Daily web log

November, Tuesday 2

Getting ready for the study trip

The program of the study trip is almost completed. In a few days we will leave Zurich to learn from other organizations their best practices in the use of ICT. For our hosting organizations we have some gifts and giveaways (see figure). Maybe "la Suisse existe"...

November, Saturday 6

An unfriendly disruption

Our delegation boarded the plane this afternoon in Zurich Kloten. During the flight from London to Vancouver a fire alert on board occured and the plane had to return to London for security reasons. After the emergency landing our delegation was transferred to a hotel where they will spend the night. As far as we know all are well. Let's hope they can continue their travel tomorrow.

November, Sunday 7

Duty free shops and flight from London to Vancouver

Our forced stop at Heathrow Airport resulted in the visit of two worlds of duty free shops, rather than of ETH World.

Our delegation arrived safe in Vancouver. Comfortable meeting with Murray Goldberg in a bar.

November, Monday 8

University of British Columbia

Welcome to the University of British Columbia. A friendly greeting by Michelle Lamberson, Director of the Office of Learning Technology, and Ken McGillivray, UBC International.

Richard Spencer, Executive Director, E-strategy Partnering and Planning, described how UBC's IT Service works to support the strategic objectives of the university.

Yet another fire alert, this time in the restaurant. While the fire brigade was searching the building, our delegation had to wait for the next course outside in the cold.

November, Tuesday 9

Visit of Microsoft, Redmond

Mixed signals from our friends in the far northwest. On one hand we are somewhat fascinated by the research activities at Microsoft Research, but on the other hand we don't feel that we have learned much and it was difficult to find a common denominator in the dialogue.

After a complicated and exhausting security check at sea-tac airport (ssss = selected for special security screening) (or see suspicious swiss species)

Inspiration for Science City: the Japanese garden on the UBC campus.

Microsoft welcomes us in the meeting room of the Internet Explorer group. Andreas Dudler (left), Ulrich Gysel (center) and Robert Perich are relieved: IE support seems guaranteed at least until 2013.

Greetings from home: Bernhard Plattner thanks Microsoft employee Michel Pahud, alumnus of EPF Lausanne, for an interesting presentation of the conference software platform ConferenceXP.

The Microsoft's program had been organized by José Osuna, Academic Program Manager of Microsoft Switzerland (left). The program included presentations by "evangelists" from the marketing team and staff from Microsoft Research.

Andreas Dudler, Director of ETH Zurich's IT Services, is about to inspect the products on offer at the Microsoft company store. Will the price of IDES software soon drop dramatically?

A stretched limousine gave the ETH delegation a VIP welcome at San Francisco airport.

Wednesday, November 10

Wednesday Nov. 10 has been e very filled and fruitful day for all the delegation. In the morning we were welcomed by UC Berkeley. David Greenbaum, Director of the Interactive University Project (left), showed us a practical example of the software to support an interactive university. Jack Mccredie, Chief information Officer and Associate Vice Chancellor, presented the new IT Strategy for the university. The IT budget of UC Berkeley has been reduced by 16% in the last two years due to the financial difficulties within the State of California.

Anders Hagström asked some more questions to Jon Conhaim, Director of E-Berkeley. This program is very similar to ETH World and introduces many new services to the university.

A group photo of the ETH delegation on UC Berkeley campus. We are in front of the famous "Campanile".

From Berkeley we move to the Presidio in San Francisco. Even though the weather is cloudy we are full of energy and highly motivated to learn more about the Internet Archive.

How about storing all of human knowledge on a hard disk? From Brewster Kahle, Director of The Internet Archive (in the red pullover), we learned that this is possible. To digitally store all the books of the Library of the Congress we would need not more than 26 terabytes.

With Cory Ondrekja (left) and Robin Harper from Linden Lab we took a trip into the virtual world of Second Life. This is a network game where many players can build houses, objects, trade and cooperate. The presentation of Cory and Robin started a very fruitful discussion about Second Life and of all its financial, social, psychological, political and ethical consequences.

Finally swissnex hosts a dinner and discussion with about 50 people in attendance. For our delegation this is a wonderful opportunity to gather input regarding our IT strategy and to build connections in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the photo (from left) Robert Perich (ETH), Michele De Lorenzi (ETH) and Angela Marti (Swiss Re/SFZH Initiative).

Christian Simm from swissnex presents the organization to the audience.

A glimpse of the guests in attendance at the dinner discussion.

Thursday, November 11

The day started with a visit to Fry's electronics, an US version of our Mediamarkt. So we had the chance to buy some electronic gadgets. The prices are comparable or even higher than in Switzerland.

Philippe Despallans welcomed our delegation at Logitech in Fremont. Philippe is Director of Video Services. He presented Logitech and the main strategies in the field of video and audio communication.

At Logitech we also met a student delegation from the Kantonsschule Enge in Zurich composed of 18 students and two teachers. The students are visiting San Francisco during three weeks. They are hosted by families and go to local schools. The visit of the students is promoted by the Zurich-San Francisco initiative.

A very nice rainbow welcomed us at Stanford. The campus is so big, that we needed at least ½ an hour to find the right location,

Peter Banks, President, and Marina Gorbis, Associate Diretor, presented the goals of the Institute of the Future (IFTF). IFTF monitors different technologies and the socio cultural aspects related to the adoption of these technologies.

Photo left to right: Roland Dietlicher Informatikdienste ETH, Marina Gorbins and Peter Bank from IFTF.

The Wallenberg Hall on the Stanford campus has been designed to provide learning and education facilities. So for example we have seen groups of students working interactive with "intelligent" walls.

Let's google. What about visiting one of the most successful companies in the world short after their IPO (Initial Public Offering)? At Google we were impressed by the number of young people working together to build future search engines sitting in their glass cubicles with a lot of brand new computer and as up of to four screens. We had the opportunity to speak with different alumni of ETH Zurich (all PhD Students) working at Google and get their impressions about ETH and their job in the Silicon Valley.

The visitor lobby at Google. On the left side there is a screen where you can see examples of actual user queries. The lava lamps indicate that you are to entry a new magical world.

Michele De Lorenzi and Robert Griesemer met again after having shared their apartment in Zurich during PhD. After having been in different startup companies in the Silicon Valley Robert is now an engineer at Google.

Our delegation in front of the Google building.

Friday, November 12

We were again back at Stanford to learn about Academic Computing. Academic Cmputing provides technology, expertise and resources in support of the University's academic mission, both directly to students and faculty, and to other organizations who in turn support the University's mission.

The Teamspace in Meyer's library offers the possibility for a group of students to cooperate using a common display.

Back home: The study trip was very successful but we are also tired. During the week we had almost no break. So people are complaining that we did not even have time to eat a large American steak with potato and sour scream. But we can have this also in Zurich.

So the last image we had of the Silicon Valley is full of light in the night. Due to the long exposition time of this picture the bay area looks much more like an artistic patch work.

The (delayed) comeback

The last day of the study trip started with an internal workshop. We discussed the main results of the study trip. We came to the conclusion that the ICT infrastructure of ETH Zurich is comparable and in part even better than the one of the visited organizations. What we must learn is to better communicate that we have a good infrastructure and what our strategic goals are.

The flight to London was delayed and the delegation did not arrive in Zurich before Saturday 10 pm.