8th Light Acquires WisdomGroup

We’re gonna need a bigger boat.
 
~Police Chief in the movie Jaws

After 21 years of independent operation, WisdomGroup has been acquired by 8th Light.

WisdomGroup’s two-decade history has been an adventure of growth and change. We started with network and server installations, morphed to the web, and tightened our focus to Ruby in 2005.

Buffett on Diversification, Risk, and Focus

Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing. I can’t be involved in 50 or 75 things. That’s a Noah’s Ark way of investing – you end up with a zoo that way. I like to put meaningful amounts of money in a few things.
 
We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. In stating this opinion, we define risk, using dictionary terms, as ‘the possibility of loss or injury.’
 
~Warren Buffett

The Chicago Polyglot Mingle

Members of Chicago’s Python (ChiPy), Java (CJUG), and Ruby (ChicagoRuby) communities launched The Chicago Polyglot Mingle on July 28, 2016. Purpose: To bring Chicago’s software development community together for an evening of networking and socializing. Here’s a 3-minute recap.

Web + IoT for Entrepreneurs

Philip Fairweather and his team at the Small Business Development Center at Bethel New Life are serious about creating opportunities for entrepreneurs. The team invited me to present at one of their entrepreneurship workshops this afternoon. Thank you Phil for the invitation and for an audience of driven entrepreneurs. Slides appear below.

WindyCityThings 2016: Wow!

 
2016 marked the first year for a very special IoT conference, WindyCityThings. Thank you to everyone who made the event so successful, especially:

• Speakers, sponsors, attendees, and organizers who all stepped up to make the conference happen.
• BLUE1647 for running the IoT Youth Program.
• David Kinney and Amy Kinney for helping with speaker selection and MC-ing.
• South Shore Cultural Center for providing a great venue.
• Ganza Image Productions for summarizing the WindyCityThings experience with a 3-minute video.