Facebook Is Lame

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Posted September 3, 2010 by John Hatfield

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John Green's Thought Bubble: Health Care Overhaul #healthcare #massivepig #walkin'tall

I know, I know - healthcare reform is so last year. Even though it's
quite dated in terms of interweb years, I found this commentary and
accompanying visualization pretty interesting.

Posted August 31, 2010 by Kelly Harward

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Arcade Fire has teamed up with director Chris Milk and the folks at Google to build an HTML5 music video for their song "We Used To Wait". They call it an "experiment" and you'll see why. There's something about it that reminds me of the early days of the web when people were still spending a lot of time figuring out what you were supposed to do with it (before it was agreed that opening a plethora of new windows in the browser was decidedly gauche). The personalization aspect is very fun (particularly if Google has reasonably good map data for the address you enter). Check it out...

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

Posted August 30, 2010 by Kelly Harward

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We need a lot more talk like this in government...

There are so many good ideas here:

In previous posts,

Umair Haque

Has coined terms like "zombiconomy" and "ponziconomy"... now "forporations"

This post has some great thoughts on intellectual property, corporations, taxes, and so much more. for example,

"The Empty Vessel Rule. Government, Arthur Okun famously argued, is a leaky bucket — one which leaks money at every turn. Yet, though the government may be often a leaky bucket, the corporation is just as often an empty vessel: bereft of any purpose higher than profit. What the private sector offers in terms of efficiency, it subtracts in terms of virtue. So what we really need to do today isn't merely to privatize what used to be public, or the reverse, nationalization. We need to meld the efficiency of the private sector with the virtues of the public sector — to pioneer the legal, financial, and contractual basis for new corporate forms, like forporations, that balance obligations to shareholders and the many kinds of stakeholders; that exist "for" a higher purpose than mere near-term profit."

"The next item of the Washington Consensus's moldy agenda is legally protecting the corporation. It's been taken to an absurd extreme, with the doctrine that corporations must enjoy legal personhood. But (Earth to beancounters) corporations aren't people — only people are people. The former face few of the obligations citizens do, can't face the same kinds of punishments, are legally bound to maximize profit in ways that citizens aren't, and tend to have thousands of times more cash, time, and power, which means they can afford to de facto buy rights almost no person on earth has (like hiring batteries of lawyers to fight cases for decades). Corporations, like hammers, are just tools. And for the same reason we don't anthropomorphize hammers, nor should we empower corporations with the same rights and powers as people. Where the Washington Consensus humanizes corporations, and dehumanizes people, the M consensus suggests unhumanizing corporations, and rehumanizing people."

http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/08/how_to_say_no_to_an_economic.html

Posted August 27, 2010 by Jeff Grover

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Looking back at you as a big and little point of light...

First, there was earth as seen from the moon ("earthrise"):

Now, as seen from the hotsy-totsy planet Mercury:

http://news.discovery.com/space/a-double-planet-seen-from-mercury.html

Posted August 21, 2010 by Jeff Grover

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This picture was taken 100 years ago! #big_picture

Photography buffs must check out The Big Picture today. They've posted a collection of color photographs taken in southern and central Russia between 1909 and 1912. Yes, you read that right – color photographs taken 100 years ago. The photographer used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. Amazing stuff. Hard to believe that you're looking at images that were taken before the Russian Revolution.

Posted August 20, 2010 by Kelly Harward

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Pencil Tip Micro Sculptures By Dalton Ghetti

via kronikle.kidrobot.com

Well, I suppose there are worse ways you could use your time. Kind of amazing stuff.

Posted August 19, 2010 by Mark M

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Are You Thriving?

The US Social Security Administration has an online retirement benefit estimator. I recently took it for a test drive and found that age 62 is considered "early retirement" for me. When I reach age 67, I will be considered "full retirement age". However, to maximize my social security retirement benefit I'll have to work until I am age 70 (the difference in benefits between 67 and 70 is surprisingly significant). I'm not foolish enough to base my entire retirement strategy around social security benefits, but it does help create an interesting conceptual timeline.

I just turned 36 a couple of months ago. It's a staggering thought to consider that from this point forward I will likely remain a member of the full-time workforce for a period of time almost equal to the amount of time that I have been on the earth to date. Wow! This thought leaves me grappling with questions of how to find meaningful and fulfilling work capable for sustaining me for a period of time equal to my current lifetime. If you're like me, you're probably not quite there yet.

I recently came across an interesting model for characterizing an individual's fit within an organization where they are employed. I know some of (the very) few followers of this discussion have recently changed jobs or are contemplating a job change, so I thought you all might be interested in these ideas.

First off, let me preface this by emphasizing that these are not my ideas. These ideas come from the work of Kurt Sandholtz and others. Sandholtz is a graduate of BYU's Marriott School and is currently a PhD candidate at Stanford University in their Center for Work, Technology & Organization.

The idea is pretty simple and centers around what is referred to as the "COP model". This model describes 3 dimensions of organizational fit: competence, opportunity and passion. The model asserts that for a person to truly thrive and reach their full potential, she must align the things she does well with the things she enjoys doing and then find (or create) an organization where she can get paid to do those things. Sounds pretty simple on the surface.

It starts to get a bit more interesting when you consider the scenarios where one of the dimensions is absent:

For instance, what about the case where one possesses both competence and passion, but opportunity is lacking? At the end of the day what you have is a hobby, not a career. To truly thrive, you need to find or create opportunity – either elsewhere within the organization where you are or by venturing out to find (or create) opportunity elsewhere.

OK, now what about the case where one finds both passion and opportunity, but lacks competence? In that case you are a rookie – and rookies don't tend to find meaningful and fulfilling work for the next 30+ years without progressing on to become legitimate professionals. To progress from rookie to professional you're going to need to improve your skills and abilities. Get more education, find a mentor, join a professional group, attend conferences or find a position that will give you more opportunities to practice the skills you need to develop.

The last case (and perhaps the most difficult to manage, in my humble opinion) is the case where one possesses competence and finds some degree of opportunity (sometimes opportunity is as simple as a steady paycheck), but lacks passion for the work. This is the scenario where work becomes a chore. If you haven't been there, consider yourself fortunate. I assume that most of us have, at one time or another, been in this situation. It's probably not sustainable (especially for the next 30+ years). So what to do? The COP model guides our intuition toward changes that bring passion back into our work. Can you find ways to create boundaries that limit the amount of passionless, draining work you are asked to take on? If the only kind of tasks that your organization is sending your way are the kind that leave you feeling drained, energy-less or demoralized it could be a good indication that it's time to move on to an organization where you can find more passion in the work you'll be asked to perform.

Like all models, there is likely some amount of oversimplification that won't explain every individual circumstance, but overall I found this a pretty interesting tool for introspection. A couple of specific things to think about:

What kinds of things do you do best (competencies)? Do you feel energized by this work (passion)?
What kinds of work do you most enjoy doing (passion)? Are you currently as good at this kind of work as you could be (competence)?
How does your individual work fit within the mission of your current organization? Is it valued? Is it visible to and recognized by others in the organization? (opportunity)
Are you in the “sweet spot” in your current job? Are you thriving? If you're not, what could you change? (sweet spot)

Feel free to share thoughts in the comments.