Microsoft 365 or Office 365, if you prefer, is so overrated. Microsoft is the master of selling licenses but when it comes down to doing real serious collaborative work with Teams and the rest of the software suite it falls apart really quickly. For example: trying to collaborated on a Word … read more

Why on earth in 2024 a company like Checkpoint still ships 32-bit software like a MDR client for Windows Server 2019? I mean, come on!! It’s like shipping a parallel port on a MacBook Pro!

Just completed a one hour customer presentation this morning. It was the culmination of a six-week project that shoud lead to bigger opportunities. I love doing presentations and I’m really comfortable doing so in front of people, especially when it is directly related to my field of expertise. Each … read more

In my day-to-day work, I’m benefiting so much from many mentors that I had a chance to meet during my career. They don’t know it, but they helped me so much to become what I am today and how I work with my other colleagues. Someone said: we are the sum of people we met in our life. I like this a lot.

Yesterday at the office, during a web conference, one of my colleagues, probably around 24 years old, called me a boomer! I responded: Hey, young boy, consider take ChatGPT for a ride and ask him what is the “X” generation is? I felt insulted.

Yesterday, while writing and editing a report for one of our clients, I used ChatGPT for two different use cases. One use case was to ask for a summarization of what “firmware” is and how critical it is. The second use case is to define the pillars of a data management and governance policy in the enterprise. On that one, I asked for more details about managing unstructured data. The ChatGPT results were mind-blowing. I know a lot about this specific IT field, and I could validate the correctness of the answers. I saved a lot of time because of ChatGPT.

But what about my ethics?

Should I write a disclaimer in this report that says GenAI was used to put together some portions of this report? Is the client ready and mature enough to read this disclaimer? Will he understand that ChatGPT is in fact like an assistant to whom I asked to summarize what a data governance policy is? How do I cite my sources?

Yesterday I did a 20-min presentation on how to take advantage of ChatGPT and GenAI tools at work, for my colleagues. Many of them didn’t learn anything because they already experimented with these tools. For others, they learned quite a bit and I saw their enchantment in their eyes. This reminds of 1993 when I gave a similar presentation about tools like Netscape, Newsgroups, Gopher, and Mail and how to use http requests. Today, we need to learn how to create effective “prompts”.

When people are nervous and under pressure, their worst tendencies often surface easily. 😌

I have been tasked to create a short presentation to my colleagues on how to take advantage of ChatGPT in day to day work. That will be a fun one to create. I love those little special projects. 😊👨🏻‍💻

I’ve been granted a Microsoft Copilot license at work for testing purposes. I have a love and hate relationship with Microsoft software in general. This will probably extend to cover Copilot as well. I shall not be deceived by this video. I will see.

I hate it when I get this feeling of losing control of my agenda at work. I’m not used to this. 😩

☝🏻 Thought of the day: collaborative software or services enabling better collaboration within a team is overrated or overestimated. If you are a loner at work, you’ll stay a loner, with or without a collab suite. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I use Notion quite a lot at work to help me manage my workloads and projects. It’s quite a powerful and flexible tool, rarely seen these days. I appreciate every minute I spend in it, to the same level I experience when using Apple Keynote.

I’m still surprised and baffled when I see coworkers with so limited knowledge of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. I mean, beyond typing words and writing simple calculations. 🤔

Sometimes, writing is like swimming against the current. Today, ideas were fuzzy, and I could not clarify them and put them in the right order. Those days are never easy, especially when it’s a day where writing intelligent texts is absolutely essential. People are depending on me. That was a bad day. Sign-off. 😑

Om Malik link-posting on his blog:

David Mills, the creator of Network Time Protocol (NTP), which is fundamental to the functioning of networks. Mills, nicknamed the Internet’s Time Lord by his peers, passed away on January 17 at the age of 85. His contributions to the development and evolution of the Internet are numerous and far-reaching. We are quietly losing a generation that has helped build the network we often take for granted. Source: RIP, Internet’s Time Lord – On my Om

I do deal with NTP protocol from time to time at my job as a solution architect. The fathers (and mothers) of the modern computing era are dying.

The notion of “avoiding vendors lock-in” in information technology is interesting. I would argue that it’s impossible to completely be without some sort of vendor lock-in1. At some point, there is always a required commitment level. You commit to open-source software. You commit to … read more

Confession of the day: I hate being confined to the world of Microsoft 365 for my work, knowing that there are much cooler tools out there. Notion is one example, Basecamp is another one, Monday, etc, even though it might be a controversial opinion. And don’t get me started about the Microsoft Visio; there are dozens of much better alternatives¹.

I’m spending my Friday afternoon writing documents for a big project at work. Even at work, I write a lot, which is a creative process, but in a different context. My personal hobbies nourish my creativity at work. Or the other way around. I don’t know. I like my job. My hobbies. My creative life. 😌

This morning, at work, I had the idea of creating a GPT that would act as a virtual resume for me. Colleagues would prompt this GPT about my professional journey with usual questions about my past experience, projects, certifications, abilities, etc. I uploaded a few files, including my resume and some other professional stuff, to try it out. It took me 15 minutes to create this virtual representation of myself. Tested many prompts against it. I’m blown away. The future is here, ladies and gentlemen.