39 posts tagged “manifesto”
It's hard to imagine I've been on Twitter about a year and a half. It has become so integrated into my life. I've met friends, kept my family up-to-date on what I'm doing (in the are-you-home-from-the-ride sense), and have found it useful to timestamp my life ("When did I go to lunch? Oh yeah..."). I'm glad I can use it as a messaging tool and a status display.
There are two web-centric applications I have started to use the last several months that I've come to the accept that I won't be able to exploit to their fullest potential. The first is Zamzar. Upload a file in one format, and it will convert it to an alternate format for you. It can do YouTube to mp4, PDF to Word, and several others. The conversion is done on one of their servers, and they give you a URL to get the final product.
The second is Evernote. This allows for notes to be stored and searched. It will even perform OCR on images, so text within images can be referenced. I took a picture of a whiteboard, and, to some degree, I can search for the text that I wrote. Really cool. The notes are stored on a server, and accessed through either dedicated clients, or a web page.
These are both incredibly useful. However, I have to execute a thought process with each use: how confidential is this? If the data is something sensitive to me personally, I have to take a moment to consider what happens if the company in question goes evil on me. We've all probably had this consideration when using web mail. Where it gets especially sticky, and where the utility of the sites has the most potential but presents the greatest challenges, is using it for work settings.
Some of what I deal with is confidential to my company. It could be deals we are working on, or intellectual property, or other functions. Uploading a document constitutes transmission to a third party, regardless of the terms of service. As often happens, security wins out, and I don't use it.
However, I think this represents a strong opportunity for these Web 2.0 companies to monetize their offering. If they create a version of the server that can be put on common, commodity IT infrastructure, a version for just my company could exist. I can get all the utility, but the added knowledge that it won't go outside of the scope of control of those who need it.
There would be a few challenges. First, the creators of this software would probably need to tweak it--at a minimum, to support integration into existing security infrastructures. It may, however, require replatforming it to things that are closer to corporate standards (this may mean Windows).
Second, they would have to show its value when other groupware is already installed. How does Evernote's utility exceed or compliment SharePoint (it's obvious to me).
I think Google is already on track--the can sell e-mail services and their office suite for your company. However, I think security and legal considerations will always keep applications that live "in the cloud" from ever reaching their full potential.
I sometimes hate Caller ID.
I appreciate it on my cell phone, when I can pick out my wife (especially on the bike, when a distinctive ring helps me decide if it is worth stopping). However, it gets abused too readily.
For starters, I don't appreciate folks who request that I call them (via a pager or e-mail), then capture my number. Just because I call you from a particular phone doesn't mean that is the preferred number. It just means that is the phone I happen to use that time. If I've given you a number separately, use that--you are much more likely to reach me.
More annoying is people who call back based solely on the caller ID. It's one thing if you just missed picking up the phone by a moment. I've done that (but I think I'm going to resist the urge). But if more than a few minutes have passed, and I didn't leave a message, don't call back. I sorted it out some other way.
Here is the worst scenario--the one that inspired this rant. I was calling a colleague, who had his cell phone right under his work phone in his e-mail signature. I somehow mix up parts of the two numbers, resulting in a wrong number. As soon as I got the voice mail greeting, I realize my mistake, and hang up.
Twenty minutes later, this person calls back, wanting to know who I am, why I was calling, etc. I explained it was a wrong number, and she didn't need to take up both our time.
Please, use caller ID for good, not evil.
In 1994, the second year of Wired magazine, Nicholas Negroponte wrote an article claiming that fax machines were a regressive step. Basically, the United States was tracking towards having more and more data in machine-readable formats--ASCII, e-mail, etc. This would be able to move information quickly, and would be machine readable. Archiving, searching, and retrieving this information would be quick. An infrastructure to make it business-friendly, such as digital signatures, would be developed and become accepted.
However, as the fax machine became ubiquitous, using older business methods, such as physical signatures on paper, were allowed to remain. By scanning an image and sending this data (slowly), paper could remain the medium of choice.
Granted, at the time of the article, computers were $3,000 investments. Relatively few people have heard of the internet--a common interconnect between businesses to allow for e-mail between anyone. In contrast, everyone knew how a phone line worked, and a fax machine would cost less than a quarter of a full computer. This was less a barrier for large corporations, but rather for common, everyday small businesses.
Fourteen years later, almost to the month, paper documents still rule, and I blame the fax machine. Granted, e-mail has become an important tool in time-stamping communications. With iPhones and Blackberries, it is more ubiquitous than fax machines. However, when it comes to officially authorizing and authenticating documents, pulling out a pen, signing a document, and faxing it remains the only option.
There are some minor advances--fax-to-email gateways allow faxes to come straight to my desk. I can use a scanner to create an image of the document and e-mail it. However, at the end of the day, it is an image file that is no better than paper for anything other than looking at it. As far as a computer cares, it is no different than a LOLcat picture. It can't be searched, and is relatively large to archive. It still takes time to deal with.
What is really surprising to me is that I work for a fairly high-tech, as-close-to-paperless-as-they-come company, and I'm dealing with other Information Technology companies who are requiring the signature. You would think someone would invest in software that would allow the creation and distribution of digital signatures. It would marry the authentication that people look for with a physical signature with the advantages of true digital formats. This is the type of innovation that would move us forward.
Until then I'll keep my pen inked and my fax machine plugged in.
Let me go a nutty step further; if your slides make perfect sense without you talking, they may be too dense.
In high school, I did competitive speech. I took a the basic speech course there (to fulfill a requirement). I took an introduction to speech course in college, again to fulfill a requirement. Finally, to fulfill a work requirement, I took a speech course offered by my company. Essentially, I took the same course three times (though the last one actually mentioned PowerPoint).
All three courses basically took the same stance on visual aids: that they should help amplify what you are saying, not replace in. In short, what Mr. Mann said above is perfectly consistent with the desired approach.Put another way: you should not read your slides.
Unfortunately, I see this in many meetings: a PowerPoint desk is created for a presentation, and, for all intents and purposes, I could be equally well served by reading the slide deck. Occasionally, you'll hear "I'm not going to drain this slide." Basically, it is another symptom of the basic problem: a PowerPoint presentation should augment, not replace, your presentation.
But, meeting after meeting, there are presentations where information is crammed onto slides. Fonts become increasingly smaller. Diagrams become dense to the point of not being intelligible. The deck ceases to communicate useful information, and begins to simply show the complexity or effort associated with what is described.
I have two hypothesises as to why this happens. First, it is simply laziness. To create the desk, they cut-and-pasted from materials they had around, put it on the standard template, and called it good. Or, they didn't want to bother making a separate handout. I confess that the latter does have a certain appeal.
My second hypothesis is that people who are working in business today are not writers. Pulling together an essay (or reading the essay) is not something that is natural, especially when trying to describe a series of ideas. On the other hand, the slide metaphore works for them. They can put each idea on a different slide (and drill down into it) much like they might write index cards. It doesn't require transitions, and doesn't require the audience as much mental energy to process.
As someone who has a liberal arts degree (and only really had essay tests), it is not my default approach. I have been both complimented and critiqued for long essays I send (sometimes even by the same person about the same document). However, I see where it might work for someone.
The problem is that what works in presenting an idea to a reader does not exactly work when talking to a live audience. Beyond simply having slides that are too dense and the frustration of being read to, I think people feel they must give every slide. Again, this may not be an appropriate level of detail, depending on the audience. Again, if you consider saying "I'm not going to drain this slide," you probably have too much detail.
Perhaps one day someone will find a tool that combines the thought-flow of PowerPoint that appeals to people while scaling to how it is delivered (non-interactively (like an e-mail) versus a true presentation). For my part, I'm going to follow what I was taught, and not confuse PowerPoint with Word.
To all those kids out there still in college:
All sorrows are less with bread.
~Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
My wife and I got a bread machine as an engagement present. We set it up in on of our apartments, diligently put in the ingredients, and out came...a mediocre loaf of bread. It was better than a store-bought loaf, and the smell was wonderful, but it really didn't get much past being, well, OK.
We got married, moved into a house, and later, we found box mixes for bread machines. Dump everything in, add a cup or two of water, hit start and you got a loaf that was...adequate. Again, better than store bought, and in more interesting flavors. It still wasn't that exciting. However, I started to get the sense of how it should look and smell.
One day, near St. Patrick's day, I decided to try Irish Soda bread. I went and bought some buttermilk yeast, and caraway seeds. Into the machine it went. It was good...but my wife and I thought the caraway seeds were a bit much. The next loaf, I left them out. It proved to be an excellent loaf of bread. We started buying yeast by the jar and powdered buttermilk, and stopped buying bread.
That is except for challah, one of my wife's favorites. A year or two later after the Irish Soda bread, I decided to take a crack at it. The recipe was a bit different. It used the dough cycle--all the mixing was done by the machine, but I had to form the dough into a loaf, do the second rise, and bake it. Challah is especially challenging, as it is traditionally braided, and has an egg wash. I got to feel the soft, almost fluffy dough after the first rise, and got the hang of braiding it. After a loaf or two, I had it down, and it is now a family favorite.
I started making French bread this way, as well as the Irish soda bread. I don't think we have ever bought bread from the store for my daughter (I'm setting her expectations for a husband quite high). The original bread machine died last year. We replaced it, but I don't think has done anything other than the dough cycle.
I felt guilty, though, getting credit for the bread that came from the machine. Using the dough cycle had me taking greater ownership of the loaf, but it was the machine that was doing all the heavy lifting. I would try to make something bread like (like my early pizza crusts), and they came out awful.
But over the summer I was craving a muffuletta. The basic sandwich is similar to many other Italian sandwiches--salami, capicola, mortadella, and provolone. The olive salad on top is a defining characteristic. However, what makes a muffuletta a muffuletta is the bread. In fact, the sandwich was named after the roll Cincinnati is a great meat town, but no one really has the bread. I had to make it from scratch, no machine. It turned out well--I made my second one today (as you can see, it's not the best for you).
I've found that I've gotten better at making bread-like things--pretzels, pizza, and other breads. I think the bread machine help. It was less scary to start. As I progressed--from box mixes to dough cycle, I got a feel for how things work. I think of it less of a cheat. And, when I just want a quick loaf, it's still handy.
Still, I'm quite fond of baking, and proud of the output. I like the feel of the freshly risen dough. Everyone loves the smell.
I think it is time to have a slice...
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You probably wrote off my shout of "bikes don't belong on the sidewalk" as a hurried commutor, trying to catch his bus. Though that is a partial description of me, the shout came from a cyclist.
By the laws of Ohio and Cincinnati, a bike is a vehical. By the laws of Cincinnati, vehical are not to be operated on sidewalk. A specific exemption exists for children under 15, allowing them to ride their bikes on the sidewalk. It is this exemption that confirms that you, a man over 15, was operating his vehical illegally.
I normally don't say anything when I see this. I've bent this rule on occassion, going from a corner to a rack when there was no one around. However, at that corner, Government Square, there were a lot of people who you put at risk.
If you need to move you bike through a crowd, please take care, dismount, and push your way through. It's not just the safe and kind thing to do--it's the law!
A common practice in IT during an outage is to form a "bridge" call--basically a conference call. During these times, every team involved in the outage is expected to be present, so that the customers can jump on and ask for information.
I certainly can see the value of this during times when several teams need to discuss a solution, or have set briefings. More often than not, it just seems like a waste.
You see, more often then not, between updates, people are off doing what they need to do. If you are not immediately responsible for a task, you sit on the bridge, listening to everyone else breath. Boredom sets in, and grand plans for mitigation of this are proposed. Or, teams that lack directly responsibility are sent off to "see what they can do." So hours go by, with either work time wasted, or personal time lost.
Everyone has a story where having someone "right there" helped, but given that everyone has pagers and cell phones, I don't think that saves too much, especially if everyone has "checked in" to the situation.
I personally think there are better approaches. For instance, have the bridge line available, and after an initial briefing and assessment of who is on point, agree to meeting every half hour. Then, honestly stick to that.
Another possibility is to look into some of the newer Web 2.0 technologies. For instance, something like Twitter could be used for status. Technicians can post updates on the site with SMS, and, likewise, interested parties can receive these via SMS (or, just poll the site).
It just seems like there are a lot of resources that get tied up in a bridge call, and the primary value is giving the appearance of attention to the issue, rather than considering what it would take to deal with it.
