Final Week

Well, I will be doing a re-cap here of what all of this sabbatical ("sabbobical") was all about for me, but in the interim while you wait to see that, check out the work:

aifreelance.com

Weeks 11 & 12

I am doing a compilation summary of the past two weeks, including the holiday.  Steve R and I have been working very hard on the website and we know that there is much more to do.  I have started a final "scrub list" of the site and on first pass we had 55 open items to attend to.  Will this ever end?

On the one hand my sabbatical was great.  I can't say that I enjoyed the time as it was and still is alot of work, but it has given me a renewed look at many aspects of what I do in the classroom and as a consultant out in the world.

There are soooooooo many logistical things that happen between a developer and a client that never truly get discussed in the classroom that I am now going to be able to bring in for discussion.

Some things to look forward to for further website development:

1. We will be getting new and better photography from an unexpected source
2. We are looking at the "information architecture" trying to decide if chronological is better than alphabetical
3. The "permissions" nightmare is s-l-o-w-l-y resolving itself
4. The transition of responsibility from the development team to the client will be slower than we expected
5. And Joomla! was a great choice for learning a content management system --- Steve R has gone above and beyond the call of duty to find amazing plug-ins and add-ons that are making the development process tres facile!

Check it out: aifreelance.com

Week 10 - Aifreelance.com

Well, it's not completely done yet — in fact, it has a ways to go design-wise, but the content is coming together.  As we still wait for many of the content authors to get back in touch with us I decided to let everyone take a peek at the site.  We have been working very hard on this and we have not done a quality assurance check of it yet, but take a look at where we are going, and have a great Thanksgiving holiday!

aifreelance.com

Week 9 — What a Difference a Week Makes

Well, I'm a bit late this week with my update, but  I have been very busy trying to ameliorate the situation with The Freelance Guide and I feel like the emergency is quelling down a bit.  I tried, in vain, to get in touch with the original holders of the mis-cited content— and to my surprise only one out of more than a half dozen contacted me.  In some cases the source website doesn't even exist anymore, and in other cases (after checking) the original content was actually taken from somewhere else, which is public domain material.

The one who did contact me, Peter Woodford, advised me I could use the content from his site http://www.creatework.com, and he also sent me a fantastic video about something he is working on: Layar, the world's first Mobile Augmented Reality Browser.

Check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08&feature=player_embedded#

Everyone who knows me in the classroom knows about my rapt devotion to the notion of "locative art." This is the closest thing that I have seen to that — more about that after I speak more to Peter about it.

I also got in touch with Tim Frick, the author of my introductory text (Managing Interactive Media Projects, Cenage Publishers) and we spoke about me using some of the content from that text (with his approval and permission) to fill in the gaps that I have in The Freelance Guide.  It was so good to speak with Tim after teaching from his text for a couple of years, and he was truly supportive and helpful.  He is working on another text that he hopes to finish for an April 2010 publish date.  I hope to actually be able to use that book in my e-commerce and marketing communication course, and he is sending me an outline of that book so I can take  a gander at it — exciting stuff!

Well,  a week ago the citation violation was at 52%.  I put the document into  "turnitin.com" again today, and after deleting things, re-writing things and getting permissions — the total is now at 38% with known permissions.  I will have to  look at the actual analysis to feel good about that number, but as I said, I now have various permissions and if need be — I have learned that I am a pretty capable writer myself.

hmmmmmmm?

One last thing.  I haven't been really talking about the personal things that I have been doing for myself during this period and one of the healthy things — in addition to eating more  healthy — I have been doing is a regular practice of yoga.  Not only that but when I have had free time I have actually been studying the practice of yoga (not just doing it).  I can see myself some day, turning to this as a side-line.  It  grounds me, makes me more focused, makes many of my aches and pains go away, and sometimes, just sometimes — when I am doing a perfect downward facing dog pose I think I am 40 again.

It must be paying off as I have been doing this daily since the end of August and I recently had a physical exam and ALL my numbers, I mean all of them, came back great!  Weigh (lost 5 lbs) Blood sugar, liver function, cholesterol (both good and bad where they should be), psa and vitamin levels — all great.  Hey!  My next vacation may be in an Ashram!

Week 8 - I Need a Citation Vacation

What a week this was!  I will remember this past week for a while.  I finally got the Freelance Guide table of contents set.  We basically used the results from the websort, which — by the way — we achieved our target audience response of 100, and as the result of that understood that the original line-up for the table of content was a bit “off.”

We added in a new section called “Career Services Listing,” which basically, as it states, is a listing of all of the staff in Career Services with a notation of who they serve.  We kept the "FAQ" where it was, and then basically took the section that was called “Keeping up with Trends,” and melded it into a new section called "The Resource Center" together with the content from “Helpful Resources.” We then ended up with four main sections.

Three of those sections were also renamed, as follows:

• Section 3 — Getting Established → Getting Started
• Section 4 — Finding Work → Finding Work
• Section 5 — Finances & Legal Issues → Learning About Finances & Legalities
• Section 6 — Helpful Resources → The Resource Center

From an information architecture point of view it is always good to keep your labeling in perfect syntax, such as getting, finding and learning.  But, when you want to make an emphatic gesture, so to speak, (with your labeling) it’s ok to change that (The Resource Center).

When "Helpful Resources"was listed in the prior document, the categories were separated by subject matter and grouped together by major.  We decided to undo that so that in the new version, all resources will be first —grouped by major —and then sorted by subject matter. The subject matters are conferences, industry directories, useful periodicals, professional organizations, recommended reading, and useful websites.

 
Anyway, I thought that was going to be the end of the formatting and fooling around with the actual content.  I thought that I was going to be able to concentrate on creating the complementary website that goes with this guide.  But one of the last things that I went to do was to take the document and send it through “Turnitin.com” to check the references and possible citation violations. 

Did I say possible violations?   After getting the document back and scrubbed through “turnitin” — it was determined that 52% of the content was taken from other sources that were not accurately cited.
So, the notion of me being able to do parts two and three (extensive training and white paper) of my sabbatical are probably going out the window — for now. 

I am going to have to spend a good deal of time ensuring that all the content for this document (and subsequent website) is cited and permissions have been obtained.  If the “owners” of the content are not inclined to give it over for free, then I will have to figure out either a way to pay for it, or write the content myself.

The listing of content owners is quite large, and in some cases very vague as to who “owns” the content. For example, many sections of the Freelance Guide were taken from state and federal government websites, and I am less concerned about those as we are doing a public service through re-purposing the content.  Where I am concerned is content that expressly states that it is copyrighted and permissions are needed.   I have started to write all of the owners, and it hasn’t been easy figuring out who they are. In some cases I have to write the webmaster of the site that the content came from to figure out who the author or writer was.  And because this is the third time that the original content has been edited, the results from "turnitin" have been vague.

Well, the good news is I am spending down-time learning Joomla! because I do have to go back into the web content to cite everything. And I must thank my best pal in the world, my colleague, Marlyn Tadros, for helping me learn the more difficult parts of this software.

I am not going to list out the past week’s activities because I literally worked on this document, every day, for nearly 8 to 10 hours in one activity or another. And I know that there’s a thought that sabbatical periods are a breeze, and for some, maybe that has been the case, but for me this has been hard work and a good understanding of what can happen in a large project such as this.

Hopefully, my news will be better next week!

Half-way Through

Techno-gibberish 
Last week was an interesting week. I tried to do something that I hate, which is dealing with technical gibberish.  Or, I tried to move my domain names from Network Solutions to Blue Host. And before I say anymore, I know that this process has to be secure, but why does it have to be difficult? If I published each company’s directions of what to do to make the transfer — either coming or going — the content couldn’t be more different. And that, by itself, is enough, but I loved the statement toward the end of the conversation that I had with customer service rep,  “If you do everything correct your domain names should transfer between 36-48 hours.  If it doesn’t work, you can try it again or give us a call.” Great.

My issue with technology is often the variance in “verbiage” from manufacturer to manufacturer and from company to company in trying to discern what they want you to do. It’s very frustrating.  And I can’t imagine that they want it that way — and yet it persists.  Just try hooking up a television to Comcast cable.  I can’t deal with that, so recently, when my mom needed one of her additional tv’s to be linked to the system it took my brother nearly an hour to do what was said to be a “simple” procedure.

Segue one: Social Media and Gold Star Moms 
I met this week with a Gold Star Mom, who is a member of the American Gold Star Mother’s Club. Wiki says the following about the club, “It was formed in the United States to provide support for mothers that lost sons or daughters in the war.”  The name came from the custom of families of servicemen hanging a banner called a Service Flag in the window of their homes, and a gold star for each family member in the military who died in service. 

She told me that her local mother’s group stays connected through social media (Facebook), and she is going to speak to me more about how it all works.  She lost her son in Iraq about two years ago, and so it was an emotional meeting.  I have decided that my research on “content” and social media is going to be a continual pursuit. At least it won’t end at the end of my sabbatical period.

 

Segue two: Freeland Guide Update 
And speaking of my sabbatical period, it’s half-way over. I realize that I am probably not going to have the time to finish all that I had proposed.  And that is because the work on the Freelance Guide is taking much more time than I ever suspected.  I nearly spent all of last week typing the new content and original edits.
 

We have more edits to come from the websorting analysis and from content experts, so we think that this is probably not going to be done until right before Thanksgiving. We met this week with Career Services and advised them of our progress. We spoke about finalizing the analysis, and initial edits by next week. We are moving certain sections of the content to other parts of the document and we are asking for all of the department chairs to assist us with missing information. We are also renaming certain sections to be more effective.  The focus for the guide is to help students understand how many different things are involved in the process of “freelancing” without scaring them away.
 

We broke the main sections down into four areas: 

1. Getting Started 
2. Finding Work 
3. Understanding Finances and Legalities 
4. The Resource Center

Once we have the document complete we will be creating a complementary website. We are beginning to “set” content into a template that we have chosen, and if you want to see the process in progress (and it is not going to be pretty) — you can go here to watch.
 

We have also initiated a "Photography Contest" through the Photography Department to help populate the website with interesting photos. More to come about that.


As I said, I am halfway though the sabbatical process  and I am going to re-calculate my proposed list of things to do against my available time and publish that update next week with some realistic hope and potential of getting it all done and still being rested to start next semester.

I will post my weekly summary notes here as soon as I have the time

Week 6 - Twitterdum and such

Before I start with anything else, if you haven't done the websort for one on my projects — please go to the following website to do the websort.  It would be much appreciated.

http://websort.net/s/A38653/


Ok. Sometimes you can't tell if something is a fad or a trend.  Supposedly, a fad is something that comes and goes whereas a trend is something that is here to stay. Barbie (TM) was a fad that became a trend — I guess.  And Tickle-Me Elmo will hopefully be a fad that stays a fad — who knows?

But I recently read the "Twitter for Dummies" book by Fitton, Gruen and Poston, and I looked at the Glossary — trying to find all of the different entities that have been spurned by Twitter.  Here's an incomplete list in no particular order:

CoTweet, Digsby, EpicTweet, ExecTweets, StockTwits, FollowFriday, FriendorFollow, FriendFeed, HelloTxt, HootSuite, LocalTweeps, Mr.Tweet, 100TXT, 140Story, PocketTwit, SecretTweet, TalkShoe, TinyTwitter, TipJoy, Topify, Tweecious, TweetDeck, TweetGrid, Tweetie, TweetLater, Tweetree, TweetScan, Tweetups, Twellow, 12Seconds, Twestival, Twhirl, twInfluence, Twinkle, Twistory, TwitBacks, TwitPic, TwitScoop, TwitStory, Twittelator, Twitterati, TwitterBerry, TwitterFeed, TwitterFon, TwitterFox, TwitterGrader, Twitterific, TwitterLocal, Twittermail, TwitterPatterns, Twitter-speak, Twittervision, Twobile, twoof, TwtVite. . .

Twell,  how was that?  That's alot of secondary digerati to digest.  I am thinking, at about three and a half years-old, Twitter has gone from a fad to a trend — most definitely.  I have been tweeting for a couple of weeks and without really trying I have 14 followers, and I am following 17 people.  I'd like to tell you that I have had the time to go through all of the above, but I am afraid I haven't.  Will I?   Probably not, but I am definitely going to pursue the ones that use marketing ploys.  And there are some fascinating ones that allow you to manipulate the Twitter API — so those I'll check out.

But this week I have spent most of the time working on the actual text of the printed version of the  Freelance Guide Project (aifreelance.com), and we made alot of progress with that. And I gove a shout out and props and thanks to Brian Bram, Michelle Yaiser and Tom Gentz for checking content for me — I really appreciate it!  And thanks to Steve Rudolfi who is the most excellent project manager in training. Check out his blog and his side of the story — it's great! 

I  also met with one of my clients this week — Carol Zander, who is the Bralady! (http://www.braladybiznewsletter.blogspot.com) and discussed how Twitter could increase her marketing mix.  We talked about a Twitter strategy and I showed her how to connect Twitter with Blogger.  She is on her way.

I thought I hit my reading-threshold  (I know that's not really a word, but hey — I am on sabBOBical — and you get what I mean), but I am going to try to tackle a few more books (in this order):  

• "The Social Life of Information" by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid; 
• "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" by Dan Asriely;
• "Remix" by Lawrence Lessig; 
• "Code: Version 2.0" by Lawrence Lessig;
• "Thinking with Type" by Ellen Lupton, and quite possibly 

That's it for now.  I am a bit tired — I admitted to someone this week that I thought that the work I have been doing for this sabbatical is a bit more tiring than regular work.  Hmmm.  I think I have to look at the leaves next week.

Last Week's Daily Events 

Friday, October 16, 2009 

• Project Management Meeting:  With John Lay, Carreer Services, and Steve Rudolfi — we accomplished much and hope to meet again on October 30th
  
• Meeting with Steve Rudolfi: Freelance Guide — we completely reformatted the FLG docuemnt and setup style sheet for it
  
• Wrote this blog
  

Monday, October 19, 2009  

• Student CD Project: Edits
• Email-a-rama 
• Content Expert Requests:  Brian Bram, Sam Roache, Michelle Yaiser. 
• Freelance Guide: Edits
  

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 

• Client Meeting: BraladyBiz
• Twitter Research
• Freelance Guide: Edits
• Websort: Sent out  invitations
  

Wednesday, October 21, 2009  

• Websort: Sent out  more invitations 
• LinkedIn Work 
• Freelance Guide: Edits
• Content Expert Requests: Tom Gentz  

Thursday, October 22, 2009   

• Freelance Guide: Edits
• Websort Work
• Content Expert Requests: Dave Griffin, Joe Griffin 

 C'est tout!

 

Week 5 - Twitter Research and "Tribes"

I am including my email address here if you want to email me directly about anything.  Sorry that the blog limits comments to only Googlers.  I will fix as soon as I can — didn't realize this. roberte.griffin@verizon.net

Before I say anything else I want to say that there is nothing more gorgeous than fiddle-head ferns as they are saying good-bye to the world in their Fall swan song.
Ok, that's as Artsy as I can get.  

I began a part of my Twitter Research this week.  I am putting together a survey that I hope to send out soon,  and I will advise when I do (using the online survey application: Wufoo). In the meantime, I wanted to follow a diverse sub-group (over time) on Twitter, and I figured out what better way to do this than to use my own name: Robert Griffin.

So, I searched for "Robert Griffin" and found 19 of us (who were registered to Twitter). I haven't checked out every profile, but of those I did check,  I can say that these guys are a diverse group.  I suppose to be fair I should also do a Roberta Griffin survey, right?

Anyway, as of now the most "followers" one RG has is "105" and the least is "1." The median number is "6" — the average (coincidentally) is "19." I am going to follow these guys periodically and check to see — as a group — if they have increased their following, and or their "influence.'  I will talk more about "influence" later.  This is only one of many things I have planned for the research on Twitter — stay tuned.

I finished reading Seth Godin's book "Tribes." (His Web site: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ .

Rather than go on and on about what I think of it — and I think it is great — I want to give you some direct quotes from it, and then you can see for yourself:

Quote#1 (that I love): "Perfection is an illusion, one that was created to maintain the status quo.

(2) (Tribe definition and as far as Godin thinks is the way marketing is headed) "A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea." (So, like everyone who uses a Mac, and loves Steve Jobs, and thinks MACS  rule!)

(3) This is not a quote but a comment — Godin is so creative that this partial-image (the t and s are cut off) is the INSIDE of the dust jacket for the hardcover edition, which is a display of Twitter follower avatars — I think.  Awesome!

(4) A crowd is a tribe without a leader.  A crowd is a tribe without communication.  Most organizations spend their time  marketing to the crowd. Smart organizations assemble the tribe.

(5) The essential lesson is that every day it gets easier to tighten the relationship you have with the people who choose to follow you.

(6) What people are afraid of isn't failure. It's blame. Criticism.

(7) A tribe that communicates more quickly, with alacrity [I love that word]  and emotion, is a tribe that thrives.

(8) It's uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers, to propose an idea that might fail, to challenge the status quo, to resist the urge to settle.  When you identify the discomfort, you've found the place where a leader is needed.

(9) Leading when you don't know where to go, when you don't have the commitment or passion, or worst of all, when you can't overcome your fear—that sort of leading is worse than one at all. It takes guts to acknowledge that perhaps this time, right now, you can't lead. So get out of the way and follow....

(10) The key elements in creating a micromovement are —

To do list: 

1. Publish a manifesto
2. Make it easy for your followers to connect with you 
3. Mkae it easy for your followers to connect with one another
4. realize that money  is not the point of a movement 
5. Track your progress

 The principles:

1. Transparency really is your only option
2. Your movement needs to be bigger than you
3. Movements that grow, thrive
4. Movements  are made most clear when compared to the staus quo or to movements that work to push the other directions
5. Exclude outsiders
6. Tearing others down is never as helpful to a movement as building your followers up

 That's it — ten is enough, if you want more, get the book (and, no. I do not benefit from this endorsement).

What does this all mean for social media? I hope to try to figure it all out when I analyze and synthesize everything that I have read. That's all for now, folks — stay tuned.

rg


Last Week's Daily Events
I am including my email here if you want to email me directly about anything.  Sorry the blog limits comments to only Googlers.  I will fix as soon as I can — didn't realize this. roberte.griffin@verizon.net

Friday, October 9, 2009

• Project Management Documentation: Freelance Guide / created new system for "labeing"
  
• Meeting with Steve Rudolfi: Freelance Guide
  
• Work on finalizing the Student CD Project
• Worked on finalizing the "Websort" for Freelance Guide
• Write this blog
  

Monday, October 12, 2009  

• Happy Columbus Day, I think?
  

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 

• Reading: Finished "Tribes" by Seth Godin
• Setup: Watched Twitter video
  
• Did online research on "Twitter" - wanted to see who has written what about it.
  
• Read through Twitter "help" files
• Began to Twitter in earnest and follow people --- it is more interesting than I originally thought --- I hope Dan Barron is reading this. 
• Emailed Steve Rudolfi new "labeling" file (xls) for the Student CD-ROM 
• Worked on Joomla! Logistics --- so frustrating to be given bad information 

Wednesday, October 14, 2009  

• Read three Cory Doctorow periodical articles (online) about "content" - email me if you'd like list.
  
• More Twitter research
  
• Typed edits in the Freelance Guide.  Ran into major problems with the document — may have to redo entire 106 pages due to this — major setback!

Thursday, October , 2009  

• Online research for "best practices" in writing a "white paper" and scored a homerun with this.  Email me if you want all file references. Basically, Stelzner Consulting is a small marketing communication consultant who wrote a nice white paper about writing white papers. A little self-promoting, but it is free!
  
• Travel day and medical appointment
  

Week 4 - Marshall McLuhan Strikes Again!

Howdee! Ending Week 4 of SabBOBical!

I am going to keep this blog short this week as I have written a longer, separate blog that you might want to look at on my Techno-Travels blog.  It is regarding the re-reading of Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Massage (sic) Message." It was quite a reading experience.

Additionally, this week  I read Seth Godin's book, "Tribes" and Mr. Godin has done it again for me in describing  a new way to think about  marketing. It will be on my newly revised readng list for my WDIM225 class (E-commerce and Marketing Communication).   Basically, the book is about how advertising as we know it, is changing.  As I was reading this I was listening to Tom Ashbrook's NPR Radio show "On-point" and the very subject was the FTC's new rules and regulations about bloggers accepting "booty" or "loot" for "advertising"  products or services within their blogs. I know I don't have to worry about that but check out the new FTC regulations.

And for those of you thinking about buying a Macbook — hold off until I let you know — there is a bug with the keyboard and it is very tiresome.  Basically, it is not registering all keys on the keyboard while typing and no matter what you do — change the touch, download new (supposed fixes) firmware etc. etc. — it doesn't fix the problem. If anyone knows anymore about this, please let me know. When I called Apple — they seemed to know about the issue and advised me to download firmware to see if it alleviates the issue, but honestly — it didn't even sound like the guy who I was talking to believed what he was saying.  He advised me to go to an Apple Store to show them the issue and take it and my case number from there.  For those of you who remember my problem with Dell many moons ago — it sounds like it is happening again! AHHHHHHHHHH!

That is  all for this week  — see details below!

RG

Calendar of Events for the Past 

( Key: Green items need follow-up.)

Friday, October 2, 2009

• Project Management Documentation: Freelance Guide
  
• Meeting with Steve Rudolfi: Freelance Guide
  
• Trip to Barnes & Noble for a course book inventory
• Online reading about "Twitter"
• Online investigation of "Meetup.com"
• Work on Student CD-ROM Project
• Write this blog
  

Monday, October 5, 2009  

• Travel to Boston
  
• Technical meeting with Steve Rudolfi to install Joomla!
  
• Project Plan: Freelance Guide
• Domain name check and decision for freelance Guide Project 

Tuesday, October 6, 2009 

• Reading: Joomla! Documentation read-through from BlueHost
• Setup: Mail on new laptop 
• Discussion: Michael Goldberg, Graphic Design Department — about logo contest for "aifreelance.com" 
• Email: Museum of Science contact RE: Site Visit 
• Freelance Guide Re-write: Addendum 1-8 

Wednesday, October 7, 2009  

• Student CD Project: Permission Form Check
• Project Management Documentation: Load latest version of these to Campfire
• Reading; Marshall McLuhan's "The Media is the Message (White Paper research)
  
• Write: (Techno-travels Blog: "Twhat's Ups?) — part of White Paper research 
• Online Support research and call into Apple RE: Keyboard issue with Macbook (#138478129)
• Review InspireData Software — email to customer Service 
• Review Steve Rudolfi's Blueprint of the Freelance Guide Website

Thursday, October , 2009  

• Agenda Creation: Tomorrow's meeting
• Independent Study Documentation 
• ( Completed an Apple software firmware update to see if it fixes the issue with the keyboard — can I ever get a break with computers — maybe it's my physical aura! )
• Reading: Seth Godin's "Tribes"
• Reading; Clay Shirky's Blog on "Mass Amateurization"

 That's it for this week — enjoy the fall foliage!

 

 

 

Week 3 — SabBobical

So far, no week has gone the way that I had planned.  I had this amazing plan and I was going to accomplish everything in it a certain way by a certain time.  Instead, it has flowed, and I have gotten a good deal of work done — but it feels sloppy. But I suppose sabbatical time is a time to give yourself a bit of a break.  The only schedule I am on is my own.

I also didn't think that this period would feel so winsome, and yet so isolating. To deal with the isolation I have been going to the local library or Barnes and Noble Cafe to do some of my reading.  There is less "home" distraction there and I am learning about solitude of a different kind.

I decided that this week's blog would be a bit more rambling than the past few, as I feel like there is a place for that even  in an academic treatise.  

I have alot of technical stuff to do to get properly setup for the continuing weeks. 

• Now that I have a Macbook with wifi I have to get a wireless router for home. 
• I have been saving money for a Windows PC netbook purchase (I've looked and none yet have it with Microsoft Windows 7 just — Vista, yuck. ). There are so many different deals for netbooks — it is confusing. If you here of one, give me a shout!
  
• I want to get an iPhone and say good-bye to Verizon.  Dumb, dumb Verizon. How they ever gave up the chance to work with Apple on the iPhone is beyond me.
• I also want to get an external hard drive to backup stuff
• And I have to finally commit to a server host to begin to build and rebuild some websites in Joomla! 

So, much to do.

I haven't talked much about Joomla! yet because I really have only done the training and haven't really used it yet, but i am excited about it.

Today I did do a training session on the new features of Mac OS 10.5 — alot of great new technology.  I loved Time Machine and Photo Booth.  (This is a photo I took with Photo Booth.  Not bad.)  

I also did a training session later on in the day in iWork'09 for Numbers.  I have been using Numbers for a bit, but didn't realize the many great features that it has — so different from Excel!

I got through a major milestone this week by completing the inventory of edits for the Freelance Guide Project and also creating the project plan for it.  I met with Steve Rudolfi, a student of mine,  today to discuss the project — it went well.

That project is on-track, but my reading and research is not exactly where I want it. 

That's all for now!

Calendar of Events for the Past Week 

Friday, September 25, 2009

• Project Management: Freelance Guide
  
• Meeting: Freelance Guide
  
• Reading and Research: Finalized "Rapt" notes
  

Monday, September 28, 2009 

• Email catch-up 
• Joomla! Training, Sections 8, 9 & 10
  
• Project Plan: Freelance Guide
  
• Physical: Setup new office space

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 

• Developed Project Management Template (in Numbers): For edits for the Freelance Guide
  
• Training: Joomla!
• Reading: "The Dip" by Seth Godin
  
• Re-created Twitter Account to: Griff_Graff — read through documentation
• Reading: Started to read Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue"
  

  Wednesday, September 30, 2009 

• Project Management Template (Numbers): Freelance Guide
• Listened to Tom Ashbrook's show on "Multi-tasking" and "Attention" — have to get this podcast
• Reading: Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue"

Thursday, October 1 , 2009 

• Training: New features of Leopard, Mac OS 10.5
• Training: iWork'09 - Numbers
• Reading: Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody" (almost done!)

Friday, October 2 , 2009

• Meeting:  Agenda   
  o    Go over any open questions from the edits
  o    Go over Project Plan (spreadsheet)
  o    Go over schedule for next week
  o    Communicate (Steve R’s role) to Kristin Cassasanto/John Lay
• Steve due next week (October 9th)
  o    Project Plan / Spreadsheet
  o    Flow Chart / Blueprint
  o    Websort setup
  o    Beginning Artwork
  

Week 2 - Information Foraging

Week 2 - Foraging for Information

Notes on Information Foraging

I began week two reading an older academic report (1999) by Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card entitled, "Information Foraging," which was cited in another periodical I read recently. It was a very slow read, but I think I was able to "mine" some good information from it to support some of my findings that I am going to put forth in my white paper.


Of interest was the following:


"Not only do people adapt  to core complex information environments, but environments of information to which people adapt are themselves complex and dynamic." And D.C. Dennett in "Consciousness Explained" has aptly characterized this scenario as using the notion of cultural knowledge units or  "memes."   Richard Dawkins made "memes" famous in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene."  The strange coincidence here is that I have been doing alot of reading lately where the notion of "memes" keeps coming up, and I read Dawkins book as an undergraduate many, many years ago — and it always amazes me when what comes around goes around.


I guess more about memes later.

I have also been looking at the concept of "attention" alot lately.  In my marketing class I have students focus on the concept of permission marketing and I try to get across the importance of attention.  What we give our attention to is incredibly important to us and to those we share that resource with.  If it happens to be a marketer, then that makes their day.

So as part of my reading period I re-read Winnifred Gallagher's book "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life." The reason that I first was interested in this book was that she wrote it as the result of her battle with breast cancer and I read it as the result of my battle with prostate cancer.  But as I started to read the book, I realized that this book was so much more than that.  Gallagher says. "Your life is run ... by a group of bickering agents with different motives. (The voices in your head.) Where sticking to a goal is concerned, you can reduce the conflict by focusing on the most supportive voice and suppressing the distracting, counterproductive ones." There's much to think about there.

Clay Shirkey's book: "Here Comes Everybody," is so much fun to read.  Well, fun I guess if you are a social media geek, that is.  But interesting if you are anyone else. Honestly, if you read this book and don't like it, or don't find it interesting — drop me a line, I want to talk to you.  The first chapter alone gets you completely hooked. He tells the amazing story about how a woman loses her Blackberry device in the backseat of a New York City cab, and figures out who found it because they took pictures of themselves using the Blackberry.  Somehow she still could access her account and see what was going on. The story is amazing and frightening at the same time.  Frightening if you have a Facebook or Linked-In account with pictures, and you do something wrong, because you can be found! 

I am totally enthralled by this book and I know I will have much more to say about it here, and in future lectures.

That's all for this week, below is a summary of the past week.

Calendar of Events for the Past Week 

Friday, September 18, 2009 

• Email catch-up 
• Project Management
• Set new schedule
• Reading: Started going through "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life" by Winifred Gallagher for notes
• Reading: Started to Read Clay Shirkey's "Here Comes Everybody." (Chapter 1)
  
• Editing: "Freelance Guide."

Monday, September 21, 2009 

• Email catch-up 
• Downloaded Joomla! Manual (This took longer than I thought --- Yikes!)
  
• Training: Joomla! (Sections 3 & 4)
  
• Reading: Information Foraging by Pirolli and (This is very academic, but I thuink there is great stuff within it; see my comments below.)
• Readinig: "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life" by Winifred Gallagher
  
• Reading: Clay Shirkey's "Here Come Everybody." (Chapters 2- 4)

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 

• Training: Joomla! (Sections 5, 6 & 7)
  
• Reading: Information Foraging by Pirolli and (Finished --- have to re-read sections)
• Reading: Re-reading "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life" by Winifred Gallagher for notes
  
• Reading: Clay Shirkey's "Here Come Everybody." (Chapters 4- 8) 
  

  Wednesday, September 23, 2009 

• Editing: "Freelance Guide" up to page 50.

Thursday, September 24, 2009 

• Editing: "Freelance Guide" up to page 51-100.

First Full Week of SabBOBical

The following is a summary of the events of the past week, at a very high-level. I am trying to be as transparent as I can be with my account of time with the hope that this can be helpful to someone else in the future as they try to decide what they will do with sabbatical time. This current log of the daily events from the past week are very high level and don't take into account all of the "stuff" you have to do to prepare for this. The scheduling, preparing, planning, travel and accounting.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

• Twitter Conference, Boston, MA — Really excellent conference and I was very proud to have two of the speakers come directly from my department at NEiA: Lauri Stevens and Sean Fitzroy.
  

Friday, September 11, 2009

• First meeting for development of the “Freelance Guide” Website with Steve Rudolfi
  
• Type up notes from Twitter Conference --- will place them on the blog when I figure out how
  
• “Notebook” Software Training - awesome new software
  

Monday, September 14, 2009

• Read periodical article “Metaphors We Surf By” by Peter Maglio - See comments below
  
• Read Chapters 1-4, David Weinberger, “Everything is Miscellaneous” - See comments below
  
• Joomla! Training – (2 hours) This is a great open source software!
  

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

• Freelance Guide Editing - 7 pages down, 100 to go
  
• Read Chapters 5-7, David Weinberger, “Everything is Miscellaneous”
• Student CD-ROM Work --- Will it ever be done?
  

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

• Travel to Boston for Student CD-ROM Staff Presentation
• PPAR Evaluation
  
• Meeting with John Lay RE: Freelance Guide - Meeting went well.
  
• Meeting With Steve Rudolfi RE: Student CD-ROM and Freelance Guide

Thursday, September 17, 2009

• Microsoft Office 2007 – Word Training (2 hours)
• Joomla! Training (2 hours)
• Finish reading: David Weinberger, “Everything is Miscellaneous”
• Read periodical: “Microsoft Research and Digital Rights Management Talk” by Cory Doctorow - See comments below

Reading Notes:

The readings this week have been enlightening and yet simply logical.  Starting from Paul Maglio and Teenie Matlock’s periodical: “Metaphors We Surf The Web By” we learn that “newbie’s” or novice users to the world wide web tend to think of it in a more physical way than experienced users do.  They report verbiage or web vernacular such as “click on,” “move to,” “type in,” “go to there,”and “come from here.” Whereas experienced users employ verbal descriptions in a more subtle and referential way that are less spatially action oriented.

In reading Cory Doctorow’s (co-founder of Boing-Boing) speech to Microsoft in 2004 regarding “Digital Rights Management” — I was stopped in my tracks thinking about the following:

“New media don’t succeed because they’re like the old media, only better: they succeed because they’re worse than the old media at the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the old media are bad at.”
 
I was immediately put to thinking as to what he was thinking about.   Can you think of an example?

 
I finished reading David Weinberger's wonderful book “Everything Is Miscellaneous” and I cannot think of anyone I know who would not enjoy this book. There is much in it that I need to dissect and layer-in to my lectures for both my Information Architecture and E-commerce courses, but here are some tidbits from it that should give you much to think about. It is a wonderful book for anyone to read who is interested in information organization, and the processing of information and how it is progressing through the Web 2.0 process.

Some words of knowledge from Weinberger:

“The remarkable fact is that we have built systems for understanding the universe using the same technique we use for putting away our laundry: Split the lump of cleaned clothes by family member, split each family member’s lumps by body part, then perhaps by work or play, by season or by color.”

and

“Reality is multifaceted. There are lots of ways to slice it. How we choose to slice it up depends upon why we’re slicing it up.

Weinberger makes the following point in a chapter that he titles “Social Knowing:”

“But just about every industry that creates or distributes content — ideas, information, or creativity in any form— exerts control over how that content is organized . . .This creates a conundrum for businesses as they enter the digital order. If they don’t allow their users to structure information for themselves,*  they’ll lose their patrons. If they do not allow patrons to structure information for themselves, the organizations will lose much of their authority, power and control.


* My comment: see Dartmouth University’s Quick-Link main page for an excellent example of doing this right.

And just when you think wiki’s are a waste of time, Weinberger says:

“The CIO of the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, J.P. Rangaswami, found that wikis reduced emails about projects by 75% and halved meeting times.  Suzanne Stein of Nokia’s Insight & Foresight says “group knowledge evolves” on wikis.

Wow!  (75%)

 
And finally, in a chapter called “What Nothing Says” Weinberger takes delight in the following:
Some labels are so dumb they’re famous:

• On a Sears hair dryer: “Do not use while sleeping.”          
• On the packaging for a Rowenta iron: “Do not iron clothes on body.
• On a Nytol sleep aid” “Warning: May cause drowsiness”    
• On Sainsbuy peanuts: “Warning: Contains nuts”                 
• On a child’s costume: “Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly.”
  

This chapter goes on to discuss metadata and how we are all surprisingly subtle readers of all forms and types of metadata.  This is a great book for anyone to read, it’s actually quite fun. It is truly required reading for anyone who is involved in creating content strategy for websites. 
  
See you next week!