Fun at Epic Systems

Epic is a software developer that focuses on medical records and information. They were founded in 1979 and have grown since then to be a dominant company in their space. They remain privately held, and have a campus outside Madison, WI.

I recently went there to discuss Redgate partnering with them and while there got to tour part of the campus. This is a bit of a dump of a number of photos, because it’s a cool campus.

When we walked up to the first building, it was reminiscent of Falling Water. I visited that house years ago, and our host confirmed that was the inspiration for this building.

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Connecting to that building was one that had quite a bit of a wilderness/safari/African theme. Art on the walls

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Images around elevators.

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Some fun spaces to sit and work or chat.

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Walking from that building to the next, since most are connected, we came upon a mini recreation of Raiders of the Lost Ark. When I pulled on the idol, we got a soundtrack of the boulder rolling playing in the background. Very fun.

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The basement of the next building had a recreation of a New York city deli and subway. I caught a shot of the space, where people can hang out with lunch.

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I loved this piece of art overlaid on the iconic skyscraper worker photo.

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In another building, there was a Hobbit theme. The entrance to one conference room looks like the Shire.

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Inside there’s fake grass around the table.

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And a space where you can get refreshments or sit outside of the main room,

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Even the place where catering or refreshments might be set out continues the theme.

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Walking further, this space has a outdoor feeling around the staircase from one floor to the next.

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Just past that, there’s a few walls with the handprints of employees who have been there ten years. How cool is that?

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We left the outdoors, heading for space. This was a very cool hallway.

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And between two buildings, there was a Heaven theme, and a Hell one. If you press the buttons, the elevator doesn’t work, but it does remind me of Dante with some lights and sound.

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Our presentation was in the Mos Eisley cantina.

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With some statues and reproductions at one end of the room,

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Around the conference room, there were various window spaces in the rock, each showing a different galaxy and the distance from Earth.

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There was even an audience for my presentation.

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Outside, it looked like the spacers were hanging out.

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With plenty of art everywhere.

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One thing I love is that Epic has maintained a lot of values over the years, and these are posted in every bathroom. I assume elsewhere, but I’d heard this and I saw these three items: commandments, principles, and principles of community.

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Our meeting was protected with a notice, and a guard.

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Epic has one of the largest, or maybe largest, underground event facilities. It was build into the ground on a former farm.

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The elevator and stairs take you down.

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Hallways have themes

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And there are 11,000 seats. I’ve spoken in a few large venues, but never this large.

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Different sides of the facility have different themes.

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Do you recognize this?

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Or this? In the entrance from above ground, this is near one of the escalators.

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This was a fabulous visit, and I wish we had more time to tour other spaces. They have a new Star Wars and (I think) Harry Potter building under construction. Hopefully I’ll get to go back.

If you want to just go and visit, you can.

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Prime Day Recommendations

It’s Prime Day. A few of my recommendations, since I want to do some shopping myself (yes, these are commissioned referrals). These are things I’ve ordered and used this year. It’s a random list, but maybe you’ll have fun with something here.

Reshuffle https://amzn.to/44qe1xz

A great book to get you to think about things changing in the AI world. I’m about 70% through and keep stopping to think.

Trademaster work gloveshttps://amzn.to/4uUIU8h

I keep losing the right ones (or the dog takes them), but I’ve gotten 4-5 pairs over the years.

Cuppa muchroom coffeehttps://amzn.to/44r1Hx2

Tastes a little funny to me, but my wife loves it and says it gives her energy. I’m skeptical, but I’ve used it.

Magsafe Phone holder for travelhttps://amzn.to/4ezAe0Q

I got this on a lark, but I’ve really enjoyed this on planes and even places where I can clip it to a table. It holds really well with a magnetic case.

Charmast power bank with cableshttps://amzn.to/4fWzsxk

We have 3 of these. I’ve tried a few others, but this has been a bargain and reliable. Charges quickly, don’t have to hunt for cables, and it’s survived many trips. I have 2 because I leave one in my personal carry on and one in the work bag. My wife grabbed one as well.

We Are Legion https://amzn.to/4aRJNHp

I grabbed this for free on Kindle Unlimited to try and loved it. I read all 5 (2, 3, 4, 5). It’s a software guy killed in a hit and run, awakened in the future as he’s uploaded into hardware to be the “AI” for a probe searching the galaxy for places to populate. It’s a fun, wild ride.

Wrangler Jeans – https://amzn.to/4oGXIpk

With a flex waistband, which is nice as I age and travel, but I’ve liked these and my wife likes the way they look. I’ll get another pair today.

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What is the Cloud?

Last week we had a training session at Redgate Software on the Cloud. One of the first slides from John Q Martin asked the question, “what is the cloud?” The next slide had the answer: it’s just someone else’s computer.

I mean that’s true, but it’s not Grant’s computer. He’s got a creaky, 4 year old HP that I don’t want running my workload.

The cloud is many things, it’s hard to define, it does so much, and at the same time, can do so little for you. Except cost a lot. We certainly find no shortage of people spending a lot of money in the cloud and not necessarily happy about it.

John was trying to educate others on the IaaS v PaaS, the challenges of cloud migration, giving them a perspective on what the cloud changes, and how customers think about the cloud. Apart from the basic details of what the cloud entails, he said an interesting thing (I’m paraphrasing here): the cloud does things that 95% of organizations couldn’t do themselves.

It’s not just someone else’s computer. It’s a whole bunch of computers someone else owns and has put a lot of security, infrastructure, planning, tooling, and more to enable you to flexibly create systems at a pace you would struggle to match inside your organization.

For most people.

The cloud is amazing. It’s is someone else’s (large rack of) computers that you can rent. They will charge you for the flexibility, and they’re not doing all your work for you, but they give you the ability to configure things the way you want them. Or you can ask one of your buddies, Claude or Copilot, to set up the configuration for you.

The cloud is a set of Lego bricks, some pre-built Lego models, a surface on which to place them, and a few rules to keep you from going too crazy, but you still have to do some work.

The cloud is a great enabler for many things. Not all, and not always for those things, but it’s up to you to find where it works, where it doesn’t, and where it’s worth the money.

That’s the cloud.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

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Brain Exercises: Fun Away from Work

I do like using my brain and trying different activities. Trying to solve T-SQL puzzles, or writing some code, or even playing some games that require me to think.

Recently my wife and I took a cruise. We’ve done this before and one of the things we’ve enjoyed it the trivia contests. They’re fun and they tax your memory a little, and reveal how much you know about the world around you. A few years ago we (with my son) won one of the contests and got a pin. This time we were hoping to repeat as winners at least once during the week.

We learned there are lots of smart people. We tried a few different contests and were close, but multiple questions away from winning. There are usually 16 questions, of various points, and we often knew 10-13, but often multiple teams fared better. Especially with the last, bonus question, which was worth more points. A few things we didn’t know:

  • Italian snack food made in 600AD inspired by children praying (pretzel)
  • how many stars are on the New Zealand flag (4)

We did get a few things right

  • Australian snack made from leftover brewers yeast (vegemite)
  • honey never spoils (true)

One of the days had a Michael Jackson theme. We are big fans, and as we listened to the songs, we knew most of them. The one we didn’t know, and in fact only one of the 25 or so teams knew, was Liberian Girl. One that my daughter knew, which none of us did, was Chicago. That was the bonus question and we needed it as we won by one point.

We got a sticker for the win, which was fun, but it was nice to stop and try to think under pressure, but not too much pressure.

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We won a second time, this one with TV Show intros. That was truly a group affair. I didn’t know many, but between my wife, my daughter, my son and his finance, we tied with 19/20 points with 2 other teams. We got a tiebreaker, and my son recognized the OC Theme, which one one else knew and I got a second sticker.

This makes me think I ought to do some trivia at a Day of Data sometime.

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