Author Archives: Skip Walter

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About Skip Walter

Retired software executive, ardent book reader. Enjoying slow travel, learning to cook, and searching for fine wine growing. Grandfather, husband, father, brother. Recorder of Seattle sunrises. Voting blue.đź’™

Heuristics for Building Great Products – Gordon Bell

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Skip Walter

One of the great entrepreneurs of the 20th Century died in 2011 – Ken Olsen who founded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).  For 23 years, Gordon Bell served as the Executive Vice President for Research and Development (both hardware and software) … Continue reading →

Posted in ALL-IN-1, Idealized Design, User Experience, WUKID | 3 Comments

Too Much to Know – The Death of the Long Form Book?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Skip Walter

At dinner the other evening at Crush with my valued all things marketing and branding colleague, Katherine James Schuitemaker, I shared with her that I finally produced a draft of the book on Attenex Patterns I’ve wanted to write for … Continue reading →

Posted in Content with Context, ebook, Human Centered Design, Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management, Learning, social networking, WUKID | 13 Comments

The Other 90% of Software Product Development

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Skip Walter

So you’ve just finished your alpha software product and you are ready to release it to the world to get some feedback.  Congratulations.  Now you are ready for the next 90% of the software development effort – RAAMPUSS. In a … Continue reading →

Posted in organizing, Software Development, User Experience | 3 Comments

Competing Product Design Centers

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Skip Walter

Traditionally product planning is the realm of the software engineering team represented by a program manager or engineering manager and the marketing team represented by a product manager or product marketing manager.  Often, these activities became exercises in “list management” … Continue reading →

Posted in Content with Context, Human Centered Design, Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management, Learning, organizing, User Experience, Working in teams | 2 Comments

Digital Humanities – Really?

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Skip Walter

Russ Ackoff shared that the best knowledge system he knew was to have an intelligent set of graduate students that knew him.  In 1985 when we were meeting regularly, he described the joy every morning of coming in and having … Continue reading →

Posted in Content with Context, ebook, Human Centered Design, Idealized Design, Intellectual Capital, iPad, Knowledge Management, Learning, Relationship Capital, Russ Ackoff, social networking, Teaching, University, WUKID | 13 Comments

Cameron Crazie for a Night

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Skip Walter

I am an over the top obnoxious Duke Men’s Basketball fan.  I have to be as the rest of my siblings and my wife and her siblings are Carolina graduates (now there is an oxymoron). Ever since I entered the … Continue reading →

Posted in Sports, Travel, University, User Experience | 3 Comments

Beautiful Day at Duke University

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Skip Walter

What a quick way to drop away forty years of my life as I revisited Duke University this week.  As I walked around the quadrangles, so many memories from my four years as an undergraduate came flooding back.  Thoughts I … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Photos, Travel, University | Leave a comment

Envisioning the Visual Analytics Future – circa 1986

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Skip Walter

The Fantastic Voyage – Computerworld, November 24, 1986 (John Kirkley) The following article appeared in Computerworld and described a talk I gave about a potential vision for a powerful visual analytics user interface.  I had not remembered this article until finding … Continue reading →

Posted in ALL-IN-1, Content with Context, eDiscovery, Human Centered Design, Idealized Design, User Experience | Leave a comment

Ode to Steve Jobs

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Skip Walter

On the way to somewhere else in preparing the last couple of blog posts, I came across a reflection document I prepared in 1990  “ALL-IN-1 Ten Years Later.”  Buried in the document was an article that caught my eye about … Continue reading →

Posted in ALL-IN-1, Knowledge Management, User Experience | 2 Comments

Good Software Never Dies – ALL-IN-1 becomes Enterprise Vault

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Skip Walter

In 1979, John Churin and I created an enterprise Office Automation product called ALL-IN-1.  I left the full time management of the project in 1986 and then left Digital Equipment Corporation in 1990.  For some 18 years, ALL-IN-1 generated $1 … Continue reading →

Posted in ALL-IN-1, Content with Context, Relationship Capital, social networking, User Experience, Value Capture, Wine | 8 Comments