Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips If possible, assist instead of advise. I worked in a government bureaucracy for over 25 years. A favorite practice to this day is the review board. Some unlucky and usually young engineer works really hard for weeks and then brings the work before a group of older engineers. The older engineers pick […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I often heard “it is obvious to the casual observer” in grad school. I even read it a few times. Guess what? That is not a true statement. I used to hear that in grad school, “It is obvious to the casual observer.” That was sort of a joke when we were […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I enter the world of cloud computing and learn that, once again, we go forward to the past. I finally did it. I entered the world of actual virtual cloud computing. Not just Facebooking or DropBoxing, but actual computing. Well, not much computing, but making a few bits move. Earlier this year […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Take care when choosing an example for teaching. Often what seem to be great examples are terrible in that people concentrate on the unintended. I have taken a lot of courses related to project management. I have taught a few. I have read a lot of books on project management, and, as […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I learn a few things about learning environments. I recently attended a conference on innovation in education at George Mason University. I am not a professional educator and, to be candid, I never thought much about professional educators. To show that I am not all cold hearted and stone headed, I learned […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Every organization and endeavor is unique to a degree, but not absolutely unique. Learn the prior experience of each person and find a way to benefit from it. Like  many of my (hi)stories, this one is from yet another experience with morons in government. I had 20 years experience in the larger […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Once again we have a controversy about who owns publicly funded research. There is much debate recently about who owns the results of research that is funded by the public. See here for one article on recent policy statements. The simple answer is that when the public funds research, the public should […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Everyday I select a few teachers. Note, no one else selects them for me. It is all my selection. As with most aspects of life, there are good and bad points here. We all have teachers – people from whom we learn things. Tiny, rural Loranger High School graduated me a few […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There is no substitute for knowing what you are doing. I love working with people who know what they are doing. They come to the workplace, see challenges in front of them, and eagerly plow into the work. Short pause – I don’t live in LaLaLand. I live and work in the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A learning environment is one where people can learn. It may not be a teaching environment as that focuses on the teachers instead of the learner. Several years back, author and consultant Jerry Weinberg told me a story about learning. The story telling was years ago, so my memory will fail me […]

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