Our founder and visionary, Mitch McLeod, was inducted into the 2018 BGSU Paul J. Hooker Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership Hall of Fame.  Mitch set us on our path – and we are so incredibly proud of him.  Check out this video which pretty much sums up Mitch’s incredible leadership.  Only four inductees were chosen this year, and we think you’ll agree – this award is pretty special.

Paul J. Hooker Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership Hall of Fame 2018 – Mitch McCleod from Bowling Green State University.

…Mitch’s Acceptance Speech

When was the last time you backed up your laptop, tablet or smartphone? I was recently asked whether or not there’s a link between cybersecurity and preparedness plans. If you have a good cybersecurity process in place, you’re always bracing for any situation – whether it’s an emergency response, a major storm, a terrorist attack, or other scenarios. Unlike a preparedness plan, which has a bit of a shelf life, a cybersecurity plan (and the technology underpinning it) changes daily.

With cybersecurity, you are (or should be) doing something daily to change the proverbial combination on your infrastructure’s lock.

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As of Sunday, September 16, CNN reported that about 760,000 customers were without power in the Carolinas due to the impact of Hurricane Florence. Cities like Wilmington, N.C., are inaccessible due to rising flood waters.

As utilities from across the country send crews to help Wilmington and other places recover from Florence, technologies like mobile digital computers (MDC), rugged laptops and GPS have put data into the hands of field crews. Just a few years ago, one utility I know of had a stack of manuals for each of its trucks–topics ranging from construction standards to payroll–that would stand four feet high if stacked cover to cover. The days of the paper manual are quickly vanishing. But putting data where the work happens isn’t just about giving field crews the technology they need to restore service.

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A utility stands on the shoulders of its operation team–the people who keep the lights on, provide service for new customers and maintain or add to existing infrastructure. These teams include a supporting cast of dispatchers, supervisors, store room employees, supply chain professionals and schedulers.

Technology–such as outage management systems (OMS), work management systems (WMS), resource management platforms and damage assessment software–can link the team together, but not always. When daily or blue-sky operations shift to dark-sky work, some industry vets have called the changeover organized chaos. Utilities always bring the lights back on. But there can be disconnects as a team transitions from daily operations to restoration mode.

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This summer the U.S. government created the National Risk Management Center to coordinate the defense of U.S. infrastructure – including energy companies – from cyberattacks. The NRMC isn’t the only group focused on security. EEI’s Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC) also partners with the government to protect the grid. And the American Public Power Association offers online tools to help its members with security concerns. Cybersecurity is a hot topic; the stakes are high.

It’s encouraging to see the government bring public and private players together. This reminds me of how lawmakers kick-started patient security via electronic health records more than a decade ago.

What makes someone secure are the practices they engage in around the clock and the type of platform they invest in. And, frankly, we’re better than most of our utility company partners in this regard only because generating power is a utility’s core competency; writing code and designing secure, cloud solutions is our expertise.

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Utilities nationwide are investing in and deploying a new generation of network technology that promises to enhance the efficiency, reliability and resilience of energy distribution. This encompasses designing, implementing and managing new business models, organizational structures and mechanisms revolving around emergency response processes and systems that require significant shifts in workforce management.

Leading-edge digital technologies being tested and put to productive use in the field include;

• Wireless sensors
• Energy Internet of Things devices
• Battery-based energy storage
• Mobile-device apps
• Drones (aka unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs)
• Enterprise power grid and distributed energy resources management platforms
• Augmented and virtual reality systems

As the list continues to grow and expand, technological and organizational transformation at the speed, scope and scale utilities are undertaking today comes with correspondingly high challenges and risks.

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