Brij Singh's Random Musings

From the innovation conference

Once I finish Rheingold's Smart Mobs, I will revisit this topic of social software and innovation :

Steelcase’s research, some done in conjunction with Conifer, asks these questions: What kind of spaces enhance innovation, and what kind of space detracts from innovation? And, even better: Where does innovation live [in the workplace]? Answer: In the linkages between people.

And yes, this is the very territory that the social networking folks are working on. One way to look at social software would be, does the software allow for the right kind of linkages between people, the right kind of access to the space where innovation lives? In their talk, Tom and Jason set forth some “Principles of Innovation Space, and I include them here because I wonder if these same principles would apply to the “space” that a group creates/accesses by using social software, or if the entire model would be different. Here are the principles:

Persistence: Supports the continuous refinement of the team’s “shared mind.”
Intent: Not just meeting space, but shared work space in which sustained, purposeful efforts take place and leave traces behind.
Interaction: Encourages and explicitly drives interaction, bridges the digital and physical worlds.
Dynamism: Purpose of the space changes as intentions and goals change.
Flexibility: Supports change modes in innovation.

It seems to me that these would be excellent principles to apply to social software. But that’s not my field, so I’m totally open to comments there. And of course, if you talk about social software in terms of disruptive innovations, then at some point (perhaps already bubbling up now) there’ll be some kind of software that allows us to interact and work together in ways that we can’t even imagine yet. If it’s really disruptive, it will allow us to work together in ways that even its creator(s) didn’t imagine.

Quote

Once in a while you bump into some quote which tried to stay in the mind -

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

- Christopher Morley (1890-1957)
American Novelist, Journalist, Poet

Huge computing power goes online

The technology now being deployed for particle physics will ultimately change the way that science and business are undertaken in the years to come

The LHC is going to test the Big Bang theory by smashing protons together at high energies.

The data generate by the experiment are expected to fill the equivalent of more than 20 million CDs a year and some 70,000 computers would be needed to analyse the data

Recommended management books

Melissa Shaw, from Network Fusion writes about her favorite management books -

* "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey.
Any of Covey's books are excellent, and if you haven't read any
of them, this is a good place to start. What I like most about
"7 Habits" is the fact that they can improve all aspects of
your life, not just your time spent in the office. To whatever
degree you implement his theories, they will yield fruit.

* "To Do, Doing, Done" by G. Lynne Snead and Joyce Wycoff. This
is a great title on project management and organization. This
book actually got me excited about organizing my files. If you
can't remember the color of the top of your desk, consider this
book.

* "Love 'Em or Lose 'Em" by Beverly Kaye and Sharon
Jordan-Evans. Worried your employees will bolt when the job
market picks up? Check out this book, a very engaging, fun
read on how to keep your superstars from leaving your orbit.

* "Turn it Off" by Gil Gordon. If you have issues with work
creeping into your personal life, this would be a good read for
you. Gordon offers you many suggestions on how to "unplug" from
work without hamstringing your career. He also includes an
excellent chapter on how managers can encourage workaholic
employees to "turn it off."

* Any of Bob Nelson's other books, "1001 Ways to Energize
Employees" -"1001 Ways to Reward Employees" - etc. I like
Nelson's work because they're nearly all real-life examples of
programs or ways managers, well, manage. You can get some great
ideas that could be implemented in your department from his
works.

Internet remake needed

Lot more to come ahead -

Today, copper wire brings broadband Internet access to 10 million American homes, says research project director Hui Zhang, who leads the collaboration from Carnegie Mellon University. The researchers envision a new fiberoptic network reaching 100 million American households within the next few years. Mr. McKeown says data could enter or leave homes at 100 megabits per second -- about 2,000 times faster than dial-up Internet access and about 100 times faster than DSL. Over this next-generation network, file size would no longer limit what can be sent over the Internet, removing a major roadblock to delivery of high-definition video on demand.

IT job security 'gone forever'

Welcome to the free agent nation.

IT job security 'gone forever' -- Gartner

Gartner predicts job losses will be staggering in mature markets such as Australia and the United States. "Each year, one in 10 jobs at vendors will move to emerging markets, while one in 20 will go on the user side," Gartner says.

Gartner says 83 percent of 151 chief information officers it surveyed globally have reported that their companies are going to IT outsourcing, process-based working or application development embedded in the business. Most said the greatest hurdles to implementing change were staff resistance and lack of competence to deliver IT differently.

World of education on a constant change

Lecture videos

Red hat building Open source architecture

Nothing new in this strategy, important thing to find out is whether they can deeply integrate all of these pieces and match the best of breed linux vendor offerings.

Red Hat is taking a three-phase approach to the new architecture.

The first will lay down Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 as the unifying platform. Seven separate hardware architectures for clients and servers will rest on top of that. The company will use Red Hat Network to deliver the technology.

Second, Red Hat is going to build its Web-applications framework, using its work with the ObjectWeb consortium, the Apache Software Foundation and the Eclipse IDE development community.

In the final phase -- the part most important to corporate managers -- Red Hat will work on integration virtualization and management capabilities. Goals include getting the most out of systems and storage.

choosing blogging software

Criteria for choosing blogging software which allows group authoring -

Must allow multiple authors (this is to be a team/group blog)
Should be low cost or free, ideally open source
We want to host it ourselves rather than using 3rd party servers
Ideally searchable
Should have some kind of CMS (Allow posting of drafts, which other editors approve)
Commentable
Searchable
Easy posting from Macs (bookmarklets, hotkey for hyperlinks within a web form)
RSS syndication and, ideally, aggregation

Some packages short listed -

Greymatter
Movable Type
Blogger
Live Journal
Radio UserLand

I like Movable Type, will try Live Journal for our site as its easier to setup.

Solaris/Linux Comparison Chart

Fail to understand whats the point of this comparison -

Solaris/Linux Comparison Chart

"Open source: Ideally suited for experimental projects due to low cost, and fast, yet unpredictable evolution" - Duh