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March 28, 2009
CAPE CORAL, Fla. – A tea party to protest government spending and taxing is canceled. Canceled by the government.
Why? They feel too many people could show-up.
[efoods]Lynn Rosko planned to hold a tax payer tea party at Jaycee Park in Cape Coral on April 1st. The idea was announced at a Cape Coral City Council meeting, then an e-mail blast by the Republican Party and it was mentioned in the local media.
With all of that attention, the City of Cape Coral felt there could be more than 500 people attending the tea party.
Therefore Rosko needed to get a permit and insurance for the event. Rosko says she's not willing to get insurance and accept liability for something that a stranger could do. Rosko told WINK News, "I have rescinded any organizing or supervision or what ever you want to call it over this tea party on April 1st."
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This guest blog post was written by Launa Zimmaro, Energy and Environment Specialist at the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts.
Two important reports on climate change were released in the past few weeks: the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report and the US National Climate Assessment. Together, these reports sound the loudest alarm yet that devastating climate change is happening now and will continue to get far worse without immediate, large-scale action. In the starkest possible language, these reports tell us of the looming, catastrophic impact if we fail to respond appropriately and quickly.
The world is warming at an unprecedented and accelerating rate, and the window to effectively mitigate and adapt to the increasingly destructive effects of climate change is closing fast—leaving no "reset" option. The effects of climate change are here now, impacting our lives, pounding the environment and threatening our economy in an unprecedented manner. These climate reports indicate that worse effects are to come and far sooner than we thought possible just a few years ago. Major efforts to de-carbonize our global society and transition to a clean energy economy must be made within the next 10 to 12 years. Failure to take bold action now will result in a future with conditions beyond our capacity to manage.
Because of the complexity and political difficulty of the issue, climate change has largely been left on the cutting-room floor of political agendas and the public's concern. Deliberate obfuscation of the facts by fossil fuel interests creates a cloud of confusion that keeps the public in the dark. Fossil fuel interests outspend environmental advocates 10:1 on climate lobbying, and that money has been very effective at stopping work on this critically important, existential issue. Climate change will easily slip back down the queue of concerns unless the public insists that elected officials prioritize action on climate change starting now.
The League has fought hard for meaningful climate action since the 1960s, and we continue the fight now. The most effective action we can take as individuals is to call and write our elected officials—those with the power to act at the level required—and demand that they take meaningful action on climate change without delay. Our future literally depends on it.

subset: commoncrawl


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2009 Pontiac G8 GXP – Click above for a high-res image gallery
When General Motors first announced it was sending Pontiac packing, our first thought was a pang for the loss of the most excellent G8 GXP, followed quickly by concern for Holden, the automaker's Australian subsidiary. After all, the General's Australian arm had done well by providing America with left-hand-drive versions of the Commodore to sail under the Poncho flag. Turns out Holden is now feeling the loss of that deal in a big way. According to a report in The Age, the company just announced a loss of $192 million USD. Thanks to the American thirst for Australian V8s, Holden pulled in $5.3 billion in revenue in 2008, but just $3.6 billion last year.
The pinch doesn't just fall on GM shoulders, though. Like the rest of the automaking world, Holden saw sales plummet due to a global recession last year. The loss of the Pontiac contract only added fuel to the fire.
[Source: The Age]


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The Irish name Carolynd claims descent from the O'Connors in Donegal where "Carlan" (from the Irish "carla" meaning a "wool-comb" and "an" meaning "one who" which roughly translates as "one who combs wool") was in Irish O'Carlain or O'Caireallain.
The surname Carolynd was first found in County Limerick (Irish: Luimneach) located in Southwestern Ireland, in the province of Munster, where the name is descended from the O'Connor stem, Kings of Connaught and the family became early associated with the county of Tyrone, and in neighboring counties.
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Carolynd research. Another 130 words (9 lines of text) covering the years 1172, 1738, 1799, 1535, 1568, 1670 and 1738 are included under the topic Early Carolynd History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Names from the Middle Ages demonstrate many spelling variations. This is because the recording scribe or church official often decided as to how a person's name was spelt and in what language. Research into the name Carolynd revealed many variations, including Carlin, Carling, O'Carolan, Carline, Karlin, Kerling, Kerline, Carlind, Carlynde, Carlyne, Carlyn, Carrlin, Carrling, Kerlynd, Kerlynde, Karlynd, Karline, Kearlin, Kearline, Kearlynd, Carolan, Carrolan, Carolyn, Carolyne, Caroline, Carolynde, Caraline, Carroline, Carlan, Carland, Carlon, Carlone, Karolin, Karolan, Karrolin and many more.
Notable amongst the family name at this time was Hugh O'Carolan, Bishop of Clogher from 1535-1568. Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738) was a blind early Irish harper, composer and singer, known for his gift for melodic composition. Born in Nobber, County Meath, his father took a job with the MacDermott Roe family of Alderford House, thereby giving Turlough an education.
By the time he was eighteen, he was blinded by smallpox and by the age of twenty-one, he was given a horse and...
Another 81 words (6 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Carolynd Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
To escape the religious and political discrimination they experienced primarily at the hands of the English, thousands of Irish left their homeland in the 19th century. These migrants typically settled in communities throughout the East Coast of North America, but also joined the wagon trains moving out to the Midwest. Ironically, when the American War of Independence began, many Irish settlers took the side of England, and at the war's conclusion moved north to Canada. These United Empire Loyalists, were granted land along the St. Lawrence River and the Niagara Peninsula. Other Irish immigrants settled in Newfoundland, the Ottawa Valley, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The greatest influx of Irish immigrants, however, came to North America during the Great Potato Famine of the late 1840s. Thousands left Ireland at this time for North America and Australia. Many of those numbers, however, did not live through the long sea passage. These Irish settlers to North America were immediately put to work building railroads, coal mines, bridges, and canals. Irish settlers made an inestimable contribution to the building of the New World. Early North American immigration records have revealed a number of people bearing the Irish name Carolynd or a variant listed above, including: John Carlin, his wife and their two children who arrived in South Carolina in 1752; Jean Carlin, who came to Halifax, N.S. in 1752; Phillip Carling, who was on record in New York State in 1811.


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Random Note of the Day: Just for fun, I was taking a practice typing test when I noticed that despite having retrained myself to use 10-key typing in a high school keyboarding class, I frequently tap and untap the Caps Lock key if I'm capitalizing words that start with letters on the right side of the keyboard. What an odd habit to slide back into…
1) NCIS: Identity Crisis
This episode is fanfic-friendly. Especially/mostly if you desire to write fanfic including animals. If you do so, point me in its direction immediately.
ZOMG MCGEE WANTS TO GET A PUPPY! YES! DO THIS! Tony's right, he's really not a pit bull kind of person. Not that there's anything wrong with pit bulls, but McGee is definitely in the market for a spaniel. I was going to say a retriever of some sort, but somehow I can't picture him with a dog quite that big. Nope, McGee needs a medium-sized spaniel ASAP. Or a mix, possibly one like the black dog on the Petfinder homepage. While I am vaguely disappointed this storyline was not resolved by episode's end, I now expect to see this brought up again. Possibly in the context of his newly acquired puppy escaping and him having to run all over creation to catch him, making him late for work and thus decide to drive straight to NCIS with dog in tow. Maybe Abby can babysit the puppy in her office while he's in the field. And everyone can share in hiding him from the Director and her codes of conduct (Gibbs will play along because frustrated!Jen amuses him), until finally she corners them, only to be won over by the puppy's adorable …puppyness, and grudgingly agrees to pretend to not see the dog, for just this one day.
I swear I will not actually write this fic.
That's your job.
Gibbs barking (heh, get it?) orders at them was too funny for words. ("Siiiit. Stay! Roll over."…and now I have squeeful visions of AU fic in my head, about Gibbs getting a puppy for Kelly and helping her train it. Wait, I think somebody already wrote this; the puppy part anyway. Timeline, Redux!)
And as if my animal-loving radar wasn't already pinging like crazy, Ziva's uncle raises Arabians!! I choose to interpret this as "Ziva knows her way around a horse," and am now free to daydream about scenarios involving her convincing/coaxing/tricking Tony into going riding with her someday. I mean, I imagine all my ships in that scenario anyway, but it's more fun when it's plausible.
I loved Courtney Krieger, the green FBI agent – really sweet and unassuming, but not nauseatingly so. I would love for her to become a recurring character in the manner of Fornell or Mann (or at least Agent Sachs), though not as much as I would love to take a trip in the way-back machine and cast THIS character on CSI rather than Ronnie Lake. I loved that Ziva was initially so suspicious of her that she was convinced she was the killer, despite a total lack of proof or motive…and also that her suspicion was based totally and irrationally on her jealousy that Tony liked the woman…but then in the end, she came around and they became friends and allies. "Do we hug now?" Heh.
Also love McGee very expressly forbidding Ziva from hair-pulling, followed by talking her down from her crazy place and getting her to admit that Krieger is possibly/probably not evil. And then McGee mentions that "Tony seems to like her," and Ziva's eyes literally FLASH FIRE. This moment is fleeting, but also awesome (and a little scary, if you're on the receiving end). Even Joe the Janitor could put 2 and 2 together from her reaction to that statement, but our agent remains completely oblivious. Oh, McGee.
Could Ziva have USED any more metaphors this week? Or…not metaphors, exactly, but pretending to talk about other people while actually describing herself (i.e. likes to be in control, not show emotions, tightly wound). As for the long speech about how she'd thought Tony had changed, and New Tony needed a WOMAN (also defined as "Ziva David")…the only thing less subtle than that would be if she ripped her clothes off and literally threw herself at him. Maybe.
Gibbs/Abby cute: Abby flinging up her hand to "mute" Gibbs before he praised her for a job half done, and him kissing the back of her fingers anyway. Awww, sometimes that's even better than a cheek kiss.
Random Note 1: Jen's hair is beginning to look really good again. I have missed this. OK, the bangs are a little heavy, but as long as she isn't sporting hedgehog spikes I'm a happy camper.
Random Note 2: NCIS is not only one of the few shows that still has a theme song, but it changes its credits sequence every season and still makes me love it so much that I occasionally go back so I can watch it again.
Cases: was it just me, or did they really try to telegraph the female pathologist as the killer? Especially with that exchange of "Dr. Mallard hates to leave things unfinished." "Yeah…me too." The music CLEARLY showed she was going to reach for a scalpel and stab Palmer right there; I couldn't believe she merely ended up helping them decipher the tattoo. (although on that note, I figured from the start it was one tattoo over another, or at least combined with another – it was way too messy to be anything distinctive on its own)
Loved the nervous Krieger dumping her drink in Tony's lap while on their spy date. HEE. Oh, slapstick comedy. You never get old. Also loved the method of the final reveal – after what may have been a record number of red herrings and dead ends – with Tony narrating the video like a classic piece of cinema while everybody sat back in MTAC to watch. Very good.
Quote of the Week:
Fornell: Kind of defeats the purpose of e-mail, when you have to print it all out for the file anyway.
Gibbs: That's why I don't use it.
Fornell: Really? Not because you can't figure out how to work it?
2) Law & Order: SVU: Savant
The promos really weren't kidding when they claimed they had a whole lineup of special guest stars. I am thinking that at this point, if Munch ever appears in more than 2 scenes, they're going to have to bill Richard Belzer as one of them. Not that I'm complaining about his scenes this week, mind. While dry humor is the best possible use of a Munch Moment, kid interaction and conspiracy theories are the runners-up, so I would consider this episode a success. Loved him crankily lecturing Katie not to talk to strangers – note to self, do not offer the man hugs – especially when it was followed by her cheerfully offering the same thing to Fin, and receiving the same scolding (but this time, punctuated with a wink…haha, I love Fin).
(Other reasons to love Fin: his Oh, I will kill you DEAD look at Lake, after the latter cheerfully played along with the misconception that they were a gay couple expecting a baby. Days later, the memory of this scene still makes me roll on the floor with laughter.)
Katie is officially the cutest child of the seasons so far, and likely to retain this title for a good long time because she was like a helpless little puppy that I wanted to gather up and hug and take home with me. Seriously. Can I have a Katie? There was no point at which I did not utterly love her (except possibly for that nasty sequence in the courtroom where she was mimicking the noises she heard, at which point I actually had to mute before my roommate got the impression that I was watching porn). Especially upon meeting Casey – "You're pretty! Can I have a hug?" Isn't that what everyone secretly thinks when they meet Casey?
I didn't believe for a second that her dad had attacked his wife, but I still spent the whole episode biting my nails and hoping they'd find some evidence to the contrary. I really didn't care whether or not he was using his daughter as an excuse to protect himself; he seemed like a pretty devoted father to me, and this made me gleeful. Especially the way they found out who it was…I loved Katie's indignant yelling that "he used the wrong word!!" (This is very much how I was as a child, what with the many dog books I read. In fact, the first time I heard it used as an insult…which, sadly, was about age 8, and it was one of my friends who said it…I thought they'd meant to say "witch.")
So yes, I was gleeful to the end. Right up until he dragged his daughter away from her mother and decided to divorce without any further discussion, despite the fact that after the violent attack, the woman had no memory of her transgressions whatsoever. BOO on the ending. Just boo.
3) Private Practice: In Which Addison [Spends a Whole Episode Bitching About the Lack of RSVPs to Her] Very Casual Get-Together, While Unrequited Love Abounds. ABOUNDS!
Dear Cooper: Um...when kids are under…let's say 14, maybe 13 years of age, you do not encourage them to tell their crush they like them. They are too young to do anything even if the crush is mutual, and whether it is or isn't, there is likely to be a vast amount of AWKWARDNESS involved after the telling. Refrain from actually telling them their "love" isn't real, but do tell them to wait it out, and focus on being friends in the meantime. Also, keep a secret journal for
future laughing purposes healthy venting.
Dear Cooper, Redux: NO. YOU DO NOT LIKE VIOLET THAT WAY. BAD! FLAIL! WRONGNESS!
You especially cannot tell me that you've loved her for ages and ages, namely while she was with Allan, because your name is not Jim and her name is not Pam, and when placed together, your cuteness does not exceed that of even one puppy, much less a whole litter.
You especially cannot tell me that you've loved her for ages and ages, namely while she was with Allan, because your name is not Jim and her name is not Pam, and when placed together, your cuteness does not exceed that of even one puppy, much less a whole litter.
In all seriousness, I seriously didn't want to go down this route. Didn't Oceanside have a strict NO CONSORTING rule in place, a rule you would think would only be strengthened after Sam & Naomi's divorce and all the unpleasantness that entailed? Apparently Addison's arrival has signaled some sort of horrible awakening and changing of the status quo, like color flooding into Pleasantville. Maybe she writes it into her contract, "I cannot work in an environment with fewer than three simultaneous workplace affairs." *shakes head* I was talking about Cooper. I just, this is like back in the olden days when I was desperately trying to defend Izzie and her Callie-bashing ways as a sign of pure friendship, and that got taken away from me…I didn't want to lose this functioning male-female friendship too. At least, not for like a season or 3. Revving it up in episode 4? LITTLE premature, and I didn't understand fandom's fascination
However, there is a difference between fandom shipping and canon shipping. When TPTB lay it out on the line and tell me to start shipping because Cooper's already on board, I become much more receptive to the idea. I'm still seeing things more from Violet's perspective than his, but I am at least willing to consider it a possibility now. If he ever tells her, that is. I will not exactly be fraught with anxiousness and impatience for this to happen, but I'm willing to read a new layer into their interactions, especially the Caring and Supportive ones, for a while.
Strangely, although I didn't care for it at first listen, now with the rest of the episode plus a couple of days to think about it, I think the bit that won me over was "You're beautiful, and you're funny, and…well, you're annoying, but in a way that's endearing when it's not driving me crazy…" Affectionate teasing! Yes! This is the way to go with relationships in which the characters are immature and slightly bonkers.
Of course, he says all this to himself as part of a practice speech, while sitting in a bathroom stall, but I like to imagine I will hear this speech again someday ("someday" meaning "2 years from now") and then things will be roses and sunshine and beautiful people running in slow motion on the beach. And not include the following exchange, amusing though it is right now—
Pete: Were you just saying "I love you" to your genitals?
Cooper: …no?
Still loving Dell & Addison's interactions. Not shipping, thank-you-very-much, but I love his cranky defense of his small territory, and how this crankiness promptly vanished upon hearing what she was looking for. (did not love his later shouting across the lobby of various parts of female anatomy. Not least because if he meant to show off his knowledge, he might not have chosen such simple and well-known parts. How about mons veneris? Fornix?
I totally did not just take time to research this on Google.) Anyway, I desire to read more of their bantering in fic. Why has this show not yet come to fanfiction.net?
Also love the addressing of the fact that Violet and Addison still hadn't really spoken to one another. And even though these are my two favorite characters, so you'd think I'd want them to bond quickly, I kind of thought Violet was awesome for deciding she had reached a point in her life where she didn't need any new friends. Of course, I liked it even more when she ended up unexpectedly talking to Addison anyway, and then finding common ground in their respective forms of crazy. Heh.
Quick Case Runthrough:
-I thought it was fairly obvious that their crazy pregnant patient was a psych ward escapee. I wondered why they didn't guess that on their own.
-I still haven't decided how I feel about Charlotte King, but by this point it feels like they're just shoehorning her into every episode, and it makes me think Oceanside is kind of a sad place if they can't go one week without shuttling patients back and forth to the real hospital.
-I sympathized greatly with the male half of the old couple, and think Pete could have phrased some of his questions in a less AWKWARD AND EMBARRASSING WAY.
-This isn't actually case-related, but I would like to point out that Addison and Pete are continuing to have a remarkable lack of chemistry.
-I didn't catch the Arm-and-Hammer thing, not even when the other doctors first started hinting this out to Sam. My mind naturally went to Mr. Clean and assumed he was the Arm-and-Hammer guy. Such is the hypnotic power of Sam and his weirdly sexy baldness. (also, I desperately wanted to point out to the guy he was coaching on TV that it was probably his potbelly more than his vanishing hair that kept women from throwing themselves at him).
-You know, I don't remember Allan being all that much of a catch when we first saw him, plus all those bad traits Violet revealed about him…I don't get how he has a gorgeous young wife and an annoying-but-endearing ex-girlfriend still pining after him.
-I am finding Naomi to be one of my least favorite characters so far, not because I really dislike her but just because I feel like she never does anything . She's just sort of there. I have finally stopped pining for Merrin Dungey (mostly because after the cake episode, I've decided to pretend that Merrin Dungey simply gained 40 pounds over the summer), so it's not that. It's just that Naomi is turning out to be kind of a bland character. Or at least I'm not picking up on her charms.
-Dear Addison: I still think that two eggs (that's down from the approximately 400,000 you're supposed to be born with – hey look, there's that Google research I didn't do coming into play again) is a ridiculous number to pin any hope on. And – wait, now I'm confused on a whole new level about how menstrual cycles play into this. Like, wouldn't those eggs be lost in a fairly short manner? And if her cycles are irregular to nonexistent, then wouldn't that have been a signal of fertility problems in the first place, long before she ever went to visit Naomi? Oh, yet more Google research says that the answer I'm looking for may be a new vocabulary word, "anovulation." I think about things like this way too much.
I was going somewhere with this…oh, right. I'm not really on board with the idea of Addison having a kid anymore. I mean, back in Seattle it seemed like a great idea - anything to give her a non-nauseating storyline. But now she's in L.A., and she has a whole fantastic group of friends, and even though intellectually I know it would not happen for ages if ever on this show, I still feel the need to point out how happy I am that she moved to L.A. And yes, I am definitely enjoying the show as a whole – way more than I ever thought I would. I don't just like it; it's become one of the shows I most look forward to every week. Seriously, top 5 – The Office, NCIS, CSI, CSI: Miami (no, I didn't mean to write NY; we'll discuss that next) and Private Practice.
4) CSI: NY: Time's Up
4x03 (minus Devon) notwithstanding, I'm disappointed in the quality of this season so far. I really have no idea what's wrong with it; it's not easy to pinpoint a cause like it was on Miami was last year, but I find myself not only not looking forward to new episodes, but not even bothering to watch them as they air. And this marks the second week in a row I've read everyone's reviews before watching the episode myself, something I normally consider a mortal sin.
But unlike last week, this week I couldn't bring myself to watch it at all. I jumped through bits and pieces of it, watching the pertinent personal clips, but the cases were so excruciatingly dull that I gave up after 5 minutes. And even the personal clips…I don't know. I just don't feel invested. Let's be optimistic and say it's just due to the glow of Shiny New Obsession finally beginning to wear off. Onward to a short series of bullet points.
-Was there a reason the camera went sideways for a second when Flack broke open the door? Leave the editing tricks in Miami.
-Flack's reaction upon ripping open the shower curtain to be confronted by…a guy showering. LOL.
-I hated the remixed theme song a tiny fraction less this week. But that's only because I haven't fired up my DVDs in a while. As soon as I hear the old one, I'll go right back to the hating. I guarantee it.
-I had to watch the whole horrible sorority girl case just because Angell was working it. I kept a tally of how many times the case made me want to throw up: the answer is 8, which also answers why I have nothing else to say about it. Angell, though – she could stand around reading the Periodic Table of the Elements, and I would still be enthralled. Ranking right up there with Mac, Flack, Peyton and Stella in my Fave Five (wait, how did Stella get back in there?), I love her attitude and her outfits and her eyebrow arches and everything else about her. *hugs*
-Danny flying tackle! More of that, please, and I'll let you make a case for ousting Stella from her position again.
-Out of sheer curiosity, I tested a 1981 penny on a vending machine to see if it was under the same confuzzlement as the parking meters in this episode. It was not. I was pretty excited that I happened to have a pre-1982 penny on me in order to perform this test, though.
Stella and her Mysterious Love Interest: I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the guy is totally normal and well-adjusted. Just to differ from popular opinion. I loved Mac telling her to go for it, even though it was hard to hear him over the subtext of how, since they're so much alike and like to avoid all the uncertainties of the dating scene, in the end they should just go for each other. :P
And now for the part I've been avoiding thinking about for 2 days: MAC. MY HEART HURTS. He was so cute and happy and content, recalling how Peyton had slowly but surely filled the giant Claire-shaped hole in our hearts, and then THERE WAS A LETTER and it was horrible. Even though I knew she wasn't coming back, I had sort of blocked that fact out, as if hoping against hope that it had somehow changed when I wasn't looking. Which just made it HURT EVEN MORE, and I had to stop watching for a minute to go cry. Well, not really. But almost. You can't say that, Peyton! You can't end your breakup letter with "my love"! That's just cruel and unusual for all parties involved to snap it off when you're both still in love just for fear that it will end someday in the future. Wait for someday. It might not come. And even if it does, at least you'll have had a little more time.
But I did like Stella happening upon the letter by chance, seeing at a glance what it was, and then showing up at the club in support. (that scene needs to be continued. Ideally, in a gen context by stellaluna_. While I'm dreaming, I'd like to hire a ghostwriter for my lab reports). Because even tamping down my back-burner shipping inclinations, they really are always going to be there for one another through good and bad, asked or not.
Will Dailey sounds like he's trying really hard to fight off a French accent, even though I'm almost positive he's American, and his song does not enthrall me, so I had to mute the whole ending scene. Which was fine; I really just like watching Mac let himself get lost in playing. So, he's got his music and Stella to make this whole process slightly less soul-crushing, but WHAT DO I HAVE?
Oh right, Jim and Pam. And also, Grissom and Sara. I must admit that last Thursday night was amazing. And it's all coming up next, right after the break!
Voice: Don't you have homework waiting?
RS: Yes. Yes, I do.


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Listen to this show
Show time: 47 minutes 34 seconds
In this show Eric Reiss, from FatDUX in Copenhagen, has a spirited conversation with Jeff Parks about his predictions for the future of those within the User Experience field in 2010.
Finally after all these years of preaching that "content is king"…companies are going to understand that what is going to drive the business model is creating the shared reference with their customers, making sure that everyone is on the same page and you do that, by and large, through content.
They [traditional marketers] still talk about SMM (Social Media Marketing) and I don't think there is a such an animal. Traditional marketing builds on demographics. Social Media builds on behaviour and following the conversation between people…
There is going to be an app that's going to replace Twitter this year…Twitter has spent too long trying to figure out what their business model is going to be.
Partner of FatDUX in Copenhagen Eric Reiss has a spirited conversation with Jeff Parks about predictions for the future of those within the User Experience field in 2010.
Eric believes content strategy will become the hottest topic for businesses; that titles will continue to become less important; how a new application with a tighter business model will likely replace twitter, and how those who have been made famous by the web alone will begin to take on the real life persona of Icarus.
Show Notes
Eric discusses his post about calculating an Internet Year.
A special thanks to Jeff's sister Suzanne Lowry for providing transcripts for Radio Johnny! More on the way soon…
Jeff Parks: So today on radio Johnny I'm having the pleasure of talking to Eric Reiss from Denmark who's the principal of FatDUX and Eric you sent me a list of interesting ideas looking at; predictions in the User Experience discipline for 2010. The first one that you sent me and maybe we'll just do this…..
Eric Reiss: Wait a minute Jeff. I've got to interrupt you right now. You promised me that you wouldn't tell anyone that I actually have written these down because my partners here at FatDUX said the worst thing that you can do with predictions is to actually put them some place where people can find them again because a year or two later the whole world can see how stupid you were. So that was also the reason I was doing this in interview form, because I figure it's harder for people to find them in a podcast, than if there on a blog. So don't tell anyone you have the list o.k? 🙂
Jeff Parks: Well I'm afraid you're screwed, because there's this thing called show notes in podcast where we write this stuff down.
Eric Reiss: Oh damn!
Jeff Parks: Okay, (Laughing) So working from the premise that you're going to share some ideas and recognizing the fact that it's December 2009, so if someone does hear this podcast six months from now or a year from now, they can put these predictions in context. Right?
Eric Reiss: Right, absolutely!
Jeff Parks: Alright, so the whole point of this conversation is not to be a "as matter of fact" idea it's to try to look towards the future, and how we can make things better for the people in UX regardless of what you call your self. We'll see at the end of 2010; you and I will have another show and we'll see how close we got to these idea's that you are sharing with everybody.
Eric Reiss: Great, sounds fun!
Jeff Parks: Alright, so the first idea, and we've talked about this in the past about how content strategy is going to be the hot topic as companies start to seriously build the web into their businesses plans. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that idea and why you think that's true.
Eric Reiss:Well absolutely. For years now we've been talking about "Content is King" and in the Information Architecture community we've talked about the "Context is King" and the business analysts understand the boxes but we also understand the arrows, and all of this is really good stuff!
But the truth is that most web sights have a tendency to look alike and we've spent years now trying to build usable, findable web sites. There are all kinds of best practices you can go to dotster, you can download skins that work perfectly well from a usability point of view, for like $62.00 a pop! People are talking about emotion, talking about personality, all this kind of good stuff that we need to build into our web sites. To be perfectly frank, for me, the personality had always been part of the content!
I think the fact that Karen McGrane who is one of the founders who is the official race official founders of Razor Fish in New York calls herself a "Content Strategist; the fact that Christina Halverson has had so much success preaching the gospel of content strategy; I have Content Strategists on my card and have for many,many years now. I think that people are going to realize that it's not about flash, it's not about the lay out, it's not about usability, it's about what you put on the site. Just think of how many really awful sites we go to. Hobby sites for example, that has something that interests us personally. Could be gardening, cooking, or collecting tin soldiers, you know, what do I know. But you can spend a lot of time on really,really bad designs sites and enjoy yourself because you finally find something that's actually worth reading. And you don't think about the fact that it's a really boring gray background and the text are centered and there are fifteen different fonts and there are three blinking GIF files. You ignore these things, and I think finally, finally after all these years about preaching the content that "Content is King", that this is really going to come about, and companies are going to understand that what is going to drives the business models is creating the share references with their costumers making sure that everyone in fact is on the same page and you do that by in large through content. It's not just written content but it's also images, sounds, if we could figure out how to do SMEL's that would also help create the shared references necessary.
So I think that 2010 is really going to see a change. And some of this had to do with the fact that we're simply in an economic crises. So there are limiits to how many hot shot flash designers a company wants to hire in. There's a greater chance that you're are actually going to be able to move some market share if you were to give people a good reason to buy your product.
Jeff Parks: Well I think too at the end of the day a lot of what your saying holds true from my prospective and my experiences as well. I think companies are finally starting to realize after a decade of throwing everything on the web and saying it's online and there for we're good to go! We're starting to realize that the web is good for certain things but we're also coming to the realization that the web is really kinda bad for a number of things, and if you take 90% of what you might have online and you throw it away, and not throw it away in the context of getting rid of it because it's business value add then you don't want to chuck it, but maybe technology isn't the best solution for that particular problem or the best way to communicate those ideas.
Eric Reiss: You're absolutely right! As a matter of fact it's so funny that you mentioned this about technology because I had an opinion piece, or a "op-ed" piece published in the Danish business newspaper Burson this morning. And my message was basically, "The solution to technological problems isn't always more technology. Sometimes it's just common sense."
Jeff Parks: And we need to get back to that again. It's almost like we've come full circle in a lot of ways. In a lot of ways twenty, thirty years ago when there was no computers, I think we actually did a better job at communicating. I think we understood to create great products and services it involved discussion and face to face interactions, that it took time to get to that point where the design is exactly what our customers wanted and there was a higher level of patience as well. People didn't expect it to be done yesterday because the web provides us access to those things so it's changing the way we work. I agree with you, I think the companies that are the most successful are going to be really focusing on content in the broader scope of what it means, and how to apply that appropriately.
Eric Reiss: Absolutely!
Jeff Parks: The other point you were making was User Experience folks will finally figure out that the UX is not a job tittle. (Jeff and Eric: laughing) which
I've been debating with people for the last few years. You're title is irrelevant in my mind. It's the value you can add to the ideas. You're title doesn't matter as much has your ideas that you can bring to the table. Now that leads into a whole other conversation about the importance of corporate culture to allow those ideas to foster and to flourish. But can you talk to me a little about you're ideas around that notion about how UX isn't necessarily a job title.
Eric Reiss: Oh, sure! Well see my education, or one of my educations, like a zillion years ago, was as a Stage Director. My first job when I came to Denmark was to direct at the local theater in Copenhagen. And this was all User Experience. I never seen User Experience as being anything that was somehow linked to online. I saw online as being just another medium. And basically, I see the whole world as being User Experience! Any kind of an interaction is something that contributes to User Experience and I think there is different kinds of interactions. Some of which we have control over. So you say in theory "Well, if I can control in interaction in some way, that makes me a User Experience designer." and I would have to say "ya" But truth is I think there is so many different discipline's involved that for any one who would have the hubris and say " Well, I'm a User Experience……'whatever'", is wrong.
I don't think that there are that many "Jack's of all trades" out there. I know that, for example..oh Jesus, five years ago,must have been.. let's see, I was in Amsterdam November 2004 or there about. And Peter Boersma and I got very,very, drunk at a restaurant and drew all kinds of things on the back of beer mats. This is where Peters T-diagram came from. He had this idea that "big IA" which is a term I loath. I think that Big IA'S are strategic IA's. I think Big and little, little is a demeaning term. I like tactical and I like strategic.
Anyway, Peter says "Well there is no such thing as big IA anymore, it's User Experience." and I said "Well no it's not because User Experience is often the visual designer. It's not just the Information Architect, it's the content providers, it's… my goodness, it's the people who set up the servers who make sure that you get a decent response time on the individual server calls. All this contributes to the User Experience. So to say that Information Architecture, strategic Information Architecture is User Experience, I think is wrong.
That said, clearly people are moving in this direction. When we had the closing plenary that Andrew Hinton did a couple years ago in, I guess It was Miami. Which is one of the most brilliant, brilliant plenaries that I have ever heard. Andrew you're so smart. I'm mean uhh, I'm just in awe. It was very good and he pointed out that Information Architecture, you know it was just one piece of a fairly complicated puzzle. And last year in Memphis, I certainly got into this in my talk about "A House Divided. Which had to do with the split between IA in the IXD community, which I've never really understood. And Jesse James talked about this in his closing plenary. So, we know there is something out there called UX. I don't think any of us are served by sort of jumping on the band wagon saying " woo I no longer do, what ever I do. I now do User Experience." You probably do a part of User Experience but I don't think there is anything that you call " well, I have a User Experience designer" I think there are just too many different elements to go into that. I mean you can in the broader sense and you can tell that to your grandmother if she understands it. But I think that in terms of tittles on business cards it's not the best thing to call yourself.
Jeff Parks: Well I mean the information age is creativeness right? I mean even in this medium and the social media sphere there's the social media douche bags that are out there. All the people that claim to be experts in the field it's the same thing. I've even seen people that have delivered here in Canada they call them "The Jack of all trades" issues, like you were saying. They were delivering IA deliverables and I mean what they call wire frames are persona's are just… well let's just say really bad! Providing no context, no details. And it's this idea that you can know about anything now. And so there fore you can see the basic stuff and create the deliverable. But the actual quality of that deliverable and your complete understanding of it; anyone can give themselves any title.
I think if we focus less on the title, and I know that's really hard in this community, whether you call yourself an information designer or a information architect. I think we could accomplish a lot more. You're point to Andrew Hinton and Jesse James Garrett, as well as having great respect for their work, I think the one thing that puts them heads and shoulders against a lot of people is that their great story tellers.They can get in front of a group, their relaxed and they have this way of communicating idea's without getting caught up into a lot of semantics, and a lot of technical details where quit frankly, even people within our industry don't even have a firm grasp of. So I think that's great and I think that moving the conversation away from the title can potentially create even greater ideas.
Eric Reiss: Ya, basically the job title is unimportant. Throughout my long career know one has ever once asked to see my university degree.
Jeff Parks: Me neither!
Eric Reiss: And I figure, Isn't that important? My goodness I even have a teaching position at a business school teaching in Madrid. You would think that somebody would actually want to see my credentials at one point. Well they don't. And the truth is I think the job title kind of falls into the same category. It's important that we know what were doing, but we don't necessarily have to give it any particular name. And in terms of Information Architecture which is certainly something that has been fought about for years and years and years now, at least a decade. My point had always been "Hey, it's whatever you happen to be doing." I think if you find a hundred Information Architects you'll find a hundred people doing a hundred things slightly differently. And so great! if it works. And if that's what you're doing and someone is willing to pay you to do that, then terrific! I mean what do you care what somebody write on their dam blog is the definition of Information Architecture. I think that's absolutely ludicrous.
Jeff Parks: Yes, well I think that the whole point here is if we spend more time valuing and understanding the ideas that are being presented and spending less time focusing on the titles we give ourselves, we could all accomplish a lot more for the people whom were designing.
Eric Reiss: Okay, let me say something snarky here. I think there people who are really,really worried about job titles are the ones that are sufficiently insecure in their own work that they needed a job title to fall back on.
Jeff Parks: Sure, absolutely! And then that actually leads us right into your next idea that (I love the analogy that you use) "Icarus will fly too close to the sun". So the folks who are merrily famous because they are famous are going to…well, in a sense crash and burn. So do you maybe want to elaborate on that idea a bit! (laughing)
Eric Reiss: (laughing) Well I elaborate on this too much, but a very funny thing happened a couple weeks ago. My wife and I were in Florida visiting my mother and as usual my wife buys all the junk magazines at the airport so that we have lots of reading material. So it's People, Okay, and Hello. I can't even remember all the names of them. Half of them are British and half of them are American, National Enquirer. It's always interesting to see what those aliens of Roswell were doing. (Jeff parks: laughs) Anyway in one of these there was interview with Nicole Richie and she says " I don't know why I'm famous" and I thought "Well darling, I don't know why your famous either." And at that point I took a copy of people magazine which is probably one of the better publications and I went threw and marked all the people who's name I recognized. I didn't necessarily have to know what they did but I at least had to be able to recognize their name.
And there was probably less than 10% of the people that I knew, like Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolee, Brad Pitt and George Cloney and so on. And then the rest of them are all reality t.v stars and other people that are certainly unknown. In Europe where I've lived for the past thirty five years, I mean my goodness, In Europe I can even pick up a similar magazine in Germany, in Sweden or in England, or in Norway, or in France, or in Italy and I won't know the manes either because these people are so incredibly local!
Well we got a lot of rock stars right now who have made themselves famous threw social media. And social media is some how is like reality shows with monitors instead of t.v's. I think that 2010, and again partly because of the economic crisis, it's going to see a weeding out. People are going to have to actually put their money where their mouth is. It's not enough just to say I'm great, you're actually going to have to go out and show people what the hell you've done.
Jeff Parks: Ya you're right, and if you get a large following, but if you can't back it up what's the point? And that actually speaks to your very next point how the individual practitioners will do better than the big shops, and the good net workers and networking organizations will probably prosper the most, and that actually speaks to the thing that I keep reaching about which is this tool, which is social media, I mean the real power behind it is the ability to connect with other people in anywhere in the world.
It's what you do with those relationships after you establish that connection that are going to determine your successes, not sitting behind a computer and try to capture context at a hundred and forty characters.
Eric Reiss: Hm, well actually the idea of capturing context at one hundred and forty characters I think is kind of interesting. One of my favorite quotes is from a french philosopher and mathematician Blais Pascal who said "Pardon the length of this letter, I didn't have time to make it shorter." If you really want to convey something at one hundred and forty characters, you've got to think about it, so it may be that SMS and Twitter and other short messaging services are actually teaching people to form their thoughts more carefully. So it may not be such a bad thing.
Jeff Parks: Okay, but at the same time too, it's not like you can provide great detail or context. I've seen a lot of arguments on Twitter and I kind of laugh at it after the fact. I'm like " Come on, come one really? You're really going to get upset over a misunderstanding on Twitter?" I mean it's Twitter!! I think that's the thing that we fail to recognize, is that these things are tools to connect to other people. You have to understand the purpose of the tool, and you have to know the people whom you are communicating with to know whether or not if it's the most effective tool for the job.
Eric Reiss: Well that's right, we're going to get back to Twittering in a little while. (Jeff:laughing) I've got some more things to say about that. I like Twitter, I think I have the reputation for "Oh well, Eric he doesn't understand social media and he doesn't like it." Well, that's…. well of course there is some truth in that. I'm quietly bemused by social media, because I see it misused by a lot of people. I think the metrics that are used to judge success are not always the best metrics. I can start writing porn in Denmark and I can assure you I'll get a lot of followers. I don't choose to write about porn in Denmark and I don't use key works that are guaranteed to get me called by the marketers and who ever else is out there.
Jeff Parks: Ya, you know how I measure success on someone on social media? I measure the success's on social media whether threw podcast or Twitter or blogging or whatever. I measure it by the feed back I've gotten from other people about the efforts that I put in to share ideas with others. So when I meet people at conferences or connect with other people threw those tools in the real world, I measure my success by the feed back that I get from other people. I don't look at stats to see.. well I do look a web analytics of course, but I don't focus on the quantitative data to prove that. The relationships that I form with other people and the friendships that I make over time are or is the measure that I used to determine my success in that particular area.
Eric Reiss: You know Louis B. Mayer and the other moguls in Hollywood use to tell there stars "Listen, don't believe your own PR!" It was kind of a problem because you get these young actors and actresses who would read the fan magazines and really start to believe this nonsense that was being turn up by the PR offices at the MGM, Paramount, Columbia and so on. And we all do ego searches. It's great fun to go onto Google and search you're own name and see how many places I've been quoted, or how have I done, or how many links are there or whatever. And the truth is, don't take it for anything more than entertainment. Don't think just because there is a lot of hits that it's necessarily a good thing. If you say something really really stupid, you can get that quoted too.
Jeff Parks: Getting back to this original point, I kinda pulled us off track here, sorry about that. You were talking about how the fact that….
Eric Reiss: (Interrupts Jeff) You're such a crap interviewer! (sarcasm…laughter)
Jeff Parks: Ya I know, I've got to get my shit together Eric, it's been a long day, I'm sorry. (laughing) You were talking about our individual practitioner are going to better than the big shops. why do you think that is?
Eric Reiss: Yes. Well you know it's interesting. And the big shop this is irrelevant to the Untied States, a big shop is like really big. In Denmark a big shop is maybe thirty,forty,fifty people. We've had some shops that are like a hundred and seventy, a hundred and eighty, that suddenly halved their staffs because they don't have enough new biz coming in the door that can justifying paying a monthly salary to all these many people.
I think that the big shops are going to down size and their going to give people fixed term contracts, and this will ultimately be in the interest of the individual practitioners. This is certainly the way FatDUX has built up a fairly sizable organization now by bringing people in by associates who aren't necessarily on staff. And it's turned out very well, people have made a lot of money and we haven't had to fire anyone this past year and were able to move resources where we need to do that.
The big shops have trouble doing that. The people who net work, the people who understand how to read the blogs to look for talent and not just piffy articles are going to do well. Now, it's not to say that being a big shop is a bad thing, on the contrary being a big shop can be a really, really good thing, but I still think that 2010 is going to be a tough year. I think 2011 is going to be a tough year for that matter. We're in trouble here and it ain't over and if anybody who says "Oh well, the economy has turned around" I'm sorry, I just don't believe that yet. And I don't think you can say that about all markets across the board. The market is very individual, if you look at the UX practitioner in London right now, you'll be hard pressed to find one. If you're looking for Drupal programmers in London right now, very difficult to find. If you look for senior people in San Fransisco you're going to have a hard time finding them. On the other hand you can go to other markets, you can go to Hamburg, you can go to Munich, Paris, you can go to Brussels, so on and so forth, and you'll find that their are people available.
Jeff Parks: Yup, again I think idea draws back to what we were saying earlier about how anyone can give themselves a title. So it's not only difficult trying to find them but it's also difficult trying to find people with the experiences who are qualified that can actually keep these conversations going forward and to be able to sell people in the value of User Experience. Would it not?
Eric Reiss: That's very true because I think User Experience community has not been very good at understanding the needs of the business community or even speaking the language of the business community. I mean they pay it lip service and every once in a while they'll use a term like "ROI" as though that proves that they have really gotten underneath the skin of the MBA crowd, and the truth is there is probably not one in twenty in the UX community that uses "ROI" correctly!
This is a backward looking metric you can not use to predict the future you can only use it to copulate that you actually got something out of whatever you did. And this is a problem, because when people are talking to business men people who have their MBA's and understand this stuff, I mean if you can't use the terms correctly and you don't understand the the math behind it then don't use the words!
And besides Dan Saffer said this at Interaction '09 at Vancouver last year, it was very piffy, he said "Look if you wanted to hire an MBA they would have hired an MBA, Well they didn't they hired us, ok?" So we don't have to pretend that we're MBA's. But with that said it certainly moves us to understand the business analytic that are behind it because anybody who tells you Information Architecture, User Experience, all these nice things that we go and do are not strategic decisions doesn't know what their talking about. You can take a whole bunch of letters in Scrabble and you can take the letters in the word "information". I have a slide that I've been using for years now, I love it. I can get all these Scrabble pieces and move it around the power point have people say "How did Eric do that?" So it can spell "information" or it can spell "tin", "iron" and "foam" or it can spell a bunch of other things.
So the boxes is not where the strategy lies, the arrows is where the strategy lies. And this is what we can do and this is what we need to sell to the business community. But there are far too many people preaching to the choir, I mean we love to go to each others conferences and so you know we'll all show up in Phoenix and we'll talk about business issues. Why are we not going to business conferences?
Jeff Parks: I think what you're describing too with the arrow's, to me that analogy is sounds like what you were ultimately talking about is ultimately process. You're talking about how business function and how they work and I think that contributes to the divide as well as you were pointing out with Dan Saffer "…they didn't hire a MBA, they hired us.!" But it's trying to understand how to communicate the value in a different process that… especially in the older businesses at least my experience here in North America have sort of clung too, that no longer work. And they don't work because the people in charge are incompetent. They don't work because the way that people are communicating and sharing ideas now has radically changed over the last decade, and the business leaders are not in the right position to making the change and aren't flexible enough in order to adopt these new ideas and if they aren't, they are going to fail. Am I following your line of thought appropriately?
Eric Reiss: Absolutely, the business community is being sucked in by buzz words like Web 2.0 and social media without actually understand the costs as well. We sent a budget into a client of ours. We have talked about how we could use social media to drive traffic to their site, and it was not a big budget. I mean social media is not free but for the stuff that we needed to do we were talking about a minor budget. And they said well this is great, put it in the works. We said "Well wait a minute, we'd love to take your money… but… you are going to have to hire two full time positions if you are actually going to follow up on these things."
And so where is the two hundred thousand dollars a year that you need to drive this forward? That's not in your budget, so don't start it. Social media is not free, social media is incredibly expensive! And I don't think that the business community understands this.
Jeff Parks: And relate to that is your next point which is…..
Eric Reiss: And it's our fault because were not explaining it very well.
Jeff Parks: Right, and I mean I think that the future in this industry isn't going to be about telling people what to do, but to facilitate a better value behind these things, because as you pointed out we've done a pretty poor job of doing that up to this point. We've done great at communicating within our own communities about approaches and things but we don't do enough. It's like Jesse James Garrett said at the closing preliminary this year. You know it's great that iRise and Morae are here but where are the Microsofts? Where are the Adobes, why aren't they at the Summit? Why aren't those people at these larger conferences?
And to that point following up on the social media idea that you shared with me is that you believe that business will realize that the user generator content is not the pencea that they thought it was, which I find really interesting. So I'm wondering what you mean by this.
Eric Reiss: I met a group of business students recently, who have recently who have this idea for a product. And the whole thing sort of realize on user generator content. And well this is all well and good but the idea isn't strong enough to actually get people to want to use your product. You're relying on something that not really there. It's chicken and egg. Just because you build it there is no guarantee that people are going to come or use it. So it's not the pencea that people think.
When you talk to business leaders or many different business leaders, they think it's web 2.0 and it's generated content and this is just going to be great because then we don't have to worry about content anymore. And I point out, well look you do have to worry about the content, probably figure out a third of the content in what you are calling generator content is something your organization is going to have to generate in order to drive the machine. You're going to have to write the blog posts, you're going to have to write the Tweets, you're going to have to go out and respond to other people's blog posts. This all takes time and there is a lot of content that needs to be generated. This isn't something that will just come in out of the blue because somebody has wondered into your blog and said "Oh I think I will write something piffy to increase the value this site." That just doesn't happen very often.
Jeff Parks: Ya, well it speaks back to Andrew Hinton's closing plenary talk that we were talking about before, he basically said is "Conversation is King" what you're talking about and at least what I hear from you saying is.. or at least from what I think that you are saying is, you need to have people engaged with others from around the world threw the web in order to make these tools valuable.
Eric Reiss: Oh absolutely, see that's the paradigm change that I think the markers still haven't realized. They still talk about SMM (Social Media Marketing) and I say (laughing) I don't think there is such an animal. I think that traditional marketing builds on demographics and social media builds on behaviour and following conversations, it's a conversation between people, between people and a brand. It's certainly not the traditional tools of marketing which we are very one way communication. Marketers aren't really geared for this.
And that kind of brings us to the last two points on my sort of predictions. The one is, there is going to be an app that's going to replace Twitter next year. I think that the Twitter people, lovely as they are, have spent too long on what their business models are going to be. Either roll something out really, really quick that's going to generate income for Twitter or somebody else is going to come along and just blow them away about something that's really really well thought out but is also part of the business model.
I wrote on our blog a couple months ago that I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how long an Internet year was because I wanted to relate Internet years to business cycles to see if there's some way that we can judge the maturity of an online product. So my answer (and there is a really long calculation that leads up to this) but my answer was, I think an Internet year is 4.7 years. (And you can all go to the FatDUX blog and read about it if you're really interested.) But the point is, if you look at Twitter, well it's well into the second business cycle and that's far too long for any business to have existed without a viable business model. So I think that they are eventually going to go Friendster which again it was out there for a couple years, didn't have a business model and got taken over by MySpace and my space got kicked out by Facebook, which for the time being is doing okay.
The idea just because you have a lot of users and you got a lot of user generated content and that's not enough to drive the business. And the final thing, and this is ties everything back to everything that we've talked about has to do with our love of wire frames. It's like if you do a really good wire frame then you've just solved all the worlds problems.
Jeff Parks: Well you have, haven't ya?
Eric Reiss: (laughing)
Jeff Parks: (laughing) What's wrong with that? What the hell? No? (sarcasm…laughing)
Eric Reiss: oh well, I 'll send ya to crowd vine for the IA summit in Phoenix because I have something to say about wire frames on my profile.
Jeff Parks:Carry on, I'm sorry. (laughing)
Eric Reiss: No,no,no (laughing ) that's all right! Thomas Vander Wal and I have a long conversation last night because we've been thinking very much in the same vein that the wire frames are fine in terms of web sites but the truth is, that we've got to learn how to map messages across multiple communication plant channels. This is what the marketing community hasn't quite figured out. Every once in a while a question will turn up on in some forum,"Well can I use Twitter as my main marketing vehicle; or as my only marketing vehicle?" The same can be said of Facebook groups or whatever you're using.
The advertising community, these people who are not stupid, and they haven't figured out how to do web sites yet; for a variety of reasons that all relate to their concept of concept. Which is look and feel and and visual and metaphorical pictures that play off a clever headline. Where as online it's all about functionality. It's what it can do. That's what your concept is.
Now when the advertising people figures this out, the strategic information architects are very apt to be replaced by the business annalists, because the business annalists understand the boxes, as soon as they figure out the arrows the so called "big IA's" can pack it in because they have lost that territory, and the advertising agencies will try very, very hard next year to try to figure out how to do this, because they know how to talk the language of business, they know how to talk to the clients, they get decent size budgets for the work they do and they have in fact have the talent in house to do a lot of the things that we're doing in the UX community. They just don't know it yet.
I mean they're trying but their trying to use old tools, and what they need to do is use old skills, but with some new tools and and they haven't figured this out again. As soon as they start to work in terms of marketing mix and well this is what we want to be doing on Twitter and this is going to tie into something else that we are going to be doing on Facebook. It's a very complicated jig saw puzzle. And we need to learn how do you wire frame that? How do you wire frame a communication message that moves from the analog world to the digital world to something quite different. There's all kinds of channels that are contributing to your business message and I don't think that anybody has really worked out a model for this. But someone should.
Jeff Parks: I've got one. Ready for it? It's really complicated. You get everyone in a room together and you throw some paper up on the wall and hand the markers and say "Start communicating with each other, let's talk about how to do this." You know there's an app for that for everything. I'm wondering whether or not if we need another app. If I'm talking to a business person that doesn't know anything but tech, what's wrong with wire frame? He can grab a pencil and start scratching on it and start communicating. I mean the whole idea is to communicate. But I guess what you're saying is, (and maybe I've missed the point which is not out of the range of possibilities) is the fact that we need something that allows us to pull all these messages together, so you're looking at a app that pulls in the context of Twitter messages into an understanding of how to wire frame better?
Eric Reiss: Well I'm not even thinking about wire frames. I'm thinking about how to get your message across, in whatever form you choose. What the advertising community has been very, very good at is mapping effort to effect. So if you're going to book tv advertisements then you talk about OTS (Opportunities To See) you know, what is your penetration going to be in different markets and hopefully if you run so and so tv spots on prime time and all these spots have waited. Some are worth more than others because it's in a very popular television show, or it's just after the news or whatever. There are very, very sophisticated algorithm's for working all of this out in television and less sophisticated algorithms, although there are algorithms, for figuring out how to figure out the viability of print advertising and other things. When somebody figures out how to work out the mix with traditional media and social media and sort of direct customer contact and pull in some customer service offerings because basically that's what it's all about is doing your customer service.
When somebody figures out how to map that out and you can certainly do that in a room with a lot of stickies but I don't think that people have quite figured out the math behind this yet. How do you sell it? How do you figure out we're spending too much time tweeting and not enough time on facebook or whatever. In the same way they say "Right, we've got too many print adds running right now, we got to do more cinema advertising, we've got to be in flight magazines, where ever this is. And the media planners and the advertising agencies have been really, really good at offline and they have no clue, as how to do this online, but I don't know why they shouldn't be good at it if they just learn to understand the medium, or the media.
Jeff Parks Right, and my idea about the whiteboard only works of course if you can get everybody into a room on a global scale which for doing business now, that's almost never possible. So I appreciate what you are saying, and you are absolutely right, we need something a little more… I don't know, I guess what you're describing is how do we get people to blend with the old school with the new school. How do we divide that bridge to bring that value it of both perspectives?
Eric Reiss: Right, well as you can hear I'm slightly paranoid about the advertising industry right now because I've worked in advertising for twenty years. I know perfectly well what they're capable of and I'm sort of amazed that they are still as clueless as they are!
Somebody wrote a blog post I think he was at Avenue A / Razor Fish well you know we should only have one agency. And the hell of it is he's right. It doesn't make sense to divide it up except people who are creative in advertising agencies that is to say art directors and copy writers are used to this look and feel kind of thinking. And it's a very schizophrenic existence to have to switch from offline to online. I did this the first seven years of the web and it drove me crazy! And it was very,very difficult to communicate to some of my colleagues who were very old school, who only looked at look and feel and didn't understand the idea of function. Now trying to be an Information Architect / Content Strategist on one side of things and to work out online concepts, I mean this is like in 1994 and 95 for goodness sakes. Very primitive stuff. Then writing advertisements, this is all business to business stuff. The rest of the day was incredibly difficult to and very schizophrenic experience. But my point is, once the advertising agencies figure out how to use their in house talents in different ways; I mean being creative is not what you do it's how you think. So we just got to get them to do something else, and they haven't quite figured it out…but they will. And this is what's going to blow the socks of what they so call interactive agencies. Because the advertising agencies are going to do a lot of the stuff that we need. They're going to understand how to do marketing mix that includes different flavors of social media, they're going to start to understand how to connect the dots. The Business Analyst understand business, they understand strategy, and to some extent they understand the content but if they understand the strategic relationships between the content, the way the information architects do, well the web houses are going to go back to doing code and the Information Architects are going to go back doing thesauri and I think that's sort of a sad state of affairs.
So, I would like those of us in the UX community to become involved. I don't know for some reason the song "The farmer and the cow man" should be friends from "Oklahoma" is running threw my mind right now. Anyway, I think the IA community has lost some key battles the last couple of years. But I'm hoping that they're not going to lose the war entirely.
Jeff Parks: I don't think they will. Any new discipline, "You know were only ten years old" from Jesse James Garrett talk at the preliminary this year as an example, you know,I sort of in the past have upset some people because I've said "For a ten year old profession it sounds like a lot of the discussions that have been going on in their community sound like a bunch of ten year old's fighting over the same shovel and sand box." And ultimately any new community that forms people are going to try to figure out where they fit within the community and the value you can bring to it. But over the next three-five years I agree with you. The global economy is going to create some necessary changes within all business and very much including User Experience discipline.
But I also think their are huge opportunities for our discipline to start to move this forward by educating people about things without forcing our own perception, our own mental model onto people, but working harder to understand all of these other agencies like you've described, marketing, the advertising, the executives, the managers. And to work more to facilitate a better understand of how to approach things rather than pushing our frame work on top of other's saying that "Well, yours is wrong and mine is right."
Eric Reiss: Absolutely!!
Jeff Parks: I think the future is bright and I think you're predictions for 2010, I honestly hope they all come true. I do. I do hope that companies will start looking at content in a context of the value for there business. I hope we do stop focusing on titles that we start to recognize the values in peoples ideas, for the ideas themselves and not the title that they hold. I think all these things are positive, but as you pointed out it's with a guarded enthusiasm that we going into the future and we work well together.
Eric Reiss: I just don't want us to lose a possible shot at sitting at the board room table and these are the battles that I see that have been lost because we have insisted that people see the world threw our eyes, instead of perhaps showing a little more empathy for the people we should be working with. That's the battle I don't want to lose!
Jeff Parks: Well, if we carry on and continue conversations like these and I've said this many times in the past and I'm going to keep repeating it for what it's worth. If we ensure the bigger names in the UX discipline and the corporations, even the smaller companies that have gotten a lot of recognition as of late. If they continue a foster sense of learning and understanding of a belonging to the people that are new to the field and really interested in this I really believe that we can get the seat at the table. I believe we need to do a lot better job of educating people of the value of what we're doing and a lot better job at involving the people of the community itself.
Eric Reiss: Absolutely, absolutely!
Jeff Parks: Well it looks like it's going to be an interesting and exciting year in 2010. Eric Reiss from FatDUX in Denmark, thank you so much for joining me today on Radio Johnny, and look forward to talking to you more in 2010.
Eric Reiss: Well thank you very much Jeff, it's been a pleasure being here and all the best to you and the other "Johnnies" in 2010 and I look forward to seeing you at a conference some place soon.
Jeff Parks: Thanks again, Eric!
Eric Reiss: Bye. Bye.


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10 Emotional Anti-Bullying Videos On YouTube
Over the last couple of years bullying has reared its head as the most serious issue faced by children and teens today. To spread the word about this issue, try to garner support and put an end to bullying, teens and adults alike have turned to YouTube.
Over the last couple of years bullying has reared its head as the most serious issue faced by children and teens today. To spread the word about this issue, try to garner support and put an end to bullying, teens and adults alike have turned to YouTube. Sad, as well as inspiring, stories of bullying have gone viral over the past year and we've compiled a list of some of the most moving and emotional videos shared.
What's going on…
We were inspired to put this list together thanks to this video, which went viral over the weekend and has already racked up over 3.1 million views. It features Jonah Mowry, a gay teen who has been bulled since first grade, telling his emotional story on flash cards.
Although this video just went viral, it was created three months ago, just before Jonah began his eighth grade year. Perez Hilton reports that Jonah is doing well and happy, despite the fact that many cyber-haters have bullied Jonah further in the past couple of days, calling his video fake.
Yesterday Jonah resurfaced in a video in which he feels obligated to show his scars as "proof," but appears to be doing much better than when he made the original video.
Words DO Hurt
Back in March, 13-year old Alye Pollack went viral with a similar video, in which she tells the story of her bullying by holding up note cards. It looks like Alye served as an inspiration for Jonah's video as well.
Casey Heynes
15-year old Casey Heynes from Australia became a viral sensation last March when he stood up to his bully, body slamming him. The video riled up a lot of support for Casey, but was also controversial. Many people felt that Casey shouldn't have resorted to violence, but others felt he had no other option. What's your opinion?
Bully Richard Gale Interview (Bully of Casey Heynes)
This interview with Casey's bully, Richard Gale, delves a little bit deeper into the story of the video above.
Kids React To Bullying
As an adult it can be hard to grasp how kids these days really feel about bullying. In honor of National Bullying Prevention Month, The Fine Brothers showed the 'Kids React' kids the Casey Heynes video and ask the kids to react and share their personal stories about bullying and what they think schools and parents can do to prevent it. It's really interesting to hear about bullying from a kids' perspective.
It Gets Better, I promise!
The following story is incredibly sad. Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year old from Buffalo, New York, created this inspirational video about how he has been bullied and that his idols like Lady Gaga give him the courage to live on and that he knows that it gets better. Unfortunately, Jamey's video went viral in September after he took his own life. Embedding for this video has been disabled. Click here to watch it on YouTube.
Lady Gaga – Hair (A Jamey Rodemeyer Tribute)
Lady Gaga pays tribute to Jamey at one of her concerts.
Joel Burns tells gay teens "it gets better"
This incredibly moving video has been viewed over 2.6 million times in a little over a year. Fort Worth, Texas City Councilman Joe Burns tells his personal story of inspiration and hope at a City Council meeting in the hopes of helping bullied kids understand that it really does get better.
Bullied Kid Turns Survivor
Bullying doesn't have to end badly. CBS reports a story of a bully that had a change of heart and actually ended up befriending his victim and helping him make positive changes.
Anti-Bullying Flashmob January 2011
In honor of International Anti-Bullying Day last February, two schools came together to organize a flash mob with an anti-bullying message of acceptance.
Megan O'Neill is the resident web video enthusiast here at Social Times. Megan covers everything from the latest viral videos to online video news and tips, and has a passion for bizarre, original and revolutionary content and ideas.


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In the world of commercial construction, time is always of the essence. At Lockheed, we continue to find ways to meet the demands of today's fast-track competitive environment — while still building in the craftsmanship and precision needed to meet the most exacting project demands for quality, durability and aesthetics.
Whatever your current or next project demands, Lockheed has the design, manufacturing and application expertise to ensure a precision fit and an impeccable installation. This is true whether you need commercial-grade windows or doors, architecturally-sound curtain wall fabrications, or the installation of a complex storefront structure.
All you need to do is give us an opening. We'll respond with the exceptional guidance, products and service that have made our family-owned business an invaluable resource for three generations.
Slocomb Windows and Doors, Inc. has taken over ownership of Lockheed's Residential Operation, allowing us to expand our commercial division. For more information regarding the transition, please visit this page.


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This week President Obama is hosting an Africa Summit in Washington. Fifty heads of state are coming together to focus on security and development. But the president's dreams of leaving a legacy of democracy building and economic development have been consistently frustrated.
It's becoming painfully evident that not every country has the values and culture supportive of democratic principles. Contrary to the early hopes expressed in Washington and in the media, the "Arab Spring" has brought more chaos and upheaval than freedom and opportunity to many countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Unfortunately, the driving mission of radical Islamists is not freedom, but an Islamic caliphate under Sharia Law. Sharia Law means "way" or "path". It's a cultural and legal framework which impacts the public and some private aspects of every citizen's life. That Islamic framework is based on the Quran, the Hadith, and centuries of interpretation and precedent.
Many in America have the illusion that all want freedom the way we want freedom. Our country was formed by Judeo-Christian values that provided fertile ground for our treasured principles--limited government, religious freedom, free enterprise, and freedom of speech.
The separation of church and state is not written in our Constitution. It was first penned in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. The association was upset about the infringement of religious liberty by their state legislature. They hoped that Jefferson's views on religious liberty would "shine and prevail through all these states and all the world."
In his brief letter, President Jefferson sympathized with the Connecticut Baptists in their opposition to the state's established religion. He further explained that he had reverence for the First Amendment's "wall of separation between Church and State" at the federal level. Jefferson had no intention of excluding religious faith from the public square; he even ended his letter with a brief prayer.
But it was clear that Jefferson wanted America to have no government-established religion. America has embraced that commitment. We are a religious people, but we affirm the right for citizens to choose their own faith.
Such values matter in forming a free country that can flourish in a religiously and culturally diverse global economy. The drive for an independent Biafra in Nigeria is driven by the same Judeo-Christian values that made America viable and strong. Those working to claim for Biafra the UN right of independence for indigenous people want their own version of the American Dream.
It's time for America to be more selective in terms of their support for freedom. The people of Biafra are hoping that their "Christian Spring" will create an island of freedom and opportunity that can attract freedom-loving Africans from around the world.
This second of three interviews with Nnamdi Kanu, the Director of Radio Biafra, will give you a glimpse of the country they long to create. It promises to be a welcoming country that supports limited government, religious freedom, free enterprise, and free speech.
The UN may remain the place that all the nations of the world meet to deal with common concerns and conflicts. But it's time America and their western allies become far more selective in the support they provide. Foreign aid should only be given to freedom-loving countries. The Western world can and must provide the legitimacy, the economic network, and aid to those who will extend the values of freedom we treasure.
After listening to Nnamdi Kanu, join me in demanding that America stop supporting the status quo in African. It's time to stop funding terrorists, corrupt leaders, and the countries that support them. In Biafra, it's time for a "Christian Spring" that makes room for all peace-loving faiths.


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Multiple Teams · Spring Sports registration now open
Registration for spring sports, baseball, softball, track & field, tennis and golf is now open at FamilyID.com
Registration for spring sports, baseball, softball, track & field, tennis and golf is now open at FamilyID.com
2018 Girls Tennis Head Coach Jeff Hammonds, Assistant Coach Larissa Gerig Players; Mikiah Batugo, Anna Bender, Perry Bradley-Bender, Genevieve Brown, Annabelle Delehant, Finley Dibert-Burgwin, Yeris Gomez, Heide Hoots, Paige Keller, Cheyenne MacKenzie, Danielle O'Halloran, Frannie Paldi, Leslie Rivera, Kaitlin Sauer, Caroline Scharff, Athena Southworth, Clarissa Vavrosky.
Megan Spaulding (12) GPA 3.83 (9) GPA 4.0 Megan and Perry are both likely to place in districts and compete at state and have both had outstanding years competing and winning matches. They have been positive role models for the team through consistent hard work, dedication, and both girls always have positive attitudes. Good luck
Last week the OSAA released the results of the Statewide Academic All-State schools in the 5A classification. We are so pleased to announce that 9 of our 10 spring sports and activities teams have been recognized as having a team average semester GPA placing them among the top schools in our classification. They are as
Megan Spaulding • Junior on our varsity tennis team • 3.8 GPA Megan is 2-1 in league and her only loss is to a state competitor last year. Megan's athleticism, positive attitude, and coachability makes her a great player with a bright future! Keep up the good work Megan!


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WASHINGTON – He first wrote out his speech in longhand. He had it printed and then cut the text into 27 snippets that he pasted on a sheet of paper. He changed three words and added 15 commas and semicolons.
Then the author, Abraham Lincoln, took the paper to the East Front of the U.S. Capitol and, on March 4, 1865, delivered one of the greatest speeches in American history: his majestic second inaugural address.
"With malice toward none; with charity for all," he said that day near the close of the Civil War. ". . . let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle. . ."
Those words are now carved in stone at the Lincoln Memorial.
No other second inaugural address — and there have been 15 others — has achieved the renown that Lincoln's has, though they have touched on serious events of state: war, economic crisis and disaster.
President Barack Obama is slated to deliver his on Monday. Can he — did the others — come close to matching Lincoln?
How about President Andrew Jackson?
Angered by South Carolina's efforts to nullify federal laws, he delivered an impassioned defense of the Union on March 4, 1833 — almost three decades before the Civil War.
With disunion, "we shall see . . . our sons made soldiers to deluge with blood the fields they now till in peace," he warned. "The loss of liberty, of all good government, of peace, plenty, and happiness, must inevitably follow a dissolution of the Union."
Or Ulysses S. Grant?
The cigar-smoking general who had led the Union to victory over the Confederacy spoke of civil rights at his second inaugural in 1873 — nearly a century before it became a rallying cry in the 1950s and '60s.
"The effects of the late civil strife have been to free the slave and make him a citizen," Grant said. "Yet he is not possessed of the civil rights which citizenship should carry. . . . This is wrong, and should be corrected. To this correction I stand committed."
Woodrow Wilson, on March 5, 1917, tried to prepare the nation for its entry into World War I just over a month later.
"We are provincials no longer," he said. "The tragic events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back."
And Franklin D. Roosevelt began his second term, in 1937, as the country struggled to emerge from the Great Depression.
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much," he told a rain-drenched crowd. "It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
Although none of them may reach the heights of Lincoln's, these addresses, and many others, are fervent and vivid echoes of their times. Some are short; George Washington's was two paragraphs. Others — including Ronald Reagan's, Bill Clinton's and Grover Cleveland's — are relatively long.
Lincoln's was a mere 701 words, 505 of them containing one syllable, according to Ronald C. White Jr., author of a book about the address.
"Lincoln showed you, you need to keep it short," said Donald Ritchie, the historian of the U.S. Senate, "if they're going to inscribe it on the walls of your monument."
"Second-term inaugurations are thinking toward history," he said. "They're thinking toward the future: 'How am I going to be remembered. . . . This is the image I want to be remembered for.' "
"In the first term, the main thing is they're starting out, starting anew," Ritchie said. "They want everybody to follow after them. . . . The second time around, they've reached the top of the mountain."
He also noted how few presidents get a second term. And White said that most second inaugural addresses are forgotten.
A few seek to settle scores.
"During the course of this administration . . . the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare," Jefferson wrote. "These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted."
Ritchie, the Senate historian, said Jefferson had suffered nasty personal attacks in the newspapers and "was probably sensitive to that."
A harried Grant wrote that he couldn't wait to be released from the duties of high office, which he felt he had performed honorably. But he was grateful to voters for the "vindication" that came with his re-election.
"Notwithstanding this . . . I have been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever equaled in political history," he said, "which today I feel that I can afford to disregard in view of your verdict."
Grant gets more credit from historians these days, Ritchie said. "He did stand for civil rights," he said. "He did station troops . . . to protect the freedman in the South. It's after his presidency that the federal government gives up on reconstruction, and you enter this century of segregation. . . . Grant stayed true to the causes of the Civil War."
It is that war and Lincoln's meditation on it that make his second inaugural address so magnificent.
His meticulous arrangement of the speech, infused with powerful biblical references, gives it the weight of prophecy, according to Douglas L. Wilson, who wrote a book about Lincoln's speeches in 2006. But it was also crafted by a superb orator for maximum impact. (Lincoln's cut-and-paste job and his somewhat eccentric punctuation can be seen as stage directions to himself.)
"He spoke very slowly," said White, author of the book about the address. "Remember that he's speaking outside. There's no amplification. He's aware of all the distractions and noises. So what do you do if you want to be heard? You speak slowly."
And in composing speeches, White said, "he would often speak the words out loud before he wrote them on a paper. Lincoln had a remarkable sense of the sound of words."
Lincoln spoke after more then three years of ferocious conflict that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and in six weeks would claim his. Everyone knew that slavery was the cause of the war, he said. But he wondered why God had brought down so great a tragedy on the country for so long.
"Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' "
If Lincoln's second inaugural address is No. 1, is there a No. 2?
"Franklin Roosevelt's second inaugural address was a particularly good one," Ritchie said. "His ideas had jelled a lot. His campaign in 1932 was fairly diffuse, and he really didn't define what the New Deal was going to do. . . . By '36, he pretty well knew what he wanted and what the problems were."
Roosevelt said: "Our progress out of the depression is obvious. . . . We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. . . . We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life."
As for Jefferson, Ritchie noted that he only gave two speeches during his presidency: his first and second inaugural addresses. In the second, aside from venting at the press, Jefferson explained his purchase of Louisiana.
"I know that the acquisition of Louisiana had been disapproved by some from a candid apprehension that the enlargement of our territory would endanger its union," he said. But "the larger our association the less will it be shaken by local passions."
In 1917, Inauguration Day fell on Sunday, as it does this year, and Woodrow Wilson took the oath for his second term in the ornate President's Room in the Capitol. He took it again, and delivered his speech, the next day.
"He was quite a powerful speaker . . . (with,) by all accounts, a very deep baritone voice," Ritchie said.
Less than five weeks before the United States entered World War I, Wilson said: "The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled . . . if we be but true to ourselves . . . as we have wished to be known in . . . the thought of all those who love liberty and justice and the right exalted."
Forty years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke of the quest for peace in the nuclear age.
"We seek peace," he said, "now, as in no other age . . . because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself."
President Richard Nixon spoke in January 1973, during tortured domestic times, near the close of the Vietnam War and seven months after the Watergate break-in that would doom his presidency.
"As America's longest and most difficult war comes to an end, let us again learn to debate our differences with civility and decency," he said. ". . . Our children have been taught to be ashamed of their country, ashamed of their parents, ashamed of America's record at home and of its role in the world."
"At every turn, we have been beset by those who find everything wrong with America and little that is right," he said. "But I am confident that this will not be the judgment of history on these remarkable times in which we are privileged to live."
Ronald Reagan flubbed a line in his 1985 address, which was delivered in the Capitol Rotunda because of the bitter temperatures outside. "We stand together again at the steps of this symbol of our democracy — or we would have been standing at the steps if it hadn't gotten so cold," he said. "Now we are standing inside this symbol of our democracy."
Ritchie, the Senate historian, said he didn't think either Bill Clinton's second inaugural address, in 1997, or George W. Bush's, in 2005, was that memorable.
But even Hollywood took note of Lincoln's inauguration sequel; the Oscar-nominated movie "Lincoln" concludes with a scene of Lincoln giving his second-term speech. "That's the last seconds of the movie," Ritchie said. "And that's a rare occasion, that any president's inaugural address is going to be in a movie."