[Presentation] Knowledge Management and the Tribunal of Experience
July 15th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in » Business
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Great presentation to Understand the Green Energy Act and Feed-in tariff: Innovation & Ontario’s Feed-in Tariff Program by Paul Gipe
Ontario Feed-In Tariff Program
Tags: Energy, feed-in tariff, FIT, GEA, ontario
On July 15, I will be presenting at the Knowledge Worker Meetup, in Toronto. Here is the abstract:
Knowledge Management and the Tribunal of Experience
Benoit Hardy-Vallee, PhD
our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.
- W.V.O. Quine
“Knowledge” is an elusive, abstract concept, yet we use it everyday. I would like first to take the time to discuss this concept, highlight its key dimensions and suggest how knowledge management should be sensitive to a proper theory of knowledge. To do so, I will briefly revisit (at a high level, it’s Wednesday night for Pete’s sake!) the main tenets of contemporary epistemology, i.e., the theory of knowledge. The goal is to make the case for a conception of knowledge that properly differentiates knowledge from information. One of the key differentiators is that knowledge has to be justified, and ultimately it must face what Quine called the “Tribunal of Experience”: empirical evidence.
Having put that in place, I will argue that the framework known as “Evidence-Based Management” (Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management, by Sutton & Pfeffer, 2006, HBS) is the surest bet as to how we should manage knowledge and even that Evidence-Based Management is Evidence-based Knowledge Management. A commitment to fact and evidence, I will suggest, should make us sensitive not only to facts about organizations but also to important facts about the Knowledge Worker: our own cognitive biases are the worst threat to knowledge, hence to its optimal management.
Speaker. Benoit Hardy-Vallee, Phd.
Benoit Hardy-Vallee is a consultant in the Operations Support Services (Utilities & IT practice) of SBR Global. Born in Quebec, he studied Philosophy of science and cognitive science in Montreal, Paris, Waterloo and Toronto. He worked as a project manager, web developer, event organizer, researcher and lecturer before entering management consulting at SBR Global, where he helps organizations reach their goals. His blog, Management Epistemology (http://www.hardyvallee.net), discusses organizational behavior, consulting and the energy industry. His interest for Knowledge Management started during his academic years. It continues to spark his intellectual and professional interest. Benoit also practices karate regularly. Currently at the brown-belt level, he hopes to get his black belt next year.
Additionally, Benoit has been a member of this Meetup group since its inception in January 2009
Tags: knowledge management
SOA Terminology
Key concepts in SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture ) from ModernAnalyst.com. (see also this “SOA for Dummies” Limited Edition Mini eBook).
Application Server
All services eventually have to run on some sort of platform, the software container of which is called an application server. In the SOA world this is usually either a Java run time environment or a .NET run time, depending on whether you have gone the Sun/IBM Java route or the Microsoft .NET route for developing services. Note that in a mixed Java/.NET situation you will separate (and completely different) application servers.
Business Process
A defined set of business activities that represent the steps required to achieve a business objective. It includes the flow and use of information and resources. These should be high enough level to be understood by the users and managers of the process. No application logic, business rules or explicit data manipulation should be represented.
Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)
Short for Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL). BPEL is an OASIS standard executable language for specifying interactions with Web Services. This seems to now be the de factor standard for running business processes and providing some interoperability between Process Engines and BPM Suites. Can be hand-crafted, but more often generated from a Business Process Modelling tool.
Business Process Management (BPM)
I’m sure you have come across this in your everyday working. A generic term for mapping, modelling and running business processes, typically using BPEL. However, note that some BPM software products do not expose their runtime (i.e. no BPEL), effectively running as a ‘black box’. Note than BPM is an approach (like SOA) not a product.
Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN)
Many (but not all) process modelling tools have adopted a common descriptive language - BPMN. It describes the graphical representation of a Business Process including some the of associated meta-data, making it more powerful than a Visio or PowerPoint diagram.
Business Rules
A specific type of business service that deals exclusively with encapsulating complex decision trees with up to thousands of criteria. Typically delivered by a software product called a rules engine.
Choreography/Orchestration
Process choreography is the ability to automate and manage business processes so that the workflow and logic decisions are made correctly. Service Orchestration allows run-time selection of the services required to fulfil the needs of the business processes or composite services requiring specific data or transformation. To be honest, these terms can be, and are, used fairly interchangeably, much to annoyance of SOA purists. However, the purists can’t agree on a clear demarcation of meaning so I’d advise you to steer clear of these terms. If anyone does use one or the other, get them to clarify what they mean.
Encapsulation
Encapsulation has specific and slightly different meanings for a number of related disciplines, such as networking, Object Orientation, and SOA. The SOA meaning is for when you reuse an existing piece of software that wasn’t designed as a service, for example an old 3270 green screen. By hiding the existing interface under a ‘facade’ - a piece of code that looks like a service to your SOA environment, but handles the interface with the old software un such a way that it behaves as it used to - the existing software has been encapsulated by a new service that can be used as any other service.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
The ESB allows run-time selection of the services required to fulfil the needs of the business processes or composite services requiring specific data or transformation. The idea is that the ESB coordinates the messaging between different Web services, based on different events and business conditions. This can help to prevent an SOA from becoming too complex and incoherent. Conversely, you may not need an ESB until you have hundreds of services. In large SOA environments, you may need several ‘Federated’ ESBs to co-ordinate all the services.
Portal
The portal is a fairly wide term for the presentation layer of the applications you are developing. In true SOA the portal contains no application or data logic - it purely exists to display and enter information with users. The advantage of abstracting the presentation logic to a portal is that you can add other media (cellphone, WAP, kiosk, etc.) without changing any of the underlying data and logic services. Unfortunately, many vendors have produced rich portal development environments that provide full application development facilities. For small systems this may be appropriate, but as it is not a pure presentation layer it does not fit into a pure SOA environment.
Process Engine
The Process Engine is the container in which the business process runs. It is process equivalent of the Application Server for services. Typically parsing BPEL as the executing language, it should be considered a black box, providing isolation from the physical infrastructure on which it runs, so that the processes are independent of the platform.
Representational State Transfer (REST)
REST is a web-specific network architecture that allows easier development and deployment of distributed applications, mainly using Web Services. A bit hardcore in concept, but you may come across web developers who insist on ‘RESTful’ development. Best to humour them, and DON’T ask them what is wrong with SOAP…
Unified Modeling Language (UML)
UML is an open method used to specify, visualise, construct and document the artifacts of an object-oriented software-intensive system under development. It is typically used in large development teams as a bridge between process models and software development. Good process modelling tools can output the information required to develop the services required to UML, so that the development team can import the information directly into their software development tools. Some developers insist of hand crafting the UML and ignoring process inputs. However, despite their claims, it cannot replace process modelling to define business processes effectively.
Web Oriented Architecture (WOA)
WOA is a style of software architecture that extends SOA to web based applications, and is sometimes considered to be a light-weight version of SOA. WOA is also aimed at maximizing the browser and server interactions by use of technologies such as REST and POX(! - don’t ask…).
Web Services Description Language (WSDL)
WSDL is an XML-based language that provides a model for describing Web services. More services are now being described in WSDL so it has increasing importance in SOA developments. Again mainly the preserve of developers so you shouldn’t be exposed to it. Pronounced wiz-dull.
Tags: SOA
97% of companies discuss a Green IT strategy
from a new research report:
“Symantec also found that Green IT has reached critical mass. Virtually all the companies we surveyed (97 percent) are discussing their Green strategy, with just one percent saying it is unimportant.
2009 Green IT Report (greenercomputing.com)
The key findings of the 2009 Worldwide Green IT Report are:
1. Green IT is now an “essential”
2. Green IT budgets are rising
3. IT is willing to pay a premium for green equipment
4. IT is at the heart of enterprise green efforts
5. Green IT initiatives are more of a priority
GHG reduction, credit, capital and investment: Issues for Canadian utility companies
Survey of Canadian utility company executives by Pwc shows that
- main concerns are : regulatory changes and development, ageing workforce, lack of transmission capacity and pressures to replace ageing assets.
- diminished access to capital is having a significant or major impact on their planning over the coming 12 months.
- credit constraints is a significant issue for the sector, yet utilities company executives expect these constraints to improve as current financial conditions ease.
- 88% of Canadian utility companies believe that greenhouse gas regulations are the largest major issue facing the sector in the next five years
- In Ontario ,concerns about the size and scale of investment required in generation and transmission dominate, with regulatory delays adding to cost concerns
From:
‘A World Beyond Recession, Utilities Global Survey 2009′
(Canada pp. 40-43)
and summary here.
The future is an electric car
A new paper in Science says that using biomass—corn or switchgrass—to make electricity rather than ethanol is the smarter move on all counts. “Bioelectricity” offers more energy per acre of cropland, and fewer environmental impacts. Scientific American does the heavy lifting.
Source: WSJ
Is it me or it sounds like good news?
April 15th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in » Business
For the first time since last Fall, we finally hear good news, and words like “optimism”:
Community Economic Development/Revitalization, Utilizing Electrical Micro Grid Development
.
My friend Sanyakhu-Sheps Amaré , Executive Director of Phoenix Communities, Inc., and I are putting together NECST (pronounced “Next”): Northern Eastern Electricity Community Systems and Technology, i.e. an an internet think tank hub on electrical micro-grid clearinghouse publishing scientific and Community Economic Development social impact papers on Micro-Grids. Contact me at benoit@hardyvallee.net if you are interested in providing thought leadership in this area.
The first paper we are discussing to be developed is on the need for governments and municipalities to simultaneously include in their national and regional grid infrastructural upgrade equal focus Micro-grids development. Here is a powerpoint that present the approach. The idea is to have a micro-grid (a community smart-grid) as a tool for Community Economic Development. You can also read an interview with Sanyakhu here
Community Economic Development/Revitalization, Utilizing Electrical Micro Grid Development
View more presentations from benoithv.
Tags: CED, economic development, Energy, green, micro-grid
