Over the weekend, I accompanied my son to Brickfair 2010 at the Dulles Expo Center. Brickfair is a completely fan-driven annual conference. People come together to share their love of Legos, to show of scenes and models they have built, and to swap bricks.

Daniel and his friend Jeremy had created a rock [...]]]>

News Cameras Very Interested

Over the weekend, I accompanied my son to Brickfair 2010 at the Dulles Expo Center. Brickfair is a completely fan-driven annual conference. People come together to share their love of Legos, to show of scenes and models they have built, and to swap bricks.

Daniel and his friend Jeremy had created a rock concert model, a show by a fictitious band called The Sharks. It was complete with a crowd surfer, light show, and a sound booth. I was proud to see it gathering lots of interest and some news cameras too.

The whole thing fascinated me, so I made this video while I was there:

As I mention in the video, Brickfair puts me in mind of Clay Shirky’s idea of cognitive surplus. It’s not exactly the same thing, but the basic thrust is similar.

More fundamentally, though, Brickfair (and the huge number of other fan-driven conferences across a variety of interests) are testament to the idea that people like to make and share. The Internet has made it easier to organize situations where people can get together and do that — and do it while they don’t happen to be together, too.

Here’s a closer shot of The Sharks:

The Sharks in concert! (Click for full size.)

Old woman . . . or young girl?

Man playing a horn? Or a woman in silhouette?

Two faces, or one?

Is [...]]]> I was doing some house cleaning in my “Brad Personal” folder and ran across these cool optical illusions. No doubt you’ve seen some of them before, but I like them collected in one place:

Old woman . . . or young girl?

Man playing a horn? Or a woman in silhouette?

Two faces, or one?

Is this a rabbit, or a duck?

Even the great icons – I’ve always thought that, when you look [...]]]> Yesterday Michael Jackson was buried. I have a terrible confession to make: the hoopla around dead celebrities has always left me cold. Perhaps it is my cranky and contrarian nature, I don’t know. But I find myself muttering inwardly, “What did he ever do, really?”

Even the great icons – I’ve always thought that, when you look at their achievements they pale in comparison to political and historical figures.

Robert MacNamara, from webspace of Cal Poly's Dr. Lewis Call

This all came into relief when yesterday’s Michael Jackson funeral eclipsed news of the death of Robert MacNamara. The crank in me went on overdrive. Not that I see MacNamara as a hero or anything – just that his passing seems more geopolitically notable than the death of a pop star.

And yet there was my CNN Breaking News alert: “Michael Jackson’s golden coffin is placed in front of the stage as his memorial service gets under way in Los Angeles.” This is breaking news?

“What did he ever do?” I curmudgeonly asked myself of Jackson, and then I was hit with the answer that made me do a one-eighty.

• Michael Jackson, through his music, brought joy into people’s lives around the world.
• Robert MacNamara, whose stamp on the international scene is indisputable, nevertheless did not make it into the day-to-day consciousness of most people. (Please note that I am not passing judgment on his actions as a political figure.)

I was filled with remorse as I thought of my snobbery.

Indeed, I realized that the cranky question must instead be asked of the world leaders: “What did they ever do?”

My point is not that Michael Jackson’s accomplishments are greater, or lesser, than other’s. My point is that it is perfectly understandable that we care about and mourn his passing in ways that go far beyond the notice we pay to historical figures. How dare I sneer at that. How dare any of us dismiss that.

Entertainers enter our daily lives. By doing so, they change our daily lives. Historical figures, by contrast, direct events that seem distant. So whose passing do you notice more?

Again, I do not mean to disparage or speak ill of anyone – living or dead. It is this phenomenon that is interesting. I wanted to share this personal epiphany.

I think I finally get it, and it’s pretty simple really: People care about what touches them. And what touches them is what they care about.

Kevin Rose (Digg founder) had set up an interview with Trent Reznor, founder and frontman of Nine Inch Nails. Like the White House’s electronic town hall,the questions are raised and voted on ahead of time by the Digg community.

You could see Reznor’s initial skepticism, [...]]]> Here is a great example of what Andrea Jarrell calls asking better questions.

Kevin Rose (Digg founder) had set up an interview with Trent Reznor, founder and frontman of Nine Inch Nails. Like the White House’s electronic town hall,the questions are raised and voted on ahead of time by the Digg community.

You could see Reznor’s initial skepticism, and he even hesitates at one point just before the interview begins . . . and finally acquiesces to go ahead.

Then he gets hit with the first question: “Your business model still primarily involves selling music either digitally or physically. Why haven’t you embraced advertising as a business model?” He pauses, and says, “I don’t usually get asked that.”

What ensues is an incredible, wide-ranging, deep, intelligent, strategic discussion about the place of the artist in today’s media world, along with concrete ideas for what today’s media landscape means for artists today:
(Here is the link if the player doesn’t work above.)

He is in total charge of his brand, understands who it is for and what is best for it, and has useful, real world advice for others who want to negotiate today’s media world.

An example: At one point he compares Arcade Fire’s and Coldplay’s approaches to their digital presence. On the surface, they are similarly Internet darlings. But they actually have opposite strategies — one bottom up, the other top-down. (I won’t say which, watch the vid.) Trent shows he’s thought about this stuff deeply.

Andrea Jarrell asked me if I am waxing so enthusiastic because I was surprised that this rocker had anything of interest to say at all, or whether it was becuase he had good advice. Good question, and it made me think. It’s actually something else: I see this as a useful, concrete discussion of how to negotiate a brand in today’s environment. Other artists and personality-based figures can glean a thing or two from it.

You really ought to spend the 40 minutes and watch.

It is just an incredible interview and I have a new respect for Reznor — whose music I had already enjoyed but now I have a man-crush on his intellect.

I came across an old passage I wrote that outlines our nation’s difficult relationship [...]]]> As many of my readers know, I write “issue guides” — discussions of difficult public issues designed to elicit small group dialogue. In my work on such guides, sometimes I develop fragments that are useful but just don’t fit into the ultimate publication.

I came across an old passage I wrote that outlines our nation’s difficult relationship with people who are “different.” For reasons of space, it is not going to make it into a publication I am now working on, so I thought I would share it. It’s a good reminder of where we’ve been — and how far we have to go.

An Uncomfortable History

America does not have a good record when it comes to the treatment of ethnic and cultural difference. Slavery of African Americans is perhaps the first thing that comes to mind in reviewing this history. It began as early as 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia, when Africans arrived at the first English settlement in the New World. At that time there was no law yet allowing for the ownership of people as slaves, so they were instead indentured servants. In 1808, importation of slaves was officially banned, but it continued unabated — the slave population in the United States rose to 4 million slaves in the 1860 U.S. Census. Slavery ended officially with the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865.

Slavery, of course, is not the only marker along the path of our nation’s poor treatment of different cultures and ethnicities.

Almost from the outset of the colonization of America, killing of the Native American Indians began. An early example is the genocidal Pequot War of 1637. Hostilities lasted in various forms throughout the westward expansion and lasted until at least 1890 when the western frontier was closed. Thousands of people were killed and whole tribes were forced to relocate as America grew. Many argue that, though the wholesale violence may have ended in 1890, the taking of Native American land and water rights, which continued for years, was just as damaging.

The Mexican-American War ended in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which held that Spanish and Mexican land grants were legitimate. But the immigration of anglo settlers brought about, according to historian Richard Vogel, “widespread oppression that sparked mass exile and repatriation. . . . Besieged refugees abandoned their farms and ranches.”

Later in the nineteenth century, Chinese immigrant labor built one of the key drivers of the settlement of the Western United States – the railroad system – but this influx of Chinese people was ended when the Chinese Exclusion Act placed a moratorium on immigration by any ethnic Chinese in 1882. This act was in force until its repeal in 1943 – at which time an annual quota of 105 was put in place. This quota was not lifted until 1965.

Anti-Semitism – hatred of Jews – has also been a part of our nation’s history. In 1915, it was the lynching by prominent area citizens of Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia that led to the creation of today’s Anti-Defamation League, an organization that combats anti-Semitism.

And, during World War Two, Japanese Americans on the west coast were forced to relocate in 1942. Those who did not make their own way out — approximately 110,000 – were placed in a number of internment camps. Only in 1976 was the order establishing the camps – Executive Order 9066 – rescinded, though the camps themselves were terminated in 1946. This particular episode was viewed as so shameful that the United States made official reparations in 1988 to all who had been relocated or placed in camps.

All these share in common the taking of what may begin as a simple mistrust of difference – and, over time, turning it into a set of policies and attitudes that together work a grave injustice on one or another culture. Certainly, many newcomers to America or people who were otherwise seen as marginal had a difficult time of it. But, in some cases, this poor treatment became more than that and instead became racism.

The national story of race, then, continues. Many point with pride to the significant strides made in the Civil Rights era and to the praiseworthy expansion of opportunity over the last few decades to include more and more Americans. But others say that this issue of ethnicity and culture continues to be difficult for America — that the same trends that have played out over history are at work today.

Today, in the twenty-first century, decades after the Civil Rights Movement, against the backdrop of a citizenry that is on track to become one in which no ethnicity holds a majority, America remains a nation that has difficulty addressing racial and ethnic tensions.

The survey shows that just about across the board, Americans are less religious today than they were two decades ago. From USA Today:

The percentage of [...]]]> An important new survey on Americans’ religious behaviors and attitudes was released this morning. The American Religious Identification Survey was first fielded in 1990 and was updated in 2001 and now in 2008.

The survey shows that just about across the board, Americans are less religious today than they were two decades ago. From USA Today:

The percentage of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

Of special interest is the “none” category — people who answer they have no religion or spirituality. That share is 15%. From the article:

So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, “the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion,” the report concludes.

Here is a presentation by Barry Kosmin, study director, about the “Nones.”

Sine Wave

That got me to thinking about my own energy and attention levels. I have long been aware that my effectiveness and energy follow a pretty strong sine [...]]]> I recently had an exchange with a friend during which I recalled that at different periods, his energy level on certain issues seemed to go up and down.

 

Sine Wave

That got me to thinking about my own energy and attention levels. I have long been aware that my effectiveness and energy follow a pretty strong sine wave. It’s not as severe as a bipolar thing — just a sine wave. Sometimes I am way engaged and on top of it . . . othertimes it is a struggle to mark even administrative work off of my to-do list.

No surprise there. I suppose everyone goes in the same sorts of sine waves. But then I got to thinking about the period of my particular wave. I think it is about fifteen days from zero to zero.

In other words, If I start the month at zero (or “neutral”), I’m likely to have a peak of energy around the 7th, get back to “neutral” around the 15th, and then be in the dumps around the 21st.

In my experience, the peak time can be pretty awesome and include prodigious creativity, indeed the whole upper third of that part of the curve is cool. The lower third of the “down” curve is not exactly torture — but I am in trouble if there is something I need to really push on at that time. I get things done, but it is hard to do my best work.

(I know this is similar to biorhythms, but I do not know enough about that to render an opinion. I am just going on my own observations, and leaving the whys for another time.)

All this makes me think a few things:

1. It would be worthwhile to test this and catalog it. Give myself a “score” every day in terms of energy and effectiveness level, and track that for a couple of months. That will show me (a) whether the hypothesis is right; and (b) what my period is.
2. If I do have such a sine wave, it might be a good idea to predict the peaks and valleys and jigger my work schedule accordingly. 
3. I assume other people have such a wave — what is their periodicity? If I can figure that out for colleagues, I can more effectively work with them (in the same way that it is helpful to know my own and others’ Myers-Briggs temperaments). 

What’s your rhythm? How do you know?