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Tuesday, January 06, 2004
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From my home town:
Crazy!
9:14:13 PM 
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Link to a good article and intersting commentary. I go back and forth on why sometimes I'm incredibly motivated and other times every single task feels like I'm climbing a mountaing. I would assume it's some internal and some external forces. Sometimes it's just perception issues.
We are not defined by our job.
Wayne Allen wrote a good post on Going the Extra Mile – Why Bother? There ensued a good discussion of various points in the comments, including this one from Johanna Rothman (quoted here in its entirety).
Early in my career, I would "sign up" for lots of stupid overtime, crunches, pushes to make the date. I postponed vacations, dates, and all kinds of other social events to "give my all" to the project. One day, I realized that working all that overtime just made me stupid and that I couldn't save the project.
Now, when a manager thinks that the answer to the project being in trouble is to add more hours, I ask him/her to think instead about what they can remove from the project to meet the deadline. The project can't complete as originally promised, so stop trying to make it that way. Instead, work like the devil (during the normal work week) to complete what you can. Sometimes my clients even do what I suggest :-)
Excellent advice. One of the most important things to remember is that you are not defined by your job. You could also be a spouse, a parent, a child, a friend, a volunteer for a charity, an awesome video game player, etc.
[Darrell Norton's Blog]
5:22:06 PM
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Interesting article on social software.
K-Logs: How Social Software Helps and Where it Doesn't. M2M. David Weinberger critiques social networking software (rightly). My take: There isn't any magic in social networking software. The value this software provides is much more basic than many people think. Here's what it provides:
- It contains solid (but private) contact information on all members.
- Profiles are available on each member (on LinkedIn you can put in a resume).
- There is a safe, formal method of requesting contact with other members you don't know. This is like UserLand's spam free e-mail.
- The connection info (you know D through B and C) is more of a gimmick than something that provides real value. There is a small amount of comfort involved in knowing how you are connected to other people (you can also get info on how many people they are connected to, which is like a PageRank for social networks). This is the part of these networks that confuses everyone.
- There is a search function for finding other members based on information in the profile (interests, company, job title, etc).
Now that we have demystified social networking software, let's think about how to apply the features.
- Solid information on weblog authors. It would be great to have standardized weblog profile and contact information. Currently, contact and profile information on weblogs, if it is there at all, is all over the map. It really sucks. Sure, you can read what someone is writing on their weblog, but you often need ESP to determine who they are, what they do, etc.
- A safe way to share contact information. Way too many people publish their e-mail address in the clear on the their weblogs. There should be a way to restrict that (via a spam free e-mail feature) that would allow the weblog's author to release solid contact information (e-mail, phone, address) to readers that they authorize.
- Search!! This is a simple and powerful feature. Want to find Microsoft or Google webloggers? Why wait for someone to build a list that may or may not be out of date? A search function on social networking profile information derived from weblogs would solve this quickly and with much more accuracy than a random Google search.
- Categorization. Have a look at Jon Udell's lists of CXO webloggers on the right hand side of his weblog. How easy would this be to create if you had solid contact information contained in a social networking system. In fact, you could build directories on the fly customized to your needs based on good profile information.
- Community and portability. The advent of open profile information would allow people to create custom communities. There is a lot of power in creating ad hoc communities of members using this type of information. It could also be used to allow members of that community to build contact lists in other applications (e-mail and IM) that are constantly and automatically updated (a new role for Newsgator -- creating auto updated contact lists for e-mail apps).
OK, this would be very, very easy to do in the weblog world if we start right now. All that is needed is a simple standard for an XML profile (as simple as RSS -- which only Dave seems able to build) that can be published by weblog authors in a form on their weblog tool of choice. If the vendors (UserLand, Blogger, and SixApart) did this, within weeks sites like Feedster and Technorati would have tools that took advantage of that information. This would then usher in a whole new deluge of innovation similar to what we are seeing in RSS today. Let's put Friendster out of business and open this up. [John Robb's Weblog]
5:16:47 PM
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Goal people and river people. In a comment on a recent goal setting post, John Moore posts a link to an excellent article on the Innovation Tools website called River people vs. goal people. It states that there are two kinds of people. Goal people,... [The Occupational Adventure (sm) Blog]
Interesting thought. I think I'm typically a "goal person" who'd prefer to be a "river person." Going with the flow through anything causes you less stress. The term river seems so natural for the way life is...some times you get in a current and go super fast....sometimes you float along with what's happening...sometimes you get surprised with an undertow and have to fight your way back up.
5:11:33 PM
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Technology Predictor Success Matrix. This is the first in a series of essays on a simple but important question: Which new technologies will make it, and which will fail? The TPSM is an attempt to approach this question systematically, by figuring out what the key success factors are for new technologies. The premise is that you use the past to predict the future. [Update: This piece will also serve as the Table-of-Contents. I’ve now posted the first piece, an overview of “Winner” technologies.]... [ongoing]
Nice link to some factors to consider when predicting a technologies success.
5:08:40 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Rebecca Schwoch.
Last update: 2/8/2005; 2:15:15 PM.
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