connecting*the*dots

Cara Michele Forrest is one of the good people, fighting the good fight. She’s a tireless advocate for the rights of homeless people in Greensboro, NC.

When I say tireless, I’m not using empty rhetoric. Below is a shot of her in front of the NightWatch truck that hits the back streets of Greensboro each and every Friday night, usually getting her — the mother of teenagers — home well after 2am.

She’s a mixture of spunk, sass, righteousness and southern momma to boot. It’s hard to imagine anyone not appreciating her take no prisoners attitude when it comes to serving the needy in our community.

Well, don’t look now, but it’s starting to look like she’s catching some blowback for her no nonsense approach to advocacy.

It’s not coming from her friends on the street.

And it’s not coming from Greensboro residents or businesses who more often than not have adverse relationships with the homeless in town.

The unfortunate element of this story is that the flak she’s beginning to receive is from players within the very same agencies that she works with on a daily basis, in the common goal of eliminating homelessness in Greensboro and Guilford County proper.

Who Is Cara Michele Forrest?

There are a bunch of issues at play here and being that Michele is too good of a soul to air some of the details — she’s too humble to frame the issues in the context of her daily life on the off-chance of making it about her rather than the work she’s doing — I’m going to play advocate for her position.

If you have any issues with this post, it’s my thinking, reasoning and positioning.

Mine and mine alone.

Let me start off by stating that Michele isn’t a career advocate — she doesn’t take a salary to help people; she helps people because it’s a part of her calling.

It’s how she walks that fine and narrow line with Jesus.

So when push comes to shove, Michele not only has zero reasons to back away from doing everything she can to serve her community, but she refuses to bow to situations that might lead her off that narrow path.

Basically, she’s the type of person that gives Christianity a good name.

I bring this up to distinguish Michele’s character and her purpose in life. It’s what makes her such an amazing advocate. She doesn’t serve the numbers of homeless folk in town; she serves her friends in need.

She listens.

So when she tries to advance the notion that there are homeless people that can and should represent their own needs during Task Force conversations — meetings that eventually craft an approach to helping the homeless — and it falls on deaf ears, she feels wounded.

Or the time Michele worked out a program with the Greensboro Public Library to provide library cards to the homeless (usually reserved for people with proof of residency in Greensboro), but the providers in town failed to see the importance of the program and wouldn’t agree to vouch for the people they serve.

To a soul like Michele, it’s just another example of talking loud and doing nothing.

The Bottom Line

Over the last month or so, Michele has become increasingly upset with the bureaucratic machinations of the homeless industry that she finds herself dealing with on a daily basis.

She refuses to give me details regarding most of her problems — being the narrow path, tightrope walker that she is — but I know she feels that there might be improprieties in play with the operations of the Homeless Prevention Coalition of Guilford County.

A few days ago, she openly questioned an element of a certain initiative — something innocuous like the non-announcement of its launch date — but after following up internally and getting an answer she retracted the post.

Maybe she should’ve posted an update to the post with the newly found information, but she killed it instead, so all parties involved should’ve been satisfied.

Not quite.

The HPCGC now wants her blog, Chosen Fast, de-linked from their member page, stating:

“The HPCGC website is not the place to share your personal opinions and thoughts, particularly ones that are contrary to the success of the Coalition. No one’s trying to stop your advocacy, Michele, but you need to use the proper channels.”

If the HPCGC considers a link to a blog “sharing personal opinions and thoughts” they’re sitting a bit too close to their monitors.

What their position says to me is that they’re extremely controlling with their organization, and particularly inept regarding the role of the internet and their objectives in the 21st century.

More precisely stated; they value appearance over substance.

Sounds like some marketing and PR consultants have made a buck or two over there.

Here’s a little insight of my own (for what its worth):

You don’t gain trust and credibility with your clients, customers, constituents or neighbors by coming off overly slick, rounded and without flaws; you gain such respect by delivering for them while allowing yourself to be viewed as a human being.

Try to name one organization on this planet that isn’t made up of the blood, sweat and tears of human beings.

You can’t.

So why represent yourself or your organization otherwise?

I’m sure the people at HPCGC think they’re doing “the right thing,” but this is how bureaucrats stomp the passion out of people trying to make a positive difference in the world — people who are more concerned with the well-being of the people they serve than becoming a sycophant to folks who are primarily concerned with their job security.

It’s not right and it’s not fair, to both Cara Michele and her homeless friends.

And the bottom line is that it’s just not good business.

Last year I quietly scoffed at Twitter because I couldn’t imagine how I would possibly keep in tune with my friends updates. Intra-day IM or SMS messages weren’t very sexy options (even Twitterific drives me bonkers to a certain degree), so I left Twitter on the sidelines.

Well, I’m glad to say that I’ve managed to figure out a system that works for me:

• I’ve set my Twitter settings to send direct messages — personal responses to my Tweets — straight to my cell, which so far has only amounted to two or three messages per week.
• I’ve signed up for the RSS feed of my friends page, so I now check it as often as the rest of my subscriptions in Google Reader; Tweets have literally become micro-posts from friends and I comment with direct messages via my cell
• Thanks to Alex King’s Twitter Tools plug-in (with John Ford tweaks), all my Tweets automatically become blog posts here, exposing my micro-posts to a different audience entirely.

I went from hating the thought of using Twitter, to loving the service.

For what it’s worth…

href=”http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/08/082906.html”>the show with zefrank

Hip Hop is a global culture and overseas, especially in poor regions, the majority of its sound and image hasn’t been corralled into becoming a product of a corporate marketing agenda; it truly is an expressive and political vehicle for people on the street pumping culture shifting vibe back into their own communities.

As Kurt Shaw writes, “…Hip Hop can at the same time teach kids and transform the world.”

With the fervor of Web 2.0 and social networking, it’s only a matter of time before Hip Hop culture — the original mashed-up, shared expression of culture and politics — organizes across the globe, and on levels we haven’t even dreamed possible.

Big shout to ChicanoBlogs and cuauhtli, who turned me on to clips from the documentary, Resistencia: Hip Hop in Colombia:

With the massacre of Haditha already drawing comparisons to the My Lai massacre — where up to 500 unarmed Vietnamese men, women and children were killed in cold blood by American forces — proponents of this war are holding fast against this incident becoming the tipping point of complete anti-war sentiment.

Local blogger, Joe Guarino:

[…] We cannot take these unfortunate events, and then somehow generalize and amplify the Big Message they convey to suggest that the overall war effort is unworthy. We cannot make general assessments of the war in Iraq (or in Vietnam, for that matter) on the basis of tragic events that do not reflect the overall pattern.

The media would be wrong to muster a drumbeat on these stories, but if they do in stereotypical fashion, the public should ignore it.

Unfortunately for Joe and his agenda, the American public will discuss the role this atrocity plays in the overall war effort.

Whether Haditha represents an accurate assessment of the US military’s tactical MO or not, it has marked a clear shift in our collective perception of modern warfare. No longer do we live in a fantasy world of surgically precise operations; we’ve all awoken to the reality that combat-stressed groups of men and women in a war zone are capable of murdering civilians on their own accord.

That 21st century, smart-bomb warfare meme is kaput; we’re now all aware that the US is knee-deep in a grudge match.

But in the end, it truly doesn’t matter if this one incident is indicative of the pattern to the entire war effort or not, because to the Iraqi people — the people on the other end of the gun barrel in any circumstance — it signifies a terrifying escalation of chaos, murder and occupation that cannot be erased with clarifying words.

Not that our words would do any good anyways.

The Overall Pattern In Iraq

From pg. 39 of the September 2004 Strategic Communication report, by the Defense Science Board — a federal advisory committee established to provide independent advice to the secretary of defense:

2.3 What is the Problem? Who Are We Dealing With?

The information campaign — or as some still would have it, “the war of ideas,� or the struggle for “hearts and minds� — is important to every war effort. In this war it is an essential objective, because the larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-Jihadists. But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended.

American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

• Muslims do not “hate our freedom,â€? but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.
• Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that “freedom is the future of the Middle Eastâ€? is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.
• Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination.
• Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack — to broad public support.
• What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of “terroristâ€? groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam.
• Finally, Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic — namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is — for Americans — really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is of course necessarily heightened by election-year atmospherics, but nonetheless sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims they are really just talking to themselves.

Thus the critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim World is not one of “dissemination of information,� or even one of crafting and delivering the “right� message. Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none — the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam. Inevitably therefore, whatever Americans do and say only serves the party that has both the message and the “loud and clear� channel: the enemy.

That last sentence (with my emphasis) represents the overall pattern that I see in the Iraq war.

We’re a 100,000 strong force of monolinguistic, armed men and women on a foreign soil.

Our soldiers have little to no training in the local customs of the Iraqi people, and practically no one can verbally communicate with either civilians or the enemy.

Essential building blocks of communication with Iraqi’s — humane, personal connections via idle chat during a convoy exercise, supportive conversation in local establishments, calming direction provided during a house raid — all become lost opportunities to gain a semblance of trust or credibility.

This simple inability to communicate waters the fields of insurgent seeds.

So when an atrocity such as Haditha occurs, the Iraqi people’s understanding of the act can’t be contextualized or messaged into obscurity by our military.

Worse even, the sheer brutality of such an incident doesn’t need to be framed or spun by operatives of al Qaeda or the leaders of local insurgents to build a greater resistance to American forces.

The atrocity speaks for itself, with a clarity of message delivered via a deafening tone of dead relatives, neighbors and friends, all never to be seen again.

Iraqi citizens have lived with the fear of a potential Haditha massacre for years now. Their daily lives are filled with various degrees of similar experiences with American forces as we consistently sweep through house after house in the middle of the night, searching for insurgents. A Haditha massacre does only one thing: it confirms their worst fears, leading to more fear and more aggression towards our troops.

No matter what we want to tell ourselves, perception is reality.

The DoD knows we’ll never be able to control the perception of Iraqi’s, so this cry of the right to look at the big picture of the war is a nothing more than panicked attempt to control the perception and reactions of Americans that might question this war effort.

To suggest that the American public should “ignore” the “media mustering a drumbeat on these stories” — these atrocities — in order to protect the overall pattern of the war in Iraq is a failed intellectual position. This incident might only be one data point in the overall pattern of war, but it’s a glaring one — one that exposes more elements going wrong over there than going right.

The Role Of The Media

Iraqi war planners aren’t overly concerned with critical journalism, such as the March 2006 Time magazine exclusive on Haditha, affecting the average American’s take on the state of the war.

Sure, it’s a concern, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

If not managed, the mainstream media can become a major threat to war efforts because it is exists via the same capitalistic infrastructure as the government it supposes to watchdog.

In other words, when media institutions begin climbing onto editorial limbs, foregoing their inherent responsibility to the interests of corporate advertising, it clearly signals a shift in times to American corporations who become placed in a position to make certain decisions they’d rather not have to make:

• They can remove themselves from media buys that are beginning to serve the reflected will of the consumer (poor PR) or
• They can keep their advertising in place as a public relations strategy, while implicitly distancing themselves from our government’s effort to wage war

See, the real concern isn’t with the common people in as much as it is with the flow of money, for once the majority of corporations are off the bandwagon of a war effort, its future becomes rather short-lived.

An Example Of The Power Of Media

Lieutenant William Calley — the American officer in charge at the My Lai massacre — faced the scrutiny of the much more centralized, mainstream media of 1970. Advertising legend George Lois provides context to the media exposure of the atrocity at the time by describing the decision and experience of placing Calley on the November, 1970 cover of Esquire magazine :

“Lieutenant, this picture will show that you’re not afraid as far as your guilt is concerned. The picture will say: ‘Here I am with these kids you’re accusing me of killing. Whether you believe I’m guilty or innocent, at least read about my background and motivations.’” Calley grinned on cue, and we completed the session.

When I sent the finished cover to (Esquire editor, Harold) Hayes he called to let me know that his office staff and Esquire’s masthead bureaucrats were plenty shook up.

“Some detest it and some love it,” he said. “You going to chicken out?” I asked. “Nope,” he said. “We’ll lose advertisers and we’ll lose subscribers. But I have no choice. I’ll never sleep again if I don’t muster the courage to run it.”

The notion that some editors might feel a sense of duty to a global community — and not just to a sovereign position or a bottom line — marks the potential for transforming the media into the greatest, political equalizer on the face of the earth.

In 1970, the attack on the “liberal” media — outlets that didn’t explicitly recognize corporate interests over human interests at every turn — was eerily similar to the conservative banter of today. From Into The Dark: The My Lai Massacre:

[…]

On April 1, 1971, just two days after the verdict, Nixon ordered Calley to be placed under house arrest while his appeal worked its way through the courts. “The whole tragic episode was used by the media and the antiwar forces to chip away at our efforts to build public support for our Vietnam objectives,� he wrote.

Across the nation, there were many demonstrations of support for Lt. Calley. The American Legion announced plans that it would try to raise $100,000 for his appeal. Draft board personnel in several cities resigned in groups. Several politicians spoke out in public criticizing the government’s prosecution of the soldiers at My Lai. “I’ve had veterans tell me that if they were in Vietnam now, they would lay down their arms and come home,� Congressman John Rarick told the New York Times.

But prosecutor Aubrey Daniel also did not remain silent. He wrote a highly publicized letter to President Nixon criticizing him for releasing Calley to house arrest: “How shocking it is if so many people across this nation have failed to see the moral issue… that it is unlawful for an American soldier to summarily execute unarmed and unresisting men, women and babies.�

[…]

In the end, we have to recognize that an atrocity such as Haditha is a symptom of the behavioral patterns of all warfare.

To brush it aside as a random act of violence would be to remove the complicit nature of war planners from the equation and lay it squarely on the shoulder of the brave souls that serve our country, no matter the call to duty.

Nicholas Carr:
“…The whole reason businesses exist is to control forces that are hard to control.”
(hey Nicholas, try keeping the comment permalinks active so next time I can properly attribute your quote)

Busting out the HOWTO Corporate Blog post over a whole bunch of nothing…

UPDATE: I’m putting where my money where my mouth is and picking up the X-Box 360. I’ve been a PS2 guy forever, with more than 25 games and waiting patiently for the PS3, but you know what? Sony’s DRM / Rootkit stupidity compared to Scoble’s integrity has proved to be the tipping point for me.

And I’m Mac addict! (read = Microsoft hater)

C’mon Locutus, quantify this decision with a corporate metric.

It’s amazing how much you can learn about yourself and someone else over a “coffee cup” of coffee.

Cara Michele and I agreed to meet over at The Green Bean yesterday to discuss how we can get moving on our new joint project. Well, after 4 hours of caffeine and an intense conversation ranging from the project at hand to religion to the MPAA, I realized that while we’re very different, amazingly enough, we’re so very much the same.

She’s a devout Christian, living and serving humanity through the love of Christ, and tends to look for absolutes to help guide her through life.

I’ve found my higher power, yet I don’t call it anything particular, believing instead that “it” is woven throughout our actions and surroundings. I’m wary of anything claiming to be an absolute, instead looking for natural patterns to clue me onward to my next experience.

We’re completely different, right? Wrong.

We both share a strong desire to empower the men and women who are left on the periphery of society; Cara Michele has been walking that walk for years, while I’ve been going all city since ‘91. So while I strongly believe in the power of information and she strongly believes in the power of Christ, our common desire is upliftment.

It’s all good.

Now if I can only get her to be comfortable with the fact that there are endless ways to describe a “coffee cup”… ;-)

Terrance—over at The Republic of T—asks a simple, yet provocative question in preparation of the 2006 elections: What’s Your Platform?

Okay, I’m game. Here are my most imperative policy reforms, in no particular order.

1) 2.0 the hell out of government
Congress was only able to see "finished" intelligence before voting to give the Bush administration power to go to war (as a last resort). In my world, anything that the Executive branch sees, the Legislative branch sees. My voice is represented by my state officials, not the president. This one example of a non-transparent government directly led to the deaths of more than 30,000 human beings.

The most applicable 2.0 philosophy for reforming government is the philosophy of openness. From open source to open content, imagine the possibilities of employing a government that makes all de-classified government documents, congressional voting records, appointee resumes, etc. instantly available in a relational database with open APIs for public use. All of this information is available now, but it’s not prepped for accessibility and reuse. This is the future of accountability. Up communication and transparency, reduce the "Fuck You!" noise of the left vs. the right blogosphere to constructive collaboration… that is until government tries to pull something, and then we get back on them like white on rice.

2) Create a nominal tax to directly supplement teacher salaries
Great teachers are few and far between nowadays. Why? Well, you try dealing with kids, administrators and parents all day, adhere to and circumvent the red-tape and legalities of this age with the grace of a seasoned politician and pull in ~$45k per year.

I’m talking about, say, a .1% tax that goes directly towards teacher salaries. I gotta admit, I got the idea from Mini-Me when he appeared as a genius teacher on an episode of Boston Public a few years back. His thesis was that the degree to which students are prepared by their public school years directly impacts their earning potential, so reward their hometown education system with a nominal, flat tax return to impact teacher salaries. Tell ‘em. Verne!

3) Rip up the Patriot Act
As alluded to in the first part of my platform, transparency of government will lead to politicians being held accountable to create humane national and global policies. It’ll also foster the innovation of extremely real-time and smart communication user experiences, which can then be applied by government in the authenticated realm of classified material.

This edict of transparency cannot be applied to individuals. Our individual right of privacy is what has distinguished us from the rest of the world for centuries. The Patriot Act is legislation with language that allows for the control, intimidation and investigation of Americans through the guise of terrorism. It’s like the old censorship debate; who defines what is terrorism? The abuse of American rights have already begun.

4) Election reforms
First, all television campaigns are free. Each major candidate (there would have to be some way to determine "major," possibly something akin to the BSC polls/stats via past political progress made) is provided a set amount of credits to apply to the "purchase" of air time. This opens up the playing field to a diverse class of politicians who can focus on the issues, not their fund raising. I bet Tom Delay would even go for this.

Second, ensure that voting is both easy to access and secure. All voting systems could easily be tied together into one database, while creating alternative voting options, such as over the internet and by phone. We’ve been to the moon people…

5) National health care for everyone… Yes, you too
Riddle me this: Large corporations get major discounts on health care coverage due to the amount of employees they staff, right? Okay, then why not treat congressional districts as semantic equivalents of large pools of employees (citizen residents) by submitting them as huge groups into the bidding process?

C’mon, try to tell me why that doesn’t make any sense.

6) Incentivize industry to reduce our dependency on oil and clean up the environment
I know, the oil industry has major power claws dug deep into our political system, but this is my platform, so I’ll risk the blunt gas nozzle to the back of my head. This current administration gave tax breaks to manufacturers who create hybrid vehicles, but capped the production of cars to 60,000 that qualify for the break. Yeah.

First, we create California-like emmission standards and apply it nationally. Second, we apply money to develop alternative forms of fuel instead of planning a fucking trip to Mars or building that damn bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Third… well, I’m not that smart, but these people are.

Well, that’s my platform. God knows there are other extremely important issues (like getting out of Iraq, impeaching Bush, etc.), but that’s all the brainpower I have for tonight. I’m sure many of you want to label me as a liberal communist or some other "sticks and stones" nomenclature, and if I just described your take on me, my message to you is grow the fuck up. These are serious times, calling for serious people. The longer you avoid engaging in honest discussions along these lines, the easier it becomes to spot your agenda.

To the rest of you, let’s work together to get these bozos out of office in 2006.

A few months back, I finally stepped out of my dead bolted existence within Ameritrade and began to digest the current state of this Web 2.0 explosion, and as soon as I did, the Semantic Web seemed so much closer to fruition than it did just a few years prior.

Much of the renewed push and entrepreneurial spirit that has driven this industry-wide rebirth seems to have been driven simply by our economic recovery from the dot-com crash. On the surface, that answer is sufficient, but something deeper is at at play. So, with my newly created free-time, I headed down a 2.0 rabbit hole to take me on a journey for clarity.

What I’ve come to realize isn’t anything particularly shocking (unless you’ve been a corporate slave for the past three years).

We’re living in tumultuous times. The air we breathe is being compromised more and more every day. Poverty around the world is increasing exponentially. Our country is knee deep in another Vietnam, another occupation, another struggle for gaining natural resources at any cost. People are becoming polarized by important and moral, personal and social issues, seemingly on a daily basis. All of this is occurring during the reign of an administration that has even the staunchest of conservatives questioning whether we, the people, are living within the midst of a dictatorial democracy, rather than a thriving Republic, built on the principles of political discourse, government checks and balances, fiscal responsibility, the separation of church and state and the power of the individual voter.

So where does this leave us as a people?

Personally speaking, I’ve decided to refocus my effort to publish my views, opinions, perspectives, experiences, etc., in an effort to make even the slightest dent in the discourse surrounding our roles as American citizens.

What motivates me? Pick your poison: the War on Terror; the Rove/Plame/Wilson scandal; the Bolton push-through appointment; the Cindy Sheehan vigil. It seems that every day a new flow of bullshit only fuels the righteous indignation I’ve come to hold regarding this administration.

Is it even possible to imagine a more visceral description of an Aristocracy at play?

For me, the complete disregard of the intelligence and voice of the American citizen begins to explain the groundswell of blogging that has occurred over the past four years, specifically the political blogs and mainstream media watchdog sites.

Sure, the potential for capital gains plays a large role in the motivation to advance technology or any other industry. The web, though, is a bit different due to it’s low cost of entry, so I believe that moral conviction plays a role in both driving the evolution of technology and the passion to leverage it to it’s fullest degree.

So what’s the connection between geo-political events, blogging and the tactical fervor of Web 2.0? (social bookmarking, tagging, open source, open content, etc.)

In a nutshell: everything.

Without a true social democracy in the real, we’ve evolved to create one on-line — where boundaries can be broken down, hierarchies can be dissolved, control can be minimized, etc.

I blog in order to get my voice out into the ether of this new social construct; I tag my blog posts to provide context and semantic relationships on numerous levels, yet with a similar purpose:

1. On the base object level to provide a succinct description of how I perceive this content from a conceptual perspective, perhaps creating a) a greater connection with the reader on a discernible level and b) connections on associative & relational levels with other objects (within my domain and elsewhere)
2. On the categorization level to establish context within a particularly defined category or across a faceted classification scheme. If I were an actual brand, this would be how I’d ensure my position was reflected within my editorial construct and navigation scheme.
3. On the retrievable object level to allow for more avenues of findability (four, well-thought descriptive tags exponentially increase the odds of object retrieval rather than none or even one, either in straight queries or in contextual presentation on the base object level)

These are tactical strategies in the information revolution.

The same principles apply to tagging even more granular object such as photographs, video and sound files, as well as the macro-level social bookmarking of URLs. The effort, I believe, is based on the desire of individual voices to be heard amidst the shelling of the mainstream media. While technically speaking, Web 2.0 is about the creation of richly defined object models and attributes — the more good data we entrench within our objects (be it content, files or URLs themselves), the better the chance for a semantic web experience — the movement behind it is much more compelling, much more philosophical in nature.

After leaving Ameritrade in April, I spent a month digesting Noam Chomsky’s Understanding Power, which introduced me to the specifics of his propaganda model thesis, which I fully digested by watching the documentary Manufacturing Consent. Recently, Dave Sifry (CEO, Technorati) posted a graph on the Technorati Blog displaying the impact that blogs are making within the once dominated realm of entrenched, funded, mainstream media.

I’m only guessing that if Chomsky has studied the progression of the web, he’s smiling up in Cambridge right about now.

The legitimization of the individual (creative and political) perspective is being sustained in the 21st century by the conviction of the blogosphere, passionate focus on the possibilities of 2.0 revenue models and domains, such as Technorati, taking a leadership position. The concept of social dialog, networking and organization and the elemental foundation of capitalism are beginning to shift in exciting ways.

Imagine a near future where:

• Individual perspectives can be made more readily sustainable through a common revenue model, reversing the big money/power structure of publication and media saturation? How would that impact the politics of our nation? Our wage labor practices?
• Algorithms and interfaces allow for rich, precise retrievals of topical queries, with just as precisely retrieved contextual objects presented within a usable format, based on better clustering techniques and taking richer and more valuable attributes into account? How would this impact the way we learn and connect to one another?
• Information domains allow topically defined objects to be rolled up into navigable concepts by users (through customization) instead of predefined categories by information architects? How could this seamlessly raise the bar for common folk in their efforts to research online? To manage information across numerous domains?
• Mainstream media articles and blog posts are presented on the same level (query or article), ensuring checks and balances of mis/disinformation, without a partisan bias? How important is it for check and balances to be rooted within the last bastion of traditional governmental checks and balances — the media?

And the great thing is that we’re not too far away from this revolutionary existence.

Blogs are beginning to bridge the social and communication gaps between nations. My peers are thinking differently when developing this medium, even in traditional business development circumstances. The tactical approach to producing, managing, sharing, finding and using information objects — defined from the bottom up — is finally getting it’s due.

Yes, these are tumultuous times, but they’re exciting as well.

Designers are held to such a double-standard, especially designers of the interactive media.

The stereotype of a designer is that he or she is, more likely than not, self-referential with their work. Business cringes when faced with the prospect of bringing in a new designer to a product team, as visions of a self-glorified, controlling, pompous designer wandering the halls, makes business and technology folks toss and turn in bed at night. I mean, come on, all designers are "shiny-shiny" types, looking for that Golden Pencil or Webby Award, right?

Business folks talk about wanting designers who have a rationale before, say, changing the paradigm of interface behavioral patterns or suggesting a different approach to the usefulness of the experience in the first place. Business wants a designer who has a process which substantiates their output; a smart, talented, non self-referential designer, able to take their domain (the business) into account when designing interfaces.

Okay. Fair enough.

So designers expose their craft, expose their thought processes, expose their methodologies to businesses and product teams in order to show that they get it. Seasoned designers are able to have a conversation about a business model; they can talk shop with engineers; they can subjugate their own system design preferences in order to understand the needs of the end user and the possibilities that lie beyond the present implementation model. The aforementioned approaches aren’t options to the craft; these are the multi-disciplinary skill sets required for the role.

Well, in steps technology with skin in the game to spare. “Innovation comes from rapid iterations of features” they say. “Okay” the designer adds, “Let’s just make sure we’re focusing on the right features, useful to people.” Instantly, product management begins to cringe, project managers start to steel up, cats sleep with dogs, etc.

Remember that the intent of crafting an interface is to create a representational model that reflects, as close as possible, the end user’s mental model regarding the goal and tasks at hand, not as an implementation model of the existing technology. So why is this method of getting to the interface so scary? Why is it so terrible to actually talk to “outside” people about product concepts? Designers create user archetype(s) and scenarios to represent the potential user base and their needs and desires in a product. If the synthesized findings confirm internal product vision, they can then be translated by the design team to craft interface behavior. This is how refined, holistic user interfaces are created across a single product, an entire domain and even into external product and brand communication. This is a cross-team, collaborative process which may or may not fine-tune the product offering, but definitely will improve the behavior of the user interface.

So is the hesitation from the fear of leaks to competition? There are ways to perform research without letting on who you are and even the concept of the actual product. And it can be done rather quickly. Or does the hesitation stem from a more human place; personal competition and the perceived loss of skin in the game?

If my non-designer colleagues in this field believe that user experience design begins and ends at the interface level, where it gets pretty, then I guess I understand the hesitation to leverage our methods. Maybe us design types should “just get drunk and throw paint on the canvas.”

Personally, I’m going to stick to my seltzer and keep asking questions.

some days are just like the last
one moment you’re slow, the next moment you fast
forward two years
beyond the transition gears
late night fears
early morning tears
you up to get down
with your whip bumping through town

dropping off the clown’d

still going round and round
about time
the project is straight
we organized the wait
off the world
we stopped, dropped and rolled on a dime
the three man weave was something to save-
or
the bassline screen freed up the man-
or
the dribble, drool and school rocked the D to sleep

broken ankles cause reactionary heaps

piles form left and right
100 breakdowns form without the sight
stumbling out to fight the win’d
stunned
shunned
run’d…

shoot for five
my man has my spot
i’m out to be alive

In an industry such as online brokerage, one would assume that the client would always be the center of focus. While most of the time that is the case, the focus on the bottom line in a publicly traded company demands more executive attention and decision-making, overtaking any best practice corporate mantra or initiative due to the pressures and expectations of The Street.

Therein lies the problem: Only a sustained and coordinated focus on client needs will provide properly targeted and designed product experiences for customers or clients.

Client service : Pricing

If a company provides services and products that support the goals of an individual, at a price that can be rationalized to fit the value proposition of the product, the company will find clientèle… but business isn’t that simple, as the cost of business drives most internal decisions.

Executives with P/L responsibilities tend to gravitate towards lessening the impact on spending first and foremost, rather than reinvesting within the organization. Whether the decision lands in the form of multi-tasking employee roles or approaching methodological advances with risk management adverseness, working within conservatively defined parameters lessens accountability to risk and most likely can’t be framed in a negative light.

So how can a business operate in a manner that supports clients goals, at a desirable price point, without putting the business “out of business” in the process?

Streamlined systems and processes play a major part.

Smart management plays another.

But the glue that binds these and numerous other business roles together is the simple concept of collaboration.

For the sake of simplicity, picture a company divided into four primary units: Marketing, Technology, Design and Business. In this simple, yet extremely complex fauxe business example, nothing could be accomplished with quality or speed without close collaboration.

• Marketing and Design need to share quantitative and qualitative research (respectively) to assist the Business in developing an explicit understanding of client needs. These qualified findings can then be prioritized by Business and Technology in terms of viability and feasibility (respectively)
• Business, Design and Technology must collaborate during all phases of product design in order for goal-directed and innovative experiences to become a reality at any point on the speed to market to best to market throughput timeline
• While this occurs, Marketing must be looped into all user experience design points to ensure that brand standards are met and a product marketing plan can be produced to reintroduce the client experience to the market in proper fashion

Yes, this is oversimplified.

Compliance has a large role in this process, as does Legal, Sales, etc. And while the above description sounds logical and pragmatic, imagine how many different organizational structures, methodologies, communication systems, talent, etc. could be put in place to support the concept of a Business - Marketing - Design - Technology paradigm.

Ameritrade had already become quite aware of the need for this degree of collaboration over the past few years and the current buzz of the company has jumped from touting our top operating margin in the industry to making a commitment to designing an organization around the needs of our clients, while keeping an industry leading operating margin.

Reaching that balance and keeping a competitive edge in this industry and on The Street is very tricky. Gutsy, sophisticated and experienced leadership must drive this level of corporate re-focus.

Next month: User research: The stereotype and the archetype.

It was around 1989 that I read Six Days of the Condor — a perfect story for an 18 year-old, chock full of deceit, murder, paranoia, sex, intrigue, spies. For some reason — possibly my attention span at the time — the end of the book threw me for a loop. So tonight, I kicked back with my Netflix choice of the week and watched the film adaptation: Three Days of the Condor.

Three words: Rent. it. now.

It was made 28 years ago, yet the plot line has come to life in eerie fashion over the last few years. I don’t want to ruin the movie for you, so if you are going to rent it, don’t read on.

Condor (played by Robert Redford) is a spy, and per chance, misses a hit on his office that leaves the entire office of seven dead. After some brilliant screenwriting, we come to find out that one of his previous reports, sent off to Langley as usual, hit a nerve within a secret faction of the CIA that just happened to be playing war games concerning the overthrow of an unstable regime in the Middle East in order to gain control of oil reserves.

Sure, the US has been meddling with numerous foreign spots over the past 50 years to keep a stranglehold on power, but shivers the size of nine inch nails traveled down my spine just the same.

The rogue CIA unit ordered the execution of the entire office after reading Condor’s spot-on investigative report, so he does the only thing he can and goes on the run to plan his next step. After outwitting numerous suits over the course of the film, he ends up confronting the CIA Director directly in front of the New York Times office in Manhattan.

After a quick verbal sparring over the morality of what our government was doing, Condor tells the Director that the story is out and the Times will be publishing it all. The film ends with the CIA Director asking Condor,

“What if they don’t print it, then where will you go?”

Redford’s face drops a bit as the last frame freezes on him.

Does Our Press Get Squeezed?

Forget the uncanny plot line that syncs up with the recent activity in Iraq (and the wild coincidence of the main NYC CIA office being in the WTC) all together. It’s eerie to see this on film, but I’m more interested with the final jab.

I often wonder how free our press really is. Our government has indoctrinated us to speak so harshly against media practices around the world, especially during the eighties and in the midst the cold war (when I was an impressionable teenager). The old “look, over there!” trick has done the trick to build a sycophantic capitalist society of productive worker bees.

Here’s something to ponder: Did you know that congress is on the verge of passing unprecedented legislation, allowing media entities to merge with minimal limitations? Can you imagine what this could mean in an Orwellian novel? Or in this capitalist society where an individual, like Bill Gates, has more wealth than the bottom 45 percent of American households combined?

Less and less competitive news media = a singular perspective.

• Advertising revenue begins to drive editorial premise and journalistic objectivity.
• Agendas are set and met.
• A top down, targeted media push (via news, marketing, advertising, programming, etc.) becomes the mainstay of communication operations.

Our society has evolved from watching the news on TV at 6 and 11 (1970’s) to digesting news 24 hours a day on TV, radio, and the internet (1990’s) to having access to thousands of individual perspectives blasting on blogs (present). So with all of this newfound access we should feel both informed and empowered, right?

To quote Mel Gibson from Conspiracy Theory, “That’s what they want us to think.”

For even the most advanced netizen, information technology is still a hindrance when trying to decipher noise from news, and fiction from fact. Simple to use, individually operated publishing channels are now available to the masses through blogging, but the reach to the majority is minimal at best as they’re presented in a non-digestible ecosystem.

I can easily imagine the power structure in this country thinking:

Let the kids play with their toys — be it bloggers broadcasting opinions based on theory or fact — no one will be able to tell the difference. No one will ever connect the dots even if they do find “truth.” The sheer amount of posts and opinions projected outwards will make all opinions null and void.

Our organized, top-down messaging is so strong via advertising, marketing, media, etc., that the bottom-up representation of the people will become lost in the noise of the the mainstream media, as well as in it’s own scattered presentation.

We’ll then use their information as data to feed our strategic messaging.

Americans have turned into thought veal over the past twenty-years. We’ve been tenderized perfectly to be devoured oh-so-nicely in an economic system that is set up to succeed only if the masses over-consume everything from food to entertainment to material goods to political punditry.

This is the boogie man that lives under my bed. I step on his throat when getting up each morning.

Admittedly, it took me a few days to shrug off my last rant. I’m finding myself at a crossroads of my career (what type of IA am I?) and upon hearing the perception of my career choice as not being a creative one, a chord was struck within me. I began my career in a creative capacity, and I plan on ending it the same way. I refuse to dumb it down to another level, as I’ve invested too much effort to do so.

Four years ago I was on a path of becoming a solid interactive designer in this industry. I had worked my way through the multimedia years as a CG artist, dabbling in art direction and interface design, and eventually made the move to the web as a full-time art director in ‘97. After a year and a half at a small interactive marketing company, I became lost. Something was missing. Every project became a battle to produce and it started to wear me down.

I needed a new resume.

That year, I proposed to the president of the company for me to concentrate on becoming a "New Media Specialist." During the course of our conversation I’d unknowingly described the responsibilities of an IA to a tee, but unfortunately, he had never heard of an IA either and couldn’t justify the position as billable. So I was thanked for being proactive and received a pat on the back on the way out of his office.

While trying to cope within those difficult times, I was introduced to the work of three people; Janet Murray, Brenda Laurel, and Bill Buxton. While my day job seemed to work overtime to extinguish the passion I had for the medium, these three people emitted the vibe that something better, more creative, was on the horizon. With Janet and Brenda’s varied take on the interactive narrative, and Bill’s perspective on redefining HCI, from 3d interaction to input device’s, I became exposed to perspectives that blew my visual design goggles out of the water. I had to make a move.

I wanted to practice what Brenda preached, creating a narrative experience in an on-line application; to explore the path of convergence that made Janet’s wonderful dreams a potential reality; to become a participant in Bill’s vision of the next generation of interfaces where an OS and the application layer become as one.

So to make a long(er) story short, I became an information architect. I jumped from the world of communication design and landed right in the midst of this intriguing discipline, with such different contextual career possibilities.

Now, three and a half years later, I’m grasping to find my niche, first and foremost as an interactive designer. While our profession is feeling the backlash of a brutal economy, the last thing I need to do is lose sight of why I do what I do. No matter how you skin this cat, we create temporal experiences through creative thought processes while collaborating with smart, creative people.

And I’d scrap with the biggest bully on the block to keep it that way.