Luck to all NU 84s, and thanks for a great weekend

So, wifi from 35K never ceases to amaze.

Twenty five years seems like a long time, and hey, I guess it is about 1/3 of your life, hopefully a bit less. Walking the Northwestern campus was like a strange time warp, seem like nothing had changed but everything had too. 1980-1984 seems like a distant dream. Then walking into the reunion party and seeing the faces from that dream was both exciting and a bit unsettling. Some great people, and most seemed to have changed yet stayed the same.

I think of my journey since then, a long and winding road, filled with dreams fulfilled and for the greatest most part joy and a luckily relatively small amount of sorrow. I think of all the transitions, from engineer to sales rep to business person, from Chicago to NY to Chicago to Ca, from single to married to father, and it is hard to imagine to have asked for a more fufilling journey.

Many years ago, my old high school wrestling coach had a saying, "luck is when preparation meets opportunity." Northwestern truly did prepare me for life. The education, both in and outside the classroom, the people, everything, must of made me a very lucky man. I've had a thrilling career, and am blessed with an amazing wife and 4 incredible little ones. Who woulda predicted that? And I was really amazed by the success and maturity that I saw in all those 47 year olds who seem like they were just 22 a few years ago! Well done friends.

Maybe it is a bit ironic that I now find myself at a crossroads of my career, and at a crossroads in the family. I have decided to go out alone as an idependent consultant, and our first child is approaching tween-ness and already showing signs of independence, and hormones :). As I embark on the next 25 years, I've already marked the data for the 50th in 2034, and I think I am prepared well to venture into my new consulting business and to continue to create a loving home for our children to grow in and to eventually leave from. I only hope that my preparation paves the way for more opportunity and luck...and to all those others, fortunate enough to have had the preparation I did, I wish you all the luck

Over and out
"Rut"

I think (like an engineer) , therefore I am (an engineer)!

In 1986, I made a decision that changed my life. I left a blossoming yet new engineering career to dive head first into business, at the most grass roots level, as an IBM sales rep. At the going away party in East Fishkill NY, my friends gave me a t-shirt (long gone to the goodwill) that said something like "Former Engineer - Technically Obsolete!"

Since that fateful day, my career has led me from sales rep, to business school, to CMO, from IBM to Intel to Netscape to successful and not so successful start-ups to my new consulting endeavor, KJR Assocs, from NY to Chicago to the Silicon Valley and to and through the black monday of 87, the dotc0m bubble burst of 2001 and the financial meltdown of 2009...and in all that time engineer has not been a word that I've even considered using to describe myself.

Until this Tuesday, when during the 7th worst rainstorm ever recorded in the bay area, I had an awesome coffee meeting with Julio Ottino, dean of the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern, my alma mater. Dean Ottino is a really dynamic guy, and I was honored to hear about all the great things he's been up to at NU, and even more flattered for some of the introductions that he offered up in our broad ranging and very entertaining conversation.

One thing sticks out in my mind. When I said to Dean Ottino that I was a "reformed engineer", I was corrected. Dean Ottino said (pardon the paraphrasing...) "It used to be that engineers were judged by what they made, but now they should be judged by how they think"

Dean Ottino also talked about the "Whole brain engineer". Every day of my career I have worked with engineers in some capacity or another, software engineer, systems engineers, developers, EEs, etc and I guess after a while I starting thinking of them as them, not us. I see now that this is a mistake. Thinking like an engineer means problem solving methodically AND creatively, with equations and with the heart. Above all I think it is a commitment to the analytical and the science of shaping the world to the benefit of the society. A daunting and awesome responsibility.

So now, as I prepare to travel to my alma mater for my 25th year (audible gasp) reunion, I am thinking of getting a t-shirt that says, "Think Like an Engineer, and You'll Never be Obsolete!" Thanks for the insight Dean!!