{{myquote|It’s always better to steer a new course when you’re the one driving the change.}}
Archives for July 2010
Please Hang With Me While I Fix The Feed
Posted on July 30, 2010 Written by
My apologies to those who subscribe to my feed – I’m trying to figure out what’s causing it to do screwy things.
A Load of Fertilizer
Posted on July 30, 2010 Written by
Blogs, Books, and Immortality
Posted on July 29, 2010 Written by
(The audio is still here, I have moved it to the bottom.)
Several people are prodding me to write a book. I probably have several in me that I don’t yet know are there – along with the ones I know are there but I’ve been too lazy to extrude.
- The business book, based on a presentation I created
- The murder mystery based on events that might have happened
- The book about communications
Fortunately, I’ve had enough going on in my life to keep me busy, or at least give me the excuse not to crack down and just do it. But is that the only reason? Or is there something more fundamental going on with regards to what we consider a book? And will it matter? [Read more…]
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Everybody Has A Story
Posted on July 28, 2010 Written by
…even if they aren’t already aware of it.
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I was conducting a presentation skills seminar for a group of engineers, and I was using one of my favorite exercises. Tell me a story in a sentence. Now tell it again in 30 seconds. Now tell it in 90 seconds. (It also works with children, sometimes to disastrous effect.)
In this case, we were preparing these engineers to go into high schools and middle schools, to get children fired up about math, science and engineering careers. Before you can get others fired up, you have to figure out what lights your fire. There was one young man in the back who didn’t know he had a spark… [Read more…]
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When Good News Gets Strangled
Posted on July 27, 2010 Written by
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If you look at Birmingham as a metropolitan area, you find growth.
If you look at Birmingham as just the city proper, and you find a city that has been on the decline since the mid-1960s. Birmingham peaked at 340,000 and has “slimmed down” to under 240,000. Fewer people means fewer youngsters, fewer youngsters means fewer students, and fewer students means fewer schools. By the time I was reporting in Birmingham in the mid-1990s, there was an annual discussion and tension about closing schools and eliminating teachers.
Each year, the state takes in money for the Education Trust Fund (ETF), and allocates it to the systems based on enrollment. At that time, allotment was calculated by taking the average attendance for the first 40 days of class, and then each school gets funded proportionally from the ETF.
Birmingham’s problem was two-fold. There was the shrinking of the population, but also a cultural phenomenon where parents waited until after Labor Day to return their children to school, missing several weeks. [Read more…]
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Fluid Platforms and Singing Whales
Posted on July 26, 2010 Written by
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There will be a theme for the next week or so. Disruption and Adjustment.
Before last week I had never heard of Ryu Murakami, but he’s at the center of an interesting case that may amplify the tremors of technology.
From Robert McCrum in the Guardian:
Earlier this month, in a manoeuvre I predict will soon be seen as a watershed, the admired contemporary Japanese writer Ryu Murakami announced that he was publishing his new book, A Singing Whale, in partnership with Apple, as an iPad download, turning his back on his regular Japanese publisher, Kodansha. The book will also include video content set to music composed by Oscar-winning Ryuichi Sakamoto.
So is there now a way to break a contract by shifting platforms? [Read more…]
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