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:
See you next week!
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.”
See you next week!
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