Flat Hatter Collaborative

Participatory Narcissism and why Counting Crows has sucked since back in the day

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2008/03/22

So I finally got Mars Edit working again with my wordpress install (upgrading wp did the trick) and am getting back in the flow of posting as I come across interesting things.

One of my favorite bloggers, Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror quotes Maciej Cegłowski’s notion of Participatory Narcissism concerning a recent post by Paul Graham.

After a while, you begin to notice that all the essays are an elaborate set of mirrors set up to reflect different facets of the author, in a big distributed act of participatory narcissism.

Which is exactly why just about “everything” Counting Crows has done “after” their first album has sucked so bad.

New Job as a Technical Director at Methodologie

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2008/01/10

Started a new job on Monday. I have joined the wonderful team at Methodologie in downtown Seattle as “Technical Director, Interactive Manager”.

Methodologie is an incredible brand design firm with a great specialty in Corporate Social Responsibility communication and Annual Report design.

I get to work with an award winning interactive team and am looking forward to a great 2008.

Also to note — I’ll probably be posting less on elearning specific topics (when I post right :) — will be moving more toward the identity of the blog becoming “Bryan Zug’s Flat Hatter Collaborative”.

Have arrived at Web 2.0 Expo

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/04/15

I am at the Web 2.0 Expo at Moscone West in San Francisco this AM. Got here early to scope out the power and do a Sightspeed video call with Jen, Thomas, and Ruthie back in Seattle.

If you are here for the conference, shoot me a note or twitter me (bryanzug) and let’s hang out.

Am looking forward to Stowe Boyd’s 3 hour workshop this AM on ‘Building Social Applications‘. I hear he know his $#!7.

Also — the first Ignite session outside of Seattle is happening tonight at the Expo. Brady has put together an excellent lineup — including Justin.tv — should be interesting.

CANCELLED: GTD Meetup for March 26

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/03/26

Tonight’s GTD Meetup where I was going to lead a discussion has been cancelled due to venue double booking.

We’ll be rescheduling and will keep you posted.

If anyone knows of a good alternate venue with wifi, please ping me so I can pass word along to Mike Wilkerson, the organizer.

Leading Discussion at Seattle GTD Meetup on Monday

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/03/24

I’ll be leading an informal discussion of some of the online project / task collaboration tools I’ve used at the Seattle GTD Meetup at 7 PM this Monday, March 26th at Hale’s Ales in Ballard.

Drop by and say hello — I plan on giving an overview of Basecamp, activeCollab, and my new favorite Vitalist.

Great Primer on Open Source Folkways

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/03/15

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that two good friends of mine here in Seattle were cross posting on their blogs about Flash/Flex momentum and how a healthy open source governance structure might be helpful in pushing momentum even further.

My natural question — have you guys met face to face? Wanna grab some food?

So last night I met Ted Leung and Ryan Stewart for dinner down at Ivar’s on the waterfront. Great time, great view, great conversation.

Though Ted and I both work in the tech industry and have been friends since Mind Camp 1.0, I had never heard him talk about his long history with open source communities and governance (Apache, et al).

All I can say is that I learned a ton about that and distributed project/team folkways in general.

Great, great evening.

I’ll Have a “Cappuccino U”

Posted by Bryan Zug - 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 –

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.

Martin goes on to relate how he dove into a Faulkner class via Oprah’s Book Club –

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).

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.

Overall, it’s a nice short summary of where things are headed — both for our traditional teaching institutions and for career training.

Installing WordPress via Dreamhost (Screencast)

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/10/09

Here’s the flash video version of my screencast on installing WordPress via Dreamhost. Enjoy!

Cerner 2006: Blogs & Screencasts in the Quest for Training Attention

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/10/09

I am in Orlando today presenting a session called “Blogs & Screencasts in the Quest for Training Attention” at the 2006 Cerner Health Conference. From the session description:

In the quest for user attention, blogs and screencasts are more that buzzwords. Join us as we examine how these technologies help organizations capture valuable elements of “watercooler conversations” and leverage them toward system and process training. Session will include: An introduction to blogs, screencasts, and RSS; An examination of why content produced and distributed with these methodologies is naturally interesting to users; A short tour of WordPress and Camtasia — two popular blog and screencasting tools.

Here’s the links to the files from the session –

• PDF of Keynote Slides (PDF - 7 MB)
• Installing WordPress via DreamHost320×240 (YouTube Flash Video)
• Installing WordPress via DreamHost1024×768 (Quicktime - 370 MB)
• Installing WordPress via DreamHost320×240 (Quicktime - 73 MB)
• Intro to RSS Readers via Newgator1024×768 (Quicktime - 268 MB)
• Intro to Camtasia1024×768 (Quicktime - 63 MB)

Berkun on ‘How to detect bullshit’

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/08/14

From Berkun’s latest ‘How to detect bullshit’

White lies are the spackle of civilization

That is awesome.

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