Math(s) and Africa

I’ve blogged a few times about education and innovation in Africa before, but I figured it would be worthwhile mentioning the AIMs School  just outside Cape Town.

From the website.

The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is an educational centre in Cape Town, South Africa. The goals of AIMS are:

• To promote mathematics and science in Africa.
• To recruit and train talented students and teachers.
• To build capacity for African initiatives in education, research, and technology.

The Institute is focussed around a nine-month, postgraduate course covering many of the most exciting areas of modern science, taught by outstanding African and international lecturers. The course develops strong mathematical and computing problem-solving skills and leads to a postgraduate diploma in the Mathematical Sciences, formally accredited by the three partner South African Universities and taught in association with the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of Oxford, and the University of Paris-Sud 11. Students with good mathematics, science or engineering degrees are invited to apply and will be supported on bursaries where needed.

There are some videos and details over on the TED blog.   Well done Barclays for the 20 scholarships. This all grows out of 2008 TED Prize winner Neil Turok’s wish — that the TED community will help him to educate the next Einstein in Africa.  Spend some time looking at Neil Turok’s talks. Humbling stuff.

Building a grasp and love of mathematics in what will thousands of Africans is a brilliant way to invest in the long term success of the continent. 

BTW.  They are looking for post docs and researchers .

 

New perspectives. Redwood, Berlin and telescopes.

(photo from klara on flickr, danke)

I’m not in Orlando this week at Sapphire, partly because I spent last week in the San Francisco and Bay Area.

The main purpose of the visit was to meet the folks at Oracle. Having competed against Oracle and PeopleSoft for much of my working life, it was more than a touch surreal entering the Redwood Shores complex.  I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I met a group of smart, engaged, friendly and deeply knowledgeable people.   They have an interesting blog too. 

I’m having something of a Hubble experience since joining Gartner.  I’m realising there is a lot more going on out there in the HCM space than I did when my orbit was tethered to Planet SAP.  (more on my Paris trip in another post)

In a couple of weeks I’ll be heading to back into the SAP zone, to  Berlin for the European  Sapphire. I’ll be looking at SAP through a new lens.

Sure,  I’m interested in the goings on with Business By Design, and the business objects integration,  but there are colleagues here at Gartner that will be covering that in depth, and I expect there will be  lots of blog coverage too. 

I’d like to talk to customers at Sapphire,  and I hope to understand more about what they are actually doing with the SAP HCM products.  I’m seeking evidence of ERP 6.0 traction beyond the technical upgrade.  There are several potentially  interesting presentations on the agenda.  (The search engine  on the sapphire site doesn’t work properly, so you need to dig to find them.)

I’m also very interested to look at RIA deployments in an HCM context. There are some funky funky tools out there, but I’m keen to hear about actual deployments.  I’ll also wander the halls and check out what the partners are up to.

It will be excellent to meet up with old colleagues, and also to see some new ones too.  I also get to go to Berlin, which as many of regular readers know, is my favourite city.

 

Technorati Tags: Berlin,SAP,Gartner,HCM,sapphire08

 

Government spending and bicycles.

Government spending has all sorts of unintended consequences, some good, some not so good.  Without DARPA we would probably not have an Internet, and the Valley south of San Francisco would still be famous for oranges.

I was in Dubai last week. That too, is an example of Government intervention. It is a spectacular if sometimes gaudy example of the state and capitalism working together. I’m guessing Keynes and Hicks would have been impressed.  It reminded me of Vegas, but much more imposing.

And speaking of Las Vegas,  some very clever fellows at Lew design and build the carbon composite bits of the some rather mean looking aircraft. 

“Welded Wing was designed to deliver STUAVs deep into denied territories. The full Welded Wing configuration will allow a total mission range of over 1,100nm and provide up to five separate missions at time of separation. The S-Class (Mothership) will provide GIG/SATCOM relay and a non-GPS reliant communications network will control the UAVs. Onboard mission computers and real time C2 will allow mission parameters to be changed in theatre.”

More acronyms and euphemisms  than an enterprise software brochure. 

But these same fellows turned their attention to the bicycle wheel and came up with this wheel. Swords and plowshares 2.0.

  

They can  cost  up to 15,000 US dollars for a custom wheelset. But they weigh just over 700 grammes for the pair.  Gosh. 

It is a sad reflection on our global  society that these are a byproduct of unmanned weapon delivery.

Instead of ogling insanely expensive carbon wheels I should really get on my bike and ride up a hill or two.

Technorati Tags: bicycles,policy,lew

 

Social media and malaria……..

Photo from the cc flickrstream of tanakawho

Via Yahoo news I read that

The British entrepreneur who sold a football Web site at the age of 17 for $40 million (20 million pounds) has switched his attention to help launch a social networking site on Sunday designed to fight malaria

“Travelling across Africa and seeing the devastation caused by malaria made me realise there was more to life than putting up soccer scores,” said Hadfield.

“Everyone I met at an aid project making mosquito nets in Zambia had either lost a child to malaria or knew someone who had.”

… Hadfield co-founded the site with health professors Peter A. Singer and Abdallah S. Daar at Canada’s McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health at University Health Network as well as the University of Toronto

Malaria is a largely preventable disease, yet it kills millions of people.

 

 

MalariaEngage impresses me for two reasons.

1. Social media platforms like this enable charities and researchers  to build compelling online presence and interaction at a price point that would have been inconceivable even a couple years ago.

“It’s about more than about giving money — it’s about creating connections. By encouraging individual participation and involvement, we will create international communities of common interest. This is the essence of social networking.”

2. By linking donations to local research, it boosts local skills and research, and explores new avenues for practical cures and preventions. Strengthening African research is goodness. Malaria impacts those least able to pay for medicine,  so it is a tragic example of market failure. The global pharma industry has not really addressed the challenge of malaria, so perhaps local research is the answer. 

 

We feel young African scientists have very good ideas that end up in the dustbin,” said Singer. “This is about helping committed young researchers with good ideas to help themselves create a better future.”

Well done to Hadfield, Singer and Daar.

 

Technorati Tags: malaria,malariaengage,social media

 

On the look out for HR technology innovation.

(photo of the view-master reel from excellent flickr stream of cgines, thanks)

I’m starting to get settled into my new job here at Gartner,  researching the HR-HCM technology space.  The support and peer network has been brilliant, the job is everything I’d hoped for.  I’m having fun. I’m learning every day.  Jim is keeping  me busy.

I’m conscious that most of my working career has been SAP and SAP ecosystem focused, and so I need to broaden my perspectives.  Step out from my SAP comfort zone.   

I hoping that my readers can help.  Point me to HR and HCM stuff you think I should be researching.  I’ll be heading to some HR-HCM related conferences, and some enterprise 2.0 events here in Europe.  Let me know the ones you think I should attend. (They can be in English or German) 

thomasdototteratgartnerdotcom  or please  leave me a comment here.

I plan to be over in the  Bay Area on the US west coast for the last week of April,  so if you are based there, let’s try to meet up.  Over the course of the year I’ll be in a number of European cities, and I even have a trip down to South Africa planned. 

A lot of my time in this job needs to be spent listening.

Technorati Tags: Gartner,HR

 

Mash it up-a in-a Zimbabwe Blogging an election.

Zimbabwe is a place near to my heart. My best friends at University were from Harare. We went to Zim on honeymoon. I will take my kids there to visit the falls, the lake and the highlands. One day it will recover, its people will no longer be hungry and the economy will thrive. The people of Zimbabwe will make this happen, sooner or later.

Today is election day. Jeff mentions the election history of Zim. It is not pleasant reading.

This time aoround the blogosphere is highlighting the corruption, fraud and intimidation in ways that the government can’t control. I wrote some weeks ago about blogging and social media in Kenya, and it fabulous to see Zim bloggers doing what most of the press stopped doing ages ago.

Have a look at Kubatana for instance, live blogging election exit polls.

Have a look at Sokwanele’s google mashup.

Or this video on youtube.

I have been following Sokwanele for some time, but reading that blog today, I’m filled with a sense that Zim is on the edge of change. I hope Mugabe goes quietly, and that there is little violence, but I believe the people of Zimbabwe are Sokwanele, which means Enough is Enough.

“The unconfirmed reports (or rumours) are flying crazily. Just heard that Robert Mugabe has apparently left for Mozambique (this morning it was Mauritius).

We also heard that Chiweshe (ZEC Chairman) fled the Meikles Hotel in Harare where the press are gathered waiting to hear results. The story goes that he refused to deliver the news.

Another unconfirmed report is that Elliot Manyike has shot someone in anger, seriously angry because he lost his seat.

But the oddest news of the morning so far is the story that Sabina Mugabe has died of a heart attack and Bob is using this as an excuse to delay the news.

I laughed at this last, because it sounds like such Zimbo grapevine stuff, but the story is coming in from a variety of sources.

It’s hard to filter fact from fiction at this stage. But what it tells me is that the nation is desperate for news and starting to share everything they have as fast as they can.

Oh, and last bit of confirmed news - this is fact fact - via the ZBC is that they are still “verifying” the results. We all know what “verifying” has meant in previous years.

… as I finished writing and was just about to post, one more snippet of news came in: the police have apparently been put on high alert commencing 2pm and the MDC planning to do a press announcement this afternoon - no time given yet.

Suddenly it turns ominous. But I’m still buzzing, BUZZING!

OH….. and another flash of info just in (this is what it’s like today) news that people are starting to celebrate everywhere.

Blogging and the web is playing a small but important role in undermining Bob. To the guys and gals behind the Sokwanele blog, respect. You are the A-list bloggers.

Sokwanele has just posted this

Let’s hope the people of Zimbabwe, who have seen the results outside the polling station doors with their own eyes, will not let this happen! Let’s also hope the army and security forces will refuse to participate in the oppression of their own people.

I hope so to.

I will leave you with Bob Marley’s Zimbabwe.

.

Perhaps his record company could re-release this one.

Natty Dread it in-a (Zimbabwe); Set it up in (Zimbabwe);
Mash it up-a in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate (Zimbabwe), yeah

 

On Getting things Done

Dave Allen’s book and method  have received considerable positive coverage in the blogosphere, and  tools to bring the method to the inbox are popping up like daffodils.

The Dave Allen Company has an outlook application for GTD,  which it sells along with books and other guides to getting your life in order.

Instead of doing the sensible thing and buying the book first, I thought I download some software…

I decided to try a Firefox plug in, based on the WebWorkerDaily review.

I’d not planned to blog this, but Zoli posted about a GTD offering for gmail,

I wanted to get organized about my ever-growing inbox, so I thought I’d give GTDInbox a try, especially after reading the positive reviews on both WebWorkerDaily and ReadWriteWeb.

My regular readers will know that I’m interested in the collisions  between law and software.  I vaguely  wondered if there was a trademark issue with calling the application GTD, but US trademark law isn’t really my cup of tea. GTD is a registered trademark of  the Dave Allen company, so they may have something to say about this use of it. Then again, they may think it is goodness that someone has built a firefox-gmail add in, as it might help them sell more books.

But this post isn’t really about trademark, it is about something even more boring, T&Cs-

Many of us don’t bother reading the T&Cs of applications we use. After all, we are busy people.  But in the case of a GTD add on, I thought  it might be worth pausing for a second and dong so. After all, in theory this little application will be rummaging around in my  inbox,

Also I figured it would be interesting to see how a Mozilla “accepted” application’s T&Cs looked. All  glowing GPL stuff, I presumed.

 

and zooming in…

Unlike Zoli, I can’t comment on the application, because I didn’t even download it.

Please,  next time you build an application, even if it is only in  beta, please add organise appropriate T&Cs in your Get Things Done before shipping list. Sure it is a beta application, but it could be  using my live data, and that of my friends and colleagues.  

But even Apple seem to have T&C challenges. More fom Zoli here.

 

Technorati Tags: GTD

 

And now for something completely different.

Gefunden

Translation partly from here. with some minor edits. (a more poetic translation here.)

Ich ging im Walde So vor mich hin, Und nichts zu suchen, Das war mein Sinn. Im Schatten sah ich Ein Blümlein stehn, Wie Sterne blinkend, Wie Äuglein schön. Ich wollt es brechen, Da sagt’ es fein: Soll ich zum Welken Gebrochen sein? Mit allen Wurzeln Hob ich es aus, Und trugs zum Garten Am hübschen Haus. Ich pflanzt es wieder Am kühlen Ort; Nun zweigt und blüht es Mir immer fort. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

I was walking in the woods on a whim of mine, and seeking nothing, that was my intention. In the shade I saw A little flower standing Like stars glittering Like beautiful little eyes. I wanted to pick it When it said delicately:, Should I just wilt if I were picked. I dug it out with all Its little roots. And carried it to the garden at the By the lovely house.   And replanted it In this quiet spot; Now it keeps branching out And blossoms ever forth

 

Thanks to defrag’s twiiter about poetry and conferences for the idea.

I need to read some  poetry, go for a walk, and hang out with my

Blümlein

 

Lords in the cloud, letting in the sunshine.

 

(photo from the flickrstream of Swamibu )

It is apparently Sunshine week in United States of America, so please excuse the metaphor collision.

Over in the UK it is goodness to see nine Lords experimenting with a blog.  It is called Lords of the blog. I quote.

Apparently we are going live today. So far, our blog confessions have had a very limited audience, but now anyone may see what we have been doing.

Not that I have anything to hide. Indeed, I suspect that most members of the Lords would be only too happy if the public could and did take more notice of what we do on their behalf. Some of us spent a lengthy afternoon last Thursday debating the best way to get more people - and especially young people - interested in the way Parliament deals with their concerns, hopes and fears.

It is easy to think of the House of Lords as characters in a PG Wodehouse novel, greeting each other with what ho! chum, eating boarding school nosh, and wondering where the empire went. But that would be wrong. I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lord or two, and even though they expressed a fondness for Yorkshire Pudding, they were right on the money as far as software and technology were concerned.  I blogged some time ago about the House of Lords and RFID and the science and technology select committee .

Though the link had come from the most reliable source on all matters UK law, Geeklawyer, I wondered for a moment if this was a put up job, but no, it seems to be the genuine article. The Hansard society is lending a hand.

It is also interesting to see rather than hosting it over on a server in under the woolsack, they are running it on wordpress.com. If it had been buried in the depths of a government website somewhere, who would read it?  up on WordPress seems somehow less contrived, and less likely that  a  Sir Humphrey  is moderating things in the background.

Having these Nine Lords blog is a fine thing. I look forward to them asking some probing questions about Phorm………

Technorati Tags: house of lords,blogging,hansard

 

On European funding, Airbus and Software.

This post was lurking in my Live Writer, but then Mike’s post spurred me to dust it off and rework it a bit. Over on Techcrunch UK he was pretty damning of EU research funding for the Theseus and Quaero projects…EU taxpayers to fund $306m Google rival. No wonder the Yanks think we’re dumb

A couple of weeks ago Vinnie had a somewhat more gentle dig at European technology industry too.

Airbus A380 at SFO, from the flickrstream of Telstar Logistics

Vinnie picked up on the Airbus comment at Cebit and said:

The Airbus for the European IT Industry is what we need,” says the president of Bitkom, the leading high-tech industry association in Germany.You keep funding that, Europe. In fact, we would love to lease Airbuses and send our folks from Washington to Brussels so they can help you design and grow the program. That way it would also keep them away from our thousands of technology entrepreneurs. Our preferred way of delivering technology innovation.

I’d like to raise several points in response to Vinnie and Mike.

1. The assumption the US software industry is somehow subsidy free ignores the history of the software industry, and the huge role that the US government plays in funding software research and driving demand in the US. Check out this book by Martin Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass., 2003. Herewith a quote..

The likely prime reason for U.S. software supremacy is a paradoxical one –government support for the industry. The paradox arises from the fact that, although the United States is non-interventionist in principle, in practice it promoted the early industry massively by creating a market for computers and software through programs such as the SAGE project, the Department of Defense’s ADP program, and the NASA program, to mention only the largest..”

And this still goes on today. In fact the whole software industry owes a big debt of gratitude to the US government and its big wallet. I bet if we were to dig around into the history of many of the most successful US technology companies and products we would find a research funded project at its core. (Netscape and the browser- thanks NSCA, and oh, and indeed Google itself.)

2. The president of BITkom knows a whole lot more about software entrepreneurship than the quote implies. August-Wilhelm Scheer is the founder of the company that builds ARIS, one of the leading German software companies and a major global player in the BPM market. He is an entrepreneur, not a bureaucrat.

3. His main point about the power of Airbus not about subsidies or government meddling, but that Airbus iis a joint Anglo-French company, and that both countries could be more successful through deeper commercial collaboration. Scheer knows, as he is also a professor at Saarbrücken University, close to the french border.

4.I don’t have a lot of details on the French Quaero project and the background for the split but to call the Theseus project a Google rival is missing the main point of this project. But I guess it makes a neat newspaper headline.

This is what the Theseus project is actually about.

So the Theseus project is not intended to develop a new Internet search engine to compete with Google and which could be used in every situation that crops up in the digital data world. The data contained on the Internet are simply far too heterogeneous and chaotic for that. What’s more, at the end of the project, there won’t even be an Internet platform – probably not even a physical product, says Thomas Huber, press spokesperson for the Theseus project. Instead, Theseus aims to create standards for semantic searches within specific areas. With partners from the business community, notably Siemens and SAP, and research associations such as the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and various universities, Theseus therefore consists of subprojects which focus on specific application scenarios. As a spokeswoman from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology explains, these have been selected in advance by companies and the Ministry itself on the grounds that they appear to be particularly promising.

The project is essentially about semantics, standards and the longer term future of the web, and it hopes to drive both fundamental and applied research.

Technology Research projects require funding. VC’s don’t fund primary research, and very few companies can afford to take the long term focus that it requires. Let’s take a well known example, a research project that evolved over about 20 years. The work started in the the late 1970’s and in 1987 a research alliance was formed between Erlangen-Nuremberg University and the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits within the framework of the European Union-funded EUREKA project EU147. This led to the MP3 format. No EU funding, no IPod, I guess.

A while ago I argued that Europe needs to invest more in pure software research.

It is about time that the governments in Europe started to invest in the future of IT rather than just subsidizing cows.

Here in Europe I reckon governments need to do two things: fund research and help create an environment where smart people can build businesses with those innovations. The German government funding this research is a step in the right direction, but governments in Europe also need to do a whole lot more to encourage an environment to exploit those innovations. Sometimes this means getting out the way.

Technorati Tags: germany,france,cebit,innovation

Disclosure: As part of my academic work at the University of Karlsruhe, I have a connection with the project.