Dave Mann is the Man!

Dave Mann: New perspective on Microsoft.

“Microsoft has been viewed as an Evil Empire for a long time, but its not structured like that anymore. And, Microsoft accounts for a huge percentage of the consumer base, so lets not count them out simply because they use a product that so many other people use”

“Microsoft contributes or supports to over 3000 open source projects, Im not gonna walk because of their reputation 20 years ago because that was 20 years ago”

“The interesting thing is that back in the day when IBM was the big evil empire company, Apple made that commercial that showed the miserable IBM workers who all looked the same and had that big hammer being thrown into the main computer, well look how people line up and walk in step for iphones now! The idea is that there is always a ‘big bad wolf.”.

 

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Moving from consulting to product-centered business model

“Consulting is a young persons’ game, and Im getting older (and wiser). I can’t do it forever. So, I need to start transitioning my consulting company to a more product-centered model. The problem is that consulting is quick money, easy money and its hard to say no to quick money”
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“Rather than investing all my time and energy in one product that could put me in the poor house if it fails, I’d like to grow a company around a number of different products and spread out my investments (like an incubator!)”

“My short term goals change, almost daily, because things happen and I inevitably a have to shift things around. When my basement flooded, I couldn’t say to my wife “Sorry hun, I have to finish this code”. Thats not realistic! So have a plan, have a schedule and realize its going to change. Tech changes so fast, you have to be able to roll with the punches”

Sophisticated Wild Ass Guess (S.W.A.G.)

Dave projected how many users rely on Office and other Microsoft products with a metric that he called a   WAG (Wild Ass Guess).  One of our regulars, Mike, pointed that Dave’s assertion was a very sophisticated wild ass guess, which we noticed resulted in a fairly trendy acronym S.W.A.G., coincidence? We think not!

 

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One Last Piece of Advice

“Once you learn your first programming language, it is much easier to learn the next one. The tricky part is to pick the right product  for the right problem. JavaScript is a great first language because its generally more forgiving than other languages”

Brad Miller, Founder of MongoSluice

Brad Miller Presents MongoSluice

DSC_0086Our Startup Meetup this week was perhaps the most technically stimulating event that we have hosted. Brad Miller has devote the vast majority of his free time to developing MongoSluice, a software tool developed to accelerate the rate of streamed data between MongoDB and traditional relational database systems.

“The tool (MongoSluice) solves the problems most enterprise developers face: how to pull insight from giant datasets stored in Mongo quickly and reliably — without building disposable one-off solutions.”

DSC_0096 “MongoSluice will maintain the relational integrity of nested MongoDB data, such as nested Mongo objects and arrays. Its compatible with all RDBMS systems with a JDBC drivers, including MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, Netezza, and Postgres”

    “Upcoming feature enhancements include a programmatic API to define complex extraction processes, and a concurrency framework for increased speed and efficiency of exporting. This will allow the end user to build complex nested structures using database queries and export those structures directly into MongoDB”

DSC_0099Despite all the time and effort, that Brad has put into his project, he was able to gain some nuanced and valuable insights from the audience.

It was inspiring to see that even during our more formal talks, we have established an comfortable and conversational environment.  We encourage open discussions of  ideas, sparking passionate debates used to strengthened and expand each speakers projects. It is our hope that these talks are mutually beneficial to our audience, as well as our speaker.

 

Chris Merkner Reads @WalnutStLabs

After leaving his family to tour the United States this past year, Author and Professor Chris Merkner stopped in the Lab to read “In Lapland” aloud and share his unique perspective of his craft. Despite Chris’ admitted hesitance or skepticism toward his own self-promotion, he mentioned how his mindset has shifted since the completion of his book: The Rise and Fall of the Scandamerican Domestic .

Below are some excerpts from “In Lapan”:
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(pgs. 30-31) “All day Sunday we’re on broadband scrolling over online paint resources. By sunset we have selected a Country Rill from a company in Pennsylvania and had shipped overnight to the house. We pay an ungodly figure to overnighted this paint, but there is no looking back: when it comes to paint, when it comes to everything at this point in our lives, cost is negligible. We charge it. We have no time for savings. All the saving we’ve been doing, all that’s over. For the first time that weekend, we eat dinner without rushing. We have even turned on the television. It’s our last supper.”

(pgs. 35-36) “She is def and she is dumb. She is swiping at the chair rail in long, reckless strokes. She’s made a speckled rill of Green Rill on our old berber. She’s crouching like a catcher, raking along the wall next to the fireplace walls. Paint is flinging and dripping. She strokes  in those long, reckless strokes lavishing the wall above and below the rail. Her Muscles tremble and twitch. Her knees crack. I take a glob in the forehead and come to. The small of her back.
I have lost my breath.
I haven’t really ever seen her like this. She turns and takes my hand, yanks me toward her, kisses me, her tongue firing in my mouth. “C’mon,” she pants. “Get into it.” Those walls that had kept me up at night are done in thirteen minutes. In thirteen minutes I’m on my back panting beside my wife looking. We’re both breathing out of our mouths, leaning against the sofa. It’s a whole mess we have here. However, in the public sense, it is done.
Or, as my wife puts it, “It’s started.”The-Rise-and-Fall-356x535

(pg. 40) “Friday, the brush is frayed and starchy, limpid and stiff at the same time — caked in a sort of translucent lacquer and generally incapable of offering a stroke of Country Rill that does not somehow ruin a previous stroke. My whole rhythm is off. I’m  doing harm. My wife just winces, says things like, “Oh, Guud.” I have covered the kitchen walls three times over. My arms ache, and my hands are blistering badly. I picture my shoulders as the inside of a rotting boat on a destitute beach. I drink water like a dog. I’ve taken to eating M&M’s again. I’m taking down the big bags of megastores that require paid membership.

Buy The Rise and Fall of the Scandamerican Domestic

Waste Oil Recyclers: Eco-Incubator

Doing Earth Day Right!

We invited Jim and Brenda from  Waste Oil Recyclers  to speak at our Earth Day Startup Meetup. We were inspired to hear all the great things they’ve done for their community, local businesses and their client-base. Below are some of the highlights.
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Birth of the Modena Garden Project

“It’s not just about the oil collection anymore. It’s been a lot about collaboration. Which is why I think this concept (Walnut St. Labs) is so cool! When Waste Oil Recyclers moved to Modena, which is now called Mogreena, Organic Mechanics soil became interested and shared space on site. He (Mark Highland) started off as a sole proprietorship, interested in organic soil, to (selling) his products in Whole Foods stores from here to Chicago. A number of years ago, the people on site said, ‘well we have all this extra space why don’t we plant some stuff?’. It started off very grassroots. Hang out on Wednesday nights we’ll work on the garden, and whatever we harvest people will share. And about two years ago we had an improptu meeting, with the Coatesville Youth Initiative,  Chester County Food Bank , some other local farmer/ CSA people, just people we knew in the area, and we ended up coming up with the basic plan that turned into the Mogreena Garden Project.”

–Brenda McNeil, VP of Marketing @WasteOilRecycle

 

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 Waste Oil Recyclers as an Eco-Incubator 

“I think how all this ties back into this place (Walnut St. Labs) specifically, our work site was a way for Organic Mechanics to share a space and share rent. We’ve brought a lot of businesses on site and we all helped one another grow, and we all shared resources. We all shared a lot of beer in the building of the place. Since then, we’ve expanded that complex. We expanded into another 4 acres, in a 24,000 square foot warehouse, where we have new tenants. We are trying to act as an incubator as well for a lot of these new businesses, by helping them move in, giving them adequate resources, and maybe cheap rent to start with. Maybe work-trade or some sort of barter, which happens all the time there.

The Mogreena Industrial Complex that this is all housed in, currently has six businesses: Veterans Construction, Organic Mechanics,Tom Breglio Wood Working, Philadelphia Block & Board and Fred’s Fine Cars. So, we have all these different people help one another on a daily basis. At first, people were trying to get the lay of the land, and now I go over there and I’ll see three different businesses all building a pallet tower, housing flowers and giant flowers made of old scrap cans, and all these wonderful pieces of artwork, but they’re also helping each other in their core businesses. The way that the complex is laid out, it does provide adequate space for those projects to take place. I think collaboration is extremely important, and having a diverse enough group of businesses in a community that you’re part of, that interacts on a daily basis can only be a good thing.

–Jim Bricker, Co-Founder and CEO @WasteOilRecycle
Custom Mobile App

“We do have a technical component to our business that is really pretty cool. We have our own full-time IT person. From square one, he designed the software program that was very specific to the company, and it allows our drivers to be out with iphones and recording what they’re collecting from every client in real time. They have their route on their phone and can GPS everything. They can enter the gallons in real time, so that at any given point in time, my client can call me and I can tell them exactly how much we collected, when we collected, and it allows us to run a lot of interesting reports. It’s great from a sales perspective to see where we have gaps in our service territory.”
–Brenda

“We have an algorithm that tells us when Limoncello is full. We can see exactly home many gallons are in their dumpster. By doing that, we can preempt the service. It makes our business more effective, but it also allows us to provide better services to our clients.”

–Jim

Senator Dinniman: The Paradigm Shift

Today @WalnutStLabs, Senator Dinniman shared his views on the post-industrial age of technology and how organizational structures have shifted.

Standardization of labor and production has been replaced by customization, the pyramidal hierarchy of organizational structure has transitioned to  a  horizontal template.

“I believe it’s learning communities such as these, which are the future. Because once someone graduates from the university, they have to continue learning throughout life. And so, What your going to see in society is more and more of these learning centers, where bright and creative people will come together to collaborate, to help each other out. And in this process, that is how  innovation will continue to evolve. “

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