Day 3 of the 2018 Canadian Track Elite Championships

Day 3 of the 2018 Canadian Track Elite Championships 

Estimated time for when Tom Perkins races the Madison tonight is 6:30pm Eastern (3:30 Pacific), teamed with our very capable friend Elói Batista. They will be racing for Jakroo Racing. Tom and Elói are young Canadian cyclists making their way international track cycling.

This is an UCI sanctioned event run by Cycling Canada at the Mattamy National Cycling Centre in Milton, Ontario, Canada.

You can find start lists and results for the event here.

See live stream link here. It is FREE and will show some incredible racing.

The announcer is superb, providing excellent commentary to help understand what is going on. I will update along her name after I find it out. Her commentating style is much like Anthony McCrossan, my favorite announcer for cycling races.

We are working on landing a spot for Tom to compete as a guest rider on an UCI trade team at the upcoming 2018 Milton World Cup (end of October 2018), or subsequent World Cup events. Any interested UCI Track trade teams, please contact his coach via coach.

After this event, Tom will be moving to a new cycling team. We will announce this team, as well as the 501(c)(3) charitable organization targeted at supporting young amateur cyclists shortly.

We are still working on funding sources for Tom's racing career, the new team, and other cyclists and teams that the charitable organization will support. More details will be published in the near future. In the mean time, if you wish to help with funding, please contact the team owner for details.

The Madison is one of track cycling's most exciting events. It can look like pure chaos on the track. The officials do an amazing job of keeping track of who is who, what team they are on, what lap they are on, who is up a lap, who is down a lap, who is lead, etc...

You can find a description of the Madison.

The Madison allows for more speed and acceleration as the riders have time to recover briefly while their team mate has a go, then get literally thrown back into the mix for their turn.

For my non-cycling friends, if you want to see a race that is crazy fun, this is THE race to watch.

9 teams have entered. 160 laps (40km) with sprints every 10. It is essentially a points race with two riders per team exchanging like a relay race over and over. Start list for the Elite Men's Madison is here.

The teams that are registered are FAST! They raced to the max yesterday in the Omnium with 5 races (including qualifier) totaling 75km at average speeds well in excess or 35 mph (56kmph) and sprints exceeding 42 mph (68kmph)

Yesterday's Omnium started with a qualifier to decide the fastest 24 of 32 registered racers to compete in the Elite Men's Omnium. The qualifier was two heats of 16 cyclists competing in a 15km Points race. In the qualifying points race, Tom Perkins placed 3rd in the faster of the two qualifier heats, easily qualifying to compete in the Omnium.

The Omnium consisted of the qualfier, followed by a 10km Scratch race, a 10km Tempo race, the Elimination race and finally, the 15km Points race. You can find results for yesterday's Omnium here and watch it here.

Tom finished 12th overall in the Omnium - a very credible result for his first time competing at an UCI or National event as an Elite level athlete. Tom's prior competitions at this level were as a U19 (under 19) cyclist.

A big thank you to the following organizations for supporting Tom's cycling career:

Science in Sport Tesseract Group, LLC American Cyclery Jakroo Canada Jakroo Custom Apparel FFWD Wheels FFWD USA Radial Sports

Do you consider these questions when evaluating a NoSQL Database?

Five Questions Enterprises Should Ask When Selecting NoSQL Database

B-Corporations (Benefit Corporations)

B-Corporations: The concept of providing a structure that requires directors and officers of a corporation to consider the beneficial social and environmental impacts of their decisions in conjunction with financial performance can be a simple and powerful approach to business. 

This relatively recent construct can provide benefits along with associated risks, some of which are discussed in the recent San Francisco Chronicle article,"Plum Organics’ quest to do good poses legal risk to Campbell Soup".

B-Corporations go far beyond marketing concepts, by providing a corporate framework where lack of delivery can be challenged. With an intent to ensure that B-Corporations deliver real value, third party standards for certification and audit (voluntary) will continue to evolve as market demands and legal challenges by shareholders grow and mature.

The pros and cons of B-Corporations are a topic of debate: can they be successful, are they practical and sustainable, can they be widely implemented. 

Time will tell whether B-Corporations can meet the joint challenge of fiscal performance alongside social and environmental benefits.

What do you think?

Cloud: The journey to simplicity...

Cloud, a frequent topic of discussion in today's world of technology, is often presented as an end goal, rather than a valuable tool that can be used to run one's business. At times, the Cloud discussion appears to present a binary choice: Public or Private.

In a recent post Jared Wray addresses the broad focus on Public cloud, making a case for an integrated platform of public and private cloud (Is Private Cloud Dead?).

For years, in customer conversations, my perspective has been to leverage both public and private cloud in an integrated fashion. In order for hybrid cloud to be realistic and practical, the end result must be a seamless integrations of applications, data, analytic and operational capabilities with a flexible, agile and secure infrastructure that provides that meet or exceed the required availability needs.

In those conversations, the most frequent question was "How do we decide what to put in public vs private cloud?". Addressing that question requires exploring the broad implications (benefits, challenges, complexities, costs, etc...) associated with these choices.

The plethora of architectures, technologies and products available, makes it extremely difficult for companies to envision an end-state goal, let alone determine an appropriate strategy / roadmap to get there.

Understanding a company's short and long term needs, creating a vision for the future, defining a roadmap / strategy to get there, and then doing to work to implement the solutions that make those goals a reality is exciting, challenging, fascinating and immensely satisfying.

While the world of technology is constantly changing, many of the approaches, methodologies and thought processes remain constant.

Services that provide business and architectural "direction / guidance" are starting to show up more frequently. Services to "simplify"  the implementation and day to day operation of these potentially complex systems are in high demand, and growing in numbers, with widely varying scope and capabilities.

While in the short to mid-term, reducing complexity is possible, the ultimate goal should target simplicity, where technology is a tool that invisibly (or nearly invisibly) enables a business to focus on, and deliver the products and services that are the reason for their existence.

Such services and solutions provide tremendous business value, enabling top line revenue growth along side cost reductions.