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352- Governance | Security | Ultimate AI with Scott Geschel · You've Been Heard

• 0:04
  Speaker A: Welcome back to today's episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I'm your host, Doug Kameen, and today I'm talking with Scott Geschel, CIO at Premier Outdoor Living. Welcome to the show, Scott.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: Thanks, Doug. Appreciate it. Nice to be here. Yeah.
• 0:18
  Speaker A: So we were talking a little bit before the show. You and I are not actually geographically very far from each other. So you're just down in central Pennsylvania.
• 0:27
  Speaker B: Correct. I'm just south of Allentown. My office is in the Pocono Mountains in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. And win or. And then we also have an office in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, as well as Green Bay, Wisconsin.
• 0:42
  Speaker A: Oh, that's pretty big spread, right? Yeah. So periodically, do you get out to Green Bay for work?
• 0:49
  Speaker B: I've been out there one time.
• 0:50
  Speaker A: Oh, one time. Oh, man. What you really need to do is parlay this into some tickets for the packers game, right?
• 0:57
  Speaker B: Yes, yes. It'd be a cheese. It'd be a cheese head for a couple days.
• 1:00
  Speaker A: That's right. Now, are you normally. I don't know if you're a football fan. I'm not a huge football follower myself, but of course I know that, you know, it's everywhere, so you know a lot about it, but.
• 1:10
  Speaker B: Right, right. I'm. I'm typically not a professional sports follower. Football follower. I mean, you got to go with the Eagles just because they're close. But I can. I understand the passion that people have with, you know, with football and, you know, and Green Bay is probably one of the better, better places to see a game.
• 1:31
  Speaker A: It feels like it. Of course, this is, this is going to be a great, great little side segue here because this is like two non sports dudes talking about sports stuff for a second.
• 1:41
  Speaker B: Correct.
• 1:42
  Speaker A: Go sports. Those sports balls, all the sports balls. We're going to talk all about it for a minute. But to your point, I think you make a great point, which I would certainly support. It feels like that some of the best teams or the best experiences are the small market teams. You know, that, that experience in Green Bay, you know, I live in the Binghamton, New York area. That's why, you know, we're geographically close. We're only probably about 90 minutes apart. And. But, you know, upstate here, like Buffalo is, you know, the experience of. Of. Of attending a Buffalo Bills game is. Is apparently quite the. The scene to behold and quite the experience to have and be in that field and take part in it and stuff, so.
• 2:20
  Speaker B: Right. And from what I understand, it's the same in Philadelphia for the, for the Eagles as well as in Green Bay for, you know, for the Packers. And again, the stadium is just the way it's situated. The town kind of revolves around it. It's extremely commercial. Pick a, pick a place you want to eat and they have it there. It is just very, very commercial.
• 2:45
  Speaker A: But no table jumping, right?
• 2:47
  Speaker B: Right.
• 2:49
  Speaker A: We'll refrain from jumping off table or jumping off.
• 2:52
  Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
• 2:54
  Speaker A: On this podcast. So getting back to more serious conversations here. So we've got you here on our podcast to talk about leadership stuff. So you're the CIO at Premier Outdoor Living. You've got, you got multiple sites. What can you tell us? I guess first of all, what does Premier Outdoor Living do?
• 3:10
  Speaker B: So we are a conglomerate of. We have two bit, two businesses, three business units. So the first business under Highwood usa, they we extrude plastic lumber and then we make furniture under, under the brand Highwood usa. And then Highwood USA also has a spa skirting manufacturing where we work with different OEM hot tub manufacturers and provide them the panels that go around the hot tubs to, to hide plumbing and the motors and all of that. And then our second business, our second company, third business is out. It's called Recycled Plastics Industries. It's out in Green Bay, Wisconsin. And they are a plastic extruder for many other types of. Of industries, everything from, you know, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, other furniture companies, et cetera.
• 4:13
  Speaker A: So I'm feeling back like. So you're in the plastics business.
• 4:17
  Speaker B: We're definitely the plastics business. Correct.
• 4:19
  Speaker A: This is like, like what was that movie in the 70s? Get to graduate or whatever, doesn't Hoffen? Like, what's the future, man? What should I do?
• 4:26
  Speaker B: Plastic Plastics. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
• 4:29
  Speaker A: So that, that's the path you follow. You're in the plastic. Right. So. And how long have you been CIO here?
• 4:37
  Speaker B: So for two years. I've been. I've been here for two years and again, loving every minute of it.
• 4:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It sounds like a super cool business. So tell us a little bit about your journey to get to the cio. You know, the CIO job. And this is, you know, this. It's funny, I normally I have somebody's LinkedIn profile to give me a cheat sheet and I don't have yours open in enough. Time to burn. I'm burning time here to see if I can get it, but I can't get it fast enough. I can't remember, this is your first CIO job, but how did you get to be in the CIO in the leadership role? What was Your journey.
• 5:11
  Speaker B: So my, my journey really started back in, when I was with, with QVC back in the early 2000s. I started there as an IT procurement manager. Kind of led my way up through different roles to a senior manager role. And then you know, as many people have experienced over the course of their career, their positions were eliminated and I was, you know, I left there and then took a position with Versu Materials that was a. They're a process manufacturer for chemicals for the, for the semiconductor industry. Very high tech. You know, it's one of those things that, from going from online retail and having T commerce at qvc going into that process manufacturing, very visual at QVC to I can't see it. I can't see what we're baking because if we, if I saw it means I'm inhaling, it means I'm dead. So very, very bad. Very, very bad chemicals, you know, so that was a big transition and my boss there was an operations manager and he essentially kept in contact with me and Premier Outdoor Living was looking for someone to move into a full time CIO role. They had a fractional CIO that previously to me and they really wanted Mike to come on who, he, who was my boss previously and he's like, I can't where I am now. I'm happy. But I have this person and they recommended me.
• 6:53
  Speaker A: Got a guy?
• 6:54
  Speaker B: Yep, you have a guy. So it definitely, you know, don't burn bridges and you know, keep your, keep your contacts and your, and your network alive and healthy. That's, that's definitely worked for me over.
• 7:08
  Speaker A: The years as, so, so as the CIO here now, and this is, I mean 20 now in the time you've been talking, I made sure to get your profile up so I could just follow you. I try to give you an extra. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that. So this is, we just acknowledge our, our failures here on the podcast when we talk. But you know, so. So as a CIO here, you know, in your past roles you've been, you know, managers of, you know, IT service manager and other stuff like that. But this is your first like I think by title CIO it sounds like, right? Yeah. So I'm going to ask the couple questions that will come from this, but my first is have you experienced the role differently being titled as CIO versus being like say like the IT Services manager or some other kind of like leadership IT role but not necessarily titled as a C level executive?
• 7:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think that's a tough question. Titles to me really don't mean a whole lot. I think a lot of it is what you do and what you can achieve, you know, if you're putting your best foot forward. You know, I think it's building the right team. I had some objectives coming into this, coming into this role where you know, we, where the current leadership wanted to, you know, a build a high performing team. You know, they wanted to have somebody who had some financial understanding, you know, so that's my procurement background. Um, they wanted a, you know, someone who had the technical chops but not be so technical that it would, you know, baffle people. That's because I don't look at myself as a technologist. I look at myself as, you know, as more of a business centric. Always focused on where, where the business is going, what we can do to better improve the business, make it more efficient. And you know, oftentimes that does start, oftentimes that ends with technology, you know, rather than starting. I'm a very big people, process technology person and sometimes it's in that order, you know, so I do think that that is one of those, you know, one of those strong areas that I'm very process oriented. Being, you know, an IT service manager, you know, really brought me into the process understanding of business processes and quite honestly, business processes typically don't change business to business. You know, accounts, accounts payable is the same, accounts receivables the same. It's when you start getting into the KPIs, those, I think those are, you know, probably more important to the business and how the business measures themselves with technology. So I'm merely an enabler. I enable the business to get to the data that they need.
• 9:51
  Speaker C: At dissecting popular IT nerds, we expect to win and we expect our IT directors to win. And one of those areas where we know that we can help you win is Internet service providers. As an IT director tasked with managing Internet connectivity, few vendor relationships can prove more painfully frustrating than the one with your Internet service provider. The array of challenges seems never ending. From unreliable uptime and insufficient bandwidth to poor customer service and hidden fees. It's like getting stuck in rush hour traffic. Dealing with ISPs can try one's patience even on the best of days. So whether you are managing one location or a hundred locations, our back office support team and vendor partners are the best in the industry. And the best part about this is none of this will ever cost you a dime.
• 10:43
  Speaker A: So thinking back in your career, when was the point in most people I talked to, they can ultimately put their finger on this, this kind of like this time or this instance or this particular role, you move from being the team member, you know, a part of that team to being the leader of that team. And that doesn't mean you're not also a part of the team as the leader. But, you know, as you were working on your journey into leadership, what part or was there a time where you were like, you know what, like, you look around and you're like, oh my God, I'm. I'm now the leader here, as you will.
• 11:15
  Speaker B: Right? Yeah. I mean, I could think back to, you know, my, I was also a military. I'm also was in the military. I was, I was Air Force for four and a half years and then I was in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard for my remainder time total was 23. 23 years. And I think it was probably in the military where, you know, I was always one of those individuals that I was always very proud about what I did and who I worked with. And I think that when you have someone who's proud about what they do and they're excited for what they do, that that feeling can be very infectious. So I had some really good, really good leaders in the military that kind of brought that out of me. I'm not very, I'm not a very, very introverted. I'm not a, I'm not an extrovert by nature, but I do think my accorded to Myers Briggs, my, you know, I'm an intj. But I do switch back and forth a little bit based on the individuals that I'm leading, you know, throughout, throughout my, throughout my journey. It's, it's really has changed and opened my eyes to, you know, having the responsibility and the collaboration with my team. That kind of drives, kind of drives me and you know, just makes me more energetic to do, to do the right thing. You know, it's not just me saying we need to go here, here, there and there and everywhere, but it's not just what we're doing, but I want my team to express how, how to do it.
• 12:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. So you mentioned your Air Force service. Thank you for your service, by the way. The, the, the. Anyway, a handful of times, like probably, I bet you, probably a quarter of the people that I talk to on this podcast have, have some, you know, connection or military service. It's not, it's, it's a, you know, it's not an uncommon path to get into different ways of leadership. What qualities do you think you need you uniquely picked up from your time? That was the leadership qualities from, from your, Your military service.
• 13:23
  Speaker B: I do think it's. It's always about managing self, you know, and how you, how you manage your. How you manage yourself can easily go to the next level to manage and lead others. And I do know, I know that there's a distinction between managing and leading. There is definitely a distinction. I look at myself as more, you know, of a, of a leader again, bringing the, Bringing the best out in people, you know, seeing, seeing things that, I mean, even in the military, I had people that had reported to me that they didn't know that this was the right career field for them, you know, and I've tried to find, you know, are there other things that they could potentially do and move them into, you know, into other areas. You know, some have been, you know, down the path of being, you know, insurance salesman and, you know, and kind of change the direction for them and, you know, got other people into it because of, of my connection with, you know, with a lot of IT people, you know, through.
• 14:29
  Speaker A: In.
• 14:29
  Speaker B: Through the military as well as through, you know, my, My civilian career.
• 14:35
  Speaker A: And so there was a friend, a friend of mine, a personal friend of mine who served in the military. He. He was saying, I can't. I can't remember which friend it was offhand, but he was telling me in the military what there's always a lot of effort to teach. I will call it like management or leadership. And I know there's a distinction between the two, but it was like, he's like, even, even the, the most basic job, there's an opportunity to teach something. Like, for instance, if there's, you know, if your job is to go clean the floor, right, to put two people on it. One person's job is to clean. One person's job is to make sure that the job gets done and probably clean too. And oh, my God, my little, like, thing did the thing where I. My Apple thing. So the people on the podcast can't see this, but we're on video talking to each other. First. I just gave a. I did the number two, which looks like a peace sign, which. That made balloons appear all over my screen. So apparently we're celebrating. But anyways, back to what I had mentioned. The, you know, so even there, like, he's like, he was like, there's even an opportunity to lead there. That's one of the things that they try to instill in you is that there's, you know, we put two people there because one is a chart, right?
• 15:42
  Speaker B: Yeah. On, on the job training is super important, you know, even having one. I look at it as on the job training. You can morph one on ones with. With on the job training. So if you're doing direct training with an individual and that to me is how one on ones have. Have at least have become for me, it's time where, you know, the person who's reporting to me, you know, has, has my, you know, my attention for, you know, for the, for the time of the one on one. They can ask any questions and it's. I try to build that, that level of trust that they feel free to, you know, to speak your mind. And, and I always ask them, is there anything that I can do? Is there anything that I can do? You know, for, for them, it's not just what they can do for me or for the organization. So I think that opens up, that opens up a lot of conversations that go well beyond, you know, just the task at hand or, you know, the projects that they might be working on.
• 16:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. So like checking in with your staff to understand where they're at, like, just not just like, hey, you need to get this done. Why is it done today? But like, let's understand what's going on here, right? Yeah. Sometimes in my. So I work in the mental and behavioral health space as our, that's our business. I'm in. And we get, you know, I think the phrase du jour is called, you know, bringing your whole self, if you will, you know, knowing. So, so we specifically work in a, in an area or we're specialists or experts in an area called Trauma Informed Trauma responsive care, which is the idea that everybody shows up with baggage that you can't see. And I say baggage in the very loosest terms because I'm not sure if. So you know, one of the people who was an expert at this be like, don't use the term baggage. But, but everybody has traumas or everybody has challenges that you may not see in that moment. You know, so when they show up to work, you know, and they're frustrated that day, you may not understand that, you know, this thing happened the other day to them, you know, a year ago, something made them. That makes them very anxious about what's happening today and stuff like that. And that doesn't mean you can't hold them accountable, doesn't mean you shouldn't hold them accountable for their work or income like that. But, but having that more holistic understanding can help you be a better manager and leader, but also be. Also help that individual be a better performer in Their, in their roles.
• 18:11
  Speaker B: Right, right. It's, it's all about empathy. Right. It's, it's understanding, you know, where they're, where they're coming from. You know, did they, did they have something happen in their, you know, in their, you know, last night at home, you know, and they bring that, they bring that to work. And you can see that right away. If you don't know, if you don't know the team that well, I think that's where, where room, where remote work has, I think, has suffered a little bit because it's all about, you know, getting things done. You can't just tap somebody on the shoulder and say, hey, you doing okay today? You know, it's, it's taking, taking forth that extra effort to ensure that you're, you know, that, you know, they, that they, that you have their back. Yeah, that's super important.
• 18:59
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I think about intentionality. So you have to be, you know, especially when you're doing with remote work, you have to be more intentional about your connection points and you have to come curious, you know, with, with how you approach people, you know, so curious about, like, okay, tell me more about why this is. And that's just. I'm going to assume that because you didn't do it right now or this thing didn't happen, that I expected that. It's for whatever the assumption may be, you come in curious to find out. So let me. Help me understand first. I'll pass my judgment still at some point here because I'm the manager, I'm the leader, and I have to ultimately be responsible and accountable to making sure we get stuff done. But we can start with not making assumptions, bad assumptions to get. Just to get the thing started.
• 19:41
  Speaker B: Absolutely, Absolutely.
• 19:43
  Speaker A: So just changing gears here a little bit. Some of the. One of the things we try to ask on the podcast is obviously, without asking you to be too revealing about things that might be, I call it confidential or proprietary types of data. But what are some of the tools and things that your company or you as a professional are thinking about, are super interested in? Like, is there a new product you're working on? It's really exciting for you, or anything else like that that you found this is going to change things or this is a real thing I always bring to every job that I do, this product or this tool or something like that.
• 20:20
  Speaker B: Right. I would be remiss if I wouldn't say AI is a target, but to me, it's the holy grail of where we need to get to and we are very infant in that journey. We are still working through our governance, coming up with data owners ownership, making sure that that data is cleansed, it's clean. You know, we've all heard the adage of garbage in, garbage out. And I want to get us to a point where we can, where the business can, can rely more on the data and that's understanding the processes that, that the operators are taking as they're making that material all the way through to ensuring that, you know, that a bill of materials lines up with a GL code on the finance side. So all of those things are super important. And until, until that data is really cleansed and we have a good grasp on where those data data lives, then we can start looking at outside influential data like market data. We can look at, you know, like bring in Google Analytics and things of that sort to start driving more or better decisions and start looking more, to be more predictive in, you know, in, you know, what the, what the, where the market is going from our furniture side, what, you know, what our customers are going to be looking for next year, you know, so we can be a little bit more, you know, a little bit more not crystal ballish but at least a little bit more again, prescriptive on where we're going to go and be more predictive.
• 22:05
  Speaker A: So have you, have you been, do you guys have a favorite AI tool that you're looking at right now, one that you prefer to work with? Are you kind of filling out the map? And before you answer that, I'll share on my side. We've also been looking at how does AI intersect with our work, which can be somewhat interesting in that we don't make widgets and sell things, we do services and help people. So the answers about where the tool become useful can be different. So I created a learning collaborative, so collaborative learning project. We have a couple of cohorts of staff who are of different experience levels and different areas of the business. Get them together periodically they share their findings to help learn from one another about where the tools are. Now we're focused on Microsoft Copilot because that way you can keep the data right within your tenant easily, you know, as opposed to having like a, you know, like a chatgpt or something where, where there's a risk that some of what you could, if you put in proprietary data could escape to the, right into the model. So like I've got a couple of staff that are really like superstars at this. I've got a gentleman on the finance side who's like, yeah, so I created like this random. This randomization routine using the AI tools that'll, you know, you feed it like protected health information data in a spreadsheet that we need to analyze for some sort of like, contract that we're working on to give data analysis on like, health outcomes and stuff.
• 23:33
  Speaker B: Right, right.
• 23:34
  Speaker A: It'll build all this stuff. It'll create the randomized numbers for you. It'll. Then he can. Then there's like a decoder key that it generates to undo it if you need to. He's using it to sort through fairly large data sets to find patterns and things like that. So, like, we're finding those uses. And then Copilot itself, we found a lot of use in. More specifically in like Copilot. Copilot's a little more set up like a coach. You know, I don't know how much you've experimented with it and I'm still gave you a chance to talk to, but when it. You were finding that it has very specific uses where Microsoft has pushed it into the various applications that you use. So I'll let you talk.
• 24:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, we. So last year I had a webinar with Abacus AI. They made a, like a. Almost like a chat bot that inserts into teams and allows you to do, you know, searches within teams. And this was before Copilot, you know, came out. That is one of the areas that I want to make sure that whatever we do isn't. Doesn't become publicly, you know, public knowledge. You know, I don't want to. I don't want to build, you know, a model that starts bringing in, you know, the Internet data because that's not going to really provide a whole lot of value for us or exposed our data out to the Internet. So keeping that close. One of the other things that I was looking at is integration, like an integration hub, you know, to bring that data in and to localize it so that, you know, we can build those data models against that particular. Against that integration hub. And it'll help us from an operational and operability perspective, make us a little bit more effective on how we're. How we're automating. I mean, there's. AI has been used for years in the cybersecurity space in, you know, monitoring and learning how learning, you know, different detectors and things of that sort within, you know, within the cybersecurity monitoring space that or the detection and response space. So it's definitely out there and how you use it is really where the business is going to kind of dictate what the appetite of leveraging AI data versus human data. For me it's all the same. It's just how we're aggregating it.
• 25:59
  Speaker A: Yeah. One of the things we found when we turned on Copilot for that group of testing users was you mentioned about teams and Copilot can be used to search teams. So teams, most organizations have some sort of sprawl. You know, you have the sprawly function controlled unmanaged teams environment because the way it rolls out from Microsoft's perspective was hey, we just turned it on and look, you could do it yourself. So then the self service nature leads to a lot of like unmanaged setups. I have a plan to get ours back under control over time and put some barriers on who can create teams. But in the interim we've found that once Copilot is enabled. So Copilot, the previous search, if you will, of teams was relatively simple. So it might search an individual team and other stuff like that. But Copilot it because it's aware of your whole tenant. All of a sudden teams that you theoretically have access to but don't explicitly, you aren't explicitly added to like Copilot is aware that you have access to them now.
• 27:04
  Speaker B: Right.
• 27:04
  Speaker A: So it's like, it's like you want to see this document and you're like wait a minute, what is this? And you're like oh my gosh, like this is the finance team. Yeah. So like we have to go back to like our finance team. Be like, hey you guys, I don't know if you know about that you set up but you know, when you just, you, I know you, you just set it up to be generally available and you only added your team to it as you set it up for a general availability. Technically it's visible.
• 27:24
  Speaker B: Right, right.
• 27:25
  Speaker A: You know, in the tenant.
• 27:26
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 27:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 27:27
  Speaker B: As I said in rights, you know, that's where you know access and you know, and you know, user rights I think are play an even more important part because now you're exposing, you know, all the various users within the, within the company to, to see everything. And with file shares you didn't have that because they were given access to specific file shares. Now we have teams. Yes, they have access to certain teams but you know, but different large language, you know, LLMs can see a lot more than you know, just what they're supposed to see.
• 28:02
  Speaker A: Absolutely. So I'm going to shift gears again here more to more I guess call a humorous or fun side of the, of our Conversations I wanted to ask if you could share. So I always pick a. There's always a couple of topics I'll ask different guests on some, you know, just depending on how the conversation goes. I feel like I would love to know and for our listeners, if there is, can you tell us something that we wouldn't expect about you? You know, and like you know, a non tech thing, you know. So like for instance, I. I build things I built during COVID and lockdown. I bought a vintage Airstream and I ripped it apart and I rebuilt the whole thing including all the cabinetry and everything else. Like, like, you know, I'm unusually handy. I guess that's the way. Yes.
• 28:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm. I'm also unusually handy. I do have, I have a woodworking shop, you know, in my, in my pole barn. But one of those things I think that most people don't know about me is that I'm. That I also farm. My, my. My wife's family have 100, 105 acre farm. We actually subdivided two acres off of it and built our house on that farm. So it's like literally right there. And you know, my, my father in law has no longer able to farm. So I, so my wife and I and my 17 year old son have kind of take that, taken that, that, that load on. We don't have animals. It's. We're mostly, you know, simple hay, you know, hay farm. But my wife and I are going to start doing flowers, grow flowers, you know. So that's, you know, again looking at, you know, the future outside of, you know, outside of technology. And, and I'm sure that there are days, I know even very, very successful CIOs successful people go, you know, a day or two without feeling like they accomplished anything and you know, plowing a field or you know, or making, you know, making 200 hay bales. You can turn around at the end of the day and say I did that. It's that immediate gratification. That's why I like doing it. And I'm sure it's the same, you know, with you as you, you know, built the cabinetry and you know, you put all that effort into it. You have something to show for it at the end.
• 30:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's definitely. It's nice to have something that's rewarding aside from the work that I do, because I do find that rewarding too. But you know, just something different. Like today I was in the office. I've been here in my office at Rochester, which I'M not in every day. So I live a couple hours away from the office, and we have this big training room and a couple of other conference rooms, and I get, like, I look at each one has, like, sets of chairs and tables that belong in them. And then I got all mixed up, you know, because, like, if nobody's here to do it, and I'm just like. So I had like a half hour break between two meetings today. I'm just like, wheeling chairs back and forth between the two, putting them all back the way. But I could already hear somebody be like, dude, what are you doing with that? Like, why? Why? That is like, essentially, like, you shouldn't be doing that. You know, you're the cio. Have somebody from, like, facilities take care of that. But I'm like, right. But when it's done, it's like, I got to accomplish it, and it wasn't hard for me to do. It's kind of nice to just have something on your task list that just felt like, you know what? I just set out to do something. It took me like 15 minutes, and it wasn't complicated, but I still did it myself. Right, right, right, right.
• 31:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, I do that all the time. You know, I see, you know, I walk by a copier, and if I'm going from, you know, meeting to meeting, you know, you walk by a copper copier and you see, you know, papers out, I'll just go ahead and I'll just fill. Not just the one tray, but I'll fill them all, make sure that we're good. And then, you know, and continue on, you know, my journey. It's just those little things. It's those little things that, you know, I know it would make. If I was, you know, starting out my career would make me feel good knowing that, you know, a C level person is, you know, willing to help out and, you know, lean that. Lean in whenever needed or. Or not when needed to.
• 32:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. So the other big I. This is actually my favorite non tech or non, you know, it related question for. For our guests. So Star Trek or Star Wars?
• 32:22
  Speaker B: Oh, I would have to say Star Wars.
• 32:24
  Speaker A: Oh, man. God. You got me the woodworking and now you're doing Star Wars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a Star Trek guy. You could discern that very quickly. But there's nothing wrong with Star Wars. I always make sure to say that so we don't get flanked on the podcast.
• 32:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, Yep, I understand.
• 32:42
  Speaker A: Yep. But. But yes, you know, so. So what is it that. So what draws you to Star Wars. And what makes it like, like what inspires you by Star Wars?
• 32:50
  Speaker B: I guess my, I would say my, my brother in law is probably one of. I have two people in my life that have been very, very strong Star wars people. I don't know a whole lot of Trekkies. And my brother in law collected all kinds of Star wars things. And I have a friend that, that he was on my team when I worked at QVC who has read every single Star wars book. He, you know, he'll go to the movies and watch, you know, the full, you know, all. However many movies there are in one fell swoop, you know, so that's kind of why I lead to Star Wars. But I do like Star Trek New Generation. I do like that. I do like the new generation.
• 33:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I've managed to pass on the Star Trek bug to my, well, I think both of my sons, but particularly my older son. So he and I sit and work through the episode or the seasons, all stuff or we've done, we did the new stuff like Star Trek Discovery and Stranger Worlds and those. And then we went back through Star Trek Enterprise, which I found on rewatching. I found it much better. I didn't dislike it the first time around, but I was like, this actually was really good. Like, it held up really well. And then we went through Next Generation. We went to D Space nine, which my personal favorite. I'm all Deep Space Nine. That is my jam. But we're currently working through old Star Trek, like original series, which is, which is kind of great. Like it's, you know, he recognizes that the storytelling is the important part of it.
• 34:25
  Speaker B: Right.
• 34:25
  Speaker A: And not the special effects. You know, like the, you know, you look at it like the green gorn lizard and it's clearly like a rubber suit on some dude.
• 34:33
  Speaker B: Right, Right. It's like they say, what's retro Is coming. You know, what, what's. What was retro is new, is now new. Absolutely.
• 34:42
  Speaker A: So, all right, we're coming up on the end of the podcast here and I always make sure. My final thing to ask our guests is if you were sharing with somebody who's coming up in their leadership journey, what would you want to share to them?
• 34:58
  Speaker B: I think someone new coming into it is at a really exciting time in their career because they can, they can choose which areas to go into. You know, when I started it was, you know, you were all. You were all. Was, you know, you did everything. And then it started getting into more specialties. I would like when I was, when I was young, you know, handy computers in the library. My first computer was a. Was a Commodore Pet 64. My mom sent my sister and I to summer school to do coding, and.
• 35:37
  Speaker A: I did that, too, with a TI 99.4A's. That was with logo with the turtle.
• 35:42
  Speaker B: Yes. I hated it. I hated every minute that I was there, because it was. You spend hours upon hours typing in. Typing in your code just to see, you know, a caterpillar go this, you know, go zigzag across the screen. It's like, yeah, really? That's all I did. So coding was never my. Was never my gig. I've always been very much device centric. I've always been like a computer guy. So infrastructure has fit me really well. And then I started getting into more of the. More of the services behind it. I highly recommend anybody who doesn't know what they want to do is to sit on a service desk, sit on a service desk, sit on a help desk, and just listen to the calls that come in, because that's going to definitely help you kind of move into the right area that is best suited for you, whether it's hardware, whether it's software, whether it's applications, whether it's cybersecurity, whether it's data, if you want to be a data scientist, you know, So I do think that that's the. That to me is. Is categorization. You know, try to. Try to have that individual categorize. Where do they see themselves going? And, you know, I've heard. I've heard from other podcasters that have been, you know, on the show have said, you know, that they were, you know, had a completely different career path and then got into it. There's just a lot of. A lot of different areas today that. That. That they can specialize in.
• 37:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right, Scott, thank you so much for investing your time with us on the podcast today.
• 37:18
  Speaker B: Absolutely. This is great. This is fun.
• 37:20
  Speaker A: So that's a wrap on today's episode of Dissecting popular IT Nerds. I'm Doug Kameen, and we look forward to coming to you on our next episode.