Deming’s Journey to Profound Knowledge with John Willis

This is Textron tv. Hi everyone. Welcome back here to techron tv.

Uh, you know, I interview a lot of people on Techron tv, some people I know for a long time, some people I've never met before. Our next guest needs to know introduction to our tech strong audience. He's, uh, one of the, one of the highlights of the DevOps industry.

Before that in cloud, he's also a good friend. He's a part of the Techron gang, which you're going to hear more about on Techstrong TV starting next month. I'm giving you a little hint, but, uh, he's the one and only John Willis.

John, how are you, man? It's good to have you on. Hey, buddy.

Yeah, no, thanks. I'm glad. Um, you know, just, um, to get sort of the message out about a book that I've been working on for over 10 years, so, pretty excited to, uh, Absolutely.

You know, John, I, I, if I'm not mistaken, we did have you on when the book first became available on Kindle or ebook, whatever the official title is for non-print versions, electronic versions of the book. Um, before we get into that whole thing though, let's, let's nail down the book, right? The, why don't you, I'm gonna let you do the honors.

Yeah. You know, title of The book, what's it About? Yeah, yeah.

The book, book, the book's called Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge. Um, what's interesting, just as a side note, the, um, the reason why it was split up, which was there's still a lingering supply chain issue with books. So apparently printed versions, you know, I, I was given the off offer of you can wait till January, 2024 to do all three, you know, audio, um, Kindle and physical, or you can put the audio and, um, and, um, and Kindle version out in September.

So I, you know, I opted, you know, I'd been working on the damn thing for 10 years. I was like, I can't wait any longer. So, um, yeah, it, it's, um, it, it really has been an incredible passion project for me.

Um, you know, to, just to go back a little bit, you know, we all know of Jean Kim's, uh, Phoenix Project, right? Mm-Hmm. I, I had met Jean about, actually, Jean and I were on a panel in the first Dev US based DevOps days.

And, um, and I didn't, I knew who Jean was and I didn't know, but I didn't know, I, you know, I, I'm sort of, Damon Edwards is my good buddy, was like, you know, be on this panel. You're here, show up, right? I'm like, okay.

And so, um, there was sort of a funny little tidbit where, um, you know, Patrick Debar was the, uh, was the moderator, you know, go figure me, gene Pat. And, uh, and, and Patrick makes just a slight, not, not this, you know, about me being the older guy on the panel, and, and Gene says something like, oh, he didn't look that old. And I'm like, thanks.

I get off the panel. And, um, and Damon says, you know, who that was on the panel, actually, I'm like, panel guy number three, I don't know. And, uh, he said, that's Gene Kim.

I'm like, no, holy crap. You know, because I had read, um, invisible Ops and, you know, that's sort of like for operations people. That was, you know, your Bible.

And, uh, and I, I couldn't find him. He'd already left or whatever. He, you know, he wasn't sticking right.

It was late in the day. So, and, uh, I kept trying to reach out to him and I met him at South by Southwest, you know, so they're coming a couple of months later and, and he told me about this book he was writing, you know, this book about. And, uh, and we went through it and, and he, um, he tried to explain a little bit and, you know, have you heard of Elliot Gora?

I'm like, no. He says, you know, and I was like, well, can you gimme an early copy? This sounds fascinating.

And he forced me to read Elliot Go Rat's, the goal. He wouldn't give me his book, which was such a gift, you know? Um, you know, so there's a lot of things that I thank Gene for, but that's definitely one of 'em, right?

'cause I, I just absorbed Goad. I read that book. I read, it's Not Luck.

I read like three or four of 'em. And, and, um, and so I was, you know, fueled with like, this guy gets me, you know, this is DevOps. And we, the first, um, uh, the second DevOps days in Silicon Valley, um, we, uh, a gentleman named Ben Rockwood, um, did this open space called On Theory Constraints, which is a big part of RA's, sort of, you know, Mm-Hmm.

Model of how to, you know? And, um, and, uh, so we're in there and I'm gunned, I'm, you know, I'm, I've got the cocktail version of expertise on, uh, on Gora. And, and, and Rockwood is not, not this kind of person, but like, if you gimme a little blurry license, he sort of pats me on the head and he didn't pat me on the head and says, oh, John, John, it all goes back to this guy called Demi.

And I was like, no, no, you know, go Red. The Go Red is the guy, you know, Uhhuh. And he forced me.

He said, I'll tell you what, you know, I know you, you know, I, I follow you. I know you're a learner. Go Google Deming's 14 points.

And either that was my curse or my blessing, because that, at that point, I was just absolutely fascinated with this guy, right? And it's, it's, I tell people like, don't really get into Demming if you're not willing to spend the rest of your life in a discovery process with him. 'cause he kind of does that to you.

So I started learning it, and then, um, I had this idea with Gene, you know, so I think this good backdrop for why the book and how the book came out. Um, I, I, the, you know, one of Elliot Go Rat's Greatest Works, in my opinion, is something called an audio only book called Beyond the Goal. And it's incredible.

You know, I've listened to it 10 times. I think Gene says he listens to it like 15 times. It's, I almost tried to get one listen in a year.

It's so, it, it, it, and I, I went to Gene about five years after the, uh, the, uh, favorite project had come out. And I said, you know, we'd already put out the DevOps handbook. And, uh, and I said, you know, we should do a Beyond the Phoenix Project.

And he loved it. And so, like, part, it was a lot of stuff, but two were the big parts for one, he was gonna go over Gora and everything he learned. And I did a chapter on everything I learned about Demi.

And at that point, gene said, you know, you really should write a book about this guy. And so, for the next sort of eight, nine years, I was just kept compiling all these stories. Another side note is I'm a big fan, uh, you know, love him or hate him, but Michael Lewis, I love Moneyball.

I love Flash Boy, I love the way he tells stories about sort of reasonably even the blind side, right? Like, how many people, I know you're a, a football nut, right? Uh, but, but like, how many people really understand what the blindside was, right?

Or, or, or dark pool trading in Flash Boys, right? And even Saber Metrics in baseball. So he does this, I think, brilliant way of like, teaching you a very complex story in a very, you know, sort of like my mother-in-Law can read it and have fun.

And I thought, man, this, if there's ever gonna be a book about Deming, this is the way it should be written. 'cause every book written about Demming was almost, you know, like, um, carbon copy, right? It was like 15 pages about his background.

Almost the same how he created The Miracle in Japan, and then his management theories. Every book there, like, I mean, some have a little nuances 'cause one of the authors might have met and hung out with 'em. But in general, that was the cookie gun.

I thought. Like, there's so much here in this, this guy who has such, um, you know, um, a, a story, an American story. Um, I, I could, could do some of the highlights really quick, but I'm like, God, this was, you know, like if somebody tapped Michael Lewis on the shoulder and said, Hey, write a book about this guy, you know, he would definitely do it.

And so I took that challenge. And so like 10 years, I, like, we all, do you know how many people, you know, tell you they're writing a book and then five years later, hey, how's that book? Right?

Well, I was one of those guys, you know? Mm-Hmm. And, uh, and then the Pandemic came along, and I honestly, I said to myself, you know, you're getting back.

I didn't get back. I, you know, I think we were all pretty fortunate. Like we kept pretty busy during the pandemic, which was great for us.

And absolutely not a lot of people had that sort of, um, um, privilege, if you will. But, um, but the thing was that my travel was gone. And that was literally, I, I think I calculated maybe 40 or 50 hours a month, was just giving, giving back to me.

And so finally I said, you know, you, you know, you're either fullest crap, John, and you're never gonna write this book or you're gonna do it. And so, I, I buckled down. I found a consultant.

I, I, I had known a lot about how Gene had got his book. Gene didn't do it all by himself. I mean, gene deserves incredible credit for that book.

But, but there were a lot of actors in, in, in the, the, that final book that took him 10 years to write. And, um, and so I followed some of those. I found a great, you know, sort of advisor, consultant, Eric Lewis, and I just buckled out over a, uh, you know, a year and a half period and, and wrote this story about this, these stories, you know, which start with, I mean, like, the, the, the narrative of him is like he's, you know, he's at Hawthorne works, you know, the Hawthorne effect.

I mean, his internship is at a place that is this incredible a book by itself. You know, Cicero, Illinois is this like, unbelievable story of Americana, of this like factory. And they're building telephone factories.

And, and the telephone is like, you know, like ai. Then, you know, the fact that you could call somebody, your, your relative just moved to California and, and, and they were gone forever. And now you can pick up this device and talk to 'em.

Like, you can't imagine how magical the telephone was in, in 1920s, right? And, and like this place is building not only the phones at scale, but the factories to support the phones. And then again, there, there's the sort of the, um, the, the, the, the studies about that created basically the, the basis for psych, uh, you know, sociology, which is the sort of the python effect.

And then he goes off and, you know, he, he, he cre creates the first, um, you know, fir uses, um, um, sampling in, in, uh, census, like up to that point. They'd never really, they'd always been a very inefficient way. And, and, you know, and then just the narrative of where he got that sort of information, which was very technical, statistical process control.

And then, but the another thing, I found some of these demming experts now come up to me, people hung out with him, knew him, took his classes, will say, I never heard that story. I never heard that story. I never heard, you know, so most people had heard before the war, the war Congress sent him a letter and said, what should we do about quality?

You know, we gotta do planes, washing machines, guns, you know, tanks. And, and he responded with, well, I'd a, I'd created a class because you remember all the able-bodied men had left. Yeah.

So there were no, like, there was no expertise in the fact, which Rosie the Riveter, right? That's right. And so, uh, and actually I have a great story about Rosie the Riveter and, and in the book as well, right?

Um, which, 'cause my mom, there's a story about my mom is actually was a Rosie. You'll like get this in the Brooklyn Navy yards. Sure.

So she literally worked during the war, you know, uh, you know, so, um, be Navy arts. Yeah. Yeah.

So, uh, but, um, so, so he, they tell him, okay, well then write the class. And then, like the, the, the viral effect of that class was like 30,000 factory workers. And, and, um, there are, I've got quotes from generals and and War Congress that said that, you know, we possibly won the war because of the quality effort created by this guy.

Then he goes into a top secret project during the war for like missile guidance and missile defense in this place called Aberdeen Proving Grounds. And, um, working with Claude Shannon, Herbert, Simon Norbert Wiener. Like, and, and this is like classified stuff, right?

And then, you know, and then what he's most famous for is after the war, MacArthur sends people over there to build. He's one of the guys, you know, um, I, I, you know, I, I try not, I, I am a sycophant for Demming, but I try not come across as one right. In my book.

And, you know, so when people say, but I Mean a storied life though, John do. So, you know, branch Rickey says, luck is 80% perspiration, 20% inspiration. The idea of being happening to be in Cicero at, at the telephone factory, the, you know, and, and the places and people he associates with from that point on, right?

Do, do those circumstances create the demand or did the man create the circumstances almost, right? And, and you're right. It, it's both.

But, but we know this both for our own careers, right? Like we, I mean, the two traits that he has that you have, and I have, and most of the people that we associate with have, is passion and, and just wanting to learn. Mm-Hmm.

So you put those two together, that creates, you know, and so he was very selective about, like, he, he didn't just wind up working with Norbert Wien and Coach Sinai. I mean, like, he knew who these people were. In fact, in Library of Congress, someday I'll get to go there.

They were like, every time he heard about some project with car, well, who it was in biology or whatever, he would send a big old letter saying, Hey, I really admire what you do. I'd love to talk to you. You know, obviously didn't have phones or anything like that.

Could we talk about, so there's like these incredible conversations on napkins and notes and of like, all these people, like, he was just, he needed to learn about, you know, and he was just an insatiable learner and that passion, you know, and when he goes to Japan, not only does he sort of, you know, everybody else goes over there and they're just bullying everybody, right? Because that's like, we just won the war, you know? And, and he's the first guy that goes over there and shows compassion and says, you know, you can do this.

And, and one, one of the quotes is like, he was the only American that believed in us. Mm-Hmm. You know, and he said the students there, um, were some of the best students he ever had.

So like the, the, the, the rocket fuel that he put in that country could, you could easily say. And then you got all that, he comes back to America. He's completely forgotten, right?

Like, I mean, this, you know, when you get into the mid to late sixties, he's already sort of created some rocket fuel in Japan. You know, we know that from like, you know, Toyota and like how we were getting sort of destroyed by the seventies and eighties Sure. By just about everything they created over there from quality, uh, price.

And, um, and he's basically unknown. He's 80 years old. And NBC tries to do a documentary called If Japan Can, why Can't We?

That's how I start my book out too, with the documentary. And, and in it, they have a little clip of him early on, but not much. But the last like seven or eight minutes they interview him.

And like, you can imagine the whole country being just diff you, you, like, we, we were, you know, I had a book club where like nobody in the book club was our age. Right. So like, I, I tried to describe to the book club that we had for my book on what it was like in 1980 or 1981 to be a teenager with a car, and you couldn't get gas.

And, and we had just lost the Olympics, and we just felt like crap. Right? Yeah.

And I, I Remember those. Yeah, I know you do. Because we, I remember being a, actually, I wasn't driving yet, but I remember the original gas crisis of 72, 73, right.

Which is when the Japanese cars and, and believe me, the Dotson, right? And Toyotas back then were, we didn't think were a match for, for the GM Fords and, and so forth. There were buzz boxes, but by, by the time the 80 81 gas crisis came, they were everything and more.

That's right. Yeah. Right.

I, I had a little Honda, I guess it was around 81, 82, a little Honda Accord, lx. I think the tires were about this big shot. They were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, bicycle.

But that thing got about 40 something miles a gallon. It was a, a five speed. It, it was, uh, 40 something, but we Were like, we were depressed.

I mean, like the Yeah, No, General, uh, inc the, the general Ike ge was that like we were all gonna be working for a Japanese company. Yeah. Japan Inc.

And then all of a sudden the stocker comes out and we get this glimpse of this, you know, octogenarian who lives like about 10 miles from the White House, and nobody even knows who he is unless you're deep in the quality. Or statistics is the guy who basically taught the Japanese how to beat us, and they can like a collective holy crap. Right?

And one of the guys who has that sort of holy crap moment is the CEO of Ford, Donald Peterson. He calls ing up and says, I need you in here. 'cause he is, was trying to figure out like why nobody can figure out why everybody was in this sort of like, oh, it's now like you buy Japan, because everybody thinks you have to have a Japan car or there.

But there were some things that they were doing, which is the core of what he was sort of teaching, which was, you know, how to sort of really understand quality or how to understand complex systems. He had, you know, this, what do he call the, the, um, system of profound knowledge, right? Which I go into the sort of the history of like how he gathers that, but system thinking, it's epistemology, it's psychology.

And Peterson sort of figured out like it was more than just a bias for Japan cars a better. Um, and so he brings him in. Here's another sort of funny story about Demming is, and again, I'll use a little bit of literary license because my book is actually, uh, nonfiction.

But, um, the, uh, you know, Deming, whenever a CEO would call him, and by the way, from the time he's like 83 to 92, he dies. He does, he's in every Fortune 100, 200, I mean, like every day, every week, every company can't get enough. And for the last decade of his life, imagine you're 83 years old, he finally, he finally gets the recognition here.

Well, and worse than that, like better than that, imagine doing the most significant work in your career in the last decade of your life, starting at 83. Well, PE and one of the things he would do is, this is why it was very effective during this time, which was he would tell the ceo, that's great. When are we gonna start working together?

And they'd be like, no, no, man. I'm the CEO. Like, I'm gonna give you the right nut.

And he'd hang up on him, and they'd going back like, don't hang up on me. He's like, well, you gonna work with me? Oh, I can.

I'm the CEO of Ford Motors. And, you know, and finally like, okay, don't hang up with me. I'll work with you.

You know, and then you have the quality revolution. And, you know, there's arguments of like, did it, was it sustainable? But like, there was some sort of stories of like, you know, and here's the thing.

When he went to Japan in 1950, um, he, there's a famous meeting in mouth Hawkney, uh, where they said 80% of the wealth, 1950, right? We're still reeling, they're still like, we, like still getting good electricity, solid roads is still an issue, right? In, in Tokyo, right?

And he, uh, in, in a, um, in a mountain outside of Tokyo, he, he does this thing, and they said 80% of the controlling wealth of Japan was in this meeting. And he told them if, if, if they follow his methods in five years, there'll be a number one, or number two, or number two, or number three, economic power. And he was right.

So when he goes into Ford, so now Ford hasn't had their heyday against General Motors since the thirties, right? G GM has just been pouncing them for, he goes into Ford Motors, finally, when Peterson gets says, okay, I'll do it, he tells 'em, he gets 'em all in the room, and he says the same thing. He says, if you follow my methods in five years, you'll be the, you basically, you the number one car company, or some variant of that.

And, uh, you know, and four years later they took over General Motors for the first time in like 50 years, right? Hmm. Um, you know, and so, so that it is just, and it was just really great.

There's a nurse who turns into one of the most quality, um, the top quality, um, patient care expert in the world, um, who spends her the, you know, last six months of Deming's life traveling with him. Just, these are the stories that I found. The Aberdeen, the stories that are, you know, this, that even the Demming experts are like, wow, that's a great story.

And then you love this, the last third of the book. And I, I wanna always thank Damon Edwards for this, you know? 'cause he, when I, when I went over the original outline with him, he, um, he said, dude, you know, because he, he mentioned that working backwards had just come out from, uh, from Amazon, the book, right?

And he said, you really should get to the bottom of like, what was Deming's effect on Amazon. I started doing some work, and there's a guy named Jeff Wilke. And so I have a great story about Jeff Wilke, who Bezos said was the number one guy.

He was basically a supply chain guy. He revolutionized supply chain in a time when it needed to be revolutionized because Amazon was changing everything. Um, by the way, I, I had to cut this story out, but I had a parallel story of Tim Cook doing the same thing in Apple.

They were both, they were both sort of like Demming lean, um, supply chain guys who both of their CEOs realized they needed somebody to bring in that new stuff that they didn't know. Mm-Hmm. You know, so you gotta give that sort of presence that, you know, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos were smart enough to know they didn't really know something, and they went out and found, you know, probably the number one and number.

Well, That, that's always the hallmark of great CEOs, right? It's to bring in the people who, right, That's right. Told those things smart than you.

Right. The, uh, but then, you know, just to sort of close that out, the, what that turned into is, uh, you know, so that set the stage for, okay, what was his impact on DevOps? But even more so the last third of the book is sort of, what would Deming do if he was alive today?

What would he think about cyber? So I've got a lot of stories from Josh Corman, Shannon Leets, um, you know, their sort of stories built into like how he would apply his, you know, profound knowledge and or 14 points against these like night capital or, um, some of these sort of like, crazy things that have happened over the last 15 or 20 years. So yeah, it's, uh, it, it's a, you know, the, the best thing that I'm getting is, which is exactly what I wanted, is not that, like, this is a great book.

I learned more than I've ever learned from any other book I get. Like, it's a fun, enjoyable, it, it's a mic. I, I, I'm not gonna say I can write like Michael Lewis.

No, but did I take a story and make it informative? Learn about a guy that you might not have known or you might have heard of, but like didn't realize what an impact he had on his life. And, and it, and this is the compliments I'm getting in the reviews, and that it was a fun story and a fun book to read.

So, And, and that's, you know, how do you turn, I don't want to use the word dry, but nonfiction, kind of factual stuff like this into a fun story that there's an art to it, John, we're way over time. But, you know, a lot of people have said Deming, of course, they, you know, I've heard it referred to Patron Saint of DevOps, right? And it probably comes from, you know, a lot of people say, you take a little lean, you take a little agile, you mix it all about and do the hokey pokey, and, and you got, and you got some DevOps in there, right?

Um, but let, let's, if you don't mind, let's spend just a few moments talking about Deming's influence on the DevOps movement beyond obviously his influence on you and your influence subsequently on the DevOps movement. But let, let's talk about Demming and DevOps for a second, if you don't mind. Yeah, no, and I, I have a section in there where I sort of, I sort of create the sort of path or pathology of how, why, and, and, and, you know, so I mean, if you look at, so like, I, like when Steven Spear like corrects people as they talk about lean, and he says, well, let, if we're gonna have a real conversation about it, it's really Toyota production Systems, right?

It's what Toyota was doing from the sixties to now, but like, certainly in the, you know, there was a, a power, uh, grid for them from like 1965 to, to almost 2000 early two thousands, right? Um, it starts with sort of Toyota, but like, like, I was able to really show the roots of the things that were going on in Japan that definitely influenced Toyota. That was, again, not just Demming, it was the people, it was other people.

Um, but Demming had a major influence on Toyota. I got to interview a guy who hired in there in 1963, worked with Toyota Ono, worked with Shingo, and told me directly that you can't calculate the impact of Demming on Toyota. So Toyota, TPS to Toyota Parks and Systems becomes Lean America tries American authors and scholars try to describe why we're getting beat up.

And they coin it lean. And so a whole lean industry emerges, right? We can trace that right back to Deming.

And then Agile, which is sort of like a very similar parallel. I I've done a fair amount of research to trace back to Agile. Um, a lot of stuff agile can be traced right back to Demming as well, some of the early Agileists, right?

Have strong demming, um, background. And so you look at all that. So if you say Demming, a lot of DevOps came from Lean and Agile.

What are the other ingredients? Well, the other ingredients were like things like, you know, sort of like I said earlier, one of Deming's, uh, sort of principles is this profound knowledge. One of the first principles is theory knowledge.

You know, I mean, a big part of DevOps is sort of hypothesis, or Mike Rother calls it Toyota Co, you know, improvement Cota, which is scientific method. Mm-Hmm. Like, how do we know what we know and how do we, we figure it out, we experiment.

We don't just make broad strokes that this shall be this or this works like that. We go into an experiment mode, right? And, you know, Steve Spear had a great quote in, in his doctoral dissertation on decoding Toyota t uh, DNA.

He said that Toyota was a community of scientists continually experimenting, right? And, and so when I think about being, and something most people probably listen or know me on this show, uh, or tech Strong family, you know, I was the only American at the first DevOps day in Kent, right? And Patrick Barr asked me to see if we couldn't create a virgin net in the us.

So Damon and I created the DevOps movement in, I mean, shoulder of Giants, like lots of people, yourself included. Um, mm-Hmm. But like, like, like, it was clear to me early on that this hypothesis and, you know, other lenses that what he calls understanding psychology, which is bias and, and motivation, right?

Like we, how many DevOps presentations have you talked when they, when he mentioned, you know, the ideas of, uh, cognitive biases and how they can get you in trouble, right? Or Mm-Hmm. And even like Peter Senge, who is the, you know, father of systems thinking basically, you know, in his first edition, he reached out to Deming and asked for advice to read the book.

And Deming wrote him an incredible letter that's in his second edition. You know, really the influence of Senge, who basically is the farthest. So like, so you got lean, you got agile, you got system thinking, you got, you know, sort of, you know, the fancy word epistemology.

But really, you know, uh, theory of knowledge or just scientific method, those are all core pieces of what Amazon was doing it, what Facebook was doing, right? So they all, whether directly or indirectly or sort of getting demming, um, you know, seeds, which, you know, when we, you know, when, you know, as we got into 2008, 2009, um, 2010 or 11, right? They, all that stuff started converging into something we called DevOps.

Crazy, crazy stuff. John, I gotta wrap it up. 'cause we, we were on, this was the longest 15 minute interview I've done in a while.

Um, but that being said, look, so the, all three versions of the book are out now. There's the ebook, or today, I think all eBooks are Kindle on, on Amazon. There's the audio version, which is again, available on Amazon, but probably available on other, uh, favorite book sellers that sell audio books.

And now, finally, and how ironic is it that you had a supply chain issue? Yeah, That's why I didn't out the, I didn't think of the irony. That, that's awesome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, um, the, the print version is out and available as well at Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Any place where you, uh, get your books from the book is from it, uh, revolution Gene Kim's, uh, publishing arm and written by John here.

And, and John, you know, to be fair, you, you do have a co-author on here, you're your advisor. Yeah, it's, uh, so he, I, I paid him as a consultant. So basically what we, you know, the, the, the, I mean, in, in general, mostly if you pay an advisor, consultant, you don't even have to put their name, but he was so passionate.

Derek, Derek Lewis was so passionate. Like some of the research he did, like the Aberdeen stuff, he found all that. And I, you know, I talked to the editors and, and the right thing to do was sort of with Derek Lewis.

So, so it's my book. I mean, it was my idea, you know, I wrote the book, Mm-Hmm. Um, he just helped me get the arc, clean some stuff up.

He's definitely a better writer than me. Um, but in general, it was the first book. Every book I'd written before was co-author with other people.

This book was mine, head to Toe. And, uh, and again, with Derek in that he was a incredible consultant and advisor, and which I paid him for too. So, but yeah.

So It was a labor of love. But that, and that clearly shows through, Hey, I, I don't know if you could talk about it, but you are working on a new book. Yeah.

So, uh, and, and we'll try to keep this as short as possible, but if you sort of got the idea that like, I like writing books like Michael, Michael Lewis, right? Like, I love the idea of, and you know, it's, you know, like one of the tar, one of the primary target readers of the Demming book was, uh, my mother-in-Law. And so she reads like five books a month, right?

She'll read everything from historical fiction to note romance, to whatever, right? Um, but she's a very high IQ reader. And, um, and I thought, boy, if I could go ahead, you know, in fact, it was Ben Rockwood and her were my two target readers.

And I thought, boy, if I could pull off telling a story where they both understand it, they both get value out of it, and they both like it. And, um, and so like, and, and my crowning thing, I, like me and Derek worked on this so hard, was like to explain Schroer's Cat to my mother-in-Law. And, and she understood it.

Like, I, like it took me like a year and a half, two years to figure out Schroer's cat, right? Um, but, um, so the idea though is I had this idea, I was thinking I was starting to play with PyTorch in Open Source, and I was starting to understand a little more. And like, we've all been sort of overwhelmed by Generat ai, you know, caused by, but, but I, I, I started going back to the history of PyTorch, and at first I was like, shoot, this, my PyTorch by itself isn't Mylo book.

You know, the guy how, but then I, as I opened it up, I'm like, no, no, there, the, you know, and, and so the narrative is like, um, I, I'm not sure exactly, you know, you know, I don't wanna be too markety, but like, it, the history of chat GPT, and that won't be the name of the book, right? Uh, but the, and, and, but it is like, to my mother-in-Law, I wanna be able to say, you think this was a miracle that happened a year ago? It's actually been 75 years.

And, and even more so, but at least a solid 75 years in the work of a credible narratives of, of these, you know, sort of brilliant people from Alan touring. So I start to book out with I on touring, uh, the, I the Imitation game, right? The touring test, you know, which basically a movie about work my through to some of the actual original, uh, people came up with neural networks, how neural networks sort of, so, and there's these things called AI winters where people would be like, why are you working on this?

It doesn't work, right? Like, so there's this great Michael Lewis of these stories. You know, the, you know, one of the, like the, there's a story of, uh, the guy, one of the founders of Deep Mind is, uh, you'll love this.

At four years old or four years old, he beats his dad in chess at six, he wins his first chess tournament at 12. He's, um, he's a, a chess champion at about 15. He decides he wants to cure cancer.

Well, he's the guy that builds Deep Mind, that does Alpha Go now do a protein follow Alpha Dev, you know, alpha Dev, like the sort program. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, you know, so, and then there's just a bundle.

You know, like some of the fa the most modern facial recognition starts out in a barroom argument with a guy named Ian Goodfellow where they're trying to decide and argue and over drinks. What's the best way to have an AI program? Explain what's in a picture, like the, these are things Michael Lewis would be like, I sound be needed A punch.

There's a, there's a whole thing in here, John, I've gotta go, 'cause I've gotta jump on another call, but we'll, we'll talk more, you know what, we, I mentioned this thing called Text Drunk Gang. John's gonna be on with us here on Text Drunk tv, and, and we'll have a chance to explore this further. John, congratulations on the book though.

And the finally the printed copy of it, I encourage all of you go check out whether you like eBooks or audio books, or you still like to turn pages like I do it. It's there. Go check it out.

This was a 10 year labor love for John, and it, and it shows through every page. John Willis here on Text Drunk tv. We're gonna take a break.

We'll be right back. Thank You. Thank you.