Rhode Island Nexus

QuahogCon is a regional conference for the hacker culture in all forms: Hardware, Software, Security, Social, Eco Hacking, Zero Impact Living. This year's conference will be from April 23 - 25 at Hotel Providence in Providence, RI. Tickets are $100. Details and RSVP.

A year or so ago, the DC401 crew decided that Providence really needed it's own hacker conference. We go to other hacker conferences around the country: ShmooCon in DC, ToorCon in San Diego, and DEFCON in Las Vegas, of course. New England doesn't really have much going on for affordable conferences. There are often conferences that happen up in Boston, but they tend to run at least $500 for two or three days of talks. One of the other things we decided was that we wanted to mix in some hardware hacking and Maker culture along with the core information security talks. Thus, QuahogCon was born out of a desire to fill what we felt was a gap in the scene.

What is a hacker conference after all? It's an opportunity for people to get together and learn about new research that's going on, often very bleeding edge stuff. Even more so, it's a great opportunity to get to meet other folks in the community who are interested in the same things you are, whether it's information security, crypto, hardware hacking, lockpicking or just plain old making stuff, there will be people who share your interests and want to share knowledge. There are also contests to give you something fun to work on and other activities for when you want to take a break from the talks.

How does QuahogCon fill all of these general hacker con requirements? To start, we've got an incredible schedule of talks lined up. There are 22 great talks spread out over the two days of the conference. Some of our featured speakers are Dan "I broke DNS" Kaminsky  giving our InfoSec keynote talk, Josh Wright speaking on Zigbee security, and Mike Kershaw talking on current WiFi threats. On the Maker side of things, we've got Matthew Borgatti giving the Maker keynote on personal fabrication tools, Darren Wigley and Larry Pesce on their ShmooBall cannon, and Mariano Alvira on his MC1322x project. For activities, we'll have a crypto challenge, the Hardware Hacking Lounge with workshops by Mitch Altman and Jimmie P. Rodgers, Hacker Jeopardy games both Friday and Saturday evenings and a party in the ballroom Saturday night.

As for people to share knowledge with, that's where you come in. Get yourself a ticket today. Register by March 1st to ensure you get one of the really cool hackable badges. If you're coming from out of town or just don't want to miss any of the fun, we've got a conference rate at Hotel Providence. This is going to be a great conference, all it needs now is you.

Hanaan Rosenthal is the Founder/President/Lead Developer at Providence's Custom Flow Solutions (CFS). He is also author of "AppleScript", the third edition of which will be available soon. Hanaan will be presenting at the February Geek Dinner on Wednesday the 17th in Downtown Providence. Details and RSVP.

For most of us, most of the automation we encounter happens at home. Dishwasher, transmission, washing machine, and so on. At work, well, not so much. At our job, the process we go through during the day is complex enough that charting it can be a headache, let alone teaching a computer or some machine how to do it. We all have that image from the sixties of the  robot that walks around autonomously performing simple tasks such as bringing you coffee. Fifty years later, and Sony is still working on this one with no release date in mind. Fact is that automating what we do, home or work, is a tall order. In fact, some tasks got nicely automated by specific machines that do specific things. For example, man has managed to automate the process of washing things like dishes and clothes, making copies, hauling our butts from place to place, and other things we now take for granted. Automation of longer, more complex processes is done as well but requires massive infrastructure, planning and expense.
 
One thing that happened in the past 25 years, especially in the print and media industry, is that up to the physical printing step, 100% of the process happens using software, right on a computer. You can design, edit, write copy, proof and correct, all without leaving your Mac.
 
What this means is that for the print industry, automation no longer means having to invest in hydraulic pumps and robotic arms. Instead, we can have software that controls software.
 
For me this was a natural path. Since I was a kid, I always looked for an easier way to get more done. Not so much out of laziness, but more out of fascination. I got my background in print and graphics from my grandfather, who is the most admired graphic designer in Israel, where I was born and raised. He is responsible for many postage stamps, the art on money notes, and he hand wrote the "Book of Peace" that was handed to Begin, Sadat and Carter after they signed the historic peace agreement in 1977. Mostly, however, he's known for being a typeface designer. Zvi designed six of the nine most used typefaces in the hebrew language.
 
As for me, I left highschool early, and some years later moved to Providence with Johanne, my wife of over 20 years. It didn't take long before I found myself glued to a Mac at the RISD lab, taking an Illustrator class with Tom Murphy. About five years later, I discovered AppleScript.
 
AppleScript is the most poked-at programming language ever created. Its attempt to sound like english is almost comical. For example, this is a perfectly legal instruction: tell application "Adobe InDesign" to tell every document whose name is not "SomeDoc" to close without saving. But don't let that fool you. Behind that laughable syntax lies power of a different kind. It is different mostly in scope. See, a single AppleScript script can control almost any aspect of the Mac. In fact, it has as much control as a human sitting next to the computer has. The implications in my mind were mind-boggling. Now, I can figure out how people did their work, understand what portions of that work really had to be done by humans, separate the portions that are purely logic-based, and teach the computer how to do those parts on it's own! I discovered workflow Automation. Well, I know, now I'll be mocked forever for saying that, but if Al Gore can take it, so can I.
 
From then on it was all AppeScript for me. I stuck my nose everywhere telling anyone who listened that I could teach their Mac how to do most of their work for them. And I did. My first big gig was at Fidelity Investment where I created a system that automatically compiled quark pages into presentations. The crew of 8 people that did that manually before has shrunk to 6 in a matter of six months, and the average time it took to produce a presentation dropped dramatically. Later on, I was shown a chart needed by one of the slides, and that Excel had no answers for. It was sort of a floating chart that had color rectangles that floated above and below the zero point. I wrote some code that produced that graph, and HyperGraph was born. From that point, I got my graph automation used in the Boston Globe for their stock charts, they were bought by The New York Times, who had me create a system for them about four years ago. That system produced the two stocks pages and the weather pages. Shortly after I did the same for the Associated Press, and now have a product with Reuters. The Reuters product is cool because it sits on a server in Boston somewhere and does it's thing with no human intervention. Imagine: Every day, four times, it taps Reuters systems to extract a massive amount of data, it then processes the data and produces those incredible charts and tables. Those are placed in layouts and FTP'd to clients. All that happenes without any human intervention. The server calls us when it feels lonely once every two months, but other than that it just works.
 
What I found most amazing about automation is that rather than constrain you, it frees you to design anything you can possibly come up with, becuse once you teach the computer how to do it for you, it will create the page in a matter of seconds whether it is boring or incredibley complex. For example, one of the charts we create shows the last week of the S&P 500. Instead of showing one line depicting the average, it draws a thin, smooth line for every one of the 500 companies! This sort of crazyness can only happen with automation.

Here's how it looks:

Another crazy graph idea was to take a pool of over 9000 mutual funds and show their return over various periods of time. Each category of funds will have a color, and lets see what comes out. (See above)

This is the yearly weather chart published in the New York Times on January 1st:

Hope to see you at the February Geek Dinner on Wed the 17th - Details and RSVP.

Stuart joined Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (RIEDC) in July, 2004 as Business Development Manager for IT & Digital Media. He spent three of his five years at EDC focused on broadband technology and the industry through his work on the RI-WINs project. Prior to his move to RI in 2004, Stuart spent over 20 years in the high tech industry, where he held senior-level marketing and product management positions both in New England and Silicon Valley for companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple Computer and various startups.

In an endeavor that is probably no surprise to any geek or techie, President Obama and his administration have identified broadband infrastructure and use as a key factor in Economic Development to stimulate the creation and sustainability of higher paying jobs in a 21^st Century economy. No surprise because anybody reading this post knows that our lives are dependent on the Internet and access to broadband. We couldn’t live without it.  

Although other presidents have talked about it, Obama is the first President that has actually raised it to the level of public policy and is investing significant capital to fill in and expand the broadband infrastructure of the United States.  

To that end, the Federal Government has created several programs to support the mission. Last year Congress appropriated $7.2B in a combination of grants and loans that will pay for the build out of broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved communities across the United States, as well as publicly accessible computers in places like libraries, community centers and public housing. These programs are known as the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration out of the US Dept of Commerce) Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) and the RUS (Rural Utilities Services out of the US Dept of Agriculture) Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP).

In addition to the BTOP and BIP programs, the government invested $350MM in a program also managed by the NTIA called the Broadband Data and Development Program (BDDP). The goal of the program is to create a map of all the broadband infrastructure and assets in the United States and six (6) territories. All fifty (50) states (and six (6) territories) are participating in the BDDP and will contribute their data to a massive database and map supported by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce and accessible to the general public.  

Just before the New Year, RIEDC received a grant award for $1.5MM in Federal Stimulus money to manage the development of the RI piece of the map. The grant consists of $1MM for Broadband Mapping over a two (2) year period and $500K for Broadband Planning over a five (5) year period.  

The Mapping portion of the grant ($1MM over 2 years) will mostly be contracted to a professional engineering firm that we selected through a competitive bidding process, as well as the URI GIS department (aka the URI-EDC or Environmental Data Center).  

We are fortunate in Rhode Island to have a strong broadband infrastructure but using hackneyed sports analogies, we are still in the rookie seasons with regards to the changes that broadband access and the Internet are and will bring to our lives. The grant has created an opportunity to develop a planning process to assess current usage and knowledge of broadband in our state and figure out where we need to get to with regards to broadband across all aspects of our lives including healthcare, education and homeland security. 

The Planning portion of the grant will be retained by RIEDC and used to undertake broadband planning activities for the state which include: 

• Develop and provide a baseline assessment of broadband deployment for the state and create a geographic inventory map of broadband service
• Identify and track the areas with low levels of deployment and the rate at which residential and business users adopt broadband service
• Identify barriers to the adoption of broadband service and information technology services in underserved areas
• Collaborate with broadband service providers and information technology companies to encourage deployment and use
• Facilitate information exchange regarding use and demand for broadband services between public and private sector users 
  

The mapping project team includes the RI Dept. of Information Technology (Jack Landers, CIO), RI Statewide Planning (Shane White, State GIS Coordinator) and URI Environmental Data Center (Greg Bonynge, GISP) and the planning activities which will commence in the spring will include all sectors of our economy including the private sector, public sector and education.  

I look forward to reporting here on the progress of the project as it unfolds.

UPDATE: A huge thank you to everyone - attendees, panelists, organizers - who made this an engaging, fun, standing-room-only evening. Please stayed tuned for future RI Nexus events.

Where: RIEDC, 315 Iron Horse Way (ALCO), Suite 101, Providence  Google Map

When: Thurs. Nov. 5, 4 – 5:30pm (refreshments served)

Afterward all are invited to drinks next door at Everyman (cash bar)

RSVP: Matt Mikula, matt.mikula@rinexus.com (we have a limited number of seats so RSVP soon)

FREE

For years, the "mobile web" has slowly been gaining steam. Recently, however, there are indications that a tipping point may have been reached, marking the start of explosive global growth in adoption and usage. Now then is the time to start thinking about the future of the mobile web, and positioning ourselves and our businesses accordingly.

RI Nexus and Providence Geeks have joined forces to pull together an All-State Team of fantastic mobile web thinkers and practitioners to address the questions: Where is the mobile web headed in terms of technologies, business models and user experiences?  What is the best way to prepare for and take advantage of these trends?

Providence Geek Co-Founder and O'Reilly Media Senior Editor, Brian Jepson, will kick us off with a short survey of the mobile web to date, addressing the question of, how did we get to this key moment in its evolution? Twitter: @bjepson

From there, RI Nexus Program Leader and Providence Geeks Co-Founder, Jack Templin will moderate what promises to be a lively, informative panel: 

Joel Evans

Joel is the CEO of East Greenwich-based Cronk Software , a firm specializing in the design and development of high-end mobile applications and games. Prior to Cronk, Joel was the Founder and Chief Geek of Geek.com (acquired 2007 by NameMedia, Inc.), and previous to that the Director of Mobile and Wireless Solutions for GTECH. Twitter: @joelgeek

 Jonathan Stark

Jonathan is a Providence-based mobile and web application strategist, speaker and author, who the Wall Street Journal has called an expert on publishing data to the web. His consulting firm, Jonathan Stark Consulting, Inc., has attracted clients such as Staples, Turner Broadcasting, and the PGA Tour. Jonathan's latest book, "Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript" will be available from O'Reilly in early 2010. Twitter: @Jonathanstark

Annette Tonti

Annette is the CEO of Providence-based MoFuse, Inc a fast growing mobile publishing platform and network, and an expert on the intersection of the mobile web and online advertising. Previously she was Co-Founder and CEO of Bluestreak, Inc., an early entrant in rich media advertising and online marketing technologies. Twitter: @atonti

Refreshments will be provided. And all are invited to join us afterward for drinks next door at Everyman Bistro(cash bar).

Space is available on a first-come first-serve basis. RSVP to Matt Mikula at matt.mikula@rinexus.com.

Tim Webb is Director of Marketing Communications for SIMULIA. He is responsible for guiding activities related to product launches, customer referencing, industry conferences, and market awareness. Tim has 15 years experience in the CAE industry, communicating on a broad range of simulation technologies, including multibody dynamics, finite element analysis, CAD-integrated simulation, multiphysics, design optimization, and simulation lifecycle management. He holds a BA in Communications from the University of Iowa.

Think back to 1978. What were you doing? Maybe you were not born yet. Or if you were a teenager like me, maybe you were chilling out to, what is now known as, Classic Rock. But for David Hibbitt and Bengt Karlsson 1978 was the year they were figuring out how to launch their new company in Rhode Island that would be focused on commercializing their finite element analysis (FEA) software called Abaqus. A year later, Paul Sorenson joined them and the company became Hibbitt, Karlsson, and Sorenson or HKS, Inc. 

It’s hard to imagine, but they started a software development company and they didn’t even own a computer! They started their development via a UT200 batch terminal (a combination of card reader and line printer) which was installed in the Hibbitts' laundry room in Scituate, RI. It communicated with a Control Data Corporation (CDC) computer in Minneapolis over a 4800-baud modem.   
 

Let’s Get Technical

At this point, you may be wondering, just what is FEA software? At  the Wikipedia  website, you can find a highly technical dissertation, but basically the software is used by mechanical and civil engineers in a range of industries including Aerospace, Automotive, Consumer Goods, Electronics, Medical Devices to analyze structural integrity of  their products, on a computer, as if they were being subjected to real operating conditions.  Think about an Automobile and how many potholes have you hit yet your car keeps running. But if you hit that pothole 5000 times, maybe something breaks, that’s a durability and fatigue problem which FEA software helps engineers predict and come up with more reliable design configurations.  That’s just one example, but FEA can also be used to study vehicle vibration, heat transfer, crashworthiness, acoustics, and more.  

In June 1978, David Hibbitt met an engineer from the Hanford nuclear development site who needed software to study the mechanical restraint of the core of a prototype for a fast breeder reactor. The reactor assembly consisted of hexagonal-section fuel rods that came into contact when subject to thermal expansion and irradiation-induced swelling. The Hanford lab offered HKS, Inc a contract to develop this capability in Abaqus, provided it was delivered in working order by the end of September. "We wrote Version 1 in three months," says Bengt. "It was 15,000 lines of FORTRAN. We had four elements: beam, gap, truss, and SPHEX, which included elasticity with creep and swelling. We knew that if we didn't deliver code to them by the end of September, we wouldn't get paid. That was a big incentive to get Version 1 delivered." 

Why Providence?

When David Hibbitt graduated from Cambridge University in 1966, he went to work for a large steam turbine company in England. "I quickly realized that I had to learn how to manage or learn more mechanics," he remembers. "I decided to learn more mechanics. I consulted K.L. Johnson, who had been my advisor at Cambridge. He said that Brown University was the best place to study mechanics in the U.S., so I moved to Providence."

And the rest, as they say, is FEA history. In 2002, after 25 years of successful operation in Providence, RI, HKS changed its name to Abaqus Inc and a new executive management team joined the organization to prepare the company for the next phase of its life. In 2005, the company was acquired by Dassault Systèmes (DS), a France-based PLM company, and the SIMULIA brand was born. DS has several other brands which serve the product design, engineering, and manufacturing industries including SolidWorks, ENOVIA, and 3DVIA, all headquartered in Massachusetts. The CATIA brand operates from the DS headquarters near Paris and the DELMIA brand operates out of Michigan. DS as a whole has more than 7,000 employees worldwide.  

SIMULIA Today

SIMULIA continues to develop and enhance the FEA capabilities of Abaqus, but we are expanding with new designer analysis products as well as software for design optimization and simulation lifecycle management. What started with two employees in a house in Scituate, RI, is now a world class company with more than 800 employees worldwide. More than 300 of those employees work at our headquarters in the renovated Rising Sun Mills complex, in the Olneyville section of Providence. Nearly 70% of our Providence workforce is dedicated to Product development, IT, and MIS.

Gerry Pollock, SIMULIA's Senior Development Group Manager for Implicit Architecture, describes SIMULIA as a company with "an intense and stimulating working environment. Employees are challenged to be innovative and are rewarded for their contributions. Teamwork and collaboration are encouraged and valued by SIMULIA, leading to an open, interactive work community."

While many of the employees are native to New England, many have come to SIMULIA from all over the world. This diversity provides inspiration, new ideas and unique experiences. For example, our employees from China and India not only sharing their knowledge but also share their culture by inviting co-workers to enjoy Chinese holiday luncheons or to play cricket. This type of exchange promotes corporate and personal growth while simultaneously fostering innovation. 

In 2009, SIMULIA received an award as one of the Best Places to Work in Rhode Island by the Providence Business News. Pierre Burgers, Director of SIMULIA Customer Services, notes, "Our people, are for the most part young, energetic, and want to contribute to their field of expertise... The team spirit shown in the games they play at lunchtime brings them together. There are runners, cyclists, soccer players, basketball and volleyball teams, tennis players, etc. who regularly use the company's gym and locker room facilities. Playing together helps us work well together." 

The company’s growth and ongoing success is readily apparent through our double digit revenue growth (as reported in the DS FY 2008 and Q2 2009 earnings announcement), a growing customer base, and the 2008 acquisition of North Carolina based Engineous Software, a market leader in process automation, integration and optimization.  

While this is just a small taste of our history, our technology, and our people, I invite you to visit our website at www.simulia.com to learn how our software is being used to improve the products we use in our daily lives. You can also learn more about Dassault Systèmes at www.3ds.com.

Chris Poe is CTO for Atrion Networking Corporation and serves as Vice Chairman of the InfoGroup Steering Committee for the Tech Collective. He holds more than 15 years experience in the IT industry and is a recognized practitioner, presenter and industry leader across technical, talent development and strategic levels. Chris and Tech Collective will be welcoming John Igoe of Dell to present at the next NetTech 2.0 event on Sept. 17th. Details at www.tech-collective.org.

Arguably one of the biggest buzzes in IT these days is “the cloud.”  

But what does that really mean?   

The Internet in a broad sense, outsourced application hosting, co-location facilities, off-site data backup or hosting services – these are all very diverse references to cloud computing. The reality is that “the cloud” is a very expansive, catch-all kind of term that means all of these things, and more. What is perhaps more interesting, however, is how much the cloud is being looked at as a viable, business-critical component of an organization’s IT strategy.  In fact, many CIOs regard the cloud as a means by which IT can be more agile in reacting to business needs than it previously had the ability to. 

So what does the cloud mean to the IT professional?  A significant majority of IT professionals are employed to implement and support the internal systems and applications that provide services to the business. In Rhode Island, that means a significant portion of the state’s nearly 16,000 employees in the IT and Digital Media sectors. If more of IT’s core services are provided from the cloud, the question becomes not just “What is the cloud?” but also, “How will the cloud potentially affect IT as a service and as an industry?” and “What must an IT professional do to position themselves to continue to have a viable career?” 

On Thursday September 17th, from 5:30-8pm at McFadden’s in Providence, the Tech Collective’s NetTech 2.0 series of networking events will play host to John Igoe, Director of Advanced Service Technology at Dell.  John is one of the foremost authorities on the cloud and will share his thoughts on what the cloud is, where it’s going, and what it means to IT and the practitioner.  If you don’t understand the cloud and where IT is headed – or even if you do – I highly recommend dropping in, listening to John, and networking with your IT industry peers to discuss these concepts.  

The IT industry is expected to grow 68% between 2002 and 2012, yet it is also an industry in which the skills acquired today, are common tomorrow, and aged the day after because technology evolution is ever accelerating.  In order to grow the success of the IT industry and its workforce, in particular here in Rhode Island, the IT practitioner must stay current and relevant with a good understanding of the environment in which one’s skills are to be applied. The cloud is likely to play a big part in that environment in the future. Don’t miss the chance to get ahead in it.  

For more information and to register for NetTech 2.0 featuring John Igoe, please visit www.tech-collective.org