MAD Musings

Systemic Change...or Insider Amnesia?

2012-01-18T10:35:00.001-05:00

Reacting to The 6 Rules Women Must Break in Order to Succeed, my favorite blogger, Paul Smith, stated:

"...their definitions of power were built upon structures of power already in existence...it seemed the very structure they claim is holding them back, is the same one they want to embrace...instead of creating truly new rules, they were suggesting to follow rules already in place...I was hoping it would resemble this quote from Alison Maitland..."We shouldn't be fixing the women but the system"...To me, if you wish to truly create new rules: take charge of yourself, create your own definitions of success and power, and be the captain of your own ship."

For once, I had to disagree with Paul. I agree that systemic change is needed. But I do not believe that it can be driven by those who do not control those systems. I used to believe that, but, after years of trying to impact change from the outside, I don't anymore. At least, I don't believe it can be done at a pace that will create a change I will see in my career. For significant, swift, meaningful, and lasting change, it needs to be driven by insiders, by those who control the systems. So, we need a critical mass of insiders motivated to change the systems under their control. But insiders have no incentive to change the systems that got them to where they are and help them maintain their position and power. And, simply by being an insider, they have not felt the inequity, bias, or discrimination that the current systems sustain.

One possible way to achieve that critical mass is for those who are currently outsiders to masterfully navigate the existing system to attain the leadership roles in larger numbers. I think that's what the 6 Rules are meant to do:

"We want to see women make up at least 30 percent of the leaders at the top levels of corporate America within the next 10 years. We believe that 30 percent will be a tipping point. If (when) that happens, the goals and direction of corporate America will change. The old rules will be shattered, America’s corporations will be better lead, and everyone will benefit."

The trouble is, once people become insiders, my experience is that they forget what it was like to be outsiders (or maybe they were never really outsiders, weren't change champions to start, or don't have enough insider support to change the system).

Can critical mass even be achieved in the next 10 years? And, even if it is achieved (which is a pretty big "if," given the roadblocks inherent in the system -- it's not as if we haven't tried to break the glass ceiling before), will the new insiders suddenly have insider amnesia and lose their passion to change the system?

I think "insider amnesia" – my term for forgetting what you wanted to change in the system when you were an outsider – is human nature. Reminds me of the anecdote in a December 2006 HBR article, "The Curse of Knowledge," by Chip and Dan Heath (also brought to mind by one of Paul's relatively recent posts). They describe a psychology experiment in which a group of people were divided into those who would tap out the rhythm of a well-known song on a table and those who would listen and try to identify the song. Tappers were asked to predict the probability that the listeners would guess correctly, and they guessed 50%. The actual success ratio was 2.5%. The tappers were shocked at the listeners' inability to identify the songs. The disparity was summed up:

"When a tapper taps, it is impossible for her to avoid hearing the tune playing along to her taps. Meanwhile, all the listener can hear is a kind of bizarre Morse code. Yet the tappers were flabbergasted by how hard the listeners had to work to pick up the tune.

The problem is that once we know something—say, the melody of a song—we find it hard to imagine not knowing it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. We have difficulty sharing it with others, because we can’t readily re-create their state of mind."

Maybe once we begin tapping from the inside, the system seems less broken to us, even though it hasn't changed. Or maybe we just are more invested in protecting the system that is currently rewarding us. It's probably some of both.

I'd still like to see 30% women at top leadership levels in corporate America within a decade, just to see if that is a tipping point. Couldn’t hurt to try that experiment, could it?

What do you think?

Is it possible for women to achieve a critical mass of corporate leadership roles within 10 years within the existing business infrastructure?
What are critical success factors?
What do you think will happen if the goal is achieved?
How do you feel about all of this?
What will you do?

Crowdsourcing Science

2011-07-30T09:51:00.000-04:00

"We are…moving to post-publication peer review where the scientific community judges what matters…connected globally through the internet."- Richard Smith Director of United Health Group's chronic disease initiative

Meh, so some guy blogs about the demise of peer-reviewed journals.

Only, I think he's right.

And the guy's opinion should carry some weight—he is a former editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), one of the preeminent peer-reviewed medical journals that has followed the peer review model since 1840.

In my opinion, the train left the station on this one a long time ago. It is a slow moving train, however. It is not in the best interests of those making money on the peer-reviewed journals industry to let go of their income source.

According to Smith, "Scientific journals began in the 17th century…Before that…scientists went to meetings and presented their studies. The assembled scientists would then discuss and critique the studies…This was the original peer review: immediate and open."

So, over time, the stewards of scientific information became a relatively small group of the scientific community, with some key publishers and their peer reviewers being the arbiters of "reliable" scientific communications. Not a bad way to do things for 170 odd years.

But the connectedness of the digital age changes everything. Everyone can be author, publisher, reviewer, promoter, as well as reader.

Even before Nature checked the data, I had faith in crowdsourcing as an imperfect but relatively sound way of maintaining an adequate level of factual integrity. The debate over whether or not to use Wikipedia as a source of information raged for years in the library realm because it isn't peer reviewed. I have always believed that for most substantive entries, there is statistically a high enough number of people who read it and a subset of them who will weigh in if the information is blatantly untrue. Experts are everywhere. Of course, there are also pretenders. I guess my feeling is that the information is likely to be accurate enough for many purposes. And I have never believed everything I read, even in peer-reviewed journals. Best to have several unique corroborating sources, maybe some data of your own, and a good dose of common sense on weighty matters.

So, will the validity of scientific information of the future be digitally crowdsourced, debated, and rated like a product on Amazon rather than peer reviewed? What impact will this have on future work based on information found in non-peer-reviewed sources? How will it impact the robustness and supportability of intellectual property? What are the implications on education of new scientists and how we teach them to evaluate data?

In my mind, I suddenly see Socrates surrounded by a mass of intellectuals and students peer reviewing

the old fashioned way—in a dynamic, real-time exchange. Isn't that exactly what we could do digitally, globally, and with more experts weighing in? Or, as Smith said, "It's back to our roots."

What Socrates could have done with a smart phone…

Technorati tags: Richard Smith, peer review, scientific publications, BMJ

My happiness: Shall I decide or shall you?

2010-12-08T13:03:00.004-05:00

At the recommendation of a colleague, I read the getAbstract summary for the book Stumbling on Happiness (Vintage, 2007) by Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, whose research centers on predicting one's future emotional state. The book is about why people make cognitive errors in predicting what will make them happy: Our brains, overloaded with memories, take faulty short cuts in which they intersperse a smattering of facts with greater quantities imagination and erroneous perception, resulting in a poor estimation of the future state. The summary states:

Based on extensive psychological research, his book posits that, regarding life's future milestones, most people would do better asking someone else what to do rather than making their own decisions.

Note that I have not read the whole book, so there likely is more to it than the summary relates. However, for me, it boils down to the well-known adage, perception is my own reality, and that perception-reality includes lots of my own imagination.

I don't disagree with the main point made by the author: that imagination (I need to add the qualifier, "alone") is a bad happiness-planning tool. His reasoning:

1. Realism – We think we see reality, but we don't. The abstract states:

Because memories and perceptions are in part fabrications, they are often unreliable guides to future feelings. Yet, people uncritically accept the images their brains provide as true, even when their brains make up or leave out important details.

2. Presentism – How we feel in the present distorts our assessment of future state. The abstract states:

The brain operates on a policy of 'reality first'…if you're imagining a future event and your emotional response to it, your current positive or negative perceptions of the real world will take precedence over what your mind's eye creates. This may distort your feelings about future events.

3. Rationalization – We invent explanations that make us happy even if they are not rooted in fact. The abstract states:

The brain inherently leans toward positive, clear, rational interpretations of events – past, present and future. It provides "psychological immune systems" that keep people's spirits buoyant. Thus, even if an experience is negative…the brain will try to provide a positive perception of it…

Sure, I can buy that. Be aware of the part imagination unconsciously plays in our assessments and estimates. Check.

But where I get stuck is in the assertion: "...most people would do better asking someone else what to do rather than making their own decisions." Hmm…

Okay, I'm a scientist and I love good data and analysis as much as any geek. But abandoning my own personal data and analysis – especially as it relates to constructing a plan about me and my future – in favor of the data and analyses of others having similar experiences? That seems like a fundamentally flawed solution by the author's own arguments (not to mention a convenient way to abandon personal responsibility, which always rankles me). Doesn't it follow that an assessment of an experience by someone who has already gone through it is tainted by the same problems of realism, presentism, and rationalization as they relate their experiences to others?

I'll also concede that in controlled conditions a majority of people can have predictable responses to certain stimuli, but I do not fully support the assertion noted in the summary that "most human beings are alike" – at least, not without a whole lot of qualifiers. People have unique ways of drawing together their individual experiences and (faulty) thinking to construct a response. Maybe that response isn't "reality" in an absolute way, but my response is my reality, even if it is based largely on personal perception. And my perception is intensely related to my personal happiness. Vive la différence!

If you could just assess absolute data and assign cause-effect relationships, understanding human behavior would be so simple that Professor Gilbert would have to find something else to do. (Just kidding.)

I think a better approach to understanding happiness is, in addition to seeking input from the experienced (which is not a bad tip, just an incomplete solution), trying to sort out components of reality vs. imagination as best as possible in our own thinking and then analyze for complexity. Being aware of realism, presentism, and rationalization sure could help in sorting all of that out. (I suspect that, if I read the whole book, I would have excerpts to show that this is what Professor Gilbert is getting at.)

Happiness, I think, is a balance sheet. The return on your investment needs to come out on the positive end. The profits need to outweigh the liabilities. The trouble is that the things that make us happy all have strings attached, making the accurate construction of that balance sheet pretty complicated. It takes some work.

In my experience, if there is a way in which "most human beings are alike," it's that a lot of who we are is seemingly hard-wired, coloring our natural responses to the world. If we seek additional quality input (e.g., asking about the experiences of others), we may be able to modify our responses somewhat:

If you are the sort of person who seeks happiness (i.e., relies on that "psychological immune system") and balances it with consideration of the data, you will find a measure of happiness, even if it is not perfect.
If you are more radical and disregard the data in favor of blind optimism, your delusion may crumble and you may crash when it doesn't measure up to your perfect imaginings.
If your inclination is to see the glass half empty (and I don't mean that in a snide way – some people are just like that) and you balance it with data, you may find avenues leading to some measure of happiness you hadn't considered.
If you disregard the data, you may only see a miserable, flawed world in that half empty glass.

It's all about balance.

What do you think?

Technorati tags: Daniel Gilbert, happiness, Stumbling on Happiness, getAbstract

Are you real, Mona Lisa?

2010-08-30T01:17:00.001-04:00

It lives. It breathes. I know the intensity of these words.

A troupe of 300 Japanese tourists, all taking individual photos of themselves in front of the glass enclosure, finally left for the next gallery, offering only a moment to fight my way to the rail.

I’d seen photographs, of course; we all have. But, now, the photographs seem to represent some other work. This is no eyebrow-deficient, small-mouthed, jaundiced lady on a muddy canvas who dolefully reminds me of Morticia Adams’ homely sister. This is a gorgeous, vibrant, three-dimensional, human creature, searching my eyes across time and space, whispering her secret joys in my heart. I could not breathe within her gaze. My God.

This is the indescribable power of portraiture, of capturing faces to exude the subject’s core at that moment, grasping recognition in my own. It is a soul released of vulnerability, speaking deepest truths it could not utter in life.

I still tremble when I think back to that moment in the Louvre.

I commissioned an artist I admire to paint a portrait of my recently deceased mother, at my father’s request. He sent emails with attached jpegs, I sent back guidance on how to make the smile more like Mom’s or to better describe the shape of her chin. When I saw the photo of the best version, I was pleased. Today I saw the painting. My God.

The artist said, “In the photo you gave me, I saw a young, happy, woman, typical of her era, seeing her future of possibilities.”

That is exactly what he painted, but both his words and mine fail to describe her truth. Only oil and canvas can.

I cannot breathe within her gaze. I cannot stop looking.

Technorati tags: Mona Lisa, portraiture, painting, art

Rubber band

2010-08-17T01:22:00.004-04:00

Have you felt strrrrrretched to the breaking point, lately? I have. And just when I think I can go no further, I find a little more elasticity.

I was losing my mind thinking about the 7,432 things I need to accomplish by Friday. After a couple of hours pounding away furiously on my laptop in the waiting room at the hospital (long story), oblivious to everyone around me, I hadn't put even a small dent in those 7,432 things. In fact, the list had grown. And a couple of huge complications had arisen.

Frustrated, I unplugged my laptop and popped my cell phone into my pocket so that I could visit the restroom. Of course, it was closed for cleaning, so I had to go searching for another. Another woman was also on the potty hunt, so we headed off to find it together.

She was wearing a baseball cap and had no eyebrows or eyelashes. Although the visible evidence suggested the answer, I asked her what she clearly wanted to be asked. She is fighting breast cancer.

She had driven more than an hour for her final chemo session. She continued to grapple with “Why me?” questions because she has always been very health conscious. She was feeling besieged by unsupportive co-workers who were speculating about what she’d done wrong to bring this curse upon herself. She was deflecting people who had various (ridiculous) suggestions on how to beat cancer. She was there all alone, facing her disease.

She told me about some uplifting audio programs that helped her emotionally. She showed me a new age tool for improving circulation and talked about her chakras and energies. When I complimented her beautiful complexion, she described a concoction she invented to heal her chemo-ravaged skin. She relayed concerns about her medical bills. She told me how she had to cut back to make ends meet, including cutting off her internet and cell phone – lifelines of connection when people can’t physically socialize. She told me about her exercise program. She told me of the joy of having a pedicure.

She smiled, she teared up.

She had a whole bag of tools with her that she used to help herself through this ordeal. She wanted someone to see them.

She wanted to help.

She wanted to be heard.

So, I looked. I listened. I commiserated. I encouraged. I affirmed. I congratulated. I complimented. I noted her advice. I tried to link her up with people and services that might help her to share her self-help discoveries with other cancer patients who might find comfort in them. I probably said a few wrong things, too.

I hope that when she drove home alone, feeling like hell, trying not to nod off or lose her stomach, leaving a few more hairs inside her baseball cap, heading closer to the people and bills that complicate her plight, she knew that someone heard her today and thinks that what she has to offer is important.

And, while I tried to be truly present for this stranger, I forgot the 7,432 things on my to-do list and focused on one unexpected thing that probably had more value than all the others combined. What a relief!

Stretch a little more. Be present for someone today. Maybe that extra stretch will keep both of you from breaking.

Thank you, lady in the baseball cap.

I Have Not the Courage

2010-08-05T23:52:00.002-04:00

I recently visited the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. Although a range of African-American experience and worldwide social injustice is covered, emphasis is on the African-American Civil Rights Movement, 1955-1968.

I was born at the end of this movement, so I have no firsthand memory of it. Textbooks I used in the 1970s and 1980s didn't include many events past World War II. (Encyclopedias I used as a child stated, "Someday man might explore space.") My upbringing in a white area in the North didn't provide exposure to racial tension; it existed in town, but didn't enter the few square blocks of my life. I knew only of a few events, like Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus, the Little Rock Nine pioneering school integration, and Martin Luther King saying "I have a dream."

So, when our exceptionally fabulous tour guide queued up displays with, "Of course, we're all familiar with the story…", I, shamefully, wasn't familiar. For example:

In 1955, 14-year-old, black, Chicagoan, Emmett Till, was brutally murdered while visiting family in Mississippi. Dared by his cousins, he wolf-whistled at a white woman. As a result, he was kidnapped, beaten, blinded, and shot in the head. His body was thrown into a river with a 74-pound cotton gin fan tied to his neck with barbed wire. His mutilated body could only be identified by a ring he wore. The two white suspects were acquitted by a jury of white men after only 67 minutes of deliberation. Afterward, the defendants gave an interview in which they admitted their crime. They never expressed remorse

As a mother, I'm shaky as I recall the photos—indescribable anguish on the face of Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, viewing an unrecognizable lump that was once the face of her son. She insisted on an open-casket funeral, saying, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."

The International Civil Rights Center and Museum is the original site of the Greensboro Four sit-in (a story I vaguely recall hearing before). On February 1, 1960, four African-American North Carolina A&T University students sat at the all-white lunch counter of F.W. Woolworth in Greensboro, triggering nonviolent sit-ins throughout the U.S. Joined daily by other students, they continued until the drugstore chain served all "properly dressed and well behaved people," regardless of race several months later.

It's unfathomable that such extreme and unpunished injustice and brutality could have been so common in my country (almost) within my lifetime.

The Greensboro Four were phenomenally courageous, given the extreme retribution exacted from a child who merely whistled 5 years earlier. How did they ever muster the courage to defy their oppressors? How did parents of college and high school students sitting in protest at that counter, amid jeers and threats, endure their fear for their children's safety, while remembering the heart-rending story of Mamie Till-Mobley's loss?

It is powerful to see the lunch counter standing on the same tile in the same room where a revolution began. It is sobering to admit I would not have the courage—courage like that of the Greensboro Four and so many others who risked their lives for equality—to cross those tiles to sit at that counter myself.

I stand in awe.

Technorati tags: civil rights, African-American Civil Rights Movement, Greensboro Four, Emmett Till, Mamie Till-Mobley, International Civil Rights Center and Museum, courage, F.W. Woolworth

It's a Man's World. (How Are They Doing?)

2010-07-31T00:28:00.012-04:00

(More from my digital compost heap.)

Father O'Malley: On the outside, it's a man's world.

Sister Benedict: How are they doing?

Father O'Malley: (Sheepishly) Not too good.

-The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)

One of my favorite snips of movie dialog. Ever. Pity it's still true 65 years later.

A social media disagreement caught my attention a couple of months ago when social media guru Chris Brogan tweeted something (or maybe it was in his blog feed?) along the lines of sometimes wishing he didn’t allow comments on his blog. Of course, that drove me straight to his blog to read his post, “Women in the Workplace,” and the reader comment of interest from Rieva Lesonsky, noted business consultant, author, and editor. (I read the other comments, too. Lots of evidence of privilege – good intentions but lack of understanding due to insider status.)

Chris Brogan stated in a comment (which seems to have disappeared now) on Rieva Lesonsky’s blog that the main points of his post were:

Not all women WANT to lead, at least the way leadership is set up now.
Maybe women are leading “from different chairs” inside and outside of organizations.

To #2, I say, "No kidding." Women have always led behind the scenes in business, making significant contributions.

The problem is that women do not receive the same recognition and tangible rewards for their leadership as men do. In fact, many men (and, to be fair, some women) have built their careers on the backs of highly talented females leading from different (less prestigious, less compensated) chairs. I doubt that many men, however, make similar complaints about having to manage upward while their female bosses keep rocketing up the corporate ladder.

To #1, I say, “Not untrue, but let's not use it to avoid the issue.”

Of course not all women want to lead, nor do all men. The difference is that women who want to lead and are talented enough to do so successfully are not given the same chances in terms of development into the role, decision-making authority, and commensurate compensation, as men. Lots of men. Often, untalented men. Men who may not even want to lead but took the money and title anyway.

Despite the problems in leadership perception and expectations corporate America, do you really think that women with leadership talent and a desire to lead would turn down high pay and a prestigious titles if they were offered? Heck, no! No more than the men do, anyway. They want to lead!

Would women change the frame of leadership if they could? Probably. But they are not in a position to do so. They have to get into the executive suite before they can make impactful changes to what defines corporate leaders, but there are nowhere enough of them in corporate leadership to be heard over the din of the old boys club.

And, sorry to burst the self-determination bubble, but Mary Middle Manager is not going to be able to revolutionize leadership at XYZ organization from a grass roots level. And, frankly, to expect her to do so is ridiculous. Oh, sure, if you don’t like something , change it – we’ve heard the rhetoric. But the reality is that business is NOT a democracy, nor is it primed for revolution. It is primed for self preservation. Most people go to work to earn a living, not change the world. Mary may be brilliant, but unless she is in the executive suite she has no real influence, no one really cares about her plight, and peers won’t rally around her to propel the coup. Worse, if she sticks her neck out too far, she just may anger the overlords. And Mary probably needs that job. After all, she’s still generally making 80-85% of what her male peers are making, no matter how you slice it.

Why will Mary leave to start her own business, retire in place, or off-ramp? It’s not that she doesn’t want to lead in the current leadership environment – she does! But by the time she effects the organizational changes that will open the top jobs to her – before she’s given the chance to lead – she’ll be long retired. Who wants to fall on the sword for a glacially moving cause?

Reminds me of this poster. I don’t want to end up with my picture on a demotivational poster with the caption, “Midas Touche’: Did she seriously think she’d ever convince the golden boys to share their gold?”

Technorati tags: gender bias, leadership, Chris Brogan, Rieva Lesonsky, The Bells of St. Mary's

_______________________________________________

Just to round out the story, here is the comment I left on Chris Brogan’s blog:

I understand Chris’ issues with this response. But, as a mid-career professional woman, I understand where Rieva is coming from, too. I have been exploring gender bias through involvement with diversity initiatives at my company. (I love my company.) Frankly, I was shocked to discover how much rationalizing I’ve done about the bias I have seen, experienced, and even (unwittingly) enabled in my career. Clearly, Rieva was quicker than I in recognizing the realities of gender bias and is passionate about it. We need to be outraged, because it *is* outrageous that gender bias can still be an issue in corporate America in 2010. In her response, Rieva raises some very important points:

1. Sexism is still alive and well.

It’s not necessarily covert, which implies intent. I think it is more of a failure to recognize white male privilege and the resulting subconscious sexism. Most of the decision-makers I know, men and women, have good intentions and have championed improvements. But, there is so far to go.

It took me years to admit that the primary determinants of my career progress were not merely hard work and talent. I received many kudos and rewards (and much more work), but not the particular career-propelling opportunities that fast tracked my male peers for highly-compensated, direction-setting jobs. I duped myself into thinking that I was taking the right steps to control my own career destiny. I control it now, but had to reconstruct my approach on the ashes of long-held beliefs.

I have long led from another chair. The question is, “Why should I have to?”

2. Perhaps we’re avoiding the priority problem by diverting attention to fruitless analysis of wants

Clearly, asking someone what they want is better than shoving what you think they want at them. However, such rhetoric can be an avoidance technique. If I make the issue about undefined personal wants, then, as a decision maker, I can offer mentoring and my job is done. If I recognize it as a systemic problem of unequal opportunities, suddenly it is a big, complex problem that rattles my own security, requires major changes, and becomes imperative for me to address. Ick.

3. There’s still a huge wage gap

Chris cites statistics that say the gap is narrowing. No matter the size, should a gap exist at all in 2010? While women are paid less than men, they continue to have more stress and less opportunity. Stress and costs rise when a business trip means you have to scramble to find a live-in caregiver at a cost you can’t afford…or pay daycare an extra $100 to attend an emergency meeting scheduled on a day you don’t usually work…or are expected to work—and pay a sitter—on your unpaid FMLA because a crisis arose at the office…or part-time simply means you must do the full job in fewer hours at reduced pay.

4. We do not provide equal opportunity

We need to stop clinging to work structures defined back in a Donna Reed world. Neither women nor men who don’t fit the archaic stereotype can fully engage in their careers in this model—and we are losing out on their talents. With the many options available to us now for rethinking work-life, work locations, job responsibilities, etc., why can’t we move it along on this issue? A woman (or man) shouldn’t have to found a new company to align values with opportunities.

Thanks to both Chris and Rieva—and all the other commenters—for thought-provoking discussion.

Spectacular Lemonade Stand

2010-07-30T21:01:00.001-04:00

Kitty Foyle: There's a lot of living to do in this world. And if you're worthwhile, you get hurt.
Kitty Foyle (RKO, 1940)

It must have been one of those days on which all 3 lines of my biorhythm intersected.

It was epic.

My siblings, father, and I were gathered at my mother’s bedside, waiting to saying goodbye to a woman who had rarely ever had a cold and epitomized true grit better than John Wayne.

Then, my husband suddenly became ill, necessitating an immediate trip to the nearest major medical center. I zoomed home, arranging care for our 3 small children on the way, picked up my husband, and sped him across town to the hospital.

I stayed until he was admitted, what seemed like 97 tubes of blood were drawn, and the doctor examined him. When his doctor assured me that all was under control and it was safe to leave him in the hospital’s care, I rushed back across town to the hospice center.

Mom died.

Oh, and our children’s regular caregiver had emergency surgery.

All on the same day.

Leading up to this day, I’d worked a 70-hour week, and had been putting in long hours and hard effort in the weeks prior. It was one of those unfortunate times when, despite other stressors, it was quite clear that it would be unwise to anger the overlords.

No, this is not the start of a novel. It sounds too ridiculous to be convincing, anyway. But it’s true.

I’d like to say that this was a crazy anomaly, an unlucky coincidence. But this sort of thing has been going on for a while.

About 7 years, in fact.

Did I break a mirror? Could this have been the grand finale of a looking-glass curse?

I sure hope so.

I guess I was due for a series of unfortunate events, though. Until about 7 years ago, I led a charmed life. Seriously. It’s not that nothing bad ever happened. It did. But everything always worked out okay in the end and never really seemed all that bad in retrospect. All the little glitches were trivial compared to the tremendous number of things that went really, really well through my entire life.

I’ve been blessed with brains, common sense, and a functioning family. My parents emphasized good values, education, and work ethic. It was no life of abundance, but we always had what we needed and, maybe, a bit more. I got a great job, married a loving man, and, despite the usual road bumps and disappointments of marriage and career, had incredibly fun times, playing in a rock band, travelling, spending summer weekends on the beach with a gaggle of good friends in a trailer we shared with another couple, enjoying good food and drink with our posse of gourmets/gourmands, and generally having a blast. Then we settled down and had the 3 most fabulous kids in the world. Life was good.

Then all the stink pellets started hailing down on us. Hard. Really, really hard. And mercilessly. Really, really mercilessly.

(A friend dubbed it The Vortex of Suck. Look for the #VortexOfSuck hashtag on Twitter.)

And life is still good. Really good.

Okay, I’m not stupid. It would be considerably better without the stink pellets. But, as long as there is tremendous, lemony suckage that can’t be avoided, I guess I’ll do the best I can to make lemonade.

I should know how. I started early in the lemonade biz.

When I was a child, I never had money to go to the movies or buy the hottest Lip Smackers flavor like my friends from families that had fewer children and larger disposable incomes, so I became an entrepreneur (along with my best friend, Lesli): We had spectacular lemonade stands to which kids from the neighborhood flocked—not only did we make and sell elaborately styled lemonade treats, but also ran carnival-style games and other fun activities from our little sideways-toppled toy box that became the counter of the lemonade stand. I earned enough cash to support my juvenile whims, albeit with the sacrifice of a few lesser loved toys as game prizes. Lesson learned: topple the box, suck it up, and redefine the situation; you may wind up getting what you want.

My life has been one calamity after another for a long run, now. Even, so, there is always someone who makes me smile (you all know who you are, and I think you are awesome), something that’s worthwhile, something that truly matters, every single day. I just have to open my senses to discover it. Each day that I can love and be loved is a glorious day. Each day of life is a one-of-a-kind gift, no matter what it brings. It's all a matter of perspective.

Kitty Foyle: Boy or Girl?

Dr. Mark: Boy. Almost lost the little fella. (Looks dolefully around the poor apartment.) Mighta been better if he hadn't pulled through.

Kitty Foyle: Don't say that, Mark. It's always better to pull through.

Kitty Foyle (RKO, 1940)

Make lemonade spectacularly. You only live once.

Technorati tags: Optimism, Perspective, Kitty Foyle

MADly Creative — WWNT?

2010-07-29T01:48:00.001-04:00

First I read Forget Brainstorming – What you think you know about fostering creativity is wrong. A look at what really works, which led me to The death of brainstorming. Newsweek got it wrong.

I read the exchanges between the Newsweek writers and the brainstorming consultants with interest. Both sides had valid points.

Nonetheless, I think the solution to getting more creativity back into American business has little to do with either side's arguments.

I am no creativity expert—just a member of the “lay audience” who has participated in brainstorming using various techniques ranging from chaotic "skeet shooting" to expert-facilitated ideation. My personal observation is that creativity has no One True Method. Even I, as an individual, have no One True Method that is right for me in every situation.

I do think that creativity can be elevated by setting up conditions that encourage it. In my humble opinion, the key conditions are time (to think, revise, dream), stimuli (i.e., new information, for which the source can be any interaction: human, media, environment, etc.), and passion (around the topic).

In my personal experience, I've been inspired even in badly organized skeet-shooting-type brainstorming environments when it was the right mix of people in the room and we were all passionate about the topic. We stimulated and built upon each other's ideas and were so passionate about the topic that it played in our subconscious minds even when we shifted focus to other tasks. We'd keep spontaneously regrouping to hash out another component of the idea as it occurred to us. Creativity was not only stimulated; it could not be restrained.

I have also seen a whole room of very clever people limp through the torture of producing nothing of significance even within exceedingly well facilitated brainstorming sessions. These dreadful, costly experiences usually occurred when the people involved just weren't truly invested in the topic. (I'm not talking about need or urgency here—the demand for a solution may be very real and you may be passionate about finding a solution, but sometimes you just don't have any passion around the topic itself that is to be brainstormed.) In these times creativity seems tremendously forced; that's when it fails, despite the best process expert being on hand to lead the exercise.

My best creative ideas come from doing a lot of reading, thinking, discussing, thinking, writing, thinking over a period of time (I guess it's that that whole "letting several simultaneous ideas percolate" method). Then, when inspiration strikes, it's like fire because my subconscious, I presume, has already been at work fitting the pieces together.

I think the biggest obstacle to creativity in business today is that we have no time—we're "doing more with less," structured, gated, LEAN, etc. until people don't have a single spare second to mentally process potentially inspiring stimuli beyond a very superficial level. (Don't get me wrong—these methods are hugely important in fully developing and executing the outcomes of creativity to extract the most value, but they don't generate creativity.) People are stretched so thin in today's corporation that the stress diminishes the ability to be functional at a high level, let alone creative. Necessity may be the mother of invention (and I'm not entirely convinced of that, either—necessity may simply be the impetus to get the resources you need for possible creative work), but desperation isn't.

So, IMHO, the heart of the solution lies in organizational design, not of finding the best brainstorming method or consultant.

WWNT? (What would Newsweek think?)

Technorati tags: Creativity, Brainstorming, Newsweek, Creativity Central, Marty Baker, Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman

Notes from My Digital Compost Heap

2010-07-29T01:34:00.002-04:00

I make a lot of notes as I survey business or technical literature. Sometimes they form the basis of future work, and sometimes they just gather digital dust. Rather than allowing so many bits and bytes to forever languish on my hard drive, I've decided to start publishing them as blog posts. Who knows, maybe my germ of a thought can add to your next breakthrough idea.

First retrieved from my digital compost heap are notes I made after reading Innovation is Not a Strategy (BrandingStrategyInsider.com, Sept. 8, 2009) and the comments following the post. Personally, I think innovation can be a strategy.

First of all, what is innovation? Innovation isn’t invention, nor is it adding “nice to have” features to existing products. My best definition of innovation is filling an unmet need in an entirely new way in which the customer finds substantive value. This may be a new-to-the-world product (TiVo*), transforming an existing product into something that operates very differently (Glad Forceflex*), or the total re-invention of an old idea (Swiffer WetJet – it’s really just a mop, but by eliminating the need for a bucket, the whole process of cleaning the floor changes dramatically). All of these ideas introduce something new to the world and customers recognize and value it.

When invention meets value, it becomes innovation. It may take a long time for that value to be realized, but for innovations like the internet, which took a long, long time for invention to meet value, the magnitude of the value when it does “hit” quells any doubt that it was innovation.

Although sales can be an indicator of value, value is not sales. Fads sell, but there is no substantive value to the consumer. Value is defined as relative worth and return on investment. I suspect most former pet rock owners became disenchanted with Sedimentary Fido soon after purchase.

So, can innovation be a strategy? I think it can, but it only works within a larger vision.

Pepsi, which cranks out inventions regularly, seems to lack vision. It builds the soft-drink version of the pet rock repeatedly. It responds to trends like health consciousness and environmental responsibility superficially with small variations on existing products. I think this cheapens the brand image, although a brand like Pepsi has been around for so long that maybe it can sustain the knocks of repeated innovation failures on the chance that something will hit.

Google or Apple, on the other hand, have strong vision and are able to translate invention into innovation over and over again to the acclaim of pretty much everybody other than Microsoft. They have failures, but they're overshadowed by the big hits. They start by saying things like, "If X were designed today, what would it look like?" They don't use their existing products to tether them to a starting point; they start from scratch every time. Yet, the pieces all fit together because they align with the larger vision.

Pepsi, Apple, and Google all are profitable and have power brands, but a reputation of innovation also draws passionate consumers that are not only the source of sales dollars but unpaid marketers of the brand with their fierce loyalty. They draw in other consumers and make each product launch a phenomenon. Innovation as a strategy? Looks like it to me.

For some companies, it may be the dominant strategy at times and a crucial factor in maintaining the brand. For U.S.-based manufacturing companies whose products have become commodities, it must be.

The innovation strategy may be cannibalistic (i.e., trade-up) or it may be redefining the product portfolio because technological advances obsolete the old products (however slowly). The latter requires a company to look very hard at its core competencies and decide how best to apply them beyond the company's traditional boundaries. Consider how brilliantly Amazon did this.

With good leadership and strong vision, a new innovative product, even one that in no way resembles the old (“big time innovation”*), could be the new flagship of the brand. Why not leverage a strong brand for a strong new product? Of course, this must be managed expertly, or you're just Pepsi with another useless sku.

Of course, I'm no expert. Just a businessperson and a consumer.

* Special thanks to Jeannie Chan who provided the examples of TiVo and Forceflex as innovations in her comment to the BrandingStrategyInsider.com post that I referenced, above. She also used the term “big time innovation,” which I also re-used – the term has been used by others, but she should have credit for inspiring me to use that term in this post. Make sure you scroll down past the BrandingStrategyInsider.com post and read her comment, among others.

Technorati tags: Branding Strategy Insider, Derrick Daye, Brad VanAuken, Jeannie Chan, innovation, strategy

On This Day, O Beautiful Mother

2010-07-25T04:22:00.004-04:00

Yoko Ono transformed one of her artworks into an online format called My Mommy is Beautiful. She encourages each of us to post a picture of our mother and give tribute to her in words or other creative expression. My beautiful mother died two weeks ago after a long and full life. Until now, I could not find the words to describe the exquisite and complex beauty of my mother. I still can't do her justice, but here is my noble effort.

My mommy was beautiful.

Mom was an educator. When I was little, Mom always sang as she worked around the house. She had a clear, sweet voice, and I loved to sing along with her as she explained our world through song. She was a marvelous storyteller, and described her childhood, especially memories of her beloved father who died when I was still a toddler, with spellbinding detail. She played games with me so that I’d learn language, math, and logic, and taught me to read so early on that I don’t remember ever not being able to read. Mom had been a teacher before I was born, while she was raising my older siblings, and her passion for teaching was in her very marrow.

Mom was busy and energetic. She drank a lot of coffee, ate very little, never touched alcohol, and smoked a half pack of cigarettes a week, because that’s what women of her generation did. She preferred walking to driving. She hated driving, actually. Yet, she would never let her fears keep her from doing what she wanted. She’d white-knuckle the steering wheel as we drove through the park’s dreaded fiords to visit her widowed younger sister in a neighboring community. In nice weather, she'd happily leave the car in the garage, put my baby sister in the stroller, and walk us to the store. She helped out elderly neighbors, driving them to doctor’s appointments or running errands for them. She visited anyone she remotely knew in the hospital. She sent greeting cards signed with her perfect, schoolteacher handwriting. She volunteered at school and church.

Mom was the queen of frugality. She economized with unfathomable skill, balanced her checkbook to the last penny, probably saved billions through her legendary use of coupons, but still always had a nickel to buy me a pretzel rod from the big jar on the counter of the store at the corner. She’d always buy me and my sister sensible, sturdy, out-of-style shoes for school because they needed to last the whole year. Yet, on my birthday, I’d always receive a tastefully fashionable outfit that made me feel like a princess.

Mom was a woman of faith. I often saw her lips moving ever so slightly as I heard the almost imperceptible click of rosary beads slipping through her fingers in her pocket. She went to mass each morning, especially enjoying school masses, which reminded her of her teaching days. On Sunday, we were all expected to dress up and be on our best behavior for mass, which was always followed by Mom’s wonderful Sunday brunch.

Mom took her career as homemaker seriously. Dad is soft spoken and all heart; Mom was small of stature but powerful in spirit. Dad was the provider, but there was no doubt that Mom was always in charge, the unchallenged organizer of the household. She labeled and filed everything and kept us on track by a system of refrigerator notes. The house was always tidy, clothes were always clean, and the refrigerator was always stocked. Her cooking was simple, but the food was delicious and plentiful. Being of Sicilian descent, she made fantastic pizza and lasagna, and there were always meatballs in the refrigerator, up until the week she died. She loved it when anyone entering the house went straight to the refrigerator and helped himself; to Mom, that was the ultimate compliment.

Mom and Dad were a sharp couple. Mom was slim and shapely, and Dad is classically dapper. On Monday nights, she and Dad went bowling, and Mom would dance around the house all day in jubilant anticipation. On special dressy occasions, when Mom and Dad would hire a babysitter for a big night out, Mom would put on her black pumps, red lipstick, and pearls that Dad gave her on their wedding day, and with a crowning dab of Chanel No. 5, she'd transform into a glamour girl who I thought looked and smelled like a movie star. The smell of her perfume would linger in the air all evening and make me drift off to sleep dreaming of my beautiful mother. In the morning, Mom always had a little surprise for me—a piece of cake wrapped in a napkin, or, if I were very lucky, her corsage from the previous evening. She'd pin the flower on my shoulder and let me wear it all day so that a little of her sparkle dusted over me, too.

Mom’s smile was dazzling and her laugh was genuine. A lot of laughing happened when she talked long-distance with her mother every Saturday night or when she got together with her best friend, Dorie. She laughed a lot less, and was silent and contemplative a lot more, after Grandma's mind and health faded and after Dorie died from cancer much too young. Dad’s best friend died young, too, as did Dad’s brother. As my parents’ circle of young friends and relatives tragically dwindled, my parents’ life became considerably more sedate, routine, and focused on us. Dad always worked long hours and Saturdays; Mom, I think, was lonely.

Mom had grit, but suffered great heartaches. Mom experienced an undue share of loss, disappointment, and worry in the years just before I was born and while I was yet a child and ignorant of my parents’ concerns. By the time I was a teenager and young adult, it seemed that the cumulative effect of Mom’s burdens, especially from my perspective of a stereotypically aggrieved teenager, was irrational distrust of of me. Mom's rules seemed unbending and her expectations impossibly high. It was not all unpleasantness—we enjoyed playing games and watching TV together. We went shopping nearly every Saturday afternoon, and Mom would cheerfully watch my younger sister and I model the latest styles. I wondered then why Mom never shopped for herself, but later realized that when her middle-age spread forced her despairing retreat to a uniform of polyester sportswear, Mom, bittersweetly, tranferred her fashion attention to her daughters. Though Mom's attitude distressed me then, I know now that Mom was just in the normal throes of middle age, amplified by too much rapidfire heartache and my somewhat oversensitive youth.

Mom was a paradox. She and Dad never had resources or time to travel much, but my sister and I developed a serious passion for international travel as younger adults. As we traveled the world, Mom, incongruously with her frugal nature, heartily encouraged us to take every trip, even when funds were low. She seemed proud and fiercely protective of our careers and independence, though she had chosen a different path for herself. She shocked us with unexpected liberal statements, inconsistent with her outward conservativeness. I think she regretted not taking more chances and chasing more dreams before age and health became limiting.

Mom was my greatest champion. When I became a mother, Mom already was both a grandmother and great-grandmother many times over. She held my hand through sorrows, celebrated joys, and, most importantly, walked with me through the unremarkable in-between times. She loved marveling at each loose tooth, hearing the kids learn to read, holding the youngest grandchildren on her lap, feeding the kids all the cookies they would eat, and proudly displaying their artwork and photographs. In recent years, she encouraged me constantly, praised my smallest personal victories, and helped me to forgive myself for my maternal failings. The woman who I had perceived as dominating, distant, and disapproving in my youth, revealed a vulnerable, understanding, supportive nature that hearkened to my early childhood. She tried to guide me through life's overwhelming burdens as I entered middle age, recalling those years when she'd lost so many key people in her own support system. She told me stories about herself that I had never heard with frank descriptions of her feelings, fears, regrets, and joys. I felt the acceptance and unconditional love I’d felt as a child, only with the added richness of a shared bond of womanhood.

Mom was indomitable. The last 6 months of Mom’s life were a shock to my family. The woman who had rarely had a cold, who put a heart attack behind her in a few short weeks so that she could resume mowing the lawn and shoveling snow, the woman who nursed my father through major health issues so that he continues to far outlive all of his relatives, the one we thought would live forever through sheer stubbornness, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Up until the last few days of her life, she was still cooking and sneaking out in her car to go shopping, under my father’s radar, albeit with shuffling feet and a certain unsteadiness. She scolded us all until her last moments, telling me to go home because she didn’t want me to drive in the dark, telling my Dad to stop coddling her, telling all of us that she didn’t want to leave this earth when we said it was okay—she would make that decision. She would not be silenced—even when her tongue was parched and swollen and morphine alone could no longer quell the pain, Mom asked our Holy Mother to pray for her, saying the rosary one last time as my older sister slipped the beads through Mom’s fingers. She orchestrated her final moments, making sure we all fulfilled our roles, as if she were still leaving instructions for us on the refrigerator door.

My mommy was truly beautiful. A couple of weeks before she died, after Mom had stopped coloring her hair in an effort to preserve it through chemotherapy, her hairdresser gave her a tight perm to make Mom’s thin, light hair look fuller. I marveled at her shining, soft, white curls and remarked that her hair was simply gorgeous against the paler, softer skin that was testimony to her 80 years. Her eyes lit up indescribably with the pure joy of feeling loved, beautiful, and happy in her own skin and with her tremendous life. In that moment, I saw a dazzling flash of that stunning, feisty, sweet-smelling woman in black pumps, red lipstick, and pearls, who knew she was a looker, always had a song, a story, a prayer, and a lesson on her lips, and was ready to conquer the world while holding my tiny hand in hers.

I miss you, my beautiful, beautiful mother, so very much.

Technorati tags: My Mommy is Beautiful, mother, Yoko Ono

Amazon Bright and Beautiful

2010-07-22T17:10:00.000-04:00

The area of e-content has much yet to be defined, but Amazon has a clever strategy, as I knew they would.

In the swirling e-content maelstrom, as publishers and aggregators see their old profit models implode and device manufacturers rush to meet consumer e-reading demand, Amazon is in the calm eye of the storm. Stephen Windwalker, Editor of Kindle Nation, blogged yesterday about Amazon's economic imperative to move into e-content, but notes that the company's strategy was born of vision, not desperation:

If Amazon hadn't gone the ebook route, but we were still somehow on the way to Mike Shatzkin's prediction, quoted in yesterday's New York Times that within a decade, fewer than 25 percent of all books sold will be print versions, then Amazon would be a company whose core business was dying.

It seems clear...that (1) Amazon did see that future…(2) neither the company nor CEO Jeff Bezos panicked…(3)…Amazon was hard at work turning the nightmare of the declining print-book future into…a Kindle content ecosystem that is either enormously attractive...or too powerful to ignore…

Amazon's strategy is working. Since the Apple iPad and its corresponding Kindle app were launched, Amazon's sales units of paid Kindle books has trended upwards, with last month's unit sales outpacing hardcover sales by 80%. As Windwalker humorously illustrates:

Apple (AAPL) put out a press release Tuesday to announce that they shipped over 12 million more Kindle-compatible devices during the fiscal quarter that ended in June, bring the worldwide total of Kindle-compatible devices to over 2 billion…that's not exactly the way Apple spun its quarterly earnings news, but that may be the way that Amazon's Jeff Bezos and his Kindle team heard it.

When Amazon announced last month that Almost Every Non E-Paper Kindle Getting Audio and Video Embeds, Gizmodo summarized:

Amazon's own e-book reader won't be able to play back video or audio embedded in e-books the way the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad will… it probably doesn't matter too much to Amazon, who stands to make a killing on the books themselves…

Those of us working for consumer goods companies understand the wisdom of Amazon's "blades" approach to e-content. (Give away the device; make money on the refills. See: The Economics of Kindle: Why e-readers are looking like razors and razor blades by Lee Gomes, Forbes.com.) Amazon created the market to its own specifications with the Kindle e-reader, and when the market reached critical mass, reverted to its core competency of content distribution. Well done, Amazon.

Especially resonant with me (see #6 here) is Amazon's approach of coopetition. Per Windwalker:

When Amazon opened its "big tent" in 1999 to launch…Amazon Marketplace, the company took the rest of the online and brick-and-mortar economy to school on the unlikely but surprisingly elegant notion that every competitor is a potential partner.

Exactly.

Strategy is about knowing your field, recognizing momentum, and finding a way to harness—or propel—it to everyone's benefit.

When I have my library hat on, I know that there is still a lot to figure out about e-content, especially lending (so many current barriers), digital copies of print works already owned (not economical in current models), and technical literature (not available or not formatted well across various devices).

Still, how different (read: cool) content lending will look in 5 years! We have many opportunities to merge devices with e-content answers (proprietary and external literature), and to develop interesting new gateways to e-content resources for internal customers. We're gonna ride that momentum!

BTW, I believe that the entire worldwide web eventually will consolidate under 3 key sites: Amazon (commerce), Wikipedia (content), and Facebook (networks) ;)

Technorati tags: Amazon, e-readers, Kindle, e-content, Apple, iPad, strategy, Stephen Windwalker, Lee Gomes, Gizmodo, coopetition, coopertition

Right here, right now

2010-05-28T01:52:00.014-04:00

One of my favorite bloggers/tweeps/authors, Patti Digh, has a unique graduation gift idea for her daughter. She is assembling an e-book of advice made up of contributions from others.

I toyed with the idea of writing something for the e-book, but gave it up as silly after reading contributions from people of note, considering that:

I don't actually know Patti beyond Twitter.
I don't know Patti's daughter at all (not even a single tweet of connection), so what wisdom could I possibly impart to her?
I'm not "known" beyond my own little corner of the universe and have few credentials as a writer, artist, etc.
Who am I to give advice to young adults?

Then, I read one of Patti's blog posts, "How to write (a book). A wee rant." After reading it, I felt compelled to submit something for the e-book. After all, I really do love writing and I seem to have some insight about people. Not much risk to just sending an email. I mean, who would ever know? So what if they did?

So I did it.

I wrote about a lesson I'm still learning, but am practicing with more skill every day. It's a lot like that bumper sticker you see everywhere, "One Day at a Time." It merely took me half a lifetime to undersand what that really means.

And, now that I actually wrote it all down, I like it. And I want to share it. So, here is my advice to a 17-year-old stranger, in all its 350-words-or-less glory:

Consider this: Right now is always the best moment of your life

My kids sometimes ask, “Mommy, what was your favorite age?” I answer truthfully, “The age I am.”

Or, they ask, “What was the best time you ever had?” I explain (in simpler words – my kids are young), “I’ve had amazingly memorable times, such as each of your births. But, the best time is right now because this moment is built upon all of those times plus endless possibilities, and I am creating it.”

Right now is always the best moment of your life.

Learn from and laugh about the past, build and dream for the future, but live now. Be fully in the present. Extract every bit of nowness surrounding you and absorb it into your cells. With every experience, every thought, and every feeling, more of who you are emerges.

You are doing something, thinking something, feeling something right now – good, bad, cheesy, brilliant, joyful, painful, dull, thrilling, or a million other possibilities. And, it is wonderful. You will never have a moment exactly like this one again. That’s wonderful, too.

Being in the now makes it easier to handle anything, regret nothing, and love life – and everyone and everything in it – in all its wonderful, endearing imperfection. Nothing is overwhelming, insurmountable, or unforgivable when it is considered in moment-sized parcels. Conversely, the tsunami of joy that can surge through your soul in a single moment defies reason. It’s a beautifully imbalanced equation.

Right now is always the best moment of your life.

Additional note: She posted it! Look here.

Technorati tags: Patti Digh, advice, being present

What people really want is a Star Trek tricorder

2010-05-21T17:49:00.008-04:00

Star Trek Classic Tricorder
Photo by David B. Spalding

While searching for information on the elements of good design, I came across this post from September 2009 by IDEO CEO Tim Brown. Brown talks about bridging Six Sigma with his trademark innovation mantra, Design Thinking.

In Brown’s post, he quotes Chuck Jones of Whirlpool, who compared design thinkers to quantum physicists (concerned with multiple possibilities) and everyone else (including Six Sigma practitioners) to Newtonian physicists (concerned with defined measurement). Brown confesses that, because of these differences, he once was highly skeptical of Design Thinking's ability to operate in a Six Sigma environment, thinking that Six Sigma was toxic to innovation. He now thinks that Six Sigma can help new ideas get better faster by improving product quality and functionality in the implementation phase. He also suggests that perhaps we should cycle between Design Thinking and Six Sigma in the product development process. He wraps up by saying, "…the biggest challenge will be to build business cultures that are agile enough to incorporate both."

In the reader comments, someone posted what I was thinking as I read his post, that Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) may be an attempt to marry Design Thinking with Six Sigma. However, I'm not sure if DFSS, which, as I understand it, relies on the voice of the customer, fully integrates the concept of Design Thinking, or more specifically, the component of breakthrough innovation.

Lorenzo Kidd and I were discussing innovation the other day and the difference between the smaller product innovations that significantly alter a common action (via a systems thinking approach) and the huge innovations that change the entire game, moving all of us in a new direction (via something more akin to complexity theory, perhaps?).

My favorite example of a smaller, albeit breakthrough, product innovation is P&G's Swiffer® WetJet®, which fundamentally changed the way we keep floors clean. There’s still a need to mop the floor the old-fashioned way periodically for a more thorough cleaning than WetJet® provides, but one can maintain a much cleaner floor between full moppings while feeling the need to drag out the old mop much less often. WetJet® removed the biggest pain of floor-washing: the bucket. This substantially lowered the user’s resistance to cleaning the floor. I suspect that P&G didn't frame their goal as creating a better mop or floor soap, but as finding an easier way to achieve a consistently clean floor. Did customers articulate this need? Maybe. But if they'd asked me, would I have said I would be willing to mop the floor more frequently? No! Yet that's exactly what people do, quite willingly, because it is just so darn easy to have consistently cleaner floors via a minute or two of effort here and there with a WetJet®. So, despite being somewhat counterintuitive, WetJet® clearly satisfied an immediate, unmet, hard-to-define customer need in a new way.

But what about those things that aren't so clearly tied to voice of the customer? Things that make us scratch our heads for years and say, "Why would anyone ever use that?" The things that businesses first shrug off as irrelevant or disruptive to operations? Things that are endlessly criticized in the news? Things that, years after they are introduced, become so integrated into our lives that we wonder how on earth we survived without them?

You know, like the internet.
Personal computers.
3G phones.
Rechargeable batteries.
Social media.

The needs behind these breakthrough innovations were so far from anything the customer could have possibly fathomed or articulated that, in a business environment, where products are determined by voice of the customer, the breakthrough ideas behind them could have died in their infancy. These ideas were so incredibly ahead of their time—radically predating what I suspect most product development teams would have been capable of relating to the voice of the customer. But, if they wouldn't have been developed as early they were, we would not be benefitting from them today.

And these ideas changed everything.

I think the true breakthrough innovations come from accurately figuring out what the customer will need, but can't possibly understand yet. It requires seeing much further down the road of progress than anyone else can. It's figuring out in the late 1960s that what people really want is a Star Trek Tricorder even though it seems like ridiculous science fiction (Lorenzo's example) and pursuing it until it doesn't seem so unattainable after all. Maybe it's more like listening to the whisper of the customer's subconscious than the clear and lucid voice of the customer.

How do we do that?

Technorati tags: Tim Brown, Chuck Jones, IDEO, Design Thinking, Six Sigma Design for Six Sigma, Breakthrough innovation, Innovation, Swiffer WetJet, Star Trek, Tricorder, Voice of the Customer, Lorenzo Kidd

Give Peace a Chance

2010-05-07T16:54:00.010-04:00

Wikimedia Commons photo by Lennyjjk, 2009-05-20
Imagine circle, Strawberry Fields Memorial, Central Park

I recently read an e-book on ImaginePeace.com, Yoko Ono’s web site. And for the first time, I got it.

Of course, everybody knows about John Lennon and Yoko Ono, even if, like me, you are too young to have watched their antics in real time.

I’ve always loved Beatles music and thought John Lennon was an artistic genius. Not only do I enjoy his music, but I also enjoy his published writings and doodles, and old sound bytes of the things he said are greatly amusing and insanely clever. My kids’ bedroom is decorated with a border created from Lennon’s artwork — not in homage to John Lennon, but just because I thought it was joyfully playful when I was selecting decorating items for the nursery.

Then there’s Yoko Ono, also an artistic genius, but much less attainable than pop-icon Lennon. You may love her or not, but she's made her mark on the world every bit as much as her late husband in her unique way and on her own terms. Personally, I like that.

We’ve all seen old video of their honeymoon week in bed and, though amused, puzzled over the point of it.

We’ve all heard old recordings of their rants on peace, rolled our eyes, and thought, “Crazy idealists!”

Right?

I always thought of them as stereotypical celebrity artists — lost in a fantasy world, spewing wonderful thoughts but taking no meaningful action. It’s easy to evangelize and wax poetic about ideals and virtue when you are worshipped by thousands and have absolutely everything you will ever want or need in the physical world and are unencumbered by worries over how to make ends meet.

Of course, we all want peace. Of course, we all need love. Duh. Why on earth did John and Yoko think it was so important to keep telling us to give peace a chance and that all we needed was love? What an inane message. Nice and all. True, of course. But pretty ineffective overall. Insubstantial. Typical of the impotent creative types that operate only in their minds, never translating their lofty ideals into meaningful action. Theory is great, but you’ve got to do something to make it count.

Well, maybe they were — and Yoko still is — doing something.

There will always be a handful of people who do BIG things: Mother Theresa taking care of the poorest of the poor for 40 years in Calcutta; Martin Luther King, Jr. who advocated civil rights; Mohatma Gandhi who nonviolently campaigned for civil rights and whose work helped gain independence for his country. The world was truly blessed by the altruism of these incredible humanitarian heroes.

There are people who are less well known who tirelessly do great work, too. Unsung heroes doing social work, manning local shelters, traveling to forgotten corners of the world with humanitarian aid organizations, rallying neighbors to gather supplies for victims of disasters, raising countless dollars for cancer research and other causes. Those who minister to the downtrodden, feed the hungry, clothe the poor. Amazingly selfless people. Amazingly generous people. Much better people than I will ever be.

Let’s face it, the vast majority of us are not altruistic. Oh, we may make an effort here and there, volunteering and contributing to worthy causes. We have our charitable moments and make our contributions of treasure and time, which is very, very important. But, for most of us, the bulk of our day-to-day effort is not devoted to humanitarian pursuits; it is devoted to muddling through our own lives.

With only minimal persuasion, we may even become sheeple:

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.
Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

John and Yoko understood that. They accepted us (and themselves) for who we are. Flawed. Easily led astray. Scared. Self-involved. Human. And, they didn’t judge. They decided that the biggest impact could be made by addressing the majority exactly as we are and keeping their plan for change so simple that no one would be unable to do what they proposed. Imagine Peace. Just imagine it. Why? Because, while we are imagining peace, cognitive dissonance prevents us from thinking of a way to do harm. While we are actively imagining peace, we can only act in a consistently peaceful way. If everyone did that, all of the evil in the world would disappear — simple in theory, difficult to do. It’s a slow process of conversion.

This world is separated into two industries: one being the war industry and the other being the peace industry. People who are in the war industry are totally unified by their ideas. They want to make war, kill, and make money. There is no argument there. They just get on with their objectives. Therefore, in that sense, they are a tremendously powerful force. But the people in the peace industry are like me: they are idealists and perfectionists. So they cannot agree with each other. They're always arguing in the pursuit of the "perfect idea." They are asking themselves and each other "What is the best way to get peace? Of course, it's MY way. What's wrong with YOUR way is that..." But instead of doing that, if we can only try to accept each other, forgive the differences and appreciate each other...because the fact is that all of us are in the peace industry. We should bless each other for that, and through that togetherness, somehow, we may be able to make the peace industry just as viable as the war industry, or more.
Yoko Ono
Mix A Building
With The Wind, 2002

So, instead of wasting energy on high-profile actions (e.g., protest marches) often resulting more in the participants feeling good about themselves through the affirmation of the group than in actually doing good for others through quiet industry, John and Yoko decided that more impact would result from trying to encourage personal, individual, simple, everyday, common participation of the unambitious masses. Imagine Peace. On your own. For 10 minutes per day. And, in that time, imagine what you can do immediately to start realizing that vision. Simple things. Calling your mother to say, “I love you.” Smiling at someone who looks like they need a smile. Reaching out with your heart.

The thing that bothered most of our revolutionary brothers was the fact that we weren't against anything, just for things, you know, like Peace and Love.
John Lennon
The Ballad of John and Yoko, 1978

Instead of applying money toward treating the symptoms of the problem (e.g., giving money to charity — although I’m sure they did that, too, and certainly would acknowledge that you must also treat the symptoms until the root problem is resolved), they decided to invest in trying to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place, knocking down the root cause of misery in the world. Thus, they began advertising for peace.

The thing is, we have this poster that says War Is Over If You Want It.

The war is here now and there's two ways of looking at it. Some people say, "Why did you spend your money on posters or peace campaigns? Why didn't you give it to the Biafran children, or something like that?"

And we say, "We're trying to prevent cancer, not cure it."
John Lennon, 1970

It took me until well into adulthood, when life becomes so fraught with energy-draining problems and responsibilities that one is forced to adopt a more realistic and forgiving view of human nature (or else, lose your mind), to understand what John and Yoko started advertising 40 years ago. I may not have the commitment and selflessness, time and energy, resources and talents to do the BIG things, but I certainly can, despite all of my shortcomings and humanitarian laziness, simply Imagine Peace for 10 minutes per day. And if I can, so can you. And so can everyone else. And together, we can create what we imagine. Creation trumps destruction, if only we can include more people in the creation process.

It’s already happening.

When I was thinking that world peace was very important, there were only about 20 people thinking that and they were handing out brochures that most people couldn't read!

Now I think that the concept of world peace is a normal one, and likewise, art too.

In the old days when we were artists, we felt pretty special, but now I think most people are participating in some kind of artistic activity and that's very good.

That's how our society's changing in a way. Even with guitars.

When the bands were playing in the 60's, there were very few people who played guitars, and now most children in schools know how to play guitars, so it's a very different society now.
Yoko Ono
Minneapolis,
2001

In my experience, John and Yoko are right. A small, seemingly insignificant kindness that someone extends to me because they have taken a moment to Imagine Peace (whether or not they know it) not only makes me happy, but inspires me to spread the joy. I do better, without even trying. What could have been a few moments of anger, destruction, exclusion, or indifference suddenly is replaced with love, creation, inclusion, and engagement. Peace propagates. The world is a better place.

Damn. That’s brilliant.

Technorati tags: Imagine, Peace, Imagine Peace, John Lennon, Yoko Ono

It's Good to Be 4

2010-03-26T01:54:00.005-04:00

Last Monday, I was pounding away on my laptop while sitting sideways on the couch, feet up. My 4-year-old little guy snuggled in beside me, smooshed between the back cushions of the couch and the side of my ribs. This is his favorite spot from which to watch me work, and he’s no trouble because he just quietly watches me type. It’s like having a warm and cushiony armrest.

After a little while, I noticed that he was breathing deeply. I asked, are you okay, sweetie? He said simply, “I like the smell of you.”

Over the weekend, we’d gone to a wedding and my husband put on his suit. This is a rarity. When he came downstairs, our little guy gasped and said, “Daddy, you look so beautiful!”

From an adult, we would have questioned the propriety of these statements. But, from a 4-year-old they are precious. 4-year-olds don’t think it's odd to comment on the way someone smells (when they’re not wearing cologne, that is) or to describe a man as beautiful (unless you’re a boy-crazy teenager), but most adults would re-word these thoughts before uttering them. Why is that? Children say exactly what they are thinking without censoring themselves with political correctness and social norms. They have endless confidence because they haven’t yet learned to try to shield themselves from failure. Everything in their world is experimental and learning-oriented, and failure is just a natural part of it. Certainly, we all need to learn to edit our inner monologues, letting out only what improves relationships and situations. This is part of being an adult. But, maybe, we edit too much. Maybe, we edit out the creativity and the impetus for change.

When was the last time you shared a still-fuzzy, crazy idea and just “talked it out” right on the spot? Do you jump in and contribute or mentally wordsmith until an opportunity to contribute has passed? How often do you ask a question or offer an opinion in a meeting even though you worry it might sound dumb or be unpopular? Do you dig deep and find the real truth when it is needed to prompt positive change? Are you willing to mix it up with people so that ideas are fully explored? Are you willing to tell your own personal stories for the benefit of others, even though disclosure makes you feel vulnerable? Do you address difficult issues even though it may alter the perceptions others have about you?

When I hit a certain age, a voice inside my head said, “Who cares what others think? You know your stuff, so stick to your guns! If niceness and positive spin obscure the goals, don't be nice! And, while you’re at it, take some responsibility for helping others to do the same.” Another friend describes it as no longer “suffering fools.”

So, I fired a few of my inner censors. And, yes, way too often I feel as if I’m sticking my neck out alone. But, if someone doesn’t demonstrate that being genuine, taking some risks, and respectfully disagreeing with others can be done without resultant catastrophe, how will anyone else ever feel safe enough to try? And how will we ever make changes if we’re too scared to discuss the real issues? Or dream up the breakthrough ideas if we are too afraid of failure? Or help others if we are too scared to look our own personal truth in the eye?

Take a chance. Rediscover you inner 4-year old amidst your grown-up insight and experience. Maybe by taking a step back toward childhood we can step that much closer to creativity and positive change.

I'm Obviously No Girl Scout

2010-03-14T16:54:00.031-04:00

I was never a Girl Scout and I wasn’t quite certain that it would be right for my two young daughters, but my husband talked me into letting our girls join Daisy Scouts this year because of his fond memories of boy scouting when he was a child. After reading the literature, it seemed that there could be little harm in allowing our daughters to join such a well-established organization with professed values (Girl Scout promise and law).

We have nothing but praise for the particular troops to which our daughters belong and their dedicated and responsible troop leaders. But, recently, my husband attended a father-daughter dance with our girls and I attended World Friendship Day with them, which are events that pull together a number of troops at various scouting levels throughout the area. I now wonder if exposure to the Girl Scouts, after seeing it beyond the two troops to which our girls belong, will teach our daughters values completely contrary to the organization’s professed values.

My husband said that, when he arrived at the father-daughter dance with our two young daughters, there were some tables near the door, presumably staffed by senior scouts, where attendees were to check in and be directed to their tables. He was appalled by the older Girl Scouts’ lack of knowledge, discourteousness, and unhelpfulness. We passed this off as an anomaly.

Then, I attended World Friendship Day with my daughters. I can no longer think that the first signs of trouble that my husband noticed at the father-daughter dance are an anomaly. I found little information on “World Friendship Day” when I tried to look it up online. However, I assume it is somehow connected with “World Thinking Day” as described on the girlscouts.org site, which is purposed to work together to end extreme poverty and hunger, celebrate international friendships, and remind U.S. Girl Scouts that they are part of a global community.

I saw attempts to achieve these purposes—or, at least, not to hinder them—in some of the programs for World Friendship Day. However, the parts that did seem consistent with the purposes were overshadowed by everything ranging from a simple laziness and lack of effort to understand or share even a single relevant bit of information about the culture represented to blatant mockeries of other cultures.

Not bothering to find even a single relevant detail about another culture, taking a “close enough” attitude that confuses two different cultures, or mocking other cultures—and then going onstage to parade this lack of regard—don’t say “world friendship” to me. For example:

Is it possible that the best way to build community with those of Egyptian heritage is acting out the song “Walk Like an Egyptian,” including Halloween-style mummies playing guitar? It’s a catchy song and the skit was mildly amusing, but if Girl Scouts from Cairo had been in the audience, would they have felt included and proud, or would they have felt that we don’t care enough about them to do any work at all to understand their culture? We must make an effort.
Did it celebrate friendship with the people of Tonga to represent their culture by dancing to a song that repeated the word “Hawaii” throughout the lyrics so that there was no denying it had nothing to do with Tonga? Sure, it was beautifully staged, but how would troops of Girl Scouts from Tonga and Hawaii have felt if they were in the audience and realized that their separate, unique cultures were indistinguishable to their U.S. counterparts? I’m certain there was no intent to be disrespectful, but choice of this song was careless. We must be mindful.
Can we connect with our friends in Greece by watching a performance in which girls dressed as various Greek gods pushed and insulted each other onstage in mockery of a central part of Greek heritage (i.e., its mythology) and, not to mention, the history of civilization? We must be respectful.
How does a bunch of teenagers throwing flour at each other to the tune of “That’s Amore” and trashing the stage, and then a girl dressed as a caricature of an Italian man saying with an exaggerated accent, “Whats-a goin’ on-a here?” show respect for Italians, each other, and school property? An adult (troop leader?) prefaced the performance by announcing that she took no accountability for it. We must be accountable.

I understand that young girls finding their way on the path toward developing good judgment may err on the side of irreverence, may try to skirt responsibility or slack off, may get so caught up in the moment that they lose focus, or may not have enough life experience to have more than a parochial and egocentric view of the world. But, I do not understand how so many adults could rationalize such performances under the umbrella of world friendship, nor do I understand the role of a troop leader if not to guide the girls to express their creativity in ways consistent with the Girl Scout law. I am certain that no one operated with ill intent; but I am very, very disappointed that so many people did not stop to consider the impact of their decisions, words, and actions on the formation of values of the little girls looking up to them.

Fortunately, there were some presentations that were very good (e.g., a wonderfully informative video on Korea in which each troop member had an equal part; an authentic dance from India that clearly showed considerable effort and cultural interest on the part of the troop) and others that were largely innocuous, having at least a small bit of relevance mixed in with what I'm sure were well-intentioned (albeit, sometimes questionable) attempts at fun and humor. It is these upon which I focused with my daughters as I tried to un-teach the disrespectful lessons taught by the other presentations. I also tried to explain the confusing truth that just because a number of adults (like troop leaders) and supposed role models (like the senior scouts) visibly represent an organization, quite a few of them may not understand or demonstrate that organization’s values.

Because teaching our children to appreciate diversity and be inclusive is a priority for my husband and me, I will have to seriously consider whether or not my girls will participate in such an event in the future. I will also have to consider the ethics of supporting an organization like the Girl Scouts that permits such lax interpretations of its professed values to be paraded in front of impressionable 5- and 6-year olds at their first cooperative Girl Scout events; a tougher choice since I think my daughters’ particular troop leaders do, in fact, set the right example.

I shared my opinions and concerns with the regional Girl Scout office in the hope that some action will be taken to ensure that future events and activities of the Girl Scouts in my area are, in fact, consistent with the values professed by the Girl Scout organization. I'm sharing it with you, here, to respectfully ask that if you are involved with Girl Scouts or other organizations where parents like me trust others to reinforce the values we attempt to teach our children at home, that you try to be mindful of the message you send through your decisions, words, and actions. Let's set the bar higher.

My hope was that my daughters would grow through their involvement with scouting. I’d like to think that’s still possible.

Update:

I received a very prompt and courteous email from the CEO of the regional office of the Girl Scouts. The tone and content were perfect: sincerely apologetic and focused on taking corrective action. The names of those taking accountability for developing corrective measures were listed. The CEO promised that I will be made aware of these proposed measures.

As long as they do what they say, I can't ask for more.

Update to the update:

As I feared, there was no follow through or follow up. Apparently, Girl Scouts is a lot of fine words with little underlying substance. I hope the interest that my girls have in it burns out quickly. I, for one, have wasted enough time with it.

Technorati tags: diversity, inclusion, Girl Scouts, World Friendship Day

Captain Obvious Rides Again

2010-03-09T09:57:00.006-05:00

At the risk of being who my dear friend and colleague, Device Guy (Twitter ID = @DeviceGuy; follow him, he’s a genius), calls “Captain Obvious,” I just had to share this “aha!” moment with you.

I was catching up on one of my favorite blogs, Paul Smith’s Welcome to the Occupation. (It’s an HR blog, but I like it anyway ;-) ) In one of Paul’s posts, he linked to a video by workshop facilitator Joe Gerstandt entitled, Fresh Definition for Diversity. I’ve spent the past year or so learning a lot about diversity and inclusion. I thought I had developed a grasp of the fundamental definitions of these words. However, a significant learning for me came as a result of the particular way Joe Gerstandt phrased his definition. I’m sure I heard a similar definition before, but it just didn’t register in the same way for me as it did when I watched the video.

Joe Gerstandt simply says that "diversity means difference." Check. I knew that. But, then he talks about it as "a relational attribute.” Relational. My mental model for "differences" was more focused on the uniqueness of individuals — sets of qualities unique to each person (Joe Gerstandt might say I was muddling "diversity" with "talent") — rather than the simple distance between two points — the relational difference.

Relational differences are momentary, transient, and only real for those directly involved. They require the participation of two entities to exist. Aha!

This sheds a new light on the whole insider/outsider concept for me. Viewing differences as relational between any two individuals on a point-in-time basis, instead of relational between each individual and the norms of the insider group on a more enduring basis, puts the hierarchy off balance and renders it irrelevant. In my new mental model, all of us and none of us are insiders and outsiders. The differences only mean something important to each of us individually, helping us to make sense of our world through mental models, judgments, comparisons, decisions. Yet, in the overall universe they are equally weighted because they are shifting, transient, without benchmarks — in a sense, unreal.

When I say "unreal," I mean it in the sense that we can't rely on differences as absolutes or truths upon which we can build our value and reward systems (although, that's exactly what we've done, with the result that we have hierarchies largely based on privilege rather than merit). But, that isn't to say that differences are without value. Differences are the basis of potential energy, which can be transformed into kinetic energy to accomplish work, if only we can overcome inertia. Herein lies the power of inclusion. Think of how much we can accomplish if we harness the power of all of that potential energy existing between each uniquely talented individual and the uniquely talented individual beside him/her.

That’s the whole point, isn’t it? (“Aha!” or “Duh!” — never quite sure.)

Technorati tags: diversity, inclusion, Paul Smith, Joe Gerstandt

10 Things I Really Like About You

2010-02-24T06:48:00.005-05:00

After publishing my previous post, using the unapologetic and somewhat tongue-in-cheek idea of calling out behavioral pet peeves started by Mother Shaffer, one of my readers told me the post scared her. This wasn’t my intent, so I decided to reframe the main points in a more positive way.

10 Things I Really Like About You

You have integrity. I know your values because they’re apparent in all you do. You live your values even when it is uncomfortable for you or means that you must change. You are slow to criticize and quick to support. You appreciate that people are complex, so you consider me in light of my overall character rather than out-of-context shortcomings. You base your evaluations on sensible and visible standards, not subjective preference. I can trust you because you are genuine.
You are inclusive. You recognize that I am very different than you are, and what goes on in my head and my life is unique to me. You view these differences as prompts to expand your own perspective. You seek to understand and engage. You know that what we can build together is stronger than what we can do alone.
You truly appreciate me. You never underestimate the value of what I do and evaluate me fairly based on our mutually understood requirements. Even though we may be at very different levels, you recognize that we are all connected and that my contribution to the overall outcome may be every bit as important—maybe more important—than yours, at times. You are quite comfortable giving me due credit—even all the credit, if warranted—because you know it’s a positive reflection on you to enlist and recognize resources that get the job done. You believe that sharing credit doesn’t diminish it, it expands it.
You are confident. You don’t need my acceptance to know and be happy with who you are. You expect my intentions to be good so you don’t seek reasons to take offense or read anything extra into what I say or do. You seek to earn my respect, but are A-OK with not being the center of my universe.
You have a clue. You understand that rewards should be earned. You expect no gifts and demand no sympathy. You do not shirk hard work or responsibility. You know that life isn’t fair. You work to create a better future, but operate within the current reality.
You cooperate. You are energized by achievement and collaboration. Competing only diverts your energy from pursuing your goals, so you don't engage in it. You’re happy when others honestly and deservedly succeed because it raises the bar of excellence and inspires you.
Your memory is good. You remember your promises, values, and what you’ve said to me even when the pressure's on. You remember that every decision has ripple effects that may affect others, so you make decisions based on data and reason rather than favors and convenience. You remember who embraces values and policies to contribute in positive ways when determining rewards. You remember that I will never forget.
You consider other points of view. You are open to alternatives that are well-reasoned and have quantified evidence. You consider no idea of your own to be infallible or the sole possibility. You encourage others to test their wings and support them throughout.
You assume the best. You don’t jump to conclusions. You always give people the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. You say and do only things that enhance relationships. You don’t attack, you positively engage.
You can write. When writing—when you can see the words and take the time to correct them —you always pay attention. You may not catch every misplaced comma or dangling participle, but you certainly commit no war crimes against language. You may even follow Grammar Girl.

10 Things That Bug Me About You

2010-02-20T17:49:00.012-05:00

I am being completely unoriginal, but after reading 10 Things I Strongly Dislike About You by Kat, who was inspired by Mother Shaffer’s 10 Things I Hate About You, I just had to make my own list.

I should note that I personally have violated various points on this list at some time, because one thing that doesn’t bug me about you is that you are not perfect…nor am I. Let’s just try to do better, okay?

10 Things That Bug Me About You

You are a hypocrite. Don’t tell me you put people first if you overlook all kinds of injustice that you are in a position to stop because it might be uncomfortable or that you might have to change. Or criticize me for destroying the environment for our children by not embracing organic gardening while you’re smoking and drinking in your first trimester. Or look down on me for being overweight when you are the one who is frighteningly food-obsessed. Face up to who you are, blemishes and all. I’ll like you better.
You are a bigot. Don’t penalize or look down on me or anyone else because we don’t fit your ideal image—you know, the one that looks, thinks, and acts just like you. You have no idea what goes on in my head or life, and you can’t judge it against the standards you set in yours.
You are a thief. Don’t steal my work and ideas, present them as your own, reap the rewards, and give me no credit. If I’m willing to share the credit with you even if your contribution was—ahem—minor, then why won’t you? Sharing the credit doesn’t diminish it, it expands it. Take my “share the credit” deal; it’s a generous one—more than a thief like you deserves.
You are a victim. You’ve got a right to gripe when bad stuff happens. It’s only human. But don’t take everything I say or do—or anyone else says or does—and often things we haven’t said or done—or even considered saying or doing—as a personal affront all of the time. Frankly, I am way too stretched to expend extra effort inventing clever and covert ways to hurt you. I don’t give that much thought to anything about you because I’m just not that generous. Seriously, you are not the center of my universe. Get over it.
You are deluded. I’m not talking about the kind of blind optimism that helps you through a tough situation. I’m talking about thinking that having a freshly-minted degree and no experience should rocket you directly into an executive position. Or believing that doing one small task that a big cheese compliments makes up for the rest of time that you did nothing and dragged down the team. Or saying that you’ve earned your place/success/reward when your parents/spouse/family bought your way into all you have. But, your private delusions aren’t what actually bug me. What bugs me is that you repeat your delusional mantra to me in your never-ending bid for sympathy over the world’s alleged cruelty to you. Riiiiight. Poor you.
You insist on competing. Not to be arrogant, but my true strengths are pretty serious strengths, so competing with me in those areas is probably pointless. If you insist on competing with me, go right ahead, but you’ll be operating alone. If you try to bait me by persistently throwing it in my face, you will only annoy me, like an irritating fly. And beating me won’t work either. If you beat me fairly, I’ll simply give you due credit. I don’t feel diminished when someone else honestly and deservedly succeeds—I’m happy for them. (However, I get angry when an incompetent who personifies this list is unjustly rewarded. Even so, it takes me a while to get there…I always first assume that the incompetent must have overriding superior qualities of which I am unaware, until they undeniably prove me wrong.) The only person with whom I ever compete is me. I think competition is counterproductive. Isn’t it better to work together?
You have selective memory. You don’t remember that you privately told me one thing and then took a completely opposite stance publicly? You swear that you only consider facts when making decisions when I’ve seen you repeatedly discard them for the sake of convenience or to advance you own agenda? You think no one noticed that you gave your thoroughly mediocre buddy a plummy opportunity even though someone else had earned it? You can’t remember that someone made egregious errors in judgment and showed blatant disregard for policy and values while you continue to reward them? You don’t remember committing to my project when someone who can get you ahead wants something? Well, maybe you don’t remember. But, then, I can’t remember to respect you.
You are closed to other points of view. Confidence is great. I can even accept arrogance if you have considerable talents to back it up. What I won’t accept are people who discard piles of quantified evidence and well-reasoned concepts—and rip apart anyone who had the guts to present them—in favor of their own (they think) infallible idea. You know who I mean—insufferable know-it-alls and little-people-with-big-egos who aren’t content until they’ve destroyed countless worthy efforts and people through sheer pigheadedness. I might be wrong sometimes. Everyone around you might be wrong sometimes. But that doesn’t mean you’re always right or that an idea that’s not yours won’t work just as well. Maybe you should open your ears and mind a bit. Or just get lost because there’s no point in talking with you, anyway.
You fight evil, except inside yourself. My best example: A woman—think, “Church Lady”—stormed up to me in a parking lot and accused me of abusing my (then) 2-year old, who was in the throes of a 20-minute public temper tantrum. My most calming attempts to diffuse his tantrum had failed miserably, and I was struggling to catch each of his limbs with one hand and put them through the straps of his car seat, while holding my other arm across the seat like a roller coaster safety bar to prevent his escape into oncoming traffic (which he’d already done once, after biting my arm and giving me a throbbing, bleeding bruise the size of LA). Church Lady hurled accusations, including that “no child” would behave like that unless I’d “done something” to him, and that my own parents were incompetent. (My son was two. We’ve all heard of the terrible twos, right?) Despite the fact that I’d done nothing to merit attack, her venom made me sob in frustration all the way home. Not long before, a news story about a woman beating a child in a car seat had aired…was Church Lady projecting? My advice: If you seek evil, you’ll find it, but it may be of your own making. Clean up your act before cleaning up mine.
Your writing skills are atrocious. I am far from perfect, and I don’t expect perfection from you. My speech is littered with grammatical errors because it’s hard to correct one’s self in the moment and without visual prompts. But when writing—when you can see the words and take the time to correct them—pay attention. Again, I’m not expecting perfection—my writing is riddled with misplaced commas and modifiers. I even have adopted the web writing style in which “sentences” start with conjunctions and verbs are omitted to emphasize the point. What I’m talking about are war crimes against language. Being able to communicate is essential. Please, get some help. I recommend consulting Grammar Girl.

Why not make a list of your own? It's cathartic.

Technorati tags: Grammar Girl, Kat's Eye on Life, Mother Shaffer

Strike "optimist" from my bio, for now

2010-01-02T02:39:00.003-05:00

Should I scream, throw something, or burst into tears? Or some combination of the three? It would be nice to be my 3-year-old, who can have a tantrum within the realm of “normal” behavior. For an adult, tantrums are unacceptable. As my kids would say, “Unfair!”

I just heard some shockingly bad news from a close friend. It was quite unexpected. And, it adds to the devastating theme that has been running through my circle of loved ones for several unrelenting years now. All I can say is, “I EFFING HATE CANCER!” (And all of the effing side effects of it and its treatments.)

I don’t want to hear about maintaining a positive attitude. Or how optimism improves health. Getting cancer and fighting cancer have nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not you are sufficiently upbeat. Maybe optimism helps someone mentally face all the hell of the battle, but that’s it. Saying optimism is the key to better health is blaming the victim. “If he were just a more positive person, those rogue cells would have disappeared!” It’s magical thinking and it’s rubbish. Happy people die of cancer every day. And sad ones live. And vice versa.

It also can have nothing to do with life choices. We all grew up learning how a healthy lifestyle reduces the risks of some types of cancers. Certainly, no one can argue the benefits of healthy choices. But assuming that a cancer patient should eat more sprouts, lose weight (overweight patients tolerate certain treatments better!), take supplements (some may interfere with treatments!), exercise more, or even stop smoking—or suggesting that if they had done these things before getting cancer they’d still be healthy—is also blaming the victim. Failing to eat 3 daily helpings of leafy greens won’t stop the chemo from working, nor will eating them help the chemo to work better in any significant way. When a body is being blasted with chemicals or radiation, taking a multivitamin is just not a key event on the critical path to renewed health (nor is it an adequate substitute for proper medical treatment). And as for choices made before cancer—many types of cancer have no known cause. For many types of the worst types, there is no link to environment, diet, habits, weight, overall fitness, lifestyle, or even genetics. It just freakin’ happens. Ask an oncologist.

And then there’s all the collateral damage. Career. Economic security. Family life. Social life. Life itself. The cancer patient suffers. The family suffers. The friends suffer. Everyone tries to put on brave faces as their insides and their worlds shatter. They try to make it right by talking about the life lessons this challenge has taught them, how they are better and wiser people. But, in reality, we’d all much rather be oblivious, hedonistic idiots who have not been anywhere near cancer than wise and virtuous heroes battling through it.

Sure, people are just trying to help as they offer advice or speculate on courses of action. Or they’re trying to make sense of the insanity. Or they’re just bumblers with good intentions. I’ve bumbled myself, even after what I’ve learned over the past few years. But I just don’t want to deal with that stuff right now. I don’t want to continue to be an adult and face more bad news with poise and courage.

Instead, I just want to flippin’ scream. And throw something. And cry. And hope that I’ll never have cause to feel this way again.

I'm a Millionaire

2009-11-25T14:37:00.006-05:00

Want to hear something crazy? I love CHANGE. In fact, I’m thankful for it.

Of course, I am most thankful for my family, health, faith, and the tremendous gift of being born into a part of the world in which access to food, shelter, healthcare, gainful employment, opportunity, creature comforts, and freedom are so common that I often forget that there are others who would be happy to have just one of those blessings for even one moment.

But as I reflect on what—beyond the obvious—is something I am grateful to have in my world, I keep coming back to change.

A classic film called The Shop Around the Corner, starring Jimmy Stewart (as Alfred Kralik), contains one of my all-time-favorite movie quotes:

Kralik: Pirovitch, did you ever get a bonus?

Pirovitch: Yes, once.

Kralik: Yeah. The boss hands you the envelope. You wonder how much is in it, and you don't want to open it. As long as the envelope's closed, you're a millionaire.

That’s change for me—being on the verge of possibility. It’s why we are all moved by weddings, births, new jobs or projects, commencements, elections, the start of a school or fiscal year, and other first moments and beginnings—they are all so ripe with fresh hope and promise. Anything, ANYTHING, could happen if we just can figure out how to seize the opportunity.

As we move into the busy holiday season and 2009 draws to a close, there’s change in the wind once more. Although I appreciate and respect what and who have brought me to this point, I look forward to what comes next: new projects, new ideas, new chances, and a new year. It is thrilling to open that envelope. I do it with confidence because, with all the blessings in my life, I already am “a millionaire.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

(If you are thankful for something, too, why not join in the global celebration of TweetsGiving? Thanks to Jay Baer and his his post on TweetsGiving for bringing it to my attention.)

Technorati tags: Thanksgiving, change, The Shop Around the Corner, Jimmy Stewart, Jay Baer, TweetsGiving

Social Media and the Art Thing

2009-11-22T16:12:00.012-05:00

Thanks to this post by Dave Rowley, a pencil smudge has reappeared on the side of my hand for 4 days straight now. {Giggle.} I haven’t had that smudge in 25 years.

From my earliest memories, I enjoyed art. The absolute standout Christmas gift of my early childhood was The Big Box. The Box contained every imaginable child-friendly art supply and craft kit. It was rapture…and kept me busy until the following Christmas.

When I was 5, I won a coloring contest sponsored by a local (but famous) department store. This was the first of many, many coloring and art contests in which I would snag prizes during my childhood. Usually, I didn’t win first prize, but I earned enough gift certificates and event passes to keep me (and my family, who got fringe) very happy. When I was 12-ish, I won first prize in the National Kellogg’s Stick Up for Breakfast Contest. The magnitude of this win was apparent to me when my mom and I visited a lawyer to help me complete the paperwork to receive my prize. Among other things, I had to sign an affidavit confirming that the entry was really my own work and allowing Kellogg’s the full rights to further use of the drawing. I began to realize that perhaps I had talent beyond the norm.

(Kellogg’s sent me a coveted prize for the 1970s: an Atari video game system. We hooked it up to our TV and played Pong in all its first generation glory. Dad—my regular Pong opponent—and I still love video games. This will be another blog post.)

When I was little (6 or 7?), my older sister had a summer job as a playground director. A guy would come to our house every other weekend and teach her how to do the playground crafts for the upcoming weeks. After he'd left, I’d try all the projects he'd demonstrated. Sometimes, someone would teach a short art class at the playground. I remember being instructed to close my eyes and feel a mystery object. Then I had to draw it from this tactile memory. I drew a bumpy vase and a basket with some fringe at the ends of the handle, which I can still see in my mind’s eye. My drawings were very accurate, to the general astonishment of everyone except my sister.

When I was a bit older (maybe 10 or so), an elderly neighbor liked to sit on his front porch and sketch. Emboldened by the natural curiosity of childhood, a friend and I trotted up to him one day and asked to see his picture. After that, he’d regularly teach me drawing basics. He gave me his sketches, often a portrait or an animal, and I’d take them home to copy. When I returned with my attempts, he’d coach me on how to improve them. I learned a lot from Mr. Chiara.

In high school, I took history in summer school so that I could fit two years of art into my schedule. I took my art very seriously, even selling some paintings (for about $20 each—imagine). I fancied myself to be part of the artsy circle at school, hanging out in the art room during free periods, trekking to the art museum on weekends with the hipster art teacher, and celebrating when my work placed in the Scholastic Art Awards. I was art editor for our award-winning school newspaper, made sports team banners and posters advertising the drama club’s plays, and designed covers for our yearbooks and other publications. Years after I’d graduated, a logo I’d designed was still gracing the school newspaper’s literary page.

By college, my drawing skills were relegated to poster making and a couple of class assignments, pushed aside in favor of other distractions (like physical chemistry and differential equations). My parents had encouraged my art, but strictly as a spare-time, stand-alone hobby rather than a gift to be channeled into my future pursuits. (In retrospect, my nose-to-the-grindstone parents had strong objections to all of the arts—seemed to view them as livelihood-threatening potential addictions. Since they lived through the Great Depression, I can see why pushing their offspring into more stable, practical, predictable pursuits was so important to them.) So, when life and career got busier, I stopped making art, except occasionally on vacation or by special request (“Hey, Shell, design a tee shirt for our alumni clambake!”). It seemed like the adult thing to do.

In all the years that I designed databases and web pages, I was able to sneak a little of my artistic eye into my work. It also is evident in my home décor and even in the way I dress my kids. But after years of creative neglect and a lifetime of hearing the message that art is for lightweights, I have trouble grasping that art is something I must do if I am to show gratitude for my God-given gifts, not something wickedly stealing time from worthier pursuits.

Now, after a year of seeing the worthwhile work of artists, authors, creativity coaches, and others I’ve “met” through social media, I’m finally waking up to the point that becoming who I was born to be means I must take 15 minutes a day to sketch. When I look at a finished sketch, flaws and all, I am 15 years old again and the world is full of possibilities. I can go forth and do good work in other areas of my life with renewed creativity.

Also because of social media, I not only have a ready-made venue to learn and receive constructive criticism about my artistic attempts from seasoned professionals, I also have encouragement and support from the same wonderful friends who fed my artsy side when I was 15. We had a particularly rebellious high school class and, although we’ve all grown up and gladly shoulder our responsibilities, my inner creative rebel is sparked by my fellow rebel sisterhood. (Love you guys!)

Who knows, maybe if I start to revive my heretofore shunted-aside talents, I may even find that there is a joyful living somewhere within them. In any case, it makes me giggle to see the smudge on the side of my hand—that alone does my heart good.

Thanks, social media.

Addendum: Gotta add the sketch for day 5:

Technorati tags: Art, Creativity, Dave Rowley, Social Media

Eleven, eleven, eleven, and one more eleven

2009-11-11T16:44:00.005-05:00

Today is Veterans Day. On Veterans Day I always remember my grandmother.

Not that Grandma was an actual veteran if you use the primary definition: a former member of the armed forces. But in some ways, she was a special kind of veteran if you consider the secondary definition: someone of long experience. And she certainly was a fighter.

November 11 was first to become Armistice Day in 1918, later to become Veterans Day. Armistice Day was the day World War I ended on the Western Front. In a railway carriage in the Compiègne Forest in France, the Allies signed an Armistice with Germany to ceasefire at “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" (Paris time).

To add to the stream of elevens, my grandmother turned eleven years old on that day in history. It was a defining moment for her generation, and my grandmother felt a special connection to it.

World War I was simply called The Great War before World War II. I’m sure that until World War II, those that had gone through the First World War thought they had seen the worst hostility and suffering the errors of man could produce. More than 16 million people died in the war, which had to seem unthinkable until World War II shattered that gruesome record with 60+ million deaths.

My grandmother lived most of her life struggling. She was near the top of the birth order in a Sicilian-American family of 11 (there's that number, again) children, 10 of whom were girls. She only completed her education through the eighth grade because she was needed at home. Too young to really enjoy the roaring twenties before the stock market crash of 1929, by the time the Great Depression started, she was a young wife and grieving mother who had already tragically lost her first-born child to an unknown heart defect before the child was 2. Two more children came along quickly, but there was no work, no money, and no prospects for my grandparents. Life was about survival.

My grandfather, a gifted artist and draftsman, did any job that would pay the bills, including digging ditches for the WPA. He often spent hours en route to and from a job, navigating buses with a book in his pocket to help him pass the time. My mother remembers a childhood of living in scruffy apartments over stores and eating nothing but pasta with nearly rotten vegetables no longer suitable for sale on her grandfather’s vegetable cart, while listening to the panic in her parents’ voices as they argued under the enormous stress of poverty and uncertainty. As a small girl, my mother would walk her younger sister home from school and manage the household until her parents came home, including handling the damper on the old coal furnace—a very risky duty for a child—because her parents were off working at whatever odd jobs they could find. Life became even more gloomy as my grandmother’s mother fell terminally ill and, for 3 years, my grandparents, mother, and aunt lived in my great-grandparents’ house so that my grandmother could care for her dying mother and manage the house for her father. My mother says that it was a terrible time: stressful, depressing, and lean, with a grim specter of impending death haunting each day.

World War II allowed my grandparents to finally earn a steady income. Having no sons, the war did not intrude on their immediate family unit, but their extended family had the same devastating losses and after-effects of war as nearly every American family during that time. My grandmother worked in a factory during the war and lost a thumb on the job.

Finally, things began to look up for my grandparents, who, not long before becoming empty-nesters, fulfilled their fondest dream and became homeowners. They bought a tiny house outside of the city,what we’d now call a “starter home.” They thought they were the richest people in the world.

They endured more worry as a grandson nearly died after being hit by a car and went through years of surgery and recovery. A son-in-law died of a heart attack in his thirties, leaving their daughter to raise 5 small children. Just before retirement, my grandfather suffered a fatal third heart attack.

By that time, my grandmother was solidly a veteran—a veteran of adversity and survival, a veteran of shattered dreams and keeping dreams alive, a veteran of cruel losses and unbreakable family ties, a veteran of poverty and unthinkable stress and hardship and duty.

She fought many health battles of her own in the following years, losing both legs and, eventually, her mind to diabetes. But, still, she was an incredible fighter. We were called to her deathbed time and time again, yet she pulled through many times before finally succumbing. I think, perhaps, because she had spent her entire life fighting for life and happiness,she just didn’t know how to stop fighting. She was a member of a generation of fighters, survivors, veterans.

Today, I first and foremost remember and appreciate veterans of armed services. But I also remember all veterans and those in service, past and present, military and civilian, who fought—and continue to fight—for a better world amid hardships and obstacles that I can’t even imagine.

And, with special fondness, I remember a strong and courageous woman whom I loved very much; who showered me with little grandmotherly gifts and my favorite cookies; who gave me treasures like my first Christmas stocking and a cherished Minnie Mouse handkerchief; who always worked hard; who faced heartache after heartache with indomitable strength; who made wonderful Sunday dinners; who drove 1000 miles with a turtle in a coffee can because she thought I would like it as a pet; who made the world’s best Sicilian pastries; who wrote me letters and made me feel important for receiving real mail; who had a beautiful face, a beautiful smile, and an infectious laugh; who had a quick temper, a fierce spirit, and a ton of love for her family; who was a fighter and a role model; and who was always proud to say that on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month she turned eleven years old.

Technorati tags: Veterans Day, veteran

Bethany

2009-11-07T23:55:00.005-05:00

In the early 1970s, I was a little girl growing up in a middle-class suburban neighborhood of Cleveland. None of the moms worked outside the home (except maybe to volunteer in the school cafeteria twice a week) and a summer day meant playing outside with the neighborhood kids from late morning until dusk with breaks only for meals. Everyone in my neighborhood was white, Christian, and spoke with a Midwestern accent.

Once or twice, a family with a slight European accent might move in, and after months of covert scrutiny, the neighborhood consensus would be something like, “They’re good neighbors. They have a well-tended yard. They seem very clean.” I’m pretty sure that—given the rampant “people like us” thinking of the time—the earth would have shifted off its axis if a non-white family had ever moved in. Those precious few European accents were about the limit of difference the neighborhood seemed to be able to sustain.

The social climate in Cleveland back then was characterized by intolerance. I still have lots of issues with the belief systems under which I was raised and which surrounded me in all aspects of my childhood universe. I knew that there were people whose skin was different than mine because my parents would make us cross the street and walk faster or lock the car doors whenever we saw them. I was probably a teenager before fully grasping that there were people who weren’t Christian. I had no knowledge of the world outside of the U.S. except that there was something called an Iron Curtain behind which the godless, evil communists in Russia lived; we prayed daily for their conversion (presumably—in my youthful understanding—to our correct way of thinking and worshipping).

But race, religion, or ethnic origin weren’t the only focal points of intolerance in my neighborhood. There were also whisperings about families who had—or were suspected of having—lives that didn’t quite resemble that of the Cleaver family. (The Brady Bunch and Partridge Family would have been considered way too progressive to live in my neighborhood, despite their squeaky-clean images by today’s standards.) There were meaningful looks exchanged by the adults about the young people in the neighborhood who were suspected of using drugs (despite no real evidence, I’m sure), became pregnant before marriage, got into trouble at school or with the police, looked too much like hippies (no shoes and long hair = lay-about drug addict), or in any other way didn’t fit the model of approved behavior.

Our parents never gave us information other than orders to stay away from so-and-so, as if whatever perceived imperfection—too shameful to talk about—might infect us. These were the days when children didn’t ask questions if not invited to do so, and we weren’t ever invited. And, being kids, we blindly accepted everything, sometimes drawing crazy conclusions from the snippets we overheard, while trying to emulate our parents’ behavior.

There was one particular neighborhood girl, a few years older than I was, who was different. The neighborhood line was that Bethany was “slow.” As a kid, I thought that had to do with speed in the literal sense. Bethany walked slowly, sort of dragging her legs from the hip with her toes pointing inward. She talked slowly, with a kind of slurred drawl. She stared a lot. She came uncomfortably close to you when she talked. She seemed to have an endless amount of time and no expectations on what she should be doing. Even as a very young girl, I found dealing with her to be trying.

She seemed to have a lot of freedom that the rest of us didn’t have. She never seemed to have to go home for lunch or dinner; she’d sit on one of our porches and eat something from her pocket. She was out on her bike hours earlier than the rest of us were allowed to go out in the morning and hours later than the rest of us were allowed to stay out in the evening. I always assumed that the hours she kept were allowed because she was older than I was.

Bethany never seemed to mind waiting. She would often wait on someone’s porch or in the yard until the child who lived there came out to play. This irked the neighborhood moms. After watching for a while through the kitchen window and realizing that Bethany had no intention of leaving, my mother would firmly tell her that she couldn’t hang out on our back porch while I ate lunch or all through the early morning until I was allowed out to play. Bethany would argue a bit (which was shocking in our neighborhood, where talking back to a parent was a capital offense), but would eventually say, “Okay,” pick up her bike, and cycle off to someone else’s porch. I suspect she just went from porch to porch, biding her time, day in and day out.

Bethany always seemed to have an extraordinary number of scrapes and bumps that she attributed to falls from her bike. I believed her—she always had her bike with her and I saw her wipe out on it now and then. She’d often ask for band-aids. I remember thinking it was strange that she never went home to get one like the rest of us would have done.

Bethany sometimes joined in our games, though she’d lose interest quickly and try to distract us. Sometimes she’d watch us play, which always felt kind of creepy. She had endless questions and often I couldn’t figure out what she meant. I tried to be polite, but my stomach clenched whenever I saw her coming. Sometimes my best friend and I just wanted to be left alone to our own secrets and games, so we’d pretend our mothers were calling us and hide inside until she went away. As it became harder to cope with Bethany's constant presence, we developed increasingly elaborate schemes to ditch her. Sometimes she’d catch on to what we were doing to exclude her and start berating us. One of our moms would overhear her angry shouts and tell her to go home. All of the moms would shake their heads and whisper.

I don’t know what ever happened to Bethany. Eventually, she stopped hanging around. Maybe her family moved away. I don’t remember. Nobody missed her when she’d gone. We forgot all about her—easily.

Looking back, I wish my parents had known how to teach me to be more compassionate toward Bethany. I wish they had explained why she behaved the way she did and helped me to develop appropriate skills for helping her to feel included while not feeling confused and irritated by her myself. Although I did try to play with her more than some of the children in my neighborhood, I wish I had tried to understand her rather than merely endure her. I wish an adult had tried to help her. I guess those were the times.

My kids recently told me about a child they know. Based on their description, I suspect the child has developmental challenges. Their irritation was apparent, and I heard echoes of my childhood in the intolerant things they told me they and the other children were starting to say and do. From my deeply buried memories came the recollection of Bethany.

We had a serious talk that day on the drive home. We’ve had a few follow-up discussions since. I hope I advised my children well. I hope they will be more inclusive than I was. I hope that the child they described won’t be easily forgotten the way I forgot Bethany...until now.

Technorati tags: tolerance, diversity, inclusion, parenting

It's Not a Competition

2009-10-16T19:46:00.004-04:00

Today I read an article in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) digital edition called “Why Email No Longer Rules…And what that means for the way we communicate.” It summarized the differences between email and social networking services like Facebook and Twitter and the challenges presented by the changes in information flows. I thought it was fairly good until I read the last paragraph and the comments. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the writers and audience of The Wall Street Journal are—shall we say—conservative. With respect to social media, the writer concludes, “And we will no doubt waste time communicating stuff that isn't meaningful, maybe at the expense of more meaningful communication. Such as, say, talking to somebody in person.” Puh-lease.

When are people going to get that social media isn’t about trying to cram a business email into 140 characters or mindlessly reporting what you had for breakfast to an uninterested cyberworld? When are we going to stop thinking that the decline of civilization is at hand because Facebook and Twitter will erode our verbal communication skills? Ooh, I just had a flashback to the 1980s when I told my boss that email would change business communications forever and that the ability to post and answer questions on open discussion boards gave a whole new dimension to research. Fast forward to the 1990s when my company’s former head of IT said, “We will never, ever have an intranet” and I laughed out loud.

Okay, Michelle, belay the snarkiness and deploy some patience. Cultural change is difficult. They’ll come around. Try to be constructive.

Let’s go through these issues one by one.

1. Email is superior for business communication

It’s not a competition. No one said you had to choose only one true communication method.

Sure, for some things, email rules. For other things, it is not the best solution. For yet other things, there may be equivalent solutions—there may even be a slight edge in efficiency.
Email is great for:

• Private communications
• Keeping a trail

I sure as heck don’t want my boss tweeting follow up information about my performance review or my doctor answering my personal medical question on WebMD if I didn’t post it there in the first place.

Email is also great for keeping a specific communications trail. When I have to answer questions for internal audit at work, I keep an email trail. That way I know what was asked and how it was answered, the dates of all of the communications, etc. Easy reference and only I and the auditors care to see it anyway (i.e., need to know).

However, email is not a great tool for collaborating on a document. Nothing like writing a few paragraphs and then 20 other people send individual emails with their individual edits. This situation screams, “Use a wiki” or, at the very least, use one working document in a shared workspace with “track changes” switched on.

Now, what about all that less obvious stuff in the middle that isn’t particularly private—perhaps it could be better addressed if it were shared in unexpected ways—and doesn’t need to be saved for posterity? Think about it. There’s a heckuva lot of it in my email inbox right now. How much is in yours?

• “Did you see this article in today’s WSJ? {link} Interesting summary of email vs. social media in business.”

• “Hey, do you have any information or old reports on topic x? I thought you worked on a team related to it a couple of years ago…”

• “It occurs to me that so-and-so {link to bio} may be an interesting speaker for our lecture series. Can’t remember where her specialty fell on your priority list. I may run into her at my next stop and I can ask her about speaking if I see her, but I don’t want to bring it up and then tell her later we’re not really interested.”

• “Did we ever get a copy of the slide deck from Joe? I can’t find it.”

What if I tweeted the WSJ link? Instead of a few of my colleagues privately debating the merits of the article, in mere moments I could be pointed toward expert assessments and related articles. Instead of speaking in theoreticals with my colleagues, people at other companies that actively are using social media in business can share real experiences and data with us.

What if the question about the old reports and team was posted on an internal Twitter-like system, but flagged to make sure I would notice it (@michelle). Not only would I answer the question, but others who may have relevant information could also weigh in, even if we didn’t know who had that relevant information. Others could weigh in with related information not specifically requested.

What if I texted the question about the speaker? My colleague directing our lecture series can look up the professional bio information easily from the link, make her assessment, and answer me quickly enough to seize the opportunity if it is, in fact, an opportunity we want. Note: links can’t be sent over the phone.

When someone just asked me the last question, the person in the next cube overheard it and said, “Just got it and posted it. I’ll send you the link.” What if the person with the answer wasn’t in his cube or worked in another area? Twitter-like apps allow him to weigh in even if I didn’t know he had the answer, and point to the link for more than just the requester to see.

None of these require email trails. My inbox is not cluttered and I don’t have to clean it up. And I might even get a quicker, more complete answer than I would have otherwise. I may even point someone else who also could benefit from the information—but who didn’t think to ask about it while I didn’t think to include them—in the right direction.

2. We’ll lose depth if we communicate in 140 characters or less.

Well, yes, we’ll lose depth if we try to fully communicate in only 140-character units. But, if you look at a Twitter or Facebook feed, there is a mix of what can be communicated in 140 characters and pointers to further information. Links point to blog entries, pictures, articles, reference works, etc.—depth is still there, but it comes to us via hyperlinks.

3. We don’t care what you had for lunch. It’s digital narcissism and a big waste of time.

Think of social media posts about what you had for lunch as a sort of digital small talk and a way to give people with whom you’re communicating a mental picture to replace the physical one they’re missing. It helps build the personal connections behind the productive ones. After all, you shoot the bull with colleagues now and then, don’t you? On the way to a meeting, you chat about weekend plans or your kid’s soccer game, right? When you come in to the office in the morning, you lean over the cube wall and rehash last night’s ball game or Zumba class, don’t you? You comment on the way back from the cafeteria about the yummy looking taco salad your friend just bought, right? (If you don’t, you work in a lonely place.)

Well, posting what I had for lunch on social media is the same thing. It’s not narcissism because it is intended as an invitation into conversation and a glimpse into my day for my friends. It’s all part of building relationships.

Today, a colleague on vacation tweeted about being at a popular Thai restaurant. Working from home, I chimed in about how much I enjoy Thai food and made a menu suggestion. Another colleague back at the office made a joke about it. We all had a good laugh, got to vacation vicariously through my colleague, and now know that we share a liking for Thai food. Revolutionary? No. But even while on vacation, my colleague, with a miniscule time and effort investment, was continuing to sustain the personal connections behind our working team without any intrusion from work on his personal day. People that have some level of personal connection work together better professionally. This exchange took 2 minutes, if that, out of each of our days. If we were in the office together, we might have had a similar conversation anyway—nothing new and no big time waster. But on this particular day, if we didn’t tweet, we wouldn’t have made that connection at all. And I’ll tell you, when you’re working at home to try to jam on a project, a momentary break to make contact with the outside world, without breaking your momentum, is a sanity saver.

Of course, many of our tweets have nothing to do with food. Well, okay, at least some of our tweets have nothing to do with food. Some days.

What social media is about is connecting with people in way you might not have otherwise. Through Facebook, I’ve reconnected with school friends I haven’t heard from in decades. Though we now live, literally, all over the globe, we’ve caught up on each other’s careers, families, interests, and lives through pictures, notes, updates, and links. In a small way, we are right back outside our lockers of 25 years ago sharing what we’re thinking or doing every day, only it’s better because now we can really be of support to each other through much more complex challenges than facing math tests and prom dates. We encourage each other through everything from potty training to job searching to cancer. These are people I had true and heartfelt connections with many years ago, but time, space, and life separated us. Now, I can easily maintain at least a portion of those friendships through simply writing 140 characters a couple of times per day, or more when necessary. Sometimes, if we happen to be online at the same time, we pull up the chat window and have real-time conversation with no long distance rates and no child-awakening telephone rings. And yes, when it is appropriate, we still pick up the phone and call. I even recently reconnected with one friend who, in one of those late-night digital chats when we were discussing the pitfalls of potty training, noted that he’d be in our state soon for a class reunion. He agreed to drive to my city and give a lecture at my company (and visit). His lecture was extremely valuable and well received. This wouldn’t have happened without Facebook.

On Twitter, I check out interesting people that my friends quote, and, if I find them interesting, follow them. I’ve had digital conversations with people I would have never otherwise met and may never meet—a whole variety of known business experts and people who aren’t famous but are interesting and knowledgeable—people who push relevant information to me and quickly point me toward answers to my questions. A few of these people have become key professional resources for me and there’s a good chance that we could work together in the future. It’s like being at a professional conference all the time—in the background. And, trust me, the time I save looking for relevant information more than compensates for the few minutes it takes me to type 140 characters (or click the “tweet this” key while reading an article) here and there throughout the day.

4. No one will talk anymore.

I hear this one all the time: “The kids were sitting right next to each other, texting each other instead of talking.” Yes—just like we used to have code phrases or pass notes as teenagers so that our parents didn’t know what we were talking about. I knew a few girls who learned a sort of sign language so that they could talk without saying a word. Do you seriously think teenagers won’t still talk, too? Social media is just one more way to talk more often, not less often.

In the professional world, it isn’t much different. Sometimes, like in the examples I already gave, there is a convenience to using digital communications, even in real time. Among these are brevity (e.g., "I can’t stop to chat because I’m running to a meeting, but can you answer this one quick question?"), the ability to share links and other visual aids, extended reach, or privacy (e.g., a person I once mentored would IM me for quick advice while difficult situations were unfolding because she was in a cube and wanted privacy without having to call attention to her situation by fleeing to a conference room to use the phone).

There may even be an advantage to social media for those of us who aren’t as quick on our feet as we’d like to be. (That’s around 95% of us, isn’t it?) Even though it takes me just a few seconds to post a comment in social media, I still need to click a button to transmit. That gives me a moment to check to make sure that I said whatever it is I’m posting in the way I really want to share it. Sure, typos still happen, but I have a moment to rethink, reword, delete, add, or change the tone. I come off as a much better conversationalist than I really am. Or is that true? Actually, it gives me a chance to convey the meaning I truly intended, rather than one blundered into because of my words outpacing my thinking. So, in fact, I communicate better.

Do these digital conversations replace verbal ones? No! They most often are conversations I would not have had otherwise. These are extra conversations, more opportunity to connect and converse, right when the communication is most useful and relevant.

We didn’t stop using the post office when the telephone was invented. Perhaps the art of letter writing suffered, but the art of communication simply found a new vehicle and added to the opportunity for people to connect more frequently, with more direct relevancy, and across larger distances. People could become more involved in each other’s lives (“Mom, listen! The baby just said “Dada!”) in ways that letters can’t quite convey. So, in this socially networked age we have more vehicles for making the world smaller and more connected. And, if life is all about the connections we make, the relationships we have, the way we reach out to each other, how can giving us ways to connect with others throughout the globe, in real time, in larger numbers and with more diversity of thought and experience than ever before be the downfall of civilization? Seems like exactly what civilization is all about to me.

Stop the fire and brimstone sermons on how social media will condemn our souls to oblivion and get connected. You’ll see. Of course, the people who need to read this won’t ever see it because I’m going to blog it and then transmit the link to Twitter and Facebook. Maybe some of their more connected friends will print it out for them and paste it into their print copy of The Wall Street Journal. Or tell them about it.

After all, it’s not a competition.

Technorati tags: social media

Sticky Notes, the Em Dash, and Mom

2009-09-24T13:19:00.005-04:00

I have always been surrounded by enthusiastic punctuators presenting a myriad of punctuation-related quirks:

Grandma used commas in a way that mystified me (but I always felt important when she sent me real mail).
An in-law follows each salutation with a semicolon (but always remembers my birthday).
An aunt surrounds her signature in quotation marks (but always knows the right thing to say).
Others perplexingly pepper quotation marks on random phrases throughout their writings (which keeps me laughing—in a good way).
Many overuse commas and exclamation points as if every moment in life is high-action adventure with unexpected and illogical pauses for breath. (Perhaps this is the right way to live.)

The list could continue for pages.

No doubt, this barrage of unusual usage has formed my views on punctuation. I hold each of these punctuation marks—and the punctuators—dearly in my heart. Yet, despite my overexposure to quotation marks, semicolons, commas, and exclamation points, my ultimate preference in punctuation was born of more than 40 years of life orchestration via sticky notes, all neatly arranged and regularly rotated on my parents’ refrigerator. It is born of the discipline of daily checks for new information and directives as conveyed upon quality-controlled, precision-cut squares mirroring my mother’s unrelenting sense of order. It is born of the triumph of my Sicilian mother overcoming her genetic predisposition to illustrate effusive thought with animated hand gestures by redirecting her communicative energy to a more subdued, adhesive-backed outlet. Here, on my mother’s sticky notes, on nearly every appointment reminder and to-do task throughout a lifetime of refrigerator news, is the em dash.

My mother’s em dashes signify thoughts that stretch beyond the limits of 3x3 sheets covered with precise, perfectly-spaced handwriting that only could be produced by a former first grade teacher who drilled thousands of Catholic school children in penmanship. When I was little, the em dash suggested items to bring to school that were obvious extensions of a list that didn’t quite fit on the note. There were em dashes ending the endless reminders of school and sports events, birthday parties, pediatrics appointments, bowling banquets, and parents’ club meetings. As I grew, it sometimes represented information to be privately understood between my parents as they struggled to communicate amidst our large family’s hectic, tangled schedules. When I was a teenager, the em dash signified undetermined babysitting times, reminders about part-time work schedules, or an admonishing reminder of Mom’s omniscience about her teenagers’ behavior. When I was a young adult, the em dash took the place of surnames of college friends and coworkers my parents had not met. In my young married days, em dashes showed my mother’s unspoken emotion following the jotted birth weight and name of a new grandchild or details about an upcoming celebration of a family member’s latest achievement. Now that we are older, the sticky notes no longer act as the nerve center of a once bustling, overcrowded household, but as joyful proclamations of the results of a life of loving industry—reminders of family picnics, birthdays, weddings, graduations, vacations, visits, and birth weights and names of great-grandchildren for a family that grew far beyond imagining. There is comfort in knowing that the sticky notes of our family life are as reliably on the surface of the fridge as meatballs are inside. And, on each one, there is a heartfelt em dash, indicating a depth of emotion and richness of experience that cannot be expressed in mere words.

The em dash, for me, is beloved because it represents a life’s worth of thoughts and feelings my mother left unwritten—but not uncommunicated—on the perfectly square, pastel yellow pages of her ongoing refrigerator memoirs. My em dash impressions are swaddled in a lifetime of loving and firm guidance and support, encouragement and maternal pride, offered by my mother to our family. Em dash, my love for you—and Mom—is forever—

Written in honor of National Punctuation Day and Mom's 80th birthday. Happy birthday, Mom!

Technorati tags: em dash, National Punctuation Day, punctuation

The Twitterization of Facebook -- and Me

2009-09-23T12:31:00.005-04:00

Jay Baer, a social media consultant, wrote an interesting article, “Imitation and Obsolescence – Facebook Guns for Twitter” in which he asks if Facebook’s recent moves to incorporate Twitter-like features is the beginning of the end for Twitter. (I love how Jay always tries to stir up conversation.) In reference to the new Facebook feature that mimics @replies (a way to flag particular Twitter users) on Twitter, Jay wrote, “… this will break down one of the last cultural differences between Twitter and Facebook in that people ‘follow’ many people…on Twitter whom they don’t really know at all, but most folks restrict Facebook friends to people they actually know…That’s going to change…”

Well, maybe.

Name drops won’t change the way I use Facebook. Facebook only allows a user to have one account/ID. If I were able to have a professional Facebook account AND a personal Facebook account, I’d be golden. But since I have to choose, my Facebook friends are only people I know and trust in meat space. Privacy controls help me feel reasonably comfortable posting details about my family and musings I’d disclose over a latte with buddies at the neighborhood coffee shop, but would never announce over institutional coffee with associates at the conference table. Facebook gives me a way to maintain closer relationships with a greater number of friends and family than I previously could within the time and space limitations of our busy lives. I’m genuinely interested in 90% of my news stream, read it voraciously, and often comment (the other 10% is Farmville and Mafia Wars) because I genuinely care about these people. I’m not trying to widely expand or diversify this network, but simply strengthen or renew bonds that already exist. I suspect that I am not alone in this approach.

But, on Twitter, I don’t know who’s reading, so I post only what I am comfortable disclosing openly. It is a place for social and informational risk-taking---following someone just because they said something interesting, I admire their work, or they are a friend of a friend. The benefit I find in Twitter is expanding my network to include people I don’t (and probably won’t) know in meat space. We have common ground but don’t operate in the same circles, so our perspectives arose differently. This influx of fresh perspective and pointers to sources of information I may not have found otherwise refines, tests, and pushes my thinking---huge value. But, as the net is cast much wider, I have true interest in less than half of the posts in my news stream and only read, comment, or retweet (i.e., re-post as a quote) the stand-outs. The members of my Twitter network aren’t emotionally invested in each other, which is why we’ll sustain the associated social risks. I lose a follower on Twitter and I sigh, but I lose a friend on FB and my heart aches.

I continuously “meet” insanely interesting new people on Twitter, which gives my network breadth. Over time---and if we meet face-to-face---some of the people in my Twitter network may become my friends. But, on Facebook, I continuously learn more about how insanely interesting the friends I already have are, which gives depth to my Facebook network. For me, these are entirely different types of networks.

So, I for one, will be continuing to use both Facebook (minus Farmville and Mafia Wars) and Twitter for the foreseeable future.

Technorati tags: Jay Baer, social networks, social media , Twitter, Facebook

I Am a Leaf

2009-06-25T09:04:00.010-04:00

Childrens Literature - K-2 (Scholastic Books Level 1 Reader – Science)
I Am a Leaf
By Jean Marzollo

This book was read aloud to a crowd of adoring literary fans (my family) by an acclaimed new reader and kindergartner (my daughter).

Illustrations:

Bright and cheery, looking like reliefs of construction-paper cutouts (perhaps an homage to Eric Carle?)

Synopsis:

As the story opens, we are lured into believing that this will be a light tale of blissful simplicity in nature:

See the ladybug? She’s crawling on me. It tickles!

Yet, this seemingly innocuous account foreshadows the work’s weighty underlying theme: contrasting proletariat transcendence of the establishment with bourgeois hubris of respectability teetering on a cesspool of mediocrity.

The hapless leaf intuitively grasps the transience of its plight:

We have a summer job. We make tree food.

Reliant on an uncertain supply of raw materials (water, light, air), the worker-leaf sacrifices its own sense of self in the substance of chlorophyll (reckoned “KLOR-o-fill” in a transparent attempt at colloquialism to ensnare the trust of the largely illiterate leaf population) to the photosynthetic means of agrarian production:

Then I add something green…Chlorophyll is green. It makes me green.

The leaf acknowledges its non-entity, an anonymous cog in the societal machine:

It [water] flows into my veins. My veins are like little pipes.

The leaf, flora’s embodiment of the biblical Job, is continuously marginalized by the bourgeoisie: A caterpillar eats a hole through our hero’s very substance, a spider be-webs it, and a squirrel tramples upon it. But the leaf transcends each humiliation with selfless virtue:

But I still did my job.

Employment opportunities diminish with eroding raw material supply (sunlight) as production migrates to prey on the populace of a new, unsuspecting solar-emerging nation. The hapless leaf is abandoned to its eventual demise. Yet, the simple leaf does not despair. Just when we think the leaf could show no higher virtue, our hero defies defeat, choosing spiritual freedom as a symbolic victory despite the inevitability of death. Reveling in the magnificence of its autumnal shroud, the leaf hurls itself from its branchy bondage into an ultimate dance upon the wind, a final flight of liberty before returning to dust.

We are left with the image of a new leaf budding in Spring, both testimony to the noble sacrifice of its predecessor and demoralizing evidence of the perpetuity and desensitization of continued oppression. The leaf displays an innate form of arboreal Stockholm Syndrome:

Soon I'll get a job...Mm-m-m. That sun feels good.

Thoroughly depressing. (This, of course, is the essence of high art.)

Review:

When synopses contain words like proletariat, oppression, and bourgeoisie and make reference to biblical characters, one feels obliged to applaud the intellectualism of the published work, while recognizing that it is probably a less-than-classic read. I Am a Leaf is no exception. It is, however, engaging enough material for reading practice, with a basic scientific theme thrown in as a bonus. As first readers go, The Mystery of the Missing Tooth by William H. Hooks is still the front-runner in our house.

And, yes, this synopsis has a higher word count than both books combined.

Technorati tags: book review, first readers, I Am a Leaf , Jean Marzollo

All your grammar are belong to us

2009-06-10T13:27:00.007-04:00

We all could use some help with our writing now and then, even if, like me, you went through 16 years of Catholic education. Following are a couple of resources for improving your writing.

Grammar Girl
I've noted my appreciation for Grammar Girl (Mignon Fogarty) in this blog before. She is the mastermind behind the podcast, Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. She has a book available by the same name and will be publishing a new book in October 2009. What I find to be useful, though, beyond Grammar Girl's cyber and print publications, is Grammar Girl's presence on Twitter. She tweets all kinds of interesting tidbits AND will answer your brief grammar questions directly and quickly. It's like having a personal grammar consultant!

Writing the Cyber Highway
Thanks to Grammar Girl, I stumbled upon this website created by Michele Tune. Michele describes the purpose of her site:

My (original and continuing) goal for Writing the Cyber Highway is to provide useful resources and a breath of fresh air to fellow writers, new or seasoned.

It looks like a wonderful resource for writing help. I need to explore it more thoroughly.

NOTE
Combining the best of both resources, a contest is underway on Writing the Cyber Highway to win a copy of Grammar Girl's book! Hurry, you must enter by June 13, 2009.

Technorati tags: Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, Michele Tune , Writing the Cyber Highway

Information Fascination

2009-04-07T14:40:00.011-04:00

I haven't blogged in a while; too much else to do. However, I really want to share three great links that others shared with me recently.

First, watch this successor to the Microsoft Surface preview that was all the rage a couple of years back: a new montage of the future of digital technology that feels intriguingly within our grasp.

Next, here's the preview that really blew me away; it lends credibility to my belief that the montage of the future is within our grasp:

Finally, view this thought provoking video called Information R/evolution on how we need to think differently about information, created by Dr. Michael Wesch of Kansas State University.

Check out his Web 2.0 video, too. I love this guy's style.

These sorts of videos make me start imagining what I can do differently in my little corner of the information universe to make both my personal world and the business for which I work more productive and fun.

I love the information age!

Technorati tags: Microsoft Surface, future vision montage, Michael Wesch, digital technology, Information R/evolution, Pattie Maes, Pranav Mistry, Sixth Sense, MIT Media Lab, wearable technology, TED conference

Fergus MacFergus, Kings, Scotch-Irish, and Oban Scotch

2009-03-17T12:42:00.006-04:00

As it is St. Patrick's Day today, I have been thinking about my Irish heritage. In fact, I've been thinking about my entire package of muddled ancestry and thinking about how typically American it is. Yep, I'm a mutt.

So, what's the breakdown? I'm 50% Sicilian, 25% Scotch-Irish, and 25% Dutch-German, according to my parents. I've always been confused about the whole Dutch-German and Scotch-Irish thing...Irish or Scottish? Dutch or German? Both?

There is precious little information about my family history. My grandparents on both sides, seeking to be patriotic Americans in the first half of the 20th century, broke with all of the traditions of the old world (well, except for my theoretically Irish grandfather who supposedly never overcame the Irish drinking gene) and dropped the languages of their ancestors, named their children with decidedly un-ethnic names, changed their own names, and tried to blend in every way they could. Only a couple of traditional Sicilian family recipes survived, most notably Brijole, which is called something that sounds like "seds-a-setti" (on a trip to Siciliy, native Sicilians looked at me blankly when I asked about this dish), something pronounced "cuch-a-daddi" (a mince-filled pastry), biscotti (sesame seed cookies), and an easter cookie with a whole egg baked inside for which I don't know the name; all else was discarded.

On my Sicilian side, we don't know much of anything. What little family folklore survived the great American purge is that both my grandfather's family and grandmother's family lived in the same general area in Sicily, in or around a place called Campo Felice in Palermo. Both of my great grandmothers apparently attended the same convent school. The families immigrated to Pennsylvania in the late 19th century. I'm buying that story on my grandfather's side, as his family name was Distefano, and that story seems to match up with origins of the name. Not so much on my grandmother's side; the name was Greco. There's got to be a reason for "Greek" being the translation of the name...lots of immigrants to Sicily in ancient times mixed the bloodlines. Who knows?

As for the Dutch-German thing, things are even sketchier. On travels to Germany, some friendly locals with whom I chatted said that one of our old family names, Van Neill, was definitely Dutch, not German. They looked somewhat dubious about the other name I mentioned, Wissing, as well, although that has a more German ring to it. (I also was repeatedly mistaken for a German, twice by people incredulous to the extreme that I wasn't, so I must look German.) We have no details on this part of the family. Was the description "Dutch-German" simply rooted in a marriage between a Dutch Van Neill and a German Wissing? Who knows.

So we come to the Irish bit. Family legend gives us a few tidbits about the Fergus family:

1. We were descended from a King.

2. We are descendants of Fergus MacFergus (some say that was the King mentioned in #1).

3. We are Scotch-Irish.

Best I can piece together from impromptu internet research is that:

1. Most Scots having "Fergus" as any part of their surname (Fergus, Fergusson, Ferguson, etc.) descend from an early Scottish King. Check.

2. Fergus MacFergus was given some land in Ayrshire, Scotland (lowlands), by one of the Scottish Kings. So, do my roots trace to Ayrshire?

3. Some of the clan from Ayrshire moved to Ulster for political (land grabbing?) and Protestant evangelization reasons. That fits with the Scoth-Irish bit, but doesn't fit with the fact that my family is decidedly Catholic.

4. Ulster Scots called themselved Scotch-Irish when they settled in America. That would explain my grandfather describing himself as Scotch-Irish.

Of course, this whole Fergus MacFergus, descendant of kings thing is also recounted on the label of Oban scotch. When I discovered this as an adult, thinking of the Irish drinking gene my grandfather preserved so fondly, I began to question whether the family folklore was true, or simply something Granddad read on a bottle one day at the pub and decided would make a good story for our family. Did he call himself Scotch-Irish because of the possible links described above, or was he simply an Irishman who loved scotch?

Despite the variables and unknowns, on St. Patrick's Day, I declare myself and my progeny to be Irish AMERICANS. After all, this is a great melting pot in which we live, and edges and distinctions are blurred when all of the ingredients melt together anyway. I guess the melding of cultures, too, is another reason why everbody is Irish on St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone, no matter what your roots!!!

Addition on 5/24/2009

Talked to relatives about the Irish thing. Here's the best "authoritative" story from relatives of my father's:

The Scotch-Irish label is probably a mistake, not really intended to convey the assumed Ulster-Irish connection. It was likely my grandparents' joke or misnomer for the marriage between an Irish (County Mayo) Toughy (or, possibly, Toughey) and a Scottish Fergus. So, it's looking like I'm 12.5% Irish and 12.5% Scottish, rather than 25% Scotch-Irish.
Still wonder about that whole Oban story, though.

I should be in Athens contemplating souvlaki

2009-02-28T22:37:00.008-05:00

Okay, I know it defies pop culture, but I see nothing attractive about LOLCats. It may have something to do with the fact that I loathe cats. I don't find cats to be cute in any way, whatsoever. They are not cuddly or affectionate. I just don't get why people have them as pets. Every cat I have ever met has been a self-centered tyrant that treats its owner as its minion. Plus, I am insanely allergic. Being plunged into itching and asthmatic fits has a tendency to defeat one's tolerance.

For Thing 30, I was supposed to cruise LOLCats sites, pick a fave LOLCat, and blog about it. Yuck. I cruised the sites. It was horrible. Unmitigated torture. And un-funny. Very un-funny. I think I'm starting to break out in hives.

Now, if I'm required to pick a LOLCat, there is only one site for me, but it isn't on the Learning 2.1 list. It is Rolcats: English Translations of Eastern Bloc Lolcats. Now this is funny, despite the cats.

I think I'm amused mainly because the captions parallel the sorts of things my friends and I say when we've had one too many (or sometimes when we haven't). We're odd that way. (Our legendary, dearly-departed trailer at the beach was dubbed Glorious Peoples Revolutionary Recreational Cooperative #7. It confused a lot of peroxide-headed sunbathers; but, then again, what didn't?)

These Rolcats speak for themselves. You've got to love any quote that contains either of the terms "proletariat" or "pig iron."

February 6, 2009 by Yuri

Have strength, my little cabbage. By the mercy of NKVD Order No. 00447, we have been chosen for Resettlement.

We will show the tin mines of Kolyma the true power of the proletariat.

February 4, 2009 by Yuri

Aaaaah… Pig iron, your musk is that of glorious industry …

Now these merit the remark "LOL."

Well done, Yuri, whoever you are. I'm ROFL.

Technorati tags: learning 2.1, LOLCats, Rolcats

Scrapblogging is the only scrapbooking I'll ever do

2009-02-28T16:37:00.008-05:00

Thing 29 is Scrapblog, an online utility to lay out a fancy-schmancy PowerPoint-ish sort of document that is supposed to look like a scrapbook. The actual tool reminded me a lot of Blurb.

I like it, but it is incredibly time consuming, as are all tools for graphics-intense publishing. They definitely get brownie points for allowing me to use the jump-right-in method very easily, though. I also thought the many options for pulling in pictures from other sites and for sharing the finished product with other sites was very slick.

I doubt that I will use this much, maybe for some personal use. Again, I do pretty well with PowerPoint, and it's more commonly accepted everywhere. If I wanted to make and store a short public presentation for online use only, I might use this. Or, if I ever develop the urge to join the scrapbooking craze (like that might happen), I would probably opt for a digital solution, too.

So, here is my masterpiece: My Favorite Books. Enjoy!

Technorati tags: learning 2.1, Scrapblog

Rolling Stone Cover

2009-02-28T15:55:00.004-05:00

Thing 28, online image generators, is just for fun. I tried WriteOnIt Fake Pictures.

Pictures speak better than words for this one.

Technorati tags: learning 2.1, online image generators, WriteOnIt

Photobucket...nice!!!

2009-02-28T14:02:00.006-05:00

Thing 27 is Photobucket. Apparently, this is a competitor of Flickr and is owned by the same company that owns MySpace.

I really like this tool a lot. The dashboard seems more intuitive to me than that of Flickr, and it can store images like animations (Hooray! I found a place to store my Meez avatar!) and video clips.

The text in Thing 27 states:

One big difference is that from Flickr you can only use photos you have posted; at Photobucket, add any image or video you like to your album (or further organize your choices into sub-albums), and you can use it, no matter who originally posted it. In other words, anything you add to a public account at Photobucket is fair game for any other Photobucket user to see and use on a blog or profile at any website (as long as it's not for commercial purposes).

This makes me wonder about copyright. How many images there are copyrighted and being used as if they weren't? I did notice at least one box that said the image had been removed due to a violation of Photobucket rules. Wonder if it was an unlicensed image issue or something merely distasteful. I guess this is a problem everywhere, though.

A bigger concern is that if I copy an image that I find on the site to my own account and then post it somewhere else (like this blog), it identifies the image as "by" me. As I did not create the image, I would prefer that it retained the information identifying its original creator. Credit should be given to the artist; seems a bit too much like finders-keepers to me. But, I can fix that by simply not posting from my account but, instead, from the original image.

All in all, a really great find. I definitely will be using Photobucket!

Technorati tags: learning 2.1, online image servers, Photobucket

Widgets, Gadgets, Gizmos, and Thingamabobs

2009-02-27T23:48:00.021-05:00

Thing 26 is widgets from YourMinis. I couldn't figure out what the instructions in Thing 26 were trying to tell me to do with a template...I think maybe that function has vanished since Thing 26 was written.

However, I did browse quite a number of widgets there, and added them to iGoogle. I have to admit that I liked the widgets I found in Google better. My favorite is this playlist widget. It was easy to select a couple of songs to create a playlist (mine is 59811528) at Playlist.com and then just fiddle with the widget settings to make sure that my widget played it. I was rather disappointed that the feature for adding it to Facebook apparently needs repair.

I also picked a totally silly one, below, from YourMinis. It couldn't have been simpler to put it here in my blog. I just clicked "Grab & Share" on the widget, selected Blogger as the destination, and the widget automatically was inserted into a new blog post (this one). I just had to edit the post to add my own text.

details

I like widgets, but prefer to use them sparingly. Like any web components, widgets, when overused, make a page too busy. Web pages should be simple, IMHO.

Technorati tags: learning 2.1, widgets, YourMini

Bursting the bubble about LetterPop

2009-02-27T17:30:00.005-05:00

I'm far from giddy about Thing 25, LetterPop. Frankly, creating great looking documents using ordinary MS Office tools like Word and PowerPoint is pretty darn easy for me. I also have a firm grasp of HTML, so I can create documents in that format, too. If necessary, it is easy to convert documents created in MS Office tools to pdf using Zamzar and attach a distribution. I just don't see the advantage of using LetterPop.

I found it to be clunky to use, having to click several times to get the editing windows to open; pages frequently loaded with errors. It was slow. I would have thought that I would either be warned when my text exceeded the designated area or it would continue automatically to a new page or column. Nope. I had to cut and paste the overrun manually into several new text boxes. The options for free accounts were limited.

The ability for readers to comment is an attractive feature.

If you want to create basic newsletters and want a simple tool, this would be a decent free option. Of course, you could just blog -- much easier.

My newsletter

Technorati tags: learning 2.1, online newsletters, LetterPop

Zamzar is ze best!

2009-02-27T13:56:00.004-05:00

This is my blog post for Thing 24.

I have used Zamzar before. It is an extremely useful utility for file conversion. In fact, let me check...

...yes, I already had it in my bookmarks.

Nonetheless, I went through the steps anyway, as directed in the lesson. Here is my beautiful new pdf, converted from a Word Document. (BTW, try the procedure in the pdf file. It is very amusing.)

I received the link to the converted file in my email box in less than a minute! Impressive! I don't think it came that quickly last time I used it.

Technorati tags: learning 2.1, file converter, Zamzar

Celebrate! It's Thing 23!

2009-02-23T19:06:00.005-05:00

I've finally reached the end, and now I can both continue on to Learning 2.1 and start figuring out how to use Learning 2.0 in my own organization. But first things first. Let's finish this part of the journey!

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

Undoubtedly, keeping this blog was my favorite part of this journey. I had blogged intermittently as part of a group blog before, but this program gave me a reason to put together a cohesive and continuing blog. I don't think I'm going to stop, although I may take a bit of a break for a while.

I also had a number of "Aha!" moments while thinking deep thoughts about wikis.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

I've been a proponent of lifelong learning, well, lifelong. I don't believe this particular program has impacted my own goals at all. However, I think it could be used effectively to help others move along the social media path a bit more quickly, which is how I intend to use it.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I think I was surprised that it is so difficult to search effectively through social media. I guess I was expecting a revelation I had simply failed to recognize before. But, nope, it's still a slog. I was further surprised at how far Google has come to offer nearly a full portfolio of tools across the Learning 2.0 spectrum in the couple of years since the Learning 2.0 program was written. Google rocks!

Oh, and I never would have guessed that I'd look good in Donald Trump's hair (courtesy of HairMixer).

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I'd suggest making it a wiki, but that was already done in Learning 2.1. Also, the program should be updated to replace the broken links with working links and active resources.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?

In the words of some of my favorite cartoon characters, The Powerpuff Girls, "We're super heroes [of learning]. That's what we do. Duh!"

So this ends the formal documentation of my 23 Things adventure. It was great!

Special thanks to Helene Blowers for taking a simple idea and making it into a powerful learning tool. Genius is making the obvious obvious.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, final summary

A little tough to do Thing 22, but let's press on anyway...

2009-02-23T17:39:00.003-05:00

Well, Thing 22 was tough to do since I couldn't access NetLibrary without having a PLCMC (The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County) library card. Do you think they'd give me one just for that purpose, even though I live in Cleveland? Just kidding.

Anyhow, I'm not clueless about how to search and download materials, so let's just pretend I was able to do this.

I browsed Audible.com for classics. One that struck me was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, mainly because a little snippet of this was pre-loaded on my GPS, and my kids and I really enjoyed listening to it in the car. However, as I generally do not drive for extended periods of time, I did not actually purchase it. Seems simple enough, though. If your comfort level is higher with Amazon, it is always an option to search there in the audiobooks section, too.

On a related note, a word about e-books. My team has a Kindle, which I find useful for reading business books that we don't really want to store on our shelves anyway (short-term user interest, not worth the bother). In fact, we always look for the e-book version first, now, and offer it as an option to our users. I have used it to browse titles, and it is quite simple.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, audiobooks

Podcast Directories (Bah) and Podcasts (Cool)

2009-02-23T16:42:00.010-05:00

I'm beginning to feel like a broken record, here. Once again, I did not enjoy the search experience using podcast directories. Again, too many irrelevant hits. I spent too many years developing precision search techniques and database systems to slog through line after line of false drops.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of broken links in the Thing 21 lesson. The Podcastalley link worked, though. After slogging through pages of supposed library and book review listings, I finally settled on adding this one to my Bloglines account:

Library Geeks (Description from listing: "Dan Chudnov invites librarians, geeks, and library geeks to geek out about libraries.")

It has only 58 subscribers and a poor rating (1/5 stars) on Podcasters, so we'll see.

I next tried everyone's old standby, Google, resulting in my subscription to:

Forward Thinking (Business & Motivational Book Reviews)

There's something about the concept of motivational books that always makes me cringe, so, again, we'll see.

Again supporting my theory that recommendations are the best route when selecting social media to follow, I Googled and found a few lists of recommended library podcasts. For example, LibrarySpot helped me to find:

PALINET Podcasts (Interviews with leaders in library technology)

My all-time favorite podcast remains Grammar Girl. This podcast is not a library thing, though.

The ease with which people can now create and publish content is both a blessing and a curse. So much to slog through...

Of course, I can't wait to start podcasting myself, internally. I have several ideas on how to further engage and educate our users via podcasts. Just need to get going.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, podcasts

YouTubular

2009-02-22T11:46:00.021-05:00

I couldn't resist the bad 80s humor for the title of this post about Thing 20 (YouTube) .

I started by doing a simple search for "technical library." This result cracked me up:

Of course, I teared up in the end. Give me a moment to gather myself...

And then I ran across some angry library patrons:

I'm not sure what I learned from this other than to be careful of disgruntled library patrons who have access to musical instruments and a video camera. In fact, it is probably wise never to anger music-video-star wannabes for any reason.

One of my all time favorite video discoveries is this Christmas Card by a guy named Jared Foster, which is pure art and joy. It is hosted on Vimeo. I don't know these people; I just really enjoyed their video at Christmastime.

So, what did I learn? Well, for most topics on which I searched I had to sort through a lot of awful hits to find something good, if, indeed, anything good existed. This lack of precision is the same irritation I have with all social media (e.g., Del.icio.us) when it comes to searching. Too much time invested for too little return. However, if you are looking for something very specific (e.g., a product demo of LED bulbs from LEDtronics; I have developed a colossal fear of my children being exposed to mercury should we break a compact fluorescent), this is a great place to look. I especially like the ease of finding historical video clips. (Remember how our teachers used to drag out those big reel-to-reel projectors to show videos in school? Now it's just point and click!) It's also great for browsing.

At my library, we frequently incorporate YouTube finds into dynamic news pages we create for our users. We see a lot of traffic to sites that we create to pull together relevant news and video feeds related to a high interest event, such as the Consumer Electronics Show. Another lesson, as with other social media, is the value of user input such as ratings, reviews, and additional content added via comments. This type of information can help users to evaluate the content against their needs and follow leads to information beyond the original content.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, YouTube

Recipe Key

2009-02-22T02:29:00.005-05:00

Here I am at Thing 19, exploring Recipe Key. I remember talking about trying to create an application like this about 20 years ago with my boss at the time. She loved to cook, but wanted a way to figure out what recipes were a match for what she had in her pantry. We talked extensively about how to create a database to do this. (My job largely was designing text based databases, at the time.) I never was motivated enough to really hammer at this idea on my own time -- I don't cook.

Well, as I always say, if I thought of an idea (or in this case, my old boss thought of an idea), chances are someone else did, too, and will make it a reality. Recipe Key is the reality.

It's pretty simple. Just drag and drop ingredients from a list into your digital pantry. Then browse the recipes that "match" what you have. You can filter by meal, ease of preparation, time to prep, etc. Unfortunately, none of the recipes were 100 percent match for what I have in the house, so I'd be running to the store anyway, if I wanted to use this tool. Good thing I don't cook; saved myself a trip.

All in all, a pretty cool app.

Now, as for using it in the library...hmmm. I'm stretching here, but maybe there's some link to the "others with items like yours" type of feature a la shopping sites. Or LibraryThing-like. So you enter what you have in your personal tech library or what literature you've accumulated on a topic and then you are presented with a complementary reading list that goes with the literary "ingredients" you've already got in your pantry. I know, I said it was a stretch. I think the real learning here is that if you can recognize a need, chances are, there's a way to make the solution happen.

Note that I use or have tried a smattering of other Web 2.0 Award Winners. You can even see my HairMixer experiment in one of my earlier posts. If I ever think of a library app for that, I've let you know.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things

Web-based productivity applications: Interesting, but of limited use to me

2009-02-22T01:50:00.004-05:00

As directed in Thing 18, I tried to use Zoho Writer, but there was something wrong with it. No toolbars appeared and there was no option to save the document. I tried Zoho (Spread)Sheet, which worked a lot better as a very simple spreadsheet. I also tried the Zoho Show, which seemed like a dumbed-down and temperamental PowerPoint. (Not that PowerPoint can't be temperamental, too.)

I guess the best feature is document sharing, although I don't know with whom I would collaborate with enough gusto to warrant use of these web-based productivity applications. My serious collaboration happens inside the firewall, where Microsoft reigns supreme.

Therefore, I have no real use for Zoho, as I am covered inside the firewall and, outside the firewall, there are so many other ways to share information with friends: Facebook, Blogs, etc. However, it's nice to know about. One never knows what the future will hold!

BTW, I am writing this in and publishing this post from Google Docs because of my difficulties with Zoho. I suspect I would be more likely to use Google for this type of thing than Zoho anyway; it's just easier and, in my mind, a very trustworthy tool.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, web-based productivity applications

PBwiki is, indeed, yummy

2009-02-20T16:01:00.007-05:00

Thing 17 was a fun one. I've heard a lot about PBwiki but, once again, hadn't taken the time to test it myself. Thing 17 made me do it!

The big plusses:

It's free! Gosh, I love the information age!
It's easy-peasy! I added content to a page, added this blog to a list of blogs, and then created a whole new page! I seriously doubt that many people would be intimidated by editing a page if they have basic computer skills.

One complaint: It seemed to me that the table of contents should have automatically updated to include my new page, but I manually added it. I'm sure there must be some way to make it go automatically; my characteristic impatience for reading help messages prevented me from finding it. I may discover it now that I have created a private PBwiki for myself, just to play with this whole wiki thing more. (You can't get to this link; I put it here for my own convenience. I doubt you would want to diddle around in the chaos of my mind any more than you do in reading this blog, anyway, but if you really want to, ask me and perhaps I will let you. Then again, perhaps not.)

Another note of caution: It would be good to suggest a standard format for the pages. Some of them were too chaotic to read. Too many cooks in the kitchen with no head chef.

We use SharePoint wikis at work; I have contributed content but not set one up independently. They seem to be more automatic than PBwiki in some ways, but also less user friendly in others. This is definitely going to require more investigation on my part, both in PBwiki and SharePoint.

I'm not going to wax philosophic about wikis any more as my last blog entry about wikis is about 3 miles long.

Later note: After playing with my new wiki a bit, I realized that the Learning 2.0 wiki must be built in an earlier version of the software. The current version operates more like I thought it should. It still doesn't automatically generate a table of contents, but it does automatically create a page when you add a link to the table of contents. This is much like SharePoint. It works, but I wish it worked in reverse, too. Maybe in the next rev?

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, PBwiki

Wikis are the revolution

2009-02-20T12:40:00.006-05:00

I’m not the first to say this by any stretch of the imagination, but wikis truly are revolutionary and have already begun to change the way we think about “authority” information.

Don’t get me wrong; I still scoff at the easily-duped, research-authority-ignorant individuals who profess that single miscellaneous data points found through Google are enough to answer their professional questions. (Triangulate, at least, people!) But that was when most of the free internet was HTML pages created by solo operators or small groups who may or may not have had any real credibility or knowledge about what they posted. The more slick- and professional-looking the web page, the more some would place their faith in the site’s claims, whether or not the person behind the claims was an expert.

But wikis change everything. Now, certainly, there are some who would profess, “None of us is as dumb as all of us.” To a certain extent, that is true. Certainly, a wave of information pushed in an erroneous direction can gather momentum and be presented and accepted as fact.

Digression: I have a particular friend who can make anyone believe anything because he can say it with a tone and manner of great authority. This was especially useful in our younger days when he would easily pass as a respectable adult and secure all of our friends admission to…well, we’ll just leave it at that. My friends and I used to also play a fun game (for geeks, that is) at the beach called, “Lies about…” The idea was to come up with the longest list possible of convincing-sounding lies on a particular subject (e.g., “Lies about nature” or “Lies about Michelangelo”). Trust me, if you put a large group of 20-something-year-old past valedictorians together for a summer full of beer-fueled beach weekends, intellectual creativity blossoms. (I wonder if the folks that invented cheese racing were past valedictorians, because we did a number of what-happens-if-we-toss-this-on-the-campfire experiments, too.) Snopes would have trouble detecting whether or not some of the whoppers we invented were real or not. (I wonder if any of them are listed there.) We even took it beyond the beach, gathering eavesdroppers everywhere from the Cleveland Museum of Art to the Louvre as we waxed lies about particular famous works of art. You’d be amazed at what people will nudge in closer to hear when you and a friend stand in front of a famous impressionist painting whispering— in authoritative tones—improvised untruths about the intentions of the painter and his subtle artistic clues to his secret life.

Open collaborations like Wikipedia are likely rife with erroneous information, some of which, I’m sure, has duped me.

However, in general, I take a more optimistic view, believing that there is great wisdom in collectively created content. Peer review, even done informally, is very powerful, and, as we see in Wikipedia, often times the people involved in collectively creating content really do have expertise on that particular subject. Because I work in R&D at a company that essentially created its industry, my professional world is full of information that is not solid, universal truth. In my world, “fact” is defined by what our research and collective intelligence suggests up to that point. There is little outside authority that parallels ours, so we create our own assumptions. Our “facts” change with new knowledge. This is the nature and progress of science.

So, wikis seem right and natural to me.

The cherry picking opportunities are obvious. Anything that exists currently (or should) as a manual or reference document can easily be envisioned as a wiki, especially if the existing document was a collective effort to produce and will be a collective effort to maintain. In wiki form, updates can happen continuously by those who are best equipped to make them.

The difficulty arises as we start getting away from the obvious. I have one colleague whose company went to a complete wiki systems solution. This company, apparently, uses wikis for everything. Not knowing the details of this company’s operation, I can only say that this approach feels wrong. Wikipedia states, “A wiki is essentially a database for creating, browsing, and searching through information.” If that is assumed to be true, should everything be in a collaborative database? My point of reference comes from early in my library career when the sum total of my group’s systems options included a database system and WordPerfect. Working within this limited infrastructure, we put every piece of information we had into databases. Everything. And it worked. However, if instead of the 1980s it had been 2009, with the variety of intuitive, low cost, highly integrated software now available, that same approach would be ridiculously inefficient. More simply, consider typing a letter in Excel or doing complicated numerical calculations in a table in Word. Both can be done, but it is mismatching tools with applications, which introduces inefficiency.

When do I think a wiki makes sense? The first clue should be that wikis are, after all, part of the social media realm. At its core, a wiki should be rooted in collaboration. If I am the sole author of a training manual, for example, and no one should update the content of that manual without my consent, a wiki is not needed. That’s not to say that wiki software couldn’t be used, just that it’s not necessary. Now, if I am the sole author, but, in the future, this manual will/could/should be improved and updated by collaborative effort, than a wiki is the thing. But the best application of a wiki is when knowledge needs to be pooled to create the content. My incomplete portion of knowledge is complemented by (and, sometimes, overlapping a bit with) the piecemeal knowledge many others. When pulled together, the collective knowledge presents a more complete story than previously available. Voila, the benefits of collaboration. Further enhancement is achieved when others can refine, clarify, and expand upon that content to create a richer content product – continuous improvement. This process of completing and further enhancing the story may be evolutionary and infinite as knowledge grows and adapts.

Which brings us to the second clue: The wiki describes core knowledge. Although any sort of data or information can be typed into a wiki, the content of the wiki should be a record of core knowledge. For example, a wiki could be used as a way to compile a directory of detailed financial reports. But the reports and financials themselves are not really core knowledge, simply transient data. The better wiki would capture the observations and interpretations surrounding financial trends over time, the methodologies for handling financial information, or a company’s summary financials over time in the context of a company profile. The financial statements themselves should merely be linked references at the end of a wiki article, not an actual part of the wiki. Core knowledge is information that is summarized, synthesized, interpreted, and put into context, not simply accumulated or manipulated. Better to use spreadsheets and databases for those types of applications.

And the final point: The wiki has longevity appropriate to the knowledge application. Specifically, the content collection, as a whole, should be more evolutionary in nature than transient. Some parts of the content may become obsolete, but the overall content is ever adapting and growing with changing knowledge and business conditions and is continuously useful as these changes occur. Now, what constitutes longevity depends on the purpose of the wiki. For example, a great short-lifespan use of a wiki, appropriate to the scope of the application, is rapidly compiling a guide for conference attendees. The collective wisdom of the group can easily be contributed for the benefit of all throughout the lifespan of the conference. Even as the attendees head toward home at the end of the conference, they may still be adapting the content of the wiki to help each other navigate changing travel conditions and record learnings that could presumably assist in the planning of future conferences. It is adaptable, changing, and useful throughout the lifespan of the application, and, in some ways, beyond. Wikipedia, in contrast, may have an infinite lifespan because it is emerging as the mother of all (informal) encyclopedias. Certainly, entries will become obsolete over time and may well be deleted for lack of use because they cover topics that are of finite interest to readers, but the collective Wikipedia is continuously useful. There are a whole host of other potential wiki uses that would fall somewhere between a short-lifespan conference guide and an infinite-lifespan Wikipedia.

I really enjoyed Thing 16 because it gave me this opportunity to explore a number of wikis in which I’ve been meaning to poke around but hadn’t found the time, pointed me toward a few of which I hadn’t even heard about, and to think deep thoughts about the most effective way to apply them in my workplace. For example, we have a research guide, but I’d love to adapt this cool wiki model, this book wiki sparked some related ideas about how to incorporate more user input into our card catalog, and that conference guide wiki I referenced earlier inspired some event-related wiki ideas.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, wikis

Library 2.0…well, of course!

2009-02-09T14:53:00.029-05:00

My favorite part of this lesson (Thing 15) was this quote from Dr. Wendy Schultz of Infinite Futures:

Libraries are not just collections of documents and books, they are conversations, they are convocations of people, ideas, and artifacts in dynamic exchange. Libraries are not merely in communities, they are communities: they preserve and promote community memories; they provide mentors not only for the exploration of stored memory, but also for the creation of new artifacts of memory.

- From To a temporary place in time…On the way to the library experience of the future

This resonated with me because it is exactly what my team has been working toward for almost a decade now. I’d like to say we’re there, but this vision is more of a journey than a destination.

As the last millennium drew to a close, my team was constructing a 5-year plan to make “All Things Virtual.” (In retrospect, “All Things Digital” would have been more accurate.) The vision was to digitally connect our users to relevant internal and external information they needed in increasingly direct ways (i.e., enhanced ACCESS).

The risk in this plan was that we were far from certain of the possibility, let alone probability, that many of the critical elements necessary for the plan’s success would exist anytime soon or work within our systems infrastructure. But, betting on our own understanding of information, technology, and social trends and how suppliers would seize opportunities created by them, we chose to trust that the essential elements of our plan would emerge. (In other words, if we’d thought of it, someone else who was equipped to turn it into a product had probably thought of it, too.) And that’s exactly what happened.

Concurrently, we began changing the way we operated and communicated internally to be consistent with other business units. We adopted practices like creating a product cycle plan, constructing service level agreements, billing back, and aggressively managing, measuring, and communicating value and return on investment for the information resources portfolio.

Our users kicked and screamed. Our library team kicked and screamed. But then it happened…the elusive and oft touted culture change. Users began to like having immediate access to a variety of information. The serendipity of self-serve research led our users to deeper understanding of their own topics and along previously undiscovered trails to new ideas. Library staff stopped being bogged down by materials processing and routine searching and spent more time helping users to effectively find answers. Information usage skyrocketed (despite bill backs!) and library productivity soared. Library staff, initially concerned that giving up control of collections and searching would make them irrelevant, now are juggling an abundance of project work -- interesting work. We’re swamped!

But once we were all connected and could access information easily, we wanted more. Fortunately, the IT tools we needed were materializing. And so began our next plan to “Inhabit the End-User’s Workspace.” For us, this means leveraging Web 2.0: making content seamlessly flow when, how, and to where it is needed (i.e., on the user's own digital turf); creating connections; and facilitating collaboration so that new content is created and shared. Our mantra is extracting VALUE: Helping our users manage and customize their content environment effectively to promote both productivity and creativity.

More importantly, we began reinventing ourselves to connect more closely with our users. We now perceive ourselves as content management consultants first, with proficiency in information. We proactively relinquished more control over our own direction and resources to better engage our users and harness their energy and intelligence in building a better content environment. For example, we formed a user advisory board and deliberately picked vocal and action-oriented members who would push us well beyond our comfort zone. We also developed a plan to convert the major part of our library’s physical space into shared collaborative space for our users; that is, we give up turf to better connect with users -- and connect them with each other -- on new, shared turf.

The result? We met with more enthusiastic support up, down, and across the organization than we ever dreamed. Our customer satisfaction ratings are phenomenal (and we thought we were good before!) and we are invited to partner on more key projects across the global organization than we have resources to support. An abundance of opportunity and being in great demand --one can’t argue with that!

But we’re not resting on our laurels. We realize that the shelf life on some of our current activities and projects is short in this dynamic information environment. We’ve already begun to address the next big game changer: virtual reality. For us, that means focusing on the EXPERIENCE of information in our work lives, not only the access to it or value derived from it, but how it integrates into who we are as colleagues and professionals. This is an ethereal concept, but we’re working on it.

Here’s a summary graphic:

Without knowing it when we started, my team aligned its plans with the Key Principles of Library 2.0:

Browser + Web 2.0 Applications + Connectivity = Full-featured OPAC

Harness the library user in both design and implementation of services

Library users should be able to craft and modify library provided services

Harvest and integrate ideas and products from peripheral fields into library service models

Continue to examine and improve services and be willing to replace them at any time with newer and better services.

Weird how we all eventually arrive at the same point philosophically, even if we take vastly different paths to get there, isn’t it? This is why I constantly remind my staff that we need to capitalize on our best ideas before they’re fully formed, because, if I have a brainwave, I would take odds that someone cleverer than I had a similar brainwave sometime earlier. So, if you want to run with an idea, you need to act with lightning speed and accept the associated risks of moving that fast. Ah, the adrenaline rush of trailblazing information management!

[An amusing aside about failing to seize opportunities…

In the 1990s, I wrote a column called Tips for Better Writing (originally called Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, but the title was shortened by the publisher) in an internal company publication. The column was always very short and to-the-point, with each article focusing on a single confusing point of grammar, punctuation, or usage. Colleagues began referring to me as “Grammar Goddess.” The column was a huge hit -- so popular that, years after I’d stopped writing it, we maintained an online directory of old columns to satisfy the many former readers who demanded continuing access. When Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing became popular, you can’t even imagine how many people told me that I should have preempted her in the podcasting universe. Her podcasts are uncannily close in content, scope, and style to my old columns. I guess grammar gurus must have similar brain patterns. If only I had seized the opportunity, you all would be following tweets of GrammarGoddess instead of GrammarGirl...*sigh*. BTW, I'm not jealous; I think Grammar Girl rocks.]

Obviously, I’m passionate about this topic. Feel free to comment or contact me if you share this passion.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, library 2.0

Mud wrestling with Technorati

2009-02-04T23:26:00.010-05:00

This thing (Thing 14) made my head hurt.

I have to admit that my most valuable discovery while scrapping in the mud with Technorati wasn't about Technorati. While looking for reasons why Technorati wasn't indexing my blog, I found this bit of HTML in the Technorati Help/FAQ, that, when inserted into my blog's page header, made my blog's RSS finally work properly with Outlook. Bonus! Weird that it wasn't already included in this standard page template for Blogger, though.

As far as using Technorati to search...well, maybe. I might use it if I were really digging. However, I'm more likely to start following blogs because they are acclaimed in respected publications or by people I respect.

My issues: Looking for particular topics brought up too much junk, and looking for authorities either brought up stuff I already know about or didn't really like. There seemed to be no middle ground. The sites in the pre-populated directories (e.g., "Popular" and "Top 100") were either of little interest to me (I know it's crazy, but I really don't care about Paris Hilton or Jennifer Garner) or obvious (I've long been acquainted with Gizmodo).

I also created a watchlist...but why? I just don't like searching on this site. Now, if I really had to exhaustively follow a particular topic (e.g., for competitive intelligence) or if I were monitoring to see how and when a new idea first appears in the digital realm (e.g., new product buzz), this might be a valuable tool.

It also took me longer than it should to figure out where things were. I guess Technorati's concept of design and mine diverge greatly. It may have been a fluke, but I also seemed to receive an extraordiary number of error messages while using the site. Very irritating.

Now, as a blog owner, Technorati is an entirely different matter. I can certainly see the merit of adding Technorati tags to my blog to generate exposure. The tools for seeing links to my blog, where my blog ranks (4,777,538), et cetera, might also be good if, unlike me, you actually care about readership numbers. I also rather like the widget, which you can see in the side navigation bar.

So why does my head hurt? Well, it seems to me that I should be able to use the labels in Blogger do double duty as Technorati tags. I couldn't seem to get it to work, though, no matter what I tried. (If someone out there can tell me, please do.) I found the Help/FAQ on Technorati to be poorly written. I finally conceded that I'd forever need to add separate Technorati tags at the end of each post. I suppose that's not terrible, but is annoyingly redundant.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things

Delicious...or merely appetizing?

2009-01-30T17:43:00.013-05:00

Here's my take on Thing 13, which demonstrates tagging and folksonomies via Delicious: Interesting, but not thrilling. Perhaps my opinion will change with further use.

What I like:

Non-browser-specific bookmark portability (obviously)
Ease and flexibility of bookmarking and tagging (less redundant and easier than IE)
Ability to share/collaborate with others by using a unique tag

Well, obviously, I like the portability of the links. However, since I use 2 computers 99% of the time (home and work) and the browser-specific bookmarks I have are unique to the types of things I do on those particular computers, not having portable bookmarks has rarely been a hindrance for me. There are the occasional circumstances when this can be handy, though. There are other ways around this hindrance, too, that don't involve Delicious.

I do like the nice little browser buttons that let me bookmark a web page in a click and tag it immediately. This is infinitely better than clicking Favorites/Add to Favorites in Internet Explorer (IE) and then sorting within folders. It's nice to not be limited to either choosing one place to file the link (i.e., choosing the equivalent of one tag) or having to repeatedly copy the link into multiple folders. In the Delicious model, one link can have many tags. This is a very good thing. BTW, I found the IE manual installation to work best for me, since there are many controls on my work computer. (See Installing bookmarklets on Delicious.)

I wouldn't have immediately (eventually - yes, since my library roots are in database design and this is a basic principle, but immediately - no) thought of creating a unique tag to collaborate on a research project, except that I recently was following tweets from the Consumer Electronics Show that were tagged with #CES09, so the whole concept just happened to be top of mind. This idea also was stated in Otter Group's podcast, Del.icio.us tutorial. This could be handy when slamming together rush research with the library team, although the confidentiality issue would need to be addressed; I need to investigate that issue further.

What I don't like: using it as a research tool. When I started following tag trails, I didn't find anything better or faster than I found by searching traditionally. The trails are going to be, by nature, irregular. Consider, someone needs to tag a page for you to find it in the first place, and unless you know the tagger (that might happen), their credibility and tagging prowess is questionable. I waded through a lot of muck only to find some of the bookmarks I already had on a very straightforward topic. I can't really see myself following Delicious tags for research unless I am really desperate. I guess I'm not the sort who holds the blind hope that if I comb through the sand on the beach long enough, I might just find a real shrunken head.

For some reason, my Delicious network badge only shows up in my browser when I refresh the page. I hope you can see it, below:

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, bookmarks, folksonomy, social tagging

Unimpressed with Rollyo

2009-01-30T09:52:00.032-05:00

Well, here is the first thing in Learning 2.0, Thing 12, that has been thoroughly unimpressive. It is a tool called Rollyo that allows you to "build your own search engine" that simultaneously searches only the internet sites that you select. I tried it, both with custom engines that I created and some of those available on the site. I thought the results were poor -- too many irrelevant hits.

So, I went to Google, looking for a better option, and, as usual, Google did not disappoint. Google custom search worked beautifully. There are some who disagree. (I prefer the simplicity of Google.)

In my side-by-side test of Rollyo versus Google custom search using the exact same sources, Google gave me precise and 100% accurate results, with the relevant content highlighted in the results, so that I did not even need to go to the returned site to verify. Rollyo gave me a bunch of irrelevant results and didn't highlight enough in the results page to help me to know why it returned those results. I'm sold...on Google. As an added feature, Google immediately asked me if I wanted to add a widget to my iGoogle page for my new search engine. In one more click, my custom search widget was ready to go forevermore on my iGoogle site. Hooray!

So, here are my two custom search engines that simultaneously search the two most popular listings of school closings in Cleveland:

ROLLYO
search of Cleveland school closings

VS.

Google search of Cleveland school closings:

Which do you think works better (and looks infinitely cooler)? I wish I would have set this up earlier this week -- my children's school was not listed on the source from which I receive text alerts, but it was listed on the other. It would have saved an unnecessary trip in blustery weather conditions.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, custom search engines

LibraryThing

2009-01-26T17:10:00.011-05:00

Late to the party on yet another one. Yep, I've known about LibraryThing for a long time. Yep, people I know and respect, including my library co-workers, use it enthusiastically. Yep, it was yet another thing I never got around to trying, until now (Thing 11).

Well, now I've tried it. I added 10 books in a matter of seconds. Slick!

If I can add a few books from our extensive personal library a little at a time, perhaps we can stop buying duplicates. I'm going to need the paid lifetime subscription to LibraryThing.

You see, my husband and I are addicts....to books. The only way I can avoid overindulgence is staying away from bookstores, cold turkey. One might think that Amazon would be online crack for me, but Amazon is my utilitarian version of a bookstore; I am less likely to overindulge because I usually am seeking something in particular. But in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, I am swept away by the entire sensory experience of browsing: gazing upon tall shelves of beautiful and colorful covers, floating on the scent of new paper and coffee, feeling the smoothness of the pages and hearing them crackle ever so gently as a book is opened for the first time. I love the aesthetics of books as much as (sometimes more than, if it is a truly beautiful book) the content. Put me in the classics section of Borders and I will walk out with a big bag of books and a huge dent in my credit card.

My husband is more likely to fall off the wagon in Half Price Books, as he always entertains the notion that he'll find an overlooked first edition by a hailed author buried among the cast-offs of others. In that store, my strategy for virtuousness is restricting myself to the children's section, where I figure my inevitable purchases are, at least, benefitting our household youth. (Truth be told, the kids' books I buy are really for me. My latest overindulgence: The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I read the kids one of the stories. Really.)

I'm going to mull over using LibraryThing professionally. It certainly is cool for personal use.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, book addiction

Return to the 23 Things: RSS

2009-01-23T16:06:00.026-05:00

Okay, I need to start jamming on The 23 Things again. It seems appropriate to address RSS and Newsreaders (Things 8 and 9), because I recently had a day from heck that could have been much less irritating if RSS had been used properly.

So, what happened, you ask? Well, I post entries on behalf of a group of other people to a particular internal blog at work. (Trust me, there's a reason.) The blog is in SharePoint which has a clunky blog editor, so my preferred tool for editing and posting entries is MS Word. Using the blog template in Word, I can post to any blog to which I have publishing rights with a simple click of my mouse.

This time, however, it wasn't so simple. I published a new post, and when I went into the blog to ensure that it displayed properly (there often are differences between the preview and the actual post), I saw an error. I went back to Word, fixed the error, and then published a draft copy (i.e., unapproved for general viewing) of the post to the blog. Unfortunately, this triggered a memory problem and I received an error message telling me that the draft could not be published. But that's not what really happened. The draft did publish, crashing Word along the way and corrupting my document. But, on my end, it just looked like Word was slowly trying to save the document. I left Word alone to crunch; it usually is better to let Word finish whatever it's doing and close itself down properly than to force it to abort with the Task Manager. What I didn't realize until my email box started filling up was that Word was stuck in some sort of weird loop and kept republishing the same corrupted draft. I finally had to force Word to close and restart my laptop, thus pulling the plug on that particular problem. Then, I went back into Word, started from scratch to avoid propagating whatever had corrupted the draft, published the new draft, deleted the original post for fear of possible embedded corruption, and, finally, approved the new draft.

So why was my email box filling up? I subscribed to the "alert me" feature for the SharePoint site on which the blog resides so that I would know if any changes were made to the site or its contents. Every time the draft republished, I received an email. These alerts weren't a problem for me; I want to know about every little change. That's the point of the "alert" function. Frankly, if I hadn't done this, it may have taken me longer to figure out what was going on with the endless loop of republished, corrupted drafts.

The problem is that, instead of subscribing to the RSS feed for the blog, some of the readers of the blog also had subscribed via "alert me." So, they, too, received a barrage of emails while Word was going through its endless loop crisis. I received a phone call from a co-worker admonishing, "Stop editing the blog! I've already received 9 emails on it!"

I checked my RSS folder for the blog. It had two new posts in it: the original post (that I deleted for fear of corruption) and the post-systems-disaster corrected version. (Check! RSS working as expected.)

Thus, my next task was sending out a general announcement on how and why to unsubscribe from alerts and subscribe to RSS. (Yes, readers should be blocked from alerts, but that's a whole different story...)

Anyhow, the point is that RSS is a great tool for keeping up on only what you want to know and arranging it a manageable way. If the readers had all been using RSS (as directed when the blog originally launched), my episode with Word's "undocumented feature" would have gone unnoticed by readers.

With respect to the 23 Things, I did, in fact, set up a Bloglines account a while back and I tried out other readers. I used the search tools and added lots of blog feeds relevant to my work. My conclusion is that having RSS delivered into my Outlook RSS folder works best for me.

While I'm at it, I did Thing 10 as well. Obviously, if you read my other posts, I've been doing Thing 10 unwittingly for a while now. Here's my official result, though:

I used Toondoo, which was very user friendly.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, RSS

The Avatar Quest

2008-12-18T23:06:00.027-05:00

I would really like to have a cool avatar that subtly hints at my super-hero alter ego but still is recognizable as me. I can't seem to find the right utility, though (not that I've knocked myself out trying). I tried Gaia, which was just not the right set of looks for me -- too "teen hipster." Meez was another attempt, which I wanted to try for the animation. However, it's been loading for 30 minutes with no result, so I'm giving it up as a bad job. Tektek, which is very basic, worked well enough for me. The search wasn't working, which made it a bit tedious to find items, but otherwise it was easy. Here are my "3 seasons" results:

Loosely named "Brrrr", "Just right", and "Warmish."

I'm thinking I need to break out the art supplies and do my own. Of course, that would require a time investment of more than 5 minutes...

Update: I finally did get Meez to work. Couldn't really find the right options to make it look like me. But it does blink. That's something.

My last attempt, although there is no animation, was at BeFunky. I like the way these turned out, although I did some editing in my own image program.

Technorati tags: avatars

The Further Behind I Get...

2008-12-02T13:25:00.026-05:00

Okay, I have totally abandoned the 23 Things for the present. The 4th quarter of the calendar year is just too busy for me. I'm behind on the 1023 Things I HAVE to do for work, so there's no time for 23 Things I merely WANT to do for my own professional development right now. Maybe I'll resume in January.

Anyhow, I did take a little while this morning to catch up on a few recent posts on LibraryBytes, the blog of the mastermind behind Learning 2.0 and The 23 Things, Helene Blowers. Of course, I had to analyze my blog after reading one of the posts.

Turns out that my blog type according to Typealyzer is ISTP - The Mechanics:

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk.

Interesting that I approach my writing as an ISTP (which sounds right to me) when my personal MBTI type is INTJ (which is me all over).

GenderAnalyzer guesses that my blog is written by a woman (59%), but "is quite gender neutral."

Here is my readability level from The Blog Readability Test:

Not very inclusive, eh?

Finally, my blog has no commercial value whatsoever, according to How Much is Your Blog Worth

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

Bummer, eh?

Also, for a real hoot (thanks again to Helene Blowers), try Hairmixer. My favorite look was my face with Donald Trump's hair:

although I look pretty darn good with Reese Witherspoon's short, wispy blond cut:

but just can't pull off the Gwen Stefani stylized do:

Next time I see my hairdresser, I'm bringing her a copy of me with Reese's hair. Or, maybe, The Donald's.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things

I'm Obviously Clueless About Public Libraries

2008-11-24T12:53:00.012-05:00

Disclaimer: Not being a degreed librarian but merely a corporate library manager, I only understand public libraries from a patron's point of view. Read the following commentary keeping that in mind.

I read an interesting blog post by Kathy Dempsey about a missed opportunity to market public libraries within a 4-part series on Examiner.com called "Top 20 things librarians in public libraries wish patrons knew or did". I agreed with her, it was a sadly missed opportunity for marketing the "gee whiz, I didn't know you did that" things that libararians can do. One comment on her blog post chided her for criticizing another librarian by failing to see that the article was intended to humanize librarians. Certainly, public librarians must deal with a lot of unfortunate, inconsiderate actions from library patrons that probably make them feel like screaming, "Show some manners, people!" but I have to admit that the title of the article series made me think that something other than a list of wishes for better library etiquette was to follow. I was disappointed that I found myself reading tips for common library courtesy, which, in all fairness, must be not so common if the interviewed librarians overwhelmingly brought them up. I'm guessing, though, that a more thorough probe by the writer of the article into what the interviewed librarians really would like patrons to know/do would have produced 20 more interesting things than the top-of-mind ones listed. Kathy Dempsey alludes to some of those more intriguing concepts in her comment after the last installment of the article.

A friend who is currently looking to re-enter the library workforce recently offered me her insights on various libraries at which she considered seeking employment. I am amazed at how "old school" many of the public libraries which she has considered appear to be. These old school libraries seem to view themselves as an extension of ivory tower academia, rather than operating like organizations responsible for providing value to their taxpayers. Not that they don't provide value, but they can't articulate it. Their visions are weak. They have no marketing plan. Gosh, even universities are acting more like businesses these days because no one wants to plop down big piles of hard-earned cash if they don't see that they are going to be getting good value. People want cutting edge for their money, especially when it is to gain knowledge.

My friend's anecdotes confirm that, like any other type of profession, the library biz has a few innovative thinkers and many who are solidly pedestrian in their thinking. The trouble with the pedestrian view is that it leaves you out on the sidewalk when the window of opportunity begins to close. Sure, information is all the rage and that helps the image of libraries at present, but librarians who don't demonstrate their unique value now will be left in the stacks as end users develop a grass-roots understanding of information through the empirical approach to dealing with it afforded by the post-Web 2.0 world. The more information savvy the end user perceives himself to be, the less he will value a pedestrian-thinking librarian who doesn't see -- or maybe CAN see, but can't describe and market what they do with pizzazz -- beyond the bookshelves or children's story hour.

Librarians connect people with information, wherever it resides: in other people's heads, books, online, or in other media. They can take the increasing amounts of relevant content available to us and help us to extract the best value from it. Librarians who can demonstrate and articulate this unique value will relate to these new self-made information patrons/experts. (Thus, the value of Learning 2.0 and the 23 Things.) And, after all, the new self-made experts pay taxes. In the not too distant future, the millennials who already believe themselves to be savvy about everything, including information, will be deciding the fate of libraries with votes outnumbering those of the boomers. Are the millennials hanging out in libraries (physical or virtual), or are they bypassing them? I don't know the answer to that because I haven't researched it, but it seems that someone must have. In any case, shouldn't public librarians be listing 20 things that appeal to the the information savvy or, at least, to information-savvy wannabes? I'm guessing that reminders to respect personal space and refrain from sneezing on the reference desk don't really resonate with the current information generation. But, I could be completely wrong.

BTW, if you want to read a practical article on basic tips for using your local library wisely, look here. It is written by Jeff Scott, Library Director for the City of Casa Grande Public Library (Casa Grande, AZ).

One fabulous take-away from the "Top 20 things..." article, though, is the reference to The Book of Bunny Suicides. I, of course, have at least a dozen people on my Christmas list who are now going to get that book!

Technorati tags: articulating value, Examiner.com, Jeff Scott, Kathy Dempsey, librarians, library etiquette, library patrons, library value, public libraries

Crazy Busy

2008-10-29T12:43:00.007-04:00

September and October are always crazy-busy months for me, so blogging, since it does not directly support keeping my job or my family operational, went right out the window. I'll be getting back to my pursuit of the 23 Things in November.

I did, however, decide to use a tool discovered in my Learning 2.0 journey to create a gift in honor of a relative's "significant birthday." I am now the proud author of a single-copy, vanity press book, published by Blurb.com. I found the software (download) to be very intuitive -- I'm a "forget the manual and jump right in" sort of user, so intuitive software is important to me. My only complaint is that I would have preferred more background and layout options. (I opted for minimalistic all black backgrounds with white lettering. No judgment on whether that's good or bad, but, for some reason, my mind always associates Spinal Tap's Smell the Glove, a.k.a., Black Album, with all black layouts of anything. So, I couldn't help mentally referring to my great literary product as "Black Book: Smell the Ink" when I was putting it together. I'm sure a psychiatrist would have something to say about that.) I suspect, however, that I could have adapted the layouts and backgrounds beyond the obvious had I bothered to read the help messages or poke around the software a bit more. Or, I could have coughed up the money for the paid, rather than the free, download. The time-quality-resources triangle again, eh?

Anyway, the book is better than expected. First, I received it in less than 3 business days -- wow! More importantly, I was a bit concerned about how some fuzzy, old, tiny photos would look when scanned, enlarged, and printed in the book. They look exactly like the originals, so it couldn't be better. Overall, it looks just like a book I might have bought at a quality bookstore. Friends who examined the book today were highly complimentary. I am well pleased; I believe the recipient will be over the moon.

This experience makes me take a fresh look at "NaNoWriMo" (i.e., National Novel Writing Month), too. I've always pined to do it, but haven't taken the plunge yet. Maybe the prospect of a book in hand, a la Blurb.com, could make it more compelling to me. Or maybe I'll write my hack novel in a month that's more convenient for me.

For now, I just need to get back to the blog. I'll be writing, I hope, next month!

Technorati tags: vanity press, Blurb.com

My Avatars

2008-08-22T16:50:00.015-04:00

Technology that I find to be insanely useful and fun to use is digital photo processing software. I absolutely love the fact that I never have to trust my negatives to a photo shop or drugstore anymore. It's great to know that even if there is something unappealing in an otherwise great shot (like my kids' dirty socks on the floor when I'm snapping their beautiful smiles or power lines breaking up a beautiful sky), I can simply edit it away. No longer is there great disappointment about bad lighting or poor alignment ruining an important shot; these problems can all be corrected. A few years ago, this would have seemed like an impossible dream. Now, in the same way that the web has made everyone a publisher, digital cameras and photo editors have made everyone a photographer. What an infinitely rich visual history our children will have to share with their progeny!

My home is filled with framed photos: snapshots from our travels B.C. (before children), heirloom photos of ancestors, current family photos. Through the wonders of scanning and photo editors, we have been able to doctor these up to display quality, whether by enhancing the color, removing scratches, or resizing to fit the frame. I've created some montages and put special effects on some of the pictures, which used to cost big money when a photo studio did it for you.

I've been using a digital camera for about 6 years, and there have been leaps and bounds in the ease of manipulating and printing photos. The first software we had was so clunky that I did little more than crop photos, usually with the result of a grainier, poorer quality image. Editing a photo was then a lengthy project. Now, in a matter of moments I can edit photos in a myriad of ways, either with software on my own PC or, better yet, with online tools like Picnik (which quite honestly does such a great job at automatically fixing my photos that there is little reason to use anything else). I can even create "art" (see my cool avatars) -- and to think that I used to use paints and pencils for that!

Now, if you really want to see some amazing digital art (not that my avatars aren't fabulous, but...), check out the genius of Lorenzo Kidd on his Digistyle website. He also has a great blog.

Where will art and photography go in the next few years? I can't wait to see where technology takes us!

Technorati tags: avatars, digistyle, digital art, photo editing

Fun with Flickr

2008-08-22T15:02:00.012-04:00

Ah, now this is good internet:
Cheese aficionados throughout Europe – a Flickr map mashup.

I am constantly amazed by what one can find on the web.

Also while Flickr-ing, I joined the ranks of those who have created a Librarian Trading Card. What do you think?

I also must credit Flickr and onebeatmonsters with giving me access to the somewhat disturbing Angry Librarian photo included in my first blogger.com post.

Working my way through this Learning 2.0 course is quite fun. Who would have ever thought I'd be pasting my mug on a trading card while sipping tea and clicking through the European cheese landscape?

Technorati tags: 23 things, learning 2.0, Flickr, mashups

Learning 2.0 and the 23 Things: Better Late than Never!

2008-08-22T13:38:00.009-04:00

Okay, I admit that I’m late to the party on Learning 2.0 and the 23 Things. I ignored the whole thing when it took off 2 years ago because it didn’t seem like a match for my needs. In the fast-paced business world, learning via playing over a 9-week period with tools that are not in the standard office suite is largely discouraged. If it were a 1-hour, no-nonsense course using behind-the-firewall products, we’d have no issue.

Of course, being an ultra-hip librarian, I’ve been using Web 2.0 technology for a while now, albeit stumbling along and learning the hard way (which probably is my favorite learning style – jump right in!). But, in my behind-the-firewall universe, thinking can become limited. So, despite the "learning by playing" and "large time investment" taboos, I finally decided to check out Learning 2.0 to seek inspiration in the outside-the-firewall world, nabbing whatever cleverness I can find for my inside-the-firewall applications. I will try to be diligent about doing the exercises, although my instinct is to power-learn through them in days rather than weeks (always trying to reduce cycle time…), so I may take a few shortcuts and jump around the curriculum a bit.

As directed, I viewed the 7½ Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners. (BTW, I think I need to visit the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County because it’s definitely NOT your father’s public library. I also want to buy Articulate.) Here’s my assessment of what’s hardest and easiest for me.

Easiest
Habit #4 – Have Confidence in Yourself as a Competent, Effective Learner.
No doubt, I believe I can learn anything that interests me. I’m a Chemist by degree, but forged career well outside of a lab. I learned everything from database and web design (in the days when it was a matter of typing straight HTML code and JavaScript into Notebook!) to business management on the job. I learned well, too. On the flip side, because endeavors like cooking don’t interest me in the least, I can barely make toast.

Hardest
Habit #1 – Begin with the End in Mind.
Goal setting, per say, isn’t a problem for me. In fact, I excel at setting ambitious business goals and executing to achieve them. My problem lies more in the difference between goal setting in my work, family, and public life and goal setting just for me alone. I need to work on investing dedicated effort to achieve goals that are just for my own benefit. My excuse is familiar: I have little “me” time. I don’t believe the nonsense that you can just “make the time” – I’m an efficiency expert and still can’t create time. When someone figures out a way to extend the day past 24 hours I’ll be all over it; until then, we’ll have to rely on balancing the well-known business triumvirate of resources, time, and quality.

On the job, if I have a work-related goal that is inflexibly under-resourced and I am unwilling to sacrifice quality, the only solution is to extend the timeline, steadily and persistently continuing the course at a slower pace until the goal is achieved. On personal goals, however, when that timeline starts to feel excruciating long, I have a tendency to either abandon the quest outright or become so intermittent in its execution that my efforts to achieve the goal begin to quietly sputter and fade. I can do better.

Yep, I’m filling out the learning contract. The details are private, but I’m going to give my best personal effort at reaching a “me” goal.

Technorati tags: 23 things, learning 2.0, lifelong learning

Why Pay for News? (My first public blog post in my Learning 2.0 journey)

2008-08-21T07:55:00.013-04:00

A recent report from Outsell, “Good Enough Content”, has caused some muttering among corporate librarians. The reason behind the ranting is that this publication is being heavily cited, often out of context, making some executives question, for example, why they need a paid news subscription when “good enough” news is free on the web.

"Don't you dare question me!"
Angry Librarian
Originally uploaded to Flickr by onebeatmonsters

Outsell's worthy intent is to force information professionals to think of their business in new ways. My guess is that the furor is not so much about the content of the Outsell report, but the unintended consequence of the publication making executives ask uncomfortable questions of their corporate librarians. To me, evaluating, building, and communicating value is my most important job responsibility. I (perhaps strangely) enjoy the opportunity to measure and calculate value and absolutely love each opportunity to present our great results to higher ups. Maybe the muttering librarians agree, but are too humble to toot their own value horns. Maybe their executives never asked tough questions before. (Are there executives like that?) Maybe they don’t have regular vehicles for communicating value to their executives. Maybe their bosses aren’t clever enough to understand value that doesn’t directly hit the bottom line. Or, just maybe, Outsell hit its mark.

An enlightened (read: shares my views!) acquaintance who is an executive for a manufacturer of OTC products said it well:

“I am a big believer in the corporate library/information group and the value it brings. I think we should question its value regularly and adapt to changing conditions…If a report gets a senior executive to… [take interest], we should welcome the opportunity to answer…”

Heck, adapting to changing conditions is what makes being a corporate librarian fun! There’s great sport in determining how changing technology and business conditions can make use of business content more effective. After all, this is the information age – wake up and enjoy it, all ye mutterers!

I do believe that information wants to be free and that, someday, even “premium” content will be (i.e., no more pay-per-article). However, premium access, delivery, and analysis options (i.e., pay-for-utility) are of significant value to business users because they save time, reveal harder-to-recognize leads, and close critical content gaps. The smart publishers are working on differentiating themselves not by continuing to hold their basic content hostage, but by providing interfaces and tools that will integrate content with daily work processes and decision-making triggers in seamless, AI-powered ways. In the not-too-distant future, business information systems are going to be really, really cool – even cooler than they already are.

Technorati tags: 23 things, learning 2.0, corporate library, library value, Outsell, Web 2.0