Doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you, the old joke goes. If you think it doesn’t apply to your company read this article NOW: Social Engineering: Anatomy of a Hack.
Does your company have a no-tailgating policy? If an employee at your company found a USB Key in the cafeteria or the bathroom – what would they do? Unless you have epoxied all USB ports, make sure you are managing the risk. Employee education helps, but as Reagan said “Trust, but verify.” This blog post will help: Managing USB Thumb Drives - Is Vista Better Than Epoxy?
Do you conduct regular sweeps for rogue WAPs? Do your employees who use wireless savvy enough to report an unknown WAP if they see one in their connect-dialogue box?
An interesting meme that relates to the power of social networks is that the “Hollywood model” is an example of ad hoc formation of successful (relatively) short-term “community” for the purpose of creating a product (movie, TV show, play). Interesting lessons can be learned from the “independent contractor” lifestyle of all the individuals in the community who make their careers out of successive entry/exit cycles with these “communities.”
I read this first recently in Howard Gardner’s 5 Minds for the Future (emphasis mine):
“…collaborations ‘Hollywood-style’; large numbers of persons, often unknown to one another, must come together over brief periods of time, make the necessary connections, and trust one another to complete the job efficiently and move on to the next assignment-be it making a movie sequel or advising another corporation.”
I also recently heard an interesting talk by Noshir Contractor, in which he categories the motivations of people in different kinds of these networks/communities, and how they change over time.
The area that I think is critical for Microsoft to grok, and get in front of, are these notions around identity and trust.
In Hollywood, your reputation is everything. For one segment of the team (actors), it is arguably more important than ability. Everyone, however, cares deeply about, and invests a lot of time in, managing their reputation. A lot of psychological problems of “Hollywood types” can be traced to a confusion on theit part between their reputation and their “psychological” identity.
Trust management flows from this. The more I know about you, the more I can find out about you, the better I can judge the level of trust I can extend to you. Likewise, if I live my life in the open to an extraordinary degree, I make it easier for you to decide the level of trust you want to extend to me.
I think “twitter-like” tools are an interesting development in the space around the “make the necessary connections” problem above. Blogs at Microsoft are one of the ways we try to address the “trust” issue.
Thoughts? Share your comments here.
I once had the life-changing opportunity to watch Phillipe Petit dance on the wire from about 100 feet away, about 6 stories up, in Denver, 1983. I’ll never forget it.
This CBS story “The Great Feat of Philippe Petit” includes a some can’t miss shots in the video clip.
Don’t miss the movie of his legendary, inspirational, “feat” – recently nominated for an Oscar.
A customer passes on this tip for speeding up your offline P2V conversions using SVMM:
“If I use a DHCP address all is fast. It’s only when I choose to use a static IP address it is slow. I’m guessing that by hard coding WinPE with a static address the speed and duplex settings are also getting hard coded and in my case this is at the wrong speed. “
Thanks Stuart!
For more info see , P2V: Converting Physical Computers to Virtual Machines in VMM (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc764232.aspx)
Windows Live is offering FrameIt beta free-as-in-beer. With FrameIt, you can set up photo collections to stream into your digital photo frame or any of your RSS enabled devices, like your desktop. How cool is that? Also includes:
Lean into education. The next generation are the ones who will have to save the world’s economies and environment. The US Govt economic stimulus package will start funneling long-overdue financial support to schools. What can you do?
Make sure your school’s IT organization is making use of all that Microsoft has to offer. For example:
Windows Essential Business Server (check out the Momentum program support you can get)
Windows SteadyState 2.5
Liveatedu
Microsoft Answers
Podcasting Kit for SharePoint (PKS)
TechNet Plus
Semblio: Microsoft Semblio consists of an SDK for developers to create and package content; an assembly tool for educators to combine multiple types of content into a single, multimedia package; and a runtime media player that students and educators can use to view and interact with the lessons and presentations.
Get more productive using free Office templates
IT Pro learning snacks
Start posting videos to free Silverlight Streaming
Microsoft Online Services
Socialize your IT department - make maximum use of the new developments on TN/MSDN, such as Social Bookmarking, Forums, CodePlex*. Community Content
Train up with Microsoft Assurance Learning Benefits
Intranet Site Model Zip Download (74.0 MB)
Is the school you are connected to making use of all these resources? If not, please e-mail them this blog so they can check out what’s available.
The Office SharePoint Server 2007 folks think they have a better TechNet TechCenter design. You can see it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/default.aspx
Go check it out and give them some feedback, or leave comments here and I will forward them on.
What I really like about it as an IT Pro:
Redesigned TechCenter to appear simple and concise, but be expandable
Now, their library page looks the same, but we must walk before we run, right?