Weekly review for the week ending 7th of Feb 2010

Last week I said I would:

• Start work on my GTD tool selection project.
  
  • My blog post about tool selection attracted quite a bit of interest and I now have a long list of tools to evaluate. However, after an initial look I narrowed down my choices to:
    
    • Toodledo with the associated Firefox plugin and ToodleDroid on my phone.
    • Brett Philp's IBM internal GTD template.
    • Remember the Milk
    • Google Tasks with the GTDinbox Firefox plugin
      
• Discuss with my local and remote managers about what my goals should be for 2010 (again a multi week project)
  
  • I got clarity on my goals and responsibilities within the global Sametime team and I started working on these. I don't want to give details on my external blog, but I will post details to my IBM internal blog
  • I had some discussion about what my responsibilities will be for the local lab management, but this is not yet agreed.
    
• Begin taking on the additional areas of leadership in the Sametime team (once I get clarification on what they are) - done
  
• Start work on comparison of MicroBlogging tools
  
  • I started work on the comparison between WildFire and StatusUpdater/MicroBlogCentral but was unable to complete it because I ran into some problems in trying to get Wildfire working
  • I tried without success to recruit a team to complete a detailed report comparing all of the client side and server side tools in this area. Therefore, I will put this idea on hold for now and simply compare the two tools.
    

Next Week I will:

• GTD Tool selection project
  • This week I will focus on trying out Toodledo with the associated Firefox plugin and Toodle Droid on my phone.
  • I will also install a copy of Brett Philp's IBM internal GTD template so I will be ready to use it next week.
    
• Work with the audit team on the security peer-review that is starting this week.
• Discuss with the local management team about my lab management responsibilities for 2010
  
• Blog on the IBM internal site about taking on the additional areas of leadership in the Sametime team
• Wildfire v Status Updater
  
  • Get resolution to Wildfire issues
  • Write the blog post about the comparison between the two tools
  • Renew my attempt to convince both teams that they shoudl merge.
    
• Build new SUT kit for Ubuntu users within IBM to bring them up to the CF1 code level
• Prepare Open Client presentation for the Senior Leadership Team

Zorin OS Presentation

One of my highlights from helping run the IBM stand at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition is that I met the two young Zorin brothers who have created their own Ubuntu variant Zorin OS. Kyril Zorin, is doing a transition year placement in IBM this week where he is investigating building a variant of the IBM Open Client on top of Zorin OS rather than the one we have at the moment which is based upon Ubuntu itself.

Zorin is an interesting distribution because it aims to help smooth the transition for people moving from Windows to Ubuntu. The menus look very similar to those in Windows XP (which might or might not be advantage based upon your perspective). Zorin OS also comes pre-configured with many things that people typically add to Ubuntu after install (e.g. MP3 support, WINE, etc.).

Here are the slides from a presentation that Kyrill did for us in the lab yesterday. Unfortunately we did not record his demonstration which was very impressive. Especially the "theme switcher" which allows you to switch between a Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Macinitosh look and feel - this will be included in the next version of Zorin OS which will be based upon Lucid Lynx.



If you are interested in learning more, I encourage you to get a Live CD from their web site

Choosing the best task tracking system for GTD

For the past few weeks I have had an item on my ToDo list "Set up GTD folders and actions tracking system" which never seems to get done. This week I didn't get it done eaither, so I decided instead to write a blog post about the factors affecting my choice. I am hoping that this might prompt some people to offer me advice. I am also going to start a formal multi-week project plan for how I will evaluate all of the options and set up a tracking system that suits me personally.

In David Allen's GTD book, he stresses the importance of setting up a tracking system that suits both your personal circumstances and preferences. The points to note are:

1. The system I use for storing information about what I need to do must be one that I trust totally, because otherwise my mind won't be focusing on what I am doing if I am distracted by worrying about whether or not I have accurately captured the next actions. What this means is that I can't entrust to a web based service that I think might be down at the times when I need to use it most.
2. The system I use for tracking my work must be really easy to get information into and out of, because otherwise I will carry information in my head and resist dumping it into the storage system.
3. Since I will be notified of work items in a variety of places I may need some form of temporary storage that is always available to be so that I can store the tasks until I get a chance to record them properly. David Allen suggests a small notebook or a collections of index cards - in my case perhaps my mobile phone would be something I would be more likely to have with me at all times.
4. I will be doing work in different places. So I need to be able to access my task list from anywhere.
   

My personal circumstances are:

• At work I will be primarily driven by my Notes email and the associated calendaring system. This is a simple fact of life in IBM. It is of course acceptable to use a program other than the Notes client to read my email and to track my personal calendar. However, I find Notes to be a great tool and I feel it makes sense for me to to be familiar with the latest innovations from Lotus, so I will not seriously consider anything other than Notes.
• At the moment I use GMail for my personal email and I also use the Google calendar for personal appointments. In addition I have recently invested in a phone running the Android operating system - this means that I have easy access to my Google data at all times, but since IBM only has a limited trial of an Android compatible VPN I won't have easy access to my Notes data when I am not at my laptop.
  
• David Allen recommends a single tracking system for both work and personal tasks, but my personal inclination is to continue maintaining a separation between them. In any case, it will be necessary that whatever task tracking system should interface well with both the Notes client and with my Android mobile phone.
  
• Both Notes and Google provide task tracking systems, but these are rudimentary. I might consider some other systems that provide GTD compatible task tracking i.e.:
• Toodleoo
• Remember the milk (RTM)
• The eProductivity template for Notes.
  

My plan for coming up with a GTD tracking system that suit me are:

1. For the first week I will investigate each of the GTD task tracking systems.
2. I will spend a week using each of the GTD tracking systems in turn to see how well they work out for me.
3. I will make a decision on what GTD tracking system I am going to use and then configure the interface between my chosen system and both Notes and GMail. This may involve a small bit of programming, but I am hopeful that there will be tools available to smooth the interface (the existence of such tools may be one of the deciding factor when choosing between the various options).
   

Fourth Weekly Review of 2010

Last week I  said I would:

• Set up GTD folders and actions tracking system (not done, but a project set up to get it done - see seperate blog post)
  
• Deliver remaining PBCs and get all of them signed off. (done)
  
• Complete my schedule for monthly 1-on-1 meetings (done)
  
• Answer Robi's share the week challenge (done - people inside IBM can read a detailed account of my work week)
  
• Start forming our new "Customer Response Team" (done)
  
• Plan for how I can help increase adoption of Sametime on Linux (started - but I need further clarification of project scope)
  

Next Week I will:

• Start work on my GTD tool selection project (this will be a multi week project)
  
• Discuss with my local and remote managers about what my goals should be for 2010 (again a multi week project)
• Begin taking on the additional areas of leadership in the Sametime team (once I get clarification on what they are)
  
• Start work on comparison of MicroBlogging tools
  

Can MT help you have Twitter interactions across langauge barriers

IBM has been involved with the Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) which is is a research group funded by Science Foundation Ireland. However, this is not an ivory-tower research group. They are tacking very practical problems about how to improve translation and localisation technologies so that they can be applied to new challenges that are emerging in the modern world.

For example, many machine translation systems only perform better on long texts where the words are appearing in context, but Tweets posted to Twitter are very short with no obvious context. Furthermore, they may contain abbreviations, mis-spellings and specialised terminology. As a result the GNGL team have launched a special project to tackle the issues that arise in this specific context.

They are now looking for volunteers to test out their system and even better provide them with feedback. Ideally they would like testers who follow people who tweet in different languages from their target set (English, French, German, Spanish and Italian).

Here are the instructions directly from the author:
My name is Declan Dagger and I work on DCM3 in Trinity College with Vincent Wade. We have built an application called twanslator on top of the twitter micro-blogging network that allows you to translate tweets into different languages. Initially we are looking to collect user centric data on the capabilities and limitations of text analytics and MT in limited character/context environments such as twitter.
 
I would appreciate your help in conducting this research. You can get involved by doing the following:

1. Go to http://www.myisle.org/twanslate and login in using your twitter account details (if you don’t have an account you can sign up at http://twitter.com).
2. When your tweets arrive there is a simple drop down menu of languages available which the tweet can be translated in to. When you translate a tweet, a rating system is then available (thumbs up / thumbs down) to indicate whether the translation was accurate or not. You can also add comments to the translation using the comment feature. Please rate all the translations you invoke as this is critical to our research.
3. We appreciate any feedback, comments and/or suggestions you may have on how to improve the twanslator application. To leave general feedback, please click on the “app feedback” icon on the left of the page. You can also make suggestions by tweeting them to “@myisle #twanslator”.
4. We will be adding new features to the application over time and ask that you follow @myisle so we can keep you informed of any updates.
5. As we need a relatively large user base to conduct our research, we would be grateful if you could suggest to your followers and colleagues to also use twanslator.
6. We would encourage you to suggest tweeters to @myisle that you recommend following for CNGL regardless of the language they tweet in. For example “@myisle you should follow @joe_bloggs [a French expert in localisation]”.
   

 
Part of the MyISLE goal is to build an open research platform for CNGL members within the social networking space. As such, twanslator has been developed using web services, workflow and customisable interfaces. So for those in CNGL interested in using twitter as part of a research study, please contact me at Declan.Dagger@cs.tcd.ie and I would be more than happy to make these services available to you.

The initial user interface is somewhat rudimentary, but I am sure it will improve over time. I have sent some feedback to Declan and I would encourage all of you to do the same (the more people who ask for the same feature the more likely it will be implemented).

Third Weekly Review of 2010

Last week I  said I would:

• Set up GTD folders and actions tracking system (not done)
  
• Complete drafts of remaining PBCs and begin delivering them if approved (done - all drafted and all but 2 delivered)
  
• Blog about experiences at young scientist (done)
  
• Complete my schedule for weekly meetings (done)
  
• Begin implementing new role (not really)
  
• Keep track of what is happening at Lotusphere (done)
  

For next week my plan is:

• Set up GTD folders and actions tracking system (this is the 4th week I committed to this, but  it might get done this week because I anticipate I won't be so busy)
  
• Deliver remaining PBCs and get all of them signed off.
  
• Complete my schedule for monthly 1-on-1 meetings
• Answer Robi's share the week challenge
• Start forming our new "Customer Response Team"
• Plan for how I can help increase adoption of Sametime on Linux
  

Review of the IBM stand at the Young Scientist and using social software for connecting with children #ibm4btyse

Last week I was involved in helping run the IBM stand at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. One of the areas that I focused on was using social software to help publicize what we were doing on this stand. This was a hectic week. Now that I have had time to digest what happened, I decided to write this blog post which  will review how effective the stand itself was and how/if the various social software channels we used helped connect with the young people attending the exhibition.

In common with many other exhibitions there is a tradition that companies running stands at the Young Scientist will attempt to attract visitors by giving gifts to the people who visit their stand.  IBM followed that tradition with 4 diiffernt things we were giving away to our visitors. This was very sucessful - at one stage on Friday it was not physically possible for anymore people to enter our stand. However, I was surprised that the popularity of the different gifts did not relate to what they cost:

1. Anyone who visited the stand and made a token attempt to appear interested in our stand was given a YoYo with the IBM logo. We had a total of 10,000 YoYos were available in a variety of colours and they were all distributed over the 3 days. They were  hugely popular with the students and were probably responsible for a huge percentage of the visitors to the stand. A typical interaction with a student almost always sarted with the question "is it true you are giving out YoYos?". Of course we relied "yes, but not that you are year would you like me to tell you about IBM ..." The students felt morally obliged to feign interest in our messages in return for their valued prize.
2. Each visitor to the stand was asked to enter an idea on our web site for how technology could be used to make the world smarter. Most students were enthused by the competition and put a lot of thought into their entry. This was a good way of ensuring they really understood the Smarter Planet theme we had for our stand. We were giving out a prize fof a laptop for the best idea, but very few of the students showed any interest in the prospect of winning a laptop.
   
3. Each day we held a draw for a Nintendo Wii. All they had to do to enter the draw was write their name on a ticket. There was some interest in the chance of winning a Wii - but the scramble to enter this was much less than the scramble for free YoYos. I think the mood was captured by one young boy (I would guess aged about 8-10) - when asked if he wanted to enter the draw he said "I already have a Wii, but I suppose I could always sell it on eBay" - clearly a youngster with business acumen :-)
   
4. We were also giving out Ubuntu Live CDs and copies of the "IBM Open Client for Smart Work" at the pedestal where we were demonstrating Open Source software. There was very little interest in this from the younger kids, but some of the older students and their parents did show an interest. Some of the visitors to the stand were already using Ubuntu, but were fascinated to learn why IBM was promoting it. In fact a large number of the CDs were given to the IBM volunteers who planned to install it on their own PCs.
   

The communications team were keen to use social software tools to promote the stand to students since they heard that the students would all be keen users of these tools. I was asked to advise them as an expert in social software. I don't consider myself of an expert (expertise is relative), but I found that Laura Cowen and Sacha Chua were only to happy to fill in for the gaps in my knowledge.

The social software tools we chose to use were:

1. We created a Wordpress blog and we planned out a schedule for which of the team members would post each day so that it would not be forgotten. Much to my surprise we kept to the schedule and even posted a few additional blog posts when ideas occured to us during the week. We managed to get IBM employees to comment on the blog by using subtle pressure on them, but I don't think only 2 of our commenters were not IBM employees (of course I could be wrong because am not 100% certain of the identity of all of the commenters).
   
2. We used the existing IBM Twitter account @IBMIrelandEvent and also the hashtag #ibmbtyse - the reaction to this was good, but again I suspect we were more successful in letting adults know about the stand than in attracting youngsters. The young people did use Twitter, but generrally were more intersted in interacting with their own social social circle than in interacting with IBM. A few students who were keen ubuntu fans did send us messages via Twitter so I guess it was high quality interactions even if not high quantity.
   
3. The people manning the stand took lots of pictures and posted them to Flickr (e.g. my photos), Picasa (e.g. Donnacha's photos) and other web sites, but we did not organise them in a way that allowed people view all the content together. The communications team did produce some fairly professional looking videos and posted them to the YouTube channel. Speaking to IBM people they were very impressed, but I am not sure how many others viewed them.
   
5. We created an identica/StatusNet account @IBMIrelandEvent but did not really use it. The communications team were using HootSuite for managing all of the social media channels and since we never connected the identica account with HootSuite nobody remembered to manually cross post. In any case I don't think many students would use identica so our omission was not noticed.
   
6. We created a Facebook event page, since we were advised that most of the students would be very keen users of Facebook. We didn't hook this up with HootSuite either since it seems that HootSuite will only post to a person's Facebook home page and not to an event page (maybe we don't fully understand HootSuite). Nevertheless I manually posted links to most of our content as it appeared and also posted links to articles about the event in the mainstream media. I think that this pages was also used more by IBMers than by the target audience - 15 of the 19 confirmed guests and 9 of the 15 people who said they were "maybe attending" were IBM employees. I think the problem is that Facebook invites can only be sent to your friends and the people at the exhibition were not our friends on Facebook. Indeed the common wisdom is that the students would be advised against interacting with us on Facebook since we are all dangerous adults.
   

In summary it was a great experience and I think people attending got a good impresssion of IBM. This video gives you a quick flavour:

Update 23/Jan: I forgot to mention the Facebook page in the initial post so I added a paragraph about that.

Goals/Resolutions for 2010

Since I have been posting weekly reviews to my blog and also spending a lot of my time at work for the last few weeks on the annual appraisal process (known as PBC within IBM), I thought it might be a good idea to also publicly post my goals/resolutions for 2010.

I don't intend to post a full set of my goals for the year because that might be tedious, instead I will only note the significant things that I want to do differently this year from the past.

I have three main goals, and they are all tied together:

1. Become active in social networking sites outside of IBM. I am already quite active on sites inside IBM, but now I feel I am now ready to leap over/through the firewall.
2. Become more focused in relation the topics that I blog/tweet about. In line with common advice, I will concentrate on topics that excite  my interest:
• Advanced collaboration tools
• Use of social software for work as well as pleasure
• Open Source Software
  
3. Be more organised in the way I plan my work. Specifically I hope to implement the GTD methodology.

Now that I have publicly declared what my goals, maybe I will be embarrassed into carrying out my promises.

Second weekly review of 2010

Here is my assessment on whether or not I completed the goals I set myself for the second working week of 2010:

• Set up my GTD system of folders and actions (fail) and continue the other practices (done)
  
  • I didn't yet set up my GTD tracking system. I was advised that I need to pick a system that I have confidence in and tha fits with my working style. Therefore I need to do some experimentation with toold before deciding what I will commit to.
  • I am still processing email rather than reading it and doing a weekly review
    
• Complete a draft of at least 2 more of the PBC annual appraisals (done)
  
• Run for the stand at the Young Scientist Exhibition (done)
  
  • As expected this consumed most of my time. It was a great experience - I will write a full report on it later.
    
• Sort out the domain names I own
  
  • complete transfer of brianodonovan.net (not done - the old registrar is still haning on to this domain so I think I will give up on it)
    
  • Take a definite decision on whether to migrate from Blogspot to Wordpress for brianodonovan.ie and tidy it up regardless (done - sticking with Blogspot for now - it looks a bit better than it used to)
    
• Get involved in a discussion about some minor tweaks in our team's organisation structure (done - but discussion ongoing)
• Set up a schedule for my regular meetings in 2010 (partially done).
  

For next week my plan is:

• Set up GTD folders and actions tracking system
• Complete drafts of remainig PBCs and begin delivering them if approved
• Blog about experiences at young scientist
• Complete my schedule for weekly meetings
• Begin implementing new role
• Keep track of what is happening at Lotusphere
  

Are high profile politicians entitled to keep their private toubles out of the media

The news in Ireland has recently been dominated by two totally unrelated cases where the private troubles of high profile politicians have become the subject of media attention. It is interesting to compare the different public reaction to the two news stories and ponder what it says about whether or not we believe public figures are morally entitled to keep their private lives private.

The first case is that of Brian Lenihan the finance minister of the Republic of Ireland who is suffering from a very serious form of cancer. This new was dramatically announced by TV3 in their 9pm news program on the day after Christmas day. Mr Lenhihan is widely regarded as a very clever and able man. Many people disagree with the strategy that he is following to try and help the Irish economy recover from the recent down-turn. However, anyone I have spoken to seems to be of the opinion that he is fundamentally a good person who is trying his best to solve the financial crisis. In addition he receives sympathy due to the fact that he can not really be blamed for causing the current probelms (he was Minister for Justice at the time when the economy was allowed to "over-heat").

The second case concerns the marital difficulties of Peter Robinson the First Minister of Northern Ireland. Most people (including myself) were shocked to hear that Mrs Robinson was having an affair with a teenage boy. This news was especially surprising because Iris Robinson (who was also an active politician in her own right) is most widely know for her fundamentalist views on homosexuality. It is hard to reconcile these views with the news that Iris Robinson was engaged in an affair with someone 39 years her junior at the time she was making these provocative statements. Most people I know would not be supporters of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) - although they clearly have a large number of people in Ireland support the party or they would not be in power. In addition most people (including DUP most supporters) don't agree with her opinions on homosexuality.

Much of the public comment about Brian Lenihan's illness has concerned the fact that TV3 were very insensitive way in way they leaked the news. Apparently they contacted him on Christmas Eve and told him they were going to release the news and gave him a deadline of 48 hours to tell his family of his illness before hearing about it on the television news. Naturally people feel sympathy for Mr Lenihan having to break such traumatic news to his family over the Christmas (he has two teenage children). However, if you are objective it is hard to believe that any other news organisation would have kept the news secret for very long. Everyone agreed that the effect of the economic policies now being put in place will not be know for sure for several years - surely it is a important fact that people should know about if there is a significant that Brian Lenihan won't be able to continue as the Minister for Finance for the next 5 years regardless of what way the electorate votes in the next election. I sense that the news outlets who are criticising TV3's handling of the news are actually just upset that they weren't the first to get access to this juicy news story.

The reaction to the Robinson's marital problems has been quite different, most commentators have been only too happy to feed the public's demand for all the titillating details. I know that the Robinson's had more time than the Lenihan family to digest the news before it became public. In addition there are some suggestions that Mrs Robinson's political contacts helped the young man in question get financial support from the public purse for his business. However, on objective analysis it could be argued that the public has less right to know about this story. The distraction caused to Peter Robinson by having to come to terms with his wife's infidelity is hardly greater than the distraction caused to Brian Lenihan by his pancreatic cancer.

I suspect the main reason for the different reaction to the two stories is the relative popularity of the individuals involved. There is probably also some guilty delight in seeing an apparently arrogant person humiliated. Many people (including Peter Robinson) feel that Iris Robinson is to be blamed for her own downfall, while nobody can blame Brian Lenihan for his recent illness. In any case I personally feel sorry for both families - it can't be easy to deal with being in the public eye in such a negative way.

Update 11/Jan: The Robinson story is even more bizarre than I thought. When I initially read reports that Iris Robinson came to meet Kirk McCambley because she already knew his father, I naively though they were saying that Ms Robinson and Mr McCambley senior were social acquaintances. However, I now realise that they were hinting that they knew each other in the biblical sense. Of course Ms Robinson has only publicly admitted having a sexual relationship with Mr McCambley junior. She also stressed that while she first met him when he was aged 9, the relationship only became sexual when he was 19 and safely over the legal age of consent.

All of this provides great fodder for salacious headlines in the media, but I still fail to see how it impacts significantly on Peter Robinson's suitability for the role of First Minister. The media are making a big deal about the financing of the cafe business started by Kirk McCambley's, but the sums of money involved are relatively small and certainly trivial compared to the sums of money involved in the many recent scandals relating to the construction and banking businesses.

The silver lining to this cloud is the fact that the Lenihan family are finally getting some space to deal with their bad news as the media outlets need to save all available space for the more titillating news coming from the Robinson family.