John Philpin

Joyce Chin Photography - maui * fine art * concert * music * lifestyle photographer

Joyce A Saturday on Maui

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Speaking of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, animator Chuck Jones and his team were said to follow these simple rules when creating the cartoons:

1. The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going "meep, meep."

2. No outside force can harm the Coyote -- only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products. Trains and trucks were the exception from time to time.

3. The Coyote could stop anytime -- if he were not a fanatic.

4. No dialogue ever, except "meep, meep" and yowling in pain.

5. The Road Runner must stay on the road -- for no other reason than that he's a roadrunner.

6. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters -- the southwest American desert.

7. All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.

8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy.

9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.

10. The audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote.

11. The Coyote is not allowed to catch or eat the Road Runner.

The rules are made only slightly less interesting by their fiction; according to Wikipedia, long-time Jones collaborator Michael Maltese said he'd never heard of the rules.

Jon Phillips, concluding Wired’s review of the Kindle Fire:

At the end of the day, the Fire must be judged by how well it executes in terms of its Newsstand, Books, Video, Apps and Web features. It does nothing very well, save video playback, running various Android apps, and making the business of Amazon shopping alarmingly fun and easy.

All of the reviews seem to agree on the main points: the Kindle Fire is best at video playback, not very good for reading, mediocre at web browsing, and acceptable for playing a handful of Android games.

Given its strength as a video-playback device, though, Amazon really should have given it more storage. One of the most common use-cases for watching video on tablets is on airplanes or while commuting, neither of which reliably offer Wi-Fi fast enough for streaming video. Ask any iPad owner who watches a lot of video if 6 GB would be enough storage.

My Kindle Fire is supposed to arrive tomorrow. I’ll review it once I’ve had a chance to use it a bit.

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We know who the 99 percent are, but what about the 1 percent?  How are they making their money, and which ones are using their power to extract wealth and game the system?

Here are some quick stats on “the 1 percenters” from Suzy Khimm of The Washington Post:

• The top 1 percent of American households had a minimum income of $516,633 in 2010.
• In New York City, the top 1 percent have an average income of $3.7 million.
• Average wealth (including home equity, stocks and other investments) of the top 1 percent was almost $14 million in 2009.

Next question : what are the 1 percenters doing for a living? Mike Konzal goes through the top jobs of 1 percenters over at his blog Rortybomb, with this excellent chart:

So why focus on the top 1 percent? Mike makes a convincing argument:

There’s good reason to focus on the top 1% instead of the top 10 or 50%. There is evidence that financial pay at this elite level is correlated with deregulation and the other legal changes that brought on the crisis. High-ranking senior corporate executives’ pay has dwarfed workers’ salaries, but is only a reward for engaging in shady financial engineering practices. These problems require a legal solution and thus they require a democratic challenge and a rethinking of how we want to structure our economy.

Third question: who, exactly, are the worst of the 1 percenters?  Which individuals gamed the system the most, and used extraction and corrupt business and political practices to amass more money and power than the other 99 percent of Americans?

To answer that question, Brave New Foundation and award-winning filmmaker Robert Greenwald are crowdsourcing the web for answers, asking people to submit names for “the worst of these one percenters.”  Greenwald then plans to make short films “exposing the specific wealthy individuals who’ve done the most damage to our economy and democracy.”

We reached out to Brave New Foundation to see what kind of responses they’ve gotten on day one of the campaign.  Here are just a couple:

IT’S A HARD CALL BUT THE KOCH BROTHERS SPRING TO MIND FIRST. BOTH BILLIONAIRES, BUYING ELECTIONS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY, PUTTING THEIR TEA PARTY PUPPETS IN PLACES OF GOVERNMENTAL POWER. – Reilly, Tucson, AZ

HOW ABOUT JAMIE DIMON OF JPMORGAN CHASE? OR LLOYD BLANKFEIN OF GOLDMAN SACHS? THOSE GUYS TAKE HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS IN BAILOUTS AND THEN HAVE THE AUDACITY TO WHINE ABOUT EVEN THE SLIGHTEST REGULATION OF HOW THEY’RE OPERATED. IT’S LIKE ME DEMANDING A SALARY WITHOUT ANYONE HAVING TO OVERSEE MY WORK. - James, Los Angeles, CA

After taking suggestions on the web, they’ll narrow it down to the top 30, and then hold a vote to figure out which ones to profile.

Close to 900 people have submitted answers on day one of the campaign.  To submit your idea, head over to Brave New Foundation’s “Who Are the 1 Percent?” page, put in a name, and your argument for why that person in “the 1 percent” deserves some attention.

They just ask you to stick to two criteria: “the individuals must be in the wealthiest 1% of Americans, and  use their wealth and power to keep the other 99% down.”  (Try to play by the rules, kids, even if the 1 percenters aren’t.)

Here’s their launch video from Robert Greenwald, which is worth a watch:

- Megan Robertson is a digital producer for DylanRatigan.com.

Analysts have to count things in order to measure value. It sounds easy but it can be tricky. As I pointed out with PCs vs. iPads, if you count an iPad as a PC you can get into a lot of trouble with your clients. But if you don’t you end up directing them away from confronting an existential threat. Only very rarely is a market report published in contradiction to widely held sustaining beliefs. More often than not analysts bow to the source of their paychecks and in so doing show their rear end to the truth.

This comes up again now with respect to how to count tablets. Consider that there is little difference in architecture, software or design between an iPhone and an iPad. They run the same OS, use the same microprocessors and have similar communication methods, inputs and sensors. However they are considered completely different products and counted as part of separate markets. The only physical attribute that differs is the screen size. So we have to conclude that the size of the screen is a huge determinant factor in deciding whether a product is a tablet but not a smartphone (or music player).

But what about tablets themselves? Their screen sizes vary widely. A 10″ screen is certainly a tablet device, but a 4″ screen certainly isn’t. Where is the boundary exactly? It seems that a 7″ device is still a tablet but a 5″ may not be. The Dell Streak 5 device is presumably not a tablet. The arguments then descend into an arbitrary definition of tablet based on whether it fits in one hand or in a bag of a certain size.

This begins to sound academic. Why should it matter what size is or isn’t a valid tablet? Buyers are not in the market for screen sizes. They are in the market for products that can be hired to do jobs or address pain in their lives. So as far as consumers are concerned, these categories are meaningless. If you want to design something you’d better segment according to jobs to be done.

However, buyers are not the target audience for the analyst. Nor are product designers (hopefully anyway.) Part of the reasoning of offering market research is that it presumably helps ecosystem participants (vendors, developers, retailers, etc.) decide where to invest their time and money. They are the target audience. They don’t spend their lives reading tech blogs. For them it’s important to understand “which way the wind is blowing” and that’s where an analyst should be helpful with data.

But then if we are to measure ecosystems, we have more difficulties.

The iOS ecosystem is pretty well understood. Apple publishes the number of devices it sells and the number of apps on its store and downloads, etc. We can assume Microsoft will do the same with Windows 8 as they do already for Windows in general.

For Android, it’s a challenge. Google measures activations, but that may not cover the actual units sold. Google admits that it does not know how many Android devices are sold or even how many are for sale. It’s in the nature of open source that it’s not controlled and hence not measurable.

But analysts still try. Consider the estimate that about 27% of all “tablets” shipped are Android. That’s not something Google helped with. Google can report the number of activations of a certain version of the OS, but they themselves don’t know what the device looks like or what size screen it has. A device vendor can put any version of Android on a device of any size. To find out how many tablets run Android, you need to try to estimate “bottom up” by adding the output from various vendors.

However, it’s clear that a large number of these devices are not exactly Android. Consider what  Kevin C. Tofel writes for GigaOm:

I asked Strategy Analytics to clarify both of those points and received the following email response from Neil Mawston, the analyst who wrote the report: ”Yes, the press release refers to shipments, not sales. All sub-versions of Android are included. Yes, the B&N Nook Color tablet is included in the tablet figures.”

So the B&N Nook is counted as an Android tablet and part of the 27% share of Android. But Google itself does not count the B&N Nook as an Android tablet. It’s not something that can even use the Android brand. From Google’s own documentation:

We define an “Android compatible” device as one that can run any application written by third-party developers using the Android SDK and NDK. We use this as a filter to separate devices that can participate in the Android app ecosystem, and those that cannot. Devices that are properly compatible can seek approval to use the Android trademark. Devices that are not compatible are merely derived from the Android source code and may not use the Android trademark.

In other words, compatibility is a prerequisite to participate in the Android apps ecosystem. Anyone is welcome to use the Android source code, but if the device isn’t compatible, it’s not considered part of the Android ecosystem.

So to summarize, whereas the Nook is counted as an “Android tablet” it…

• cannot be called an Android device without violating the trademark
• may or may not compatible with Android Apps
• does not include Google Services like Google Maps
• cannot license the Android Market client software or brand
• is not considered to be a part of the Android ecosystem by Google

All this is also true for the Amazon Kindle Fire and whatever Baidu, Alibaba and other Google competitors will be selling. Furthermore, Google can define compatibility and therefore what “being Android” means arbitrarily and can change that definition at will. It can even withdraw compatibility on the basis of business priorities.

It matters because these devices might end up very popular (see Amazon’s reporting of Fire’s pre-orders in its quarterly earnings call) and in aggregate could even be the majority of “Android tablets”.

The result is that most analysis of the Android ecosystem (and by comparison, all mobile ecosystems) depends on classifying as Android devices those that compete with Google, and indeed, with Android. For the purpose of assessing value, growth and opportunity for third parties such reports fall short.

So what should be done?

The solution is simple: Count as Android devices those that are allowed to be called Android as per Google’s own definition. It makes clear that developers can reliably sell their software through the Android Market. It makes clear that those devices are designed to use Google services and it makes clear that those devices are not designed to compete with Google.

Those devices which are using “derived” Android source code and are not compatible (as per Google’s definition) and are not allowed to be called Android by their vendor should be called something else. Maybe “Android-like” or “Android derivative” or “Non-Google Android” or just “Other”.

Creator of the C programming language, co-creator of Unix. A true titan of computer science.

The new book from Andy Borowitz, The 50 Funniest American Writers: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to the Onion, is Andy’s hand-picked collection of the best funny writing in America: Mark Twain, Woody Allen, David Sedaris, Nora Ephron, George Carlin, James Thurber and dozens of others guaranteed to make you laugh out loud.

Already a New York Times bestseller and in its second printing, The 50 Funniest has been ranked the #1 humor book in America by Amazon.com.

All proceeds from book sales go to Library of America, a nonprofit, charitable institution dedicated to the preservation of American writing.

To get your copy for the special low price of $15.19 (46% off the store price) click here.

“Sublimely funny… This book is a treasure trove of laughter and an ideal gift for anyone who needs to be cheered up or refreshed, which these days means just about everyone you know.”

– Nell Minow, The Movie Mom

READ AN EXCERPT HERE

GET ANDY’S BOOK HERE

It is impossible — absolutely impossible — to overstate the debt my profession owes to Dennis Ritchie.

Every computer science student knows and owns the K&R book. The “R”, Dennis Ritchie, unfortunately passed away this weekend.

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Creating a successful and influential ‘Me 2.0′ persona presupposes a strategic use of the social media. Since our objectives and goals are multifarious, it is up to each and every one of us to make a number of well-thought-out decisions in the social networks to ensure that how we want to be perceived, how we want to communicate and the kind of community we want to build and interact with become a reality we can embrace and feel proud of. At the end of the day, our social media persona is a direct extension of ourselves visible to the whole world through the World Wide Web; and with all the risks, challenges and wonderful opportunities this entails.

One of the most readily available and real-time buzz-generating social networks you can’t do without for personal branding purposes is Twitter. And yet the manifold advantages that can be derived from Twitter will only be within your reach if you are able to carefully steer the course of your profile building, your follow-back policy and your day-to-day tweets among other key ingredients. The use you make of the ever-popular microblog should reflect your personality, your values and your communication style in a way that reinforces your brand and puts across a clear and consistent message underscoring what you are all about and how you can contribute to your current or future organization and your community. Luckily for us there is ample room for all to develop their own Twitter style without sacrificing their idiosyncrasy or uniqueness.

Perhaps one the most salient differences across the Tweetosphere is the chasm between those who (as a norm) follow back and those who don’t. Without wanting to sound dismissive of those who choose differently, I want to argue here that for most of us following back is usually the best standard policy. Let me hasten to add that we all evidently retain the right of admission, and will be perfectly justified to not follow individual Twitter accounts that appear to be offensive, malicious or downright uninteresting.

Let me share with you the ten reasons why, enjoying to the full my freedom of action in Twitterland, I have chosen to follow back on Twitter and believe you should follow back too:

1. I seek to interact and not just churn out messages
2. I want to transmit that I am interested in other people’s tweets
3. Most of my referents follow back (e.g. Dan Schawbel)
4. I don’t want to come across as a guru
5. I use Twitter both for personal and professional purposes
6. I enjoy reading my followers’ tweets as much as writing my own
   
7. Online networking and socializing are an integral part of my strategy
8. I come across revelant information I would not find otherwise
9. It is easy to unfollow if someone does not turn out to be what you expected
10. I need to honor my Klout ‘conversationalist‘ profile

No other social network has been more instrumental in the building of my online brand than Twitter. And following back has been the cornerstone of my Twitter success. I encourage you to share the reasons why you agree, are ambivalent on the issue or disagree with me and do or do not follow back in the ‘comments’ section. I also encourage you to get a grip on Twitter and use it to the full in a determined and brave attempt to reach out to others and make your personal and professional dreams come true.

Author:

Oscar Del Santo is a lecturer, key speaker, blogger and populariser of online reputation and inbound marketing in Spain. He has been extensively featured in the Spanish and Latin American media and is a regular contributor to several TV and radio programs. He was recently awarded the #TwitawardSV for his participation in El Salvador’s Social Media Day, has been included in the ‘Top 70 Spanish Tweeters’ list and is the author of ‘Reputacion Online para Tod@s’.

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Our writers are picking their favourite albums. Here, Malcolm Jack writes about an album that will always feel like home

Appropriately enough for a band whose sheer bookishness winds people up, me and Belle and Sebastian got off on the wrong foot. In the late 90s, the speediest means by which a lad in his teens in the sticks in Scotland could feed his developing appetite for music was Channel 4 Teletext's Planet Sound. I scanned it religiously. Just who the hell, I questioned as 1997 turned into 1998, are these nobodies doing Oasis and the Verve out of Single of the Year? And with a song as wimpily titled as Dog on Wheels?

I dismissed the Glaswegians for the saps they clearly were, then spent the next few years rolling back on that snap assertion until they'd become one of my favourite bands. Belle and Sebastian's second album, 1996's If You're Feeling Sinister, has been a fixture of every stage of my life since. Subtly poetic, wickedly funny, gorgeously melodic, steeped in ramshackle C86 jangle and the pop classicism of Bob Dylan and the Velvet Underground, it encapsulates everything I've come to treasure in music.

In 2011, where next to no band is un-Googleable and pop stars tweet about every changing of their socks, the band would struggle to preserve the aura of mystique that was so intrinsic to their early appeal. Back in the mid-90s B&S were so publicity-shy they didn't appear in their own photos and only broke cover via the likes of pored-over lo-fi Super 8 videos (who's Belle, and who's Sebastian?) and songwriter Stuart Murdoch's liner note stories.

Murdoch's lyrics read like the elliptical character sketches and confessions of a cynical, soft-voiced bedsit romantic, part peeping tom, part choirboy. On If You're Feeling Sinister, we meet his most vivid assortment of oddballs, from the disgruntled old gent in Me and the Major, a man – not unlike his narrator – perennially adrift from the times who "remembers all the punks and the hippies too, and he remembers Roxy Music in '72", to the title track's Hilary, a girl "into S&M and bible studies" whom her sleazy vicar took aside and "gave her confirmation". Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying could almost address how Belle and Sebastian swam defiantly against the laddish tide of Britpop. "You could either be successful or be us," Murdoch sings, "with our winning smiles … with our catchy tunes."

Arguably any of Belle and Sebastian's first three albums could be considered their best, from their 1996 debut, Tigermilk – original vinyl copies of which change hands today for nearly as much as the cost of recording the thing – to 1998's The Boy with The Arab Strap, the one that demonised the band in the eyes of a generation of teeny-boppers by bizarrely enabling them to beat Steps and 5ive to the best British newcomer award at the Brits in 1999. It's worth noting, too, the remarkable body of standalone singles (Dog on Wheels included) and EPs originating from that era, as collected on the 2005 compilation Push Barman to Open Old Wounds.

Clearly there was some kind of magic in the Glasgow air during those bountiful two years between the summers of 1996 and 1998 and Belle and Sebastian were bottling it at the source. In fact, there's something about the band's relationship with Glasgow that has always felt especially important to me – like 80s Manchester to the Smiths or 60s New York to the Velvet Underground. Could If You're Feeling Sinister have been made in any time or place other than 90s Glasgow, with its detached air of rainy melancholy? Like more than a few people I've met over the years, Belle and Sebastian's music undoubtedly hastened my decision to move here to live and work, in the same leafy streets and red sandstone tenements that form the backdrop for those early Super 8 videos. I'm leaving the city soon, and I'll miss it sorely, but as long as I can put on If You're Feeling Sinister it'll never feel far away.

• You can write your own review of this record on our brand new album pages: once you're signed into the Guardian website, visit the album's dedicated page.

Or you could simply star rate it, or add it to one of your album lists. There are more than 3m new pages for you to explore as well as 600,000-plus artists' pages – so simply find their albums and get to work.

A weekly look at the best album reviews submitted by you

As you may be aware, it's now possible to review more or less any album you like on guardian.co.uk/music.

Here's how to do it:

1. Search for the artist whose album you want to review, using the search box on the right here. Find the artist page from the search results.

2. On the artist page scroll down until you see the carousel displaying their albums. Flick through until you find the album you want to review, then click on it to get to the album page.

3. Type your review below where it says "Type your review below". When you're done, click "Post your review".

4. Go and do something else, as you have now completed the album reviewing process.

Here are a few recent album reviews we liked, posted by people who have successfully navigated points 1 to 4 above:

SwashbucklingStuff on Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit

It's a perfect album. Every single track has it's own clear identity and sets up the next one. Nothing is repetitive, they are not a one-trick pony, although like the actions of all good rabbits everything comes back to sex.

PerfectCriminal on Good Morning Spider by Sparklehorse

To call this an album of redemption would be too simplistic. Really it's an album that deals with a man trying to find enough hope and beauty in the world to carry on.

SW2600 on Grey Britain by Gallows

The first track, The Riverbank, starts with lapping waves against, what I picture to be, a wooden row-boat out on the River Thames at midnight, probably to dump a body. Singer Frank Carter heralds the start of the album crying out "God help us now, we're ready to die" setting the tone for things to come.

Jamie Skey on Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins

A powerful yin-yang artwork, an album of embracing contrasts, of light and dark, of sin and redemption, of power and grace … Truly a masterpiece, whether you can palate the orchestrator's personality or not.

And our favourite review of the past week was by Kalyr, whose very fine blog can be found here. He took on Nostradamus by Judas Priest

An epic in every sense of the word

Judas Priest's double album "Nostradamus" came out back in 2008. At this stage in their career, it seems that the veteran genre-defining metal act had decided there was no point doing just another generic Judas Priest album like 2005's "Angel of Retribution" that marked the return of Rob Halford. So they went for something altogether more ambitious.

Nostradamus is a concept album based on the life of the legendary seer. Rather than singing about the notorious prophesies themselves, they've taken the far more interesting path of telling the story of the life of the man himself. With tales of persecution, plague and love won and lost it does occasionally veer into slightly cheesy melodrama. But this is a Judas Priest album after all. What did you expect?

It's been compared with Kiss's infamous "The Elder", although I feel Judas Priest have made a rather stronger album. It's immensely varied musically. Alongside the twin guitars of Glenn Tipton and KK Downing there's extensive use of keyboards, and the album is full of atmospheric moments which owe as much to prog-rock as metal. Occasionally it even strays into even more un-Priest territory that's dangerously close to the sound of a West End musical.

But despite these diversions you're never that far from plenty of their archetypal pile-driving guitar sound either, and the end result can only be described as epic. Both disks flow as one continuous piece of music, songs running into one another, sometimes with short instrumental pieces bridging the gaps between them. Like many double albums, it doesn't quite manage to be consistently great all the way through, and there are one or two passages that feel like filler. But it's also of those albums where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts even when some tracks don't necessarily stand up on their own, and it has more than enough high points to satisfy all but the most narrow-minded of fans.

Rob Halford is still a force to be reckoned with as a vocalist even in his fifties, and those piercing screams of his upper register are in good working order. He's a little less effective on the album's many ballads; he's not as good trying to convey emotion as he is using his voice as a lead instrument on the heavier songs.

Despite a few flaws, I like this album a lot. Many people accused them of going all Spinal Tap with the 12-minute song about the Loch Ness Monster on "Angel of Retribution", and their response was to take things far, far further with this epic concept album. It's not as if they haven't done plenty of albums filled with short punchy songs in the past. If they never do another album it will be a fitting close to their career. And if they do make another one, I'm not quite sure how they're going to follow this.

this post should appear in your book.

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This I am convinced is going to be a STUNNER.

On his second solo album, Grace for Drowning released September 27 on K-Scope, the frontman of the rock band Porcupine Tree has forged an unusual sonic alchemy of progressive rock, textural electronica, piano-pop balladry, soundtrack-like soundscapes, doom rock . . . and jazz.

full article is here Grace Under Pressure: An Interview with Steven Wilson < PopMatters.

Another great piece from our friends at The Perfect Labor Storm.

A Parent’s Guide to Texting, Facebook, and Social Media

Seniority no longer reigns in today’s organizations. In fact, it’s not uncommon to manage people 10 or 20 years older than you. Leading is hard enough when you have experience on your side.

Here are three ways to make sure your age doesn’t betray you:

1. Be confident. Start strong. Don’t qualify your statements or ideas. Speak with conviction and assume that your ideas are good ones.
2. Be open-minded. Balance your poise with an open mind. Put your proposals out there and then solicit opinions and ideas. Give your colleagues a voice.
3. Ask for feedback regularly. Make sure people know you care about continuous improvement. They’ll be more likely to give you useful feedback about your performance.

Read on for the full article :

Leading Older Employees – Jodi Glickman – Harvard Business Review.

As many of you will know, we at Expert Alumni are concerned with all aspects of our members activities.  Working for money is just one aspect, enabling people and organisations to benefit from opportunities in the volunteer sector is a hugely important driver for us.

We are working in a number of different directions to develop this, so it is with some excitement that we introduce you to an opportunity with Medair.  We are building a close working relationship with Medair so expect to see more about them and volunteering.

Medair UK is an affiliate of the Swiss-based international humanitarian agency, Medair, providinglife-saving relief and rehabilitation in disasters, conflict areas, and other crises.

We seek out andserve the world’s most vulnerable people affected by crisis, particularly the forgotten men, women,and children who live in difficult-to-access regions in Africa and Asia.

Our internationally recruited staff are inspired by their Christian faith to care for people in need, providing practical andcompassionate support, regardless of race, religion, or politics.

Medair UK is a recognised leader in accountability and transparency, and remains Intelligent Giving’s no. 1 ranked charity across both “religious” and “international” categories.

Medair UK also maintainsmembership of the ImpACT Coalition and Fundraising Standards Board.We are seeking additional members for our accomplished Board of Trustees. Driven by the valuesunderlying all of Medair’s work, you must share our enthusiasm for serving the world’s mostvulnerable by extending Medair’s network of supporters in the UK.

We are seeking people withfundraising, governance and leadership expertise.If you are interested in this opportunity please let us know quickly.

Please send your CV, together with a covering letter explaining your motivation for applying to medair@expertalumni.me

Deadline for applications: Tuesday 31st May 2011For more details, see www.medair.org

We’ve said it before – we’ll say it again ….

The company wants to fill between 150 and 300 jobs a year but admits that one of its biggest problems is finding the right people with the right skills. Trevor Garlick, the head of the companys North Sea operations, said: “Getting hold of the right people is a real issue for us. We are hiring a lot of people, but we are also an exporter of a couple of hundred people to other regions. We are a centre for recruiting elsewhere.

The Full Story.

Our thanks to the Independent for the original article.

The article is dated August the 15th – but our guess is that not much has changed since then ! You know we are working on these problems for you.

The nightmare that is plaguing many companies as the economy recovers is the lack of skilled workers. There is no one cause for the shortages but a significant driver is the loss of Baby Boomer brain power. But the good news is that there can be a happy ending.
One company that is doing an exceptional job at managing their aging workforce is the National Rural Electric Co-operative Association (NRECA). I’m very proud to say that NRECA and many of their members have been clients of my company Success Performance Solutions for several years. So I was thrilled today when I turned the page in The Economist and saw their success story about how they are managing their aging workforce. The NRECA story isn’t only about well-deserved recognition but it serves as a model that other companies can use too.

The shortage of skilled worker problem is already acute in many industries like healthcare, aerospace, energy, and even technology. It has been exacerbated by a failure to plan, despite ample warning, about the impact of aging Baby Boomers.
The article in The Economist cites The Sloan Centre on Ageing and Work at Boston College survey which found that 40% of employers worry that the ageing of the workforce will have a negative or very negative impact on their business. And yet despite this dismal warning, another survey last year by two British management institutes found that only 14 percent of managers think that their workplaces are prepared to cope with the greying of the workforce.

A significant number of older workers also became collateral damage as a result of how employers managed the recession. Many aging workers were forced to take early retirement while others were told to leave before the door hit them on their behinds. In either case, companies lost not only basic skills required to run their business but all the unwritten knowledge that swirled in and between the heads of veteran workers. Now many companies are finding that replacing one old body with a younger model isn’t very effective when life’s experience and maturity are ignored.

How did NRECA do it? First of all, they recognized that couldn’t change long-term demographic trends. They could however respond differently and more effectively. The NRECA chose to see older workers as part of their modern workforce, not drags on productivity and performance and costs associated with healthcare costs and benefits.

But setting the strategy and implementing well are two different things. After all the literature and Internet are filled with stories about the rigidity, curmudgeon attitude, and poor technology skills of older workers. References abound too how older workers just don’t have the physical ability to meet the physical requirements of many jobs. While that might be true, more jobs these days require more brain than brawn: according to the Urban Institute think tank, 46 percent of jobs in America require little if any physical demand.

And despite Millennials like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changing the way we communicate, several aging Baby Boomers like Steve Jobs (Apple). Larry Ellison (Oracle), and John Chambers (Cisco) can hardly be dismissed as non-relevant in the world of technology even today. Besides according to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, Americans aged 55-64 have launched more businesses than those aged 20-34 in every year since 1996.

But as The Economist author aptly notes, “None of this means that adjusting to an ageing workforce will be easy. Companies will need to rethink the traditional career ladder that linked seniority to pay and power.” They will also have to address the dramatic differences in work-life attitudes between the aging Baby Boomers, the trapped cohort of Generation X, and the emerging Generation Y workers.

The statement that caught the most attention was that companies and people must learn to “treat retirement as a process rather than a sudden event.” That solution seems to be a great fit for both the business that can’t afford to go cold turkey when a skilled Baby Boomer retires and for the Baby Boomer who willingly wants to continue working or is forced to work for financial reasons.

Congratulations NRECA! And for all the other employers who expect to remain in business have no choice but to learn how to deal with a rapidly aging workforce just like NRECA.

This article was written by Ira Wolfe and originally published on the website Perfect Storm. To see the original – please follow the link below

Read more: http://hrblog.typepad.com/perfect_labor_storm/2011/04/managing-older-workers-a-solution-for-skilled-worker-shortage.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+perfect_labor_storm+%28Perfect+Labor+Storm%29#ixzz1Wl070sgc
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

We have been arguing a long time now that knowledge work is in the process of being broken down into ‘manageable chunks’. Seems like the Economist agrees with us – and sees it as one of the next challenges for new graduates.

Dreaming spires, meet pin factoryThomas Malone of MIT argues that these changes—automation, globalisation and deregulation—may be part of a bigger change: the application of the division of labour to brain-work. Just as Adam Smith’s factory managers broke the production of pins into 18 components, so companies are increasingly breaking the production of brain-work into ever tinier slices. TopCoder chops up IT projects into bite-sized chunks and then serves them up to a worldwide workforce of freelance coders.These changes will undoubtedly improve the productivity of brain-workers. They will allow consumers to sidestep the professional guilds that have extracted high rents for their services. And they will empower many brain-workers to focus on what they are best at and contract out more tedious tasks to others. But the reconfiguration of brain-work will also make life far less cosy and predictable for the next generation of graduates.

Schumpeter: Angst for the educated | The Economist.

This post was originally written for and published on ODesk. It so caught the imaginations of the readership that though the number of views for the post was in line with expectations at ODesk – the commentaries were off the charts. Some people even went on to reblog and or ‘Scoop It’, like Mary Ellen Ferris.

Of course – over here at Expert Alumni, we weren’t too surprised. The ‘Pay, Purpose, Play mantra that we have been expounding on for a while now makes a lot of sense, and once people start to understand it – then the maths just work.

As always with guest posts for other blogs, we allow time before publishing the content onto our own blog. That time has gone. Read on to see what we had to say. Click here if you want to read the original post on ODesk – along with all the comments.

One of life’s greatest challenges has to be knowing when we have enough of something — to stop ceaseless craving and accept where we are with satisfaction.

In another post (“It’s Not About Balance”), we were discussing the issues of balance and the misnomer of work/life balance. Once we accept that balance is not really the issue — or at least that a 50:50 work:life ratio is not feasible and we focus on getting our priorities right — we can make progress.

More and more people are changing the way they work from full time, one company at a time, career-ladder climbing to a more open approach of freelance, interim or contract work — what we refer to as “Portfolio Life.” All generations seem to be involved in this shift — from Baby Boomers who refuse to be “retired,” to Millennials seeking to maximize impact and flexibility.

With this approach to career-building, the additional flexibility can allow non-paid work options to come alive. In fact, I believe that there are three key factors in Portfolio Life – Pay, Purpose and Play. Pay: we all need money and financial rewards for our efforts. Purpose: we need to be fulfilled, to feel that those efforts have meaning. Play: we need leisure time to refresh and refuel.

When people stop to think about their situations, they see the ideal intersection of those three areas in Portfolio Life — largely because it offers the independence and autonomy to adjust the ratios accordingly. By developing an approach to a career that recognizes when “enough is enough” in each of those three dimensions, you can make adjustments depending upon your desires and needs at any given time.

‘Enough’ is a variable, conditioned by life context and often driven by ‘in the moment’ decisions. In the developed world, money — or the conspicuous things it buys — are often taken as the glow of success. But it is a pale glow at best. The reality is, we do need money, but we need our purpose to be fulfilled, too. Long- or short-term goals and objectives will influence the ‘enough gauge’ on the dashboard of Pay, Purpose and Play meters.

The regular world of work can prevent this, since the demands on our time and energy are often too high to accommodate. But as Portfolio Life becomes more prevalent, so too will the choices of what to do with our time and when. For example, does the highly experienced engineer want to drill for oil every day? Or perhaps apply the same competencies and experience to drilling for water, thus saving lives instead? In order to do this, you have to understand what is “enough” at each point in time, and fine-tune as you go along. Needs change, and what may be “enough” to satisfy your requirements to earn money will no longer serve you well if your focus shifts to “purpose” or “play” down the road. Whatever we decide we will do, we have made a decision to allocate time and energy. As a friend of mine puts it, every decision to do something is an irrevocable use of time.

So, how does your Pay, Purpose and Play dashboard look? Have you ever looked? Chances are you have a flashing red light somewhere in there that needs your attention. I encourage you to take a look and evaluate where you are — and then make a plan to get where you want to be.

Do you agree that the independent ‘Portfolio Life’ gives you more flexibility to live a balanced life? Share your thoughts in the comments section below! You can also join the continuing coverage on Portfolio Life here.

Having recently made the transition from working (for 14 years) in an organisation to working for myself – often from home; it is interesting to me how specific and organised virtual or remote workers have to be about their work. When I work with my clients it is an imperative to identify the specific deliverables and timescales in our projects together – and as long as I meet those requirements – I have earned my fee, I am happy and so are they. I wish I could have operated like that when I was employed.

This didn’t occur to me until recently but looking back at being an employee, everything about my role was all rather vague. I had a job description and two line managers and targets – I had one-to-one meetings every month – but no-one really knew specifically how the organisation wanted me to reach those targets, what my exact deliverables were and indeed when they could and should be delivered. This was a problem because I sold academic competence. I had all the responsibility for meeting the sales targets but no authority to align the human and other resources.

In my frustration, I realised I had to come up with a solution on my own. There was a business plan containing my “financial targets”. Pound signs and numbers, and I figured out that if I asked what I was being incentivised to sell, I would get an answer that would then logically enable me to align the resources I needed. So I asked both my line managers what they wanted me to sell to get my bonus? Seemed like a simple question to me, but when I didn’t get an answer, I emailed the HR department – and they couldn’t tell me either!

Oh dear, that email got me into big trouble. It caused one of my Line Managers to a) Shout a lot and bang the table with his fist, b) double everyone’s financial targets, c) introduce a 22 page competence framework – and d) impose some awful sales training. But still, no-one was being SPECIFIC about what areas I (we) should concentrate on – I was not alone, my fellow BDM’s were equally frustrated. As time went on, working without enough clarity became a real problem – when the opportunity to take voluntary severance arose – I took it.

For the past twelve months, having returned from a long holiday on the beach – funded by my generous severance package; I have been running my own Sales and Marketing business. It is so different – I don’t allow any lack of focus to happen. For me it is all about tangible results, making sure the client is happy, maximising my time and income.

Funnily enough, one of my clients is my previous employer – they are using me because they know I am good! However, now we work differently – with specific agreed outcomes and a contract…..and they are getting the results they have asked for and I am loving it.

John has been posting some very interesting articles on work from home, or not working from home…

How many times have we heard about “Work-Life Balance”? The suggestion has been that people balance work and life, with an inference being that we should do both in equal measure. In many (not all I hastily add) cases it has been lip service from well meaning HR people who needed to say something to both sides.

Well, for me, it is not to do with balance but much more to do with ‘enough’. The right amount. That means from a persona point, we are getting what we need. If my need is accumulating money for the next 12 months then having a lot of play time, spending money is not helping me.

So, to the posts.

Back to balance, or rather – enough. From my perspective this is a classic pendulum reaction. Over emphasis of one aspect or the other of just about anything will cause a reaction in the opposite direction at some stage in the future.

It was of course very trendy and potentially effective for business to have people to work from home. I question the rationale for many of these decisions and suspect that a few were well thought out. In the middle of a major economic crisis the desire to reduce overhead on office space became a huge driver to justify the – well why not work from home choice.

One has to wonder if the same decisions would have even been considered in absence of a boardroom demand to reduce overheads? Of course, overhead reduction is a reasonable reaction in hard times, but the effects of remote working were not always properly thought through.

Reaction to difficulties at Yahoo may well be in part remedied by pulling everyone together but as is so often the case, perhaps it is in part to do with how such things are executed. There is little doubt and plenty of evidence to suggest that working remotely is effective. There is plenty of evidence too, to show that the converse is also true.

So in another offering, Amazon’s James Hamilton works and lives on his boat. Fantastic. But read on. He also goes to the office.

The fact is, there are some kinds of work that lend themselves to remote working and there are some people who can do it. Not necessarily all of the time. This is a complex subject and we will be adding more pieces on this but the reality is, companies and people need to get the right mix and situation. For our part, we see an ever increasing number of people who will work not just remotely but also in a Portfolio Life. This means doing a range of things – for Pay, Purpose and Play. Both companies and people need help to get it right, otherwise, as is clear from the reaction at Yahoo, there is a very real chance that as the pendulum of over reaction swings back, some big players will get knocked out!

Remember this post yesterday ?

It was all about how Marisa Meyer has decided that no one at Yahoo will be able to work from home / telecommute etc …. Life is changing at Yahoo.

Many pundits are writing pieces about it being the wrong / bad decision or the right / good decision.

I fall into the camp of huh ?

And I fall into it since every single company that I know of are downsizing their offices, reducing costs by having people work at home. In fact one of the core things that people talk about in ‘Future of Work’ scenarios is that people won’t go to an office anymore. (I also happen to think that is an extreme POV).

But what I do wonder is whether there is an under current at Yahoo along the lines of nobody really understanding what people are doing and this is a clumsy way to start to examine the solutions ?

Just like outsourcing – working from home works very very well when you are totally on top of what results are expected in return for a sum of money. The process is not time dependant – it is value dependant. I give you x – you give me value of y – and we both have our own equation for whether that is a good deal.

If I don’t have a good idea of value – I ask what your hourly rate is. Now I can assess my value. (Except you can’t since in an hour, you have no idea what someone can truly deliver – if you don’t understand what is going on).

But if you are at home – how do I know how long you are working ?

I know that nobody at Yahoo is saying they are returning to a punch in punch out mentality of workforce management – but it sure does fell like it. I think Yahoo is trying to work out what it is doing. Of course – at the other end of the scale you have Amazon – who seem to have taken telecommuting to a whole new level …..

Meet James Hamilton, a distinguished engineer who is responsible for keeping Amazons $4.5 billion tech infrastructure business running while inventing new ways to make its data centers more efficient.He’s responsible for keeping a giant portion of the Internet up and running. Sites like Netflix, Pinterest, Reddit and Airbnb all rely on Amazons web services.

and he does all of this on a boat !!

The full article is here:
Amazon Engineer lives on a boat and (sometimes) works from Hawaii

well here is some news I really DIDN’T expect to see today.

This post at 37 Signals and this one from the news organisation KMUW are both essentially saying the same thing.

And that is that ‘working from home’ in Yahoo is no longer going to be acceptable. In a memo from the desk of Marisa Meyer, she said

Being a Yahoo isn’t just about your day-to-day job, it is about the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our offices.

I know what she means, but I dont think it is coming out right. I (we) think we are moving towards an age of the virtual worker, the occasional worker, the portfolio lifestyle – and when someone insists that I need to be on their premises in order to do my job suggests one or more of a number of things.

• They do not understand what I do – so want to see me around.
• They don’t believe I am delivering the work that I am being rewarded for.
• They think they are paying me for my time worked – not my value delivered (which kind of ties back to that top point)

Now don’t get me wrong – I totally totally get the cultural aspects. I really do. They are important . But being in the office cant be the only way to do that can it ? I mean – pop into a coding hot bed one day take a look around.

• Rooms darkened
• Screen on
• Headphones over ears to block out any sound at all
• All you can hear is the tap tap tap of the keyboards

Tell me about that culture / water cooler thing again.

Of course the flip side of this is that if I can only deliver value to you when I am in your offices – then I guess the work I currently do at home on the weekends and at night time is no longer considered work you need – so I won’t be doing that.

What do you think ?

What do you think the reaction will be ? Will there be employee fall out ?

Quite exactly when something like this will kick in I do not know – BUT – I do know that aspects of it are here already.

Putting aside the idea of arm bands tracking Tesco warehouse staff – consider a remote worker, coding or writing a script, or developing an image for a marketing campaign ….. how do you know what they are doing.

I would personally take the value argument. I need a piece of work – it needs to be delivered by a certain date – and it needs to have a certain quality. Job Done.

But there’s more – there is already software in place tracking those remote workers, grabbing random screen shots, capturing the stages being worked through, logging the key strokes – strong argument indeed for the notion that Big Brother is watching – watching you to be specific – and just because you are freelance does not mean that you are free of these kinds of controls.

He’s on the cutting edge of the “quantified self” movement kickstarted by Wired’s Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly. But it’s not just his body and environment that Dancy tracks. He constantly takes screenshots of his work, and everything he does — every meeting, every document he creates, every Tweet he sends, every file he shares, every screenshot he takes — is logged in Google Calendar, providing him with a timeline and his entire work life. If you ask him what he did on a particular day, he can tell you with great precision.

And he thinks every white collar worker will need to adopt a similar regimen soon.

Of course – as I was talking about on one of my other blogs just the other day – the flip side of this is that you do get paid …

Delighted to report see our very own Jon Glesinger writing about The Future of Work over at BizCatalyst360.

We hope you like what he has to say – but as a regular reader of this blog, you will recognize some of the themes.

I believe that there are three key factors in Portfolio Life – Pay, Purpose and Play. Pay: we all need money and cash rewards for our efforts. Purpose: we need to be fulfilled, whether helping inner city kids to read, helping in a disaster area or so many other ways that we can improve the lives of others. Play: we need leisure time.

More and more people are combining these as a lifestyle where significant time is spent on each as we balance priorities. Some work, some play and some giving… We call this Portfolio Life. The Portfolio is a series of work, and purpose-filled activities. A far cry from the career ladder and grindstone of the typical work life…

Going forward we hope you will find us popping up more and more on related sites – as we do – we will keep you informed here.

In order to stay relevant, companies have to do away with closed door management.

read the full article here :

Getting By In A World Without Bosses [Future Of Work] – PSFK – PSFK.

I wonder why there is no Jerry Maquire equivalent in business. You know – the kind of person who works as a business persons agent / manager – represents you and NOT the company you are seeking to join.

Wouldn’t that be powerful ?

Interim agencies are the closest that come to my mind – but it still doesn’t do it for me.

More discussion as part of my ‘Future of Work’ threads running through this blog, but for now – here is the 50,000 foot view:

Musicians, actors, sports people – essentially the people that ‘entertain’ us – are really the only professions that have professional representation – managers, agents etc – that is a negotiator / business person that acts on your behalf in working with entities that seek that individual’s services.

And I am not talking about head hunting / recruiting – they are paid for by the hiring body – and so at the end of the day are representing the best interests of that entity.

Is this another job that will emerge as humanity moves more and more into a portfolio life style of work ? #seriousquestion

Originally posted here

North Sea salaries expected to rise 15% due to skills gap

Kevin Forbes, chief executive of recruitment website Oilandgaspeople.com, said: “Our forecast shows that with increased investment in North Sea oil, demand for qualified staff is set to reach an all-time high, which will exacerbate an already serious skills shortage, a problem that is being further exacerbated as UK candidates head abroad to earn even higher wages with a huge demand for qualified expatriates globally.”

… we knew that

Another blinding post from JP

He starts off with Music, transitions into the context of music – disappears into album art – talking of which if you want to see two master modern musicians waxing lyrical on album art – ONE DAY check out Steven Wilson and Mikael Akerfeldt duelling over great album covers in Akerfeldts album collection. (This isn’t that link – but I love how often the place themselves in front of album covers to talk about their music.)

His (JPs) point on album covers and packaging is spot on even of itself – I for one love the album art of the past and mourn it’s passing …. But I also believe that packaging continues to be one avenue that musicians can use to differentiate and offer something special to their listeners, fans, customers …. But that’s another story.

From then he moves into the death of the artist Storm Thorgerson – another loss of a master – and whilst talking of packaging, wanders over to David Byrne’s book How Music Works - and yes I do need to go get that one – looks fascinating.

Not connected to the Wired Article he wrote back in 2007 – and which my good buddy John Parker brought to my attention through this post on our Just Good Music blog. (And yes – far too many JPs !) – but that man Byrne does think a LOT about music. Love It.

And then from there, JP moves onto the point of his story – that indeed Context Matters. Well – of course it does – but we do seem to forget. Still – don’t take my word for it – pop over to JP’s site now and read it all … and if nothing else – get to the last 4 paragraphs.

That’s All.

First time I have seen it stated so definitively … No room for misinterpretation here ….

This has been lurking in my drafts folder, so decided to ‘get it out’. It pertains to the ‘amazing news’ that Beyonce lip-synched at the inauguration. Quelle surprise !!

Personally, I believe in 2013, if you do not have it – and aren’t capable of delivering live music on the day – you shouldn’t be there – OR – admit it before – but don’t ‘pretend’.

Years and years and years ago – back in the UK – a furor broke out – someone was touring with their album – tickets were bought – and the performer came on to the stage and played the entire album on a record player – sitting calmly beside his ‘phonograph’ – listening with the audience. People didn’t like it. Hasn’t happened much since – and in all honestyi t was probably more of a ‘statement of art’ – a commentary on the inevitable dubbing and synching that was going on at the time with shows like TOTP.

We now live in a different age. Technologically – and transparently. There is no excuse.

One day – somehow – integrity will be restored. Until then if you can’t even believe that a song is being sung ‘live’ – at one of the most watched events of the year – what chance do we have that we would believe anything ….. anything at all !

Thought provoking read from Fred Wilson. I remember talking about this over lunch with friends Dave Wilt and Jose Lazarus over 10 years ago – of course back then we didn't have a name for it … but this was essentially the idea …

Read It Here

S T U N N I N G
Found By Mr. John Philpin (yet another one)

Well how weird is that

Just saw this

against which I commented this

i like – partic the last one – reminded of band on the run AND music AND bohemian rhapsody – all around the same time in prehistoric times – both work that multiple songs in one single kind of angle – good catch – thankyou.

… note the reference to ‘Music’ – The John Miles song – and lo my last posting to this blog was three weeks ago – referencing EXACTLY that song !!

The Circle of Life indeed.

BTW – take a listen to those three songs – do you like them ?

“Music was my first love

And it will be my last

Music of the future

And music of the past

To live without my music

Would be impossible to do

In this world of troubles

My music pulls me through”

…. exactly

• Music is not a race like winning the marathon, 100 meters et al
• Music is not about success, who was first, how it is classified
• Music is not about the ‘best’
• Music *is* a collection of notes, and variations of patterns and rhythms and timbers and tones and and and …. that hits an individual in a different way
• Music is a language with rules like mathematics and then suggestions and abilities to change and move things around – to see what happens – just like maths
• Music is at once science AND art
• Music is about emotion and feeling and sensory engagement
• Music is about creativity and living

Genre’s are meaningless

• think of ballad’s by metal groups,
• think of pop music produced by classically trained musicians
• think of rock groups ripping off 20s blues musicians
• think of C and W with rhythms and riffs that emerge from the same blues
• think of jazz emerging from blues and then jazz emerging from ‘classical’ ‘ ‘folk’ spanish music
• think of Roger Waters and Paul McCartney and others attempting to write opera
• think of Tommy – a rock opera – but what is ‘opera’

Wikipedia : Opera (English plural: operas; Italian plural: opere) is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (called a libretto) and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting.

Tommy wasn’t the first Rock Opera – it was the first to hit mainstream attention.
It was also dubbed a Rock Opera before it was delivered in a ‘theatrical setting’.

Unlike (say) The Wall which – from inception – was delivered in ‘theatrical settings’ – albeit at venues like Earl’s Court and LA’s Sports Arena – not exactly ‘theatres’.

And remember how everybody waxed lyrical over Sergeant Pepper’s in 1967. Great album. Definitely a shift for the ‘fab four’ – but you only have to look around at the London music scene at the time to understand how they were influenced ….. even listen to some of the lesser known bands who released debuts in that year … but they were the Beatles – and they got the headlines.

And I do not want to take anything away from what the Beatles did – I truly don’t – but I do want people to understand music and its history in context. ‘We’ don’t. ‘We’ barely understand anything about the music, the business, how hard these people work to deliver what they do. And instead we keep flocking to what the experts say is ‘the stuff’ you should be listening to.

The chances are if you are reading this – you aren’t in that category BTW. And that is the problem. How do people who ‘GET’ this make the 99% ‘get it’.

And why do I care ?

All the racing and winning and charts is stuff that has been produced by the publishing industry to justify their existence – WITHOUT attention to the musicians. And it still goes on. If they really cared about who is ‘winning’ then why were downloads only recently counted as ‘valid’. Why can’t bands count the disks they sell at their concerts as part of their count ? And ‘classifications’ helps the music industry package up and sell it. And anyway how do you make a judgement call on whether a beautiful new voice singing a modern cover of an old Billie Holiday tune is better or worse than a brand new instrumental released by an ex member of Yes. You can’t. You shouldn’t. They are different.

Popular music is based on exactly that. What is POPULAR ? Back in the day – popular was who bought the most – not which was requested the most – go figure.

And we (the people) have been shaped accordingly by that industry – and it is sickening. Because, it is the same as it ever was. The banality of music coming across the airwaves is because most of humanity don’t get it.

Sit in audiences and listen to the cover bands and the requests made by people. “Can you play any Willie Nelson” … “sure the one I JUST played was a Willie Nelson – didn’t you know that – IDIOT !! ”

Don’t get me started. And the crap continues. And it is crap.

Let’s wake up and LISTEN.
Let’s PAY ATTENTION
Let’s STOP talking about winning.

Let’s just support ALL MUSICIANS. It is tough what they do. And though I don’t’ LIKE some of the music I hear – I do listen and try it out. I do try to stop myself from being too critical – because I know what it takes to put that stuff together and get up on a stage and perform and sing your heart out and expose yourself. I could never do that.

And seriously – despite what the ‘airwaves’ will have you believe there is some AMAZING modern music out there – we don’t have to keep listening to bad scratchy renditions of music from our youth – sure, its fun – but seriously people – you do not have to live there and keep telling me that

/rant

… unless you want to read this BRILLIANT post from my friend and Just Good Music Cofounder John Parker (the other one was Robert Golladay) …. 10 years ago this year. It is different – but relates. And one reason it relates is that John out of so many people I know that are drawn to music is one of the few that does NOT have a total match on the music I love, but still understands music (and me) well enough to bring things to my attention that have bypassed me – but he STILL discovers it – finds it and shares it. Because he is engaged. As he wrote in an email to me just yesterday :

If I understand ….
… your musical tastes at all, then I have to ask, do you know the group This Will Destroy You?

If not, start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BSHAXpNey0

Now THAT is what it’s about (John’s share – not (necessarily) the band.

Apologies for the wandering nature of this post. Something just hit me this afternoon, and I wanted to get it off my chest. Thanks for your attention – and if you have any comments – please add them below. I am going to be promoting this post and engaging a few more ideas as I consolidate it all into more structured thought.

The relevant post that prompted this post can be found here.

The key is in the final paragraph –

Jonathon Coulton is the ex Yahoo Troubadour who provides this little ditty about Fractals and The Mandelbrot set. Not sure whether I am more surprised that there is a song about Fractals – or that Yahoo employed a Troubadour !!!

My thanks to GW for the heads up.

Draconian Downloading Law In Japan Goes Into Effect… Music Sales Drop