The momentum for the helmet cam idea for remote data center operations continues to grow. My friend who started the solution 3 months ago is buying three more sets of hardware.
When you think Helmet Cam you may be thinking images like this.
Well what it looks like is this.
There are three pieces of hardware - the wireless helmet camera, the Bluetooth noise cancelling headset, and a video streaming server.
As soon as I have video that is approved for posting, I'll post again. And soon I'll provide the list of hardware used.
There are a handful of people I am working with to continue the evaluation. If you think you want to be an early adopter, you can contact me.
I am having a blast with this helmet cam idea. People are so excited they want to figure out how to use this as a differentiator, and ask to not tell others. I could have gone down the money pit path of trying to patent a helmet cam idea applied to data centers, but that would have just put lots of money in the hands of patent attorneys.
A demonstration of the use of video analysis is in this Fast Company article.
Football Coaches pore over game film to spot things they'd never see in real time. Check it out: When the defense blitzes, the free safety picks up the running back. So by picking off the safety, the middle of the field will be wide open for a screen pass. The value of this meticulous observation is intuitive in the sports world. After all, coaches get a week to review a 60-minute game. In the organizational world, where every day is game day, such analysis is less common. It's unfortunate because studying the game film can yield unexpected insights.
The application highlighted is in teaching.
Lemov suspected there was technique underneath the teaching magic -- and if he could find it, he could teach it. So he identified a classic top-5% teacher at North Star Academy in Newark, New Jersey, and asked if he could observe the class. Lemov's buddy, a wedding videographer, agreed to record the teacher in action (a welcome relief from the Electric Slide).
Five years later, having recorded and analyzed hundreds of hours of videotape, Lemov has some answers. In his new book, Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College, Lemov reveals what he learned. As he expected, great teachers have a lot in common. For instance, star teachers circulate around the whole space of their classrooms. They are always within seconds of being at the shoulder of any student in the room. Less experienced teachers rarely "broke the plane," the imaginary line running between the blackboard and the first row of student desks.
Top Five Things Every Teacher Needs to Know (or Do) to Be Successful Amazon-exclusive content from author Doug Lemov
1. Simplicity is underrated. A simple idea well-implemented is an incredibly powerful thing.
2. You know your classroom best. Always keep in mind that what’s good is what works in your classroom.
3. Excellent teaching is hard work. Excellent teachers continually strive to learn and to master their craft. No matter how good a teacher is it’s always possible to be better.
4. Every teacher must be a reading teacher. Reading is the skill our students need.
5. Teaching is the most important job in the world. And it’s also the most difficult.
I was talking to one of my really smart data center friends, and he showed me a list of things that need to be done to manage the date center process. I looked at the list after he showed me his video feed using my helmet cam idea I wrote about 2 months ago.
May 16, 2010
Shouldn't Helmet Cams be used to document Data Center action?
I've had this idea for a while, and haven't heard of any doing this yet. Why aren't data center events like maintenance and emergency trouble shooting documented with Helmet Cams?
I saw this article in PopSci that shows a helmet cam on a Dutch Marine boarding a German ship occupied by Somali Pirates.
The helmet camera ideas is working for him and we were laughing that people aren't doing this more. And, the video was hilarious too. He's figured out the whole system and he'll share the parts he used when he gets me his own video feed I can share. He is a believer in the method of open sourcing ideas.
So, back to looking at his list of things that need to be done to manage a data center. I looked at the list, decomposed the list into fundamental concepts, and started thinking how the pieces could be integrated into a system.
After a minute, it hit me. "You need to put all these pieces together into a quality control system. And, give the system to a group independent of the data center operations team to audit operations." What group? "Put it in Marketing or Finance so the issues have to go up to CEO/COO if the groups cannot work directly with each other."
One of my first jobs out of college was working at HP in quality engineering and the group reported up to marketing, not manufacturing. Why? #1, the quality of your products affect the customer experience. Who is focused on the customer? Marketing! They can make the trade-offs of customer and warranty impact vs. manufacturing cost to affect margin. Finance could also do this, but I would choose marketing before finance. The last group you want to do quality control is your group who runs your operations. You need to think where the group should exist so they will get rewarded to find problems.
This idea may sound crazy, but luckily we both know the VP of marketing we can float this idea by on his next trip to Seattle.
And, you thought my helmet cam ideas was crazy. Quality Control in the data center is even more radical. :-)
PS, when I say my friend is really smart, he fits in with a few friends who I worked with developing software, creating OS features back when we all worked for Apple. One thing Apple taught us is sometimes when you know what is right you just do it, because there is no data to support your decision as no one has done it before.
I've had this idea for a while, and haven't heard of any doing this yet. Why aren't data center events like maintenance and emergency trouble shooting documented with Helmet Cams?
I saw this article in PopSci that shows a helmet cam on a Dutch Marine boarding a German ship occupied by Somali Pirates.
Video gamers and warfighters alike will appreciate this stunning first-person-shooter view of a Dutch marine boarding team taking back a German merchant ship from Somali pirates. It's not hard to imagine many more soldiers of the future equipped with cameras so that commanders can have multiple on-the-ground views of rapid response operations carried out in real-time.
The marines were tasked with liberating 15 crewmen aboard the German merchant ship Taipan, which had been hijacked by 10 Somali pirates. The crew locked themselves securely within a safe room and called for assistance, according to a reader translation provided by the blogSNAFU.
If you don't want to put it on safety helmet, you can get one for your wrist for $99.
I'll take this blog entry and send it on to a few people I know and maybe we can see if some one in the data center industry will give this idea a try.
Imagine what a remote team could do to help troubleshoot a data center problem.
commanders can have multiple on-the-ground views of rapid response operations carried out in real-time.
Makes so much sense, but I can think of many reasons why this is not a bottom up approach as there are few data center operators who want their work documented. So, it will take an executive who doesn't actually go into data centers to give the order to document mission critical work.
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