle
(From The Jungle Book)
by Rudyard Kipling

Now this is the Law of the Jungle –
as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper,
but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk
the Law runneth forward and back –
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,
and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

The poem is quite longer then this and is well worth the read and contains many observations of how a wolf pack must conduct itself to prosper, all from Kipling and since we aren’t trying to encroach on the territory of literary criticism blogs we will move on.

So long story short we had a discussion about this particular section of this poem and I asked “What does this mean to you?”

The response was:

“We work as a team, each one makes up the team and our strength lies in our team work..”

Again our new developer summed it up and this is the magic of team play, once each member sees what can be accomplished as a unit they become better as an individual in turn. As Jim Collins at www.jimcollins.com and author of “Good to Great,” describes it is all about getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus and injecting a rigorous discipline and then figuring out where to drive the bus. You can drive to Mars with the right team in the correct seats. Well you can’t technically drive to Mars, but you get the idea and if you haven’t read any of Collin’s books they are good reads. I personally don’t know if I am as Collin’s describes a Hedgehog, who knows maybe in business but the thought of being a rolly polly little mammal with spines sticking out of me is giving me a rather alarming visual…Anyway, just read the book. Now time to go back and see how our young Padawan is doing. J

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