Category: Thoughts

Have some time?

paschmann

This single list of link has fueled a lot of reading for me over the past few months … The most counterintuitive facts in all of mathematics, computer science, and physics:

It is possible to compute over encrypted data without access to the secret key: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption It is possible to prove that you know a value x, without conveying any information apart from the fact that you know the value x: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof It is possible to play poker by telephone in a trusted way which prevents cheating: http://math.stonybrook.edu/~scott/blair/How_play_poker.html If customers take on average 10 minutes to serve and they arrive randomly at a rate of 5.8 per hour then the waiting time for one teller is five hours while the waiting time for two tellers is 3 minutes: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/10/21/what-happens-when-you-add-a-new-teller/ There exists a set of three dice, A, B, and C, with the property that A rolls higher than B more than half the time, and B rolls higher than C more than half the time, but it is not true that A rolls higher than C more than half the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontransitive_dice Causation does not imply correlation: https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.03118 The Earth makes 366.25 rotations around its axis per year. (Related: 0% selected the right answer on this SAT question: Circle A has 1/3 the radius of circle B, and circle A rolls one trip around circle B. How many times will circle A revolve in total? youtube.com/watch?v=kN3AOMrnEUs) There is a surface that has only one side: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobius_strip It is possible to travel downwind faster than the wind: 

youtube.com/watch?v=jyQwgBAaBag read more

The SAP Community

paschmann

Reminiscing and looking back on this, its strange to think that I have had a SAP Community or Forum account since my late teens … Multiple TechEd events, talks, blogs, being a SAP Mentor, a job at SAP, friends, colleagues, and most recently a part of the SAP Champion program has been a personally rewarding commitment over the last 20 odd years … #timeflies

https://people.sap.com/paul.aschmann

Enterprise Mobility @ SAP – Mobile App Development

paschmann

This is the second blog post of a series around the enterprise mobility IT team at SAP. We are an internal team focused on managing mobile devices, applications, and developing custom apps for SAP’s 100,000 employees. I have been a part of this team for the past six years. I believe we have some unique stories, software, tools, and insights to help others in the community considering, or currently undertaking, some of the challenges which surround mobility and its adoption in the enterprise.

Introduction

Apps have been a cornerstone for deploying mobile devices at SAP, and like any symbiotic relationship, the success of one depends on the success of the other. Our employees have realized the benefits of simplicity, speed, and availability in consumer applications and the power of their mobile devices. They have brought that same expectation to the enterprise and expect that these same traits be available in their work lives and daily processes. This is often how our mobile projects are initiated. In my eyes, the employees who demand innovation are the unicorns of the enterprise – they are passionate, willing, and eager to buck the norm and innovate on processes, which could be decades old, but rife for improvement. read more

GE Healthcare: Design Thinking in the NICU

paschmann

I have been exposed to design thinking in a variety of ways over the past 13 odd years. From conferences, startups and projects – I have used the framework to develop and build services, software and hardware which incorporates one of the most important elements in the design: empathy.

Empathy ensures that the designers, developers and creators of these products “walk a mile in their shoes” and put the users at the center of the development lifecycle rather than technology, limitations or costs.

This TedX talk is a nice example of empathy in something critical that all of us can in some shape or form relate to, which is being born. The video centers around the design thinking process which went into the design and development of Neonatal Intensive Care Units and the equipment which nurses and parents have to deal with when a child is born prematurely. It is a great example of how empathy was an integral part of the process from start to finish. read more