Prof. dr. Wubbo J. Ockels is a Dutch physicist, and also the Netherlands’ original astronaut. He is a Professor of Aerospace Sustainable Engineering and Technology at the University of Delft.
TEDxAmsterdam: Wubbo Ockels from TEDxAmsterdam on Vimeo.
Ockels explains how ‘time’ is created by human beings, as a way our brains can make sense of gravity. The speed of light is constant, because it is made by us: it’s the clock by which we have calibrated our existence.
The White Mountain from charles on Vimeo.
David Johnson (Poynter Online – E-Media Tidbits) offers some insight on how news organizations cover live events like the recent Health Care Summit:
“Big media and broadcasters can’t give lip service to social media and focus on business as usual because their audiences aren’t even listening with half an ear anymore. Instead, they’re increasingly talking amongst themselves as the tools for conversation and interaction become commonplace and easier to use. (And that audience is having a conversation that may be painful for traditional news directors and producers to hear.)
Speaking as a long-time radio guy, we always thought a wall-to-wall live audio feed was as good as it could get. My god, you got to listen to the entire debate/press conference/trial/etc live! What more could you want?
We’ll, “the people formerly known as the audience” want a lot more.
I love WordPress. I won’t bore you with all the reasons. But one very big one is: plug-ins. These are little add-on’s that add extra functionality to your blog/website. Today one of our sites needed a way to display multiple videos on a single page. I found several plug-in’s that looked like good candidates and settled on one called YouTube SimpleGallery. It’s free but I made a small donation to the developer.
I usually test plug-in’s here, to get the hang of them. If you click on the VIDEO tab at the top of the page,you’ll see a bunch of thumbnail images that –when clicked– play the video on YouTube.
You can also configure the plug-in so the video pops up in its own window.
I can’t believe I’m still having to make this case. But I can throw a rock and hit half a dozen people in our company who –at the mention of Twitter– will huff, “I don’t care about what some stranger had for lunch!”
I think most of them know that something more important is going on but they don’t want to admit they might be wrong on the topic. And because they are NOT part of “the conversation,” they don’t see tweets like these on the Twitter page of Mark Neumann, a candidate for governor in Wisconsin, where our company operates a news network.
Neuman has almost 3,600 followers and some of them –who might not otherwise– might hit the link to our site to hear the interview with their guy.
PS: This is the kind of blindness that brings out the smart ass in me.
“I think the term “local” dates to a time when communities could only be served by media which originated within them – the local newspaper, TV, or radio. Today, communities continue to have local pride, interest, and concern, but their means of expressing and sharing in those things are no longer limited to the media which so happen to be around the corner.”
“There is no longer any such thing as “local” as we traditionally use the term. The definition of “local” is both expanding (interests are broader than geographies) and shrinking (I am the ultimate “local”) at the same time.”
“If the Internet makes the world “local,” then what’s is your (radio) advantage?”
— Mark Ramsey at Hear 2.0
I got mine today. More on that in a moment.
I think just about everybody dreads performance evaluations. Managers hate doing them and employees hate having their work “evaluated.”
All managers know this is something that should be happening on an ongoing basis. But it’s so uncomfortable (remember that scene in Office Space with the “Bobs”) it usually happens only once a year, usually at budget/raise time.
Employees don’t hear a single word of the evaluation (assuming there’s a face-to-face with the boss) because they’re just waiting to hear how much of a raise they got. They also question whether the boss has any idea of how they are really “performing.” At least that’s how I remember it, before I parachuted out of management, landing safely in Learfield’s Internal Services Group (accounting, engineering, IT).
A couple of of years ago the head of ISG asked for my ideas on how to evaluate what I do. (Huh. Why didn’t I think of that?) I suggested he ask the people I worked with (and for) what they thought, keeping their responses anonymous, of course. He liked the idea and we’ve done it that way (for me) for the last two years.
Most of this year’s feedback was positive (modesty prevents me from sharing) but I do have some areas that still need improvement:
“…can be sarcastic but almost always in fun. Steve lives and breathes the web both at work and in his off time. The downside is whatever he is working with or reading at the time, you are going to hear about it at least as much as you want if not more.”
“Steve Has a tendency to be flippant and arrogant if you don’t agree with this assessment that the world revolves around the Web (and Apple). Sometimes we have clients that need something simple or have a need that he doesn’t agree with. Patience, and understanding that other points of view may be valid, would be appreciated in those instances.”
“Steve is very creative and talented. With that skill set comes a certain degree of “attitude” that isn’t always well-accepted/understood by others.”
Guilty as charged. I’m something of a smart-ass but I’m working on changing that. (Sharing this here is a small part of that effort).
But I like this kind of performance review. The anonymity makes it easy to get the cold hard truth. Every encounter with a co-worker or client is an opportunity to get right … or get it wrong. Keeps a boy on his toes.
This site is not live yet but you can get email notification. Assume the convicts won’t be tweeting directly. I’m trying to imagine how this won’t be a bit of a downer.