New to me local tech blog

CTO Vision, Technology context for the enterprise

New to me local business blog

Potomac Executive Biz, connecting, not just networking.

Social Media and federally funded research

Using Collaboration Technologies to Accelerate Innovation in Federally Funded R&D Programs

The challenges involved in managing collaborative processes using such technologies can be significant in the context of Federally funded R&D programs that involve many different types of organizations:

1. The different people and organizations involved may not be accustomed to communicating or collaborating to accomplish common objectives.
2. Competing business objectives may exist among these different groups, e.g., for-profit vs. nonprofit, academic vs. commercial sector, basic research vs. engineering, privacy advocates vs. law enforcement, etc.
3. Voluntary participation by the private sector can be an important factor in driving success of a Federally supported R&D program. For this to occur, the private sector needs to understand and adopt a variety of public sector goals, objectives and — bureaucracy intrudes here — processes.

What researchers need is for someone to walk them through the basics of social media.

What is Firebrand Monday?

Firebrand

The Super Bowl has always been the holy grail of advertising and Firebrand celebrates that," says Shari F. Leventhal, Chief Marketing Officer. "Most people watch the Super Bowl with hopes of seeing the best, most creative commercials the ad industry can serve up. The greatest commercials get to play every day at Firebrand. So the Firebrand Monday campaign is our way of saluting the best of these commercials, past and present, as well as the famous icons that make commercials so memorable, and in many cases, a part of pop culture.

The marketing coattails of the Super Bowl never ceases to amaze me.

New to me government contracting blog

GovCon, A Gathering Place for the Fast Growing Government Contractor

Blogs and search engines

greggersh

Wow. Wrote a blog post 1/2 hour ago, already #1 in Google for relevant keywords and getting traffic via search. Wow.

Scandal! Obama will only speak on the record!

Team Obama Is Courting Everybody But the Press

Some reporters say Obama seems disdainful toward journalists, having submitted to precisely one off-the-record chat over beer several months ago in Iowa.

If Obama cleans all the anonymice out of the White House and federal government it will be a very good thing.

Edit -

Jim Horton takes a different view. For my part I think our industry cannot take too hard a line against the use of anonymous sources.

Future of federal blogging

Clinton: Let's Put Bloggers Inside Government Agencies

This is just another indication that blogging has become mainstream and must be part of any government contractor's communications effort.

The debate over privacy

The IT Skeptic

People demand online privacy as if it were some god-given right.

Declaration of Independence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Ninth Amendment

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

I suppose it depends upon whether or not you believe in God, but certainly the protection of privacy has a long tradition among English speaking people.

Hyping your conference

Content Convergence & Integration Conference has a gossip section on their website. Very clever.

AIIM StratML Committee

AIIM adopts StratML

The AIIM Standards Board has announced that it is adding Strategic Markup Language (StratML) to its standards program of work. AIIM, based in Silver Spring, Md., is an enterprise content management association.

Owen Ambur, former senior architect at the Interior Department, and Adam Schwartz, a program analyst in the Program Management Office at the Government Printing Office, oversaw development of that schema, which is designed to encapsulate strategic plans, performance plans and performance reports in a format based on Extensible Markup Language, the association said last week.

January 10th saw the first meeting of the AIIM StratML committee. It opened with Betsy Fanning describing the AIIM’s standard’s process. I learned that AIIM is the US representative on the International Standards Organization Technical Advisory Group. If you want to influence the industry standards in this area it is necessary to participate in this group.

Adam Schwartz opened his presentation with a brief explanation of what StratML is, from my notes: StratML is a mark up language and schema for strategic plans as well as performance plans.

StratML creates a system whereby an organization can track its plans and measure performance. It was created to comply with the Government Performance & Results Act of 1993. This calls for, amongst other things, a publicly searchable database of federal government strategic and performance plans and progress reports. Although private organizations would probably not want to make their plans public, such a language would have obvious value for their internal planning and review.

The should the standard created by the committee be accepted by AIIM, it would then be submitted to the International Standards Organization, so the work of this committee will have far reaching consequences for the entire industry.

One of the committee members asked if StratML could be related to XBRL, but there was some feeling that might be taking on too much.

The core schema has been created and incorporates GEFEG XML. Mark Logic has created a search prototype, a password in required.

AIIM members who are interested in participating in the work of this committee should contact Betsy Fanning, Adam Schwartz, or Owen Ambur.

StratML Wiki

How to use Twitter to hype your FOSE exhibit

Step one: Set up a Twitter account and subscribe to some feeds. Check DC Technology Network for good local tech feeds.

Step two: Follow the conversation so you have a feel for what works.

Step three: Start tweeting about you booth. If your company is participating in any of the conference panels, tweet about that. Tweet about which products are going to be featured. Tweet about the individuals at your company who will be working at the show.

Step four: Tweet about your partners who will be showing at FOSE, share the buzz.

Step five: Tweet about setting up for FOSE, how the booth is put together and the ideas behind your presentation.

Step six: Tweet throughout the show, what happened at the booth (NEVER use names without permission), what it is like to work at the show.

Step seven: After FOSE issue some after the show tweets.


Edit -
Jeff Hurt talks about his experience using Twitter while participating in the American Society of Association Professionals (ASAE) three-day online conference for small staff associations.

George Soros on our times

The worst market crisis in 60 years

The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years.

However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.

The Levy Institute has been saying much the same.

I highly recommend Soros' book, Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror.

Five things about me redux

Jesse Wilkins of Informata blog tagged me, so I will link to my earlier post.

PR Student Blogs

ISCOM eCulture & Communications via Elizabeth Albrycht.

FCC public safety spectrum

FCC spectrum auction hits snag

The FCC had set aside 10 Megahertz of spectrum in the D Block for sale to be shared by public safety users and commercial users. The winning bidder of that segment must negotiate a sharing arrangement with a public safety group designated by the FCC.

The sole bidder, Frontline Wireless LLC, a startup with several prominent backers, did not submit the $128 million down payment to the FCC needed to qualify to bid.

“Frontline Wireless is closed for business at this time. We have no further comment,” the company said in a Jan. 12 statement. Company officials could not be reached for comment.

Media reports have speculated that Frontline was unable to get enough financing to cover the minimum required reserve bid of $1.33 billion for the D Block, an amount set by the FCC.

Before we hand over the public safety spectrum for the entire country to one company we should be sure that the company is solvent.

See also FCC’s unanswered questions.

Requirements and process improvement

Requirements Management

I have often read that no or little requirements' management is probably the cause for most project failures in software development.

From my point of view, I can say that I have seen requirements management save projects from schedule overruns and keeping project managers away from getting new ulcers... Also, having a controlled change management procedure is at the very heart of it.

Years ago at DC SPIN, I heard a speaker say that he wanted to write a novel where the villian would be the Feature Creep, and the hero would be the dashing Contracting Officer who slew the Feature Creep.

Rating MBA programs

The Financial Times has a ranking of MBA programs. I wonder if they factor the number of alumni convicted of financial fraud into their rankings?

Email retention in the era of accountability

E-mail Scandal Drives Storage Lesson Home

As the saga of whether the Bush administration properly saved or illegally deleted e-mail continues to unfold, experts are advising companies to review and confirm that corporate e-mail policies are not only in place but are meeting regulatory requirements.

"It's one thing to back up and archive e-mail, but it's a whole other thing to make sure it's there and you're able to retrieve it," said Matt Smith, president of LiveOffice, a provider of message managing and archiving services.

These investigations will continue and it is only a question of time before government contractors are drawn in.

The coming fight over privacy

EU Group Head Says IP is Personal

In a ruling that could have long term repercussions -- especially on the way in which search engines record and store data -- the Head of the European Union's Group of Data Privacy Regulators said IP (Internet Protocol) addresses that identify computers on the Internet should generally be regarded as personal information.

Peter Scharr, who is also the Data Protection Commissioner for Germany, was speaking at a hearing of the European Parliament on the subject of 'online data protection'. He expressly said that when someone is identified by an IP or Internet Protocol address, "then it has to be regarded as personal data".

Privacy is the next killer ap. The market isn't ready yet, but it will be.

Privacy/data protection regulators around the world