Digging into Human Rights Violations Talk at the Western University

I was invited by Western University, Canada to give talk on the system architecture developed for the Digging into Human Rights Violation Software. Talk was part of the panel discussion titled "Digging into Human Rights Violation: What We Know and What We Don't." Panel members were Ben Miller from Georgia State University, Lu Xiao from Western University, and Karthikeyan Umapathy from University of North Florida. Panel discussion was held on June 19, 2012 from 10 AM to 11:30 AM at the Faculty of Information & Media Studies, Western University, London, Canada.

For more information on the panel:

http://www.fims.uwo.ca/about/news/news_items/12-06-15/Lecture_Digging_into_Human_Rights_Violation_What_We_Know_and_What_We_Don_t.aspx

Web of Web Things Talk at the Joe Berg Seminar

On February 21, 2012, I gave a talk on Web technologies at the Joe Berg Seminar held at the Museum of Science and History, Jacksonville, FL.

Title of talk: "Web of Web Things"

Talk provided an overview of value of the Web, growth of the Web, and a discussion on past, present, and future Web technologies. Talk provided examples of global projects (such as Ushahidi, PatientsLikeMe, and Kiva) that use Web technologies to make a difference in the global society. The talk also provided examples of UNF student projects that are making a difference in the Jacksonville community.

Mission of Joe Berg Seminar:

“The Joe Berg Seminars of Jacksonville presents challenging evening seminars and programs for outstanding public and independent high school students led by experts in various fields of the sciences and humanities. Participation in the society promotes independent thinking and a love of learning while enlarging the students' awareness of career options and current societal issues and allowing association with many of the other best students in Jacksonville.”

For more information about Joe Berg Seminar:

http://www.unf.edu/coas/sci/Joe_Berg_Seminar_HOME.aspx

When Requirements Go Bad: Requirements Errors

Yesterday I attended a talk on “When Requirements Go Bad: Requirements Errors - Sources and Avoidance Strategies” by Kurt Bittner. Kurt Bittner has co-authored two books: Managing Iterative Software Development Projects and Use Case Modeling.

Kurt Bittner Bio on InformIT
http://www.informit.com/authors/bio.aspx?a=4B75C773-9B16-4283-88F9-888B641A7058&rl=1

He categorized requirements errors into three categories
1. Misconception errors – user needs misconstrued
2. Specification errors – user needs understood but written ambiguously
3. Implementation errors – communication breakdowns and lack of enough reviews and testing

While above were the core of the talk, he also provided some typical errors and strategies to avoid them. The entire talk was excellent and worth the money, given that I am teaching a requirements management course this spring.

Date of the talk: January 8, 2008
Venue: University center, University of North Florida
Organized by: North Florida Rational Users Group
http://www.nf-rug.com/index.php