Guindon design exercise slideshows

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n.b. G+ is evil. Need to go back to Picasaweb albums to do get generated embed code :( https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos?noredirect=1

Accenture competition for "Leaders of Tomorrow"

Accenture and The Irish Times hosting a competition seeking business ideas with prizes; the Leaders of Tomorrow Award.

Link = careers.accenture.com/Microsites/leaders-of-tomorrow-award

Of interest for Digital Story Telling...

A chairde,

tá súil agam go bhfuil sibh go maith.
Our recently completed half hour documentary on Branar Téatar do Pháistí will have it's first TV broadcast tomorrow night on TG4 at 8pm.
In the film, we follow Branar as they bring their production of Clann Lir to Cologne. It's a big step for them - their first time bringing their work foreign. They're a great company, it's a nice little story!
As well as offering a window into their quiet and magical world of children's puppetry, the film includes music from a range of contemporary / underground Irish musical acts, inc. David Kitt, Tieranniesaur, Karman Line, Halves.
Here's a brief trailer for the film, please feel free to view / circulate: http://ow.ly/qXWdh
For those of you who are Twitter inclined, the tag is #PuipéadBeag
The full episode can also be viewed on the TG4 player http://nasc.tg4.tv/1c7QKyc

Ádh mor,

James
. . . . . . . . . . .
James Kelly
Feenish Productions
26 South Frederick St
Dublin 2

Fionnuala - Puipead Beag Ar Thuras Mor - airplane landscape

Curious about hardware failure rates?

This post on ExtremeTech identifies aggregate failure rates for a crucial piece of high-tech infrastructure, hard drives. Cloud computing data centres would be expected to have continuous hardware refresh/replacement in place to counter the inevitable failure of storage. (link)

Source: ExtemeTech: "Hard drive failure conforms to the bathtub curve — a curve that reliability engineers use that neatly illustrates the three distinct phases of a product’s lifecycle"

Seminar: Students & Mobile Phone Apps

Students & Mobile Phone Apps: Everyday Uses for Problem-Solving

An interactive presentation by Dr. Crystal Fulton & Hannah Gleave.

When: 14th November at 11.00 am
Where: To be held in Room 107, in the UCD School of Information and Library Studies, Belfield Campus.

Stallman at TCD 1st of November

Richard Stallman will be speaking in TCD again this year on the 1st of November: https://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/news/2013/10/rms-the-second-coming-of-st-ignucius/
(via Mark)

Educational Provocation

“So,” Juárez Correa said, “what do you want to learn?”

This article on Wired (link) on how a radical teaching technique is producing results in disadvantaged settings; it suggests that the basic provision of computing resources, that is, the essential hardware and software for running the machines, coupled with educational materials like encyclopaedia, specialised software and information sources, produces sufficient conditions for people, especially children, to learn effectively in a self-directed manner.

Digital Storytelling: Skills Workshops for Video Production

Two Skills Workshops for Video Production covering basic points leading to introductory level knowledge.
These workshops consist of two practitioner led 2hr sessions in video skills and digital storytelling.

Dates: Afternoon Sessions 3pm-5pm: Tuesday 29/10 and Tuesday 5/11
Location: Lecture Theatre 1, Blackrock.

REGISTER HERE (http://goo.gl/VSTolu) PLACES ARE LIMITED

A Google maps reference with room location and suggested parking zones.
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zI3tiisSQK_k.kqOUvhH4ARXE

And a link to UCD's official Blackrock map
http://www.ucd.ie/maps/Blackrock_Campus_Map_2011.pdf

Context:

To engage in the contemporary digital social networked environment organisations have adapted to new modes of communicating and engaging with clients, partners and markets. Training, explaining, persuading, and just communicating through video offers the potential for more direct and personal impressions of engagement with others. Video blogging has become a mainstream genre for communicating and engaging; the arena of organisational leadership has shifted to presentation and presentations are repurposed as videos. 

Agenda

First session - preparing to film, and filming;

• preparation & visual approach - e.g. shot list.
• employing slideware (Powerpoint or Keynote) to mock/prototype/storyboard the project
• how to shoot - i.e. basic guidelines for framing, camera movement, lighting etc.
• how to get good audio
• scripting and recording a voice-over

Between sessions – homework
shoot footage between classes, to be reviewed at the beginning of the second class.

Second sessions - using your footage - editing;

• review of footage shot by students
• overview of different editing options (mac, pc, iPad etc)
• basic principles of editing
• pacing and rhythm
• use of soundtrack
• uploading options - YouTube, Vimeo

References

Exercise: a 30 second video

Kongregate (case analysis)

As you'd expect, a spreadsheet is probably the best way to model the different scenarios and answer the question...

Here's one I did earlier (http://bit.ly/1cplWdx)

We may disagree about the figures or the methods, but at least we've attempted to address the financial question before moving on to the strategic and subjective decision.

An iBusiness student's perspective

Uma Nedunchezian talks about the masters in iBusiness at UCD at 2012 Dublin Castle event hosted by Education in Ireland for Indian Students (view the video).

Seminar: Process innovation and technology cost reduction

An overview of Accenture’s approach to helping organisations to reduce the cost of technology and using technology to drive business performance.

Event details
When: Oct 17, 2013 
from: 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Where: Lecture Theatre 1, Blackrock
Contact Name: Allen Higgins
Contact Phone 7164775

Guest speaker, Derek Lande from Accenture, will present on how Accenture helps organisations to reduce costs which is a key priority for all businesses in the recovering economy.  The seminar will discuss how organisations can use different cost levers to drive efficiencies in Technology spending ranging from tactical actions to significant organisational change.  The seminar will also discuss how technology can support cost reduction activities throughout the business as well as the sensitive implications including impacts on staffing levels, morale and talent development.

All Welcome

A Google maps reference with room location and suggested parking zones.
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zI3tiisSQK_k.kqOUvhH4ARXE

And a link to UCD's official Blackrock map
http://www.ucd.ie/maps/Blackrock_Campus_Map_2011.pdf

Seminar: Smarter Planet and Cities

Smarter Planet and Cities with mobile, social, cloud and analytics technology.

Event details
When: Oct 10, 2013 
from: 06:00 PM to 07:00 PM
Where: C201, Blackrock
Contact Name: Allen Higgins
Contact Phone 7164775

You are invited to a talk by Cenk Kuzucu from IBM, presenting on Smarter Analytics and Smarter Planet & Cities (smarter vehicles, energy). Tech trends enabling these visions involve all major facets of technology: mobile, social, cloud and analytics.

Cenk Kuzucu is a Management Consultant in Strategy&Change practice. He joined IBM Business Consulting Services in 2004 after obtaining a M.Sc. degree in Electronic Commerce from Dublin City University. He has worked with different clients from several industries in the areas of business process re-engineering, performance improvement, business strategy and ebusiness systems implementations. Cenk has worked as a functional lead for several business process innovation and Enterprise Application Implementation projects. Cenk's primary interests are eBusiness Strategy and Business Dynamics. Since joining IBM, he has worked on a range of projects in the Telecommunications, Financial Services,Travel & Transportation, Distribution, Healthcare and Government sectors.

Cenk has been involved in researching and developing solutions for rich real-time multi-channel/band messaging within current telecommunications infrastructures. He is an alumni of DCU and past participant in IBM's ExtremeBlue competition (2003). ExtremeBlue is competitive (paid) internship programme where multidisciplinary teams comprised of both IT and business students/graduates work on challenges defined by IBM. ExtremeBlue teams from across the globe then compete internally for recognition and prizes by contrasting project and business outcomes.

Garrath Patterson will also be on hand to present on project management in client-facing consulting engagements and bids. Garrath has managed technical projects for clients in the airline, retail and telecommunications sectors as well as in the public sector. In addition to managing projects he has also worked in Quality Assurance roles on systems projects over 13 years in the IT consulting industry and has worked on all phases of the systems life cycle, in particular, UI design and usability and web interface usability.

All Welcome

A Google maps reference with room location and suggested parking zones.
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zI3tiisSQK_k.kqOUvhH4ARXE

And a link to UCD's official Blackrock map
http://www.ucd.ie/maps/Blackrock_Campus_Map_2011.pdf

References:
C-Level Studies > http://www-935.ibm.com/services/c-suite/
Analytics Related Studies > http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/bao.html
Big Data > http://www.ibm.com/big-data/us/en/?lnk=fkt-bgda-usen
Smarter Serious Games > http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/gaming/ 

SILS Seminar: "Is Information Still Relevant?"

'tis it a case of too much information...

You are invited to a talk by Dr Lai Ma entitled, "Is Information Still Relevant?" based on a conference presentation delivered previously in Copenhagen, August 2013.

When Oct 10, 2013 
from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Where SILS Room 107, Belfield
Contact Name: Lai Ma

The term information in information science does not share the characteristics of those of a nomenclature: it does not bear a generally accepted definition and it does not serve as the bases and assumptions for research studies. As the data deluge has arrived, is the concept of information still relevant for information science? Three conceptual constructs are examined for exploring how information may be a useful concept in information science discourse: information as data, information as processed data, and information as justifiable claims. Information is relevant if it is understood as justifiable claims that shape and are shaped by the standards, rules, and best practices of data preservation, data curation, and other activities in the flood of data.

SILS is UCD's School of Information and Library Studies (link)

IBM's tech trends report

IBM's 2013 tech trends report shows skills shortages or gaps across all major facets of technology: mobile, social, cloud and analytics.

A screenshot of IBM's interactive tech trends dashboard, 2013.

What does this presentation of data say to your industry?
(link)

A Technology Vision for 2013

Thursday 3rd October, 2013. From 18:00 - 19:00. In lecture theatre C201, Blackrock.

Hilary O’Meara, Head of Technology, Accenture Ireland, will speak to the new digital mind-set needed to become savvy to the current convergence of IT and the business...
A video of the seminar is available at http://youtu.be/YCNZvoVE2NU

Your invitation to the guest lecture.

Hilary O’Meara:

Loreto College
University College Dublin: BSc Computer Science (1993)
Accenture (Anderson): 1993 - Current
Test, development, lead, manager, business unit, division head.
Large scale development projects
Technology integration and outsourcing projects
(profile link on accenture.com)

Invitation to Netsoc events

Tuesday night Oct 1, UCD's Netsoc are having Quaser session in Stillorgan Leisureplex along with BYOB Bowling afterwards. Quasar will begin at 7:00pm so make sure to arrive at 6:45 at the latest. Mathsoc and Physicsoc will also be joining us for this so this will be a great chance to meet lots of new people. If you aren’t a part of Netsoc but would still like to come to this event you can sign up on the night if you want. 

Here’s a link to the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/315032178638253/?ref=22

Also on Wednesday morning between 11:00am – 01:00pm Netsoc are having our first Netsoc coffee morning in the Blue Room of the Student Centre, there will be Tea, Coffee, and Biscuits.

ECIS 2014 Call for Papers

ECIS is the top European Information Systems conference, run under the auspices of the Association for Information Systems (AIS).

ECIS 2014: Digital Work, Digital Life
The next annual ECIS conference will take place from 9 till 11 June in Tel-Aviv, Israel
(an invitation from Chrisanthi Avgerou and Dov Te’eni, co-chairs...)
This year we invite the following types of submissions:

• Complete research papers
• Research-in-Progress papers
• Panels
• Teaching cases
• Prototypes that will be demonstrated at the conference

ECIS will also host an industry stream, with presentations from IT executives and professionals and visits to innovative Israeli digital firms.
The ECIS 2014 Doctoral Consortium will be held from 6 till 8 June. We encourage institutions from Europe, Middle East and Africa to nominate doctoral candidates who would benefit from participating in a vibrant international academic research development event.
And there is still an opportunity to propose pre-conference workshops and tutorials.

Deadlines
Pre-conference events proposals: 1 November, 2013
Complete papers, Research-in-Progress, Teaching cases and Prototypes: submission begins on 1 November, 2013; Deadline Date: 8 December, 2013
Panel submission deadline: 5 March, 2014

For more information, please visit the ECIS 2014 website at http://ecis2014.eu/

COOP 2014 call for papers

Eleventh International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems
27-30 May , 2014
Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société Sud-Est
Nice, France
http://coop2014.wordpress.com

******* Important dates ********
- 8 November 2013 Deadline for paper submissions
- 1 February 2014 Notification of acceptance/rejection
- 15 February 2014 Camera ready Papers
- 27-30 May 2014 COOP 2014 conference in Nice

****** Introduction ************
COOP is one of the key European conferences on Cooperative Systems, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Collaborative Computing and is affiliated to EUSSET - the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies.

COOP 2014 will be the eleventh edition of the biennial COOP conference and will take place in Nice, France and hosted by the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société Sud-Est.

Historically, COOP brought together the French tradition in Cognitive Ergonomics and the European tradition of CSCW. However, while this history is important, the focus of COOP has developed over the last few conferences. It now embraces a wider set of research questions on technologies and related issues within social, organisational and societal settings. The conference aims to bring together researchers and practitioners who contribute to the design, assessment and analysis of cooperative systems and their integration in organizations, public venues and other settings. The COOP conferences promote the idea that cooperative systems design ideally requires a deep understanding of collective activities, involving both artifacts and social practices, within a given in context.

In keeping with the conference’s tradition, COOP 2014 will take place in an Intimate setting, facilitating in-depth discussion and feedback in a multi-disciplinary environment. As well as welcoming back experienced researchers, academics and practitioners we are keen to embrace a wider research community. We welcome different perspectives from those doing relevant work who have not been to COOP before and we are paying special attention to encouraging up-and-coming researchers within the community with some specially designed features within the programme.

Contributions are solicited from a wide range of domains contributing to the fields of cooperative systems design and evaluation: CSCW, HCI, Information Systems, social and collaborative media, multi-agent systems, organizational and management sciences, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ergonomics, design, etc.

COOP 2014 will feature a single-track program of high-quality research papers, including a session dedicated to the work of early-career researchers, a workshops and masterclasses track and a Doctoral Colloquium.

For the “Early Career Researchers Track”, we encourage early career researchers who wish to publish their work and receive in depth-feedback (PhD students close to completion, < 3 years post-doc experience, etc.) to submit to the track, which will constitute of a special paper session in the main conference program. The papers will be included in the main conference proceedings.

********* Submissions **********
Accepted papers will be included in a book of proceedings published by Springer, and will be indexed in the ACM digital library

Full papers must be no longer than 16 pages and formatted according to the Springer template: http://www.springer.com/authors/book+authors?SGWID=0-154102-12-417900-0

Papers submissions will take place via Easychair and the submission system will go live in the near future.

*****Other Submission Categories*****
Submission requirements and deadlines to be announced soon for:
Workshops
Masterclasses
Doctoral Colloquium

The Eagle Project and its context

The broader commercial setting was the looming backdrop against which West constructed a mythology for the project; Castro's personality, DEC's VAX, the FHP (Fountainhead Project). Limited resources were made available, a core team of less than 30 engineers, competition for scarce resources within Data General. West carefully established emotional distance between himself and the team, with Rosemarie, Alsing and Rasala working as go-betweens.

The project, like all projects, was subject to various constraints, and it employed and succeeded based on a number of key enabling factors. The Eagle project had to satisfy some key requirements

1. Support old 16 bit software.
2. Be a 32 bit machine.
3. Do 1 & 2 at the same time (no mode bit).
4. Use a limited number of boards

The eventual design also had to be innovative (not a kludge or a bag on an Eclipse) in order that West could entice other engineers to work on it. The architect, Wallach eventually found some elegance in its design, an innovative Ring System for the CPU architecture, even though he had to allow space for EGO's instruction set within his "wonderful - 'super' - instruction set." p82

West's management method, if it was one - that Alsing and Rasala went along with - was wryly referred to as the "Mushroom Method".
The project teams were organised roughly in two, reflecting two differing professional foci and skills: the Hardy Boys and the Micro Kids.

The basement area at Westborough became a kind of territory, the boundaries of which defined who could be an insider and who were outsiders. Even within its own boundaries the Eagle project evinced marked divisions, delineating hierarchy and focus, between the Hardy Boys and the Micro Kids, between new hires and old hands, between people who had worked on other projects in DG and those to whom the Eagle project was their only experience. The basement space itself was divided into open spaces and closed spaces; for example West and Alsing had their own offices, with doors that could shut! The others were spread among sprawling cubicles. The hierarchies and non-hierarchies, some formal, many informal, coexisted somehow. Experience defined membership. Signing-on was a crucial transition between being a DG employee and being a member of the Eagle team. The whole team and the separate sub-teams had their own rites of passage. Membership and status were evident over time as each person underwent tests of strength like playing Adventure through to the end, responding to the "Tube Wars", hacking into Alsing's encrypted file. 

Notes: Have a look at the article on Wired "O, Engineers" (8.12 link).

Getting stuck in a problem

Getting stuck, stuck in a problem, is how creative problem solving occurs. The article by Kendra Shimmell underscores the value of us directly engaging deeply with a problem with all its messy complications, with no certainty even that we will solve it, in order to arrive at our own understanding or solutions.

"Learning by Design: It's Not What You Know, But How You Think" by Kendra Shimmell

The approach Shimmell describes is the complete antithesis of rote learning, or learning off answer 'patterns' to questions and challenges posed in traditional educational settings. Rather than dealing with, indeed training ourselves for, bounded well-known solvable challenges, real design is done amidst the messy uncertainty of possibly evolving contexts, anxiety, doubt and the unknown.

A certain quantum of bravery (and ignorance) is needed, along with hard slog, inspiration and serendipity.

Objects of development

MAKING OUR DIGITAL LIVES
The modern era is increasingly delineated by a ‘digital life’ or form of engagement that entwines complexly with our existence in a physical world. IT and high tech use-production is seen as the enabling force for overcoming immobilities. They are implicated in transforming our social or organizational interactions and generate heightened perceptions of speed, movement, presence, both global and local awareness, and interconnectedness. We introduce the idea of high tech use-production to try to overcome the idea that these transformations result from push processes originating in the development centre.

Furthermore, our capability to successfully create and utilise high tech products is linked with a variety of challenges across a number of diverse domains; organisational theory and sociology for management and societal use patterns; economics and systems theory to understand aggregate behaviour; physiology, psychology and ethnography to understand use factors and design for finished products; maths, materials, and physics, for microprocessor and computational innovation.

Let’s take a closer look at the objects of software, the expressive environment for software engineers. The following illustrations are representations of different aspects of a not untypical digital product (Figure below). In this case a rendered simulation of an apartment, a wireframe model of the same scene, the software services for configuring the simulation, an XML description of objects present in the simulation, the build log for compiling the simulation and some source code for one of the objects. Furthermore there are many more layers of source and representation with their related technologies associated with this particular product.


Figure Images from Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2010

These are all ‘representations of’ and ‘resources for’ an interleaved complexly reinforcing structure that can be un-picked or un-packed right down to single lines of code. The point of this presentation is to illustrate the argument that “developers solve problems at all levels, between the ‘whole project level’ and the ‘one line of code’ level (and everything in between.” (Raccoon, 1995)


Figure Layered perspective of digital production

The many layers of digital production are interleaved and interconnected from the single line of code right through to the whole project as Raccoon (1995) suggests. This may account for both the brittleness of digital systems and their complex resilience. The same work dynamic occurs across large and small teams, across large and small organisations, across the world and is an important aspect of the defining qualities of software development work. Significantly, the practice of high tech production also depends on creative and collaborative processes; software engineering is a designing profession regardless of whether the engineer is working on a version 1.0 project or maintaining an existing product through multiple generations and update releases. Yes crafting and designing software is a kind of individual contribution, a highly cognitive process, however in practice it is also a highly communicative and essentially social process comprised of many various interactions in a team.

MyWhat? Remember MySpace?

These articles address what often happens when a tech startup falls. The people move on and do great things in other companies. The demise of a firm may yet produce fruits in a process that might be labelled innovation recycling. The knowledge and learning produced gets reused as the firm's members enter other ventures.

The fertile soil of silicon fen (FT article - paywall may limit future access)

From Myspace's Ashes, Silicon Start-ups Rise (NYT article - paywall may limit future access)

As modern workplaces go Wordpress is at one end of a spectrum

Scott Berkun's book ``The Year Without Pants'' is an insider account of working in Wordpress, itselft a largely virtual endeavour.

"The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of work" (link) 

Iterative and incremental design/development: a brief history

Iterative and incremental design/development (IID) is often pitched as a radical and transforming change that high-tech development teams should evaluate and adopt. Anecdotally however over half of industrial high-tech systems development is actually done using sequential or waterfall style development.

And yet ``IID concepts have been and are a recommended practice by prominent software-engineering thought leaders of each decade, associated with many successful large projects, and recommended by standards boards.'' (Larman and Basili, 2003).

So why hasn't incremental iterative development become the norm over the last 50 years? Why hasn't sequential or waterfall style development disappeared from the scene in spite of its acknowledged shortcomings? Indeed waterfall style approaches seem to be remarkably resilient, as does the desire for iterative development. Are these different `styles' of management really so opposite? Surely they co-exist in practice and if so how?

References
CA Associates (2010) Balancing Agility with Governance (link)
Weinberg, G (2011) Iterative Development: Some History (link)
Larman, C. & Basili, V. R. (2003) Iterative and Incremental Development:A Brief History. Computer,36, 47-56.

Real Artists Ship!

Attributed to Steve Jobs, apparently as a rallying "threat" during the amazing effort that went into shipping the system and software for the first Apple Macintosh (see anecdotes on Folklore.org).
The quote was used in the script of "Pirates of Silicon Valley".

The Folklore.org website contains a wealth of history and anecdotes recounting the lives, successes, failures, relationships, surroundings and other detail from the earliest days of Apple. Dan Kottke's posts recall the early hardware work on the Apple, Lisa and Mac projects, with photos of some of the early wire-wrapped prototype boards developed. Folklore.org

Homesourcing: A worker's reflection

A post by c:/ Ryan with comments reflecting on what homesourcing is really like (link).

"The perks are otherwise very nice. Fully stocked fridge, personal showers and an easy commute. What more could you ask for? The down side is that you really do have to work at maintaining personal hygiene and appearance. Its easy to get stuck in a rut of wearing pajamas all day. That is generally bad for morale and self worth. It is best to treat it like a Real Job and go ahead and shower before work, shave, and take care of yourself.
Last but not least, working remotely brings with it difficulties in communication with others. I touched on this earlier. When using just text to talk to others, there is a lot that is lost. It is way too easy to gloss over what someone else spent their valuable time writing, and then give them a response that does not dignify them at all. I've had this done to me many times, and have even done it to others without thinking. It's something that you have to be absolutely mindful of. Failure in communication precedes more failures. You must also wear a smile in your text. I've found that a simple smiley here and there really helps convey warmth."

Exercise: a 30 second video

"I like (something) because..."

Goal
To get 'hands-on' experience creating a video presentation.

Instructions
You have 30 minutes to produce a 30 second video.

1. Form groups, at least one member of each group to have a laptop computer on the wireless network.
2. Each use your own smartphone with video function
3. Announce the objective
• To create a video addressing a defined theme "I like the (something) because..."
• Completed video to be 30 seconds duration or less.

Tips First try producing the video in a single take (to avoid merging different shots or doing complicated edits). Planning a video... Start by brainstorming different ideas in the group. When brainstorming:

1. Let each member provide 2 or 3 ideas, capture each ideas with a post-it notes.
2. Suspend your judgment until everyone has stated their idea.
3. Next build on ideas, some ideas will be put aside at this stage.
4. At all times be aware of your own and other's personal safety.
5. Criticise the idea not the person.
6. Use serial discussion, everyone has a turn, no one person dominates.
7. Consider taking on roles but keep it democratic.

Producing a video Videos have a beginning, middle and end so consider writing a brief script. Assign roles...

1. to write the script.
2. to plan the shots.
3. to film.
4. to act.
5. find/create props.
6. to edit.

Do dry runs!

Perhaps you might

• Upload your video to Vimeo or YouTube?

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Further reading

• My piece on storyboarding ideas (managingsystemsdevelopment.blogspot.com).
• Storyboarding is also used as a user-design technique for systems development. For examples see The Importance of Storyboarding Your iPhone App by Josh Clark and Storyboard technique for software projects by Adam Musial-Bright.
• Reynolds, G. (2008) Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, Berkeley, CA, New Riders.
• Sawyer, B. (2009) The Learner's Journey in Practice. (blogs.oreilly.com)
• BBC video editor (link)
• Camista screen recorder (link)
• Quick and Easy Video with a Flip Cam (dspace.ndlr.ie)
• A Guide to Student-Generated Videos(www.studentgenerated.com)
• MINO HD FLIP CAMERA USER GUIDE (dspace.ndlr.ie)

Here's my pitch for you to 'storyboard' and some tips on how to do it.  Storyboarding from Allen Higgins on Vimeo.

My pinterest collection of video exercises and related presentations

How can I motivate people to play with programming tech?

Give them a goal they can achieve using programming tech!
Using (for example)...
Jampot's TheAppBuilder (link)
The MIT App Inventor (link)
HTML5 (many courses available e.g. Udacity's game course (link)

Must project managers be technically savvy?

On the question 'must project managers be technically savvy' posed by Luc Richard (link), my answer is a fairly obvious 'yes', however I will qualify it by saying that the project manager does not need to be the technical architect, indeed I judge that the two roles should be completely separate in teams of greater than 3 people. Richard makes some strong claims:

On estimating

"In order to create a project plan, you must be able to estimate how much effort is required to complete all of the required tasks. Needless to say, you can't estimate effort unless you truly understand what's involved in designing and implementing those features."

On scheduling:

"A project manager must be able to schedule activities in a logical sequence."

Assuming you are starting from the conventional project management perspective you will find that the questions raised by Richard are, as it happens (coincidence?), the defining areas of the PMBOK. But a careful reading of Richard's responses reveals something else, an underlying assumption that the project manager does everything.

In response to Richard's assertion that "To be an effective project manager, you must be capable of designing and developing the solution yourself." I claim to be an effective project manager you must instead develop skills and sensitivities for getting the best out of heterogeneous, multitalented, multidisciplinary, mixed gender, culture, age, experience teams!

Unless of course you're working on a team of 1! (or 2, or 3)

As an antidote to too much PMBOK and too much Technology I strongly recommend having the following on your bookshelf:

Beck, K. (2000) Extreme Programming Explained : embrace change, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley.

Brooks Jr., F. P. (1995 (1987)) The Mythical Man-Month : Essays on Software Engineering, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

Cockburn, A. (2002) Agile Software Development, Indianapolis, IN, USA, Pearson.

Cohn, M. (2006) Agile Estimating and Planning, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Pearson Education.

Demarco, T. & Lister, T. (1999) Peopleware: productive projects and teams, New York, NY, Dorset House Publishing.

Kidder, T. (1981) The Soul of a New Machine, New York, NY., Little, Brown and Company. Hachette Book Group.

Mcconnell, S. (1996) Rapid development: taming wild software schedules, Microsoft Press.

Poppendieck, M. & Poppendieck, T. (2003) Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA, Addison Wesley.

User experience or engagement?

There is a rather subtle aspect of technology design that is often neglected, that is 'how design works within a whole context'. This idea is rather like thinking in terms of a design ecology rather than a design 'thing'. The truly difficult issue to address is 'the audience' or users, actual people.

Engagement is a long term value. A good user experience doesn't necessarily equate with engagement with a technology system. The basic unit of analysis for user experience is probably a strand of end-to-end goal driven interaction, whereas engagement looks at involvement with the technology system over days and weeks, ideally years. Engagement also considers performance within the technology ecosystem. While engagement isn't the same as 'product as a service', many successful technology engagement experiences are with long duration technology systems that operate as services.

I was thinking about examples of good and not so good engagement experiences. A good user experience may well be successfully paying my bin collection fee online or reviewing my phone bill online. I complete the tasks in less than 10 minutes, I feel confident the process is safe, I get feedback on progress and successful completion. But I'm not engaged with either of those experiences, I don't return out of curiosity or to tweak my preferences or add things. A good engagement experience might be my preferred use os Chrome for logging into 10+ different webmail accounts, my tweaking of the Chrome bookmarks or launch page. Engagement is evident in the whole experience of using my iPod, taking photos, curating some of my photos on Instagram, linking some of them to my Facebook, and the quick seamless experience of my Apps, particularly the email client on that device.

Jim Kalbach expands on his version of this discussion on his Wordpress blog (link).

Bringing it all together: Agile Product Management

Henrik Kniberg's Agile product ownership in a nutshell video: brings it all together nicely. It provides a great overview of how agile systems development actually works from the product management perspective.



Should we build the right thing? Build the thing right? Build the thing quickly?

Python programming for novices

Is Python a good language to learn programming?

A question regularly posed to Slashdot followers is "how to become a programmer?" or "what programming language is the best to learn?" There are no easy answers because it is not easy to learn to program nor is there one best language for learning to program or to program 'professionally'. However a broad consensus exists that Python is useful both as language for learning how to program and as a programming language in its own right suitable for developing serious software applications.

A terminal session driving my python program.

Learn Python The Hard Way (2nd Ed) by Zed A. Shaw is a sufficiently challenging yet productive step-wise set of exercises that you can use to gradually learn both how to wrangle your computer and how to program. You will learn that the answer is both out there (thanks search engines and people who post to blogs or groups) so long as you ask the question, and within you if you work hard enough to discover and understand why something doesn't work the way you expect it to work. You will find that docs.python.org is an essential resource for understanding the whats and whys of Python, and Wikipedia an aid for learning fundamental concepts.

What python course does google use? Google's own python class offers a well paced introduction to the language https://developers.google.com/edu/python/ (link)

Thoughtful reflection on software roots

We should pay attention to our roots. If we don't know where we came from we'll never really know where we're going. After all, how can you go anywhere without leaving somewhere?

Here the idea was why technology courses at college neglect its history. Not some potted Babbage begat Eniac begat Apple begat Internet. Something substantial that actually studies software, why it worked well, what succeeded, what didn't, what was before its time, of its time, or timeless about the actual software we used.

The post that started this on Threads (link) and also flick through the posts on Slashdot to expand the range of possibles (link).