Year 30

I believe that days go slow and years go fast
And every breath’s a gift, the first one to the last – Luke Bryan, ‘Most People are Good’

Eigenvector Research starts its 30th year this January. Reflecting on that made me think of the Luke Bryan quote above. Some days have been long, for sure. For me that’s particularly true when I’m doing administrative stuff. There are also some days that go incredibly fast. When you are “in the zone” writing code to investigate a new method you get to five o’clock and wonder where the day went. But all of the years go fast. This really hits me when I think of the things I started long ago but still haven’t finished (like that journal article on Gray Classical Least Squares). And of course when you realize your children are adults with job titles like “Senior Financial Analyst” and “Orthopedic Surgical Resident” you wonder where the years went.

Every breath is a gift, especially when you are doing something you love. In the field of chemometrics (chemical data science, machine learning) there’s just no end of things to think about and explore. And of course part of the fun is working with such a great crew. Here’s our technical staff ( I guess I can still include myself in that) at Shuckers during the 17th Eigenvector University last May. We group up differently depending on the project (software, consulting, training, webinars, helpdesk, etc.) so I get to work with EVRIbody from time to time, as do we all. That really keeps it interesting, in part because we span a wide range of ages (almost 40 years) and hobbies (ski racing, rowing, trail running, biking, baseball, photography, playing the bagpipes) and other interests (cosmology, cooking, movie and music trivia, French). (Et bien sûr j’adore encore partager le bureau derriere avec ma femme Jill, la Directrice Générale!)

It piles up. When I checked this morning there have been 24,532 commits to our software version control system. Version 9.3 is the 38th release of PLS_Toolbox. We’ll have our 18th EigenU this year and our 13th Eigenvector University Europe. I lost count long ago of how many short courses we’ve done but it’s way over 200. We’ve done over 30 webinars, and have had consulting projects with 50+ companies and national laboratories. And no end in sight!

Neal and I joke that we got into this because life is too short to drink bad coffee, bad beer, do boring work or live in a crappy place. That sounds flippant but it is actually true. So a big THANKS! to all our customers who have enabled us in this software odyssey and intellectual pursuit. We have a lot planned for 2024 that we think you will find useful! We hope to continue to serve you.

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to All!

BMW