Google wave

I read about Google Wave in Ny Teknik (Sweden's biggest technology newspaper) and this was the first hands on description I had about how it could work, even though I had read about it before.

My immediate idea was that this could be used in science. Researchers could include data and/or hypotheses in a wave and other researchers could contribute to this wave with further data, analysis or conclusions. It could be very useful for collaboration between reserchers which are not co-located.

Remember where you read it first, in this blog!

Now I'm just waiting for an invitation from Google...

The difference between Academia and Business

From xkcd.com

What is a project...

I'm taking a course in project management and leadership for PhD students. Quite interesting...

One of my immediate observations is the discrepancy between the academic definition of a project and what we call a project in the car industry. According to our Swedish textbook a project is an activity with

• a well defined goal
• during a well defined time period
• with pre-defined resources
• under particular work model

A vehicle project, for example a model year update, certainly fulfills the first three, but the work model is/should be the same as the one we use for a model year update of another vehicle (not including any kaizen).
There is not something unique working with a particular vehicle model that warrants creating a project, it is just another task. A huge task, but nevertheless...
A research project is a different thing, for example developing the architecture for a new generation of electrical systems. There most work and deliverables are new and have not been done before or at least not in the last 10 years...

The other thing that I noticed as major difference is that the textbook states it is (or should be) impossible to participate in more than one, or at most two, projects simultaneously. An engineer at an EESE department usually works in more projects than that...

This post is in a response to an email I got about my previous post on more personal observations...

Comments

I got an e-mail that it is imposible to comment this blog. I tried myself and I agree. Annoying since I have blogged for more than a year now.

I have tried to fix this in the blog settings, but I find it strange that the default settings from Blogger made it impossible to leave a comment...

Focus of the blog?

I have a former colleague who started blogging after he became a technology management consultant (the blog is called Heartbeat Development). He has a lot more personal observations than I have in my blog, which I think is very interesting to read.

The question is if I should also have a more personal touch in my blog? I'm not sure, since I wanted to focus my blog on issues that relates to my research and factors that influence working with software architecture in the automotive industry. I will ponder this some more...

"Inspiration Day" on Vehicle Information and Communication Technology

I attended an "inspiration day" on Vehicle Information and Communication Technology (VICT) last week, arranged by Lindholmen Science Park and VINNOVA.
The purpose of the day was to display current Swedish research in the area and hopefully give ideas to new research projects. It was attended by a mix of people from industry, academia and government.

All presentations are available online here. Some in English and most in Swedish, not much I can do about that...

AUTOSAR webinar

Vector hosts a webinar on the basics of ECU development with AUTOSAR on 24 November 10:00 EST. You can register for the webinar here.

Sorry for the shameless plug for a commercial company, but at least this seems to be free. And there are few opportunities to learn more about AUTOSAR that is not hosted by a tool vendor or supplier...