… you can, without fear or favor, blame this gentleman!! Him and Michele Baker!!

Stephen and I go back almost 10 years when he was a pilot in the company I worked in. I remember his love for flying. Has been doing it for 41 years. When I had gone to our Alaska office for a business review, Stephen had taken me up in the air and showed me a bit of Alaska.

So, when I found out that he was in town for some training, I had to find some time to sit with him. You see, Stephen is one of those rare folks whose intellectual curiosity is boundless. Of course, we spoke a lot about airplanes. The mechanisms of how the smaller planes fly and what are the key skillsets required.

But we talked about things that you would not think you would discuss with a pilot. We talked about motorcycles and we talked about boats. We talked about Bayesian probabilities and generative AIs. One of the more interesting arguments we got into was whether with quantum computing we can fairly accurately predict how any human being will think or decide on a particular problem given enough data on how the same person has thought or decided before.

It was a bit of an unfinished debate. I feel this need to go to Alaska and spend a day with him to finish off our discussion. And maybe go up in the air in his personal plane.

Something tells me the next crazy idea is starting to germinate!!

Got a chance to meet up with one of the smartest persons I have had a chance to work with. I remember Dan joining our company (Equifax) three years after I had joined. The lasting impression I had of him from my first few meetings was his vision around data and analytics and how business/customer oriented he was.

After leaving the company, most of my run ins with Dan were in the running trail. Looks like this year’s birthday call got him to set up a coffee meet up at the other location we used to often run into each other too – our local Starbucks!!

It was good catching up with Dan!