Relocation!

This is just a quick posting to explain what's happening. I've had to relocate my Hit/MIS blog and this is its new home. I've just put up the few past postings here (labelled with Archive) for anyone who cares.

Thanks for joining me here.

Archive: Wireless spectrum auction

(Originally posted November 30th, 2007 at hitmis.postopolis.com)

I wasn’t going to write about this - everyone else is. However, Ray sicc’d a reporter on me (thanks, Ray), and her questions made me think about a few things.

In short, by reserving a portion of available spectrum for companies other than the big three (Rogers, Telus, and Bell), the wireless provider pool should grow. And business theory suggests that more providers equals a better deal for consumers. Certainly, it means that a large incumbent company can’t just buy up all the spectrum and do nothing with it (from a Porter 5-Forces perspective owning all the spectrum would be a great way to block new entrants).

So, that’s the theory. And it remains to be seen if it plays out. But what is interesting to me is the players who are rumoured to be interested in entry - in particular Quebecor (owners of Videotron) and Shaw. Why those two? Well, they’re ISPs and cable companies. Shaw, at least, also provides home phone service over it’s network (VoIP, but they don’t call it that).

Why are these two interesting? Call it convergence. Now, as a consumer, I have one company providing entertainment, data, and voice services. One bill. Well, that’s not that big a deal. But, what if my cellular phone could seamlessly travel between my home WiFi network and the cellular network? What if I can seamlessly travel between any WiFi network (home, work, school, public…) and the cellular network? With my phone choosing the cheapest option at the time. Of course, this assumes WiFi networks are cheaper than cellular; hmm, or at least that some WiFi networks are cheaper.

Now, what if this integrated data, entertainment, voice service company also started looking at what services they can push out to their completely mobile customers? We don’t see a lot of folks watching TV on their cellphones in Canada. Is that because, like me, they prefer their huge HDTVs at home over 2-inch cell screens? Or, could it be that it’s just too expensive to get that much data streamed to your phone? Or a bit of both. Would more competition lead to more services? Would Apple finally launch their iPhone in Canada?

What do you think will happen in the near future? Will we have more competition? And if so, will it be there for the long-run?

Archive: Trend Spotting

(Originally posted November 2nd, 2007 at hitmis.postopolis.com)

I ran into a former student of mine today who was interested in how I kept up on IT trends and the like. Well, I don’t know, I’m just a geek, the information finds me. But, since I’m going looking for good sources of information for him - places to find out what’s happening in technology and how to perhaps harness these new developments for competitive advantage (of course, I’d argue it’s a temporary advantage at best), I figured it would make a good blog posting. So here I am, posting for the first time in over 6 months.

As for using IT/IS for competitive advantage - well, you’re going to have to figure that out. What new technology makes sense for you or your business is very specific to your situation. But feel free to ask questions. Maybe we can all learn something new together.

If anyone out there even reads this, please add in your favourite sources of information, too.

Trends

• Pattern Finder especially the “Patterns and Trends” category

MIS/Business

• CIO Magazine
• The Economist - Technology Quarterly
• Forrester in general and Charlene Li’s blog in particular. Note that you can gain access to Forrester research through the UofA library.

Gadgets

• Gizmodo

Security

• SANS resources online. I’m a geek, so I tend to actually look at the Handler’s Diary. You should also check out their newsletters if you like getting info pushed to you.

Techy stuff

• CircleID “a community hub for the Internet’s Infrastructure & Policies”
• Everything Sysadmin

Enterprise stuff

Since so many EIS use dashboards to present information to executives…how about the good and the bad of dashboards?

• DashboardSpy (the good)
• Junk Charts (the bad)

Of course, some of my best sources are actually friends. Not many of them have tech blogs, though.

• The Synthetic Librarian

With sincere thanks to Michael for helping me fill in this first pass!

I consider this posting a work in progress. I’ll update it (or post follow-ups) as I add to my list.

Archive: Network Neutrality

(Originally posted March 27th, 2007 at hitmis.postopolis.com)

What is it?

In it’s purest form, network neutrality provides transport to all traffic without discrimination. The idea is that the network carries any and all traffic and passes it on in the order it was received. However, there are variations on this definition.

Some would allow for quality of service(QoS) provisions within the definition of net neutrality. QoS allows for certain traffic to be passed at a higher priority. The network provide could, conceivably, charge to honour QoS provisions - and that fact is the start of the network neutrality debate.

If a service provider can charge to honour QoS, what’s to prevent them from degrading service for anyone who doesn’t pay for elevated service. Net neutrality activists point to events such as Telus blocking access for its customers to certain websites during a strike in 2005 and Shaw Communication’s (and here) decision to charge a fee to provide quality of service for users of competing VoIP solutions on Shaw Internet connections as indications that service providers will act against the interests of subscribers if they are allowed to.

What does it mean to me?

Well, that depends. Real time applications like voice over internet (VoIP) and videoconferencing (VC) work better when there are quality of service provisions. So, if those are your main applications, you’d like to be able to discriminate traffic and have VoIP or VC traffic delivered at a higher priority than, say, email traffic.

However, the fear is that service providers will extend the discrimination beyond classes of applications and in to specific sites. A large company could pay more to ensure that their website loads more quickly than their competitors’ sites. This would ‘encourage’ people to use that faster loading site and have a negative impact on the competitors. Practically speaking, anyone who could afford to pay for better deliver would and those who couldn’t would die.

This idea is very distressing to many in the Internet community. They point to the importance of neutrality in enabling innovation. Would Amazon have been able to build it’s business model if an existing bricks and mortar store could just dump a lot of cash into network access - causing everyone looking for books to go to the existing company site and not Amazon? Could some new search engine pay your ISP to load it faster than Google? In a world of many small businesses, the fear is that a few large ones could afford to play by the new rules at the expense of the many.

What is happening in Canada?

We’re behind the US, not surprisingly. In November 2006, CBC reported that the fight had arrived here. The telco’s want to let market forces dictate the evolution of services; activist organization, experts, and even big content providers (here, here, and here) want legislation.
Reading on the issue

NN fact and fiction (pro NN from FreePress)

Wikipedia Network Neutrality (neutral presentation of the issue)

Joining the Snake: A balanced and pragmatic approach to NN (from the Progress and Freedom Foundation)

Archive: Ideas for knowledge management in Web 2.0 world

(Originally posted September 28th, 2006 at hitmis.postopolis.com)

One of the hardest things for organizations to capture is tacit knowledge. And then, if you do find a way to capture it, how do you find it again when you need it? Perhaps there are some answers to both of these questions in the world of ‘Web 2.0.’ That mesh of applications like blogs and wikis and social networking.

Rod Boothby has a posting over at Innovation Creators that discusses how this is being made possible. For example, boorah is a restaurant recommender that combs the web for information to feed its recommendations. In Boorah’s words, the

… system uses patent-pending Natural Language Processing technology to find, summarize and present information from across the web in a way that is far more useful than it’s ever been before.

Or what about Yedda, social networking that brings people together to share knowledge?

While it’s true that most enterprises are still frightened by emerging web applications such as blogs and wikis, in reality, these tools might help them capture information and create the community needed to improve internal commications, knowledge sharing, and efficiency. Think of all that informal information-sharing that goes on between employees in the same office? Imagine if you could enable employees located in different locations to connect with each other just as easily! That’s what the whole Web 2.0 thing is about - enabling people to connect; to build relationships. And that’s good for business, too.

Archive: Technology and Alberta

(Originally published July 19th, 2006 at hitmis.postopolis.com)

Today I was reviewing some notes I took a while back that directed me to look into the Alberta ICT Council. From there I discovered some really interesting sites that I wanted to direct you to.

20/20 Network is trying to create an ‘Alberta Chamber of Technologies’ in order to facilitate Alberta’s ability to take advantage of a new, knowledge/technology based economy. To me it looks like this is the group of people trying to answer my earlier questions about ‘what is the knowledge economy and how do we foster it in Alberta?’

From there, I found the “Alberta Technology Chamber of Commerce” blog. The most recent posting there paints a gloomy picture of Alberta’s ability to be successful in the tech sector.

Booming Economy Aside, Nearly Half of Alberta’s Tech Firms Would Leave the Province - 2006 Alberta Technology Report

The Ernst & Young report reveals that 80% of technology companies continue to cite a lack of available financing as a key challenge

I haven’t spent much time reading through either site yet, but I am expecting them both to be sources of information that I’ll use for this blog in the future.

If you want to get more involved in shaping Alberta’s tech future, I’d suggest you look into participating in the discussions at 20/20 Network.

Archive: Enterprise 2.0

(Originally posted on June 29, 2006 at http://hitmis.postopolis.com/)

It seems the corporate world is starting to take notice of the web-based tools and services that have made social software and ‘web 2.0′ so popular. An article in the Globe and Mail today discusses how businesses are able to use web services to enable collaboration and even building databases.

Michael Rhodin, general manager of IBM’s Lotus division, said the Web 2.0 method of “capturing collaborative wisdom…is a different take on knowledge management, which was fundamentally flawed.”

One of the latest entrants in this field is Vancouver-based Dabble DB, which came out of private “beta” mode this week and launched the public version of its service: An interactive database management tool that will spread joy to corporate project managers everywhere.

So I wandered off to check out Dabble DB and it looks pretty amazing from the demo. This is definitely a tool that would help small organizations or departments build databases to support specific functions. I wonder how scalable it will be. I guess I’m going to have to set aside some time to actually try the product for 30 days.

Archive: Musings on the Knowledge economy

(Originally posted June 28, 2006 at http://hitmis.postopolis.com/)

I attended a conference on SuperNet opportunities last week and posted some personal blog entries about it. In particular, I ranted about support for a knowledge economy, which lead me to realize that I don’t really understand the term. What is a ‘knowledge economy?’ What are the skills that people need to work in this type of economy? What is needed to nurture the knowledge economy (beyond good ICT infrastructure)?

Wikipedia says “A knowledge economy or a knowledged-based economy is a phrase that refers to the use of knowledge to produce economic benefits.” But that doesn’t really help. I know that the phrase is intended to convey a reliance on what people know rather than on the ‘industrial economy’ which was based on producing tangible goods. However, this doesn’t get me any closer to understanding what it takes to participate in the knowledge economy, to nurture businesses built on knowledge.

OK, there’s an article at the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development called “What is the Knowledge Economy” that starts to get at some important differences between the knowledge economy and our more familiar industrial economy. In particular, the idea is that knowledge creation leads to GDP growth; as a result, R&D should be encouraged because this leads to knowledge creation and innovation.

The Commonwealth Centre for eGovernance contains a document discussing tools for the knowledge economy that is well worth the read.

From my short time researching the topic and trying to better understand the elements necessary to drive the knowledge economy, this is what I’ve come to believe:

• information and communications techology (ICT) infrastructure is necessary to participate in the knowledge economy but not sufficient.
• ICT is an enabler; it releases the creative potential and knowledge of people and organizations
• ICT can facilitate knowledge creation rather than act as a driver of change
• ICT opens up global markets
• People are the valuable commodity
• Quality education (access) is required in order to nurture knowledge workers
• we must stimulate innovation and creativity in organizations and people
• there must be cultural change to ensure that people and their intelligence is valued
• It’s no good to impose external ‘best practises.’ We need to let people (organizations, teams, countries,…) find the best way for them to work to create and share knowledge. If we impose strucure, then we undermine confidence and the message that we value intelligence. If we say we value knowledge, then we need to let people use their own intellect to create structures and knowledge.
• knowledge gained by experience is as important as formal education (which is why we have to let people think for themselves in the bullet above)
• lifelong learning is vital for both people and organizations.

OK, but why does any of this matter in a blog for MIS students? Well, if we’re interested in working with information systems, in being ‘knowledge workers,’ then we need to understand what skills are important. And we need to know how to apply those skills, how to exploit the resources we have available to us (our brains) to provide value to an organization. That’s why having an idea of what is meant by ‘knowledge economy’ is important to us all.

I guess the key lesson, then, is that we need to always be learning.