Author: Kevin

I am extremely interested in both current events and the ever evolving world of technology. Business and finance have exceedingly become important areas to me, as well. Over the next few years, I hope to log many interesting personal views and opinions concerning important aspects of the world in which we live. Keep in mind that all content posted by me on this web site reflects only my personal views and opinions and not those of anyone else.

Ella and The Hand

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Ella and The Hand

I don’t know why but I’m feeling a strong desire to write this simple message of appreciation for someone that will read this message.

Recently I went on a routine business trip for only two days. While I sincerely enjoyed my trip, meeting new people and getting business done; I missed my wife and our five furry children more than ever. And, frankly, the biggest highlight of my travel was coming home instead of going to the event itself. 

The instant I came in the front door upon getting home, Gracie and Finn “embraced” me with their waggy-tails, big barking mouths and jumpy enthusiasm. I was so happy to see them, and I think they were happy to see Daddy again.

After Grace and Finn finally got settled a little bit, it was time to see how my youngest daughter, Ella Bean September Neal, was doing because she’s a very independent spirit and doesn’t pretend to make a fuss about anything.

So, I headed out to her lazy daytime sleeping bed in our office where she likes to nap in the sunshine and I said ‘hello Ella-bean’.  She responded ‘meow…’, and rolled on her back as a direct invitation for me to rub her tummy like she enjoys so much.

I reached out my hand to scratch her tummy, back of her neck and chin, but I stopped because she was in such a frenzy for me to rub her with my hand that I didn’t know which rub-part was her priority.

So, I just held out my hand and appreciated the gift the God gave me. 

A Hand, with five-fingers, that can move in various horizontal/vertical directions, have nerves to feel sensation such as heat and cold plus effortlessly interoperate with the rest of my body. 

Basically, I had taken touch, with my Hand to scratch Ella’s furry-chin, as sort of an entitlement instead of the gift that this is.

As I held my Hand still for 30 minutes, Ella made the decision whether her chin, belly, neck, ears, back, or wherever she wanted rubbed. It was her choice, not mine, which was really cool.  I spread my fingers out so that she was able scratch several areas in the same pass (she’s so small that she can get a neck, chin and back scratch in one fell-swoop). It was 30-minutes of great reflection that a simple gift, that I don’t appreciate enough such as a Hand with five fingers, can provide such happiness to others.

This 30-minutes also allowed me to consider how Ella’s paws (a.k.a. her Hands), with five nails, are specially created for her purpose in life. She has claws to be able to scale high-fences, climb on roofs as well as defend herself from attacks.

So, while we both Ella and I have similar features with Five digits, we are gifted with specialized purposes with our Hands. The commonality is that Ella and I can touch our Paws/Hands and be bonded forever in our love and happiness for this wonderful gift.

Capture & IDP Conference 2023 – TWAIN Working Group

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It was a great honor for me to represent the @TWAIN Working Group at the Infosource Capture & IDP Conference last week in Chicago. I provided an update to the attendees on “Monetizing TWAIN Direct” with some examples of Use Cases for Generative AI, Conversational AI and Document Processing AI with TWAIN Direct. Then I shared our success with TWAIN Direct Developers Day in Safety Harbor, Florida as well as the TWAIN Direct ISV Showcase Series webinars. Finally, I thanked our valued member companies and encouraged membership to be part of the Digital Transformation AI future with TWAIN!

At the Infosource Capture & IDP Conference last week, I shared some real Artificial Intelligence use cases for TWAIN Direct. I was having some fun with the TWAIN acronym, to get the audiences attention and to fit in with the theme of AI, but I was also very serious about incorporating various techniques of AI including Generative AI, Conversational AI, and Document Processing/Analytics AI to illustrate the strategic importance of TWAIN Direct to the AI ecosystem

One of the TWAIN Working Group highlights I shared at the Infosource Capture & IDP Conference last week, was TWAIN Direct Developers Day (TD-DD). TD-DD was a terrific and energy-filled day of seeing TWAIN Direct in action. In one day software developers were able to get a functioning TWAIN Direct document scanning application working. Some feedback included: “Integration of TWAIN Direct was simple and easy”, “There was a good vibe at Developers Day” and “The partner ecosystem and ISV solutions for TWAIN Direct are really impressive”. We will be hosting another Developers Day in Spring 2024 so please send me a message for more details.

Fitting directly in the theme of my presentation of “Monetizing TWAIN Direct” at the Infosource Capture & IDP Conference last week, was sharing the TWAIN Direct ISV Showcase Series. This ongoing webinar series, hosted by the TWAIN Working Group, included various topics such as cybersecurity, cashflow management, content management, file conversion, capture, and more, featuring our growing ecosystem of software partners and integrations. Please send me a message if you’d like to be included in future TWAIN Direct ISV Showcase Series webinars.

As a non-profit organization, the TWAIN Working Group is supported by our valued member companies. At the @Infosource Capture & IDP Conference last week, many were in attendance including Atalasoft/Kofax, Epson, Kodak Alaris, PFU, P3iD Technologies and Visioneer. Since TWAIN is an open-source specification, our organization is selling nothing and charges no commercial licensing fees. Our only motivation is to provide a solid industry-leading and accepted standard for scanning device-to-software application communication. I’m pleased to share that at the Conference, the state of document scanning with TWAIN Direct has a very bright future and each opportunity means tangible business for one, or many, of our valued member companies.

The Inaugural Capture & IDP Classic (2023)

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On Tuesday, September 5th, 2023, I was so honored to help organize a golf outing with 11 former colleagues and friends. We had a fantastic time!

September 5th, 2023 was on a Tuesday, the day before we had an already planned our annual ‘Capture & IDP Conference’ in Itasca, Illinois (a 15 minute drive from Chicago), which was held on the 6th and 7th, so we decided to finally organize a golf excursion on the day before the Conference started.

On Tuesday, September 5th, 2023, I was so honored to help organize a golf outing with 11 former colleagues and friends. We had a fantastic time!

September 5th, 2023 was on a Tuesday, the day before we had an already planned our annual ‘Capture & IDP Conference’ in Itasca, Illinois (a 15 minute drive from Chicago), which was held on the 6th and 7th, so we decided to finally organize a golf excursion on the day before the Conference started.

Our golfers included mostly ex-Law Cypress Company and ex-Fujitsu colleagues who have maintained a good relationship over nearly two decades. A great addition to our group was that we were joined by a few of newbies including Guillermo from Buserdi and Grace from Photon Commerce. Both of their energy, willingness to have fun, as well as participate with the group was incredibly awesome!

Golf was a lot of fun, but most of the on-course smack-talk and activities would earn an R-rating from the internet so I’d rather not share these discussions and rather focus on the more family-oriented highlights for the purpose of this blog update.

For the on-course highlights, Dave Gerber won two of three contests which were the long-drive contest (302 yards on hole #10) and a closest-to-pin on hole #6.  Ralph Gammon won the other closest-to-pin contest on hole #13.  Congratulations to both Dave and Ralph for their winning efforts!

After golf, a huge highlight of the day was an intimate concert where the Revenue Man (https://www.therevenueman.net/) played for two hours a selection of homegrown hits, plus also popular cover songs. Everyone really enjoyed the show and interaction. Please check-out the Revenue Man’s songs, download his music and support his dream.

One of the post-golf activities that I planned for “The Inaugural Capture & IDP Classic” was a 30-minute “award ceremony” with gag-award certificates to all golfers so that we could recognize everyone and have a little fun at their expense.

Although I spent time to create and print the certificates for the fun of the group, I fully expected for them to end-up in the trash can. However, I was surprised that everyone was appreciative of their awards and took them seriously!  The awards themselves were intended to be “gag”-type certificates, but for everyone to respect them was totally cool.

Below is each award for your viewing pleasure!

  1. Bob Fresneda – “Gift of Gab” award

2. Dave Gerber – “El Cigarro Grande (The Big Cigar Guy)” award

3. Steve Baldwin – “Best Judge Elihu Smails” award

4. Cesar Vega – “Best Score for Irish Player” award

5. Ralph Gammon – “Best reporter and most inquisitive” award

6. Doug Cripps – “Biggest Troublemaker” award

7. Guillermo Chavez – “Most Distance Traveled” award

8. Jay Stobie – “Like a Good Neighbor, Jay is there!” award

9. Grace Zarzecki – “Best Score – Hockey Player” award

10. Erin Dempsey – “Best Event Organizer” award

11. …and, finally, myself for the worst golfer, I received the “Pickleball Training Class” award because they think I need to stay off the golf course for the rest of my career!

Overall, I hope everyone had fun at “The Inaugural Capture & IDP Classic”. I’m not a professional organizer, so if anyone has suggestions for next year’s event please send me a message or call me.

I really appreciate everyone that participated because, after all, it’s sincere friendships that matters.

Sincerely,

Kevin

Neal Family Barnhouse Update, 07/29/2023

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It’s been awhile since our kids latest update, so here goes:

Bleu-Berry!

Bleu, is our wonderful chill baby. She is a 6-year old rescue kitty and her days are spent mostly sleeping and minding her own business. Bleu is mostly active at night where she likes to cuddle with Mommy and be a big baby. She is strong as an ox with a great personality.

Bleu is strong as an ox and is like a little black panther kitty. She is the mature feline amongst our other children and she’s the responsible adult most of the time. Occasionally, late at night when no one is watching she will come out and run around the living room as daddy shines the red-laser pointer thingy for her.

The Grace!

Gracie, who we adopted on the same day as Bleu, is our crazy Chiweenie. Gracie is also 6-years old and she’s a lot of fun. She spends her days barking at everything as if her little stature will be intimidating enough to do something.

“The Grace!”, as Mommy likes to refer to her is always full of energy. Her spunky attitude is very relatable to Brandee so I think this is why these two characters have such a tight bond :-).

Gracie’s greatest strength is also her greatest weakness as her curious nature tends to get her into be trouble….especially when chasing skunks in the backyard. She’s gotten sprayed several times but keeps running after them nevertheless.

The rescue sissies!

As I mentioned, Bleu and Gracie were adopted on the same day, so they are forever sissies. These two are totally trusting in every way that it’s so heart-warming.

It’s truly wonderfully remarkable for me to see cats and dogs getting along so awesome. It’s so refreshing to witness everyone getting along so nice and I just wish that people could do the same.

You can’t imagine the incredible bond between these two. It’s an amazing display of love and it’s most evident when either of them isn’t feeling well, then the other instinctively protectively cares for the other.

Ella-Bean

Ella, is our 5-year old, crazy-beyond-belief Tortoise Hair beauty. Ella is full of energy and runs around the house at light-speed. She has a crazy look in her eyes and her personality is a match!

Ella has a very independent personality and doesn’t mind spending time on her own. However when she does make an appearance, she always has to be the center of attention!

Although Ella is only 10 pounds, she thinks she owns the world. I guess good things come in small packages?
She loves to be friendly with other animals like the birds, squirrels and raccoons in our backyard.

Finn-Ster

Finn is our nearly 2-year old rescue, 71-pound, black lab, who commands the most attention. While he’s the biggest of all our animals, he’s bar-far, the most attention-demanding guy of all! We love his energy, but he’s a lot of work, for sure!

Just like Bleu like to chase the red-laser pointer thingy, Finn is a huge fan of flashy-lights! He also loves for Mommy and Daddy to toss his catchy-balls way up in the air so he can jump and catch them skillfully in his mouth. We can do hundreds of catchy-ball throws per night and he never gets enough!

Finn loves to play with Ella especially and, believe me, she loves to reciprocate! Finn and Ella love to tease each other and it’s so cute. Ella will hide under the couch and every time Finn sticks his nose under the couch, then Ella swats in the stout….with love of course :-).

Just Cat (J.C.)

J.C. (“Just Cat”), is our latest re-homed baby and we are so grateful for him!!! He was a gift that we weren’t sure would be compatible with our four other babies, but he’s been a perfect addition to the Neal Family Barnhouse!

The phrase “Last, but not least” has never been more appropriate than with J.C. He truly is a gift from God. As you’ve read with our other furry children, we love them all. However, as much as we wanted J.C. to come home with us, it wasn’t right to disrupt our current furry children, so this was a major concern.

Overall, Brandee and I are so happy to give our children such a wonderful life. We are proud parents with all these waggy-tails, stinky-breath and deadly-claws! We love them all so much that this is our purpose in life.

God Bless and Please Adopt,
Kevin