Recently in Other Category
Today on my way in to work I reached 5,000 total miles on my bicycle. That's about the same as going from Seattle to Detroit and back (assuming one would want to go to Detroit in the first place).
It's been almost exactly five years since I got my current bike, so that averages out to about a thousand miles a year. It's definitely been more than that in the past year. While that doesn't make me Lance Armstrong, or Kole Kantner for that matter, it sure feels good to be riding regularly, and I'm comfortable enough doing it in all kinds of weather that this year I gave up my parking pass (though I can always take the bus or use commuter parking tickets).
Reliable, human-powered transportation. What more could you ask for? I'm looking forward to passing the traffic jams on the first couple of days of Fall Quarter!
Technorati Tags: bicycling
I don't think it will surprise anybody when I say that as far as work goes here in UW Technology, it's been a terrible summer.
Hopefully I'm not hallucinating, but I think that now I can begin to see a faint glimmer of light that I'm hoping might be coming from the end of the tunnel.
We've now found new homes for all of the folks who remained in UW Technology after the May layoffs, all within various parts of UW Technology Services
I am now reporting to Associate VP Scott Mah. While we're still working out the details of job title and description, I'll be generally continuing to work on issues of technology strategy, coordination, and communication with other parts of UW Technology and university units, as well as continuing to coordinate new technology evaluation and integration for the UW. I'll also continue participating in representing the UW in regional and national technology forums (as much as time and budget allow).
Scott is someone I've known since coming to the UW, and as I've worked with him more over the last couple of years I've been impressed with his growth as a leader over that time. Scott is smart and works incredibly hard at developing his organization and moving the UW in the right directions. I'm pleased and excited about this opportunity to work closely with Scott.
RL "Bob" Morgan is joining the Identity and Access Management (IAM) group within Distributed Systems. Most of Bob's UW work over the years has been very closely aligned with the IAM folks, so this comes as a natural evolution. Bob will report to Nathan Dors, and will also continue his work with Internet2 and other national groups working on issues of identity management and associated issues.
Fang Lin and Leman Chung, who are software developers who work on the My UW portal and associated apps, have joined the Applications Engineering team in Distributed Systems and are reporting to Janice Granberg. As part of the Apps Engineering team Fang and Leman are situated in a new home with engineering folks they've worked closely with over the years.
I'm also pleased that others from my former Emerging Technology team have found new homes within the UW. Bill Corrigan is working with Chuck Benson's team in Health Sciences, Tony Chang is working as an Integration Architect in the Office of Information Management, and Melissa Albin is also working in OIM.
While I still miss the eTech team and the work we were doing, it feels good to be able to start moving forward towards whatever comes next. Stay tuned - film at 11:00!
I realized that I hadn't blogged about our trip to New Orleans last weekend with KEXP.The story of the discussions between KEXP and WWOZ isn't really mine to tell (I was just there as a technology advisor), but the conversations were really interesting.
David Freedman and his 'OZ crew were terrific hosts, and it was great to be part of an insider's view of the Jazzfest. Everyone had interesting stories of Katrina and New Orleans pre and post. It was terribly sad to see some of the remaining devastation and drive through neighborhoods where there were still FEMA trailers in front of the houses, and to see how much abandoned and destroyed property there is.
It did seem like there was a lot of optimism in the air, and a feel of New Orleans coming back to life. Hard to say how much of that was just Jazzfest optimism.
WWOZ is an amazing part of the music community in a town where music really does matter in ways different from other places. We got to hear a lot of fabulous music - including Aaron Neville's first appearance in New Orleans since Katrina, in the gospel tent at Jazzfest.
Some pics of the trip are here.
The McKinsey Quarterly has an interesting interview with Pixar's Brad Bird about innovation. I was struck by this passage, among others:
The Quarterly: If you ask most companies how they innovate, they’ll say, “Know your customer. Find out what your customer really wants you to do.” It sounds like you think about innovation differently.
Brad Bird: Our goal is different because if you say you’re making a movie for “them,” that automatically puts you on an unsteady footing. The implication is, you’re making it for a group that you are not a member of—and there is something very insincere in that. If you’re dealing with a storytelling medium, which is a mechanized means of producing and presenting a dream that you’re inviting people to share, you’d better believe your dream or else it’s going to come off as patronizing.
So my goal is to make a movie I want to see. If I do it sincerely enough and well enough—if I’m hard on myself and not completely off base, not completely different from the rest of humanity—other people will also get engaged and find the film entertaining.
After chatting with Richard Katz about the idea of an ECAR book club a couple of weeks ago, I've been feeling a need to catch up on some professional reading lately - I get plenty of reading about specific technologies, but not enough on strategies that make technology useful.
I was impressed by Web Worker Daily's list of the Top 10 Books for Web Workers 2007 and immediately picked up a bunch of them. I started out by reading local author Scott Berkun's Myths of Innovation which is interesting and insightful, if not revelatory. Also on my shelf now are Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die; Dave Weinberger's Everything Is Miscellaneous - The Power of the New Digital Disorder; and Lois Kelly's Beyond Buzz - The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing.
I'm also working my way through Richard Florida's paper on The University and the Creative Economy - I'm intrigued by his ideas that it's the creative class of workers (artists, software people, the gay community, etc.) are a driving engine of success for urban areas in today's economy.
And when I don't feel like reading business books, I'm really enjoying Michael Chabon's delightful alternative history detective novel, The Yiddish Policeman's Union.
At the urging of a couple of friends, I'm also exploring the world of social book-listing - I'm using the Visual Bookshelf app on Facebook along with Richard and other friends, and at Tom Lenon's suggestion I've also joined Shelfari. We'll see if they stick.
Is there something in the air today?
xxx is . Yes she is. 21m ago
yyy is getting more abnormal all the time. 49m ago
zzz is thinking of crawling under a desk. 50m ago
Technorati Tags: facebook
Boy - today must be the day for presentations shared via SlideShare - here's another good one from Rohit Bhargava, who is Vice President of Interactive Marketing at Ogilvy Public Relations, on the 10 truths of marketing in a web 2.0 world.
Unfortunately for all you iPhone viewers, SlideShare uses Flash, so you can't see the presentation, so here are the 10 truths (minus the great illustrating graphics):
- Your secrets are not secrets
- Authenticity, not transparency
- Personality makes it real
- They know you are marketing
- Falling asleep on hold is bad
- Screwing up is an opportunity
- In strangers we (now) trust
- Features don't matter
- Your mom reads blogs (seriously)
- Relevance is content, not ads
As someone who regularly watches Mariners baseball games on TV (nice win over the Red Sox last night), I am alternately bemused and outraged by the statement near the end of each game that any
accounts and descriptions of this game may not be disseminated without express written consent of Major League Baseball
That is such a blatant and illegal misinterpretation of any intellectual property law as to be completely ridiculous - "I'd tell you about last night's game, but I have to get permission from MLB first".
Now at last, somebody's doing something about it:
The legitimacy of that broad claim may be determined by the Federal Trade Commission after the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a lengthy complaint with the FTC this morning. The CCIA is a trade group with members such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, RedHat, and others that promotes "open markets, open systems, and full, fair, and open competition." Those companies believe that the overly broad copyright claims "cast a pall" over the tech industry.
Related Stories
* What the Copyright Office thinks about Fair Use
* Did ya know? It's Fair Use Day: July 11, 2007
* NFL fumbles DMCA takedown battle, could face sanctions
The CCIA's complaint fingers the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBC Universal, Morgan Creek, DreamWorks, Harcourt Inc., and Penguin Group (USA) for deceptive trade practices, accusing them of systematically mispresenting the rights of consumers to use copyrighted material. "These warnings that we have been seeing for decades are false," CCIA spokesperson Jake Ward told Ars Technica in a Monday interview. "They are a misrepresentation of the law and a violation of consumers' rights."
It's about time.
I was shocked and saddened to read on Danah's blog that Peter Lyman died yesterday from cancer.
Peter was the University Librarian at USC in the early '90s, at a time when I was living in DC and looking for what to do next in my life. I interviewed with Peter and John Waiblinger and they offered me a job at USC, which I accepted.
Shortly after I accepted the job, Peter came to DC and we got together to chat. He was heading out to CNRI to meet with Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, and he invited me to come along. He was heading to Dulles after that, and asked if I'd drive to both CNRI and then take him to the airport. He was leaving on some overseas trip, and we soon realized that his huge suitcase and the Miata I was driving would present a challenge. We put the top down on the Miata, and Peter held onto the suitcase balanced on top of the trunk lid while I drove the Dulles toll road to Reston.
I still remember fondly sitting in the room with Peter and the two fathers of the Internet, soaking up the immense amount of intelligence that I was privileged to experience. The link between the library/information folks and the engineers forging the net was beginning to be formed in those early days, and Peter was one of those whose energy and intellect helped create much of what we now know as life on the net.
A week or so after that meeting the USC folks called to say that they had received a massive budget cut so wouldn't be hiring after all, so I never got a chance to work for Peter, which I've always regretted (though he left shortly thereafter to go to Berkeley, and I ended up at the UW a year or so later).
I hadn't seen Peter in a few years, and didn't know he was sick. He'll be sorely missed, though his presence will live on in the work of his students and those he mentored, like Danah.
Technorati Tags: people, peter-lyman
This line in Guy Kawasaki's interview of Seth Godin made me want to read Seth's new book, "The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)":
Losing organizations embrace tactics because they’re not flexible or brave enough to embrace strategy.
Is that a great line or what?
Seth goes on to say Smart organizations are clear and loud and vivid about their strategies and the market forgives them—endorses them too—when they change their tactics on the path of getting there.
That's good insight.
