The Journey Behind DSMRK

I started my first blog in 2004 using Blogger, at a time when blogging itself was still relatively new. In late 2005, I moved it to my own domain, dsmrk.com, and continued writing for more than a decade.

Over those years, technology changed dramatically. I moved from writing about software and technology to building software products, working with manufacturing systems, developing connected technologies, and eventually building Bevywise around industrial IoT, manufacturing software and connected systems.

When I started Bevywise, I stopped hosting dsmrk.com. The work did not stop. I am bringing the site back because I want a place to write about what those years taught me, where the factory and the software meet.

Manufacturing is in the middle of another change. Machines are connected, a lot of the factory now runs on software, and someone can draft an application in an afternoon. A badly designed system can be built faster than before. A system with a clear architecture can use that speed. DSMRK is where I want to write about that difference, from the work rather than from the week's news.

Digital Manufacturing × Software Technology

Most of my working life has sat between two things. One is the factory: how the process actually flows, where a decision is made, and where a tool changes the output. The other is the software: how the application, the data and the connections should be put together so they can still be changed later.

I have written separately about starting with the process. The short version is that I want the operational problem understood before anything is designed around it. I will keep writing from the plants and the products I have worked on, and I will leave out anything that will be stale by next quarter. The tools will change. Understanding the problem, and building a system that still works after the tool changes, will not.