June 09, 2004
TDF Finale
Training Directors Forum wrapped up midday. I am an exhausted but happy camper. Phil Jones told 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 loyal 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.
June 08, 2004
Dropouts
Tammy Galvin has stepped down as editor-in-chief of Training magazine, along with Stacey Marmalejo. I'm looking forward to a revitalized Training mag.
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 college 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 elearning
jay cross is director of the omega institute
jay cross is strictly business
Naturally, I had to try a few other names, for example:
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 learning 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.
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 edge 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 nuclear state
And another....
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 "honey trap"
monica lewinsky is safe sex? try telling your spouse oral sex isn't adultery?
monica lewinsky is a dame
For this final one, I'll admit that I deleted lots of redundancy and distastefulness.
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 december
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 computer 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 marriage
britney spears is both religious and conservative
britney spears is 20 years old
britney spears is an amazing young woman
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 Forum. 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.
June 03, 2004
eLearning Effectiveness?
Oxymorons.info lists more than 800 combinations of contradictory or incongruous words, such as 'Cruel Kindness' or 'Jumbo Shrimp.'
| Assistant | Manager |
| Home | Office |
| Independent | Financial Advisor |
| Industrial | Park |
| Job | Security |
| Limited | Lifetime Guarantee |
| Liquid | Paper |
| Long | Briefing |
| Mobile | Station |
| Mobil™ | Station |
| Mono | poly |
| Moving | Target |
| New | Antiques (Arriving Daily!) |
This got me thinking about the state of corporate learning.
| Level 1 | evaluation |
| e | Learning |
| Performance | model |
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For a non-laughing matter, how about this post to David Farber'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.
May 29, 2004
ASTD msg 1 of n
I'm spending several days with my parents in Northern Virginia and will be flying back to the West Coast tomorrow.
Why the blog break? I lost my nationwide Internet connection, so I've been unable to post photos. Email is spotty, too. Thanks to everyone who expect me to be more consistent and wrote to see if I were okay.
The official word on ASTD is:
- (Alexandria, VA) May 28, 2004 - Over 8,900 training, learning, and
performance professionals from 78 countries attended the American Society for Training & Development's (ASTD) 2004 International Conference & Exposition, the workplace learning and performance industry's most comprehensive annual event. The ASTD Conference took place May 23-27 at the 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.
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 2003 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 with 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 automatic 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 have to read my watch upsidedown than to continue struggling with hidden .wad and .pst files. Am I alone in my confusion?
April 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 twice, so I'm inventing lots of new content and fresh examples. Several years ago, my preparation would have included meticulously planning inputs and outputs, 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 the 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 state 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 some changes in the world that can serve as the foundation of my upcoming presentations:
Schadenfreude continuation.
Fifteen years ago, 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-blancs. Alas, the bubbles disappeared from the Brut before I'd finished my half-glass sample.
Small world. 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 more the return of spring, bright sunshine, and flowers everywhere.
Here's where I'm investing my time these days, not in priority order:
April 27, 2004
Upcoming Events
This Friday. Free.
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, Vice 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 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
I'll be talking about "Metrics, A Pragmatic and Contrarian View".
April 24, 2004
'Lanta
I spent several days this week in Atlanta.
Ali-Oli, a beautiful restaurant in Buckhead. Jet-laged Jay, enjoying a fine 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 gobbling a pile of French fries. Both had pitchers of beer.
April 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 East. Any advice?
April 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 wander the hills of my neighborhood. Yesterday it was photographing spring colors as I walked. The day before, the dogs begged so hard, I couldn't let them down.
Spring in Berkeley (click for larger image)
Tonight I downloaded mp3 interviews with Tim O'Reilly, John Hagel, Steve MeConnell, Don Norman, and 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
New England Complex Systems Institute
The Complexity & Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems
April 08, 2004
Free webinar this Tuesday
Join me online 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 will likely cover a dozen recent discoveries and insights, thereby increasing the odds of offering something to everyone.
Register here. It's free.
April 06, 2004
Knowledge Roundtable 2004: e-Learning
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, Vice 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 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 (“Levels 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.
April 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,
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!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 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 much as reconstructions. Of course, if you bought the logic of Dr. Gerald Edelman 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, never a repetition."
We don't "remember;" we re-think.
March 28, 2004
Spam, spam, spam, spam, virus
I'm getting five or ten messages a day that read like this one:
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 attach.
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.
March 27, 2004
Context Driven Topologies
Context Driven Topologies is a collaborative effort to begin to draw the geometry of knowledge as it changes over time.
Lou Kauffman, a knot theory topologist and project participant explains it as this “For me, the key concept is that of the "pivot". An image in one field can trigger a patterned response in another field due 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 ingredients 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 inventor in physics, neuroscience and emergent computation; a theoretical cosmologist, 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 learning and innovation evolve over time, an inventor interested in information visualization and interaction design, and more artists, animators, and archivists.
And what do I have 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 MacPherson 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 have 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 Rothko trouvee, this one the beach in Nice:
March 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, about 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 with EDS. Yesterday DigitalThink said their arrangement with EDS was toast.
March 23, 2004
An Alternate Reality
Late this afternoon 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 Accord as isolation chamber. Today I cut on the radio. NPR was broadcasting Senate hearings on 9-11.
Deja vu. Senate hearings are an old dance form. Al Pacino and Robert Duvall in the Godfather 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 -- Watch 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 question, you don't answer it. Instead, you answer the question you wish they'd asked. 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 theme 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 Quaida, that would have focused our attention. How so? asked the intel guys, noting that while always alert to avoiding "collateral damage," we've been trying to off Osama for years. Declaring war on a decentralized organization that flies no flag wouldn't have helped. Yeah, but maybe we'd have assessed "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 inside 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 work on improving the situation. Or is that too bi-partisan?
Coming up next: Religion. (Just fooling.)
March 21, 2004
March 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 riverbank.
Moncton is healthy, except maybe for this place where the pizzas are great, 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 pumping up eLearning in the Province.
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 morning. Typical copy:
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 component listens on port 13468.
The attachment is a virus. Do not open the attachment.
Microsoft does not email virus alerts. Ever. These email bombs are sent out by the viruses themselves.
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 show the relative position.
Give it a try. (Go ahead, do some ego-surfing. See the relative rankings of your ego-boo.)
Thanks to David Weinberger for the pointer.
March 11, 2004
Tangents
After dinner, I figured I invest an hour in crafting my RSS experiments page. Fat chance.
I scanned the first 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 anything. 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 Management, 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 title 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 backwater, 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 the chart needs a few more pieces: distortion filters, amplifiers, misinterpreters, spin doctors, etc.
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 found 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 butcher shop.
- Lady: "$5 a pound for hamburger!?! The butcher down the street only charges $4/lb."
Butcher: "Why don't you buy your hamburger from him?
Woman: "He's sold out."
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 screen:
Then my screen froze. I waited ten minutes, then bailed. My "My Stuff" folder showed that I'd booked the flight. Time to pick a seat.
Uh oh. Looks like the skies are crowded. Six legs on my trip; not an aisle seat in the bunch.
March 10, 2004
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, Lotus, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, Silicon Graphics, 3COM, and many others.
Regis is my kind of marketer. He published an article in Harvard Business Review that claimed "Marketing is everything." His focus on time played a role in me naming my company Internet Time Group.
Since I've read all his books, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that Regis's thinking directly parallels mine.
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 inside another Starbucks.
Regis pulled a few gadgets out of his pockets, noting that he'd given his 10 year old granddaughter an i-Mac. Upon receiving it, she turned 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 crowd, 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.
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, Arkansas.
For someone who has bought heaven-only-knows how many paper maps, this sort of thing is phenomenal.
February 23, 2004
GetIt!
Hard to imagine, but if you just don't have enough Jay in your life, read this Insight 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).
February 16, 2004
Edinburgh
I adore travel to unfamiliar places. Even in the gray drizzle, 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 wherever I find myself. Speaking of which, I find the 10-year old Ardbeg Single Islay 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.
February 07, 2004
New TV Series
Ripped from the headlines!!! (Today's New York Times)
White Collar Crime Unit
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 oral 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."
February 06, 2004
MyDoom, Your Doom
I have now wasted eight hours over the past couple of weeks deleting virus-mail from my inbox. When the Feds find the S.O.B. who opened this Pandora's Box of cyber-mayhem, 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 email appears in his inbox "as if delivered in the night by some evil Santa."
January 31, 2004
Help save Berkeley landmarks
You may know that I love the Berkeley hills and their pathways. Last year I described a beautiful walk up a hill lined with houses designed by our revered, indigenous architect, Bernard Maybeck. A few days ago, a resident of that hill 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
The neighbor's letter:
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 there: 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 buildings, others such as The Boynton House ("Temple of the Wings") and the Hume Cloister, add historic interest to the neighborhood. All of these houses have been respectfully developed and many have been designated National or State Historic Landmarks, under a time-consuming process initiated by their owners.
Call it Buena Vista Way, Maybeck's area or more curiously, "Nut Hill," 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. Those 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 views 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 permits 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 middle 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 tall 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 granted. 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 altered.
Taking a Stand
They would be very appreciative to have Path Wanderers Members write a letter 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 will 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
January 30, 2004
No room for LMS big boys
- Office of Personnel Management, 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 (RFP) 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 NAICS 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 of less than $21 million.
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 college. 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. Don'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 almost 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 station, 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 with him. It's really a basement room, but it is kind of cute. He is a very fine 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 much you are looking forward to being grandparents, and I know you will give the 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 with open arms. He is kind, and although not well educated, he is ambitious.
I guess that's it. Now that I have brought you up to date, I want you to know... There was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion or skull fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, 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
DigitalThink Announces Financial Results for 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 with EDS that runs through June 2005. Many times over our three-year relationship we have renegotiated the master agreement with EDS by amending and expanding our service offering, in all cases with the best interests of our customer in mind. EDS alleges that DigitalThink 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 times in the past. We are currently in negotiations with EDS to provide a business 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 significant 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 taking 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 execution for our customers and our shareholders should EDS go away as a customer," concluded Pope.
January 28, 2004
Plug those leaks
A visit from the FBI
By Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus
Posted: 28/01/2004 at 13:02 GMT
and
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