Google Inc. plans to open a new facility in the Ann Arbor area and hire 1,000 workers there over the next five years, company and state officials said. Link to Woodtv.com

• Key Take Aways: At a high-level we advocate these for any designer or design team interested in expanding their strategic involvement or influence.
• Organizational Dynamics: Lack of organizational influence is frequently blamed on either reporting structure, or a lack of organizational understanding about the role of design. While both of these factors may be in play, focusing only on them to increase influence is unlikely to yield results.
• Metrics: Taking the initiative to measure and track explicit customer experience metrics provides designers with a significant amount of leverage during strategic planning and product design.
• Design Skills: We’ve distilled four attributes central to design that provide unique value to strategic decision-making.
• Executive Presentations: When working on strategic initiatives that impact business direction, more likely than not, designers will need input and buy-in from key stakeholders.

Years ago, in college, a few Virginia Glee Club colleagues and I sat around in the Glee Club House, drinking beer and watching a recent Aerosmith concert on cable. As the string section behind the band appeared on screen, our director, John Liepold, told us that one of his friends had been tapped as the touring cellist for the band, and said, “Imagine that career. No matter what else happens to her, she’ll be able to say ‘I was in the Aerosmith orchestra.’”

Well, tonight, that sentence can be spoken by everyone in the Boston Pops. What a weird night, with the decay of Steven Tyler’s vocal chords on full display. And Keith Lockhart hitting the gong at the end of an abbreviated “Dream On”?

But no matter how weird, it’s still not as weird as last year. Big and Rich with the Boston Pops? Dream on, I guess.

Update: Waitaminnit. “Walk This Way” with the Boston Pops? Now it’s weirder than anything I’ve ever seen in this town.

I think I came to via Artima Buzz. It rings with the dischord I've heard throughout my career, and find the Scrum folks testifying freedom from at the unshackled organ. Great writing, Ben.  Windows users might also want to catch the ActivePython notes regarding process interrupting and version upkeep. The LiveJournal python-dev group holds quite a list. Have I overlooked an aggregated view?

<snip>rant on similar usage of 'would be nice', 'that'd be good', and other apparent un-documentables, followed by disenchanted baffle over Scrum (yearly redemption required) certification.  Maybe more on that later.  Criticize in private...wait for a reply...</snip>

And for what it's worth, the Google News Alert I subscribed to has yielded very few results, and removing the Google News button on the googlebar is a worthy measure in reducing information addiction.  Did you have any different results, Jarno? ...and even though your blog has MOVED, it was fun digging up that link searching for various items entitled 'Python owns object.'

The Trust are delighted to announce the release of a new CD of four chamber works by Alan Bush, representing the early and late phases of the composer's career. All the works are unpublished and none of them have been recorded previously. Two of the early works on the CD - Phantasy for Violin and Piano and Quartet for Strings and Piano (two movements only) - had their first public performances in December 1924 in Hampstead Town Hall, London, with Bush playing the piano parts. The Sonata for Cello and Pianoforte, written about 60 years after the other works, is along with Bush's Sonata for Organ Op.122 (1987), thought to be his last work.

The music is performed on the CD by the London Piano Quartet, formed in 2000 by Norma Liddell, Elizabeth Turnbull, David Kennedy and Philip Fowke, all distinguished performers in their own fields. The Quartet has quickly made a name for itself through the players' relaxed style and informative presentation. It has premièred and recorded works by other British composers in addition to a concert repertoire of piano quartets by many major composers.

The CD is accompanied by an excellent, very informative sleeve-note by Timothy Bowers, who studied composition with Bush at the Royal Academy of Music and is now himself a well-known composer and professor at the RAM. The Trust owe him another debt of gratitude in that Dr. Bowers prepared the manuscript edition of the Sonata for Cello and Pianoforte, used by the artists on this CD.

I took a course on the History of the Civil Rights Movement when I was at the University of Virginia. Taught by Julian Bond, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the course’s readings alone were enough to make any thoughtful American think long and hard about social justice, as was the opportunity to research local reactions to the movement (see my paper on Virginia’s Massive Resistance movement). One of the thoughts I had at the time was about what I would have done if I were alive in the movement years.

Now, of course, I know: I would have been performing somewhere rather than protesting. Because that’s how the quest for justice played out today: my colleagues and pastors from Old South were at the State House rallying for equal marriage while I was rehearsing the Gurrelieder at Tanglewood.

—Someone with less of an axe to grind than mine, by the way, should look at the signs on both sides of the street from today’s protest and learn what can be learned from them about the protesters. The thing that struck me—and again, I’m biased—is the preponderance of identical “Let the People Vote” signs, professionally made (by VoteOnMarriage.org, who don’t merit a link but who also apparently trucked in cases of water), on the anti-equal-marriage side, and how the few off-message signs that appear on that side of the street are incoherent and threatening, while just about every sign on the pro-equal-marriage side is handmade and many of them are funny or thoughtful. I especially like this rebuttal to the specious “let the people vote” argument.

Fortunately there are others out there who are more proactive than me, including the Tin Man, who has decided to take advantage of his current between-positions status to try to make a new career in gay-rights law.

For more context on the constitutional convention today—and the protesters—check out Bay Windows’ liveblog. To take a look at what the other side is saying, see VoteOnMarriage.org’s “Arguments for Marriage” page, which is a fine collection of strawmen.

Design and programming activity as a profession is better performed with mathematics and applied logic concepts as first-class tools in the hands (heads) of practitioners.

There are a significant number of factors to take care of in order to improve design and programming skills that last. Two of those are: essential mathematics and, first-order logic (also known as first-order predicate calculus). If you are serious about a design and programming career, you know that already.

This is another trait of the current youthful state of mainstream software development industry where many, many people delude themselves into thinking that formalism means tons and tons of paperwork or (not kidding) a dress code wearing mandatory suit and tie. Then, some of them will say: 'we are formal here'.

Regardless of what people are wearing, good and needed formalism in our industry is the kind of formalism related to useful software specifications, that is to say, class interface design and programming by contract.

In other words: 'Talent Mandatory, Suit Optional' as stated in Quinn Emanuel’s philosophy towards law.

Bertrand Meyer in his book, Object-Oriented Software Construction-2nd Edition, page 400, in a section entitled 'The expressive power of assertions' said:

'Including a full specification language into the language of this book would have completely changed its nature. The language is meant to be simple, easy to learn, applicable to all areas of software construction, and implementable efficiently (with a final run-time performance similar to that of Fortran and C, and a fast compilation process).

Instead, the assertion mechanism is an engineering tradeoff: it includes enough formal elements to have a substantial effect on software quality; but stops at the point of diminishing return — the threshold beyond which the benefits of more formality might start being offset by the decrease of learnability, simplicity and efficiency.

Determining that threshold is clearly a matter of personal judgment. I have been surprised that, for the software community at large, the threshold has not moved since the first edition of this book. Our field needs more formality, but the profession has not realized it yet.'

Assertion-first design, also known as test-driven development represents a powerful and reasonable tool at the hands of more and more designers and programmers, hoping the level of mathematic formalism in software development increase in a positive way.

One of the many innovations Sam Palmisano has spearheaded at IBM is the idea of reaching out to "alumni". The first initiative was a few years ago when he started a semi-annual reception for executives and former executives of the company. That was just the beginning and now the idea of reaching out has been opened up big time. The number of past and present IBMers is probably close to a million people. Establishing communications with such a huge base can be nothing but a good thing for the company.

When I left engineering school and joined IBM in 1967, it was common to look for a job at a company and expect to stay there your entire career. Nobody thinks that way anymore. If you tell someone you were with a company for decades, they might ask "what's the matter, couldn't you find any other jobs?". Another change is in the old days if someone left the company they were considered a traitor and barred from coming back. Today, there are many executives that left the company at some point, got some experience at one or more other companies, and then brought that experience back into IBM.

The Internet has enabled everything to be connected to everything, so setting up a blog to "connect" past, present, (and maybe future) IBMers to each other and with the company seems like a very good idea. The The first step was the Google Group, the logical step two is the new Greater IBM blog. Over time other forms of web technology such as wikis, audio and video podcasts, instant messaging, and various mobile technologies will likely enter the mix.

The possibilities are endless -- collaboration on projects, personal networking for jobs and deals, referrals to and from IBM, and social networking for the fun of it. I look forward to being part of this as it evolves. Upon e-tirement in 2001 with nearly four decades at IBM, I don't really feel like I left anyway! Feel free to visit patrickWeb. There are a number of categories that I have been writing about for more than ten years. Things related to IBM are at this site, I am sure I will be writing about and linking to the Greater IBM blog as will others. Cross linking will increase the overall "connectedness". That's what the web is all about. I am really proud that IBM is taking the blogosphere so seriously.

Greater IBM Blog
Greater IBM on Google Groups
read more:

On Sunday, 2 February 2003, Ross Winters (recorders) and Christopher Green-Armytage (piano) gave a delightful recital of works for recorders and piano at the King of Hearts Arts Centre, Norwich, which is housed in a beautifully restored, old building. The programme was devoted to British and German works for recorders and piano of the 20th century, and included compositions by Gordon Jacob, Edmund Rubbra, Antony Hopkins. Christopher Green- Armytage also contributed two delightful piano pieces by Chopin, Nocturne, Op. 62, No. 2 and Mazurka, Op. 17, No. 4, and John Ireland's Sonatina for piano solo, which was appropriate because John Ireland had taught Alan Bush composition for five years, 1922-1927, and remained a close friend of his former pupil until he died in 1962. The concert concluded with Alan Bush's Sonatina for descant, treble and tenor recorders and piano, Op. 82, which Ross Winters described as a most "substantial and important work", a fitting end to his programme.

Ross Winters

The Bush Sonatina has three movements; Introduction and Allegro, Andante quasi larghetto, and Vivo, which are written for treble, tenor and descant recorders. Beginning on the treble recorder, there is a short introduction, followed by a beautiful melodic passage in folk idiom. The second slow movement on the tenor recorder exploits the dark, rich, sonority of the instrument. The third movement opens with a vivacious horn-pipe melody on the descant recorder, followed by a more reflective passage on the treble recorder; this movement returns to the horn-pipe motif on the descant recorder and ends with a great flourish. The Sonatina was beautifully performed by Ross Winters and Christopher Green-Armytage.