The Evolution of Community

In my current position I have two staff members who are remote workers, working out of their home in Portland, Oregon. They are really solid contributors and very interesting people.

I was talking to one of them the other day about things and since he is from the Marin County area he has a lot of friends and family down here. I asked him if they had made many friends in the Portland area and he said that they aren't really very social so they pretty much keep in contact with the friends they've had for years. He said he keeps up with his friends almost daily via e-mail, instant messaging, and playing X-box over the network together.

This individual's social interactions with old friends only reinforces my theory that the nature of community and friendship is evolving dramatically. In an earlier post I recounted how simply posting old family photos has reunited my Italian family with my U.S. family. Even though I only see them once every few years, I have a small handful of really good friends from high school and grade school. In fact, we've been able to reconnect and have more frequent communication in the last few years as they have become more regular computer users and are using audio and video chat. Obviously you have to have something in common or some sort of connection in the first place but the now ancient art of letter writing is no longer required, spontaneous short conversations are possible without often inconvenient telephone conversations.

Some people might bemoan a lack of depth as a result of the abbreviated instant messaging (IM) or text message conversations but I think without these vehicles that most people would otherwise abandon communication with their geographically distant friends, or at least let them lapse.

Again, my team member's means of keeping in touch with his friends through e-mail, IM, and X-box gaming is neat. No, it's not the same as 'being there' but often times that's not even an option and without these things, it's highly probable that they'd lose touch all together.

State of the CIO 2008

CIO.com had an interesting article recently about the CIO of 2008: What Kind of CIO Are You? In reading through it I was pretty easily able to identify my style. The first thing that really rang true for me was that of being a Transformational Leader. One of my strengths is being able to quickly identify the needs of the organization, the current state, and how to reorganize and shape the IT division to better align IT with the strategic objectives of the organization. Here are the bullets of the article:

• Redesigning business processes
• Aligning IT initiatives and strategy with business goals/strategy
• Cultivating the IT/business partnership
• Leading change efforts
• Implementing new systems and architecture
• Mapping IT strategy to overall enterprise strategy

I also think my nature is that of what they called the 'Business Strategist' which really doesn't seem wholly different. Here is the description for it:

• Developing/refining business strategy
• Understanding market trends
• Developing external customer insight
• Developing business innovations
• Identifying opportunities for competitive differentiation
• Reengineering or developing new sales and distribution channels

The other type of leader that they describe is a 'Function Head', which strikes me as being more of a tactical role. While I am certainly comfortable with the tasks associated with it, I do find my contributions to be more transformational and strategic.

Much of the article talks about being in the right place at the right time and I couldn't agree more. It is imperative that anyone, regardless of their position, be able to identify his or her own skills and put them to work in an organization that will benefit. It needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship for both the employer and employee to be successful. A couple of times in my career I've had frank discussions with employees who just didn't seem to be finding their groove and I wasn't able to adjust their positions enough to make the groove fit them and I had to say that maybe it wasn't the right job for them. While this sometimes terrifies people, it can often be the necessary wake-up call for everyone.

Coffee Makers....

Minor post here but I just noticed that my response to a story about reducing energy consumption was picked up in another story on ComputerWorld. Too cool!

In sum, we switched to an insulated carafe coffee maker because we discovered that leaving a coffee maker on to keep the coffee in the carafe warm takes about 1,000 watts of electricity. That's nearly as much as a hair dryer or a space heater! Of course, coffee that hasn't been burnt by a 1,000 watt warming plate for an hour tends to taste better too.

On [Web] Community, Part III

In part II of On [Web] Community I mentioned how publishing old family photos restored communications with my Italian grandmother's side of the family. Well, it didn't stop there. I also posted several of my Smetana family photos to the same web site and received communications from my father's cousins on both his father's and mother's side of the family. As it now turns out, his cousin Paul is putting together a Smetana reunion in Lansford, ND 2009 and I've built a small web site for the event as well. Most of the communication with my dad's side of the family had been lost for over 30 years.

While the re-discovered familial ties was not something I had planned, it was a very fortunate unintended consequence. Once again, the web can build tremendous community.

On [Web] Community, Part II

Earlier I discussed the new type of community that I've begun to notice evolving. Really, it's been coming for years but I remember commenting to a more philosophic friend of mine how when I went for a neighborhood walk I would notice smaller yards, larger houses, and few people working outside or playing. The common thing, if I were walking at twilight or later, was that the iridescent glow of a television or computer monitor was often prevalent inside many homes. Granted, when I first made my observation not a lot of homes had computers so I'm reasonably sure this was the glow from the television. I believe times have changed and more people are getting their entertainment and interaction through their computers.

Instant messaging lets me video chat with my brother in Australia and his wife and newborn son. It lets my mother see my new daughter instantly and now interact with her. I can post photos to my photo site and my friends and family can keep up on activities of ours at their leisure. I'm able to send e-mails to my friends in Europe I made twelve years ago when I traveled there for business for several years.

A particularly neat thing happened last year as a result of the Internet. I have become the family documentarian and have scanned nearly every photo I have along with my parents' old family photos. Some photos date back to the 1910s. I've also made a point of labeling the photos with first and last names and dates where applicable and if possible, places. I posted all of these to my family tree web site early in 2006. Let me give you a bit more perspective now... On both my father's and mother's mother's side of the family there has been relatively little knowledge of the families. My grandmother came to the US after WWII from Italy after having married my grandfather. While she had photos and letters from her family, most of the communications didn't make it past her (not by design, it just kind of happened). As time has gone on and I've taken up an interest in my lineage, I gathered as much information as possible from my mother and my uncle. It just so happened that they seemed to have more information in their heads than they might have realized and I included it in my documentation. That should hopefully give you a better sense of how the information on my mother's mother's side was lost. So, within a couple of months of posting the information on the web site with photos, I received a communique from someone who turns out to be my mother's cousin in Italy! We corresponded and I passed the information along to my mother. It so happens that they had been curious about what had happened to my grandmother's American family. My mother and her brother had also been planning a trip to Europe and after some correspondence with the Italian family they adjusted their trip to take them to Italy to visit and stay with the Italian cousins. It turned out to be a small reunion in Italy and they had a grand visit. This summer my mother's cousin's 18 year old daughter came to the US for 6 weeks and stayed with my mother, my uncle, and my brother. She had a great time and was able to see more of the US than most Europeans do in a lifetime.

So, with that verbose story, I can only emphasize that there is a new community on the web. I still don't believe life should exist solely on the web but it can be used to enhance your life and bring infinitely greater connectivity to family and friends than you might ever hope without it!

On [Web] Community, Part I

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I've had this conversation a couple of times with technology workers who have kids. The gist of it is this:

They prefer to keep their kids somewhat isolated from technology, from having a computer to cell phones of their own, to instant messaging to FaceBook or MySpace pages. I'll ask them why and the response is that they don't want them to be like all the other kids who seem preoccupied with texting, communicating via MySpace/FaceBook, and IM. They want their kids to go outside and have live, in-person interaction with other kids.

I can see this from their perspective. I grew up in a small western Montana town where we played baseball and football in the back yard in the summer until it got dark. We rode our bikes all over town in small gangs. We played with firecrackers and all kinds of other good things. I really cherish those memories and hope that my kids have those kinds of memories. We had a community of friends and a certain loyalty to one another and our hometown.

Now, it's rare to see a kid over 10 without a cell phone and not able to actively carry on 6 or more IM sessions simultaneously. Childhood obesity is also at all-time highs as well. I'm not blaming the obesity on the pervasiveness technology but many people do.

As I see it a huge cultural shift is underway. Kids have adopted technology, there's no denying it. Some have embraced it with a death-grip even. While most of the kids already know their text and IM friends from real-life interactions, many of us do not know in person our forum-buddies in discussing things from antiques to tweaking an operating system to do what we want to working on vintage Airstream trailers. Either way, there is a new community that has arisen on-line. No, it's not the same as a block-party with your neighbor, but it's more like hanging out on the porch with someone who is as interested and knowledgeable as you might ever hope to meet on your area of interest.

While I don't discourage anyone from going for a hike or camping with their kids, I'd be hesitant to keep the kids too far removed from technology. If they aren't familiar with it and communicating when their friends are, they might be missing out on the new social skills, potential work skills, and most importantly, community. It kind of reminds me of the family we grew up with whose parents didn't have a television and disavowed sugar; they'd come to visit us and we couldn't peel them away from the TV or the cookie jar. Like most things, it's all about balance. I think we need to respect many traditions and pastimes but don't forget to look around the present and the future.

Social Networking and Anonymity

As I delve deeper into the world of social networking/Web 2.0 I have to keep stuff in mind.... I can fully understand how people can easily slip into a sense of false security that what they post and share will be viewed by only the people they tell and exchange links but just about anyone reading this now will know otherwise. With that said, I always try to keep in mind the 'what if' where something I posted or replied to hit the front page of the newspaper. I don't randomly post things or nothing too incriminating anyway. Be careful about what you post, someone can find it and potentially use it against you.

An article I recently read on branding yourself said to be sure to Google your own name periodically to see what's out there. Most people are amazed, particularly if you work for a publicly held company in a high level role or many positions in a public institution.

The other thing that I considered is using a pseudonym. You know, I really don't get that. I guess I do if you are trying to run around and flame people without stuff truly getting back to you or if you're doing things that border on being illegal. If you're being real and aren't hiding something and you stand behind what you say, why not use your own name (or at least the same pseudonym)?