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.”
Koen De Bosschere is professor of Computing Systems at Ghent University in Belgium, and leader of the Computer Systems Lab. He is the editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO), and coordinator of HiPEAC, the premier network of computing systems researchers in Europe. He is co-editor of the bi-annual HiPEAC vision document and organizer of the yearly ACACES summer school. At Ghent University, he manages the bachelor and master program in computer engineering, and the university-wide student-entrepreneurship project for which he received the Hermes Award in 2012. He co-authored 100 publications over the last 10 years. His research interests include computer architecture, system software, code optimization, and software security. He earned B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electronics Engineering and Computer Science at Ghent University.
As the coordinator of the European HiPEAC (High Performance and Embedded Architecture and Compilation) Network, how would you evaluate its impact over the last decade?
HiPEAC started in 2004. At that time, we were convinced that a research network in computing would help to strengthen the computing systems community in Europe. After 10 years, we are a network of over 1,500 researchers, active in all major European countries. We organize four well-attended networking events per year, publish a bi-annual research vision document, and we represent the European computing systems community at the level of the European Commission.
Through HiPEAC, the community has gained international visibility, and its impact has grown. The global European research funding has increased fivefold over the last decade. The fact that we are successful does not mean that our job is done, however. In the future, we want to focus on better monetization of the European research results, and on job creation. Given the disruptions that are expected in the coming decade (the potential end of Moore's, Nielsen's and Kryder's laws), there are many upcoming challenges. HiPEAC wants to help the community to tackle these and to help Europe to become more competitive in the computing systems domain.
What are the advantages of the unique journal-first publishing model used by HiPEAC conferences, which rely on papers previously published in scholarly journals for main track presentations?
In 2010, HiPEAC decided to completely change the concept of its yearly conference. Instead of a five-day publication event, we wanted it to become a three-day networking event, with a rich program of keynotes, invited talks, workshops, tutorials and poster sessions running in parallel with the main paper track.
Since we no longer wanted the conference to be a publication event, we decided to outsource the paper selection process to ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO). In order to encourage our authors to publish in ACM TACO, we keep publishing a yearly call for papers for the conference, but the submission site is the submission site of ACM TACO. We helped the journal to streamline its review process to reach decisions in at most two months. Papers submitted by the submission deadline in June get a final decision by November (after two review rounds), and are published in January, just in time for the conference.
Both the conference and the journal tremendously benefitted from this decision. The conference now currently attracts 500+ delegates instead of the 200 we attracted before—it has become a real community networking event attracting all European stakeholders in computing.
ACM TACO now attracts about 190 submissions per year, instead of 40 in 2010. We observe that most authors no longer wait until the call for paper deadline to submit their work, but submit throughout the year, which spreads the review load for the journal. Hence, this decision simultaneously made the conference and the journal more attractive, which is for me a clear proof that conference publication is not the only possible publication model in computer science.
Authors are willing to submit their original work to a journal on condition that the journal review process is of high quality and fast, and that the published work gets enough exposure in the community. This is how most other research communities work—they publish in journals, and they network in conferences. It is not difficult to change; we can simply copy the best practices of other disciplines. It only needs the courage to do it.
What are your major concerns as Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization?
Operationally, my biggest concern is respecting the deadlines. When a paper is submitted, we promise the authors a decision after at most two months. That means that I spend quite some time checking the deadlines, and intervening if associate editors or reviewers are not respecting their deadlines. I really want decisions in at most two months. Recently, we got a few decisions in five weeks, which is great for the authors. I am continuously experimenting with new incentives to convince editors and reviewers to respect their deadlines and to deliver high-quality reviews and decisions.
Strategically, my biggest concern is the low impact factor of many of the computing journals, compared to journals in other disciplines. I try to understand the root cause of it. One obvious reason is that most scholars prefer to publish in conferences instead of in journals, but that is not the only reason. I recently discovered that we also cite fewer recent papers compared to disciplines with journals with high impact factors. Furthermore, improving the impact factor is clearly a chicken-and-egg problem. With a high impact factor, the journal will become more attractive for high impact papers, but we need such papers in order to increase the impact factor of the journal. As with all chicken-and-egg problems, it will take time to fix them.
As a leader and visionary in the European technology community, what advice would you give to young people considering careers in computing?
I advise young people to read about the future—and by this I mean about the predictions for the next 50 years—that is the half century that maps on their professional life. Some people like Moshe Vardi (Editor-in-Chief of Communications of the ACM) state that they will experience "the end of work" in 2045, or the technological singularity also predicted in 2045 by Ray Kurzweil. These events will not happen overnight, we are already evolving towards them today. The rise of cognitive computing is in my opinion a clear example. Thinking machines will replace many middle-class jobs. I do not know the future-proof jobs, but I tell my students to invest in a wide range of future-proof skills: creativity, social skills, entrepreneurship, and of course computing.
Earlier I had written about the key themes on the agenda of major governments worldwide for the United Nations Global E-Government Forum. From my prior post, you can see that Big Data and analytics are high priorities. Closely underlying this is Hadoop or similar platforms and machine learning (and deep neural networks). This underscores the post by T.K. Rengarajan, corporate VP, Data Platform where he talks about real-time analytics for Apache Hadoop in Azure HDInsight, new machine learning capabilities in the Azure Marketplace. Rengarajan goes on to say that Big Data, including Hadoop and advanced analytics, is changing the way customers do business. He also goes on to add that “Microsoft Azure Machine Learning helps customers and partners rapidly design, test, automate and manage predictive analytics solutions in the cloud. For example, search engines, online product recommendations, credit card fraud prevention systems, GPS traffic directions and mobile phone personal assistants all use the power of machine learning to provide people with valuable insight. Today, we are introducing new machine learning capabilities in the Azure Marketplace enabling customers and partners to access machine learning capabilities as Web services. These include a recommendation engine for adding product recommendations to a website, an anomaly detection service for predictive maintenance or fraud detection and a set of R packages, a popular programming language used by data scientists. These new capabilities will be available as finished examples for anyone to try.”
These are significant additions and highly recommended supported by my experiences at the GeGF last week, underlying the strong need for these Microsoft solutions.
I just returned from the United Nations-supported Global E-Government Forum and Scientific Practical Conference (GeGF). The first two UN-GeGF were hosted in South Korea and the third was granted to Astana. I chaired (moderated) and keynoted the opening session of the conference and was invited to the international Ministers Roundtable discussion. The Ministers Roundtable speeches and discussion items appear in the final report from the forum and are submitted to the United Nations General Assembly. It was an interesting experience with two television interviews and two media/online press interviews which were quoted in the final reports appearing with the forum as illustrated by this example: Recommendations worked out at Global E-Government Forum 2014 will be included in UN member states development plan.
The ultimate goal of the Forum was to enhance government capacity through presentations, discussions, and peer-to-peer learning. There are 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 etc.
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 etc.
This week, Stephen Ibaraki has an exclusive interview with Paul Lee.
PAUL LEE, M.D. (CEO)
:00:22: What were your catalysts to get into medicine? "....Multiple reasons, one is the science really attracted me and the clinical practices (how science can be involved in the human body) was very intriguing so it was a natural path for me to go into medicine...."
:01:19: Can you describe your time with ROKA? "....In Korea there is compulsory military service and as a Lieutenant Doctor I needed to go in as an Officer and not a Private so it was three years, but it was a great experience....I was the Chairman of a public health center there so I saw patients of all ages, but mostly elderly patients with hypertension and diabetes...."
:02:02: You indicated earlier you also spent time at Oxford and at Catholic University. What lessons can you share from that? "....It's a little bit of self-confidence, but mostly courage that forces you to make that first step to do what you really want to do...."
:02:46: What was your initial interest or catalyst for going to Singularity University FutureMed 2013? What were some lessons that you learned? "....That was an amazing conference for me and a real eye-opener....It made me really think about how and where medicine is going to be, and what is really necessary for doctors (I consider patients more of a consumer because they are buying a service from the doctors and the health professionals). The landscape of healthcare is changing dramatically so how we can disrupt the healthcare system around the globe was the pinnacle of FutureMed...."
:04:49: What challenges in healthcare led you to become the CEO of Qurely? "....In Qurely we believe that offline clinics (which are your everyday clinics) can essentially be moved onto online clinics. However, at the current time it's very difficult for patients (or consumers) and the doctors themselves to incorporate into online transactions and online visits. We believe rather than going full online medicine there needs to be a buffer between an offline clinic and full-on telemedicine – that's what Qurely is....All we are doing at Qurely is matchmaking between the doctor and the consumer in real time so that they can video conference, audio chat or instant message between themselves and get the health information resources directly...."
:06:45: Describe the healthcare model of Qurely? "....There are marketplaces for almost every industry. There is nothing like that in the healthcare services so we're saying there needs to be a marketplace in the healthcare system where doctors and consumers around the world can meet, and consumers can choose their doctors by looking at the profile, credentials and their reviews and ratings and then choose to have a conversation with that doctor...."
:07:56: What is the business and revenue model of this new marketplace? Using the business model canvas as a guide, can you further describe the key areas of Qurely? "....The canvas model; I'm pretty familiar with it but let me just focus on one main thing, the value proposition. In the US alone more than 70 percent of GDP is spent on healthcare and more than 750 billion dollars is wasted. Also it takes about 39 days for a consumer to actually schedule an appointment with a primary physician, 50 days for specialists, and you need to go into the office and wait for about an hour to see the doctor which is only going to last about seven to ten minutes. We're saying let's get rid of all that wait time....We are saying Qurely can make the system much more rapid and much more concise with a price which is chosen by the consumer and not the doctor or the hospital. That's the value proposition that we at Qurely give to the consumers and the doctors...."
:11:46: Is this medical diagnosis that's occurring here? "....We think Qurely doesn't need to diagnose or provide prescriptions in order to help people. Most of the situations in a clinic are consumers coming because they need advice, they need informational resources straight from the expert's mouth....If you're not educated in the area of medicine it's very difficult to find and pinpoint the exact information that that you need, so getting that information straight from the health professional is very important and very useful, despite not having that diagnosis or prescription inside the consultation...."
:12:51: Various smartphone manufacturers are now embedding biometric kind of devices within the smartphone. Are you able to use some of that data as well? "....If you have the doctors on one side and the consumers on the other, if we have those two lined up on a platform, then companies like Apple, GE or Samsung who are developing all these sensors that can detect, for example your heartbeat or glucose level in your blood, then all these things can be incorporated into our platform and the doctors will be able to use the data to help the consumers. We think using that data and diagnosing and prescribing will be full-on telemedicine....But at Qurely we think it's a little early for full-on telemedicine....so Qurely is acting right in between the offline clinic and the full-blown telemedicine....Definitely the plans incorporate all the sectors and all the innovative technologies coming out that will measure all the health informational data, which is basically quantifying self data and that data will be crucial in forming Qurely and the future of Qurely...."
:15:31: What does Qurely mean to the healthcare system? "....We're hoping and we believe that it's going to disrupt the healthcare system and will help consumers to find and talk to doctors in a much more rapid, concise and effective way, so that doctors can earn more money in volume because they will see patients from all over the world and they are not just limited to their own state. There will be patients from other states as well as other countries...."
:16:53: What Key Performance Indicators (KPI) will determine Qurely success in three years? "....So the KPIs that we've discovered and we have targeted are: the number of sessions completed on Qurely, the number of active doctors and the number of consumers registered...."
:18:16: What would be your goals in those three metrics this year and in 2015? "....That's a very good question and also a very difficult question at the same time because right now we are hoping to have around 800 doctors around the world providing sessions within six months of launch. In 2015 we are hoping to get around 3000 doctors around the globe. We are starting to get doctors from a variety of countries...."
:19:44: It’s clear that Qurely is going to impact society because you are providing an alternative, a more easily accessible vehicle to get really great information and to get it quickly and at good cost and you get creation occurring through this process. Through this marketplace that you are creating what do you see as the impact on government, business, education and other areas? "....The healthcare market right now will change and because Qurely is the first marketplace in the healthcare system, we believe that if we have the number of doctors and the consumers set up, then selling healthcare goods, selling drugs with pharmaceutical companies coming in, all the sensor companies (like Samsung, GE, IBM, Apple. etc.), all these big, big corporate companies will be able to come in and hopefully join our venture in improving the healthcare system. So I see a very big impact on business in the healthcare sector especially....For the government, right now telemedicine law is changing dramatically and it will have to be changed....I'm hoping that Qurely can push the boundaries so that the government will change the regulations and the laws in telehealth and telemedicine so that people can really innovate in that area....In education I think the most important thing that we see in Qurely is how the doctors are trained, because with the innovations such as Google Glass and all these wearable devices we see that the training of doctors can change...."
:22:49: What is your exit strategy for Qurely? "....I believe that when you are building a business and you are thinking about the exit strategy I don't think you can really build a good company and a good business. Right now we are not thinking about the exit strategy, we are just thinking about how we can help the consumer in their own right and help the doctors so that they can provide their expertise in a way and in a manner that they can really help themselves as well as the consumers and the patients...."
:23:50: I can clearly see an advantage for the US marketplace for this kind of strategy, but how about areas in the world where they have socialized health such as the UK and Canada? "....In the majority of countries it's just that hassle of making an appointment, scheduling, traveling to that office and waiting in the waiting room to see the doctor, when you could just do that online with a video conference very quickly and efficiently when you choose. The pricing is very important because we believe it's not the doctors or the hospitals who should be setting the prices we think it should be the consumers who should be setting the price because they are buying the service that they want....I don't think it matters if it's the UK or China or the US, if it's more convenient and it's more price-worthy I think people will use it...."
:26:11: What are your other interests and what are the broad implications and applications of your work? "....I'm interested in artificial intelligence to be perfectly honest. I really do think (although I'm a doctor) that computers and artificial intelligence will be able to diagnose a patient much better than a human doctor can, in let's say twenty years....Artificial intelligence I believe will help the doctors make a much more sound judgment of the diagnosis or the treatment because as a human being I believe there are limits. Artificial intelligence will be able to get all the latest information....Test the artificial intelligence in a clinical setting....Then I believe artificial intelligence will guide or help doctors in the long run to diagnose and treat patients. So it's two side of the sword, if you use it right I think it would be a very beneficial way of improving medicine. We have Big Data in mind at Qurely and the artificial intelligence is where my other interests are — I am looking closely at how these are evolving...."
:30:17: In all that you have done what are your most difficult challenges and what valuable lessons do you wish to share? "....Taking that first step needs a lot of courage, it needs a lot of blind self-confidence and it's very, very risky....I believe that taking that first step to execute your idea is the most valuable and the most important thing that you can do as a startup or as an entrepreneur...."
:31:38: In addition to what you've already mentioned are there any other qualities that help you to excel? "....Also it helps being positive...."
:34:26: You have an interest in medicine and in being disruptive in this whole healthcare area, plus you are an innovator and an entrepreneur and you are also interested in artificial intelligence. Do you have any idea of what you consider to be some of the upcoming disruptive innovations? "....I think artificial intelligence as we both agree is a big sector, also the sensors will be very disruptive....All that data will show amazing statistics of how we can potentially cure disease and how we can essentially live longer and all these things are really amazing...."
:35:56: From your extensive speaking, travels, and work, do you have a story that you can share (perhaps something amusing, surprising, unexpected or amazing)? "...Let me answer that in a very different way....I think the most important thing about being an entrepreneur is that you need to be able to impact a problem. You need to be able to solve a problem and that's why I've chosen healthcare. But if you ask me what my life goal would be – I want to farm in Africa...."
:37:20: Paul, 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.
These useful lessons are shared from Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals:
Quoted from Nik’s post: “How often have you wished that you could easily press a button and get an exact picture of all the servers in your SharePoint farm? I know this came up a few time in my career as a SharePoint administrator. Today is the day where I make all your dreams come true! Together, we will learn how to develop a very simple PowerShell script that will allow you to easily scan your entire SharePoint environment and extract relevant information about the various components running on them and the resources they have available. The icing on the cake is that we will create our script in such a way that it will present all the extracted information in a visually appealing and useful way…”
This post on Package management for PowerShell Modules with PowerShellGet was written PowerShell MVP Kirk Munro
Quoted from Kirk’s post: “Windows PowerShell has developed a great reputation for itself, not only from the capabilities of the product, but from the strength of the community that has grown around the product. As a PowerShell MVP and long-time member of that community, one of my favorite ways to give back to that community is to share the results of my PowerShell work with them in a format that they can use in their own environment. For me, the format of choice for that is PowerShell modules, but up until recently there hasn’t been a Microsoft-supported, sanctioned way to share PowerShell modules privately inside of organizations or publically across the internet. Fortunately, that is all about to change when sharing, discovery, and consumption of PowerShell modules gets a whole lot easier with my favorite new feature in the upcoming release of Windows Management Framework 5.0 (WMF5), PowerShellGet…”
The following post was written by Visual Studio ALM MVP Amir Barylko
CHRISTIAN ASSAD-KOTTNER, M.D. (CMO)
Dr. Assad is an interventional cardiologist with a deep interest in the incorporation of exponential technologies to improve healthcare. He has a special interest in information technology and computer sciences as well.
Early in his career he was granted the young investigator award by The Mexican Society of Cardiology for his research on genetic markers in acute coronary syndromes.
Shortly after graduating from medical school he initiated a year of heart failure research at The Methodist DeBakey Heart Center. Here he became the first to demonstrate the presence of anti-cardiac antibodies in the failing myocardium. His findings have been the foundation of several award-winning projects and ongoing research in the heart failure and transplant laboratory. Recently was awarded 1st place for the Best International Research Project Award at TCT/CADECI 2012.
Dr. Assad has a unique understanding on how technology can be incorporated into medicine to improve patient outcomes as well as medical education. He was named in the Top 20 HealthcareIT list (#HIT100) in 2013.
:00:25: What factors led to your passion for medicine? "....My grandfather was a doctor, my father is an interventional cardiologist and I think since I was a kid that was basically in my subconscious. I've always been very passionate about technology on more of the geeky-side. But when I was growing up and had to choose a career, medicine was something that I had seen for such a long time that it was obvious that there was some influence by my grandfather and father to choose that path, which I can honestly say I'm not sure I would have chosen if that were not the circumstance. Nevertheless it's been a very interesting path that I have chosen...."
:01:29: What lesson can you share as Editor of Singularity University FutureMed Magazine? "....The lesson I found most significant is called exponential med, which is basically the incorporation of exponential technologies into the way that medicine is practiced....Topics like tissue engineering, nano technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, the human elementation, etc. I think we are going to starting seeing these changes being incorporated into healthcare at a quicker pace in the coming years..."
:03:00: What were the drivers for your deep interest in the incorporation of exponential technologies to improve healthcare and in information technology and computer sciences? "....My passion for incorporating exponential technologies came even before I knew what exponential technology was. Before going to the medical career path I was thinking of electrical engineering, IT or some computer science as a career. When I chose medicine and I stayed on it I'd always been trying to implement this passion in technologies into my daily life to see how I could improve it to make me more efficient, not only for myself, but to improve the lives of patients and other practicing providers...."
:05:20: Can you talk about your award-winning work with anti-cardiac antibodies and in heart failure and transplants? "....It was a very interesting event that occurred more than seven years ago, but that finding is still going on, going stronger and hopefully it can lead to future medical therapies to either prevent or to help patients with heart failure...."
:08:12: What is CPRGLASS and its value? "..... What we did was create a very simple app which shows the potential of using wearable technology to give the best CPR possible by a bystander, so instead of somebody being scared or concerned about going ahead and helping an individual who just had a cardiac arrest, if he activates CPRGLASS he can give the best CPR possible. This gives you an understanding of how wearable technology can help an individual save a life, and if you use your imagination you can think of the ways that a technology like this could be incorporated into your daily life...."
:12:35: Christian talks about what led to his fellowships? "....Gadgets for me are very intriguing because of how we use technology to target particular diseases. It gave me an idea of how my creativity and imagination could someday lead to improving particular procedures....My incorporation of technology with medicine has led me to the Fogarty Institute which is the best place for me at this point in time to merge my interests and passion to hopefully create something with huge impact in the near future...."
:15:00: What are your current and future research interests and the value to government, business, society and education? "....The area of research that would be the most intriguing to me is incorporation of these different technologies into patient care. Even though I'm an intervention cardiologist and endovascular cardiologist, I'm very interested in ways of preventing people from actually needing the procedure....Motivating people to become healthier is what needs to happen so that is where I see myself doing research, because it's an area that I enjoy and understand really well. I think that the incorporation of wearable technology with maybe some gamification and information to patients incorporated into artificial intelligence can lead to tremendous results....."
:17:37: Now let's talk about your work with Qurely. What is Qurely? "....It's a way for doctors to share their knowledge with an individual instead of having the individual search the internet and maybe get some false advice. We aim for any patient to be able to speak with a doctor anywhere in the world, get his knowledge and information and then develop a conclusion from that. I'm not saying a diagnosis or treatment at this point in time (because rules and laws will need to change in the future because of how fast exponential technologies are going)....That is what Qurely is doing, it's basically a marketplace that uses gamification to help doctors and patients communicate in a more efficient and relaxed manner...."
:21:10: Can you add more about the value of Qurely to doctors and clients or patients? "....The value to doctors comes from being able not only to see patients from a pool in their own country or in their own state, it basically opens it out to a whole different variety of patients that might need his or her expertise, and get knowledge and peace of mind after that conversation that he or she had with the doctor....Initially we do not aim to give the patient a particular, self or individual diagnosis because of obvious reasons, even though many of the doctors to, due to legalities and regulations we are basically giving general information and we are establishing a connection between the patient and the doctor to communicate....This is the initial part of Qurely and as technology starts evolving, laws start evolving and more specific or clinic-like situations could happen, but that all depends on how it's evolving. We want to establish a friendship, a collaboration, a nice conversation between a doctor and a consumer. This way the consumer gets the best advice that could help them and hopefully in the future, this type of scenario, this type of platform can be transformed into a worldwide clinic in which a doctor in Mexico could be treating a patient any place in the world...."
:27:24: What is the medical future for Qurely? "....At this point in time it's a 'telehealth' concept in which our main goal is to initiate the communication in the relationship via the internet between patients/consumers and doctors, and that is the first step. It's getting doctors to embrace the web to embrace this new type of connection, this new way of offering their advice to patients in which hopefully in the future they can do it with the cooperation of either wearable technology, different gadgets and sensors that can monitor saturation, the electrocardiograms, microfluidics and seeing patients' labs, and they will get to a point in which maybe the physical contact will not be as important as all the other data that we would be able to obtain and use in this conversation between the two individuals...."
:30:30: What are your other interests and what are the broad implications and applications of your work? "....My interests are close to anything that surrounds or is related to the exponential technology. I use that term a lot but I think it's a very interesting one because in whichever field that you want to focus on there is tremendous potential and impact; for example, 3D printing or artificial intelligence....Once you start digging and getting into more specialized diseases the number of people you can impact becomes less so the goal right now for me (which is a very big interest), is how to use all this data which people call Big Data (that may come from different sensors, wearables, your smartphone), and how to use all this information to prevent the patient from getting sick. This will come from merging these different technologies....."
:34:05: What are your most difficult challenges and what valuable lessons do you wish to share? "....I think the most challenging in medicine is innovation; at least it has been for me....It's challenging when you want to innovate in the medical setting because there are so many rules, legalities, lawsuits and implications that it's not just about having a great idea. A great idea is as good as its execution....Learning (and you learn from failures), but failures give you experience and those failures are what has been the challenging parts in innovation in medicine. They have given me a lot of insight and slowly but surely we are getting somewhere...."
:36:28: Please share your top valuable experiences and lessons from your prior history? "....I remember throughout my career I was always saying, 'Well I was lucky.' Then somebody told me the harder you work the luckier you get and I think that has been my quote because hard work always pays....Another thing would be when you really feel passionate and strongly about something, never doubt yourself....I also believe in paying it forward. Be as friendly as possible. Treat everyone with fairness and equality and I truly believe what goes around comes around....Embrace the fear when you're innovating and when you are creating something different....Keep yourself open to career path changes...."
:42:45: What specific qualities do you think make you excel and why? "....Persistence....Creativity and imagination....Hunger to achieve something....My passion for technology and medicine....A positive personality...."
:46:55: In terms of the people that you have admired over the years (perhaps in history or currently) or others, can you talk about those people who inspire you? "....One of them without a doubt is my father. He is a very successful interventional cardiologist in the United States. He has done great things in medicine, in cardiology, and he always targets or aims for the best for the patient, the best for his country, the best for medicine....Inspiration can come from anywhere, not only from an individual, it can come from a situation, it can come from anything so I wouldn't say there is a particular individual that inspires me. I would not say that there is a particular individual that inspires me....I get inspired by many individuals...."
:49:39: Is there anything that surprises you? "....I don't understand how it is that we have so much of an extreme between the rich and the poor and not being able to do more for them....It's a feeling that I have and that is something that surprises me...."
:51:54: You are involved with Qurely, you are involved with innovation, you have your medical career. Is there something you want to do next that is outside of what most people think? "....Be able to mutate your profession and to become somebody that you never thought of....I love what I do, I love my career but I am open to new experiences, and if I believe that I can do more in a particular area that will change my original path to a certain extent, I'm okay with it...."
:55:48: Can you talk about what you think may be the top upcoming disruptive innovations? "....Big Data....When you get all this information, you get artificial intelligence and you get wearable sensors and robotics, and then what happens next? It's the automation of your job....The next thing close is 3D printing. 3D printing in the next five to ten years will have huge impact on many different levels from construction all the way to medicine...."
:01:05:28: There are all sorts of policies both in the US and internationally, do you like to see some changes in policy? "....It's hard because every country has their policies. Every country wants something it needs to change. They have to go through a very different level of regulations in which all those regulations (the way I see it), are obstacles to progress....At this point in time the way that our technology, our science, our research is growing or in evolution, it's in a faster, quicker pace than what our laws are able to handle....I'm not saying that the laws implemented at this point in time are wrong, I'm just saying that they will need to change, they will need to adapt to the quick pace of how technology is changing for us to be able to use it in the most efficient manner as possible...."
:01:09:26: You travel extensively, have a varied career, done a lot of different types of work in different domains, so from your extensive speaking, travels, and experience, can you share some stories (perhaps something amusing, surprising, unexpected or amazing)? "....The discovery of the anti-cardiac antibodies....After three months of being in the lab, going weekends and trying different stains and views and experiments I finally stumbled on something which was spotted as staining. Imagine it as different circles put together and when I was looking at the histochemistry in the microscope, I see the glowing of all these myocytes out there. When I started seeing that I thought what's going on here? In the three months I've been here I've never seen this before. So I had to go back on my steps and see what it was exactly that I did, and then what I spotted was that I had used an anti-human anti-cardiac antibody. It was then I realized that I had found an antibody that was present in the patients with heart failure...."
:01:13:50: Do you have any additional life goals you want to achieve? "....I guess something I realized is the amount of time that goes to my passions and to my work, but my goal is to be the best husband and father I can become. Family is first in my book, and to a certain extent what I do in my passion and in my work is to provide the best quality of life to my family....Having said that I have a tremendous passion to develop applications, services or devices that have the potential to impact not only one, two or hundred people, but thousands or even millions of people...."
:01:15:58: Are there any other challenges (outside of medicine) that you think are facing us today that we need to put some attention to? "....The biggest challenge that I can see is the automation of jobs that I mentioned. This is something that I am seeing as a growing trend and I think other individuals have seen it....As I said it's a tremendously exciting time that's coming, but we need to know and inform ourselves with what it is and keep an eye on its evolution, because as we all know it's increasingly becoming more rapid and substantial...."
:01:20:31: If you were conducting this interview, is there one question that you would have asked yourself and then what would have been your answer? "....Will machines replace doctors, or computers actually replace doctors?...."
:01:24:15: Christian, 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.
Hendrik Deckers is the Managing Director and founder of CIONET, the biggest community of IT executives in Europe. In this role he is responsible, together with his team, for expanding CIONET into new markets and for the development of new and existing services.
Bringing together over 4400 CIOs, CTO's and IT directors from wide ranging sectors, cultures, academic backgrounds and generations, CIONET's membership represents an impressive body of expertise in IT management. CIONET's mission is to feed and develop that expertise by providing top-level IT executives with the resources they need to realise their full potential. Represented countries include the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Luxembourg, Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium.
CIONET develops, manages and moderates an integrated array of tools and services from the online CIONET platform — the world's first social network for CIOs — to a range of offline networking events, conferences, workshops and executive education programmes all tailored to top-level management. CIONET also provides exclusive access to the latest research through regular online and offline publications and a number of value-adding partnerships with key players from the academic and corporate worlds.
From 2000 till 2005 Hendrik was Vice President at ExpertEyes and Managing Director at Close Partners; in these roles he developed and delivered sales and marketing programmes that focused on helping IT vendors to launch and expand their commercial activities in Europe.
Hendrik worked at SAS Institute from 1990 till 1999, where he was responsible for the Belux company & product strategy, held positions as head of business development and worked in product management and pre-sales. He has a Masters in science and a postgraduate degree in economics from the K.U.Leuven.
Hendrik (51) is married, has 2 teenage sons and lives in Mechelen, Belgium. In his spare time he enjoys playing the piano and walking his dog.
:00:39: What led you to found CIONET? "....I've been working in the IT space for about the last 25 years and have always enjoyed bringing people together so that they could exchange insights and experiences from their work in IT and IT management....In 2005 I connected the dots (that I liked IT and bringing people together), and with my new passion for social networking I decided to build CIONET. At the time it was the world's first online-offline community for CIOs and IT executives...."
:01:44: Can you get into more detail about the value of CIONET and why should IT executives care? "....The role and value of CIONET is to bring IT executives together in a strong and active community that works both online and offline so that they can exchange their experiences and best practices...."
:03:00: If I was a CIO in North America and I wanted to join CIONET is there a way I could do it and if so, how would I go about it? "....Today we are not active in North America. Our focus currently is in Europe and we are expanding in South America as well...."
:03:35: You have an interest in Asia as well? "....We are also building good relationships with the Chinese CIO Union so that we can build a bridge between the European and South American CIOs and the Chinese CIOs...."
:03:53: If a person is a CIO in Europe and they wanted to join, is there a membership fee of some sort? "....The model that we have adopted is to make it as easy as possible for CIOs to join so there is no membership fee...."
:04:33: What are your goals for CIONET for 2015? "....Over the last 9 years since we started, we've grown our community to over 4400 members in 10 European countries: the UK, France, German, Spain, Italy and so on. Our first goal for the next year is to further expand in new territories in new countries in Europe....also for the first time we will be expanding outside of Europe into South America....Our second goal is basically to expand the range of services that we provide...."
:06:16: What are your goals further out, let's say 2017, 18, 19? "....Further out our goal is really to establish in every major European and South American country. (To be established as the most valuable community for IT executives where the CIOs and digital leaders turn for support are known as professionals in their challenging jobs)...."
:06:38: As this interview is seen in over 100 countries, how can IT executives get involved with CIONET? "....At one end we are exclusive and at the other end we are inclusive. We are exclusive in the sense that only IT executives that fit our membership criteria and work in the countries in which we are active can join....But at the same time we are inclusive in the sense that if you fit the criteria we want you as a member and we want you to apply for membership (which we provide free)....If you work in a country where we are not active yet, please get in touch. We are interested to expand into new countries so maybe you can help us to get in contact with the right people to set up CIONET in your country...."
:07:57: What are the top concerns and challenges of IT executives? "....Number one challenge is digital business transformation....A more classical concern for IT executives that has been on their agenda for many years is the constant challenge of aligning business and IT....A third challenge, how can they organize their IT organization and the IT services in such a way that IT really supports business agility and the company's need today to be successful....A fourth, also a recurring challenge, is IT cost reduction....There are a number of technological challenges that IT organizations face today — new technologies that on one hand can add a lot of value to a company, but could also destroy a lot of value in the company if not implemented in the right way...."
:11:02: What do you see as the challenges of 2017? "....I think that the digital leadership is going to be a main challenge for IT executives in the coming years....Other challenges we just talked about are business/IT alignment, business agility and cost reduction; these will be there for the years to come.....Each year we will be seeing new things coming in the market, so the CIOs need to be developing strategies each time to see how they can get the most out of each new cycle of the technological innovations that are coming to the market...."
:12:23: What do you see as some of the leadership qualities required in 2015 for IT executives? "....Digital leaders need to accept that technology is going to change business over and over again and so for that they need to stay up-to-date on what's happening....To see the bigger picture and make a plan to manage the content, data, processes, they have to set the right goals, strategies, find the right outcomes while minimizing risks....Communicating their vision and their plan and doing the marketing of their IT organization and showing the value that they are creating for the organization in the best possible way...."
:14:12: We’ve gone through this adoption of mobile, social media, the cloud, cyber-security. Do you see any disruptive things on the horizon that CIO's need to take a look at in terms of technology? "....Each day there's new things coming along. I'm very interested to see what the impact is going to be like with the internet of things (everything is going to be connected to each other)...."
:15:07: Do you see any controversies today and their impact on businesses and can you talk about them? "....IT and especially the governance of IT is too important for the IT department only so I think CEOs and business leaders need to be in tune with the challenges and concerns that IT brings to their organization and need to really understand the opportunities, but also the threats that IT brings to their organization. I see it as the role of the CIOs to teach, inform and educate on an ongoing basis C-level executives about these opportunities and threats....Another controversy that's been going on for quite some time is the place of the CIO in the organization....The last controversy I find quite fascinating is the old bring your own device discussion....."
:17:28: One of the things you are involved with is the World CIO Forum (WCF) which is hosted in China from November 10 – 12 2014 in Xi'an, China. Can you talk more about it? http://ccio.cie-info.org.cn/index.html "....The World CIO Forum is a global conference for IT executives and hosted by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and undertaken by the Chinese Institute for Electronics. There will be more than a thousand IT leaders, and decision makers, government officials and so on from around the world will be participating...."
:18:07: Did you have any recent meetings with the organizers including with the China CIO Union? "....When I was in Beijing last August we had a great meeting with the people from the Chinese CIO Union. We are building a very strong relationship with them and are looking forward to supporting them and the organization of the World CIO Forum and also inviting our members to join there because I think the topics that are going to be addressed at this conference are really exciting.…."
:20:02: Some of the largest banks in the world are now Chinese and some of the biggest companies in the world are now Chinese. I guess that would be of interest to executives to say that there is this tide coming from the East and we need to connect with them in some way. I guess that would drive your interest as well. "....If you have never been there you have no idea of what's going on, what's happening there and what is coming our way. We can look at it on television and we can look at the paper, but being there and seeing the amazing rate of development and growth is really an eye opener....What we would like to do is to give more of our members who have never been there and been exposed to the Chinese market the opportunity to see what's going on there, and to talk to their Chinese counterparts so that they can get prepared for the future when more and more of Chinese organizations, technologies will be coming over to the West...."
:23:39: Can you talk about how CIONET is working with the World CIO Forum? Are you a partner or supporting it as a partner in some way? "....We are supporting this conference on two levels: we will help with inviting some top speakers for the Forum, and we will be inviting our members, giving them the opportunity to attend this conference...."
:24:15: Can you describe your most significant and influential achievements and the practical outcomes seen today and forecasted into the future? ".....It's fascinating to me to see how an idea that I developed nine years ago (to build a large community for CIOs), has now turned into an international network of IT executives who on a daily basis, connect with each other, learn from each other and share knowledge with each other. The community is really a living thing...."
:25:04: You've already given an answer to what are some of the leadership qualities that people should have, but looking into your own career are there any other lessons you wish to share that may be helpful to ICT executives in their roles? "....Think big to create a big vision that is appealing to people, that challenges them and excites them....Work very hard and put systems and processes in place and constantly keep the quality high for everything that you do....Attract very highly driven people who go the extra mile. Build a strong team and give the people a clear framework to work in (within that framework give them a lot of freedom to be creative and to develop the business further)....Have confidence....Be creative and always continue to innovate and reinvent yourself...."
:26:45: Past, present, and future, can you name some people who have inspired you and why is this so? "....It's hard for me to name people, but I'm inspired most by the people around me and first of all I'm very much inspired by my team....Second, our CIOs and IT executives— I've met them and befriended so many of them now....I'm also inspired by my family, people very close to me who stand next to me in good and bad times...."
:27:55: You have this great opportunity to have traveled widely because of your amazing career and what you’ve built over the years. Is there anything that surprises you still? "....It really is a privilege to live in these exciting times and to witness all the amazing technological revolutions that we live in, so I'm surprised that some people are not excited about technology....I'm very driven by a positive attitude and by a belief system that anything is possible when you put your mind to it and so it's also a surprise that some people think differently and that they don't believe that this attitude is so important in life...."
:28:51: Do you see any improvements in policy that should occur in the next few years and can you tell us why? "....I'm not really involved in policy-making and I'm afraid I have little to contribute on that level, but what I would like to see on the international level is a global economy that is more stable and more long term thinking...."
:29:35: 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 think that the more practical codes, credentials and systems that are put in place the better it is. At the same time computing is a field that is changing so fast and so quickly these systems should be flexible enough so they are not limiting the immense creativity I would say that triumphs this exciting domain of computing and IT in general...."
:30:46: Hendrik shares some stories (perhaps something amusing, surprising, unexpected or amazing), from his extensive speaking, travels and work. "....The first time I attended an annual conference in Spain (CIONET Spain) was really a fulfilling moment to me because I was there at the conference and there were more than 150 people and they were all talking in Spanish (which I didn't understand). So all of a sudden you see something that you imagined happening in another country and being very successful in another country and you don't understand a thing about what everyone is saying — so that was quite interesting...."
:33:41: You choose the topic area. What do you see as some of the top challenges facing us today and how do you propose they be solved? "..... I think for many of the challenges: world economics, the development of poor countries and green economies and so on, I think to a certain extent technology will be able solve some of these world challenges. The rest of course is up to leadership and making sure that we have wise people leading and that they do the right thing...."
:35:36: If you were conducting this interview, what question would you ask and then what would be your answer? "....Name one book from the last couple of years that really fascinated you?...."
:37:19: Hendrik, 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.
I am speaking, chairing the opening session of the 2014 Global e-Government Forum International Scientific Practical Conference next week involving 60 countries and in collaboration with the United Nations. I am sharing here since the topic areas should be on your agenda and this provides a quick check list. I will write articles about my lessons learned post-conference. There is more below.
-------------
The third Global e-Government Forum (GeGF), a joint event of the United Nations and host country will be held in Astana October 7-8, 2014. The first two forums were held in South Korea. Delegates from over 60 countries will be participating. The UN Deputy Secretary General, ITU Deputy Secretary General, Prime Minister, Ministers will be providing their deep insights.
The Ministry of Investment and Development in close collaboration with the United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs will host the 3rd Global e-Government Forum in Astana, where high-level representatives from governments, international organizations, academia and business in 60 nations will gather to discuss the e-Government role and trends in the new era under the theme of ‘Smart Governance in Sustainable Development: New Possibilities of Partnership in Networked Society’.
The ultimate goal of this Forum is to enhance government capacity through presentations, discussions, and peer-to-peer learning. There are four objectives towards this goal:
As a part of the Forum, the International Scientific Practical Conference will bring together global scientific experts in ICT. The main aim of the Conference is to determine the significance and role of new ICT trends and their adoption in public sector for effective governance.
The conference will consist of three sessions:
This article from Lync MVP Paul Bloem, provides useful information.
John shared his deep insights in this interview.
Q: John, Intel is doing amazing work. Can you profile how stratified information, computing or mobile access is being provided to the world's 7.24 Billion?
Broadband for All
To understand which programs to focus on, we must examine the full Internet and access device affordability model.
Until recently, just 2 Billion people could afford the PC and the typical $30/month unlimited Broadband fees. This limited Broadband, mostly to the mature economies and to the higher incomes in Emerging Economies. For example in Africa and India less than 5% of the people can afford $30/month.
In 2012, the Prepaid (pay as you use) model came to Broadband. This followed exactly the same lower cost business model that had driven the cellphone voice surge in Emerging economies. Device costs continued downwards as entry PC’s approached $200, entry tablets moved under $100 and entry Smartphones were even lower cost. This helped usher in the era of Prepaid (pay as you use) Broadband.
Led by Asia and quickly followed by Africa, typical availability of say 400Mbyte downloads for under $1 become commonplace from many Service providers in over 70 countries. Business offerings became more varied. For example Service providers in China and India now offer more prepaid data if used in evening /night hours, which proves Ideal for University student to use WiFi on the College Campus by day and smaller Broadband use on the 3G dongle at home in the evenings. Another example is Indonesia, where Prepaid can be segmented by targeted useage (Facebook or eMail ) and priced for that usage.
With 30 day expiration dates, and Monthly ARPU in the $1-5 range, Prepaid Broadband is allowing a surge in affordability in Emerging Economies and can drive affordability up from less than 5% of citizens in the lower income countries to perhaps 30%, truly reaching the 3rd Billion people.
As we focus on the 4th to 7Th Billion, quickly the reality that many of these citizens live off $1-3 a day is the limitation and there is no business model today that allows these citizens to buy a PC/Tablet device and pay for Broadband. This is where Private Public Partnerships with Government interventions must help. There are 2 pathways starting to address this.
First is many of the 4th and 5Th Billion own simple low cost voice phones and increasingly low cost dataphones that can access the internet. Far more can be done to use these devices to access the internet. With smaller screens, prepaid data goes farther. Emerging uses like Mobile payments for convenience or for those who are not banked, simple Healthcare information (even SMS --“the Medical truck is coming to your village on Monday” or simple data tracking to help Diabetes and Tuberculosis) are surging. UNESCO studies show many of the children who do not attend school are learning entry levels of reading and writing on their phones, which may give them inspiration to attend school to learn more. This is where the m-Powering Working groups of the IT Broadband Commission are focusing.
Second is shared access. Computer Broadband access can occur in School, Libraries, Government Centers and service centers provided by local entrepreneurs. In all cases, these centers can be used to provide internet services to those who cannot afford to own devices. Beyond providing access, these centers can be structured to provide standard services. For example, in India and Bangladesh there are tens of thousands of these Internet centers, managed by villagers. In India these act as agents of the banks (bill paying, microloan financing), agents of the Government (provide online registrations to access Government services) and provide some services like PC skills training or email. Indian Government financed the Training and setup of these centers but they soon become sustainable businesses with the ladies that operate them earning perhaps $100/month. Imagine such a center with 4 PCs, a printer and scanner serving 2000 villagers. If just 1 person per family uses this center for one hour a week, then most of the village can be served each of them with the villagers paying say $1 /month (the 5% of income threshold that can be spent on Internet) and the center being profitable.
Accelerating both of the phone usage and the Shared Access Community service centers can be facilitated by the application of the Universal Service Funds and /or innovative upfront financing. Universal Service funds can help finance the local Wi-Fi hotspots, setup of the centers, select and train those who manage the centers and help them provide a basic suite of Government services and Private (Banking, training, etc) services. The private industry has many training and service capabilities to add and cooperate with Governments in a Private Public Partnership. This can be one faster path to “Universal Access”.
A complimentary approach can be the school system. In several countries (example Turkey), Universal Service Funds are being applied to ensure every school has Broadband, every teacher and student has a PC or tablet. This ensures 100% access for all students and a modernized education system.
Q: How does this align with internet.org?
Several groups such as internet.org and Alliance for Affordable Internet (which Intel is part of) have programs focused on Connecting the 7 Billion.
Q: What is the current status of the World Ahead program and its outcomes for 2014?
Intel World Ahead focuses on 4 pillars -- affordable devices, affordable/available connectivity, training and content. These 4 are required for all vertical areas (Education, Healthcare, Government services, reaching lower income citizens and for rural). At any point in time we are engaged in perhaps 200 Digital Divide programs globally.
Our flagship is Education where we enable (reference design) purpose built PC's and Tablets for k12 students, have ICT trained over 12 Million teachers with "Intel Teach", work with Telcos and Governments on connecting schools and work with publishers to enable electronic content, analytics and assessment.
Intel has deep programs in Healthcare, mostly in the developed Economies. We apply some of these practices in Emerging markets through partners.
We have a joint venture, non-profit Grameen-Intel Social Business, based in Bangladesh, initially focused on Agriculture. Soil analysis using PC to select fertilizer has been shown to reduce costs and improve yields, which is key for smaller farms.
Intel has taken a leadership role with ITU and WSIS.
Q: What are the measurable outcomes and how does this alignment with business enterprise interests? How does this work trickle down into the business enterprise (including in the West) and provide measurable value to different enterprises: small, medium and large?
I sit on The ITU Broadband Commission as a Commissioner and one huge breakthrough was the bringing of lower cost prepaid Broadband business model to have affordable broadband for the 3rd Billion. This is based upon the same prepaid Voice Business model that led to the Emerging market surge in cell phones.
With lower cost options, the Telcos and all suppliers reach more customers. Intel put considerable marketing effort with Telcos to make solutions available for prepaid and educate these new customers on the benefits to their businesses and lives.
A newer focus is with the mPowering Working groups of ITU that focuses on greater Internet uses (mPayments, mCommerce, mHealth, mEducation) of Billions of phones owned by lower income citizens that are not today using the internet.
A third area with ITU is shared access, Telecenters, rural service centers providing internet access to Rural and lower income citizens who cannot afford ownership.
In all of these cases, reaching more customers by providing targeted business models (lower cost options) is more business opportunity for all suppliers and service providers. Operating the rural service centers in India and Bangladesh to provide Banking services, Government services and training services can be a profitable business for the ladies that operate these centers.
Q: What are the top resources links you would recommend and why?
Access to all ITU Broadband Commission resources www.broadbandcommission.org
Access to all Intel Education programs www.Intel.com/Education.
Access to Intel World Ahead programs - go to www.Intel.com then search for WorldAhead.
Q: You pick the domain or market segment. What are the top 3 challenges and the proposed solutions?
In every segment the key challenges seem to align well with the 4 pillars we focus on 1. Affordability 2. Training
- eg Intel teach has trained over 12 Million teachers in ICT skills to create a lesson plan and use ICT in the Classroom.
- eg In India, they need 1 Digital Literate person per family to access the Government programs online. Intel "PC Basics" and other Digital literacy tools contribute to the training
3. Locally relevant content -this is an opportunity to create local employment and skills
Fabrizio Gagliardi is Distinguished Research Director at Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain, where he oversees the long-term international alliance strategy of the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre. He is founding member and Chair of the ACM Europe Council, and serves on the boards of Informatics Europe and several other technology groups. Previously, he was Director, Microsoft Research, External Research (Microsoft Research Connections) for Europe, Middle East and Africa from 2009 to 2013. A pioneer in developing and introducing Grid computing in Europe, he was Principal Investigator and Director of the EU-DataGrid and EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE) projects in Europe from 2000 to 2005.
Over his 30-year career at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), Gagliardi had responsibility for data acquisition and management. He also managed joint research and development projects between CERN and computing companies, managed CERN-IT computing support to the CMS experiment (one of two CERN experiments which discovered the Higgs particle), and directed the CERN School of Computing.
His research interests in HPC technology include design, development and operation of large distributed HPC computing infrastructures for science, research and industry, and management of large international projects.
In your role as main stakeholder and an originator of VENUS-C, the innovative, commercial cloud- based, user-centric cloud infrastructure for Europe, what would you identify as the key elements that made this initiative highly effective?
VENUS-C leveraged new emerging distributed computing techniques, as did the previous EU framework programme projects (EU-DataGrid, EGEE, etc.) which I had the honour of initiating and leading. First were cluster and grid technology, then the new emerging commercial offering of cloud computing, which has made it possible to virtualize the entire computing infrastructure stack. VENUS-C was conceived in 2010, and ran through mid-2012.
A key element of its success was the smooth integration of the Microsoft commercial cloud Azure into more specific technical and scientific community-developed tools and programming environments.
Another key element was to associate real and demanding user communities from the very beginning with the overall project architects and developers of the VENUS-C computing infrastructure. This is what today would be called co-design. Being associated with ACM has allowed me to be continuously well informed of the latest computer science developments and breakthroughs, and to reflect this knowledge in the project.
What are the most impactful achievements undertaken by the ACM Europe Council under your leadership since its inception five years ago to serve the European computing community?
ACM Europe has made considerable progress in amplifying the ACM footprint in Europe. Clearly the progress is slow, given that Europe is a relatively mature market for professional associations such as ACM, unlike India or China, where the impact of the regional ACM councils has been more dramatic.
Most notably, ACM Europe, with the establishment of a legal entity in Brussels, has increased visibility and obtained consideration by the European Commission (EC). The EC has participated in several ACM Europe events, and has begun regularly consulting with the leadership of ACM and ACM Europe. This interaction has led to our intention of forming a dedicated body (EUACM) to increase ACM's presence with the EU authorities in Brussels. EUACM's role will be analogous to USACM, the ACM Public Policy Council in Washington, DC.
Other achievements include the launch and successful ramping up of ACM-W Europe, which has started a successful series of conferences, and a new task force to promote and support the activity of the ACM chapters in Europe. Together with Informatics Europe, ACM Europe has also begun efforts to monitor and promote computer science education in Europe.
As director of the EGEE: Enabling Grids for E-sciencE project to extend CERN's computing power and data processing capability, what initiatives did you develop that have since been adopted by the European Commission for large projects of this kind?
EGEE, building on the previous success of projects such as EU-DataGrid and others, prototyped the establishment of a large, worldwide distributed computing infrastructure based on open software. It provides the best business model for provisioning the CERN computing power necessary to analyze and collect data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experimental programme. This effort has led to the recent discovery of the Higgs particle, which resulted in the Nobel Prize for Peter Higgs and his colleagues. In order to manage a project with more than 90 partners, I developed a new federated administrative scheme, since then adopted by the EU for its major funded projects.
As one of the EU's foremost technology leaders, what advice would you give to young people considering careers in computing?
Computing is an ever developing and evolving field. From more theoretical research work, to applied computing to major societal challenges, to engineering newer and more advanced technology solutions, computing pervades our entire life and society. In the past 20 years, with the advent of the internet, computing has changed the way we all live and think. I believe it is very exciting and motivating to be part of this major human adventure, and have the chance of influencing it.
From a more mundane viewpoint, the possibility of finding a good job in computing is probably as high now as it has ever been. The number of jobs generated by CS is expected to be enormous in the years to come.
My advice is to embrace a career in computing, choosing whatever part is most attractive for each individual. No matter what subfield is chosen, there will be excellent opportunities for a successful career and a comfortable life. Being associated with ACM as a student is a major asset, and I would encourage any young CS scientist or student to consider membership. It costs little and can provide a lot!