Jay Gillette

Blogospherical.

Greetings from the blogosphere.

I'm on the road, but the Internet lets you access the world wide information network from all over the planet. I've been thinking about the new term "blogosphere." I've focused before on the "blog" part of the term. (Tom Peters calls this the Year of the Blog.)

Yet now I'm looking at the "sphere" part of the term. This is influenced by a book I recommend: Being Spherical: Reshaping Our Lives and Our World for the 21st Century by Phil Lawson and Robert L. Lindstrom.

The essence of the book is that the way we think shapes the way we see the world and everything about it. For a long time a mechanistic worldview has come from the industrial era's thinking. The authors characterize that as square thinking. Now they suggest that we think in more spherical terms, that we replace our being square with being spherical.

Here's their website for the book: http://www.seethesphere.com/

On Mozilla Firefox by Prof. Randall Stross (NY Times Digital Domain)

Here's a link to Prof. Randall Stross "The Fox Is in Microsoft's Henhouse (and Salivating)", on Mozilla Firefox.  It's the free, open-source Internet browser that was made available 09 November 2004. 

See the weblog entry I did on this on 29 November 2004, "The Leader as Empiricist--Mozilla Firefox Browser 1.0--Give it a try."

Firefox has already captured 5% of the browser market, and is affecting Microsoft Internet Explorer's market share, which has dropped below 89%--from over 95% share just a few months ago.

Prof. Stross is a historian, and lately has specialized in analysis of information and communication technologies and the business culture of California's Silicon Valley (which is essentially the Santa Clara Valley). Stross teaches at San Jose State University there. San Jose is the largest city in the Santa Clara Valley.

Prof. Stross is also a historian of China. I taught in the same department with him at the Colorado School of Mines, in the Paleozoic Era. His New York Times material now can be found by searching the nytimes.com website and searching "Digital Domain" in quotes in their search box.

Mozilla Firefox is significant Internet geek news. Stayed tuned.

Geek & Wonk Surf Alert: Information Industry Wave--China's telephone and Internet subscriber numbers

Mr. Wang Xudong (2004), Minister of China's Ministry of Information Industry(MII):

"Since China started its reforms and opened up to the outside world, tremendous progress has been made in its information industry.

By July this year, the number of telephone subscribers in China has exceeded 600,000,000, among which fixed telephone subscribers occupy 299,000,000 while mobile subscribers 310,000,000, whose respective penetration rates are 22.9% and 23.7%.

Such a subscriber scale ranks No. 1 in the world. The number of Internet subscribers in China has reached 87,000,000, ranking No. 2 in the world."

         [Internet source is here < PTC Mid-year Seminar 2004]

This amazing set of numbers comes from Mr. Wang's opening speech at the Pacific Telecommunications Council Mid-year Seminar 2004.

FAITS in play--and thoughts on professional duty: we're either on the bus or we're off it.

Colleagues, the FAITS database decision is imminent.

For background, see my post of 08 December 2004:

Reminder to Evaluate FAITS Database; and You can still Use FACCTS Database till end of December 2004

Even though the free viewing period period for FAITS closed last Friday, 10 December 2004, you can and still should post your comments on FAITS to your ICS 602 Weblog--the library staff is culling FAITS comments from the weblogs for their meeting on the database later this week.

Even if you didn't get to FAITS during the viewing period, your input can still be viable in the following way. Go to the FACCTS database now via the university library website.

Evaluate the usefulness of FACCTS for your Information and Communication Sciences research and professional activity. Compare and contrast especially with consumer-grade database resources like Google.

Since FAITS is a smaller version of FACCTS, this will give you a sense of what FAITS can represent for your work. Last year's Human Factors Institute researchers recommended FAITS among the options they studied (which included Google and other paid and free resources). That is why we have the option to consider today.

This exercise in database analysis serves us in two ways: first, it assists the library and CICS administration as end-user input to a real decision they have to make.

Second, it involves everyone in everything, as Tom Peters suggests in Thriving on Chaos (1987), chapter P-1, (pp. 342-355). For Tom Peters, this is a guiding premise of "Achieving Flexibility by Empowering People."

Many young people and worker-level people complain when they are not including in decision-making. It's an easy complaint to make, especially after the decision has been made. They communicate powerlessness, or a sense of not having any adult or real power.

Yet like democracy itself, power in theory means taking responsibility for taking action in practice. You have to do power to have power. And it turns out that doing power looks a lot like doing your duty.

Mark Twain says "Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."

So take some time to help yourself, help the Bracken library at Ball State University, help CICS, and help the profession. Check out the professional databases we need to evaluate and choose. Post your knowledge-value-added (KVA) information.

As usual, as Ken Kesey puts it--you're either on the bus or you're off it. Our FAITS are in our hands.

Reporter's Desktop--good Knowledge Worker's tool

Reporter's Desktop by Duff Wilson

Reporter's Desktop (RD). Great researcher and writer resource!

Here's URL in case of missing links: http://www.reporter.org/desktop/

My Internet source in finding this was an update to the fine New York Times CyberTimes Navigator.

I posted on the New York Times Navigator resource here.

Knowledge Workers and Knowledge Managers need tools like Reporter's Desktop.

We owe Duff Wilson our thanks. He gives the background for his free information work here.

I like this excerpt from the background piece:

"The RD is offered here for the good of the greater community of journalists.

At an investigative reporters' conference in Phoenix, somebody asked me suspiciously, 'What's in this for you?'  So cynical!  I get nothing but the best web page I can design to launch my own work, and the pleasure of trying to keep up with the best reporting tools on the web."

Do good work.

Reminder to Evaluate FAITS Database; and You can still Use FACCTS Database till end of December 2004

Colleagues, recall our task to evaluate the database called FAITS [Faulkner's Advisory for IT Studies] found at the link below:

FAITS Database [username=ballstate; ask a colleague or Dr. Gillette for password if you don't have it].

Trial period ends Friday 10 December 2004.

The outcome will be to recommend whether Bracken Library and CICS should purchase the subscription. Cost/benefit analysis will be made by the respective adminstrative managers. CICS researchers should determine relevance to CICS graduate study and Center interests.

Good posts have already been made on this topic by Adam Harrington and Jason Houser. Their posts are good models, that will help the adminstrators make their decision.

Recall the FAITS Database trial is to test for a replacement for the FACCTS Database. [Faulkner's Advisory on Computer and Communications Technologies] is a great, professional-level database for us, but the subscription cost has become prohibitive.

We still have use of FACCTS through December 2004, according to my understanding.

This is a good resource for your research now, and might keep your ICS mind in the groove during the holiday break. You can bring FACCTS up on your computer when you want to get rid of that pesky relative or friend who wants to use your machine for a game. Or as an alternative window to maximize when some pesky relative or friend walks in when you're using your machine for a game.

Reminders: 

Drop Dead Date for FAITS review = Friday 10 December 2004.

We'll make Due Date for weblog post of your evaluation = 18 December 2004. 

Happy Trials to You, JEG

Reminder to Evaluate FAITS Database; and You can still Use FACCTS Database till end of December 2004

Colleagues, recall our task to evaluate the database called FAITS [Faulkner's Advisory for IT Studies] found at the link below:

FAITS Database [username=ballstate; ask a colleague or Dr. Gillette for password if you don't have it].

Trial period ends Friday 10 December 2004.

The outcome will be to recommend whether Bracken Library and CICS should purchase the subscription. Cost/benefit analysis will be made by the respective adminstrative managers. CICS researchers should determine relevance to CICS graduate study and Center interests.

Good posts have already been made on this topic by Adam Harrington and Jason Houser. Their posts are good models, that will help the adminstrators make their decision.

Recall the FAITS Database trial is to test for a replacement for the FACCTS Database. [Faulkner's Advisory on Computer and Communications Technologies] is a great, professional-level database for us, but the subscription cost has become prohibitive.

We still have use of FACCTS through December 2004, according to my understanding.

This is a good resource for your research now, and might keep your ICS mind in the groove during the holiday break. You can bring FACCTS up on your computer when you want to get rid of that pesky relative or friend who wants to use your machine for a game. Or as an alternative window to maximize when some pesky relative or friend walks in when you're using your machine for a game.

Reminders: 

Drop Dead Date for FAITS review = Friday 10 December 2004.

We'll make Due Date for weblog post of your evaluation = 18 December 2004. 

Happy Trials to You, JEG

One of top 25 emailed articles from New York Times--What Corporate America Can't Build: A Sentence

December 7, 2004

What Corporate America Can't Build: A Sentence

LOOMINGTON, Ill. - R. Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an online school for business writing here, received an anguished e-mail message recently from a prospective student.

"i need help," said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. "i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you".

Hundreds of inquiries from managers and executives seeking to improve their own or their workers' writing pop into Dr. Hogan's computer in-basket each month, he says, describing a number that has surged as e-mail has replaced the phone for much workplace communication. Millions of employees must write more frequently on the job than previously. And many are making a hash of it.

"E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited," Dr. Hogan said. "It has companies tearing their hair out."

A recent survey of 120 American corporations reached a similar conclusion. The study, by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.

The problem shows up not only in e-mail but also in reports and other texts, the commission said.

"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy," said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study. "But they need people who can write clearly, and many employees and applicants fall short of that standard."

Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers by setting off requests for clarification, and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion.

Here is one from a systems analyst to her supervisor at a high-tech corporation based in Palo Alto, Calif.: "I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."

The incoherence of that message persuaded the analyst's employers that she needed remedial training.

"The more electronic and global we get, the less important the spoken word has become, and in e-mail clarity is critical," said Sean Phillips, recruitment director at another Silicon Valley corporation, Applera, a supplier of equipment for life science research, where most employees have advanced degrees. "Considering how highly educated our people are, many can't write clearly in their day-to-day work."

Some $2.9 billion of the $3.1 billion the National Commission on Writing estimates that corporations spend each year on remedial training goes to help current employees, with the rest spent on new hires. The corporations surveyed were in the mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, finance, insurance, real estate and service industries, but not in wholesale, retail, agriculture, forestry or fishing, the commission said. Nor did the estimate include spending by government agencies to improve the writing of public servants.

An entire educational industry has developed to offer remedial writing instruction to adults, with hundreds of public and private universities, for-profit schools and freelance teachers offering evening classes as well as workshops, video and online courses in business and technical writing.

Kathy Keenan, a onetime legal proofreader who teaches business writing at the University of California Extension, Santa Cruz, said she sought to dissuade students from sending business messages in the crude shorthand they learned to tap out on their pagers as teenagers.

"hI KATHY i am sending u the assignmnet again," one student wrote to her recently. "i had sent you the assignment earlier but i didnt get a respond. If u get this assgnment could u please respond . thanking u for ur cooperation."

Most of her students are midcareer professionals in high-tech industries, Ms. Keenan said.

The Sharonview Federal Credit Union in Charlotte, N.C., asked about 15 employees to take a remedial writing course. Angela Tate, a mortgage processor, said the course eventually bolstered her confidence in composing e-mail, which has replaced much work she previously did by phone, but it was a daunting experience, since she had been out of school for years. "It was a challenge all the way through," Ms. Tate said.

Even C.E.O.'s need writing help, said Roger S. Peterson, a freelance writer in Rocklin, Calif., who frequently coaches executives. "Many of these guys write in inflated language that desperately needs a laxative," Mr. Peterson said, and not a few are defensive. "They're in denial, and who's going to argue with the boss?"

But some realize their shortcomings and pay Mr. Peterson to help them improve. Don Morrison, a onetime auditor at Deloitte & Touche who has built a successful consulting business, is among them.

"I was too wordy," Mr. Morrison said. "I liked long, convoluted passages rather than simple four-word sentences. And I had a predilection for underlining words and throwing in multiple exclamation points. Finally Roger threatened to rip the exclamation key off my keyboard."

Exclamation points were an issue when Linda Landis Andrews, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, led a workshop in May for midcareer executives at an automotive corporation based in the Midwest. Their exasperated supervisor had insisted that the men improve their writing.

"I get a memo from them and cannot figure out what they're trying to say," the supervisor wrote Ms. Andrews.

When at her request the executives produced letters they had written to a supplier who had failed to deliver parts on time, she was horrified to see that tone-deaf writing had turned a minor business snarl into a corporate confrontation moving toward litigation.

"They had allowed a hostile tone to creep into the letters," she said. "They didn't seem to understand that those letters were just toxic."

"People think that throwing multiple exclamation points into a business letter will make their point forcefully," Ms. Andrews said. "I tell them they're allowed two exclamation points in their whole life."

Not everyone agrees. Kaitlin Duck Sherwood of San Francisco, author of a popular how-to manual on effective e-mail, argued in an interview that exclamation points could help convey intonation, thereby avoiding confusion in some e-mail.

"If you want to indicate stronger emphasis, use all capital letters and toss in some extra exclamation points," Ms. Sherwood advises in her guide, available at www.webfoot.com, where she offers a vivid example:

">Should I boost the power on the thrombo?

"NO!!!! If you turn it up to eleven, you'll overheat the motors, and IT MIGHT EXPLODE!!"

Dr. Hogan, who founded his online Business Writing Center a decade ago after years of teaching composition at Illinois State University here, says that the use of multiple exclamation points and other nonstandard punctuation like the :-) symbol, are fine for personal e-mail but that companies have erred by allowing experimental writing devices to flood into business writing.

He scrolled through his computer, calling up examples of incoherent correspondence sent to him by prospective students.

"E-mails - that are received from Jim and I are not either getting open or not being responded to," the purchasing manager at a construction company in Virginia wrote in one memorandum that Dr. Hogan called to his screen. "I wanted to let everyone know that when Jim and I are sending out e-mails (example- who is to be picking up parcels) I am wanting for who ever the e-mail goes to to respond back to the e-mail. Its important that Jim and I knows that the person, intended, had read the e-mail. This gives an acknowledgment that the task is being completed. I am asking for a simple little 2 sec. Note that says "ok", "I got it", or Alright."

The construction company's human resources director forwarded the memorandum to Dr. Hogan while enrolling the purchasing manager in a writing course.

"E-mail has just erupted like a weed, and instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen," Dr. Hogan said. "It has companies at their wits' end."

Accenture Challenge a Success--Congratulations to All Who Succeeded in Meeting the Challenge

Accenture Challenge took place last week, with the culminating event on Friday 03 December 2004.

Glad to see some reflective thinking being expressed on the CICS weblogs. I thought the event was a good and complete version of the CICS Accenture events I've seen. This comment is to give a sense of perspective to the master's candidates who participated this year.

It was good to see some of the veteran candidates and alumni attend as spectators. I'd like to see that as a growing custom in the Center for Information and Communication Sciences. That would assist the Center in making the Accenture Challenge go beyond a class assignment "with benefits." The veterans I saw in attendance were Joel Patrick, Donna Penticuff and Matt Smith. If I've missed anybody or made an error, I apologize, and ask that you add the information in a Comment to this weblog entry.

I was proud of all the teams. I saw a lot of good presentation technique, and good teamwork overall. The geeks took a fair amount of incoming pretty well. Congratulations to all who contributed to the success of the 2004 Accenture Challenge--it was the Center in action at its best.

JEG