Cooking for Burning Man 101
Google engEDU
37 min – Aug 8, 2007

Google Tech Talks
August 8, 2007

ABSTRACT

Anyone who has been to Burning Man before can tell you that it is an extremely harsh and challenging environment physically, emotionally, and culinarily! Come hear two veteran burners/culinary team members talk about the best ways to set up your Burning Man kitchen/food plan. You’ll come away with some useful recipes and vital Burning Man tips & tricks. Who knows, you may even find your playa carpool buddy! Read the rest of this entry »

Comparing American and Chinese Negotiation Styles
Google engEDU
49 min – Aug 24, 2006

Google TechTalks
August 24, 2006

Terry Hird, UC Berkeley, Founder of Negotiation-International, has over 25 years of international business and negotiation under his belt. Terry’s work as a business owner, consultant and educator has brought him into contact with top business, organizations and learning institutions around the world. He has done business and negotiation in more than fifty countries throughout Asia, Europe, The Middle East, South America, and Africa. To learn more about Terry & Negotiation-International, visit http://www.negotiation-international.com

ABSTRACT
There is no Chinese word for negotiation. Tan pan translates "discussion or making a judgment". In Chinese a negotiation means a dialogue with a beginning, middle, and no end.

This one hour workshop will touch on the highlights of the differences in negotiation style of American and Chinese negotiators. Based upon one of many courses and seminars, Negotiation-International teaches corporations "going global", you will hear about the inherent sources of difficulty in these negotiations.

Different opening moves Different negotiation processes Different negotiation principles Face and guanxi (relationship) Tips for success to minimize misunderstandings and pave the way for success Bu da bu Xiang Shi: "Without a fight you do not know each other." Read the rest of this entry »

Achievable Futures
Google engEDU
35 min – Apr 26, 2006

Google TechTalks
April 26, 2006

James Lyndsay
James Lyndsay is actively involved in the international software testing community. He received ‘Best Paper’ awards at the largest software testing conferences in both the US and Europe in 2002, and gave keynote talks at AsiaSTAR and STAREast in 2003. He is an invited participant in a range of influential forums, including the ISEB / ISTQB software testing certifications.

ABSTRACT
Over the last decade, we’ve seen huge changes in the ease and ubiquity of our access to information. We have vastly more power at our fingertips, and the technologies that provide that power have become commodities. However, software testing has failed to keep up with the times, and pressure is building that may lead to convulsive change.

This talk looks at the unique potential of testing to provide crucial, but otherwise undiscoverable information in an otherwise impossible timeframe – and at the split that has appeared between testing focussed on expectations, and testing focussed on the delivered system.

James Lyndsay believes that we can use our existing skills, approaches and tools to rise to these challenges, and reach a bright, but very different future. Read the rest of this entry »

What Every Engineer Needs to Know About Security and Where to Learn It
Google engEDU
49 min – Jul 10, 2007

Google Tech Talks
July 10, 2007

ABSTRACT

This talk discusses recent trends in security, and what every engineer needs to know to prevent the most significant emerging threats such as cross-site scripting and SQL injection attacks. Just as every engineer might use object-oriented design principles to achieve extensibility and re-usability, every engineer needs to employ principles such as the principle of least privilege, fail-safe stance, and protecting against the weakest link to achieve security. Instead of focusing on "tips" and "tricks" that allow you to "band-aid" the security of your systems, we discuss how to derive defenses based on the application of security principles, such that you can determine how to deal with new threats as they come along or application-specific threats that might be relevant to your domain. Finally, we present some statistics on the current state of software security vulnerabilities, and discuss existing and upcoming challenges in the field of software security.

Speaker: Neil Daswani Read the rest of this entry »

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great!
Google engEDU
51 min – Jan 25, 2007

Google Tech Talks
January 25, 2007

ABSTRACT

Project retrospectives help teams examine what went right and what went wrong on a project. But traditionally, retrospectives (also known as "post-mortems") are only performed at the end of the project — too late to help. In organizations where teams develop using iterative, incremental methods, Agile retrospectives at the end of each iteration or increment stimulate continuous improvement throughout the project. Exceptional software process and project improvement grows out of solid data and good planning.

Esther Derby and Diana Larsen, authors of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, will introduce you to a framework for effective retrospectives, provide tips and pointers for sustaining interest in retrospectives throughout the project, and suggest ways to maintain the relevance of improvement to the work of your team. Read the rest of this entry »