And like that, summer is over and the kids are back to school. But this year is a little different, as my daughter has joined her big brother at the elementary school and started kindergarten. For some reason when my son started kindergarten, it didn’t seem like it was as big of a deal to me. Maybe he has always seemed older. Maybe it was his naturally outgoing personality that made it easier. Or maybe […]

Growing up in the 80’s, malls were a pretty big deal. They were the social hotspots for teenagers, the place where you could buy anything (so the original Amazon), and even spawned a full-on tour for Tiffany, aptly named “The Beautiful You: Celebrating the Good Life Shopping Mall Tour ’87.” One of the best things to do at the mall was to go into stores where you knew there was no way you were buying […]

Phew! All of the boxes were finally moved in. The house was in disarray, but my wife and I were happy to finally have the family back in a home of our own. Then the cleaning began. Why is it that the process of cleaning a house reveals so many problems? Things look so much cleaner from a distance. And why does cleaning also reveal so much dysfunction? When it comes to buying a home, […]

My kids have officially become obsessed with Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s masterpiece musical about the life of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Every time we get in the car, the first thing they ask for is to listen to Hamilton. They sing the songs constantly, day and night, taking turns between who gets to be Alexander Hamilton and who gets to be Aaron Burr – the oldest always ends up being Hamilton. Over the last couple […]

As hard as it is to believe, today is already June 1, the 152nd day in the Gregorian calendar (153rd day in a leap year). There have been some pretty big moments in history that took place on June 1. Examples include Anne Boleyn was crowned Queen of England in 1533(for a short period of time), Benedict Arnold was court-martialed for malfeasance in 1779, Kentucky becomes the 15th state of the US in 1792, the […]

And like that, my spring conference season is over. For three straight weeks I traveled to Florida attending user conferences, learning from peers, exploring innovative solutions, racking up JetBlue points, and spending lots of time in an Uber. Each of the three conferences, JDA, Pitney Bowes, and Manhattan Associates, offered dynamic content and a glimpse into the future of software. At JDA, the big announcement was around the introduction of the Luminate platform. Pitney Bowes […]

I spent the beginning of the week (for the second straight week) in Orlando. This time, I was speaking at the Pitney Bowes Retail (R)Evolution conference. The conference as a whole was a great event, with the two days splitting up the complete customer shopping journey and overall experience. One of the highlights (aside from my participation in a fulfillment automation panel of course) was the keynote from Kevin O’Leary, AKA Mr. Wonderful from Shark […]

In the Boston area, this is one of the best weekends of the year – Patriot’s Day weekend. And the biggest tradition of Patriot’s Day weekend is the running of the Boston Marathon on Monday, where 30,000+ runners will trek the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston. Every runner has a story, whether they are an elite runner looking for the win, a runner that has qualified for the most prestigious marathon in the world […]