How do internet systems, the world wide web, online social networks, databases and client server technologies serve relationships and the arts? What are the consequences of putting so much data about ourselves onto the web, and how can we manage the impression and information that is given out?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have given the gift of a named star from the International Star Registry for someone. I have seen my name on a brick, or a plaque or a wall that commemorates an event or a donation or a campaign. These are crumbs that we leave which provide one of the trails that can be followed as a path back through our lives. (sounds like the catch phrase of a bad soap opera). We vainly attempt to affix ourselves to a place, as though we believe that any place has permanence.
But time is immemorial. (according to Wikipedia, "Time immemorial is a phrase meaning time extending beyond the reach of memory, record, or tradition. The implication is that the subject referred to is, or can be regarded as, indefinitely ancient."
Wow. I want a piece of that. I want my moment in time.
Certainly you can have a "place" in history. Perhaps you were lucky enough to have bought a pixel set from the "Million Dollar Home Page". Alex Tew sold pixels from a 1,000,000 pixel page for one dollar each and paid for his college education (and a few pints no doubt). But because it is finite, there are only so many people or companies that could have made their mark. Alex hit his goal, but now what?
I bought the Tacoma Dome for 18 dollars back in 2007 at www.dollaranacre.com. Nice. Dollar an Acre has sold online acreage around the world on a virtual map of the globe. However, my property value has not gone up over these last two years and no one really seems to care that I have laid claim of ownership to this digital representation.
So when will my moment come?
I could hope for the Governor to send out a proclamation that today is "Andrew Fry Day", but I would have to somehow earn that. Not happening any time soon.
If only there was a way for me to publicly claim that day for myself. (or to be less self centered, claim it for someone else in the hope that they will then claim one for me in return)
Well, set your watches. My first moment will arrive tomorrow on Minutaur. Minutaur is a new site that allows for you to purchase moments, days, weeks and months, which thanks to Elliot Trotter, will allow just about anyone to have their moment. How cool is THAT!
Concerned that they may have already sold out? Is their any time left? The brilliance of Minutaur is that time doesn't run out. OK, in certain cases, such as basketball games and McGruber episodes on SNL, time does run out. But there is always more time on the way, whether we are here for it or not!
This is usually the part of my post that I lazily cut and past information from the site I am talking about to give more information. But with Elliot's talent you can expect no less than a video segment explaining the site. So I will lazily embed the video.
Here is even more from Elliot:
The concept for Minutaur arose from discussions about how human beings connect and chronicle their lives. Time and memories play a major role in how we humans view the world, and beyond electronic or physical photo albums, there really wasn't a great way to connect a specific moment with a specific memory and to share it with the world. We tied that with the novelty of making it YOUR OFFICIAL TIME as a way to digitally commemorate your memory. That idea came in part from from looking at services that let you name a star in the sky for a loved one, and get a certificate to make it official. We figured, why not do that with time? Why couldn't 2009 be the year of Andrew Fry, or June the Official Month of the Google, or 6 am on May 5th, 1986 be my official moment of birth?
Though they sell time at Minutaur, they are also a social networking site. In this case they are creating connections between people based on events and shared moments instead of likes and dislikes.
And though time is fleeting, you can always get a certificate to commemorate your moment in time.
In August of 2005, Tim O’Reilly, technology publisher extraordinaire invited 250 of his friends to join him for a day of activities that would allow them to get to know each other better and to “hopefully come up with some cool ideas about how to change the world.” The idea was to have people who are doing interesting work share it with others. Interesting in this case meaning the topics of web services, data visualization, opening source programming and data security among other things.
This had been going on for about three years by 2005, and was a pretty exclusive event. Those that were not invited, but were also doing interesting things decided that they could organize a similar opportunity, make it open to anyone interested in explaining why they were interesting and garner enough interest in the event to fill it. It was a success and in answer to the O’Rielly event, named “FooCamp”, it became known as “BarCamp” in a gesture toward its tech geek roots. It is also known as an “unconference” because it shapes itself on the day of the event and speakers present in half hour slots on a first come/first served basis. Chris Messina’s idea was an unqualified success and the occasion for BarCamps has increased in number and venues.
If you were interested and had heard of BarCamp over the last few years, it would have likely been one somewhere in Seattle or on the East Side.
That was until this August 8th at the Suite 133 offices. Thanks to Scott Kuehn, Michael Maitlen, Jamie Paulson and Robert Peaslee (and Jen, but I don’t know her last name) an open invitation to participate and interact is available to the Tacoma set. You DO NOT have to be a tech geek to participate. Perhaps your interest is in marketing or art or economic development. If you are willing to speak, you are welcome to the event.
Open at 9:00am with presentations starting at 10:00am, the event will go until 5:00pm. Coffee is your friend. Perhaps we will all get to know each other better and come up with some cool ideas to change the world, the state, the county, or maybe Tacoma.
Jamie has demoted himself to having only known about the event early on, and given the sign up sheet so far, I am going to guess that Jen is in fact Jennifer Halverson Kuehn.
The topics and participants to date can be found on the attendance page.
I went down to Starbucks for an iced tea today and it was reasonably crowded. I left the store and was headed back down Pacific and around to the office when I noticed the new furniture in Tollefson Plaza.
Having once before entered into "the space that wants things to happen there", I decided to take advantage of the additions and try them out. One of the things that concerned me from a distance was that it appeared to be several separate small patio furniture-like pieces, which might easily be picked up, thrown into the back of a truck and hauled away.
Not the case. Not that someone foolish and determined couldn't do it, but these chairs and tables are more than meet the eye. When I pulled back a chair to sit down I was surprised by it's heft. It is one solid piece of movable sitting space. I then took hold of the table and sure enough, though not anchored it was incredibly dense and heavy. Good. I also noticed that there was a large chain link and lock around the base, so that if several of these pieces are locked together, they are not going anywhere.
So onto the sitting experience. First off, it is a beautiful day, which helps. I didn't sit under any of the umbrellas because the sun felt good. Believe it or not, there was a bit of activity all around, and it was not that close to lunch time either.
There were a couple other people who wanted their own little corners of Tollefson to themselves, but if they had wanted to come join me I would have been all for it. "Come on over here person that I don't know", I wanted to yell, "Share this chair and table with me". I chose not to because I liked that they were using the Plaza and didn't want to scare them off.
The car traffic, which cuts off one side of the park, was actually a simple diversion. People walked back and forth from both sides of the street, with some bus traffic from the stops as well. And then, every few minutes, the Link would rumble by in either direction.
All and all, I liked having the table and chairs there. Sure, you can sit on the steps or the grass, but that feels like improvisation. The chair clearly beckons and the table top allowed for me to set my tea down on occasion. A man, walking away from me across the plaza, let a paper cup drop from his hand to the concrete. Traffic noise probably kept him from hearing me yell, "pick it up...!" plus an identifier as to who I was speaking to, so I just picked it up myself on the way out.
A couple more obvious trash receptacles would be nice.
Also, how about something spraying UP from the fountains. From where I was sitting you don't see any water feature. Something to plunge into, a'la a refreshing Tollefson Ice Tea.
