#it really shows that they both internalized their discovery of tesla very very differently

[alcordraws]

I love baby Nai so much, he was so silly before he was smacked in the face by the trauma of seeing Tesla's mutilated corpse.

No need to sleep? That's fine more time for cowboy movies (and Vash is asleep so he doesn't get to whine about it). He's a little trickster! And Vash commits to the bit with him! He likes his quiet piano time and even if he's grumpy about Vash interrupting and changing the tempo on him, he'll still indulge him, just like Vash indulges his little pranks. He even wore the stupid pink birthday hat

[lovelyirony]

Stars with thorbruce

Bruce remembers his mother’s hand smoothing over his curls, telling him stories of how the constellations came to be. He remembers hearing soft words of using the Big Dipper for milk and cookies. He smiles as he remembers asking his mother who lived among the stars. 

They were beautiful, surely someone had to live there. 

His mother smiled. 

“You will find it out, my smart boy. None of us know yet, although some of us have a feeling that we’re not alone in this galaxy.” 

Bruce would look out his window every night and ask the stars who among them lived in what world. He asked how their world was. 

Thor knew others lived other places. His mother read Loki and he stories of other people, how they lived. 

His father said how Asgard ruled it all with a golden-hued hand. 

He asks of Terran people, Midgardians. 

“You don’t need to concern yourself with them,” Odin says. “Now go and train. A weak king serves no purpose on a strong throne.” 

- 

Bruce does not smile when he realizes that there are others out there, not when he’s been dragged in as a monster to help fight other monsters. Accepted, just this once. 

He looks up at beings who look like stars for one brief second. And then they descend with a roar, and he knows. 

He turns, letting Hulk take the lead. 

His mother knew they were not alone. 

But she could not have known this was the result.  

- 

Thor is…different. He returns from taking his brother back to…Asgard? And he is quiet. 

Bruce just quietly moves around him to get his tea or food. 

“Dr. Banner?” Thor asks, his voice impossibly soft. It does not fit a man who is as large and imposing as he is. “Can you…what can you tell me about Earth?” 

“It sucks,” Bruce answers automatically. 

Thor blinks. 

Bruce does not want to explain why earth sucks. So he takes his naan and goes back to his room. 

- 

The god cannot leave well enough alone. He is knocking on Bruce’s door at eight o’clock in the morning. 

Bruce answers in an old t-shirt that’s seen better days, old pants, and bags under his eyes. 

“Why does earth suck so much?” 

Bruce sighs. 

“Go to the kitchen. I’ll explain there.” 

Bruce goes into a long-winded tangent about how much human invented concepts suck and how policy makes everything slow and he can’t even fly in a plane because he’s deemed a flight risk and people keep trying to kill him and the unending guilt over his own mistakes will be his demise. 

“Do you guys have therapy on earth?” Thor asks. 

Bruce laughs. 

“Yeah, we do. I need to find a new therapist soonish. Just hard with my…issue. Earth doesn’t suck. It’s cool.” 

“Show me?” 

“Uh…yes?” Bruce asks, blinking. “What do you want to see?” 

“What’s your favorite thing about earth?” 

Bruce has to think. 

“Come with me tonight. On the roof.” 

- 

The stars are never as bright as they were in Ohio, which is about the only good thing Bruce can say about Ohio. It’s the only good thing anyone could say, really. 

“Are you serious?” 

“Yes, never go there,” Bruce says. “Ever.” 

“…noted. Not even for one of your natural…reserve park things?” 

“Nope. Not even for those. You’re gonna get murdered there.” 

“I’m a god, Bruce.” 

“Ohio people only believe in one god, and that god is less jacked than you.” 

They laugh together. 

Bruce tells him all about his mother’s stories of the stars, what he learned from others. 

“Do you want to hear our stories?” Thor asks softly. 

They make a habit of going on the roof once a week, weather permitting. If it does not permit, they sit in the sunroom and have coffee, chatting that way. 

Bruce learns that Thor was alive when Nikola Tesla was, but never went to earth. 

“I was in training to become king, and Odin didn’t really want me venturing out too far,” Thor says. “But I heard that earth had some catching up to do. You definitely have us beat with food though. Damn.” 

They stare over at the stars. 

Bruce struggles to ignore his red cheeks or the fact that Tony keeps calling him “lover boy.” 

“Nope. I’m not that.” 

“Sure you aren’t, the rest of us spend time gazing into Thor’s eyes,” Tony says, batting his eyelashes. “Just ask him out already.” 

“Get therapy,” Bruce shoots back. 

“Are we talking about how we all need collective help?” Natasha asks. “I thought that was what Steve’s meeting was about tonight.” 

“Shit, I’m not going to that then,” Clint says. “Do you think he’ll buy it if I tell him that my dog has a son?” 

“I don’t buy anything, I grew up in the Great Depression,” Steve responds, coming down the stairs. “Also Clint, you have a dog? Since when?” 

“Since never,” Clint responds back. “I don’t have a dog.” 

“Good, Tony said no dogs.” 

“For Steve,” Tony mumbles. “But we’‘re missing the obvious part of this discussion, which is Bruce’s love-life.” 

“I don’t have one of those in stock.” 

“Check in the back,” Tony snarks. 

Bruce rolls his eyes. 

“I don’t have a love-life guys,” Bruce says. “The only thing I love is dismantling huge corporations that are evading ecological law.” 

“And also hanging out a ton with Thor,” Natasha responds. “Wait, are you–” 

“If we have to talk about emotions then I demand we discuss Natasha’s thirsty tweet about Sharon.” 

“My cousin, Romanoff?!” Tony yells. 

Bruce takes this time to escape down to his lab, where Natasha is not allowed in. 

“I cannot say with full certainty that she will not break in,” Jarvis answers. “But I will try my best, Dr. Banner. Hell hath no woman like a woman.” 

“You’re just as bad as Tony with phrases,” Bruce says. “But thanks.” 

Thor is down there. 

“Why is Natasha locked out of the lab?” 

“She told me that she preferred wine from California, she was obviously banned,” Bruce says quickly. 

“I thought last week’s argument was you and her against Clint,” Thor says. “And I think you won? Clint thought his expired Kool-Aid was wine. That was a very sad night.” 

Bruce freezes. 

“Ha. Yeah. That was right. She’s still banned.” 

“What was the debate upstairs about? I heard snippets about it. Tony said something about checking in the back? Is he mad about the fruit again? He can’t expect to buy strawberries and them to still be there.” 

Bruce laughs. 

“Nah, Steve’s having a group talk about therapy options for us. I think Tony’s gonna try and con his way out of it by pushing Bucky in front of him. It won’t work.” 

- 

As it turns out, Natasha has swift revenge. 

She can’t break into the lab. 

But she can make sure the two of them can’t break out. 

“Until you confess the door is gonna be closed,” Natasha says over the intercom. 

“Confess what?” Thor asks, looking nervous. 

“Oh…you know. Stuff. Now you have to by six, otherwise Steve will break you out and then you have to say it as a duo. Do you want to tell all of us or just the two of you…alone?” Nat asks. 

“Fuck you,” Bruce says, flipping off the sensor. 

- 

Thor’s nervous. He…this is new. He hasn’t liked someone is what is probably about two thousand years. 

Bruce is…he’s different. 

He likes the small things and rants about how stupid the smallest things are (like his least favorite spoon) and also looks phenomenal when the sun is shining and he’s laughing about a new story and…

Thor wants a forever. He’s known forever. 

But he hasn’t known forever with Bruce. 

And now they’re locked in his lab. 

Bruce bangs his head against the table. 

“Think Steve will break us out?” 

Thor is about to answer when the intercom comes to life again. 

“No, he won’t be,” Tony says. “I’ve managed to convince him to share his PowerPoint on what kind of fork he wants to reorder for the kitchen. He got passionate about what design he wants on the handle.” 

There’s a muffled yell that sounds suspiciously like “no curvature on the handle!” and then silence. 

“God,” Bruce mutters. 

They sit in silence for a moment. Thor’s not exactly sure what to say. It’s not like they make Hallmark cards for “you’re the first person I’ve loved in about two millennia and I want you to be mine until the earth implodes.” 

Similarly they don’t make a Hallmark card for “I thought I was incapable of love but now I’ve fallen in love with you and you’re a god and I’m a near-indestructible chaos-bringer.” 

It’s a work in progress for the card-making interns, honestly. 

“What did Nat mean by talking to me?” Thor asks. “I know this is probably gonna be awkward. Wouldn’t be locked into a lab if it wasn’t.” 

If Bruce had had maybe ten minutes to himself, he would’ve come up with a good lie. One that he could say without shifting eyes or a stuttering mouth. But he can’t. Lying takes time. 

“So I’m pretty sure I like you. As in want to take you out on a date like you. And I didn’t tell you because you’re a god.” 

Thor blinks. 

“Bruce no offense but you calling me a god and also seeing me at my lowest in salmon board shorts? Hilarious.” 

Bruce gives him a face. 

“You know what I mean.” 

“And I was going to say that I like you, but you are a brilliant scientist who changed your world through discovery, not by force,” Thor responds. “You love helping others and you also turn into a giant green guy who likes food trucks and hates not smashing things.” 

Bruce blinks. 

“Did we–?” 

“Yeah, we did. I also think this means we have an excuse to miss both Steve’s presentation on fork styles as well as his call for therapy, which in reality was only for Clint.” 

The lab doors open. Bruce automatically flips Natasha off, but is met with Natasha flipping him off. 

“Tony wants to talk to me about my ‘intentions’ with his cousin because of you, Banner. This means war.” 

“Well now I have a guy who has a giant, unliftable hammer on my side,” Bruce says defensively. He grabs onto Thor’s hand, grinning. “Just try me.” 

Thor smiles too. 

“I believe I owe Bruce a few more dates, so we will regrettably be missing Clint’s intervention,” Thor says. “See you later!” 

Clint makes a groupchat with them in it only to send: 

:((((( guys :( 

They don’t check it until the morning, after Bruce rolls over and complains that Thor has way better pillows. 

[pengychan]

The Mind Cage - Epilogue

Title: The Mind Cage Summary: In another world, Stanford Pines places a metal plate in his skull far too soon. In another world, Bill Cipher is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Characters: Bill Cipher, Ford Pines, Stan Pines, Fiddleford McGucket Rating: T COMPLETE. Click here for the first chapter, warnings and links to all chapters up so far.

A/N:  And here’s the epilogue - if you read the Journal, you’ll definitely know which scenario it’s based on! (If you haven’t: it’s from a parallel reality where Stan left with Jornal 1 when told to, Ford reconnected with McGucket and together they made interdimensional travel possible without allowing Bill access to their world. Happy ending for everyone… except Stan, clearly. So I had to fix that.)

***

The Astonishing Anomalies of Gravity Falls

Fiddleford H. McGucket, PhD Stanford F. Pines, PhD

– To Stanley Pines, without whom none of this would have seen the light of day.

Introduction

Nikola Tesla once said that the history of science shows that theories are perishable; with every new truth that is revealed, we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

Much of what is written in this paper defies what most believe to be real; research on the cause of these phenomena is still ongoing. Only by keeping an open mind on the scientific evidence presented in this work, and abandoning all preconceptions…

***

Stan had seen it coming from a mile away.

The not at all subtle mention of ‘ongoing research’ was a first hint, as was Stanford’s decision to wait for McGucket to come pick his car up before publishing the revised thesis paper. ‘To discuss a few matters’, he had said, but Stan knew it wasn’t the paper he wanted to talk about: for that, a phone call would have sufficed. If Stanford wanted to wait for a face-to-face chat, there had to be a lot more going on.

The third big hint wasn’t so much something his brother did, but what he did not do. He got rid of the rather creepy amount of Bill-related stuff he kept in his basement, including a golden statue Stan would have rather melted to keep the gold; everything in any way connected to Bill Cipher had to go, and go it did. Except for the one thing his brother did not dismantle.

So really, when Stan went in the kitchen one night to find the door to the basement open and his brother downstairs, staring in silence at the deactivated portal with his arms behind his back, he was not surprised in the slightest.

“So, lemme guess. You’re thinking of firing up this baby and see what’s beyond.”

His words caused Stanford to wince and turn. He looked amazingly guilty, like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar - something that had never happened when they were kids, really, because that was usually Stan’s role. And he’d never felt guilty when caught, anyway.

“Stanley, I… I hadn’t realized I had woken you up.”

“You didn’t. I woke up on my own,” Stan said with a shrug, and walked up to stand by his twin’s side. “So. Am I right? Is this what you want to discuss with Nerdy?”

“Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but truth be told I haven’t made up my mind yet. It’s… just an idea.”

“An expensive one, huh?” Stan guessed, and grinned, elbowing his brother’s side. “That’s where the money from the paper is gonna go, huh?”

Stanford’s guilty expression melted into a laugh. “Only my part, no worries. And only if Fiddleford believes what I have in mind to be feasible - only if he agrees. If he says no, then that will be it,” he said, then paused for a moment and turned to Stan. “… What do you say?”

Okay then. Stan hadn’t been surprised to find his brother there, but now he sure was. “Whoa there. Are you telling me that if I say ‘nope, don’t do it’, you’ll just scrap this whole thing?”

“I am,” Stanford said, no hint of humor left in his voice, and Stan knew he meant it.

“… Okay. I ain’t saying no just yet. What’s your idea?”

Stanford turned back to the portal. “This is a gateway to other dimensions, and in a way it feels… wrong to keep their existence hidden from mankind. I would never dare activating it with Cipher still around, but now he’s gone.”

“Yeah, but if Nerdy’s rambles are anything to go by, this thing kinda leads into the tenth circle of Hell.”

“It does, as things are. Cipher tricked me into building this portal so that it would lead into his own dimension - the Nightmare realm. However, I think that a dimensional vortex neutralizer might allow us to entirely bypass it, giving whatever dwells in it no opening to come through and leaving other dimensions accessible for us to explore.”

That sorta made sense, in a very sci-fi sort of way. And really, it sounded like an amazing chance: as kids they had wanted to explore the world, but had always been a little put off by the fact explorers had already been pretty much in every corner of Earth, leaving no unknown waters left to map. But what would it be like, to explore dimensions - and be the first ones to ever do it? Also, getting unbelievably rich and famous in the process would be a nice cherry on top of the cake of awesome.

“Oookay. Let’s say I’m intrigued. Can you build a thing like that? A neutralizer-something?”

Stanford shook his head. “No, not me. If anybody can create something like it, that’s Fiddleford.”

“Looks like we’re gonna have to ask Nerdy, then,” Stan said, then shrugged. “Okay. If he says yes, we go through it together. If he says no, we dismantle this whole thing - wouldn’t even be the first of your inventions I break, huh? - and use the money from the paper to buy, like, a research cruise ship or something. You do the research, I enjoy the cruise.”

The idea made Stanford laugh again. “That sounds tempting,” he admitted, then sobered up. “It might just be what we’ll do. Fiddleford almost lost his sanity to whatever he saw on the other side. I can’t say I truly expect him to agree giving the idea a go.”

Stan shrugged. “Hey, you never know. The guy’s got bigger balls than one would think. I mean, figuratively. Didn’t look myself. Did you?”

Stanford raised an eyebrow. “… Really now?”

“Hey, you were college roommates. Never even got a glimpse?”

“Stanley. He is married.”

“Nope. Was married. Might be your chance, Poindexter.”

Another laugh. “I’ll pretend to have never heard any of this,” he said, turning his back to the portal. “As for the project, I’ll ask next week when he comes for his car. He’s likely to bring his son with him, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t repeat any of this in front of the child. Or at all. Let’s go back to sleep.”

Stan made a dramatic gesture towards the door. “Ladies first,” he said, earning himself light punch on the arm. He rubbed the spot, watching Stanford walk away, and grinned. Not so much because of the joke, but because he had noticed something most wouldn’t have even thought of.

As he left the basement, Stanford didn’t turn to spare another glance at the portal. It was enough for Stan to be certain that yes, if he or McGucket said no, Stanford would just dismantle the portal and never bring it up again. His brother strived to go forward, as he always had, but no longer all on his own.

Never again all on his own.

***

… The inauguration of the International Institute of Oddology in Gravity Falls, Oregon, is undoubtedly the greatest leap ever made in history - not only proving the existence of worlds outside our own, but even allowing mankind to make contact with them.

“The Dimensional Vortex Neutralizer makes the activation of the portal perfectly safe, but for time being only specialized teams of experts can travel through dimensions for limited amounts of time. We do however have high hopes that, in the future, interdimensional travel will be open to all,” said Dr. Stanford Pines, founder and CEO of the Institute, who took the scientific world by storm last year with the publication of his amazing discoveries.

According to Chief Operating Officer Dr. Fiddleford McGucket, the team has successfully made contact with a dimension known to its inhabitants as Dimension 52 during its latest expedition.

“We documented every step, and are looking forward to share all we’ve gathered in a press conference at the end of the month,” he added.

Both declined to comment allegations that one Stanley Pines, whose title and role in the Institute are still unclear, attempted to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a seven-eyed alien lady in the course of the expedition. They also denied Mr. Pines’ earlier claims a souvenir shop and guided tours of the Institute are in the works, to the disappointment of local children.

On other news…

***

“Guys! GUYS! I found another door and it’s all brand new! He explored another dimension!”

“Cool! Let’s go now! I want to see it!”

“Wait, let me take my notebook…”

“Who’s got a camera?”

“I’ve got seven!”

“Oh! I want one!”

“No. You’d just finish all the film to take pictures of noses.”

“I wouldn’t! Liam, tell him!”

“… He’s right, actually. You do that all the time, Billy.”

“Hey! That’s not true! I also take pictures of ears! And teeth!”

“C’mon, Stanford, don’t be a stick in the mud! Let him keep a camera and let’s go.”

The new door wasn’t a long distance away; Stanley and Stanford ran all the way to it, while Bill and Liam hovered right behind them. Really, why did they even bother walking and running when they could fly so easily in the Mindscape? Stanford had said something about a ‘force of habit’, and it sounded really boring, a bit like staying in one place all the time.

Because sure, the beach was great and a lot of fun, but it was just so much better to go out and explore all of the new memories that kept popping up… especially the ones of different dimensions. So far they had met a bunch of warrior piglets with octopus arms - Stanford had gotten a really cool tattoo there - then they had found a dimension where it was mandatory to gamble. It had been a lot of fun, until they had caught him and Stanley cheating, so they had to leave really quickly. Stanford and Liam had been really annoyed at them, because they’d been only halfway through taking notes and snapping pictures of everything they could see and now they were pretty much banned from going back in that memory.

Then there had been the other one - a world called Exwhylia that had looked a lot like the Second Dimension - but they hadn’t explored that one. When Billy had found it, one look had been enough decide he would never, ever take Liam there. They would hate him there, just like at home. They would call him Irregular. And they would try to kill him, just like at home.

But it wasn’t really home, was it? Because home is supposed to be a place where you feel welcome, and Liam had never been welcome back there, not at all. No one less than Regular had been.

I’m glad it’s gone, Billy had thought when he had slammed the door shut, and right there and then it hadn’t even mattered that it was probably what the other Bill had felt like, what he had thought after destroying it. Because they deserved to be gone.

I’m glad they’re all gone. But I am here, Liam is here, and we’re free.

“Here! This is it!”

The door Stanley had led them to was made of very dark wood, with a brass plaque on it. Most doors seemed to have one: Stanford Pines’ mind was incredibly well-organized.

Dimension 52.

“What do you think is in here?” Liam asked, floating closer. His eye was wide and almost sparkling, a notebook and a pen already in his hands. Billy thought, not for the first time, that their world just hadn’t deserved him. It hadn’t deserved either of them. “Maybe a new color?”

“Hot alien girls! Or… or the Toffee Peanut Dimension!” Stanley immediately piped in.

“Eldritch abominations!” Stanford exclaimed, holding up a camera. Billy, who was kinda hoping to find a dimension of endless candy or something like it but would also settle for abominations, shrugged and hovered to the door, reaching out to grasp the handle.

“Hey, only one way to find out. Kings of New Jersey?”

“Kings of New Jersey!”

Bill pushed down the handle. The door opened, and they stepped into the unknown.

***

June 2012

Ah, summer break. A time for leisure, recreation, and taking it easy… unless you’re me.

My name is Dipper. The girl about to puke is my sister Mabel. You may be wondering what we’re doing in an interdimensional shuttle-cart, fleeing from a creature of unimaginable horror. Rest assured, there’s a perfectly logical explanation. Let’s rewind.

It all began when our parents finally allowed us to spend the summer at our great uncles’ International Institute of Oddology in Gravity Falls, Oregon…

***

(For the record: in the end, Stan totally wins the argument and there IS a gift shop in the Institute. Soos and Wendy will obviously work there. Because I say so.)

***

[Back to Chapter 14]

[Back to the beginning]

[inerginc]

It’s very fashionable nowadays for utility businesses to cite the great internet giants as their inspiration. I’ve been in many a meeting in recent years where clients have told me “we look to Google and Facebook” or “we want to be just like LinkedIn or Netflix”. Now, this is commendable … to an extent. These businesses are successful, popular, globally recognised and clearly very different from the traditional utility business.

And in these crazy times when utilities themselves don’t want to look like traditional utility businesses anymore, who wouldn’t want to turn to the darlings of the digital world for some tips? Right?

Digitising a hole in the ground?

However, digging further into how such businesses can genuinely be a guiding light for a century-old industry based on heavy assets, government funding and natural monopolies is not always so easy.1 These wholly digital, often global business models don’t always translate directly to the needs of a team planning the movement of an HV transformer along a country lane; an asset manager worried about how best to scrape waste off the filters in a fleet of 60-year-old water treatment plants; or a direct labour force, skilled in digging holes in the ground in major conurbations.

“Of course they don’t David!” I hear you cry. “We’re not trying to digitise excavations!” And I appreciate that. I really do. I understand fully that there are many opportunities to digitise; to emulate the customer-service ideals of the internet giants; to introduce flexibility and…gasp…innovation.

Safety first

But my examples about transformers and water treatment plants and labourers are not flippant ones. They’re examples of the fundamental tasks that define an industry. And of the unshakeable safety-first principles underpinning everything that is done in an industry that can all too easily blow up buildings, electrocute individuals or even poison whole populations. These things don’t happen too often. But they do happen.

Now, into such a safety-conscious, tried-and-trusted environment comes a new and enthusiastic Chief Digital Officer, citing the benefits of digital disruption and of new – possibly unproven – ways of doing things. Tough gig, huh?

It’s that culture thing again

As you may be working out by now, I’m talking about cultural issues. Again. I’ve written before on this site about CDOs and their role in culture change, but let’s take a particular example today and go into a little more detail.

One of Teradata’s mantras is “fail fast”. We’re a data & analytics company, so we’re talking about analytics, of course. The kind of analytics where business users - not the IT Department - have the tools, the environment and the opportunity to combine data sets and apply analytics quickly and easily. And see the results just a quickly. Some of those analytical journeys will lead to new insights that could save the company time or money, or even improve safety. But some will prove … nothing. And you know what? That’s OK. It’s part of the deal. And it’s not just us preaching such an approach. A culture of discovery and “fail fast” is a key part of all the inspirational organisations that your peers cite. Yes, all of them.

Failing like Netflix

Consider Netflix. They’re well known for building shows based on analytics. Netflix understands the kinds of plots, actors and direction that their customers like and create new combinations of them in their next original show. It means their hit rates are high. So far, so good. Something to emulate in customer interaction perhaps?

But wait. We’re not finished here. If that new show doesn’t perform as expected, it’s dropped. They fail fast. Even so, Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, recently discussed how they still “… have to take more risk; you have to try more crazy things. Because we should have a higher cancel rate overall. [By taking risks] you get some winners that are just unbelievable winners”.

Take another look at that quote. Where it says “we should have a higher cancel rate”. Netflix’s CEO wants to see failure. Because in experimentation, there is the opportunity to discover new, valuable things. And the reality is that some experiments fail. Others though … others create billionaires, or change the world. Or both.

Fail fast, or fail altogether?

Aye, there’s the rub 2. How many of your employers, your colleagues, or your staff are ready for experimentation and failure? Not many, I’d guess. And that’s not unreasonable. A TV show that goes live, but fails to capture the attention of a critical mass of viewers is not the same as, say … a combination of chemicals that’s released into a treatment plant but fails to make their water safe to drink. It just isn’t. Is it any wonder that utilities people are often uncomfortable with experimentation and failure?

But digitisation really is coming. Disruption is already here, from every angle. Citing Tesla and Apple as your new competitors is already getting old, because it’s no longer a threat. Its real. Today. We all know the industry must transform or die.

In such circumstances, even utilities need to experiment. And learn that failure can be OK. Not on live networks, experimenting with people’s health or their energy supply. Of course not. But with new combinations of asset, workforce and supplier data; with new ways to communicate and engage customers; with crazy ideas about weather and demographics and home solar-plus-storage takeup combined with opportunities to invest in grey water recycling startups.

Or just with adding ERP data to Historian data in an analytical environment, to try a few new ways of applying analytics to asset health monitoring or phase imbalance in MV networks.

It’s time to get over those cultural barriers and embrace the right kind of failure. The fast failure of discovery analytics. Because if you don’t, pretty soon failure is going to embrace you. And it’s a death grip. Coming soon.

  1 No matter what your favourite Management Consultancy might tell you. 2 It’s from Hamlet. The famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy in fact.

  About the author:

David Socha is Teradata’s Practice Partner for the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT).  He began his career as a hands-on electrical distribution engineer, keeping the lights on in Central Scotland, before becoming a part of ScottishPower’s electricity retail deregulation programme in the late 1990s. After a period in IT Management and Consulting roles, David joined Teradata to found their International Utilities practice, later also taking on responsibilities in Smart Cities and the wider Industrial IoT sector.

  Image credit: 123rf.

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