Confused about the Internet of Things? Join the club

Over the past year or so there has been a mounting flood of tweets, news reports, white papers, and

announcements related to the “Internet of Things”.  This is you know, where you roll out of bed, grab your smart device, and tell it to get the toaster ready.  As you’re getting dressed, you receive a text message telling you your toast is ready and browned to perfection.  Later while at the office your stapler messages you that it needs a refill.  Sarcasm intended, but the possibilities are endless and only limited by our imagination when one thinks of the universe of interconnected devices. You see, one day there will be RFID chips and IP addresses attached to just about everything we use. 

But first, in order for these devices to truly be interoperable, they need to be able to communicate with each other via some sort of common protocol, a standard.  Before this can happen, there has to be a generally accepted set of rules governing whatever that standard purports to define.  Ideally, this acceptance should be industry wide and adopted by partner firms and their competitors.  These standards are set by standards bodies comprised of member companies whose employees volunteer their time and expertise.

In the course of my career, I’ve had varying degrees of experience with a couple of different standards groups:  ANSI X12, which defines one of the standards for Electronic Data Interchange in a variety of industries, and papinet which is a global standard for supply chain messaging within the pulp and paper vertical markets – from raw timber harvesting to the printing of end point magazines and newspapers.  Work on a standards body often requires a great deal of time as well as a significant financial commitment for travel and related expenses.  During my tenure working with the papinet team, we held working group meetings in Washington DC, Oslo, Seattle, Vienna, Chicago, and Helsinki, and all that was in about a six-month period.

Standards bodies are governed by an executive steering committees comprised of various companies with interest in the standard (which often compete directly against one another) and contain various ‘Working groups’.  It is within these working groups where the nuts and bolts of the standards are actually defined.   Working groups meet frequently and the members have to put their own company’s work on hold while they meet.   It’s a typically Socratic process where subgroups and teams hash out the details of a particular specification and then present and defend their proposal to the larger  group.  After an iterative process of proposals and working drafts, presentations and rebuttals, the final draft proposal is formally written up and presented to ‘Industry’ for comment and trial use before formal adoption.

We’re now seeing the beginnings of defined standards groups for the Internet of Things.  However, it’s important that we don’t end up with competing standards.   Some of this will shake out as the nascent IoT ecosystem matures but it’s important to coalesce the best ideas, practices, taxonomy, use cases, and business models in order to build a robust standard for the Internet of Things that will benefit all of us.

Here are some of the groups trying to get a grip on the whole IoT space before it things get out of control and become unmanageable.  I’m no engineer, and I can’t say that I fully understand how these groups will work together, but in order for things to move forward without too much chaos there should be some symbiosis between these entities.

  

Industrial Internet Consortium

This organization is backed by  AT&T, Cisco, General Electric, IBM, and Intel.   The IIC describes itself as a “not-for-profit organization that catalyzes, coordinates, and manages the collaborative efforts of industry, academia, and the government to accelerate growth of the Industrial Internet.”  Its working committees include teams focused on four primary areas:   Technology, Architecture, Security, Marketing

“The Industrial Internet Consortium doesn’t establish standards – rather, we evaluate and organize existing standards, and we advocate for open standard technologies in order to ease the deployment of connected technologies. “ – Lynne Canavan, Senior Program Manager, IIC

The IIC proposes to “take the lead in establishing interoperability across various industrial environments for a more connected world”. Specifically, the consortium’s charter will be to encourage innovation by:

•      Utilizing existing and creating new industry use cases and test beds for real-world applications;
•      Delivering best practices, reference architectures, case studies, and standards requirements to ease deployment of connected technologies;
•      Influencing the global standards development process for internet and industrial systems;
•      Facilitating open forums to share and exchange real-world ideas, practices, lessons, and insights;
•      Building confidence around new and innovative approaches to security

 The IIC also maintains various ‘Testbeds’ conforming to IIC reference architecture where “solutions can be deployed and tested in a [controlled] environment that resembles real-world conditions.”

OpenInterconnect Consortium

The OIC has a stated goal of “defining the connectivity requirements and ensuring interoperability of the billions of devices that will make up the emerging Internet of Things”

This effort is backed by Atmel, Broadcom, Dell, Intel, Samsung, Wind River  It is the “intention of the OIC is to create standard specifications for interoperability across connected devices."

Based on the statements between these organizations, it appears that the IIC hopes to become a kind of secretariat for the nascent standards which the OIC hopes to be the author and developer of.

Internet of Things World Forum

The primary goal of the IoTWF is to accelerate the market adoption of the Internet of Things.  The focus here is on more growing the IoT at a macro level.  This group will focus more on driving adoption of whatever standards prove dominant and encouraging its members to work with one another to drive industry as a whole.  In the next IOT World Forum meeting (October 2014, Chicago), there will be talks and keynote addresses focusing on Smart Cities, the Smart Grid, Manufacturing Use Cases and industry-specific sessions, i.e, Retail, Oil and Gas, Transportation. , Healthcare, etc.

There are other groups and organizations hoping to elbow their way in to becoming major players in the IoT including the recently announced Thread initiative which plans to develop an IP based networking protocol to connect devices over a mesh network.  Thread's backers include Samsung, Google (Nest), and Silicon Labs among others.

And finally there’s the AllSeen Alliance which wants to “encourage widespread adoption and help accelerate the development and evolution of an interoperable peer connectivity and 

communications framework based on AllJoyn for devices and applications in the Internet of Everything”.  The reference to ‘Alljoyn’ points to an open source project by Qualcomm which provides a framework for interoperability among connected devices.

There clearly seems to be some overlap among some of these initiatives and I expect to see some shakeout, but this will be an exciting space to be in over the coming years and some good opportunities for companies with vision to put forward some great new solutions that will benefit all of us in ways big and small.

So there’s my take on the beginnings of enterprise trying to get a handle on the Internet of Things.  Clear as mud ?

Henna and What ?

When I was in B-School years ago, we used Philip Kotler's classic tome, Marketing Management as our primary textbook.  I vividly recall the lessons related to what we all know as the "marketing mix".  The four components to the marketing mix were 1) Product; 2) Price; 3) Promotion; and 4) Packaging.

Product was the actual item itself that would be used, consumed, eaten, assembled - whatever.  Price is obviously what the buyer would need to pay to acquire the item (typically we were discussing end-users in this context).  Promotion comprised advertising, PR, in-store displays, coupons, discounts in newspaper or magazines etc. Nowadays that would include promotion on SoMe platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.  Finally the fourth "P" of the marketing mix was Packaging.  How it was wrapped, boxed, labeled, presented,  in order to be picked up by the consumer and brought home.

Now depending on one's point of view, there may be some discussion or disagreement between the overlap between Product and Packaging.  Is the product name itself a component of the "Product" or the "Packaging"?  If a given product was prepared in two different packages with different names, which one would sell 'better', but these are discussions and topics for market researchers and perhaps another blog post.

The example here, "Henna "N" Placenta" just seems to me to be a horrible example of a complete packaging fail but from what I've read, it seems to be an excellent product with good reviews by end users.  Yet the product name seems so off-putting to me that I fail to see how it passed the Marketing Review committee on Hask's Brand Management team.  Maybe this is an example of a product that is so good it will sell well regardless of its name but it certainly doesn't seem like a product I would not want to go anywhere near.

Can Twitter Make You a Better Writer ?

All experienced writers know the phrase “less is more” as it relates to the written word.  The first rule of self-editing is to review one’s early drafts and gradually reduce the word count to eliminate unnecessary verbiage that still leaves enough to get the point across.  Whenever I write something, whether an email, technical document, or a blog post, there follows an iterative process of culling and excising unneeded words and phrases and perhaps supplementing what remains with the occasional added emphasis or other revisions. Finally,  I’m left with is something that’s usually 1/3 shorter than the original document and hopefully a clearer, more persuasive argument.

 As I’ve become moderately active on Twitter, I find that the same principle applies.  How many times have any of us tried to send a Tweet that at first extends far beyond 140 characters?  There’s no way to escape the 140 character limit, so the choice is either abandon the Tweet entirely, or edit it to make every word matter.  Reduce or eliminate unneeded adjectives; find one word to replace two; move phrases around and still find away to get your point across.  It’s fine to use intentional misspellings and abbreviations on occasion, e.g., ‘ur’, ‘btw’ - but if more people applied the same amount of criticism and editing to their email messages and work-related documents, we might find a higher degree of quality writing both in and out of the work place.

Six Sigma, Elon Musk, Process, and the Need for Creativity in the Workplace

I want to thank Mark Babbit (@YouTernMark on Twitter) for bringing this interesting post by Andrew Smart to my attention.  (http://switchandshift.com/six-sigma-is-draining-employees-creativity)

Smart quotes from Elon Musk on an occasion in which Musk say, "I don't believe in process" because it stifles creativity and critical, out of the box thinking.  I could only shake head and think, "Huh ?"

The 'villain' in this post is Six Sigma.  Now, I am not a huge fan of Six Sigma  (and don't get me started on ITIL),  but Six Sigma is simply a way to define, and then refine a given work process using statistical analysis of each step and input.  Going through a Six Sigma project is a painful exercise for anyone, but once the project is over, there is a new, improved business process in place for whatever the exercise was about.

Smart quotes Musk saying, "The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking...." .  Now I'll concede that perhaps at a macro level Musk doesn't believe in process, but at a micro level, process and defined methodologies are critical to gaining consistent results, improved efficiency, and ultimatly lower process costs.

When I say 'at a macro level', I mean that Musk is a disrupter, an outlier, who wouldn't be where he is now by coloring inside the lines all the time and sticking to process, the status quo.  We need these big thinking types to look at things in new ways - absent from process - in order to create this brave new world we're in now.  He also needs recruit others like him to help build these companies.

However, at a micro level - in the day to day running of a business and creating this new world, process is critical - as long as it's not sacrosanct.  A well defined methodology is to a business process as JIT inventory management is to a taut supply chain.  The leaner the process, the more efficient the steps, and the fewer wasted motions are involved.

However, processes - even good processes - can usually be improved and that's where creativity and critical thinking will always have a place in a good company.  With the precise engineering requirements and (literally) mission-critical tolerances needed by Tesla and Space-X , there is no way he could run either one of these two amazing ventures without well defined, specific, rigorous processes in place.

However, once any process becomes an end to itself, and process managers refuse to entertain critical thinking by team members in a position to provide input to potential improvements to that process, that's when everyone suffers and this is what I believe Musk means when he says he doesn't believe in process.

Six Sigma isn't draining anyone's creativity.  Only narrow minded managers can do that.

Thoughts on an amazing F1 season

The 2012 season for Formula One finished last weekend at the Interlagos circuit in Sao Paolo. After a nail biting race (at least as far as how the overall World Driver’s Championship would turn out), we've finally reached the season’s finish line and can collectively take a few deep breaths and gather up our reserves for the first race of the 2013 season in Melbourne in a little over three months.

This has been a very special season for me – certainly my best ever because after being a fan of open wheel racing in general, and F1 in particular, I was finally able to attend my first Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas, near Austin, Texas. It was a wonderful experience, and I’m already looking forward to attending as many more GPs as I am able to in the future.

During this year, I've been privileged to meet quite a few professionals who are part of what's euphemistically called the "F1 Circus" . I won’t name them here, but I’ve met racing journalists working in the US and abroad in both print and broadcasting media. These pros spend between 9 and 10 months each year on the road as the F1 series travels around the globe from continent to continent, from Australia to England, from Shanghai to Sao Paolo, only to start over again in Melbourne in just over three short months. I’m not kidding when I say that I wish I could work in their world. I know it’s not always fun and exciting. The hassles of constant travel can wear anyone down, but what a life to live while you can do it.

I’ve been a fan of open wheel racing, including Indy Cars and Formula One racing since I was a teenager. Back in the days before the internet (or even VCRs !) about the only way a kid in the states could even watch an F1 race was via tape delay and that was reserved for the biggest race of all, Monaco. Needless to say, most of my F1 knowledge and insight back then came from magazines. It was much easier to follow Indy cars since the races took place in the states, and at least the Indy 500 was always front and center on ABC's Wide World of Sports. I remember Mario winning at Indy in 1969 and a few years afterwards, the tragic year of 1973 in which both Art Pollard and Swede Savage were killed. Just three years later, Niki Lauda had his fiery crash at the Nurburgring, and much later the tragic deaths of Ratzenberger and Senna at San Marino finally forced sweeping changes to improve safety in the sport.  In the grand scheme of things, the lows aren't quite balanced by the highs because no number of wins, championship drives, and excitement can undo the death of a race car driver or track marshall, but the as long as safety improvements are made and the sport becomes safer, then one can say that some good has come of their tragic deaths.

Back to this F1 season. During winter testing at Jerez, who would have thought that Scuderia Ferrari would be in contention for the WDC ? Even their full coming out party had to be cancelled due to snow and poor weather. The cars were considered slow and uncompetitive. Ferrari-istas complained about the nose of the F2012 (“snout” may be more like it). Going into the first race at Melbourne, the Scuderia's cars for 2012 seemed destined for lackluster performance at best when compared to arch rivals McLaren and Red Bull, but once piloted by the best driver in Formula One today - Fernando Alonso - the car came alive and he finished 5th in Melbourne and then won the very next race at Sepang. Had Alonso not been crashed out in the first lap at Spa after Grosjean’s blunder at the start, it’s quite likely that he would have collected his 3rd WDC rather than Vettel.

Meanwhile, his teammate Felipe Massa seemed to finally return to his old self after that terrible accident at the Hungaroring a few years back. Although he didn’t win any races, Felipe returned to the podium twice this year with numerous 4th and 5th place finishes and finished in the points in 14 out of the 20 races this year. He proved to be more than a worthy partner to the great Alonso.

This year saw the welcome return of Kimi Raikkonen to F1 from his self-imposed exile exploring other forms of motor racing. He brought excitement and winning ways to the “new” Lotus team and proved once again that an iconclast such as he still knows how to win, and on his own terms. Kimi's now famous retort to his engineer in Abu Dhabi, “Leave me alone - I know what to do”, says it all. His teammate, Romain Grosjean showed a lack of maturity in the cockpit, with some disastrous consequences (he may have cost Alonso the title WDC title with his shunt at Spa) but Romain also demonstrated how fast he is by finishing on the podium three times this year in spite of several DNFs.

I’ll be sad to see the departure of Kamui Kobayashi from the Sauber team (and probably F1 completely) and the likely departure of Heikki Kovaleinen from Caterham (same), but especially with Sauber, it’s been wonderful to see how that team has emerged as a contender again ! Although it couldn’t really challenge for the Constructor’s Title, drivers Kobayashi and the young Mexican Sergio Perez are both exciting drivers with the skills to win at this level. Next year they’ll both be gone as Kamui moves out of F1 and Perez switches to McLaren but Peter Sauber and Frank Williams’s eponymous teams have both demonstrated that there is still room for the independents among the more monied and richer teams in the sport. The promotion of Monisha Kaltenborn as team Principal at Sauber, and the increasing number of women in the F1 paddock prove that women have a firm place in Formula One and after a long absence (Leila Lombardi in 1976) we may see another woman in the driver’s seat on one of the teams within the next few seasons.

Finally, we see the passing of the torch from the last, and greatest F1 champion to the next superstar - Sebastian Vettel - a 3 time Champion at the age of 25. At the rate he’s going and with the strength of his Red Bull team, Seb could easily surpass Michael’s 7 WDCs by the end of his career.

It’s a year of transition and changes in 2012-2013. F1 returns to the United States at the beautiful Circuit of the Americas with accolades all around. Lewis Hamilton leaves McLaren, the only team he’s ever known, for Mercedes. Perez leaves Sauber to take Lewis’ spot alongside Jenson Button. Michael Schumacher retires for the second, and final time. Some long time F1 journalists leave the field to find other professional avenues to report on and others and it looks like the HRT team may fold after only three years of competition. F1 is a an expensive ticket for everyone, but Bernie always gets his money up front.

Bring on Jerez and Melbourne. We’re already waiting.

What Defines a Global Individual ?

What defines a Global Individual? Is it reading The Economist or Spiegel ? Watching Deutsche Welle? Vacationing overseas ? Is it being an ex-pat or on a global assignment for one's firm? Not necessarily.

Being a true global individual comes not from travel or reading, but from having an understanding of, and respect for, other peoples and cultures, and as much as possible, having a sense of empathy for their history, ethnicities, languages, geography - and wanting to understand more. It's grasping the realization that the country in which one calls 'home' is just one of many countries and remembering that geopolitics aside, you're not alone out there. The ability to travel helps, but the tremendous cost of international travel prevents many from seeing these other lands first hand, but doesn't prevent one from being (or becoming) a global individual.

I've also read that some firms are finding it difficult to find employees willing to accept an assignment abroad. It seems that employees are worried about the hardships that would be faced by their families in a strange land or they have a perception that by being so far away, they may seem 'invisible' to the executives back home and could miss out on possible opportunities for career advancement.

As to the first item, that's a perfectly understandable issue, but it can be addressed by good research up front, tapping the large network of expats who have gone before, using the resources offered by the sponsoring firm, and finally using the internet to really learn about the community to which you could be joining. The second item just doesn't make sense to me at all. In this era of globalism and multiculturalism, what would-be executive wouldn't want to grab at a chance to add some true international experience to one's resume?

There's got to be a reason I keep practicing my German and French on an almost daily basis. Is anyone out there listening?

Odds and Ends. Formula 1, smart phone apps, Twitter data mining...

Formula 1 – Bahrain GP Unif1ed ?

There seems to be a different ‘feel’ and perhaps even a sense of foreboding ahead of this year’s race next Sunday. Some journalists are in Bahrain now, more will be there soon, and the teams themselves will begin arriving shortly. Practice sessions begin Friday with qualifying and the race itself falling on Saturday and Sunday. Last year’s race was cancelled due to unrest following the ‘Arab Spring’ which began in Tunisia and quickly spread to Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. However this year, even as the unrest continues, and seems to be escalating, the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone (along with Jean Todt) have declared that this year’s race will continue as planned. The FIA’s announcement on 13 April indicated that officials from FIA have been meeting with government leaders and security officials from Bahrain and concluded that “the proper security measures are in place for the running of a Formula One World Championship event in Bahrain”.

The problem is that (according to the press release) Todt’s trip to Bahrain was back approximately five months ago (November 2011) and since then, unrest has only grown as the date of the race grows ever closer. According to one foreign correspondent I follow on Twitter (Byron Young of the Mirror (@byronF1), protesters are planning two ‘Days of Rage’ during the GP on Saturday and Sunday. No one wants any trouble at the GP, but if the citizens are determined to have their voices hears, there is likely no better time when much of the sporting world will have its attention focused on their tiny island in the Gulf.

***

I’ve recently become particularly intrigued by two small companies – Insightpool, and Placeme. They have nothing in common with each other except that each of these is thinking ‘outside the box’ and have come up with solutions to problems that didn’t even exist. I don’t mean that in a sarcastic manner. After all – Apple’s success was at least partially predicated on coming up with consumer products that didn’t exist and all of a sudden everyone had to have an iPod, an iPhone, and now an iPad. Insightpool has become adept at data mining and farming Twitter feeds to a deep level in order to provide its clients with very granular data specifically geared to market research. As Twitter grows in popularity and this company’s data mining tools and algorithms become more sophisticated, I believe Insightpool is poised for takeoff (or perhaps acquisition) as the company gains customers and word of mouth. The founders are skilled at social media and are well connected with the Atlanta technology scene. Insightpool could use a lot more depth on its website (all it has now is a landing page). Insightpool’s tagline is ‘Converting your competitors’ customers’ – something all companies would like to do. Whatever the future holds for this company, I’m sure it’s be bright and I’ll be watching intently.

Placeme is a startup that was founded by Sam Liang who is one of the super smart ex-Googlers creating the world we live in now. I’d have to thank Robert Scoble for bringing this to my attention. Robert doesn’t know me from Adam, but he posted a video interview with Sam Liang on Google Plus and I was immediately hooked. Sam likes to use the phrase “persistent ambient sensing”. Once invoked, Placeme records the sensor data from one’s smart phone including the GPS, accelerometer, compass, clock, - virtually all motion – “to learn about the mobile user in real time and over time”. Placeme runs on Android and IoS and is from Alohar Mobile which offers an SDK to developers who could then use this data to develop their own location based apps. To paraphrase from Alohar’s site, an app developer interested in creating a ‘healthy living’ app might use the SDK to tell a user something like, “I see you’ve been to McDonalds’s five times this week, but you’ve only been to the gym once”. I’ve only begun using this app, and don’t have much data recorded yet, but my head is spinning when I think of the possibilities. For those worried about privacy concerns the privacy policy is strong and frankly, if you’re worred about stuff like that, no one is forcing you to use it in the first place. Just log out and turn of the app if you don’t want your phone to record your locations and time spent there.

Disclosure – I have no personal connection with either one of these companies except for one small exception: The founders of Insightpool also have a music-related site, gorankem for which my daughter has occasionally helped with social media marketing until the rigors of being a fulltime student took precedence. It was through her work with gorankem that I first learned about the very cool work being done by Insightpool.

A Few Random Things...

Berlin - I've recently come across several online articles about this city becoming the latest hotspot for tech startups - especially in the social networking space. The most recent being Om Malik's nice post from a few days ago. I've only been to Berlin once, about four years ago, but I was very impressed with the city and all it had to offer. It's big, multicultural, has a good transportation system, inexpensive housing, and boasts some world class universities and technical institutions. Throw in the Currywurst stands on every other corner and the assistance offered by the city government and groups such as Berlin Partner, and you have a all the right ingredients for this city to rival anyplace else as a proving ground for new technology.


10 years ago - I lost a job I had been in for only 11 months. Yep. Three days after Christmas. I was pulled me into a conference room with the head of HR and that was that. The place was truly Dickensian (It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...), but mostly, it was the worst of times.

While out walking my dog today, I wished a woman I passed on the street a 'Merry Christmas'. She seemed quite startled that some random stranger would speak to her and offer some sort of random pleasantry. "People don't talk to one another any more", she said. "Well I do", I replied. Her smile afterwards made my day.

Just sayin'