Year: 2006

Universal plug adapter for foreign travel

I wish this item had hit Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools site a couple of weeks sooner, since we just got back from 10 days in France. Although I didn’t lose any adapters on this trip, it looks as though my collection will fall victim to better design.

APC Universal Plug Adapter

APC_adapter_web.jpg

If you’ve ever traveled to Europe, you’ve taken or bought a plug converter. If you’ve traveled much at all, you’ve probably purchased a set of these things in a lovely (and huge) travel case. Equally likely is that you’ve either forgotten one or two or lost them somewhere along the road, forcing you to purchase spares that don’t fit in the original case.

For this reason, I got tired of a bag of random adapters and went looking for a universal one. I found two or three of them and they all had one thing in common; they were the size of a baseball (I’m obsessive about size and weight when I travel). So when I stumbled across this adapter by APC, I fell in love. It’s small (1x2x4 inches), it’s packable, it has all the adapters I need, and it works. If you travel overseas and you’re sick of a computer bag that weighs more than your luggage, you have to have this.

— Keith Smith

APC Universal Plug Adapter
$16
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by APC [Cool Tools]

Learning to go meta

[Cross posted at Future Tense]

I’m in the midst of reading John Thackara’s excellent In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World, which will eventually warrant a full review.  Today, I want to pick up on one particular observation Thackara makes on the role of learning in organizations. He makes the point that

…the most important skills of all are so-called metacognitive skills–an understanding of guiding principles, of what really matters, and the abilility to filter out the growing flood of stuff that does not. “We need to be able to formulate new questions, ” [Howard] Gardner argues…”and not just rely on tasks or problems posed by others. We need the ability to learn in new ways, to evaluate our own progress, to be able to transfer knowledge from one context to another.” [pp.136-37, In the Bubble]

What makes this particularly important is that virtually no corporate training and precious little other training/education addresses these metacognitive skill issues. That’s partly because developing good metacognitive learning skills diminishes the relative importance of the training department. If you become adept at identifying and monitoring your own learning, you may well conclude that the organization’s curriculum bears little relationship to your needs.  

As individuals, we need to assess whether our learning mix includes sufficient attention to the metacognitive. Do we have a good sense of how we learn? How well can we identify gaps in our skills or knowledge and map those to useful learning opportunities? How accurately can we monitor our level of mastery of a new skill?

If we have the appropriate organizational influence, we should be asking similar questions of our organizational training and development programs.

Fact-based or ideology-based thinking: Go watch “An Inconvenient Truth”

An Inconvenient Truth

Year: 2006

Length: 96

Media: Film

Rating: 5 out of 5

Take a couple of hours out of your schedule this weekend or next and go see “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Al Gore starring documentary about global warming that is now in theaters. You’ll learn much about global warming and much about many other topics should you choose to pay attention and watch on multiple levels.

The reviews are uniformly positive (I confess I haven’t checked what Fox News thinks of it, but here is a link to the NY Times review). Besides its central message, it contains lessons on effective presentations and stroytelling and lessons on the contrasts between how science is done and how those who find the science “inconvenient” operate to undermine it. This has me thinking on multiple levels.

There’s an excellent website to accompany the movie, as well as a blog and an RSS feed.

Tags: InconvenientTruth GlobalWarming AlGore

Comprehending Engineers

Michael Levin is a “Friend of Buzz” I met a few years back when I was visiting Buzz when he was still based in Florida. Michael is a Java developer and all round good guy. I thought this was worth passing along to my engineering friends and those who live with them. I found it helpful

Comprehending Engineers

Comprehending Engineers – Part 1:To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Comprehending Engineers – Part 2:What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers?Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets.

Comprehending Engineers – Part 3:Three engineering students were gathered together discussing the possible designers of the human body. One said, “It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints.” Another said, “No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous system has many thousands of electrical connections.” The last said, “Actually it was a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?”

Comprehending Engineers – Part 4:”Normal people … believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain ‘t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.”

Comprehending Engineers – Part 5:An architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to have a wife or a mistress. The architect said he preferred a wife, as they could build a solid foundation for an enduring relationship.
The artist said he preferred a mistress, because of the passion and mystery he found there.
The engineer said, “I like both.”
“Both?”
Engineer: “Yeah. If you have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with the other woman, and you can go to the lab and get some work done [Michael Levin’s Weblog]

Review of Naked Conversations

Naked Conversations : How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers

Author: Robert Scoble, Shel Israel

Year: 2006

Publisher: Wiley

ISBN: 047174719X

A bit slow, but I’ve finally found time to finish Naked Conversations.

This is currently the best choice available to introduce blogging to an executive level audience that is either trying to figure out “what’s in it for us” or is curious about what you’ve been mumbling about under your breath recently. It won’t tell you much that’s new if you’re already actively blogging, but you’re not the target audience. The format, tone, structure, and emphasis on stories are all what you need to help key decision makers in your organization “get it.”

In Chapter 3 on blogs and word of mouth marketing, Scoble and Shel provide the following quote from Seth Godin about the connection between blogs and curiosity:

“Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs,” said Godin. “This is the most curious segment of the population, the people who are seeking out the new and the useful. This is the audience that doesn’t need to be interrupted because they are already listening. They are alert, on the lookout for the next big thing. No need to yell. If you’ve invested the time and the energy and the guts to make something remarkable, this audience can’t wait to hear about it.”

Scoble and Israel focus on the marketing/external relations aspects of blogging and consciously ignore the potential value of blogging within the organization. But curiosity functions everywhere. Their advice is generally sound and on point. Much of that advice does translate from external to internal applications.

If you’re trying to bring this technology into your organization, go buy a stack of copies and get them into the hands of your executive team.

Tags: NakedConversations blogging

An update on my shoulder and recovery progress

I am continuing to recover from my shoulder injury last month. Although the progress feels slow, both my physical therapist and orthopedic surgeon tell me that things are right on schedule and doing well. When I first posted about the accident I had just met with the surgeon and we had not yet completed all the diagnostic tests. Once the CAT scans were in, together with more detailed x-rays, it was clear that I had done significantly more damage than I initially thought. What I had was, in technical terms, “a closed, comminuted fracture of the right proximal humerus.” In more colloquial terms, what I had was a “head split,” where I had turned the ball of my shoulder into something resembling a jigsaw puzzle. Quite remarkable what you can do to yourself falling off a bike at 0 MPH.

Continue reading An update on my shoulder and recovery progress

Developing an eye and ear for Web 2.0 phenomena

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead
Benjamin Franklin

I’ve been following the controversy and conversation around Digg, HD-DVD keys, and the AACS-LA response. I’ve found the following to be among the more thoughtful and useful posts on the topic for my interests:

My views on copy protection and DRM (digital restrictions management/digital rights management) have generally been more pragmatic than ideological or policy oriented. I think the evidence suggests that copy protection and DRM schemes generally don’t accomplish what they ostensibly claim to. They don’t stop anyone who wishes to circumvent them, and they increase costs and interfere with the rights of those who do play by the rules.

In this most recent incident, we’re discovering that the latest generation of technology tools and services with explicitly social components are even farther ahead of law and policy than usual. “Cease and desist” letters begin to lose their effectiveness when the number of “offenders” starts to expand exponentially. “Deep pockets” lose their effectiveness when the conflict becomes asymmetrical.

The decision makers here are not stupid people, despite what their responses might suggest. On the other hand, they do appear to be “net deaf” or “net blind.” Their judgment is formed and informed by long experience in linear environments. Whether they can compensate for that experience in a changing world is problematic. Ed Yourdon in another post that just hit my feed reader offers some thoughts on why it may remain difficult.

The problems of hierarchy are largely invisible from the top. The power of new networks is hard to appreciate if you don’t immerse yourself in it. It’s a bit like trying to coach a sport that you’ve never played. There’s only so much you can learn by watching from the sidelines. If you want to make sound decisions, you need to invest in acquiring the requisite experience.

 

Eric Mack webinar on using MindManager as a Knowledge Management Tool

I won’t be able to attend this since I wll be on Spring Break with the family, but I intend to watch it after the fact. Eric’s weblog is also well worth your time if you’re interested in knowledge work and personal productivity.

Sign up for my “How I use MindManager” webinar

MindJet has asked me to present a webinar on how I use MindManager to get things done. I agreed, and on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 10:00 AM (PST) I will present a free webinar, entitled MindManager as a Knowledge Management Tool: How I use MindManager and Lotus Notes to get things done. That’s the fancy title. My working title is “Mind Mapping in the Digital Sandbox.” (See description below)   

…

I’ve provided a link to sign up for the webinar at the end of this post.

MindManager as a Knowledge Management Tool:
How I use MindManager and Lotus Notes to get things done.
Date: Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Time: 10:00 am Pacific Daylight Time

Description: Consultant and eProductivity Specialist, Eric Mack, will give us a tour of his world and how he works and how he uses Mind Manager as a visual thinking and planning tool. He will discuss how he uses Mind Manager as a visual dashboard and planning tool for project and action management. He will also share how he uses Mind Manager on a daily basis as a support tool for getting things done with the GTD methodology and how he uses Mind Manager as a research support tool for Knowledge Management. Finally, he will show us how he uses MindManager to brainstorm and track projects and actions stored in Lotus Notes databases. In addition to using Mind Maps at work, Eric uses them when home-schooling his children and when coaching robotics teams. We’ve asked him to share a little bit about how he teaches the kids to use Mind Maps to organize their thinking and strategy when planning for a paper or a competition. At the conclusion of the webinar, Eric will be available to answer your questions.

Click to Enroll

Originally posted on Eric Mack Online

John Sviokla blogging on technology and strategy

Dan Bricklin nicely summarizes most of the nice things I would have said in calling your attention to John Sviokla s new blog (Sviokla s Context). I think I can rightly take some credit for persuading John to add his voice and thinking to the mix. John and I first met twenty plus years ago at the Harvard Business School. John was just finishing his DBA (Doctor of Business Administration, not Data Base Administrator – this was HBS s original version of a Ph.D. in business that explicitly emphasized interdisciplinary thinking) as I was starting work on mine. He joined the faculty there and I worked as his research assistant for a while.

When HBS foolishly chose not to offer him tenure ten years later, I persuaded him to join me at Diamond, where he ended up becoming my boss again. Calling John quite bright is along the lines of describing Tom Brady as a pretty good quarterback. If you are at all interested in how technology and strategy fit together, John is someone you would best pay attention to.

John Sviokla s blog. As part of my work as a DiamondCluster Fellow I ve spent a lot of time talking with their vice-chairman and Global Managing Director of Innovation and Research John Sviokla and listening to his presentations. We ve also produced a few episodes of a podcast together. Prior to DiamondCluster (a consulting firm that merges technology and strategy consulting) John was a professor at Harvard Business School (not when I was there as I recall). He s quite bright and helps me understand big businesses and organizations.

John has recently started blogging at a somewhat regular pace (a new long post every day or so). Given the disclaimer that I have a financial interest in DiamondCluster, that I do consulting for them, that I talked with John about his blog a few weeks ago as this was starting, and that he pointed to me today when writing about Motorola wikis, etc., etc., I have to tell you this because I think I d be doing my readers a disservice if I didn t: John Sviokla s new blog is really worth reading. He covers technology and business in a way that will help people in both worlds. He brings interesting perspectives that remind you of those moments in business school when after 60 minutes of discussing a case in class it all starts making sense there s a way of looking at things I hadn t considered.

His blog is Sviokla s Context and it has an RSS feed.

John is trying to add his voice to the blogosphere. I think it s a welcome addition. A nice sign of the times as a blog may be pushing aside the white paper at a major consulting firm. [Dan Bricklin on John Sviokla]

Deliverables – the fundamental secret to improving knowledge work

I’ve been exploring the role of deliverables in understanding and improving knowledge work for a while. In January, I took another shot at articulating the link in a column in the Enterprise Systems Journal putting deliverables at the center of the challenge of improving knowledge work.

Knowledge work does not produce standardized, well-defined outputs. Instead, the value of its outputs depends on how well they match the unique needs of their users. No one is interested in a spreadsheet full of someone else’s data; no teacher is likely to value a copy of a paper you’ve submitted to another class. Understanding what aspects and features of a knowledge work product are most valuable to its intended user is key to focusing efforts on producing the desired deliverable. [The Fundamental Secret to Improving Knowledge Work – ESJ].

Our experience in industrial settings encourages us to look at the output as something that is already well-defined and well-understood. We focus on process changes that will produce the output more quickly or more cost-effectively. When we are doing knowledge work, we do better to focus on the deliverable longer and more mindfully. At a minimum we need to understand the user’s definition of quality, the balance between uniqueness and uniformity that will meet this level of quality, and the conditions that must be met to declare the work done.