Mark Barbour Email & Phone Number

I am fortunate enough to have had a very unique career. I attribute this partly to being inherently interested in solving new problems and learning new things. I also take those new things with me to the next step in my path. I want to use this About space to share some of the things that I love doing, and have become quite good at:- Teaching/Training: This is probably my favorite thing to do, because I have found that it is the fastest way for me to learn, and it uses all of the other skills I have picked up over the years. In addition, I love engaging in the inherent value of copying knowledge. I have witnessed both good and bad training practices and have seen a strong correlation between an organization's success and their ability to copy knowledge to new team members.- Communication: I was a 911/Dispatcher for just under 5 years. Phoenix PD's Communications Dept has an amazing training staff who produce an extraordinary program. It is not an easy thing to teach someone to be able to do that job, and I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to experience that. I have used not only the communications skills, but the training I received there pretty much everywhere I have gone in my career.- Documentation: Again, 911/Dispatch is where I honed this skill. You are constantly reminded that everything you document during a call is public record, and is subject to being justified in court. The training that comes with supporting that responsibility has given me the ability to document things quickly and accurately. While working in IT/Data Science, I have used that basic skill to learn how to build systems that are optimal for the retrieval and use of documentation. - Programming: I consider this skill to be my most economically valuable and useful skill. I see Code and Data Literacy as rapidly becoming a fundamental skill in our society. I'm not saying that everyone is going to become a programmer, but consider for a moment that not everyone who can read becomes an author. The more people, in general, who can at least understand code and data, the more information they will be able to handle without getting overwhelmed. I compare this to the vast increase in global wealth and security as literacy rates improved during the industrial revolution. New revolution, new literacy. This also brings me back to my passion for teaching and training. - Data Science: I see this skill as simply one tool (albeit a very powerful one) in my programming skill-set. My preference is to use it as simply as possible to solve direct, well-defined problems.