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BoldIQ featured in PSBJ story about tech hiring

89 people entered. Only 5 got hired [2 by BoldIQ]. Here’s why the WTIA still says this jobs program was successful. By Ashley Stewart.

Roei Ganzarski has interviewed a lot of people.

He’s CEO of BoldIQ, a scheduling software company. The Bellevue startup requires employees to have deep technical knowledge, which is why Ganzarski typically hires MIT, Stanford and University of Washington graduates.

When Ganzarski interviewed job candidates earlier this year through a new program put together by the Washington Technology Industry Association, however, there was a new rule – he couldn’t ask where they went to school.

Instead, he and all the other business leaders who participated had to decide whether to move forward based only on what the candidate said and the skills he or she had.

Modeled after the NFL, WTIA launched the “Draft Day” pilot program to help Seattle-area companies fill open jobs with candidates from nontraditional backgrounds. The goal of the program was to compel recruiters to judge a job prospect’s skills, not their alma mater.

One candidate – U.S. Army veteran Daniel Browning – spent a few minutes telling Ganzarski about his computer networking background, which included teaching people in Afghanistan.

“I thought if he could teach computer networking to a bunch of Afghanis in a war zone, I bet he could do well here,” Ganzarski said. “If he told me then he went to MIT, I would have believed him de de s.”

But Browning didn’t go to MIT. He didn’t go to a university for computer science at all.

He graduated from Code Fellows, a computer science bootcamp that teaches fundamental skills in weeks, not months. Ganzarski’s reaction is the desired effect of a recent Washington Technology Industry Association program aimed toward eliminating school bias.

Code schools — some of which are nonprofits, others are for-profit programs — have the potential to mitigate the profound lack of diverse technology talent in the Puget Sound region. The number of students graduating from code schools is on the rise. Code.org, for example, is No. 60 on the PSBJ’s nonprofit list and launched only a few years ago.

Still, technology companies want to hire computer science graduates from the same top schools, which have fewer women, people of color and veterans in their graduate ranks.

The nonprofit WTIA reached out to educators from coding schools and community and technology colleges to nominate recent graduates for the program. Nearly 90 were nominated and coached through a “Training Day” skills workshop.

Ultimately, the group selected 16 candidates – including 10 women, six people of color and two veterans – for short, speed-dating-style interviews with local companies including Uber, Redfin and SweetLabs.

Seven students received job offers and five accepted. Samantha Prince – the full-stack developer featured in the July 8 PSBJ cover story “Coders are in demand. So why aren’t tech companies hiring code school grads?” – is one of the graduates who now has a job because of the program. She was hired by Bellevue startupBase2 Solutions, which hired three women who participated in Draft Day.

Draft Day wasn’t perfect and not all code school and community college computer science graduates are ready for jobs. Most of the nominees – the people recommended by code schools and community colleges – weren’t prepared for an interview.

Ultimately, less than 6 percent of the original participants have jobs because of the program. But WTIA still counts Draft Day as a success because recruiters learned good talent can come from anywhere.

“Those students weren’t getting interviews,” WTIA CEO Michael Schutzler said. “We can get them interviews now, and that’s truly inspiring and motivating.”

WTIA plans to revisit the program, with a few changes, including focusing on particular workforce demands.

The idea for the program came out of an annual event that brings together companies, government and academia to tackle the state’s technology challenges, which happens again this fall.

Before Draft Day, Ganzarski said he didn’t think code school graduates would be right for his company.

Then, BoldIQ hired two Draft Day participants, including Browning, and Ganzarski said they’ve exceeded his expectations.

“We went into this looking at it like we were giving them an opportunity,” Ganzarski said. “What we found was they have tremendous skill, capability and passion for what they are doing and they’ve been able to achieve even more than we would have expected from any hire, even a brand name school.”

To read the full article on PSBJ click here

Zodiac Seats US President & CEO, to participate on BoldIQ panel.

Jeff Barger, President & CEO of Zodiac Seats US, will be a panelist on the ‘Competing and Growing in the On-Demand World’ panel at the upcoming Wharton Aerospace this November.

Jeff will bring a broad and diversified manufacturing perspective to our panel looking at how well established manufacturing can too modify itself to accommodate the one on-demand economy. Prior to his leadership role at Zodiac, Jeff led businesses and organizations at leading companies including GKN Aerospace, L-3 Communications, and Piper Aircraft.

The 2016 Wharton Aerospace panel will be about Competing and Growing In The ‘On-Demand’ World. Like every other part of our lives, the need and desire for ‘on-demand’ is quickly changing aerospace & defense – from airlines, to logistics, from drone missions to mafucaturing, everything is moving towards a real-time dynamic environment.

Gone are the days of long-term planning and “simply” dealing with disruptions. Today, everything is based around continuous change and disruptions.

Customers want their service now, when and where they ask for it. But with this ‘on-demand’ culture comes a risk of great inefficiency, waste, pollution and increasing costs.

Led by Roei Ganzarski, President & CEO of BoldIQ, panelists will share perspectives on how they do more with their resources while decreasing waste and at the same time growing and competing in the ‘I want it now’ world.

BoldIQ Support Engineer at FullConTech

Daniel Browning was certain of two things when he completed his military service: He would need a degree to stay in IT and transition to the private sector and, because he had a family to support, he had to get a job as soon as he graduated.

Although he’d gathered 6 years of experience working in IT with the U.S. Army as a Signal Support System Specialist, when Daniel left the military in 2013, his first goal was to earn a BS in Computer Science. He’d started working on his degree through St. Martin’s University’s Extended Learning Division while still in the Army and stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. After leaving the Army, he continued working on his degree at the university’s campus in Olympia.

Life as a non-traditional college student brought with it some adjustments. Daniel, who comes from a military family and had grown up on an Army base in Germany, had been stationed in the U.S., Korea and Germany and had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He’d carried the responsibilities of military leadership, as well as those and husband and father, and had lived in harm’s way with young men, like himself, who had joined the military out of high school. As a student at St. Martin’s, most of the other students he met were at a much different place in their lives, and he had to learn to deal with different stress patterns.

“As a soldier,” Daniel said, “you’re constantly exposed to stress and it becomes a part of your life. Stress is your ‘normal’ and it builds a unique camaraderie of people going through it together. In school, stress is concentrated on the end of the semester — it’s not the ‘normal.’”

To help him find the right technology job, Daniel went through WTIA’s inaugural Draft Day program in June. He was surprised to discover that while there were some companies that seemed reluctant to hire veterans, most people with whom he spoke expressed an appreciation for his military experience – especially BoldIQ in Bellevue. Daniel had an opportunity to interview for a job as a Support Engineer with the company through Draft Day.

“I wasn’t expecting my military service to count for anything in the job hunt,” he said. “BoldIQ was looking for veterans, because they needed people who could make quick, accurate decisions in stressful situations, are motivated, and can work without a lot of supervision.”

BoldIQ offered Daniel a job, and he started working there at the end of July, supporting customers, primarily in the aerospace industry. He also graduated from St. Martin’s in August with his degree in Computer Science.

“Life right now is awesome,” Daniel said. “BoldIQ values my background and my abilities as an individual. It’s a supportive, fun, and diverse organization, so I get to learn from a variety of different people.”

What’s Daniel’s advice to employers when it comes to talent management? “Be willing to teach,” he said. “In most interviews, there’s a test, a coding assessment, and lots of emphasis on having the exact right experience. There’s a lot of great talent out there that may not quite fit the job description. There’s a lot you can teach people, and teaching not only builds ability — it builds loyalty.”

Click here ot read full WTIA blog

BoldIQ featured in AIN story

Operators Optimize With BoldIQ’s Astro by Matt Thurber – September 12, 2016

BoldIQ’s Astro flight operations software originated as the power behind DayJet, which was slated to become an air-taxi operation eventually flying 1,000 Eclipse 500 very light jets. DayJet didn’t survive, for various reasons that might include delays in getting the Eclipse 500 into service, but Astro lives on as software that helps fleet operators manage their complex operations.

What makes Astro different from other operations software is its dynamic optimization capability, which does what no human can do: figure out how to get the most out of a fleet for the least cost, basing those calculations not only on existing conditions but also on anticipated demand and resource constraints.

“The whole concept was to run a complex and dynamic operation like a flight department or charter operation,” said BoldIQ president and CEO Roei Ganzarski. “Human brains are not built to be capable of looking at a lot of data and then making good decisions. You need sophisticated software.”

‘DYNAMIC OPTIMIZATION’

For busy operations, a typical situation might come about when trying to schedule another flight after allocating all the resources needed for previous trips. According to Ganzarski, humans become unable to manage all of the data involved once the number of elements being managed reaches seven, and decisions after that are compromised.

For example, say that a charter scheduling team has already made arrangements for seven flights, including blocking off the aircraft, making sure they are all capable of flying the requisite number of hours and cycles without exceeding any maintenance limits, ensuring that the flight crew meets all requirements, arranging ground transport, catering and so on. Then a new call comes from the sales department, a new trip request that is urgent and paid for and must be flown.

The harried humans in this scenario will have to scramble to find an aircraft and flight crew that aren’t already tied up with the earlier flights. And when they do manage to put the schedule together, it is likely that they did so inefficiently because they are incapable of looking at all of the data involved to juggle all of the planned trips in a way that makes the next trip efficient and profitable. Most operations will simply try to squeeze in the last request without even considering how it affects the company’s margins. The likely result will be yet another unprofitable deadhead leg.

As Ganzarski explained, “The goal of dynamic optimization is to look at the entire network and make a decision based on the future of the operation. Given all of the resources, pilots, aircraft, crew, demand, rules and the financial cost structure, what’s best? An hour from now, if we get more demand or a pilot calls in sick, what should we do right now? This answers what should we do with our resources and demand.”

In the example above, Astro’s Solver 2.0 engine would look at all of the planned flights on the upcoming schedule and make changes to accommodate the last request. The operator can create criteria within Astro for Solver to use. If the last flight cannot be accommodated without cutting into the required profit margin, for example, then the operator might choose to reject that request. The better outcome is if Solver can move around some elements of previous or upcoming trips to free up resources for that last request.

Astro’s Solver doesn’t calculate the cost of the flight, Ganzarski explained. “That’s usually what operators calculate. We say, the cost of the flight is irrelevant. What’s relevant is what will acceptance of this flight add to the network in terms of costs?”

Solver can instantly show how making small changes can affect the proposed flight. If a particular flight will cost the operator $3,000 to complete at a certain time, Solver can show how departing, say, two hours earlier will lower the network cost by $800 or departing two hours later will raise the cost by $2,000. If the customer is flexible and can leave earlier, the flight can still be completed and there is enough cost saving to offer a discount. But if the customer wants to leave later, then either he will have to pay more or the operator should refuse the trip. “Customers tell us this one [feature] alone allows them to say no to flights they normally would say yes to,” he said. “You can’t take unprofitable flights. You have the power of negotiation on the fly.”

Another way that Solver helps is with an AOG. For example: an aircraft is away on a trip and suffers a broken door seal that will take three days to repair, Ganzarski explains. Solver highlights four flights that are affected by the AOG. After blocking that airplane from flying for the repair period, the operator needs to figure out how to recover the four flights.

The operator can ask Astro for six different options to handle those four flights. The program can be run to cover a selected period, in this case the one that covers the four flights and the three days that aircraft will be grounded. The user can select various criteria, such as not allowing Astro to defer any maintenance, but that it isOK to add, say, a 15-minute delay to flights already scheduled. The user can also set Solver’s processing time; the more time, the better the results.

Solver creates six different plans to recover from the AOG. “Each one is feasible,” Ganzarski said. “One might be better financially, another operationally. You don’t have to focus on how to solve the problem; you just look at which solution you want to choose.”

Astro is designed for any size operation and a variety of operator types, from small flight departments to charter providers and fractional-share operations. Astro can also handle all details of the operation, from dispatch releases, crew records and maintenance scheduling to vendor integration, weight-and-balance, flight planning and pilot rest. Executive AirShare, PlaneSense and JetSuite are among the large operators using the system.

Click here to read full story

NetJets Executive Vice President, to participate on BoldIQ led panel

Bram van der Ploeg, Executive Vice President of Scheduling and Logistics at NetJets, will be a panelist on the ‘Competing and Growing in the On-Demand World’ panel at the upcoming Wharton Aerospace this November.

Bram has a wealth of experience when it comes to the world of On-Demand, holding various leadership positions at NetJets, the world’s largest on-demand aircraft operator, and prior to that, consulting at Cambridge Technology Partners.

The 2016 Wharton Aerospace panel will be about Competing and Growing In The ‘On-Demand’ World. Like every other part of our lives, the need and desire for ‘on-demand’ is quickly changing aerospace & defense – from airlines, to logistics, from drone missions to mafucaturing, everything is moving towards a real-time dynamic environment.

Gone are the days of long-term planning and “simply” dealing with disruptions. Today, everything is based around continuous change and disruptions.

Customers want their service now, when and where they ask for it. But with this ‘on-demand’ culture comes a risk of great inefficiency, waste, pollution and increasing costs.

Led by Roei Ganzarski, President & CEO of BoldIQ, panelists will share perspectives on how they do more with their resources while decreasing waste and at the same time growing and competing in the ‘I want it now’ world.

BoldIQ Team NAVBLUE, an Airbus Company President & CEO, to participate on BoldIQ led panel

Mike Hulley, President & CEO of Navblue, an Airbus Company, will be a panelist on the ‘Competing and Growing in the On-Demand World’ panel at the upcoming Wharton Aerospace this November.

Mike is an accomplished business leader that has held various senior management and technical positions at companies like Navtech, EDS, IBM, Siemens Nixdorf (SNI), Galileo, Covia, United Airlines, and Delta Airlines.

The 2016 Wharton Aerospace panel will be about Competing and Growing In The ‘On-Demand’ World. Like every other part of our lives, the need and desire for ‘on-demand’ is quickly changing aerospace & defense – from airlines, to logistics, from drone missions to mafucaturing, everything is moving towards a real-time dynamic environment.

Gone are the days of long-term planning and “simply” dealing with disruptions. Today, everything is based around continuous change and disruptions.

Customers want their service now, when and where they ask for it. But with this ‘on-demand’ culture comes a risk of great inefficiency, waste, pollution and increasing costs.

Led by Roei Ganzarski, President & CEO of BoldIQ, panelists will share perspectives on how they do more with their resources while decreasing waste and at the same time growing and competing in the ‘I want it now’ world.

BoldIQ team member to speak at FullConTech

Support Engineer Daniel Browning selected as one of three Flash Talk presenters at the WTIA’s FullConTech conference to be held in Redmond, WA Oct 3 2016.

FullConTech brings together leaders from the public and private sectors to develop new ways to foster positive, sustainable growth for the technology industry and our community.  With a focus on exchanging ideas and taking action, FullConTech sessions encourage participants to challenge traditional ways of thinking and collaborate across industry, education, non-profit and government to solve problems and make a meaningful impact.

Last year’s 300 participants worked together to build a playbook for WTIA, designing new initiatives to address specific needs within the technology industry and the broader community.  Based on the cross-sector collaboration that took place at FullConTech 2015, in July 2016, WTIA launched Draft Day, a program that uses a “blind” recruitment and interview prep program to connect diverse talent from underrepresented schools with tech employers across the state.

Daniel, a veteran of the U.S. Army, was one of two people hired by BoldIQ at draft day.

Click to learn more about FullConTech

BoldIQ CEO to lead panel on ‘Growing in an On-Demand World’

The 2016 Wharton Aerospace panel will be about Competing and Growing In The ‘On-Demand’ World. Like every other part of our lives, the need and desire for ‘on-demand’ is quickly changing aerospace & defense – from airlines, to logistics, from drone missions to mafucaturing, everything is moving towards a real-time dynamic environment.

Gone are the days of long-term planning and “simply” dealing with disruptions. Today, everything is based around continuous change and disruptions.

Customers want their service now, when and where they ask for it. But with this ‘on-demand’ culture comes a risk of great inefficiency, waste, pollution and increasing costs.

Led by Roei Ganzarski, President & CEO of BoldIQ, panelists will share perspectives on how they do more with their resources while decreasing waste and at the same time growing and competing in the ‘I want it now’ world.

BoldIQ and the U.S. Rangers

BoldIQ is proud to again be part of the annual Ranger Regatta! on August 11th, 2016. We are all looking forward to engaging with the community of special operations Rangers in a relaxing environment.

BoldIQ Team Aviation Week on BoldIQ

It was a breakthrough concept. Use a fleet of small, on-demand, ride-share jets to serve a network of airports and adjust the seat price to reflect each passenger’s scheduling flexibility. Oh, and confirm the trip and fare instantly.

That was DayJet’s operating plan. It was so revolutionary, even mighty Boeing was watching with concern. And with good reason.

Think about it. A passenger goes online and inputs the date and times of a desired trip from A to B, knowing that the wider the time span for departure or arrival, the lower the price. Seconds after pressing “Send,” there’s the fare and flight. No en route transfers needed, although there may be stops to board others. In other words, passengers set the trip’s timing and pricing. And by only serving small airports, ground travel logistics were quick and hassle-free.

For the carrier, delivering such a service is as complicated as a Moonshot because the variables are nearly infinite. It must ensure an airplane is available at the locations, times and dates—near or far—chosen by a variety of customers. Same for the pilots. The routing selected must be efficient yet factor in the component of a yet unknown cohort of passengers traveling on the same aircraft from and to other airports. It must be able to accommodate any weather, ATC, staffing or other unanticipated problems or delays—profitably and quickly.

To do all that requires serious computational muscle, heavy-duty algorithms and custom-designed programming. The effort addresses two interlocked halves of a system anchored in complexity science—one that manages reservations for on-demand trips and another that manages a fleet of aircraft and its support staff.

The person behind the DayJet concept was Ed Iacobucci, a Silicon Valley superstar who cofounded Citrix Systems in 1989. He drew some Citrix veterans—two of them Russian rocket scientists, literally—to the new project along with other software developers. The team then spent more than three years creating, refining and testing the system.

In 2002, DayJet ordered 239 Eclipse 500 very light jets (see photo, top) then still in development. Iacobucci calculated that even with two pilots up front, the minijet’s break-even load factor would be about 1.3 passengers. Unfortunately, he never got to prove that. The company planned to begin operations in Florida in 2006, but a struggling Eclipse was a year late in starting deliveries. DayJet eventually got 28 jets, but by then the recession of 2008 had a stranglehold on the economy. That, combined with the late start and lack of capital, ultimately resulted in the company suspending operations just one year after launch.

However, a group of Silicon Valley investors recognized the potential of the DayJet computer program. They purchased the technology and created BoldIQ. Based in Redmond, Washington, the 20-person enterprise is led by Roei Ganzarski, the former chief customer officer for Boeing’s Flight Services division and one who had monitored DayJet’s evolution.

Ganzarski describes BoldIQ as “a dynamic resource-optimization company” that aims to derive the best possible use of an organization’s assets “executable at the click of a button”—exactly what DayJet programmers “designed beautifully” a decade ago.

If given enough time and information, some optimization process might deliver even better results, but good, feasible, fast results are more valuable to business, Ganzarski says, paraphrasing Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.: A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

Today, BoldIQ’s technology is employed by charter, fractional, managed business aircraft operators and aviation service companies, including Jeppesen, Executive AirShare, Bye Aerospace, JetSuite, Europe’s GlobeAir and New Zealand’s Merlot Aero. It also serves ground transportation providers and mobile workforce outfits by “getting the cable guy and repairman to the job” most efficiently, Ganzarski says.

Its next target is the health-care industry, with the goal of improving efficiencies to allow doctors and nurses to treat more patients.

Iacobucci died of cancer in 2013 at the age of 59. Ganzarski sees DayJet’s computerized engine as a true legacy of a man he lauds as a “software guru.” And by continuously building upon and refining that core technology, BoldIQ is “commoditizing optimization” that can benefit small and medium-size businesses.

As for those Russian rocket scientists? They’re still at it. In fact, six of DayJet’s original programmers are among BoldIQ’s employees, which is a tribute to a good idea, well executed. At the click of a key.

Click here to read the full article on Aviation Week