In search of an optimal Cognitive process

If Jung had a son, could he explain this to him. If he did then, it is all worth it is my take.

The Eight Cognitive Processes Adapted from Linda V. Berens and Dario Nardi, Understanding Yourself and Others®: An Introduction to the Personality Type Code (Telos Publications, 2004) *Used with permission.

Perception Jung classified the functions into two major groupings. He noted that there are two major kinds of mental processes. One is perception, a process of becoming aware of something. In the perceptive process, there is some sort of stimulation and we become aware of or attend to that stimulation. It is how we gather or access information. Jung called this an irrational process since the awareness simply comes to us. Jung identified two kinds of perception: Sensation and Intuition. Sensing is a process of becoming aware of tangible information. INtuiting* is a process of becoming aware of conceptual information. Sensing and iNtuiting can both be done in either the outer, extraverted world or in the inner, introverted world. Judgment The other kind of mental process identified by Jung is that of judgment, a process of organizing, evaluating, and coming to conclusions. Using the judging process, some sort of evaluation is made. Jung identified two kinds of judgment: Thinking and Feeling, both of which can be used in either the outer, extraverted world or in the inner, introverted world. Simply put, Thinking judgments are based on objective criteria or principles, and Feeling judgments are based on personal, interpersonal, or universal values.

Se - extraverted Sensing Experiencing the immediate context; noticing changes and opportunities for action; being drawn to act on the physical world; accumulating experiences; scanning for visible reactions and relevant data; recognizing “what is”. Si - introverted Sensing Reviewing past experiences; “what is” evoking “what was”; seeking detailed information and links to what is known; recalling stored impressions; accumulating data; recognizing the way things have always been. Ne - extraverted iNtuiting Interpreting situations and relationships; picking up meanings and interconnections; being drawn to change “what is” for “what could possibly be”; noticing what is not said and threads of meaning emerging across multiple contexts. Ni - introverted iNtuiting Foreseeing implications and likely effects without external data; realizing “what will be”; conceptualizing new ways of seeing things; envisioning transformations; getting an image of profound meaning or far-reaching symbols. Te - extraverted Thinking Ordering; organizing for efficiency; systematizing; applying logic; structuring; checking for consequences; monitoring for standards or specifications being met; setting boundaries, guidelines, and parameters; deciding if something is working or not. Ti - introverted Thinking Analyzing; categorizing; evaluating according to principles and whether something fits the framework or model; figuring out the principles on which something works; checking for inconsistencies; clarifying definitions to get more precision. Fe - extraverted Feeling Connecting; considering others and the group—organizing to meet their needs and honor their values and feelings; maintaining societal, organizational, or group values; adjusting and accommodating others; deciding if something is appropriate or acceptable to others. Fi - introverted Feeling Valuing; considering importance and worth; reviewing for incongruity; evaluating something based on the truths on which it is based; clarifying values to achieve accord; deciding if something is of significance and worth standing up for.

What you stand to gain through Social Media.

A few years back, I got my family and friends to sign up with JotSpot, yes before they were bought out by google, to do pretty much the same thing as what can easily done by facebook, Orkut or myspace today. Long before that, there were the IRC channels that I would use to gain insight about veritical topics, but today twitter, friendfeed and the likes makes that easy.

When I joined twitter, it was becuase I was into the "knowledge elicitation" kick, born out of a KM class I was taking at DePaul, thanks to Alan Burns. That was about 3 months ago. Today I have about 46 followers and I follow 37. A drop in the bucket when you compare those numbers to that of Shelisrael, Scobelizer, Chrisbrogan, davewiner or Techcruch and the likes. But while it might be important for some to have a large number of followers, what is important for me, is to be able to get at the important bits of imformation that is flowing through these channells. To understand that in quantitative terms, if each of those listed about have about 10K followers, I have access to the information flowing through their conversations, provided I know how to extract that. That is where the skills of ETL come in handy.

For example, today @Shelirsrael put out a request to get a list of businesses that were using twitter. I wont go into the model of using twitter to enhance the customer service experience, you can do that if you follow the stories of Zappos and the like, but instead in a few minutes, @shelisrael got a link to Twitter Brand Index , which is truly mind boggling.

Most twitter users are very proficient at following conversations, and use it in clever ways, but I am new to this game and every time I stumble onto something that is powerful, I like to share, so here goes.

I am following @shelisrael (one of the 37 that I follow), I see he puts out a request for a list of businesses who use twitter. A little later, he thanks everyone who sent in good information. Thats a trigger. I go to http://search.twitter.com and search for @shelisrael, it lists all his conversations, with the most recent ones on top. From there, I just drill down into conversations and get the information needed.

@Chrisbrogan put out a really nice blogpost on the 5 tools of social media, a while back. I find that a very interesting post or rather a great social media strategy. If you are a intentional social media leverager, it 's a must read. If you are hooked into social media then read his other posts as well.

I will leave you with this for today. If you are new to the twitter scence, and would like to LISTEN and learn, (with a slant into technology, mostly information systems), follow the guys and gals on the list that I follow. I am @mibdepot on twitter and you can get to me via http://twitter.com/mibdepot.

Happy Listening.

It's all about passion

There is a great tradition at Winchell, it's called a happy hour, once a month, one household hosts and invites the entire neighborhood. Since moving here last year We have been to 3 of these and I must add, the reclusive me does not mind it one bit.

I have met a quite a few folks and like hearing their stories. Particularly what brings them or brought them to Kalamazoo. Okay you are wondering what does this have to do with passion?. Well be patient Kemo Sabe.

At the last happy hour, I run into this couple, both Geologists, who picked Kalamazoo for a variety of reasons, after having lived in many major cities in the US. Well that perked my attention. One thing led to another and we got talking about kids. My friend told me that his son was a national merit scholar. Well I started digging deeper.

After some knowledge elicitation, I got this:

Teach your kids about being passionate about what they do. It does not matter what they do, all that matters is they do the best they possibly can or they become the best they can be in what they do. That's it.

I remember the days when I would often work late, and would leave work around 3 or 4 in the morning, take the train, it would be me and the homeless folks on the train. I would often say to myself, WTF?. and the answer always was, it takes Passion Terry!!.

I share this bottled secret of passion with you, Enjoy.

No News is Good News, BBC just plain shockingly silent and brilliant

Call me a plagiarizer call me a copy cat, but this one is so brilliant that I have to. No make that I need to, or I must, I shall, I will. I have always contented that imitation is a great form of flattery, so here goes.

Note to the reader: All those words about amount to NADA, just watch this BBC video SILENCE THE NEWS

In Search of Transparency

Steve Denning's idea of Scaring someone into listening, followed by selling the idea by appealing to their intellectual reasoning is a tad opaque and worse yet, no one wants to listen to "The Sky is falling" Story. So In the interest of getting the message out on Transparency, this is perhaps the first of one of many in the series of blog posts you will see at this site. To start with, here is how you can achieve transparency using CSS assuming you have a file called klematis.jpg

<img src="klematis.jpg" width="150" height="113" alt="klematis"
style="opacity:0.4;filter:alpha(opacity=40)" />

Presenting an image via CSS has a lot in common on how we present ourselves. To start with, it is an image of ourselves presented with physical attributes such as size (width and height), our moniker and Style. Interestingly we also use Opacity pretty regularly. In fact so regularly that we are now trying to conciously be TRANSPARENT. The filter:alpha(opacity=40) therefore is a very significant attribute. It truly means that you are 60% transparent in what you do.

I plan on taking this further to understand, what is the opacity level we should strive to? Should opacity levels vary with differing external inputs? What taxonomy is ideal for differing level of opacity? so on and so forth.

Mental Obesity

Mental obesity is the deadliest disease plaguing the American public today and we don't even recognize it.

WARNING!! if you don't treat it on time it will KILL you.

We Americans are so used to excess that obesity is fairly commonplace amongst us. If you consciously watch, you will be surprised how conditioned we are to ignore obesity around us. of course this from the point of view of a non-obese person, which I truly can't lay claim to.

It is killing a lot of folks for sure, but we are unable to stop it at the roots. All indicators point to excessive consumption as the root cause of this deadly malady.

Excessive consumption if pervasive, eventually becomes a culture. So we have become an mentally obese nation. The next biggest product we will consume will therefore be none other than a plethora of mental fitness gadgets.

From a conversation with Daniel Casey on 07/12/2008

Why Barack's flip flop troubles me so when there are other important issues

A couple of days ago, I sent Obama a tweet, asking him why he voted for the FISA bill. Its been over 48 hours now and no response. Which to some extent I expected, but there was that faint glimmer of Hope in me. The audacity!!

As I try to sort this out logically, I see there could have been 3 outcomes:

a) He has been very busy and does not have time to look at the direct tweets his followers send him
b) He does not want to answer, does not care, particularly if it is a difficult question.
c) He only uses twitter (other social networks) as an advertising medium

The day I asked him the question, Jesse Jackson said things he should not have said in an open mike, that took news media by storm and completely overshadowed the FISA vote story. Perhaps Jesse and Obama wanted it that way. Either way it worked, there were some rumblings on NPR about the vote, but that was it.

What ever his reason for not answering my question, item c. got me thinking about the use of social media. What do people use social media for? Could it be as an advertising media for their products?. In this case Obama has around 40K plus followers, if he wanted to sell soap, all he has to do is say, ah..I showered this morning before making my speech at the chicago Police Academy..That Irish Spring Soap, gave me the boost I needed to change today. You get the picture.

Here I am thinking, wow politicians could use this media as a polling mechanism to find out how they should vote on the senate floor. Or wow, they can feel the burden of Joe Average as he struggles on that line to get an Iphone, after having spent $5 on gas to get to the store and so on.

But I think I am wrong. I dont think Obama will ever answer my question. After all why should he. He is just wants to win this election just like McCain does. So come January when I wake up in the morning and the MAP shows mostly red, like it did 4 years ago, I wont be surprised one bit.

What a guy. Why didnt I think of this when I turned 50

Jon Swanson wants you to help him celebrate his birthday. So he created a list of 8 things you could do for him. Funny thing is if Jesus had told me to do any one of those things, I would have rebelled. But hey, its an internet Buddy asking for a hand, so it is worth doing. Happy Birthday Jon.

Here is his list of 8 things. Please copy this article as many times as you wish.

1. If you know someone who can’t afford to go out to lunch with your office group, slip them a $10 anonymously. Bring them into community. (If you don’t know someone, send something to the local rescue mission.)
2. If you know someone who is fighting cancer or Alzheimer’s or panic attacks or depression, sit with them, listen to them.
3. If you know someone who locked up for something they didn’t do–or even something they did–send them a note. If you can, visit them. Talk to them. The people I know who have been on “ankle bracelets” could use someone being kind.
4. There are people who go shopping at Goodwill and Salvation Army. They can’t afford more than the $2 for a pair of slacks. So pack a bag and drop it off.
5. Sometimes people get to demand your time (bosses in particular). Throw one of those people off-balance by offering to help on the next part of the project.
6. Shake hands with someone who no one else will touch. Or at least look them in the eye and talk to them.
7. Tell God that you can’t figure everything out yourself.
8. Find a little kid–a niece, a neighbor, your own–and listen for how they talk about what they believe. Listen to their trust.

That’s it. Do one of those things for me. Tell them Jon sent you.

(It will be easier to explain an internet friend than explain that Jesus said these things, too.)

Kindness without expecting return

Winchell is a really nice neighborhood in Kalamazoo. It has all single family homes, families with children and if I were to try to characterize it, the tags would be: Middle to Upper Class, White Collar, Predominantly White, Well maintained yards with ownership age range between 40 and 50. To put it in perspective Frank Lloyd Wright designed parts of the neighborhood around Winchell around the 40's.

A great place for kids to grow up, as it is wooded, Close to the Winchell Elementary school, Woods Lake and overall a nice place.

Around 8PM last night we had visitors. A couple, age range 30 to 40, white female, the male had a darker complexion, could be Hispanic or partly black. They told us they had just moved in to the neighborhood, and this bizarre story:

Their names were Rochelle and Edmund. They had bough the house at 2228 Waite ave this week. Rochelle had a C-section this week and the hospital would not let the kid go home with them. Rochelle claimed she was a nurse, but the hospital made here take CPR lessons. Rochelle's sister who was house sitting the other two kids, left for Indiana with the kids and the car broke down on the highway. The banks are closed and they really need some money for gas.

My wife did not bat an eyelid, asked them how much they needed. Edmund said $30 would do. She went it and got the money and gave it to them. The couple said they would return the money when the banks opened this morning.

After they left, we had this sense that we just got panhandled. So we checked the address Edmund gave us and that realized, he either made a mistake on the address or he did some falsification.

The point of the story goes to, human decency. How often are we kind without expecting anything in return? If you as a couple are walking from door to door looking for money, that cannot be good by any standards. Who are we to second guess and see through falsehoods or truths.

Hammock in July

Finally after a year, got the Hammock up. It took a bit of doing, finally with a bit of clever use of the neighbor's tree, got it to work. Now for those cool summer naps, in the shade and breeze.

Collaborative Video Blogging

From the "Always full of Ideas" department:

8 people go on a journey, a vacation of sorts. Age ranges, 10 through 60. Some place exotic. As all trips go, of course we take pictures because we want to remember our trip, our journey to that exotic place. So why not do it right.

What does a camera at a wedding table signify?. It is inexpensive and disposable, where the participants at the table take pictures during the event. A collaborative photo journal of sorts that gives us a better collage if you will of what transpired. It is a better collection of memories taken from exponentially higher number of angles, than that of what the hired Photographer can take physically take by himself. In fact it was one such Photographer who thought of this idea of collaborative Journaling using that disposable camera. The folks at the table have to ONLY point and click. The idea is simple, easy to implement and therefore adoption came easy to the point where every wedding does it today. Brilliant!! as the guiness guys would say.

Extend this idea to our 8 people that go on a journey to an exotic place and then take it further. As a rule when we go on vacations to an exotic place we carry our camera. We tend to have one designated photo journalist for the trip. This designate is akin to the hired Photographer who provided the disposable camera's at the Wedding. What if he or she came up with a way that could get every one to participate in the photo journaling process? But instead of being just photographs, what if our method of chronicling was to podcast or video cast the journey?.

Remember the rules for successful adoption. It has to be simple, inexpensive and easy to implement. Just like the disposable camera at the Wedding table. If we were a student of Collaboration and Knowledge management, this can be a fascinating project of fairly significant proportions. Why? because the days of us just taking static pictures while on vacations might become a thing of the past. This might become as disruptive to Vacations as the internet perhaps.

Collaboration needs good facilitators, for this project we need a good facilitators who are also good story tellers, good Knowledge management experts who can elicit good story telling from the rest of the group. And finally she needs to be an innovater to turn this into a "disposable camera at the wedding table" sort of an idea.

A good innovator's quest most often starts with research, more research and then some more research. Today, research is easy thanks to the many innovators that gave us the internet, search engines, data mining and folks who share content.

In a nutshell, I am looking to create a SIMPLE INEXPENSIVE TEMPLATE for folks who go on exotic vacations, to photo journal from different angles (like our innovative hired photographer at weddings) using good story telling and podcasting.

Off to Kenya next Summer, but before I go, I need to become a innovator, collaborator, KM expert, and Great Story teller!!.

chip in for quiltingBok

Blogging with Consistency

Consistently blogging. It could mean a couple of things.

1) Blog every day or blog on a specific frequency
2) Blog consistently about certain topics
3) Blog on a specific frequency about specific topics
4) just Blog

If you are building up a brand, I believe item3 would be the way to go. But we dont always blog to build a brand do we?.

I for one like to blog, staying line with the "Captains Log" approach. Remember Captain Kirk, oh what would we do with out his logs. But it is important to be consistent, and it is also important to Write, not just cut and paste. The writing part is good training. You will thank me for that 30 years later (notice the long tail theory cynicism there) I am sure.

So does this mean I am not consistent? or will not be consistent?. For a fact the content I blog about will be free for you to use and reuse. It also will bring some value to you is my hope.