Category: General

"The two most powerful things in existence…

“The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture.”

Ken Langone, co-founder, Home Depot

Acronyms: TLA

On my first day at work during a placement in the middle of my University course I was invited into a meeting with most of my new team.

LismoreAfter watching some rather scary videos of missiles nearly crashing into the back of aeroplanes, from which they were supposed to be being dropped, the meeting started.

The first thing the person chairing the meeting said was:

No TLA’s today.

As you can see we have a new member and they won’t be able to understand you if you use TLA’s.

I spent the rest of the meeting trying to work out what a TLA was.

I was too shy to ask and this was a time before the Internet existed and there definitely wasn’t a Google – TLA even has its own Wikipedia page these days.

I’ve been fascinated by the use of acronyms ever since.

I’m thinking that this might become an occasional series, but I tend not to think these things out in advance, so I’m not sure how many or when.

(If you are still wondering a TLA is a Three Letter Acronym!)

(Not all of the acronyms I’m going to write about will be three letter ones!)

I forgot my phone

A video to make you think.

Is this the world you want to be part of?

Is this the world you want to make, because by your actions you are making the world around you.

When was the last time you were really present?

A Virtual Desktop Analogy – Rooms and Properties

One of the techniques that I like to use when discussing technology with customers and colleagues is analogy. I find that it helps to break through the barriers of technology terminology and acronyms. It creates a picture in people’s heads that they can relate to.

Granddad wonders what a virtual desktop is?I’ve recently really enjoyed reading the analogy for Virtual Desktops put forward by Andreas Groth on IBM’s Thoughts on the Cloud Blog:

The virtual desktop arena is particularly mired in terminology and acronyms. For starters, what is a desktop anyway? Is it the top of this desk I’m sitting at? Is it the device that’s sitting on top of the desk? Is it the layout of the things on the screens that I am looking at? Well, of course, it’s all three of them depending on the context, even though the device that I’m currently using is a laptop. What does virtual really mean anyway? So when we start talking about shared virtual desktops, persistent virtual desktops, dedicated virtual desktops, local virtual desktops, pooled virtual desktops, etc. it just adds to the confusion. Virtual applications anyone?

Andreas’ analogy uses different residency types (hotels, private residence, etc.) as a parallel for the different virtual desktop types.

  • The hotel is analogous to the basic pooled virtual desktop approach. It has all of the basic capabilities you require. It’s the same every time you go into it because it’s serviced. You’re allowed to take some of your own stuff in, but you have to take it with you when you go.
  • The private residence is analogous to the dedicated virtual desktop approach. It’s yours, you can do what you like inside it. If you break it then you’ll have to fix it yourself, or hire someone in to do a professional repair. You may check into a hotel room while it’s being fixed, but it won’t be home.

He then extends this parallel to look at the different perspectives that people have about the residency – the occupier sees things differently to the property manager.

A really good analogy isn’t there to provide all of the answers, it’s there to help you get a different insight, and this one does.

It provides the insight about why people don’t really like the hotel approach (pooled virtual desktops). They generally have no technical reason, or even a functional reason for disliking it, it’s just that the desktop experience has become personal to them and you can’t really personalise a hotel room. Likewise, some people will, given the choice, always live in a hotel, because they like the way it’s serviced.

Another insight is the difference in costs and charging models. You generally pay for a hotel on a per-night basis, but you take out a longer term relationship for a private residence. Perhaps we are doing ourselves is disservice by viewing them as the same in the virtual desktop world.

I suppose that in this analogy a local virtual desktop on a  laptop is a gypsy caravan. It’s where you live, you can do what you like to it, and you carry it around with you. What do you think?

Because it's Friday: Isaac Newton vs. Rube Goldberg

I suspect that each of you knows who Isaac Newton is but, just in case you don’t, he’s famous for a number of things including the definition of gravity (that’s right the apocryphal story of a man with an apple falling on his head).

I also suspect that fewer of you know who Rube Goldberg was, especially if you’re British.

Rube Goldberg was famous for drawing cartoons with fantastical machines for accomplishing, mostly, rudimentary activities. They are the type of contraptions that Wallace and Gromit would erect.

The cartoon on the right is a Rube Goldberg machine to make sure that someone was awakened by the raising of the sun.

Put the two together and you get a rather interesting little video:

Isaac Newton v Rube Goldberg

Top Posts 2012 Q3

I meant to do this at the end of September but forgot, so here it is, a little late and hence not quite for the whole of the quarter (because it’s for the last 90 days).

Nice to see some new post being popular. It’s also interesting to see the continued march of the Because it’s Friday posts (7 out of the top 20). Good old Rich Pictures continues to be the top post some 3 years after it was first written.

  1. Rich Pictures
  2. I love what I do – because – I’m good at what I do – because…
  3. Ignore Everybody – and other quotations
  4. Would you tell that to a stranger? What do you share online?
  5. Because it’s Friday: Optical Illusions
  6. A Lack Of Planning On Your Part Does Not Constitute An Emergency On Mine
  7. Team Development: Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing
  8. Infographic: Working from Home
  9. Because it’s Friday: Remixing ‘Call Me Maybe’
  10. Make your password complex or long
  11. Because it’s Friday: Humorous Sign Graffiti
  12. Because it’s Friday: Huge Water Balloon and a Slow Motion Camera
  13. Because it’s Friday: Boys and their toys
  14. Connection, Interaction and Human Rights
  15. Amazing HD Videos to Download (BBC)
  16. Because it’s Friday: OLED Audi
  17. My changing workplace – part 7: The late 90′s
  18. Facebook Productivity Impact
  19. “The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
  20. Because it’s Friday: Mini-Golf Open

 

Some time in the year 2055…

One from Bonkers World to make you think:

My changing workplace – part 6: Outsourcing 90's

This could have been a conversation at the beginning of the 90’s:

Ribblehead"Did we get agreement to buy that mainframe upgrade through the investment board"

"No"

"Why not"

"Because manufacturing needed a new machine to produce widgets so they got the money"

Why was that? Because I worked for an organisation that was primarily focussed on manufacturing and in that context IT was regarded as a bit of a money pit with limited value. Or, at least, that was the perspective that I got from the place where I was sitting. I wasn’t sitting very high in the organisation and my viewpoint was quite limited, but it was a widely held view.

Around the middle of the 90’s two of the larger IT hardware and software providers decided to make an approach to my employer regarding facilities management. In simple terms the proposition was about asset transfer – "We’ll buy your equipment off you and then rent them back to you, that will give you a bit of a cash injection and give us the responsibility to make the investment decisions. You’re a manufacturing organisation and don’t want to be worrying about all of this IT stuff, let us do that". There was an important message in these discussions and that was the the best people to do IT were IT people. In other words IT was becoming more professional.

The initial proposition was, an interesting one, but the organisation decided not to take them up on their offer; instead they decided to talk to a number of organisation about the idea that had been proposed to them. They weren’t the only organisation having the conversation but they were one of the earlier of the larger organisations to be thinking about this new way of deliver IT capability – outsourcing.

Eventually they settled on which one of these organisations they were going to work with, and which of us were going to work for them. This was the first time I came across a law that would shape many conversations over the years – TUPE.

From a personal perspective as someone in their mid-20’s looking to advance my career the whole thing looked like a wonderful opportunity. The extent of my advancement in the manufacturing organisation looked pretty limited, in the new fast growing IT organisation the horizon looked much more expansive. Although, as someone in their mid-20’s with a small child much of what happened is a bit blurry. I remember a couple of presentations telling me how wonderful it was all going to be, one in particular sticks in my memory because the short wiry Scottish man presenting was quite animated. I didn’t spend much time thinking about this change which, looking back, feels like a very significant one.

It’s fair to say that not much changed in the beginning of our new employment, we went to work in the same place and worked on the same things. But the world of opportunity had opened up and I managed to make a move from one part of the organisation to another, from there I took on a role covering more varied customers and staff across the country and eventually throughout much of Europe. I also realised that my core strengths did not make me good at people management, but that’s a story for another day.

Some people still define me as someone who has always worked with the manufacturing company where I started and having been back there to work a few times I don’t blame them, but I have gained experiences that I would never have gained if I had still been working there.

Speaking as someone who has worked inside the system for over 20 years now I see that outsourcing was an inevitable consequence in the lifecycle of information technology; a lifecycle that is still playing out today. We are in the processes of changing from one form of outsourcing to another in what many people call cloud. Outsourcing was an opportunity for me then and continued to be so for many years, the new outsourcing is bringing different opportunities.

"Do what you can do the best and outsource the rest" Tom Peters

"The best companies outsource to win, not to shrink. They outsource to innovate faster…" Thomas L. Friedman (The world is flat)

My changing workplace:

"If you want to be effective you must by hook or by crook find…

“If you want to be effective you must by hook or by crook find non-trivial blocks of time for pure reflection; new-tech doesn’t change this.”

Tom Peters

"The purpose of the modern organization is to make it easy and natural and expected for people to take risks. To lean out of the boat. To be human." Seth Godin

"Every meeting that does not stir the imagination and curiosity of attendees…

“Every meeting that does not stir the imagination and curiosity of attendees and increase bonding and co-operation and engagement and sense of worth and motivate rapid action and enhance enthusiasm is a permanently lost opportunity.”

Tom Peters