Mike Panzitta

San Jose becomes the first city in California to choose to implement AB 1033, allowing homeowners to sell ADUs separately from their primary residences. Representative Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat who authored the bill, and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan held a press conference on Friday, emphasizing that this is a new path to affordable housing. "We all know that homeownership has become out of reach for many residents in San Jose and across California," Mahan said. "We need to incorporate the innovation inherent in our region into housing policy to keep the American dream alive, and this new ordinance does just that. San Jose will continue to lead the way, but we can't solve this crisis alone, and I look forward to seeing other cities in California follow suit." “I’m grateful to the City of San Jose for seeing the impact my legislation could have on their community. ADU ownership can provide a pathway to buying a first home and can even help our seniors downsize,” said Ting. “With this more affordable housing option, increased homeownership can help create stronger communities.” San Jose has built nearly 1,400 new ADUs in the past five years, with thousands more under construction. That number represents about 23% of San Jose’s new housing stock during that same period. Now, homeowners in San Jose can sell their ADUs individually, similar to how you would sell a condo. AB 1033 went into effect this year, but cities must take additional steps and opt-in to the law. “Being able to sell my ADU was another reason to build my backyard addition, and it was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done,” said Joyce Higashi, an ADU owner in San Jose. “Not only has it increased my property value, it’s generated more rental income than I ever expected.” The Casita Coalition, a statewide organization dedicated to removing barriers to building more affordable, sustainable housing, was a strong advocate for the legislation. They developed a model ordinance that San Jose used to draft the local legislation needed to take advantage of the new law. “With homebuyers across the state facing an extreme shortage of new home inventory, we applaud Mayor Mahan and the City of San Jose for creating new possibilities for homeownership,” said Rafael Perez, Casita Coalition board chair.#SanJose #California #AB1033 #AccessoryDwellingUnits #HousingPolicy #AffordableHousing #HousingInnovation #PhilTing #MattMahan #HomeOwnership #CommunityBuilding #RealEstate #HousingReform #UrbanDevelopment

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Part of what inspires me at my job is the ability to identify gaps and having the autonomy to create and build. Andy talks about builders as inventors. He then talks about primitives. I have not heard this before so as I read on I became obsessed with the idea and how I can relate it to my work. To sum it up, the idea is to create every process as a separate entity so that they can be mixed and matched as needed to create a new and better process. The criteria is that a primitive can't be divisible. The idea that a new invention, service or process doesn't need to be perfect it just needs to be better is novel. One can take the product then, gain feedback and improve upon it as often as necessary until it becomes the gold standard. Well, that sums it up for me but feel free to read... https://lnkd.in/gZSuhf7T

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I'm fascinated at how much I don't know. Let me tell you a story about how #TIL my design approach preferences and the way I've learned to work are related to a book called Cheaper by the Dozen, which was later made into movies. We (me and everyone I work with Kaizen I/O) use a human-centric perspective in our design discussions. If you're in the office, you'll hear questions like: - Who can cancel a policy? - Are they the authority for cancelling or is that someone else? - What team is that person on? - And then what do they do next? - Do they need to tell anyone that it's been cancelled? - and so on. With our expertise in architecture and technology, this line of exploration enables us to create software imbued with empathy for humans ;) (this statement is still evolving, so bear (bare?) with me). Anyways, I've been thinking about how to succinctly articulate this approach, which led me to read more about a discipline called Human Factors Engineering. That's a whole other rabbit hole, but let's stay focused on why I'm writing this post. Lillian Moller Gilbreth, an engineer, psychologist and mother of twelve who invented the Pedal Bin, was an early pioneer in applying psychology to time-and-motion studies. "A genius in the art of living". She's noted as pioneering ergonomics on the Engineering Psychology wikipedia article. Her two children wrote Cheaper by the Dozen which tells the story of their family life and describes how time-and-motion studies were applied to the organization and daily actives of their large family. BAM! There is so much to learn. https://lnkd.in/gxgRxGWu

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Very insightful work by Anthropic’s interpretability team. And an amazing paper, with outstanding writing and figures. The idea is very simple: interpret LLMs by leveraging sparse autoencoders as surrogate models of the MLP of transformer blocks, which allow one to disambiguate the superposition of features captured by a single neuron. A simple idea, but a very careful and complex execution, as it is often the case in our line of work. The paper goes into many details and provide a large array of insights, although the gist of the implementation remains obfuscated due to the closed source nature of Claude. Too bad, because this is the kind of work that we need to better understand and eventually trust LLMs. This is demonstrated by the authors in the section ‘Influence on Behavior’, where they show that clamping some features to either high or low value during inference is “remarkably effective at modifying model outputs in specific, interpretable ways”. Hopefully this kind of work is going to be replicated and generalized to open-weights models, such that we have new ways to steer their behavior. https://lnkd.in/eVym7f_f #interpretability #xai #explainableai #steerableai #anthropic #claude #anthropic

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Fellow in-house taxonomists, ontologists, metadata managers, and semantic wizards: what is the name of the team or business unit that you work within? I have the good fortune of getting to rename the "Content Standards" program I lead at Kaiser Permanente IT. My team has determined that the name is too vague to convey the core activities of the program, and leads to confusion with the cross-functional teams we collaborate with. I'm looking for a clear name that will resonate with stakeholders within my org. So I've got a very classic taxonomist question: What to call the program? 🤔 For some context... What my program is responsible for: - Defining and governing standards for metadata, structured data, taxonomy, and ontology for classifying/structuring digital content - Implementing processes and platforms to good metadata hygiene - Assessment and remediation of content metadata What my program doesn't cover: - Writing or editorial style guides - Content design - Content strategy - Site maps or navigational structure - Data governance Any ideas are most welcome!

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A successful systems design and delivery strategy begins by assuming that change is likely the only constant. Be adaptable, or fail.

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Having been in the value space for awhile, what's not to like about this book from a man (Rupert Morrison) that I hugely respect. Cannot wait to read through elements like: putting strategy into practice, frameworks for segmentation & competitive analysis, flaw detection, 4D's framework etc. I hope to get it signed once I receive copy. https://lnkd.in/eKNxure3 #StrategicValueCreation #CustomerValue #CompetitiveValue

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I recently became aware of the term "Gish Gallop". I find that this concept can also be applied to a similar style of discussion, whereby a person dominates the conversation to control the narrative. The opposite style of discussion is where participants minimize words to convey the maximum quantity of useful information. Then, provide the maximum opportunity for participation by others. Learn to not gish gallop. https://lnkd.in/gYw4g_XE

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Many of colleagues, I guess are affected by the bureaucracy in organisations. It's time Indian as well as MNC organisations learn from this book. When humans are at their best, why do we need so much middle management layers. It just kills the innovative spirit! Best of the organisations like ABB time to consider #humans #innovation #management #leadership

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Hi folks, I am conducting a sequel live streaming session on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook on Thursday July 18th at 12 pm PST (approximate duration: 1.5 hours). EVENT: "Practical concepts on how to determine if you are in the right place within your professional career" LIVESTREAM (on the platform of your choice): LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/gHqWiesP Facebook: https://lnkd.in/g2zYVmCP YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gQ8SFcDe Instagram: https://lnkd.in/gg3utmms TikTok: https://lnkd.in/gBKNQvvf AGENDA:  + I will share my personal experience and what I have done to uncover my new path (talents, epiphanies, obtaining feedback from others, etc) + Some misperceptions about the whole approach of change - will  answer questions from the previous recorded session https://lnkd.in/gd4PZE8y  + Why it is important to "wake up" and to recognize a reality vs. an illusive state of being - how this is a path to a train rack sooner or later  + For those who want to take next steps: what are the options? Where to go and what to do? +Why traditional methods: motivational, psychological, medicinal, meditation and energetic practices, even physical activities or change of environment works for a minute! I call it a "dose of happiness' '. + What am I proposing alternatively - an easier path to balancing all facets of one's life (happiness, realization of one's full potential). Sharing my personal experiences. LIVESTREAM (on the platform of your choice): LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/gHqWiesP Facebook: https://lnkd.in/g2zYVmCP YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gQ8SFcDe Instagram: https://lnkd.in/gg3utmms TikTok: https://lnkd.in/gBKNQvvf Everyone is welcome! Since this is a live session, the approximate duration is 1.5 hours. You should be able to place your comments and interact with me. #technology #growth #empathy #transparency #anxiety #stress #awakening #communication #customerobsession #selfdiscovery #balance #inclusivity #humility #love #trust #success #improvement #inspiration #empowerment #fear #greatness #fullpotential

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We need to move past the idea that knowing everything is the best; asking good questions is a much more critical and underrated skill that we need to embrace. I’ll demonstrate with a case study on how the exact problem to solve can dramatically shift based on answers to basic questions. But first, why does this matter? This is because good questions are the cornerstone to truly understanding the underlying requirements. So many issues would simply not exist if the right questions were asked at the right time - Many products with little to no adoption would not be built - Numerous designs would not be scrapped very late in the game - Countless incidents would be caught before they make it to production Let’s use my favorite leveling question shared previously https://lnkd.in/gxCHTWSu. "Imagine you join our team/company X and discover that our SLAs (Service Level Agreements) are consistently in the red. What steps would you take to address this issue?" Fundamental questions to ask: Q1: Are the customers actually unhappy? If there are no customer complaints, the problem may boil down to a simple SLA update. If there are complaints, changes to the system are likely necessary Q2: What specific SLAs are in red? How long is “consistent”? If multiple SLAs (latency, availability, consistency) have been red for 12 months, it's a deeper systemic problem. If a single SLA is red for 3 months, it’s a simpler problem. Q3: What is the SLA and what is the system performance? If the SLA and system performance don’t diverge that much, it can be solved with incremental steps. However, if the SLA is 99.99% and performance is 99%, then deeper issues must be addressed. To recap… Asking the right questions at the right time can entirely transform the approach and solution, saving a lot of time, effort and grief. It is a critical skill for senior engineers. I’ll leave you with this iconic clip from Margin Call… “Explain, as you might to a young child. Or a golden retriever” ~~~ ✍️ Do you agree? Share if you have examples where the right question changed project’s direction. ♻️ Repost if this is helpful.

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Anyone experiencing FOMO about GenAI and looking for ideas should read this book. Stop trying to replace humans earning a living with GenAI. Focus on shadow work instead — all the work that your company offloaded onto your customers that was previously done by your employees. Start with that. Examples: * ATM machines * Self-checkout counters * Online payments Start with making these things better and more humane. https://a.co/fm5HdsS

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I am excited to share the latest blog, co-authored by myself, Junhwi Kim and Vyas Sekar, detailing how we managed to successfully localized and improved LLM by combining Fine-Tuning and RAG. https://lnkd.in/gKDkgGPq

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Last week, I spoke about AI and regulations at an event at the U.S. Capitol attended by legislative and business leaders. I’m encouraged by the progress the open source community has made fending off regulations that would have stifled innovation. But opponents of open source are continuing to shift their arguments, with the latest worries centering on open source's impact on national security. I hope we’ll all keep protecting open source! I’m encouraged by the progress the U.S. federal government has made getting a realistic grasp of AI’s risks. To be clear, guardrails are needed. But they should be applied to AI applications, not to general-purpose AI technology. Nonetheless, some companies are eager to limit open source, possibly to protect the value of massive investments they’ve made in proprietary models and to deter competitors. It has been fascinating to watch their arguments change over time. For instance, about 12 months ago, the Center For AI Safety’s “Statement on AI Risk” warned AI could cause human extinction and stoked fears of AI taking over. This alarmed leaders in Washington. But many people in AI pointed out that this dystopian science-fiction scenario had little basis in reality. About six months later, when I testified at the U.S. Senate’s AI Insight forum, legislators no longer worried much about an AI takeover. Then the opponents of open source shifted gears. Their leading argument shifted to the risk of AI helping to create bioweapons. Soon afterward, OpenAI and RAND showed that current AI does not significantly increase the ability of malefactors to build bioweapons. This fear of AI-enabled bioweapons has diminished. To be sure, that bad actors could use bioweapons — with or without AI — remains a topic of great international concern. The latest argument for blocking open source AI has shifted to national security. AI is useful for both economic competition and warfare, and open source opponents say the U.S. should make sure its adversaries don’t have access to the latest foundation models. While I don’t want authoritarian governments to use AI, particularly to wage unjust wars, the LLM cat is out of the bag, and authoritarian countries will fill the vacuum if democratic nations limit access. When, some day, a child asks an AI system questions about democracy, the role of a free press, or an independent judiciary, I would like the AI to reflect democratic values rather those of authoritarian leaders. I came away from Washington optimistic about the progress we’ve made defending open source. Looking beyond the U.S. federal government, there are many jurisdictions. Unfortunately, arguments for regulations that would stifle AI continue to proliferate. But talking to regulators does have an impact. If you have a chance to talk to a regulator, I hope you’ll do what you can to help governments better understand AI. [Original text in The Batch (with links): https://lnkd.in/g5SZ6ypa ]

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A very timely and Insightful read from #hbr !! Tech is changing at a break-neck speed, product lifecycles are becoming shorter, and along with that, new challenges are coming up on the people management front as well. Today’s leader needs to experiment, fail fast, adopt and adapt faster and still keep the business moving in the positive direction. Go through this informative article and let us know some of the best practices that have worked for you in balancing the “traditional” techniques of mgmt with “emerging” needs.

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There are two kinds of failure. 1. "We're failing now and need to change strategies to succeed" 2. "This is a failure; let's not do this again" If you talk about failure, make sure your listeners understand which kind you mean! And, recall how powerful that first kind of failure is! It has given us basically anything worth having or inventing. If your children haven't given you the gift of asking to watch this clip 235,826 times already, I invite you to take the lesson straight from the sages: https://lnkd.in/gAyN3E9b

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Why Engineering Leaders Must Walk the Floor in the Age of AI In an era where artificial intelligence reshapes boundaries, Boeing’s evolution from hands-on manufacturing to a disconnected assembly of outsourced parts serves as a stark reminder of what we stand to lose when leaders distance themselves from the core of their craft. As an engineering leader, I've navigated from coding on the front lines to orchestrating from the executive suite. Leadership isn't merely about steering—it's fundamentally about understanding, at a granular level, the work that we oversee. We must be engineers, lest we become mere editors of a book we cannot read. To challenge myself and "walk the floor" in our digital age, I embarked on a personal project unconnected to my day-to-day work. I decided to develop a mobile app using Flutter, a language new to me, and GitHub Copilot for assistance. I chose an on-device project to avoid cloud networking costs, and I set a non-negotiable goal to finish it—publishing in the App Store was my definitive "done." Spoiler: I succeeded—Yet Another Spider Solitaire (Y.A.S.S) is now available in the app store. Install Y.A.S.S. on your device here: https://bit.ly/4a4zKeT This journey wasn’t just about dusting off my programming skills but reinforcing a crucial leadership philosophy: understanding through doing. Tools like Copilot enhance our capabilities but cannot replace the foundational knowledge that an experienced engineer brings. In the final stages of the project, I partnered with a friend who brought complementary skills to the table. This collaboration not only enhanced the quality of Y.A.S.S but also reinforced my belief that effective leadership involves knowing when to leverage the strengths of others to achieve a common goal. It isn't perfect, but as those who know me have heard me say, “unshipped software delights no customers.” So, here's to the first round of delight. I hope you like the game and welcome any feedback.

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Today, I found a fascinating way to think about “Tokens” in LLMs. It came from a conversation between Jensen Huang and Patrick Collison at a recent Stripe event. When asked about the future of compute capacity in five years, Jensen smartly dodged that question a bit, but then gave an excellent explanation and analogy about why tokens are the new forces that will power the next decades of humanity. He explained that we're now producing something unprecedented (and at scale): floating point numbers that possess “value”, which we now call tokens. These tokens are valuable because they encapsulate “intelligence”. People are now taking these tokens and transforming them into English, French, images, videos, chemicals, proteins, robotic movements, etc. And many are working hard to expand the range of concepts and ideas we can create with these tokens. He then goes on to made a compelling comparison between tokens and electricity. In the past industrial revolution, we successfully found a way to convert “atoms” into “electrons” (by boiling water to power electricity turbines). And now, we've discovered a way to convert "electrons" into "tokens" (by using energy to power data centers that train and run LLMs). When electricity was first introduced, few people understood its value. Today, paying for kilowatts is routine. The same will happen with tokens. Right now, only early adopters and builders are paying tokens. Soon, everyone will be paying for tokens on a daily basis to supercharge productivity and power new products and services. Many new industries will be born from and built on top of tokens. When I first heard about this way of thinking, I got goosebumps. Perhaps it’s because Jensen has a good storytelling skill that helps him sell what he builds, but I have to admit this way of thinking gave me a brief surge of pride. I'm proud of humanity's collective effort and creativity, which have taken us from living under rocks to building machines that can "think." That's nothing short but a miracle.

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