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Alison and I are on our honeymoon in beautiful Hawaii and it is so nice to be unwired. This is a humorous paradox considering I am writing a blog post, but I have to make a quick commentary that as we progress into a more digitally pervasive society it is important that we unwire from time to time to appreciate the things that we take for granted. As information flows faster and faster taking it slow is a wonderful change of pace.
Boing Boing links to a neat article from World Changing on a simple technique for making your own water filter using little more than Clay, Coffee, and Cow shit. I am attracted to the article because it is the hallmark of innovation; the combination or recombination of existing items into something new and fantastic. I think this is something that I could do if need be.
I am in the process of setting up the NVHA Wiki for our small work group and I have to say that I am really loving using the Socialtext wiki. I feel it combines all of the great on-line publishing tools for text and I know I am just scratching the surface. As our group grows and modifies its self I am eager to see how our ideas get influenced and recreated in a sharing culture. I also love the meta - we are using a social software piece to study social software. Nothing is better than on the job training - OJT - something a recruiter told me was very important way back in high school.
In preparing for my wedding this weekend we have spent an egregious amount of time creating just the right table assignments to promote a combination of both friendship and flirting. As we were piecing together table 9 for the reception I began to think if an algorithm would do better at this than my fiance and I. Would a computer and a program do a better job matching up cousins, friends, and fraternity brothers than us? By table 21 I was convinced the answer was maybe.
See in all of the scramble to place people we were unknowingly sourcing dozens of different relationship bonds and connections and making judgment decisions and artificially manipulating the existing networks. We were weighting and valuing the constructs of each relationship individually and making adjustments as we went forward. By table 26 I was confident that there was just way to much metadata to include and consider and articulating it a program would have been a futile attempt. In the end I feel that the human relationship web is best understood in context and not in a database.
Slashdot pointed me to the official Dodgeball.com website noting that they have have been purchased by Google.com. Jerry asked in an e-mail why Google would not just create their own competing system since they have much more reach and resources. My response is that Google was after the system as much as it was after the name and the brain power of Alex and Dennis. Sometimes the best way to recruit brilliant people is to buy the company the were working for. I know Dennis and he is worth buying Dodgeball for if you can retain his services. In this case I think Google bought Dodgeball for the human capital as much as the Intellectual property.
I am interviewing a few people for a position next week and I needed an intrument to really get people into a position where they may need help, and to start a dialoge. I developed a unique questionaire that is completly relation unto itself. It is mentaly very unusual and my hope and expectation is that the instrument will stimmulate conversation and give me a good bit of insight into how I may relate with the person I may be hiring. I put the questions in the extended post. Feel free to use or comment on.
Business 2.0 has a nice article on Monetizing The Handshake, and it is about the value of relationships to sales people. It presents a new system where salespeople are paid when they make deal-closing introductions virtually. Innersell.com is where salesmen and women can go and try to find vendors for their clients who need products outside of their expertise. Essentially it turns every salesman in to a relationship creator for the company. If a successful match is made the introducing salesman get a commission of the sale.
Do not let the semantics fool you, this is important! I want to first put out that a corporate blogger is one who is paid to blog about the ongoing activity of a company from inside that company, and an employee who blogs is not paid by the company specifically to blog, but has another official job function.
So can you really trust the corporate bloggers? Aren't they an arm of the P.R. machine designed to spin positive press and wordsmith messaging to the masses both internal and external? Shot answer is maybe. Integrity is something that seems to be for sale on the cheap these days and I just have a hard time buying the fact that the corporate blogger isn't simply a member of the P.R. team.
This varies greatly from someone like myself who is employed to do something completely different but still finds some time to write up certain aspects of my job. There are no expectations, aside from good taste and rational forethought when mentioning the society, and I have no one critiquing my postings for a spin factor.
Now there is a third group, those who are not employed by the company and receive company sponsored blog space to make postings. I would like to study this group and see if they have any affinity to make positive posts. They may eve make the most constructive criticisms as an outside viewer who cares about the growth and prosperity of the company. I would like to find some case studies of this company supported outside blogging.
Kids say and do the funniest things and these kids dram a number of idiomatic expressions. The link is below and the drawings are absolutely wonderful. If you need a chuckle go here!
I am very excited that the Laura Landro wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal on using Blogs as a tool for ill patients. I have seen instances of blog use in Alzheimer's patients, and I am happy to see it is making its way to other diseases. Laura mentioned our NVHA Innovations Conference and I was stoked to see that as well. The bits about the society and our involvement in blogging and cancer are in the extended post. Special thank you to our Corporate Communications people who did a great job with the background and information.
