The awesomeness of the Milky Way galaxy and its stars

The panorama’s creator, Dr. Axel Mellinger of Central Michigan University, spent 22 months and traveled over 26,000 miles to take digital photographs at dark sky locations in South Africa, Texas and Michigan. I just had to share this piece of work by him to my blog readers.

3000 panoramic images of our Milky Way - Dr. Axel Mellinger

Let us dream and dream big!

Yellowing Leaves

It’s autumn back Stateside and I miss it always – it’s my favorite season. Here are some nice youtube vids of Autumn back “home” and other places.

Hong Kong-American Nobel Prize Winner & HK ICT future

I’m quite estatic for my newly adopted host city Hong Kong of only 15 months. Although I’ve blogged about the challenges working here giving me fits now and then, a wonderful recognition was recently awarded last Tuesday to Charles Kao, formerly vice-chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong for the Nobel Prize for Physics shared by fellow physicists Willard Boyle and George Smith, who invented a sensor that is the digital camera’s ‘electronic eye’. Kao won the prize for his pioneering work in fiber optics, which can effortlessly carry trillions of messages around the world. Without which of course, the Internet doesn’t work. Imagine that…I can’t. So it’s a deserving recognition.

This leads me to write about the opportunity for HK’s ICT industry. It’s at a cross-roads that if not properly paid attention to by the HK Government, private industry and education universities. With this recognition, hopefully it will stir the imagination and focus the energies to this key industry sector to propel Hong Kong forward to new heights. Without the maturation of ICT in people, technology, industry, Hong Kong will be in danger of falling farther behind against it’s rival, Shanghai. This is tightly coupled with HK’s financial sector which is one of the main users of ICT technologies and is extremely influential in shaping ICT utilization. There’s quite a lot of angst (see Naomi Martig’s article) around this topic but HK isn’t like Singapore – which is both good and bad.

The root of the ICT success as an industry lies in its people. To this point, I’m referring to the ability of ICT professionals to use problem-solving and fast analytical assessment to deploy the right ICT technologies for the organization’s success. Not just simply operational success but also business transformational success. I’m not so sure at the moment we’re seeing the latter as much. Even operational success needs a bit of catching up to do as HK ICT professionals are more and more becoming either too expensive or too irrelevant knowledge and skills-wise. This article from the CIO Executive Council republished in Computerworld, Hong Kong edition illustrates many of the issues facing companies looking for HK ICT professionals. Perhaps it’s a bit much to ask for and development time is needed. True enough but nevertheless, business environment is changing, organizations are changing to meet these environmental changes, and last but not least, ICT professionals are global and boundary-less so there’s even more competition for the home-grown HK professional. We can’t afford the lament that University grads are not prepare for IT work.

Let’s see where the future holds for HK….We are certainly living in interesting times!

Corporate Social Responsibility – HK Society of the Blind

CSR programs that large corporations actively promote are one of the few bright areas in which one can do actual good – for society, for deserving and less fortunate people, and for the individuals who break from mundane and mind-numbing office work. In the past I’ve participated in my green efforts, tree-planting, and other environmental reclamation programs. This time was a bit different and dare say more meaningful.

My company over the past several years have worked together with the HK Society of the Blind and their great people. A few weeks ago we sponsored graduates of their programs HP mini computers to use and which were equipped with visually impaired computer tools. So on Aug 22nd, a few of my young(er) IT helpdesk guys with other company employees trooped over there for the afternoon to learn more about the visually impaired and helped them with their new computers. These computers are one of the main tools for them to connect with the rest of the world and enjoy its benefits.

I was paired with a nice gentleman named Henry, who had become blind much later in life. According to him, he now only has about 5% sight – meaning he can sense light and thus have some depth perception. This is highly important in the world of the visually impaired – some light sense and perception is very meaningful. He spent quite a number of years overseas in Canada, growing up there and going to school around the Toronto Area. Interestingly, I found out from Henry that there is a universal “language” that we can communicate with them when we interact/walk with them. I also learned that there are generally 5 “types” of blindness. Having dim sum together with the whole group of about 15+ was too short.

Over the next couple of hours we worked with our students and each other to “show” them how to work their new computers. It’s hard to really write how great the experience was with them. Everyone there was just so grateful and energized that we were there with them. And the feeling was mutual and personally was heart-warmed to see my young guys really getting into helping them. The HKSB is a worthy NGO that has very ambitious plans and programs to help the visually-impaired people they serve and have a complete and full life that we with full vision have.

I hope that we can continue to keep up with the program and perhaps expand our types of donations – retiring or decommissoned IT equipment that still have use left.

Below are the people that helped make it happen:

Back L-R: Vivian Au, Emily Chan, Kitty S.M. Chung, Me, Mike Mak, Deanna Cheung; Front L-R: Martin Tang, Ben CY Lee

Give liberally – they are a wonderful service organization that make meaningful improvements in people’s lives. Kitty is a Director of the Rehabilitation Division. Emily is one of the managers there who works with their clients on a day-to-day basis to make their lives complete.

Historical snapshots in time – July 1 & July 4 2009

These two days represent important dates in history. July 1 in particular is a major milestone for Hong Kong’s history as the day marks the birth of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Hong Kong Skyline Night View

Often viewed as the major gateway into China historically, it presently faces a bit of a difficult cross-roads, economically, politically, and socially. Democracy still lives as Tens of thousands march for democracy in Hong Kong. But not all is well in this city state – focus and direction for itself under the big shadow cast by China is always present.

July 4, America’s day of freedom, is under threat and it’s not an external one. Felix Rohaytan writes in his recent op-ed piece: Saving American Capitalism. The so-called American Dream has come under serious re-evaluation since the excesses of the US capital markets are directly responsible for missives like Rohatyn’s.

Rohaytn writes:

Market-based capitalism requires a platform of political freedom, the creation of wealth and fairness in its distribution. These values were reflected in the American economy until the 1980s, when American capitalism and European social democracy created reasonably similar economic outcomes.

It’s no wonder that both the US & HK feels itself at a cross-roads given the above truth between economic and political freedoms and social health.

There road ahead isn’t all that clear, in HK, universal suffrage won’t come at least until 2017. In the US, the excesses continue unabatted. If the greatest crisis to happen to the US since the Great Depression can’t be reigned in by reason, then there is even less hope.

However, both Hong Kong (by extension China) and the US can find the future roadmap in the “idea of an “ownership society” mentioned by Rohatyn. It’ll require stricter regulation to ensure human nature doesn’t prevail, sacrifices across the board to ensure equity. Ultimately the system must be fair, it must be regulated, and it must be ethical.

RIP – Rajeev Motwani, Google founder’s professor and early investor, dies

This is worth a separate mention.  While Sergey and Larry certainly should get their due recognition for Google, the fact is, it’s often the people behind the entrepreneurs that really “make or break” the startup.  Such is the life of Silicon Valley startups – your VC is equally critical to your success – hence the need to find the very best.

With out Motwani’s influence would Google have been as successful?  I shudder to think life without Google – it’s been that powerful and transformative in our generation.

Check out Techstartups 3.0 obit.

MBA Oath & Masters of Barely Anything

I couldn’t help myself on this blog post. The article “A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality” from New York Times, May 29, just triggered a mental conniption in my head. It follows the efforts of Harvard MBA grad Max Anderson and his fellow classmates in their pledge to not advance their “own narrow ambitions” in an MBA Oath.

What a bunch of fringe lunatics really. These folks don’t have anything to show for from of their truly expensive education? That supposedly among the best and brightest feel compelled to taking an “oath” will somehow make them more ethical than before they got into the program and graduated? We got ourselves a bunch of genius’ for sure.

For the corporate hiring managers world-wide, here are the 651 losers to-date who you will definitely NOT want to hire.

I promise you, taking the oath won’t make any of the 651 more ethical than before they entered Harvard. And, that is perhaps the saddest testimony from this whole embarrassing tale. We have sown a generation of “future leaders” that out-Gecko, Gordon Gecko!

NOTE: The terminology “Masters of Barely Anything” came from a July 12, 2004 BusinessWeek article. I liked the following book reviews – by Eric Nehrlich, an unrepentant generalist, and Jim Stroup, author of Managing Leadership.

Departmental / Functional theme songs

A few years back as I was getting to understand more about my company’s culture, some colleagues and team members got together in a karaoke place in Taiwan. Here we sang, drank and chatted up about our personal views of our current work place etc. These sorts of outings are awesome for team building because (a) it’s in a social, neutral setting, (b) we can be open and honest with each other (we’re probably drunk or getting there anyways), and (c) we get to know each other better – warts and all. By now, I had already formed certain strong beliefs of what I thought each of the departments/functions stood for as well as what each of the major departmental heads represented in their role.

So during this setting where we were getting pretty warm and fuzzy minded, here’s what we came up with. Please share your thoughts in the poll afterwards!

CEO/MD/GM:

GENERAL COUNSEL/LEGAL:

SALES & MARKETING:

HUMAN RESOURCES:

IT gets 2 songs (maybe 3)l, one main and the second one due to the fact that many corporations split up IT into 2 different functions – artificial Demand IT and Supply IT distinctions that create needless rifts in the IT service management life cycle, IMO.
IT:

Due to the nature of Finance’s scope & portfolio, they have 3 themes. Check out this reference about it and why (better yet, see it!). FINANCE:

If you feel that I should include a function left out above, please drop me a note. There’s probably one or two that I know of that probably should be in there but not enough practical exposure to quite give them their own “theme song”.