Of Content and Content deliverers.

Last weeks Rant was all about Listening: Natural progression would be to talk about the yang of that Yin. Which brings me this week to "Content and How to deliver it so folks would listen".

Let me start with some examples from current events:

1) Google created a Web Browser from scratch and released it with a COMIC STRIP this week. They spoke through a comic strip.

2) RNC (Republican National Convention) kept the media/analysts away during their speeches, so the Content would not be sliced and diced in real time.

While listening is more of a passive role, meaning you listen to what is being said or deliverd, Delivering content appears to be very dynamic and often times takes ingenuity. Take this scenario:

Back in the 80's the guys at the Xerox Palo Alto labs, wanted machines to talk, so here is what they came up with:

CSMA/CD Carrier Sense Multiple Access / Collision Detection: The low level network arbitration protocol used on Ethernet. Nodes wait for quiet on the net before starting to transmit and listen while they are transmitting. If two nodes transmit at once the data gets corrupted. The nodes detect this and continue to transmit for a certain length of time to ensure that all nodes detect the collision. The transmitting nodes then wait for a random time before attempting to transmit again thus minimizing the chance of another collision. The ability to detect collision during transmission reduces the amount of bandwidth wasted on collisions compared with simple ALOHA broadcasting. (1995-02-23)

In every sense, we converse very much like the Protocol but still are in a state of conflict, are we creating protocols better than we can humanly interact?. When will human communications and interaction learn from switching, multiplexing, compression, stateless and stateful packet filtering?

Why is this relevant? We create in our likeness, so pay close attention as I dissect this using a metaphor approach. On the left is What is our creation and the right side is Human perception.

1) Protocol = grammer

2) Ethernet = Language

3) Nodes = People

4) transmit = deliver content.

5) Collision and detection = from a transmitters point of view, eliminate noise

What is missing appears to be the listening part. Why was that left out?. Perhaps at that time, LISTENING was not important enough to those who developed Ethernet. Circling back to my current events thought from earlier in this post, Google said they created a new browser because things have changed since the first days of the web and the HTTP protocol. So they developed a browser from scratch to meet the new paradigms of today. Quite a concept. So if Ethernet were developed today (again) would the emphasis be on LISTENING? and not so much as TRANSMISSION? Food for thought perhaps which leads us to WE NEED TO VALIDATE OUR TRUTHS OFTEN.

Problem I see with using metaphors to get a point across, is that one can get lost along the way or your reader can loose his way in the maze so the trick is to use these design principles

SIMPLE

DIRECT

VALIDATE the content periodically.

VALIDATING CONTENT , introduces the element of TIME. So the big question is should we validate our TRUTHS from time to time? and when it comes to LISTENING and SPEAKING, do our concepts need validation? Most probably.

Circling back one more time to the RNC convention mentioned above: Quite a few half truths were presented to make the point that we should vote for the Mccain/Palin ticket. Lots of innuendo's, and an approach of instilling FEAR was evident in most of the speeches. The CONTENT and the DELIVERY can be a powerful way to sway our perception even if they are half TRUTHS.

I have rambled on about the other half of the equation that makes up a CONVERSATION today. Not sure if it is a cohesive set of arguments. I will leave you with that for now.

Remember VALIDATE your TRUTHS frequently. The result might surprise you.

Listen Now, Hear me later.

I suddenly have this urge to listen. Not sure when it started but its there and it is not going away. So this week I am going to talk about LISTENING

One on One listening
Listening in a Group
Listening to the the World
Listening to Oneself
Listening Tools
Deterrents to Listening, the Noise.

One on One listening:
Face to Face listening, mostly falls into two categories, Same time/Same Place and Same time/Different Place but they both involve direct one on one conversations. The stake of each participant in the conversation defines the intensity with which they listen. The higher the stake, the greater the intensity. It could be a conversation with a child, spouse, significant other, a friend, an acquaintance, a relative, colleague, superior, the list goes on. Fact remains that in a conversation you have to listen, which defines the quality of the exchange of information. Listening is a such an integral part of our lives that we seldom stop to measure how well we listen or how much we gain out of a conversation. How well we listen also depends on the deterrents to listening, the Noise that comes into play as we listen. A lot of the noise is our own mental chatter, our predispositions and our confirmational biases that we have grown to accept as part of our make up. Srikumar Rao has talked about mental chatter in his book " Are you ready to Succeed" . Any good Knowledge management book or course will tell you that Confirmational Bias is a strong deterrent to effective listening. So there is a good chance that we dont listen effectively at all and perhaps we should start paying attention.
Listening in a Group:
Again as in the One on One listening, Listening in a Group, falls into the two categories of Time/Place. In a social setting when there are more than a few folks interacting, listening can take on a different path. If the group comprises of like minded people, you will hear what you always wanted to hear and what sustains your interest in the subject. In a group, listening follows the traditional norm of followers and leaders. We tend to listen to a strong leader more than the collective intelligence. We often prefer listening to the trickle down from a few strong leaders still after so many years of evolution. So what does it take to listen to the collective intelligence?. To understand that, we need to look at how the social media movement has generated listening tools and how these tools can provide us plethora of avenues to fine tune our listening skills.
Listening to the the World:
An extension of listening in a Group, listening to the world is becoming far more possible in the 21st century. We do hear more about Wars, famine, hunger, disasters and we hear about them faster than we did in the past. Development in Media and technology has pushed the envelope to the point where we are starting to see an information overload. We cant listen effectively to it all, but we can listen effectively to what we choose to. We are a planet of 6 billion people, of which today may be a billion can tap into the resources through the internet, telling us that we have a long way to go, and we should get there sooner than later.
On a side note, for those of you are into technology, we will run out of IP (IPv4) addresses spaces in the next 3 to 4 years, so get ready for a change to IPv6. We might have to revisiting our addressing technology on the whole.
Listening to Oneself:
Listening to ourself has become so engrained into us that we seldom stop to think of how we do it. Unless ofcourse you are studing the congnitive process in a academic setting. But it is important particularly becuase of the mental chatter I mentioned before. This mental chatter has a way of distracting us from effectively listening. There have been various forms of meditation tracks that have tools to manage the mental chatter, but we seldom have the time or inclination to work at fine tuning the art of Listening to Oneself.
Listening Tools:
In IT Operations management, listening tools are huge, and so are Unattended Event Notifications that are driven out of the listening tools. As human beings we have invented these tools that can help us manage our business. There are some pretty incredible algorithms and slick methods developed that help us with the competitive advantage. So why not scale those techniques down to the individual? We are slowly starting to see a progression in that direction. There are many technology evangelists like Chris Brogan who are pushing the envelop in this area, perhaps we should all STOP and LISTEN.
Deterrents to Listening, the Noise:
Finally deterrents to listening: If you lived on a farm or in a remote place, they say the pace is slower. They say you dont need to multitask as much. They say your head is clearer, the air is sweeter, the water more refreshing and so on and so forth. In fact those of us who can afford it even take vacations to sleepy villages in Portugal to enjoy this serenity. Deterrents to Listening is the lack of serenity perhaps and does not have to be limited to some places/some times? So what does it take to reduce the deterrents to Listening?.

I really belive it takes more that using tools to manage your time better. It take more than following the 7 habits of succeful people, and countless others who have made it rich by writing books about how to effectively manage your precious time.

It really might be as simple as listening to your self once in a while. Leave your confirmational biases at the door, and start LISTENING, it might just make a difference.

Thats my Saturday morning Rant for this labor day weekend. 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.