Inspired by the concept, I did up this logo — then made it open source!

Every so often, I come across an idea that really grabs my attention and that I really want to see work. This is one: An innovation from Lloyd Hardy in Cong, Co. Mayo,  for open-source, third-level learning. In fact, instead of just blogging his plan after I read about it, I was moved to get in contact with him to find out more.

So, over the last few days, we have been discussing the Free Software University (FSU) and his plans for the online college. Hardy says he has already lined up 150 tutors and learners keen to get going. The lessons will be open source and made available free of charge to students. He is also quick to point out that open source means more than free of charge. “It means free as in freedom,” he says.

Licensing will fall under the Affero General Public License (AGPL). “The one thing we need to do in this ideology is to protect the innovation of students from abuse. The AGPL allows us to do that,” said Hardy. “In this way, we hope to better ourselves – as a band of learners and to provide a fertile environment for the latest innovation,” he added.

No certifications or accreditation are available yet, but that should not deter serious students from taking third-party tests such as the American College Level Examination Program (CLEP). Hardy hopes to have some courses available in the coming months. Those will probably deal with web development, GNU/Linux scripting, Joomla and so on.

Lloyd Hardy

Hardy is hoping to offer a rich learning environment where students can draw on fellow learners, tutors and industry partners. “The means by which we ‘afford’ such qualified tuition is by ‘industry partnering’, where any company who would like to interact as closely as possible to a body of researchers can become involved. The company benefits by having access to new technologies and by having students work on their real-world projects, which gives students rich working environment experience,” he said.

As I mentioned, this is an idea that really grabbed my attention. I even wrote up a newspaper article on it, and sent it off to the Sunday Business Post earlier today. I’ll have a lot more to say on this subject, but I wanted to make an initial blog posting now to help get the word out.

Yesterday’s talk at the Irish Computer Society on Cost Control for IT Managers* had just that — some concrete advice on how to reduce expenditures by looking at non-payroll overheads. Given by Fintan Swanton of Expense Reduction Ireland (ERI),  the seminar zeroed in on two areas IT Managers should be able to make a quick impact: electricity and phone charges.

His first piece of advice is no surprise: Shop around. Swanton said he phoned around earlier this week, and Energia, Airtricity and Bord Gáis are offering to beat the ESB‘s prices by between 10 percent and 12 percent for commercial customers. Swanton also recommended watching electricity prices after Oct. 1 because the energy regulator has decided that the ESB is free to set prices for commercial customers. Ironically, observers expect this to result in lower prices for business.

The second piece of advice is to understand your bills. Some customers may be paying extra because they exceed maximum agreed usages. Known as the Low Voltage Maximum Demand, Swanton said this clause “constantly trips people up.” Two common reasons companies end up paying is due to moving location or expanding. He said one ERI customer with 17 sites ended up saving €10,100 a year after they reconfigured their allowances.

Low Voltage Maximum Demand is one of the tariffs for commercial electricity customers. It includes charges for capacity – in essence Maximum Import Capacity (MIC). This is the maximum current you can draw from the grid and the MIC  is set in the connection agreement. You have to pay per kVA of MIC, so if it is set too high, you are paying for capacity you’re not using, and if it’s too low, you can incur substantial penalty charges for exceeding it. There’s more detail here on the ESB website.

Assuming people are still making profits and want to reduce them for tax purposes, Swanton said qualified, energy efficient, capital  equipment can be written off in one year. This includes HVAC, BEMS, lighting and IT equipment.

On voice, Swanton’s advice was similar. Shop around and keep an eye on your bills. He suggested keeping away from fixed-term contracts due to the amount of competition in the market. His experience was that savings of 25 percent can be found. While providers will offer discounts on call rates as an incentive to switch, smaller discounts are available on line rental. They are not offered, so you will have to ask, he said.

Swanton said ERI is always finding unneeded items on phone bills. These can include line redirection, obsolete equipment and unused lines. He warned, however, not to disconnect lines that appear inactive in case they are needed for alarms or incoming faxes.

Phone bills can be a treasure trove waiting to be reclaimed. “Invoicing errors are extremely common,” Swanton said. The Aberdeen Group estimates between 7 percent and 12 percent are wrong. Swanton said his experience was at the higher end of that range, and few, if any, are in the customer’s favour. Some examples include:

• Being charged the wrong rate
• Paying a minimum call charge
• Failure to disconnect line as requested
• Rental charges on equipment not in use
• Charges for discontinued data services e.g. X.25
• But his favourite is being invoiced for “items the carrier cannot explain.” He told of how one customer’s bill had an alphanumeric entry. They rang the carrier and they could not explain the charge. After many calls and a lot of time, ERI recommended not paying the charge unless the carrier could explain it properly. It was dropped without explanation.

Other suggestions on tackling phone bills include:

• GSM gateways for mobile
• Prohibiting directory enquiries; use the internet instead
• SIP for teleworkers
• Consolidating mobile devices to one carrier
• Reviewing bills to eliminate excessive personal use

It was a good seminar. There was a lot there and it is not easy to do justice to it in a short blog posting. But, it would appear based on ERI’s experience, that many organisations are failing to fully claim their savings.

* ICS members can see a video of the whole talk by following the link on the events page.

Possibly hiding a trojan

Protesters organising a mass defection from Facebook yesterday said 33,313 quit the social networking site. It sounds like a lot, but in the context of the site’s 400 million users, it is a small percentage. The Guardian blog reporting the story said the site also has to worry about a new source of trouble. Consumer groups in the U.S. are applying political pressure, the blog says.

Ultimately, it won’t be an unofficial rabble of protesters that bothers Facebook or forces more coherent improvement; it will be US regulators.

As if that isn’t enough, security flaws have been reported in the code behind Facebook’s like button. Basically, a teaser encourages users to click on the button to add it to their Facebook page. You click on the link and a trojan gets installed. Then the bait is added to your newsfeed where others can fall for the same trick. Here is some advice if you have been hit:

If you’ve been hit with this likejacking attack, the best you can do is remove the like from your profile and delete the post from your News Feed. You might want to apologize to your friends with a Facebook status update, too.

NOTE: The blog has moved. The rest of the post is over here http://johnmuldoon.ie/?p=234

The video below — which I found out about by way of Mike Waddell at http://creativeleader.co.uk/ — offers a different take on autonomy. It turns out that is a powerful motivational tool for knowledge workers. Produced by from the RSA, the piece says money is not a motivator, and that offering it as a reward for anything other than simple tasks is actually counterproductive.

Granted, we were already familiar with Google’s 20-percent time. The RSA video mentions Australian software company, Atlassian, which does something similar: Once a quarter workers are told they can work on anything with anybody they want.

If nothing else, it is a great video. Well worth 11 minutes of your time.

The most risk-prone forms of innovation: None and home-run strategies*

Continuing their series of talks at the Irish Computer Society (ICS), Michael O’Duffy of DCU’s Centre for Software Engineering and David Trevitt of Business Knowledge Innovation advised on how to exploit innovation. Their talk was the third in a series on the subject.

O’Duffy cited research that design is the core to market differentiation. Most products are “me too” varieties and rushed to market, he said. The design process, however, can separate a product from its competitors and can also provide a road map for its upgrade and eventual replacement. An example I wrote about recently is General Electric’s process where they now devote significant resources to innovation even to the point of disrupting themselves (PDF) with new, less-expensive products.

Trevitt spoke of the risk-reward balance that must be struck. In addition to the cultural view of risk, innovators must also keep an eye on their customers. How open are they to change?. “You may also have to sell them,” Trevitt said.

Change can be incremental or radical. The greatest rewards come from radical breakthroughs. Apple’s explosion in to the music business with the iPod is a great example. But radical efforts also present the greatest risk. Trevitt advised working on incremental innovation, too. The academic research bears this out. The graph above shows that relying on a break-through innovation is just as risky as not innovating at all.

To address risk, Trevitt advised a raft of tools including modelling, marketing testing (surveys, focus groups, expert views, etc.), pilot markets, and other means to measure a potential product’s viability. However, those tools also have their shortcomings. Trevitt used a quote from Henry Ford to point out the potential pitfalls in relying on focus groups:

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

The speakers were asked by one audience member about organisations that have no culture of change. O’Duffy said some had tried a skunkworks approach where a group worked on product development outside the main organisation. “That doesn’t tend to work very well. You want to bring them on board,” he said. Acknowledging innovation can be disruptive, he said innovators were not mavericks.

Another questioner asked who owns the risk and rewards in innovation. Trevitt said it is ultimately the CEO but it is up to the designer to clearly communicate their ideas and the risk involved. He said that architects are generally “very articulate” because they constantly  explain new and abstract ideas to customers. However, an internal innovator will want to be successful and will not intentionally harm the company. After all, their reputation depends on it.

* The graph is from Corporate Entrepreneurship & Innovation, 2nd Edition by Morris, Kuratko & Covin. You can read a sample chapter (PDF) here, or a PowerPoint summary here.