Learning is Change

Question 97 of 365: What are we willing to work for?

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I used to tell everyone that I was going to become a teacher. I would tell them that it was the novels that I read in high school that made me first want to do it. I would say that those novels were the ones that I wanted to read for the rest of my life. Whether it was The Old Man and the Sea or The Stranger, I turned to that argument for describing my passion for teaching. I did that for years. Mostly, because it was easy.

I didn’t have to explain any other part of why teaching was so appealing. I didn’t have to go into the way that it made me feel when something I had done caused someone else to learn. I never had to retell each of the times that I had tried to teach someone else and learned something in the process. I could just say that the books were enough, and people wouldn’t go any further. They either totally agreed and really enjoyed the books they read in high school and therefore had no reason to doubt my sincerity, or they 100% disagreed and wanted to have nothing to do with a conversation about them.

And yet, the real answer was always more complicated than that. I worked as a teacher so that I could be happy. I am most fulfilled in my working life when I am helping other people to know more and be able to do more. I am most engaged when there is the ability for improvement. I am tuned in to any kind of revision available, especially within a human being. And reading books was just a shortcut to those moments. I could see the change within the characters and I could then help to create those same changing experiences for my students.

And yet, I don’t do that anymore either. I am willing to work for so much less now. I don’t see daily change within those around me. I am not part of translating characters and stories for others, but rather, I have become a transcriber of the same stories. I am trying to create the same outcomes across the board for adults, which was something that I never expected out of my students.

So, while I am paid more, I am willing to work for less.

This is also why I drink coffee so much now. It is why I go out to lunch. It is why meetings for me are no longer obligations, they are a source of sustenance for me (at least the ones I set up or willingly take part in).

I now take part in a ritualization of going to coffee shops to talk over big ideas with other people. I eat food in order to build out what is possible. I meet with others to prove that sanity is still possible without reading The Catcher in the Rye once a year.

And that is what I am working for now. I am working for a single refillable mug that I can keep on going back to the counter with and having them fill it up. I am working for a panini sandwich, pressed perfectly while I sit with the next interesting person that I can’t wait to collaborate with.

Because it isn’t enough to answer e-mail. It isn’t enough just to finish a project and have someone say good job. It isn’t enough to launch a space that others will use or be “visionary” about your planning. Mentoring and being mentored is what I am willing to work for. Nothing else is good enough when I am not in the classroom. Everything that takes me away from sitting down with someone else over coffee or a meal seems to be wasted time.

Even if I am getting work done by answering e-mail or by sending out tweets or by responding to discussions that are going on in online classrooms, I’m not willing to work for those things alone. I am not willing to work for a piece of technology or a system that can’t see the value in two people sitting across a table from one another and hashing out the world’s problems.

So, here is to hoping that our next paychecks have a lot more mentorship and a lot less e-mail attached to them. Here is to hoping that our work isn’t defined in how busy we are, but in how much we made time to go out to eat with others. Here is to hoping that for every meeting that gets called on a regular basis, you have many more that are held in just one time and space and that give lasting value to the things that are discussed.

That is what I am willing to work for.

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Question 96 of 365: What's touch got to do with it?

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My son wouldn’t stop screaming in the Apple store today. I tried to give him crackers and even Vanilla Wafers to try and get him to entertain himself. But still he wailed. He threw his food on the ground and then screamed until I picked it up for him to throw again.

This was at the second Apple store we went to today.

The first store we went to, I let him out of the stroller and let him run around. The store wasn’t really supposed to be open yet, so there wasn’t anyone there except for the “trainers.” I was all alone with the iPads, except my son wouldn’t let me get a good look. It was like he was trying to make sure that I didn’t become too attached to the “magical” device.

He nearly knocked one off of the table and almost knocked over a couple of signs before we decided that the training time before the store was open was not an appropriate time for a screaming one and a half year old. And yet, all I wanted to do was to let him see it and touch it. And that is what he wanted too. It was a shame that there wasn’t a kid’s iPad section, with foam rubber on the ground and huge numbers of kids apps ready to play with.

So, what was I able to do with an iPad while parenting my child who is not quite ready for the intricacies of new technology? I have written an e-mail, opened up a number of apps, checked out openspokes.com (everything but the flash video works great), and checked out Pages. While those 7 minutes (total) are not enough to write an in-depth review, they are enough to make a single pronouncement: my son will likely use a touch screen of some kind almost every day of his life.

While I do not believe that the iPad itself (at least not in its current iteration) will be what my son uses in the future, the power of telling a device what you want it to do with your fingers is exactly what my son expects to do, all of the time.

He didn’t want to watch me touch the giant screens. He wanted to do it. He wanted to run his hands over them and make them do stuff. Whenever I bring out my laptop to show him something, he immediately thinks that I am going to check e-mail or look at something that will distract me from time with him. When we pull out the iPod touch, he immediately thinks that it is something for him to touch and for us to interact with, together.

That is the difference of touch. Touch is for working together and for sharing, a computer with inputs that must be learned (keyboards, mice, etc) is for being alone. Touch is for changing what is in front of you, traditional computers are for making incremental shifts (in text, in presentations, etc.).  Touch is for show and tell, the desktop is for sit and stare.

While many people are arguing that the iPad is turning us back into consumers rather than producers or creators, I would like to argue that touch devices like the iPad are what will teach my children to never be satisfied with sitting back and only being entertained. Because they will literally be making changes to what they see with their touch, they will always question the content that is in front of them. They will want to manipulate every type of media. They will want to watch movies with on screen chat. They will want to read newspaper with commenting always turned on. They will want to draw on everything and manipulate where the buttons go and what they should do. I’m not sure they will even know how to simply be consumers.

My children want to touch everything, so why should I usher it out of them by introducing computers that do not require this creative part of them. If I believe that touching other people and giving my kids toys that can be manipulated (blocks, legos, crayons and the like), why should I not extend that to the devices that I ask them to use.

If we are really talking about making our schools, our businesses, and our personal life more intuitive and filled with authenticity, touch is what we need.

Not the iPad, but touch.

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Question 95 of 365: What do teams solve?

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Groups seem to be the holy grail of social networks. From Linked-in groups to the new Facebook communities to the millions of people self-organizing in Ning networks, groups have become the default setting for communication and collaboration. When you are in doubt about the effectiveness of your web application, throw groups in, and you will have a winner. When there is nothing left to hang your hat on, set up a team that will send out e-mails to everyone multiple times a day.

And it makes sense. People want to organize around an idea. They want to set themselves up to answer the problems that a single set of people have. Where it all goes wrong is that people start to believe that by simply setting up a team, they have solved something significant. They work so hard to organize themselves that the energy for action just isn’t there. Even in the ease of grouping within a hashtag, very little seems to be done that isn’t in the effort of maintaining the grouping rather than moving it forward.

Teams are meant to change, to be modified, to evolve. And yet, we are creating teams and groups online that have no ability to become something different than what they once were. Once you are a “fan”, the group doesn’t change. Once you are a member of a Linked-in group, the members are mostly stagnant. And that is sad.

I want teams with iterations. I want the ability to change the purpose for any given group that I am within. Restating our hypothesis continually is the only way that I know to create rather than persist. And that is why Friendster is dead. That is why Ning networks grow and die. It is why people can leave behind entire bodies of work online when they are no longer interested in having those same old conversations.

So, why not let groups evolve. Why not allow ideas to branch naturally, one from another until you are working with only the people that are as invested as you are in solving the problem at hand. Why does the process of self-selection have to be the last democratic act that you can contribute to a group?

Here is what I am proposing:

  • Self-select into a group.
  • State your bias and interest in associating with the group.
  • Establish a great schism within the group because of either disagreements, reevaluation of needs, or interest in solving different problems.
  • Split groups, rename both, and reestablish bias and interest for the new groups.

With this in mind, teams never become bloated. Lurkers don’t outweigh participants. People aren’t cc’d because they exist, they are informed for consent in decisions. People have ownership in their group, because they are continually in the process of remaking it. They need it, because it needs them to thrive.

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Question 94 of 365: Should we buy and sell our screen real estate?

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My wife and I sold our first house this weekend.

It was the place that both of our children started their lives. It was the first place that we could truly call our own. And, it now belongs to someone else. It is theirs to experience and tell stories about. It is theirs to raise their kids and try not to kill the grass in. And I am happy about the whole process.

However, signing those final papers and seeing the check get deposited in our bank account made it all so surreal. It also brought home the idea that it isn’t something that happens every day. I had never before sold a piece of earth to another human being and I don’t anticipate doing it again for a long time. But, the feeling was so nice and so other worldly that it made me want to think about space in a whole different way.

I owned that piece of land, that space, for a period of time. And with a few notable exceptions (doing illegal things within it), I could do whatever I wanted to with it. While I own many objects, a house is the only space that I have ever owned (although, I guess you could argue a car is a moving space I own, but let’s not get too semantic). And then I started thinking about the spaces that I own online. While I am a huge advocate for the cloud, I don’t think that I can make the case that I really own much of what is up on the internet with my name on it. If all of the hosting services I pay for and Google (which, I mostly don’t) went under, I would be left with nothing. So, I went after a more literal definition of space that I can own.

I own my screens.

I own the displays in my devices that let me interact with all of the data that exists in the same way that I own my house that lets me interact with the other people in my family. Our family owns couple televisions, a couple computers, some cell phones, and an iPod or two. This screen real estate is owned outright. And while, I never had thought about it this way until I sold my first house, what if I were to sell part of that screen to someone else?

What if I wanted to sell 1/10th of my laptop screen to an advertising firm? What if I wanted to lease 1/4th of my TV to my favorite entertainment company? What if I wanted to create a commodified market for screen real estate, where users could actually set the price of their own screens depending on their willingness to click on products and services and the percentage of their screens they wanted to part with.

It seems to me that the companies and advertisers have it exactly backwards. They are dealing with a middleman, a reseller of real estate. They are buying ads from Google or from a television network, when they could be buying it directly from the users. They could be working directly with the customers who will be the ones actually buying their product rather than working with a company who will not. I get that Google is the one distributing the ads, but I don’t think we need a distribution service at all if I am accepting the responsibility for selling off 20% of my screen. I am no longer a passive part of the contract with content providers and marketers. I am no longer trying to fast forward through commercials because I have selected the ones that I want to see. If I have leased my screen, then I must sit through the ads that companies want to push.

And I am now choosing what to be sold. I can choose only technology advertising, or food, or local. If companies really want to get smart, they will stop talking to mobile and location-based ad gurus. They will start talking to users about just what kinds of things they would be interested in selling their screen for.

For example, I would sell 1/10th of my computer screen to a running banner of local deals on food, new technology products, and books and periodicals. I would love to be pushed that information in exchange for a few hundred dollars a year. I would be a more informed consumer and I would be able to afford more of those want-based (rather than need-based) purchases.

Unfortunately, at the moment, it seems as though many people don’t think that I own my screen enough to sell directly to me. They think that they have to go through a different company that provides the software or the web-service to reach me. It is almost as if Google is putting up billboards on my front lawn and then selling other people the opportunity of putting up ads. But, if they would have just asked me in the first place, I would put up signs for them, so long as they give me a good deal on landscaping or driveway sealing.

Let’s cut out the middleman. Let’s establish a marketplace for screen real estate. Realtors optional.

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Question 93 of 365: What are our plans for data?

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I don’t think that I will ever get over the fact that a world of information exists in the air I breathe. I am continually amazed by wifi and 3g and all of the other networks that carry our data as if there was nothing more natural in the world. And even though each device that can pick up on the signals that perpetuate our need for more and more access, we are still dealing with a clunky system of paying for that access.

America online started us down the path of paying by the hour. We were locked into managing time rather than content. We have corrected that issue only by changing the system to pay by the Gigabyte. Even when we get “unlimited” access, there is still fine print stating the contrary. We manage our bandwidth rather than our connections. We secure our networks within our homes so that within any neighborhood we are all paying for a service that we could be sharing quite easily. And now that we have iPads and smart phones, we are paying by the device as well. We have combined all of these payment schemes into one upsetting mess of minutes, bytes, and networks, and devices that don’t allow for flexibility or sharing of resources.

So, what is our plan for data in our future?

I would like to pay for my access, but I want the freedom to share it within my home with every device. I want the ability to use any network available without having to protect them from one another. I want every device I use to be both a host to other devices and a leach off of the data in the air. I want to be a walking network. I want to walk down the street with a device in my pocket that has both speed and versatility. I want to be a hotspot for others and an incredible bandwidth hog for myself.

So, here is what I will pay for:

  • A single connection to everything (wifi, 3g, wimax, etc.)
  • Unlimited Bandwidth (I will not be downloading torrents much, but I think that the principle of not cutting off the very people who test the possibilities within a network is a really good idea.)
  • The ability to extend the reach and quality of the wireless networks for the companies that provide them (I’m interested in being a part of the solution here).
  • The ability to share my connection with all of my devices (not, necessarily every other person around me, though, because I believe that everyone should be able to connect in public for free, but pay for connection in private)

Anyone want to give me a quote on what that should cost?

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Question 92 of 365: What would unicorn taste like?

Sometimes, it is really important to consider the impossible, the
improbable, and the utterly insane. There is nothing so freeing and
beautiful as working to be hopelessly unwound. I believe in creating a
space for spelling out blessings and working out the unknown.

In all seriousness, with champagne cream sauce, unicorn is quite
exquisite. Believe me when I tell you, pursue it and let it become a
part of you. You and yours.

Posted via email from olco5’s posterous

Question 91 of 365: Is freelancing ever enough?

People freelance because they want their freedom. They want to be able to come and go as they please, take an afternoon off or stay at home and hang out with their kids. Freelancing can mean almost anything too, which is really nice for anyone who thinks that they have a skill but can’t quite seem to find a title or position that suits them perfectly. It is seductive in its simplicity. With no one to answer to except to clients and no one to argue with other than yourself, freelancing really does bring much of the benefits of a job without a lot of the headaches.

But, do freelancers (and their less prestigious cousins, the consultant) ever feel like they are part of something bigger? Do they feel as though they are afforded the comradeship and passionate struggle that a daily grind can provide? Is it enough to work on something for a few days, finish it and then never see it again because you have moved on to the next project?

While this isn’t a crisis by any means, these kinds of questions make me wonder if the things that are almost universally valued in our modern society are really worth it, like flexible schedules, pay for performance, naming your own price, creative expression, the ability to travel, and a project-based, user-centered work environment.

I keep on thinking that there may be something to an older model of work, from 9 to 5 (and only during those hours). I am almost haunted by my need to speak with other individuals that I didn’t self-select to work with. The individuality I crave really can only be achieved if I am a part of something larger, because otherwise, what I am really rebelling against? Deciding to be outside of a system means that you are just one of any number of individuals who exist outside. You are the noise without much of a way to break through. Being inside of a system, you get to be the upstart individual who really wants to change things. And there is something to believing that change is possible within an existing organization that provides real satisfaction (assuming that it is accomplished at some point, I suppose).

And yet, the freelancer in all of us screams just a bit more when the ground appears to be shaking benieth us. When we have no control over our own fate, it seems a bit far fetched that we would all want to spend time within a larger entity. But we persist within because of this need for organization. It is only when we feel as though we can provide a better organizing structure for ourselves that we start to seek what is going on outside. If there is a path that can be fashioned that will provide the right kinds of boundaries for our freelancer selves, then we do have a legitimate reason to flirt with leaving the bonds of the corporate or  academic world.

Perhaps something like Pick is what people need to test the waters. Perhaps the ability to see just how simple a life without big business or public schools can be will be enough to answer these questions. But, I would ask to each and every freelancer that is now readying their portfolio for that site: “What do you miss most about working with others for a greater common goal?”

And if they can answer me, or if they have figured out a way to be a freelancer and still feel the common cause of any worker bee, then my fears will be quieted. But, until I figure out just how this is done, I will be quite happy to pursue change and ideas from the inside. All while I lick the glass and envy the beautiful spring day out there.

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Question 90 of 365: How can we stop creating knowledge pyramid schemes?

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I’m in over my head.

I claim to know more than I do.

I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, and I don’t even know their names.

The current expectation is that I am knowledgeable about everything that is put in front of me. It has been this way for a number of years now, but I’m not sure when that transition occurred. I used to be able to simply learn from others and not have to know anything. But now, it is getting harder and harder to say, “I don’t know.”

I must come up with answers or be able to produce them without much of a head start. I like the challenge that is posed in this assumption and the level of respect I am afforded, but it is just so hard to give advice or proclaim truth when I literally just looked up the answer or tried out a new solution 5 minutes before responding to your e-mail.

While I am huge proponent for the fact that a degree does not mean that you know anything, I also see the paradox that I have created. By stating that claim, I am forcing myself to credential each act of speech I initiate. I am saying that I can know everything that someone who has a degree does know. I am belittling their accomplishment, while ridiculously inflating my own.

I sometimes feel like I sit atop of a knowledge pyramid scheme. I feel as though, I am trying to gain as much of other people’s knowledge by reading their work and networking with them so that it makes me look important and valuable. I keep on bringing more people on because I feel as though someone is going to find me out and call my bluff. But, no one has. They just keep on feeding me more information and connections.

The pressure is pretty incredible to know and to do. It is exhilarating most of the time, but sometimes it feels hollow and overly ambitious. Resting on laurels (what laurels I can actually claim as mine) sounds nice from time to time.

The one way I keep rationalizing sitting on top of this pyramid is that I believe that others are creating pyramids of their own and I am on the bottom of theirs. Hopefully, they are not relying on a foundation (me) that will crumble, just as my pyramid may crumble at any moment.

I cannot be the oracle or the prognosticator of everything in my field of vision, whether that is startups, technology, or education. These things are fluid and, in the grand scheme of things, I know nothing about them. While I may be able to rely on others to let me do my job, I cannot exist without them. And, I need to. At least to the point of making sure that I have earned the respect I have been given, that I can cite my own experience rather than someone else’s as proof that I know what I am talking about.

So, here is the deal:

Call my bluff. Please. Tell me that I don’t know anything and make me look like a fool. Show me just how little I have done and how much I have to learn. I need that. I need to not be an expert for a while. I need to just be mentored and molded. I need someone to ask me questions for a change. And I need to not take those questions as an invitation to garner respect because of the answers I come up with. If you do this for me, I promise I will do it for you as well.

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Question 89 of 365: What's on the table?

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Interactive LED Dining table
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In discussions about change, the expectation is that some things are negotiable and others are not. There is a kind of understood language for those things that are sacred, and therefore off the table. We give them a preferred nomenclature, using words like standards or givens. These assumptions within any given change are ones that single-handedly deny compromise. They are responsible for strikes, mass-firings, and even riots given the right set of circumstances. They are what is universally known to be off the table.

But, the table is big enough to hold everything. We just seem to like cutting it short and using only part of it to hold meetings. It is like we huddle together at the head of a big board room and ignore all of the space that we could have if we acknowledged it existed.

In writing about radical use, I advocated for taking the everyday objects and ideas and figuring out ways to reorganize and utilize them to greater and more interesting effect. I would like to make the case now for putting everything on the table once more.

We should not remove things because they are too hard to discuss or they would disrupt all other negotiations. We should not remove things because they would take to long to sort out or too many people are invested in them the way that they currently exist. Everything should be laid out and explored. Everything should be debated. Now, we may come up with similar conclusions, but the only way to be truly sure that you have made the right decision is to continue to affirm it.

So, what’s on the table?

  • Childhood
  • Relationship
  • Hierarchy
  • Memory
  • Privacy
  • Ownership
  • Health
  • Religion

There should be no givens on these topics. No free passes to any groups that find themselves at odds over the particulars. I want free and open questions to be raised as to the validity of a particular viewpoint. I want to put it all out on the table and manipulate just how important and prevalent each element is. I want to question the value of starting and stopping childhood at a certain age. I want to consider outsourcing our memory to objects and metadata on a machine. I want to discuss just how private each of us needs to be if we could trust that everyone else shares the same privacy.

I want data to support what stays on the table and what comes off. I want a Microsoft Pivot-like interface on the table so that we could measure the effects of each proposal.

And why is this so important?

Because our assumptions have led us down the wrong path too many times. Believing that things were off the table have led us to compromise just how much we can get done. If we know that change is only available for the few things that we comfortably admit are broken, then change is nothing more than an illusion.

And I want it to be real. I want to touch it and see it and talk about it. I want to notice that things are getting better all of the time because we have had the tough conversations and made the difficult concessions. If we had an interface for putting everything on the table, I think that more people would inevitably no longer fear what they have committed to. They could look at their own truth, and iterate into what makes sense for who they are right now and what place they inhabit.

What’s on the table? Everything.

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Question 88 of 365: What are we worth?

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We are never so crass as to boil down a person to a dollar amount. To do that would be to establish the idea that a person could be purchased, rented, or otherwise commodified. And, we don’t do that.

Instead, we valuate ideas. We put a price tag on companies and contributions. We create elaborate systems for payment by the hour or contracts that seemingly stretch on forever and bind us to a given bank account in perpetuity.

Even then, we are a little squeamish about what we are worth. Everything is a negotiation about where the scales should actually end up. We press down hard with our thumbs on one side sometimes and other times we lift up that side just to show how fair we can really be.

So, what if someone was going to invest in You? What if they said that you needed to look at your own projections for the next 10 years and come up with a number of just how much your ideas and contributions are going to be worth. Then, they were going to buy a percentage stake in you and give you a term sheet for their rate of return.

Would that make us more comfortable with the process of figuring out what our first round of funding should really look like?

Many times we obfuscate our worth by eschewing a simple cash valuation of what we have to offer. Now, I am not referring to net worth or liquidity, but rather taking a good hard look at all that I have created and the things we are yet to create. We could easily make projections of this kind and garner support in the form of investors. But we don’t, at least not in any systematic way.

We ask people to invest in us as social beings. We ask others to work with us to raise buy-in capital. We even seem to be quite adept at establishing worth in salaries and benefits. But, many of us would not equate our salary with our worth.

So, perhaps there is another way to determine our worth, while still preserving the sense that we cannot possibly know how much a human is capable (in a monetary sense). What if everyone took the time to valuate their best idea (and keep on assessing it over time)? What if we all could pitch this idea to those with deep pockets and ask for investment? What if we got that investment and actually put that money toward making that idea come true? What if we didn’t hide behind being a non-profit, public, or altruistic institution (or even a business with overly optimistic projections), but put the ideas out to be bid on and get provide real dividends to anyone willing to participate.

So, I guess I will put this out there as is:

I believe my best idea is worth $550,000. I am looking for a $250,000 of further investment. Anyone interested?

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