Brian Roy’s Blog

How much do your customers hate your IVR?

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 | Innovation | Comments

So much that entire companies are being launched to aid customers in getting around it.

BRINGO is a new service which enables customers to get to a human fast…

BRINGO cuts through all of that so you don’t have to. That’s right, BRINGO has conquered phone trees.

Here’s how it works:

1. Find the company you’d like to call by category (credit cards, mortgages, loans, health care)
2. Enter your phone # (we will never disclose your phone number to anyone, not even your mother!).
3. Wait a few seconds while we navigate the phone tree.
4. When we call you back, pick up your phone and you’re done. No more phone trees.

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Techdirt Insight Community - Disrupting Technology Analysis

Friday, May 18th, 2007 | Analysis, Innovation, Web 2.0 | Comments

Sorry Gartner… Techdirt is applying Web 2.0 thinking to the market for IT Analysis; and the concept is pretty impressive.
Perhaps as interesting (to me anyway) is that this is the most impressive 2 minute elevator pitch I’ve seen in a long time.
More after the jump…

Did you learn more in school or out?

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 | The Future | Comments

Jeff Pulver at the Jeff Pulver Blog asked a great question today:

Which leads me to today’s question of the day: Looking at what you are involved with these days on a day-to-day basis, did you learn more of what you need to know to do this from something you learned in school, or from something you taught yourself?

I firmly believe that “school” - structured education - can serve only one real purpose. It should teach us how to learn.

My reality is that I learned far more outside of structured education than in. Having said that I do credit structured education for helping me learn how to learn. I also credit structured education with exposing me to a broad variety of concepts and igniting passion for those things that would shape my career.

As stated in this post I have great concern that we are losing a generation of engineers becase we are failing to ignite middle and high schools students passion for engineering, science and math. Please get involoved.

Free software is dead… really?

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 | OSS | Comments

From the Bankok Post:

“The Free Software movement is dead. Linux doesn’t exist in 2007. Even Linus has got a job today.” Controversial statements from the head of Microsoft’s Linux Labs, Bill Hilf.

Full article here.

Imagine my shock at Microsoft’s Bill Hilf coming out and saying that free software is dead. What is next… the RIAA saying all music collectors are criminals?

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Congress (finally) decides to do something to aid innovation…

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 | Innovation, Regulation, The Future | Comments

Congress finally decided that it was time to address the fact that the US is falling woefully behind the rest of the world - and Asia in particular - in educating engineers.

Drawing wide support from Democrats and Republicans, the Senate approved legislation dramatically increasing federal funding for research. The bill also seeks to jump start a revival of student interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs from elementary to graduate schools.

On average, U.S. colleges and universities now annually turn out approximately one million graduates, but only 70,000 of those degrees are in engineering. By contrast, China and India churn out 6.4 million college graduates a year, with almost 1 million of those in engineering.

This article provides more detail.

If the numbers above (1 million graduates vs. 6.4 million; 70k engineers vs. 1 million) do not provide you with a fundamental understanding of why U.S. companies outsource high tech jobs I’m not sure what will.

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