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Government / Politicking / Webculture — Comments Off
04
Feb 11

Regarding Egypt…

For many Americans, the Middle East is a haven for terrorists, oil, and sand.  This infographic loosely based on Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark might help with regards to Egypt.  This infographic from Hootsuite shows some of the social media metrics.  The Daily Show and the Colbert Report also do more than your favorite pundit, fearmonger, or gasbag.

The current crisis in Egypt first appeared in my Google Reader with a story of Egyptian Muslim’s protecting their fellow countrymen Coptic Christians during prayer.

There was (and is still) great debate on the contribution social media in revolutions spreading across the Middle East (and causing concern as far away as China).  These tools were and are bring used in capacities beyond their original intent, spreading the protesters plans (full translation here).  World economic leaders gathered at DAVOS appear to have appreciated that social-media led uprisings are the new normal.  The true factor powering these protests is the network of people, not profiles on Facebook and Twitter.  Regardless, YouTube and Flickr are assisting in the story telling in ways only they can.

Explanations abound from Egyptians living at home and expats abroad.

While the Obama Administration appears to have been surprised by the events in Egypt, US State Department cables released via Wikileaks in the NYTimes showed increasing dissatisfaction and disengagement.  The US State Department also worked with Google to get videos showing human rights abuses uncensored after blocking at the request of the Egyptian government.  It’s worthwhile to point out that the military hardware crushing dissent was paid for in American dollars.

Network analysis revealed that access to the internet in Egypt was nearly cut off [infographic]. Cutting off access to connect, communicate, cooperate, and collaborate is essential to stopping a revolution; Cutting of access is not without cost.  It sends a signal to peer nations, the populace at large, and business and trading partners, none for the better.  I suspect that access to social media will be regarded as a barometer to the freedom and stability of nations.

I’m unsure if anyone has checked in with Malcolm Gladwell on the subject, who previously reported that social media was not sufficient for activism.  His criticism was not well received at the time, even less so now.

Government / Misc. / News / Politicking / Webculture — Comments Off
28
Jul 10

Is it irresponsible to compare Conservative Media to the ‘Human Centipede’?

Updated:  I see comedian Patton Oswalt (via Twitter) got here first.

Why, it’s irresponsible not too!

newscentipede

Feel free to improve upon this as you see fit.

Business / Culture / Organizational Dynamics / Psychology — 1 Comment
17
Nov 09

Managing or Leading?

I saw this retweeted quote (via Twitter from Frank Roche) attributed to the recently deceased Russell Ackoff:

“It is better to use imprecise measures of what is wanted, rather than precise measures of what is not.”

On an intersecting tangent, I saw the below at John Baldoni’s Leadership at Work the Harvard Business Blog regarding a recent McKinsey study:

That’s a conclusion that I draw from a recent global survey by McKinsey and Company about what it takes to manage corporate performance. Only 48% of managers surveyed believed that they need to inspire and only 46% believed it was their responsibility to provide direction during this crisis. The numbers for inspiration and direction actually drop to 45% and 39% respectively when considered as behaviors for how to manage post-crisis.

More troubling, only 30% of managers felt that they needed to motivate their employees during the crisis and just 23% did post-crisis. The need for accountability ranked low too, just 23% for crisis and only 18% post-crisis. Innovation also ranked low, just 33% believed it was necessary now, but some 46% did believe it was necessary post-crisis.

My personal mantra has always been that managing and leading are two separate things that are not mutually exclusive.

Narrowly defined, managing is about policies, procedures, and the allocation of scarce resources.   Management is about fear – eliminating risk from negative deviance – what you want to avoid.     You won’t get more, you’ll just lose less, trying to shrink the pie as little as possible.   Leadership is about opportunity by winning hearts and minds and motivating your team.   By focusing on what you want – emphasizing positive deviance, you can go for more and better, and seek out opportunities, making the pie bigger.

Politicking — 1 Comment
30
May 09

IOKIYAR, v. Supreme Court

The narrative of the wingnuts against Sonia Sotomayor is that she’s a racist, based on an out-of-context quote from a speech at Berkley:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life”

The commentary from the lunatic fringe is rapidly approaching ‘peak wingnut’:

Former GOP Speaker of the House and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich, via Twitter:

White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.

Former drug addict and current GOP boss Rush Limbaugh:

“So, here you have a racist. You might want to soften that and you might wanna say a reverse racist. And the libs of course say that minorities cannot be racists because they don’t have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist and now he’s appointed one.”

Former US Rep. Tom Tancredo:

“If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case, which is, from my point of view anyway, nothing more than a Latino — it’s a counterpart — a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses. If you belong to something like that in a way that’s going to convince me and a lot of other people that it’s got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is “All for the race. Nothing for the rest.” What does that tell you?”

Former Watergate convict felon G. Gordon Liddy:

“Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.”

Keep in mind, just a short time ago, such behavior by a Supreme Court nominee was condoned by the press, and any questioning along such lines during confirmation criticized harshly (via Media Matters):

When the nation learned in 2005 that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito had belonged to a Princeton University alumni organization that advocated a cap on the number of women and minorities allowed at Princeton, the news media quickly circled the wagons to protect the Bush nominee.

[...]

So it seems the news media treat even a suggestion that a Supreme Court nominee might be guilty of involvement in a bigoted organization as a vile slur. Even if the nominee touted his membership in a group that sought to limit the number of women and minorities accepted into his alma mater. Even then, such questions are treated as inappropriate and abusive scrutiny that have no place in civil discourse.

As long, that is, as the nominee in question is a conservative white male, nominated by a conservative white male president.

This has much more to do with preserving the existing gender and race power structure, and nothing to do with the nominee.   The data does not align with their rhetoric, says Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog:

In sum, in an eleven-year career on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of 4 times. Only one case (Gant) in that entire eleven years actually involved the question whether race discrimination may have occurred. (In another case (Pappas) she dissented to favor a white bigot.)   She particulated in two other panels  rejecting district court rulings agreeing with  race-based jury-selection claims. Given that record, it seems absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decisionmaking.

The simple folk aren’t bothering to look at the data, and are instead hoping that a wedge argument of identity politics and its ‘secret code’ is still relevant after the most diverse election in American history, despite the electoral threat of a divided party.   A majority of the public doesn’t buy it, and the most likely outcome will be an even more bitterly divided GOP and diminished electoral opportunities.