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IBM Symposia
Megan Beynon 05/05/05 © 2005 IBM Corporation
From T.S. Eliot to Invention in I.T.
Megan Beynon – IBM Certified Software Engineer
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
How did I get here?
� English Language and Literature
at Manchester University
� Product Development at IBM
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
What is working in IT about?
� Being “techie”
� Hardware, cables, devices
� Software, operating systems, device drivers
� Databases, storage systems
� Automation of processes
� Programming
� User interfaces
� Online gaming
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
What is studying English about?
� Analysis
� Filtering and organising complex information
� Construction and defence of logical arguments
� Seeing situations from many perspectives
� Language and communication skills
� Empathy and imagination
� Appreciation of beauty
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
What else is the IT industry about?
� Interaction of people and technology
� Design, architecture, creativity
� Customers, requirements, support
� Technical documentation
� Information management
� Autonomy of systems
� Innovation and vision
� Problem solving
� Solutions
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
The IBM Career of an English Student
� Software Test and Solution Test
� Customer Presentations
� Technical Documentation: eg, course materials
� Innovations
� Event Coordination
� Information Management System Design
� Project Mentoring
� Product Development
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Technical Documentation
� Problem Determination Across Multiple
WebSphere Products AIX Platform
� http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/f338d71ccde39f
08852568dd006f956d/ff10c44b94fce32385256d4b006749d3?O
penDocument
� Introduction to Websphere Business Integration
Message Brokers System Administration Course
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Testing Software and Solutions
� Testcase design and documentation
� User interface requirements
� Setting up test environments
� Running tests
� Product improvement
� Product expertise
� Customer engagements
� Integration expertise
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
SoftwareSoftware
TestTest
UserUser TechnologiesTechnologies
SoftwareSoftware
SupportSupport
DevelopmentDevelopment
SoftwareSoftware
ServicesServices
Team LeadingTeam Leading
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
The IBM Career of an English Student
� Software Test and Solution Test
� Customer Presentations
� Technical Documentation: eg, course materials
� Innovations
� Event Coordination
� Information Management System Design
� Project Mentoring
� Product Development
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Explore IT 2003
� Fun event to introduce 10 yr olds to I.T.
� Simulated networking exercise: COMPUTING INFRASTRUCTURE
� Dance music creation using software: CREATING USING I.T.
� Morphing images using software: TRANSFORMATION
� Remote Lego Building: COMMUNICATION AND I.T.
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Demonstrated innovations
� Apparatus, method and computer program for
adding context to a chat transcript
� http://www.freshpatents.com/Apparatus-method-and-
computer-program-for-adding-context-to-a-chat-transcript-
dt20040923ptan20040186721.php
� Four others pending and some published ideas.
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
The IBM Career of an English Student
� Software Test and Solution Test
� Customer Presentations
� Technical Documentation: eg, course materials
� Innovations
� Event Coordination
� Information Management System Design
� Project Mentoring
� Product Development
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Team Information Distribution Infrastructure
eg. WEBSITE DB
INFO
REQUIRED FIELDS:
eg. Product: Websphere MQ
eg. Destination: External Use
REQUIRED FIELDS:
eg. Software Type: Integration Middleware
eg. Product Family: Websphere MQ
eg. Product: Websphere MQ Messaging
eg. Audience: Sales and Customers
INFO
TIDI DB
� Mapping categorisation between databases and managing information lifecycle
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Content Displacement
Page
Content A
Content B
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Peridot
� The challenge: implement a system that autonomically manages web sites by ensuring that hyperlinks always point to the intended content.
� Based on ideas developed by Megan Beynon and Andrew Flegg in 2003
� New ideas developed and material published by the students: James Bell, Benjamin Delo, Jules Friedman and Philipp Offermann
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Extreme Blue
� 3 month summer internship at IBM
� Penultimate year students
� http://www-05.ibm.com/employment/uk/students/ebi.html
� Opportunity to work on innovative projects
� Extreme Blue project “Peridot” 2004
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Why do customers need Peridot?
� Hyperlinks often suffer from “Content Displacement”
– URL still valid but content changed significantly
– URL no longer valid and content difficult to find
– Site owner might not notice the change
� Content displacement poses several problems
– Requires manual maintenance
– Loss of productivity
– Can harm company image and online sales.
Peridot provides the first solution to this problem.
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
� Based on two of IBM’s filed patents
� Patents won 2003 Autonomic Award
Maintenancecycle
Web page
Fetch link
targetFingerprint
Store and
compare
Determine
significance
Find
alternatives
The Peridot Solution
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Peridot is about Trust
In productivity and information network
Tru
st
In customer’s web presence
In the tool
• Client customisation of degree of automation
• Learning of client decisions
• Full feedback
• Minimise damage to corporate
image
• Protect online sales
• Information does not go missing
• People spend less time searching
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
� Fingerprinting
� Finding alternatives
Maintenancecycle
Fetch link
targetFingerprint
Web page Store and
compare
Determine
significance
Find
alternatives
Key areas ofinnovation
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Fingerprinting
� The challenge
– Extract the relevant features from a page in order to uniquely identify it’s meaning.
� The solution
– Fingerprints might contain
descriptions of:
• Relevant phrases
• Colour Palette
• Website owner
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Finding alternatives� The challenge
– Search a document space
of millions to find relevant
replacements
– Needs to be done in real
time
ABCDEFG
ABCD EFG
foo.comABC
bar.comBCD
abc.comEF
new.comCDZ
bar.comBCD
ABCDEFGZ
ABCDZ
BCDZ
� The solution
– A very fast tree search by
phrases cuts alternative
space down
– The remaining alternatives
are assessed by fingerprint
comparison
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Doing the Maths
� Tree Data Structure method of storing data for efficient searching
� Suppose each node in the tree has ten children
� A tree of 100 items would be only 2 nodes high
� Search 1,000,000 items in 6 decisions
� 1,000,000,000,000 in just 12 decisions
� The height of the tree increases logarithmically
� Scalable solution.
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Architecture
Spider
Fingerprint
Change
Control
URL Change
Evaluator
Alternative
Finder
Client Notify
Fingerprint
database
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Press coverage of Peridot
� New York Times:
� http://tech2.nytimes.com/mem/technology/techreview.html?r
es=9906E4DA103AF932A15753C1A9629C8B63
� BBC News:
� http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3666660.stm
� Finalist in IEE Innovation in Engineering Awards
� More Information:
� http://www.bleb.org/software/
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Something for any career
� How do you ‘do innovation’ - especially when you don’t have the ‘expertise’ in a field?
– Problem solving skills and a willingness to take a fresh look
– Explore ‘innovation’ as you would approach an area of study: Innovation SIG at Hursley set up to do just that.
– Minds are like muscles, innovation practice is like physiotherapy
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Innovation 1. a. The action of innovating; the introduction of novelties;
the alteration of what is established by the introduction of new elements
or forms.
• A strike of inspiration
• A ‘eureka’ moment
• The gradual development of a solution to a problem
• The problem/solution pair is a ‘new’ one – no-one else addressed it
• The solution is ‘new’ – no-one else thought of solving this way
• A new spin on an old story: Douglas Adams and the car chase
What does it mean to ‘be innovative’?
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
… “this is the way it is, it cannot be resolved”
… seeing a ‘problem’ instead of a ‘situation’
… “there is a workaround, there is no need to improve it”
… inconvenience, the father of invention
… “computers just don’t work like that”
… challenge even limits that seem reasonable
• ‘inventive’, ‘different’, ‘beautiful’, ‘weird’, ‘exciting’ …
So how do you go about ‘doing something new’?
…if people say these words about something it’s a clue that it
might be innovative.
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
The future of I.T. affects everyone
� How can we grasp and manage the implications of technological advance?
� Can we control how technology shapes and affects human experience ?
� Will future generations learn to ‘think’ like computers ? Would that be good ?
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
…
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance
…
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T.S. Eliot. The Rock, 1934
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Would you like to be part of the future of I.T.?
� Experience and technology: the ‘precious draft’
… a lecturer reviewing a second draft of a thesis sent an email containing
comments. The email began ‘When I was reading your precious draft…’
and went on to outline the impression the PREVIOUS draft had made
compared to the second draft. The student felt extremely offended by the
phrase ‘your precious draft’, apparently referring sarcastically to the recent
draft. We can no longer say that technology is disconnected from human
experience. In this example the proximity of ‘c’ and ‘v’ on a keyboard
caused a major problem!
� Would you like to understand the way that people
and technology interact and how it affects us?
� Would you like to contribute to the way we build
and use technology in the future?
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Would you like to be part of the future of I.T.?
� Thinking like a computer: ‘Error: null is invalid’
… while completing a wizard to set up some software, a user was
presented with the message: “Error: null is invalid”. It turned out that they
had selected ‘next’ on a panel in which a field that required input had been
left blank. The back end database had received an empty (‘null’) input when
‘next’ was selected, which caused a problem and was therefore an invalid
entry. Messages frequently contain words or phrases that mean nothing to
a user without this level of understanding of the technology. Users develop
the ability to work with computers by learning to speak their language and
deduce which types of events correlate to which types of output. The
software is developed in the first place by people who can already do this.
� Do you want to see technology respond to you, or
be forced to adapt to respond to it?
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
The IBM Career of an English Student to date…
� Software Test and Solution Test
� Customer Presentations
� Technical Documentation: eg, course materials
� Innovations
� Event Coordination
� Information Management System Design
� Project Mentoring
� Product Development
IBM Symposia
© 2005 IBM CorporationMegan Beynon 05/05/05
http://www.ibm.com/
Questions?