Progressive Place

Spiral Learning, for subjects too vital for a training module

2010-11-11T13:24:00.002-05:00

This came in an October newsletter from the Masie Center (http://www.masiecenter.com/). Since I can't find it in their website to link you to, I'm just copying the whole thing here.

Spiral Learning: Critical Topics Woven Into the Organization

By Elliott Masie, Chair - The Learning CONSORTIUM

Some topics can’t be contained in a single course or online module. We advocate that there are a few ideal topics for “Spiral Learning”, meaning they should be woven throughout the organization and integrated into a wide range of learning and development activities.
Consider these 4 topics for Spiral Learning in your organization:

Cyber Security: Using technology in a manner that is secure and safe for the individual and organization.

Safety: Creating a culture of safety throughout the organization, with an eye toward managing risk in every nook of the enterprise.

Corporate Sustainability: A business approach that creates long-term consumer and employee value by creating a “green” strategy aimed at the natural as well as social, cultural and economic environments.

Virtual Leadership: With distributed teams, our leaders must evolve their leadership modes to extend across time zones and distance while leveraging new models for assisting team members across the globe.

Sure, a learning department could offer classes on Cyber Security, Safety, Sustainability and Virtual Leadership, but the topics are too important and too pervasive to be contained in a single learning activity.

Spiral Learning advocates weaving these topics into every corner of our organizations and existing learning curriculum. Here are a few examples:

Executive development case studies should be focused on topics of Cyber Security or Sustainability. As we are teaching strategy or alignment, let’s make these “Spiral” topics the content focus.

Exemplars: Actively build exemplars of individuals or units that are aggressively tackling these topics and promote them as internal corporate “heroes”.

Teachable Moments: Managers should find regular “teachable moments” to focus on how we can take better approaches to educating employees about these topics.

Job Descriptions & Performance Review: These topics can be built into job descriptions and performance reviews to highlight their mission-critical status.

Contradiction Awareness: I was about to organize the distribution of a daily newsletter at our conference; then I thought about the Sustainability issues and the image of several hundred papers left on tables.

Hurdles: As learning and performance professionals, we should focus on behavioral hurdles that stand in the way of implementing approaches to address these important areas.

Spiral Learning Design is a great opportunity to combine learning with organizational development and corporate communication to spark strategic and measurable changes in our workplaces. Each of these Spiral Learning Topics lends itself to a measurement or dashboard.

We will be focusing on Spiral Learning at our Learning 2010 event, to be held from Oct 24- 27 in Orlando. We will hear from Howard Schmidt - White House Director of Cyber Security, Greg Hale - Safety Officer for Disney, and a wide range of learning leaders working on Sustainability and Virtual Leadership.

Complete information at http://www.learning2010.com

We have an Advanced Registration Discount and there are a range of hotel rooms still available.

Yours in learning,

Elliott Masie, Chair - The Learning CONSORTIUM

Sent by: The MASIE Center, PO Box 397, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866

The Sensor Suit, with Mouthpad accessory

2010-06-15T22:15:00.005-04:00

As I slowly shift my body in yoga class, I visualize the tight and pained spots I need to lean into and visualize dissolving. In my mind's eye, these areas appear, as though in an infrared scanner, in hotter colors. I then imagine them melting into coolness, to be drained away by my breath directed to the area.

Quite suddenly, the vision shifts to me wearing a garment that fits like a wetsuit, embedded with sensors that "read" the bio indicators, and feed the stream of info into a 3-D visor I’m wearing. Attached to the visor by a tiny, thin wire is a “mouthpad”, a tiny, flat touch pad stuck, like a glob of peanut butter, just inside of and above my upper front teeth. I use this like a touchpad, controlling the interface with the tip of my tongue.

Some possibilities:

The sensor suit could be used in rehab after neural and muscular damage, to help re-acquaint the mind with the body, so it can go about establishing and extending new channels of communication.
The mouthpad could be used by quadriplegics as a control device. The tongue is more sensitive and less fatigued when it stays inside the mouth, where it belongs.
Longer term, both would have all kinds of applications in the mass market. Me, for example-- an average aging person enhancing my body awareness, allowing me to get the most out of exercise, and minimizing the possibility of injury by accentuating cautionary feedback. A swimmer could control a remote-control robotic device in the water, or even (heaven forbid) take and respond to text messages while swimming laps.

Extending the Handheld Device

2010-06-15T22:13:00.001-04:00

EXTENDING THE HANDHELD
Core concepts here:
Handheld devices are weakest at helping the user maintain a sense of context for the small amount of information displayed on the device’s small screen. A helpful adaptation would be a larger display space outside the device; say, a printed illustration showing the layout of the options in a particular app. Until we become familiar with the conceptual space inside the app, our memories are not good at doing that on their own.
The device screens could provide more contextual information by using visual layering to simulate a 3-dimensional image space. Color coding and varying depth of shade and color could further enhance the (delicacy? Precision? Articulateness?) of the display. For whatever reason, pocket video games are the only mobile devices that have gone this route.

Background: see http://audiknow.com, and the paper that spawned the idea, at http://home.comcast.net/~writebrain1/WB0502/330_Audiknow.htm.

Blended media could greatly enhance the experience of using a handheld device. In a research paper I wrote back in 2001, I pointed out that the small screen of a mobile device doesn’t provide the context a person needs to make full sense of what one sees on the screen. In situations where the content is known and fairly predictable, the handheld could be laid on a printed chart that physically represents . like a site map that shows the whole subject domain, or any conceptual space laid out like a mind map, with each sub-topic/page node and relationship briefly described and illustrated.

(Rewrite the following 3 paragraphs. They’re redundant.) Basically, viewing a visual application in a handheld’s screen is like viewing real life through a paper towel tube, or a rolled-up newspaper. If you set the device down on a sheet of paper on a clipboard, or a table even, your visual space is limited only by the size of the paper. If the paper shows the whole “map” of the app you’re working with in the handheld, you get to see how the detail in the screen fits into the “bigger picture”. To see the detail at a different point in the app, just find that spot on the large chart, then tell the device to go to that point, where you’ll see a zoomed-in” view. The proximity sensor in the iPhone, iTouch and iPad could provide this positioning automatically.

This was a primitive form of blended learning that would have been exceptionally useful in all kinds of applications. I put it aside because it didn’t apply to my paper, which focused on mobile digital audio. By the time I finished the paper, I’d forgotten the visual idea, and was working to make a business of the more familiar audio part. It would have been simple create a pilot, but it didn’t happen.

Another spin on the idea was to extend the image by creating a 3-D visualization within the handheld, and using it on a drafting table with a set of roll-up charts. The absence in handhelds of so obvious an enhancement as the 3-D image continues to amaze me. People are very skilled at thinking in 3-D perspective. Treating the handheld device screen as a flat surface makes as much sense as declaring that all cities should have only one-story buildings. In the size-constrained land of the handheld, 3-D should (be the) rule (not the exception).

Incidentally, I also continue to be appalled that the creators of mind-mapping software don’t use depth, shading, and perceived near-far proximity to enhance the visual and conceptual richness of their products.

It occurred to me 11 years ago that my kids’ Gameboys were vastly better at representing a complex domain than my PDA. Once you learned the terrain, it was graphically navigable, and used several metaphors to simulate a 3-D physical space. While it’s sad that I didn’t act on that observation back then, knowing how my mind works, it probably would have kept me from finishing my research paper and getting the damn degree.

Separate topics:
The Golden-i is a Bluetooth video headset, mainly intended as a mobile interface to a computer or the Internet. Voice activation makes it a totally hands-free workstation. However, adapting it for eye-monitoring would let the user:
1. Use blinks as button clicks, to navigate among layers in a 3-D space. Since blinking is mostly automatic, signals would have to start at 2x, plus signals for close-and-open, etc.
2. Use quick left-right-up-down eye motions to move an oversize image correspondingly, as with an iPhone, or like moving objects around on a physical magnet board.

Mobile technology in the work setting can be very Green-enhancing, in that it saves travel, time, office space, carting around of materials, and more. Also, I’ve noticed that most large-scale sustainability initiatives depend so heavily on automation, they could say “IT Inside”, like most PCs say “Intel Inside”.

Hemp, the Fabric of Freedom

2010-04-04T09:44:00.003-04:00

Our nation's Founding Fathers wore fabric made of cotton because they could afford it, and because many of them had enslaved the people who planted, picked, and processed it. In this land, cotton as a crop was possible only through the enslavement of others. Today, it is possible only through a constant and unsustainable battle against Nature.

By contrast, our Founding Fighters-- the farmers, bakers, wheelwrights, and carpenters who fought and died to free our nation from tyranny-- wore hemp. Hemp that withstood the wear and tear, the mud and blood and sweat that planted the seeds and nourished the roots of our freedom. Hemp that was chosen by Betsy Ross to create the first Stars and Stripes. Hemp that had grown like a weed across much this continent, before an environmentally insane and economically-motivated campaign after World War Two eradicated it.

Hemp is not a drug. It is an amazingly hardy and useful plant that grows easily, without irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizer, just about anywhere. Unlike cotton. Cotton can do none of those things. Our economy and our environment need help now. They need hemp now.

Cotton is rooted in Slavery. Hemp is rooted in Freedom.

Choose Hemp.

As soon as I find out what organization is spear-heading this movement, I'll post it here.

What's my favorite thing about documenting requirements?

2009-12-24T09:18:00.003-05:00

My favorite thing about documenting requirements is talking with someone who's an expert at a particular job, but might not have a sense of how much their work contributes to the big picture, to the bottom line. I capture what they do, and make sure I got it right. Then I put it into the context of the big picture, and hold that view up for them to see. The reaction is usually something like, "Oh, wow! So that's what this does, how that works, where I fit, what they do!" Almost always, they get a bigger sense of themselves and their importance, and a better understanding of those they interface with.

Meyers' Twilight series is deeper than it appears

2009-05-28T20:17:00.007-04:00

Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series was called "downmarket" in the April 20 Newsweek. Why am I five weeks behind in reading my Newsweeks? Because I was, yes, deep into the Twilight series!

The Twilight series is full of ponderable questions about the human condition. Consider: How can the "good" vampires stand to live with us regular humans, when a vampire's strongest desire is to rip out our throats and drink our blood?

Here's a similar question: How can so many of us regular humans drive powerful machines of potential death and destruction, and be tempted daily to maim and kill some of the obnoxious idiots on the road, yet not do so?

The "good" vampires make it quite clear: Once they've experienced the life-enriching joy of living among humans, subduing their taste for human blood becomes a worthy trade-off.

Maybe they're not that different from most of us, after all.

The Next Eco-Advance: First Bottles, then Bento Boxes

2009-05-09T16:39:00.006-04:00

Perhaps you’ve seen, or ordered, a “bento box” in a Japanese restaurant. Until they were replaced by polystyrene, as here, the personal re-usable bento box was a common container for Japanese to take their lunches to work in (school children have been getting universal school lunches since after WW II.)

Here’s my vision of the next eco-advance, after using one’s own water bottle and coffee mug: the personal re-usable bento box. Initially a personal statement for trendy young econistas, the bento box will eventually be adopted by all the environmentally conscious. Rather than accept our food in disposable containers, we will insist on having it put into our own containers, from which we will eat it or take it out, to wash it at home. Initially this will conflict with municipal health regulations and vendor convenience, but those will quickly adapt to suit the changing market. To accommodate servings that are charged by weight, each container will have its tare weight embossed on the handle, and that weight will be deducted at checkout.

At purchase, those using their own containers may have to sign a release of vendor liability should they get sick from an unclean container. This has obvious risks, if the sickness might also have come from the food itself. An alternative might be for arriving customers to use a fast, automated steam sterilizer designed for that purpose.

All Is Connected

2009-05-06T11:20:00.002-04:00

You’ve probably seen this shape: It's a circle, with a bunch of evenly-spaced dots drawn on it, and lines drawn that connect every possible pair of dots. It's often drawn with lots of points, then the lines filled in to create a fine mesh of connections, to show how complex the relationships can get between multiple things.

Now that you have that shape in mind, consider it representing this:
In the real world, all phenomena are connected.
If a technological race such as ours is to have a sustainable presence (read: long-term survival) in this world, we are responsible for understanding how everything we do impacts everything else, and all the relationships.
While the challenge may seem impossibly complex, the responsibility to take it on is no less ours.
We have the sensing technology to monitor, reveal, and measure the influences and outcomes, and the analytical tools to identify and assess the impacts, and locate the causes.
We must accept the responsibility to understand and act on what we learn.

Leveraging Disadvantaged Digital Natives into the Workforce

2009-03-18T15:20:00.014-04:00

In my work in corporate IT and training, I’ve noticed that a vast number of young adults, even many from disadvantaged backgrounds, use technology in their everyday lives in ways that most multiple-degreed fifty-somethings can’t even imagine. I've envisioned a way to help these young people leverage their competitive advantage as “digital natives” into long-term success in the mainstream workforce.

My vision is for an interactive network that provides just-in-time learning, guidance, monitoring, and reinforcement, to help workers and teams stay on-target, on-task, and on-track. This network would reflect and take advantage of the rich and complex cognitive networks that already exist in the minds of digital natives. It is this thinking that makes them fundamentally well-suited to thrive in the twenty-first century.

The Green Collar Workforce is an ideal place to start implementing this network. While Green Collar Jobs are often characterized as re-tooled blue collar jobs, they are far from the “skilled labor” of old. The old model, in which management thinks, plans and directs, while labor carries out their mandates, has had disastrous consequences for our planet and for many of us as workers. Almost too late, we've discovered that the web of life is so intertwined that not even one worker can afford to be out of the loop and unaware of the consequences of one's decisions and actions.

Some short term advantages to a connected workforce of Green Collar Digital Natives include:
- accelerated ramp-up from trainee to skilled worker
- cost-efficient transfer of critical knowledge from aging baby-boomers to new workers
- learning, guidance, and collaboration provided in a familiar, comfortable, and non-threatening format
- expert monitoring and real-time, as-needed intervention, for positive reinforcement, spirit-boosting, and correction
- learning and skill acquisition customized, at little additional cost, to the individual and the work task
- highly efficient work teams, in which members collaborate, share learning and motivation, and build group effectiveness and esprit de corp.

In the long run, a connected workforce will be an always-thinking, always-connected, always-learning collective entity. But, while it may in some ways resemble The Borg in Star Trek - The Next Generation, the individuals in this entity will retain and apply their individuality, visions, and consciences. Such an evolutionary step is imperative, to enable the survival of our species in a complex, delicate, and interconnected world.

To move this concept forward, I need expert input about the problems and opportunities that it might address, as well as about current and planned initiatives with which it might either connect, or conflict. Input is sought from experts in:
- workforce education and performance support technology
- online and mobile tools for learning, work-life, and collaboration
- job training or workforce support for disadvantaged and post-incarceration young adults.

For more on this topic, read the fourth posting before this one, that begins "Performance Support for launching the Green Collar..."

Sustainability Resources in the Philadelphia area

2009-01-27T20:34:00.003-05:00

This is a list-in-progress. You can add links to additional resources in a Comment, and I'll add them to the list if appropriate.
Note caveat at the end.

Sustainable Business Network of Phila- http://sbnphiladelphia.org/

B-Corp, pledge to use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems- http://www.bcorporation.net/

This blogger's Plastisaurus blog, where you can click the 2007 link to read the tale of the Plastisauri- http://plastisaurus.blogspot.com/

Delco Alliance for Environmental Justice - http://www.ejnet.org/chester/

Green For All, Van Jones' magic trick: stir in environmental justice with green jobs, and, Voila! One issue! And amazingly, it works. http://Greenforall.org

PennFuture, for Environmental Action in PA- http://PennFuture.org

Promoting alternative fuels and efficient fuel use in cities- http://www.phillycleancities.org/

Green Jobs Philly, a garden of hidden local treasures- http://greenjobsphilly.org/

PA Resources Council- http://www.prc.org/

For eco-entrepreneurs- http://www.greenbusiness.net/

Delaware Valley Green Building Council- http://www.dvgbc.org/

Clean Water Action- http://cleanwater.org/pa

Clean Air Council- http://cleanair.org/

We Can Solve the Climate and Energy Crises- http://www.wecansolveit.org/

The blogger and contributors to the list are not responsible for the accuracy, content, or existence of the websites linked to here. Anyone who follows these links is solely responsible for the results and outcomes of that use.

That's what I get for not looking it up online, like a normal person

2009-01-12T14:17:00.002-05:00

This is good for a chuckle—

I had looked up the number of my local appliance parts dealer in the phone book, then set my cell phone down on the page while I wrote the number on a piece of paper. I then closed the phone book and put it away— with the cell phone in it. Not seeing my cell phone around, I used my desk phone to make the call. When I realized my cell phone was missing, I called it. Since I had the phone on vibrate, not ring, all that paper cushioned the vibration nicely.

Fortunately, I did eventually think to look in the phone book.

When SMEs create their own instructional materials, beware

2009-01-08T11:37:00.002-05:00

Here are 2 caveats to observe, when letting Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) create their own learning materials. These rules equally apply to web content, user guides, comedy sketches, and anywhere else the quality of the writing may affect the outcome.

Be sure to point out to management the likely differences in outcomes between "better than nothing" and actual designed instruction. The IDL (instructional design) literature is full of metrics for identifying desired learning outcomes, and how well various examples achieved them. Even if you're not responsible for creating the content, you are responsible for having gone along with the decision. And, if heaven forbid something goes drastically wrong because somebody didn't learn something they needed to know to do their job, you don't want to end up the goat.
Exercise editorial control over all content, be sure it is included among your deliverables, and that your time is budgeted to do it. And, BTW, templates are only useful if their use requires instruction in how to use them. Otherwise they'll be applied ignorant of their purpose; or, worse, dismissed as bureaucratic nonsense.

Performance Support for launching the Green Collar Workforce

2008-12-23T09:28:00.012-05:00

(c) David Calloway 2009

What group in our nation is highly technology-savvy, yet can't even get through that most basic economic and social gateway, the high school diploma? Oops-- the question gave away the answer. Just like our new president, a vast number of today's high school dropouts have absorbed advanced technology into their daily lives in a way that will remain forever alien to most multiple-degreed professionals over 50.

This essay describes a way to provide those hidden gems of the workforce with a low-cost, high-impact support and learning framework of online instruction and community, via their ever-present cell phones.

Three things have excited me in the past year: an LMS, the Green Collar Jobs movement, and Social Networking. Here's what each is:

An LMS, or Learning Management System, is an online environment for managing, tracking, and participating in organized learning activities.
Green Collar Jobs will help get our economy back on track, reverse our environmental mess, and pull millions out of poverty.
Social Networking has wired today’s youth civilization in a way that remains a mystery to most workers over 50.

As a citizen, I’ve puzzled over how I could merge my work with my passion to serve both people and planet. As an LMS analyst, I manage an online system that provides learning and certification to over 2000 field workers in the energy industry. The skill, safety, and compliance education I now provide to thousands of energy workers is much like what millions of green collar workers will need to acquire over the next few years. At a recent LMS vendor conference, I realized how I could merge these two important parts of my life.

Failure of Jobs Programs. Since the War on Poverty in the 1960s, job training has been seen as a primary means of bringing people out of poverty and into the mainstream. But it has often failed, for many reasons. Budgets run out and support structures are withdrawn before vital lifestyle changes can take place. Three generations of participants have gotten their hopes up, seen those hopes dashed, and ended up back where they started. Conditions today are, paradoxically, either worse than ever, or better than ever, depending on your perspective.

On the worse side, consider the School District of Philadelphia’s forty percent drop-out rate. Educated professionals know from experience that it’s hard enough to stay employed with “just” a college degree. Imagine the sense of hopelessness of living without even a high school diploma.

But on the better side, we see millions of such “poorly educated” young people, here and around the world, using advanced digital technology to connect and share information of all kinds, as quickly and naturally as breathing. Using tools that may be forever out of reach to many well-educated, highly-paid professionals, they have achieved the ultimate measure of technology adoption: they've made it a ubiquitous part of their lifestyle.

A productivity framework could be delivered via powerful smart phones, such as Blackberries(R), connecting those new to the workforce with a powerful support structure, and with each other. It would be a cost-effective, easy to use online environment for ongoing, real-time e-learning, skill building, mentoring, engagement, and monitoring. It would bring new workers, organizational and corporate allies, mentors, volunteers, and other allies together as collaborators, "co-laboring" toward a shared outcome: a smart, productive, engaged, and constantly improving workforce.

The author can provide more detail on this framework, upon request. If you might be able to help or advise in enabling this initiative, please respond by email to writebrain1 at comcast dot net.

Blackberry is a registered trademark of Research In Motion Limited

Three-dimensional thinking in a Triple Bottom Line world

2008-04-10T10:53:00.002-04:00

How to think in three dimensions in a Triple Bottom Line world

Rather than back into my subject from a tangent, as I usually do, I'll state the topics of this article:
1. Triple Bottom Line, but only briefly
2. My three-dimensional mental model, and how I learned it
3. The three-dimensional world we live in, as the natural way to perceive, analyze, and share our thinking, rather than the prevailing linear way
4. The intriguing and eclectic perspectives at www.nonesoblind.org, and why this is more related than it sounds.

Here's my typical online experience. At a Green Entrepreneurship conference at Temple U. yesterday, I was doodling possible designs for a Triple Bottom Line logo. I wrote the characters 3BL, then BL3, as in, BL-Cubed, on a sketch of a cube, as though on an alphabet block. I decided to do a web search when I got home, to see "what's out there."

I quickly found that 3BL© is a copyrighted logo of some accounting organization. That's okay; I like BL-Cubed better anyway, because I learned long ago to organize my mental space into three-dimensional patterns, to match the world I live in. Similarly, I envision Triple Bottom Line not as a simple extension, but as a geometric expansion, of the simplistic— dare I say, primitive? — single bottom line concept.

The search led me to a concept called Book3, or Book-Cubed, in a website called www.nonesoblind.org.
It combines it's creator's vision for saving our nation from decline, with his approach to structuring information for presentation and learning. I read the Book3 introduction with growing excitement. Maybe this was the tool I've searched years for, where I could map concepts and issues during development, then to present to others, the way I see them in my mind: in interlinked, 3-dimensional patterns of elements and relationships.

When I analyze an issue, I tend to form a 3-dimensional mental picture that spreads the elements out into a network of linked arrays, like a stacked set of interconnected charts. This allows for a more detailed representation, more rigorous analysis, and more comprehensive and defensible conclusions. On the flip side, it can create a monster headache, as offshoots of emotion and misinformation weave an inconclusive, contradictory, and paralyzing tangle.

Always a literary, artsy type, I only learned this discipline well into adulthood. At age 32 I was forced by circumstance to become a computer programmer (long story deleted). I learned the useful discipline of structured analysis, and applied it happily to numerous computer systems tasks. After about two years, I found myself, quite effortlessly, using structured analysis to construct a 3-dimensional mental model of every complex issue I encountered.

Numerous side benefits began to appear. Of course, my everyday problem-solving skills had taken a giant leap forward. I also found I could now sketch the kind of accurate perspective views that had always escaped me in Art class. As a baritone, always singing the harmony and not the melody, I could immediately mimic almost any harmonic line, however obscure or unfamiliar. But now I could anticipate, even create, complex harmonic structures. It's been proven that young children who learn to play a two-handed musical instrument gained a lifelong cognitive advantage in math, science, and other fields of abstract analysis. Had I, by brute force, re-wired my brain to overcome my early skill deficiencies?

I eventually quit programming to became a technical writer, and draw on both sides of my now more balanced brain. This is when I saw, for the first time, that my three-dimensional mental model is a more accurate view of the world than I had before, and is a very useful and natural way to think. I was soon struck by how many people don't constuct three-dimensional mental pictures. Whether they haven't learned, or have forgotten, or just don't bother, I don't know. I do know that I'd gone through 16 years of formal education, and don't recall ever having encountered this incredibly useful discipline, or anything like it.

A problem remains: I still don't have a visual space where I can store a partially-constucted mental model, outside of my brain, where the connections won't fade, and where my overactive right-brain won't re-arrange them in countless tangles of less-relevant relationships. I've tried pencil-and-paper grids on multiple pages, and tabletops filled with sticky notes, and multi-page Visio charts, and mind-mapping programs on the computer. The mind-mapping was the best, although I gave that up when I found the response so slow and the framework so awkward, that I ended up analyzing the process, and losing track of the purpose.

So, what about Book-Cubed? While it may be a useful interface for hierarchical presentation, it's still visually flat, and leaves too much context out of the picture. Because it's not actually a cube, it fails its promise. The physical reality we live in has three dimensions. Because we're all accustomed to living in that reality, it's the logical and familiar paradigm for laying out our mental terrain. Until something better comes along, that is.

The content of www.nonesoblind.org also intrigued me, and I'll have to give it a lot of thought before I can comment. I will say that, two years ago, I could not have imagined a hotly contested presidential race between Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. Maybe many of us in the US agree with Andrew Schmookler, and are ready to create ways to bring his dark vision into the light. If you want to know more, visit the website: www.nonesoblind.org.

How can we help people to change, not just tell them to?

2007-11-30T11:57:00.000-05:00

This message is a brain-storm that I’m working thru the details of. Maybe you’ll have some insights or suggestions.

I was looking at non-profit jobs on Craigslist. Most appear to be for a variety of canvassing campaigns, to raise funds for progressive legislative and promotional initiatives. Of course, I support their objectives, and donate a bit to many of the ones I encounter.

But I wonder— Are any of these smart, energetic, dedicated young workers being paid to share the knowledge and expertise of their organizations, in ways that will really change how people act, to start bringing about the changes they promote?

I could see these street workers as the action end of a real support network, connecting better-living expertise with those who need to apply it.

More thoughts, not yet expressed for presentation:

…homes and communities learning and doing things differently, immediately, and consistently. Campaign workers take problems, issues, and obstacles to their knowledgeable communities of practice, initiate dialogs, to connect those who can and who’ve done, with those who need to do.

…paid to work directly with municipalities, churches, service organizations, and membership organizations to help their constituents take direct action, compost, use less energy, eat more sensibly, drive less, treat themselves and each other better, and so on.

Do you know of anything like this going on anywhere? I just feel like I’m living in a big disconnect. We’re writing checks, and reading what articles we can. But every day, we may still be doing things, out of sheer habit, that invalidate the outcomes we’re paying somebody else to promote.

Can transparency save the small indie business?

2007-06-20T15:00:00.000-04:00

Recapturing lost notes: Please pardon my shorthand. I first saved this as a calendar entry in Outlook. I later opened it, added more, and hit ctl-S. Accidentally bridging the S and the D, which disastrously are side-by-side, I deleted twenty minutes worth of typing, not to mention some inspired original thinking, only partially recaptured here.

Can transparency save the small indie business? Much of our wonderful local "health food" store Martindale's stuff is horrendously expensive, compared to most other sources. Why? Is it all lack of buying leverage, or are lack of savvy, energy, or funding also factors? How do they get and implement Best of Class food and health solutions for their customers?

If I knew why M'dls stuff costs so much more than Trader Joes, I mt decide to shop there and pay more anyway. I mt also thk of ways to help them bring thr costs down, that they hvn't tht of.

Mdl's web site appears to be run by Healthy Living. What else does HL do for them? What if HL merged w a regnl or nat'l coop suptg indie biz's w kind of svcs TJs provs thr stores?
TJs appeal is more than price: it's fun, atmosphere, worker QOL, and more.

Energy example: SunEdison has the scale and track record to offer pay-as-you-go solar energy to billion dollar-plus firms. Aside from the advantage of a predictable, no-upfront-cost expense, what do they do that indie solar firms could do, given the help of a large coop?

more to come...

BLCD Fun Fair flier

2007-05-24T09:54:00.000-04:00

How's a Democrat in Congress Different From a Soldier in Iraq?

2007-05-24T09:13:00.001-04:00

How's a Democrat in Congress Different From a Soldier in Iraq?

The Democrat in Congress just rolls over and PLAYS dead.

From the Baffle 'em With Bullfeathers Dept.

2007-04-09T22:57:00.000-04:00

If you have to apologize for a really big blunder, do this first:
Say you've been very upset about the death of your beloved Uncle Sitting Trout,
and you've had a terrible hangover from all the Saki you drank at his big Irish wake.
While they're struggling to figure that one out, they might forget all about your blunder.

Too much narrative: Why most of what's written doesn't need to be

2007-03-13T10:00:00.000-04:00

Too much narrative: Why most of what's written doesn't need to be.

Most of what's written is narrative. Maybe it's the only chance for many of us to struggle to express ourselves to others, without which we'd forget how.
Example: documenting a systems development project (SDLC). We don't really need to re-express every function of a particular implementation of, say, an open source email program. If it wasn't expressed well when the program was first created, then subsequent tech writers could pull the doc out of an open docs repository, improve it, and check it back in. That's how open source code works: Constantly, collectively, work on and improve an open model, rather than re-writing it over and over again for use within one company.

Would the outcome be good or bad? Fewer jobs for tech writers, or more jobs and better docs? How's it worked out for open source programmers?

Business communication was the first target of this idea, but that version will take longer to prep for publication, and was put aside for now.

Convert your email to audio, scan and bleep it on the go

2006-12-11T10:16:00.000-05:00

It's easy to scan thru a lot of voice mails while on the go, deleting many. Wouldn't it be nice to do that with emails?

So here's the idea:
Create a program that does these things:
1. Converts selected parts of email messages to audio, saves these as mp3s, loads them into a song list, and downloads that to the music player.

2. You listen to them, and sort them as you would voice mail messages. The program tags each to keep, delete, forward, reply, or follow-uplater.

3. When next sync'd up, the messages are converted back to text, and the actions you took on the audio messages are replicated on the matching emails. The replies and forwards can be sent as either audio, or converted to text.

This all seems possible, although step 2 may restrict it to Blackberry phones and other programmable phones, since it probably exceeds the intelligence of a music player. And the programming would have to be on both the PC and the mobile device, and maybe also the email program.

Compliance, User eXperience, and the Trouble with Transparency

2006-10-23T17:12:00.000-04:00

©2006 David Calloway
(This is a draft; feedback and insights appreciated.)

Compliance and User Experience are symbiotically attached, through a common lifeblood called Transparency. These thoughts on that relationship came to me in a conversation with a friend at a local compliance consultancy.

The compliance industry puts a lot of attention to enabling surveillance and disempowerment: Keep a close eye on everyone, and don’t let them do anything they shouldn’t do. This is an expensive and deadening approach. Despite what compliance literature and conference promos imply, the number of people who are intentionally non-compliant is very small.

Most people want to do the right thing, if it's not too difficult. This makes compliance primarily a User Experience issue: Make The Right Thing easy to do, and The Wrong Thing hard to do, and non-compliance may well become a non-issue. It is much more effective to focus on enablement. Systems and procedures that make it easy to comply with regulations make compliance a no-brainer. Make transactions and interactions clear, sensible, and unambiguous, and they'll be performed correctly and consistently, for the most part, by people and computers alike. Failure to comply will then become a glaring exception, and stand out like a sore thumb. That's called transparency.

Transparency is the enemy of fraud, as well as a lot of other things that hold organizations back, such as waste, ignorance, misunderstanding, and suspicion. These outcomes are compounded when procedures are messy, convoluted or error-prone, be they manual or automated. Reasonable people, in a reasonable work situation, will avoid doing anything that takes time and attention away from what they do best and are being paid to do, whether it’s selling, repairing, driving, or whatever.

Here's a typical scenario I hear over and over again. I've done a good day's work, and I'm ready to go home. As I'm updating my activity log, the system rejects a transaction code I've entered. I don't find the code I want in the online look-up table, the support desk isn't answering, and the Help page is useless. You can bet I'm going to choose an inaccurate code from the list, hit Update, and log out. I intend to correct this fraudulent mistake tomorrow, if I remember. As I leave with a feeling of dread, I know I'd feel a lot worse about missing my van pool and facing a two-hour trip home on 3 different buses.

Countless automated systems have shown that they can be quick, easy, and natural to use, making compliance a no-brainer. So then, who's creating all those compliance nightmares? Commonly, it's a poorly designed or integrated system, implemented with insufficient feedback, testing, training and support. Willing non-compliance is the rare exception, rather than the rule. Instituting compliance measures that make people's jobs harder to do just punishes those who want to do the right thing, and makes them more likely to want to do the wrong thing.
I admit it: as a tech writer, it's often fallen to me to write instructions trying to explain how to use cantankerous systems and convoluted procedures. I’d much rather have been simplifying or eliminating the bad design that made my detailed instructions necessary. But, since that wasn’t my job, more often than not my input on such things was brushed aside, sometimes with disdain.

If anything, a quality user experience can make things too transparent. Transparency is the enemy of things that a lot of people are heavily invested in— things like croneyism, passive aggression, sweetheart deals, corruption, bigotry, and so on. Not to mention outmoded ideas and world views, and economic and political systems in need of overhaul. Some of the things that can't hold up in bright light may be dear to the hearts of people at all levels in an organization.

So I say to UX people: If all are not delighted with your improved User eXperience, don't take it personally. Maybe they just see you coming, Windex and squeegee in hand, to clean some basement windows they'd rather not have other people peering through.

Holistic/Integrative Health Care: What'll it take?

2006-10-04T13:39:00.000-04:00

Idea: A hospital, and by extension a medical complex, that actively solicits customers and employees who are committed to living healthy lives, in all possible ways. Is it possible? What would it take?

Some aspects:
Integrative, alternative, low-cost, environmentally friendly, low-tech, low-footprint, low-consumption, non-invasive, inspired, spiritual, down-to-earth, sustainable.
Compassion for the care-givers who feel the suffering all around them, and need desperately to do something with that pain besides bury and drown it.
Hospitals escape the me-too competition that's created over-capacity in glamorous, expensive specialties.
Nurses get the respect and influence commensurate with their knowledge, responsibility, and wisdom.
Physicians know, think about, and take care of patients, not insurance. Any investments in real estate, practice management firms, and such are strictly on their own time, not part of their jobs.
Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants lift the unreasonable burden of responsibility off the physicians.
Patients lose the self-destructive tendency to sue everybody at the drop of a hat.
"Integrative" comes to include things like a patient-centered, unified health information network; community involvement in lifestyle choices, such as recreational activities, diet, and addiction reduction...
And on a related subject: The P in HIPAA stands for portability, not privacy. It's distressing how few medical practitioners know that. Believe me, I've asked.

Open Source Entertainment

2006-10-04T13:21:00.000-04:00

Open Source Entertainment:
What comes after home-made music videos and skin flicks?
Some thoughts on applying open source and peer-to-peer models to interactive and on-demand video and audio

Will interactive and on-demand video and audio evolve like cable and cellular, in which a diverse but user-hostile industry gradually consolidates into a few highly functional, but expensive and monolithically-controlled networks? Or will it become more like the Web, bringing-- in theory, at least-- all to all?

What's your guess? Extra points awarded for informed guesses!
The prize, should you amass enough points, is to get quoted in an article on the topic. You can post a comment here, or better yet, contact me directly at davidc@audiknow.com.

Grassroots Action+ Reality TV+ Music Video= Street Media

2006-07-13T09:22:00.000-04:00

Progressive media can accelerate a movement whose time has come. Examples include West Side Story, Motown, and Dylan. It provides the images and language, even the theme music, that moves caring hearts to action. Progressive media that supports the person-to-person influence of a grassroots movement can halt the radical right's Orwellian media juggernaut.

And it's free!

Powerful, free content is everywhere, channels are nowhere.
Terrific music tracks, and powerful, but underutilized, media assets are clogging progressive hard drives and shared servers the world over. That's essentially free content. What's needed is a reliable production and distribution channel, with a creative, progressive vision, to put the best of that stuff to good use grabbing guts and hearts.

A timely political statement, expressed in music, movement, and images, has tremendous power. Shown at a recent GeoClan conference, Guerrilla News Network's intense Drug Trade video danced right up the steps to Music Video's front door, then didn't go in. What would it be like, I wondered, if the GNN documentary danced right through that door, and delivered it's potent message as 21st Century musical theatre? With a reality media twist?

This could become a new genre of activist entertainment, like West Side Story was in the late 50s. That musical was part of a re-invented Broadway that brought progressive thinking into the mainstream, and laid some of the groundwork for mass acceptance of the Civil Rights movement in the early 60s. Not to mention opening doors for a generation of progressive, popular theatre and films.

A scenario
Start with a quality piece like the GNN video, updated to focus on a current topic. Create a dialog and lyrics script from the pivotal phrases in the piece. Sample and loop thru those phrases and images of the talking heads and newsreel clips, with repeated sequences reinforced by a crescendo beat that builds to a point of impact. Then soften the tone and imagery. Let the impact sink in on the audience. Shift the theme to recovery, possibilities, and good work that real people are doing. Rinse and repeat.

Initial Launch
Distribute it free, as Creative Commons material, to all the progressive web media outlets.
Email segments widely, to be re-distributed virally as email media attachments.
Package it with follow-up surveys to find out how people are, or think they could be, using it as a tool to organize around, and generate action.
Grow the process into a systematic infrastructure (see Pachamama Alliance as example)
Get DJs to slip samples and excerpts into dancehall mixes and multimedia podcast channels.
Create an alternative, non-commercial Pixar of persuasive multimedia entertainment. (Whoops-- poor example. No, I don't recommend selling it to Disney after a few years.)

Growth Curve
As soon as the first production is circulating, do another one about some other political hot potato. Get the most positive survey respondents from the first to submit outcome stories, and to send hard copies to potential funding sources. The respondents will have great stories to tell, but might not be real good at telling them. Use your network to enlist a progressive marketer and writers in their local area to help them, pro bono. They'd do it-- it's a solid investment.

I'd like to explore this further with you and/or anyone else who might help make it happen.

Warmly,

David

AudiKnow LLC-- Listening Between the Lines
Home of "Ben Franklin, Creative Revolutionary"

2006-06-19T22:23:00.000-04:00

Imagine this on every paper towel and toilet paper dispenser in the country.

WHEN I AM AN OLD MAN, I SHALL WEAR SPEEDOS(tm)

2006-05-25T08:46:00.000-04:00

WHEN I AM AN OLD MAN, I SHALL WEAR SPEEDOS^(tm)*
And contrasting plaids.

And stop to play with children, doing what I like when I feel like it.

And pick up the phone after 5 rings, and immediately begin to tell a corny joke,
before I find out who's calling.
If I pick it up at all.

I will draw silly pictures, and offer to hug people who cry or look sad,
and never wonder what others might think.

When I am an old man, I shall ride my bicycle into town,
wearing tight bike shorts and a bright striped bike shirt that stretches, almost,
across my tummy.

And I shall clack across tile floors with my clip-on shoes,
chewing on my helmet strap and stopping to chat
with neighbors as though all were well with the world.

Then I shall ride home with my backpack full of healthy,
eccentric things like soy milk and adzuki beans and
supplements with names no one can pronounce.

And I shall hurry, because the rocky road
ice cream is beginning to melt.
Or maybe I shall stop under this tree and eat it now,
and not even wait until after lunch.

(c) 2004, 2006 David Calloway
* Speedos(tm) is a registered trademark of Speedo Holdings BV

An Article an Hour: The High-Output Writer

2006-05-24T08:57:00.000-04:00

Article an Hour: Initial concept sketch
(c) 2006 David Calloway, M.Ed.
AudiKnow LLC--Listening Between the Lines
e-Content and e-Learning. Fast, fresh, and accurate. Hi-tech and hi-touch.

I have in mind a methodology for writing articles fast: 2 people collaborate within a framework that's akin to Agile Systems Development.

Note that this piece was written in solo, so it took over an hour and is still not quite finished.

Aspects
- Peer collaboraation: I help you, then you help me. Accountability creates outcomes.
- Could this help people who do publish often to write more efficiently?
How do columnists write so much, so often? Do most work alone? Ask Ron Goldwyn, retired Inquirer reporter, now doing PR for non-profits.
e-Book writers- David Newman, unconsulting.com- Have techniques for writing e-books that would apply to writing articles? If nothing else, buy his book on the subject.

It’s said “RBs (right-brainers) just start writing, and LBs outline first.” As a left-brainer, I tend to jump right into the writing. Then my training kicks in, I outline a bit, and then return to writing. The more purposefully I follow this back-and-forth method, the more quickly I create a better article. An outline is like an evolving map of my subject matter: it’s as much to remember where I’ve been as to see where I’m going.

How do writing teams work, vs solo writers?
Examples--
TV writers work in teams- daily or weekly TV programs, news, sitcoms, serials.
Song factories of the 50s: Gamble & Huff, Holland-Dozier-Holland, and the place Carole King worked.
2-writer teams in musical theatre: G&S, Lennon-McCartney, Lerner & Lowe. While these teamed two specialists, could the songsmith and the wordsmith each help in the other’s specialty?

My related experiences. I’m convinced that learning to be a technical writer made me a better writer in all ways, including the creative. I’m more coherent and focused. My academic and journalistic writing in college was inspiring and fun to read. But it was to unstructured and directionless to be compelling.
As a Project Documenter, I found that an aggressive deadline and at least one other person awaiting a deliverable seemed to activate and focus my knowledge and experience, as well as my imagination. Near-term feedback is vital for me.

The problem. Two big time losers curse my writing process: The final, fatal, never-ending rewrite of perfectionism, and mid-stream ideas and course changes. The details about these phenomena are not central to this article, and so are elaborated at the end. I have some thoughts on how I might handle them.

The Solution. A collaborative, team-based methodology called Agile Development works great in systems development and other project-driven arenas. How about agile writing?

Here’s how it might work: As soon as the 1st draft is more or less complete, post it to a publishing partner. They’ll clean it up, note questions and changes so it’ll make more sense and impact, and re-post it. Then in IM, we quickly work out the details, and whoever has the most complete version in front of them, publishes it.

How do newspaper professionals handle this? They have to get a lot out quickly.
More questions for Ron and other columnists and reporters:
- Do you work in collaboration with another writer, or solo?
- If solo, then who do you know who works better in collaboration?
- If both, is one or the other way better for certain kinds of writing?
- Are there already collaborative techniques to help tangential thinkers finish things?
- Working with a computer is a help and a hindrance for me. (Say how.) How is it for others? Help: quick capture and re-arrangement. On paper, I scribble, micro-edit (correcting misspellings, poor expression, and sloppiness, rather than saving that for later.)
Hindrance: Over-correct here too, such as going back just now and giving the word “over” an initial cap; …

Perfectionism has no place in writing for periodicals or blogs. Whether it even belongs in writing for the millennia—in books, constitutions, and addresses to the nation, say—is debatable. Perfectionism does not make perfect, it just makes never-finished.

Mid-stream inspirations. The desperation to “get it all in” will trump the need for conciseness and completion. This desperation can be overcome only by the satisfaction of seeing one’s name frequently in bylines. And with that, the knowing that whatever doesn’t get said in this article is material for the next one, or the one after that.

My typical writing scenario
An idea or inspiration will appear in surprising detail. I’m off to a fast start, and within 10 minutes I capture a lot of it, loosely outlining and rearranging as I go. A computer helps a lot here.
Then I add in elaborations, caveats, and counter-arguments.
Then I balance and integrate the counter-arguments, and knock out the ones that aren’t relevant.
That’s when I enter the danger zone. Just when I should be wrapping up, usually within a half hour or so, a radically different twist or insight occurs, and I charge off in hot pursuit. That tangent turns into more tangents. An hour later I realize that the original article has been lost in the vine-tangle of tangents.
An hour and a half have now passed. The article is unfinished, and no longer about what I said I’d write about. Other, neglected tasks are demanding my attention. Discouraged, I jot a few more quick notes and put it aside for later.
This story has two possible conclusions, depending on whether the article’s been assigned, or self-initiated.
If assigned: Weeks pass. If the article’s been assigned for a journal, the editor calls me at the last minute. Tossing all else aside, I labor to squeeze myself back into the original inspiration. Hacking away the tangled vines of tangents and detours, I finally submit a pretty good article, much like the one I could have written in the first hour or so.
If self-initiated: Months, or even years, pass. The article, with its original inspiration, is forgotten, like it never happened. If it was a brilliant response or insight into an event in the world, it has become old news. Then, while searching through my file cabinet or hard drive for something else, I stumble across this tarnished trove of unfinished masterpieces and unrealized visions, and suffer deep pangs of regret and loss.

(c) 2006 David Calloway, M.Ed.
AudiKnow LLC--Listening Between the Lines
e-Content and e-Learning. Fast, fresh, and accurate. Hi-tech and hi-touch.
============================

Portal and RSS, Save Me from Mount St. Spam!

2006-05-22T10:26:00.000-04:00

Here's an updated vision of the "personal publishing" concept from the Web's early days. I think RSS has to be a vital piece in the corporate portal. Here's why:

I get, and send, a lot of email. Here's how a typical 100 incoming emails break out, with a relative value ranking:

(If there's a big gap below, please skip past it. It's my best attempt at pasting an html table into this posting.)

How many	Type of message	Relative value
50	Industry updates, newsletters, and outright spam	2%
15	Personal	10%
25	Functional, work related	80%
10	Other	8%

In the Functional category, at least half is project and process-related documents and memos. These are from managers, leads and co-workers on multiple projects; firm management; and outside development partners, including clients, VARs, and vendors.

When I'm thinking about a specific project-- at a team meeting, say-- I have a pretty comprehensive mental map of the activities, tasks and timeframes of that project. But most of the time, say when I'm looking thru my email inbox, that image gets jumbled in with several other projects, and then with all the other stuff there. Keeping the whole hodge-podge straight takes a big mental toll, and makes all my real work that much harder to manage.
Email is a lousy way to run a business. But it's what most of us do, most of the time. Managing all those cognitive maps in my head is hard enough as it is. Add in the ongoing burden of creating, updating, and maintaining my own personal network of folders, moves, deletions, forwardings, and so on, just to keep track of it all?
Then toss over it a nightly layer of dust and ash spewed by Mount St. Spam? Well, that makes it darn near impossible.

Portal, Save Me!
Okay, so we've moved a lot of that stuff into the corporate portal. We're not all groping in darkness of email anymore, and somebody who's good at organizing things is handling that end.

So where's RSS come in? Good question! I thought I had that in mind at first, but then it turned into a justification for a corporate portal.
The answer, next week.

Cheers,
David

Personal Brand Identity Consulting Endorsements

2006-02-07T23:08:00.000-05:00

Marybeth Henry, Financial Advisor

Simplexity is complexity, made simple. It's how David Calloway illuminated the subtle things that differentiate my personal brand in the marketplace. I highly recommend David for any organization or individual wanting help to identify the strengths and values at the heart of their value in the market, then to convey all that in a succinct mission statement.

Rich Holland, Human Resources Consultant

David, I want to thank you for helping me streamline my Bio Tech client proposal. Your assessment helped me clarify the problem, identify the key points, and emerge from a ton of detail with just the parts that supported my case. My client responded very favorably to the proposal, and the presentation I built around it. You helped me achieve a positive result, and I appreciate it.

Wireless performance anywhere, transmitting everywhere

2006-02-07T22:51:00.000-05:00

The performers act, sing, and dance, as they would anyway. They also wear tiny wireless microphones, cameras, and lights, with the whole audience experience being an extension of what the performers perceive and reveal in their interactions.

Because it's all worn, wireless, and mobile, the whole world truly becomes their stage. They can take their performance anywhere. The cameras could be recording for a subequent video, or linked to a displays in the performance itself, whether mounted on a stage, on a large wall, or on the side of the van they arrived in.

Imagine this as street performance, beyond theatre. Political commentary that goes to the people, wherever they are. Or choreographed to interact with a pristine forest. After the performance, leaving not a trace. Performing anywhere, transmitting everywhere.

This vision was inspired by a performance by Lisa Kraus of the Swarthmore College dance faculty. Please add your inspirations and comments!

I'm not a statistic, in all likelihood.

2005-11-04T11:58:00.000-05:00

OUTLIERS: A STAGE SCENARIO

The stage is an angled sheet of graph paper. The people move in and out of demographic clusters, exploring the paradoxical inverse link between geographic dispersion and cultural uniformity.

In earlier times, we lived in crowded cities or villages. Our clustered demographic dots virtually atop each other, in cluttered and crowded tenements of diversity. A rich stew of diverse communities sharing space and little else.

The Melting Pot. Our angular identities dissolved into a lumpy sea that dispersed across the countryside. We increasingly tuned in to the same messages, bought the same houses, dreamed the same visions.

Now we've spread across the grid-- building, consuming, and discarding as we go. Flying past each other unseen behind the smoked glass of our lonely statistical SUV. Listening to 150 channels full of stories about characters who only seem different, until you line them up statistically, and see what a very small part of the chart they cover. And because they're really all alike, the constant din of their few narrow messages in our minds drowns and suffocates the teeming throng of characters and unique stories inside each of us.

Problem is, those characters don't like being suffocated and having their stories obliterated, and their senses opaqued behind smoked glass, and their limbs torn off to slip aerodynamically along the highway.

And they're getting angry.

Podcasting Will Demolish the Digital Divide

2005-10-03T00:37:00.000-04:00

How Can Podcasting Demolish the Digital Divide?
By David Calloway © 2005 (DRAFT, needs work)

Merging the cell phone with podcasting will Demolish the Digital
Divide. HOW?

The digital divide is a chasm that has kept poor people, regions, and
countries off the Internet, and out of the 21st Century. That's
because the keys to access, a computer and an internet connection,
are expensive.
Cell phones, by contrast, appear not to recognize the digital divide.
Cell phones are reaching more, poorer people every day. But it's still
seen as just a phone, plus whatever toys and novelties the
manufacturer can squeeze into it.

Several forces will converge to turn digital cellular into an
information channel for the digitally disenfranchised, with
revolutionary consequences.

What is Podcasting?
All around these days you see young people wearing headphones.
They're listening to music, talks, discussions, books, and all kinds
of things on digital audio players such as iPods. Podcasting is
increasingly how they get that content. (For a real explanation of
podcasting, visit wikipedia.org, and type in "podcasting.")

Content providers put radio-like audio shows on the Internet.
Listeners copy those shows into their computers, and from there
into their iPods and other little tiny digital audio players. The
listeners then take the players with them and listen to things they'd
maybe read if they had time and could read easily, or otherwise miss
entirely. To hear a sample, visit www.audiknow.com and click on
"Imagine this scene..."

How can Podcasting demolish the digital divide?
Right now, you have to have an internet-connected computer to
download digital audio. The key foundation of the digital divide is
the relative expense of computers and internet access. Cell phones,
on the other hand, are already bringing down the digital divide in
personal communication. A majority of poor people in the US have
pre-paid cell phones, along with more and more in the rest of the
world.

Notice that most poor people in the US, even many homeless
people, have cell phones. But few have fast computers and internet
connections. No downloads, thus no iPods. And the poor are
mostly on pre-paid plans, with no free or dirt-cheap off-peak,
evening and weekend minutes. No cheap minutes, no downloads.

In the mobile digital audio future, billions will listen through
iPod-like cell phones, with programs downloading at night, by
subscription, directly into huge digital memories.
When competition in the pre-paid market brings free off-peak
minutes to these customers, downloading large files will be feasible.
Audio will be the preferred medium for cellular web files. The
phone's display, useless as it is for extended reading, is ideal for
displaying the kinds of brief, hierarchical menus in the
pre-Windows (DOS) programs of old.

Removing the PC intermediary (write more on this.)

Why should the rest of us care?
Here's an example how Podcasting can revolutionize marketing and
outreach:
A regional medical center sends me a promotional magazine 4 times
a year. It's so entertaining and informative, that I toss it unopened
into the recycle bin as soon as it arrives. I know I'll end up reading it
cover to cover, and I just don't have the time to do that. It pains me
to know that I just threw away a few dollars of precious outreach
and education funds of an already strained healthcare industry. I try
not to contemplate how many billion times that scenario is repeated
across the system.

Now, to change tracks: I'm one of the 50 million and growing who
regularly download digital audio programs, If I were to get that same
healthcare update by podcast, as an entertaining radio-style feature
program, I'd probably enjoy listening to it, while I'm on my way
somewhere. It's like a radio show that an advocate, educator, or
marketer can actually get onto. Where you decide what gets said,
and I as the listener decide when, and whether, I'll listen.

Where's the Content?
Who will record all the information that will empower
dis-empowered people? A network of volunteer readers will audify
it. Many people will already be using the AudiKnow Audio
Business Modeler to audify the journals and promotions of
organizations, associations, and professional societies they belong
to and care about. It's a natural step to begin, as volunteers,
to...(write more, tie in to 3D.)

AudiKnow Audio Business Modeler
will provide the framework: portal, interface, specifications, and
content partnerships, all molded into a replicable set of Best
Practices. The AudiKnow Foundation will coordinate the partner
network and evolving Open Source specifications, and create the
templates to integrate ongoing learning and practice design of both
systems and participants.

Commercial Business Case.
(TO DO: FIND an eComm Finance visionary to track & paper-charge recipients, laying groundwork & detailed requirements for an actual revenue system. )
Symbolic message to user: "Thanks for your interest, and for using
AudiKnow to download your subscription. When AudiKnow goes
big time, you will be charged 18 cents for this service, Want to
avoid those charges when that happens? Take our survey to see
which AMOs (Affinity Marketing Organizations) most want to get
their messages in front of you."

Affinity Growth.
Readers, volunteers from all kinds of pursuits, will become
advocates for AudiKnow conversion within their particular Center
of Practice. Their journals will go for it because AudiKnow is,
essentially, a free additional value channel and revenue resource,
that gets them out to a wider audience, without diminishing their
subscriber base. Kind of like their decision whether to launch a
website several years ago. At first, it's a no-brainer all around:
Members take the audio version because it's given to them, sources
produce it because it's easy and cheap. As the bar is raised, the
benefit and profit potential go up with it.

Audiation spreads by contagion.
Specialists share content with generalist friends, and soon general
purpose-- well, the basic blog-style story, but with full tracking of
content movement, value derived, and incremental revenue
collected, symbolically for now; see below. In the Revenue Phase,
it'll be in real revenue dollars.

Entities want to reach those who download their audio content.
They'll be willing to pay well for a guaranteed affinity audience.

ANALYSIS
I. Opportunity
1. Mobile digital audio merges best of audio and print
i. Mobility
ii. Convenience
iii. Navigability random, not linear
2. Podcasting as vehicle for mass adoption
i. Initial content appeal trumps poor interface
ii. Revenue issues resolving
iii. Awkward process fast improving
3. Cell phones = ubiquity

II. Gaps & problems in opportunity
1. What is it? Old models won't extend, status quo won't work
2. Intimacy of the Ear: quality, targeting will rule
3. Current presentation doesn't fit the medium

III. Filling the gaps, solving the problems
1. True, "no peeking" mobility
2. Merging radio, print, and web: keep the best, lose the worst
3. Information infrastructure: get what & who you want, when you
want
4. Education-Entertainment balance

IV. Longer-term Payoff
1. Faster payback thru greater adoption & penetration
2. Create new markets, demolish the digital divide
i. Cell phones as personal info companions
ii. Beyond the PC: computers will be eclipsed
iii. non-voice hybrid of digital dial-up, broadband, download
============================

Performance Coaching Endorsement for David Calloway

2005-07-17T16:05:00.000-04:00

David Calloway, Performance Coach

It was 10 PM the night before I was to tape a big-time TV pilot. Even though I've been working on camera for two years, the script I was supposed to have memorized still wasn't working for me. As I could feel the panic rising, I called David for some performance coaching. And somehow, by midnight I was relaxed and ready.

How did he do it? David is a warm, encouraging, and skilled coach, as well as a great communicator. He boosted my confidence, got me laser-focused on my core message, and helped me find the right words and images to bridge my love for cooking with my love for the audience. My heart, mind, and talent were all working together, and the taping went just great. I will definitely hire David again!

Sheri DeMaris: Creator, Producer, and Host of TV shows on healthy cooking and living, including Tea with Sheri and Macro for the Mainstream.

REALITY ENTERTAINMENT: Vicarious, Vulture, and Video all begin with V

2005-07-15T13:27:00.000-04:00

REALITY ENTERTAINMENT: Vicarious, Vulture, and Video all begin with V.

PODERTAINMENT:
Audio Productions studios will like this.
Between them, audio and digital interactive production will be bigger than the TV-Video industry is now.

Reality TV is about as real as professional wrestling, and popular for the same reasons.
The ear is closer to the libido than the eye. The nose is closest, of course, but digital technology has made little progress there.

The Next Big Thing: Reality Radio, but it won't be BROADcast, it'll be PODcast, and the video will once again be provided by the listener's imagination.
Blogging and podcasting will merge, and be delivered to all thru their cell phones. (See Podcasting to Demolish the Digital Divide.)

Reality radio will bring us real peoples' stories, voices, situations, lives. Like reality TV, but really real.

Titles, Slogans:

REALITY-- PROFESSIONALLY PRODUCED
REAL LIFE-- PROFESSIONALLY PRODUCED
TELL IT TO THE MIC. (Logo is an open palm holding a microphone; a twist on "Tell it to the hand")
STORIES TOO GOOD FOR FICTION
ANDY WARHOL WAS RIGHT. YOU KNOW, THE 15 MINUTES THING.
REAL LIFE, EDITED FOR PRIME TIME
PRIME TIME 24/7

A Vicarian is one who is enriched vicariously by what one watches, reads, and hears thru the media. Example: A media fan who becomes a better human being from stories about everyday heroism.

Opposite is the Vicarrion, one who thrives on dirt about other peoples lives. Example: Those who read numerous popular national mags & rags, the names of which we won't mention.
We're not sure which to consider those who partake in phone sex. Sex is good, but something about that business... oh, I don't know.

BTW, phone sex will become an audio podertainment phenom in... (checking watch) ...oh, about 21 months.
Give or take 3 days. As with online porn, sleaze drives progress.

3-year market scenario for AudiKnow and Podcasting

2005-04-22T11:12:00.000-04:00

Soon, a booming market in digital audio will accelerate development of human-quality text-to-speech.

Information audio will evolve like the computer and software industries, only faster. Podcasting is now… (Draw more from my writings about Podcasting.)

4Q05- Mobile Digital audio become ubiquitous.
Digital audio players are everywhere. Gigabytes of storage and MP3 replace cameras as must-have cell phone options. Satellite radios reach critical mass, advertising growth begins to drive charges down 50% per quarter. Satellite subscribers come down with Curse of the Cable: "Aagghh! 200 channels and I still can't find what I want!"

In response to demand, the navigational interface-- as in "navigating the web," not as in a boat-- will grow as the key differentiator. The iPod will begin to feel clunky and primitive, and Apple will continue to lead in the coming Usability Wars.

1Q06- Information audio is mainly high-leverage content, having either a high value for some, or high appeal to many. A booming, but still nascent market.
Broadcast radio providers, led by the digitally advanced NPR, start to awaken.
Intelligent satellite radios introduced. The industry still won't know how to use their tremendous power.

In response to demand, AudiKnow intelligent satellite channel premieres. Like On-Demand, only better. How's it better? Ask for the white paper on it.

A growing market will drive "computer" speech, or text to speech, (T2S), to mature to near-human-quality (NHQ). Then "NHQ-T2S", or just "NH", will gradually make audio the preferred medium for a lot of things we now get in text, but don't have time to read.

2Q06- Demand spreads gradually into moderate-leverage content, which offers enough revenue to meet rising costs of maturing talent pool.

Info Audio, or IA, being promoted into the mainstream, appears on the cover of Newsweek.
Spreading T2S begins to push higher-cost human voices out of lower-margin applications. But only the voices; not the editors, engineers, producers, marketers, or anyone else.

Broadcast radio realizes all their jealously guarded archives are just dead assets without demand. "Archives," always a dull word, will be relabeled "AUDIO SUPERSTORES", and vomit terabytes of stuff onto the web, making an undifferentiated mess and confusing everybody.

3Q06- Demand for IA makes human-voice content more expensive and harder to get. Overnight, near-human quality T2S, or NH, takes over low-leverage commodity end of IA market.

4Q06-2Q07- Mainstream, mainstream.

Employment Implications of NH
Will this then eliminate jobs? NO. For the foreseeable future, digital audio will require a human voice. Rather than eliminate jobs, computers created more. Along with more demand and more complexity, came greater utilization, higher perceived value, greater dependency, and thus more demand. The jobs changed, became more complex, more interesting, and more lucrative. Operators became programmers, and then systems analysts, and then information engineers.

For a while, distributing information in audio will require human voices to read it, and human editors and engineers to produce it. Recorded audio is labor-intensive, so a lot of new, good-paying jobs will appear for vocal talent, editors, producers, engineers, and writers to re-write and adapt current print material for audio. (Yes, print writing and audio writing are different.)

As with computers and communications, as the "means of production" automates, the "talent" will have to gain advanced technical skills, or end up doing something else.

Needed: bootstraps that don't rip when you pull hard

2005-02-15T14:40:00.001-05:00

A plan for eliminating poverty with a long-term, peer-led, results-driven support framework; a rough draft.

Ideas after Social Venture Institute, Nov 2004. Sustainable Business Network
(c) 2005 David Calloway.

Adult Financial & Life Mastery Program

An expert on the panel told Tim Styer, CEO of The Service Works Co., "Your board must do more! Get members to contribute specific, identifiably valuable knowledge, assistance, and services, and replace any who can't or won't with ones who will. " This was typical of the feedback to firms like Styer's. I heard a different key issue: To get the employees to recognize the great personal value they gain from working for Service Works. They're growing a richer life, long-term, across a broad range of quality measures. Why blow your budget trying to match a corporate competitor's hourly rate, when your total package is so much more? Your board needs to include high-level corporate types with a progressive tilt, to bring in deep-pocket, resource-rich partners who can contribute to a package you could never afford to create yourself.

Get university and corporate allies to provide in-kind support, volunteers, and consultants. Focus on growing financial and life skills literacy among your employees. The partners will gain personal satisfaction, life enrichment of their own, a more diverse world view, and tremendous PR. Service Works will gain financial strength and ability to reliably make payroll, among other things.

We're talking about people who've bought the official story about their inadequacy. What's worse, they keep getting billed for it, month after month. The solution is more than a systemic analysis. It will address specific gaps in financial and other life skills, identify and mentor natural leaders and coach teams. It will also bring individuals, families, and communities together to help each other become a culture of achievement .

To become a culture of achievement and success, participants will have to leave a lot of their old culture behind. This can be suported with objectives that define a program, a curriculum, and ongoing support framework. (see Component Detail, below.)

Start out with a few individual success stories that simply and graphically:
- illustrate the problems
- frame the context for solving the problems
- explain how real people solved those problems in their own lives
- describes how they used specific tools and resources to implement and maintain the solutions.

In response to this idea, a financial planner said "our firm does all that." But they don't have a program or a plan around it, nor could they. I've reviewed the informational material they send out. I'm somewhat financially literate, and even I struggled with it. Which means it's probably useless to most of the population it's intended to serve.

For-profit financial firms such as Washington Mutual and Legg Mason should contribute to this cause, but they can't be or lead the cause. It has to be a center of energy, a movement-- an uprising, even. It must so powerfully change how poor people see their lives and their personal economy, that it makes the establishment feel a little nervous.

Some Component Detail
Simply and graphically illustrate the problem- plenty of stories around for that, both failures and successes. Most valuable are the stories that show the importance of every single participant: the almost-failures, and the successes that later failed, when one pivotal resource pulled out.

Frame the context for solving the problem- changing financial habits is a long-term-- indeed, life-long-- thing, and ties directly to changing life habits, which means changing culture. Long-term goals are the hardest to follow thru on. What can help people stay the path? How can subcultures of achievement and financial strength be identified, supported, seeded and sustained, until they become the mainstream, replacing and retiring the old, dysfunctional traits?

Explain the solutions-
present tools to implement and follow through with the solutions. Kit form might be best: forms, multi-sleeve folders, labels, calendar, columnar notebooks, boxes

Support structure- introduce toolkits first in a classroom or workshop setting, with skilled guidance.
Then transition graduates into weekly or semi-monthly support/social structures; halfway groups, with expert guidance giving way to peer mentors.

End state
An institutionalized and self-sustaining parallel culture, drawing on structure of 12-steps. Monthly support groups, accountability pairs, frequent celebrations of successes large and small. Build into a parallel culture of accomplishment, to keep people investing in their own success, and supporting others, through the inevitable ups and downs. Create a sub-culture and habits of cumulative accomplishment and wealth-building. Raise its voice above the corporate-sponsored din of the consumption culture.

Financial Planner Michelle Singletary hosts NPR's The Color of Money. Michelle could become an Oprah of personal finance: a celebrity-status personal finance expert, motivational speaker, writer, trainer, magnetic media personality. Her website is http://www.michellesingletary.com/. Might she also be

Info Podcasting seminar coming soon to Philadelphia

2005-01-13T16:04:00.000-05:00

Have you heard of Podcasting? It's how you subscribe to get selected audio content delivered to your PC, where it's passed along to an iPod or other pocket MP3 player, all automatically.

Here's what that means: Imagine the kinds of specialized information that you can now get only in print becoming broadly available in audio, on demand. Listen to whatever you want to hear. Listen anytime, anywhere. Even if you're driving, or folding laundry, or operating machinery. All because it's audio, the only truly mobile medium.

A side note, before we get into this:
A seminar on information uses of Podcasting is being planned for Philadelphia in the next few months.
"Experts," if you can call them that in a 4 month old industry, are being sought. Please post inquiries here.

Now, back to our program:
Like digital audio in general, Podcasting content is now almost all music. That's gonna change, big time. Digital audio's not just for music anymore. The MP3 player's about to grow up and get a job. Soon Podcasting will move real information, and influence real decisions. And because it's audio, it will be more emotionally powerful than print.

Podcast content is following the evolutionary path of web content: going from personal musings of digerati and extremists, to articles from magazine and journals, to commerce. But comparing the two is like watching an accelerated video of a flower blooming in a few seconds.

Podcasting will be revolutionary for the 1/3 of people in the US who can't read well, and real convenient for those who don't have time to, which is the rest of us. Imagine the kinds of specialized things you could only get in print becoming broadly available in audio, on demand. Whatever you want, whenever and wherever you want it. Satellite radio, with its "two hundred channels and I still can't find anything to listen to" can't match that. With fast-download web connections the norm, much of what you read this year, you'll be listening to next year. Or the year after, at most.

The machines are changing a bit slower. Predictably, the user experience of Apple's pricey iPod (source of the "pod" in podcasting) is creamy-smooth. The competing massive-storage MP3 players are about as user-friendly as broken glass. They're competing by casting stones through each others prices. The result will be that iPods will get a bit cheaper, while the others will get vastly better.

Definitions of Podcasting have mostly been written by weenies, so they're all about RSS feeds and "it's like a Tivo for radio." Things that mean nothing to regular folks. It's also why I didn't catch on to this movement for several months, although it's very akin to AudiKnow.

This one from Wikipedia is helpful:

Podcasting involves the recording of internet radio or similar internet audio programs. These recordings are then made available for download to portable digital audio device (sic). You can listen to the podcast internet radio program while you are away from your computer or at a different time than the original program was broadcast. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting)

The ipodder.org definition was written by pioneer Dave Winer, so it's more technical:

Think how a desktop aggregator works. You subscribe to a set of feeds, and then can easily view the new stuff from all of the feeds together, or each feed separately. Podcasting works the same way, with one exception. Instead of reading the new content on a computer screen, you listen to the new content on an iPod or iPod-like device. Think of your iPod as having a set of subscriptions that are checked regularly for updates.

If you still don't get it, don't worry. It'll be clear enough when it's all around you.

Non-Alpha Liberation! Uh, if it's okay with you...?

2004-11-22T15:17:00.000-05:00

A Type A world is an unbalanced world!
Free the world of domination by the Dominants!
Non-Alphas unite!

Oh, come on, guys! Please?
No, don't say that. They will not get mad! So what if they do?
Well, maybe you have a point. Okay, maybe later.

Will you get back to me? For sure?
Okay, thanks. Bye.
Whew! That was close!
I don't know, did I do the right thing?

The Global Fundamentalist Apocalyptic Conspiracy

2004-11-22T14:03:00.000-05:00

In a sense, the current era remains part of the European Renaissance, a.k.a. The Age of Enlightenment. Now everything enlightened seems to be under attack everywhere, casting shadows of a comng Dark Age.

It's certainly taking hold of Islam and Christianity, and Right-wing Orthodoxy in Judaism.
Again these three clash at the flashpoint of history, Jerusalem.
Flinty eyes hard with hatred strike stone of threadbare earth,
shooting heartless sparks to enflame old injuries.
Hot mindless winds of passion toss aside civility, and trade,
and tolerance, and compassion, and love.

Are we to stand silently by and let our world be sucked into another firestorm?

Well?

What is Security, really? New Zealand, 12/10/01

2004-10-14T23:35:00.000-04:00

I recently returned from a place that, in many ways, feels like the USA in 1982. If you're old enough to remember, think of the excitement that accompanied the publication of two seminal books: The visionary MegaTrends, and the eye-opening In Search of Excellence. The people of New Zealand still seem to have that practical, optimistic, open, and friendly feeling that Americans had in the early 80s. (Say more about that. The analogy may not work, but the feeling was definitely there. Recall, also, that 1982 was the last, previous recession. The automotive and consumer electronics fields were giving the US a feeling of being trounced by Japan, Inc. No, so maybe the1982 analogy won't work. How about using 1984, the year I actually read those seminal books?)

The things that make us secure haven't changed: trust, resilience, self-reliance, flexibility, and committed relationships. But the amount of energy and resources we're pouring into "security" have changed drastically. The terms of Security are now defined by two industries: The private Security industry, and the Government Security industry.

Of course, the threats to our security have grown drastically, too. But are the things that are being threatened worth what we're spending to protect them?
What do you really need, to be secure? (Distinguish from "feeling" secure, which is a whole different subject.)

Try this experiment: Put yourself in a pleasurable circumstance; say, at a favorite weekend retreat. Then reassess what you really need to protect. Achieving a sense of personal security is a lot easier when it isn't anchored in a mass of fragile personal possessions, which you must constantly protect against the onslaughts, real or speculated, of those without.

Find your own balance between dealing with and doing without. For many of us, recreational dreams involve getting away from our complications, and returning to the simplicity of a less cluttered lifestyle. So, what would be so bad about living like that all the time?

Translated into IT/Disaster Recovery and KM terms: What is truly vital, & would need to be recovered? What is really mission critical, and what, in a pinch, could you do without?
Now: How much of that would you be better off without, all the time?
(ref CRN 12.24-31/01)

And for ourselves, which things are truly enhancing our lifestyles, and which are just complicating them?

Mobile Health Information Commentary

2004-10-14T23:18:00.001-04:00

(Unpublished draft, 2003)
There are advantages to being such an eclectic. When I figure out a complex topic like mobile health information, I want to share it with the very diverse audiences that need to know about it. Requirements analyses, lifecycle documentation, web-based training, and white papers rise out of the same inner drive: To communicate important information to a particular, clearly-identified audience, following a definite structure, in the way that audience can best integrate it.

Mobile health has caught my attention both for its great promise, and for its even greater complexity. The most successful mobile applications are demonstrating phenomenal ROIs. However, as with any dynamic technology, many more implementations are not successful.
To paraphrase a famous quote, the problem is not in our tools, but in ourselves.
Translation: More projects are defeated by poorly understood and articulated requirements and desired outcomes, than by leaning too far out over the leading edge.
These results are exaggerated in health care, especially when too much is riding on the outcome. I've also been investigating HIPAA, the 800 pound gorilla that's been snarling at health care information of late. I'm starting to think of a use for that Introduction to XML I had a few years ago.
There I go again--start out with a simple request, get off into an essay. Later for that.

Attn.: Steven Ortquist, Banner Health, re invitation to "Please send HCCA your HIPAA Privacy-related documents," based on my thoughts in response to this article:
Wireless health driven by HIPAA (Google search)... that lets anyone into the network." Most of the mobile ... We are integrating the handheld with our internal ... For now, Concentra's WLANs are HIPAA-compliant. ...
www.infoworld.com/articles/ct/xml/02/04/08/020408ctwireless1.xml

I'm an IT analyst studying aspects of HIPAA, toward extending my consulting practice. With HIPAA, a new word is about to enter the lexicon: Mobliability. That's Mobile Liability. "Authoritative" pronouncements about mobile health care are being made daily by writers who reveal their weak understanding of IT basics. Do health care information specialists notice the same weakness in health care knowledge among IT commentators?

My comments follow the relevant passages in italics:
Michael E. Stull, a principal at eHealthcare.net:
"Users will have to master authentication and, for example, turning on the ability of the system to use the access control lists of the MAC [media access control] address of the network card [used in] accessing the LAN."
Hey, who you callin' a user, pal? You're describing a job for a very experienced network engineer. Not what I'd consider a "user". And where'd you learn sentence structure?

Next: "Most of the mobile road map has been laid out for Concentra. The first leg of the journey was to eliminate an expensive medical transcription system that cost $3 million to $5 million."
Two misleading statements in a row. First, this is Why, not How. Second, it's a destination on the map, not the route to get there.

"Concentra's programmers spent about five months building ChartSource with ...(various Microsoft tools listed)... and XML and XSL style sheets."
It should be mentioned that without XML and XSL, not only would HIPAA be impossible, but DHHS wouldn't have had the nerve to even suggest it. A common format--or language, if you will--is the key element in portability. Reminds me of an old stand-up comic introducing a speaker with the line, "Our dear friend HIPAA, without whom none of this would have been necessary."

"The point-and-click application allows a physician to click on a patient's name to display his or her medical history. "
Point-and-click? If they mean "squint and poke", they should say so. Design for the handheld interface is a demanding, specialized discipline that few currently possess, and the screenshots shown look indecipherable.

"After an examination, the doctor feeds the diagnosis into ChartSource as well as 'the completed and signed medical note and puts it back into our Practice Management System [database],' Wilson explains."
"Feeds the diagnosis"- how? Freehand entry? selecting DRGs or codes from a list?

Also, since this article targets IT and not health care, it needs to state explicitly that only the handheld can automate the entire data path, from initial generation through all possible uses. And, once automated, it can be controlled and secured.

"The customized system includes a decision-tree application for consistency in patient reports."
How does a decision tree make patient reports more consistent? Is this a health care-specific reference?

Like many of the HIPAA regulations, this issue (where to put the firewalls) is not clear cut.
As general and vague as the HIPAA regulations seem, two things are certain. These are:
1. The regulations apply consistently to all. So, for so many organizations to be pursuing compliance in isolation is an immense waste. The health care consuming public would be better served by the industry seeking optimal collaboration and community-building toward common solutions. And if DHHS is not ideally situated to coordinate this massive effort across all 50 states, what the heck is it there for?
2. The drop-dead compliance dates are eerily similar to that much-vaunted and maligned trick of the calendar we saw a few years back, Y2K. It's big, it's comprehensive, and it's absolute. And as a fundamentally simple thing replayed billions of ways, there are just a few ways to do it right, and billions of ways to screw it up.

A final thought: When health care folks need new information to respond to a challenge, they circle the wagons and have a conference. My instructional strength is in e-Learning, so by contrast, my first impulses would be to:
1. create web-based courseware to increase the shared baseline of expertise across the varied disciplines;
2. host virtual events to build and strengthen the community of interest; and
3. invest heavily in Web-based portals to build the community of practice that will get actually the job done.

And, do you know what the outcome of all this working together will be? DUH-UH -- shared, portable health information! Remember, the P in HIPAA does NOT stand for Privacy, it stands for Portability. Isn't that what HIPAA was supposed to be about?

HIPAA- You paid the cost. Don't throw away the rewards!

2004-10-14T23:09:00.000-04:00

HIPAA- You paid the cost, now collect the rewards (2003 unpublished draft for article)
DON'T FORGET THAT THE P IN HIPAA STANDS FOR PORTABILITY. Not Privacy.
If we remember that, then HIPAA can pave the way for a quantum leap forward in medical effectiveness. HIPAA forced the medical industry to replace numerous outdated systems based on paper forms and outdated computers.
Think about it: What are medical records? They are, basically, the recorded saga of your life, your physical existence on this planet. To make the kinds of informed treatment decisions expected of us today as medical consumers, we need to have that information about ourselves in a form that we can find, access, and comprehend.

SCENARIO. Picture yourself meeting with your physician in her office. After brief greetings and banter about your respective families, she asks the purpose of this visit. You tell her about a pain you noticed a weeks ago, that's gotten progressively worse since. She studies the screen of her tablet PC. It occurs to you that the doctor appears to be working intently on an Etch-a-Sketch, a mental image that makes you chuckle. She looks up quizzically, then returns to her electronic slate.

The physician soon looks up again, smiles, and clips the tablet into a stand. She swivels it toward you, and comes to your side of the desk so you can both see the screen. It shows a generic, naked human torso-- not your own, you are relieved to see-- with your area of complaint pulsing slightly in red. Below the image is a table listing symptoms, as well as other input you gave in an online interview yesterday at your home computer, when you went online to schedule the appointment.

With a fingernail, the physician lightly taps an on-screen button. The image tilts and rotates into a 3-dimensional view, and the body image on the screen is overlaid with another body image. With a few words from the physician, it hits you, literally in the gut, that a little problem she warned you about two years ago has now grown into a big problem, and you have to do something about it. Now.

Details to expand
- Family history & personal profile fed into an actuarily-based condition predictor, that overlays the generic body picture with personalized potential trouble spots. May be a few pre-herniated disks or a dormant mass. Or, hypertenstion & infrared cold spots pointing to constricted blood flow in some parts of the body.

- Billing and Payments- These are especially bewildering to nearly all concerned. I, for example, don’t like getting first surprise, and then repeat, invoices for medical services. Did I receive that service? Didn’t I already pay for it? I thought that was covered by my insurance, when I gave them my card. Why are they billing me now?

Solution: Illustrate relationships between services received, billing, and payments using colorful, USA Today-style graphics, flow charts, timelines, and personalized labels. Adapt for what-ifs: What if I have a prolonged illness? What if I get extended coverage? What if I self-insure for that risk? The technologies there! How freaking hard can it be? Or do they PREFER us to stay confused?

Advantages:
Make the medical process visible and open. We’re supposed to take active role in our treatment and apply it to our lifestyle, right? How about giving us the conceptual tools to make that possible, and stop obfuscating it in distressing forms and paperwork?
In the online interview situation, you had more time to …

Obstacle: In preliminary interview, I wouldn’t know to the relevant questions to ask myself, that the physician would ask. Maybe the preliminary interview should be an interactive web conference with the Physician's Assistant?

Compliance 2: Scenarios in Compliance Training

2004-10-14T22:58:00.000-04:00

(Draft, 2002) With sweeping regulations like HIPAA, OSHA, and JCAHO, few and simple are the basic facts. Many and great, however, are the ways of interpreting and implementing these facts, and thus the errors and omissions that can result during interpretion and implemention. Training is very thoroughly in the general principles. But if people don't understand how the principles were implemented in their systems and procedures, they will act as though they were not trained, screw up, and render their organization non-compliant.

The solution is detailed scenarios that will be fodder from which practitioners can create the accurate "inner stories" that will help them remember and apply complex regulations, and on which they can model their behavior, and "Do the Right Thing."

Compliance 1: Forgetting Lessons of the Industrial Revolution

2004-10-14T22:43:00.000-04:00

(Note: Since this was written in 2002, we've seen the advent of automated certification management systems. But the final output is still a linear text document, intended for people to read and sign-off on. That's still a weak point in the system.)
To Simplify Compliance: Certify the Content, not the Document. What's that mean? Pharmaceutical Information expert Paul Mattise says, "Certify the SOP, signatures only on the deliverable, not on the process." That's making people do with their sore, tired eyeballs what machines should do by design. Instead, reduce the workload and accelerate the process. Eliminate the source of much of the confusion: Drop the documents entirely, certify the factlets/objects and data package they're in.

The knowledge that we transmit in the vast majority of our written business documents is not nearly as tacit--i.e., as creative, unique, or expressive-- as we'd like to think it is. We are trying to use the unstructured, fuzzy, subjective tool of language to represent, badly, an underlying reality that is essentially objective, and modularly, hierarchically structured. We need to separate the factual representation from the narrative. Images, tables, lists, and standardized language--i.e., "meaning objects," or jargon--will help us to overcome the quagmire of misunderstandings in which we often find ourselves.
Have we forgotten all we learned from the Industrial Revolution, besides how to control abuse and corruption? We can create standard visual frameworks for document structures (format, styles, breaks, fonts, etc.) Then we can store and manipulate the content as XML, and put the e-signatures on that. Treat it as the data it is, and stop trying to make it literature.

Dems can throw sleezy political lies for fun and profit, too!

2004-09-18T20:02:00.000-04:00

Okay, here's one to counter the Swift Boat Veterans. Maybe SNL or the Capitol Steps might be interested.

Wealthy Saudi student Osama bin Laden visits Yale for a month-long International Economics seminar. Dubbya's family, dear old friends of the bin Ladens, arrange for him to stay in one of the many guest rooms in Dubbya's fraternity house. The two wealthy lads soon become drinking buddies, and then close friends. Very, very close. A few eyewitnesses to intimate acts between the two begin to talk. Foolish. Very, very foolish, considering at least one of several bro's, "returned vets" in their mid-20s, is never more than a hurl away from Junior. Rumors spread, and are quickly squashed. One house resident falls victim to a mysterious illness, another from his 4th floor window. Not surprisingly, nobody talks after that.

Until now...

NELL, a TV treatment based on 1994 Jodie Foster movie

2004-09-17T11:35:00.000-04:00

TV series concept based on the 1994 Jodie Foster movie Nell
Concept c. 1999-2004, David Calloway. All rights reserved.

Thoughts on why Nell would make a fabulous, original, thought-provoking dramatic TV series.

Characters we care about:

Nell

The sherriff and his wife (who's mental illness did not magically disappear, but is a recurring theme and sub-plot)

Psychologist Paula and her family: Jerry, the local doctor, their daughter Ruth. Ruth is growing up, styling herself after Nell, which is not an easy path for a pre-teen to travel.

The "jerks" in the pool hall. It turns out that most of them, like Nell, cannot read. Her struggle to gain literacy becomes a model for one, who is a basically nice guy struggling to break out of his failure trap, to the dismay of his buddies. What will they do to stop him?

Story lines that will appeal to a variety of audiences:

The tale could be picked up either within the five year lapse preceding the end of the movie, or after the end of the movie, when Nell's become a bit more mainstreamed into the local culture.

Nell's friends try to shelter her from the "corrupting" influence of her wealth, and of those it attracts. It's possible that most of it went into making her mountain a wilderness trust, so she could continue to live on part of it, relatively undisturbed.

Other story lines:

Explore the classic tale of the "innocent" in a tentative dance with civilization, but not in a drippy way. For example, she is befriended by a handsome but manipulative "environmentalist," who in fact works for a developer, intending to induce her to sell. Who's more convincing? And at what point does the audience find out that he's a fraud? Next week's episode, maybe?
Introduce the inherent new-age, spiritually-oriented messages in a very natural human context. An underlying theme is the commonalities between a sincere new-age perspective, and the old-fashioned, home-spun values espoused in the stories. Because of this, sponsors will have to be carefully selected.
Nell continues to be a healer of many of the broken souls who cross her path. A special bond grows with Native Americans in the area. A shaman colleague of Paula takes her under his wing as a not-quite apprentice. (Be careful she doesn't become a caricature of a savior, ala "Tommy-The Shameless Stage Extravaganza".)

Nell manages to maintain her efficient, fulfilling lifestyle, while dealing with a constant stream of new experiences, many both scary and attractive.

Sex must, by the nature of the situation and the times, be a presence. It should be handled gently, and with a light touch, but it cannot be taken lightly.

BTW, do you know who owns the movie copyright? All I could find thru Google is the production companies: 20th Century Fox (USA), Egg Pictures, and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (USA).

Martha Stewart to redecorate Danbury

2004-09-17T11:20:00.000-04:00

It's rumored that Martha Stewart has already been ordering material for new curtains and specifying the color scheme in her future suite at the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, CT.

One wonders, why send her to the already tastefully appointed Danbury? Why not somewhere that's dark and dreary and could really benefit from her decorator's touch? Her conviction may have tainted her reputation, but certainly not her ability as a creative designer. Imagine the wonders she could work on a more challenging canvas!

But alas, so few women are sent to Federal prison, that Danbury is the only one available. Maybe they could loan her out to more needy State penal institutions, such as Sing Sing in New York and New Jersey's Rahway.

Then, her production company could launch a TV series called "This Old Cell."

This is a RADCOTT Day

2004-09-10T09:38:00.000-04:00

Ever get the feeling that a whole day, or more, was spent Re-Arranging Deck Chairs On The Titanic?
That was yesterday. A real RADCOTT day.

International Relations, Lesson 32: Stepping on Toes

2004-07-06T16:16:00.000-04:00

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
International Relations, Lesson 32: Stepping on Toes

An informed respect for diversity is a vital part of your international polish. And I don't mean "Polish", as in, being from Poland. Being considerate of others, wherever they're from, will greatly increase your effectiveness, your professional stature, and thevalue you represent to your organization.

In international relations, it's usually a good idea to avoid stepping on any toes. But what of the 3 subcultures across the globe, where stepping on another person's toes is regarded as a high compliment? Yes, indeed.

For example, to the Chajmadi nomads of the eastern Urals, stepping on toes symbolizes the interdependence of a well-negotiated business deal. Each trader would put his or her bare right toes upon the bare left toes of the other, and embrace briefly but firmly. Of course, the traditionally large-bellied Chajmadi elders managed to maintain eye contact throughout. Recent trends toward younger, slimmer leadership, however, have rendered this practice somewhat awkward, leading to a decline in its popularity.

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Web Services IS Documentation

2004-06-29T17:30:00.000-04:00

Web Services IS Documentation
(c) 2002 David Calloway. Written 12/17/02.

We're hearing a lot about Web Services (WS) these days. Suffice it to say for now, that it’s a simple idea with a complex implementation, it's easy to misinterpret, and it will ultimately be world-changing.

Ahah! I get it! WS is really all about documentation!
Isn't they? And is it/they singular or plural? Oh, these techies and their fractured syntax.

Technical Writers should give serious attention to WS, and not just for the new wave of grammar-mangling it's launched. "Yes, David," friends would remind me, "You said that about DTP, and BPR, and IMM, and XML, and even about KM and e-Learning." (Sorry, my Acronym Glossary is in the shop for a major upgrade. Meanwhile, try www.whatis.com.)

Well, yes. So I did. And I was right. All those waves did represent major rides for Tech Writers to increase our value to our clients and expand our professional horizons. Some waves we caught and rode, some we tumbled under, and many just passed us by. Why our contribution continues to go under-recognized, in both up and down markets, is a subject for another time.

What are/is Web Services?
What do you think Web Services is about? Is it a new technology, like TCP-IP, HTML or .NET (pronounced "Dot-Net")? No, but it does use all those things, so you'll have to sound like you know something about them.
Essentially, Web Services is documentation. (There goes that darn grammar conflict alarm again.) It's a standard, so what will make it work is everybody agreeing on the rules, and then following the rules they agree on.
Because Web Services is an open standard, every step is a step forward, integrating what came before. A bunch of trading partners gets together, define a standard for exchanging information, and then codifies, writes, & develops processes to fit that standard. From then on, information is exchanged, and things work. As promised. Because the standards were agreed upon by all participants.
At least, that's the idea.

The Web Services Directory
Basically, a Web Services Directory listing says:
· what the Service does
· what it needs to work
- what you can get from it
· what it expects in return.

The Web Services rulebook is called a directory. One offers one's web services to the marketplace by publishing one's offerings to a directory service. To exchange business information through Web Services, partners negotiate the terms and standards that will define their information relationship, and subscribe to the appropriate Web Services.
Directories, publishing, subscribing: This should all be sounding very much like the world that writers have lived in all along.

What's different about Web Services?
You may recall that EDI, EAI, Distributed Computing, and myriad other initiatives have, with high cost and mixed success, attempted to coax disparate computer systems into talking to each other. Web Services is different, because it's anchored not in technology, but in the common dictionary definitions of XML.
Effective XML standards require that data look and act like its industry-standard dictionary entry says it should. You could say it's "speaking the same language", but then one might confuse it with a programming language like C++ or COBOL, which it's nothing like. Here's a better analogy: trading partners agree to use exactly the same dictionary definitions for basic business units like Account Record and Widget. If you can't agree on precisely what each unit is and does, then you can't use XML without an expensive, error-prone translator. And that puts you back where you started, in the expensive, error-prone world of custom-programming.

Raises documentation to new level
To summarize, Web Services is really just a bunch of descriptions. External descriptions are what it is, what it does, what it takes in and puts out, and its expected/desired behaviors and outcomes. Internal descriptions are the data elements, interfaces, interactions, link points, caveats, qualifiers, acceptable ranges, and more (I may elaborate on this later). The pieces described are components, and each component must be described in absolutely granular detail, and with unquestionable accuracy.

The narrative and tables describing Web Services objects to humans is equal in importance to the quality of the systems interface, because they say why and how to use those objects. Long-term competitive success in web services will depend on ever-growing circles of information sharing. The participants who negotiate and implement those business relationships must understand exactly what it is they're agreeing to, and being able to count on accurate, understandable documentation is a big part of that. Because this is all so new to most people, that should include case studies and scenarios, illustrating their intended use. These "stories" are commonly conveyed as Use Cases, using the structure of Universal Modeling Language (UML).

Significance for Technical Communicators
* Code has always existed to support and enable function. The code has never been the function. Developers tend to forget this simple fact.
* The code & functional objects are the means to an end. They are not the end in themselves. Just as Web Services clarify and reveal function more precisely than anything we've ever seen, haphazard maintenance can kill it.
* Web Services and XML exist to communicate among systems, and so depend on communication among humans, through collaboration: standards bodies, specifications, and protocols.

Increasing revenues and profit margins
As the circles of data relationships widen and overlap, the neglected issue of object re-use will become a matter of survival. Not just for revenue opportunities for replication and re-sale, but because the commercial value of objects will rise dramatically in proportion to the level of testing and validation they receive in a variety of conditions.
More thoughts, not integrated into article:
…Commercial re-use of standardized, plug-n-play components will steadily increase licensing and incremental revenues, and thus profit margins. Their documentation can make them sink or swim. Matching quality Web Services with quality documentation, produced by professional technical communicators with equal savvy in technology, marketing, and business collaboration, can make these products fly.

Meet Nick Besser, PI

2004-06-29T15:37:00.000-04:00

Hi:
I'd like to introduce you to my friend and alter ego, Nick Besser, PI. He's choosing to remain out of sight because working as a PI all these years has made him a bit paranoid. I was hoping that meeting you might lighten him up a bit. God must have a sense of humor, and all that.

Anyway, we're hoping to coax Nick in out of the cold to resume his PI practice. In his PI, or "Private Investigator" role, Nick hunts down performance problems and bottlenecks and brings them to justice. As a seasoned professional he works with clients at all levels, creating a custom routine for each engagement. Oh, this guy has some stories! He could speak to industry groups and trade shows to promote HPT, or Human Performance Technology, his favorite methodology for achieving PI.

Actually, what Nick means by PI is as changeable as the weather. One day he'll say it stands for "Private Investigator", and the next day insist it means "Performance Improver". And when a low pressure front's coming through, he'll claim he's off to HQ to "Purge Idiots."

But, beneath Nick's reserve and stoicism, he's really a very deep and heartfelt guy. Although he never knew his real family, they did name him for for "nichts besser", a Germanic expression that means "none better." He considers it his life mission to fuel the drive to constantly grow and improve that he sees in the heart of every human being.

Nick is currently struggling to resolve his identity confusion. For one thing, he can't say whether his Germanic heritage is Amish or Yiddish. In long nights of research on the all-Yiddish search engine, Koogle.com, he disrupt sleepers with shouts of, "Chey, Barkeep! Gimme anudder Belt o' that Red Eye Borscht!"

Ahem. To resume our detailed analysis: Nick has assembled a rather complex identity from watching every episode of Mannix and other 1970s Private Investigator shows. But somehow, Nick has twisted his title to mean "Performance Improver". And occasionally he regards it as a license to Purge Idiocy throughout the organization.

Our own research into Nick's credentials has confirmed that he is impeccably qualified to satirize the current Security mania. And, as Nick likes to remind us, "Not even the bad guys are really all bad."

Our plan is to start out with some short skits, which we will later merge into a one-man show. Nick will then begin to recruit additional characters--covertly, of course. They will then melt away to a top-secret training camp in the mountains, to prepare a series of hard-hitting, action-packed radio dramas. We've already registered the domain name nickbesserpi.com. The name "Koogle.com" seems to have disappeared under a cloud of suspicion.

Before you decide to accept any other assignments, I must urge you to come up with some recommendations for upcoming episode themes. Your discretion in this matter is imperatif.

Suspensefully yours,

David C. aka Nick Besser, PI