Francis Pelland

Hiring for HELL YES! Catering your hiring experience to find great talent that your teams and candidates to also be excited about.

Hiring is a critical component of many of our job functions. A great interview process allows for the candidate to be pumped about the role and the company, while also allowing you to see whether they would be a great fit. It may not come to anyone’s surprise that interviews is in many situations a process that doesn’t get a whole lot of love. But like many of our other skills, you need to…

For the love of data, invest time in it!

For most, data is as valuable as gold. Often, it isn’t treated as such. Why is that?

I’ve often referred to data as that love hate relationship that many of us have had with school. It’s something that many of us felt that we needed to do just enough to pass, whereas others felt they needed to go above and beyond to get top marks. Who’s the winner here?

Continuing with the school analogy,…

Polishing off my Home Automation with a new demo. Closer to the finish with a complete demo coming soon!

I haven’t written in a while. As you may imagine, life has had a lot to do with it. But the other large contributing factor is the time I have invested into building out a (sweet) home automation system.

I’d love to say it is done, but let’s be honest, is any product ever done? The reality of Marvin, as I am calling my home automation, is that it is in a somewhat functional state. To date, it…

Marvin's learning his first skill, finances. Could it one day make a great financial advisor?

With Marvin’s core architecture designed, I started developing the framework.  The framework itself is intended to handle multiple use cases, from supporting personal information to provide contextual experiences to controlling devices.  Marvin’s key differentiator is that it is powered by data, rather than a simple trigger based on an action.  This is why the core of the framework contains APIs…

I’ve come to the realization that I like companies that try to disrupt a market. Whether it be phones, IoT devices, or software. Love rooting for the next up and coming success story, even if it means some growing pains along the way. I tend to be a very passionate person when it comes to technology.  I find myself pouring over details, specs, and features with each new thing. It’s rewarding to…

Marvin: Automation my Smart Home Devices

Part of the process of designing Marvin is to carefully ensure that all devices within my home fit well into the ecosystem.  I severely underestimated the time it would take to carefully plan out each part of my ecosystem.

I’ve started buying and implementing smart home / IoT devices over the last year or so. The devices were implemented with the idea that they will all be managed a central…

Over the past while, I’ve been fully immersed these days into figuring out how to build Marvin.  In doing so, I’ve been researching products, services, or even technology that would help me do it. While diving into each one and evaluating whether to proceed in using them, I’ve found myself looking for the very same thing in each one.  That is, are they working to ensure their developers are…

Marvin – Personalized and Smart Virtual Assistant

Over the last two years, I’ve been buying into Internet of Things (IoT) devices. While the devices themselves may be smart, they do not make a smart home.  In comes Marvin.  Unlike many who have gone for Jarvis as a name, I chose the name Marvin from Hitchhiker’s Guild to the Galaxy. Marvin has a brain the size of a planet, which is fitting considering the information it will be processing.

Brain…

Exciting time for electric cars

Two years ago, I wrote about electric cars questioning their validity. A lot has changed since that post. Electric cars are starting to get exciting! Tesla has done a lot to raise awareness for electric cars.  They’ve made them cool.

Let’s take a step back

In the 90’s, GM introduced the EV1.  Most see that as a failed attempt at the electric car.  It’s controversial. Check out the movie Who…