Much Ado About the Postal Service

I have relatives in the United States Postal Service (USPS), so I'm always kind of kept up-to-date on the goings on with the Post Office.

Here's my assessment of the current situation.  Let me know if I get any of this incorrect.  The USPS is looking at eliminating Saturday delivery.  This move is seen as required to keep the USPS afloat, as it will save them oodles of money in employee costs.  They have lots of expenses.  In what was kind of a pushy move by the Congress (seemingly to push toward privatization of delivery service), the USPS was required to pre-fund retirement for employees that haven't even been born yet, which has put undue stress on their books, making it look as if they're losing lots of money.

So this kinda stinks, because if that goes through, we won't get stuff on Saturdays, and people won't get their social security checks or health care bills on time.  And all for something they ostensibly shouldn't have been asked to do in the first place.

Combine that with the idea that this is one of the only Constitutionally-mentioned entities that Congress can establish.  It's established for the people and run under the executive branch, and it seems weird that anyone would be gung-ho about eliminating it.  It could be the profit motive from the competition, other delivery companies.

I'm not just going to leave it as my source that I have family in the USPS.  What really got me thinking about this recently was this awesome Stuff You Should Know podcast about how the USPS works.   They talk all about this pre-funding mandate and the original reason that the Post Office is mentioned in the US Constitution.

And that's what I'm really here to talk about.  See, I like to think about taking something that's established and pretending it doesn't exist.  Then I think about what would happen if it were created today.  So given the original Constitutional goals for the Post Office, what would the framers have wanted for the USPS if it were created today?

If you listen to that podcast (and all their other podcasts are great.  They make great commute-fodder) and check the Wikipedia article (not awesome sources, so if anyone wants to throw something I missed my way, I'd listen), they mention that the whole point of the Constitution giving Congress the power to establish and run a Post Office was that it would enable commerce.  That it would improve interstate communications.  And it would create a source of revenue for the early U.S.

So consider for a moment that at the time, there was no other way to really communicate.  The Constitution was set up to drive the economy by enabling communication and commerce.

I'm convinced that if the Postal Service today were re-conceived, it would be a telecommunications company.  That delivers packages maybe.  That's the only thing that would deliver the same economic impact and benefit that the Post Office delivered back in the 1700's would be a massive country-wide telecom company.

So then this came across the wire (and then the wireless) yesterday, and gob-smacked me.

That's right.  The current private infrastructure is so bad that we all cringe at this video.  South Korea has internet speeds much faster than ours.  South Korea?  Really?  This article offers the explanation that it's because in South Korea, competition is much more robust.

Because when I think capitalism and competition, I think South Korea, not the United States.

I'm not saying we should drop everything and reinvent the USPS as a massive telecommunications company.  I think we're too far away from that for it to become a reality.  But I really think there's something in the concept that the telecommunications infrastructure is a public good designed to facilitate commerce and communications between the states, and that the framers of the U.S. Constitution wanted it so.

Relentlessly Market to Your Own People

It's no secret that I'm a corporate employee.  I like to study and read about management of companies (well, not to the point of getting an MBA or actually doing the management, but I'm fascinated by the discipline).  I love to share things that I learn from the perspective of the employed to the employer.

It's usually something about morale.  Today it's not.

Today, I have something that benefits not just the employed, but the whole company - relentlessly market to your own people.  I talk to lots of people in corporate IT, who suggest that working for one company is no different than any other.  That the same problems plague all companies. Almost as if the different companies are completely interchangeable.  And these same IT people move jobs a lot.  They're not emotionally invested in the company they're working for.  They're interchangeable cogs.  Their work is not their passion.

By relentlessly marketing to your own people, you can inspire them.  You can energize them.  You can get them to evangelize for you.  And you can do this relatively cheaply, easily, quickly.  I mean, you already have a marketing department, right?  Can they not take a few minutes a quarter to make sure your brand message reaches every single employee?

They're a Captive Audience

Your employees are in your building everyday.  They're surrounded by the workspace you provide for them.    They can't help walking by the front desk, or going into or out of the elevators.  They use your restrooms (if you're not in a shared toilet situation).  You control what they see.  If you can't market to these people, you can't market to anyone.  Put up banners in your lobby.  Put your quarterly ad campaign pictures above the urinals, or in the stalls in the bathroom.  Hang them up in the lunchrooms.

You Do Not Want to Lose Them

Employee turnover costs companies lots of money.  It's not cheap to replace a good person that leaves, and it's even more expensive to search out a replacement, train them, and get them productive.  If your company looks like the same cube farm they've been through five times in the last ten years, you're not going to keep them.  You want them to feel like family, not mercenaries.  You want them to be invested emotionally in your company.  If you can't get them invested in the well-being of the company by profit sharing or an employ stock option plan, at least make sure they know the products well and understand your company vision and their place in it.

They are a Free Source of Marketing

The more they know about the product and your message, assuming they agree with it and you make them happy in other ways, that message will leak out in places all over their lives.  People go to events all the time where the most frequently asked question is "So... what is it you do for a living?"  If you have primed them with an excellent elevator speech, then your message gets out, and you haven't had to pay for it.  Their family will know what you do, their friends, their kids' friends' parents, and so on.  Having an army of marketers in the community where your business is free marketing.  And with social networks, that message can extend far beyond the local community.

It's Easier to Attract People Who are Inspired by What You Do

If your employees understand your vision and share it with others, there's a greater chance you will find people with whom that vision personally resonates.  The most motivated and inspired employees you can find are the ones that share the vision of the company, ones that believe in the company's mission.  Building organizations is really finding that optimal mix of talent, passion, motivation, and mission of employees that can maximize delivery of that vision for your customers.

They are a Great Test Market

If you're a product company, make sure they use your product.  Give them products for free.  Give them crazy discounts.  Make sure that you make it difficult for them to say no to your product.  In doing so, you get free beta-testers.  Take surveys of your employees and ask what needs to be improved.  Ask if they use competitor products, and why (I'm not suggesting here that you should require them to use your product, but if they're not, you should find out why not.  You may be missing a market segment that you thought you were targeting).  They, more than any other customer, want you to succeed.

Why wouldn't I do this?

Well, I can almost hear the arguments already:

"My employees aren't my target market; we make stuff targeted at seniors (or tweens, or some other non white-collar job having subset of the population".  True for sure.  And these people have fathers, mothers, grandparents, siblings, kids.  They know people.  You tell them who your target audience is, and the people they know that fit the bill will pop into their mind.  They may think to themselves, "Oh yeah!  I have to remember to tell Uncle Charlie about that!" 

"Giving away our product isn't financially possible."  Granted, Ford can't go giving away C-Max hybrids to everyone in the organization to show off their wares or get feedback, but they sure can offer an employee discount program.  And really, are you going to get more honest feedback from people anywhere?  These employees have their jobs tied to the success of the products.  They may have profit sharing that incentivizes evangelism.  They will tell you what your product needs.  Ask them.  Listen to what they say.

Call to Action

Market to your people.  Relentlessly.  They can be your greatest advocates.  They can be your best test market.  They can work harder for you if they are truly sold on what you do.  Don't mess this up.

It is a Science; You're Just Bad At It

I hear this phrase misused often: "It's an art, not a science."

To me, this phrase really means that the way something is judged is not objective; rather, it is dependent on the beholder, and different pieces speak to different people in different ways. Jackson Pollock, the artist, had a very distinct, but controversial, style.  Some people liked it, and some people didn't.  It couldn't be judged objectively, because it's art, not science.

You could apply science to this art, by the way.  You could look at color density, color distribution, scope, size, effort.  And all those things that you could measure about it could not predict what any specific person's reaction to it should be.  It's that lack of predictive ability that prevents art from being science.

I heard this phrase, "It's an art, not a science," used a couple days ago to describe project management.  I've heard it applied to creating organizational structures, or defining a management process.  In all these cases, this phrase is being used as a placeholder.  An excuse.  A conversational roadblock.

Just because you don't want to codify your decisions does not make what you're doing art.  It just means you're being sloppy and don't want to talk about it anymore.  Spend the time.  Convince your peers that what you're doing is the right thing at the time.  If it's a one-off, you still have reasons.  It's not art; it's a result of a calculated business decision.

Just because something is difficult to do doesn't make it an art.  It just means you have to work harder and adjust more to get it right.  Take the time to create metrics and repeatable processes.  When you have repeated things a couple times, then tweak and look for different results.  You can't do experiments in an uncontrolled environment.

Just because you can't articulate why you have a gut feeling doesn't make it an art.  It just means you're not communicating clearly, and if you want people to listen to you and get behind you, keep clarifying.  People who follow "gut" leaders are not the people you want executing for you, because they're not questioning deeply enough.

Just because you can't manage to do things the same way twice doesn't make it an art.  It just means that you lack the discipline and will to do things the same way twice.  You failed to collect the requirements completely on this project?  Doesn't mean that it's optional.  It means you failed on that part and that you need to push consistency.  It doesn't make you an artist to fail to follow your defined process or follow through on your commitments.

Project management, creating organizational structures that work, creating cohesive teams, and creating management processes are all disciplines.  They each have a body of literature about how to do things in an optimal way.  There are objective ways to define metrics, make measurements, check against metrics, tweak and optimize. There is very much a scientific approach to doing all these things.  Anyone who says otherwise isn't reading enough about their own discipline.

Beware of anyone that says "It's an art, not a science."  Call them on it.  Often, they're trying to end the conversation because they don't have a good argument.  Because what they want isn't really the scientific optimization, but some other, more politically motivated answer.  In the interest of openness and transparency, call them on it.  Bring the underlying issues to light.  Help guide them to the principles that will help your organization grow strong with evidence-based decision making.

How to Run Farther

Note I am not a doctor, and I’m not suggesting that you should run beyond your abilities.  I’m going to get that out there up front.  No, what I’m really talking is how to keep yourself motivated on longer runs. 

For about the past five years, I have been a treadmill runner.  Until last year running with Brandon Satrom and a few other folks at That Conference, I had never run outside with people (with the exception of outdoor races).  That experience opened my eyes to running outside, and through the summer and fall, I ran outside and loved it.

A brief history of running outside makes running on the treadmill boring.  I don’t even look around when I’m running outside, so  I figured I’d never have that issue.  But I do now.  This winter has really ramped down the temperature, and I haven’t been able to run outside for a couple months.  I've had trouble since 2013 started with even running my typical 5k.

I’ve had to really push myself in the past few weeks, and wanted to summarize what helps keep me running, even when early morning tiredness has me wanting to stop.  Or I just feel tired.  Or my feet kinda hurt.   Here are my top tips for running through it: 

Throw yourself at the treadmill and miss

Get distracted.  This is my number one strategy for running farther.  If for any reason I start thinking about running, the act of running, my body aches while running or anything in any way related to how far I've gone and how far I need to go, I get tired.  Even when trying to motivate myself with distances or speeds.  If I want to run a longer distance, I need to get distracted.  

This comes from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, where all you had to do to fly was "throw yourself at the ground, and miss."  The key to missing the ground was to get distracted just before impact, and your body would just hover there.  Getting distracted and keeping your mind off your run can allow you to run longer than you'd expect.

Use the smaller lap indicator on the treadmill

This is equivalent to the “set smaller goals” method of goal achievement.  Don’t focus on the two and a half miles you have left to run.  Focus on that little treadmill animation that marks off tenths of a mile, or quarters of a mile.  If you’re running around 6 miles an hour, each quarter mile only takes 2.5-3 minutes, and having smaller, shorter goals can really help keep you on track.  One other neat thing to do is to run each of those units at a different speed.  Run at 6.2 miles per hour, then slow down to 5.8 miles per hour to “rest”.  Varying the speed can provide distraction.  See "Throw yourself at the treadmill" above.

Don’t let your body get you down

You may feel something pulling or hurting and this may have you wanting to stop.  I’ve had a lot of mornings like this.  My calf isn’t feeling so good, I think.  It’s going to cramp later.  My tush hurts.  Often this is just me looking for an excuse to stop.  The way that I get through this is to try to find distraction anywhere to take my mind off the little complaints.  If things persist, I will stop, but I know myself, and I can often go well past where I feel small discomforts.  This is again where I have to claim not to be a doctor.  Only you can draw the line for yourself what feels like real pain and what feels like you can push through.  Distraction is key.

Make sure your random music tracks are on point. 

If, like me, you listen to music as you run, this may be important.  I don’t listen to the same set of songs every day, or even the same artist.  I have music that I like and that motivates me saved up in a playlist of “running songs”.  I usually randomize those so that each run is different.  Because each song can be 3-9 minutes long (Master of Puppets, I’m looking at you!), one random song that you don’t like will tank a half mile of enthusiasm, and that can tank your run.  Solution: pare down your playlist to those songs that really get you.  When you find one that doesn’t work for you, remove it with prejudice.  What you want are your most distracting motivational songs.  Only. 

Slow down

If you’re really tired and feel like you can’t keep running, slow down.  Some days you just can’t keep the pace you want.  Some days you start out feeling like the rabbit, but you wear out quickly.  Even better to start out running slower than you think you need to and ramp up the speed.  Remember, if you can’t run one day at your target pace, it’s not as if you’re not running at all.  You’re still running more than the average person.

Don’t stop

Last thing you want to do is stop and walk.  I see this in a lot of 5k races.  I’ve had to do it in 5k races myself.  If you’re committed to finishing the 5k because you’ve started, you’ve got a fixed distance to go, and if you keep running, you’ll get there faster.  Most likely you won’t feel any better walking, and it’s so difficult to get running again after you stop.  See "Slow down" above.

Check your output levels

I don’t know if this happens to everyone, but I thought I’d share.  Sometimes once the cardio system wakes up, the digestive system wants in on the party.  If this happens to you, consider warming up and ensuring you won’t have any … interruptions.

Well, that's my tips.  Feel free to share yours!

Part Time Technology Work

So I saw this article come across today.  I urge you to click through to it and read it, but the gist I got from it is that there will be an uptick in IT hiring this year.  Further, it has been said that there is a shortage of good IT folks in the marketplace.  I don't know how true any of this is, to be honest, as I'm not in the recruiting business, and I haven't been in the marketplace in years.  But I keep hearing it from friends and reading it on blogs as if it's fact.  I solicited ideas here, and John Wright offered an interesting response here.

The article suggests also that there will be upward pressure on IT salaries.  That competition is heating up for technology skills.  For those people that have had their salaries held flat or nearly flat over the past couple years, this may be a great year to figure out what your passion is, and get a pay bump while doing it.  If you're not feeling the love and gratitude where you are currently, it sounds as if there are many places that would be grateful to have you.

So here's what gets me.  I believe companies are missing a possible hiring model: part time IT consulting.  If this demand is so high, maybe companies would start considering it.  I know that I don't have the ability to take on a full time second job (although I know colleagues that have successfully virtualized themselves to the point where they have two full time jobs, an opportunity that accrues to someone who works from home, works flexible hours, and has no commute), I do have the ability to put part time hours toward interesting work.

I suspect there is a lot of capacity out there for the part time technology work.  Curious to hear from other developers.  If you had the ability to put an extra couple hours a day after the kids went to bed, either to get a little different experience, or just to drum up a little extra jingle for your pockets, would you?  If there were an obvious marketplace where you could go find part-time projects easily, would you?  Does such a site already exist and is just hidden to me?

Here we are with potentially very large excess demand and an unknown supply.  I have talked to a few folks that suggested companies will only take hourly employees on as full-time.  Some managers still hold the outdated thinking that they need to see you in your seat.  Whatever it is, I'm thinking that part time employment development gigs are something that needs to happen more easily.

This situation would have benefits for a number of people:

Devs seeking experience
If you're a Developer working, say, in Java, and you really want to work on Ruby, or Rails, you often don't have an opportunity to work in a new technology.  Could you, however, be staff aug on a project?  Maybe not at your current rate, as you're a Senior Java Dev, but would you take newb Ruby rates to get the experience, if the money were in addition to your day job salary?

Managers seeking bandwidth
If you are a manager with a huge backlog of technical debt, maybe you need someone to pay down a little of the debt while your team is doing maintenance to help you reduce your burden.  Maybe you need someone to set up a continuous integration build and test automation, because you don't have someone in house to do it for you.  Maybe you just have a temporary need to relieve some pressure on your team, but you don't need a full body.  Maybe you just need some quick expertise and don't want the burden of employees, and can't afford a full-time consultant.

Managers worried about the cost of development
So we've said that with not enough developers and an increased need for them, and with the model of offshoring of development shown to be less cost-effective than estimated (who didn't see that coming?), it seems as if the price of your projects is going up.  But if you can get a part-time evening developer who is skilled in Rails and wants to work on your Spring application but has the right discipline and attitude, would you take them on at a rate lower than a Spring consultant?

What's the obstacle here?  What is preventing this from happening.  If there is an IT shortage, and there are devs with capacity, and we know how well virtualization and off-hours development works, what are we waiting for?  Is is management FUD?  Do developers traditionally shy away from side jobs?  What am I missing?

Is There an IT Talent Shortage?

I keep hearing that there's a huge shortage of IT workers.  That there are businesses hiring, and they can't find good people.  I did notice in the last round of hiring for the team I'm on that it was hard to find good candidates.  It was difficult to get resumes in, and it was tough to find candidates that met our needs and got through our screening.  (Note: we were very lucky and got some great folks for our team in 2012, so I know they're out there)

Note that it's not 1999 anymore.  People are not reading a single book on HTML and landing a high paying job with a single interview that only really asked if you were breathing and could type an angle bracket or two.  People are not moving from job to job, year over year, and getting a 10% salary increase each time they move.

That said, when I hear that there's a shortage of IT workers, and I hear the unemployment numbers, I am not certain I know what I'm hearing.  Is it that the IT worker rate of unemployment is that much lower than the general population rate?  Or are there plenty of IT workers that simply can't find work, or are in the wrong location.

There's another explanation, and I'm hoping someone can fill me in (comments, email, twitter, whatever), and that's there are IT workers out there out of work, but not willing to work in the positions that are offered.  That is, are there more senior people available out there than junior people, but the openings are all for junior people (or vice versa)?

Is it that the companies can only afford junior level pay and openings and the demographics of the available worker are wrong?  If that's the case, doesn't that eventually have to put upward pressure on salaries, and push businesses to offer the positions out there that can be filled?

What's So Great About Self-Driving Cars?

Self-driving cars.  Oh, man, the holy grail of the modern-day commuter.

As someone who survived a year of long-distance romance with my now beloved wife, and as someone who used to spend up to two hours a day in the car commuting, and who now spends at least an hour a day in the car commuting, I have to say that I've dreamed about nothing more (except the aforementioned lovely) than I have about the self-driving, or autonomous, car.

During may of these hours, I spent time fantasizing about something I felt was inevitable.  That someday, the car would drive me wherever I wanted to go.

I still do this, by the way.  Fantasize about the future of the driving car, I mean.

And over the past few years, I have been following the news of Google's self-driving cars with fascination.  I am so excited that they are making great progress.  I have even taken the trouble to write to my state representatives to urge them to make Illinois a trial ground for the cars.

Here's how I think the self-driving car can help us:

No more distracted driving
Life is busy.  We have fewer hours in the day to accomplish more.  We have alerts coming at us at all times.  To keep up with all of it, lots of people, right or wrong, have taken to driving distracted.  Especially when they face the dreaded Chicago commute, with so much time spent in the car, people feel the need to cram in a meal, read or respond to email, talk on the phone either for home or business, or even get a shave or put on makeup. All that leads to needless fatalities and injuries due to people not paying attention.

The self-driving car changes a lot of that.  If the car is able to take you fully to your destination, then you can read the paper, get in your meeting, eat your breakfast, do some work on a laptop.  Basically, anything you could do on the train.  The self-driving car basically becomes your personal train, going exactly where you need it.

Fewer Accidents
Remember, a self-driving car doesn't have blind spots.  It never forgets to check them.  Their reaction time is much faster than human reaction time.  I don't envision cars, no matter how they are piloted, ever being able to completely eliminate accidents; the situations that can occur on the road are far too varied.  But with tireless sensors and alert algorithms, it's a lot better than what a human being can bring to the table.

No more wasted time
While not as good as telecommuting, the self-driving car means that you can do other things during the commute.  You will be able to organize your day around having some tasks that you are able to do while commuting.   If you are needed for 8 hours of work a day, there may be no reason you can't do some of that work while commuting.  Editing documents, working on spreadsheets, sending email, communicating to clients, writing code, all those things become possible to do while on the commute.

Can you imagine how your life changes when instead of leaving your house at 7 a.m. to be at work by 8 a.m. and leaving work at 5  p.m. to get home by 6 p.m., you get to start working when you get in your car at 8 a.m. and stop working when it pulls into your driveway at 5 p.m.?  Two extra hours at home with your family is a prize we should all be working diligently toward.

No more vehicle ownership
Ok, one of the best benefits of self-driving cars is my favorite.  Tell me why, if cars can drive themselves, would I ever want to have one parked at my house?  Why would I want to have the extra square footage in a big drafty space attached to my home that is just there to house two or more vehicles while they sit idle?  Totally wasteful.  I can pay less for a house if I don't need all that extra space.  Houses that currently have garages can be retrofit to have a new great room for entertainment or can trade that extra space in for storage so they can refurb their basement.

Imagine having a standing order for a vehicle of a certain size/luxury with a service organization whose car comes and picks you up at a certain time every morning.  You jump in and it takes you to work and drops you off at the door.  You want a luxury car?  You pay a little more.  You fine with a little car that gets great mileage and has a low total cost of ownership?  You get a discount.  You pay the automobile bill at the end of every month, and only pay for what you use.

You won't have to worry about owning a vehicle - all that mess of when do you buy, when do you sell, depreciation, repairs, etc.  All those costs are spread out over the car company's vehicle fleet and included in the per-use price.

While you're at work, the car can be part of a fleet making more trips picking people up and dropping them off.  If a single car can fulfill the needs of three or four people through a single day, then there only need to be about a fourth of the cars in existence (note that because people still need to go where they go when they go now, that doesn't necessarily reduce the number of cars on the road at any given time, just the total number of cars needed overall).

No more parking lots
If a car drops you at the door of your work, your office doesn't need a parking garage to hold cars.  Or maybe it doesn't need such a large lot.  Certainly the cars have to be somewhere, but if they are out providing services to other passengers, fewer cars will sit parked all day.  This means that there's lots of useful land that can be converted into something more useful, or just into lush green campus for the businesses that used to need so many parking spaces.

No more drunk driving
I don't know about everyone, but I suspect the only reason people who drive drunk is that they don't want to wake up and have to go fetch their car.  If you don't own a car, the question is moot.  The car comes around and picks you up just as it would do if you were sober.  It's a similar situation to not wasting time, but I separate it out here because it's a very specific problem that this solution absolutely does away with and in a way that doesn't shame the person in any way.

Fewer moving violations and traffic stops
And with self-driving cars, what's the likelihood that there will be traffic infractions?  If the car is following its programming, it knows how fast to go, what the traffic laws are, and won't do things it's not supposed to do.  There won't be any speeding tickets. Check out this article on what it truly means to be self-driving, and how one gives a ticket to a self-driving car.

Better commute times
What the heck causes the commute times to suck so bad?  I am not a civil engineer, but I have my guesses.  Merging always sucks.  Any time three lanes become two, or two become one, or an acceleration lane merges into moving traffic, there's a little dance between the lanes.  I've seen people refuse to let someone in; I've seen people try to graciously let each other in, only to end up in a you first, no you first game.  Doesn't happen with self-driving cars (assuming they all are.  I can see people being jerks and specifically not letting a self-driving car merge), as they have no ego about who goes first.

Computers don't get apprehensive about traffic density.  When traffic density gets too high, people tend to hit the brakes in apprehension.  Self-driving cars behave consistently and would self regulate.  They might move more slowly with higher density as safety dictates, but they wouldn't be likely to set up a standing compression wave in traffic that can last for hours.  Check out this link for some amateur traffic analysis.

Autonomous cars mean no more gapers delays or sun delays.  The car doesn't need to slow down so the person can get a good look at whatever's on the side of the road (and remember, there would be fewer reasons for anyone to even be on the side of the road), and the car doesn't care where in the sky the sun is, if at all.

Ok, so I'm totally convinced.  Now what?
Where do we go from here?  For me, it's a foregone conclusion that this would be one of the greatest advancements our civilization can make, and I want to see this happen here in the USA at the fastest rate possible.

Thing is, I would love to be part of this solution, but I don't know how to help.  One obvious solution would be to try to get on the project at Google.  I'm a technologist with a lot of experience, so maybe one of the things I could do is try to go to work there.  That's one angle, but I believe they probably have all the engineers they need on this project.

I see one of the greater obstacles to adoption is going to be FUD in the public eye.  Despite the record of human drivers vs. the record of self-driving cars, there is always going to be worry that the programmers forgot something, some rare situation that may crop up.  That in that situation, the car won't know what to do the way a human would.  You hear about fatal bugs that crop up in software from time to time, and no matter how remote or infrequent the possibility, and no matter what the empirical data eventually shows, some people are always going to believe they are better than a machine.

Further, there's some buzz that a car must always have a "driver", and that the "driver" must not be drunk.  That kind of outmoded thinking comes in direct conflict to the Utopian vision I have for self-driving cars.

So how can I be part of the solution?  If you are working on these problems, or know anyone who is, I would love to be in touch with you or them.  You can get in touch with me through contact information found at http://www.kevinpdavis.com.  Even if it's to have a quick conversation about what it's going to take to make this happen over the coming years... What can I do to help?