random

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Anthony Lakes reunion 06

The consensus was that it was a good gathering. Good food, good hikes, good times.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Uploading photos to the blog

The photo from the Cabin with everybody eating a snack is a 3000 x 2000 pixel file uploaded (it took awhile). The photo of Alice's house is 800 x 533 pixels. This is just an experiment.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Working in a technical environment presents opportunities to engage people with outstanding specialized talents and skills. I went to college with them. I've socialized with them. I've worked with them. I've seen this technically developed mostly male group create much of what we now take for granted in the world around us. I believe that the gamers represent an identifiable subset of that technically engaged culture. This cuts across cultural background and nationality. It's a phenomenon worth exploring. I typically hesitate putting people in categories, so I’m struggling with the words to describe this group, even to group them. Not all those who respond to technology as do gamers are actually gamers, but exhibit behaviors in the workplace that suggest management in a similar way.

The Gamer

A growing component of the technical workforce is composed of a highly skilled sub-culture in which the participants have grown up heavily engaged in computer games. Members of this group have developed a specialized skill set, but more importantly have developed as competitors, with a set of attitudes and views that differentiate them from the mainstream workforce. This group of individuals has finely tuned responses, developed in a virtual world that enables them to outperform all comers in certain realms of the real world.

Expertise quickly developed: When faced with a carefully structured set of problems to solve, the gamer can often whip through the options, arriving at the optimal solution quickly because they have learned that they can win by forging ahead. They often believe themselves invincible, since they have survived every challenge they have faced, including death, in their virtual worlds.

Cooperative problem solving: Despite the image of the individual against the computer game, there is an extensive group of massively multiplayer online games. These gamers consider themselves sociable and successful in cooperatively achieving mutual goals.

Processing of visual information: Moving quickly through huge amounts of data presented visually develops a specific analysis and problem-solving skills that gamers bring to any visually presented problem, whether it’s an online form to be filled out or a large spreadsheet scrolling by.

Persistence and flexibility: The gamers willingness to continually try different approaches, coupled with the belief that there is a way through the maze, sets them up to not only plow through concepts and approaches doggedly with an open mind, but to have no doubt that an optimum solution exists.

Ambition and competitiveness: Gamers play to win. While there is generally a sense of following the rules of fairness and an a often a teamwork attitude, winning is the driver.

Insubordination: Spending hours upon hours in virtual worlds that they share only with their peers, gamers often disengage from those outside their world. In particular, the guidance and criticism of peers far outweighs any direction given by authority figures in the workplace.

This analysis is based on an article by Erin Bilba in the April 2006 issue of Wired magazine. Maybe sometime I will continue with my thoughts about how this understanding of the gamer character can influence the management of this valuable component of our technical workforce.

How to provide a workplace environment where gamers excel: to be continued…

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

From the bus to the office

Things I noticed today on my way to work:

The sun on the south side of buildings in winter is very different from the summer version
The Smith Tower is a wonderful building and continues to stand taller than the giants around it
Architecture is powerful
after many years, some wood utility poles collect a lot of staples.
doors to buildings with for lease signs are sometimes mistaken for toilets
some seagulls are really big
people mean it when they say "have a good day"
working is better than not working
cobblestones have a lot of character
attitude is evrything

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Sunday Morning

The days are getting longer. I have to take the bus in to work late to see daylight, but I've done so recently. I like working in the city. And riding the bus. This photo was actually taken last spring. I walk through this new city hall on the way to work some days.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Oaxaca thoughts

Photo of Cactus at Mitla, near Oaxaca, Mexico. Great place in the world. It's where I want to live in the wintertime. Additional photos are posted here.

I’m sitting here on my last of 19 days in November/December in this gritty city thinking about spending more time here. Elizabeth and I sat down this morning with William, our landlord and close neighbor, whom I’ve spent time with over the past weeks. His father was born and raised here and he moved to a Sicilian neighborhood of New York where, after being a taxi driver in Oaxaca, he developed a travel business that William wanted no part of.

William now finds himself married to a Oaxacan, running a Bed and Breakfast -- engaged in the very business his father wanted him to join. I was sympathetic – it’s similar to being raised in a family of builders and and trying to be a mechanical engineer.

I would like to spend a part of the year here. And so would Elizabeth. The thing is, the old part of the city is what is attractive. There is a lot of building going on in the surrounding area, adjacent to the city, and the prices of a two-bedroom house are under $50K, US. It sounds attractive to a baby boomer on the leading edge of a bubble that everyone knows is huge and no one knows where it is going or how it will be funded.

But we don’t want to move to another suburb, no matter what it is close to. Here is what we’ve found out about this city, after living and mostly walking around within a mile of so of the Zocalo.

Oaxaca is remote, much as Eugene is, from the political and cultural center of its state and its country. It’s probably more representative of its state than Eugene is, but much more separate from its country, politically, at least. It is a very corrupt city, much as Mexico City was 25 years ago when I visited there. I think Mexico City and Mexico in general has come a long way politically since PRI was defeated by Vicente Fox and PAN in the last election. We’ll see if it sticks with the elections next summer.

The corruption in Oaxaca is still so great that the execution of leftist party leaders this week appears to be unchallenged, or at least not vigorously investigated. The taxes are skimmed off by the politicians who are only out for what they can get today. There is no planning. In particular, there is no sense of what to do about a scarce water supply as the city continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. Property values, while seemingly low by US standards, have quadrupled over the past ten years. I don’t think it is going to stop any time soon. Despite the remoteness, and the threats of serious water shortage, I believe property values in the central city will continue to rise. Possibly at significant rates, much as the central areas of Eastern European cities have exploded since the wall came down.

It’s not just to make money for our kids that I would want to own something in the Oaxacan city center. It’s a way of life here that we can both engage. This culture values art. Music, dancing, and the visual arts are supported here. There are festivals, not only experienced in the churches, but offered to the public in the Zocalo on over 100 days of the year. Last night we watched kids, primary and middle school age from pueblos in the area, perform dances and share their local crop-influenced views of the world. It ended in great fireworks and bounty being tossed to the audience. This strong engagement of tradition and old-fashioned ways will not go away anytime soon, despite parents taking videos and talking on cell phones.

Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s just a relief to disengage from the media of the US and simply be remote. The Zapotecs we have talked to, while perhaps a small sample size, are the most impressive people I’ve met, in engaging me as a basic, mono-lingual person. They seem to know what is going on in the world, choose to be a part of their own culture, and speak more directly to me, with better English than any European who’s second language is English, much less the third language after Spanish. (Victor, the tour guide at Monte Alban; Maria, the weaver in Teotitlan; Martin Chicon, the folksinger; Jaime and Noe, the taxi driver) There are many distinct indigenous cultures. The Zapotecs are simply the ones we came into contact with and heard speaking to their friends and family. There are apparently over 100 languages spoken in Mexico today. In Oaxaca, Spanish is taught in public schools, but not English.

Elizabeth spent time in the university library and was impressed with how vigorously these kids are pursuing the study of art and architecture. She feels that the thirst for learning among the young people she saw is well beyond the engagement of young people in our culture. Of course it could just be that they are more physically social and verbal in their pursuits than the online kids at home and we just can’t observe the thirst, curiosity, and mental engagement of our own kids. Then again, one wonders how rich the online material is, compared with a library full of luscious photos of artwork.

We visited the home of Roldolfo Morales in Ocotlan. He was well supported by his community until his death in 2001. And he returned that support by insuring that important buildings were restored and are cared for in the public interest. One of Rufino Tomayo’s paintings was sold in Paris last year for well over a million dollars. It seems to be a painting that was never shown locally. The local community wants it back. Tomayo collected some of the most significant archeological artifacts from across Mexico. He endowed a museum containing his collection. Gilberto Aceves Navarro had an opening last week. He and Francisco Toledo are some of the last of the old guard painters. Toledo is apparently working to return the architecturally and historically important Camino Real convent to public use.

The art community is strong, the politics are corrupt, and technology is being embraced. I got off the plane and my cell phone just worked. I’m sure the bill for the few times I used it will be outrageous, but it serves as an indication of the potential for and investment in connectedness of this community. While there are internet/phone places on every street, many businesses continue to use typewriters. At the market, the guy who types for anyone needing written words still bangs away on his trusty Corona.