Author Archives: Rick Ladd

About Rick Ladd

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I retired over14 years ago, though I've continued to work on and off since then. Mostly I'm just cruising, making the most of what time I have remaining. Although my time is nearly up, I still care deeply about the kind of world I'll be leaving to those who follow me and, to that end, I am devoted to seeing the forces of repression and authoritarianism are at least held at bay, if not crushed out of existence. I write about things that interest me and, as an eclectic soul, my interests run the gamut from science to spirituality, governance to economics, art and engineering. I'm hopeful one day my children will read what I've left behind.
16 October 2009

Seeking Balance

By Rick Ladd

Lately I’ve been having a bit of trouble coming up with things to blog about. It’s not that there aren’t subjects worthy of discussing or exploring; it’s just that most of them have to do with my job and I’m uncertain over whether or not – and to what extent – I can share what it is I’m doing and the issues my company is facing. Neither is any of it “Top Secret” (though some of our work is) but, rather, we are an old and staid aerospace company with deep roots in governmental contracting and with a strong impulse to hold everything we do close to the vest. This is, in part, to protect our intellectual property which, in the world we move in, is quite valuable, and the need to comply with the provisions of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) that provide very serious – and expensive – penalties for “exporting” controlled information and knowledge. Export-controlled knowledge is our bread and butter, so I need to be sure I err on the side of caution.

So, I guess this in the way of a caveat. I would love to reveal more about where I’m employed; after all, I’ve been there over twenty years and my experiences greatly color how I see the business world and what I have to say about my struggles to incorporate Enterprise 2.0 design principles and tools within the organization. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do so for the foreseeable future, though I am working on figuring out just how to step up the precipice without dropping off the cliff of inappropriate posting. I suspect this will be an ongoing struggle, but I will keep trying to figure out how to share my thoughts about our efforts at developing into a company that derives a large part of its income from industrial and commercial efforts, rather than government contracts.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Business

26 August 2009

To Search or Not to Search

By Rick Ladd

About a week and half ago, while searching for I have no idea what, someone where I work came across a document or two that contained sensitive personal information. They should not have found this information, yet there it was. They were using a tool we have called Goldfire Researcher, a very powerful semantic search engine developed and sold by Invention Machine. The discovery precipitated an order from our IP Attorney to immediately remove access to all the databases generated from our huge share drive. This occurred almost on the same day I had another of Invention Machine’s products, Goldfire Innovator, installed on my machine and a couple of days before I was to receive training on its use. Needless to say, the training became exceedingly difficult as there was nothing to use for research; at least nothing internally.

Today we are to meet with two of our lawyers and decide how to proceed. I don’t believe anyone thinks it is in the best interests of the company to not be able to search our own data for useful information in either performing our daily work, or in our innovation initiatives. I understand the position of the lawyers. Being one myself (though that is not my position where I work), I appreciate the need to protect the privacy of our employees and the information that was found should not have been where it was. We need to put a process in place that allows access, yet protects all kinds of sensitive information. It will be interesting to see just what we come up with.

I should point out this is not a shortcoming of the tool(s) that Invention Machine provides. Rather it is, in some ways, a fortunate side-effect of the power of the tool(s) that we have surfaced areas where others have not been adhering to the procedures we already have in place for protecting this kind of information. I am hopeful we will find a way out of this quandary soon and will be better organized with respect to all our data as a result.

Rick

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23 August 2009

A Few Wordz on Spelng, Grammar, and Punctuation.

By Rick Ladd

In the course of an interesting conversation precipitated by a Tweet from one of the folks I follow on Twitter (is that from the Department of Redundancy Department?), I was asked to share a blog I posted on a site within the firewall where I work. Since the subject of that blog has absolutely nothing to do specifically with the business I’m in, I have no problem doing that. Please understand, though, I was writing in response to an issue I had heard raised numerous times at work and I was specifically trying to address that issue.

Nevertheless, the issue probably exists to some extent outside our particular firewall. In fact, since the blog post that precipitated the conversation I’m referring to was making a point far more generally applicable than the subject of my blog, I feel compelled to point it out as well. It’s from ProNagger.com – Converting Procrastination Into Action, and the specific post is located here. What follows now is my post from work, the title of which is identical to that of this post:

I have heard that some people are a bit reluctant to use AskMe because they know whatever they write will “live on” for a long period of time and they don’t want to take a chance of looking foolish for years to come. I can understand that, especially when it comes to taking a position with respect to a technical issue that may not have a crystal clear answer. I can also understand the reluctance when it comes to spelling, grammar, etc.

So let me point something out that I’ve learned over the last couple of years. First of all, while spelling, grammar, and punctuation are all very important (and few people are quite the stickler I am for their correctness), when it comes to communicating and sharing ideas, I think they’re a bit overrated. This has been driven home to me especially when using Windows Messenger, which I do quite a bit. I have finally reached the point where I don’t bother using capital letters and I only use punctuation when absolutely necessary to be clear.

I also use Twitter, which only allows for the use of 140 characters in any act of publishing. So, sometimes I take a lot of liberties with spelling in order to pack as much meaning into a short communication. So, the point I’m making here is . . . I hope you won’t let the possibility you will post questions, answers, etc. on AskMe with mistakes in them stop you from contributing. It really isn’t that big a deal – especially when balanced against the substantial need to increase our ability to share our knowledge and learn from each other.

This post generated quite a few comments, most expressing relief to have this pointed out to them. One of them, from a colleague I know well who blogs a fair amount internally, merely pointed out his discovery that the original author of the post can edit it, but those who comment could not. I felt compelled to respond and here is what I said:

I have learned the same thing. However, I specifically refrained from correcting this blog because of the message I wanted to convey. I think we’re all pretty much in agreement that spelling, grammar, and punctuation are extremely important in demonstrating the veracity of a document intended to convey important factual information and, perhaps, some other types of communication that require excellent form. I think we all agree as well there are certain forms of communication that needn’t be quite as “clean” as others; IM and blogs come immediately to mind. I have read a lot of blogs by a lot of very well-read and highly respected people. I notice errors popping up all the time. I think most people forgive those errors, not because they don’t matter at all, but because they don’t really detract from the message and the rapid dissemination of ideas is seen as more valuable than careful editing. Besides, blogs generally don’t go through edit cycles and, if you read the newspaper you know editing is no guarantee of good writing either.

I have a confession to make. Though I changed nothing in the blog as it appears at work, I did make a couple of changes here where I discovered errors in my original post. Please forgive me. As I’ve confessed elsewhere, I have a tendency to be a member of the Grammar and Spelling Police . . . I have to follow my bliss!

Rick

I have learned the same thing. However, I specifically refrained from correcting this blog because of the message I wanted to convey. I think we’re all pretty much in agreement that spelling, grammar, and punctuation are extremely important in demonstrating the veracity of a document intended to convey important factual information and, perhaps, some other types of communication that require excellent form. I think we all agree as well there are certain forms of communication that needn’t be quite as “clean” as others; IM and blogs come immediately to mind. I have read a lot of blogs by a lot of very well-read and highly respected people. I notice errors popping up all the time. I think most people forgive those errors, not because they don’t matter at all, but because they don’t really detract from the message and the rapid dissemination of ideas is seen as more valuable than careful editing. Besides, blogs generally don’t go through edit cycles and, if you read the newspaper you know editing is no guarantee of good writing either.

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Collaboration

7 August 2009

Social Computing Isn’t Just for Old Folk!

By Rick Ladd

I don’t suppose there are all that many people my age who get so much satisfaction out of all the social computing services and tools available on the Internet nowadays. If they do, I suspect they’re mostly on Facebook, as I am. There’s so much more available, though, and I’m trying to make the most of them. Sometimes it seems a bit overwhelming to try and keep up while also learning how these services can benefit my company (or any company – you never know) as well.

This evening was a great example of why I’m so enamored of them. The weather for the last couple of days has been quite temperate for southern California; far cooler than the previous week, when the temperatures were getting into triple digits. That was great for using the pool, but now I favor just sitting outside and enjoying the cool breeze that picks up at the end of the day.

While I’m sitting on the patio, enjoying at tall Scotch & water, I’m also using my Blackberry to communicate with people all over the country; sometimes all over the world. I have – on my BB – both Twitterberry and Facebook mobile, as well as my Gmail account. So I’m reading an email  from a friend in Florida, carrying on two Twitter conversations with friends in Texas and New York, taking and uploading a cute picture of my oldest (8 y/o) daughter, and reading a response from a friend in Arizona.

The connections available through the Internet are absolutely astounding and it pisses me off to think all this is coming in the late autumn of my life. Nevertheless, I plan on squeezing every last bit of connectivity, education, joy, and solace I can get out it before I move on. This in one awfully contented evening.

PS – As I sit here typing on my laptop, my daughter (who cannot yet type) is sitting next to me with a disconnected keyboard, mimicking my actions, Ooh! Sweet!

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6 August 2009

The Sky is Falling

By Rick Ladd

For the record, I am neither religious nor superstitious. However, enough things have gone wrong today to make me wonder if I shouldn’t at least be knocking on wood my house is still standing and (obviously) my fingers are still working.

The first thing to go on the fritz was our only service/tool I would consider a social tool where I work. We’ve had our IT folks and support from the vendor look at everything and each one of them, so far (time to put the hammer down), is looking at the machine logs and – seeing nothing untoward – shifting responsibility. The problem, however, remains and needs to be dealt with immediately, if not sooner.

So . . . then Twitter suffers a denial of service attack and is either down or clunky for hours on end. I was going through double withdrawal and it was beginning to make me twitch a little bit. Something had to be done.

Well, not much I can do about Twitter but, as the project manager for our internal social tool, I could raise a ruckus and get people doing something – collectively – to help fix this problem. So we get the vendor rep on the phone and he is always helpful and knowledgeable and we work with him frequently to resolve minor issues and discuss feature upgrades, etc.

The conversation starts out just fine but suddenly his phone starts distorting and cutting out. He tries using his cell phone and, after a couple of minutes, it drops from the call. He calls back and, again after a few minutes, it starts distorting again. As of now, we’ve been on and off the phone for over an hour, the problem still exists internally, Twitter stills seem famischt, but at least the phones kinda worked.

I’m wondering, the Perseid meteor shower is only six days away. Maybe Comet Swift-Tuttle is returning to slam us and we’ve just missed it. Maybe its the end-of-days, maybe the Mayan calendar is right or Nostrildamus hit it “on the nose”. Stay tuned.

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Business

5 August 2009

Blogging While Employed & Finding Value

By Rick Ladd

I’m finding it difficult at times to keep my mind on work, mostly because I want to follow the threads of the tweets those I follow on Twitter are providing – and it’s time consuming to do so. There is so much good information out there about how social computing can transform an organization – or even an individual (see Nancy White’s wonderful article here) – and I want to study it all.

I’m not exactly a newbie to this stuff, as I’ve been tweeting for around a year now, I’ve had a blog for seven or eight years, and I’ve been a member of Facebook for quite some time as well. However, the exigencies of my work and family life have kept me from participating as fully as I would like to. This is especially true of my work life. I want to write about it but worry I should not do so, as it might be perceived as disloyal or, heaven forbid, tantamount to sharing information they do not want to make public. I know all about the first amendment, but I like my job – despite the company’s hierarchical, command-and-control past and (mostly) present.

Thankfully, there is change in the wind as more and more people are discovering just how useful social computing can be and how important it is to the future of our company – especially as the market for our services is changing and the need to move from strictly government contracting to far more commercial endeavors increases. Our reluctance to change, I’ve discovered, is not limited to my industry (see this post) – which I find heartening, if somewhat disquieting.

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31 July 2009

E2.0 – Putting a Systems Face on it

By Rick Ladd

One of my Twitter friends directed me to a post she had just put up on the FASTForward blog entitled “The Context of ‘Intent'”. There’s a lot of savvy understanding in this post of hers about how E2.0 needs to synthesize the concepts of adaptation and emergence. One major thing I got out of it may be very applicable to my efforts – and those of many of my colleagues – at developing an enterprise-wide approach to Lessons Learned. In order to do so, we have to change our understanding (IMO) of what exactly Lessons Learned are, i.e. where do they come from, how do we “capture” them, and how do they get used?

Currently, we tend to think of Lessons Learned as special moments in time when we recognize something in our experience has given us an insight that should be captured and made available to others who may be duplicating what we’ve been doing that “generated” the lesson. However, I’m of the opinion lessons are embodied in virtually every document we create. Granted, many of them may be somewhat trivial or don’t have major,  generic implications, but they are lessons  nonetheless.

Getting back to Paula’s blog. It seems to me it would really be valuable (and would  surely be an E2.0 app) if we could create a system which would continuously allow for adaptation of its functionality based on the users’ experience and their desire for adaptation to take the app’s “Lessons” into consideration in making it more capable and responsive. I recommend highly reading this short (despite Paula’s protestations otherwise) blog.

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27 July 2009

On Becoming More of an E2.0 Evangelist

By Rick Ladd

As of today I have become more active in the outside world evangelizing (and learning about others who are evangelizing) Enterprise 2.0. I have been working within my company for close to a year and have achieved some amount of success, but I’ve been reluctant to share what I’ve been doing outside the firewall because of the nature of our business (Aerospace, with heavy emphasis on export-controlled info and knowledge). I have also been somewhat consumed with finishing a Masters degree in Knowledge Management, a field I have been practicing for over a decade. So . . . combined with the imminent completion of that degree, and a newfound desire to learn from others despite the possible discomfort it may at times cause me, I am going to plunge in and root about for the nuggets I need to bring my company up-to-speed.

It’s now or never. Onward and upward . . . and all those aphorisms and cliches that indicate one is moving out on a long-held desire. I am hopeful I can engage many others in this journey. I have much to learn and, perhaps, a little bit to share as well. The job so far has been full of roadblocks and sidetracks, but there is an ever increasing number of people (even in management) who can see the writing on the wall. I’m hopeful as hell!

Rick

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27 February 2009

Discounting Twitter

By Rick Ladd

A little while ago I was at a meeting with reps from an advertising agency that specializes in creating web presence for organizations. They’re pretty well known and have won a webby for one of their campaigns. My organization has never advertised by itself, though it has benefited marginally from ads by parent organizations (and there have been a few . . . organizations, that is).

I was impressed with the web savvy and the general tenor of the presentation these guys gave. Equally, I was happy with the direction our executives went in when discussing this stuff and their overall approach to moving in this direction. There was, however, one item that came up which disturbed me somewhat, and that was a discussion of Twitter in which they were summarily dismissive . . . which I think is a big mistake.

Now I’ll grant this – a business such as ours is not interested in tweets like “Just finished my croissant with black currant jelly. Starbucks is so yesterday”, or “Just finished walking the dog. Back with large bag of poop. Weather looks to be quite comfortable today”. Neither do we care about monetizing Twitter or some similar product. It’s not what we do. However, and this is true whether Twitter finds a way to monetize themselves of whether they just flat out go out of business, the concept of micro-blogging is NOT going to go away. It has too damn many use cases to be ignored.

One example I can think of off the top of my head (and I believe NASA is using this very model to prepare orbiters for missions) is for a geographically dispersed team to stay in contact with each other with respect to the completion of critical items that impact downstream activities. I have experienced numerous situations where the lack of communication regarding the completion of a step in a complicated series has resulted in the loss of a day or half day in the completion of the project. This is not trivial.

At any rate, I really think there are lots of use cases for Twitter within the enterprise. Dismissing it out-of-hand is foolish and short-sighted in my opinion.

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26 February 2009

Learning & Innovation

By Rick Ladd

Can a group of people, using a process designed to stimulate lateral thinking specifically targeted at very difficult engineering design problems, find new and innovative solutions to them (especially when their bellies are full of salad and pizza courtesy of the company)? That’s just what we sought to answer today. A few dozen of the best and brightest at our company, which makes them some of the best and the brightest in the world at what they do, were brought together to be presented with 10 difficult problems our current or past customers would like to have solved.

They were then introduced to a process designed to stimulate consideration of solutions not necessarily within the discipline these engineer/scientists are accustomed to dealing with. We set up a wiki specifically for the purpose of enabling ongoing discussion and collection of data and information, presented them with the problems (and the salad and pizza), showed them the tool, let them play with it a bit in search of some quick brainstorming, then set them loose.

I’m not sure anything will come of this. Obviously, we’re looking for solutions we can sell (can you guess the government – in one form or another – is our ultimate customer?), but will we be able to come up with novel solutions to itches that have wanted scratching for some time? It’s precisely because these are difficult . . . really difficult problems, that we’re trying an approach we’ve only come close to attempting once before and that was somewhat different than this iteration.

The prospect of a very stodgy engineering company kicking up its heels a little bit is very exciting to me. I can’t wait to see if these guys can take to the wiki. I suspect it’s going to be a bit painful, but they’ll have a little help from some of the younger involved engineers, as well as the business development and program management people who were there to supplement the teams.

We’re not looking to solve interesting problems for the sake of their solving, though there certainly is a large component of curiosity and wonder that infuses the people who attend these kinds of sessions. What we’re really after though is contracts; contracts to give us the opportunity to move forward on securing some truly commercial contracts. This is going to be a major transition for us and I know it’s not going to be easy for some of these guys. I’m hopeful the transition won’t be too painful, but having some quasi-commercial contracts will ease some of that pain I think.

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