Kelley Graham of Toasterz Talks About Appliances, Migration and More

Sat, 2007-10-06 23:46 — dcp (original articve)

Blue GNU caught up with Kelley Graham, of Toasterz, to find out about his company's business appliances, migration and education work.

Please tell me a little about yourself, how you got into computing.
Several reasons come to mind.

  • I've always loved tools and computers are the ultimate swiss army knife.
  • The potentials and flexibility of information technology is irresistible.
  • Contributing to the OpenSource movement is tremendously satisying.
  • OpenSource is a fantastic area of innovation.

I don't really separate 'Computing' activities from any other. I consider myself a tool using critter who can listen. The only difference in my mind between one activity or another is the degree of personal interaction, tool sophistication and the innovation 'quotient'. To put
it another way, interesting activities for me are those with a high degree of 'newness' and risk.

So, to answer your question a little more conventionally, it was inevitable that I got involved with technology.

Would you mind sharing how Toasterz came to be (how long have you been in business)?
In business since 1994. Toasterz was a way to formalize what I'd already
been doing since childhood.

  • Helping others adapt gracefully to changing conditions.
  • Contribute to the greater good.
  • Spend as much time as possible on the leading edge of culture.
  • Create a healthy and flexible professional life for myself.

What are "Toasterz"?
Toasterz are small appliances that make tasty toast. :)

The idea behind Toasterz is that information technology in all it's applications should strive to be as elegant and intuitive to use as a toaster. More importantly, devices should do only what they're supposed to do without fuss. This fits more with how people actually use everyday
objects.

When this concept is applied to larger collections of devices- all talking to each other - I like to think of their collective software stack as a 'software infrastructure'.

I recently blogged on how the best expressions of information technology should be invisible. This is why open source is so compelling. In moving towards an open commodity 'software infrastructure', operating systems, commodity functionalities and devices should be invisible to the user. The only thing users need to know about is a clear and logical gui.

To the proprietary software vendor, this is the exact opposite of their business model. They have to be in your face all the time with their branding, updates, upgrades and constant reminders that they are necessary to your continued existence. Such is business.

Proprietary business models are necessary to encourage risk taking and innovation, but are inappropriate when applied to any commodity 'software infrastructure'.

Rule of thumb, if it's a commodity 'something', it should be open source.

You offer a variety of products and services. Which are the most requested?
Services: Drupal implementations, open source strategic planning, converged network planning, troubleshooting and of course, general change management.

Products: ExchangeKiller(R), Easy-PBX(R) and Easy-VC QOS video conferencing infrastructure devices. Pretty much in that order.

I expect new products currently in development aimed at educational 'learning infrastructure' will be the breakout for the hardware side of Toasterz.

Who are your primary customers (what types of organizations and industries)?
Consulting to individuals, small-med business and non profits.

Industries are mostly information or service based. Traditional vertical market based businesses heavn't been a factor. Long tail niche market businesses seem to find the open source philosophy and new ways of doing attractive.

Products: mostly small-medium business and educational entities.

It's still early in the open source innovation cycle, so who knows what's round the corner.

On your website, you mention that "change must be managed in an evolutionary, not revolutionary. manner. Can you expand on that for me?
It comes down to change management. Some persons when faced with something new - not just novelty - but a really new way of thinking or doing, have a fairly dramatic fear response. The brain actually shuts down and tries to actively disassociate from the offending agent of
paradigmatic change. Significant efforts must me made throughout an organization to safely manage this mechanism.

These paradigmatic changes are disruptive and must be introduced at a rate that can be assimilated. The severity of fear reaction differs according to each individuals' genetics and experience. So, for a meaningful percentage of a group to apply new ways of thinking and
doing, there is necessarily a long transitional period.

Recognizing this means a preference for evolutionary change (EC). Revolutionary change within an organization is usually mandated by early adopter types and never penetrates successfully into core business processes... proving largely an expensive waste of time.

As my wife would say, many organizations act like particularly 'bratty people', so the 'EC' principle must be carefully and consistently applied. An organization remains relevant by keeping up or slightly exceeding it's peers. The rate of application of innovations within a group must be balanced by the collective fear response.

Too much paradigmatic change too fast and the group will disassociate from the adoption process. All sorts of 'reasons' will be given, but the underlying cause is always too much, too soon.

I describe the relationship between innovations and their practical uptake as akin to the one between a car's engine and it's brakes. The engine's only purpose is to move forward as fast and efficiently as possible and the brake's only purpose is to slow everything down.

Advocacy is hard and everyone involved with change management should consider applying this useful bit of info.

You offer services focused on e-Learning. Would you tell us about your involvement in the e-Learning arena? What does that entail?
I'm happy to say that I'm CTO of an important project called Global Literacy Foundation. It's still early, but I'm excited by its potential.

Early on, I recognized that our educational institutions could be well served by open source software. It has taken a very long time but the tools are available now to make significant advances in bringing our learning methodoloigies up to speed with our technology.

A 'learning infrastructure' at its core must be open, standards based and consistent no matter the specific application. We've got commodity hardware, commodity networks, commodity access to these networks, but no commodity software stack to complete the circle.

One of my main duties as Global Literacy CTO is to promote the idea of a 'leaning infrastructure' as the critical missing piece to eLearning's wide adoption. Subsequently, Global Literacy Foundation will offer up a 'learning infrastructure' roadmap and open source codebase to the Community.

Recognizing that the commodity bits of this infrastructure should be open source, this still leaves a huge area for proprietary software stacks to plugin in to this common framework. Drupal is at the core of this framework.

It's early, and there's an impossible amount to do, but the possibility is there. I'm excited. Those interested in this project can reach me at literacy.now@gmail.com.

As far as eLearning specific services offered, it is basically just the same formula for service providers anywhere... 'identify current conditions, determine actual goals and impliment'. The same commodity tools are applied to eLearning or whatever issue is at hand. We try to
keep it simple.

I'm curious about your Windows-to-GNU/Linux migration service. Are you seeing an increase in inquiries or service requests in this area?
Each client has very different needs and expectations. There are no hard and fast rules to any migration. I work to discover what their current workflows are and then map those to their self-defined business goals. There are very few small organizations that that have a clear
idea of how important this 'modeling' is to their bottom line.

By addressing each area of improvement in kind, the next thing you know you've 'migrated' to a new paradigm. I use safe, neutral language as often as possible when discussing a 'migration'.

Migration inquiries are steady and unremarkable. When I do get a call, I usually give them everything they need to get started for themselves - emphasizing experimentation and fun. The sooner they try, the sooner they will be GNU/Linux users. I try to keep the barriers to entry into the GNU/Linux world as low as possible. Hopefully they call back when
they want to do something interesting.

What tends to be the most challenging area of Window-to-GNU/Linux migrations, in your experience?
Getting users to open up to a better way of doing things. It seems that normal business rules fly out the window whenever you discuss 'desktop productivity' or 'directory migrations'. So much fear of change.

Which GNU/Linux distro(s) do you rely on the most in your work?
Ubuntu, Snapgear, Trustix, Fedora and Debian each have have their flavor to meet the requirements of whatever context at hand.

Your website mentions Drupal services. Why Drupal?
Drupal has the most potential. Its' modularly, code quality and active Community make it the only choice for a 'software infratructure'. When I was looking for a CMS to incorporate into my services, the last thing I wanted was something that wasn't designed to accomodate change at the core. Drupal is wonderfully flexible, scalable and logical.

How's business these days? Does it fluctuate much? Is it steadily
increasing?
Business is great and in my niche doesn't fluctuate much. I choose only
those customers who want long-term business relations. The decision was made early on to build a quality client base and not go after the
numbers. It was really slow at first and difficult to find business, but
you keep at it and listen, REALLY listen, to your clients needs and you
find a way.

Overall, it has been steadily increasing... it seems more geometrically than linearly of late.