Messaging with Bluemix from Space - The final post #mq #messaging
The team from Imperial have just put together their final blog post and I wanted to share this with you. Messaging to the Edge of Space has been an epic journey, full of quite literal highs (ascending to 20 miles above the Earth) and some very worrying moments (when our probes parachute didn’t deploy and it very rapidly returned to Earth, stubbornly heading for a lake.)
The final word as always though, belongs to the engineers:
The Launch Part 3 – Epilogue
Every project has to end, and this will likely be the final post on our blog. It’ll contain a bunch of leftover pictures and media, along with final thoughts and thanks to all involved.
I think the best way to show the the journey, however, isn’t through my words, but through the IRC chat from experienced high altitude ballooners commenting on our mishaps:
Our payload had a bit of an accident
Silver linings
The next order of business is to show some pictures from our camera in space! The view up there really is something else, so here’s a selection of the best images we got back from the meteorite payload that never should have survived:
Next up are a few more pictures from launch, plus a great video kindly filmed and edited by Mark Barnard:
I’d like to end with some final thoughts on the project from a perspective after the fact. It’s been a difficult project that only succeeded due to the help from the community at UKHAS (who we cannot thank enough) and a whole lot of luck along the way. In addition, one person we haven’t mentioned enough so far is our supervisor at IBM, Jon McNamara. He’s the one who kick started this whole thing in the first place, and without his vision to try a project as audacious as this none of it would have been possible. During the project itself he was also incredibly helpful and easy to work with, and lent us a hand with so many bits and pieces that would have been completely overlooked otherwise. The payload is now proudly displayed, safe and sound,in his office.
Other shoutouts go to Steve Upton for giving us guidance on our software’s entire architecture; Jeremy Pitt for being understanding of the roadblocks we ran into along the way and being flexible with us; everyone else at IBM such as Dominic Bramley who set up the innovation room for us; and everyone else involved at Imperial for setting up the industrial link so that this could happen.
There was also talk of a deeper relationship between Imperial and IBM as a result of this project, one of the outcomes being access to Bluemix for students at Imperial. The main players in this discussion were Jon McNamara and Jeremy Pitt, who are people with an appreciation for the potential of technology to not only solve problems, but to inspire an audience to push for further advancement in innovation. Tech can be a bit dry and corporate at times, and one big take away from this project is that it doesn’t have to be; in fact it really shouldn’t be if at all possible. This project is a perfect example of this in action, with ideas for the future being thrown around as a result of the launch – hopefully the end result will be a jumping-off point for even more cool projects to come and show what’s possible in this technologically auspicious world.
When IBM first announced the Watson Developer Cloud in October of 2014, they unleashed the potential for developers around the world to tap into the cognitive power that Watson provides. Since this initial release, the number of apps utilizing Watson within Bluemix has exploded. We have seen apps leveraging Watson’s personality extraction capabilities for enhancing social engagement to apps combining speech detection to deliver interactive experiences. Out of all these applications, some of the most unique and innovative use cases have come out of hackathons, where the creative juices are always flowing. I want to highlight some of the great MVPs that have come out of only a few days of hacking with Bluemix and Watson.MVPs at IBM...Read MoreIBM Technical Rock Star Program
Yep - welcome to the 2nd Season of HursleyFM. On this the first episode we round up with tech news and feature a fun project called Edge of Space.
This goal of this project was to create a space probe, launch it, send telemetry back to earth and control the IBM Hursley Innovation center with the data (effecting lights, the floor movement etc).
Hey folks - check out our Matt Chapman and Mark Walters, two of our IBM Messaging developer gurus, giving an introduction to the new IBM MQ Console running on the new IBM MQ Appliance.
I've had the pleasure of working with these guys for years, particularly Mr Walters and these are two of the brightest and most fun guys to work with in the industry. A joy to be able to chat to them about the goodies they create.
This is a top gaming podcast - but certainly not for the faint of heart - or younger listeners.
An intelligent, engaging and often sophisticated conversation on gaming from all manner of perspectives.
A couple of episodes really stand out for me. The first is the crusade by one man to almost single handedly save a hugely significant portion of American gaming history. Its a great piece and lays out the story of a man who invests in vintage pinball and then opens up an arcade/museum for anyone and everyone to enjoy.
The second is the exploration of what happens when an online game world ends. Something that I hadnt really considered was that, aside from the gaming element - online gaming offers the ability to communicate and potentially strike up friendships with people from all over the world. Definitely worth a listen.
For most of us, who don't live the dream of working in a game studio, it's still quite rare that you hear those two subjects mentioned in the same sentence.
Although - little by little, the little ninja that is gaming culture is slowly but surely creeping its way into the workplace.
There looks to be an increasing subset of the brave and the bold that bestride both gaming and corporate culture who see value in mixing the two together. And so they have identified those practices that are used in gaming to keep players coming back and wanting to do better - (particularly in competitive on-line gaming) and are applying them to motivating employees in the work place.
And so the term 'gamification' has started to be heard more and more and sometimes even spoken by those who have no interest in gaming at all.
Some of the ways this has manifested, has been in the reward structures applied to the workplace and to problem solving. So for example - if you are pivotal to supporting the members of an online technical community - you may find you 'rank up' and are rewarded with very visible kudos. This of course is a powerful motivator, as it means that you are recognised across your industry for being an expert among your peers.
And who doesnt want that?
You will see an example of this in the very awesome www.Stackoverflow.com site.
Here's the thing though. Kudos is typically a very individual thing. 'Look what I've done' - as opposed to 'Look what we achieved together'. Which despite a fair amount of evidence to the contrary - isnt something that is openly encouraged by enlightened corporate culture. Often the corporate mantra is 'you can achieve more as a team - than you can alone'.
True.
But does the current model of gamification support team work - as opposed to individual success?
Do we see much in the way of team kudos applied to anything in the workplace within the scope of gamification?
Are we looking at the wrong games for our inspiration?
Take a peek at a recent iteration of Call of Duty
Here a player (in a team) individually dominates the game - and is rewarded (at an individual level) for his success by perk upon perk - ending in being rewarded with a very large plane descending upon his enemies, obliterating them and resulting in him winning the game and being the boss of everything.
- p.s I like COD im just making the point it can place a lot of emphasis on individual achievement as opposed to encouraging teamwork.
Ok so that was a prime example of typical gamification - 1 person does well - is rewarded and rewarded some more at an individual level. He will doubtless rank up and be regarded by his peers as a legend. But its not an outstanding example of teamwork.
Now have a look at this Battlefront 3 clip
If you can forgive the orgy of destruction, what you are looking for starts around the 40 sec mark. The clip consists of two people working together - one as the pilot of the helicopter and one as the gunner. At about 40 secs, the gunner removes an incoming threat in possibly the best example of teamplay I have ever witnessed in a game...worth viewing simply to appreciate the ability of the players.
The cool thing about this - although its not evident from the video, is that both players, the pilot and gunner are rewarded for their achievements, no matter who actually takes the final shot. Compare that to traditional competitive FPS, where you will often be left shaking a fist at a team mate for 'stealing' your kill (and your points).
So whats the moral of the story? Apart from leaping out of attack helicopters and taking out jets with a rocket launcher is a really cool thing to do.
Is it possible that the next evolution of gamification in the workplace follows a similar path? That rather than only rewarding individual performance we change the game to reward team achievements in the workplace. We find a way to recognise the skill and commitment of the individual, but we realise it in the context of the team achievement in completing the overall goal successfully.
Battlefront 3 has done this remarkably well in the extremely competitive arena of online fps. Can we apply the same model to the workplace?
I like games. I've been playing them since forever, and I've never really stopped.
As the technology has changed, the medium I've played in has changed over the years too. From a child running around playing hide and seek, to board games, to Space Invaders and on to the Spectrum (48k for those that remember) and on to swathe of popular consoles such as the Sega's, Nintendo 64's and the first Playstation, then to PC's.
Then finally, the advent of online games...
Boom! That was me sucked in and lost forever. Off with me to the worlds of Project Gotham, Counter-strike, Battlefield, Dirt, Gran Turismo, Halo, and countless others. And for the largest part, I never really gave a moments thought about examining what it was that kept me coming back for more.
But, over the past few years I started to look a little more carefully at what makes gaming so engaging. What is it that keeps you motivated to improve your skills, work better with your team, think harder about how you can all Capture the Flag together?
And that inescapable feeling of "I'll just try one more time..."
Here's the thing that I find interesting. The principles behind good game design encourage the players to improve their skill, their teamwork, their collaborative planning and their joint persistence in achieving a shared goal.
So, can these principles be applied to other areas, such as say - work?
In a way, some have already been applied. As long as recognition for individuals and their achievements in the workplace has existed, so has 'Gamification' - the method of employing game mechanics to encourage productivity. Albeit unwittingly.
But, traditionally its always been at a fairly rudimentary level, such as individuals achieving and amassing points/scores/kudos. The totted up score results in metaphoric pats to the head for those individuals that are perceived do well, and less happy metaphorical experiences for those individuals that are not.
Here's the good news. Business/work focused collaboration tools are following where gaming technology has led. We now have the ability to collaborate, share ideas and effort in the achievement of a business goal, as opposed to Capturing a Flag. And many forward looking organisations are actively looking to implement these tools and encourage employees to use them, both internally using things like IBM Connections, as well as externally, like Twitter/LinkdIn etc.
But here is the dichotomy, and the sound of the other shoe dropping. Typical organisations that seek to look to the future and implement these social tools, will be enabling and encouraging employees to collaborate together as a fluid team as never before, in the achievement of each others goals. Resulting in a collective WIN! for the organisation.
However, the culture of recognising those achievements, is still going to be lagging behind, and focused at an individual level. Where each individuals achievements will be totted up and compared to all the other individual scores on the big work scoreboard, in a very large, very real competition.
So on the one hand we have the tools and the need to change the culture of large organisations to encourage collaboration between individuals, in the achievement of each others goals, for the collective good of the organisation. But on the other, the recognition of those same achievements will be focused at the individual level, with competition to drive each individual to have more achievements than anyone else.
How does that work?
The difference becomes even more apparent if we try a thought experiment. Say we popped into a time machine and went back a couple of thousand years to Rome, back when corporate culture was first born. We then managed to corner an employee of a corporation and tried to explain all the ways that in the 21st century, employees could collaborate together to collectively achieve goals at work. It would sound like magic, and that's if they were even able to grasp the fundamental concepts. But if you explained how corporate culture recognised those achievements, he would probably say 'Yeah. Same thing happens where I work chief'.
There does seem to be a bit of a gap between the way corporate culture encourages employees to achieve goals and the way in which it recognises and rewards them.
To be far this gap also existed in gaming (and in some cases still does) when online collaborative games first appeared. In fact, the problem was spookily similar. Let's say we have an online game between two teams. The goal of each team, is to defend/attack a position that is held by the opposing team. To achieve this goal, the members of each team should work together seamlessly, which they do using the collaborative tools they have at their disposal. Here is the problem, a term phrased as Kill Stealing.
Check it out. Sound familiar?
Effectively, it's where a sub-group within a team end up working together (by chance or design) to bring down a single enemy, but because of the poor game recognition system, only one of the group will end up being rewarded for doing so. This gap between achievement and recognition, led to all sorts of problems. Gamers who despite being on the same team, would effectively work in isolation , or worse still, some gamers would even keep tabs on other team members (using the collaborative tools), and choose the right moment to swoop in and steal their kill (and the achievement) at the last second. At the end of the game, all the players scores where totted up and ranked with kudos and praised bestowed upon the high ranking players and loserdom bestowed upon lower ranking ones.
So, how can the workplace game model evolve in the same way that the online game model did? Wouldn't be great if organisations could learn from the lessons from the gaming community, and benefit from the productivity and creativity that our technologically accellerated social culture brings?
Well, in the same way that gamers defined what the problem was in their community and then crucially defined solutions to solve it, maybe large organisations can follow suit? So, instead of large scale culture change being pushed top down (which often has less than awesome consequences), the gamers (employees) attempt to nudge in organic changes the culture themselves.
For example. Next week at work we are having some collective fun in the guise of a project to help our gamers become more familiar with tools that will help make life a bit easier. To drive it, we are using the vehicle of a game, along with all of its mechanics with prizes and rewards and kudos. The difference is, that we are actively encouraging collaboration with each other. Encourage and recognise the creation and promotion of information that will help others complete the game, rewarding those that enable others, no matter who actually finishes first or last.
Effectively, we will be solving a 'crime' and rewarding those that identify the perpetrator, but with the focus on collaboration and sharing of information. So if you are new to the game, pick up handy hints from others and achieve the result quickly, more power to you. If you are one of those who created the content, that enabled the others to achieve the goal quickly by sharing on forums, blog posts and status updates...well you're awesome and you will be seen for being just that.
It's a largish type of 'game', and it goes on for two weeks. I'll let you know how it turns out.
In the last blog entry I chatted about an upcoming experiment at work using gamification, to encourage adoption and education on some cool collaboration tools.
The scope of participation was meant to be contained withing the IBM Labs of UK and Ireland, but by the end of the two week game, we had gamers playing from the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Denmark, out to India, across to the USA and all the way round the world to Australia, with participants numbering in the hundreds, with folk still joining and playing even though the 'event' is concluded.
So it looks like this gamification thing is a winner!
From a purely practical point of view - it was surprisingly resource light, especially when you compare it to traditional education methods, If you have ever developed a piece of education in the form of a workshop, you know how time intensive the creation/preparation can be. Then comes the delivery of the education itself - another very labour intensive activity. Add to that the need to deliver in multiple geographic locations, with all of the cost of travel, logistics, time...brrr.... The gamification model begins to look like a very attractive alternative.
So all in all, an extremely positive experience, which has caught the imagination of quite a few people in the organisation. There is the definite opportunity to replicate in other areas, for example, applying gamification to testing and development as well as education.
Looks like we have some subsequent irons in the fire....
More soon :)
In the meantime meet Dr Redshirt and the 'gang'...
But, it happened nevertheless. I can witness. I was there. In fact, I was one of the brave souls that kicked it off in the first place. And you know what? It was hilarious. Rarely have I met so many great people, been so inspired by innovation, had so much fun. So, before I forget, if you are thinking of organising one of these bad boys, be prepared for some hard graft, but also be prepared to be astonished by the people you work with, and the people you have yet to meet in the execution of this activity.
So what was this Hackathon thing we did? And why did we do it? Did it end without injury?
Well, before we get to the Hackathon, a bit of background. One of the nice things about working in Hursley, is that we often get the chance to try out 'stuff'. A little while back we had a play with using gamification as to tool to educate large volumes of people on the use of software.
That was tremendous fun. The education 'entity' took a life of its own and escaped beyond Hursley. It spread out over a number of countries, eventually even reaching Australia. It's still going strong now, moving, growing virally, happily educating thousands of IBMers all over the place.
Well, that was a while ago, and it was time for something new to play with.
So, back end of last year I was looking at ways of creating collateral that developers outside of IBM would find engaging and fun. We wanted to encourage technical people to play with our toys, let us know what they thought. We really wanted to engage with the external developer community. Also, I had been inspired by a number of Dev meetups that had been orchestrated by the epic James Governor, namely Monkigras, Thingmonk and ever so recently, Monkigras again.
I loved them.
Rarely had I had so much fun. Especially at Thingmonk. It was such a fantastic format. I played with wonderful contraptions, made them do things like bleep, flash and send tweets, while hooking them up to MQTT, NodeRed and MessageSight. Then we listened to some inspirational stories about how this tech' was used to solve real world problems. And of course we consumed lots and lots of wonderful food and drank weird and wonderful things. Most importantly though, I was able to chat to developers about the things they were up to and the problems they were trying to solve. And how they were solving them.
So as a result, I was very much inspired.
I am also very fortunate that my job brings me into contact with some truly epic people. I was chatting with Ben Mann (who runs a blog 'a desk in Hursley'), Joshua Carr, James Bennet and Nick Downs over a coffee, after our top trip to ThingMonk.
"Why dont we do a Hackathon?", says I, " Our developers would compete to create innovative and fun collateral with our software. And external developers can reuse it to solve problems and have fun too."
I began to stare off into the middle distance...
"In fact, we could have a multi-Lab hackathon, get all the IBM locations in the UK and Ireland to join in. It will be great!", I said - still in post Thinkmonk euphoria mode. "Hoorah!" we collectively cried. And that was that.
The next day, the reality of the situation dawned. I needed to create a Hackathon and it was going to involve lots of IBM locations all over the UK and Ireland. I wonder how you do that?
I was chatting over the events that had led to this question, to a coffee drinking buddy, the awesome Emma Lewis, plots were hatched, plans were forged and before we knew it...
The Great Cluster Code-Off was born!
It was to be a hackathon between anyone and everyone who heeded the call in the IBM UK and Ireland. Although I now had the ability via Emma to reach the Labs in our Geo - I needed to actually create the event itself.
Firstly, we needed a theme. I put a shout out. "What about a Robopocalypse?", someone cried. Everyone seemed to like that. "But what about Zombies?", someone else cried. Everyone seemed to like that too.
We now had two themes. Robopocalypse and a Zombiepocalypse. We decided, in the interest of engaging as many people as possible, that we should keep both of them. Anyone who wasn't utterly charmed by the idea of either fending off a Robopocalypse, or a Zombiepocalypse, wasn't someone, in our opinion, who had any interest being a developer.
So, after creating a community using Connections, we announced the theme(s), the technologies to be used (MQTT, NodeRed and MessageSight) and set a date. I then sat back and wondered if anyone would be interested. We didn't have to wait long. After a couple of days the entries started to pour in. Team after team, submitted promising projects! I breathed the enormous sigh of the unbelievably relieved...
And the battle commenced.
The hackathon was to take place over the course of a few weeks, culminating in a day of demonstrations of the finished projects to a crew of motley hardbitten judges from the world of messaging. Those remote from Hursley would demonstrate their goodies via Google Hangout (I really like that technology) and be judged according to a set criteria.
a. Innovation
b. Use of technologies
c. Ease of replication
d. Fun
The demonstration 'Day of Judgement' was hectic, with last minute preparation and getting folk setup as they arrived. All being professionals, the competitors were pretty relaxed and ready to have judgement administered upon them. I ran about for most of the day, ensuring everyone had everything they needed. Some lessons learned of course. Don't do a Google Hangout, in a very busy room full of loud people doing demonstrations, with an omnidirectional microphone. Also, when a large proportion of the entrants had a mobile app' element - ensure your location has decent mobile data reception. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
So how did it go? Well, to borrow a phrase, it very much went all right on the night.
The first team - The Big Blue Line, did a really cool point-to-point race app, which allowed anyone to view progress via Google Maps. Presumably, to help us evade detection by the hordes of Robots.
Here is a video of the app being demonstrated...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4l1Rea5HYA
and here is a piccie of the team talking through the imminent Robopocalypse and their means to defend us against it, to Messaging Director Gerry Reilly.
A team from York (The Soggy Bottoms!), submitted a fitness app' entry which used MQTT, IBM MessageSight and NodeRed, and was very reminiscent of Ridge Racer from the mid 90's. Do you remember the racer, where you competed against the ghost car of the person who did the fastest lap? Well, the app was similar to that, it allowed cyclists to race against each others times on a certain route. The app would display a 'ghost' of the other cyclists to beat, and show your pace along side theirs. Awesome stuff. And clearly, the team had our best interests at heart, by keeping us fit enough to deal with whatever the Robo/Zombiepocalypse threw at us. :)
Here is a video of their amazing fitness app... which held an honourable third place in our hackathon!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFQoZSd-uP8
Way up in Aberdeen, a team from CICS constructed an epic entry using an arduino as well as MQTT, and MessageSight. Here the awesome Andy Armstrong put together a device which provided an early warning system (clearly useful in a Robo/Zombiepocalypse) which in this case was focused on monitoring his build system. Here is a video of the man in action, talking about his entry...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkm2sgHQ0jo
Now, we come to the entry that took second place in The Great Cluster Code Off. Here was a true Robopocalypse device! The Mostly Armless team had created a fully instrumented arm, which was sensored up to the hilt to provide feedback on its movements, while allowing anyone to control it with a simple web/mobile interface.
It's other use (the primary one being for the Robopocalypse) was to help teach kids to code. A hugely laudable goal!
Here is a video of the arm in action...check out the funky soundtrack.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhD4_aNojxs
This project brought crowds of people - from new, wide eyed starters to IBM all the way to the new Hursley Lab Leader Rob Lamb
We come now to the winners of the competition - pipping The Mostly Armless team by only six points to the finish, The Something, Something, Liberty team!
Here the team used MQTT, NodeRed, IBM MessageSight and Liberty to devise a mobile and virtual paintball game (clearly to sharpen our reflexes for the robot onslaught). Here is the video that shows how its played...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a-qYNdkHxY
And the response was awesome! Here are a few piccies of the delighted judges, along side Alex Pringle and Liz Maple
More delight...this time featuring Gary Chapman, Dave Waddling, Alex Pringle alongside Rob Lamb
A great day! Now, as soon as the teams are rewarded and loved, the collateral from this awesome hackathon will soon be made available via DevWorks and the IBM Messaging GitHub pages (yes, thats new...more on that soon!)
You will be able to download the technologies, the projects, start playing and constructing your own apps in no time.
The next order of business is to show some pictures from our camera in space! The view up there really is something else, so here’s a selection of the best images we got back from the meteorite payload that never should have survived:
Next up are a few more pictures from launch, plus a great video kindly filmed and edited by Mark Barnard:
