IBM Think Conference Day 2

Creating a Bespoke Design Thinking Practice in Utilities with IBM Cloud Garage​

A major utilities customer has embarked on their own design thinking journey, but to meet their unique industry and internal requirements they needed help to support the scale and speed of their design thinking practice. These choose the IBM Cloud Garage as their design and collaboration partner to help define and scale their design practice and develop an approach to support it enterprise-wide. Learn how this collaboration has led to a successful design transformation for the customer.

IBM Research Science Slam: Predicting 5 Innovations to Help Change Our Lives in the Next 5 Years

Our mission at IBM is to help our clients change the way the world works. There’s no better example of that than IBM Research’s annual “5 in 5” technology predictions. Each year, we showcase some of the biggest breakthroughs coming out of IBM Research’s global labs –five technologies that we believe will fundamentally reshape business and society in the next five years. This innovation is informed by research taking place at IBM Labs, leading edge work with our clients, and trends we see in the tech/business landscape. Presented via a 'Science Slam' - our researchers will share their work and predictions through compelling, personal narratives that bring the technology out of the labs and into everyday life - in under five minutes each.

Video: Science Slam

Accelerating the Journey to AI

Organizations recognize data is what fuels digital transformation, and are looking for new ways to unlock the value of their data and accelerate their journey to AI. That is why 80% of them view AI as a strategic opportunity.  Yet, only 19% of organizations understand the data required for AI. Successful organizations apply a prescriptive approach to climbing the ladder to AI, based on a unified architecture that delivers everything they need for enterprise AI, on any cloud.  In this session, hear Chief Data Officers and Chief Innovation Officers share a behind-the-scenes look at their approach to managing the full lifecycle of AI, and the essential lessons learned on their journey to drive smarter decisions throughout the organizations.

Video: Accelerating the Journey to AI

Hybrid, Multicloud by Design. Accelerating the Enterprise Cloud Journey

Cloud is integral to virtually every enterprise digital transformation strategy. Yet less than 20% of workloads have moved to the cloud. Why? Put simply, complexity. Enterprises are struggling to modernize apps and workloads, and overcome persistent tech and data silos reinforced by vendor lock in. Agile enterprises can accommodate changing business requirements at speed. The right cloud foundation built on open standards frees workloads and data to run on the right cloud model, on or off premises, and across multiple clouds. It embraces tech and data from more sources to speed innovation. And when combined with unique industry, security and tech expertise, it can tailor the journey to cloud to your enterprise for better outcomes.

Hybrid Multicloud By Design

Transform Your Analytics with IBM Data Virtualization

Data virtualization allows customers to discover, query and control access to data across their enterprise in a scalable manner. IBM's new data virtualization technology is designed to query across data sources (IBM Db2 family, IBM Netezza, Oracle, Informix, SQL Server and many others), on-premises, on private cloud and public clouds and across geographies. The new technology provides a quantum leap in scalability over previous federation methods, with increased emphasis on governance and access control. Its primary goal is to enable central access across your data sources via a virtual data platform. This virtualization helps eliminate data silos, bringing the data closer to the business for actionable insights.

Transform Your Analytics

The Blueprint for Smart Businesses

How do you design your business for growth? Being "digital" at the edges is no longer enough. To succeed companies need to truly align the data they own towards purposeful innovation. This is the story of an insurance company who is now a risk management expert. Of a car manufacturer who found their competitive advantage in mobility. It is about an apparel retailer who is a fashion expert. But where do you start? Smarter businesses differentiate themselves from within. They have a culture of agile innovation that leverages AI and cloud on their journey to become a smart, secure and sustainable business. This is a new era for business - defined by incumbent disruptors - where companies who have a past, have the most promising future.

Video: Blueprint For Smart Buisnesses

What We've Built on IBM Quantum So Far​

Quantum computing offers theoretical speed-ups for many business applications. This includes creating new materials, calculating new markets and optimizing logistics. Accenture and IBM Research have come together in a first-of-a-kind partnership to demonstrate quantum computing’s applicability to today’s business challenges. Business application teams from over 15 different countries around the globe will be testing out their theories, by using IBM Q with the specific objective of showcasing the possibilities this new compute paradigm can bring.

IBM Think Conference Day 1

​I had the pleasure to attend the IBM Think conference in wet and chilly San Fran from Feb 11-14th of this year. 

The event overall was very interesting, thought provoking, and provocative. I'll be posting the event materials as well as some of my notes and thinking of the specific events and conference.

What's New In Dev Ops

On the first day, I didn't actually make it to this event due to traffic, but I was interested in it. Here's the material:

What's New In Dev Ops​

Core message: ​Devops is not about software development, it's about improving the economics of software delivery. Various IBM toolchains for DevOps are discussed. Worth a look, but a bit of an attempt to sell IBM tools in this space.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Designing for Today's Business Needs

This was an absolutley fantastic session, and it's unfortunate it wasn't recorded. A great demo of design thinking with developers, architects, and business folks.

New software designs start with many whiteboard sessions to sketch an idea, get insight from peers and ultimately total buy-in from stakeholders. How are you handling the likely re-architecture as you drive your cloud strategy? This can be laborious, time-consuming and often frustrating. Development teams need to agree on a new breakdown of capabilities, logical flows between services, and interaction with external services. Communicating this strategy can be complex within the team and with all stakeholders and LOBs. What's needed is a shared design space where teams modernizing applications can collaborate effectively to design and communicate an architecture as it continuously evolves.

A Picture is worth 100 words

Access the Future Today: Quantum Computing​

Quantum computing takes advantage of the laws of quantum mechanics found in nature and represents a fundamental change from classical information processing. For two years now, IBM has enabled more than 100,000 people around the globe to access quantum computers for learning, research, and tackling new problems. While still early, we believe it’s just a matter of time until we start using these devices to solve certain problems better than we can today. IBM’s Dario Gil will discuss this radically different approach to computing built on the laws of quantum mechanics and how the roadmap for mainstream adoption of this new technology is being forged today by IBM in collaboration with a global community across business, academia and research.

Video: Quantum Computing

How to Realize the Value of DevOps

I'll be honest: I didn't get a lot out of this session. There was some good encouragement that DevOps is the way to go, but little in the way of actually tackling it, or the business value it unlocks.

Join experts in a discussion about the challenges and direction of DevOps.

Speakers:

• Andrea Martinez, IBM
• Alan Shimel, Media Ops Inc (DevOps.com)
• Matthew Crabbe, QA Media
• Mick Ahmad, FannieMae
• Eitan Azoff, Ovum

IBM and SAP Cloud Platform: Agility to Intelligently Transform and Innovate Your Business

This was a pretty good discussion on leveraging good end user experience to unlock both digital transformation, but also enabling new channels for delivery.

Digital transformation demands an enticing customer experience across all channels independent of underlying data, and a flexible IT landscape that provides a comprehensive suite of integration tools. SAP Cloud Platform provides an enterprise grade business Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to help customers address those requirements. IBM GBS has enabled high-value use cases for how companies can extend and personalize their SAP S/4HANA deployments, both on-premises or in the cloud, and has built innovations side-by-side leveraging SAP Cloud Platform. Hear how IBM is providing a design-led approach with Apple iOS and is leveraging next-gen technologies like Blockchain and Watson with SAP Cloud Platform to create a unique value proposition.

Think 2019 Chairman's Address: Building Cognitive Enterprises

The linup for this event was far too long to even think about getting inside, so many of us caught the video from the restaraunt around the corner. A great networking opportunity nonetheless! Worth a look.

Join IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty and some of the world’s top CEOs and leaders as they share their journeys to the Cognitive Enterprise.

Video: Building Cognitive Enerprises​

Millenials Conundrum

I totally agree with this article.

Millennials aren't playing by the boomer's rules that we gen X'rs just kind of grudgingly accepted. They're not buying houses, cars, or even getting married the way that generations before them have.

And why?

Because it can seem pointless, that's why. School costs are insane to account for overruns and a shitty outdated education system. Housing costs are insane so that the boomers can retire. Cars are a burden, not a freedom - when you can live downtown and bike or walk or take transit everywhere.

And why get married when you were likely raised in a broken home, that not only upset and hurt everyone, but financially devastated them too?

It's a no-win raw deal. And the only way to play those kinds of games is not to play at all.

We need to change the rules so these kids can win.

http://www.lifehack.org/304505/recent-research-finds-millennials-are-the-best-educated-yet-worst-paid-generation

Coffee Drinkers More Likely To Succeed

I knew it!

It is not just about keeping you awake. There are other reasons that you should drink coffee. It also makes you smarter. The caffeine present in the coffee you drink blocks the adenosine in the brain. Adenosine is an inhibitory transmitter. When this adenosine is blocked you have a higher energy level and you can work at a higher level.

8 Reasons Coffee Drinkers More Likely to Succeed

"Enough With The Poor Me Attitude"

This is something I actually heard a leader say five years ago. Not to me; but to everyone.

It was about accountability. As in, taking it.

I just heard it at another leadership table. But this time, it wasn't a lack of accountability. It was...

Something else.

And I'm trying to figure out what that something else was.

Last Cutover

I'm in the middle of executing what is hopefully my last cutover weekend. The last vestiges of PIP, and the last one executing in this model.

It's going well so far, and I'm hopeful it continues that way. I feel crappy that I'm not at home with my kids on a beautiful summer saturday...

The Power Of Delegation

... Especially while on vacation... Isn't just for the boss.

It's also for those working for you to be able to step up, and even more importantly, understand what you do, day in, day out.

A recent vacation by my boss helped me understand that.

It helps you understand what your boss needs, what pressures are driving them, and the bigger picture. So it's not just to allow the person taking time off to do so, it's actually an opportunity for others to learn.

Do it.

Three Kinds Of Days

After being promoted, I've realized that I have three kinds of days.

The first kind of day is the day I know from the start is going to be a shit show.

The second kind of day is the day I think is going to be good, and turns into a shit show.

The third kind of day is the one that I think is going to be a shit show, and turns out to be good.

Today's looking to be the third kind of day.

Regular morning. Up at 6AM, shower, shave, make my morning cappa, and off to work I go. I have an 8AM critical meeting, so I drove in.

Sometimes I'll drive half the way in and then jump on a little used bus I know about to avoid the parking fees and to give myself some email catchup time. But today, no time.

Well, into the meeting madness I go. Regular confusion with process going on, luckily I think I got it all out of the fire. Quick break for lunch, and then back at it for the afternoon meetings.

Important late afternoon meeting with my boss' boss, then home to see a buddy I haven't seen in a year, and then pack for San Fran - leaving tomorrow!

Whew.

What Next?

It's been almost exaclty three years since I've updated this blog.

In that three years, I've achieved a lot -- I've gone after my career in a very large way, and achieved at a level that I thought was as far as I wanted to ever take it.

And now that I'm there, I'm asking... what next?

I've also acheived my 3rd degree black belt in aikido... and then taken a hiatus from aikido altogether. Because... what next?

I've been focusing on family. And that, I think, is what's next.

Work

I've learned a great many things over the past month... "friends" at work are not neccessarily friends, people you thought were "enemies" are quite often the only ones telling you the truth, and the solid ground beneath your feet is really a tower of sand. If you give up your fate to others, you'll be ruled by them. No longer.

What the CEO wants you to know

Very dry, dull book with some basic financial info like ROI and cash flow. Not a lot here.

Acting Director Gig Over Today

Whew... it's been a hell of a couple months. What did I learn from in the director role?

• having 200+ reports and being responsible for $100M+ in budget is hard. Fun, but hard.
• your peers and leaders expect you to have all the details for every project, issue, and person at hand at any moment. Keeping track of 136 in-flight projects in your head is tough.
• it's a hellava lotta fun helping build a quarter of a billion dollar IS budget for one of Canada's biggest companies.
• politics isn't everything, it's the only thing. Keep your head on a swivel at all times.
• protect your time like it's gold -- everybody wants a piece. Note to self: raise leaders that know how to manage their time.
• all-day meetings suck. Really, really suck. Note to self: when in the role permanently get rid of these.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Great book on how to create a high functioning, interactive, and engaged team. A must read.

Rework

Absolutely brilliant book. It's a series of very small chapters, one to two pages framed by a simple sketch to introduce the idea.
Some examples:
Embrace constraints
Don't copy
Pick a fight
Illusions of agreement
ASAP is poison

Key ideas:
1. Plans are harmful. They're an illusion that you can predict the future. Respond better to reality.
2. Ignore the competition. You'll end up copying their ideas if you don't rather than developing your own.
3. You don't need to waste time in meetings or paperwork. 90% of this will go away on it's own.
4. Most business functions are excuses. Do it yourself.

The 80/20 Principle

If you haven't heard of this, read this book. If you have, read it anyway. Pareto's principle changed my career and my outlook on much of my life. Simply put, redirect your attention and energy towards the 20% of effort that yields 80% of the results. Doubling this effort yields a 160% output on only 40% of the effort. Sally forth and kick ass, my friends.

A Time Of Deconstruction

It feels like we're in a time of deconstruction.

The whole family has been sick on and off for the past month. We're tired, grumpy, and just need some rest. From colds to puking and back to colds again.

At the same time, the Aikido community has been falling apart. We've had the death of one Sensei in town, and politics and squabbling within the community have been tearing it apart. On top of impropriety, arrogance and disrespect. It's brutal -- this is not what it's about for me and it's time I thought about the amount of effort and time I put in to this at the cost of my family.

Work is good. I'm in a new position in the project group with all the non-infrastructure people reporting to me. I finally get to set things up the way that I want and show how good a shop we can have. But to do this, we're literally taking away huge dollars from out outsource provider. So people's lives are going to be impacted yet again -- many of them are the same people we impacted by moving them from here to there. I feel a bit like the angel of death.

I guess that you have to get rid of the old to bring in the new. 

New Role @ Work

After a year of hell, I've been given a reprieve. I've spent the last year dealing with contracts, negotiation, budgeting, and conflict resolution -- and learned a hell of a lot; spending your day with directors and VPs teaches you more about the inner workings of corporations than almost anything can. But simply put, our agreement with IBM simply has not lived up to either side's expectations... and spending your days arguing is no way to live.

But now I'm done. We're taking projects back in-house and I am rebuilding a soup to nuts application team. Solution design all the way to handover. SAP, non-SAP, anything with code.

And I can't wait. This is what I do well. Plan, see through bullshit, deploy resources, and execute. I know what needs to be done and how to do it. I know who needs to help. 

And for the first time in my career there's no one standing in my way.

Zen To Done

Good (and short) e-book on productivity. If you're only going to read one book on how to cut through the clutter and get the important things done, this is it. Key ideas:

1 collect. Habit: ubiquitous capture. Carry a small notebook (or whatever capture tool works for you) and write down any tasks, ideas, projects, or other information that pop into your head. Get it out of your head and onto paper, so you don’t forget it. This is the same as GTD. But ZTD asks you to pick a very simple, portable, easy-to-use tool for capture — a small notebook or small stack of index cards are preferred (but not mandated), simply because they are much easier to use and carry around than a PDA or notebook computer. The simpler the tools, the better. When you get back to your home or office, empty your notes into your to-do list (a simple to-do list will work for now — context lists can come in a later habit). Read more.

2 process. Habit: make quick decisions on things in your inbox, do not put them off. Letting stuff pile up is procrastinating on making decisions. Process your inboxes (email, physical, voicemail, notebook) at least once a day, and more frequently if needed. When you process, do it from the top down, making a decision on each item, as in GTD: do it (if it takes 2 minutes or less), trash it, delegate it, file it, or put it on your to-do list or calendar to do later. See Getting Your Email to Empty and Keeping Your Desk Clear for more.

3 plan. Habit: set MITs for week, day. Each week, list the Big Rocks that you want to accomplish, and schedule them first. Each day, create a list of 1-3 MITs (basically your Big Rocks for the day) and be sure to accomplish them. Do your MITs early in the day to get them out of the way and to ensure that they get done.

4 do (focus). Habit: do one task at a time, without distractions. This is one of the most important habits in ZTD. You must select a task (preferably one of your MITs) and focus on it to the exclusion of all else. First, eliminate all distractions. Shut off email, cell phone, Internet if possible (otherwise just close all unnecessary tabs), clutter on your desk (if you follow habit 2, this should be pretty easy). Then, set a timer if you like, or otherwise just focus on your task for as long as possible. Don’t let yourself get distracted from it. If you get interrupted, write down any request or incoming tasks/info on your notepad, and get back to your task. Don’t try to multi-task. See How NOT to Multi-Task for more.

5 simple trusted system. Habit: keep simple lists, check daily. Basically the same as GTD — have context lists, such as @work, @phone, @home, @errands, @waiting, etc. ZTD suggests that you keep your lists as simple as possible. Don’t create a complicated system, and don’t keep trying out new tools. It’s a waste of time, as fun as it is. Either use a simple notebook or index cards for your lists, or use the simplest list program possible. You don’t need a planner or a PDA or Outlook or a complicated system of tags. Just one list for each context, and a projects list that you review either daily or weekly. Linking actions to both projects and contexts is nice, but can get too complicated. Keep it simple, and focus on what you have to do right now, not on playing with your system or your tools.

6 organize. Habit: a place for everything. All incoming stuff goes in your inbox. From there, it goes on your context lists and an action folder, or in a file in your filing system, in your outbox if you’re going to delegate it, or in the trash. Put things where they belong, right away, instead of piling them up to sort later. This keeps your desk clear so you can focus on your work. Don’t procrastinate — put things away.

7 review. Habit: review your system & goals weekly. GTD’s weekly review is great, and ZTD incorporates it almost exactly, but with more of a focus on reviewing your goals each week. This is already in GTD, but isn’t emphasized. During your weekly review, you should go over each of your yearly goals, see what progress you made on them in the last week, and what action steps you’re going to take to move them forward in the coming week. Once a month, set aside a little more time to do a monthly review of your goals, and every year, you should do a yearly review of your year’s goals and your life’s goals.

8 simplify. Habit: reduce your goals & tasks to essentials. One of the problems with GTD is that it attempts to tackle all incoming tasks. But this can overload us, and leave us without the necessary focus on the important tasks (MITs). So instead, ZTD asks you to review your task and project lists, and see if you can simplify them. Remove everything but the essential projects and tasks, so you can focus on them. Simplify your commitments, and your incoming information stream. Be sure that your projects and tasks line up with your yearly and life goals. Do this on a daily basis (briefly, on a small scale), during your weekly review, and your monthly review.

9 routine. Habit: set and keep routines. GTD is very unstructured, which can be both a strength and a weakness. It’s a weakness for some people because they need more structure. Try the habit of creating routines to see if it works better for you. A morning routine (for example) could include looking at your calendar, going over your context lists, setting your MITs for the day, exercising, processing email and inboxes, and doing your first MIT for the day. An evening routine could include processing your email and inboxes (again), reviewing your day, writing in your journal, preparing for the next day. Weekly routines could include an errands day, a laundry day, financial day, your weekly review, family day, etc. It’s up to you — set your own routines, make them work for you.

10 find your passion. Habit: seek work for which you’re passionate. This could be your last habit, but at the same time your most important. GTD is great for managing the tasks in your life, and trying not to procrastinate on them. But if you’re passionate about your work, you won’t procrastinate — you’ll love doing it, and want to do more. The habit to form here is to constantly seek things about which you’re passionate, and to see if you can make a career out of them when you find them. Make your life’s work something you’re passionate about, not something you dread doing, and your task list will almost seem like a list of rewards.

 

http://zenhabits.net/2007/04/zen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-simple-productivity-system/

4-Hour work Week

Decent enough book but unless you're planning to set up an internet business and take off (something I can't even imagine doing at this point) then 75% of the book is not for you.

However, getting rid of the 80% of stuff in your life that doesn't add anything and strategies for tellecommuting really do work. A good read.

http://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp/0307353133/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231713269&sr=8-1

My Productivity System

We've had several shakeups at work lately due to the crazy labor market in calgary as well as the recent outsourcing at work. I've been given the work of 3-5 people in total to do, essentially to have oversight/governance of IT -- both operations and projects.

To achieve this, I've dramatically revamped my productivity system.

Job #1 was to revamp Outlook. I've never been an Outlook fan and one of the major piss-offs from using it is that there's no real "Dashboard" to allow you to work in any kind of coordinated fashion between your inbox, calendar, and task lists. I found the "Outlook Today" feature which worked great except that it didn't actually show you your fucking inbox, just the number of unread items in your inbox. Big help.

Then I discovered that you can hack outlook today. A few lines of code later, and what I came up with is below:

The left column is a full folder view of my inbox. The middle column is an agenda-style view of the meetings that I have scheduled for today and tomorrow. Top right is today's tasks, and bottom right is my inbox. This allows me to see my whole day at a glance.

Email

Email is the #1 productivity killer out there. I have 4 simple options to keep my inbox clear:

1. Scan and delete it. Immediately.
2. Respond and delete it. Immediately.
3. Create a task or meeting out of it. Clicking and dragging it into tasks or calendar works.
4. Archive it. I've got a simple folder in my inbox marked "Archive". Use sparingly.

Tasks

Decompose all of your projects into 1-2 hour tasks if possible. Whole days are the limit. Give each task a schedule and priority so it shows up on your dashboard for that day. 'Nuff said.

Calendar

If a meeting request comes in that you don't understand or doesn't have a clear agenda that is relevant to you, decline or send a delegate.

Daily Warm Up

Book yourself a half hour meeting first thing in the morning to do the following:

1. Review today & tomorrow's calendar -- are there any meetings coming up that I can cancel, defer, or need to prepare for?
2. Review today's tasks to confirm that the priority, timing, and need hasn't changed. 
3. Answer the question: What do I want to get done with my day?

Daily Cool Down

Book yourself a half hour to cool down from the day by:

1. Reviewing tomorrow's schedule and tasks, updating as required.
2. Review the tasks that got done today and the ones that didn't -- reschedule them as needed.
3. Clean out your inbox. No excuses. No emails belong in your inbox by the end of the day.

When to get your tasks done?

Between meetings. If you can't find the time, book time out of your calendar or cancel some meetings. Move from the top of your to-do list down. You'll find that some big tasks become quite short once you get into the zone and have clarity about what needs to get done.

Spare time

You might actually find you end up getting your stuff done with time left in your day. The odd day at least. Here's what I use the time for:

• Networking. Linkedin is great for this, but even better is hooking up with your workmates (present or past) and going for coffee, beer, or just a walk.
• R&D. Constantly better yourself.
• Tomorrow's tasks.
• Leave early! If you're done, you're done. A boxer doesn't stay in the ring after he's won the fight. Go home and relish the fact that you're done. This is something I've been very upfront with my boss about -- let me handle my own schedule and you'll be happy with the results. And he has been.