Y2K: An Autobiography

I thought it would be useful to give you a taste of the interviews that are in the Ondemand section of this Podcast series. 

Join me as I have a conversation with Murray Campbell who was once a Journalist with The Globe and Mail and who was brave enough to fly with me from Chicago, IL to Heathrow London that fateful night.

Spoiler... we survived. 

p.s. I will continue with 'It was a Change Problem' April 6th - my schedule is a bit up in the air, as is everyone else's these days. 

We treated it as a Change Initiative, here's how we did that. 

A look at a small subset of the many conferences that were held around the world during the 1990s.
The topics presented, how the story changed as we moved from Innovators to Early Adopters, from Early Majority to Late Majority and to save time? We ignored the laggards.

A Look at the commonalities that people have been discussing... why they occur and why they are normal human behaviours.

 

 

What was the Embedded system problem?
How we know it was real,
what we imagined and
what we worried about. 

If you want to receive a copy of 'A Crock of Clocks'?
Email me at pdejager@technobility.com

Covid-19 resulted in Lockdowns,

which resulted in Unemployment levels that exceeded all past expectations,

which resulted in Unemployment systems - usually in the legacy category - bursting at the seams

which resulted in call outs to COBOL programmers

which highlighted a flaw in how we view 'Legacy Systems' 

It's not about old code - it's about old systems designs. 

Since Y2K involved many of these same systems, the question arises did we miss an opportunity? 

This episode takes a look at one area where Y2K remediation failed miserably. 

If you'd like to view the video version of this interview? Head to: www.vimeo.com/technobility/bonus

Robert Sawyer is a SF Writer with dozens of books to his credit - and both Hugo and a Nebula awards as bookends to his work. One of his novels, "Flash Forward" was made into a TV series, so it's more than likely you know some of his work already.

I'm pushing the next regular episode of the podcast out to July 7th 2020 as I take a small holiday in the midst of the lockdown

Enjoy, spread the word and leave some feedback please.

This is the entire keynote I gave at this conference --- it was one I called 'The Two by Four' talk. 

An uncompromising, unrelenting talk designed to get the listener to either take action and start fixing the problem, or storm off in a huff determined to prove I was wrong (and then contact me later to say I was correct)

Enjoy. 

In this episode I look back at a few important articles that appeared on the year2000.com website - My Testimony to the US House of Representatives, Doomsday Avoided - and my responses to the responses to that somewhat controversial article. 

In addition? We're introducing a new feature - Tangential IT Issues with James Lauber - where we start exploring the 2038 problem in some detail

Three articles this episode
1998 Dec 14th - An UNreal Question - report from the UN
1999 Apr 14th - How Bad, How Long, How Likely - a look at Y2K Preparations
1999 Dec 20th - A Best Kept Secret - A look at the HTC - High Tech Consortium

And James Lauber explores how computers fail in Strange ways