TechIntersect

Sunny Slope 1928-29 Students

This week should be pretty interesting. I have an interview scheduled with Laurence Conrow, a classmate of my grandmother’s at Sunny Slope School in Wakefield, KS. My mother found this class photo among my Grandma’s belongings. I’m hoping that Mr. Conrow can identify the pupils in the photo, because there isn’t a roster that says who is who. My grandma & her sister both attended the school this year.

I’m looking forward to learning more about country schools in Kansas this week.

Well I finally caved in and set up a blog for my 5 y/o Thomas. He’s been pestering me for a blog for some time. It’s called Farm Boy Tom and it’s about all things farming. He has had farming on the brain since he could talk. I guess it is natural for him to want to keep up with his big sister Emily.

Seven year old Emily has been blogging on Science Girl Em since the beginning of the year. The experience has really helped her to work on 21st century literacy skills. Even in the summer, when most kids are completely ignoring academic work, she’s been working on reading and writing for her blog. In the short time she’s been doing this, she has had some amazing conversations with people from all over the world.

Both of my kids have different interests & skills, and both are interested in blogging. That is the beauty of blogging, it can be about any subject that interests you. Speaking of blogging benefits, I just read this interesting article on the subject over at Duct Tape Marketing. Here are a few of my favorites mentioned over there:

• Blogging makes me a better thinker
• Blogging makes me a better writer
• Blogging keeps me focused on learning
• Blogging allows me to test out ideas
• Blogging makes me a better networker

What fantastic skills for kids and adults to work on! I hope you are supporting the kiddo bloggers out there by reading and commenting on their blogs. Not just my kids, but all kids who are making the effort to participate in the read/write web. If you need a place to start, here is a wiki that lists some young bloggers. So go on; read some kid blogs today!

These days social media is in the forefront of our consciousness. Twitter tweets and Google searches about the death of Michael Jackson slowed the entire Internet. Social media is constantly in the news and many organizations are struggling to make sense of it all, trying to see how new media fits into their mission.

Recently, I was struck by the marked difference in approach between IBM social computing guidelines and the Associated Press social networking Q & A. Obviously these are very different businesses with different missions. However, IBM seems to understand that social media empowers it’s employees to learn and to contribute while AP seems to want to place limits on what it’s employees can and cannot do while using the medium for self-expression. AP even goes so far as to expect it’s associates to self-police personal online sites such as Facebook for third party posts that might run counter to AP standards & guidelines.

If I were an AP employee, my Facebook page would be out of compliance. In recent weeks I have posted informational links to news stories that triggered passionate replies from Facebook friends. (George Tiller’s murder is one such story.) I didn’t really offer an opinion, just shared information, but if I were to follow the AP guidelines, I would have had to delete all comments that weighed in on the story. Also, I have a Navy buddy who rails against President Obama on a near daily basis, often with links on my Facebook page. Sometimes I agree, and sometimes I don’t agree with his thoughts, but the point is I’m happy that the commentary happens. I know my friend better as a result of the conversation, and since he lives far away, before Facebook I rarely heard from him.

Honestly, I think that Twitter scares the heck out of the AP. This tweet comes from my twitter friend @grantgriffiths:

RT @Dana_Willhoit: I swear Twitter is the new Associated Press/UPI wire service. It’s The People’s Wire Service.

No wonder AP is threatened. Certainly Twitter has the downside potential of quickly spreading false rumors. But it’s facilty with globally sharing information that is accurate is undisputed. As I write this, the Iran election story is still in progress and we don’t know what impact Twitter might have on that situation. Could the AP become irrelevant in the near future as this technology evolves?

I will continue to beat the transparency drum. I think social media amplifies your true identity. If you are a cheat, a jerk, a bigot, these will quickly be exposed, just as will if you are a decent & humble person. I don’t think that it’s wise to try to live a phoney baloney life these days. It’s best to just be yourself and let the world see you for what you are. If you are trying to hide something from us, it is no wonder you shrink from this medium.

Last year I wrote about how teachers can stay relevant in the classroom by doing non-teaching summer work that is related to what they teach. This summer, I am once again back at Twin Valley, a privately-owned rural telecommunications company, doing the teacher-internship thing. One thing I enjoy about working here is paying attention to and thinking about things I normally don’t think about- here it is the telecommunications industry. (Perhaps I should since I actually teach a networking class.)

I enjoy reading the trade publications that are floating around here. Guess I’ve always been a reader. As a kid, I read everything that wasn’t nailed down, including our set of World Book encyclopedias. Jack Kilby, Kansas native & co-inventor of the microchip had the same habit. Jack Kilby once repurposed a dental instrument into an electronic resistor shaping tool because he’d once read about a unique tool in a dental supply catalog.

Convergence of ideas is a funny thing. I’ve read & written and talked a lot about social media in recent months. I just read the latest edition of Rural Telecom Magazine, and what is the lead story? Social Media: The New Marketing Imperative by Scott Briscoe. It’s a great article that shows even rural telephone companies need to be thinking about the implications of social media.

I can’t stress enough the importance of everyone in business to at least take a look at the trends in social networking & social media. Chances are great that even if you choose not to participate, if you have any customers at all, you will be talked about online. If you are not participating, you are forfeiting a chance to have a say in the discussion about your own company. But as Briscoe points out, it’s not all about the products, it is about being involved in the discussion:

Social media is not a particularly effective means of directly marketing your company’s products and services, and that’s especially true of rural telecommunications providers…

Telcos should be looking to either build or be a significant part of a locality’s online socializing, and you don’t do that by only talking about the new cable being dropped or the new phone services offered. Telcos always have been about more than simply offering services. They have been part of the fabric of the communities they serve—whether it’s sponsoring the local hockey team, covering local high school athletics or sponsoring the community photo contest. This is the spirit in which their foray into social media is most likely to provide maximum gain.

The days of carefully crafted press releases being the only source of information are over. According to Briscoe, it is time to test the waters of social media in your business or get left behind.

It might be tempting to take a wait-and-see approach to social media. One of the problems, however, is that if you’re waiting until you have all the information before jumping in, you’ll always be on the sidelines—the technology simply changes too fast…

Give it a few weeks of study, but then do something. Don’t worry too much about getting it wrong. It will take time to build up any sort of following anyway, and you’ll be learning the whole time. You’ll discover what tactics work and which ones should be scrapped; what takes too much time to do and what is too simple and quick to skip.

This excellent advice has held true since the beginning of online discourse and applies to all industries, telecom or otherwise. Lurk & learn first, then jump in when you feel comfortable contributing. But do jump in, the water’s fine!

The empathetic response is the secret to delivering bad news without coming across like a class-A jerk. Love  & Logic teaches that consequences delivered with empathy allows kid to direct blame inward, while consequences delivered with anger provides an escape valve for them to project blame elsewhere. This is often where many parents & teachers (myself included) mess up.

Recently my 5 y/o & I were in Walmart. He wandered off & soon returned with four Ninja Turtle DVD’s at $10 ea. and he only had $6 in his pocket. That’s great, I’ll bet you’ll really enjoy those, I said. Let’s check out. (We were at a not so busy electronics counter). Give them your money.

The clerk smiled, we need more than $6, honey. She whispers to him, try to talk your dad into loaning you some more.

Oh, no, I said. He buys his movies with his OWN money! How do you feel about taking $6 for these movies? I asked the clerk.

I don’t think I can do that, she says, thinking to herself I must be an idiot.

She says she won’t take $6, I sadly tell him.

He starts crying and throwing a fit. That’s a bummer, I tell him. What are you going to do?

By this time, there are two clerks, and they think their heart is going to break at the sight of my disappointed & distraught boy. Maybe you can find a toy that you can buy for $6, they offer. How about a car? They suggest.

Then my son perks up. Yeah, maybe we can find a toy. Let’s go Dad.

So we leave the videos at the counter, off to the toy section, with my reputation as an understanding dad intact.

Wait, it gets better. After several minutes of looking for under $6 toys, he settles on a pair of foam swords, one for him & one for his sister. You really want those? I ask. A kid could get into a lot of trouble with those. Yes. he’s decided. OK, you decide. I reply.

You might be able to guess where this is going. Only a few hours later, I was again being a sad, empathetic dad when I explained that I only let sword fights happen between kids who take it outside, and don’t try to hurt each other. We’ll get the swords down another day when I have more energy & feel like you guys won’t get crazy with them.

Yes, it is a lot of work to do it this way. Yes, to some parents it seems like I’m a pushover when I don’t get angry when straightening my kids out. (trust me, if you stick around long enough you can see the anger too.) But as Jim Fay puts it, “someday they’ll be the ones choosing my nursing home.” Hopefully when that time comes they will remember the patience I’ve tried so hard to model for them.

And now… The Rest of the Story.

Lawrence KS High School Government teacher Tim Latham was fired after his first year of teaching in the district. A veteran teacher, some speculated that his dismissal was due to his conservative stance on the issues in the classroom; a position not uncommon in red-state Kansas, but unwelcome in against-the-grain liberal thinking Lawrence.

It was a story largely ignored by the main stream media, but covered by bloggers and eventually Fox News picked it up. A Facebook group calling for the reappointment of Mr. Latham exploded from 200 to 2000 members. In an unusual reversal of position, the Lawrence school board has decided to reinstate Mr. Latham.

Wow. It’s not often that people in leadership positions admit to making a mistake. So often we hear about cover-ups, and simple hard-headedness where once a decision has been made we’re gonna stick with it, right or wrong. Well done Lawrence Board of Education. It takes courage to admit a mistake and change your mind after weighing the evidence presented to you.

I’m from Kansas, and naturally interested in all things connected to the State of Kansas. Most people probably do not associate the Pizza Hut brand with the land that brought us Dorothy and the Tin Man, but believe it or not, the very first Pizza Hut was located in Wichita, Kansas.

When I was a kid in the 1970’s, going to the Pizza Hut was a very special treat. Although we were in the heart of Pizza Hut country, we only went out to eat on very rare occasions- maybe once or twice a year- and our favorite place to go was Pizza Hut.

We loved the Pizza Hut,  because it meant we would all get a cool “Pizza Man” puppet with our meal.

It was basically an oddly shaped plastic bag with a “Pizza Hut Man” printed on it, but it was fun enough for us. It was torture to “save our drinks” for our meal, because in those days there was no such thing as a free refill and my folks wouldn’t spring for seconds. We would always be served our drinks right away, then two hours later they would finally bring us a piping hot pizza. At least it seemed like it took two hours. A visit to the Pizza Hut was an entire evening event. There was no such thing as a fast pizza. It seems like in the mid-eighties, Pizza Hut changed some kitchen processes & the wait for pizza preparation was greatly shortened. That change was a most welcome change, but I don’t feel the same way about the latest news to come out about Pizza Hut.

Pizza Hut is re-branding itself. Some packaging and even some store signs are going to be known simply as “The Hut”. This is from the same parent corporation that brought us “KFC” instead of “Kentucky Fried Chicken”. Ok, that’s fine. I understand the need to update. Why not take the Holiday Inn approach?

Can you imagine if Holiday Inn re-branded to “The Inn”? Guests couldn’t check in without visions of Mary & Joseph searching for lodging in Bethlehem.

My real question is, why aren’t these companies blogging about ideas they are considering? Why don’t they see blogging as a very effective alternative to marketing focus groups? There still seems to be a widespread notion among marketers that customers should be treated as mushrooms; that is kept in the dark and fed excrement. Why not engage us in a conversation about your ideas?

There is a danger in avoiding the conversation about your brand. Just because Pizza Hut doesn’t participate doesn’t mean the conversation won’t happen, it simply will happen without them. One indication to me that Pizza Hut doesn’t want a conversation is this press release which attempts to dispel rumors that the company is completely changing it’s brand. Dear reader, that is the purpose of a corporate blog. Instead of releasing a statement and thinking that the job is done, they could (and should) be blogging about this, engaging everyone interested in a conversation.

More and more companies are getting the idea, but it seems to me that we still have a very long way to go. Companies such as IBM have taken a pro-active stance even to the point of encouraging blogging about the company, and writing guidelines for employees who want to blog as IBMers. Companies who ignore blogging will pay the price.

I searched Google for a Pizza Hut blog to learn more about the branding change. Here is the top result on the search: Pizza Hut Team Member Blog. Here’s what I found there:

Pizza Hut uses Class 2 vegetables, as they are cheaper. But it causes problems with how our products look. While we are badgered about the thickness of a slice of cucumber, “supply chain” are happy for us to use one cucumber which has virtually black skin, and others which are almost yellow.

While for the majority of the products it makes very little difference, it just shows that their commitment to quality goes as far as “only if it’s cheap enough!”.

Not exactly the “officially sanctioned” message a corporate blog might post, is it? By ignoring blogging, Pizza Hut has allowed this concerned employee to be their top spokesperson. Such is the danger of ignoring the social media as a marketing tool.

As a lover of freedom, I want to wish everyone a happy Juneteenth day. Juneteenth is the oldest known annual celebration of the end of slavery. According to Wikipedia,

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day Union General Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to take possession of the state and enforce the emancipation of its slaves.

This year the legislature of Kansas passed a resolution recognizing the Juneteenth holiday, and there is a movement towards establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday. Freedom is certainly a cause worthy of reflection and celebration. Happy Juneteenth!

I arrived in Austin, Texas this week for the American Society of Engineering Educators (ASEE) conference. It is interesting that an unintended consequence of engineering design, the Congress Street Bridge, has resulted in one of Austin’s favorite tourist attractions, the Mexican free-tail bat colony.

Last night, Elena, the professor from Notre Dame who helped me write our paper we are presenting here, Camilla, her beautiful 4 month old daughter and I walked down to the bridge to see the spectacle. We really didn’t know what to expect, but were quite impressed.

We arrived at sundown, and a large crowd of people had gathered to watch. We waited for what seemed to be 15-20 minutes then slowly, a stream of bats emerged from beneath the opposite end of the bridge. It was dark enough that we could barely see them against the trees, but when they headed out into the open sky, it looked like a long, streaming cloud of black.

Edit: More information about the history of the bats is here. I hope to find some bat t-shirts today.

Tags: Austin TX, bats

A Navy buddy of mine shared with me the story of Mr. Latham, a Kansas teacher who was fired from his Lawrence High School teaching job purportedly for pushing his conservative political point of view. Of course conservatives are upset. I guess only Fox News has picked up the story.

As a Kansan, what I find a little interesting is that he was fired for his conservatism in Kansas. This blogger challenges his reader to play an easy parlor game: find Douglas County, the home of Lawrence, in this map of county-by-county 2008 election results. Go ahead, check it out. It won’t take long, I promise. (If you’re unfamiliar with Kansas geography, I’ll give you a hint it’s in the eastern half, not Kansas City)

Well the main-stream media other than Fox News might not pick this up, but it is gaining attention in the social networking world. Facebook has a group on his behalf.

I do find it interesting that the history teacher didn’t show the Obama Inauguration to his class; certainly a historic event regardless of whether or not you supported the candidate.

Some questions: Do you think it is important for a faculty member to “fit in” with others on the faculty and administration? Is the board out of line with his dismissal if the story is as it’s been presented, his politics don’t match the school? (We hardly ever get the entire story) Am I the only one to see irony in where he decided to teach? This is not the first time in history that Lawrence has been a hotbed of dissenting viewpoints. (Sacking of Lawrence, Quantrill’s Raid) Finally, why would anyone want to work in a place where they are not wanted?

Would love to hear some thoughts on this.