HomePlug Ethernet, part 2

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

For the last week or so, our living room has been out of bounds as we installed a new fireplace, redecorated and are now getting a new carpet fitted. That means all of the furniture has moved out to another room – and that includes our Smart TV.

After months of near-perfect video streaming over the Power Ethernet connection that I wrote about in November, I’ve had to go wireless again, and that means lots of buffering, etc. – despite the TV being right next to the Apple AirPort Express that I’m pretty sure should be repeating the signal.  That’s prompted me to a) do something about it as it will be another week or so before the Xbox and Smart TV are back in the living room and b) write this post about my experiences with my Power Ethernet TP1000 sockets.

Installation

If you can install a 2-gang (double) power socket, you can install a Power Ethernet socket*.  Simply turn off the power at the mains (consumer unit), disconnect the existing socket wiring, connect the TP1000  – and you’ll have a single power socket and four Ethernet ports in place of the two power sockets that were there originally.  Repeat for the second socket (you need a pair to work together) and a mesh network is created automatically. Simple!

A few points to note:

  1. Depending on the depth of the pattress or wall box that your socket uses, you may need a “spacer” to increase the depth to at least 35mm. I found that the wall box for my living room (standard fit for an early-1990s house with dry lined “dot and dab” walls) was too shallow but some spacers were included with my sockets.
  2. Even with the spacer, it’s still a tight fit (the back of the TP1000 is bulkier than a standard switched double socket) and I moved the point at which the ring main entered the wall box by a couple of centimetres to improve access to the wiring connections.
  3. The TP1000 power socket is unswitched. That’s not a problem for me, but may be a concern for some people.
  4. Although the facia plate for the TP1000 is white, the unit itself is grey (and my spacers were white). Also, it has rounded corners, which look nice, but are difficult to match with existing sockets (or the spacer).  Again, not a problem for me (the socket is hidden behind our TV stand) but it would be good to see Power Ethernet devices available in a selection of finishes to match the most commonly used electrical fittings here in the UK.

Use

It’s a power socket, just use it as normal.

And it’s an Ethernet switch with four connections. Just use them as normal. Of course, one end will need to be connected to your Internet connection – for me, this is via the wired LAN in my home office, without any need for cross-over cables.

Performance

For many years, I avoided Ethernet over power line solutions because I was concerned about interoperability between the various standards, and I’d heard stories of poor performance. Of course, this will vary tremendously based on the electrical wiring in use but I’ve been pretty impressed with the Power Ethernet devices. Bear in mind that my primary use is to stream TV from the Internet (BBC iPlayer, for example), so the bottleneck is my “up to 8Mbps” ADSL2 connection, but  I’m having no issues at all, even streaming HD content.

It’s difficult to measure the true throughput of the network but the Power Ethernet Management Software (PEMS) suggests I’m sustaining a connection at around 160Mbps and the initial connection speed often rises over time.  Tests using file transfers (for example, using NetCPS) suggested lower transfer rates but it’s still far better than over Wi-Fi – and seems more reliable.

The TP1000 Ethernet sockets also go into standby mode when not in use, which obviously has an environmental (and fiscal) impact, but they are quick to “resume” when a device is plugged in to one of the RJ45 connections or switched on, taking just a few seconds to establish a connection as normal.

Management

As I mentioned above, Power Ethernet provides management software  for the Ethernet switches inside the TP1000s. I’m not using the advanced functionality (e.g. setting up VLANs or QoS) but those sorts of capabilities will be extremely useful in an office environment and it’s still useful to be able to see the topology of the network, check out the port states, monitor bandwidth and otherwise manage the devices from a single location. Supplied as a Microsoft ClickOnce application, I did initially have some problems installing the software but Power Ethernet were able to take my log files and quickly resolve the issue. Since then, PEMS has automatically updated itself to the latest software release with absolutely no problems and apart from a few display problems (which may be due to the fact I’m running it on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine, and connecting via RDP), it’s been pretty solid.

Power Ethernet Management Software

Interoperability

I mentioned that my SmartTV is temporarily in a different location (approx 8m from the nearest Ethernet socket) and, faced with an inability to watch iPlayer without buffering, I needed to set something up.  As this is a temporary fix and I don’t think Power Ethernet sockets are available with a brushed metal finish, I picked up a single TP-Link AV200 Nano powerline adapter (TL-PA211). It’s not as neat but it’s no worse than a 12V DC “brick” and it’s fine for a temporary setup. And, because both the TP-Link and the Power Ethernet sockets are HomePlug compatible, it instantly joined the mesh so I was connected to my Internet connection right away with no further configuration required.  What I did find is that the TP-Link connection is slower – which may be down to the the household electrical wiring or the device chipset (the TP-Link device uses the Intellon INT6000 chipset, whilst the TP1000 uses the Qualcomm Atheros INT6400) – but PEMS recognises a third party device and has shown me connection speeds in the range of 85-115 Mbps – which is still pretty decent and far more than my broadband connection!

Summary

I’ve been really pleased with my Power Ethernet TP1000s and I’d certainly recommend them for home or small business use. The management software can be a little clunky but it’s only really needed if you want to manage the embedded Ethernet switch, which is overkill for my simple home setup. And, whilst they may not be the cheapest HomePlug devices on the market, there are some significant advantages in terms of physical security, aesthetics and performance – and there’s always the option to combine with other 200Mbps HomePlug devices where appropriate. If you’re looking for an alternative to Wi-Fi, and running CAT5/6 is not an option, I seriously recommend taking a look at Power Ethernet.

 

* Of course, if you’re not confident in doing this, then consult an electrician. I’m not qualified to give electrical advice – I’m just a “competent DIYer”.

Recommended listening: MK Geek Night recordings on “the high cost of free” and “so you have an app idea?”

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Tomorrow night is MK Geek Night and the event continues to gain in popularity, “selling” out in just 8 hours, with a huge waiting list.  Last month I wrote some brief highlights, and hinted that I might like to follow up with more detail on a couple of the talks. Unfortunately, that’s not happened but audio from all five of the “MKGN 3” talks is available on SoundCloud.

I particularly recommend checking out Aral Balkan (@Aral)’s talk on the high cost of free – a talk that seems particularly pertinent each time a “free” product hits the news, whether that’s Google Reader being withdrawn, Facebook changing the terms of use for Instagram or Twitter changing its API…

Meanwhile, if its mobile application development that floats your boat, Dave Addey (@DaveAddey)’s talk might help you to decide if your app idea really is a good one…

Watch this space for highlights from tomorrow night’s event.

The conference call productivity drain…

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

The following script is based on a real conference call. The names and times have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent but, other than that, it’s pretty accurate:

9:45 (15 minutes before the meeting): Reminder pops up, “snooze” it until 5 minutes before.

9:55: I’ll just finish writing this email… I wonder, was there any preparation required for this meeting? I haven’t done any but no-one else will have either…

9:59: Ah yes, that meeting – how long?! An  hour and a half! Dial the conference service. What was the meeting passcode again? Got it, I’m in. Ah, hold music.

10:00 (advertised meeting start time): “The chairperson has not arrived. Please wait…” more hold music.

Just after 10:00: Call is opened, just two people so far. Social chat about what’s going on.

10:01: Someone else joins the call. Say hello, bring them into the chat. More banter.

10:02: Two more attendees join. Roll call. Explain that we’re waiting for a few more.

10:03: More attendees. Almost quorate now. Roll call, just waiting for Michael and Stuart. Michael did say he would join but, in the interests of time, start the meeting.

10:05: Michael joins the call. Apologies for lateness. Quick roll call and bring up to speed on introduction. Start meeting properly.

10:07: Stuart joins the call. He’s in the same building as the meeting organiser and wants to join in person. He’s told the room number and drops off the call.

(call continues for another hour or so…)

This is “normal”?! Several middle-managers, not exactly inexpensive resources, waste time waiting for others to get themselves organised. A few minutes, multiplied by several attendees soon becomes an hour of lost productivity for the company.  I’ve even seen this on calls with hundreds of people (literally) waiting.

I admit, sometimes meetings over-run for good reasons. Only last week I had to delay a meeting and missed another two calls completely because an important issue arose which needed immediate resolution (a personnel issue – and people trump process in my mental rule-book) so I allowed a meeting to over-run. I tried to keep others informed though, rather than leaving them hanging on a conference call waiting for me to arrive.

But, in our organisation, people accept the sort of practice I’ve laid out above as normal (or at least, they tolerate it) and I’ve coined a term to describe the company timezone (which is 3 minutes after the real time).

The thing is, we’re not alone. That’s why I feel comfortable talking about this issue on a public forum – it happens in organisations all over the country – indeed, all over the world, all of the time.

Yesterday, Matt Ballantine published a blog post entitled “clock watching”, in which he suggests it’s not collaboration tools we need, it’s somebody asking “why are we meeting?”. Quoting from Matt’s post:

“Imagine if the workflow for setting up a meeting, rather than being ‘find a slot available for the attendees, book the meeting’, was more like:

– state the objectives and outcomes required for the meeting
– understand who might be active participants
– describe who should be informed, yet not necessarily attend
– validate that this will require a meeting to achieve the necessary outcomes
– plan out the activities for the session
– validate again that a meeting is the best route for the outcomes to be achieved
– work out the correct time for the meeting
– find an appropriate time slot for the meeting
– send out participant briefing notes to everyone concerned”

For a while now, I’ve been asking “Do you need me on this call? I’m not sure what value I’ll be adding”. In future I’ll be more strict. And I’ll be starting the meetings that I control right on time, rather than when we have most people on the call. If people realise that they miss things by turning up late, maybe they will be more punctual? Or maybe I just need to chill out?

Lego: the best value toy that money can buy (and tracking down replacement parts)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Thirty years ago, I was a ten-year old boy who spent a huge amount of time building Lego models, usually to be destroyed by my younger brother*. Today, my sons are playing with that same Lego, supplemented by a growing number of sets of their own (slowly taking over our house in spite of my efforts to contain it to the living room and their bedrooms).

Imitation sets are just not as good

There have been a few sets gifted from others that are not “real” Lego.  It may sound ungrateful but these mostly have been passed on to charity shops as either:

  • They had black and white instructions that were difficult to follow.
  • They needed us to download and print the instructions ourselves (surprisingly expensive and impractical).
  • They just didn’t fit together as well as real Lego (the models are too fragile).

Whether it’s Knex, MegaBlox or one of the plethora of wannabees, it seems that imitation Lego is really just a false economy.

Sourcing replacements for broken parts

One of the properties of Lego bricks is that they are incredibly strong. Anyone who’s every stood on one whilst walking bare-foot can tell you that! But, ever so occasionally, a practically indestructible Lego part gets broken and, faced with an inconsolable eight-year-old who wanted to use a 2×2 plate with ball connector that had snapped off (“it’s really rare and we’ve only got about 2 of them Dad”), I set about locating replacements (super glue had done a better job of sticking my fingers together than it did two pieces of Lego…).

There are various Lego parts databases online, as well as sites specialising in selling second-hand Lego parts (although parts availability can be patchy). I found the BrickSet Lego Brick Guide to be comprehensive, accurate and easy to work with (it ought to be – I’ve just noticed it’s an official Lego site!) and I searched for the part I needed, using a set number that I knew it appeared in.

Lego’s parts replacement service is not available in all countries and I couldn’t find it via the UK website but a friend who used to work at Lego said they often sent out parts to replace broken/missing pieces. So, after locating the exact part, I went to Lego’s replacement parts system and requested a new piece.

This is where Lego excelled. Not only did they replace that part but I also asked for replacements for some others that had become broken over the years and Lego shipped them, free of charge. I would have paid for them, if I could find them but Lego’s customer service is so good and their confidence in the quality of the product so strong that they will replace the broken pieces.

The real value of Lego

I can’t think of any other toy that’s provided as much play value as Lego and it was interesting to read an article about how Lego’s price has changed over the years (it’s not as expensive as it first seems).  Then, last weekend, my sons spent their pocket money on some more.  My 6 year-old plumped for some Lego Star Wars sets (no surprises there) but my 8 year-old bought a battery pack, motor, lights, switch and gears.

Over the next few days, he built a vehicle that drives itself, worked out how best to arrange the gears and motor, how to make it stronger, how to tweak the electrics so that the lights came on separately to the motor. Each iterative change brought improvements, and taught him a little more about making things work. In short, Lego taught him about physics, engineering, electronics (arguably innovation too…) – all with very little input from me.  Whilst my wife is looking for ways to feed his interest (and apparent aptitude) for STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I think we might get quite a long way just by buying lots of Lego Technics and Mindstorms!

 

* On one notable occasion I “left home”, aged 7, walking out after my brother broke up a Lego model I’d created… I came home a few hours later in a panda car…

Fixing iPass and Virgin Trains Wi-Fi authentication issues

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Connected to Virgin Trains Wi-Fi using iPassAlthough I travel on Virgin Trains pretty frequently, it’s usually only from Milton Keynes to London Euston and not worth getting my laptop out of my bag. Now, I’m finding myself travelling to Manchester more often and working on the train is a major advantage over driving.

Virgin has Wi-Fi on its trains, which is complementary in first class but chargable (at the usual extortionate rates) for those of us in the cheap seats. The company I work for provides me with an iPass client though, so I can use that to connect without hefty credit card fees and expense claims (at least on Windows I can, it wasn’t working for me on iOS last time I tried).

Lately though, I’ve found that the iPass client would connect to the VirginTrainsWiFi network and then present a pop-up asking me to pay for access.  That didn’t seem right, so I logged a call with our IT helpdesk… I’ll spare readers the details of that particular experience but I also spoke to Virgin’s Wi-Fi support team, who suggested I download an updated “phonebook” for the iPass client.  The client version that I’m using (2.3, I think) doesn’t have an option for a phonebook download but, with the help of some of the guys in our IT department, I found that the phonebook can get corrupted sometimes and the resolution is to remove and re-install the iPass client.

We don’t have a huge sample but I’m now told my fix (I’m connected on iPass, on the train right now) makes it a 100% success rate from 3 people with the problem.  Maybe it will help someone else out there on the ‘net too…

Selectively removing cookies to resolve Office 365 authentication issues

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Every now and again, Office 365 decides that it doesn’t recognise my credentials and won’t let me log on. Well, not from a my normal web browser anyway. Everything works on my iDevices, my Windows Phone, even in a a protected browser session (e.g. Google Chrome’s incognito browsing), but not from my “normal” browser, with handy password management extension…

Because it works in a protected browser session, I was pretty sure the problem is related to cookies but removing them all is a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut.  Instead, I delete individual cookies by going to chrome://settings/cookies and search for the microsoftonline.com cookies.  After removing these, I can log on successfully for a few weeks until the next time Office 365 decides it can’t authenticate me…

Searching Active Directory with PowerShell and a user’s phone number

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I have a guilty secret: I screen my incoming phone calls. I no longer answer blocked numbers on my work phone – it’s always PPI spam – and I recognise the numbers of those I work closely with, so I can prioritise my response (i.e. do I want to be interrupted by that person, or can I respond to voicemail later?). To be honest, it’s just the same with email – some people will get an immediate response, others will need more thought and I’ll respond when I have more time (or not, in some cases). Is it unprofessional? I don’t think so – it’s about time management.

Recently, I had a missed call on my mobile from a number I didn’t recognise. I could see it was internal (all of our mobile phones have the same first few digits) so I thought I’d search the Global Address List in Outlook. Unfortunately though, Outlook doesn’t let me search the GAL on phone numbers…

I could have just called them back (actually, I did!) but the geek in me had the bit between the teeth… could I script up some kind of reverse lookup for phone numbers? And, in true Barack Obama (or Bob the Builder if you’re on this side of the Atlantic) style, the answer turns out to be:

“Yes, we can!”

So, if you use a Windows PC and you like scripting, read on. If you don’t, probably best just call the number back and see who answers!

Getting ready to query Active Directory with PowerShell

The first hurdle was that, in order to query Active Directory from PowerShell, I needed to have the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) component installed on my Windows 7 workstation in order to do this, but it’s actually a two-step installation process.

  1. Firstly, download and install the RSATs to the workstation.
  2. In Control Panel, Programs, Programs and Features, Turn Windows features on or off, make sure that the Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell is available under Role Administration Tools, AD DS and AD LDS Tools.

Once the RSATs were installed and the Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell was enabled, I could fire up Windows PowerShell and issue the command to load the Active Directory management cmdlets:

Import-Module ActiveDirectory

Finding the available attributes to search against

Next up, I needed to know which properties are available for an Active Directory User object. I used my own email address as a filter to Get-User, which retrieved the details for the given AD User object, then selected all properties and piped the resulting output into Get-Member (which gets the properties and methods of objects):

Get-ADUser -Filter {EmailAddress -like "user@domain.com"} -Properties * |
Get-Member -MemberType property

Building up confidence, I started to play around and query individual attributes for the selected object:

$user = Get-ADUser -Filter {EmailAddress -like "user@domain.com"} -Properties *
$user.Title
$user.OfficePhone
$user.SAMAccountName

I found that each of these returned the information I would expect for my own user account in Active Directory.

Constructing the query

The next step was to search the whole directory but this time to filter the properties returned and to pipe through Where-Object to match certain criteria, then pipe the resulting output from that query into a table:

Get-AdUser -Filter * -Properties OfficePhone |
Where-Object {$_.UserPrincipalName -match "Wilson"} |
Format-Table OfficePhone,UserPrincipalName

This returns the office phone number for everyone whose user name contains the string Wilson.  That tested the principle but was not the query I was trying to create, so I edited the query to match a number against a number of phone number properties (making sure that all the properties that need to be displayed are in the filter) and also prompted for the search string, storing it in a variable:

$Search = Read-Host 'What number would you like to search for?'
Get-AdUser -Filter * -Properties OfficePhone,MobilePhone,TelephoneNumber |
Where-Object {$_.OfficePhone -match $Search -or $_.MobilePhone -match
$Search -or $_.TelephoneNumber -match $Search} |
Format-Table GivenName,Surname,OfficePhone,MobilePhone,TelephoneNumber

This time, the resulting output was exactly what I was after – a single entry matching the partial phone number I’d asked it to match (824753 in the example below):

GivenName  Surname  OfficePhone  MobilePhone    TelephoneNumber
---------  -------  -----------  -----------    ---------------
Mark       Wilson   73824753     +447xxx824753  73824753

Finally, I wrapped the whole thing up in a script and, as long as I’ve done the usual Set-ExecutionPolicy remotesigned stuff, I can perform reverse lookups on phone numbers to my heart’s content… now, if only I could have an iPhone app to do this for me when the calls come in…

Stuck in the wrong App Store with iOS 6

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Account Not in This Store Your account is not valid for use in the U.S. store. You must switch to the U.K. store before purchasing. Earlier this evening, I tried to download an app that’s only available in the US App Store. iOS helpfully redirected me, where the store said my account was no use to it…

But, after that, I seemed to be stuck in the States with an account that doesn’t work in the US store and a load of apps that need to be updated from the UK App Store.

This Apple ID is only valid for purchased in the UK iTunes Store. You will be switched to that Store.But there is a fix. It seems it’s a problem in iOS 6 (has there ever been a release of iOS as problematic as this? Or is it just that the major bugs in iOS 6 have been related to ActiveSync and have all affected me*).

There is a fix though – as described by Apurva Tripathi, the resolution is to switch to the Featured tab, then scroll down to the bottom of the page. Click on your Apple ID  and select Sign Out. Then sign back in to be redirected to the correct store.  Reading around on the ‘net suggests this is not just a UK/US thing – it could affect users in various geographies.

*because Apple stuff “Just Works”

Embedding Windows Media in a SharePoint website

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A few weeks ago, I found myself standing in front of a green screen in a meeting room that had been “converted” into a temporary film studio, recording a video for internal communication on the technology standardisation initiatives I’ve been running for the last few months.  After all the edits and final approvals, the videos are now coming online and, as “Chief SharePoint Officer” for our team (I jest), it was up to me to hack our portal and get them online.

I figured that the guys in our internal studio must have done this before and, sure enough, the advice I received was to use JWPlayer for Flash content or to embed a media player for Windows Media files. We went with Windows Media (I can play the WMVs offline too), so I used a method described on Stack Overflow to embed an object inside a SharePoint Content Editor Web Part.

I’m sure that there are alternatives that provide better cross-browser support but as this is a SharePoint 2007 website, the only browser that will be used is some variant of Internet Exploder (and our corporate browser is Internet Explorer 8) so not too much to worry about.

I needed just one slight variation.  The videos I used were 480×270 pixels so, with the controls, I needed the player to be slightly taller. Playing around until I had no black bars around the video got me to the following code:

A full-quality download of this video is also available.

What do Aston Martin, design, learning styles and digital storytelling have in common? (#MSRN)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Every now and again, I get invited to a fantastic event and, earlier this week, I found myself at a former school (now a “creativity and innovation space”), on one of Britain’s first council estates, in Shoreditch, East London, home of our very own “silicon roundabout”, to discuss research, disruption, invention and innovation.

If time permitted, I could write a dozen blog posts based on the discussions at Microsoft’s Research Now event. Unfortunately, the highlights are all I can deliver right now, but there were many of them…

The art of design

Aston Martin Parking OnlyFirst up, Head of Design at Aston Martin, Marek Reichman (@Design_Dr) gave a fantastic presentation on the iconic brand’s approach to design. Living, as I do, just a few miles from Aston Martin’s spiritual home in Newport Pagnell, I may be a little biased but there are few brands that stir the imagination as much as seven-times bankrupted Aston Martin – which is partly why they have been the coolest brand in the UK for five out of six years (the anomoly being the year that Apple temporarily took the top spot, since reclaimed for 2012/13 with YouTube in second place and Aston Martin in third).

The company’s new headquarters is a modern version of a castle in the middle of England, built from local stone, in a circular shape, with a moat, a drawbridge and narrow windows and signifies how design is integral to the culture of Aston Martin. Even so, Aston’s design studio (the company’s first in house studio, created in 2007) is a separate building with 6m tall windows, joined to the main complex with a glass corridor – an ivory tower in which to design, with transparency so others can see in.

I won’t continue to reproduce Marek’s presentation – I just can’t do it justice – so here are just a few choice words: power; beauty; soul; cool; exclusivity; luxury; creativity; and craftsmanship.

“Coolness” is something that one cannot claim – it has to be bestowed – but Marek Reichman describes it as stylish, innovative, original, authentic, desirable, unique. That’s a great set of adjectives that, for me, perfectly describe Aston Martin.

Design from the boardroom to the shop floor

With the unenviable job of following Marek Reichman’s keynote, Chief Design Officer at the Design Council, Mat Hunter (@mat_hunter) started out by commenting on the relationship between job titles and confidence, mocking has own grand title in comparison to Marek’s understated “Head of Design”. Mat’s presentation was no less engaging as he took us on a journey with:

  • A logistics company that’s seen improved revenues since they started to better communicate what they do through branding and graphic communications.
  • A discussion of form and function with the kettle evolving from a stove-top model to an electric kettle, one with an automatic off switch, to a cordless model, to a stylish model.
  • Disruption through changing meanings – why do we need a kettle? Why not simply have a tap that dispenses hot water for a cup of tea? Or how about the wrist watch, with Swiss craftsmanship commoditised by cheap Japanese digital timepieces, only to be usurped once more by Swatch, who took analogue technology and made it a fashion item? In another example, Streetcar (which became Zipcar and is now owned by Avis) proved that, in some markets, people want access to a car, not necessarily to own one. Then there are concepts like The Amazings – for people to try something old and learn something new.
  • Looking at innovation, Mat described the “double diamond” design process where we use the left side to redefine the brief before finding new solutions to a problem. Examples include: the Mailbox app which is aiming for a a clean mailbox and using a queuing system to manage demand [only time will tell how successful that is – I’ve lost interest already]; Casserole Club which uses the social web to connect people and provide peer to peer “meals on wheels”; The Matter which gives young people work experience and drives a better quality of output by involving them in local planning and decision-making; and even the Government Digital Service, aiming to transform the way in which the UK government provides online services with a set of human-centred design principles, integration, board-level leadership (and recruiting the best people).

Design-led transformation and innovation

In the next slot, Microsoft Consultants Fred Warren and Phillip Joe spoke about why and how to innovate using design. I really need to take another look at the slide deck to properly understand what was presented as we jumped from anecdotes such as Virgin Atlantic’s redefinition of transatlantic flight by “reframing the experience” in Upper Class, getting travellers from A to B (not Heathrow to JFK) and removing friction points to Pine and Gilmore’s Experience Economy and on to customer experience evolution but I got the impression Fred’s part of the presentation (the “why?”) could be summed up as “step back and look at the problem from a different angle” – and “don’t die hesitating”.

Phillip spoke about the “how?” with four themes of orchestration (guide the vision), envisioning (explore scenarios and define visual and textual narratives), empathy (understand what users want), and execution (take the vision and make it real – which parts of the narrative will be built out).

To be perfectly honest, this was the session that I didn’t really get. Maybe I was tired. Or maybe the previous presenters had given me so much food for thought my brain needed time to adjust… but the basic premise is sound: finding out what the problems are, rather than offering solutions right away (although isn’t that just what consultants do?).

Organisational DNA

This slot was the surprise for me. A real gem. Strategic People and Organisation Development Consultant, Elizabeth Greetham gave a talk on getting an organisation culture aligned for innovation. The concepts that Elizabeth visited are not new, but it’s good to re-visit them.

Honey and Mumford’s learning styles are a cycle of learning by doing (activists, jumping in at the deep end), reflecting (think and observe), theorising (through models) and trying out (pragmatists, starting in a safe environment). Often we skip the reflection, eradicating the time to think creatively, which in turn stifles innovation.  Meanwhile activist-pragmatists skip the theory, which can be valuable to re-engage with from time to time.

Moving on to perception and memory processing, Elizabeth spoke of four learning strategies:

  • Visual (pictures, written word).
  • Auditory (spoken word).
  • Kinaesthetic (actions and movement).
  • Tactile (touch).

Whilst visual and auditory learning are well understood (e.g. leading to success of PowerPoint) kinaesthetic learning is about doing, reaching, feeling. Restricting people to one screen limits this – the movement is important (mind maps can help). So does hot-desking – some people need their own space. The implications of touch are still being explored and, whilst it’s discouraged in the workplace there are some benefits that have been discovered through work with autistic children.

On cognitive styles, Elizabeth described two types:

  • Verbal-imagery: words vs. pictures (not everyone’s brain creates images – sometimes they need to be provided)
  • Wholist-analytic: global vs. components (some people need the big picture and to know what comes before and after their part vs. individual widgets in detail); another way to look at this is breadth first vs. depth first.

The psychological contract is about the perceptions between an employer and an employee about their obligations to one another – more than just a written contract of employment. Promises are often made or implied, e.g. during recruitment, in appraisals, at a social event, when travelling together – and we shouldn’t make promises that are not in our gift to deliver.

Elizabeth then spoke of the sixteen Myers-Briggs personality types, before highlighting that intimacy is key to success – for every person in an organisation, someone else needs to know what makes them tick. Organisations need a structure that supports this; small working groups enable people to get to know one another much better.

In summary, “well it’s how we do things around here” is made up of people, how they learn, the psychological contract status, and personality factors. And that, is the organisational DNA.

Design in the digital physical world

In his presentation, Principal Interaction Designer at Microsoft Research, Richard Banks (@rbanks) explained some of the ideas he’s been working on for digital storytelling. His team’s ethnographic work is a combination of social science, computer science and interaction design; they look at people, see how they work, spot anecdotes about life – and spark ideas for things that can be designed. Specifically, Richard talked about the theme of the future of looking back: creating new value from reflecting on the past.

For example, on inheriting his late grandfather’s box of photos, Richard discovered they had been recorded with “metadata” (names written on the back). But with most of  us creating thousands of digital images each year, that’s a lot to pass on when our time comes.

Technology has moved past the point where it’s a play thing, it’s now an integral part of our lives and we need to deal with death on social media too. We all have boxes of sentimental objects that we don’t keep on display. The question is whether digital artefacts be sentimental too? To take another example, old diaries provide an insight into others’ lives – even if the points recorded seem mundane at the time. May be our tweets will be the same some day?

Richard showed pictures of physical items created to store digital artifacts, such as:

  • A box to backup your tweets.
  • A digital slide viewer which backs up Flickr images into a box that looks like an old Boots slide viewer.
  • A digital photo display focused on one individual containing events throughout their life structured on a timeline [à la Facebook] providing the context for where things fit.

Another interesting angle is the motivation behind digital storytelling, perhaps just creating a record for a sense of permanence – not necessarily interesting now but it may be later. And then there are the new possibilities afforded by digital media – such as putting two people into a picture that could have been together, but were not (e.g. a grandfather and grandson when one had passed away before the other was born). I’m currently taking something in the region of 10-12,000 pictures a year and I have hundreds of slides in the loft inherited from my late Father. It’s high time I took a good look at my own digital curation and storytelling…

Envisioning the future

Microsoft Chief Envisioning Officer, Dave Coplin (@dcoplin) gave the final talk before the inevitable panel session to wrap-up the day. I’ve blogged about Dave’s talks before – fast paced and highly entertaining. The twist this time around was to ask the question “What can you change in your business that you do because you’ve always done it?”. See the big picture. Avoid the arrogance of the present. Look for outcomes, not process. Set your people and your data free. Fundamentally, think human, be human. And empower others.

Conclusion

It’s been a while since I attended a Microsoft event that was as thought-provoking as this one. Most of the company’s output is pure marketing but this was a refreshing change; enabling others to lead the conversation, facilitating discussion, and leading thoughts without the distraction of a product pitch.  For this reason alone, congratulations are due to the Microsoft UK Enterprise Insights team (@MicrosoftEntUK), who hosted the day. Add in the first-class speaker line-up and it was well worth it.

As for takeaways, well, I’ve written many of them in this post but, whilst design is not at the core of my work, it can help me to think about things differently and the organisational DNA talk has given me plenty to consider as I plan for building my own team inside the organisation where I work.