Happy New Year! I was originally going to talk about focusing on how powerful it is to speak and think positive thoughts and words over ourselves and others, but we can save that fluff for another day. I want to talk about why I could possibly be the Ebenezer Scrooge of New Years and, if I’m not mistaken, I don’t think I’m alone. I think you, yeah you, just might be too! Now, the problem I have with New Years is the “New” part. Sometimes, I love new, and other times, I hate it.
I have younger children and we were watching the new Incredibles 2 movie. I always laugh at the scene where Mr. Incredible is railing against his son Dash’s math textbook named New Math. “Why would they change math!? Math is math!!”
My daughter got a robot for Christmas. She’s 12, so it’s a robot, not a toy! Bolt is a cool robot, but its design is for you to program it yourself. So, as much as Hannah liked the idea of learning to code, the spark went out really quick once she realized Bolt was just a remote-controlled ball with twinkle lights. Though Hannah was saddened by this revelation, I looked at the toy and saw its potential. Then a wave of dread came over me… So, Hannah and I spent quite a while during Christmas break learning how to code Bolt.
This brings me to my point. Sometimes, learning new things sucks! Now, even though she shares my sentiment entirely, don’t tell my daughter this. There is a fine barrier of entry where we want the shiny new toy just to work within our expectations. Plug and play so to speak, without needing to learn an entire new language.
We eventually had some breakthroughs with Bolt and it ended up being a pretty fun thing to do and learn with Hannah. We’ll keep you posted on the progress of our evil kill-ball-bot!
Anyhow, back to why you also hate New Years! We released the new Agfinity Buyer Hub for all our buyers this week. Our programmer, Jordan, and I have been working on this project for close to 4 months trying to create something that buyers can enter, track and receive feedback on for the bids they post on your grain. Sounds easy enough, right? We did a release just before Christmas to work out some of the bugs and Monday, January 7 th, we opened it up to all our buyers. To my amazement, not everyone embraces new software. In fact, I was shocked to find out that buyers were not as excited as I was about all the value propositions that this new technology allows for. Why is this? Mostly, because it’s new, different, not quite the way it was before. “I’ll have to learn how it works, before I’ll know if I like it,” said one buyer.
Ladies and gentlemen, I couldn’t agree more, newer sometimes sucks and change can be hard; however, I think we all ( eventually) agree, it’s worth it. Thanks again to all the buyers that have been using and learning something new this year. We truly appreciate it!
– Joseph Billett @JosephBillett 1-888-969-5552
This whole thing also aligns with one of our core values!
We cultivate meaningful relationships through innovative systems, efficient processes and transformative technology as we plow into the future of agriculture.
