2. I had 5 different majors in college, none of which centered around computers. I started out looking to go into medicine and ended up graduating with a degree in Philosophy. (I did end up doing a minor in computer science)

3. I spent most of my time in high-school and college being an athlete. I played goalie for the University of Toronto Varsity Blues, lead my high-school crew to compete at the Canadian championships, and ran cross-country, track and triathlons in the summer. (And every time I read Jason Womack’s blog I get the urge to race again)

4. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial streak – I started my first business at the age of 19 as a “Goaltending Consultant”, with the other head instructor of the Jim Park Goalie School. And, much as today, we ran into some difficulties trying to work in the USA – it was my first lesson the importance of the right visa.

5. The book that most changed my thinking was Dennis Conner’s book The Art of Winning, which I read when I was 14. It’s still the simplest, most on-point book on building successful teams and successful careers that I have ever read. I still give it to anybody who manages a team under me – it’s an incredible playbook for building a successful winning team.

Since I jumped in due to Thom’s cheating, I feel it only necessary to tag the only the people who I’d most like to know random things about. So, I tag Linda Ferguson, Alex Hutton, Michael Vanderdonk, Andy Jaquith, and Adam and the folks at Emergent Chaos.

SSSE Domain 6 – Quality Assurance

December 29, 2006

Fundamentally, network security is a QA act. While we don’t always believe that it is, a simple thought experiment shows that it is:

If code was completely bug free, network and application architecture were flawless and users were perfectly trained and never made mistakes, would we have security issues?

I think that we would find ourselves hard-pressed to answer yes to that question. Luckily for all of us, none of those things are possible. But the point is that we need to understand the mechanisms by which quality assurance happens.

Note that I’m not talking here just about “software QA”, which is what most of us think about when contemplating “QA”. Here, I also mean the principles that enable the creation of quality throughout product design, development and deployment – the work of Deming, Six Sigma and Lean.

Required Texts

Testing Computer Software – This one is Cem Kaner’s seminal manual on all things software QA. This one is up there with the work of Richard Stevens when it comes to talking about amazing technical references.

Out of the Crisis – This one is Deming’s master work, and the absolute bible of product quality.

Supplemental Texts

The Six Sigma Way – Peter Pande’s excellent reference on all things Six Sigma contains all of the key points about Six Sigma and is actually interesting to read at the same time.

Toyota Production System – Written by Taichi Ohno, the architect of Toyota’s production system which was the model for what eventually became known as Lean. This one’s the original source material, and an important basis for understanding how to build products (and software and networks) in the most effective way possible.

Powerpoint Karaoke

December 28, 2006

Joi Ito talks about Powerpoint Karaoke, which is being played at 23C3 (which I really wish I was at). The game is:

“You get up. They cue up a random presentation. You ad lib it. ”

Terrifying. But I imagine that it’s a riot. Perhaps we can get them to do this one at Blackhat. (For those that didn’t hear, registration for Vegas 07 is now open)

The Best of 2006

December 28, 2006

Over at his blog, Adam asks for a favor – that we put up a list of our favorite posts from 2006. That’s definitely a tough one to narrow down, because there are so many cool posts that I’ve seen in 2006, but I’ll do my best to put up a quick list of the ones I haven’t previously linked to here:

Jason Womack – Consistency and Change

Ryan Poppa (nCircle) – Are We There Yet?

Steve Pavlina – Purpose: Permanent Message, Temporary Medium

Thom Singer – Chief Networking Officer

Guerilla Job Hunter – The 12 Days of Christmas (Series)

Keith Ferrazzi – How to get “Buy In”

Andrew Storms (nCircle) – Thwarting Physical Santa Security

Tom Peters – A Tribute to Brand Yous

Linda Ferguson – Psyche, Cupid and the Rest of the World

There are a huge number of others, but those are just a few of my favorites from 2006.

The Million Dollar Challenge

December 28, 2006

Over the holidays, I committed to myself that I’d read 7 of the books that have been sitting on my book shelf awaiting my attention. One of those books was the One-Minute Millionaire. The book has an interesting separation – on the left hand pages, the book is a non-fiction manual to manifesting wealth. On the right side, it’s a fictional story. The split is weird, but once I got used to it, the book had an impact.

It had an especially interesting challenge that I’ve been unable to stop thinking about. Paraphrasing the book:

Play along with me for a minute.

Could you do it?

The more I think about it, the more the answer is yes – if I had to, I could figure it out. And I would imagine that, put in the same situation, we’d all find the same way. We’d pull together all of the smartest and most successful people we could find, and ask them the magic question:

“I have to make a million dollars in the next year, and you’re someone who has done it. Can you show me how?”

And, because there was someone’s life on the line, we’d listen to their advice and follow it. Because we would view it as a must – as the character in the book faced with this question says: “Well, what choice would I have? Who cares what the odds are? If someone’s got my grand-daughter, I guess I’d just have to figure out a way, wouldn’t I?”

So, my question… could you do it if it was your child or spouse or parent? And, if it’s something that you could do if you had to, what keeps it from being something that you have to do right now?

What other goals (other than just making a million dollars) could you accomplish if you had to?

An Email Trick for those Road Warriors out there…

December 28, 2006

So, this one’s a quick trick that I’ve known ever since my days of writing articles in Sys Admin, but it’s a trick I hadn’t thought about letting others know about for a while, until I was reminded by a recent post over at Hawk Wings.

Port 25 isn’t the only port for sending mail on. In fact, there are two other common ports in use by most ISPs and mail servers:

Port 587 serves as the port for the submission protocol (RFC 2476) – this port is designed to take mail from end users, and functions exactly like SMTP for all intents and purposes.

Also, port 465 is the reserved port for SMTPS (SMTP over SSL) – this is an encrypted version of SMTP.

This is useful info because many ISPs (especially wireless or hotel ISPs) block outgoing traffic on port 25 to prevent spam. So, you can re-configure your mail client to send its outgoing mail on port 587 or port 465 (make sure the “secure connection” box is checked for 465), and you’ll be able to send mail from almost any of your accounts, no matter where you are.

Scott Blake – “It never ceases to amaze me what security people won’t share with each other”

December 27, 2006

The 4th episode of the Technology Career Excellence podcast series involves Scott Blake, the CISO in Residence at Echelon One. This podcast is the first of three parts of the interview with Scott. In this episode, we discuss the mission of Echelon One and the nature of the CISO role.

In addition, Scott talks about how important it is to build a network of contacts within your community, and share information widely – this sort of networking is the only way to create the kind of upward spiral of information that is required to become better and faster within a given industry.

Give it a listen…

The Z List

December 27, 2006

Seth posts about the Z-List over at his blog – it’s a pretty cool list of bloggers that has been travelling the blogosphere, and getting added to with each step. Kind of like a blogging chain letter of cool blogs… there are some blogs on here that everyone should definitely check out. I’ll post the list below, but even more interesting is that Seth created a Plexo over at Squidoo for the list… it allows you to see which blogs others have liked.

Check out the plexo (and drop a vote for Episteme when you get there).

Here’s the current Z List:

BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Episteme – Belief. Knowledge. Wisdom.
Jaffe Juice – Joe Jaffe
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Andy Nulman
Billions With Zero  Knowledge
Working at Home  on the Internet
MapleLeaf  2.0
Darren  Barefoot
Two Hat Marketing
The Engaging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
Conversation Agent
The Copywriting  Maven
Hee-Haw  Marketing
Scott Burkett’s Pothole  on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding &  Marketing
Carpe  Factum
Steve’s 2  Cents
Simplicity
Popcorn n  Roses
On Influence &  Automation
Servant of  Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Make it  Great!
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
Urban Jacksonville
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs  Blog
Design  Sojourn
Frozen  Puck
The  Sartorialist
Small  Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob  Sutton
¡Hola! Oi!  Hi!
Shut Up and  Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art,  Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the  fly
Jeremy Latham’s  Blog
SMogger Social Media  Blog
Masey.com
37 Days
A Clear Eye
Alex Halavais
Blog Brothers
Brand Autopsy
Brand Soul
Creating  Passionate Users
Crossroads  Dispatches
Doc Searls
Drawn
eHub
FAST Company
gapingvoid
gillianic tendencies
Good Experience
Hitchhikers Guide to the Blogosphere
Hobopoet
How to Save the World
Josh Hallett
Joy of Six
Learned on Women
Listics
Make it Great
my topography
New Charm School
Occupational  Adventure
Orbit Now
Pause
PureLand Mountain
Seth Godin
Simplicity
Songs of Experience
Talking  Story
Time Goes By
Tom Peters
Tomorrow Today
WonderBranding
World Changing
Tertiary Education
Joyful Jubilant Learning
Creative Think
8wishes
Movie Marketing  Madness
Blog Till You  Drop!
Get  Shouty!
One Reader at a  Time
100 Bloggers
Critical Fluff
The New PR
Own Your Brand!
OTOInsights
bizandbuzz
Work, in Plain English
Buzz Canuck
New  Millenium PR
Pardon My  French
The Instigator  Blog
AENDirect
Diva  Marketing
Marketing  Hipster
The Marketing  Minute
Funny  Business
The Frager  Factor
Mindblob
OrbitNow!
Open The Dialogue
Word Sell
Note to CMO:
That’s Great  Marketing!
Shotgun  Marketing Blog

Systemic Games

December 27, 2006

Processes are created. Then, people “game” the system to avoid the processes, which causes the creation of more processes that ensure that the system is “game-proof”.

The second step is what causes the creation of almost all bureaucracy – by modifying the system to avoid the ability to game it (i.e. creating more controls), we embed within the system the idea of the original game. And, when this process has occured iteratively a few times, the system starts to become bloated and difficult to navigate because it incorporates steps that walk through all sorts of different “game avoidances”.

This is why Lean is so successful: an iteration of Lean causes you to strip out the game avoidance steps and go back to the original process.

Fake Security

December 27, 2006

Overheard in a recent meeting:

“As important as real security is being audit-proof.”

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