Homage to Indexed
Homage to Indexed (quite simply brilliant, go there now...)
P*** My Blog
Has anyone else apart from me been offered a great opportunity to increase traffic? Increase readership? Get your thoughts and ideas out there to a wider audience? I'd love to think it's because of the quality of my writing and content but I'm getting more and more email from "publishers" wanting to distribute my content - for free! And it's not all spam .. the latest email I got was from Blogburst
At its core, BlogBurst is a news service bringing quality blogs onto highly-trafficked, high-brand mainstream publisher sites like the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle and San Antonio-Express News.
After a flattering introduction I was invited to ask for an invitation to join the network however, on further reading it appears that after its beta phase Blogburst will be selling my content on via a subscription service to its very impressive readership list. Huh? I'm not sure who this might appeal to but I'd rather potter away here in my own little corner of the world where anyone can read what I write for free...I think I'm a long way away from needing an agent just yet and if anyone is going to make money off the back of my toiling it's not going to be an anonymous syndicator proporting to dress it up as an opportunity I can't miss.
Another good news story about customer service
As a two time award winner in the 2006 Irish Blog Awards, I received two Bitbuzz vouchers for a month's online access. I used one and promptly forgot about the other until a few weeks ago. Naturally the voucher was out of date when I went to try and use it so on the offchance that the pre Christmas spirit might be alive and kicking I emailed Bitbuzz to ask if there was any way in which I could re-activate the voucher (knowing that they weren't obliged to do so). (On an side note here, I heard a contributor to a radio show recently say that nearly 30% of gift vouchers purchased at Christmas are never redeemed and the duration of vouchers is becoming shorter and shorter..but I digress). I got a very nice email back from customer service saying they would credit my account with an additional 200 anytime minutes. They were prompt in their rely and the email was courteous and polite - frankly if they'd said no in the same tone I would have been happy enough. The passive aggressive nature of what passes for customer service in Ireland is more frustrating than the content of the message. How long before we'll be charged for good manners and politeness I wonder?
So well done Bitbuzz - 2 good news stories in month is a record in my book!
Edit: Following Colm's reminder (in the comments) that I was an Irish Blog Awards winner in 2006 (not 2005) I've amended the entry appropriately..I'm not sure what that says about me that it seems like such a long time ago now...
What's Real Research?
Qualitative research, doesn't tell us what is going on, at best it gives us some ideas about what might be happening. And it does this in a way that may help to trigger a new way to define or crack a problem in the planner's mind but is laughable as a means for making critical business decisions.
I don't often come across posts that make me splutter and mutter at the screen but this post from Adlierate (via The Art of Conversation) had just that affect on me. Has Richard looked at the differences between quantitative and qualitative research methodologies? Is he a subscriber to the adage that if you can't count it, it doesn't count? A central concern of a quantitative approach is the generation of findings which are generalised, replicable, test theory and privilege objectivity. A qualitative approach to research views data as emergent; privileges primacy of interpretation; facilitates hypothesising in the service of theory building and seeks to generate theory from data.
I'm currently researching a Doctorate using the principles of Grounded Theory (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) a research method in which theory is arrived at through the data. The data I'm generating are very different from and yet aligned with those collected by quantitative researchers in the same area. I'm interested in looking at the meaning that is made of the phenomenon in business life, not only an academic definition of a theoretical concept. In my mind there's no competition when it comes to which methodology works best for the task at hand. My approach is conversational, semi-structured, flexible in order to include as many types of data as possible and most importantly reflexive - I take account of my intrusion into and impact on the study by virtue of asking the questions.
So from now on I am going to reserve the name research for the real deal - actual data that reports on reality.
In a comment on this post Richard says
I should explain that my issue is not with qualitative research though, in a sense it got caught in the cross fire - think of it as polemic collateral damage.
Well I don't think this is acceptable - too often qualitative is thrown around like it's some subservient methodology and as a short hand for "not good enough"...Of course it's not good enough if you don't really know what you're talking about in the first place. Perhaps the issue here is with good and bad research not quantitative and qualitative. In scapegoating the latter what's really being avoided is poor research conducted from a quantitative perspective. Could I respectfully suggest that Richard's post may be suffering from a little of that itself?
Stop Twittering
I’m watching the world go mad Twittering. (And I'm watching the passion it arouses when you offer a different view. Call me a luddite but I don’t get it. I get it in the sense that it’s a new fangled gadget and it’s all shiny and out of the box but do we really need more "instant" communication tools? Lisa has an interesting post about the high cost of communicating
If your department budget was charged $100 for every minute you spent communicating, would you choose your words more wisely? It is likely that the costs are that high or higher.
There’s a huge tyranny to this not only in terms of actual financial cost but in terms of the personal. I have a cell phone – not a blackberry. I simply don’t want to be that available all the time. “Turn the thing off” I hear you say – yes, but if you have a blackberry (and now a Twitter account) and even a cell phone you create the expectation of availability and it’s the expectation that creates a difficulty around saying “no”.
What are we teaching our clients and colleagues? We’re teaching them that there are no more boundaries. Instant availability, instant access, instant blurring and instant gratification. It’s not possible to meet anybody else’s needs to that extent – we will wear ourselves out, increase stress and erode the ability to care about others. Saying “no” is a fundamental boundary setting exercise if not done appropriately leads to an inability to manage our wants and desires.
All this elecronic communication is an avoidance of real intimacy. Sending out group emails, arranging social lives by text, reporting in live time about that social life via Twitter none of it is about being in the moment with the person with whom you are with. Reading a text message online about what someone with whom you have a casual relationship is doing right now is voyeuristic and it’s playing to an audience that’s not there – it’s not a genuine relationship based on giving and receiving. If it’s that important - pick up the phone and have a real conversation with somebody. Arrange to meet for a coffee or a chat - are you really in touch if you have to use a keyboard as an interface? What am I doing? Why not take a risk and call me to find out?
Edit: Kathy Sierra has a superb post on this issue over at Creating Passionate Users
Lessons from the circus
The Dublin Fringe Festival began on Saturday night and I and my blogger friend Dermod had great seats for La Clique at the Spiegeltent. Dermod has written a lovely review of the evening here but I wanted to throw in my tuppenceworth as well. For a couple of hours on Saturday evening I was enchanted and entertained by a series of fabulous performers (who were joined on the evening by the wonderful Camille O'Sullivan). And as I was sitting there at the front of the tent watching a double jointed man squeeze through a stringless tennis racquet and two "strong men" with unmatchable finesse and showmanship do unspeakably amazing feats I realised I was impressed. I was so very impressed. And I took great comfort in the fact that there wasn't a single person in that audience who could emulate what these performers were doing. There wasn't a moment of envy - just sheer admiration. And it got me thinking about how important it is to be impressed by other people in a way that's healthy and nurturing.
At one point the above mentioned double jointed man balanced precariously on a series of tin cans (4 to be precise) on top of a piano, the top one was the size of a bean tin...he then wrapped his legs around his head and wondered out loud with us that if he could follow his dream and spend his life doing this...what might we aspire to?
Well, tin cans and stringless tennis racquets aside for a moment, he had a point...and it was eloquently made and even more eloquently received by many of the people I knew there that evening. What if following our dream meant being the best we could be? What if waiting for the "right" thing to come along meant we were missing opportunities to be impressive in other areas of our lives? What if we had to learn to be impressive first and the dream might follow...and what if we allowed ourselves to be impressed once in a while without feeling threatened?
All that and more at the circus..and if you plan on going to the circus, using the piano as 12 o'clock, get a seat at 3pm...I can't tell you why but I do promise you'll be impressed.
Everyone is born creative
Reflecting on the enterprise bootcamp reminded me of Hugh McLeod's wonderful treatise on how to be creative. You can read the full document here. My favourite chapter from it is I'd like my crayons back please.
Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, "I�d like my crayons back, please."
So you've got the itch to do something. Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brownies into a proper business, whatever. You don't know where the itch came from, it's almost like it just arrived on your doorstep, uninvited. Until now you were quite happy holding down a real job, being a regular person...
Until now.
You don't know if you're any good or not, but you'd think you could be. And the idea terrifies you. The problem is, even if you are good, you know nothing about this kind of business. You don't know any publishers or agents or all these fancy-shmancy kind of folk. You have a friend who's got a cousin in California who's into this kind of stuff, but you haven't talked to your friend for over two years...
Besides, if you write a book, what if you can't find a publisher? If you write a screenplay, what if you can't find a producer? And what if the producer turns out to be a crook? You've always worked hard your whole life, you'll be damned if you'll put all that effort into something if there ain't no pot of gold at the end of this dumb-ass rainbow...
Heh. That's not your wee voice asking for the crayons back. That's your outer voice, your adult voice, your boring & tedious voice trying to find a way to get the wee crayon voice to shut the hell up.
Your wee voice doesn't want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something. There's a big difference. Your wee voice doesn't give a damn about publishers or Hollywood producers.
Go ahead and make something. Make something really special. Make something amazing that will really blow the mind of anybody who sees it.
If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.
The wee voice didn't show up because it decided you need more money or you need to hang out with movie stars. Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it. There's something you haven't said, something you haven't done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of. Now.
So you have to listen to the wee voice or it will die... taking a big chunk of you along with it.
They're only crayons. You didn't fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?
Practising at different frequencies
I whiled away several hours today trawling through the archives of International Psychoanalysis one of the few blogs I've come across in this area. There's a very interesting article by Arlene Kramer Richards on the issue of training and licensing of practitioners (in the US) Why Do I Want to Include Our Colleagues in Licensing as Psychoanalysts? in which she says
Different points of view about psychoanalytic education and theory can be grouped, I think, into two categories. One camp argues that psychoanalysis must be safeguarded from those who would debase it by using the name to include therapies that are scheduled for less than three times per week. The other camp argues that psychoanalysis is, as Freud himself defined it, the use of the concepts of transference and resistance to understand the unconscious and especially unconscious affects, wishes, prohibitions and fears. Who is right?
She then adds
People who have sought psychoanalytic training have complained of being excluded as not good enough or smart enough to do psychoanalytic work. Those who are excluded then turn around and denigrate the group that excluded them. It should be no surprise to a sophisticated audience to learn that excluding people does not make them friends. But psychoanalysts have been doing such excluding for over a century. How do we get away with it? I think that we get away with it because we have a very valuable technique that speaks to people’s hearts and minds in a way that no other technique does.
I'm not a psychoanalyst but my work (therapeutically and organisationally) is all about the transference - the issues Ms Richards raises are of course relevant to any professional association or group, As the old Irish saying goes - the first thing on the agenda of any political party meeting is 'the split'. She is arguing for more fluid boundaries between the rigid definitions of who is and who is not an analyst - suggesting that an understanding of the transference process is the key component of the practice.
For both the practical reason that we want to continue the field of psychoanalysis and our own analytic practices and the theoretical reason that transference and resistance are the firmest foundation for analytic understanding, I think we need to welcome our colleagues who practice at different frequency from ourselves as fellow psychoanalysts and welcome ones.
I like the idea of people practising at 'different frequencies' as ourselves and I would suggest that not all types of therapy are suitable for all kinds of people - neither is one type of therapy necessarily the right answer for somebody at each stage of their journey. The article is the text of a presentation she is making at a conference The Future of Psychoanalytic Education to be held in New York at the beginning of December and the post also has a number of very considered comments (you can register to comment at the bottom of the sidebar on the right). I'm looking forward to reading more at this site and if any readers know of other psychoanalytic/psychodynamic blogs that aren't on my blogroll, please let me know.
Reading the Irish Times online
I'd almost given up trying to read the Irish Times online because of the amount of advertising busyness (particularly the flash stuff) you have to wade through to get to the text. So I've become a big fan of Adblock Plus the lovely application that gets rid of advertising noise on websites. Have a look at the difference between the Irish Times home page without Adblock Plus and then with it - almost makes reading the paper online a possibility again doesn't it? I realise that free content sites have to make a living with advertising (Irish Times is not a free content site) but is there really any point if the advertising inhibits readers digesting your content?
