So I'm writing this in the Admirals Club in D.C. as I wait to take a flight to Chicago to connect to London.  Originally, I was on the red eye to Heathrow from JFK last night and hoped to post from there.  And while Queens would never make my "must travel to" summer list, I was pretty bummed to learn my flight was cancelled when I went to check-in for the 8:40 PM to NY.

That said, it feels good to be back flying American.  Sitting amongst fellow early morning frequent fliers, I'm reminded of my old days at Board Member; specifically, 2002 - 2005.  Those were the years I racked up a ton of miles flying back-and-forth from New York City to London as part of a joint venture with The Economist Group.  In fact, it was that type of business travel that put my miles flown at 1,000,000+ on this airlines... so cheers to Joan + the rest of the great crew I worked with (most of whom are still there) for giving me the chance to make those trips and represent our interests!

While I should start thinking about finding a bite for breakfast, I hatched a writing plan in the cab to DCA last night that I'm committing to.  As it stands, I'm going to make time to check in from the following locations:

• Tuesday = London (or the EuroStar up to Brussels)
• Wednesday = Brussels
• Thursday = Brussels
• Friday = JFK/New  York

As always, I'll try to post design, technology or innovatione-insired content.  Of course, I reserve the right to go off the reservation + share something that inspires my good, fun and/or creative side!

To provide a bit of context as to why I'm sitting here + not taking the metro over to Bethesda this morning, I'm heading over to a conference in Brussels that draws a global audience of regulators, economists and technologists -- all keen to manage scarce spectrum resources.  Computech is one of the big sponsors of the conference, and we have one of our practice leads speaking on market and technology developments.  So the middle part of the week, I'll will be busy promoting our firm's expertise + connecting with peers and telecom regulators from around the world.  (*If you're interested to learn more about the subject, I'll be blogging + tweeting for Computech while I'm there learning and networking).

Prior to that fun, I'm in London tomorrow to meet with a handful of potential partners as well as with Ofcom (a peer to the FCC here in the U.S.).  Sadly, I'm missing the meeting I had scheduled for this afternoon at Botanist in Sloane Square.  Some of you know it as the restaurant that inspired my brother + my summer bar in Nantucket.  Guess I'll have to wait until my next trip over to stop in.

Alright, flight boards in a few minutes and I'm hungry -- so I'll sign off.  But before I do, a request.  If you've been to Brussels + have any suggestions for places to go, things to see between work obligations, I'd love to hear.  Drop me a comment below.  And bonus points if  you can ID the inspiration for today's title.  Here's a hint: think Sunday morning television.

In the five years I've been at Computech, we've totally refashioned the way we market + position the firm.  For example, when I joined the company from New York City in July of 2005, we had a rudimentary site that essentially offered a phone number and a few project descriptions.  Don't believe me?  Check out the Way Back Machine.

Since than, we've established a pretty healthy pace for refreshing content -- while amping up our online aesthetic.  If you've been on the site recently, you'll find a beta version of our most recent creation.  While more content-rich than our previous sites, I'm excited to share that our new homepage design goes live later this week.  Here's a sneak peak at what it will look like:

In case you're interested in our online evolution, here's something of a story board of the previous three designs.  The top left version went live in late '05, the "paper tree" in '07 and the panoramic in the fall of '08.

While just one piece of our overall marketing program, computechinc.com is our most visible + widely available way that we engage with customers, employees, prospective clients and future staff.  Take a look at what we're working on; I'd certainly appreciate feedback on what works for you -- and what might be improved.

Over the last few weeks, I've had my hands full with a number of spectrum-related opportunities at Computech.  Be it interest from the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries (Ofcom) to a new supply agreement to provide spectrum auction services to Industry Canada, an RFP from Ireland's Commission for Communications Regulation to a handful of our auction team working in Mexico City with COFETEL, it seems like my days have been filled to capacity with talk of managing, allocating and regulating this scarce, valuable resource that cannot be seen or felt.

Spectrum Holdings in the 700MHz band range (c/o the FCC's Spectrum Dashboard)

Heeding the advice of my good friend Tien Wong, I've focused more of my personal time on better understanding telecommunication-related issues that are impacted by such governmental interests.  Tien, the CEO of the VC firm Opus8, suggested that my last five years running business development at our firm, coupled with Computech's 16 years of IT-related support at the FCC, affords me a rather interesting perspective on how technology + the telecommunications "industry"intersect (*by which I mean regulators & industry alike).  As my recent posts show, my technical interests trend towards deep data analytics; conceptually, this matches up nicely with our firm's expertise with spectrum management.  Indeed, the balancing act that so many countries' regulatory bodies need to strike continues to play out on the global stage (and yes, we're happy to play a supporting role).  Just as with agile data management, the key for most telecommunication authorities centers around real-time knowledge of spectrum demand, use and oversight.

So, over the next few weeks, I'm going to shift my writing focus from Big Data, data-driven dashboards and data analytics to the technical implications of managing a spectrum lifecycle.  Being that I'm heading up to Ottawa on Tuesday for their annual 20/20 Spectrum conference -- and to Brussels in June for the annual European Spectrum Management conference -- what better time (or place) to start sharing my observations than now on DCSpring21.  While I can't promise specific topics, my travel schedule does provide some general direction.  Due up this week: my observations from Canada based on perspectives shared by senior spectrum, radio and telecommunications officials from around the world.

Plenty of businesses invest money and resources trying to integrate, organize and manage data. Yet too often, it seems they become overwhelmed by it.  Gartner Research says it best: such "efforts result in fragmented views, siloed information and missed opportunities. This incoherent vision can ultimately damage competitiveness and increase IT and business costs. In today’s economic climate is that a risk worth taking?"  So in the spirit of yesterday's post on Big Data, a "simple" rendering of a data management technology stack (at least as we think about it @Computech):

While some might find this diagram abstract, the goals of agile data management are becoming clearer to me:

• Make data in an organization's databases available in an understandable + explorable format;
• Provide easy access & navigation from one subject area to another (e.g. combine data from one application with another application's data); and
• Ensure data flows within an organization become transparent -- regardless of which operational system generates/maintains the data.

Periodically, I look back on what I've written here -- and also on Computech's Concomitantly.  Last night, as I read Full 360's blog on the Agile Data Warehouse Story, I realized I'd jumped headfirst into the agile data management space without really defining an important concept: Big Data. Used to describe the massive quantities of raw and processed data that are being generated today in applications such as retail operations, let me add some color to the Big Data concept by pasting a sentence from the afore mentioned blog:

"Think of all the McBurgers sold every minute of every the day in a dozen different combinations. That purchasing information is valuable - but only if it can be made manageable, and accessible."

True, it’s become relatively easy (and cheap) to collect data. However, organizations of all sizes continue to wrestle with a fundamental challenge: making sense of what they’ve collected given the speed with which new types of data are generated. So as business leaders begin to execute new strategies based on better analytics and information, organizations with individualized, distributed computing and storage environments may soon require a more flexible, agile, and service- oriented solution to improve their proficiency in handling Big Data.  Make sense?  Drop me a line + let me know your thoughts.

Co-opetition occurs when companies work together for parts of their business where they do not believe they have competitive advantage, and where they believe they can share common costs.  For co-opetition to work, companies need to very clearly define where they are working together, and where they are competing (wikipedia)

I'm a sucker for case studies.  While some from my b-school days still haunt me -- like structuring a leveraged buyout of Seagate technologies -- HBS recently published one that did not leave me searching for a shot of Pepto.  The brief, which examines Top Coder's model of competition-based software development, had me running to talk with former AOL and FINRA execs about how their organizations tapped TopCoder's reach into the global community of programmers.  I also talked about the practical application of this crowd-sourced software with a guy who knows a thing or two about tapping the collective intelligence of a community (Inkling's co-founder).

I'm still writing + editing a longer entry for DCSpring21 based on their feedback -- and I have my own thoughts based on my role promoting/selling our software development shop's services.  But before posting my two cents, I'd be interested to hear from others who have used TopCoder or are familiar with their crowd-sourcing tactics.  Pros?  Cons?  Great stories and words of caution?  Come one, come all... Thanks!