Merry Christmas to my friends, family, readers and anyone else who happens to read this!

When I was thinking of what photo to accompany my greeting, I could have easily taken one of the blowing snow amidst the subzero temperatures that has consumed the upper Midwest this week, but the scene above caught my eye the other day. This is the façade of the former Hollister store at the local mall that has remained long after the store moved to a more modern-looking space. With the weather outside as frightful as it is, there was something about the faux California beach scene decorated for the holidays that made me smile.

Whether you celebrate the holiday in any way shape or form, or not, may your day be as full of happiness as possible.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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When the organization I work for began talking about using Salesforce, my first inclination was to try to get ahead of the game and learn something about the global giant in cloud-hosted business applications. Where I had some familiarity with the platform from the past, my knowledge was far from current and I wanted to be able to at least be able to converse about the platform at a basic level.

As I explored how to learn Salesforce, I was quickly directed to Trailhead a platform in itself for learning the product. Trailhead uses gamification, a process to deliver learning while making it fun and awarding digital tokens or badges along the way, - and microlearning, a method of taking complex information and breaking it down into smaller components for ease of learning and retention, to help make sense of the vast landscape that is Salesforce. If gamification and microlearning are new terms to you, click on the links above for great overviews of them from my friends at Evolve Solutions Group.

Trailhead is available to anyone for free – yes, free. Not only does it remove the barrier to entry on learning Salesforce but it serves as a great marketing tool for it to boot.

Thus my learning journey began. Trailhead offers various modules that present a topic in multiple units. At the end of each unit is a short quiz where you can earn points. Upon passing all of the unit quizzes you earn a badge for the module. Groupings of modules around a topic area are called a trail. There’s also projects where you can develop applications in a Salesforce sandbox site, which is also free. There are also trailmixes which are user-generated groupings of modules that are created by Salesforce staff as well as fellow learners. The more badges and points you earn qualify you for various ranks – as shown above, I am an Expeditioner as I have earned over 50 badges and 35,000 points.

Modules offered on Trailhead begin with learning how to best use Trailhead itself, and then go from high-level to detailed on the overall Salesforce platform and its components. There are also modules on softer skills, including project management, leadership and other topics such as Accessibility. Where there is also a Salesforce connection to what is presented, anyone can learn or be refreshed on a variety of business skills on Trailhead.

As I completed modules and projects and earned points and badges, I realizes the 2 major benefits to using Trailhead.

Learning product capabilities – Where I may not end up being a Salesforce developer, I will definitely leading products and applications built on the platform. Over my career I have found understanding the code and how an application is developed as an advantage to best leveraging the capabilities of any technology. For example, I will be working with Salesforce’s Experience Cloud, a product where a customer portal can be developed and managed. Knowing what you can do with it, how you can do it and in the case of Experience Cloud how user licenses are managed has been beneficial to me and my team in how we can best leverage it. Outside of Experience Cloud I have learned how it fits into the overall Salesforce ecosystem.

Killing time – This is something I did not see coming, where I am using Trailhead when I have a little time to spare. Yes, Trailhead in some regards has replaced Solitaire as a simple prop to occupy my time! Whether I have spare minutes while waiting for my kiddos sports practices to finish or just want a good yet productive diversion in the workday, Trailhead has been beneficial in that regard. Plus it has allowed me to explore other modules and trails and their related Salesforce products I may not have otherwise known about. It’s time better spent than trying to stack virtual playing cards in order.

In addition to this usage, a nice feature of the Trailhead platform is connecting with others, similar to how you can in LinkedIn or other social media platforms. Click here to view my Trailhead profile and I welcome you to connect with me.

Deconstructing Trailhead

No matter your field, keeping your skills sharp is imperative, especially in this global remote working economy. Where Salesforce has the dominant position in the cloud business application market and can as a result dictate how people use and are educated on its platform, they have chosen a unique approach to learning. Much time and investment goes into something like this, but I feel this is money well spent and my guess is that Salesforce does as well. Not only am I learning what I can do on the platform, but I am learning apps and functionality that need to be licensed which directly impact the revenue of Salesforce. More vendors and companies can learn from this approach of leveraging microlearning and gamification to their advantage.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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For those readers in the US or those who observe the US holiday elsewhere, Happy Thanksgiving! Whether you are reading this as you start your day or towards the end of it as you complain about eating too much (and hopefully not during the game where my Patriots are taking on the Vikings, but I digress), I would like to share some unique tales related to the holiday.

Your humble author has actually spent a lot of time in Plymouth, Massachusetts over his lifetime. As a Bay State resident I of course visited the town for its historic role where the Pilgrims landed. Additionally I worked in the town for over a year and a half on a great consulting project early in my career (which I too should write about someday, another digression) and mixed with townspeople and tourists often. Allow me to share a couple of stories from that time.

Landmarks of Sorts

When I worked in Plymouth it was over an hour from my home, so I often shopped local businesses for goods and meals. There was a great sub shop in downtown Plymouth I would often go to, which just happened to be close to Plymouth Rock. Some lunchtime visits there were easier than others, depending on the number of tourists huddled by the gazebo that sheltered the infamous boulder.

One day after getting my lunch I observed there were only a few tourists by the Rock. Where every bone in my body was telling me not to go to it, I did anyway. I had visited Plymouth as a young adult before (as I will talk about later) and had seen it, but decided to give it another look. For those who have not had the pleasure to see it in person, it’s a large rock with “1620” chiseled into it, laying on the shore’s edge. The gazebo is a granite-pillared structure where you are standing a level above it looking down upon where supposedly Pilgrims took their first steps onto the New World. So that it is not disturbed by people, a gate is on the waterside of the gazebo, though water can freely splash on it.

So I stood there, with sub in hand, leering upon this tourist destination. It was somewhat peaceful looking down at it and Plymouth Harbor behind it. But the longer I was there, the hungrier I got and decided to have my lunch right there as I leaned on the railing under the gazebo. Where I kept the sub wrapped for the most part, likely crumbs from it landed on the centuries old symbol.

History Takes a Break

The Plimoth Patuxet Museums (known as Plimoth Plantation up until 2020) has on its grounds a creation of the original compound the Pilgrims built upon their arrival among other features. It is considered a living history museum, where in addition to the buildings there are actors who are dressed as people did in the 1600’s not to mention speaking in the English dialect of the time. Though someone who is not a fan of such places due to growing up in New England and going to such museums more than a person likely should, I have gone twice, the first time with my immediate family back in my young adult days.

As one tours the above-pictured village, you can see what is believed to be what it looked like back in the day as well as interact with people playing the roles of those whose names are familiar from history lessons, including William Bradford and Myles Standish. Though the exact location of the original compound and its specifics are largely unknown, it gives a good idea of what life was like at that time.

On the museum grounds is a beautiful visitors center that features a movie theatre, gift shop and a dining hall where you can have for lunch a Thanksgiving dinner (the hall also makes a great place to have a wedding reception as friends did when they got married at a park on the property several years ago, again I digress). Following a few hours of immersion in the history of the Pilgrims, we were hungry and decided to have said Thanksgiving meal and got in line at the cafeteria.

After a while standing in line I turned around and low and behold it was Myles Standish. Well, it was the actor who played him that we saw “on the set” a short while ago. He was still in his woolen period uniform, though he had unbuttoned the top and was wearing a very 20th century t-shirt under it. Tapping into my inner-tourist I smiled and said to him and my family, “look, it’s Myles Standish in line with us!” At this he scowled and said, “not now, I am on my lunch break.”

May you make your own Thanksgiving memories, in Plymouth or wherever you are.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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As I write this post, it is almost 2 weeks after the 2022 US midterm elections. There are still races that have not been certified, ballot recounts in process and along with them a multitude of news headlines and speculation as to why all of this is happening. Outside of the news outlets and municipal halls, rumors and doubts circulate. Of course there are more races that have been tabulated and certified with candidates declaring victory and their opponents conceding, yet those contests are not the “breaking news” as those still outstanding.

But does that have to be the case? Can ballots be counted and confirmed with confidence and within a reasonable amount of time to not cast a shadow on the overall process? The answer is yes, as this is already being done and has been done for years thanks to a sophisticated technology solution that isn’t getting headlines like it should.

Making Voter Intent Clear

Several years ago I had the good fortune of working with Larry Moore at a firm he was leading. At that point he was already a tech pioneer and visionary. His door was always open when I had a question or challenge and he was able to help me see things from aspects I hadn’t even considered. Later we later reconnected and I learned about technology he envisioned and with a great team brought to life to help solve the issue of voter intent and integrity. The company he founded was Clear Ballot and the technology involves scanning paper ballots and using advanced software to count both votes and voter intent. Think of how a ballot looks and if someone didn’t fill in an oval correctly or maybe circled the name instead of filling in the pesky oval, and this is what the software helps determine, with human reviewers, to properly audit an election.

Even as I re-read what I just wrote I know I am not giving this proper justice. Fortunately Larry recently produced a video where he describes the problem most are aware of and the solution most are not. The video “See the Vote - Fight Disinformation” is embedded below or click here to watch the video on this voting technology.

Deconstructing Defending Elections

It is beyond cliché to say how technology has positively impacted out lives. However as a result of issues with voting and certifying elections over the years, the prevailing thought of paper ballots and hand-counting, with all of their own challenges, has been the direction to insure elections are fair and accurate. I hope this video shed light on how technology has, can and will be a positive force in election integrity.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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What if? What if the atomic bomb was never dropped on Nagasaki? What if McGovern beat Nixon in the 1972 US Presidential election? What if Hitler was victorious in World War II?

It’s hard to imagine how life as we know it would be if history as we know it was different. Or is it? I recently found this topic little easier to comprehend when a colleague gave me a copy of The Best Alternative History Stories Of The 20th Century.

At over 400 pages, this book has 14 individual stories that fall into the genre called “alternative history.” For those not familiar with this genre, the stories are based on an event or period of time in history that is reimagined with a different outcome. The result is a collection of tales of what could have been different, making you think even more as you turn the pages of this assortment of fiction. Not only was I thinking about alternative outcomes as I read this book, a few takeaways leapt from its pages as well.

I didn’t know this genre existed before this book – Where I have repeated here on the posts of this humble blog that I am no prolific reader, I certainly backed up that statement when it came to alternative history. I had never heard of the genre before I read the book. That helped me get to the several hundred pages as I was intrigued at what would be the “best” of stories.

No two stories were the same – As each tale of an alternative outcome were written by different authors, the stories were as unique as the individuals. Some were short, some were long. Some were painstakingly detailed, others glossed over minutiae in exchange for plot and character development. Some were about a specific event itself and others were related to activities as the result of an alternative history. In the end I mostly appreciated the variety of styles as much as their topics.

I never finished 2 of the stories – Two of the stories were very hard to follow and I decided after several pages to skip them. One was about a period of time I didn’t quite understand when it was and the story was difficult to follow. Another had a very complex style that made it hard for me to read. Where I have read every page of every book I’ve written about, this is the first time I did a fast-forward on a few.

The Best Alternative History Stories Of The 20th Century was unique in how it made me think at different levels, and is a book I highly recommend. When I make more room in my bookshelf I will certainly consider adding alternative history stories to it. As I pass along all books I read, this is going to one of my favorite cousins, both for her enjoyment and to help atone for missing her recent birthday.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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