[00:00:07] Hey, quick little mini episode here. First off, a little housekeeping. I just realized we had the email address wrong and all of the episode show notes through episode seven.
[00:00:19] So it has been fixed, thoroughly tested. It is on the
[email protected] I don't expect you to know how to spell it.
[00:00:28] So it's in the show notes. It is all corrected now. Second, and more importantly, we went to the IBEW 4th District progress meeting in Cleveland in July.
[00:00:40] We had an amazing time there. You know these things, these events are like held in a hotel. So you're kind of at a table in a hotel hallway.
[00:00:49] It's kind of weird sometimes people don't wanna come to your table. So this time we brought our microphones and recorded 12 people answering a few set questions. So they answered the same three questions everybody did.
[00:01:01] Big shout out to Roland Carter at the IBEW International office. He went out and found some great guests for us.
[00:01:09] So in the spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood, I thought I should answer those questions, hopefully show you guys how easy it is. We will be at the IBEW 3rd District progress meeting in Pittsburgh and the Nika show in Chicago in September. So we'll bring a similar set of questions, but they'll be a little bit different so that you guys don't get bored of them. So I'm going to answer those now. My name is Ann Larson. I am the CEO of Coralion Software. And the best part of my job is that I work with an amazing team. They are incredible. They get things done that I could never do. They have the best ideas and they're just amazing, energetic and excited about the work and I just love it.
[00:01:52] The biggest challenge facing our area today is if I think about our area as SaaS software. I would say it's a constantly changing technology.
[00:02:02] This has always been true with technology, but right now with AI, it is just going bonkers. It's a challenge. It's a big challenge. It's also really exciting.
[00:02:14] The team is like leveraging AI like you would not believe. I'm hopefully going to have our lead engineer on the show to talk about what they do, because it is is crazy. Some of the stuff that they show me, the multiple LLMs they've got running to test things and, and build things and just do all kinds of stuff. It is very, very cool. It is also a lot and it is constantly changing and getting better and doing more and more and more. And you have to keep up with different processes and different workflows and learning what it can do. And can't do and what it does well. And so it's just. It's a lot happening.
[00:02:51] One lesson I've learned the hard way is there's an old management chestnut.
[00:02:58] Slow to hire, quick to fire. I don't really love that term. It's just kind of catchy, easy to say.
[00:03:05] I think what we've learned the hard way over these years is that hiring should be very careful and deliberate. You should know what you want.
[00:03:17] You should do the work ahead of time to figure out what you want. There's lots of tools out there to help you. We have made that process better and better and better over the years. And quick to fire. I don't like to say fire. I like to say let go. Because it's really.
[00:03:33] I mean, I really honestly see it as giving the person an opportunity to try something else.
[00:03:41] If I have to let somebody go, they're probably pretty unhappy, and I'm probably pretty unhappy, and the team might be unhappy too. So seeing a lot of those red flags earlier, I've worked on it a lot, making sure that people are a good fit for the company, and if they're not, that's okay, but then we're just not the right place and let them go and find the right place and give them that freedom. So that's some hard lessons learned.
[00:04:09] So that's our mini episode.
[00:04:11] Look for our IBEW 4th District podcast episode coming up soon.
[00:04:17] And I'll catch you later.
