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The Smarter Cities Challenge is a competitive grant program awarding $50 million worth of technology and services over 3 years to 100 cities around the globe. These grants are designed to address the wide range of financial and infrastructure challenges facing cities today. It is an opportunity for cities around the world to get free expert consulting. For more information on the IBM Challenge you can visit the IBM website. 

Last year, Pittsburgh, PA applied for such a grant to get ideas on how to solve their traffic congestion problems. After a thorough selection process, they were chosen to become one of 32 cities that would receive free consulting from IBM experts in 2012.

IBM built a team of six executives from around the world (India, Sweden, Mexico and the US) to work on the problem. I was chosen to be part of the team because of the work I had been doing on an internal white paper on traffic as well as my software experience as a senior certified executive IT architect, but each member brought a different skill set to the team. Most of us had never been to Pittsburgh before, and that was a conscious decision, as the program leadership wanted us to take a look at the situation with fresh eyes.

We spent the first ten days of our assignment performing over sixty interviews to a wide array of stakeholders. As expected, they all had their particular point of view on the challenges facing the city, even though several popular themes quickly emerged. During this period we didn’t have many opportunities to visit Pittsburgh, as most of our work was performed at the city Town Hall, located just a couple of blocks from our hotel. However, after we completed the interviews, we had the opportunity to tour the city and visit several boroughs, including East Liberty, Oakland, Shady Side, South Hills and South Side. This allowed us to better understand the complaints we had heard, as well as evaluate the proposals that had been made. By the way, if you have never been to Pittsburgh, you should. The city is really nice and deserves to rank higher as a tourist destination. Each borough has it’s own style and character. I am not surprised Pittsburgh was named the most livable city in the U.S., as it seems a great place to live, work and raise kids.

After completing our analysis, we spent the last days (and nights) of our stay working on our report. On our last day we presented a preview of our findings at a meeting hosted by Mayor Luke Ravenstahl at Carnegie Mellon University.

Producing a report in just three weeks, about a city we didn’t know was a real challenge. Despite all the hard work, and our experience, there are many topics we didn’t have the opportunity to dive deeply into. The city, the Allegheny Port Authority, the county and the state, to name just a few of the stakeholders, already have many experts who understand very well the issues at hand. The problem, as always with large organizations, is to get everyone to work together and to share information. I sincerely hope that our final report, to be published shortly, will help them reach that goal. Since everyone we met was so willing to help improve the city and work has already started on some of our recommendations, I am confident they are on the right track.

Update 1: The event was covered by the local press: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Trib LIVE

About two years ago, on a Friday evening, one of the managers in my team asked me about the possibility to pursue an MBA. This is something that IBM will usually pay for their top talent employees, so I went to HR to ask about the deadline to submit requests. It turned out that the deadline was that very same day and that they had forgotten to notify me. My HR partner sent me a form, which I forwarded to the employee who had asked for it. Since I couldn’t leave the office because I had to wait for him to complete the form, I took a look at the different options that were available. The Executive MBA program at IPADE, which ranked among the best in LA, seemed interesting because it focused on people management, which is a set of important skills techies like myself usually don’t develop naturally . So, without spending too much time thinking about it, I decided to also submit my application.

A couple of days later, IBM’s local education board approved my application and the very next day I had an interview with the head of the program, as the selection process was already well under way. One day later, I passed the admission exam. Now that I think about it, since I had never attended a private school (public schools in Europe were very good back when I studied there), I honestly thought this was just a minor requirement and that anyone willing to pay the ridiculous tuition costs, would be automatically accepted. So, I wasn’t really surprised when I got my acceptance letter. I later learned that 9 in 10 candidates were turned down. That is when I realized that I had been extremely fortunate to be accepted and that I had to take this endeavor extremely seriously.

The fact is that this MBA program didn’t really seem that hard to me, but you certainly need to commit to it. You need to spend many hours a week reading and preparing cases. The school warns you, but I think that it is fair to say that nobody I spoke to realized the level of personal investment required to complete the degree, including my wife.

The Executive MBA program (MEDEX) was, in many ways, a refresher of my undergraduate degree in Economics. I feel that students who had law or engineering degrees had a much harder time than I did. For them, learning basic Economics and Accounting in a short amount of time was a real challenge. There were however, many new things I learned during these two years, and I must say that I really enjoyed most of the sessions.

One thing that the school should have told me is that in order to get my degree I had to present a recent birth certificate, proof that I had completed high-school as well as all my university credits. When I enrolled, they assured me  that my university diploma was enough and that turned out not to be true. Well, getting all those documents in time  for graduation is easier said than done when you were born in the Netherlands, completed high-school in France and got your undergrad degree in Spain, but looking at the bright side, it justified a nice European vacation.

If I had known about all the papers I needed, how hard it was to be accepted, and the amount of work required on top of an already demanding day job, I probably wouldn’t have considered enrolling. This shows once again that important decisions don’t always require much data. Now that it is over, I can say that I am extremely happy I completed the program. I learned a lot and made many new friends. I don’t expect this diploma to be a career changer, that was never my goal, but it certainly was a worthy experience.

So, you now all know why my blog went dark for the last two years. The good news is that I’m back now and that I should have time to update my site regularly.

MBA tuition, US$50,000. Wearing a ridiculous hat on graduation day, priceless…

Although the markets haven’t closed yet, Right now Apple’s market cap stands at 156.9 billion, 400 million more than IBM’s. This is simply remarkable. After years of being the underdog, the Cupertino based company has left most of its current and past competitors in the dust. Dell, HP and now IBM have all been unable to keep up with the explosive growth of Apple since Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

If someone had told me back in the 90s, when converting someone to the Mac was nearly impossible, that Apple would be able to stage such a comeback, I simply wouldn’t have believed it. Even I who have been a loyal Apple customer since the early 80’s came extremely close to throwing the towel in the late nineties. Then came Steve Jobs, the iMac and the iPod and the rest is history. I am really happy to see a company that has always believed in innovation succeed in the market. Jason Calacanis summed it up very well in a recent TWIT episode saying that if you want to be rich you look up to Bill Gates, if you want to be great you look up to Steve Jobs.

However, market valuations do not always reflect the true health of a company. Apple’s revenue depends on the sales of a very small set of products and therefore is extremely vulnerable to sudden market changes. Companies like IBM which offer a wide selection of software, services and hardware can better adapt, and that is why they have been able to survive for so many decades. For Apple to continue growing they need to offer a wider range of products. They know it and that is why they are investing in a new datacenter in NC and why they will probably launch pretty soon their rumored tablet computer. When Steve Jobs said “See you soon” at the recent iPod media event, he probably meant it.

On Sunday I will fly to San Francisco to attend WWDC. This will be my fourth WWDC in a row. From what I see, most of the sessions will be a rehash of what we saw last year. That isn’t too bad as it will allow me to focus on what is new in Snow Leopard and iPhone 3.0 and spend more time at the labs.

People seem to have very high expectations from this WWDC, which isn’t unusual. Most expect new handsets and a hopeful handful still expect the mythical Apple Tablet to be finally announced. I am not that interested by new hardware. New handsets will come at some time, that we know, and since we know that they will be running iPhone OS 3.0, which is already available for current devices, I really don’t care if they are announced at the show or two months from now. As for the tablet, my guess is that we will have to keep waiting.

However, most people seem to be much less interested by Snow Leopard. That is probably a mistake. Apple has deliberately set low expectations for this release and is probably set to over deliver in several areas, even though nothing has been announced. Regarding the new features that we know about, like Grand Central and OpenCL, we have no exact idea what kind of impact they will represent in terms of performance gains. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. Like last year, I will keep my finger crossed for Windows and iPhone versions of iChat which would make the Mac version more useful.

On the iPhone front, I have high expectations for significant third party hardware device announcements that can be controlled from the phone. Building a strong ecosystem around the iPhone is key to its long term success and Apple has been very clever to open the development of non-trivial hardware extensions to third parties. It would be nice to see Arduino work with Apple to allow hardware geeks easily create new hardware gadgets for the iPhone. That would open a new market for the phone in universities all over the world.

You may have noticed that I have been quiet for the last few months. I was busy working on a new Mac application. As you may have guessed, I don’t have a lot of time to work on personal projects. My job at IBM from Monday to Friday, with extremely long working hours, and my family to which I devote week-ends take most of my time. As a result, I have to be smart and use any spare time wisely. Working on multiple projects is definitively not an option.

The application I have just released, CityListBuilder for iMovie ’09, is quite simple. It is designed to help non-technical Mac users to add support for additional cities to the new animated travel map feature. This can be done by hand quite easily by just editing the contents of a flat file, but I thought that Mac users deserved a better solution.

From a technical perspective though, writing this app was a very interesting exercise. It gave me the opportunity to work with REST services (to interface with the Google Maps geocoding service), WebKit and the authorization services. I think that the strategy of releasing relatively quickly small apps that allow me to learn new technologies is quite effective. I have already started to look for new ideas for my next project. One candidate project involves using Bonjour and Quartz Composer, two technologies I have never used so far and that I believe are quite interesting. It would also allow me to work on an iPhone client which is quite exciting. I will let you know more once I actually start coding.

When Apple announced the iPhone OS 3.0 last week, most users where pleased. This new version addresses most of the problems that customers have been complaining about since the launch of the 3G iPhone. Features like cut, copy and paste or the ability to finally sync the Notes application with a Mac or a PC will definitively make a lot of people happy.

However, despite all the improvements that Apple has included in this new release, it is clear that this is just a transition product that will improve the user experience but that nobody can seriously define a revolutionary. Those who expected the iPhone OS to run on new types of devices, like a larger tablet or a smaller, cheaper phone are probably disappointed. There seems to be nothing in this release that allows existing applications to run on different form factor devices. That doesn’t mean that we won’t see a new generation of iPhones relatively soon. In fact AppleInsider has already reported on some of the features the new phones are expected to sport when they are released this summer. However, these products will be evolutionary (better camera, improved speed, etc), not revolutionary.

So, what should we think of those rumors that tell us that Apple has been shopping for 10” LCD screens? They might be still be true, but they just won’t be for a device running the iPhone OS. That probably means that if Apple chooses to release a Netbook later this year, it will most likely be a Mac, or at least a device much closer to a Mac than to an iPhone.

Earlier today Apple sent out invitations to the media for a special event next Tuesday to be held in the Apple Town Hall on Apple’s Cupertino campus to discuss the upcoming iPhone 3.0 software and SDK.

Immediately rumors started to fly about possible new features to be included in the new version of the OS. While this update may bring us some new features like cut & paste support or tethering that users have been clamoring for over the last few months, this is not likely to be the most relevant part of the announcement.

Why do I believe that? I will start with a disclaimer, I do not have sources within Apple. This is just logical reasoning, based on what we know. So, what do we know? Apple could implement tethering, MMS support or cut and paste without having to release a new SDK, months before launching a new device. There is more to this announcement than building excitement for the next OS release. Apple needs the developer community to start working on their applications to provide a smooth migration path for users.

I can only think of three reasons that could explain this urge from Apple to mobilize its developer community. The most obvious reason is that it includes major changes that require programmers to test their applications for compatibility. The next one is that it includes significant new capabilities that the developers could leverage to create new applications. Finally, Apple could be releasing a new version of the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that would make development much easier for unexperienced programmers.

So, what does this mean for the average user? Well, it depends on which of the previous options turns to be true.

What would require widespread testing of all current applications? There has been much discussion over the Internet about new form factors for the device. Some wish Apple would release an iPhone nano, while others are waiting for a larger iPhone tablet. Right now, this cannot be achieved, because the GUI is not scalable. Applications are designed for a 480*320 display. If Apple is planning to release new models with larger or smaller screens, this will have to change and it will require significant work from developers. Look for “Resolution Independence”. Other hardware changes, such as a higher resolution camera or expanded sound capabilities could also require changes to the APIs that would require less but still significant testing. We may not know how the new iPhone models that Apple will certainly launch later this year will look like, but we will have a pretty good idea as to what to expect feature wise.

There is no doubt that the App Store has been a total success. With over 25,000 applications released since its inception, the iPhone is now the mobile platform that offers the largest software catalog. Still, many enterprises find it difficult to hire the talent to create business apps. If Apple wants to fully crack the corporate market, it needs a simpler development environment for those reluctant to learn Objective-C. I do not really believe that Apple is moving in this direction, but it is a possibility.

Finally, there could be significant new APIs added to the SDK. For example, currently support for SOAP and REST services, as well as XML, is spotty at best. These new APIs could open the door to a whole new generation of applications without requiring Apple to release radically new products.

The good news is that these options are not exclusive, and therefore, we may see all of them turn true next week. However, that is probably wishful thinking. On Tuesday we will know.

Americans love to forgive those who have sinned, as long as they repent. It is probably because of the way christian evangelists interpret the Bible. That is why televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart were forgiven for their sins after appearing repentant in front of the public.

The same happens in politics. In the 2000 elections, everyone knew that then candidate George W. Bush had abused alcohol during his youth. He was never known to be a hard-working person either. However, because he was repentant and claimed to have changed, everybody seemed ready to forgive him.

Today we find ourselves in a similar position. Barak Obama has recognized that, as an adolescent, he “experimented” with marijuana and cocaine. The question is, should he be forgiven for his errors?

The fact is that it is very easy for me to forgive all the mistakes made by politicians like George W. Bush, Barak Obama or John Edwards. After all, none of them did have direct consequences on me or my loved ones. Truth is that it is really up to the people they have hurt, not us, to decide wether they deserve being forgiven or not. However, from a voter point of view, it is a totally different matter. It is our duty to elect the best person for the job. Past mistakes, specially if extremely serious, are a clear proof of bad judgement. This is something that we have to take into account when choosing a candidate. We can forgive but we cannot forget.

We all have flaws, it is part of human nature, but many of us don’t lie repeatedly, aren’t unfaithful to our spouse and haven’t abused controlled substances. I believe that our society deserves to have candidates that do not need to be forgiven and that we can be really proud of. Is it really too much to ask for?

I was promoted a couple of weeks ago. This was something totally unexpected but it turns out that I am now just a step away from becoming a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, which just a month ago seemed like an impossible goal to achieve. It won’t be easy but I will certainly do my best to try to reach that position.

The best part of the promotion is that I got a larger, closed office. When you spend as many hours as I do at work, you want to feel at home at work. I therefore decided to decorate the walls by hanging pictures of all the tech luminaries that have left their mark on the computer industry as well as the products they brought to market. In a way,this is my personal Computer Hall of Fame.

Well, it turns out that this is much easier said than done. If you look on the web you will not easily find many pictures or stories from our recent past. Try for example looking for images of Sir Clive Sinclair (the man who brought us the ZX 81 and the ZX Spectrum computers) and you will be disappointed by the results. Same story for Sir Alan Sugar, the founder of Amstrad, who brought us the CPC 464 back in the eighties. You may think that this only happens to brit aristocrats, but you would be wrong. I tried to find a picture of former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner and could only find a small picture on IBM’s corporate site. Even worse, I could only find two poor quality pictures of Adam Osborne, the man who brought us the first commercially available portable computer, and passed away just five years ago. There isn’t much information about him in Wikipedia either.

In general, most companies will carry current pictures of their top executives but except for a small number of honorable exceptions (IBM and H-P mainly) they don’t seem to care much about preserving their history. The situation is obviously much worse for dead companies like Netscape, Amstrad or Atari which do not have curators interested in preserving their legacy.

With the Internet focusing mainly on recent events, if we are not careful, in a couple of years we will have lost a large part of our recent history. There are a couple of nice sites that deserve praise, for example folklore.org which extensively documents the history of how the original Macintosh was built, but that is obviously not enough. It would be nice if there was a place for all of us to collaborate on preserving the exciting stories of the computing revolution. On wikia there are 28,586 Star Trek articles, but there is nothing comparable for the computer history. That is really sad.

Several argentinean newspapers (link in Spanish) have reported on a MacBook Air gifted by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to Argentina’s president Cristina Kirchner. This is apparently creating a large controversy as the product is perceived as a luxury item. As a result, the presidency will create a public official gift registry to avoid any suspicions of corruption. This is certainly a good initiative implemented in many countries rocked by similar scandals in the past. However, in general the controversy was created over much pricier gifts like the diamonds that African dictator Bokassa gave to French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing back in the 70’s.

What really surprises me is to see how Apple products have become a symbol of luxury recently. I am sure that everyone remembers for example the gold plated iPod that David Beckham received from his team mates. I have seen many CEOs of large enterprises be the single Mac users of their company. For example, I know that Ricardo Salinas Pliego, CEO of Grupo Salinas and one of the wealthiest men in Mexico uses a Mac. At Banorte, one of the large Mexican banks, and probably the fastest growing one, there are only two Mac users. However, those users have a lot of weight as they are the CEO and the Director of Marketing.

What does that mean for the future of the Mac in large companies? Well, it means that the IT staff has no option but to learn how to use those computers and support them. That opens a new market for Apple. It also means that it is becoming harder for IT departments to adopt solutions that exclude the Mac. This is not good news for Microsoft and it could help companies like IBM or Oracle that have developed collaboration solutions that are truly platform independent. Many open-source advocates have long criticized Apple for their proprietary approach to computing. It is time for them to recognize that Apple is helping their cause very strongly by forcing the adoption of open standards.