Digital by Design, Agility and Data Architecture

For 12 months, starting the summer of 2018, I was very fortunate to fill the data architect role for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador's digital by design citizen facing web portal. An amazing team was brought together and we accomplished an amazing amount of work given the complexity of the environment we were all working. Kudos to the leadership team for seeding the ground and pulling together a diverse and effective group of people.

Being the oldest team member, with 35 years as a technology professional, I noticed a number of items and approaches that I consider the highlights of the project. I call out my 35 years experience because I know success doesn't always happen in a large group of people (with a team larger than 35). A group of strangers doesn't always come together when tasked to ship software on schedule and on budget. The cool part of this project is that the highlights were both technical and project management. In a nutshell, we came together using a scrum model of project management (hosted within JIRA) and architected a microservices technology stack using predominantly Microsoft technologies. The user experience design was exemplary and the software approach stayed aligned with the best of agile practices. We also used a scrum of scrums approach to manage the three distinct scrum teams.

What made this first year of a new project so effective?

The Agile Practices
The team was encouraged to use Agile approaches to successfully ship software. Thankfully, the commitment came from the most senior level and agile workshops were used to align the teams understanding and approach to agile. I consider these three agile practices what kept us all well aligned;

1. We rigorously stayed with 3 week sprints. This was facilitated by the scrum of scrums group and kept us all focused on shipping working software.
2. We embraced jira and stayed true to moving cards. It took a few sprints, as a whole we ended up having all the team members updating and moving cards. This, combined with morning standups, kept the team transparency high and important issues in the open.
3. We always had demo days and retrospectives. This went a long way to keeping us focused and successful. All team members were encouraged to attend the other scrums demo days, this built excitement and kept us focused and moving.

Software Engineering Discipline
Developing software is as much art as it is science. Our team included many accomplished software engineers and this helped us implement features quickly and completely. Kudos are deserved by many on this project team, in particular, one of our technical leads (this is you, Phil) was hellbent and lead through example with two attributes of software engineering that are super important and sometimes missed;

1. We refactored always, no excuses. As a group we were always learning, as implementing features is a relentless teacher. Improving upon our code base through refactoring kept the quality improving, and the bugs low. Even from a data architecture perspective, at the beginning of each sprint we refactored the data tier with the required data changes from the previous sprint. Data tiers often have different heart beats that the middle and user tiers as they are dependent on the legacy systems, which often have legacy heart beats. This is a blog post in itself...
2. Automated testing. We automated whenever we could, we aspired to have automated tests with coverage to all our code. We got close by using frameworks and having a test first mind set. And don't underestimate how effective existing testing frameworks can be applied to the data tier.

Architecture was collaborative 
All architects were encouraged to contribute and discuss, we were always white-boarding and soliciting feedback. This kept the architecture strong and well understood throughout the team. And because we had a shared understanding of architecture the refactoring was reduced. All good...

Work Life Balance for the Sandwiched CTO

Never more in my life have I required work-life balance and understand what it means at a personal level. This all started when I accepted a CTO position with Bluedrop Learning Networks ( a great organization with a good alignment to my career journey ). The interview process was extensive and I had the opportunity to meet all corners of the team I would be working with. Overall a good and thorough process. Kudos to everyone involved! The interview process included multiple discussions about work-life balance, and how I (in my mid-50's) have four aging parents over 80 years, two middle-school age children, one young adult age child, a bunch of volunteer activities, personal interests that I wont let go, and three residences to maintain. Oh yes, and a spouse who is an family doctor who also works in palliative care... needless to say I am often the go-to person when a short notice family issue arises. All this said, and after a few important conversations I had to let go of my new CTO role after only six months. I needed to focus on what I consider most important for my family. Though I am not an entrepreneur ( - though, I do think a good CTO needs to have the entrepreneur mindset - ) I completely agree with Randi Zuckerberg about approaches to managing the workload of a senior professional, or also known as the entrepreneur's dilemma.

The entrepreneur's dilemma:

Maintaining friendships. Building a great company. Spending time w/family. Staying fit. Getting sleep.

Pick 3.

— Randi Zuckerberg (@randizuckerberg) December 9, 2011

For me, it's that simple. It's the implementation that will be the hard part. I need to have spending time with family, staying fit (in good health), and getting sleep to be my priorities. And I need to organize my life around these three and the others come in between or when priorities change. Something important to consider is that these five items need to be put into the larger context of a life well lived through a whole lifetime. That means you pick three on a daily, weekly, or yearly basis. Set your priorities for the day and/or week and follow through. This allows for flexibility within the entrepreneur's dilemma. In other words;

Peter's dilemma:

Maintain friendships. Have meaningful work. Spend time w/family. Stay healthy. Get sleep. Be creative.

Iterate around 3 at a time.

— Peter Rawsthorne (@prawsthorne) June 27, 2018

As you can see I also added one, be creative... my thinking around this aligns with having the time to think and create, free the brain to focus on the abstract and artistic and to wonder aimlessly... it is an important part, and keeps your edge in a world where innovation is becoming increasingly important.

Computer science taught as an art

I've been involved with learning, teaching and creating for all my life. During my formative years (in-utero to shortly after high-school graduation) I was focused on getting what I needed to finish. I was also involved in a lot of art (music, graphic design, crafts, dance, theatre) but my socially encouraged (my parenting) focus was on math and science. Needless to say, I have had my feet firmly planted in both art and science my whole life. I guess most people are this way, with different ratios of art to science. I really feel I continue to straddle both these areas as I pass my 1/2 century mark. What this has given me is a deep appreciation and engagement in both art and science. This is why I am more broad than I am deep. And this is why I have learned art as much as I have learned math and science.

Now I am an enterprise architect, educational technologist, computer scientist, teacher, visual arts performer and all around nice guy (well I hope). I still draw and paint, play music (the best I can) and dance in the open. I encourage my kids to engage in art more than science. Surprisingly, my kids math and science skills are good. I do think there is a connection.

I also think computer science can be taught very well as an art. Particularly, in the early stages of learning computer science. Why? Because, it needs to be done with reckless abandon and with the freedom to make a mess. You need to be able to stop half-way and throw it away. You need to be able to change it into something never planned. You need to be able to break something, and then fix it. You also need restraints through assignments (or learning themes), focused subjects, a palette, skills and abilities, uncertainty and little preparation, it all needs to be inspired and interpretive. I also see taking risks and "feeling stupid" is safer with art than science. Doing a scientific experiment seems more serious than dancing like no-one is watching or painting for yourself. Art seems more reckless than science. It is this recklessness that makes art more accessible to learn than science. I also think there is a lower barrier to entry for art than science, though I don't think it needs to be this way.

How I perceive creating and learning art.
My participation in the arts comes in two themes; the visual make things (graphics, painting, architecture, woodworking, and building) and in folk music and dance. How do I learn new things within these realms; by doing, with a whole lot of reading, research and seeking out those who have done it before. How do I believe it best assist to others learn; by involving them, and pointing them toward understanding how they themselves learn and encouraging their own research practices. Together we do things, I've built and created many things with others and the conversation and collaboration is a beautiful thing. Bringing together music and dance is an amazing collaborative effort. Best done with a willingness to fail, and the patience to persist. One of our best dances is tri-martal-o (it took two years to develop), is hauntingly beautiful, the music is inspired and the piece is way fun to dance. The important aspect of learning art is to dive in, create and participate as soon as you can. And remember, make a mess.

How I perceive creating and learning computer science.
Immediate feedback is the way! Being able to get something working by using the tools and techniques immediately is paramount to learning computer science. Programming something and then seeing it run, render, compute... is preferred for learner engagement. Once this immediate feedback has been experienced, the opportunity to create has been fulfilled, and a good number of computing science tasks have been completed then the deepening and complexity can begin. And this deepening and complexity needs to grow iteratively with continued immediate feedback and fulfillment. It should almost be like playing an instrument or creating art; repetition, creation and fun.

I believe it is also important to understand computing science as a creative and where it fits within the big scheme of things (historically, culturally, epistemogically, and algorithmically). This helps to put computing science into life context. Where it fits with being a human being, and this is where it gets interesting. The ability to take working ideas out of your brain and use them (in other ways and experiments) within a device outside of your head. This is computing science, and it is unique in history. For thousands of years we have taken ideas out of our heads and created things; first, wall paintings, then tools and writing, then machines and engines... but now, we can re-incarnate a working idea in another device that can process the idea, and use it with other peoples ideas, or more of our own ideas. And we can process these ideas as experiments and run a collection of ideas for days with different inputs which influence further ideas.

How do I see teaching computer science as an art? 
Create, make a mess, work with others, make... this is why I see the maker movement so positive. And why the webmaking initiatives currently underway as the right way toward teaching computer science. It creates a low barrier to entry and encourages learning with reckless abandon while on a journey of skills and knowledge development. Webmaking also takes learning computer science into the realm of social learning, which I consider more closely aligned with learning the arts than the sciences.

But how would this work for the more complicated computer science topics? The solution is in how more complicated art projects are created. They are more collaborative efforts, where the more experienced are given the complicated tasks and have to be sure their direct collaborators are also engaged. And there is a whole bunch of healthy collaborative critique going on. Look at how a performance art piece is created, learned and performed. What can be taken from this process and applied to teaching the more complicated aspects of computer science.

In my opinion one of the best books when considering the creation of computer software is written by Russell Shackelford and titled "Computing and Algorithms", I've used this book a number of times when teaching entry level computer science. What I fond strongest in this book is how it connects the creation of computer algorithms (software) with art from the scientific perspective. Or at least that is how I read it...

So in the end when teaching computer science as an art it also comes down to practice, practice, practice... if you want to be a good artist, that includes a lot of practice. If you want to be a good computer scientist, that also takes a lot of practice. The key is to find fun, creative and collaborative ways to stay engaged, and treating the learning of computer science as an art will keep it more engaging. Regardless of age. And as the projects and learning become more complicated, increasingly engage others who are peers and mentors. Find the fun individually and as a group.

How does the network see your personal brand?

Branding is important. It provides an external (or public) theme for endeavours; business endeavours, professional endeavours, organizational endeavours. Personal branding has become increasingly important in the networked age where the communications technology (read: Internet) reduces the barriers to promote and communicate brand, even personal brand.

How klout perceives me... https://klout.com/prawsthorne

I have gone through my personal branding exercise a few times in the past, and what I now find most interesting is what the feedback loop in my network sees as my brand... when I traverse the keywords/themes that myself and Google+, LinkedIn, Klout, and other social media have tagged to my respective profiles I am left with the personal branding of; Technology, Architecture, and Education. And my network brands me much stronger in the technology and architecture realms than the educational. I know this branding assessment is somewhat a self-fulfilling prophecy as I have been the one who has joined the groups, followed and friended the people and organizations, blogged about subjects, added keywords, created profiles, contributed to discussions, attended events (online or otherwise), etc, etc... but there are also data analytics going into all this. So by giving a broad sweep over ALL my connections to the network and paying attention to the keywords getting bubbled to the top by the network and the related analytics should give you an idea of how the network sees you.

How my linkedin endorsers perceive me... 

Am I OK with this? Absolutely!

Having a brand of; Technology, Architecture and Education? Does my data analysed network perceive the brand I would like to be perceived with? Absolutely! Most of my professional life, over the last 15 years, has focused upon enterprise and solution architecture. I am a technologist first, with proven successes in architecture. I am also an educator with experience as college and university faculty with a number of technology projects in the edtech realm, where I have increased access to education using technology innovation and solid architectural approaches.

How do you create, alter, and promote your personal brand?

This is where it gets interesting. How do you create, alter, and promote your personal brand? This is what I believe are the steps toward branding yourself;

1. What would you like to be? What is your personal brand? Create a vision for yourself.
2. Be that person. Even if you are not there, yet, be that person as best you can given the real world constraints.
3. Set up a Personal Learning Network (PLN) in the subject areas of your personal brand. Read, research, participate, engage, become.
4. Also use traditional approaches to learning, this will also help with building expertise and grow your network.
5. Write and engage with the social network, be broad with your use of tools. It is amazing what you can learn online with a well designed personal learning approach.
6. Be very public with your learning. Also leverage your existing expertise and blog and engage. Curate wikipedia pages or other knowledge bases in your chosen subject area. 
7. Wherever you participate be sure your personal profiles are up to date within that social media.

What if you are already an expert and have an established personal brand?

1. Keep going. Engage the communities and social media, share your knowledge.
2. Push your life-long learning, add to your personal knowledge. Write about your learning, it is one of the best ways to commit the new knowledge to long-term memory.
3. Continue to curate your shared knowledge across knowledge bases.
4. Be a guest blogger and seek out opportunities to write for popular sites.
5. Participate in online learning forums and MOOCs.
6. Don't forget that publishing is not only written. There are many ways to share; YouTube, Slideshare, Google Docs, Podcasts, etc... be sure to attach the correct keywords.
7. Tweet, Message, Promote... all good.

What if you want to alter your personal brand?

1. Saturate your network with the content (created and/or shared) aligned with your brand change.
2. Be very public with your learning toward the brand change. 
3. Publish your existing and growing expertise.
4. Participate as broadly as possible.
5. Find the related online communities, engage.
6. Curate the subjects within your this new subject domain.
7. Create and add valuable new content.

2. Begin a creative project or concept map about the subject domain

This where the work of learning within a new subject domain becomes increasingly fun. Begin a creative project centered around the word or concept that you have chosen as your domain of study. The project should be as fun and creative as you can imagine, or the project could be completely pragmatic and capture details of the learning journey. The main purpose is to fire-up the mind from many different perspectives in relation to the domain of study. The project should be able to grow and change through the full duration of your researching your subject domain. Essentially, the creative project becomes a personal learning portfolio that ties the project together. As you learn more about your chosen subject through your research, reading, creativity, play and discussion it is important that you add to your creative project. A few ideas for creative or pragmatic projects includes (but not limited to);

Build on your idea

• a daily or weekly diary about your subject
• an ever expanding concept map dedicated to your subject
• a learning portfolio with weekly updates
• a wall size collage with images, articles, writings
• the authoring poetry and songs
• a blog reflecting about your learning (include images, photos, references, etc.)
• create your own maker project with an accompanying video blog
• write a play of short story including your subject as a theme or character

The inclusion of the creative project is about play and creating rituals around your study. It really is about the play, about the broadness, and about the engagement. Learning should be about play, with an amount of discipline built in. Why play? Why broadness? Why engagement? Why discipline? Each of these attributes of your self-determined study has a rationale;

The play - is about enjoying what you are doing so you return to do it again and again. It is also about not allowing yourself to be restrained to follow up on related themes or threads within your chosen subject domain. It allows one to learn with reckless abandon, and to be at play.
The broadness - is about exploring the subject in its entirety and allowing yourself to follow-up with related, or seemingly unconnected, ideas and subjects you stumble upon as you deepen your understanding of the subject domain. It's important to remember that learning a subject domain is also about learning how the subject domain relates to others. When constructing knowledge review the learning in different contexts and against other subjects is an important part of learning. It deepens your understanding.
The engagement - is about reaching out to others with similar interests who can provide insight into your subject domain, or you could provide insight into their subject domain. This is about engaging the community or communities in and around your subject domain. It is about adding content, resources, opinions, value, energy, good-faith... its becoming a member of, and engaging, the community of experts who are all attracted to the same subject domain as yourself.

Where to engage? engagement can happen in many places, both online and off. It is strongly encouraged that you find a variety of places to meet with people who are also interested in your chosen domain of study. A list of places includes, and is not limited to;

• everywhere - seek out your peers and mentors, you will be surprised where you find them. Tell people what you are doing ask for assistance.
• online collaborative spaces - different subject communities hang out in different online spaces... find them!
• conferences - attend conferences on your chosen subject.
• the library - go to the library and hang out in the section related to your subject.
• at colleges and universities - yes, you can still learn by taking courses and hanging out with like minded people.
• social media - follow hashtags, join groups, engage in online discussions, find related RSS feeds.

The discipline - is about committing the time to exploring and playing within your chosen subject domain. It is about follow-through and completing tasks related to your understanding. Learning something in-depth takes effort, time and a deliberate practice. And don't think learning is any different because the subjects you have chosen are self-determined, mastery takes time and commitment. Some say mastery of any subject takes over 10000 hours, so be disciplined and enjoy yourself.

Creativity, fun and discipline will get you to finished when choosing to pursue self-determined learning. It will be the amount of personal commitment you make, and how much fun you find the subject and activities. What will it take for you to be attracted, on a regular basis, to study and spend time with your chosen subject domain. A creative project will assist greatly in being attracted to your subject, and it will open your approach to learning to being outside the traditional.

Related searches and references
Learning in depth
Learning portfolio
Maker faire
Learning through play

Narcissism and Presentism

This is an important video when describing curriculum development and how it could offer a journey out of the current culture of narcissism and presentism. I wanted to watch this video as reference to my post on "Personal Curriculum Mapping". It supported well my belief that it is important every individual be engaged in curriculum development. And from my perspective, the development of their own curriculum. I have embedded the video and included the main points that meant the most to me and my idea of personal curriculum mapping.


William Pinar "Allegories of the Present: Curriculum Development in a Culture of Narcissism and Presentism" from Tallinna Ülikool on Vimeo.

• Curriculum is mostly focused upon economy and society. In general, it is not localized to community needs. Most curriculum development is procedural and assessment focused.
• Curriculum development should encourage ongoing forms of intellectual engagement.
• Advanced capitalism has created an environment of narcissism and presentism. People have retreated from public life. People no longer engage with the past or future.
• Allegory (storytelling) provokes reflection and engagement to the past and future. It also is an internal and external journey as one will reflect internally to the history. Allegory stretches in many directions and allows individuals to find personal relation to the story. Study of history is important, it fits very well to allegory.
• Curriculum guidelines should be no more than guidelines. Teachers should have freedom to explore wherever their imaginations take them.
• Intellectual labor is also an emotional undertaking. Allegory allows for intellectual depth mediated by the learner.
• Allegory and analogy both connect the individual internally to external objects, events and other people. They connect people to the world. Contributing to curriculum development connects us to others, the past, present and future.
• Self-reflective understanding transforms the present.
• Move from curriculum standardization to curriculum differentiation. Working through the legacies of the past enables finding the future.
• Presentism. All that we have is now. One task follows another task. It erodes the lived links among originality, creativity, spontaneity, anger, risk-taking, excitement, pleasure, discomfort, anxiety, all of humanity.
• I don't want teachers to be the same, a good mix of people. We need teachers to be individuals. We need an intellectual differentiation.
• The tests that only make sense are those that are devised by the teachers for the particular class.
• Outcomes based curriculum are manipulative and too limiting, we want to keep the future open. It is the excitement of becoming educated.

My take away; distinctiveness of continents, nations, states, provinces, cities, municipalities, neighborhoods, families and individuals is good for humanity. Diversity will keep our knowledge base broadening. Curriculum development  needs to include the learner. It would connect the learner to the past, present and future of the subject domain when they have greater responsibility in creating the curriculum.

MUSIC 101: Ableton Live and the Pipe and Tabor

So I've been reflecting upon my learning of the pipe and tabor and how it has stalled in its progress. Not that I have stopped learning how to play the instrument for I believe my approach toward its mastery is also a big part of my learning. I have learned a number of important lessons, its just the lessons do not have me actually playing the instrument, what I have learned about is my approach to learning the instrument.

My lessons learned are as follows;

1. I need feedback. I need to also train my ear and it is difficult without any actual musical reference.
2. For me, learning the instrument is also in learning the songs, their melody, and lyrics (if available).
3. I need a quiet place to practice that won't disturb the family

My deliberate practice;

1. Get the Ableton based studio working with the new MIDI keyboard so I can listen to the songs on the piano, then play them on the pipe.
2. Be able to record my practice so I can listen, get feedback and train my ear. 
3. Use Abletone in Live mode where I could listen and play along, while also recording.
4. Iterate between playing the music on the piano and then playing it on the pipe.

Next Steps;

1. Finish configuring Ableton Live 8 to work with the new Oxygen 25 MIDI keyboard
2. Become proficient with Live 8 to record my sessions and listen live to my iterations between piano and pipe
3. Memorize the lyrics to "Go enlist for a sailor"

Learning Outcome(s);

1. I will be able to use a Digital Audio Workstation (Ableton) to record and playback the playing of a pipe and tabor while alternating this play with the MIDI keyboard.
2. I will be able to sing "Go enlist for a sailor" in its entirety (this does not mean I will be able to sing it well)

My Deliberate Practice

After my reading of "Talent is Overrated" I will be including a deliberate practice approach to my learning of the pipe and tabor. I will bring a more deliberate practice to much more of what I do. For the time being a deliberate practice will have me reflecting upon my learning where I focus upon what is holding me back. Until I have a foundation which to build upon I need to create my broad and stable base for my musical study. Keep in mind I should be considered a beginner musician. Many of my coming posts will be the writings about this deliberate reflection. My reflections will include;

1. recent lessons learned - a candid review of my most recent learnings
2. the actual practices - where I believe I need the most practice
3. next steps, and - what I am going to do to facilitate the practice
4. learning outcome(s) - the specific outcome(s) of my learning