FIRSTHAND STORIES WITH ANTHONY VELTRI
Nobody Asked.
Anyways, here’s what happened.
Hurricanes. An ash cloud. A 1790 farmhouse. A truck bought on eBay that ended up responding to Hurricane Katrina.
These are stories from places I’ve worked, situations I didn’t exactly plan for, and people I still remember years later. Along the way, I took photographs & videos. Sometimes, I remembered to turn the camera on, too.
Some stories involve national emergencies. Others involve discovering what the previous owner of your house considered an acceptable repair.
Nobody asked. I already had the pictures out.
Anyways, here’s what happened.
A few stories to start with.
A nameplate at Hoover Dam. A truck from eBay. A volcano with terrible timing. Pick whichever one makes you curious.
Somebody put their name on it.
At Hoover Dam, a small maintenance nameplate caught my attention. Years later, I’m still thinking about the person whose name was on it.
So I bought a truck on eBay.
It became a mobile mapping lab. Then Hurricane Katrina happened, and the truck became part of a much bigger story.
The volcano wasn’t on the itinerary.
An Icelandic ash cloud stranded me in Vienna while a multinational exercise was waiting in Kyiv. Getting there became its own operation.
Pick a story.
Start wherever something catches your eye. Each story stands on its own. There’s no required reading, and nobody’s checking whether you learned anything.
The Scalpel vs. The Swiss Army Knife: When Solo Integration Beats Federation
Field Guide: Disconnected Editing Is Not a GIS Feature. It Is a Survival Pattern.
Why I Kept Quiet: A Field Note on the Stewardship of Operational Knowledge
Field Note: When You Call a Committee a Team
Sphere and Spikes: Building What You Need Without Becoming a Specialist
Field Note: The 1790 Farmhouse and What It Taught Me About Stewardship
Field Notes: Why Facts Don’t Change Minds: Motivation And Story Frameworks For Leaders
Field Notes – The Pre-Shoot Ritual: How To Lower Friction For High-Stakes Video
Field Note: Rapid Goal Setting For Cross Functional Teams
The Audition Trap: Why Panel Interviews Create False Negatives in Hiring
Systems Built On Heroics Are Brittle
How Wildland Fire Actually Moves: A Guide To The Three Tier Dispatch System
Field Notes: What The Katrina Book Was Really For
Field Notes: What The Mobile Mapping Unit Taught Me About Forward-Deployed Systems
Field Notes: What I Learned Writing The Government Video Guide
Guarding the Room: A Hubbard Brook Story About Science and Funding
About the voice: “Nobody Asked” nods to the deli-counter storytellers I grew up around. Somebody’s holding court, the story is already underway, and whoever’s in the room is part of it. “Anyways” is how the storyteller picks up the thread and keeps going, unbothered. My scientific and professional writing has its own register. Here, I write closer to how I tell these stories out loud.