All posts by Richard

Office Life

Ruminants’ Ruminations, or The Coolest Things We Ingested This Year

Another best-of list blog post! Another best-of list blog post whose preface warns you it is a best-of list blog post! So sue me. Or don’t read it. ‘Tis the season, and I’m a copycat.

2011’s been a kind of wild and crazy year, both for us as a company and for the software world as a whole. But rather than do a straight recap, I decided to poll our crew on the hands-down coolest thing/language/trick/product/comestible/visual symphony/regular symphony they’ve ingested this year, and let you extrapolate your own state-of-the-union conclusions from these. Alors:

  • Sean Kermes:
    • Sugru! Sugru is super frigging cool.  It starts life as putty that can be hand-molded at room temperature for a bit upwards of half an hour, then over the next 24 hours it adheres to whatever you stuck it to and becomes a flexible (but tough) and slightly grippy silicone.  I’ve used it to repair and craft drawer and cabinet handles and fix some random crap, and I’m planning on starting to make some custom-fitted mouse grips so that I’m not dragging my fingers across the desk all day. Continue reading Ruminants’ Ruminations, or The Coolest Things We Ingested This Year →

Big Data, Events, SharePoint

Boston SharePoint Salon: Go Big or Go Home

Big as in data, home as in “out of business.” Because there’s only going to be more data, and people are finally realizing that not only can it be sliced and diced and visualized in formats comprehensible to the business analyst—it needs to be. The questions are: how should it be stored and queried and where should the visible representations of these queries be displayed?

Hadoop, Apache’s open source, distributed computing and storage framework based on Google’s MapReduce model is one answer to the first question. Or you could buy a supercomputer, but, those are kind of expensive! And less fun to say!  As for the second question, of course the answer depends on the type of data. As this is a SharePoint-focused Salon, though, I’m going to nominate SharePoint as one potential answer. Why? Well, Microsoft’s new Big Data Solution will put enterprise Hadoop solutions on Azure and Windows Server, including the now available SQL Server Connector, which lets you transfer data between Hadoop and SQL Server.  So, if you plan on upgrading to SQL Server 2012, you’ll be able to access data stored in Hadoop from SharePoint, and do all your slicing and dicing and displaying in PowerPivot and Power View. Presumably.

Interesting, no? We think so. If you agree, please join us at Tico (Berklee Street) this Thursday, from 7 to about 9:30 pm. You can RSVP here, or email me! And if you can’t make it, but know someone whom you think should attend, please spread the word!

Women In Tech

National Girls Collaborative Institute Days 2-3 Recap

As mentioned in the first recap (which obviously you, my slavishly devoted readers, read), I’m in Tucson for the National Girls Collaborative Institute. Why? Because as someone with a growing interest in and passion for STEM education, I wanted to learn about the nuts and bolts of a project whose collaborative model has enabled and connected girl-focused STEM organizations across the country. And also, because NGCP asked me to speak about using social media as a community builder. And also because I work for a cool company that lets me go to these sorts of things.

Anyways, when I left off yesterday, I was about to go to a dinner/laser show at the University of Arizona’s Flandrau Science Center, which contains a planetarium, telescope, mineral museum and marine discovery center. If any of you are ever in Tucson, I definitely recommend going–U of A is justifiably famous for its geology and astronomy programs, and the Science Center is staffed with fervently knowledgeable geologists, gemologists, marine biologists and astronomers, plus a staggering amount of Wulfenite. The lazer show was set to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, I ate empanadas and nitroglycerin ice cream, Tucson is famous for its mid-century neon signs, sea cucumbers spew their guts into predators’ faces as a last resort, Jupiter shone bright and poor little Io is melting. (Want to work for SoftArtisans? We’re hiring.) Continue reading National Girls Collaborative Institute Days 2-3 Recap →

Women In Tech

National Girls Collaborative Institute Days 1-2 Recap

[Photo credit: Karen Peterson]

Greetings from the desert of the real, otherwise known as downtown Tucson, AZ. It’s my first visit to the Grand Canyon State, and I’ve been really struck by the size of the sky and the sepianess of its light. And all the cacti and sagebrush. But mostly, I’ve been struck by the efficacy, sensibility and change-affecting potential of the National Girls Collaborative Project‘s collaborative model. In a nutshell, for those of you unfamiliar with the organization, the NGCP is a national, NSF-funded project comprised of regional/state collaboratives comprised of girl-serving STEM organizations. Through their website, conferences and this annual institute, the national NGCP assists and educates the regional collaboratives in finding, funding and raising awareness about their local organizations. It’s a fantastic model, and one, that, as I tweeted yesterday, reminds me of Hadoop’s: tap into the resources of many through a central hub, maximizing output and minimizing waste.

Continue reading National Girls Collaborative Institute Days 1-2 Recap →

Office Life

The Charitable Locavore: 5 Boston NonProfits Worth Donating To

I returned from vacation today to find my neighborhood newly populated with balsams, Christmas lights and the gentle clang of the Salvation Army Santa’s bell. While that and other national charitable organizations are certainly worthy benefactors of your Christmas/Hannucka/Kwanza spirit, why not consider donating to a local nonprofit instead/ in addition? What Boston’s nonprofit landscape lacks in quantity, it more than makes up for in innovation, accessibility and creativity, as the following five nonprofits demonstrate. Each offers multiple avenues of involvement, easy-to-use websites and visible and visible and tangible testaments of your impact.

1.) Cauzoom: On this “Community Cause Marketing” site, you get to pick or start a project, contribute directly, via giftcard or by spreading awareness. Recent projects include holiday gifts for foster children and their families in Woburn, art supplies for the Brookline Arts Center and the Northeast Animal Shelter Senior Visitation program in Salem.

Continue reading The Charitable Locavore: 5 Boston NonProfits Worth Donating To →

Big Data

30 Hadoop and Big Data Spelunkers Worth Following

Understanding the basic purpose of Hadoop is easy: it offers a way to quickly store, process and extract deliverable meaning(s) from vast datasets. It does this by breaking the datasets up into commodity-server-sized chunks, replicating these to reduce failure, and sending them out to a connected web (cluster) of commodity servers (nodes) . Understanding how it can integrate with the current big data landscape and may integrate with the future one is a little harder—for that, I’ve turned to the experts. Luckily for me, and for you, if you’re in my boat, many of them maintain active twitter and blogging presences. Even more luckily, the quality and clarity of writing is really, really high. The following list is by no means exhaustive, but poking into the thoughts of even a few can elucidate everything from machine learning to data modeling and distributed systems.

1.) Hilary Mason

Continue reading 30 Hadoop and Big Data Spelunkers Worth Following →

Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Stacia Misner

[This is the sixth in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame at the very last statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. Those of you who work in the SQL Server BI arena are mostly likely familiar with Stacia Misner— the consultant, instructor and prolific author is one of  the MS BI stack’s greatest champions. Here, she talks tractors, the SQLBI community’s collective consciousness and growing up in the stars. For guidance and in-depth tutorials on all things SQL Server, SSRS, SharePoint and BI, check out Stacia’s blog and books! And if reading her story inspires you to share yours, please feel to email me.]

I’m Stacia Misner, a business intelligence consultant, author, and instructor specializing in the Microsoft business intelligence stack. I have been working in the business intelligence field since 1999 and started my own consulting company in 2006.

1)      Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

I’ve always been interested in technology in one way or another. My parents were both programmers, although I don’t recall growing up thinking that I would follow in their footsteps. I was always very good at math and science, and was properly encouraged in those areas. I had the privilege of growing up in Houston, in the heart of the space industry, so all my friends’ parents (mostly fathers at the time, I suppose) were engineers or scientists. Technology seemed a normal part of life, and my friends and I grew up expecting that it would become more and more like Star Trek as time went on. Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Stacia Misner →

SharePoint

NEUGS Part 11: Workflows, AKA Lifesavers for the Lazy

Not going to lie, guys, I’ve been putting this post off for a while. (Ironic, as procrastination is exactly what Workflows aim to prevent.) To me, the term connotates TPS reports and dingy cubicles and unsheathed florescent overhead lights and perpetually sweaty officeworkers in greasy button-downs and Bluetooth headsets. Also, blandly enthusiastic sales execs talking about connection and knowledge share and  koi ponds, though I’m not sure where that last image comes from. Butttt, here’s the thing: workflows provide a pretty useful method for keeping individuals and teams on track, through a series of automated steps triggered by the initialization or completion of a designated action.

Eg let’s say, completely hypothetically, that I am a fairly low-ranking business analyst at Kibble ‘n’ Krunchy Bits Corp. Let’s also say, again completely hypothetically, that I have this habit of uploading my weekly sales report to the sales team site, then wandering off to gchat for hours. So the reports just sit there without anyone looking at them for like, weeks at a time, and then at the end of the quarter everyone is surprised by how much sales of KrunchExtreme Lite with Passionfruit Extract ™ have grown. (Even though, hello, they should have known this because the factory workers and delivery men have all been putting in on average 13 hours of overtime a week for the past four months, figures which someone in a different department really should be keeping a better eye on.) A Workflow – in this case a modified Approval Workflow – provides me and my managers with an easy solution to this lack-of-awareness problem. Continue reading NEUGS Part 11: Workflows, AKA Lifesavers for the Lazy →