Seeing Information

My previous post on Information Overload identified the problem we have with handling all the data that is being created in our modern Information Age world. This post has 2 simple examples of the power of information and how it can be more easily understood using Data Visualisation techniques.

I recently received an email showing the expected growth trends in the Australian economy in 2012. One of the things I found hard to make sense of from the article was exactly which sector was doing better so I decided to pull the information from the post for the sectors that had it, put it into excel and do a graph. This is the essence of Data Visualisation. Here is what I came up with.

Data Visualisation

So from this we can now see, that is the point, that the Resources and Energy sector is expected to grow very strongly whereas Advertising and Marketing is shrinking. I sent a copy of the graph to our business mentor Dr Marc Dussault, The Exponential Growth Strategist, as I thought he would be interested. He reworked it slightly and sent back this:

Better Data Visualisation

There are 2 changes here. The first is that the data is ordered so the trend is clearer.  Organising the data better can improve the understanding you get from the same data using the same Visualisation Method.

The second change is that the formatting of the data is more attractive which makes it more likely the information will be looked at. Marc says that is because he did his graph using a Macintosh computer whereas I used a PC running Windows. That is a long running debate but in this case the visual results are clearly better. So formating the visualisation also helps.

Seeing Connections

Sometimes it is the relationship between pieces of information that is important. This second example is our website. This is done using a HTML Tag Diagram Viewer which is free and you can play with it yourself. My thanks again go to  Dr Marc Dussault, The Exponential Growth Strategist for providing this link. The link redraws our primary domain but you can just put your own in if you want to see what that looks like. It was created by Marcel Salathe so my thanks also go to him for creating and making freely available such a useful tool.

Here is what the graph for http://www.successful.com.au looks like.

www.successful.com.au Website Visualisation

This shows how the tags on the pages relate to each other and how the pages link from the home page in the centre to the rest of the pages on the domain. The blog shows as a cluster only in this view. Here is the legend for understanding the colours.

• Blue: for links (the A tag)
• Red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
• Green: for the DIV tag
• Violet: for images (the IMG tag)
• Yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
• Orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
• Black: the HTML tag, the root node
• Gray: all other tags

So this information is both graphically represented and also Colour Coded, another Data Visualisation technique.

I then decided to see what just this blog would look like http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/?url=http://www.successful.com.au/blog

www.successful.com.au/blog Website Visualisation

So the blog is a lot more complicated. And that also makes sense. There are more outgoing links and more interlinking since I also reference other posts.

As an Electronics Design company we use Data Visualisation all the time to help us analyse both research results and test results. So I plan to show a few examples of that in my next post.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2012  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

How Much Data?

According to IBM, 90% of the data created in the history of the world, was created in the past 2 years. The article was looking at Social Media Information but the claim was generic. Talk about Information Overload. How do we keep up with this?

There are sceptics that believe this Data Deluge is overstated but even if they are out by a factor of 10, it seems we are in danger of moving from the Information Age to drowning in data.

I worked with a very fast thinker once. Working with him was like trying to see ahead underwater while travelling in the wake of an outboard motor engine. The trick was to decide what to ignore so you could just address the important things. He used it as a tactic to get his own way during meetings. I was reminded of this while thinking about this topic. It seems the whole human race is about to face the same dilemma. How to sort the important information from the huge volume of total information being produced.

Information Overload

Information Relevance

Not all of information produced is of the same quality, usefulness or relevance. Assessing Information Relevance will become increasingly more important. A post on Facebook letting us all know that someone’s dog just farted is not as valuable to know for most of us compared to the passing of a new law that puts a carbon tax on high carbon emitters.

The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is expected to produce data equal to 1% of the worlds production rate when it is running. This required a new approach to data storage. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Large Hadron Collider is a higher energy version of the Australian Synchrotron which has specialised detectors that examine the fine details of how the matter of the universe is constructed. The intent is to look for evidence that the Higgs Boson exists as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.

Test Everything

I mention it here because they have to record the experimental data knowing that it may be some time before they can fully interpret it. They have planned for the Information Overload as well as the long term Information Storage.

In fact it is a great example of long term planning with the original proposal in 1985 and the construction beginning in 1994 and being complete in 2008. You see the steps involved in LHC Milestones.

Stephen Wolfram has put together a timeline of the Advance of the Data Civilisation and if you are keen you can also buy the  Historical Timeline of Systematic Data from them.

Information Storage

So how do you store all that data?

If we used DVDs it would produce a stack that goes to the Moon and back. That’s too big to store as DVDs.

The increase in data comes from 3 sources:

• new data sources such as ubiquitous sensors, LHC, business metrics, research…
• increased data creation from existing sources such as social media, blogs, web publishing…
• unprecedented processing power

So far the storage solution is the growth of server farms and while many higher density storage technologies are being investigated, most data is stored on conventional hard disks. Redundacy and data security are of course hot topics.

Hard Disk Storage

Information Processing

The other major issue is how do we make sense of all this data. Traditional data Integration tools are considered to be not ready for Big Data, and this is likely to get worse before it gets better. Information Processing is going to be one of the opportunity areas of the next decade.

According to CNN, Data Scientist will be one of the hot jobs in 2022.

Even in the much smaller world of Successful Endeavours where we develop new products and have to do the Innovation, research, Prototypes and testing associated with them; managing all the data requires both discipline and planning.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2012  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

Technology Humour

This is a follow on from Some Engineering Humour which you are likely to also enjoy. For this post I have tried to find videos that show some aspect of the use of technology that also has a humourous side to it. This was surprisingly difficult. It seems that as engineers, we often don’t give a lot of credit to the power of humour. My previous post is on page 1 of Google when I search for Engineering Humour! So the videos I did find are all by non-engineers.

This first video is by Aparna Rao who shows a range of products or art installations she developed, many of which reimagine everyday objects and have quite a sophisticated sense of humour associated. The art installations are her speciality and all require technology for the implementation. The design of objects for quirky family members is quite touching.

Design Humour

David Carson is talking about design. He uses humour extremely well in this presentation although it take him about 5 minutes to get warmed up so don’t bail out early as it is well worth listening to the end. If you are interested in design at all, Electronics Design or any other sort, then this has some very interesting points to consider. I particularly found the implications for User Interface Design to be thought provoking.

Engineering Jokes

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To a pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets.

An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess”. He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week.” The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want for a week.” Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, “What is the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess, that I’ll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?” The engineer said, “Look I’m an engineer. I don’t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, that’s cool.

Four engineers were driving to a conference together when their car stopped dead in the road. The Electrical Engineer said it was clearly a wiring problem and they needed to check the fuses. The Chemical Engineer said obviously it was a clog in the fuel line – all they needed to do was clean the fuel filter. The Mechanical Engineer said that they were all mistaken – surely it had thrown a rod and they needed to rebuild the engine. They all waited for the Software Engineer to say something, as he just sat there. Finally they asked him what he thought was wrong. He shrugged his shoulders and said “I don’t know maybe if we get out of the car and get back in it’ll start.”

A math and engineering convention was being held. On the train to the convention, there were both math majors and engineering majors. Each of the math majors had his/her own train ticket. But the Engineers had only ONE ticket for all of them. The math majors started laughing and snickering. The engineers ignored the laughter. Then, one of the engineers said, “Here comes the conductor”. All of the engineers piled into the bathroom. The math majors were puzzled. The conductor came aboard and collected tickets from all the math majors. He went to the bathroom, knocked on the door, and said, “Tickets Please”. An engineer stuck their only ticket under the door. The conductor took the ticket and left. A few minutes later, the engineers emerged from the bathroom. The math majors felt really stupid. On the way back from the convention, the group of math majors had ONE ticket for their group. They started snickering at the engineers, who had NO tickets amongst them. When the engineer lookout shouted, “Conductor coming!”, all the engineers again piled into a bathroom. All of the math majors went into another bathroom. Then, before the conductor came on board, one of the engineers left the bathroom, knocked on the other bathroom, and said, “Ticket please.”

Two Engineers walk into a bar, the third one ducks.

Random things I found amusing

At one site based on PHPBB I found a section on Virtual Engineering Humour. The content was “Sorry but this board is currently unavailable”. I’m still not sure what Virtual Engineering is as I’ve only ever tried Actual Engineering.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2012  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

What is Innovation

The problem with innovation is that it is a word used all the time with the expectation that using the word somehow makes things better. A definition for innovation is a bit harder to nail down. Here are some examples.

Something new or different introduced – dictionary.com

Change that adds value – Roger La Salle who invented Matrix Thinking and the Innovation Matrix. His latest book is called “Innovate or Perish”!

Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Wikipedia

The Australian Government website on Innovation lists the programs on offer but avoids a definition.

Innovation Matters

Innovate or Perish

The graph above shows the need for Innovation on a continual basis and not just a single event. It is taken from Embedding Innovation on the Matrix Thinking website.

Innovation matters because without it, entropy ensures we go backward. There is no standing still. The graph above shows the financial implications of this. There is only forward and backward. A very scary set of statistics for Australia come from the Australian Intellectual Property Scorecard which shows that in every significant way,  Australian Innovation has gone backward over the period from 2005-2009. Now 2009 was a tough year, but the trend predates this so you can’t just dismiss it as a consequence of the GFC. It was happening in the full on growth period that preceded it. Here is a brief summary of my reading of the report:

• Only 10% of Patents filed in Australia are by Australians
• Australian Patents to Australians fell 20%
• International Patents to Australians fell 20%
• USA Patents granted to Australians rose to 0.7% then fell back to 0.6%
• European Patents granted to Australians rose to 0.55% then fell back to 0.45%

This is not the sign of a healthy Innovation Environment. The slow decline in Australian Manufacturing is certainly one of the reasons but it seems we have just become less interested in Innovating.

Australians granted Australian Patents

Innovation Requires Need

I read with interest The Innovation Machine on how a range of different companies ensure innovation happens. Google and 3M are famous for their Innovation strategies which includes employees having discretion over how some of their time is spent so they can pursue things that interest them. The argument in the article however is that Innovation is unnatural, and so you must create an environment that ensure Innovation occurs.

In a second article that touches on this point on Israeli Entepreneurs, an Israeli company Optibase has cutting edge video equipment which only exists because of the Israeli military. Staying alive is a powerful motivator and the military are keen for improvements to come from anywhere. Innovation is expected!

Our business creates or updates roughly 100 new products each year. So for us, new is normal. And this need makes Innovation essential. This is one of the advantages of working with an external product development consultancy. Even if you have the internal skills to do the work yourself, an external viewpoint will always be different. The ultimate aim is to be able to harness the best of both to get a better outcome than you could from either alone.

Innovation can also be stifled and this is not just an Australian phenomenon. I covered this is Prototypes Blunt Innovation.

My thanks go to Dr Marc Dussault, The Exponential Growth Strategist for the links which prompted this post.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2012  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

Prototyping

Prototypes are very useful. We use them all the time when developing new products. They let us try out new ideas explore how well a particular technology will work for a specific application.

One danger of a prototype, is that there is the temptation to think that you can then just fix it up to make it into a product. This is a common enough dilemma with software. It mostly works so a bit more polish and it will be OK to ship it.  This is definitely a danger zone. Once a prototype has served it’s purpose, put it aside. The design the product from the ground up. And then, if you can use any of the prototype design, then do so in a considered way based on the design and architecture you have determined will meet the entire needs of the project. Most prototypes do not have the exception handling and support featured needed to make them into real products that can be tested and maintained.

So I was interested to read about another potential problem with prototypes in the December 2011 edition of the Harvard Business Review in an article titled Early Prototypes Can Hurt A Team’s Creativity.

Innovation Blockage

The problem outlined is that the prototype can limit the thinking about the project. It is way easier to pick and choose features on a defined thing and critique flaws than to create something new. So the early prototype can really set the team back if they let it define the full scope of how to think about the underlying problem being solved.

Prototypes Can Kill Innovation

I have seen the same think happen when a product needs a new model. It is obvious to look at incremental improvements and “Low Hanging Fruit” but sometimes you have to step back and think about the market and the customers and what they really need. Maybe it is time for a clean slate. And maybe there are good reasons why the old technology the product was based on is not the right choice for the next model.

In both cases, the prototype and the existing model act as a frame of reference that limits innovation and creativity.

The hard part of course, is recognising when that is the case and when it is not.

As an example, one project I worked on early in my career involved creating a new international product for a company entering a new market. It was for an existing category and there were 6 incumbents who had been there for a while, in some cases 30 years. The company did something very wise. They sent someone to talk to several opinion leaders and to all the local users of the equipment. The intent was to determine the best way to go about gaining market share. The story told was that none of the existing products met the customer needs really well. Over time they had converged into 2 formats, one for each market segment, and it was a price war as the products had become commodities. But when they were asked what they were trying to do, the customers gave 2 clear stories, one in each market segment. The marketing and product specifications were based on these 2 stories and we designed a single product to meet both market segments. The product entered a crowded international market at a price point 50% above the next most expensive product. The company planed to sell 300 in the first year and ramp up after that. The sold 1500 in the first year and had to move to a larger factory to satisfy the demand.

Leica Autostainer XL

I also got a patent for one of the new technologies developed. The point is that if you meet the actual need, people will pay for that. The issue in this market was that the incumbents had let each others’ offerings define their responses and not the customers’ need. Another example of stifled innovation until a new player listened and changed the game.

I have never forgotten that lesson.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2012  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

Quantum Computing

One of the areas where there seems great promise, but also great confusion, is the Quantum Computer. I’m not going to try and sort that all out here. You can follow the links to get a better idea of the topic. However there is one aspect that does interest me. In my post on Music Electronics I looked at how I got started in my career. One of the things that I spent a great deal of time working on was getting cleaner, clearer and Low Noise Amplification for microphone pickups. So I read a recent IEEE article on Quantum Noise and amplification with great interest.

Quantum Amplification

The full article on Quantum Quiet Amplification covers a range of topics but I am going to focus on the amplification mechanism as this shows some very innovative ideas in operation, and also the nature of research.  What we have below is a microscopic view of the amplification device with the main area of interest on the right and half way down. You are looking at is the core component of a mechanical resonator that amplifies microwave signals.  That’s right, a mechanical structure to amplify a microwave signal.

Quantum Amplification

A more complete picture showing all the components is shown below. Both images are from the original IEEE article.

Quantum Resonator

Research and Discovery

Now there is a lot of conjecture about whether this will allow them to get to a low enough noise amplification or not, and there is a good argument that the mechanical resonator will have all of the same primary Quantum Noise issues an electronic amplifier has. But it also has the potential to remove, or at least reduce, the effects of Flicker Noise, which is a problem with existing electronics based amplification systems based on the Josephson Junction. It will take some time to see whether this novel approach really does deliver a long term advantage. However it is also a great example of good research and the relationship between Research and Discovery.

They were looking for a way to cool a mechanical resonator when they noticed that under certain conditions it amplified microwave signals . So they found something new looking for something else. This is the nature of science. And a great example of following a new path of great promise.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

Professor Goran Roos

Professor Goran Roos

As well as being the Thinker in Residence for South Australia, Professor Goran Roos is considered one of the 20 most significant thinkers of the 21st Century. This morning he was presenting his views on Australian Manufacturing to a combined breakfast meeting of the South East Business Network and SEMMA.

So what did I learn?

Here is the short list on what manufacturing does for an economy:

• R&D is driven by it
• Innovation is primarily manufacturing related
• Value added exports are usually manufactured
• Creates more indirect jobs per direct job than other sectors
• Many service companies have a manufacturing core
• Is the fastest knowledge growth domain
• Is essential for a highly competitive economy

His primary point is that “A healthy manufacturing sector is a must for any advanced economy with ambitions to maintain both economic and social wellbeing“.

Now he has my attention big time. Because this is something I have inherently believed my entire working life. Australia needs manufacturing.

Manufacturing creates employment

Next  he looked at the contribution of manufacturing to employment and why we have employment issues in Australia. Yes I know the official unemployment figure is low, but that is because many people looking for work are not included in the official figure. So here is how is pans out for employment:

• For each manufacturing job, there are 2.5 other jobs created around it
• In Australia where there are 1 million jobs in manufacturing, that means there are 3.5 million jobs in total associated with manufacturing
• For each working person, there is a dependent person relying on them for income. These can be relatives, children, spouse etc.
• So in total there are 7 million people in Australia dependent on manufacturing

Now lets look at mining:

• For each mining job, there is another job created around it
• In Australia where there are 200 thousand jobs in mining, that means there are 400 thousand jobs in total associated with mining
• For each working person, there is a dependent person relying on them for income. These can be relatives, children, spouse etc.
• So in total there are 400 thousand people in Australia dependent on mining

So the current government policies and industry practices of reducing manufacturing and increasing mining for direct export are actually economic suicide.

The service industry is even worse for indirect job creation though it does employ more people than mining ever will:

• For each service industry job, there is  0.5 jobs created around it
• The ABS statistics for 2010 show roughly 3 million people working in service industries in total including the 0.5 jobs created
• For each working person, there is a dependent person relying on them for income. These can be relatives, children, spouse etc.
• So in total there are 6 million people in Australia dependent on service industry jobs

What this means is that manufacturing is actually the most critical sector in Australia in terms of job creation and future prosperity.

So lose manufacturing, and you lose a huge number of jobs.

The USA has shed 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000, primarily to offshoring manufacturing to lower cost economies. These jobs were replaced by low paying personal service jobs. The net result is record levels of unemployment and a trade deficit in every manufacturing category.

He also spoke of the hidden categories, particularly in industrial products, that lead to high export incomes and have been strength of many European Manufacturers. The following diagram shows the  attributes that make these products possible. Note that 4 are to do with knowledge, and 4 to do with structure and relationship. This implies you need both.

Invisible Middle Market

Economic Growth and Competitiveness

Economic growth is a measure of how well you have been doing up to now. It is a measure of the past performance. It applies to yesterday.

Competitiveness is a measure of how well you will keep doing. It is a measure of likely performance. It applies to tomorrow.

So it is more important for the future to be positioned to be competitive, than it is to have had past economic growth. Ideally you will have both.

Some examples of countries that are highly ranked for competitiveness and also economic growth are:

• China
• Singapore
• Switzerland
• Sweden
• Finland

That was a surprise.  Australia ranks at number 15 for competitiveness and growth according to this analysis. The red line is the frontier of highest competitiveness. Australia is a long way from it.

Future Economic Success

Innovation

Goran Roos also had an interesting take on innovation and this fits in nicely with the view of Edward De Bono on Creating Value. He defines 2 types of innovation that are required to address Australia’s lack of competitiveness:

• Innovate to create value
• Innovate to retain value

Based on this, offshoring is a really bad idea. It is only done to reduce overheads for cost based activities. For value based activities where we retain the value and the income from that value in Australia, we should be onshoring!

Knowledge

Manufacturing is the fastest knowledge growth domain. This is an interesting claim and one that had a case put for it to demonstrate the validity. Here is the case:

• Manufacturing generates 15 times the knowledge that mining does per unit of economic activity
• Manufacturing generates 3 times the knowledge that service industries do per unit of economic activity

Professor Goran Roos also pointed out that knowledge is like a race. If you slow down for a bit, then you can’t catch up if the other runners keep going full steam ahead.

Onshoring

It now makes sense that mining for export is not that great an option. Take something of huge potential value, and give it away at the lowest point you can in the value chain.

Onshoring means we pull value creating back in Australia so we get paid for it. And making stuff, and providing the service industries to support that should be our primary strategy for the future.

The other point Professor Goran Roos made is that Australia is not a scale based economy. We don’t have a large local market by world standards and so we should focus on product categories which do not require scale. Or in my language: lower volume, higher value add products. This is also know as Niche Electronics Manufacture.

Thinker in Residence

His speech on the future of South Australian manufacturing is also worth watching and listening too. Here it is:

All graphics are Copyright © Goran Roos 2011.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

Australian Synchrotron

I went to the open day for the Australian Synchrotron at the Monash Science Park on Sunday. As a member of SEMIP I already knew about the Australian Synchrotron but had never actually visited it. I am very glad I did.

Australian Synchrotron

On the open day I went to 2 sessions. The first was titled “Synchrotrons for Dummies” which was very well presented and gave a good overview of the Australian Synchrotron but more importantly, gave excellent examples of how it is used and what it can be used for.  Here is a short list from one of their brochures, by no means exhaustive:

• Improving fertility
• Examining forensic evidence
• Helping premature babies breathe without getting lung damage
• Improving energy storage
• Improving industrial processes
• Nano-scale material science
• Improving cement

The Australian Synchrotron uses very high energy electrons to create electromagnetic radiation that can be used to either select specific frequencies for analysing, or for getting access to much higher energy or finer resolution imaging. It runs 24 hours a day when in operation and multiple experiments can be run at the same time on what they refer to as Beamlines. Each Beamline can run in parallel with the others as they are independent. The higher energy allows better penetration and the finer resolution which means you can go down to features comparable to a single molecule. So you can think of it as either:

• A very bright light (1 million time brighter than the sun before you filter it back to what you want)
• A very high resolution microscope
• A very high resolution and finely tuned X-Ray imaging system

The Australian Synchrotron website has an excellent set of explanations including How the Synchrotron Works.

Synchrotron Science

The second session was on Synchrotron Science and included a detailed guided tour through the entire complex starting from the electron gun where the initial 90KeV electrons are generated then into the booster ring where the energy is kicked up by a factor of over 30,000 and finally through to the main storage ring where they are circulating at 3GeV energy and as close to the speed of light as we know how to make them.  In fact, they are going so fast that adding more energy makes them heavier just as Einstein predicted. The energy and the equipment involved are staggering. I was reading the individual steering magnet ratings and they are water cooled 6KW devices. And there are hundreds of them, all colour coded according to their specific function.

Australian Synchrotron Science

The guided tour included both a detailed up close view of the equipment and also a trip over the top to see the complex from above.  The entire device is the size of a football oval.

Australian Synchrotron Science Valves

Beam Time

And the commercial arrangements are very attractive. If you have a great idea for a project and it meets the selection criteria, it costs you nothing. If not, you can rent Beam Time as they call it for $400 per hour and usually get a slot within 8 weeks. Given that this is a $300M device, that is an absolute bargain.

Australian Synchrotron Open Day

Now I am thinking about what my clients might be able to do with this amazing facility.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

VECCI New Ideas Forum 2011

I had the privilege of being invited to the VECCI New Ideas Forum 2011 where we had the chance to add our ideas to those already gathered by VECCI. They had opened an ideas portal on the Internet which was a great way to gather ideas. If you want to add any of your own, it is still open and you can contribute ideas in one of 3 categories:

• Business Futures
• People Futures
• Regional Futures

Victorian Parliament

The forum was held at the Victorian Parliament. The ideas generation process took a few topics to really get going well and the initial spark came from a topic involving bicycles. After that the forum hit its stride and many hundreds of valuable contributions were made.

From my notes on the day, here are some of the topics discussed:

Business Futures

• Enhancing government expenditure efficiency
• Transport including east / west links and 24 hour freight
• Progress on government reform
• Lowering government costs
• New sources of funding for local government
• Transport – city and rural passenger and freight transport
• Developing Port Phillip Bay for tourism, commercial, recreational and environmental
• Air Transport – upgrading existing airports and adding a third airport in Melbourne’s south east
• Sea Freight – adding container handling to Webb Dock and Port of Hastings

People Futures

• Aligning work laws to work needs
• Promote health services for export
• Attracting overseas entrepreneurs
• Retaining our best and brightest
• Education reform in curriculum and governance
• Minerals boom opportunities, especially skills development
• Getting the best from our youth

Regional Futures

• Technology shifts in how we live and work
• Making our regions more investment ready
• Strengthening regional project approvals
• Understanding regional cost advantages
• Promote regional natural assets
• Regional event attraction
• Decentralisation including government

So that is quite a few topics to be generating ideas on.

Dr Matthew Butlin

We also had a presentation from Dr Matthew Butlin on the topic of Keeping Victoria Competitive including key findings from the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission. They are looking 3 key areas:

• Productivity
• Competitiveness
• Participation

There were some messages there that are hard to ignore including these ones I took note of:

• Victoria has gone from the most efficient state to nearly the least efficient
• Efficiency is currently negative, that is we are getting less efficient each year
• Literacy and numeracy are declining
• State taxation and regulatory reform must happen
• State transport infrastructure must improve
• Business focused innovation is the key and not Government driven innovation

Mark Stone, VECCI Chief Executive

The session was wrapped up by VECCI Chief Executive, Mark Stone, who reiterated the need to be innovative and tackle some of the hard issues that have been left unaddressed for more than a decade including a third airport located to the south east of Melbourne.

So a lot of interesting topics and quite a bit of intellectual capital applied to them for the day. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

On the threshold of a career

I have often been asked about how I got into Engineering. I got a serious reminder of it on 23 November 2011 when I went to see The Moody Blues in concert in St Kilda.

The Moody Blues - Live in St. Kilda 2011

I had started a science degree at Deakin University in Waurn Ponds, Geelong, and stopped after the first year because I realised I didn’t have a good reason for being there. I had always liked science but I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career.

Isn’t life strange

One thing that did happen that year was that a fellow student introduced me to a music group I had never heard of. This was The Moody Blues. I was hooked on the first listen. They sang songs about the meaning of life and communicated with such skill that I wanted to able to do the same. So I took up guitar and started teaching myself how to play.

At the end of that year I decided not to go back for second year of science and took a year off. I worked a couple of mundane jobs, move from Geelong to South Melbourne and joined a pub band to try my hand at music. We were no comparison to The Moody Blues but something very important happened. I found that I loved working with the equipment and thought it would be really cool to be able to design my own guitar effects, amplifiers and PA equipment. Music Electronics was the career for me.

I had no idea what to study so I went back to Deakin University and asked them. They said that I should do a degree in Electrical Engineering majoring in Electronics. So that is what I did for the next 4 years. This time I had a reason to be there and it showed in my academic results when I graduated with a First Class Honours degree and a grade average of a High Distinction. I also started designing music equipment during my career and even before graduating had equipment installed in recording studies and sold to professional musicians.

So that is how I got started in Electronics and why Analogue Electronics is one of my technical specialties.

Lovely to see you again my friend

So back to the concert.

The Moody Blues - Live in St. Kilda 2011

Wow. The Moody Blues were founded in 1963 and the main lineup dates from 1967 where they released the first concept album. That’s right, they beat the Beatles to it. The album was Days of Future Past. Of that lineup, 3 are still touring: Justin Hayward, John Lodge and Graeme Edge. Graeme Edge turned 70 earlier this year. And they still rock. That’s what finding the right career does for you. Passion and perseverance for the long haul. It is one of the best concerts I have ever been to.

And again I am grateful for the inspiration they were to me and for the career in Electronics that came from that.

Some of you may have noticed that the headings are all based on albums or songs by The Moody Blues.

New Horizons

I still play guitar and now also produce music. So as an example, here is a piece I recently produced trying to capture the journey from uncertainty into hope using music only. It is titled “Finding Hope“. Enjoy.

Finding Hope -Ray Keefe

Finding Hope – © Ray Keefe Right click to save or click to listen in the browser.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd