Category: Learning

Learning

Helping Me Blog: Hay House’s Book Writing Challenge

Posted on by Josh Welch

Reid Tracy and Kelly Notaras are hosting this free 4-day challenge this week. I am hoping it will help me organize my thoughts and writings around my blog. Perhaps you will be able to attend too.

Hay House is providing support: “Our Aspiring Author’s Tool Kit”:

Learning

Twilio Segment Webinar, “Navigating a Cookieless World with Better Data” January 17, 2023

Posted on by Josh Welch

Their agenda:

  • Gain a better understanding of upcoming data trends
  • A view on the advertising landscape how best practices are shifting and why
  • What it means to harness first-party data in this new era

My thoughts: Great panel (Google, Meta, Snap and Deloitte Digital). Very candid answers. In April, 2021 Apple started making privacy changes, over 18 months later the main online platforms are still grappling with how to react. Still grappling with developing products to bring to market to help company’s with on-line marketing and advertising on their platforms. Twilio is figuring it out.

I was especially impressed with Michelle McGuire Christian, Deloitte Digital and Chris Plambeck, Snap Inc. contributions to the webinar.

Twilio Segment’s recorded webinar

Learning, Life

Expectations for 2023

Posted on by Josh Welch

Why not put out my guesses along with the Conventional Wisdom (CW) for various topics. Each topic will have a blog post with detailed information and source links.

China – Slow to recover after reopening with mass COVID infections. Recovery will take into 3rd and 4th Quarter.

  • Unlocked society after 3 years in late December ’22
    • No country opened faster and with so little planning
  • CW: Recover quickly in three months – at end of 1st quarter
    • I disagree, think recovery will take longer
    • Recovery from the trauma will take more time

US Federal Government Leadership –

  • CW: Gridlock is the usual, just moved to US House: I agree
  • Third year of presidency is usually flat economically

US Stock and Bond Markets –

  • Stocks largely unpredictable – movement based on crowd psychology
    • Though based on numeric market fundamentals
    • I need to explore data modeling of
      • Crowd psychology and market fundamentals
  • Best guess: -5% to -10% return for year
  • CW: Stock Market is largely unpredictable

US Federal Bank – will move interest rates up more, US will have a slight recession around 3rd quarter

  • CW: Rich will have a recession, not affect working and middle class as much
    • Wall Street (stocks and bonds) more affected
  • Myself: Inflation is taking a bite out of everyone
  • Recession Shape
    • I need to explore interactions between Baby Boomers, Gen X & Z
      • Affecting recession and US real estate values
  • Shortage of Workers
    • Why? What is the effect of the mass inflow of immigrants?
      • I need to explore US census & employment data
        • Think answer is in Baby Boomers retiring with Gen X & Z getting older

Technology –

  • ChatGPT – CW: The Next Big Thing? Or will we wait?
    • How will it be used? Unknown, TBD
    • I need to learn
  • Cookie-less online advertising and marketing still being developed
    • CW: Which company/app will dominate? Google, Meta et al addressing
    • I need to learn
  • US 5G Service – CW: Did not turn out to be The Next Big Thing
    • More stable and widely available 4G level speeds
    • My observation: More short video streaming instead of text on news sites
  • US Federal Gov. funding for chip manufacturers
    • CW: National security issue: shoring up existing industry
  • What about all the satellites launched last year?
    • My curiosity – haven’t heard recent update
  • What about iLot mentioned in press 2017-2019
    • My curiosity – haven’t heard recent update

European Union – All points are CW: Surprisingly resilient as standard of living drops

  • Jump in energy costs for all EU countries, w/Ukraine war
    • Surprisingly well received by citizens
    • Helped with fast reactions by EU governments
  • Other choice being: more steps towards war w/Russia

Interesting ‘Winners’ of the Ukraine war – All points are CW

  • India and China are purchasing the inexpensive ($60US/barrel) Russian oil exports
    • So their economies are getting a boost
    • Where EU economies are getting depressed
  • Globalization is slowing down –
    • Countries with more complete economies better positioned

That’s about it for my observations and a few predictions.

Learning, Life

Toastmasters Level 3 Achieved

Posted on by Josh Welch

Toastmaster’s training program called Pathways has one complete a series of speeches. I’ve completed my 6th, 7th and 8th speech in the series named, “Dynamic Leadership”.

In chronological order:

  • Creating Effective Visual Aids – “Cooking Omelets Three Ways”, the speech was done in my kitchen as I cooked! I had fun, though Jacques Pepin has nothing to worry about.
  • Connect with Your Audience – “Sharing Our Toastmaster Experience”, as people collectively made a word cloud
  • Negotiation Styles – a research paper on various negotiation styles used in business to achieving common shared goals.

Creativity, Learning

MIT: Customer Experience for Tech Leaders

Posted on by Josh Welch

Customer experience for tech leaders can be seen as how new tech is introduced to an organization.

  • What I liked: Many aspects were covered
    • List of potential technologies plotted: hype chart
    • How to pick tech important to your organization: radar chart
    • Balance customer ease-of-use with security concerns
  • Could have been improved
    • Prof. Andriole’s presentation had low quality visuals
  • What I liked best / was surprised about:
    • Have new techs be introduced in sequential pilot programs
    • Learn from successes and failures
    • Then incorporate successes into the larger organization

MIT: Mass Institute of Technology

Data Analysis, Learning

Coronavirus: Update to 3/26 Projections

Posted on by Josh Welch

In late March there was a lot of talk about will we open the country on Easter? How many people will have the virus then?

I researched and estimated how many people in Oregon would test positive for coronavirus and  how many would die by Easter. Healthcare stats are a bit different than modeling future sales and capacity planning! (See my blog on 3/26 for the initial information.) As Easter was yesterday, I revisited my projections against actual.

NET:

  • Number of cases: I over-estimated (1,371 actual vs 2,862) As the growth rate dropped from around 15% per day to 4-8% for the last week. I had a constant 15% growth rate.  Everyone stayed home!
  • Number of deaths: I was very close (52 actual vs 51) As my predicted growth rate matched actual until the last week. To be blunt, it takes awhile for one to die. So my model expected most people diagnosed in the last week to still be alive.

3-26-2020-CoronavirusPredictionAtEaster

Learning

AEI: Coronavirus Response, A Road Map to Reopening

Posted on by Josh Welch

As I tried to extend my coronavirus understanding and modeling – I realized a key component to future modeling was missing!

  • The expected future behavior to base the model on
    • Yes, we’re that far out of the box on this topic

Thankfully, there are many people working on this topic including the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) released “Coronavirus Response; A Road Map to Reopening” on 3/28/2020. People who know way more than myself discuss their ideas in a serious way.

Four phase plan – which will take considerable time with focus on saving the most lives.

Phase I: Slow the Spread – what we are doing, with a lot more testing

Phase II: State-by-State Reopening – with massive testing and contact tracing

Phase III: Establish Immune Protection and Lift Physical Distancing

Phase IV: Rebuild Our Readiness for the Next Pandemic

AEI-NatCoronaResponse

 

Learning

Salesforce ApexHours: Developer Training

Posted on by Josh Welch

I’ve been working my way along Salesforce’s Trailhead (software training). The points have been racking up with those 500 point challenges! Then I noticed ApexHours.com Developer Training Program in conjunction with Salesforce. The trainings have been great and well organized. There is more to being a developer than I realized! Pleased to say my experience with SAS, SQL, C++, and Java has come in handy as they put the various software components and methodology into perspective.

  • 13 live webinars, each 1-2 hours long
  • Lead by consultants working with Salesforce
  • The slides are on ApexHours.com and recordings on YouTube

The pace reminds me of a College summer course.