Tag Archives: travel

Beijing in pictures


Courtyard

Originally uploaded by andyp uk

I’m spending a couple of weeks on business in China. It’s an exciting trip as it is my first time in mainland China, I’m getting to do a lot of travelling around, and I’m building some connections with my colleagues in IBM’s China Development Labs (and I was able to spend time with Chinese colleagues in the UK in preparation, learning about the business culture and language here).

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind already. Shortly after landing on Friday I gave a relatively impromptu 2 hour presentation to the WebSphere developers in CDL, which covered everything from life in Hursley, through my career, our product strategies, and the latest news on technologies like WebSphere MQ, MQTT, Message Broker and WebSphere Registry and Repository.

My first “free” day in Beijing, Saturday, was very wet… and I underestimated the distances on the map in an attempt to walk to an attraction which I deemed “fairly close” to my hotel. Word of advice: the guidebooks describe Beijing as “not very walkable”, and my impression is that it really isn’t; I should have taken a cab! Today though, the weather changed and I was able to get out to see a couple of the sights including the Forbidden City (which I’ve previously mentioned here on my blog, in the context of the Beyond Space and Time project which utilises IBM technology and our experience in virtual worlds), and part of the Great Wall. Really spectacular stuff. Colleagues helped me to arrange a tour with Grayline and I have to say that they were excellent. The one obvious issue here is traffic, which is really choking movement – other than that it’s a very pleasant, modern (but utterly vast!) city with some wonderful people.

I didn’t bring an SLR with me but I captured a few shots with the iXUS and iPhone 4. Keep an eye on Flickr.

Tomorrow it’s straight into workshops, roundtables and presentations, and I’ll be travelling around for much of the next couple of weeks, so online interactions may be limited.

Boston view




Boston view

Originally uploaded by andyp uk

Arrived in Boston for SHARE 2010 where I’ll be speaking on Wednesday. Love the architecture.

My talk from CRIM Crystal Ball 2010 – video

Following my talk in Montreal a couple of weeks ago, my hosts from CRIM have been kind enough to provide me with the video and have also given me permission to share it online. They’ve also posted a short photo report on Flickr.

See the High Def / full quality version on Vimeo

Also available (lower quality) on Viddler

Impact 2010 (and the cloud – no not that one!)

Despite the efforts of the volcanic cloud of doom, I’m currently teaching some of my peers from across north-east Europe (NE IOT in IBM parlance) at an education event in Germany. My specialist subject(s)? WebSphere Service Registry and Repository, Service Federation Management, Enterprise Service Bus, and MQTT… the torch for last one of these having been passed to me recently by a very “hard act to follow”, aka Mr Martin Gale.

Assuming I can get back to the UK, and then assuming I can get out of it again, the next conference – and the last one currently in my calendar for this year – is going to be IBM Impact 2010 (#ibmimpact), the premier annual WebSphere event. There, I’ll be teaching about WSRR, presenting on WebSphere Message Broker, and attempting to also provide ongoing commentary of what is happening. Wish me luck! :-)

Impact 2010 | IBM Software Conference | May 2-8 Las Vegas, NVIf you’re also going to the event and want to get a head start – or perhaps more importantly, if you are not going, but you want to follow along – you might want to check out the Social @ Impact 2010 site, where we’re aggregating content.

Eyjafjallajokull image credit: Boaworm via Wikimedia Commons under a CC license.

Enterprise Convergence: CRIM Crystal Ball 2010

Today I had the privilege of joining a number of distinguished speakers on the slate at the CRIM Crystal Ball Conference, 2010, in Montreal, Quebec.

My topic was what I chose to term Enterprise Convergence: or, how consumer technology is changing the way we work. The pendulum has swung the other way from the past – previously, email was used in academia and by corporations before it gained mass adoption; now, mass adoption of social networks, virtual worlds / 3D Internet and always-on and pervasive connectivity are driving the ways in which enterprises have to adapt their models of operation internally.

My slides are on Slideshare (and I created a SlideShare event to collect others). I’ll try to add some commentary shortly, because they are largely images and may not make a huge amount of sense without the words to back them up!

As usual I get excited and animated and could have gone off in all kinds of directions when asked to speak on a topic like this – I envied a few of the other presenters and could have jumped in to add to some of their commentaries, too! A few references and reading suggestions if you are interested in learning more around the subjects I was covering:

  • Everyware by Adam Greenfield. One lady asked me afterwards whether this book is still worth reading as it was published in 2006. Absolutely. It’s a great read. Actually I reviewed it here on my blog back in 2007.
  • Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins. This is interesting in terms of media convergence and the blurring of the lines between different types of media and connections. Not an essential read, but it’s where I got inspiration for my title!
  • The Future of Management by Gary Hamel. At least one other speaker mentioned this at CRIM 2010 and it’s really a great read, thinking about trusting employees and daring to be different in management and business models.
  • Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott. I lose count of the number of times I’ve recommended this. Read it. It’s awesome and will likely change the way that you think of the generation entering business in the next few years. Trust them. Innovate with them.
  • Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Everything is social, live with it, use it, embrace it.
  • Andy Stanford-Clark’s infamous Twittering automated home
  • If you want to keep up with trends in technology like those I outlined in the talk, you might want to subscribe to the weekly podcast that I co-host, Dogear Nation
  • IBM Social Computing Guidelines – publically available to read and review, and there’s a nice video too.
  • INNOV8 Game – IBM’s Business Process Management simulation game
  • IBM Lotus Connections – a modular social software platform for the enterprise
  • IBM Sametime 3D – virtual collaboration
  • IBM WebSphere Cloudburst – provision private cloud servers
  • Unity3D and Layar
  • David Helgason from Unity on Gamification and 2010 trends

Finally, you can find photos from my first trip to Quebec here and photos from the event in the event photoset on Flickr.