Michael possessed over 30 years of experience in Information Technology with focuses on complex application development, database technologies and IT strategy. He also spent the last 20 years in Internet technology, eCommerce development / operations, web usability, computer security and Public Key Infrastructure technologies.
It’s really easy to blame everything on technology, whenever there is a project failure, especially new ones with lots of acronyms and buzzwords.
On the other hand, have we trained up the business users to master the technology ? Have we defined the project objectives clearly ? Have we reviewed and revised the business processes to work with the technology ?
People, process, technology … technology actually comes last.
So don’t blame everything on technology, blame the project failure on how we implement a new technology.
“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” – Steve Jobs
Back in 1994, I joined a company who was developing a document service for the trading companies in Hong Kong. The service facilitated the trading companies to send various trading documents to the Hong Kong Government securely and with authenticity.
The technology behind all these was Public Key Infrastructure, or asymmetric cryptography. Even though back then I was the System Architect of such system, the technology was totally new to me – Hashing, Asymmetric Encryption, Digital Signing etc. For some reasons however, I was intrigued by all these fancy technologies.
Fast forward to year 2000, Hong Kong rolled out the Smart IDs for Hong Kong citizens and each of these Smart IDs had a chip embedded that in theory you could store the Private Key inside it and did your own digital signing. And of course, with the receiving party’s Public Key, we could do secure encryption as well.
Eight years later, in October 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper on The Cryptography Mailing list at metzdowd.com, described the digital currency – BitCoin. And the infrastructure that BitCoin worked above was what we call now – Blockchain (this term is not used at all in the original white-paper).
By now, you all know Blockchain is again based on hashing, cryptography and time-stamping. Did I know what I learnt back in 1994 would become the foundation of the digital currency or even future computing infrastructure ?
No of course, because as Steve Jobs said … we can only connect the dots looking backwards.
I don’t know ten, twenty years later, what dots we all can connect and find something new. However, you may be able to get some insights on the following excellent documentary on Blockchain –
Unlike previous years, I didn’t complete all the books below cover-to-cover. Instead, for most books I just picked a few chapters to read, and learn as much as possible. There are some good ones though (i.e. I finished the whole book) … and you can tell how the state of my mind changed, along the year, with the reading sequence.
We all know what CTO, CIO and CEO stand for, but lately I just think all these titles now stand for something else. Something pretty different.
First, as we all know the full name of CTO is Chief Technology Officer. According to Wikipedia, CTO is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupant is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organisation. Of course I guess “technology issues” include what technology to use, to deliver and to maintain. In the security conference SecureHongKong couple of years ago, renowned security expert Dr. Meng-Chow Kang told the audiences that CTO stands for Chief Trust Officer. I agreed with it wholeheartedly. Technology is crucial to most, if not all, corporations nowadays; but what really matter is the trust that we all shall build among the technology and the stakeholders.
Then what about CIO, Chief Information Officer ? That one is rather easy, as many companies already renamed it to Chief Innovation Officer or Chief Integration Officer. Last year, Deloitte pointed out it’s time CIO to evolve to Chief Integration Officer, and CIO is not only the connective tissue but the driving force for intersecting, IT-heavy initiatives. And of course, to many new startups, innovation is really the single most important reason why the company exists at all. The new Chief Innovation Officer (or CINO) shall manage all the processes of innovation in the organization.
Lastly, the Chief Executive Officer – he or she that shall own the company vision, provide proper resources, build the culture, make good decisions and deliver the company’s performance now may has many new roles. In addition, the modern day CEOs shall understand what experiences the company’s products and services are being delivered to the customers as well as stakeholders. Indeed, many companies already established the role of Chief Experience Office (or CXO).
So, are you possessing one of these job titles ? Are you ready to take on the new role(s) ?
Two things I don’t like much about the Manfrotto / Kata Revolver backpack are first, it’s not designed to hold two camera bodies even with its rather huge body. Second issue is the backpack cannot stand by itself – after all it’s designed like a revolver (such that you can access lens easily).
M.Y. Lessons Learnt 