Technology, Knowledge, and Society: August 2010

Monday, August 30, 2010

CTU Video for Chinese Students considering a degree from CTU Colorado Spings

CTU Colorado Springs has a new video concerning their university locations in Colorado Springs and Denver. See Chinese version of the university video below.

Colorado Technical University, Colorado Springs, CO

CTU Colorado Springs has a new video concerning their university locations in Colorado Springs and Denver. Please view video below.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Secrets to Success

IMPORTANT MESSAGE: If you want to succeed as bad as you want to breath you will be successful. You must be able to go without sleep because if you sleep you may miss that one opportunity.

International Handbook of Academic Research and Teaching – IHART (Volume 10)

International Handbook of Academic Research and Teaching – IHART (Volume 10)

View more documents from Maurice Dawson.

Finally I was able to locate the published proceedings from March 2010 Houston Conference. Please view publication accordingly.

Academic Conference in Atlanta, GA

The Intellectbase International Consortium (IIC) Academic Conference is in Atlanta, GA on the dates of October 14-16, 2010. Myself and a few others shall be present presenting over seven academic papers. My topics are related to the following items: 1. Use of Web 2.0 in Military Applications, 2. Software Assurance, 3. IA Project Management, and Cyber Security Plan Development.

The conference provides a great opportunity to network and meet others in the realm of academia. Since attending these conferences I have been afforded many opportunities that I would not have known about. This event has helped in my pursuit of moving towards an academic career. This conference proceedings become published as book chapters which is an added bonus for anyone attending and publishing their material. During this event I shall serve as a session chair. This will be my second time serving as a session chair this calendar year.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

International Journal of Project Organisation and Management (IJPOM)

Dr. Emad Rahim and myself have received another joint publication.

Transitional leadership in the Defense & Aerospace industry for IT program management: A critical analysis for recruiting and developing IT administrator
by Emad Emad, Maurice Maurice
Abstract: This article proposes a framework to create effective transitional leadership in the defense and aerospace industry. The proposed framework identifies and maps traits and skills of military personnel in a manner that can be tested and validated in accordance with principles of human resource management. Applying this framework would assist hiring managers in their selection of program or project managers from the military in transition to a defense contractor support organization. Employing a research approach embracing a mix of both quantitative and quantitative strategies, the study examined more than 50 respondents to a 34-question survey, focusing on 14 respondents who submitted fully completed surveys. The conceptual framework for this study is derived from investigations conducted by project management practitioners and scholars who have built upon the research of previous research, which studied project development models within various industries.
Keywords: Program Management, Project Management, Transitional Leadership; Department of Defense, Aerospace Industry, Recruitment, Talent, Human Resource

Monday, August 23, 2010

Engineering Complex Systems and Complex Systems Engineering

This is a great video on engineering complex systems and complex systems engineering. This is truly a great video for systems engineering

The Mysterious Field of Engineering Systems

The Mysterious Field of Engineering Systems | MIT World
- Watch more Tech Videos at Vodpod.

About the Lecture

One of the nation’s revered technology leaders dispenses anecdotes and wisdom on the slippery subject of engineering systems (or systems engineering). Norm Augustine just can’t get a handle on the discipline: “No one agrees on what it is, or what it does.” After years in industries like Lockheed Martin, Augustine has come up with “Norm’s Rules,” and can at least define ‘system’ as “having two or more elements that interact,” and ‘engineering’ as “creating the means for performing useful functions.” But these definitions don’t get you too far in the real world.

Augustine shows a fuel control system, which some engineers might view as part of a propulsion system. In turn, aeronautical engineers might think of the entire airplane as a system, and transport engineers view aircraft as merely components in systems incorporating airports, highways, shipping lanes. Augustine continues up the ladder until “our system that started as a fuel controller…seems to have the whole universe as a system.” Like Russian Matryoshka dolls, systems can always be embedded within larger systems. Even if you try to simplify a system in terms of just a few objects with a binary, on-off interaction, things can get complex very quickly. Five elements in a system can exist in more than a million possible states. Says Augustine, “A typical earth satellite has nearly one million parts; a 747 over 5 million. How does that make you feel about flying?”

Distinguishing the significant interactions and the important external influences on a system are central to designing and problem solving. And these days, engineers must include politics, public policy and economics as part of their systems. “The trick is to bound the scope of the system so it’s not too large to be analyzed and not too small to be representative.” Doing this right is “why systems engineers should be paid so much.”

Augustine concludes with his “Dirty Dozen” systems engineering traps, which have led to embarrassing bust-ups, monumental failures, and real tragedies. Notable among these: “the ubiquitous interface,” (or absence thereof). He describes how two flight control groups used different metric units and accidentally sent a Mars-bound spacecraft whizzing off into deep space. There’s the “single-point failure,” exemplified by the collapse of a football field-sized satellite dish due to a poorly designed bracket. There’s software, “which like entropy, always increases:” a Mariner spacecraft headed in the wrong direction due to a missing hyphen in 100 thousand lines of code. The problem with most systems ultimately is that they “contain human elements … and humans sometimes do irrational things.”

IEGR501 Intro To Adv Systems Engineering Class Begins Tomorrow at Morgan State University

IEGR501 Intro To Adv Systems Engineering class begins tomorrow at Morgan State University. This is going to be an exciting class focused only systems engineering. All coursework and syllabus is finally created. I am excited about this opportunity teach at such an institution on the graduate level. I have created an integrated course which has a group project in it as well to include a good amount of literature to review.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Colorado Tech Alumni Group

Colorado tech alumni group

This is a group for current students, faculty, or graduates of Colorado Technical University to network.

View site at http://coloradotechalumni.wackwall.com/index

Technology, Knowledge, and Society