The WashBoard

The Wisdom of Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T08:01:00.002-04:00

This is a re-post. It contains exerts from a commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave several years ago and captures my feelings very 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.

The Value of Records

2011-07-30T08:31:00.006-04:00

I admit it, earlier in my life I had very little appreciation for history. But over time I realized that an understanding of history provides valuable insight into why things are the way they are, and can help provide suggestions for addressing issues today.

When I joined the National Archives, I used work that I had been doing to trace my family history to help me better understand the processes that were in place for archivists and researchers to find records. I used a few facts that I had about my dad’s military experience to launch into some amateur research at the Archives.

I had a picture from one of his albums that showed that he was in the Navy in WWII, and based on the annotations on the picture I assumed he was on the Memphis.

As it turns out, he wasn’t on the Memphis, which was a WWII ship. Instead he was in Memphis for training.

Without being terribly deterred by this misstep, my quest for information continued. I completed an SF-180 to gain access to his military records, and was fortunate enough to travel to the Archive’s St. Louis facility earlier this month to see the Archive’s National Personnel Records Center, which is where most of our military records are housed. I was able to catch up with my request for access to dad’s records and his Navy file was located for me to review.

The record was awesome. I had expected to see the typical record entries – his enrollment date, discharge date, etc. What I found were these things, plus some very surprising items that helped me resolve some of the mysteries in my dad’s past.

Dad joined the Navy in the height of WWII and was discharged at the end of 1945. One of the unexpected treasures in the record file was a film negative containing the image taken of dad the day he joined the Navy.

The big surprise came when I found a letter from my grandmother, written to the Navy, requesting an early discharge for my dad. The request accompanied other documents that supported her request which was based on her inability to maintain the household given my grandfather’s failing health. Dad was needed back home to support his family.

Through a number of letters supporting the request, dad was honorably discharged from the Navy on December 29th, 1945 and returned home to re-assume his position as head of the household. He was 24 years old.

I now understand more of the background of my dad’s life. His role as the head of his household was never discussed, nor was the situation leading to his departure from the Navy. The history did help me understand what drew him to an eventual career in the aircraft industry. After his dad passed away, he left the Virginia area and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to be a part of the growing jet engine industry. His Navy training in aircraft maintenance certainly must have been the seed that inspired him to seek a job working on jet engines. He worked for the General Electric Aircraft Engine group for 32 years, retiring as a field quality engineer, after starting as a production worker.

Records provide invaluable insight into our past. Making these records permanently and easily accessible is incredibly important, not only to researchers, but everyone. Someday, everyone will want to explore the past to finds some clues that will undoubtedly reveals things that will be a surprise.

Authentication is a user-centric activity

2010-09-20T09:27:00.002-04:00

My view of what it takes to authenticate something requires attention to two key attributes:
1. Verification that you are getting the item that you intend to authenticate from a reputable source that can represent that the item is authentic, and
2. verification that the item has integrity, i.e., that it hasn’t changed since it was presented by the reputable source.

If you think about it, if you want to be assured you can access authentic government data, where do you go – in the paper world, you go to a depository library (verification #1). You then get access to a copy of a document that may contain the data you are looking for, probably with the help of a document librarian. The document you get access to appears in a form (bound and denoted to be authentic, etc.) that you can trust to be authentic. Given these two validations, you, the user of government data, can conclude that the document is authentic.

There are some key points affecting the electronic world.
1. Replicas are provided, originals are not sent.
2. Replicas are always modified from the original. The digital world has accomplished this almost seamlessly – documents are rendered to adapt to your browser and environment, print-ready documents are RIPed to deliver a similar look-and-feel to the original. The term RIP is probably very telling when you look inside one of these sausage machines.
3. The challenge that we face is one of determining whether the user or receiver of the replica has sufficient information to confidently determine whether the replica is authentic.

Authentication is a user-centric activity.

The tools that the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has adopted to support authentication are targeted to address validation #2 – integrity. Fortunately, GPO qualifies for validation #1, as long as we maintain our reputation for being a trusted repository of official and authentic government documents. But, this is why we have invested in FDsys and need to continue to maintain this repository to sustain the level of trust we have earned.

Quotations

2009-11-27T08:28:00.005-05:00

I run across quotations at times that really resonate with me. This is a good place to create a registry of these.

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which
knowledge gives." James Madison, 1822

"Whatever you are, be a good one." Abraham Lincoln

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin

"Science is about what is, and engineering is about what can be. The entire existence of engineers is dedicated to doings things better and more efficiently." Neil Armstrong, 2000

"Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods. The ceaseless flow of information throughout the Republic is matched by individual and commercial movement over a vast system of interconnected highways crisscrossing the country and joining at our national borders with friendly neighbors to the north and south." “Together, the united forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear — United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower February 22,1955 [I think is is really interesting that President Eisenhower included communication in these statements supporting the Interstate Highway Program.]

10 stupid career-limiting moves… ...and how to avoid them

2009-10-13T11:56:00.005-04:00

I ran across this recently and felt that this list is very good and should be referenced occasionally. Most of these are common sense, but there are some good tips to consider. The list comes from John Heckers, an executive coach in Cherry Creek, Colorado.

1). Making money a major consideration. Harold Geneen, the former head of ITT when it was the world’s largest conglomerate said, “If you have to choose between money and experience, take the experience and the money will follow.” If you’re a money-grubber, you are going to wind up both less prosperous and less experienced than those who value each experience before the money. The money will follow in time — and in much greater amounts.

2). Refusing to “play politics.” Everyone says they “hate to play politics,” but the most successful people are also the most successful business politicians. Office politics is the game of knowing the power centers and utilizing them for your advancement and benefit. If you’re not bright enough to see how this is going to get you ahead in any organization, I hope you truly enjoy being a cubicle dweller.

3). Spending money on everything but your career. If you take a look at the 100 most successful people in America you will find that almost every single one of them has spent money on coaches, professional advisors, consultants and so on. I’ll see people go spend $100,000 on a new Mercedes, but get cranky about spending $25,000 or so on an Executive Coach. Lousy priorities. How do you think you get the money to buy Mercedes? Duh! Your career. Maximize it! And, by the way, most of my executive coaching clients found out to their delight that all they had to do to get at least a portion of my fee paid by their company was ask the right people in the company.

4). Less-than-professional attire. I see, especially among young people, an incredibly stupid belief system that they should be able to dress as they please. If you believe that, please go to work for the Peace Corps or a social service agency (and even they have dress codes). If you want to get ahead in business, dress like the top people dress to the greatest degree possible.

5). Not keeping commitments. Anyone who is careless about keeping commitments is going to get a bad reputation. This is a very small town.

6). Bad-mouthing someone influential. “Nuff said. It is the kiss of death.

7). Believing you have a right to a “work-life balance.” We’re all working our behinds off these days. Life is rough in the business world right now. No matter how old you are, if you believe that you need a “work-life balance” in the middle of the worst recession since 1929, you really need to grow up and get your behind to work.

8). Not improving themselves. Again, people will spend money on houses, vacations, cars, etc., but won’t take classes to stay current or move ahead. Find out if you need or can get certifications, licensures, degrees, diplomas, etc. Get them. Show your superiors that you are constantly spending time and money on your career. Many times, the company will pay for this, but even if they don’t, it is the best investment of your money you can make to invest in yourself and your knowledge and professional base.

9). Having an in-office romantic relationship. You might as well start filling out the unemployment application now if you’re going to fool around in the office – especially, but not only, if you’re married. There are so many things wrong with this it needs its own post.

10). Thinking inside the box, or acting outside the box. Think outside the box. But follow the “rules” of corporations when you’re acting. You can do virtually anything so long as you play “Mother May I?” correctly according to the corporate Hoyle at your company. But if you are a staid, linear thinker, you’re never going to get ahead. Linear thinkers are a dime a dozen, but many are in the corporate hierarchy. This is why you have to look like a stodgy boring suit in playing the game, but truly think with originality and intelligence.

Your baby's ugly -- sage advise for entrepreneurs

2009-06-08T17:34:00.003-04:00

Steve Baker, friend of mine recently posted this article that is really good, not just for us crazy entrepreneurs, but for everyone in the world today -- the last paragraph contains great advise for us all.

It takes an incredible amount of intense drive, determination and strong ego to breathe life into a business and create products from scratch, but it's also that same ego that won't let a business owner be objective about what their business needs to succeed.

The business is up and running at light-speed and management doesn't have the time or willingness to stand back and take an honest look at what they have created. They are too close to the problems to see them. Just like a proud parent, they have spent sweat and time creating this "baby," and they refuse to believe that it might be less than perfect.

I call this the "business parent trap." It is in this trap that business owners often create and introduce products that would not test out in the marketplace. There's an attitude of "Hey, it's gotta be great because I thought of it."

I've found that there are usually two basic things wrong with a business: the product (the baby) and the management (the breath).

So how do you assess your business? Are your employees going to tell you that you're headed in the wrong direction? Not likely.

Occasionally a consultant will be brought in to review the company's performance in a given area. Unfortunately, when management does bring in a consultant, they often are really looking for affirmation - not straight-forward constructive criticism. Unfortunately, some consultants are more than willing to "affirm for a fee."

If you're going to succeed, then someone needs to tell you if your baby's ugly or you've got bad breath. So here are some blunt yet truthful thoughts for your business, and perhaps you:

GET OVER YOURSELF: Know yourself, trust yourself, believe in your self...then Get Over Yourself. You're really not the smartest person in the world. You built the business and know it better than anyone else, but no one else really cares how much you know.
SPECTATOR SPORT: Conversation with you should not be a spectator sport for others. Remember that there's a huge difference between listening and merely waiting for your turn to talk. You hired your employees and perhaps a consultant because you assumed they had brains, so let them use them. Ask questions and listen to answers.
JUST ANOTHER PRODUCT: Realize that even though you think that your new product or service is the greatest thing since the flip-top beer can, the world just sees one more product and must be convinced. You created this product and you know every function of it, but customers do not buy functions, they buy only benefits. Whether your product is a high tech internet service or a left-handed widget, you must show how it is uniquely beneficial to your customer. Functionality makes your products work, benefits make them sell.
PAPER WEIGHT: If you have the skills to create a product, chances are that you don't have the skills to market and sell it. Many business owners think that marketing and sales are the simplest part of their business, so it is almost an afterthought. There is only one reason that inferior products outsell better ones; and that is successful marketing. Think of your marketing plan as the complete story book that sells your product. If your story book is a best seller, then your product will be a best seller. Without the right story that will build sales and distribution, your wonderful product is just another paper weight that is headed for a land fill.
STAND BACK: Your competitors are not all stupid. Guess what? They think their babies are cute too, and they may tell better stories that make them look even better than yours. So stand back and look at yourself and your baby and try to look through the eyes of a disinterested party, because believe it or not, the world is a disinterested party.

Remember, there's a strong chance that you will not be in business in 5 years. As busy as you are, and successful as you think you are, you must set your ego aside and realize that there are things beyond your control.

The secret to success does not lie in knowing everything; the secret lies in knowing what you don't know, and finding those who do. I’ve been successful because I seek out constructive criticism, asking others to tell me my baby’s ugly…but tell me why.

Cloud computing -- continued

2009-06-03T21:29:00.006-04:00

I plugged into a cloud computing webinar recently. I thought the meeting was informative for the first 30 minutes, and then it turned into a sales pitch for a tool to help create a private cloud. The supplier was Appistry (http://www.appistry.com/products).

Here are my takeaways:

Cloud computing is the next step along the path in creating common, shared data centers. The major steps in this evolution are: dedicated data centers, virtualization of data center components (virtualized servers and shared storage), and now cloud computing.
Some government groups are starting to use the cloud concept, but are creating "private" clouds by using their own infrastructure on configuring it to be a cloud environment to gain capital and operational efficiencies.
Appistry claimed remarkable capital improvement efficiencies through developing a private cloud with their applications (CloudIQ Manager, and CloudIQ Engine). They referenced a benchmark study that resulted in an 80% improvement in capital utilization. Frankly, I find that hard to believe on a sustained rate. They also claimed very good operational efficiencies, which seem logical since the infrastructure would be normalized to standard configurations, in theory requiring less staff.

My hope in attending the webinar was to get better insights into cloud applications for government applications without using owned infrastucture. This discussion didn't address this since Appistry is focused on selling tool to help create private networks. But, the benchmark data on capital and operational efficiency benchmarks (even with factoring in some realism in the claims) helps demonstrate the value of cloud computing in potentially lowering ongoing costs to manage IT systems. Once the security model is adequately addressed, this model will start to be the solution of choice for data centers and information systems.

10 qualities of mind for navigating uncertainty

2009-06-03T06:55:00.002-04:00

1. Bring your full self to the challenge - Don't hide from the experience. Reinvent your leadership everyday. Develop a capacity for living in the moment. Let yourself experience the full emotional range. Change must begin with you.

2. Let your values by your guide - Your honesty, integrity, courage, and commitment to excellence may be the only thing certain in an uncertain world. Rely on your principles. They will prevent mistakes and help you sleep.

3. Live in a "world of not knowing" - Develop the capacity to learn in real time. Be gentle with yourself. Tolerate the ambiguity of life. Be clear about what you know and don't know. Befriend your anxiety about not knowing.

4. Clarify what you can and cannot control - In America, we see ourselves as the world's great problem solvers. But sometimes we can't control the outcomes. Learn when to take the initiative and when to be let nature take its course.

5. Live in the past, present and future - Keep perspective. "Realistic optimism" goes a long way. Stay passionate and optimistic yet honest about reality. Dreams can go a long way during tough times. Past lessons are our greatest teachers.

6. Befriend the chaos of life - Chaos is healthy - it's about life reordering itself. Face it head on. Chaos is the source of creativity and innovation and creates non-linear, business concepts that bring about our next generation of products.

7. Manage your bright and shadow sides - Expect to see both sides of your personality. Face up to your leadership shortcomings. Be aware of how stress brings forth your shadows. Get feedback from a friend, spouse, or partner.

8. Understand the diversity of people - Everyone sees change through his/her own lens. Some choose to hide; others act; still others won't stop talking. Listen deeply, tailor your response, and stay one step ahead.

9. Embrace the paradox of leadership - Uncertainty is full of contradictions and requires a multi-faceted response. Consider: tough empathy, urgent listening, reflective decisiveness, flexible firmness, and constructive impatience.

10. Build a culture of principles and performance - Focus on the higher purpose; teach people how the business works; lead by example; focus and align; obsess over customers; leverage core capabilities; be a leadership liberator; and lead brutally honest management teams.

Did you know? Interesting trivia...

2009-02-20T07:21:00.004-05:00

A friend recently sent this to me. I thought it was very telling of the times we are living in.

If you are one in a million in China, there are 1,300 of you
China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world
The 25% of India's population with the highest IQ...is greater than the total population of the United States --> India has more honor kids than America has kids
The top 10 in demand jobs in 2010...did not exist in 2004
We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist...to use technologies that haven't been invented...in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet
The U.S> Department of Labor estimates that today's learner will have 10-14 jobs...by the age of 38
1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer for less than a year
1 in 2 worker has been there less than five years
1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online
There are over 200 million registered users on MySpace. If MySpace were a country, it would be the 5th largest country in the world
The #1 country in broadband internet penetration is...Bermuda. The U.S. is #19, and Japan is #22
We are living in exponential times
There are 31 billion searches on Goggle every month - in 2006, this number was 2.7 billion
Who addressed these questions before Google?
The first commercial text message was sent in December of 1992 - today, the number of text messages sent and received everyday exceeds the population of the planet
Years taken to reach a market audience of 50 million
- radio, 38 years
- TV, 13 years
- Internet, 4 years
- iPod, 3 years
- Facebook, 2 years
Number of Internet device in 1984 was 1,000
Number of Internet device in 1992 was 1,000,000
Number of Internet devices now is 1,000,000,000
There are 540,000 words in the English language, about 5X as many as there were in Shakespeare's time
It is estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century
It is estimated that 4 exabytes (4 x 10^18, or 4 billion gigabytes) of unique information will be generated this year - more than was generated in the previous 5,000 years
The amount of new technical information in doubling every 2 years - for students starting a 4 year technical degree this means that...half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study
NTT Japan has successfully tested a fibre optic cable that can transmit 14 trillion bits per second along a single strand of fibre. This is equivalent to 2,660 CDs or 210 million phone calls every second. This technology is tripling every 6 months and is expected to maintain this rate for the next 20 years
By 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain -- predictions are that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capability of the human species
During the time it took for you to read this, 67 babies were born in the U.S.; 274 babies were born in China; 395 babies were born in India; and 694,000 songs were downloaded illegally

Comment collection / collaboration tool

2009-02-14T13:54:00.004-05:00

I stumbled across an innovative tool this week that may be very useful for us at the GPO. The tool is offered by Mixedink. MixedInk takes a fresh approach to collaborative writing. It's a fun, democratic and elegant way for people to weave their best ideas together. (Plus, it's free!)

I met with the founder of Mixedink Friday and got a complete demonstration of the tool. They are a small start up company that has developed this concept into a very user-friendly tool that is hosted in a cloud. This tool was used by Slate Magazine to allow the general public to create a proposed inauguration speech for President Obama (Mr. President, Give this Speech).

As the new administration moves to more open government, tools like this could play a big role.

GPO's Competitive Strategy

2009-01-29T12:14:00.009-05:00

A colleague asked me for my thoughts on GPO's competitive strategy. He was working on a paper for his MBA and was looking for input from other GPO managers.
To address this question, I think we need to start by looking at the agency’s mission, and then examine our strength, weakness, opportunities and threats. From here, we can look at our strategy to remain competitive (and viable) in the market to serve our mission.

From the 2004 Strategic Vision document, our mission is stated as follows:
- To provide the agencies and organizations which make up the three branches of the Federal government with expert printing and publishing services, on a cost recovery basis, in order to avoid duplication and waste of government resources.
- To provide, in partnership with Federal Depository libraries, for nationwide community facilities for the perpetual, free and ready access to the printed and electronic documents and other information products, of the Federal government.
- To distribute, on a cost recovery basis, copies of printed and electronic documents and other government information products to the general public.

The vision was stated as follows:
- To deliver Federal information products and services from a flexible digital platform.

Competitive strategy
Our strategy to meet the opportunity and fend off the threats can be outlined.

1. We will understand the market we serve in light of our mission as outlined in Title 44.
This isn’t a new action, but one that needs to be carefully addressed given the rapid changes in technology, which translates to rapidly changing market needs. For FDsys, we worked closely with our end user community; librarians, agencies, congress. Focus groups and councils were formed to communicate with these groups to get their input into what they felt was needed in a new system, and to also validate that we understood them. These groups formed a good basis for candidates for beta testers. This process of involving the customer/partner is critical in successfully meeting market needs.

2. We will accurately capture requirements.
We have a number of examples, both good and bad from which to draw. Concentrated requirements working groups work well for this, with customer/partner follow up as required to validate these requirements are understood.

3. We must innovate.
Innovation is the process of devising a product or service that addresses the customer’s/market’s unmet needs. The output of the innovation process is a concept that, with a supportive business case, enters the product development process, where product design is completed and design conflicts are resolved. Practically speaking, a winning concept must also meet GPO’s success criteria. We need to maximize GPO's value through innovating solutions to meet or exceed needs, delivering solutions to position GPO to be the natural source for authentic Federal information.

4. We must organize in a way to assume a posture of serial innovation to efficiently meet new market needs as they emerge.
We need to have plans to continue to anticipate and understand GPO’s market needs and be prepared to address these with effective solutions in a timely fashion. Our organizational structure coupled with new policies (like our System Development Life Cycle process) and governance (Planning and Strategy board serving in an oversight role for strategic direction and capital investment planning) will support this, coupled with continued diligence into market assessment and active voice of customer work.

5. We must deliver.
We need to develop the integrity within the agency to do what we say we are going to do. This can be accomplished through prioritization of initiatives and through establishing effective organizations to implement projects to meet our goals.

Reference: GPO's Strategic Vision

FDsys goes live!

2009-01-16T16:15:00.004-05:00

The initial launch of GPO's FDsys went live yesterday. This release includes the search and access elements of the system, introducing a vastly improved user interface over the GPO Access tool that has been in production since 1994.

The team has done an outstanding job getting a very complex system completed. In early 2008, the program management of FDsys was changed, moving GPO into the role of the prime contractor. Harris Corporation was ineffective at getting this difficult task completed. When this change was made, the team committed to delivering the first release in January. In less than a year, the GPO team contracted new subject matter experts, completed the system design, and led the development, integration, and test activities to launch this system. It was an terrific example of excellent teamwork and collaboration, doing whatever it took to complete the job on schedule.

Innovation

2009-01-05T17:07:00.003-05:00

The Rochester Institute of Technology is putting additional focus on innovation and, being a member of the dean's council for their Golisano College of Computing and Information Science, I was recently asked to comment on my definition of innovation. I feel innovation is the process of devising a product or service that addresses the customer’s unmet needs. The output of the innovation process is a concept that, with a supportive business case, enters the product development process, where product design is completed and design conflicts are resolved. Ideally, only winning products enter the development process. Practically speaking, a winning concept must also meet company success criteria and societal criteria.

Additionally, I believe that innovation should be approached on a “needs-first” basis. This is an approach to innovation in which companies first uncover all the customer’s needs, then determine which are unmet, and then devise solutions to address those unmet needs. This approach to innovation has, at times been difficult to use effectively, mostly because it is difficult to identify and capture the customer’s needs. Capturing customer needs to drive innovation is a critical step and enhances the performance of the eventual product or service in the market and therefore is worth the effort required.

Cloud Computing: Pilot Results

2008-12-24T12:32:00.020-05:00

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

2008-12-16T12:54:00.008-05:00

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

2008-12-08T13:09:00.012-05:00

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

2008-11-28T07:06:00.003-05:00

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 Biotec hnology - 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

2008-10-06T05:49:00.004-04:00

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

2008-09-30T08:37:00.002-04:00

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

2008-09-12T08:25:00.002-04:00

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

2008-08-07T20:55:00.007-04:00

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

2008-07-31T17:18:00.001-04:00

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.