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June= 09, 2004

TDF Finale

Training Directo= rs Forum wrapped up midday. I am an exhausted but happy camper. Phil Jones t= old me 475 people attended (including 83 faculty and about 40 sponsor reps). I felt much more intimate. Talking with vendors and with friends, everyone agreed that small is beautiful. Training Directors Forum has the most loy= al customers of any VNU training event.


Informal Learning Center=

The small size, combined with healthy breaks, sponsored meals and open bar, and inviting facilities, encourage schmoozing. I talked myself hoarse.


Real Learning


More real learning.



Watch out for this bunch!

I have more notes and scribbles...but no more energy tonight.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 10:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June= 08, 2004

Dropouts


Tammy Galvin has stepped down as editor-in-chief of Training magazine, al= ong with Stacey Marmalejo. I'm looking forward to a revitalized Training mag.=

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June= 04, 2004

Googlism


One of my freshman roommates at college continually quoted Eccelesiastes, saying, "Vanity of vanities," sayeth the Preacher; "Vanity= of vanities, all is vanity." I don't know about you, but I'm glad colle= ge is behind me.

Googlism is all vanity, but it's quick and kind of fun. In brief, Googlism gathers phrases about you from you-know-where, e.g.

Googlism for: jay cross


jay cross is founder and ceo of internet time group
jay cross is a thought leader in elearning
jay cross is ceo of elearning forum
jay cross is a social scientist
jay cross is valiantly trying to get a webcast working on other end
jay cross is acknowledged
jay cross is a blunt proponent of the bottom
jay cross is doing some very interesting research and writing on elearnin= g
jay cross is director of the omega institute
jay cross is strictly business



Naturally, I had to try a few other names, for example:=

&nbs= p;

Googlism for: brandon hall


brandon hall is the official name of the administration building
brandon hall is not an appropriate setting for students with severe learn= ing disabilities
brandon hall is murdered on sept
brandon hall is from north carolina
brandon hall is a very structured and traditional school community which holds high expectations for its students
brandon hall is a leading independent expert in e
brandon hall is an internationally recognized researcher and speaker on e=
brandon hall is a person
brandon hall is an ideal location for your meeting or conference
brandon hall is probably the best known name in the lms
brandon hall is the lead researcher for brandon
brandon hall is a completely innocent victim
brandon hall is a renowned e
brandon hall is een onafhankelijk onderzoeker op het gebied van e


On a roll! Gotta try another name.

&nbs= p;

Googlism for: bill gates


bill gates is a satanic worshiper who uses microsoft to gain
bill gates is richer than
bill gates is the anti christ
bill gates is a theif
bill gates is on the bus
bill gates is a hero
bill gates is darth vader
bill gates is opening windows on world health
bill gates is the pope
bill gates is the devil
bill gates is "biggest
bill gates is killed in 1999
bill gates is evil
bill gates is not the
bill gates is committed to the macintosh
bill gates is a racist
bill gates is scheduled to testify in antitrust
bill gates is a wanker
bill gates is 666
bill gates is the devil himself
bill gates is an american unoriginal
bill gates is smiling
bill gates is not richer than god
bill gates is an arrogant
bill gates is a genius
bill gates is a wimp
bill gates is number one and worth 110 billion dollars
bill gates is sharing his fortune
bill gates is a bleeding heart do
bill gates is very busy taking over the world
bill gates is not the sort to allow a rival like steve case to get an edg= e on him
bill gates is not the only one who needs to think about antitrust
bill gates is going to have to physically come over to my house and lobotomize me before i believe that ie is not just an application
bill gates is a nice man really
bill gates is dead
bill gates is still rich
bill gates is richer than all african countries put together
bill gates is so powerful that microsoft has just declared itself a nucle= ar state



And another....

&nbs= p;

Googlism for: monica lewinsky



monica lewinsky is lovely
monica lewinsky is sex
monica lewinsky is not alone in this world
monica lewinsky is jewish? if she wasn't
monica lewinsky is another person who
monica lewinsky is so staged and controlled
monica lewinsky is writing a "tell
monica lewinsky is interviewed on tv
monica lewinsky is not alone in this world not so much time ago the whole world was watching the development of the notorious story between
monica lewinsky is trying to say? read the original in russian
monica lewinsky is what the cia and the kgb used to refer to as a "h= oney trap"
monica lewinsky is safe sex? try telling your spouse oral sex isn't adult= ery?
monica lewinsky is a dame



For this final one, I'll admit that I deleted lots of redundancy and distastefulness.

&nbs= p;

Googlism for: britney spears



britney spears is dead
britney spears is not my daughter's role model
britney spears is #1 woman
britney spears is here
britney spears is a new elvis presley and a new american icon
britney spears is one fine shtook of ace
britney spears is the world's top celebrity according to forbes
britney spears is feeling fine
britney spears is so hot when
britney spears is single
britney spears is not a real woman
britney spears is a virgin
britney spears is smoking cigarette
britney spears is vet
britney spears is fake
britney spears is the best
britney spears is set for a role in buffy the vampire slayer
britney spears is 2001's #1 woman online
britney spears is planning to release a collectible book and dvd in decem= ber
britney spears is spending some time away from music
britney spears is one of the biggest sensations to hit the world of pop britney spears is living a 'dream'
britney spears is nude
britney spears is not a slut
britney spears is awfully busy
britney spears is a man
britney spears is writing a tell
britney spears is evil
britney spears is naked on the net
britney spears is like many 17 year old girls
britney spears is a three
britney spears is the target for parody
britney spears is world tour starts let me know thanks re
britney spears is walking down the street with a pig under her arm
britney spears is the pentium 4
britney spears is much inspired by the man with great contributions to co= mputer science
britney spears is ready to drive milk fans crazy one more time
britney spears is back and she's here to stay
britney spears is hanging out with jenna jameson and according to friends=
britney spears is to be given an award for her charity work
britney spears is far from upset over her parents' recent divorce
britney spears is eyeing a future career in politics
britney spears is a virgin i
britney spears is mine
britney spears is still a virgin and plans on remaining pure until marria= ge
britney spears is both religious and conservative
britney spears is 20 years old
britney spears is an amazing young woman

Bet you can't resist: Googlism <= /p>

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 05:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Upcoming Events


This Saturday I'll be attending PlaNetwork in the San Francisco Presidio. It's a great venue for strengthening weak ties.


Sunday afternoon I arrive in Chandler, Arizona, for Training Directors For= um. I'll be there through Wednesday afternoon.


Will exchange scintillating conversation and/or consulting advice in exchange for rides= to and from Sky Harbor Airport. I arrive in Phoenix 3:30 pm Sunday and depart 4:30 pm Wednesday.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 12:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June= 03, 2004

eLearning Effectiveness?

Oxymorons.info lists more = than 800 combinations of contradictory or incongruous words, such as 'Cruel Kindness' or 'Jumbo Shrimp.'

 <= /p>

&n= bsp;

Assistant

Manager=

Home

Office<= /p>

Independent

Financi= al Advisor

Industrial

Park

Job

Securit= y

Limited

Lifetime Guarantee

Liquid

Paper

Long

Briefin= g

Mobile

Station=

Mobil™

Station=

Mono

poly

Moving

Target<= /p>

New

Antiques (Arriving Daily!)



This got me thinking about the state of corporate learning.

Level 1

evaluation

e

Learning

Performance

model

This page intentionally left blank.

For a non-laughing matter, how about this post to David Farb= er's IP maillist:


From: "Trei, Peter"
To: dave@farber.net
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 10:58:50 -0400
Subj: The worst case of password abuse - ever.

This is just Strangelovesque....

What was the password which controlled the firing of America= 's ICBMs for years during the height of the Cold War?

00000000

That's right. For *all* of them. The Permissive Action Link codes for all of Americas missiles provided less protection than on an average suitcase.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 09:15 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May = 29, 2004

ASTD msg 1 of n

I'm spending sev= eral days with my parents in Northern Virginia and will be flying back to the = West Coast tomorrow.

Why the blog bre= ak? I lost my nationwide Internet connection, so I've been unable to post pho= tos. Email is spotty, too. Thanks to everyone who expect me to be more consist= ent and wrote to see if I were okay.

The official wor= d on ASTD is:

(Alexandria, VA) May 28, 2004 - Over 8,900 training, learnin= g, and performance professionals from 78 countries attended the American Soc= iety for Training & Development's (ASTD) 2004 International Conference &am= p; Exposition, the workplace learning and performance industry's most comprehensive annual event. The ASTD Conference took place May 23-27 at t= he new Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The EXPO drew 342 vendors.

The Jay-version = of what went on, scheduled to appear here next week, will feature coverage of the chirping cicadas, the Who Moved My Cheese booth, my annual award for = the worst expo booth, coverage of the bash at the Smithsonian, and tidbits of corporate espionage.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 01:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May = 16, 2004

User indifference

Notice anything = odd about this ad for the Microsoft watch?

It's upsidedown.= Who wears a watch that only others can read?

I'm trying to synchronize three lists of contacts. There's a contact list in Outlook 20= 03 but all the entries in mine are duplicates (and I have no clue how to weed out the redundent ones). There's an Address Book available via Accessories that contains another list entirely. And there's a list that Card Scan maintains. And I almost forgot the names and email addresses that Outlook= is capturing as I send mail; I can't find where these are. And some fragments left over from Outlook Express. And a list trapped in Eudora. And another= in Mozilla Mail.

Communicating wi= th contacts is one of my prime functions on the net, but if Microsoft has information to help out, I've yet to find it. There's no apparent automat= ic backup. Synchronization is a nightmare. What I really need is a secure web-based way to maintain one list of contacts info that's accessible wherever I am.

I'd prefer to ha= ve to read my watch upsidedown than to continue struggling with hidden .wad = and .pst files. Am I alone in my confusion?

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 01:06 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Apri= l 29, 2004

Sonoma Dreaming

This week is the quiet before the storm, for May is chock-a-block with conferences, presentations, and writing porjects. I hate to tread the same ground twic= e, so I'm inventing lots of new content and fresh examples. Several years ag= o, my preparation would have included meticulously planning inputs and outpu= ts, due dates and audience profiles, notes and journal entries, and a field of PostIt notes. In an unpredictable world, this old logic no longer applies= .

After a charming lunch with a friend in Sonoma, I drove up t= he long, tree-lined driveway to the former home of General Mariano G. Vallejo (1808-1890), who, at the age of 30, was named comandante-general of California. His charming carpenter gothic home, built in 1850, is now a s= tate park. I sat on a bench across from a one-room meditation cottage by a fountain in the side garden.

I inhaled a few = deep breaths, tuned in to the babbling fountain, and gave my hand the freedom = to scribble whatever came to mind. After a bit of pruning, I'd roughed out s= ome changes in the world that can serve as the foundation of my upcoming pres= entations:

Schadenfreude continuation.

Fifteen years ag= o, a French chateau appeared in the southern section of Sonoma Valley known as Carneros. It's a knock-off ot the Taittinger family chateau in Champagne.= The day's work nearly done, I felt compelled to stop.

I liked the Brut better than the pricier rose and the all-chardonnay Reve de Blancs-de-bla= ncs. Alas, the bubbles disappeared from the Brut before I'd finished my half-g= lass sample.

Small wor= ld. The fellow who brought my wine sampler and I struck up a conversation. He conducts an online leadership program through a local college. Soon we were doing riffs on value-driver collaboration.

By now you may be wondering, "Has Jay totally lost it?" Maybe. But I think it's m= ore the return of spring, bright sunshine, and flowers everywhere.

Here's where I'm investing my time these days, not in priority order:

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 11:58 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Apri= l 27, 2004

Upcoming Events


This Friday. Free.

3D""3D""3D""3D""3D""


Knowledge Roundtable 2004: e-Learning: From Practice to Profit


Wednesday, May 5th - Friday, May 7th
Radisson Harbourfront Hotel, Kingston, Ontario

Speakers: Dr. Maryam Alavi, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Research, Emory University, Dr. Roberto H. Bamberger, Solutions Architect, Microsoft Corporation, Jay Cross, CEO, Emergent Learning Forum, Jacques Gaumond, Vi= ce President Sales and Marketing, Technomedia Training Inc., Lynette Gillis, President, Learning Designs Online, Lucy Jacobus, Senior Manager, STRATX, Maxim Jean-Louis, President & CEO, Contact North/Contact Nord, Leslie Jefford, Learning Consultant, Bell Canada Enterprises Corporate Services, Sebastien Lamiaux, Consultant, STRATX, Richard Nantel, Director, brandon-hall.com, Jamie Rossiter, Director, E-Learning Program, CANARIE I= nc., Patrick Sullivan, President, Workopolis, Trace Urdan, Principal and Senior Research Analyst, ThinkEquity Partners Inc.

Dow= nload e-Learning: From Practice to Profit Brochure
Register Online

I'll be talking about "Metrics, A Pragmatic and Contrarian View"= ;.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 10:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Apri= l 24, 2004

'Lanta

I spent several = days this week in Atlanta.


Ali-Oli, a beautiful restaurant in Buckhead. Jet-laged Jay, enjoying a fi= ne meal.


What a gorgious place to work. The dining room is built directly over the Chattahoochie River.


The Chattahoochie National Recreation Area provides access along the riverbanks. I sat a spell to read.


The swallows were brave enough to let me get close.


On impulse, I went to see Kill Bill 2. As I entered the darkened theatre,= I was almost knocked out by the smell of fast food. The audience was seated= at small tables and counters. I pulled up a chair to the counter. The guy on= my right was digging into chicken barbecue; the folks to the left were gobbl= ing a pile of French fries. Both had pitchers of beer.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 09:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Apri= l 19, 2004

e-Merging e-Learning

If you happen to= be in Abu Dhabi in mid-September, drop by the e-Merging e-Learning Conference.

I'll be speaking, along with Curt Bonk, Richard Straub, and some interesting-sounding characters I have yet to meet. This will be my first trip to the Middle E= ast. Any advice?

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 02:12 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Apri= l 13, 2004

Exercise?

Exercise is not = my favorite activity. I'd much rather sit at my desk and mind-meld with the = net. Usually I need something besides my health to push me out the door to wan= der the hills of my neighborhood. Yesterday it was photographing spring color= s as I walked. The day before, the dogs begged so hard, I couldn't let them do= wn.


Spring in Berkeley (click for larger image)

Tonight I downloaded mp3 interviews with Tim O'Reilly, John Hagel, Steve MeConnell, Don Norman, an= d a bunch of other people I hold in high regard. Tomorrow I'll walk up Wildcat Peak while imbibing their words of wisdom.

Internet Surfing Finds

Entropy= at MIT

Complexity Digest

Santa Fe Institute=

New England Complex Systems Institute

The Complexity & Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 09:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Apri= l 08, 2004

Free webinar this Tuesday

Join me o= nline this coming Tuesday, April 13th, at 3:00 pm Eastern, noon Pacific. We'll spend about an hour together.

The title of my = chat is Emergent Learning. The sign-up page says I'll talk about about adaptive systems, social networking, contextual collaboration, content aggregation, value networks, real-time enterprise, business process modeling, and the economic return = from intangible assets.

Frankly, I have = yet to outline what I'm really= going to talk about. (If you have suggestions/questions, email me. I w= ill likely cover a dozen recent discoveries and insights, thereby increasing = the odds of offering something to everyone.


Register here. It's free.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Apri= l 06, 2004

Knowledge Roundtable 2004: e-Learning

Knowledge Roundtable 2004: e-Learning: From Practice to Profit

Wednesday, May 5= th - Friday, May 7th
Radisson Harbourfront Hotel, Kingston, Ontario


Speakers:=

Dr. Maryam Alavi, Senior Associa= te Dean of Faculty and Research, Emory University
Dr. Roberto H. Bamberg= er, Solutions Architect, Microsoft Corporation
Jay Cross, CEO, Emergent Learning Forum
Jacques Gaumond= , Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Technomedia Training Inc.
Lynette Gillis<= /strong>, President, Learning Designs Online
Lucy Jacobus, Senior Manager, STRATX
Maxim Jean-Louis, President & CEO, Contact North/Contact Nord
Leslie Jefford<= /strong>, Learning Consultant, Bell Canada Enterprises Corporate Services
Sebastien Lamiaux, Consultant, STRATX
Richard Nantel<= /strong>, Director, brandon-hall.com
Jamie Rossiter<= /strong>, Director, E-Learning Program, CANARIE Inc.
Patrick Sullivan, President, Workopolis
Trace Urdan, Principal and Senior Research Analyst, ThinkEquity Partners Inc.


Download e-Learning: From Practice to Profit Brochure

Register Online



Jay Cross
May 7, 2004

Metrics are relative, not absolute. Find out why the only valid
metrics for corporate learning are business metrics. Figure out
what matters in your organization; then show the connection
between that and what you do. Kirkpatrick’s four levels are bunk.
Imagine telling your sales manager that the sales force was well
prepared (“Lev= els 1 & 2”) but simply hadn’t sold anything (“Levels
3 & 4”). = Good luck in your next job.

Traditional accounting assigns intangibles a value of zero.
Hence, traditional ROI has little credibility with enlightened executives= .

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 10:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Apri= l 01, 2004

Even amateurs play this game

Quiz: How many errors can= you spot in this unsolicited email?

Dear Jay,

________ is a 5 year old custom content development and Education
Organization with presence in over 5 countries of the globe. We provide training solutions to individuals, organizations,colleges, universities,<= br> and the Government. 6?

With strength in Instructional design,Content Research and Development,
Design & Development of Learning Technologies & Tools, we offer organizations end to end learning solutions for all your custom content and training needs. But who punctuates your courseware?=

We are enclosing in this mail details of a proposition which we would like
to discuss with your organization. We would like to partner with
__________ to offer solutions to your partners in Custom content
development. There is no enclousre.

We would welcome any further queries you may have in this direction and
looking forward to a discussion. I can hardly wait.=

Best Regards
Raju


_______, the global eLearning consultancy
Sr. Manager, Business Development
Chennai 600 004
India.

----------------= ---------------------------------------------------------------------------= ----------------------------
Please take note:


1. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, please let us know immediately. Kindly refrain from disclosing, copying, or using the information in any way. You heard the man. Don't share= any of this valuable form letter.


2. As an anti-virus measure, our mail server rejects the following
attachments: *.com; *.exe; *.bat; *.eml; *.mp3; *.dot; *.vb; *.vbs; *.vbe= .
If you need to send us an attachment of this type, please contact Tock at=
chat____net.


Thank you!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------= ----------------------------------------------

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 12:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Marc= h 30, 2004

Yes, that is I

In answer to your queries, yes, I'm the subject in the photo currently in the header of Internet Time Blog. Palo Alto, California. A few years back.

Here's one from = the same era, this one shot in Alexandria, Virginia.

Photographs are = the only memories I retain from this period. They aren't real memories, so mu= ch as reconstructions. Of course, if you bought the logic of Dr. Gerald Edel= man repeated here last week, "real memory" is an oxymoron. "No brain event happens the same way twice. Even memory is always a variant, = he says — a re-creation, ne= ver a repetition."

We don't "remember;" we re-think.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Marc= h 28, 2004

Spam, spam, spam, spam, virus

I'm getting five= or ten messages a day that read like this one:

Hello user of InternetTime.com e-mail server, <= /o:p>

Some of our clients complained about the spam (negative e-mail content)
outgoing from your e-mail account. Probably, you have been infected by
a proxy-relay trojan server. In order to keep your computer safe,
follow the instructions.

For details see the att= ach.

The attachment is invariably a virus-laden document.

Since I run the "InternetTime.com e-mail server," the emails are clearly bogus.= Don't you be fooled.=

Yesterday's email also brought a request from "Citibank" that I send them my PIN = and account number for "verification." This was a new form of an old con; I alerted Citibank security.

Opening the mail these days is like walking through a mine field.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 08:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Marc= h 27, 2004

Context Driven Topologies

Context Driven Topolo= gies is a collaborative effort to begin to draw the geometry of knowledge as it changes over time.

The aim is long-term digital preservation by redefin= ing the relationship between historical comprehension, human dynamics, the pa= ce which new ideas emerge and change other ideas around them - and a new way= to describe this process to advanced networks of machines.

Lou Kauffman, a knot th= eory topologist and project participant explains it as this “For me, the key concept is that of the "p= ivot". An image in one field can trigger a patterned response in another field d= ue to matching structures at some level of discourse. The surface appearance= can be of a "tiny" relationship due to much that lies beneath the surface. The key to this project will be the facilitation of such pivot events. This requires the creation of space and context, not computation = or classification. But computation and classification are necessary ingredie= nts to make the images and information available for play and purvey”.

Whoa! Knot theory topologist? Other participants include a cognitive scientist and ontological engineer interested iin semiotics, a theoretical nuclear and particle physicist, a chemist and natural philosopher, a theoretical morphologist, a Los Alamos theorist and invent= or in physics, neuroscience and emergent computation; a theoretical cosmolog= ist, a sculptor interested in symbols, form and unseen concepts; an American composer of concert music, a painter using oils on canvas to dwell on the order in disorder, a painter investigating process grammars and artworks = as maximal memory stores, an unusual kind of choreographer living in a small town in Germany (He makes audio acoustic clothes), a photographer from New York City who investigates the nature of light and is a painter of formal abstraction derived from physics and mathematics, an artist transforming = data from non-art images to suggest a complex economical portrait of how learn= ing and innovation evolve over time, an inventor interested in information visualization and interaction design, and more artists, animators, and archivists.

And what do I ha= ve to do with this group? One of my oddball hobbies is looking for art in nature. The person working to get an NSF grant for this project came upon= a photograph of gravel I took in Point Richmond five or six years ago. It's= the righthand image below:

Deborah MacPhers= on plans to use this in a presentation at the Fourth International Conference MATHEMATICS & DESIGN (M&D-2004) in Buenos Aires this June. [ Her portfolio= ]

Weirder things h= ave happened to me; I just can't seem to recall them right now.

Here's a Rothko = that popped up in my window while flying from Paris to San Francisco a couple = of years ago. I think this is Kansas:

And another Roth= ko trouvee, this one the beach in Nice:

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 05:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Marc= h 25, 2004

DigitalThought

Convergys, an outsourced billing and customer service operation spun out of Cincinnati Bell, is buying custom content developer DigitalThink for $120 million, a= bout 3x revenue. Think of it as buying staff at $320,000/head.

DigitalThink was riding high in mid-2000 when it announced a long-term $100 million deal w= ith EDS. Yesterday DigitalThink said their arrangement with EDS was toast.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 01:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Marc= h 23, 2004

An Alternate Reality

Late this aftern= oon I drove from Berkeley to south San Jose, a two-hour journey along crowded= but fast-moving freeways. Usually I'll spend a long drive contemplating the future or just letting my brain hop from one topic to the next: Honda Acc= ord as isolation chamber. Today I cut on the radio. NPR was broadcasting Sena= te hearings on 9-11.

Deja vu. Senate hearings are an old dance form. Al Pacino and Robert Duvall in the Godfat= her captured them perfectly. The McCarthy Hearings were better live tango than Uncle Miltie ("Senator, have you no common decency?"). The propaganda & innuendo of the House Unamerican Activities Committee waltzed through my school and countless others (Operation Abolition -- Wa= tch the lefties ride the spray of the firehose down the steps of San Francisco City Hall). The Watergate shuffle kept me glued to the tube for the better part of a summer (bonus points: John Dean lived in the same block in Alexandria as my parents at the time).

When Rummy came = on today to go through the motions, the image of Robert McNamara kept popping into my head. In Fog of War, McNamara says that when they ask you a quest= ion, you don't answer it. Instead, you answer the question you wish they'd ask= ed. I smiled as a senator told Rumsfeld that his answer was great but it didn= 't address the question he'd been asked.

The central them= e of today's inquiry, and I'm cutting a few corners here, boils down to "= Does shit happen?" A senator would ask whether we shouldn't have figured = that bad guys might hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings. No, not necessarily, would come the reply. You can't be ready for everything. The smart-ass senator would suggest that maybe if we'd declared war on Al Qua= ida, that would have focused our attention. How so? asked the intel guys, noti= ng that while always alert to avoiding "collateral damage," we've = been trying to off Osama for years. Declaring war on a decentralized organizat= ion that flies no flag wouldn't have helped. Yeah, but maybe we'd have assess= ed "actionable intelligence" more liberally. I'm certainly not an apologist for Rummy, but the Senate's Monday-morning quarterbacking is so= far from reality, it makes me ill.

Hey, you guys in= side the Beltway, the world is unpredictable. Get over it. Sometimes there's no one to blame. As I mentioned, shit happens. Q.E.D. Deal with it. Let's wo= rk on improving the situation. Or is that too bi-partisan?=

Coming up next: Religion. (Just fooling.)

 

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 08:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Marc= h 21, 2004

Celebrity spam, the new collectable

Jakob! You rasca= l! And I was hoping to pick up an Esther.

Poste= d by Jay Cross at 05:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Marc= h 19, 2004

Wordless workshop

Pictures louder = than words department:



Trans Canada highway enroute from Fredricton to Moncton.


The river here was majestically frozen.



This farm dog was suspicious of me taking pictures on the frozen riverban= k.


Moncton is healthy, except maybe for this place where the pizzas are grea= t, and the beer brewered on premises.


Stephen Downes and I compared notes in the aforementioned Pump House.


Harold Jarche and I talked about everything from CMS and Drupal to pumpin= g up eLearning in the Province.

Posted by Jay Cross at 09:18 P= M | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 13, 2004

Pandora's mailbox

Most of you aren= 't newbies, but here's a warning, just in case.

My emailbox is overflowing with bogus warnings from Microsoft this mornin= g. Typical copy:

New MyDoom Virus Variant Detected!

A new variant of the W32.Mydoom (W32.Novarg) worm spread rapidly through the Internet. Anti-virus vendor Central Command claims that 1 in 45 e-mails contains the MyDoom virus.

The worm also has a backdoor Trojan capability. By default, the Trojan compon= ent listens on port 13468.

The attachment is a virus. Do not open the attachment.

Microsoft does not email virus alerts. Ever. These email bom= bs are sent out by the viruses themselves.

Posted by Jay Cross at 12:28 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 12, 2004

Google/Yahoo Compare

I love it when people come up with stuff like this.

Get an instant comparison= of hits on the topic of your choice on Google and Yahoo. The blue lines s= how the relative position.

Give it a try. (Go ahead, do some ego-surfing. See the relat= ive rankings of your ego-boo.)

Thanks to David Weinberger for the pointer.

Posted by Jay Cross at 07:46 P= M | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 11, 2004

Tangents

After dinner, I figured I invest an hour in crafting my RSS experiments<= /a> page. Fat chance.

I scanned the fi= rst half dozen items and then my curiosity kicked in. There is simply too much cool stuff on the web. Maish Nichani hijacked my attention, saying

The need for design research seems quite obvious: work and life have become complex; we need holistic methods to understand the changing relationships before designing anythin= g. Nathan Shedroff offers a glimpse of how holistic one needs to get in designing experiences.

I sense a similar shift in e-learning design: from instructional design to learner experience design (LXD). If this too= is going to be a mind, body, and soul shift, then we are need to be more holistic. We need to look beyond learner characteristics and learning objectives. We need our own set of learner experience methods to help us understand the complexities of learning, working, and decision making in = the real world.

Nathan's site was beautiful and thoght-provoking (and marred= by dead links). Ideo's experience design was so compelling that I shelled out $50 for a set of methodcards (which I'll tell you about once I have them = in hand).

Next I followed Maish's lead to Zen and the Art of Knowledge Manage= ment, a short but cogent description that cuts to the chase. It's as if author = Carl Davidson has been reading my mind, for he's giving the same oddball advice that I do: visual learning, storytelling, talk spaces, social network analysis, and even a lovely quote from e e cummings:

While you and i have lips and voices which are for kissing and to sing with who cares if some one-eyed = son of a bitch invents an instrument to measure Spring with?

I'll be back to explore the other resources here.


"RSS Job One: Managing The Real-Time Information Flow" is the tit= le of an article by Robin Good, and that says why "syndication" is= so important. There's a wide river of opinions, pointers, and facts floating= by 24/7. You can cross your fingers, wait weeks or months, and drink in a filtered, flavored, packaged bit of the flow from some corporate backwate= r, or you can scoop some current, unadulterated stuff out of the river with = your RSS dipper right now.


How News Travels on the Internet by Steve VanDyke. So true. I think t= he chart needs a few more pieces: distortion filters, amplifiers, misinterpreters, spin doctors, etc.

Posted by Jay Cross at 11:27 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bait-and-switch

I spent the last 90 minutes on Orbitz trying to find the best multicity fare for a trip to Washington and New Brunswick. Finally, I fou= nd the right combination and clicked the "Book It" button:

Twenty seconds later, I had signed in. Then I received this message:

Drat. How could the price jump so fast? Answer: It hadn't. I went back to the beginning and re-entered the data. Guess what?

I know that airline pricing is a very complicated, ever-changing, mix of stuff, but that's no excuse for promoting one price when your software knows it's higher.

There's the old story about the woman who goes into the butc= her shop.

Lady: "$5 a pound for hamburger!?! The butcher down the street only charges $4/lb." <= /o:p>

Butcher: "Why don't you buy your hamburg= er from him?

Woman: "He's sold out."<= /span>

Butcher" "Lady, when we're out of hamburger, it's only $1 a pound."

The next three flights I chose were sold out.

When I finally found a flight that actually had seats, Orbitz told me:

This time I made it all the way to bottom of the final scree= n:

Then my screen froze. I waited ten minutes, then bailed. My "My Stuff" folder showed that I'd booked the flight. Time to pi= ck a seat.

Uh oh. Looks like the skies are crowded. Six legs on my trip; not an aisle seat in the bunch.

Posted by Jay Cross at 12:31 P= M | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 10, 2004

The daily training spam


I dunno, Steve.. Dyslexia, maybe?

Posted by Jay Cross at 06:12 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 01, 2004

Regis McKenna

Next on stage at the WebEx User Conference was Regis McKenna, marketer extraordinaire. This is the guy who helped launch America Online, Apple, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Intel, Linear Technology, Lotu= s, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, Silicon Graphics, 3COM, and many other= s.

Regis is my kind of marketer. He published an article in Har= vard Business Review that claimed "Marketing is everything." His foc= us on time played a role in me naming my company Internet Time Group. <= /o:p>

Since I've read all his books, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that Regis's thinking directly parallels mine.=

The network is t= he new social and cultural model. Even Al Quida billed itself as a network. =

Marketing evolves as it involves.

The goal of marketing is to build and sustain relationships with buyer and seller, and to expand and sustain those relationships over time.

In 2002, humans created 5 exobytes of new informaiton (that's about as many bytes as the earth has ants.)

Marketing is being redefined as a learning process.

Moore's Law is behind the ascendence of value-added services.

Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) wrote that the Net made possible "drive-by relationships."

Marketing is everybody's job.

Starbucks is in the real estate business. In Silicon Valley, there's a Starbucks in= side another Starbucks.

Regis pulled a few gadgets out of his pockets, noting that h= e'd given his 10 year old granddaughter an i-Mac. Upon receiving it, she turn= ed it on and said, "Life is good." She has a cell phone, too.

Regis pulled a transistor out of his pocket. Next he held up= a tiny chip that contained 500 million transistors. And after that, a vial = that contained 1.5 billion nanodevices.

Of course, I had to find a way to talk with this guy, so I followed him behind the curtain. Handing my camera to someone in the crow= d, we posed for a picture. Damn. Eyes closed again. At least this will give = me an excuse to try to force my way into see Regis once more.

Posted by Jay Cross at 07:51 P= M | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 26, 2004

Awesome

The digital natives, kids who grow up with computers and the= Net as part of their lives, have one big advantage over me: they will be alive long after I'm dead. One place I have something they have been denied is = awe. Things that appear on the Net simply blow me away.

For example, I just followed a pointer from Robin Good to MultiMap. =

Here's where Uta and I were married, in Heidelberg, Germany.=

And the red dot marks my grandmother's house in Hope, Arkans= as.

For someone who has bought heaven-only-knows how many paper maps, this sort of thing is phenomenal.

Posted by Jay Cross at 01:37 A= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 23, 2004

GetIt!


Hard to imagine, but if you just don't have enough Jay in your life, read this Insig= ht Newsletter from GetIt Multimedia. (I know -- it's time for a new photo.)

Loyal Emergent Learning Forum members know Laina Raveendran Green, the interviewer and GetIt's CEO, for she attends our sessions when she's on this side of the Pacific (instead of Singapore).

Posted by Jay Cross at 11:18 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 16, 2004

Edinburgh

I adore travel to unfamiliar places. Even in the gray drizzl= e, alleys and cemetaries are beautiful if beauty is what you're looking for:=

Some things remind one of home...

Others are a fun surprise, as in this Safeway:

Sometimes, you make private associations that bring a smile = to your face.

Tonight I enjoyed a phenomenal dinner of nouveau Scottish cuisine. A pear stuffed with crab meat, wrapped in delicate smoked salmon. Grilled halibut in a red pepper coulis atop haricots verts and lightly sautéed vegetables. Three delectable Scottish cheeses. =

The dollar is so worthless (less than half a £) than I feel like I'm carrying a third-world currency.

Luckily, I have no hang-up about shopping for bargains where= ver I find myself. Speaking of which, I find the 10-year old Ardbeg Single Is= lay Malt superior to the 17-year. The elder is smoother, but it has lost too = much of the youngster's peatiness.


Tasting notes

Next time I'm in Scotland, I think I'll go island hopping.

Posted by Jay Cross at 02:25 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 07, 2004

New TV Series

Ripped from the headlines!!! (Today's= New York Times)

White Collar Crime Unit

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 6 - I= rwin Schiff, the nation's best-known promoter of claims that no law requires t= he payment of income taxes, suffers from delusions including a fantasy that = he alone can properly interpret the tax laws, according to papers that he had his lawyers file in Federal District Court in Las Vegas.

The mayor= 's office noted that Irwin Schiff is not related for former DA Adam Shiff. <= o:p>

The mental health claim= is also a ruse, according to an e-mail message sent on Tuesday to Mr. Schiff= 's thousands of supporters by his girlfriend, Cindy Nuen. She wrote that this defense is the only way for Mr. Schiff to escape fraud penalties because,= she wrote, his lawyers are "scared" to tell judges that "the income tax law is meritless and frivolous."

Mr. Schiff's personal psychiatrist, Dr. Luis Carlos Ortega of Las Vegas, wrote last year, ... that Mr. Schiff has suffered from paranoid delusions about= the tax system for decades.

...Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco is scheduled to hear or= al arguments on Tuesday on whether Mr. Schiff can be barred from selling his book "The Federal Mafia: How the Federal Government Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Federal Income Taxes."

Posted by Jay Cross at 10:20 P= M | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 06, 2004

MyDoom, Your Doom

I have now wasted eight hours over the past couple of weeks deleting virus-mail from my inb= ox. When the Feds find the S.O.B. who opened this Pandora's Box of cyber-mayh= em, I propose they send him to Guantanamo for twenty years of :interrogation" by the best thugs the CIA can buy.=

This morning I read through a hundred incoming emails on the= web using Horde. I deleted 95% of them as obvious Spam.

This reminds me of hearing Tom Stewart talking about how ema= il appears in his inbox "as if delivered in the night by some evil Santa."

Posted by Jay Cross at 09:39 A= M | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 31, 2004

Help save Berkeley landmarks<= /h3>

You may know that I love the Berkeley hills and their pathwa= ys. Last year I described a beau= tiful walk up a hill lined with houses designed by our revered, indigenous architect, Bernard Maybeck. A few days ago, a resident of that hi= ll asked my help in getting the local Zoning Board to deny granting a special use permit that would allow someone to build an enormous, view-blocking, = 22' by 2-story wall in this neighborhood. I'll do what I can.

To make a difference, you need to register your feelings with the Berkeley Zoning Board by this Thusday. For particulars, email: maybeckhill@yahoo.com They'll respond quickly and with gratitude!

Take your choice:


a. Unobstructed View


b. Two story, 22' high, industrial box

Click thumbnail for larger images.

The neighbor's letter:

History It's a sad day when the character of the Berkeley Hills is jeopardized by= a new, very determined land-owner. The area comprising Buena Vista Way, La = Loma and Maybeck Twin Drives, is cited as one of the most significant in the s= tate by architectural historians.

The origins of the neighborhood's special reputation go back to the late 1890s when Maybeck began designing homes in Berkeley that blended into their natural surroundings and projected a simple, healthy lifestyle for their inhabitants.

Maybeck lived on Buena Vista Way and designed a number of significant houses ther= e: the "Sack" House and the Wallen Maybeck House and the Mathewson studio to name a few. All designs reflected his guiding principles of blending in with the environment. In addition to Maybeck's former buildin= gs, others such as The Boynton House ("Temple of the Wings") and the Hume Cloister, add historic interest to the neighborhood. All of these ho= uses have been respectfully developed and many have been designated National or State Historic Landmarks, under a time-consuming process initiated by the= ir owners.

Call it Buena Vista Way, Maybeck's area or more curiously, "Nut Hill,&quo= t; it's a place with a lot of history. And a place that has been preserved by owners and occupants for everyone in all Berkeley and beyond to enjoy. Th= ose who live there delight to see runners, bikers, interested tourists and of course, the Path Wanderers, come up and take a look around, take in the v= iews and peer inside some unique homes. Often times, when they see a walker huffing and puffing toward the top, they offer a glass of juice or an invitation "to come inside and poke around." It's a resource for the whole city, and residents are proud to be its guardians.

It's not always a breeze to live in the area however because the codes around zoning and building are fairly strict. Additions to homes and even permit= s to build carports are not easy to come by. Thus far, these few special "blocks" have developed organically and their uniqueness remains intact.

The Issue at Hand
Unfortunately, residents living in Maybeck homes and others there, are now faced with a possible decision by the Zoning Adjustments Board to allow a very large, very modern and mostly windowless house to be built in the mi= ddle of the historic area. The lot to be developed was part of the site of the home that Maybeck built and lived in until it was destroyed by the major Hills fire in 1923.

If Use Permits are granted, the house as designed will be almost twice as ta= ll as anything else in the area and characterized by a 22-foot long façade that would eliminate the views of the Bay from the street. =

Neighbors have written letters, gone to late-night Zoning Board Hearings and as respectfully but solidly as possible opposed these Use Permits being gran= ted. The residents are not against development, in fact, some are contractors = and builders.

They are however united against this project that does not respect the history= of the area. They have worked to preserve the Hill as a Berkeley resource and find it difficult to believe that its future could soon be forever altere= d.

Taking a Stand
They would be very appreciative to have Path Wanderers Members write a le= tter to the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board and/or the Planning Commission or otherwise communicate with the powers that be in the City, to OPPOSE this project.

The final Zoning Board vote is scheduled for FEB 12th. Zoning Board members w= ill review all letters and input received by FEB 5th.

Wes Boyd, MoveOn founder, when he was interviewed by CTNow last August said, "You wish these things would be taken care of by other people." Area residents are hoping the Path Wanderers might be a group that cares enough about the history and preservation of the Hills that they would be= inspired to write to the City on this.

The address:

Zoning Adjustments Board C/o Current Planning Division 2120 Milvia Street Berkeley, CA 94704

Re: proposed house at 2861 Buena Vista Way
Attn: Sage

 


Temple of the Wings

&nbs= p;

Posted by Jay Cross at 03:40 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 30, 2004

No room for LMS big boys

Contracting Office Address

Office of Personnel Manageme= nt, Contracting, Facilities and Administrative Services Group, Contracting Division, 1900 E Street, N.W., Room 1342, Washington, DC, 20415-7710=

Description

The Office of Personnel Management in Washington, D.C. will be issuing a Request for Proposal (RF= P) that will lead to the establishment of multiple Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts for online training, products and services in support of the Government Online Learning Center (GoLearn). GoLearn is responsible for providing the full spectrum of web-based human capital performance (e-HCP) tools and the full range of web-based training content, including academic, technical, executive and organizational development courses to federal employees.... The LMS/LCMS niche will be set aside totally for small business. The N= AICS code for this niche is 541511 (Custom Computer Programming Services). For this niche a company is considered small if it has gross average annual sales for the proceeding three years o= f less than $21 million.

Posted by Jay Cross at 09:17 P= M | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 29, 2004

Uh-oh, proper perspective

A Daughter's Letter home from College

Dear Mom and Dad:

It has been four months since I left for coll= ege. I have been remiss in writing and am very sorry for my thoughtlessness. I will bring you up to date now, but before you read on, please sit down. D= on't read any further unless you are sitting down .... OK?

[If you know this old chestnut, jump ahead to= the sequel.]

Good. I am getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture and the concussion I got from jumping out of the window of= my dormitory when it caught fire, shortly after my arrival, are pretty well healed now. I only spent two weeks in the hospital and now I can see almo= st normally and only get three headaches a day. Fortunately, the fire in the dormitory and my jump were witnessed by an attendant at a nearby gas stat= ion, and he was able to call the Fire Department and the ambulance. He also visited me at the hospital, and since I had nowhere to live because of the burnt-out dorm, he was kind enough to invite me to share his apartment wi= th him. It's really a basement room, but it is kind of cute. He is a very fi= ne boy and we have fallen deeply in love and are planning to get married. We haven't set the exact date yet, but I'm sure it will be before I start to show.

Yes, Mom and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how m= uch you are looking forward to being grandparents, and I know you will give t= he baby the same love and devotion and tender care you gave me when I was a child. The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend has = some minor infection which prevents us from passing our premarital blood tests, and I carelessly caught it from him. This will soon clear up, thanks to my daily penicillin injections.

I know you will welcome him into our family w= ith open arms. He is kind, and although not well educated, he is ambitious.

I guess that's it. Now that I have brought yo= u up to date, I want you to know... There was no dormitory fire, I did not hav= e a concussion or skull fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnan= t, I am not engaged, I do not have syphilis and there is no man in my life. However, I am getting a "D" in History and an "F" in Science, and I wanted you to see these marks in their proper perspective.=

Your loving daughter,

Chelsea

PRESS RELEASE

DigitalThink Announces Financial Results for Third Quarter of Fiscal 2004

&nbs= p;

SAN FRANCISCO, J= an. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- DigitalThink, Inc. (Nasdaq: DTHK), the leade= r in custom e-learning for Fortune 1000 companies, today announced financial results for its third quarter of fiscal 2004.

. . .

"We are seeing very positive signs in the custom e-learning business and more importantly in our business," said Michael Pope, president and chief executive officer of DigitalThink.

. . .

That said, we do face a significant challenge in our relationship with our customer EDS."

"EDS is our largest customer first signed under a master agreement in July of 2000," continued Pope. "We have a valid and binding contract wi= th EDS that runs through June 2005. Many times over our three-year relations= hip we have renegotiated the master agreement with EDS by amending and expand= ing our service offering, in all cases with the best interests of our custome= r in mind. EDS alleges that Digita= lThink is currently in default under the master agreement. We strongly believe there is no basis for these allegations. The dispute is = not over quality of courseware or level of service concerns. EDS, however, has indicated it may attempt to terminate the remaining portion of the contract."

"This current discussion does not surprise me, as we have renegotiated many tim= es in the past. We are currently in negotiations with EDS to provide a busin= ess resolution to the matter using the process provided for in our contract. = If we are unable to reach a mutually-agreeable business resolution regarding this matter we intend to pursue all breach of contract and other claims we have against EDS. Obviously, a business resolution is our preferred outcome."

"Rest assured, we are not standing still at DigitalThink. Customer concentration risk is not new to this company. As such, we have assessed the situation = of what DigitalThink looks like without EDS many times in the past. = We have a plan that we believe will enable = us to serve our clients and fulfill on our mission of providing outstanding customer service and custom e- learning. Our plan would require significa= nt expense reductions, including headcount reductions and lease terminations."

"In summary, you should understand four points: one, we see positive trends in our business conditions; two, there is an issue with EDS that we are taki= ng all possible steps to resolve amicably; three, we believe we have an extremely strong case should we have to resort to a legal resolution; and four, most importantly, we have a plan for DigitalThink's continued execu= tion for our customers and our shareholders should EDS go away as a customer," concluded Pope.

Posted by Jay Cross at 09:14 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 28, 2004

Plug those leaks

A visit from the FBI
By Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus
Posted: 28/01/2004 at 13:02 GMT

A favorite trick= is to surreptitiously turn on the Webcam of an owned computer in order to wa= tch the dupe at work, or watch what he's typing on screen. In one, a hacker s= ent a WinPopup message to a fellow: "Hey, put your shirt back on! And why are you using a computer when there's a girl on your bed!" Sure enou= gh, the camera had captured a guy using his computer, sans shirt, and in the background you could clearly see a young woman stretched out on a bed.

and

Eastern European hackers, backed by organized crime, such as the Russian mafia. In other words, the professionals. The easiest way to illegally acquire money now = is through the use of online tools like Trojans, or through phishing: set up= a fake Web site for PayPal or eBay or Amazon, and then convince the naíve to enter their usernames, passwords, and credit card information.

 


More of these are Posted by Jay Cross at 03:17 P= M | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 19, 2004

TechKnowledge Travel Plans

I just booked my flight and room for ASTD TechKnowledge in Anaheim the second week in February. This will be about my umpteenth time working across Katella Boulevard from the Kingdom of the Mouse.

You don't need to stay at the Convention hotels. I have never stayed at the Hilton or the Marriott on the Convention Center grounds. Too rich for my blood. Five years ago I stayed at a cheapo motel on Harbor for $40/night; it's since been torn down.

This time around, I'll be at the Anabella. It's on Katella, = a five-minute walk from the Conference Center. Clean. Friendly. Laid back. I had a good experience there two years ago.


A deluxe room goes for $64/night ($55 before tax) from hotel.net.

My flight from Oakland to Orange County is costing more than= I'd planned on: $111 roundtrip (Alaska Air, orbitz.com) because I didn't rese= rve far enough in advance to qualify for Southwest's $60 ticket.


I wouldn't dream of paying to go to DisneyLand. (I did it long ago; my son has outgrown it; I consider Disney almost fascist). However, you can get = the Disney aura by walking through Downtown Disney, a Disneyesque shopping ma= ll with restaurants. It's walking distance from the hotels.

Drop me an email if you'd like to meet while I'm in Southern California.

Posted by Jay Cross at 12:08 P= M | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 16, 2004

The Beatles Strike Again

A number of years ago some politico was horrified to discover that the song he'd been praising, "With a Little Bit of Help From My Friends," was about drugs.

I'll be speaking at WebEx's premier User Conference in San Francisco. My invitation just arrived.

We have chosen "Come Together" for our first conference theme as we know our W= ebEx customers, experts and partners will want to come together to experience = this important event!

You figure it out.

Posted by Jay Cross at 06:05 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 15, 2004

Mispelling? Us? We help people decide on degree programs.

Press Release Source: eLearners.com Inc.

eLlearners.com(SM) Launches Free Online Assessment Tool to Determine if Online Education Is Right for You
Wednesday January 14, 7:30 am ET

eLlearners?

HOBOKEN, N.J., Jan. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- eLearners.com Inc., creator of the leading website for connecting learners to online educatio= n, announced the launch of eLearners Advisor, a new tool designed to assist prospective students in determining their readiness for online education.= The free seven-minute assessment tool asks 42 targeted questions designed to = evaluate the user's preparedness. eLearners Advisor then provides comprehensive feedback and information that students can use to help them decide if an online degree program is appropriate for their needs.


Press Release Source: eLearners.com Inc.

Correction -- eLearners.com Inc.
Wednesday January 14, 8:54 am ET

In the news release, eLearners.com(SM) Launches Free Online Assessment Tool to Determine if Online Education Is Right for You, issued earlier today over PR Newswire by eLearners.com Inc., the company name was misspelled in the headline. It should have read "eLearners.com" rather than "eLlearners.com" as incorrectly transmitted by PR Newswire.

Posted by Jay Cross at 10:59 A= M | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Generic Corp's Implementation Advice

Now that Generic Corp has a mission, they need to tell customers how to implement their products.

"People have become smarter about how to communicate and conduct business globally and= we see that with the explosion of the Web. Today's workforce is realizing the significant benefits that virtual tools provide in saving time and money, allowing them to be more productive."

Tips for getting the most out of _________________

• Find a champion. Select someone to motivate a= nd inspire a team or organization to use the new tool. He or= she can be anyone or anywhere in the organization, as long as they know the technology. The champion must also have insight about the challenges that people in a virtual environment face.

• Set clear expectations. The champion must set clear expectations for how the technology is to be used to imp= rove teamwork. Print them on a reference card for everyone to post on their computer monitor and view.

• Train people only on methods and essential features they will use now. Give people only as much as they can apply ri= ght now, today. Then stop. Let people digest what they have learned, practice= it in their real work and get comfortable with it. Then introduce new featur= es.

• Teach new skills over time. To create true teamwork, the best practices and skills have to keep evolving. Therefore, people need more learning and support, one step at a time.

"If people don't find value in a tool, they'll stop using it. The key is to embrace collaborative technology and introduce it in new ways that drive high-performance teamwork."

Posted by Jay Cross at 10:20 A= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 14, 2004

Mission of Generic Corp

Some day I plan = to write a generic proposal for a generic product sold by Generic Corporatio= n. In preparation, I collect content-free business puffery I find on the net. This is what you get when you click "Mission" on one corporatio= n's home page:

We intend to hol= d a strong position in our industry by offering quality service to our custom= ers, hiring the brightest and best people available, by nurturing a family type culture that extends to our partners and customers, and by focusing on efficient practices. We will seek to keep overhead low, while continually offering a strong value proposition to maximize revenue, thus leading to a profitable enterprise.

Everything we do, everyday, underscores our collective dedication to this credo. Our objective is to earn the right to become our stakeholders’ vendor-of-choice, employer-of-choi= ce, partner-of-choice, or investment-of-choice.

I am not making this up.

It takes a special view of the world to write such a buzzword-laden, self-centered, meaningless piece of tripe. Wow. I am in a= we.

Posted by Jay Cross at 11:21 A= M | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 06, 2004

Wayne & me

Wayne Hodgins and I chatted for 2 1/2 hours today. Wayne liv= es in the future and thinks waaaaaaaaaay out of the box. Friends have told me they can't understand a word he says. Some of us find him a visionary and inspiration.

With apologies to Steve Martin, Wayne suggests, "Let's get small." Granula= r. So small that we can glue the grains together to construct anything we can dream up. Like configuring personalized lessons for everyone in the world= .

Metaphor #1. Dell Computer. You build your own computer. They get it to you fast because they maintain an inven= tory of standard components. Dell doesn't have factories that make things; it = has warehouses that assemble things. Question: Is Dell selling products or services? Can we do a Dell on learning?

Metaphor #2. Planeload of soldiers flying to the battlefield. As they take off, they don't know where they're going or what role they'll be expected to play. They must be ready to handle the unexpected. How can the military make sure the troops have right competencies? Or can learn them on the way? Competency is more important than content because the objective is to accomplish the mission= .

Metaphor #3. Personalized lessons for each of the 6.3 billion people on earth. ("What if the impossible isn't?" Wayne is underwhelmed by our expectations.) Modular assembli= es, open architecture, Web services/interoperability, and learning grains as small as possible but no smaller, are all parts of the solution. But how = can we avoid the manual tweaking and closed-system mentality that held back Performance Support?

We count on emergence -- organization and structure that are already there but not yet visible. That's what underpins the automated collection of metadata, expert locators, pattern recognition, smart graphics... self-organization.

Metaphor #4. Parameterized design, AKA emergent design. Feed the parameters of the desired ou= tput into CAD and have it instruct the computer to create a 3D prototype. Or design a boat hull on the screen and the computer-controlled mold shapes itself to the pattern. One-off's become as economical as mass-producted. (This gets me thinking that Business Process Modeling will evolve = into parameterized workflow. It's all in your head. Or on your hard disk.)

How small can we get? What do the atoms look like? Wayne considers Bob Horn's information blocks the minimum. They're as small as you can go with and still have them stand al= one. Any atom has four distinct elements. Each atom, or grain, is composed of = four basic pieces: "pure" content, presentation, sequencing, and meta-data.

You want to play with these things, you need IMOTO,

  • Wayne's and my thinking overlap in numerous areas. (And, hav= ing written that, I realize it's akin to saying that I agree with Hawking abo= ut string theory and Gell-Mann about quarks.)

December 29, 2003

Koan Spam

This morning I received a mystifying email from China. The b= ody reads:

selector articulatory avocado stairway fought contributor honoraria lakehurst face edwardine robot prof= use rifle macassar artillery mournful homebound nantucket contrariwise madison teleconference balletic choosy dire bayberry carve gustavus complementary conceit wastewater otter console parasite letterman compel crank harsh nauseum bromide leghorn disk anus schumacher superstition opalescent smart tango switzerland flail amputate saguaro fluorescent edible militate ilona cowpony micky eva

Anyone know what's going on here? Did I intercept a terrorist message in code?

Posted by Jay Cross at 08:42 A= M | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 28, 2003

Recycled Spam

What illegal shenanigans will those crafty spam artists thin= k up next?

Posted by Jay Cross at 10:33 A= M | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 11, 2003

24 hours

Seb Paquet writes Seb= 's Open Research, a blog with "pointers and thoughts on the evolution of knowledge sharing and scholarly communication." He wrot= e me from New Brunswick that he planned to be in San Francisco today and we decided to rendezvous.


Late Wednesday S= eb sent me an email that he was going to a party in my neighborhood in Berke= ley the next evening and perhaps we could meet there. So I put on my Santa su= it, wandered over to Jerry Michalski's house (I thought he lived in Sausalito; he's actually a neighbor), and met an absolutely wonderful gro= up of people, some of whom I knew through their blogs.

The story continues...

At the party, Gordon Moore (no, not that Gordon Moore= ), invited us to drop by the Internet Archive for lunch the next day. Seb was new to San Francisco, so this morning I led him on a whirlwind tour on th= e way to lunch. Among other things, we tangled with Union Square, the Post St. shops, Chinatown, North Beach, cable cars, the Marina, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Presidio, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, Seal Rock, Great Beach, and Golden Gate Park.

The Internet Archive


It's a great contrast: a century-old, clapboard Army building housing an altruistic, hyper-high tech operation. Inside, Brewster Kahle and a dozen helpers create, maintain, and move forward the Internet Archive.

Brewster aims to capture and preserve all the books, magazines, television, the web, softw= are, and music created by humankind, and to make it accessible to the entire world. He thinks of it as "making the free world work." It's a 25-year goal.

In addition to the Archive staff, clustered around the lunch= eon table were a chap from the National Library of Iceland, another from the National Library of Norway, two people from the Project Gutenberg Distrib= uted Proofreaders, a guy from SBC Global, a volunteer from Boston who is helpi= ng the Archive capture music, and others.

The Archive is moving its computers into a new data center. = The fellows moving the PCs joked about carting around "100 Terabytes in a U-Haul." The Archive runs on a complex of nearly a thousand computer= s. Their typical computer includes four 250 gig hard drives, a terabyte in a= ll, and costs about $1,400. They consume about $500 worth of electricity every month.

From the Archive's site:

Why the Archive is Building an 'Internet Library'

Libraries exist to preserve society’s cultural artifac= ts and to provide access to them. If libraries are to continue to fos= ter education and scholarship in this era of digital technology, it’s essential for them to extend those functions into the digital world.=

Many early movies were recycled to recover the silver in the film. The Library of Alexandria — an ancient center of learning containing a copy of every book in the world — was eventually burned to the ground. Even now, at the turn of the 21st century, no comprehensive archives of television or radio programs exist.

But without cultural artifacts, civilization = has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. And paradoxically, with the explosion of the Internet, we live in what Danny Hillis has referred to as our "digital dark age."

The Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet — a = new medium with major historical significance — and other "born-digital" materials from disappearing into the past. Collaborating with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, we are working to preserve a record for generations to come.

Stewart Brand has written:

"The Internet Archive is a service so essential that its founding is bound to be looked back on with the fondne= ss and respect that people now have for the public libraries seeded by Andrew Carnegie a century ago.... Digitized information, especially on the Inter= net, has such rapid turnover these days that total loss is the norm. Civilizat= ion is developing severe amnesia as a result; indeed it may have become too amnesiac already to notice the problem properly. The Internet Archive is = the beginning of a cure — the beginning of complete, detailed, accessible, searchable memory for society, and not just scholars this time, but everyone."

One amazing aspect of the Internet Archive is its reliance on volunteers. The fellow assembling the music archive does it as a labor of love. Today was the first time he had met Brewster or visited the Archive. Similarly, Project Guten= berg's Distributed Proofreaders spreads the task of proofreading amongst five hundred active volunteers. Some people check a page a day, others complete dozens, and some folks do this almost fullltime. Interested? The= y'd be glad to have you join in "preserving history one day at a time.&q= uot; Thus far, PGDP has proofed a million pages. They've posted 10,000 public domain books to Project Gutenberg. Charles Franks says they're tracking t= heir target of proofing a million books in ten years. The strength of numbers = at work--along with the genius of chopping the work up into small pieces....=

Conversations with Jerry Michalski, Jerry's mom, Steve Larsen (Net Perceptions), Peter Merholz, Seb Paquet, the Archive people, and doz= ens of others have generated so many ideas and connections that my head feels about ready to pop. I'm going to have my morning coffee, browse through t= he New York Times, and let "the boys in the back room" process my neural firings.

Well, I find I have to get out a few thoughts.

I am filled with optimism that we can make the world a better place. Folks like Jerry and Brewster are going to help us do it.

Everything in the world is connected or becoming so. At pres= ent it's like the "Internet cloud." You don't see the lines of conn= ection but you trust that they are there. I'm beginning to perceive something parallel, sort of "Reality Soup." I appreciate that everything (systems, people, places) is connected, I don't see most of the connectio= ns, but just realizing I'm in the soup simplifies my worldview.

Now, I'm going to go get that coffee.

Posted by Jay Cross at 10:43 P= M | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 10, 2003

eLearning Forum Season's Party

Menlo Park (SRI)
eLearning Forum Sea= son's Party

You missed it!

Posted by Jay Cross at 11:26 A= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 09, 2003

A Day of Shopping and Surfing=

360 degree views of Stonehenge. Absolutely stunning.

There's wonderful writing in the blogosphere if you have the pointers to find it. Caterina= :

On the Diminutio= n of Knowledge

It seems to me that the shadow cast by one's mind, that is, the sphere of knowlege that one's brain may encompass, is finite, has a certain limit, and stays within that limit; that one thing remembered causes another thing to be forgotten; that one carries one's o= wn personal circumference of attention, and that, try as one might, try as I might, that is, I cannot cram more understanding, more thinking, or more knowing into this pre-ordained or self-limited Knowosphere. That someone = else knows something and I don't doesn't cause me to relax into the noosphere, though there are certain things I am happy not to know, i.e. I haven't the faintest idea what football team is likeliest to triumph this year, and am satisfied that certain problems, (an understanding of cube roots, fathomi= ng Kant) fall outside the realm of my concern.

I can relate. I've given up on football, cube rootes, and Ka= nt, too.

Today I participated in a demo of Breeze Live, Macromedia's new synchronous technology. Wow. Macromedia was having inter= nal server problems, so Peter Ryce plugged his modem into a phone line and st= ill managed to give a snappy performance.

The Breeze interface is clea= n, a minimalist work of art. Breeze compares to the conferencing tools I'm accustomed to. like a Jaguar XKR compares to my Honda Accord. Don't get me wrong. My Accord is a great car. It's virtually maintenance-free. But get= ting into a Jag, everything is leather, chrome, or walnut burl. It's fast. It = look stunning.

Peter showed us a Breeze presentation (that i= s, PowerPoint ocnverted to Flash), video that had been converted into Flash (supposedly a push-button operation), hi-res jpg photos, and other content from a library. He flipped into app sharing -- and recorded that vignette= for immediate playback. He called up some "Flash Paper," Macromedia= 's Flashy Acrobat-like tool (except lightweight).

Tom King clicked open a webcam, quite clear b= ut the size of a large postage stamp. I clicked a link and my webcam shot appeared right next to Tom's. Given that Breeze Live comes with voice over IP, this could be a nifty coaching environment.

Tom and Peter use the metaphor of a conference room to describe the Breeze Live environment. Unlike conferencing solutio= ns that are over and done with when everyone exits, a Breeze Live Conference Room is persistent. I can go back where we were this afternoon and find t= he same set-up, the same presentations, the same content library, etc. =

I'll report back after I've tried Breeze Live. After all, th= is was just the demo<= /u>. (Scroll to last item of the link.)

 

Posted by Jay Cross at 09:15 P= M | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 02, 2003

Overture

Overture is a recent Yahoo acquisition. Their new direct mail piece is headlined &qu= ot;Increased Sales Leads." I just received one addressed to:=


Jay Cross
Owner
Jay Cross
30 Poppy Lane
Berkeley, CA 94708-1408

Okay, so they confused a personal name with a company name. = But I begin to question the validity of their algorithms when I received four more copies addressed to:

Jay Forrester
Webmaster
Internet Time Group

Bill O'Brien
Analog Devices CEO
Internet Time Group

Patti Shank
Managing Partner
Internet Time Group

Dee Hock
CEO of Visa
Internet Time Group

I guess I'd better get my sales leads elsewhere.<= /span>

Posted by Jay Cross at 05:04 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 26, 2003

Berkeley Dinner with Dave Winer


Dave

Thirty of us joined Dave Wi= ner this evening at the King Tsin restaurant on Solano at the Albany/Berkeley border for feast and conversation. We filled four tables. I talked with a couple of people w= ho didn't know who Dave is!

Unlike the Chinese dinner event in Palo Alto a few months back, where everybody had a camera, I seemed to be the only one taking photos and rudely flashing at people as they ate. In the great majority of my shot= s, everyone has their eyes closed.

Dave's M.O. at these dinners is to start a new table when the one he= 's at fills up. This keeps the group from feeling like there are tables for adults and tables for children. Unfortunately, given this game of music= al chairs, I didn't get to speak to Dave all evening. Next time I'll arrive late.



Mark &a= mp; Chris contemplate the whole fish that arrived after we were stuffed.

&n= bsp;

These a= re both Scobelizers.

&n= bsp;


Sylvia pulled the group together.


Paul writes for Wired, among others.

 <= /p>

&n= bsp;


Oh, boy, nothing like a big plate of broccoli for dessert.

←= Tom Hunt, sys op and teacher at Longfellow Middle School in Berkeley, told = our table that adolescents learning to program is parallel to their learnin= g a foreign language. Do it early on and the student will speak fluently for life. Learn a language as an adult, and you end up sounding like Henry Kissinger. Tom believes that fluency in one programming language begets fluency in another. If schools were flexible (ha, ha, ha), wouldn't we = map the curriculum to the plasticity of students' minds?

&n= bsp;

Yours truly. I told you we had our eyes closed. <= /span>

Posted by Jay Cross at 12:24 A= M | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 21, 2003

LOL at EDS

It's late. I should be in bed. But this simply cracked me up= > EDS: Runni= ng with the Squirrels. Things have apparently changed since the days when Ross Perot was calling the shots.

Perhaps I'm easily amused this evening, but this quote from Michael Schrage also brought a smile to my face:

"I think "knowledge management" is a bullshit issue. Let me tell you why. I can give you perfect information, I can give you perfect knowledge and it won't change your behaviour one iota. People choose not to change their behaviour beca= use the culture and the imperatives of the organisation make it too difficult= to act upon the knowledge. Knowledge is not the power. Power is power. The a= bility to act on knowledge is power. Most people in most organisations do not ha= ve the ability to act on the knowledge they possess. End of story."

More of the same

Posted by Jay Cross at 12:09 A= M | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 19, 2003

Digital library night

Last Sunday I made my way down to= the Hillside Club on Cedar for Berkeley Cybersalon: Libraries and the Future. I had no idea what I was getting into but figured it had to be be= tter than TV. Besides, I don't get out enough.

Daniel Greenstei= n, president, the California Digital Libraries Initiative, explained the economics of research publications; it's not a pretty pictu= re. Since '86, inflation has risen 75%; the fee for research journals is up 4= 00%. A majority of the pubs are sold in "baskets" by commercial publishers. Changing things will involve faculty shunning the price-gouge= rs. This is the same argument corporate training managers face. Vendors want = to sell the whole store; customers want only what they want.












Anne Lipow, director of the Library Solutions Institute, is concerned about the human element in research libraries. Research librarians are of= ten idle, awaiting patrons' queries. They can point people to the best source= s, save time, and improve the quality of research. Where do librarians fit n= the digital world? This, too, has a direct analogy in the training world. The= re the question is, "What happens to the instructors?" The answer = is that some of them before facilitators, guides, coaches, and organizers, b= oth online and in the real world. In the Information Age, surely there's a ro= le for librarians -- so long as they don't refuse to budge from their comfor= t zone behind the counter.

Brewster Kahle, founder of The Internet Archive, was the real treat, an enthusiastic visionary. His goal is universal access to all knowledge, an= d he has plans on how to get there.

    • How much is there? 100 million titles (the Library of Congress has 26 million).
    • How can we access it? No matter where Brewster finds himself, he's alwa= ys a one-day walk or less from an Internet cafe.
    • How to capture the info? It takes about 2 hours to scan a book. This doesn't cost much in India.
    • How to distribute the books? Vans outfitted with computers, scanners, e= tc., are printing books on demand in India, Egypt, Uganda.... Kids have 100,000 books to choose from. Production cost is $1/book. These are often the first book a kid ever owns.

Off line, Brewster described what it would take for universal access, Mind you, the Web is growing by a couple of terabytes a month. To capture the world's knowledge, Brewster sees the need for six locations w= ith a petabyte of storage and gigabit/second access. Whew! Brewster is founde= r of the Internet Archive. See = How the Wayback Machine Works. Before that, he came up with WAIS and Alexa.

Brewster is founder of the <= u>Internet Archive. See = How the Wayback Machine Works. Before that, he came up with WAIS and Alexa.

Posted by Jay Cross at 07:03 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

No means no.

Yahoo! was once respected on the Net. They just lost me for good. This arrived in today's email. It triggers that line that Doc mentioned last month, "What part of everything don't you understand?"


When you first registered with u= s and created your Yahoo! ID, our system presented a single "Yes" or "No" option for receiving all types of marketing communicatio= ns. At some point you said "No," and after that we no longer sent= any of these types of messages to you.

In March 2002, we began rolling out an updated marketing communications system. Instead of just a single "Yes" or "No" choi= ce, we created a new Marketing Preferences page where you decide....

When this updated system was first announced in March 2002, we told = you we'd begin sending you messages about Yahoo! products and services acro= ss all categories, even though you had said "No" to messages und= er the old single choice system. We also told you that you could still= say "No" to these messages by visiting your Marketing Preferences. But we did not completely implement this change until now. <= /span>

Starting January 1, 2004, Yahoo!= will begin to send you messages, via email or postal mail, about our own products and services....

 

I guess they're looking out for me, giving me a default setting of "yes"= ; to all this crap:

These categories are for Y= ahoo! services only. New Yahoo! features and ev= ents.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Special offers, online sal= es, and shopping tips on Yahoo!.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Travel specials and exclus= ive deals.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Managing personal finances= .

Yes &n= bsp;No

Entertainment, games, and sports.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Finding a job or an employ= ee.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Meeting someone special or= a new friend.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Staying in touch with frie= nds and participating in online communities.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Managing my time and conta= cts.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Using Yahoo! for research = and surfing the Web.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Building web sites for per= sonal or professional use.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Ways to sell things on Yah= oo!.

Yes &n= bsp;No

Tools for growing and mana= ging a business.

Yes &n= bsp;No


See what = you could be receiving. Check out some sample special offers from Yahoo!

Posted by Jay Cross at 06:11 P= M | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 13, 2003

Internet Time Outbound

(This is a letter to the Internet Time mailing list.)

It's been three months since the last issue of Internet Time Outbound. I'm better writing a daily blog than churning out a once-in-a-while newslette= r. Nonetheless, I'll give you a brain-dump of some things that struck me as important this past quarter.

If you're not familiar with blogs, note that the first thing y= ou see may be the tip of an iceberg. Click "= Continue" for more.

Informal Learning. This is the low-hanging fruit of performance improveme= nt. Think of it as "unauthorized learning." It can move mountains a= nd it is dirt cheap. Vendors won't tell you much about it because they haven= 't figured out how to make money from informal learning. See this article in CLO or this = white paper.

Blogs. Web-logs, or = blogs, are finally catching on in business. Blogs are a new medium, both a very simple way to write and slap pictures on the web and a means of preserving and indexing thoughts and observations. A good blog is an online= salon. Blogs are nodes in communities of practice. Third graders post their assignments on the web and are critiqued by their peers. I wish I'd been = able to do that. The first Ed Blogger event starts in a couple of weeks in San Francisco.

Workflow Learning. Tomorrow we're throwing open the doors of the Workflow Learning Institute<= /u>. I am convinced that the NEXT BIG THING in learning & performance is j= ust around the corner. Workflow Learning rides on the back of web services; i= t's the real-time, on-demand learning that appears when it's needed. Sam Adki= ns and I are publishing research reports, setting up a subscription news service, and trying to get the word out through webinars, eLearning, and = live events.

TechLearn. Earlier this month I returned to Disneyworld for my sixth TechLearn. I've blogged them all. Photos and antique observations are available from = this page. This year's summary: (1) Let's get small. (2) Provide it wh= en they need it. (3) Work =3D learning =3D work.

Webinars. It's fun to webcast to people all over the world while sipping one's own blend of coffee and surveying the redwoods in the backyard. Two= or three hundred people attended my events this quarter, so I plan to contin= ue them next year. I want to experiment. Today's webcasts resemble lectures,= or infomercials; I would rather conduct a dialogue. Stay tuned.

La France= . I had a wonderful time visiting friends in Southern France= . photos For something a bit more zany, try the How Be= rkeley Can You Be parade or our week in Toronto=

Richard Saul Wurman spoke at Online Learning this year. Memorable lines: "I'm not that smart but I'm incredibly curious. I love it. ? Users? I don't give a shit. I don't know what's in their heads. I only know what's= in mine. I only write about what I understand." Were only all designers this honest.

"I sell my desire to le= arn about things. That journey is what you take people on."

Someone else's joke: I thought my brain was the most important organ in my body and then I thought, hey, look who's telling me that.

Getting at perspective, Saul tells a Steve Wright joke: "Everything = is in walking distance ... if you have enough time."

It's one of the most important things we do, but no one receives training= in how to converse. (A meta-= learning observation.). By the way, the Meta-Learning Lab is seeking funding to develop a "black belt" facilitator program. We are out to fix t= he process, not the events.



Social Network Analysis is important. (Back to the informal learning thin= g.) I became a charter member of the Institute for Social Network Analysis of the Economy and talked with the professor who discovered the "strength of weak ties." The irony= is that I have heard from the Institute since I gave them my dues. It's like= the page at the Society for Organizational Learning site: "What We Do. Practice - - - This page is currently under construction." (And has = been under construction for more than two years.)

In a webinar on personalization, I asked people to imagine a store that treated customers the way early eLearning treated learners. You bought an expensive item last week and come back into the store. No one acknowledge= s you or says hello. No one calls you by name. They've already forgotten you we= re here before. They have no memory of your purchase. There isn't much merchandise on the shelves and you're not allowed to try anything on befo= re you buy it. We never follow up. You want a personal shopper? Ha, ha, ha, = ha, ha. That's a good one. Is it any wonder people don't buy this stuff?

jay

Jay Cross, Internet TIme Group, Berkeley, California

What's new with you? Send me an email or leave a comment below.

Posted by Jay Cross at 08:55 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 29, 2003

Head Stop

Head Start is testing small children. Today's New York Timtes notes:

More than half a million 4-year-olds in Head Start programs around the country are taking = the same test, which has been mandated by the Bush administration. The largest standardized testing of such young children ever in this country, it has exposed a bitter divide between federal officials and many experts in ear= ly education.

The test reflects the philosophy and principl= es behind the No Child Left Behind law, which emphasizes literacy and math, = and has imposed testing for children starting in the third grade as a key to raising academic achievement.

But critics say the test is flawed and meaningless for such young children, whose development is in enormous flu= x.

We don't need no education.
We don't need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teacher, leave those kids alone.
Hey, Teacher, leave those kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Posted by Jay Cross at 09:08 P= M | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 27, 2003

Scroll down for links

Interoperability? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. It's funny -- funny-strange, not funny-ha-ha -- that cyber-catastrophe seems to know the precise time to needle the user for maximum effect. Gonzo programmer that= I am, over the weekend I decided that rather than simply add a few menu ite= ms in the sidebar to my blog, I should shift the entire site to CSS. No more tables, just blocks of stuff floating here and there. Professional. In one touch, I could recast hundreds of pages in Halloween orange and black if = the spirit moved me.

Of course, I tried to do this without manuals. It's like rid= ing a motorcycle without a helmet or swinging from the high trapeze without a net. I fell. The new site looks wildly different in each popular browser. Things look great in Mozilla, iffy in Internet Explorer, and unworkable i= n Opera. Oh joy.

Looking for navigation and links? Page-down. They're down there somewhere.

Posted by Jay Cross at 09:38 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 11, 2003

Where I'll be

Here are some of my whistlestops in the coming quarter. I'll= be wearing the loud Hawaiian shirt. Please say hello.

KMWorld & Intranets 2003
October 14-16, 2003
Santa Clara Convention Center
Santa Clara, California

eLearning Forum
October 24, 2003
University of California
Berkeley, California

TechLearn 2003
November 2-5, 2003
Disney’s Coronado<= span style=3D'font-size:13.5pt;line-height:140%;font-family:"Trebuchet MS"; color:black'> Springs Resort
Lake Buena Vista, Flawda

eLearning Producer 2003
November 11-14, 2003
San Francisco, California
(Register here)

ASTD TechKnowledge 2004
February 9-11, 2004
Anaheim, California

Want Ad
Seeking a kick-ass meeting room for 60-75 people for four hours in Novemb= er to conduct monthly meeting of the eLearning Forum. A broadband Internet connection would be nice to have. Rew= ards are prestige, honor, free admission to event, recognition on our website,= and our enduring thanks. = Email me.

Posted by Jay Cross at 04:56 P= M | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 15, 2003

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore.

It's too bad Franz Kafka is not around to enjoy this and say "I told you so."

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-039<= /u>

Buffer Overrun In RPCSS Service Could Allow Code Execution (824146)

Originally posted: September 10, 2003

Who should read = this bulletin: Users running Microsoft ® Windows ®=

Impact of vulnerability: Three new vulnerabilities, the most serious of which could enable an attacker to run arbitrary code on a user's system.

Maximum Severity Rating: Critical

Recommendation: System administrators should apply the security patch immediately

&nbs= p;