Conservative MP Garth Turner was turfed from the Conservative causcus yesterday because of his blog, the Turner Report.  The Conservatives cited confidentiality concerns.

I like this guy, I don’t agree with him on much politically, but I really like his take on democratic engagment.  His blog has unmoderated comments, and he participates in conversations with people who comment.  This type of front line engagement with constituants is exactly what we need in politics today.  Few people don’t feel threatened by the openness of social media, but this guy is absolutely fearless.

But there is a political blogging lesson in this.  If you are the maverick MP with differing opinions from your causus, I’m not sure that I would use my blog to further the debate.  What is said in Causus, should stay in causcus.  But that doesn’t mean that he should not engage in discussion.  By all means, write about the important issues and express your opinion.  But don’t be an idiot and tip your bosses hand.  That’s the kind of move that’ll get you fired.  And it did.

So as much as I like the guys “people first” attitude, I wish he handled this with a little more tact.  As much as I cringe everytime I read the “reaganomic” basis for his financial policy, I like having someone in the conservative causcus who will ask questions and disagree.  Disagreements lead to discussions, and good heated discussion inherently sqashes dictatorial leadership. 

We are worse off with this guy at home.

PS: Check out the comments in yesterdays post.  Gosh I’m glad I don’t hang out with hardened conservatives.  They might start calling me a commie, and I hate that. 

Last night I had a couple of beers with Jim and Kelly from Volunteer Abroad.  VA is an organization that hooks up students with aid projects in six countries.  They train new volunteers so that they can get by in the language and not get robbed at every turn.  They do a direct connect of the resources (people) to the organizations in county.  Much of the travel industry (and more specifically volunteer aid orgs) are mired in mark ups and dubious ethics.  Not these guys, they are the real deal, doing good things for real people.

They have set up houses in all of the countries in which they operate, and they just moved into a great head office here in Kingston.  (A huge old limestone in the downtown that is just perfect for the 24/7 work that they do.)

I’ve been friends with Jim for years now, and have watched as he has nurtured VA into what it is today.  He’s the CEO of the company, and a very cool guy.

The reason we met up was to talk about social media and blogging for his company and how they should go about implementing things.  It really is a perfect company for a blogging initiative.  They are doing good/ ethical work, they have some PR issues that have more to do with the industry rather then their business, and they have well educated and passionate people working for them. 

I’m looking forward to continuing these conversations with them.  Good karma all around.

Mike Rohde wrote the other day on a podcast that addressed the concept of “Continuous Partial Attention”.  As Mike points out, this is not about multitasking, but the continuous monitoring of possible inputs from technology.  It also is based on the premise that the modern geek is constantly connected to the “Network”.  I count myself among these modern geeks.

I should start this out by defining what my inputs are.  Throughout the day, I get information delivered to me via my palm Treo.  This could just as easily be my work computer or my home computer, but I have routed everything through my treo, as it is the one computer that is on my person all day. 

Throughout the day I am notified of things that are happening right now.  I get email from more than five accounts, I’m notified about breaking news, I get email notifications of blog comments, I get text messages from friends and family, meeting reminders, task reminders, and of course phone calls.  All of these inputs make my phone vibrate on my hip, and I admit that I almost always pull it out to see what the alert is about.

I say almost, because there are times when it is simply rude to stop the conversation and look at my treo.  I’m not one of those people that will drop a person to person conversation in order to check my treo.  I get too many inputs for that.  To be polite, I simply silence the phone in my pocket without taking it out.  I have it set up to remind me of these things in five minutes.

Being constantly connectted certainly does offer the opportunity for distraction.  But I prefer not to look at it that way.  It is always my choice to respond to an alert or phone call, or email.  Personally, I find it remarkably convienient, to have real time delivery of my relevant information.  If something is time sensitive, then I can respond.  If it is not time sensitive, then I can mark it for future processing and deal with it at an appropriate time. 

But all of this comes back to the concept of attention.  I’m notoriously ADD, and I am often scattered and bouncing from one thing to another.  But my assitant is constantly bring me back to the present moment, delivering information needed right now.  All of my daily tasks are scheduled at times when I am likely to have the time to act on the reminder, so I tend to get things at appropriate times.  (For example, my regular house work reminders are scheduled half an hour after I arrive home from work.)  It allows me to manage my time and attention and supplies me with enough information to make adjustments to things on the fly. 

There are some tools that help filter the inputs based on time and context.  I use Callfilter to regulate phone calls and sms messages throughout my day.  Personal calls get routed to voicemail directly during working hours, and the phone radio gets turned off completely when I am in a meeting.  This is just another layer of directing inputs appropriately.

It has taken some time to get my inputs to an acceptable level, and to gain control of when these things are delivered. Even now I get the occasional glitch that causes a completely inappropriate alert, but they are few and far between now.

I honestly don’t feel taxed by this type of networked living.  Being a node on the network doesn’t cause anxiety or adrenaline pumped days.  (Although some of the content can induce anxiety sometimes…)  All of these inputs allow me to particiate at work, in life at the yacht club, in my family life, and in the blogosphere. 

So what do you think?  Are you at peace with your “connection” or do you long for the days when things were simpler and slower.  Leave me a comment, and I promise I’ll read it promptly, although it may take a little time for me to respond.

If you are a techie hippie like me you owe it to your self to check out this track.  Was on the Daily Source Code yesterday. 

Too cool.

I’ve been a big fan of the mac for a few years now.  I’ve never been an Apple fanboy, and I am the first to admit that I have my fair share of problems with my macs over the years.  But recently Apple have begun to grate my ethical nerves for a couple of reasons.

Blogging and Social Media

Apple have been developing applications that allow people to blog and podcast with their mac right out of the box.  (Granted the apps aren’t all that great, but whatever.)  Apple customers, and this is a great big generalization here, have been at the forefront of social media.  It’s easier to do audio and video work on a mac, and corporate culture of “Think Different” lends its self to these digital hippies that are creating content for free. 

However, Apple have not adopted these technologies into their own corporate culture which makes a lot of people think that Apple are being very hypocritical.  Bloggers have been bashing Apple’s PR practices for months now and there has been no response at all.  Command and control messaging that has been used by companies to build their brand is no longer effective.  Consumers are skeptical when they hear the lattest tagline, and it is getting harder and harder to buy into corporate messages.  Social media advocates will tell you that the only way to get out of this type of messaging is to engage with your customers.  Listen to them, talk to them. 

Apple was perfectly positioned to do that.  Mac fans are just that: fanatics.  There would be so much good feed back coming from their customers.  But sadly Apple have decided to close the door and continue to bombard us with lifestyle ads.

One last rant on the Apple’s relationship with its customers.  As I mentioned earlier, mac people are fanatics and are constantly waiting for the next product release.  There are several websites that write about rumoured products and services that will be appearing from Apple in the near future. A little while ago, Apple tried to force one of these sites to reveal the source of a leak that revealed a new product.  Apple argued that the blogger is not a journalist and thus was not covered by the first amendment.  Apple recently lost the case, thus granting bloggers the same rights as journalists.  (At least in California anyway.) 

There is a huge irony in the fact that Apple was the company to get everyone all excited about creating new media, these same bloggers are somehow less credible than other journalists, and finally reinforced blogger’s rights by losing a court battle.  Damn, there’s some weird Karma going on there.

Production Practices:

The other thing that bugs me about Apple is that they have positioned themselves to be the ethical company that enables people to change the world.  (Search google video> “Apple ads” to see what I mean.)  They invoke Ghandi and other labour leaders to make their point in their advertising.  How dare they?

Wired ran an article yesterday on how Apple products are manufactured in China.  Apple assembles all of their products in China and their labour practices, although not terrible, have been called into question.  As the article points out, politically propressive Apple should be way above the minimun labour standards.  This is yet another missed opportunity by the Apple PR department.

Another thing about the Apple’s production that bothers me is the quality.  Just a few years ago the aluminum powerbook was a the epitome of production quality.  Recently bloggers and websites have been reporting more and more defects and shody quality standards on their flagship products.  Several class-action suits have been launched against the company and again their has been no public response from the company.

Conclusions:

Will I stop buy macs?  We’ll see.  Although i like to be an ethical consumer, almost every hi-tech product in NA has passed through an asian factory with relatively low paid workers.  As for the PR gaffs and non-communicative nature of the company, we can only hope that Apple will eventually drink the kool-aid and start talking to it’s customers.  We’ll see what happens when people start to get really pissed off.  They are already making comparisons to the “old” evil-empire Mirosoft.

I’ll leave you with some questions:  How important are these things to you?  Is the contradictory corporate culture a deterent to you as a consumer?  Do you care if your products are produced in sweat shops by a company that markets to the politically progessive?

I just got through listening to CC Chapman's latest installment of Managing the Gray, where CC gives a great primer on SL.  It's a fantastic summary of what SL is and isn't.

If you've heard the buzz about SL but still don't have any idea what it's all about, check out this podcast.   When people ask me about SL, I'm sending them a link to this podcast.

Also, if you're into social media check out the rest of his podcasts, he's a succesful guy who has a lot to say. 

I'm listening and learning.