⏱️2-Minute Break -🏈Super Bowl Edition with Gerard Hudson
For Gerard Hudson, Go Beyond is a way of life. From prepping for the Super Bowl, to cleaning up post-Katrina, to creating puzzles and … jetskis? Gerard loves a challenge.
For the past three years, Gerard has helped design and build the network that will power Super Bowl LIX and allow our customers to share the experience with friends and family better than ever before. What did Gerard and his team do to prepare? Glad you asked:
They created the largest millimeter wave system that Verizon's ever deployed
At Caesars Superdome, they deployed 509 5G UltraWideband and 155 C-band radios, giving fans the same capacity of a small city
They laid more than 560 miles of fiber in the Greater New Orleans area - that’s enough to wrap the outside of the Caesars Superdome 869 times!
They added unmatched large-capacity connections at the most popular areas in New Orleans — like Bourbon Street, Louis Armstrong International Airport and Jackson Square
These permanent changes will remain a fixture of the New Orleans network — powering and empowering how residents and visitors live, work and play for years to come.
⏱️Now that you know what Gerard has been doing at work, take 2 Minutes to learn about all the other amazing things that make this V Teamer one-of-a-kind.
🎓How did you come to work for Verizon?
I had a friend who graduated a semester before me, and was hired at Verizon. He told me to apply for an internship, and I did. I was hired as an intern in February of 2007, so next month will begin my 18th year!
🏓 It’s amazing how many people come to Verizon and stay for decades. But like a lot of V Teamers, you’ve had more than one job.
That’s true, I’ve bounced back and forth between positions multiple times, moving from system performance engineering to radio frequency engineering and so forth. I jump in to take care of whatever they need me to do.
🧩 January 29 was National Puzzle Day. How did you get interested in making puzzles?
I had a buddy who was really into these sequential discovery puzzles (i.e. puzzles that require a series of steps and hidden tools to solve), but many of the puzzles can be very pricey and hard to find. I got into 3D printing and discovered a group with a puzzle library where creators allowed people to recreate their puzzles. With permission from the creator, I made an exact working replica of a very famous puzzle.
🐢 How did Turtle Trip, your award-winning puzzle come to be?
While I was on a trip to Japan, my girlfriend played a practical joke on me and filled my house with hundreds of tiny plastic turtles. So, I came up with the idea of a puzzle about a turtle who needed to find his party pants. I engineered it, manufactured it, assembled it, had my girlfriend sew tiny pants, asked a friend to write the story, and it all came together. (Learn more about Turtle Trip here.)
(Unfortunately, Turtle Trip is out of print at this time, as it is a very time consuming manufacturing process that Gerard handles himself.)
🧰 You have some amazing hobbies.
I did build my own jet ski once. Right now, I have a 100-gallon paludarium with Starry Night Reed Frogs and a 75-gallon fish tank with a colony of yellow lab cichlids. I've also got three 3-D printers, a small electronics workshop in my garage and a pinball machine in my living room.
🩸Give us one more fun fact about you.
12 years ago, one of the engineers I work with had a baby with a genetic issue that prevented him from producing platelets. I started doing replacement donations for him and 12 years later, I’ve donated more than 15 gallons of platelets.
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