Disasters, Emergency Communication, and Ham Radio

When a major disaster occurs normal lines of communication are disrupted. Volunteer Ham Radio operators handle emergency communications, just as they did after the 9/11 disaster and they are now in South East Asia. Ham Radio is often the only remaining communication channel in a disaster’s aftermath.

The December 27 issue of Time Magazine refers to Ham Radio in derogatory terms in their article on blogs. While their comments on blogs are accurate: blogs until recently were a "curiosity" and "cult phenomenon," which they liken to a "faintly embarrassing hobby" like Ham radio, they are entirely clueless about Ham Radio and its value. Unlike blogs, Ham Radio has long been and still is extremely valuable, having provided successful emergency communications during many major crises since 1913.

After the 9/11 disaster, telephone service was overloaded, cell phones essentially worthless, and police and firefighter frequencies clogged. Ham radio operators handled a lot of the emergency communications. After the call of "No more volunteers please," ham radio operators were still being encouraged to volunteer because of their specialized skills.

The headlines today read "Tsunami Death Toll Tops 114,000." Who do you think is handling the emergency communications? Who is helping to direct and coordinate emergency supplies and help, as well as relaying messages about friends and family members in the region? As in essentially every emergency, volunteer Ham Radio operators have stepped up to fill the void created by damaged and destroyed communication infrastructure.

When a major disaster occurs, the Internet and telephone service are disrupted. Any pre-existing “official” emergency communication channels get overloaded or are destroyed. FedEx and DHL are not going to get a package into a disaster area overnight if at all! Amateur Radio operators, or “Hams” as they are typically called, are in the perfect position to help. Although their antennas may have been destroyed by the emergency, and they may have no commercial power, Hams are great at using their knowledge of technology and radio to improvise. A simple piece of wire strung from a tree makes an antenna that can provide effective communications. Generators or batteries, perhaps even yanked from the family car, can easily provide electricity. Hams are ready to go almost immediately, while reestablishing other forms of communications can take many valuable days and waiting can prolong human suffering and sometimes even increase the death toll.

Disasters can occur anywhere. Fortunately there are Ham Radio operators almost everywhere. Ham Radio operators are a time tested and organized international network of trained radio experts ready to aid in any disaster. The US Congress even officially recognizes Ham Radio’s value “with respect to providing emergency communications” (title 47, Code of Federal Regulations). In comparison, I don’t think Congress has anything to say officially about blogs . . .

Love is The Killer App

I just read Love is The Killer App, subtitled “How to Win Business and Influence Friends” by Tim Sanders.

This is a book by a Geek (just check out his picture on the back page!) that is particularly useful to other Geeks, although the intended audience includes both geeks and bizpeople.

Geeks, or perhaps we should say IT personnel, are not known for their soft skills, because their soft skills tend to be underdeveloped. Geeks get along well with other Geeks, or at least communicate well, but rarely can truly communicate effectively with others in their organization. This singular fact is a major contributor to both massive IT project failure and lack of quick adoption.

The key point of the book is that “Nice Smart People Succeed.”

“It's really just the concept of karma applied in a business context. If you do good stuff, good stuff will come right back to you. It's a concept that is thousands of years old”
-James D. Foster

Tim advice falls into three categories:

1) Be smart – and work on being smart. He recommends reading everything in your field, with a big emphasis on books. Take extensive notes – mark up the books. Hard covers rule because you’ll save them and hopefully treasure them.

2) Your network holds amazing power. Keep your contacts well organized (in true Geek fashion, Tim recommends a Palm Pilot. He’s convinced me. I’m getting one – goodbye random scraps of paper!). Freely share your contacts with your other contacts for their benefit.

3) Tim calls #3 compassion. As a Geek, I have some difficultly with this of course. Expressing emotion in the business world, or anywhere else, is not my forte. But he makes a strong case, with I won’t even attempt to summarize in a few words. Tell people you like that you like them! You’re happy to see them. You look forward to talking to them. It works – if it’s true!

This is not the type of book I’d normally pickup and read, but it was recommend by a close friend, and I strongly recommend it as well (Tim recommends recommending books you like as well). The extensive use of terms like “lovecats” (something we should all be) would become cloyingly annoying very quickly if this book was not extremely well done AND written. But Tim Sanders pulls it off, and this fairly quick read is well worth reviewing after finishing as well.
Yesterday I met with someone I had only exchanged email with before, although I had done a quick project with him in the past. The meeting went very well, and we left with mutual promises of very specific future business. We will be making each other money in the next few months. As a true testament to the value of Love is The Killer App, I noticed after our meeting that I was using several of Tim’s suggestions and they were working. We connected, and I mean more than “I will do X for you and you will pay me Y.” We shared our contacts, and I think I’ll recommend this book to him. Maybe I'll have Amazon send him a copy.

If you are so smart, why aren’t you rich?

During the Internet boom, we collectively held an underlying assumption that getting rich was a noble pursuit. It was the “best” thing anyone could do. If you were smart then you were rich, or well on your way to becoming rich. If you weren’t rich or at least well on your way, you simply were not very smart.

The Internet culture, at least during the boom years, valued money – which they strongly correlated to intelligence, much more highly than previous generations. By Internet boom standards, Bill Gates was a greater person than Ghandi, Marc Andreesson was certainly cooler than Nelson Mandela, and a cog in the wheel almost killing themselves at some Internet startup for fame, fortune and stock options outranked both the Pope and Dalai Lama!

Certainly in my father's generation, entrepreneurship was not highly valued as it was during the boom or even today. Making money for money’s sake was considered crass and even uncouth. Further back, the idea that a “gentlemen” would engage in any form of commerce was considered absurd. “Nobles” and “Merchants” were entirely different classes. Merchants certainly were not noble – they were closer to today’s image of used car salesmen. Anyone who had recently made a fortune was considered “nouveau rich” and looked down upon. Today, our Nobles are the like of Bill Gates and Larry Ellison.

There is something to the notion of smart=rich=good. If you make money honestly, you have presumably added value somewhere and benefited people. If you are smart enough to make a lot of money, you have benefited a lot of people – perhaps humankind as a whole. You might even be close to sainthood if successful enough! Of course counterexamples exist, but especially in technology this is a strong argument. For example, one of my many uncles has made a medium sized fortune in medical technology. His work has benefited many people and even extended and saved people’s lives. He is smarter and cooler than those guys who recently annoyed many of us while running for president of the US!

During the Internet boom years, if you were smart, you were rich or well on your way to riches. End of story.

Today all the buzz is about “life balance” and being happy. We no longer assume massive financial success will necessarily make us happy or better people. Companies hire consultants to give seminars and advice on life balance. Spending seven days straight in the office and catching naps under your desk is no longer in vogue. You can be smart and happy without massive wealth.

We valued money during the Internet boom because there was a lot floating around and riches seemed within grasp of everyone. Now we value happiness more highly as it seems within grasp for everyone.

Personally I did well during the Internet boom years, although I didn’t join any startups as an employee. I was a consultant. I worked hard and I played hard. I didn’t get rich monetarily but have rich memories – a month trekking in Nepal, a summer fly fishing obsessively in Maine, two years working my butt off in Hong Kong on a great expense account (this one did pay!), etc.

I left getting rich for later, which is still in my plans. Who knows, we may have more control over money than our happiness?

Here’s hoping to my eventual sainthood!

Operating Systems need to be secure by default.

An automobile manufacturer couldn’t sell cars without basic security – i.e. locks. It would be irresponsible. Even for country dwellers who may rarely or never lock their cars, the ignition lock is an essential safety feature. Imagine if a three year old could get in a car and start it! It would both be immoral and the car manufacturers would get their pants sued off in our litigious society.

Operating Systems need basic security built in and need to be secure by default. For example, an unpatched and unprotected Windows system on the Internet will be compromised in 20 minutes on average according to the SANS Institute! And this compromised machine can be used by hackers for denial of service attacks, to help hide malicious hackers tracks, to host kiddie porn or pirated software, to send endless spam, etc. In other words, your insecure machine on the Internet can adversely affect others, just like a drunk driver is a threat to more than just themselves.

Operating systems are NOT secure by default. Usually most of the settings are wide open in the default and hence therefore most commonly used configuration. Default passwords are often not changed and are easy to find – try googling “default passwords.” Although Windows has very recently made some needed but still impressive strides in the right direction with Windows XP Service Pack 2, OSs are NOT secure by default. This includes Windows variants, Linux and Unix variants, etc.

Actually ALL applications need to be secure by default. Yes, ALL applications! Even that game on your PC could contain a Trojan or be exploited and allow a hacker to gain a foothold on your machine and network.

Blogs and Search Engines

I don’t tend to write or think about marketing much, but I’ve recently found: Blogs are an incredible tool for improving Search Engine placement!

My website, demop.com, only went live about 6 months ago (yes, I am a Luddite in many ways). Yesterday if you searched on “Ted Demopoulos” or “Demopoulos Associates” you would not find my web site on the first page of most search engine results. Yes, you would find all sorts of things about me: I love ham radio and wine, teach classes for SANS, partner with the Institute for Advanced Professional Studies, once taught a seminar on “Microkernels” for USENIX a decade ago, and the University of Uppsala in Sweden thinks I’m pretty cool too. You also might think I run an organization for gays and lesbians of Greek decent, although that’s a different “Ted Demopoulos.” But if you were actually looking for me, my website would not have been on page one results of Google.

Within 24 hours of starting my blog, with zero promotion other than telling three friends, my search engine world has changed. We’ll look at three of the top ones:

Google, the 800 pound gorilla of search engines:
The first hit for “Ted Demopoulos” and “Demopoulos Associates” is my web site, instead of being relegated to 2nd or 3rd page results. “The Ted Rap” is hit eleven if not in quotes, and hit #1 if in quotes.

Yahoo:
The first hit for “Ted Demopoulos”, “Demopoulos Associates”, and “The Ted Rap” is my web site. I assure you this wasn’t the case 24 hours ago!

MSN (Microsoft) Search:
Like Yahoo, all three search phrases return my website as the #1 result, and they did not a mere 24 hours ago.

I had heard that blogs were highly weighted by the search engines in their placement rules, but this is incredible. I checked right before creating my blog and then 24 hours after creation. I had previously followed all the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rules and guidelines, but after six months I was still second page results. Then I create this blog with 2 postings and I’m make more progress with the search engines than 6 previous months of following SEO “Best Practices.” I don’t even have a link from my website or anywhere else yet to this blog!

Now how could this be possible?? I have no advertising, no links, no RSS feed. You can’t easily find my blog right now unless you have the URL, or use a search engine. Where did the search engines get the URL and why do they care? Well, I use www.blogger.com, and the search engines must have somehow found out from blogger. I will not speculate on why they care!

I’m going to go register myself with all the blog directories in the next few minutes: daypop, technorati, eatonweb, globeofblogs, etc. Who know what that may accomplish? Maybe I’ll win a valuable prize? Maybe I’ll be knighted? Perhaps the Pope will bless me?

Hopefully, at very least, I’ll stay #1 in the search engine results for myself!! There is something comforting about knowing that someone searching for me actually finds me first.

But the bottom line: Creating a blog, even with zero promotion and close to zero content to date, has done more for improving search engine placement results than following six months of Search Engine Optimization “Best Practices.”

Hey Hey, You You, Get Outta IT!( with apologies to the Rolling Stones)

Although improving, the Information Technology job market has been abysmal for the last few years. Many of my friends and (former) colleagues have been out of work for months if not literally years. This because the Internet Boom created lots of jobs in IT and people rushed into IT to fill them. In the subsequent Bust, the jobs disappeared, but not the people! Many IT jobs have come back to pre-boom levels, but the IT job market has been bloated by people who didn’t really belong in IT. This is slowly changing as these people find more appropriate and often rewarding work in other fields.

When we were in the midst of the Internet Boom, roughly 1995-early 2000, the market priced many dot com companies absurdly highly. At one point, Priceline, which was spending several dollars for every dollar in revenue, had a higher valuation than the three largest airlines combined! Work in IT abounded. Acquiring venture capital was relatively easy – an interesting idea, backed by nothing: no business plan, no founders with a track record of success, etc, could get funded. Remember the term “New Economy?” Things were going up forever! This was the information age baby – prior rules of business just didn’t apply!

The heavily dotcom weighted NASDAQ stock index peaked March 10, 2000, more than double its of level of a year before. By late 2001, it was serious we were in deep doggy doo doo. The “New Economy” was dead.

I spent most of the boom years consulting. I had a blast – there was plenty of work for smart hard working people, and work for lazy less than brilliant types as well. I probably should have joined a startup and made oodles of money and retired, but I’m happy with my prior choices – I really did have a blast! And then all of our “Greenspan Irrational Exuberance” crashed to the ground. In 2000 alone, dot com stocks fell approximately 90%. In fact, the burst of the Internet bubble is widely credited as spurring US Economy’s major downturn in 2000 and 2001. The international economy was not good either.

I started doing the startup thing after the bust. Consulting was steady but slow unless I wanted to fly to the Pacific Rim where my friends would have kept me very busy. But with a new lifestyle with wife and kids it wasn’t a great choice. Startups weren’t a great choice either! My first, Cerint Technology Group, which did offshore outsourcing with an interesting twist, was a “textbook failure.” Our Venture Capital guys even went bankrupt and only gave us some of the promised seed money. When things got really tough, the principals collectively and immorally screwed me. Hey guys, you bastards could have given me the promised now-worthless stocks options! My second startup, The Security Training Institute, www.i-sti.com, did somewhat better because of our gifted leader, “The Poodle,” Pierre Noel. There was simply too much competition – too many people in IT! It didn’t matter much if you were great; someone “good” or “OK” who needed to make their mortgage payment was cheaper.

A lot of people entered IT because that’s where the jobs were. I’m a prime example. Despite a longtime fascination with computers, I was working on my PhD in Mathematics and intended on working in that field. I found an “interesting job” working for Apollo Computer and thought I’d get some practical industry experience before returning to finish my doctorate.

Now I probably belong in IT, BUT some of the people who entered IT during the boom probably do not belong here! Slowly over the last few years most of these people have found or are slowly finding more rewarding and/or appropriate work in other industries. Before you jump down my throat saying I’m an elitist bastard, let me give a few examples (names changed to protect the innocent, and to amuse myself):

Pluto worked his way up to worldwide director in charge of something important for a large software concern. He was smart, talented, and did a great job. He wasn’t technical, and had no great love of technology, but he was a good business dude who did real well. He now owns a small design and advertising firm and is as happy as ever.

Raphael was a “middle manager” for large computer vendor. He had been there a long time and was successful and happy. After being laid off and unemployed for a while, he’s a middle manager once again, this time outside of IT. He is just as happy there – IT has no particular draw or fascination to him.

Agamemnon was a decent technical guy. He was smart, had been in IT since college, and expected to be there until retirement. He was in IT because that’s where the jobs were. After being laid off and unemployed for a while, he is now a combination house husband, apparently quite gifted schoolteacher, and professional gambler, and is happier than ever!

All three of these people have something in common. They were in IT because that’s where the jobs were. They are now out of IT because the jobs aren’t there anymore.

They have no particular love for IT. Although they were all successful in IT, and enjoyed their work, they are now successful out of IT.

We are slowly recovering from the Internet Boom and subsequent Bust. And part of this recovery involves the slow and painful reduction in the IT workforce. Many of those people who joined during the boom years are slowly moving out. It’s been long, slow, and painful – but recoveries often are.

The IT job market is slowly recovering from a massive party, and an even bigger hangover!

Welcome to me

Ted: “Welcome to Me” – what a strange title!

Ted: Well, Ted, we’re the only one here. You just created this blog, no one can possibly know about it yet. This conversation with yourself isn’t even posted yet.

Ted: Ok, that makes sense. Say, why did I create this blog?

Ted: Because everyone else is blogging. You need a blog to be cool. You don’t want to be behind the curve.

Ted: Sorry, that doesn’t sound like me – try again.

Ted: OK, but that’s a common reason. Lets see, maybe to help you procrastinate?

Ted: Well, that must be a partial reason, as there are several other things I should be doing now instead!

Ted: And because you have so many intense conversations, whether while working or over a beer, and you want to capture that information somewhere. Writing it down will make you organize and remember your thoughts better – at least better than when drinking beer!

Ted: I have some inane conversations as well, whether drinking beer, coffee or nothing. I shan’t capture those. OK?

Ted: OK. And in your keynotes you have a lot of material that simply isn’t written down anywhere, except maybe as scribbled notes on cocktail napkins. Not exactly profound stuff, but worth documenting.

Ted: Some of it is profound, or at least funny. Well, I DO comment on profound things others have said and done sometimes. And maybe blogging will let me comment on others' profound statements and remember my comments too.

Ted: You put some good things in your newsletter, but that’s a more formal medium. For example you’d never talk to yourself in your newsletter. And in a blog people can add comments. For example they can elaborate on your postings, add their own experiences, or tell you you’re simply wrong.

Ted: I don’t need more people to tell me I’m wrong, I’m married – remember? And my four year old thinks he’s a teenager too! And hey, what if no one reads my blog?

Ted: Remember that a blog is first and foremost a Content Management System. Who cares if anyone else reads it? You have a lot of content in your head: interesting experiences, opinions (notice I’m not saying interesting!), conversations, keynote material, etc. Get it down on paper – errr, get it down in bits and bytes, organize it, and you’ll remember it better and be able to easily access it when you want.

And besides, I’ll read it, and everyone cool is doing it.