Shadrach White

Our fifth and final guest speaker for this course was Shadrach White. I wasn't sure if he would speak during a class session after the confusion the first time. I figured he just wouldn't have the time. In any case, he showed up. Looking him up online, I saw Shadrach was the chief executive officer of a company called cloudPWR. Looking over the blogposts of other students, I read that he talked about his company's flagship product, Airlift. As I was looking up Mr. White and his business, I noticed something interesting. In his company's mission statement, Airlift was actually trademarked. However, when I entered Airlift into the google search bar, I got a lot of hits, none about Mr. White's company and/or product. I got some hits for airplane companies, movies, etc. I guess I learned more about the nature of trademarks through that.

Moving on to what Mr. White actually talked about, I liked reading about the way Mr. White talked about development. The way he talked about well written code described perfectly the way I felt about it. There's nothing like the feeling of clean code that actually works. Another interesting thing about his talk was when he told us to consider what kind of company we want to be seen as. He gave the example of when his company was looking at a marijuana company as a prospective client and he found himself considering the implications of the decision to either choose or refuse working with that company. It is definitely important to consider your brand, especially as a consulting company that takes on clients.