For the M.S. in Enterprise Integration that I’m getting in conjunction with my MBA, I have to write a research paper in order to finish the degree – (same concept as a PhD type program, but it’s not a thesis w/ defense or anything as involved as that). I didn’t realize until now just how hard it is to narrow down a topic enough so that you can actually write a paper on it. We’re constrained by the fact that our paper has to be related to systems development in some way, but beyond that, it just has to be a “doable” research topic. Right now, I’m looking at the maintenance phase of software development and how you can capture experience / knowledge in a way that adds value to current and future maintenance. I started out at a high-level wanting to look into knowledge management and this is where I’ve ended up after a couple of months of digging around in research articles. Anyway, I was just curious if any of the Spoke community is working on a research paper and what topics you’ve chosen to look into.
July 2005
First Tire Change
Wow, I just had to change my first flat tire and that took way more effort than I had imagined. I wouldn’t have even been able to get the tire changed if it weren’t for 2 of my friends that happened to be kind enough to help. Geez, I have a battery powered jumper pack / light / air pump that I have always used in the past when there was a flat, but this time, the pump just stopped working. Not sure what happened, but it’s not but a year or two old so that’s surprising that it has already died on me. Oh well, I was going to post something more interesting today, but it’s too late for that now…but, there’s always tomorrow. 🙂
First Years @ Microsoft
For those of you that are interested to know what it’s like to work at Microsoft right out of college, you should check out Steven Sinofsky’s post over at blogs.msdn.com. Really gives you a great idea of what type of experiences you can expect as you start out. (And I imagine these experiences aren’t unique to MS either so even if you don’t want to work for MS, you might want to check it out.)