Montie's Product blog

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Montie

"Integrating Consultants into a Well-Managed Design Process"
A Joint PDMA / TEC / ASME Event

Date: 25 Oct 06

Time: 6:00 PM - Pizza / Networking
6:30 PM - Keynote Speaker
7:00-8:30 PM - Roundtable Discussion with Audience Participation

Location: Lord Corp., 111 Lord Drive, Cary, NC 27511-7923 (e-mail montie@montie.com for directions)

Cost: $10 Members, $25 Non-members, Free for Students

Please RSVP by Oct. 20th to asme.rsvp@yahoo.com

Keynote Speaker: Charles Lord, Triangle Advanced Design and Automation, LLC

Consultant Roundtable Members

Project Management -- Sean Ahr
Mechanical / Industrial Product Design -- Anthony Anibale
Computer Modeling and Performance Prediction -- Michael Hiller
Dealing with Electronic Emissions -- David Guzman
Software Development -- Michael Izquierdo
Role of Marketing in NPD -- David Chapman
Embedded Systems / Safety Issues -- Coleman Moore
Balancing Available Capital and Product Development -- Thomas Vass

Thanks to Our Sponsor: JMC Machine & Tool, Apex, NC

More About the Roundtable Members

Sean Ahr, Director of Engineering
Porticos, Inc.
Morrisville, NC

At Portico,s Sean is responsible for providing our customers with innovative and effective solutions that exceed their expectations. With over 10 years experience in both consumer products and aviation design and development, Sean works to ensure that our customer’s projects are managed with excellence. Prior to his service at Porticos, Sean worked in both mechanical design and project leadership roles in multiple divisions of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, The New Piper Aircraft Company, and Northrup-Grumman Aerospace. He holds and has contributed to several design and utility patents, and has been instrumental in gaining compliance to regulations of federal agencies such as the FAA and FCC. Sean holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering from North Carolina State University, and has advanced training in engineering management and organizational behavior.

Anthony Annibale, Partner
Insight Product Development
Raleigh, NC

Anthony Annibale is a partner and managing director for Insight Product Development in Raleigh, North Carolina. Insight has offices in Chicago, Boston and Raleigh, and 90 professionals on staff, and is one of the largest product development firms in the United States. Anthony manages all aspects of the business for Insight’s Raleigh office as well as running many of the major client programs. He also shares the responsibility of managing the firm in corporate development, client strategies, and new business ventures. Anthony has more than 15 years of engineering experience in product design, manufacturing, product innovation planning and product line management. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Old Dominion University of Norfolk, Virginia.

Fredrick D. Buggie, President
Strategic Innovations Intl.

Frederick D. Buggie has over 20 years' experience directing Programs that apply the group-creativity by teams of selected experts in diverse fields (prepared in advance) to generate innovative concepts for leading companies in the US and Europe, in virtually every industry, to achieve their business growth objectives ... including: 1) Identification of new product development opportunities, that fit the company's particular technologies and production capabilities; 2) Fully commercializing a newly-developed, versatile product or process, by uncovering all of its promising market applications. Author of the widely acclaimed business book, New Product Development Strategies, and more than 50 articles published in trade & professional journals, including "The Four Phases of Innovation" (Journal of Business Strategy), Mr. Buggie also conducts Executive Seminars & Workshops on Innovation in Business. He is an Elected Fellow of The Institute of Directors in London, and served as President of The New York Chapter of The Association for Corporate Growth.

David Guzman
RFTEK
Raleigh, NC

David Guzman has been an independent consultant for 5 years and operates in the area of Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) and RF circuit design. Previous to starting his business, David held engineering positions in several companies including Square D Company, Nortel Networks, RF Microdevices and Solectron. David has spent almost 20 years working in the areas of new product development in industrial controls, RF circuit design and the design and test of circuits and systems for Electromagnetic Compatibility compliance. David holds a BS from the University of Rhode Island , an MSc. form the University of Nebraska and an MSEE from North Carolina State University .

Michael Hiller
In2Solutions
Cary, NC

Michael Hiller earned his BSME and MSME from North Carolina State University, and he is active in ENC ASME. His consultancy focuses on finite element analysis simulation & optimization using Multiphysics ANSYS software. This best-in-class software integrates linear and non-linear structural, thermal, magnetic, and fluid/air flow & cooling phenomenas. His organization provides FEA services to designers, manufacturers, and inventors, and he also helps companies develop in-house FEA competencies if desired. He has simulated everything from snap fits, to integrated circuits, to telecom enclosures, to superconducting magnets, to bridges, to 500' marine structures (and everything in-between). Mike has worked in the manufacturing sector as well as the CAD/FEA (ProE & ANSYS) software sales channel - - his clients benefit from his unique combination of practical experience as well as software industry "insider" expertise.

Creed Huddleston, VP
Omnisys Corporation
Raleigh, NC

Creed Huddleston is the Vice President of Omnisys Corporation, a Raleigh-based company that specializes in the development of real-time control and communication systems for OEM customers. In his 11 years with Omnisys, Creed has participated in the creation of products that are deployed globally to thousands of end-users such as Daimler-Chrysler, Becton, Dickinson, and Company, and Imation Corporation. The company is an authorized consultant for Microchip, Lattice Semiconductor, and Trolltech, and it is also a member of the Freescale Design Alliance Program. In addition to his duties with Omnisys, Creed serves on the technical advisory board for Quickfilter Technologies, Inc., a Dallas-based startup producing mixed-signal integrated circuits that provide high-speed analog signal conditioning and digital signal processing in a single package. His book Implementing Intelligent Sensors Using the Microchip dsPIC will be published by Newnes in December of 2006.

Mike Izquierdo, Software Development Manager
Kidde Aerospace & Defense
Wilson, NC

Mike Izquierdo currently is the Software Development Manager for Kidde Aerospace & Defense, a Hamilton Sunstrand Company. He manages the development of safety critical software for the aerospace industry in overheat detection and fire detection/suppression systems for both military and commercial aircrafts. He developed software for the Airbus A380 Overheat Detection System and managed the A380, Boeing B787 Dreamliner, C17 Overheat Detection System and the Joint Strike Fighter. He is currently a member of the SC-205 subcommittee working on DO-178C. He’s been in the engineering field for over 20 years and has worked in the fields of ASIC and FPGA design and PCI board design of Audio/Video Codecs. He was with IBM for 15 years, received his PhD from NC State in 1997 and has been an IEEE member for 27 years.

David Chapman, CEO
919 Marketing Co.
Holly Springs, NC

David Chapman has over 20 years of senior-level marketing and business development management experience. He has served on the American Marketing Association's Best New Products Awards Panel and is a member of the National Association of Certified Consultants. David's career path combines corporate and consulting roles, and includes stints as CEO of a national professional services firm, VP Marketing for the market leader in workforce technology training, and global Account Director for the largest global advertising agency network.

Coleman Moore
CDA Design Group

Coleman Moore is an experienced consultant and engineer, with over 25 years
of experience in the embedded systems, product design and safety systems
industries. Coleman has worked with many clients and corporations across
the U.S. and Europe. Coleman specializes in electronics product design and
in getting products to market quickly and effectively.

Thomas Vass
Good Business Advice
Raleigh, NC

Thomas Vass is a registered investment advisor for small high tech companies and private individuals. He helps companies raise growth capital. He is also an author and economist, and writes about the relationship between product innovation and economic growth. His new book Predicting Technology: Identifying Future Market Opportunities and Disruptive Technologies, published by The Great American Business & Economics Press, Inc., is available at www.gabby-press.com

Morning,

As product designers, we often get hung up on features. Features are important, but they are only part of the experience that the user has when he interacts with the product. The user is concerned with the experience.

Follow Shimon (a Carolinas-PDMA chapter member) as he leads us through the process of designing for experience. The presentation came from the September Carolinas-PDMA chapter meeting. This is a great way to look at design from the user’s point of view.

The presentation (audio plus power point) from the September chapter event (Design for Experience) is available at:

http://www.montie.com/PDMA/2006_sept_event

The audio only version is available at:

http://www.montie.com/PDMA/2006_sept_event/pdma_9_27.mp3

As always, please send your suggestions and comments to montie@montie.com.

Have a great day!
Montie Roland
President, PDMA Carolinas

Afternoon Fellow Product Developers,



"Using Product Design to Drive Brand Power" is the topic of the next Carolinas PDMA event on 27 Sept 06.

The Carolinas chapter website is at:

www.pdma.org/carolinas

Additional information about the event is available at:

http://www.productinnovators.com/carolinas/events/index.htm

Please RSVP to montie@montie.com. If you would like to join the event via webinar, please indicate on the RSVP e-mail.

Thanks,
Montie Roland
President – PDMA Carolinas Chapter
montie@montie.com

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USING PRODUCT DESIGN TO DRIVE BRAND POWER: Are You Designing Experiences or Developing Products?

From the design of experiences to the manufacturing of brands, design strategy has the power to drive innovation, identify new market opportunities, fight commoditization, and even reduce new product development costs.

This event will be provoking and highly informative, revealing the best of Eastern and Western practices in innovation and new product and service development.

Key take aways:
- Start thinking "experience" and build experience-based teams
- Bring balance and value in your innovation process
- Learn how brands of tomorrow are being built in Greater China

This session is designed for product managers, innovation leaders, marketing executives, brand managers, product development managers, and other professionals interested in innovation, design, and product development.

Please join us for this unique opportunity to exchange points of views and build relationships with your peers as well as gain insights from our distinguished speakers:

- Daniel Koo, Lead Designer, SQV Design International, Taiwan
- Shimon Shmueli, Director of Innovation and Experience Design, Touch360, Durham, NC


ABOUT THE PRESENTERS:

Daniel Koo
----------
Daniel is the leader of SQV Design International, the most reputable product development firms in Greater China. Daniel is a talented value-added industrial designer, an innovation champion, and a sough-after advisor on how the power of design can communicate consumer benefit for strategic business advantage. With a thorough understanding for US and Asian Pacific markets, and consumer as well as commercial markets, Daniel leads Taiwan and mainland China based teams working with clients such as Lenovo, Acer, Texas Instruments, NEC, 3M, Arora, Johnson, and many other top brands, across industries.

Over the course of his career, from his first position with RKS Design in the US in the late 1980s to his founding SQV Design International after the merger of his firm I+U Design with SQV Group, Daniel has won prestigious design awards including a 2005 IDEA award for the Lenovo ET960 Pocket PC phone and two 2006 IF awards for the flagship P-Series of AG Neovo LCD display and Moxa Switching System. His designs have been featured in media ranging from Business Week to Marie Claire.

Daniel holds a B.S. in product design from Art Center College of Design in California. He is a sough-after speaker by government as well as professional organizations, in Asia and in the US.

Shimon Shmueli
--------------
Shimon is co-founder of Touch360, an Research Triangle Park, NC, strategic innovation and product design firm. His expertise is in new product design, innovation, and marketing. His holistic approach, professional background, and creativity give him a unique ability to lead the development of products while addressing issues ranging from business and marketing strategies all the way to the "byte and notch" level.

Before founding Touch360, Shimon was with IBM, where he held leadership positions in marketing, division-level business strategies, and new product development and design.

Shimon was a co-founder and CTO at KeyNetica, a company that pioneered the use of the USB Flash Drive as a mobile platform.

Shimon holds a BSEE degree from the Technion; an MSEE degree from Polytechnic University; and an MBA from Wake Forest University. Shimon has been a speaker and mentor in various forums, including Johns Hopkins University, MIT Sloan, and George Mason University, where he was an adjunct marketing professor.

Afternoon All,

Here is your chance (press release below) to get a grant to help fund your start-up in NC.



Their website is www.ncidea.org.

Happy Hunting!

Montie

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NC IDEA seeks grant applications from entrepreneurs and early-stage companies
08-21-2006

RESEARCH TRAINGLE PARK, N.C. – NC IDEA is seeking grant applications from North Carolina entrepreneurs and early-stage companies focused on information technology, medical devices or material sciences.

NC IDEA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to helping establish and develop early-stage companies through the commercialization of research innovation. NC IDEA plans to award $150,000 “proof of concept” grants to help bridge the gap between innovative ideas and venture capital funding. The grants are designed to prepare companies for equity funding, accelerating the creation of new North Carolina companies and jobs.

NC IDEA is accepting online applications through its Web site (www.ncidea.org) beginning today, Aug. 21. Grants of up to $50,000 per company will be awarded in December.

The grants support business activities that validate potential markets, reduce business risks, and advance projects to the point at which they are suitable for consideration by private equity investors. Preference is given to companies that have not previously received equity financing. An entrepreneur who has not formed a company may apply, but company incorporation is required prior to the awarding of grant funding.

Bridging the Innovation Gap
Many new technologies are not successfully transferred out of universities and research institutions because of a funding gap between government and private equity support. Research funding typically does not include support for business development activities or development of product prototypes suitable for mass production. Yet, venture capital funds typically do not invest in companies until they have a product and are already generating revenues from customer sales.

The NC IDEA grant program provides a novel source of assistance to bridge this gap. Earlier this year, NC IDEA awarded $225,000 in grants to seven early-stage North Carolina companies.

"NC IDEA’s grant program offers young pre-venture companies an opportunity that can't be found elsewhere," said Josh Whiton, chief executive officer of TransLoc, which received an NC IDEA grant in the previous cycle earlier this year. Dr. Nimmi Ramanujam, a professor at Duke and project manager for previous grant recipient Illuminus, agreed. “There are no other sources of early funding that can be sought to address these issues,” she said.

In addition to funding, NC IDEA and its strategic partners facilitate access to business and technology leaders who will mentor and guide entrepreneurs to help them overcome research, product development, sales and product adoption hurdles. NC IDEA collaborates with the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), The North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA), the North Carolina Small Business and Technology Development Center (SBTDC) and Southeast TechInventures.

The initial “pre-proposal” applications must be submitted online by Sept. 15. Approximately 12 to 15 companies submitting “pre-proposal” submissions will be selected to participate in a subsequent full proposal submission and review period from Sept. 15 through Oct. 27. This process will include submission of a more in-depth proposal and prioritized budget for use of grant proceeds, and potentially a presentation from the company to a NC IDEA Grants Program advisory committee.

About NC IDEA
NC IDEA provides grants, loans and traditional venture capital to help young companies between seed funding and Series A financing. The non-profit company further supports these companies by leveraging strategic partnerships and alliances to help companies through research phases, business challenges and growth goals. NC IDEA is committed to supporting North Carolina’s economic development by ensuring young, innovative companies grow, create jobs and become contributing business leaders. For more information, visit www.ncidea.org. Media Contact: Scott Yates, Largemouth Communications (for NC IDEA), 919-649-6621, scott@largemouthpr.com.

Morning,

I am now on the blog team for the PDMA (www.pdma.org). My first entry is at:

http://blog.pdma.org/?p=70

The pdma blog is at:

http://blog.pdma.org

Have a great day!

Montie

What is a blog?

A blog is a specialized version of a website. Blogs allow users to concentrate on providing content (usually editorials) rather than worrying about the technical aspects of creating a web page.

Modern web publishing tools such as Microsoft’s Front Page allow just about anyone to compose relatively simple websites. Front Page has made the task of editing simple websites almost as easily as using Microsoft Word. Even though the software is straightforward to use, running a website requires the user to establish a web space to publish to, and to deal with the issues related to publishing to the web. These technical hurdles keep most people out of the web publishing business.

Blog software streamlines the process of web publishing. Websites such as Bloglines.com have streamlined workflows that allow users to quickly and cheaply (often free) create their own blogs. The combination of; the open source software movement, PHP (a scripting language on web servers), and MySQL (a database program, similar to Oracle) has allowed even low-budget websites to host blogs that reach huge audiences.

Why is blogging so popular?

Non-technical users can now easily create and maintain their blogs. The biggest cost of creating and maintaining a blog is the writer’s time. This allows writers to concentrate on creating their content. Bloggers can easily add text and pictures to their blogs. Once text and pictures have been added, or updated, that content is almost instantly available on the internet. Bloggers get the instant gratification of having their writing and images instantaneously available around the world.

Bloggers can also add content to their blogs from anywhere in the world. All they need is a computer with an internet connection. It is now common to see a press release saying “He will be blogging from”. What this means is that magazines and other media outlets can have their bloggers add content while they are at venues such as trades shows, planned events, the scene of natural disasters, or even from their tent in Iraq. A good example is the proliferation of blogs written by soldiers from their duty stations in the Iraq war.

Readers can subscribe to one, or many, blogs, often for free. Subscriptions are maintained by aggregators. These aggregators allow the reader to tell the aggregator website which blogs they want to monitor. Some aggregators only monitor specific blogs (maybe only blogs they host). Other aggregators maintain directories of active blogs (this is common for podcasts). Subscriptions are much more convenient for the reader than having to visit the blog each day to check to see if there is new content.

One of the secrets of the success of the meteoric rise of blogs is the use of the RSS feed. Every blog has an RSS feed. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. RSS feeds use a standard format to encapsulate the content of the blog. The use of the RSS feeds also allows the encapsulation of audio (podcasts) and video. From a broader perspective, it’s important to consider that RSS is as important to blogs as news services such as the Associated Press have been to traditional media. Make no mistakes, blogs represent a new media. The adoption of RSS feeds (and the subsequent support of these feeds by blogs and aggregators) creates a path for the distribution of blogs.

To put this in perspective there are three main ways to find a website on the internet. The first is to search for a topic, maybe through Google or Yahoo, and then visit a site that has information about that topic. Another way is to see, hear or be given a website address (maybe in print, TV, or radio) and then type in that address in Internet Explorer to go there. The third way is to see a link on another website or electronic document. You then click on the link and the website comes up.

Without RSS, most blogs would languish in obscurity as web pages that never got read. The aggregators now use RSS feeds to provide potential blog readers with choices of blogs to read. A good metaphor is to think of an RSS feed as a TV channel. For example you may turn to Fox to see a program on Thursday nights. RSS turns the blog (or podcast) into an outlet. Your computer can bring up the RSS feed and present you with the content of that channel. Combine this with the directories of blogs and podcasts that aggregators create and you have the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of channels, all on-demand. With the TV, you have to have TiVo, or a VCR, to record the programs that you miss. With RSS feeds, you can download the content and listen to it at your convenience. You can even search it.

Make no doubt blogs and podcasts represent a new media, both for entertainment and information. In the past, being “media” meant massive investments in airspace, equipment, and personnel. Now one individual can sit at his, or her, PC and share opinions, thoughts, wisdom or knowledge just by sitting down and typing it into his computer and hitting “upload”. Pictures, video and audio and are now easily integrated into blogs and podcasts. Just the ability to take a picture with your digital camera and have it passed through the RSS feed to thousands of subscribers is massive. This is a powerful tool, one which will affect the way we perceive the flow of information, thoughts and ideas for a long time to come.

Having a standard format allows aggregators to monitor blogs. The aggregators have programs visit (also called spider) each blog at regular intervals and check for updates. RSS feeds even contain a tag that suggests to the aggregator how often their blog is updated. This allows bloggers who update frequently to have their RSS feed checked more often.

Aggregators check the RSS feed by visiting the website hosting the blog and downloading the RSS feed. The potentially new RSS feed is automatically compared to the previously downloaded feed. Once new content has been detected, the aggregator then alerts any subscribers to the fact that the blog has been updated and new content is available. An example of an aggregator is www.bloglines.com. Other aggregators include:

www.blogwise.com
www.blogger.com
www.feedburner.com
www.newsgator.com
http://www.apple.com/rss/

Bloggers may also use a service like www.pingomatic.com to alert major aggregators if their blog has been updated more frequently that usual.

There are several ways an aggregator can alert subscribers to the presence of new blog content. The first way is through an e-mail. The subscriber receives an e-mail from the aggregator (or from the blog website itself) letting the subscriber know that new content is available. Bloglines uses a program (downloaded by the subscriber) running in the background on the subscriber’s machine. This program checks the RSS feeds from a list of subscribed blogs for new content. Once new content is available, the reader can visit the blog and read the new content. It is important to note that the software that downloads new podcasts (podcatchers) works essentially the same way.

There are also search engines that concentrate on blogs. A good example is blogsearch.google.com.


How do you create, publish and syndicate a blog?

There are two different ways to create a blog. The first is to go to a website that provides blogging services. These sites include:

www.bloglines.com
www.blogger.com
www.eponym.com
www.typepad.com
www.wordpress.com

Generally, creating your first blog is as easy as creating an account and starting to add content. However, many of these sites require you to agree to terms that include the reassigning all copyrights to the hosting site. This means that to use their services you may have to give them the rights to the content you are adding to your blog. This can be very important if you decide to reuse that content later (or you want to control how the content is used), since you may not own the content in your blog any more. This is one time that it is critical that you read the terms before you agree to use “free” blog services.

The second way is to integrate blogging software into your website. This requires more skill and an on-line presence. There are several different ways to achieve the creation of your own blog. One is to use software that is built for the sole purpose of allowing the creation and maintenance of blogs. These may be written in CGI, Perl or PHP. PHP blog scripts often use a MySQL database. Most presence providers (such as www.powweb.com) support PHP and MySQL. Sources of blog scripts include:

www.hotscripts.com
www.outshine.com
www.sixapart.com/movabletype/index
www.wordpress.org/hosting/

At www.Montie.com we use a slightly different approach. We wanted to support an on-line community, as well as, a blog. The on-line community is powered by a script called PHPbb. PHPbb is available from www.phpbb.com. This is an open source script that is used on tens of thousands of websites around the world. PHPbb has spawned several widely used variants such as Post-Nuke. There is a good chance that any time you are looking at a forum on the internet, it is powered by PHPbb or a variant (such as Post-Nuke).

We then use a program called PHPBlog from www.outshine.com. PHPBlog allows all the topics on a specific forum to be posted as blog entries. Each time a reader visits the blog (www.montie.com/blog/index.php), the script searches the forum database to create the blog page and compiles the RSS feed.

We also use CuteFTP to move files around and to edit the script files. Unfortunately, in order to install PHP scripts you will want FTP software to upload files to your website and edit PHP files directly while you are installing and upgrading software. It is necessary to upgrade software as security issues are fixed. You can do FTP transfers (moving files to and from your website to set up and configure the PHP scripts) with Microsoft Internet Explorer. Many tasks can be automated with a program with CuteFTP and that is a huge time saver.

You will also need to be familiar with an image editor. The web gives you the opportunity to present full color images to the world at almost no cost. Once you have a blog and begin adding content, there is a good chance you will want to add pictures, sound (podcasts), and maybe video. You’ll also need to create a banner for the top of your blog. You’ll also need to do more mundane things like resize pictures that you want to show off on your new blog. There are a couple of tools that come with Microsoft Windows that work fairly well. There are also many image editing programs available commercially, and some even for free. Learning to use a simple one will be a huge help as you discover how a simple image from your digital camera can add to the power of your written words.

Once you have all of this set up, you will want to use tools like those available at www.pingomatic.com and www.feedburner.com to properly syndicate your site.

If you have any questions or comments about this article, Montie can be reached by e-mail at montie@montie.com, or you can visit his website at: www.montie.com. Montie is a consultant providing product design services. He is also the President of the NC/SC chapter of the PDMA (www.pdma.org/carolinas).