Illuminosi- the key to success is to remain Active

We are there every day of the year, so that you don't have to be. This is the hard part- staying actively engaged when the large and small details are being discussed. This can include discussions about the finer points of the English language and the implications of a particular dialect of "Spec-eze". This is our world, and we live it every day because we love it.

We have been involved in the pathfinding for PCIe 5.0, new signal definitions for storage devices, and the details behind signal protocols, so that retimers and switches would behave the same as speeds doubled from PCIe 4.0 to PCIe 5.0. We have been involved in trade show planning as well, including the Persistent Memory Summit, Flash Memory Summit, and the Storage Developers Conference.

What we care about

Unambiguity, aka "Coherent Understanding". That means that it can be understood the same way by everyone. Test, Engineering, Management, Marketing and Planning should all have the same understanding of how a feature is to be implemented. Even if English is not your primary language. We have strong experience in working with international teams from across Asia and Europe, so we can negotiate those finer details in the specifications so that everyone understands the same thing.

Prompt responses are key to keeping your teams running at full speed. We are able to provide answers quickly and knowledgeably on a wide variety of topics. When we don't know the answer, we know who to ask, and will respond to in that manner. To us, "I don't know" is a valid answer, because we always follow up with "but I will find out and get back to you". The same prompt replies are given for all your teams and situations, we give your our promise.

"Engage early, engage often" is our philosophy for dealing with all our standards groups and contacts. That means we are often present before the formation of new standards groups. We were there from the first meeting of what became the "Computational Storage Technical Working Group" in SNIA. One of our team acted as the Technical Editor for the Denali Specification that dramatically improves the Open Channel 2.0 specification, and is part of the groups that decide who/what gets presented at various key trade shows in the technical presentations. We took an active role in the founding of the Power Subteam in the PCI-SIG because we understand the importance of power management in all sorts on computer platforms from cell phones & laptops to data centers.

If this sounds interesting to you, contact us and we will help you understand this new way to improve your engineering team.

More about Activities

Taking notes

Sometimes, we feel the old ways are best. One example is how we attend meetings. We start by using notebooks (the paper ones) to take all our notes. It helps with retention of details. Also, we shut off email, web browsers, code editors, and all other projects during meetings so that we can concentrate on the meeting at hand. This type of notebook never "bluescreens" or hangs.

The importance of face time

One of the most important parts of standards work is the after hours discussions. Those of us who have been in it for a long time know that the best part of standards occurs after the meetings end for the day. It's those impromptu meetings in the hall, or over dinner afterwards that matter. Then we are free to discuss the activities occuring in other groups- like the latest signal definition in PCI-SIG, a heatsink dimension change in SFF, or a network protocol change in NVMe. Those face to face interactions are golden and often are worth the price of the plane ticket on their own. Keep in mind that your biggest customers are there, so it is good for you to get those key insights because you won't find them anywhere else.