My 7 year old daughter asked me what I meant while I was talking on the phone and used the phrase "Don't try and boil the ocean?"  I was working from home and talking to a client and used the term that we are undoubted all familiar with.  When I got off the phone she asked me, "Dad, how come you can't boil the ocean?"

I simply said, "It's an expression sweetheart.  You know, if you try and do something too large you can't do it.  Just like you couldn't boil all the water in the ocean away.  Understand?"

She scrunched her nose and I could see she was thinking.  Then she replied, "You could if you used mom's pot."

I replied, "A pot would be too small wouldn't it?"

She answered, "Yeah but you would just do it over and over again.  One pot at a time."

To this I smiled and chuckled as I reflected on the truth of her statement.  It got me thinking about the approach that my consulting group and I take when approaching client problems.  Project X leverages a Rapid Results approach, striving to chunk things down into 100 day initiatives that deliver value.  In effect, our approach for producing value through short engagements that make up a larger organizational strategy is akin to boiling the ocean one pot at a time. 

Trying to "boil the ocean" all at once will undoubted result in an organization realizing that  they are under-powered (resources like people, funding, technology, processes).  Breaking up large initiatives into manageable "pots" allows an organization to effectively leverage the finite resources it has. 

There is a second element to take note of as well. What is important for organizations to realize is that with the pace of change that occurs in markets today, and especially with technology, "boil the ocean" projects take so long to complete, that business value is not realized in a timely fashion.  

I have found through experience that projects that are structure across a long period of time tend to break down because people spend a lot of time in meetings & talking about what needs to be done; months will pass and little gets done. Results are expected at the end of the project and project teams see those far off results in the distance and hence the result doesn't shape the process.  In shorter term projects, you get results quickly and that allows for two important benefits: 1) learning & 2) renewed capacity.

What do I mean by those benefits.  First, learning: When I am on an engagement that is leveraging a rapid results process, these short initiatives allow me to learn.  That learning then feeds into the future phases, thus improving future initiatives.  Take an example of a project that has been structured to last 9 months.  In my approach, I would have had three projects - three opportunities to learn and enhance the next phases.  In the single "boil the ocean" type project, you only have a chance to learn once the project has completed.  Value is realized too late.

Secondly, renewed capacity.  Capacity in this case can mean a number of things.  First, it is your resources.  A "boil the ocean" project will likely have many moving parts that requires many people.  Larger teams are harder to manage.  Multiple stream projects are harder to manage.  In many cases, staffing a large project can be difficult.  By delivering smaller projects in a rapid framework, you can operate with a smaller, more agile team.  Secondly, you have the opportunity to realize cost savings through the rapid results approach.  This could free up dollars, that could then be used to fund future phases.  

These are just two of the main benefits. I will in a future post detail some of the challenges and pitfalls of this approach.  Suffice it to say, however, that my experience has been that the benefits far outweigh the challenges.

I would welcome thoughts from others who may have leveraged a rapid-results-type and hear what benefits and disadvantages you may have experienced. 

I've spent some time over the past few months carrying out some strategy work in the education market as a part of our Education Transformation solution offering.  The way technology is leveraged by kids has always been something I've been interested in (here are past posts), both because I have children of my own & because I am always looking for ways that organizations can extract real value from their investments in information technology.

As I have worked with my own children over the past couple of years, I've come to see more and more that this generation of children is really changing due to being a digital generation. I saw this as well when I created and operated the Youth Technology Camp program for children.

Our children are changing, the world they will enter after school is changing, so why is it that education has not changed that much?  I don't think that it has kept up with the changing nature of the world with which it has found itself (a good video that drives home the point of rapid change is this one titled Did You Know).

So how is education changing and where is it all going?  What does it mean to transform our education system into a 21st century model?  To best understand this change, we need to understand the changes as they relate to the various stakeholder, processes and objectives.  The transition from Education 1.0 to today's Education 2.0 and eventually the future Education 3.0 is causing a fundamental paradigm shift in various aspects of education.  The diagram to the left tries to capture this change.  Most importantly is the move to a customized approach for each student.  That is truly disruptive.  It is akin to the the level of customization we receive in so many other areas of our lives.  For example, banks have embraced technology to try and deliver us a more customer-intimate experience, a one-on-one relationship between the bank and its customers.  The expectation is part of the culture today and kids are growing up with that.  Education needs to strive to deliver that type of learning environment to today's youth. 

Technology can help enable this important transformation, but it plays a secondary role in my opinion.  Cramming computers into classrooms, deploying laptops to students and hanging Smartboards on the wall are not enough to have any measurable effect on the quality of education.  I've seen this first hand in discussions I've had with schools.  Further, the research done by others shows the same thing (read Disrupting Class for an excellent in-depth look at this).  This isn't surprising to me.  As I've seen in other industries, technology itself is seldom the silver bullet to transform an industry. 

What is needed is the proper, strategic use of technology.  Without this important element, the all important processes and people (change management) elements won't fall into place and you end up with under utilized investments in technology.  That is why my focus when working with organizations it to employ a sound strategic process that puts the needs of the organization first and the use of technology second.  In education, technology is not the end-game.  A richer learning environment is the end-game, and technology is the enabling means to get there.

If you are interested in ways that myself and Project X Ltd. are assisting educational organizations with transforming their use of technology, click here for more information.

I had one of those shake your head moments a few days ago that has remained with me and so I thought I'd put fingers-to-keyboard in an attempt to flush out some thoughts and put the incident behind me. 

Over the past year I’ve looked at technologies that allow me to work effectively while on the go. For connectivity I’ve often relied on WiFi access points that might be found at vendor offices, client locations, hotels or coffee shops. While often these resources work out, they aren’t always ideal. Many times, when I needed connectivity the most, that was the time I just couldn’t get a WiFi access point to work effectively. 

Let’s start with the setup. I use multiple laptop computers depending on what it is I am working on or where I am going. I also have been using a Netbook for times when lugging a laptop around is too cumbersome (see my previous post on Netbooks here). Most of my laptops are Mac except for an older IBM Thinkpad I occasionally pull out. The netbook is also a Windows device. The Rogers Rocket internet stick when plugged into a Windows machine does a nice self-install. I simply plugged it in and the software that is loaded on the wireless stick installs on the PC. This only has to happen once. Every subsequent time when I plug the internet stick into a Windows based machine, it simply launches the MobileLink software that was previously installed. From there I just click the Connect button on the MobileLink interface and I’m connected to the high-speed Rogers data network. 

I love robotics.  I also love telepresence (the ability to be someplace via webcam and/or shared web space).  That is why I was immediately interested in the Rovio when it came out.  I've had it for a few months and wanted to share my thoughts on it.

Firstly, what in the world is a Rovio?  Well, the straight definition from WooWee, the company that makes Rovio, is:

...a WiFi enabled mobile webcam that lets you see, speak and hear from anywhere in the world...as if you were right there in the room...

What I like about Rovio (besides it being a cool piece of tech) is:

What is important when you have an outage is how you deal with that outage.  Of course there are the obvious elements, like getting the issue resolved and ending the outage.  I think equally important though is how you communicate the outage to your end users.  Often an end user is far more tolerant of an outage when they have information as to what's been impact, what's being done, and when/if the issue has been resolved.

I thought of this during Google's Gmail outage yesterday.  Yes, even Google, with all their robust infrastructure and multiple levels of redundancy, does experience an outage.  The Gmail one was widespread, impacting a lot of people and generating a ton of negative chatter on the Internet and in media.  I was glad to see, beyond just resolving the issue, that Google took a proactive step to communicate today by providing end users with a dashboard that gives the status on a variety of Google applications (like Gmail, Calendar, Docs, etc).  This kind of dashboard provides performance status that is important to the end-user and works to temper people's reactions to outages.  I know from experience that when my team experienced a corporate outage with email, for example, then once the issue was resolved, any little thing that user perceived as an issue with email, they quickly escalated because they weren't always sure if the issue was resolved.  I think Google's dashboard is a good step in the right direction in continuing to earn people's trust in the cloud services that they have given to the market.  Can more be done?  Absolutely.  Still, if this is the first step among many, I think end-users will be a lot happier, even when there is an outage. 

You can see the Apps Status Dashboard by clicking on this link.

I must admint that netbooks are a tech that puzzled me somewhat.  For a time I felt they were too small and, more importantly for me, too underpowered.  Of course, what I was thinking about were mini laptops that I tested over the years - there was no netbook category.  They were ultraportable laptops like a Sony UX50 or a Fujitsu Lifebook.  I liked their size (for the most part) but found them to be pokey/sluggish when it came to performance.  I loved the concept of the OQO as this really tiny computer you could use at your desk, plugged into a keyboard and monitor.  Then, when you had to leave the office, you simply grabbed the OQO, put it in your pocket and off you go.  A very appealing idea for me.  The problem again, was performance.  The device is somewhat underpowered.  The other issue - price.  You were really paying a premium for that portability.

All those things I mentioned above came back to me (mixed feelings) when I started to see this new category emerge called Netbooks.  They have been taking the markets by storm though, in a time when laptops and PCs have been taking a beating.  I often see articles that talk about how business users are warming to the netbook and how the overseas market has been soaring for these low powered mini devices, but still I scratched my head in wonderment.

To be honest, I'm predominately a Mac user, so the netbook initially held little appeal to me with them being Windows or Linux based.  I was of course interested to see if Apple would come into this space.  I love the MacAir which I occassionally use (when I can pry it away from my wife) but for me, there was a still gap that needed to be filled somewhere between my iPhone and the MacAir (or my other laptops like the Macbook Pro).  There were definitely times where the lugging around of my laptop was totally unnecessary but still I took it along with me for those times where my iPhone just wasn't enough.  I do more with my iPhone than I have ever done with any other smarphone, but still, I can't comfortably write a lengthy blog post or a chapter for my book on my iPhone.  Surfing on the web is a joy, but it doesn't lend itself to doing research via the web.  With that said, I don't like lugging my laptop around all day long only to find I used it for 30 minutes in a coffeeshop between meetings. 

It was in this grey area that the netbook started to make sense to me.  The netbook was really meant to be used, well, on the net!  Sending and receiving emails.  Surfing the web for news.  Blogging on the road.  Perhaps some lite editing in Google Docs (or Word....perhaps?).  It was that portable device that you'd always have with you, slipped into a small bag or even a file folder and (and this is a big AND), you didn't have to shell out $2000-$3000 for. Performance mattered less because you weren't doing processor intensive activities - you were really leveraging the net and without having to break the bank.

This is why I think netbooks are really taking off - they fill that need I described above, and they fill it for a reasonable price.  The ultraportables from before were (are) just too expensive for the function that they would be used for.  The netbook however is coming down into that sweet spot where people will own a laptop and a netbook rather than having to choose between one or the other.

This is all very good for the end user, but I feel it can't be good for Microsoft and OEMs.  The netbook market is literally a race to the bottom and you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who wins in that race.  I think that is why Apple has stayed out of the netbook market so far.  To deliver a low cost, mini netbook with OS X on it would kill the laptop market that Apple has been trying to build.  If Apple does get into the netbook space I suspect they'll do it with a device that sits between the iPhone and the MacAir and that device will have an OS that is functionally somewhere between the iPhone OS and the the Mac OSX.  My prediction is that that'll be Apple's approach to create a segment that doesn't cut into one of its other segments.

As for me, I am now testing out two netbooks and you'll have to stay tuned for future reviews.  So far, one I have taken with me nearly everywhere, tucked away discreetly in a small bag I carry and twice I've taken it inside a an expanding folder that I carry with other documents (no I'm not talking about a MacAir).  I must say that as skeptical as I was with regards to Netbooks, the gap that this test unit is filling for me has really been wonderful.  I look forward to sharing my thoughts on my specific test in the next week or so.

If you've had personal experience with a netbook, please feel free to add your comments below, or drop me a note on Twitter.  You can follow me there @mip69.

I posted a blog a few days ago about my surprisingly positive experience with using Twitter.  As a part of using Twitter, I've found there are many ways to update the "what are you  doing?" field.  I'll blog tomorrow about how I do this on the iPhone when I'm out and about, but the reality is that predominately, my time is for the most part spent in front of a computer.  

I recall when I took a family vacation and we were aboard a cruise ship.  At one point I was out on deck with my oldest daughter, and while I looked out a the massive ocean stretching out before us I quoted a line from a famous poem titled The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, that line being, "Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink."  

....Large-scale desalination typically uses large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure....

Ultimately the Data Warehouse is a tool used by business to supply information necessary for informed decision making. Information is distinct from data. Information is data that has been intelligently processed via a Data Warehouse to allow it to be used for key business decision making. These characteristics are common to all data warehouses, but not all Data Warehouses are the same, they simply share common characteristics, both technically and in the business. These characteristics include the desire to use analysis of performance to drive the decision making process and identify areas to improve efficiency and gain a competitive advantage.

Over the years I have tried a number of tablet PCs in an attempt to have something that I could write my notes on and they'd then exist on my computer.  Try and try again, no matter what devices I've tried, the promise of enhanced note taking just hasn't been there for me unfortunately.  This lack of value for me was due to any number of things, such as:

• size of the unit - either they are too big and clunky to carry around or they are too small to effectively use
• battery life - nothing worse than having the unit not turn on in a meeting or die half-way through the meeting due to a drained battery 
• format of the notes - too often, systems I tried used some kind of proprietary format for the files that contained my hand written notes, effectively trapping my notes if I ever wanted to change systems 

Despite the above shortcomings however, I have still lusted quested for the holy grail that would enable me to hand write my notes, but still have them captured digitally.  Several months ago, my prayers were answered and I'm here to tell you about one of the most  valuable devices I've had the pleasure to use in the past year.  

I've been a long time Facebook user.  And I love it.  I find it an incredible way to keep in touch with family and friends.  I'm not sure if it is because I've used Facebook for so long that Twitter initially made little sense to me.  Let me tell you then, how I went from being confused, to a huge supporter of Twitter.

I signed up for Twitter some time ago; when exactly I can't remember.  I typed a couple of one-line updates.  That's what they felt like to me, like Facebook status updates.  That was what was somewhat disappointing to me.  It was like a lightweight version of Facebook.  Status updates but nothing else.  I tried to see what the appeal was.  I searched for some people that I knew, but alas, nobody was there.  So I stopped visiting, content to update status in Facebook, share photos with families, and trade comments with friends.  Twitter seemed like a technology that had been surpassed by Facebook.

Well it is summer time, and I thought I'd lead off my return to blogging with a post for technology and kids.  My kids have been busy doing all sorts of good outdoor fun this summer: swimming, golfing, water parks.  After a day out and about they like to come home and crash with some indoor fun. 

I found this site for my children that they absolutely love and I wanted to share it with you all.  The site is Kerpoof and it brings together two of my favourite things:  technology and creativity.  Kerpoof allows children to create a number of things:

• pictures where they start with a background and drag & drop characters and props to create a scene.  The tool is intuitive enough to adjust items you drag into the scene in terms of size to give a sense of perspective & depth
• drawings where kids can freehand draw
• movies where they can use an interesting timeline tool to have objects, characters, and speech appear & move as time passes.  It is a great introduction for kids on how animation is done.  It uses a similar paradigm to other movie creation tools and serves as a good introduction for kids
• cards and stories that again allow them to leverage a variety of creative tools

What I found most interesting about Kerpoof, aside from the tools, is the social network aspect.  Children, once setup with an account (that is free), earn virtual coins that they can then use to buy other things, like different style pens for example.  The art work is made available for other users to see and other kids can rank your work, which also earns you points. 

I've watched my oldest and youngest, 10 and 6, both spend time on this site and thoroughly enjoy it.  They email me pieces of their work through the day and it is amazing to see the level of sophistication that can be achieved after "playing" with Kerpoof for a while.

If you are looking for a good destiniation to send your kids to on the web, be sure to check out Kerpoof. 

Hello dear readers. At long last, I have finally returned to blogging. Life was incredibly busy with a number of personal life events and so tech blogging took a temporary hiatus.

Does that mean I was away from my usual use of technology? Not a chance! As I sit here this morning blogging in a Starbucks from my 3G iPhone, I have a dozen topics that I will slowly ease into this week.

It is great to be back! I look forward to reconnecting with you again in the coming days and weeks.

Ciao!
mip

For years we've heard about the next great iPod Killer.  A music player so revolutionary, it would surely break Apple's dominance.  Yeah right.  What did we get? Wanna-be-device after wanna-be-device.  Why do companies insist on labeling their products as "such-&-such-killers".  It is just dumb.  It introduces unnecessary pressure on the device, which rarely amounts to anything more than a later comer to the party.  It gave us poor devices like the Microsoft Zune which were destined to be iPod-killers but really became bottom-drawer-fillers.

Hence, I had to roll my eyes, now that LG has announced their iPhone killer.  Ummm...didn't they already try that with the Prada phone...which tanked miserably as an alternative to the iPhone.  Well they are at it again now with the Voyager, which looks to be a rip-off of the iPhone.  It looks pretty, sure, but will it perform well?  Will it be anything more than a "me-too" device?  LG has already made a misstep.  They have said this device will be the iphone-killer.  What happens if it isn't?  Wouldn't they have been better off just releasing this phone and letting it stand on its own?

No date or price has been set yet.  I would be willing to bet that by the time this phone hits the market, Apple will already be preparing the next generation iPhone.  What is encouraging about this story, however, is that you can see that Apple really has redefined the market - everybody is trying to imitate them.  What else is new?