This will be brief, but I am reminded why I was taught to include a searchable alternative to any lengthy collection of text I put on the Internet. We break things up to be easier to read and to make better use of screen real estate. However, I'm going through some research on the Internet for a paper, and I know I saw an article that said something about IBM. However, most publishers paginate the information, limiting the effectiveness of my trusty Ctrl+F habits.
Alternative: continue publishing great information, but also include a link to an ugly long-text version so I can search it.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
I want to be epic. Let's be epic
This past weekend was wonderful because I did close to nothing but meet with remarkable people and play music.
As school is wrapping up, the Raikes School had their corporate board meeting. I serve as a student representative on the board, so somehow that justified inviting me to a lot of the proceedings and I have to say I had a wonderful time. In my mind, it is really cool to see fascinating, intelligent, and successful people take interest in the progress of a small school in Lincoln, NE. In the back of my mind, I hear the voices of most Lincoln residents who would label us as elitist or something comparable. However, I am proud to say I was counted among people committed to ensuring the success of a generation emerging from higher education and into the workforce.
Most of the meeting was focused around various goals we have achieved over the last year and goals we should have for the future. Without spilling too much of the details, I am proud to see the leaders of the school pushing the group of students in the right direction.
Friday evening, my senior class was invited to the home of Jeff Raikes. First off: what a beautiful home he had. Often I discount Nebraska or the Midwest for having nothing other than flat and uninspiring landscapes. I was blown away by that spot outside of Ashland, NE. Superficial beauty aside, I was so impressed with the conversations I got to have with some of the more noteworthy guests there. I came away from the dinner inspired to do big things like what these people were doing with their lives. Jeff's involvement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the comments of others at my table for dinner reminded me that success means more than making a lot of money. I saw so much passion for each person's work at the table. I saw a passion for using one's talents and gifts to make the world a better place. I was somewhat starstruck, but perhaps it was the wine.
We also had a benefit concert on Saturday put on by various people within the worship team at church. That was pretty awesome as well, and I actually had a good time playing and singing for a crowd. I actually hadn't done that before. I have the recordings and I still maintain my overly self-critical positions, but I'm happy regardless. We surpassed all goals we had set for the semester and the event pushed us past $6,000 raised by a college group. I am thrilled.
If you'd like to read more about the causes we supported, you should check them out here.
Church on Sunday was beyond amazing. I haven't felt that honored to be a part of something in a long time, and I had an absolute blast playing guitar with the worship team. It was a bittersweet feeling knowing it would be the last time I would play there as a regular member of our team. However, seeing how God was glorified with our service that morning subdued any feelings of sadness I could have had. How can one be sad when such amazing things are happening in that group?
So, if there was one way I could sum up the last few days, I'd just have to say it was "epic." It was a weekend full of experiences that just blew me away with how much we are capable of doing with honorable work, passion and commitment.
This post originally started with me wanting to share a song. I've been listening to this about nonstop since last week. There's just something about the way Manchester Orchestra writes raw emotion into a song. I'm still picking through the lyrics and trying to glean some kind of meaning or significance from the song. Yet, I still just feel blown away every time I put a decent pair of headphones on and let the music envelop me for 6 minutes.
I've embedded the song, and hopefully Grooveshark cooperates, but the combination of all these experiences lately really makes me want be epic. I want to do something significant with my life. I want my life and my work to be used for something greater. I want the music I write to move people and to mean something.
Perhaps these are lofty goals. Yet, I'm at a major turning point in my life. I spent most of today working with the various moving companies to put dates to my final days in Nebraska. My desire is that I'd hit Seattle running at full steam and that I'd do something epic with my life. We'll see.
As school is wrapping up, the Raikes School had their corporate board meeting. I serve as a student representative on the board, so somehow that justified inviting me to a lot of the proceedings and I have to say I had a wonderful time. In my mind, it is really cool to see fascinating, intelligent, and successful people take interest in the progress of a small school in Lincoln, NE. In the back of my mind, I hear the voices of most Lincoln residents who would label us as elitist or something comparable. However, I am proud to say I was counted among people committed to ensuring the success of a generation emerging from higher education and into the workforce.
Most of the meeting was focused around various goals we have achieved over the last year and goals we should have for the future. Without spilling too much of the details, I am proud to see the leaders of the school pushing the group of students in the right direction.
Friday evening, my senior class was invited to the home of Jeff Raikes. First off: what a beautiful home he had. Often I discount Nebraska or the Midwest for having nothing other than flat and uninspiring landscapes. I was blown away by that spot outside of Ashland, NE. Superficial beauty aside, I was so impressed with the conversations I got to have with some of the more noteworthy guests there. I came away from the dinner inspired to do big things like what these people were doing with their lives. Jeff's involvement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the comments of others at my table for dinner reminded me that success means more than making a lot of money. I saw so much passion for each person's work at the table. I saw a passion for using one's talents and gifts to make the world a better place. I was somewhat starstruck, but perhaps it was the wine.
We also had a benefit concert on Saturday put on by various people within the worship team at church. That was pretty awesome as well, and I actually had a good time playing and singing for a crowd. I actually hadn't done that before. I have the recordings and I still maintain my overly self-critical positions, but I'm happy regardless. We surpassed all goals we had set for the semester and the event pushed us past $6,000 raised by a college group. I am thrilled.
If you'd like to read more about the causes we supported, you should check them out here.
Church on Sunday was beyond amazing. I haven't felt that honored to be a part of something in a long time, and I had an absolute blast playing guitar with the worship team. It was a bittersweet feeling knowing it would be the last time I would play there as a regular member of our team. However, seeing how God was glorified with our service that morning subdued any feelings of sadness I could have had. How can one be sad when such amazing things are happening in that group?
So, if there was one way I could sum up the last few days, I'd just have to say it was "epic." It was a weekend full of experiences that just blew me away with how much we are capable of doing with honorable work, passion and commitment.
This post originally started with me wanting to share a song. I've been listening to this about nonstop since last week. There's just something about the way Manchester Orchestra writes raw emotion into a song. I'm still picking through the lyrics and trying to glean some kind of meaning or significance from the song. Yet, I still just feel blown away every time I put a decent pair of headphones on and let the music envelop me for 6 minutes.
I've embedded the song, and hopefully Grooveshark cooperates, but the combination of all these experiences lately really makes me want be epic. I want to do something significant with my life. I want my life and my work to be used for something greater. I want the music I write to move people and to mean something.
Perhaps these are lofty goals. Yet, I'm at a major turning point in my life. I spent most of today working with the various moving companies to put dates to my final days in Nebraska. My desire is that I'd hit Seattle running at full steam and that I'd do something epic with my life. We'll see.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
A reflection on security
As a technically-minded person, I'd like to think I have a pretty good grasp on Internet security. Well I got rocked today and I didn't realize it until the moment after I hit enter and gave away some information.
I needed to find a good way to generate thumbnails on a series of images for a work assignment. I wanted it to be scriptable so I could jam in a few commands and let my computer do the work. Well I found a good solution on this blog post.
If you go there, you might notice a small pop up stating a Twitter API needs a password. To me, this made sense. I have a few applications to feed the Twitter addiction, and I didn't think twice before dropping my password to make my Twitter plug-ins work again.
This is social engineering at its finest. However, when I think of social engineering, I think of people who are too "stupid" (for lack of a better term) to realize people are playing against that ignorance. I suppose I allowed my arrogance to shove me into complacency.
It was a good reminder to realize the Internet isn't necessarily safe and my confidence in my technical ability was perfect bait.
Now I don't know whether this guy did this intentionally or not. He has some pretty solid information on there that helped me a lot. It could be a third party hijacked his site. Either way, I had to change my password and all other passwords similar to it.
A sobering reminder.
I needed to find a good way to generate thumbnails on a series of images for a work assignment. I wanted it to be scriptable so I could jam in a few commands and let my computer do the work. Well I found a good solution on this blog post.
If you go there, you might notice a small pop up stating a Twitter API needs a password. To me, this made sense. I have a few applications to feed the Twitter addiction, and I didn't think twice before dropping my password to make my Twitter plug-ins work again.
This is social engineering at its finest. However, when I think of social engineering, I think of people who are too "stupid" (for lack of a better term) to realize people are playing against that ignorance. I suppose I allowed my arrogance to shove me into complacency.
It was a good reminder to realize the Internet isn't necessarily safe and my confidence in my technical ability was perfect bait.
Now I don't know whether this guy did this intentionally or not. He has some pretty solid information on there that helped me a lot. It could be a third party hijacked his site. Either way, I had to change my password and all other passwords similar to it.
A sobering reminder.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
On the homestretch
I don't really have anything specific to jot down lately. Perhaps that's why I've avoided posting lately, but I think now might be a good time to dump some filler in here. I'm currently waiting for my computer to update to Ubuntu 9.04, dubbed "Jaunty Jackelope." I'll record my impressions after this is all done with and I've had a chance to evaluate. My end-goal is to reclaim the entirety of my hard drive from a defunct Vista install.
The back-story on that one was I had a dual-booting solution going for a while (you might read my earlier posts to find out more about that adventure). Unfortunately, my Vista set up went down a long time ago after I tried to install SP1. Even more unfortunately, I didn't have the time to stop and fix it because it was during the busier part of first semester. So I've been running entirely on 15 GBs worth of Ubuntu. So yeah, I need to fix this. Anyway, moving on...
This went really well! On Sunday, April 19th, we had just over 200 runners and walkers come out and show their support for People's City Mission and the struggle against homelessness. I was so relieved to see such a good turnout, and it reminded me how wonderful it is to work with people who have their stuff together. Behind the scenes, I think we overcame quite a bit to make this come off. For a first effort, the planning, logistics, recruiting, and turnout came together beautifully.
Right now, things are looking like they'll be doing this event again next year. Sadly, I won't be around to see it. Hopefully my interactions with other kids have inspired them to commit to helping out this time next year. It would be even more wonderful if some people were inspired to help beyond just an afternoon's worth of running.
I had a thought along these lines the other day. I was thinking about our fund raising goals and how much revenue we actually did generate. I thought about the turnout and how I would have liked it to be better. And then I thought about this:
From among the approximately 250 or so people that came out that day, some had a better awareness about the condition of homelessness in Lincoln. From that subset, perhaps some of them began to see how they could contribute and do something about it. Even fewer still may feel accountable to that knowledge and would become passionate about serving their community. If even 5 people came out of this event and committed to volunteering on a regular basis, I would be thrilled and would see it as a victory worth more than any revenue we could generate.
I'll see if I can get some pictures up on this site, but I will be working on putting them up on the Mission's site for sure. Feel free to check them out when they're up.
I've mentioned once or twice that I've been working on a web application that would help the people here at the Mission organize the changes made to the web site. I'm realizing it is more of a specialized project management system where the project is hard coded to be web site maintenance. Hopefully, the differentiating value can be in the in-application file editor that I hope to hook up to the publishing process. I have an idea of how I can make that work, but I need to get the interface done first.
That has been something I've found frustrating about Grails so far. I love the MVC methodology, and I really enjoyed setting things up in Grails. I've been asking myself lately if building from the domain up is the right way to go. I'm realizing now that in doing so, I haven't really made many design considerations regarding the interface or flow through the site. This is a stark contrast to the design pattern we used in our HCI class. In this methodology, we designed from the interface down. We used personas, user tests, and even paper mock-ups and prototypes to get an understanding of how the user would use the application and designed from there. Perhaps, next time I will look for some kind of happy medium between the two.
I don't think the "PCM Change Manager" (I'll worry about catchy names later) is too far off from being done. I just need to figure out my hardware setup now and figure out how I can deploy it before I take off!
So I'm about to 'graduamate'--or graduate, as it's more commonly known--and I'm pretty excited. I picked up my cap and gown yesterday and coughed up some money to become a proud member of the Huskers Alumni Association. I even got a pin! Word.
In all seriousness though, I'm pretty excited for this to happen. I've loved school and the opportunity to expand my mind, but I'm even more excited to get out and do some work! I think the idea of capitalizing on all the potential my professors and other people involved in my college career have tried to grow in me is thrilling. Beyond that, I'm excited to not have homework and actually enjoy my free time. In these last few weeks, any free time I've had has been sapped of it's benefits because I keep thinking about all the work I'm not doing. It is growing tiresome. Even sleep is becoming a mess. Last night I woke up at 2:30 am thinking I had to go to work. I wake up with my heart racing sometimes ready to start working on things. On a weird note, I haven't been woken up by my alarm in weeks. I seem to always wake up before it and wonder if the clock on my phone is wrong.
So yeah. I'm excited to get out of here. :)
On a happer note, I'll be looking for an apartment in Seattle soon, and then I can get a kitchen together and start making my own food! Selleck Cafeteria, you've been wonderful (read, "free"), but I can only stand the lack of variety for so long. It's time to move on.
I think that's all I'll put for now. I've been running across a lot of project and task management applications on the Internet lately, and I think I'd like to draw some comparisons among them. I think this is a really cool area for software, and I've found a few promising players. Maybe when I find some time...
Cheers!
By the way, the coffee I'm drinking right now is just wonderful. I have no idea what it is, but it just warms my soul because of how good it tastes. Thank God human beings are wired to take pleasure in such simple things.
The back-story on that one was I had a dual-booting solution going for a while (you might read my earlier posts to find out more about that adventure). Unfortunately, my Vista set up went down a long time ago after I tried to install SP1. Even more unfortunately, I didn't have the time to stop and fix it because it was during the busier part of first semester. So I've been running entirely on 15 GBs worth of Ubuntu. So yeah, I need to fix this. Anyway, moving on...
Run for the Homeless
This went really well! On Sunday, April 19th, we had just over 200 runners and walkers come out and show their support for People's City Mission and the struggle against homelessness. I was so relieved to see such a good turnout, and it reminded me how wonderful it is to work with people who have their stuff together. Behind the scenes, I think we overcame quite a bit to make this come off. For a first effort, the planning, logistics, recruiting, and turnout came together beautifully.
Right now, things are looking like they'll be doing this event again next year. Sadly, I won't be around to see it. Hopefully my interactions with other kids have inspired them to commit to helping out this time next year. It would be even more wonderful if some people were inspired to help beyond just an afternoon's worth of running.
I had a thought along these lines the other day. I was thinking about our fund raising goals and how much revenue we actually did generate. I thought about the turnout and how I would have liked it to be better. And then I thought about this:
From among the approximately 250 or so people that came out that day, some had a better awareness about the condition of homelessness in Lincoln. From that subset, perhaps some of them began to see how they could contribute and do something about it. Even fewer still may feel accountable to that knowledge and would become passionate about serving their community. If even 5 people came out of this event and committed to volunteering on a regular basis, I would be thrilled and would see it as a victory worth more than any revenue we could generate.
I'll see if I can get some pictures up on this site, but I will be working on putting them up on the Mission's site for sure. Feel free to check them out when they're up.
PCM Change Manager
I've mentioned once or twice that I've been working on a web application that would help the people here at the Mission organize the changes made to the web site. I'm realizing it is more of a specialized project management system where the project is hard coded to be web site maintenance. Hopefully, the differentiating value can be in the in-application file editor that I hope to hook up to the publishing process. I have an idea of how I can make that work, but I need to get the interface done first.
That has been something I've found frustrating about Grails so far. I love the MVC methodology, and I really enjoyed setting things up in Grails. I've been asking myself lately if building from the domain up is the right way to go. I'm realizing now that in doing so, I haven't really made many design considerations regarding the interface or flow through the site. This is a stark contrast to the design pattern we used in our HCI class. In this methodology, we designed from the interface down. We used personas, user tests, and even paper mock-ups and prototypes to get an understanding of how the user would use the application and designed from there. Perhaps, next time I will look for some kind of happy medium between the two.
I don't think the "PCM Change Manager" (I'll worry about catchy names later) is too far off from being done. I just need to figure out my hardware setup now and figure out how I can deploy it before I take off!
"Graduamation!"
So I'm about to 'graduamate'--or graduate, as it's more commonly known--and I'm pretty excited. I picked up my cap and gown yesterday and coughed up some money to become a proud member of the Huskers Alumni Association. I even got a pin! Word.
In all seriousness though, I'm pretty excited for this to happen. I've loved school and the opportunity to expand my mind, but I'm even more excited to get out and do some work! I think the idea of capitalizing on all the potential my professors and other people involved in my college career have tried to grow in me is thrilling. Beyond that, I'm excited to not have homework and actually enjoy my free time. In these last few weeks, any free time I've had has been sapped of it's benefits because I keep thinking about all the work I'm not doing. It is growing tiresome. Even sleep is becoming a mess. Last night I woke up at 2:30 am thinking I had to go to work. I wake up with my heart racing sometimes ready to start working on things. On a weird note, I haven't been woken up by my alarm in weeks. I seem to always wake up before it and wonder if the clock on my phone is wrong.
So yeah. I'm excited to get out of here. :)
On a happer note, I'll be looking for an apartment in Seattle soon, and then I can get a kitchen together and start making my own food! Selleck Cafeteria, you've been wonderful (read, "free"), but I can only stand the lack of variety for so long. It's time to move on.
I think that's all I'll put for now. I've been running across a lot of project and task management applications on the Internet lately, and I think I'd like to draw some comparisons among them. I think this is a really cool area for software, and I've found a few promising players. Maybe when I find some time...
Cheers!
By the way, the coffee I'm drinking right now is just wonderful. I have no idea what it is, but it just warms my soul because of how good it tastes. Thank God human beings are wired to take pleasure in such simple things.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Expanding Evals Idea
In this post, I sketched out an idea for a new evaluation system focusing on brevity, frequent use, and graphic representation of information. I got a couple comments about it, and both focused on enforcement.
So how do you build policy and enforcement into software? Well, that can easily be done with checks before user actions to ensure the desired outcome has been achieved. To be honest, I don't like that. One of the top goals for my idea is that users should love--or at least not really hate--using the software. Building enforcement rules into the software doesn't align with that goal.
However, in order to be effective, students actually have to use the software to get effective evaluations. As put to me by Nate, if students don't have to do anything, they won't do it. That makes sense. So how do you ensure students use software that doesn't force them to? What makes us use the current evaluations system.
To answer that, I will stick with an idea that I've always carried with me for a while: be cautious when trying to make software do something a human should do. I love software because it helps us be more effective. It enables efficiencies and helps us do things better than we ever thought possible. It can even open doors in some situation. However, as a society, we shouldn't let software cripple us in areas where we should be competent with or without software.
Thus, software shouldn't always replace good policy, human management, and work ethic. In this software, I could easily hide a submit or exit button until the user fills in all the required information. I could write code that nags the user until he or she completes each evaluation. Yet, that is terribly annoying. It detracts from the user experience I want to create. It also eliminates the ability to work in increments--ie, work a bit, save it, and return to it later.
The current evaluation software doesn't have any enforcement rules, yet they get done. That is because there are policies or business rules to ensure things get done. In our context, the policy is "do your evals or something really bad is going to happen to your grade--even though we're going to be mysterious and not tell you what." In this software, the same thing will hold true.
Software should supplement, not replace, business rules. It can supplement management by providing reminders, work flow tools, collaboration and communication features, and a list of other things. But the human side of things can't be replaced by a machine.
Students won't do anything they don't have to, but a piece of software shouldn't force them to do it. If there is going to be a "bad guy" in the situation, it should be in the management and not in the tool. Enforcement will lie in management--or the faculty in this case--and it will not go into my proposed solution. In my opinion, I don't think that's where it belongs.
That being said, I do see some value in creating reminders or feedback to give the student the hint that certain tasks should be completed. I could see having some notification pop up when a user is exiting to inform them that active tasks have not been completed. It might even send an e-mail alert to inform a student that their required evaluations have not been submitted and they have x number of days to complete them.
Edit: This is a late addition I thought I should add
Another thing I see is letting the software make use of data to enable managers to enforce participation. Each point submission and comment will be associated with the user that submitted it. While it probably shouldn't be shown on the interface, the system can record that "User xyz submitted the following evaluation on mm/dd/yyyy". A PM can just look up all comments made by a user and see that there were submissions for all the appropriate categories. Good reporting tools will be essential to making this work.
I think this is kind of a fun idea. I've spent some time looking at the Google Charts API and I think that could be an awesome way to present some information. I haven't put any other design considerations into it, but it might be a fun project to work on.
Any comments, feedbacks, or angry rebuttals? Please leave a comment if you have one. If you think this would be a good project to start, let me know and I'll see if I can set one up. Drew forced me to set up a GitHub account yesterday to share my Change Management software with him, so I'll spend some more time learning about Git.
Thanks for reading! Cheers.
So how do you build policy and enforcement into software? Well, that can easily be done with checks before user actions to ensure the desired outcome has been achieved. To be honest, I don't like that. One of the top goals for my idea is that users should love--or at least not really hate--using the software. Building enforcement rules into the software doesn't align with that goal.
However, in order to be effective, students actually have to use the software to get effective evaluations. As put to me by Nate, if students don't have to do anything, they won't do it. That makes sense. So how do you ensure students use software that doesn't force them to? What makes us use the current evaluations system.
To answer that, I will stick with an idea that I've always carried with me for a while: be cautious when trying to make software do something a human should do. I love software because it helps us be more effective. It enables efficiencies and helps us do things better than we ever thought possible. It can even open doors in some situation. However, as a society, we shouldn't let software cripple us in areas where we should be competent with or without software.
Thus, software shouldn't always replace good policy, human management, and work ethic. In this software, I could easily hide a submit or exit button until the user fills in all the required information. I could write code that nags the user until he or she completes each evaluation. Yet, that is terribly annoying. It detracts from the user experience I want to create. It also eliminates the ability to work in increments--ie, work a bit, save it, and return to it later.
The current evaluation software doesn't have any enforcement rules, yet they get done. That is because there are policies or business rules to ensure things get done. In our context, the policy is "do your evals or something really bad is going to happen to your grade--even though we're going to be mysterious and not tell you what." In this software, the same thing will hold true.
Software should supplement, not replace, business rules. It can supplement management by providing reminders, work flow tools, collaboration and communication features, and a list of other things. But the human side of things can't be replaced by a machine.
Students won't do anything they don't have to, but a piece of software shouldn't force them to do it. If there is going to be a "bad guy" in the situation, it should be in the management and not in the tool. Enforcement will lie in management--or the faculty in this case--and it will not go into my proposed solution. In my opinion, I don't think that's where it belongs.
That being said, I do see some value in creating reminders or feedback to give the student the hint that certain tasks should be completed. I could see having some notification pop up when a user is exiting to inform them that active tasks have not been completed. It might even send an e-mail alert to inform a student that their required evaluations have not been submitted and they have x number of days to complete them.
Edit: This is a late addition I thought I should add
Another thing I see is letting the software make use of data to enable managers to enforce participation. Each point submission and comment will be associated with the user that submitted it. While it probably shouldn't be shown on the interface, the system can record that "User xyz submitted the following evaluation on mm/dd/yyyy". A PM can just look up all comments made by a user and see that there were submissions for all the appropriate categories. Good reporting tools will be essential to making this work.
I think this is kind of a fun idea. I've spent some time looking at the Google Charts API and I think that could be an awesome way to present some information. I haven't put any other design considerations into it, but it might be a fun project to work on.
Any comments, feedbacks, or angry rebuttals? Please leave a comment if you have one. If you think this would be a good project to start, let me know and I'll see if I can set one up. Drew forced me to set up a GitHub account yesterday to share my Change Management software with him, so I'll spend some more time learning about Git.
Thanks for reading! Cheers.
What's a Heartsong for anyway?
Oh man, this has been one of those mornings where I would have loved to stay in bed and it's only 9:00 am.
I know I run a pretty busy life. I like to take on more than I should be able to chew. I like being in charge of things and making sure they come off ok. But occasionally it catches up to me and I crash. Like this morning.
Last night I spent most of my evening working on a group paper and preparing a presentation for another class that I will be presenting later today. The way this group operates kind of pushes me out of my comfort zone. I'm used to synchronous work in the same location. I'm used identifying tasks, doling them out, and seeing everybody get them done. Last night was so different. I'm almost surprised our presentation came together. I'm still not sure how it will go. I still have to make sure our handouts get printed off. There are many variables I can only hope go well. On top of that, I still have to eFile my taxes and the only barrier is a financial one, which is stressful enough in and of itself. In fact, one of the few things I'll really let get under my skin.
So I came to work this morning about ready to destroy something--because for some reason that's the first thing I think will make me feel better. Instead, I shut my office door and fired up my laptop. First thing I notice: it refuses to connect to the office wireless. The point goes to Ubuntu! At this point, I'm about ready to blow up.
Instead of destroying everything around me, I fire up Songbird since I can't get to Last.fm. I start up "Grapevine Fires" by Death Cab for Cutie. I shut the door. I turn the volume up.
I love this song, but for some reason the sounds enveloped me and I stopped paying attention to it. For some reason, it made me think about God. This was weird. This kind of thing hadn't happened before.
I'm taking a Leadership in Organizations class with Dr. Colleen Jones right now. She makes a big deal about teaching spirit and soul in work and in leadership. It was an odd concept to swallow at first, but it grew on me after a while. We had to read Leading with Soul for class. It's odd because I had to read it when I was a freshman and I thought it was the most expensive piece of fire-starting material I had ever seen. Reading it again as a senior, I saw so much more value in it.
The book illustrates the idea that the soul and spirit are real entities within an individual. It is interesting that the authors make a case for the soul and spirit without using religious words. This isn't a biblical concept to them. This is something we all can relate to. The spirit is the intangible way we relate to people. It is the ethereal way in which we connect and relate to the world around us. It's what we connect to when we inspire and share experiences with each other. The soul is what feeds and drives the spirit. A strong and well-attuned spirit can connect with the spirit and influence it. It works in harmony with it.
Well, I am a 'religious' person. I do see spirit and soul in a biblical sense. And this morning, mine were battered. I have taken on a huge load and I've made a considerable effort to manage it myself. This morning, I snapped into prayer without even thinking about it.
The book speaks of a 'heartsong' or prayer. It is the way in which we connect with our souls. It is how we reflect inwardly and meditate on who we are, what our significance is, and what it means to just exist. For me, it is my way of attuning my soul to my God.
Amidst the stress, the exhaustion, and the sonic ambiance as supplied by the oh-so-wonderful Death Cab for Cutie, I turned to prayer. I reevaluated the position of my soul and spirit before my God. I reevaluated the nature of my work and became that much more thankful that I even had the opportunity to be a good steward of my talents and the needs around me. Most importantly, I remembered I'm not in this alone. I don't have to manage all my personal stress by myself. My strength lies not in myself but in my Lord. My faith means more than my one-time salvation, but in my present-active salvation from life itself.
I don't know what it was, but I just snapped this morning--and it was in a good way. It reminded me the importance of finding ways to stop, reflect, realign, and be at peace with the world. I don't expect life to get any easier, and being able to leverage my 'heartsong' will be so important as I grow.
I think the book tries to emphasize that everybody has a heartsong. Prayer doesn't have to be a thing of faith. It is a thing of self-evaluation, internal dialogue, contemplation, and a conversation with the essence that makes you 'you'. This sounds incredibly corny, I know, but the idea is that we should be attuned to the intangibles of our lives. We should be able to balance our ethereal essence with the hard reality of the world around us. I think it's kind of a cool idea.
A lot of my posts have been technically related lately. I haven't really taken a religious leaning in my writing lately. This morning was just an interesting experience for me and I thought I'd share.
I know I run a pretty busy life. I like to take on more than I should be able to chew. I like being in charge of things and making sure they come off ok. But occasionally it catches up to me and I crash. Like this morning.
Last night I spent most of my evening working on a group paper and preparing a presentation for another class that I will be presenting later today. The way this group operates kind of pushes me out of my comfort zone. I'm used to synchronous work in the same location. I'm used identifying tasks, doling them out, and seeing everybody get them done. Last night was so different. I'm almost surprised our presentation came together. I'm still not sure how it will go. I still have to make sure our handouts get printed off. There are many variables I can only hope go well. On top of that, I still have to eFile my taxes and the only barrier is a financial one, which is stressful enough in and of itself. In fact, one of the few things I'll really let get under my skin.
So I came to work this morning about ready to destroy something--because for some reason that's the first thing I think will make me feel better. Instead, I shut my office door and fired up my laptop. First thing I notice: it refuses to connect to the office wireless. The point goes to Ubuntu! At this point, I'm about ready to blow up.
Instead of destroying everything around me, I fire up Songbird since I can't get to Last.fm. I start up "Grapevine Fires" by Death Cab for Cutie. I shut the door. I turn the volume up.
I love this song, but for some reason the sounds enveloped me and I stopped paying attention to it. For some reason, it made me think about God. This was weird. This kind of thing hadn't happened before.
I'm taking a Leadership in Organizations class with Dr. Colleen Jones right now. She makes a big deal about teaching spirit and soul in work and in leadership. It was an odd concept to swallow at first, but it grew on me after a while. We had to read Leading with Soul for class. It's odd because I had to read it when I was a freshman and I thought it was the most expensive piece of fire-starting material I had ever seen. Reading it again as a senior, I saw so much more value in it.
The book illustrates the idea that the soul and spirit are real entities within an individual. It is interesting that the authors make a case for the soul and spirit without using religious words. This isn't a biblical concept to them. This is something we all can relate to. The spirit is the intangible way we relate to people. It is the ethereal way in which we connect and relate to the world around us. It's what we connect to when we inspire and share experiences with each other. The soul is what feeds and drives the spirit. A strong and well-attuned spirit can connect with the spirit and influence it. It works in harmony with it.
Well, I am a 'religious' person. I do see spirit and soul in a biblical sense. And this morning, mine were battered. I have taken on a huge load and I've made a considerable effort to manage it myself. This morning, I snapped into prayer without even thinking about it.
The book speaks of a 'heartsong' or prayer. It is the way in which we connect with our souls. It is how we reflect inwardly and meditate on who we are, what our significance is, and what it means to just exist. For me, it is my way of attuning my soul to my God.
Amidst the stress, the exhaustion, and the sonic ambiance as supplied by the oh-so-wonderful Death Cab for Cutie, I turned to prayer. I reevaluated the position of my soul and spirit before my God. I reevaluated the nature of my work and became that much more thankful that I even had the opportunity to be a good steward of my talents and the needs around me. Most importantly, I remembered I'm not in this alone. I don't have to manage all my personal stress by myself. My strength lies not in myself but in my Lord. My faith means more than my one-time salvation, but in my present-active salvation from life itself.
I don't know what it was, but I just snapped this morning--and it was in a good way. It reminded me the importance of finding ways to stop, reflect, realign, and be at peace with the world. I don't expect life to get any easier, and being able to leverage my 'heartsong' will be so important as I grow.
I think the book tries to emphasize that everybody has a heartsong. Prayer doesn't have to be a thing of faith. It is a thing of self-evaluation, internal dialogue, contemplation, and a conversation with the essence that makes you 'you'. This sounds incredibly corny, I know, but the idea is that we should be attuned to the intangibles of our lives. We should be able to balance our ethereal essence with the hard reality of the world around us. I think it's kind of a cool idea.
A lot of my posts have been technically related lately. I haven't really taken a religious leaning in my writing lately. This morning was just an interesting experience for me and I thought I'd share.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
My Crack at Evals
I don't mean to try to ride on Nick and Nate's thunder with their series on evals, but I actually came up with an idea earlier I thought I'd share. To get any new reader up to speed, we do team evaluations for our Design Studio projects in Raikes School. Many of us have been analyzing the way we do things in Design Studio to see how we can make them better. One specific area is in our evaluation system. If none of those things made sense to you, you may not find anything useful in the rest of this post.
I was taking a walk earlier today and I was thinking about how technology has changed the way people communicate. We got the pleasure of listening to Evan Williams from Twitter speak to our program last week (recorded for your viewing pleasure). Twitter is an increasingly popular way to communicate. In my experience, it is marked by brief, succinct communication, yet users are still able to say everything they need to say. I've also noticed that most Twitter users update pretty frequently.
Readers of my blog may note that brevity isn't one of my strengths ;)
Another thing I see today is the use of visual media is also a popular way to communicate. Web designers often turn to visual representations of data to mimic conventions we are used to in real life.
So my idea focused on combining short communication, frequent updates, and visual cues to create a new evaluation system.
I tried to sketch out what I thought the interface might look like with the GIMP.
In this design, the individual being evaluated is shown in the middle of the graph. I made a quick assumption that this evaluation system has identified 6 key points of success that every member of Design Studio should have. Each category is a corner on graph.
Each member on the team would be able to evaluate the individual using this tool. For each category, a user would be able to add points for each category, thereby pushing the graph out on that particular axis. This graph would quickly show where the individual's strengths are. However, an evaluation system that only focused on where an individual was doing well wouldn't be too effective. To show where an individual should improve, a user would also be able to subtract points for a given strength.
The system would aggregate the submissions for all users evaluating a given individual. This data would contribute to the overall graph for an individual. If designed well, the system could present different views with the data, but that's another story.
I gave some thought to whether a user should have a number of points to distribute for each evaluation period. Players of RPG's should find this familiar if they've ever distributed points across dimensions of a character's skills. The alternative would just allow the user to add a point, subtract a point, or do nothing to a given category. Going even further, the system could allow a user to add or subtract one or two points to allow for greater variation or more expressive decisions.
One thing I don't like about the current evaluation system is that it doesn't tie results of an evaluation to specific incidents. For example, if I did well in my 'Communications' category, I can't point to any specific behaviors or incidents to reinforce the feedback. Conversely, if I did poorly in an area, I don't know which behaviors to change. Therefore, each time a user added or subtracted a point, the system would prompt for a brief comment as to why. The system would then save the comments to each category for each user in a database or other storage system. Program managers could pull this data later for reporting purposes.
The other thing that I would want to see in this system would be shorter evaluation periods. Perhaps every week or two weeks, team members would go through this process. Hopefully, the interface is easy enough that this can be done with minimal time and effort. Another advantage of more frequent updates is that feedback is more timely, and thus more useful and relevant. Individuals would be able to see their chart as it changes and can react to the evaluations more effectively.
Perhaps a cool but not as useful feature would be the ability to take periodic snapshots of the graphs and be able to play them back. A user could see his or her graph change over time. This might be a fun way to see an individual's growth over time. This engaging interface might make user's less likely to get frustrated and tired of using the system, thus making evaluations more honest, useful, and effective.
Let me know what you think! Is this a good idea? Would you use a system like this? What glaring mistakes or disasters did I overlook with this idea?
Bear in mind this came to me as I was running through the rain from the garage to Kauffman.
I was taking a walk earlier today and I was thinking about how technology has changed the way people communicate. We got the pleasure of listening to Evan Williams from Twitter speak to our program last week (recorded for your viewing pleasure). Twitter is an increasingly popular way to communicate. In my experience, it is marked by brief, succinct communication, yet users are still able to say everything they need to say. I've also noticed that most Twitter users update pretty frequently.
Readers of my blog may note that brevity isn't one of my strengths ;)
Another thing I see today is the use of visual media is also a popular way to communicate. Web designers often turn to visual representations of data to mimic conventions we are used to in real life.
So my idea focused on combining short communication, frequent updates, and visual cues to create a new evaluation system.
I tried to sketch out what I thought the interface might look like with the GIMP.
In this design, the individual being evaluated is shown in the middle of the graph. I made a quick assumption that this evaluation system has identified 6 key points of success that every member of Design Studio should have. Each category is a corner on graph.
Each member on the team would be able to evaluate the individual using this tool. For each category, a user would be able to add points for each category, thereby pushing the graph out on that particular axis. This graph would quickly show where the individual's strengths are. However, an evaluation system that only focused on where an individual was doing well wouldn't be too effective. To show where an individual should improve, a user would also be able to subtract points for a given strength.
The system would aggregate the submissions for all users evaluating a given individual. This data would contribute to the overall graph for an individual. If designed well, the system could present different views with the data, but that's another story.
I gave some thought to whether a user should have a number of points to distribute for each evaluation period. Players of RPG's should find this familiar if they've ever distributed points across dimensions of a character's skills. The alternative would just allow the user to add a point, subtract a point, or do nothing to a given category. Going even further, the system could allow a user to add or subtract one or two points to allow for greater variation or more expressive decisions.
One thing I don't like about the current evaluation system is that it doesn't tie results of an evaluation to specific incidents. For example, if I did well in my 'Communications' category, I can't point to any specific behaviors or incidents to reinforce the feedback. Conversely, if I did poorly in an area, I don't know which behaviors to change. Therefore, each time a user added or subtracted a point, the system would prompt for a brief comment as to why. The system would then save the comments to each category for each user in a database or other storage system. Program managers could pull this data later for reporting purposes.
The other thing that I would want to see in this system would be shorter evaluation periods. Perhaps every week or two weeks, team members would go through this process. Hopefully, the interface is easy enough that this can be done with minimal time and effort. Another advantage of more frequent updates is that feedback is more timely, and thus more useful and relevant. Individuals would be able to see their chart as it changes and can react to the evaluations more effectively.
Perhaps a cool but not as useful feature would be the ability to take periodic snapshots of the graphs and be able to play them back. A user could see his or her graph change over time. This might be a fun way to see an individual's growth over time. This engaging interface might make user's less likely to get frustrated and tired of using the system, thus making evaluations more honest, useful, and effective.
Let me know what you think! Is this a good idea? Would you use a system like this? What glaring mistakes or disasters did I overlook with this idea?
Bear in mind this came to me as I was running through the rain from the garage to Kauffman.
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