tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2286776880346834892024-02-20T05:46:23.957+13:00Simon G's BlogRamblings from an Enterprise Architect that has escaped the ivory towerSimon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-35312947643999260132023-01-20T15:00:00.000+13:002023-01-20T15:37:39.107+13:00 How I manage my email<p>A colleague was noting that he was wanting a better approach to manage his email so I thought I should document what I have been doing for several years now and has been (mostly) working for me.</p><p>The general concept is that I aim to have nothing in my Inbox at the end of each day. </p><p>The approach I have been using builds on top of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity-ebook/dp/B00KWG9M2E?&linkCode=ll1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=aba43de7d79a2dbad69cc89d2ecd384f&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl" target="_blank">Getting Things Done (GTD)</a>, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/inbox-zero" target="_blank">Inbox Zero</a> and the <a href="https://www.productplan.com/glossary/eisenhower-matrix/" target="_blank">Eisenhower Matrix</a> to prioritise it.</p><p>Ideally as soon as an email arrives and I get around to looking at, I move it to an appropriate folder to action later, respond straight away, file it away in my archive folders or delete it. In reality I often end up going through what is still lingering in my Inbox at the end of the day and do this. </p><p>I have some key folders setup:</p><p></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>1. Action - Urgent and Important</li><li>2. Action - Urgent but not Important </li><li>3. Action - Not Urgent but Important</li><li>4. Action - Not Urgent and Not Important</li><li>Casual Reading </li></ul><p></p><p>These are the key folders I use for determining the priority of actioning an incoming email. Of these 1 & 2 are the key ones for me; 4 I often don't get to for a long time. Casual Reading and 4 are used a bit interchangeably and the reality is I rarely put things in those folders. Once I have dealt with emails from these folders I put them into my standard folder structure. I also keep a list of things I am working on (or plan to get to) and sometimes the contents of emails will be added there. </p><p>I used to have a "Waiting for others to respond" folder but found I rarely used it so now days tend to keep the email sitting in the various action folders so I am regularly reminded about it and may then deprioritise it from there.</p><p>With some email clients (such as the Outlook fat client) I have found that folders can be configured to show the number of items in a folder (as opposed to the number unread). I have found this useful as a reminder that there are emails requiring an action.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdQzrCMQi8CGikmB9V7UjX1TFtYM3pFwjzEZB0GHjHXPRW7m4xJCOjRDfdAI-dRAps9t4lwFMxtI_y69ieuwtD-EA-hHiROq7OL3nLMmhyZF5cuU2GrTWlKzfu89NPqDtnXNb3heEoB_0z5lSYMJJW1RAf_D7lkwJ4nJ5IQkc0oVsPvjOAX5lFi4JBMA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="169" data-original-width="311" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdQzrCMQi8CGikmB9V7UjX1TFtYM3pFwjzEZB0GHjHXPRW7m4xJCOjRDfdAI-dRAps9t4lwFMxtI_y69ieuwtD-EA-hHiROq7OL3nLMmhyZF5cuU2GrTWlKzfu89NPqDtnXNb3heEoB_0z5lSYMJJW1RAf_D7lkwJ4nJ5IQkc0oVsPvjOAX5lFi4JBMA" width="320" /></a></div>It is not a perfect system but I have found that having nothing in my Inbox at the end of each day useful to have a clearer frame of mind and to not miss something that may be buried in my Inbox. <p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-87121250882896643742019-01-03T19:52:00.002+13:002019-01-03T20:10:12.167+13:00"Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems"; my key take-aways<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Site-Reliability-Engineering-Production-Systems/dp/149192912X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1546484988&sr=8-1&keywords=site+reliability+engineering&linkCode=ll1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=6af126c848de4469355c1aff2d766364&language=en_US" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="381" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkY1DMIbafeuu7xpj9bVrVzkSek_R74Cs10pdCAXy7eq_Lb6DYm19NvOnWK_IBSAHZ4Qog03TTaM_UmKyAjms2E7XeHhDch-RHTUzXpS0LNnixMZ4Xdz-fKQpRPEfIicp40FrZcTrA-wwl/s320/sre.jpg" width="244" /></a></div>
"<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Site-Reliability-Engineering-Production-Systems/dp/149192912X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1546484988&sr=8-1&keywords=site+reliability+engineering&linkCode=ll1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=6af126c848de4469355c1aff2d766364&language=en_US" target="_blank">Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems</a>" edited by Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff and Niall Richard Murphy contains a number of insights into Google's SRE practice. It is a bit repetitive at times but this assists in drilling in some of the key points.<br />
<br />
My key take aways were:<br />
<ul>
<li>Google places a 50% cap on all aggregate "ops" work for all SREs - tickets, on-call, manual tasks, etc.</li>
<ul>
<li>The remaining 50% is to do development.</li>
<li>If consistently less than 50% development then often some of the burden is pushed back to the development team, or staff are added to the team.</li>
</ul>
<li>An error budget is set that is one minus the availability target (e.g. a 99.99% availability target will have a 0.01% error budget).</li>
<ul>
<li>This budget cannot be overspent and assists in the balance of reliability and the pace of innovation.</li>
<li>Cost is often a key factor in determining the proposed availability target for a service.</li>
<ul>
<li>if we were to build an operate these systems at one more nice of availability, what will our incremental increase in revenue be? does this offset the cost to reach that level of reliability?</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>There are three kinds of monitoring outputs:</li>
<ul>
<li>Alerts</li>
<ul>
<li>signifies a human needs to take action immediately</li>
</ul>
<li>Tickets</li>
<ul>
<li>signifies a human needs to take action, but not immediately</li>
</ul>
<li>Logging</li>
<ul>
<li>no one needs to do anything, but it is recorded for diagnostic or forensic purposes</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>Automate yourself out of a job: Automate all the things. Have a low tolerance for repetitive reactive work.</li>
<li>When creating rules for monitoring and alerting, consider how to reduce false positives and pager burnout:</li>
<ul>
<li>Will I ever be able to ignore this alert knowing it is benign? When and why? How can I avoid this scenario?</li>
<li>Does this alert definitely indicative users and being negatively affected? If not, how can these be filtered out?</li>
<li>Is the action required urgent or can it wait until the morning?</li>
<li>Adopt a philosophy of pages and pagers of:</li>
<ul>
<li>Every time the pager goes off, I should be able to react with a sense of urgency. I can only react with a sense of urgency a few times a day before I become fatigued,</li>
<li>Every page should be actionable.</li>
<li>Every page response should require intelligence. If a page merely merits a robotic response, it shouldn't be a page (e.g. automate it).</li>
<li>Pages should be about a novel problem or an event that hasn't been seen before.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>Google's services communicate using Remote Procedure Call (RPC). c.f. gRPC.</li>
<ul>
<li>Data is transferred to and from an RPC using protocol buffers</li>
</ul>
<li>Google Software Engineers work from a single shared repository. </li>
<ul>
<li>If they encounter a problem in a component outside of their project, they can fix the problem and send the proposed changes to the oner for review.</li>
<li>Changes to source code in an engineer's own project require a review.</li>
<li>All code is checked into the main branch of the source code tree (mainline). Most major projects don't release directly from the mainline; instead they branch from the mainline at a specific revision and never merge changes back to the mainline. Bug fixes are submitted to the mainline and then cherry picked into the branch.</li>
</ul>
<li>At Google a time-based metric for availability is usually not meaningful due to globally distributed services. Instead "request success rate" is often more meaningful.</li>
<li>Google SRE's unofficial motto is "Hope is not a strategy"</li>
<li>An SLO is a service level objective; a target value or range of values for a service level that is measured by a service level indicator (SLI).</li>
<ul>
<li>Common SLI's are request latency, error rate, throughput, correctness and availability</li>
<li>Choose just enough SLOs to provide good coverage of your system's attributes. Defend the SLOs you pick; if you can't ever win a conversation about priorities by quoting a particular SLO, it's probably not worth having that SLO.</li>
<li>Perfection can wait</li>
<ul>
<li>You can refine SLO definitions and targets over time as you learn about a system's behaviour. It's better to start with a loose target that you tighten.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>The Service Reliability Hierarchy provides a good graphical depiction of the elements that go into making a service reliable.</li>
<li><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhffapLdl_nL8ga8sqOjNhSJpqYB-y__jls_5jIfwGRLDcJPeRAscCMpCccFUIBdB75c7sjeo5krEgctukQNt1PZltFa80LXFwsVOUJ04iWHzAzRtbBIuD9aEadsfjJyWFTDFKcYnT09-QP/s1600/hierarchy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="900" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhffapLdl_nL8ga8sqOjNhSJpqYB-y__jls_5jIfwGRLDcJPeRAscCMpCccFUIBdB75c7sjeo5krEgctukQNt1PZltFa80LXFwsVOUJ04iWHzAzRtbBIuD9aEadsfjJyWFTDFKcYnT09-QP/s400/hierarchy.jpg" width="400" /></a></li>
<li><a href="https://prometheus.io/" target="_blank">Prometheus</a> is an opensource monitoring system that shares many similarities to the tool used by Google for white-box monitoring; Borgmon. </li>
<ul>
<li>To facilitate mass collection, the metrics format was standardised, with metrics being able to be pulled back in one fetch e.g. http://webserver:80/varz could pull back http_requests and errors_total</li>
<li>Borgmon also records info such as whether the target responded, what time the collection finished etc.</li>
</ul>
<li>Google utilises <a href="https://github.com/google/cloudprober" target="_blank">Prober</a> for black box testing from an end-user perspective.</li>
<li>The most important on-call resources are:</li>
<ul>
<li>Clear escalation paths</li>
<li>Well defined incident management procedures</li>
<li>A blameless portmortem culture</li>
</ul>
<li>Your first response in a major outage may be to start troubleshooting and try to find a root cause as quickly as possible. Ignore that instinct! Instead your course of action should be to make the system work as well as it can under the circumstances.</li>
<ul>
<li>c.f. a novice pilot is taught that their first responsibility in an emergency is to fly the airplane; troubleshooting is secondary to getting the plane and everyone on it safely onto the ground.</li>
</ul>
<li>Test roll-back procedures before large-scale tests</li>
<li>History is about learning from everyone's mistakes</li>
<ul>
<li>Postmortems are key to putting effective effective prevention plans in place and learning. Make postmortems widely available (inc. having postmortem reading clubs) and consider that people reading them may have minimal knowledge about the context of the environment.</li>
</ul>
<li>Plan for failures / potential incidents. </li>
<ul>
<li>If you haven't gamed out your response to potential incidents in advance, principled incident management can out the window in real-life situations.</li>
<li>Ask questions such as What if the building power fails…? What if the network equipment racks are standing in two feet of water…? What if the primary datacenter suddenly goes dark…? What if someone compromises your web server…? What do you do? Who do you call? Who will write the check? Do you have a plan? Do you know how to react? Do you know how your systems will react? Could you minimise the impact if it were to happen now? Could the person sitting next to you do the same?</li>
<li>Have a matrix of all possible combinations of disasters with plans to address each of these.</li>
<li>Processes should be documented in such a way that any team member can execute a given process in an emergency.</li>
<ul>
<li>Document all manual processes</li>
<li>Document the process for moving your service to a new datacenter</li>
<li>Automate the process for building and releasing a new version</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>Google's incident management system is based on the <a href="http://www.fema.gov/national-incident-management-system" target="_blank">FEMA Incident Command System</a>. </li>
<ul>
<li>This includes several distinct roles that should be delegated to particular individuals for an incident (swap roles around the team for different incidents):</li>
<ul>
<li>Incident Command</li>
<ul>
<li>hold high level state of incident and maintain living incident document. They structure the incident response task force and assign responsibilities and prioritise</li>
</ul>
<li>Operational Work</li>
<li>Communication</li>
<ul>
<li>public face of the incident response task force. Provide periodic updates</li>
</ul>
<li>Planning</li>
<ul>
<li>deals with longer-term issues, such as filing bugs, ordering dinner, arranging handoffs and tracking how the system has diverged from the norm.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>The incident management framework can apply to other operational changes as part of change management, which provides an opportunity to practice the process.</li>
</ul>
<li>Weighted round robin is often used for load balancing. Each client keeps a "capability" score for each backend in its subset.</li>
<li>Gracefully handling overload conditions is fundamental to running a reliable serving system.</li>
<ul>
<li>Build clients and backends to handle resource restrictions gracefully: redirect when possible, serve degraded results when necessary, and handle resource errors transparently when all else fails.</li>
<li>On client-side, for the last two minutes of history, retain requests and accepts. Use this to throttle and to handle retries.</li>
<li>Have different criticality of requests (Google has four levels; CRITICAL_PLUS, CRITICAL, SHEDDABLE_PLUS, SHEDDABLE)</li>
</ul>
<li>The Paxos protocol is often used for strong consistency guarantees is a distributed environment.</li>
<ul>
<li>Paxos utilises a consensus approach. </li>
<li>Google uses this for many things, including cron and Chubby (their distributed lock service).</li>
<li>BASE (Basically Available, Soft state, Eventual consistency) allows for higher availability than ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability), in exchange for a softer distributed consistency guarantee.</li>
</ul>
<li>The most important difference between backups and archives is that backups can be loaded back into an application, while archives cannot.</li>
<li>From the user's point of view, data integrity without expected and regular availability is effectively the same as having no data at all.</li>
<li>Bugs in applications account for the vast majority of data loss and corruption events.</li>
<ul>
<li>The ability to undelete data for a limited time becomes the primary line of defence against the majority of otherwise permanent, inadvertent data loss. c.f. soft delete and then deletion after a reasonable delay (e.g. Mail trash can).</li>
<li>Backups and data recovery are the second line of defence after soft deletion. Test your data recovery.</li>
<li>The third line of defence is early detection; put in place out-of-band checks and balances within and between an application's datastores.</li>
</ul>
<li>The ability to control the behaviour of a client from the server side has proven a useful tool (c.f. a config file might enable/disable certain features or set parameters such as how often to sync or retry)</li>
<li>A good visualisation of a blueprint for bootstrapping an SRE to on-call is depicted as:</li>
<li><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCuTXtkBDrgWiUHkaT0EGqCrpCVTm-sWxA1o1FXaLaBU9YXw0IznWpFPXAO9ngqRtBhuEY5LBCo3u7Z101K-1CbbogsjwUM1kYFw160YR_sqgwIRVqHpEqJJtVKcPY-HhxozVkCEHyL4SG/s1600/bootstrap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="743" data-original-width="900" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCuTXtkBDrgWiUHkaT0EGqCrpCVTm-sWxA1o1FXaLaBU9YXw0IznWpFPXAO9ngqRtBhuEY5LBCo3u7Z101K-1CbbogsjwUM1kYFw160YR_sqgwIRVqHpEqJJtVKcPY-HhxozVkCEHyL4SG/s400/bootstrap.jpg" width="400" /></a></li>
<li>Have learning paths that are orderly for new SREs, such as:</li>
<ul>
<li>How a query enters the system</li>
<li>Frontend serving</li>
<li>Mid-tier services</li>
<li>Infrastructure</li>
<li>Tying it all together; debugging techniques, escalation procedures and emergency scenarios.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-67463002478739264292018-08-18T20:47:00.000+12:002018-08-18T20:57:43.799+12:00Book Review: "The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups" by Daniel Coyle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Code-Secrets-Highly-Successful/dp/1847941265/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1534501609&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=ba81053a0ba06f2a33367478eadd6902&language=en_US" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="313" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjABKQG5XYLzAy854ZJ_g93Ty9NGjMsRZlhjnGF1rD8pWnIZzsch1vA5FRmGLeN7rRgJAttYMDU7XzgHcInaT4K1jJcNxkTHKYL7c7QHPRY7qcDIuzZhW6NL8K9g_w7HLBaFviWyKA3OZug/s320/the+culture+code.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I enjoyed reading <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Code-Secrets-Highly-Successful/dp/1847941265/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1534501609&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=ba81053a0ba06f2a33367478eadd6902&language=en_US" target="_blank">"The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups"</a> by Daniel Coyle. It has lots of great stories about groups in various fields (SEALs, sports teams, corporate environments, creative companies, aircraft crew and more) and the various (often subtle) attributes that makes these teams successful.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Key takeaways for me were:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<ul>
<li>Safety is the foundation on which strong culture is built.</li>
<ul>
<li>Our brain is obsessed with psychological safety and we require lots of signalling over and over to feel safe.</li>
<li>A sense of belonging is easy to destroy and hard to build.</li>
</ul>
<li>Patterns of interaction of successful groups that have good chemistry often include:</li>
<ul>
<li>Close physical proximity, often in circles</li>
<li>Profuse amounts of eye contact</li>
<li>Physical touch (handshakes, fist bumps, hugs)</li>
<li>Lots of short, energetic exchanges (no long speeches)</li>
<li>High levels of mixing; everyone talks to everyone</li>
<li>Few interruptions</li>
<li>Lots of questions</li>
<li>Intense, active listening</li>
<li>Humour, laughter</li>
<li>Small attentive courtesies (thank-yous, opening doors etc.)</li>
</ul>
<li>Vulnerability tends to spark cooperation and trust.</li>
<ul>
<li>If you send a signal you have weaknesses then the recipient often relaxes, connects and starts to trust.</li>
<li>Good teams often do a lot of extreme stuff together. A constant stream of vulnerability gives them a richer, more reliable estimate of their trustworthiness and brings them closer so they can take more risks. </li>
</ul>
<li>After action reviews / Retrospectives after a mission or initiative are useful to improve team success.</li>
<ul>
<li>Discuss and replay key decisions, talk about mistakes, learn, ask why several times. </li>
<li>The goal is not to assign credit or blame but rather to build a shared mental model that can be applied moving forward.</li>
<li>A good after action review structure is:</li>
<ol>
<li>What were our intended results?</li>
<li>What were our actual results?</li>
<li>What caused our results?</li>
<li>What will we do the same next time?</li>
<li>What will we do differently?</li>
</ol>
</ul>
<li>Things to consider for an initiative:</li>
<ul>
<li>What excites me about it.</li>
<li>What I'm not so excited about with this.</li>
<li>What I want to get better at with this initiative.</li>
</ul>
<li>Leaders should ask their people:</li>
<ul>
<li>What is one thing that I currently do that you'd like me to continue to do?</li>
<li>What is one thing that I don't currently do frequently enough that you think I should do more often?</li>
<li>What can I do to make you more effective?</li>
</ul>
<li>Ideas for action include:</li>
<ul>
<li>Over-communicate expectations</li>
<li>Deliver negative stuff in person</li>
<li>Listen like a trampoline (gain amplitude through repetition such as asking the question in multiple ways)</li>
<li>In conversation, resist the temptation to reflexively add value. After a scaffold of thoughtfulness suggestions can be made.</li>
<li>Have action reviews, brain trusts etc.</li>
</ul>
<li>Communicate a clear consistent beacon of purpose.</li>
<li>High-purpose environments are dug out of the ground, over and over, as a group navigates its problems together and evolves to meet the challenges of a fast changing world.</li>
<li>Adopting a "What worked well/Even better if" feedback process is a good approach to encourage fixing problems and working together.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-84179787676759416582018-04-02T20:43:00.001+12:002018-04-02T20:43:53.246+12:00Book Review: "Seven eLements of Leadership for a New Breed of Leader" by Michael A. Pitcher<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Seven-eLements-Leadership-Breed-Leader-ebook/dp/B01DDYUSEW/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=edfe4ba89b9c8960e93f9773b0d07892" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B01DDYUSEW&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20" width="133" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=httpgianoutsb-20&l=li3&o=1&a=B01DDYUSEW" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />Written in an engaging manner with lots of examples based around the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Seven-eLements-Leadership-Breed-Leader-ebook/dp/B01DDYUSEW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=02be5d506bff1422260fa62ea4a2e77c" target="_blank">Seven eLements</a> of "Laugh, Learn, Listen, Language, Lagniappe, Legacy, Love" I took away a number of good points to consider, many of which were good reminders and some of which were good reinforcement of things I have already been doing.<br />
<br />
My key takeaways:<br />
<ul>
<li>General</li>
<ul>
<li>Leadership = Influence. And you influence ALWAYS! If you’re in a position to influence the behaviour, thoughts, or feelings of others, then you’re in a leadership role.</li>
<li>Coaching is teaching a specific set of skills required for success in a specific situation. Mentoring is sharing wisdom so that the mentee has the opportunity to learn from the life experiences of the mentor.</li>
</ul>
<li>Laugh</li>
<ul>
<li>Authentic leaders show vulnerability and allow others to see their humanity. Laughter is the authenticity that opens the window so others can see inside. Laughter opens the door for meaningful conversations that create meaningful relationships.</li>
<li>Humour defuses conflict, reduces tension, and puts most people at ease.</li>
</ul>
<li>Happiness</li>
<ul>
<li>Happy employees create happy customers, and happy customers ensure happy shareholders.</li>
<li>When we are happy—when our mindset and mood are positive— we are smarter, more motivated, and thus, more successful.</li>
<ul>
<li>One of the easiest ways to ensure a great start to any day or project is to focus on the last five minutes before you engage in the activity. </li>
<ul>
<li>For the business leader, this is the last five minutes of your trip to work each morning. </li>
<li>For the athlete, it’s the last five minutes before going out on the practice field, and </li>
<li>For the sales professional, this technique is a change to the last five minutes before you walk into a sales call. </li>
<li>Change your channel.</li>
</ul>
<li>During the last five minutes of your morning commute, or whatever important event you’re headed to, play whatever music you choose that rocks your world.</li>
<ul>
<li>Even if you use your commute time as an educational opportunity with audiobooks, change your channel for the last five minutes. Music has the ability to change your mood, so why not choose to make your attitude upbeat and positive?</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>Ask yourself “What three things make me happy today?”</li>
</ul>
<li>Learn</li>
<ul>
<li>Questions to ask yourself: What did I learn last year? What will I learn this year? What new relationships did I build in the past year?</li>
<li>“If you are speaking, you are not learning.” There are many situations when it is best to listen and learn.</li>
<li>Experts agree that experiential learning is the most valuable form of education. The act of doing far outweighs any other form of learning.</li>
<li>Search “25 TED Talks That Will Make You a Better Leader.”</li>
<li>Learn to embrace change. Learn that your attitude is everything. Learn the importance of diversity.</li>
<li>It has been well documented that note-taking can increase your ability to retain information by up to 25 percent, and when you review your notes within twenty-four hours, retention increases even further.</li>
</ul>
<li>Listen</li>
<ul>
<li>“Diversity is not about race, or gender, or age. It’s about the diversity of life experiences that each of us has. We want and need diversity of life experiences to ensure that we make the best business decisions possible.</li>
<li>“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.”</li>
</ul>
<li>Language</li>
<ul>
<li>Using inclusive language is one of the most effective forms of communication for leaders.</li>
<li>The quickest way to earn the respect of your team is to show them respect. Both “please” and “thank you” quickly put you on that path.</li>
<li>Admitting you made a mistake is an opportunity to earn the respect of those you lead. This also provides you, as the leader, with the opportunity to role model the behaviour you expect from team members.</li>
<li>“What do you think?” is a question you should ask on a regular basis of people throughout your organisation. For those who make decisions based more on emotions than facts, the question is slightly modified: “How do you feel about this?”</li>
</ul>
<li>Attitude</li>
<ul>
<li></li>
<li>“Your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude in life.”</li>
<li>Most people want to follow someone who sees some light at the end of the darkest tunnel. Leaders simply don’t quit.</li>
<li>In your role as a leader, your team wants you to have a positive attitude.</li>
</ul>
<li>Lagniappe</li>
<ul>
<li>“a little something extra!” That’s what great leaders do.</li>
<li>Recognition of the little wins, accompanied by the feeling of accomplishment, is the fuel that ignites the desire for greater achievement.</li>
</ul>
<li>Legacy</li>
<ul>
<li>Ask yourself "What will be your legacy?"</li>
</ul>
<li>Love</li>
<ul>
<li>When you truly love what you do, that love creates enthusiasm.</li>
<li>Time and familiarity can take a toll on your level of enthusiasm, but you are responsible for this emotion. Find something in your role or your vocation that excites you and lock into that opportunity.</li>
<ul>
<li>What attributes of your work do you truly enjoy? Is there something about your current job that you could find passion in? What could spark a new level of enthusiasm or engagement? How can you make a new commitment to your work?</li>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-15653002059228506562018-03-18T20:04:00.000+13:002018-03-18T20:04:16.677+13:00Book Review: "The Power of Moments" by Chip Heath & Dan Heath<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Power-Moments-Certain-Experiences-Extraordinary/dp/1501147765/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=a67effc7460848589fea6ef6ece004d2" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1501147765&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20" width="130" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=httpgianoutsb-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1501147765" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />I was listening to a podcast where one of the authors of this book was explaining the concept of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Power-Moments-Certain-Experiences-Extraordinary/dp/1501147765/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=29a128d3edf084f3f25abd69a8ac5b7e" target="_blank">"The Power of Moments"</a> and provided some examples that compelled me to buy the book straight away (which is very rare for me). The book is packed with examples and lots of great advice, albeit it is a bit verbose at times. The key concept is that we can be more impactful as leaders and as people by recognising and creating more "moments" / memorable experiences. We can be the designers of moments that deliver elevation, insight, pride and connection. These extraordinary moments are what make lives meaningful.<br />
<br />
My key takeaways:<br />
<ul>
<li>Three situations that deserve punctuation: transitions, milestones, and pits. </li>
<ul>
<li>Transitions include first day of work, weddings and graduations.</li>
<li>A milestone may be the length of time an employee has been at the company, getting to a key point in a project or completing a marathon.</li>
<li>Examples of pits include:</li>
<ul>
<li>a positive response to a service failure and </li>
<li>designing a fun environment (experience) for a child having an MRI scan and transforming terror into delight.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>If we recognise how important defining moments are, we can shape them and make them more memorable and meaningful.</li>
<ul>
<li>e.g. your first day at work shouldn't be a set of bureaucratic activities on a checklist. It should be a peak moment with things like a computer being ready for you and setup with required applications, an email from the CEO welcoming you and telling you about the company's mission, lunch and coffees arranged with colleagues etc.</li>
</ul>
<li>A relationship in which one party is oblivious to the most profound moments in the life of the other is no relationship at all.</li>
<li>Studies have consistently shown that reliability, dependability, and competence <i>meet</i> customer expectations. To <i>exceed</i> customer expectations and create a memorable experience, you need the behavioural and interpersonal parts of the service. You need the element of pleasant surprise.</li>
<li>To elevate a moment (usually elevated moments have 2-3 of these traits):</li>
<ol>
<li>Boost sensory appeal. e.g. deliver treats on a silver tray.</li>
<li>Raise the stakes. e.g. add a competition or deadline.</li>
<li>Break the script. e.g. do something out of the ordinary.</li>
</ol>
<li>Familiarity and memorability are often at odds.</li>
<li>By breaking the script, we can lay down a richer set of memories. We feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they're not. Scare yourself, regularly.</li>
<li>Moments that break the script are critical for organisational change.</li>
<li>Great mentors focus on improvement, provide direction and support. </li>
<ul>
<li>They introduce a productive level of stress. </li>
<li>Wise criticism encourages encourages people to stretch.</li>
</ul>
<li>The promise of stretching is not success, it's learning. c.f the willingness of entrepreneurs to put themselves in a situation where they can fail.</li>
<li>"Full appreciation of work done" has been in the top two motivators of employee from studies spanning 46 years.</li>
<li>When people make advance mental commitments - if X happens, then I will do Y - they are substantially more likely to act in support of their goals than people who lack those mental plans. e.g. if committed to drink less alcohol, when a waiter what you I for a second drink, I'll ask for sparkling water.</li>
<li>You are unlikely to deliver a great customer experience without first delivering a great employee experience.</li>
<li>Remote contact is perfectly suitable for day-to-day communication and collaboration. But a big moment needs to be shared in person. c.f. dialling into wedding or graduation.</li>
<li>If a group of people develops a bond quickly, chances are its members have been struggling together. People will <i>choose</i> to struggle - not avoid it or resist it - if the right conditions are present. The conditions are:</li>
<ul>
<li>The work means something to them, </li>
<li>they have some autonomy in carrying it out, and</li>
<li>it's there choice to participate or not.</li>
</ul>
<li>If you want to be part of a group that bonds like cement, take on a really demanding task that's deeply meaningful. All of you will remember it for the rest of your lives.</li>
<li>Organisational leaders should learn to cultivate purpose - to unite people that would otherwise drift in different directions, chasing different passions.</li>
<ul>
<li>A sense of purpose sparks "above and beyond" behaviours.</li>
</ul>
<li>Our relationships are stronger when we <i>perceive</i> that our <i>partners</i> are <i>responsive</i> to us. Responsiveness encompasses:</li>
<ol>
<li>Understanding</li>
<li>Validation</li>
<li>Caring</li>
</ol>
<li>Gallup's six most revealing employee engagement questions:</li>
<ol>
<li>Do I know what is expected of me at work?</li>
<li>Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?</li>
<li>Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?</li>
<li>In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work? (<i>Validation</i>)</li>
<li>Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person? (<i>Caring</i>)</li>
<li>Is there someone at work who encourages my development? (<i>Understanding, Caring</i>)</li>
</ol>
<li>"What matters to you?" is a great question for responsiveness.</li>
</ul>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-28467351110126872112018-02-17T17:40:00.001+13:002018-02-17T17:42:24.660+13:00Book Review: "Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it)"<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Exponential-Organizations-organizations-better-cheaper-ebook/dp/B00OO8ZGC6/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li2&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=97e610b170906cc42a08dcb4358d8f32" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B00OO8ZGC6&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=httpgianoutsb-20&l=li2&o=1&a=B00OO8ZGC6" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /><a href="http://amzn.to/2Fblp3i" target="_blank">Exponential Organizations</a> by Salim Ismail, Michael S. Malone and Yuri Van Geest contains lots of useful information about how to give your organisation a chance of survival (be it a new one or an existing one of any size). It was repetitive at times and at points it felt like a Singularity University sales pitch but there was sufficient useful content for me to deem it a worthy read.<br />
<br />
My key takeaways:<br />
<ul>
<li>"Once any domain, discipline, technology or industry becomes information-enabled and powered by information flows, its price/performance begins doubling approximately annually." <i>Ray Kurzweil</i></li>
<li>Rather than owning assets or workforces and incrementally seeing a return on those assets, Exponential Organisations (ExOs) leverage external resources (people, systems, machines etc.) to achieve their objectives. An exception to this is for scarce resources and assets.</li>
<ul>
<li>Maintaining a small core allows significant flexibility. </li>
<li>It also brings in fresh perspectives and expertise.</li>
</ul>
<li>Enlist customers and leverage offline and online communities in everything from product design to application development.</li>
<li>There are common traits that have been identified across ExOs. They include a Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP), as well as ten other attributes that reflect the internal mechanisms and externalities they're leveraging to achieve exponential growth. The book delves into each of these and provides examples of organisations that leverage each.</li>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpsipzv6rMmihMUeEc9po_e4pD8aVsenpclS1FL16x9tbT7Hg9kKGu9lpRpDNB3Xvd8lDpPWergouHeJ2ivGtGDLvnh4TlQsZOBaNLehNWgn5dCwuLxabs_8FEdpJnmpk2PGs_7ILm_xlP/s1600/massive-transformative-purpose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="571" data-original-width="961" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpsipzv6rMmihMUeEc9po_e4pD8aVsenpclS1FL16x9tbT7Hg9kKGu9lpRpDNB3Xvd8lDpPWergouHeJ2ivGtGDLvnh4TlQsZOBaNLehNWgn5dCwuLxabs_8FEdpJnmpk2PGs_7ILm_xlP/s400/massive-transformative-purpose.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<li>The Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP) is the aspirational purpose of the organisation. Think BIG, transformative and inspirational.</li>
<li>When failure is not an option, you end up with safe, incremental innovation, with no radical breakthroughs or disruptive innovations. By integrating experimentation as a core value and adopting approaches like <a href="http://blog.gianoutsos.com/2017/12/book-review-lean-startup-by-eric-ries.html" target="_blank">Lean Startup</a>, enterprise failures (while still accepted as an inevitable part of risk) can be quick, relatively painless and insightful.</li>
<ul>
<li>In addition, a corporate culture that accepts failure benefits from diminished internal politics and much less in the way of pointing fingers and "blame games" thanks to trust, transparency and openness.</li>
</ul>
<li>The five-year strategic plan is an obsolete instrument. The future is changing so quickly that it is likely to produce false scenarios with a high probability of wrong advice. A one year plan is more appropriate with course correcting along the way towards the MTP.</li>
<li>A never-say-die attitude and relentless execution is key to entrepreneurial success. To a true entrepreneur, there are no impossibilities, just barriers to overcome.</li>
<li>"Startups should be hunch driven early on, and data-driven as they scale." <i>Fred Wilson</i></li>
<li>Culture is a company's greatest intangible asset.</li>
<li>Four strategies for large organisations while keeping core business intact:</li>
<ol>
<li>Transform leadership - train in new technologies, methodologies, have diversity etc.</li>
<li>Partner with, invest in or acquire ExOs.</li>
<li>Disrupt[X] - inc targeting new fields (i.e. disrupt at the edge of the business using change agents from within the business that are highly creative, self-starting individuals who don't fit neatly in a box).</li>
<li>Implement ExO Lite internally.</li>
</ol>
<li>Six traits of ExO leaders <i>Rob Nail</i></li>
<ol>
<li>Visionary Customer Advocate.</li>
<li>Data-driven Experimentalist.</li>
<li>Optimistic Realist.</li>
<li>Extreme Adaptability.</li>
<li>Radical Openness.</li>
<li>Hyper-Confident.</li>
</ol>
<li>"If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering." <i>Jeff Bezos</i></li>
<li>By making data-driven, objective decisions (Experimentation), self-directed teams (Autonomy), constant shared awareness (Social) and Dashboards, teams focus on the end result rather than internal politics.</li>
</ul>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-26187830537583169612018-01-17T20:57:00.000+13:002018-01-17T21:17:18.092+13:00Solution: Getting macOS Messages to work with Google Chat / Talk / Hangouts in High Sierra <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG1TSTB-pT7xFmaSI7899fSF22c1_c2AItbWk8RY9u4f3o9HQSsTfyCiejALVKY7sp7JKJxV_EZXHu9ROH1R-IH1PKR7GE5rFckmo4N0Tn6l3w7HKmN6ZnwfPidMsu0nNKvuda0SM0ChId/s1600/hangoutandmessage.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="512" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG1TSTB-pT7xFmaSI7899fSF22c1_c2AItbWk8RY9u4f3o9HQSsTfyCiejALVKY7sp7JKJxV_EZXHu9ROH1R-IH1PKR7GE5rFckmo4N0Tn6l3w7HKmN6ZnwfPidMsu0nNKvuda0SM0ChId/s320/hangoutandmessage.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
The Messages application wasn't working for me on macOS and I was wanting it to work with my Google Chat / Talk / Hangouts service. It appears that with macOS High Sierra a workaround is required.<br />
<br />
After struggling to get it going I finally got it going after some searching on the Internet and trying a couple of supposed fixes. What ended up working for me were the instructions on <a href="https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/gtalk-messages-solution-found-high-sierra.2073393/">https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/gtalk-messages-solution-found-high-sierra.2073393/</a> with a couple of tweaks. The tweaks were required to support 2FA which is enabled on my account.<br />
<br />
The instructions, repeated here so that I can find them again if required and to assist others having the same problem, are as follows:<br />
<ol>
<li>Go to System Preferences / Internet Accounts and delete your google account.</li>
<li>Open Terminal and run the following commands (Warning: This will delete your history!):</li>
<ol type="i">
<li>find ~/Library/Preferences -name "*iChat*" -delete</li>
<li>rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Messages</li>
<li>rm -rf ~/Library/Messages</li>
</ol>
<ul><ol>
</ol>
</ul>
<li>Reboot</li>
<li>Open Messages</li>
<ol type="i">
<li>In the "Messages" menu select "Add Jabber Account..." and add your google account details.</li>
<ul>
<li>Since I have 2FA enabled on my account, I setup a separate App Password at this point at <a href="https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords">https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords</a></li>
</ul>
<li>I then ensured "Enable this account" was <u>not</u> selected and went to the "Server settings" tab and changed the settings to: </li>
<ul>
<li>Server: talk.google.com (it was set to gmail.com I think)</li>
<li>Port: 5223 (this was set to 5222)</li>
<li>Enabled "Use SSL"</li>
</ul>
<li>I then switched back to the "Account Information" tab and enabled the account.</li>
</ol>
<li>Reboot</li>
<li>Open Messages</li>
<ol type="i">
<li>Change status to Available (if it's not working for you, see next step re Keychain)</li>
<li>Check Buddy list to see if it is populated </li>
</ol>
<li>Messages didn't work for me at this point, so I went into the Keychain and searched the passwords for "jabber". I changed all related accounts passwords to my "App Password" and it worked.</li>
<li>Go to System Preferences / Internet Accounts and re-add your google account.</li>
</ol>
Whilst it may be possible to skip some of these steps, I followed them and it worked for me. Hopefully this is also of use to others.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-12832955652655403332017-12-23T14:23:00.002+13:002017-12-23T14:28:11.419+13:00Book Review: "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0670921602/ref=as_li_ss_il?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1513991485&sr=8-1&linkCode=li3&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=fc8142426b4d6f224fa89b82a0a188f0" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0670921602&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=httpgianoutsb-20&l=li3&o=1&a=0670921602" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0670921602/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1513991485&sr=8-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=132a5efcc29121815b2dfaab59c6b9fa" target="_blank">The Lean Startup</a> is a book I have been meaning to read for years and never got around to. It contains lots of useful advice and good case studies explaining experiences of what has and hasn't work. The book is oriented towards software development startups (and software development innovation in general in any sized organisation) and could have easily been condensed into a third its size.<br />
<br />
Key takeaways:<br />
<ul>
<li>Build, Measure, Learn (go through this loop as fast as you can)</li>
<li>Use validated learning and measure using actionable metrics, not vanity metrics. Use cohort analysis.</li>
<li>Do split testing to measure what matters to customers</li>
<li>Build a Minimal Viable Product (MVP), gain quick feedback from customers, learn quickly and evolve as required</li>
<li>Use 5 whys for root cause analysis and identifying what to target in terms of improvements</li>
</ul>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-66981468316633583292017-12-23T14:22:00.002+13:002017-12-23T14:26:22.650+13:00Book Review: "Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days" by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Brad Kowitz <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas/dp/0593076117/ref=as_li_ss_il?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1513991978&sr=1-1&&&&linkCode=li3&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=bf56d2d7ca64b62353a26c76c06f574e" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0593076117&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20" width="130" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=httpgianoutsb-20&l=li3&o=1&a=0593076117" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas/dp/0593076117/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1513991978&sr=1-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=e5b29a025817991a2d435163e7aa74d1" target="_blank">Sprint</a> is a superb book that is very easy to read, with real world examples of how to apply the techniques discussed. I have taken some of the concepts discussed and am applying them to other activities beyond a 5 day Sprint process. Thoroughly recommended.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-14944869456486701752017-06-15T21:05:00.000+12:002017-06-15T22:48:19.496+12:00CIO Summit 2017 SynopsisI’ve spent a bit of time at the <a href="http://www.ciosummit.co.nz/" target="_blank">CIO Summit</a> in Auckland over the past couple of days and below is a synopsis from the sessions I attended.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Key overall themes</h3>
<ul>
<li>Digital Transformation (DX) is still a key focus of organisations, with cultural change being one of the most fundamental shifts.</li>
<li>Increased use of Cloud/“as a Service” models is prevalent across most organisations.</li>
<li>Customer-centricity as opposed to other models such as Product-centric.</li>
<li>Connections & ecosystems (internal and external to organisations) is key to DX, with APIs being a key enabler.</li>
<li>Smart use of data is becoming increasingly important to drive great customer experiences.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Further detail</h3>
<h4>
Trends & Insights</h4>
<ul>
<li>“The 3rd platform is the key to creating new value” IDG</li>
<li><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRiy3-C6xFYvVqASIOECtWFWI_E8jOOuAFsiPsfmtg6f7e3n-JGha7BJiMqk6U9OmSK2U_fPedxHij3hDEKA_rNKY-bjTfG1_kBsns92Uigftb_DTx-xxDEo8FS8Uex69cO75SriWvEgII/s1600/2017-06-14+09.14.59smaller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRiy3-C6xFYvVqASIOECtWFWI_E8jOOuAFsiPsfmtg6f7e3n-JGha7BJiMqk6U9OmSK2U_fPedxHij3hDEKA_rNKY-bjTfG1_kBsns92Uigftb_DTx-xxDEo8FS8Uex69cO75SriWvEgII/s400/2017-06-14+09.14.59smaller.jpg" width="400" /></a></li>
<ul>
<li>Mobility, Big Data/Analytics, Cloud, Social</li>
</ul>
<li>“By 2020, over 2/3 of Enterprise IT and software spending will be for cloud-based offerings” IDG</li>
<li>“70% of CIOs have a cloud first strategy” IDG</li>
<li>“By 2019, 42% of IoT data will be processed at the edge of the cloud” IDG</li>
<li>“By 2019, AI will be integrated into 40% of DX initiatives” IDG</li>
<li>“By 2020, DX teams will source 80%+ of their solution components (e.g. via APIs) from external – often open source – developer communities” IDG</li>
<li>We are living in a time of unprecedented pace and scale of innovation and adoption. It’s much easier for competitors to come into your markets and reach scale very quickly.</li>
<li>Connections & ecosystems (internal and external to organisations) are a key focus + relationship with customers. APIs are a key enabler for this. API gateways are key to connect the dots across your ecosystem.</li>
<li>Organisations are moving to customer-centric approaches & increased use of “as a Service” models.</li>
<li>Open APIs, Architecture, Governance and Data are key.</li>
<li>Definition of a startup: Operating in an environment of extreme uncertainty. Every single business of today is a startup!</li>
<li>The CIO role has changed from supporting strategy to designing and leading strategy.</li>
<li>Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.</li>
<li><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2b1m82fcwTSV8up2jbQ5J9ARXcI6756yYlCIQFqEfFahZxCNE4TUt9M8AYSJwr2tHkWNKSpiLWB12GeBkfEPZVckW-ODZBadX3OgpJqe_hhnzMuHEF91oRI44xZwOhaz45hwkqaxu-0tR/s1600/informationisnotknowledge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2b1m82fcwTSV8up2jbQ5J9ARXcI6756yYlCIQFqEfFahZxCNE4TUt9M8AYSJwr2tHkWNKSpiLWB12GeBkfEPZVckW-ODZBadX3OgpJqe_hhnzMuHEF91oRI44xZwOhaz45hwkqaxu-0tR/s400/informationisnotknowledge.jpg" width="400" /></a></li>
<li>If you expect black and white you will miss the golden opportunities</li>
</ul>
<h4>
Culture</h4>
<ul>
<li>Hire for resiliency, adaptability, diversity of thinking and social skills.</li>
<li>Have a mission/vision that drives people (for your part of the organisation), embed it in how you operate and show progress.</li>
<li>“Introduce an environment of trust. Invite partners and customers into the environment” – This encourages creativity, openness, collaboration and diverse thinking.</li>
<li>Top motivators for people: Inspiration (most important), Appreciation, Job security and Communication. Money and Physical workspace whilst important typically are less important overall.</li>
</ul>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-4784475449794815512015-07-23T22:32:00.000+12:002015-07-23T22:35:08.052+12:00IT & Enterprise Architecture Conference 2015 - Day 2<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Today was the second and final day of the <a href="http://www.conferenz.co.nz/conferences/it-enterprise-architecture">IT & Enterprise Architecture Conference</a> 2015. Below is a summary of my key notes.
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<div>
<b>Going beyond IT. What EA can really mean for your organisation</b></div>
<div>
John Pearson, Business Architect, IAG
</div>
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Consider the Demand vs Supply side of architecture</li>
<li>IAG is using traditional TOGAF domains (Information, Application, Technology Infrastructure and Security) with business architecture being used to better align with the demand from the business</li>
<li>Enterprise Business Motivation Model (EBMM) - Accenture, Nick Malik (<a href="http://www.motivationmodel.com/">http://www.motivationmodel.com/</a>)<ul>
<li>anchor diagram for business architecture</li>
<li>using to understand change impact</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Bake business architecture approaches in early in the architecture journey</li>
<li>Understand the business, its priorities and where value can be added</li>
<li>Understand architecture capabilities in service to the business</li>
<li>Understand key stakeholder needs and communication preferences</li>
<li>Become involved in the strategy conversation<ul>
<li>Technology Strategy - development and alignment</li>
<li>Corporate Strategy - business strategy development</li>
<li>Divisional Operating Model - operating model</li>
<li>Digital Strategy - knowledge of distribution models and digital opportunity</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Build credibility through insight, advice and technology knowledge</li>
<li>Have a kit bag of techniques and visual props</li>
<li>Move from being regarded as a technologist to being a business enabler</li>
<li>Apply business architecture principles to our own “EA business” (c.f. Business Model Canvas for EA)<ul>
<li>Business Model</li>
<li>Key Capabilities</li>
<li>Operating Model</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>TOGAF World Class EA is useful to guide demand and guide supply (<a href="http://www.opengroup.org/india2011/presentations/Global%20Trends%20-%20Multinational%20Arch%20Deployments.pdf">http://www.opengroup.org/india2011/presentations/Global%20Trends%20-%20Multinational%20Arch%20Deployments.pdf</a>)</li>
<li>Elicit guiding business principles prior to programme execution</li>
<li>Metrics are being evolved to measure EA team, but include<ul>
<li>System reduction</li>
<li>Business satisfaction with EA team</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<div>
<b>Business Transformations: How to survive high rates of change</b></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Ian Bedwell, Strategy and Architecture Manager, Foodstuffs North Island
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>130+ full time people creating a new retail platform, $150m total to complete<ul>
<li>SAP-based</li>
<li>New business process</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Moved from onsite data centre to using Datacom for data centres and this has been a good experience</li>
<li>Had lots of disparate systems, primarily due to acquisitions / mergers</li>
<li>With a merger<ul>
<li>Do we understand the degree of changes needed?</li>
<li>What do we need first? second? ….</li>
<li>What do we need to stop? start? change?</li>
<li>Understand possible priority conflicts across the execs</li>
<li>Why are we doing this?</li>
<li>What will the new company look like?</li>
<li>Ensure Management is committed</li>
<li>Align Performance measures and rewards</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Vision —> Strategy —> Action</li>
<li>Business change is NOT about technology</li>
<li>Factor in the people elements first, above technology and process otherwise you will fail</li>
<li>What staff <u>see</u> is more influential than what staff <u>hear</u></li>
<li>Do practical reinforcing stuff<ul>
<li>Join up the networks</li>
<li>Normalise rules</li>
<li>Give equal access</li>
<li>Make step changes</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Understand risk vs reward appetite</li>
<li>Speed of execution vs risk of rework<ul>
<li>c.f over analysing vs gut instinct based on experience</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>People risk and capability risk are likely to be an order of magnitude greater than technology risk</li>
<li>Principle: Permission to fail (as long as you never impact the customer)</li>
<li>Be open and as fast as practical with people impacts<ul>
<li>Organisational uncertainty will make people vote with their feet</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Technology exists to server the business not the other way around. Don’t lose site of the goals</li>
<li>Giving certainty sooner is better than technical elegance too late</li>
<li>Do not expect due diligence to discover the “nasty” things hiding under “rocks"</li>
<li>Keep partners and suppliers up to date with thinking - even if it may appear to be negative to them</li>
<li>Prioritisation and governance and more prioritisation</li>
<li>Moving to being customer led<ul>
<li>From from “I have a deal for you” to “What does the customer want?"</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>New POS terminals know the price of all products on that day for if they go offline</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Extending company’s boundaries. A security perspective</b></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Ofer Reshef, Manager - Security & Risk, Fonterra
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li><a href="http://map.norsecorp.com/">http://map.norsecorp.com</a> shows real time attacks around the world</li>
<li>Time to compromise is getting faster and faster</li>
<li>Identity management is often a key perimeter</li>
<li>Vision for cyber security at Fonterra: Sharing information with confidence on any platform</li>
<li>“How experts gain influence: HBR July 2013 (<a href="https://hbr.org/2013/07/how-experts-gain-influence">https://hbr.org/2013/07/how-experts-gain-influence</a>)<ul>
<li>Trailblazing</li>
<li>Tool making</li>
<li>Team working</li>
<li>Translation</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>43% of users directly re-use passwords across sites</li>
<li>There is a company that can phish you on request<ul>
<li>20% of users will click on phishing package email on average</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Can buy denial of service as a service</li>
<li><a href="http://www.digitalattackmap.com/">http://www.digitalattackmap.com/</a> shows world-wide denial of service attacks</li>
<li>What business data can go externally?<ul>
<li>Use a Impact vs Duration scale</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Cross-boundary data encryption can be useful with business partners</li>
<li>Fonterra has a Enterprise Security Architecture that defines key activities and patterns for solutions</li>
<li>US Department of the Interiors Cloud Computing Technologies has criteria for assessing cloud providers (<a href="http://www.doi.gov/oig/news/dois-adoption-of-cloud-computing-technologies.cfm">http://www.doi.gov/oig/news/dois-adoption-of-cloud-computing-technologies.cfm</a>)</li>
</ul>
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Strategic vs Tactical – the eternal debate</b></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Alexey Zhavoronkov, Domain Architect, Vodafone New Zealand
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Classes of tactics<ul>
<li>Strategy aligned</li>
<li>Strategy neutral</li>
<li>Strategy negative</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Strategy and tactics are tightly connected<ul>
<li>Strategies without tactics are fantasy</li>
<li>Tactics without strategy is chaos</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Understand What (Strategy), Why (Business Vision) and How (Execution) of a solution. These need to work in sync.</li>
<li>EA practice<ul>
<li>Business capability map (based on eTom)</li>
<li>As Is business & technology landscape</li>
<li>To be business & technology architectures</li>
<li>Review current system & project states (strategy aligned, neutral, negative)</li>
<li>Transition architectures & roadmap</li>
<li>Governance</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Are you too busy to improve?</li>
</ul>
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Delivering value through Big Data</b></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Phillip Higgins, Big Data and Analytics Architect, SAS Institute (<a href="https://twitter.com/HigginsPhillip">@HigginsPhillip</a>)
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Volume, Variety and Velocity</li>
<li>Big Data Analytics Top Priorities (Source: Gartner Sept 2013)<ul>
<li>1. Enhanced customer experience</li>
<li>2. Process efficiency</li>
<li>3. New products/business models</li>
<li>4. More targeted marketing</li>
<li>5. Cost reduction</li>
<li>6. Improved risk management</li>
<li>7. Monetise information directly</li>
<li>8. Regulatory compliance</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>New Zealand: Trends and Use Cases<ul>
<li>NZ cautious about adoption</li>
<li>A number of businesses have plans or are devising strategies for Big Data</li>
<li>Where are NZ companies at<ul>
<li>Educate 35%</li>
<li>Explore 35%</li>
<li>Engage 25%</li>
<li>Execute 5%</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Customer insight is #1 use case<ul>
<li>Customer Lifecycle Management</li>
<li>Total Customer Experience</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1422168166/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1422168166&linkCode=as2&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=HLLPBAXCDEAQMIOK">Thomas Davenport “Big Data @ Work”</a> is worth checking out</li>
<li>Promote constant learning for staff</li>
<li>Patterns for Big Data (levels of maturity)<ul>
<li>Store and Explore</li>
<li>Predictive Analysis</li>
<li>Actionable Analysis</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>EDW can be a Big Data data source</li>
<li>Big Data moves beyond the structured EDW construct to handle all types of data</li>
<li>NoSQL + Hadoop (HDFS and MapReduce) recommended<ul>
<li>Hive - SQL access for Hadoop</li>
<li>Impala</li>
<li>Spark - next generation processing engine for Hadoop</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Enterprise Architecture and true agility, lessons from mobile development</b></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Steve Greenley, Independent Enterprise Mobility Consultant
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Examples of mobile disruption:<ul>
<li>Uber disrupting the taxi industry</li>
<li>Google Maps for navigation and routing based on traffic</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>“Today, companies have to radically revolutionize themselves every few years just to stay relevant. That's because technology and the Internet have transformed the business landscape forever. The fast-paced digital age has accelerated the need for companies to become agile.” Nolan Bushnell</li>
<li>Types of Mobile App:<ul>
<li>Native</li>
<li>Hybrid</li>
<li>HTML5</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>ionic (<a href="http://ionicframework.com/">http://ionicframework.com</a>) is Steve’s favourite framework at the moment for producing lots of mobile apps rapidly. Being used in Fletchers innovation lab.</li>
<li>Integration approaches for mobile (from most to least desirable)<ul>
<li>REST</li>
<li>SOAP - sometimes too heavyweight for mobile solutions</li>
<li>Direct database access</li>
<li>Screen scraping</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Embrace Agile Principles</li>
<li>True agility<ul>
<li>Reducing overheads in the delivery process</li>
<li>Applying best practice to get things right first time, more of the time</li>
<li>Application templates</li>
<li>Component re-use</li>
<li>Writing only as much software as necessary</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
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<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<b>21st Century Organisations and what we can learn from game designers</b></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Owen McCall, Managing Director, SuccessfulCIO (<a href="https://twitter.com/OwenMcCall">@OwenMcCall</a>)
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Only 20-30% of the workforce is engaged. Since there is a skills shortage, they can find work elsewhere.</li>
<li>Adapted from Heskett et al.<ul>
<li>Design Work —> Create Engagement —> Exceptional Service —> Produce Results</li>
<li>Customer advocacy is fundamental to achieve great results. Create exceptional customer service consistent with your brand, utilising a highly engaged team. Build an organisation that builds a team focussed on supporting your team to be successful.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Engagement is key</li>
<li>Game designers are the best in the world at creating engagement<ul>
<li>People pay to use the game</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>What is it that MMO game architects do that can be learnt from to drive better engagement?<ul>
<li>Context - tell you what you are going to be doing<ul>
<li>Overall purpose</li>
<li>Your role</li>
<li>What you need to do now</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Clear objectives<ul>
<li>measurable and time-constained</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Understand capability<ul>
<li>build skills and capability over time</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Feedback / Progress</li>
<li>Rewards<ul>
<li>Individual or Group awards</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Support<ul>
<li>FAQs, Forums</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>A game never prescribes what you need to do, it lets you work out how to do it, since that is how you build skills over time, and it provides avenues to support you.<ul>
<li>i.e. Don't prescribe what to do, provide autonomy for people to work out how to do something (with support), since that is how they will build skills and get better engaged.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Motivation Science (popularised by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594484805/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1594484805&linkCode=as2&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=UBQHFC64QJRDAMKV">Daniel Pink in Drive</a>)<ul>
<li>Autonomy - let me decide how to do my job</li>
<li>Mastery - give me the opportunity to improve my skills and capabilities and provide feedback on my process</li>
<li>Purpose - how does what I do contribute to a greater goal</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>EA for benefits realisation – Adapting to the changing environment</b></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Iain Sanders, Managing Director, Game-Changing Innovation
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Criteria for EA Benefits Realisation<ul>
<li>EA agility - achieve greater flexibility through customised architectural models</li>
<li>EA delivery - </li>
<li>EA maturity</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>John Boyd's OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act<ul>
<li>developed from context of winning a dogfight in the air</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Operate inside customers’ and competitors’ OODA loops</li>
<li>Be resilient to change</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Embracing the digital age</b></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Denis O’Shea, Chief Executive, Mobile Mentor (<a href="https://twitter.com/denishoshea">@denishoshea</a>)
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>From clicks and keystrokes to swipes and taps</li>
<li>Wearables and nearables (e.g. beacons) are here now<ul>
<li>captures information that provides context</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Mobile brings unique context to the content</li>
<li>Uber is mobile first and mobile only</li>
<li>Price of beacons is significantly dropping. They will be in more and more assets moving forward.</li>
<li>3 Beacon zones<ul>
<li>Far</li>
<li>Near</li>
<li>Immediate</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Beacon apps typically need to integrate with many systems; CRM, CMS, Alerts & Notifications etc.</li>
<li>Retail Use Case: Proximity based offers</li>
<li>Transportation Use Case: Real time traffic data</li>
<li>Hospitality Use Case: Hilton lets you skip the front desk and then provides you instructions where to go and to get into your room</li>
<li>Arts Use Case: Proximity based information on the art</li>
<li>Denis’ expectation is there will probably move to a multi-tenanted architecture where beacons for multiple organisations are handled by centralised companies and notifications can be centrally managed (e.g. by Westfield).</li>
</ul>
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<b>Summary of my key takeaways</b></div>
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<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Move from being regarded as a technologist to being a business enabler</li>
<li>Apply business architecture principles to our own “EA business” (c.f. Business Model Canvas for EA)</li>
<li>Elicit guiding business principles prior to programme execution</li>
<li>Factor in the people elements first, above technology and process otherwise you will fail</li>
<li>What staff <u>see</u> is more influential than what staff <u>hear</u></li>
<li>People risk and capability risk are likely to be an order of magnitude greater than technology risk</li>
<li>Giving certainty sooner is better than technical elegance too late</li>
<li>Keep partners and suppliers up to date with thinking - even if it may appear to be negative to them</li>
<li>20% of users will click on phishing package email on average</li>
<li>US Department of the Interiors Cloud Computing Technologies looks useful for assessing cloud providers</li>
<li>Strategies without tactics are fantasy; Tactics without strategy is chaos</li>
<li>Assess initiatives as to whether they are strategy aligned, neutral or negative</li>
<li>NZ companies have been cautious about big data adoption but this is now starting to grow momentum with a key focus being customer insight</li>
<li>Today, companies have to radically revolutionize themselves every few years just to stay relevant.</li>
<li>Consider ionic (<a href="http://ionicframework.com/">http://ionicframework.com</a>) as a mobile application framework</li>
<li>Only 20-30% of the workforce is engaged. Since there is a skills shortage, they can find work elsewhere.</li>
<li>Learn from MMO game architects about driving better engagement (context, clear objectives, under capability, feedback / progress, rewards, support)</li>
<li>Don't prescribe what to do, provide autonomy for people to work out how to do something (with support), since that is how they will build skills and get better engaged.</li>
<li>Mobile brings unique context to the content</li>
<li>Price of beacons is significantly dropping. They will be in more and more assets and locations moving forward.</li>
</ul>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-35649834518304348212015-07-22T19:10:00.000+12:002015-07-22T19:21:49.446+12:00IT & Enterprise Architecture Conference 2015 - Day 1<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Today I attended the first day of the <a href="http://www.conferenz.co.nz/conferences/it-enterprise-architecture">IT & Enterprise Architecture Conference</a> 2015 at the Crowne Plaza in Auckland. This was my first time at the event and it was a good opportunity to network with the wider IT & Enterprise Architecture community. Below is a summary of my key notes.
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<b>Setting the scene: Enterprise Architecture 2015-2025</b></div>
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Craig Pitout, Senior Manager IT Advisory, EY (<a href="https://twitter.com/CraigPitout">@CraigPitout</a>)
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<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Cloud, Mobility, Big Data and Social Media are key forces of Digital Disruption</li>
<li>Themes affecting enterprise agility<ul>
<li>Customer centric</li>
<li>Product centric</li>
<li>Internal efficiency</li>
<li>Regulatory requirements</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Force for uniqueness vs Force for commonality</li>
<li>Quantifying the impact<ul>
<li>Innovation impact vs Value potential<ul>
<li>Disruptive - disrupt the core</li>
<li>Adjacent - change and expand</li>
<li>Sustaining - incremental improvements</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>EY Business Reference Model - Agile (<a href="http://www.ey.com/GL/en/Services/Advisory/EY-translate-strategy-into-execution">http://www.ey.com/GL/en/Services/Advisory/EY-translate-strategy-into-execution</a>)</li>
</ul>
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<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Agile behaviours<ul>
<li>Responsiveness to change</li>
<li>Value-driven</li>
<li>Practical experimentation</li>
<li>Empowered, self-managing teams</li>
<li>Customer communication and collaboration</li>
<li>Continuous improvement</li>
<li>Respect for people</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>W123 - World-Class EA: The Agile Enterprise (<a href="http://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/W123">http://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/W123</a>)</li>
<li>The six qualities of business architecture<ul>
<li>Stakeholder experience</li>
<li>Risk</li>
<li>Alignment</li>
<li>Efficiency</li>
<li>Agility</li>
<li>Business Achievability</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>W146 - World-Class EA: Business Reference Model (<a href="http://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/W146">http://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/W146</a>)</li>
<li>Moving forward<ul>
<li>Become a digital practice</li>
<li>Build a business architecture capability</li>
<li>Establish agility goals</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>In addition to To Do list build a To Don’t list</li>
</ul>
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<b>Facilitating system transformation across the Public Sector</b></div>
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Regine Deleu, All-of-Government Enterprise Architect, The Department of Internal Affairs (<a href="https://twitter.com/rdeleu">@rdeleu</a>)
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<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Government Enterprise Architecture for New Zealand (GEA-NZ)</li>
<ul>
<li>applied at agency, sector and all-of-government level</li>
<li>there is now v3.1, but worth checking out <a href="https://www.ict.govt.nz/assets/Guidance-and-Resources/Government-Enterprise-Architecture-for-New-Zealand-v3-0.pdf">https://www.ict.govt.nz/assets/Guidance-and-Resources/Government-Enterprise-Architecture-for-New-Zealand-v3-0.pdf</a> and <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/RegineDeleu/presentation-geanz-v30">http://www.slideshare.net/RegineDeleu/presentation-geanz-v30</a></li>
</ul>
</ul>
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<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Five Business Areas<ul>
<li>New Zealand Society</li>
<li>Individuals and Communities</li>
<li>Businesses</li>
<li>Civic Infrastrcture</li>
<li>Government </li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data and Information<ul>
<li>Motivators<ul>
<li>Plans</li>
<li>Controls</li>
<li>Contracts</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Entities<ul>
<li>Parties</li>
<li>Places</li>
<li>Items</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Activities<ul>
<li>Cases</li>
<li>Events</li>
<li>Services</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Nine Application and ICT Services Domains<ul>
<li>Corporate Application</li>
<li>Common Line of Business Applications</li>
<li>Specialist Line of Business Applications</li>
<li>End User Computing</li>
<li>Identity and Access Management Services</li>
<li>Security Services</li>
<li>Data and Information Management Services</li>
<li>ICT Components, Services and Tools</li>
<li>Interfaces and Integration</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Four Infrastructure Domains<ul>
<li>Platform</li>
<li>Network</li>
<li>End User Equipment</li>
<li>Facility</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Structure and Artefacts</li>
</ul>
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<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Accelerate Delivery Methodology (ADM)</li>
</ul>
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<b>CIO perspective: Leveraging the value of EA</b></div>
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Mike Clarke, CIO, SKYCITY Entertainment Group
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<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Proactively engage with business leaders on new ideas and enhancements</li>
<li>Conversations distill into four pillars<ul>
<li>Digital Transformation</li>
<li>Business Alignment & Direction</li>
<li>IT Structure and Cost</li>
<li>Security</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Business strategy has an IT delivery mechanism (c.f. IT strategy and delivery aligned to business strategy)</li>
<li>"Cloud computing is not a technical construct, it is a commercial construct"</li>
<li>Delivering value<ul>
<li>Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?</li>
<li>Pragmatic<ul>
<li><u>Sufficient</u> documentation, <u>sufficient</u> governance, <u>sufficient</u> testing</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Meets business need / solves the business problem</li>
<li>Accelerates time to business value</li>
<li>Makes the solution easier to support</li>
<li>Makes the solution easier to expand</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data is a key enabler to make decisions and drive change</li>
<li>Attitude, Skill & Knowledge (ASK) is key</li>
<li>Pragmatic approach<ul>
<li>Avoid an academic approach</li>
<li>Purpose before action</li>
<li>When / where required</li>
<li>Focus on business value - investment needs to match the value</li>
<li>Focus on improving IT delivery</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Right people in the right roles</li>
<li>Debunking the SaaS myth - i.e. this is not an excuse for not having governance</li>
<li>Relationships are key</li>
<li>Be as transparent as possible</li>
<li>Recruit IT people with a business focus</li>
</ul>
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<b>Value creation. Winning the challenge in small-medium organisations</b></div>
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Angus Wall, Enterprise Architect, Unison Networks
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<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Storytelling is super important</li>
<li>Where do you invest money? EA is between strategy and system implementation</li>
<li>Get involved in the business planning. Move away from strategy being done to us and being part of the process (partnership model).</li>
<li>Business Disruption —> Target Business Outcome and Measure —> Architecture Strategy<ul>
<li>Align architecture strategy to business outcomes</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Assessing Business Impact<ul>
<li>Network & Operations</li>
<li>Contracting</li>
<li>Procurement & Logistics</li>
<li>Commercial</li>
<li>Finance</li>
<li>HR</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Roadmap done for each domain, then aggregated</li>
<li>Business Capability Model (kept at a high level)<ul>
<li>Manage Risk</li>
<li>Sell Unison Products</li>
<li>Operate Business</li>
<li>Marketing & Communications</li>
<li>Operate Network</li>
<li>Procurement & Logistics</li>
<li>Build & Maintain Network</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Make sure collateral is published and business focussed</li>
</ul>
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<b>Panel Discussion: EA for management utilisation. Are we on the same page?</b></div>
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Angus Wall, Enterprise Architect, Unison Networks
</div>
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Michael Tapp, Principal Architect, Cyma (<a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelTapp2">@MichaelTapp2</a>)
</div>
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Keith Delle Donne, Associate Director, PWC
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Martyn Bowis, Enterprise Architect and TOGAF Trainer, Architecting the Enterprise
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Communication and Relationships is key, understand their motivations</li>
<li>Get out of your business unit and engage wider across the organisation</li>
<li>Work with the business to assist them with their strategy</li>
<li>Be involved in the construction of the Business Plan</li>
<li>Have a Business Capability Model and use this as a key discussion vehicle</li>
<li>Super-impose a story over a picture the business is familiar with</li>
<li>Minimum viable architecture</li>
<li>You don’t want headless chicken agile, have guided agile</li>
<li>Use industry models (helps with using the same language)</li>
<li>You can teach skills, you can’t really teach attitude</li>
<li>EA needs to cover with both strategic and tactical initiatives</li>
<li>Principles guide decision making</li>
<li>Share your vision</li>
<li>Set expectations early on (particularly re bad news)</li>
<li>Come with solutions, not problems</li>
</ul>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<b>Masterclass: Bridging the communication gap</b></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Rachael Cotton-Bronte, Director, FLINT-box (<a href="https://twitter.com/Rachael_CBronte">@Rachael_CBronte</a>)
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Communication is the art of being understood</li>
<li>"The problem with communication... is the illusion that it has been accomplished” George Bernhard Shaw</li>
<li>We live in a time of unprecedented change</li>
<li>Diversity is the norm</li>
<li>Communication networks are increasingly complex</li>
<li>From command & control to power & enablement</li>
<li>Communication is essential to organisational success</li>
<li>Communication is the key to building trust, promoting understanding, empowering and motivating others</li>
<li>Words are like smashed eggs, once they go they go</li>
<li>Plan your Message<ul>
<li>What are the key messages?</li>
<li>Why is the message important?</li>
<li>What are the possible objections?</li>
<li>How will I address any objections?</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Avoid jargon</li>
<li>Don’t make assumptions about levels of knowledge</li>
<li>Communicate same message through multiple channels<ul>
<li>different people prefer to absorb information in different ways</li>
<li>Paper, Audio, Video, Phone, Whiteboard</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Keep content below 111 words</li>
<li>"Nothing I say this day is going to teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn I must do it by listening” Larry King</li>
<li>Components of communication<ul>
<li>Physiology 55%</li>
<li>Voice tones 38%</li>
<li>Words 7%</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>It’s what you don’t say that counts</li>
<li>Listen actively<ul>
<li>Body Language</li>
<li>Explore<ul>
<li>Question Open</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Reflection<ul>
<li>Clarify summarisation</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Understand your audience<ul>
<li>Think, See, Feel, Do</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Putting it together<ul>
<li>1. Key message</li>
<li>2. Telling the story</li>
<li>3. Layering information</li>
<li>4. Test & Evaluate</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Talk about the elephants in the room (e.g. risks). Manage expectations.</li>
<li>What do different people want?<ul>
<li>CIO<ul>
<li>Stability</li>
<li>Cost of IT</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>CMO<ul>
<li>Customer experience</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>CEO<ul>
<li>ROI</li>
<li>Stakeholder complexity</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>CFO<ul>
<li>Where is most of the money going?</li>
<li>Risk</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>How do you measure success? What are your business metrics?</li>
<li>Project Managers at e-bay - 50% are INTJ</li>
<li>People characteristics<ul>
<li>Conscientious</li>
<li>Dominance</li>
<li>Steady</li>
<li>Influence</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>10:20:30 rule for pitching from Guy Kawasaki<ul>
<li>10 Slides</li>
<li>20 minutes</li>
<li>30pt font is smallest that should be used</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
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<b>Would you hire yourself? The must-have skillset for proficient Architects</b></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Paulo Rocha, Enterprise Architect, Watercare Services Limited
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>EAs usually come from a variety of different paths; often from IT though and this impacts the perception of EA.</li>
<li>Penn State University now has a degree for Enterprise Architecture (<a href="http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates/enterprise-architecture-masters/overview">http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates/enterprise-architecture-masters/overview</a>), nothing yet in NZ</li>
<li>“World Class Enterprise Architecture” framework from the open group is about the “What” <a href="http://www.opengroup.org/india2011/presentations/Global%20Trends%20-%20Multinational%20Arch%20Deployments.pdf">http://www.opengroup.org/india2011/presentations/Global%20Trends%20-%20Multinational%20Arch%20Deployments.pdf</a></li>
<li>EA competency model has 7 core areas. Different roles (e.g. Designer vs Business Architect) require different aspects of this:<ul>
<li>Analytical Thinking<ul>
<li>Strategic Thinking</li>
<li>Problem Solving</li>
<li>Systems Thinking</li>
<li>Creative Thinking</li>
<li>Critical Thinking</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Architecture<ul>
<li>Design</li>
<li>Information Analysis</li>
<li>Modelling</li>
<li>Process Improvement</li>
<li>Roadmap Development</li>
<li>Scenario Building</li>
<li>Standards Development</li>
<li>Systems Development</li>
<li>System Integration</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Interpersonal skills<ul>
<li>Conflict Resolution</li>
<li>Emotional Intelligence</li>
<li>Influence</li>
<li>Integrity</li>
<li>Negotiation</li>
<li>Political Savvy</li>
<li>Relationship Bulding</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Communication<ul>
<li>Elicitation</li>
<li>Facilitation</li>
<li>Oral Presentations</li>
<li>Written Communication</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Finance<ul>
<li>Cost Benefit Analysis</li>
<li>Budgeting</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Management<ul>
<li>Asset Portfolio Management</li>
<li>Coaching and Mentoring</li>
<li>Decision Making</li>
<li>Industry Regulation & Compliance</li>
<li>Information Management</li>
<li>Lifestyle Management</li>
<li>Rick Management</li>
<li>Project Management</li>
<li>Performance Management</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Leadership<ul>
<li>Cyber & Information Security</li>
<li>Emerging Technology Monitoring</li>
<li>Enterprise Change Management</li>
<li>Information Assurance</li>
<li>Inspirational Direction</li>
<li>Policy and Governance</li>
<li>Project Portfolio Management</li>
<li>Strategic Planning</li>
<li>System Quality Assurance</li>
<li>Technology Governance</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Need to also consider experience in addition to skills i.e. leverage lessons learnt through experience</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<b>Quick fire session: Where should an EA sit in the corporate organisation?</b></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Paulo Rocha, Enterprise Architect, Watercare Services Limited
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Michael Tapp, Principal Architect, Cyma (<a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelTapp2">@MichaelTapp2</a>)
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Abhishek Anupuri, Senior Analyst, PWC
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Martyn Bowis, Enterprise Architect and TOGAF Trainer, Architecting the Enterprise
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>It is more important about where you can impact change as opposed to where you are in an organisational hierarchy</li>
<li>Leadership is about influence rather than a particular title</li>
<li>Outcome is more important than output and process</li>
<li>With too much process you kill the art</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<b>Summary of my key takeaways</b></div>
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<br />
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Continue to embrace agile behaviours (Responsiveness to change; Value-driven; Practical experimentation; Empowered, self-managing teams; Customer communication and collaboration; Continuous improvement; Respect for people)</li>
<li>The six qualities of business architecture would be useful for rapidly assessing the impact of an initiative (Stakeholder experience; Risk; Alignment; Efficiency; Agility; Business Achievability)</li>
<li>GEA-NZ has some good information publicly available that is worth checking out for evolving an EA</li>
<li><u>Sufficient</u> documentation, <u>sufficient</u> governance, <u>sufficient</u> testing</li>
<li>When recruiting in IT, recruit people with a business focus</li>
<li>Get involved in the business planning. Move away from strategy being done to you and be part of the process (partnership model).</li>
<li>Align architecture strategy to business outcomes</li>
<li>Use Business Capability Model to show at a high level where work is occurring</li>
<li>Make sure collateral is published and business focussed</li>
<li>Communicate same message through multiple channels</li>
<li>Physiology is 55% of communication, voice tones 38%, words 7%</li>
<li>The EA competency model could be useful for recruitment and working out areas to grow in</li>
</ul>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-26245413686671766262015-07-11T18:57:00.000+12:002015-07-12T16:02:27.660+12:00Gather 2015<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
I attended the inspirational <a href="http://gathergather.co.nz/">Gather</a> 2015 unconference today. As described on the website for the event “It is the digital, technical and creative community’s big day out”. There were several sessions running simultaneously and it was hard to choose what to go to since there were so many interesting topics. Below is a summary of my key takeaways (or interpretations thereof) from the sessions I attended.<br />
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">UAVs, Internet of Things, 3DVR: What are we going to do with these things? How do we get us/our companies/NZ to lead the way? What can we do to take advantage? These are the questions - does the room have the answers?</span></span></h4>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
MAKER CHANGE BUSINESS
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
@lancewiggs
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Future<ul>
<li>Skynet</li>
<li>Remote Monitoring</li>
<li>UAV Tour - e.g. rent a UAV and do tour of Egypt</li>
<li>Auto-herding</li>
<li>GPS in humans</li>
<li>Better battery life</li>
<li>Sensors inc. in building beams to say if leak problem</li>
<li>Track robber</li>
<li>Traffic control</li>
<li>Drone based terror</li>
<li>Evidence-based thinking<ul>
<li>Data —> Interpretation</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Auto milk ordering from fridge</li>
<li>Mesh networks / Less centralisation</li>
<li>Constant health monitoring / Early detection of problems</li>
<li>Ethical choices of how to handle certain things automatically (e.g. auto-brake, auto swerve into car with less people in)</li>
<li>Vehicle to Vehicle communications</li>
<li>Computer learning</li>
<li>Drink drive detection in cars</li>
<li>Increased auto detection of breaking the law (e.g. speed detection, lack of registration, lack of WOF)</li>
<li>Flexible screen technology whereby from an art perspective could have people involved</li>
<li>Sell your body as a working advertisement</li>
<li>Immigration and migration pressure (people move to get access to tech)</li>
<li>Privacy is a key consideration</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>New jobs<ul>
<li>Building drones</li>
<li>Drone recovery</li>
<li>Visual recognition and avoidance</li>
<li>Distributed air traffic control</li>
<li>Designing and building the logic</li>
<li>Laws to enable these new devices</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Questions that emerge<ul>
<li>Who do we trust to look after our security?</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>What can we do in NZ to be best in the world?<ul>
<li>Since NZ is seen as a trusted country<ul>
<li>Create the open model</li>
<li>Open doesn’t necessarily mean trusted through</li>
<li>Medical data on your person or in the cloud (user choice)</li>
<li>Control of the data is probably the key area</li>
<li>Legislation is a key consideration</li>
<li>There is a potential opportunity in this space</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Test market since a small country<ul>
<li>Transport / Autonomous vehicles<ul>
<li>We can change our laws relatively quickly</li>
<li>Less legal liability in NZ</li>
<li>Why would the car companies want to of this in NZ though? </li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Air traffic control (distributed)<ul>
<li>i.e. not as much traffic here.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Search & Rescue</li>
<li>Drones to deliver to remote locations</li>
<li>Building sensors<ul>
<li>Sensors to test structural integrity of buildings after earthquakes</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Digital money / contactless money<ul>
<li>More-so than now</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<h4 style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
HOW TO START A STARTUP.<br />
The talk we should have every year on what you need to know about starting a startup and getting funded.
</h4>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
STARTUP
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
@sponno @asknicely
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Launched @asknicely SaaS one year ago; 2 founders</li>
<li>Run from home / “the shed", so lean</li>
<li>Idea —> Validate Idea<ul>
<li>Prototyped in under two weeks</li>
<li>Trialled with snapper</li>
<li>Get data and learn</li>
<li>Then focus on getting $</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Threaten to cut off service if not being paid</li>
<li>Use of particular tech doesn’t matter; just use what you’re happy with, investors don’t care</li>
<li>Get as far as you can with your own funding. Important to get high valuation early.</li>
<li>Used Digital Ocean for servers (super cheap)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.mandrill.com/">Mandrill</a>, Google Docs, <a href="https://www.swipehq.co.nz/">Swipe HQ</a> for Payments (really good), <a href="https://www.intercom.io/">Intercom.io</a>, <a href="https://autopilothq.com/">Autopilot</a> for managing email, <a href="http://calendarly.net/">Calendarly</a> is great for online booking of demos, <a href="https://join.me/">Join.me</a> for voice/video/sharing conferencing to give product demos, Google Ad Words </li>
<li>US Phone number with Skype</li>
<li>Legal docs (founding doc based on back of the napkin, employment contracts)</li>
<li>Never run out of money; consider lead time of getting money</li>
<li>Investor is adding equity, so consider that in terms of their share of the company (e.g. 500k, 250k invested ==> 33% of company)</li>
<li>Pitch deck focuses less on product than growth and the team<ul>
<li>Create a story. Super important. Talk up being lean and team history.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Find a lead investor. They are usually for the next round of money.</li>
<li>Has found angle networks to be good.</li>
<li>Board is important for ensuring you are focusing on the right metrics</li>
<li>Over half of money spent on marketing</li>
<li>Vanity metrics mean nothing (e.g. website hits).</li>
<li>“Money only buys you time. Without money you are dead"</li>
<li>Spending about $700 to acquire a customer. Cost of Acquisition.</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Prototyping and Designing - let's talk tools and collaboration. How to work together and iterate fast.</span></span></h4>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
CREATIVE</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
@natdudley (and you, please)
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>From user design team at Vend</li>
<li>Tools include:<ul>
<li>HTML</li>
<li>Photoshop</li>
<li>Balsamiq</li>
<li>Sketch</li>
<li>Omnigraffle</li>
<li>Framer (Javascript framework to build awesome interactions)</li>
<li>Invision</li>
<li>Post-its</li>
<li>Lucid Charts</li>
<li>Evernote</li>
<li>Keynote</li>
<li>Powerpoint</li>
<li>Pen & Paper</li>
<li>Unity 3D</li>
<li>InDesign</li>
<li>Mindmaster</li>
<li>Avocode</li>
<li>Proto.io</li>
<li>Relay.io</li>
<li>ConceptBoard</li>
<li>Wake</li>
<li>Atomic</li>
<li>Illustrator</li>
<li>TinkerCAD</li>
<li>Slack for communications (super important)</li>
<li>Flowdock (similar to Slack)</li>
<li>Neurally (good for working with remote participants)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Sketch & Invision key tools at Vend (used together)</li>
<li>Invision (<a href="http://www.invisionapp.com/">invisionapp.com</a>) enables clickable prototype, can add comments<ul>
<li>Not great for prototyping, but good for communication</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Wake is like a Pinterest board for your company</li>
<li>Wake and Relay are both about creating ambient awareness of what your company is working on</li>
<li>Shouldn’t have too high res too early</li>
<li>Xero is looking at their own version of Bootstrap</li>
<li>Fails<ul>
<li>Too much detail too soon</li>
<li>Too low res</li>
<li>Lack of communication in some orgs & feeding back early and ongoing</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Do workshops<ul>
<li>Helps people to understand why something is being done</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>How to take Print-minded designers on the journey<ul>
<li>Show them an example of a live example</li>
<li>Be clear on requirements</li>
<li>Provide avenues for getting increased clarity</li>
<li>Show examples of previous work</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Balsalmiq is a key tool used by many</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<h4 style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Interviewing for talent. We've all been on both sides of the table. Let's talk about what works, and what doesn't work. </h4>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
BUSINESS/OTHER/CODE
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
@HaikuGeek (Lisa Wong)
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Everybody filled in Post-its which they then categorised into the following areas<ul>
<li>Hiring<ul>
<li>Like</li>
<li>Don’t like</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Hiree<ul>
<li>Like</li>
<li>Don’t like</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>We then split into teams to discuss each category. I went to the Negative Hiree team.</li>
<li>We then grouped the common themes and presented back to the group.</li>
<li>Hiring - Like<ul>
<li>Telling people what to prepare for and what the process is</li>
<li>Technical skills in interviews</li>
<li>Getting to understand the thought process of the hiree</li>
<li>Cross-functional interview teams</li>
<li>Tell a story to the candidate to understand their empathy</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Hiring - Don’t like<ul>
<li>People haven’t researched the company</li>
<li>Being put on the spot</li>
<li>Interviewers asking wrong questions</li>
<li>Interviewers correcting Hiree</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Hiree - Like<ul>
<li>Opportunity to explore culture</li>
<li>Understanding what they are being hired for</li>
<li>Options to get into detail about experience</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Hiree - Don’t like<ul>
<li>Technical testing in interviews (people don’t like)</li>
<li>Personal/Fluffy questions</li>
<li>Sugar coating company culture</li>
<li>Recruiters & time between feedback</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<h4 style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
The Gathering — Panel: "How we work" </h4>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">featuring Lance Wiggs, Dale Clareburt, Robyn Kamira, Amie Holman and you! Moderated by Nat Torkington</span></span></div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>The human value of what you do is important</li>
<li>Rich Dad Poor Dad - breakdown of different jobs</li>
<li>Being self-employed<ul>
<li>greater risk</li>
<li>need to be able to live at the bottom of the trough</li>
<li>consider charging companies that can afford it more to supplement other work (inc. for voluntary initiatives) and down time.</li>
<li>self promotion is important (feed and water people that may provide work, not selling, listening about problems)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Employee in an organisation<ul>
<li>regular money</li>
<li>can still make a difference</li>
<li>can be a great training environment and learning how to work with others</li>
<li>multiple stakeholders</li>
<li>often too many rules</li>
<li>huge opportunity to change the lives of many</li>
<li>can start a startup at the same time</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Owning a startup<ul>
<li>can setup company how you want</li>
<li>exciting to grow the company, albeit hard</li>
<li>like living on steroids all the time</li>
<li>huge sense of responsibility to pay people and care for them</li>
<li>you never know when an opportunity will cross your path; be prepared</li>
<li>failing is hard, but think what is the worst that can happen</li>
<li>keep learning; if you’re not learning you are a psychopath</li>
<li>go in with your eyes open</li>
<li>working in a startup is a great way to see if starting one yourself is for you</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Be your own best supporter</li>
<li>Fear is sometimes a perception, front up to it</li>
<li>Valuable book: How to make friends and influence people</li>
<li>Look for companies you fit with first, job second.</li>
<li>Know what you are good at and what you passionate about</li>
<li>Support others</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<h4 style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
Adventures in App Development the making of Speaking Email. Introducing a new app that speaks your email and how we built it. Core tech - cordova, gmail api, text to speech, voice recognition </h4>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
CODE </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
@mike_beweb
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li><a href="http://speaking.email/">speaking.email</a></li>
<li>Free tool (for iPhone) for first 1000 downloads</li>
<li>Key Use Case: Driving</li>
<li>Found <a href="https://cordova.apache.org/">Cordova</a> was easy to get going with and free</li>
<li>Cordova has plug-ins for different native implementations (e.g. accelerometer)</li>
<li>Used <a href="http://goratchet.com/">Ratchet</a> for UI. Good framework by same people that made bootstrap.</li>
<li><a href="https://context.io/">Context IO</a> is quite good for using IMAP, ended up using Gmail REST API initially<ul>
<li>Lots of parsing required with Gmail REST API</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Don’t use local storage if you will have lots of data</li>
<li><a href="https://www.genuitec.com/products/gapdebug/">GapDebug</a> is a good debugging tool for mobile apps built using Cordova or PhoneGap</li>
<li>Discussion from room:<ul>
<li>Would be good to summarise emails</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">What Do We Expect from Front End Developers - what skills and knowledge do we expect; how does someone become a front-end developer.</span></span></h4>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
CODE
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
@wrumsby
</div>
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>HTML + CSS + JS</li>
<li>Development<ul>
<li>Pre-requisite (if doing JS)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Making things look pretty (implementing the design)</li>
<li>Making something that people actually interact with</li>
<li>Discussion re whether HTML + CSS + JS all required to be a front end developer<ul>
<li>Different opinions in the room</li>
<li>A continuum (designer/front-end/back-end)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>On the job learning</li>
<li>Continuous learning</li>
<li><a href="http://wordpress.tv/2008/10/31/wordcamp-sf-2008-kathy-sierra-kicking-ass-and-creating-passionate-users/">Building Kickass Developers by Kathy Sierra</a> is worth checking out</li>
<li>Service-side front end development is sometimes considered part of front-end development (not everywhere though). Even more-so is New Zealand is the need to be a jack of all trades.</li>
<li>Scrum can also mix up roles; i.e. the job needs to be done, back-end dev may end up doing front-end.</li>
<li>Market expectations have changed over time as to what a front end developer does</li>
<li>JS is a must for a senior front-end developer, <i>may</i> be okay for a junior not to know.</li>
<li>Front-end development is the crafting of the design</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Show off your software stack!</span></span></h4>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Describe you site's stack, from hardware/hosting up to everything else (or maybe just the cool bits). Approx 3-5 minutes each (depending on interest). If you want a slide or two please send in advance to the organiser.</span></span></h4>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
CODE
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
@slyall
</div>
<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?-->
<br />
<ul style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;">
<li>Micro-services to common API back-end. Same commitment to API consumers as internal team.</li>
<li>Use feature flags to determine who gets a certain feature (controlled groups)</li>
<li>AWS enables increased focus on features than infrastructure</li>
<li>Docker being used by a bunch of orgs</li>
<li><a href="https://raygun.io/">Raygun</a> is great for error tracking</li>
<li><a href="https://www.rabbitmq.com/">RabbitMQ</a> commonly used for messaging</li>
<li><a href="https://www.atlassian.com/software/bamboo">Bamboo</a> recommended for Continuous Integration</li>
<li><a href="https://slack.com/" target="_blank">Slack</a> and <a href="https://www.hipchat.com/" target="_blank">Hipchat</a> both seen as great collaboration tools</li>
<li>Linux is key OS being used (RHEL and Debian in particular)</li>
</ul>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-76921663047998991782015-01-05T21:15:00.000+13:002015-01-05T21:18:34.922+13:00Book Review: ArchiMate 2.1 Specification<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9401800030/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=9401800030&linkCode=as2&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=IQFPR5NZECHW7IWD"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyWcswXIdoC3Idcld7osKPUWuv4v3cDdvAkUzsHmvYOL6p4EmO3ZKE2b7kpPPUBZBdwi60j-EZKeTfUmGdTKiMfEyE8fs72AcrlDjXWsIC9nck33P0lwlhpckiRWDz_UjJ6Ge2EF8A-1u-/s1600/419dLQfFnEL._SL160_.jpg" /></a></div>
Having used ArchiMate for the past few months (with guidance from an ArchiMate guru) I decided to read the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9401800030/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=9401800030&linkCode=as2&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=XLHQXOTFXU6T2YH4%22%3EArchiMate%C2%AE%202.1%20Specification%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=httpgianoutsb-20&l=as2&o=1&a=9401800030" target="_blank">specification</a>.<br />
<br />
The specification is fairly dry reading, quite academic at times and is more of a reference guide. I found myself wanting a more practical book so have subsequently ordered what has been highly recommended to me; "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9081984047/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=9081984047&linkCode=as2&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkId=MHH56SKKZQJSOFVL" target="_blank">Mastering ArchiMate - Edition II</a>" by Gerben Wierda.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-62241689325831010062014-11-30T16:49:00.000+13:002014-11-30T16:49:46.595+13:00Using Raspberry Pi as a Time Capsule to backup a Mac<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8xliWokfxT-G6jDyKHqKca2MmCzpBxEmVfcrXxcBmUA9LmhV-8ObbzCCA9e_EtODEGo6hrhA7RW_l5QW6Mk3ikSxgrUAyOouWOLOqKzPP-TxQ3hQ9LxuCUpcuq4fqTPkNGRcw-1i62pLF/s1600/Raspi_Colour_R-207x250.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8xliWokfxT-G6jDyKHqKca2MmCzpBxEmVfcrXxcBmUA9LmhV-8ObbzCCA9e_EtODEGo6hrhA7RW_l5QW6Mk3ikSxgrUAyOouWOLOqKzPP-TxQ3hQ9LxuCUpcuq4fqTPkNGRcw-1i62pLF/s1600/Raspi_Colour_R-207x250.png" height="200" width="165" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKHeOW9O4YnzwEwhrS4qj4-TrO5AJ3i5q7zm425z2iwffgWjwwbHP5vuFlbPBknCgagPxwsvjAvXmtrSOaUflAtVjb8G9gf6tgeWewxE2RkvrT3D-ONMX9RR5GO3bERZO6dRhfnpyFBRDz/s1600/timecapsule.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKHeOW9O4YnzwEwhrS4qj4-TrO5AJ3i5q7zm425z2iwffgWjwwbHP5vuFlbPBknCgagPxwsvjAvXmtrSOaUflAtVjb8G9gf6tgeWewxE2RkvrT3D-ONMX9RR5GO3bERZO6dRhfnpyFBRDz/s1600/timecapsule.jpeg" /></a></div>
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Time Machine is the built-in backup feature of OS X. It keeps a copy of all your files, and remembers how your system looked on any given day so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past. Apple sells a device called a Time Capsule, but rather than buy one of these I opted for a diy approach using my <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/" target="_blank">Raspberry Pi</a> and so far it seems to be working well.<br />
<br />
My setup consists of:<br />
<ul>
<li>Raspberry Pi Model B running Raspbian connected via network cable to a router</li>
<li>MacBook Pro running OS X Yosemite v10.10.1 connected via Wifi to a router</li>
<li>External 2TB drive (with separate power) attached via USB to the Raspberry Pi</li>
</ul>
It was relatively easy to setup following the instructions at <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=47029">http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=47029</a> . I am reiterating the instructions here just in case the page disappears (with a couple of additions I needed):<br />
1. Start with a clean installation of Raspbian, configured for your network<br />
<br />
2. Power down your Pi, connect your storage drive, and boot your Pi back up.<br />
<br />
3. Since my Pi only has 2 USB ports, I wasn't able to have a Keyboard, Mouse and USB drive connected without using a USB hub. Since I didn't want to use a USB hub I installed a VNC server on the Pi and a VNC client application on the Mac using instructions from <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/vnc/">http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/vnc/</a> which can be summarised as follows.<br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo apt-get install tightvncserver</span><br />
<span style="color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, Andale Mono, Courier New, Courier, mono;"><span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ tightvncserver</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, Andale Mono, Courier New, Courier, mono;"><span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ vncserver :0 -geometry 1920x1080 -depth 24</span></span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
4. Install netatalk and gparted</div>
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo apt-get update</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo apt-get upgrade</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo apt-get install netatalk gparted</span><br />
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5. Start up the graphical desktop on your Pi using startx, and run gparted (it's under "preferences" in your start menu). Select your storage drive (not your SD card), delete any existing partitions, and create a new single partition of type ext4. Then exit gparted.<br />
<br />
6. Set your Pi to connect to your storage drive when you boot, and create a place in your Pi's filesystem for it to go<br />
a) create the directory with appropriate permissions<br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo mkdir /mnt/TimeMachine</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo chmod 777 /mnt/TimeMachine</span><br />
b) setup auto boot<br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo echo "/dev/sda1 /mnt/TimeMachine ext4 defaults 0 2" >> /etc/fstab</span><br />
This command came up with a Permission denied error so I instead manually updated the <span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">/etc/fstab</span> file using nano with the entry in quotes (<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">/dev/sda1 /mnt/TimeMachine ext4 defaults 0 2</span>) added at the end.<br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo nano /etc/fstab</span><br />
c) mount the drive<br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo mount /dev/sda1</span><br />
<br />
7. Configure netatalk to share the directory<br />
a) setup netatalk<br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo echo "/mnt/TimeMachine \"Time Machine\" options:tm" >> /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default</span><br />
This command came up with a Permission denied error so I instead manually updated the <span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">/etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default</span> file using nano with <span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">/mnt/TimeMachine "Time Machine" options:tm</span> added at the end (Note: the \'s have been removed from the echo command).<br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo nano </span><span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">/etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default</span><br />
b) restart netatalk<br />
<span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">$ sudo service netatalk restart</span><br />
<br />
8. On your Mac open your Time Machine preferences, click Select Disk, and choose Time Machine on raspberrypi. I found initially that I couldn't find the Time Machine share so I went to Finder and connected to the Raspberry Pi at <span style="background-color: #f7f7f9; color: #8b8b8b; font-family: Monaco, 'Andale Mono', 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.210000038147px;">afp://pi_ip_address</span><br />
<br />
9. The backup should commence after a couple of minutes.<br />
<br />
<i>Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation</i><br />
<i>Apple, Mac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, OS X, Time Capsule and Time Machine are trademarks of Apple Inc.</i><br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-71290955885983004302014-06-21T19:22:00.001+12:002014-06-21T19:22:05.231+12:00Book Review: The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-4-Hour-Work-Week-Anywhere/dp/0091929113/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1403334909&sr=1-1" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEMjHkIdQ9X7NPTHwNziJEjx-qKbmYCY-tPK_42qGHM4DT2DI0p-Nm21BZ7RQbqeH3N4ZkfMy5_dkmJyXVL6umNeh5GnSjcRYFxinZFbfP3kxtqTAbD4wkWiGG9rAJ6wtZEiwT2oEYIkK/s1600/71DPD5QEZCL.jpg" height="200" width="125" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-4-Hour-Work-Week-Anywhere/dp/0091929113/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1403334909&sr=1-1" target="_blank">"The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich"</a> by Tim Ferriss is one of those books I had heard about but not got around to reading until now.<br />
<br />
My key takeaways:<br />
<ul>
<li>Think about what parts of your work or personal life you could outsource to free up time to do other things (some good references are provided in the book such as elance, Your Man In India and Brickwork). </li>
<li>There are some good reminders about time management, handling interruptions, testing (even down to product name testing via Google AdWords) and keeping it simple for the customer by reducing the number of decisions they need to make.</li>
<li>Some good advice was provided about having a minimum advertised pricing clause in order to prevent wholesaling wars (not only by organisations, but also by discounters on eBay)</li>
<li>There are some useful links to tools and sites to get a website up and running quickly, some good advice about projecting that your company is bigger than it is (e.g. by having multiple email addresses for multiple departments) and using this as an enabler to scale later.</li>
</ul>
I skimmed over many of the other parts of the book since it was a bit too verbose.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-17960433538165323382014-01-12T20:31:00.000+13:002014-01-12T20:35:33.824+13:00Book Review: Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CATSONE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00CATSONE&linkCode=as2&tag=httpgianoutsb-20" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBM0LAx2PqDl-EYzfoOPLsxjL4BggD_R5BfxrCkdAR0JK4SDON6OwFQtw3XLm0VCmhGdyqDi-7bGXS4Ggmb7wCGKCOsuzz5_F0bL-ZyuefnBP4sxVOyYe-UlR8w6FeXy14b1WMOamuvALJ/s200/tesla.jpg" /></a></div>
I found <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CATSONE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00CATSONE&linkCode=as2&tag=httpgianoutsb-20">Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century</a> to be a very quick read and a well written synopsis of Nikola Tesla and imagination. I had heard of Tesla but didn't know much more and this book was a great introduction to an amazing person and a great inspirational read about genius being a path anybody can take, never giving up, thinking being the enemy of creativity and varied knowledge and experiences being more likely lead to fresh ideas. It is not a book for getting an in depth understanding of Tesla or in depth information about self improvement or imagination, but it is a good short inspirational read.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-55834724504339814272013-01-03T17:24:00.001+13:002013-01-03T17:24:23.270+13:00Fitbit One: turn your everyday life into a fun path to fitness<p><a href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=422402&u=729194&m=31379&urllink=&afftrack=" target="_blank"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="simple.b-dis-png.h47e3210a910010717f0d5ec74009f261" border="0" alt="simple.b-dis-png.h47e3210a910010717f0d5ec74009f261" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtNiZZnZocI1atpQwPbN_bQCEFludDzbtORKB4OnJvNaeRKP-RnehYZ11H85OnF51J6NcxmMLyDwM0c_YIITjRnToGQfiSSrYW0viubBwStOvZ2rHo__2NHP9xz4dBSQpnM7UbUfVSacwi/?imgmax=800" width="67" height="183" /></a>I have had a <a href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=422402&u=729194&m=31379&urllink=&afftrack=" target="_blank">Fitbit One Wireless Activity + Sleep Tracker</a> for just over a week and absolutely love it. This a device that measures your activity, adds a competitive nature (with yourself and others), and is part of the craze of gadgets about the Quantified Self.</p> <p>The general idea behind the Quantified Self is about gaining self knowledge through numbers, with the intent of self improvement.</p> <p>The <a href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=422402&u=729194&m=31379&urllink=&afftrack=" target="_blank">Fitbit One</a> logs the number of steps taken, floors climbed, distance walked, calories burned, activity level and sleep patterns. This information is collected on a day by day basis and wirelessly transmitted by Bluetooth 4 via a PC/Mac or compatible device (such as the iPhone) to the Fitbit website where you can compete against others or just yourself. There are also virtual badges you can earn by achieving milestones, such as 10,000 steps in a day, climbing 25 floors in day etc.</p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnknBlrFQo-D3f43uCxvlIt47IAm6xLTLLUfzYLuybPqzG0ZZSXk4ZJM2kpSfCfBHG0gIxYFfSAVNaUyDIEHEqOhAKrWva0lrgMLOjiLyv5vO4Wq3WDPD6EgQrEo_N276GPcbIOLHKKMrQ/s1600-h/sit_crop3.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="sit_crop" border="0" alt="sit_crop" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSqykV4IxDA3LjmvgVTjFe7s_Y0lEnwdFJNel4zqWXEDV-XWfTT3IoFpP5VCza37-pUpCmjjimj5b5uYy_Z3-0ej3FbnxcoReil87p7nSaiX5bd9yZjYkWX2_GthuSGtVnz_28pvkLAWD7/?imgmax=800" width="508" height="567" /></a></p> <p>Functionality is also available via the website or mobile apps to log food consumed, water consumed, activities done, sleep and weight. Appropriate calories are calculated and used to inform you how well you are tracking towards your goals.</p> <h2>Key Advantages</h2> <ul> <li>One of the key advantages the Fitbit One has, in my view, is that it can be easily concealed in a pocket or attached in a non-conspicuous way. This was a consideration I had when comparing this device against the Jawbone UP and Nike+ FuelBand. </li> <li>It is also a very simple device to use, tracks a reasonable amount of info and has only one button. </li> <li>Syncing of information to the Fitbit website happens transparently “over the air” once you have done a very simple PC/Mac installation. A USB dongle is supplied for enabling a PC/Mac to communicate with the Fitbit One via Bluetooth 4. </li> <li>The gamification features, with virtual badges, competing with others and yourself provide a good additional drive to exercise. </li> <li>An API is available for integration with. There is also an ecosystem of applications emerging, inc. integration with sites such as Runkeeper and Endomondo. </li> <li>There is a silent alarm that will vibrate to wake you up. </li> </ul> <h2>key Shortcomings</h2> <ul> <li>Whilst there are apps for iPhones and Android, the Android devices don’t currently support synching. The main reason from reading the forums appears to be that the vast majority of Android devices do not have Bluetooth 4 support and anything lower than 4 would have too big a drain on the battery of the Fitbit device. Support is however apparently coming soon for some devices. </li> <li>When tracking sleep, you need to explicitly hold down the button for two seconds to start the sleep event and hold it down again to turn it off. Whilst it does work it’s not great. </li> <li>Whilst data is available to be extracted, doing this easily via the Fitbit site requires paying a Premium fee. </li> <li>Setting the silent alarm to wake up cannot be done on the device itself and needs to be via the website or iPhone app. </li> <li>To charge the device required using a special connector (which is provided). Charging is required every 5-7 days so you don’t want to misplace this. It also feels a bit strange to not be attached to the device while it’s charging.</li> <li>Logging of food is a bit tedious, then again I’ve found this with all similar sites. </li> <li>Since a USB dongle is typically required to support synchronisation of information, care must be taken not to lose this small dongle.</li> <li>Whilst the Fitbit device can apparently take a bit of rain, it is not waterproof so you can’t wear it all the time.</li> </ul> <h2>Overall Synopsis</h2> <p>Whilst there are some shortcomings, compared to its competitors I think it is currently the best of the bunch and enjoy using it. </p> <p><em>Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links for the Fitbit One product. By clicking through you are supporting Simon G’s Blog and I thank you. The article is completely non-biased.</em></p> <a href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=422402&u=729194&m=31379&urllink=&afftrack=" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://www.shareasale.com/image/31379/one-affiliate-468x60.jpg" /></a> <div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-31399493780865189292012-08-14T21:10:00.001+12:002012-08-14T21:10:19.696+12:00Book Review: “Mark Zuckerberg: Ten Lessons in Leadership”<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007HJDG4Y/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007HJDG4Y&linkCode=as2&tag=httpgianoutsb-20" target="_blank"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="zuck" border="0" alt="zuck" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi04YrcmGNA4f6zLip1bABFA5lZmr2tc1id9F6E0uDzHdndGDbF4hk120N_-X76zA5NkUiJ3lQ_LGCsnrkqTyxoEvhzS19yd3WMbSrlCCIF5k15qUS2faVZTkkGxVEkV5j5S54wWJWsL-C3/?imgmax=800" width="142" height="185" /></a>I was sceptical that <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007HJDG4Y/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007HJDG4Y&linkCode=as2&tag=httpgianoutsb-20" target="_blank">“Mark Zuckerberg: Ten Lessons in Leadership” by Michael Essany</a> would be worth reading, but decided to give it a go anyway. It isn’t a large book, but the documentary style works well and I found it in fact contained good practical advice including inspiration to get out there and make a difference, leveraging mentors, getting started, focusing on the idea first and details later and many other great pearls of wisdom. <br />The key points I noted were:</p> <ul> <li>When popularity supplants passion at the forefront of the entrepreneur’s mind, the likelihood of success rapidly diminishes. </li> <li>Live your regular life and just try to build stuff that matters. </li> <li>The most successful entrepreneurs of tomorrow will be those who take to the next level that which we have today. If you want to be the next Steve Jobs, you're not required to invent anything in order to do that. You simply have to listen, observe, and innovate. </li> <li>Young entrepreneurs are notorious for idolizing the wrong people. You cannot and should not have a 'mentor' who is unreachable, outside of your industry, and doesn't wholly represent that which you seek to become. </li> <li>Most people think of great entrepreneurs as lone wolves who accomplished their dreams by themselves. This could not be more false. From Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to Warren Buffet and Donald Trump, each had a mentor or two along the way. Each have well documented experiences with these mentors and speak openly about the help they got along the way. </li> <li>"Hit 'em where they ain’t" and never let your immediate location be an immediate deterrent for immediate action. </li> <li>Starting the entrepreneurial process is one thing; sticking to the process is another </li> <li>Control must not be yielded under any circumstances. </li> <li>The most successful inventors and entrepreneurs of our time have given the world technologies that can be personalized and effortlessly controlled by the user. When people take ownership in a highly personal way of their smartphones, computers, social networks, etc. they are highly inclined to keep returning to those devices and platforms. </li> <li>Rivalries are healthy for business, essential for innovation, and just a whole lot of fun. </li> <li>The most successful entrepreneurs of the 21st Century will be those who limit their adherence to 'traditional distractions.' </li> <li>When inspired, wait for absolutely nothing. </li> <li>In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. </li> <li>If you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress </li> <li>The things we can do without a lot of thought or effort are often of greater value because they allow us to get started and getting started is the most important part. </li> <li>The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like. </li> <li>When you're passionate about a simple idea that brings together diverse and wonderful ideas, resources, and technologies into a cultivated platform that does collectively that which each part could not do individually, success is not only possible, it is virtually inevitable. </li> <li>It's all about the idea - the core, compelling, central focus of the product or service. Details don't matter at first. Details come once you've assembled your team, consulted bright, diverse minds, and patiently charted a course toward prototype or product completion. </li> <li>Details matter more than anything else - but not at first. It's the core idea that must lead the way </li> </ul> <div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-13804724713297248452012-03-26T22:22:00.000+13:002012-03-26T22:22:18.101+13:00Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345487427/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0345487427" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=0345487427&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&ServiceVersion=20070822" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=httpgianoutsb-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0345487427" style="border-bottom-style: none !important; border-color: initial !important; border-image: initial !important; border-left-style: none !important; border-right-style: none !important; border-top-style: none !important; border-width: initial !important; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-top: 0px !important;" width="1" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345487427/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0345487427" target="_blank">"Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway"</a> by Susan Jeffers contains lots of good practical advice, such as the power of eliminating negativity and pessimism from your vocabulary, taking responsibility for your reactions, how to have a balanced life, and many other great pearls of wisdom.<br />
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Here are some of my key take aways:</div>
<div class="p1">
</div>
<ol>
<li>All you have to do to diminish your fear is to develop more trust in your ability to handle whatever comes your way</li>
<li>The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it</li>
<li>Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I'm on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else</li>
<li>Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes with a feeling of helplessness. </li>
<li>Before you take any action in life, ask yourself: "Is this action moving me to a more powerful place?" If it isn't you will think twice about doing it.</li>
<li>Begin eliminating the terribles, can'ts, problems, struggles and so on from your vocabulary. Certain words are destructive; others are empowering. e.g. "I can't" --> "I won't", "I hope" --> "I know", "What will I do?" --> "I know I can handle it"</li>
<li>The more you expand your comfort zone, the more powerful you become. Each day stretch yourself and do something that intimidates you</li>
<li>You are the cause of the feelings that take away the joy in your life. Are you a 'victim' or are you taking responsibility for your life? Whenever you are not taking responsibility you put yourself in a position of pain, and hence decrease your ability to handle the fear in your life</li>
<li>Taking responsibility means never blaming anyone else for anything you are being, doing, having or feeling</li>
<li>Taking responsibility means not blaming yourself</li>
<li>Taking responsibility means being aware of where and when you are not taking responsibility so that you can eventually change</li>
<li>Outtalk your negativity</li>
<li>It is empowering to have the support of a strong, motivated and inspirational group of people. You have to go out and create the type of support system you want.</li>
<li>The knowledge that you can handle anything that comes your way is the key to allowing yourself to take risks</li>
<li>You're not a failure if you don't make it; you're a success because you try. The trick in life is not to worry about making a wrong decision.</li>
<li>If I am not making mistakes, I can be sure I am not learning and growing</li>
<li>Act as if you really count</li>
<li>Create a whole of life grid of what is important to you for a balanced life and allocate 100% commitment of time to each; Contribution, Hobby, Leisure, Family, Alone Time, Personal Growth, Work, Relationship, Friends. Each day, create daily goals that reflect all the boxes in your grid.</li>
<li>With a positive attitude, value can be created from anything that happens in your life</li>
<li>Genuine giving is not only altruistic; it also makes us feel better.</li>
<li>You must become what you want to attract. Be the kind of person you would want to surround yourself with.</li>
</ol>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I thoroughly recommended this book.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-15398399208994068892012-01-29T15:58:00.001+13:002012-01-29T16:00:39.800+13:00Book Review: How To Have Confidence And Power In Dealing With People by Les Giblin<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0134106717/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0134106717" target="_blank"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="1e37124128a02faf24b06010.L._AA300_" border="0" alt="1e37124128a02faf24b06010.L._AA300_" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBcvt7TEZNuI2Y0-Yr-TBLb4MWl3zr1Hn34ukUZrLDBbDfb4XKTyPpgEKKZX9pHB-lW9BK70DaV1WPxC3WZXYGnwYXGRtFlR_piDUhvR2T4Rm-dzLYSVODFh1nenS9SNfftKJq4Xev6DlG/?imgmax=800" width="113" height="158"></a>"<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0134106717/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0134106717" target="_blank">How To Have Confidence And Power In Dealing With People</a>” by Les Giblin had been sitting on my bookshelf for years and I was expecting it to be an over the top sales book so had put off reading it, but I was so wrong and now wish I had read it years ago. This is a superb book that has lots of great advice, good examples and is well written. I also really appreciate the short recap that each section has at the end summarising the key points.</p> <div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-75372067060211686772012-01-21T00:27:00.001+13:002012-01-21T00:29:05.816+13:00Book Review–“Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ” by Daniel Goleman<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0747528306/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0747528306" target="_blank"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 5px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="49fd2b185ac4ecad329f6f6fcd8120ab_18740653481270286681" border="0" alt="49fd2b185ac4ecad329f6f6fcd8120ab_18740653481270286681" align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhpVnGcCy5tW4jruGo5CFaEGh_LVe3_nJNcNn2zjZjRCG8uG5OLSNECwDMfDeDGUSAi7LMoJ7Nmtib2pTjFqKL3nmTnyvLfH8AWpDIFO914yhcVlD525zRiCOQ9N9-9JbYgcOF4l7YrJKU/?imgmax=800" width="156" height="240"></a>I found <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0747528306/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0747528306" target="_blank">“Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ” by Daniel Goleman</a> to be quite an academic (and at times scientific) view of emotion that includes some good story-telling. </p> <p>It started very dry but I found it got more engaging about 60 pages in. I found the book to be more focussed on describing emotional intelligence as opposed to providing much guidance about how to improve your emotional intelligence. Despite this, I did however find that it contained a wealth of interesting information. </p> <p>My key takeaways were:</p> <ul> <li>We have two minds (rational and emotional) that typically operate in tight harmony. <li>Anger builds upon anger; the emotional brain heats up. <li>Distraction is a highly powerful mood-altering device. This is due to the fact that it is hard to stay angry when you’re having a pleasant time. <li>Thoughts are associated in the mind not just by content, but by mood. People have what amounts to a bad-mood thoughts that come to mind more readily when they are down. <li>While crying can sometimes break a spell of sadness, it can also leave the person obsessing about the reasons for despair. Crying that reinforces rumination only prolongs the misery. <li>Aerobic exercise is one of the more effective tactics for lifting mild depression. This however does not hold true for habitual exercisers, since the opposite is true whereby they start to feel bad on those days they skip a workout. <li>Relaxation techniques which put the body into a low-arousal state work well for anxiety, a high-arousal state, but not so well for depression. <li>A constructive approach to mood-lifting is engineering a small triumph or easy success. <li>A potent antidote to depression is seeing things differently, or cognitive reframing. i.e. step back and look at the scenario from the perspective of somebody worse off. <li>A helpful depression-lifter is helping others in need. e.g. volunteering, feeding the homeless. <li>A strong cultural work ethic translates into a higher motivation, zeal, and persistence – an emotional edge. <li>Good moods, while they last, enhance the ability to think flexibly and with more complexity, thus making it easier to find solutions to problems, whether intellectual or interpersonal. Laughing consequently can help people think more broadly. <li>People with high levels of hope share certain traits such as being able to motivate themselves, reassuring themselves when in a tight spot that things will get better, being flexible enough to find different ways to get to their goals or to switch goals if one becomes impossible, and having the sense to break down a formidable task into smaller, manageable pieces. <li>People perform at their peak while in flow; they exhibit a masterly control of what they are doing, there responses perfectly attuned to the changing demands of the task. <li>People seem to concentrate best when the demands on them are a bit greater than usual, and they are able to give more than usual. If there is too little demand on them, people are bored. If there is too much for them to handle they get anxious. Flow occurs in that delicate zone between boredom and anxiety. <li>Being able to manage emotions in someone else is the core of the art of handling relationships. <li>Emotions are contagious. We transmit and catch moods from each other. <li>Coordination of moods is the essence of rapport. <li>In terms of managing our own career, there may be nothing more essential than recognising our deepest feelings about what we do – and what changes might make us more truly satisfied with our work. <li>Turning a blind eye to acts of bias allows discrimination to thrive. To do nothing, in this context, is an act of consequence in itself. <li>While a group can be no “smarter” than the sum total of its strengths, it can be much dumber if its internal workings don’t allow people to share their talents. <li>Harmony allows a group to take maximum advantage of its most creative and talented members’ abilities. <li>Cultivating good relationships with people whose services might be needed later can increase your chance of success. <li>The stars of an organisation are often those who have: <ul> <li>thick connections on all networks, whether communications (who talks to whom), expertise (which people are turned to for advice), or trust. <li>teamwork coordination. <li>leadership in building consensus. <li>ability to see things from the perspective of others, such as customers or others on a team. <li>persuasiveness. <li>ability to promote cooperation while avoiding conflicts. <li>initiative – being self-motivated enough to take on responsibilities beyond their stated job. <li>self-management in the sense of regulating their time and work commitments well.</li></ul> <li>Helping people better manage their upsetting feelings – anger, anxiety, depression, pessimism, and loneliness – is a form of disease prevention. <li>Many patients can benefit measurably when their psychological needs are attended to along with their purely medical ones. <li>The emotional abilities children acquire in later life build on those of the earliest years.</li></ul> <div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-588034378318921492011-11-27T16:24:00.001+13:002011-12-01T10:08:11.460+13:00Considerations when responding to an RFI or RFP (a view from the receiving end)Having been on the receiving end of Request for Information (RFI) and Request for Proposal (RFP) responses, from an evaluation perspective there are ways respondents can make it easier for the evaluation panel to assess what it is being proposed and ultimately have greater success on getting through to the next round. These considerations are from my experiences with Software package selection and with Delivery partner selection, but should be applicable to many other selections.<br />
<br />
<h4>
1. First impressions count.</h4>
Even before the RFI/RFP response is opened, an evaluator can be swayed by the presentation of the response and the level of engagement getting there.<br />
Key considerations:<br />
<ul>
<li>Ask questions during the response period to validate any areas lacking clarity, but don’t go overboard. </li>
<li>Make sure you meet the response times. </li>
<li>Use good quality paper and colour (if required to present a paper copy). </li>
<li>Binding can make a document look classier. </li>
<li>If the response requests that all questions and communication go through a particular person or channel, then abide by this. </li>
</ul>
<br /><ul>
</ul>
<h4>
2. Make it easy for an evaluator to find information they are looking for.</h4>
When performing an evaluation I will assess the RFI/RFP response against an evaluation template where I score the responses from each vendor. In order to ensure that I am being fair in terms of the evaluation, I assess each line item of the template across all RFI/RFP responses at the same time, as opposed to scoring each vendor separately and then moving on to the next.<br />
Key considerations:<br />
<ul>
<li>If there is a RFI/RFP response template provided, use it. </li>
<li>Have a table of contents on Page 2 (or thereabouts) of the document, and ensure there are page numbers throughout. </li>
<li>Have your logo on the front page of your response. This makes it easier when the reviewer is looking through documents from multiple vendors. </li>
<li>Be very clear about what is and isn’t included in any pricing. Even if you have the information in a scope section, it is worth highlighting the key inclusions, exclusions and assumptions in the pricing section too so that if an evaluator is looking at each solution in parallel you are not seen to be overly expensive or hiding something. </li>
<li>Don’t have information split across multiple documents, unless explicitly requested to. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<h4>
3. Consider what an evaluator is likely to be assessing the solution against.</h4>
Whilst there are a number of questions asked in an RFI/RFP, there may be other things that an evaluator is wanting to see demonstrated in the response. If the response is silent about something, then the evaluator may rate this lower than it should be.<br />
Key considerations:<br />
<ul>
<li>Show an understanding of the requirements. </li>
<li>Explain how the proposed solution meets the requirements. Diagrams are good. </li>
<li>Show an understanding of the business / industry sector. </li>
<li>Use case studies that are in the same region / country where possible. </li>
<li>Cover the methodology that is proposed to deliver the solution (if appropriate). This should however not read as if it is a shopping list of methodologies straight from a text book. </li>
<li>Explain your level of flexibility to adapt the methodology and/or solution to better fit the organisation. </li>
<li>Demonstrate thought leadership and best practice guidance. This may be by providing alternative solutions or explaining standards or processes that will be adopted. </li>
<li>Explain different pricing model options you are open to; Fixed, Time and Materials, Monthly, Pay per use, ... </li>
<li>With a software package selection, explain what is possible with configuration, what will entail customisation / development, and if so how this will impact any upgrades. </li>
<li>Explain additional opportunities your solution provides. </li>
<li>Cover whatever else you think is of interest to the evaluation panel. </li>
</ul><div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-10992450955868603962011-11-24T22:09:00.001+13:002011-11-24T22:27:46.812+13:00Book Review: Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316178314/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0316178314" target="_blank" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMns9ZcISXfeFp9YdFXn9q9g0qDD5cr8hZab0GfQEVZWdzgldQ3-hj96WEO8D5DIsfWeSMnpJCjMLQGcTr2LisdgSkyeSDIBIHRxh7FQjFn2GYBqsSYoXYRGckL0UVws8Y_4aEvsio9zW0/s200/hats.jpg" width="130" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316178314/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpgianoutsb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0316178314" target="_blank">Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono</a> is a very easy read and provides a good simple approach for exploring ideas and problems through thinking from different perspectives in a structured manner. There are six hats, each of which have different characteristics:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">White Hat: facts, figures, information</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Red Hat: emotions and feelings, hunch and intuition</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Black Hat: devil's advocate, negative judgement</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Yellow Hat: optimism, positivity</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Green Hat: creativity</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Blue Hat: controlling of the hats and thinking, orchestration</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"> </span></li>
</ul>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">The idea of the hat is that a person will put on or be asked to put on a hat and to express a view from that perspective. This gets people thinking in different ways and since it is play-acting people are more willing to express views from under the security of the hat that otherwise may be left unsaid.</span><br />
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228677688034683489.post-77564630074919486182011-08-23T23:09:00.001+12:002011-08-23T23:10:57.561+12:00Exporting from OpenOffice Base database to SQL<p>I was wanting to export the contents and design of an OpenOffice.org Base database to SQL with the intent of migrating to MySQL. I struggled to find out how to do this, but finally found out how.</p> <p>To generate an SQL file that contains both the contents and the data of the database I used the following command from the “Tools –> SQL…” menu:</p> <p><strong>SCRIPT 'C:\temp\file.sql'</strong></p> <p>When I tried to write it to the <strong>C:\</strong> root directory I got a security error, but using another directory worked fine.</p> <p>Thanks to <a href="http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=32333">http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=32333</a> for pointing me in the right direction.</p> <p>Incidentally, on my way to the final solution I also came across the following command to generate a CSV file of a table’s contents:</p> <p><strong>SELECT * INTO TEXT "output_csv_file_name" FROM "table_name"</strong></p> <p>The version of OpenOffice I was using was OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 – OOO330m20 (Build:9567) and I running this on a Windows 7 machine.</p> <div class="blogger-post-footer"><hr /><font size="1"><a href="https://blog.gianoutsos.com" target="_blank">Simon G’s Blog</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/gianouts" target="_blank">Follow Simon on Twitter @gianouts</a> </font></div>Simon Gianoutsoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14106033771379259921noreply@blogger.com3