Dick Morley

Moving trendlines from professionals to the masses

dick.morley@cyon.com — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 05:00:00 GMT

The road to the future is not a projection of the past. As the book "The Black Swan" suggests, improbable events occur frequently. It is unlikely that a specific event (earthquake - mud slide - drought - and on) will occur. But, it is probable that some improbable event will occur often. So projections of events based upon a naive analysis will be flawed. Expect a decisive turn of events. Good or bad.

The trend in technology to believe in short term trend extrapolations is naive at best. So what do we do? HP looks at the top 1% of patents, determined by the reference frequency, to learn the trends. Even if we didn't know what they are. And seven of eight of these salient inventions are done by individuals or small organizations. Only one in eight is initiated by large organizations.

Let’s look at the social trends. Engineers are in short supply. CAD/CAM training is lengthy and ponderous. We expand a problem to fit our concept of solution. For an analogy, consider monster trucks. Those big earth moving machines serves a big need, but for some jobs, like the bringing cable the last mile to the home, they’re counter-productive. The invention of the backhoe and the Fordson tractor overwhelmed the market because they filled that need not served by big earth moving machines. The Monster shovels never saw it coming.

Movies vs TV, iPod vs music distribution, trucks vs rail, USPO vs Fed-Ex are but a few examples. Newer trends are Computer Games vs Movies, Vista vs OS X, and for our audience, Mainstream CAD vs Google SketchUp. For those on the right side of the equation, we just want to solve a problem, not learn to use the tool.

We need to solicit revolutionary elements into our staid and rational engineering systems.

Photosynth and CAD

dick.morley@cyon.com — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT

I got this from my friends at NCMS (Tony Haynes) and tis food for thought
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

Take a look at the link above and then consider all of the DoD legacy systems that began life in pre-CAD days but have been enhanced over the years with a multitude of modifications where design data spans the spectrum from 2D drawings on vellum to 3D CAD solid models annotated with PMI information. Is it possible that Photosynth technology can relate all those different types of image data to produce a result that is far richer than anything available today? I think it may well be the “next big thing” in useful application of mixed media data for sustainment.

I sure agree, even though is calls for monster screens and GB of running data. We sure can browse our design and images better than now..

Risk Management

dick.morley@cyon.com — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT

Risk management helps get a project done, on budget and on time.

We need to become professional managers. Risk management is a tool that is seldom used in marketing and tool development. Risk, the probability of something happening that impacts your objective, is a chance to make either a gain or a loss. It is measured in terms of likelihood and consequence and, in this business, "holy shit" is an acceptable term.

Don't use an immature process for analysis.

Use the natural habitat of the project.

Teach and train formally and often.

Think risk beginning to end, collect data from beginning to end.

Risk and opportunity go hand in hand.

We tend to treat projects as an art form, but it really is engineering. Comments? Dick Morley

Introduction, innovation, and smoke.

dick.morley@cyon.com — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT

Introduction of Morley, and what innovation does.More...