Two weeks ago, the team at Ecogate unveiled the 2023 greenBOX NXT, the new state of the art for control of industrial dust, mist, and fume collection systems.

Boasting powerful industrial hardware and a modern software architecture, this unit can effortlessly handle industrial ventilation systems throughout an entire factory. With improved measurements of ventilation values, pressures, air velocities, and air volume are measured and regulated.

This week, we shared more about the software architecture for the new controller, which I started building back in 2020. I’m particularly proud of how this turned out.

We started with a goal to build nothing less than the greatest industrial dust collection controller the world has ever seen, and to build it with a software stack that the most successful tech companies in the world would be proud of. In this we have succeeded.

Many of the guiding principles come from Google’s Sate of DevOps Report, which systematically analyzes and quantifies software development best practices. I wrote about some of those findings back in 2020.

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A cacophony of sounds. Quick images, hard to decypher. What is that? Forest. Jungle. Narrow roads. An old woman smiles.

Something is wrong. I was somewhere, doing something. I was excited about it. Why can’t I put it all together?

Suddenly I snap to, deep breath in.

An old man squats in front of me, looking me in the eyes. He’s worried. I am sitting on the side of a narrow road, deep in a jungle somewhere. There is only the man. No other people, no buildings.

“Where am I?” I ask. “What happened?”

“You had an accident,” he says, in a tone that says that he’s told me this already.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t remember.”

“I know,” he says, and he does. He explains it again: I am in Indonesia. I was riding my motorcycle. I had an accident.

I look around. My motorcycle stands at the side of the road, on its kickstand. No other vehicles are around.

The man is the owner of Warung Bucu, just down the road. He asks me if I can walk. I can, it turns out, and we walk to the Warung. He feeds me nasi goreng and tells me what had happened.

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A few weeks ago my esteemed former colleague, Dr. Alberto Cruz of the California State University, Bakersfield, invited me for an interview with him and his college students about life as a software engineer and advice for Computer Science students who want to become one.

We talked about what to do in college to stand out from the crowd when applying for your first job, internships, projects, interview prep & tips, programming languages, tools of the trade, and what life is like as a software engineer.

Here’s the interview:

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When the team reached K2 base camp, they found it glum. There had been three avalanches, and all groups had turned back. No had reached the summit of K2 that year. Those who remained in base camp were stressed out and depressed.

But Nims Purja was undeterred. His grand adventure - Project Possible - required that he climb the mountain, and so that’s what he would do. First, though, he needed to break the depressed mood of the camp and convince others that it was indeed possible to reach the summit.

So he threw a party, K2-style. There was booze, music, dancing, good vibes, and letting go of fear.

Tonight we drink, tomorrow we plan! – Nims Purja

These are scenes from 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible, the documentary of Nirmal Purja’s quest to climb all 14 eight-thousander peaks within in under 7 months (as compared to the previous record of over 7 years).

The documentary is great and well worth watching, and the turnaround in the base camp of K2 was one of my favorite parts. What lessons on leadership could we draw from it, I wondered?

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Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life
by Marshall B. Rosenberg
Wikipedia | Goodreads

For a long time I resisted reading Nonviolent Communication (NVC) because I did not like the title - it seemed to implicitly accused my current communication of being violent, though obviously the author knows nothing about me.

I suppose ultimately under Marshall B. Rosenberg’s (MBR’s) definitions much of the verbal communication in which most of us engage regularly is indeed violent - especially that most “violent” of words, “should”.

Nevertheless, let me unequivocally state that I am glad I got over those reservations and read the book, and that I have since bought several more copies of the book and gifted it to others.

It is an ongoing reminder to keep our attention focused on a place where we are more likely to get what we are seeking and help others do the same.

Communication That Blocks Compassion

Before we dive into MBR’s Nonviolent Communication process, let’s look at what the opposite of that looks like - MBR refers to this as “communication that blocks compassion”. Labels and judgements are on great example, even implicit ones. When we use them, we become trapped in a world of who is what that is hard to escape. These are a matter of perspective. For example,

If my colleague is more concerned about details than I am, he is “picky and compulsive.” On the other hand, if I am more concerned about details than he is, he is “sloppy and disorganized.”

MBR believes that

all such analyses of other human beings are tragic expressions of our own values and needs. They are tragic because when we express our values and needs in this form, we increase defensiveness and resistance among the very people whose behaviors are of concern to us.

I think that is spot on.

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