Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016: First Timer’s Impressions

Posted on January 16, 2016 by admin

The legendary and glorious Consumer Electronics Show. A congregation of more than 170,000 people (for comparison, I grew up in a city of only 30,000), in the shiny artificial Las Vegas. A happening that takes over tech pages in all the media for the week before it and multiple weeks after. An almost 50 year old event where a camcoder, an HD TV, and an Xbox were first shown to the excited public.

I dreamed of going for the last 3 years; I served as a judge for the CES Innovation Awards this year; and I finally made the trip happen.

CESIt was all I expected, and more. I expected big — it was bigger. I expected the coolest new technologies — there were more technologies, and they were even newer and even cooler than I anticipated.

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Posted in Conferences, Consumer technology, Hardware, Highlights, How the world is changing, Industry trends, Internet of Things, Technology, Travel, Uncategorized, Wearable computing | Comments Off on Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016: First Timer’s Impressions

The Onion At Its Best: ‘Seek Funding’ Step Added To Scientific Method

Posted on November 26, 2015 by admin

The Onion spots a much-needed addition: ‘Seek Funding’ Step Added To Scientific Method.

Quoting from the article: “After making an observation and forming a hypothesis as usual, the new third step of the scientific method will now require researchers to embark upon an exhaustive search for corporate or government financing,” said the group’s president, Gordon McBean, adding that the new stage of the process, which will be implemented across every scientific discipline, also entails compiling and forwarding grant proposals to hundreds of highly competitive funding sources.

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Ironman Triathlon

Posted on October 24, 2015 by admin

I did it!

The face of a person at the finish line of their first Ironman:

MariaGorlatova_Im2016

I found the Ironman different from all the races I’ve done before.  After ~20 major races and more than 50 races in total, I thought a race experience would not be a surprise for me.

But Ironman is different. It is a full-day affair, sunrise to sundown, and past that (I started at 8 AM and finished just short of 10:30 PM). And more than a handful of moments in the race made me feel downright certifiable. I’ve never before imagined saying to myself “No worries, I only have about two hours of cycling left” and “All seems to be going well, right? I’m almost done, now I only need to run a marathon.” An experience like few others.

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Projected Ending of Moore’s Law: Can Engineering Creativity Sustain The Rate Of Progress?

Posted on October 4, 2015 by admin

The projections of the ending of the Moore’s Law are nothing new — seemingly, they were being made for many decades. For example, back in 2009 an NSF director Jeannette Wing had the following graph in her ACM MobiCom talk slides (click to enlarge):

moore_sl_endingWhile the projections are not new, media reports on them have seemingly been intensifying. Within the last month, both The Economist and The New York Times chose to run articles on Moore’s Law coming to an end:

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Posted in ASICs, Creativity, Hardware, How the world is changing, In the news, Industry, Industry trends, Research, Technology | Comments Off on Projected Ending of Moore’s Law: Can Engineering Creativity Sustain The Rate Of Progress?

New Management Models: Do They Make Control-Theory And Information-Theory Sense?

Posted on September 27, 2015 by admin

There has been a lot of talk lately about new management models, that is, the alternatives to centralized top-heavy decision-making that has been the staple of the corporate world for so long. Coursera has had a fun class on this, “Managing the Company of the Future“, largely based on the lecturer, Prof. Binkinshaw’s, book “Reinventing Management“. And of course the Zappos’ holacracy (which I cannot help but habitually spell as holacrazy) experiment has been getting quite a bit of news coverage as well (see Forbes May 2015, New York Times July 2015, Atlantic October 2015, and many others).

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Posted in Communication skills, How the world is changing, In the news, Industry trends, Management, New business models, Uncategorized | Comments Off on New Management Models: Do They Make Control-Theory And Information-Theory Sense?

Quirky, which Brought us Pawcet and Hundreds of Other Products, Is No More

Posted on September 25, 2015 by admin

Quirky, an invention platform startup that created the magnificent Pawcet, a drinking fountain for dogs, is, alas, no more. After raising more than $180 million from investors and bringing more than 400 products to the market over its 6 years of existence, Quirky has filed for bankruptcy.

QuirkyBankruptTwo years ago, I would have crawled through mud and walked through fire to have a chance to work for Quirky. They didn’t give the time of day because of my lack of experience with non-research electronics. Part of me would love to believe that awful hiring decisions like this one did them in.

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Posted in Consumer technology, Creativity, Hardware, How the world is changing, In the news, Industry, Industry trends, New business models, Technology | Comments Off on Quirky, which Brought us Pawcet and Hundreds of Other Products, Is No More

Experience with Manufacturing

Posted on May 24, 2015 by admin

When I was interviewing for PM positions a couple of years ago, I wanted to do what I do now – build exciting real-world products soup to nuts, concept to manufacturing to deployment, algorithms to software and hardware design to manufacturing and to operations. Yet, when I interviewed for such roles, my lack of experience with one particular aspects of this – manufacturing – was oftentimes the ultimate deal breaker. Luckily, for my current role my experience in successfully running interdisciplinary research software-hardware projects outweighed this particular missing part of my background, and I got a chance to learn, on the job, the negotiations, vendor relationships, and manufacturing.

And, knowing what I know now, I see 100% why companies see the experience with manufacturing as supremely important. Hardware is hard. Manufacturing is hard. While it may be relatively straightforward to reason through how that would be the case and how hardware is different from software (e.g., you’ll clearly need more up-front investments and more planning), it is equally easy to not zoom in on important considerations and pay for it later. Thankfully, people who have been burned – or have succeeded – in this are oftentimes prepared to share their experiences.

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50 Races Completed: Reflections

Posted on May 18, 2015 by admin

As of this weekend, I have finished a total of 50 races. My first race was a May 2009 Jersey City 10K run. My 50th race was a Harriman State Park olympic distance triathlon (1500m swim, 40km bike ride, 10K run). Of the 50 races, the most challenging were the 3 marathons, the 1/2 Ironman, and a handful of triathlons and 1/2 marathons that I had aggressive time goals for. I raced in Canada, USA, and Switzerland.  In the USA, I raced in California, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, New Hampshire, and Maryland. I would not name a favorite race because I do not play favorites with my races. But many were truly spectacular. Philadelphia’s Broad Street Run, a 10-miler that goes through the heart of the city, deserves a special mention. So does the “only one hill” Mount Washington Race (see the blog post here), and of course Escape from Alcatraz and NYC triathlons. All were magnificent.

I never thought I would complete 50 races. I never thought I would complete 5, even. But here we are.

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DARPA Project Experience and DARPA Project Leaders

Posted on May 3, 2015 by admin

Recent Wired Magazine profile of  Dr. Regina Dugan, formerly the director of Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and currently an executive at Google (Wired Magazine article available here) led me to a Harvard Business Review article by Dr. Dugan about how DARPA approaches radical innovation projects.

DARPA’s approach to research and innovation is somewhat atypical; quoting the article, “DARPA brings together world-class experts from industry and academia to work on projects of relatively short duration. The projects’ intensity, sharp focus, and finite time frame make them attractive to the highest-caliber talent, and the nature of the challenge inspires unusual levels of collaboration. In other words, the projects get great people to tackle great problems with other great people“.

DARPA_logo

I worked on one of DARPA cybersecurity-related projects back in 2007-2008. The article brings back memories and puts the outstanding experience I had as part of that project in perspective.

I was a relatively junior contributor back then, still fresh out of an M.Sc. program and not yet on to my Ph.D. program, but oh boy how much I learned! Working on the DARPA project, I:

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PM Candidates: Ask Questions, Please

Posted on February 10, 2015 by admin

All job candidates, for all jobs everywhere, should know to ask questions of their interviewers when prompted. The answer to “Do you have any questions for me?” ought to be never be “no“, for any position.

But especially for PM (Product/Project/Program) Manager positions – for the love of God, PM job candidates, please do come up with questions! Asking questions is such a core part of the job that you are interviewing for – you absolutely need to demonstrate to your interviewer that you ask questions willingly, gladly, and very, very well. If you are not asking questions, here are some of the questions that the interviewer will have about your candidacy:

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