January, 2008

Elevate a knowledge sharing culture

A knowledge sharing culture is important, as sharing knowledge is powerful. It can help make joy [quality] occur more innately and be more inherent. In particular companies it however may not be about keeping your job; it may instead be about or result in you helping others be all they can be so as to have them achieve desired missions while you evolve towards giving it [IT] the extra degree through increased communication with the universal community and team.

Love, peace, and happiness are ingredients; however, simply stated quality is joy

Love, peace, and happiness are ingredients; however, simply stated quality is joy associated with a mindset that seeks to embed value and excellence within people, processes and products. Innately the quality trek through the sea, sky and interconnected universe is an individual journey that is also about helping others and building capabilities for good and intelligent collaboration that increasingly enable the darkness of evil forces to be converted into light. Making quality inherent or occur inherently starts in you and becomes intrinsic and pervasive as help is given, and as others begin to see, apply, creatively mature, and innovatively embed that which is divinely toward a mysterious and elusive core of joy. Applied to a presentation the resulting inherent quality simplicity, flexibly adapts informative, entertaining and interactive elements to fit within constraints such as time. In this way, quantity adjusts, however, innately quality remains. Applied to an exchange of IT knowledge, advocates help architect upward and inward solutions by sharing and evolving thoughts as they increasingly give energy to questions, answers, initiatives, special interests, high purposes and stakeholder needs enabling a future history of continually increasing quality, value, excellence and simplicity that is brighter for all.

Globally, start thinking now about 2020 and beyond! Thank you for doing so. With a unified spirit for collective optimism and perseverance anything is possible, even enabling increasingly greater collective wisdom. The future begins with you. Thank you again for all you do.

An individual trek through the universe, that is also about helping others

Innately the quality trek through the universe is an individual journey that is also about helping others and

building capabilities for good that increasingly enable the darkness of evil forces to be converted into light. 

R U READY TO… SAVE THE DAY? 

IBM knows that a powerful truth that helps save the day is that heroes must emerge and collaborate to transform individuals to teams for achieving increasingly greater results. This is likely a reason why IBM is often connected to people coming together. One way IBM does this is through events which they sponsor and host. For example the Rational Software Development Conference 2008, June 1-5 at Walt Disney World, click image above to “Meet the R-Heroes”. As another example, IBM is an elite sponsor of Summit 2008, where this year during the event being held May 7-9 in Ottawa, the Association of Public Sector Information Professionals will celebrate its 45th anniversary, and the Canadian Information Processing Society will celebrate its 50th. The theme for Summit 2008, Achieving New Heights — A New Personal Best, centers on personal growth and innovation, and achieving new heights for self and others such as related to project teams, the workplace, the larger community, and overall, society.

This post sends best wishes for success of all events being held during 2008. It also sends best wishes that all connected to software, technology and information will continually year after year (to 2020 and beyond), achieve new heights of personal and team bests that increasingly enable higher levels of intrinsic and pervasive fun, value and joy for all.

For more events see TechTarget Enterprise IT Events.

Embedded within the global consciousness of our on-going evolution

Intelligent collaboration may have a connection to some degree to the advances or social pioneering conducted by intelligence agencies. There may even be some relation to evolving collaboration, or to evolving concepts of quality control (aka detection) and quality assurance (aka prevention), or to evolving dimensions of quality in terms of the value-inherent (intrinsic and pervasive) to the provision of cutting edge knowledge. Concurrently it may be possible to a degree that the advanced means by which to increasingly contribute to rebuilding the capacity for intelligent collaboration within and throughout our world and universe, may be connected and embedded within the global consciousness of our on-going evolution and the upwards and inwards continual rebuilding of worth, and joy. As we learn to look within we may even discover new means and increasingly enable the capacity to continually achieve unimagined levels of joy.

With hope of sharing potential words of wisdom that others may benefit from, this post encourages review of prior posts (e.g. i, ii) as well as the response indented below from a friend (a National Director of Audit, Compliance and Enterprise Risk Management) when he was informed what would be enough for me to focus on research and blogging while living within the simplicity of a country setting (e.g., perhaps in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia). His response includes words once expressed to him by a well regarded person within a well regarded organization.

He once said that if you have something valuable to share, other than with your friends, you should always charge as much as is reasonable for this information, service, skill, etc., unless you are providing a goodwill gesture to a long established client. When one provides a “bargain rate” or offers something valuable for nothing, the majority of people, will not perceive the value of what they are receiving, take it for granted, and even dispose of it more readily than when they are paying for it.

You have a great deal to offer and as such, you should ensure that you are charging a reasonable rate. I don’t believe that amount is reasonable for your skills and believe you should put forth a higher rate that reflects the value of the services, operating costs, etc. and ensures you can maintain a standard of living that does not leave you open for some to take advantage of.

That said, if there is a higher cause or purpose (charity, friend, family member, desire to leave a legacy, etc.) then one can work for next to nothing knowing that the memory of what they created will someday benefit the world and be appreciated after their humble existence.

This is not intended to criticize but rather, look out for a friend in this often cruel world where honesty and humility gets taken advantage of by far too many people.

In hopes of sharing something thought provoking, indented below are a few words associated with rebuilding worth that are from Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Read them, buy the book, perhaps consider a purchase or think of ideas relative to Arrive Without Traveling, and then look within and do some thinking, for example along these lines {It is time to read Inherent Quality Simplicity; time for all to help creatively mature and innovatively embed the mindset; time to think about advances before, by and beyond 2020; time to think what to positively contribute towards helping to advance high purposes; time to think what you may enjoy the benefits of. Will the next part (3) of software and web quality further evolve joy and the joy of sharing thoughts and opinions with people through philosophical discussions and written exchanges in a manner that is increasingly direct and protecting? Would it help if knowledge exchange stated the contributor’s bio but not their name? Perhaps a future where all are more anonymous would have some benefits as all increasingly begin to more so let go of ego and increasingly move towards simplicity and just wanting to be of some service to the general idea of increasingly being of some help to the continual rebuilding of worth within society to higher and higher upwards and inwards dimensions so everyone more so will have ever-increasing levels of innate joy in life. In this way, perhaps we shall learn greater truths and overcome the hurdles of present realities in which a well regarded friend of a highly accomplished friend expressed that during his career he had learned that: giving too much for free often led to being taken advantage of; liberally sharing information with practice leaders, though perhaps noble, seemed to dilute its value. The way of the future is inherent to the rebuilding of individual worth, and as each of us discover this further, each may more so be supportive and committed to the success of more so enabling collective wisdom and related strategies that largely are embedded within the global consciousness of our evolution, and waiting for all to increasingly be part of the sea, sky and interconnected universe of enrichment and enlightenment so that there is more so an unlocking of true continual improvement which is far reaching and more so for the benefit and joy of all.}

Quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others too because the Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn’t think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going. My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all. God, I don’t want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There’s a place for them but they’ve got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We’ve had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it’s just about depleted. Everyone’s just about out of gumption. And I think it’s about time to return to the rebuilding of this American resource — individual worth.

Note: feel free to replace American with Global, so this applies perhaps more so to all of humanity. Let’s continue with a few words from Pirsig’s ZAMM.

There are political reactionaries who’ve been saying something close to this for years. I’m not one of them, but to the extent they’re talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they’re right. We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashion gumption. We really do. I hope that in this Chautauqua some directions have been pointed to. Phaedrus went a different path from the idea of individual, personal Quality decisions. I think it was a wrong one, but perhaps if I were in his circumstances I would go his way too. He felt that the solution started with a new philosophy, or he saw it as even broader than that — a new spiritual rationality — in which the ugliness and the loneliness and the spiritual blankness of dualistic technology reason would become illogical. Reason was no longer to be “value free”. Reason was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality, and he was sure he would find the cause of its not being so back among the ancient Greeks, whose mythos had endowed our culture. 

In reality, quality is a personal journey and about helping others. It may also be about increasingly realizing we are one, and therefore about increasingly acting as such. Perhaps wisdom flashes help. Perhaps there is wisdom all around us and we just have to be open to receive it.

Perhaps these words are relevant to the importance of casting light on matters of software, technology, information and life quality and value (even though these words are from a movie and different context, perhaps this will help achieve a lasting worldview and state of peace and joy like never before, perhaps this is the way it should be):  

A truly great structure, one that is meant to stand the tests of time never disregards its environment. A serious architect takes that into account. He knows that if he wants presence, he must consult with nature. He must be captivated by the light. Always the light. Always.

Evolving quality and value, and rebuilding the capacity for intelligent collaboration

After years of digging, sharing and dialogues with friends, this post has emerged. Hopefully it somehow contributes toward further evolving quality and value, and rebuilding the capacity for intelligent collaboration.

What is intelligent collaboration? Perhaps it is all which has the potential to help stimulate increased sharing and the increased exploration of higher purposes and of the needs and opportunities for rebuilding worth, the (quality, value and human) equation, thought leadership, and the capacity for increased intelligent collaboration throughout the entire universe. On this page KPMG says, they are committed to making a real difference to the communities in which they operate, and that they believe corporate social responsibility is at the heart of all great organizations. And here it is said, “the Internet is starting to replicate more closely how humans interact and collaborate naturally“.

When one thinks about what may help in the next part (3) of software quality and the web to have and increase widespread adoption of advances, perhaps one part of the answer to increasing intelligent collaboration is related to knowledge exchange and blogging. In today’s world blogging is capable of sharing relative to virtually any type of advance. For example there is a blog related to Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (which this Accessory Highway notes “is a special technology where high quality audio can be streamed from one device (your mobile phone) to another (your stereo headset) via Bluetooth technology”). Perhaps other parts of the answer to increasing intelligent collaboration are link exchanges and ethical cyber marketing that actively follows good practice.

When you think of the largeness of “reported” errors, corruption and unethical practice, and when you recognize the largeness of such things that are unreported and not fought (favoring instead to continue living paths of least resistance), you may begin to see that one high purpose that may need significant advances, and widespread adoption of related advances, is ethics, and ethical contributions towards rebuilding the capacity for intelligent collaboration.

Perhaps the world should more so increasingly unify communications innately around ethics, in order to produce advances in ethics, and in order to find ethical ways that help overcome hurdles to the widespread adoption of advances in ethics. Perhaps another area of high purpose where advances are needed, along with widespread adoption, is related to rebuilding worth.

To some performing a tedious boring task in hopes of it leading to an $80/hr (40 hours a week) contract may be worth their time. For others they may prefer having one fairly decent day’s pay a month, so they can freely give many more hours in the month to digging and blogging in order to increase the value inherent to the idea of more so increasingly helping the growth and maturing of a global community of practice and knowledge sharing. In the next part (3) of software quality and the web, it just may be that important functions are not wholly internal to your organization, as a friend of a friend once suggested the offshoot (global chief knowledge officer) of his Chief Technology Officer role was.

To advance knowledge, related to various important topics such as ethics, the future needs important functions to be more so and increasingly intrinsic and pervasive, so knowledge is shared more so within and external to many organizations. In this way, all shall more so gain. In this way, there more so will be a rebuilding of worth (individual and universal) to greater upwards and inwards dimensions within people, within products, within processes and so on, including relative to rebuilding the capacity for intelligent collaboration within and throughout our world and universe.   

Widespread adoption of advances

In today’s world despite tremendous progress, increasingly the world must unify communications innately around high purposes and related needs to increasingly help; i) produce advances; ii) overcome hurdles to widespread adoption of advances. To consider this from one perspective, you may find this post helpful, Telesurgery Adoption Faces Challenges.

Thinking about the value of unified communications

It may be interesting to think about the value inherent to all that may relate to the concept of unification. At minimum you may like to do some thinking about the value of unification as it specifically relates to unified communications.  To do so you may like to visit this new site, SearchUnifiedCommunications.com. You may also like to read an 01.21.08 article by Gary Audin (he has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience; he has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks… this has included local area, national and international networks, as well as VoIP and IP convergent networks, in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Asia).

Joy manifest within software, technology, information and life

Rather amazing how Valentine’s Day has evolved (video here). Perhaps there’s a bit of wisdom in poets or others who say love is all you need, or in these words “being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage” (Aristotle). But what does this have to do with software and information technology? Well, perhaps more than you think. Consider how someone may be positively impacted by something generated by an IT Pro. Consider how anyone may be positively impacted by the positive energy given to them by another. Consider the positive creations that may come from someone who loves the work and environment they are part of, or feel as if they are one with. When you look back in history, on this day and on those remaining in January (videos here), or on many past events, you may say the world needs many projects associated in various positive ways to peace, love, happiness and joy. Perhaps this happiness project will then be of some help to humanity. Perhaps so too will these words, “Set your heart on doing good. Do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy.” — The Dhammapada (various translations likely available on the net; for example there is one on the big view, click Buddhism then Dhammapada, among other you may connect with words “The Seeker” or to particular bits within the Dhammapada like: “The greatest quality is seeking to serve others”; “Live in joy”; “Look within”; “Shine”). This post sends best wishes to all that this and every February brings greater peace, love and happiness thanks to those who try to continually make joy manifest within software, technology, information and life. 

Bits poetic

Quality and value are two of the forces that shape as well as are emergent from the architecture of a software-intensive system. Interestingly, these factors — quality and value — appear to be consistent with architectural elegance and simplicity.  Grady Booch, IBM Fellow 

The above quote was provided by Grady for inclusion within the book Inherent Quality Simplicity. While the brief view below of a notion (inherent quality) is not a poem, you may find innate bits poetic. Ideally you connect with the nature (e.g., of order; or of joy) somewhat hidden from plain sight. Ideally in some positive way bits inspire on-going thinking and imagination for continually increasing collective wisdom. Ideally you will be part of creatively maturing and innovatively embedding a mindset for goodness and of making things continually better. Grasp the essence. Find your purpose. Help to continually bring goodness to the paths of the technological way of life. This blog and post take no credit; simply share awareness of something that exists and has great potential to help make worlds increasingly better as growing numbers contribute to continually elevating the inherent quality simplicity of software, technology, information and life within a vast universe.

Intrinsic and pervasive, the value is inherent, and the beauty and elegance peacefully transforming toward wider, higher and deeper upwards and inwards levels of solutions which draw contributions from all, for all. Each idea, like a drop of water in a pond, generates circles with waves as it meets with new dimensions of a sea, sky and interconnected vast universe of enlightenment and enrichment. Invisibly to a large degree, bits poetic of patterns emerge to unlock continual improvement like never before. Leaner, more embedded, more synergistic, like new forms of personal and corporate DNA, the evolution continues, and with each revolution forward leaps enable revelations which can help continually make things better from any and all positive perspectives (for example perhaps: improving the space of resources in a production unit; placing chief architects at the top and in corner offices; more so ensuring each resource can produce a design or develop one). United by collective vision converted to daily goals and self-managed accountability, the power of individuals and teams strives to excel the existence, pace and automation of perfect ones and zeros (e.g., zero overhead, defects and rework), while inherently aiming to surpass each goal and to progressively make further inquiries so as to increasingly discover each mu of uncertainty that could lead to further clarity and benefits associated with continual optimization of algorithms, protocols or formulas for ever-increasing quality and value. Driven, by optimism and perseverance, and by a passionate and egoless desire to contribute positively beyond their lifetime, and by that which has helped to make quality and value inherent within past and present, they seek, for self and others, the questions and answers that will help make quality and value increasingly innate (or occur increasingly inherently) within the viip before, by and beyond 2020 and the coming centuries of a future history that is poised to be continually brighter for everyone thanks to the universally evolving quality, value, excellence and simplicity associated with software, technology, information and life.

The meaning for the term quality has developed over time, and now various interpretations exist, e.g., 1. ISO 9000 - “Degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements”. So too do many threats, risks and opportunities. Now more than ever all need to recognize that the notion of inherent quality has existed for centuries; and that fun and value, driven by positive energies, are increasingly becoming part of the intrinsic and pervasive computing reality and innate technological way of life. Now is a perfect time for many to read, creatively embed and innovatively mature Inherent Quality Simplicity (see About for link or SearchSoftwareQuality.Com for excerpt). Thank you for all you do to increasingly help make bits poetic and many things continually and architecturally better. Within the quality decisions, dimensions and life of the present and 100 years from now and beyond, worlds do and will look forward to positive on-going contributions. One example that is up and coming is of course the Handbook of Software Architecture by Grady Booch (related goals shown below are from this page which contains additional information about his upcoming book). 

Goals

The primary goal of the Handbook of Software Architecture is to fill this void in software engineering by codifying the architecture of a large collection of interesting software-intensive systems, presenting them in a manner that exposes their essential patterns and that permits comparisons across domains and architectural styles. Reflecting on his work on patterns, Christopher Alexander notes that he and his colleagues “made observations, looked to see what worked, studied it, tried to distill out the essentials, and wrote them down.” This approach is at the core of all good science.

The second goal of this work is to study these architectural patterns in the context of the engineering forces that shaped them and then to expose a set of proven architectural patterns that may be used to construct new systems or to reason about legacy ones.

The third goal of this work is to feed my insatiable curiosity. Whenever I encounter an interesting or useful software-intensive system, I often ask myself, “how did they do that?” By exposing the inner beauty of these systems through a study of their architectural patterns, I hope to offer inspiration to developers who want to build upon the experience of other well-engineered systems.

Quality Decisions, Dimensions and Life… 100 years from now

I’m thinking of the circles and waves of quality and value inherent within the past and present. I’m thinking of the levels and dimensions of quality and value that continually need to move upwards and inwards by and beyond 2020 (e.g., by 2050 or 2058, or by 2100 or 2108 and so on). Start thinking now about somehow helping to enable perfect universal vision concurrent with a true giant leap year! Make the year 2020 mean something positive 100 years and more from now. Choose a special interest (e.g., People, Processes, Products, Services, Sharing, Polling, Events) and be part of contributing to a future history that is profoundly even more positive than the present or past. Start thinking now about 2020; and beyond (e.g., relative to quality decisions, dimensions and life… and the state of such things, 100 years from now)! Thank you for doing so; and for your passion to help make things continually better.

                                            Lyrics for One Hundred Years From Now

Google (Schmidt) at NASA 50th

Virtual world will be part of making the real world better

The prior post stated what could be part of the answer to easily finding and helping to mature innate quality, value, excellence and simplicity. It is up to each of us however to inquire into and contribute to the emerging evolution of software quality and the internet (perhaps both currently in part 3, and associated to increased degrees of unification and having positive energies become more one). Will the future of algorithms and protocols better determine content quality and be more developer-friendly with correspondingly higher degrees of performance? Will website design templates be used increasingly in part due to sharing a blog post comment apparently from an Amsterdam-Netherlands organization? Will a pedestal be reserved for companies who help achieve high purposes or offer free web services? Will the value inherent to the concepts of sharing and polling be part of increasingly making the world better? Will a thinking net of micro and macro perspectives draw IT Pros and the general public increasingly together? Is it possible the virtual world will be part of making the real world better? Will the increasing dimensions of positive collective imagination and wisdom continually help intrinsically and pervasively evolve the concept of perfect vision, and of what a ’leap year’ should mean to all? In the end, part of the answer is free web services, and doing whatever you can to help advance matters of high purpose. 

“pedestal is now reserved for companies like Google, which offer them free Web services”— Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor of Internet Evolution (relates to this poll)

Ideally the virtual world will be part of making the real world better, so that tremendous gains result for current and future generations. Ideally this new website, SearchFinancialSecurity.Com, will be of some valuable assistance.

100+ million blogs, 100+ thousand new ones a day

With 100+ million blogs and counting, and 100+ thousand new ones each day and counting, ITKE (and the future work of IT Pros on complex algorithms), could be part of the answer to easily finding and helping to mature innate quality, value, excellence and simplicity.  

That is a lot of blogging

Did a quick visit to WordPress.Com just now; apparently they have 2,237,483 blogs and counting. Apparently their new posts for today are 4,339 and counting. That is a lot of blogging. Within at least one of the posts for today (this one), there is a reference to a digg blog post about digg’s new algorithm changes (the noted digg post has quickly gone over a thousand diggs… one you may find interesting is from a webdeveloper who goes by cafefort and says English is his 4th language — as food for thought his comment is rephrased as a question below).

Is it possible an algorithm can determine content quality?

(before potentially answering, consider this: some posts may require thinking between the lines or a view into the future; some posts regardless of the number of hits or the diversity of hits, may still be waiting to be fully discovered… you might say beyond language, the reader’s interests, direct correlation to matters of high purpose, and other variables one might have to factor into an algorithm, that some posts are part of that which may be hidden in plain sight)

You can’t depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus — Mark Twain

Can the viip (value-inherent, intrinsic and pervasive) to imagination be factored into an algorithm?

Thinking of the value inherent to the concept of sharing

The prior post shared these words, “value-inherent (ConceptShare), intrinsic and pervasive (it’s all around)”. In this post, I’m thinking of the value that in general is inherent to the concept of sharing. Looking back on the News page (of InherentQuality.Com) and clicking on “Sharing”, the following June 2007 story was mentioned, Dow Jones and Progress Apama First to Integrate Elementized News into Algorithmic Trading Platform. Also mentioned in the same month was that “you may enjoy watching this video, reviewing a few awards (e.g. 1, 2, and 3), visiting progress, and looking in at a few details”. Today, while thinking of thought balloons (i.e., positive ideas) and of the value that in general is inherent to the concept of sharing, and of sharing awareness of progress, I noticed the following that you may also enjoy reading, “Reflecting on security: A decade of growth”…”Information security: A dynamic decade” (as introduced in Security Wire Daily, SearchSecurity’s enewsletter: “If you consider yourself an observer of the past 10 years in information security, few would be surprised if you suffer from a touch of whiplash. As you’ll see in this retrospective looking back at the first 10 years of Information Security magazine, (login required), things moved pretty quickly. Where to begin? Well, at the start of Information Security’s journey in December 1997, there wasn’t a security profession. At least not as we understand it today. The chief information security officer was a notion whose time had not yet arrived. Compliance wasn’t the bane of corporate security’s existence, and macro worms were, around.”). Ideally before, by and beyond perfect vision leap year 2020, security will increasingly be among the progress that is a viip (value-inherent, intrinsic and pervasive) that you beam into your step (e.g., that you integrate to higher, wider, deeper and increasingly simpler levels, whereby the related positive complexities are inherent and virtually invisible). In any event, it will be interesting to watch progress advance or progress, from security and many perspectives; perhaps even relative to things like this BI IQ quiz, and the value that will increasingly be inherent thanks to a growing number applying the concept of sharing.