Living and Working in a Virtual World

Steve Jarvis as Morning Keynote for SST

2012-01-25T13:44:00.000-08:00

Steve Jarvis, Vice President of Product Operations for Expedia U.S. will be the morning keynote at this years South Sound Technology Conference, held March 9th in William Philip Hall on the University of Washington Campus. The morning segment and following panel which includes members of the local technology community and industry will focus on the explosion of mobile application development over the last year.

As the VP of Product Operations, Steve is responsible for the health and growth of all lines of business. Jarvis carries P&L responsibility for the air, car, hotel, package, cruise, insurance, and destination services businesses of Expedia’s US operation.

Prior to joining the Expedia leadership team, Jarvis was Vice President of Marketing for Concur’s Small & Midsize Business segment providing strategic leadership for brand, differentiation, advertising, and market development functions.

Prior to joining Concur in 2010, Jarvis was Alaska Airlines’ Vice President of Marketing, Sales and Customer Experience. In this role he was responsible for design of the airline’s customer experience, setting priorities for differentiation in a lower cost industry environment. He also led customer research, brand and advertising, sales functions, marketing programs, customer care, and in-flight product.

Prior to joining the Alaska executive team, Jarvis served as Vice President of E-Commerce and Acquisitions for Destinations.com, a Seattle-based online travel portal. Jarvis has held technology related positions at Autodesk, Intermind, and AT&T Wireless. He started his career at Boeing as a design engineer after graduating from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering and master’s degree in business administration.

This is just another great addition to a lineup of speakers and panelists which include experts in cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, data integrity and networking both socially and technically. With an lunch keynote by White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt it is sure to be a well attended and interesting event.

Howard Schmidt to Keynote at SST 2012

2011-11-23T10:02:00.000-08:00

Big news for the SST Conference 2012, one of the keynoters for the event will be Howard A. Schmidt, the U.S. Cybersecurity Czar (official title Special Assistant to the President and the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator) for the United States.

Howard is the former Chief Security Officer for Microsoft and Vice President of Security at Ebay.

The South Sound Technology Conference is scheduled for March 9th in William Philip Hall with breakouts in different rooms.

The steering committee has met a few times and a program is being developed. Though not firm, we are looking at a more fully realized track in mobile applications this year. Last year we had a popular panel, but wondered if there was enough going on in mobile development in the South Sound to be impactful. That question has been answered over the last year with a boom in development and solutions. Therefore were bringing back a panel at a minimum and likely expanding to a second breakout session.

On May 18th, 19th and 20th we will be holding a South Sound Entrepreneurs Weekend. This is an offshoot from last years conference as well. In order to prepare for it, we will be asking several companies and organizations from the area to describe for us what type of tech company in the area would help their business grow and what solutions would they provide. Basically, we want to drop some business ideas into the hopper for a little fermentation before we break them out at the entrepreneurs weekend. (It must be close to a holiday for that metaphor to exist).

As the program solidifies more information will be forthcoming. As always, your ideas are welcome. Remember to save the date: March 9th.

Virtual Scavenger Hunting Once More

2011-10-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

It is that time of year when the students of Living and Working are sent virtually scavenget hunting. It is a reasonably large class this year, so ten teams are competing for grades and prizes. Since I first started sending folks off on the hunt several years ago, the ability to find items has become far easier. The first hunt listed ten items that they were to find or create on the web. The list is up to three pages and nineteen items, some with several parts necessary to be complete.

Though I once had the teams send URL addresses or screen shots when they were found, the hunt has gotten large enought that it is far easier to have them gather up the items in two batches, and send them off bundled together.

Also, the seach items have gotten a bit harder. My favorite now is to find out the married name of my oldest sister. It is also a scary one. Keeping in mind that many people have their security questions for log in's as family member names (consider the often used "mothers maiden name"), you would expect that this is an impossible task without knowing me personally. Not so. Even though I have not posted this information anywhere, it is possible to discern the answer through a combination of publicly accessible sites.

Whether I am asking for directions to a home that costs below market value and fits a particular set of characteristics, or local news that is over twenty years old, it is designed to cover a multitued of search techniques, sites, search engines and indexing.

Kickstart your Arts Endeavor

2011-10-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of the web site Kickstarter. It is one of a new set of fundraising platforms that use the idea of crowdsourhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcing or in this case "crowdfunding" as a model to generate money for your art project. They aren't all art projects, but most are. One project that I have backed is the book and film, "The Cicada Princess" from which a picture appears above.

You have to apply to Kickstarter and are vetted by the folks who run it as to whether your project is likely to succeed, or meets their guidelines. Because this is a subjective process, you will find a LOT of detractors on the Web. Google "Kickstarter Scam" and see what I mean.

However, my experience as a "backer" on several projects has so far been a very positive one. I probably won't be backing more in the future until some of my current backed projects come to fruition. However, as an exercise in shadowing how projects get done (and face obstacles unforeseen) it is extremely valuable. For someone who is interested in getting a behind the curtain glimpse at the ups and downs of getting an artistic endeavor out the door, it is cheap. You are able to follow along with your project and if the timeline gets pushed for completion, there are generally plenty of other backers pushing for news. That may not be comfortable for the person creating the art, but they sign up for it when they use the site.
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The project owners are required to fix a deadline and a target minimum of funds to raise. If they aren't able to reach that target amount by the deadline, no funds are collected. The money that is pledged by donors is collected using Amazon Payments.

So are, of the projects I have backed, all have hit their targets. Some at multiple times their minimum level. With the exception of the Stageright Productions folks and their unique performance of the "Pirates of Penzance", all have seen their projects pushed out. Some by a little, due to shipping timelines from China or from production errors. Others because they chose to take more time to finish. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
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Because I know some of the parties involved, I am not worried about the delivery. With others, it is obvious that they have a lot of friends and family backers, which makes the need to deliver all the more important.

I am looking forward to two family Christmas presents from my backed projects: The board game "The Road to Canterbury" and the Wohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnderland card game "Borogove".

If you are looking to fund an arts project, or even a product like "B-Squares", take a look at the site. Make no mistake, you will still need to do the heavy lifting as far as contacts are concerned, but the mechanism they provide, even at a 5% fee, may be a good value to you.

A Platform Discussion

2011-10-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

Over the last few days in class we have been discussing the idea of what a platform is. From the very basic definition of platform to the impact of companies or organizations that are successful in pulling off a platform play.

On Wikipedia, under platform, they list over twenty kinds, from a diving platform to a political parties platform. The one that has the greatest relevance to the Internet and the World Wide Web is provided this definition.

Platform technology is a term for technology that enables the creation of products and processes that support present or future development. It establishes the long-term capabilities of research & development institutes.

Whether a computer operating system provides a platform for applications, or TCP/IP stacks provide a platform for Internet technologies to develop, the impact and power behind a platform is tremendous.

Just ask Google engineer Steve Yegge, who in a post that was meant to be between peers ended up going public. He deleted it afterwards, but it was too late. Elvis had left the building.

PC Magazine has an article on the topic here and it is worth the read.

Here is just a taste of what he wrote in his post as reported by PC Magazine:

"Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right," he wrote. Yegge criticized the company's hiring procedures, operations, charity giving, accommodations, compensation, and what he perceived to be lack of perks. Founder Jeff Bezos, he said, was "an infamous micro-manager" on the level of Steve Jobs, who made "ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies." (Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.)

"But there's one thing they do really, really well that pretty much makes up for ALL of their political, philosophical and technical screw-ups," Yegge wrote. About a decade ago, Bezos realized that "that Amazon needs to be a platform."

"A product is useless without a platform, or more precisely and accurately, a platform-less product will always be replaced by an equivalent platform-ized product," Yegge wrote.

Where it hurts is that Yegge points the finger at Google+ as doing it all wrong, claiming that "is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership."

The question is, is this a Jerry McGuire moment for Steve Yegge, where he is applauded internally but ultimately jettisoned? Or will the public/private posting error (if it really was in error) be forgiven in favor or harnessing the passion that he shows in his post toward creating a successful platform out of Google+

Steve Jobs and History

2011-10-10T09:21:00.000-07:00

After Steve Jobs passing from pancreatic cancer, there has been a huge number of articles and remembrances about the man and his impact on technology. There will be many books written in the future as well.

I just wanted to add a few of my own thoughts while they are fresh to me now. I talk about Steve Jobs in my classes. How could you teach about entrepreneurship and technology and not. Or the evolution of the Internet and the Web as well. The latter may not be the first topic that comes to mind, but his impact has been felt there beyond the personal computers and digital players that have come from the company.

I was able to meet Steve Jobs in person once in my life. He was at the University of Washington Seattle and visited the tech fair. I don't even remember the year, though because he has just launched the NeXT Computer and gave a presentation at Meany Theater I believe it was around 1989-90. I was working at Microsoft at the Time.

He has had an interesting life, and his relationship with Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple is in itself a character study. You can read "West of Eden, The End of Innocence at Apple Computer" for some background on the relationship of Steve to the company. You can even watch some of the recent biopics that have come out like "The Pirates of Silicon Valley from 2005". And that film came out before Steve brought Apple back to be the giant it once more is. Steve Jobs life may become its own course of study.

However there are two things that I like to point out when talking about his life. He has helmed two different billion dollar companies. Apple and Pixar. His company he founded after being ousted from Apple, NeXT Computers, made it easier for Pixar to create Toy Story and Finding Nemo. It was on a NeXT Computer that Tim Berners-Lee set up the very first World Wide Web server.

A Full Ride, Living Stipend and a Job in Information Assurance

2011-09-30T16:25:00.000-07:00

How does a full ride scholarship, a living stipend (because the funding organization wants you to work on research and studies) and employment once you’ve earned your degree sound? That’s what the Information Assurance Scholarship for Service program does, and is doing for two graduate students currently at the Institute of Technology. And there is more to come in the next three years.

To create a powerful incentive for students to enter the Information Assurance field, the Department of Defense is offering the program described above. As they put it:

Nearly every day, the United States faces growing threats and attacks against our critical government systems. DoD’s mission is to address the Nation’s urgent security challenges and to proactively seek solutions to protect and defend our information and information systems. One of the key security challenges DoD faces daily is assuring that the Department's information, information systems, and information infrastructure are protected and available in order to support the Department's transformation to a secure net–centric environment.

To continue to provide the growing number of trained personnel needed, DoD is working with universities across the country, known as, often referred to as CAEs, to develop and expand IA–related curricula and to offer programs of study for future IA professionals.

Universities must qualify in order to provide the scholarships and earn a National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance designation. Then that university has to pass muster during an NSF (National Science Foundation) site visit to be vetted to provide that opportunity. If you would like to apply for the scholarship, you must attend a qualifying institution.

As it happens the University of Washington has qualified as one of the universities to offer it. Last June, led by Dr Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, the Director of Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity at the UW, the site visit by the NSF was conducted and included visits to the Institute of Technology at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

The visit was such a success that they asked that Barbara increase the budget in her proposal.

Three months later Barbara sent out the announcement:

The NSF has officially awarded us $2.1M to fully fund 18 graduate-level scholars over the next 4 years to fully immerse in information assurance (IA) studies! Further, we received an additional $ ½ M on top!! This truly launches us on the national scene as a significant IA presence in the Northwest and in the field at large!
There are only 30+ schools in the US who have had similar awards, our sister iSchool—Syracuse University—being one of them, along with CMU, Johns Hopkins and Purdue. There are only 200+ such scholars in the US at any one time—we’ll have 4 this year—we are in elite company!!

Once again I am reminded of the strengths we have in the South Puget Sound to help generate success in research and technology in the area of Information Assurance and Cybersecurity. With our partners in academia to the North, and in particular UW Seattle’s Information School, we can be part of future solutions to the challenges described on the CISC (Center of Information Assurance and Cybersecurity) site:

The challenges of information assurance are not going to be solved easily, quickly, or independently. Solutions will require new research, new capabilities, new products and services, a spectrum of broadly and specially educated professionals, a much more aware public, and much innovation and broad collaboration. Washington is a convergence of international commerce, military defense, and network-based software development. As such, it is both vulnerable to disruption, and is the home of a spectrum of professional talent and organizations that can be well served by the presence of a national center of excellence.

If you are interested in applying for the program, consider applying to the graduate program at the Institute of Technology at the UW Tacoma or the Information School at the UW Seattle.

A Tech Events Calendar for the South Sound

2011-09-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, at the 2011 South Sound Technology Conference, a small group of people met in one of the breakout rooms in order to talk about the technology event calendar for the next year. That year being more of a Summer to Summer span as opposed to calendar, but I am already digressing.

My intent was to try and publish a straw man calendar so that a more firmly established annual list of meetings could be drafted, vetted and adopted. Also, edited, enhanced and engaged. Not to mention perused, published and... ok, never mind.

So poster boards were put up and people wrote down events, organizations and ongoing meetings. However, the end result was not really easy to digest and articulate into a calendar. I will give you the raw results first. If it is too much for you just skip down:
__________________________________________

POSTER BOARD ONE:

EDB Annual Meeting
A Funding Seminar
ISSA Training – 1st Tuesday of every month in the Tacoma Room
Pacific NW Cybersecurity Challenge
PNW Cybersecurity Symposium
City Club – a technical based presentation (social networks, online privacy, cybersecurity)
Technology Career Fair (put on by Workforce?)
Group meetings – Tacoma Tech Consortium
- South Sound WTIA
- Tacoma Angel Network

POSTER BOARD TWO:

Ruby on Rails coding meetup
Startup Weekend
Suite 133 –
William M Factory Incubator
Tacoma Angel Network

POSTER BOARD THREE:

Gaming – Intel
Kinects – Microsoft
Have an out of town big tech event meet up. Whether going to a Washington Technology Industry Event like the Industry Achievement Awards or the Technology Alliances Annual Luncheon, coordinate a group to attend the event together.
Hold a digital government summit in Tacoma
Washington URISA

POSTER BOARD FOUR:

Shift Awards – Honoring Innovation
Meet ups – unstructured
Look at the www.washingtontechnology.org online calendar
Harmon: Science Café
Dorkbot
South Sound Technology Conference 2012

POSTER BOARD FIVE:

Startup Weekend
Barcamp X 4
Alliance of Angels pitch session in Tacoma
Social Media Outlets
Tacoma Library meetings (books?)
FIRST Robotics – Intel Dupont SOTA Winners
End of the quarter colloquium at the Institute of Technology at the UWT
PLU

____________________________________________

You see. Plenty of stuff there, but where to start?

It seems to me, there are several organizations listed. Whether they put on events or might put on events that focus on the technology sector, they are part of what aggregating a calendar might look like. Now I don't know if dorkbot is an organization or an ongoing event, but they have not done anything around town for several years. I just know I enjoyed going to the meetings that they had. To the point, each of these organizations holds multiple meetings and events, and could contribute to a calendar.

The Tacoma Angel Network
Institute of Technology
Economic Development Board
Dorkbot
City Club
Grey Hat Group
Tacoma Tech Consortium
Tacoma Workforce
William M Factory
Suite 133
Washington Technology Industry Association
Technology Alliance
Washington URISA
Alliance of Angels
Tacoma Library
PLU
Not to mention, but I will, Microsoft and Intel.

Several ongoing events were listed as well. These are usually bigger events and have some history to them. These alone would be almost one big tech event per month.

The Pacific Northwest Cybersecurity Collegiate Challenge
FIRST Robotics Competition
PNW Security Symposium
The South Sound Entrepreneurs Weekend (A StartUp Weekend like event)
The South Sound Technology Conference
The Economic Development Boards Annual Meeting (listed, though not tech focused)
The SHIFT Awards (put on by SiteCrafting)
A Technology Career Fair

Not finally, but about as much as I want to cover right now, are events or meetings that take place several times a year. For example, the end of the quarter colloquium at the Institute of Technology happens four times a year. Each event, though student presentation based, brings about 70 people together during the course of the day. It should probably be more.

End of the quarter colloquium at the Institute of Technology
Barcamps (suggested we have one quarterly. The last was great.)
City Club meetings (on occasion tech subject matter)
Science Cafe at the Harmon (is this still going on?)
ISSA Training (Tuesday of every month)

That's about it for now. Please feel free to comment on edits, additions or subtractions.

Do the Puyallup (Again)

2011-09-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

For the last few years I have posted the lyrics to the Puyallup Fair's most well known theme song here on the blog. Yes, it is time once more to review the lyrics to the "Do The Puyallup" song of yesteryear.. I will be going to the Puyallup Fair with the family and riding rides (and getting ill), watching shows, checking out the booths for Sham-Wow or a Magic Bullet demonstrations, eating ears of corn and scones and generally having a good time.

Last year my second oldest wanted to go on the giant slingshot for her birthday. Who knows what this year will bring.

So

"Do the Puyallup"
musics and lyrics by Saxon Rawlings, (slogan by Denny Hinton)

Oh you can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup.

All the people and the animals down at the fair,
They do the Puyallup like they didn’t have a care
And it looks like so much fun to do
I think I’m gonna learn how to do it too.

I saw a duck and a chicken down by the farm,
A kickn' up the hay and a raisn' such a storm,
That I asked the farmer what they were up to
and he said "Puyallup, That's what they do."

You can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup.

Asked the farmer if he’d show me how to do it
And he said "why son their ain’t nothin to it.
Just move to the music and jump in the air
Like everyone else who comes to the fair"

You can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup

You can do it in the rain or the sun or the fog
It comes real easy like rolling off a log
Get a partner from Tacoma or Seattle or Fife
Even let you do it with your husband or wife.

It’s a natural thing there isn’t any doubt
Folks do it while they’re sittin’ or walkin’ about
While over on the midway on the merry go round
Kids are doin it in circles going up and down.

Now it don’t matter if it’s rain or shine
When you do the Puyallup you have a good time
So guys grab get gals and gals grab a fellow
If you’re worried ’bout the rain just bring an umbrella.

You can do it with a mouth full of cotton candy
Caramel apples, salt water taffy
Hot dogs, hamburgers, man oh man
Hot buttered scones with strawberry jam

I do the Puyallup cause it feels real neat
Put a smile on my face and a tickle in my feet
Ain’t no way not to do it right
You can do it all day and into the night

you can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup

Do the Puyallup

Do the Puyallup

Summer Colloquium at the Institute of Technology

2011-08-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

It is the end of the quarter and time for another set of presentations from students on research, readings and internships. Taking place in two rooms in the Cherry Parkes building the discussions, discoveries and lessons learned start at 9:00am and go until around 2:00pm.

Here is the order of presentations:

Institute of Technology Student Colloquium
Summer Quarter 2011

Speaker Session One (CP 105):
09:00am Digital Forensics and Law Enforcement
Josh Phelps (Andrew Fry)

My internship with the Lakewood Police Department’s digital forensics services has a work flow and style is very dynamic and project oriented. I work with Detective Darin Sales and the Forensics services manager Brian Johnson. After the background check process I met with them to discuss a number of problems they have encountered from an IT perspective as well as possible projects to undertake as a solution to those problems. I communicate primarily through e-mail and of course in person. Currently I am working on two projects.

The first project is refining the departments “Computer Case Worksheet", a document that is the first step in the documentation process after a computer is seized and is being analyzed. Here, I am utilizing my system analysis and design experience as well as what I know and what I’m learning about digital forensics practices for law enforcement purposes.

The second project I’m working on is coming up with a sound, viable solution to an issue faced when prosecutors receive the report generated by our forensics software.

09:30am Web Development Internship with Weyerhaeuser
Travis Corbett (Andrew Fry)

Many large companies today utilize Microsoft products and technologies for the majority of their business needs. Weyerhaeuser is one of those companies. In my internship with Weyerhaeuser’s Web Content & Collaboration Services department I had the opportunity to work with some of these products and technologies, and in most instances, for the very first time. We in the Information Technology & Systems degree program have often been told of the importance of conceptual learning versus specializing in particular technologies. So while the trend in academia, it would seem, is biased against Microsoft products, I found myself in a situation where I had to use the conceptual knowledge that I have gained in college in order to adapt and become proficient in new technologies that I have had little to no experience with. In my presentation I will be discussing this experience.

09:50am Agile Development Methodologies
Sushma Konda (Dr. Larry Wear)

Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development based on requirements and a collaboration of team work. There are many such methodolgies implemented by various sectors of companies around the world. In this presentation, I'll be discussing the most popular methodolgies implemented by large companies and thereby gained profits. Scrum and distributed scrum and extreme programming are the topics on which I have been working with my advisor Dr.Larry Wear this quarter. I'll be discussing each methodologies behavior, its pros and cons.

10:10am Creation of Pedagogically Useful Algorithm Animations

Suma Gopalakrishna (Dr. Donald Chinn)
With a brief introduction to what Pedagogically Useful Algorithm Animation means, this presentation will go over the 2 algorithm animations that I created over the summer, under the guidance of Dr.Chinn. The presentation will cover details of the aspects we considered in design of the animations, the tools we used and the algorithms we animated. It will also include display of the said animations.

10:30am Avue Technology Internship: Java Development for a Web Based Application
Jeff Bleckert (Andrew Fry)

A discussion of the searching and interview process for a developer internship, as well as the experience of working as a fulltime Java developer intern, focusing the challenges of finding and beginning a new position as an intern and working with a web based, sql driven system using the Java language and libraries.

11:00am Weyerhaeuser Internship and Access Control Directed Reading
Shakil Sahim (Andrew Fry and Dr. Yan Bai)
Internship

I’ll have the presentation on my Weyerhaeuser internship split to 3 main topics. First will be Asset management. I’ll go over the routine process of handling a ticket that’s requesting change of ownership of an asset. I will include screen shots of the tools we use. Then go over some of the stuff on the side such as major updates, transitioning to new system (requirement gathering, testing, etc) and daily reports.
Next ill go over Identity management tasks that I was taught and did for a short period of time. This included practicing how to create new accounts, enabling, disabling, and terminating accounts, managing duplicate accounts, and granting/stripping roles, running scripts against Active Directory to pull data requested and the attempt to modify a Delete/Disable script that is outdated so it’s more accurate and runs efficiently.
Finally, I’ll go over some of the new tasks that I will be taking up starting in a few weeks. I’m currently reading up on ASP.NET, C#, Visual Basic and etc. My manager has also encouraged me to research on CRM systems because of its high demand. I’ll finish things off with some final thoughts.

Directed Reading

I’ll start the presentation off talking about the definition of Access Control and go into the main topics that the chapter covered. I will pick a particular topic from the chapter that has various sub topics to cover in greater detail. I’m not a 100% sure at the moment but it will most likely be the many forms of authentication such as passwords, key cards, retina scan, finger print, voice and etc.

I will wrap up the presentation with what I took away from the reading and a summary.

11:30am Internship at Regence – Agile Project, Directed Reading Computer Forensics and Mobile Devices
Brandon Son (Andrew Fry and Dr. Yan Bai)

The Proof of Concept consists of a 12 week agile project regarding Regence's PIM (Provider Information Management) system. The current system was written in VB6 10 years ago. This new project involves a PoC of Microsoft Dynamic CRM. The team involves lead developer (Garfield Lindo), three interns (Brandon Son, Jason Green, Shawn Smith), and a consulting firm: Collibrium Partners (from Atlanta, GA). Taking to account that it is a 12 week project and the system is large in scope, our sprints are focused on the main functionality of the important parts of the system.

Regence Sponsor: Garfield Lindo

12:00pm Internship at Institute of Technology – Critical Services Virtualization
Vera Brennan (Stephen Rondeau)

Turning the information technology to 180-degree view happens enough often in the industry. However breaking the connections
between hardware and applications layers has numerous advantages and disadvantages, and so brings hardware, software and networking conflicts between existing physical servers and new virtual servers. Especially if we consider the potential upgrading conflicts during the transformation of existing physical servers running Windows Server 2003 into virtual servers running Windows Server 2008 R2.

During the summer 2011 internship I was asked to learn in depth Linux and Windows administration commands, practice in setting and testing, virtualization environments, install Windows Server 2008 and 2008R2 in virtual machine, create and configure Windows domain, migrate existing INSTTECH users to INSTTEST, familiarize with Windows clustering for files,create cluster and migrate existing files to new cluster,create license management and much more. In my presentation I will present troubleshooting workaround that I gathered during the internship and a general overview of switching from physical servers to virtual.

12:30pm Micro Server Architecture Evolution and Associated New Architectural and Debug Challenges
Johnson Daniel (Dr. Jie Sheng)

In the recent years, the adaptation of micro servers is gaining momentum in the server market segment due to the compelling advantage of power efficiency, size, and total cost of ownership over traditional servers. Micro server is defined as any server with a large number of nodes, usually with a single socket or multiple low-power processors and shared infrastructure. The independent study will explore the three aspects of micro servers current state of implementations, architectural challenges, and debug challenges.

01:00pm Functional Test Automation in Web Applications
Sergiy Kulyk (Dr. Josh Tenenberg)

As technology moves toward web applications, developing functional test suites for such applications becomes of higher and higher importance. Small and large companies face the problem of maintaining the quality of their web products, while at the same time regularly updating and renovating them. I would like to share my experience as an SDET in a large online retail company. In my presentation I will introduce the problem at hand, why it is important, challenges that need to be solved, and how those challenges are approached by the QA team I have a privilege to work with.

01:30pm Temperature Control With a Thermistor and an Arduino Aakanksha Gaur (Dr. George Mobus)

It is a project to control (increase or decrease) the temperature of water using an Arduino board and a thermistor as main components. I will be giving a power point presentation along with the project demonstration.

Speaker Session Two (CP 108):

09:00am Internship at Isilon
Gavin Greene (Dr. Daniel Zimmerman)

The goal of my internship was to design and implement a web application that incorporates a variety of existing technologies in a modular way . The program is a web-based administrative panel that uses SQL alchemy to preform operations on a MySQL database containing areas that the company provides support at, and the level of support. The application takes user inputted addresses and uses Google's geocoding API to retrieve longitude and latitude information, verify that the user inputted a valid address, and normalizes data ('United States' as opposed to 'USA' or 'usa') . the front end of the application is written in JavaScript using Ext-JS 4 and the backed is written in python using pylons. This project involved learning about each of the languages, frameworks, API's and protocols (such as:SQL, Google maps api, Ajax, JSON), as well as the way each of the components interacted with one another. The project provided an excellent sampling of many different technologies and gave me an good example of how applications are designed, developed, tested, and implemented in the real world.

Isilon Systems, a division of EMC, is the global leader in scale-out storage. Our nearly 2000 customers attest to that. Our mission is to remove the barriers that exist between businesses and their data. And our goal is to help customers get to the information they need, manipulate it and act on it.

09:30am Hacking and Countermeasures
Douglas Kroll (Dr. Yan Bai)
In this project I am using new techniques for hacking and then showing how to defend against the different attacks I had researched.

1. Describe the different types of hacking techniques

2. Show the attacks on my secure network.

3. Show how I defended against the attacks

10:00am Internship With T-Mobile
Brent Sargent (Dr. Yan Bai)

T-Mobile is the #4 mobile carrier in the US. After forming through a series of mergers and acquisitions, T-Mobile itself is being acquired. My internship has been working in the product development group where new hardware / software is tested before release. In my presentation I will focus on what it's like to work for a seemingly large organization, what it's like in the product development team, and how the impending acquisition has affected the work environment and product development.

10:30am Sales Manager Form on Android Platform
Billie Jo Wood (Dr. Ankur Teredesai)

I did a project at CodeSmart Inc in Lacey, WA which Chad Stoker the president as the superviser and project lead.

The project: Establish an android application that will be used by for Sales Managers of Natural Molecular Testing Corporation utilizing Java in the IDE eclipse. The application is an order form for a client that includes the patients private data.

11:00am Text Mining Biological Research Papers to Index Drug-Drug Interactions
Aaron Munger (Dr. Ankur Teredesai)

In many scientific domains, there is a vast amount of useful information that is sparsely distributed across volumes of research papers. In order to make this information useful as a whole, text mining algorithms can be used to parse out and index the requested information using Information Exctraction (IE). I am proposing a project that will demonstrate the use of IE on the specific case of finding drug-drug interactions within Biology texts. A variety of techniques will be implemented, including the formerly developed PRISE, that searched for protein-protein interactions, as well as submissions from other contestants in a current IE contest to find drug-drug interactions.

12:30pm Internship at Boeing - Local Area Networks - Northwest Region Design & Engineering
Roger Klink (Andrew Fry)

I will go over the experiences I have had over my Summer internship with the Boeing Company. In particular I will highlight four areas of interest which include:

1. Company Overview

2. Organization

3. LAN Technologies

4. Summer Internship Activities

01:00pm Internship With the School District
Gary Armstrong (Andrew Fry)

To be provided

01:30pm Internship System Three a Real Life Website – Reading Computer Forensics

Tyler Withrow (Dr. Yan Bai)
The main objective for the internship was web development, code debugging, and research. The website is actually a collection of three different applications that work together to create the web site and its features. The main framework is ASP.NET and then there is a cart program and a PHP locator application that works together with the framework. I researched the code that I have never worked with, ASP and the cart, then developed and debugged the code I knew, PHP and basic web code. After changes were made, they were approved by the internship sponsor and owners of the company.

Internship Sponsor: Brett Cowman VP
System Three Resins

Directed Reading with Bradon Son: The main objective was to continue our study on computer forensic applications and methodologies using the book “Guide to Computer Forensics and Investigations” by Nelson, Phillips, and Steuart. Our focus was on current computer forensic tools (ch.7) and forensic methodologies & tools for mobile devices (ch.13). Using a complementary lab book, we tested the tools and methodologies.

Math, Science and Leadership at the Institute of Technology

2011-08-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

On the week of Monday, July 25^th 2011, the Institute of Technology held its Math, Science and Leadership program on the University of Washington Tacoma campus.

We welcomed nearly 50 students from 7^th through 12^th grade for a week of robotics, environmental science and architecture. Highlights included field trips to visit the Center for Urban Waters on the Thea Foss Waterway and visits to the History and Art Museums that stretch along Pacific Avenue in Tacoma.

Each summer, the program provides a different experiential learning process which focuses on leadership skills and preparation for excellence and success in mathematics, science, technology, engineering, and leadership. The students formed cohort groups averaging 16 students on each team and followed through the week focused on three different themes. The themes this year included Environmental Science, Robotics and Architecture, with morning themes of Leadership, Computer Science and Math.

It was in 2003 that the Institute of Technology implemented the Math Science Leadership (MSL) program. MSL targets populations that are underrepresented in these respective fields, by focusing on three specific disempowered groups: minorities (which can take on varying connotations), low-income students (determined based on whether or not they qualify for free or reduced lunch) and first-generation college-bound students. The program seeks to enrich the lives of youth in three areas:

· High level of secondary academic achievement in high-potential youth, specifically in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

· Leadership and social skill development for students as they transition from middle school to high school, and high school to college.

· Encourage students to develop the necessary skill-sets to become successful in pursuing postsecondary degrees in these respective fields.

The event could not have succeeded without a wonderful team of instructors, parents, volunteers and generous sponsors. In particular a big thanks to Intel Corporation who have been long time supporters of the program.

Logistically, programmatically and thematically everything went well. We some advance planning and work over the academic year we hope to continue the program next Summer and the Summers to follow.

Local Projects Completed at End of the Quarter

2011-06-01T16:39:00.000-07:00

I teach Managing Technical Teams this quarter, and it is one of my favorite courses to teach. Probably the most compelling reason for me is the guiding project of the classroom experience. After almost immediately forming in the first week of the quarter, four to six person teams need to choose a project that they will be working on over the next eight to nine weeks. The requirement of the project is that it must provide a "contribution to the community utilizing technology".

This means that outreach is done through from the Institute of Technology students to organizations and non-profits throughout the Puget Sound area.

The teams finished launching their projects via class presentations on Tuesday. Six total teams giving one hour presentations each.

Just some of the projects included:

Database design and development for the Breast Cancer Research Center.
Development work on training web forms for the Law Enforcement Support Agency.
Automated installation and set up programming for the Domestic Abuse Women's Network.
Online training programs for Goodwill of Silverdale.
Web development work for some very small local companies without the resources to do so otherwise.

I wish this class were taught twice a year, Fall and Spring, just to see the contributions continue to make their impact.

Additional student work in directed reading, research and internship will be on display this Friday starting at 9:30am in the Cherry Parkes building as part of the end of the quarter colloquium.

Cong. Adam Smith to Open SST Conference

2011-03-09T11:59:00.000-08:00

Congressman Adam Smith will open the 2011 South Sound Technology Conference as the morning keynote speaker, and Egils Milbergs, executive director of the Washington Economic Development Commission, will provide the lunch keynote address.

The annual South Sound Technology Conference, which is hosted by the Institute of Technology at the University of Washington Tacoma and slated for Friday, March 11, is the technology showcase for Tacoma and the South Puget Sound. Since 2000 it has brought together leaders from industry, education and government from around the state to discuss and demonstrate technological innovations and their ongoing applications.

This year the conference will highlight the Institute of Technology's 10th year of service and education. Launched in 2001 through a combination of state and non-state investment, Gov. Gary Locke proposed the institute, which was championed by industry and approved by the Legislature, to address the growing demand for educated professionals for Washington's high-tech economy.

Congressman Smith is a strong supporter of innovated technology advancement and education, especially as it relates to investments in alternative fuel sources and biofuel technology.

On his website, Smith notes, "Locally, the South Puget Sound region has attracted many new high-wage, high-tech jobs. . To this end, I've joined and initiated conferences in our area that bring together leaders in technology, education and community development to share ideas and craft strategies for educating our workforce, attracting new businesses and making the South Sound a center of technology."

Egils Milbergs, a noted thought leader in competitiveness policy, champions the vital importance of U.S. technological, manufacturing and innovation leadership to long-term prosperity. He is advancing the concept and practice of regional innovation ecosystems in Washington.

Panel and keynote presentations - including networking opportunities - provide a venue to discuss, explore, understand and deploy technology as a solution, an opportunity and an advantage. Sessions planned for the South Sound Technology Conference include discussions on mobile application development, energy and sustainability, information technology as a driver of infrastructure in the South Sound and an open breakout forum designed to create a common calendar for technology related events and activities for the year ahead.

Panelists and speakers for the all-day conference include:

Matthew Tolentino, researcher, Intel Corp.
Beth Whitzel, lead developer at LESA (Law Enforcement Support Agency)
Brian Forth, CEO, Sitecrafting
Kevin Freitas, mobile applications developer, Sitecrafting
Angela Gow, senior webmaster, Multicare
Mark Brown, CEO, IdentityMine
Egils Milbergs, executive director, Washington Economic Development Commission
Andy Wappler, vice president for corporate affairs, Puget Sound Energy
Graham Evans, senior vice president, EQ2
Erik Hanberg, executive director of City Club of Tacoma; and chair, Tacoma Reads
Darrel Bowman, CEO, mynetworkcompany
Gary Bracket, Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber
Rick Shanaman, CEO, Optic Fusion
Jon Owen, director of information technology, DaVita
Linda Gerull, director of information technology, Pierce County
Andrew Fry, UWT, Institute of Technology
Orlando Baiocchi, director, Institute of Technology, UW Tacoma
Bruce Kendall, CEO, Economic Development Board of Tacoma-Pierce County

Throughout the day, graduate and undergraduate students from the Institute of Technology will showcase their work through poster sessions and demonstrations in the Gallery area.

The conference concludes at 2:15 p.m., followed by a mixer with conference participants and Institute of Technology alumni and faculty.

reposted from http://www.tacoma.uw.edu/news/congressman-smith-open-tech-conference

Egils Milbergs - Building the World’s Largest Science and Innovation Ecosystem

2011-03-01T15:22:00.000-08:00

SST Conference Update:

Keynote lunch speaker bio for March 11th Conference:

Egils Milbergs is the executive director of the Economic Development Commission of Washington State. (www.wedc.wa.gov ).

The Commission is charged with developing a long term economic development strategy and making the state the most innovative region in the world. He was appointed by Governor Chris Gregoire on January 23, 2008 after a nation-wide search. He is a noted thought leader in competitiveness policy and champions the vital importance of US technological, manufacturing and innovation leadership to long-term prosperity.

In Washington State he is advancing the concept and practice of regional innovation ecosystems. He held previous positions as president and founder of the Center for Accelerating Innovation, president of the National Council for Advanced Manufacturing, president of the Institute for Illinois, Deputy Assistant Secretary for productivity, technology and innovation for the U.S. Commerce Department, and executive director the President’s Commission on Industrial Competitiveness.

Here is an abstract describing his presentation:

Egils Milbergs, after 25 years in Washington DC, accepted a new challenge in the “other Washington” to prepare the state’s long range economic development plan. Washington State is home to many innovative companies such as Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, Starbucks, Costco and Real Networks. But what is next? The Pacific Northwest region is a case study on creating the world’s largest science and innovation ecosystem. This presentation will highlight the work of an 18 member public–private commission focused on transforming the economy to be more creative, open and collaborative.

Find out about the dynamics of government, business, academia and philanthropy in bringing about this change. A new public-private model for driving Washington’s economic future and the requirements for economic recovery and job creation will be discussed. These topics will be integrated into the foundation for the next update of the State’s long term economic development strategy and action recommendations to be presented to the Governor, legislature, congressional delegation and public later this spring.

After his presentation, Bruce Kendall, CEO of the Economic Development Board of Tacoma-Pierce County, will conduct a fireside chat with the speaker to cover more specific South Sound objectives.

Looking for a Technology Date? Me too

2011-02-28T16:00:00.000-08:00

Calling all technology companies and organizations:

Wouldn't it be great if we had a collective calendar of technology events in the South Puget Sound? We have had Barcamps, Startup Weekends, Dorkbot events (awhile ago), International eCrime Conferences, the PNW Security Symposium, Tacoma Angel Network events, end of quarter colloquiums, Tech Meetups, the SHIFT awards and more.

Not to mention the South Sound Technology Conference on March 11th.

I would like to see if we could gather up all these great meeting times and events and put them in one place? I am not sure how that would work but I would like to give it some effort to try and figure out a way.

In the afternoon breakout session of the SST Conference, time has been set aside to start collecting times, days and information on upcoming technology related events and organizational meetings.

Do some advance scouting for your company, use this as an opportunity to promote your group, bring ideas for how we might share this information and share it.

Let's see if we can bring the WTIA or The TA down for a meeting or an event.

The meeting room will be next to William Philip Hall and the effort will take place after a lunchtime keynote focusing on innovation and economic development.

Gary Bracket from the Tacoma Chamber and I will help to coordinate the conversation and the collection of information.

Erik Hanberg Joins Energy Panel SST

2011-02-25T14:13:00.000-08:00

Erik Hanberg is Executive Director of City Club of Tacoma, a Web Developer with Mary Holste Design, an author (The Saints Go Dying, Little Book of Gold) and occasional guest speaker in my class. But why is he on the Energy Panel at the South Sound Technology Conference?

Because last year Erik Hanberg was picked by Mayor Marilyn Strickland to chair Tacoma Reads Together, a community reading initiative. Additionally, last Tuesday the 22nd at the City Council meeting it was announced that “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope” would be this years selection.

Now we are all supposed to read and discuss this book together. I am going to.

As reported in the Tacoma News Tribune,

The 2009 book was written by William Kamkwamba and journalist Bryan Meale. In it, Kamkwamba tells how he went to his village library and checked out a book on energy that included pictures of windmills. Using scrap parts, he built a crude windmill to power several appliances in his family’s home in Malawi. He later created a solar-powered water pump to provide the first drinking water in his village.

Why did Mayor Strickland pick Erik?

“I selected Hanberg because he is a voracious reader, a champion of social media, and very active in the civic, arts and business arenas,” said Strickland. “As our city moves forward, I want to ensure that new voices are brought to the table to serve on boards, commissions and in other positions of leadership.”

Why is Erik on the panel? Given the panels energy focus and the conferences South Sound focus, this gives us a representative voice in the conversation.

KOMO has more on the Tacoma Reads Together initiative.

See you there on March 11th in the William Philip Hall on the UWT campus.

Register Here:

Registration It is only 15 dollars and it comes with lunch. Such a deal.

An Energy Teaser for the SST Conference

2011-02-09T11:06:00.000-08:00

As more elements of the March 11th South Sound Technology Conference fall in to place I thought I might mention the morning energy breakout session presentation by Dr. George Mobus.

His current working title is:

The Critical Energy Challenges: Time and Scale

Dr George Mobus will be presenting on how effective alternative renewable energy sources may be as opposed to fossil fuels. He will discuss peak oil and peak net energy with attention to the potential decline rates from these sources. The biggest challenge according to professor Mobus is the time frame for replacing our current level of net energy with renewable/alternative sources, and the various conservation approaches to reduce the scale problem.

His passion for the topic is obvious, as is his straight forward approach. As he has said of his presentation, “ this represents an honest assessment of the challenges ahead as a prod to why we need massive investment in those technologies that stand a chance of meeting the challenges.”

To get a feel for his ideas and passion about energy and systems science, check out his blog "Question Everything".

Following his presentation will be a panel discussion from industry and energy experts, including Graham Evans, former Executive Director at Washington Clean Technology Alliance and current Senior Vice President with EQ².

Also on the panel will be Andy Wappler,vice president, Corporate Affairs for Washington-based Puget Sound Energy, utility subsidiary of Puget Energy.

As head of Corporate Affairs, Wappler is responsible for the company’s ongoing efforts to enhance relationships with communities, government agencies and major customers, as well as the company’s communications. He also is the chairman and president of the Puget Sound Energy Foundation.

According to their website, "Puget Sound Energy is the Pacific Northwest’s largest utility producer of renewable energy and, among investor-owned utilities, is America’s second-largest generator of wind power."

I have a third panel guest on tap, though they may be given a breakout segment of their own depending on how their presentation comes together.

So join us on March 11th for the day. Registration is only 15 dollars and it comes with lunch. Such a deal.

Mobile Applications and the South Sound

2011-01-26T16:53:00.000-08:00

I had a gentleman come to see me today who talked about the mobile applications he has been developing for the Android. He was doing so because he wanted to sharpen his technical skill set as well as work with technology that was growing in use. He then asked me if there was any mobile application development going on in the South Puget Sound.

The answer is yes. In fact, this years South Sound Technology Conference on March 11th is going to focus on mobile application development as one of its breakout sessions on the technical track (the second track is the business track).

Brian Forth, President of SiteCrafting, a web design and application development company located in Tacoma will be presenting on the topic. He will be discussing not only how mobile applications are creating opportunities and providing unique solutions to his companies customers, but also how the technology is changing the industry landscape.

Following his talk panelists which will include Keven Freitas, a mobile apps developer as well as two companies from the area that have deployed their mobile app solutions. Many of us know Kevin as well from his contribution of FeedTacoma to the Tacoma online community.

Brian came by the Entrepreneurship in Technology class this week to talk about his experience building the company and branching out to include Seattle and Spokane offices. The presentation engaged the students who weren't shy in the least when asking questions about building a company and leveraging technology in business. During the presentation he talked about ChambersEdge just one of the mobile solutions his company has delivered.

A mobile application that provides business and contact info about all your chamber members. It can be accessed by chamber members and visitors alike.

Just a quick search on the topic "mobile application development Tacoma" pulls up several companies in the area who are doing development or offer the service, such as IdentityMine and BigStep Consulting.

It should be a great presentation and a rewarding conversation. Be sure to register.

Ring Round the Moon

2011-01-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was opening night for the three act play Ring Round the Moon at the Lakewood Playhouse. After several weeks of rehearsal for me and even more for many of the cast members we had a live and lively audience last night, which brings another level of energy to all the performances.

The actors who I am performing with are all wonderful and talented. They had their lines, blocking, dancing and characterizations off book and well formed with days to spare before we opened. That gave us the opportunity to run the show through several times over in advance, which is great, but leaves you wanting somewhat. It is when the audience is introduced that the world the director, designers, stage management and costumers have created through the show comes alive completely.

The show is in three acts and with intermission runs for three hours, which can tire you out. But with the audience there, obviously engaged until the final bow, it provides plenty of energy for the task.

One of the great surprises for me from last night was one particular scene that plays out an important dramatic moment that requires several shifts of mood from the actors and is also reasonably lengthy. It is also full of very funny moments, which you can forget about after hearing it many times over, as it becomes exacted by the players. Well it soared yesterday and the laughter from the audience actually gave it greater impact.

This is the first non-musical I have done in YEARS and it has been a blast. Also new to me is doing a show in the round. A very immersive experience to say the least. I have done shows with two of the other actors but for the majority this will be my first experience. It has been a wonderful one at that.

For information you can go to http://www.lakewoodplayhouse.org/.

Here is how the director David Domkoski describes his sense of the show:

What excites me about Ring Round The Moon is Christopher Fry's extraordinary language, the vividness of the images he creates and his delightful word play. Towards the end of the play one characters describes another as 'scrupulous and considerate, but not considerabl...e,' or as another character describes himself, 'I am acting providence tonight. I deflect the influence of the stars. The stars, twinkling up there with9ut an inkling of what's going to happen tonight." Very Oscar Wilde-ish. The play was once described as being a 'soufflé with razor blades”.It's not all fun and games as it might first appear. Beneath the laughter, Fry explores some serious social issues. The play is a cross between Cinderella and Pygmalion. Cinderella in this case is a poor but highly principled dancer hired by a cynical and manipulative young aristocrat to break up his less worldly and love smitten brother's engagement.

The Suburban Times has a nice write up of the show and gives due to the actors and their roles.

Clint Nelson of Startup Weekend to Keynote

2011-01-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

As we get closer to Friday March 11th and the 11th Annual South Sound Technology Conference I will post more on the the great speakers and panels that we have for the event.

Right now I am excited to announce that Clint Nelson of Startup Weekend is going to be our lunch time keynoter. Startup Weekend is a Seattle non-profit that runs weekend-long brainstorming sessions for entrepreneurs around the world. If you are unfamiliar with Startup Weekend, here is information about them from their site:

What is Startup Weekend?

What We Do:

54-hour events where developers, coders, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and create startups!

Startup Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiments where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable. Most events have about 75 attendees, half of which have technical backgrounds and the other half have business backgrounds.

Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, individuals and teams are encouraged to bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday teams code, design, research, develop, create business plans while constantly streamlining their startup vision. Come Sunday evening—which always comes around way too soon—teams come together to watch each other’s demos, listen to judges’ feedback, and even win awesome prizes.
Startup Weekends are specifically designed for entrepreneurs looking for feedback on an idea, are interested in finding a co-founder, would like to learn a new skill, or would like to test the entrepreneurial waters by joining a team. Startup Weekends are risk-free environments where everyone is expected to roll up their sleeves and dive into the exhilarating world of startups.

It is my hope that this will be the launch toward a full out Startup Weekend in Tacoma/Pierce County to be held later in the year.

Clint is a director of Startup Weekend. For more information about Clint, other than his bio from Twitter (I'm an enabler, I run @StartupWeekend, I love harnessing the power of disruptive thinking, new ideas, traveling, flying, snowboarding, and the outdoors!) or from his bio from the DC Startup Weekend, (One awesome dude) I can tell you he is a very busy guy who has been traveling all over the world and we are lucky to have him speaking. He will be coming back from the EU the day before the conference.

Register here for the conference:

Been A Busy Year Moving into the Next

2010-12-29T12:12:00.000-08:00

Balancing the number of things one can accomplish in a given time is getting more difficult for me. I don't think that committing to three different shows in three different theaters one after the other did anything to free me up, that is a certainty. However, I am thoroughly enjoying the rehearsals and look forward to the performances.

I was taken aback by a ABC radio news reporter this morning, who was commenting on the changes that came in 2010. She said that "out of nowhere" Twitter and Youtube became legitimate news reporting systems. I might agree that this year it became mainstream, but those to systems, and Twitter in particular, were impacting journalism dramatically in 2009 as well. Just look back at Journalism 2.0 by Mark Briggs and you will know what I mean.

Some things that did come to completion this year will be more notable next year as well. The South Sound Technology Conference was postponed until March, a database for managing contact information for South Sound Tech companies was completed and I dug in a little deeper into the area of personal digital libraries.

I imagine that will be a focal point in 2011, along with a few more shows.

Fall 2010 End of Quarter Colloquium

2010-12-10T10:09:00.000-08:00

For the sake of sharing some of the topics presented at the end of each quarter, here are some of the items being shared at the Fall 2010 colloquium.

Institute of Technology Student Colloquium

Fall Quarter 2010

Speaker Session One (CP 105):

09:30am - 10:30am

Anomaly Detection in Power Plant Data Streams

John Patanian (Chair Dr. Ankur Teredesai, Dr. Orlando Baiocchi, Drs. Raj Subbu, Weizhong Yan, Feng Xue)

Anomaly detection answers the question, "Is my complex system

behaving normally?". Anomalies may correspond to damage in industrial equipment. In this scenario, if damage can be detected early then remedial action can be taken before a catastrophic event occurs. We are developing, comparing, and applying several anomaly detection algorithms to detect multiple types of power plant faults. Ensemble methods will be used to develop anomaly detectors with improved robustness and accuracy. We will then compare the performance of our algorithms against anomaly detection using standard statistical process control. The ensemble fault detectors will be incorporated into demonstration system that is built upon a complex event data processing software framework, will consume simulation power plant data and ag equipment faults.

(via skype)

Keyword Bidding in Sponsored Search Using an Estimation of Distribution Algorithm

Aparna Sundara Rajan (Dr. Matthew Alden, Dr. Ankur Teredesai, Dr. Daniel Zimmerman)

Keyword based sponsored search is an important mode of advertisement through the Internet today. It provides an important source of revenue for search engines that allocate advertising space for advertisers. This advertising space is allocated to different advertisers through auction mechanisms since there are very few positions available for the huge number of advertisers wanting to publish their advertisements. For each probable keyword that could be searched by web search users, a keyword auction is conducted in which interested advertisers bid an amount that they are willing to pay each time their ad is clicked. The order in which the advertisements are displayed on the ad space is determined by the ranking of these bids. Deciding how much to bid is a real challenge for an advertiser; if the bid is too low with respect to the bids of other advertisers, the ad might not get displayed in a favorable position; a bid that is too high on the other hand might not be profitable either, since the attracted number of conversions might not be enough to compensate for the high cost per click.

In this project we develop an intelligent bidding strategy using an Estimation of Distribution Algorithm. We assume that the advertisers have a fixed set of keywords for which they are interested to bid for higher positions among the sponsored links. We validate our bidding strategy using instances of Trading Agent Competition Ad Auctions (TAC/AA) \footnote{aa.tradingagents.org} game, where we implement our strategy as competing bidding agents. Winning agents from each tournament of games are used to evolve bidding strategies over several iterations. We expect that through this evolution we will be able to create better bidding strategies in terms of profits made over TAC/AA game instances.

Streambased Keyword Monitoring

Mythreyee Sunil (Dr. Ankur Teredesai)

10:30am – 11:00am

Augmentation of Re-ranking Approaches and their Evaluation in real time web

Garima Tiwari, Hannah Adele Craswell, Arda Shayandeh (Dr. Ankur Teredesai, Dr.Jenny Sheng)

I worked with Arta and Garma to design and implement a Facebook application for the Augmentation of Re-ranking Approaches for Twitter Search project. The application allows users to select a category/topic and then rank 5 tweets in that area by most informative. With user submitted data we then are able to compare it to the project's auto-ranking algorithms in order to support the validity of the way the algorithms rank tweets. My contribution to this project focused on the design of the application and coding it to work with the Facebook API.

11:00am – 11:45

OSPI Internship

Hannah Adele Craswell (Dr. Ankur Teredesai)

I have been working on my internship through the Education department here at UWT. My project was to work on a team to build a web system for the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). OSPI has funded many state needs projects over the past decade, though they have no clear idea of what these funds are being used for. This web system has two parts to it. The first part is a way for OSPI to know what the projects are using the funds for. The system also tracks the performance of each project to ensure funds are being used to their full potential. The second part of this web system is an information portal. This part informs the general public (parents, educators… etc) of what projects the state is funding, what trainings they offer, and how to contact the projects for more information or to request a training.

Liberty Mutual – Safeco Information Technology Internship

Derek Atwood (Dr. Ankur Teredesai, Scott Wright)

My main project over the summer was to look at a major process and map the entire process to determine bottlenecks and improve the process. I mapped it by creating an interactive web page that detailed each step of the process.

Desktop Application Support Analyst Intern

Ron Van Co (Andrew Fry)

My Internship was for the City of Seattle as a Desktop Application Support Analyst. The problems we’re faced with at the City were the deployment of 350’s PC to vary site location and remote locations of City of Seattle. We faced varies different challenges such as proper software configurations, understanding the network infrastructure, and knowledge of basic shell scripting. These types of challenges were necessary in order to do our work properly. As a company we want to provide the best customer service to our customers and tend to any problems that arise after deployment. Our goal was to get users to quickly adapt to new changes after they received their PC. We provide on-call support for the vary site locations and remote locations after the next business day of deployment to make sure users can properly do their work. A lot of customers of the City don’t know the technical components of the computer and when talking to them we need to understand their point of view when they can’t understand the complication of a computer. I learned about when I worked for the City of Seattle and goal of IT. The goal as IT was to provide support for all users across the city about their computer and anything technical that they can’t understand. We provide on-call support all day at the City and when users need help with their PC we help. Some the solutions we use to help users are by phone, or in person. We try to do things over phone if necessary but if not we make a trip out to the user’s PC to fix the issues. Having a new PC is new to everyone and we try to make it easy for the user to manage. Overall, the internship was a great opportunity for me to learn the politics of a work environment and how to work alongside a team of interns and come out successful. I was rewarded an extension of my internship up to a year and I continue to work there until this day.

11:45am – 2:00pm (Andrew Fry)

Internship with StreamAudio

Tim Larson

This internship study was based on the examination of the internals and fundamentals of the online audio streaming and hosting company StreamAudio. The focus of this presentation will consist of the basics of audio streaming and hosting, as well as an exploration of the difficulties of interning for a current employer. Specific topics will include the technologies and software behind hosting and streaming audio, network and hardware infrastructure, systems monitoring, market research, advertising, and client support. As well a brief background about the company and their service provider will be discussed to serve as a fundamental foundation.

Internship At Global Scholars

Gurpreet Singh

The goal is to get experience and use the knowledge of internship towards my major as an Information Technology Systems. For my goal to success I started looking for internship, with the help of Professor Andrew Fry who is our Internship faculty sponsor. Professor Fry gave me lot of ideas how to approach towards your internship. I tried and I got the result pretty soon, when I got called for the interview with Global Scholars. A company that strong’s the education community with online tutoring and developing lots of software for teachers and students to their learning or teaching environment.

From Global Scholars I got a computer, my own desk and company email address for communication. I was excited; my first project is to display the output of xml files by using Microsoft Visual studio C#. I had to come with my own idea how to do it and I do had lot of problems while doing it but whenever I got stuck I have developer people to help me out. And I finished the job felt great. After that he asked me to do a web form and put it on IS server. Now I am working on it currently. My working experience was so far developing program and test it and make it work, which is not my prime aspect. But making a website also comes under developing but putting it on web server is the IT part. I love working at Global Scholars and I am slowly finding my way towards the goal.

Internship with Wizards of the Coast

Brent Douglas

I did my internship at Wizards of the Coast at their Renton corporate headquarters. Wizards of the Coast provided me a diverse learning environment where I have been able to work closely with the most experienced people in their field at the company. My main focus has been working with the Software Systems Engineer as well as the Build Release Engineer in working and maintaining the whole server infrastructure at Wizards of the Coast. What I will be presenting is my main focus in work. This has been in working with a lot of virtualization through the use of VMware Vsphere Client in deploying and maintaining virtual machines across the server farm. I will also be showing a little about how I have scripted a kickstart file to make deploying linux boxes much less tasking which proves to be highly efficient. In addition, I will also add my experience in gathering info using the SNMP protocol in gathering system information and data which I have written a bash script to easily compare and collaborate the various statistics from every box on the server farm.

Summer Internship at Prepared Response in Tacoma

Nucharee Prabkhet

This internship was focused on the research and development of a dynamic maps application for Prepared Response.Inc. The application provided quick access to local and wide range area maps. Allowing users to edit maps in real time.

ITS Internship with Avanade

Timothy David Deas (Avanade Sponsors Chris Dury, Tim Jorgensen, and Adam Carter)

My time at Avanade (IT Consulting company) as an intern in the ITS Support role has been very enlightening. Avanade is in the power of three with Accenture and Microsoft as the parent companies. As an ITS Support intern, I have been able to assist in the ITS Operations department by implementing varies improvement methods such as web services in SharePoint development, daily process improvements, customer satisfaction, system engineering by making a script to automation installations, and business morale. I will present an overview of experience I have gained at Avanade that involve the ITS department, marketing department, and the whole company as a whole and how I interacted with each. Also, there are many other great things that I was involved in at Avanade that brought me to grow beyond my previous professional self-composure. After displaying the various ways in which I was able to provide to the growth of Avanade and myself, I will incorporate the global side to Avanade’s business side. I will expand upon the processes that Avanade is involved with and the goals that we took on to make businesses all over the world successful.

The IT Infrastructure Transformation Of The Rescue Mission

Ed Resleff

Background - The Rescue Mission (a.k.a. Tacoma Rescue Mission) had four servers – two at the Admin location, one at the New Life Square location, and one at the Tyler Street location. All were operating Windows Server 2003. The entire server network was more than three years old with the main server being more than 5 years old, and two of the four main servers were over 90% capacity. In addition, other prior system drawbacks were age, reliability, capability, upgradability, processing capacity, and overburdened storage facility. In response to these issues, a plan was made and implemented to upgrade to new systems using current technology.

Implementation - The goal of the server migration project was to upgrade the Rescue Mission’s aging and outdated server network to better meet the needs of the executives, employees and ultimately those who benefit from the work of the Mission.

The two newly installed systems use the latest technology – New Quad core-dual proc Processors, 64-bit O/S, and the latest 128-bit encryption. This fits the Rescue Mission’s new IT model of providing for future computing needs – specifically, the new Serenity Client Tracking Tool, resolves underlying issues with current O/S & Exchange 2007 (email accounts),and allows for future user-community expansion plans. Leverages purchased O/S licenses that were idle – Win 2008 R2/Exchange 2007 and, sets up for the new MSSQL License for the Serenity upgrade.

Major Benefits include:

1. Scalable – Long-term strategic plans – Live Streaming & video archival

2. Redundancy – long-term – dual hosts

3. Life expectancy – 3-5 years

4. Expansion capabilities – expansion of storage space (3.5 TB+), RAM

5. Matches the new Internet configuration – Integra MPLS

6. Works with Mac equipment – Entourage

02:00pm – 3:00pm (Seth Syberg)

Triple Threat Slots Web Application

Aaron Tran

The motivation to do this project, is early on in college I took a couple of different programming language courses, one of my professors had a lecture one day about programming being fun. I was curious so I inquired further. The professor encouraged me to create something like a slot machine game before I graduate from college. And he had me hooked ever since. The goal behind this was to create a web application or game that would satisfy the entertainment of the user. The approach we took in our course was dividing the project into different steps or iterations. Most importantly we prepared thoroughly before diving into the actual project itself. The ending result will hopefully be a fun product for the user. This web application should be good enough, where if it were to be edited or added onto, the web application could potentially be even better.

South Sound Industry Internship Database

Joshua Miller

The South Sound Industry Internship database is a PHP / MySQL website dedicated to providing the students of the University of Washington’s Institute of Technology with an easy and accessible resource to search for and find internships around the Puget Sound. In order to ensure this goal a MySQL database was created to store the data and a PHP based website is used to search and navigate the information. The website also supports a small number of administrators that can add, remove and update values within the database. They are filtered by their UWNet IDs to ensure that unauthorized users cannot tamper with the database.

Problems, Policies and Solutions Concerning E-Waste

Sean Grady

Provides an in depth discussion regarding the exponentially growing amount of electronic waste production across the globe. The paper provides the definitions of e-waste, along with the monumental impact it has on the environment and society. Present and proposed policies are analyzed with the goal of differentiating the good and bad avenues that are being used to tackle the problem. Areas of interest start on a global scale then move towards a focus on the United States and State-wide solutions. The aim of the research is to identify public apathy towards e-waste, and in turn raise awareness towards a policy paradigm that would highlight a solution based on shared responsibility among consumers, producers, and municipalities.

Speaker Session Two (CP 106):

09:30am - 10:30am)

Access Control for Distributed e-Health Systems

Durga Devi Devaraj (Dr. Yan Bai (Chair), Dr. Lirong Dai

Conventional access control models like role based access control are suitable for regulating access to resources by known users. However, these models have often found to be inadequate for open and decentralized multi-centric systems where the user population is dynamic and the identity of all users are not known in advance. Some existing works address specific pieces of this problem. Here, we have a comprehensive approach to build a trust based access control model for medical record access in such dynamic systems. We are building a distributed authentication model for secure and legitimate communication between different hospitals. There are two phases in this project – discovery phase and communication phase. In discovery phase, we use gossip protocol to exchange list of trusted entities between hospitals. JSON message format is used for communication. In the communication phase, the hospitals handle requests based on the trust information gathered in discovery phase. In this phase, we will investigate partial failure and security scenarios in this distributed system.

Filtering spam images in social networks
Amita Lakkad (Dr. Yan Bai, Dr. Donald Chinn, Dr. Matthew Alden)

Recently, malicious users spread spam messages in image formats instead of text formats in order to avoid being detected by traditional text-based spam filters. To increase the popularity of spam images, spammers start posting messages through social media and social networks. Content-based image retrieval methods are insufficient in detecting the spam images. We, therefore, developed an efficient anti-spam technique to detect and filter spam images in social networks.

10:00am - 11:30am (Yan Bai)

Internship at Mantech
Ashley Jones

ManTech International Corporation delivers innovative technology and technical service solutions to federal government customers. Some of the agencies they support are DHS, FBI, DOD, NSA, and NASA. The internship at ManTech was primarily based on the design and creation of UML models for one of their existing software systems. Reverse engineering was used to create the UML models. This position was supported by the software developers to aid in any assistance necessary to create accurate models. This presentation will cover the details of UML modeling and why they are an important part of software development.

Internship with Avanade
Hai Nguyen

Avanade is a technology services company that specializes in enterprise business solutions leveraging the Microsoft platform. Avanade was founded in 2000 by Accenture and Microsoft Corporation, serves customers in more than 24 countries worldwide with more than 11,000 professionals. My internship placement was in Technical Communications with the Client Services Group, which is part of the Information Technology Services department. My presentation will focus on: my experience of working in a mid-sized technology company, working on a multitude of different projects, challenges and learning opportunities, and my future outlook within Avanade.

Privacy Issues in eHealth 2.0
Dan Su (Amy)

eHealth 2.0 is becoming increasingly popular. Like other Web 2.0 services, privacy is a huge issue. The privacy concerns in eHealth 2.0 are even more critical because of the existence and/or widespread use of sensitive health information. We study the existing privacy control strategies of Web 2.0 and eHealth 2.0 applications, and compare and contrast their similarities and difference. A privacy control framework for eHealth 2.0.is proposed.

11:30am - 12:30pm (Dr. Jenny Sheng, Dr. Sam Chung)

An Efficient, Secure JAUS Implementation in C++ and Java
Joel Morrah, Leo Hansel, Ho-Kyeong Ra, Miles Raymond

abstract: JAUS is standard that facilitates interoperability between unmanned vehicles, regardless of manufacturer or programming language. To accomplish this, the JAUS standard has a very strict set of messages that are specified down to the byte level, as well as a hierarchical structure for each UV and the system as a whole. We have implemented a basic communication program to follow the message set and the message passing scheme specified by the JAUS standard.
Several JAUS implementations are currently available, such as OpenJAUS, JAUS++, and Activist, but we decided to create our own. The reason for this is that both JAUS++ and Activist are poorly documented and the code does not execute. OpenJAUS executes, but is poorly documented and has extra features, some of which are not specified in the JAUS Working Group documentation. Our goal is to create a JAUS version that is easy to understand, use, is as close to compliant with the JAUS standard as possible, and is secure.

12:30pm – 01:15 (Guy Johnson)

Internship at Mutual of Enumclaw

(Cory Hankemeier)

Mutual of Enumclaw is an insurance company based in Enumclaw. Information Systems are a key in the operations of the company, as claims are logged into databases, and applications are virtualized. My presentation will address my internship at Mutual, company culture, technology, and projects I worked on.

Working with Lionbridge

Tyler Patnode

Lionbridge is a business that provides localization, development, and software testing services. Among these services is search rating, a service that employs raters to examine the relevance and safety of search results on three major search engines: Google, Bing, and Yahoo. In this presentation, I will discuss my job as a Lionbridge search rater, including the company itself, my job, the quirks of an online work environment, and the experience I've gained.

01:15pm – 2:15pm (Dr. Matthew Alden)

Quality Assurance at Mindbloom

Faiz Quraishi

Mindbloom, Inc. focuses on using social media to assist users in pursuing life goals. The site offers the ability for uses to find other with similar goals and use peer encouragement through social media. The gaming paradigm of Mindbloom is used to motivate its users to actually complete their goals. As a quality assurance intern at the company I was responsible for the automated testing for the functionality of Mindbloom’s web application. Part of my duties involved testing user scenarios, so that the application functioned correctly regardless of what users tried to do. I was also responsible for testing new feature added to the application’s back end. All my tests were automated to allow quick research and results. The internship allowed me to use programming skills acquired from school in creating tests that worked efficiently and reliably. In addition to this I was also able to observe real world software development and assurance during my weeks interning.

02:15pm – 03:00pm

Switch Replacement Project

Jake House

The switch replacement project is one of the latest upgrades for the network infrastructure at the Highline School District, applying the new and updates networking equipment a strong backbone for at least 10 schools became, faster, and more reliable. This project greatly improved the efficiency of work for district staff, teachers and students. Using new hardware for the network, my partner and I configured the new hardware to work with the existing networks. Throughout the project as a group of 4 of us, we were able to install 99 new wireless access points and many large SuperX, and 48 port switches.

Busy and the Holidays

2010-11-30T08:52:00.001-08:00

No, Busy and the Holidays is not the name of a 1950's singing group, though I now lay claim to the name if I ever time travel. It just means that we are already past Thanksgiving and the to do list from work and home is piling up.

The plus side is that if the Christmas decor didn't get up this weekend then it wasn't going to happen for a while.

This is likely the earliest the Fry house has ever had a tree up and decorated, not to mention that outside is looking rather festive. Not Griswold festive or Whoville festive but bright and twinkly enough to bring a smile.

The picture, taken from my old phone, does not do it justice, but it is serviceable.

"100 Tacomics" Book Signing

2010-11-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a book signing for Tacoma political cartoonist, artist and web designer, RR Anderson, who officially released the much-anticipated 100 Tacomics: The Secular & Apolitical Cartoon Life of Tacoma and her Moral People(s). If you have ever been amused, aghast, enlightened or deeply offended by one of this Tacoma's cartoon-legion hero's work, then this book will provide you the necessary fodder to laugh, wince and shake your head once again.

The Tacomics included in the book are drawn from what he has drawn for the last four years or so. Actually there have been some really interesting Tacomics that won't make it in because of their appearance in 2010, but that is OK. Ryan announced that he is working on the next edition, composed of work done through 2010 to 2012 at the signing last night. He promises that he will produce one every Tuesday in order to make that happen. Just because he would be doing that anyway should not diminish the anticipation of the upcoming sequel.

Though in book form, it cannot repeat the appeal of working your way down the comments section that accompanies each new Tacomic as it is posted, it provides a equally valuable experience by including commentary from the man himself. He describes much of the inspiration of what went behind each comic, and when no inspiration existed, he admits to it. Additionally, information on the Frost Park Chalk Off, the secret society of Tacoma, "The CLAW", and other bits and pieces of Tacoma are generously included. That makes this a must have history book as well.

I am pleased to have my signed copy from the event, which I purchased at King Books. I also bought one from www.lulu.com, which I will likely place in the Christmas stocking of someone I know. Anonymously.

The one I have will go on the bookshelf, strategically place high enough that my kids will have to be tall enough so that when they stretch to reach it, they will be old enough to stretch their minds on the topic of Tacoma's political scene.

It will be next to my original drawing of the Tacomic, "Who Control's The Tacoma Media".

Time To Elf Yourself Again?

2010-11-10T09:47:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know it is not even Thanksgiving, and I do not believe in dealing with Christmas stuff in early November. I am a Macy's Thanksgiving end of parade kind of guy. However, I love the elf yourself thing that JibJab does each season.

Once again the JibJab team has combined forces with a kind sponsor (OfficeMax) to provide some free access to some fun online festivities. No doubt I will find the appropriate family photo and each of my kids will once again be dancing around like a wild pack of elves.

The question is do I do it now, or wait until the day after Thanksgiving, which is still two weeks away.

Fall 2010 Virtual Scavenger Hunt

2010-11-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

It is once again time for the virtual scavenger hunt in Living and Working in a Virtual World. The students will be in teams of three and have laptops with wireless connections to work with.

When I first started doing this, the teams would be lucky to find half the items. With search engines and search techniques being much improved, it is now a race to see which team finishes first.

I have tried to add a couple of tougher queries that require special search engines or specific sites to succeed.

One new item, which is in my opinion a bit spooky is this one.

"What is the maiden name of my youngest sister?"

That is the only information given. Substitute a question similar to this with the name of one of your family members and think about how easy or hard it might be to find online. I will guess that half the teams get this one right, even though there are no official public documents out there which give the answer away.

UPDATE: CHANGE OF DATE Registration for the South Sound Technology Conference is Up

2010-10-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

The 11th Annual SST Conference has been postponed. A new date has been established in the new year, but will be announced when the venue has been confirmed.

As many of you are aware, and if you aren't now is a good time to be, the South Sound Technology Conference is coming up on November 19th, 2010. Presentations and conversations are to include sustainability and peak oil, mobile application development and that every present topic in the South Puget Sound, cybersecurity.

There will be a lunch keynote and therefore, a lunch. We will use the registrations in order to estimate the number of lunches we will need, and this year their is a nominal registration fee for the conference, which will take place from morning until afternoon in the William Philip Hall on the UWT campus.

This fifteen dollar fee will not only cover the lunches, but this year we have added the option to pay twenty dollars for the conference, with five dollars going toward a student registration.

The registration page is up, thanks to the help of the University of Washington, Tacoma advancement group who have created the page for us.

Register here for the conference:

More information on the speakers and events are coming up. Contact me if you have a particular topic or speaker that you are interested in, as there are a few slots still available.

Searching for Some History

2010-10-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

In week three of my Living and Working class we discuss search engines. Starting from a historical perspective we touch on how it became necessary to create means to find the vast amount of information that was exploding in number and size across the Internet and then the Web. Archie (and Veronica and Jughead) from McGill University and the University of Nevada respectively, Gopher from the University of Minnesota (go Golden Gophers), are mentioned. Then we discuss the generation of many different search engines which grow to prominence, are merged or replaced up to the present day.

At this point we talk about types of searches, specialty searches, vanity searches and those third party stalker search engines that keep an eye on you.

Some of this is done through my own personal experiences: (I went to see Pulp Fiction as a break from an Internet conference with this great kid, Brian Pinkerton, a grad student at the UW) Who knew that Webcrawler would become so popular that it wasn't allowed to operate during the day and that the engine (and Brian) would get picked up by AOL. My feeble attempt to hire him for Free Range was dwarfed by what AOL could do.

Some is done through going online and some is done through a Powerpoint Presentation.

However, I have stumbled across a web site that does an excellent job of summarizing the history of search. It is www.searchenginehistory.com. Search Engine History is published by Aaron Wall and references several academic sources for its compilation of information and links. Another excellent resource found through search.

Tacoma Waterway at Sunrise

2010-10-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

Exit133 posted an article on the Shoreline Master Program. If interested it can be found here.

However, I was struck be the photo accompanying it that was provided courtesy of the City of Tacoma Community and Economic Development. There are lots of great shots of Tacoma, as there are of any city of its size and water based geographically advantageous location.

But I just liked this one.

Living and Working Virtually Once Again

2010-10-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

The school quarter started less than two weeks ago and this quarter I am once more teaching Living and Working in a Virtual World. Once of my favorite things about this particular class is that the students represent many different programs here on campus. Though the other courses I teach are populated by Computer Science and Information Technology students, this class is made up from Business, Urban Studies, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Nursing and others.

One major difference from when I started teaching the course several years ago is how rapidly we adopt and integrate new technologies into our daily lives. Where at one time you might ask how many people are familiar with blogs and blogging, now the question is how many people own their own domain names. Social networking sites have gone from being interesting ideas to commonplace utilities. You can decide to publish your ideas, create e-commerce sites and form sub group support systems and you don't have to know any HTML.

If there is one thing I can count on during the course of the quarter, it is that one of the non-technology driven students will introduce me to a new application of technology that I did not know previously existed. Such is the widespread saturation of technological adoption and change in the present.

Hairspray at the TMP

2010-10-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

The latest theater production I have been cast in is Hairspray, which is currently playing at the Tacoma Musical Playhouse. The house has been full every night and for a 380 seat theater that is pretty amazing.

Just this week, David Edward Hughes, Seattle writer for the publication Talkin'Broadway wrote his review of the show. It is great to see such a great cast, orchestra and crew get some attention for their efforts. And what a fun show it is to do.

See his review here:

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/regional/seattle/se451.html

Tony Hey to Speak on Campus

2010-09-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

One of the great opportunities you get when studying or working at a university is to be able to hear great speakers. Next Tuesday, Oct 5th, is one of those opportunities.

Tony Hey, vice president of the External Research Division of Microsoft Research, will be speaking from 12:30 to 1:45 in the Carwien Auditorium. He is responsible for worldwide external research (ER) collaboration in Microsoft Research. He leads the company's efforts to build long-term public-private partnerships with global scientific and engineering communities, spanning broad reach and in-depth engagements with academic and research institutions, related government agencies, and industry partners.

Dr. Ankur Teredasai, one of the faculty from the Institute of Technology had a chance to hear him speak earlier this year as sent this to me as a recommendation to ask him to campus:

"Tony is very eloquent and passionate about the way computing can transform scientific and engineering research and it's a pleasure to get an opportunity to listen to him discuss these issues. He is internationally recognized for his many contributions to the discipline of computing; in particular his work on development of the MPI standard for parallel computing. His move to the Pacific Northwest adds tremendous value to the computing and technology community."

I am looking forward to the conversation.

Do The Puyallup (the lyrics)

2010-09-09T15:30:00.000-07:00

That time of the year again. I will be going to the Puyallup Fair with the family and riding rides (and getting ill), watching shows, checking out the booths for Sham-Wow or a Magic Bullet demonstrations, eating ears of corn and scones and generally having a good time.

So it is also time once more to review the lyrics to the "Do The Puyallup" song of yesteryear.

"Do the Puyallup"
musics and lyrics by Saxon Rawlings, (slogan by Denny Hinton)

Oh you can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup.

All the people and the animals down at the fair,
They do the Puyallup like they didn’t have a care
And it looks like so much fun to do
I think I’m gonna learn how to do it too.

I saw a duck and a chicken down by the farm,
A kickn' up the hay and a raisn' such a storm,
That I asked the farmer what they were up to
and he said "Puyallup, That's what they do."

You can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup.

Asked the farmer if he’d show me how to do it
And he said "why son their ain’t nothin to it.
Just move to the music and jump in the air
Like everyone else who comes to the fair"

You can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup

You can do it in the rain or the sun or the fog
It comes real easy like rolling off a log
Get a partner from Tacoma or Seattle or Fife
Even let you do it with your husband or wife.

It’s a natural thing there isn’t any doubt
Folks do it while they’re sittin’ or walkin’ about
While over on the midway on the merry go round
Kids are doin it in circles going up and down.

Now it don’t matter if it’s rain or shine
When you do the Puyallup you have a good time
So guys grab get gals and gals grab a fellow
If you’re worried ’bout the rain just bring an umbrella.

You can do it with a mouth full of cotton candy
Caramel apples, salt water taffy
Hot dogs, hamburgers, man oh man
Hot buttered scones with strawberry jam

I do the Puyallup cause it feels real neat
Put a smile on my face and a tickle in my feet
Ain’t no way not to do it right
You can do it all day and into the night

you can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup

Do the Puyallup

Do the Puyallup

Tacoma Science Café at the Famous Harmon Brewery

2010-09-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

As I was looking through my email this article came through on the Pacific Science Center newsletter. I though I would pass it on. Note that these meetings will take place at the "famous" Harmon Brewery in downtown Tacoma. When I was enjoying my hummus plate there yesterday I didn't know I was sitting amongst the famous. Neat.

I look forward to joining those meetings when I am able. I certainly know a couple of professors who are likely to be there.

Tacoma Science Café
Science Cafe
Pacific Science Center is pleased to announce our third Science Café, which will be located in Tacoma, Washington.

A partnership with KCTS9 Public Television, the Tacoma Science Café will take place the first Thursday of each month at the famous Harmon Brewery in downtown Tacoma. The pub known as "Tacoma's Downtown Gathering Place" will welcome local scientists and community to discuss current science topics from climate impacts in the Northwest to the science of chocolate.

"We are grateful to the Institute of Museum and Library Services for their generous grant that allows us to expand our Science Café program to the South Sound," said Meena Selvakumar, Acting Vice President for Strategic Programs at Pacific Science Center.

Science Cafés bring scientists face-to-face with the general public in the comfortable, lively atmosphere of a neighborhood café or pub. All Science Cafés are free to the public, open to all ages and no science background is required!

"People attend our science cafés for a variety of reasons," said Wendy Hansen, Ph.D., SCOPE Project Manager for Pacific Science Center. "But most are there to learn something new about current research and to ask questions of the speaker. The appeal of the cafés is that people get to learn about cutting edge research in a fun environment."

The new café will launch Thursday, November 4, at 7 p.m. at the Harmon Brewery in downtown Tacoma. Each Science Café begins with a local scientist presenting a backbone of science related to the night's topic, followed by a short break for table discussion and beverage refills. The highlight of the night is an extended question and answer session with the scientist.

Previous cafés have covered climate science, evolution and religion, robotics, and health care, just to name a few.

The Harmon Brewery is located at 1938 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma WA, 98402

Summer Reading and Writing

2010-08-28T09:27:00.001-07:00

One of the things I enjoy most about vacation time is the opportunity to read and to write. I write during the course of the entire year, but when I have some breathing room, I like to write fiction. As most people who write will tell you, writers read a great deal. I think it is part of the recharging process.

For me, the vacation read is the detective story. I polished off an old Agatha Christie "The Third Girl", and two more of Aaron Elkin's Gideon Oliver mystery series. Many years ago when I was at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference, Aaron Elkins (who lived in the Pacific NW) was speaking there. It was probably the only time I remember geeking out a bit and I circled him like a vulture before I gained enough courage to go over and gush a bit. He ended up signing a couple of his books for me.

I let some of his new additions to the series get away from me, but was able to catch up with a couple of them this week, finishing "Uneasy Relations" and "Skullduggery". I have a couple more to go but figure I will be done by Monday.

As for writing, for some reason outside of non-fiction I tend to write short horror. When I have successfully written longer fiction it has been humor such as a screenplay called "Tree Rings and the Beer Hoops Extraganza" and the TV pilot "Love Jumps" (neither which have seen the light of day, though I did get some good feedback from the screenplay).

So I managed to finish another short story over the last month to add to the fix others sitting in my drawer at home. One of my writing buddies suggested I practice what I preach and make it available for download, which I will likely do after a rewrite or two.

I love vacation time.

A DNA Map for Blue Pill - Red Pill Tests

2010-08-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

Seeing the end results of student projects and research is the best part of the Institute of Technology's end of the quarter colloquium. However, there are other more specific elements that make it a fascinating and enjoyable event.

Such as these to examples:

When discussing his future plans for building out an investigatory tool set to capture and track malware, a student used this phrase...

"I want to create a DNA map for Blue Pill/RedPill tests."

How many opportunities do you get to hear someone make that a serious goal.

Another thing is the informational tidbits that you pick up from a presentation. For instance, Davita has thousands of servers in their data center and thousands of employees in the Tacoma area (and over 30,000 worldwide).

The colloquium is held every quarter and the Summer colloquium is happening now.

Institute of Technology Student Colloquium
Summer Quarter 2010
Speaker Session One (CP 105):

09:00am Internship at DaVita
Kyle Levy (Andrew Fry)

This internship study examines the intricacies of corporate IT from a data center perspective. The primary focus of this presentation will be on the daily job responsibilities of a data center operator, as well as an analysis of the communication necessary between various groups within IT, and our internal customers. Specific topics will include a discussion on some of the enterprise-level software that is utilized at DaVita to monitor and backup critical systems, server hardware, and the complex communication processes present within the organization. Background information on DaVita will also be provided in order to acquaint the audience with the large kidney dialysis provider, their goals, as well as their unique information technology needs.

09:30am Automated malware analysis & the use of rootkits to prevent vm detection.
Adam Brunner (Dr. Yan Bai)

The goal of this research project was to design a automated malware analysis system using virtual machines, while preventing detection of the virtual system by using root kit technology.

10:00am A Unit Test Generator for the Next Generation of JML
Jonathan M. E. Hogins (Dr. Daniel Zimmerman)

The automation of plans is an important part of manned and unmanned space missions. The Plan Execution Interchange Language (PLEXIL) is a software language being developed by NASA to express and execute plans for automation in a format that is expressive and formally verifiable. The PLEXIL language and its execution software, the Universal Executive, were previously limited to extremely basic communication with other executive agents based on the sending and receiving of static character strings. Most space systems consist of distributed network of machines that rely on communication to perform tasks, and these old communication features prevented the creation of automation plans for many NASA systems currently in development. This project introduces more robust and expressive communication abilities for distributed execution into PLEXIL and the Universal Executive. Including the static message passing from the old framework, the new communication system allows sending and receiving of arbitrary data, direct commands between executives, and queries for external state. These new features not only allow for the creation of automation plans on distributed systems but also allow the creation of simulators in PLEXIL that correctly emulate external environments such as robot hardware and power systems.

Expressive Inter-Executive Communication in PLEXIL

OpenJML is the next generation of the Java Modeling Language tools and will support Java 1.7. One important part of the JML toolset is JMLUnit. This tool automatically generates unit tests for JML-enhanced Java code, enabling developers to take full advantage of the JML markup language as well as reducing the amount of tedious, error prone test writing that is required as a part of test-driven development. The goal of this directed research project was to develop an implementation of this tool for the OpenJML project called OpenJMLUnit. Based on the design by Dr. Daniel Zimmerman, this next-generation version of the JMLUnit tool features a new unit testing strategy that enables advanced and extensive unit testing with minimal developer input. It was also specifically designed to be easily adapted to other compilers, allowing the adaption of the tool for older versions of Java as well. This presentation will give an overview of the OpenJML project, the features and usage of OpenJMLUnit, and its possible impact on test-driven development.

11:00am From Point A to Point B – An Internship at Expeditors International
Jesse M Carrigan (Dr. Daniel Zimmerman)

Not all tech jobs are at tech companies. Expeditors International is a premier global logistics and freight forwarding company based in Seattle. Technology is a key part of Expeditors' business and the company has made a significant investment in its people and systems. In this presentation, I will discuss my internship at the company, including the company itself, my work there, coursework that was applicable to my projects, and lessons learned that weren't addressed in the classroom.

11:30am Using Open Source Software to Develop a Testbed for Unmanned Vehicle Systems with Smartphone as Communication Media
Joel Morrah (Dr. Jie Sheng)

For autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UVSs), communication is necessary and essential in accomplishing complex mission tasks; it becomes especially important in cooperative missions where tasks are solved using many vehicles of different sizes and characteristics with different sensor suites. Smartphone technology offers an interesting communication infrastructure for remotely accessing, controlling and interacting with UVSs in an integrated and highly portable manner, and offers the ability to have an interface to the World Wide Web (WWW) for additional information useful in mission achievement. In this research open source software will be applied to develop a testbed for UVSs with smartphone as communication media. Google Android will be used to build applications such as streaming video from UVSs, sending snapshots of targets to the central station, etc. The performance robustness and security issues will also be examined.

12:00pm A Study of Software Engineering Certification
Sean Grady (Dr. Matthew Alden)

A study covering the feasibility of instituting a software engineering exam that would in effect deem practitioners federally legal and qualified to work in the field. Subjects range from academic and employment concerns to whether certification would help or hinder software innovation. This study also examines how the related field of Information Technology has addressed such concerns. Propositions to endow students with vendor-specific and vendor-neutral certifications are discussed and final opinions based on input from industry professionals and academics.

12:30pm Virtualization in Information Technology
Michael Satran (Dr. Matthew Alden)

This paper introduces an educational tool used to facilitate students learning Java programming. InterAcText is a computer-based Java programming textbook. InterAcText includes several different forms of interactive tools that engage readers and encourage them to become part of the learning process. The software for InerAcText is being created using an Iterative Software design approach. This paper discusses the functionality and design of the first release of InterAcText, the results of the first evaluation of the text and accompanying interactive tools, and concludes with a discussion on what features and fixes will be implemented in the next iteration.

01:00pm Summer Internship with Tagmaster North America
Thanousone Vorasane (Dr. Matthew Alden)

TagMaster North America is the leading provider of long-range and high-performance Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems for Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI), serving the marketplace through its wide network of system integrators, partners and distributors. TagMaster system allowed the marketplace able to effectively and efficiently track, monitor, and manage the parking usage. More importantly, it tightened security, as only vehicles with valid TagMaster ID-tags are able to gain access to the parking facility.

I was tasked with a development group to design a web-based interface to allow the clients/users to able to access the system anywhere there is an Internet connection, and without any software installed.

Speaker Session Two (CP 108):

09:30am Internship at Vertafore
Maori Kano (Dr. Sam Chung)

The purpose of this report is to explain what I did and learned during my internship period with Vertafore, Inc. Vertafore, Inc. is an insurance software provider. It is the leading provider of software, services and information to the insurance distribution channel. The report is also a requirement for the partial fulfillment of University of Washington Tacoma internship program. The report focuses primarily on the working environment/process, assignments handled, and successes and shortcomings that I did encounter when handling various tasks in the AMS360 and Sagitta development division.

10:00am PEN Project
Brock Brown, Jon Fang (Dr. Yan Bai)

There is an increasing need for well trained and experienced security professionals. The PEN project intends to supply quality education materials for security education purposes. These materials will include computer and network data captures from realistic scenarios. Scenarios include illegal internet activities and common server/client attacks and exploits. The centerpiece of the project is the Honeywall bridged firewall. This device allows for attack monitoring and network segregation to keep a simulated infection or attack from spilling outside the project and becoming a real one. In this presentation we will detail the many hurdles that were overcome to create high-quality security education materials. We will also present some suggestions for ongoing uses for the PEN and Honeywall in the security research being done here at Tacoma.

10:30am Internship At Prepared Response
Brock Brown (Andrew Fry)

This presentation will describe my experiences as an intern at Prepared Response. My role at the company was to research the feasibility of integrating a distributed computing system. The solution should allow servers at
geographically separate locations act as one logical unit. The solution should allow for heterogeneous systems to be added to expand system capacity and performance. Solutions explored include Cloud Computing, NoSQL databases, and Network File Systems.

11:00pm Internship at the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries
Thuy Ward (Dr. Matthew Alden)

The Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) oversees the safety, health and security of employees in Washington state. Part of that duty includes accounting for state taxes. L&I uses an Accounts Receivable and Collections (ARC) system to track the work assignments of revenue agents. However, the ARC system does not provide work assignment history information such as previously assigned revenue agents and closure dates. Revenue agents may question why they received a debt on their New Work Assignment Worklist, but there is no convenient history available. During my internship L&I, I developed a new module for the ARC system that gathered and displayed work assignment history information for revenue agents.

11:30am Automated Feature Deployment on MSN
Thomas Dickens (Dr. Matthew Alden)

Features are unique, displayed experiences on an MSN webpage. Examples of features include slideshows, tab groups, and menu bars. Deploying new features, or updates for existing ones, involve two steps: updating the underlying code and then modifying the webpage in a web UI. This process is highly human reliant, and as such, is slow and error prone. The goal of this project was to create an automated process for adding new features to a webpage. A deployment script can now be created to be executed by the deployment tool, saving time and reducing errors that are more likely to occur during the current deployment process.

12:00pm Active Learning in the Computer Science Classroom
Jonathan Ogden (Dr. Donald Chinn)

This paper is a survey of current Computer Science instructional techniques that address theoretical and practical aspects of the college learning environment. This paper will be investigating Active learning styles including Cooperative learning, and their models for student learning. Particular attentions will given to Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Perry Model of intellectual development in College age adult learners. As an experienced Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) I will bring my personal experiences with adult learning and the techniques I personally employ in the classroom.

12:30pm A Study of Software Engineering Certification
Rob Kesterson (Dr. Yan Bai)

A study covering the feasibility of instituting a software engineering exam that would in effect deem practitioners federally legal and qualified to work in the field. Subjects range from academic and employment concerns to whether certification would help or hinder software innovation. This study also examines how the related field of Information Technology has addressed such concerns. Propositions to endow students with vendor-specific and vendor-neutral certifications are discussed and final opinions based on input from industry professionals and academics.

Starting Up Another Startup Weekend

2010-07-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

Some of you may recall that back in January of this year, we put together a trial run of a Startup Weekend, hosted at Suite 133.

If you don't remember, here is a reminder.

Now, Jerry Suhrstedt, CEO of Heavy Guerrilla and a dynamo of a guy is organizing a Startup Weekend on a larger scale down in Olympia. Working with the folks who run Startup Weekends, who happen to be headquartered in Seattle, this is much more aligned to the official events.

I had lunch with Jerry today and he provided me with posters, flyers and information about the upcoming event.

Logistically, here it is:

Oct 15, 16 and 17 2010
Harned Hall on the Saint Martin's University campus
5300 Pacific Ave,
Lacey, WA

The doors will open at 5:00pm on the Friday of the weekend.

registration is available at olympia.startupweekend.org

The cost is $75 dollars or $40 dollars for students.

When we conducted our trial run earlier this year, we made it free and I brought in some drinks and munchies.

With this Weekend, the $75 dollars pays for meals during the course of the weekend. It also pays entry and of course the networking is priceless.

The call to action is "Bring Your Ideas" and the steps as outlined in the material are pretty simple and to the point.

Register for the Event
Pitch a Green, Tech or Any Idea Friday Night
Work with a Team to Develop Your Idea
Present your Startup Sunday Night
Potentially Win Startup Funding

I will post more when we get closer, and am hopeful I can attend the event.

The intent is to set up another Startup Weekend event in Tacoma for the end of Winter again. If we could regularly hold two events like this in the South Sound per year, alternating between Thurston and Pierce County, I think it would be a great additional to the calendar of technology events for our region.

This will likely be one of the topics at this years South Sound Technology Conference complete with its own breakout session.

Now if someone wants to throw another Barcamp....

South Sound Technology Conference 2010: Save the Date

2010-07-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

Save the date of Friday November 19th to come and attend the 11th annual South Sound Technology Conference on the University of Washington, Tacoma campus. Last year’s event was a great success with over 165 registrations and over 200 attendees filling the William W. Philip Hall during the course of the all day event.

Like the 2009 event, there will be keynote speakers in the morning and during lunch, technology panels and exhibits in the Kopp gallery. Also, once again there will be dual track breakout sessions, though this year we have reserved larger rooms to accommodate the sessions.

One of the tracks has been identified as Energy, Sustainability and Technology which is a very timely topic. Other parts of the program will be developed as we get closer and will be posted on the South Sound Technology Conference website at www.sstconference.org. Thanks go out to Seamus Holman and Gridworks Design for once again sponsoring the site.

The annual South Sound Technology Conference is the technology showcase for Tacoma and the South Puget Sound. For years it has brought together leaders from industry, education, and government from around the state to discuss and demonstrate technological innovations and their ongoing applications.

Panel and keynote presentations — including networking opportunities — provide a venue to discuss, explore, understand and deploy technology as a solution, an opportunity and an advantage. SST is perhaps this region’s best annual event to learn how technology is transforming our business and community life.

Engineering Students Deliver Improved Rehabilitation Cart

2010-06-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

In October of 2009 Craig Deitering, a senior in the Computer Engineering and Systems (CES) program at the Institute of Technology modified a battery powered car for kids so that it could be “driven” by children with limited motor abilities. The project was a success but after the car was used by the kids at Puyallup’s Good Samaritan hospital, several needed improvements were identified.

It was decided that the engineering students in this last academic year’s Devices and Controls class would implement these improvements as a team project.

The project leader for the class team, student Brian Gosch, described the improvements that the team was planning to make to the battery powered car (called the BOSS cart) to Dr. Steve Shores. Dr Shores agreed with the approach. He also went on to list a number of potential senior projects that the students could work on that would help the children's rehabilitation center at the hospital.

Seniors from the Computer Engineering & Systems program at UW Tacoma visited the Children’s Therapy Unit (CTU) at Puyallup’s Good Samaritan hospital to get a first-hand look at how the staff at the unit creates games and tools to help kids with special needs. Steve Shores, who is a CTU therapist there and head of the Assistive Technology Program, demonstrated many of the devices his group has made or modified to help the children.

In the latter part of May, nine students Jessie Fortier, Aakanksha Gaur, Brandon Nadeau, Brian Gosch, Eun Ju Lee, Frank Le, Kris Knabel, Krisnil Gounder and Teddy Doll finished the enhancements and modifications to a BOSS cart for Multicare's Good Samaritan Children's Therapy Unit.

Working with faculty sponsor Robert Gutmann, PhD the student team made the electric vehicle more flexible and targeted for working with children in need of rehabilitation services and treatment. It was Bob Gutmann, the instructor for the class, who made the initial contact with Steve Shores at a CTU fundraising event. Gutmann’s wife, Linda Gutmann, is on the Board of Directors at the hospital and is very familiar with the achievements and needs of the CTU.

With the success of the modifications and the delivery of the new, improved cart, Dr. Gutmann and Dr. Larry Wear, Associate Director of the Institute of Technology at UWT, hope to expand the involvement of CES students with the CTU and get more students to focus their senior capstone design experience on projects that will benefit the CTU.

End of Quarter Colloquium for Spring 2010

2010-06-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

The Institute of Technology is holding its end of the quarter colloquium today. Students from the undergraduate and graduate programs in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Information Technology programs report on their directed readings, directed research and internships. The number of students who have projects and readings to report on are a record number this quarter. Forty students, presenting individually and in teams are filling to large classrooms in the Cherry Parkes building on the campus for the majority of the day.

Here is just a sampling of presentation topics

Improving Accuracy in Image Spam Detection

Last quarter's research into detecting image spammers ended with significantly sub-optimal accuracy rates for image spam detection in online photo-sharing site Flickr. This quarter, the project was centered around developing a more accurate pattern for use in identifying spam. The number and variety of keywords recognized by the system were expanded, and additional information gathered from the image itself. A data set was then constructed such that a bio-informatics team could run scans and develop an accurate pattern, program the pattern into last quarter's spam detector, and thus improve the accuracy of the detector.

A Study of Information Security and the Tor Internet Anonymity Tool

This paper represents a comprehensive review of the knowledge and information gained through a 10-week study and research course into the field of information security. Topics covered include e-health security, honeynets and botnets, access control, web security and IPSec, Firewalls and VPNs, and online anonymity, including data from a project consisting of a performance analysis of the Tor Internet Anonymity tool.

Exploring Computer Forensics: Is Data Ever Really Gone?

As technology changes so does the way data is stored. Is data really gone when you delete it? Various reasons exist on why data is deleted or damaged but the most prevalent reason is when someone is hiding or deleting illegal information. A computer forensics specialist uses tools to find data that has been deleted or destroyed. The government uses computer forensics to find information on a system that was tampered with by a criminal or to find information about a criminal. Computer forensic specialists aren’t simply handed the data, they must find the data in the machine using different tools and then deduce what happened. There is also a major problem around company employees that have become irate; when this happens a computer forensics professional comes in to get evidence from the irate employee’s computer to find information about what data the employee tapered with. There will be a presentation given by two students detailing various signs and methods that computer forensic specialists look for. There will also be a Demo shown on how the ProDiscover software will recover data from a thumb drive.

Reinforcement Learning for Sponsored Search Auctions

The use of sponsored search is one of the key mechanisms by which search engines like Yahoo!, Google, Bing, etc. generate profit. Due to increasing demands for advertising space, most search engines are currently using auction mechanisms. Because of the limited budget of each advertiser, strategic bidding behavior plays a crucial role in sponsored search auctions. From an advertiser's perspective, an ideal strategy has to prevent the advertiser from overbidding, while at the same time bidding enough to obtain his favorite position, thereby beating competing advertisers. The goal of our independent study was to devise an optimal bidding strategy, based on reinforcement learning, that automatically decides how much to bid for a given keyword query on a given day in order to maximize profits by keeping costs per click down while achieving high conversion rates from potential customers.

Fuzzy Logic and Web Intelligence

Fuzzy logic is a computing paradigm that allows an object to satisfy a property only to an extent, thereby providing a way to deal with vague, imprecise, and uncertain information. During the last decade, many proposals have been made for the use of fuzzy logic to power intelligent web applications, such as information retrieval, sponsored search, web service selection, recommender systems, semantic web search, etc. The goal of our independent study was to compile a critical state-of-the-art overview of the use of fuzzy logic in this application domain, with a particular emphasis on the information retrieval area. As will become clear in our presentation, we have not only distilled an overview of existing work, but we have also dug deeper to find out what makes fuzzy logic suitable (or perhaps unsuitable) to be of use for the future generation of intelligent web applications.

This quarter’s colloquium also features student demonstrations from the Computer Engineering and Systems program of their Senior Projects. Just a few samples...

Fire Alarm System

The project shall be designing a fire alarm system with a Lego NXT robot and a cellular phone which can run Android Operating System and has a Bluetooth. The Robot will detect fire and send a signal to a cellular phone through a Bluetooth. The cellular phone will ring a bell and show the image from the robot to warn the user about a fire. Because user receives alarm signal with the phone, user can move in a distance that a phone can receive Bluetooth signal from a Lego Nxt.

Intel Car

The project shall be designing a sensing control system and an unlocking system for a vehicle. The sensing control system will receive signals from front and rear end of the vehicle to which the sensor system is installed on and display alert message and distance on the LCD display. The unlocking system will be sensing specific knocks, “secret knocks.” The system will receive and count knocks from the user. If the knocks are in the sequence, the system triggers the motor to turn the lock and unlock the door.

For a full program with student names and times see the Institutes we site.

Making a Contribution to the Community Utilizing Technology

2010-04-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

That is the most (and vaguest) direction that I give to the teams of students who are in my Managing Technical Teams class in regards to their group project. Teams form very early in the quarter and are charged with reaching out to the community (as they define it) and making a contribution to that group by using technology to solve a problem or make an enhancement to the sponsor groups processes.

In the past, teams have integrated databases between Pet Ark and the Humane Society of Tacoma, created a data capture mechanism for the Salvation Army to manage volunteers who step forward during the non-holiday season and helped the Save the Bridge group build a web site that could take donations. Those are just a few of the many that have been a result of the efforts of the student teams over the years.

This quarter there are 38 students on 7 different teams. I will highlight a couple of their projects as the quarter comes to a close.

Congrats to the UWT GreyHat Huskies

2010-03-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

The University of Washington Tacoma team of students representing the GreyHat Group here on the campus performed admirably at the third Pacific Rim Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition held last weekend. The team, which also helped to prepare others for the event, came in second out of a group of outstanding competitors.

Pictured: The Director for the Center of Excellence in Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, commands attention.

Congratulations and thanks should also be given to Don McLane (who also provided the pictures), Barbara Endicott-Popovsky (CIAC Chair) and faculty member Yan Bai (Assistant Professor who teaches Computer Networks,Network Management,Information Assurance, Computer and Network Security) for their work in preparing the students and participating in the event.

Here is the news from Grey Hat team member Parker Thompson:

Our team this year at PRCCDC worked really hard and came in second place beating every other team except UW seattle engineering! I would to thank all of our team members, those who observed the red team, Dr. Yan Bai, and everyone else who helped use make this a success. Our team members this year included myself on the email server and the router, Jesse Morgan for the first day on the router, Kimberly Harvey on the Website and Database, Teddy Vitro and Hai Nyguyen on client machines and as team mangers, Brain van on the internet machine, Aaron Offerdahl on the backtrack machine, and Robert Kesterson on the domain controller.

This student organization also helped the International Conference on E-Crime that was held late last year in Tacoma a success. Of course, as any hard working Institute of Technology student group would, they are already planning for more activities.

We have many exciting plans for the future of the club such as more collaboration with other teams (particularly the winning uw seattle team and devry), to continue to work to make our lab setup closer to the of the ccdc, and setting up a vpn into our lab setup so students at home and students at other schools can still use the lab network.

Thank you again to everyone,

Parker Thompson

Congratulations again, and good luck with building out an excellent lab space for future competitions.

Huskies Competing in the CCDC

2010-03-19T13:15:00.000-07:00

Sure, you know that the Huskies are competing in the NCAA tournament, but once again they are also competing in the Pacific Rim Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition as well.

The Grey Hat group, a collection of Institute of Technology Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Information Technology Systems students interested in cybersecurity, data integrity and information assurance, will be competing this weekend against other student teams of eight from a selection of universities and colleges from the Pacific Northwest. This includes Alaska, Idaho and Victoria University of Wellington.

Coached by Don McLane, the UWT team will not be crashing the boards but keeping others from crashing their servers. Dr. Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, Director Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, will once again be on hand to cheer on the Purple and Gold (and everyone else competing, no doubt). Last year, the "evil red team" had a few of the alumni of the Grey Hats working for them, making it an especially difficult foe.

Some of the preparations for the event include a group of exercises put together by The UW Tacoma group, the Grey Hats, partially to prepare for the CCDC, and partly as a general Information Assurance introduction.

The winners of this regional competition will compete in the nationals with travel and lodging expenses paid.

Held previously at Fort Lewis and last year at the Microsoft Corporate Campus, this year's event will take place on the campus of Highline Community College.

Taken from the CCDC website:

In this competition, student teams are presented with a pre-configured systems of a fictitious company that they are tasked to operate. The evil red team, which sits next door, however, will attempt to vandalize and break into this network. The student teams need to defend against the attacks of this red team. In particular, the goals for each team are to:

- fulfill assigned business tasks (so-called injects)
- keep services operational
- prevent break-ins by the red team

Students are scored based on the goals above. The team with the most points of the two day event will be the winner of the 3rd Pacific Rim Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition and will proceed to the National competition.

Our objectives for this event are:
- Build a meaningful mechanism by which institutions of higher education may evaluate their programs.
- Provide an educational venue in which students are able to apply the theory and practical skills they have learned in their course work;
- Foster a spirit of teamwork, ethical behavior, and effective communication both within and across teams;
- Create interest and awareness among participating institutions and students.

Mission:

The Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) provides institutions with an information assurance or computer security curriculum a controlled competitive environment to assess their student’s depth of understanding and operational competency in managing the challenges inherent in protecting an enterprise network infrastructure and business information systems.

The Organizing Committee are:

Barbara Endicott-Popovsky – CIAC Chair
Don McLane – UWIT Tacoma
Corrinne Sande — Whatcom Community College
Brian Hay – University of Alaska
Bob Bunge – DeVry University
Christian Seifert – Victoria University of Wellington, NZ
Michelle Moore – Microsoft
Mike Acker - ISSA
Rick Davidson - University of Washington
Brady Bloxham - Idaho State University
Dwayne Williams – National CCDC Advisor

Check out this documentary about the first year of the event.

Go Dawgs!!

Business Internet Services (BIS) - Company Profile Number 7

2010-03-05T16:50:00.000-08:00

I have blogged about Topia Technologies and Skoot a few times over the years on my blog. What may not be known is that Janine Terrano, CEO of Topia, is also the CEO of Business Internet Services, a web development company which was established in Tacoma in 1996.

BIS has been a fixture in downtown Tacoma throughout the economic up and downs of the technology sector, all the while building websites, custom applications and tools, content management systems, extranets and intranets. They count over six hundred clients over that time, including recent launches of the EDB's (Economic Development Board for Tacoma - Pierce County), the Gig Harbor Cancer Care Center and Feed Commodities, a premier recycler of bakery by-products in the Pacific Northwest.

In January of this year they launched their Software as a Service (SaaS) business service, providing emerging products and applications for the small to medium-sized marketplace.

From their press release:

“Our ability now to offer SaaS products in a downloadable marketplace is just one more step to keeping our customers ahead of the curve on what used to be cost-prohibitive technology and applications,” says Terrano.

Services that their teams provide include, strategic consulting, project management, usability design, graphic design, software development, application testing, hosting and data reporting for their clients.

They also do mobile application development work for business.

Last time I walked around their hallways there were quite a few folks working there, but since some offices no doubt were Topia, I do not have an strong approximation of how many employees make up the company.

However, the web site does have a current listing for an entry level software developer with at least of years experience with .NET an SQL.

To keep up with what is happening there, they have a developer blog at http://biscminds.blogspot.com/

Note that it will not only give you information on the company, but provides some development advice as well.

Janine is also active on Twitter, where you can follow her at J9er. A good interview was done with her by the Tribune late last year.

Following the Job Hunt on Tweetajob

2010-03-04T08:53:00.000-08:00

The managing recruiter for a large (to be unnamed) holding company of a technology icon was a guest speaker in my class yesterday. The topic was on effective ways to recruit and retain employees to a growing technology company. Michele has been to the class on several occasions during the last few years and always draws great questions and gives solid, valuable advice.

Because so many of the students come to me for direction on how to go about finding employment after they graduate, not only is the information pertinent to the business plan they are required to develop as part of the course, but it also is great guidance for when the students themselves are searching for employment.

One thing that surprises me on occasion is when a student, often who is getting ready to graduate in a quarter or so, comes into my office and starts with this question: Do I know of any job openings? I am not fond of this introductory question, because it arrives without any background information to go with it. Job openings where? What are you interested in doing? Where have you looked? What companies do you want to work for? What locations are manageable for you? What is your favorite color? (maybe not that).

I also hear on occasion a tone of disappointment that their search has gone of for weeks with no or only a couple of interviews. On digging, I find that they have submitted resumes online to only a handful of companies and that they are still waiting to hear back from them. A successful job hunt generally requires a more deliberate and sustained approach.

I am happy and pleased to be able to help where I can when they come to see me. The first thing I tell them to do is to take that large market of jobs that are available (there is a large market, but in down times they are sometimes harder to find) and narrow them down to a specific prospect pool. This is still several hundred companies to draw from. Then I ask them to make a list of the top ten companies from that prospect pool they are most interest in and do some research on them. Then they can apply if they remain interested. They should always have a number of companies they are interested in on that list, even when they have scheduled interviews with others. It should continually be populated as other choices are dropped from the list.

But that is not the point of this post.

They point is that Michele gave a simple suggestion that made a great deal of sense to me. Once you have established the companies with which you think you would like to work for...

Follow them on Twitter.

In fact, if you are looking now, immediately create a List on Twitter and start following you personal list of companies. You may hear of job openings from the tweets, you will gather intelligence on the companies you are interested in and you will get a feel for how they are regarded by their employees and customers.

There is another site that you should look into. Tweetajob.

What is Tweetajob?

Tweetajob is a web based platform that interacts with Twitter, allowing recruiters to efficiently tweet jobs. Because our site allows jobseekers to specify location and career interest, you only receive those job tweets that interest you. Jobseekers can elect to receive job postings via Twitter feed, through the Tweetajob search engine or via mobile devices, according to personal preferences. Recruiters pay to post their jobs to Tweetajob.

There are a number of sites and services out there, from Craigslist to Monster.com.

With the two suggestions above, there is another online tool to add to your arsenal in the hunt for a job.

Prepared Response - Company Profile Number Six

2010-02-18T11:29:00.000-08:00

Mike Brown, the Chief Technology Officer for Prepared Response, came by the Institute and talked to a group of interested students about the company. He discussed their products and services as well as discussed some projects and research that the company would be interested in seeing worked on.

Prepared Response, Inc. is a privately-held corporation that was founded here in Tacoma in 2000 (it has headquarters in Seattle now, but a larger presence in the South Sound).

They are the "leading innovator in crisis management and emergency preparedness solutions and training that enable police, fire, and other emergency responders to save lives and mitigate property damage. Prepared Response's solutions have been repeatedly proven to save lives as well as protect property in schools, hospitals, malls, and other public and private critical infrastructure."

The company launched its first product, "Rapid Responder" in January 10th of 2002. One week later, they announced the state of Washington licensing of the product.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Thursday, Jan. 17, 2002

Washington State adopts statewide emergency planning and disaster response application

State law enforcement, fire associations license PRI's Rapid Responder product

OLYMPIA, Wash. - Washington state law enforcement and fire officials have licensed an emergency preparedness and disaster response software application from Prepared Response, Inc. that will eventually allow all emergency personnel in the state to access critical location information when responding to a crisis.

The Washington Associations of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) and the Washington State Association of Fire Chiefs (WSAFC) licensed the Rapid Responder(TM) application from Prepared Response through an allocation from the Washington state Legislature. The agreement allows the product's use throughout the entire state.

Before I get to some additional snippets of their products and history, I want to note that they were one of the first companies in the area to bring on interns from the Computing and Software Systems program from the Institute of Technology at the UWT. During the tech sector downturn and particularly after 9/11, when it seemed that more folks were being laid off than hired, the company took a chance on some students who were graduating from a program that did not have a long history. One in particular, F.C., who I always thought was an excellent student, ended up being hired on at the end of that internship. I recommended to another student who had been looking for a position post graduation that she contact an alum working there. She ended up being hired on as well.

They are both still there today, which in itself speaks highly of any work environment but especially of a company that was not that old itself at the time of their hire.
______

The number of solutions that the company provides has grown and now includes:

Rapid Responder (version 5.0 in 2008)
Crisis Management System

Rapid Responder® allows first responders to quickly access key information about thousands of facilities, including tactical pre-plans, satellite and geospatial imagery, interior and exterior photos, floor plans, staging areas, hazardous materials, utility shut-offs, and evacuation routes. The system protects thousands of educational facilities, public buildings, critical infrastructure, and private facilities across the US.

Guide Safe
Occupant/Employee Safety & Alert Notification System

GuideSafe™ is a Web-based tenant management and notification solution that provides you and your tenants with key information for dealing with a wide variety of emergency incidents, and gives you the power to notify them in the event of daily building disruptions or emergencies.

Hazard Tactics
Multi-Hazard Emergency Preparedness Training & Threat Consulting

In the face of a crisis, you must be prepared with a response plan, established channels to first responders, the media and the public, as well as crisis response practice at all staffing levels. PRI has created a set of courses to prepare you for every stage of a crisis.

Their management team consists of:

Jim Finnell who is the President and Chief Executive Officer
Jim Tarte who is the Chief Financial Officer
Michael Brown who is the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer
Marti Wagner who is the Vice President, Enterprise Sales

and just recently:
Pete Ochinko
Vice President, Security and Risk Prevention Solutions

Thomas J. (T.J.) Miller
Vice President of Federal Sales

Notable on their board are:
John T. Carleton
Chairman of the Board and Senior Vice President of Benaroya Capital Company.
Benaroya Capital was an early investor, providing the company with some significant seed funding when their product hit the market in 2002

Ralph Munro
Former Washington Secretary of State, Chairman of the Washington State Task Force on International Education and Cultural Exchanges; and Co-Chairman of the International Task Force of the Council of State Governments

No social networking sources like blogs, twitter or Facebook to speak of. (correct me if I am wrong)

A pretty extensive web site, though no recent news activity this year unless you go through a Google news search. That is where I found the announcements of new officer positions, as well as this news from Oct of 2009 in the "Disaster Preparedness Daily News".

Avue Technologies Corporation - Company Profile Number Five

2010-02-12T16:15:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday of this week, Dan Creamer of Avue Technologies Corporation and Mike Brown of Prepared Response came by the campus to talk about their respective companies and to meet some of the students who will be graduating from our programs. The students were able to learn more about companies that sold into the federal market and the presenters got the chance to meet with individuals who might be potential interns and potential future employees. Both companies have interned students before and have hired them as well. Today I will profile Avue Technology and save Prepared Response for the next iteration of the company profile postings.

Avue Technology has been around for some time. They were founded as a consulting business in 1983 as Washington Consulting Services (WCS). Their specialty was in consulting services related to classification, staffing, employee relations, Civil Rights and labor relations for the Federal Government.

It wasn't until 1988, though, that they began producing a software product. Called “ProClass,” it was a DOS-based software product that according to the companies history "incorporated an “expert system” that automated the classification process of certain Federal job positions." Their first software customer was the United States Air Force. Soon, ProClass was in use in over 125 Air Force bases worldwide.

Early in 2000, Avue started hosting its own applications in a data center and would customized and maintained all content and software for the client as a Software As A Service (SAAS) solution.

For some time, much of the development work was done way up north, WAY up north, because the company had a difficult time finding developers in the South Puget Sound. Several years ago the decision was made to do more of the research and development work back in the city where the company was founded, Tacoma.

Today, they have two distinct software development teams that have grown to a point that the company has acquired additional space in their building, on 11th and Broadway in downtown Tacoma. One of the teams, led by the aforementioned Dan Creamer, is made up entirely of alumni from the Computer Science program at the Institute of Technology here at the UWT.

Here is the software solution description from their web site:

Avue includes a bi-directional interface that integrates Avue data with other systems including Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), payroll systems, financial systems, and time and attendance systems....

Our expert system rules engines, application functionality, content databases and IT infrastructure are all hosted in our secure data centers and accessed by our clients 24/7, using a standard browser via the Internet from anywhere in the world. You won’t need to purchase hardware, software, or software enabling devices – a standard browser and Internet access is all any user ever needs.

Avue is explicitly designed for high scalability and performance and a subscription includes unlimited concurrent users – from managers, administrative officers, support staff, recruiters, EEO personnel, background investigators, HR professionals, to employees and applicants. Avue provides all the capacity you need to support all your users and encourages high numbers of concurrent users, especially during key events such as annual performance ratings and surge hiring. Avue maintains over 99% uptime and has never lost data or been below this threshold. The unique combination of our technology and business model enables our solution to be rapidly deployed within organizations and deliver quick and measurable results.

But don't call it a software product or service because...

Avue Digital Services: ADS is neither a software product nor leased access to a software product. Instead, it is an integrated digital service delivery system. ADS provides domain-specific expertise and engineered content to the user, along with business process management and transaction processing. ADS applies the essential business rules of the organization, uniquely, to help it achieve its business goals in a delivery system that includes domain content and expertise, as well as re-engineered processes, as a total package.

To that point, they continue to create additional solutions on their platform, many that can be traced by the press releases that have accompanied them such as...

Time & Attendance and Employee Scheduling Modules
Online Talent Communities for Federal Job Seekers
A Transitions Job Site

I can tell you that they do employ software developers, whatever the classification of the solution.

They employ around 50 or so people in the area and have remained at a pretty steady state for a number of years (I found one source that said 80 people and another that said 50 so I am remaining conservative). They are headquartered here in Tacoma but also have offices in Bremerton and Washington, DC. Additionally they have satellite offices in several other states.

The company was founded by Linda Rix in 83, and she is the Co-Chief Executive Officer along with James Miller, who also has experience in the consulting industry.

No Twitter or Facebook sites to speak of, but they have a pretty complete web site.

Startup Weekend Recap

2010-02-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

For those interested in how last weekend went, it went well.

When the decision was made to try to hold something like a Startup Weekend it was meant to be a dry run. Recruitment for the weekend was done through blogging alone and a few direct email inquiries of those who had mentioned an interest in the past.

The location was great, given Suite133's experience in hosting the earlier technology based "unconference" called barcampTacoma.

There were two outcomes on the attendance side that concerned me. If we had less than 12 participants I was going to be disappointed, if we had more than 30 I am not sure how I would have handled the logistics.

On Friday night, we had 16 people participate. A few of them made it clear that they were unable to come for the full weekend and just wanted to join in on the first night of discussion. I am glad they came. Given the size of the crowd, everyone was able to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about what they could contribute.

By 7:00pm we were suggesting potential business ideas, with an understanding that there had to be the chance that it could be launched over the next two days. Ten ideas were discussed, which was a good amount. We then voted on the favorites form that ten. Of those five were pretty even in the voting so we held a second vote. One idea which was pretty popular had a second idea, which was more of a feature than a product or a business was folded under another that was a broader solution.

Critical to the final selection was feasibility for completing at least a prototype, so though one idea was popular, another made a great deal more sense.

Here is where we were very lucky. In order to successfully create anything, the talent to do so had to be in the room and ready to work. We had marketing, business planning, design and development experience represented at the Suite. There were four people with ties to the Institute of Technology at UWT, not counting myself. Two alumni of the Computer Science program and two current students.

David Hazel, alumni of the program and veteran of three official Startup Weekends was key to making things work. Not only was he able to give us guidance on how we were doing and what to expect in the next couple of days, but he was well versed in Drupal, a web content management system with enough open source elements that we could create a web site with much of the functionality we were looking for.

Another thing that David prepared us for was the drop off in attendance, which given those who had already mentioned their lack of availability was not a surprise.

On Saturday we spent our time discussion the build out of the idea as a business, how they a Startup Weekend generally handled ideas such as ownership and went to work building the site.

A total of 12 people participated in the second day, with the nice folks from Spryng came by to talk about there entrepreneurial support efforts and to discuss their upcoming conference.

David trained several of the other participants in how to build with Drupal, and on Sunday, six folks worked to get it done.

At the end of the weekend, a working prototype was completed, including some Flash animation in a subsection of the site. Was it launched? No. It needs to complete the remaining implementation of a couple of the features and needs to be given a facelift to better represent the target audience it is aimed at.

The team set up a Wave thread to keep it moving forward, and there is a hope to bring it into the public eye when that is done. It needs to be populated with data and then it is ready to go.

It was a rewarding opportunity to meet and work with great people, to learn about new tools and technology and to gain the experience of what a Startup Weekend is like. Hopefully Clint Nelson and the folks from the official Startup Weekend organization can help us pull off an even bigger event in the late Summer.

Seasonal View - Company Profile Number Four

2010-02-02T09:49:00.000-08:00

Many people know Derek Young from one of the companies that he has founded or co-founded. He founded Exit133 which, launched in 2005, is a web publication and online community focusing on Tacoma, which covers real estate, politics, the arts and urban development. He also co-founded Suite133, a shared office for telecommuters, start-up entrepreneurs and creative professionals. It was from within the Suite133 offices that his latest venture was born.

In January of 2009 he partnered with Dave Stockwell (COO and also a co-owner of Suite133) and Whitney Rhodes (former writer for Exit133 and co-owner of Suite133) to create Seasonal View, which provides solutions in IT project management, service management operations and information security.

As they put it on their about page:

Seasonal View is an agile organization encompassing decades of experience and success supporting IT in big business. Our consultants comprise of specialists in many areas who are hand selected for each assignment to ensure they address the project’s specific needs. Combining passions for design, process and business strategy, we pursue the areas of business where interaction with the customer is the most critical. Small enough to be approachable but with far reaching ties, we can provide the guidance your project requires to be a success.

The information security side of the business is interesting to me because it falls into the information assurance and cybersecurity cluster of companies that I have been highlighting over the last several years.

Specifically, they assist in determining and implementing "the appropriate controls based on the value of your organization’s information assets, threats to those assets, and management’s tolerance of risk." They work directly alongside the companies IT staff as team members or act as consultants to guide the process.

Services in the information security category may include internal security assessments, external security exposure, control implementations, process development and project management for starters.

Seasonal View also provides to the Service Management and Tech Support industry through process creation, tools, and knowledge management.

Their clients to date have ranged from small local to Fortune 500 ranked companies. Given the nature of the work, they are not able to simply list them off of their site.

Currently under employment opportunities they list

Information Security Assessor (Contract)

Seasonal View’s Information Security Assessors independently manage all phases of third party assessments for our clients including planning, execution and reporting. Assessors execute, oversee, guide and evaluate the work of other auditors culminating in a successful presentation of the results to Senior Leadership. Audits will primarily focus on areas of general controls, but could include applications, pre-implementation review, and complex areas of the business and technologies.

In particular I like the comment made at the end of the paragraph under their Career Opportunities page. "Brilliant Jerks need not apply." Also of note, the informational card which reads "James Bond" in the graphic at the top.

They do not have a Twitter account or blog as yet, but you can follow Suite133 at Twitter in the meantime.

Startup Weekend Tacoma This Friday

2010-01-26T11:13:00.000-08:00

SEE YOU THERE TONIGHT AT SUITE133 AT 6:00PM

Here are the logistics to this weekend's get together.

Place: Suite 133 on Pacific Avenue

Derek Young and company are graciously hosting this weekend at their location. There sponsorship for these kinds of grassroots development and business efforts should be fully appreciated. They loaned out their digs for the first barcampTacoma and it worked quite well. Given the loose structure of the upcoming weekend, it is good to have had that experience under out belts.

Time:

Friday at 6:00pm. Arriving to the suite at 5:15pm or so I will have made my way down from my office at the Institute of Technology to the premises. We will hopefully have a critical mass of interested folks by 6:00pm, which is the official start time.

Saturday: We will start at 9:00am, but you are free to come and go as you please.

At 10:00am I will be going over a business plan template. I have started, ran or advised on boards for tech companies in the double digits, so hopefully I can impart some modicum of wisdom on the topic. Other speakers, a la barcampTacoma will be scheduled during the day.

Sunday: We will play it by ear, but at 11:00am, John Dimmer of the Tacoma Angel Network will be giving a talk on financing.

I anticipate Clint Nelson of startupweekend.org one of the organizers of Startup Weekends will be there Saturday or Sunday, if they are back from New York from a similar event.

And that, my friends is about it.

Hopefully, we will launch a company or product at the end of that time.

How many folks will be there, I don't know. I have gotten email responses from at least one dozen folks so far, so that should make for at least two to three teams.

They first year that the 72 Film Festival ran, I remember hoping for at least three teams and even organized one myself. Twelve teams participated with eleven of them submitting films at the end of the weekend. If we managed half that it would be very cool.

What to bring:

Your enthusiasm. Your ideas. Your strengths and your weaknesses.

A laptop if you have one. Paper and pencils if you don't.

I will bring some water and soft drink from Costco for the offset, but we will be going out for meals and drinks on our own dimes. The official events that we will be exploring for late Summer or Fall have entry costs that cover meals and T-Shirts. I am all over the t-shirt idea but they will need to be an individual or group effort on its own as well.

IT WOULD BE EXTREMELY HELPFUL IF YOU COULD REGISTER YOUR INTEREST IN ATTENDING BY EMAILING ME AT droid116@gmail.com.

Vadium Technology - Company Profile Number Three

2010-01-25T17:06:00.000-08:00

We in the South Sound almost got to hear from Rod Nicholls, President, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Vadium Technology on an afternoon panel at this years South Sound Technology Conference (SST2010). Unfortunately a company wide issue (mysterious, yes) made his participation impossible. I thought it was a shame not only because I like these guys, but because many of you may have never heard of them.

They provide next generation digital security and privacy solutions utilizing their technology called, AlphaCipher, which is a Digital One-Time Pad (D-OTP) that enables, "secure, dynamic, multi-point communication structures by integrating unbreakable encryption, strong identification and authorization with multi-factor authentication into one easy to use, robust solution". AlphaCipher is part of an application development solution which protects against network and cyber attacks.

Whew!

Given the stories we hear on an ongoing basis regarding digital based attacks whether on financial institutions, governments or Google, you can easily imagine the value here.

They are a privately held company and are headquartered in Tacoma, Washington, where they were founded in 2001.

The founder and Chairman of the company Wolfgang S. Hammersmith invented the AlphaCipher Encryption System, and developed the current product and associated Key Generation Systems over eighteen years prior to founding the Company itself. His bio includes an amazing array of interests outside his expertise in security including including being a licensed Ship's Master, a licensed Armed Private Investigator and Agency Principal in Washington State, and a helicopter pilot.

Their CEO is José Antonio Ríos who has more than 30 years of international experience and worked in senior executive capacities at multi-national corporations such as Global Crossings, Telefonica, S.A., Hughes Electronics and the Cisneros Group.

Their product suite revolves around their encryption solution, Vadium’s AlphaCipher which they provide an SDK (software development kit)for so that security solutions on networks, PCs, laptops, removable media, wireless and handheld devices can be created.

Specifically they provide:

* File and Folder Encryption with Authentication
* Key Creation and Management
* Custom Applications

I had not heard from them for awhile after the conference and just as I had decided to create a profile on them, a press release came out from the company announcing a sales agent and reseller agreement with Grupo Colvista, the largest government systems integrator in Colombia. This makes sense as a lot of their customers are international.

Internet traffic and e-commerce are growing rapidly across Colombia's highly developed broadband infrastructure. As increasing amounts of sensitive information are digitized by Colombian enterprises and government agencies, there is a rapidly growing need to secure sensitive digital data and communications.

Because of the sensitive work they do, they are keenly aware of international ethics and compliance issues that their company and its employees face, even devoting a section of their website to the issue.

In terms of employment, they have several job openings listed including in sales and software development but the majority were posted a while back. However, the company says it is always interested in "visionary, skilled and enthusiastic team oriented professionals".

No sign of a Twitter account but when I searched for Vadium it produced many tweets in regards to their recent reseller agreement, in several different languages.

Ron Kornfeld and the All Important Business Plan

2010-01-21T11:55:00.000-08:00

The Entrepreneurship in Technology class got a treat yesterday with the visit and guest lecture by Ron Kornfeld. I met Ron many years ago when he was a fellow board of directors member for the WSA (Now the Washington Technology Industry Association - WTIA). He remained active with new and emerging companies throughout the dot com era and when he was not directly involved with any, he was consulting with them, emphasizing the importance of business planning and helping with ideation (the process of creating new ideas).

I asked him to come speak to my class eight years ago as he was one of the authors who contributed to the text of "Cracking the New E-Conomy" with chapters on that all important business plan. In fact, it was the business planning template that he provided for free from the Normandy Partners web site that the class was using in building out their own plans. It is also the business plan template I will be presenting on at the Startup Weekend Tacoma.

Since then he founded PersonalGrid, a start up that provided a first-of-its-kind consumer web service for sharing, managing, storing, and publishing digital information. He was also co-founder and EVP of Product Strategy at SchoolSoft Corporation, a start up developing the first adaptive web service to teach children in precisely the way that they learn best. He conceived of the innovative initial product plan, product roadmap, and go-to-market strategy. The company has evolved into a tremendous resource for teachers and students based on the efforts of the team who succeeded me.

So after couple of companies and successful exits later, he is back to the consulting field, though now the company is called NimbleSource LLC. According to their about page NimbleSource is describes itself this way:

"Business success is about speed: to market, to revenue, to profitability. Maximizing speed means fault-tolerant planning and agile market management to remove the friction in your business model. At NimbleSource, our principals have decades of experience in business planning, product management, marketing strategy, and sales excellence. We help entrepreneurs turn ideas into opportunities."

The business plan template and the advice provided along with the document are still quite valuable. If you go to the resource page of the site it will provide you access to the document. If that doesn't work go to the resource page and look under business tools.

We still use this template in the class, and will be using it during the Startup Weekend on Jan 29th, 30th and 31st. I have had a number of folks already send me their interest in participating to my gmail account. droid116@gmail.com

Next week I will lay out more on the logistics including a map and directions to Suite133 and some general requirements of what to bring and what to expect.

You may want to take a look at the business plan template in the meantime.

IdentityMine - Company Profile Number Two

2010-01-15T13:10:00.000-08:00

IdentityMine was another company in the South Sound that was founded at the onset of the Dot.com meltdown. Headquartered in Tacoma (1015 A Street,Suite 1200) with offices in Seattle, Pleasonton and Hollywood, California and India, it provides a product and service approach to user experience solutions.

Integration of deep technical expertise and rich engaging design through the use of Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight, Microsoft Surface and Natural UI technologies set us apart. We facilitate the inevitable convergence of IT, traditional operations and marketing efforts to make a truly memorable and intuitive user experience.

I like that they have a mix of both services and products.

As they describe their services:

IdentityMine offers services that span from very short-timeframe demo application development to full project outsourcing requiring many different disciplines over an extended period of time.

The products are pretty interesting and include "Blendables" a set of tools and components that help in design and development and "Surface Skins" which creates a customized look for a Microsoft Surface Table.

The Blendables products come in three varieties which according to the site is:

- The Essentials Mix is a set of 10 controls which span all aspects of design and development in Windows Presentation Foundation.

- The 3D Mix is a platform for easily creating immersive 3D application experiences in Windows Presentation Foundation.

- The Layout Mix is a set of layouts which leverage the Panels technology used for application and content layout in Windows Presentation Foundation.

If you are interested in learning more the product line has its own web site at www.blendables.com.

The Surface Skins is an extension of a Microsoft product and is a design project described as such: "Our designers work with you to evaluate your location, the function of your Mirosoft Surface and your target audience to create the perfect match."

For a better understanding you can read this 2008 press release which gives an example of what they do. In part it reads:

Hotel 1000, downtown Seattle’s premier luxury destination and a leader in hospitality IT, and IdentityMine, the leader in User Experience, announced today they have partnered to release one of the first customized versions of the latest Microsoft Surface applications. IdentityMine designed, developed and installed the customized applications for Microsoft Surface specifically for Hotel 1000.

I don't have any information on how many employees they have as the spread I found on a Linked-in page was 11-50. However they appear to be quite busy.

According to a post on their blog from last week, they were in New York showing off a new product solution, the IdentityMine Retail Map.

“The IdentityMine Retail Map is another solution in a set of solutions focused on the retail vertical,” said Chad Brown, SVP of Sales and Marketing at IdentityMine. “Recent focus by retailers to increase the enjoyment of the shopping experience has lead to entirely new thinking about user experience (UX). By leveraging our expertise in Microsoft Surface and Windows 7 Touch, IdentityMine is uniquely positioned to create new interactive experiences across multiple physical environments.”

As long as you have Microsoft's Silverlight loaded their web site shows it off nicely. Some examples of their work on this page.

----

Mark Brown
CEO | President

Chad Brown
Senior Vice President Products & Services

David Meunier
Senior Vice President Operations

David Fitzgerald
Senior Vice President HR & Staffing

They have a blog for Blendables http://www.blendables.com/blogs/

They have a blog for the company IdentityMine http://www.identitymine.com/forward/

Check out their videos on Vimeo http://vimeo.com/identitymine

There is also a Twitter account, but no Tweets to speak of recently. Best to search on the company name.

Bootstrapping a Business

2010-01-13T09:34:00.000-08:00

"Bootstrapping — the practice of launching a business with personal funds, credit cards, hard work and chutzpah — has long been a catalyst of Silicon Valley's dynamic economy." starts an article by Scott Duke Harris of the San Jose Mercury News. It was carried by the Seattle Times on December 7th and it got me thinking about the nature of entrepreneurship in today's economy.

One of the reasons that comes up frequently when discussing why companies fail is that they did not have enough capital. Often it is the case. But when loans and investment dollars are short on supply and the economy is stagnant at best, there is a requirement to build from the ground up. That is when bootstrapping becomes a more common phenomenon.

You obviously start at a disadvantage and eventually money has to come in from revenue and potentially investors, but the friends-family-self funding stage is where a great deal of groundwork needs to be laid.

Ben Parr of Mashable outlines some of the realities of bootstrapping in his December 8th blog post.

Bootstrapping is the art of building a startup with little to no venture capital. You’re creating your company as leanly, efficiently, and cheaply as possible. Perhaps it’s because you need a viable product before you can obtain investment or because you don’t want to give away 20% of your company to a VC. Regardless, bootstrapping is becoming a more popular option for many entrepreneurs.

Though he mentions that it is becoming a more popular option, the tone does not pull any punches as to the difficulties involved.

However, if you have an interest, join me on the 29th, 30th and 31st of January at Suite133 to discuss bootstrapping, prototyping, business planning and many other tech start up topics. This is an informal event, but it is important to know who can make it and how many may come. You can email me at droid116@gmail.com.

If there is enough interest and the weekend goes well, we will likely be able to land a few sponsors for the next go round and may even be able to involve the folks from StartUp Weekend. If you are interested in what kind of companies could possibly launch from three days worth of exploration and prototyping, check out the list of companies that have successfully launched from their events.

http://startupweekend.org/past-companies/

Optic Fusion - Company Profile Number One

2010-01-09T11:50:00.000-08:00

When I visited downtown Tacoma around 2000 I was looking to create a hosted application location for a company called Lariat Software. I was hoping to establish it here so that I could eventually transition to running it, allowing me to work near where I lived. There were a number of software and technology companies downtown at the time, so I felt that it wasn't out of the question to establish a business in the technology sector that could succeed. Not only that, but with a huge investment by the city in building out the infrastructure, Tacoma was being touted as America's most wired city. We ended up hosting a server for the media reporting solution at ATG and began testing the waters as to whether a hosted application would work in the emerging opportunities provided by the World Wide Web.

And then in 2001 and particularly after September 11th, the dot.com boom collapsed and the dot.com fever of that had produced so many companies broke, taking down with it companies that never should have existed, as well as many that were solid and held real promise. ATG closed it's Tacoma location, though it was profitable.

Downtown Tacoma appeared to be a ghost town as far as tech companies were concerned.

Yet it was in 2000 when Tacoma native Rick Shanaman founded Optic Fusion with the goal of providing carrier-class colocation and network connectivity to the Tacoma market. Currently the company's President and CEO, and along with John C. Kois (Director of Business Operations), Eric Stockwell (Director of Products and Technology) and Randy Stockwell (Director of Facilities and Construction) they provide a state-of-the art, carrier neutral colocation facilities located in downtown Tacoma at the Perkins Building, and in Seattle at the Westin Building.

There promise as a host and colocation facility is to guarantee 100% uptime to every customer in all of our locations.

As described by their website

Optic Fusion provides solutions for every business with IT infrastructure. From Design to Connectivity, Optic Fusion is the one-stop local solution. Our Design and Build division provides high quality network infrastructure and wiring throughout the region, as well as large project fiber splicing. Our Consulting services leverage the resource of our 24x7 NOC to provide everything from network design, installation, and troubleshooting, to outsourced Help Desk services.

Initially, Optic Fusion also provided web design and development as part of its services in a subsidiary of the company called Dynamics in Design. I imagine that diversification of service provide flexibility during the early 2000's when business was very tough. In early 2006 Dynamics in Design was merged into another standout Tacoma company, Sitecrafting which enabled Optic Fusion to focus on its core customers and business. Companies in the South Sound leveraging each others strengths is a good thing. As evidenced in the example of these two companies again in 2008 when Optic Fusion helped SiteCrafting implement a data center expansion mentioned in this Aug 2009 press release:

SiteCrafting partnered with Tacoma-based Optic Fusion to design the scalable and robust system. The new data center is load balanced with clusters of highly available web and database servers, similar in structure to what Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Google and Amazon use.

When I began working at the Institute of Technology and taught a class called Managing Technical Teams, one of the students asked me for help in finding an internship. I met with Rick and talked about the students and wondered if internship potential existed at the company. The student applied at Optic Fusion and was hired as an intern. He was hired at the end of that internship. With the establishment of the ITS program at the Institute, I imagine there is a possibility for many more over time.

Since the companies inception, it has expanded the data center to twice its size, featuring humidity and temperature controls, back up power and HVAC systems, video surveillance, fire-threat detection and suppression, and secured access. They have expanded into the Westin building in Seattle and continue to man there operations 24 hours a day with Optic Fusion's Technicians.

They also provide consulting and IT outsourcing services for small to medium sized businesses, including help desk services, network design and installation and network troubleshooting.

Optic Fusion's consultants all have the necessary training, certifications, and experience to provide any IT support service. From Microsoft Windows environments, to Unix/Linux/BSD and OSS, to Cisco and HP network devices, we can support any project and problem on any platform.

You can follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/OpticFusion

According to their web site, Optic Fusion is always looking Support Technicians.

____________________________________________________________________________

During the course of the year I hope to provide a short profile of an average of one Pierce County technology company per week. By years end there should be an ample supply of names and data to help folks who are looking for partners, jobs, internships or the products and services they supply.

Start Up Your Company in Late January

2010-01-06T16:22:00.000-08:00

There is a group that is headquartered in Seattle called Startup Weekend. They put on "start up weekends" all around the world and are trying to schedule 50 out of 80 applicants for 2010. Read more about them here.

To get them here in Tacoma by January 29th, 30th and 31st would not be possible.

BUT WAIT!! THERE'S MORE

That doesn't mean we can't take the idea for a dry run. Hey, we organized a 72 film festival in 2006 that is going strong into its fourth year and getting better all the time. Maybe we can do the same for businesses.

For those of you who participated in the Tacoma barcamp, expect the same great networking and do it yourself type of organization.

In fact, it will be held in the same location, through the generous sponsorship of Suite133. Maybe a company or two that comes from the exercise will end up working out of the suite.

The general idea is to bring people of different strengths, ideas and ambitions together for three days, starting on Friday evening. At the end of the weekend, hopefully, companies will launch from the effort.

Paraphrasing how the Startup Weekend folks describe it.

Friday at 6:00PM
Everyone meets at the Suite133 offices and introductions are made. Within the hour people pitch ideas for products, businesses or expound on something they wish personally to pursue.

At 8 o'clock we will self sort into teams based on interests and skill sets with the intention of coming up with a product or company idea. By nine or ten o'clock we break off to groups and either carry on or go home to rest for the next day.

NEXT DAY: On Saturday we meet up by 9:00am and get working on development, prototyping, business plan development and by the afternoon, even some possible coding or web development. Break off and go to lunch at noon.

By six o'clock everyone meets up for a recap of what they are working on and how it is working out. Think refined pitches, but now with prototypes.

By eight, nine or ten: Break for drinks or off to bed.

On Sunday the projects are being developed and even some live web sites are possible. As the Startup folks say, this is "sink or swim time for a weekend launch".

At the end of the day, presentations are made from each company about what did and didn't work. Contact information is exchanged and agreements are made as to what will move the product or company forward.
------

What else can be expected? Well, I will line up guests where I can. I am trying to arrange for an Angel Investor to come by and talk. Maybe I can get someone from the Tacoma Angel Network. I will see if one of the folks from Startup Weekend wants to visit and gives us some direction for a later event. I would like to see someone from the Amazon or Microsoft cloud computing initiative introduce their services. Maybe the William M Factory folks can introduce the facilities for their new Technology Incubator building. (they have already expressed interest but I would need to schedule it)

At the onset, I will introduce a Business Planning template I use in one of my classes and give a short presentation on how to build out a successful plan.

You don't have to be there for every moment of every day. You can come and go. But if you get passionate about an idea, expect that there won't be enough time in the weekend.

If you are interested, send me an email at droid116@gmail.com.

One Post a Week is Not Enough

2009-12-26T11:29:00.000-08:00

As the year is coming to a close it is clear that this year was not a prolific one for blog posting, especially here on Living and Working in a Virtual World. I can certainly speculate on a number of reasons for the decline, with the likeliest culprits being Facebook and Twitter. Certainly the total number of postings of items online was greater than in the previous years, but they were split between many different social network and publishing sites.

I expect that is not unusual for others as well.

Blog posts are different than Facebook status updates and entries and Twitter tweets. Certainly entries on Twitter came fast and furious during certain days, because entries into that system are characteristically different than for other publishing venues. Though I only tweeted on specific days, they were generally on conference days and at presentations.

But I am not satisfied what has been posted on this blog. I know of on way I can post at least as many times in the next year as in 2009, and yet make them a bit more valuable. I have spoken several times on the number of technology companies in the South Puget Sound and so if I were to post information about only one per week, it would equal the number of posts from this year on its own. So that is what I will be attempting in 2010.

Merry Christmas to Everyone

2009-12-22T11:17:00.001-08:00

Things have been busy, as they are for most, with teaching and taking classes, winding down the quarter and getting ready for the holidays.

Rehearsals kept things busy as well, for the 9th Avenue School of Dances Nutcracker, which ran at the Fife Theater Arts Center. Almost the whole family was in this one, and maybe next year I can get the oldest to rejoin the cast.

Here is a photo of our former nanny, who also danced in the show, with my wife (the maid), my second eldest (party scene and soldier), third (party scene, angel and chinese dancer) and my son (party scene and mouse). I am hovering over them as Herr Drosselmeyer.

End of the Quarter Colloquium for Fall 2009

2009-12-09T13:30:00.000-08:00

In the last year, several events have been held to try to create an atmosphere of networking in the technology sector. Margaritas at the Matador, after work beers sponsored by the WTIA at Meconi's, and ironically the one event with no drinking called "Barcamp" at Suite133. We just came off of a very successful South Sound Tech Conference as well.

What may be overlooked, in regards to keeping up with what is happening in technology on an ongoing basis, is the end of the quarter colloquiums at the Institute of Technology. Students at the undergraduate and graduate level participate in a day of presentations regarding internships, readings and research. Those of you who have interned students may have already attended one. If there is a subject area you are interested in, you are welcome to attend and network as well.

This Friday is the colloquium for Fall 2009. Here is some info on it.

----------------------------------------------

Institute of Technology Student Colloquium

Fall Quarter 2009

Speaker Session One (Cherr Parkes Building, room 108):

09:30am Spatial-Temporal Access Control for e-Health Services
Apaporn Boonyarattaphan (Dr. Yan Bai (Chair), Dr. Sam Chung, Dr. Ankur Teredesai, Dr. Radha Poovendran)

The transformation of healthcare from human-based to online services can expose e-health to the security threats as other online applications. The identities of legitimate e-health users need to be verified cautiously before the access is granted. Given that any healthcare services only happen at certain times and certain locations, we propose use time and location to perform security control. In particular, we will develop and implement a prototype of the Spatial-Temporal Access Control (STAC) for e-health services to authenticate and authorize users. The traditional mode, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), is too rigid to handle the dynamic authentication and authorization requirements of e-health applications. STAC is beneficial for e-health services since it allows us to define the spatial and temporal constraints for e-health authentication and authorization decisions.

10:00am Finding the Best Parser for PRISE - a Comparative Study
Craig Truzzi (Dr. Martine De Cock, Dr. Ankur Teredesai, Drs. Timur Fayruzov)

The Protein Interaction Search Engine (PRISE) is a biomedical text mining system intended to help researchers find interactions between proteins described in full text. One of the cornerstones of PRISE is an English language parser. The parser is essential for the text mining process, as it converts a plain English text sentence into a set of features, such as part-of-speech (POS tags) and grammatical dependencies, which are used to extract interactions. In the current PRISE implementation, the Stanford Parser is used to process the text. It is a high quality parser that implements some interesting features, but it is too slow and allows PRISE to process only a couple of thousands of abstracts per day.

In this presentation we will explain how a study of the (dis)advantages of various other parsers as documented in the literature led us to propose the parser NO-RERANK as an alternative for the Stanford parser in PRISE. We have implemented this other parser into PRISE to empirically evaluate its impact on the system. In this talk we will reveal whether the replacement gave rise to an increase in efficiency and effectiveness and, if so, to what extent.

10:30am Ranking of Protein Interactions for PRISE
George Dittmar (Dr. Martine De Cock, Dr. Ankur Teredesai, Drs. Timur Fayruzov)

The Protein Interaction Search Engine (PRISE) is a biomedical text mining system intended to help researchers find interactions between proteins described in full text. This presentation will discuss our work towards developing a new ranking module for PRISE to help rank abstracts returned to the protein researcher. The main objectives of our project were to evaluate current ranking and output schemes used by PRISE and test them against newly proposed ranking strategies. We will discuss the implementation of different ranking schemes over different annotated biomedical data sets, as well as present precison@k values and what they mean in terms of the results obtained doing test runs of the different schemes.

11:00am Twitter Authority Based Search
Rinkesh Nagmoti (Dr. Ankur Teredasai, Dr.Martine De Cock)

Microblogging services such as Twitter are increasingly becoming a valuable source of information and are therefore gaining tremendous importance for web search and real time data analysis. In this project we propose Authority Ranking algorithms for Twitter users to improve Information Retrieval and Search for Twitter. We also demonstrate a web based tool which allows users who are interested in searching Twitter, to compare various search results. The demonstrated tool includes a twitter search engine interface that comparatively presents relevant tweets to the end-user. The end-user then provides her preference for one search result over another; and the tool records this preference and reports on overall search statistics. These statistics helps in analyzing the Authority Ranking Algorithms which in turn helps in improving algorithms which powers the real time microblog search.

11:30am A Working Prototype of a Daily Dietary Social Network
Billy Lybyer, Andrew Park, James Tolman, Jung Shin
Dr. Ankur Teredesai)

The social web is becoming increasingly pervasive with the advent of mobile interfaces that allow real-time, on the fly publish-subscribe mechanisms. Given the advances in this domain, aggregating information about what one eats on a daily basis should not be difficult, yet collecting, querying and sharing this data with healthcare professionals such as doctors and nutritionists is still a challenging task. Integrating such data with other electronic medical records data systems may lead to significant benefits for not only the subscriber but the overall society. Many restaurants now provide information about the contents of their menus online and there is avid interest amongst users to collect and share this information as effortlessly as possible.

The focus of this project is to develop a working prototype of a social network whose main intent is the sharing of daily dietary food intake amongst its members. The main access point to the network would be by the use of an intelligent mobile application. The members of the social network would be able to take photographs of the food they eat and add textual ‘tags’ to their photos using their phone. An additional option is to allow just textual information about their food intake not associated with any photos.

12:00pm Computer Cooking Contest 2009 Website
Wilfredo R. Ortiz (Dr. Isabelle Bichindaritz)

This presentation explains the difficulties and actions taken to update a web application written for the Computer Cooking Contest 2009. This contest involves creating a website that can be used to research and search for recipes based on certain user-entered criteria. The portion I dealt with was a restructuring of the web application layout, including server configuration, database interactions and the user interface (web design).

This project required expanding on the original project's design, and implementing cleaner user interfaces for the searches as well as modifying how search results were parsed and displayed. These now use JSPs, Javabeans and JSTL tags for easier and more configurable display and greater customization and standardization across pages as opposed to the previous HTML pages. The difficulties in deploying a Netbeans project to an external Tomcat server served as a valuable lesson, including how to implement Catalina to run Java servlets.

This project matched closely with my current internship and allowed me to expand my knowledge of the techniques and software that were used there. In fact, by completing this project I was able to work more effectively due to a better understanding of the frameworks and technologies involved. This was especially true in the case of Javabeans and the JSTL library, which I had little experience using beforehand. Overall, the project did not hinder but in fact enhanced my internship experience, and is an example of how classes at the University of Washington Tacoma can prepare you for your chosen career field.

12:30pm Avue Technologies Internship
Wilfredo R. Ortiz (Dr. Isabelle Bichindaritz)

This presentation will describe my experiences as a Software Development Intern in a professional field working at Avue Technologies. As a first foray into the field for a full-time student it is important to know what technologies and techniques are currently in use, and how the time spent and information acquired at the University of Washington Tacoma's Institute of Technology ties into a career in this area. That is the purpose of this presentation.

As far as relevant technologies go there are several that were familiar and several that took time to learn. New to me was the Spring Framework, a Java framework for building applications, and in this case web applications. Also presented was Enterprise JavaBeans Technology, another architecture for building web applications. Furthermore, I gained experience concerning database/website interaction and an introduction to several development tools that I had never worked with before this internship.

Overall my time spent at the university did assist in preparing me for entering this career field. The intensity and magnitude of the work involved in the professional sector served as the greatest difference from the University environment. Looking back at my time spent at Avue Technologies this quarter, I now see why an internship is recommended for this degree choice, because without it you will have little to no idea what you will be dealing with when you enter the job market.

01:00pm Research In Motion: Software Development in a Mobile World
Tim Simon (Dr. Daniel Zimmerman)

As cellular phones continue to increase in power and popularity, the mobile development market also continues to grow and change. It is predicted that in 2014, 6.67 Billion mobile applications will be downloaded. In 2009, the Blackberry RIM market share increased from 40.4% to 47.5% (IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, 2009). As mobile applications are significantly less complex than desktop programs, it is possible for a small group or even an individual to develop and market software targeted at the ultra-portable market.

This presentation will give a brief look at the mobile market, and then delve into techniques used for creating mobile applications in the Blackberry Research In Motion (RIM) environment. The discussion will cover the development environment, unit and black-box testing, style differences, and API, as well as difficulties that can be expected during the coding process. After this presentation, the viewers should have an idea of how to begin developing for the mobile environment in general, and the RIM platform specifically.

01:30pm From Design to Release - Game Development
John Emerson (Dr. Daniel Zimmerman)

A common adage in the game development industry is "The last 10% of the project is 90% of the work". I have found this to be true, so I intended to take a game project from the design stage to distribution stage, and overcoming all hurdles in the way. Not having succeeded, I'll examine why and present the progress that I've made.

02:00pm FPGA Design Engineer Intern
Daniel De Jager (Dr. Larry Wear)

Daniel De Jager discusses his experience working as an FPGA Design Engineer for EMAG Technologies, an Ann Arbor MI based company that specializes in original solutions to complex RF problems. In his work, he was tasked with designing a device that upon receiving a trigger signal will start creating a 2.5Gbit/sec signal of arbitrary content. This project allowed him first-hand experience of a practical application of FPGAs. During his stay at the company, he was able to practice design methodologies taught at UWT and make good use of those skills to go from concept to practical design and working simulations.

A Visit by the Brazilian Delegation

2009-11-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

This has been a busy month and today is no different. The SST Conference is on Friday and we already have enough registrations to make me think we could be pushing 200 attendees this year. Nice.

But even before this Friday we are pleased to be hosting a delegation of educational leaders from Brazil who are visiting the Institute. Their objective is to stimulate the scientific and technical cooperation between the University of Washington and Brazilian institutions.

They spent some time is Seattle yesterday and today they will be joining our Director and Associate Director, Dr. Orlando Baiocchi and Dr. Larry Wear, along with myself on a trip out to Intel Dupont. Thanks to Rick Meeder and Tomm Aldridge of Intel for arranging it. I have been on the Intel tour before and the work they are doing in the Dupont facility is fascinating.

We will also be giving them a tour of the campus here and show them around our research labs.

Brazilian Delegation

* Dr. Jorge de Almeida Guimarães
- President, CAPES, Ministry of Education

* Dr. Sandoval Carneiro
- Director of International Cooperation, CAPES

* Dr. João Fernando Gomes de Oliveira
- President, Institute of Research Technology (IPT) São Paulo

* Dr. Amaro Lins
- President. Federal University of Pernambuco

* Dr. Alvaro Prata
- President, Federal University of Santa Catarina

* Mr. Pedro Costa
- The Information Company, with business in Brazil and State of Washington

Junie B. Jones and the Tacoma Childrens Musical Theater

2009-11-11T09:58:00.000-08:00

In 2006 The Tacoma Musical Playhouse launched the Tacoma Children's Musical Theater. I was very lucky to be in one of the first productions when it launched, "The Wind and the Willows" directed by Nancy Wilkinson. One of my fellow actors in that show, Chris Serface, is now the Director of Education for the TMP and directs June B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business, the children's show currently running at the theater. Adapted from the book by Barbara Park with book, music and lyrics by Joan Cushing the story follows Junie B's difficulty in accepting a new member to the family while at the same time deciding what to bring for show and tell.

She won't have anything to do with her new baby brother until she hears Grandma refer to him as the "cutest little monkey." Junie B. can't wait to bring the best show-and-tell to class: a real live monkey! With lessons of identity, change and the inevitable trials of childhood woven with a little mischief ("monkey business"), this show is not to be missed!

The Tacoma Children's Musical Theater was an opportunity to bring more fully produced musical shows to the South Sound, specifically aimed at young audiences and families. Junie B. Jones is not only a fun show full of great actors, (everyone does a great job, but the Show and Tell scene is not to be missed) ((Taylor Niemeyer who was "Dorothy" from TMP's The Wizard of OZ is a PERFECT Junie B) but it is a testament to the work done to bring children in to see musical theater. We had a sold out show last Sunday, a full house on Tuesday and had to add an additional performance on Thursday to accommodate all the elementary school classes that wanted to come see the show. This weekend is close to selling out and it is a shame to have to turn people away at the door, especially with a 300 plus seat theater.

What has also been fun is the atmosphere in the lobby after the show. Whereas in the mainstage shows it is a tradition for the actors to great folks after the performance in the lobby, in the kids shows it is a bit like a character greeting at Disneyland. The actors who play Junie B, Lucille, Grace, Meanie Jim and Crybaby Williams are all big draws, and get to sign autographs and take pictures.

__________

Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business
Directed by Chris Serface

Junie B. Jones : Taylor Niemeyer
That Grace : LaNita Hudson
Lucille : Jessilyn Carver
Meanie Jim : Taylor Richmond
Crybaby William : Jon Huntsman
Mrs. : Kae Blum
Boss of the School : Charlie Long
Mother : Carol Richmond
Father : Andrew Fry
Grandma Miller : Susan C. Smith
Grampa Miller : Dan Engelhard

_____________________________________________________________________

Here is a bonus Rat and Toad picture from 2006

Paris, Madrid, New York to Tacoma

2009-11-09T12:43:00.000-08:00

More about the world traveling Richard Purcell, keynoter at the SST Conference on the 20th. He has just finished up a globe hopping set of conference presentations from Paris, Madrid and other major cities, so it is no surprise that Tacoma is next on his agenda.

Richard Purcell has been a leading voice in addressing consumer privacy and data protection challenges since the late ‘90’s. He leads Corporate Privacy Group (CPG), focusing on sustainable and effective information security and privacy programs. He advises multi-national corporations, Internet start-ups and government agencies. CPG specializes in Web-based courses for security and privacy awareness and practices. As Microsoft’s original privacy officer, he designed, developed, implemented and managed one of the world’s largest and most advanced privacy programs.

Recently, Richard was named to the Executive Director position of the Privacy Projects, an information management think tank and research organization. In 2009, he was appointed Chairman of the Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee for the Department of Homeland Security, a committee on which he has served since 2005.

Register Now SST 2009

2009-11-06T12:57:00.000-08:00

South Sound Technology Conference 2009:
Entrepreneurship and the South Sound Technology Cluster

Come to the 10th annual South Sound Technology Conference, the technology showcase for the Tacoma and the South Puget Sound region. On Friday November 20th in William W. Phillip Hall on the University of Washington Tacoma campus civic and industry leaders, government representatives, university faculty and students will come together at a free conference to hear panels speak on building technology companies in the South Sound and leveraging the commonalities of the companies that are here. A lunch keynote from the CEO of Corporate Privacy Group, Richard Purcell, former Chief Privacy Officer of Microsoft and chairman of the board of TRUSTe will highlight the middle of the day. Breakout sessions that include discussions on sustainability and poster presentations from Institute of Technology students will occur once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

The South Sound Technology Conference, www.sstconference.org provides a forum that increases the awareness of technology as it impacts our daily personal and professional lives, and even more importantly, the role it can play in the development of our regional economy. The conference charter is to further the continuous growth of technology in the South Sound region and provide information about global technology issues.

Bruce Kendall, CEO of the Economic Development Board of Pierce County will kicks things off with a discussion of entrepreneurship and the economic development of the South Sound Region. The morning panel that follows will pick up the topic with Tacoma entrepreneurs such as Derek Young, Mark Briggs and Brian Forth. Graham Evans of the Washington Technology Center and John Dimmer of the Tacoma Angel Network will talk about funding and innovation.

The afternoon panel will feature companies from the area that represent the data integrity, information assurance and Cybersecurity cluster that is growing in Pierce County. Breakouts will include discussion of how to support that infrastructure and will also give attendees the opportunity to view student research projects at the Institute of Technology.

The yearly event is made possible by the hard work of many volunteers, the generosity of corporate and community sponsorship such as the City of Tacoma, the Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma and GRIDWORK as well as the support of honorary co-chairs Congressman Norm Dicks and Congressman Adam Smith.

For more information, contact conference chair
Andrew Fry - andfry@u.washington.edu - 253-692-4583
To register, go to www.sstconference.org and sign up under the “attending” menu.

Sponsor links
www.gridworkdesign.com
www.cityoftacoma.org
www.tacoma.washington.edu
www.tacoma.washington.edu/tech

Building a Tech Company in Tacoma and the South Sound

2009-10-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

Are you an entrepreneur in the making? Do you have the next big web 2.X idea and just need to fill in the business, finance, marketing, sales and development holes to launch the next Google, Facebook or Serra Media?

Well, your timing is good. Over the next few months there will be plenty of discussion, networking and resources to help you flesh out a business idea, make the necessary contacts and launch your company here in the South Sound.

To whet your appetite you might review the Exit133 post from September on the topic "What is the Condition of Tacoma's Entrepreneurial Ecosystem?"

Also, the Tacoma Angel Network is partnering with six other angel groups for a MIT Enterprise Forum startup demo. You can read about it on the TacomaTechConnect blog.

Plans are in the works for a 72 hour startup weekend in January of next year. If that interests you then talk to me about it at...

Entrepreneurship in the South Sound - Creating Connections

The South Sound Technology Conference, held November 20th in William W. Philip Hall, will start off with a presentation and a panel, both of which you budding entrepreneurs do not want to miss.

Bruce Kendall, CEO of the Pierce County Economic Development Board will talk about entrepreneurship in Tacoma and the development of downtown. His presentation will lead into a panel of professionals, investors and experts that I will moderate.

Brian Forth, SiteCrafting
Graham Evans, Washington Technology Center
John Dimmer - Tacoma Angel Network
Derek Young, Seasonal View
Mark Briggs, Serra Media

Some things of note from this group include:

Sitecrafting continues to grow as a company and recently launched a Spokane office. Brian frequently hosts meet ups and networking events for developers and clients at his company.

Graham will talk about the Washington Innovation Summit which is held annually and next Spring is being hosted by Tacoma.

John Dimmer is an experienced investor and entrepreneur in his own right who is an Entrepreneur on Campus at the University of Oregon and a judge of their business plan competition (as well as my former business partner and high school classmate).

Derek is not only the founder of Exit133 but has recently launched Seasonal Views.

Mark is the former interactive content editor for the News Tribune and author of Journalism 2.0 but is currently building the company he started last year, Serra Media.

Wow. I mean. Come on. Don't you want to hear these folks impart wisdom?

If you do, register for the conference because there are a limited number of spots for the event.

Washington Clean Tech Open Gala

2009-10-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

I have written about the Clean Tech Open before, but as a refresher, here is a blurb that they supply about themselves.

The Clean Tech Open is a catalyst for clean tech innovation. A non-profit organization founded in 2006, it provides today’s clean tech innovators with the tools, training and connections they need to become tomorrow’s viable clean tech businesses. The core of the Clean Tech Open is an annual regional business competition, supported by expert volunteers and mentors, that provides entrepreneurs with the crucial business training, services and insights they need to successfully go to market. The Clean Tech Open has assisted dozens of companies in raising nearly $140M in funding, and spurred the creation of hundreds of jobs in California. Fueled by a network of over 400 volunteers and sponsors, the Clean Tech Open unites the public and private sectors in a shared vision for making America’s clean tech sector a thriving economic engine. Past alumni successes include Adura Technologies, Cool Earth Solar and GreenVolts.

This year was the first in Washington, and 56 companies presented. I know that at least two or three were from the South Sound, though unfortunately none made the finalist list. But, and this is an important but, there is always next year. In fact, it is expected that the Clean Tech folks will be part of the morning breakout session at the SST Conference on November 20th, to discuss Clean Energy and Sustainability. More to the point, how companies and people from around the South Sound can prepare for next years Open.

If you want to know more, they are throwing a gala next week on Thursday the 29th at the ACT Theater in Seattle.

Here is more info on that:

Join us at the ACT Theatre in Seattle for the culmination of the first Pacific Northwest Clean Tech Open business competition where we will celebrate the region's most promising clean technology companies and announce the three 2009 Regional Finalists. The three Regional Finalists will have been selected from an initial pool of 56 companies who entered the competition in May 2009. Each will receive a prize package consisting of cash and in-kind services, and all will continue on to compete against finalists from other Clean Tech Open regions for a national prize of $250,000!

Attendees have the chance to speak with the semi-finalists and meet other key regional players in the clean tech industry at a networking reception with drinks and hors d'oeuvres in the elegant Bullitt Cabaret. Enjoy the keynote presentation by a featured leader in the Clean Tech industry, hear from Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire, learn more about the Clean Tech Open's plans for 2010, and join us in enthusiastically recognizing our Regional Finalists as we send them off to the National Competition!

Catching Up with Mark Briggs

2009-10-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

Mark Briggs, co-founder and CEO of Serra Media stopped by my class yesterday and gave a number of interesting updates on what has been going on in his life since leaving his position of editor of interactive news for Tacoma News Tribune.

Serra Media continues to grow its customer base even in a down economy. They have not only added several newspapers who are running their "Newsgarden" solution, but have also expanded into crowdsourcing information for shopping deals.

Newsgarden is a social news mapping platform that helps newspapers build community and creates new markets online for them. Already in use by several Washington city papers as well as the Cedar Rapids Gazette, it is being trialed by many others with the potential for a significant increase anticipated.

And as is the case in entrepreneurship and launching a new company, an opportunity presented itself to leverage their platform for a distinctly different use. In a chance meeting with a columnist and blogger from the LA Times, Serra Media was able to create TownLuxe for the Bargain Babe LA site. Bargain Babe Media partnered with Serra Media in July to launch a destination for local bargain hunters to share deals and other shopping insights with local shoppers in the Los Angeles area. There are more locations on tap to launch the TownLuxe solution.

You may be familiar with Mark from his earlier work on both evangelizing the need for newspaper reporters to adopt more interactive and web based reporting tools. He began teaching some web basics, exploring and commenting on the use of blogs and social media tools such as Twitter as speaking on the topics. This led him to write the book and launch the blog Journalism 2.0 - How to Survive and Thrive.. The book has been a success and has been downloaded over 100,000 times in PDF format.

He has a new book out, which will be available for purchase in November of this year called Journalism Next: A Practical Guide to Digital Reporting and Publishing. This book is geared more as a teaching text and I wish him the same success as his first title.

Mark still lives in Tacoma and commented on Exit133 the other day that he wished there were more developer and entrepreneur meet ups here in the South Sound.

We will cover that topic in greater detail on November 20th as he has joined the panelists discussing "Entrepreneurship in the South Sound" at the SST Conference held in William Philip Hall on the UWT Campus. More on that panel at a later date.

APWG eCrime Summit in Tacoma

2009-10-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

eCrime is the internationally focused topic of discussion next week in Tacoma and the discussion has never been more timely. (Check out Mount Rainier in the background of the graphic). Here is a few words from a recent Anti Phishing Work Group report that came across the Reuters news network.

I found it timely as I received to phishing emails today in my inbox. One from a poorly formatted "B a n k of America" site and one from an online payment company. Both bogus of course.

LOS ALTOS, Calif. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(Business Wire)--

The APWG`s latest Phishing Activity Trends Report illustrates electronic crime`s innovation and apparently unchecked ambition with new records being reached for such felonious instrumentation as rogue anti-virus software, phishing websites
and crimeware designed to target financial institutions` customers.

The APWG H1, 2009 report found that the numbers of detected rogue anti-malware programs, fake security software that actually infects computers to animate assorted electronic crimes, grew 585 percent between January and the end of June 2009.

Some of the more interesting data points from the report.

Highlights of the H1, 2009 Phishing Activity Trends Report include:

● Unique phishing reports submitted to APWG recorded a high of 37,165 in May, around 7 per cent higher than last year`s high of 34,758 in October.

●The number of unique phishing websites detected in June rose to 49,084, the highest recorded since April, 2007`s record of 55,643.

● The number of banking trojan/password-stealing crimeware infections detected increased during more than 186 percent between Q4, 2008 and Q2, 2009.

● The total number of infected computers rose more than 66 percent between Q4 2008 and the end of the half, 2009 to 11,937,944 - now more than 54 percent of the total sample of scanned computers.

● Payment Services became phishing`s most targeted sector, displacing Financial Services in Q1 & Q2.

So with all this going on, what are we going to do about it. How can we combat it or even keep it in check. These important discussions are going to take place in a city that is active in industry supporting data integrity and information assurance and educational institutions doing research and education to promote cyber security awareness and defense.

Tacoma

As the report concludes.

Those members and researchers from around the world will be considering the results of the H1, 2009 report at the eCrime Congress | Tacoma on Oct. 19-21, a three-day event that combines the APWG`s General Members` Meeting (member-restricted) on the 19th and the eCrime Researchers Summit on the 20th and 21st, (open to the public) a peer-reviewed research conference on electronic crime that the APWG holds annually in conjunctions with the IEEE Standards Association.

Note that there is an open to the public segment on the 20th and 21st.

Barbara Endicott-Popovski, one of the adjunct faculty at the Institute and the Director of the Center of Information Assurance and Cybersecurity at the University of Washington will be on the panel and many of the Institute students and faculty will be in attendance.

Our friends at Internet Identity were an instrumental part of getting this conference here and putting it on.

Show People do "Curtains" at the TMP

2009-10-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

photos by Kat Dollarhide

I am excited to be heading into the second weekend of performances for Curtains, at the Tacoma Musical Playhouse. The musical is set in 1959 Boston, Massachusetts and follows the murder investigation of cast and crew when Jessica Crenshaw, the supremely untalented star of "Robbin' Hood of the Old West", dies during her opening night curtain call. Making things more interesting is the clever and competent detective in charge of the case, Lt Frank Cioffi, who is just as interested in seeing the musical succeed (while falling for a young starlet) as he is in solving the case.

This is an ensemble piece and the cast is full of great characters and talent. I have worked with almost every member of the cast before on other shows and am having a wonderful time working with them here. In "Curtains" there are two stories playing out at once, the show within the show, "Robbin Hood", which has been savaged by critics and in need of a work over, and the whodunnit of the murder. Highlights from "Robbin Hood" feature some great dance numbers including amazing young talent in numbers like "Thataway" and "Kansasland".

Anyone and everyone who was part of the curtain call of in the first scene of "Curtains" finale of "Robbin Hood" is a suspect, including the Producers of the show Carmen and Sidney Bernstein, the backer Oscar Shapiro (me), the esteemed director Christopher Belling, the once married song writing team of Aaron Fox and Georgia Hendricks, the stage manager Johnny Harmon or any of the cast members, including lead dancer and choreographer Bobby Pepper and starlets in waiting, Niki Harris and Bambi Bernet. To make matters worse, they have to contend with horrible opening night reviews, including one from the Darryl Grady of the Boston Globe, and an intrusive investigation led by Det. Frank Cioffi

Sooooo... quick lists
These are the actors playing the roles mentioned above. To give a sense of how theater people build friendships and connections I am listing (guaranteed incomplete) shows that I have done with them in the past.

Carmen Bernstein : Karen Christensen (vocal powerhouse)
Babes in Arms
The Phantom Tollbooth
A Musical Mystery Dinner

Sidney Bernstein : Darrel Shephard
This is my first time working with Darrel but I love what he is doing.

Oscar Shapiro : Andrew Fry
This guy is hot or cold depending, but I have done every show with him.

Christopher Belling : Jon Douglas Rake
Radio City Music Halls - A Christmas Carol
Jon is the artistic director of TMP so many shows directed by.

Aaron Fox : Gregory Conn
South Pacific
The Producers

Georgia Hendricks : Heather Malroy
Pinocchio (I was the Fox, she was the Cat) great song.

Johnny Harmon : Chris Serface
The Wind in the Willows (I was a Toad, he was a Rat)
My Fair Lady
The Phantom Tollbooth (he directed)
The Producers

Bobby Pepper : John Huddlestun
Urinetown
My One and Only

Niki Harris : Ashley Coates
The Producers
My One and Only

Bambi Bernét : Hailey Hays
The Producers

Daryl Grady : John Miller
South Pacific

LT Frank Cioffi : Mark Rake-Marona
The Boys From Syracuse
The Fabulous Fable Factory
Urinetown
My One and Only

And for good measure:

Randy Dexter : John Hunstman who sings "Kansasland"
Big River

So when we sing "Show People", pictured above, early in the first act, I am certain we all relate to the sentiment and to the experience working with each other throughout the song.

It is an honor and a joy.

One challenge I was concerned with at the first rehearsal was that many of the scenes take place on the stage as simply that, the stage. The set is the stage we are on and when you are used to rehearsing with set pieces it can throw you off the top. But it didn't take long to accept it as the stage in Boston in 1959 where the previews of Robbin Hood were being held.

When they rehearse the numbers from the show, the set pieces reflect those of the show within the show, and I have heard a number of comments from folks who have seen the show that they were impressed and entertained by them. But then, "who doesn't love red."

There is also a scene played behind makeshift curtains, which is a hoot to say the least. Here is a picture.

Prior to that, Jeffrey Stvrtecky, who along with being musical director and orchestra conductor, plays Sasha Iljinsky, a character in the show. The audience last Sunday loved him.

As for going to a show. You cannot beat a live orchestra, and once again the folks in the pit at the TMP do a engaging, wonderful job.

Getting Back to Blogging

2009-10-06T10:37:00.000-07:00

It is amazing how transitory technology solutions are. The minute you think one has made itself a permanent nest in the online ecosystem something else comes along and tramples the habitat.

Friendster was the early winner in social networks, to be eclipsed by MySpace, which was pushed to the side (not entirely) by Facebook, which is making interface changes based on the surge of Twitter users. LinkedIn looks to be in a sturdy spot, but there are online business relationship and connection social networks hoping to get traction.

And with all of this, there is the real world as well.

In that real world, my class Living and Working has started up again, and it is time to reduce the FaceTwittering that has taken up the little online time that I have had, and time get back to blog posting. There have been opportunities to post no doubt. I have been sent articles and emails with suggestions that have been interesting and on target, but my momentum was stalled this Summer with many diversions.

So, expect more. Whether it is a discourse on the power that Twitter users have over the companies that hire marketers to listen in on comments or upcoming conferences such as the international eCrime Conference taking place in Tacoma on Oct 19th. Back to blogging.

Do The Puyallup

2009-09-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

Heading out to the fair today with the family. Always fun. Two years ago in September I posted a piece on the Puyallup Fair and the Syracuse State Fair, with the lyrics to "Do the Puyallup at the end. Now around this time of the year, I get many visits looking for the song, so I am reposting the lyrics to the song below.

"Do the Puyallup"
musics and lyrics by Saxon Rawlings, (slogan by Denny Hinton)

Oh you can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup.

All the people and the animals down at the fair,
They do the Puyallup like they didn’t have a care
And it looks like so much fun to do
I think I’m gonna learn how to do it too.

I saw a duck and a chicken down by the farm,
A kickn' up the hay and a raisn' such a storm,
That I asked the farmer what they were up to
and he said "Puyallup, That's what they do."

You can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup.

Asked the farmer if he’d show me how to do it
And he said "why son their ain’t nothin to it.
Just move to the music and jump in the air
Like everyone else who comes to the fair"

You can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup

You can do it in the rain or the sun or the fog
It comes real easy like rolling off a log
Get a partner from Tacoma or Seattle or Fife
Even let you do it with your husband or wife.

It’s a natural thing there isn’t any doubt
Folks do it while they’re sittin’ or walkin’ about
While over on the midway on the merry go round
Kids are doin it in circles going up and down.

Now it don’t matter if it’s rain or shine
When you do the Puyallup you have a good time
So guys grab get gals and gals grab a fellow
If you’re worried ’bout the rain just bring an umbrella.

You can do it with a mouth full of cotton candy
Caramel apples, salt water taffy
Hot dogs, hamburgers, man oh man
Hot buttered scones with strawberry jam

I do the Puyallup cause it feels real neat
Put a smile on my face and a tickle in my feet
Ain’t no way not to do it right
You can do it all day and into the night

you can do it at a trot,
You can do it at a gallop,
You can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate.
Just don't be late.

Do the Puyallup

Do the Puyallup

Do the Puyallup

The Upcoming South Sound Technology Conference 2009

2009-09-11T11:31:00.001-07:00

If you haven't done so yet, save the date of November 20 for an all day event covering companies and technology in the South Sound. As the program builds out with final details, I will post them here and they will be available on the website for the event at www.sstconference.org.

We have one keynoter set and I have previously discussed the panel and discussion that will be occurring in regards to identifying a promotable cluster of companies in the South Puget Sound based on some commonalities.

First off, if you are unaware, the annual South Sound Technology Conference is the technology showcase for Tacoma and the South Puget Sound region. For years it has brought together leaders from industry, education, and government, both locally and from around the state, to discuss and demonstrate innovations and ongoing applications which utilize technology. Panel and keynote presentations, including networking opportunities, provide a venue to discuss, explore, understand and deploy technology as a solution, an opportunity and an advantage. SST is perhaps this region's best annual event to learn how technology is transforming our business and community life.

Keynoting at the event will be Richard Purcell, CEO of the Corporate Privacy Group. Here is some bio information taken from their site.

Richard Purcell ranks among the original Chief Privacy Officers in the United States. He created the position at Microsoft in the late ‘90’s, becoming a leading voice in addressing consumer privacy and data protection, domestically and internationally.

As Microsoft’s privacy officer, Mr. Purcell designed, developed, implemented and oversaw one of the world’s largest and most advanced privacy programs, spanning software development, web deployment, infrastructure management, workforce management, and consumer data handling practices. He developed and monitored a distributed team of privacy managers throughout the corporation and its global subsidiaries. Mr. Purcell was a leading advocate of the Platform for Privacy Preferences, or P3P, publicly committing Microsoft’s support in 2000 and working closely with the Internet Explorer development team on incorporating the specification into IE v6.

In 2003, Mr. Purcell left Microsoft to form Corporate Privacy Group, an independent privacy consulting firm focused on establishing sustainable, affordable privacy programs in corporations, agencies and institutions. Privacy Directions™, a training curriculum for corporations designed to institutionalize privacy awareness, practices, and compliance throughout their organizations is a notable early offering.

Mr. Purcell serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for TRUSTe, an independent trust authority for privacy on the Web. Mr. Purcell was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee in 2005. Mr. Purcell advises Fortune 100 corporations, leads privacy training seminars, and lectures extensively.

He is a former member of the Int'l Association of Privacy Professionals, or IAPP, and on their Advisory Board for Privacy Certification. Mr. Purcell is an IAPP-certified information privacy professional. He is a founding member of the Conference Board's Council of Chief Privacy Officers. He served on the Federal Trade Commission's Advisory Committee on Online Access and Security.

Here is a recent interview that he held with the folks at NYMITY.

End of the Quarter Colloquium at the Institute

2009-08-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked the end of the Summer quarter at the UWT and consequently the end of quarter colloquium for the Institute. Undergraduate students who conducted independent reading, research or internship present on their findings and experiences. Graduate students give updates, findings and the occasional final defense of a thesis or capstone event.

These presentations are open to all, but up until the present are generally attended by mostly other students and faculty. Summer can be tough on attendance because there are no other courses taught in the Computer Science or Computer engineering programs. That means a lesser number of students and faculty present on campus.

Too bad, as there were some excellent and informative presentations given. A graduate student presented on research into algorithms for measuring authority on Twitter, a group of students discussed a project in which they were building a social network infrastructure to support dietary tracking and an undergraduate doing research on 3D rendering models for re-contructive surgery announced his project was selected for presentation at a US medical conference.

I tweeted on some of the proceedings, which you can find at Droid16 on Twitter or over in the sidebar here.

MSL Bridge Building with Marshmallows

2009-08-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

I had the honor of judging a bridge building competition today. The eighth grade contingent of the Math, Science and Leadership program at the Institute were asked to build bridge structures using toothpicks and mini marshmallows. The bridges then had to withstand several books being piled on top one after the other until the structure collapsed. When they had used all the books from the set they had bought, a water jug was used to additional heft.

Bridges were judged not only on how well they withstood the pressure, but also for original design and efficiency in the use of the materials. The one bridge which stood the longest was reinforced many times over with additional toothpicks and many mini marshmallows. The structure which ultimately was judged the best was constructed out of a lattice of pyramids reversed on themselves.

Cindy from the business school was the other judge, and it we independently were in agreement on all of our picks.

Well done eighth graders.

Barcamping at Suite 133

2009-08-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

Got here a little early than many this morning and it was enjoyable walking the quiet streets of Tacoma on my way to Suite 133.

Around 25 people signed up to attend the first Barcamp (the software developers unconference) and by 9:45am most if not all had arrived. I signed up for the 11:30am time slot and will be talking about "The South Sound Tech Universe."

The first session was a discussion of how one might bootstrap a software offering or idea into a sustainable business. Not one that makes the huge dollar, but one that can sustain with a handful of employees. Mike did a great job of conveying the basic ideas to address and the desire to be an entrepreneur.

Next up, Marguerite gave an enthusiastic presentation on branding, prospecting and personal image and how to leverage blogging and twitter.

The time for my presentation came quickly and to bribe my way to a bigger audience I offered a map of the Puget Sound Tech Universe to one of the attendees. The presentation time allotted came and went fast. Before the day began I wondered if I would get tired or bored. No way and no time to do so as the presentations came fast and furious one after the other.

Erik Hanberg gave an excellent talk on entrepreneurship in technology and business building recommendations. As you may have discerned, I did not go the tech track so much as the business track. But if the presentation in Foo room was too business oriented for you, you could also head over to the Bar room.

All and all a successful first iteration of Barcamp for Tacoma. I imagine another will be forthcoming in Winter.

A Visit to Northrup Grumman

2009-08-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

As I have been going about creating a list of software and technology companies in the South Puget Sound, I have also been able to visit a few. So far (with the help from a couple of excellent MSL interns) I have identified around 70 companies. Some of them have changed names. Examples include TUI Consulting, which was bought by Axon Solutions Inc. and still hosts a number of SAP folks here, and just recently Sagem Morpho, one of the states biggest technology companies, which became even bigger through a merger with Printrak, and now goes by MorphoTrak.

Some of the companies are small shops of two to four people.

Some you are likely well aware of if you live near Tacoma, such as Intel in Dupont and Topia Technology which is headquartered downtown.

But it wasn't until recently that I was aware that such a large contingent of Northrup Grumman computer and environmental scientists existed here in Pierce County. They have been operating here since 1983, and have been specializing in the development of environmental software since 1993.

The Northrup Grumman Corporation itself is a global defense and technology company with 120,000 employees worldwide. The branch located in Lakewood, WA, has been growing slowly over the last several years and when I met with their site manager, Bruce Sisco, in June, they were up to 50 people.

As of this week when I visited their offices in Lakewood, they are now up to 51, with the latest hire being an alumnus from the Computer Science program here at the Institute of Technology at the UWT. What is more, they are intent on growing over the next few years and may even double in size.

Their vision is to provide effective tools to Government and the private sector for prediction of impacts caused by environmental events. If some of their public sector solutions for environmental event prediction gain traction I can see them having an even larger footprint.

Here is a description of the software and solutions they are developing.

Environmental Decision Tool (EDT): The EDT is our initiative for a family of software products that exhibit our vision to provide effective tools for prediction of impacts resulting from environmental events. The EDT can tailored to provide solutions for:

Flood Protection
Coastal Protection
Surface Transportation
Utilities
Health & Safety
Recreation
Fire Fighting
Oil Spills
Others

The EDT provides decision-makers with situational awareness and a forecast of the environmental impacts on infrastructure, facilities, equipment, agriculture and people from the combined effects of weather, hydrology, and other natural causes. The EDT expedites the analysis of multi-source, multidisciplinary, complex data sets and equips the decision-maker with the required information. The EDT delivers innovative, ergonomically sound information displays to identify environmental impacts.

I enjoyed my tour of their facilities and the software development and testing labs. I was familiar with the area their building was located in because I worked in a restaurant across the street from them back, back, WAY back, when I was in high school. However the address is about to change, as they are moving to bigger quarters in the near future in order to accommodate their growth.

I look forward to more visibility of the company, building a closer relationship with the Institute and their development efforts in the future.

Former Institute Grad and Faculty Member Earn Cover Story

2009-07-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

If you are in the computer industry or in computer science education then you are familiar with the "Communications of the ACM". If you are not, it is a highly respected publication read world wide. Aside from the 90,000 members of the ACM who receive each issue, it is read by many more non-members as well.

Here is a snippet of how the publication describes itself:

Communications of the ACM is the leading print and online publication for the computing and information technology fields. Read by computing professionals worldwide, Communications is recognized as the most trusted and knowledgeable source of industry information for today’s computing professional.

So it is quite an accolade that former Institute of Technology Computing and Software Systems graduate student Kristin Shinohara and Institute Faculty member Josh Tenenberg landed the cover spot and are a featured article in the August 2009 edition. Kristin is now a Ph.D. Student in the Information School of the University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Professor Josh Tenenberg has been teaching and conducting research at the Institute of Technology at the University of Washington, Tacoma, for many years. He has recently been interested in Computer Ethics, Social Informatics, Human-Computer Interaction Design, Commons Governance, and Computer Science Education. Just this last year he started an Industry Partners co-teaching program that brought one of Google's Human Interface Design experts into the classroom for a quarter to share the course.

The article comes from the capstone project that Kristen was working on to complete her degree with the support and sponsorship of Josh, who was the faculty Chair. The focus was on a blind person's interaction with technology and is described nicely by the publication as follows:

One of the most effective methods for designing technologies for blind users is to observe how they interact with tools that are part of their daily lives, say Kristen Shinohara and Josh Tenenberg in this month's cover story (see page 58). The findings illustrate how elements of meaning can be as important as usability in the design of technology. In fact, their article inspired this month's cover image – a Braille representation of a quote by Helen Keller: "It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision."

If you would like to read the article, here is a link to it online, as well as a link to the entire publication.

A Blind Person's Interaction with Technology

Communications of the ACM

Congratulations to the both of them.