Shift Happens - revisited, with sources

My last blog post was a video titled “Shift Happens”, and I asked for feedback about the sources –  many thanks to everybody for their responses.  It turns out that the video was updated in June 07 (see below), and comes from a group of US based educators, Kark Fisch and Scott McLeod.  I’ve attached their list of sources below.  There’s also a wiki where you can join the debate at Shift Happens. 

 

Slide	Source
In the next 8 seconds 34 babies . . .	Web search on population, then did the math.
Name this country . . .	Angus King Presentation - http://web.mac.com/northeastleadership/iWeb/Angus_King/Podcast/A19C541A-7E2C-4BB3-A581-63EA068369CE.html
2006 College Graduates, college graduates in India that speak English.	Geoffrey Calvin, Fortune Magazine, July 25,2005 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/07/25/8266603/index.htm
China #1 English Speaking Country	Somebody at the Milken Conference – reported at http://weblogg-ed.com/2006/more-musings-from-milken/
U.S. Department of Labor Statistics	Originally from Ian Jukes - http://web.mac.com/iajukes/iWeb/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/fgtgtg.pdf Also: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/nlsoy.pdf and ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/news.release/History/tenure.09212004.news
College Majors	New College Majors: U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration. http://www.doleta.gov/BRG/Indprof/biotech_profile.cfm (New media: washingtonpost.com, February 23, 2005)
10,000 hours of video games	Interactive Videogames, Mediascope, June 1996.
10,000 hours on phones, 20,000 hours of TV, 250,000 emails/IMs	Mark Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, 2001.
U.S. 4-year-olds	Kaiser Family Foundation Report, 2003, http://www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/uploaded_files/102803_kff_kids_press.pdf
Years to Market Audience	http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/briefing/technology/tech.pdf
Number of Internet Devices	http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
Text Messages	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_service
1 of 8 Couples Met Online	Fortune Magazine 8-7-2006 - http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/08/07/8382578/index.htm Quotes Diana Farrell, head of the McKinsey Global Institute
eBay Revenue	http://finance.google.com/finance?q=EBAY&client=news
Google Searches	Web search (of course!) - http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156461
MySpace	http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=myspace.com
YouTube	http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=youtube.com
Words in English Language	Originally from Ian Jukes - http://web.mac.com/iajukes/iWeb/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/fgtgtg.pdf   Lots on the web, many indicating more than 540,000 – including Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
3,000 Books	Originally from Ian Jukes - http://web.mac.com/iajukes/iWeb/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/fgtgtg.pdf   Lots on the web including http://www.princetoninfo.com/200405/40512c03.html
Technical Info Doubling	Ian Jukes - http://web.mac.com/iajukes/iWeb/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/fgtgtg.pdf Cites George Gilder - http://www.amazon.com/Telecosm-World-After-Bandwidth-Abundance/dp/0743205472/sr=1-2/qid=1172692403/ref=sr_1_2/002-0116902-0249611?ie=UTF8&s=bookshttp://www.amazon.com/Telecosm-World-After-Bandwidth-Abundance/dp/0743205472/sr=1-2/qid=1172692403/ref=sr_1_2/002-0116902-0249611?ie=UTF8&s=books
Fiber Optics	Ian Jukes - http://web.mac.com/iajukes/iWeb/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/fgtgtg.pdf   Some from George Gilder, some from Ray Kurzweil, some from ?
Children in Developing Countries	http://www.laptop.org/
OLPC	http://www.laptop.org/
Computers and Humans	Ray Kurzweil book - The Singularity is Near - http://singularity.com/ Also http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
Students Collaborating	Specifically references the Horizon 2007 Project - http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com/ but of course there are many examples of this.
Over 5 Millions Conversations	See this post - http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/03/over-two-million-served.html - for an earlier count, then revisited some of those sites for updated counts.

— Philip Greenwood

 

Tags: Strategic+Information

Shift Happens

I don’t know the source of this information, but it’s plausible and thought provoking…if you know where it came from, please leave a comment!

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Strategic+Information

Inform, Influence, Inspire

Here’s a video called “Inform, Influence, Inspire” – a phrase borrowed from our project communications model.  It’s about what Beaufortes does for our client’s project teams. 

The presentation style is a touch experimental, but you’d expect nothing less from us, now, would you?  We expect to do a lot more with video in the years to come, so we’re building the skills now.  As a company we’re always evolving and improving, and this presentation is aligned with that ethos.  So this current version is simplified, and the video rendering is vastly improved…

So dim the lights, put the headphones on, put your feet up, and enjoy a tranquil moment with Beaufortes!

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Why+Use+Beaufortes, Inform, Influence, Inspire

Volunteer Armies

I just found out that Adam Curtis’s 4 part documentary “The Century of the Self” is available to watch online (1, 2, 3, 4). Cool! It’s a little preachy, but it does tell quite an amazing story of how Freud’s psychological principles were first put to effective corporate use by his nephew Edward Bernays.

We take it for granted that emotional selling has been around for ever, attaching sexy women to big cars, and hunky builders to diet coke, but before Bernays there was none of this. Advertising was… well… just informational. If I wanted to sell you a pair of shoes I would tell you about their specification, and leave it at that.

When I look at how most large corporations communicate internally with their project teams, it’s like we are in a time warp, I see today what was common place in advertising 100 years ago, purely informational communication. We fully acknowledge that when dealing with consumers we have to ‘market’ to them, create brands, and excite them with images they can identify with, and aspire to.

… but talk about employees and just because we are paying them a wage we get lazy, and think that there is no need to engage or sell to them. They work for us, we just need to tell them what to do… don’t we?

Global Warming and the Cynefin Framework

Ever since meeting Louisa-Jayne O’Neill of the UK Cabinet Office at one of David Gurteen’s knowledge cafes, I’ve been interested in the Cynefin Framework.  Ms O’Neill wrote an insightful article about the interaction of faith and decision making with respect to the Bush presidency, and that was to be my introduction to the framework.

The Cynefin Framework, proposed by Dave Snowden, helps us understand the nature of knowledge as it relates to different types of situations, and different approaches to decision making in those situations. The space in the middle of the diagram reflects an area of decision making that is affected by faith, or to use a more subtle term a “predisposition to belief”.

On a plane ride to South Africa recently, I watched Al Gore’s documentary film about Global Warming – An Inconvenient Truth.  For two weeks I was a convert; image going on your first safari, thinking “all this will be gone in 30 years”.  I watched the film again on the return flight and, guilt ridden, discussed it with everybody I saw on my return.  Gore’s arguments seemed so compelling; his simple, at times personal, approach to conveying his messages was convincing.