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In the latest of a string of successes for my writings, my recent essay on Continuous Innovation has been posted to the RAPP Global Blog! This is directly at the "front door" for our agency worldwide, so it's a huge deal. Plus, I had the chance to work with some great people outside my regular circle here, which is just additional fun.

We wanted this version to be a little more readable and interactive than the original, so we came up with the idea of splattering it with links all over the place - making it the hyper hyperlinked remix version, if you will. Take a look at some of those links, they were half the fun in getting this done.

ESSAY: Continuous Innovation

Update: Received a wonderful comment from a user identifying themselves as the Chief Technologist for NASA at Langley, VA. Here's hoping I can help space exploration, if in some small way!

I guess I must be good at this essay thing. They had another writing contest here at work, and I decided to enter. I wasn't really looking to do anything special, just wanted to see for myself if it was a fluke: if it was possible that I could write that well again. I really figured I had no chance, because of course, they wouldn't let me win twice, right?

Well, they did.

This contest was supposed to be about "Innovation." Here's the full essay, along with the announcement email, from the same Global Strategy guy. Plus, some minor mentions from later in the year. Enjoy!

Continuous Innovation


You have two minutes to do something innnovative. 120 seconds. Go.


Can we all be honest with each other here? When you look at the results from your latest campaign and see a click-through rate of .05%, or an open rate of 1.14%, or an average time on site of 00:00:14 with a bounce rate of 85%, you're not excited. Even though these numbers may be well above standard for your client's industry, or average rates for the medium, you can't help but wonder about the majority. The ones that just didn't do what you wanted them to do.

So what happens? You get in the office the next day and flip through your Rolodex of optimization techniques, survey out a 30+ variable testing matrix that would confuse a rocket scientist, and set about to "move the needle." Brief, blow out, build and blast; you manage to make that K.P.I. look a little less S.O.L., and your client is happy to carry on doing the same thing with the same messages in a slightly better looking package. That needle's moved, but that majority? Still there.

So why doesn't this FEEL good? Why doesn't this inspire your work and infuse your day?

Why doesn't this feel Innovative?


90 seconds.


The fact is, a lot of the things we fill our day with are NOT innovative. And really, there's nothing wrong with that - great work relies completely on great execution. An excellent process or cutting-edge idea will be the inspirational equivalent of a blank sheet of paper if it isn't carried out with absolute attention to detail, timing, and budget. The world needs people that do this, and for at least some part of our lives, we all must be one of them.

The problem is we confuse Innovation with The Work. We can't block out 30 minutes on our calendar to just "Innovate." Innovation doesn't generate any discrete deliverable, follow any Visio flow chart process, or wrap itself up neatly into a revenue stream by the end of Q2. Innovation is like a rainbow: ephemeral, beautiful, and impossible to precisely predict.

But, you CAN create the right conditions for it.

Just like we all know that stormy-sunny mix that gives the best opportunity for a solar color gala, we all intrinsically know the circumstances that will foster innovation within our organizations. We know the value of those hallway conversations, the break room areas, the coffee machine (oh YES the coffee machine), the foosball table, the huge whiteboard, the iPod with noise-cancelling headphones. We know those things that don't have a direct return, the stuff that's expensed before the bottom line, the things that usually get axed when numbers need to add up.

We know what fosters innovation - we're just afraid of it.


60 seconds.


The core problem with innovation is that it is rooted in, and generated by the Unknown. We can fertilize and water the field all day long, but ultimately it is innovation that makes a seed become a plant. The fear is that you might throw all your might and resources into a singular project to foster innovative growth and... it doesn't happen. Or worse yet, you take your baby idea out of the incubator and try to introduce it to the real world and guess what? It fails.

You know what we call new ideas that succeed? Innovation.
You know what we call new ideas that don't? Failures.

Under this paradigm, it's easy to see why a project with unclear and uncertain returns would never get off the ground. It's understandable trying your hand at the tried-and-true before ever venturing off into the unknown. When the world is black and white, why would you ever want to put yourself in the red?

And that's your problem.

If you see every new venture, every weird idea, every novel concept as ultimately falling down the plinko machine into one of those two buckets, the risk is always 50-50. You're always that fixed distance away from perceived utter disaster, and you're always going to stay there.

Take a moment and think of the enormous gamut of problems you work with and attempt every day - from a way to remember to pick up the dry cleaning, to some method of resolving conflict with a co-worker, to influencing a new audience to buy your client's product.
The wrong thought is to rank these solutions the same way we would a coin flip - heads/tails, right/wrong, successful/not. We deal in a work that so tightly integrates with the human experience, that of communicating and carrying understanding of a client to groups of other humans. We play on emotion, on aspirations, on cognitive dissonance. So how can we call one idea absolutely innovative, or another absolutely a failure? How can we not appreciate the campaigns that "showed a small ROI" or "did sorta well" for what they are - learning opportunities.


30 seconds.


If asked about his greatness, Edison would tell you about the thousands of ways he discovered how NOT to make a lightbulb. Einstein would tell you about the 42 years of life BEFORE he won his Nobel Prize for Physics. Michael Jordan would tell you about the 26 times he was trusted to take the game-winning shot and MISSED. Greatness only germinates from the ashes of failure. Innovation will only spark after countless ideas are tried, tested, and most are found lacking. The world's Next Big Idea isn't sitting out on the sidewalk like a lost penny - it's hiding behind a veil of missteps, mistakes, and missed opportunities.

The clear fact is that in order to foster innovation in ourselves or in our organization, we need to create a mentality that ALLOWS for failure. We need to build into our campaign plans an aggressive process for correctly identifying results, then extracting every single bit of meaning or understanding from them - both "good" and "bad." This knowledge then needs to feed our future works. This knowledge must be immediately shared within our organization. This knowledge needs to be openly celebrated in front of our clients, to prove how we've positively built from failure and made our partners' money really worth something in the long run.

We need to innovate, or we will become irrelevant. Therefore, we need to fail, or we will never find success. And when we fail, we must intensely scrutinize the results in order to innovate.


Time's up. Did you innovate? Did you fail? How about both.

I am pleased to inform you that our writing contest winner is once again Eric Swayne. Yes, that's right. Eric Swayne. Again.



Well done Eric!



This contest focused on innovation. As direct marketers, innovation is a bit of a strange bedfellow. I mean, we typically focus on a linear approach of testing, learning and then optimizing. Innovation requires new, often lateral thinking, is often inefficient and as Eric rightly points out ...gasp...can actually require failing, maybe even repeatedly, before getting to the Promised Land. And yet now more than ever our ability to innovate as customer obsessed agents on behalf of our clients is the litmus test by which we are judged as true leaders in our space.



Traditional executions across traditional channels, nuanced by creative and offer are simply not working as well as they used to. Consumers demand more...more relevance, more experience, more inspiration, more opportunity to co-create across multiple touch points. Across channels heretofore not even considered media. To truly succeed for our clients we are going to need to be brave, pioneering and yes, perhaps even fail from time to time. Different than many the Rapp way, the way of data igniting creative experiences, of direct marketing sensibilities informing new applications across emerging channels, gives us an unfair advantage. It slides the odds of success to our favor. And I am happy to take any advantage I can get, fair or unfair, on behalf of our clients.



Take the time to read Eric's entry on risk taking, on having the courage of our convictions and on our mandate to innovate as a brand. It is inspiring. Please join me in congratulating Eric on what is quickly becoming the Swayne Writing Contest. (Actually, the entrants are presented to a panel of judges without name!) I encourage all of you to participate in the next iteration and help us crown a new champion. Not to mention win a bunch of money :-)

This next one came from the CEO of all RAPP itself. He CCed our Global President, and the President of North America:

This is really well done Eric. I’d like you, [name witheld] and [name witheld] to trim this down, add a couple of real Rapp examples of innovation and put this on the website blog. This is a very relevant topic.


Thanks Eric.

And here's the blog he was talking about: http://opinion.rapp.com/. I'm working with other amazing luminaries of the RAPP stratosphere to get this live, and I'll let you know here when it's up.

I'm still utterly amazed and honored to win this go-round. The money's nice (VERY nice), but the validation as a writer and strategic thinker is many, many times more valuable. It's mind-boggling and humbling to have a reputation throughout the world-wide stretch of RAPP. I hope I'm afforded many more chances to do this kind of free-form, blue-sky thinking.

ESSAY: The New ROI

So the great place I work at recently had a writing competition about "reaching the new complex consumer." I was inspired to enter, because it's a fascinating topic - and the winner got a nice load of cash! I may not win, but I'm pretty proud of this little piece, so I wanted to share it here.

Remember: I'm writing this as a marketer, to other marketers. Some of the tone may get a tad fanatical for you, but when you're in the Advertising/Marketing industry, that's what it takes to get the attention of The Jaded.

Enjoy!

The New ROI: Collective Networking Between Brands and Consumers


There is no more "them," and it's all our fault.

For good or ill, we started as Marketers with our "magic bullet" messages and drilled all the way down to the "guerilla" level for the express purpose of reaching and changing the behavior of Them: The Consumers. We've poked, prodded, offered, discounted, promoted and printed everything we could to affect The Target Audience. Each new medium has just been a wider net for us to reach more numbers to get more prospects and yield more ROI. We've used all 360 degrees around The Demographic to find a new angle, but now They have done the unthinkable:

THEY have learned to ignore us.

You have felt it. That inward shut-off when you see the overly-idyllic lifestyle photo, or your hand reaching for the dial at each mention of "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!" You know the Marketer's bag of tricks and can provide textbook examples of each, probably with material just from your morning commute. You've reached the point where it's sub-conscious, and yet if you're a Marketer, you'll get to your desk and try to analyze the next email campaign for whether we can get more out of Them with the "buy-one-get-one" or the "half-off" offers.

And this is the point: You ARE one of Them.

Marketers can not live in a diatomic, "Us vs. Them" world anymore, because the world has fundamentally changed. Publication now inherently includes participation, and the same people using your product are now recommending your product, rating your product, ranking your product, or just ranting about your product. Every move a Marketer makes throws off ripples of conversation, and the successful organizations are the ones who can anticipate these fluid dynamics, strategically activating groups and memes that maximize their clients' potential.

Marketing isn't hypnosis anymore, it's anthropology.

Our new study is to understand the full experience of how consumers interact with products, and how consumers interact with each other. These interactions are the new "synapses" in our collective intelligence, and it is at these points of exchange that every brand finds its success or failure. As information flows through these points, nuance is gathered. Impressions are made. The Sneezers come out, and Tipping Points are neared. Everything that goes into forming an opinion, or deciding on a purchase, filters through this decentralized network.

Marketers can't be Brand Managers. They must be Brand Matchmakers.

In the status quo, brand management is about control. We control the ways and places our Brands interact with Consumers, and only let that interaction occur when it's in our Brand's best interest. "After all, if all a Consumer knows about our Brand is what we tell them, then that's all they can say about it, right?" Following this path, some Brands have taken the recursive path into effective silence, repeating only the boilerplate messages and ignoring the conversations around them. It's the Marketer's role to take this Brand into The Real World and introduce it to the Consumer, making every interaction genuinely positive for BOTH parties.

Marketers have to be done "telling." They must INVITE.

Every marketing campaign has to begin by identifying (or creating) a point of JOY between a Brand and a Consumer. Is it an amazing timesaver? A gift to the Environment? A security for the future? What interaction between one Brand and one Consumer will be so incredible that it can not be kept under Wraps? Your campaign is a personal invitation to participate in this moment; to experience the Brand at THIS point. It's no longer a question of gimmicks or tricks -- it's a moment of relationship.

Brands are parties, and the best ones have party favors.

Return On Investment is a fine metric when you're dealing with concrete assets. A bridge costs so much money and lasts so long, meaning a certain ROI. But can we reduce the social work we're doing to the level of asphalt? Marketing is about Return On INTERACTION; the mutual benefit gained by both the Consumer and the Brand from encountering each other. If the Consumer can take away an artifact, a benefit, a new mental benchmark (or even all three) from a positive interaction back to their social network, the Brand is the real winner.

Successful brands create a "Gold Rush Effect."

You would think the first person to find gold in the Klondike would keep their mouths shut about it. It's a finite resource of immense value, so shouldn't you keep it to yourself? Unfortunately, that person had to use what they found to get what they wanted -- gold exchanged for money or stuff. They HAD to interact with other people who wanted the same thing. It's in our nature as Consumers to share our experiences, and it's in our nature to want GREAT ones. Brands want their Consumers to walk away with the huge gold nugget, because they know that more will come looking for the same.

Welcome to the Consumerscape. Hope you brought business cards.

It's the equivalent of a political campaign, this concept of Brands "pressing the flesh" with Consumers. For some Brands, it's going to be hard to get out there and mingle with "real people." For others, they will have skilled Marketers to help them develop a form of charisma, a genuine personality that encourages Consumers to come closer. Some businesses will focus on earning a million dollars. Others will focus on winning a million friends. Which will be worth more?

What Do You DO, Anyway?

I've been getting a lot of questions like this, since announcing that I'd become a full-time Interactive Project Manager, and when I get that blank stare I've always had this great quote from Sports Night running through my head (emphasis mine):

You guys know who Philo Farnsworth was? He invented television. I don't mean he invented television like Uncle Milty, I mean he invented the television. In a little house in Provo, Utah. At a time when the idea of transmitting moving pictures through the air would be like me saying I've figured out a way to beam us aboard the Starship Enterprise. He was a visionary and he died broke and without fanfare. The guy I really like though was his brother-in-law, Cliff Gardner. He said to Philo, "I know everyone thinks you're crazy, but I want to be a part of this. I don't have your head for science, so I'm not gonna be much help with the design and mechanics of the invention. But it sounds like, you're gonna need glass tubes. See Philo was inventing the cathode receptor, and even though Cliff didn't know what that meant or how it worked, he'd seen Philo's drawing and he knew he was gonna need glass tubes. And since television hadn't been invented yet, it's not like you could get 'em at the local TV repair shop."I want to be a part of this", Cliff said, "and I don't have your head for science. How would it be if I taught myself to be a glassblower? And I could set up a little shop in the backyard. And I could make all the tubes you'll need for testing." There oughta be Congressional medals for people like that. I've looked over the notes you've been giving over the last year or so, and I have to say that they exhibit an almost total lack of understanding of how to get the best from talented people. You said before that for whatever reason, I seem to be able to exert authority around here. I assure you, it's not 'cause they like me. It's because they knew two minutes after I walked in the door that I'm somebody who knows how to do something. I can help. I can make glass tubes. That's what they need.

By the way, if you've never seen Sports Night you oughta get that on your Netflix list right now. William H. Macy delivers that line, and boy does he sell it.

The New Job

Well, since my wife basically called me out, I should probably get back here and blog about my new job and what's been keeping me so busy. This is a long post, but I want to tell you the whole story of what's gone on here, since there's been a lot of changes and a WHOLE lot of God working in our lives.

So as a lot of you know, I'd been working at Texas Instruments, as a contractor. And for the record, I liked it there! I liked what I was doing (because I'd basically carved out my own role), and I liked who I was working with. There were really only two things wrong with my situation: my salary was below market value, and the benefits package I was getting as a contractor wasn't near what I could get as an actual employee.

Sure, there were a lot of other factors that irked me about being a contractor. Sure, it was hard to be the Project Manager and Get People To Get Stuff Done when they were employees and I was a contractor (blue badges vs. red badges... and don't get me started on those yellow badges!). Sure, they instituted this weird policy where employees could work from home but contractors couldn't - even though we both had the same equipment and were (assumedly) both sets of trustworthy adults. One of my contractor friends and I started calling this the Chinese Water Torture - no one droplet freaks you out, but add these things up and it gets overbearing. I wasn't to that point, but I can't say it didn't factor in.

So I'd been looking, for a while. Job boards, emails, interviews - the whole bit. At one point, I got a pretty serious interview from a company offering WAY more than I was making. Only one catch: the business was right on the edge of my moral standards. A lot of other people might not have felt a moment's regret doing this kind of thing, but I did. I told them that I probably wasn't their ideal candidate. That was one of the first interviews I had in my looking process, and it really colored my experience through every other encounter with a company. Others got serious (and I even got an offer at one point), but they never were in that stratosphere. I was glad to get interviews and offers, but in the back of my mind, I was always wondering if my value was actually way up there, instead of somewhere below.

I prayed a lot about this, and my friends from my church small group know that I wrestled a lot with this. Christians, on the whole, aren't taught a lot about how to deal with Ambition. We're allowed to strive for spiritual perfection, we all know that, but what about the rest? Is it wrong for a Christian to want to succeed in their career because they believe they can? Is it wrong to use money as one of the ways you measure that success? Is it wrong for me to want my family to live more comfortably? This search for the Contentment that isn't Stagnation is still something I'm trying to figure out.

My search seemingly concluded with an offer from the startup internet company GodTube, and I was really pumped about it. After all, it's been one of my passions to investigate this realm where Christianity and Cyberspace collide, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. I accepted the offer, knowing that the benefits and vacation weren't at all as good as I wanted, but believing that God had led me here and would work that part out.

About halfway into my two-week notice in my job at TI (what one should do during that lame-duck time is probably a blog post in itself), a friend there asked me if I'd be interested in another job opportunity. He had a friend at Rapp Collins, a full-service marketing agency, and they were having a BEAR of a time finding someone to come in as an Interactive Project Manager. The pay range was higher than what I'd accepted at GodTube, and I knew from my previous jobs with Ad/Marketing agencies that their benefits were usually pretty nice, too. So after praying about it, talking about it with my wife, and getting the input of respected friends, I decided to go ahead and interview there. This was a clear example of letting God show you the way he's planned, because I knew there were some hurdles to get over to get me working somewhere else after I'd already accepted another company's offer.

The interivew at Rapp went very well, and they were completely understanding of my situation. After 24 of the more stressful hours I've ever had, they contacted me with an offer. The benefits were there, the hurdles were overcome, and the pay was even back in the range of that first job - the one that had been nagging me ever since. I accepted, and had to inform GodTube that I'd been "made an offer I couldn't refuse."

I've been at the new job for a couple of weeks now, and I'm starting to see what God had in mind when he put me here. There's a lot of chaos, and a lot of work flow processes that have been cobbled together and held by sheer manual human labor because "they've worked so far." My new boss is extremely open to automating and streamlining these things, and has given me the task of doing just that. It's like a blacksmith creating his own hammer and anvil before starting a job - you're in a better position to do a good job because you made the tools. The word is that we've got a job coming in to do a complete redesign of a local corporation's web site, and I'm gonna be the guy Getting Things Done on that.

It's been a long journey, but I'm rejuvenated by my new surroundings. I lost the opportunity to pursue this "God and The Web" passion directly, but I'm going to start a new side project on that soon - keep looking here for details. What's more, I'm getting new leads to do some freelance design work, so I'm still gonna have the chance to get my hands dirty with some code and Photoshop. God's led me a long way to get here, and I praise Him for what He's done. Here's to more blogging from a new work address.

What's Kept Me Busy

So what in the world have I been up to for a month? What's so busy to keep me from blogging? Well lemme tell you, Sweet Cheeks I've got some good reasons! Let's check in on what I've been up to:

Work

Courtesy bulldog7897

We all have it, we all do it. And yes, it can be an amazing joy or a terrible beating - or somewhere in between. December was an absolutely insane month for work, because we were making some HUGE changes to the site I work on. For those of you who haven't worked on a site for a large corporation, you may not be able to imagine the logistical, political, technical, spiritual, ecumenical and grammatical issues that you have to overcome to make ANY change, much less a dramatic one. How dramatic? Well, we were going from...

THIS

to

THIS

...including all the look & feel for every page in the site. It's quite a bit of change. So much, in fact, that we had to bring the entire site down for about 12 hours to implement the change. And, since it wouldn't be nice to pull our online rug out from under our customers' feet, we took the site down at 10pm CST and brought it back around 1pm CST the next day. (Yeah, that's longer than 12 hours, but we had to test the thing internally before "going live.") I must say, though, our Project Management team really came through on that all-nighter. We camped out in a big conference room, each of us working on our respective elements of the site, and we were STOCKED with coffee and food and cookies and fruit and desserts and everything else one could want when trying to say awake. It was hard, but I must say it reminded me of those glory days in college of all night LAN parties.

*Sigh*, those were the days.


Baby

Since I have a kid these days, the Holiday Season has become radically different. I'd probably even call it better, because kids make any family get-together so much richer - so much more. Lukas was just an amazing Christmas baby (note: link goes to an embarrassment of cute baby pictures), and everyone had fun.

But more than just the joy of watching a baby try to eat tissue paper or being more entertained by the $4 teether than the $30 rolly-ball, the Holidays became infinitely more filled with logistics. All you people that have been parents for Christmases Past are now giving me that "Yeah, NOW you get it" look, complete with the Knowing Nod, but give me a break. This is my first time through this rodeo.

And speaking of rodeo, it's like cat wrangling to get a baby ANYWHERE to spend longer than 4 hours. You gotta pack up the Pack-N-Play, clothes, food, toys, diaper-changing materials, perhaps even a high chair! Lemme tell ya, we have since invested in a portable high-chair/feeding station solution, and I'm very excited about its prospects.

Oh, and coming home from Mema and Grandad's house, I thought we were going to have to strap some items on the roof, Griswold style. Note to self: if you're going down to Houston for a Christmas-like celebration, make sure and leave plenty of room to bring stuff BACK.




Toys

No, not his toys, MINE! Even though The Squid made out like a bandit, poor ol' Daddy wasn't ignored, oh no. Plenty of cash came from my parents (and I thank you deeply) that I plan on investing in some new domain names and web hosting. I don't have a good personal portfolio site, and if people are gonna take me seriously at all as a Web Guy, I gotta get that taken care of. Plus, I've had an idea I've wanted to pursue for quite some time - another web site/blog - and hopefully I'll get to tell ya'll about that soon as well.

But the in-law parents came through with flying colors as well, by bestowing upon me this little device you see to the right. Yep, I've joined the ranks of the iPod People, and of course, I love it.

Walk in to any Apple store or pick up any Apple product, and you'll be tempted - you'll be tempted to "drink the Kool-aid" of Apple fan-dom. I've always resisted this, even to the point where my first MP3 player was actually an Archos (yeah, you haven't heard of them), not an iPod. Now, my Archos was pretty nice. Good form factor, nice features, even had a slot for CF cards so you could dump your photos directly on there. But let's all face it - the sexiest and easiest music player in the world is an iPod. You may not have to drink all the Kool-aid, but you gotta have at least some, 'cause it's REALLY good.

So now I'm spending all my time getting set up with iTunes and the iPod. I've got 20 GB of music files from my old player, and none of it has album art. Only some of it has reasonable Artist/Album/Genre info, and even less actually has the track numbering in there. And, as any good geek would wanna do, I REALLY want everything in there to be PERFECT. I've become addicted to Discogs.com, because I can go there and pull album art for even the most rare of singles. "Now let's see, do I wanna use the US single art, or perhaps the US Radio Edit? Maybe the UK or Japan releases??"


So, that's just SOME of what's been keeping me occupied. Sorry for the delay, Sweet Cheeks, and I hope we can talk more often in the New Year.

WORTHY OF BLOGGER PR!

Looks like I'm important enough to warrant some blogger PR! Yes folks, I have arrived.

They've asked me to link to their company's site, so I'm doing so in the email below. Thanks, Abazias for taking notice of a little ol' blogger like me!

Hi there,

I noticed that you recently blogged about our "Will a Diamond Engagement Ring Blend?" video! We found the topic to be extremely interesting and glad you felt it was worth a mention as well.

In looking at your recent post http://stoplookingswan.blogspot.com/2007/08/video-journey-she-did-what.html
, I was wondering if you would be willing to include a link to the actual video or our website within that post?

If this is something you'd be interested in doing, or discussing, please feel free to let me know.

Also, if you had any additional ideas to discuss, I would love to hear them!

Respectfully,
Julie
Abazias.com
Stock Symbol: ABZA

"Will a Diamond Engagement Ring Blend?"
http://www.abazias.com/video/diamond_ring_in_a_blender.asp

Abazias Diamonds
http://www.abazias.com

Technorati Tags: web, pr, blogging

BREAKING NEWS: MONEY != HAPPINESS

That's a not-equal sign, for those of you not crazy enough to be a web guy doing JavaScript.

This article from Penelope Trunk collates some interesting research answering an even more interesting question: How much money do you need to be happy? Turns out it's somewhere around $40,000 per year:

To someone who just spent four years in college living off nine-thousand-dollar loan stipends, an increase to forty thousand means a lot – moving from poverty to middle class. But it’s a one-time rush. After you hit the forty-thousand-dollar-range money never gives you that surge in happiness again.

But what is it that can most affect your happiness? It's not money, if you're looking at all the factors. Turns out it's really about relationships...kinda...

And by social relations, most researchers mean sex – with one, consistent partner. So consider giving your career aspirations a little less weight than you give your aspirations for sex. For those of you who like a tangible goal, David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College says, “Going from sex once a month to sex once a week creates a big jump in happiness. And then the diminishing returns begin to set in.” He adds, to the joy of all who are underemployed, “It’s true that money impacts which person you marry, but money doesn’t impact the amount of sex you have.”

Maybe all this research simply justifies the twentysomething tendency to hold a series of entry-level jobs and put off having children. Says Karo: “All we really want is to get paid and get laid.”

Those researchers - always saying something frighteningly true and blunt, all at the same time.

Technorati Tags: research, money, sex, relationships, happiness, success

IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!: Part 2 - the Student Zone

When a Web Designer goes under a rock for a few weeks and you don't hear from him, there's usually only one reason. And when he emerges, yes, a new site is born.

I give you... the Texas Instruments Student Zone!

education.ti.com/studentzone

This project was a real new experience for me, because I was the Project Manger this go-round. I worked with 3 vendors, 2 graphic designers, 1 HTML Developer, and I think there was something about a partridge in a pear tree there somewhere. Near the end, I was doing all of those roles myself, plus Flash developer, Copywriter and Sanity Checker!

So go take a look at my new site, and expect more from me on here later!

OH DEAR BLOG, I STILL LOVE YOU

Update:

In deference to my employer, I have disabled the links to any European language version of this site. Being a contractor, I was not fully aware of their launch timelines, and I don't want disrupt anyone else's hard work. I genuinely enjoy working at TI (my contracting company may be a different story, but I'm not going to get snarky here), I really do like the people I work with and I absolutely hope to be working with them for quite some time to come. Hopefully when those European language sites are unveiled, I'll be able to show them to you.

In the interest of free speech, let me also say this. As much as this is my space to say what I want, this is also my space to NOT say what I want. I'm making these changes because I want to make them, not for any other reason.

And to all the TIers that show up here - WELCOME! Feel free to poke around and take a look at what's going on here. If you'd like to ask me about anything on here, feel free.

---

Hey guys -



Sorry it's been a while. I've been utterly slammed at work, because we're launching a new product here at Texas Instruments - Educational Technology. And yes, I haven't been allowed to talk much about it before now, because it's indirectly part of my NDA.



But now, with great fervor, pomp AND circumstance, I give you...

TI-nspire!!

Not impressed? Well, see, I've been working on the translation part of this whole project. No, unfortunately, I don't speak Danish or Dutch or Norwegian, but we were given all the appropriate texts by those that do, and asked to replace the English parts with those other lovely languages.



So now you can see it in Danish...



Dutch...



or Norwegian.



So now can you see why I might have been busy? Can you understand why I've been banging my head against the wall when what was Grasp the Math is now Forstå Matematikken? Yeah, they're not big on articles out there in the land of the Danish.



Ok, so go check out my work, enjoy, and I'll have some more fun on here soon. Thanks!



-The Swan



Technorati Tags: nspire, texas instruments, calculator, graphing, math, danish, dutch

NOW I'M AN "AWARD WINNING" WEB DESIGNER

iParenting award for "We All Use Math Every Day"
Originally uploaded by Stop Looking At Me Swan.

Yep, looks like my 15 minutes of fame have started. iParenting has named "We All Use Math Every Day" as one of their top sites for 2007. I do all the layout, code and administration for this site, and co-designed it with my good buddy Rondo. You'd better believe this is high-quality resume material, here!

ZEN AND THE ART OF CUBICLE LIFE

I'm going to be stringing a few different concepts together here, so bear with me...

My Dad works as an engineer, fixing complicated data storage sytems in mostly oil companies and government hush-hush black holes around the world. He's got a favorite saying: when resolving an issue depends much more on the natures of the people involved than the physical electron-routing problem itself, he likes to call this an "Electro-Political Issue."

Apt title, if you ask me. And I know that even if you work at McDonalds flipping burgers for a livin', you deal with politics to some degree. People want to get what they want, and sometimes that means that the right thing, the thing that needs to happen, doesn't. What's more, in order to do the thing you're being paid to do, sometimes you're going to have to bend over backward to get someone else what they want.

I've always been intrigued with the concept of Zen. It's become a very fashionable term: "That's so Zen," or "I just had to zen out," or even Everything Zen. If you take a look at the true meaning of the word, it comes from a form of Buddhism - a religion whose main goal is the end of suffering. Zen seeks to obtain insight into the end of suffering through long periods of meditation; specifically, a seated meditation called zazen. This is a moment of complete self-denial, in which one seeks to completely remove the mind of all thought, so that it may be opened to a new enlightenment. Again, this is the true key of Zen, whether practiced in meditation, archery or even motorcycle maintenance - complete denial of self-thought to focus on a task, even if that task is to clear the mind entirely.

If you work very long in a corporate setting, you'll find plenty of people who want very much to be successful. They put their whole heart and soul into a task to squeeze every last drop of gain, improvement or recognition. Workaholics, we may call them, because their exhaustive grip of passion is so engaged with their work that they can't take a moment to detach and nourish their personal lives. And through this process, could we call them truly successful? Even if they earn tons of money, can we call them a success if their personal lives are in such shambles they have nothing of true worth to spend it on?

Sometimes we get so caught up in playing the game: working the people, gaining the influence, putting my pedestal higher and higher, running after this dangling carrot of a goal. We run and run and run, and even if we finally reach what we want, we find it wasn't worth it in the first place.

What we need at work is a good dose of ZEN, and I think it's the completely Christian thing to do.

I'll show you: take a look at this verse:

"And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." -- Colossians 3:17

You see, we get all entangled within the vain passions of work when we do it for US. When we put in those extra hours so that WE can get noticed or WE can produce more than the next guy. Our priorities get out of whack because WE think that we can sacrifice the personal to gain in the professional. And yet, when we follow that kind of path, it seems like both suffer in the long run.

Paul here advocates a Zen-like approach to work - a complete denial of self by doing EVERYTHING for God. We don't work to promote ourselves or our agenda, we work because that's what God has put in front of us, and we give it the attention and passion it deserves. BUT, when God puts something else in front of us, like a family that's expecting us home for dinner and kids that need a strong parental role model, we put down the one task to take up the other. There's no regret or hesitation in doing this, because we're completely focused on HIS agenda, not ours. Considering whether a task is worthy of our time takes on a higher meaning, because we've got a whole new paradigm to frame it in.

And, when the office gets political, when things get snippy and catty, when people promote themselves within the guise of a job, we don't take the bait. Why? Because we're only doing God's work on this Earth, and we don't NEED the recognition of a false sense of accomplishment. We don't need to hang our self-worth on an initiative or program, because God makes the call, and we are genuinely content with His answer.

There's a concept in sports called "pushing" or "forcing" your game. It happens when you're so driven to succeed, you start to make rash decisions in the hope of an ever diminishing return. You drive the ball instead of passing, because you want that next hoop so bad. You swing at a pitch that's outside the strike zone, because you want that RBI for your stats so much. You really try to smack the ball off the tee as hard as you can, because you want those extra few yards on your drive. Of course, the result of this phenomenon is that you actually end up getting LESS: more misses, more whiffs, less distance.

When we give up our own agenda in the workplace through a Zen-like medition on what's important to God, we protect ourselves from pushing our own game. When you're not forcing a task into place - trying to will a job to work the way YOU think it should - you're actually MORE productive. Denial of self actually makes your self work BETTER.

Perhaps the Psalmist says it best:

"Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass."
-- Psalms 37:5

Technorati Tags: zen, God, sports, work, life, cubicle, politics, self improvement

50 WAYS TO BECOME A BETTER DESIGNER

I just finished reading this article, and immediately forwarded it to my graphic designer pal here at work when I hit the Photoshop section. When I made it to the end, I was rewarded with the great payoff of this quote:


Computer Arts - 50 ways to become a better designer

As a rule-of-thumb, a good way to deal with clients is actually to treat them with the contempt you would a small horned imp from the ninth layer of hell’s gate.

Technorati Tags: art, designer, web, photoshop, better, computer, internet

PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY PATH: The Joys of Drag & Drop

I know I'm young, but I'm old enough (and geek enough) to remember my first days of computing. My dad had a TI-99/4A Home Computer, and man I thought that thing hung the moon. I played "Hunt the Wumpus" for hours on end. I got that computer in my room as a hand-me-down when dad got his brand new 8086 - that's an Intel processor far below a Pentium anything. It had a 10 MB hard drive that I can clearly remember thinking we would never fill up, and I played text-based games on there like Kings Quest and Police Quest. The computers got better and the games got better, all the way through to Wing Commander.

Then, the computer world totally changed. Not because of some new processor, but because of something new hanging out of your computer. A mouse.

I also remember the first time we had Windows 3.1 - a version far before 95. It wasn't pretty, but I remember the features being marketed to us early adopters; key among these was a little feature called Drag & Drop.

The world, and computers, have changed drastically since then. I'm sitting here with hundreds of times more computing power in my laptop than that TI ever imagined. Windows is the de facto standard, and that mouse has even become an Optical wonder. But that little Drag & Drop feature never left us, although we have gone so far beyond our roots that we often forget just how useful it is, especially if you're running a dual-monitor setup. Here's some nifty things you can do with Drag & Drop that you might have forgotten over the years.

• Forget CTRL-X and CTRL-V for cut and paste, just highlight a section of text in almost any word browser and you can drag it to any other part of the document to drop it right in. Need to copy and paste? Just hold down that CTRL key while you're dragging. This is especiallyuseful when you're pulling text out of one document to another - just have one open in each screen.


• Moving text or images doesn't just have to happen between two instances of the same program. Try highlighting text in your favorite browser, and dragging it to an instance of Word or Excel - this is great for when you need to save tables or text on web pages.


• Is your Start Menu overrun with program folders for each application, and shortucts in places you never can find? Everything in the start menu can be dragged and dropped. Click the start button, and you can even right-click in the programs area to create new folders or delete folders.


• Do you often revisit a specific document or file, and hate having to drill down through tons of folders to get to it? Just create a shortcut for it on your desktop. Use your right mouse button to drag the file to your desktop, and when you let go you'll have all the options you could ever want.


• If you need to make copies of files from one place to another (like to your thumb drive), just open the start and the destination in separate windows - either on one monitor or two. Highlight all the files by dragging a box around them or hitting CTRL-A, then hold down the CTRL key while you drag them to the destination folder. This works great for burning a CD, too.


• For those of you using Firefox (and you really should be), go install the Drag and Drop Upload extension. Every time you see a form field with a "Browse" button next to it - usually when attaching a file using a web email client - you'll be able to just drag and drop your file directly to that textbox. This extension puts the path there for you.

There's a thousand other uses, but those are just some of the first that came to mind. So go forth, wield your mouse with confidence, and be productive!

Technorati Tags: drag, drop, productivity, computer, drag&drop, highlight, copy, windows, mouse, personalproductivitypath

PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY PATH: Write It Down!

One of those ugly things about becoming an "adult" is that you learn that slacking through or relying completely on talent just doesn't work anymore. Not following through on a project or not remembering an appointment doesn't just give you a bad grade anymore - it could mean your job, your livelyhood, or your career. It's taken a school of hard knocks for me to learn that I needed to change my wicked and slothful ways, but now I'm pursuing a new path - one I'll be shaing with you. Call this "GTD for the common man" or a "Dummies Guide to Juggling Life," but I'm going to share in this topic ideas I've found that actually work for me - whether they're radically geek or extremely boring old-school.



Like myself, I'm sure many of you think you have a brain. Let me help you with one clear truth - you don't. At least, you don't have the brain you really need. All of us have deficiencies in how our minds work, even the ones that look like they have it all put together. For me, the problem is often that I have too many ideas. I'm an ENFP, which means I'm great at perceiving interrelated ideas or intuitively discovering needs, but I'm terrible at following through on them. I get more lightbulbs above my head than there are on the Vegas strip, but just as fast as you can lose your money on a blackjack table, they're gone. Our brains are incredible processors, but without training or help, they're terrible hard drives.

So when you look at creative types across many disciplines, you'll see one theme running through how they pull down all those ideas - everyone has to write it down. Whether you're an aspiring comedian, web comic artist, creator of fine art, or just a guy trying to get things done
, there's an amazing power in putting your ideas in a written form while you're thinking:

• Writing your ideas actually helps you remember them, because you engage your visual and kinetic learning paths


• Writing creates a fixed state for your ideas, so you can look back on them and see how your position has changed - this is why you should write the date on everything


• Writing ideas creates a small level of commitment - every time you see it, you'll be reminded about what that means for you

What should I write on?
What actual instruments you use are completely up to you. As an avid Palm user, I always love using my PDA, but it's not always the best choice for writing. I've taken to carrying a small notepad with an elastic closure with me where ever I go (not a moleskine, mind you, I'm too cheap for that), because writing my ideas on a small pad of paper eliminates the barriers of Graffiti and styluses (styli?). Whatever you write on should be quick, easy, and present as few barriers as possible for getting the ideas from your mind onto something concrete.

What do I do with what I've written?
Also entirely up to you, but writing an idea down shouldn't be the end of it. If it's a project, you need to move it into some sort of workflow system, even if that's as simple as a to-do-list. The paper is a temporary fix, just getting the idea down and set so that it doesn't float out your mind. Even if you write everything that's ever in your head, if you don't do anything about it you're still stuck at square one. I like to use an icon system of sorts for defining items that require action, are just for my own information, or are related to a phone call I've made. Review your notepad or index cards or whatever as often as possible, so you know that everything that's in there has a place and an action if necessary. If you don't know what to do with what you've written, put it in a different place or on a page called "HUH?" and come back to it later. If it still doesn't do anything for you, you can probably get rid of it.

I hope you'll enjoy embarking upon the path to personal productivity with me, and I really want to see your comments on if you're using this concept!

"Today is where your book begins/ The rest is still unwritten."


Technorati Tags: GTD moleskine notepad writing productivity personalproductivitypath

TRUE SUCCESS

I think often about money - from how I need to balance my checkbook, to how are we going to afford [BLANK], to what can we do to make our expenses less, to how can I earn more money. It's not an obsession, but it's a topic that certainly covers a lot of areas of my life.

And then I see something like this:

True success will now be defined in terms of fulfillment. If you are experiencing joy while doing what you are doing, you are successful. If your activity is making a meaningful contribution to society and the environment, you are successful. If you are reveling in a progressive collaboration, you are successful. If your intelligence and creativity are being challenged and are growing, you are successful. If you are giving people value, you are successful. If you are happy in the doing, then, with each step, you arrive. Why? Because you are already there.

Thanks, Fred. I needed that.



Technorati Tags: money success life quote