Learning is Change

Question 180 of 365: Are we selfish?

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I have never liked cavorting. I find the nimble act of careless frolicking to be unnerving. Done within the snow is even more scary. You have to dress for the occasion and know that the people you are with will not laugh at you. The mood is almost never right for frolicking. I can’t have just settled down with a book or ready to go to work. I certainly can’t be half-asleep when it starts to snow and be asked to frolic by my girlfriend in college and feel an amazing need to leave our dorm room with heavy clothes on to go and cavort at two in the morning.

Surely, no one could say that this was selfish. Hopefully, you see that cavorting under the circumstances was not my first choice. How dare she ask me to do that when all I wanted to was sleep. Her understanding of my needs was lacking, which was much of the reason that we broke up after about 7 months of dating. And yet, this was the moment that I realized that I was inherently selfish. That my own needs were above those of people that I loved.

In everything that has happened since, I have been trying to unravel what it is that would cause me to get up and cavort like I want to do it as much as the one I’m with. And more than that, what would cause me to stop doing whatever I am doing and start working with those that I love toward their priorities.

Last night I went out and spent money. Money my family doesn’t have at the moment, at least not for going out without my family. I felt selfish in the act, and even worse in the aftermath. Explaining away the expenditure seems to be as painful as realizing that I didn’t want to frolic with my ex-girlfriend. I realized that my priorities are not the same in that moment as what my wife wants and what my family needs.

That kind of selfishness is excusable sometimes, but I can’t say that it ever feels okay. I may have needed last night, but it was at the expense of what the rest of me (my family) needed. How can I justify that? How can I allow myself to be separated from who I am to simply go after what I want?

I know I will work it out, but if I am honest with myself, I know that I made the wrong decision last night. I’m okay with being wrong, but this is a bad wrong. I can and will learn from it, but why couldn’t I see it before the fact? I saw the separation, but somehow I thought it was justified. It isn’t.

And it makes me wonder about all of the things that we deny and separate out so that we can be selfish for a moment. Keeping in sync with the people that mean more to me than anything else is the only thing that matters. The conference, the meeting, the blog post, and the unending grind of the public sphere is designed to separate us out into our interests and capacities.

The get together will boil us down to our most selfish interests. We network because we want more than we have, even if that is just a good conversation. We meet to advance the things who will become while cutting of a little bit of who we are. We mask the worst of ourselves much of the time because we are envious of this version of ourselves that doesn’t really exist. And that may be healthy for some, but not for me. At least not after last night.

I am selfish, and I know what it costs. It costs me cavorting and frolicking and enjoying the company of the people that will feed my passion. And this is how I know:

Last night was exhausting. Going out for happy hour with my wife gives me energy. That is the kind of cavorting that I need. Those moments that keep me energized are the ways that I know I am not being selfish because I am completely in sync with the other person’s needs. I want to be in sync with my family because they give me the energy to live. And I want to live, without being too selfish.

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Question 178 of 365: Are we backwards compatible?

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I am on an old computer today. It doesn’t work with all of my newfangled iPads, Keynote files, or the standard version of Gmail. I feel a little bit lost on it, actually. I can’t do the things I would normally. I have to figure out workarounds. I don’t have any issues with doing this. I am energized by figuring out how to do new things with old hardware. But, it does make me think about just how little backwards compatibility really exists. Not just with our technology, but within ourselves.

It makes me think back to when I was using this tech the first time around. Who was I then? Am I compatible with that person, even? Back then, I had no idea about what two children meant. I hadn’t made some of my current closest friends, and I certainly hadn’t figured out that there was something after teaching. In short, I was probably about 25% of who I am now just a few years ago. And I don’t think that today’s me is all that compatible with the one I was. 

I’m pretty sure that the two of us would fight, actually. We would fight about what is the most important thing to be doing with our lives (creating greater change or teaching kids how to think for themselves). We would argue over money and influence and connections. He would probably read books right in my face (seeing as how I hardly have time to do that now). I would probably shoot back about how much I know about life through my son. He would laugh at the grey hairs and the bags under my eyes. I would poke fun at his uninformed workflow and lack of vision.

I am not the man I was, but I don’t want to be. I would never give up what I have for what I have been. That is why I feel as though backwards compatibility is overrated. While it may make sense for some technologies, I realized through the process of having to recreate a presentation from one that stripped out all of the links and some of the images, that the whole thing needed to be reworked anyway. I realized that the person that gave the presentation last time isn’t compatible with who I am today. Why should the presentation itself be that way? 

Sometimes, we should be forced to give up 70 percent of what we had so that we can become what we can become. In a presentation, it will transform the message and the intent. In a person, it will transform our actions and our personalities. 

So, are we backwards compatible? No. And we shouldn’t strive to be. We should go forward, relentlessly. We should forget and retry and revise until we can look at one version and the next and see the actual progress. Kind of like the ways in which we look at Internet Explorer 6 now. It is time to retire who we were (IE6 should die, actually). We can always look back, but we don’t have to keep building who we are so that compatibility is assured. It is convenient sometimes, but most of the time it just holds us back.

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Question 177 of 365: What is plan b?

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Preparation is something I had to learn. While I have always planned, true preparation has always eluded me. I mean to say that the ability some people have for seeing the way things will work out before they do has never been my gift. I have to play my way through everything and push the boundaries in order to get at what is possible. I have to see which questions get asked and which conversations are essential before it all makes sense.

That is why when streaming three concurrent sessions at a conference with two video feeds and one audio feed each, I new that everything would eventually work out. I knew that there would be a plan b that I could put in place. I just didn’t know what that plan b was until I saw it.

Originally we were going to use rented powerful laptops, but we didn’t have the right converters for our video feed. Then we were going to use our Boinx TV mixer to give the pictures nice overlays, but our own laptops weren’t capable of handling all of the multimedia. We were going to have the audio pumped directly to the mixer but the Ustream broadcaster wasn’t having any of it. Ultimately, we had a great stream being pumped out with both the powerpoints and the live video. This is super nerdy and all, but I think that the plan b we came up with was exactly what we wanted in the first place, but it took us a few revisions to get there.

It was the process of finding the plan b that was actually most engaging to me. Knowing that things would work the first time is not interesting to me. It is only through troubleshooting and creating a new solution that I feel valuable. It is about the workaround and the new workflow that everything comes together and I truly learn something.

Which is why I am much more inclined to give my children and the other people that I work with a tool that isn’t specificially meant for the task at hand. Perhaps I don’t have the right one, but more likely I know that it is the process of figuring out just what the tool can do that will bring about the greatest change.

People say that the iPad isn’t a creation device. By making it into one, I am learning more than if I just accept that limitation.

Some say that blogging is dead. By figuring out how to make my writing alive and valuable to me, I am able to find it’s relevance.

The conventional wisdom is that boomers aren’t interested in a networked workplace (Personal Learning Networks and the like). The plan b is in figuring out where we can go from a place of resistance.

I don’t believe that we are ever done planning for the future, and that includes creating a perpetual plan B. I want to make sure that all of my actions are in the creation of the best possible option for what comes next.

We are not creating the first version of the future. Everything is a revision, a second and third and fourth attempt at getting things right. So long as we keep at it, I know that it will be everything that we need. It may not be what we hoped for, envisioned or prepared for. It will be what we deserve and what we work for. It will be our best plan b. I promise.

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Question 176 of 365: When is networking just drinking with friends?

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Long Three Days "at" ISTE NECC 2009
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The largest technology and education conference has come to Denver. Is the one time of the year when people from all over the world get together in a single space and talk about the issues that are most important to them, whether those are of equity and access, 1:1 computing, open source software, social media, online learning, or curriculum standards. All of those conversations are going to happen this week, and it isn’t the first time they have happened, either. In fact, many of the people who are here this year were at this conference last year, and perhaps the year before. And even if they weren’t, it is highly likely that these people have met online or at another conference.

So, networking is hopeless for these people. They know each other. They have had these conversations before. The contexts are different. The setting is different too. Perhaps, even something new is created. But, the unbridled networking that is the signature of seeing new people and figuring out how they find significance in your life is not something that happens when the same people have the same conversations about the same important issues.

Instead, we just have friends sitting down for a drink with one another. And maybe that is the best thing that we can be doing right now. Maybe it has always been about finding the people that we can sit down with and share one true moment, without introductions. We need to know people before we really can see their potential as collaborators. We need to see them as consistent parts of our creative lives before we let them in to the rest of who we are and what we have to offer.

So, let’s sit down and have a drink. Let’s continue the conversations we have started. And for those new people who we have never met before, let’s start the next conversations so that in a few months or years we will be able to see those individuals as collaborators, and more than that, as friends.

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Question 175 of 365: Where does arrogance come from?

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It is impossible to know everything, or to even know all of the things that there are to know in one particular area. We all know this to be true, and yet there is a certain level of arrogance for people in positions of power that seems to imply the opposite.

Consulting and arrogance go hand in hand. You never have to stick around to see hoe things shake out. Anyone who claims to know the solution is a consultant and not a stakeholder.

Stakeholders are around for the long haul. They are interested in making sure that everything has been thought through and that backup loans exist. Consultants don’t worry about backup plans. They are never brought in again if the first time didn’t work out.

It is not to sway that consultants can’t care about the issues of the day, it is just that they are an expendable part of the community. The arrogance that comes from not doing any one thing for a terribly long time is so ingrained in their actions that they start to believe all that they are preaching. I am glad for their voices and their persecutive, but I don’t want them running anything. I want consistent voices, but ones that crack every once in a while. I don’t want the mighty voice coming down from on high and letting me in on the secret to a better work life or collaborative solution.

Arrogance comes from a place of will.

The consultant is under the impression that they can will something into being. It is their personality and charismatic leadership that are going to see us through. It is their vision and forward thinking that will place us ahead of the pack. It is their body of work that will speak for itself and show us the way.

I was once a consultant for the job that I now hold. Before I became a stakeholder, I had the chance to be arrogant. I consulted on creating an online school and provided professional development on how to create online courses. The school that I helped to first design had several flaws, not the least of which was that I wasn’t sure I would have to live with the results if I stopped consulting. I developed something that didn’t require me to exist and that made sense to do. Unfortunately, the results became readily apparent of how drastically different our vision was from what we actually implemented.

We had disjointed and inconsistent content. We had to switch learning mangement systems (3 times in two years). We had no way to insure that the tools that our stakeholders used today would be in place tomorrow, and we switched it on them many times.

All of these things come from a place of arrogance. I arrogantly thought that by providing 101 tools and resources for authentic learning that would be enough to spark the people I was consulting with to create an environment that we could all be proud of. But I was just a consultant presenting an answer. I didn’t listen to what happened before and I sure didn’t want to admit that I had never actually attended an online course. I claimed authority when all I should have been claiming was my seat at the table.

So, here is what I promise:

I will never consult on a project that I don’t ever have to see again.

I will never create a solution before I know the real problems.

I will never offer my experience as evidence that the current project will be a success.

I will never start a revolution without understanding exactly who’s head I will have to cut off to do so.

I will never stop being honest with those around me as to my bias, my understanding, and my plans.

I will listen to anyone who cares to speak with me.

I do not want the arrogance that comes along with consulting. Instead, I want to be so invested in my work, regardless of actual titles, that I feel as though I am staking all that I am with each action. “Becsause I said so” is not enough. At least not for me, and certainly not any more.

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Question 174 of 365: What is our coallition?

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My name is Ben Wilkoff.

I claim it as my own.

Here are the other things that I claim:

I claim a space that allows people to come together and air their grievances. A space that allows for all of us to learn from one another. A single place that we direct people toward that for debate and discussion about the things we care about. A place to ask questions and feeling like the process of answering the question is the most important part.

I claim a coalition. Of the willing, of the reluctant, of the undervalued and unfortunate. I claim the ability to take part with and without access.

I claim support.

I claim the ability to walk into a room and ask for participation and collaboration and to receive it without question. Where business cards are scrawled all over with the stuff that people won’t tell you unless you talk with them: pen marks that seem to stab out the doubters that can’t see what we see.

My coalition is the people that waiver over every decision and then make them and execute without hesitation. They are the ones that we see in passing and the ones we sit down with at a bar. They are the ones that come back after years of inactivity. They are the ones without titles and the ones with as much power as they dare to wield.

My coalition doesn’t stop. It is wondering out loud, at everything.

The space I claim accepts all kinds of contribution. It accepts the forward, the reply, the collaborative document. It gobbles them up without a single worry. It seeks out attachments and links and moves them to places of significance. It works with mobile devices with relish. It functions on nothing but content, aggregating and organizing it into what it should be: the truth of our own stories.

I claim moving forward and all of its consequences. The super majority and the awkward minority. The haphazard fantasy and the articulated vision.

I do not deny the ambiguity of my claims, but rather I embrace what it means to walk in with no preconceived notions about my future. I believe that the only way onward for me at this moment is to take the meetings and the phone calls and the e-mails and the tweets that come my way and the opportunities that will prolong my ability to see where all of this leads. It isn’t about focus. It is about floundering and spasming into success. If I wallow away with the best people I know, they will surely show me the right mud to play in.

So, here is what I plan on doing:

Every person I see that is at all interested in becoming a part of what I claim, I will introduce to my coalition. I will tell them that I am interested in asking questions. I will see if they are interested too. I will tell them to contact my coalition with their answers. I will encourage them to tell their story. I will treat everyone I know as the right person for that moment. I will never let a bias beget failure. I will take all comers.

I will continue to expect more and more from them until we all burn out and are reborn as zealots for what we believe is true. I will cultivate the debate as someone who wants a fight but will be satisfied with peace.

I claim learning. I claim collaboration. I claim the future.

Nothing less than the entirety of human connection through a process of inquiry and reflection will do.

(Oh, and I want Jupiter too. I have it on very good authority that when claiming who you are, you should always claim something you can never hope to gain. That way, everything else is entirely possible.)

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