What the hell have I gotten myself into? I was just looking for a place to stay!

These were just some of the thoughts racing through my head as I was white-knuckling the drive to our hotel outside of Bozeman, Montana as part of our family cross-country road trip. We were booking hotels along the way and The Lodge at Big Sky was the closest hotel available to Bozeman, where we planned to anchor our trip to Yellowstone National Park. We didn’t get to Bozeman until sunset, and by the time we went thru the city and towards our hotel it was pitch black – too dark for my liking with trailer trucks coming and going around us. The fact we had no sense of where we were truly heading added no comfort either.

What was in actuality under an hour drive seemed like an eternity, and upon arrival I was drained. Soon after we checked in and arrived at our room, a corner suite with high ceilings and big windows. About all we could see outside at this hour was a firepit on the patio below us. Closing the curtains, I thought about warming by the fire with adult beverages the following night.

In the morning we slowly rose and I made my way to the lobby for coffee. Back at the room we were slowly rustling the children for our day trip to Yellowstone, and I decided to shed a little light on the situation. Fumbling with the curtains until I found the pull rods, in unison I pulled them apart, opening them not only to a bright sunny day but one of the most beautiful natural sights I’ve ever seen.

In awe, I grabbed my phone and snapped the picture at the opening of this post. It is Lone Peak, part of the Big Sky ski resort. Of course, I say this with great knowledge now, but I had no idea where we were heading or what we would encounter once the new day arrived. We bookmarked these views and prepared for our trip to see Old Faithful, and ended up spending another day and night longer to explore the beauty of this area. What was pure chance became a highlight of the journey.

Recounting this story – and this is my deconstruction as well – I am reminded that you never know what will arrive in the morning. Over the last few weeks there has been a lot of stress, but some bright spots as well, as we adjust to events we have no control over. In telling this tale from last summer I am offering hope – to you my fair reader, and to myself especially.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Chances are you are reading this from the comfort of your home. With the declaration of Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19 as a pandemic and declarations of emergencies around the globe, many people are working from home for the near-term. For a lot of them, it is the first time they are working from home for a continuous period of time.

Where working from home isn’t a new concept, not everybody does it. Some companies still don’t have work from home policies. For some industries such as manufacturing, working from home isn’t exactly an option. Even for those people whose employers allow working from home, they may do it once or twice a week, but not every day.

If you are new to this – welcome! I have been working from home continuously for almost the last 3 years and have had a home-based office in the past, so on this topic I have some standing.

Where there is all kinds of advice I can give on working from home for extended periods, I offer these 5 tips to help level-set your experience.

Take a shower – This tip is not as much about your hygiene as it is on your daily routine. Most of us have a routine that leads to us leaving for work, and it is best to continue to do so even while working from home. I do this myself, and it helps prepare me for the day. I then don’t have to scramble if I have to leave the home and go someplace to make myself presentable. Plus, the others in your house will thank you for your cleanliness.

Carve out your space – The ideal work from home scenario would have you in an office with a window and a door that locks that is furnished with the proper desk and chair. In reality, you may be hunkered down on the couch or at best your dining room table. In any case, you need to set space that is yours so that you don’t need to move the kids’ art project in order to create that weekly report. One thing I have done is the past is get some storage bins with snap-locking lids, where I can put my office equipment and supplies and then set them aside at the end of the day, protecting them from other elements around the home.

Don’t obsess over household chores – As you are sitting there, slaving away on your computer on your couch, you may notice more things that need to be cleaned in the house. The carpet could use a shampooing, the furniture is dustier than it should be, and what’s up with all of that laundry? I’m not saying to ignore it completely, but keep it in perspective with the job you still have to do. It’s ok to move laundry from the washer to the dryer during the day and fold some clothes during that status meeting you struggle to keep awake for even when in the office.

Move around – A reality of working from home is that you won’t be moving around as much as you used to. Even if you’re not someone who counts steps and takes the elevator to your office, don’t forget the activity getting to and from the office or within the office will be cut drastically. You don’t need exercise equipment to make up for this, even a walk around the block at lunchtime will help you get some of the body movement you are not getting within the house.

You don’t have to like it – Working from home is not for everyone. Here’s a not-so secret I will share: I am not the ideal work from home person. I am an extrovert, and love working in an office and interacting with team mates to solve the technical problems we face on a daily basis. That being said, all I need for my job is Internet access, my smartphone and a Web browser – not even my own computer – and I can get everything I need to get done during the day. I work from home as we moved hundreds of miles from my office for personal reasons, and where I knew there was an element of sacrifice, I have still been productive and interact virtually with my team throughout the day.

There are a myriad of other work from home tips and life hacks out there, and as I started writing this I saw many myself. I welcome your feedback on these, and if they helped you or anyone else you shared with them to get through this new logistical arrangement.

Deconstructing Working From Home

You too may not be the ideal work from home person, and that’s ok. What’s going on in the world with the reaction to this virus, like anything else going on in the world, is constantly changing. For better or for worse, we as humans have to do the same. Sometimes it’s the small things that need adjustment along with the greater for us to adapt and thrive in changes situations. Good luck.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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“Define the sandbox for me to play in.”

This is a phrase I find myself saying more and more. It is something I have said in the past on occasion, but now it is creeping into my speech with greater frequency.

“The sandbox” I refer to comes from the childhood play thing – a literal box or tray, perhaps a half a foot in depth and a yard square, filled with sand that infants or toddlers would play in. This confined area is designed to keep the sand and the child in a defined space, all the while still allowing them to be creative and have fun.

Later in life the analogy of the sandbox would come into play (pun intended) in my chosen career of software development. Here, a sandbox is an isolated system of servers, network, software and end-user computers and mobile devices where development and experimentation can go on without impacting live software. Though there’s no sand in a technology sandbox, it can easily be as messy.

Thinking Inside and Outside The Box

Many years have passed since my early playing and I have been in all sorts of environments – business, volunteering, social, among others. I have invoked this metaphor of the sandbox as the definition of the overall boundaries or rules of engagement with whatever endeavor I am involved with. In raising this, I am asking for these parameters to be defined, upfront and complete, so I know the limits I am to work within.

In asking for the sandbox definition, I am not looking to limit what I can do. It’s actually the opposite; I want to know the boundaries so I can push them to the limits. When you think about it, there are limits in some way, shape or form in most aspects of life. There’s laws, regulations, policies, traditions, norms, emotions, budgets, physical space, time and design guidelines to name a few. If they exist, let me know them going into whatever I am going to do, so rather than being a hindrance, they are taken into consideration in my planning and actions.

Define your sand-what?

When I speak this phrase – and I find it most effective when spoken – it is often met with puzzlement. What I am asking for is not only something that is not often asked for, but the answer may not even exist, or exist in a form beneficial to myself and others. I am not a perfectionist, and I am not asking for the perfect sandbox either. In some cases, I get various documents or a conversation with someone. When this happens, I try to document what information I have received and as a result am defining the sandbox from these materials. When I do this it is met with some apprehension, especially from those who don’t want to commit or acknowledge the sandbox I have just defined from them.

It’s all play until someone pokes an eye out

Running up against the definition of the sandbox has had both positive and negative results for me in the past.

One time I felt I knew definition of the sandbox, only to find out I didn’t, which had a big impact on my work and emotions. I had to create the technical components of a presentation on a topic, with others creating the other supporting materials. The presentation was short, and I knew I was not going to be able to discuss all aspects of it, so I included external resources for the participants to explore further after the presentation. These resources were Web sites that are known for their leadership on the topic and ones I use myself. However, the day before the presentation, all but one of the links I included was struck from it by the firm’s legal counsel.

Why? They said the sites they had an issue with were run by organizations that also offered consulting services, and by including them it could be implied that the firm were endorsing these vendors. As the firm had strict policies on endorsing vendors, which I found out only as a result of this presentation, these links had to be removed. Period. When I pushed back the lawyers wouldn’t let me finish my sentence.

With the presentation so close, I had no time to find other links to include – I had the best of them, and would have to vet their information thoroughly, as well as ensure they were not offered by someone who was also consulting. So my slide had one link, the one at the bottom of the list, which I had included simply as a reference site. The presentation went on and caused confusion in the mind of some participants, and some told me this. Had I known about this endorsement policy going into it, I would have had plenty of time to rethink my material overall, from what I wrote to what I linked to. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t, and had no fun playing in this tiny sandbox this time.

A more positive example of pushing the limits of a sandbox is when I moved for a more prominent search function on an Intranet portal project I wrote about recently. Even though in this case I didn’t have the full definition of the sandbox in the form of lack of support from my director, I had the confidence that leadership would approve of this change, which they did. Even if it had not been approved, my team and I felt the effort to play to the edge of the sandbox was worth it.

Do you want to play a game?

Even with the sandbox defined for you, it is ultimately up to you if you want to play in it. Though I don’t remember specifically, I bet there were times when I would crawl or jump out of the sandbox as a child. If you do choose to play in it, be aware that on some occasions the sandbox definition may change while you are playing, and this can also trigger a decision point if you want to continue playing or move on.

The decision not to play can be unfortunate for both the person who could have played in it and for the sandbox owner as well. For the owner it can, if they accept it, create a learning moment. Typically a sandbox is there for someone to play with. But what if nobody wants to play in it? The owner – the employer, organization, what have you – has a decision to make. Do they have a sandbox nobody wants to play in?

Deconstructing Defining Sandboxes

I hope the metaphor of a sandbox resonated with your and did not distract from my overall points. In any endeavor there are boundaries. Knowing what they are going into it will make the activity smoother. Changing or just disclosing boundaries late in the process can cause disruption to all involved with the endeavor and can have repercussions to the individuals – the players – and the organization – the sandbox owner.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Where I am in no hurry for my own children to become teenagers, something else in my life has reached that milestone – this blog.

Over the last 13 years I have used The Hot Iron as a platform for whatever is on my mind. In the beginning it was more frequent, and over time it has not been as much. Interestingly as I am writing this post I went back to the archives to see how many times I wrote here in 2019 as it seemed like more than in recent years, but that wasn’t the case. Perhaps I was just thinking about it more this year?

If you are reading this, you are one of the few and much-appreciated people who have stuck with me for some time to read this, and for this I am very grateful. I gave up years ago on making promises for writing more, but I have not given up completely on this site.

As this will be my last post for the year, may the new decade beginning on January 1, 2020 be a time where all that you want becomes real!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Announcements • Thrive • (1) Comments • Permalink

A few weeks ago I attended what I will call a "meta meetup" – it was a showcase of business and technology meetup networking groups in Northeast Wisconsin. The event was called Meet the Meetups and was a local version of a similar event held in the Milwaukee area.

Following the event I reached out to the organizers and shared with them how I wished something like this took place a couple of years ago when I moved to the area. My quest for such groups when I first arrived here was nowhere near as bountiful as what I encountered at this gathering in Green Bay.

As one of my goals for the coming year is to immerse myself more in technology – both in general and local – I am sharing this list of meetup groups here. Perhaps it can help someone looking now as I did then, and perhaps I will see you at one of their events?

Rising Tide Society / Tuesday's Together

BAM (Big Data, Advanced Analytics, and Machine Learning)

The Nest

Women In Entrepreneurship - Northeast Wisconsin

Current - Young Professionals (Green Bay Chamber)

1 Million Cups

Green Bay Power BI User Group

Northeast Wisconsin Cloud Users Group

Fox Valley Dev Ops

Northeast Wisconsin Agile Users Group

Digital Fertilizer

Wisconsin UX

ReactJS Green Bay

Fox Valley Business Data Intelligence and Analytics

Fox Valley Microsoft Data Platform

Fox Valley Game Development

WI Kentico User Group

Northeast Wisconsin Developers Users Group

Fox Valley Sharepoint User Group

Thought-Hacking Wisconsin

I would like to share one that was not at this event, but is also a worthwhile networking and learning opportunity. Women in Technology Wisconsin hosts monthly events and networking, and is not only for women – I know, I have attended one of their events.

If you know of other networking opportunities in Northeast Wisconsin for business and technology, please share them in the comments of this post.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Announcements • Business • Technology • Thrive • (1) Comments • Permalink