Essay on Book Critique

Paper on Book Critique Paper on Book Critique Jocelin Camacho December 4, 2014 Mexican American Studies 141-07 Book Critique William S. Maltby book 2009, â€Å"The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire†, is about how Spain accomplished to be one of the most impressive realms and wound up falling soon after one century of being extremely amazing. A country rose from the cinders of Europe, they builded a realm not at all like anything humankind had ever seen previously and it would remain the biggest domain. Spain changed the world more than any cutting edge country ever. In the late fifteenth and sixteenth century Spain was one of the most remarkable nations on the planet. In the fifteenth century Spain had been controlled by two Christian realms and it was Castile and Aragon. In 1469 King of Aragon Ferdinand wedded Isabella Queen of Castile and through this marriage started the way toward binding together Spain into a solitary realm. Later a brought together government was set up and authority was moved in the possession of the government. Isabella supported Christopher Columbus to inves tigate abroad and attempt to locate any great that will help with exchange. Lord Philip sent a task force to attack England and while attacking the England won the fight. An excessive amount of spending and superfluous wars of Spanish lords depleted the national treasury. Spain declining during the wars, and afterward in the sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain rivals were getting all the more impressive. During the nineteenth century Spain lost the greater part of its reality nations and had to perceive the autonomy of its New World Colonies. There was no such nation as Spain, much the same as some other realm it started from the base and will wind up rising right to the top. However inside a century Spain turned into the most remarkable country in Europe. Spain experienced monetary, social, and political age during the sixteenth century, yet because of awful arranging and choices Spain later declined as a realm. The Spanish realm experienced a great deal of wars during the time they were extremely incredible. Beginning from a little domain, Spain bit by bit figured out how to extend their realm and control more urban areas so it very well may be under their domain. â€Å"War, as opposed to the advancement of social or monetary government assistance, was the essential business of the early present day state. During a significant part of the sixteenth and seventeenth hundreds of years it devoured multiple times more income than every other capacity of Spanish government and was without anyone else answerable for the crown’s huge debt† (85). Much the same as some other realm being in the condition of war will come its high points and low points. Being in wars continually then that will have a destruction for any domain. It takes a great deal of cash to for a country to demonstrate so much weapon and particularly if a country is continually on war. It isn't just about simply battling another nation or city, however just as keeping up the militar y prepared. War makes a great deal of cash a country and in the event that the country doesn’t have the assets, at that point they should get cash from some place. Domains and countries want to continue developing their capacity and overcoming each city. By doing that realms and countries begin getting under water. I accept there is a contrast between safeguarding your realm and attempting to overcome different urban areas just to feel all the more impressive. Realm don’t need to feel that they should be the most impressive country than different ones. There is no advantage of different nations being terrified of the most impressive. Realms feel the need of indicating the remainder of the world how amazing they can be. Spain utilized religion as a social procedure. One of the motivation behind why the

Analysis of the 8th Amendment

Examination of the eighth Amendment eighth Amendment Introduction The eighth (Amendment VIII) to the United States Constitution can be lawfully characterized as the area of the United Sates Bill of Rights what restricts the government from forcing unnecessary fines, neither incurring brutal and unordinary disciplines nor forcing unreasonable bail. The eighth amendment was affirmed to be a piece of the United States Constitution in the year 1791.This amendment was practically like a specification made in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 where the administration made an assertion to the point that they needed to work as their predecessors had by not requesting for over the top bail neither impressive unnecessary fines nor incurring merciless or bizarre disciplines. On account of England the arrangement was for the most part determined by the discipline including Titus Oates. During the reign of King James II during the 1680s Titus Oates functioned as an apparatus in the London pillory circuit. Oates was included numerous normal punishments that had been by and large forced constrained on him in a way that was both unreasonable and unrivaled. Oates had lied after swearing to tell the truth which prompted numerous honest individuals being put under capital punishment. Parliament endorsed the assertion against â€Å"cruel and strange disciplines â€Å"for England in the year 1689. The assertion was clarified by the parliament that it should forestall disciplines, for example, the one delivered on Titus Oates by the Kings Bench. In December 1689 the then parliament supported the arrangement to be passed into law. The primary state to embrace a stand like that of England on the issues was the province of Virginia. In the year 1776 the Virginia presentation of rights consolidated the English bill of rights and afterward went on above and beyond to suggest in the year 1788 that the above arrangement be remembered for the US constitution as at the Virginia show that intended to favor the U.S constitution. It was some Virginia states men, for example, Patrick Henry and George Mason that previously embraced that congress be constrained by utilization of the limitation as in the English bill of rights. This depended on the feelings of dread that if that didn't occur the congress could cause a few disciplines that were both irregular and extreme on crooks. The two Virginians additionally focused on the requirement for the Congress to get rid of the line in the English bill of rights that appeared to concede to torments and brutal discipline perpetrated on its kin previously. And furthermore prescribe d congress to begin the establishment of common law for the more polished customary law. At long last Mason and Henry were fruitful in their journey and afterward the eighth amendment was received by the United States. In the year 1789 James Madison changed the words should in the English bill of rights to† will at that point proposed it to the congress for alteration. Brutal and strange disciplines The eighth amendment as indicated by the Supreme Court precluded altogether the curse of certain disciplines and simultaneously deny some different disciplines which when contrasted with the wrongdoing for which they were given for apparently was extreme or those which supposedly was over the top when the capability of the culprit was placed into light. This was viewed as important on the grounds that in the prior years a portion of the decisions passed on to the individuals were in abundance considering the way that the culprits were either clumsy to carry out such violations or the wrongdoings submitted were minor. In the year 1962 the preeminent courts decided that the savage and irregular disciplines act applied to all the conditions of the United States through the fourteenth amendment. This followed the case including Robinson versus California, 370 U.S. 660 in the year 1960. Before the Robinson case the eighth amendment had just before been applied in bodies of evidence agains t the government. For the situation including Furman versus Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 of the year 1962 the four rules that would decide if a discipline passed onto a culprit was â€Å"cruel and unusual† were composed by Justice Brennan. These included explanations that for the discipline passed on deciding by how extreme it is debase human pride under conditions as on account of torment, it likewise that any irregular and merciless discipline was one which was absolutely and plainly dismissed by the entire society, one which supposedly was perpetrated in a way that apparently was completely self-assertive or one that was evidently pointless. Brennan proceeded to compose that it was a desire that no American state would pass a law that would appear to subvert any of the four principals, with the end goal that all choices made in court including the eighth amendment would consider all the these standards. The disciplines for which as per the eighth alter were prohibited paying little heed to the wrongdoing submitted would incorporate any type of eviscerating, open analyzing, drawing and quartering or copying alive. This corresponding to the four Brennan standards where disciplines that were completely dismissed all th rough the general public. In the instances of Atkins versus Virginia 536 U.S. 304 of 2002 the preeminent court proclaimed executing intellectually impaired individuals fell in the illegal disciplines and furthermore on account of Roper versus Simmons 543 U.S. 551 of 2005 where the court decided that executing individuals under18 years was an infringement of the eighth amendment paying little mind to the wrongdoing submitted by the culprit. Disciplines that were illegal for specific violations remembered cases for which the court needed to topple disciplines, for example, the cadena transient which commanded that â€Å"hard and excruciating labor† shackling are discarded while during the time spent detainment or when confronted with common handicaps that were changeless. The case referenced above occurred in 1910 and was regularly observed as a methods for building up some proportionality while applying the eighth amendment. In some different cases it was decided that rebuffing a characteristic brought into the world American resident for any wrongdoing by removing his citizenship was seen to be illegal and crude as it included totally harming the people status in the general public. For a situation including Coker versus Virginia 433 U.S. 584 of 1977 the court at the time obviously expressed that the inconvenience of a capital punishment or assault was absolutely unlawful and that applied to whatever other situa tion where demise didn't happen. It proceeded to explain that assault violations by definition do exclude either demise or even any genuine body damage to the next individual. Unreasonable fines For a long time the United States Supreme Court never had a lot to state when the subject of unreasonable fines was referenced. In one early case the Supreme Court had no capacity to overhaul any decisions passed by a lower court as respects the subject of overwhelming fines being forced on somebody. In later years the need to need to audit the measure of fines demanded on an individual since it generally prompted the detainment in light of the fact that the individual couldn't raise the sum forced on him/her by the court. In a stage intended to guarantee equivalent resident assurance the court figured out how to put to significance the words â€Å"excessive fines† when contrasted with the individual for whom the judgment is intended to influence. Be that as it may, the court additionally precluded applying the above statement couldn't be applied to cases including private situations where the administration had not been engaged with the indictment nor was it to get any portio n of any of the granted harms. This choice depended on the expectation for which the over the top fines statement was intended for. The court unmistakably expressed that when the eighth amendment was embraced into the US constitution the word ‘fine was taken to allude to any installment that would need to be made to sovereign substance for an offense submitted. THE court left open the choice regarding whether the condition could be applied to qui cap activities or cases including common punishments and yet it presumed that the over the top fines provision was at first expected to influence the fines that were just forced by one payable to the administration. In cases including any polite relinquishment the over the top fines statement could be applied. The significance of the condition as it respects to the quantum discipline of a specific offenses when it is free of the capacity of the guilty party to pay the fine forced on him despite everything anticipates the consequence of legitimate procedures. Extreme bail In England it was the obligation of the sheriffs to choose whether or not an individual had the right to be conceded bail. Because of the consistent maltreatment of intensity by the sheriffs the administration in those days discharged a resolution that unmistakably classified the bailable and the non-bailable offenses. Be that as it may, these resolutions could be undercut by the choice of the Kings judges. As indicated by the law then an individual could be held without bail contingent upon the orders of the sovereign power. It was regularly contended that the King didn't have the position to settle on such choices and this prompted the encroachment of human rights when individuals were deliberately kept in jail in spite of having submitted bailable offenses. This and a lot more ambiguities were inevitably put to an end by the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. After the Habeas Act was passed judges were confronted with the choice to set the bail sums yet they regularly represented a few su ms that were impracticable. It was until the year 1689 that the English bill of rights prohibits the interest of over the top rights yet a further revision to recognize bailable and non bailable offenses was required. Bail is supposed to be unnecessary and infringing upon the Eighth amendment if the incentive to which it is set is higher when contrasted with the sensibly determined worth that is planned for guaranteeing the legislatures affirmed intrigue. The point of setting bail is supposed to be as an assurance that the individual who is blamed is attending present himself for court date and acknowledge the sentence that is passed on to him and no more. All together for an individual

Interview with Alex Taussig from Highland Capital Partners

Interview with Alex Taussig from Highland Capital Partners INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi, today we are in  Menlo Park,  in the Highland Capital Partners office with Alex. Alex, who are you and what do you do?Alex: Haha Hi, good to have you guys here. My name is Alex Taussig, Im a ventures capitals partner at Highland Capital Partners. We are a 26 year old venture capital firm with offices all around the world, and we invest in early stage technology companies. So, thats both enterprise companies, everything from infrastructure software to application software to consumer internet companies, market places, social media, all that kind of stuff. So, weve been around, as I said, for a while.In  Boston,  we have our offices where we started the firm. We also have our office out here, as well as in  Geneva  and in  Shanghai.Martin: Great! Awesome.Martin: Can you tell us a little bit about your background? What did you do before you started being a venture capitalist?Alex: So I have a bit of unconventional background in some sense. For a long time growing up, I thought I was going to be a professor. So I was on an academic track for the most of my life. Started labs when I was a teenager and did a lot different types of research expose into a lot of different technology in bioinformatics, computer vision. I ended up doing physics and materials engineering. Physics is an undergrad and then materials engineering as a grad student at MIT.It was some point during the grad school days, I got a little bit bored of research. Its a bit of a slower pace than we find in the startup world. And at the same time, Ive known a lot of folks that I went to college with at Harvard, who had come out to the Valley to start a companies or a lot of them at that point of time, theyre actually going to Microsoft and then come to the Valley. That would seem to be a lot of pattern. And I was at Harvard when Facebook started, so it was part of this generation of sort of new entrepreneurs and decided that I wanted to be part of that in someway. And at the time , someone had told me about venture capital, which is sort of this of interesting intermediary between people that make the technology and the financial markets. And having grown up in New York City, and been in around the finance community in my whole life, I thought it would be a nice marriage of my passions for sort of helping capitalized businesses and then also working with technologists to help bringing their stuff out of the lab, out of the confined of small, little dimly-lit rooms into the real world and serving customers. So I decided to venture capital, Id like to  learn more about what that was.So I ended up going to business school. I left MIT, got out of PhD program and decided to get a Masters instead, so I wrote my thesis. And then I went over to HBS,  Harvard  Business  School  and joined  Highland  out of business school.So Ive been with  Highland  for about 5.5 years now. And started working in our  Boston  office with one of our founders very closely. So that was sort of my apprenticeship, if you will. I worked very closely with him on a number of companies in the security software space, dataware housing. We invested in a robotics company, which I’m happy to talk about. Its pretty cool stuff.So we like really technically complex problems and really amazing engineering founders. And thats really what Ive been doing pretty much ever since. And I moved out here about 2.5 years ago to help build our West Coast office. And thats kind of what Ive been doing. But Im sort of a career venture capitalist and Im inspired by great innovations and great engineers. Id like to help them explore their transition from inventing great technology and moving it to the real world.Martin: Actually from my point of view, there are a lot of similarities between being a professor, entrepreneur or venture capitalist by building up hypothesis and testing them. The only thing is that, as a professor maybe you can only do the theoretical stuff, but as an entrepreneu r and a VC you also see the consequences.Alex: Well in a laboratory, you’re still isolated from the real world, you know. I worked on a project that was trying to create computer chips that ran on light. So, instead of electricity, the computer chip that runs on light. Thats a big idea, right. We were totally, I mean as a student I was totally unaware that Intel would just like totally control this market. Theres no hope for commercializing this technology as a small company.Had I known, had I come from the business background, I probably would have figured out earlier, right. But with that being said, you know, you do a lot of really cutting edge stuff in the lab, but you do it as sort of scale and with a sort of mentorship that doesnt really guide you down to the commercial route.  I think that we still have a lot of work to do on a model that transitions a laboratory research out into the real world. You know, Stanford over here has done a great job at it. MIT is doing a  good job, Harvard is doing a descent job, but there’s  still a lot of work to do. And I think coming from that world, I can I kind of walk in both pair of shoes if you will.I see some similarities, there’s a good amount of   hypothesis-driven testing you refer to, but the practicality is quite different. The emphasis here if its not valuable to customer, its not valuable to work on. Which is very different than academia.HIGHLAND CAPITAL PARTNERS INVESTMENT CRITERIAMartin: Let’s talk about Highland Capital Partners. What are the typical selection criteria for you to invest in a company? And maybe you can build some kind of matrix, depending on  ticket  size, industry, at what stage is the company, etc.Alex: Lots of different venture firms have different approaches. I think, we can talk about different stages of investing. At  Highland,  we are predominantly Series  A  investor. So were usually coming in as the first largest institutional investor in the company. Were usually the fi rst outside board director, thats not always the case, but its usually the case. We like to think that we have a mark on the early formation and growth of the company.  And at some point, more capital comes in and other board members come on board, but we like to be the trusted, kind of first person that makes a bet on a group of entrepreneurs.As such our criteria, different firms think about it differently. There are firms on this road here that focus a lot on market or they focus very much on the specifics of the product. I would say that my focus, and I think most of us here, tend to focus a lot on the team. We very much believe, that we want to be backing great founders who can really take it the whole way. So anytime, sort of a difficult exercise, cause youre thinking maybe 8, 9 years in the future, but we think that we have over 26 years to develop a decent pattern recognition on what makes founders really, the kind of people who can lead the whole way.  That doesnt mean that they always do, but we try to find those criteria. And if we look at our own history of our biggest wins as a firm, theyre usually the ones where the founders did go the whole way.So, what does that tell? For us, I think, in some sectors you need to bring to the table some sort of relevant expertise from that industry. Some sort of insight that you would have that a lay person thats walking into that business wouldnt have. I do think that having fresh perspective in some businesses is helpful. But if youre building a security software company, having a good history of knowing what features are valued by customers is really helpful because once you shipped your product, that  mission  is critical stuff, right.  So having the experience from the industry is very important.We often talk about magnetism, like with founders. Theres some people that, I dont know if youve met, but you just go, I really would love to work with that person. Theres a certain amount of optimism, a certain amo unt of what I call unflappableness. Someone who cant be taken off their path. And those types of people are very rare to find, but they believe in it so much themselves that other people are willing to take the risk and go with them on the journey. Thats something we look for.In some ways of shapes and forms that might be called leadership. But actually leadership has also some other characteristics as well. Leadership isnt just the ability to guide, get people to go on the journey with you, but its the ability to actually organize those people into a functioning organization.And so, even with very young founders, we look for people who have the ability to manage, who have the ability to partition the work and motivate and really help developed their employees.  This is not easy stuff. And its helpful if youve worked in a high function organization before and have seen these patterns, but even first time founders sometimes have a knack for that.If its a highly technical project, we look frankly for brilliant, world class engineers. The last company that I kind of let the investment for  Highland  is, the CTO is one of the guys who helped write Java. One of the other founders helped create MapReduce at Google. So we really look for people with world class technical talent, because what weve found is that there is, between a good engineer and a truly great engineer, theres like a whole order of magnitude in productivity. Its not just their productivity, its the other talent that they can attract to the team.  So when you back truly great people, they actually form this sucking sound in this industry where they get the best talent into that company. And that of course reinforces the companys success.Martin: How do you test this magnetism and on the other hand industry knowledge, given that you often times invest in companies that are trying to reshape an industry and which is most of the time you dont have direct insight in the industry as well?Alex: I mean the w ay we test the team aspect is, we do a lot of references. Ideally, the ideal situation is youve already worked for this person for 20 years, right. And you already have the evidence. It happens occasionally, every now and then. But a lot of times, teams come out of companies that were successful and start a new company. You may have known them by reputation, or you may know them socially, but youve never worked with them before.What we do there is, we do heavy, heavy deep reference checks. And we talk to lots of people that have worked with them, we talk to people that have work with them even like 20 years prior and we form in our own heads, a narrative about that persons career. And we try to understand what makes them successful, what are their strength, what are their weaknesses. And we form a thesis around the team.And, like I said, were not always right. But more often than not, we are. That often, when we are right, we actually find that those are the best companies. And so, personally when I go very deep on the team, and try to really understand, what theyre good at and what they need from us. And frankly, it helps us thinking about how we can be helpful as a partner. If this is a very strong technical team, but they dont really have a good business development sense, thats something we can try to bring to the table. We can try to find them someone. First of all, we can advice them on that. But we can also go try to find them someone to work in that function.So thats kind of how we  set that out.  I think the only thing you can do is, talk to people who have worked with them before and form an opinion about what they need.Martin: And how can you find out if some founder is really able to manage pivots? Like before, most of the time, the first year wont be the final idea when you execute a company.Alex: So that another great reason to back teams instead of  market sales. There is this idea that a great team will find a great market. The people that beli eve in the market say that, you could put Bill Gates and have him sell ice cream, and hell never build a 100 billion company because the market size for ice cream is only so big. Right.  So, its more of a religious  conviction,  but I think that great teams tend to find new opportunities.Weve had  companies in the past that started down on one direction and have made pivots into several, maybe several times, to the point where I think the good ones tend to stick in the same market, but they try to change the business model.So, a good example would be a portfolio company of ours called thredUP, which is an e-commerce company. When they started out, the idea was to basically to be able to exchange clothing with one another. So, you and I can trade our shirts, if we want to. That only has so much upside, because theres just not that many people whore willing to dig through other peoples closets and judge, I like that shirt has a little bit of stain on it, I really dont want that one, b ut Ill take that one. Its a lot of work for a consumer, right. And its actually a lot of work for a seller, because they have to figure out, they have to go take everything, photos and put it online.So, that company pivoted to become an e-commerce company. So meaning that theyll actually just buy things from you and they know what they can buy and what they shouldnt buy, and then they go sell it on the Internet. So for the consumer, it just looks like a normal e-commerce store. And for a seller, all they do is just put all their stuff they want to sell in a bag, and you send it in. They dont have to worry about it.  And thats when the business really took off. And thats when we invested.But the founders are 2 guys I went to business school with, and Ive known them for 5.5 years now. It took many years to really figure out what the right model was. But these guys, by the time they got there, they were experts on that market. There’s no one who knows that market better than these gu ys. And you have to be willing to support founders, while they figure that out because it sometimes not everything takes off right from the get go.We tried to back great people, who weve believed have the ability to figure what the right business is.Martin: Alex, Im very sure that you see so many pitches a year. Can you tell us a little bit about what makes a great pitch and then maybe tell us a little bit of some examples where you say, this was a great pitch because of X and this wasnt a good pitch because of Y?Alex: So any great pitch is a great story, right. The best pitchmen and pitchwomen are the best story tellers. So the best pitches Ive seen, have taken me through this opportunity. Youve got to get peoples attention right away. One of the things that kills me is, when people don’t tell you what the product is until half way through the deck. Tell me what youre building, tell me why youre building it, tell me why the world needs it. Take me on the journey, tell me who you are and why you guys are the most relevant people that actually go on this journey and convince me that its a journey worth going on together. And if you take that attitude as oppose to just kind of giving me a bunch of facts, I think that youre probably half way there. We of course, we decided if its a fit for us, but youll be surprised of how many people come in here and just regurgitate a bunch of facts about a market size and about product matrix  and stuff. And that works for later stage investors, whore more interested in just, I want to invest a dollar and get 3 dollars out.For us, were signing out for 8-9 years of work potentially, and we have to believe that this is going to change the world. We have to believe that any investment that we make is going to return our fund. Thats multi billion dollar company and to do that, you have to believe that its a generational type of opportunity. And for that, youll need to be able to tell us that story.Its not very specific feedback , but to be more specific, I think one of the most interesting thing Ive seen in the slide deck that I really liked, I really dont see this that often. It is the same company actually, thredUP. I remember when the CEO was pitching us, he said, heres what you have to believe to want to invest in my company. He said, if you dont believe these things you should not invest, and he listed them. And the interesting thing by doing that is, you kind of go through one-by-one, you go, Okay I believe that, I believe that, I believe that. And so like, then I should invest in the company.So he led me down this road and it was a very logical argument. I think more founders should take  that type of approach, where they are like, Look, theres a lot of risk in this venture. Heres what we believe. And if you believe what we believe, clearly theres a massive opportunity here. And it doesnt mean that were going to get there, we have to execute on it, but what we see is, look for is the optionality.Th ey look for, if the execution is good, can we actually have a huge opportunity? Its a huge upside. So thats what its all about. Its not about necessarily convincing them that theres no risk. Smart investors know theres risk. Its about convincing them that the upside is there. And for that, you need to believe in a certain set of things. If you dont believe them, youre not going to believe theres the upside.Martin: And when youre saying that, entrepreneurs tell you stories, do you mean that they should give you a big picture in terms of, Okay, in 5 to 10 years we would like to own that and that on that market, or do you want to say, This is what we want to do in the next 2 years?Alex: Theres the story, theres a combination, so heres what I say. Theres a 10 year road map. Like this is a 10 year vision, thats what I say. A 10 year vision and theres like a 6 month plan.  So youve got to believe in the 10 year vision, and you have to believe in the 6 month plan. Like whats the next logic al miles  from here to here.  So youve got to simultaneously sell both of those things.I remember when we have a company in our portfolio called 2U, which is an online education company that recently went public. I remember, the very first meeting with them, one of the founders said that, look theres plenty of online colleges you can go to, but they have the wrong incentives system. Like if you are, I dont know if you have this in Europe, but this for-profit education like  University  of  Phoenix, or Capella.Martin: Open university in the  UK, I guess.Alex: You borrow money from the government via Title IV, to go to school and then, so you load yourself up with debt as a student, and then you come out with a degree thats not that valuable actually, in a lot of cases. Or you may not even finish. Why is that an endemic problem? Well, its because they actually dont really have that much incentive for you to be a great, like have a great job and a great profession. Theyre kind of in a business of signing you up and covering their acquisition cost and then moving on to the next student. Thats how they make their money. And sure theyd like to keep paying your tuition, but if you ultimately not a successful in job market place, it doesnt really affect them.Whereas if you look at non-profit schools, like Harvard, or MIT or YALE or USC, or  Georgetown, whatever, great schools, theyre non-profits and their mission is just to educate people wholl go out into the world and have great careers. And they build their reputation on the fact that people are educated, and also can have a great career with the degree they get.And in particular with graduate degrees, its very, very tied to your career, because youve already graduated from college and youre going back to school because you want  to get to the next level in your career.So, instead of building another online school, lets go build a company that helps bring these non-profits on the internet, because then they can tak e their mission and take it global. You can go from being the number 10 program in your field to being the number 1, and we can help give you those tools to go online.  Were now align with our school partners. So to me, it was a very compelling vision of the future. I think in every vision of the future, where it actually ends up in retrospect working, its always a bit controversial when you first hear it.Like today, this was like 2009 or something when we first heard this. Today, online education is like, kind of going mainstream. Back then, it was not. So there was a lot of controversy. Will school sign up for this? Will school want online students coming to their universities? Will that dilute our brand? And it turns out, it was the best thing in the world for their brand. Because they basically, you know, there are students around the world that never heard of these guys and now theyre getting degrees and now theyre going into workplace and  people are seeing that on their resu me.So, its a transforming of a company but it was very controversial at the time, and require you to think differently, but the story made sense. If you believe this, if we can get there, this is a massive opportunity because were the first online education company that actually aligns with the students for outcomes.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM ALEX TAUSSIG In Palo Alto we talked with venture capitalist Alex Taussig about the investment process and investment criteria at Highland Capital Partners. Furthermore, Alex shares his learnings and advice for young entrepreneurs.The transcript of the interview is provided below.INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi, today we are in  Menlo Park,  in the Highland Capital Partners office with Alex. Alex, who are you and what do you do?Alex: Haha Hi, good to have you guys here. My name is Alex Taussig, Im a ventures capitals partner at Highland Capital Partners. We are a 26 year old venture capital firm with offices all around the world, and we invest in early stage technology companies. So, thats both enterprise companies, everything from infrastructure software to application software to consumer internet companies, market places, social media, all that kind of stuff. So, weve been around, as I said, for a while.In  Boston,  we have our offices where we started the firm. We also have our office out here, as well as in  Geneva  and in  Shanghai.Martin: Great! Awesome.Martin: Can you tell us a little bit about your background? What did you do before you started being a venture capitalist?Alex: So I have a bit of unconventional background in some sense. For a long time growing up, I thought I was going to be a professor. So I was on an academic track for the most of my life. Started labs when I was a teenager and did a lot different types of research expose into a lot of different technology in bioinformatics, computer vision. I ended up doing physics and materials engineering. Physics is an undergrad and then materials engineering as a grad student at MIT.It was some point during the grad school days, I got a little bit bored of research. Its a bit of a slower pace than we find in the startup world. And at the same time, Ive known a lot of folks that I went to college with at Harvard, who had come out to the Valley to start a companies or a lot of them at that point of time, theyre actually going to Microsoft and then come to the Valley. That would seem to be a lot of pattern. And I was at Harvard when Facebook started, so it was part of this generation of sort of new entrepreneurs and decided that I wanted to be part of that in someway. And at the time, someone had told me about venture capital, which is sort of this of interesting intermediary between people that make the technology and the financial markets. And having grown up in New York City, and been in around the finance community in my whole life, I thought it would be a nice marriage of my passions for sort of helping capitalized businesses and then also working with technologists to help bringing their stuff out of the lab, out of the confined of small, little dimly-lit rooms into the real world and serving customers. So I decided to venture capital, Id like to  learn more about what that was.So I ended up going to business school. I left MIT, got out of PhD program and decided to get a Masters instead, so I wrote my thesis. And then I went over to HBS,  Harvard  Business  School  and joined  Highland  out of business school.So Ive been with  Highland  for about 5.5 years now. And started working in our  Boston  office with one of our founders very closely. So that was sort of my apprenticeship, if you will. I worked very closely with him on a number of companies in the security software space, dataware housing. We invested in a robotics company, which I’m happy to talk about. Its pretty cool stuff.So we like really technically complex problems and really amazing engineering founders. And thats really what Ive been doing pretty much ever since. And I moved out here about 2.5 years ago to help build our West Coast office. And thats kind of what Ive been doing. But Im sort of a career venture capitalist and Im inspired by great innovations and great engineers. Id like to help them explore their transition from inventing great technology and moving it to the real world.Martin: Actually from my point of view, there are a lot of similarities between being a professor, entrepreneur or venture capitalist by building up hypothesis and testing them. The only thing is that, as a professor maybe you can only do the theoretical stuff, but as an entrepreneur and a VC you also see the consequences.Alex: Well in a laboratory, you’re still isolated from the real world, you know. I worked on a project that was trying to create computer chips that ran on light. So, instead of electricity, the computer chip that runs on light. Thats a big idea, right. We were totally, I mean as a student I was totally unaware that Intel would just like totally control this market. Theres no hope for commercializing this technology as a small company.Had I known, had I come from the business background, I probably would have figured out earlier, right. But with that being said, you know, you do a lot of really cutting edge stuff in the lab, but you do it as sort of scale and with a sort of ment orship that doesnt really guide you down to the commercial route.  I think that we still have a lot of work to do on a model that transitions a laboratory research out into the real world. You know, Stanford over here has done a great job at it. MIT is doing a  good job, Harvard is doing a descent job, but there’s  still a lot of work to do. And I think coming from that world, I can I kind of walk in both pair of shoes if you will.I see some similarities, there’s a good amount of   hypothesis-driven testing you refer to, but the practicality is quite different. The emphasis here if its not valuable to customer, its not valuable to work on. Which is very different than academia.HIGHLAND CAPITAL PARTNERS INVESTMENT CRITERIAMartin: Let’s talk about Highland Capital Partners. What are the typical selection criteria for you to invest in a company? And maybe you can build some kind of matrix, depending on  ticket  size, industry, at what stage is the company, etc.Alex: Lots of diff erent venture firms have different approaches. I think, we can talk about different stages of investing. At  Highland,  we are predominantly Series  A  investor. So were usually coming in as the first largest institutional investor in the company. Were usually the first outside board director, thats not always the case, but its usually the case. We like to think that we have a mark on the early formation and growth of the company.  And at some point, more capital comes in and other board members come on board, but we like to be the trusted, kind of first person that makes a bet on a group of entrepreneurs.As such our criteria, different firms think about it differently. There are firms on this road here that focus a lot on market or they focus very much on the specifics of the product. I would say that my focus, and I think most of us here, tend to focus a lot on the team. We very much believe, that we want to be backing great founders who can really take it the whole way. So anyti me, sort of a difficult exercise, cause youre thinking maybe 8, 9 years in the future, but we think that we have over 26 years to develop a decent pattern recognition on what makes founders really, the kind of people who can lead the whole way.  That doesnt mean that they always do, but we try to find those criteria. And if we look at our own history of our biggest wins as a firm, theyre usually the ones where the founders did go the whole way.So, what does that tell? For us, I think, in some sectors you need to bring to the table some sort of relevant expertise from that industry. Some sort of insight that you would have that a lay person thats walking into that business wouldnt have. I do think that having fresh perspective in some businesses is helpful. But if youre building a security software company, having a good history of knowing what features are valued by customers is really helpful because once you shipped your product, that  mission  is critical stuff, right.  So having the experience from the industry is very important.We often talk about magnetism, like with founders. Theres some people that, I dont know if youve met, but you just go, I really would love to work with that person. Theres a certain amount of optimism, a certain amount of what I call unflappableness. Someone who cant be taken off their path. And those types of people are very rare to find, but they believe in it so much themselves that other people are willing to take the risk and go with them on the journey. Thats something we look for.In some ways of shapes and forms that might be called leadership. But actually leadership has also some other characteristics as well. Leadership isnt just the ability to guide, get people to go on the journey with you, but its the ability to actually organize those people into a functioning organization.And so, even with very young founders, we look for people who have the ability to manage, who have the ability to partition the work and motivate a nd really help developed their employees.  This is not easy stuff. And its helpful if youve worked in a high function organization before and have seen these patterns, but even first time founders sometimes have a knack for that.If its a highly technical project, we look frankly for brilliant, world class engineers. The last company that I kind of let the investment for  Highland  is, the CTO is one of the guys who helped write Java. One of the other founders helped create MapReduce at Google. So we really look for people with world class technical talent, because what weve found is that there is, between a good engineer and a truly great engineer, theres like a whole order of magnitude in productivity. Its not just their productivity, its the other talent that they can attract to the team.  So when you back truly great people, they actually form this sucking sound in this industry where they get the best talent into that company. And that of course reinforces the companys success.M artin: How do you test this magnetism and on the other hand industry knowledge, given that you often times invest in companies that are trying to reshape an industry and which is most of the time you dont have direct insight in the industry as well?Alex: I mean the way we test the team aspect is, we do a lot of references. Ideally, the ideal situation is youve already worked for this person for 20 years, right. And you already have the evidence. It happens occasionally, every now and then. But a lot of times, teams come out of companies that were successful and start a new company. You may have known them by reputation, or you may know them socially, but youve never worked with them before.What we do there is, we do heavy, heavy deep reference checks. And we talk to lots of people that have worked with them, we talk to people that have work with them even like 20 years prior and we form in our own heads, a narrative about that persons career. And we try to understand what makes them successful, what are their strength, what are their weaknesses. And we form a thesis around the team.And, like I said, were not always right. But more often than not, we are. That often, when we are right, we actually find that those are the best companies. And so, personally when I go very deep on the team, and try to really understand, what theyre good at and what they need from us. And frankly, it helps us thinking about how we can be helpful as a partner. If this is a very strong technical team, but they dont really have a good business development sense, thats something we can try to bring to the table. We can try to find them someone. First of all, we can advice them on that. But we can also go try to find them someone to work in that function.So thats kind of how we  set that out.  I think the only thing you can do is, talk to people who have worked with them before and form an opinion about what they need.Martin: And how can you find out if some founder is really able to ma nage pivots? Like before, most of the time, the first year wont be the final idea when you execute a company.Alex: So that another great reason to back teams instead of  market sales. There is this idea that a great team will find a great market. The people that believe in the market say that, you could put Bill Gates and have him sell ice cream, and hell never build a 100 billion company because the market size for ice cream is only so big. Right.  So, its more of a religious  conviction,  but I think that great teams tend to find new opportunities.Weve had  companies in the past that started down on one direction and have made pivots into several, maybe several times, to the point where I think the good ones tend to stick in the same market, but they try to change the business model.So, a good example would be a portfolio company of ours called thredUP, which is an e-commerce company. When they started out, the idea was to basically to be able to exchange clothing with one another . So, you and I can trade our shirts, if we want to. That only has so much upside, because theres just not that many people whore willing to dig through other peoples closets and judge, I like that shirt has a little bit of stain on it, I really dont want that one, but Ill take that one. Its a lot of work for a consumer, right. And its actually a lot of work for a seller, because they have to figure out, they have to go take everything, photos and put it online.So, that company pivoted to become an e-commerce company. So meaning that theyll actually just buy things from you and they know what they can buy and what they shouldnt buy, and then they go sell it on the Internet. So for the consumer, it just looks like a normal e-commerce store. And for a seller, all they do is just put all their stuff they want to sell in a bag, and you send it in. They dont have to worry about it.  And thats when the business really took off. And thats when we invested.But the founders are 2 guys I went to business school with, and Ive known them for 5.5 years now. It took many years to really figure out what the right model was. But these guys, by the time they got there, they were experts on that market. There’s no one who knows that market better than these guys. And you have to be willing to support founders, while they figure that out because it sometimes not everything takes off right from the get go.We tried to back great people, who weve believed have the ability to figure what the right business is.Martin: Alex, Im very sure that you see so many pitches a year. Can you tell us a little bit about what makes a great pitch and then maybe tell us a little bit of some examples where you say, this was a great pitch because of X and this wasnt a good pitch because of Y?Alex: So any great pitch is a great story, right. The best pitchmen and pitchwomen are the best story tellers. So the best pitches Ive seen, have taken me through this opportunity. Youve got to get peoples atten tion right away. One of the things that kills me is, when people don’t tell you what the product is until half way through the deck. Tell me what youre building, tell me why youre building it, tell me why the world needs it. Take me on the journey, tell me who you are and why you guys are the most relevant people that actually go on this journey and convince me that its a journey worth going on together. And if you take that attitude as oppose to just kind of giving me a bunch of facts, I think that youre probably half way there. We of course, we decided if its a fit for us, but youll be surprised of how many people come in here and just regurgitate a bunch of facts about a market size and about product matrix  and stuff. And that works for later stage investors, whore more interested in just, I want to invest a dollar and get 3 dollars out.For us, were signing out for 8-9 years of work potentially, and we have to believe that this is going to change the world. We have to believe that any investment that we make is going to return our fund. Thats multi billion dollar company and to do that, you have to believe that its a generational type of opportunity. And for that, youll need to be able to tell us that story.Its not very specific feedback, but to be more specific, I think one of the most interesting thing Ive seen in the slide deck that I really liked, I really dont see this that often. It is the same company actually, thredUP. I remember when the CEO was pitching us, he said, heres what you have to believe to want to invest in my company. He said, if you dont believe these things you should not invest, and he listed them. And the interesting thing by doing that is, you kind of go through one-by-one, you go, Okay I believe that, I believe that, I believe that. And so like, then I should invest in the company.So he led me down this road and it was a very logical argument. I think more founders should take  that type of approach, where they are like, Look , theres a lot of risk in this venture. Heres what we believe. And if you believe what we believe, clearly theres a massive opportunity here. And it doesnt mean that were going to get there, we have to execute on it, but what we see is, look for is the optionality.They look for, if the execution is good, can we actually have a huge opportunity? Its a huge upside. So thats what its all about. Its not about necessarily convincing them that theres no risk. Smart investors know theres risk. Its about convincing them that the upside is there. And for that, you need to believe in a certain set of things. If you dont believe them, youre not going to believe theres the upside.Martin: And when youre saying that, entrepreneurs tell you stories, do you mean that they should give you a big picture in terms of, Okay, in 5 to 10 years we would like to own that and that on that market, or do you want to say, This is what we want to do in the next 2 years?Alex: Theres the story, theres a combinatio n, so heres what I say. Theres a 10 year road map. Like this is a 10 year vision, thats what I say. A 10 year vision and theres like a 6 month plan.  So youve got to believe in the 10 year vision, and you have to believe in the 6 month plan. Like whats the next logical miles  from here to here.  So youve got to simultaneously sell both of those things.I remember when we have a company in our portfolio called 2U, which is an online education company that recently went public. I remember, the very first meeting with them, one of the founders said that, look theres plenty of online colleges you can go to, but they have the wrong incentives system. Like if you are, I dont know if you have this in Europe, but this for-profit education like  University  of  Phoenix, or Capella.Martin: Open university in the  UK, I guess.Alex: You borrow money from the government via Title IV, to go to school and then, so you load yourself up with debt as a student, and then you come out with a degree that s not that valuable actually, in a lot of cases. Or you may not even finish. Why is that an endemic problem? Well, its because they actually dont really have that much incentive for you to be a great, like have a great job and a great profession. Theyre kind of in a business of signing you up and covering their acquisition cost and then moving on to the next student. Thats how they make their money. And sure theyd like to keep paying your tuition, but if you ultimately not a successful in job market place, it doesnt really affect them.Whereas if you look at non-profit schools, like Harvard, or MIT or YALE or USC, or  Georgetown, whatever, great schools, theyre non-profits and their mission is just to educate people wholl go out into the world and have great careers. And they build their reputation on the fact that people are educated, and also can have a great career with the degree they get.And in particular with graduate degrees, its very, very tied to your career, because youve a lready graduated from college and youre going back to school because you want  to get to the next level in your career.So, instead of building another online school, lets go build a company that helps bring these non-profits on the internet, because then they can take their mission and take it global. You can go from being the number 10 program in your field to being the number 1, and we can help give you those tools to go online.  Were now align with our school partners. So to me, it was a very compelling vision of the future. I think in every vision of the future, where it actually ends up in retrospect working, its always a bit controversial when you first hear it.Like today, this was like 2009 or something when we first heard this. Today, online education is like, kind of going mainstream. Back then, it was not. So there was a lot of controversy. Will school sign up for this? Will school want online students coming to their universities? Will that dilute our brand? And it turns out, it was the best thing in the world for their brand. Because they basically, you know, there are students around the world that never heard of these guys and now theyre getting degrees and now theyre going into workplace and  people are seeing that on their resume.So, its a transforming of a company but it was very controversial at the time, and require you to think differently, but the story made sense. If you believe this, if we can get there, this is a massive opportunity because were the first online education company that actually aligns with the students for outcomes.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM ALEX TAUSSIGMartin: Alex, imagine a friend of yours or a friend of friend of yours comes to you and says, Alex, I would like to start a company. What would be the best advice that you would give him, in terms of financing the company or maybe setting up a team, or later on, after he finds a managing relationship with the board?Alex: First thing Id say is, why do you want to start a company. So starting a company is really, really hard. Its almost impossible to describe it, how hard it is to most people.I guess starting a venture backed kind of company is extremely hard. You have no resources, its incredibly difficult for people to hear your cause, its hard to get that initial traction, and you devote so much of your life to actually making this work. And you put yourself and your ego and all that stuff into it, your blood, sweat and tears. For something that will, you know, probabilistically not worked out. And by the way, if you are really good, youre probably leaving some job that was very high paying and some lifestyle that youre really accustomed to go and do this.So, its like a very, very difficult thing to do and I actually think that starting a company is not the right choice for most people. I don’t believe that most people are founders or have the ability to be founders. But I also believe, that in this culture we have right now, what seems to be very popular to romanticized people whove founded companies, that a lot of people think they are that person.So the first thing I tell people is just do a  gut check. Its just to basically say, am I willing. Here’s what I would tell people. Are you willing to work on this idea for 2 years with no traction. Like if youre willing to do it for 2 years with 0 traction, then you probably have the grid and the fortitude to actually make it the whole way. Because I have a lot of friends who have started a very successful companies, for which the first 2 years of that, they had nothing.What separates them from everyone else that went by the way side, was the fact they actually stuck with it. So youve got to be able to do that. If you can do that, youve a  higher chance of being successful. So thats the first thing I would say to them is, do you want to spend 2 years of your life on something that potentially have 0, 0 traction and still want to go for it. So thats what I would say.Martin : Okay. Great! And in terms of financing, what would you recommend to your friend? He is very young and he’s trying to set up a not that much capital intensive business.Alex: The first round should honestly, I mean, I had some good advice from a professor in business school. Business school is funny. You dont remember a lot of the stuff youre told, but every now and then, theres a little nugget that sticks in your head. And this one is always stuck in my head. Which was, the person who is likely to write you the first check, is not going to do it because of your business, theyre going to do it because of you.So theyre going to do it because they want to see you succeed. So I think the first thing you should do if you are financing a company, when youre just starting it, is go find the people who want you to be successful and will back you because its you. So get those people. Then, the next people you get, should be extremely high profile and have a great reputation in the industr y youre focused on.So instead of trying to go out and  raise money from like 100 random people, focus on like the 10 highly relevant people. Because it turns out the way fundraising works is once you get 1 or 2 of those people, everyone else will want to be in the round. So you spend 80% of your effort on the really relevant, highly visible people.  Once you get them, its like going bowling. All the other pins will just start to fall over.So thats usually the advice I gave people at that stage.I would honestly take money from as few individuals as you can and still be able to raise enough. The more people you add to the cap table, the more angry phone calls you have to deal with, Wheres my money? Oh, how you guys doing? Often times the most annoying ones are the angry ones, its the, Hey, how are things going? can I come and check it out? You dont want to manage a lot of, a lot of people. You want to have a low maintenance investors and have as few of them as possible, in my view.Ma rtin: Because you want to focus on the building the business and not on managing the investors relationship.Alex: Fundraising for most entrepreneurs is a nuisance. There are some that actually enjoy it. They tend to also be very good at it. But most people I know, really dislike fundraising and would prefer not to spend a lot of time on it. And I think thats probably right.When I meet people and interested in investing in the company, I tell them, look heres what I need to do to get to the point where were going to decide were going to make an investment, and I want to use your time as judiciously possible, because I know this is not the fun part. The fun part is building the business. And then when I go on the board, were going to have a long, long relationship to work together. So right now is the time where we need to fill each other out and I need you to answer some questions. So I think good investors will be judicious with their use of your time and bad investor will waste you r time.Martin: Alex, you have seen so many startups. What learnings or mistakes have you seen when young entrepreneurs are trying to scale the company?Alex: Ill tell you a couple of things.I mean theres the classic trying to scale your company before you’re really truly a product market fit. Investing a lot of dollars behind, say, a paid marketing campaign, when you really dont even know what your contribution margins are, or if thats not the relevant matrix, when you dont know the type of users youre trying to acquire. Doesnt make a lot of sense. Theres always, test you can perform but really scaling on those efforts prematurely that can burn through a lot of cash very quickly.  Ideally, when youre in that early stage, the cash youre spending is really should be going to support your team, not in much else.One other thing is, Ive seen is relying on business development to drive early traction. It turns out that other people are never going to be as good at selling you product as you will. If youre going to rely on channels or partnerships to push your product through, its really, really chunky and its really difficult to motivate those parties to actually work hard for you, because they have a ton of other parties as well.  So, Im not a big fan of channel businesses early on, Im not a big fan of businesses that are driven by business development partnerships early on. I think, you need to find a way as a startup to control your own destiny in some sense. Develop direct relationship with your customers or your users and figure out how to get those people to actually help you grow.So, Ive seen those mistakes probably most often with regard to scaling.Martin: Alex, thank you very much for your time. Next time you are pitching Alex, now you  know  how great  pitch looks like and please consider that. Thank you very much.

Volcanic Eruptions - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 3 Words: 760 Downloads: 6 Date added: 2019/08/16 Category Environment Essay Level High school Tags: Volcano Essay Did you like this example? A volcanic eruptions are devastating events that cause mass destruction throughout our society. Volcanoes are made by lava and ash coming out of the ground and hardening. Then over time, it will create a volcano. Volcanoes kill 540 people each year(Fox News). Volcanoes can be caused by other natural disasters or pressure underneath earths surface but the destruction can be minimized by following the evacuation route. To begin with, volcano eruptions can be caused by many different things. One way a volcano erupts is when it is located on a boundary line of tectonic plates. In the text, Why Do Volcanoes Erupt it notes When one plate pushes under the other, this forces molten rock, sediment and seawater down into the magma chamber. The rock gets melted to magma, and eventually overfill the chamber until it erupts. Another way the volcano can erupt is when there is a decrease in external pressure in the chamber. An article states A decrease in external pressure on the magma chamber may also allow for an eruption by minimising its ability to hold back increasing pressures from the inside(Why Do Volcanoes Erupt). Usually a natural disaster like typhoon will cause a huge decrease in external pressure in the volcano. Volcanoes also have a huge effect on climate change as well. For example, Mount Tamboras eruption was so big that it put a lot of particles in the air causing it to block the sun so the te mperature dipped down. This caused many crops in that area to die. All in all, volcanoes have many ways that they can erupt which can cause major effects in the climate. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Volcanic Eruptions" essay for you Create order There has been many catastrophic volcanic eruptions that has caused mass destruction to our society. Two examples of volcano eruptions are Mount Tambora and Mount st. Helens. Mount Tambora erupted in 1815 at sumbawa, an island in Indonesia. An article notes that The death toll is probably about a million people(Little). That is more than a whole city filled with people. Another huge volcano is Mount st. Helens. This volcano erupted in washington on march 7, 1980. This terrible event killed 57 people and the ash went all the way to Minnesota. The eruption was caused by seismic activity in the state. The text states 4.2 magnitude tremor was recorded four days after the seismic activity(History.com Editors). To prevent any more destruction, many residents evacuated the area and the national guard put up road blocks to prevent people from going into that area. These are only two of the many big volcanic eruptions that can cause a lot of damage if not careful. One of the most recent volcano eruptions was the volcano in Kilauea, one of the islands in Hawaii. It started in 1983 and has destroyed 35 structors. A website states The good new is that,so far, no fatalities or serious injuries have been reported by this eruption(Whitefield). To make sure there are no deaths, islanders are evacuating. The text states an eruption from Hawaiis Kilauea volcano forced more than a thousand island residents to evacuate their homes(Mexican volcanoes and how volcanoes are formed). All in all, this volcano eruption was a lot smaller than Mount Tambora and Mount st. Helens because of the death toll and other features of a volcano. This volcano is one of the most recent eruptions on this planet. Finally, there are some safety tips to avoiding an injury during a fierce volcano eruption. In the text, it states Do not drive in heavy ash fall(Volcanoes). Ash is really dense so a certain amount of it can cause your car to cave in which would end up being a terrible car ride. Also, that ash can be really dangerous once it gets into the lungs. The text Volcanoes states Follow evacuation or shelter orders. If advised to evacuate, do so early. This could prevent from having to drive in the ash at all. These are some safety tips to how to survive a volcano eruption. Volcanoes can be very beautiful but at the same time, they can have the ability to destroy a whole city. Imagine if a volcano just erupted. What safety precautions would be taken place? Would you evacuate the area or try to wait it out? But if volcanoes could be predicted, then it would allow everyone in the area to evacuate a couple days before the eruption begins. This would prevent any fatalilties or any extra damage that could be taken if not evacuating. Volcanoes have way more to them than what meets the eye.

The Religions Buddhism And Shinto - 1678 Words

There are many aspects of this world such as culture, technology, or art that have been influenced by other things. The way that things influence each other has allowed for new possibilities and ideals to be formed. Religion is no exception; there have been many instances where religions have influenced each other and blossomed due to new ideas being presented. A good example of this the relationship between the two religions: Buddhism and Shinto. Buddhism was brought into Japan during the early 6th century from Korea, and was later institutionalized as the state religion in the late 6th century by Prince ShÃ… toku. The Prince was a great patron of Buddhism and by having made it the state religion, it would help Buddhism spread. However, Japan was not without its own religion—Shinto—which had been there for many years prior to the arrival of Buddhism. With Buddhism gaining traction in Japan with the help of Prince ShÃ… toku, what then does it mean for the Shinto relig ion? However, Shinto was not long forgotten, which leads to the question: how did the two religions, Buddhism and Shinto, interact with each other when Buddhism arrived in Japan? In this essay, I will discuss how both Buddhism and Shinto were closely tied to each other in Japan, and how they would influence each other in different ways that allowed them to grow into new directions. One of the first aspects of Shinto to look in regards to relations with Buddhism is the name itself; the meaning of the name â€Å"Shinto†Show MoreRelatedThe Religions Of Shinto And Buddhism1079 Words   |  5 Pages The two religions that are located in Japan are Shinto and Buddhism. The two religions in japan are extraordinarily unalike, while Shintoism believes that every living thing including rocks and sounds contain some type of god in them, and Buddhism is concerned with the soul and afterlife that happens in Buddhism. The religions differ very much from each other with little similarities . Buddhism and Shintoism differ in one using shrines while the other has temples, the two both have religious ceremoniesRead MoreHinduism, Buddhism, and Shinto1049 Words   |  5 PagesHinduism, Buddhism and Shinto, while vast in differences there is much to learn about these three religions similarities as well. Some facts and history of Hinduism include, Hinduism (being the oldest of the three) is dated back in pre-history before 10000 BC even believed to predate the Indus River Valley Civilization! The Vedas (the holy text of Hinduism) is the foundation for Indian culture and also the basic belief system of Hinduism. The basic belief structure of Hinduism is as follows, theRead MoreJapanese Scholars View of the Shinto Religion1110 Words   |  4 PagesThe Shinto religion is seen in two different lights by Japanese scholars. One is the view that the role of Shinto in Japanese history as a periphery religion and reliant on Buddhist ideals for its success. 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This is possible due to the polytheistic nature of most popular religions inRead MoreEssay on Shintoism and Buddhism1210 Words   |  5 PagesShintoism and Buddhism The Japanese religions, including Shintosim and Buddhism, are rich and complex, and it contains many condradictory trends which may puzzle a Westerner. In the center of the tradition is Shinto, the natural religion of Japan. Also in the center is Buddhism, the Indian religion that was brought to Japan in the sixth century from Korea and China. Throughout the history of Japan, it has been these two religions that have contributed most to the Japanese understandingRead MoreEssay on Shintoism: Strengths and Weaknesses1117 Words   |  5 PagesThe Japanese culture has been greatly influenced by its religions, and one of the most influential religions has been Shintoism. Shintoism has been dated back to 500BC, when the descendants of the sun goddess, Amaterasu-OmiKami, worshiped the gods and goddesses of Japan. Shinto means way of the gods and that represents what people who practice Shintoism believe in. Shintoism is a religion based on Japanese mythology, which is centered on a mal e god, Izanagi, and a female goddess, Izanami. TheseRead MoreThe Night Watches Of The Buddha1747 Words   |  7 PagesQuestion 2 Analyze the night Watches of the Buddha, and explain how the content was developed in the Mahayana Sutras. Mahayana Buddhism is originated in the first century C.E. and focuses on new concern for liberation through the assistance of a bodhisattva (Voorst ). Also, Mahayana Buddhism requires a body of scripture, and so began the Mahayana Canon (Voorst ). Mahayana Sutras is one of section of the Mahayana Canon, which focuses on the denial of the reality of existence and nonexistenceRead MoreHealth Care Provider and Faith Diversity1394 Words   |  6 Pagesvery popular religions this writer will discuss the spiritual perspective on healing, the critical components of healing, and what is important to people of a particular faith when cared for by health care providers. The three religions that will be discussed are Sikhism, Shintoism, and Buddhism. This writer will also compare these faiths to the Christian philosophy of faith and healing. Health Care Provider and Faith Diversity The first of three religions that will beRead MoreSimilarities Between Shinto And Shinto Religion933 Words   |  4 PagesOf the many religions in the world, none are quite as unique as Shintoism. Shinto, meaning â€Å"the way of the kami†, is the indigenous religion of Japan. It is believed to have existed since the 6th century B.C.E. However, there is no documented origin nor is there an established founder. At the center of the Shinto religion is devotion toward various kami and the rituals performed to please them. It does not attempt to explain existence or the afterlife. Instead, Shintoism focuses on interactions withRead MoreShinto - A Japanese Religion Essay1687 Words   |  7 PagesShinto: A Japanese Religion Uncovering the religious significance and practices of Japanese Shinto As an ancient religion of Japan, Shinto was originally a combination of nature worship, divination techniques, and shamanism. Meaning the way of the Gods, the origins of Shinto are not apparent in comparison to other religions, especially other Asian religions and beliefs. With no obvious founder, as well as original written scriptures and authentic laws, a number of theories exist about the

The John Dewy Principles Free Essays

â€Å"The correlate in thinking of facts, data, knowledge, already acquired, is suggestions, inferences, conjectured meanings, suppositions, tentative explanations:–ideas, in short. † Out of the authors that I have read this year, Alfred North Whitehead and John Dewey are the two that I have found the greatest commonality with in the subject of obtaining and gaining information. Whitehead speaks on education relating back to Life. We will write a custom essay sample on The John Dewy Principles or any similar topic only for you Order Now It seems to be the only way to become a person that can understand the world around him/her is to be a person who learned using life as the main force in education. â€Å"There is a proverb about the difficulty of seeing the wood because of the tress†¦ The problem of education is to make the pupil see the wood by means of the trees. † I think that he and I touch base with the idea of life being the driving force in education. Whitehead continues with distaste for formulated subjects and views Life as the only subject matter for education. Dewey seems to feel as though life should be the main subject matter for education. Dewey expresses an interest very similar to Whiteheads in the three stages in which education travels. Whitehead felt that romance was the first stage of education. Dewey stated that the pupil must first † have a genuine situation of experience-that there be a continuous activity in which he is interested for its own sake. † He continues with the methods that would best help the pupil to formulate their own conclusions. Secondly, that a genuine problem develop within this situation as a stimulus to thought; third, that he process the information and make the observations needed to deal with it; fourth, that suggested solutions occur to him which he shall be responsible for developing in an orderly way; fifth, that he have opportunity and occasion to test his ideas by application, to make their meaning clear and to discover for himself their validity. † This brings us to the scientific method. Now, instead of being fed information, we begin to formulate knowledge. There is a problem (noticed detail), thinking, hypothesis (educated idea), experiment, conclusion which compares to the hypothesis and reaches for a proof or disproof. We have created proof or even a habit. Whitehead expresses the danger of the implantation of inert ideas. Dewey wrote that â€Å"†¦ ideas are anticipations of possible solutions†¦ and tested by the operation of acting upon them. † Dewey was concerned with the school problems that are assigned to students becoming empty pointless problems that importance ends with the beginning of the pupil as a human. An idea that came to mind was to have a basic break down as far as the needed subject matter that has to be covered yet letting the pupil†s go out and find it in their lives as human beings. Dewey would describe this as an unscholastic approach. A problem that can lie here, is insufficient material being covered or students not fulfilling their part. Another potential problem would lie in the size of the class. A larger class size would have the great possibility of some student’s ideas being left uncovered. I considered how that might have a worse effect than inert ideas. Their ideas being left uncovered leave them with a lack! on the information as a whole. The realism of the situation is another factor to consider as well as the time prospective. In closing, I understand and agree with both Whitehead and Dewey’s propositions for a more efficient style of acquiring a more fruitful, long term, though process, it would take more than I think is possible without lengthening the academic year. And what student would really want that? How to cite The John Dewy Principles, Papers

The Cycle free essay sample

For me, bearing witness to this cycle was some sort of elated amazing. In the course of but a few minutes I observed how quickly old can become new in such a cruel nature. Many would say that, because of my age, I am at a point in my life where things are just beginning, for me however, this is a time of ending. My childhood has been overshadowed by obligations and my high school career is nearly over. It is now up to me, to ensure that my old experiences become recycled, that they are woven into a new beginning. I want to become a person that will be of help to others. Every weathered door that closes, I want a new one of opportunity to open. Eventually, when I get to that point so far in the future that I cling to my place in the earth and refuse to believe my purpose has passed, I can only hope, pray even, to become new once more. We will write a custom essay sample on The Cycle or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page That my legacy, experiences, dreams, and ambitions will leave a mark and be of use to others. The Cycle free essay sample The gnarled tree roots showed the grip of winter, frost carving initials into bark, leaving a timeless trail. Underneath the weathered wood were fresh-to-the-earth shoots, holding tight to the tree like a hat in the wind. Surrounded by this novel life, the tree seemed starkly dead. The bare canopy left the ground peppered with streaks of sunshine eagerly imbibed by hungry seedlings. In the breeze, exposed branches recoiled in shyness, pleading for buds to burst and dress their shameful nakedness. Remnants of a nest, a home to some chickadee or starling, clung to a dip in the timber as if it refused to believe its purpose had passed. Now Im sure, at some point, this scene was quite different; fledgling cradled by mother, cradled by nest, cradled by tree. Forthwith, however, the tree had released its embrace. Bits and pieces of nest rained down, pried from an old home by prodding branches. We will write a custom essay sample on The Cycle or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Nature seems to be particularly cruel to things that are old, all too obviously acknowledging worthlessness. Constantly shedding layers and discarding pasts, if only it was that easy. The past, now raining down from the weathered wood was caught, quite if by happenstance, in arms of the greenest blade of grass. It was only allowed a moment to rest and enjoy a newfound companion, until it was snatched away in the delicate talons of a glassy-eyed robin. Red chest like a beating heart, he proudly carried his prize, landing gingerly in front of his complement to deposit his bauble. She masterfully wove her new treasure into a basket-like home for her soon-to-be family. For me, bearing witness to this cycle was some sort of elated amazing. In the course of but a few minutes I observed how quickly old can become new in such a cruel nature. Many would say that, because of my age, I am at a point in my life where things are just beginning, for me however, this is a time of ending. My childhood has been overshadowed by obligations and my high school career is nearly over. It is now up to me, to ensure that my old experiences become recycled, that they are woven into a new beginning. I want to become a person that will be of help to others. Every weathered door that closes, I want a new one of opportunity to open. Eventually, when I get to that point so far in the future that I cling to my place in the earth and refuse to believe my purpose has passed, I can only hope, pray even, to become new once more. That my legacy, experiences, dreams, and ambitions will leave a mark and be of use to others.

Causes Of Poverty In The Developing World Essays - Population

Causes Of Poverty In The Developing World The causes of poverty in the developing world Wars Many LDCs have been badly affected by wars. There have been many civil wars in Africa, caused by European empire-building in the nineteenth century. Several African races were joined into one country, but half a race was left in another country. These countries were still artificial countries after they achieved independence. One race was often badly treated by the ruling race, which resulted in civil war. This also happened in Europe since the various parts of Yugoslavia were given independence. LDCs also suffer from wars between different countries, such as: Ethiopia and Somalia, Afghanistan and Russia. There are wars caused by corruption and political differences too, for example: Mozambique, Angola, Guatemala. Wars destroy crops, homes, schools and hospitals causing even more poverty. Many people are also forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in safer countries. These neighbouring countries, some of which were developing, will be made poor again by the sudden influx of refugees with out money or food. Natural disasters Many LDCs are located in areas of the World where natural disasters occur frequently and very severely. These natural disasters are earthquakes, floods, droughts and volcanic eruptions. Thousands of homes and acres of precious farmland can be destroyed by an earthquake or a flood. If there is no rain, the crops will not grow unless the farmers have the wealth to sink wells, install pumps and organise an irrigation system. Debt Most LDCs are forced to borrow money from the banks of developed countries to survive and begin to develop. These banks charge interest, so that a less developed country has to pay more in interest than it earns in foreign currency. In the early 70s, Chile borrowed 3.9 billion dollars. By 1982, Chile had paid 12.8 billion dollars in interest and still owed money. The extra 9 billion dollars should have been used to speed up Chiles development, but instead it went to countries that are already rich. Cash crops The only way for many LDCs to make enough money for their debts is to grow cash crops. Cash crops are grown to be sold rather than consumption. Cotton, Coffee, tea and tobacco are grown to sell to the developed world. Many people in LDCs are starving because land is used to grown cash crops instead of food. World poverty concerns us all as we depend on each other. For example, if we want the Sudanese to grow cotton for our clothes, we must make sure they have enough food to survive on. The causes of poverty in the modern world Here are three new and worrying causes of poverty: The World markets work in favour of the rich and powerful. Therefore, the profits are not shared equally. This causes homelessness and unemployment in rich countries and the poor countries can not develop their economies properly and they are kept in poverty Since the Second World War, the world has been divided into two sections with capitalist countries on one hand and communist on the other. This has led to four things: The attention of world leaders has been focussed on the Cold War instead of the problem of world poverty Large amounts of money have been spent on weapons which could have been used to relieve poverty The rich countries have given aid to the poor countries just to get them on their side in the Cold War and not to help them (they did this by supplying them with weapons) When wars have happened there has been an increase in the number of refugees, which adds to all the other problems. War has caused famine too. There have been problems with the increase and decrease of population. Sometimes, the methods to deal with these have been brutal and wrong. They have taken away peoples rights and forced people to use methods of birth control which the Church can not accept. Other factors contributing to world poverty These other factors contribute to world poverty: lack of education, low life expectancy leading to a large number of children, relying on one export whose value may decrease in the world market, changing a country from rich to poor almost overnight. Religion Essays

Got Silk essays

Got Silk essays The article Got Silk, which was written for The New York Times Magazine by Lawrence Osborne, tackles the controversial issue of cloning and genetic engineering. Osborne is a journalist who on a regular basis contributes to such noted publications as The New York Time Magazine, Salon magazine, and The New York Observer newspaper. All of these publications are known for their intellectual and academic articles, therefore one would expect an article written by Osborne to be of the same quality. Yet when he tackles a topic that is touchy as cloning and genetic engineering of goats to produce spider silk in their milk it is not up to par. Instead, while explaining how spider silk is one of the strongest materials in the world and what it could be used for; Osborne falls short. Osbornes main argument in the article was that some of Nexias workers were unsure at the beginning of the abnormal experiments but then came around to the idea; Osborne shows this by joking around about the though t of it. Lawrence Osborne takes a tour of transgenic farm; a place were animal species are either cloned or genetically mixed to create medically useful substance. The farm is owned by Nexia Biotechnologies. Nexia scientists are engaged in an experiment where a single gene from a golden orb-weaving spider is placed into a goat egg. Nexia ends up with goats producing spider silk in their milk. The reason for the experiment is because the spider silk is virtually the strongest material that exists in nature. The use of the BioSteel (Nexias name for spider silk) will be for body armor, tennis racket strings, and fishing line. After visiting the farm Osborne wanted to write an informative piece, because, as he says: ...genetics is the most glamorous frontier of contemporary science, but also the most fraught with anxiety. It seems that cloning, transgenic animals and genetic engineering are where our dee ...

The Use of the Internet as a Social Activity and Self-expression Essay

The Use of the Internet as a Social Activity and Self-expression - Essay Example ss the statement: â€Å"the internet has presented individuals with real possibilities for self-expression, conversation and creative work.† To appreciate its relevance, a brief history of the origins of the Internet would initially be discussed. Other various uses of the Internet, aside from the focal points, would also be presented. What is exciting in this technological development is that it has not stopped evolving and there is still a vast future ahead. A lot of stakeholders have the desire to continue their quest to discover new applications and uses which would define the future of the Internet. However, the consequences of information overload and accessibility to data have tremendous effects on the traditional concepts of culture. Our way of life, due to the technology provided by the Internet, will never be the same. written by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in August 1962. According to Leiner, et.al. (2003), the history of the Internet revolves around four distinct aspects: the technological aspect, operational and management aspect, social aspect, and commercialization aspect. The emergence of new media technologies such as the cable, satellite and the Internet has a tremendous impact on the traditional forms of mass media. In a book on Media and Cultural Theory, Freedman wrote that â€Å"a combination of technological innovations (concerning digitization) and cultural shifts (towards a more individualistic consumer society) appear to have handed new media technologies a competitive advantage over their predecessors† (â€Å"Internet Transformations†, 275). With more and more people utilizing the Internet for various purposes, there had been significant declines in primetime viewing of broadcast networks and circulations in magazines and broadsheets. The Internet boasts of a variety of uses for a wide range of clientele. From among the famous users of the Internet, our teenagers of today are seen to be the primary consumers of the Internet. A study

The event of Holocaust Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The event of Holocaust - Research Paper Example The researcher states that when one examines the history of the 20th century, many human sufferings and even massacres and large-scale cold-blooded executions come into mind but the most outstanding of them all is the holocaust. The holocaust was the massive destruction or the genocide of about 6 million European Jews and other ethnic minorities during the World War II giving a total of approximately 10 million deaths. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government targeted ethnic minorities residing in Europe and this included the Jews, the Romani, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, the Sinti and the Polish. They also extended their hatred to homosexuals, political and religious opponents, Jehovah’s witnesses and the disabled regardless of whether they were of foreign or German ethnic origin. Of all these groups of people, the Jews were the main target and they comprised almost half the numbers killed. Out of the nine million Jews who lived in Europe at that time, approximately six million of them died inclusive of close to 1 million children. The holocaust was a state-sponsored murder propagated by the Nazi government and it basically involved the killing of the various target groups. The event took place in the Nazi-occupied territory. This persecution and removal of German Jews begun almost immediately the Nazis came to power. This was in January 1933. The holocaust killings were driven by the idology that represented Nazi’s illusion that there was an international Jewish conspiracy to rule and control the world. This made this event such a large scale event in the history of man in that the murders were conducted in almost territories of Nazi which represent 35 separate European countries. Four main distinctive features about the genocide are institutional collaboration, scale and ideology, use of extermination camps and medical experiments. The genocide was carried out in stages starting from 30th January 1933 to 8th May 8, 1945 and the killin gs were conducted through various ways. Concntration camps were set up for confining the Jews. The Jews who were forcefully being moved from their homes were put together in these camps. The inmates were then used as slaves until they died of exhaustion. In these camps, they received no medical attention and some of them died of disease. Initially, these camps were to act as temporary residence for Jews awaiting relocation to areas outside Europe including former colonial powers and Africa. In some places like Poland, they were places for containing the Jews so that they could give labour force to the German war industry. Despite this, the Germans had a plan of eliminating the Jews finally and so the camps were set near railroads. Here, thousands died from disease, starvation, maltreatment and starvation. There is therefore no doubt that forced labour was an extermination tool. A model of destruction through work. Since the emergence of Third Reich, the concentration camps turned in to incineration places or extermination camps. The Third Reich required the Romani and the Jews to be assembled and confined in overcrowded ghettos awaiting from where they were transported by cargo or freight train to extermination camps. These journeys were horrific and many of the died on the way. Many of those who survived the journey were systematically murdered in gas chambers. These camps were equipped with several gas chambers for conducting mass extermination and this is one unique feature of the holocaust. By 1942, 6 large extermination camps had been set up in the Nazi-occupied Poland and as many as 15,000 camps and sub-camps in the Germany occupied nations. Another group of Jews and

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Design

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Design Introduction Objective The goal of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is to achieve reusable assets in an agile manner that is aligned with the business needs of the organization. The SOA Reference Architecture provides guidelines for making architectural and implementation decisions. To that end it serves as a blueprint for creating or evaluating a solution architecture for different groups within the organization. In addition it provides insight and patterns for integrating the different elements of an SOA as illustrated by the different layers of an SOA. An SOA Reference Architecture is designed to answer some of the key questions and issues encountered while developing a solution such as: What are the aspects of an SOA as expressed in terms of layers that need to be considered when designing solutions based on SOA principles? What are the building blocks needed to include in each layer of a solution? What are some of the key architectural decisions that need to be made when designing a a solution that is based on SOA? Which roles in a project would benefit from using these principles and guidelines? To answer these questions this document provides the following: Establishes a common vocabulary and set of definitions for services and SOA. Identifies the different functions of an SOA implementation and define their interactions with each other and with functions outside the scope of the Rufus platform. Provides SOA guiding principles. Defines consistent design and implementation across services. Shows when and where to use SOA technologies. Supports SOA governance. Provides an architectural based design methodology. Overview This document presents the layers, building blocks, architectural and design decisions, patterns, options and the separation of concerns needed to design or evaluate an SOA architecture. The architecture consists of multiple components which are divided into the following categories: Quality of Service (QoS) Security Consumer Business Process Integration Services Information Infrastructure Governance Monitoring Management Center of Excellence (COE) Design Time Elements Component View Design Time Elements Design-Time Activities are the technical activities, guidelines, and deliverables that allow for everyday development within the SOA and Integration Architecture. Including: Service Modeling and Design Canonical Data Modeling Policy Specification Service Assembly Service Testing Service Identification Service Lifecycle Management Service Modeling and Design Services must be modeled and designed to support an extensible plug-and-play model by being: Reusable So that other Services leverage an existing Service. Composable So that a Service can leverage other Services. Interoperable So that Services can work with each other. Discoverable To support location independence. To enable the above qualities, each Service (except for Data and Utility Services) needs to have: A well-defined Service Contract To enable loose couple by hiding low-level implementation details from Service Consumers. SOAP-based Web Services achieve this by specifying a WSDL interface with XML-based document exchange. RESTful Web Services define a contract with HTTP input parameters and JSON/XML-based responses. Coarse-grained So that operations have enough data to carry out all tasks in a stateless manner. Stateless operations Statelessness (i.e., not maintaining state between invocations) enables a Service to be reused in many contexts. A way to handle Exceptions to notify its caller if there are problems carrying out an operation. To ensure that each type of Shared Service is designed and implemented in a uniform manner, a SOA Governance team should create SOA Best Practices documents for: Service Design, Web Service Design, and XML Message Design in Designers Guides (i.e., working agreements). Topics would include: Service Specification and Design Interface (including Canonical Data model for messages see section 3.5.2) Policies (see section 3.5.3) SLAs (Service Level Agreements) A description of what the Service does A description of the Services operations. Best practices for each type of Shared Service (Business, Common, Data, Integration, and Utility). Examples showing the difference between Service-Oriented Design and Object Oriented Design. How to develop a SOAP Web Service (and handle Exceptions). How to develop a RESTful Web Service (and handle Exceptions). Canonical Data Modeling (XML) Many organizations have several autonomous packaged and custom developments that have evolved independently of one another. Many times, each system has become a system with its own implementation methodology, culture, processes, business rules, and vocabulary. Many companies face the problem of using the business data to enable applications to communicate in a distributed systems environment. Organizations design Canonical Data Models (CDM) to help analyze the message exchange within the organization and with their trading partners. Data is embedded in the basic architecture of any organization. To develop the CDM, an organization must inventory business concepts and map the vocabulary into fundamental business concepts. The CDM provides a framework for integrating the disparate terms for each line of business. The CDM is a catalog of neutral terms defined in an XML Schema, including: Entities in the business domain (e.g., Order, Customer, etc.) Agreed-upon data structures so that a domain element has a single, common definition. Formatting rules. A CDM defines an organizations data in motion the XML messages exchanged between: Services within an enterprise. An enterprise and its external trading partners. Many industries have an industry standard (e.g., ACORD, for Insurance, or EDRM for e-Discovery) to define core concepts and define data exchanged between companies. A Canonical Data Model provides the following benefits: An enterprise can easily exchange data with its business partners. An enterprise can adopt a single approach to exchanging data across all services the enterprise. The canonical model helps define the interface for each Service (thus hiding the structure of the physical data in the database). Changes to the canonical data model are required only when an entirely new business concept arises. Policy Specification Policies provide service-level meta-data to Web Services consumers. Specifying these policies is an important step in Web Service design, and this is accomplished by attaching policy expressions to the WSDL. Specifically, these policies include: Security: Transport Protocol Algorithm (RSA, etc.). Messages Authentication/Authorization Level of Service (e.g., Silver, Gold, Platinum, etc.). For example, a Platinum customers requests execute on best-provisioned server for better performance (but also at a higher price). Performance For example, send notifications if performance for a particular service dips below the promised SLA. Auditing For example, begin auditing when a particular service consumer invokes an operation on a Service. Service Assembly A Business Analyst first develops a Business Process Diagram (using BPMN Business Process Modeling Notation) to model a business process at a business/requirements level. Then, designers and developers create a runtime model in either BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) or JBI (Java Business Integration) to: Assemble existing Shared Services into a Business Process Enable a BPMS product and/or ESB can run the business process. Designers use MEPs (Message-Exchange Patterns) to model the runtime characteristics of a business process. Typical MEPs include: Pipes and Filters Content-based Router Recipient List Wire Tap Dynamic Router These patterns are gaining in popularity and many of the newer ESB and BPMS products support executable MEP models. Please see the following for further information: Enterprise Integration Patterns Home Page Enterprise Integration Patterns, Gregor Hohpe, Bobby Woolf, et al. Service Testing Most Shared Services will be implemented as Web Services, and it is important to take a Test-Driven Development (TDD) approach to Web Services development because: Designers and developers need early feedback on the design, functionality, usability, and performance of each Web Service. QA personnel need to be able to test Web Services. Overall quality is very important because each Web Service could be used by multiple consumers. Service Testing includes: Inspecting Web Services: Documentation Generating HTML documentation from the Web Service interface. Debugging Show SOAP/HTTP requests that are sent received over the wire. Invoking Web Services: Generating Web Services requests from WSDL to set the Web Service. Simulating/Mocking Web Services Generating Unit Tests based on the Web Service interface. Functional/Performance Testing Web Services Simulating load conditions. Reporting on performance under load conditions. Commercial products include: Eviware soapUI Pro iTKO LISA Open Source products include: Eviware soapUI Community Edition WebInject PushToTest TestMaker Points to Ponder (for Evaluation) Does the product support both SOAP and RESTful Web Services? How? Does the product enable you to view SOAP/HTTP messages over the wire? Does the product have a good/usable Web UI to make it easy to test? Can a QA/Tester use the product without developer intervention? What level of SOAP, WSDL, and HTTP does the product support? Does the product support an Agile/TDD approach with Unit Tests and Mocking? Does the product generate Unit Tests to support Continuous Integration? Can the product simulate load conditions and report on performance/scalability? How much setup is involved? How does the licensing work? Service Identification Service Identification is one of the key steps in designing a Service-Oriented solution because it defines and identifies high-level Business Services by using the following the following approaches: Top Down: Analyze and model business processes. Design new Services that enable the tasks and activities in the business processes. Bottom Up: Service-enable existing and applications systems. Create business processes from the Services. Middle Out: Analyze and model business processes. Catalog existing applications and services. Determine which can be Service-enabled. Create Service Adapters. Map tasks and activities from the business processes to existing Services. Create new Services to fill in the gaps. A Middle-out approach is recommend because it takes the best parts of the other approaches: The bottom-up approach creates isolated silos that dont align with the business. The top-down approach takes a long time, and the enterprise cant wait for every business process to be defined in order to begin designing and developing Services. A compromise approach takes into account the need for timeliness, but also instills enough discipline to design Business Services that match up with the goals and objectives from the Business Architecture by: Taking a first cut at the Business Services from Marketing materials and meetings with the CMO and other business stakeholders. Starting with only a few Business Processes. Driving toward a thin/vertical slice of functionality based on the business processes. Service Lifecycle Management Service implementations are software like any other software module or application. As such, they go through a similar lifecycle. The service lifecycle is depicted in the following diagram. The lifecycle starts with Service Identification. Services are part of more general business processes. As such, new services are usually identified by the design of a new business process. This is not the only way that new services are identified however. Sometimes services are identified as part of portfolio management. This involves analyzing the requirements for a service across the breadth of the enterprise. The level of analysis required for this type of identification is difficult to gauge and therefore CIBER does not recommend using portfolio management for service discovery at this time. Once a service has been identified, it follows an iterative development process. Iterative processes use the feedback from subsequent phases to make corrections in previous phases based on lesson learned or issues that may crop up. Services are part of a greater distributed system however and any changes made can have an impact on other development efforts. Therefore it is important to be mindful of the effect change can have even during development of a service. The Service Specification and Design phase produces at a minimum the specification for the service interface. This interface specification includes the semantics and data that the service supports. This represents the contract between the service and its consumers. Diligence should be applied to the design of this interface as changes to the interface have the greatest impact to subsequent phases. Changes to the service interface can impact both clients that may be developed in parallel, implementation of the service, as well as test plans that have been implemented to test the service. This does not mean that a service interface must never be changed once it is designed. Designs are not perfect and in todays IT environment it is not always possible to take the time required to produce an interface definition that is ideal. Therefore it is prudent to put processes in place that take into account that service interfaces may change. Whenever implementing a service take into account tha t the interface may change to the extent possible to minimize the impact of that change. This also applies to the implementers of consumers of the service. In some cases, consumers may want to wait until the service has been through some number of rounds of testing before starting their implementation. This allows for some experience to be developed with using the service thereby (hopefully) minimizing the possibility of change to the interface. Once the service has been designed it proceeds to the Service Implementation phase. In this phase the service will be developed based upon architectural standards developed by the university OIT group. Any issues encountered trying to implement the design of the service should be fed back to the designer in order to refine the design if necessary. Finally, service need to be tested before being deployed into production use. Testing of services involves four primary areas of focus: Security testing is essential to assess the risk of a service with regard to vulnerability, data privacy and data integrity. Tests need to be developed to test boundary conditions which can assess the robustness of the service handling inputs outside the range of anticipated values. Tests should also be created that ensure the service performs as expected based on the roles as defined within the system. Type of Testing Description Functional This area of testing focuses on ensuring the service performs its function according to the requirement of the business process it support. Automated test suites should be developed to perform regression testing to quickly verify functionality during the life cycle changes that may occur. Performance This area of testing focuses on performance characteristics of the service including measurement of time to perform the service and load testing of the service. The output from this type of testing forms the basis of understanding how to configure and deploy the service in a production environment. Interoperability This area of testing ensures the service adheres to its service specification. Early identification of interoperability issues is key to integration of the service through exposure to university partners and clients. This type of testing is especially important when the service interacts with multiple data sources and/or systems. Security Security testing is essential to assess the risk of a service with regard to vulnerability, data privacy and data integrity. Tests need to be developed to test boundary conditions which can assess the robustness of the service handling inputs outside the range of anticipated values. Tests should also be created that ensure the service performs as expected based on the roles as defined within the system. Regression One of the more important types of testing related to usage of services is regression testing. The more applications that depend on a given service, the more impact a change to that service can have on the environment. As such, when changes are made to services, regression testing must be undertaken to ensure that the service not only supports new or updated functions but all other functions upon which the service relies. Table 1 Service Testing Types Once the service is ready it is deployed into production use. At this point the service enters the maintenance cycle as opposed to the development cycle. Services in production sometimes require change. The change may be due to a defect in the system or a request to add more functionality to the service. It is important to understand how this change should be handled based on its nature. Defects that are a result of a fault in the underlying implementation of the service and do not change the behavior of the service may be handled by a Defect Remediation process. In this case it is desirable to apply a fix as quickly as possible to the existing service as it may be affecting multiple university processes and causing a disruption to the universities ability to perform its function. Changes that modify the behavior of an existing service or its interface are best handled by identifying a new service or a separate version of the service. In this scenario versions are really new services that are separate from the original. Taking this route minimizes impact on consumers using the original service but can cause a proliferation of services within the enterprise. This may not always be desirable however and some effort should be put into defining conditions under which an existing service in production may be modified (for instance, only one business consumer is affected and the change is well understood). This should be documented so that everyone understands the conditions and ensure that changes are handled in a consistent manner. Service Withdrawal is the final step of the lifecycle. Eventually services will start ballooning (especially when changing production services leads to the creation of new services) and some services will stop being used. Removing service can be problematic as a service may support multiple business process owned by different colleges and departments. A procedure needs to be adopted to define and orderly withdrawal of services from the system. Such a procedure may start with deprecating the service (with a note explaining why and some suggestion as to another service to replace it). Secondly, services can be monitored for use and the consumers identified. Finally, if the service is still being used the consumers should be contacted to discuss a solution. This should result in establishing a schedule for the consumers to switch over to another service so that the service may be withdrawn. Consumers of a deprecated service may not have incentive to change. Making changes requires effort and possibly some risk to the consumer. This needs to be recognized when seeking collaboration from consumers to switch over to another service. In this case it will be necessary to be creative in coming up with a common understanding of the benefit of switching to a newer service so the deprecated one may be withdrawn. Center of Excellence (COE) An online community to: Impart the SOA Vision. Educate IT and business staff on SOA. Communicate SOA best practices. Gain feedback on how to adapt the SOA Governance process and overall SOA program. Provide support advice for new and ongoing SOA implementations. Provide SOA Resources: Books Web Sites Industry Standards Quality of Service Logging Most applications and systems use some form of logging that stores messages to a persistent medium (DBMS, file, etc.). Logging provides the following benefits: Troubleshooting Applications log errors upon failure, and system personnel use this information to repair the problem. Reviewing System personnel examine log messages to check for problems. Auditing Security personnel can review log messages to see what actions a user performed in the system. Debugging Developers generate log messages to debug their programs. Identity Management Identity Management is the ability to identify a requestors (person or system) true identity and relationships between people and organizations (groups). The current policies and level of enforcement are expected to continue into Managed Services by using Microsofts Active Directory as the source for identity management. Confidentiality Confidentiality assures that during transport of the data it was never visible, accessible or viewed other than by authorized recipients. There currently is no Smart Energy or Smart Grid requirement to secure messages for Confidentiality. Authentication Authentication is also done within Microsofts Active Directory and adds authorization policies to the verified identity. Authorization Authorization is currently done at the application level. Within Managed Services (stage MS3) authorization will be performed to determine whether the requestor (person, application, service) is authorized to access the requested service, data and even the Managed Data Repository. Integrity / Non-repudiation Integrity requires that during transport and even as read by the sender there were no unauthorized modifications of the content of the message. Non-repudiation assures the sending service that the receiving service has received the intended message. Current Smart Energy and Smart Grid projected needs do not require message Integrity, but for sensitive messages (time, confidentiality, event, or priority) there is Non-repudiation. Consumers Service Consumers are the end consumer/user of the services provided by an enterprise. The consumer has the flexibility to process and display useful and relevant information provided by Services. Service Consumers access Services through a consistent interface (or contract) exposed by that Service. Service Consumers can be: User Interfaces B2B Applications Business Processes User Interaction Users can access enterprise services through variety of mechanisms, including Portals, web sites, or PDAs. A web site provides a web-based interface to enable users to perform daily, job-related tasks. A web site leverage the services created provided the organization, as a part of SOA implementation, and do not contain any business logic themselves. The site seamlessly integrates with back-end services (using SOAP/WSDL, REST/JSON) and business processes. The site can be secured by global security policies, but also can include role based authentication that limits access to only relevant information making it easier to manage. A Portal is a web site that enables users to access highly personalized information and services. It can increase the productivity and effectiveness of employees within an organization through a consolidated view of available services and information. Typically the site is highly interactive, allowing the user to run a wide variety of tools and functions such as, global search queries, and custom dashboard and advanced business intelligence tools. Portals provide a unified entry point to the organization and provide common look and feel all across applications. Portals form the front end for business processes and custom applications created as composite applications. The site can also be utilized to mash-up other applications or services from 3rd party sites. Wikis, Blogs, RSS feeds, and content can all be made available within the site. A PDA enables mobile users to access enterprise services. Like sites and portals, a PDA has no business logic of its own, but it allows the end user to interact with back-end services by seamlessly accessing the Web Services exposed by an enterprise. However, a PDAs interface and functionality is much more limited than that of a web site because of display and memory constraints. B2B Applications An organization normally collaborates with external business partners such as suppliers and customers to achieve its business objectives. An external partners B2B application (e.g., a web site or portal) will invoke a Web Service exposed by an enterprise, which in turn executes business functionality on behalf of the client. Business Processes A Business Process codifies and streamlines the rules, practices, and business s activities in an enterprise. Business analysts create Business Process Diagrams using the industry-standard Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) to document a set of coordinated tasks and activities that lead to an organizational goal. You can think of a business process as a graphical representation of a Use Case (RUP) or User Epic (Agile / Scrum) in that it shows normal and alternate flows along with exceptions encountered during processing. In SOA, a business process coordinates the business services (see section 3.2.1) developed by an enterprise. SOA architects and developers derive business services from the tasks and decision points in a business process diagram. Business logic is used to form business flows as parallel tasks or sequential tasks based on business rules, policies, and other business requirements. Examples of Business Processes include: Purchasing a product Time Entry / Approval Billing Service Provisioning For information on tools and products, please the Workflow / Orchestration section (3.4.5). Collaboration Services Presentation Services Presentation Services define a common set of services to manage interaction with users or trading partners (to the extent this second interaction is needed). Presentation services are provided by: web servers, portal servers, and application servers that provide the capability to quickly create the front end of business processes and composite applications to respond to changes in user needs through channels, portals, rich clients, and other mechanisms. Presentation services integrate with other foundational services, such as security (e.g., single sign-on). Users can access enterprise services through variety of mechanisms, including Portals, web sites, or PDAs. A web site provides a web-based interface to enable users to perform daily, job-related tasks. A web site leverage the services created provided the organization, as a part of SOA implementation, and do not contain any business logic themselves. The site seamlessly integrates with back-end services (using SOAP/WSDL, REST/JSON) and business processes. The site can be secured by global security policies, but also can include role based authentication that limits access to only relevant information making it easier to manage. A Portal is a web site that enables users to access highly personalized information and services. It can increase the productivity and effectiveness of employees within an organization through a consolidated view of available services and information. Typically the site is highly interactive, allowing the user to run a wide variety of tools and functions such as, global search queries, and custom dashboard and advanced business intelligence tools. Portals provide a unified entry point to the organization and provide common look and feel all across applications. Portals form the front end for business processes and custom applications created as composite applications. The site can also be utilized to mash-up other applications or services from 3rd party sites. Wikis, Blogs, RSS feeds, and content can all be made available within the site. A PDA enables mobile users to access enterprise services. Like sites and portals, a PDA has no business logic of its own, but it allows the end user to interact with back-end services by seamlessly accessing the Web Services exposed by an enterprise. However, a PDAs interface and functionality is much more limited than that of a web site because of display and memory constraints. BI / Reporting BI (Business Intelligence) / Reporting provides a high-level view of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to business stakeholders to enable them to make decisions and manage the business. Examples of KPIs include: Efficiency of business processes. Job Costing. New customers acquired. Sales information by demographic (age, ethnicity, geographic region, etc.). Churn / turnover of accounts by demographic. A BI product uses the information stored in a Data Warehouse to present it to the user. A BI tool (such as Business Objects) uses Key Performance Indicators (KPIs e.g., sales conversion rate, in-force polices, market penetration, for example) to report on data, identify trends, perform data analysis, etc. to enable business users to make decisions and operate the business as efficiently as possible while advancing a business strategy. BI increases business agility and shortens timeframes for decision-making. It gives companies the ability to identify and anticipate opportunities represented by seemingly unrelated events. It is a key enabler of strategic and tactical decision making. Commercial products include: IBM COGNOS MicroStrategy O