Innovation is about finding a better way of doing something. Like many of the new development buzzwords (which many of them are over-used on many business documents), the concept of innovation originates from the world of business. It refers to the generation of new products through the process of creative entrepreneurship, putting it into production, and diffusing it more widely through increased sales. Innovation can be viewed as t he application of better solutions that meet new requirements, in-articulated needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments and society. The term innovation can be defined as something original and, as a consequence, new, that “breaks into” the market or society.
Innoveracy: Misunderstanding Innovation article points out that there is a form of ignorance which seems to be universal: the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation. The way this is exhibited is in the misuse of the term and the inability to discern the difference between novelty, creation, invention and innovation. The result is a failure to understand the causes of success and failure in business and hence the conditions that lead to economic growth. The definition of innovation is easy to find but it seems to be hard to understand. Here is a simple taxonomy of related activities that put innovation in context:
- Novelty: Something new
- Creation: Something new and valuable
- Invention: Something new, having potential value through utility
- Innovation: Something new and uniquely useful
The taxonomy is illustrated with the following diagram.
The differences are also evident in the mechanisms that exist to protect the works: Novelties are usually not protectable, Creations are protected by copyright or trademark, Inventions can be protected for a limited time through patents (or kept secret) and Innovations can be protected through market competition but are not defensible through legal means.
Innovation is a lot of talked about nowdays as essential to businesses to do. Is innovation essential for development work? article tells that innovation has become central to the way development organisations go about their work. In November 2011, Bill Gates told the G20 that innovation was the key to development. Donors increasingly stress innovation as a key condition for funding, and many civil society organisations emphasise that innovation is central to the work they do.
Some innovation ideas are pretty simple, and some are much more complicated and even sound crazy when heard first. The is place for crazy sounding ideas: venture capitalists are gravely concerned that the tech startups they’re investing in just aren’t crazy enough:
Not all development problems require new solutions, sometimes you just need to use old things in a slightly new way. Development innovations may involve devising technology (such as a nanotech water treatment kit), creating a new approach (such as microfinance), finding a better way of delivering public services (such as one-stop egovernment service centres), identifying ways of working with communities (such as participation), or generating a management technique (such as organisation learning).
Theorists of innovation identify innovation itself as a brief moment of creativity, to be followed by the main routine work of producing and selling the innovation. When it comes to development, things are more complicated. Innovation needs to be viewed as tool, not master. Innovation is a process, not a one time event. Genuine innovation is valuable but rare.
There are many views on the innovation and innvation process. I try to collect together there some views I have found on-line. Hopefully they help you more than confuze. Managing complexity and reducing risk article has this drawing which I think pretty well describes innovation as done in product development:
8 essential practices of successful innovation from The Innovator’s Way shows essential practices in innovation process. Those practices are all integrated into a non-sequential, coherent whole and style in the person of the innovator.
In the IT work there is lots of work where a little thinking can be a source of innovation. Automating IT processes can be a huge time saver or it can fail depending on situation. XKCD comic strip Automation as illustrates this:
System integration is a critical element in project design article has an interesting project cost influence graphic. The recommendation is to involve a system integrator early in project design to help ensure high-quality projects that satisfy project requirements. Of course this article tries to market system integration services, but has also valid points to consider.
Core Contributor Loop (CTTDC) from Art Journal blog posting Blog Is The New Black tries to link inventing an idea to theory of entrepreneurship. It is essential to tune the engine by making improvements in product, marketing, code, design and operations.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
The Fundamental Fallacy of Modern Recruiting
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/21/the-fundamental-fallacy-of-modern-recruiting/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity_1462_5234485190956611512
Think the hiring process is tedious and a waste of time? You are not alone. Lately, there has been growing concern among policymakers and journalists about the increasing time gap between the posting of a job listing and the actual hiring of a worker.
The most popular explanation for this trend among economists is that labor quality is dwindling – that there is a “skills mismatch” between job seekers and employers. Another theory advanced by Vox’s Matthew Yglesias argues that there are too many applicants per position, complicating the process of finding the right employee.
These theories and others miss a critical point: built into these analyses is the assumption that recruiters and human resources professionals actually know what they are looking for when hiring.
They don’t, and I am going to call this the Fundamental Fallacy of Modern Recruiting.
Recruiting would seem to be one of those things you really can’t screw up if you want your business to grow. Talent is everything, according to every business conference and TED talk ever. Human capital, after all, is the lifeblood of the modern corporation, and so it must get incredible attention from senior executives.
That’s worth a real lol, and maybe even a roflcopter.
As anyone who has worked in one of these modern corporations knows, recruiting has become a profession like every other function in the business world. It’s essentially outsourced, or maybe insourced is a better way to put it.
The Rise Of Ambiguous Jobs
This essential challenge is a classic one in economic theory: the principal-agent problem. As organizations grow and become more specialized, the distance between recruiters (and really, any business function) and the people who actually know who should be recruited grows not just linearly, but exponentially.
However, there are decent structures and incentives to handle the principal-agent problem, yet recruiting still remains awful. Why?
My theory is that jobs have become far more ambiguous in today’s world than they have in the past, making it much harder for HR specialists to use pattern recognition to find the right fits. Two decades ago, a software engineer used to “just code,” probably within a very narrow set of languages and environments.
Our world is fundamentally more complicated today. An engineer doesn’t just code in one language on one platform, but is now expected to engage with a range of frontend and backend systems using a myriad of languages and platforms.
While every one of these skills may not be used on a daily basis, the kinds of versatile engineers desired by employers today are capable of shifting from one place to another in the codebase on a whim.
That’s not all though. Engineers in most firms today are also supposed to know at least something about product design, marketing, and customer support for those top-paying enterprise clients. Purely technical roles still exist of course, but they tend to congregate away from consumer and enterprise software into areas such as embedded systems.
Interdisciplinary skills may be the hallmark of the modern engineer, but it is precisely that broad and ambiguous skillset that complicates hiring. Engineering is hardly alone is experiencing this change in ideal worker. No one just hires a “marketer” or a “salesperson” anymore. There are so many requirements and expectations for all of our roles that it should be no wonder why jobs can’t be fulfilled very quickly.
It’s not the fault of the recruiters. I’m certain they are doing everything they can to make their organizations grow, but they have an impossible job looking for these unicorn employees. When we combine the increasing ambiguity of our jobs with the increasing distance of HR recruiters from the actual work taking place, you get everything that is wrong with modern recruiting.
Founders should not just insource their hiring to some specialist, but should instead continue to take an active role in ensuring that the right employees are being hired.
One example of this is Stripe’s Capture the Flag tournaments, which test programmers on their security abilities through a tough set of challenges.
Another example is Larry Page at Google. He continues to read every employee’s biography and gives an up or down vote before they join the company.
Last, but certainly not least, there is also the post-hiring stage of recruiting, when real magic can happen. Mentorship and training can go a long way toward turning a good employee into a great and even fantastic one.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meet Envoy, The Startup Everyone From Airbnb To Yahoo Is Using To Check In Guests
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/06/23/meet-the-startup-everyone-uses-to-check-in-guests/
Before you can tour the offices at a big tech company in San Francisco or Silicon Valley, chances are you’ll have to sign in on an iPad first. Resting at the front desk, the device prompts you for your name and often demands you sign a non-disclosure agreement before your host gets a notice that you’re there. It’s roughly the same experience at the headquarters of startups like Airbnb and Docker as it is public companies like Pandora and Yahoo
The digital check-in is the work of its own startup, Envoy, which hopes to be the software for the office manager of the future.
“Companies feel a lot better when they don’t have to sign anything on paper,” Gadea says. “And people complain significantly less after using Envoy than if they were handed a clipboard.”
Envoy’s product isn’t just an iPad: it’s the software that can send push notifications that the guest or package has arrived and the follow-up email that Envoy can then send sign-ins, encouraging the spread of its own product.
It’s a problem companies are willing to pay for, too. Envoy doesn’t have a free version, and users pay either $99 each month for a basic option or $249 per office monthly for the full product. Revenue is growing 20% month-to-month without any marketing or sales.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Woz Wows with Humanitarianism
Advice: Work on projects you love
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326971&
The creator of the first Apple personal computer — the Apple I — spoke about the past, present and future of innovation during his keynote at the Freescale Technology Forum 2015 here (June 23). Says Wozniak, innovators today have the wrong motivation — to make money — whereas in his day, innovation was something he did because there were no affordable electronics to use at home for fun.
“I was working with calculators at Hewlett Packard, using RPN [reverse-Polish-notation], which meant you had to be smart already to be able to use them,” Wozniak told his audience during his keynote at FTF.
Computers in those days were either mainframes or programmed in binary with switches on the front of them.
After meeting Steve Jobs, who was working at Atari for Nolan Bushnell, Jobs enlisted Wozniak to help him design the circuit board for the game Breakout. For the board Job’s said he was paid $700, which Woz and Job’s split 50/50 — $350 each.
Woz claims to have distributed $20 million of his own money among those employees who were key to Apple’s early success.
The experience at helping Jobs at Atari also payed off technologically, since it gave Woz the idea of using an inexpensive TV for output and RAM for program storage and scratch-pad memory. The other big problem Woz had was programing in binary, so he invented his own form of Basic that could run in 4-kilobytes of memory with no operating system.
After that Wozniak started paying attention to his dreams, and after forgetting a potentially great idea he had had during sleep, he started writing them down in the middle of the night.
“Often they were nonsense the next morning, but many of my best ideas came while I was sleeping,” Woz told us.
Woz was still giving away the plans for his PCs for free, until Jobs stepped in and they partnered up.
“I would work on my own projects after work at home, and I offered the PC idea to HP four times, but they refused, which is probable a good thing, because they would have just made it into a boring computer for engineers, whereas the social integration was more important to me — the idea of making connections with other people computer-to-computer. That’s why I was giving away the plans on how to build a computer.”
Steve Jobs gave Woz the idea of selling his plans. Jobs idea was to make the kits for $20 and sell them for $40, but the vision grew from there to the Macintosh and all the other Apple products available today.
Innovation today
Today, everybody’s motive to innovate is all wrong, according to Woz. Today people want top invent things to make money, instead of to satisfy some need in which they have a personal interest.
“Today most innovators are just trying to duplicate Facebook or Uber with a new twist,” Woz told us.”The big innovations that are likely to be the most successful are those that have emotional effects on people, like virtual reality. If I were 24 years old today, I would be trying to build things that people told me were impossible.”
Woz is not inventing things anymore.
Inventors today have it easy, according to Woz.
“Intel microprocessors were hundreds of dollars in my day, which was hard to afford, but today you can buy a microprocessor on an Arduino board for $35. In fact, the Arduino guy was like me–he wanted a board that was affordable so he could do his own projects,” Woz told us. “Today all the technology disciplines are available and cheap enough for everybody, but today most people are just trying to make money with computers rather than make them do things they want done.”
When asked if robots were going to take over the world, he admitted that he had once worried about that, but no more.
“If you go into an airport and use the kiosk, that machine is taking over a job the same as they are doing at factories. So what happens when computers achieve conscious?” Woz asked us. “Now I think it will be 100s of years before computer even be smart enough to take over, but by then they will understand that nature has to be preserved and man is a part of nature, so I’m not worried.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Little Iron Tchotchke Can Help Cure a Big Health Issue
http://www.wired.com/2015/06/little-iron-chotchke-can-help-cure-big-health-issue/
It looks like a trinket a tourist might pick up as a quaint souvenir, but this fish has the power to cure anemia.
Called the Lucky Iron Fish, the three-inch-long piece of metal functions like a nutritional supplement, only instead of swallowing it, you add it to a simmering pot of food for ten minutes. Doing that can increase the iron content in the diets of users in places like Cambodia, where roughly half of the population suffered from iron-deficiency anemia before Lucky Iron Fish was introduced. The fish just won this year’s Cannes Lion Grand Prix in product design.
The designers not only managed to make the treatment foolproof but increased compliance by hacking a local superstition, that fish are auspicious.
Charles happened to know of a simple, cheap solution: adding a chunk of iron metal to food while it cooks. The heat causes the blocks to release between 60 and 300 milligrams of bioavailable iron, which then gets absorbed into the food or water. That’s substantially more than is recommended for one person a day, so you can imagine the iron’s effectiveness at improving an entire family’s diet at once.
It worked: Women—who do most of the cooking—started slipping them into pots and skillets.
Lucky Iron Fish is in its third round of trials now, and so far, has found evidence linking adoption of the fish to a 50 percent decline in iron-deficiency anemia in the areas they’re being used.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Expands Its Educational Platform “Classroom” With A New API, Share Button For Websites
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/google-expands-its-educational-platform-classroom-with-a-new-api-share-button-for-websites/#.utwu3c:3qeR
Google Classroom, the company’s educational initiative that launched last year to allow teachers and students to communicate and collaborate with each other using Google tools and services, has today received a number of new features, the most notable being a new Classroom API for admins, and a Classroom share button. The latter lets developers or schools simplify sharing content – including links, videos and images from around the web – with the Classroom platform. It’s being launched alongside 20 educational content and tool providers
Classroom, a part of Google’s Apps for Education product lineup, first debuted in 2014 just ahead of the start of the school year. It uses Google’s Docs, Drive and Gmail to make assignment creation and tracking easier for teachers, while also allowing them to make announcements, ask questions and respond to student questions in real-time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Surplus food for the homeless is just an app away
http://www.cnet.com/news/feeding-forward-app-delivers-food-to-homeless-shelters-in-real-time/
On-demand smartphone apps are known for addressing the whims and desires of the comfortable. It turns out they can also serve the greater good.
Through a website and mobile app, Feeding Forward matches businesses that have surplus food with nearby homeless shelters. Here’s how it works: when companies or event planners have surplus food, they tap the Feeding Forward app and provide details of their donation. A driver is dispatched to quickly pick up the leftovers and deliver them to food banks.
Excess food is a serious issue in the US. After paper, food scraps are the nation’s second largest source of waste, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Leftovers fill 18 percent of landfills and make up over 30 million tons of what is sent to dumps each year. When cut off from oxygen, the organic matter creates methane gas and contributes to global warming.
At the same time, the EPA says that roughly 50 million people in the US don’t have access to enough food. That’s more than 15 percent of the population — or nearly one in six people.
“In the US, about 40 percent of the food we grow never gets eaten,”
Food recovery isn’t a new idea.
On-demand apps and services have become big business in the last few years — think of Uber
Why has it taken so long for such food waste recovery programs to become popular? For starters, donating leftovers in the US isn’t easy. Potential donors worry they’ll be liable if something goes wrong with the food
Berkenkamp, from the NRDC, believes on-demand apps like Feeding Forward can help solve this distribution problem, because they systematize the process of matching donors with recipients.
“These mobile apps can connect the dots in our food system,” Berkenkamp said. “To have technology that connects in real-time is critical. It’s a real advance.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Computer Science Education Got Practical (Again)
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/06/30/016225/how-computer-science-education-got-practical-again
In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of young people who had grown up tinkering with PCs hit college and dove into curricula designed around the vague notion that they might want to “do something with computers.” Today, computer science education is a lot more practical — though in many ways that’s just going back to the discipline’s roots. As Christopher Mims put it in the Wall Street Journal, “we’ve entered an age in which demanding that every programmer has a degree is like asking every bricklayer to have a background in architectural engineering.”
For programmers
Theory, practice, and fighting for terminal time: How computer science education has changed
http://www.itworld.com/article/2941286/careers/theory-practice-and-fighting-for-terminal-time-how-computer-science-education-has-changed.html
When it comes to learning programming, some things have changed — but not everything
In 1950, fifty-one people attended the Summer School on Programme Design for Automatic Digital Computing Machines at Cambridge University.
the students who came to Cambridge that summer were the first to sign up to specifically learn the art on Cambridge’s EDSAC computer.
“When I started, in ’81, the university had around 12 terminals available for the CS department, hooked to the single mainframe the university owned. Only seniors and grad students were allowed to use them.”
Just five years later, when Pierce took his first class in 1986, his hardware environment was quite different: a lab full of Apple IIs.
“One big change is the expectation that everyone has their own computer.”
When I was taking computer classes in high school in the late 1980s, we discussed transistors and logic gates, not that I really remember much of it or ever fully grasped how it related to programming a computer.
Nancie K. may have been working on assembly language code on in the early 1980s, but in Rob Pierce’s experience, modern-day classes are quite different. “C/C++ has been replaced by higher-level VB and Java,” he says, “and ‘while’ and ‘for’ loops are taught long before stacks and pointers.”
Beyond the nuts and bolts of what specifically you’d study and what machines you’d use to study it on, there’s a bigger question looming over the field: why would you bothering studying the subject at all?
“I feel like whoever was designing the curriculum was vaguely aware that people taking the class might want to do ‘stuff with computers’ in the future and didn’t feel the need to try to tie it to any other discipline.”
The class Dr. Carlson teaches now is called “programming for engineers,” and is much more aimed at practical use. The language it’s based on is MATLAB, “a numerical programming language that’s fairly popular with academia and engineers.”
In fact, the practical needs of both students and employers have given rise to a whole category of computer science education under the aegis of schools that aren’t colleges at all. These “code schools” are aimed at eschewing theory and giving students practical skills in a short amount of time.
While MOOCs like Udacity have made sweeping claims that they’ll replace universities, Parker doesn’t see CS degree programs going away anytime soon. But courses like his company offers are a useful supplement. “Most employers still want CS grads with five years (real world) experience.”
Computer Programming Is a Trade; Let’s Act Like It
That Would Help Offset Supply-and-Demand Mismatch
http://www.wsj.com/articles/computer-programming-is-a-trade-lets-act-like-it-1407109947
If you’re a young person who is thinking about becoming a computer programmer but can’t afford college, you might think about skipping college altogether, says Ryan Carson, co-founder of an online coding school.
And he isn’t alone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
First Click: Google’s making me dumb
June 23rd, 2015
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8830141/first-click-google-s-making-me-dumb
I don’t know my own phone number even though it hasn’t changed in 15 years. Yet I can still remember the home numbers of my two best friends in grade school. As a species, we’re gaining more and more knowledge every year. But I’m only getting dumber.
I blame Google.
And with Google Now on pace to deliver just the right information at just the right time, soon I won’t have to remember anything. Thanks, Google.
I blame Apple, too.
My iPhone puts the world’s information at my fingertips. With Siri, I just say “call my wife” without ever having to know her phone number.
The idea that the internet is making us stupid isn’t new, of course.
human memory is adapting to the instant availability of all the world’s information. As such, we’re more likely to remember where the facts are rather than the facts themselves.
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
What the Internet is doing to our brains
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
Tomi Engdahl says:
This comic explaining the origin of the Slinky takes an unexpected turn
How a spring became one of the world’s most recognizable toys
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
How a Naval Engineer Turned a Torsion Spring into the Slinky
https://medium.com/backchannel/how-a-naval-engineer-turned-a-torsion-spring-into-the-slinky-977877664f2d
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony Launches A Crowdfunding Site For Projects From Its Employees In Japan
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/30/sony-first-flight/
Sony has dabbled with crowdfunding in the past — using sites to float an e-ink watch and mesh sensor kit, and most recently its much-anticipated Shenmue 3 title — but now the Japanese company is making a big play in the space after launching its own site for crowdfunded projects.
First Flight is a Japanese-only service (right now) which showcases ideas and products developed by Sony’s own employees. The site is an extension of an existing initiative from Sony’s Seed Acceleration Program which aims to support and incubate new business ideas from inside the company. Corporate culture so often stifles radically different thinking or innovate ideas, and this is Sony’s play to lighten things up and encourage freshness.
“First Flight is intended to deliver experiences that move people emotionally through innovation. It will enable each start-up and their customers to share their ideas and inspiration, and then jointly bring those ideas to fruition through direct and interactive communication,” Sony said in a fairly corporate sounding statement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft To Launch Minecraft Education Portal For Teachers
http://games.slashdot.org/story/15/07/01/1826254/microsoft-to-launch-minecraft-education-portal-for-teachers
Microsoft wants to help educators use Minecraft to teach pupils about maths, history, creative design and other subjects and skills, claiming the game is already being used in classrooms in the US and UK. Minecraft developer Mojang was bought by Microsoft last year for $2.5 billion
Microsoft Sees Minecraft As Learning Tool For Schools
Read more at http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/projects/public-sector/minecraft-microsoft-schools-teachers-resource-171647#RbCpXCCe7rSuEoxi.99
Tomi Engdahl says:
Where Dreams Come True
Orlando doesn’t just represent Mickey and Minnie anymore. Central Florida’s institutions of higher learning are creating a seamless pipeline of social mobility.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/orlando-what-works-119159.html#ixzz3f6Q3DVvK
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Innovators Who Created the Digital Revolution
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=31&doc_id=1326857&
Walter Isaacson profiles people who made the digital revolution happen, neglects others.
Walter Isaacson’s “The Innovators: How a group of hackers, geniuses and geeks created the digital revolution”
Focusing mainly, but not exclusively, on the period starting in the 1960s, the author covers the key developments of the era in chapters on all the elements involved in computer design: software, transistors, microchips, video games, the Internet, personal computing, online, and the Web.
Overall, “The Innovators” will appeal to anyone who wants to learn about the major players who made it all possible. But you may not agree with Isaacson’s choices or the conclusions he draws about innovation — I didn’t. But that is precisely why you should read it.
Isaacson devotes about 100 pages of this 450-page book to Steve Jobs of Apple and Bill Gates of Microsoft; Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce of Intel occupy another 50 pages. He covers other innovators with varying degrees of completeness, giving me the impression that he allotted space in his book according to how important he felt the people were, which makes sense, I suppose.
Although he touches on the innovations of a number of people I was impressed with when I met them during that period (among them Douglas Englebart, Marc Andreeson, Ted Hoff and Stanley Mazor, and Garry Kildall), Isaacson doesn’t give them the detailed coverage I think they deserve.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can this Thync device promises to affect human mood with electrical impulses to skin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=73&v=ZklkZz2bgEU
Thync is placed over the skin. Electrical impulses by means of the device is claimed to be able to influence, for example, the stress level.
http://www.thync.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Even the “Idea Person” Should Learn How To Code
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/07/07/0334215/even-the-idea-person-should-learn-how-to-code
he said, ‘Why waste so many years learning how to code? Why not just pay someone else to build your idea?’” But Rhee isn’t buying into the idea of the look-Ma-no-tech-skills “idea person.” “We must not neglect the merits of technical skills in the conception of the ‘idea person,’” she argues.
Even the ‘Idea Person’ should learn how to code
https://medium.com/@stephrhee/yale-pick-up-your-slack-6f8f21f3d01e
Why Yale needs to pickup its slack in the CS program and how we need to reinvent the ‘idea person’ today
“Why waste so many years learning how to code?
Why not just pay someone else to build your idea?!”
This attitude is the number one reason why Yale and other schools are failing to deliver the education that many students want today. We talk a lot about how we need to have more CS programs in the country, but I want to touch on what that program looks like at my school and how it can be better. This goes for any college not teaching app development, product design, or UI/UX. Actually, this goes for any college more expensive than Codecademy and Treehouse, which are basically free.
America has figured out what education should look like for fields that have been around longer, such as law. Yale, for instance, defines its curriculum as one that lets students “think and learn across disciplines, literally liberating the mind.” As such, an aspiring lawyer can major in English or Political Science.
The college education of the aspiring software engineer, product manager, or UI/UX designer, in comparison, is predictable and monotonous. Certainly, she also benefits from taking English classes because communication skills are crucial in life. But when she searches for courses related to her dream job, she only finds the most theoretical topics of computer science, and not even all of them at Yale. These courses are the fundamental building blocks of computer science, but on their own, they only teach her how to reinvent the wheel. She isn’t “liberated” at all.
What’s worse, this is it for most CS majors. College is the last place where they can learn from experts before they are expected to create productivity and value. And once in industry, many will find that they only know how to reinvent the wheel, with lots of student loan debt dragging on the side.
It’s tempting but irresponsible to say students should teach themselves about VCs, iOS, UI/UX, and product design. When students can’t find the 25th hour in their days to do so, most will choose to focus on their (reinvent-the-wheel) classes.
We must not neglect the merits of technical skills in the conception of the “idea person.” What the 60-year old entrepreneur and others of his generation — the people in control of the education we receive — don’t realize is this: for college students dreaming of becoming unicorns in Silicon Valley, being an “idea person” is not liberating at all. Being able to design and develop is liberating because that lets you make stuff. This should be a part of what we see in the “idea person” today and what it means to be “right” when designing an undergraduate curriculum. When you don’t need to rely on someone else to go from having an idea to publishing on the App Store, you are liberated to make. When you know how VCs invest in products, you are liberated to think. I’m not saying everyone should do this. What I’m saying is that colleges should pay attention to all those who want to do this because that is the kind of education we are paying for.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rube Goldberg is born, July 4, 1883
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4431969/Rube-Goldberg-is-born–July-4–1883?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_designideas_20150707&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_designideas_20150707&elq=3117ed9758cc48419a6a552d10dfe48a&elqCampaignId=23783&elqaid=26861&elqat=1&elqTrackId=5013384063f7435894f3493b12e6bd22
Not many engineers gain enough recognition to become a household name, but Rube Goldberg might be an exception. Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve probably seen the machines named after him.
After receiving a degree in mining engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1904, and working briefly as an engineer for the city of San Francisco, Goldberg pursued a career as a cartoonist.
One of his most famous characters was Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts who often demonstrated complicated inventions, drawn as schematics with instructions. The inventions depicted complex ways to accomplish mechanical tasks through an impractical series of simple steps, and they became Goldberg’s trademark.
In 1931, Rube Goldberg was listed in the dictionary as an adjective, defined as “accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply.” The complex systems became known as Rube Goldberg machines, and they’ve been used in board games like Mouse Trap, and often in TV and movies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Learning Simple Robot Programming With a ‘Non-Threatening’ Robot Ball (Video)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/07/07/2024252/learning-simple-robot-programming-with-a-non-threatening-robot-ball-video
Gobot, it says here, “is a framework for robotics, physical computing, and the Internet of Things, written in the Go programming language.” And in today’s video, interviewee Adrian Zankich (AKA “Serious Programming Guy at The Hybrid Group”) says that an unadorned robot ball — in this case the Sphero — is about the least threatening robot you can possibly use to teach entry-level robot programming.
Start with Go language? Cylon.js? Use whichever you prefer, Adrian says. Mix and match.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Our Botched Understanding of “Science” Ruins Everything
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/09/22/1312251/how-our-botched-understanding-of-science-ruins-everything?sdsrc=popbyskid
“Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writes at The Week, “If you ask most people what science is, they will give you an answer that looks a lot like Aristotelian ‘science’ — i.e., the exact opposite of what modern science actually is. Capital-S Science is the pursuit of capital-T Truth. And science is something that cannot possibly be understood by mere mortals. It delivers wonders. It has high priests. It has an ideology that must be obeyed. This leads us astray. …
How our botched understanding of ‘science’ ruins everything
http://theweek.com/articles/443656/how-botched-understanding-science-ruins-everything
Here’s one certain sign that something is very wrong with our collective mind: Everybody uses a word, but no one is clear on what the word actually means.
One of those words is “science.”
Everybody uses it. Science says this, science says that. You must vote for me because science. You must buy this because science. You must hate the folks over there because science.
Look, science is really important. And yet, who among us can easily provide a clear definition of the word “science” that matches the way people employ the term in everyday life?
So let me explain what science actually is. Science is the process through which we derive reliable predictive rules through controlled experimentation. That’s the science that gives us airplanes and flu vaccines and the Internet. But what almost everyone means when he or she says “science” is something different.
What we now know as the “scientific revolution” was a repudiation of Aristotle: science, not as knowledge of the ultimate causes of things but as the production of reliable predictive rules through controlled experimentation.
Galileo disproved Aristotle’s “demonstration” that heavier objects should fall faster than light ones by creating a subtle controlled experiment
This method of doing science was then formalized by one of the greatest thinkers in history, Francis Bacon. What distinguishes modern science from other forms of knowledge such as philosophy is that it explicitly forsakes abstract reasoning about the ultimate causes of things and instead tests empirical theories through controlled investigation. Science is not the pursuit of capital-T Truth. It’s a form of engineering — of trial by error. Scientific knowledge is not “true” knowledge, since it is knowledge about only specific empirical propositions — which is always, at least in theory, subject to further disproof by further experiment.
The vast majority of people, including a great many very educated ones, don’t actually know what science is.
If you ask most people what science is, they will give you an answer that looks a lot like Aristotelian “science” — i.e., the exact opposite of what modern science actually is.
This leads us astray. Since most people think math and lab coats equal science, people call economics a science, even though almost nothing in economics is actually derived from controlled experiments.
Because people don’t understand that science is built on experimentation, they don’t understand that studies in fields like psychology almost never prove anything, since only replicated experiment proves something and, humans being a very diverse lot, it is very hard to replicate any psychological experiment.
even though with very few exceptions, almost none of the policy options we as a polity have have been tested through experiment (or can be)
People think that a study that uses statistical wizardry to show correlations between two things is “scientific” because it uses high school math and was done by someone in a university building, except that, correctly speaking, it is not. While it is a fact that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads, all else equal, to higher atmospheric temperatures, the idea that we can predict the impact of global warming — and anti-global warming policies! — 100 years from now is sheer lunacy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Running a Town Over Twitter
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/07/07/1910227/running-a-town-over-twitter
You may call Jun an ancient town — it was founded by Romans 2,200 years ago. But Jun’s mayor is known worldwide for using the latest technology to run the city. Back in 1999, when he was deputy mayor, the town declared internet a basic universal right for its citizens. And now political parties run “virtual” campaigns without printing posters. But the most impressive accomplishment of Jun’s mayor is running the entire town administration and public services using Twitter.
2,200-year-old Andalusian town runs on Twitter
http://www.citiesofthefuture.eu/2200-year-old-andalusian-town-runs-on-twitter/
Jun, a small Andalusian town founded by the Romans 2,200 years ago, is using Twitter to reduce bureaucracy, serve its citizens, and run a more efficient administration.
Mayor José Antonio Rodríguez Salas (@JoseantonioJun) has encouraged all Jun residents to get a Twitter account to communicate easily with the town government. That way they can report issues about public services and infrastructure, send suggestions, participate in the town decisions and “talk” to the mayor and council members directly.
Jun [pronounced “Hoon”] is one of several commuter towns around the provincial capital of Granada and has a population of 3,800. Its local economy depends heavily on Granada but also has a long tradition of pottery.
The town prides itself on making use of the latest technology to streamline the administration and provide efficient public services. But this isn’t its first foray. It had already made history in December 1999 when it declared internet access a basic public service and universal right for its citizens.
Twitter is used for all town services, including the street sweeper, who can be called by residents if they see something that needs cleaning. In order to use the services residents are required to have a Twitter account in their name (a third of them now have one) and register it at the town hall, so town employees know they’re dealing with actual residents. The town also provides free training courses to any residents who are not confident about using the technology.
All public employees have a Twitter account, including the town’s police officer (@PoliciaJun), the town electrician, and the street sweeper (@BarredoraJun).
With such high citizen participation the mayor was able to reduce the police force from four officers down to just one. He is very proud of reducing bureaucracy to the minimum and doing all the paperwork on Twitter.
The town’s success using Twitter has not gone unnoticed by the social media giant and, earlier this year, it sent its chief data scientist MIT professor Deb Roy to investigate how Twitter can be used to run the entire town. Jun was also visited by Twitter’s former CEO Dick Costolo last April.
Professor Roy was impressed with the town’s commitment to use the best available tools to serve its residents and with how Twitter has become a suitable platform for small towns and communities.
“Jun is the exception rather than the rule, with a very committed and technologically confident mayor who has pursued this project for 16 years,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
PHP for Non-Developers
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/php-non-developers
I can write the “Hello World” equivalent in almost every programming language out there.
Then I met PHP.
I know PHP is no longer cool. I know that compared to Python it’s extremely limited. But I also know that with PHP, I actually was able to create useful programs from the beginning. I suspect that’s why I love Bash scripting so much.
One great thing about PHP is that just about every Web server has it installed and ready to go. If you get advanced and want to start making system calls to the underlying Linux OS, you might have to tweak php.ini a bit, but getting a PHP platform is usually as simple as installing a Web server with a LAMP stack.
PHP code is just text. You can use any text editor you like.
PHP code can be added to standard HTML, or it can be strictly PHP code that creates HTML as output.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Calling All Data Do-Gooders
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/07/09/2345244/calling-all-data-do-gooders
We’re entering a new era of data-for-good, writes SAS CEO Jim Goodnight, who explains how SAS and the International Organization for Migration are using analytics and data for disaster relief efforts, but issues a broader call-to-action: “These projects just scratch the surface of what’s possible when new data, and those that know how to use it, are applied to humanitarian needs.”
Disaster relief efforts show promise of analytics and seemingly unrelated data sources
http://blogs.sas.com/content/corneroffice/2015/07/08/disaster-relief-efforts-show-promise-of-analytics-and-seemingly-unrelated-data-sources/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bell Labs Plugs in to the Network
Storied lab is back on track, president says
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327100&
Following a lull in the 1980s and early 1990s, and a shift toward business-driven research, “Bell Labs feels like it’s back on track,” President Marcus Weldon told EE Times from his Murray Hill, New Jersey office. The multi-Nobel Prize winning research institute has kicked networking research into high gear under Alcatel-Lucent and is about to get a boost from a mega-merger with Nokia Networks.
Bell Labs’ physicists, chemists and engineers should “think freely about problems that people think are too complex to solve,” Weldon said. Many of those problems will arise over the next 10 years in the areas of wireless and networking infrastructure thanks to a lack of spectrum and an ever-increasing number of connections. As a result, the network will be the next big thing in innovation, Weldon said.
Last year, the labs announced its researchers sent data at 10 Gbits/second over existing copper wires. The XG-Fast project was the first major success in a 13-project series that aims to solve networking problems ten years out.
“We’ve hit the physical limits of almost all the technology we have in the way its deployed today,” he said. “We’re going to move away from an [architecture] model where things are relatively centralized and we’re going to have to distribute them. As we go there, we’re going to bring the cloud with us,” he added.
“One area of commonality is in wireless research. In the era where Huawei claims it’s investing thousands of people into 5G, it’s not even clear that sum of [Nokia and Bell Labs’] research groups would…keep up with the Chinese,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Move Over Gucci; Laser Cut Handbags Are a Thing
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/13/move-over-gucci-laser-cut-handbags-are-a-thing/
What happens when you want to make a custom handbag with some handy tech features, and have access to a nice laser cutter? You end up doing what [Christian] did: design a assemble a Woman’s Handbag made of Laser-Cut Leather with iPhone charger and LED Light.
The design of the bag was made in Adobe Illustrator and sent off to a Epilog Legend 36EXT laser cutter located in the hackerspace located near [Christian] in Vienna. Once the parts were precision cut, traditional leather sewing methods were used to assemble the handbag (with a little help from a shoe cobbler).
Woman’s Handbag made of Laser-Cut Leather with Phone charger and LED Light
http://www.instructables.com/id/Womans-Handbag-made-of-Laser-Cut-Leather-with-iPho/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vintage Electronics Magazines Predicted Our Current Future
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/13/vintage-electronics-magazines-predicted-our-current-future/
Do you remember the magazine Popular Electronics? What about Radio Electronics? These magazines were often the first exposure we had to the world of hacking. In December we learned that Americanradiohistory.com has gone to the trouble of scanning nearly every copy of both, and continues to add many many others — posting them online for us to enjoy once more. Since then we’ve been pouring through the archive pulling out some of the best in terms of nostalgia, entertainment, and fascinating engineering.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Six Things The Most Productive People Do Every Day
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/11/the-six-things-the-most-productive-people-do-every-day/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity_1462_-8826764439054574631
I admit I stole this title. Part of being productive is to piggyback on the shoulders of greatness. So I decided to write down what six things I do every day that help me with productivity. They make work for you. Or not. They work for me, although I always need to improve.
Reading
Sleeping
Eat at Home
Throw Stuff Out
No News
No Meetings
No Phone
Email
Experiences
Tomi Engdahl says:
Welcome To The Unicorn Club, 2015: Learning From Billion-Dollar Companies
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/18/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club-2015-learning-from-billion-dollar-companies/#.b5imzi:n4iY
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft:
Changing the face of coding through Girls Who Code program — The true potential of future innovation will only become a reality if more women are part of it; a rich, diverse community of innovators is key …
Changing the face of coding
http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2015/07/15/changing-the-face-of-coding/
Said another way, many girls in the U.S. have the opportunity to learn how to play soccer and, as a result, they benefit from the teamwork, skill development and fun involved. That’s the kind of opportunity I would like to see develop for the technology sector, which presents a different, yet perhaps even more significant, set of opportunities for girls and young women.
Unfortunately, the strength in the talent pipeline that we see in female soccer today is not the reality for technology. The U.S. is facing a shortage of Computer Science (CS) graduates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every year there are close to 140,000 jobs requiring a CS degree, but only 40,000 U.S. college graduates major in CS, which means that 100,000 positions go unfilled by domestic talent. Even more dramatic is that women in U.S. colleges and universities earn only 18 percent of CS degrees. In middle school, 74 percent of girls express interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), but when choosing a college major, only 0.4 percent of high school girls select computer science.
The true potential of future innovation will only become a reality if more women are part of it. A rich, diverse community of innovators is key for new technologies to address the needs of modern society. That is why Microsoft YouthSpark – a global initiative to create opportunities for all youth to learn computing – supports Girls Who Code, a national nonprofit organization that aims to close the gender gap in technology in the U.S.
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Markoff / Edge.org:
John Markoff on slow pace of automation, shorter term bets from VCs and government, future of transportation, AR as the next big platform, more
The Next Wave
A Conversation With John Markoff
http://edge.org/conversation/john_markoff-the-next-wave
This can’t be the end of human evolution. We have to go someplace else.
It’s quite remarkable. It’s moved people off of personal computers. Microsoft’s business, while it’s a huge monopoly, has stopped growing. There was this platform change. I’m fascinated to see what the next platform is going to be. It’s totally up in the air, and I think that some form of augmented reality is possible and real. Is it going to be a science-fiction utopia or a science-fiction nightmare? It’s going to be a little bit of both.
JOHN MARKOFF is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covers science and technology for The New York Times.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gigster Does The Dev Dirty Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/22/uber-for-developers/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity_1462_3517792612109707168#.b5imzi:hTNw
Got a startup idea? That and some cash is all you need to get a fully functional app built for you by Gigster. Launching today, Gigster is a full-service development shop, rather than a marketplace where you have to manage the talent you find.
Just go to Gigster’s site, instant message with a sales engineer, tell them what you want built, and in 10 minutes you get a guaranteed quote for what it will cost and how long it will take. Give Gigster the go-ahead, and it will manage an elite set of freelance coders and designers to build your product and give you status reports each week. Once you get your project back, Gigster will even maintain the code, and you can pay to add upgrades or new features.
There’s a massive talent crunch in tech. It can be quite tough for a fledgling startup to attract great engineers, especially if they’re not near a hub city like San Francisco. Gigster could help entrepreneurs affordably develop a minimum viable product so they can get the funding and attention they need to build a company.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Xiaoice, Microsoft’s Chinese chatbot, has a sense of humor, good listening skills, and 20M registered users
For Sympathetic Ear, More Chinese Turn to Smartphone Program
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/science/for-sympathetic-ear-more-chinese-turn-to-smartphone-program.html
She is known as Xiaoice, and millions of young Chinese pick up their smartphones every day to exchange messages with her, drawn to her knowing sense of humor and listening skills. People often turn to her when they have a broken heart, have lost a job, or have been feeling down. They often tell her, “I love you.”
“When I am in a bad mood, I will chat with her,” said Gao Yixin, a 24-year-old who works in the oil industry in Shandong Province. “Xiaoice is very intelligent.”
Xiaoice (pronounced Shao-ice) can chat with so many people for hours on end because she is not real. She is a chatbot, a program introduced last year by Microsoft that has become something of a hit in China. It is also making the 2013 film “Her,” in which the actor Joaquin Phoenix plays a character who falls in love with a computer operating system, seem less like science fiction.
“It caused much more excitement than we anticipated,”
The program remembers details from previous exchanges with users, such as a breakup with a girlfriend or boyfriend, and asks in later conversations how the user is feeling.
Microsoft has been able to give Xiaoice a more compelling personality and sense of “intelligence” by systematically mining the Chinese Internet for human conversations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Biohacking Movement and Open Source Insulin
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/30/the-biohacking-movement-and-open-source-insulin/
As it turns out, it’s not impossible, but it’s not easy either, and with the competing demands of a job, a family, a house, and now learning how to manage diabetes traditionally
A few weeks ago, I started thinking about DIY insulin production again. I knew that commercially prepared insulin was no longer isolated from mammalian pancreases. That practice had been all but abandoned since the gene for human insulin had first been inserted into bacteria in 1978 by Genentech. The gene was carried on plasmids, small loops of DNA that can be inserted into bacteria or yeasts. Under the right conditions, the protein encoded by the gene on the plasmid can be produced and excreted by the cell. Grow a lot of cells that do this, and you get a lot of human insulin. Purification of the insulin from the cell culture is not trivial, but at least compared to whole-tissue extracts it’s relatively straightforward.
A few weeks ago, I started thinking about DIY insulin production again. I knew that commercially prepared insulin was no longer isolated from mammalian pancreases. That practice had been all but abandoned since the gene for human insulin had first been inserted into bacteria in 1978 by Genentech. The gene was carried on plasmids, small loops of DNA that can be inserted into bacteria or yeasts. Under the right conditions, the protein encoded by the gene on the plasmid can be produced and excreted by the cell. Grow a lot of cells that do this, and you get a lot of human insulin. Purification of the insulin from the cell culture is not trivial, but at least compared to whole-tissue extracts it’s relatively straightforward.
So far, the organized efforts to produce insulin using a collaborative, open source model seem to be centered on getting enough funds together to cover prototyping and initial experiments. But it also seems like the basic plan has been thought through well and addresses the root problem: getting cells to express insulin is easy, but purifying it enough to not kill the diabetic is not. To that end, extra amino acids will be attached to the insulin to allow it to be purified in fewer steps.
Biohackers working on open source insulin are quick to point out that what they’re doing initially is strictly research – citizens scientists looking at an interesting biochemical process and sharing their results.
To be honest, the biohacking movement seems a bit moribund right now. Sure, there are a fair number of biohacking groups listed online, but scratch the surface and you’ll find quite a few of the web sites for these groups haven’t been updated in years, and a few bear the “Lorem ipsum” mark of never having been completed. To be fair, there are plenty of maker spaces across the world with wet labs equipped for both biology and chemistry experimentation
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacking the Digital and Social System
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/03/hacking-the-digital-and-social-system/
When you live in a totalitarian, controlled and “happy” society, and you want to be a hacker, you have to hack the social system first. Being just an engineer doesn’t cut it, you have to be a hypocrite, dissident and a smuggler at the same time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Right Way to Do A Hacker Conference
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/03/the-right-way-to-do-a-hacker-conference/
DEFCON is huge. Last year attendance tipped at about 16k, and we’d wager this year will be even bigger.
Build Your Own Badge
Set Up Your Electronics Lab
Build a Crew
Party at Night, Brunch with Hackaday
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers can be attractive. Shocker.
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4440092/Engineers-can-be-attractive–Shocker–?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20150807&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20150807&elq=64aaba9c898648d5b026689445e051c6&elqCampaignId=24274&elqaid=27415&elqat=1&elqTrackId=08e4beeea9504eaa8afa34e1ffab2d72
Somewhere, Hedy Lammar is proud of a young engineer in San Francisco.
Here’s the deal: Back in Hedy’s day, circa 1940, she became a famous Hollywood actress. But what Hedy really wanted to be was an engineer. In fact, she had a workbench in her Hollywood home where she tinkered on a regular basis.
The beauty with brains had experimented with automated control of musical instruments, and, together with George Antheil, she submitted the idea of a secret communication system in June 1941, receiving US Patent 2,292,387 in 1942 under the name Hedy Kiesler Markey.
Hedy so very much wanted to be an engineer, not an actress. To simplify her story, she fell back on acting because no one took her (and her pin-up looks) seriously as an engineer. How could someone attractive be an engineer? Aren’t engineers always and only cube-dwelling Dilbert-like creatures?
Hell-a-no. Yet now, 75-plus years after Hedy’s struggle, there’s a new struggle showcased on Twitter. It started when 22-year-old software developer Isis Anchalee was asked by her employer, San Fran-based OneLogin, to appear in recruitment ads.
In response, Anchalee started a twitter hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer to which hundreds of women, men and children have posted their images and what they do as engineers.
The hashtag’s feed has become a beautiful display of diversity, challenging the preconceived concepts of who can work in tech.
And it’s not just women. Every engineer should be out there waving the #ILookLikeAnEngineer, be they a Dilbert clone or Hedy Lammar beauty or Mohawk sporting NASA engineer or whatever.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dennis Monticelli’s parting comments for engineers
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4440081/Dennis-Monticelli-s-parting-comments-for-engineers?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150806&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150806&elq=617e5f570e234280b800e086578c3d25&elqCampaignId=24251&elqaid=27393&elqat=1&elqTrackId=43629508805249878f9c80abd7790588
Fifteen years ago Dennis Monticelli was named as a National Semiconductor Fellow and just recently has retired from Texas Instruments Silicon Valley (Formerly National Semiconductor) on July 31, 2015.
read his advice carefully and put it into action if you want a successful, thriving career as an engineer.
When it comes to career development I can offer a little advice.
Always treat people with respect. Your collaborations will bear more fruit and your relationships will be more pleasant, a welcome thing in any situation. Besides in the greater fraternity of engineers, paths will cross time and again….trust me.
Keep learning. It must be in our DNA
Be a leader, not a victim. I had this posted on my computer during some of the darker years. Victims have things happen unto them. They make excuses and feel sorry for themselves. Leaders make things happen and develop followers. Besides, leaders feel a whole lot better about themselves than victims.
Share successes. Be a “we” person.
Finally, follow your passion. Harnessing our internal energy is the key. Each of us has to find what strongly motivates us and leverage that to do great things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA’s Rapid Prototyping Laboratory aiming for Mars
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4440041/NASAs-Rapid-Prototyping-Laboratory-aiming-for-Mars?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20150731&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20150731&elq=3cba30fc91dd407ca2c30a0298cf8e4d&elqCampaignId=24184&elqaid=27317&elqat=1&elqTrackId=4eceb47b89194bc4bfe13160c5579b08
The NASA Crew Interface Rapid Prototype Lab (RPL) is made up of a small team of developers. Lee Morin, astronaut and lead, heads up the RPL. The team is dedicated to providing quick and correct solutions to challenges in human spaceflight vehicle interfaces. The close proximity, direct participation, and leadership by the crew is an essential ingredient for the RPL’s effectiveness.
RPL is adept at using immediate feedback and close collaboration between crew, contractors, and NASA partners to successfully apply the rapid prototyping model. The RPL endeavors to continue that success to meet the challenges we face going forward with the new vision for their agency.
The RPL’s primary focus is to complete design of MPCV/ORION displays and controls and validate with crew evals so these designs will be ready when decision is made to construct the MPCV/ORION manned spacecraft. A Major Focus is to capture glass cockpit concepts developed at JSC over the past decade in a way that they can be communicated and shared with commercial partners under Space Act Agreements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Time stands still for no tech
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4440039/Time-stands-still-for-no-tech?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150803&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150803&elq=de1823e2c41145fc8ccf748212cf423d&elqCampaignId=24195&elqaid=27326&elqat=1&elqTrackId=49d069d6af7c4e1ea8b5604a70184079
I’d made multiple trips to a nearby Goodwill donation center, where I’d dropped off (among other things) a multitude of both brand new and previously used tech items for hopeful (re-)use by others.
In the process of sorting through my garage (which others have referred to in the past as Fry’s Electronics Warehouse) inventory, I’ve come up with a few conclusions that I thought I’d share:
Winner takes all
Several shelves of one of the shelving units in the garage had been completely devoted to powerline networking adapters from various manufacturers, based on the three main historical technology contenders: HomePlug, UPA (the Universal Powerline Association), and HD-PLC.
And as I predicted long ago, HomePlug (along with its AV and AV2 technology successors) has won out in the market, leading to an explosion of HomePlug-based suppliers and products.
Proprietary rarely succeeds
echnology sometimes moves quickly
In perusing innumerable boxes of software in particular, I was struck by how quickly particular products (and versions of products) become obsolete, an observation that related to operating systems and applications alike. Sometimes the obsolescence was more or less intentional on the part of the developer; a deprecated O/S version would no longer receive bug fixes and security patches, for example, discouraging its continued use. And sometimes the lack of valuable feature set advancements rendered a legacy software product obsolete; a photo or video editing program might lack support for multi-core CPUs or high-resolution images, for example, or might be unable to encode to a newer-generation codec standard.
And technology sometimes moves quite slowly
The bulk of the CPUs, motherboards and related desktop computer building blocks (graphics cards, HDDs and optical drives, DRAM, power supplies, cases, etc) in my technology stable dated from the latter part of the prior decade.
A fundamental reason why I gave away all the desktop PC gear, bottom line, is that my wife and I are mostly Mac users (not to mention laptop users) nowadays.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The real costs of failed design collaboration
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/all-aboard-/4439959/The-real-costs-of-failed-design-collaboration?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150721&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150721&elq=8daa935782ae48ebb74907144a0f2f5e&elqCampaignId=24027&elqaid=27134&elqat=1&elqTrackId=38f48820889a460eaa68bca20c40372c
Antiquated design processes are failing designers. All over the world, engineers are struggling every day with the simple process of communication between electrical and mechanical design teams. What plagues them is not the lack of power in the tools, but the inability to adapt to what is an entirely different product design workflow than what was required a decade ago.
The product experience has changed dramatically, but the tools that designers rely on to craft these experiences are struggling to catch up. And if something doesn’t change soon, tools might cripple the progress that’s been enjoyed in the industrial era of engineering entirely.
The product designs of the future
Engineers are tasked with designing ever denser, smaller, and smarter products. To design something that small and powerful requires a design process that is tightly aligned across all engineering domains. There are a number of product design trends underway – below are just a few that are directly impacting how engineers work together:
The emergence of sophisticated electronics in vehicles
The growing dependency on connected products
The introduction of wearables as a viable technology
This isn’t your father’s engineering world anymore
Despite the reality of the changing product experience, the same tired design practices that focus not on collaboration, but on treating everyone involved in the design process as an isolated specialist, are employed day in and day out. In many ways, companies are still clinging to the ideals of the industrial era of engineering, when what is needed is quite the opposite. We’re still relying on the same technology that was introduced decades ago, including:
Interchange file formats
Linear design processes
Unmanaged communication methods
The true costs of failed design collaboration
Everyone involved in the electronics design industry is familiar with these approaches, and we’re all guilty of relying on them every single day. Every week, countless hours are spent patching the holes in design workflows, fixing mistakes, working overtime and maybe even weekends because of them.
we are becoming all too familiar with the real costs of our failed design collaboration processes, including:
● Missed time to market and budgets, with design revisions slipping through the cracks and prototype costs skyrocketing from failed communication processes.
● Wasted time and productivity, with designers having to manage multiple revisions that could have been solved the first time with a properly implemented collaboration system.
● Product experiences that are compromised during the design phase based on budget and time constraints vs. being iterated to perfection.
We don’t need another interchange file format
I’ll say it again: We don’t need another interchange file format.
What is needed are intelligent design tools that allow for communication between one another. Intelligent tools that don’t require engineers to shove data into a box and pass it along. With these tools, there are no boxes – there is no data translation.
Bi-directional data synchronization
These tools need to share data seamlessly, without requiring any kind of interchange file formats. What does this mean in a practical scenario? Being able to commit changes between design environments, and have those changes instantly transmitted to our fellow engineers.
Commenting and revision systems between design environments
Not only does data need to be shared, we need to be able to add the human element of communication into the mix outside of the unmanaged channels that we rely on. Within our design platforms, we need a connected and universal communication environment that allows us to clearly articulate the design revisions that have been made and share those details with others involved in the design process.
What does this look like in a practical application?
Will we develop these solutions in time?
We need to start developing these solutions now. It won’t happen overnight, and it’s going to be a slow transition. But the reality is that technology is just going to become more complex. Products are going to keep getting smaller, thinner, and faster than we could have ever imagined.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can new job titles upgrade engineers’ stature?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4439900/Can-new-job-titles-upgrade-engineers–stature-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150715&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150715&elq=5b7289a9d0764c72ac2f8a4a888bf55d&elqCampaignId=23931&elqaid=27034&elqat=1&elqTrackId=7ee5108da42c43c1b96765d086cf9fa7
The relatively low respect and acknowledgment which engineers get from the public, despite the near-miraculous products they design and deliver at low cost, has always been a major irritant to me. A few years ago, for example, a Hollywood celebrity was lauded for “designing” a smart phone (sorry, I don’t remember who it was) when all he or she really did was decorate the case. The engineers who actually designed the phone and the invisible infrastructure were bypassed by the celebrity-crazed media and their audience.
The reality is that there’s a televised, overhyped award show almost every week, such as the Oscars, Grammies, various music awards (it’s easy to make your own list), but the few major engineering awards for genuine accomplishment get little attention. I won’t try to figure out why this is; there are many reasons and opinions ranging from the superficial nature of modern culture to the supposed introverted nature of engineers. Yes, I know, life is unfair, but still it’s a lousy situation.
Still, there is one low-cost, easy thing we can do to possibly improve the situation: enhance the job titles which engineers have. Most such titles in the engineering area are fairly clear and direct, such as project manager, designer, or chief technical officer, and so on. But while they are straightforward, they lack the “pizzazz” that might make them seem more dramatic and perhaps intriguing to the general public. While there have been exceptions such as “technology evangelist,” those are rare cases.
The non-technical world seems to have realized this. The job titles of not-so-long ago were fairly clear and meaningful (at least to me), centered on words such as marketing, sales, research, engineer, production, and customer support.
Now, instead, I see job titles which are both more dramatic and concealing. These include chief growth officer, chief revenue officer, audience engagement editor, and senior viral editor, to call out just a few; I am sure you can add to this list as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Measure career advancement by blowing your mind
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/measure-of-things/4440038/Measure-career-advancement-by-blowing-your-mind?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150806&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150806&elq=02ea34dede14436ca89a944a781e26d2&elqCampaignId=24260&elqaid=27401&elqat=1&elqTrackId=0df716c1a79e4725a783701f7e30b209
As I’ve said a few times in this space, if we know one thing about innovation and creativity, we know that it happens when you bring skills from one field to bear on another.
A few weeks ago, I spent an afternoon at Autodesk’s shop on San Francisco’s Pier 9 and witnessed magic, over and over again. If you think of engineering as a creative endeavor, then you are obligated by your own beliefs to apply for Autodesk’s AIR (Artists in Residence) program. Autodesk, famous for its 3D printing technology and “maker” culture, has a program for which you should apply.
Artists in Residence is a four month program that provides $1500/month plus a budget for your project. Autodesk AIR will give you access to top-of-the-line shop equipment. Not just CRC mills and every type of 3D printer you can imagine, but water jet cutters, a complete wood shop, design software, colleagues from every background, as well as space and time to create. You will retain your intellectual property, though you will have to publish your designs and techniques and give a final presentation.
he day I was there, they also had gourmet food trucks, arcane cocktails, weird cheeses, and local microbrews.
Okay, maybe you’re thinking, “I’m an engineer, not an artist. Sure, I goof around in the garage on lots of projects, but art? An internship? I’m too old, I’m too young, I don’t have the experience, I have too much experience—”
“Wrong! You’re perfect for this opportunity and they want you!”
Carl Bass, Autodesk’s CEO, is an engineer, too, and this program is his baby.
Don’t worry about age, experience level, or background.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New study into lack of women in Tech: It’s NOT the men’s fault
It’s just simple mathematics, apparently
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/27/new_study_into_lack_of_women_in_tech_its_not_the_mens_fault/
A new study into causes of the scarcity of women in technical and scientific fields says that it is not discrimination by men in the field keeping the ladies away. Nor is it a repugnance felt by women for possibly dishevelled or unhygienic male nerds.
No, the reason that young women don’t train in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) areas – and thus, don’t find themselves with jobs at tech companies, in IT etc – is quite simply that they mostly don’t know enough maths to do those courses.
“It is all about the mathematical content of the field. Girls not taking math coursework early on in middle school and high school are set on a different college trajectory than boys,” says economics prof Donna Ginther.
Other theories as to why there aren’t many women in tech or (hard) science have been advanced. Some say that putting up sci-fi posters and leaving tins of coke about puts women off; others that women are just simply repelled by nerds; others that the problem – specifically for very attractive women – is that they fail to mention the fact that they’re very attractive during job interviews.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Many Scientists Does It Take to Write a Paper? Apparently, Thousands
Scientific journals see a spike in number of contributors; 24 pages of alphabetized co-authors
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-many-scientists-does-it-take-to-write-a-paper-apparently-thousands-1439169200
A Frenchman named Georges Aad may have the most prominent name in particle physics.
In less than a decade, Dr. Aad, who lives in Marseilles, France, has appeared as the lead author on 458 scientific papers. Nobody knows just how many scientists it may take to screw in a light bulb, but it took 5,154 researchers to write one physics paper earlier this year—likely a record—and Dr. Aad led the list.
Almost every paper by “G. Aad et al.” involves so many researchers that they decided to always list themselves in alphabetical order. Their recent paper, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, features 24 pages of alphabetized co-authors led by Dr. Aad. There is no way to tell how important each contributor might be.
“Basically, this guy has won the academic lottery,”
In fact, there has been a notable spike since 2009 in the number of technical reports whose author counts exceeded 1,000 people, according to the Thomson Reuters Web of Science, which analyzed citation data. In the ever-expanding universe of credit where credit is apparently due, the practice has become so widespread that some scientists now joke that they measure their collaborators in bulk—by the “kilo-author.”
The exponential growth has a number of causes, one of which is that experiments have gotten more complicated. But scientists say that mass authorship makes it harder to tell who did what and who deserves the real credit for a breakthrough—or blame for misconduct.
More than vanity is at stake. Credit on a peer-reviewed research article weighs heavily in hiring, promotion and tenure decisions. “Authorship has become such a big issue because evaluations are performed based on the number of papers people have authored,” said Dr. Larivière.
Usually, the position of first author confers the most prestige, identifying the person who contributes the most to a research enterprise. The last author is usually the senior scientist who oversees the experiment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel doubles its bounty for women and ethnic minorities
The queue for the men’s toilet is out of control
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/04/intel_pays_double_for_women_and_ethnic_minorities/
Chipzilla Intel is so desperate to increase the diversity of its workforce that it is paying double its finder’s fee for women and minorities, according to reports.
Intel is currently offering $4,000 (£2,560) to employees who suggest job candidates that help it achieve its diversity goals, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Intel is committed to increase the diversity of our workforce,” the company said in a statement seen by the paper. “We are currently offering our employees an additional incentive to help us attract diverse qualified candidates in a competitive environment for talent.”
Intel’s diversity statistics for 2014 showed 24 per cent of Intel employees are female, with 31 per cent of employees classified as Asian, 3.5 per cent as black and 8 per cent Latino.
Google has also pledged to tackle the lack of diversity in its workforce, setting aside $150m (£98m) of its annual $66bn turnover.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has also said he is “not satisfied” with his company’s lack of diversity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Typewriters suck. Yet we’re infinitely richer for those irritating machines
The invention of backspace made us all better off. Right?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/12/typewriters_were_awful_unless_youre_an_economist/
One of the things we greybeards have a seriously difficult time getting over to the youngsters is quite how much life sucked back in the old days. It’s easy enough to look at the bald economic statistics and see that incomes haven’t moved up much (for the UK) or even at all (for the US) in recent decades.
But the one single feature of a computer keyboard which a modern typist will miss most is the backspace button. On a typewriter this didn’t erase your errors, it just took you back so you could type over them again.
All in all, it’s a rather fun reminder of just how bad things were (OK, not bad, just less good than now). And there’s two eonomic points that flow from this fairly trivial observation.
The first is that we do try to include the benefits of these sorts of things in our inflation numbers. We use something called “hedonic adjustment” to try to deal with the increasing quality of things over time.
Of course, our incomes have changed over this time in nominal terms: even the worst of the general claims is that they’ve not risen in real terms while keeping pace with inflation in nominal terms.
So, while we might have faster computers in the figures, we might not have backspace.
It’s just, from my point of view, interesting to have a workable example of how much more difficult it was to do something back then in this form of a typewriter emulator.
The second economic point is that this neatly shows the dual effects of advancing technology. On the one hand, all this computer stuff has produced the priestly caste which makes up the readership of this ‘ere mag. As the car produced the caste of mechanics and chauffeurs that were the experts capable of making the technology work, so computing brings you, dear Register readers, into being.
But as also happens with new technology, once we’ve got past those initial decades where only the Illuminati can operate it, we end up destroying the jobs of the experts of the previous technology.
The car did lead to an explosion in the number of experts to drive and maintain them. But, proportionate to the number of vehicles, the current number of those experts is very much lower than the number of expert coachmen who were required to operate the earlier transport technology.
And so it has been with computing. It really wasn’t all that long ago that to get anything useful out of a computer you needed to be an expert. Nowadays most fools can operate one out of the box; at least, for tasks such as word processing or taking a picture.
That is, in a nutshell, advancing technology. After passing a stage where it’s very much more complicated than whatever it is replacing, it really turns skilled jobs into unskilled ones. The skill and the complexity is now in the machine, not in the knowledge of the operator.
OverType
The Over-The-Top Typewriter Simulator
http://uniqcode.com/typewriter/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hardware innovation isn’t dead
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4440121/Hardware-innovation-isn-t-dead?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150812&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150812&elq=bd0421c99a4740ad9d3df86b77be181a&elqCampaignId=24327&elqaid=27479&elqat=1&elqTrackId=1f3f489556b54da5834c3122fc92b577
The death of electronics hardware has been a topic of discussion for years—as pundits predicted that new products would be evolutionary rather than evolution. Inventive entrepreneurs, however, are betting on new electronics hardware as the next big thing, and consumers continue to get excited about helping to fund the next promising hardware offering on Kickstarter.
In recent memory, revenue associated with global consumer electronics manufacturing has been in a slump, as it tried to find new directions beyond the traditional television market that provided the industry’s mainstay. The global market represents a $283 billion market, with an annual growth rate of 6.6%, according to IBISWorld’s Global Consumer Electronics Manufacturing market research report. “Over the five years to 2020, revenue is expected to increase thanks to higher demand in emerging economies resulting from higher disposable incomes and relatively lower penetration of many consumer electronic products,” the report said.
Designers are trying to help this boon along, with new ideas emerging from all over the world. On Kickstarter, hardware captured a lion’s share of the attention from users. Of nearly 2,700 technology projects that were successfully funded in the past year and a half (from January 2014 to August 2015), the biggest share of the pie fell into the general electronics category.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tim O’Reilly and the ‘WTF?!’ Economy (Video)
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/08/12/1844243/tim-oreilly-and-the-wtf-economy-video
This is a conversation Tim Lord had with Tim O’Reilly at OSCON. Tim O’Reilly wrote an article titled “The WTF Economy,”, which started with these words: “WTF?! In San Francisco, Uber has 3x the revenue of the entire prior taxi and limousine industry.” He talks about Uber and AirbnB and how, with real-time measurement of customer demand, “The algorithm is the new shift boss.” And then there is this question: “What is the future when more and more work can be done by intelligent machines instead of people, or only done by people in partnership with those machines?”
The WTF Economy
https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/the-wtf-economy-a3bd5f52ef00
WTF?! In San Francisco, Uber has 3x the revenue of the entire prior taxi and limousine industry.
WTF?! Without owning a single room, Airbnb has more rooms on offer than some of the largest hotel groups in the world. Airbnb has 800 employees, while Hilton has 152,000.
WTF?! Top Kickstarters raise tens of millions of dollars from tens of thousands of individual backers, amounts of capital that once required top-tier investment firms.
WTF?! What happens to all those Uber drivers when the cars start driving themselves? AIs are flying planes, driving cars, advising doctors on the best treatments, writing sports and financial news, and telling us all, in real time, the fastest way to get to work. They are also telling human workers when to show up and when to go home, based on real-time measurement of demand. The algorithm is the new shift boss.
What do on-demand services, AI, and the $15 minimum wage movement have in common? They are telling us, loud and clear, that we’re in for massive changes in work, business, and the economy.
What is the future when more and more work can be done by intelligent machines instead of people, or only done by people in partnership with those machines? What happens to workers, and what happens to the companies that depend on their purchasing power? What’s the future of business when technology-enabled networks and marketplaces are better at deploying talent than traditional companies? What’s the future of education when on-demand learning outperforms traditional universities in keeping skills up to date?
Over the past few decades, the digital revolution has transformed the world of media, upending centuries-old companies and business models. Now, it is restructuring every business, every job, and every sector of society. No company, no job is immune to disruption.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ACE Awards honor innovators in engineering and technology
http://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4439980/ACE-Awards-honor-innovators-in-engineering-and-technology?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20150724&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20150724&elq=0653485ffcbe4861a4b7f0c9d3e390a8&elqCampaignId=24083&elqaid=27202&elqat=1&elqTrackId=d2d80563b7ac48c8ab2bfd369e29cb61
The 2015 Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Awards, presented by EDN and EE Times, were held last night as part of the ESC Silicon Valley event.
The awards celebrate some of the best engineers, products, and companies making a difference every day in the electronics industry.
“The advances made each day by engineering and design are outstanding, bettering every aspect of life for today and tomorrow,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spoken language could tap into ‘universal code’
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2015/08/spoken-language-could-tap-universal-code
We know a lot about language, but we know very little about how speech developed.
But how did we decide which sounds to use for various words? Now, an experimental game has shown that speakers of English might use qualities like the pitch and volume of sounds to describe concepts like size and distance when they invent new words. If true, some of our modern words may have originated from so-called iconic, rather than arbitrary, expression—a finding that would overturn a key theory of language evolution.
“It’s interesting to me that people are so consistent in their ideas of how to express these different meanings,” Perlman says. “[Students playing the game] are nervous at first, and they don’t have any idea of how to express these meanings the first time through. But, lo and behold, they are actually very consistent in what they do. They all share similar intuitions.”
This isn’t the first time that sound has been linked to meaning. In a series of cross-linguistic experiments, researchers have demonstrated something they call the “kiki-bouba” effect. Subjects consistently link round objects with rounded, back vowels (like the “ou” in bouba), and they link sharp, angular objects with unrounded, frontal vowels (like the “ee” sound in kiki).
“This study is informative about how language might have emerged because it asks people to create acoustic labels for different concepts,” Kita says. “So there is a kind of universal code that people are tapping into to express these concepts.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here’s what science says about how digital technology REALLY affects our brains
http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-digital-technology-affects-our-brains-2015-8?r=US&IR=T
Experts are divided on the impacts all this screen-time is having on our brains.
Some people claim that use of the internet, social media, and computer games is having a negative impact on social interaction, empathy, and even personal identity.
But the research doesn’t totally support these views, other scientists say.
The debate over digital technology and young people
http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3064
Needs less shock and more substance
Through appearances, interviews, and a recent book1 Susan Greenfield, a senior research fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford, has promoted the idea that internet use and computer games can have harmful effects on the brain, emotions, and behaviour, and she draws a parallel between the effects of digital technology and climate change. Despite repeated calls for her to publish these claims in the peer reviewed scientific literature, where clinical researchers can check how well they are supported by evidence, this has not happened, and the claims have largely been aired in the media.
Another of Greenfield’s claims is that intense use of computer games could lead to impulsiveness, a shorter attention span, and aggression.1 Yet studies on video gaming give a much more nuanced conclusion. Evidence suggests that playing action video games produces a small improvement in neuropsychological performance
Another claim made by Greenfield is that reliance on search engines and surfing the internet could result in superficial mental processing at the expense of deep knowledge and understanding.1 There is indeed evidence that when people know they can access information through search engines they are less likely to remember the content.9 However, this effect applies to many situations and is not restricted to the use of technology; for instance, people who work in teams are less likely to remember facts when others hold the information, which allows for more efficient use of mental resources. This is a well studied and adaptive form of thinking called transactive memory.10
Taking the broader view from published research, current estimates are that internet use accounts for less than 1% of subjective estimates of wellbeing, and there is currently no evidence from neuroscience studies that typical internet use harms the adolescent brain.
Accurate, informed information from sound scientific studies is essential to inform this process
Tomi Engdahl says:
Your Homework for this Weekend
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/13/your-homework-for-this-weekend/
Your homework for this weekend: Build me something and enter it in The Hackaday Prize. I’m not joking.
Here’s the gist of it: Choose a problem that is faced by a large number of people. Build something that helps fix it, and document what you did. You need to start a project, publish 4 project logs, a system design diagram, and a video of less than 2 minutes in length. That’s it, and you can easily be done with all of this if you choose to make this weekend a hackathon.