What are we if we are not humane?
Donna and I went on a roadtrip today with her daughter Amber to complete the family Christmas visits. Along the way we discussed the content for her revamped website, and with it, the business benefits of IA.
Try as we might, we couldn’t come up with anything better than “You are going to do this stuff anyway - structure a site and some content to satisfy a business need. Hire me or some other smart person and we’ll help you to not screw it up”.
Can this be all there is?
The secret can now be revealed: Snoskred, Meg and I (and a team of very helpful moderators) have been working on the Aussie Bloggers Forum over the last couple of weeks. It has been an exciting time, with a lot of community-in-action networking (and a lot of hard work, including a sterling effort by Snoskred’s partner as forum administrator).
So what is the Aussie Bloggers Forum about? Here is what the front page says:
Aussies, and bloggers, can be really nice people
Put the two together and you have the potential for a wonderful community.
At Aussie Bloggers, we are passionate about blogging and helping other Aussies do the same. But you don’t have to be an Aussie to join the forums, all nationalities are welcome here. If you are interested in blogging at all then join us in the forums today.
Unlike other forums out there on the web, questions are welcome and you will find lots of friendly Aussies willing to help. Helping out mates is part of the Aussie way, after all.
One aim we have for this forum is to gather a range of Aussie bloggers who have skills over different blogging platforms and social media sites to help provide information and advice to other Aussies who are not as experienced.
Let’s face it, the blogosphere is a really big place! We’ve enjoyed connecting with other Aussie bloggers and the friendships we’ve formed. We hope these forums will make meeting other Aussie bloggers much easier.
We want this to be a happy, helpful place where advice and networking occurs in an non threatening and collaborative environment. Nastiness won’t be tolerated.
If you are a ridgy didge, fair dinkum, true blue, dinky die Aussie who is already blogging, or thinking about it - then you’ve found the right place.
I encourage you to register today - it is free, fun, and a great way of sharing what you know about blogging and life in general.
If you need more convincing, watch the slideshow.
Steve Collins wrote the following:
Shawn Callahan of Anecdote argues that the need for the term knowledge worker is redundant now that technology is ubiquitous in the developed world and that almost every worker trades in knowledge of some sort. He sees its use as a way to discriminate between identified knowledge workers and those whose roles are not traditionally viewed this way:
It’s an dark undercurrent and tacitly becomes a basis for discrimination. “Our salespeople are knowledge workers but our gas fitters are not.” I suspect this feeling of superiority comes from the erroneous data-information-knowledge model where knowledge (and even more ridiculously, wisdom) sits at the pinnacle of the pyramid.
I see where Shawn is going with his argument, particularly in developed nations. But I agree with Matthew Hodgson, who puts forth an alternative position that Shawn’s views are misplaced. Matthew argues that Shawn misses an opportunity to communicate an understanding of knowledge work outward from the insider community to the larger workforce and organisational management who don’t necessarily label themselves as knowledge workers - “Oh, no! I work in marketing/HR/finance/logistics/whatever.”
This is the story so far as I can tell:
Generally speaking, these guys know what they are on about. All three are respected within their own fields of endeavour. By the tone of the three posts, we can probably guess that Shawn doesn’t identify as a knowledge worker - but Matt and Steve do, and are looking to defend the distinct identity of the term.
There is a discrimination, if subtle, against non-knowledge workers by those who see themselves as being different. I’ve seen it. Wherever one profession sets themselves above another, there are territorial disputes - this piece of the project is mine, that is yours, don’t touch. Following the example set in IA recon, I think that the defenders of the concept need to separate knowledge worker as a role from knowledge work as an activity - then they may find more common ground with people like Shawn (and I) who see the role as devalued but the activity as essential.
Insanity took me a couple of months ago and I’ve been a Dodo customer (of sorts) ever since. I say “of sorts” because they haven’t provided me with much of any kind of service yet, and they haven’t billed me so I haven’t paid them. It’s a funny relationship.
Dodo has issues. Here is a rough timeline:
I do have the landline - it does work, woohoo, but still no broadband, and no router.
If this was an isolated incident then I would be feeling a bit paranoid - but Dodo is infamous for the highest number of complaints of any Australian ISP, twice that of runner-up Bigpond.
Where do they go so wrong? My guess, based on receiving-end experience, is that they have an information silo issue. Judging by the accents they have three different sets of call centres - one or more in Australia, one in India, and one in the Phillipines. There is nothing wrong with overseas call centres - they make good business sense when they are set up correctly - but when a routine foulup requires action by five different departments that don’t seem to talk to one another (and there is no effective resolution of the issue) then I have to guess that the information just isn’t being passed from one department to the next.
I’ve seen this happen on client site as well, and it always strikes me as an opportunity to change for the better. If consulting opportunity is the intersection of chaos and money, then all Dodo needs is the money. Chaos they have in abundance.
The tale can now be told.
Wikipedia defines the Dunning-Kruger effect as:
The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.
The phenomenon was demonstrated in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, then both of Cornell University. Their results were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999.[1]
Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,
- incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,
- incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,
- incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy,
- if they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.
I did not just quietly observe this - I actively saw it happen around me.
And no, I’m not kidding. I wish that I was. I’m not naming names because (a) I’m no longer on that project and (b) to do so would be unprofessional.
WebBlast Canberra 2007 took place on 12 December 2007.
The success of the evening was a credit to the organisational skills of co-convenor Gavin Dispain. This is the second time that he and I (and a lot of volunteers) have got together to make an end-of-year social occasion that is open to everyone within the web industry - managing directors, web managers, information architects, graphic designers, university lecturers, students, and account managers.
This is me, slumped in a chair exhausted at the end of the evening:
It was great, but by 9PM or so (when this photo was taken) I’d pretty much adrenalined myself into a stupor
Everyone seemed to have fun - and there was the added bonus of a lot of business-related networking in amongst the celebration.
The chap hoisting his glass in the far background is none other than our own Stephen Hall. Also visible in this photo are Susan Schuller, Susan MacGillivray, Scott Ward, Paul Cooper, Andrew Meers, John Kennedy, Steve Collins, and many more besides. If you are in this shot and I haven’t mentioned you, please accept my apologies - leave me a comment
WebBlast Canberra 20o7 would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support of the following sponsors:
And to the volunteers, my undying thanks:
Note: Photos used in this article were kindly taken by Matthew Hodgson - please see his Flickr gallery for more.
