Robert Yonaitis - Technology & Management ~ Tips and Tricks

A Merry Christmas and A Note to Leaders

2011-12-24T09:27:00.005-05:00

A Christmas Carol -Open Book

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is to watch a Christmas Carol ( read about the novella ) by Charles Dickens. I watch this maybe three four times a year and I think it is a great novella overall. It gives the protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, a mirror into his own soul. As companies operate in and through tough times, it is important that you-as company leadership- never forget about the communities in which your business exists and that there are people struggling at this time of the year. This can be the hardest time of year because the contrast can be large and it is inescapable between the people that have and those that do not.

The immediate community you need to deal with is that of your employees and you need to lead from the top. As an executive, be hands on, as a leader of the team you need to be a part of the team every day. If you find yourself in an “Ivory tower” you have work to do and maybe get started today. Empower your employees not only at this time of year, but also all year long. If you decorate your office at this time of the year, participate in putting up the decorations.

If you have holiday parties, and you “Should” be having a holiday party, develop a corporate culture of giving and helping the local community, this should be your second concern. Help your community by donating time or taking up collections for local food banks. If you do not have a holiday party tradition-start with this and immediately arrange a holiday party.

Most companies find their next concern to be customers and this links to product and product quality. If you have created your product only for love of money than you have a problem that needs to be dealt with immediately. While suitability to task is the customer’s responsibility you as a leader have the responsibility to be honest with your customers and insure that all of your products work as advertised.

Remember leaders, nothing good can come from something bad and outward overt or hidden lies. Ensure your products work and that your sales team is always unambiguous when describing product or service. Never ever put an employee in a position where they have to choose between keeping their job and lying to a customer. Leading from the top matters here because if you as the executive do not take care of your customers it will stain your company and in the end it will harm you as well.

You next concern should be with your competitors, compete fairly and fairly does not mean that it can be argued that you may be right by law, instead you should be right. Here some areas to be concerned with:

Never infringe on a competitors trademark
Never infringe on a competitors copyright
Never lie about a competitor’s product or service
And more, think about it and involve other executives to develop strategies together to focus on your products or services and quality versus being negative

When you lead you set the tone and the tone should be competing with quality and ethics versus bad behavior.

As a leader you get to set the culture of your company. The culture is essential to your success. Here are a few tips that you might find valuable:

Make it possible for every employee to be proud of their company and position, make sure everyone contributes to the companies and each other’s success
Have an ethics clause in employee handbooks and contracts. From the top make it clear that ethical behavior matters when dealing with each other or customers
Create internal community outreach efforts
Create and live by your company mission statement and make it pervasive, make sure everyone understands why you are in business and why it matters

The holidays always provide a time for us to reflect on the things for which we are grateful and as leaders we can reflect on our own behavior and goals. We should set lofty goals and then work hard to exceed them. However, if we cannot complete our goals within our company ethics and belief systems breaking the same is not acceptable.

One last note on this Christmas Eve, to those that outsource product development or support, ask yourself a few questions about outsourcing outside of the USA:

Do I outsource with the sole goal of paying less for labor or taxes?
Do I outsource because environmental regulations are more favorable in a different country?
Does the country I outsource to have equivalent workers’ rights equal to my own countries and or companies beliefs?

If you answered yes to any of these questions you need to rethink your decision to outsource and most likely cease your outsourcing. Remember nothing good can come from unethical behavior or actions, money is not everything and if you cause harm to get your money it is something that will follow you in life.

To be a Leader and to telecommute does not work. Think to yourself, how many great leaders you know inspired you via email. When I think of leadership via remote I think of how it would be to read about a place online but never go to the same place. Can you know something without experiencing it? Yes, while it is possible to do so it is also true that you will never make it your own without personal experience. Creating a company culture remotely just does not work. Your leadership team needs to be in the office and performing their duty of leading and driving your companies vision. Quality of employees and quality of products and/or services are a direct reflection of leadership.

It is never too late to change your organization and it is not hard, it is just a matter of writing down what you need to accomplish as part of your plan and then moving forward with a step-by-step execution of that plan. Remember leaders need to be with their team to lead and one should lead by example. As a leader I can rifle through a list of leaders that have molded me and together what we accomplished. While I have been successful as a leader, it is important to note, I have never defined success as the size of my paycheck. I have always defined my success on the accomplishments of my teams and the positive impact that we have had on our community and or space in which we did business. Every person on your team will enjoy this holiday in their own way and what you can do for them now and every day of the year is to give them a position in an ethical company of which they are proud. Your best advocates will always be your employees.

I would like to end this post by wishing everyone a wonderful holiday and a happy new year.

- Rob Yonaitis

Perhaps the world’s worse Airline Rewards program

2011-08-02T17:13:00.003-04:00

Le Bris' flying machine

When it comes to flying commercial I love United Airlines, in my opinion they have the best loyalty program in the airline industry. What they do is offer you benefits related to using their product. This concept is not new and the benefit to their company is clear. Having customers that will talk positively about your product or services and of course actually buy those products is of course the goal. Having been in in the software and services industry myself for over twenty years, I also know an unfocused upon fact; not everyone will tell you when they are unhappy with your product.

For over a decade I have also looked deeply at the accessibility question: Why do so many companies seem to not care about building accessible products or marketing materials? On a recent trip to Bogota, Colombia, to discuss worldwide accessibility efforts, I was hit by a serious and I think irrefutable fact. Accessibility is being sold by most companies, in the form of a customer loyalty program, let us compare.

First, an airline says if you “get to gold” you will have the benefit of extra legroom and your first bag free or that you will always get your first choice meal in business class if you reach the highest level of their frequent flyer program. On the other hand if you do not do so, you can still buy extra legroom and you may or may not have to pay for a bag and you might not get your meal of choice. In general they are saying if you achieve a certain level of status you pay less and enjoy more. The take away here is perhaps a soft threat to frequent flyers stating they can avoid all the fees and have all the benefits if they just fly one airline.

Next, a company that specializes in Accessibility solutions has the same twist. They say if you do not build accessible you may get sued or be subject to some other action. In the early days of Accessibility consulting I remember a company that used to threaten to sue companies in order to gain their business. Regardless of the hard threats you were told that besides not getting sued accessibility was the right thing to do. So, the sales pitch in this case is basically the same except one focuses on positive and one focuses on negative. We should all remember sales 101, negative is not the best way to sell.

In addition to this there is the problem of product definition. The plane and in-flight services you receive as a frequent flyer are clearly defined while with Accessibility the sales pitch starts with a more subtle innuendo to the customer” you have no idea what needs to be done so you need to pay me as an expert.” This is perhaps the most troubling. Highly educated engineers are being told that accessibility is so complex that even if they buy the product they will need to buy the services perhaps for an eternity, as accessibility is just too complex for the everyday person to grasp and there are no standards. When confronted with the no standards question the accessibility provider says it is just too complex. We can find clear instructions online and standards for so many things on the web but not for accessibility. Is accessibility intentionally ambiguous?

In the end if the customer is not satisfied with a loyalty program they simply fly with a different carrier or ignore all loyalty programs and just fly with the cheapest ticket. When it comes to accessibility they just do not “fly”. This fact is heartbreaking as it hurts so many people and we need to identify who is to blame. If we go with the high road here we blame the process and not the people. The overall rejection of building a standard and going with ambiguous guidelines is the reason in my opinion. Could you imagine saying to a builder of a handicap ramps that it can be done any number of ways and the only way to do it properly is to hire an expert or do you expect that your builder can read and understand the requirements and guidelines, I assume you would want the latter? Could you imagine planning and designing a restaurant with a seating area of 130 in the new building and not having anyone tell you how many wheelchair locations are required? Instead you are told that you will need to hire and keep a consultant on a yearly retainer to ensure accessibility of your restaurant, as this may change at any moment, or again do you expect an unambiguous guideline. As a community we need to push for information that is unambiguous as related to education and guidelines. For software and web accessibility to go further it needs to steal a page from the construction industry and make its guidelines or a new standard is unambiguous by design. This needs to be done even if a few companies are not contemplated or covered because of changing technology and or bleeding edge technology.

The cold hard truth is that we are not educating well on accessibility because the guidelines are not unambiguous. Our community tends to treat anecdotal evidence as research proofs and this is not a good or productive thing. Learning from the airlines and their sales tactics is something we should do as a community and the first thing we need to do is look at southwest. Bags fly free here, and while they may shout at other airlines you never hear them focus on a competitor by name. The reason is this makes it a positive sale. However, in accessibility there is much infighting, competitors slander other competitors or products, and there is more than the occasional shake down if you want some press for your product and this is bad. Why is it bad you may ask? The answer is we are not selling free airline bags and we don’t even live up to the negative sale that is offered.

I always believe it is best to focus on what you do well rather than to criticize a competitor. By highlighting your strengths and the features of your solutions, you draw attention to your competitor’s weaknesses, without being negative. One approach I have I really like for is to create a chart of features and capabilities listing the best things that you do with a column for each of your products and one left blank. When a customer asks you how your products or services compare-provide them with the chart of what you do and the space for them to compare to the competitors. By doing this you are educating your prospect and being positive.

Perhaps the most important thing is rewards. In accessibility, if we are being positive, we tell people what good things they can achieve, how if they do not do this they are losing customers because they are not focusing of accessibility, and then we show them the disability statistics. Impressive until they ask if we do something for deaf people and we have to look at them and say we have no solution but we include them in the numbers. If we assume our customer is smart, they look at these numbers and see that it includes a plethora of disabilities but your product or service does not address these issues. Because of this the accessibility company looks like a liar that plays fast and loose with numbers and the customer walks away.

In addition there is the paradox of the sales statement in this case:

Tell the customer that they need to support the minority because of the size of their disposable income
Then tell the customer that your focus is on serving people with disabilities, as it is the right thing and there is money to be made in doing the right thing
You then tell your customer that you have no captioning solutions but isn’t it the right thing and did you not leave a lot of disposable income on the table.

Given all of this it seems that accessibility vendors that use the “subscribe to this belief” and “get this reward” do not practice what they preach in their sales arguments. In fact they may be the worse Airline Rewards Program available, or at least in that model. In my next post I will give my thoughts on what needs to change to get wider acceptance of products to the market using techniques not laced with fear, uncertainty, doubt and other threats. I will also cover how it is good to make money at it and why we need NGO’s to be formed to complete this task.

Ciao,

Rob

IGF 2011 Kenya – A Timely Event

2011-07-26T14:15:00.000-04:00

IGF Kenya Logo

Recently it seems that the world is on fire and the internet seems to be at the center. The examples are all around us; people are creating new governments due to social media, governments are censuring social media or blocking Facebook, and a flash mob robbery in Georgetown was incited over the internet where recently the IGF USA meeting was held also.

You may ask, what is the importance of the IGF 2011 in Kenya? With the world changing so quickly it is important that key stakeholders discuss the changes and potential outcomes. This year’s meeting has a proposed main theme, 'Internet as a catalyst for change: access, development, freedoms and innovation'. Didn't I just say timely! You can read more about this conference at http://igf.or.ke/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=21:joomla-facts&catid=30:the-community&Itemid=37 .

When I consider my professional tasks and how different outcomes can be advanced through both my consulting and product development initiatives, I consider this meeting as one of the most important that I attend yearly. For those of you that cannot make it to Kenya please do consider remote participation, more information about the remote participation can be found here: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/remote-participation-2011.

The internet is a catalyst for change. Those of us that work with it and help to shape it, via technology and policy, should take an active role in its future. The recent IGF-USA meeting stressed to the USA members that getting involved matters, I agree. To many times we see the world changing and we say we cannot impact it. My experience says that this is just not true. If you have the time you should participate and if you have questions or ideas that you think should be raised and you cannot attend why not let me know by email. You can reach me at ryonaitis@34alabs.com . I will report back from Kenya how your thoughts were received. I will also be blogging daily from the event.

My best,

Rob Yonaitis

Should your CTO have an Engineering Degree?

2011-07-25T15:02:00.004-04:00

Teacher in Classroom

Someone recently asked me if technical decisions should be made by a technical person, where a technical person means someone who was trained in an engineering discipline (with a Engineering Degree). They were looking for a CTO-type or at least a product lead. I was troubled a bit by this question because there seemed to be a quick answer and while simplicity is desired in engineering it is rarely sufficient in building an effective team. The question itself seemed wrong based on my own experience. To me it did not seem to be properly phrased to solicit the information they were seeking for the following reasons:

A degree is no guarantee that someone is qualified
A degree is no guarantee that a person can make decisions based on company success versus personal needs

With all of this in mind, I quickly built a list (in my head) of the most technically savvy people I know in the world. When it was complete I knew the answer to the question immediately. However, being me I could not answer the question directly because there really is no correct answer. The real world people that I thought of had degrees in Engineering, English, Arts and some had no degree at all but they were all brilliant and any one of them could fill a CTO role for me. Why? This was the question I had to answer, why was the answer not what was expected and how could I rephrase the question back to the person who had inquired? My reply was simple, ‘Did you mean to ask, if a person is making technical decisions should they be qualified to do so?” and if the response was ‘yes’ then my answer was “Yes” to the new question.

While a degree helps us learn the basic tricks and tools of the trade there is no guaranteeing that this information will transfer to the real world. There is a certain type of dedication required to be successful in any field and that is precisely what one should look for in hiring rather than the piece of paper. Every time I look at degree or certificate requirements I think of the movie “Tommy Boy” and the guarantee skit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVm1K_emzIA(Careful Language-I think it uses the S*** word once) with Chris Farleyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Farley

In closing, what you need in a CTO is not a degree, as that is not a quality which indicates the person can do the job. Instead to compete in today's market, what you need is a track record, experience, and someone who has a "can do” versus "it cannot be done" attitude. My final answer to the question was: ‘As an executive that is qualified to do the position you are hiring for simply hire someone qualified and someone better than yourself possible, the degree is just noise’

Cheers,

Rob Yonaitis

2011 IGF-USA Meeting Report

2011-07-19T14:35:00.000-04:00

Capitol rotunda

Yesterday was the 2011 IGF USA meeting. This meeting precedes the IGF 2011 meeting in Kenya later this year. What is the IGF? IGF stands for “Internet Governance Forum”. While this may sound lofty, real discussions are held regarding the future of the Internet.

About the IGF, from their web site; “This is the official Web site of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), run by the IGF Secretariat. Its purpose is to support the United Nations Secretary-General in carrying out the mandate from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) with regard to convening a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue - the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The site provides an interactive, collaborative space where all stakeholders can air their views and exchange ideas.”

The meeting had high value information. Here are just a few things that caught my ear:

Young people were aware of privacy but just more trusting. This is an interesting statement but it is at best anecdotal. I could go to the young people in my family and teach them about Facebook and privacy and they would learn things they would never know – I would also note they would be less trusting.
I did find it relevant that piracy was discussed and there were discussions regarding not blocking sites at the DNS level and talks that claimed Avatar was more popular and made more money because it was so heavily pirated. From personal experience I can say that there “may” be some truth to that-if it is at all like software, however, I believe that the tug of war between the two sides creates a balance and it should be continued.
There were good conversations related to using the right tool for the audience with which you want to communicate.
One participant made an interesting comment related to privacy, they stated that web browsing or search history is like a diary and if what we searched for was not private we would probably not search for what we do… Note: it is not always private!
One great comment at the end was:”If you want to preserve what you like about the Internet, you have to make your voice heard” Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice

In the end getting involved makes good sense here are a couple links:

• The IGF Site: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/
• IGF-USA Site: http://www.igf-usa.us/
• IGF Kenya 27-30 Sept 2011:
http://igf.or.ke/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=21:joomla-facts&catid=30:the-community&Itemid=37

I look forward to seeing everyone in Kenya -- get involved!

Re-post: The browser padlock – Is it meaningless?

2011-06-28T13:34:00.002-04:00

Viking Age Lock

More than once, in the past months, I have found myself in the undesirable position of having to replace a credit card for fraud or having my bank send me a new card because their data was compromised. Their data included my personally identifiable information (PII). Considering this, and my online practices, I found it necessary to evaluate my behavior when going to a website. While I was sure I had nothing to do with a banks’ system being compromised, I had to ask if my behavior might have led to identity theft or fraud that was used against me and my account. In my review of this data I found that while I was not at fault I had not considered if sites were secure enough before using them. I found that I relied on simple information, the browser padlock, which was about as meaningful as a screen door lock, to determine if a site I was using was safe and secure. Considering this I have decided to make changes. But before I get into the changes let me describe the problem a bit more.

As an online culture it becomes important for us to protect our privacy related information from many sources of data leaks. The areas of concern are personally identifiable information, from here on out I will refer to this as PII. PII is information that can be used to identify you and perhaps your location in some way. A simple non exhaustive list would be; full name, ID or driver license number, passport number, vehicle registration, face, handwriting, credit card numbers, social security number, mother’s maiden name, mother’s middle name, age, gender, race, job position, employer, criminal record. In fact PII is any information that can be used to identify you.

You may want to review: the “Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information (PII)”. By NIST.

Now, let’s return to the title of this article regarding the browser padlock and whether or not it is meaningless in the situations that I discussed above. I would have to answer that no it is not meaningless, but in fact is dangerous as it creates a false sense of security. The browser padlock makes us lax on where and how we enter information. This is especially true when you consider the willingness that we have to enter PII into web based applications in situations where we know nothing about the company, their security practices or the quality of the application. What are some of the things that companies should be doing to protect their consumers? Here is a list that web developers need to consider:

1. The company privacy policy/statement should be in the websites user interface and it should be in the design area of the global footer. While from an application perspective this may not be very important, from the perspective of ‘Do I have a warm and fuzzy regarding the website’ it is huge. If a website does not have this I recommend going away and fast. But please note that having a statement does not mean that your information is safe!

2. Forms are of course a main concern with PII and not just forms but form elements and any other sort of user input. To the user these items are also not always present and to the application developer not trained in security they are often overlooked. Here is a shortlist of some of the elements that matter:

Input
TextArea
Select
Buttons
Datalist
Keygen

By themselves, these items are not inherently bad, but it is how they are used that can be bad. Again they are not always visible to the site visitor and they may be stylized to appear like anything but a form. So there are some form rules that developers and site visitors need to be aware of. First, a form should not use the get method, as a developer you should not use this method as related to PII, Authentication, etc…it is not necessary. Remember HTTPS does not provide an acceptable level of PII protection to the visitor in this case (Logs, History, and so on). In addition to the obvious issues with having PII in the URL it is important to never trust the user input. We do this every day, when we set patterns for completing a phone number but for some reason many developers do not find it necessary to prevent malicious user input. When we use textareas, inputs or any way to enter or display data as developers we must validate the input and take the extra step if available of encoding your html and using other forms of validation. A take away here is that we need to evaluate all forms to see if they are developed and implemented in a secure manner.

3. Cookies, there are many types of cookies; session cookies, authentication cookies, third party cookies and so on. With regards to security and privacy a web site/application, to be safe, should use secure cookies for any cookie that exposes security or privacy information and they should also prevent mixed content. Even with this precaution there can still be dangers to PII and other user account information. A take away here is that we need to evaluate all cookies to see if they are developed and implemented in a secure manner.

4. Mixed Content is an issue for many reasons with the first being, what it means to the site visitor. Most site visitors have no idea what it means and to keep it simple here it means content that is received via https and http and in many cases a user has the choice of whether or not they want to display the same. One of the problems with this can again be the developer of the web application and/or a lack of a content security policy in the development team. From Cross Site Scripting (XSS) to “spear fishing” and a lot in-between, the impact of mixed content can be huge because again the lock provides a false sense of security. A take away here is a company needs to develop a content security policy.

You may notice at this point I have not provided any information on scanning or reviewing PII on pages yet and that may seem a bit odd, but I think by the end you will agree that it is not. The reason this is not odd is that there are a couple truths that need to be mentioned about your PII. First, if the site you are visiting does not use basic application security your PII is not safe on the site. Second, if it is obvious that the site you are visiting does not have a policy on content security then all the scanning in the world for data leaks is meaningless. When a company considers a Privacy Scanner, like the ConPraxis Privacy Server (http://34alabs.com/conpraxis.htm), to proactively check to see if their visitors data is safe they also need to look to security factors before random and near meaningless scans for a SSN number and more.

So what can a site visitor do along the same terms as the company who purchased a privacy scanner? The sad answer is “not much today”. This is because the items listed above require that the site visitor be able to identify the security issues listed above, understand the context and then make a decision to go forward or leave the site. Personally, I find that I never do this and I know how to. So what do we do when we either do not have the time or the knowledge to review a website application?

When trying to solve a technical problem I always lean toward education and in this case education seems to be a perfect solution. In the next week or so 34a Laboratories will make available a free and online version of the ConPraxis Privacy Server that will be suitable for both developers and every day web trotters. It will allow you to enter a URL and see how it validates against a list of well-known web site security threats and security context threats and privacy/data leak issues. It will be a one page at a time tester used for educational purposes. Its intention is to educate not to inoculate, so please do read the reports, learn and take an active part in protecting your PII and Online Identity.

An API will also be available to help you tie these validation checks into Visual Studio, Rad Studio and more. This will allow developers to perform a quick scan of their application from their IDE. Developers also need to consider their content security policy and tools like the ConPraxis Privacy Server and its plug-ins to different development and content environments are a good first step toward both developing and enacting policy.

We have all seen, and not read, a forty page privacy policy notice from our banks or cloud application providers. That may make sense if we trust the provider and we understand they are selling our PII to partners. However, when it comes to being willing to allow someone to steal our information we need to think twice, by educating ourselves on what the browser padlock really means and the security context of the items that appear in the browser chrome we will be safer.

So to state the obvious, I will repeat my previous answer, “No the browser padlock is not meaningless, but in fact is dangerous as it creates a false sense of security “, by educating ourselves, both developers and web trotters we can better protect everyone’s PII. Remember, in the end the browser padlock merely defines how information is being transmitted, it does not relay information on proper application development nor does it provide information on what the web sites content security policy includes.

Cheers,

Rob Yonaitis

Use Risk management versus Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD)

2011-06-06T18:00:00.001-04:00

Example of risk management: A NASA model showing areas
at high risk from impact for the International Space Station.

Sometimes, the problem with acronyms is that people use them without understanding what they mean. When someone does this they risk their own reputation. So to all of the salespeople who claim that FUD is the best way to sell, please look into what FUD means.

From Wikipedia:
Fear, uncertainty and doubt, frequently abbreviated as FUD, is a tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations,[1][2] politics and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative and dubious/false information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor's product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival. The term originated to describe disinformation tactics in the computer hardware industry and has since been used more broadly.[3] FUD is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

Now, we understand that could be as simple as a sales person stating "if you buy that product all of these bad things will happen", but like anything FUD has been used long ago and a bit in the reverse. Instead of saying "If you use this there may be problems", they might say something like; “Pay me protection money so you will not get robbed”, and if you did not pay they robbed you! This is FUD as well; Risk Management on the other hand may be the police telling you to install cameras and an alarm system to mitigate the risk of being robbed. The Police do not get paid by you directly to give that advice. So if you are a salesperson, ask yourself if you are using FUD in one of the following ways:

• Buy our product or service and you will not get sued or face legal risk?
• Buy our product or service over our competitors because it is really not designed for Windows and you may have problems!

Both of these are FUD and both are not the way to sell in the Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC) market. The reason is that the customer is looking more for a partner than a product or service. Ask yourself how many customers are repeat customers or how many have you lost? In the GRC space education and partnerships matter, your customer needs to trust you, once there is a lie or FUD you will no longer be trusted.

In GRC there is too much at risk and the last thing a company wants to do is partner with a liar or someone trying to sell with fear, uncertainty and doubt! Salespeople and executives that have selected the GRC market should do a little reading on Risk Management; this is a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management . If you understand risk management then you are forced to give real information. Take the possibility of getting sued if you do not comply with a particular concern. Use real data and reliable statistics and if one in one million will get sued for not complying, then as part of your risk management strategy and planning you need to know the exposure. What you do not want is to be guilty of using FUD as it may get a single sale but it will not get help you win loyalty from your customers and it is clearly not ethical, in my humble opinion (IMHO).

Cheers,
Rob

Do Software Executives need a Master of Science Degree?

2011-05-31T11:44:00.002-04:00

Following an era in which many talented young executives left school to form startup companies, there was a rash of people dropping out of school to do the same thing. Now if these young tech experts with business science majors were successful does this mean that you can be successful without completing your training? I think that in every group there are examples that resulted from a combination of fortune, extremely hard work, and discipline in which people achieved superhuman things without the need of a degree. Having said that it does not always mean they are qualified to be executives on the teams of which they become members on the road to achieving their success.

Let’s take a few moments and explore what we get when looking at a master’s of science degree and how it benefits a company. It must be noted that most of what is pointed out here is a matter of anecdotal evidence or the stuff of best practices but nonetheless it is compelling.

The first thing that happens for a Master of Science candidate versus a Bachelor of Science candidate is that you learn to think and write differently from your first course, (exception: English or Journalism Majors). In graduate school, beginning with your first research paper, you learn how to identify and communicate about problems and solutions at an executive level. In fact, it is as if you throw out all personal pronouns on day one and you inherit a new identity, that of the researcher. It is one thing to say that you believe something in your gut but it is another to prove or disprove something. If you just look at the scientific method you realize that you need reason and methods in making sound decisions. In all scientific inquiry our goal should be truth.

So the second item is truth, as when you practice the scientific method you deal with scientific theories. These theories are proved by experimentation and you have to remember that by doing this you also have to admit when you are wrong. Just as experimentation or process can prove something to be true, a future data set may prove something to be false or to cause harm. Just look to the pharmaceutical industry for examples with which you will be familiar. There is always some drug that causes harm or has some unintended consequence.

Finally, as a masters graduate you will have extensive experience with these processes and you will develop the ability to detach yourself from a specific problem or decision that needs to be made. While your “Gut” still plays a role with your prejudgment of a problem presented to you, a masters graduate will know that this may just be a starting point and he/she need to validate their position as opposed to just telling someone to do something "because I said so".

It can be very exciting when executives incorporate the use of process and scientific method into their companies' daily operations. As an example, an executive can foster a work environment in which everyone can bring an idea forward, but qualify that with a requirement that the idea should be worked out as a research paper and then presented to the team at a “Lunch and learn’ session, perhaps a Friday "pizza day" during which employees can give a presentation.

The presentation should have the following parts:

The title page
The abstract page – A summary of the presentation/paper
The introduction – The beginning that states the goals and includes the hypothesis to be proved. Remember a hypothesis, be it null, inductive, deductive or non directional.
Proof – Sections that are used to make and support the argument
Summary – The closing argument for the idea or proposal

Now this can be helpful. Imagine this as an example case: Adding a print feature to our application will increase the number of technical support calls.

What you will find if you incorporate a process like this into your company and give your employees the time to work on these types of ideas and suggestions, you will have a culture in which employees want to improve your organization versus just collecting a pay check. You will also have employees that don't take it personally if you do not accept their idea. Everyone will instead understand that this is built into the process and the team flushing it out and saying no, versus an executive in an ivory tower saying no because it was not their idea and they cannot put their name on the same.

While a Masters Degree of Science or equivalent is not required to start a company, the education and experience that one gains from the degree helps to build a culture that is ready for innovation. I personally believe that a company culture is built from the top down and the people at the top have to be able to admit when they are wrong or that they did not think of a problem or situation that a junior executive or engineer brought forward. Think of the last time your CEO or CTO admitted mistakes and or failures and talked of the steps they were performing to fix the same as well as prevent them in the future. I can think of a few from just this past week!

If your answer as related to your company is never, then you probably will not get far with suggestions in your organization. Humbly submitted, you should probably leave and go to another company where the culture is willing to grow you and have a realistic view on its own performance. Another question you might ask yourself is, “what is the process that management has put in place for me or any employee to make suggestions to improve the company or products / services of the company?” Again if you answer none you should consider leaving for your own personal development and future success. I hope this post helps you to evaluate the question poised in its title, “Do Software Executives need a Master of Science Degree?” Perhaps I just gave you some good ideas on how to improve the bottom line of your business, either way - never stop trying to innovate your process.

Till my next post!
-Rob

My thoughts on Non-Competes

2011-04-26T15:46:00.003-04:00

Code Civil des Français,
1804, original edition

Hello all, since this is more along the lines of employment advice, I am posting this in my tech blog. It is a post that I think is of a serious nature, about a situation that a friend of mine experienced, but I will not be putting my friends name in the post to protect his anonymity. About a month ago a friend of mine came to me with comments about a non-compete they had signed. The non-compete was simply a general statement and they were going to have to leave the company because of issues with the management.

I explained to them about non-compete agreements in general. We spoke about related laws, statutes and relevant NH and other Supreme court cases. The non-compete in question was so broad that the lawyer was either incompetent or they had done the document this way so that they could keep my friend tied up in court for years. I noticed my friend made some mistakes or assumptions that we all have made in the past at one time or another.

There was no compensation tied to the non-compete and thus upon a termination the employer would have retained the restrictive parts of the contract without the employee maintaining any of the benefit. If termination was for “no cause” the contract should have been dismissed and my friend did not have this clause incorporated. Without this kind of obvious protection, a corporation could stop any kind of competitor by hiring away their employees, having them sign a non-compete and then firing them, thus eliminating their competition. While on its face this is ridiculous and would be likely considered to be unconscionable by a court interpreting the non-compete, it is something to be aware of when entering a contract.

So in the end there was a sobering thought, the company had a non-compete that would be (IMHO) unenforceable and there should be no worries, alas the world is not perfect. The company who wrote the poor non-compete, with all of its vagaries, had made overtures that they would fiercely defend the contract and let the courts decide it as they felt they had rights. I was saddened when my friend called and told me the news.

The company had deep pockets and planned to effectively keep him from working, even though they knew that almost every case like this would be ruled on in favor of the employee. So why did they plan to do this? Because they had sales over 30 million, the money was not an issue and they had turned it into weird personal thing. The cost would be prohibitive to my friend. Alas, in the end, it was not required, my friend left the company and there were no court challenges to the best of my knowledge, however it did make me think of writing some employment tips.

First, do not believe that lawyers do not need ethics and do not assume they are ethical. If you run into lawyers that do something like this you need to be willing and able to go after them to the appropriate state bar associations, etc. You may find you are not the first one to complain.

Second, do not sign a non-compete, if you do make sure that it is very clear, it is tied to compensation and that it expires when the contract expires or on termination or layoff for no cause.

Next, have a non-defamation tied to it.

From Wikipedia: Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander (for transitory statements), and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image. It is usually a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant)

If the company does make defamatory claims, that impact your future employment, make sure that they will need to pay for court costs if they force this claim. You may find they are a bit less likely to defame you if they are on the wrong side of a hundred thousand dollar suit.

Finally, it will take money. If you are going to sign a non-compete put 20,000 in the bank for a suit on day one, a good firm will require ten thousand dollars down on day one and another ten will be gone within 45 days if they are a good firm and you fight false claims aggressively. If you cannot put the money in the bank you need to reconsider signing the agreement.

In closing, remember you may need to sign a non-compete, just do not assume a lawyer is perfect. Have it reviewed by your own lawyer, all reputable companies will allow you to have a lawyer review the non-compete. We all may do them from time to time; my last non-compete (which was not much of a document in my opinion) ends in a couple weeks, it did not prevent me from doing anything I wanted to do, while the company can request to extend the non-compete for compensation they are not required to do so, as the founder of a company you may need to do something like this as I did and like most things, non-competes also end – feel free to do what is right for you but look into the law! Remember competition is a good thing and in most industries we know all the players, so we can count on transparencies and openness.

Remember:

Feel Free to file complaints against law firms or lawyers, happens all the time
Make sure you are compensated if fired without cause or have the contract terminate
Make sure the agreement includes non-defamation! Companies do not want to be sued so even the threat of a suit will make them walk away from you and the defamation
Make sure that compensation for lawyers’ fees is part of any agreement
Make sure you have money in the bank for the suit upfront
Be smart and protect your rights under the law!
I am not a lawyer, if you find you need advice after reading this call a lawyer :)

Cheers,

Rob

What is the goal of the W3C Presentation: "Web Accessibility is Smart Business"

2011-04-05T19:29:00.006-04:00

I have been reviewing the current draft presentation of the W3C’s Education and Outreach Working groups, “Web Accessibility is Smart for Business”, to try to understand its educational goals ( http://www.w3.org/WAI/presentations/bcase/ ) . The logical assumption is of course that the goal of the presentation is to educate people that Web accessibility is smart for business. What would be the instructional goal and learning domain?

Goal One (v) - Describe Why Accessibility Is Smart For Business.
This seems to be a pretty basic verbal goal, where I am defining a verbal goal as a goal that provides verbal information, facts stated, and specific information provided. It appears that the presentation makes the assumption that that all a business cares about is money. However, the slides and speaker notes provide none of the detail required to support this assumption, but instead just include some charts with lines. In terms of an educational format, this presentation would be given by a lecturer and this lecturer would show a PowerPoint, all or maybe not all of the slides. PowerPoint is of course a technology aide used by lecturers to help present information to a group of people. But what is the basic PowerPoint rule for education versus PowerPoint for sales?

It is common to see a salesperson show a PowerPoint and then read the information on the slide. The information is the message and companies do not like to see it modified as the message has been tested and the company believes it works. However, in an educational setting this would be a most incorrect way to educate a group of people. It is commonly known in education that overuse of technical aides is a distraction and a decrease not increase of learning! The lecturer should not put up a slide just to read from it as it is distracting/ Rather they should only use the technical aide (PowerPoint) to present information they will lecture on not to repeat what is written on the slide.

On Numbers, in business and in engineering, facts matter. This presentation presents some great "hockey stick" graphs (showing dramatic upwards trends) on how a company will achieve increased revenue and direct cost savings over what appears to be four (4) years. This slide indicates (in the speaker notes) that the graphic is based on anecdotal information and not real data. So why include these charts if they are invalid (basically made up) and what units is the money in,? Will I have a 200 Billion Pound return over eight (8) quarters? Following the same thought, the slide show indicates/implies that if you develop an accessible site you could increase your natural traffic by 50%, This is interesting and I assume anecdotal again, though I did not read this in the speakers notes.

Based on the numbers and facts presented a businessman would have to discount the presentation as made up or one simply with facts just not in evidence. Does this hurt or help the goal that we assumed for the presentation?: Goal One (v) - Describe why Accessibility is Smart for business. The answer is obvious.

OK, so what goal should this document have? In my experience the problem with getting businesses to "develop accessible" has nothing to do with dollars, or in general cost. It is simply attitudinal. Think to yourself for a second, when is the last time you checked into a hotel room and reviewed the fire escape information on the back of your door, or a similar place? I do it every time. I do it because it is situational awareness and that is important to me when I am not in my home.

So what is an attitudinal goal? Well in perhaps a simple definition an attitudinal goal is one which is designed to have the student make choices or behave in a manner that implies an underlying belief or preference. It is my humble opinion that this educational document is trying to “Play” business and fails at that, when instead it should be focused on changing attitudes and belief systems. I think this document should be rewritten and in doing so the authors should consider new goals:

Goal One (A) Choose to maximize Accessibility Guidelines in web properties
Goal Two (A) Choose to incorporate Accessibility training in all Company Training
Goal Three (A) Choose to incorporate Accessibility Guidelines in all web applications

When training is developed to focus on changing attitudes versus putting up fictitious potential numbers it is likely that this type of education will produce real grass roots success.

Cheers,

Rob

Accessibility Lessons from a Straw

2011-03-11T13:56:00.001-05:00

When it comes to addressing a problem it is important to take a complete look at the situation and then move forward to define all of the parts. Doing this dispels myths and is unveiling information always present. A successful accessibility (a11y) program needs to understand all forces (influences) at play to understand the state of play. So should you start making changes without understanding all of the influences on your accessibility program and what parts the same influences play? Should you implement new technologies without understanding the impact on all the parts of your program? Would you upgrade to Windows Seven without performing a compatibility check?

To examine this question I will use a straw. Everyone knows you put the straw in and suck out the fluid. This sucking up of the fluid brings the fluid into your mouth and quenches your thirst? Why the question mark? The simplest answer is that this is, prima facie, correct but you guessed it, in fact it is wrong. You are saying wait, “I put the straw in and I suck up the fluid”, but in fact you are not and if you were responsible for designing straws or juice containers and went forward with this premise you would fail and have a mediocre career without changing this mindset. What would you need to do to be successful? You should have understood all the forces that had influence on what direction the fluid would flow. (Note: I am taking a science topic that could take a few pages and a few good diagrams to describe and compressing it - saving you time on comments). The straw in glass example, it is simple, and here are the parts:

• Air (atmospheric) Pressure
• Straw with two open ends one in the fluid
• Open top glass
• Fluid (water)
• Gravity

So the atmospheric pressure from the outside of the glass is not important because it is sufficient to repel pressures, but the opening of the glass allows for pressure down and there is pressure at the bottom of the straw to force the water up. However, there is pressure from the air pushing the water back down, so when sucking on the straw you remove the pressure down on the fluid, this lets the upward force on the fluid act and you have fluid in your mouth. This is easy to test if you have a proper glass and cover, simply cover the glass and try to suck up fluid, you can’t! There is no upward pressure. Try another experiment, an easier one:

1. Put your finger over the top of the straw while it is submerged in the fluid.
2. Remove the straw from the fluid while keeping your finger on the top
3. Observe, the fluid remains in the straw and does not rise or lower, you have hydrostatic balance (a stalemate), two very powerful forces (Influencers pressure upward and gravity) but no net motion.
4. Remove your finger from the straw
5. Observe, all forces are in balance and the fluid flows (Hopefully back into the glass so that you do not have a mess!)

This shows us that at step two there was both upward pressure and downward pressure of equal amounts. The little bit of air left in the straw provided downward pressure that stopped the water from rising in the straw but not enough pressure to force it out of the straw. When you remove your finger the water flows as the pressure was allowed into the top, and all forces are in balance.

OK, time for my point. An accessibility (a11y) program is a serious and complex undertaking one which program managers need to guard against human nature and making decisions mainly on anecdotal evidence, even if the program manager believes observations to be true, because they may do severe damage to the program in the long term by making decisions based on untested/unverified data. Remember, anecdotal data gives us a place to start, a conversation, but it should never be the end. So every program for a11y and every program manager must define all the parts. For an example I will use an education and outreach program:

• Training Material
• Outreach Process
• Teacher
• Student

Should your training material be the same for every student? NO, if it is you will have limited success because it is proven that there are different types of learners. Do you teach adult learners as adult learners, or do you teach them like children? This is a very good question that need to be answered and based on these two simple questions you now probably have at least three sets of training materials required if you want to be successful! An additional training set would be required as related to the technical level of student and a possible additional set for lawyers and compliance people. Outreach process, to whom and how do they communicate? The Teachers, Technical, non-Technical, does it matter? The Students, Young, Old, Executive, Technician. (Note: this does not come close to covering all training concerns you can email me at the address provided at the end of this posting if you have questions)

When, I think of the problems with education and outreach as related to a11y, I look at the data and conclude that they arise from poor training material or incomplete training programs. Some of the problems observed were:

• Technical people make decisions on training with no professional training on developing instructional systems
• The impact of technical decisions without understanding all the influences on the total program (e.g. with the false argument that the water comes out just as good from the straw because of only one force being applied)

Let us leave the straw and a11y for a moment. Think of a sales manager that sees an unsuccessful salesperson, they see that no sales are being made after 30 days so they terminate the sales person without ever trying to figure out why they were not successful. So if a program is successful in spite itself it is most likely something that will not be repeatable or sustainable, OK, back to a11y and our straw.

Therefore, if something makes the overall state of accessibility better, it is NOT a valid argument for continuance without total system/program review and validation to assure that gains in one area does not lead to losses in another. Additionally, and somewhat unrelated, it begs to question how many a11y advances are gained simply because of the observer effect; when a subject knows it is being observed the performance improves.

Unfortunately, there is enough anecdotal evidence available to indicate that as a group, a11y practitioners, program managers and standards gurus need to sit down and understand all the influences on an a11y program and chart the road forward. The need to include; trained scientists, trained educators, stake holders, and any other interested or important parties to the program is very clear. There are more than enough interested educators, scientists and other required elements to develop well performing programs that don’t steal progress with every new standard or guideline because of disjointed efforts.

If you have any questions on this post feel free to mail me at ryonaitis@34alabs.com , yes my spam filter kung foo is good!

New Blog Design is almost done

2010-06-30T11:35:00.002-04:00

coming soon...

Social Media, Seat Belts and Technical Support

2010-02-08T13:02:00.007-05:00

It’s not even noon but it feels like it is afternoon here in Concord, NH. Usually it takes me only a few days to get back on US versus EU time, but this has taken a full week so far. I did everything I could think of to make the transition: got some extra sleep, did some extra workouts and stayed up longer to adjust my sleep patterns. None of my efforts worked as intended. But the jet lag experience did give me the idea and inspiration to write this post.

I was fortunate to start my software development career in a very traditional way. First, I received a degree in Computer Science. After receiving the degree I then landed a job in technical support. Following that I moved to a job in Quality Assurance which led to software engineering. In-between these positions I wrote my first small-run book, WYSIWYG (Simply put!).

What basic things did I learn?

Empathy for the customer
Attention to detail
Patterns of success
Patterns of failure
Everyone possesses a limitless potential for both good and bad engineering

Why bring this up now in a blog post? Simple, I want to share something that I learned with the blogosphere. What I want to share are my thoughts on how companies perceive and handle complaints. This is a topic of much discussion lately and whole companies have risen up as virtual seat belts to protect a company’s reputation. Unfortunately this has led “bean counters” to hire PR firms and Reputation Specialists because this is cheaper than building good quality products and supporting the same in the first place.

Let us be clear, no software is bug free. If someone claims their software is bug free then you should laugh at them. Personally, I have known quality assurance engineers who have made a good living proving arrogant engineers or more arrogant marketers wrong.

The “seat belt” is an added measure of support and protection. This added measure of safety that is needed in case of an accident is just that. You would not go without it, but regardless of the seatbelt, would you drive in a car that could accelerate at any time, creating an accident that might kill you? Most clear thinking people would say “no way.”

The 1 in 10 rule

When I worked in technical support I found out very early, because I would listen to the customers on the phone, that while they may have called in for a specific reason, the reasons that led them to the call in the first place were easily noticed and repeatable. Here are just a few:

1. There was a problem impacting work.

2. There was the problem or an irritant less than a stop work error?

3. The problem was during an evaluation, and they wanted the software to work.

4. The customer has a vested interest in the product working.

So taking this into account you can see that there is a real concern. But you do not need to read this post to understand it better.

Let us say you buy a phone, and it does not work; are you the type that makes the best out of the situation, returns the phone for a new one, or do you get on the phone to try to work out the problem with technical support. In my experience I have found that one in ten owners of a product will call technical support. This is why, when running departments of software companies. I put a strong importance behind both solving the problem while providing the complete solution online-making sure it was indexed properly so people could find the answer to the problem by simply searching Google.

So simply put, if one in ten will complain, you may keep them but you may lose nine potential customers or repeat customers. Imagine trying to manage a budget when you discard 90% of your potential customers. These are the customers you must focus on for growth and sustainability.

Social Media

In comes social media and yes I have a small story. I had a problem with my Bowflex Tread Climber. I needed to install new tread platforms so I ordered the replacement parts. When they were delivered there was no assembly instructions included. I searched the web for instructions and found none. I tweeted about the awful time I was having in finding the instructions with the hash tag #Bowflex and a customer service rep sent me the answer in minutes, on twitter. Can you say #win. Hopefully they also ship install instructions now and make them easier to find on the web. So Bowflex had a seatbelt to augment their online instructions in case someone like me had a crash.

Head in the Sand Approach

It is hard to believe, but some companies, still try to control information. They hide support information from company employees and customers. If there are support problems, they solve them or kluge them but do not broadcast them. They do this because they fear that customers will not chose them if their software was not bug free (please refer back to my comment on the existence of bug free software). These dictatorship type companies in the end use a seat belt approach only versus an education and quality approach.

Conclusion

The good news is that these companies that behave like dictatorships, in honor of the almighty dollar, are going away! Social Media and the internet bring a new level of transparency ensuring that companies that behave like little tyrants cannot survive.

Some Resources:

Search on Twitter for your products or company

http://search.twitter.com/

Use something like hootsuite to monitor all products and company trademarks

http://hootsuite.com/dashboard

Thanks Everyone!
-rob

Madrid - January,28 2010

2010-01-28T16:54:00.001-05:00

Today I had several interesting discussions. Topping them were: climate change, migrations of peoples, desert expansion, the aging population and ambiguous warnings versus telling someone they can be sued for failing to meet accessibility requirements. Really a tough day. I must also add that I will be blogging about this when I get back to the states.

ciao - rob

viridis ire

2009-10-07T15:07:00.003-04:00

I was just out on the street talking to the Waste Management people; WM is the company that picks up my recycling at my lab (34a Labs). This is a good change if you consider not long ago they would have been here to pick up my trash. So from trash I went to no trash and how did I get here? About 1.5 months ago my city (Concord, NH USA) started a new program where if you wanted to have them do trash pickup then you need to buy trash bags from the city, however, recycling was free. I have to admit that at first I was upset! I ended running into them as they were just picking up my recycling when I was going out for my containers: one large trash can for the bottles, cans, plastic containers and the smaller orange bucket that is used for paper and cardboard.

I went back and put these back on my deck and headed in to get the one soda can and some paper, that I had gathered since the night before, and deposited them into the containers. After doing this I carried some onion scraps and some tomato ends into my new compost bin in my back yard.

I was talking to the Waste management people to tell them that I had one trash bag left (the purple Barney bag) and when it was gone I would not be using them anymore. This is the first in a long list of steps that I had taken to reduce my personal impact on the environment. The list of what I have done includes but is not limited to:

· Insulation of the lab space
· Adding another layer of R-19 insulation in the labs attic space
· Adding Multi Paned insulated windows and storms
· Replacing all light bulbs with energy saving bulbs

So now; having done all of the above I have done the last step, no trash cans at the different workstations just recycle bins. I kind of have the same feeling that I had after I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking, I wondered for the first year, why did I smoke when I knew it was damaging. I suppose that there is some odd intersection between doing the right thing and the path of least resistance. It was very hard to quit smoking (bad habits are not easily ejected) and it was no easier than turning 34a Labs green. So now I am thinking why or how was I ever so unaware of the waste of resources. I hope I am a better ex resource waster than an ex smoker.

Don’t get me wrong, if I am out at a bar and perhaps had one or two too many glasses of wine, scotch or Guinness I may borrow (borrow loosely used here) a cigarette from you totaling perhaps 10 cigarettes a year compared to the three packs a day that I smoked about eight years ago. So I suppose, I may find myself wasting something here or there, but every time I do, I will not make excuses and I will work to keep it rare.

SharePoint Best Practices Live Blogs, Tweets and Videos

2009-08-26T10:50:00.003-04:00

Hello All:

So day three of the conference and I have to say i love watching the video and following along with the tweets. OK This is very good. Try it out:
http://www.endusersharepoint.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/LiveStream-4Columns-day03.htm

8:30am - 9:40am 10 things you wish they told you about SharePoint 2007Sahil Malik
9:55am - 11:05am Best Practices for Developing Web PartsTodd Bleeker
12:30pm - 1:40pm Mind Mapping for the Information ArchitectRuven Gotz
1:55pm - 3:05pm SharePoint, jQuery, and the Content Editor Web PartPeter Serzo
Wicked problems and SharePoint - “The one best practice to rule them all”Paul Culmsee
Records Management Best Practices in SharePointZlantan Dzinic

http://www.endusersharepoint.com/

-rob

Mt. Everest Basecamp

2009-08-23T21:43:00.001-04:00

Trying to plan trip for next season. All Gear ordered..

Monitoring the National Vunerability Database at NIST

2009-07-14T10:44:00.002-04:00

Hello All:

Just a quick post here on the importance of monitoring the National Vulnerability Database at NIST, sponsored by the DHS National Cyber Security Division/US-CERT. http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?execution=e1s1

As developers we need to understand we are developing on or for platforms and we must keep an inventory of these and all third party components that we use in our applications and then monitor the list for security vulnerabilities.

From a customer support perspective we need to make customers aware of our security practices that are followed as part of our engineering process and as part of ongoing maintenance.

This is very simple and essential. If you do not have security practices and procedures you need to develop them and bring up these concerns with your leadership.

Cheers
Rob

Shrinking and Formatting Drives

2009-06-19T09:11:00.004-04:00

This can be fun but it is time consuming on this Friday morning. Rain for the next Ten days, Maybe a trip to DC is called for this weekend. I should have ordered partitions at the size I needed - what was I thinking. New Machines are good. It will be a busy Development weekend.

New Dell Servers Due in on Thursday

2009-06-16T09:26:00.002-04:00

This is great news as I will be installing Windows Server 2008 Virtualization it is a very good thing to need something to complete a development task and to just be able to go get it when needed. The new SharePoint Compliance Workflow Engine I am writing open source for my third post will benefit from this configuration. I will post the complete configuration in my post.

Cheers,
Rob

Facilitate Next-Generation Experiences

2009-06-04T11:15:00.002-04:00

Well or at least make something meaningless sound special. Thanks to mark for passing this on here is the bullshit generator. Watch out gartner for some of this noise! http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html

We need to monetize vertical technologies and in an essence grow front-end architectures. In the end I may be concerned about our inability to synthesize bleeding-edge e-commerce solutions. The team will evolve best-of-breed web-readiness solutions for the public. I do hope that we will aggregate 24/7 e-markets at the end of the day. However, we need to visualize plug-and-play communities.

- Rob :)