Coach seats are getting even smaller???

On my last flight to Europe on a Wide-body jet I had the honor of sharing my share of an 8 seat wide row with a decidedly non-personal space minded big framed guy. No matter what I did all flight long, I could not keep the guy (awake or otherwise) out of my seat space. His elbows never entered his own space for the duration of the flight, and whenever we retrieved his phone/iPod from his breast pocket I had to "wax the car" to keep from getting my nose busted.

That flight was on-board an Airbus A330 class jet. The seating arrangement on these happens to be the old standard 2-4-2 arrangement.
http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Delta_Airlines/Delta_Airlines_Airbus_A330_Version_2.php

But it would seem that despite our tendency as a species to be getting wider, the seats on the planes we ride are getting narrower.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304384104579141941949066648

New global phone: Droid Razr

Entering a new era in my smart phone ownership. 4G along with the global access that I need for work.

I just got issued a new Motorola Droid Razr for work. This is a welcome upgrade to my weathered and road weary Droid 2 Global.

I opted to forego the Apple iPhone 4s (which many of my colleagues picked) for the Droid as I wanted to finally get up to 4G speeds. Especially since the contract term for the phones at work are 2 years, I did not want to be holstered to an essentially already 2 year old platform.

So far I am not disappointed in the phone. Compared to the Gingerbread Android OS the new Ice Cream Sandwich OS is already a great improvement. the OS is responsive and intuitive as I expected from the Android system. Not to mention that with the Dual Core processor, I have much less lagginess in basic operation.

The phone is amazingly thin and light weight. Even in it's case (a silicon model ordered for me as part of the "package" our office decided on).





Plusses

• Bigger screen (4.3 inch)
• 4G speeds
• Higher resolution
• dual processors
• more RAM
• More battery life (allegedly)
• 
  

Minuses

• shipped without SD card upgrade (only 8 GB onboard)
• no QWERTY slideout keyboard
• No removable-swappable battery (but hopefully longer battery life)

Already this phone is a little off the cutting edge. As Motorola just released the newest generation of line of phones. the Razr M, a soon to be released RAZR HD, and RAZR HD MAXX. But it seems that besides OS and processor versions the RAZR and the newer lines are still highly comparable, and I don't yet feel too  much phone envy. 

Taking the phone on the first road trip this coming week, so we will see just how well it performs in the field. But to date I am pleased with the phone, and glad I opted out of the iPhone.

What Hipmunk.com taught me about engineering....

I have made some posts before about an idea of needing a more Comprehensive Methodology for Many engineering problems. Spefically, the windmill I choose to tilt at is Sheet Metal Stamping Process Engineering (formability). While I wont user this space to get too far into that topic (you can follow up at the post listed above or in the book Sheet Metal Forming Processes and Constitutive modeling (shameless plug).

But I digress, I have been trying for a while to find an analogy that people would understand for the need and drive of people to be able to digest information based on multiple-dimensional-Decision-Drivers. For most people you could weigh most decisions based on Function-Quality-Cost-Time. We want something done (function), and done well (quality) for a reasonable cost (duh) on time. How well any solution achieves that desire should be measured upon those criteria.

Whenever, we discussed this idea with others; they frequently tell me that either they are not responsible for cost or project time, or that they already have rules and standards in place that are used to govern whether or not they achieve their cost and time goals. This has become an unassailable truth in their minds one which I sought to alter (as we are selling software that aims to address Quality-Cost-LeadTime for sheet metal stamping processes).

Finally, while searching for flights to our international sales meeting I stumbled upon an analogy I think should hit home. Hipmunk.com showed me the way...

.
Assuming that arrival time was the most important quality function the flights as shown above are ranked as the best. If departure time was the most important quality metric then the views would be completely different.

Now these flight options must clearly come with different costs. That economic reality is very clear to everybody. But what if the internet did not allow for explicit display of costs? What if our company followed a process flow that stipulated that one department sets financial rules and the other departments had to fit those rules while not knowing the numbers used to generate the rules.

This is not such a far fetched idea....so let's imagine how these flight plan engineering rules might look:

1. Airlines charge more for convenience, therefore direct flights should be avoided for they will cost more
2. Airlines route to hub airports to optimize on flight capacity, so flights that make use of major hubs will be cheaper (more legs to more hubs are cheaper)
3. Flights that provide shorter layovers will be marketable at higher prices, longer layovers may be cheaper

With those relatively clear rules in mind, we could narrow the flight options to several viable options. 

• The American Flight via LGA/JFK
• The Delta Flight via JFK
• The United Flight via FRA (and ORD)
• The Cathay Flight via ORD and HKG

The problem is that with each of these flight options we are having to prioritize without any measurable which rules to follow. Also, we cannot put a value on arriving early or late to the meeting or having to leave home earlier. This is a more common problem than we might realize with our engineers. Our engineers have to make decisions that they know affect costs, but many times without the tools they need to recognize the cost of their decisions.

If we now introduce the cost measurement to the travel example:

We now can see that some of the "rules" did not apply to this particular scenario. The cheapest flight overall did not have the longest layovers and did not have more legs. In fact the flight that by "rules" wisdom the "best" the CATHAY flight that maximized inconvenience and therefore seemed to be the one that would be cheapest was a scant $8000 at the time of this posting. Not to mention that it effectively force the traveler to make enough miles to circumnavigate the globe without actually having the benefit of doing so.

But where HIPMUNK really shines is the further filtering function of AGONY.

With Agony as a filter we can see that the relatively low cost of $1630 a mere $48 dollars more buys us a flight with a shorter layover less agony. The fact that it also has no flight changes in the US may or may-not have any affect on the agony algorithm used, but for me and any seasoned traveler knows that EU member nations on the continent are less of a headache than the average US airport for layovers (Heathrow lately being a major exception).

What did this teach me about engineering?

• That without a clear methodology for weighing out the multiple dimensions of decision drivers we simply cannot make sound decisions; We will most likely end up shorting one criteria for another
• If we accept that there will be some compromise we can use background analytics to weigh out many seemingly intangible cost/benefits of the various options that we consider
• If we did not consider that there were more than one option and thought that the first answer that successfully met the "quality criteria" we may have never recognized these better solutions; imagine if we just took the first flight that got us from A-B on time

Thank to HIPMUNK for not only being my travel search of choice, but for helping me illustrate to my colleagues that our vision of a multi-dimensional decision engine is, in fact, the way to go.

   

Addressing first order problems with third order solutions

The sign shown in this photo is a none too uncommon sight in the restrooms of many places in the world. Necessitated by frequent blockages of the plumbing when coarse paper towels are flushed.

Placing a sign such as this might seem a solution to the problem at hand but does it address the root of the problem? Sure if people stop putting paper towel in the toilet the problem of the plugged toilets should go away, right? But did it consider why people go to the trouble of walking to the toilet with the paper towel to flush it?

When the problem is that people needed to use the towels instead of a more flushable media to "do their business", is this the most elegant solution? No. If the stalls never run out of favorable paper to use for the toilet duty, does that not keep the towels out of the loo?

In my other life as a sheet metal stamping plant process improvement specialist, we faced an issue where during part shipping "surface lows" appeared in some doors we stamped. The quality manager did a detailed study of the issue and narrowed the occurences to situations where the part was lifted from the conveyor in a certain matter. He wrote a SWI (standard work instruction) imploring the rackers to only handle the part in a certain manner to prevent the issue from cropping up. In fact the only way to fix the problem was to address the forming of the parts several operations earlier.


Now consider this applied to professional issues:

• When quality issues in the plant keep cropping up; do we dim the lights in the inspection area (even dismantle it; yes, that really happened once). Or should we find the root cause? 
• If warantee costs skyrocket; do we change the terms of our warantees? Or do we improve our product? 
• When the scuttlebutt in the work place is critical of ones performance; do we ask the staff to limit intra-personnel discussions? Or should we mine the criticism as valuable fodder for improvement or change?
• If the blank washer is leaving too many particles of "dirt and slivers" on the sheet metal; do we uninstall the blank washers? Or find the source of the impurities that the blank washer imparted to the sheet metal?

Take a look around your place. Are you asking your people to stop flushing the paper towel? Better look to the seat of the problem.

What makes a good trainer?

Technical training (for skills like engineering software, machine repair, electrical maintanence, troubleshooting, or any technical skills transfer) requires a different breed of trainer. Having worked for nearly 18 years as/with/around technical training and education I have had the pleasure to work with some of the best, as well as some of the worst.

What are the traits to look for when searching for the effective trainer for your technical products? It may be stuff that you can't find in their CV or resume unless you read between the lines.

The best trainers I met were almost maddeningly curious--about everything. My first mentor in technical training wanted to figure out how everything worked, broadly and deeply. That things worked was never enough, he had to get into it. He was curous about all thing, all people, all points of view. If we differed in view on anything he would want to know more. Not prove the other wrong.

Effective trainers like to make others shine. Inneffective trainers use the training platform as a way to demonstrate their smarts.  Really painful trainers teach by showing others what they know, & glow when their students stare slackjawed at them as they elucidate on the nuggets of their esoteric and private knowledge store.

We never hired anybody to be a trainer without forcing them to do multiple presentations to multiple people. Any trainer worth their while would never shy from this. Nor would they worry about now knowing what to present on, everybody has mastery of some skill worth presenting on. A good trainer can make a training class of anything.

What educational requirements should we look for? Most important is an educational background that demonstrates an ability to learn and apply knowledge. As an engineer I am biased toward the field of engineering as a good source for trainers. But I have worked with excellent trainers who came from the military, mechanical and electrical engineering, i have worked with some with PhD's and other with no degree at all. The ability to be effective at training was not evident on the resume (though experience in training on the resume is good to see) but most important was the drive to learn new things and share with others.

When I took a job with one company they took it on faith that I would be good at training. I was a little surprised that they never asked me to make a presentation and as luck has it I think I did well for that company. But to leave such an important thing to luck, or worse to take the word of the applicant as the only measure of training fit would be highly unwise.

It doesn't matter what the topic is that they present and teach for the interview. In fact if it is "off topic" even better. The good trainer should be able to take anything that they know and measurably transfer knowledge and skill. They should leave the participants in the presentation wanting more.

If this person is not expert at the topic you want taught already that is not a roadblock. They needn't be the "best" at (insert training goal here); They only need to be the best at learning and transfering what they learned.  Diverse resumes with broader curricula and experiences as opposed to "deep" knowledge in just one area. Diverse hobbies and tastes are also helpful, and a cultural and social flexibility as the trainer will undoubtedly need to deal with all sorts in the course of thei job.

As a parting word I will paraphrase one of my favorite instructors Gerald Pool of GM "in the valley of the blind, the one eyed man is king." You can teach a new hire to be that one eyed man, but the ability and drive to lead will be up to them. That is what you need to seek out.

Don't blog where you eat.

The old idiom; don't s*** where you eat gets updated.

Robocall voicemail log

Okay, a little bit of editing and here it is. The audio of the vme we got regarding the robocalls that have apparently come from our number.

Watch "ANGRY Robotcalled" on YouTube

RoboCalling and it's weirder repercussions

This Month something odd started to happen at my house. The phone would ring, we'd ignore it (as it is primary season in Michigan) if we did not recognize the caller ID, and then we'd see if there was a Voice Mail message later. It turns out that these calls were originating from all over Michigan. And believe it or not they were not all ROBOCALLS. In fact many were plainly from real humans who were angry about ROBOCALLS that they were receiving.

source: www.inqusitr.com

But why would they call that number (the number assigned to my non-voting age daughter). As far as I can tell they were calling back the number that had shown up on their caller-ID or they had *69 called-back whomever had made an annoying ROBOCALL to their phones.

Does this make any sense? It appears as if interested Political Operatives who are actively smearing Romney and Santorum in my area are using my daughters phone number as their "callback number" for these ROBOCALLS.  

Have any of you heard of anything similar. Really annoying and a little disturbing. My kid is afraid to answer her phone right now for fear of having some angry recipient of a ROBOCALL yell at her.

So far, I have checked with some national advocates against ROBOCALLS (twitter @EndTheRoboCalls)
and our Michigan Secretary of State (in MI the Board of Canvassers report to her); alas nobody can tell me what I can do about this, nor if the practice would be legal or ethical.

Employee Morale

Cains Brain (http://www.cainsbrain.com/a-guide-to-employee-morale) not too long ago posted this cartoon, only recently brought to my attention by Guy Kawasaki and the folks at HolyKaw and Alltop.com.

Enjoy.

Stereotypes, bias, and the mind

As a member of a culturally stigmatized group (Americans) in the eyes of many of the people I come into contact with while I travel for work. I found these designs by Yanko Tsvetkov highly entertaining. After all, I recognize that the we, of the much vilified USA, have earned our bad reputation. We often are loud talking, impatient, greedy capitalists.

From Yanko Tsvetkov's Mapping Stereotypes

Stereotypes of many Europeans that are held my Americans are not too far off the mark. Stereotypes and biases (cultural or otherwise) are an important part of how people work. With the amount of data that the typical person is confronted with daily, to process every decision, each interaction from a neutral stand point is a veritable impossibility. 

Have you read Seth's Blog: The triumph of coal marketing

As I read the RSS feed for Seth's Blog: The triumph of coal marketing I was struck by the fact that with all the disaster that we see coming from the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami and the nuclear plants there, that many opportunists are heading straight to the anti-nuclear (pro-coal) message.

Read Seth's blog since he makes a different point than i do here.

Fear mongering and pandering to special interests are heading straight into overdrive at certain news outlets. Now this is not to make a point as if the death toll from the nuclear incidents in Japan, or those we remember from Chernobyl are insignificant. NO FAR FROM IT. But merely that we tend to "amplify sudden and horrible outcomes than it is to talk about the slow, grinding reality of day to day strife".

Right now people all over the world are reacting to the issue, by stopping plans for future nuclear reactors, questioning and challenging the elected officials who previously backed them, and politicians are backpedaling away from prior positions supporting nuclear energy.

The INCONVENIENT TRUTH here is that we cannot sustain the world populace's energy demand with our current power sources. Emerging countries and developed nations if they turn their back on nuclear will have to resort to Gas, oil, and what little we can get from Solar and Wind. But unfortunately, that will not fill the gap left by nuclear.

to Paraphrase Winston Churchill: Nuclear power is the worst form of energy, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

The Birth of a Word: TED Talk 2011

TED talks are amazing places to watch, hear, learn, and discover some of the most amazing things. From Deb Roy's presentation on the Birth of a word it is tricky to force oneself to get over the technological tricks they had to invent to perform this research (video correcting 10+ fisheye video feeds into a near 3D representation of Deb  Roys home that can allow us to follow him, his wife, their son and the nanny through their house for a few years) to discover the patterns in that lead to the successful emergence of word use.



Had to watch this a couple of times before I could let the point of it, sink past my utter amazement as to HOW they parsed it, to what they found. The 120 Terabytes of data, the linking of the various feeds into a single cohesive (and virtually 3D) time space environment. And get where it was going.

The space time tracking of movement in the video to find the feeds where they could locate his sons specific word use. the ability to get audio transcripts from disparate video sources into a coherent "stream" of communication. This turns into different methods of tracing the communication threads throughout our society and our social structures.

Not sure what it all means yet, but to quote Deb Roy and son.   "wow"

Careful the legacy you leave

Here's a funny story with only a small moral:

The engineering director of a medium to large tool shop paid a call on his former employers, now customers. He stopped by the desk of the administrative assistant to ask if she would note his arrival for his appointment which was set to start in 15 minutes, and if possible announce his presence to the Mr. Big the chief of this operation.

The conversation went a little like this [slightly altered to protect the ignorant]:

"Hi, I'm Bob Namechanged. I'm here for an appointment with your boss, Mr. Big."
"Oh? And where should I say you are from Mr. Namechanged?"
"Tool and Dieshop Inc."
"Oh, good. Be sure to mention that you are from Tool and Dieshop Inc. Because we used to have a guy here named Bob Namechanged too. But nobody liked him. Apparently he was a bit of an A-Hole."





What on earth did Mr. Namechanged do while at his former employer to earn this reputation?
How surprised he and his new colleagues must have been to find that his relationship with the old shop was not rosy; no doubt expectations of a healthy relationship may have even been part of his hiring at "Tool and Die Inc."

We must all be careful of the legacy we leave behind. The world is getting flatter and as Kevin Bacon will attest we are all only 6 degrees of separation from anybody else.

Fun makes the stairs more appealing [video] - Holy Kaw!

It should com as no surprise that if you want to get people to embrace change, that injecting a little WiiFM like making it fun will have a positive effect on the unstated change initiative the VW was attempting (they wanted to prove that fun made it worthwhile). Also the fact that they did not tell people that they were trying to alter their behavior increases the (i) perceived input. It was their idea after all to enjoy the musical step.

Re-Blogged from AlltopFun makes the stairs more appealing [video] - Holy Kaw!

Motorola Droid 2 Global: Further notes

On it's second trip to Europe, the Global version of the motorola Droid2 is still performing admirably. I have been to the tops of mountains, and by rail all over Switzerland and can't complain much about performance. One gripe is battery life. I don't think I quite make it a full 8 hour work day without getting dangerously low on battery. Charging options can be quite frustrating since carrying a charger everywhere one goes is not ideal. Nor are the battery options.

My wife picked up from Ebay or Amazon a charger and battery for the Motorola Droid line of phones. However it should be noted that the battery pictured shows a battery with Motorola logo, but the battery you will receive is not authentic. Of course it should stand to reason that if the USB charging cable from MOTO cost $8 why would the battery cost less?

No now I started shopping for those rapid battery chargers, that use USB cable to charge the phone. These chargers allow you to pre-charge a larger high capacity battery using your USB cable. Then you carry around what is supposed to be around 3 iPhone charges.



From what I can see. There is quite a range of possibilities. Prices are quite variable but it looks like one has to buy in the $50 range to insure that you have a battery with 4000-5000 mAh (3-4 charges of the DROID by the numbers) The Duracell seems to be the better bargain at only $20 but only 1100mAh. which may get you going once per reload.

The so-called powerhouse by Duracell runs the price up to nearly $45 for only 2000mAh. So the brand is adding some price (but who knows how much value). The size of these things is a little daunting considering that our pockets are getting more and more packed with gadgets. So I guess I will try the GUM Plus or the Splash intense. Each of which have slightly less than obnoxious form factor and are at least no larger than the phone itself.

    
     

poor video from the Technopark presentation

Tried to capture some video of the presentation, but unfortunately the batter on the camera is pure crap. In any case I salvaged some video thanks to Roald who saw the camera stop.

Brown Bag Lunch: Selling Innovation/Change

I made the presentation, but unfortunately my camera has such a disappointing battery that I have not video of the talk. But here is the slide show instead. I post via slideshare.

Since the talking I do is not captured, I have to make sure that I give credit where it is due. Also, for more places to see, things to read, or inspiring voices you can look up:

• Simon Sinek, Start with Why (the what, how, is not original)
• Dan Ariely for the comparative difference thought starter
• mondaydots for first showing comparitive difference to me, and planting ideas for the simplicity of the presentation

Don't Talk with your Mouth full: Technopark Zurich Brownbag lunch presentation

I have been invited to make a presentation at the Zurich Technopark. Apparently the Self-Proclaimed-Die-Expert and Techni-ho is a "world renowned" expert on Technical Evangelism.

I will be presenting on the theme:

Selling innovation/change

Technical Evangelism by the numbers

The basic theme of the presentation will be a return to one of my earlier concepts; and attempt to quantify the amount of resistance that people have to new ideas:

I doubt that any of the 3 people who read this blog will necessarily be in the Zurich Area this week (the presentation is Thursday the 20th of January, 2011 at 12:30). But if I cared whether or not people listened or read what I do, this blog would not exist. 

I will consider posting the entire presentation after the debut on Thursday.

Droid2 Global by Verizon: thoughts and review

I just got the new Droid2 Global by Moto for Verizon (not just got it. I already took it out for a 8000 mile trip to EU and Switzerland and back).

I have to say that so far I am VERY VERY happy with the performance of the phone. For starters I should mention that my previous phone was TERRIBLE (BB 8830 World Edition). The old phone was about as advanced as a set of tin cans connected with string compared to the Droid2.

Not gonna run down some kind of over the top Cnet type benchmark for you but here is what I like:

• sync with MS Exchange server from work was seemless (mail, contacts, and Calenders)
• Wifi
• GPS (with navigation by google maps)
• Touchscreen
• Slide-out keyboard
• overall communication options (phone good, VOIP using Fring, IM using GoogleTalk, SMS-oip using GoogleVoice, social stalking using Facebook/twitter/LinkedIn)

no issues getting data overseas (once i turned it on) and everything else has been simple. Not using it too much for games (Angry Birds), or music or Movies. But using it a personal communication hub has been perfect.

more as I use it more....

Funny? or Sad?

What passes as humor these days and for some people is a little puzzling.

Recently my employer had a marketing event (seminar) that was attended by a former colleague, who is currently employed at a customer. Apparently, he decided it was in the greatest humor to fill out his satisfaction survey in my name-making many snide comments and leaving generally negative feedback.

Never mind that during his tenure with my company I stood by him and took many bullets for him; or that I put my reputation on the line by advocating his strengths, as others pulled down on his alleged weaknesses; but the event was attended by a number of people in our industry who should be always thought of as potential future employers or customers.

There have  been days that I have done similar, but I usually made sure that such "Mock" surveys made their way in to the hopper and did not get turned in.

• Sorry, I did not find it funny to see my name attached to the survey
• Sorry that I am not held in high enough regard to keep you from making an ass of yourself
• Sorry you mistook me for somebody so disposable that you can use my name that way

Respect of oneself and others was a lesson that some people still need to go back to kindergarten to learn.