A couple of months ago my main laptop experienced a catastrophic hard drive failure. While I had most of my files backed up, key files and applications got scrambled. One area that suffered was iTunes and my podcast subscription. As a result, I’ve rebuilt my podcast subscriptions, and these are now my “top 5” in no particular order:
Can Social Media Help Change the Public's Perception of the Engineering Profession?
The National Academy of Engineering has published a report called Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering. Given the importance of the engineering profession to US competitiveness and innovation, I’m hoping that the important research described in the report hasn’t overlooked the opportunities social media provide for engaging the public in the types of “conversations” the title of the report seems to promote.
When Do "Best Practices" Make Sense?
Matt Elliot’s Always looking for ‘best practices’ stifles innovation makes the case that slavishly adopting another organization’s “best practices” actually stifles innovation.
Facebook Connect Raises Complex Data Portability and Data Sharing Issues
Successful system operation frequently depends on the quality of the data it contains. Social networking systems rely on the ability their members have to manage and keep up to date information about their identities. They also rely on the ability to describe and act upon data about relationships with other network members. If identity or relationship data are faulty, unstable, or inconsistent, the operation of the social network, and the performance of network based transactions related to it, will suffer.
I Bought a Magazine Today!
I know, I’ve criticized magazines before as vestiges of an old fashioned past, but I confess: I bought one today.
Associations -- and Social Media -- Are Only Human
Ben Martin’s provocatively titled blog post As long as people don’t really care associations will survive addresses the common (these days) idea that social media and social networking somehow “compete” with the traditional idea of a professional association. After all, if anyone can throw together an online group of like-minded individuals at the drop of a hat, won’t professional associations inevitably lose members to such grassroots movements?
A friend, a professional engineer, asked me for tips on establishing a “web presence.” This is what I wrote:
I don’t own an iPhone; that AT&T connection is what hinders me. But I do think its success presages the eventual replacement of laptops, especially as it (and its successors) become larger and more powerful.
Stage 1 - The Joining
A meatspace friend tells you about a new service that all the cool kids are using. You join.
In Finally! Relevant Applications for YouTube and Twitter in the Enterprise! Jim MacLennan suggests some interesting ideas about using Twitter and YouTube in the context of an industrial manufacturing operation.
What's So New About the Outsourcing of Innovation?
This is a followup to the comments I received on my post Should You Outsource Your Organization’s Innovation Processes? I wrote that in response to some of the (semi-controversial) things that Jeffrey Phillips had said in his own blog post, You should outsource innovation if…
Am I Asking the Right Question About Technological Literacy?
Maybe the question should be how technologically literate people should manage the jobs they find themselves doing — jobs that may not be ready to take advantage of all the skills and experience technologically literate people bring to them.
Should You Outsource Your Organization's Innovation Processes?
Innovation guru Jeffrey Phillips makes the following statement in You should outsource innovation if…:
Will Merging U.S. Science Agencies Increase Innovation?
I read the news report Merger of US earth sciences agencies proposed by AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid with mixed feelings. The report describes a serious proposal to combine two US government agencies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Listen to Radiolab’s City X. It’s a history of shopping malls told through slickly edited sound bites and Muzak.
Do Real People Care About Disruptive Technologies?
One of the most interesting blog post I’ve read recently is 8 Disruptive Technology Changes by Robin Bloor. Here is his list:
Craig Thomler’s Make government data freely available neatly lays out, from an Australian’s perspective, a discussion of how the public can benefit if government agencies make raw data available for access by individuals and organizations who then analyze or present that data in a useful way. These points are from Thomler’s conclusions:
In How Much do People Need to Understand Technology to Manage It? I discussed “technological literacy” from the perspective of management. I expressed some skepticism about whether heavy users of popular communications and computer technology necessarily understood enough to effectively manage that technology in an organizational setting.
How Much do People Need to Understand Technology to Manage It?
Jeremiah Owyang’s post Gen Y Enter Stage Left, Baby Boomers Exit Stage Right got me to wondering how much people should understand about technology in order to manage it in an organization.
At last night’s Meeting VI of the Alexandria Web Strategy Discussion Group, convened at New Target in Alexandria, Virginia, Maddie Grant raised the topic of RSS feeds. She’s tried a number of readers and now she uses Google Reader. Still, she complains about the problems with setting up readers and especially the challenges of explaining the process to other users. In her mind, RSS has not lived up to its promise.