The constant hunt for professional development units (PDUs).

Ah. The bane of all PMP certification holders. PDUs.

I value the structure to 'ensure' continual learnings and recency with  the project management discipline. But its definitely painful for busy practitioners to maintain this score of 60. I'm into my 2nd cycle of renewal now, having earned my PMP back in 2007. Hope to renew this for as long as its of professional interest to do so. I do not see many PMs in this industry having proper project management certifications or even training to say the least.

Recently attended a 2 day Symposium organised by the Singapore Chapter of PMI as part of this great PDU hunt. This is my 3rd Symposium. I do see a difference in mindset when I attend this particular session. The need for PDUs is still there (i will be honest here, that's the primary motivation), but I do find myself selecting/approaching each presentation from a broader perspective. Its less of what's interesting for my personal development, but more of what can I bring back to implement in POSSIBLE.

To name a few:

• Further develop and incorporate Agile in our PM processes
• Professional development of the PM department.
• How do we measure effectiveness of the training that staff gets sent to?
• Setup and management of our project management office (PMO) 
• Networking to lookout for potential clients and PM candidates to hire. 

Tons of stuff that I think is beneficial for myself and the team. Will try to spend some time over the next few weeks to flesh them out and maybe even discuss some here. 

As per my old army times, Advance and Overcome. 

How interactive can a Print Ad be?

Wow. This is nice. Gimmicky for sure. But nice.
Lexus used a proprietary technology called CinePrint to create the effect that you see in the video. The Lexus 2013 ES would seemed to change colors, throb to music, turn on its headlights etc.

Nice multi-sensory experience that combines the sight, sound and touch. Next question would be. How interactive can your Next Print Ad be?




Read more and view the video here.
http://mashable.com/2012/10/09/most-interactive-print-ad-lexus/

The uncommon truth: Why can't we get taxis in Singapore when it rains

Ah. The uncommon truth. We try to use this alot in our work with clients. Find out beyond what they are saying. What is not the obvious?

Use of big data to the rescue.
A study was actually done on why can't we get cabs in Singapore when it rains. Now this is unusual because we have tons of cabs (or taxis as Singaporean like to call them) in our city state. We have like 5 cabs per 1,000 people. Compared that to 2.6 in Hong Kong, 3.3 in London and 1.5 in New York.

So why aren't we getting our cabs? Ask any Joe on the street, the answer would usually be more demand for cabs due to the rain. Cabs are really quite affordable in Singapore compared to other similar cities.

What the study uncovered was astonishing. GPS records of cabs was compared against weather satellite. The uncommon truth? The cabs were not zipping around like bugs due to high demand. In fact, they stopped moving.

Why? Because of cab company policies , the drivers are penalised in event of accidents (even if its not a fault of theirs). So most of them opt to just sit out the rain.

Read more here.
http://www.computerworld.com.sg/resource/applications/why-you-dont-get-taxis-in-singapore-when-it-rains/

Permanent data storage

How advanced do you think we are, in terms of being able to store information?

The most common medium that we have now would be paper, tapes, CDs, harddrives and memory cards.

You might say that we have progressed well in terms of technology. The memory cards we used now sure beats the floppy disks that I used back in the 1980/90s in terms of speed and capacity. But reality is, these medium of storage dun last very long. Worst, due to the technology advancement, we find it difficult to access old mediums. Try finding a disk drive to read your vintage 5 1/4in floppy disks. In another few more years, you probably will not be able to access your old CDs. Heck, most laptops nowadays do not even come with CD drives anymore. Go further, a decade into the future, I doubt anyone has USB connections.

But access aside, how long can our current means of information storage last? Paper can last several hundred years without significant deterioration under storage conditions in libraries and archives. Digital storage like your CD and HDD could probably last a hundred year at most. Magnetic tapes will last max of 50 years.

Compared to what the Egyptians did. They carved in stone. Those last for a few thousand years. Until now, we could not outdo them.

Someone invented quartz glass storage. These babies technically could last forever.
Wedding photos storage, anyone?

Read more here.
http://gizmodo.com/5946110/this-piece-of-glass-can-store-data-forever

Having our own labs.

Innovation is key in my industry.

Yet in most of the companies I worked in, research and development is managed haphazardly at best. During good times,a single piece of equipment or technology might catch the eyes & ears of management and kickstart a fury of activities to purchase/learn, trial and implement. Most of the time, it is a series of disconnected activities carried out by individuals out of their interest.

R&D projects compete for the same resources that works on paid client projects. There are often multiple start-stop cycles as different resource hops in and out of the R&D projects. Its tricky to manage such projects as internal requirements can change over time and there are usually tension between business (that wants to see business value) and IT (who are just excited to try anything new and innovative).

The current company that I'm with right now concluded on the same as well. Global HQ created a labs toolkit which contains the necessary information required to setup R&D labs  across all regional offices. This includes list of hardware and software to purchase, the type of packaged demos, possible areas to R&D into etc.

For once, we have budget set aside yearly to run these, would be really interesting to see how far we can bring the labs concept to in POSSIBLE Singapore. On plan we are looking at being able to showcases prototypes around:

• Augmented Reality 
• Proximity 
• Kinect 
• RFID
• NFC
• Scentbot
• Leapmotion 

Interesting times ahead. Let's see if I can manage to take a couple of videos of the demos in the near future.