Thursday, November 11, 2004
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
2005 Federal 100 award
The Federal 100 recognizes individuals from government, industry and academia who significantly influenced how the federal government buys, uses or manages information technology. Federal 100 winners are recognized for their risk-taking, vision and pioneering spirit in the federal IT community.
The best PR advice Technoflak can possibly offer is to nominate your customer. If your customer looks good, you look good.
The deadline for nominations is Dec. 17, 2004.
In memory of Herbert Schantz
Herbert Schantz died of cancer this past Sunday. He was president of the local TAWPI chapter.
Schantz was one of a select group of consultants who shape the local technology industry. He was a member of NCC AIIM and wrote regular articles for our newsletter.
Much of how we process banking transactions and how we process forms was influenced by Schantz’s work, both as a consultant and his work for TAWPI.
His wake is tonight at Adams Green in Herndon and the funeral is at St. Catharine’s off of Georgetown Pike on Thursday morning.
This is one of his many articles:
DATA WAREHOUSE – OVERVIEW
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
NewComm Forum Americas West 2005
NewComm Forum Americas West, Napa, CA, January 26-27, 2005
NewComm Forum Europe 2005 will be held in early February in Paris, France
New Communications Forum: Blog University is not a traditional conference. Rather, it is an interactive, international forum, comprising an extended, meaningful conversation and the sharing of ideas and theories about the future of marketing communications. The forum will also include an online component, beginning two months prior to the events, and continuing afterwards, giving attendees the ability to start learning immediately via the website, blog and wiki.
Technoflak is very excited to be participating. Also nervous.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Security watch
We do need passports with more data," says computer security expert Bruce Schneier. "But they chose a chip that can be queried remotely and surreptitiously. I can't think of any reason why the government would do that, other than that they want surreptitious access."
For those foolish enough to imagine we should just trust our government, devices that can be remotely accessed by our government can be remotely accessed by any government, or any organiation with the budget and motivation to do so. Does that make you feel more secure?
Libel legal jurisdiction blues
Jim Horton points to this most important article on the international libel lawsuit trend.
We are going to have to reconcile the issues of free speech, the individual’s right of redress when they have been libeled and national soverignty.
We are going to have to reconcile the issues of free speech, the individual’s right of redress when they have been libeled and national soverignty.
Partnering with IT: the Key to RIM Success
ARMA NOVA Seminar 2004
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
The Northern Virginia Chapter of ARMA, Intl. welcomes you to a one-day seminar designed to help you Partner with Information Technology Professionals in your organization to ensure your success and the success of your RIM Program.
Join Charles Dollar, Ph.D. as he helps us understand the implications of the Forrester Report recently released by ARMA, International and what we need to know about Information Technology to forge partnerships with the IT Professionals to manage electronic records and information.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Cease fire in the OS wars?
Microsoft .Net and J2EE coexist nicely
In the so-called “platform wars,” Microsoft .Net and Java 2 Enterprise Edition have roughly equal market share and will continue to coexist, said Brian Lyons, chief technology officer of Number Six Software Inc. of Arlington, Va. “I was really surprised by how split the marketplace is,” he said.
Lyons contrasted the two Web services platforms yesterday at a conference sponsored by the National Capital Chapter of the Association for Information and Image Management.
The Office of Management and Budget has recommended that agencies choose one of the two for their e-government business initiatives and technology reference models.
Friday, November 05, 2004
e-Gov goes to war
Navy puts warfighting first
The war in the Middle east is squeezing the Navy’s electronic government efforts, deputy Navy Department CIO Robert J. Carey said today at an Arlington, Va., conference sponsored by the National Capital Chapter of the Association for Information and Image Management.
Carey said the Navy’s seed-funding of e-business initiatives through an office in the Naval Supply Systems Command is “morphing under the huge bill for the fleet in the Persian Gulf. We recognize the need to seed things, nevertheless—to carve out money to advance corporate change.” He said the e-business office has returned $7 in savings for every dollar invested.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Jim Horton's predictions
As a blogger, it is only fair to let you know about the accuracy of my powers of observation. I made two predictions about the election that is still going on at this hour -- both apparently wrong. I had also made a prediction about the World Series -- also wrong. All this goes to prove that in some areas I should give prognostication a rest. Fortunately, I did not burden you with either prediction, but I did tell my friends and family who will mock me as they should.
Technoflak knows the feeling. She is still cleaning off the humble pie fate threw in her face.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Small is accountable
Dominic of Epicycle explains:
The overall problem, as I see it (and this is where, when talking to my friend, I started waving my arms a lot) is that the government is using the wrong sort of IT company to design and build these systems: they are fixated on the idea that when you need a large scale IT project, only a large scale IT company can possibly do the job. This leads them inexorably to the UK's big name consultancies - the likes of Anderson (or whatever they are calling themselves since the Enron embarrassment), Ernst & Young, Siemens Business Services, KPMG, Cap Gemini, or indeed my old nemesis Sema.
I'm convinced that this isn't necessarily the case, though. There are some extremely keen and talented analysts and programmers working for small IT companies in the UK, and these little firms are sleek, nimble and hungry... Unlike the big boys they don't expect £100,000 just to turn up to the first consultancy meeting, and with a complete lack of giant glass-walled office buildings and squadrons of overpaid managers in Mercedes, their idea of an outrageous fee is many orders of magnitude less than anything their more bloated cousins would ever contemplate. Furthermore, their staff usually take a far greater pride in their work than the faceless contract clones who end up employed by the big consultancies, and really care about delivering what they have promised, on time and in budget. Contract staff can leave behind their mistakes when they move to other projects or other companies - but if a small company is going to survive at all, it simply can't afford to make those sorts of mistakes in the first place, and this almost always shows in the overall quality of the systems that they produce.
Why do buyers think that bigger companies are better? Because they have heard of them, simply a matter of publicity. That is why I founded Presto Vivace, Inc. Simply getting a good feature story will give a small company the high profile they need to compete. Better copy for readers, better stories for reporters, better value for taxpayers, everybody wins.
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