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I am participating and judging at the International CES in January 6-9 2015 experiencing disruptive trends that will profoundly impact enterprises.
You will find the trends here in an article I wrote for IDG-IT World appearing today:
http://www.itworldcanada.com/blog/what-are-the-technology-trends-at-the-international-ces/100471
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Why should you care about CES?
I was invited in 2012 by a top Eurasia-based government to lead their delegation since they saw CES as a key component for their strategic planning impacting businesses and industry. In 2014, I was invited to chair and keynote the opening session of the United Nations Global e-Government Forum Scientific Practical Conference and as an event vice-chair to chair and keynote the opening dialogue session with CIOs and CEOs at the IFIP World CIO Forum. The themes at these events underscore the technologies and keynotes at the international CES. With the impending digital quake where the majority of businesses and jobs will change, it is more vital now than ever to keep abreast of the latest trends.
Why CES?
CES is the largest international technology showcase with the future on interactive display in over 2 million square feet spread over three conference centers.
Imagine the excitement and insights gained with 160,000 pre-vetted delegates, 6000 press and 3500 exhibitors unveiling their latest innovations across the entire spectrum of consumer and business technology.
In addition, I have an invitation from the US Embassy to be in a US Embassy led industry executive delegation (as board chair of various organizations/groups) and I will be evaluating the content from the perspective of value to the enterprise, SMBs, and ICT practitioners.
Added insights will be gained from the list of speakers including:
CBS Corporation President and CEO Leslie Moonves to Keynote Brand Matters Panel
GoPro CEO Nicholas Woodman to Keynote Leaders in Technology Dinner
Ford President and CEO Mark Fields to Debut on 2015 International CES Stage
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich to Keynote at 2015 International CES
Daimler Chairman Dr. Dieter Zetsche to Deliver Keynote Address at 2015 CES
Samsung President and CEO Boo-Keun Yoon to Deliver Keynote Address at the 2015 International CES
What am I looking for?
What will become the top trends? Will these trends be clearly demonstrated? What will be the impact on business and particularly IT executives? How does this support your enterprise mobile one strategy, BYOD challenges, cloud adoption and the blurring lines between consumer wants and enterprise work?
How closely does this align with major themes I have seen at other conferences such as the Astana-hosted UN Global E-Government Forum Scientific Practical Conference?
The ultimate goal of the Forum was to enhance government capacity through presentations, discussions, and peer-to-peer learning. There were four objectives towards this goal:
· to increase knowledge of e-Government policies, trends, solutions and best practices of countries;
· to enhance global network to exchange ideas and cooperate for e-Government development;
· to make recommendations and suggestions to provide guidance for governments so they could adopt them for realizing Smart Government and Smart Society; and
· to renew the commitment of policy makers to utilize their acquired knowledge and expertise for elaborating innovative e-Government development strategies fit for their countries.
As a part of the Forum, the International Scientific Practical Conference brought together global scientific experts in ICT. The main aim of the Conference was to determine the significance and role of new ICT trends and their adoption in public sector for effective governance.
The conference consisted of three sessions:
1. Data science for Smart Government;
2. Smart convergent technologies;
3. Use of architectural approach in the public sector.
Topics are interest include:
Data Science for Smart Government:
- Open Data;
- Open Government Data;
- Big Data Science and Foundation;
- Big Data Analytics;
- Big Data in e-government;
- Big Data in Smart city;
- Big Data in industry;
- Big data in Healthcare;
- Sensor Data, Streaming Data;
- Metadata and public information;
- Business Intelligence;
- Information retrieval;
- Data Privacy and Security;
- Acquisition, Modeling and Processing of Data;
- Data Structures and Algorithms;
- Data mining and data warehousing etc.
Smart convergent technologies:
- Grid and Cloud Computing;
- Hybrid information technology;
- Mobile computing;
- Digital convergence;
- Convergent technologies for smart government;
- Intelligent communications and network;
- Multimedia convergence;
- Internet of Things;
- Digital citizen cards;
- Smart Card and RFID Technologies;
- Electronic signature;
- Geographical information systems (GIS);
- Cross Domain Interoperability;
- Interactive decision making;
- Knowledge management, intelligent systems;
- Open source solutions for e-government;
- Ubiquitous Computing and Embedded Systems.
Use of architectural approach in the public sector:
- E-government enterprise architectures;
- Information systems architecture;
- Service-oriented architectures, web services;
- E-gov framework;
- Government collaboration patterns;
- Business Process Management in E-government.
This week, Stephen Ibaraki has an exclusive interview with Professor Tetsuro Kakeshita.
Tetsuro Kakeshita received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Kyushu University in 1989. Currently he is an associate professor at Saga University, Japan.
His major research interests include quantitative analysis of ICT education and ICT certification, and complexity analysis of database and software systems. He developed a systematic education program in computer science in his department in 2002. The program was accredited by JABEE (Japan Accreditation Board in Engineering Education), in 2003, which is the second accredited computing program in Japan. He then collaborated with JABEE from 2004 as a chair/member of several accreditation teams, a criterion committee member, and a member of an accreditation committee in charge of the computing and IT-related domain. He established the Forum for high level human resource development at IPSJ (Information Processing Society of Japan), in 2007. The discussion at the forum led to the creation of the certified IT professional (CITP) system which IPSJ is just starting. He also developed an accreditation organization for IT professional graduate schools with JABEE and IPSJ in 2010. He received an excellent educator award from IPSJ in 2013. He also joined ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7/WG20 from 2013 and currently is a co-editor of the revision project of ISO/IEC 24773 Software and Systems Engineering: Schemes for the Certification of Software and Systems Engineering Professionals. He is a member of IPSJ, IEEE Computer Society and ACM.
DISCUSSION:
Q: Tetsuro, thank you for sharing your deep experiences with our audience. A: "Thank you for providing me an opportunity to share knowledge through this interview. I used to study at the Department of Computer Science, McGill University as a visiting student when I was a Ph.D. candidate. I also had a chance to visit a Canadian university1 for CEAB (Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board) accreditation as an international observer in 2005. I was an editor of the IPSJ Journal of Digital Practices, for their special issue on certification for high level IT professionals in 2011. The special issue also contained an article on the CIPS certification system. So I have experienced various aspects of education, accreditation and certification both in Japan and Canada, so I hope this interview provides a better understanding of these aspects."
Q: Recently your outstanding paper entitled "Requirement Analysis of Computing Curriculum Standard J07 and Japan Information Technology Engineers Examination Using ICT Common Body of Knowledge" was specially selected for JIP (Journal of Information Processing) Vol. 22, No.1.https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ipsjjip/22/1/22_1/_article. Can you outline the domains covered by the paper? A: "Thank you for mentioning our recent research contribution. In this paper, we analyzed the relationship among the various domains of computing curriculum and the most major IT examination in Japan."
Q: What did you hope to accomplish with the paper? A: "The Computing Curriculum Standard J07 was developed by IPSJ mainly based on CC2005, Computing Curricula 2005: The Overview Report, and the related curriculum guidelines. The Computing Curricula is separated into five domains, CS, CE, SE, IS and IT. The guidelines of these domains are developed by different communities so that the relationship among the five domains was not clear for society or for college professors majoring in computing. I think that such situation is not desirable since industry does not understand various educational efforts conducted by academia. As a result, the student’s learning effort tends to be neglected during job hunting activities and after they are employed. The Japan Information Technology Engineer Examination (JITEE) is a large IT examination in Japan with 400,000 examinees each year. Although JITEE is well recognized throughout the industry, not many universities utilize the requirements for their education. This is another mismatch between academia and industry. Taking into consideration the above situation, in this paper I tried to clarify the relationship among J07 domains and JITEE. This makes it possible to reduce mismatches and to promote collaboration among academic communities and industry."
Q: What were the outcomes of the paper? A: "The paper clarifies the relationship among the five J07 domains and eight JITEE examination categories, utilizing mapping to a common ICTBOK which we have developed. We estimated importance level as well as requirement level for knowledge and skill of the domains and examination categories in terms of 23 fields and 155 areas defined by ICTBOK. Such evaluation is carried out through the analysis of the J07 curriculum guidelines and the syllabus of JITEE examination categories."
Q: How are the outcomes of use to government, industry and education? A: "The Japanese Ministry of Education is currently running a revision of the Professional Engineer qualifications. The revision for the IT domain focuses on the clarification of the knowledge and skills demonstrated by the qualifications in order to promote collaboration with JITEE examination. The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is currently developing a conference to promote IT-related skill standards. The purpose of the conference includes clarifying knowledge, skills and tasks required by IT professionals working at various domains. Information Technology Promotion Agency (IPA), which is an agency administered by METI, recently published the i-Competency Dictionary as a reference BOK and task model for various skill standards for IT professionals. The concept of our paper is thus going to be reflected in the development of the future skill standards and IT-related BOK. Since the skill standard is widely accepted in the Japanese IT industry, we are expecting that our outcomes will be utilized for IT human resource development for industry. The Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) is planning to develop a new computing curriculum standard (J17), which is expected to be published in 2017. The i-Competency Dictionary also references the current version of IPSJ curriculum standard (J07). I expect that our research concepts will also be utilized during the curriculum standard development. The curriculum standard will be referenced by many Japanese universities for their curriculum development. Since IPSJ takes the major role at the IT-related accreditation in Japan, the new curriculum standard will also be utilized for quality assurance of IT-related college education."
Q: How are the outcomes of value to your country? A: "I think that education at academia, human resource development at industry, and evaluation of person’s ability should be designed consistently. However, actual systems for education, human resource development and certification are designed and operated independently by each authority in Japan. I hope that the outcomes of our research can contribute to the Japanese society in order to increase consistency among the systems in IT-related domains."
Q: How can the outcomes be used internationally by other countries, such as in EU, US, Canada? A: "I think that a similar situation that I explained above can also be found in other countries. In this sense, the same concept can be applied to each country to increase consistency among various systems within the country. I also think that our framework based on mapping to ICTBOK can be extended to clarify relationships amongst various systems for education, human resource development and certification in many countries. Then it will become possible to promote international collaboration among such systems in the IT-related domain."
Q: Can you profile the CITP certification system which IPSJ recently started, and the value to practitioners, government, industry, society and education? A: "CITP certification is designed to provide equivalence among various IT qualifications such as JITEE, private certification at each IT vendor, and Professional Engineer qualifications in terms of the IT-related skill standards in Japan. It also aims at conformity to the related ISO standards. We utilize existing qualifications and certifications as building blocks to develop CITP so that CITP can be considered an “adaptor” of a certification or a qualification scheme for the conformity to ISO standard on certification. Such an approach is considered to be reasonable in order to establish a large scale IT professional certification. IPSJ is planning CITP to be accredited by IFIP IP3 for the conformity to ISO/IEC 24773. The CITP certification can then be internationally used after it is accredited. In general, a certification is utilized as evidence that a person has a certain level of ability. Thus the CITP certification system will be useful for a practitioner or industry to prove their ability. CITP allows clarifying of the ability of each practitioner in terms of the IT-related skill standards developed by the Japanese government. From the viewpoint of the certification users, CITP can be utilized to provide requirements for recruitment and/or job assignment for IT professionals. CITP also provides objectives for human resource development at industry and individual career/skill development planning. The objectives provided by CITP can be utilized to improve college level education as well as the skill development of each student. IPSJ is planning to develop a professional community whose members are CITP certification holders. The community is developed for social contribution as well as skill development of the members. Such social contribution activities, including collaboration among various organizations and/or policy making, will raise the social position of the IT professional in the long run."
Q: The Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) received a national profiles survey inquiry related to IT certification, qualification, e-skill standards, IT curriculum and accreditation scheme from CEPIS in July 2013. What was your role with the survey? A: "There are many activities related to IT certification, qualification, e-skill standards, IT curriculum and accreditation scheme in Japan. I asked for a summary or introduction of each activity to the related organizations. Then I integrated the responses to complete the survey as an editor."
Q: Can you summarize the findings of the survey? A:
Q: What surprised you? A: "I have joined or monitored most of the above activities for ten years. However I noticed couple of activities which are unfamiliar to me during the survey. At the same time, I felt that few organizations understand the entire story."
Q: How will the results influence the future? A: "It was valuable to share the national profiles survey result with the related organizations. I also recognized the importance of sharing information amongst related organizations in order to promote mutual understanding and collaboration."
Q: ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7/WG20 is working to revise ISO/IEC 24773. Can you describe your role and what you hope to accomplish? A: "ISO/IEC 24773, Schemes for the Certification of Software and Systems Engineering Professionals, is planned to be developed as a multipart standard. I am a co-editor of the Part 1: General Requirements of the ISO/IEC 24773. I hope to provide a consistent set of requirements that a certification system should keep in order to develop a reliable network of internationally acceptable certifications in this domain. Since software and systems often play crucial roles in the real world, the responsibility of the software and systems engineer is often heavy. I think that a certification is a good (although not the only) means to verify the ability of an engineer. I also hope to provide a better framework to clarify relationships among various certifications and qualifications in software and systems engineering. Here qualifications are done on a one time basis only, while certification implies periodical re-certification and continuing professional development (CPD)."
Q: What was the purpose for ISO/IEC 24773:2008? A: "The old ISO/IEC 24773:2008 was designed as a comparison framework for certifications and qualifications for software engineers. ISO/IEC 24773:2008 is useful to compare various certifications and qualifications in the domain of software engineering; however, the notion of requirements and conformity was not defined."
Q: What is the purpose of the new 24773? A: "ISO/IEC 24773 is designed as a conformity requirement standard for certification schemes for software and systems engineering professionals. The new ISO/IEC 24773 will provide minimum requirements for certifications for software and systems engineers. The standard will also provide a comparison framework which ISO/IEC 24773:2008 provided."
Q: What new requirements will be added to 24773? A: "One extension is the addition of requirements for certifications for systems engineers. Requirements of the new 24773 will be essentially the same as the comparison criteria defined by the current 24773:2008. However, there may be additional requirements based on the discussion at ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7/WG203. For example, the standard will recommend that each certification or qualification map their BOK and the expected set of tasks to a reference BOK such as SWEBOK and an SLCP standard such as ISO/IEC 12207:2008. The recommendation is introduced to clarify the relationship among various certifications and qualifications. The ISO/IEC 24773 is developed as an extension to the generic conformity standard ISO/IEC 17024 for certification of persons. Since the 17024 was revised in 2012, the corresponding requirements are modified accordingly."
Q: Who should manage the global accreditation service for certification of software and systems engineering domain? A: "Third party accreditation is an important means to prove conformity to an international standard. I think that IFIP IP3 is a candidate organization to provide such global accreditation service for new ISO/IEC 24773, since IP3 is the only organization that has the experience to accredit certification schemes based on the current ISO/IEC 24773. Although I do not intend to exclude other candidate of accreditation bodies, I expect that IP3 is willing and prepared to become an accreditation body to assess conformity to 24773. Such activity will also be valuable to raise the international position of IP3 and IFIP."
Q: What is the impact and value of the new changes to: business and industry, governments, practitioners, education, society? A: "I expect that the new standard will facilitate continuous improvement of each certification and qualification. By clarifying the relationship among various certifications or qualifications, each practitioner and the society will be able to select appropriate certification and/or qualification considering their needs and current situation (such as achievement level). I also expect promotion of mutual collaboration among different certification and/or qualification systems."
Q: What should businesses do about the new changes? A: "IT service providers can utilize certification and/or qualification as a tool for IT professional development and evaluation of a person’s ability. At the same time, they can utilize a certification or a qualification as a means to assign jobs and to recruit for software and systems engineers. If they are well prepared to demonstrate the ability of their employees using certification and/or qualification, then the demonstrated evidence can be utilized as a business tool to prove their strength from the viewpoint of human resources. IT service users can utilize a certification and a qualification as a means to evaluate a person or an IT service provider for recruiting or job assignment purposes. However it is important for a user to clarify the required ability for the target job. This implies that an IT user should become smarter."
Q: How should government use the new changes? A: "A government has essentially two roles. The first role is a national policy maker related to IT. The second role is an IT service user. The two roles should be played in close relationship since these two roles strongly affect each other. From the viewpoint of IT policy making or leadership, it is important to clarify the required ability to realize the intended strategy or plan. The government should collaborate with more IT professionals than before in order to become a "smart" IT user."
Q: How should the new changes be reflected in education? A: "More sophisticated IT professionals are required at IT service providers and IT users including government. Thus, a higher level of IT skill will be required for college graduates, regardless of their specialty. Introduction of the new 24773 will clarify the requirements of certifications in more detail. Such requirements can be utilized to design an effective education program to develop high level IT professionals. Although I do not recommend an education program to satisfy all the requirements of 24773, knowledge and major skills should be trained through college level education. Such effort is valuable to increase the level of collaboration between academia and industry and to open up the future of the skill development of their students. I also suggest that faculty members having interest in this matter participate in the development of BOK and the competency model for IT professionals from the viewpoint of academia."
Q: How can practitioners use the new changes? A: "A change will be an opportunity with adequate preparation, while it can be a threat without preparation. I hope that all practitioners reading this article understand the necessity of skill development. The required knowledge, skill and competency are changing depending on the market needs, so that life-long skill development is important. Certifications and qualifications will provide a guide for their career development and evidence of their ability. I think it is important for an IT professional to have enough ability so that they do not solely depend on their employer."
Q: Describe five areas of controversy in the areas that you work. A:
Q: Do you feel computing should be a recognized profession on par with accounting, medicine and law with demonstrated professional development, adherence to a code of ethics, personal responsibility, public accountability, quality assurance and recognized credentials? [See www.ipthree.org and the Global Industry Council, http://www.ipthree.org/about-ip3/global-advisory-council] A: "Recognized professions such as accounting, medicine and law are protected by corresponding licensures. A licensure is typically composed of an education system, certification and a law. I think that we need to develop such a system in order to develop IT professionals in a systematic manner. We, as IT professionals, also need to clearly define the scope of the tasks which require licensure. I recognize that IT professionals play a crucial role in mission critical tasks of various application domains. In such cases, licensure is useful. On the other side, there are many IT tasks which do not need a high level IT professional. We need to distinguish them and persuade society for the necessity of licensure in computing. The development of such a licensure system will require extensive and long term effort, so that we should learn from the experience of the recognized professions above."
Q: What do you wish to accomplish in the next three years? A: "I am expecting a safe launch of the CITP certification and a community of CITP certification holders. I also wish to work on the development project of ISO/IEC 24773 and Computing Curricula J17. These are big projects, so collaboration with my colleagues will be quite important to accomplish them."
Q: What improvements in policy should happen in the next two years and what would you like to see internationally? A: "I have observed many activities to clarify knowledge, skill and competence in the IT domain through my recent experiences in Japan, ISO standard development and the CEPIS survey on e-Skills. I expect that the relationship of BOKs among various IT certifications and qualifications will be clarified. I also expect that the notion of competence will be clarified so that the relationship of competencies among various certifications and qualifications can be clarified. Then collaboration of certifications and/or qualifications becomes possible. Such collaboration will be valuable for society to develop a network of IT certifications and qualifications in order to develop high level IT professionals."
Q: From your extensive speaking, travels, and work, please share some stories (amusing, surprising, unexpected, amazing). A: "I have joined various accreditation teams and visited many universities. I always meet excellent educators at each university, although teaching effort is less evaluated compared with research contribution. Their enthusiasm towards education can be easily observed from their teaching material and feedback to/from their students. I felt that such educators are quite valuable since they are not motivated by outside incentives such as career development. Their enthusiasm is a source of my effort in this domain. Last year, I went to the Ministry of Education in order to talk about collaboration with other ministries. Since different ministries have different jurisdictions and they are quite sensitive about the invasion from each jurisdiction, it is usually difficult to build a collaboration of multiple ministries. However the officer I met was different. He quickly understood the necessity of collaboration between qualifications run by different ministries, and negotiated with the officer in charge of the other ministries for mutual collaboration."
Q: If you were conducting this interview, what question would you ask, and then what would be your answer? A: "Well. I would like to express my thoughts and experiences through this interview. An IT system often carries a crucial role and a heavy responsibility in modern organizations. So we can say that IT treats the life of an organization, while it is well known that a medical doctor treats a human’s life. We should become professionals who can fulfill our responsibilities. Certification and education systems are the means to achieve this goal. At the same time, we should visualize and respect a professional having enough ability and/or outcomes. A seamless system of certification and education is essential to achieve this goal. Although competition among professionals is important to develop high level IT professionals, it is also necessary for such professionals to collaborate with each other to achieve better performances in society. To this end, a clear objective and plan become necessary to motivate the professionals. IPSJ is currently developing an IT professional community in order to discuss these matters. Recently, IPSJ made an agreement with the Institute of Professional Engineers of Japan (IPEJ) in order to promote visualization of high level IT professional and development of professional community in IT domain. This is a part of our effort towards collaboration of different communities."
Q: Tetsuro, with your demanding schedule, we are indeed fortunate to have you do this interview. Thank you for sharing your deep experiences with our audience. A: "This interview was a good opportunity also for me to collect and integrate my thoughts. I appreciate Stephen for providing this opportunity."
From their annual report shareholder letter signed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella indicates: ”Looking forward, we have a rich product road map that positions us to thrive in a mobile-first and cloud-first world. For example, we recently launched Delve, an Office 365 cloud-based service that automatically brings relevant documents, data and other artifacts to workers. And we announced our intention to acquire Mojang the, Stockholm-based game developer of the popular “Minecraft” franchise, a game that spans PCs, consoles, tablets and mobile. We also plan to launch Skype Translator this fiscal year, which has the potential to dramatically break down language barriers in our communications. And, perhaps most important, we recently previewed new features and innovations in the next version of Windows, Windows 10.
All of these new services and experiences will be underpinned by significant investments in our cloud strategy — including building more datacenters and increasing capacity in existing regions; expanding our hybrid cloud offerings with new releases of StorSimple, InMage and other products; and launching new cloud capabilities, such as Azure Machine Learning, an offering that has the potential to be game-changing in helping people mine data for predictions.”
http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar14/index.html
From a post by Immo Landwerth [MSFT]: “At connect(), we announced that .NET Core will be entirely released as open source software. I also promised to follow up with more details on .NET Core. In this post, I’ll provide an overview of .NET Core, how we’re going to release it, how it relates to the .NET Framework, and what this means for cross-platform and open source development.”
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2014/12/04/introducing-net-core.aspx
Register TODAY for the next free ACM Learning Webinar, "Getting Cyber Safety Through to Employees (and anyone else)," presented on Thursday, December 18, 2014 at noon ET (11am CT/10 am MT/9 am PT/5 pm GMT) by Ron Woerner, Director of Cybersecurity Studies, Bellevue University.
The talk will be followed by a live question and answer session moderated by Karla Carter, Associate Professor, College of Science and Technology at Bellevue University; Vice Chair, ACM SIGCAS. (If you'd like to attend but can't make it to the virtual event, you still need to register to receive a recording of the webinar when it becomes available.) Note: You can stream this and all ACM Learning Webinars on your mobile device, including smartphones and tablets.
People are and always will be the weakest link in security. Yet, it's an often overlooked topic. This session discusses people skills, influence, and social engineering in security education. This session will educate attendees on human motivation and interaction, how security controls may be bypassed by a person's intentional or unintentional acts, and methods for reducing the cyber risks associated with people. It concludes with online references that can be immediately used to inform on simple steps for cyber safety. Duration: 60 minutes (including audience Q&A)
Presenter: Ron Woerner, Director of Cybersecurity Studies, Bellevue University Ron Woerner is the Director of Cybersecurity Studies at Bellevue University. He has over 25 years of corporate and military experience in IT and Security and has worked for HDR, TD Ameritrade, ConAgra Foods, Mutual of Omaha, CSG Systems, and the State of Nebraska. Ron earned a B.S. from Michigan State University and a M.S. from Syracuse University. He was awarded the CISSP in 2001, the CISM in 2014, Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), and Toastmasters Advanced Communicator and Leader designations. He is the Air Force Association CyberPatriot 2013-2014 Mentor of the Year for his work with High School cybersecurity competitions. He loves to talk to others who are passionate about Security and Privacy.
Moderator: Karla Carter, Associate Professor, College of Science and Technology at Bellevue University; Vice Chair, ACM SIGCAS Karla Carter, Vice Chair for ACM SIGCAS, is an Associate Professor in the College of Science and Technology at Bellevue University, in Bellevue, Nebraska. Drawing on over 20 years of information technology experience, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Information Technology Ethics, Emerging Technologies, Enterprise Data, Social Engineering, E-Commerce, and Web Development, and has been awarded Bellevue University's Excellence in Online Teaching Award. Karla's research interests focus on the intersection of information technology and society, particularly in the areas of social media and privacy. She is curious, intense, and irreverent, and can be found on Twitter at @professorkarla.
Click here to register for this free webinar and be sure to share this with friends and colleagues who may be interested in this topic. And check out our past events, all available on demand.
I had a conversation with esteemed developer Terry Coatta on TLA+, which Leslie Lamport, ACM Turing Award winner in 2014, talked about in my chat with him.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/cdnitmanagers/archive/2014/05/26/chat-with-leslie-lamport-acm-turing-award-recipient-in-2014-nobel-prize-of-computing-world-renowned-distinguished-researcher.aspx
Terry says: As for TLA+, I suspect that it will receive similar treatment to many of the formal approaches/tools that have been developed. That is, I think there are some folks who will be able to apply it, but I doubt that it will see broad adoption. There are a couple of reasons that come to mind.
First, many development teams are not directly building distributed infrastructure themselves. Instead, they rely on infrastructure developed by others. So, for example, many applications use Redis for distributed caching. This relieves them of the need to create such an infrastructure themselves and reduces their need for sophisticated analysis tools.
Second, ‘real’ applications tend to have a bewildering variety of edge cases due to complex customer driven requirements. My experience is that these formalisms work well for small, constrained problems, but are unwieldy for the more ‘sprawling’ sorts of applications that we find ourselves building. Teams building focused infrastructure pieces are probably in a better position to take advantage of these tools. So, I could more easily imagine the folks who build Redis using TLA+, than I could my own team.
For more on Terry, see: http://blogs.technet.com/b/cdnitmanagers/archive/2014/11/04/register-for-december-3-webcast-quot-data-access-and-entity-framework-quot.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/cdnitmanagers/archive/2014/11/04/register-for-december-3-webcast-quot-data-access-and-entity-framework-quot.aspx
Scott Hunter and Scott Hanselman from the Web Platform and Tools division on what's new in open sourcing and ASP.NET
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2014/11/25/open-sourcing-and-asp-net-with-quot-the-scotts-quot.aspx
The ITU released their ICT data and country rankings today.
The ITU is the UN agency dedicated to ICT with 190 country members and 700 organizations/corporations. I chatted with their incoming 2015 Secretary General (China-born) Zhao at the United Nations Global e-Government Forum Scientific Practical Conference in October (I chaired and keynoted at the opening session of the GeGF Scientific Practical Conference) and have another one upcoming chat with Zhao in December that will be released as an interview. Big Data was a highlight at the GeGF. At the World CIO Forum two weeks ago in November (I was a WCF vice-chair and chaired / keynoted the opening plenary “dialogue” session with CEOs/CIOs), all the plenary host government, industry, and academia presentations over two days highlighted investments in Big Data, machine learning, deep learning, robotics.
Here are extracts from the ITU report released today:
This year’s report features a special focus on the potential of ‘big data’ from ICT devices and applications to improve public services like healthcare, education and environmental management, with the increasing digitization of human activity making it possible to gather and analyse data from a huge range of disparate sources. Big data from the ICT services industry area already being used to produce large-scale insights of relevance to public policy, such as mapping inequality of income levels (Box 5.1). In the future, big data collection could also provide valuable information for measuring the information society, through analysis, for example, of mobile subscription data to provide mobility profiles and understand the utilization of different kinds of services. ITU is collaborating with the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) and national statistical offices to identify ways of using big data to improve social and economic policy making.
The steadily growing number of Internet users has been reflected in a steep increase in the volume of online content. Social media applications are contributing significantly to driving Internet use, as more and more people create, share and upload content onto social sites. According to the report, a handful of giants have emerged as major global content providers. For example, more than 100 hours of video content are uploaded every minute on YouTube, which is now the world’s largest video file-sharing service with services in 61 countries and over one billion unique visitors every month, while Wikipedia, the largest and most widely used online encyclopaedia, now features over 30 million articles in 287 languages.
Over three billion people are now online and information and communication technology (ICT) growth remains buoyant in just about every country worldwide. Latest data show that Internet use continues to grow steadily, at 6.6% globally in 2014 (3.3% in developed countries, 8.7% in the developing world). The number of Internet users in developing countries has doubled in five years (2009-2014), with two thirds of all people online now living in the developing world. Of the 4.3 billion people not yet using the Internet, 90% live in developing countries. In the world’s 42 Least Connected Countries (LCCs), which are home to 2.5 billion people, access to ICTs remains largely out of reach, particularly for these countries’ large rural populations. In the mobile cellular segment, the report estimates that by end 2014 there will be seven billion mobile subscriptions, roughly corresponding to the total global population.
Encouragingly, the report notes substantial improvements in access to international bandwidth in poorer countries, with developing nations’ share of total global international bandwidth rising from just 9% in 2004 to over 30% today.
Denmark ranked Number One in ITU’s ICT Development Index (IDI)*, a composite measurement that ranks 166 countries according to their level of ICT access, use and skills (Chart 1). It is followed by the Republic of Korea.
The IDI top 30-ranking include countries from Europe and high-income nations from other regions including Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Japan, Macao (China), New Zealand, Singapore and the United States. Almost all countries surveyed improved their IDI ranking this year.
In terms of regional comparisons, Europe’s average IDI value of 7.14 remains well ahead of the next best-performing region, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS - 5.33), followed by the Americas (4.86), Asia & the Pacific (4.57), the Arab States (4.55), and Africa at 2.31.
The CIS and the Arab States showed the highest improvement in regional IDI averages over the past 12 months.
By the end of this year, almost 44% of households globally will have Internet access at home, up from 40% last year and 30% in 2010. In the developed world, 78% of households now have home Internet access, compared to 31% in developing countries, and just 5% in the 48 UN Least Developed Countries.
Internet access in schools has made important strides forward over the past decade. In developed countries, the vast majority of schools now have broadband Internet, with many industrialized nations having already reached 100% school connectivity. In developing countries substantial progress has also been made, but access levels vary widely, not just from country to country, but also across different regions within nations.
According to ITU’s sister UN agency the Universal Postal Union, increasing the proportion of post offices offering public Internet services to 45% of all establishments would provide one third of all rural areas and towns worldwide with Internet connectivity.
Broadband prices continue to fall; for the five-year period from 2008-2013 entry-level fixed-broadband prices dropped by 70% globally. Over the same period, the standard entry-level broadband speed has risen from 256kbps to 1Mbps.
For full text see:
http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2014/68.aspx
Join Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Chief Technology Officer, Azure, as he kicks off a week of Azure training for IT Professionals. Over the course of four days, Senior Technical Evangelist Rick Claus and members of Azure Engineering deep dive into the technologies critical for IT Pro Implementers, like you, to help better understand and build your foundational cloud skills. Register here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Microsoft-Azure/Level-Up-Azure-IaaS-for-IT-Pros?WT.mc_id=11100-iaas-for-it-pros-event-
December 1
Establish the Foundation: Core IaaS Infrastructure Technical Fundamentals
December 2
Dive Deep into Networking, Storage, and Disaster Recovery Scenarios
December 3
Embrace Open Source Technologies (Chef and Puppet Configurations, Containerization with Docker and Linux) to Accelerate and Scale Solutions
December 4
Optimize Windows Workload Architecture and Administration Capabilities Within Azure
Be recognized for your skills
Get certified for your skills! Register for the event to receive reminder emails and obtain details for receiving a 50% off exam voucher you can use towards Exam 70-533: Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions for Microsoft Azure Specialist Certification.
Here are ACM Career News for this week. You can find the articles here
Appreneur Scholars awards are seeking nominations from students—the listed deadline has been extended. The winners receive global recognition at the world’s largest conference International CES, scholarship and trip to the US Las Vegas. The 2015 international CES, http://www.cesweb.org/, has 160,000 pre-selected delegates, 3500 exhibitors, 6000 press and over 2 million square feet of space. Starting in 2013 with the first awards, Robin Raskin (Living in Digital Times ) and serial entrepreneur Elim Kay (latest ZAKA-APP) of the Kay Family Foundation put on the awards program at the international CES. I will be judging. Apply here:
http://appreneurscholars.com/
I have written about the international CES including chatting with the CEA President, Gary Shapiro:
http://www.itworldcanada.com/author/sibaraki
Roberto Scopigno is a Research Director at ISTI (Instituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione), an Institute of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in Pisa, and leads the Visual Computer Lab.
A graduate in Computer Science from the University of Pisa, he has been involved in Computer Graphics throughout his career. He is currently engaged in several European and national research projects concerned with multi-resolution data modeling and rendering, 3D digitization, scientific visualization, geometry processing, and applications to Cultural Heritage.
Scopigno has published more than 200 papers in international refereed journals/conferences. Currently Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Computer Graphics Forum.
He is recipient of several awards, including the Distinguished Career Award of the EUROGRAPHICS Association, and the EG Outstanding Technical Contribution Award.
What is the scope of your initiative to make a digital model of the Madonna of Pietranico and as part of your project to digitize cultural heritage?
The Madonna di Pietranico was an excellent testbed for experimenting with the adoption of new technologies in the framework of a restoration project. This terracotta Madonna, broken in pieces in the 2009 Abruzzi earthquake, was restored using 3D graphics technology in multiple phases of the restoration: to assist restorers in the recombination of the pieces (solving the recombination puzzle); to support physical reassembly (using 3D printing); and in producing a virtual restoration of the original polychrome surface. The restoration is narrated in a video which can be viewed here. The impressive results came from a very tight collaboration among researchers, art historians and restorers.
What factors led you to develop a tool for remote exploration of images in a 3D environment, which are designed to help crisis managers and first responders during emergency operations?
We were thrilled by the idea of mixing different media in the same rendering context, pioneered by the Microsoft's Photosynth system. Why keep different media isolated and independent? In many cases, using different modalities opens new insight opportunities. We have experimented with that approach in the framework of Cultural Heritage (CH) applications as well as for the design of crisis management systems. In these cases, sampling the current status with photographs is much faster and convenient, but it is also important to keep photographs immersed in a 3D representation of the sampled scene. We are also experimenting with a tighter integration of visual media (3D or 2D) with the more consolidated textual media.
How does your role as Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH) impact on your own research projects?
Editing an international journal costs time and effort (in many cases, spent shepherding reviewers...) and consequently, it is an activity often conflicting with personal research activity (since time is a finite resource). Anyway, the ACM JOCCH focus is a new interdisciplinary domain, now usually called Digital Humanities. The role of the journal can be foundational in this domain and I am proud to contribute to a process that should consolidate JOCCH as the reference journal on this topic.
As a renowned innovator in the European technology community, what advice would you give to young people considering careers in computing?
I think that the scope of JOCCH is a wonderful domain of activity for young researchers or ICT professionals. We have only scratched the tip of the iceberg: ICT technologies can bring huge contributions to conservation, restoration, education and fruition of our Cultural Heritage. There are wide opportunities for both academia and companies to innovate and to design new systems. Also dissemination of results for the wide public is a partially unexplored field.
NRC’s Learning and performance support system (LPSS) research program is entering the pre-testing phase to help corporate and industrial workplaces in all industry sectors from oil and gas to policing, technology, academic, military and medical devices. This means interested users can sign up for a trial account giving them an opportunity to develop their own learning program from the ground up and to provide feedback that will shape the final platform development.
As more and more learning resources are shifting from a traditional classroom setting to a more personal e-learning experience, NRC is ready to enter the pre-testing phase of its program. Participating in this trial phase will allow users an opportunity to influence development priorities to best serve their requirements.
Users interested in experiencing NRC’s new approach to learning ahead of the market can visit: http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/solutions/collaborative/lpss_intro.html
Both Terry and Erik are experts in Software Development and with strong and long history with Microsoft developer solutions and research. This is one that I highly recommend!
Register TODAY for the next free ACM Webcast, "Data Access and Entity Framework," presented on Wednesday, December 3, 2014 at noon ET (11am CT/10 am MT/9 am PT/5 pm GMT) by Terry Coatta, CTO, Marine Learning Systems; ACM Practitioners Board. The talk will be followed by a live question and answer session moderated by Erik Meijer, Founder and CEO, Applied Duality; ACM Queue Editorial Board.
(If you'd like to attend but can't make it to the virtual event, you still need to register to receive a recording of the webinar when it becomes available.) Note: You can stream this and all ACM Learning Webinars on your mobile device, including smartphones and tablets.
Data access is a fundamental component of almost all software applications. However, the data that any given application manipulates varies across a number of axes: volume, structure, growth over time, and modification rate are perhaps the most significant. When this is combined with application requirements driven by a varying set of demands related to features, time-to-market, scalability, and consistency, you end up with a dizzying array of possibilities for how to handle data access. There has been a great deal of excitement over the past few years regarding NoSQL databases, and as if often the case with software development, they have sometimes been portrayed as the silver bullet that solves the data access problem. Those of us who have been developing applications for any period of time know, however, that there is no silver bullet; only specific solutions to specific problems. This seminar will look at the issue of building a data access layer, and will focus on situations in which a more traditional SQL database makes a reasonable foundation for a data access layer. We will then go a step further and look at the use of Object Relational Managers (ORM) within the data access layer and provide some specific guidance with respect to making use of Microsoft's Entity Framework. Duration: 60 minutes (including audience Q&A)
Presenter: Terry Coatta, CTO, Marine Learning Systems; ACM Practitioners Board Terry Coatta is currently CTO for Marine Learning Systems. Marine Learning Systems is an eLearning software and services provider to the maritime and resource industry. Prior to Marine Learning Systems,Terry was President of AssociCom, a Vancouver-based start-up that builds online communities for professional and trade associations. His expertise lies in the areas of software architecture and software development. As CTO for Vitrium Systems Inc., he led the development organization through the release of three new products, and the customer base expanded from under 10 to over 200. From 2001 to 2005, he was the VP of Development at Silicon Chalk Inc. where he led a team developing a unique real-time collaboration tool for use at universities and colleges. Terry was also a founding partner in Network Software Group Inc. (acquired by Open Text Corporation, 1996) and Director of Software Development at GPS Industries Inc. An active ACM volunteer, Terry serves on the ACM Practitioners Board and Queue Editorial Board, and chairs the Case Study Committee.
Moderator: Erik Meijer, Founder and CEO, Applied Duality; ACM Queue Editorial Board Erik Meijer is a Dutch computer scientist and entrepreneur. From 2000 to 2013 he was a software architect for Microsoft where he headed the Cloud Programmability Team. His work at Microsoft included C#, Visual Basic, LINQ, Volta, and the Reactive programming framework (Reactive Extensions) for .NET. His research has included the areas of functional programming (particularly Haskell) compiler implementation, parsing, programming language design, XML, and foreign function interfaces. In 2011 Erik was appointed part-time professor of Cloud Programming within the Software Engineering Research Group at Delft University of Technology. Since 2013 he is also Honorary Professor of Programming Language Design at the School of Computer Science of the University of Nottingham, associated with the Functional Programming Laboratory. Currently Erik is CEO of Applied Duality Inc., which he founded in 2013. In the past, he was an associate professor at Utrecht University. He received his Ph.D. from Nijmegen University. Erik is the recipient of the Microsoft Outstanding Technical Leadership Award (2009) and the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award as a member of the C# team (2007). He is also a member of the ACM Queue Editorial Board. Click here to register for this free webinar and be sure to share this with friends and colleagues who may be interested in this topic. And check out our past events, all available on demand.
For more go to: ACM CareerNews as an objective career news digest for busy IT professionals.
This week, Stephen Ibaraki has an exclusive interview with Markus Kummer.
Markus Kummer is the Internet Society's Senior Vice-President, a role completing in 2014. In 2013, he was asked by the United Nations to chair the preparatory process for the annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held in Bali, Indonesia. He joined the Internet Society in 2011 to assume the position of Vice-President in charge of public policy. Previously, he worked for the United Nations as Executive Coordinator of the Working Group on Internet Governance and subsequently of the Secretariat supporting the Internet Governance Forum.
Markus joined the United Nations in 2004, after holding the positions as eEnvoy of the Swiss Foreign Ministry, during the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). He served as a career diplomat in several functions in the Swiss Foreign Ministry and was posted in Lisbon, Vienna, Oslo, Geneva and Ankara.
Markus is based in Geneva, Switzerland.
To listen to the interview, click on this MP3 file link
PARTIAL EXTRACTS AND QUOTES FROM THE EXTENSIVE DISCUSSIONS:
:01:27: Your role with the Internet Society is completing, can you talk more about that? What led to your last role? What you wish to do next? "....It followed my UN role where I had been involved in bringing people together so they could talk to each other, and by doing that I learned a lot about the internet and the internet community. Joining ISOC was a natural step. In ISOC I've been involved in public policy, internet governance discussions...."
:03:30: Can you talk about the Internet Society, their past and future importance to business, governments and academia? "....The Internet Society was set up by some of the internet pioneers (in particular by the two inventors of the underlying internet protocol), back in 1992 in the very early years before the internet really took off. The Internet Society has always been there to promote the internet to bring it to the people....The strength of the Internet Society is it operates at the intersection of public policy, the policy of technology and also of development, so whatever policy recommendation we may issue, they are based on a very solid technological understanding of the internet, and at the same time they have benefited from the reality check of development work on the ground...."
:06:16: You were asked by the United Nations to chair the preparatory process for the annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). What did you hope to accomplish and what were the challenges? What are the main issues in Internet governance and how should they be resolved? "....Last year was a very challenging year as it coincided with the disclosures about mass surveillance. That caused a seismic shift in the discussions on internet governance and it was a challenge to react to these disclosures, but the Internet Governance Forum stood up to the challenge and faced the discussion....It was possible to have a healthy, robust discussion on these issues, and by doing so I think the Internet Governance Forum proved its value to the community as a platform where you can discuss important and controversial issues in a civilized manner where people don't just talk, they also listen to teach other...."
:14:01: What do you see as the main internet controversies today and their impact on business? "....One of the major controversies has always been the role of the government that facilitated the invention of the internet and its continued role in the running of the internet, that is, the United States....This is an ongoing discussion which has a long tradition, but at the same time I would like to emphasize the United States has used its stewardship role in a very responsible manner and has never politicized the internet....There are many definitions of what net-neutrality is or is not, but there is no agreement on any definition beyond a given group. It is an obvious discussion that is of importance to business how the network is managed in an appropriate way....There are many issues, almost ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, but what is important I think is that we rebuild trust as a technology that we can use without having to be afraid...."
:18:37: You were involved in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) from the first phase; can you give a quick overview of what this is? What outcomes are important to business and how can ICT executives influence future outcomes? "....The World Summit on the Information Society was essentially called to bridge the digital divide to help developing countries catch up....I was involved first with the Swiss government and then I was asked by the UN to be the Secretary to the Working Group on Internet Governance, which came up with a working definition on internet governance and report (by and large endorsed by the second phase by the Summit in Tunis in 2005)...The outcome I would say was important to business because it recognized that the existing internet governance arrangements worked well and are effective, and it recognized the need for internet governance arrangements to include non-governmental actors (private sectors, civil society but also the technical community), and the government, in short, could not do it alone. It recognizes that it is a fast-moving technology that needs the involvement of all stakeholders...."
:21:42: Can you describe your most significant and influential achievements and the practical outcomes seen today and forecasted into the future? "....I see myself and have seen myself mainly has a facilitator and I think the Working Group on Internet Governance was maybe my most significant achievement...."
:23:57: You have an extensive leadership history. Can you share some leadership lessons which may help ICT executives in their roles? "....I think the most important lesson maybe is listening to people and what they have to say, what their concerns are and taking people seriously. But again I would not be pretentious saying this is a leadership lesson to give to executives who have learned in their own way of how to perform their functions...."
:27:23: Past, present and future, can you name some people who inspire you and why is this so? "....Nelson Mandela....Nitin Desai....Lynn St. Amour...."
:30:35: What surprises you? "....A lot of what you hear in the discussions is not new, but there is a repetition of what you have heard before. Sometimes you may be surprised that you feel the people don't listen or don't understand, or you think that it should be well-known by now by everyone....But sometimes you are also surprised in a nice way by just hearing nice stories...."
:33:52: What if any improvements in policy do you think should be made in the next two years and what would you like to see internationally? "....In some cases solutions are known, but not by everyone, so to improve the general understanding of where solutions can be found - the Internet Governance Forum can play an important role in doing that as a place that can function as a one-stop go-to place where people can get the information needed to find solutions to their problem...."
:36:36: Do you feel computing should be a recognized profession on par with accounting, medicine and law with demonstrated professional development, adherence to a code of ethics, personal responsibility, public accountability, quality assurance and recognized credentials? [See www.ipthree.org and the Global Industry Council, http://www.ipthree.org/about-ip3/global-advisory-council] "....I said I would hate to see all of a sudden that computing is seen like the bar or the medical profession where you write an exam (or in some countries where the profession can say how many people are allowed in). I would like to see it continue as a very open profession. But if there is a voluntary agreement on some basic ethical standards, then definitely it would be nice to be supportive of that and I do know there exists initiatives among computing professionals to have this approach. As long as it doesn't have a downside to it and locks out people from the profession...."
:40:00: Markus shares some stories from his extensive speaking, travels, and work (something amusing, surprising, unexpected or amazing). "....In the early days of Internet Governance discussions there was a delegate who said it's just not right that one country (the US) controls the administration of the DNA. Everybody looked around in surprise, what is he talking about? He was obviously talking about the DNS, the Domain Name System but he confused it with DNA. Now having said that you don't hear that kind of very basic mistake any more. People now on the whole are much better informed than they were 10 or 20 years ago. So that amuses me...."
:44:34: You choose the topic area. What do you see as the top challenges facing us today and how do you propose they be solved? "....When it comes to the internet I mentioned what I see as the top challenges already. That is basically how you reconcile a borderless technology with a world which is based on national sovereignty and national borders....Outside the internet there are also many challenges. We have to develop mental challenges that the internet can be part of the solutions. Climate change - where the internet contributes to climate change it can also be part of the solution by helping to measure as part of the process of the solution...."
:46:38: If you were conducting this interview, what question would you ask, and then what would be your answer? "....How do you reconcile the borderless technology with a world which is based on national sovereignty and national borders?....Do you stop migration by building fences or by helping countries look at the problems at the root within their own countries?....Can the internet be more part of the solution than part of the problem?...."
54:55: Markus, with your demanding schedule, we are indeed fortunate to have you come in to do this interview. Thank you for sharing your substantial wisdom with our audience.
For more, go to: http://www.acm.org/membership/careernews/archives/acm-careernews-for-tuesday-october-21-2014/
From Lync MVP Desmond Lee which is the 45thin the series.
First paragraphs: Quoted from the link to the full article:
“PowerShell is the window to managing many aspects of a Lync Server 201x environment. Coupled with the deployment of the Monitoring Server service (or separate role in 2010), extensive data can be collected to support operational and troubleshooting demands. By installing the optional Monitoring Reports on selected SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) instances, common types of reports are easily available at your disposal.
As Lync deployments become ever more popular and widespread, it became evident that the Lync Management Reports shipped with the product do not address certain reporting requirements needed in the field. Since persistent and dynamic Lync data are stored in various SQL databases in the backend as well as on each Front-End Server, the act of firing up SQL Management Studio, connecting to the right server and executing a SQL query will enable you to put together a user-defined report. You can find many excellent blog posts that walk you through the intricacies of constructing the often complicated looking SQL statements.
Microsoft discourages building SQL queries to pull information directly from the underlying database tables for a good reason. Besides the inherent complexity and tediousness involved, such as the use of multiple table JOINs, the database schema, table relationships and naming conventions may change in future updates and product versions. Hence the risk of breaking customized SQL queries is very real indeed.”