I would first like to thank everyone following this blog, which I started back in August. I need to share that I was very happy to notice that some of you were had been engaged in Consultaglobal, my former blog on innovation practices, which had registered 500,000+ views by the time I finished that project back in 2012.

In the meantime I’ve done some experimentation with corporate blogging, mostly behind Alcatel-Lucent’s firewall. This means that access to CloudNouveau is restricted to teams I work with in the company. This also became a rewarding initiative as momentum grew early on to 10,000+ views in just a few months of activity. I plan to create more content and engage in more discussions here at “Innovarista” this new year. I will get back to blogging regularly and will continue to welcome everyone’s participation and any input that you might have.

I took the above picture this past week in the mix of the polar vortex which brought bone chilling cold to the Midwest, nearing minus 45 °F degrees here around. Chicagoans like to say that winters “build character”. I think that this year’s “character dose” will make a lasting impression and will keep us going for quite a while ; )

Take a quick look at the photograph and you will notice two suns setting simultaneously over the horizon.There was a third sundog further to the left, which my picture did not capture. This was the result of a solar halo, an atmospheric optical phenomenon. The real sun was the one in the middle of the halo, which is shown on the left side of my picture. Phantom suns are known as sundogs as ice crystals within clouds get aligned and happen to refract the sunlight under extreme weather conditions.

This was a cool experience and an early highlight in this new year, nevermind the subfreezing polar vortex : )