Author Archives: David

Now this is a nifty app: Synergy

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Synergy is an open source tool that allows you to use one monitor and keyboard for multiple computers. You switch between the computers by simply moving your mouse off the side of you current screen. It even works across several operating systems, so you can quickly switch from your Linux desktop to a Windows box for example. Wow!

With synergy, all the computers on your desktop form a single virtual screen. You use the mouse and keyboard of only one of the computers while you use all of the monitors on all of the computers. You tell synergy how many screens you have and their positions relative to one another. Synergy then detects when the mouse moves off the edge of a screen and jumps it instantly to the neighboring screen. The keyboard works normally on each screen; input goes to whichever screen has the cursor.”

The Technology Powering High Context

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Ben asks for more tech content (while comparing me to Darth Vader) and I deliver! 🙂

I made a few changes to the technology and hosting for my site as I re-did the design and content for my consulting biz. Here is an overview of the changes.

Content Management
I am using the latest version of WordPress to power the entire site. Not only can it blog, it can also host static content pages starting with the 1.5 version. I used the static front page plugin to have static introductory text as the home page. I also made a page template that included much of the markup from the main index template in order to move the blog to a /weblog/ subdirectory.

I was a bit torn about moving the blog off the home page but I ultimately decided that it was best to make a clean introduction on the home page for new visitors and regulars could go to the new blog page. This turned out to be a bit tricky to get to work. Drop me a line if you want my code, happy to share it.

Finally, sticking with WP had the added bonus of keeping all my existing RSS feeds in place without a lot of tweaking.

Design
The design for the site is a modified version of the Kubrick template that D. Keith Robinson just slammed today as way too common. I’m crushed but I don’t think I’ll redesign just yet. 🙂 I think it is a very flexible template that can be pretty extensively modified if you want.

The logo was designed by my wife Jennifer. Being married to a graphic designer has its perks.

Hosting
The site is now hosted with Text Drive, a new hosting company that caters to cutting edge open source technology. In fact, when you sign up for an account a significant part of the proceeds go to the open source project of your choice. I dedicated mine to WordPress. As they are a start-up, there are pros and cons. On the pro side they are incredibly responsive and very willing to change and experiment. The con that comes with that is a bit more downtime than usual as they shake out their systems.

So, nothing too extraordinary, except that I was able to rapidly build a new site using open source technology and even an open source design template. If you have comments on the design, content or anything else, please post them to this entry. I’d love to hear the feedback.

Announcing High Context Consulting!

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I am very excited to announce that I am going to be leaving my current position at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association this June to launch my own consulting firm, High Context Consulting, LLC.

Working for myself has been a long-time dream of mine and the time finally seemed right to make the jump. ASHA has been a great place for me over the past 5 years and I will really miss working with the wonderful web staff. I view the stuff we did together at ASHA as the best work in my career so far. Thanks to David T, Tule, Kat, Brenda, Dwayne and Glen for creating such a great team!

So, what kind of work will I be doing? It essentially boils down to helping membership organizations use the Web and web-based technologies more effectively and aligning those efforts with their over goals. For the long version, read my newly designed site: www.highcontext.com.

I will continue to write this weblog, posting more frequently I hope. Wish me luck and send referrals! 🙂

NYT Paywall

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David Weinberger provides a good analysis of why the New York Times putting its editorial writers behind a paywall is a bad move: Joho the Blog: The NY Times world of pain.

I just heard (!) that the Times is going to start charging $50/year to read its op-ed columnists. (That will also get you access to their archives.) I feel their pain, even as I think it’s the wrong decision.

The Times is watching its value erode. Electronic distribution is only going to become a bigger part of the picture, its readership is exulting in the exposes of the failures of the MSM to provide full and accurate coverage — the real story about the Newsweek brouhaha is why we are so eager to hear about ways the MSM is failing — and the authority of The Times is being challenged by a new news architecture that denies the necessity of having gatekeepers at all. In this face of all this confusion, the Times has made some smart moves, including giving a backdoor to permalinks to its articles and moving towards dynamically building “topic pages” that aggregate info”

MSM stands for main stream media. This issue is relevant to MSAs as well (main stream associations).

Tagging Enterprise IA

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Lou Rosenfeld has begun a group tagging project, using del.icio.us to track links related to enterprise information architecture. Bloug: Experimenting with Tagging:

Do you use del.icio.us? And are you interested in enterprise information architecture? Then consider tagging your EIA bookmarks with the tag ‘enterprise_ia’. If at least a few of us start doing this, then, as the tag gods suggest, we’ll all benefit from each other’s research by monitoring the tag at ‘http://del.icio.us/tag/enterprise_ia’. Please spread the word to anyone who you think might be interested.

See del.icio.us/tag/enterprise_ia and del.icio.us/rss/tag/enterprise_ia to subscribe.

Lou also raises the question of how to increase precision in social tagging. I’m not sure that’s the right question. Folksonomy doesn’t seem to be about precision. It can be mined by someone who wants to create precise references but the point of it is not to have formal indexing structures. It’s hard to let go of that (I say from personal experience).

Coaching

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I like this definition of the purpose of coaching from the Management Craft blog.

Coaching in a business setting has four purposes:

  1. Coaching should improve client coachability.
  2. Coaching should help the client get unstuck and moving toward his or her goals again.
  3. Coaching should enhance client self-awareness.
  4. Coaching should facilitate breakthroughs.

That last one seems to be the real purpose in my mind. If not that, why do it?

Big Blog

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IBM is now encouraging their 300k+ employees to blog if they want and has posted a policy to set their expectations for employees who do blog:

Guidelines for IBM Bloggers: Executive Summary

  • Know and follow IBM’s Business Conduct Guidelines.
  • Blogs, wikis and other forms of online discourse are individual interactions, not corporate communications. IBMers are personally responsible for their posts. Be mindful that what you write will be public for a long time — protect your privacy.
  • Identify yourself — name and, when relevant, role at IBM — when you blog about IBM or IBM-related matters. And write in the first person. You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM.
  • If you publish a blog or post to a blog and it has something to do with work you do or subjects associated with IBM, use a disclaimer such as this: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”
  • Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.
  • Don’t provide IBM’s or another’s confidential or other proprietary information.
  • Don’t cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval.
  • Respect your audience. Don’t use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, etc., and show proper consideration for others’ privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory — such as politics and religion.
  • Find out who else is blogging on the topic, and cite them.
  • Don’t pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don’t alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.
  • Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective.