Status Go: Ep. 220 – Doing Good Through Tech | Calvin Hendryx-Parker

Summary

In this episode of Status Go titled “Doing Good Through Tech,” host Jeff Ton sits down with Calvin Hendryx-Parker, CTO and co-founder of Six Feet Up, a tech company that is focused on IMPACTFUL projects for organizations that are “doing good.” The discussion revolves around technology and how it can impact the world for the better. They dive into how Six Feet Up evaluates its projects and how they prioritize making a positive impact on society. Listeners will learn about amazing projects that they have completed and how they aim to make a difference through this business model. If you’re interested in the intersection of technology and doing good, this episode is a must-listen.

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About Calvin Hendryx-Parker

Calvin Hendryx-Parker is the co-founder and CTO of Six Feet Up, a Python and cloud expert consulting company that makes the world a better place by using technology to accelerate the initiatives of companies that do good.

Calvin’s Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP) is to inspire and enable tech leaders to open minds and bring the world together for a sustainable future. At Six Feet Up, Calvin establishes the company’s technical vision and leads all aspects of the company’s technology development. He provides the strategic vision for enhancing the offerings of the company and infrastructure, and he works with the team to set company priorities and implement processes that will help improve product and service development.

Calvin is passionate about the open source community and specializes in app development, AI, big data and cloud technology. He is regularly sought after to share his expertise — both at international conferences and in the media.

In 2019, Calvin was named an AWS Hero — one of only 48 Heroes in North America. He is the founder and host of the Python Web Conference; the co-founder of IndyPy, the largest Python meetup in Indiana with 2,100+ members; and the founder of IndyAWS, the fastest growing cloud meetup in the state with 800+ members. Additionally, Calvin is the driving force behind LoudSwarm by Six Feet Up, a high impact virtual event platform that debuted in June 2020.

Outside of work, Calvin spends time tinkering with new devices like the AWS DeepRacer, CircuitPython and Raspberry Pi. He is an avid distance runner and ran the 2014 NYC Marathon to support the Innocence Project. Calvin and his family enjoy annual extended trips to France where his wife Gabrielle, the CEO of Six Feet Up, is from. Calvin lives in Fishers, IN and holds a Bachelor of Science from Purdue University.

 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:45]: Setting the Context and Welcome to Calvin Hendryx-Parker

[00:02:02]: Calvin’s background and the formation of Six Feet Up

[00:04:13]: Entrepreneurial Operating System – EOS and IMPACTFUL projects

[00:08:51]: IMPACTFUL Projects defined

[00:12:34]: Ten Years of IMPACTFUL projects and 100 IMPACTFUL stories

[00:14:05]: Progress toward the goal

[00:14:57]: Hiring process at Six Feet Up

[00:17:37]: Current size and global footprint

[00:18:56]: Finding great talent

[00:20:17]: People, Planet, Profit

 

[00:22:45]: Tech Community Involvement

[00:24:37]: Loud Swarm

[00:26:17]: Climate Tech

[00:29:47]: Actions for Our Listeners

[00:31:23]: Thank You and Sign Off

 

 

Episode Transcript

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:00:00]:

But for us, EOS has been really transformational in achieving our growth and looking toward the future, and working on our goals. So, EOS tries to define some common practices from setting, like, one-year, three-year, and ten-year targets. That’s the first thing you need to put into that glass before you put anything else in there because if you fill it with sand, you can’t put any more rocks in there. So those are the big things that move the company forward and are very meaningful towards moving that needle you.

Voice Over – Ben Miller [00:00:28]:

Technology is transforming how we think, how we lead, and how we win. From InterVision, this is Status Go. The show helping IT leaders move beyond the status quo, master their craft, and propel their IT vision.

Jeff Ton [00:00:45]:

Not to make a blanket statement, but we are all seeking to attach greater meaning to our work, to be part of something larger than ourselves. Okay, and I know I just made a blanket statement, but it is true. Even those less altruistic than others want to know their efforts are going to more than just a paycheck.

Back in the earlier days of the environmental movement, we called it the three P’s, People, Planet, and Profit in that order. In fact, the very first blog post that I ever wrote was titled just that, People, Planet and Profit. That was way back in November of 2008. We’ll be sure to put a link in the show notes to that piece of Pulitzer Prize-winning writing. To today’s guest. People, Planet, and Profit is more than just a platitude. He and his company have a goal of doing good in the world. And guess what the profits are following. Please welcome Calvin Hendrix-Parker to Status Go. Calvin is the CTO and co-founder of Six Feet Up, a Python development and cloud expert consulting company. Welcome to Status Go, Calvin.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:02:00]:

It’s excellent to be here. Thanks for having me, Jeff.

Jeff Ton [00:02:02]:

I’m so excited for our conversation today. A couple of weeks ago, I got even more excited. I was on a recent cross-country trip, and so, as I typically do, I’d loaded my cell phone with a dozen or so podcast episodes of Tech leadership-style podcasts, when imagine my surprise. I heard your voice coming through MyManu Cliks earbuds. You were the guest on the CTO Podcast with Etienne De Bruin. I’m going to encourage our listeners to check out Etienne’s podcast. I thought it was a great conversation, Calvin. And to our listeners, you really need to check out his episode, specifically. It was actually a series on their  B E S T, BEST framework that they’ve built for development shops. And while we’re not going to talk about that today, I do want to dig into the passion and the purpose that drives Six Feet Up. Before we get into that, Calvin, can you share a little bit about your background and what brought you to the formation of Six Feet Up?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:03:10]:

Yeah, that’s a long time ago. Since Six Feet Up started in 1999. We were actually in the Bay Area. I met my wife and co-founder in San Francisco, and we were working for some dot com startups in the back in the dot com heyday, only to later found our own consulting agency, which started as basically a server in our living room that was like doubled as a coffee table. Later to move into a cooking rack in a garage someplace with a T1 line and then onto bigger and better colocation facilities from there. But along the way started really developing our software engineering practice building, starting with websites but then now moving into more like software applications for customers. That’s really where we got our start, was hanging out in the Bay Area. Then 2003, we moved back to Indiana and really started growing the company, hiring people, and then building bigger and better things.

Jeff Ton [00:04:05]:

That’s awesome. And I, for one, am glad you came back to Indiana because it’s a great place to be.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:04:11]:

Me too. Great.

Jeff Ton [00:04:13]:

And as you know, the tech community here is thriving. We’re not quite Silicone Valley, but we are catching up a little bit at a time. I want to talk a little bit about Six Feet Up. I know that you all use the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS. Could you describe a little bit about what that is and why you chose it to run Six Feet Up?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:04:36]:

So, we chose EOS. About four and a half years ago, we were working with a couple of companies who were looking into EOS. It basically started out…there was a book called “Traction” by Gino Wickman which outlined the EOS framework. And then there’s a follow-on called “Get a Grip,” which is kind of a narrative if you’re looking for kind of how it all works from listening to a story-type medium. But for us, EOS has been really transformational in achieving our growth and looking toward the future, and working on our goals. Kind of the premise behind EOS is if your company is going to have an operating system, it’s going to have to have one operating system. And so, EOS tries to define some common practices from setting like one-year, three-year, and ten-year targets, to how meetings are run and when the leadership team gets together for their quarterly meetings and the annual meeting and when you set those various goals and then each quarter setting rocks. So, if you’re familiar with the…I can’t remember what the book that originally came from, but like Franklin Covey…wrote about rocks, it’s the first thing you need to put into that glass before you put anything else in there because if you fill it with sand, you can’t put any more rocks in there. So those are the big things that move the company forward and are very meaningful towards moving that needle.

And EOS has been pivotal in us becoming very excited about these impactful projects. Our ten-year target was actually something we worked really hard on and, at first was not easy for us to define. We started out saying we want to do purposeful work. If you kind of go back even before we were an EOS company, Daniel Pink released a book called “Drive”. He talks about intrinsic motivation and the reason we show up and do the things we do and the things that motivate that and that intrinsic motivators, the things that are inside you that can really drive people to excel and do more than just an outside motivator like money or some kind of reward.

And we always knew that the people who worked at Six Feet Up really appreciated that autonomy and that intrinsic motivation, and we knew there was a drive to do good in the world. But defining a do-gooder when we started on the EOS journey was actually one of our main sticking points. We knew we wanted our ten-year target to be related to the do-gooders in the world itself. And so, the first step was actually to define what a do-gooder is. Who are you going to work with? What companies are you going to seek out to help go advance or accelerate their mission through, in our case, using software engineering to do that?

It took us about a year and a half to really come down to the Impactful project is actually defined by our acronym, which is…clever enough…Impactful. It’s really things that are impressive, moving, purposeful, advanced, collaborative, transformative, future-focused, unquestionably benefits humankind, and legacy So if we look at every project we do, we actually measure it against those specific criteria and for it to become qualified as an actual Impactful project for our company. The whole company votes on the project we just completed to say whether this was an Impactful project. And our goal for the ten-year target was to do ten Impactful projects in ten years, and it’s really worked out well. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to define a do-gooder because you may have companies that do things that maybe are not typically in the do-gooder realm, but they have divisions or software projects inside of them that may actually match our Impactful standard.

Jeff Ton [00:08:10]:

So, it may not be the company overall, it could just be a project that’s being done within the company.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:08:17]:

For example, we’ve done some work in the past with Sandia Labs and they’re one of the places where the nuclear atomic bomb was developed. While impactful in other ways, it’s probably not the kind of project we would want to be working on, or doing things for people who are manufacturing weapons. But we worked with a specific group inside of that specific laboratory that was working on nuclear de-proliferation, and so helping them advance that cause of actually nuclear de-proliferation as opposed to the reverse actually fits our definition of an Impactful project.

Jeff Ton [00:08:51]:

Could you run through the acronym again? What is an Impactful project?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:08:57]:

Yeah, so each of the letters of impactful is one of the criteria where we’ll have a one to five scale, and for a project to be deemed impactful, it needs to reach a certain bare minimum threshold score. I don’t remember the scoring off the top of my head, but that’s basically how we determine it. The first one is the “I” is Impressive. Is it of some meaningful level of a project? It wasn’t just like we put up a web page for somebody, but we did something that would be considered impressive and not just run-of-the-day table stakes type work.

The M is going to be under Moving. Is it meaningful? Does it move you? Do you get some kind of a feeling when we talk about that project? One of our projects we worked on was about helping predict the trajectory of wildfires and saving the firefighters’ lives. Making sure that wherever they start digging their fire trenches and things actually, they don’t put them into harm’s way through this prediction of where that fire is going to go. And that can be moving when you hear their lives saved because of that kind of a.

Is it Purposeful? Does it serve some major or some greater purpose in the world for the greater good of things? Looking at the projects we’ve done now, for example, we helped NASA back in 2015 with the New Horizons probe that went to Pluto. And so, we helped them redesign and re-architect the user interface for the data that was coming back from the New Horizons probe so the scientists could have greater ability to slice and dice that mission data that was coming back.

Was it Advanced? So that’s the A in Impactful. Just using old-school technologies is not going to cut it. We need to be doing something that’s not bleeding edge or cutting edge but more leading edge for us. So, is it advanced?

Jeff Ton [00:10:44]:

So probably not COBOL?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:10:46]:

No, it’s not really moving the needle there. It wouldn’t be considered advanced for us.

C is for Collaborative. Did we work in a collaborative fashion with the customer and amongst the team? It’s actually one of our core values of Six Feet Up as well as the go-together aspect of our team and what we do.

The T is Transformative. Did it change something from not working before to working? Or was there a major change in process that this now enabled for that customer?

Was it Future-focused? Is it looking to build software that will last longer than a few months? We really try and build things that can last for up to a decade or more for being future-focused.

The U is Unquestionably benefiting humankind. We recently worked on a project where we helped the innovator or the entrepreneur who had come up with an algorithm for predicting where lightning will strike up to 20 minutes ahead of time with a 98.6% accuracy within 400 meters radius. So, within a quarter mile, within 20 minutes, we could tell you exactly where Lightning is going to be. The only problem was he only had it running on a single laptop, and it took 90 seconds to do each inference. We actually refactored that to be a serverless cloud application and got the inference down to under 500 milliseconds. So, it could actually be delivered into production and used by insurance companies or for sporting events or airlines, for example, to minimize the windows they have to keep planes either on the ground or circulating in the air. And just think of the applications for a technology like that.

And then, does it leave a Legacy? Is it going to have a long-lasting, hopefully, impression on the world?

Jeff Ton [00:12:34]:

So how many years ago did you establish this goal of ten impactful projects? Over ten years.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:12:43]:

2015. I was in our ten-year range and with EOS, halfway through or almost all the way through the ten years, you actually look at your next ten-year target. So, we’ve actually started our next ten-year target, which is going to be taking the same idea, but actually writing 100 impactful stories in the next ten years. So, taking this idea of doing impactful work and doing more to showcase and highlight the people in the world who are doing good.

Jeff Ton [00:13:12]:

So, your company is not content creators per se, right?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:13:16]:

No.

Jeff Ton [00:13:17]:

So, help me understand that a little bit. The 100 impactful stories, you’re still going to be doing impactful projects, right?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:13:24]:

Correct.

Jeff Ton [00:13:25]:

So is the number still going to be ten for the next ten-year program, or is this replacing that goal?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:13:33]:

This will be replacing that goal. So, the new goal would be…it may be more than ten projects, but it may not be 100 separate projects, but it may be 100 separate stories we tell along the way about the impactful work we’re doing in the software and cloud space.

Jeff Ton [00:13:51]:

And how are you going to tell those stories?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:13:53]:

It could be anything looking at short-form podcasts, social, audio. It could be just plain old blogs and being able to give exposure to those various groups.

Jeff Ton [00:14:05]:

Okay, well, I know a podcast that you could tell your stories on any time!

Back in 2015, you set this goal. How are you doing towards the goal? It’s not quite ten years yet.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:14:18]:

Not quite ten years yet. We are at six of ten.

Jeff Ton [00:14:21]:

Six of ten, okay!

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:14:23]:

Yeah, ten. So, we’ve got four more to go and just a little over two years to do it. That’s fine. I think we’re going to comfortably hit that goal…and actually work on it now…starting to rack up the 100 stories in the next ten years.

Jeff Ton [00:14:39]:

Trying to build that library before you have to start doing it…before you have to start hitting the goal.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:14:47]:

The real point is, I think our group really loves trying to change the world. Like, can we change the world through technology and make the world a better place.

Jeff Ton [00:14:57]:

Well, you must use that as part of your hiring process, right? Because people, they have to buy into that vision.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:15:05]:

Oh yeah.

Jeff Ton [00:15:05]:

What’s your hiring process look like to identify people that have that passion?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:15:11]:

A lot of it is through the networks we already have. We’re very involved in the open-source communities, going to a lot of conferences like PyCon or EuroPython or being an AWS reInvent. So, finding people through those networks or people through their networks of people we know. We also look online. You can obviously find the careers that are available right now at sixfeetup.com/careers that will lead you to the kind of people or the job descriptions for what we’re looking for currently. I think what it helps with most is though, attracting and setting the expectations for those who are kind of heading down this road and going on a journey with us.

And I think it’s really attractive for a lot of people. A lot of people want to get out of maybe the standard nine-to-five grind and would really rather be doing something more interesting. Some people have come from the product world over to work at Six Feet Up, which is where we’re obviously an agency or a consulting model, and the work is very different each day. There’s such a variety of things we’re working on and doing different kinds of projects for our customers, so it never gets boring. You’re never working on the same thing for more than a year or depending on what the kind of project is straight.

And typically, you’re never alone. We always have a kind of an internal mantra of “never go solo” where we put multiple people on a project so that the client and the partner who we’re co-partnering with on the project gets the benefit of the wealth of knowledge that success brings to bear. Like, our team is a very senior team of developers who enjoy solving hard challenges. That’s really a key bit here is we don’t have any junior, there’s no entry-level developers on our bench. We’re not doing production-style work. We’re actually out there solving sophisticated hard problems.

Jeff Ton [00:16:57]:

Yeah, like rocket science. I mean, NASA!

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:17:02]:

I never thought I’d say that, yeah, like rocket science.

Jeff Ton [00:17:03]:

We’re going to pause right there for a word from InterVision Systems. InterVision, as you know, is the publisher of the Status Go podcast.

Voice Over – Ben Miller [00:17:17]:

Unlock the Power of More. With InterVision Systems, we provide the cutting-edge technology and expert guidance you need to take your business to the next level. Don’t settle for less. Choose InterVision Systems and discover what’s possible. Contact us now to learn more.

Jeff Ton [00:17:37]:

And if you do want to learn more, visit InterVision.com. Today we’re talking with Calvin Hendrix-Parker of Six Feet Up, and we’re talking about do-gooder. So, we want to do projects for companies or divisions of companies that are do-gooders and IMPACTFUL projects. And we were just talking before the break about the hiring process. Calvin, what’s the size of Six Feet Up now, and what’s your geographic footprint?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:18:06]:

Yeah, that’s interesting. We’re about 30 people right now, kind of fluctuating right around that, looking to grow as a few more projects on-board. But the company actually, during the Pandemic, expanded globally. We already had some remote workers. That was not a foreign concept to us, although we did forgo the office space we had during 2020 and went just all in on the full remote workspace. But that enabled us to then start working with folks who are even outside the country. We had a couple who are around our country inside the United States, but we’ve got folks all across the globe, six to seven continents, Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Slovenia, Greece, Germany, Turkey, Canada, and Brazil.

Jeff Ton [00:18:56]:

Wow. And you’re finding most of those people, as you said, through conferences and some of the other activities that you all take part in, right?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:19:04]:

Yeah, through conferences, I mean, even through sites like Upwork, we found some really skilled folks who are putting their advertisement for work on those kind of sites and people who have applied through the SixFeetUp.com site as well. Essentially the hiring process at Six Feet Up, we really try to leverage data. So, before we even talk to anybody, there’s a couple of assessments we have folks take to see if they’re going to fit for the various kinds of positions that we’ve got up there. But that doesn’t preclude anyone from being interviewed for a position or even hired for a position. It’s just more data points in the process itself, so, we can actually build a great team all across the globe.

Jeff Ton [00:19:43]:

Well, and it goes without saying, I imagine that you are a very diverse organization as well.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:19:50]:

Yeah, we’re even a woman-owned small business enterprise. But in addition to that, it’s not just kind of smoke and mirrors, and my wife’s the co-founder and owner of the company, but we actually have a very diverse workforce as well. Like the people who are on the team aren’t just a standard fare. There’s a great people, a great mix of personalities, and a great group to work with.

Jeff Ton [00:20:17]:

When I talked in the introduction about the whole concept of people, planet, profits, and then if you focus on the first two, the third comes.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:20:26]:

Yeah.

Jeff Ton [00:20:27]:

How’s that going for you guys?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:20:29]:

I’d say pretty well. During the Pandemic, we grew from we were probably about twelve folks pre-Pandemic, 2019-time frame. And then we doubled through the pandemic, helping people obviously with people moving to work remote and realizing that technology was going to play a bigger role in their day-to-day work. People had a lot of software projects that needed to be done and so that, I think, had a lot of influence on us growing…and the fact that we can solve problems in a very sophisticated modern fashion given our criteria for what we feel like is high-quality software development.

Jeff Ton [00:21:07]:

Before 2015, when you set this as your ten-year goal, were you doing these kinds of projects and just not focused on them as a goal, or was this something that you came to an epiphany, if you will, not trying to be trite in any way, but maybe in 2015 that you started doing this?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:21:27]:

No, I think even before [2015] we realized we had worked a lot in the nonprofit space and the higher education space, and those people were obviously doing a lot of work toward a greater good. A lot of the issues that they have, though, is they don’t typically…maybe have on staff a capacity for certain levels of technology or skills in those certain areas, and that was something we really brought to the table for those kinds of companies. So being able to again accelerate their journey in the technology space to help them make the world a better place was already like kind of on our radar. I think the EOS platform, so we actually started with EOS, probably about…must have been 2017 timeframe, and so the NASA project was two years before. So, we kind of backdated our ten-year goal so we could capture that NASA project as the start. We would go forward with it in the future. But we already knew prior to the NASA project and prior to EOS that us as humans feel great about doing good for others. You leave work each day feeling awesome, and you can’t wait to get back at it the next day. And that’s not just, not just me as a founder of the company, but I think I feel like the team that we’ve built feels that way as well.

Jeff Ton [00:22:45]:

Yeah, one of the things that has always impressed me about your organization, and this is before you and I even met, just watching your organization, is the community involvement. And by that, I mean the community of technology professionals. The AWS Meetup, the Python Web Conference. How did you guys get involved in doing those types of things?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:23:07]:

Well, moving back to Indiana from the Bay Area in 2003, I think I was still struggling to find the open-source community here in Indianapolis, in Central Indiana area. And you know, from being around here that this area was pretty Microsoft heavy, pretty MS-centric around everything, .Net, a lot of like Microsoft apps, a lot of business apps, a lot of off-the-shelf type software. And so, I really was trying to find my tribe. So, in 2007, that’s when I founded or co-founded the Indianapolis Python user group, Indy Pi. And that was really our first venture into community-building anything kind of scale. So, 2007 to today, we’ve now got well over 2000 members in that specific meetup and speakers every month.

We do run the yearly Python Web Conference. This is our fifth year in…2023 is our fifth year, so next year will be year six. So, it’s really exciting to bring people together from all over the globe. The Python Web Conference was actually started as a virtual conference in 2019. Pre pandemic. It was in vogue to be a virtual conference, but it was done with the intention that we were bringing people who couldn’t travel to a major regional or major Python conference to the same kind of caliber of talks and people actually focusing on some kinds of talks that maybe aren’t getting the same highlight they would get at Python doing it in our virtual conference.

Jeff Ton [00:24:37]:

Well, in this involvement in conferences, it led you to, I think, during the Pandemic, if I have the story right, to create Loud Swarm.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:24:46]:

That’s true. Yeah.

Jeff Ton [00:24:47]:

Which is your conference software, right?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:24:50]:

Yeah. Because it was, again, early days in the Pandemic, we built that and launched it for the Python Web Conference that happened in 2020, which would have been in June, I believe it’s June. So, around April, I was literally whiteboarding my ideas for it because we had done an event in 2019, it still felt disjointed and disconnected and didn’t have that integrated feel to it. And I felt like there was a better way for folks to engage in a conference, consume the great talks, but also get face-to-face time with the speakers and the other conference attendees and have that same kind of feel that I’ve come to love about going to conferences. I’ve been to 19 of the last 20 PyCons, and it’s just become my tribe and my family, and so I want others to experience that as well. So, we built the Loud Swarm platform based on just kind of those ideas. How do we leverage technology and the web and video to make a great experience and not try and mimic like an expo hall or the real world? Really leverage what’s going on in the virtual world to give everyone that same conference experience?

Jeff Ton [00:25:57]:

Well, and to our listeners, not that this is a product pitch by any stretch, but I’ve had the opportunity to see a couple of demos of the platform, and if you are a conference manager or event planner, you should check it out. And Josh Qualls, you better be listening because you were the one that introduced me to Loud Swarm.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:26:16]:

Well, I appreciate that.

Jeff Ton [00:26:17]:

One of the things that you have focused on recently, and I don’t know if it’s a pure focus or because you’re looking for impactful projects, you’ve kind of found your way there. The climate tech.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:26:29]:

Yeah.

Jeff Ton [00:26:30]:

Talk to us a little bit about what drove you in that direction and what some of the things that you’re seeing from a technology perspective in the climate tech space.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:26:40]:

Sure. So, when looking at being intentional about going after impactful projects, we specifically wanted to target a couple of different domains. If you look at the United Nations site. I believe there’s 17 different project areas that fall underneath this certification of kind of an impactful or do-gooder type projects in the world. And we just kind of thought about what we thought was important for our team. And what I feel like is important for the world is that there would be no world if we don’t save our climate. So that kind of rose right to the top.

We’ve also been looking at a few others. Climate change and sustainability obviously being kind of number one. If without a planet, you’ve got no place to live. And there’s a ton of technology going into climate tech right now. I think that when us as humanity is faced with a hard problem, we will solve these kinds of problems. It’s just a track record we have. Even in the bleakest, darkest of times, we’ve figured out some way to either reverse a terrible trend or to fix or make the place a better place. I know that carbon emissions have been a big topic, and we obviously worry about that because of the depletion of the ozone layer. But I think we’ve actually started on the right track…being able to do carbon capture technology projects. There’s a lot of innovation going on there.

The most recent XPRIZE is actually around carbon capture. So, if you go look up XPRIZE.org, you can see a lot of the various projects that they’ve been doing, and that also has kind of hit the top of the list. It’s like, how can we reduce carbon in the atmosphere to help save the planet? So, we recently went to a couple of conferences. I just got back from North Carolina, the UNC Climate Tech event this spring. And it’s a great group of people, obviously, because everyone there cares a lot. They’re very deeply invested in the things they’re doing, and they’re doing it for a really good purpose. So, it’s hard not to get excited when you talk to people like that. And enthusiasm is definitely infectious.

Jeff Ton [00:28:45]:

Well, and I’d imagine also inspired when you’re seeing some of what people are doing.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:28:50]:

Right! Yeah. In the innovative ways that people are looking to solve these kinds of problems. You can kind of go down every presentation with some either new technology or some new way. They’ve kind of come up with either sequestering the carbon, using the carbon, repurposing the carbon. People are locking it into building materials so that you can keep that carbon out of the atmosphere and actually lock it away in other places or locking it into specific kinds of stone. It’s really fascinating how creative humankind can be when posed with a very serious problem.

Jeff Ton [00:29:26]:

And it’s almost a seemingly insurmountable problem.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:29:30]:

Right. And that’s the area where our developers get excited. It’s these hard problems. So, it’s a good match where there’s a tough problem ahead of us, and technology of an advanced enough nature is actually going to be part of the solution. That’s where we want to be as well.

Jeff Ton [00:29:47]:

Well, Calvin, as I warned you, we are all about action here on Status Go. We love to leave our listeners with some explicit calls to action, things that they can go out and do. So, what are one or two things that our listeners can do tomorrow because they listen to this conversation today?

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:30:07]:

I mean, I would encourage them to go read our blog. We post a lot of great tech stories and articles up there. Some of the Impactful projects I mentioned actually are on our site as case studies. So, if you actually just go to Sixfeetup.com/Impact, that will link you directly into the section about our mission and the Impactful projects we’re working on. The other thing, if you wanted to check out more on that BEST framework that you heard on Etienne’s Podcast, the CTO Podcast, that’s just sixfeetup.com/best.

Jeff Ton [00:30:42]:

And we will absolutely put links to those specific sub-links on your site in the Show Notes, as well as to your Career page for anybody listening that would want to join. I’m sorry, I cut you off. Say that again.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:30:55]:

I said any friends of Jeff are going to be great new friends of mine.

Jeff Ton [00:30:58]:

Well, I appreciate that. I’ve already started making new friends, new contacts from speaking with you and Darcy. So, it’s been great. Calvin, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. My guess is this will not be your last appearance on Status Go.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:31:15]:

I hope not.

Jeff Ton [00:31:15]:

We will have you back for sure to talk further about the great work that you are doing at Six Feet Up.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker [00:31:21]:

All right, thanks, Jeff!

Jeff Ton [00:31:23]:

To our listeners, if you have a question or want to learn more, visit intervision.com. The Show Notes will provide links and contact information. This is Jeff Ton for Calvin Hendrix-Parker. Thank you very much for listening.

Voice Over – Ben Miller [00:31:39]:

You’ve been listening to the Status Go podcast. You can subscribe on iTunes or get more information at intervision.com. If you’d like to contribute to the conversation, find InterVision on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Thank you for listening. Until next time.