[Chris Lyles]

​Good afternoon friends.  I’m Chris Lyles and I have the pleasure of working at WAPA, which is a federal utility that markets and delivers cost based hydropower.  I’ve been with them since 2007, but wish I would have joined the industry right out of college.  I missed out the first 13 years of my working career on all this fun!  I’ve spent 13 years hopping around WAPA in different positions until I found my permanent home in Asset Management.  I love AM as it allows me to venture into the business aspects of our industry as well as the field maintenance component.  Super fun! 

My family and I live in Lakewood CO, just west of Denver.  We spend most of our time four wheel driving and camping in the rocky mountains.  Like some others on this thread, I too am from TX.  But after experiencing the high country of Colorado, I moved here as fast as I could.  (:  I’m married to Andrea.  We’ve got three young kids.  8, 3, and 2. 

I’m really excited about recently joining UAI and look forward to meeting you all in the near future.  Fun times ahead. Chris

——————————
Chris Lyles
VP of Asset Planning & Management
Western Area Power Administration (WAPA)
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 03-18-2020 10:38
From: Leslie Cook
Subject: Introduce Yourself

Hello UAI Members,

I’m excited to try something new on UAI’s Member-Only Community. I want to not only make this forum a place for work and professional connections to take place on a daily basis, a place to ask each other questions, find answers and exchange knowledge and share information, I want to make it a fun environment to help us all de-stress, get to know each other a little better, and build bonds and friendships of a lifetime.

One of the coolest things about the UAI community is seeing members make connections with one another-it’s incredible to watch personal and professional relationship and friendships begin, grow, evolve, and last. The more relationships that are built between us and the more we get to know each other, the more valuable our work exchanges will become. We open up, we share more, we learn more and we all become so much better together!

Our community gets bigger every day. Many of you already know one another, while others are brand-new faces. I feel like it’s time that we (both new members and established ones) take a little time to introduce ourselves.

• Share your name
• Where you’re from
• How long you’ve worked in utility analytics
• I also encourage you to share non-invasive personal tidbits about yourself, i.e. what you like to do for fun, your hobbies, your pet peeves, or even your favorite memes, of course keeping it in good taste. Share things that will help us all get to know you better

I think it is important to have a little fun while we work and enjoy each other’s company. Please, use the UAI Member-Only Community as a place to work hard and play hard, enjoy, laugh, and have some fun.

I’ll kick us off, and please know you can include as much or little detail in your introduction. I’m wordy, so I went all out:

I’m Leslie, UAI’s membership & digital engagement manager. I’ve been with UAI for almost five months and I’m passionate about connecting members who share similar interests and challenges, and providing them with benefits, experiences, and tools they need to solve their problems and improve their organizations. I enthusiastically joined UAI to help improve and evolve the UAI membership value, as well as manage UAI’s collection of Communities. I am a strategic program director, dynamic business leader, and expert facilitator with over 20 years of experience. To learn even more about my professional work or to connect with me, visit my profile on UAI’s member-only site or LinkedIn. Please reach out to me directly at any time if you have questions or need anything from UAI. I can be reached at lcook@endeavorb2b.com or 646-693-5965.

I’m a Texas girl at heart, born and raised in a small town in north Texas, and then I headed out west to graduate from Texas Tech University (Go Red Raiders!). After school I moved to Colorado and I’ve lived all along the front range for the last 22 years, settling in Denver for the last six years, and I still have a Texas accent (You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take the Texas accent out of the girl!). I’ve been married to my best friend from high school for 17 years, and we have two amazingly intelligent miniature Australian Shepherds, Indio and Charley, who keep us busy.

When I’m not working, I can be found traveling the world. We have been to 11 countries so far and we hope to continue to expand our adventures. I also like to leverage my high attention to detail and project management skills when dabbling in home remodeling and interior design. I come up with crazy design schemes and my patient husband implements my ideas, doing all the skilled and hard labor work. We are now close to the end of a complete remodel of our 1952 house. I cannot wait to be done with this project that has taken us about three years to complete…I can almost see the light!

I am truly excited to get to know ALL UAI’s members, so please reply to this discussion post to introduce yourself. Give a little of yourself and you will be surprised at how much you get in return through your valuable, purpose-built relationships via UAI.

Like I said, I have only been with UAI for about five months, but I’m already having so much fun and learning a lot from all of you! We have a lot of positive updates coming soon and we are evolving, with your input, to better meet your needs and goals, and I can’t wait to share these things with you. You must stay tuned into UAI’s Member-Only Community to learn more within the next few months. We will also be announcing some new things and some updates during the unique and exciting event we have coming in June 2020, UA Summit Reimagined!

Introduce yourself, learn more about others, and connect through UAI!

Stay safe and healthy,

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
646-693-5965, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————

[Leslie Cook (Adm)]

Thanks for introducing yourself, @Chris!  I love seeing the WAPA crew jump right in and take advantage of this thread on Ask Your Network, as well as the UAI Analytics Communities!  Also, great shot of the rocky mountains! Thanks for sharing! 

I preach this often during monthly Community Conversations, but it applies to the Ask Your Network forum on UAI Connect as well…  UAI events, UAI Communities, the Ask Your Network forum, etc. should not only be a place to connect, collaborate, and ask other members professional/work questions, but it should be a place where everyone gets to know each other better by sharing tidbits of life and your personal experiences. The more we know each other, the easier it becomes to share the professional stuff!

UAI is a place where smart people get together. I think it is even more important now than ever before, because of what the pandemic has caused socially. Since we are missing out on the in-person socialization that events provide, we are not connecting on a personal level as much. I encourage it! Please use this platform to connect on a personal level. Once people know each other on a personal level they can talk about common interests, such as family, hobbies, sports, etc. Like I’ve said, this provides a level of comfort to then discuss business challenges. The more this happens, it will eventually lead to even more valuable interactions and collaborations. You can really start to challenge each other, dig in deep, and help each person and company within this community grow. Remember, you get back 10-fold what you give within a community like UAI. 

I’ll follow Chris’ lead and share some photos of a few of my favorite things: Traveling (oh, how I miss it this year! Photos here are from Bruges, Belgium and Playa Nosara, Costa Rica), taking advantage of Colorado hiking, and snuggling with our cute Mini Aussies.

Thanks so much to all and I hope you enjoy your weekend! ​

Your member advocate, 

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
719-203-8650, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 09-11-2020 15:26
From: Chris Lyles
Subject: Introduce Yourself

​Good afternoon friends.  I’m Chris Lyles and I have the pleasure of working at WAPA, which is a federal utility that markets and delivers cost based hydropower.  I’ve been with them since 2007, but wish I would have joined the industry right out of college.  I missed out the first 13 years of my working career on all this fun!  I’ve spent 13 years hopping around WAPA in different positions until I found my permanent home in Asset Management.  I love AM as it allows me to venture into the business aspects of our industry as well as the field maintenance component.  Super fun!

My family and I live in Lakewood CO, just west of Denver.  We spend most of our time four wheel driving and camping in the rocky mountains.  Like some others on this thread, I too am from TX.  But after experiencing the high country of Colorado, I moved here as fast as I could.  (:  I’m married to Andrea.  We’ve got three young kids.  8, 3, and 2.

I’m really excited about recently joining UAI and look forward to meeting you all in the near future.  Fun times ahead. Chris

——————————
Chris Lyles
VP of Asset Planning & Management
Western Area Power Administration (WAPA)
——————————

Original Message:
Sent: 03-18-2020 10:38
From: Leslie Cook
Subject: Introduce Yourself

Hello UAI Members,

I’m excited to try something new on UAI’s Member-Only Community. I want to not only make this forum a place for work and professional connections to take place on a daily basis, a place to ask each other questions, find answers and exchange knowledge and share information, I want to make it a fun environment to help us all de-stress, get to know each other a little better, and build bonds and friendships of a lifetime.

One of the coolest things about the UAI community is seeing members make connections with one another-it’s incredible to watch personal and professional relationship and friendships begin, grow, evolve, and last. The more relationships that are built between us and the more we get to know each other, the more valuable our work exchanges will become. We open up, we share more, we learn more and we all become so much better together!

Our community gets bigger every day. Many of you already know one another, while others are brand-new faces. I feel like it’s time that we (both new members and established ones) take a little time to introduce ourselves.

• Share your name
• Where you’re from
• How long you’ve worked in utility analytics
• I also encourage you to share non-invasive personal tidbits about yourself, i.e. what you like to do for fun, your hobbies, your pet peeves, or even your favorite memes, of course keeping it in good taste. Share things that will help us all get to know you better

I think it is important to have a little fun while we work and enjoy each other’s company. Please, use the UAI Member-Only Community as a place to work hard and play hard, enjoy, laugh, and have some fun.

I’ll kick us off, and please know you can include as much or little detail in your introduction. I’m wordy, so I went all out:

I’m Leslie, UAI’s membership & digital engagement manager. I’ve been with UAI for almost five months and I’m passionate about connecting members who share similar interests and challenges, and providing them with benefits, experiences, and tools they need to solve their problems and improve their organizations. I enthusiastically joined UAI to help improve and evolve the UAI membership value, as well as manage UAI’s collection of Communities. I am a strategic program director, dynamic business leader, and expert facilitator with over 20 years of experience. To learn even more about my professional work or to connect with me, visit my profile on UAI’s member-only site or LinkedIn. Please reach out to me directly at any time if you have questions or need anything from UAI. I can be reached at lcook@endeavorb2b.com or 646-693-5965.

I’m a Texas girl at heart, born and raised in a small town in north Texas, and then I headed out west to graduate from Texas Tech University (Go Red Raiders!). After school I moved to Colorado and I’ve lived all along the front range for the last 22 years, settling in Denver for the last six years, and I still have a Texas accent (You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take the Texas accent out of the girl!). I’ve been married to my best friend from high school for 17 years, and we have two amazingly intelligent miniature Australian Shepherds, Indio and Charley, who keep us busy.

When I’m not working, I can be found traveling the world. We have been to 11 countries so far and we hope to continue to expand our adventures. I also like to leverage my high attention to detail and project management skills when dabbling in home remodeling and interior design. I come up with crazy design schemes and my patient husband implements my ideas, doing all the skilled and hard labor work. We are now close to the end of a complete remodel of our 1952 house. I cannot wait to be done with this project that has taken us about three years to complete…I can almost see the light!

I am truly excited to get to know ALL UAI’s members, so please reply to this discussion post to introduce yourself. Give a little of yourself and you will be surprised at how much you get in return through your valuable, purpose-built relationships via UAI.

Like I said, I have only been with UAI for about five months, but I’m already having so much fun and learning a lot from all of you! We have a lot of positive updates coming soon and we are evolving, with your input, to better meet your needs and goals, and I can’t wait to share these things with you. You must stay tuned into UAI’s Member-Only Community to learn more within the next few months. We will also be announcing some new things and some updates during the unique and exciting event we have coming in June 2020, UA Summit Reimagined!

Introduce yourself, learn more about others, and connect through UAI!

Stay safe and healthy,

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
646-693-5965, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————

[Leslie Cook (Adm)]

Hello UAI Members,

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! I want to send out a friendly reminder to not miss out on a chance to receive pride and glory, bragging rights, and a $10 Starbucks gift card! I don’t know about you, but I love free coffee! :-) 

Don’t forget to reply to this post with your outage management data visualizations for September’s “Best Visualization of the Month” contest. Please make sure you post your data visualizations by the end of day Tuesday, September 22, 2020. On Wednesday, September 23, I will reply to this post with a survey, so members of UAI can vote for their favorite data visualization. 

Please find more information below about the September 2020 theme…

September 2020 Theme: Outage Management Data Visualizations – Some areas of North America have already been effected by storms and for other areas, storm season is closing in. During storm season, every utility deals with outages. Let’s take the month of September to share your outage management data visualizations. How are you working to improve your visualizations this storm season? Maybe you want to beef up your visualizations this storm season. By sharing your data visualizations for outage management, you could be helping your peers with ideas on how to improve their visualizations. Examples of things to share: distribution outage management data visualizations or mapping distribution heat maps, etc.

If you have any questions, please reach out by replying to this post or contacting me directly at lcook@utilityanalytics.com or 646-693-5965.

Thanks!

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
719-203-8650, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 09-01-2020 14:54
From: Leslie Cook
Subject: September 2020 Theme – Best Visualization of the Month Contest

Hello again, UAI Members,

It is an exciting day at UAI! The August 2020 member favorite for the “Best Visualization of the Month” contest was announced and now I present to you the theme for the September 2020 “Best Visualization of the Month” contest…

September 2020 Theme: Outage Management Data Visualizations – Some areas of North America have already been effected by storms and for other areas, storm season is closing in. During storm season, every utility deals with outages. Let’s take the month of September to share your outage management data visualizations. How are you working to improve your visualizations this storm season? Maybe you want to beef up your visualizations this storm season. By sharing your data visualizations for outage management, you could be helping your peers with ideas on how to improve their visualizations. Examples of things to share: distribution outage management data visualizations or mapping distribution heat maps, etc.

In case you missed it last month… What is the UAI Best Visualization of the Month contest? 

In collaboration with the UAI Connect Ambassadors — a team of member volunteers that help drive engagement and encourage member collaboration on UAI Connect — UAI will be implementing a new monthly contest on the Ask Your Network forum on UAI Connect. Each month, we will post a themed “Best Visualization of the Month” contest. The monthly theme will be selected by our UAI Connect Ambassadors. We also encourage you to submit your ideas for monthly themes on an ongoing basis. You can submit those to me at lcook@utilityanalytics.com or just post your ideas on the Ask Your Network discuss forum.

This monthly contest is set-up to encourage you to post your data visualizations in regard to the given month’s theme. All during the month, we hope you will reply to that month’s contest post to share your data visualizations (no matter how simple, functional, elaborate, or complicated) and include a short description as it relates to your visualization. You can attached your visualization to your reply or embed it within the reply.

One week prior to the end of the month, we will reply to the post with a survey link that will poll members to select their favorite visualization. When selecting your favorite each month, consider criteria like, how automated is the visualization, where is the visualization pulling the data, how easy is the visualization to understand, etc. (of course this criteria is not required, but we wanted to pass along some example criteria to consider while selecting your favorite visualization).

We will close the poll at the end of the day on the last business day of the month. We will announce the member favorite at the beginning of the next month. The member favorite will receive pride and glory, bragging rights, and a $10 Starbucks gift card! Our hope is this will be a valuable monthly exercise that is an opportunity to share and learn from one another, help encourage a little spirit of competition, and that you will have some fun!
 
Let the games for September begin!

Have fun,

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
719-203-8650, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————

[Martin Richardson]

Luckily not many outages at this time.

 

https://outages.fortisbc.com/Outages

 

 

——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 9/14/2020 5:57:00 PM
From: Leslie Cook
Subject: RE: September 2020 Theme – Best Visualization of the Month Contest

Hello UAI Members,

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! I want to send out a friendly reminder to not miss out on a chance to receive pride and glory, bragging rights, and a $10 Starbucks gift card! I don’t know about you, but I love free coffee! :-) 

Don’t forget to reply to this post with your outage management data visualizations for September’s “Best Visualization of the Month” contest. Please make sure you post your data visualizations by the end of day Tuesday, September 22, 2020. On Wednesday, September 23, I will reply to this post with a survey, so members of UAI can vote for their favorite data visualization. 

Please find more information below about the September 2020 theme…

September 2020 Theme: Outage Management Data Visualizations – Some areas of North America have already been effected by storms and for other areas, storm season is closing in. During storm season, every utility deals with outages. Let’s take the month of September to share your outage management data visualizations. How are you working to improve your visualizations this storm season? Maybe you want to beef up your visualizations this storm season. By sharing your data visualizations for outage management, you could be helping your peers with ideas on how to improve their visualizations. Examples of things to share: distribution outage management data visualizations or mapping distribution heat maps, etc.

If you have any questions, please reach out by replying to this post or contacting me directly at lcook@utilityanalytics.com or 646-693-5965.

Thanks!

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
719-203-8650, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 09-01-2020 14:54
From: Leslie Cook
Subject: September 2020 Theme – Best Visualization of the Month Contest

Hello again, UAI Members,

It is an exciting day at UAI! The August 2020 member favorite for the “Best Visualization of the Month” contest was announced and now I present to you the theme for the September 2020 “Best Visualization of the Month” contest…

September 2020 Theme: Outage Management Data Visualizations – Some areas of North America have already been effected by storms and for other areas, storm season is closing in. During storm season, every utility deals with outages. Let’s take the month of September to share your outage management data visualizations. How are you working to improve your visualizations this storm season? Maybe you want to beef up your visualizations this storm season. By sharing your data visualizations for outage management, you could be helping your peers with ideas on how to improve their visualizations. Examples of things to share: distribution outage management data visualizations or mapping distribution heat maps, etc.

In case you missed it last month… What is the UAI Best Visualization of the Month contest? 

In collaboration with the UAI Connect Ambassadors — a team of member volunteers that help drive engagement and encourage member collaboration on UAI Connect — UAI will be implementing a new monthly contest on the Ask Your Network forum on UAI Connect. Each month, we will post a themed “Best Visualization of the Month” contest. The monthly theme will be selected by our UAI Connect Ambassadors. We also encourage you to submit your ideas for monthly themes on an ongoing basis. You can submit those to me at lcook@utilityanalytics.com or just post your ideas on the Ask Your Network discuss forum.

This monthly contest is set-up to encourage you to post your data visualizations in regard to the given month’s theme. All during the month, we hope you will reply to that month’s contest post to share your data visualizations (no matter how simple, functional, elaborate, or complicated) and include a short description as it relates to your visualization. You can attached your visualization to your reply or embed it within the reply.

One week prior to the end of the month, we will reply to the post with a survey link that will poll members to select their favorite visualization. When selecting your favorite each month, consider criteria like, how automated is the visualization, where is the visualization pulling the data, how easy is the visualization to understand, etc. (of course this criteria is not required, but we wanted to pass along some example criteria to consider while selecting your favorite visualization).

We will close the poll at the end of the day on the last business day of the month. We will announce the member favorite at the beginning of the next month. The member favorite will receive pride and glory, bragging rights, and a $10 Starbucks gift card! Our hope is this will be a valuable monthly exercise that is an opportunity to share and learn from one another, help encourage a little spirit of competition, and that you will have some fun!
 
Let the games for September begin!

Have fun,

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
719-203-8650, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————