Category: Personal

My worst technology mistake

Ben Bradley of Growingco.com interviewed me about Knowledge Management that ran over at Darwin magazine a few weeks back. It was an interesting exercise reflecting on my worst technology mistake. It probably won’t surprise anyone here, but I concluded that

In particular, I ve become a lot more skeptical about top-down approaches to knowledge management. And I ve become much more cautious about the importance of pushing the technology envelope. We were doing a lot of good things to improve internal communications and interactions among our experts. We started paying more attention to that to good effect. Not as sexy, but a lot more impact.

My current thinking is that organizations that want to make progress on KM will need to blend top-down and bottoms-up approaches. It’s not a question of which approach is right, but of how to blend both approaches.

Podcasting? Later not sooner for me

I’ve been following all the energy and excitement around the notion of podcasting with a certain amount of skepticism. This certainly explains why I haven’t yet been a consumer and am not likely to be. I generally don’t spend a lot of extended time in cars and I don’t find listening to be as high-bandwidth a channel as reading. I do travel by air a lot, but I generally use that time to read, not listen.

I’ll grant that there are a lot of busy people who do find themselves behind the wheel and would definitely prefer something intelligent to the usual fare on the radio. It may be that podcasting might be relevant to me as a potential producer of content rather than as a consumer. So, I’m continuing to pay attention, but it’s likely to remain lower on my list than making sure I make more time to post some old-fashioned text to my blog.

A picture named pod.jpgIf you want to understand podcasting, get an iPod, get the software, subscribe to some feeds. Then go for a drive, ride a subway or an airplane, take a walk, do something away from the computer and take the iPod with you. Listen to one of the new programs. Then let me know if it works. Fact is, you can’t use your eyes when you’re driving, they’re busy. Same with walking. It’s pretty hard to type on a subway. Annotation, if it’s going to happen, will be in voice, and implemented in the iPod. It’s easy to see if you just use it. Use it. Use it. Nike says just do it. The iPod commands: Use it. [Scripting News]

SpaceShipOne captures X Prize

If we manage to survive the next few years, this may prove to be the most important news of 2004.

Historic Space Exploration Event. spaceshipone

  • CNN: SpaceShipOne captures X Prize. SpaceShipOne climbed into space for the second time in a week to claim the $10 million Ansari X Prize. X Prize officials said the privately funded craft reached 368,000 feet — well into space — Monday to win the $10 million prize.

    • A wonderful day for space buffs, and humanity. People will soon leave this planet, to live permanently in space and on other worlds, and this achievement is one huge step along that path. (Image thumbnail by Dexter and Southfield Schools, via CNN) [Dan Gillmor’s eJournal]

    McGee’s Musings new linking policy – what he said

    Now here is a linking policy I can get behind. It is, forwith, the linking policy at McGee’s Musings.

    Boing Boing has a linking policy. Cory Doctorow: After years of making fun of “linking policies” that set out the terms under which a website can be linked to, Boing Boing has decided to create a linking policy of our own. Here it is — now, abide by it!

    Boing Boing doesn’t believe in linking policies. They’re dangerous, have no basis in law, and they break the norms that make the Web possible. They’re a wicked, stupid idea.

    That said, if you believe in linking policies — that is, if you believe that people who make websites should be able to control who links to those sites and how — then have we got a policy for you:

    No site with a linking policy (other than a policy such as this one, created to deride and undermine the idea of linking policies) may link to Boing Boing. Ever. [Boing Boing]

    John Perry Barlow on John Kerry

    Once again, John Perry Barlow cuts to the heart of the matter. Here’s the core of it, although the whole thing is worth your time and attention:

    Right here, right now, somewhere over the Atlantic, I’m having a moment of clarity. I realize the obvious. I realize that, along with a lot of other people, I have fallen prey to the peculiar American frailty which has given us so many bad presidents. I refer to our national tendency to treat presidential elections as though we were all high-schoolers choosing a Prom King.

    Thus, when it comes to qualifying for the American Presidency, a grating accent can be a bigger political liability than a record of homicidally misguided policies. Being inconsistent is a greater personal failing than being consistently, doggedly, disastrously wrong. Being dorky is more damning than being dictatorial.

    We all need to get a grip and quickly. Whatever it has been traditionally, this Presidential race should not be a personality contest. I say this as much to myself to myself as I do to you. I have to snap out of it and remember we are not electing our new best friend here. We were electing a set of ideologies, cultural predispositions, policies, practices, and beliefs – many of them religious – that may literally affect the fate of life on earth. And one thing I will say for George Bush, he has disabused me of my old belief that it doesn’t really matter who’s President. [Barlow Friendz]

    A day at the Brigham

    Quite a week.

    Had a more direct and personal encounter with the Emergency Department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston earlier in the week than I would have liked. I’ve been working for a client in the Longwood Medical Area here since mid-July. Over the last several days I’d been having chest pains off and on. Generally not considered a good sign for an overweight, underexercised middle-aged male. I finally decided that being moderately embarrassed if it was nothing was significantly preferable to what my wife would do to me if it were something serious. The image of her digging me up to kill me was the deciding factor so I walked across the street to the Brigham.

    I’m happy to report that the outcome was moderate embarassment rather than immediate bypass surgery or worse. I spent a good portion of the day on a monitor and they ran me through a treadmill stress test. While not absolutely definitive, it appears that my heart is sound. My thanks to all the good folks I met at the Brigham who reassured me that I had done the sensible thing and made me feel comfortable despite my anxieties.

    Philosophy in my inbox

    Just to prove the email isn’t entirely useless, Charlotte passed the following along to me and I though it was worth sharing. I have no idea who the author is.

    “Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the
    intention of arriving safely in an attractive and
    well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways,
    Champagne in one hand – strawberries in the other, body
    thoroughly used up, totally worn out and
    screaming WOO HOO – What a Ride!”

     

    Reading habits and The Creative Habit

    I’ve been doing the 50-book challenge this year. Although I’m way behind on writing up what I’ve been reading, I think I have enough in the queue to hit the goal by year’s end. A quick count says I’ve posted 27 short reviews, I have another 6 books finished that I need to write up, and I have somewhere between 19 and 28 other books I have in various stages of completion.

    For years my reading habits typically have multiple books in various stages of being read. Sometimes I get sidetracked enough on some books that I end up having to start over, but generally I find it more interesting to have multiple threads running in parallel because I then get the additional benefit of watching and reacting to how different books interact with one another and with whatever I happen to be working on at the time.

    Perverse, I suppose, and YMMV.

    At the same time, this strategy also allows me to plow through particular books when I’m in the mood or they resonate in some way with my immediate needs. Often that may be nothing more than retreating into a good story. I blew through about half of The Rule of Four this weekend. Certainly doesn’t hurt that besides being a good read, it’s set on the campus of Princeton and that makes it feel like a mini-reunion.

    I chose to leave that on my bedside table when I headed out to O’hare this morning, however, to leave room in my backpack for Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. I’m not done yet, but will be before week’s end. I came upon this by way of a recommendation that showed up in my aggregator a while back from Dennis Kennedy (I think). This is an absolute must read (and re-read) for any of us who has to create as some part of what we do. In my own view, that includes anyone who would even loosely describe themselves as a knowledge worker.

    Among many insights, Tharp shows why most knowledge management efforts have been disappointing at best and points to how they will need to change to succeed. See Chapter 5, “Before You Can Think out of the Box, You Have to Start with a Box,” for insight into why knowledge management needs to start at the personal level, even if it must ultimately connect with those around you.

    A treat from Halley

    A nice Sunday afternoon treat from Halley.

    Our Job.

    Our Job

    Thanks to John Perry Barlow for ending his email with this great quotation.

    Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.

    — Thomas Merton

    [Halley’s Comment]