Leaders, Managers and Neither

I just came from a 1 hour presentation on our organization's CIO search committee. The report was fairly brief, and decidedly non-controversial.

One of the presenters of the report repeated several times the statement "We need a CIO with vision, that will lead our organization to greatness".

After approximately the fourth time he repeated this, I mentioned that there was a difference between leaders, visionaries, and managers. I suggested that we did not want a visionary/leader, that instead what we need is a good manager. "That is what I said" he replied. But, of course, that isn't what he said.

I used to get these things confused myself, until I listened to this talk by the father of modern management, Peter Drucker. He has since died, but I think this was an important moment for myself, where I realized that I would never be a manager. I am just not that person. But managers are very important -- it is just that their role has changed, but not as much as some would expect.

What we need is not a leader with vision, but an organization with vision. This is a critical difference. One is a one-trick pony. It is Steve Jobs. The other is a sustained culture of innovation, where a CIO protects this culture, and lets it flourish, even it means that things have to change in ways that make people uncomfortable. It is a bunch of Steve Jobs in an ecosystem that can support them, let them do what they do best.

This does sound a bit overly optimistic (and a bit corny) when I read it just now, but I think it is what makes some schools better than others.

Conservapedia

I can't complain based on politics. That is the problem. The expectation is that logic, reason and facts can somehow *be* biased. History is indeed open to interpretation. It is continually revised -- but for the better,for the worse, or simply spun?

Post Modernism tried to approach this problem, and in the end became a victim itself.

Blindly accepting anything written online without substantiation is a critical problem. It is a problem with wikipedia, or any service that offers "information" -- but is it manifestation itself -- or is it how the information is presented?

That is what confuses me about Conservapedia. Why does it need to exist? It seems to me that what wikipedia could always use are people who are willing to rigorously interrogate content -- make sure that it is clear, the citations are clear, that it meets muster intellectually. This is not a conservative or liberal thing. These things have nothing to do with whether someone is liberal, conservative, republican, democrat, christian, buddist or agnostic. It is necessary to think clearly and critically.

But, sadly, the folks that set up Conservapedia think differently about this. That separate can be equal. Or better.

Frankly, I find this sort of thinking quite scary.

--hal

52 Reasons to stop using Windows 2000

It is memorial day weekend, so I doubt many will see this, but thought it might be good to generate a little traffic.

A quick story. My nephew's Win2kPro machine quit booting -- blue screen on bootup (drive missing error! -- which is of course not true -- because it was booting from the drive to get that message). Yeah, a virus had mangled the master boot record -- fixed that.

Lots and lots of viruses -- lots. I used Avast Home Edition (not a plug here, but it does work and it is free) to remove stuff.

Windows Update Installer however doesn't work -- you see -- it was disabled as well by the virus software. I spent at least 45 minutes in microsoft help figuring out what to do (clean registry, spin 3 times, clap hands, take a drink of water, throw salt over my shoulder).

After many gyrations, I uninstall it, and install a new version. After a couple of reboots, it works!

So, as the title goes -- Windows then proceeds to download 52 updates in one sitting.

A reality check is good once in a while.

I have Vista installed under Parallels on my Mac. I am sure it will be better.

Ethics and Cocaine

This post on the blog "Innovation Online" (humpf) about the energy drink "Cocaine" was interesting, but perhaps not for the reason that the author wanted to be.

I find the moral indignation expressed slightly offputting. Really. Is naming a drink after a illegal substance a violation of ethics, or simply in Bad Taste? And who gets to decide?

This popped into my head, because I know there have been other products named after illegal acts/substances (Grand Theft Auto, the perfume "Opium"). I am sure they caused outrage as well, but they certainly didn't cause our society to collapse.

It seems to me that the outrage that this author expresses is quite misplaced. Instead of targeting a specific energy drink that likely tastes quite bad (citric acid and high fructose corn syrup), let us talk about some REAL violations of ethics. There are much worse things to focus on than a tacky energy drink. I will leave it up to whoever reads this to make up their own imaginary list -- mine is brief, but I am sure you can think of what it might contain.

The reason I write this is that more than ever we are distracted, we can't keep our eye on the ball. We expend mental energy over a badly named energy drink, because we can't seem to fix the bigger problems. The violations of ethics are so large that we can't see them, so we fret over a badly named energy drink -- but it is really just a distraction.

--hal

Mixed Media

You know it has hit prime time when educators talk about "mix culture", a term that has been used by many (including Lev Manovich) to describe the phenomena of combining media sources in unexpected ways -- creating juxtapositions -- hybrid creatures. In music, mix culture goes back a long, long ways -- as soon as crufty 12 bit Mirages hit the scene -- a decent sampler everyone could afford. HipHop was important to it. But we can go back even further to composers in the 30's, 40's and 50's who used "found audio" (Cage et al).

Most think of mix culture in the context of YouTube, or techno music, but it is more profound that this. I give you Okapi, who I think shows what this really means.

The music is clever, juxtaposed, but it is very musical. It leverages acoustic sounds much more than most who work in this medium -- it is a nice refresh from the usual remixed drone. It seems to me to be at times quite cinematic.

So, again, like Edith Frost, you can download a nice packaged sample of his work, or you can actually buy one his CD's.

Dick Dale

Dick Dale is the king of the surf guitar. Listen kids, to his advice. He says -- make your own CD's, book your own gigs, don't be afraid to do gigs for free, don't worry about being on the cover of Rolling Stone (or, I will add, a music video in rotation). Just make stuff, don't sign with a label (or create your own label like Fugazi), sell out of the trunk of your car like Johnny Cash.

He has always been one of my guitar heroes, but now I respect him even more.

--hal

What Does EMI's DRM Free Songs Mean for Artists?

I am as pleased as anyone else that EMI will begin selling their digital download music as DRM free. Apple's iTunes store will deliver them as 256 kb/s AAC files, which just happens to be the bitrate I use to rip music into iTunes. So....I will finally give iTunes some of my hard-earned cash.

But....it really doesn't change the fact that the reason this is happening is that there is a bit challenge facing music companies. I have been thinking about bigbox retailers such as BestBuy -- this is not a good thing for them, as CD sales continue to shrink.

Perhaps the most bone-headed reaction I have heard to this announcement is the comment that all it would do is fuel more piracy. I doubt that things could be worse than they are now -- anyone can rip their CD's into iTunes quite easily. If anything, I think people really want to pay for music. I know that I do. My main gripe these days is the stuff that you can't get on CD -- Lime Spider's "The Cave Comes Alive", Bill Nelson's debut album "Northern Dream". I actually just lost a bid on ebay for that particular album -- which ended at $26.00.

Add to this the dilemma of the working artist. They need a distribution company perhaps for promotion -- but do they really? I think about this as I listen to Edith Frost's demo album, full of sad, bare and beautiful music. It sometime evokes memories of all things "Twin Peaks". It is worth a download. I like the spareness of it, although a little less reverb would have been nice.

I found her through a now-defunct site "Comfort Stand", which was a brave idea -- sort of a "Creative Commons" of music. Some of the content there has found it's way to my iTunes list forever. Okapi -- cinematic music music indeed.

So, sorry to cop out based on the provocative title. I don't know what it means. I think the industry will look a lot different in 20 years, hell it might not even exist as it does now.

Now, go download some free music please, and buy something to support those brave enough to take advantage of the internet.