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Well, hello, everyone. I wanted to start off by apologizing for the audio quality here.

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The content is fantastic, but I had forgotten my mic, so we had to record on my laptop,

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which is unfortunate. But I think what I and John go over is definitely good enough to

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stick to and pay attention to. Also, I want to make sure you know that we have our spring

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one tours going on everywhere globally. I was just at the Charlotte one. It was great.

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In February, we've got St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and Columbus. Then there'll be a little

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bit of a European thing, and I'll definitely be there in London and Amsterdam, and then

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we'll be in South Africa in April. And then we go on to Istanbul and Paris and all sorts

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of other places back in the U.S. But if you want to check out those dates in the cities,

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just go to springlontour.io. So with that, here's the interview that I had while I was

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in Charlotte with John Mitchell, who works at Duke Energy. They just opened up a new innovation

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lab, I would call it. It's more of Optimus Center, as he calls it. And I wanted to ask him how things

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were going there and for a couple of stories about how they'd been improving software.

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Oh, we're at the brand new Duke Energy Innovation Center at Optimus Hall. That's a mouthful.

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Here in Charlotte, right?

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Here in Charlotte.

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Yeah. Yeah. I have to say, I'll have to take a picture for the podcast, but it's very nice. I think

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my favorite part is definitely the wood flooring. I don't know what it is, but man, I like wood

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flooring.

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Well, it's over 100 years old, and it's interesting because we're here doing innovation, but when

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it was built, the turn of the century, it was actually a part of Duke Energy's future of providing

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electricity in the Carolinas and creating this industry called textiles that just exploded

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in this area. And this is the world's largest gingham fabric.

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Gingham?

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Yes.

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Like picnics?

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Yeah. So if you look at the floors and the carpets and everything's gingham, and we wore

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gingham shirts last week on opening day.

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Yeah. That's interesting.

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Yeah.

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Huh. Wow, gingham. I've got a good gingham cowboy shirt.

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Really?

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Yeah. It's red, so I don't feel so garrish every now and then. Anyways, why don't you

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introduce yourself?

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Hi. I'm John Mitchell from Duke Energy. I lead our digital strategy and delivery. It means

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I have to come up with it and actually deliver it.

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Not just the slides.

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Yeah.

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We can just talk about it.

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Yeah. Yeah. So I think you and I recorded something maybe about two years ago or so.

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I don't know. And so I thought it'd be nice to kind of catch up on the way things are

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going. And well, I mean, you have this building, so that's good. And I think that's good.

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I think when we talked last, I mean, you went to the story of how you're fixing up your

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software, and we talked about an application for line worker management that you had been

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doing, and you have many more applications now that your team has gone through. But, well,

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first of all, explain what Duke does for people who don't know.

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We're a large gas and electric provider. I mean, we're a full stack in terms of we generate

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electricity. We distribute it, transmit it over big transmission lines. We sell it to wholesale,

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industrial, commercial, and residential customers. And we build the customers. So a lot of utilities

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that have become kind of separated.

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Like brokers and things like that. Yeah. But we do, we full stack Indian. Okay. So we're one of the,

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one of the largest by some measures. Yeah. Yeah. And you do pretty much all of the Southeast

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United States, right? We, we, yeah, we, well, we have South Carolina, North Carolina, a large portion

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of the Carolinas, and then portions of Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio.

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Right. Indiana. Yes. Huh. All right. Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. That makes sense.

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Mergers, acquisitions. Yeah. Yeah. That's true.

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So that's how. That's true. Which creates challenges for us because every one of those

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areas are, have a slightly different twist on the regulation. Oh, is it state regulated or?

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It is. And then I guess down to city and municipal and county as well, right?

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Yeah. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exciting. Yes. Hopefully you don't have to deal with that too

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much. Just a little bit. So, so tell like, uh, you know, another thing you explained to me that

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was interesting and then we'll get into maybe we'll pick an application or two to talk about,

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but, uh, we were walking around and you were explaining the methodology used to go from like

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corporate strategy down to like developers doing something, which I hadn't really heard this method

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of doing that. So can you explain this concept of the journey people?

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Yeah. So when we, uh, one of the, so we, we totally got on board, you know, with agile engineering

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and particularly the pivotal way of building great software, but, uh, and then we needed to know,

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you know, very user centric design. So we, we, you know, focused on, on the user solving real

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problems, um, great UX design, but the piece we had missing and we realized last year was,

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was really the, when you're doing something completely new. So the lean startup kind of,

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kind of third piece of it, I guess you, if you will, we realized the lean startup really

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starts with some intention, some strategy. So we recognize the strategy is going on. We didn't

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need to invent that. It's actually, we had no shortage of ideas and strategic planning and

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all that happening at, you know, uh, very high levels of the company.

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And if I can interrupt your train of thought, so what, what is strategy in that context?

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Okay. It's, we want to, uh, you know, maybe we want to, we want to grow our, our revenues

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and, and certain, you know, target certain commercial industries for us or, or maybe we want to change

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our mix of, um, fuels. So maybe we want to shift more to renewables and what do we want to do

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about electric vehicles? So there's a lot of strategy going on to anticipate the tipping point

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when there's actually more, it's more desirable to buy an electric vehicle than it is to buy a gas

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vehicle. Well, what does that mean? What happens when the Tesla supercharger can charge a car in 15

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minutes? Well, imagine how much energy that spike in and picture, uh, uh, what a sheets or a QT and you've got,

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you know, 20 cars trying to charge it once. Yeah. How do we handle that type of situation?

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That's like if everyone was downloading BitTorrents. Exactly.

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All at the same time in the same neighborhood. So we have to, so there's a lot of strategy work

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around those things. Yeah. Out of the strategy then to your, to your question around, uh, what are these

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journeys and workflow teams? So from the strategy becomes a, either a journey or a workflow.

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Uh, we like to say journey if it involves people, a customer, what is that customer journey from,

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uh, if we're, if we're trying to break into a new market or a new product or what is the workflow

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we're trying to solve for if we're trying to dramatically change the efficiency of one of our

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plants? Yeah. Then there's, there's a, there's a workflow for how to work throughout the plant gets

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done, uh, to make the plant work. Yeah. And so those workflow teams, they're, they're small product

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oriented type teams, uh, led by design thinkers, uh, that help them really map out, uh, map out the,

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that, that new journey and then identify them. Here's where the lean start comes in, identify

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what are the big, uh, assumptions. So our nuclear plants, for example, down the hall here, they're

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working, they had an idea that if we put, so they have a thousand workers at any, any plant. Yeah.

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Uh, labor is a huge, huge, huge piece of their cost. Uh, they have a lot of work activities

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going on. So the idea was how can we use technology? What if we had an RFID chip on all of our workers?

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Yeah. Not to be big brother and check in on them, but to help understand, well, okay,

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it takes a crew of five because we need a safety person and a regulatory compliance person and,

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and, you know, someone verifying the works, you know, following the procedure. Uh-huh.

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We plan that for an hour, worst case. What happens if they finish in 30 minutes? Well,

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how do we dynamically move them to other areas? Ah, right, right.

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So a lot of the thousand people are to account for a worst case scenario on a given day where

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we're doing hundreds of, uh, just fixing different pieces of work. Yeah. Yeah. And,

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but to, to the lean startup, you need to validate, will that work? Yeah. Will RFID actually work in

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the plant? So rather than ordering, actually, the first inclination was to order a thousand of these

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things. Just get going right up. Yeah. Let's get going. Let's put in the order. No, let's order one.

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Let's take it out there and see if it actually works in the plant environment. Yeah. Can we get

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the data back in real time? What do we do with the data? So validating the assumptions is the job of

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those workflow or journey teams. I see. And do they come up with the assumptions too? Or like who comes

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up with that? Well, through, through a design, through empathy mapping, through a variety of design

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thinking type of workshops, they can take that strategy. So what is the outcome that our leaders

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want? And we'll ideate on what are potential ideas. Right. Right. So I guess in that example,

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to kind of like, I don't know, I'm just making this up, but like at the strategy level, you're probably

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like, uh, there's a lot of autonomous things and we can automate stuff. And then that should

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internally, that should allow us to run our plants more efficiently, which has good bottom line effects.

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Right. Or, or being more efficient means either you can save money or you can do more. I mean,

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you can make more with the same thing basically. And so, and so therefore the strategy group's like,

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you should do that. And, and like maybe with computer stuff, things will work out. And then

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the journey people are there, they're there too. The assumption is you can improve it somehow,

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improve how labor is allocated, moved around. And someone might have the idea of like, well,

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if we knew where every person was, and then we knew who that person is, we can just better locate

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them in the plant as needed. And so the journey people basically are experimenting with and verifying

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that that's a thing. So they're like that level. And then eventually, I guess, well,

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what happens once the journey people have figured it out? So the journey team would have enough,

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you know, a very small amount of support from, I mean, from software engineer or designer to do a

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prototype. And so ultimately, I mean, hopefully a lot of the assumptions can be validated just by

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going out and talking to people. Yeah. In some cases, there's a prototype to be taken out into the

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field, validated. And again, it's, it's, it's not a paper prototype necessarily, unless you can get

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away with that, you know, it might be working software that's, you know, it's in a nuclear

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plant. So it's still got to be secure, even if it's not, you know, production environment still

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has to be secure, has to meet certain minimum standards. So, right. So we've got the platform

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tools that allow us to do that quickly and very, very low cost. And so once they prove,

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once they validate, then they would receive that, that's where the metered funding kicks in. Okay.

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I see. I've given you this, this much, I'm going to double it for a couple of months and you can

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start to build an engineering team. Now you, you validate it. You've convinced me, the leader,

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board, whatever, that, you know, what you're, you're talking about, you're going to be able to

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capture the benefit or the result you were after. Now you can stand up and then, oh, that's

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interesting. It's kind of a hierarchy. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. So then that's another way to get over the

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idea of getting funding to innovate, which I think is always a problem of, I mean, obviously you have

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to argue for and establish this, but it has, it's a system by which you can try out new things without

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gigantic financial commitments and all the work that comes from it. And it's sort of understood that

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these journey people are like going through ideas. And then eventually, like you said, you get to the

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regular budget cycles and planning around things. Huh? So does that work?

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It seems to be work. We've had a few, you know, a couple of products, a couple we're about to release

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next month that have, in my mind, clearly benefiting from the approach.

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Yeah. Yeah. Huh. That sounds good. So let's, let's pick one of the applications you can talk

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about. And like I, we were talking after lunch, there's this example of the IRS that I use where

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they figured out delinquent taxes. And I feel it's a great example. No offense to them, but I've used

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it for like three years. So I'm on the hunt for new examples of like how, how having like more design

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and lean product thinking and being able to do weekly cycles. I mean, all the great stuff, how

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that's actually done better software. Like a good example of like, we had an assumption of how we

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should do something at first, but we were wrong. And we like, we figured out the right way to do it

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because we had that, that feedback cycle. So now, now give us the impressive application.

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Okay. Well, I'll give you a couple of examples. So one, one is, it's very important to us. We're,

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we're, um, uh, about a month away from releasing, um, our flagship app for our customers. So a mobile

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app, very native Android and iOS. Oh yeah. I saw that earlier. Yeah. Uh, and so that's, uh, it's taken a

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year to get to that point. Um, not because it's, it takes a year to build, uh, mobile apps, but because

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it takes a year to really shore up a lot of backend services that weren't really suitable for building

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a high performance modern app against. Yeah. So we had to build some APIs, cache data, things like

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that. Uh, but anyway, the, the original concept, um, our company had had a vendor they were looking

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at that had said, Hey, I think customers this generation, they want to chat. Yeah. So, uh,

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anybody looking to build a new, fresh, modern app customers want a chat interface. Yeah.

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We were not sure that was the right approach, but we're willing to listen to that. We felt like, uh,

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we were looking at what Google's doing and some of the other, uh, apps, this card approach where cards

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slide in. Yeah. So we had, we had two ideas, uh, this chat interface or this card interface. And we

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said, okay, let's, let's try both and let's see which, which our customers prefer. And so through,

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you know, rather than committing to one or the other or trying to have a bake off and, you know,

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have a, have a bunch of meetings to decide, we just took, took the concepts and we said, okay,

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let's not even build a chat interface. Let's just use the vendor app and, and let's build a different

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experience using, um, the cards and see which one the customer liked. Well,

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the customer totally didn't get the chat interface at all. Right. Right. Like, I don't even know what

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that is. Yeah. And we were like, wow. But, and they totally love the card interface. So,

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and this is for like paying bills, reporting outages, reporting outages, whatever someone in the house

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with their energy stuff wouldn't need to do. Yeah. Huh? Yeah. So we'll probably build them a chat

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interface for the folks that want to do that, but we were able to validate really quickly

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without hardly any investment. Yeah. Um, before we wrote really any, any code at all, the customers,

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which, which they prefer. Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Yeah. I've, I've only in the past year

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started to like use that chat stuff, like on various things. And, and I guess it's like a great

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substitute for an open-ended phone call you might have to someone because there's a person doing it,

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but then it's also like, you're not on the phone, but then like, I don't really want to like

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do something in Facebook messenger to pay a bill like that. Right. Like that would be weird.

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Like it, it doesn't need anyways. Yeah. That's interesting. That's a good one. So, so what are

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some other applications like that? So we're another app we're going to release, and we haven't

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shared much about this, but, um, a game for our customers to connect to a younger generation.

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Uh-huh. Uh-huh. This is one of our challenges, and we're not alone. There's a lot of industries like

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this. Um, we're often, as long as the power is on, if you flip the switch and everything comes on,

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and the gas heat's on, and your house is warm, you never think about your energy company. But there are

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some things we'd like for you to think about, like energy efficiency. And we want you to think of the

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value of the product that we deliver. Uh, so connecting with young, uh, a young customer,

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a young generation is something we wanted to do. And we felt like a good way to do that was,

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was with a game. Well, this was, the idea came about, the strategy came out during the time

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when Pokemon Go was all the rage. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, we were dead set on producing an

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augmented reality game for our customers. Oh yeah. So, uh, our business owners were pretty,

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pretty excited about that idea as well. Uh, but instead of jumping into development,

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we did a one week design sprint. And we actually, um, built, we, we actually designed,

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prototyped, uh, a working prototype by the fifth day. And we presented it to our customers,

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um, to, to a group of young customers that we recruited, our kids and family and stuff. We brought

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them into our corporate headquarters and showed them the app. And, uh, and we also brought some

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people off the street. They, they thought, what is this? And it was like an AR thing.

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Yeah. That's cool. I don't get it. I don't know why we're doing this. Yeah. Uh, this is not a game,

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you know, and they gave us all this feedback and it was so refreshing hearing, hearing that, even though

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it hurt our feelings a little bit and it wasn't what we wanted to hear. Yeah. But it felt so good

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knowing that, Hey, this is not what they wanted. They just wanted to play a game. Yeah. Uh,

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like any of the other million games in the app store. And so we pivoted from there, uh, in our

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end product. I won't spoil it here. Download it from the app store in a few weeks. Uh, yeah,

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you showed it to me one. It looked pretty, it looked like it would be fun, right? It's, it's, uh,

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it looks like it would be one of those games that can like fill empty time. Yeah. Right. You know,

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like it's like, you ever play that game threes? Yeah. Oh man, that one's amazing.

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It can do that and teach you a little bit about energy efficiency without being too preachy or

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teaching. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the idea. So a huge pivot there and no doubt, uh, you know,

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it could have been disastrous to spend a lot of money on an augmented reality game that nobody wanted.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully that'll pan out. I mean, that, that seems like anyways,

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it'll look nice. So that's, and the last thing I wanted to ask, uh, and we talked a little bit

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about this is like, so what, uh, how's like recruitment and retention going? Like not only

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with this facility, but just in general, I mean, I know you've like been out in the community speaking

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a little bit, but like, how do you, how are y'all thinking through, like, we gotta not only hire

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good people, but also like have not have people leave. Like, how are y'all managing that, uh, as you,

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I don't know, get better at software? It's, you know, the cliche, it's all about the culture. And

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we believe that from day one, even, even before we have, every engineer that we've, we brought into

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this environment, um, has had to be vetted to be culture compatible. Yeah. How do you, how do you do

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that vetting? We, we have a few folks that just have a knack for, for that. Okay. They can do,

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sit down, do the coffee talk, ask questions, interact. And we don't look at it as if you're

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passing or failing the test. We look at it like, are we compatible? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you

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might be miserable here, right? If you want to go off in a corner and, and, and do development by

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yourself, you're not going to want to, don't come here. That's, that's not what we're doing. We're,

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we're really repairing. We're, we're out in the open. It's a very open environment. We expect,

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um, we expect, um, we expect to, to share, expect a lot of learning. So, um, we're probably not as

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talented as, as a lot of companies in terms of pure, you know, we're not hiring rock scientists

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necessarily, necessarily, but we're looking for the culture compatible people. Um, we have a saying,

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be kind, be amazing. All right, right. And, you know, kind because ultimately, uh, it's about

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our customers and if we can't, uh, step in their shoes, understand, you know, what a diverse group

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they are, what are their problems? How can we ever be amazing? And then being amazing is the

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expectation that, you know, we can deliver a software experience as good as anybody.

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Yeah. Yeah. So, so then, I mean, to approach it from a different angle. So like what I talked

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with a lot of people and like, it's hard to hire, like, what, what would you, what are like the three

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things you would tell them to start doing? Like if they think, and let's, let's assume they're

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correct and they're not just like wrong, but actually it's easy to hire, but they're finding

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it hard to like get people on board, right? Like people keep declining their job offers. No,

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no matter how good it is. Like, how do you, how do they start to fix that?

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Well, so I think you gotta be, you gotta move quickly. And so we should, our big pivot was from

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hiring on demand where, Oh, I need a song. I need a job developer running post a job. And,

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you know, let's hope during this two week period, it's open.

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When somebody happens to go, we shifted from that to perpetually having, you know, a junior,

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a senior software engineering jobs out there. And then the second thing we did was actually

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created those job titles. So we had, we had, we called our software, we called our programmers,

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um, application analyst. Yeah. Yeah. You had the analyst name in there.

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Yeah. So just by changing that, we started seeing, uh, um, a whole, you know, we started seeing better

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candidates. Yeah. And then the third thing we did, so, so since we have those out there perpetually,

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we created that really small team of people we trusted to that could, could interview them.

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So on Thursdays we do senior, we do software engineering interviews and we kind of, we can take in about

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four, we can do about four interviews at once. Okay. And what we do is we'll do a culture session with

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them in one room while there's a, there's some software engineers pairing in another room. And we do it in a

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real friendly way. We're not like trying to fool you or trick you, you know, with crazy logic

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questions. Yeah. We're just trying to see. No, like you're saying, you're trying to find

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compatibility. Yeah. Right. And then on the coding side, you know, do you know, this, does your

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knowledge on your resume match what you, you know, you're understanding in person. And so, and then

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we'll just switch. And so we, we, we do that and it creates sort of a, a pipeline, doesn't go super,

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super, super fast. Right. Um, we, we probably need 25 engineers right now and we can only hire,

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you know, maybe one a week. Yeah. So it could take a while to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Being deliberate,

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we've found is a lot better running out and just grabbing 25 on demand or whatever. Yeah. That's

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like where you're starting off as an interesting, uh, build up to what seems like common sense,

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which is if, if you want to hire good people, good people want like a career. And so you should

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create a career for them. Right. Instead of like, we need a Java person, like, no, you need to like,

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you need a developer, right? Like, and you need to have just, uh, a stable of them. And that's like

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something that as a company, you need to cultivate and just have ongoing. And then there's the patience.

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So that's helped, man. We've even got, you know, we got feedback from the candidates,

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even the candidates we didn't hire, uh, have said, Hey, that's the best interview experience

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I've ever had. All right, right. We didn't even hire them. Yeah. And so that, that was really,

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really good feedback for us. Yeah. So that's played a big role. And obviously this place now that we

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have it, we've been talking about it, of course, uh, this, this place is really a great environment,

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I think for engineers. Yeah. Y'all have a big auditorium over there. That's it. Like we were talking

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about start a meetup or something. Right. That's always, I always like that when a company does that,

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cause they're like giving back to the community, which, uh, you know, also has extreme self-interest,

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but those are the best when you've got self-interest and also like you help the community out. Right.

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Like it's, it's nice to bring that together. Well, great. Well, well, thanks for, uh, well,

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thanks for giving me a tour and I had some nice rotisserie chicken. So that was good. And those

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avocados with the quinoa. Sorry. I didn't come through on the pimento cheese, but

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you stocked up it from the airport. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've got plenty of them. You know,

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I don't actually, there must be some pimento cheese place around town here instead of in the airport,

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but that airport pimento cheese is pretty good. Oh, so the guy that we saw on the train

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platform, his friend started the pimento cheese business here. So I haven't actually met him,

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but it's a great startup story. Yeah. Tell them they need some stickers and then they can send some,

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some die cut laptop stickers to me for it with pimento cheese. All right. Well, uh,

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if people wanted to follow you around on Twitter or whatever else, where would you send them? Where

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would you send them to? Oh, goodness. Uh, well, you have something, don't you? Yeah, I do. Uh,

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um, probably the best thing. Just shoot me an email. All right. Right. Yeah. Well,

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what's your email? John Mitchell at deep dash energy.com. There you go. And maybe if they're

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interested in a job or hosting a meetup hiring, check out deep energy.com and see

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our software jobs, software engineering jobs. Oh, we're also hiring designers. Yeah. Well,

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perfect. All right. Well, thanks again. And, uh, see everyone next time.