Cloud Computing: Pilot Results

In an earlier blog, I discussed how cloud computing may be a good option for help converting paper publications to searchable digital files. We embarked on a pilot test of cloud computing to evaluate this option.

The cloud was used to convert uncompressed TIFF images into searchable PDFs, requiring an optical character recognition (OCR) engine and a PDF distiller. This is a computationally intensive operation typical of image processing and therefore seemed to be a good application for distributed cloud computing.

Our pilot at the Government Printing Office consisted of processing nearly 20,000 pages of the Statutes at Large collection that had been scanned to our specifications. To assess the cloud capabilities, samples of the collection were processed with four different instance types; small, large, high-CPU medium storage, and high-CPU, large storage. The characteristics of these instances are outlined in this table:

Virtual instance details

Results were developed to assess the cost of processing a 100 page publication, which is roughly a 90MB package of TIFFs. Calculated costs included the upload/download transmission cost and the computing cost.The results were very interesting, indicating additional processing capability (virtual cores) improves the performance, to a point.

The transmission costs actually turned out to be higher than the processing costs, but it was clear that the high-CPU, medium storage processing solution was the most cost effective. Licensing costs for the OCR tool were not included in this evaluation.

Pilot cost summary

Special thanks to our to our awesome engineering co-op student, Isaac Jones for developing the test plan and collecting to data for this evaluation.

References:
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
FDsys Operational Specification for Converted Content

Printed Electronics

In late 2007 silicon ink and inkjet printers were used to print a transistor with respectable performance. And now, a year later, there have been good advancements in demonstrating a product using this technology -- RFID tags using printed ICs (PICs). The past year has boosted nFET thin-film transistor (TFT) performance from electron mobilities of 80 cm2/Vs to nearly 100 cm2/Vs and full CMOS functionality has been achieved.

This is extremely cool. It was not too long ago that printed electronics was used for conductors as a part of an assembly. Now, printed electronics is moving into an area where effective active electronics can be built using low-cost printing technology. The flexibility and scalability enabled with printing technologies in the electronics market is mind-boggling, making the production of billions of devices seem reasonable.

One key market for this technology is for supply chain item inventory marking using RFID tags. Once a cost effective solution for individual RFID tags is available, this technology will quickly move to the mass market making inventory control and consumer transactions nearly painless. These low-cost RFID tags are expected to become increasingly common as a means of identifying every type of consumer product. Some device cost ~20 cents today, with a gaols to achieve a sub 1 cent cost.

References:
RFID Tags Using Printed Electronics
First Printed Silicon RFID Platform for Item-Level Intelligence

Crunch time

It seems like all projects experience a big crunch at the end. This is certainly the case with GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys). This ambitious program to develop and launch a world-class information management system for Federal publications has been underway for some time now and has experienced a number of difficulties over the past few years. But since March of this year, the team has achieved traction and has been making terrific progress. Nonetheless, as the promised launch date approaches, knuckles are starting to turn white and some folks are starting a nasty habit of gritting their teeth.

I think things will turn out fine for this project despite the end-of-year vacations and holidays -- this team is focused and dedicated to getting this complex information system launched.

I was rummaging through some old files recently and came across a drawing that fit the FDsys situation well. Needing only a few Photoshop edits, this drawing was customized to fit bill perfectly.



To learn more about FDsys, check out the website -- www.gpo.gov/fdsys

Colorado Inventor Showcase

I had the pleasure of being invited to attend and judge the 4th Annual Colorado Inventor Showcase on November 10th at the Cable Center on the Denver University Campus. The event was terrific, where a number of Colorado companies came and displayed their innovative products. A group of judges reviewed their products and made some pretty tough assessments on their innovative nature and their ability to meet a market needs.

My pictures of the event can be seen on my Smugmug page: http://mlwash.smugmug.com/gallery/6573530_VjaLs#418504358_8Ev7S

Winners included the following:

• Inventor of the Year Award: Inventor - Beacon Biotechnology Team; Company - Beacon Biotechnology - Beacon’s BrightSPOT Reader, a hand-held device to provide instant diagnoses of any disease imaginable.
• Consumer Product of the Year Award: Company - re-thought; Inventor, Robert Irwin; BioHAWT - A biomimetic horizontal axis wind turbine designed for power generation
• Commercial Product of the Year Award: Company - VanDyne SuperTurbo; Inventor - Ed VanDyne; Fuel efficiency device called a SuperTurbocharger, designed to increase fuel efficiency by 25%
• Software Product of the Year Award: Company - Alchemy Grid - Inventor, Elliot Turner - Orchestr8 transforms the way you distribute and consume Internet content
• Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award: Philip Hartman (Age 14); Company - Fiberlight Int'l;
• Honorable Mention Award: Company - Smart Lid; Inventor - Bill Miller;
• Honorable Mention Award: Company - ET Squared; Inventor - Pete Tovani; Product to mitigate the negative impact of Human Beings on planet Earth.
• Honorable Mention Award: Company - Think Like a Genius; Inventor - Todd Siler, Ph.D.; Three dimentional imagination tool for bringing new ideas to life
• Honorable Mention Young Entrepreneur Award: Company - Kyle Invent; Inventor - Kyle Myhra; Spot Sucker stain remover technology

World Buisness Forum 2008

I had the opportunity to attend the World Business Forum in NY City on September 24th and 25th. This forum is held in the fabulous Radio City Music Hall and is attended by about 4000 people from around the world. This year, notables such as Bill George, Michael Porter, Colin Powell, Madeline Albright, Rudy Giuliani, Jim Collins, Jack Welch, Marcus Buckingham and Tony Blair presented at the forum. It was fantastic.

Bill George – author of True North
Bill George is a Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School and the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Medtronic.

Characteristics of authentic leaders
• Self awareness – they need to accept feedback and be able to reflect on these as well as their experiences
• Practice values under pressure
• Build on your strengths
• Leadership is lonely – build a support system, a group that you can be open with
• Lead an integrated life – be the same person at work and at home
• Know the purpose of your leadership – follow your compass, not your clout

Micheal Porter – Harvard Business School professor
Five tests for a good strategy
• Must have a unique value proposition compared to the competition
• Must contain a different tailored value chain
• Contains clear tradeoff indicting what not to do
• Consists of activities that fit together and reinforce each other
• Has continuity allowing continued improvement during realization

It typically takes about 3 years for a strategy to kick in, therefore a strategy must stay in place for some time – it can not be changed frequently.

A novel and unique value proposition will expand the market. This value proposition must address these questions:
• What customer?
• Which needs?
• What relative price?

There is a growing social dimension in value propositions.

How to approach your strategy in troubled, stressful times:
• Stay focused on your strategy
• Don’t overreact
• Look for opportunities to restructure to optimize your organization

Jim Collins – author of Good to Great
Greatness is not a function of circumstances.

What makes companies great? Consistent, disciplined performance. But, be cautious, the moment you think you are great, you won’t be!

Packard’s Law: If your growth rate in revenues consistently outpaces your growth rate in people, you simply will not – indeed cannot – build a great company.

Most “overnight successes” are typically a 20 years process.

Initial step in good to great -- determine who will be on the team. Key team attributes:
• Strong team members can prepare for what they can’t predict
• The leader needs to understand the percent of team that consists of the right people – this needs to be monitored at all times
• The right people are self-motivated
• The moment the leader feels that they have to manage a team member, it is clear that this member is in the wrong role

Great leaders do not need to be charismatic.

Great companies have 5 levels of leaders:
1. Highly capable individual – makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills, and good work habits
2. Contributing team member – contributes individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and works effectively with others in a group
3. Competent manager – organizes people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives
4. Effective leader – catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards
5. Executive – builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will

Humility + Will = Level 5. These leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larget goal of building a great company.

For a company to be great, they must manage risk effectivity and have Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs).

Stockdale Paradox: You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

Jim’s recommended to do list:
1. Start a “stop doing” list
2. Use the diagnostic tool available on line (www.JimCollins.com) with your team
3. Determine how many on your team are the right people and develop a plan for what to do with the people that are in the wrong role
4. Start a personal board of directors
5. Get young people in your face
6. Build a council to make decisions
7. Determine your questions to statements ratio – develop a plan to double this
8. Turn off electronic devices – take time to think. Schedule “quiet-tude”
9. Ask everyone on the team to define what they do, not what their title is
10. Get your core values solid
11. Establish 15-25 BHAGs, identify the obstacles and eliminate them

Quote from Jim’s mentor (on his personal board of directors): “spend less time trying to be interesting and more time being interested”

Marcus Buckingham
Marcus Buckingham is an inspiring speaker with important insights to maximizing strengths, understanding the crucial differences between leadership and management, and fulfilling the quest for long-lasting personal success.

Build on your strengths and manage around your weaknesses.

Differentiating question to determine high performing teams: at work do you have the opportunity to do what you do best?
• Only 14% of US resources felt they spend most of their day playing to their strengths even though,
• 45% of people questioned in the US believe that focusing on strengths is the best way to gain performance.

Ben Franklin: Wasted strengths are sundials in the shade.

David Rubinstein
David Rubenstein is the co-founder of The Carlyle Group, an American private equity firm. Rubenstein is also active in philanthropy, on December 18, 2007, David Rubinstein purchased the last privately owned copy of the Magna Carta at Sotheby's auction house in New York for 21.3 million dollars. He announced that it would be housed at the National Archives in Washington D.C.

David’s recommended to do list:
1. Do what you love
2. Don’t follow the conventional wisdom
3. Don’t take “no” for an answer
4. Share the credit and the wealth
5. Make yourself indispensable – develop an area of specialization
6. Focus on the product or service you are selling, not the money
7. Think global
8. Get out of your office, it is stimulating – everyone is a salesperson
9. Seize opportunities – plans always change
10. Do not show arrogance

Tony Blair
Leadership: You owe the people you lead your honest view of a situation and a decision on how to move forward.

Green IT

The Government Printing Office (GPO) was recently named as a finalist by Computer World magazine for Green IT initiatives. This is an impressive honor granted to a 147 year old agency that is slogging through several massive information system transformation initiatives.

GPO’s IT systems are similar to any other organizations; relying upon networks, hardware, trained personnel and the most important, satisfaction of the end user. In the past several months, the department has eliminated redundancy throughout the agency by consolidating servers, reused or recycled all retired hardware, enhanced end user capabilities and reduced energy consumption in areas by more than 50%.

Additionally, the IT organization is specifying all new systems with low energy components, and equipping areas, as appropriate, with low energy Citrix solutions.

Sustainable computing is a priority for GPO and every effort is being taken maximize green computing techniques. As a federal agency, GPO takes pride in our mission to Keep America Informed and believes environmental stewardship is not only good business but good government.

One of the fundamental transformations at GPO is to develop and launch a world-class information management system for Federal publications. This is known as FDsys, GPO’s Federal Digital System (www.gpo.gov/fdsys). This and other system initiatives are being developed in line with GPO’s sustainability initiatives. These digital system initiatives will allow GPO to maintain their mission to Keep America Informed, by offering access to Federal publications electronically, and improving our print operations to efficiently utilize raw materials and energy. All new digital systems are being installed with energy saving components.

We plan to implement virtualization technology for servers once this technology proves to be reliable for our applications. Virtualization offers us the ability to share single physical servers to support multiple applications operating systems. This will further reduce our Information Technology energy consumption.

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided as a service, allowing users to access technology-enabled services without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.

As we face the need to convert several hundred years of paper documents to digital files for quick and easy access, cloud computing may provide a nice solution for us at the Government Printing Office. There have been efforts underway at GPO and other Federal agencies to scan documents and produce collections of TIFF images that can later be processed to create accessible versions. To date we have several terabytes of TIFF data collected that needs to be converted. But, this is just the tip of the iceberg – we anticipate this unprocessed data will grow to multiple petabytes. To process this data, we are faced with either building an in-house computing capability to convert these documents, outsourcing the conversion, or getting creative and exploring capabilities like cloud computing.

Fortunately there are some benchmarks emerging that we can use to help model this problem and guide us to a solution. It appears that processing a page of text in TIFF from and converting this to a searchable PDF takes about 1 minute with OCR engines working on a typical computing platform available today. This will certainly improve over time as Moore’s Law continues to benefit us. This simple benchmark will allow us to cost out the options.

One of the key barriers that we need to anticipate is licensing specific applications that will be used to accomplish this conversion. In particular, licensing OCR technology to be used in a cloud of thousands of virtual machines to parallel process a large collection of TIFFs appears to be one of our major hurdles to clear.

As virtualization technologies continue to emerge and mature, they will play a big role in solving some complex and, at times, short term computing tasks, minimizing the need to build large, on-site computing facilities.

The Wisdom of Teams

I have had the pleasure of working with some great teams throughout my career and I hope to be associated with several more great teams. I discovered the book The Wisdom of Teams several years ago and have routinely handed out copies of this book to team members as their teams form. Jon R. Katzenbaum and Douglas K. Smith outline many of the critical aspects of great teams that I wholeheartedly support.

My notes from this book…

Teams consist of a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

Complementary Skills:

• Technical or functional expertise – the basic skills required to attack the problem.
• Problem-solving and decision-making – teams must be able to identify the problems and opportunities they face, evaluate options and make necessary trade-offs and decisions about how to proceed.
• Interpersonal skills – common understanding and purpose cannot arise without effective communication and constructive conflict that, in turn, depends upon interpersonal skills that consist of: risk taking, helpful criticism, objectivity, active listening, giving the benefit of doubt, support, and recognizing the interests and achievements of others.

Committed to a Common Purpose and Performance Goals:

• A common, meaningful purpose sets the tone and aspiration – most teams shape their purposes in response to a demand or opportunity put in their path, usually by management.
• Specific performance goals are an integral part of the purpose – transforming broad directives into specific measurable performance goals is a critical first step for a team trying to shape a common purpose meaningful to its members. Specific goals provide clear and tangible footholds for teams by: defining a team work-product, facilitating clear communications and constructive conflict within the team, maintaining focus, having a leveling effect (teams that succeed, evaluate what and how each individual can best contribute to the team goal and do so in terms of the performance objective itself rather than a person’s status or personality), allowing the team to achieve small wins (small wins are invaluable to building members’ commitment and overcoming the inevitable obstacles), and challenging the team members to commit themselves.

Committed to a Common Approach

• Team members must agree on who will do particular jobs – agreeing on the specifics of work and how it fits together to integrate individual skills and advance team performance lies at the heart of shaping a common approach.

Mutual Accountability

• No group ever becomes a team until it can hold itself accountable as a team
• Two critical aspects of teams: commitment and trust.

One of the finest teams I have been associated with is the Program Management Office at the Government Printing Office. This team formed around a central purpose: to define, develop, and deploy a world-class digital information management system for the Federal government. They embraced the goal and charged forward to do everything they could to achieve the goal. The charter members of this team consist of Scott Stovall, George Barnum, Selene Dalecky, Gil Baldwin, Kirk Knoll, Lisa LaPlant, Matt Landgraf, Kate Zwaard, Blake Edwards, Kirk Petri, Adam Schwartz, and Magan Mohrmann. I will always cherish my involvement with this team.

The wisdom of Steve Jobs

This is a post from an earlier blog that I had that I thought was a good start to the The WashBaord, and characterizes my feelings well.

.....[being] fired from Apple was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Stewart [Brand] and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.