January Round Up
Welcome to the 27th entry of my public journal, where I share *some of the things* I've been thinking about, learning about, and exploring across work, tech, wellness, and life.
Dear Friends,
Winter weather finally arrived here in New York, but that’s OK because I’m off to Cartagena, Colombia this week for a yoga retreat (more on that below) where it’s 90 degrees and sunny.
In this post, I’m sharing highlights from work, side projects and some of the other things I’m getting into.
Work
I made my first podcast for work - a conversation all about Salesforce and Security with my cofounder Daniel Keith and 5 time Salesforce MVP Sandi Nuss Zellner and published it on Youtube, Spotify and our website. With SaaS applications, security is less about encryption and firewalls and more about data protection - how are you managing and controlling who has access to sensitive data and what they can do with it. That includes employees as well as custom code and 3rd party apps. Concepts we know from software development like DevSecOps, least privilege access, and role-based permissions are just as relevant to SaaS applications.
We’ve been in business for more than a year and yet only now getting around to sending a newsletter. Here’s the January newsletter which highlights recent work we did for Brightergy to use strictly out-of-the-box Salesforce functionality to avoid tech debt. If you’d like to sign up for future updates you can subscribe on our website.
Side Projects
Recently recorded and put out Episode 7 of Four Old College Friends - my just-for-fun podcast with my college friends. Last time we recorded was before Thanksgiving and since then one got engaged and another sold her house post divorce and her kid got into college. Middle age is not a dull time.
Finally got around to writing a follow up to the travel notes I wrote about my Mongolia trip from 2019. In Notes from Mongolia Part 2 I write about Buddhism and Naadam festival. The visit to the Erdene Zuu monastery was quite impactful, and it’s where I picked up an important lesson that I’ve since brought back home and incorporated into my work. “Our brains are useful, but our hearts are important” was the inspiration for the talk titled “Leading with Heart” that I gave at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in 2022.
I got connected to a new friend last week and we talked about a potential board opportunity for a non profit she’s starting. I’m not ready to share details but I’ve been interested in learning about board work, and her non profit is something I’m personally connected to, so it seems like a good opportunity to explore. I asked around for perspectives on upside/downside of board work and got some nice responses - nothing I hadn’t already been aware of, and my main takeaway is making sure there is clarity about expectations for my role.
Travel and Personal
Lots of upcoming travel over the next 6 weeks - some personal, some work. I’m looking forward to all of it but wish I could spread the trips out a bit.
Cartagena Yoga Retreat - Yoga has been an influential and consistent part of my life for the past two decades. When I say 'consistent', I don't mean I practice consistently because I often let months pass without a sun salutation. But yoga has always been there, whether I'm practicing frequently or not, and whether it’s days, weeks or months, I always return to it. The lessons I've learned on the yoga mat have influenced my daily life more than any other activity. It used to be the mental health benefits that kept me coming back, but as I've grown older, the physical benefits are becoming just as important. I didn’t seek a yoga retreat out but one of my college friends is a yoga teacher and she’s organizing it, so it was a no brainer. I’ve never been to Cartagena before so I’m looking forward to exploring the city, enjoying the sun, and focusing on health. Hope to share photos soon!
I’m making arrangements to attend ETH Denver this year. Nounish Prof got us official press passes and we reserved studio space to do a live recording of GM Farcaster. We’re working on some other plans to share soon.
I’m also making plans to travel to Portland in early March for the DevOps Enterprise Forum for the second year. Excited to participate in the scenius and publish another guidance paper this year. More on this as we get closer.
The second FarCon user conference was officially announced - early May in Venice, CA. Am I going? Wouldn’t miss it.
Around The Web
Enjoyed reading The Generalist’s piece about AI hardware and how we might interact with AI beyond the limits of our current devices. “All of the miracles AI has performed in recent memory have been made from constrained hardware: the black rectangles of our laptops, phones, and tablets.”
YB wrote a very thoughtful essay about what makes Farcaster special and explains the current arbitrage that early users can take advantage of. “Currently, users on Farcaster have the unique opportunity to shape the conversation, collaborate quickly, receive quality feedback, and directly engage with crypto accounts (i.e. Vitalik) that would otherwise not happen on saturated platforms.” As an early user this has absolutely been my experience. You know - small fish big pond vs. big fish small pond phenomena, and we’re all making a bet that the pond will grow.
Have you heard of Manny? Manny is a “free, open-source model for use in media, video games, and cross-platform virtual or augmented reality.” There is something so utterly captivating about Manny I just coined a new term “MDD” or Manny Driven Development - the desire to find a side project to work on just to incorporate Manny.
In the latest All In podcast episode, the topic of tech enabled business came up, with an explanation of the difference between true “tech companies” and “tech enabled companies”. I was reminded of a great conversation I had last year at the DevOps Forum where man of us were expressing frustration at the “every company is a tech company” trend. We ended up putting it into our paper by comparing the different business models of Starbucks, EBay and Salesforce. You can download the full paper here.
Excerpt from Talking Business guidance paper
A Note to My Subscribers
I started this substack in December 2022 as an experiment to see if developing a writing habit would help clarify my thinking and/or provide other benefits. You can read about my original intentions in my first post or my more recent reflections after sticking with it for a year.
I write about twice a month and share musings, meditations, and links to things I’m finding interesting as I build out my consulting company, raise my kids, and have fun creating and learning in the worlds of crypto, tech, finance, science and wellness.
Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here or find me on X and farcaster.
Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️
Board work can be fun. I did quite a bit. My 2 cents: have an idea what the organisations needs and how you can help it get there. Be sure to allocate time (especially when unpaid, the workload can grow quickly). Understand why you are doing it, and regularly check whether your interests are still aligned with the effort you put in. Especially with work 'for a cause' you don't want it to chafe or be guilted into spending more time than is acutally good for you. More importantly: have fun and enjoy the fact that you are contributing to a better world.