Daily Archives: August 16, 2017

A 7-year-old boy discovered Chilesaurus diegosuarezi in southern Chile in 2010 during a geology expedition with his parents.

A bizarre-looking dinosaur discovered by a young boy in Chile may be the missing link showing how members of one major dinosaur lineage evolved into a completely new dinosaur group, a new study finds.

Researchers in the United Kingdom say the species, dubbed Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, explains how some theropods, mostly meat-eating, bipedal dinosaurs, evolved into the herbivorous, long-necked ornithischians.

Previously, it was unclear how the "ornithischian group just suddenly appeared and became this well-adapted herbivorous group," said the study's co-lead researcher, Matthew Baron, a doctoral student of paleontology at the University of Cambridge in England. "There was no intermediate step. This is the first one we've found." [See Photos of the Missing Link, Chilesaurus diegosuarezi]

If future research confirms this finding, this would make Chilesaurus the earliest member of Ornithischia, a group that includes the armored dinosaurs, such as Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus, as well as horned dinosaurs, such as Triceratops.

But not everyone is on board with this interpretation. Rather, more "grunt work" is needed to determine Chilesaurus' true identity, said Thomas Carr, an associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin and a vertebrate paleontologist. Carr was not involved in the study.

This isn't the first time Chilesaurus has turned heads. In 2010, 7-year-old Diego Surez, the son of two geologists, found the 145-million-year-old beast in southern Chile's Toqui Formation.

After Diego found the first specimen, excavations in Chile yielded more than a dozen Chilesaurusindividuals, including four complete skeletons that ranged from turkey-size young dinosaurs to nearly 10-foot-long (3 meters) adult dinosaurs. But despite the abundance of fossils, Chilesaurus'anatomy was a real head-scratcher.

The creature looked like a mixture of lineages. It had the long neck, small skull and clunky feet of a sauropodomorph (a group of long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs with lizard-like hips); the beak, teeth and pubic bone of an herbivorous, bird-hipped ornithischian; and the bipedal stance, robust forelimbs and ilium (the upper part of the pelvic bone) of a meat-eating theropod.

An artist's representation of the enigmatic, herbivorous species found in Chile.

To determine where Chilesaurusfit in the dinosaur family tree, the South American researchers looked at four data sets to compare the dinosaur's features with those of theropods, mainly from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, as well as with sauropodomorphs. In the end, they deemed Chilesaurusan enigmatic plant-eating theropod, a relative of Tyrannosaurus rexand the fearsomeVelociraptor, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Nature.

Chilesaurus diegosuarezi walked on its hind legs as other theropods did. It also had robust forelimbs that looked like those of other Jurassic theropods, such as Allosaurus.

However, not everyone was satisfied with Chilesaurus' classification as a theropod. Earlier this year, Baron and his colleagues stunned dinosaur researchers when they published a study revising the dinosaur family tree. According to their analyses, theropods and ornithischians were more closely related than previously thought.

Baron wanted to see where Chilesaurus fit on the new family tree. So he reached out to Fernando Novas, a paleontologist at the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who was the lead researcher on the 2015 Nature study.

Novas provided data on Chilesaurus to Baron and study co-lead researcher Paul Barrett, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Once Baron and Barrett had Chilesaurus' information, they plugged it into their enormous data set, which has data on the earliest dinosaurs on record. [Gory Guts: Photos of a T. Rex Autopsy]

"[Chilesaurus] came out as basically the first diverging member of one of the major groups, which is a position that had never been suggested before," Baron told Live Science. "It was a bit of a surprise."

However, evolution is a long, complicated process. There are ornithischians that are older than the Late Jurassic Chilesaurus, but they likely evolved from earlier theropods, Baron said. The fossils of these older, transitional creatures have yet to be found, he said.

"More and more evidence is now appearing that the ornithischian group might just be entirely Jurassic and Cretaceous, that they weren't present in the first period of dinosaur history [the Triassic]," he said.

It's difficult to say which interpretation is correct that is, whether Chilesaurus is a theropod or an early member of Ornithischia, Carr said.

"Having read these works side by side, I can understand why the [2015 researchers] thought what they thought: The evidence is convincing that it's a theropod," Carr told Live Science. "[But] this new paper is just as convincing that it's an ornithischian."

There's only one way out of this conundrum, Carr said: "All of these data sets have to be combined" so researchers can determine, once and for all, where Chilesaurus fits a task that can't be completed unless all of the relevant and available data from the Mesozoic is used.

Chilesaurus diegosuarezi has characteristics of three different dinosaur groups. Its pubic bone points backward like that of an ornithischian dinosaur, perhaps because it provided the gut more surface area with which to digest plant matter.

Even though the family trees are different, it's possible to combine the data sets of the early dinosaurs that Baron used and the Sauropodomorpha and later theropod data sets that Novas and his colleagues used, Carr noted.

"It does take a lot of work, but in the end, what you get is a data set that includes all of the relevant characters from all of the relevant analyses," he said. Only then can researchers "get the single truth, the historical truth of the universeas it happened," Carr said.

Baron accepted the critique in stride. "That's genius because that's exactly what we need to do," Baron said. "And that's exactly what I am doing at the [moment]."

Combining data sets is arduous work and could take four or five years to complete, Baron said. But the end result would shine a light on dinosaur evolution, which is a valuable step forward because "we actually are finding we know less and less about dinosaur evolution," Baron said. [Photos: Newfound Tyrannosaur Had Nearly 3-Inch-Long Teeth]

If that's the case, then the discussion on Chilesaurus'relationships has just begun, Novas told Live Science. "However, I welcome the novel interpretation by Baron and Barrett, because it promotes a necessary debate on poorly known aspects of dinosaur evolution as a whole," Novas said.

The new study was published online today (Aug. 16) in the journal Biology Letters.

Original article on Live Science.

Read more:

This Enigmatic Dinosaur May Be the Missing Link in an Evolution Mystery - Live Science

It's 2003. May. IT is becalmed, in the doldrums, in limbo. The flurry of activity and inexplicable spending that was the Y2K tsunami has long since blown over. Some still refer to the millennium bug as IT's finest hour. Others believe it was a totally manufactured crisis. Either way, in 2003, the business side of the house is no longer supporting any of IT's fantasies. The Standish Group has just published the results of five years of analysis on the failure rate of IT projects: A depressing 65% of IT projects fail. The dominant project methodology is Waterfall (popular since the 1970's). Looking at the breakdown of the average IT spend, approximately 20-25% is committed to keeping everyday IT operations up and running, with the remainder going to innovation and new solutions for the business. The business is reacting to Y2K and pushing for more stability, availability and reliability from their IT systems. The business is demanding real business value and ROI from their IT spend, not pie-in-the-sky touchy-feely measurements. IT is struggling to respond. Struggling to translate real IT performance gains into demonstrable value for the business. Struggling to understand its role in the confusing new millennium. Struggling, in some way, to justify its very existence.

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Around this same time, a small group of unconventional programmers gathered at a ski resort in Utah in October 2001 and created Agile. More about this milestone in the evolution of IT later

Economically, in 2003, we are in a downturn. The collapse of Enron and WorldCom has vividly demonstrated that no company is "too big to fail." These scandals lead to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, which contains provisions where key executives can now be sent to prison for falsifying the financials of public companies. IT is to play a major role in the financial reporting systems of public companies. In addition to the heavy operational focus of most IT shops, new compliance requirements are added to IT shops already heavily burdened with a plethora of audits.

Politically, in 2003, we are reeling from recent events. Our first presidential election of the new millennium took six weeks to decide because of the method used by Florida to collect simple data ("hanging chads"). The headlines in Europe call it a real "Mickey Mouse" operation. Less than two years prior, 9/11 had caused us all to question everything. Even the long-vaunted FBI had been caught with its IT computing pants down. The nation's top cops, famed for their ability to gather and sift through huge volumes of information, are exposed as laggards in 2001, dependent on outdated systems that do not have a prayer of keeping up with the exponentially increasing demand. Systems that were linked -- at least, indirectly -- to the domestic intelligence failures leading up to 9/11. We went from invincible to vulnerable in the span of one sunny Tuesday morning. It is a difficult time for the U.S. and a difficult time to be in IT.

IT operations is still operating under the old rules. The 2003 rules. Nothing has changed for them. Well, that's not quite true. They are trying to apply the 2003 rules to a world with smartphones, Wi-Fi and ubiquitous cloud environments.

As if things couldn't get any worse for IT, in the May 2003 issue of the Harvard Business Review comes an article by Nicholas Carr entitled, "IT Doesn't Matter." The premise is simple and direct: IT, like so many other technological innovations before it, has become a commodity. IT no longer represents a strategic business advantage. No longer can one organization exercise technological dominance using IT as its lever. Now, every organization has roughly the same IT: networks, routers, servers, databases, websites, email and so on.

Carr further points out that, now that IT has reached this stage of commoditization, it represents a major risk to the business enterprise: The risk of not being there. IT outages that were mere annoyances in the past now place the business at a significant disadvantage. This development in the evolution of IT was not just a shift in thinking, but a strategic shift in where you put your IT spend: Risk mitigation versus innovation. In fact, this fundamental shift in thinking (and spending) was well underway. Every organization on the planet had been caught on the horns of this dilemma three years earlier during the Y2K mess. But there was simply far too much to do at the time and no downtime to think about why we were doing it. Y2K was the embodiment of Carr's basic premise: IT represented a strategic risk for the business.

The industry's response to Carr's article was swift and pointed. Analysts and pundits lined up to debunk the premise that IT and its technology were little more than 21st century plumbing. The overriding theme of the responses to Carr's article can be paraphrased as, "Sure, we all have the same technology, but it totally depends on what you do with it! Look at Cisco and Wal-Mart and Dell -- they are innovative." (Remember, this is 2003!) So, the real question is: Was Nicholas Carr right in 2003?

Is he right today?

Fast forward to 2017. What has changed? What hasn't? The Standish Group has now been measuring the failure rate of IT projects for 20 years. The IT project failure rate is still at the depressingly low rate of 65%, with very little fluctuation from year to year. The dominant project methodology is still Waterfall.

In 2017, most IT operations groups remain focused on delivering reliable, stable, secure services with a minimum of down time. Now, however, approximately 75-80% of the IT spend is committed to keeping the everyday IT operations up and running, with the tiny remainder going to innovation and business solutions. Is this progress? Today, the business is pushing for more creativity, flexibility and innovation from their IT systems. Yet, many IT operations groups -- stuck in post-Y2K mode -- remain hunkered down and determined to create the most bulletproof environments in history.

Meanwhile, the business side has been scrambling to maintain its relevance while competing in our new digital world. Smartphones and tablets that are always connected. More savvy consumers. Drastically different customer expectations and timeframes. The business now knows what needs to be done and they know how fast they need it done. The business has started pushing development (dev) and project management (PM) to get with the program. Pushing them hard. Very hard. With 20 years of data to back it up, dev and PM have to admit that they are broken. The Waterfall project methodology is simply not working for most development projects. There are better ways to develop software.

Phew! Crisis averted. Business, dev and project management are all in sync, oh my! Breaking into their happy dance and all's right with the world!

Whoa! Not so fast. Yes, things are finally good with biz, dev and PM, but nobody told ops. You remember IT ops, the people who actually deploy all these new wondrous Agile-developed business solutions so that actual value can actually be realized by the business. For real.

IT operations is still operating under the old rules. The 2003 rules. Nothing has changed for them. Well, that's not quite true. They are trying to apply the 2003 rules to a world with smartphones, Wi-Fi and ubiquitous cloud environments. They are still trying to: Lock it down, resist change, make it bulletproof, defeat hackers, safeguard availability, increase reliability and maintain stability and, indirectly, frustrate the heck out of the business and dev and PM as they try to maximize value at a totally different pace.

Ops seem to represent a literal roadblock to the fast lane of Agile deployment. Ops is not a little off- kilter, but rather is suffering from a complete disconnect. A different definition of value and success. Like landing on a different planet where everything seems upside down. A Twilight Zone episode where all the beliefs you have valued and cherished are up in smoke. Poof! Life, literally, doesn't make sense anymore.

Can this chasm be crossed? Can two such diametrically opposed sets of values ever be brought into alignment? Even more than that: Can two sides that seem to be polar opposites actually exist --no, thrive -- under a common set of rules? They can. The popular buzzwords are digital transformation. But haven't we actually been digitally transforming since before the mid 1990s? Yes, so let's call it what it is -- a value transformation. (Which means it's a people transformation.)

Go to part two of Spalding's essay on the evolution of IT, "Soar toward 'value transformation' on DevOps wings," for a discussion of DevOps' role in delivering today's definition of business value.

A strategic CIO plays the long game

Need for speed propels DevOps

Masters of low-cost, low-risk change

View original post here:

The evolution of IT: From 'IT doesn't matter' to value creator - TechTarget

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Tim Allen hasnt been having the greatest year. A rare, outspoken Hollywood conservative, shortly after the election the Home Improvement star caught flack for suggesting that Trump supporters are unfairly bullied, and instead of learning from that mistake later doubled down on those remarks by telling Jimmy Kimmel that being a Hollywood conservative is akin to living in 1930s Germany.

A couple of months later, Last Man Standing was canceled by ABC, and although it seemed possible that CMT might pick up the family sitcom, the cable network made like Lucy with the football when it became apparent that it was too expensive to continue producing.

Thats a rough shake for anybody to go through within the span of just six months or so, and as of Wednesday, Allens name was trending again and not for a flattering reason. Late Tuesday night, the Tool Man gifted the world with this deep thought on evolution.

It was his real Kirk Cameron banana moment, you could say.

Continue reading here:

Tim Allen Has Found Himself The Subject Of Ridicule Over His Hot Take On Evolution - UPROXX

HARI SREENIVASAN: Now a look at the state of global terrorism.

It comes from Ali Soufan, a former FBI counterterrorism agent who identified the 9/11 hijackers. He details the evolution of terrorism in this newest addition to the NewsHour Bookshelf, The Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State.

He recently sat down with Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: You write in this book that the night Osama bin Laden was announced to have been killed, you were home alone. And then, instead of feeling jubilation, you felt troubled. Why was that?

ALI SOUFAN, Author, The Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State: I was happy that we finally got him. And a lot of my colleagues and friends that I know who sacrificed so much, some of them their lives, you know, finally can rest, knowing that hes dead.

But also, at the same time, I kind of was troubled that we are now not fighting an organization anymore. The terrorists, the threat mutated to a message. Bin Laden accomplished something way bigger. He had a message that was spreading around the Muslim world.

Unfortunately, on May 2, 2011, we killed bin Laden, but we didnt kill his message. His message lives.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, the world has been focused for the last five years or so on Islamic State.

ALI SOUFAN: Yes.

MARGARET WARNER: Major move to get rid of their territorial caliphate.

When thats accomplished, what then?

ALI SOUFAN: See, we forget that the Islamic State basically was a branch of al-Qaida. It used to be al-Qaida in Iraq.

So, when it comes to the message, its the same message of Osama bin Laden. They differ at what stage they are in, in their plan. Are they in stage two, where they just need to create chaos and manage that chaos? Or they are in stage three, establishing a caliphate?

ISIS decided that they are in stage three, established a caliphate and prepare for the final confrontation with the West. But, today, as you mentioned, we see ISIS dwindling. We see that terrorist organization, with all their bravado, losing their territory and going back from a proto-state to an underground terrorist organization.

I think most of the people who joined ISIS are still believers in what bin Laden started back in the early 90s. I wont be greatly surprised to see some kind of a merger between these two organizations under the flag of the message of Osama bin Laden.

And I think his son Hamza today is trying to be the person who claims that message.

MARGARET WARNER: The next bin Laden.

ALI SOUFAN: Exactly.

MARGARET WARNER: You, in almost a novelistic way, look at bin Laden or al-Zarqawi, who was the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, or Baghdadi, the head of ISIS.

ALI SOUFAN: Yes.

MARGARET WARNER: Was there a common thread among them?

ALI SOUFAN: Well, yes, absolutely. And the common thread is their own belief.

It is people who believe that there is an ongoing war between the West and the United States. And anyone who does not in their way of interpreting events around the world is an infidel, regardless if youre a Muslim or youre not a Muslim. That doesnt matter.

And thats why almost 95 percent of the victims of this form of terrorism are Muslims.

MARGARET WARNER: Now , you mentioned Hamza, Osama bin Ladens son, who, by my count, would be, what, 27 years old?

(CROSSTALK)

ALI SOUFAN: Twenty-eight, yes.

MARGARET WARNER: You think hes the coming face of al-Qaida?

ALI SOUFAN: I think they are preparing him to be the coming face. I mean, he has been a face of al-Qaida since he was a child. He was always featured in the propaganda tapes of al-Qaida.

At the age of 13, he was the voice of fiery poems in the presence of his dad about al-Qaida and about jihad. So, many of those old members of al-Qaida fondly remember him.

Hamza, recently, he put five or six messages, but only in the last message, al-Qaida announced him to be sheik, which indicates a promotion. Before, they used to call him Brother Mujahid.

So, we know that al-Qaida is putting him in a leadership position.

MARGARET WARNER: Lets go back to the threat to the United States.

ALI SOUFAN: Yes.

MARGARET WARNER: How can the West, which has been at it for 16 years already, confront that?

ALI SOUFAN: Were not seeing, you know, organizational terrorism threat anymore.

I think the boundaries, you know, between ISIS, al-Qaida, you name it, whatever you want to name it

MARGARET WARNER: All their affiliates.

ALI SOUFAN: All the affiliates. Its kind of very blurry.

I think we have to focus on the message, not on the organization. I think the threat of terrorism mutated since 9/11. It shifted from being an organization to a message with affiliates across the Muslim world. And these affiliates are gaining a lot of strength because of the civil wars that exist in places like Syria or Iraq or Libya or Somalia, you name it.

So, I think what we need to do, number one, is to find a political solution and diplomatic solution for these conflicts. Without solving the conflicts in these areas, its going to be extremely difficult to diminish the threat.

Second, we need to force countries in the region not to use sectarianism in their geopolitical struggle against each other to garnish back influence in the region.

Third, we need to fight the narrative by exposing the hypocrisy of an organization that claims or a message that claims the United States and the West are at war with Islam. But they kill more Muslims than anyone else.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think that the United States or the West is capable of doing effective countermessaging?

ALI SOUFAN: I dont think governments can do the job, not in the United States, not even in the Muslim world, because governments dont have the credibility.

But there are a lot of things that governments can do. We need to facilitate civil organizations to stand up and speak against these extremists.

Sixteen years after 9/11, we still dont even know what to call the enemy, rather than form a comprehensive strategy. And thats what I try to do in this book. I try to write a novel with real characters in it, with the hope that the American people understand the threat that you are dealing with.

And I hope, in a small, little way, I will be able to contribute to better understanding of the threat that we all continue to face 20 years later.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, Ali Soufan, Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State.

Thank you very much.

ALI SOUFAN: Thank you.

Read the original post:

New book traces the evolution of terrorism since bin Laden - PBS NewsHour

Almost one out of two meeting planners today says that event technology is a primary pain point, according to a new study published by etouches.

Another new report from Cvent revealed similar sentiments among planners relating to cloud-based event management platforms, stating, Planners cite poor transparency and accuracy over pricing, along with lack of clarity and poor response rates, as their main pain point with venue selection.

In the etouches report, the top concerns among planners pre-event are: selecting the right content (56 percent) and managing attendee registration (51 percent). During the event, the biggest pain points are: communication with attendees (44 percent) and registration/check-in (42 percent).

Post-event, 65 percent of planners say that theyre using technology to measure the overall return on investment (ROI), but at the same time, how they analyze and use that data to inform future event programming and design remains a challenge.

In the Cvent study, the overwhelming pain point for planners is the length of time it takes to receive responses from hotels for their digital requests for proposals (RFPs), and the often inaccurate and/or omitted costs supplied within those responses.

Speaking at the annual Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) conference in Boston last month, representatives at both etouches and Cvent addressed the ongoing challenges with event technology adoption, and how their services are evolving to make tech more user friendly and effective for the planner community.

In the media and event space, technology was for so long an efficiency play, in terms of its just a better way to do business when you can capture some data automatically, said Mike Mason, VP, sourcing and hospitality solutions with etouches.

I think its now evolved, and what youre seeing is the importance of the onsite experience. During the event, attendees need more than just content. Its really about, how do you engage that attendee at a level with them theyve never had before? Because, you know, everyones fighting for attendees.

Earlier this year, etouches acquired the Loopd platform to deliver new solutions for on-site engagement, using artificial intelligence to provide a more personalized event experience.

Loopd integrates bi-directional wearable smart badges, a mobile event app, and a cloud-based analytics engine. When attendees are using the Loopd badges, which can transmit contact information and any other kind of digital content, event organizers can track how attendees are moving through the event, and which programming is most popular.

Attendees also have a record of every vendor they approached and who they met, and based on commonalities across the spectrum of those event and vendor contacts, Loopds machine learning provides suggestions for similar participants that may be of interest for the individual attendee.

If the device understands that youre talking to me and were sharing information, and it looks at what is important to me and whats important to you, it can begin to build a profile of who you might be interested in talking to, said Mason.

Tie that into the mobile app where event managers can now feed you information that might be important to you based on where you are, said Mason. You might be walking by a session that you didnt think about, and [the app] will say, Hey listen, you mentioned this before. You might want to step inside here. This is what theyre talking about right now. So its real time, and were just on the front end of that.

However, Mason added that its incumbent on event tech firms across the industry to do a better job managing expectations and delivering the support necessary to help planners use technology more effectively.

With technology companies, we need to play a much more concentrative role in the process to help you benefit from it, because unless you benefit from it, and see the ROI, its just gonna be a pain in the butt, he explained. So, we have an ROI tool that we launched at the end of last year, and well sit down and spend time with our customers to establish their baseline key performance indicators, metrics, and goals. So they can see at any point, before, during and after an event, because its all real time, how theyre impacting the trajectory of an event.

With the exponential rise of digital RFPs, hotels are challenged with prioritizing the onslaught of proposals they receive, which is the root cause for the lengthy time it often takes to respond to planners.

Theres no doubt that the increased volume in the RFPs is putting pressure on hotels to respond, saidBrian Ludwig, SVP of sales at Cvent. One of the things that proves to be most effective in getting awarded business is how quick and responsive you are to the planners that are submitting that proposal. So for hotels, its about how do we effectively process all these incoming leads. And then how do we deal with the smaller meetings that might be able to be done in an automated fashion, so that we can focus the manpower on the more complicated pieces of business.

Toward that end, Cvent launched anew Group Business Intelligence tool this summer, designed to provide real-time data and analytics of hotels group business leads, and those of their competitors, in a single platform, helping hotel sales staff prioritize incoming queries and score leads.

The tool is also intended to make it easier for hoteliers to examine leads, dissected by specific time periods, customer segments, competitor rates, response times, and peak night volume, helping calculate the potential value of each piece of group business with more context and business insight than before.

Its really about bubbling up that data in a way that can be used and leveraged by organizations more intelligently, said David Quattrone, chief technology officer at Cvent. Its really taking it up a level where you get some insights into how youre competing and where youre effective versus not, and how you can adjust things.

Ludwig added that the Business Intelligence tool is also designed to help hotels schedule group business more strategically to maximize their open dates, soft weeks, and overall event calendars.

So, for a hotel rep now, youll compare what your turnaround time is versus your competitors, whether youre adding in the right information around alternative dates, whether youre able to shift business, Ludwig said. For example, you could have a piece of business that might from a lead-scoring perspective not look that attractive, but if you expand out to an alternative date, all of a sudden it becomes a very lucrative piece of business.

See full article

Photo Credit: The etouches group at IMEX America 2016. The company recently acquired another company to provide AI-powered, personalized event experiences. etouches

Read more from the original source:

Meeting Planners Are Struggling With the Fast Evolution of Event Technology - Skift

Flanked by pallets, kegs and towering, shiny stainless steel tanks, Jim Sharp walked me through the Evolution Craft Brewing Co. brewhouse located in Salisbury on the road to Ocean City.

Sharp is one of three head brewers.

Mike, hes an analytical guy, he said as we make our way through the equipment. His brain is just, all the time, firing on everything. Then youve got Tim, who is more laid back. If something goes terribly wrong, hes the one saying, Hey, take it easy. Everythings going to be fine. I think Im a little bit of an in between of both of them.

When he tells me that, and the fact that he doesnt stress out easily, Im not surprised. Within minutes of meeting the affable engineer-turned-brewer, it became clear Sharp is a relaxed guy.

Hes a seasoned pro, thanks to years in the industry including a stint as the brewer for Tall Tales in Parsonsburg but isnt phased by much.

Once, my pump went up in the middle of night, he continues. It was midnight, and it started spraying beer. I just shut everything down and spent another three hours on my hands and knees in three-inch-deep hot water, trying to fix it without tools. But during moments like that, I always tell myself, I have my dream job, and I dont have to sit behind a desk for nine hours a day.

Even though Sharps comfort in his own skin is emblematic of Evolutions welcoming, community-focused culture as a whole, the company whose owners are the first to admit they hasnt always done a good job of telling their own story.

Its a challenge that only amplifies itself the farther you travel from their brewery and cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge into Annapolis, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and beyond.

John and Tom Knorr are brothers, as well as the founders of Evolution. The former brought with him a love of food, and the latter came to the proverbial table with a love of beer. It was the marriage of those two elements that would later serve as the foundation for the brewery but before that, their story began with restaurants.

It started with The Red Roost Crabhouse and Restaurant in Whitehaven. They needed the best pale ale they could possibly get their hands on. Why? Well, its what pairs well with crabs.

But instead of seeking one out, they brewed their own the Primal pale ale, the first-ever Evolution beer.

Now, in addition to The Red Roost, their family of restaurants includes Boonies Burgers, Beer and Bait; SoBos Wine Beerstro; Specific Gravity Pizzeria and Beer Joint; Birroteca; The Nickel Taphouse; and Encantada.

Evolutions restaurant-forward approach is why youll find food pairing recommendations on virtually all of their beers sold including their newest seasonal IPA, Hops Limn.

Built on the success of their Pine-hop-le pineapple IPA (first released in 2016), this complement to fish tacos, hot summer days and sunshine has already sadly come and almost gone. But, if you see Hops Limn out in the wild on draft or in six packs, its worth the pickup.

There are beer drinkers who side-eye fruit-infused IPAs with the same angst they reserve for pumpkin beers. While I try to see the good in all of Beer Gods children, Ill admit I was also apprehensive, given my dislike of shandies, a blend of beer and some sort of carbonated drink, like fizzy lemonade.

Ick. Shandies are liquid, tart-fueled nightmares.

Lucky for my taste buds, Hops Limn hits the spot with a subtle kiss of citrus against the backdrop of a more traditional IPA recipe. (In fact, Id wager this beer may even prove inviting to those who have been skeptical of IPAs in the past.)

Additionally, as much as I love my tall boys of limited hazy hop bombs, Evolution demonstrates with this new release that you dont need to produce a beer that should be poured through a strainer before you drink it, for it to be considered delightfully juicy and crushable.

But the fact that Evolution has chalked up another win in their beer column should come as no surprise.

Evolutions Lot No. 6 double IPA is a classic, beloved by many a beer nerd far and wide. Nouveau Rouge is a phenomenal Flanders-style sour ale project found on our table every Thanksgiving. Though less popular, their Exile red ale also has a special place in my heart and it holds its own when placed alongside a generously-seasoned lamb shank.

And dont even get me started on their Rise Up imperial stout, made with local Rise Up brand coffee.

But at a time when the industry is changing rapidly, whats next for Evolution?

Even though their beach-side accounts are clamoring to have their product available in cans, and they recently started distributing to Tokyo (really!), their next investment will be in their own backyard.

Where some might look outward after years of success and forward momentum, the Evolution team announced in July theyre getting back to their roots through an expansion. They realized when people visit, many only remember the experience of their Public House, a restaurant attached to the brewing facility.

The renovations will include a family-friendly gathering area the kind has become synonymous with the modern brewery with plenty of green space, a fire pit and a little cornhole for good measure. Inside, they will be putting in a smaller brew house and pilot system that visitors will be able to see as theyre sipping from pints in the taproom.

Though these plans are made possible by the growth theyve seen since opening their doors in 2009, their choice to pivot backward is by design. Because, no matter what lays along the road ahead for Evolution, they want to ensure their connection to their community and their roots the foundation of who they are never gets left behind.

Liz Murphy lives in Annapolis with her husband, Patrick, and their two lazy dogs, Horatio and Nugget. She runs her own Annapolis-based beer blog, Naptown Pint. You can reach her at liz@naptownpint.com.

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Naptown Pint: Evolution Craft Brewing's road ahead starts at home - CapitalGazette.com