Writing for the web

I vastly prefer informal writing styles for the web. And, thus "internet" and and "email" over "Internet" and "e-mail."

This is a post from Wired News from back in 2004, where they say they will no longer capitalize "internet".  http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/08/64596

Quote:

In the case of internet, web and net, a change in our house style was necessary to put into perspective what the internet is: another medium for delivering and receiving information. That it transformed human communication is beyond dispute. But no more so than moveable type did in its day. Or the radio. Or television.

Clap clap.

The CBC had a similar posting in 2003. http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/words/internet_i.html

Quote:

The language we speak and write is constantly evolving. Almost 100 years ago, the first edition of what's now known as Strunk and White's The Elements of Style insisted on to-day, to-night and to-morrow. Much of the book's general advice on clear writing remains relevant. But its specific edicts on how to spell certain words were abandoned decades ago.

More blogging advice

Nora Carr's column in the June 2008 eSchool News added some more blogging tips:

• write about topics you care about and feel passionate about


• good blogs have a viewpoint and a voice


• use an informal "Dear Mom" approach to your posts


• keep postings short and link to other articles or sites


• subheads, bullets, one-sentence paragraphs and other graphic organizers can help readers skim your contents


• craft titles with care; often users may only read the titles to decide if they want to read the entire posting


• post regularly

Change

In an article on global climate change in the June 2008 issue of Wired, the comment was made:

Markets are better mechanisms for change than command and control.

I think that point is a good one to remember in all sorts of arenas. And, there's got to be a lesson in there for managing technology change, too.

More tips on blogging for newbies

Nora Carr wrote about some tips for blogging for newbies in the May 2008 issues of eSchool News.

1. Write for an audience, not yourself.


2. Don't blog anything you don't want our mother, your principal, or school superintendent to know.


3. Provide information about yourself.


4. Start with a blog service.


5. Less copy, more often.

Flow, or the psychological conditions of enjoyment

Years ago (1992?) I heard a lecture on Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's concept of "Flow" -- the conditions under which people are happy and productive.  Some of those conditions were:

1. person given a chance to complete the task


2.  person given the opportunity to concentrate on the task w/out distractions


3. task has clear goals, clearly presented to the person


4. the task provides immediate feedback


5. the person's involvement is deep, but effortless


6. the person has a sense of being in control


7. the concern for the self disappears (but when the task/job is finished, the sense of self is enhanced or raised)


8. the sense of time duration is altered (time slip away)

Flow has also been described as being "in the groove" or "in the zone."

Crucial is the balance between the work/task/job (the challenge) and the skills/progress of the person (the success).  There should be a challenge, but one that is met.  There should be obstacles, but ones that are overcome.

When a person works in that "sweet spot" -- the balance between the challenge and the success -- his/her sense of enjoyment and satisfaction is maximized.

Innovation at work

The March 2008 issue of Fast Company wrote about the most innovative companies in the world. A few quote caught my attention.

On page 74:

When you visit the Gooleplex in Mountain View, California, what's special is elusive. The company looks like the standard-issue, Wii-in-the-lounge, hieroglyphs-on-a-whiteboard, code-until-dawn tech shop. But the difference isn't tangible. It's in the air, in the spirit of the place.

Talk to more than a dozen Googlers at various levels and departments, and one powerful theme emerges: Whether they're designing search for the blind or preparing meals for their colleagues, these people feel that their work can change the world. That sense is nonexistent at most companies, or at best intermittent, inevitably becoming subsumed in the day-to-day quagmire of PowerPoints, org charts, and budgetary realities.

I don't think you always need to feel you are "changing the world," but you do need to feel that you are making a difference. Not just killing the hours or maintaining status quo, but building something better.

On page 84:

Google has a high tolerance for chaos and ambiguity.

From the online version of the article:

A PAYCHECK IS A LOUSY MANAGEMENT TOOL

"There's an old Peter Drucker line that goes, 'If you ever really want to learn how to be a manager, go work with volunteers.' Because when you manage volunteers, you realize that the paycheck is actually a lousy management tool. It has almost nothing to do with how you manage and motivate and organize and excite people. It can become a crutch, right? And in that sense, not in the financial sense, but in the 'build something great, change the world' sense, everyone at Google is a volunteer. So the trick in managing volunteers is get out of the way and clear the underbrush."

IMPOSSIBLE TO DUPLICATE

"You could not replicate this with a different set of people. There are management practices here that would break with different staffs, and vice versa; there's not one way to do it. We have a matched set of hiring and operations that go together. 'Culture' is a fine word for all that."

On page 85:

My impression early on was, 'Wow, you hire a guy who's an expert in food and let him run with it! You don't get in his way or micromanage.' After a year or so, I realized this is the way everything works here.

We came up with a values system. We said we want local. Then it was local, fresh, and sustainable. Then it was local, fresh, sustainable, and organic. We don't want genetically modified organisms or nitrates. We're the first company to go global with cage-free eggs.

Blogs, Women, and Science

Blogs, Women, and Science presentation by Annalee Newitz.

http://www.fairerscience.org/pages2/annalee_2_0.html

This blog retired; see new blog at NJIT

I am no longer blogging to this account. You can find my new blog at NJIT's WordPress MU installation at https://blogs.njit.edu/robertso

Update:  I left NJIT in 2011 and transferred my posts back over to this blog!  (Feb 2012)

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Here's a great talk by the always compelling Clay Shirky.

One of the key concepts I took away from it was this quote from Clay:

Every URL is a latent community. Which is to say: in addition to the value of having an individual being exposed to a resource that's available on the internet, there's additional value to be gotten by introducing those users to one another.

Bloggins tips from NY Times article

Here are some tips on blogging distilled from a NY Times article from March 20, 2008.

Tips:

1. Write about what you want to write about, in your own voice. Blog about your passions. Don’t blog about what you think your audience wants. Post because you have something you are dying to write about.

2. Fit blogging into the holes in your schedule. Blog is best handled by inserting it into the small bits of free time that rest among the bigger chunks of your work -- between classes, as a break, and during slow time at home.

3. Just post it already! Resist the urge to polish your blog posts. Don’t bottle up your ideas forever believing you have to hit a mature, complete, perfect point. Glogs are always in progress.

4. Keep a regular rhythm. Bloggers disagree on how often they should post -- some post several times a day; others will go a week without a post. What matters is that you establish a reliable rhythm for readers.

5. Llinking to other bloggers is the best way to get them to link to you. Links from other bloggers increase your readership two ways: they send readers directly from other sites, and they raise your ranking in search engine results.

6. Allowing readers to post comments on your blog not only increases readership, it provides a sense of live interaction with the rest of the world. But beware: the insulting comment is an Internet art form.

Blogs rolling along

We're starting to launch blogs now. I've been working with groups such as:

• Engineers Without Borders


• Connections Miniversity


• Murray Women's Center Ambassadors


• Green @ NJIT


• CCS Dean


• TLT (Teaching, Learning, and Technology)

Total soccer

Reading an article about DayJet, a new air-taxi service, I was struck by this description of total soccer. I'm a huge soccer fan and have known about the legendary Dutch teams of the 1970's for many years, but I'd never seen total soccer described so eloquently, let alone in a non-soccer context.

Herriot offers another sports metaphor: "Total soccer," popularized by the Dutch in the 1970s, replaced brute-force attacks to the goal with continuous ball movement. "Moving straight to the goal is an excellent way to score, except for one slight problem--the other team," Herriot says. "They're a human version of Murphy's Law. In total soccer, you continually place the ball in a position with not the straightest but the greatest number of ways to reach the goal, the richest set of pathways."

"Each individual pathway may have a lower possibility of reaching the goal than a straight shot," Sawhill chimes in, "but the combinatorial multiplicity overwhelms the other team." The Dutch discovered that a better strategy was a series of good, seamlessly connected solutions rather than a single brittle one.

"The Dutch won a lot of games that way," Herriot adds. "It also created a different kind of player, a more agile, intelligent one. In some sense, we're teaching DayJet how to play total soccer."

In complexity lingo, a chart of all the pathways those Dutch teams exploited would be called a "fitness landscape," a sort of topographical map of every theoretical solution in which the best are visualized as peaks and the worst as deep valleys. "We're dealing with a problem where the problem specification itself is changing as you go along," Sawhill says. "You no longer want to find the best solution--you want to be living in a space of good solutions, so when the problem changes, you're still there." Fluidity is the greater goal than perfection.

I mean, obviously they are describing a "possession game" but the image of the soccer pitch as a topographical map is a very interesting one.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/115/open_features-flight-plan.html

Authenticity

Another good article in the May 2007 issue of Fast Company magazine on the appeal and risk of authenticity.

Under "What does it take to be authentic?" they wrote:

1. A sense of place


2. A strong point of view


3. Serving a larger purpose


4. Integrity

Update from June 2007:

A letter in the next issue (Jul/Aug 2007) not confusing a brand's "gesture" with its "raison d'etre."  The example given was for Abercrombie & Fitch.  If their mission is to make the most extraordinary gear for the most fascinating people when they do the most interesting things, then its gesture can evolve from making hunting gear for aristocrats who go on safari in Africa to surf wear for college coeds who go to Costa Rica for spring break.

Brand manager

The May 2007 issue of Wired magazine featured a story on Tim Kring, the creator of the TV series Heroes. Here's a quote:

A modern TV creator also has to think outside of the boobtube. "When I pitched Heroes, I knew an important element to getting on air was how it can incorporate the Internet," he says. "I'm sort of a student of television, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that things are changing quickly. Production costs are going up. We're losing eyeballs. We have to reach people in other ways."

Which is why Heroes has recently introduced a female character who can physically interface with the Web. She's already a featured character in the tie-in webcomic, and she guides fans through an alternate-reality game, giving them codes so they can hunt for clues on MySpace pages and blogs purportedly written by the characters. (Kring and his team of superfriends have also set up 9thwonders.com, a site with illustrations, interviews, and message boards where fans can gather to dissect the previous week's episode.) "My job has changed from being in the writing and editing room," Kring says, with some surprise, "to managing a brand." Not bad for a guy who used to write dialog for a talking car.

Interesting that this TV show creator sees his job as a "brand manager" that cuts across platforms beyond TV -- MySpace, blogs, specialty websites, etc.

Quote on "aboutness" and tagging

"Things aren't about what they're about. "Aboutness" is also contextual and ambiguous. For example, if my blog entry on the JFK assassination links to the 1962 Sears catalog from which Oswald bought his rifle, the author of that catalog will not have labeled it as being about the JFK shooting. And if a scientist publishes a paper about a new polymer, she may in passing reject some closely related compound because it's too sticky -- but that may be exactly what you're looking for. So, for you the article is about what the author tosses away in a footnote. Not to mention that in much of the best writing, about-ness is an emergent property. So, while the author's intentions are an important clue, aboutness is ambiguous. Systems that too easily categorize and classify based upon a univocal idea of aboutness do violence to their topic."
-- David Weinberger at www.hyperorg.com/misc/unspokengroups.html

Quote about publishing

"As the internet and all its variant technologies become a bigger and bigger part of our lives, the comoditization of content will only increase. A blogger holding forth on the merits of his favorite brew has access to the same worldwide audience as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author ... As a publisher, our strength and our future lie in partnering with the best scholars ... making their work more accessible, meaningful, and useful ... We're no longer in the business of amassing content--quantity isn't the issues ... We will all be moving away from a just-in-case content development approach (it's all in there) to just-in-time, 100 percent relevant reference delivery."

--Ron Boehm, President & CEO, ABC-CLIO

As quoted by Cheryl LaGuardia in her e-Views and Reviews column (p. 26) in the May 15, 2005, issue of Library Journal (see www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA601030.html).

Recommended article -- Opening up OpenURLs with Autodiscovery

I'm recommending a very good article in the April 2005 issue of Ariadne -- Opening up OpenURL with Autodiscovery by Chudnov, et al.

Read it at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue43/chudnov/

Craigslist

Interesting quote from an article about Craigslist in the Jan 16, 2006, New York magazine:

During the transit strike, Scott Anderson, a blogger for the Tribune Company, noticed with sadness that the ride-share space on Newsday.com, a Tribune holding, was empty while Craigslist was going crazy with offers. “Yet another crisis and Craigslist commands the community,” he wrote. “How come Craig organically can touch lives on so many personal levels—and Craig’s users can touch each other’s lives on so many levels? It’s just frustrating that even when we [newspapers] try, we more often than not find we are absolutely losing what may be one of the most important parts of the business as it more and more moves online—the ability to connect people to one another and to activate conversations. To not just be the deliverer of news and information . . . but the catalyst of connection.”

Some of this could apply to libraries, too. Libraries are too slow to respond to its users' needs and changing expectations. So, they go elsewhere. Libraries used to be physical places for interaction and conversation. Now that our users have gone online, they have become "invisible users" and libraries have lost some of that "community" and "catalyst" role. Librarians have not built or provided similar virtual space.

BTW, the full article is at http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/media/internet/15500/index.html

Tightly-coupled systems

Loosely-coupled systems is a concept in which I am interested. I recently read a good counter example of a tightly-coupled system that I want to remember for illustrative means. The scheduling of airline flights. Some quotes:

"In a less efficient era, the waste of simple back-and-forth scheduling might have meant an extra aircraft or two just waiting idly, costing the airline money, but luckily available to fill in for the out-of-service DC-10. Now, with scheduling approachign perfection, less than 2 percent of American's fleet lies fallow at any given moment. So the nearest replacement plane happens to be in Dallas. A crew must fly it to Chicago."

"The paradox of efficiency means taht as the web tightens it grows more vulnerable to small disturbances -- disruptions and delays that can cascade through the system for days."

"Networks like this are said to be tightly coupled. A complex construction project with a timeline scheduled with perfect efficiency, all the slack squeezed out of it, may be tightly coupled and a candidate for serious disruption."

"Charles Perrow, in his study Normal accidents, extended the concept to complex systems where the coupling connects not physical parts but abstract services, people, and organizations. 'Looselyl coupled systems, whether for good or ill, can incorporate shocks and failures and pressures for change without destabilization,' he notes. 'Tightly coupled systems will respond more quickly to these perturbations, but the response may be disastrous.'

Gleick, James. Faster: the acceleration of just about everything. Pantheon Books, New York, 1999, pp. 219, 223, 224.

Quote about technology to socialize

"Net Geners use technology extensively to network and socialize. In their personal lives, buddy lists, virtual communities, and social networks such as Flickr or Orkut are heavily used. 'When we poll users about what they actually do with their computers, some form of social interaction always tops the list -- conversation, collaboration, playing games, and so on. The practice of software design is shot through with computers-as-box assumptions, while our actual behavior is closer to computer-as-door, treating the device as an entrance to a social space.'"

Quote from page 2.12 of Chapter 2 (titled Is it age of IT: first steps toward understanding the Net Generation) of Educating the Net Generation by Diana G. Oblinger and James L. Oblinger (editors), 2005 EDUCAUSE (ISBN: 0-9672853-2-1).