Seattle Mind Camp 5: Sustainable Work/Life Patterns
Posted by bryanzug - 2008/11/21
Kendall Guillemette and I are gonna get a discussion session together at Seattle Mind Camp tomorrow on sustainable work/life patterns. We’re calling it “Seattle Mind Camp 5: Sustainable Work/Life Patterns (…is Calacanis a Saint? Something Else?)”.
See flier below. Some seeds for the discussion —
- How do you structure your work?
- Is banking on a buyout like saying, “I’m gonna play in the NBA?â€
- What’re your successes?
- Your epic fails?
Also cool — we plan to use an iPhone audio meter to insta-poll the crowd on what we should talk about (if it’s a decent size).
Special shout out to all those who need a refresher on “All Your Base Are Belong to Us”.
DevLearn 2007 Session
Posted by bryanzug - 2007/11/07
Here’s my presentation files from my session at DevLearn 2007 in San Jose today as .PDF (1.3mb) or .PPT (1.7mb) — Dave Wilkins of Knowledge Planet and I did a session called “Team-based Authoring: It’s About Time”.
Mike Wesch discussing “Web 2.0… The Machine is Us/ing Us” video at Web2Open 4:00
Posted by bryanzug - 2007/04/17
So when I saw this video, I just about peed my pants. It’s a Ken Burn’s-esque animated screenshot/text/typography video that tells the story of the web up to today.
Just found out that the guy who made it, Michael Wesch, will be discussing the video at the Web 2.0 Expo today today at 4:00 pm.
It all takes place at the Web2Open gathering that is an unconference running in parallel (and in conjunction) with the main conference.
This is the kind of loosely coupled teaching/training that is going to take us into the next “age”.
Whitespace: 34% More Retention in Half the Time
Posted by bryanzug - 2007/03/14
Cool article this AM from the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review. It’s a review of an eyetracking research study called “Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design“.
Best quote —
“What if you could engage users in a story for about half the time, yet have them remember about 34 percent more of the content?”
Visit the article for cool screenshots of the noted before and after design. Main takeaways are that retention increased with a redesign that emphasized —
- Increased white space
- Concise main idea
- Removal of unnecessary images
- Shortened lines of text
- An added graphic for each restaurant ranking
Blackboard Patent to Be Re-examined
Posted by bryanzug - 2007/01/29
Since I’ve weighed in on this issue before, I wanted to note — word has come via Harold and Chris of a Slashdot report that:
“Groklaw is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark Office has just ordered a re-examination of the e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc, thanks to a filing by the Software Freedom Law Center. SFLC’s press release states, ‘The Patent Office found that prior art cited in SFLC’s request raises “a substantial new question of patentability†regarding all 44 claims of Blackboard’s patent…’ The SFLC explains that though such re-examinations may take a couple of years to complete, approximately ‘70% of re-examinations are successful in having a patent narrowed or completely revoked.’â€
Ignite Seattle videos now ablaze
Posted by bryanzug - 2006/12/14
Had another great opportunity to shoot some rapid turn around video last week. This time it was for Ignite Seattle. All I have to say is what a night.
I’d call it a snapshot of this grand moment we are experiencing in the Seattle geek entrepreneurial community. Lots of fun from my end to help the momentum along.
Where to start? So many highlights — you can see all 25 of the five minute sessions over on the Ignite Seattle Blip.tv page. One’s that stood out were —
- Scott Ruthfield (embedded above) from Amazon talked about doing re-design in a “Megacorp”. Scott was at our Mind Camp 3.0 Discovery Slam and is a great presence on stage — very funny and engaging. Blip.tv video is here.
- Brian Aker was great as he told the story of ripping up his new house to install his own computer based phone system — it’s as much a tutorial as it is an essays on geek relationships with your wife. Very funny. Blip.tv video is here.
- Scott Berkun did a session on ideas and innovation and, as always, did a great job. Very cool visuals. Blip.tv video is here.
So many others were great — go take a look at the other sessions when you get a chance.
I’ll Have a “Cappuccino U”
Posted by bryanzug - 2006/11/26
Via Harold Jarche this AM comes a link to a free pdf book called “Cappuccino U” (.pdf) by Jerome Martin and published by Spotted Cow Press.
It’s kind of a chronicle of diving into / developing “a new, personally-driven approach to learning”. From the Intro —
Martin goes on to relate how he dove into a Faulkner class via Oprah’s Book Club —This e-book is about a new style of learning in which innovative people have combined new information technology with traditional ways of learning to develop a new, personally-driven approach to learning. It happens predominantly in “the third place,†a location that is neither home nor office. The third place is usually a coffee house, one which is designed to serve this particular audience.
People gather in their favourite third places to work, relax, visit and learn. They work independently and in groups. Some of them use computers which may or may not be linked to the web. Some are taking courses online; others are writing books like this one.
This is Cappuccino U.
I soon learned that Oprah has not only a book club but a classroom as well. By joining her book club (at no cost to me) I found that I had access to lectures about Faulkner and the books. I and thousands of other students were told that the lectures would be available over the summer. We were asked to read the books in the order I listed them and were informed by e-mail when a new lecture was available on the web.He then does a nice summary on how education is no longer “acquired through vaccination” — that’s a nice phrase —
Some people feel that they have an education because when they were 22 they received a Bachelor’s degree, or they received a PhD when they were 28 (or, more likely these days, 38).Overall, it’s a nice short summary of where things are headed — both for our traditional teaching institutions and for career training.
However, education is not acquired through vaccination or some sort of
anointment. We learn daily – or we have the opportunity to do so. Continuing education, be it formal or informal, is essential to our growth as individuals.
If our formal education has been successful we will have been vaccinated with a curiousity virus and will continue to look for new knowledge, not just because it is useful to us but because we have an insatiable desire to learn and become better at what we do.
Less about eYada and more about participatory cultures
Posted by bryanzug - 2006/11/08
Tama points out a couple of reports this morning on technology and learning that focus less on the tools and more on how they enable folks to engage in participatory cultures.
From Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century by Henry Jenkins and the MacArthur Foundation —
That is why we focus in this paper on the concept of participatory cultures rather than on interactive technologies. Interactivity is a property of the technology, while participation is a property of culture. Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways. A focus on expanding access to new technologies carries us only so far if we do not also foster the skills and cultural knowledge necessary to deploy those tools toward our own ends.
That seems like a really compelling way to describe all this eLearning 2.0 stuff to me.
Dove targets ‘beauty propoganda’ and blurs the lines of education, conversation, marketing, and provocation
Posted by bryanzug - 2006/10/31
Perusing the meme this AM, I came across this Advertising Age article on Dove generating more results/buzz from this viral YouTube video than through a Super Bowl ad.
With not a penny of paid media and in less than a month, “Dove Evolution,” a 75-second viral film created by Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, for the Unilever brand has reaped more than 1.7 million views on YouTube and has gotten significant play on TV talk shows “Ellen” and “The View” as well as on “Entertainment Tonight.” It’s also brought the biggest-ever traffic spike to CampaignForRealBeauty.com, three times more than Dove’s Super Bowl ad and resulting publicity last year, according to Alexa.com. By those measures, “Evolution” is the biggest online-buzz generator in the U.S. personal-care and beauty industries, topping this year’s effort from Omnicom Group’s Tribal DDB on behalf of the Philips Norelco Bodygroom shaver. And that’s before the campaign began rolling out to 10 additional countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America last week.
When you watch the video, it’s easy to see why this is so sticky — very compelling conversation going on there about ‘truth/beauty’ done in a very lowfi way (even though it is an ad).
As the father of a 3 year old girl, Dove just won me over with a combination of marketing, education, conversation and provocation on the issue of ‘beauty propoganda’.
Somehow I get the feeling that this is what education is going to look like in the future — lots of blurred lines — all requiring engaged citizens who will need to sort it all out.
Installing WordPress via Dreamhost (Screencast)
Posted by bryanzug - 2006/10/09
Here’s the flash video version of my screencast on installing WordPress via Dreamhost. Enjoy!