Recently I came across a great bit of prose, written by Max Ehrmann. Just to be safe on copyright issues (thank you, David), I've linked to a site that has the piece in its entirety.
Hope you enjoy.
Server Sprawl
Because we are a Church, we are considerably more cost conscious than a typical enterprise would be. In an effort to save power, cooling & hardware costs in our data center, we've begun implementing virtualization. We've been using virtualization for quite some time with our AIX servers, but we've now begun to virtualize Windows and Linux boxes.
Most of you know what virtualization is, but for those who don't, I'll try to explain.
<virtualization_explanation>
In the past, when a team needed a server in the data center, we would purchase them their own server. Their application might use, on average, 10% of the capabilities of that server. Or less. It was a waste, not just for our shop, but for the entire industry. A potential, but not always viable, solution was to load multiple solutions onto one box, but those solutions shared the application server and operating system and consequently could interfere with each other by crashing the operating system or the application server and/or just utilizing too much of the computer's brain (CPU).
Virtualization allows us to load multiple instances of an operating system on a single box. So on one machine, we could load several solutions, each with its own instance of the application server (Websphere) and the operating system (typically Linux). So if one solution crashes its instance of the OS, the other solution is just fine because it's running on top of its own instance of the OS.
And because each solution was previously only using around 10% of the total resources of the server, you can run, say, 5 solutions on one server and still only use around 50% of the server's resources. You just cut your power, cooling and hardware costs by roughly 80% (minus a little overhead for the virtualization technology itself).
Pretty amazing.
</virtualization_explanation>
We have seen significant, and maybe even extraordinary, savings on our "per server" costs as a result of virtualization.
The unintended consequence has been "server sprawl." The ease, speed and extremely low cost of creating a new server (because it is virtual) has increased the demand for servers. Without great governance and management tools, this is becoming a problem for most enterprises.
How are you dealing with "server sprawl" in your shops?
Most of you know what virtualization is, but for those who don't, I'll try to explain.
<virtualization_explanation>
In the past, when a team needed a server in the data center, we would purchase them their own server. Their application might use, on average, 10% of the capabilities of that server. Or less. It was a waste, not just for our shop, but for the entire industry. A potential, but not always viable, solution was to load multiple solutions onto one box, but those solutions shared the application server and operating system and consequently could interfere with each other by crashing the operating system or the application server and/or just utilizing too much of the computer's brain (CPU).
Virtualization allows us to load multiple instances of an operating system on a single box. So on one machine, we could load several solutions, each with its own instance of the application server (Websphere) and the operating system (typically Linux). So if one solution crashes its instance of the OS, the other solution is just fine because it's running on top of its own instance of the OS.
And because each solution was previously only using around 10% of the total resources of the server, you can run, say, 5 solutions on one server and still only use around 50% of the server's resources. You just cut your power, cooling and hardware costs by roughly 80% (minus a little overhead for the virtualization technology itself).
Pretty amazing.
</virtualization_explanation>
We have seen significant, and maybe even extraordinary, savings on our "per server" costs as a result of virtualization.
The unintended consequence has been "server sprawl." The ease, speed and extremely low cost of creating a new server (because it is virtual) has increased the demand for servers. Without great governance and management tools, this is becoming a problem for most enterprises.
How are you dealing with "server sprawl" in your shops?
Risk Magic
Last week at the Research Board, I had the pleasure of sitting down to talk with Peter Tippett, a security guru who bucks common risk management wisdom and has made an enemy of many security folks who find his focus on being "practical" naive. He was both delightfully insightful and hilarious.
He offered many tidbits of wisdom.
For example, he talked about endpoint protection. Security best practices dictate that laptops, particularly ones carried by executives or other folks who might be carrying sensitive data, be encrypted with heavy duty encryption stuff. Tippett argues that this practice is silly.
In order for something bad to happen, ALL of the following must be true:
What is the likelihood that even the first three of these things might happen, let alone the last two?
A good security professional will know the potential attacks and best defenses. An excellent security professional will temper the desire to "continually batten down the hatches" by considering the probability of successful attacks and planning accordingly.
Peter was refreshing and fun.
He offered many tidbits of wisdom.
For example, he talked about endpoint protection. Security best practices dictate that laptops, particularly ones carried by executives or other folks who might be carrying sensitive data, be encrypted with heavy duty encryption stuff. Tippett argues that this practice is silly.
In order for something bad to happen, ALL of the following must be true:
- The individual must lose (by negligence or through theft) a laptop
- The laptop must have information on it that could actually be used in some harmful way
- The person who acquires the laptop (through whatever means) must desire to get data off of the laptop and not just sell the laptop for drug money, which is probably much more often the case.
- The bad guy must have the ability to get through the basic security protection on the laptop
- The bad guy then must have the ability to use that information in some hurtful way
What is the likelihood that even the first three of these things might happen, let alone the last two?
A good security professional will know the potential attacks and best defenses. An excellent security professional will temper the desire to "continually batten down the hatches" by considering the probability of successful attacks and planning accordingly.
Peter was refreshing and fun.
Risk Magic
Last week I had the pleasure of listening to Peter Tippett, a security guru who bucks common risk management wisdom and has made an enemy of many security folks who don't see things his way. He was both delightfully insightful and hilarious.
He offered many tidbits of wisdom.
For example, he talked about endpoint protection. Security best practices dictate that laptops, particularly ones carried by executives or other folks who might be carrying sensitive data, be encrypted with heavy duty encryption stuff.
PaulWilmot
He offered many tidbits of wisdom.
For example, he talked about endpoint protection. Security best practices dictate that laptops, particularly ones carried by executives or other folks who might be carrying sensitive data, be encrypted with heavy duty encryption stuff.
PaulWilmot
Dear Vendors
Dear Vendors,
I have the following suggestions for how to deal with our shop.
I have the following suggestions for how to deal with our shop.
- Send me emails all you want, introducing your new product, whatever. I get them almost daily. Please realize that they don't do any good. I usually delete them outright. Please don't feel badly that I don't respond. I just don't have time.
Conference on Twitter
Many are following LDS General Conference on Twitter using the #LDSCONF keyword.
Conference Online
We're broadcasting General Conference online this weekend, as we have in the past. There are English, Portuguese, Spanish, and American Sign Language versions.
We're using encoders from a Utah company, Move Networks, to stream the video. In the future we will stream additional languages.
The quality is good enough to watch on a big screen if you have a way to hook your computer up to a TV or a projector.
Enjoy!
We're using encoders from a Utah company, Move Networks, to stream the video. In the future we will stream additional languages.
The quality is good enough to watch on a big screen if you have a way to hook your computer up to a TV or a projector.
Enjoy!
2: Learn
Any executive (CIO, CEO, business owner, whatever) will tell you that one of the keys to success is hiring great managers. In a technology group (or company) the people chosen to manage engineers are usually … the best engineers.
Do great engineers make great managers? Not without hard work.
You've heard the story: Maestro finishes a performance and is approached by a member of the audience. "I would give my life to play like that." Maestro pauses. "I did."
Most worthwhile pursuits require desire, effort, practice, and focus. And time.
Leadership is no different. You can help by providing opportunities for leaders and potential leaders to study the craft. Here are three ideas:
- Books. Every month or so, we select a group of leaders and read a leadership development book together. We have read books like The Anatomy of Peace, Influencer, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, and so forth. We then get together to discuss the books. I typically facilitate a discussion with about three groups of twelve or so each month. These meetings teach me an awful lot and provide an opportunity for leaders in the organization to learn from each other.
- Speakers. Occasionally we bring in speakers. At the Church we've been able to convince some pretty amazing speakers to come in pro bono, but if I were back in the corporate world I would set aside budget to get great speakers to come in and meet with key leaders.
- Training. We have New Manager Training for all new managers and ongoing, monthly training for all managers. Topics like personal productivity, effective performance management, process, and delegation are covered. We try to focus on very high quality experiences rather than half-baked, thrown together classes. We don't always succeed, but typically these classes reflect the high degree of effort and focus on making them high quality.
These are intuitive suggestions, but I'm surprised at how many companies I talk to which either a) don't pay attention to developing leaders or b) don't treat these opportunities seriously.
Online Tech Talks
A year or so ago we did some "tech talks" in California, Washington and Utah where we got together with techies to discuss technology at the Church. We'll be doing this online this week. This one is for people interested in technology and how the Church uses it.
More information here.
More information here.
Stitching Photos
Six months or so ago I heard about a web site called PhotoSynth, a tool that started in Microsoft Research Labs. You can upload pictures of a building or city block or object or whatever into PhotoSynth and it will stitch them together into a 3d view.
PhotoSynth is now live. It has some limitations, like the inability to add pictures to someone else's Synth, but you can just imagine the potential!
I downloaded a bunch of pictures of the SL temple from Flickr and created a PhotoSynth called "Mormon Temple (SLC)." It was able to automatically stitch together about 11 percent of them, although all from the same side.
Would love to see someone put enough pictures into a Synth to create a full 3d view of one of the temples!
Kudos to Microsoft for a clever idea!
PhotoSynth is now live. It has some limitations, like the inability to add pictures to someone else's Synth, but you can just imagine the potential!
I downloaded a bunch of pictures of the SL temple from Flickr and created a PhotoSynth called "Mormon Temple (SLC)." It was able to automatically stitch together about 11 percent of them, although all from the same side.
Would love to see someone put enough pictures into a Synth to create a full 3d view of one of the temples!
Kudos to Microsoft for a clever idea!
1: Accountability
Perhaps the most important attribute a leader needs to be successful is accountability. Humans will do amazing things if they know what is expected of them. They will often do stupid things if they don't.
Consider the parable of the rock:
A village chieftain once asked a young warrior to bring him a rock. The young man, feeling excited, creative, and proud to have been asked, guessed that the chieftain wanted a new decoration for his hut. He went out and found a beautiful quartz crystal and brought it to the chieftain who shrugged and said, "Thank you. But that's not the rock I wanted. Please try again." Disappointed, but still resolute, the warrior then decided that the chieftain must be worried about the oncoming winter, so he returned with a piece of coal. "That's not it either,” said the chieftain. Getting frustrated, the warrior asked around the village and found that the chieftain had asked for rocks before and had once accepted a piece of granite. Thus, the young man traveled several days to a place where he could find granite. He chipped off a large piece and hauled it home to the chief, who didn't have time to see him, but sent a message through his lieutenant-chieftain that he had changed his mind and no longer wanted a rock.
You've probably been on both ends of that story. I know I have. The warrior, instead of spending productive time, spent time trying to divine what the chieftain wanted. What a waste of effort! Clear instructions save everybody time and improve the quality of work. Accountability is impossible without them. You can grow leaders by giving clear instructions and letting them flourish.
I once had a manager who subscribed to the “bring me a rock” school of thought. He was a smart, talented guy, but he had very stringent, inflexible notions of how things ought to be done. He would ask me to bring him a rock over and over and over again until, at last, the rock I brought was the one he wanted. Hey, I eventually brought him what he wanted, so we succeeded together, right? Wrong. Each day seemed like a continual struggle with this manager, and I often felt like I was spinning my wheels. I definitely wasn't as productive as I could have been. Obviously, this behavior turns people into drones whose purpose is to figure out the leader's will.
As a leader, you have a responsibility to help your people help you. If you have particular concepts of how things ought to be done, be clear on those up front. People need a sandbox, especially in large enterprises where standards, protocol, politics, and policy, by necessity, govern. But make those boundaries as spacious and as well-documented as possible.
Once you establish boundaries, you must set people free within them. People want to feel empowered. They want to be creative. They want to solve problems and have freedom. Turn them loose and stay out of the way! People are paid to use their brains, and the more they're micromanaged, the more they have a tendency to turn their brains off. Micromanagement can work well in very small groups with monumental challenges which require heroics. But micromanagement doesn't grow leaders. I know. I'm a recovering micromanager and I've seen the negative effects of meddling on potential leaders.
It may be easy to criticize someone's ideas. And it's human nature to think that your way is better. You might even be prescient enough to see a potential train wreck coming. But letting leaders own their decisions allows them to feel accountable and learn from their own mistakes. We can't (and we shouldn't) want to teach every person to do every job. We don't know enough and we don't have enough time. Let people learn on their own. Each time you swoop in to solve a problem that you see coming you remove a potential lesson from the people in you organization. Accept mistakes for what they are: cheap leadership training courses.
Clear expectations and defined, yet spacious boundaries with room for mistakes will create leaders in your organization.
Consider the parable of the rock:
A village chieftain once asked a young warrior to bring him a rock. The young man, feeling excited, creative, and proud to have been asked, guessed that the chieftain wanted a new decoration for his hut. He went out and found a beautiful quartz crystal and brought it to the chieftain who shrugged and said, "Thank you. But that's not the rock I wanted. Please try again." Disappointed, but still resolute, the warrior then decided that the chieftain must be worried about the oncoming winter, so he returned with a piece of coal. "That's not it either,” said the chieftain. Getting frustrated, the warrior asked around the village and found that the chieftain had asked for rocks before and had once accepted a piece of granite. Thus, the young man traveled several days to a place where he could find granite. He chipped off a large piece and hauled it home to the chief, who didn't have time to see him, but sent a message through his lieutenant-chieftain that he had changed his mind and no longer wanted a rock.
You've probably been on both ends of that story. I know I have. The warrior, instead of spending productive time, spent time trying to divine what the chieftain wanted. What a waste of effort! Clear instructions save everybody time and improve the quality of work. Accountability is impossible without them. You can grow leaders by giving clear instructions and letting them flourish.
I once had a manager who subscribed to the “bring me a rock” school of thought. He was a smart, talented guy, but he had very stringent, inflexible notions of how things ought to be done. He would ask me to bring him a rock over and over and over again until, at last, the rock I brought was the one he wanted. Hey, I eventually brought him what he wanted, so we succeeded together, right? Wrong. Each day seemed like a continual struggle with this manager, and I often felt like I was spinning my wheels. I definitely wasn't as productive as I could have been. Obviously, this behavior turns people into drones whose purpose is to figure out the leader's will.
As a leader, you have a responsibility to help your people help you. If you have particular concepts of how things ought to be done, be clear on those up front. People need a sandbox, especially in large enterprises where standards, protocol, politics, and policy, by necessity, govern. But make those boundaries as spacious and as well-documented as possible.
Once you establish boundaries, you must set people free within them. People want to feel empowered. They want to be creative. They want to solve problems and have freedom. Turn them loose and stay out of the way! People are paid to use their brains, and the more they're micromanaged, the more they have a tendency to turn their brains off. Micromanagement can work well in very small groups with monumental challenges which require heroics. But micromanagement doesn't grow leaders. I know. I'm a recovering micromanager and I've seen the negative effects of meddling on potential leaders.
It may be easy to criticize someone's ideas. And it's human nature to think that your way is better. You might even be prescient enough to see a potential train wreck coming. But letting leaders own their decisions allows them to feel accountable and learn from their own mistakes. We can't (and we shouldn't) want to teach every person to do every job. We don't know enough and we don't have enough time. Let people learn on their own. Each time you swoop in to solve a problem that you see coming you remove a potential lesson from the people in you organization. Accept mistakes for what they are: cheap leadership training courses.
Clear expectations and defined, yet spacious boundaries with room for mistakes will create leaders in your organization.
1: Let Leaders Succeed and Fail
Perhaps the most important attribute a leader needs to be successful is accountability. Humans will do amazing things if they know what is expected of them. They will often do stupid things if they don't.
Consider the parable of the rock:
A village chieftain once asked a young warrior to bring him a rock. The young man, feeling excited, creative, and proud to have been asked, guessed that the chieftain wanted a new decoration for his hut. He went out and found a beautiful quartz crystal and brought it to the chieftain who shrugged and said, "Thank you. But that's not the rock I wanted. Please try again." Disappointed, but still resolute, the warrior then decided that the chieftain must be worried about the oncoming winter, so he returned with a piece of coal. "That's not it either,” said the chieftain. Getting frustrated, the warrior asked around the village and found that the chieftain had asked for rocks before and had once accepted a piece of granite. Thus, the young man traveled several days to a place where he could find granite. He chipped off a large piece and hauled it home to the chief, who didn't have time to see him, but sent a message through his lieutenant-chieftain that he had changed his mind and no longer wanted a rock.
You've probably been on both ends of that story. I know I have. The warrior, instead of spending productive time, spent time trying to divine what the chieftain wanted. What a waste of effort! Clear instructions save everybody time and improve the quality of work. Accountability is impossible without them. You can grow leaders by giving clear instructions and letting them flourish.
At Microsoft, I had a manager who subscribed to the “bring me a rock” school of thought. He was a talented guy, but he had very stringent, inflexible notions of how things ought to be done. He would ask me to bring him a rock over and over and over again until, at last, the rock I brought was the one he wanted. Hey, I eventually brought him what he wanted, so we succeeded together, right? Wrong. Each day seemed like a continual struggle with this manager, and I often felt like I was spinning my wheels. I definitely wasn't as productive as I could have been. Obviously, this behavior turns people into drones whose purpose is to figure out the leader's will.
As a leader, you have a responsibility to help your people help you. If you have particular concepts of how things ought to be done, be clear on those up front. People need a sandbox, especially in large enterprises where standards, protocol, politics, and policy, by necessity, govern. But make those boundaries as spacious and as well-documented as possible.
Once you establish boundaries, you must set people free within them. People want to feel empowered. They want to be creative. They want to solve problems and to have freedom. Turn them loose and stay out of the way! People are paid salaries to use their brains, and the more they're micromanaged, the more they have a tendency to turn their brains off. Micromanagement can work well in very small groups with monumental challenges which require heroics. But micromanagement doesn't grow leaders. I know. I'm a recovering micro-manager and I've seen the negative effects of meddling on potential leaders.
It may be easy to criticize some one's ideas. And it's human nature to think that your way is better. You might even be prescient enough to see a potential train wreck coming. But letting leaders own their decisions allows them to feel accountable and to learn from their own mistakes. We can't (and we shouldn't) want to teach every person to do every job. We don't know enough and we don't have enough time. Let people learn on their own. Each time you swoop in to solve a problem that you see coming you remove a potential learning lesson from the people in you organization. Accept mistakes for what they are: cheap leadership training courses.
Clear expectations, defined (and spacious) boundaries with room for mistakes will create leaders in your organization.
Consider the parable of the rock:
A village chieftain once asked a young warrior to bring him a rock. The young man, feeling excited, creative, and proud to have been asked, guessed that the chieftain wanted a new decoration for his hut. He went out and found a beautiful quartz crystal and brought it to the chieftain who shrugged and said, "Thank you. But that's not the rock I wanted. Please try again." Disappointed, but still resolute, the warrior then decided that the chieftain must be worried about the oncoming winter, so he returned with a piece of coal. "That's not it either,” said the chieftain. Getting frustrated, the warrior asked around the village and found that the chieftain had asked for rocks before and had once accepted a piece of granite. Thus, the young man traveled several days to a place where he could find granite. He chipped off a large piece and hauled it home to the chief, who didn't have time to see him, but sent a message through his lieutenant-chieftain that he had changed his mind and no longer wanted a rock.
You've probably been on both ends of that story. I know I have. The warrior, instead of spending productive time, spent time trying to divine what the chieftain wanted. What a waste of effort! Clear instructions save everybody time and improve the quality of work. Accountability is impossible without them. You can grow leaders by giving clear instructions and letting them flourish.
At Microsoft, I had a manager who subscribed to the “bring me a rock” school of thought. He was a talented guy, but he had very stringent, inflexible notions of how things ought to be done. He would ask me to bring him a rock over and over and over again until, at last, the rock I brought was the one he wanted. Hey, I eventually brought him what he wanted, so we succeeded together, right? Wrong. Each day seemed like a continual struggle with this manager, and I often felt like I was spinning my wheels. I definitely wasn't as productive as I could have been. Obviously, this behavior turns people into drones whose purpose is to figure out the leader's will.
As a leader, you have a responsibility to help your people help you. If you have particular concepts of how things ought to be done, be clear on those up front. People need a sandbox, especially in large enterprises where standards, protocol, politics, and policy, by necessity, govern. But make those boundaries as spacious and as well-documented as possible.
Once you establish boundaries, you must set people free within them. People want to feel empowered. They want to be creative. They want to solve problems and to have freedom. Turn them loose and stay out of the way! People are paid salaries to use their brains, and the more they're micromanaged, the more they have a tendency to turn their brains off. Micromanagement can work well in very small groups with monumental challenges which require heroics. But micromanagement doesn't grow leaders. I know. I'm a recovering micro-manager and I've seen the negative effects of meddling on potential leaders.
It may be easy to criticize some one's ideas. And it's human nature to think that your way is better. You might even be prescient enough to see a potential train wreck coming. But letting leaders own their decisions allows them to feel accountable and to learn from their own mistakes. We can't (and we shouldn't) want to teach every person to do every job. We don't know enough and we don't have enough time. Let people learn on their own. Each time you swoop in to solve a problem that you see coming you remove a potential learning lesson from the people in you organization. Accept mistakes for what they are: cheap leadership training courses.
Clear expectations, defined (and spacious) boundaries with room for mistakes will create leaders in your organization.
Growing Leaders
In a recent post I talked about the need to infuse IT professionals with business, leadership and interpersonal skills. Easier said than done for some, but still possible and a worthy effort. In the coming weeks, I'll discuss some of the principles we use as we try to grow our leaders from within.
- Accountablity, 7/14
- Learn, 9/30
Book Club: Here Comes Everybody
Clay Shirky gave a remarkable talk at a conference I attended this last year.
Here Comes Everybody is his latest book. In the book he discusses how wikis, blogs and other contemporary telecommunications devices are fundamentally changing society.
Here Comes Everybody is his latest book. In the book he discusses how wikis, blogs and other contemporary telecommunications devices are fundamentally changing society.
Scrum at Google
Jeff Sutherland is one of the co-creators of "scrum." Scrum is an agile software methodology.
In this talk, Jeff describes how he consulted with Google on their AdWords project and helped them implement Scrum. It's an enjoyable talk. I listened while cleaning my office this morning. Make sure you peek at the slides once in a while which flow as he talks. The Q&A at the end is good.
In this talk, Jeff describes how he consulted with Google on their AdWords project and helped them implement Scrum. It's an enjoyable talk. I listened while cleaning my office this morning. Make sure you peek at the slides once in a while which flow as he talks. The Q&A at the end is good.
Lessons of Leadership from Classical Music
Please enjoy the lesson that Benjamin Zander teaches us on leadership. This is a wonderful 18 minute talk given by Zander at a recent TED conference. The TED (stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design) web site has many other great talks as well. Enjoy!
Moving Forward
Last week we released a new Beta web site: LDS Maps.This is a web site that people use to locate LDS buildings all over the world. This will eventually (probably July) be the replacement for a tool called Meetinghouse Locator on lds.org and mormon.org.
We'd love for people (members of the Church and non-members alike) to check it out and give us your feedback! This is only a beta so you will probably see some glitches, performance problems, incorrect data or issues with the design. When you do, let us know about them!
For members of the Church, if the meeting times are wrong then please let your ward clerk know. He can change the meeting times in his system (MLS).
If you see any other problems, including incorrect locations for buildings, click on the "Feedback" button in the web page itself and let us know what you think. With your help, we'll get any incorrect information fixed quickly!
Also feel free to give feedback in the comments here.
We are integrating this technology into the next generation of our web sites so that members of the Church can easily find who lives in their ward or branch boundaries and where. We will also be working on Spanish and Portugese versions, as well as versions for mobile devices.
We'd love for people (members of the Church and non-members alike) to check it out and give us your feedback! This is only a beta so you will probably see some glitches, performance problems, incorrect data or issues with the design. When you do, let us know about them!
For members of the Church, if the meeting times are wrong then please let your ward clerk know. He can change the meeting times in his system (MLS).
If you see any other problems, including incorrect locations for buildings, click on the "Feedback" button in the web page itself and let us know what you think. With your help, we'll get any incorrect information fixed quickly!
Also feel free to give feedback in the comments here.
We are integrating this technology into the next generation of our web sites so that members of the Church can easily find who lives in their ward or branch boundaries and where. We will also be working on Spanish and Portugese versions, as well as versions for mobile devices.
Top 10 Disruptive Technologies
Last month, Gartner identified the top 10 disruptive technologies for 2008 - 2012. And the list is pretty accurate:
We're already trying to figure out how to deal with some of this stuff. Disruptive? Yes. Scary? Definitely. How does a CIO (or IT manager) deal with, embrace or hold off new technologies?
Virtualization is a great example. In our data centers we face the same problems most I.T. shops do: not enough power or cooling. Answer? Virtualization! We're virtualizing servers with technology built into IBM's AIX platform and also with VMWare.
The plus is that it's easier to get servers stood up, each server is cheaper and the utilization is much higher overall. This saves on both power and cooling which is the original problem. The downside is that servers are so easy to requisition that they proliferate like wildfire. Without strong change management processes it can get crazy. And the management tools for virtualized servers aren't mature enough yet. It's clear we're getting value out of virtualization, but is it worth the challenges it presents? I think so; I wish I were more sure.
Web mashups are another interesting one. Users are hurling their data out from the corporate firewall onto the Internet and using various web mashups to create interesting new apps. It's great for the end-user! But the I.T. professional is having fits with security, code management, etc.
All of these new technologies bring both promise and pain. The job of the CIO and the I.T. professional is to understand them and help our business partners see the potential and recognize the risks.
What a fun time to be in information technology!
- Multicore and hybrid processors
- Virtualisation and fabric computing
- Social networks and social software
- Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
- Web mashups
- User Interface
- Ubiquitous computing
- Contextual computing
- Augmented reality
- Semantics
We're already trying to figure out how to deal with some of this stuff. Disruptive? Yes. Scary? Definitely. How does a CIO (or IT manager) deal with, embrace or hold off new technologies?
Virtualization is a great example. In our data centers we face the same problems most I.T. shops do: not enough power or cooling. Answer? Virtualization! We're virtualizing servers with technology built into IBM's AIX platform and also with VMWare.
The plus is that it's easier to get servers stood up, each server is cheaper and the utilization is much higher overall. This saves on both power and cooling which is the original problem. The downside is that servers are so easy to requisition that they proliferate like wildfire. Without strong change management processes it can get crazy. And the management tools for virtualized servers aren't mature enough yet. It's clear we're getting value out of virtualization, but is it worth the challenges it presents? I think so; I wish I were more sure.
Web mashups are another interesting one. Users are hurling their data out from the corporate firewall onto the Internet and using various web mashups to create interesting new apps. It's great for the end-user! But the I.T. professional is having fits with security, code management, etc.
All of these new technologies bring both promise and pain. The job of the CIO and the I.T. professional is to understand them and help our business partners see the potential and recognize the risks.
What a fun time to be in information technology!
Gen Y is Changing the Web
Generation Y is the generation born approximately between 1981 and 2001. They are primarily the children of the baby boomers.
Here are some key characteristics of this new generation (mostly from the the Wikipedia article on Gen Y):
This will be an influential generation.
Here's a great article on how they are changing the web (or is the web changing them?). It's worth a read.
Here are some key characteristics of this new generation (mostly from the the Wikipedia article on Gen Y):
- Represent about 70 million consumers in the United States
- Earn about $211 billion and spend about $172 billion per year (They will probably be primarily responsible for the health-related decisions for their parents, the baby boomers and thus control a lot more future "spend").
- 97% own a computer
- 94% own a cell phone
- 76% use instant messaging
- They tend to move jobs more than ever before
This will be an influential generation.
Here's a great article on how they are changing the web (or is the web changing them?). It's worth a read.
New Blogs
Since the inception of this blog I've been a little confused--sometimes blogging to an "Information Technology" audience and sometimes blogging to non-techies who are curious about media.
We've created a new blog, focused on the latter audience. It's called LDS Media Talk. In that blog, Larry Richman (LDSWebGuy) and I and several others will talk about media issues and how they affect families.
In LDS CIO I will blog to I.T. professionals, both to techies and to people interested in the business of I.T.
As usual, your comments are welcome!
We've created a new blog, focused on the latter audience. It's called LDS Media Talk. In that blog, Larry Richman (LDSWebGuy) and I and several others will talk about media issues and how they affect families.
In LDS CIO I will blog to I.T. professionals, both to techies and to people interested in the business of I.T.
As usual, your comments are welcome!
Comments ON
Some of you have indicated that comments being OFF by default discourages people from commenting because you don't see your comment show up immediately.
So….
Comments have been turned ON by default. Comments that are off topic (like advertisements for multi-level marketing jobs, requests for me to review a resume and anything disparaging of the Seattle Mariners) will be deleted. J
Behave yourselves!
So….
Comments have been turned ON by default. Comments that are off topic (like advertisements for multi-level marketing jobs, requests for me to review a resume and anything disparaging of the Seattle Mariners) will be deleted. J
Behave yourselves!
Apparently Geek is Cool
When I was in high school, "Cool" guys played football, went to movies and had fast cars. "Nerds" were guys who went to debate tournaments, played dungeons & dragons and played with those new "computer" things.
I, of course, was a nerd.
After reading this article, I now realize that I morphed from a nerd into a geek.
Fun article.
I, of course, was a nerd.
After reading this article, I now realize that I morphed from a nerd into a geek.
Fun article.
Hear from the Engineers
Some of our engineers (program managers, QA, developers and others) have been posting about their experiences working at the LDS Church on the LDS Tech blog.
If you have any interest in what it is like to work at the LDS Church, check it out.
If you have any interest in what it is like to work at the LDS Church, check it out.
Tinkering
I'm a tinkerer. A good friend (who was also a direct report) painted a mental picture of me standing beside a cookie jar with my mother out of the room, debating with myself about whether I should dive in and grab a cookie. This, he explained, was my inherent
"Don't confuse operational or implementation problems with the need for changing strategy."
From Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense, Pfeffer & Sutton.
"Don't confuse operational or implementation problems with the need for changing strategy."
From Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense, Pfeffer & Sutton.
Book Club: What Got You Here Won't Get You There
What Got You Here Won't Get You There is the best business book I've read in a long time. The premise is that executives (and managers) will be more successful leaders if they quit being jerks. Sounds simple, but he enumerates exceptional examples of his canonical "20 reasons why leaders fail."
It includes things like "always having to be heard," "shooting the messenger," and "not saying thank you."
Not only does he give hard hitting examples, but he talks about how to start getting rid of these personality and leadership flaws.
Here's the one I'm going to work on: "saying but."
Scenario: Colleague comes in with great idea. Instead of saying "thank you" and expressing the enthusiasm that I actually feel, I say something like: "That's really cool, but..." and then proceed to make my mark on the conversation by bringing up some reason why the idea is partially flawed or a "counterpoint to think about" or just some general critique.
What's the point? Think before you talk and thank people for speaking up! Don't be Mr. Debate all the time! I'm resolving to quit.
It includes things like "always having to be heard," "shooting the messenger," and "not saying thank you."
Not only does he give hard hitting examples, but he talks about how to start getting rid of these personality and leadership flaws.
Here's the one I'm going to work on: "saying but."
Scenario: Colleague comes in with great idea. Instead of saying "thank you" and expressing the enthusiasm that I actually feel, I say something like: "That's really cool, but..." and then proceed to make my mark on the conversation by bringing up some reason why the idea is partially flawed or a "counterpoint to think about" or just some general critique.
What's the point? Think before you talk and thank people for speaking up! Don't be Mr. Debate all the time! I'm resolving to quit.
Everybody loves to cha-cha-cha
A young man I was teaching in a Sunday School class today introduced me to ChaCha.
ChaCha is a question answering service for mobile devices. I tried it and it's pretty cool.
You just send a text message with a question to CHACHA (242242). For fun, I typed my first question this afternoon: "How long is a marathon?" I got an answer in just a couple of minutes:
The marathon is a long-distance running event with an official distance of 42.195 kilometers (26 miles 385 yards) road race.
Wow. That was interesting, I figured, but it's still pretty lame because it's a bot (a computer) and therefore can only answer common questions. I asked another common question: "Who is Gordon B. Hinckley?"
Gordon B. Hinckley is the 15th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The Church is represented. Nice! I can forgive the capitalization error and the missing hyphen. I figured I would ask an uncommon question next: "Who is Joel Dehlin?"
Chief Information Officer for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Huh. At this point, I was starting to wonder if was actually a bot or maybe a human. I tested it: "What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
That depends, is it an African or European swallow? A swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?
I was a little dumb-founded. Either the computer was trained to interpolate Monty Python quotes, they were really good at planning for what stupid questions someone like me might ask or I was texting with a human. Later I found out that ChaCha is, in fact, staffed by humans and you can ask just about anything and get a reasonable answer (directions, movie review, sports scores, restaurant recommendations, etc.). The answer is limited to 160 or so characters of text so you'll want to avoid questions like my friend Eric Denna's favorite: "Define the universe and give three examples." But for simple answers to a surprisingly broad set of questions--basically anything a reasonably smart person can find on the Internet in a few minutes--it's a really neat service I'll be using often.
And it's free--at least for now.
ChaCha is a question answering service for mobile devices. I tried it and it's pretty cool.
You just send a text message with a question to CHACHA (242242). For fun, I typed my first question this afternoon: "How long is a marathon?" I got an answer in just a couple of minutes:
The marathon is a long-distance running event with an official distance of 42.195 kilometers (26 miles 385 yards) road race.
Wow. That was interesting, I figured, but it's still pretty lame because it's a bot (a computer) and therefore can only answer common questions. I asked another common question: "Who is Gordon B. Hinckley?"
Gordon B. Hinckley is the 15th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The Church is represented. Nice! I can forgive the capitalization error and the missing hyphen. I figured I would ask an uncommon question next: "Who is Joel Dehlin?"
Chief Information Officer for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Huh. At this point, I was starting to wonder if was actually a bot or maybe a human. I tested it: "What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
That depends, is it an African or European swallow? A swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?
I was a little dumb-founded. Either the computer was trained to interpolate Monty Python quotes, they were really good at planning for what stupid questions someone like me might ask or I was texting with a human. Later I found out that ChaCha is, in fact, staffed by humans and you can ask just about anything and get a reasonable answer (directions, movie review, sports scores, restaurant recommendations, etc.). The answer is limited to 160 or so characters of text so you'll want to avoid questions like my friend Eric Denna's favorite: "Define the universe and give three examples." But for simple answers to a surprisingly broad set of questions--basically anything a reasonably smart person can find on the Internet in a few minutes--it's a really neat service I'll be using often.
And it's free--at least for now.
Careful what you say!
Freakonomics is one of the blogs I track that I actually try to read. Recently, Fred Shapiro (Yale Book of Quotations) has been blegging to find quotes that sound outlandish and are attributed to famous people.
For example,
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home" is attributed to Kenneth Olsen, founder of DEC.
And
"I think there is a world market for about five computers" is pinned to Tom Watson of IBM fame.
You've heard these kinds of quotes before and they're typically accepted as fact. Most of them, including the reported Bill Gates 640k comment, are not not direct quotes. They are heresay, often with the only verified quote several layers removed from the original author.
One can easily imagine seeds of truth in some of these sayings. Maybe the purported authors were joking. Maybe they said something close, or were using hyperbole to make a point. Maybe they were being sarcastic. Regardless, someone remembered it the way they wanted to and these guys got stuck with the quotes.
How often does this happen to you? Recently I was in a meeting with a sharp member of my staff who quoted me completely erroneously. I corrected him and he argued with me about what I had said. I was amazed that he and I had such a different recollection of a comment I had made. While I know what I meant, what matters is what he thought I said.
Be careful what you say! Repeat yourself. Be consistent. And tell the truth!
It's too easy to be misquoted.
For example,
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home" is attributed to Kenneth Olsen, founder of DEC.
And
"I think there is a world market for about five computers" is pinned to Tom Watson of IBM fame.
You've heard these kinds of quotes before and they're typically accepted as fact. Most of them, including the reported Bill Gates 640k comment, are not not direct quotes. They are heresay, often with the only verified quote several layers removed from the original author.
One can easily imagine seeds of truth in some of these sayings. Maybe the purported authors were joking. Maybe they said something close, or were using hyperbole to make a point. Maybe they were being sarcastic. Regardless, someone remembered it the way they wanted to and these guys got stuck with the quotes.
How often does this happen to you? Recently I was in a meeting with a sharp member of my staff who quoted me completely erroneously. I corrected him and he argued with me about what I had said. I was amazed that he and I had such a different recollection of a comment I had made. While I know what I meant, what matters is what he thought I said.
Be careful what you say! Repeat yourself. Be consistent. And tell the truth!
It's too easy to be misquoted.
Big Things
At the Web 2.0 expo today, Tim O'Reilly (a keynote speaker) quoted a wonerful poem, written by Rainer Maria Rilke. I felt moved and wanted to share.
Click here to read it.
How many of our battles are big ones?
Click here to read it.
How many of our battles are big ones?
General Conference on iTunes Store
General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now available on the iTunes store. Click here to get it.
You need to have iTunes installed on your computer.
You need to have iTunes installed on your computer.
Tapping with a Sledge Hammer
Last week brought a most excellent event: pinewood derby.
Oh yes. Pinewood derby.
Pinewood derby is a cub scout event where dads cub scouts take a block of pine wood, four nails, and four plastic wheels and create a car. They then race the cars along a track against all of the other dads cub scouts. Dads Cub scouts look forward to this event all year long.
Talk about a rich environment for potential blog entries!
We got the car painted the night before (an improvement over past pinewood derbies) so we planned to wait to put the wheels on the car until the next day when I would "get home early."
Of course we had a late meeting the next day. I live almost an hour away from the office so I called Lani to let her know I would barely make it. We decided that she would bring Alex, the car pieces and a hammer to the event.
A hammer. Not a sledge hammer--a hammer! The axles for these things are tiny little pieces of metal. If you're not familiar with pinewood derby, there are tons of legal tricks you can employ to make your car faster: lubricate the axle, use a drill press to drill new holes closer to the edges, make one of the holes a little higher off the ground than the other three, carve out most of the body and add weight to the back, etc, etc, etc. But no tricks will compensate for bad wheels or bad axles. And in my hand were four tiny little nails and a gigantic hammer. Since we seemed to have no other choice, we lay the car on its side and prepared to insert the axles by pounding them into the soft wood.
A friend stopped us and held up a tiny little hammer. "Try this," she said with a smile.
Back in November I wrote about matching great systems with great people to increase effectiveness. The point, in the conext of this metaphor, was that if people aren't getting the job done, check that you've got the right tools before you blame the worker.
Unfortunately, we often try to do too much with tools and process. We use a sledgehammer for a small job.
In our shop, we have a process we use for accomplishing projects. Most feel the process is too cumbersome and slow. However, when faced with some kind of persistent problem the same people who complain about the burden of the current process want to add more steps or controls, making it even slower or bureaucratic feeling.
If you assume people have good intentions, you can often accomplish the same things through simple training. In our department, we have a number of requirements for software development projects:
When we began implementing process in Church I.T. we had a tendency to put controls and process in place to make sure all of these things happened.
However, process shouldn't be used as a gate unless it's absolutely necessary. Rather, people should be trained to understand expectations and they will, more often than not, comply!
Why use a sledge hammer on a pinewood derby car when you can use a tiny little tapping hammer?
Assume people are well-intended and teach them what they need to do to be effective!
Oh yes. Pinewood derby.
Pinewood derby is a cub scout event where dads cub scouts take a block of pine wood, four nails, and four plastic wheels and create a car. They then race the cars along a track against all of the other dads cub scouts. Dads Cub scouts look forward to this event all year long.
Talk about a rich environment for potential blog entries!
We got the car painted the night before (an improvement over past pinewood derbies) so we planned to wait to put the wheels on the car until the next day when I would "get home early."
Of course we had a late meeting the next day. I live almost an hour away from the office so I called Lani to let her know I would barely make it. We decided that she would bring Alex, the car pieces and a hammer to the event.
A hammer. Not a sledge hammer--a hammer! The axles for these things are tiny little pieces of metal. If you're not familiar with pinewood derby, there are tons of legal tricks you can employ to make your car faster: lubricate the axle, use a drill press to drill new holes closer to the edges, make one of the holes a little higher off the ground than the other three, carve out most of the body and add weight to the back, etc, etc, etc. But no tricks will compensate for bad wheels or bad axles. And in my hand were four tiny little nails and a gigantic hammer. Since we seemed to have no other choice, we lay the car on its side and prepared to insert the axles by pounding them into the soft wood.
A friend stopped us and held up a tiny little hammer. "Try this," she said with a smile.
Back in November I wrote about matching great systems with great people to increase effectiveness. The point, in the conext of this metaphor, was that if people aren't getting the job done, check that you've got the right tools before you blame the worker.
Unfortunately, we often try to do too much with tools and process. We use a sledgehammer for a small job.
In our shop, we have a process we use for accomplishing projects. Most feel the process is too cumbersome and slow. However, when faced with some kind of persistent problem the same people who complain about the burden of the current process want to add more steps or controls, making it even slower or bureaucratic feeling.
If you assume people have good intentions, you can often accomplish the same things through simple training. In our department, we have a number of requirements for software development projects:
- Language must be Java or .NET.
- Code coverage for unit tests must be a certain percentage.
- All of the functional disciplines (like interaction design, development, QA, database, etc.) must be consulted on the plan.
- Resources must be freed up and ready to go.
When we began implementing process in Church I.T. we had a tendency to put controls and process in place to make sure all of these things happened.
However, process shouldn't be used as a gate unless it's absolutely necessary. Rather, people should be trained to understand expectations and they will, more often than not, comply!
Why use a sledge hammer on a pinewood derby car when you can use a tiny little tapping hammer?
Assume people are well-intended and teach them what they need to do to be effective!
Grow Your Own CIO
In a post back in March, I posted that an effective executive recruitment strategy can be to grow people inside your organization.
Book Club: Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring
Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring is the latest book I'm reading. Henry Eyring was a pretty remarkable scientist, garnering many of the most distinguised prizes for scientific contribution, and was a faithful Latter-day Saint. He spent a great deal of energy convincing people that science and religion are fundamentally different pursuits and can therefore co-exist peacefully.
The book is written by his grandson, Henry J. Eyring, who takes an interesting approach to detailing Erying's life. Rather than proceeding through a chronology, Eyring divides the chapters by attributes he might have gained from his forefathers.
Here's a quote from the book:
"The lesson of Henry Eyring’s life is that simple people, people just like you and me, can change the world. We do it a little bit every day. And we have the potential to change the world much more, if we can better understand and use our unique gifts."
Need a CIO? Grow Your Own.
In this post over at CIO.COM, Susan Cramm makes the point that the average I.T. professional who feels he is ready to be a CIO isn't ready at all. She makes a call to CIOs to inform their people that they need to get more "business experience" and to develop "senior level relationships."
Her charge is noble, necessary and terribly difficult. Many I.T. professionals lack skills critical to being successful in a C-level role. To many I.T. professionals, a vertical career track requires technical depth and specialization. Consequently they spend a disproportionate amount of time developing technical skills and not enough time on skills that would help them get into and navigate within the boardroom.
Skills like:
Communication. My department works on hundreds of simultaneous projects. In addition, we operate hundreds of different products and services continually. It's critical that we keep our customers and our management aware of what is going on in the shop. I plead and beg our engineers and project/program managers to write very simple, understandable status reports. It is a constant struggle. A member of my office reviews (and in the past has typically re-written) every one of them. We have a hard time talking without jargon and acronyms.
Relationship Management. When I worked in computer games at Microsoft I often had to "check out the competition" and so played an awful lot of games for a couple of years. I remember telling my wife, Lani, about this great new game called Everquest where you could meet new people, develop friendships and have fun together, all in a virtual world. She said, "Gee Joel. It sounds almost as fun as real life." Hmmm. Sarcasm. The fact is that relationships are easier on line than in real life. If things aren't going well, you log out or you just "block" the other person. You don't have to co-exist in a meaningful way--the biggest source of conflict is deciding who gets the +4 magic, +4 intelligence mace you picked up off a monster your party just clobbered. I know I.T. guys who get along socially just fine in on line games and who struggle to go out to lunch periodically with their customers. "I don't really have anything to talk about with them." "I'm too busy."
Business Acumen. Our shop is going through some growing pains this year as one of our focuses is on writing effective business objectives for a project. It's hard. Engineers think about solving problems very naturally. We don't always think about cost justification. Why does it make business sense to upgrade your application server? "Well, the cache is filling up and we're queue'ing requests. That's why." Upgrading may make all the sense in the world to a technologist who understands what's under the hood, but a business person might decide that the business consequences of not upgrading are acceptable in light of the cost of upgrade. This is particularly relevant at the Church where we have to take extra precautions to keep costs low. Many basic business skills like cost-benefit analysis, contract negotiation, and others are not even taught in computer science or information technology programs, and when those skills are taught, they atrophy in I.T. people who are not being required to use them.
In our department, we're taking steps to help our professionals develop these skills. I'll talk about those steps in the next post.
Her charge is noble, necessary and terribly difficult. Many I.T. professionals lack skills critical to being successful in a C-level role. To many I.T. professionals, a vertical career track requires technical depth and specialization. Consequently they spend a disproportionate amount of time developing technical skills and not enough time on skills that would help them get into and navigate within the boardroom.
Skills like:
Communication. My department works on hundreds of simultaneous projects. In addition, we operate hundreds of different products and services continually. It's critical that we keep our customers and our management aware of what is going on in the shop. I plead and beg our engineers and project/program managers to write very simple, understandable status reports. It is a constant struggle. A member of my office reviews (and in the past has typically re-written) every one of them. We have a hard time talking without jargon and acronyms.
Relationship Management. When I worked in computer games at Microsoft I often had to "check out the competition" and so played an awful lot of games for a couple of years. I remember telling my wife, Lani, about this great new game called Everquest where you could meet new people, develop friendships and have fun together, all in a virtual world. She said, "Gee Joel. It sounds almost as fun as real life." Hmmm. Sarcasm. The fact is that relationships are easier on line than in real life. If things aren't going well, you log out or you just "block" the other person. You don't have to co-exist in a meaningful way--the biggest source of conflict is deciding who gets the +4 magic, +4 intelligence mace you picked up off a monster your party just clobbered. I know I.T. guys who get along socially just fine in on line games and who struggle to go out to lunch periodically with their customers. "I don't really have anything to talk about with them." "I'm too busy."
Business Acumen. Our shop is going through some growing pains this year as one of our focuses is on writing effective business objectives for a project. It's hard. Engineers think about solving problems very naturally. We don't always think about cost justification. Why does it make business sense to upgrade your application server? "Well, the cache is filling up and we're queue'ing requests. That's why." Upgrading may make all the sense in the world to a technologist who understands what's under the hood, but a business person might decide that the business consequences of not upgrading are acceptable in light of the cost of upgrade. This is particularly relevant at the Church where we have to take extra precautions to keep costs low. Many basic business skills like cost-benefit analysis, contract negotiation, and others are not even taught in computer science or information technology programs, and when those skills are taught, they atrophy in I.T. people who are not being required to use them.
In our department, we're taking steps to help our professionals develop these skills. I'll talk about those steps in the next post.
Royce
"Man has, through the richness of the intellectual quest, become more knowing, more clever and more skeptical. But we have not become more profound or more reverent. Nor have we found a way to put our learning in the context of the eternal."
Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce
You Have the Right to Remain Visible
How many of you would take your home computer to a public place and leave it running?
Or make a list of every web site you browse (EVERY WEB SITE YOU BROWSE) and publish it in the newspaper?
Would you write your credit card number down on pieces of paper and pass them around large groups of people?
We are engaged in the digital analogs of these things all the time, and most of us don't know it.
How many of you would take your home computer to a public place and leave it?
If you fire up a wireless laptop in my house you'll see four of my neighbors' wireless networks, all but one open to the world. I'm about as technical as the sole of an old shoe, but it would be trivial for me to hack into one of their computers and cause all kinds of problems: peek at pictures, read on-line journals, grab credit card numbers or snag on-line passwords stored in cache. Though I'm harmless, some are not. This type of cyber-tom-foolery happens regularly. Thieves drive around looking for wireless networks, discover them, break into them (usually trivially) and make off with the digital rewards.
Or make a list of every web site you browse (EVERY WEB SITE YOU BROWSE) and publish it in the newspaper?
If you think only you know the web sites you visit, think again. Your computer stores traces of where you go in cyberspace and, depending on the security settings on your browser, other web sites can get access to that data. Even if you're careful on your computer, the ISP you use to connect to the Internet can store that data. Some of them are even starting to sell that data--in a way that is actually pretty ingenious. Let's say you're up on a web site reading a review of the movie "Bourne Ultimatum." You might notice that the next web site you go to has an ad to rent or buy one of Matt Damon's other movies. This is possible because some ISP's are starting to provide data about the last place you browsed to the next place you browse and charging for that information. Read the privacy notice of your ISP carefully and I imagine that in many cases you'll find that you can't prevent it.
Would you write your credit card number down on pieces of paper and pass them around large groups of people?
If you send your credit card number over email or tell someone your credit card over the phone (land-line or cell phone) you might as well be writing it down on little pieces of paper and dropping them off a building roof into a crowd. Technology for "listening" to phone calls and "sniffing" emails on the Internet is basically mainstream. It's easy to rationalize, "Oh, I'll just do it this once," but the first time you find big charges on your credit card that you didn't make, you get serious about protecting yourself.
It's interesting to me that we can be so much more careful about protecting our non-digital assets, when our digital assets can be stolen or undermined so much more quickly.
I'd love to hear what precautions you're taking to protect yourselves.
Or make a list of every web site you browse (EVERY WEB SITE YOU BROWSE) and publish it in the newspaper?
Would you write your credit card number down on pieces of paper and pass them around large groups of people?
We are engaged in the digital analogs of these things all the time, and most of us don't know it.
How many of you would take your home computer to a public place and leave it?
If you fire up a wireless laptop in my house you'll see four of my neighbors' wireless networks, all but one open to the world. I'm about as technical as the sole of an old shoe, but it would be trivial for me to hack into one of their computers and cause all kinds of problems: peek at pictures, read on-line journals, grab credit card numbers or snag on-line passwords stored in cache. Though I'm harmless, some are not. This type of cyber-tom-foolery happens regularly. Thieves drive around looking for wireless networks, discover them, break into them (usually trivially) and make off with the digital rewards.
Or make a list of every web site you browse (EVERY WEB SITE YOU BROWSE) and publish it in the newspaper?
If you think only you know the web sites you visit, think again. Your computer stores traces of where you go in cyberspace and, depending on the security settings on your browser, other web sites can get access to that data. Even if you're careful on your computer, the ISP you use to connect to the Internet can store that data. Some of them are even starting to sell that data--in a way that is actually pretty ingenious. Let's say you're up on a web site reading a review of the movie "Bourne Ultimatum." You might notice that the next web site you go to has an ad to rent or buy one of Matt Damon's other movies. This is possible because some ISP's are starting to provide data about the last place you browsed to the next place you browse and charging for that information. Read the privacy notice of your ISP carefully and I imagine that in many cases you'll find that you can't prevent it.
Would you write your credit card number down on pieces of paper and pass them around large groups of people?
If you send your credit card number over email or tell someone your credit card over the phone (land-line or cell phone) you might as well be writing it down on little pieces of paper and dropping them off a building roof into a crowd. Technology for "listening" to phone calls and "sniffing" emails on the Internet is basically mainstream. It's easy to rationalize, "Oh, I'll just do it this once," but the first time you find big charges on your credit card that you didn't make, you get serious about protecting yourself.
It's interesting to me that we can be so much more careful about protecting our non-digital assets, when our digital assets can be stolen or undermined so much more quickly.
I'd love to hear what precautions you're taking to protect yourselves.
Did You Know 2.0
This is an interesting/sobering/motivational video on YouTube which offers some interesting factoids to think about.
Internet Activity Around President Hinckley
The activity on the Internet surrounding President Hinckley has been huge this and last week.
Newsroom has an article pointing to some of the major coverage.
BlogPulse ranked "Gordon B. Hinckley" as the third most mentioned person in the blogosphere on the day after he died.
As of 11:20am this morning there were 170 groups on Facebook created in memory of President Hinckley. 29,038 individuals belong to the largest group which is called "In Memory of Gordon B. Hinckley." Over 90,000 people have subscribed to at least one of the groups.
There's also a new web site called HinckleyChallenge. This is an unofficial web site which challenges people to read the Book of Mormon in 97 days (in commemoration of his age when he died).
Finally, there is a great video up on YouTube where young people share their feelings about the Prophet.
Newsroom has an article pointing to some of the major coverage.
BlogPulse ranked "Gordon B. Hinckley" as the third most mentioned person in the blogosphere on the day after he died.
As of 11:20am this morning there were 170 groups on Facebook created in memory of President Hinckley. 29,038 individuals belong to the largest group which is called "In Memory of Gordon B. Hinckley." Over 90,000 people have subscribed to at least one of the groups.
There's also a new web site called HinckleyChallenge. This is an unofficial web site which challenges people to read the Book of Mormon in 97 days (in commemoration of his age when he died).
Finally, there is a great video up on YouTube where young people share their feelings about the Prophet.
New Web Sites for Two Church Presidents
In honor of President Hinckley's passing and President Monson's new assignment two new web sites were created to celebrate these wonderful men.
gordonbhinckley.com
thomassmonson.com
In addition, the MoreGood Foundation has also created web sites:
www.gordonhinckley.com
www.thomasmonson.com
gordonbhinckley.com
thomassmonson.com
In addition, the MoreGood Foundation has also created web sites:
www.gordonhinckley.com
www.thomasmonson.com
Glenn Beck on President Hinckley
Thanks to Brad Stoddard for pointing me to Glenn Beck's comments the day after President Hinckley's passing.
President Hinckley has passed away
President Hinckley passed away tonight at 7:00pm, MST.
I will miss his sense of humor, his energy, and his passion.
What a wonderful man.
I will miss his sense of humor, his energy, and his passion.
What a wonderful man.
Expressing your feelings
On December 15th of last year, Elder M. Russell Ballard, an apostle of the LDS Church, gave a talk to students of Brigham Young University in Hawaii. He encouraged the students to express their feelings and testimonies of the Church using new media (including the Internet).
Last week at Church, a young man talked about the efforts of some of the kids he knows to express themselves on the Internet.
If you search YouTube you will find plenty of videos which are negative about the Church. However there you will always see that members of the Church are starting to step up and express their testimonies, create montages, and even write and perform songs.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LdPT5oVtG9E
Brad's Testimony
Keep it up!
http://www.ldscio.org/2007/10/08/video-blog-experiment/
http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/using-new-media-to-support-the-work-of-the-church
Last week at Church, a young man talked about the efforts of some of the kids he knows to express themselves on the Internet.
If you search YouTube you will find plenty of videos which are negative about the Church. However there you will always see that members of the Church are starting to step up and express their testimonies, create montages, and even write and perform songs.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LdPT5oVtG9E
Brad's Testimony
Keep it up!
http://www.ldscio.org/2007/10/08/video-blog-experiment/
http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/using-new-media-to-support-the-work-of-the-church
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