Every IT organization can benefit from knowledge-sharing. An example of this, and a particularly resource efficient way to grow the skills of almost any organizational unit, is to allow for cross-training.  An exceptional vehicle with which to present cross-training is as a component of an “20% Plan.”

A 20% Plan might include time for members of an organization to expressly work on their own ideas (Google has such an installment within its workflow). There are other ways to make use of such an allotment of time for an organization — though, with this design Google leans toward fostering creativity.

A sound structure to develop and implement cross-training, starting with the most credible and knowledgeable members in each sub-unit, is a well-rounded, mature accent to any IT organization — and might make a smart form for early adopters of 20% Plans — especially at Universities, where the resources to teach in mass are at the ready.

Installing such a facility to members of organizations helps to build important relationships, promote trust,  and can increase the overall value of each and every member. In this way, peer review allows even the cross-training methods to become better over time, and over-time impose internal efficiency standards on each developed organization unit.

I suggest something along the lines of: members develop training topics as a function of their skill-set, while audience size and reaction determine acceptance and effectiveness. In this way, the raw data help to demonstrate direction and help organizational development respond in something closer to real-time.

Who do you want to spend your money? A woman who needs $150,000 in make overs and travel expenses or a guy who makes a pair of shoes go the distance (and into the White House)?

In case you McCain people wondered, this is what it means to walk the walk.

One of the most observable yet understudied socioeconomic changes in the US over the last century, has been the integration of a credit system whose sum value while virtual, has been forcibly bloated to equal that which was actual. It is a structure which has inflated the value of American currency, the appetite of the American consumer, and made less visible the need for mindful economic discipline — discpline in general.  It is a structure that popularized passive budgeting, over-spending, and the carrot-on-a-stick philosophy that comes from keeping up with the Jones’. More importantly and obviously more general, this is a structure that changed our society.

The change has created a set of conditions that poise the US for a dangerous and likely disastrous economic retraction — leaving us the same old questions we had when we set-out. And yet these conditions will give birth to newer, deeper questions about the future (and who we are). For while it is arguable that this explosion of virtual wealth may have incited some social mobility or led to some amount of social progression, I fear both those advances however great, have also been as equally virtual.

Certain ultimate questions take shape upon the horizon: What social or cultural changes will lead Americans to the discipline needed to excel with the changes ahead? And: Is this generation ready for a world where it must pick between dinner or a movie?

This is for John–

1.  Thinking on Your Feet

Few people might call analysis an art, but it is — ask any developer. When you have to come up with a way to fix a train when its moving along the tracks (patch a broken, already released product) , you learn fast how to think on your feet.

Another way to put it: when you develop software, over time, you begin to restructure your thoughts so that almost any inquiry can fit inside a formalized optimization problem.  It goes something like “What is the ideal way to handle this?” After answering that question in the multitude of ways its presented developing software, the programmer literally has learned optimized internal methodologies. This in turn further improves how they handle future analysis.  And before long like rolling lava, this optimized way of thinking covers all things and creates a new mental landscape. Smarter… Faster… Stronger…

Except maybe as an acrobat on the high-wire, few other jobs will provide such powerful training with thinking on your feet.

2.  Mastering Discovery

Developers need a lot of other software tools for making software.  And they are without a doubt the very definition of power user when it comes to how most of those tools were designed to be used.  So its often that a developer will discover a bug in the very tools used.  What so great about that?

These instances teach you discovery! They teach you how to remain skeptical and studious, so that one day from learned proper analysis, you are astute enough to see such problems coming down the pike and perhaps inspired to deal with things differently in your own creations– all gratifying..

Sometimes though, there is just no more instant a form of gratification than being first.  First in line.. first to make it home– first to find a problem.  Mastering discovery means just that, being first when it comes to finding (and if possible solving) problems.  But, it also means being a developer sometimes comes with all the gratification and arrogance of approaching your SAT proctor and saying suggestively, “Excuse me, sir.  I think you’ve gotten this question wrong.”

3. Being In-Demand

Lets face it, we’re surrounded by technology.  And one of the best things about being a developer — being a technologist — is simply the fact that right now, every one needs you!  Mostly due to the truths surrounding #4 on this list.

4. Making it Look Easy When its Not

One of the best things about being a software developer, is that we’re usually able to make it look incredibly easy given what the heck we’re actually doing.  We type some jumble into some window on our screen and suddenly, we can all socially network on the web;  communicate and search based on geographic location; blog about our day; become closer to one another and the information that binds us to one another.

To draw a metaphor other developers might need concrete, nails, hammers, sheet rock, a giant truck to carry it all and the laborers. Not us; a desk if you got one otherwise our lap will do and these days the obvious Internet connection, is pretty much all we need.

The reality is though, our job — software development — is intensely challenging, making the success all the more sweet albeit not so easy to share.

5. Making Friends/Solving Problems

Then there are times you can share it.

One of the most true statements about sociality with people is that shared trials and tribulations can bring people together more smoothly and easily than most other sets of circumstances.  The effort to share survival is an ultimate and immediate trust-builder.

When you and your co-worker manage to save the company $100,000 outage, keep some cracker from making it all the way into some critical system, find a faster way to complete some business process, or even just provide a friend a URL that makes their personal lives easier somehow, you’re making friends,  solving problems.  You’re contributing to something that is truly the masterwork of every developer: a unified framework for solving problems, creating a better perhaps less hectic life for everyone.

I love to paint myself as a sober minded person, one that would not very easily fall in with the crowded world of conspiracy theories. Some people go on believing everything that they read. You shouldn’t (thats right, *evil grin* not even I). This idea begs the question, who can you believe? An interesting paradox presents itself though similarly here: Who’s watching the watchmen?  But first, the details…

Buying into this next idea isn’t joining the crazy club at all, no matter how many of those kinds of alarms this might immediately set off in your head. Give it a chance — I did, and was surprised. If you do, this will find you as far from that group as possible and in a world that makes a bit more sense, about why for so long, the Internet has been able to remain this “open” bastion of communication. Because none of this is a conspiracy theory, its not a theory at all, its a simple to understand fact. Infrastructure, especially something as revolutionary as the Internet, must be protected, in other words, watched.

For a long time now, the United States government has been monitoring Internet usage going directly against all constitutional forms protecting individual civil liberty. How would I know? Besides the video below, and the myriad trustworthy Americans who’ve worked in telecom I’ve known, and what I’ve heard from them for years, I too have had my own personal experience.

In the late 90s, a person representing the FBI offered me a job tracking hackers as part of a project at that time, I was told, was called Phoenix (a re-vision of Project: Sun Devil). Now, it is known publicly by the same name as at least one of the software tools that resulted from the current instance of the project, called Carnivore.

While the video shown below is aging, dated 03/02/2007, the latest on the FISA decision brought all this to the front of my mind, and caused me to want to re-highlight all of this, as well as my experience (if not for my own personal reflection, for your review). I mean, if its just a conspiracy theory and no one’s watching, why would telecommunication companies even require legislation providing immunity, right?

No friends, its not some far fetched circumstance at all unfortunately, or something hidden under a deep brow of secrets and codes. Essentially, the government has been doing this since it was possible, and since experts could tell there would be a mass exodus of our culture (but especially an explosion in media on) to the Internet. And because everyone was so busy eating up their new technological toy, no one bothered to notice. And if they had, like back in 03/2007, what could they do? Watch the video and ask yourself: Who’s watching the watchmen?

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=2930944

His art has been linked here always as a staple on the sites blog roll. In this video though, Chris Jordan, is in his own words able to bring new life to his work (from TED, Chris Jordan: Picturing excess).

Something happened when I turned 28 — I changed fundamentally. As the unrecorded lyrics to a song my old friend Mario once wrote explains, “time… changes.” I think this was Mario’s uniquely interesting way of explaining how as people change, that change propagates in the world around them. I’m not quite sure I understand why or even how things came to be so in my case, but maybe trying to describe these two parts of my day (my secret times) will help.

Secret #1: The Beginning

Everyday now, by the time my rather expensive coffee maker has quit its gurgling, I find myself feeling a lightning-like excitement. Before this, the newness of a day did not excite me in the least and instead stared back at me questioningly as if from the gaze of a wondering child.

I would ask while trying to convince myself to get up, “Why do you keep doing this?” In other words, why do you keep on living, as if it were that torturous. I think we can all agree that that is a ridiculously pessimistic outlook and was probably a big part of my problem. When I realized I had stopped asking myself this (which I realized suddenly one morning), my first thought was I had just quit caring altogether and that I had become so cynical that such questions required no answer for someone like me. Fortunately howsoever, for me (and the rest of the good people in my life), this is not, nor was not, the case. No, in fact, because I had been so far from the feeling for so long, it took all this to realize, I’m happy!

I love my family. I love my friends. Above all else, I love information. A close second might be, that I love our troubled world. I love problems, as such I love my job. Certainly I have no love of creating problems, but knowing they’ll be there because not everyone is so interested in solving them as I, is a kind of comfort. This may be partly because I have come to believe in, whole heartedly, the Zen aphorism the obstacle is the path — which really just means among other things, a direction toward solution is only ever clearly defined by the problem invoking its need. But, I’ve come to understand my love of ability more, and my love of freedom to contribute. Though I find odd to reveal, I even love that I get to use tools like Wordpress everyday to continue to practice and hone the art of writing. All this, so that one day, I may take this show on the road, so to speak — and write a book.

Secret #2: The Ending

Everyday, around six or seven o’clock in the evening, I settle myself outside. If its cold or raining, I’ll secure myself away on the porch or even in my parked car with the windows down (as much as nature allows me). I’ll sit out there for hours sometimes. I sit there, outside, and I try and empty my mind of everything swirling inside it. I try to give myself over to nature by listening to the world.

Whether it be birds chirping, clicking crickets, the wind’s whispering voice (as Hendrix thought of her) in my ear, the gentle tapping of raindrops, or the more silent and wispy, stinging snowflakes at my face, I watch and listen to the world. I think of this quiet and relaxing time by myself as a tutor in ethics, but much more. It is nature as this teacher that tempers me, helping me as a man and a technologist, to understand, that in world rarely interested in acclimating itself with the old and left behind, we must seek to understand the oldest technology, nature itself, as time… changes.

An assumption based in logic, that seems unfortunately too true about our Country is that, in the United States of America, not knowing something makes one popular. This is because, more Americans “don’t know” than those that “do know”,  making ignorance a more socially acceptable attribute at times than intellect.

America, in an age of information, has become a home for a Culture of the Stupid. So says the Washington Post and its sources in a piece titled The Dumbing of America. We have to wonder if this phenomena is the result of people mistaking vision for academic, intellectual or social elitism. Or, if this is just the beginning of an era of Anti-Intellectualism.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/03/national/main3783425.shtml

President Bush on Monday will release a $3 trillion budget for 2009. Here is a look at some of its elements:

DEFICITS: The plan will claim deficits in the $400 billion range for this year and next. For the 2009 budget year covered by the Bush plan, deficits are likely to rise higher than Mr. Bush predicts after additional war costs are added in.

DEFENSE: The Pentagon would get a $35 billion increase to $515 billion for core programs, about 7 percent, with war costs additional. Another $21 billion would go to the Energy Department for nuclear weapons programs. A $70 billion “bridge fund” for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would give the next president time to consider options, with tens of billions of dollars more needed regardless of any strategy shift.

DOMESTIC APPROPRIATIONS: These would be essentially frozen at current levels, with most services being cut after inflation and population growth are factored in.

HOMELAND SECURITY: Overall, the budget for homeland security programs will increase by almost 11 percent, with a 19 percent increase for border security and immigration enforcement efforts, including new money to secure the border with Mexico.

MEDICARE AND MEDICAID: The programs will see almost $200 billion in cuts over the next five years, about three times the savings proposed last year but rejected by Congress. Much of the savings would come from freezing reimbursement rates for most health care providers for three years and from cutting payments to hospitals serving large numbers of the uninsured poor.

HEALTH: Health and Human Services Department funding would be cut by $2 billion, amounting to a 3 percent reduction. Funding for the National Institutes of Health would be frozen. The Food and Drug Administration would receive a 6 percent boost to $2.4 billion to ramp up food and drug safety efforts.

EDUCATION: Education programs would be frozen at $60 billion, with no increase to keep pace with inflation. Bush is pushing to restore $600 million lawmakers cut from Reading First, which serves low-income children. Title I grants, the main source of federal funding for poor students, would rise about 3 percent. Special education would receive $11.3 billion, a $330 million increase.