Mystery Car! - Dave's Blog-A-Rama

bigboxcar: marksbirch: If you want to know why nearly all...

Wed, 08 May 2013 07:47:35 -0500

marksbirch:

If you want to know why nearly all companies suck at content marketing, these two charts should make it abundantly clear. Org charts? Committees? That is a good way to slow the process and lose in a world that moves at the speed of social media and memes. Oh, and then you have to add “legal review” to everything…

Less is more when it comes to creating and delivering great content marketing. Relevance and timeliness is everything. That is something you do not get out of meetings, committees and cross-functional groups.

Exactly what marksbirch says above. Also, the part about “orchestration of content” made me wince. Can’t even type the entire sentence. Maybe it’s just me.

And it gets strikingly worse when it’s intranet content strategy.

I met the owner of this 1966 Ford Bronco when Kara & I were...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:45:50 -0500

I met the owner of this 1966 Ford Bronco when Kara & I were walking Tucker around Lake Nokomis. He said he got the personalized plate when people mistook it for a Jeep. We chatted for a while - I mentioned my 1971 Jeepster Commando - and after we continued on our walk I felt bad that I didn’t ask if I could take his photo because, well, this old guy - I’d put him at about 75 or so - was much more interesting than his truck.

iteeth: Artist Richard Jackson: I tend to avoid self-promotion...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:41:51 -0500

iteeth:

Artist Richard Jackson:

I tend to avoid self-promotion and elude validation as a notable figure in the art community. That whole scene boils down to drinking cheap beer in different locations night after night. Making art by relying on your own resources cuts you out from a crowd that is begging for cash to do anything. Fostering independence in yourself, wherever you are, can be more isolating than working up in the mountains. The capabilities of an individual are what most intrigue me. Corporate activity or work that originates from a collective is not so compelling. This attitude has probably caused me to be sidelined or excluded from key exhibitions. People also tend to think that I am cranky, which is not true. I circumvent dependence on others’ interests and do not screw around waiting for answers. For this reason, very few people have seen most of my work. But—as is typical of the art world—there is so much bullshit swirling around that people get on the phone and describe my work pretending to have seen it or to possess knowledge about how I have made it. Their hyperboles make my projects much larger than I ever could. I purposefully play off of this collective imagination as my output is molded by bigger and bigger fibs.

"Now the problem is, when you can’t smoke, if you stand there and stare out of the window on your..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:58:54 -0500

“Now the problem is, when you can’t smoke, if you stand there and stare out of the window on your own, you’re an antisocial, friendless idiot. If you stand there and stare out of the window with a cigarette, you’re a fucking philosopher.”

- Rory Sutherland - ‘Perception is Everything’ (via untitled-mag)

A Little Bit of Plywood. A Little Bit of Pride.

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:36:21 -0500

Okay, I know that pride is a sin, though perhaps not as much of a sin as cat juggling or walrus teasing. But I wanted to show off a bit of a project I just finished.

It’s a funny thing because this all happened with a few pieces of plywood (and a bit of birch) and some amazingly detailed plans from Prairie Designs in California. This was the project, um, maybe mid-stage. There are some short plywood rectangles, some long plywood rectangles, a few two-level rectangles (which were out of birch but could have been out of plywood), and a post. Yup. Not showing the wiring right now, but that was a pain to do so I’d rather not discuss.

Anyway… After countless hours - well, probably 40 or so - I finished my project, a recreation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin III lamp. I think it looks pretty nice. It’s a much softer glow than you see in this photo.

I Am Not Illya Haynes and I Am Making Things Worse

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:21:20 -0600

A few weeks ago I was having lunch with my friend Illya Haynes. He was applying to graduate school and had done a search on his name to make sure, well, that there was nothing out there with his name that might affect his application. (He’s a very upstanding fellow so I would have been surprised to find anything offensive.)

Anyway, a curious thing happened when he clicked on Images: the first photo that appeared was mine! I looked into this a bit and realized I had posted on Tumblr that “I was at Psycho Suzi’s with Illya Haynes” some time ago. Since I do not refer to myself in 3rd person, the only name mentioned was Illya’s, and so my photo became associated with his name. Of course, I could have addressed this by adding an alt/title tag to the photo but, really, who does that anyway? Yeah. Nobody.
So here I am, writing this post with Illya’s name in the title, and though anyone reading this will know that I am not him, it’s quite likely that Google will make that incorrect association.
Funny.

Tongue out and feeling nothing but joy.

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:16:30 -0600

Tongue out and feeling nothing but joy.

Managing the Megamall of Enterprise Search

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 17:24:00 -0600

I’ve been struggling to find a good analogy for this post and I think I’ve come up with, well, at least something good enough to keep writing. Who knows, maybe I’ll even click “Create post” before the day is over.

As you may know, I work for a large corporation in the glamorous field of intranet search, a.k.a. enterprise search. People who use our intranet searches - we have many searches and even more sites - are often very unhappy with the results. They point to search as being the biggest failure of the intranet. Are they right in this critique? You betcha.

I sense your impatience. You’re asking, “Dave, what is this analogy you’ve come up with? We’re dying to know because we know it’s gonna be a zinger!” First, “zinger”? Who says zinger anymore? That went out with “humdinger.” But I digress… My analogy: Search within large companies is analogous to a shopping mall. That is, you have anchor stores that carry a bit of everything - the Sears of Search - and then all of those other stores that exist because they sell more specific products and their employees have more detailed expertise.

You’re probably asking, “Why should I care?” Honestly, if you don’t work for a large corporation OR if your large corporate employer has a well-managed intranet space and search (HA!), you may not have an issue. You should keep reading to bask in my elegant prose, but I can’t say you’ll gain much for the trouble. However… If you have anything to do with intranet search - if you’re the victim or the culprit - AND if you would like my gratitude, you should read on.

Okay, I’ve lost the thread… The analogy. Okay, back to the mall. The large corporate intranet has at least one anchor store. You can find your HR policies, general procedural information, corporate news, etc. After that, though, your success will be limited. If you’re looking for specific information for your group, or for another group, it may be hard to find. Just like in the real world, your persona changes constantly: Are you helping someone in a different group? Helping a customer? Trying to find information for yourself to do your job? The variants are endless, and before you even start your search you need to know who you are at this exact moment. (Am I sounding too existential?)

But here, alas, is where the shopping mall analogy crumbles. Even a person ignorant of product names would know, walking through the mall, that an Apple store does not sell fruit and that Forever 21 has nothing to do with blackjack. Our intranet searches often don’t give us that context. We may see a URL path, but unless we’re familiar with the site, it does not give us a picture of what the site is about. But what about the title, Dave? Well, think about it this way: If you went into a plant store and said, “I need a bulb” you would get different questions and a different end result than if you made that request in a lamp store. With the intranet search, it’s often the case that you have no idea which store this content is coming from.

“But Dave, this sounds terrible! How can it possibly get any worse?!” Oh, it can. It can. If you searched for “60W bulb” on Google you’d find plenty of sites selling just that. Those exact words would be in the title. Easy enough. On the intranet, though - and here I’m making the intranet sound like some sort of gulag, and that’s largely correct - the chances are as good as even that you will find documents titled “Slide 1.” Yup. It happens. It happens often. To keep with a retail theme, it would be like going to a grocery store where half of the labels were off of the cans and nothing had an expiration date. (That last part is rather apt; it’s often the case that old versions of content will appear in the search before newer content.)

So… Is there a solution to all of this? To be quite honest, not without drastic measures. I would recommend, with no reservations, some sort of penalty assigned to people who published content with bad titles or that failed to remove old content from the site. Yeah, metadata is fine and all, but dammit, titles! It’s also the fault of, um, me, but I’d rather not be penalized because I’m putting in a half bath and, well, I need the cash. But if I were to suggest a penalty to someone LIKE me, but not really me, I would say that person needs to make sure that sites are easily identified. Even when we provide faceted navigation in the search, we show sites by their URLs and not by the name of the site. That’s just unacceptable.

Well, I’ve been jabbering on more than I should be. But, despite what seems to be the inscrutability of this problem, there is a solution. It will not be easy. A lot of people will get offended. But, well, if anyone could really figure out the true cost of bad search - I believe it’s a great cost but I don’t have numbers that I trust - maybe those of higher stature than I will decide to put some effort behind the issue. We’re can’t put in a flower garden until we get rid of the engine blocks and old tires!

Context and Clarity

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 11:16:16 -0600

So I’ve been thinking about search again - it is my job, after all, so it should be on my mind quite often - and the importance of both context and clarity. You could also say that I am just looking for something - anything - to write about, and that is perfectly correct as well.

Anyway, Context. My Dad was in World War II. Around 1990 or so, one of his former Signal Corps buddies started having a yearly reunion. Someone filmed these reunions and I have those VHS tapes. The sound quality is terrible; during the receptions it’s just a din of people talking.

But here’s where I think it gets interesting: Though all you can hear is a din, there is clearly a Nazi flag in the background. If you saw this video and did not know the context - that this flag was taken as a souvenir when they fought the Germans in Italy - you might conclude that this was some sort of pro-Aryan meeting rather than a reunion of old war veterans.

So what’s my point? Well, heck. I guess this turned out to be more of an anecdote than a cautionary tale. Though I guess the point is that you have to know what the context is before you make any conclusions. But, well, that’s pretty obvious. Maybe I’ll move on to Clarity. Yes? Okay.

So, Clarity. My wife’s grandmother is in an assisted living facility. For Halloween they played a BINGO-like game that had a fall/Halloween theme. Instead of numbers they had images. However, these images had a degree of ambiguity that is more than many of an advanced age can stand. One image was an apple and another was a candied apple. One image was a jack-o-lantern and another was a pumpkin. This caused for complete confusion among the players.

“Does it look like I’m smiling? You are NOT going...

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 16:29:00 -0500

“Does it look like I’m smiling? You are NOT going out in that skirt!” “Lighten up, mom. It’s better than what this guy’s wearing.”

Dragon-shaped iron ring for hitching a horse - Siena. I liked...

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 16:56:10 -0500

Dragon-shaped iron ring for hitching a horse - Siena. I liked most how the stone has worn over hundreds of years. #dragon #siena (Taken with Instagram)

untitled-mag: If Dr. Seuss Books Were Titled According to Their...

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 08:52:12 -0500

untitled-mag:

If Dr. Seuss Books Were Titled According to Their Subtexts

nprfreshair: Tomorrow: Colson Whitehead on zombies

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 13:45:27 -0500

nprfreshair:

Tomorrow: Colson Whitehead on zombies

Photo

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 06:32:07 -0500

NPR: On July 19, 1957...

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 14:55:07 -0500

NPR: On July 19, 1957...:

npr:

“…five Air Force officers and one photographer stood together on a patch of ground about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. They’d marked the spot ‘Ground Zero. Population 5’ on a hand-lettered sign hammered into the soft ground right next to them.

As we watch, directly overhead, two F-89 jets roar…

npr: cyberlabe: Infographic Principles Explained By...

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:59:06 -0500

npr:

cyberlabe:

Infographic Principles Explained By Lego

Stepping on “Data” barefoot in the middle of the night is NO JOKE.
—Daisy

2.0 beers per hour (max)? I like the way this cartoon thinks....

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 18:53:12 -0500

2.0 beers per hour (max)? I like the way this cartoon thinks. And it’s backed by science, maybe.

Romeo & Juliet windmill, June 2, 2012.

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 18:36:00 -0500

Romeo & Juliet windmill, June 2, 2012.

mittvennandnow: That One Where Mitt Romney Is More Developed...

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:57:53 -0500

mittvennandnow:

That One Where Mitt Romney Is More Developed Than Most Women In DC Comics, Actually.

mittvennandnow: Source.

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 18:58:38 -0500

mittvennandnow:

Source.