Getting some good laughs from the Federal Data Center Consolidation

I  don't know about you, but from the beginning when the US Fed Gov't announced they were going to close data centers, I was getting some good laughs.  Really you think the way to close a data center is tell the staff that their data center will be shut down?  IT staff has learned to ignore the strategic projects from the CIO as he/she will be gone in 2 years. 

Vivek Kundra who announced the Federal data center consolidation lasted 2 1/2 years.

Vivek| Kundra (Hindi: विवेक कुंद्रा; born October 9, 1974) is an Indian American administrator who served as the first chief information officer of the United States from March, 2009 to August, 2011 under President Barack Obama.

Network computing has a post on the three lessons learned from the Fed's data center consolidation.  Jumping to the last two paragraphs.

To understand just how wrong a data center consolidation can go, consider the findings of MeriTalk’s recent survey of 200 federal data center operators. Not only did 56 percent give their agencies’ consolidation efforts a grade of C or below -- a clear sign of a project headed south -- a whopping 45 percent believe that it’s more likely they’ll win the lottery, the Washington Redskins will win the next Super Bowl, or another large meteor will hit the Earth than agencies will meet FDCCI objectives.

Far from a glowing endorsement, but it serves as a third lesson -- an important reminder to IT execs that they’d be well advised to consider their data center teams’ perspectives before going full steam with consolidation mandates.

The IT staff is getting a good laugh as they continue to do same job they did yesterday, the month before, the year before, and last decade. :-)

Can you see the Media Bias? Rush Limbaugh says Apple is Republican, Google/Samsung are Democrats

The whole idea of unbiased media works when you want to be the one source of news.  When it comes down to it though very few people want to hear both sides of the story without any bias.  Even when people read both sides, they are looking for information to support their views.  

CNET focuses on the battle between Apple and Google.

Rush Limbaugh: Apple is Republicans, Google is Democrats

In a scholarly analysis of tech blogging, the great Republican commentator offers that 9 out of 10 blogs hate Apple. Because Apple is like the Republican Party. Oddly, though, Limbaugh last year was himself mad at Apple.

Rush Limbaugh blog post focuses Tech Blogs starting to notice media bias.  I agree it is entertaining to watch the bias influence coverage.

It's a teachable moment out there.  Fascinating.  Study of the media is fascinating.  To watch the sports media, folks.  Because they're all liberal, they're all formulaic. They're all liberal by default.  They don't know anything else.  And you can predict, if you become familiar with it, with them, you read their stuff often enough, you can predict when something happens in the NFL, you can predict how 95% of the reporters are gonna take it and how they're gonna report on it.  You can predict, just like you can in news media.  It's incredible.  It's a fascinating study to me. 

What I find interesting is Rush Limbaugh doesn't want to point to who the biased tech blogs are because it would drive more traffic to them.

RUSH: An e-mail: "Rush, why don't you name some of these left-wing tech blogs you're talking about?"  Folks, I've thought about it, and there's nothing to be gained by it.  If I call 'em out, all they're gonna do is get happy that I'm giving them attention and elevating attention.  It's not gonna change them.  If I start naming people, the same thing.  It's one of these unfortunate things.  This program is so big that certain things I can't talk about because, believe me, these people do not need -- I know I'm making this all sound interesting, but they don't need to be bigger.  They don't need more readers.  The more readers they have, the more damage they would do.  And all I would do, if I mention them by name or by name of author is make 'em bigger and it would not accomplish here what I'm -- I know it's frustrating.  If this were just a local show in Podunk state, I could tell you everything, but it's the biggest show in media.  And put these little chumps on the map and they'd never be bigger, but it wouldn't change, just make 'em snarkier and ruder.  Just the way things work.

Problems with adding Supply Chain people, thinking like procurement instead of spatial intelligence

How many of you are frustrated with your purchasing department?  I had a short stint at Apple in the Purchasing group.  The purchasing group had a staff of technical project managers who would work with the product development teams on peripherals for Apple products.  During this time is when I got a peak into mindset, the way people approach the task of purchasing/procurement, but this is anecdotal.  Harvard Business Review has a post on "The Problem with Procurement" with a sample survey.

If this sample is representative, then we can hardly be surprised if many c-suiters think that procurement is a backwater. And we can hardly expect young high-flyers in most industries to see it as a career path of choice.

Looking ahead, procurement managers will have to change the way they approach suppliers and business peers; being a strategic business partner means so much more than negotiating a discount.

One comment in the post tries to target the problem.

My admittedly limited experience with corporate and governmental procurement functions is that they focus on compliance and price, as opposed to effectiveness and value.

The focus on compliance and price makes sense as most of the time procurement is part of a finance function, not engineering.

Many of the things that Procurement buys are physical things.  To an engineer the physical things have meaning in spatial terms, not just price and compliance.

Spatial thinking “finds meaning in the shape, size, orientation, location, direction or trajectory, of objects,” and their relative positions, and “uses the properties of space as a vehicle for structuring problems, for finding answers, and for expressing solutions.”

And it is hard for non-spatial oriented people to understand spatial people as most of the systems ignores them.

Nearly every standardized test given to students today is heavily verbal and mathematical.  Students who have the high spatial and lower math/verbal profile are therefore missed in nearly every school test and their talent likely goes missed, and thus under-developed. What’s more,spatially talented people are often less verbally fluent, and unlikely to be very vocal. Finally, teachers are unlikely to have a high spatial profile themselves (and typically have the inverted profile of high verbal and lower math/spatial), and although they probably do not intend to, they’re more likely to miss seeing talent in students who are not very much like themselves.

There is a point that being spatial is not idolized in society.

Today we idolize creative actors, dancers, artists, musicians, and writers. But when was the last time someone raved to you about a creative engineer or mathematician? Why isn’t STEM considered creative or cool? Longitudinal research has made a solid link between early spatial talent and later creativity. Yet for whatever reason, we don’t appreciate the highly creative nature of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

In the technology world though, the spatial thinkers are idolized.  Having young kids are you driving your kids to be actors, dancers, artists, musicians or writers? STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) may not be cool, but it is creative and you can get paid really well.  You may not be idolized by the paparazzi.  But you can be idolized by your peers.

Aug Ski Camp Mt Hood

It's Aug 2, 2013 and the kids are in ski camp at Mt Hood Oregon.  The ski area is the center of picture.

Here are kids coming off the mountain.

It's pretty warm (people wearing shorts) and dry where the parents pick up the kids.

Some of the kids are in a week long camp and trekking up every day.

It is so much easier to get nice pictures of the kids in this weather compared to the winter.

What do the parents do?  Go for a hike.

And relax with a Bloody Mary in the sun.

I get to take the pictures.

The most important truth in your career, who are you surrounded by

I've been staring at this post on Forbes on career truths.

I’ve also come to learn that in business sometimes it’s strategically (and monetarily) beneficial to remain under the radar.

As I sat down to write, I began looking over interviewing and career articles that I’ve written in the past as well as some content that was written by others.

Both fail to mention some very pertinent career truths or distort reality. Here are 7 that pieces of career truths that you don’t normally read about.

The one truth that resonated as the most important is the choice of who you surround yourself with.

3. You are who you surround yourself with – Be careful whom you associate with. Choose colleagues and friends carefully.

Surround yourself with sincere, honest, optimistic, kind, resilient and hard working people. Your potential will far exceed that of someone who associates themselves with highly controlling, jealous and pessimistic individuals.