Tales from the Technoverse

Commentary on social networking, technology, movies, society, and random musings

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Federal Countdown – October 5th

October 6th, 2012 · big data, government 2.0, government business, technology

Every now and again, I get invited to appear on the Federal Countdown, hosted by Francis Rose, Friday afternoons from 3pm to 4pm on WFED radio.

The focus of the show is to have two guests select their three most important stories about the Federal Government. The third most important article is discussed by each guest individually. Then both comment on the two selected second-most and first-most (first-most or just most?) important stories of the week.

Yesterday John Salamone, who is a managing consultant at Federal Management Partners, were the guests. I thought I would provide a brief summary of the three articles I brought in this entry.

The audio for the session is posted on the WFED web-site at:

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/156/3067288/Federal-News-Countdown-Big-data-sequestration-solutions-and-cloud-savings.

[Read more →]

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Turning A Page

October 2nd, 2012 · baseball, washington nationals

Last night I had the pleasure of going to a game lost by the Washington Nationals. And, of course, the reason was that in the middle of the 9th inning, we found out that the Pittsburgh Pirates had beaten the second place Atlanta Braves which meant the Nationals had won the National League East.

I am one of those people born in Washington DC and lived in the area all my life. I still have fond memories of my father taking me to see the hapless Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium. For those who never went, Griffith Stadium was sort-of a mirror image of Fenway Park in Boston. Washington’s ‘Green Monster’ was in right field, not like Fenway’s left field one. The other difference was that Washington’s team was ALWAYS terrible and the crowd’s fairly small. [Read more →]

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Follow Your Passion

September 27th, 2012 · Firefly, life, movies, Serenity

I have learned over the years that doing things that you are passionate about is very important.

This was brought home to me earlier this week when I had lunch with a long-time friend of mine who I worked with during my time at Sun Microsystems. We were comparing job experiences and she remarked that every time she took a job purely because of the money that it ended up being a mistake.

Of course, I recognize that acting on that understanding is not always easy. [Read more →]

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Using Biological Constructs As Metaphors For Developing System Architecture

August 19th, 2012 · cyber-security, presentations, technology

Last week I read about a research team at Harvard lead by George Church that encoded Church’s next book in DNA. As the write-up in the Harvard Medical School web page, http://hms.harvard.edu/content/writing-book-dna, said:

“Although George Church’s next book doesn’t hit the shelves until Oct. 2, it has already passed an enviable benchmark: 70 billion copies—roughly triple the sum of the top 100 books of all time.”

A Wall Street Journal write-up by Robert Lee Hotz, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444233104577593291643488120.html?mod=e2tw, quoted Church as pointing out that:

“A device the size of your thumb could store as much information as the whole Internet”

The articles go on to talk about the issues involved with the achievement, for example currently it is only possible to read the information sequentially and both reading and writing is slow, all of which in the end are engineering issues which will be solved over time.

The interesting issue to me is how it is increasingly useful to use biological metaphors to drive thinking about systems design and architecture and in more recent times of course using actual biology itself. And while we use the words, I am not convinced we have thought through all of the implications.

[Read more →]

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Thoughts On Technology Futures

August 3rd, 2012 · cloud computing, cyber-security, government 2.0, government business, technology

For the last two year’s I have written, or largely written, the Powertek Corporation, www.powertekcorporation.com, response to a SmartCEO, http://www.smartceo.com/, set of questions associated with where Powertek is positioned technically and what that means to the company. While preparing this year’s, I looked at what I had written in 2011 and by golly, much of what I wrote is still pretty good, so thought I would post it here and then follow up a while later with our new, improved thinking.

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A Visit to Cornerstone Christian Church

July 25th, 2012 · history, international, presentations

A few weeks ago, early on a Saturday morning, I found myself at the Cornerstone Christian Church in Richmond, VA, sitting in a chair in the Church social hall. Facing me were perhaps 15 young (and not so young) immigrants from various parts of Sudan.

I had wrestled for perhaps two weeks since I was invited to kick off a two-day seminar on volunteer organizing, trying to figure out what I could offer that would be of value. For each of these immigrants were members of the Lost Boys (or Girls) of Sudan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Boys_of_Sudan. [Read more →]

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The History of Invulnerability

July 8th, 2012 · books, Entertainment, history

When I was young I was an avid comic reader, originally obsessive about lots of DC comics like Superman and Batman and later Marvel comics like Spiderman and the Avengers. Today I get to see all of these characters on the movie screen, the aging fanboy I guess I have become, without much regard to the quality of the film.

The last thing that would have occurred to me to think about was the fact that the comics were created by actual people with actual lives and actual concerns and issues.

Last night we went to see The History of Invulnerability by David Bar Katz at the DCJCC. The play focuses on the story of Jerry Siegel, one of the creators of Superman in 1938 along with his artist partner, Joe Shuster. [Read more →]

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My Wild and Crazy Week

June 8th, 2012 · afcea, books, life, travel, washington nationals

Once a year, Ellen goes to New York for a book festival for almost a week, like this last week typically leaving Sunday morning and returning Thursday evening.

I will note in passing that when Ellen goes to New York, she takes the bus; when I go, I take the train. One wonders what conclusions can be drawn from this (Gender differences? Political differences? Attitude toward spending money differences?)

Anyway, during that week I am ON MY OWN. Able to do WHATEVER I WANT. Free to do it WHENEVER I FEEL LIKE IT.  Of course, except when I have to go to work, or work on my classes I teach, or this last Sunday except when I am with my younger daughter, Tamar, watching the last two episodes of Game of Thrones for the season. [Read more →]

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Reflections on the DOT Headquarters Move

June 2nd, 2012 · technology

While working on lesson plans for some of the classes I teach, I came across the summary and lessons learned I wrote up after we finished the move of the US Department’s of Transportation headquarters from L’Enfant Plaza to the Navy Yard. It original appeared in Federal Times, I thought some of it might be applicable to other large IT projects and have reprinted it here:

The Department of Transportation Moves to a New Headquarters

Daniel G. Mintz, Chief Information Officer

Department of Transportation

 “We’ve done the impossible and that makes us mighty.”

– Mal, Serenity Captain, Firefly TV Series

The weekend of June 22, the last employee was moved out of the old Department of Transportation headquarters building at L’Enfant Plaza and moved into the new building on the Southeast Federal Center.  That weekend the entire Office of the Secretary, including all of the communications associated with relocating a Cabinet Level Secretary were also moved.

[Read more →]

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Broadcast of My Interview w/Mark Amtower – Amtower Off Center

April 9th, 2012 · cloud computing, cyber-security, government business, social networking, technology

With the Washington Capitals having made the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Phrase “Off Center” means something a bit different than it might have a week ago.

Regardless I had a great time recording Mark Amtower’s show last Friday, for broadcast today, Monday, April 9th, at noon, and rebroadcast Thursday, April 12th at 11am.

The other guest was Ed Swallow, VP of Business Development, for Northrup Grumman’s Civil Systems Division.

We kicked around the differences between working for a large or small company, in my case Powertek Corporation, www.powertekcorporation.com; as well as how the two can work together.

Technology topics include Cybersecurity and mobility. No technology discussion would be complete without some mention of ‘the cloud’, so we covered that also.

We talked about how small companies can differentiate themselves, Mark’s summary of the program discusses Ed’s approach:

http://blog.federaldirect.net/2012/04/some-great-small-biz-tips-on-amtower.html

I discussed how Powertek has taken the concept of the Voice of the Customer which we use to ensure we get usable feedback on projects and added additional structure to it in order to make it a Powertek value-add.

Thanks to Mark for inviting me and for Ed Swallow for being such a great fellow participant.

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