I spend a lot more time than you would think, questioning technology. Yes, I am an IT professional...but I don’t necessarily believe in technology for the sake of technology. In fact, even when I do think a technology is important, I question the way that it should be deployed.

Some of the best, and ultimately the most productive, conversations and/or arguments that Envision’s engineers have are about how and when to deploy technology. I take my role as CTO at Envision very seriously, and find myself playing devil's advocate and often forcing my peers to reconsider what they think they know to be "best practice".

I have often felt that one of Envision’s biggest strengths is that we don’t take "recommended deployment guidelines" for granted. In the end, these are always written to serve the vendor’s best interest, and they rarely take into account the interaction between disparate technologies. So, when one technology’s "best practice" runs contrary to another technology’s "best practice" what do you do? Did you even see that coming in the first place?

If you work at Envision, you probably did because we spend a lot of time looking ahead and planning for the future. However, not every tech company is like that. In fact, we have worked on numerous systems whose primary problem was that a prior vendor just drank the coolaid of some manufacturer without thinking much about it.

What has me thinking about this? Mostly it’s that my boat just got a little more "techie".

I generally resist the addition of technology to my boat. Oddly, I am saying that as I sail south with a computer on my lap and a connection to the internet :)

Nonetheless, I don’t have an electronic chart plotter, or GPS integrated electronic navigation software, or even a color GPS display. This boat has always been my oasis from the technological. I still use paper charts, a compass, and a divider to plot my courses; and I have never pushed a button that would raise a sail. However, as I said, my boat did get more techie this season. I have installed a hydraulic autopilot, and I have named it Otto.

That is right...this boat can now drive itself.

I wasn’t sure I was going to like this, but I can now say (without hesitation) that this is the single coolest, most rock’n-ist, ultra-mega-awesomest, bomb-diggity thing I have ever installed on the boat. I just totally love riding along without having to man the wheel every two minutes. I want one of these in my car. In fact when I am old and / or lazy (er), I may even install one on my powerchair.

This is an example of the right technology at the right time.

Long live Otto!!