OK I know the Oscars are long finished but I just saw 'The Hurt Locker' at the weekend and I've wanted to tie it into a post for ages.
My two cents worth - I desperately wanted 'The Hurt Locker' to be a worthy winner of six oscars, especially as it won out over 'Avatar'. However, I was disappointed. Whilst it is a good film, it certainly isn't a great one. Best Film and Best Director - I don't think so. But this just reaffirms what I've always believed about luck and timing playing their part in awards ceremonies.
At my last ever Oracle Consulting conference I was led to believe by my Practice Manager that the project team I had lead was up for an Outstanding Performance Award. We had just finished a difficult 4 month project that was a great success. The client was happy and referenceable, the systems integrator couldn't praise us highly enough and was lining us up for more work. And we had achieved all of this with the minimum of fuss. OK, we'd worked a few weekends and late nights but nothing out of the ordinary.
So there I sat at the dinner at the final night of the conference fully expecting my team to be one of those to pick up an award. You guessed it though - we didn't even get a mention. I have to admit I was desperately pee'd off. The project that claimed the prize we'd been promised, by contrast, had been classic car crash IT. Badly managed, poor quality, late, over budget, all hands to the pumps, client threats, the whole lot. Some hours later my Practice Manager came skulking over with some lame explanation that the award was given as recognition for all the 'above and beyond' efforts put in by the other project team.
So my advice to you. If you want to win awards and get recognition go ahead and fcuk up your project and then flog your staff for 18 hours a day to correct your mistakes. Don't, whatever you do, just run a successful project without drama. I left Oracle a few months after that and the irony was that I got a posthumous award for another penultimate project I'd been on. Too little, too late.
Showing posts with label Avatar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Avatar. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Avatar and the Real Time Data Warehouse
Last night I saw a feature on the making of Avatar. What caught my attention about this was the way in which they had created a 'virtual camera' through which James Cameron could observe the live action of his actors morphed into their avatar bodies and displayed in the CGI generated world of Pandora - in REAL-TIME.
In my business world, which is about as far removed from Pandora as you could get, I build data warehouses and have been doing so for many a year. From time to time the concept of Real-Time Data Warehousing has arisen and largely been dismissed for the following technical reasons:
- Data Dependencies
- Slowly Changing Dimenions
- Complex Transformations
- Updating Aggregate/Summary Data and Cubes
All of the above are still valid, and there would still need to be a valid business reason to go to the extra cost and expense of building a real-time data warehouse as opposed to a cheaper batch one.
However, I'm sure the technical hurdles that the Avatar movie makers overcame must have been a whole lot longer than my sorry list. Maybe it's time for a rethink!
In my business world, which is about as far removed from Pandora as you could get, I build data warehouses and have been doing so for many a year. From time to time the concept of Real-Time Data Warehousing has arisen and largely been dismissed for the following technical reasons:
- Data Dependencies
- Slowly Changing Dimenions
- Complex Transformations
- Updating Aggregate/Summary Data and Cubes
All of the above are still valid, and there would still need to be a valid business reason to go to the extra cost and expense of building a real-time data warehouse as opposed to a cheaper batch one.
However, I'm sure the technical hurdles that the Avatar movie makers overcame must have been a whole lot longer than my sorry list. Maybe it's time for a rethink!
Monday, February 1, 2010
Rancid Aluminium2: 26 billion smackers down the gurgler
In a recent report it was stated that the UK Govt under NuLabor had wasted about GBP26bn on failed IT initiatives. That's about $2bn for every year in office with an ROI of zero. Just think about that for a moment?
Maybe some of that money was wasted on building 1,700 websites of which only 431 will remain by the end of 2010 after recommendations that most be culled in a recent audit.
Meanwhile James Cameron spends about GBP180mn making 'Avatar' over 4 years, whilst pioneering new technology and gets an ROI of over GBP1bn in less than three months.
Honestly, the UK would have been wiser investing this money in Cameron's Lightstorm and Peter Jackson's WETA and conservatively could have made a profit of GBP100bn which is half the money that the BofE has printed with its policy of Quantative Easing to bail out the banks.
OK it doesn't work like that and we know that when UK Goverment money finds it's way into the arts (via Lottery funding) we end up with films like 'Rancid Aluminium' and not Cameron's smash hit.
What puzzles me is that the government still tries to run large IT projects anymore because everyone know that it's just a licence for government approved suppliers to print money.
I don't know how much the US has spent on intelligence related IT projects post 911 but what I do know is that they failed to stop a known terrorist suspect from boarding a flight on Christmas Day.
So what's my point?
Over the last decade I've had the pleasure to work with two managers who successfully defined how they would structure and govern large projects in order to avoid the wastage so profligate in government IT spend.
The first even wrote a thesis about how large projects are inherently more difficult and risky to land than smaller ones. The second built an IT governance framework that consisted of a few simple groundrules:
- all projects to be sponsored by the business without exception
- no project to last more than 9 months. Any piece of work identified larger than this would be broken into phases less than 9 months in duration.
- no project to cost more than GBP2m
Sounds simple and yes it works, but what about when you need to do the big projects? Well I guess we probably need Project Managers of the calibre of James Cameron for that otherwise you're better off saving your pennies for a bailing out a bank or two.
Maybe some of that money was wasted on building 1,700 websites of which only 431 will remain by the end of 2010 after recommendations that most be culled in a recent audit.
Meanwhile James Cameron spends about GBP180mn making 'Avatar' over 4 years, whilst pioneering new technology and gets an ROI of over GBP1bn in less than three months.
Honestly, the UK would have been wiser investing this money in Cameron's Lightstorm and Peter Jackson's WETA and conservatively could have made a profit of GBP100bn which is half the money that the BofE has printed with its policy of Quantative Easing to bail out the banks.
OK it doesn't work like that and we know that when UK Goverment money finds it's way into the arts (via Lottery funding) we end up with films like 'Rancid Aluminium' and not Cameron's smash hit.
What puzzles me is that the government still tries to run large IT projects anymore because everyone know that it's just a licence for government approved suppliers to print money.
I don't know how much the US has spent on intelligence related IT projects post 911 but what I do know is that they failed to stop a known terrorist suspect from boarding a flight on Christmas Day.
So what's my point?
Over the last decade I've had the pleasure to work with two managers who successfully defined how they would structure and govern large projects in order to avoid the wastage so profligate in government IT spend.
The first even wrote a thesis about how large projects are inherently more difficult and risky to land than smaller ones. The second built an IT governance framework that consisted of a few simple groundrules:
- all projects to be sponsored by the business without exception
- no project to last more than 9 months. Any piece of work identified larger than this would be broken into phases less than 9 months in duration.
- no project to cost more than GBP2m
Sounds simple and yes it works, but what about when you need to do the big projects? Well I guess we probably need Project Managers of the calibre of James Cameron for that otherwise you're better off saving your pennies for a bailing out a bank or two.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Avatar, FingerWorks and MultiTouch
Judging by its massive box office takings I wasn't alone in viewing James Cameron's Avatar movie over the festive holiday. I'm happy to confess that I was blown away by it, even on second viewing. What I'm still not quite sure about is why?
The story and script are fairly predictable and whilst performances are good the characters are a little cliched. However, none of that really matters because the movie engaged me in a way that few others have. Part of this may be down to Cameron's attention to detail in creating the alien flora, fauna and language etc. and the way they've improved the facial expressions capture technology.
However, what I suspect is that on some level the 3D effect (or is it really 2D steroescopic?) has had a large part to play in the level of engagement I felt. Has James Cameron pulled off a mass delusion and transformed a good film into a real gamechanger? Certainly the movie industry is buzzing at the prospect with news of 3D re-releases of LOTR, Star Wars, etc. I also just read that the new Bond movie will be in 3D.
What I'm more interested in though is the fact that prior to Avatar's launch 3D had been doing the rounds for years without gaining any traction outside of a novely IMAX movie. Before Avatar the idea that audiences would wear some dodgy 3D goggles for more than two hours in your local multiplex was almost unthinkable. In the space of a month Avatar has changed all that. It is a real paradigm shift for the movie industry and its director has been rightly been hailed a visionary.
So what has this to do with IT. Well if we move from a visionary director to the visionary CEO of the tech world, namely Steve Jobs, what can we expect with his next release? If the tech blogs are correct it's all but certain that Apple will launch a new tablet computer at their press event later this month. Beyond the tech specs of the device there has been much speculation about what the focus for the device will be and what will be its killer app? So far none of the predicted features of the new tablet (e-Reader, Web browsing, Media Player, Video conferencing, VOIP calls, etc.) aren't already available on your average notebook. So what we're talking about here is a new form factor but the same old applications. If that the case why do I believe that the Apple tablet will succeed where Bill Gates tablet computing strategy failed.
For me the only answer can be that what will make the Apple Tablet a huge success isn't a killer app as such but it will be how the device engages the user. What I'm saying is that I think the killer app of the Apple tablet will be the the way we interact with it. It's no secret that Apple have been beavering away for years and filing patents related to multitouch technology that go far in advance to what we see today in the iPhone or MultiTouch mousepads on our Macbooks.
The recent withdrawal of the FingerWorks domain that Apple owns may provide some clues, together with speculation that iWorks, Apple's office productivity suite, has been rewritten for multitouch. Let's also consider what may be waiting around the corner for iPhone OS 4.0. If Apple get it right and somehow come up with a vocabulary of getsures then this could be the biggest breakthrough in user interaction since the arrival of the mouse.
Why? We becuase for over a hundred years the western world has interacted with keyboards adopting the QWERTY key layout. The QWERTY layout was chosen because it helped prevent mechanical typewriter keys from jamming, something I think we will have little need for today. The challenges I can think of that the QWERTY keyboard has faced in its life are:
1) the adoption of the mouse, which was a complementary not replacement technology
2) Palm's Graffiti script language for its PDA's because QWERTY was deemed unsuitable for handhelds until Blackberry came along
3) Interesting technologies like the Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe which to date are let down by poor handwriting recognition software
4) Graphics pens and tablets, which have a limited niche market
5) Voice recognition software, which to date people are reluctant to adopt as they feel self conscious talking to machines
I think we can agree that none of the above have seriously challenged the dominance of QWERTY.
So here's my big prediction for the new decade. I believe we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift that will see the way in which we interact with devices and I believe that we will get our first glimpse of this new world when Steve takes to the stage on the 26th. Whether the multitouch vocabulary announced them will kill QWERTY or complement it remains to be seen but I think the world will look a little different after the 26th. Just like the movie world does now thanks to James Cameron.
The story and script are fairly predictable and whilst performances are good the characters are a little cliched. However, none of that really matters because the movie engaged me in a way that few others have. Part of this may be down to Cameron's attention to detail in creating the alien flora, fauna and language etc. and the way they've improved the facial expressions capture technology.
However, what I suspect is that on some level the 3D effect (or is it really 2D steroescopic?) has had a large part to play in the level of engagement I felt. Has James Cameron pulled off a mass delusion and transformed a good film into a real gamechanger? Certainly the movie industry is buzzing at the prospect with news of 3D re-releases of LOTR, Star Wars, etc. I also just read that the new Bond movie will be in 3D.
What I'm more interested in though is the fact that prior to Avatar's launch 3D had been doing the rounds for years without gaining any traction outside of a novely IMAX movie. Before Avatar the idea that audiences would wear some dodgy 3D goggles for more than two hours in your local multiplex was almost unthinkable. In the space of a month Avatar has changed all that. It is a real paradigm shift for the movie industry and its director has been rightly been hailed a visionary.
So what has this to do with IT. Well if we move from a visionary director to the visionary CEO of the tech world, namely Steve Jobs, what can we expect with his next release? If the tech blogs are correct it's all but certain that Apple will launch a new tablet computer at their press event later this month. Beyond the tech specs of the device there has been much speculation about what the focus for the device will be and what will be its killer app? So far none of the predicted features of the new tablet (e-Reader, Web browsing, Media Player, Video conferencing, VOIP calls, etc.) aren't already available on your average notebook. So what we're talking about here is a new form factor but the same old applications. If that the case why do I believe that the Apple tablet will succeed where Bill Gates tablet computing strategy failed.
For me the only answer can be that what will make the Apple Tablet a huge success isn't a killer app as such but it will be how the device engages the user. What I'm saying is that I think the killer app of the Apple tablet will be the the way we interact with it. It's no secret that Apple have been beavering away for years and filing patents related to multitouch technology that go far in advance to what we see today in the iPhone or MultiTouch mousepads on our Macbooks.
The recent withdrawal of the FingerWorks domain that Apple owns may provide some clues, together with speculation that iWorks, Apple's office productivity suite, has been rewritten for multitouch. Let's also consider what may be waiting around the corner for iPhone OS 4.0. If Apple get it right and somehow come up with a vocabulary of getsures then this could be the biggest breakthrough in user interaction since the arrival of the mouse.
Why? We becuase for over a hundred years the western world has interacted with keyboards adopting the QWERTY key layout. The QWERTY layout was chosen because it helped prevent mechanical typewriter keys from jamming, something I think we will have little need for today. The challenges I can think of that the QWERTY keyboard has faced in its life are:
1) the adoption of the mouse, which was a complementary not replacement technology
2) Palm's Graffiti script language for its PDA's because QWERTY was deemed unsuitable for handhelds until Blackberry came along
3) Interesting technologies like the Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe which to date are let down by poor handwriting recognition software
4) Graphics pens and tablets, which have a limited niche market
5) Voice recognition software, which to date people are reluctant to adopt as they feel self conscious talking to machines
I think we can agree that none of the above have seriously challenged the dominance of QWERTY.
So here's my big prediction for the new decade. I believe we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift that will see the way in which we interact with devices and I believe that we will get our first glimpse of this new world when Steve takes to the stage on the 26th. Whether the multitouch vocabulary announced them will kill QWERTY or complement it remains to be seen but I think the world will look a little different after the 26th. Just like the movie world does now thanks to James Cameron.
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