NorthStarNerd.Org

What's the Half Life of Your Knowledge?

I graduated from Dartmouth in 1978. If I had stopped learning, I would now be unemployed.  Estimates state that in as little as six years, 1/2 of what you learned about technology in your college is now obsolete. What have you done to remain current?

One of my favorite sites for engineering education is back for Winter term, and the price is right ... no charge.  Attend a research engineering seminar this Winter from Stanford:

• AA-297: Seminar in Guidance, Navigation, & Control
• CS-547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
• EE-203: the Entrepreneurial Engineer
• EE-380: Seminar on Computer Systems
• ME-396: Design and Manufacturing Forum
• MSE-472: Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar

Here is the enrollment link.

This link pushes you to the Staford enrollment form. The Winter courses are not yet listed on the Stanford page ... however upon completion this form will give you access to all Stanford free courses. Make certain to bookmark the confirmation page.

Do these courses not hit the mark? Check out my engineering learning wiki. The wiki's only rules are:

• Content should support engineering knowledge transfer
• Content should be available without charge
• Anyone may contribute to this wiki. Learn how!

A Dancing Nerd

It's the holidays ... what can I say!  My kids would have no part of this, but my pets (Spot and Cyrus) had no choice (or my wife).  Thus, the dancing Hoegs ...

• Full Motion Elf Video

You can also just see a static screenshot.  Click to enlarge.
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Simulation = Innovation, But Not Second Life

Earlier this year I explored Second Life for my company. Although the project was fun, it was difficult to imagine any actual payback that would accrue given the large investment required to create and maintain an island. However, the concept of using advanced simulation is an area that any engineering company should actively pursue. With that thought in mind, I enjoyed listening to the most recent Design News Podcast:

• Virtual Reality: The New Weapon in Product Design

The ability to innovate and use simulated environments will ultimately reap huge benefits, just not in Second Life. Continuing the theme of design innovation, my good friend Rafael Sidi just blogged yesterday about innovation, and the "key to success". Via his post, he also link's to a Booz, Allen and Hamilton study just released on corporate R&D (pdf). As a fyi, Rafael practices what he preaches.  His company, Elsevier, was an early adopter of "Search" integrated with "RSS". Elsevier's Compendex engineering research tool added this capability based upon customer input. Thus, you may wish to review my recent post on customer centric innovation.

Customer Centric Innovation

The software community understands how dramatically open source has changed the playing field, but do folks in other technologies appreciate how one must look outside one's own organization if you truly have the desire to innovate and grow?  With that thought in mind, I want to recommend two great podcasts. The first is an interview with Patrica Seybold over her book, Outside Innovation. In an interview with Business Week she reviews the story how Lego used lead customer input to help them design the Mindstorms product:

"Lego: The company has tapped thousands of customers to help it design its Lego MINDSTORMS robots. We're talking kids, math teachers, college professors, and software hackers. Back in 2004, the company held a two-day workshop at MIT with a handful of what Seybold calls its "lead customers," getting their help in identifying the features that should be put into the next generation product, MINDSTORMS NXT. Later, a couple of the members of this MINDSTORMS User Panel were invited into the top secret lego labs to make detailed suggestions on some of the physical pieces that should be added to the kits. Then before the commercial launch of the product, Lego recruited about 100 customers to be beta testers. The company also opened up its software APIs and encouraged customers to create extensions to its operating system or to actually replace its core software with theirs. The company also created a community to facilitate sharing of software and ideas between its customers. All of this customer engagement work is paying off for Lego. Its revenues climbed 11.5% last year and it swung from a loss to a profit."

Thus, here are the two podcasts:

• Patrica Seybold Interview: Innovation Meets the Revolution
• Lego Mindstorms NXT: Lead Users and Viral Marketing

I will add both of these podcasts to my Innovation and Networked Economy Podcasts page.
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Google Says Subscribe to This RSS Feed

For some time I've used GreatNews (my screencast and overview). This RSS feed reader has great features, and allows me to read my premium internal corporate feeds (i.e. content inside the firewall).  While I expect to continue to use GreatNews at work, I may have to switch to Google Reader at home.

Why?

Google Reader has recently added a new feature which recommends blogs to which I should subscribe based upon my usage history (i.e. my subscribed sites and what I actually read). Maximize the two screenshots to see what I mean. One can easily export all one's feeds to an OPML file and then import them into Google Reader.  It's an experiment worth trying. You may monitor what Google is up to with their RSS service via their Google Reader blog.
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