Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Our beautiful mind

... or: Like my daddy used to say: "Use your head"
I used it all last month in my tech-troubleshooting sessions:
This nice TED Talk about babies and learning is very informative.  Most interesting to me is the part where a cute 4 year old boy, goes thru problem solving very naturally.  What is it that makes grown adults look at a dead monitor and not even want to try moving it around a little, jiggle the cables, try a few things to see what happens.  We all should have this kind of freedom to test out what could work.  Just sayin'.












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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

the years pass but some things stay almost exactly the same.

Ahem,
This is still NOT an authorized blog and in no way shape or form are my employers endorsing any of this.
this statement made on a regular basis since 2005 or 2006 may even be enough to keep me my job should I publish something here that goes viral.

That was the 1st statement in the re-heated post below, followed by my struggles at that time to get staff to share ideas in a blog here at MPOW. 
Again, would you believe that  most of these challenges are still there>  Under different guises but still there, almost the same.   Over 5 years later...


      Monday, April 03, 2006


       dis'-CLAIM-her


Wow,
1st of all, I should reiterate that this is a personal blog. Although it mostly contains work related musings, it is not done in my official capacity. It is not sanctioned by MPOW. Yes, it's true, I am still somewhat a "closet blogger".

See, I am currently trying to get everyone at work to start a staff blog for internal communications. Think librarystuff.
I really thought it would be simpler. Here are a few things that surprised me:

Staff (many) stated their clear disappointment at the thought they would have to user their real names (I thought 1st name only so we know who you are right?). I have also had someone ask me: "so if someone posts something that I judge (her word) inappropriate, and I say so in a comment, will I get flamed for it?" I had to think for a second before reminding her that if she was going to disagree with someone, she had to be ready for others to disagree with her. Now, OK, I get it, I have no idea how difficult it can be for many to speak up since I have never had a problem myself shining a big spotlight on my face, even as I was inserting my big foot in my own mouth often times.

On the other hand, powers that be's 1st idea regarding a staff blog is to "establish standard naming conventions that should include your first name/your department" ... Bless their hearth. As much as I repeated to them over and over that what would be mostly required of them would be to "let go".

I know, I should have known all this was coming, right. Am I kidding myself that it is not unfair to ask folks to identify themselves here? It was not my idea but I don't see it as such a big deal. I just thought this should be about real people discussing real issues hoping to take real actions in the end... And with management, I know, I know, there is an innate need to organize and arrange everything in our business... Hopefully, the discussions will be light enough in the beginning to help everyone relax. Most of our efforts about this work blog has yet been spent on what to name it and what to use for names for participants. I have now spent a lot of my time campaigning to re-focus energies on the PURPOSE of this blog, the BENEFITS for all etc...Let's all talk about "Radical Trust".

So here we go, now we will see how it goes, and I have to divide my posts between here and there, hopefully to soon have the ability to link here from there. My voice is really starting to carry out of the closet anyway.




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