Georgia Innovation

I moved!

2009-11-07T05:04:00.000-08:00

I recently moved my blog over to michaelwparks.com. Hope to see you there :)

Finding time to adopt tech innovation is Catch 22 for many people

2009-07-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

I'm having a problem. I keep running into people who just don't have time to adopt new technology innovations like social media. I recall years past when I was selling the idea of preventative maintenance systems to plant maintenance managers. Often they would listen to my pitch then say something like, "Well that all sounds good except I'm just too busy putting out fires every day to find time for implementing a PM system." I can't count how often I've heard those words. To their way of thinking it was simply a catch 22 situation where there's no time to prevent future fires while today's fires are burning. But then sometimes I would come across a plant maintenance manager who whole heartily adopted a PM strategy and system. Faced with the same daily fires they somehow found the time and energy to adopt the new technology and often came out looking like heroes as a result. I have often asked these "hero" maintenance managers how they found the time to adopt and implement PM and the answer I heard most often was "I didn't have the time NOT to adopt a PM program." How can this completely opposite viewpoint be explained? And it's not that the managers who couldn't imagine having time to adopt new ways of working and managing were lazy. Most were very hard working and put in far more than 40 hours each week just trying to keep their heads above water. I can understand why the idea of piling something else onto their plate seemed insane from that perspective. But then how to explain the maintenance managers who had the opposite view, successfully adopted the new PM system and revolutionized how their organization operated?

Today I run into managers who when faced with the idea of adopting social media will say, "I'm just too busy to pile even more work on top of what I'm already doing." And they really are busy emailing, sending out revisions of attachments via email, going to meetings, and returning phone calls to even think about piling on even more responsibility with Twitter or Facebook or a blog. The problem I think is they can't imagine how social media will reduce and in some cases eliminate their old style of communication and collaboration. In their mind the new technologies will simply pile more work on top of their current load. It's funny how the same patterns of behavior and thinking just keep cycling round and round no matter the endeavor.

Some Companies Can't Innovate

2009-06-17T05:29:00.001-07:00

I was just reading about a conference put on by a middle-school in the Bronx called Dot-To-Dot. The main conference topic was exploring freedom but what really caught my attention was the technology platform they used to organize and host all aspects of the conference. Since 2007 this public middle school, IS 339, has been using Google Apps to engage students in new and innovative ways like student run businesses and student projects. Even grading and progress is managed collaboratively with students using Google forms and spreadsheets. What strikes me is how does a public middle school adopt and innovate with a technology like Google Apps when so many companies and government organizations (run by adults) are seemingly unable to do the same? I'm wondering what are the major factors in corporations and governments that stand in the way of adopting a strategy around technology innovations like Google Apps. I've seen it over and over throughout my career...with minicomputers, personal computers, LANs, 4th Gen Languages, Web Sites, Intranets, content management systems, etc. These technologies have all been right there staring every company in the face..but most companies just can't seem to see the new technology until years later after the technology has been adopted by others and has become "old hat." Why does this happen? If I had to pick one barrier to adoption of new technology for innovation I would have to choose middle management. There always seems to be one or more middle managers, who know little to nothing about how technology is used and where it is going, but for some reason finds it necessary to stand squarely in the way of anything that he/she deems TOO new. I think the reason small startup companies are so innovative is because they aren't big enough to have put any middle managers into place. Once they do the innovation slows down or even stops. If anybody else has a better idea I would sure like to hear it.

Cloud Sherpas

2009-06-05T08:17:00.001-07:00

I just read about a startup company made-up of former Georgia Tech students called Cloud Sherpas. Their business is to assist companies in migrating to and maintaining Google Enterprise Apps. They also do Google App Engine development. This is a great service (and a great name) since most small companies don't realize the value and reduced cost they could achieve by adopting Google Enterprise Applications for email, shared documents, collaboration websites (for employees, customers, and partners), groups, and chat (voice and text) just to name a few of the services available from Google at little or no cost to the business. I'm not sure why a small to mid-size business today would want to do anything else especially given the tight economic times we are in now. And I have to add that whoever thought up the name Cloud Sherpas is a genius.

Bing is a hit

2009-06-02T15:16:00.000-07:00

I've been trying out Microsoft's new quietly announced search engine, Bing, since it's release yesterday. As an avid Google user I have to say I'm impressed. I'm getting very good search results that seem to return super fast. I'm really starting to like the maps feature especially. Oh and check out the extras drop down menu in the right hand side of the tool bar especially the webmaster and developer centers...really nice features. So far I'm very impressed with Bing (But It's Not Google). I love the competition this will create which can only be a good thing for the search industry. Way to go Microsoft!

Six Predictions for 2009

2009-01-18T07:03:00.000-08:00

(1) Tight budgets in the ressession will accelerate the adoption of Cloud computing

Cloud computing, which is arguably the biggest paradigm shift in IT since the PC, came crashing onto the radar screen of the business world in 2008. Led by market leader Amazon Web Services several large technology companies started offering cloud computing services in 2008...Google App Engine in the middle of the year and Microsoft Azure services coming online towards the end of year. Intuit's Quickbase has been around for several years and in 2008 began gaining real traction in Fortune 500 departments tired of waiting in the IT backlog line. Many small companies offering cloud services rose to prominence including Zoho, DabbleDB, Mozy, Salesforce/Force, Ning, Wetpaint, and Rightscale just to name a few. In 2008 Cloud computing user groups started popping up in major cities around the world. In 2009 the state of our economy will further drive the need to cut IT costs of maintenance which is often over 80% of the entire IT budget and focus more dollars on applying technology to adding innovation and improving cash flow. Businesses are going to find that adopting the cloud computing model will not only reduce maintenance but also speed up delivery of solutions. Small companies that have run their business primarily using a combination of Quickbooks and Excel spreadsheets will began to discover cloud applications in 2009 and adopt them at a rapid pace due to their ease of use and lack of requirements for IT support.

(2) Twitter usage will explode to 50 million accounts

Twitter is going main stream in 2009. Twitter is just too cool, useful, powerful, and common sense. Everybody using Twitter knows this. Twitter went from near zero to 5 million in 2008. In 2009 it will easily go to 50 million. Companies will hire people to monitor twitter for tweets on their brand and make appropriate responses. The number of 3rd party apps for Twitter exploded in 2008 and will continue doing so in 2009.

(3) The reduced value of email will finally become apparent to corporate leadership

As new social networking tools for communication and collaboration like Twitter, Facebook, Google Sites, Blogger, Wordpad, and Google Talk are brought through the back door of enterprises by employees who use these tools at home the need for email and even more importantly the time for traditional email will continue to decline. In my own experience most of my emails now are spam and ham anyway while my best most relevant communications more often occur inside social networking environments. I predict that in 2009 management at many enterprises will finally "get it" and maybe some will even form a strategy for "official" adoption of all the great new tools that are available above and beyond email.

(4) Trust will be the new "control"

If you make the decision to make the leap to cloud computing then you are giving up "control" for "trust." You are making a decision to trust the vendor of cloud computing services to safeguard your data, not to sell your data to a 3rd party, and to assist you if there is a problem. If you want control, then you need to setup your application 100% behind your own firewall on your own server and managed with your own staff. You will pay for the server hardware, staff salaries, and training for staff so they know how to maintain the technologies. And you will count on your staff to know more than the best organized hackers in the world to secure your network. I think more people will choose "trust" over "control" in 2009. It's a trend that the under 25 crowd has already adopted completely.

(5) "Do it" yourself IT

In the past IT solutions required installing applications on servers or mainframes that were controled by the IT department. Units within a corporation requested projects which had to be approved in the budget and then put onto the IT group's project backlog list where they remained sometimes for months if not years. Nowadays cloud computing enables solutions to be created that run outside of the control and even beyond the eyesight of traditional IT. And since many cloud apps are free they can even be created and maintained outside the traditional budgeting process as well. Suddenly without warning you have a business unit using a system making them more efficient and effective where IT and the management approval chain had nothing to do with approval or development. This is one of the most disruptive shifts I have seen in my 25 years working as an IT professional in large organizations. Many IT groups simply don't get what's happening (many are in denial) as they grow ever more marginalized as the systems they are responsible for maintaining grow less important to the business.

(6) Virtual Worlds will continue to expand and proliferate

Virtual worlds are here to stay and will continue to grow in 2009. Second Life for example grew by 61% in 2008. As virtual worlds continue expanding from the 3 Cs (communication, collaboration and commerce) to more advanced rapid prototyping, simulation, education, and data visualization they will continue to attract increasing numbers of education and training professionals, medical professionals, scientists, and engineers.

Turning IT into a service organization

2009-01-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

IT departments have historically seen themselves as the guardians of the computer network and the protectors of the company’s data and technology assets. In relation to users, IT has often believed that the primary mission is to protect them and the network from themselves. This approach has been called “playing god on the network” or "culture of no" philosophy and while it may have served a purpose in the past, nowadays more forward thinking IT organizations have began to realize that they need to fundamentally change their approach. The best IT leaders are turning their departments into service organizations that are focused on using technology as a business enabler, super-serving and partnering with end users, and educating users about new technology as it emerges onto the business landscape.

New Bizspark program offers free Microsoft software to startups

2008-11-17T14:38:00.000-08:00

If you are a new (less than three years old) startup or entrepreneur developing a software product there is a new program available from Microsoft you should know about. The program, called Bizspark, is designed to accelerate the success of early stage Startups by providing fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools and productions licenses of server products, with no upfront costs and minimal requirements.

If you join the Bizspark program you will be provided with a MSDN Premiere license which gives you access to all of Microsoft development products including Visual Studio 2008 Team edition and production licenses for Windows Server 2003/2008, SQL Server 2005, Sharepoint Portal Server, and Biztalk server.

In order to be accepted into the Bizspark program you must be sponsored by a Microsoft Network Partner. Last week I applied and was approved on behalf of my department at Georgia Tech to be a network partner for companies located in Georgia. So if you are interested in participating in Bizspark send me an email or leave a comment (make sure you provide an email so I can contact you).

Google Docs Rock

2008-10-07T05:49:00.000-07:00

I've always been something of a power user of Microsoft Office ever since the release of version 1.0 back in 1993. But more and more nowadays I find myself creating google docs instead. I find the convenience and simple design along with the ease of sharing a document with anybody either in private or public mode just too compelling to resist. The biggest complaint I hear about google docs (especially from Microsoft folks) is they lack the rich feature sets and sophistication of Office documents, which is very true. My take on that argument is that like most people I rarely use the more sophisticated features found in Excel or Word or Powerpoint. In fact studies have shown the majority of people use Excel to create lists of "things" which they can then sort and/or add up. And I don't know about you but I'm completely turned off whenever I see a powerpoint presentation designed to overwhelm with attempts to impress by overdosing on all the advanced features. I read somewhere that "Simple is the new sophisticated" and google docs certainly fit this description. But the real power of google docs lies in the ability to easily share them with others. You can invite others to work on a document with you...even have multiple people updating the same document simultaneously (each persons updates appear in a different color). Documents can be shared privately so login is required to view...or publicly with a URL that opens the document for anybody without a requirement to log in.

The biggest advantage of docs for me is being able to access them from any computer. I'm so tired of being tied to one particular computer just because Outlook is installed on it or having to physically move office documents from one computer to another via email or flash drive whenever I know I'm going to need them someplace else. This is probably the main reason I'm loving google docs so much now.

So basically with docs you can create spreadsheets, documents, presentations, and forms that are used to collect data into spreadsheets. You can also organize docs into folders.

A major concern of some is being able to access docs while offline. For me this isn't an issue as I am never off line unless my internet connection is down...which has become so rare for me I can't even recall the last time it happened. But some people might want to access a presentation at a meeting without a connection or maybe update a document while on a plane.

Google answered this issue with Gears, a technology that installs onto your local computer and allows access to docs while you are disconnected from the Internet.

One more major feature I want to mention before I close is that docs can read and save as MS office documents. You can upload a Word document for example and it converts to a google document. You can also save a google document as a Word document or as a pdf.

Did I mention that Google docs are completely free? And you get several gig of free storage in which to store them?

Check out docs for yourself at http://docs.google.com

Emerging Tech Hype Cycle for 2008

2008-08-26T07:23:00.001-07:00

I was just reading about 2008 emerging technology hype cycle published by Gartner. According to Gartner new technologies progress through five distinct stages (1) Technology trigger, (2) peak of inflated expectations, (3) trough of disillusionment, (4) slope of enlightenment, and (5) plateau of productivity. And each technology moves through these stages at it's own pace. Some on a 2-5 year cycle for example while others are on a much longer cycle of 5-10 years. I just located the 2006 curve here and I'm searching for as many as I can find. Since I began my career in technology back in 1980 I've been well aware of this curve. But this is the first time I've seen it published and documented. I can't think of a single new technology over the past 28 years that hasn't gone through these stages...except for the ones that flopped or became obsolete before reaching stage 5. In my early years I would be so disapointed whenever an exciting new technology like artifical intelliegnce for example would enter stage (3) trough of disillusionment. But after a while I realized this stage is inevidable after so much hype is piled on by industry media and consultants who are trying to capitalize on the initial excitement in order to rake in the big bucks while business leaders struggle to understand and are afraid of being left behind. As these same business leaders begin to realize the technology can't possibly deliver the sky high results that were promised...they start a backlash against the technology that always appears very negative. Articles appear with quotes from prominent corporate leaders telling war stories of how the technology failed to deliver. Over time the story fades and all of the get rich quick consultants and vendors move on to the next new over hyped technology. Meanwhile the people who are left are the ones who believed in the technology all along recognizing it's potential and understanding it's limitations. They began to advance it's capabilities and utilize it to solve problems and thus begin the long slow climb back up out of the trough to real value on the plateau of productivity where most decent technologies eventually end up.

Amazon Web Services keeps on growing with Elastic Block Storage

2008-08-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

Amazon just released a major enhancement to their EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) platform with the addition of Elastic Block Storage which provides a persistent storage volume (think virtual hard drives) for use with Amazon EC2 instances. Previously one big downside to using AWS/EC2 for application hosting was lack of permanent dynamic storage capable of hosting a mysq l database for example. So if your app needed a backend database you had to host that database someplace else (outside the Amazon cloud). And because they’re virtual you can clone them, snapshot them and benefit from automatic replication.

Eric Hammond has already written an article giving step-by-step on how to setup a mysql database on EBS.

New web 2.0 site helps match Inventors with Retailers

2008-08-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

"Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success." ...Thomas Edison

Edison Nation is a new website designed to match inventors with major retailers. Based on the PBS television series Everyday Edisons the new site packed with web 2.0 features is geared to helping inventors take a product from idea to store shelves.

Companies like Home Depot and Bed Bath & Beyond have signed up to evaluate submissions

If a retailer selects an idea, the inventor will receive $2500 up front and annual payments based on success of commercialization.

This is particularly relevant to inventors who are located in Georgia, which according to a recent study by researchers at Georgia Tech, the state currently has no organization or entity that focuses on the needs of independent inventors. Based on the top needs of Georgia inventors as identified in the study, Edison Nation is a much needed resource for Georgia's community of inventors.

Edison Nation is free to join but the paid membership of $9.95 a month provides extra benefits including being able to search the database for ideas that have already been submitted. It also costs $25 to submit each idea.

New Google Search Analysis Service

2008-08-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

Google just released a new service called Google Insights for Search. Similar to its popular Google Trends this new service is geared towards advertisers. It's a tool to track a particular search term's popularity across the Web and geographic regions of the world. Using this service you can track how much a term has been googled over time, show where it's most popular on a map, and even see the top "related" and "rising" searches for the term are. And you can filter results by geographic region or time frame. If you are into meme tracking or analysis then Insights for Search is the perfect tool for you to use.

.NET University comes to Atlanta

2008-07-16T23:00:00.000-07:00

Today I had the opportunity to attend .NET University at the Microsoft offices in Alpharetta. .NET U is a free one day class on new and emerging Microsoft technologies like Biztalk, .NET 3.0, and Sharepoint. The class I attended today was on ASP.NET. I continue to be amazed at the quality of training available free of charge from Microsoft. The two instructors for today's class were both top of their field who you will see presenting in events that cost hundreds of dollars. Microsoft also provided a nice lunch free of charge. The concept of .NET University is to provide all the course materials, handouts, labs, and powerpoint and to encourage it's reuse by anybody willing to take th e time to present. So it's a great resource for internal training or user groups. I look forward to future offerings of .NET U in Atlanta.

Google Health

2008-05-20T17:58:00.000-07:00

I was surprised today when Google released Google Health. Didn't see that one coming at all and still reeling over the implications. My first reaction is concern about a single large corporation being the repository of our private medical records and that Google found a loophole in HIPPA which doesn't apply in their case. On the other hand with the trend today of putting personal information onto social networking sites and national health info systems like the one in Brazil (written in Java and covering every single citizen including indigents with a health id card) maybe Google being the keeper of our health info makes perfect sense.

Here's how Google describes the system...

"Google Health allows you to store and manage all of your health information in one central place. And it's completely free. All you need to get started is a Google username and password.

With Google Health, you manage your health information — not your health insurance plan or your employer. You can access your information anywhere, at any time."

I signed up immediately of course but found that my doctor isn't a participant...yet.

Google plans to take over the world...I just wish I owned stock :)

Backnoise at Atlanta Startupriot

2008-05-20T05:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was bummed cause I was unable (unqualified actually :) to attend Atlanta Startupriot. But someone on my twitter stream mentioned something called backnoise.com/startupriot which turned out to be a great little tool for listening in on the backchannel of the event. One person on backnoise.com/startupriot was streaming a live video and so I went from bummed out to happy camper while sitting at my desk watching and listening to the startupriot presentations one by one. Backnoise.com is pretty cool. All you have to do to start a new conversation is visit the site and click on the logo or you can simply browse to http://backnoise.com/name_of_your_conversation.

What's this blog about?

2008-05-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

Working for Georgia Tech's Enterprise Innovation Institute I enjoy plenty of opportunities to learn about technology innovations that can positively impact business top and bottom lines and improve the lives of consumers. Nowadays I am most excited about the new cloud computing models like Google Apps, Intuit's Quickbase, and Amazon Web Services; the promise of virtual worlds from companies like Second Life and Kaneva; some of the new social networking sites like Twitter, Skribit, and del.icio.us; and putting them all together in mashups. These technologies tend to have very low to zero entry costs with potentially huge positive impacts on the success factors of businesses and individuals. I'm also excited about some of the fast rising web 2.0 programming languages like Python and Ruby. So this blog is all about telling you everything I know on these innovation enablers as I learn them myself. Hope you enjoy the ride.