A couple of months ago I discovered PRI’s Selected Shorts series of podcasts based on radio broadcasts of public readings of short stories by classic and contemporary authors. One of the first stories I listened to via my iPod was Joseph Conrad’s “Down to the Sea in Ships” — the initial description of a seaport absolutely bowled me over. I was hooked. I’ve subscribed to the series on iTunes ever since.
That’s one of the reasons I’m concerned about how President Obama’s proposed changes to Federal procurement rules might tip the scales even more in favor of the issuance of fixed price contracts in situations where insufficient detail on requirements and available budget aren’t readily available to potential bidders.

McKinney Interviews Cochran about First HP Pocket Scientific Calculator

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the podcast of Phil McKinney’s interview with David Cochran about Cochran’s involvement on the team at Hewlett-Packard (HP) that designed the first pocket scientific calculator. The situation was interesting from the standpoint of innovation management and luck.
In September 2006 I published The Justification of Enterprise Web 2.0 Project Expenditures. It examined differences between the cost justification of current information systems compared with cost justification of older systems. It discussed how some of the rules for calculating and thinking about technology related costs have changed.