Posts

Beauty

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Beauty is food for the soul. 

Boundaries

There are more boundaries in my head than in the physical world. 

Computational Thinking

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Computers dominate our world today and their dominance will continue to increase over time. Since I work in Hi-Tech, working with computers has been an integral part of my life. To get better at working with computers, I read Computational Thinking . The book defines Computational Thinking (CT) as "the mental skills and practices for:  1. Designing computations that get computers to do jobs for us; and  2. Explaining and interpreting the world as a complex of information processes.  The design aspect reflects the engineering traditions of computing in which people build methods and machines to help other people. The explanation aspect reflects the science tradition of computing in which people seek to understand how computation works and how it shows up in the world."  The book goes into the history of von Neumann architecture , computer science, software engineering and how things evolved over time. It is a fascinating read. I found the following paragraph to be particularly

Humans And Machines

All Large Language Models (LLMs) outputs are probabilistic but we consider them as definitive. 

History

To better understand the world today, learn history.  Empire podcast is a  fun and addictive way to learn history. 

Business Writing

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I have to write frequently for work. My writings include messages, presentation decks, articles, white papers, etc. A simple rule, I found useful, to make my writing more effective is to follow PAMD, which is:   1. P urpose: Why am I writing this document?  2. A udience: Who is the document for? How much do they know about what I am writing?  3. M essage: What is the message I want the audience to get from the document? What is the message I don't want the audience to get from the document?  4. D elivery: How will the document be delivered? In a meeting, via email, or in a solo presentation? PAMD for business writing  For example:  As a startup CEO, I might be writing a broad deck to be delivered in a board meeting. The purpose is to get buy-in from the board on a new strategy. The audience is all board members, senior executives from the startup, and the general counsel at the board meeting. The message might be that the recommended pivot is the best option to be successful.  Star

Meetings

In group meetings of three or more people, you are never communicating with just one person.