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Thursday, November 28, 2002

This Weblog Has Moved

After trials, tribulations, false starts, wearing of sack cloth and much gnashing of teeth (and the blood of one dead chicken) I have successfully moved my weblog. For the past week I have been posting only at the new location. It works as expected. All is well.

• New Home page.
• New primary RSS.

Most of the archives will remain here in order to preserve as many links as possible, but I ran out of disk space and had to delete some of the early ones to keep the site under 40MB. All the archives are at the new site. Eventually I will come back here and put in re-direct meta-tags for both web browsers and RSS aggregators to automagically load the new location. In the meantime, if you have subscribed to a particular Category -- i.e. Patento.absurdium -- you can re-link to it via the Category links on the left.

Many thanks to:

• Mark Pilgrim for design guidance and CSS creation
• Erin Clerico at Weblogger.com for site hosting and comments configuration
• Brent Ashley and Matt Mower for technical assistance
• the entire Userland discussion group for moral support.

(drum roll please)

Now, on with the show.......................

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Freight Management Important for Print-to-Order

Printable Technologies Inc. Licenses Invenix Freight Management Software

[...] The Invenix Freight Management software calculates an order's real-time shipping costs by performing order cubing, box selection, weight calculations, and shipper rate calculations using both parcel and LTL carriers. The solution licensed by Printable includes the printed products configurator, which calculates volume and weight for printed items based on quantity, product dimensions, paper weight, and other job specifications including folding, binding, and shrinkwrapping. [...]

[WhatTheyThink]

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Role Playing for KM

Knowledge Workers Zodiac.

Via Seb's Open Research.

Al has just dug up a gem by David Skyrme on the German language blog fliegenvonferne which describes twelve types (or roles) of knowledge workers. Pretty neat, concise descriptions.

The roles are (see here for the full descriptions):

• Expert
• Knowledge analyst
• Knowledge leader
• Knowledge networker
• Knowledge custodian
• Knowledge creator
• Knowledge entrepreneur
• Knowledge packager
• Knowledge visualiser
• Knowledge activist
• Knowledge seeker
• Storyteller

And a knowledge manager is all 12!  It's nice to have the distinctions around the roles and to recognise how each drives different activities.  But remember, they are roles describing action - not who we are.  I would hate to see "Company X is looking for a knowledge packager.  The successful applicant..."

[thought?horizon]

Amazon Gains Bertelsmann as Services Customer

Bertelsmann aligns with Amazon.

BERTELSMANN HAS TAPPED online retailer Amazon.com to help run Bertelsmann's music retailing Web site, CDnow, company representatives said on Tuesday.

The Gütersloh, Germany, media company has contracted Seattle-based Amazon.com to provide services to CDnow, according to spokespeople from both companies. Bertelsmann's BeMusic division oversees the CDnow music site and Bertelsmann's BMG Music Service record club.[...] [InfoWorld: Top News]

Opportunities in Russia

Market Opportunities in Russia

Russia is probably not on your map in the search for new growth opportunities. I rarely hear software providers talk about their expansion plans east of Poland. But Mirantis, a technology outsourcer that features what it calls "instant-on" services for the Russian market, believes that many North American and Western European countries are missing an opportunity to participate in one of the great growth economies. Of course this assessment is a little self-serving since the company targets Russia, but a quick check of top performing mutual funds on Yahoo! Finance shows that six of the top seven mutual funds for the last year are Russian or Eastern European-focused with growth rates of 22% to 40%. No, I didn't forget the negative sign--that is positive growth. [...] [AMR Research]

Sunday, November 24, 2002

Relationship Between Content Management and Learning

What is a learning object?. Glenn Millar has written a very good primer on learning objects, that walks through what they are, how they are constructed, and what they are used for. To quote: First, many educators see learning objects as a viable alternative to... [Column Two]

The paper, from the British Columbia Institute of Technology, classifies learning objects as having the following characteristics:

• Smaller units of learning: Learning objects usually comprise a smaller unit of learning than a course, typically ranging from two to 15 minutes.
• Self contained: Each learning object is self-contained and can be used independently of other learning objects.
• Reusable: Learning objects are reusable. The same learning object can be used in multiple contexts for multiple purposes.
• Can be aggregated: Learning objects can be grouped into larger collections of content to create more substantial units of learning.
• Tagged with metadata: All learning objects are tagged with metadata that describes the learning object and allows it to be easily retrieved in a search.

All of these are characteristics typical of what one looks for in setting up a CMS. Another important point the author makes is:

The second thing that needs to happen before learning objects can become the norm in educational practice is that educators need to learn more about them. They need to feel comfortable about using them and they need to become adept at searching for them and creating them.

Weblogs, and their associated CMS systems would make great introductions to the modular, reusable, and bite-sized concepts expressed in learning objects. Can we find a way to formalize this connection and build a stronger, long-term value proposition for the educational sector?

Funding for Blog Research

But given how tight budgets are for the public sector it seems likely that grants would be one of the few ways school districts and municipal governments could make this happen. I hope Liz will blog the grant proposal process. Judging from the comments on her post she's already generated some interest.

Research on weblogs: getting funding?.

Liz is thinking of applying for funding at the U.S. National Science Foundation to study blogs. Ideas on her mind include "designing new curricula, creating new professional publication models, sponsoring a conference, developing a new online resource center for microcontent publishing, etc, etc." Alex might be interested in such a thing...

This might be the first time that plans for a research grant application are unraveled in such an overt manner. I must say Ilike the approach.

[Seb's Open Research]

Thursday, November 14, 2002

Partnership For Success

Update: Well, upon further investigation earlytorise.com is not what I thought. I still like the piece below, but I won't be signing up for etr anytime soon, at least until I know a lot more about just what it is and who's behind it.

[From www.earlytorise.com and their ETR newsletter]

"Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success."
Henry Ford

TODAY'S MESSAGE:

Don't believe the popular view of success -- that it is an individual effort. If you do, you'll spend all your time working on the wrong thing -- yourself -- instead of developing the support of a small group of smart, hardworking people who can make you successful, even if you have no unique "genius" inside you.

* * * * *

TRIPLE YOUR CHANCES OF ACCOMPLISHING YOUR GREATEST GOALS

If you want to triple or perhaps even quadruple your chances of success, partner up with someone who will work with you toward your goal.

Two heads are generally better than one -- not just twice as good, but three or four times as good. If you can get one smart, hardworking person to help you with each of your four main life goals, you will almost certainly achieve them -- and probably much sooner than you think.

The myth of individual genius is destructive.

It gives us the wrong blueprint for success, one that is more likely to bring us frustration and failure in our lives.

When we buy into the myth of individual genius, we think we have to do all the hard work ourselves. We think that our job is to discover some hidden well of creativity inside us -- a source of ideas, power, and inspiration that will magically enable us to achieve our dreams.

But the truth is very different. Studies show that most successful people rely on the help or assistance of at least one other person. All my own experiences validate those findings, and so do the experiences of my friends and colleagues who have succeeded. (I can't think of a single lone wolf who succeeded. I know several people who think they made it on their own, but what they did was rely on the help of others and then deny those people the credit they were due.)

Business surveys show that partnerships achieve greater success than individual proprietorships. Statistically speaking, they are more likely to survive the difficult start-up stage, they grow faster, net greater profits (for each partner), and last longer.

The same can be said of social partnerships. Married couples have higher incomes (per individual), enjoy better living standards, have more successful children (in terms of all the standard measurements), and view themselves as happier than do bachelors and single parents.

Much if not most of the world's greatest art and entertainment has been the result of partnerships. (Think of Lennon and McCartney or of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.)
The capacity of one single mind is enormous -- maybe unlimited -- but the likelihood that that potential will be fully tapped is very small. We are all limited by our emotional stupidities, our negative addictions, our self-limiting and self-destructive behavioral patterns. But those limitations can be broken through when you have a partner to push and prod you.

And when you reciprocate by pushing your partner to do and think and see more than he would on his own -- well, then you have the beginning of something very powerful.

Think about your current goals. Pick one that you are not making great progress toward. Now ask yourself, "Who is helping me achieve that goal?"

If the answer is "nobody," you have a great opportunity open to you. You have a chance to finally get your idea into action, do the sometimes difficult things that need to be done, make the progress that your goal requires, and one day -- maybe sooner than you might believe -- be able to sit back and say, "Hey, I did it!"

Almost all of my achievements are the result of partnerships. Top on the list -- of course -- are my three spectacular children, products of a partnership that is principled by my spouse. The movie I finally managed to produce was the result of partnering with PL, who "guilted" me into doing what I wouldn't have found time to do otherwise. (We are engaged, right now, in the same process on a new script.) My first $100 million-plus business was the result of a partnership, in which I was the apprentice and my partner the master. The current similarly sized business venture I'm involved in is the product of an equal partnership at one level and a mentor/protégé relationship at another. My other multimillion-dollar business ventures are all partnerships, as are most of my real-estate deals. The stories I've had published, including those that have won literary awards, were all the result of working closely with a trusted editor. And even ETR itself is a partnership with several people.

So … who are your partners? Who are your coaches? Who is urging you to get up earlier, work harder, and think smarter? Who is giving you good ideas? Who is praising your successes and warning you about pitfalls?

There is romance in playing the lonely achiever, but little potential in it.

Do this today:

1. Review your four life goals and identify the ones you don't have partners for.

2. Think about what you need: an equal partner, a mentor, a coach, an editor, a cheerleader, or whatever.

3. Survey your friends and colleagues to determine if any of them would be a suitable partner.

4. Commit yourself to getting a partner.

That's enough for today. In future messages, we'll talk more about how to make partnerships work for you. And don't worry if you don't know someone who can help you. I'm working on some ideas that will solve that problem.

Here's something else you might want to do: Give a friend -- someone you see as your intellectual equal -- a complimentary subscription to ETR. (They can sign-up here: http://www.EarlyToRise.com/SuccessPartnership.htm) And then initiate an ongoing, informal discussion with that person about some of the ideas suggested in our daily discussions. The idea would be that you would support each other's goals generally by sharing ideas, offering advice, and giving encouragement on specific projects.

As with all partnerships, the benefit you are getting now will be more than doubled by doubling up with someone else. Give it a try.

[Leaders.net]

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This Page was last updated: 11/28/2002; 6:49:28 PM
Copyright © 2002 Terry W. Frazier