PAW 2019 Conference Series - Gerhard Pilcher - Elder Research

Welcome to the 2019 Predictive Analytics World (PAW) Conference Series. Recorded live in Las Vegas, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Gerhard Pilcher, CEO of Elder Research. Find Gerhard Online: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn Elder Research [00:02] I’ve been working with data in the technology field, but in a weird...  I have a really weird... I have a really crazy career path.  [00:11]   All right.  Let’s hear it. [00:12]   Before I went to technology, I was CTO for a telecom firm, inventing the new DSL subscriber line (high-speed over copper). [00:20]   What year is this? [00:21]   This was in the years from about ’90 to about ’99. [00:26] So early 90s, all the 90s. [00:28] All the 90s. [00:28]    That was a crazy time, right? [00:29] It was a crazy time, and things were booming.  It was insane. Well, then had a tragedy sort of happen in my family and realized I wasn’t spending time with my young sons and wife; so, I bought a road construction company.      [00:42]   Was that better?  I don’t know. [00:45] I don’t know.  It was crazy. It was like being a farmer.  You know you’re dependent upon weather and uh...  But the interesting thing is technology was just starting to come into the road construction business.  So it was fun. I got to do some things like do oil sampling in predictive maintenance on our large equipment, which allowed us to avoid downtime and more costly repairs.  I got to bring in GPS grading. And, instead of having people out there pulling strings with wooden stakes and doing traditional surveying, the operators had computers in their equipment, and they could see where the road grade needed to be.  And people don’t realize how much goes into actually building a road and compacting it and getting it ready for pavement. And so, that was a lot of fun. And I ended up we were cutting roads at a higher quality than the state was able to measure that quality; and ended up getting invited to Washington, D.C., to talk about grading and that kind of thing and how they could bring their quality processes along because they were actually taking quality out of the roadways.  So a little bit crazy career there.   And then I decided at a late age that I’m going to go back to grad school and study more about this statistics and analytics stuff.  And so, my son was just going to be a freshman at NC State and was looking for a place to live. And I made this decision with my wife, but he wasn’t quite aware of what was going on.  And so, I called him one day; I said, “You know you’re having trouble finding a place to live. I’ve got the perfect place for you. It’s an older roommate, probably can cook and clean a little bit for you, but it seems like a decent guy you know.  What do you think?” He said, “Well, give me his number.