Many years ago (seconds in robot time), we had a new leader join our OCIO (Office of the CIO). Shortly thereafter, he made a request that a SharePoint site be created for himself and one for each of his direct reports. His main site would be called “Technology Infrastructure and Operations” or TI&O for short. Now, the only thing missing was the hapless soul to be tasked with this new “opportunity.” As fate would have it, I happened to be walking past his office on the way to get a 5th cup of coffee, and behold, a volunteer was born. On my way home that evening, enjoying all the pleasantries of Northern Virginia drivers, traffic, and stoplights, my thought process went from TI&O to TInO (pronounced tee-no) to thinking of the material “tin” to thinking of the Tinman from "The Wizard of Oz", to thinking “robot.”

Now that my focus was on a robot, I had to think about what to use for inspiration in the creation of it. It became clear to me that the inspiration should be none other than the man who tasked him with such an auspicious responsibility. That weekend on my deck with a sketchpad (and maybe a beer) Tino was born. What design features of Tino were inspired by our leader you ask? Well, for one, Tino is a bit hair challenged. Also, let’s just say that the first few days for him in his new role were challenging, so the dent in Tino’s cranium represents the manifestation of the mental picture of him banging his head on his desk. Other design aspects represent different projects and concerns he had at the time, like Wi-Fi in the enterprise, storage in the datacenter, heat in the datacenter, etc. Tino’s design has evolved over the years, but the essentials have been kept. My sights then focused on the creation of robots to represent each of his direct reports. However, those are stories for another time...