Natasha D'Souza

Visiting the moon has been on my to do list for a while.? Alas I am not an astranaut or millionaire therefore space travel is out for me at the moment.?

NASA has come to the rescue by launching their send your name to the moon as an alternative for moon tourism.?

Today’s the deadline to get your Certificate of participation.?

Bill Gates had a dream, it was to put a PC on every desktop in every home, office etc. That dream has certainly come true in the developed world. So when Microsoft announced that they will no longer sell Windows XP to OEMs as of June 30th this year there was quite an outcry from the users.

Vista has not turned out to be what was promised and a lot of people are reverting back to Windows XP. Some businesses have invested heavily in getting their processes and systems to be compatible with XP. What will be the impact of this decision on these businesses and Microsoft? Some speculate that this is a bad decision on Microsoft’s part. Before we can jump to conclusions we have to understand our options.

• Open Office an open source software for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more
• Source Forge opensource software development website
• Novell Open Workgroup Suite replacement for microsoft small business solution
• Mircosoft alternate products listing
• There’s always the MAC

Open source appears the way to go however there is not one company out there that offers one stop shopping like Microsoft does. So has Microsoft made the right decision or are there any loopholes?

The next quarterly SOA meeting will take place in Ottawa. It’s an excellent opportunity to interact around the topic of business-driven SOA. The format is a mix of invited speakers, working group updates, breakout times and interactive SOA Hot topic roundtables.

When:Wednesday June 25th & Thursday June 26th
Time:7:30am-5:15pm & 7:30am-4:30pm
Where: Ottawa Marriott Hotel, 100 Kent Street

Don’t forget to register.

A couple of years ago I upgraded my bike for a new mountain bike. I was not sure what to do with the old one, as it was in very good condition and throwing it in the garbage did not seem like a good idea. I did make the effort to call around to see if anyone would accept a donation of a bike and not having much success the bike stayed in the garage collecting dust.
Then I found about Bicycles for Humanity, a grass-roots initiative whose aim is to empower disadvantaged communities in developing countries through the provision of sustainable transport.

A bicycle is one of the simplest and cheapest transport technologies available today. All it needs are a few simple tools or spare parts for repairs and maintenance. The roads in Africa are bumpy and dusty and people walk for miles each day to make a living or to get a sick person to a hospital. So a bicycle would make a huge difference to their quality of life.

One sunny morning I put my bike in the car and dropped it off, I drove off feeling good about myself. My old bicycle would now make a huge difference is someones life.

A container was shipped to Namabia along with other goodies.

If you have a hybrid or mountain bike sitting around at home drop it off on June 21st 2008. If you don’t have a bike and still want to help out, they do accept donations towards the cost of a container to ship these bikes. they also accept donations of soccer equipment.

If your business exports products and services outside Canada, then this meeting is for you. Export Development Canada (EDC) is reviewing a report they will be submitting to Canada’s Minister of International Trade. EDC’s goal is to establish trade between Canada and other countries.

The purpose of the report is to assess how EDS is evolving and should continue to evolve, to address the competitive dynamics and demands of international trade.

The structure of the review is

• The changing global and competitive environment
• Canadian business needs, ensuring EDC’s ability to meet them
• Canadian private-sector financial capacity for trade and risk management: is there a role for EDC to play to increase this capacity
• EDC’s place within government

Here’s your chance to provide input to the government.

Details of meeting

When: Thursday June 12

Time: 8:30am

Where: Holiday Inn Select & Suites, Algonquin room, 101 Kanata Ave.

The Technology Innovation Management (TIM) program at Carleton University has some very interesting sessions. They are all FREE which is a bonus. The next one coming up is focused on APIs.

Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) provide users access to the data or services of an information technology platform. A very good example is Google Maps.

A mashup is an application that combines data and services from multiple open APIs. Mashups allow the rapid creation of custom applications by users.

When:Wednesday, June 11
Time:4-7pm

Where: Carleton University, Mackenzie Building, Room 3190.

This event is ideal for company executives, entrepreneurs, academics and graduate students who are interested in commercialization of software products and services.

Register on the wiki.

I recently met an old friend who works at one of the local hi-tech companies and was very excited about his up coming trip to Asia. He was going there for a couple of months and was hoping to get some sight seeing in.

On the flip side he did say that he was going to train a team of 10 and said that in 5 years he would have trained himself out of his job.

5 years ago, around the time of the tech bubble burst, manufacturing jobs were lost to Asia. It became apparent that we could not compete at that price level. At that time everyone said that it was ok as long as Canada was still involved heavily in R&D.

However, this conversation about training teams overseas are all too common today. What happens 5 years from now? Is Canada going to give up their R&D to the overseas market as we can’t afford to innovate here?

Let’s take a step back and try to connect the dots.

• In Canada our universities are heavily subsidized, we pay at least 10 times less for tuition here than south of the border. So as a country a significant amount of our investment goes into university education. In Ottawa it’s not uncommon for someone to have multiple degrees

• Since the technology downturn a few years ago, there are still thousands of underemployed tech workers in Ottawa. They are very well educated and have a lot of industry experience however there is no place for them to use these talents. Instead they have to settle for pizza delivery, warehouse work etc…. Silicon Valley North has not bounced back to its glory days

• With the current trend of training R&D teams overseas the underemployed will increase significantly over the next 5 years, hence a wasted investment in the university education

The city of Montreal did something very interesting a few years ago. They promoted their animation industry to the global market. Today there are a lot of very successful companies that specialize in animation and gaming. Montreal is known worldwide for this particular skill which have lead to a lot overseas customers.

With this in mind, I do have a very easy solution to this problem, promote the technical talent in this city globally.

I have had this conversation with various decision makers in this city and they all tell me that a hi-tech company, Dell had moved here for this reason. I need to clarify this whole Dell situation… when Dell moved to Ottawa to create thousands of jobs, it was for their “call center”!!!!! These types of jobs are low paying and for students, not for someone who has a degree and several years of industry experience.

Let’s promote Silicon Valley North and attract overseas companies to set up shop here for R&D and let Canada utilize their investment in the education of their tech workers.

Almost open

A little shy

See the pollen

A little different, purple