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Sunday, December 25, 2005
On the Holidays
I was raised Roman Catholic, so as a child we celebrated Christmas, yet every year in my stockings there was also a small bag of Hanukkah geld. A small reminder from my mom of our family's Jewish roots as well.
Now, as an adult, my family still celebrates Christmas, but as an atheist I find myself somewhat at loose ends this time of year. I enjoy, though it is stressful as well, the process of finding gifts for others - finding that perfect item for someone whom I love. And certainly I do not complain when others give me gifts - always a good feeling.
When asked, by a survey or the like, I will self-identify as Jewish, though more out of ethnicity than religion, but at the same time I go through life with a desidely Irish name - Shannon Clark - so in some manner I'm a "stealth" member of the tribe. Many people find it somewhat surprising that I'm Jewish, but I certainly qualify (mother, grandmother, great-grandmother who are all Jewish).
As a child, however, I attended a Roman Catholic elementary school (yes, with nuns as teachers) and nearly everyone (outside of some family members) whom I knew were Roman Catholic. I distinctly remember as a child assuming that the whole world was Roman Catholic (and yes, I know my own mother and other relatives should have been a rather obvious counterexample but that was the reality I lived in for a time).
This perception of the world, perhaps, was strengthen by the lack of a TV in my family until I was in junior high (around the summer after 7th grade). In 7th grade I attended a public junior high and certainly many of my classmates there were not Catholic, though the subject rarely came up. I had skipped a grade (never finished 2nd grade when we moved from NY to Chicago I started 3rd grade instead of complete 2nd grade) so I was younger than most of my classmates. Around 8th grade or freshman year of high school most Catholics get confirmed. Confirmation, one of the seven sacraments, is the public announcement that you will be a member of the Roman Catholic faith, that you will raise your future children as Catholics and that you will live your life as a member of the Church.
I chose not to be confirmed, at first by simply avoiding the subject, but later on in high school very deliberately. I had long held serious doubts about God, in the 3rd grade I had failed a test in Religion class when I had turned in an empty page for an assignment requiring us to "draw a picture of God" - I knew that they wanted a picture of an old man with a long white beard or something like that - but all I could imagine at the time was that God, if existing, was everything and nothing - and certainly not an old man in a white beard no matter how much that was expected of me.
I studied philosophy, fairly seriously, in high school, taking a full year course in Philosophy my sophomore year and then doing additional independent study in philosophy with one of my teachers. I found in Existentialism (though not in the later Marxist phase of Sartre) a philosophy of the world that agreed with my own views - and which gave priority to the importance and responsibility of choice.
I made the active choice not to be confirmed because had I been confirmed I would have been publicly making the choice then and into the future of living my life as a Catholic. I valued that public declaration and did not want to make such a declaration if I did not intend on honoring it. I had too much respect to disrespect the ceremony if I would be making a statement I did not believe in - and the starting point of "I believe in God" was one I would not publicly state.
My philosophy of the world is complex. I very firmly believe in the priority of individual choice and action. This is often hard and challenging, it does not allow me an amorphous "other" in the form of God (or society, chemicals, other individuals or groups) onto whom to shift blame and responsibility for my life. It is not a forgiving philosophy or an easy one, it is why I have never once in my life been drunk, it is why I avoid taking drugs that impact mental capacity (and why I do have a serious philosophical debate with myself over my consumption of caffeine).
As the party choosing to take those substances I do not then shift responsibility to the substance for any action which I might take while "under the influence" so, preemptively I choose not to imbibe. I will, occasionally, have a glass of wine or a bottle of cider, but not much more.
I'm certainly not perfect, and in fact I often avoid making a choice and thus via inaction effectively make a choice but somehow a less explicit one. This is not a good behavior on my part - and one I have to watch and continue to learn to avoid.
But to bring this back to the holidays. I find myself increasingly taking care that I focus on "the holidays" and not on Christmas (or Hanukkah) whether in a card which I send or in my speech.
This evening, I am home alone, my girlfriend is visiting her family flying back tomorrow to have Christmas dinner at my parents. I went out for an early dinner, then sat in a Starbucks for a little while before going and seeing Fun with Dick and Jane - which was fun but didn't live up to the promise of the premise. As I walked the mostly empty streets of Chicago I found myself as always during these religious yet general public holidays feeling a bit removed from the rest of society.
I find myself much more comfortable with purely secular holidays - Fourth of July for example - and less comfortable with these religiously based holidays. I feel that I am on the outside, and I wonder how the millions of others who live in the US but who are, like myself, not Christians (or in many cases not even having been raised in a Christian background) feel this time of year. My Jewish friends joke about going out for Chinese or a movie and there are many a Jewish singles event this time of the year (I went to one years ago when I was single) but I wonder how my Buddhist, Muslim, Pagan or Hindu friends feel.
The US society is still very much dominated by Protestant Christianity. I wonder, how many people, like my youthful self, just assume that the whole world, that "everyone", is believing the same as they do, is celebrating in the same ways and the same events that they celebrate. I suspect that the numbers of people who hold this view of the world is quite large, though I hold out some hope that growing connectivity driven by the Internet but also 100's of channels of TV and a global entertainment marketplace may be helping to increase the intuitive awareness that there are other ways of viewing the world.
But it is equally possible that you can still (perhaps even more easily now than ever before) isolate yourself and view only those things that reinforce your own views of the world and "reality". Customized news, TiVo, radio and other mediums all supporting just one view can render it increasingly easy to never encounter others of different faiths and beliefs (or lack of belief).
I wonder very seriously about the growing number of people who are being home schooled, who never get the complex opportunity of a public school to encounter others of different backgrounds and religions. Though that assumes, of course, that at a public school there will be diversity, this is not always true of many (perhaps most) communities in the US. I was fortunate to attend a high school which was exceptionally diverse - racially, religiously, economically. Students there were in public housing while others were given Rolls Royces when they turned 16. Every year 20 or more exchange students (and teachers) would attend the high school. At graduation we were given a speech which talked about how different the rest of the world and likely our college experience would be - how less diverse most places were.
We were lucky.
In 2006 I will be moving from Chicago to Berkeley. I leave the city where I have lived for the past 23+ years for another which I grew up hearing about (my parents met at U. C. Berkeley). It is a diverse community in many ways, but not in all ways. The tech community, of which I will be a part in the Bay Area, is not as diverse as it could (and I would argue should) be. Many events and companies are extremely male-dominated, not always very racially diverse, and in many cases (as is not uncommon with smaller firms) very uniform in their makeup. There is also passive (and at times active) discrimination against people by age - with the bias being towards younger developers. In places like Berkeley there is also an extreme lack of political diversity.
In any of these cases, like my younger self in the Catholic elementary school, it is all too easy to assume that "everyone" is like those with whom we spend our days, with whom we work and play, with whom we live and interact with. Even when presented by evidence to the contrary - a homeless man, an occasional colleague who didn't vote for Kerry, a developer still working with Java (or C or Fortran or Lisp or even using IE) - we can still act and have the impression that everyone is mostly like us.
So my holiday wish is that everyone - whether religious or not, atheist, Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, IE user, Firefox promoter, Republican or Democrat or not a US citizen - will make a point to remember that we - humans - are diverse and different and celebrate, remember, and embrace that diversity. Make a point in this upcoming new year, and throughout this holiday season to engage with the other - to seek ways to continually remind yourself that there are many faiths, many viewpoints, many experiences of life.
I wish you a happy holidays and a great new year. If you are reading this, please feel free to engage with me - whether via a comment here, email, or in person. I welcome your interactions and I look forward to the challenges (and choices) ahead of us all in 2006.
12/25/2005 01:45:00 AM
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Friday, December 16, 2005
Evil Genius Chronicles - Apprenticeship
I left the following, long comment, at Evil Genius Chronicles - Apprenticeship
To offer a somewhat different perspective, I think what people respond to in the various reality tv shows (and now also webshows etc) is not that someone 'has' a job or gets one - but the specific, usually unusual and relatively rare job which the winners get. i.e. six figures (plus lots of recognition) 'running' a line of business for a billionaire; running a music studio, being on air talent for a major (cable) network etc.
There is also a great related branch of 'reality' tv shows which illustrate at least to a degree an interesting side of many jobs - from extremes like 'dirty jobs' to more practical examples on HGTV and others about real estate, design, or building. Even shows like 'monster garage' etc while clearly entertainment, are also showing creativity as well as working in teams.
Now don't get me wrong, I was raised without a TV for much of my life and go without one frequently (the past month and half for example) but I'm also not as pessimistic as the previous commentator - tv shows, including some (but clearly not all) of the 'reality' shows have in many respects been getting LESS mindless not more. They compete against entertainments in many mediums - but the long story arcs of the best shows and the problem solving / creativity of the best of the short shows is markedly different than earlier eras of TV.
Stephen Johnson discusses this to some degree in his book 'everything bad is good for you' the phenomenon of the growing complexity of thought required by the best of modern media.
(news noteably usually not being in this category - there the thought required has mostly gone down not up - though it was never very high to start)
12/16/2005 10:13:00 AM
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Friday, December 09, 2005
ThinkGeek :: Polarity - Magnetic Boardgame
If you are reading this and are wondering what types of things I might like for the holidays... ThinkGeek :: Polarity - Magnetic Boardgame
Okay, let met get this straight - hovering pieces, controlled chaos in game play? Count me in...
On a serious note, I love to see new games like this - strategy and gameplay in new dimensions, sounds really fun and mind-bending, probably quickly to play, but also rewarding of repeated play with the ability to get better, while still having some room for randomness and variation.
12/09/2005 01:47:00 AM
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Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Windows Live Safety Center
Windows Live Safety Center
I left a comment here about my experienaces.
11/01/2005 05:41:00 PM
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Windows Live Safety Center: Free online scanner for PC health and safety
Windows Live Safety Center: Free online scanner for PC health and safety
A useful service which is part of Microsoft's launch of a variety of services under the live.com site. I'm testing this out on my primary laptop and will see what (hopefully nothing) it finds.
I'll also test this with less updated/secured systems, my windows 98 machine for example and see how/if it handles that.
11/01/2005 03:33:00 PM
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Wednesday, October 26, 2005
White Sox Win!
What more is there to say - 88 years - many generations and as a Chicagoan I'm thrilled and excited and very happy - I didn't think it would ever happen and now it has in very convincing fashion.
If next year the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox were to play it would be the 100th aniversary of the last time those two teams met in the World Series - the 1906 World Series. Something to hope for (imagine how impossible those tickets would be to come by... )
My record of not making it to any Chicago team's games when they have a winning record remains intact - I missed all the Bulls games in the 1990's, the Bears in the 1985 and now the White Sox in 2005!
10/26/2005 11:39:00 PM
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Flavors of Fall
While the weather here in Chicago while gloomy and wet is mostly fall like, unlike my friend Ethan in the Bershires, we are also rapidly approaching the end of farmer's markets here in Chicago. So this past weekend and week we have been cooking fall flavors as a celebration of the season before Chicago as it is want to do switches to the long winter.
Over the weekend I went a bit wild at the Green City Market, a local organic farmer's market. I then spent all day Saturday cooking and invited friends over to taste.
Starting with a bag of apple seconds (bird bites etc) which I purchased for $2.00, Julia peeled and cored them, we then slowly cooked them on the stove in an inch of water with three cinnamon sticks.
As this reduced I started the first of many dishes which required our oven (wishing yet again that we had double ovens - a feature we'll look for in any new abode). First in was some pinwheel beets, so named because when prepared correctly they retain a pinwheel pattern on their insides when cut in rounds. They also have the great feature of not bleeding and of being somewhat sweeter than many other beets, in short a perfect beet for salads.
To prepare these I cut off the green portions just above the bulb (but left the tails) and washed them. I then put them in a Pyrex baking pan with a half-inch of water and covered the whole pan with aluminum foil. I preheated the over to 350 degrees and put them in for about 30-40 minutes (until a knife stuck in them went in easily without resistance). When I took them out I then washed them in cold water (alterntating between two glass bowls until the water was cool) and peeled the skins. I then set these aside and moved on to the next dish.
Next I cut in half two acorn squash. I cut these across the middle and scooped out the seeds. I then placed them on a lightly oiled baking pan and placed brown sugar, then a scoop of butter (about a teaspoon) and then a bit more brown sugar as well as salt, pepper and a sprinkling of maple sugar candy crumbs. I lightly oiled the edges of the squash with extra virgin olive oil. These I cooked at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes.
When I took the squash out I placed them in individual bowls and covered each with aluminum foil to retain the heat.
The next dish was a pork steak. This was an organic pork steak I had purchased at the farmer's market from the farmer who raised the pig. It was frozen so I had let it defrost all day while my other dishes were cooking. I spiced the pork steak with salt and pepper (french sea salt and very good black peppercorns freshly ground) and a maple spice rub I purchased that morning from the Spice House. I broiled this for about 10 minutes on a side.
While the pork cooked I prepared the beet salad.
This was a bed of fresh baby organic lettuce, drizzled with organic extra virgin olive oil (from Trader Joes) and 7 year aged balasmic and sea salt and black pepper. I then added the beets in slices (with a few smaller beets cubed for variety). Then I julianned a golden russet apple (This is possibly the best apple I have ever gotten from a local farmer's market and amongst the best I've ever had - not pretty to look at but unbelievably tasty and very firm - ideal for salads). I added these very small strips of apple which soaked up the balsamic. Then I topped the salad with a great stilton which I had purchased that morning from a wheel the cheese stop up the street from me had opened for me to taste - just the right flavor and texture for this salad.
With dinner I drank fresh apple cider to complete the perfect sampling of fall flavors.
Julia and I ate together, then two friends of ours stopped by, for each friend I prepared a salad and a sampling of the other dishes - homemade apple sauce, pork steak, baked acorn squash and beet & apple salad. They each enjoyed their tastes.
That was Saturday. On Sunday while we were out shopping for other items we stopped at Whole Foods and purchased some pork chops and some pasta. I prepared the pork chops with the same maple rub - extremely good. I also purchased some other beets and made the same salad but with different beets (still good but not quite as good as the pinwheel beets which were sweeter and softer in texture).
The pasta we purchased was pumpkin filled pasta, I prepared that for dinner last night with a light alfreddo sauce which I prepared while the pasta cooked (butter, milk, cheese, small amount of garlic powder.
We've also been making other dishes this week - an angel food cake (from mix) which we have been eating as dessert along with some of the apple sauce (and vanilla ice cream). For lunch the other day I sliced some hard boiled eggs with a julianned golden russet apple to this I added some of the 7 year old balsamic and some sea salt and ground pepper - very very tasty and fast.
In short this week has been a celebration of fall colors and flavors - pumkin, squash, apples, beets, pork. Later this week I plan on making homemade butternut squash soup and continue our celebration of the fall.
What dishes have you been making this fall?
10/26/2005 08:01:00 PM
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Sunday, October 02, 2005
?My heart?s in Accra ? Travel Writing
?My heart?s in Accra ? Travel Writing
My friend Ethan Zuckerman has seperated out from his regular blog his writings about his travels. All are very well written and engaging, worth a look when you have a few minutes.
10/02/2005 11:58:00 AM
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Saturday, October 01, 2005
Movies I want to see
At the moment there are more movies released which I want to see than I have time to go to the movies, here is the list of currently released movies which I want to see (and why), it is surprisingly long, probably the longest such as list has been in the past 5, perhaps 10 years.
Mirrormask - Neil Gaiman's new film. Here in Chicago only showing for one week. So this is likely the first film I'm going to go see, probably this weekend or next week.
Serenity - Josh Whedon's new film based on the Firefly TV series. While I haven't yet caught up on the Firefly series, given his track record with other series and the previews, this is near the top of my list of films to see.
Proof - While I have heard some mixed reviews, the ones I trust have all been very positive about this film, given my own interest in math as well as my many friends who are mathematicians I want to see this film.
Lord of War - I'm rarely disappointed in Nicholas Cage's films and in this one he plays an anti-hero arms dealer.
Oliver Twist - Roman Polanski's newest film of the Dicken's classic. I'm looking forward to seeing this.
Everything is Illuminated - while I haven't yet read the book, this story is one I feel I have to see.
A History of Violence - sounds like the type of story I would find fun.
The Aristocrats - for the overview of the history of comedy in America for nearly the last century.
Capote - not yet out in Chicago but when it is out I want to see this.
And still in theaters and I haven't see yet:
Fantastic Four - seems like it would be better on the big screen.
I'll add more links and details later, but this a quite a long list for me other than one or two films above I would regret not seeing all of these films while they are playing in theaters. And besides these there are many other films I wouldn't mind seeing as well as lots of great films coming to Chicago in upcoming weeks for the Chicago International Film Festival and other fests.
10/01/2005 01:29:00 PM
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Friday, September 30, 2005
Returning to the blogosphere
I have been absent for the most part from the blogosphere for a while now, writing quietly on my lalptop and digesting what I have been doing this summer. Now that we have entered into the fall I will be trying to get back into the blogging habit - across all three of my blogs. Here at Searching For the Moon I will blog mostly personal items - generally sites I find that are interesting but perhaps as well thoughts about restaurants, movies, plays, or other events I attend or see. I hope to also post some of the photos from my recent trip out west as well as detail some of the many things we did while traveling.
On my professional blog, piecing IT together I will be posting about my research, consulting work and business related articles, websites and events. My focus for the Fall will be Flow Economics, which is my term for the new form of economic analysis I offer my professional clients - looking at the relationships of an enterprise in terms of a network and then analyzing the flows within that network. This offers a new perspective on business whether small or large.
At MeshForum we will be blogging about Networks, our past speakers, and the process of organizing MeshForum 2006 (May 7-8 Chicago). We have a number of annoucements we will be making in the next few weeks, including some big names as speakers and an upcoming MeshForum dinner on Oct 5th here in Chicago.
9/30/2005 05:20:00 AM
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Thursday, September 15, 2005
Travels throughout the West Coast
I am back in Chicago having been out on the West Coast for two weeks during which time I was in Santa Barbara, Berkeley and San Francisco, Myers Flat, Coos Bay, Portland, and Seattle. With many other stops along the way.
While I will be posting more about this trip, including photos to Flickr and specific comments in my various blogs, this is just a quick heads up here in case anyone was wondering where I have been - we returned home on Saturday but it has taken me until today to get caught up and I still have a few thousand emails to get through, a large inqueue of feeds to read, and many other items to take care of and complete - "vacations" are hard work, at least when you return.
9/15/2005 05:46:00 PM
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Thursday, August 18, 2005
Hilary Rosen on Larry Lessig's blog
After the comment storm I participated in a few days ago, Hilary Rosen has posted her responses to the comments on Larry Lessig's blog.
I added the following additional comments:
"There is a critical difference between the "Internet" and other spaces governed by US laws.
For one - the "Internet" is truly global (I think the last country without connectivity has now been connected) and while it is true that US legal decisions have a way of being written into treaties and/or copied around the world - as we have recently seen in the case of the EU rejecting Software Patents this is by no means universally true.
So when the US, as in many recent laws like the DCMA, tries to legislate for the Internet as a whole it may in a very real sense be fighting a losing battle, with the biggest losers possibly being US citizens (and our corporations) who will be prevented from the full potential of digital technology.
In the case of online gambling, for example, this is a complex subject - but it is also very clearly one where companies (and their millions of customers) in other countries are seeing a great deal of innovation and revenues.
In the case of innovation in less politically charged realms - from patents to music - I personally find it striking that some of the most innovative music I have heard recently have been mashups, mostly from Europeans (though they are likely difficult to license in Europe as well as the US).
On a more legally clear example, I listen to a large number of podcasts - however here in the US they are restricted heavily by limitations (specifically the lack of legal universal licenses ala radio licenses) to allow podcasters to mix and play any song they would like to. However other countries have adopted radio-like universal licenses and the result is one of my favorite podcasts and a mix of music better by leaps and bounds than any radio station I have ever heard (on or offline) - Karin's Themed podcasts. These are about 1 hour blocks of music bound by a common theme - often a very international selection of music, but even when she selects only English language songs her groupings and selections cause me to hear old songs in new ways.
She pays the licensing fees in the Netherlands to be in legal compliance - so the artists she plays do get compensation from her playing of the music, in much the same way they do when a radio station plays them - and as a fan I gain the great benefit of hearing old music in new, creative ways.
I think for many forms of non-duplicative creative use (i.e. not selling a CD that is an exact copy of the artist's CD) a form of universal license such as the radio license - though probably tiered and/or with a per-unit percentage of price capped fee - could make much more sense than the current "clear every right with every possible rightsholder". Especially since the number of "orphaned" copyrights is huge and growing (even works created just years ago can be difficult if not impossible to track down the copyright holder of. A simple example, I wrote to many USENET newsgroups in the early 90's - my writing gained am immediate copyright - however if you were now to want to print, in full, the content of a specific USENET newsgroup you would have to find each poster and get permission. I am no longer at the email address I posted under, which was a university account, a quick google search of the Internet does turn me up as the first "Shannon Clark" and indeed I list on my profiles that I attended the university where the posts came from - so it is probable that I am the same Shannon Clark - but how can you be certain? There are literally dozens of other Shannon Clark's in the US. And I did this fairly simply, I posted under my own name - what about someone like "three blind mice" - how would you go about including his comments, in full, in another creative work?)
The point is that the requirement "get permission first" is increasingly untenable.
Here in the US we do not currently separate out commerical and moral rights - in the EU they have taken the approach that these rights are separate (which creates the complication that in the EU creative commons licenses or attempts to put new content into the public domain may still be bound by "moral rights" which apparently the authors may not be able to waive completely).
I think we should make it easy for the "public domain" to grow again - both by cleaning up orphaned copyrights (Lessig's suggestion of a minimal registration fee would clear things up pretty quickly and separate out "commercially viable" copyrights from the millions of orphaned ones - and have the further advantage of making it clearer which works were/were not in the public domain) and by making the process of offering up works to the public domain easier (and perhaps making some areas, such as comments especially anonymous ones, USENET etc areas where the public domain is assumed - that is by posting publically unless you attach restrictions you waive future need to contact you for permission to quote, remix, etc)
Moral rights - i.e. the right not to have your words used in ways you do not agree with are a much trickier issue. I think, however, it might be possible to expand the concept of "misrepresentation" (and/or libel) to cover this without much difficulty. (i.e. you can use what I right without first clearing it with me - but you can't use it in a way that makes it appear that your changes/remixes are my original work - i.e. use my works to claim that "Shannon Clark wants there to be no public domain at all" via the means of selective editing and insertation of new words into my text.
You could, however, use my words in a quotation (even an extended one that might go beyond "fair use") as part of your pamphlet or book arguing against my position. If my writings had a way of being placed in the public domain OR if you had a way of obtaining a "radio like" license then I (in the US at least) couldn't object to your usage and use that objection to prevent (or make commercially onorous) the publication of the book.
It is not always going to be a clear line - and multimedia examples will be complicated (does the music playing a documentary imply that the musicians condone the actions appearing on screen to their music? what if it isn't a documentary but a commercial? what if it isn't a 'commercial' but is a 'reality tv show'?) but I think there are alternatives which offer great benefit than the current stasis and uncertainty.
Shannon"
8/18/2005 12:24:00 PM
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Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Feedster Top 500 blogs
Feedster (sf) :: RSS Search Engine
I'm clearly not listed... but worth a look lots of great feeds and blogs I was not previously aware of and very good to see friend's sites highly ranked.
8/16/2005 01:57:00 PM
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Monday, August 15, 2005
Hilary Rosen on Larry Lesig's blog
I left a comment on Lawrence Lessig's blog.
"Hilary,
An example for you - and really just the tip of the iceberg.
From a recent interview in Paste Magazine (http://www.pastemagazine.com/action/article?article_id=1816) Beck says ?The only difference is that it?s pretty much impossible to clear samples now. We had to stay away from samples as much as possible. The ones that we did use were just absolutely integral to the feeling or rhythm of the song. But, back then, it was basically me writing chord changes and melodies and stuff, and then endless records being scratched and little sounds coming off the turntable. Now it?s prohibitively difficult and expensive to justify your one weird little horn blare that happens for half of a second one time in a song and makes you give away 70 percent of the song and $50,000,? he laughs. ?That?s where sampling has gone, and that?s why hip-hop sounds the way it does now.?
Pretty much says it all.
If an artist with Beck?s level of success in the past, and likely future successes, can?t express himself via sampling and remixing in the ways he would creatively like to, we are indeed seeing works being stifled and limited.
Outside of music a very similar problem exists in print publication - where the long common practice of quotes and citations is increasingly being prohibited by publishers. If even academic works are being stifled in fairly clear fair use situations, again works are being stifled.
In essense the demand by many owners of content that not only do they own it nearly in perpetuity (continually extending the life of copyrights meaning that the public domain stops somewhere in the 1920?s), as well as the ever more restrictive environment for anyone interested in using works of others as components of their work makes it ever smaller the domains where people can comfortably and legally operarate.
.
Indeed I wonder if great works of are such as the collages of Matisse or others would be allowed in today’s environment - or would the artist and his (or her) representatives have to “clear” each image and item they reuse and repurpose - each little corner of paper…. (not to mention would Warhol be able to do what he did with Cambell Soup Cans?)
I’m a technologist and writer. When I create I want to be able to create in the ways that my muse dictates - however if, say I wanted to write a story which mentions brand names, which quotes from other publications, which uses real places - I may have resistance from publishers. And when it, if it is, is tried to be made into another medium - TV or Film for example, each of those brands would (in today’s environment) only be used if that placement were paid for. (it is a source of personal annoyance and pain when in a “reality” show there are no real brands just fake ones, a few paid placements, and lots of blurred areas).
Sometime soon I think there will have to be a backlash to this blurring of reality.
Real people operate in a world of brands - in a world of content from many sources - the music and tv clips in the background of many people’s private films of reality means that those same clips cannot (today) be shown in a movie theater or put on TV without great expense due to the enforcement of many different “rightsholders”.
(see the example that Lessig cites frequently of the man who made a film that won awards at Cannes for a cost of about $400 but would cost 1000x to clear all the rights if he wanted to show it here in the US. That is stifling creativity.)
Shannon
8/15/2005 11:44:00 PM
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Sunday, July 31, 2005
Philip Greenspun's Weblog: Best Car for Chicago
I added a long comment to Philip Greenspun's Weblog: Best Car for a 25 year old woman in Chicago.
My comments were about driving in Chicago, great discussion though I'm not the only person to suggest the option of "do not have a car at all".
7/31/2005 03:02:00 AM
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Thursday, July 28, 2005
Unix style recent history - for dummies
One of the funniest things I have read in a long while - Sun Ray Blog.
A history of recent events in unix command line format, but with comments and explanations for the non-unix geeks out there. As one of the commentors mentioned, may be funnier than the version without the comments, even to a long standing unix geek like myself.
7/28/2005 07:21:00 AM
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Hidden Villa
When my mom and aunt were growing up, they attend a unique, multicultural summer camp - Hidden Villa.
My sister and I then attended when we too were growing up.
Hidden Villa is a unique, amazing and special place. Founded over 65 years ago, it is an organic farm, 1600 acres of partial wilderness, a hostel, and a chance for people of all races and creeds to come together.
While not without flaws, it is one of the more special places in this country and a place very dear to me.
7/12/2005 03:52:00 PM
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Monday, July 11, 2005
Blogging and job prospects: from the academy to the SCOTUS
on Ars Technica, the following (Blogging and job prospects: from the academy to the SCOTUS) gets it, I think, nearly completely wrong.
Were I giving advice to a grad student at the moment, I would advice them TO blog. A good, well done, and engaging blog will likely connect that grad student to their peers, both other emerging scholars and more established academics in their field(s) of interest.
By providing a service online, and by mastering new forms of technology and communication the grad student only enhances, not diminishes their own job prospects and possibilities.
Why do I say this when, as this article points out, there are counterexamples?
A few examples:
- Ester Hargatai and others at Crooked Timber (http://www.crookedtimber.com) a fantastic online community and resource, and clearly a source of engagement and support for all who are contributing, and one which helps all of them raise the profile of their work and research.
- Mary Anne Mohanraj. A very good friend of mine, she has been keeping an online journal since 1994 (yes well before "blogging" ), her active readership there has helped her build up an audience for her writing, which in turn led to successful editing jobs for a number of books, some smaller releases of her works, and eventually to a 2 book deal with Harper Collins for two books, one of which her dissertation just was released in hardcover this month. Her journal and readership helped her as she wrote her disertation and books, and in her job search (successful) - she has been teaching at Vermont college and is about to teach here in Chicago at Roosevelt University (see http://www.mamohanraj.com) - but also a google search for Mary Anne turns her up first.
I am a conference organizer. When I went lookig for speakers and presentors, I looked online. Those academics with minimal to no web presense were significently less likely to get an invitation from me to present than those who have an active online engagement.
7/11/2005 08:08:00 PM
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Friday, July 08, 2005
Podcasting - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _
Podcasting - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _
I left a long comment about Podcasting and MeshForum on Mark Cuban's blog this afternoon.
It is important also to realize that some Podcasts - like IT Conversations (which is a mix of conferences, radio shows, and new content - are at a level of attention well past what most streaming online radio shows ever reached - IT Conversations gets as many as 20,000+ people to download each show they release (and that was pre-iTunes, I suspect they may reach 50,000+ on popular shows pretty soon) with over 100,000+ monthly unique listeners.
Those numbers are compelling.
They also are changing the conference business in some radical new ways.
My conference - MeshForum (http://www.meshforum.org) reached 50+ people in person in our first year. A respectable turnout for a first year conference on a complex topics (Networks - social, technical and physical).
Via IT Conversations, where our first session has just gone live this afternoon (see http://www.itconversations.com/series/meshforum2005.html) we will reach probably 20,000+ different people with at least one session from MeshForum 2005.
That is a 400x increase in our reach.
A year from now when we hold MeshForum 2006 that increased reach can only help us - by helping get great speakers and participants but also by yet again increasing our reach to I would guess 50,000+ people for MeshForum 2006.
As a conference organizer this changes how I structure the conference - I have a new and very important audience to consider.
As a podcast listener the content I get from podcasts is content that for the most part does not exist anywhere else. It resembles the best of independent radio (or in some cases the best of public radio) but it is much more focused, liberated of the constraints of the FCC, and in nearly all cases (and all of the cases that I listen to) driven by personal passion.
Shannon
7/08/2005 03:21:00 PM
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Thursday, June 30, 2005
When tech support works - IBM
For the past couple of months I have been suffering from a laptop with a keyboard where the keys were not completely functional, my space bar in particular would often not register meaning that as I was typing, and I type very fast, occasionally the space bar would not hit and two words (or more) would run together. The result was that over the past few months I have been finding myself resisting writing as much as I usually do and since what I get paid to do is very much based on written results, this was a problem.
So, yesterday I finally looked up the phone number and called IBM tech support for my T40.
A few specific ways in which they made this process better than painless.
1. On their website they had a quick and easy tool which looked up my details automagically - so in one single web window I had my product type and serial number (no need to turn over the laptop and squint at worn codes on the bottom).
2. Their phone number was answered immediately, the automatic system was clear and concise with just a few options and with the most common option being 1 (i.e. I called for hardware support and the choices for hardware support were generally 1) all told it took just a few seconds to get to a person, who then answered on about the second ring, so no long wait on hold.
3. When I explained that my keyboard was sticking and was broken, all that I was asked was what my model and serial number was, he then located the right replacement keyboard, confirmed my shipping address (I had to have it shipped to my home not my business address, which was no problem at all), and he then directed me to a page on their website, accessible via just a few steps, which gave me detailed instructions on how to replace the keyboard.
4. The keyboard arrived this morning at 10am - so less than 24 hours after I called them. What's more, replacing an IBM Thinkpad keyboard is something the consumer can do (without voiding any warrentees) and all it required was that I unscrew 4 philip's head screws. A few minutes after getting the new keyboard here I am typing happily away on a brand new keyboard.
As always, the IBM keyboards on their Thinkpads (well Lenova now) are great, the ease with which it was replaced was fantastic. And though they did make a small change in the look, it functions perfectly and I am a very happy IBM/Lenova customer.
In constrast most other firms I have dealt with insist on tying you up on the phone for pointless delays and waits. IBM just identified my problems, provided me a solution and then that was that.
Fantastic and a reminder of why I picked an IBM (and why I got a 3 year warrentee when I did).
6/30/2005 11:28:00 AM
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Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Real Estate Commissions
Philip Greenspun's Weblog:
I left a short comment on Philip Greenspun's blog about real estate commissions.
6/08/2005 12:13:00 AM
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Friday, June 03, 2005
Streamload - Share Videos and Photos - Online MP3 Storage and Access
Streamload - Share Videos and Photos - Online MP3 Storage and Access
Unlimited data storage - fee for download.
Clearly a business model which can only grow and one which I can see a lot of personal uses for - for example as a backup system. I would be very happy to pay $50-100 for the month when I needed to recover my system.
Also as I think about launching a Podcast and other media ventures, a service such as this, including the ability to accept large (up to 50GB) data files from anyone via their xStremMail service, seems like an interesting one as well.
6/03/2005 05:50:00 PM
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Google Sitemaps - My Sitemaps
Google Sitemaps - My Sitemaps
An experiment that Google is offering to allow managers of websites to provide Google with a sitemap of all of the URLs of the site, in standard formats, to help the google crawler update new pages more frequently.
I hope that plugins for Wordpress, Moveable Type, and perhaps something for blogger.com come out soon to auto-generate the sitemaps for blogs in a way that helps get more archives into the google search engine, a problem which those of us with years of archives feel most strongly.
6/03/2005 05:17:00 PM
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Friday, May 27, 2005
Speak Up: The Promise of Girls' Education
Speak Up: The Promise of Girls' Education
I left the following comment, which will be posted eventually I think, about the importance of woman's education.
Richard,
Yout should take a look at Prof. Jeffery Sachs' recent book "The End of Poverty" and the work of the Earth Institute he heads up at Columbia (http://www.earth.columbia.edu). He specifically talks about the importance of female eduction in the developing world and adds to your list of reasons that educating woman (and more generally helping children survive childhood) leads to lower fertility rates and reduction of population growth from rates that are currently doubling populations in very short periods to more sustainable levels.
He also adds to the importance of School Lunches by way of a story he tells of one school, I think in Kenya, where prior to instituting school lunches they were ranked ~110th out of 200 schools in the region. After just adding school lunches for the 8th grade they raised their school ranking (on the basis of national tests) to 2nd in the region. Prof. Sachs is working with NGO's to extend the school lunch program there to all grades.
Thomas P. M. Barnett in his books and writings also emphasizes the critical importance of woman's education on closing the gap between countries. Countries where girls get an education and woman have rights and opportunities tend to move forward in many other areas (environment, development, stability).
Shannon
5/27/2005 01:24:00 PM
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Thursday, May 26, 2005
Project Syndicate
I recently found Project Syndicate (http://www.project-syndicate.org/contributor/2). To quote from their about us page:
"Project Syndicate is an international association of quality newspapers devoted
to:
bringing distinguished voices from across the world to local audiences
everywhere; strengthening the independence of printed media in transition and
developing countries; upgrading their journalistic, editorial, and business
capacities. Project Syndicate currently consists of 235 newspapers in 111
countries, with a total circulation of 38,241,201 copies. Its activities fall
into three broad categories:
disseminating the highest quality commentaries
and analysis to its member papers; fostering institutional links among member
papers; Project Syndicate is a not-for-profit institution. Financial
contributions from member papers in developed countries support the services
provided free by Project Syndicate to members in less advanced economies.
Additional support comes from the Open Society Institute, Politiken Foundation
and Die Zeit Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Foundation. " Contributors include Prof. Jeffery Sachs of Columbia among many other distinguished thought leaders. It looks to be something which the blogosphere should (and could) use as a source, and given the very global scope definitely should be looked at by the Global Voices programs at the Berkman center etc.
They have an rss feed at http://www.project-syndicate.org/ps.rss
Here's the link for their member papers - in 46 different languages and 111 countries (http://www.project-syndicate.org/member_papers)
From their notes on prospective members, the following bit about translation struck me as something many people would find interesting:
"Distribution
Project Syndicate distributes its columns via
email.
Translation: Project Syndicate offers translations of its commentaries
into Arabic, Chinese, Czech, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. While we
strive for the highest quality of the translations, we provide these
translations as a courtesy only and always note that the English text is the
sole authoritative version. Feedback on the quality of our translations is
always welcome and helps us maintain and improve their quality."
Looks like a great project and one the "blogosphere" should link to and support.
5/26/2005 03:43:00 PM
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Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Plazes and Working in Cafes
I have added Plazes to my home page for this blog. A modification of my "Working in Cafes" plan, if the WIFI goes out at one café, as it did this morning, I'll move to another here in Evanston and update my location via Plazes. I'll also look at using a service like Jambo, however I like the wide ranging yet useful aspect of Plazes.
5/24/2005 02:08:00 PM
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www.podcatch.com : Essay on media and podcasting
www.podcatch.com has a short essay from Dave Winer about watching what you are agreeing to when signing a contract with a media exec.
My comments are about the possible model of Oprah.
A model that might be looked at is Oprah.
i.e. if you manage to do the following trifecta, you can collect big:
- Generate a large, passionate, ongoing audience (which stays with the station/channel who air you giving them an incentive and value to supporting you)
- Own the content yourself and negotiate for a significent portion of the advertising revenue (and ideally manage a mix of local/national advertising)
- Continue to add other content and outlets, as well as maintaining a strong brand and connection to your audience.
Shannon
5/24/2005 11:51:00 AM
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BP Crosses a Line - Tom Peters Blog
Another post from the Tom Peter's Blog: "BP Crosses A Line".
I left a long comment here as well.
This also makes for an even more short term focus.
One of the major roles of the media, historically, has been to spark and foster debate. Coverage of many issues has started with an initial report, perhaps full of inaccuracies or errors, which then over time is reacted to, corrected, and refined getting a bit closer to "the truth" but also importantly fostering public knowledge of and debate about the issues (and the facts).
If we are entering an era when most media from the blogosphere (see Apple's lawsuit) to major newspapers and magazines to TV think only of the immediate, short term, initial reactions to everything they write about - then we are unlikely to see ongoing support for investigative research, or coverage of anything which can not both be simplified to a single story and vetted by advertisers. Small bastions may remain in the publications supported by foundations or interested groups (Mother Jones, Unte, New Yorker on the Left, other publications on the right) but their circulations are a far cry from the New York Times or the reach even now of Network TV news.
Shannon
5/24/2005 11:06:00 AM
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Death To All Panel Sessions: Corante > Get Real >
Death To All Panel Sessions: Corante > Get Real >
I left a long comment about MeshForum and what we did for MeshForum 2005 as a response to Stowe Boyd's rant about bad conferences.
We tried to address some of these issues at MeshForum 2005 (http://www.meshforum.org)
A few things we did which seemed to work.
- spent a lot of time planning and thinking about the speakers and the order of the speakers to help reinforce each other and minimally overlap
- brought together a mix of speakers - academics, business professionals, consultants, military experts
- though we did have a bit more PowerPoint than I would like to see at future MeshForums, most speakers were introducing new ideas, had a lot of content, and were given enough time to get their ideas across
- we scheduled speakers for a significent amount of Q&A and had an audience capable of asking great questions without giving mini-speeches.
- MeshForum 2005 was a single track - so everyone attending saw and heard the same speakers. We also had a majority of speakers who attended for the whole conference and thus had heard the speakers before them, brought their talks into their own presentations, and were able to later interact with later speakers
- Held the conference outside of the "usual" venues (not a hotel, not a resort, not an auditorium). The flatness of the space with just a low stage, yet a slightly elevated section allowing for great sightlines for everyone, led to a sense of connectedness to the speakers and easy interaction
- We incorporated meals and evening events into the conference, this was critical to allowing people to interact, truly network, and follow up with questions and thoughts for future action
- We ended the conference with an entire day in Open Space. This format allowed for a fully interactive workshop - everyone who attends that portion of the conference sets their own agenda, picks the topics they want to work on. Though smaller than the full conference, the workshop led directly to lots of future action and helped translate the conference environment into one that will lead to ongoing, continuing interactions and relationships.
I welcome feedback about what we did this year and how we can hold the best conference possible next year (our plan is for May 7-9 again here in Chicago), we hope Corante can once again be a sponsor and be an even more active and involved sponsor this year. :)
thanks,
Shannon
5/24/2005 10:24:00 AM
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Tom Peters's blog on Selling (Out) Broadway reprise
Selling (Out) Broadway reprise
I left my longest comment yet on the Tom Peter's blog:
As a writer myself, I find this trend a mixed one - I certainly see the branding value of what people at Springwise/Trendwatching (http://www.trendwatching.com) call "branded brands" - i.e. the use of one brand (Broadway, Hollywood, TV shows) to promote another brand (though in fairness to Springwise, they focused on branded products using other branded products such as Smuckers Jam as an ingrediant in another item).
But like the all pervasive use of 555-####'s for phone numbers in the media, brands are rapidly becoming signs and reminders of what (and who) paid for the show, and in their all to often blurred state indications of who did not.
If you watch most of TV you see a very removed version of "reality" - the only brands visible on most shows, especially on a network like MTV, are those brands who paid to be there (or much less often brands that weren't seen yet as brands). The cast of most reality TV wear shirts not with actual logos but with made up slogans or catch phrases, the kitchens are full only of specific products, even scenes of "reality" are filtered and blurred.
It is a small item, but it is also a grating one - it shows how divorced our creative products have become from the reality we all experience. Who knows, perhaps this will lead to a generation who demands clothes and items without brands. :)
On a more serious note however, by adding an assumption that "visible brand == payment" it raises new issues of the chinese wall. It is one thing for the supporters of a show to be mostly anonymous to the show itself (clips mixed in, occasionally "sponsored by" messages as in early Radio and TV) but as the brands become an active part of the experience of the show they clearly have the strong potential to influence the show itself.
Further, I wonder how this will change our view of history over time. Plays are studied usually by reference to the text - does this sponsorship "change" the text of Simon's play as performed elsewhere, or just for this run (I assume just for this run). On TV will future reruns (or DVD boxed sets) have logos from brands which fail. Technically I suspect that some shows at least may substitute one brand for another for future reruns (or market segmentation, I think some live sporting events show different ads based on the audience, inserted electronically and not visible to people attending the game)
As well, what happens to the next piece sponsored by a future Enron, Worldcom, or Tyco? We've begun to see this as sports stadiums get renamed/rebranded, but as brands work their way further into all entertainment (and increasingly only there if payments changed hands) this problem will be one that happens with greater frequency.
A great topic.
Shannon
5/24/2005 12:34:00 AM
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IFTF's Future Now: Google Alerts and keywords of the future
IFTF's Future Now: Google Alerts and keywords of the future
I left a long comment.
5/24/2005 12:33:00 AM
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IFTF's Future Now: Google Alerts and keywords of the future
IFTF's Future Now: Google Alerts and keywords of the future
I added a long comment about this idea of using Google alerts - my thought being to look at somehow using Amazon.com's SIP's as well.
5/24/2005 12:14:00 AM
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Sunday, May 22, 2005
Don Park's Daily Habit - Role-Bloggers
Don Park's Daily Habit - Role-Bloggers
I left a short comment about the World of Darkness.
5/22/2005 12:40:00 AM
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Saturday, May 21, 2005
Sacred Cow Dung: The Dream: A Email System For High-Volume Email Management | Realized TODAY ...
Sacred Cow Dung: The Dream: A Email System For High-Volume Email Management | Realized TODAY ...
A great description of a solution to email problems available today.
I use something similar, though not precising the same and I think there are some features here I should look into and consider, as well as changes to my current practices which I should look at doing. But a good starting point for discussion.
5/21/2005 11:52:00 PM
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piecing IT together - blog from JigZaw Inc launches
This morning I have launched piecing IT together a trademarked blog from JigZaw Inc and myself, Shannon Clark.
Over the next few days I will be adding many of my technology and business related posts from this blog to the piecing IT together blog.
In addition I will be writing new, long form (typically) posts which will, I hope, help answer the question that even my friends often ask "what exactly do you do, Shannon?"
Topics will include:
- Networks
- Due Diligence of early stage firms, vendors, competitors, and without naming names clients
- Software architecture and design
- Philosophy of consulting
- Project management methodology
- and many others
I may add guest bloggers in the future and expand the blog from just my posts to include other consultants with whom I have worked. Initially the design is pretty basic, I'm using b2 as the software. In upcomming days I'll likely be adding payment and contact details, links to applications we have written, google adsense content (possibly), tags, and hopefully further improvements. If you have any suggestions - design, content, or otherwise, please leave them there as a comment.
5/21/2005 03:56:00 AM
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Friday, May 20, 2005
Summation: Power verses Integrity
Summation: Power verses Integrity
I left a short comment (with some fun links).
5/20/2005 10:04:00 PM
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Joi Ito's Web: Becoming boring
Joi Ito's Web: Becoming boring
I added a comment to Joi's discussion of whether or not he is becoming a boring blogger.
5/20/2005 08:29:00 PM
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Follow Up On "What's Going On At Technorati": Corante > Get Real >
I added a short comment about odd Google/Technorati behaving to Stowe Boyd's Follow Up On "What's Going On At Technorati".
5/20/2005 09:32:00 AM
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Crooked Timber ? ? Isolated social networkers
Crooked Timber ? ? Isolated social networkers
I left a comment here about MeshForum, looks like a blog I should follow.
5/20/2005 02:39:00 AM
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Thursday, May 19, 2005
Chicago Bloggers
Chicago Bloggers
A nice directory by El/train stop of Chicagoland bloggers. I've submitted my blogs here and have also added the "neighblogs" links to my left hand column from another resource mapping blogs by geocoding.
5/19/2005 05:23:00 PM
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Working in Cafes - Tues and Thurs - open invitation
Starting Tuesday May 24th and continuing through at least the summer I will be working, and extend an open invitation to others, from Cafe Mud at 1936 Maple Ave in Evanston.
This is an experiment in creating a virtual community of entrepreneurs and consultants, here in Chicago (or visiting Chicago).
The café has free wifi, good coffee, large concrete tables and plenty of space and power outlets. During the daytime, they tend to be quiet and the overall space is an easy and productive environment.
I have seeded this experiment with invitations a couple dozen consultants and entrepeneurs I know and have worked with here in Chicago. If you are reading this and live in Chicago, or are visiting Chicago, feel free to stop by Café Mud on a Tuesday or Thursday and join us.
5/19/2005 04:21:00 PM
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Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - The Problem With RSS Readers Inspired By Outlook
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - The Problem With RSS Readers Inspired By Outlook
I tried to post the following to Dare's blog, getting an error when I do however.
There are some categories of information we call get you missed:
- SPAM - I get a lot of this, spam filters get rid of much of it, blacklist kills most of it on my blogs, but some still gets through
- Low priority emails - events coming up months from now, amusing articles from friends, general reference articles etc
- High priority emails - changes of location/time for an upcomming meeting, question from my girlfriend, news from family or friends, inquiries about possible projects, responses to proposals or requests, etc (generally speaking a response to what I wrote - a reply to an email, comments/trackbacks about a comment/post I wrote etc should get high priority
On Bloglines - I love it, use it all the time, but there is one feature I wish worked better.
Specifically, I wish that when I "mark something as new" (i.e. keep it around in my primary view) I could do so in way that would behave differently from "new" as in "unseen" messages.) Yes they have a clippings folder/blog which can be used to move items and store them - but since I view the updated page all the time (since it changes) while only view my archives (saved items) very rarely this goes unused by me mostly.
Which brings me to a key point:
- we visit and monitor those views which can CHANGE. When they do, we need ways to quickly and reliably see what HAS CHANGE/IS NEW. (this btw is why I often don't like WIKI's takes a different view and a lot of work to see what is new and changed)
Think about your calendar. If, like many of us, you are the only person who adds items to your calendar then no matter how often you do so, your calendar is unlikely to be a view you visit frequently and often, probably just in the morning when you see what you have planned for the day, perhaps during the day as you add notes, new appointments etc.
However, if you are in an environment (usually a corporate environment) where your calendar is open and other people (assistants, co-workers, bosses, perhaps even clients) can add items and schedule you, then you very likely monitor and view your calendar on a regular and very frequent basis. That view has to show you quickly and easily what is happening, possible conflicts, and perhaps visually highlight "new" items (perhaps "tentative" items) etc.
Generally speaking when we (as developers) design tools we should think about why would users visit and use the tool? If it is "just" for themselves with only content they create then the tool will work and serve one set of purposes, useful perhaps but vitally different than if the tool involves the pushing of content down to the user - then the user has to have ways to work within the tool over time (modern email clients make it easy to see what is a "new" message vs an old message, though many don't clearly show "new" vs. "unread")
Hope this helps,
Shannon
5/19/2005 11:38:00 AM
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Scripting News: 5/19/2005
Scripting News: 5/19/2005
Dave Winer is calling for the reinvention of the radio DJ, though he doesn't recognize that.
Tod Maffin is a fantastic source for new podcasts. We ought to organize this better. Somehow we built a centralized system, and we already know that centralized systems suck the life out of communities. How can I ask this question. Tod, I have an hour to spare. What should I listen to? Or alternatively, let's say I want to give Tod my Tuesday walk-time. Every Tuesday he's got something good for me to hear. He had to make a gut-wrenching decision because there are really 18 things he knows I should hear, but I'm only giving him one hour per week. I have six other days. Who else should I give a day to?
Ummm Dave - that's radio. A DJ (or station programmer) fills an hour with what they think you would like to listen to. In a podcast manner it is time-shifted but otherwise how is this different from a radio show? (or for that matter from what Adam Curry is doing with the "podshow" on Sirus?
I see podcasting as something different. I program my own radio via podcasts - at some point in the day I fill my iPod (a 512 M shuffle in my case) with those shows I want to listen to - typically a mix of speakers/talk with music shows, with the occasional "other" (cubscast for my daily dose of sports talk and news, KOMO news for short blurbs of topical news, etc)
5/19/2005 11:19:00 AM
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Fractals of Change: Are You an Entrepreneur?
Fractals of Change: Are You an Entrepreneur?
One of my favorite bloggers, Tom Evslin, does it again with his amusing (yet accurate) list of top 10 ways to know you are an entrepreneur.
I should add to his list... but won't at the moment. Lots to think about.
5/19/2005 10:47:00 AM
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Chicago crime database | chicagocrime.org
Chicago crime database | chicagocrime.org
Chicago crime data + Google Maps = cool and useful new app
(especially if you are thinking about, as I have been for a while, moving)
5/19/2005 01:54:00 AM
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Monday, May 16, 2005
48 hours in Europe
On the Tom Peter's blog, a post aboutthe number of hours you may be able to work in Europe.
I added my comments:
I'm in the US and as an entrepreneur I set my own hours - that said, under these guidelines I would have a severe problem working in Europe.
For one - and this is not such an easy question - "what is work"?
Seriously - as a consultant am I working when I read and search/monitor the web? When I'm thinking about a client's problems in the shower? What about when I attend a networking event in the evening? (Martha Stewart recently had this problem due to her attending an event - she claimed and I would tend to agree - that her attending such events was part of her job)
And for another, a lot of my work and those of many other consultants and IT professionals is cyclical. I spend relatively resonable hours in research and preparation, in the meeting with clients and preparing, but then frequently may have extremely long hours as we reach significent milestones and deadlines. (One project involved a call Friday morning, working all day and night to understand an app which had failed, then all day meetings on Saturday and Sunday to create a solution which could be rolled out early morning on Monday).
Which points to just one of the other issues involved - extra time is frequently needed in the middle of crisis - and it is unlikely that people will be looking at their watches and in the middle of critical events leaving saying "well that's my 48 hours for this week - see you next week" (if anyone I ever worked with did this, I doubt I would ever work with them again. Yes there is a time and often a need to take a break and recover, but there is also at times a need to stay and finish.
Shannon
5/16/2005 02:04:00 PM
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Sunday, May 15, 2005
Some things Dave Winer is wrong about...
I listened to Dave Winer's podcast of May 14th and I have to disagree with him on many many points.
One, I have heard him repeat many times that "he was the first blogger" and that "all the first bloggers in 1997/98 were using Frontier". Dave is simply flat wrong here. There were people who were keeping online journals (not called blogs but effectively the same thing) for not just a few months but for many years before Dave's blog. How do I know this? At least one of them is a very good friend of mine, Mary Anne Mohanraj (her journal, online since 1995 is at http://www.mamohanraj.com/Diary/diary.html ) and I think there were even a few others who posted online journals prior to Mary Anne.
Two, Dave makes a point which he (and others) have made that there are "not many woman bloggers". (I'm male btw if you are reading this via rss) I looked over the 166 some blogs I read via RSS, nearly half of them are by woman. Further, there are dozens of other blogs I read not via RSS which are mostly by woman. A common trait for many of them - they are not blogging about tech. I think often Dave (and others in a certain circle of bloggers) think that "blog" == politics & technology. Even with the examples of podcasts, LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, Yahoo 360 and a few million other blogs (many not in English) all who are blogging and talking about music, personal lives, loves, writing, tv shows, movies, games, sports, and dozens of other topics.
In that world, there are millions of bloggers, many of them woman.
And one final point.
Three, Dave goes on to put out a call for "non-professional", "not the best quality" etc from podcasts. Perhaps that what he wants to do, perhaps that is what he wants to listen to, but it by no means whatsoever what I as a listener listen to or what I seek out (or when I think about producing content seek to produce). Rather, I look for people who have consistent quality, produce content that engages me, and generally (unlike Dave) content I can listen to as I want to listen - but don't have to drop everything I am doing to just listen - i.e. sound quality stays the same, threads of content don't ramble (too much) and the overall product is very high. As I have posted previously (and commented on many times elsewhere) most of the podcasts I listen to are by semi-professionals (Dave's being an exception).
In a few weeks I'll have podcasts which I'm on going up on IT Conversations - recordings from MeshForum 2005 - like everything Doug Kaye puts up, only the highest quality recordings will go up (unfortunately this means a few of our speakers may not air). While disappointing this is also why IT Conversations is as good as it is.
Dave (if you are reading this), this is not personal, and you are certainly welcome to attend MeshForum 2006 (or other future MeshForum events). I do, however, think that there is a vast and complex world (of blogs and other activities) which you have been ignoring to a point. As technologists we should remind ourselves that at the end of the day it is the vast, complex networks (my personal interest) of people who will be using and interacting within and around and through the tools, platforms, events and technology we put together - their uses may not be how we imagined, most likely they will ignore 90% of what the tools "can" (or as many would say "should" do) in favor of what people actually want and do.
5/15/2005 09:09:00 PM
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BBC - Cult Television - Doctor Who - Ebooks
BBC - Cult Television - Doctor Who - Ebooks
Free Dr. Who books! Yeah. (thanks BoingBoing)
In High School I was a huge Dr. Who fan - watched every single episode (including all the pieces to one of the "lost" episodes), bought many of the books, and even met a number of the former Doctors at various events and cons.
So free Dr. Who books are very cool - I'm looking forward to looking at them when I have more time. If I had a PDA at present, I would fill it with these and read them when I had a free moment.
5/15/2005 04:42:00 PM
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Friday, May 13, 2005
Darci Riesenhuber on TomPeters.com
tompeters! Guest Blogger: Darci
I added to this discussion about when a public company should take a position on social issues.
I posted about this a few times in comments on Robert Scoble's blog and on my own personal blog (http://searchingforthemoon.blogspot.com).
I think that corporations whether small or large have a significent social responsibility. But even more importantly, corporations have to be consistent and transparent in their positions - when a corporation such as Microsoft claims one set of standards for internal behavior, but then shifts from those positions to a very different one in its external engagement - the message which is sent is one of great distrust, lack of leadership, and inconsistancy. Whether you are an employee, potential employee, business partner, customer or even a shareholder this is not what you (well at least I) seek in businesses. Consistency and transperancy allow me no matter what my relationship with the firm is to understand and make decisions based on clear choices - I want to trust that while a firm is doing and stating one thing it is not simultanously working at cross purposes someplace else.
I also think that as a society and as business people we are misunderstanding the structure of businesses and the relative importance of different stakeholders. Literature and the popular press typically focuses on the "shareholders" - often to the exclusion of all other stakeholders in a corporation. However especially in a firm such as Microsoft (with billions in cash/near cash assets and significent cash flow) shareholders actually should in many ways play only a minimal role in Microsoft's business actions.
Why do I say this?
One, corporations care about their share price (the corporation as a whole, we'll talk about individuals with stock or stock options in a moment) primarily only if the corporation is planning selling additional shares on the open market. Less often corporations may have financial instruments pegged to share price (bank covenents, listing agreements with markets) so corporations do care about some minimum per-share price. When a corporation is planning on using shares to purchase another party then the share price may matter, though again corporations often have many options to finance purchases.
For a corporation such as Microsoft they have cash on hand and if anything are a net purchaser of shares on the open market (to fulfill options issued to employees). Should they require financing, they have bond and bank recourses which they would use prior to the step of issuing new shares.
The power of shareholders at many firms is often overstated. Many firms, Microsoft included, have majority blocks of shares in the hands of a few parties (founders, large mutual funds, pension funds etc) These blocks frequently have sufficient votes to handle all but the most exceptional of occasions. Further, most shareholders sell shares of corporations they no longer believe instead of casting votes to encourage change.
The exception to this is employees and others who have restricted shares or who are holding options. They have a strong, personal interest in specific pricepoints for the shares and may (as in the case of shares held in 401k plans or restricted stocks) be limited in their opportunities to sell shares to express disagreement.
In short, I would argue that for corporations who do not expect to sell additional shares on the open market and do not expect to make significent acquisitions with stock, that they should take a longer horizon view.
As part of this they may as many firms are look at ways to also shift executives and employees away from short term, quarter over quarter share price connections and also tie their interests to long term success (cash bonuses, profit sharing, options and vesting tied to business performance etc).
Firms should also look directly at those stakeholders who will no matter the share price have a direct and immediate impact on the business - namely first the firm's employees and secondly the firm's customers, partners and suppliers.
If the firm can take steps and stands which will enhance opportunities and ease challenges faced by customers and by employees (i.e. in the recent Microsoft case making personal sexuality not a reason for discrimination in housing for example) then the firm will benefit by having more focused employees and more generally by lowering the challenges faced by customers.
At least that's my view.
Shannon
5/13/2005 07:46:00 PM
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This is going to be BIG! - Who are all you people?
This is going to be BIG! - Who are all you people?
My answer, useful to have elsewhere as well:
I'm an entrepreneur and consultant based in Chicago. I wear two hats - one non-profit and one for-profit (and actually a few additional non-profit hats). My non-profit hat is MeshForum (http://www.meshforum.org) a conference on Networks I started and which was first held at the beginning of this month here in Chicago. We had speakers from around the world, including Esther Dyson and many others.
My for-profit hat is JigZaw (http://www.jigzaw.com) a software and consulting firm I started five years ago in May of 2000. While we started out with angel funding and software ambitions, at present my focus through JigZaw is very high end consulting and the occasional contract software development - typically involving complex data analysis. I describe our consulting as being a bit more technical and in depth than what a McKinsey & Company can offer - I provide business analysis, but also can go deep into the actual code of an application or system to analyze it to make recommendations about whether to enhance, replace or build a new solution to complex business problems.
Our business tends to either be for very large, often Fortune 100 sized firms, or (and this is why I read your blog and Fred's) for early stage startups.
I've been active on the Internet (to the point of managing my own servers) since 1991. I have many friends across the globe who are at various stages of launching businesses. I try to stay up to date on emerging technology, on the VC community, and on general technology and business trends.
(I'm also the technology director of a non-profit, non-partisan public policy think tank - Hope Street Group (http://www.hopestreetgroup.org) and I'm the webmaster for a few other non-profits)
Keep up the interesting writing!
Shannon
5/13/2005 06:15:00 PM
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Jon Udell: Envisioning information
Jon Udell: Envisioning information
A trend I hope continues and a company I plan on researching further.
5/13/2005 03:46:00 PM
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j|turn ? Podcasting is a Bad Idea
j|turn ? Podcasting is a Bad Idea:
"Shannon Clark Says:
May 13th, 2005 at 10:25 pm
I read about 150 some blogs (about 160 feeds in my rss reader, but ~10 of them are search results etc)
I subscribe to about 35-40 podcasts.
For me they serve very different and equally interesting purposes.
Blogs I read for content, to follow friends, less often for entertainment.
Podcasts, at least the ones I follow, I listen to mostly for entertainment, occasionally to learn. I subscribe to about 20 podcasts which are mostly music - various IndieFeed podcasts, Rock & Roll Geek Show, Coverville, Karin’s themed podcasts, the $250 Million Radio Show and a few others. These have entirely replaced listening to radio for me - they play great music, selected with care by someone who cares and usually puts the music together in a way that is very compelling - great listening and vastly better than commercial radio (though I would be happy if they included ads especially if that meant they could continue to do what they do).
A few other notables - WeFunk (nearly 2 hours of great radio, broadcast on radio but available on the web); The Thomas Edison show - from NJ, a 1 hour show also broadcast on radio but available as a podcast of early turn of the century recordings, many from the archives of the Thomas Edison museam.
I then also subscribe to a handful of other podcasts - Adam Curry’s because I enjoy it, Dawn and Drew because I mostly enjoy it, KOMO news which would be even better were I in Seattle but shows how commercial radio can use podcasting very effectively 30 second to 2 minute short news stories - great stuff and good to shuffle amidst my other listening. And I listen to IT Conversations for deep, rich, highly interesting tech interviews and conference recordings - much more compelling than reading a powerpoint presentation or even a report of a presentation - and vastly more portable than trying to view a small video/web presentation if that were even an option (full disclosure, the conference I run, MeshForum will be distributed by IT Conversations later this Spring).
And I listen to a few other shows like the Podcast Network, David Winer, Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything, Le Show from Harry Shearer etc.
A common theme to most of the podcasts I listen to - they are made by people who if not professional radio people are very close, and in most cases have a significent background in audio recording and often in radio. i.e. They put together a well recorded (usually) and compelling show. Some, like Benjamin Walker do a lot of audio editing, others record and do no editing, but all sound good.
I think of my ipod shuffle as my self-programmed radio. For me podcasts offer a mix of music and tech (mostly) with bit of politics mixed in which I can set up quickly and listen to over the course of the day.
So I encourage you to give other podcasts a chance.
One final note - based on the podcasts I subscribe to 15-20 megs is a more accurate average and quite a few that I get are more like 50+ megs. I think this reflects deeper more comprehensive content - might be worth looking for larger podcasts to sample them.
Shannon
5/13/2005 03:30:00 PM
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WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Kicking the Mule
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Kicking the Mule
added a short comment about taxis in India to this thread
5/13/2005 03:16:00 AM
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apophenia: identity crisis: the curse/joy of being interdisciplinary and the future of academia
apophenia: identity crisis: the curse/joy of being interdisciplinary and the future of academia
I made a long comment to Danah's post:
Danah,
I'm outside of academia but have just finished running MeshForum (http://www.meshforum.org) a conference on Networks where we made a lot of effort to bring together a truly wide range of academics, business people and government experts around multiple aspects of and views on Networks.
From this a few thoughts - I would argue that the growing study of and understanding of networks which has blossomed in the past 5 years represents a truly interdisciplinary and important development. Social scientists, physicists, economists, and dozens of other fields finding a common language and means of collaborating together to address very real and important problems.
At MeshForum we had a number of people who's careers illustate real work across disciplines:
- Dr. Anna Nagurney of U. Mass - Amherst. Dr. Nagurney is an economist but has professorships in both the school of management and the school of engineering. She has published and/or edited 8 books on Networks - including works specifically on transportation networks and Network Economics. Her talk at MeshForum brought together work from operational engineering, transportation, economics, and many other fields.
- Dr. Noshir Contracter, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Contractor is in the school of communications, but his research interests and works (over 250 papers and books) have been with researchers from many other fields.
- Dr. Eivind Almaas, University of Notre Dame. Dr. Almaas is a physicist but his research at Notre Dame in Dr. Albert-Lazlow Barabasi's lab is on biological networks. Dr. Barabasi's work (see his book Linked) includes studies of computer networks, social networks, and physical networks.
Just a few examples from speakers we had - our other speakers are also great examples.
My own interes (well one of them) is in studying economics through a lens of networks. To do this, I am learning as much as I can about networks in every context - social, physical, biological, technical etc. I expect to adapt techniques from many fields to address the issues I'm studying.
Hope this helps,
Shannon
5/13/2005 02:44:00 AM
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Smart Mobs: TheAssBook.net: collegiate social hookup networking
Smart Mobs: TheAssBook.net: collegiate social hookup networking
I left a short note - happy to see that the Scavenger Hunt tradition is going strong (and continuing a long tradition of getting media attention for the University of Chicago - my favorite which unfortunately took place after I was a judge being the time students actually succeeded at making a nuclear reactor - a small one, but functional nevertheless)
5/13/2005 01:19:00 AM
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Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Hiring is Obsolete
Hiring is Obsolete
Good advice. More later.
5/11/2005 01:22:00 AM
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Tuesday, May 10, 2005
HotRecorder - Recorder for Skype and other VoIP applications
HotRecorder - Recorder for Skype and other VoIP applications
A tool for me to look at in the future when I plan on launching one or more podcasts.
5/10/2005 01:59:00 AM
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Ming the Mechanic: Tax Haven Trillions
Ming the Mechanic: Tax Haven Trillions
Filing this away for the future - as I write up and think through my views on economics via the lens of Networks, the issue of tax havens may make for a very intriguing paper (or two or three) and/or a chapter or two of the eventual book.
Basically I would claim that by looking at tax havens - both the countries and the businesses inside of those countries - through a lens of networks will offer a powerful and important tool, as well as suggestions for future actions, which will I think provide a better and more accurate view macroeconomics than current economics (at least as commonly accepted and used) is capable of modeling and discussing.
5/10/2005 01:52:00 AM
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Monday, May 09, 2005
bad fr yr health? on Flickr - Photo Sharing!#comment3480063
bad fr yr health? on Flickr - Photo Sharing!#comment3480063
I left a long comment on Esther Dyson's recent flickr post on time.
5/09/2005 12:34:00 AM
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Saturday, May 07, 2005
Johnnie Moore's Weblog: Waterfalls and chaos
Johnnie Moore's Weblog: Waterfalls and chaos
an interesting article/paper linked to via Robert Scoble's link blog on the topic waterfall development vs. chaos in looking at how people solve problems.
Interestinglyhe does not mention how I solve problems, or how I have been trained to work on problems - interative development - process development which involves a deliberate process of cycling back - often in a "Spiral" form working out to the solution.
5/07/2005 08:00:00 PM
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Friday, May 06, 2005
Salon.com Politics
Salon.com Politics
Related to my comments on Robert Scoble's blog about Microsoft's position, Farhad Manjoo writes a good summary of why Microsoft's position on discrimination is important.
5/06/2005 10:52:00 PM
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An idea for Networks and the Law
An idea, some notes and thoughts on it, will work on this further and post more later.
If you take a law firm and do the following, I think there is a possibility of interesting applications of network technology.
First, start by researching the normal patterns of citations in legal cases (Lexis/Nexis has done this in conjunction with an unpublished paper - link will follow)
Using this data, look at the patterns of citation, specifically co-citation (along with results of cases where applicable) and look for the general trends determining whether citations are age related (i.e. frequently cited articles get more citations because of age) vs. the portion of the citations which are due to other causes - i.e. not age but something else such as being a good case and precedent.
Then within a law firm do a similar analysis of the legal documents prepared by the firm (not contracts etc but legal documents which involve citations of precedence - i.e. filings with various courts). Look at the patterns of citation used by the firm - look at the results of those filings (probably available somewhere within the firm's systems). Compare citation patterns internal to the firm with the general patterns from the Lexis/Nexis data.
My thesis is that when you do this a few things will show up:
- certain patterns of citations which are effective - i.e. core cases which should be cited in a given type of case
- some patterns in citation internal to the firm which are different than the more broadly found patterns in the Lexis/Nexis datasets. Possibly including an ability to determine which pattern is more effective (i.e. it is possible that for some types of cases the patterns of citation used within the firm are more effective than the general pattern seen in the Lexis/Nexis datasets)
This historical analysis could be a good baseline for the firm to then do the following:
A lawyer takes a draft document and sends it to the system.
The system looks at the pattern of citation and determines how the draft document compares with other prior internal documents as well as historical documents from the public record - it can then suggest citations which might logically be included, as well as perhaps citations which might best be removed (i.e. correlate with ineffective filings perhaps).
Obviously this it non-trivial and would only work for the largest of law firms, but I think it might be a fairly interesting and probably valuable system to build - and a possible source of competitive advantage for a firm which used it.
5/06/2005 10:18:00 PM
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Joi Ito's Web: Creative Commons and BzzAgent
Joi Ito's Web: Creative Commons and BzzAgent
I suggested that Joi get in touch with the Word of Mouth Marketing Association in a comment I left on his blog.
5/06/2005 12:11:00 AM
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RSS:- sponsor a pundit
Sponsor a pundit or Dave Winer tries an experiment and I leave a short (for me at least) comment about it.
5/06/2005 12:07:00 AM
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Thursday, May 05, 2005
Scoble asks about Target and blogs
After meeting with Target, Robert Scoble asked for some ideas for Target on why they should blog.
As I am want to do, I guess reflecting the end of MeshForum 2005, I left Robert a very long comment, repeated below for my records.
A few thoughts. I like Target, have enjoyed every time I have shopped there, but haven't shopped there in years.
- why not? Well the simple answer is we (my girlfriend and I - and before you assume anything, I'm male - name is confusing online) both sold our cars a few years back - as a result we rarely shop anyplace we can't easily walk or take public transportation to.
- But a more complex answer is "I don't know what I would shop for at Target" - why should I go there? Even more specifically, why should I go there this upcomming weekend?
Almost every week my girlfriend logs into the Walgreens website, downloads the circular for walgreens (specifically, I think, for the walgreens down the block from us) and looks for specials and coupons on products we need.
Were Target to have a blog - and more specifically - were Target and especially target.com to have a blog - which featured the stories about their products, perhaps specials, but even just the backgrounds, why I might want to buy it, and reminding me that it is an option - they would get business from me more often. And we're certainly well within their target demographic (and "the Target..") - urban, young, professionals who care about strong design, quality, as well as fair prices. We're not the Walmart demographic - I've been in a Walmart I think once in my entire life.
Recently I purchased, on the somewhat spur of the moment, a jacket from Wilson Leather, in no small part because it was featured in a post to Boing Boing. In a similar manner were Target to have a blog, in which they told the stories of products they sold - especially the everyday, basic, but very well designed products which are one of their specific niches - it is not unlikely that besides the specific readers of their blog, other blogs, perhaps even major sites like BoingBoing would pick up on these items and mention them as well...
(it strikes me as I write this that even more so than Target, CostCo really should blog - they have dozens, perhaps hundreds of items each year which are unique, special, and often extremely good prices - and they have a very specific challenge to consumers that you never quite know which products will be in stock any given time you go to the store (and if, like me, you don't have a car a trip to Costco is a big commitment but worthwhile when I had my membership).
Some models to consider specifically.
- Woot (http://www.woot.com) - they blog, they have an RSS feed, they sell a single item per day - and nearly every day sell out of that product. Why can't a Target or a Costco adopt a similar model - possibly on a per-store basis, taking a cue from Woot of injecting a personal touch when describing the products - yet retaining a highly accurate and reliable touch as well - and offering fair prices for interesting products.
- Design Within Reach. They have a newsletter which is content rich, but also does a lot to convey the mission and passion of their company for design - even beyond just products they sell. The newsletter creates a personal connection and passion for the store even before purchasing products - I feel engaged and interested. And they use this medium for more than just marketing and specific sales messages, they also use it to recruit new employees as they open up new stores - a clear winner as they start by recruiting people who already have formed bonds and ties to the firm, even before working there.
I want to like a company such as Target - but as I said, I am also while favorably inclined, not a recent customer.
To those who wonder whether or not blog readers are sufficient to make an impact on a non-tech company. A few considerations - done well, the "blog" would and could be reached by many different ways - say by including it directly on the pages already present for people who search for details about their specific local Target store.
Blogs for the specific stores, as well as general blogs for Target could also serve as a permanent counterpart to ongoing advertising and marketing campaigns - rather than one-time-use domains as many advertisers seem to try out these days, and rather than rather cryptic but apparently effective ads as Target does today - why not incorporate an online component and counterpart to offline ads - this could be done as a very low cost.
One idea: ad a URL to the end of existing Target ads.
At that URL, a blog which details ALL of the items seen in that spot, highlights the current prices and/or sales on those items, and takes a potential customer through to related products and other specials as well as the stories behind some (all?) of the items - at least those which are unique to Target.
Sure, for the branded items you might (but only might) have to incur a small extra fee to use them online as well as in the spot, but clearly Target in their current advertising is very willing (or at least hsa been in the recent past) to show other brands alongside with the Target circle.
I think a consumer company such as Target should focus on their connection with those consumers - a blog for suppliers & partners is something very different, perhaps useful, but I would think not the best and most impactful place for Target to focus.
Another thought - with a good, accurate and passionate story brands and items acquire a different level of price flexibility. That is, when you know and have been told the story behind a product, believe (and better understand the reality) of why it has advantages over the generic, run-of-the-mill example of that type of product - people have a willingness to pay more because with that purchase they also get the value created by that story.
Now I'm not arguing for spinning yarns or half-truths, but for a firm such as Target when they do invest carefully in design (and I hope as well into quality) they should find ways to tell that story - it likely could result in solid sales without resorting to as many discounts and/or allowing for higher prices. And clearly anything which might allow for higher margins should get Target's attention.
Hope this helps and is interesting.
Shannon
Shannon Clark • 5/5/05; 1:49:31 AM
My main points - Target should blog, possibly on a per-store basis, and should focus on exciting and engaging customers and friends (possible guests). They should look to other, successful merchants who are using the web and online media effectively, and they should consider how to use Target.com as well as individual stores in a way that can create passion - and with that focus on related tasks such as recruiting.
5/05/2005 12:54:00 AM
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