DevOps and The Phoenix Project – a good review and write-up.
My experience with introducing DevOps in a traditional enterprise
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Tag Archives: Technology
It’s all about excellent service
A great post here that talks very nicely about building a culture of service excellence in IT. Written by Glenn Remoreras – another fellow IT professional – and his blog is well worth a read.
Service excellence in technology is what I’m all about and it brings my passions of great service and the latest technology together. There are sadly only a few organisations that provide great great service, in or with technology but Glenn’s post nicely gives some ideas as to what it takes to build a culture that can deliver.
Glenn highlights 5 key points, as values or behaviours, that you need to nurture and develop in your organisation to deliver service excellence:
- Putting the customer first always
- Creating a culture of collaboration and teamwork
- Being proactive (versus just reactive)
- Continuous learning
- Creativity and empowerment – for innovation and change
Great points and they all make a lot of sense. I’d go even further and say that it’s not just technology services where these are relevant – but any business or organisation who wants to deliver the best service. And today delivering the best service is what your customers are demanding. Are you delivering?
How to focus in the age of distraction? And a 10k run.
A superb mind-map from Learning Fundamentals in Australia about how to focus in the age of distraction…
With so much going on these days and the constant and growing need to feel and be connected, this is a great little pointer for how to better manage it all, and not get too consumed by it.
- How often do you check e-mails?
- Do you turn your phone off?
- Do you use to-do lists?
- Is there too much digital information?
- Do you get much exercise?
A great link there back to running. Running for me is a great distractor in itself – I’ve said before I don’t listen to music when I run and that helps me focus my mind on the running. The pure freedom of just getting out and running is unbeatable and with the ability to keep pushing and improving yourself.
It’s the British 10k in less than one month’s time. My training plan is going ok. 4 runs per week being done – pretty much, bar the week when my sister was over and a cold got the better of me. Aiming for low 40 something minutes which I know I can do – need to focus on more speed work over the next 4 weeks. Some great runs this week in the great British June weather – gales (which almost did knock me over), heavy rain (yes I got drenched) and sun!
10 technology trends set to change the world
A great post – care of Manufacturing Executive – that I found from Twitter of a presentation from Dave Evans at Cisco back in July last year. 10 technology innovations and trends that are happening now that will impact all our lives over the next 10 years…
Here’s the overview list…
- The Internet of Things – more ‘things’ being connected to the Internet than people
- Big data – allowing us to predict more things and change the way we plan
- The cloud – making all knowledge of the world available to everyone
- The next generation Internet – network speeds are increasing exponentially
- Hyper connectivity – realtime broadcasts with unprecedented transparency
- The power of energy – intelligent use of energy
- Augmented reality – and the ultimate man-machine integration
- 3D printing – everyone becomes a manufacturer
- Artificial intelligence – completely intelligent and self-aware computers
- Human evolution – slowing the ageing process
And links to the original presentation and video from Dave.
As an aside Dave’s job title has to be one of the coolest ones out there – Chief Futurist & Chief Technologist. It clearly demonstrates the importance and criticality of innovation in technology. Do you have one of these chiefs?
Why dad needs the new iPad for his 70th birthday
Mum and dad set off for their new life down under 2 weeks ago now and it was dad’s 70th birthday just after they arrived.
Dad’s an Apple fan at home – with a nice big shiny iMac but he’s never made the move to a tablet, preferring his little netbooks for trips away. But with his 70th on the cards an iPad was looking a nice option – so he can keep up with the technology the grandchildren are using (not that he needs an excuse). But the recommendation from me was to wait until they’d announced the new one before ordering – and even then we’d have to wait.
So the new iPad is here and it looks good. One’s definitely on the cards for me as well, to upgrade the original iPad we’ve got. What problem does it solve for me (to quote Stu)? None that I know of but I’m a fan-boy and I know I need one. And it looks great for dad’s 70th present.
What makes it even better for dad is a new app (iBGStar) that our neighbour Gray showed me a link to, that plugs into the iPhone or iPad and takes a real blood reading and then the app measures your blood sugar levels, to help keep tabs on diabetes. Very very clever – assuming it all works as good as it says on the tin.
Now just need to wait until the shipping times come down a bit for the new iPads!
And this will officially be my first non-running blog entry – a major breakthrough.
Time for a new playlist
Three runs done this week. With one long one – 15 miles – the longest I’ve done for a while. Went back to running without music this week. Does it make a difference? Difficult to say. Not normally a fan of running with music, I really enjoy the thinking time. But have recently been using the iPhone with music (and the genius that is the Nike+ GPS app) and yes it’s nice to listen to something. You do need a good playlist though – clicking shuffle when you’ve got pretty much your entire music library on your arm, complete with Christmas and children’s music, doesn’t help much (though it does bring a smile you your face).
So what makes a good playlist? Forget the technology – it’s a good assumption these days that we’re all digital fans when it comes to music and creating a playlist from any tracks we want (including new ones we want to buy) is a simple task and literally a few clicks away. Good old Virgin have a nice page on their marathon website that has playlists used by some of the professional athletes and winners from previous years and you can listen to them and buy them with a few more clicks – a very clever touch.
A bit more digging and you can find websites that analyse music by beats per minute (BPM) and show you tracks for the BPM you’re looking for. I’m told 160-180 BPM is good for marathons.
A bit of then seeing what I like that’s on these playlists and buying one or two tracks that I don’t have yet and we’re there. A new playlist ready to use in iTunes and syncing with the iPhone for live testing next week!
Gotta to love this new digital technology…!
Any recommendations or suggestions for good running tracks very welcome!
