I mentioned that I was having some problems with my column2.com email address, and I finally figured out what the problem was: in playing around with Google Apps for my domain, I ended up forwarding that email to a mailbox that I wasn't actually checking. D'oh! At least all the mail wasn't lost, but now I have an extra 80 email messages to respond to from the past three weeks.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 11:02 AM in OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

It seems like my column2.com email forward was not working properly, and at least some email sent there has disappeared into that great bit bucket in the sky. If you've sent me something recently and didn't hear back, try it again, I've reset the forward and it's working now. If that fails, my first name at kemsleydesign.com is my direct address.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 08:50 AM in OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

This meme has been floating around for a few months on the web, and it's time for it to die. I was tagged by Neil Ward-Dutton, and I promised to respond although I'm not passing it on from here. Time for a new meme!

So here goes, five things that you (probably) don't know about me:

1. I hold a private pilot's licence, although I've only flown once in the last five years. I remember my first solo flight like it was yesterday, and regret not keeping it up.
2. My favourite TV shows are Desperate Housewives and Battlestar Galactica. Don't even try to psychoanalyze that one.
3. I love to cook, and most times would rather cook for friends than go out to a restaurant. In particular, I will cook just about anything on a barbeque regardless of weather, which seems less weird if you consider that my family traditionally cooks a 30-lb Christmas turkey on the barbeque. In the snow. My favourite vacation ever was cooking school in Tuscany.
4. My first programming language was FORTRAN, and I never learned COBOL. I started my career writing Fourier analysis pattern recognition applications for satellite images, although I'd be hard-pressed to remember what an eigenvalue is these days.
5. I learned to read at age 4, and it's been my most common leisure activity since that time. In spite of that (or maybe because of the number of books that I read), I rarely keep books for very long: I either borrow them from the public library, or buy them and pass them on to friends/family when I've read them. My only "permanent" collections are cookbooks and travel guides.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 11:10 AM in OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

Often, when I receive a request for a meeting on something that's far outside of my usual BPM/Enterprise 2.0 interests, I'll turn it down. However, when the meeting is with various deans and professors at Carnegie Mellon University West about their new Masters in Software Management program (press release here), I'm happy to make an exception. I graduated as an engineer over 20 years ago, and programs like this just weren't available then; I was curious to see how engineering education has advanced. I had a call with Dr. Jim Morris, dean of the CMU west coast campus, Dr. Martin Griss, associate dean for education and director of the software engineering program, and Tony Wasserman, executive director of the Center for Open Source Investigation. Of course, they're all professors at CMU as well, at the relatively new campus in Silicon Valley.

The Masters in Software Management is like a software engineering equivalent to an executive MBA: it's intended for people who are already experienced practitioners but want to improve their management skills in a big way, and do so part-time while they continue to work so that they can start to see immediate application and benefit. It grew out of the high level of interest in the management courses offered as part of the Masters in Software Engineering program that's been running since 2002, as well as interest from employers in the marketplace for the skills that they plan to teach. The Masters in Software Management is less technical than the Masters in Software Engineering, but offers some amazing courses that I think should work their way into any senior software engineering or computer science curriculum: open source, enterprise architecture, managing distributed teams, outsourcing, and many others. Since these are presented in a current business context, using long-running teams and simulating a small company experience, the goal is to produce the next generation of software leaders.

The program doesn't kick off until later this year, so they don't know the demographics of the student population yet, but are expecting that most will have a technical computer science/software engineering background, and that there will be a mix of those from small companies who want to improve their skills and build the next Google, and some from large companies who are either closet entrepreneurs or are serious about software management within their organization. About 1/3 of the Masters in Software Engineering program attendees are women, and they expect the percentage to be higher in the Software Management program. As in the Software Engineering program (where about 30% of the students are offsite), they'll allow remote students, although they need to be onsite for the 4-day kickoff and a few more times during the 2-year program.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 08:50 AM in OffTopic • SoftwareDesign | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

My other half didn't quite make it to the card store -- although I understand that a spa day is in my future -- but TIBCO remembered me on Valentine's Day (click on the image):

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 03:32 PM in OffTopic | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

Call it Love 2.0. All this talk about collaboration and presence yesterday, plus a blog post over on my "off topic" blog about Skype stalkers, and I've had a request from Skype's PR company to help find someone to interview for Valentine's Day tomorrow. The gist of the story is how Skype can help long-distance lovers keep in touch, especially on Valentine's Day.

Are you currently in a long-distance relationship? Do you live in Toronto? Do you use Skype to communicate with your other half? Are you free to be interviewed (on camera) by Amber Mac of CityTV tomorrow?

If you said yes to all four questions, and you're game for this, contact Margie Cader directly (I'm just the messenger, leave me out of it).

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 04:00 PM in OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

I was on the BPMG site today, specifically the articles launch page, and I noticed that they appear to be using a graphic that is identical to the Bloglines plumber (the page that Bloglines puts up when they are down for maintenance). Who's copying whom?

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 01:25 PM in BPMG • OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

This is completely off topic, but I'll be in Vienna, Austria for New Year's, and there is a big concert by the Vienna Philharmonic on the morning of January 1st that we would absolutely love to attend -- my other half is Croatian and he used to listen to this concert every year on the radio from Croatia. I know that the tickets sell out a year in advance, but if you know of any way to get a couple of tickets for this, please let me know -- I'll do a blog post in your honour. :)

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 09:53 AM in OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

A happy 4th of July to all my American readers. For me, it's a day to catch up on my RSS feeds and email, since there's so little new content coming in today, and finish up a couple of small projects.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 10:52 AM in OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

It's Canada's 139th birthday today; happy birthday to us! The best parade that I saw today was the one through Chinatown, where Canadian flags were carried alongside Chinese dragon puppets and tagu drummers. I was glad to be on foot; it must have snarled traffic over the entire west side of downtown. The Festival of Fire fireworks competition kicks off tonight at 10:30 from a barge off Ontario Place, and should be visible from anywhere along the lake.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 04:30 PM in OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

For the code monkeys in the crowd, you'll fall out of your cubicle laughing at this.

(via Sutha Kamal)

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 06:46 PM in OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

A cool map that you can create of the countries that you've visited. Here's mine:

create your own visited countries map

When I look at it, I'm more amazed by the places that I haven't been (nothing in South America? or Asia?) than the 29 countries that I have.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 05:24 PM in OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us

I received an email from James Taylor today, and on second reading, I noticed the following in small print at the end of his signature block:

Despite not being sent from my Blackberry, this email may nevertheless be terse and contain spelling and grammatical errors.

As a very sympathetic Blackberry user, I'm still laughing.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 09:57 PM in OffTopic | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | Add to del.icio.us