Five Year Anniversary of VT Tragedy

Today is the five year anniversary of the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all the families, relatives and friends of those who lost their lives on April 16th, 2007 in this senseless tragedy.....

The picture below was on the Collegiate Times in 2007 at VT:

 

There is a permanent memorial at VT. The Collegiate Times has a nice article describing the memorial.

My memories of last April 16th started with a phone call from my wife. Julie called and said, "just wanted to let you know that John is fine." At the time I was on my SunRay reading email while on a con call when she called my cellphone. She never calls me during theday since she is a school teacher. "Why would John not be be fine?" I asked. She asked me if I was watching TV or listening to the news. Of course I was not watching TV or listening to the news. She explained what was going on. I immediately interrupted the Sun folks on the con call and quickly said, "I had to get off the call, there was a shooting at my son's school."

It was then that I turned on the TV and was shocked to see the peaceful and beautiful VT campus on the news. I started getting emails, phone calls from literally around the world checking on John. You sometimes forget in casual conversation that you mentioned something about your kids that your friends and colleagues remember. Every time a call came, I paused the DVR. I was getting the current updates from friend, colleagues\s and family all around the world via email and non stop phone calls. As the numbers kept rising, it became more and more surreal.

 My son John was working for the Collegiate Times during his freshman year.  He put together a very nice week long history of events starting on April 16th through April 23rd that shows what happened each day.

I can not imagine the horror the students and faculty must have felt. There was an article in the post today by Nick Miroff, titled, "A Year Later, Virginia Tech Is Still Healing" is a well written article worth reading. As Miroff points out:

"Virginia Tech students have learned to talk about it in shorthand, if they talk about it at all. This Story

• A Year Later, Va. Tech Is Still Healing
•  Special Report: Va. Tech Shootings 
•  Essay: In Blacksburg, An ER Physician Still Tries to Heal
•  Blog: Va. Tech Students Remember  
•  VT: One Year Later - Living With Cho

They do not use the words massacre, or

shootings, or rampage. They call it "April

 16th," and sometimes not even that. To
 say "four-sixteen" is enough. Everyone
 knows." 

I have been back to VT many times since April 16th, 2007 both as a parent and working for Sun Microsystems where I have given talks and brought down Sun's thought leaders to speak at VT's ACM where my son John is President.  Each time, the first thing I do is visit the memorial

          Governor Kaine has did a good job demanding there was the VT Task Force.  Governor Kaine stated:

"On April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech University suffered a terrible tragedy. Today, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families and the entire Virginia Tech community.

"In the year that has passed since that horrible day, we have grieved for those we lost and prayed for the comfort of their loved ones. We have rejoiced in the recovery of those who were injured. We have been inspired by the unfaltering hope and Hokie spirit of Virginia Tech. And we have renewed our commitment to do even more to learn lessons from that day and to make our campuses and communities safer.

"As I think about the victims' families, I am at a loss for words to express what is in my heart. The courage and strength they have shown in the face of such tremendous, tragic loss is awe-inspiring. We have been inspired by the resilient Hokie spirit of Virginia Tech, both in Blacksburg and around the world. Since that tragic day last April, the unshakeable sense of unity and hope demonstrated by the Hokies has touched the lives of people around the world. Their focus on pulling together to support their school and each other in the days after the shooting, and their commitment to public service through the VT Engage program in the months that followed has moved us all.

"We still have work to do. A continued commitment to improvement is the best tribute we can pay to those who lost so much. And as we move forward, we will continue to be inspired by those in the Hokie Nation."

VT seems to have made the right changes. The VT Task Force seemed to not pull any punches when it came to how the University should have dealt with the events on the morning of April 16th, 2007. As the AP reported and I FULLY AGREE with Governor Kaine about purchasing firearms at gun shows. Virginia needs to get its act together.  This loophole is INSANE!

"Gov. Timothy M. Kaine proposed mandated background checks yesterday for everyone who attempts to purchase firearms at gun shows - legislation that he called critical to helping prevent future tragedies like the shootings at Virginia Tech. Many families of those killed or injured in the April shootings have called on legislators to close Virginia’s so-called gun show loophole, which allows people to purchase firearms from unlicensed sellers at gun shows without having to submit to background checks. Under current Virginia law, only licensed dealers are required to run background checks on customers.
“If by doing this, we can keep one family from having to go through what these families have suffered, it will be the best thing that the legislature will do this year,” Kaine said at Virginia State Police headquarters, surrounded by several of the victims’ families."

VA continues to be a backward state and allows the gun show loophole.   I also called into the Kojo Nnamdi Show when he had an anniversary show on the VT shooting.   If you go to the 11:52 mark, you can hear my statements and question that goes until the 13:14 mark.

 

"Courage is the first of human qualities because it
is the quality which guarantees all others."

Winston Churchill

The tragedy at Virginia Tech is still heart wrenching. As a parent of a VT freshman, it is still hard to comprehend the magnitude of this tragedy. There
were many heroes on VT's Campus on April 16th, 2007. Many
are well documented in the press.

There are five individuals who were behind the scenes
that are absolute heroes in my mind. Those five heroes are
the individuals who run online Collegiate Times which is
VT's main online paper and kept the world informed on the
latest breaking news coming out of VT on this senseless
tragedy. These five individuals were literally working
around the clock, giving up sleep to keep their fellow
students, parents, family, friends, faculty and the rest of
the world informed.

These five unsung heroes all have the "first of human
qualities" - courage. It would have been perfectly
understandable if these five individuals would have given
up when their servers went down. But they did not. They
had the courage to literally work around the clock to get
the server back up *and* keep the rest of the world
informed of the latest updates to one of the most of
horrific days in the history of our country. The five
individuals are:


Chris Ritter, Online Director
Tim Tutt, Web Developer
John Edstrom, Associate Web Developer
Gabriel Martinez, Associate Web Designer
Collin Smith, Multimedia Editor

One of the many amazing statistics is that the
Collegiate Times received up to 53 million hits by
early afternoon on Monday April 16th.

Wikipedia has a nice history of the Collegiate Times with the
picture that appeared on the Collegiate Times April 17th, 2007,
edition titled "Heartache."




Below are just some of quotes on the fantastic work that
these five unsung heroes did under
tremendous pressure.

The OnLine Newshour on PBS

"The Internet became a prime place for people to
get the news out of Blacksburg. The college
newspaper, the Collegiate Times, scooped the major
media, getting the story online, right after the
first shot rang out, and staying on it non-stop
ever since.

The 104-year-old paper received up to 53 million
hits by early Monday afternoon, forcing the site
down for a time. It also listed some of the dead
early Tuesday morning, prompting the New York Times
Web site and other news outlets to link to the
Collegiate Times."
The Shield - University of Southern Indiana Student Newspaper
"The information on the Web site is remarkable.
Besides the list of confirmed deceased, the site
provides a graphic map of the shootings, a photo
gallery, personal accounts and interviews and
related stories ranging from emerging donation
details to the impact on the nearest hospital. The
staff has handled the facts correctly, but not
without compassion, which is a difficult task.

The Collegiate Times editorial says, "When
considering the number of deceased victims, 32 is
devastating, but those lives are not just a number,
each one is a member of our community." Journalism
cannot be disregarded due to a personal tragedy,
since citizens rely on journalists for information.
Such journalists must remember, however, that
although horrific tragedies stir media attention as
sensational, there is nothing sensational about
human suffering and coverage must be conducted
tastefully.

Well done Collegiate Times staff.

To those that believe campus newspapers are a waste
of time and funding, let this tragedy serve the
purpose of proving the necessity of campus
newspapers nationwide."Chronicle of Higher Education

"National Public Radio is among news organizations
that have profiled and praised Virginia Tech
student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, which has
become a crucial source of information for other
reporters covering Monday's events.

The papers online edition, said NPR's Larry
Abramson, has grabbed international attention
indeed, on Tuesday The New York Timess home page
linked to the student publications list of
confirmed victims of the shooter. Mr. Abramson
also pointed out that Collegiate Times staff
members know how to mine Facebook for information
inaccessible to many older reporters who are
unfamiliar with the social-networking site." -WGHP Fox TV VIDEO:


"The team at The Collegiate Times, the campus
newspaper, will remain. So far, they have been
setting the pace for all journalists"Middlebury Campus


"The face of a crisis, the writers, photographers
and editors of Virginia Tech's student daily, The
Collegiate Times, transcended their roles as
college journalists to not only inform their
community, but to inform the world. With many local
news sources shut out, only limited comments coming
from Virginia Tech officials and an entire campus
on lock-down, the importance of these students'
work was heightened to an extreme. The written,
photographic and video posts to The Times website
throughout the day were among the most vivid and
honest portraits of the campus available. Working
from computers outside of their offices, the
students held nothing back, and produced a raw,
emotional narrative of the tragedy. Their reporting
was effective, critical and in every sense, brave."

Editor and Publisher


"While the editors of the student newspaper went
about their work with inspiring leadership,
internal communications by Virginia Tech
administrators showed the University was less than
fully prepared. As more and more details about the
sequence of events have been released, it has
become clear that administrators did not notify the
entire campus or order a full lockdown until more
than two hours after the first round of shooting
began. Whether or not any of the deaths in the
second round of shooting could have been avoided,
we should realize the need for all institutions to
prepare for the unimaginable. And in the face of
this shooting, college administrators everywhere
should recognize the need to share information with
their communities quickly and clearly, even as the
full extent of a crisis may remain unknown."


"The college paper at Virginia Polytechnical
Institute kept a running account of the tragedy
that struck the campus today, with more than 30
students gunned down in at least two areas of the
campus, a dorm and a classroom. The shooter is
allegedly dead as well, but not identified. It is
not known if he was a student ...

Here is how the student-run Collegiate Times
reported it, blog-style, with the most recent
posting first. A full article is now posted there,
which includes the note that police "are also
investigating if it has any relation to the recent
bomb threats on Tech's campus."


Seattle Post Intelligencer


"For unique reporting on the massacre read the
Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's student-run
newspaper."University Daily Kansan

"While news organizations like CNN have done a
thorough job in covering Monday's events, I'd like
to point the readers of kansan.com to Virginia
Tech's student newspaper, the Collegiate Times.
After overcoming early technical difficulty when
the news initially broke, they've done what I feel
is an admirable job as the student voice of the
Virginia Tech community.

In the process of learning about these tragic
events, be sure to not overlook the students
themselves. http://www.collegiatetimes.com"WRAL

"I found a couple sites with unique angles on this
story. One of the most interesting is The
Collegiate Times, which is VT's student newspaper.
Their staff apparently first reported this shooting
this morning. The server is overwhelmed right now,
but it will be interesting to check their coverage
in the days and weeks ahead."Forbes

"Monday's shooting at Virginia Tech provided a
grim, real-time stress test for the effectiveness
of Web 2.0 technologies. And on Monday, all of them
seemed to work: Information flew through text
messages, blog posts, Web sites, online videos and
social networking sites.

The Internet reacted to the event immediately--and
more quickly than Virginia Tech administrators, who
took two hours to warn students, via e-mail, about
a first shooting. The Web site of VT's student
newspaper, the Collegiate Times, crashed when
students flooded it after the first shooting. As a
replacement, students created a low-tech blog,
CollegeMedia.com.
It posted the first entry about the event at 9:47 a.m.,
minutes before the second shooting began."
Yahoo News

"The student newspaper, the Collegiate Times,
regularly updated its website proving to be a
valuable resource for the campus as well as the
national media."
Daily Californian


"And as this happened, students at the Collegiate
Times, the Virginia Tech student newspaper, were
able to live-blog the days events. The Web site
began the day with a post at 9:47 a.m. EST,
reporting Shots were fired on campus and
provided continuing updates throughout the day. The
entries of the papers staff provide an
illuminating window into the fear and questioning
that doubtless gripped the campus in those
uncertain hours."


"The Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's campus newspaper,
was the first media outlet to break the story Monday with
on-line reports of shots fired on campus."Manhattan Mercury

"No amount of on-the-job experience or education
could have prepared Kelly Furnas for what he's
faced this week in his capacity as an editorial
advisor to the campus newspaper at grief-stricken
Virginia Tech University.

.....

To be honest its been pretty much non-stop working
with the student newspaper I have not had time on a
personal level to sit down and digest everything
yet," Furnas said.

The Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's campus
newspaper, was the first media outlet to break the
story Monday with on-line reports of shots fired on
campus.

"I can't put into words how proud I am of our
students," Furnas said. "They have provided
desperately needed information to their readers,
and they have done that with gusto. I think the
campus newspaper's reputation with the students
here has helped a lot."

The Age (Australia)

"'The school's student newspaper, The Collegiate
Times, filed up-to-the-minute online dispatches. At
4.44pm: "Police have confirmed that the shooter
took his own life." At 4.54pm: "University
Relations has confirmed 31 deaths at Norris Hall,
in addition to two deaths at West Ambler Johnson."Gulf Times

The Collegiate Times (its server quickly crashed
and a blog written by editors with messages from
students appeared instead on the web site of the
newspapers owning company), as well as to media
outlets around the world, including CNN and the
BBC. Regardless of where the contributions are
aimed, the back and forth on facebook.com and other
social networking sites are equally an instant and
new resource for news producers and reporters


NPR


"As reporters from around the world descend on
Blacksburg, Va., one publication stands out:
Virginia Tech's student newspaper, Collegiate
Times, is doing a truly remarkable job of covering
the story."

About 15 staff members were rushing to update the
site about every 15 minutes with news of the
convocation, shooting investigation and candlelight
vigil plans.

"We're getting like 10 billion phone calls,
everyone from Al Jazeera to tiny radio stations in
Iowa," Kendall said.LA Times


"The paper's scoops included eyewitness accounts of
the shootings, interviews with a classmate of the
shooter and a list of victims' names that was
posted late Tuesday. A reporter was one of the
first to question administrators about why they
didn't warn students during the two hours between
the two shootings Monday morning."
Poyneronline

"The Web staff for Virginia Tech's student
newspaper, The Collegiate Times, was also
scrambling for solutions after its servers crashed
around 10:30 a.m. the day of the shootings.
Online editor Chris Ritter's main goal was to get
the site back to its original state -- a large,
graphical and Flash-intensive homepage. When that
couldn't happen, Ritter and his staff opted for a
simple text page with blue background -- to ensure
they could communicate information quickly to
users. After that page continued to overload its
own server, The Collegiate Times tech adviser,
Scott Chandler, suggested that the staff use the
College Media server, the parent company which
hosts the publication's site.

Once the site stabilized on the additional server,
The Collegiate Times began posting photos and
videos to a third server usually reserved for
design research and development. To prevent
crashing again, a Virginia Tech server is now
hosting videos and photos for the site.

Monday night The Collegiate Times staff redesigned
its homepage from scratch to have a Web site that
was "intuitive and a graphically pleasing display"
of its special content for the shootings. The
Collegiate Times began creating breaking-news
multimedia when escaped convict William Morva shot
two police officers at Virginia Tech on the first
day of school last August.

Since then, Ritter said users are looking at the
Web for information more than ever before, and the
staff has adopted a Web-first attitude change."
Roanoke Times on CT:
Coping Through Journalism Video

 

Hopefully the healing will continue for those directly affected...

 

Multitasking: Paging and Swapping

Multitasking: Paging and Swapping

Apr 11, 2012

By  Dave Edstrom
NOTE:  This is an article I wrote for the April 2012 Edition of the IMTS Insider

In modern operating systems there are lessons learned from the concept of multitasking that can also be applied to human beings. These lessons have to do with how computer systems deal with limited memory to allow applications to exceed the amount of memory available, as well as how many applications can all run on the same system. Since both computers and humans have finite memory, I thought it was a topic worth exploring.

A brief discussion on computer architecture using simple math is necessary to understand the basic fundamentals. Disk drives are cheap and slow, whereas memory is fast but expensive.   Memory is sometimes confused with disk drives because both use capacity terms such as gigabytes. The big difference is access speed – speed in both the time it takes to go access memory, as well as the speed at which you can then transfer that data. We will concentrate on access speed because it is the most important of the two variables. It takes 200 nanoseconds (billionths of a second) to access memory, whereas it takes on average 9 milliseconds (thousandths of a second) for a disk drive to move or seek to a given spot on a hard disk.

Nanoseconds and milliseconds both sound fast. But, it is important to understand the magnitude of the differences, so let’s compare the access times of memory and disk. A disk drive accessing information at 9 milliseconds can also be stated as taking 9,000,000 nanoseconds. This means accessing information from disk is 45,000 times longer than from memory. Let’s put it in layman’s terms. We will round up the access time of memory to keep the math easy. Let’s say for comparison purposes it takes 1 second to go to memory. Keeping that ratio, a request seeking to a spot on disk drive would then take 12.5 hours. Now here is the kicker – your operating system is doing this THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of times per second. This is why your best bang for the buck when buying any computer is to put your money into lots of memory. 

At the beginning of the home computer revolution, it used to be that the size of your program you were running could never exceed the available memory in your computer after you factor out the operating system and any start-up programs. Computer architects realized, from day one, that the speed and amount of memory is an absolutely critical component in computer design. The concept of virtual memory was applied from other operating systems to the home computer market back in the 1980s. Virtual memory is the memory management framework that treats RAM and disk drive storage in a similar fashion. The bottom line on virtual memory is it allows the amount of memory that all of your applications and operating system needs to exceed the amount of physical RAM in a computer. How does this work?

When you power up your Mac or PC, the first step is loading the operating system, all the necessary start-up programs, and finally the login screen. All of these programs move from slow disk drives to fast memory. When you start up your applications, the same process happens – slow disk drive to fast memory. If you keep clicking on software applications that you can run, eventually your PC or Mac slows down.

Is the number of applications limited by the amount of physical memory you have? No, virtual memory allows the amount of memory needed with your applications to exceed the physical memory. The operating system will allow you to keep starting up applications. We have all seen this before when a system has become just dirt slow. When a system has too many applications running, it slows down because it is “thrashing,” or is spending a good deal of its time paging in applications to run in physical memory and then paging out applications from memory to an area of disk called swap space so new applications can be paged in to run. A page is simply a defined size of a program or data.

Think of dividing applications into pages and your data into pages. These pages are read in before you need to run them or use them on your computer.  What does an operating system do when it realizes that it is spending too much time paging applications in and out? The operating system decides enough is enough and instead of paging in/out nonstop, it gives each application more time to run and to actually accomplish something. It does this by swapping out entire processes versus dealing with applications and data on a page-by-page basis.

Let’s look at another layman’s example of paging in and paging out of applications. Imagine memory is your dishwasher, your sink is your disk drive and applications are your dishes. If you have a huge sink, a small dishwasher and lots of dishes, you will spend every minute of every day loading, running and unloading the dishwasher. If you have a huge dishwasher, small sink and just a medium amount dishes, you will only need to run the dishwasher every other day. This demonstrates the importance balance in any type of system.

A more interesting question to ponder at this point is how does your operating system deal with the problem of having a memory shortage and how does this relate to humans?

When you are at your job and have countless tasks you are working on, if you are going from one task, to another task, to a different task, you are exactly like a computer’s operating system which is thrashing or spending most of its time paging in/out. Many studies have been done demonstrating that when someone is interrupted when doing a complicated task, it takes 8 minutes to reload all of the thoughts to get back to the same point you were at prior to the interruption.

While having lunch with my good longtime friend Brian Raymor in Seattle, the topic of human multitasking came up. Brian was kind enough to send me the Multitasking Stanford Study done  and conducted by Stanford researchers Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass and Anthony Wagner. The article was written by Adam Gorlick and Jack Hubbard.

It is a great study. The link above also has a video with it. This is a must read article in my opinion. There is a great statement made in the video, "multitaskers are lousy at multitasking."

Here are a couple of points from the article:

"High-tech jugglers are everywhere – keeping up several e-mail and instant message conversations at once, text messaging while watching television and jumping from one web site to another while plowing through homework assignments. But after putting about 100 students through a series of three tests, the researchers realized those heavy media multitaskers are paying a big mental price.”

"They're suckers for irrelevancy," said communication Professor Clifford Nass, one of the researchers whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Everything distracts them."

The recommendation to reboot or start killing off applications are the two most obvious suggestions to make your system responsive again. How do humans stop paging, reboot or kill off applications? Bottom line is your memory and your computer’s memory are both very precious.  You’re not a computer, but you have a lot in common with computers – balancing the number of tasks, setting priorities and not getting caught up where you are doing nothing but paging in/out tasks is critical. Even an operating system understands the difference between being busy and being productive and so should you.

String Theory Simplified - Video

I thought this very short video was quite creative in describing string theory.

Is Sugar Toxic? 60 Minutes Special

I thought this special 60 Minutes had on sugar was very interesting.

A calorie is not a calorie....   Checkout the Small Dense LDL that are associated with heart disease graphics if you want to change your diet.  Limiting sugar can help reduce cancer according to this special as well.   Turns out sugar is very addictive.  It goes back to the age old phrase, "everything you know is wrong - again".

Akhil, Kevin and Tim at Hilton Head Redfish and Shark Fishing

During spring break, we went to Hilton Head, SC and stayed at Vallemare at Palmetto Dunes.  We brought along my youngest son Tim and his good friends Akhil Gowda and Kevin Taggart.   We had a place right on the ocean.  We did all the normal beach stuff including jet skiing, skim boarding, boogy-boarding as well as fishing in Palmetto Bay.   Below (from left to right) is Tim, Kevin and Akhil and they are on the Mighty Mako with Captain Dave Fleming.

Above is Akhil reeling in a monster Redfish.  Below is Akhil holding the huge Redfish he caught.  It was so big, Captain Dave Flemming pulled out HIS camera to take a photo.

Above is Kevin catching a Bull Shark.  Kevin brought it up to the boat and the Captain decided not to use a net and it slipped out of his hands, but it absolutely still counts as a catch for Kevin.
 


Above is Tim catching a Shovelhead shark.

Above is Tim holding his Shovelhead shark he caught.   Tim did catch a record flounder a couple of years ago in Ocean City, MD.  Here is the link and below is the photo from the Coastal Fisherman.

Chris Melissinos - The Art of Video Games at Smithsonian

Julie and I were honored to attend a VIP event at the Smithsonian American Art Museum event that Chris Melissinos was the curator and did and AMAZING job putting it together.

 Above is the logo for The Art of Video Games.

It was an absolutely first class event.   There were individuals from all walks of life.  We had a chance to talk to lots of long time friends from Sun Microsystems as well as Chris's mom Faye, dad Bob and Chris's brother Ryan.  Sue Walls, Steve Fritzinger and other Sun employees were there as well.  It was very cool to meet some famous people such as Tom McMillen of UMD Terps, Washington Bullets and a Congressman from Maryland.  Tom was the #1 high school player in the entire country when he signed to play with Left Driesell at Maryland.  A very nice and BIG man.  I should have got a picture with him, but I saw Chris and moved along.

Above is the first area of The Art of Video Games that describes Chris's journey with gaming.  Part of Chris's journey was at Sun Microsystems whe he was a sales rep and was considering sending in a proposal for Sun to get into gaming.  Chris happened to ask my opinion and I thought it was a brilliant idea.   Chris did such a fantastic job with this that Scott McNealy, co-founder, president and CEO of Sun, encouraged Chris to push forward with his proposal.  Chris did and was eventually named Sun's Chief Gaming Officer and the host of Java One.   I have never, EVER met a more passionate, creative or smarter individual than Chris!

Below is a short video of Chris thanking the contributors and the crowd for a great night while giving a very eloquent talk on The Art of Video Games.

Above is Chris and I at the event.   Chris was kind enough to give a key note at the [MC]2 MTConnect Connecting Manufacturing Conference I hosted in November 2011.

Above is me, Chris and my wife Julie.   We purchased Chris's book called The Art of Video Games which is fantastic.

One of the benefits of being Chris is that woman line up to get their photos with him.  The line went out the door, down the steps and all the way down to The White House 12 blocks away.   Chris is very fortunate that his lovely wife Michelle realizes that Chris is the Michael Jordan of Video Games and must be shared with ALL of his fans :-)

Below are some links from the Smithsonian's American Art Museum site: 

The Museum's blog Eye Level
Picture This: Installing the Kiosks for The Art of Video Games, February 23, 2012
The Making of The Art of Video Games, February 3, 2012
The Art of Video Games: Announcing GameFest, January 26, 2012
The People Behind the Video Games: Tommy Tallarico, December 20, 2011
The People Behind the Video Games: David Cage, October 27, 2011
The Art of Video Games: A Sneak Peek, October 20, 2011
The Art of Video Games: Five Questions for Chris Melissinos, August 18, 2011
The People Behind the Video Games: thatgamecompany, July 12, 2011
The Art of Video Games: The Votes are In!, May 5, 2011
5 Questions with Chris Melissinos, March 29, 2011
The Art of Video Games: Vote Now!, February 19, 2011
5 Questions with Chris Melissinos, March 29, 2011
The Art of Video Games: Vote Now!, February 19, 2011

In the News
The Washington Post, March 18, 2012, “Critic’s Review: ‘The Art of Video Games’ at the Smithsonian American Art Museum” by Philip Kennicott
The New York Times, March 16, 2012, “An Exhibition in Easy Mode” by Seth Schiesel
BBC News, March 15, 2012, “Video game art gets the gallery treatment” by Jane O’Brien
USA Today, March 13, 2012, “Are video games art? Draw your own conclusions” by Mike Snider
Salon, March 10, 2012, Five-Minute Museum, “Video games as multi-player art project” by Emma Mustich
Metro Connection, WAMU 88.5, March 9, 2012, “Jumping Inside The Art of Video Games” with Rebecca Sheir
Smithsonian, March 2012, “The Art of Video Games” by Abigail Tucker
Smithsonian, March 2012, “The Art of Video Games”—Interview with Chris Melissinos” 

Below is Chris wrapping up his welcoming message and inviting the attendees to go up stairs to attend the exhibit.

Obama and $1Billion Manufacturing Innovation Investment

Interesting article at the San Antonio Business Journal on President Barack Obama proposing to spend up to $1 billion to create a national network of as many as 15 Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation around the country.   MTConnect should be a key part of this...

Lighting Up Your Booth and Sales With MTInsight IMTS Lite

Lighting Up Your Booth and Sales With MTInsight IMTS Lite

Mar 14, 2012

By
Dave Edstrom
This is an article I wrote for the IMTS Insider March 14th, 2012

Woody Allen once said, “90 percent of life is just showing up.” Unfortunately, that philosophy is exactly the type of thinking that some exhibitors have about preparing for trade shows. In 2012, we are seeing a major change in how exhibitors prepare for IMTS with the game changing MTInsight app called IMTS Lite. Just showing up is not nearly enough anymore.

Exhibitors have long realized it is not about the quantity of attendees showing up at their booths, but rather the quality AND the quantity.   IMTS has such a well-established and proven track record regarding attendance, that the critical pre-IMTS marketing question comes down to a simple question:

• How can my company drive the most qualified attendees to my booth at IMTS?

If you attended any of the IMTS Exhibitor Workshops, you know that there are a number of great answers to that question, but I would argue that the best answer to that question for IMTS 2012 is the MTInsight IMTS Lite app.

I want to share just a little bit about what IMTS Lite is under the covers, but first let’s take a look at what IMTS Lite does to help IMTS exhibitors.  IMTS Lite can help you promote your booth in the 2012 show using contact information from 2010 registrations. In addition, IMTS Lite can:

• View visitors to your booth in 2010 (Leads)
• Find out who was at the show but who did not visit your booth (Opportunities)
• Look at all visitors to the 2010 show (All IMTS)
• Filter by geography, industry, product interest, buying role, job function, and plant size to narrow your results
• Use Contact Search option to look for specific individuals or companies
• Export your results to use in your own company database or marketing campaign
• Import IMTS registration data directly into your CRM

Data is growing at a 40% year-over-year rate for as far as the eye can see. Jobs for those individuals who understand how to sift through and manage that data are commanding top dollar.   Business and market intelligence efforts are seeing quantifiable ROI using data.  Running applications in the cloud is starting to become the norm and not the exception. These facts are worth just a second to understand what is under the covers of the IMTS Lite app.

AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology has built IMTS Lite as an industrial class application that runs in the cloud.  Because it runs in the cloud, we can say, for all practical purposes, IMTS Lite has unlimited scalability.  If we had 1,200 exhibitors sign up for IMTS Lite tomorrow, it would be no problem whatsoever in terms of handling the requests.    Why?  We designed MTInsight from the ground up to run in the cloud.

In addition, we have teamed with a business intelligence company that runs in the cloud, and we placed all of the data in the cloud as well as all of the MTInsight applications. This cloud allows us to scale storage and processors to dynamically meet demand. We don’t need to “tell” MTInsight or the IMTS Lite app anything – it simply grows with the workload. We also ensure security by using https — the protocol that encrypts the data between your browser and the site you are speaking to. It’s used by websites that handle financial transactions, as well as other sites that want to protect their data. Sometimes you see a small lock appear on the browser bar when you are using https. 

But the real secret sauce to IMTS Lite is the decades of experience that have gone into what IMTS Lite needs to accomplish. The requirements came out of Peter Eelman’s Exhibitions Department (which was co-championed by Michelle Edmonson), AMT’s IMTS Show Committee, Mark Kennedy and Kim Brown from the MTInsight Sales and Marketing Department, as well as countless others inside and outside of AMT.  The voice of the IMTS exhibitor was heard loud and clear throughout the entire process. Pat McGibbon, AMT’s Vice President of Strategic Information and Research (SIR) and his extremely talented SIR department led the development and deployment team. This diverse group put IMTS Lite together along with a small team of consultants.

The data sources are managed by Pat’s team, which is made up of manufacturing industry experts who are statisticians, economists, researchers, mathematicians, database experts, programmers, and experts in BI. These are the talented individuals who write the analytic software that create the MTInsight dashboards, charts, reports and graphs that you see.

What is the bottom line with any show like IMTS?  Driving more qualified individuals to your booth that in turn will drive more sales and/or services for your company.   What is the best way to do that?  In my opinion, it is to sign up and use the IMTS Lite app – today!

Let MTInsight help you start your pre-show marketing campaign for IMTS 2012. Visitwww.mtinsight.org to learn more and subscribe. For questions, pricing, or to schedule a live demonstration contact Mark Kennedy (mkennedy@amtonline.org or 703-827-5220) or Kim Brown (kbrown@amtonline.org or 703-827-5223) today!

Dr. Dave Dornfeld Receives Charles F. Carter Advance Manufacturing Award

Huge congratulations to Dr. Dave Dornfeld of University at California at Berkeley (UCB) for receiving the Charles F. Carter Advance Manufacturing Award last week at the Manufacturing Technology Forum.

As is stated on Berkeley's site:

Dr. David Dornfeld, Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability at UC Berkeley, has received the Association of Manufacturing Technology's Charles F. Carter Jr. Advancing Manufacturing Award. Dr. Dornfeld is specifically recognized for his research toward advancing the understanding of burr formation and prevention, sustainable manufacturing, micro-machining, precision manufacturing and chemical-mechanical planarization.

Dave was the first professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department to become involved with MTConnect and was a huge contributor.   He is a brilliant man and a very nice guy as well.

Dave also coined "Dornfeld's Law" that I thought was so incredibly brilliant and funny that I had to blog about it.

God Bless Brian Carney and the Carney Family

This a very, very sad post to write.....

Brian Carney passed away suddenly in the early hours of Thursday March 8th of a heart attack.  There was not a nicer or smarter person that I ever knew.   For all of us who knew Brian, this is a great loss.   It was a real shock as Brian was in tremendous shape.  We went on a 50 mile bike ride together just a year or so ago and I specifically remember thinking that I need to get in shape like Brian.  Brian was also a black belt in karate.  He took this up in his 50s which was just amazing to me.

I can honestly never remember Brian being in a bad mood or ever being short with anyone.   As Tim Smith, long time Sun Microsystems employee said in an email to Jim Fiori and me, "Brian was one of the nicest people I ever worked with. Quiet competence w/ no ego. Very rare combination."   Tim was absolutely right.

John DiCarlo and Dennis Govoni have been keeping folks updated.  Ann Carney called my house last night and I spoke with Ann today.  She asked that we get the word out.   Marie O'Brien spoke with Ann.  Ann told Marie that Brian's phone and computer were all password locked, so it was difficult to find out all the contacts.

As the Washington Post reported:

On March 8, 2012, of Alexandria, VA. He is survived by his wife, Ann Sursa Carney; daughter, Allison Palmer Carney; two sons, Evan William Carney and Patrick David Carney. Also survived by his mother, Ann C. Carney; brothers, Kevin, Michael and Dennis; sister, Ellen. Friends may call Monday, March 12 from 6 to 8 p.m. at EVERLY-WHEATLEY FUNERAL HOME, 1500 W. Braddock Rd., Alexandria, VA. Funeral services will be held Tuesday, March 13 at 10 a.m. at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, 1427 W. Braddock Rd., Alexandria, VA. Memorial contributions may be made to a charity of your choice.

Please share this information with those who knew Brian. 

This is the website where you can view details on the services, sign the guestbook, upload a photo and share your thoughts.   I am sure Ann and the kids (they are adults now) would appreciate your thoughts and any photos, as well as signing the guestbook.

SERVICES

Visitation

Monday, March 12
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM  

Everly Wheatley Funeral Home
1500 W. Braddock Rd.
Alexandria, VA 22302

Get Directions →

Funeral Mass

Tuesday, March 13
10:00 AM   

Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church
1427 Braddock Rd.
Alexandria, VA 22302

Me and Joe Gibbs at Manufacturing For Growth Conference

I gave three talks at two different conferences in Orlando yesterday - two on MTConnect and one on MTInsight.

The highlight was absolutely meeting Coach Joe Gibbs.  Below is the photo of me and Joe Gibbs before lunch and after he spoke to 1,500 people.  I told Coach Gibbs that he was a real hero in the Edstrom household.  We spoke for about 5 minutes.  I asked Coach Gibbs with individuals such as John Riggins and Tony Stewart, did he need different set of rules for those individuals.  What Coach Gibbs said was, "no, the rules are the same, but there are different ways to motivate individuals.   For example, Ernest Byner would run through walls for me and I never had to ask him anything."    It is amazing the success Joe Gibbs has had with the Redskins and NASCAR with Joe Gibbs Racing.  It was GREAT to meet Joe Gibbs in person!

Below is a photo of Coach Gibbs discussing when he went to John Riggins farm house to convince John to come back to the Redskins to play in Coach Gibbs first year.  When Riggins accepted he told Coach Gibbs, "IF I come back, I will make you famous."  Coach Gibbs thought, "this guy is a fruitcake!"  He said to himself, "I will have to trade this guy if he accepts my offer to play for the Redskins."

Below is Coach Gibbs drawing out the most productive play in Redskins history - "Charlie 10 Hitch".   Charlie 10 Hitch averaged 9 yards PER PLAY for the Redskins.