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Tuesday, October 16, 2007 |
From Jon Udell.
The once and future university. Mike Caulfield points to this video which, he says, [base "]does a nice job of showing what a museum a university education has become.[per thou] The large lecture hall shown in that video certainly reinforces the point. Seeing it reminds me of a telling episode this past April. I was writing about Darwin and I recalled something I[base ']d heard in a biology lecture I[base ']d heard the previous spring on one of the Berkely podcasts.
I went back to the site and wound up referring to the current year[base ']s version of that lecture in video form. As I scrubbed back and forth on the timeline looking for the part I remembered, my daughter [~] who was then between high school and college [~] watched over my shoulder. Eventually she said: [base "]So, the students just sit there?[per thou]
That was the first of three revelations. The second was my realization that I[base ']d certainly absorbed those lectures more fully on a series of bike rides, breathing fresh air and soaking up sunshine, than had the students sitting in the lecture hall.
The third revelation came when I found the part I was looking for, and realized that it wasn[base ']t as good as last year[base ']s version, which had been overwritten by the current version.
I love university life. I[base ']d give anything to have had the tools we have today [~] for recording, research, communication, and collaboration [~] back when I was in school. If I had a year off, I[base ']d want to spend a chunk of it in an academic environment, experiencing it in ways that were never before possible. I[base ']d use the same strategy I apply to tech conferences: absorb most of the packaged content out of band, and seek to maximize high-value personal interaction. My guess is that as more students begin to expect that [~] and as parents, who can now peer into the institution as never before, and actually see what they[base ']re paying for, also begin to expect it [~] universities will adapt.
The most inspirational story I[base ']ve read about college lately is this New York Times magazine article about Olin College, a clean-slate redesign of an engineering school:
The result is a school with no academic departments or tenure, and one that emphasizes entrepreneurship and humanities as well as technical education. Its method of instruction has more in common with a liberal arts college, where the focus is on learning how to learn, than with a standard engineering curriculum. [base "]How can you possibly provide everything they need in their knapsack of education to sustain them in their 40-year career?[per thou] [president Richard K.] Miller asked. [base "]I think those days are over. Learning the skill of how to learn is more important than trying to fill every possible cup of knowledge in every possible discipline.[per thou]
Also notable in that issue was this Rick Perlstein essay about how college, as a discrete experience outside the flow of normal life, is coming to an end:
To me, to Doug Mitchell, to just about anyone over 30, going to college represented a break, sometimes a radical one and our immediate postcollege lives represented a radical break with college. Some of us ended up coming back to the neighborhood partly for that very fact: nostalgia for four years unlike any we had experienced or would experience again. Not for these kids.
Hamilton Morris, with his hip, creative parents, is an extreme case of a common phenomenon: college without the generation gap. (As I write this at a coffee shop near campus, a kid picks up her cellphone [base ']Äî [base ']ÄúHi, Dad![base ']Äù [base ']Äî and chats amiably for 15 minutes. [base ']ÄúWhen we went to college,[base ']Äù a dean of students who was a freshman in 1971 tells me, [base ']Äúyou called on Sunday [base ']Äî the obligatory 30-second phone call on the dorm phone [base ']Äî and you hoped not to hear from them for the rest of the week.[base ']Äù)
Morris is an exaggeration too of another banal new reality. You used to have to go to college to discover your first independent film, read your first forbidden book, find freaks like yourself who shared, say, a passion for Lenny Bruce. Now for even the most provincial students, the Internet, a radically more democratic and diverse culture [base ']Äî and those hip baby-boomer parents [base ']Äî take care of the problem.
A good thing? A bad thing? Probably both. It was a great essay.
PS: I almost couldn[base ']t find that Rick Perlstein essay. It bugs me when magazines work so hard to put together a thematic issue, like that NY Times Magazine college issue, and then scatter the stories online. You guys worked hard on that issue! It has thematic integrity! Why not publish the table of contents and link each article to it?
Here was the search strategy I had to employ:
- Find the Olin article
- Note the date: September 30 2007
- Search the Times archive for September 30 2007
- Restrict that search to the magazine section
1:13:01 PM 
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Yes, I know, I'm going crazy posting today. But I also had this reaction to the redesigned Business Week.
Yikes! What Have They Done to BusinessWeek?!
My favorite phrase regarding good branding is "unique and memorable." Great brands provide a unique and memorable experience. Ironically, I can't remember where or when I first heard the phrase "unique and memorable" but I'm pretty sure it doesn't apply to the new BusinessWeek look.
Study that "new" logo for a moment. Could it be any more generic? I guess so, if they would have gone with a black background instead, but the white-on-red look is pretty darned close to the opposite of unique and memorable.
I just received my copy of the first print issue with the new design. (To be honest, I didn't see a big problem with the old design and I seriously doubt it was the culprit for a decline in subscriptions. Nevertheless, someone felt that something had to be done I suppose, hence this new look.) I also recently read
this article
describing the rationale for the overhaul.
First of all, the headline "Imitating the Web, for the Busy Reader" makes me cringe. The article goes on to say that, "from an advertiser's perspective, the new BusinessWeek is designed a bit more like a web site." I think you could replace the word "advertiser's" with "reader's" and it would still be true. But is that really what we're looking for in a good magazine...for it to look more like a web site?
I go online for the most up-to-date news as well as to read short pieces of content. My eyes start to dry up and glaze over if I'm constantly scrolling or paging through an article. Magazines are where I go for more in-depth content; that, and some of the nicer ones do a better job with full-color images than you typically see online. But it's really all about depth, which is why I was also disappointed to read that "the magazine will feature just two long articles a week."
If they're going to dumb down the business news every week in this magazine where am I supposed to go for the more in-depth coverage? Why do I feel like my BusinessWeek subscription just morphed into a magazine version of USAToday?
- Joe Wikert [Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog]
1:07:54 PM
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Software-as-a-service continues to grow--at least in number of product offerings. Here's one for the apparel industry.
Centric Software has developed a product line it calls "product intelligence." It now has a web-based application suite for the apparel industry that offers collection and line planning as well as product specification and product sourcing. The apparel industry can now conduct operational performance management with a set of applications specifically designed for the entire process from line planning to introduction. This application suite enables apparel retailers, brands and manufacturers to speed time-to-market, cost-effectively source products for private label brands, and increase profitability.
"Our roots in collaborative product design and key performance metric visibility have given us unique expertise to develop applications that integrate functions and improve operational performance in the apparel industry," said Chris Groves, president and CEO of Centric Software. "Centric's Product Intelligence applications provide greater insight into all sources of product and business information for better decisions and execution. This apparel suite is the first to deliver the right information to multiple functions for fast, efficient response to business objectives and market opportunities."
Centric's integrated apparel suite consists of three secure web-based applications that provide immediate visibility into product specifications, sourced products, suppliers, costs, forecasts, orders and calendars. The benefits extend from the executive office to individual designers to suppliers in an easy-to-use interface. The three applications manage technical product specifications (Centric Product Specification), supplier performance and sourced product management (Centric Product Sourcing), and calendar and line planning (Centric Decision Center). All applications combine metrics entered directly into the system with live information from suppliers and in-house repositories such as spreadsheets, product databases, ERP systems, email and other documents.
10:40:17 AM
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Theodore D. Crandall has been named senior vice president and chief financial officer of Rockwell Automation. Crandall, 52, served as interim CFO since April 2007, and was previously senior vice president and head of the Control Products & Solutions segment.
"Ted is the ideal CFO for Rockwell Automation," said Keith D. Nosbusch, chairman and chief executive officer. "His outstanding leadership skills, business savvy, financial acumen and significant knowledge of Rockwell Automation make him uniquely qualified to advance both our growth and productivity strategies." Crandall's appointment comes after a thorough review of both internal and external candidates.
Replacing Crandall as senior vice president and head of the Control Products and Solutions segment is Robert Ruff. Ruff was previously senior vice president, Americas Sales. "Bob accelerated programs that increased our market share in the Americas region and drove significant business performance results," said Nosbusch.
10:13:54 AM
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Wonderware, a business unit of Invensys, has added new compact panels to its industrial computer product line. The new panels are the entry point to the latest integrated and scalable Wonderware HMI and SCADA software solutions that can manage a single machine, production line, complete plant or a customer's entire automation and information enterprise.
The panels combine hardware with powerful Wonderware human-machine interface (HMI) software. The panels are offered in a range of screen sizes and are manufactured to comply with various industrial environment ratings including NEMA 4X/IP 66 and Class 1, Div. 2. They are configured and managed via the newly introduced Wonderware Development Studio, which is designed to enable IT and engineering teams to collaborate on software application modeling, development, change management and deployment across the full range of Wonderware software applications.
The new panels are aimed directly at the Rockwell Automation PanelView line--one of a number of products released by a variety for suppliers also targeting PanelView. Looks like competition for operator panels is heating up.
10:11:59 AM
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Just talked with Adib Nasle, president of Edsa Micro, and was introduced to a new area of design and simulation (to me, at any rate). The company has been focused on a design and analytical product for electrical power distribution, say for facilities such as a manufacturing plant. Users are design / consulting engineers (read PEs). Company managers saw a need to bring critical electric power information in real time to plant management. As Nasle explained to me, there is a lot of knowledge of the system locked up in the design package that usually takes a PE to interpret. So if there is a problem or potential problem, managers have to call their consulting engineer (unless they are among the luck few to have a full time PE on staff). Therefore a product called Paladin Live. It embeds a design into a real-time sensor system to monitor the actual power situation (using technology from Eaton Corp.). The product includes a simulation module that enables "what-if" scenario planning.
I tried to sell power monitoring products back in the early-mid 90s (only sold a little). Nasle says that Edsa's product is better than just monitoring in that it relates back to the original design so that a manager can see where things are slipping (introduction of some harmonics, or oversized motor or the like).
7:29:43 AM
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© Copyright 2007 Gary Mintchell.
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