Finding Patterns in Places, leads to insight

A group of Carnegie Melon Researchers published a Siggraph paper on "What makes Paris look like Paris?"  When I read this paper and watched the video it reminded me of many of the conversations that some of the top data center people have.  Comparing elements of what they see and do with others, discussing what others try and whether it would work in their environment.

Last year a bunch of us went to visit some top financial data center executives and toured their facilities.  We could find elements of the power, mechanical and other systems that told us who designed the building and how it compared to their building.

NewImage

One of the insights from the paper is that the famous landmarks are not what make the look and feel of the city, but the stylistic elements.

6 Conclusion
So, what makes Paris look like Paris? We argued that the “look
and feel” of a city rests not so much on the few famous landmarks
(e.g. the Eiffel Tower), but largely on a set of stylistic elements,
the visual minutiae of daily urban life. We proposed a method
that can automatically find a subset of such visual elements from
a large dataset offered by Google Street View, and demonstrated
some promising applications. 

Do you work best during a sunny or cloud day? Study says bad weather increases performance

HBR has a post that is good for those of you who live in bad weather environments.  

Morning Advantage: Busy Day Ahead? Pray For Rain

by Kevin Evers  |   5:00 AM August 17, 2012

Common sense tells us that bad weather makes us blue and therefore less productive at our jobs, but it turns out the opposite is true. As detailed in this executive brief at HBS Working Knowledge, researchers Jooa Julie Lee, Francesca Gino, and Bradley R. Staats found that performance at a mid-sized Japanese bank peaked on the days with the worst weather, as it did in a series of lab experiments they conducted too. Here’s their theory: When the weather’s bad, our minds wander less, and we’re able to focus more because we really can’t do anything else.

Now in data centers, you don't usually get to see the sun that much.  There aren't a lot of skylights or windows, so the weather may not affect you.  Or the weather may affect you because you know what is like outside.

Some suggestions from their research: Save drudge work for the wettest days and creative endeavors for sun-soaked days. Other ideas include using weather reports to determine the best staff size on a given day and moving service centers to cities with poor (but not entirely depressing) weather. Here’s to you, Seattle.

A greener data center should be built on truths, lying is not healthy

I don't know about you, but I am so tired of the over exaggeration of green data centers that I don't pay attention to most statements that data centers are green any more.  People think they are green simply because they are LEED certified, yet they provide so transparency on what they did to be certified. and whether the main reason they got certified was for marketing purposes.  There are quite a few people who have expressed how little the return is for saying their data center is LEED certified.

Low PUEs are an exaggeration as well.  When you know who the people are behind the statements, one of the questions I ask myself is this type of person who regularly tells lies or the truths?

NBC has post on an experiment done to see what happens if people tell the the truth for 10 weeks vs. a control group that does their regular life of lying.

We tell one lie, sometimes two, every day, sharing an average of 11 untruths per week. We tell lies to avoid hurt feelings, or we embellish to make a story more interesting. 

But whether it’s a white or boldface lie, all these fibs harm our health. Researchers discovered that people who lie less experience better physical and mental health than those who commonly bluff.

Just because people are visible speaking at conferences doesn't mean they are lying less.  In fact, the speakers could be lying more than the rest.

“The irony is that now that we have more outlets for disclosure [such as Facebook], it forces us to lie more because now people ask really bold questions,” she says.

Keep in mind that telling the truth doesn't have to be as bad as Jim Carrey's movie Liar Liar.

Telling the truth can be more like this.

Kelly stresses that not lying doesn’t mean sharing harsh truths -- it means telling kind truths or not revealing some information. A kind truth might sound like “I loved how that other dress looked on you,” instead of “you look terrible in this dress.” Participants in the no lie group also avoided exaggerations by changing the subject or not answering questions, politely, of course.

Telling the truth is also better for the soul and your health.

“Good relationships have long been connected to good health,” says Kelly. “The bottom line is this is really about the relationships … being caught in these lies is anxiety [producing] because we don’t want to ruin the relationships.”

Observation: why the press can be difficult sometimes

I laugh when people think of me as media.  I think of myself as an engineer who likes to solve problems.  Being an Industrial Engineer, I spend a lot of time thinking about the human element in projects.  With this blog I can now write a bunch of my observations and share it with anyone who wants to visit this blog. The great thing about blogs, twitter, and other social media is you can now have a voice even if you don't work for a major publication.

One of the observations I want to share is one I made over 25 years ago when i was working for Apple.  There was an evening party after an event like MacWorld with a wide range of people from the Mac ecosystem including Apple HW and SW developers.  There was a particular guy who was dressed poorly, had bags to grab stuff being handed out, and an attitude. This guy was nerdy than the rest, and I worked with the Apple developers with not the greatest social skills who I thought were nerds.  I looked at his badge and he had a media badge.  I watched him a bit more and he had an air of entitlement that said treat me with respect. Why? If not, I'll write something really bad.  Many people kept their distance from him.

To be a technical reporter, you need to have some technical knowledge to understand the press releases. But, in general they are not technical enough to work for the companies that make the stuff. What got me thinking is how does it feel to be constantly looking at the latest technology and know you aren't qualified to work there, the people you are talking to are changing the world, and getting paid really well with stock options.  There are a handful of journalists that are successful, but they don't retire after their company goes IPO.  

It is easy to talk to the press the same way you talk to your peers about a technology.  Keep in mind that your product and its success can actually rub someone the wrong way.

When a person does get rubbed the wrong way, they can spend more time to show this person is wrong by interviewing someone with an opposing view. This can also be called unbiased reporting.  How many times does a journalist say this person is the expert and this other person is some random person I finally found with an opposing view that is not credible as the expert opinion.  The unbiased reporting is an interesting area.

Where can we find unbiased journalism?

A Hemingway novel ends with the line, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" I've always wanted to know what was true, not merely what I might want to believe -- including about Obama. I assume some WSJ readers are the same way.

...

I was a journalist; I know how and how not to game statistics. I suspect this "study" of gaming statistics because it uses two different time periods: recessions post- WWII and post-1960. Isn't that an apples-to-oranges comparison? I suspect the statistics were gamed to make Obama look as bad as possible. I know for sure that's at least one reason why this was published in Opinion rather than the news pages.

In fact, this evident gaming makes me disappointed in the WSJ. But it'll never be a perfect world -- as all conservatives know.

 

It's tough to be unbiased when you are reporting on a subject that you enjoy, but think you could do.  Imagine if sports journalisms was composed of those who didn't make the team.  If entertainment reporting was composed of the waitresses/waiters who couldn't make it on Broadway.  

One tip about talking to the press is to try and get some background on them.  When you talk to the person keep in mind you could be rubbing them the wrong way.  This is why phone interviews can be so difficult.  When you see the person you can see how they are reacting to you.