Grandpa Ham – Grandpa Can do IT!

• Success Tweeting Headlines from IPAWS-OPEN Alerts. Follow @dmopenstate if you want to be spammed during the upcoming demos. #

Rick Wimberly’s Emergency Management blog identifies the fact that I stated that IPAWS-OPEN could make international connections. BUT………
U.S. regulations make inter-nation connectivity fairly difficult, if not impossible, unless there are treaties and/or formal diplomatic agreements in place. So, it can work with Canada where we have both agreements in place and a real need for cross-border civilian population alerting. With other nations… not so much. Just a clarification.

We used to advertise that DM-OPEN 2.0 would be released this summer and that its follow-on would be IPAWS-OPEN 3.0. We have changed our mind (with good reason). OPEN 2.0 will be IPAWS-OPEN 2.0. IPAWS takes full control of OPEN in mid September. Version 2.0 will be fully functional in terms of basic IPAWS architecture and will be used for IPAWS sponsored demonstrations, interoperability events, etc. OPEN version 3.0 will be needed for Cellular Mobile Alerting Services (CMAS), full compatibility with Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) version 1.2, and full compliance with the IPAWS Profile. Still, a lot of basic capabilities required for IPAWS can be done with OPEN 2.0. It can be used for text based Emergency Alert System (EAS) messages, National Weather Service Non-Weather Emergency Messages, and can be a basis for development by vendors of all types that wish to use a non-proprietary system and protocol for the exchange of messages that use Emergency Data Exchange Language Distribution Element (EDXL-DE) and/or CAP. (And do not forget that National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Information Exchange Packages (IEP) make excellent content objects inside an EDXL-DE.)

Marck Lucero (FEMA) and I made a presentation to attendees at the World Conference on Disaster Management in Toronto in June about how IPAWS will be able to play in cross-border alerting and how we can use IPAWS-OPEN to connect to Canadian alerting infrastructure in a way that allows resilient connectivity between local authorities on both sides of the border. It is a 17 minute presentation in Quick Time format.

I have been offered three separate work opportunities in the last two weeks. All good. All interesting. If I were concerned that the OPEN “thing” was in trouble I would be gone. But I remain confident in success. I am a believer, but more importantly I am seeing results. Successful Production Readiness Review this week. Yes it will happen.

IPAWS at NAB

Spent April 10-15 in Las Vegas at the Annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual convention. What a huge event! And what a success for IPAWS! We showed that you can write CAP messages using a variety of input software and they can be auto-delivered by the IPAWS aggregator prototype (DM-OPEN) to an wide variety of Emergency Alert System (EAS) Broadcast devices, radios (to include NOAA weather radios), and specialized software of many kinds. I was even auto-tweeting the headlines of CAP messages retreived from the aggregator. It all works folks. Kudos to the whole team: IPAWS folks, vendors, and broadcasters. We are on our way.

• Finished up 2 days of rehersals and testing for the IPAWS booth at the NAB show in LasVegas. Sucess!!! #
• IPAWS Profile CAP, DM-OPEN as IPAWS Aggregator, one origin source message to all kinds of EAS devices an Radios through RDBS. It works #
• Lots of success for the IPAWS program at the NAB show!!! Demos on demand and nearly flawless. IPAWS-OPEN works with EAS devices. #
• NIEM recognized OASIS CAP in IPAWS. A basis for Real improvements to EAS and alert dissemination for the U.S. In action live at NAB show. #

• Will post demo-only IPAWS Alert Headlines from the NAB show in Las Vegas beginning today and all next week. Follow @dmopenstate to see!! #
• IPAWS NAB Test Alert, DEMO Only … Evacuation Order … Evacuate Pharoah Hotel and vicinity … Potential Explosion #

• RT @trevbhatt so i decided to post that poem. http://guruoftheclan.blogspot.com/. I #
• @JamieXML I loved Ada (the language, that is). The countess of Lovelace was not bad in her day either. in reply to JamieXML #

Admiral Grace Hopper lived for a long time after her first claim to fame as one of the builders of COBOL. I met her while teaching at the U. S. Naval Academy in the 1980′s. She gave lectures on Computer Science and handed out “nanoseconds” to every midshipman in her lectures. A “nanosecond” was a length of wire through which a bit of data could pass in one nanosecond. It gave structure to the concept of data transfer. She did not like Ada (the language) much. COBOL was always first in her heart. But she did inspire the midshipmen, both female and male, with her fervor and intelligence. Me, I liked Ada the language and the fact that it was named after such an important player in the history of computing.
A side story from my academy teaching days. I once asked my “Computer Science for Rocks and Jocks” class an exam question on history as follows: “What claim to fame does the Countess of Lovelace have on the history of computing?” I expected some of the dumb Jocks who had not read the material to make jokes related to Linda lovelace. I would then be able to point out that Ada, the Countess of Lovelace, was not only the first woman programmer, but the first person (man or woman) to describe how to program a computer. Only two students rose to the bait. Unfortunately, one of them was a female midshipman. She may have learned the most valuable lessen of all: Do not jump to conclusions. It can be embarrassing.