Team Name

Our team at work finally has a name.

Naming groups of people in large organizations is not pleasant.

You go through acronym gymnastics trying to make clever things work. We had one acronym based name that someone's wife pointed out could also be spelled O-FACE (Office Space reference). We tried to use a metaphor, but sadly, those are hard to get past HR.

Our team is a bit of a Skunk Works, but we didn't want our name to make it appear like we aren't focused on providing business value.

Our name is:

Premium Innovation

That is about as much zip as you are going to get past upper management and HR at my company. For those not in the insurance industry, 'Premium' is synonymous with 'Revenue'. So it is a bit of a double entendre. We are focused on writing software and implementing systems that will have a very high impact on the bottom line. Putting the word 'premium' in the name is supposed to convey that. The second meaning means that we are premium software/system engineers (of course!). The 'innovation' bit is of course corporate, but it is better then "solutions" or something. And the truth is, we are going to be doing a lot of innovating (or at least that is the plan).

So there you have it.

Please don't ridicule the name - I simply can't bare it after going through 20 different ones the past month! ;)

Now of course there must be an acronym - this is corporate America. Don't quite know what it will be ... PI (like 3.14)? P.I. (Magnum!). PIT (Premium Innovation Team).

Time will tell ...

Rainbow

I'd just like to point out that Rainbow Sandals kick butt.

I prefer Double Leathers.

I'm going to go creep around my neighborhood wearing mine. They are 3 years old and they are magnificent.

Fish

Last week I caught this redside Trout on the Deschutes

It was pretty wild - we fished this back eddy and didn't see much. As we hiked out we were on a ledge and had a great view above the river. Below we could see 2 large trout. I hiked back down with our guide, Jakob Lund and my dad and our guide to the Warm Springs reservation (Toot) stayed above.

My dad and Toot told us where the fish was and I casted to it. The fish started moving up river and we thought he was gone. But then he circled back and swam towards me. With my dad and Toot's frantic directions from above I saw the fish. I casted to it again and he slurped up my dry fly. He put up a good fight and we released him after this pic.

Lots of fun.

Elemental Links - New Age Analyst

Brenda Michelson is starting her own analyst firm: Elemental Links .

I don't know her personally, just a blog colleague. I stumbled across a good paper on Event Driven Architecture (EDA) that she wrote a few months ago and I started reading her blog.

I really dig the fact that she is going to be a "transparent" analyst.

I have always been troubled by the transparency problem with IT Industry analysts. It is far too easy for analysts to have conflict of interest problems when they have clients on both sides of the fence. This is a problem when readers of the research do not know which vendors are also clients of the analyst / who funded the research they are reading (and perhaps basing vendor short lists on thinking that it is objective).

Kudos to Brenda for being transparent. We won't have to guess what her natural biases are (after all, we all have them). I hope that this becomes the norm with IT Industry analysts.

And Brenda, please make a point to always review an OSS alternative when researching software (given your track record in this area, I doubt this will be a problem). And if you don't think there is a credible OSS alternative, state why. This is another curious issue with non-transparent analyst firms. Too often viable OSS alternatives to proprietary software are not reviewed or even mentioned in research.

This is not an endorsement by my employer, but my personal view. Vendors are NOT free to quote with attribution to my employer.

Wireless Addiction

I'm with Roger Simon sadly. The house we rented in Sunriver (and all the others apparently) had a wireless network.

I also had my Blackberry "for emergencies".

The good news is I didn't get too behind on email. That is the bad news too.

With WiFi, wireless will be everywhere. Someday soon, it will be next to impossible to "disconnect".

Roger says it well:

But I fear for our future. As information intrudes everywhere, it will become harder and harder to find peace - unless we find it in ourselves... not always an easy thing.

Although I love technology and love the "connected" world, I liked the physical boundaries that used to exist when it came to vacation.

On a Bender

I'm going dark for a while ...

I'll be in Bend.

I will be kicking it with the family, having cold ones, mountain biking, hiking, fly fishing, and trying to resist learning more about Ruby.

Open-Source people in their natural habitats

Tim Bray knows stuff:

I think Carr’s problem is that he doesn’t actually see Open-Source people in their natural habitats; he was at OSBC but not OSCON. The practice of OSS software has two drivers that matter: the community of peers, and the urge to scratch a technical itch. If you don’t understand that, you’ll never understand anything important about OSS.

I very briefly met Tim at OSCON.

I made a "I really respect your music" type comment to him. He was all, "hey thanks - who are you?".

The "I really respect your music" line originated in college. I was studying in Europe and attending a Phish/Santana show in Rome. Phish opened for Santana. When Phish finished their set, they came and hung out with the crowd (mostly a bunch of American college idiots like myself). Trey Anastasio (then Phish's lead singer) came by and I said, "Hey man, I really respect your music." (like a total blubbering idiot). Trey responded:

7 second pause, "hey, um ... thanks?". And then he left.

I have a way with words, what can I say.

Are Standards Becoming Barriers to Innovation?

+1 for Stefan Tilkov who +1's Sam Ruby.

Stefan Tilkov says:

The industry as a whole has become so dependent on abstractions that they’re used without regards for their benefit.

Sam Ruby says:

The link is the glue that holds the web together. It is what differentiates the web from protocols like ftp that merely serve as access methods for documents. The very notion of a link has become practically inexpressible and virtually unthinkable in the vernacular of SOA.

And I say, "standards" are becoming the enemy. They used to be the best option out there to defend against lock in. Now I fear that (at least in the integration space) standards are being abused to create barriers to entry and barriers to innovation. Every 6 months there is a new consortium, a new set of specifications, a new media blitz. Perhaps I’m just jaded or naive, but I believe in the future where open systems result in ex post facto standards. Standards should result when there is a ground swell of support from integration practitioners for some person’s or vendor’s open innovation – not from some theoretical agreement from vendors.

09-AUG-06 Updated with fixed name for Stefan Tilkov :O)

Stumptown within 100 yards

There is new coffee house within 100 yards of my humble abode that serves Stumptown Coffee

I am an espresso addict and Stumptown is pretty much unbeatable in terms of "for shits-sake that is good" coffee.

This tricked-out coffee house named "Sip & Kranz" just opened. They:

1. Have Stumptown Coffee
2. Were professionally trained by Stumptown barristas
3. Have a kids room for my darling daughter to play in while I take espresso baths
4. Have Icelandic decor

I had my first cappuccino there this morning and it was as good as at a real Stumptown.

Needless to say, I'll be making many many stops there on my walk to work going forward.

Oh look, a better review then mine.

What does this have to do with EDA or Open Source you ask? What do you think gives me the fuel to yammer on about that stuff. Espresso is extremely important.

Later Bendy

Had a cold one with my original boss at LM. He is off to start his own digital textile printing business.

He was one of my favorite managers because he trusted me and turned me loose to do stuff. And he is smart & really engaged. I like the smart ones, mostly ...

Anyway, will miss you Bendy.

Good luck in your endeavor. Hope you sent that email ...

Ruby Blocks

I commented on how I think Ruby Blocks are pretty sweet to my friend Erik and he responded:

come on dude, you sure you wouldn't rather type:

File f = null;

try
{
    f = File.open("/tmp/bs");
    //do-stuff
}
catch(IOException ioe)
{
    //die!
}
finally
{
    if(null != f)
    {
        try
        {
            f.close();
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            //eat-it
        }
    }
}

than:

File.open("/tmp/bs") { |file| //do stuff }

(that's my favorite example btw)

Yeah, so I like blocks better then the above ;)

Learning Ruby

I am embarrassed to say that I don't know Ruby. I've hacked together shell scripts, done some Perl, but don't yet have any experience yet with Ruby.

Looks like my team may be using a bit of it, so I'm going to start learning it.

Just returned from Powells Technical Books (best bookstore flat out) with a Ruby book. They were all out of them at OSCON, but still happily gave me the OSCON 35% discount. I didn't have my badge from OSCON on me, but I did have a Mozilla Firefox T-shirt on so they believed that I'm a hacker.

Upon the recommendation of my friend Erik, I bought Dave Thomas' Programming Ruby.

I'll let you know what I think as I learn. I know a lot of people who I respect who dig Ruby. I'm assuming I will as well. I doubt I will turn into a Java basher though (like a lot of the Ruby on Rails crowd), but one never knows.

OSCON - Eben Moglen

My friends I was with at OSCON all ditched out on the Eben Moglen keyote at the end of the conference.

Their loss.

Eben is wicked smart and is doing very important work. The OSS community is lucky to have such able & passionate legal counsel.

While I don't always agree with the Free Software Foundation, I'm sure glad they are there.

OSCON = Exhausted

Well, another OSCON is coming to an end.

It has been great. I am exhausted. If there was any doubt, I am now completely 100% washed up. I went out Monday, Tues, Wed. Last night especially. Monday, went out with a crew to the Portland City Grill. Tuesday, different crew - different restaurant. Last night was insane. Went to the Jive Software, OTBC, OSL party which was insane. Met Matt Raible. That gentleman is insane (in a good way). Also Bill Lynch from Jive. Also insane.

The sessions have been pretty good, although they have the annoying habbit of putting 2-3 sessions I want to attend all in the same time slot & then having none in the next, but all and all good show.

I met / listened to some of my favorite bloggers in sessions:

• Matt Asay
• Tim Bray
• Simon Phipps

I was pretty impressed with a Sun session I went to. As I said in May, I think they are starting to come back. Now I have nothing against Ruby, but this session was a breath of fresh air as the Sun dudes were wicked smart and thoughtful. Some in the Ruby crowd (while also smart) are not so thoughtful.

OSCON Day 1

Busy day.

I was at the office at 7:30 AM PST for a ccall and then at OSCON for Businesses Partnering with Open Source Communities: Opportunities, Perils, and Pitfalls at 8:30 AM.

It was pretty good. Didn't tell me anything I didn't really already know, but good reinforcement and looks like the handouts have some good articles I have not read.

It reinforced my belief that industry and acadamia need each other. The presenter, James Howison is doing his doctorate on OSS communities.

After OSCON, I walked to the office and ripped some meetings. For dinner, I hit Portland City Grill for dinner with friends. It was absolutely delightful. We had a wicked view of Mt. Hood and the food was ridiculous.

Looking forward to the Executive Briefing tomorrow.

Reading Books 2.0

I finally finished reading Charlie Wilson's War.

I generally liked it. I knew that the United States was involved in helping the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Cold War, but had no idea just how much. I didn't know how tight we were with Pakistan and how we turned a blind eye to their Nuclear activities. I generally understand the details of "unintended consequences" a bit better now. And I had no idea how much 1 Congressman can get done (for better or worse).

The book reinforced my opinion that the world is insanely complex. It also made me less of a news junkie. Reading a view of history like this and realizing that at the time these events were taking place none of this was public knowledge makes reading the news voraciously seem rather pointless. Don't get me wrong, I'm still paying attention, just not as much.

I'm going to start reading The World is Flat, Release 2.0, by Thomas Friedman next. I used to read Tom Friedman's column every week at the NY Times. I quit at some point - forget if they put it behind a login or I got sick of it or what. And can we please all just shut up about "2.0". Does everything have to be "2.0". I mean come on - enough.

For software related stuff, I'm still reading: Open Sources 2.0 (the sequel to Open Voices)
Producing Open Source Software
and occasionally glancing at Open Source for the Enterprise (don't think it is very good).

OOPSLA Event Driven Architecture Workshop

Saw this workshop at OOPSLA on EDA here in Portland, OR this fall via Marco on ESP.

I haven't been spending as much time obsessing about EDA as of late. But I still think it has the most promise in terms of enabling wicked cool integration. We just need something like AMQ IMHO.

Anyway, I hope to be there.

Maybe some of my EDA practitioner friends will be too?

Open Source Transparency

Saw this article by John Udell via Pete Lyons

This is one of the many reasons I dig Open Source:

Open source software development, to a degree unmatched by any other modern profession, offers apprentices the opportunity to watch journeymen and masters at work, to interact with them, and to learn how they think, work, succeed, and fail. Transparency and accountability govern not only the production of source code but also the companion processes of design, specification, testing, maintenance, and evaluation.

U.S. Dpt. of Defense and Open Source Software

Saw this via Matt Asay.

Guess who is saying: To summarize: OSS and open source development methodologies are important to the National Security and National Interest of the U.S. for the following reasons:

• Enhances agility of IT industries to more rapidly adapt and change to user needed capabilities.
• Strengthens the industrial base by not protecting industry from competition. Makes industry more likely to compete on ideas and execution versus product lock-in.
• Adoption recognizes a change in our position with regard to balance of trade of IT.
• Enables DoD to secure the infrastructure and increase security by understanding what is actually in the source code of software installed in DoD networks.
• Rapidly respond to adversary actions as well as rapid changes in the technology industrial base.

Yes, the U.S. Dpt. of Defense that is who. Now don't you feel silly for believing all that FUD?

Oh wait, there is more to Open Source then cost savings? Wait, now I get it!!

Seriously, this is good news for Open Source.

Blog Policy

I republished all of my posts today in order to bring my blog in compliance with my employer's, (Liberty Mutual, Agency Markets) developing blog policy. I needed to get the disclaimer on all of the pages. Sorry for screwing up your RSS reader.

My blog has been unconnected with my employer until recently when I posted some jobs, which, made it clear who I work for.

I inquired about a blog policy (since one didn't exist) and one is now in the works. In the interim, I received some initial guidelines.

It is your standard stuff:

• The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of Liberty Mutual
• Vendors mentioned are not free to quote with attribution Liberty Mutual

But besides that, I was encouraged to continue blogging. I'm happy about this because I really enjoy doing it. I learn more from reading blogs and maintaining a blog then almost anything. There is something about just writing down your thoughts about complicated things in a public forum that makes you think harder in general. There is a real joy when you see people reading your blog (even though I only get 50 unique readers per day so far except when someone links to me), commenting on posts, and linking to it. I have made a handful of "blog friends" who I really respect. And some of our best candidates for the jobs I posted have come through my blog. I am a huge believer in blogs in general - not just for technology, but for all things. Blogs are driving tons of innovation and progress because they are breaking down traditional walls. That can be dangerous, but there is much more upside then downside. I am glad that I work for a company that cautiously encourages this.