Thursday November 08, 2007 
Thursday November 08, 2007 Ahhh. A clean page in front of me. That's a bit how I'm feeling right now - still caught up in the afterglow of time off but really enjoying being back at work.
Part of it is just beaming with pride over how much got down - and how beautifully it was done - during my absence. My team? They rock! It's just that simple. They got through earnings, crisis communication on wildfires, a major presentation at a professional conference, a high visibility communication opportunity with Jonathan, planning of offsites and leadership meetings, and sensitive internal issues not for discussion here, all on top of the usual day-to-day stuff. Which is nothing to sneeze at... Good thing I come with a, well, shall we say healthy ego, or I might be looking over my shoulder, wondering if I was still needed!
Thanksgiving is two weeks away, so you'll pardon me for getting a jump on what I'm grateful for today - and that is this team of professionals who work so hard on behalf of Sun. And do it with grace and a great sense of humor. Many, many thanks to each and everyone of you on my extended staff. You do us proud!
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Nov 08 2007, 12:24:54 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]
Monday October 08, 2007 So I suppose this is a bad thing for Sun's head of employee communications to admit, but...
I hate company values communication campaigns. Too often, the campaigns feel contrived, celebrated with great chest beating, shouting how fabulous we are. The content can be trite - I mean really, does any company have values that don't celebrate truth and justice? (see Divas, Liars and Thieves if you want to hear me continue the rant.) Ugly t-shirts, refrigerator magnets and paperweights engraved with "Our Company Values" complete the travesty. Yuck.
And yet, I'm here to talk about Sun's values. Without balloons. Without Lucite pyramids. Without smugness. Because I believe we're doing this in the right way - articulating values that reflect who we are and who we want to be, and then tying the whole thing to performance management.
When Jonathan did his direct report reviews in August and September, he framed the conversations around the values that are near and dear to the core of this company. And when he and his top management team reviewed high potentials and talked about succession planning, the dialogue centered as much on people's character, as exemplified in the values, as in their accomplishments.
That's putting your money where your mouth is. And it exemplified integrity, which happens to be one of our five values:
o Courage
o Integrity
o Innovation
o Collaboration
o Pace
By the way, Sun's reputation for courage, integrity and innovation brought me to this company almost five years ago. At that time, collaboration was in scant evidence and pace a joke. Since then, in my opinion, we've come a long way on collaboration, breaking down silos, truly putting all the wood behind one arrow. Pace? Well, we're not going to win any land speed records just yet but there's recognition that we must do better in that area. And as we all know, what is measured is what is done. So putting the spotlight on pace can only help us.
Rather than bringing in the elephants and dancing girls to celebrate our values, let's do something a tad more meaningful. Let's talk about them. Talk to your co-workers, talk to your employees, talk to your managers about them. We're all going to assessed on how we lived them this year - they are that important. Let a thousand conversations begin, and let those spur another thousand, and another thousand, and then perhaps another thousand. Let's get clear on what these values mean to us as an organization, what they mean in our workgroups, and as leaders and employees in the company. In the end, how we hold ourselves and others accountable for living these values is what will make a difference.
For more on our values, you can listen to Bill MacGowan, our chief human resources officer, talk about them here.
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Oct 08 2007, 08:48:33 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]
Friday August 24, 2007 A Ticker Tape Parade of Opinions
It was a stroke of genius. It was an act of idiocy. It was much ado about nothing. It was hugely significant.
As I sit here and drink my morning cup of coffee, I think back to the roar of keyboards that took over the airways yesterday when we announced that Sun's ticker symbol would change from SUNW to JAVA. And what a clatter arose as so many passionate people vented their feelings about this move.
Not a letter went in the mail. Hardly a telephone rang. There were no masses of people gathered in the courtyard, loudly debating. And yet thousands made their voices known. Jonathan's blog had 24,105 hits by 6 pm last night, with 146 readers taking the time to comment on this move - overwhelmingly negative comments, by the way. Meanwhile, the bloggers' alias at Sun was abuzz with the news. Someone sent an email to the alias titled, "New Inanity," and the Sun internal bloggers' alias came alive with comments. The external chat rooms were alive, too, with developers, customers, employees weighing in on the discussion.
The announcement struck a nerve. For many, Java is more than a language - it's a cause. And you don't mess with causes lightheartedly. For employees, still feeling confused over the combination of a great year and the announcement of more layoffs, it was a puzzlement. Why spend money on changing a stock ticker when some people are losing their jobs?
On the other hand, there were those who thought the move was brilliant. We got a huge amount of press, people were talking about us all day. My colleague Al Riske, author of our well-known series Contrarian Minds and a blogger himself, asked the question, "Was it P.T. Barnum who said there's no such thing as bad publicity?" And aside from the publicity, there are number of people who think the move was right - take advantage of our assets and build awareness of our brand.
Jonathan's ears were surely burning all day as he was damned for being, in the words of one pundit, "a marketing weinie" and praised, in the words of another: "Dude. Wonderful. I love the energy you are bringing to Sun. This move is geeky and bold. Way cool. Keep it up."
By the time this exhausting day of highs and lows - and then some more lows - ended, I realized that I haven't felt so optimistic about the future of communication in months. Talk about freedom of speech. And engaging your community in a conversation.
One of our values at Sun is "courage." Whatever you think about the ticker symbol change, you have to agree that it takes tremendous courage to open yourself up to the world and let the conversation swirl loudly and passionately. There are some companies who would have shut down the comments page on their CEO's blog to hide the negative reaction. To Sun's credit, we did not. Personally? I went from the old Web 1.0 reaction of "Damage control!" to realizing that none was necessary. That today's world of e-communities, networking and connections were doing just fine without any "help" from a corporate communicator.
Was changing our ticker symbol a bad move? Was it a good move? Or was it indeed a tempest in a teacup, or rather, a java cup... Time will tell. But the lessons of social networking - and the courage it requires - will stick with me for a long time.
Social networking: toy or business tool? I think today we received the definitive answer.
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Aug 24 2007, 08:03:00 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]
Wednesday August 08, 2007 Keeping the Social in Social Networking
Sunday night, my son and two of his friends joined us for dinner. Over barbecued chicken and corn-on-the-cob, we swapped stories about jobs we'd held, places we'd been, meals we'd eaten. But the most interesting part of the evening - at least for me - was the conversation we had on communication and the role that social media plays for these twenty-somethings.
Their take, in a nutshell:
- Text messaging: Air
and water (btw, dinner was eaten to the background music of cell phones
beeping, singing or tooting alerts of new messages coming in).
How you know where to meet your friends, where the best band is playing
tonight, what time to pick up a friend to go out.
- MySpace: The ultimate site with the best functionality and the most friends
- FaceBook: Used mostly because photo-sharing was better, but features such as "poke" were met with rolled eyes and groans: "What kind of loser 'pokes' someone? If you have something to say, be sociable and text message!"
- Instant messaging: IF you have a pc and IF you happen to be using it, a good way to multitask conversations with a variety of friends
- Will you be my friend?: Friend lists also elicited groans. Why do people you haven't heard from in years now want to be your "friend?" Is it a contest to see who has the longest list?
- Twitter: Huh?
- E-mail: E-what?
- Second Life: A dangerous addiction. The heroin of the electronic community - once you get started, you may find hours of your life gone. But very interesting, and the idea that one can make a living in a virtual world quite fascinating
Such an excellent question. My dinner guests see social networking as...social. A way to communicate, keep in touch, know what's going on. That's its power.
And that's my takeaway from Sunday night. Relationships drive our business. And healthy relationships are built on common knowledge, trust, respect and a large degree of likability. These tools can help us find common ground with each other, learn about each other, and as a result, possibly quicken relationship building and trust development.
Over 3,000 Sunnies now use Facebook. For the most part, we use it because it's a fun way to exchange information, share photos, learn about each other's interests. There's not a big business side to it. But that's OK. Because it's keeping the social in social networking.
We have a lot to learn about this world, but let's not forget what we already know - that we want to work with people we respect and like. Getting to know someone is a big part of that process. How social media can help us expand our relationships and expand our worlds - and how to keep the joy of interpersonal, inperson relationships sacred - are the really big issues we'll need to tackle in the months and years ahead.
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Aug 08 2007, 09:11:01 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]
Monday August 06, 2007 They both depress me. The right number makes me ridiculously happy; the wrong depresses me beyond reason. Yes, i know this is not rational. Yes, I know our stock is up 40 percent over last year. And yes, I'm thankful my weight is not up 40 percent over last year. But still...
Having missed the boom years, I can't really relate to being a multimillionaire, at least on paper. But I can definitely relate to losing money, on paper and in our family bank account - after all, we weren't exactly financial wizards who managed to avoid the dot.com crash. Today, it's not so much about losing money (I joined Sun recently enough that I'm in the fortunate position of not having options underwater), it's more about making money. And watching our stock drop after our outstanding FY07 is really, really annoying.
But that's just money. Let's talk about something that strikes even harder - fitting into my jeans. Arghh. The scale goes up, the scale goes down. The jeans fit, the jeans don't fit. Was it the cookie I ate? The glass of very good wine I couldn't resist? It's nature's cruel little joke that as the years go by, the body gets worse. For women, weight clings to us like white on rice, hairs sprout from our chins while thinning on our heads, the wrinkles... OK, I'll stop now. My male readers are probably gagging and my younger female readers are thinking, "Oh, please, don't let that happen to me."
So here's the scoop. There are some things we cannot control. There are some things we can. The aging process and the market can't be controlled. What we eat and how we conduct our business can. If our stock goes up another 40 percent this next fiscal year, no one - including yours truly - will be complaining. As for my jeans? Alas, an expanding market, complicated by inflation and very good dry martinis...
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Aug 06 2007, 09:00:00 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]
Tuesday July 31, 2007 We held our leadership conference last week - something like 185 vice presidents from around the world came together to kick off our new fiscal year and get aligned behind our FY08 priorities. We did something a little different this year - we asked customers, a former Sun employee, a placement counselor for a major university, a frustrated would-be customer, and even a Silicon Valley legend, to come in and tell us their view of... us.
When you ask for honest feedback. you get it. Sometimes that's more fun than others.
Just a few years ago, we wouldn't have asked for this perspective at a broad forum such as our leadership conference. Our wounds were a little too raw, our pride too badly damaged. And frankly? We were pretty busy focusing on staying afloat. But last week, we came together after a year where we made remarkable progress in turning our company around. You saw the earnings, I hope - it was a report card that just about anyone would be proud to take home.
In light of that, I like to think of this leadership conference as an inoculation against complacency. Yes, we did a lot of great things last year. But we didn't grow enough, and unless we want to spend the rest of our careers cutting costs to maintain profitability, that's something we need to get right in the months ahead.
Our guests did us a great favor by coming in and being truth tellers. Yes, we heard a lot of nice things about what we're doing right. But more important for our future - and our ability to grow - was hearing what we were doing wrong. Here's a short checklist:
- Solaris is fantastic but hard to install and hard for new admins to use. Can't we make it more like Linux? (Answer: Yes. In fact, Project Indiana is already well underway.)
- Our online store is a pain to use. Amazon got this right - why can't we? (Answer: We need to, and honest - we're working on it. We think you'll see improvements soon.)
- Pricing and order management consume way too much time for our customers. We need to do something about this. (Answer: Harder to fix. We're doing a major installation of ERP which is targeted at fixing exactly those problems. But if you've ever done one of these installations, you know that easy it's not.)
So as we congratulate ourselves on a fantastic FY07 (did I mention how good our year was??), we go into our next fiscal year with our eyes wide open. As Mike Lehman will tell you, we're on a journey. And like any journey, there are high points and low points involved. Knowing where some of the land mines are is as important as not drinking our own Kool-aid. Let's move forward with courage, with persistence, and with the words of our guest speakers top of mind. By doing so, FY08 just might be even better than FY07, and wouldn't that be something to write home about...
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Jul 31 2007, 08:07:25 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]
Friday June 29, 2007 Revolutions are generally poorly funded, chaotic, messy affairs. By definition, they are grass roots. There are moments of glory and moments of ignominy. And the outcome is not guaranteed.
Revolution is on my mind, not only because of the July 4th holiday here in the states but because of a very interesting meeting we hosted here at Sun yesterday - our first Sun Social Networking Mashup. Forty folks joined us, both in person and virtually, as we came together to talk about how we can move the company forward, pushing the envelope further and further. Communications, software, marketing, labs, the field and many other groups were represented.
Is revolution an overstatement? Not at all. Our session demonstrated many of the characteristics of an uprising - grass roots, little funding, lots of egos (heck, mine alone took up two seats!), lots of ideas, agreement, disagreement, debate, discussion, and, well, some chaos. What a blast it was!
So in this brave new world, our leaders will learn that they must earn their audiences, much as bloggers do. A title will get you a first listen, but not necessarily a second. Messages needs to be sharp, meaningful and relevant - the audience has moved from victim to volunteer. Communicators don't get off unchanged either. We will find that "managing the message" is a thing of the past. The genie is out of the bottle, and the smart communicator needs to find out how to facilitate the process, not fight it. And life for the citizenry? Overwhelming, involving, self-selected.
John Dutra, our CTO for IT, pointed out that 40 people can't change the world. But 40 people can convert another 40 people, who can convert another 40 people, and so it goes. In fact, there are already thousands of people at Sun who have joined the revolution - now the question becomes how we can use the revolution to form new communities, to collaborate with people who we might never have thought to team with before.
Mistakes, missteps, collisions are all a part of this. How wonderful to work for a company that embraces this messy process. For in that way we are a state-sanctioned revolution, chartered by our leadership to leap ahead, assume nothing and make the new world ours.
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Jun 29 2007, 03:23:55 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [5]
Monday June 11, 2007 When our daughter, Carolyn, was a new baby, I used my limited craft skills to create a little human faces mobile to hang over her crib. Aside from the fact that my husband claimed that the faces looked more like demons than humans and worried I was traumatizing our firstborn, Carolyn stared and cooed at the faces endlessly. This is hardly a testament to my craft skills - it's a fact that babies are wired to recognize and react to human faces.
So I can't say I was terribly surprised to see the results of a recent survey at Sun that showed 61 percent of our employees still prefer to get information from their manager. Social networking makes it easier for managers to reach out to employees and do much of what employees like - provide context to the information, cast it in terms of what matters to the manager, the employee and their group, and just talk about it. Emoticons make it possible to humanize the interaction, sharing feelings and being more genuine.
But there's still something about face-to-face communication that is pretty impactful. Consider a seminar I attended last week on social media and communication. At the session, we saw a demo of a virtual world that was used for company meetings. Part of it was way cool. Virtual meeting places, personalized avatars, interfacing with the real world through a window to a physical conference room...great stuff. In fact, the person speaking to us was from Europe and joining us through his avatar on a big screen in the conference room.
But. I found the experience devoid of emotion and not terribly engaging. Why? Because I was looking at a face that didn't smile, wince, roll eyes, frown, blink or show any kind of reaction at all. Any expressions that came through from body positioning (fold, unfold arms, etc.) were consciously initiated, taking the authenticity factor away. We saw what he wanted us to see, not who he really is. I couldn't relate to him.
So while I find virtual worlds intriguing, I can't say I find them engaging. And I think we'll have to do a better job on the engagement side so that the worlds are not just an intellectual exercise or a video game. Or I think lots of us will lose interest in them pretty quickly.
We're pioneers together in this world. And because communication is at the heart of our humanity, what we do in shaping this world will in turn shape ourselves and our children - how we share, how we relate. What an opportunity we have. And what a privilege.
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Jun 11 2007, 08:00:00 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]
Monday June 04, 2007 The sky is definitely orange. The sky is definitely purple.
I was listening to a National Public Radio show from April in which Bill Moyers talked about his return to PBS. Moyers spoke about the role of the press in reporting and interpreting information, and how that's more difficult today than it has been in a long time. This made me think about my own role as chief employee communications guru at Sun, and what the role of my team is in communicating with Sun employees.
When I first joined Sun early in 2003, I spent a fair amount of time just reading and listening to much of the archived internal communications we had on hand. Frankly, I was disappointed. It felt to me like a spin machine, and after hearing again about how splendid things were at Sun, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, I remember taking my headset off and groaning. Why couldn't we just 'fess up and talk about the world as it really was in 2003 - we had quality problems, our stock sucked, morale was in the toilet and there was tangible fear that we would be acquired by a company whose vision and values were very different than ours.
I've lost some of my naivety since then, and I do understand that there are some things that it is wise not to discuss in public forums - you don't want to yell, "Fire!", and start a stampede, for example. But there are many others that should not be kept in the closet. You don't solve problems by pretending everything is just ducky. You solve problems by facing them and coming up with solutions. And that means communicating about them. Honestly. Fairly. Objectively.
The sky is definitely orange. The sky is definitely purple. Who is right? How do you get to the underlying facts and how do you present them in such a way that you treat both sides with respect? And what is your role in pointing out that maybe, just maybe, the sky is, in fact, blue?
We've done some pretty interesting things at Sun to open up the environment. We've run polls on our internal home page after quarterly earnings reports, asking employees if their confidence in Sun was better, worse or about the same after hearing the news. The results weren't always fun to get, depending on the quarter. But it let us know what people were thinking. We've asked employees what one question they would want answered by our executives -- and received hundreds of questions, some of them tougher than what even Mike Wallace in his heyday might have asked. When executives know that employees know what's going on, good things happen. Just like when politicians know citizens are paying attention...
Open questions help with open communication. It's harder to dodge the tough issues when you have 34,000 employees asking you about them. So what are the principles of a principled communicator? Well, just about the same as a principled Sun employee, as embodied in our Sun values of innovation, courage, collaboration, pace and perhaps most important of all, integrity.
And by the way, the thorniest communication problems come not with reporting if the sky is purple or orange. It's those shades of blue and gray that are the toughest to manage...
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Jun 04 2007, 03:11:10 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]
Wednesday May 30, 2007 Over the long Memorial Day weekend, I read Anna Quindlan's beautifully written essay, “The Weight of What-if” in the April 2 edition of Newsweek. In it, she remarks that those who make war must weigh the good it aims to accomplish against the ruin it leaves behind – a scar on the earth and on countless families who lose loved ones – and civilians and soldiers alike who survive but are left with lifetime reminders of conflict – physically and/or mentally. To quote her, “The rationale for going to war has to meet many tests, but one of them – perhaps the most important one – is whether the mission is strong enough to carry the weight of so many ghosts and so much misery...”
Ms. Quindlan starts off her essay commenting on the high draft number her boyfriend received in the 1971 lottery. My husband was also lucky - his number was 290. And with that, the fear of him going to Vietnam ended. His brothers were as fortunate as he – they all drew high lottery numbers.
Many years later, we continue to live privileged lives.
Our weekend was spent at our peaceful Montana cabin with some of our family. I caught up with my 26-year old nephew, who has spent the past three months volunteering his time in New Orleans to rebuild that trashed city, I was filled in on the adventures of another nephew, a young man who has spent the last year living in Thailand on remarkably little and is now getting ready to head off to India to do the same. Meanwhile, my sister's son has been accepted to law school next year. He spent the last two years in Teach-for-America in the New York area. My son is searching for another job in Los Angeles, trying to find work that pays above minimum wage and provides benefits – not so easy without a college degree.
With no draft in place - and no lottery
which places lives at the mercy of a lucky or unlucky draw - my
children are free to make their own decisions. I have friends
whose children chose to join the armed services. I have friends
whose children did not. As a mother, I'm so grateful that my son
and my daughter have the freedom of choice.
There are no simple solutions
here. As a country, I'm proud that we've rallied behind our
troops - the individual men and women who serve us all - regardless of
how we feel about the war that is being fought. That, at least,
is one lesson we learned from Vietnam.
To those who have sons, daughters,
wives, husbands, mothers or fathers in the armed services, I salute and
thank
you and yours for the sacrifices that are being made. My Memorial
Day wish is for a safe and healthy return for your loved ones. And
for all of us -- a quiet prayer for peace soon.
Tuesday May 22, 2007 If Beethovan had an avatar, what would it look like?
Of all the fascinating cultural changes that technology is bringing us, the new opportunities for artists are among the most mind-boggling, at least for me. Musicians, of course, have been in the forefront of technology for a long time. Recording equipment is the Gutenberg press equivalent for musicians, making it possible to save, copy and share music. But visual artists haven't had this level of technlogical disruption available to them. As Joni Mitchell says, when asked to do an encore, "No one ever said to Van Gogh, 'Hey, man! Do another Starry Night! He did it, he finished it and that was that'"(capture on her brilliant album, Miles of Aisles).
But Web 2.0 is an equal opportunity door opener. Three stories to share with you that you may find interesting...
Bringing the Gallery to My Front Door
Do you know where and how I buy a fair amount of artwork? Well, given that I'm not a billionaire, my tastes are eclectic and I love the feeling of living in an art gallery, I'm always on the hunt for new artists who do interesting work. Not so easy to fit into a busy life. Until I was introduced to Hang Gallery in San Francisco. Hang represents new, undiscovered artists. When they had a gallery in Palo Alto, it was a fun (and dangerous) place for me to drop in. But once they closed that location and consolidated everything in the city, the convenience was gone. Until I discovered their website. Which is fabulous. I can easily browse the collection, see what's new, read about artists, contact them, rent or buy works. I've probably picked up a dozen pieces from them (remember - these are new artists, so you can pick up interesting stuff for very little money).
Art for Sale
So there's a very big movement these days on eBay, centered on "a-painting-a-day." Katherine Tyrrell blogs about this here. She comments that smart artists who want to make a living from their craft have become smart business people and smart web users. Want to buy a piece of artwork but don't have a lot of dough? You can bid on these paintings that usually start well under $100. The quality varies with artist, and beauty, after all, is in the eye of the beholder. Browsing is free, and you can be tempted to get involved for not much money. BTW, Katherine gives some good advice to anyone looking to use the web to build a business. Little bonus for her readers...
Making and Marketing Music
Isn't it ironic that at a time that music is ubiquitous that the music industry is in such deep doo doo? How could an industry run itself so poorly that it has managed to completely miss the revolution? Instead of jumping in, they resisted and are paying a very high price. Editorial comments aside, my colleague, Dave Viotti, brought to my attention this article from the New York Times. Its title, Sex, Drugs and Updating your Blog, alone made it worth looking at, but its author, Clive Thompson, went beyond the title to tell a story well worth reading. Thompson writes of a musician, Jonathan Coulton, who has used the web to build an audience, sell out concerts, sell music - all without an agent. And there's more...his fans have become part of his music:
"Coulton welcomes his fans’ avid attention; indeed, he relies on his fans in an almost symbiotic way. When he couldn’t perform a guitar solo for “Shop Vac,” a glittery pop tune he had written about suburban angst — on his blog, he cursed his “useless sausage fingers” — Coulton asked listeners to record their own attempts, then held an online vote and pasted the winning riff into his tune."
Talk about the Participation Age...and about breaking open walls to let the world in.
Posted by terrymckenzie ( May 22 2007, 08:04:51 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]
Thursday May 10, 2007 OK, hipsters. So here we are, blogging our little hearts out. Experimenting with social media. IM'ing like a bunch of teenagers on a school night. And while we're getting hip on all the new cool stuff that's out there, our kids are talking to each other in a different language - and not one they taught at my high school in Cleveland, Ohio.
A story to illustrate my point...
One of our communicators, Tina Moon, has a teenage daughter - 14 years old, I believe. One weekend, Tina got a text message from her daughter, asking if Tina could come pick her up from a sleepover. It was early on a Sunday, and Tina was not only just half awake and annoyed at being roused on her one day to sleep in, but was also concerned. What teenager ever asks to be picked up early in the morning? So there was some text messaging back and forth. As Tina was getting ready to leave the house, her daughter texted her one more time, asking if she was on her way. Worried, Tina asked if there was something wrong. In response, her daughter texted, "dw jw ". Tina flew out the door and rushed to the friend's house. To find...
No daughter. She was out having breakfast with some friends. Torn between anxious and angry, Tina came home. A few minutes later, her daughter was dropped off by the parents of her friends. And was bewildered at her mother's reaction. After all, the daughter explained, she told her mom that all was well. Doesn't everyone know that "dw jw" means, "don't worry, just wondering"?
I've managed to learn English. I've failed at learning Spanish. At one point, I was reasonably fluent in Italian but those skills are long gone. And now? Now I have to learn... text language??? Oh heavens, I'm in so much trouble. Dare I say, datz a LUG idea? (translation: that's a stupid idea). Tina has taken pity on me and sent me the website that she is now using to communicate with her teenager. I heartily recommend transl8it to you.
Unless you don't want to "git w it." But a warning... you may b L bhind!
Posted by terrymckenzie ( May 10 2007, 06:00:00 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [3]
Friday May 04, 2007 "Digg users staged a revolt this week when the site's administrators tried to remove articles referring to code that could be used to hack DVD copy protection. Digg backed down, saying it would abide by its users' wishes - has the power now truly shifted to the end user?" (Digg: Power to the People or Recipe for Disaster? INSIGHTS, Kate Worlock
A small fly in the golden honey of social media...sometimes the "wisdom of crowds" looks a lot more like reckless mob behavior than a socially self-regulating mechanism where common sense and correct information ultimately rule. Says author Kate Worlock, "Sites dependent on user contributions must accept that they are at the mercy of the mob - only by working with the crowd can these businesses grow, and this does change the balance of power. " (for more on this story, click here)
Changes the balance of power for good? Or for mischief-making antics that ultimately hurt others? Think about what happens when we substitute one word for another:
From: The wisdom of crowds to .... the wisdom of mobs
From: Power to the People! to....Power to the Swarms!
Merriam-Webster's Thesaurus uses the following words as synonyms for crowd: army, crush, drove, flock, horde, host, legion, mob, multitude, press, swarm, throng. Somehow "swarm" isn't quite as inspiring a term as "crowd" and "horde" certainly brings to mind a very different image, doesn't it?
Revolutions are shaped by words, make no mistake about it. Social media has flipped the power triangle upside down, and given a voice to those of us who would otherwise have none. Sometimes we behave well, sometimes we don't. Of all the topics I hear discussed at conferences around social media, this very issue is at the heart of many conversations. To what extent do we regulate the medium? To what extent do we let the people/crowds/throngs regulate themselves?
Posted by terrymckenzie ( May 04 2007, 08:01:11 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]
Tuesday May 01, 2007 I'll be 55 this year. I'm not one to get hung up on a number, and so my age hasn't been an issue for me since I was 15 and could barely wait to turn 16 and be able to drive. My big sister, kind person that she is, did find a way to sober me up about my advancing decrepitude. She said, "Fifteen years ago, you were almost 40. Fifteen years from now, you'll be almost 70." Gee, thanks, sis.
On the other hand, we have very good friends, Doug and Peggy, who are 70, and frankly, if our seventies are anything like theirs, we have good times ahead of us. Last summer, for example, my husband went on a week-long trek with Doug and other friends through the mountains of Montana. This was not a stroll in the woods - this was rock climbing, hanging off 1,000 foot cliffs, worrying about grizzly bears craziness. They came back exhausted, 10 pounds lighter per person and completely exhilarated. This trip was how Doug celebrated his 70th birthday.
And last month, I was in Cleveland helping my mom celebrate her 85th birthday. We had to cut off the guest list at 20 because we wanted to keep her birthday luncheon small enough to be intimate. But she could have easily invited another 30 good friends. Her friends ranged in age from 40 to 95, and were just a great group of women. The ability to make and sustain this many - and this quality - of friendships humbles me. Her friends adore her and speak of her with the greatest of admiration. At 85, my mom has the spirit, the intellect and the energy of a 35-year old. She says that she can't believe it's her when she looks in the mirror - the image does not match the spirit.
So one more. My lovely daughter, Carolyn, turns 25 this spring. She's going through a syndrome that we parents of young adults know well - the "quarter-century crisis." This occurs when our children graduate from college, start out in the world and then realize how scary it can be to figure out your career and your life path. She kicked off her career strongly, working for Sun in Chile and then moving over to Ernst&Young (Santiago), where she advanced quickly. But now? She doesn't know what to do next. Stay in her current job at Telefonica Espana, start her own business, or start a family. Carolyn inherited my Type A personality, so not having a clear goal to push toward is disconcerting for her. Plus she's a newlywed American living in Chile. Not an easy path she's chosen...
So my point? Life is what you make it. Yes, each of us is dealt cards that we must play (and by the way, I'm really hoping I got my mom's genes on aging gracefully). But we decide the game and the moves. And age truly is just a number. It's the spirit with which you approach life that counts.
Posted by terrymckenzie ( May 01 2007, 12:47:26 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]
Friday April 27, 2007 When my son was 16 (could that really be 7 years ago?), he and his friends were all blogging. My husband and I were fascinated but eventually, turned off (it might have been that blog where he ranted about what miserable parents we were - which made us feel kind of badly until we clicked on several other teenage blogs and found similar themes. This is not to say we weren't bad parents but apparently, we were hardly alone in reach new depths of parental tyranny.). But I digress.
Sun blogs are three years old today. If you look at the thousands of people who have blogged on our site, that's roughly 9,000 years in blogger time (3 years times conservatively 3,000 people). I joined a year ago, and have not regretted a minute of participation. All that experience, all that knowledge, all those great personalities sharing ideas and talking...how cool is that?
I've "met" people I never would have had the opportunity to talk with. I've read about products and processes, insights and ideas that have made me smarter and more knowledgeable. I've shared family moments and work moments, and have become a member of a much broader community.
Bloggers create a community of ideas. We're judged by the quality of our thinking and the clarity of our writing. We join our Sun community with that of the world at large. And I believe in my heart that we are all better for it.
Happy birthday, everyone!
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Apr 27 2007, 12:35:07 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]
