lessons-learned
Apparently Robert Havighurt wrote a book in 1952 that popularized the concept of teachable moments. I've never heard of Mr. Havighurt, nor his book, but fortunately my father taught me all about teachable moments. When I was learning to drive, my father insisted on logging many, many hours
lessons-learned
I was at a Subway recently, where I (very) often grab a sandwich during the work week, and a guy in line started a conversation with me, complimenting me on talking to each of the sandwich artists. We talked about how people so rarely take the time or energy to
CIO
As a small business CIO, video conferencing has traditionally been split into 2 extremes: 1. Expensive solutions of enterprise vendors like Polycom and Cisco 2. Consumer experience of using the webcam in your laptop with something like Skype or Google Hangouts I'm excited to see that some technologies
miscellaneous
Government Contracting is a tough industry to keep up with -- here are some good sources of Government Contracting (GovCon) updates: * Free Services * Nextgov email newsletters * Federal News Radio email updates * Government Matters, a 30-minute, weekly TV show on WJLA * Government Technology * Federal Computing Weekly (FCW) * Paid Services * Washington Technology
miscellaneous
Kathleen and I are excited to ride in our 3rd and 11th MS Bike Rides (respectively) this year. We'll be riding the 100km (62 mile) route on June 7 out of National Harbor, with some long- time cycling/wine friends. The ride benefits the MS Society and their
miscellaneous
In my recent focus on internal IT infrastructure and process (more CIO and less CTO), I've been searching for relevant CIO resources -- here are a few I've found useful. * CIO Today * CIO.com Newsletters (e.g. CIO Government, CIO Leader) * CIO.gov * SearchCIO * Blogs.hbr.
miscellaneous
I've been interested in getting back into sailing, after my days teaching sailing down at Camp Pianktank; so I've been checking out DC-area sailing options. I thought I'd share what I've found for those interested: * DC Sail * Classes: Yes, members can take
CMMI
The CMMI process improvement model is focused on improving the overall processes involved with designing, creating, and supporting technology products and services. While the overall framework can be confusing, I enjoyed Watts Humphrey's explanation of the focus for each of the maturity levels in Looking Ahead: * Maturity Level
agile
Ken Schwaber's book on Scrum, which falls under the Agile umbrella of methodologies, is a great introduction to Scrum, and I love the mini case studies (1-2 pages) he puts in the book to make the concepts more accessible. Here's how I'd summarize Ken&
miscellaneous
Back in late 2012 I went to a great Acceleprise Demo Day, and tonight I caught yet another class of cool companies doing impressive stuff in DC through http://www.Acceleprise.vc (DC-based accelerator focused on enterprise technology): * Apozy - sadly I missed this one due to exciting DC traffic
miscellaneous
It's very easy to get caught in a constant posture of reaction, where you are constantly putting out fires instead of actually improving teams/systems/processes. I was listening to a 22 Feb 2012 podcast from Michael Ellsberg (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-ellsberg-show/id673996932) recently, where
productivity
Windows 7 has a great little utility, the Snipping Tool, hidden away where most users don't find it. If you click the Start button, and type in "snipping" it will show up as the the Snipping Tool. It lets you highlight an area of the screen