تاریخچه مختصری از شیرپوینت (از دیدگاه یک تازه وارد نسبی)

یادداشت: این مقاله در ابتدا به ارسال شده www.endusersharepoint.com. یادم رفت تو وبلاگ خودم پست کنم 🙂

شیرپوینت یک معامله بزرگ از روزهای اولیه خود را به عنوان نوعی از تکنولوژی انکوباسیون در مایکروسافت تکامل یافته –آن را تقریبا مانند یک فیلم ترسناک تکامل یافته, که در آن ایجاد دانشمند دیوانه طول می کشد در زندگی خود, breaking free of its creator’s expectations and rules. The technical evolution is obvious – the WSS 3.0 مدل شی غنی تر و پیچیده تر از WSS 2.0, which was itself an improvement over earlier versions. The next version will no doubt show tremendous improvement over 3.0. From an End User’s perspective, اما, تکامل شیرپوینت است و حتی بیشتر قابل توجه است.

در روزهای اولیه, SharePoint didn’t offer much to End Users. They would have their usual functionality requirements, work with IT to define them well and implement a solution. IT would use SharePoint to solve the problem. The product wasn’t very accessible to End Users. I’ve thought threw a few analogies, but I decided to stick Venn Diagrams to show what I mean. When Microsoft first released SharePoint to the world as a commercial offering, به دنبال یک الگوی نسبتا سنتی از پایان این کاربر <-> IT relationship. A lot of End Users, برقراری ارتباط و کار با تعداد بسیار کمی از این افراد به ارائه راه حل هایی که در حل مشکلات کسب و کار:

دامنه مشکل کلی که شیرپوینت یک پلت فرم تحویل مناسب است کوچک است (especially compared to today’s SharePoint. End Users and IT worked in a more classic arrangement with IT: تعریف نیاز به IT, صبر کنید برای انجام آن کار خود را در پشت پرده و تحویل محصول نهایی.

به عنوان شیرپوینت به تکامل 2.0 جهان (WSS 2.0 و شیرپوینت پورتال سرور), several things happened. اولین, the “problem domain” increased in size. By problem domain, I mean the kinds of business problems for which SharePoint could be a viable solution. مثلا, شما که فکر می کنم بیش از حد سخت نیست در مورد پیاده سازی یک راه حل جستجوی جدی در محیط شیرپوینت تا SPS (و حتی پس از آن, آن را به عنوان خوب به عنوان آن نیاز به). در همان زمان, پایان دادن به کاربران این توانایی بی سابقه نه تنها تعریف, but also implement their own solutions with little or no IT support.

The 3.0 بستر های نرم افزاری (WSS و MOSS) maintained and increased that momentum. The problem domain is enormous as compared to the 2.0 بستر های نرم افزاری. Virtually every department in a company, اعم از بهداشت تولید و بخش های ایمنی به بازاریابی, از فروش به کنترل کیفیت - آنها می توانند مورد استفاده مناسب برای شیرپوینت (و آن را یک مورد از mashing میخ گرد را به یک سوراخ مربع نیست). در همان زمان, the platform empowers even more End Users to implement their own business solutions. I try to capture that with this diagram:

This has proven to be both a potent and frustrating mixture. The 3.0 platform turns previously stable roles on their heads. Suddenly, کاربران نهایی به طور موثر هستند قاضی, هیئت منصفه و جلاد تحلیلگر کسب و کار, application architect and developer for their own business solutions. This gets to the heart of the problem I’m writing about. But before I dive into that, اجازه دهید از فیل در اتاق در نظر.

مشابه به توپ کریستال

چگونه شیرپوینت 2010 این الگو را تحت تاثیر قرار دهد? Will it be incremental or revolutionary? Will more, کمتر یا در حدود همان تعداد از کاربران نهایی خود را پیدا کنید قدرت برای ایجاد راه حل ها در شیرپوینت 2010? Will SharePoint 2010’s problem domain expand even further or will it just refine and streamline what it already offers in WSS 3.0 / خزه?

اطلاعات به اندازه کافی وجود دارد خارج وجود دارد "با خیال راحت می گویند که پاسخ کلی این است:

• The problem domain is going to dramatically expand.
• کاربران نهایی خود را حتی بیشتر قدرت پیدا کردن نسبت به قبل.

The Venn Diagram would be larger than this page and cause some IT Pros and CxO’s to reach for their Pepto.

I believe it’s going to be a tremendous opportunity for companies to do some truly transformational things.

هیچ بولز در من فروشگاه چین!

این برای تلفن های موبایل بزرگ, اما از نقطه نظر من به عنوان یک مشاور شیرپوینت و قرار دادن خودم به کفش از یک مدیر فناوری اطلاعات, I see this vision. I own a China shop with beautiful plates, کریستال, غیره (محیط شیرپوینت من). I’ve rented a space, I’ve purchased my inventory and laid it all out the way I like it. I’m not quite ready to open, اما در پیش بینی, I look at the door to see if my customers are lining up and I notice an actual bull out there. I look more closely and I actually see دو bulls and even a wolf. Then I notice that there are some sheep. Sheep are پس بد, اما آنها شاید مبدل گرگ? I don’t want bulls in my china shop!

بدتر می شود! When I rented the space, I couldn’t believe how nice it was. Wide and open, امکانات فوق العاده, very reasonable price. اما, در حال حاضر من درک که فضاهای باز گسترده و درب بزرگ است کاملا برای یک گاو نر به اندازه آمدن سرگردان در و ذخیره کردن زباله به چین من.

من هل دادن این قیاس بیش از حد, البته. End Users are not bulls (بسیاری از آنها را به, در هر صورت) و بخش فناوری اطلاعات نمی کنند (یا قطعا نباید) view their user community with that kind of suspicion. اما, این نوع از برخورد کامل در نظر گرفتن محل در حال حاضر را در وجود دارد 3.0 platform that I expect will only get worse in SP 2010. SharePoint already empowers and encourages End Users to define and implement their own solutions.

فوق العاده است و همه, اما واقعیت این است که هنوز یک محصول بسیار فنی و هنوز هم خواستار نوع شدید تجزیه و تحلیل مورد نیاز کسب و کار, design and general planning and management that technical projects require to be successful. These are not the kind of skills that a lot of End Users have in their bag of tricks, especially when the focus is on a technical product like SharePoint.

I’ve given this a lot of thought over the last year or so and I don’t see any easy answer. It really boils down to education and training. I think that SP 2010 رفتن به تغییر این بازی، کمی و آن را به بازی متفاوت و در حرکت آهسته به عنوان شرکت رول SP خود را 2010 راه حل های بیش از 2010 and beyond. In order to succeed, End Users will need to transform themselves and get a little IT religion. They’ll need to learn a little bit about proper requirements
analysis. They will need some design documentation that clearly identifies business process workflow, مثلا. They need to understand fundamental concepts like CRUD (ساختن, به روز رسانی و حذف), توسعه تمدن / آزمون / QA / بر انگیختن محیط و نحوه استفاده از آن زیرساخت به درستی استقرار راه حل هایی که زندگی می کنند مدت زمان طولانی خوب و خم (شکستن نیست) در پاسخ به تغییرات در سازمان.

در هفته های آینده, من قصد دارم به تلاش و ارائه برخی از ایده های جدید خود من, و همچنین لینک به کار بزرگ انجام شده توسط بسیاری از نویسندگان دیگر (بر www.endusersharepoint.com و در جای دیگر) so that interested End Users can learn that old time IT religion. Keep tuned.

</پایان>

مشترک شدن در وبلاگ من.

من در توییتر در http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

[یادداشت: This article cross-posted to پایان کاربری شیرپوینت اینجا: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2009/09/09/sharepoint-a-case-study-in-ask-the-expert/]

Sometimes, when you’re working as a consultant (as a profession, or in a consultative role within your company), you find yourself living in an Onion story. The Onion has a series of articles called “Ask an [expert] در حدود [some problem]". This follows the famous “Dear Abby” format where a concerned person is asking for personal advice. The onion’s “expert”, اما, is so focused on his/her area of expertise and current problems that the expert ignores the question entirely and rambles on about his area of expertise. As consultants, we need to keep that in mind all the time and avoid falling into that trap. It’s classically described like this – “when you use a hammer all day long to solve your problems, everything starts to look like a nail.” We professional consultants are always on guard against that kind of thing, but we come into contact with people who are serious professionals in their own role, but are not consultants. They don’t have the same need or training to do otherwise.

هفته گذشته, I wrote about one of my company’s clients and an on-going project we have to enable high quality collaboration between various eye doctors in the US and Canada performing clinical research on rare disease. In addition to leveraging core SharePoint features to enable that collaboration, we’re also working an expense submission and approval process. It’s complicated because we have so many actors:

• A handful of individuals at different doctors’ practices who can enter expenses on line.
  • There are over 40 doctors’ practices.
  • At some practices, the doctor uses the system directly.
  • At many practices, the doctor’s staff uses the system directly.
• A financial administrator (who works for my direct client) who reviews the expenses for accuracy and relevancy, approving or denying them at the organizational level.
• A 3rd party accounts payable group. These people pay all of the bills for out client, not just bills coming out of the rare disease study.

The Accounts Payable group has been a challenge. Working with them yesterday reminded me of the Onion series. In my role as business consultant, I explained the need to the accounts payable company:

• Clinical studies sites (doctors’ practices) incur study-related expenses.
• They log onto the “web site” and enter their expenses using an online form. در این مورد, the “web site” is hosted with SharePoint and the expenses are entered into an InfoPath form. Expense receipts are scanned, uploaded and attached directly to the form.
• An automated workflow process seeks approval from the appropriate financial administrator.
• You, dear 3rd party AP company – please review and approve or deny this expense. I’ll send it to you any way that you want (within reason).At this point in the discussion, I don’t really care how it needs to be bundled. I want to work with the AP group to understand what they need and want.

When I explained the need, the 3rd party took a deep dive into their internal mumbo jumbo lingo about expense approval processes, Oracle codes, vice presidential signatures, 90 day turn-arounds, غیره. And panic. I shouldn’t forget about the panic. One of the bed rock requirements of the consulting profession is to learn how to communicate with people like that who are themselves not trained or necessarily feel a need to do the same. Among other things, it’s one of the best parts of being a consultant. You get to enter a world populated with business people with completely different perspectives. I imagine it’s a little bit like entering the mind of a serial killer, except that you aren’t ruined for life after the experience (اگرچه ورود به ذهن یک مدیر AP پیاده روی در پارک نیست 🙂 [see important note below***] ).

One of the great things about our technical world as SharePoint people is that we have ready-made answers to many of the very valid concerns that people such as my AP contact have. Is it secure? How do I know that the expense was properly vetted? Can I, as the final payer, see all the details of the expense? How do I do that? What if I look at those details and don’t approve of them? Can I reject them? What happens if the organization changes and the original approver is no longer around? Can we easily change the process to reflect changes in the system? Can I revisit this expense a year later if and when I get audited and need to defend the payment?

As SharePoint people, we can see how to answer those questions. In my client’s case, we answer them more or less like this:

• InfoPath form to allow sites to record their expenses and submit them for approval.
• Sites can return to the site to view the status of their expense report at any time.
• As significant events occur (e.g. the expense is approved and submitted for payment), the system proactively notifies them by email.
• The system notifies the financial administrator once a report has been submitted for approval.
• Financial administrator approves or denies the request.
• Upon approval, the expense is bundled up into an email and sent to the 3rd party payer organization.
• The 3rd party payer has all the information they need to review the expense and can access the SharePoint environment to dig into the details (primarily audit history to verify the “truth” of the expenses).
• 3rd party payer can approve or reject the payment using their own internal process. They record that outcome back in the SharePoint site (which triggers an email notification to appropriate people).
• In future, it would be nice to cut out this stilly email process and instead feed the expense information directly into their system.

In conclusion, there’s a life style here that I describe from the professional consultant’s point of view, but which applies almost equally to full time employees in a BA and/or power user role. Work patiently with the experts in your company and extract the core business requirements as best you can. With a deep understanding of SharePoint features and functions to draw upon, more often than not, you’ll be able to answer concerns and offer ways to improve everyone’s work day leveraging core SharePoint features.

***Important note: I really don’t mean to compare AP people to serial killers. اما, I could probably name some AP pro’s who have probably wished they could get a restraining order against me stalking them and asking over and over again. “Where’s my check?” “Where’s my check?” “Where’s my check?"

</پایان>

مشترک شدن در وبلاگ من.

من در توییتر در http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

[یادداشت: this blog post is cross posted at Mark Miller’s site here: HTTP://www.endusersharepoint.com/?p=1897]

One of my company’s more unusual clients is a New York City doctor who is a leader in his particular field of medicine (eye care). Like many doctors, he has a strong interest in research. He wanted to do some research on a rare eye disorder that affects a relatively small number of people in the U.S. and Canada. I don’t know the number, but it’s really too small for a large pharmaceutical company to invest its own private funds with an eye toward eventual commercial success. I’m sure large pharma’s do some amount of research into rare diseases, but I believe that the U.S. government is probably the largest source of funding. Like anything, resources are scarce. Many doctors across the country want to perform research and trials. به عنوان یک نتیجه, there’s more than a little competition for that government funding. This is where my company and SharePoint enter the picture.

The fundamental idea is that a master organization will recruit other doctors across the country and enlist those doctors’ practices in a particular research study. These individual practices must sign up with the master organization and then, subsequently, sign up for a particular study. The relationships look like this:

• One master organization.
• Many different doctor’s practices sign up with the master organization.
• The master organization obtains funding for individual studies. At the outset, there is just the one study on a specific rare eye disease although we’re already ramping up for another study.
• Individual doctors’ practices sign up for specific studies. A specific practice could sign up for one or multiple studies.

The master organization itself is broken down into groups:

• Executive committee
• Steering committee
• Individual study committees
• Administration
• others

سرانجام, when a specific doctor’s practice signs up to participate in a study, they need to provide professionals to fulfill a variety of roles:

• Investigators (including a primary investigator, normally a doctor, along with one or more additional investigators)
• Coordinators
• Technicians
• Grants administrators
• others

The above roles have very specific and highly proscribed roles that vary by study. I won’t get into more detail here, but if you’re interested, leave a comment or ایمیل من.

And now I can answer the question, SharePoint – What’s it good for? The answer – it’s really good for this scenario.

This intro is already longer than I expected, so I’ll summarize the vital role that SharePoint plays in the solution and dive into details in a future article (if you can’t wait, ایمیل من or leave a comment and I’ll be happy to discuss and maybe even try to do a demo). We are leveraging a wide array of SharePoint features to support this concept:

• Sites for committees, individual roles (coordinator sites, investigator sites, غیره).
• Security to make sure that different practices don’t see other practices’ data.
• InfoPath forms services for online form entry. This is a particularly big win. به طور معمول, these difficult forms are printed, mailed to the practices, filled out and mailed back. The advantages to the online forms are obvious. They do introduce some complexities (licensing and human) but that’s another story.
• Out of the box web parts, like announcements (when does committee [X] meet?) and meeting work spaces.
• Forms based authentication in combination with a CodePlex tool to provide self-registration and password forget features.
• Customized lists and list views for visibility into study activities which simply aren’t possible with pure paper and pencil approaches.

With the exception of the forms based authentication module and a handful of InfoPath forms, this project is using nearly all out of the box SharePoint functionality.

Before I wrap up this min-case study, I want to point out something very important – no on involved with this project (aside from my company of course) has any idea that a thing called “SharePoint” is playing such a fundamental technical role. Nearly all of my end users view this as “the web site.” Our client values us because we’re solving their business problem. SharePoint is a great technical blob of goodness, but done right, that’s irrelevant to end users. They need a problem solved, not a wonderful blob of technology.

</پایان>

مشترک شدن در وبلاگ من.

من در توییتر در http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

یا آن را فقط به من? I’ve received three or four calls at my house since late September looking for SharePoint work. I’m used to the email solicitations, but these phone calls are a little unnerving. I haven’t had an updated resume on a job site I(like Monster pr Dice) since almost two years ago exactly. And back then, my resume was all about BizTalk and MS CRM. That’s the only place my phone number appears on line anywhere, تا آنجا که من می دانم.

</پایان>

مشترک شدن در وبلاگ من.

من در توییتر در http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

بسته شدن فکر در این غیر این صورت مقاله کسل کننده به خوبی به مشکلات ما اغلب در جامعه فنی روبرو هستند صحبت می کند:

"Such dreary developments, پیش بینی با اطمینان, باید فلسفی متحمل."

This puts me in mind of one of the presentations I gave at the SharePoint Best Practices conference last month. I was describing how to get "great" مورد نیاز کسب و کار و یکی از مخاطبین خواسته, در اثر, what to do if circumstances are such that it’s impossible to get great requirements. مثلا, فرهنگ یک شرکت داده شده آن را در مقابل جمع از الزامات / تحلیلگر کسب و کار, preventing direct communication with end users. This is a serious impediment to obtaining great business requirements. My answer was "walk away." I’m not a big humorist, so I was surprised at how funny this was to the audience. اما, I’m serious about this. If you can’t get good requirements, you can be certain that a dreary outcome will result. Who wants that? I’m a consultant, بنابراین آن را واقع بینانه تر (اگر چه وحشتناکی دردناک و شدید) for me to walk away. اما, اگر شما در یک شرکت تثبیت شده و نمی خواهید به, و یا نمی توانند, راه رفتن به دور, جورج (برای یک بار 🙂 ) راه را نشان می دهد.

</پایان>

مشترک شدن در وبلاگ من.

من در توییتر در http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

How often does this happen to you? I’m sitting at my laptop, reading blogs, responding to forum postings, 2 copies of visual studio open and VPN’d out to another server with its own visual studio + 15 browser windows (a typical day) and someone named Samantha (my wife, apparently) tells me, "We have be there in 30 دقیقه. Get dressed."

I get up in a daze, wander around the house confusedly, get in a car and next thing I know, I’m at a party with a beer in my hand and someone asks me, "So, what do you do for a living?"

These conversations never go well.

به من: "Ahh … I’m a solutions architect for EMC."

Nameless Person: blank stare

به من: "I work with a product called SharePoint … it’s from Microsoft."

NP: "Aha! I’ve heard of that company! What is SharePoint?"

به من: "Umm … it does collaboration … people use it to share information … It’s a platform for building busines sol…"

NP: Eyes glazing.

به من: "I’m a programmer."

NP: "Aha! I know people in my company that do programming! When I was in high school, I played around with BASIC."

And with that part of the conversation over, we turn to something easier to talk about, like politics.

Anyone care to describe how they handle this?

</پایان>

مشترک شدن در وبلاگ من.

I’ve been in classes these past two weeks and one thing that strikes me is that there are a lot of thoughtful, smart people working on SharePoint (as consultants or IT staff) who don’t blog, توییتر, seem aware of public message boards like MSDN forum or SharePoint University, maintain Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, غیره. They are pure information consumers. Not bad, just interesting.

</پایان>

مشترک شدن در وبلاگ من.

دسته سال پیش, my boss asked me to train some users on a product called Results. Results is an end user reporting tool. It’s roughly analogous to SQL Server Reporting Service or Crystal. در آن زمان, آن را به اجرا در لوله های سبز طراحی شده است (e.g. عین 50 پایانه) connected to a Unix box via telnet.

My default answer to any question that starts with "Can you … " is "Yes" و این جایی است که مشکل آغاز شده.

مشتری یک شرکت شیمیایی در جنوب کالیفرنیا بود و فقط در مورد پیچیده پیاده سازی ERP بزرگ بر اساس QAD MFG/PRO. The implementation plan now called for training power end users on the Results product.

I wasn’t a big user of this tool and had certainly never trained anyone before. اما, من تعدادی از کلاس های آموزشی دیگر انجام شده بود و سریع روی پای من بود, so I was not too worried. Dennis, نمایش نتایج: از شماره واقعی تمام وقت مربی, had given me his training material. Looking back on it now, it’s really quite absurd. I didn’t know the product well, had never been formally trained on it and had certainly never taught it. What business did I have training anyone on it?

به چیزهای پیچیده لجستیکی, I was asked to go and meet someone in Chicago as part of a pre-sales engagement along the way. The plan was to fly out of New Jersey, رفتن به شیکاگو, meet for an hour with prospect and then continue on to California.

خوب, I got to Chicago and the sales guy on my team had made some mistake and never confirmed the meeting. پس, I showed up and the prospect wasn’t there. Awesome. I pack up and leave and continue on to CA. Somewhere during this process, پیدا کنم که مشتری در حال یادگیری کمتر از 24 hours before my arrival that "Paul Galvin" آموزش کلاس, not Dennis. The client loves Dennis. They want to know "who is this Paul Galvin person?" "Why should we trust him?" "Why should we pay for him?" Dennis obviously didn’t subscribe to my "در اوایل دادن خبر بد" philosophy. Awesome.

من در فرودگاه و برای برخی از دلیل فوق العاده احمقانه می رسند, I had checked my luggage. I made it to LAX but my luggage did not. برای من, از دست دادن توشه بسیاری مانند رفتن را از طریق هفت مرحله از غم و اندوه. Eventually I make it to the hotel, بدون توشه, خسته, گرسنه و پوشیدن من (در حال حاضر, بسیار مچاله) business suit. It takes a long time to travel from Newark — اهار — به مشتری — بازگشت به اهار — و در نهایت به LAX.

من در نهایت خودم را در اتاق هتل نشسته, خوردن نوار snickers است, exhausted and trying to drum up the energy to scan through the training material again so that I won’t look like a complete ass in front of the class. This was a bit of a low point for me at the time.

بیدار شدم روز بعد, did my best to smooth out my suit so that I didn’t look like Willy Loman on a bad day and headed on over to the client. As is so often the case, او در فرد خوب بود, polite and very pleasant. This stood in stark contrast to her extremely angry emails/voicemails from the previous day. She leads me about 3 miles through building after building to a sectioned off area in a giant chemical warehouse where we will conduct the class for the next three days. The 15 یا 20 دانش آموزان به آرامی جمع آوری, most them still expecting Dennis.

من همیشه شروع کردن کلاس های آموزشی من با معرفی خودم, giving some background and writing my contact information on the white board. As I’m saying, "Good morning, my name is Paul Galvin", من نوشتن نام من, email and phone number up on the white board in big letters so that everyone can see it clearly. I address the fact that I’m replacing Dennis and I assure them that I am a suitable replacement, غیره. I have everyone briefly tell me their name and what they want to achieve out of the class so that I can tailor things to their specific requirements as I go along. The usual stuff.

We wrap that up and fire up the projector. I go to erase my contact info and … I had written it in permanent marker. I was so embarrassed. In my mind’s eye, آن را شبیه به این نگاه: There is this "Paul Galvin" شخص, last minute replacement for our beloved Dennis. He’s wearing a crumpled up business suit and unshaven. He has just written his name huge letters on our white board in نشانگر دائمی. What a sight!

این همه با خوشحالی به پایان رسید, اما. This was a chemical company, بعد از همه. A grizzled veteran employee pulled something off the shelf and, احتمالا در تخلف از مقررات سازمان حفاظت محیط زیست, cleared the board. I managed to stay 1/2 day ahead of the class throughout the course and they gave me a good review in the end. This cemented my "pinch hitter" reputation at my company. My luggage arrived the first day, بنابراین من روز بسیار بیشتر قابل ارائه بود دو و سه.

همانطور که من در نظر گرفتن چشم قرمز بازگشت به خانه, I was contemplating "lessons learned". There was plenty to contemplate. Communication is key. Tell clients about changes in plan. Don’t ever check your luggage at the airport if you can possibly avoid it. Bring spare "stuff" in case you do check your luggage and it doens’t make it. I think the most important lesson I learned, اما, این بود: همیشه یک مارکر قبل از نوشتن تست در گوشه سمت چپ پایین تر از تخته سفید, با حروف بزرگ, "پل گالوین".

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Due to some oddball United Airlines flights I took in the mid 90’s, I somehow ended up with an offer to transform "unused miles" into about a dozen free magazine subscriptions. That is how I ended up subscribing to Scientific American magazine.

As software / consulting people, we encounter many difficult business requirements in our career. Most the time, we love meeting those requirements and in fact, it’s probably why we think this career is the best in the world. I occasionally wonder just what in the world would I have done with myself if I had been born at any other time in history. How terrible would it be to miss out on the kinds of work I get to do now, at this time and place in world history? I think: pretty terrible.

Over the years, some of the requirements I’ve faced have been extremely challenging to meet. Complex SharePoint stuff, building web processing frameworks based on non-web-friendly technology, complex BizTalk orchestrations and the like. We can all (hopefully) look proudly back on our career and say, "yeah, that was a hard one to solve, but in the end I pwned that sumbitch!" بهتر است با این حال, even more interesting and fun challenges await.

I personally think that my resume, in this respect, is pretty deep and I’m pretty proud of it (though I know my wife will never understand 1/20th of it). But this week, I was reading an article about the Large Hadron Collider in my Scientific American magazine and had one of those rare humbling moments where I realized that despite my "giant" status in certain circles or how deep I think my well of experience, there are real giants in completely different worlds.

The people on the LHC team have some really thorny issues to manage. Consider the Moon. I don’t really think much about the Moon (though I’ve been very suspicious about it since I learned it’s slowing the Earth’s rotation, which can’t be a good thing for us Humans in the long term). اما, the LHC team does have to worry. LHC’s measuring devices are so sensitive that they are affected by the Moon’s (Earth-rotation-slowing-and-eventually-killing-all-life) gravity. That’s a heck of a requirement to meet — produce correct measurements despite the Moon’s interference.

I was pondering that issue when I read this sentence: "The first level will receive and analyze data from only a subset of all the detector’s components, from which it can pick out promising events based on isolated factors such as whether an energetic muon was spotted flying out at a large angle from the beam axis." Really … ? I don’t play in that kind of sandbox and never will.

Next time I’m out with some friends, I’m going to raise a toast to the good people working on the LHC, hope they don’t successfully weigh the Higgs boson particle and curse the Moon. I suggest you do the same. کاملا نان تست خواهد بود 🙂

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