Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Author: Jon Karnofsky

  • ABT Olympics 2017: Company Culture at Its Best

    Culture Club: Who We Are

    When you hear the phrase “Culture Club”, you likely think of Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? or Karma Chameleon. At ABT, the Culture Club is a group of employees who have a monthly budget to plan and implement fun events for everyone. We at ABT follow a “Work Hard, Play Hard” mentality, and the Culture Club supports the latter. As president of the Culture Club, I’m lucky (and proud) to have helped the team organize company events for years. Our events range from our Pumpkin’ Chunkin’ at Halloween, to old-school egg drops, to team trivia, and to one of our favorites: the ABT Olympics.

    What Are These Olympics All About?

    On May 19th, we held our 7th Annual ABT Olympics— essentially a two hour field day for adults. The Culture Club decides on a number of games, sets the rules, assigns random teams, and our company competes for bragging rights and a custom trophy.  There’s plenty of fun debate over rules minutia, usually some shenanigans for the referees to have to sort out, and an entertaining combination of heated competition and whimsey. We always color-code our teams, and have some wearable object (t-shirt, wristband, etc.) to identify teams. For the second year in a row, we have used superhero capes. I cannot express the glee I have watching 50+ people in superhero capes playing team games!

    What We Played This Year

    Each year there is a mix of new and previous events. Teams can earn bronze, silver, or gold in each event. In 2017, this was the line-up:

    Water Balloon Toss: Pretty much what you would expect. Teams of two throw a water balloon back and forth, getting farther apart from each other on every toss—as long as the balloon doesn’t break.

    Rock/Paper/Scissors: A recent addition and favorite, a small-bracket tournament with fast-paced, head-to-head, hand-symbol domination.

    Ladderball: We try and have a few games where everybody plays. Each person on a team has one throw, and the team with the highest total score wins. Simple concept, but not easy.

    Sanskrit Scramble: An new ABT original.  We wanted a game incorporating a puzzle somehow.  Culture Club members created a two-person game where one person could see a set of sanskrit symbols, and had to relay the right symbols to their teammate who put tiles on a solution board.

    Flip Cup: Another company “everyone plays” favorite. It’s a bracket tournament of standard flip cup. (Beer or nonalcoholic beverages allowed).

    Final Relay:  A series of small events lined up in a relay to determine the overall winner of the Olympics. Teams that earned more medals in earlier events got a head start. The team flag is used as the “baton” that players pass as they complete part of the relay.  

    2017 Olympics Highlights

    As the ABT Olympics Emcee and assistant ref, I get a pretty good view of the events. As happens every year, we have a few highlights that stood out this year.

    For the water balloon toss, each team has two pairs tossing balloons. Team Black (Black Beard Blazers) were both the best costumed, as pirates, and both pairs of athletes survived to the end securing their bragging rights for the event.

    In Rock/Paper/Scissors, veteran Hap Wiggins of Team Purple (Eggplants) and recent hire Brian Smith of Team Green (Cash Me Outside) tore through the early rounds. They each dominated their first round and semi-final opponents. In the finals, however, Hap lost whatever psychological advantage he had built up, and Brian Smith came out victorious.

    In Sanskrit Scramble, we had a slight referee snafu. (Happens most years, but we do our best to avoid these!)  We had one ref for each of the six teams, but unfortunately our answer sheets showed us only 10 of the 12 symbols in the solution. We had to resolve mid-event, but we’re confident that the teams that won medals did so legitimately. Team Red (Red Bull Alliance) was one of two teams ending up with a DNF claiming referee shenanigans. Their appeal was denied. This type of chaos is just part of the fun!

    In the final relay, all six teams stayed pretty close to one another. There was a point that all six teams were on the plank skis at the same time, the second to last leg. With some impressive ski coordination, Team Pink (RosĂŠ Raiders) took over the lead and ultimately won the Olympics. Team Yellow (Yellow Jackets) pulled up the rear by struggling with their flag at the end and letting Team Green ahead of them.

    Thanks to Andrew Bartlett for shooting video and putting together this incredible highlights reel:

    Looking Forward to 2018

    After every Culture Club event, we gather feedback from the company so we can learn and improve for next year. The response was very positive again for the Olympics, and some great ideas for changes or new games were included. Now my only struggle is waiting another 12 months before we get to do it again!

  • Recap of the 2015 NCTA “State of Technology” Conference

    Recently, I was able to attend the North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA) “State of Technology” conference. This conference brings together some of the leading companies and technologists for a look at the future of technology and North Carolina’s role in that future. The conference consisted of keynote speakers, panel discussions and breakout sessions that examined some of the leading trends of the day. During my time at the conference, I was able to sit in on the opening keynote by IBM’s SVP of Solutions Portfolio & Research and two breakout sessions on “Big Data” and “Cloud Technologies.”

    NCTA Keynote: John Kelly of IBM

    John Kelly, SVP of Solutions Portfolio & Research for IBM, delivered the keynote speech, a reprise from five year ago.  He opened his talk with a look back at the predictions he’d made back in 2010. At that time, he predicted things such as real-time data analysis, affordable personal genome mapping, and IBM Watson’s ability to compete on Jeopardy.  I thought this approach was a creative way to provide legitimacy to tech predictions which usually are just tossed away.

    Kelly then turned his attention to his predictions for the next five years.  One data-related prediction he made stood out to me: data generation will continue to grow exponentially, and in 5 years people will be producing tens of zettabytes of info.  (A zettabyte is one trillion gigabytes.)  By that point, the ratio of unstructured to structured data will be huge.  Interpreting structured data usefully is already a big data challenge, and I believe tools to utilize this amount of unstructured data is going to be a key goal in the industry,

    Kelly also imparted a potential planet-shaping insight: functional, practical quantum computers could be available in a few years. Why is this planet shaping?  Quantum computing power grows exponentially compared to current processing, which means that it could take just a short while to bypass the computing power that currently exists on the planet.  This level of power should help to resolve our big data issues, it may allow companies to process and react to information near real-time, and it will open doors to applications nobody has yet dreamt of.

    “Big Data” Breakout Session

    In the first breakout session of the day, panelists from LPL Financial, MCNC, Railinc, and Next Glass fielded questions on “Big Data.”  There were a few valuable discussions including roles in the life cycle of big data, data ownership, and the lack of educational paths for big data science.  To me, the biggest take away of the session came from Mark Johnson, CTO of MCNC. Johnson was discussing a conundrum he sees regarding data: The value of the data may not be apparent when it’s collected. This doesn’t mean, “there’s so much data we don’t know if it will be useful.”  Rather, it’s more that the usefulness of data may not even exist at the time data is collected.  He referenced the Navy’s policy of recording weather data, every day, on every ship and noted that if all that data could be centralized and inputted, weather companies could have detailed  global weather patterns over the last 100 years for use in modelling.  I feel safe in saying the Navy didn’t plan for this when creating that policy a century ago.  Think deeply on this, and let it spark in your mind should you be deciding what data to discard or simply not collect.

    “Cloud Technology” Breakout Session

    The second breakout session, “Cloud”, included experts from SAS, the City of Asheville, WorkDay, and Piedmont Natural Gas.  Topics discussed included migration to the cloud, changing skill sets for IT, the benefits of API development, and the inevitable move to the cloud. One member of the audience asked the panel a question pertinent to many businesses these days: where to start when trying to migrate? Scott Barnwell, Business & Public Technology Manager from the City of Asheville, provided a strong answer: Disaster Recovery (DR).  Scott noted that in his research of setting up DR, using the cloud was 80% cheaper, testable, and ultimately was the only feasible solution.  DR is something that is only tested or implemented on occasion, so using physical hardware for this purpose just didn’t make sense.  Scott boiled the concept down later to “the ROI tends to speak for itself.”

    Conclusion

    John Kelly and the Big Data session both helped plant seeds of how creating data related solutions will be challenging, but rewarding to early adopters.  The critical nature of moving to the cloud resonated more with me as someone who architects business solutions in the cloud, but hopefully business owners are able to see that the move is approachable and attainable.  The NCTA event ultimately served (what I believe to be) it’s purpose: exposing the business community to technology areas which are growing and can facilitate success.

    *Photo credit: Griffin Hart Davis