Category: Personal

I've now reached four years of writing in this space. Curiously, I missed my
first blogiversary, but did manage to post this item: Doonesbury on
blogging.

Obviously, the rewards and benefits continue to outweigh the costs. I still
get a kick out of meeti ng someone who's read something here. I continue to meet
new and interesting minds because of my presence here and I get to stay in touch
with many of the others that I've met along the way. It continues to amaze me
that these words find their way to all sorts of odd and unexpected places around
the planet.

To the following blogging friends I have managed to
acquire because of blogging, thank you for making this an experiment I intend to
continue. Let's see who else we can invite to the party.

Jenny Levine, AKMA, Terry Frazier, Betsy Devine, Buzz Bruggeman, Denham Grey, Marc Orchant, Cameron Reilly, Marjolein
Hoekstra, Ernie Svenson, Judith Meskill, Jack Vinson, Ross Mayfield, Lilia Efimova, Jeremy Wagstaff, Matt Mower, Ton Zijlstra, Eric Snowdeal, Rick Klau, Greg Lloyd, Chris Nuzum,
Jordan Frank, Halley
Suitt, Jon Husband, Dina Mehta, Shannon Clark, Bruce MacEwen, Espen Andersen, Hylton Jolliffe, Stowe Boyd, Francois Gossieaux, Jim Berkowitz, Eric Lunt, Dennis Kennedy, Matt Homann,
Jim Ware, Elizabeth Albrycht, Regina
Miller, David Gurteen, Rik Reppe,

If I've forgotten someone, my apologies. Ping me and I'll update the
list.

I remain interested in the challenges of making organizations better places
for real people to work in and still believe that the effective use of
technology makes a difference. I suspect that large organizations are nearing
the end of their useful life and that the evolution toward new forms will
continue to be painful and noisy. I worry about leaders and executives who
choose to ignore facts and who can't or won't distinguish between the theory of
evolution and the theory of who shot JFK.

In the long run, I still put my bets on the value of curiosity. There is deep
truth buried in Dorothy Parker's observation that provides this blogs
tagline:

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There
is no cure for curiosity.”

Found this at Jason Womack's blog this morning. Made my day and I figured I'd help pass it along:

Buzz came through
Chicago last week on his trek
across America. I was on my way back from a day of interviewing and
recruiting at the University of Illinois in Champaign and found Buzz in a
Starbucks in Glenview. From there, Buzz followed me home in his new Saab. In
typical Buzz fashion, he charmed Charlotte once again and proceeded to demo ActiveWords and a series of other
software tools and tips to her. We also showed off Skype by calling Jeremy
Wagstaff in Jakarta using Buzz's laptop as an impromptu speakerphone. Of course,
I will now be installing ActiveWords on Charlotte's computer when I get back
tonight (I'm in Boston today). Charlotte was suitably impressed and happy to
discover someone who knew things about his computer and its applications that
was news to me as well. Her reaction was the typical one I have come to expect
when a non-technical knowledge worker sees ActiveWords for the first time – “why
hasn't Microsoft bought this and made it part of Windows?”

The next day Buzz and I went on into Chicago where he pitched ActiveWords to
my CIO. We also spent some time with some of my colleagues as we started to
think through how to do a pilot evaluation that would let us demonstrate the
potential value of ActiveWords within our day-to-day knowledge work efforts.

I've been an ActiveWords user now for four years and I still learn something
new about how to make use of this tool whenever I watch Buzz show it off. It is
the kind of tool that can be hard to fully appreciate until you see it in the
hands of an expert. I came away with a number of ideas for new things I would
like to do. I think we have the basis for an initial pilot and should find a
number of user groups for whom ActiveWords will become part of their knowledge
work toolkit.

PC marketing has played the productivity card from day zero. Early on,
however, the marketing message skipped over the part about the behavioral change
needed to realize the potential of technology. Few of us have the time or
inclination to observe and think about how we work, much less think through how
we might go about making our work easier. We still don't have the tools we need
to really address the challenge of improving the
productivity/effectiveness of knowledge work. One way to think about
ActiveWords is that it is the smallest first step you can take to begin making
your PC a tool to extend your effectiveness that gives you the quickest payback.
With luck, it may also help sensitize you to the notion that you can get more
value out of your tools if you learn how to use them and take the time to
observe your work and look for ways to make it more effective.

We finished the day with a blogger dinner at Reza's hosted by Shannon Clark
of MeshForum. We had a nice turnout and
lots of good conversation and food. I'll post more about the dinner later.

I'm still digging out from last weekend, which I spent in Boston
celebrating my 25th reunion of my business school class. Friday night
we had dinner at the Top of the Hub in the Prudential Center with a
view of Fenway Park where the Red Sox were beating the Yankees.

At
HBS you spend your entire first year with your section of roughly 80
people, so the ties are strong. There was a lot of wry laughter about
those fanciful spreadsheet projections we had discussed five years ago
at our 20th in June of 2005. There was also a lot of wonder about the
change we've seen in 25 years and the change we were likely to see in
the next 25.

Over the years, it's been interesting to watch the
evolving conversations and concerns at each reunion.. In 1985, at our
5th reunion, we were pretty full of ourselves (Charlotte had a more
earthy way of putting it). As time has gone on, our conversations
and priorities have become much more focused on family and community.
Then, we all rushed off to hear about the latest new ideas and worked
the crowd. Last week, we blew off the lectures, sat outside on the
lawn on a gorgeous fall day, and walked to Harvard Square to grab ice
cream at Herrells.

Harvard sometimes has a reputation for
encouraging competition at the expense of cooperation; it certainly did
when I was there. On the other hand, you don't have to succumb to it. I
was in Section I and there used to be an apocryphal story of a comment
by the Dean that perhaps eight sections would be better for the school
than nine. As a group, we had a healthy skepticism about authority. I
do recall one thing we did as Section I that did earn us some trouble.

Histroically,
about 5% of the first year class at HBS flunks out–we called it
“hitting the screen.” In our section, we concluded that there was
no reason that any of those people had to come from our section. We set
up a voluntary lunch help session. If you were doing well in a course,
you'd hang out in the classroom to help out anyone else in the section
who felt they needed it. Sometimes I helped, sometimes I needed help.
While we did get some mild pressure from faculty to drop the idea, we
ignored them.

This last Saturday night, while there were a lot
of people still networking over cocktails, you could find the Section I
contingent on the dance floor and, a bit later, closing down the Oak
Bar at the Copley Plaza. A few more of us were drinking Diet Coke this
time than 25 years ago, but we still laugh at Bruce's jokes. And we're
still having fun.

Happy Birthday to Jack Vinson. And he offers us a most delightful present indeed.

Joho the blog points us to

Susan Crawford has put together one of the most delightful five minutes I've spent on line in a while.

Comments

We're sending donations to the Red Cross as we did earlier this year
for the tsunami in Asia. Courtesy of Rex's suggestion, I am also
putting a banner link to the Red Cross over to the right for those who
would like to contribute that way.

Instapundit has an excellent list of places you can contribute. If you've got a roof over your head, open your wallet.

(via: PaidContent.org) [rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog]

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