Information Technology Blog

Archive for June, 2010

Anytime from mid to late June, my diary is normally reserved for attendance at HITEC, undoubtedly the world’s leading hospitality technology event. This year was no exception so I found myself in Austin, Texas. What a great place – with hotels close to the Convention Centre, this ‘Live Music Capital of the World’ also enjoys being one of the world’s technology innovation capitals. This year I came away excited by the evidence that the global hotel industry and its technology providers are working on the right issues.

HITEC offers a unique combination of highly rated educational sessions, a huge technology exposition and many, many sponsored evening parties for those ever valuable networking opportunities and conspicuous consumption of margarita cocktails! Sessions are led by industry peers and experts whilst the expo showcases the latest industry products and services from over 300 companies. Combined with the opportunities to connect with fellow hotel technology professionals, HITEC has everything to keep me current in my thinking for today and the future. This year I came away excited by the evidence that the global hotel industry and its technology providers are working on the right issues.

Innovation

Today’s connected world allows for businesses to be structured in very different ways, with innovation being accessed from both inside and increasingly outside the organisation. In some ways of course this is the trend that Hotel Solutions Partnership is part of – enabling clients that engage online to import expertise that can be delivered in person and/ or on-line. There are many examples of hotel companies distributing and networking to garner a higher level of thinking and innovations in service, experience, design, creation and execution than that which is available within the four corporate walls.

I’ve written in these columns before about how technology is allowing the customer to be the innovator of the bedroom experience and once again I saw the Guestroom of the Future at HITEC. Such has been the interest that Guestroom 2010 is looking much further into the future by recently re-branding as Guestroom 20X. At this years show I also noted that progressive hotel brands are increasingly willing customers to engage online with one another and with the organization. The goal is to tap into this new type of guest engagement for shareholder gain. Brands are engaging with guests to design, test and market different elements of the guest experience. With improved insights into the guests needs, such brands should be better equipped to quickly reconfigure the hotel product, service and overall experience.

As my associate Larry Bowman points out later, technology allows employers to tap into the pool of talent in very different ways than in recent years. And I think we will see an increasing willingness to outsource more and more essential but non-core processes leveraging the web as hotel companies drive toward further and further productivity gains.

Business information

My hobby horse for a number of years has been the opportunity that BI (business information) systems offer; Take a look at the tools provided by such vendors as Datavision and Aptech. Systems are becoming more and more interconnected through common standards (think of HTNG’s efforts in this regard) for exchanging data – providing not only better, deeper and wider information for decision making but also enabling new levels of automation.

But its also unbundling that is a trend – using other companies and entrepreneurs to enable rapid scaling (up or down) whilst keeping balance sheets light and tight. This is more and more enabled by technology (e. g. Saas) where hotels and hotel companies are more trusting of security and bandwidth reliability and are making better use of web services and related technologies.

These columns have previously drawn attention to the role that technology tools have played, are playing and will play, in transforming revenue management. Predictive technology tools are increasingly available and used – bringing more and more discipline into many aspects of hotel management. Sometimes I sense the balance has gone a little too far (don’t lose sight of the hotelier in us!)but there can be no doubt that the hotel industry is a much more effective user of productivity and performance enhancing technology tools than it was even a few years ago

Evolution

Finally in this rapid scan across the technology available to the 21st century hotelier it is worth also remembering that some businesses have evolved that are essentially accumulating pools of data and making revenue by providing access to selected data or the entire data. TravelCLICK is perhaps the most obvious example of a business based on this premise, but so too the newly emergent STR Global.

I wonder what the technology landscape in 2020 will be like. Any suggestions? You can bet your last dollar that the new and inventive landscape will be badged as addressing “Generation Z’s” “must haves”. It’s a little scary to be a member of the Baby Boomers – now there is something I can’t change.

Your much awaited travel plans will be greatly enhanced if you are well equipped with the appropriate travel gadgets. I have compiled a list of some gadgets that are sure to fill the down time and enhance the wow time!

1. iPods; Bringing an iPod loaded up with a variety of your favorite music can add a personal touch to an unfamiliar territory. It can be comforting and this comfort extends to helping an individual relax at night. Many people have slight to moderate difficulty sleeping in strange places. Also, iPod speakers are very small, portable and wireless and can allow you to play your music in your room, at the beach or by the pool, etc. An iPod arm band is another stylish accessory that will prove useful.

2. An Electronics Hammock; This gadget compliments any of your small gadgets that need charging. This Hammock is positioned right below an outlet by fastening to the plug itself and holds your electronic product to ensure that it does not dangle precariously or lay on the ground at risk of getting wet or stepped on.

3. Indestructible Travel Cases; Keeping your electronic gadgets with you at all times and also keeping them safe and dry is easier than ever before with the waterproof and crushproof Pelican Micro Case Series of cases. There’s even a purge valve to equalize the pressure!

4. Nintendo DS, Gameboy, Playstation portable; These three products are all hand held game consoles. Although marketed for adolescents, many adults also own and play these game consoles. There are hundreds of games to choose from and the DS has features such as PictoChat and 2 player capabilities. These features enable more than one user who has their own console to be partaking in the same activity or game. These players are connected wirelessly through a system to system wireless connection. Therefore, the 2 player feature only requires one of the players to actually have the game inserted into their DS. PictoChat allows for simple input of keyboard text and written text/drawings to be exchanged by up to 16 people.

5. Educational Computer Software; Educational computer software is great for children when they have some downtime either in the hotel, car or in the airplane. This activity is engaging and playful as well as intellectual. Bringing your laptop along is obviously required. WiFi is available at most hotels and a number of restaurants and travel service areas. Using the WiFi connection will enable you to check weather, get directions and phone numbers and look up local attractions.

6. The 150-Country Auto-Detecting Travel Adapter and Converter: A lightweight, compact device that automatically detects incoming voltage, converts it to 120-volt AC power, and provides plug adaptation for over 150 countries throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Caribbean, and Australia. The plug configures to fit a variety of international sockets, and it has a built-in USB port that allows you to leave chargers for cell phones, digital cameras, iPods, and other devices at home. The device also allows simultaneous AC and USB connection to charge two devices at once.

7. Voltaic Backpack; Voltaic backpack is a solar powered backpack. This sleek accessory will power every one of your gadgets (save your laptop) as long as there’s daylight. It is also a stylish bag to carry while on any trip. Specifics include;

• 4 Watts of Solar Power: From three tough, light weight, waterproof solar panels

• 4-6 hours of direct sunlight produce enough charge to fully charge a typical cell phone

• Battery Included: 4,400mAh at 3. 6 volts Li-Ion battery pack with 3 voltage settings to store solar power

• When not in the sun, the battery can be charged using the AC travel charger or DC car charger making it just as useful on the grid as off

• 11 standard adaptors for easy connections to common cell phones and universal plugs

• Includes a car charger socket and USB adaptor so you can always use a standard charger for your device

• Note: It is not designed to charge laptops, it will however charge cell phones, sat phones, PDAs, GPSs, iPods, cameras and most other handheld electronics

Technology allows us to enhance our much awaited travel plans by arming us with very cool gadgets. I am sure the items on the list that I have compiled will enhance your vacation!

Technology has completely changed the way mankind works. It has become an integral part of our lives and basic movements of man are now solely dependent upon technology. Technology has prepared mankind to work faster, smarter and allows the brain to concentrate on other exciting and challenging goals and milestones. The last decade is dedicated to the workmanship of technology and its impact on the human race. http://education. ixs. net/. It has given us sleeker cell phones, internet mobility on personal computers that can now fit in purses and an extensive database of knowledge called the internet.
There is no avenue that technology has not touched. The complete workforce of mankind now works with technology. Thousands of industries and organizations around the world are now reaping the benefits of technology. And the education system is no exception to the rule. Technology has advanced and honed policies, streamlined academic activity and provided extensive reporting that was never possible before. Unique systems are now available in the market that immediately notify parents if their child or children arrive late at school and allow teachers to remotely send homework and grade papers online. Students across the world now search and prepare term papers all from simple browsing the internet at home or libraries. The basic principles of knowledge have not changed but the very edifice of obtaining and teaching has been revolutionalised by technology.
Other benefits of technology in the education arena are the administration functionality that technology provides. It allows colleges and universities to monitor thousands of students at one given go and allow hundreds of students to register classes that are suitable to the teachers and the students by the click of a mouse. Elementary and high schools can use sophisticated voice mails to update parents of the progress of the updates of their children. Technology has also been able to successfully deploy dedicated networks across intranets within college domains to share documents and reports.  
The primal goal of these communications servers are designed to streamline information and messaging within the school system’s administrative and teaching community. This type of system can also help facilitate communications between various designated groups, clubs, the entire student body, and parents. Through this, everyone can stay better informed of special events and check the system frequently for any updates or changes that may have occurred. All student games, activities and personal information of students can be stored and retrieved at any given time by school officials.
The other important benefit of technology in the education sector is the exponential increase in enrollment due to the availability of online courses. People do not have to be physically available to take part in an important meeting or class across the world. Simple bandwidth connectivity will do the job and allow thousands of people in one global sphere to easily communicate with people in dispersed areas.
Hundreds of companies exist that build and provide applications and sophisticated softwares that further improve on the benefits of technology in education. Applications now provide video conferencing and remote logins to servers. For more information and details visit: http://education. ixs. net/content/Technology-and-education. php

The Drupal Technology is used to build websites. It is one of the most modular open source web content management framework that adds a lot of emphasis on collaboration. The designing of the this technology application is such, that it needs to be customized according to the requirement of the project. But a limitation of its customization is that, these changes are done by overriding or adding new modules to the application. Drupal technology is exclusive and unique, because it separates content management from content presentation.

Drupal Technology website applications are used to build any kind of Internet portal, websites based on e commerce, online stores and even corporate websites. The software is extremely dynamic an can be utilized to create any kind of website, as a matter of fact it has also been used to create online directories and e-learning sites.

The Drupal Technology is secured by thriving security team that responds to every threat in order to keep the software safe. It is backed by a 24X7 online community, site administrator, designers and software developers who work continually to better the technology.

Drupal technology of web content management is not only used to create online trading sites, but it can also successfully create, instant messenger, it can also be used to include audio and video facilities in the sites along with photo galleries. This content management system is completely safe and secured.

The fact that Drupal can easily enable the customization of its websites according to the personal requirement of the site projects makes it even more unique and a favourite of the developers.

The Drupal CMS Technology is also a search engine friendly method, which has resulted in easy and effective ranking of the websites constructed by this technology to rank well in the search engines.

The best way to utilize the Drupal technology is to get your website created in the CMS technology through a reputed web solutions company that has expertise in the field. Web designers who are trained in drupal technology will be able to help you modify the Drupal templates according to your requirement and ready your website according to your own desire.

 

The law of diminishing marginal returns

 

I recently had a bit of a debate with a technology consultant friend who knows I am big on content and detail within project planning and the contracts that support a technology deal.   We found ourselves talking about that principle of economics called the law of diminishing marginal returns.   His point was that for project owners who are in the midst of planning a new project—gathering requirements, fleshing out specifications, polling user preferences, etc. —the law of diminishing marginal returns sets in much earlier than they realize.   The resources spent during the initial planning stages produce some hefty returns.   But soon after, spending the same amount of resources again, and the next time after that, will produce smaller and smaller chunks of benefit.   When you are caught up in a planning process, it is often difficult to identify the point at which your cost-benefit curve has begun to flatten.

 

What my friend was saying seemed plausible, and because I did not have any evidence to the contrary, I just accepted his theory.   Then I thought of a possible consequence of his theory, and I said, “You’re not going to go out and start spreading this thought around the technology community, are you?”

 

Threatened evangelist

 

My fear was this.   Here was I, this evangelist of content and detail within every information technology project, and across the table was a fellow who could undermine the past and future progress of my mission by telling folks they actually need less planning and critical thinking for their technology projects and not more.    Project owners’ planning and thinking are, after all, what generate the content and detail I crave and have come to respect.

 

Well, we talked some more, and my friend added some clarification.   As it turns out, he was suggesting mainly that project owners not waste time and money planning what cannot be planned effectively at a particular point in time.  Made sense.   I was still squirming, but now a bit relieved.

 

Obvious example

 

You have decided to use a staged or iterative approach for your next project.   You will buy some off-the-shelf software and customize it a fair amount.   Phase 1 might involve extending a discrete element of existing functionality and then wiring up to a live database for some testing.

 

In this example, there is really no point to thinking through the details of Phases 2 through 5 or estimating costs within those phases, except in either case at a very high level, because:  1) unless Phase 1 is completed smoothly and with an acceptable cost, you will never get to the subsequent phases; and 2) you have not yet tested your assumptions about costing within Phase 1.   Indeed, you probably chose an iterative approach for this project because of your inability to plan your project effectively from start to finish.   

 

Less obvious examples

           

My friend and I talked some more, and we moved beyond the obvious examples, the ones that are easy to accept.   My natural reaction was to resist any further extension of his theory because I knew he would be cutting closer and closer to the bone, threatening the very foundation of my evangelist mission.   However, sitting before me was a bright person and a clear thinker, with nearly two decades of experience with technology.   I had to listen (nervously).   “When the student is ready to learn, the teacher will appear. ”    

 

Requirements gathering – A good thing, no doubt, and something the experts have been encouraging us to do more of over the last ten years.   “Insufficient requirements development cited as leading cause of project failure. ”  When it comes to requirements, we have been led to believe that more is not enough.   Surely there is a point at which more requirements are not helpful (and may even be detrimental), but the experts have not told us how to determine just when we have turned the corner.

 

Specifications development – Same story.   Develop specifications thoroughly now or risk project failure.   

 

User preferences – Same story.   Involve your users in your planning process.   Otherwise, “If you build it, they won’t come. ” 

 

We have heard so much preaching on these topics that each of us can rattle off a number of clichés for each topic.   The advice has been mostly good, but we are hammered with it by speaker after speaker, in article after article.

 

Reconciliation

 

As much as I resisted the flow of this discussion with my friend, I have to admit that what he was saying made perfect sense to me.   But now I had to find some way to reconcile two divergent concepts:  on the one hand, my long-held belief that more project planning and critical thinking should always be one’s aspiration, and on the other, my realization that you truly can have too much of a good thing.

 

Ultimately, I found the reconciliation I needed with just one insight.   It occurred to me that, with all of the speakers and literature out there telling us to engage in more best practices for our technology projects and more often, we have become conditioned to believe that more is not enough—in fact, because of the nature of the beast, more can never be enough.   We have been doing more and more, and the incremental improvements we have witnessed, together with the new articles we read, encourage us to keep doing more and more.   Of course, our intention is good, but when can we stop doing more?  When should we stop doing more?

 

It’s all relative

 

I think it all boils down to relativity—your relative sophistication as a technology buyer, and the relative nature of your particular project.   If you started heeding the experts’ advice many years ago, your approach to buying technology may be fairly sophisticated by now.   You may be doing an appropriate level of planning for your projects, and maybe you occasionally do too much.   Other organizations are just now opening their eyes to a better way, perhaps prompted by a recent problematic project.  

 

Second, when enough is enough depends on your particular project.   Your goal is to plan effectively and thoroughly for all aspects of your project, but be mindful that your present need or ability to plan certain elements may not yet exist.   Further, even if you have the present need and ability to plan a certain aspect of your project, do not overdo it.   For example, do not continue to add more and more requirements to your requirements basket as if quantity were your only goal.

           

On this last point, remind yourself that requirements, specifications, user preferences, and every other item on your project-planning list have at least one thing in common.   Once you have thought of them and cemented them into some spreadsheet, they have a way of hanging around for the duration of your planning process, and often through completion of your project.   Instead of waiting to whack some of these hangers-on toward the end of a phase or at the end of your project (“backward creep” of scope or deliverables), attempt to prioritize them at an early stage of your project.   You will not even open Requirements Container 2 until the high-priority requirements in Container 1 have been exhausted (satisfied or deliberately discarded).   A prioritization approach could save you time, dollars and other resources.

 

Conclusion

           

For many of us, it may be best not to let go of our conditioned response to project planning and critical thinking—not just yet anyway.   The conditioning represents an overall positive motivation, its underlying purpose is producing results, and our technology procurement process, including its planning element, may still have plenty of room for improvement.   The more sophisticated technology buyers among us might want to put the brakes on the conditioned response a bit.  

 

Regardless of what camp you are in (and until further notice from the experts!), be at least mindful of the fact that there is such a thing as too much project planning.   I, for one, am now a believer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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