At Work in Portland

Like many business stories, this one begins with random meetings at a local Starbucks. Pretty soon, I was writing for CERM Academy, which coined the term “risk based thinking”.

I learned about the new ISO standard, which was replacing older practices with “risk management” as the way to respond to VUCA. I’ll let you search engine that, and also ISO sections 9001:2015 and 14001:2015.

CERM was doing profiles of people trying to make ends meet in the Gig Economy, through a website called WorkingIt.com, which behind the scenes was amassing short interviews.

Walk up to someone on the street, and get some short candids. That’s not always easy, unless you’re cute Asians, which in this case they were.

CERM helped me dive in to the Internet of Things (IoT) and actually do some hands-on Arduino programming. They gave me a kit. I already had a Pi3 (Raspberry Pi — a tiny computer (Arduino is even tinier)). I learned a lot from the Arduino approach.

We’ve come a long way in making metals emulate neurons in their if-then responses. Controlling chains of causation: the only reason we think Rube Goldberg machines look flaky is they’re high risk (prone to failure).

Around the same time, I took on a delightful summer school responsibility that overlapped the full eclipse of the sun here in Oregon. Tourists were flooding into the state, especially to high desert towns such as Madras and Terrebonne.