Serendipity

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. I’m fortunate to have many opportunities for serendipity and to discover the joys and wonders of people, places, and things that oft are better than what I was seeking. Serendipity is one of my guiding principles… to better be in the moment and see, really see, what and who, is around me in that moment. The greater joy is indeed often in the random discovery. Oddly impatience seems to be both a barrier and enabler of serendipity… impatience provoking me to discovery with impatience simultaneously not giving me the pause necessary for discovery.

Thus ends my first month of blogging here… I hope to do more and collect more professional as well as personal thoughts storing them here as a place to share with myself in the future and others who may via ‘serendipity ‘ find some utility here.

XBRL public groups

I got this from Rob Ries at NASD... I'm subscribing to monitor.

XBRL Public group that I lurk on - it's http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/xbrl-public/. There are others, too - do a search for XBRL at http://groups.yahoo.com. Some major XBRL players are listening in on the xbrl-public group - you see postings by, for example, Charles Hoffman and other XBRL bigwigs

Shu Ha Ri

Learned an interesting concept today... Shu Ha Ria which is a Japanese martial arts concept related to learning.

Shu describes the beginner (and teacher) initially learning the fundamentals and basic techniques of a new concept - the initial rules of the road. 

Ha is mastery of the basics and the beginnings of learning the boundaries and limits of Shu (understanding the limits of rote learning) ... beginning to internalize understanding and stretch what has been learned. This stage reveals insight into how to really apply understanding.

RI is the concept of transcendence, to so understand the principles of the subject that your a true master. The mastery leads to connection to other masteries and profound insight.

 

An interesting aspect of this is in training and writing.. learning to address each audience - the Shu with the basics, the Ha with insights on how level II learners can see the limits of any approach and apply them creative to solutions and finally RI who understand the principles/concepts. In your daily experience you'll encounter people at each level and a good communicator will understand this and address each audiences need. Great training materials will address all three - the rote with clear, precise patterns to learn for the Shu, lessons to help the Ha grow and insight to share with the Ri to expand the boundaries of understanding.

Pandora

If you haven't tried it I highly recommend checking out Pandora.

It's a free Internet radio station that's unique in that it plays custom 'stations' you create. Simply enter a musician or song you like and it plays like tunes of that genre. Indicate songs you like/dislike and the station amazingly tweaks itself to a whole series of songs you'll love. Very cool. You can setup dozens (I believe 100) stations. Check it out!

Great RDF and OWL Resource

Found a great resource for learning more about Resource Definition Language (RDF) and OWL (Web Ontology Language.

These look like solutions to the limits of Schema. They take XML documents to the next level of semantic definition.

For more research...

Dave Beckett's site - http://planetrdf.com/guide/

Windows Live Writer test

I was looking for a simple off-line blogging tool and saw several good reviews of Windows Live Writer. So I downloaded it and am now trying it. It works well. It supports all the standard functionality, good spell check (necessary for me) and seems to supports Blogger well.

More after I use it for a while. If your using one you love let me know (and why?)

Beyond XSD

Another interest I have, which I hope to explore and ferret out here is whats beyond schema?

Schema (XSD) and it's instance documents XML are a tremendous improvement over flat file and unstructured data - providing a means of both easily extending (growing) a domain data model as well as making the elements of the data very granularly defined. But there are many limitations as well. Technologies like RDF and OWL look to be the logic next step in further enhancing an insurance information taxonomy that would allow all the consumers of insurance data (both within an enterprise as well as external) to more effectively and more accurately be able to share data. That's the goal, as I see it anyway, to make insurance information transparent and available where ever, whenever its needed.

So my question is how to proceed? First I need to document some findings and discoveries.

Reporting Insurance Information to the SEC using XBRL

At the recent NAVA Conference in Baltimore M.D., one of the presentations by Mike Willis from XBRL presented the idea of reporting insurance (variable) product data to the SEC using XBRL. Naturally as an industry we've already invested more than a decade developing an industry standard data model and dictionary through ACORD (the ACORD Life and Annuity Standards), and more recently the past six years we've developed a richly detailed Product Profile for Annuites (PPfA) specifications thru NAVA... so the question begins with how do we leverage what we've developed in PPfA to satisfy the requirements/needs of the SEC/NASD? Interesting question and one worth exploring.

The first... of a series of questions begins with:
* What information does the SEC want
* How much of that is in the current PPfA's
* How hard to add what's missing
* How about Life and other lines?
* How does this mesh into XBRL
* How does his link with efforts towards a semantic understanding of insurance data (RDF, OWL)

Notes on Software Product Lines

I wandered into the concept of "Software Product Lines" and am deeply intrigued.

It seems to be an evolutionary step beyond SOA or SOOS, to a means of developing software solutions with change, flexibility (aka versions) built into the design - treating the assets of a product from models, requirements, and other artifacts through to components in a designed (read: architected) manner to maximize the proverbial goal of reuse.

Some links I found from the onset:
The main site - hosted by Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/productlines/

Microsofts 'Software product Lines' approach via Software Factories
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/aa718951.aspx

Other links:
More readings on Microsofts appraoch to Software Product Line, Software Factories:
The case for Software Factories Part 1: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480032.aspx
Part 2 - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954817.aspx
Part 3 - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954811.aspx
Part 4 -

Use of Software Factories for HL7 (Could we do for ACORD Life Standards???)
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954602.aspx

Developing a Domain Specifc Language for An Service Oriented Archtecture (... in Insurance??)
The Avaneda Case Study - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb381702(vs.80).aspx


Insurance Case Studies:
Vital Forsikring ASA
Pension Insurance Provider Reduces Time-to-Market with Scalable Solution
- http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=49164