Endless Knots

Bloggers, listen up: think F

Maybe all you bloggers reading here already know this. I did not until Jim Conley, who keeps the well-read On Brookline blog, came to visit today. Though he visited for different purposes, it wasn't long until we lept off to my beloved topic of writing (and blogging). Jim teaches writing to prospective communicators at Emerson College and thus has an opinion or two about what works online.

Turns out, bloggerinos, that people read screens in what researcher Jakob Nielsen dubbed an F-pattern.

We skim the top lines relatively quickly, moving across the screen (left to right*).

Then work our way down the screen.

Reading a bit here.

And there.

So

if

you

want

people

to read...

Enough of that. Get the point? How did people discover this? Heat tracking studies of eye movements. Ironically, or coincidentally, or neither, we happened to have a tour of the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (yes, as in Fidelity Investments) last week, where we looked into one lab where they were tracking subjects' eye movements. Wish I'd known then what I know now. Henceforth, dear readers, watch for my posts to be very F-y.

*Is it a mirror F for the right to left languages? Jakob, where are you?

For a more detailed description of what he found, jump:

Mass Technology Leadership Council winners!

Not sure how this one slipped past (award ceremony was last week) but our esteemed friend David Weinberger was just named co-winner of "Mover and Shaker of the Year" Award by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. MTLC, presided over by yet another terrific person, Joyce Plotkin, is the New England technology industry group that's been introducing new ideas in our region for a long, long time. Signature events in recent memory: Mikhail Gorbachev addressing some 750 people about the role of information technology in Russia and Eastern Europe (see Dan Bricklin's blog post here); Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales bringing us up-to-date on all things wiki; and our very own Jeff Stamps appearing at the Tech Trends meeting in September, '07.

Another MTLC winner worth noting: CIO of the Year, Dr. John Halamka, who plays that role nobly for the huge health-care network that is the CareGroup (along with that little institution known as Harvard Medical School) and who's just started a new blog here.

Roy Kesey is All Over

I've mentioned Zoetrope several times before, launching pad to emerging and already great writers. Roy Kesey, who writes a column for McSweeney's Internet Tendencies, is both, the former only because the wider great-writer loving public hasn't had the joy of reading his work yet. Dzanc Books, in that small category of non-profit publishers founded to promote writers "who don't neatly fit into the marketing niches of for-profit presses," has chosen Roy as its lead author, with two of his titles in print. If All Over is anything like the work of his I've read, prepare yourself for a knockout. When I finish one of his stories, I am in jaw-drop mode, wondering how he was able to pump up the fuel to even write it. Stephen King apparently agrees with me: he chose Roy's story, "Wait," as one of The Best American Short Stories 2007. The husband of a Peruvian diplomat posted to Beijing, Roy's US appearances are rare. Here's his extensive tour schedule for All Over.

Which way to the Arboretum?

Certain things are not supposed to happen. For example, drivers of trolleys, those happy little conveyances, are not supposed to get lost. With full passenger loads. On their way to weddings (especially those as elegant AND socially-aware as Daria and Aaron's). But guess what? The trolley we were on today, headed for the National Arboretum, hardly a top-secret location in Washington, DC, had a very hard time reaching its destination. As it turned out, we were the lucky trolley. We only took four u-turns and an hour's drive time for a 15 minute excursion requiring two turns--total. The trolley behind us arrived nearly an hour-and-a-half late. On the return, one trolley got lost leaving the Arboretum. Google maps? Training? AAA? Rogue trolley service? This one defies explanation.

But, and a very important but at that, the transportation snafu did nothing to detract from the spectacularity of the festivities: A Latin-American pre-wedding party with salsa dancing, a ceremony that paid tribute to the remarkable commitment of the couple to human rights (they've already used their lawyering skills in Ecuador, Egypt, and South Africa), and a reception dinner where wild sturgeon enjoyed its best preparation in known-fish culinary history. Thank you, Alan and Michelle, and Carole, for these gifts to your guests and the whole world.

New work by Eliza Stamps

Here. Enough said.

If you haven't...[heard the Boston Philharmonic]

I am guessing that other bloggers find this introductory phrase running through their minds when they encounter something interesting, powerful, or otherwise worthy of blogging. It's happened to me several times in the past week where I witness something, want everyone reading here to experience it too, and then find myself mentally composing a post that begins..."If you haven't see/heard/been to..."

But when you find yourself coming up with the same intro, you know you're getting a little lazy. So, let me try this:

If you're lucky, you've been to the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and seen Ben Zander explaining the music that the orchestra is about to play in rather artful language and then conducting what turns out to be quite an enveloping performance. Such was the case last night at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre, a gorgeous old building and a small and intimate place to absorb music. I've been there a number of times but never like last night when...

The BPO presented the American premiere of Shirish Korde's Svara-Yantra, the Indian inspired concerto with Joanna Kurkowicz on violin and Samir Chatterjee on tabla that brought waves of bravos and encores. Catch it if you can: they repeat Saturday, October 20, 2007, and Sunday, October 21, 2007.

NB: Thanks to Liam Fahey and Knowledge Leadership Forum, which invited all those attending this fall's session to the concert. (We were there as speakers.)

November '07 book club: The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley

Next up for our Fiction Book Club, The Go-Between a classic, L.P. Hartley's look-back from half a century later to the summer of 1900, which opens with this superb line:

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

Shhhh...it's Tuesday morning

Ever wish you could have a day with no interruptions? Or even an hour? Intel has been running an experiment whereby Tuesday mornings are Quiet Time. So far, so good. People love it, according to Nathan Zeldes:

Many of the engineers are happy about the newfound thinking time, and are protecting it by pushing back on interrupters during the Tuesday AM slot. Not unexpectedly there are also some who complain that this isolation prevents them from getting answers to urgent questions during that morning… we are assuming the benefit outweighs this cost, and are waiting for the mid- and post-survey to tell us whether this is correct.

Next up for the engineers, Zero Email Friday, a bit of hyperbole it make the point:

In our new pilot, we encourage the members of an organic group to focus each Friday on direct conversation – face to face or by telephone – for interpersonal communication within the group...While this may seem a small thing, experiments done in other companies showed a great impact once people started exploring communication with the human voice.

Imagine the possibilities if we actually starting talking to one another again. Hello.

Quick! How happy are you right this minute?

On his blog, the incomparable Tom Peters, to whom we are eternally grateful for the unexpected and generous boost he gave to our 1993 book, The TeamNet Factor, points to the Danish word arbejdsglæde that means "work happiness" (in Swedish, Arbetsglädje). Contrast this with karoshi, the Japanese word  meaning "death by overwork." Click through to Tom's source for this from his new "cool friend," Alex Kjerulf's blog, Positive Sharing.

Transparency and the Dalai Lama

Here's a riddle for you:

Q: What do Radio City Music Hall and organizational transparency have in common?

A: The Dalai Lama.

Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, was in New York again this past weekend for a three-day teaching, the third such protracted event like this that my hubby and I have attended. In 1981, we were two of 150 people who spent a week in a small lecture hall at Harvard University on the Dalai Lama's first visit there. Last year, we spent three days with our daughter and 3000 others at his lecture sponsored by Tibet House (co-founded by Professor Robert Thurman, the first American ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and, famously, father of Uma). Tonight, we're fresh from his latest New York appearance with our daughter again and at least 5000 others, another three-day event, this time sponsored by Healing the Divide (the non-profit started by Richard Gere, a long-time follower of Tibetan Buddhism) and The Tibet Center.

It would not be accurate to say we are Tibetan Buddhists. In truth, which is largely what the Dalai Lama's teachings are about, my hubby might pass, as he has read scadzillions of books on the subject, but, as is my wont, I'm a perpetual neophyte, interested primarily in the Dalai Lama's profound (too shallow a word, really) insight into human nature.

The Dalai Lama's psychology (the principal focus of last year's teaching) causes us to hold up a mirror to our most naked selves; his spirituality so inclusive that he encourages everyone to practice their own beliefs; and, in this teaching, his dissertation on Tibetan Buddhist logic is as close to quantum physics as "religion" could possibly be.

I'll say again here what I've said to many friends: If you haven't had the chance to hear him, make the time. Unless you're a baby, in which case you aren't reading this--at least not now--there will never be another mature Dalai Lama in your lifetime. This man is 72 and, with any luck, he'll be around for many more years. There will be no 15th Dalai Lama until this one passes away. And, then it will be some time before his successor is identified; many years will turn before that person is teaching.

Trained for his position from the time he was a tiny boy, the Dalai Lama probably never imagined back in the Potola, his residence in Lhasa, Tibet, that he would someday end up sitting on the stage that the Rockettes made famous, surrounded by 100 monks and nuns, wearing a crimson visor to block the klieg lights, with a headset hooked behind his ear, and talking for hours to thousands of Americans about non-duality and emptiness.

Without taking on a very serious piece of writing, I cannot summarize the past three days.

But I do want to share this, relevant to the themes of this blog. At the very end, after the Dalai Lama had made some very poignant suggestions about how to be a better human being, how to be more compassionate, more selfless, Richard Gere, who'd spent three days sitting in lotus position with the monks and nuns, took the microphone and said the usual wonderful things one would expect--how inspiring, meaningful, and touching the teaching was. And then he said something unexpected: that the Dalai Lama believes in transparency and in that spirit, a monk came forward to share the financials of the event.

According to Buddhism, no one should be paid for teaching. Thus, the monk read the line item expenses, totaling $1.396 million (it's not cheap to rent Radio City, i.e. $650,000); income was $1.394 million. "We are pleased to report," the monk said, "a loss of $3800."

May all sentient organizations be so transparent.