][< MAN,
1) How many hours have you logged?
2) You should be ED of The Guild.
3) Agree with most of your conference call rules, however most calls should
be mandatory or excused as any other meeting (What about Robert's Rules?)and
second should be uninterrupted as with a regular meeting
4) Mobile phone etiquette: Dan Briody: Wireless World:
Ten Commandments of cell phone etiquette, with amendments to follow:
1. Thou shalt not subject defenseless others to cell phone conversations.
When people cannot escape the banality of your conversation, such as on the
bus, in a cab, on a grounded airplane, or at the dinner table, you should
spare them. People around you should have the option of not listening. If
they don't, you shouldn't be babbling.
2. Thou shalt not set thy ringer to play La Cucaracha every time thy phone
rings. Or Beethoven's Fifth, or the Bee Gees, or any other annoying melody.
Is it not enough that phones go off every other second? Now we have to
listen to synthesized nonsense?
3. Thou shalt turn thy cell phone off during public performances. I'm not
even sure this one needs to be said, but given the repeated violations of
this heretofore unwritten law, I felt compelled to include it.
4. Thou shalt not wear more than two wireless devices on thy belt. This
hasn't become a big problem yet. But with plenty of techno-jockeys sporting
pagers and phones, Batman-esque utility belts are sure to follow. Let's nip
this one in the bud.
5. Thou shalt not dial while driving. In all seriousness, this madness has
to stop. There are enough people in the world who have problems mastering
vehicles and phones individually. Put them together and we have a serious
health hazard on our hands.
6. Thou shalt not wear thy earpiece when thou art not on thy phone. This is
not unlike being on the phone and carrying on another conversation with
someone who is physically in your presence. No one knows if you are here or
there. Very disturbing.
7. Thou shalt not speak louder on thy cell phone than thou would on any
other phone. These things have incredibly sensitive microphones, and it's
gotten to the point where I can tell if someone is calling me from a cell
because of the way they are talking, not how it sounds. If your signal cuts
out, speaking louder won't help, unless the person is actually within
earshot.
8. Thou shalt not grow too attached to thy cell phone. For obvious reasons,
a dependency on constant communication is not healthy. At work, go nuts. At
home, give it a rest.
9. Thou shalt not attempt to impress with thy cell phone. Not only is using
a cell phone no longer impressive in any way (unless it's one of those
really cool new phones with the space age design), when it is used for that
reason, said user can be immediately identified as a neophyte and a poseur.
10. Thou shalt not slam thy cell phone down on a restaurant table just in
case it rings. This is not the Old West, and you are not a gunslinger
sitting down to a game of poker in the saloon. Could you please be a little
less conspicuous? If it rings, you'll hear it just as well if it's in your
coat pocket or clipped on your belt.
To this list, I would add, "Being There Beats Calling In" in other words:
Calling by mobile should not outrank or interrupt a person to person meeting
or conversation. One does not commute for an hour to meet someone face to
face to be interrupted and put on hold, this is just plain rude!
Best,
Leland
Leland R. S. Torrence
Leland Torrence Enterprises and the Guild
17 Vernon Court, Woodbridge, CT 06525
Office: 203-397-8505
Fax: 203-389-7516
Pager: 860-340-2174
Mobile: 203-981-4004
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
www.LelandTorrenceEnterprises.com
-----Original Message-----
From: The listserv that Ruth calls "Pluto's spider-hole."
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gabriel
Orgrease
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 7:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [BP] Peering into the Future of the Infosphere
Dan,
Excellent article.
A few thoughts come to mind.
My son, his significant other (the two political scientists), myself and
my wife all play WoW. Obviously the two younger play it pretty
seriously, they are both in the top rated guild on the server (there are
many servers and many players on each server) - meaning their guild has
logged the hours to beat the last Boss in the most recent instance. They
are in essence a member of the advance guard - their computer stations
located within 5 feet of each other. Last Saturday & Sunday though we
both sit in the same house, and shout back n' forth to each other
something like 20 ft, our recreation (meaning our escape to refresh our
lives) was partly spent, between her watching baseball and my hiding
from baseball, with our two avatars (Oa & Heftyhanna) running around in
Darkshire together. As I spend as much time as I do in the Auction House
(AH... and there are two types of them, one for use within the faction -
ours being Alliance - and one for use between the two factions - we play
PVP which is player versus player and in which the opposite faction,
Horde, can show up at any time and kill us, or we kill them, for honor
points bla bla)... regardless I can find nice armor or weapons or
whatever at the AH and buy them for my wife's character, in fact, when
we started playing on Saturday I enchanted a bunch of her gear. It was a
nice gesture like remembering to buy flowers or a pumpkin.
David & I in business have from the beginning of our partnership
conversed in an analogous parallel between the act of doing business and
the dynamics of online gaming. Recently we have noticed in business the
moving around of design professionals from one firm to another, as in
musical chairs, and our conversation as to the phenomena, which seems to
have many varied and relatively unconnected motivations - though we are
seeking out the socio-economic pattern to determine a corollary w/ the
health of the economy - we dropped into discussion as to how folks tend
to move from guilds (small political entities w/in WoW, grps of ppl
brought together for a common purpose to achieve a group goal -- and to
share talents, experience, tehnique & pooled resources) -- it seems that
to accomplish in the fictional cyberspace it can take many hours of
concentration and obsession and say you are a geeky guy w/ a girlfriend
(or wife) who resents that you spend all that time online eventually the
pressure builds up to NOT be connected and you throw your hands up, say
you cannot take it any more (she wants to go ocean kayaking), and you
leave the guild. There are therapists for online gaming addiction.
As to our conversing in WoW analogies in our probes & investigation work
the process of finding out information is very similar in practice &
process to entering into any previously unexplored instance (dungeon)
even to the point of how we interact in the communications as to how we
are interfacing w/ the process (WoW players use Ventrilo, which makes it
possible for multi-audio conversations in groups over our headset-mics
of like 40 ppl doing one thing w/ emotional intensity.... for free?? not
counting brodband costs, and I hear a family got hooked not on WoW but
on Ventrillo they all talk to each other frm here to Austria & back).
The WoW experience gives us a working vocabulary, a model of perception,
a metaphoric/analogous language, with which we can rather quickly &
efficiently analyse, sum up and communicate an ongoing process in
interaction with OTHERS. It is a long way for me from the stonemason
saying "Awa" whenever he wanted water in the mud.
I was recently brought to a conversation re: use of cell phones on a
worksite as being seen as non-productive work activity. I protested in
that the auto body mechanic owner of the business where we were working
and who was possibly observing the phone usage and may, or may not, have
construed it as a diversion from putting holes in his building... that
the brunt of the communications process most likely was me sitting 80
miles away and interfacing w/ the work, as much, directing and either
deriving feedback or providing information to the process. As I see it
we parallel manage projects with multiple channels of communication. The
infosphere is radically changing the manner in which business in 'bricks
& mortar' is being conducted. There is going to be a divide between
those who are participating in a process that will be for the most part
invisible to those who do not participate in it. (I am reminded of a
presentation Stewart Brand gave a few years back at an APT conference in
Chicago.) There is a definite need for an interface, and an economy to
be realized in the interface, between those working in the infosphere
and those working in the physical world. Broken windows do not get
replaced by someone working at a computer, the glass needs to be
procured and moved about, lifted and installed. But someone sitting at a
computer connected to the infosphere can certainly initiate and
facilitate the process and provide direction w/ the same efficiency as
they would undertake with a computer online game simulation. "We need to
go here now and do this, today. Call me when you get off the grif. I
will be collecting glowing mushrooms in the mean time."
So Bluetooth... I am enamoured of the idea that I resisted of having a
phone connected to my ear that I can use in a manner in which the owner
of the auto body shop cannot see that I am talking or being talked to
regardless if it is in service to his project, or not. In other words,
the process of getting the work done can be done more efficiently w/out
the overhead of a luddite watching... I compare it to the habit of
walking around with the titles of books turned in so that the jocks
cannot see what I am reading and that if they do not see what I am
reading I pray that they are less apt to want to beat the crap out of me.
I do resist the 24/7 connection. It does not stop folks from thinking
that I should be connected 24/7. Despite the fact that so many folks are
paying attention, and therefore it increases our communal need for
responsible attentiveness, it also I hope makes possible for people to
not pay attention.
Currently a few issues are such as this -- the Skype answering service
(my robot?) which is our main business phone #, the one printed on our
business card, I can't remember to go check if anyone has left a
message. So I do not return phone calls a whole lot. I have enough to do
already without more connections. But now it sends a txt message to my
cell phone via VOX and SMS reminding me to go check. The cell phone,
which is the direct connection is the number that if I am doing business
w/ you is the one to call. If I forget to turn it off and leave it on my
pants it tends to go beep beep at some god awful hour and wake someone
up. If it wakes Kathy up then I usually get the pants entire dumped on
my head. So I try to remember to leave it in the 'office (the place for
paperwork)' on the charger - battery maintenance is a pain - but then
when folks wanting the 24/7 access call they wonder why I do not call
them back, particularly if they do not leave any message -- well, I'm
herding enough information already and what comes first on MY list is
what gets taken care of, regardless of my attempts to multi-process and
use several computers at one time. Human interaction for the most part
slows things down (poor audio on cell phones -- and I find that from
home base to cell phone Skype is much more clear than the land line...
signal to noise ratio... the exhaustion one encounters with parsing too
much noise coupled with the slowly evolving biological breakdown of the
reception mechanism) and at the same time it is human interaction that
increases the demand on faster throughput. I am finding it as a result
more compulsive for me to avoid bad communications processes in favor of
expending less energy to maintain a semblance of communication on
multiple layers.
Another note on WoW. Though I play the AH quite a bit it is a futile
activity in a larger context as if what I actually wanted to obtain was
more money in the cyber economy I can spend cash to obtain it. My buddy
in Afghanistan gets pretty bad lag on his laptoip and as a result he
cannot play the AH and so, having nothing else to do w/ his non-work
time (14 hour shifts) he pays for his gold. It is safer for him to sit
in his plywood shed and go online than to go and do anything anywhere...
we recently had a conversation about going on a solo 5 hour road trip...
for him it was a NOT on your life! If I cannot supply body armor at
least I can help a soldier not be bored to death. There is a human
phenomena on WoW called Chinese Farmers which essentially is a
real-virtual sweathouse for someone, I'm not actually sure if they are
Chinese or not, who spend their time playing WoW in order to accumulate
and sell crap and then in turn when paid real money will sell, I imagine
through a consolidating broker, Gold to WoW players -USD. I see them
active on the AH when suddenly a particular item (cured rugged hides) is
being sold 50 times by one player with a name like Xingmaopo at a
slightly below market rate (there are market rates). I myself have had
my characters assumed to be a Chinese farmer because sometimes I simply
like to screw w/ the heads of my fellow players, particularly if they
are being obnoxious immature jerks... like that A-hole Gongojaff last
Friday who was pissed that my War Karvemupski did not know how to block
the boss at the Scarlet Monastery chapel. So Gongojaff is now on my
ignore list... I am invisible to him and he cannot whisper to me. And,
in closing, there is a learning curve between generations - there is no
way to tell anyone's age on WoW unless they reveal it by saying so (who
can you believe) or you assume so by their actions... but in the larger
consensus there is an education of the younger generations of the
importance of preservation of the information commons.
When you log on to a character WoW tells you in detail how many days,
hours and minutes you have played the particular character.
][<en
PS: and there is this recent outburst on my part in respect of
information overload and our human tendency to inadvertently abuse each
other with it...
Conference Calls
1. Prior to schedule of a conference call the nature of the
business to be conducted on the call needs to be clearly clarified and
communicated to those who will be invited to participate on the call.
The task assigned to a conference call should be narrowed down into
sufficiently small subdivisions of the entire project and event plan
process (see Work Breakdown Structure - an effin list) to permit a small
group for discussion. It is up to the call coordinator to select and
invite participants to the conference calls.
2. Working conference calls should not be undertaken without a
written agenda that has been previously sent out by e-mail to all
invited participants. A moderator, if not the call coordinator directly,
will be chosen prior to the call with a task to keep order towards an
efficiency to complete the business at hand as quickly as comfortable
for all working conference calls.
3. Free form, brain stormed, gas cloud consciousness, general
progress reports, pep and social conference calls need to be clearly
distinguished from working conference calls. Social calls do not need an
agenda and participants should be forewarned and everyone agreed that
the calls will be informal and nonstructural.
4. Working conference calls should be broken out into no more
participants than are needed to cover specific tasks. If the call
coordinator is reporting to the larger organization or allied work
groups then it is appropriate that the call be limited in number of
participants. For example if the call is required for the project team
to work out logistical issues then it should be limited in participation
to the project team ironing out logistic issues. Not everyone in the
organization needs to be equally informed about the number of plastic
chairs. Likewise fund development calls should be limited in scope of
participation to those working on fund development and not involve those
working on plastic chairs. It is the responsibility of the call
coordinator to see that communications across working groups are made as
needed. Either to see directly to the communications or to delegate
communications to another participant on the call.
5. Participation of higher level leadership, staff or other
organization members on any or all working calls is not needed and may
often not be appropriate and should be discouraged as it has a tendency
to erode the authority of the call coordinator.
6. Calls that involve the participation of individuals to interface
outside of the organization, such as allied event planning partners, the
number of persons invited in on the call should be limited to the
specific task at hand. Individuals external to the organization should
not be invited in on working conference calls without previously
informing members of the event project team that outsiders will be
present on the call.
7. The purpose of working conference calls is to communicate and
solve problems. Problems cannot be solved if they cannot be brought up,
argued over, explored and a consensus reached as to means to work
towards solutions by the responsible parties. Large groups on conference
calls are dynamically incapable to obtain a consensus toward action.
Problems (dirty laundry) should not be aired in front of outsiders or
allied partners and friends.
8. No volunteer to an organization should be exposed to
embarrassment or cornered if they are perplexed with a problem that they
are inhibited to discuss openly and explore with their peers.
9. Conference calls should not continue if it is not possible for
all participants to either hear each other comfortably, or for the less
outgoing to have an opportunity to speak their piece.
10. Participation on conference calls should be considered voluntary.
They should also be conducted with decorum, in a polite manner and in a
spirit of respect to all parties present.
XXX
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