Dave's Whiteboard

I just read Personal Kaizen: 15 Tips for your continuous improvement at Garr Reynolds’s Presentation Zen blog.  “Kaizen,” which in American business terms tends to mean “continuous improvement,” was all the rage for a while, one of those fads like canary-yellow neckties–some years back, walking down K Street in Washington DC, you could go blind on a sunny day.

I don’t mean there’s no such thing as continuous improvement.  I do recall companies frantically trying to “change the culture.” Often that’s boss-speak for telling people, “Stop doing that; do this instead.”

Reynolds makes the point explicit: continuous improvement is daily, continuous, steady, and takes a long-term view.  Which connects well with other ideas I’ve been mulling over, including the nature of habits, efforts to improve my own performance, and a tendency to beat myself up when I fall short of a goal.

Reynolds’s post has a list of 15 ideas for your own continuous improvement.  Right in the middle, one sparked off the screen for me:

Learn to take better photos. Since you’ll be taking so many snaps to learn from and to share [in another tip, he suggests keeping a digital scrapbook of images that you find interesting], why not get much better at the art of photography?… You don’t have to become as good as the pros, but you can get much, much better. Learn what separates the great photos from the ordinary. The lessons from photography will help in your general guest to become a better visual thinker.

I put the spark-sentence in bold because it triggered the kind of reflection that leaves me still.  I’m very prone to say that I don’t have much graphic sense.  In the past, that’s meant I’ve been pretty lean with graphics I’ve created or selected (for example, to illustrate a presentation or an online lesson).

And I’m probably not going to become a professional photographer–partly because I haven’t had any interest in becoming one.  What I hear, though, isn’t just about a mindset toward imagery, but an encouragement to be not only mindful but active.

That last idea reappears in another of his points: teach others what you learn. In a recent #lrnchat discussion, Aaron Silvers, in search of a motto, asked what the Latin would be for “Everybody teaches. Everybody learns.”

I haven’t thought this through well, but I have in mind two aspects to what we think of as learning: storage and retrieval.  You can’t get stuff out (either individual facts, procedural skills, or tacit knowledge) if you haven’t gotten it in.  And that retrieval, I think, is almost always a case of application: we’re recalling for some reason.

Moreover, each time we try to recall–when we try to act on what we’ve been learning–we’re doing more than pulling a fact out of some neurological file folder.  We’re reprocessing the information. We’re connecting it with what we already know, and with what we’re just now finding out.

In a very real sense, the learning never stops, because  that activation over time leads to physical changes in our brain.

This is a follow-up to my previous post about one of the keynotes at the Higher Ed Web Association’s conference this past week.  I wanted to do a couple of things: provide some context, dig deeper into what the #heweb09 tweet stream contained, and think out loud about what I’ve learned about a situation I was not at all involved in.

Some context

I’ve talked at least a bit with four people who attended the keynote.  Michael Fienen’s already discussed it on his own blog, and gives some background suggesting that the choice of speaker was unfortunate.  The speaker’s background may have stirred up some resistance, but so too did his apparent inability to connect with a technically sophisticated audience.  (HEWEB members design, develop, manage, and create the future of college and university web sites.)

A similar viewpoint appears near the end of this post from Nick DeNardis on the Wayne State University web communications blog.

Plunging into the stream

I downloaded all the tweets for #heweb09 that day, extracted those from 11:59 am to 12:59pm (my arbitrary boundaries for the keynote tweets), and took them on a ride in Excel to see what I could learn.

Who was talking?

There were 536 tweets with the #heweb09 hashtag, sent by 119 different Twitter accounts.  In terms of low volume:

• 49 individuals tweeted only once (9.1% of total tweets)
• 17 tweeted only twice (6.3%)
• 9 tweeted only three times (5.0%)

So on the low end, 75 individuals (63% of the total) sent 110 tweets (20.5% of the total).  Meanwhile:

• 1 person tweeted 28 times (5.2%)
• 1 tweeted 27 (5.0%)
• 1 tweeted 23 (4.3%)
• 1 tweeted 20 (3.7%)
• 3 each tweeted 17 (51, or 9.5%)

These 7 high-volume  individuals (5.9%) accounted for 27.8% of all the tweets.

I think this is a reasonably wide spectrum.  33 individuals account for 70% of the tweets.  All but two of them were present at the keynote, and among those 31 present, everyone sent at least 6 tweets (one every 12 minutes).  The average was 11.4 tweets.

Where were they?

I tried to see who among the group was actually present.  If I couldn’t tell, I assumed the person was there.

Under that criterion, 23 people (19% of the total tweeters) were not present at the keynote but chiming in from elsewhere.  These NPs tweeted 61 times in all (11.4% of total).  NPs with 4 or fewer tweets: 19 people, 36 tweets (59% of the NP total).

So, more than 80% of the tweets were from people actually present.

What were they saying?

“RT” (retweet, a repeating of someone else’s tweet) occurs 170 times in the 536 tweets, though some tweets have more than one (e.g., “RT @alex RT @betty” — I’m sharing what Alex said Betty said).  If each RT were unique, that’d be 31.7% of the volume; I’m guessing the actual number is closer to 27% or so.

Not to discount that–if you’re sitting next to me in a presentation and whisper something insightful or clever to me, I might just whisper it to the person on the other side: a non-digital retweet.

Not all the tweets in the stream related to the keynote–remember, this is a hashtag stream.  In the first 100 tweets (the inital 23 minutes), about 20 were clearly unrelated.  For example, a vendor was having a drawing for a prize, and three or four tweets in that group of 100 dealt with that.

I didn’t analyze the entire stream, but even if that 20% factor held up, more than 400 tweets still dealt directly with the keynote.

First impressions

At 11:59, the start of my stream time, someone said “hella drop shadow” — a criticism of the PowerPoint format.  Within ten minutes, people were asking, “how old IS this presentation?”  And by 12:15, this:

watching people try to figure out how they can get out, starting to see the OMG I AM TRAPPED looks on faces.

What I’m seeing

I wondered about some kind of groupthink–a kind of techno-mob getting carried away.  I see that as a real possibility, especially if there’s a gulf between a relatively small number of Twitter users and most other attendees.

• One attendee estimated as many as 400 at the keynote.  If that’s the case, then close to 20% of them were on Twitter, not to mention texting or Facebook or some other means for making real-time comments electronically.
• And, other than one or two expressions of sympathy or pity, no one in the stream came to the defense of this presentation.

I’m thinking about a speaker who doesn’t have access to a backchannel (whether on Twitter or some other vehicle).  I know that I wouldn’t feel competent to present and to monitor a stream even periodically.

• But I could try to have a partner whose main job would be to do that–act as a combination link jockey (tossing additional information into the stream), scribe, and ally who could lean over and say, “Hey, Dave — people already know about having a blog.  They’re asking about managing wikis.”

I’m wondering what I would have done as part of this audience.  25 minutes into the hour, tweets began to emerge hoping for an interruption.  At another HEWEB09 session, there was a mock “Kanye moment,” with someone breaking into the talk to promote a competing one.  Tweets at the keynote wondered about that, first in jest.  Then someone, seeming to react to the speaker’s works, wondered, “Would he like the immediate feedback of us all walking out?”

• Nobody interrupted the speaker to suggest he wasn’t connecting.  In her blog post, presentation specialist Denise Graveline talks about the special position of a speaker–the implied authority and the general reluctance to disrupt.

The whole keynote concept needs rethinking.  Look at a Ustream video of this keynote.  Ignore the sound quality (being picked up by a PC to the back of the room) and just notice the setting: big ol’ ballroom, round banquet tables, chandeliers, two display screens, and a vast expanse that the speaker is patrolling.

• Why are the screens on all the time?  Presentation 101 says turn the damned things off when there’s nothing to pay attention to.
• Could the participants explain why this speaker is the keynote?  I’m not talking about Galper, unless you’re a HEWEB member.  I’m talking about how well the organization’s choice aligns with the interests of the people who’ll participate.

The final thought for me, perhaps the biggest change — I’m not going to talk about audience any more.  An audience is what you have at a performance, like a concert or a play or a taping of Wheel of Fortune.

When it comes to a professional presentation, what you have are participants–people who want to take part, who plan to take part, in what’s going on.

I used to say I’m not a photographer.  Not owning a camera placed obstacles in the way of taking pictures.  I’d buy a disposable camera before a vacation.   I picked up the post-vacation prints one year and found on the same roll of film shots from the previous year’s trip:  I’d averaged two pictures per month.

Saying  “I’m not a photographer” was synonymous with “I don’t take pictures” and easily conflated with “I can’t take pictures.”  Which is silly, because anyone can take pictures.  The quality may vary, the reasons may vary, but all you need is a camera and the decision to press a button.

What makes a photographer, then?  Perhaps the eye.  Or the eye and the mindfulness.

I know that in since I began my blog, I’m thinking more visually.  That’s why I’m so appreciative of people who share their pictures with Creative Commons licenses.  I customized my Firefox toolbar with a button: when I click it, it launches Flickr to search for CC-licenses images that I can adapt or modify for use in a non-commercial environment.

This is the search string, in case you’d like to try it:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=&l=deriv&ss=2&ct=3&mt=all&w=all&adv=1

I have a similar string for CC-licensed images for commercial environments:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=&l=commderiv&ss=2&ct=3&w=all

(I got that idea from the ever-helpful Harold Jarche, who recently posted Photos you can use, a list of several sources for images.)

I’ve developed an informal process for how I use these images here on my blog:

• The image itself links to the source (e.g., the original on Flickr).
• The credit line at the bottom of my post links to the photographer’s profile.

In addition, I tell the photographer about it, using a template like this:

Hi, [Photographer Name]:

I want to thank you for posting this photo with a CC license:
[URL for the original image]

I used it with a post on my blog, and thought you might like to see the result:
[URL for the blog post]

The photo on my blog links back to the original in your photoset, and the credit line at the bottom of the post links to your profile.

I very much appreciate that you made it available.

The “credit crunch” in my post title refers to the fact that I’ve recently caught up on these thank-you notes.  I sent out about seven dozen in the last six weeks and received some 20 replies.  Nearly all thanked me for letting them know about the picture, and several commented on the post in question.

One photographer did point out his specific requirements for acknowledgment–requirements I hadn’t met.  I couldn’t figure out how to include the kind of credit desired, and so I removed the image from the post and let the him know I’d done so.

Lesson for me: double-check the CC license.

When I search for images, I try to find ones a little out of the ordinary.  The two I’ve included with this post strike me that way: I hadn’t expected something like the first one, which scarcely hints at a camera.  The second image appealed to me in several ways: the different directions people are looking, the red robes, the children.

All these things help widen my visual vocabulary, and I’m convinced they enhance the thoughts that appear on my Whiteboard.

CC-licensed images:
An eye for photographs by Htet-Aung;
media monks by Wonderlane.

One semester, as an undergrad, I took a course on ancient epics:  Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Voyage of the Argo, the Aeneid, a couple of side trips along the way. The University of Detroit is a Jesuit school, so we called the professor Father (not Doctor) McKendrick.  I recalled him as I read a post on Dean Shareski’s Ideas and Thoughts blog.

Here’s why: we spent the opening night of class—two and a half hours—on the first seven lines of the Iliad.

Dean Shareski is a digital learning consultant for a public school division in Saskatchewan.  His post, Dealing with My/Our Attention and Information Issues, is well worth reading, even if like me you aren’t involved in the education of children.  Rather than offer a top-five list, he says he wanted to “share a few things I think can be helpful in a day of attention deficits.”  I thought I’d highlight a few here.

Simplify the complex

Dean points to the Common Craft videos as great distillations of complex topics.  He suggests that educators sometimes reject technology in the classroom because of the complexity.  (I’d add that the techno-jazzed can sometimes contribute to that rejection, at least in the world of work.)  “We can spend lots of times examining the intricacies of using media, but without a good story, it doesn’t matter.”

Sometimes good enough is good enough

“When you get 3 million search results, sometimes you settle,” Dean says.  Be honest: when’s the last time you clicked through to the fourth page of a bunch of Google results?    This is not to say “settle for anything.”  It’s more like, “Where are you going, and how long do you plan to pack?”

I’m iterative.  A lot of the time, what I produce gets better if I’ve had the chance to revisit and rethink it.  Heck, sometimes when I’m explaining something, I’ll interrupt myself as a clearer picture emerges in my head.

But there’s sometimes (often?) a diminishing-return factor, and occasionally the procrastinator’s optimism.  (A standing joke with a video producer was, “We’ll fix it in post,” meaning the post-production process.  Sometimes you can’t fix it; sometimes, there isn’t going to be a post.)

Snacking versus eating

For me, this was the grabber in Dean’s post.  I could easy snack all the time, whether you’re talking about information or food.  There’s not necessarily anything wrong with snacking, but for myself, I have to choose to focus.

I’ve always been something of a generalist, at least since I decided not to study English in grad school.  At the same time, I’m drawn to detail when I can discern a story.  When Father McKendrick spent all that time on seven lines of the Iliad (there are nearly 16,000 lines altogether), he turned them into a framework—as Homer had—to invite us further into the story.  Not a snack, an appetizer.

Rage–Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feast for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

(Greek text from the Perseus Project;
translation by Robert Fagles)

I received the following comment to my last post about #lrnchat.  I’ve decided to display it here, rather than with the other comments on that post.

Personally I think that #lrnchat, in twitter, is more akin to spam. I don’t follow #lrnchat and my twitter stream is spammed.

I get twitter – but using twitter for chatting – no. There are chat rooms, chat programs, and established methods of having real time chat that people have been using for a long time (IRC anyone?)

#lrnchat to me seems like using what’s new and shiny for something that it just doesn’t do well and annoys people NOT part of the conversation.

Dr. Pepper

I’m doubtful Dr. Pepper is the commenter’s real name, and the email address provided is of limited value in learning otherwise.  Dr. Pepper nevertheless remains covered by my blog’s guarantee of satisfaction.)

I don’t agree with the implication that an extended conversation on Twitter is ipso facto spam, any more than Twitter’s trending topics are.  “Unwanted” doesn’t equate to “spam.”

Clay Shirky makes a related point in Here Comes Everybody: people over, say, 40 are in general unaccustomed to publicly-available messages not being addressed to them.  You now hear all kinds of conversations, but for the most part, as Shirky says, “they’re not talking to you.”

I agree there are many ways to have virtual conversations.  $100 against an 8-track tape, however,  says that the average age of an IRC user in the U.S. is closer to my dad’s than to my daughter’s.  IRC has its virtues and its charms, but in terms of its audience appeal, it’s ham radio with a keyboard.

The notion of “established” methods being preferable — which is what I think is being argued — is peculiar; it appears on a blog powered by WordPress (not yet seven years old).  More important, the notion ignores ample evidence that dozens of people–many of them technologically sophisticated–choose to chat via Twitter.

In other words, they’ve made their preference known.

As for annoyance, I’m sure Dr. Pepper is annoyed.  (Maybe even at me, since I willingly participate in #lrnchat and will likely strike again.)  What could trigger the annoyance?

• You follow #lrnchat, so you see #lrnchat.
• You follow people using #lrnchat, so their #lrnchat tweets show up.
• Someone you follow retweeted #lrnchat.

I see those in descending order of annoy-itude.

• If you follow #lrnchat and don’t like it, then you get several hundred action potentials a week (mainly on Thursday nights).
• If you follow #lrnchatters, well, that’s a thing they tweet about.
• If you only see #lrnchat in retweets, then the yoke is hardly bitter and the burden hardly harsh.

I can’t do anything about any of that for you, though you ought to be able to see  possibilities to diminish the impact of the first two.

Well, if I knew who you were, I could block you, and *I* at least would disappear from your Twitter screen.  You could block me with the same result.  But that’s just me.

Many Twitter clients like Tweetdeck include features to filter for or filter out by individual, by topic, or by string. That last could include a hashtag.

Otherwise, #lrnchat and Twitter conversations in general are like the tongue-in-cheek “endorsement” in a newspaper ad for 19th century humorist Artemus Ward:

I have never heard any of your lectures, but from what I can learn I should say that for people who like the kind of lectures you deliver, they are just the kind of lectures such people like.

Thanks to CKL’s HotSheet for the quotation. And thanks to Russell Hoban’s favorite badger, who inspired the title for this post.

Jam on biscuits, jam on toast,
Jam is the thing that I like the most.
Jam is sticky, jam is sweet,
Jam is tasty, jam’s a treat–
Raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, I’m very
FOND… OF… JAM!