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Most recent blog entries
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World 2.0 |
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Joel Orr
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By Joel Orr on
3/25/2008
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On Dave Gurteen's knowledge management blog, a fascinating take on the "2.0" meme:
I
recently spent the whole of January in SE Asia; giving talks and
running knowledge cafes in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. As
always I learnt as much as a I taught at these events.
Most of us
understand what Web 2.0 is all about as we move from a read-only web to
a read-write or participatory web.
And we are starting to come
to grips with so called Enterprise 2.0 where the concept and
technologies and social tools of Web 2.0 are moving from the open web
into organizations.It is still early days and there are many issues to
be grappled with as we try to balance the structure and stability of
the old world with the more fluid and complex nature of the new.
But
the "2.0 meme" is starting to affect everything. In a talk in Kuala
Lumpur I was asked how you implement Enterprise 2.0 and I was talking
about so ...
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Global warming? Maybe. But we should still work on alternatives to fossil fuels. |
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Joel Orr
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By Joel Orr on
3/21/2008
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Amazing how even the most scientifically-minded become advocates of causes whose scientific basis still holds many open questions. There are systemic reasons for this, and they are not new, and I am very far from the first to point this out. I'm reading an anthology of editorials from Analog (formerly Astounding) Science Fiction magazine, written in the forties, fifties, and sixties, by John W. Campbell. He has much to say about the institutional need to quash alternatives--in medicine, very notably, but also in all sciences.
The referenced article below points out that there is a lot of emotion behind climate issues today--but that the implications of the questionable conclusions hold regardless. This is from the American Society for Engineering Educators.
Canadian editorial criticizes climate "hysterics."
In a
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BIM Handbook |
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Deke Smith
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By Deke Smith on
3/18/2008
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BIM Handbook, A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contractors by Chuck Eastman, Paul Teicholtz, Rafael Sacks and Kathleen Liston recently published by Wiley with a forward by Jerry Laiserin is the first scholarly text of its kind for building information modeling. It covers the subject well and provides a lot of good insight as to what tools are available and what is possible today with the tools. It also takes a glimpse into the future of where this whole effort is headed. This is a fast moving target and it will also be fun to look back at this book in ten years as the baseline of what it looked like in 2008
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New edition of JBIM available |
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Deke Smith
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By Deke Smith on
3/18/2008
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buildingSMART alliance™ has published its second edition of the Journal of Building Information Modeling. The cover story about BIMStorm™ is by Kimon Onuma. There are other articles covering the latest concepts in this exploding industry. It will be available in PDF on the buildingSMART alliance web site (www.buildingsmartalliance.org) soon and will be in print in a couple of weeks.
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Autodesk World Press Days |
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Joel Orr
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By Joel Orr on
2/15/2008
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Autodesk held its World Press Days in San Francisco earlier this week. The bottom line: Autodesk is focusing on helping customers integrate all the product lines where it makes sense. The use of REVIT for facilities, integrated with the use of Inventor for the machines that get placed in the facilities, along with Civil 3D for the site - you get the idea.
Running throughout the presentations was the thread of sustainability. Green designs were featured, and environmental impact considered in each case study.
CEO Carl Bass kicked off the event, and was accessible throughout. There is the clear sense that the company is blossoming with an engineer at the helm.
Autodesk's digital prototyping message was prominent, and several speakers went into some depth to explain that this approach to the automation of design is well-thought-out, and is sound both philosophically and organizationally.
The firm now has a Plant divisi ...
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Is SaaS the Killer App for the CAD Industry? |
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Brian Seitz
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By Brian Seitz on
2/10/2008 9:00 AM
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As the Engineering and the Software industries have changed over time, the priorities of users and vendors have diverged. The old industry model of doing business selling products may be becoming obsolete as a new model of selling service takes on momentum in other software industries. Engineering SaaS maybe the next Killer App in Engineering Software as it will change the fundamental value proposition for businesses. Both Engineering firms and Engineering Software providers should seriously look into this new model of business.
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It's never too late to have a happy childhood |
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Joel Orr
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By Joel Orr on
1/27/2008
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That's a phrase I heard in the framework of the Hoffman Process - a
methodology for finding out things that are keeping you from being who
you really are, and taking action to get them out of the way. But that's
not with this post is about.
I
read recently - it may have been in an ASEE (American Society of
Engineering Educators) mailing - that most people have determined
whether they will pursue a career in engineering or science by the end
of the 8th grade. And the decision hinges on how they feel about math.
I've
also read recently that the number of young people choosing
engineering, science, and technology professions in the US is declining.
The
ability to do math is a filter for getting into good engineering and
science schools. On the surface, that seems reasonable: Math is the
language of precision, and its abstractive tools provide access to the
reasoning of the ages, as well as the ability to carry it o ...
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Book review: "Everything is Miscellaneous" |
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Joel Orr
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By Joel Orr on
1/25/2008
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When David Weinberger spoke at COFES 2005, his topic was "Everything is Miscellaneous." Now his book of that name is out, and it is fascinating. The implications for the engineering software business are worth thinking about.
Here's an essay Weinberger wrote for Amazon.com called, "The Flocking of Information":
As businesses go miscellaneous, information gets chopped into smaller
and smaller pieces. But it also escapes its leash--adding to a pile
that can be sorted and arranged by anyone with a Web browser and a Net
connection. In fact, information exhibits bird-like "flocking
behavior," joining with other information that adds value to it,
creating swarms that help customers and, ultimately, the businesses
from which the information initially escaped. For example, Wize.com
is a customer review site founded in 2005 by entrepr ...
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