Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Hacking DNA and all that jazz

Recently returned from e-Tech (http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etech/) and have been fascinated by the remixing DNA concepts proposed by Drew Endy.

It is a new approach in my book, and I'm torn between using my spare time for :-

A. hardware hacking (hardware hacks from the far side - James, see http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050314/pf/050314-14_pf.html)

B. DNA remixing (see http://web.mit.edu/endy/www/scraps/talks/03.15.05.ETech/)

C. 3D fabrication (manufacturing via inkjet like technology).

D. Living.

E. Beer.

Choices, choices, choices.

Away tomorrow to a Butler Group symposium on measuring IT value. Could it be that finally people are catching on to worth based development (WBD)? A move away from the flawed fixed price or hour charging mechanisms which pervade our industry?

A fair dollar for a fair dollar.

Open source and XP (agile not windows) have made headway, everyone is catching onto commodity pricing of IT as a service (salesforce.com and all the web services being setup etc). Maybe soon those few project which are of competitive advantage will use WBD?

Internal venture capital mechanisms to fund new IT projects and a focus on value where value is important and cost where it is cost of doing business?

I've high hopes for tomorrow. Expect ranting soon.

Today I had 6 ducks left in my pond.