Gear Up for Digital Transformation
Baseline Analysis
Review of current state with the purpose of identifying present-day challenges and major blockers for tomorrow
Vision Development
Iterate the why and the what to set the 10× target for the future, unconstrained by today's tools and processes
PoC Trial
Develop a Proof of Concept trial to drive rapid learning cycles, but take no shortcuts that will impede scale-up during roll-out.
About
me and how I can help
Introduction
My background is in electrical engineering, with more than two decades of industrial experience. In recent years my focus has been on IoT & Edge Computing Cloud technologies and I am currently with FUTURi Power Inc, an intelligent electrification pioneer. Past positions include Vessel IoT Lead Architect at ZeroNorth A/S, a leader in the green transition of global maritime trade, Managing Director & Head of Engineering at METIS Cybertechnology, Software Development Manager at EnerSys Energy Systems Americas (formerly Alpha Technologies Ltd.), Chief Architect and acting VP Engineering at mimik Technology, Electrical Supervisor at Thenamaris (a top-tier ships-management company), Principal Engineer at Atmel (now part of Microchip Technology), system engineering Lead at Theta Microelectronics RFIC IP and design services) and research engineer at Ericsson. Also as an FP6, FP7 and Horizon 2020 expert evaluator and reviewer with the European Commission, in Information, Communication and IoT Technologies, I have co-monitored execution of fourteen R&D projects, with budgets totalling in excess of 75M EUR and typical life-cycles of 2-4 years each. I hold postgraduate degrees in Digital Telecommunications, Electrical Engineering, from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada).
Analysis
The first and possibly the most important step in a digital transformation journey is to review and analyse present reality. This will allow identifying challenges in process, information and decision flows, along with stakeholders and their needs. In this and pretty much in every step that follows, especially so for those with an engineering backgound, it will be tempting to rush to solutions. It is, however, crucially important to remain focused on what every step needs to accomplish. Analysis will highlight all that's keeping your team from growing while achieving its best. Factoring in where your organization needs to be tomorrow should also reveal major blockers that stand in the way.
Vision
Developing a digital vision for your organization is no small undertaking. While challenges and blockers from analysis should be pointing the way, Vision requires boiling down what it is you want to do and, maybe even more importantly, why you want to do it. Iterating these two core questions will help set a 10× goal for the future, unconstrained by today's tools and processes. Approaching this the other way arround, building solutions on old or new tools simply because they are available, is ultimately setting you up for failure. Clarity of Vision, on the other hand, naturally paves the way for the last step in the cycle: iterative proof-of-concept trials, generating knowledge and guiding progress.
PoC
Flawless analysis and crystal-clear vision will never be enough. Iterating through a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) phase is the only way to bring the vast ICT and IoT space down to earth for your organization, helping you fail early and learn fast. An iteration will pick a specific business problem from the analysis phase and define metrics for success. It needs to start small in both domain coverage — focusing on a small data set — and trial time, taking 3 months or less to complete. This will accelerate learning and help manage stakeholder expectations. Implementation will take no short-cuts; a PoC must fully leverage the micro-service paradigm while paving a clear scale-up path.
Open Source
and amateur radio
Introduction
I have been active in the
Open Source
movement since the early 90's, contributing to GNU/Linux - its flag-ship operating
system - and to core components such as the
X-Windows
system (or X11) pioneered by
MIT,
as well as writing stand-alone applications and utilities.
The free software movement is one of the most successful social movements
to emerge in the past decades, driven by a worldwide community of
programmers dedicated to the cause of freedom and sharing.
![[Free Software Foundation]](img/48765.png "[Free Software Foundation]")
Open Source
My involvement with computing and networking reaches back to the early 90's
and the infancy of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Notable Open Source
contributions include xisp: a full-featured dialup TCP/IP tool with an X11
interface, Xaw3D: a 3D version of Xaw, the X11 widgets from
MIT
project
Athena,
international keyboard support for X11R6 via shared object runtime libraries, and
xmailbox: an animation and sound-enabled mailbox applet.
xisp
included an ISP and PTT database manager for logging and calculating dialup costs,
as well as manual login, call-back and per-ISP DNS selection capabilities. While
practically obsolete in the broadband-access world of today, it was featured in two
Linux Journal,
articles, in the
December 1998 and
December 1999 issues.
Xaw3D
was a drop-in replacement for most operating systems supporting shared libraries,
and added Motif® look-and-feel to the otherwise visually unappealing Xaw
library, while
xmailbox
was included in the contributed applications and utilities of MIT's X11R6 official
distribution.
Amateur Radio
Between 1991 and mid 1994 I served as President of the
Amateur Radio Society
(ARS) at
UBC.
The UBC ARS is a non-profit, student organization governed by UBC's
Alma Mater Society,
with a mission to promote Amateur Radio as a hobby to students, faculty, staff
and the community. During these four years we greatly increased student
membership, improved the 2m and 70cm Campus repeaters, completed an auto-tracking
144/440 MHz satellite station and deployed experimental high-speed wireless
digital links in the 220/440 MHz bands. We also published two preparatory
course books to complement our very successful weekend courses for prospective
radio amateurs. The two text-books ("Amateur Radio Basic Qualification
Manual" & "Amateur Radio Advanced Qualification Manual" - of which I am a
co-author) together with the weekend courses were for many years the Society's
main source of income.
VE7HDB is my call-sign in Canada, where I hold Advanced Theory and Morse Code
certificates. My reciprocal call-sign in Greece is SV0XCB.