Recent content on Mark Groves
Who I am I’m Mark Groves — a retired software industry professional with 28 years of experience leading product and engineering teams at companies like DocuSign, SAP Concur, Microsoft, and Splunk. After a long career building platforms, managing teams, and navigating the chaos of fast-moving tech companies, I stepped away from full-time work in mid-2023. I’m now based in Pagosa…
Recently, while visiting Belize a group of us went out to one of the cayes. We did some snorkeling, saw some incredible fish, and spent the afternoon on the beach with cold beers and BBQ. I was trying to be present in the moment. I don’t believe I pulled out my phone the whole day. But here’s the thing, after this enjoyable day, I couldn’t easily describe it to someone. Not in…
This first week of Spanish immersion was in some ways harder than I expected, but overall the first week felt productive. In many ways, the class was like going back to school. I haven’t had an instructional education experience in many years. Sure, there were the inevitable corporate training exercises, but those are nothing like sitting in a class with a teacher. We’re doing a…
It is 6:30 AM, and I’m sitting on a beach just outside of Mulegé, watching the sunrise over the bay. The water is calm, the air still, and despite there being several other campers nearby, it’s completely silent. Instead of checking my phone after I wake as usual, I’ve chosen to come outside and witness this moment directly. This is what I came to Baja for. Not what’s on my…
The roads in Baja are teaching me patience. After more than a week of traveling here, I’m becoming accustomed to maintaining focus while navigating these narrow passages. The most important lesson of driving in Mexico seems deceptively simple: just take your time. People will pass if they need to, and worrying about your speed won’t get you anywhere faster or safer. This principle of…
The day after retirement feels surreal. After decades of calendars packed from dawn to dusk, suddenly: nothing. Not vacation’s temporary pause, but a permanent, stretching-into-infinity nothing. At first, this nothing feels like freedom. No jockeying for meeting slots. No need to block time to eat lunch. My calendar app sits unused, a digital relic. After years in tech leadership where my…
The moment arrived. After years of planning my early retirement, I couldn’t have scripted the situation if I tried. In early January 2023, I sat down with my manager, the President of my division, for yet another routine reorganization discussion. Decades in tech leadership made these reorganization meetings as predictable as clockwork. Another restructure, another role shuffle – the…
There you are at that event, getting ready to do the thing you committed to days, weeks, or months ago. And you ask yourself, “why did I say yes to this?” This type of thing happens to me more often than I would like to admit. These could be significant events, like speaking at a conference, or small events such as having coffee with someone you barely know. There isn’t anything…
Over the last several weeks, I decided to build my site from the ground up using Hugo , a static site generator. My main goal in rebuilding my website is to get back into writing while having a place on the web that is my own. I am adding features of the IndieWeb to my site along the way. My latest IndieWeb support is implementing Webmentions. With the help from posts by Vincent Pickering , Keith…
An insightful piece from Martin Tisne of the Luminate Group on how the data captured about us is not a resource an individual can manage. The basic idea being – it’s a new resource that is being extracted, it is valuable, and is a raw product that fuels other industries. But it also implies that data in inherently valuable in and of itself and that “my data” is valuable, a…
I’ve decided to restart my web site and to get into a regular writing habit. I can’t say that I have been great at keeping this practice. I can’t promise my posts will be well thought out. In some sense that the lack of clarity is my main goal. My goal is to learn more about how I think about a topic by writing publicly. A little about myself is likely a reasonable way to start.…