### Cogitations n. 1. an act of reflection or meditation; contemplation. 2. the facility of thinking. 3. a thought, scheme, or plan. *(Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, 1999)* --- ## I Create to Live My life has always felt like a journey through building: ideas born, experiments launched, lessons learned — over and over. From my days with punch cards and mainframes, to founding companies, to now post-corporate adventure, I’ve followed one guidepost: **create, learn, teach**. > “If I’m not building, I’m not breathing.” For over 40 years, I led in the corporate world: founding companies, scaling teams, and driving growth at the intersection of science, engineering, and business. Today, in retirement, I’m still creating — through coding, teaching, making, and exploring ideas that excite me. --- ## A Timeline of Companies & Creation Here are the major waypoints — the companies I started or led, how they grew, and what I learned along the way: | Company / Venture | What & When | Outcomes & Lessons | |---|---|---| | **Irv Shapiro & Associates (ISA)** | **Early 1980s** – After ~5 years at DEC, I founded this as a consulting firm. Focused on software consulting/engineering services to Fortune 5000 companies. | Taught me how to build client trust, deliver under deadline, hire engineers. Seeded the idea of scale in service businesses. | | **Metamor** | **Mid–Late 1980s** – Grew out of ISA; expanded consulting scope until the company had over **500 consultants** serving a global client base. | Ultimately sold to **Corestaff**. Scaling people is harder than scaling code — culture, structure, and alignment matter as much as technical quality. | | **Edventions** | **Mid 1990s** – Before most people even knew what the Internet was, I co-founded Edventions to provide **safe Internet access and homeschool connections** for elementary schools. We served over **125 schools nationwide**. | A bold bet on the future of education and technology. Ultimately sold to **Edison Schools**. Lesson: timing matters, and being early can be both exhilarating and challenging. | | **DialogTech** | **2007–2021** – Founded as the next leap forward, DialogTech became a **marketing automation leader delivering voice analytics**. We gave marketers the power to track, route, and analyze inbound calls — connecting digital ad spend with real conversations. | Under my leadership, revenue approached **$40 million** and the company was cash flow positive. In 2021, DialogTech was acquired by **Invoca for $100 million**. Lesson: when you give businesses visibility into their customer conversations, you change how they market and sell. | | **MakeWithTech** | **2018–Present** – Post-corporate project — community + maker space + learning hub. Tutorials, 3D printing, electronics, lasers, sharing experiments. | Built a passionate community, tens of thousands of YouTube subscribers, thousands of forum members. Some projects succeeded, some didn’t. I learned again: community & authenticity matter more than polished perfection. Monetization is necessary but not sufficient to define value. | | **Savta.ai** | **2024–Present** – My newest experiment: exploring what tradition and tangibility still matter in an increasingly digital world. Physical cards, memories, connection. | A work in progress. Already showing me that the questions — not just the technology — are what I enjoy most: what connects us, what feels human. | --- ## Learning, Teaching, Creating — Always Together After decades in leadership and product building, I find that my richest rewards now come from sharing: writing what I’ve learned (warts & all), teaching what I’m exploring, and creating in public. - I post blog reflections: sometimes on success, often on what went wrong. Because “failure” is just a data point. - I build small tools or experiments not because I need them, but because they clarify ideas. - I teach through YouTube, tutorials, and community forums — not to show off, but so someone might think: *I can do that too.* --- ## Retirement, Reinvented “Retirement” sounds like rest. For me, it’s the chance to re-orient. To stop doing what I have to, and focus on what I want to. I’m free from quarterly targets, but I’m not free from vision. I’m free to experiment. To build things that wouldn’t have seemed “scalable” but feel deeply satisfying. > “Every hobby carries the seed of something more.” Sometimes projects succeed. Sometimes they don’t. But every one of them tells me more about people, technology, and myself. --- ## Featured Reflections Here are stories where I’ve pulled back the curtain — the decisions, regrets, surprises: - **[[A Little About Me]]** – My origins, the detours, and what I’m learning now. - **[[Models Application is Shutting Down]]** – When ideals meet real business metrics. - **[[Purple Cow Focus The Microsoft Lesson for Startups]]** -- Be different to win. - **[[Enhancing Productivity in the AI Era - A Guide for Teams of All Levels]]** -- AI will not eliminate jobs, it will enhance and change them. - **[[AI Powered Note Taking]]** – How we remember, how tools assist memory — and what we lose or gain in between. --- ## Let’s Make Something Together If you've got an idea, a question, a project, or just a curiosity: reach out. Let’s build, tinker, and iterate together. Because even in retirement, I believe the most important work is the work that pushes boundaries — of technology, of business, of what we think is possible. --- ## Connect & Explore - [LinkedIn – Irv Shapiro](https://www.linkedin.com/in/irvshapiro/) - [MakeWithTech.com](https://makewithtech.com) — My maker community & experiments - [MakeWithTech Youtube Channel](https://youtube.com/c/makewithtech) — See what I build, what I learn, what surprises me --- > “My greatest creations may be experiments that never made it — because those failures paved the way for everything else.”