Government | Shepherd's Pi

Intriguing Politics – Social Media Discussion

Posted on April 3, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: The second International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) wrapped up yesterday in Seattle. It was organized again by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (or AAAI), with co-sponsorship by Microsoft, Google, and several universities and Web 2.0 companies. The papers are already being posted online here, which is great as there were some very interesting topics explored.

ANALYSIS: One really thought-provoking theme was proposed by Matthew Hurst, a scientist at Microsoft’s Live Labs (and co-creator of BlogPulse), who was a participant on the “Politics and Social Media” panel. He’s summarized his points on his own blog, but it’s definitely worth pointing out the key distinction he posed:

Firstly, politics is about scaling social organization. A premier can’t talk to every citizen, so s/he has lieutenant’s. They have their own underlings, and so on in a typical hierarchical/departmental structure. Social media, however, is all about individuals – we read entries in weblogs, etc. So, if a politician wants to connect via social media, isn’t there some sort of fundamental mismatch? Obama may have 20, 000 followers on Twitter, but how many comments has he left on blog posts?

Secondly, there is the issue of social media amplifying the polarization (or homophily) found in any topical community. Thus, individuals look around at their neighbours in the social graph and see much of what they themselves are made of.

This bottom-down, top-up dichotomy has been discussed more generally about social media and social networks (often drawing a sharp distinction between “old-media” and “new-media,” or more colloquially if imprecisely as between “the media” and “the web.”)

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Microsoft, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: AAAI, ai, artificial intelligence, Barack Obama, blogging, BlogPulse, blogs, data mining, datamining, Google, Government, ICWSM, innovation, IT, Live Labs, Matthew Hurst, media, Microsoft, new media, news, Obama, politics, Seattle, social media, tech, Technology, Twitter, Web 2.0 | 3 Comments »

Google’s Argument to Enterprise IT: “Trust Us”

Posted on April 2, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: Yesterday, Google’s Dave Girouard, VP of enterprise sales, gave a keynote speech on “The Evolution of Cloud Computing” at FOSE, a Washington trade-show focusing on federal government and military IT customers. According to a Washington Post reporter’s blog account afterwards:

[Girouard said] “Google will have to do things differently” to work with defense and intelligence agencies, where data security and privacy are held to the tightest standards. But he argued that having information spread across hundreds of different servers is actually more secure than housing data on a few servers at a specific location. “Security is now more virtual than physical,” he said.

ANALYSIS: The Google salesman (Girouard is VP of enterprise sales) was speaking at FOSE on the same day I made an April Fools blogpost featuring a lame “Cloud Computing” joke (see it here, come back when you stop laughing).

This year I’m at FOSE as neither buyer nor speaker; the past couple of years I spoke at FOSE, as a DIA official, and I always enjoy walking the exhibit floor, plus I was curious about Girouard’s take on Google’s current move into the federal space.

To be honest I’ve met him before when he was with Virage and he’s a fine fellow, a good salesman.

The rhetoric of his main pitch, though, seems to be battling uphill, and I’m not sure he gets a nuanced distinction.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, Society, Technology | Tagged: business, cloud, cloud computing, companies, corporations, data, data security, Dave Girouard, enterprise, enterprise computing, enterprise IT, federal government, FOSE, GCN, Google, Government, Government Computer News, IC, information security, innovation, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, Intellipedia, internet, IT, Microsoft, Oracle, servers, software, software development, tech, Technology, trust, Virage, web, Web 2.0, wiki, Wikipedia | 2 Comments »

Microsoft Research Reclaims Value of Pi

Posted on April 1, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: Educators in the state of Alabama are chafing as the state celebrates a dubious anniversary: today marks ten years since the Alabama state legislature voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159… to the “Biblical value” of 3.0. Ramifications were felt across the state.

Now, a team of Microsoft Research computer scientists have announced success in a groundbreaking effort to refactor the Biblical value, using modern high-performance computing hardware and machine-translation technologies on the original Old Testament texts.

ANALYSIS: Looking back, an April 1998 issue of Science and Reason newsletter written by physicist Mark Boslough recounts the political and cultural battles which went behind the Alabama legislative change. The legislature of the “Yellowhammer State” justified the change by citing biblical injunction. As one supporter put it: “the Bible very clearly says in I Kings 7:23 that the altar font of Solomon’s Temple was ten cubits across and thirty cubits in diameter, and that it was round in compass.”

The use of “3.0” as the value of pi led to problems in schools, businesses, and local scientific pursuits, including a group of frustrated engineers at the NASA research facility in Huntsville. According to NASA/Huntsville’s director of special projects “Dr.” Jim Simon (doctorate pending), “We had strayed from using our Microsoft software and instead had been trying to figure out how to use an advanced Google search platform, which was sold to us as a powerful Cloud Computing system.”

Unfortunately, that effort proved frustrating for the “rocket scientists” any time they used calculations involving pi, based on the Alabama-standard value of 3.0, mostly because they were under the mistaken impression that they were contractually barred from using Cloud Computing on any sunny days. Given the hospitable local weather that left them unable to use their computers for an average of 290 days each year.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Microsoft, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: 2.0, Alabama, april, april fool, april fools, april fools day, Bible, business, cloud computing, computer science, culture, dixie, economics, economy, entertainment, God, Google, Google Search, HPC, humor, Huntsville, Jim Simon, King James Bible, life, machine translation, Mark Boslough, math, mathematicians, mathematics, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, NASA, pi, R&D, religion, research, rockets, science, semantic web, semantics, software, Solomon's Temple, space, tech, Technology, translation, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 | 21 Comments »

Media Says, IBM is Good for Government. Ah, Strike That….

Posted on March 31, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: Federal Times, which was first to break the story, is reporting this afternoon that “IBM has been indefinitely suspended from doing business with federal agencies, according to a General Services Administration Web site.”

ANALYSIS: People accuse me of being too cynical.

I admit, I am something of the opposite of the great line from This is Spinal Tap, when the David St. Hubbins character says, in the random interview clips at the end of the movie, “I believe virtually everything I read, … and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human, than someone who doesn’t believe anything.”

I do have trouble believing things I hear and read from most mainstream sources at first blush.

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Filed under: Government, Society, Technology | Tagged: AP, blogging, blogs, business, business news, Center for the Business of Government, contracting, David St. Hubbins, federal government, General Services Administration, government contractors, Government Executive, GSA, IBM, journalism, journalists, Live Search, marketing, media, news, newspaper, newspapers, PR, press, public relations, reporters, research, RSS, Spinal tap, Washington Post | Leave a comment »

Do Voters Love the Candidates… or their Fonts?

Posted on March 29, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have chosen distinctively different typeface fonts for their campaign posters, bumper stickers, and TV-ad logos.

Obama uses sans serif Gotham. McCain uses sans serif Optima. Only Clinton uses a serif, New Baskerville. According to the Los Angeles Times yesterday, many typographers are following the usage choices closely, and now some political analysts are finding message in the medium; Obama’s choice is “the hot font of 2008,” Clinton’s font flourishes “conjure trustworthiness,” while McCain’s communicates an “old-fashioned yet quirky vibe.”

ANALYSIS: Anyone who remembers their first experience with a personal computer’s word-processing program recalls that initial thrill when the realization hit: I can choose any font? I can choose any font!!!

Billions of funky emails, resumes, and yard-sale posters later, we’re all perhaps jaded by the profusion of font styles, and tend to have built up biases and defenses regarding certain looks.

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Filed under: Government, Microsoft, Society, Technology | Tagged: 2008, Aric Sigman, Barack, Barack Obama, campaign, campaigns, candidate, candidates, Clinton, communication, communications, computer, computers, consultants, culture, election, election 2008, elections, font, fonts, Gotham, Government, Hillary, Hillary Clinton, IT, John McCain, LA, LA Times, LAT, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times, marketing, mass media, McCain, media, Microsoft, New Baskerville, news, newspaper, Obama, optima, personality, political campaign, political campaigns, political consultant, political consultants, politics, poster, posters, presidency, president, presidential campaign, press, psychology, Simon Daniels, Society, speech, speeches, speechwriting, tech, Technology, television, Tobias Frere-Jones, TV, typeface, typefaces, typography, vote, voter, voters, voting | 2 Comments »

A Roadmap for Innovation – from Center or the Edge?

Posted on March 28, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: In marking its five-year anniversary earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security released a fact sheet touting the department’s accomplishments in that time, including “establish[ing] the Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) to provide a 24-hour watch, warning, and response operations center, which in 2007 issued over 200 actionable alerts on cyber security vulnerabilities or incidents. US-CERT developed the EINSTEIN intrusion detection program, which collects, analyzes, and shares computer security information across the federal civilian government. EINSTEIN is currently deployed at 15 federal agencies, including DHS, and plans are in place to expand the program to all federal departments and agencies.”

Analysis: I’m not going to write, in this post at least, about US-CERT and EINSTEIN in particular. I will point out that some writers have been skeptical of “Big DHS” progress on cyber security up to now, and the anniversary was an occasion for much cynical commentary.

Charles Cooper in his popular Coop’s Corner blog on CNet wrote that “when it comes to network security, DHS appears to be more of a wet noodle than even its sharpest critics assumed… Talk with security consultants and former government officials involved with DHS and you come away wondering what these folks do all day.”

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, R&D, Technology | Tagged: 2.0, AJAX, back-office, budget, bureaucracy, business, CERT, Charles Cooper, cio, cloud, cloud computing, cloud services, cm, CNET, cocom, cocoms, code, configuration management, Coops Corner, cyber defense, cyber security, cyberdefense, cybersecurity, danoviz, data, data centers, datacenter, datacenters, Department of Defense, development, DHS, DIA, DoD, e2.0, EA, einstein, enterprise, Enterprise 2.0, enterprise architecture, finance, gadget, gadgets, Government, hardware, Homeland Security, information assurance, information management, information security, infosec info sec, infrastructure, innovation, Intelligence, intrusion detection, iraq, IT, IT management, j2, korea, management, Mary Legere, mashup, mashups, Microsoft, Microsoft PopFly, Mike Pflueger, MNF-I, NCSD, network, network security, networks, operations management, ops management, patch management, Pentagon, pflueger, PopFly, programming, R&D, Rod Beckstrom, ROR, Ruby on Rails, S+S, SAIC, service-oriented, services, SOA, software, software plus services, south korea, tech, Technology, USFK, web, web services | 6 Comments »

The Future of Enterprise Computing – and Social Computing

Posted on March 26, 2008 by lewisshepherd

I wrote the other day about how highly ranked the University of Virginia’s undergrad business school is (a close second in BusinessWeek’s annual ranking), and mentioned that one reason is the creative research and programs they sponsor.

In fact, thanks to UVA’s McIntire School of Commerce, I enjoyed a great day recently exploring some of my favorite topics with leading experts. I was an invited speaker at their one-day conference on The Future of Enterprise Computing on March 14th, presented by McIntire’s Center for the Management of Information Technology (CMIT). It was a fascinating day….

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: 2.0, Accenture, Andrew McAfee, blogging, blogs, Brian Weston, business, business school, Business Week, BusinessWeek, Chris Rasmussen, CMIT, college, Computerworld, computing, conference, DIA, DNI, e2.0, enterprise, Enterprise 2.0, enterprise computing, futurology, Government, grad school, graduate school, Harvard, Harvard Business School, Hinchcliffe, IC, innovation, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, Intellipedia, IT, Jeff Kelly, JWICS, Live Labs, McIntire School, media, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, ODNI, Paul Daugherty, R&D, research, Ryan Nelson, social networking, social networks, Society, tech, Technology, Troy Raines, University of Virginia, UVA, walled garden, Walled gardens, Web 2.0, wiki, wikis, XML | 2 Comments »

The IC’s Own Geek Superheroine

Posted on March 25, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: According to the law establishing the new position, the Director of National Intelligence is charged with “the recruitment and training of women, minorities, and individuals with diverse ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds,” as a way of broadening the personnel base on which the nation relies for intelligence analysis.

ANALYSIS: I’ve noticed that one of the single-most-viewed posts in this six-month-old blog has been my early profile of Dr. Lisa Porter, when she was appointed the first director of IARPA, the advanced-tech crowd for the intelligence community.

I can tell that the large volume of hits isn’t from my normal reader crowd, but comes in from search results. There was another uptick of hits on that old post this week, driven by searchers using Google and Live Search, and I believe it’s because WIRED magazine has its own profile of Porter in its new edition, the one with “Apple: Evil/Genius” on the cover.

The new profile, while short, doesn’t mind taking advantage of her apparently unexpected good looks; it begins, “Picture Q as a tall blonde woman with an American accent, and you’ve got Porter. Lisa Porter.”

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: anime, DARPA, diversity, DNI, entertainment, equal rights, geeks, HR, human resources, IARPA, IC, innovation, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, Lisa Porter, magazines, media, ODNI, R&D, recruitment, research, Society, tech, Technology, Wired, WIRED magazine, woman, women | 5 Comments »

Expect Some “New Thinking” on Cyber Security…

Posted on March 24, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff last week: “I am pleased to announce my appointment of Rod Beckstrom as the first Director of the National Cyber Security Center. Rod will serve the department by coordinating cyber security efforts and improving situational awareness and information sharing across the federal government.”

ANALYSIS: There are people who think inside the box, those who think outside the box, and those who ask: What box?

Then there are “the anti-box people.” They see the box, shove it on its side, stomp on it to squeeze it flat, and consign it to recycling where it belongs.

One of those kind of people is Rod Beckstrom, a well-known Silicon Valley successful entrepreneur and author. I knew him at Stanford, aeons ago, and like others recognized his leadership drive when he ran successfully for student body president, and he left with both a BA and MBA on the way to forming his first successful software startup.

I was surprised when I read last week that Rod is moving to Washington to take a high-level government job.

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Filed under: Government, Intelligence, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: al Qaeda, Bob Gourley, Chertoff, Craigslist, cyber defense, cyberdefense, cybersecurity, DHS, Global Peace Network, Government, Homeland Security, information assurance, information security, INSA, Michael Chertoff, Middle East, National Cyber Security Center, NCSC, Pentagon, Rod Beckstrom, security, Silicon Valley, Stanford, Technology, wiki | 5 Comments »

Top Undergrad Business Programs in the U.S.

Posted on March 20, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: In the recently-released annual BusinessWeek ranking of top undergraduate business programs, Wharton (the feeder program for UPenn’s better known Wharton MBA program) once again leads the field, and the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce again comes in second. The Top 10 this year are:

1. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
2. University of Virginia (McIntire)
3. Notre Dame (Mendoza)
4. Cornell University
5. Emory University (Goizueta)
6. University of Michigan (Ross)
7. Brigham Young University (Marriott)
8. New York University (Stern)
9. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
10. University of Texas-Austin (McCombs)

ANALYSIS: My alma-mater bias compels me to mention that “The big news this year is the University of Virginia,” as noted by Louis Lavelle, Business School editor for BusinessWeek, during an online chat outlining the results. “It really gained on Wharton. The ranking is based on an ‘index’ number, and the No. 1 school is always an index number of 100. Last year Virginia was way behind — it had an index number of 92.7. This year it was 99 — a virtual dead heat” for the top spot.

Oddly, my grad-school alma mater Stanford, which ranks high perennially on MBA program lists, has no undergraduate business school or program, so it’s missing from this list entirely.

The big question is, what explains movement in the ranks? What are some schools doing right, and some wrong?

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Society | Tagged: Brigham Young University, business, business school, Business Week, BusinessWeek, campus, CMIT, college, colleges, commerce, Cornell, education, Emory University, Georgetown University, Goizueta, GSB, Haas School, IT, John Griffin, Julian Robertson, Louis Lavelle, MBA, McDonough School, McIntire School, MIT, Notre Dame, NYU, R&D, Stanford, students, tech, Technology, UC Berkeley, UNC, universities, university, University of North Carolina, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas, University of Virginia, UPenn, UT, UVA, Virginia, Wharton School | 2 Comments »

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