Okay, so building on last’s week’s post, let’s say you’ve decided that one key ingredient to successful meeting is an agenda. You’ve built your coalition of people who don’t want to waste time in meetings and perhaps pummeled dissenters with stale donuts until they capitulated. Maybe you even have a meeting facilitator –the one who pitches the donuts the strongest– to keep things on track. So now what do you do to make the meeting agenda stick?…
This past weekend I had some free time. What do project managers do with free time? Make lists! Specifically, I decided it was time once again for my biennial Favorite Films sort. (you can find posts about the favorite film here). Creating a list of favorite films has been something I’ve been doing since at least the late 80s, but my current method is something I’ve been doing since 2012 and have found easy –and not…
I’m going to post on project management topics in what I’ll call a new wonky Wednesday tradition. Since we’re now deep into the New Year (well, for the Federal government anyway), I thought I’d delve into the bane of so many people’s existence: meetings. To paraphrase a common sentiment about writing, I don’t like meetings, but I love having met. Why? Because within any enterprise, there’s decisions to be made and issues to be hashed out and…
I suppose I should have posted this with Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday travel season, but hey, delays are to be expected with the TSA, right?Dylan Mathews over at Vox argues that the eliminating the TSA may, in fact, save lives. And if that’s too dry, you can always check out Adam Conover of “Adam Ruins Everything” as he debunks the security theater of the TSA. Man, I’m glad I don’t have to travel…
I’m always interested in the evolution of organizations, both how they change as they grow and how they respond to changes in the wider world. So when it involves Apple, arguably one of the most influential companies on the planet, I was definitely interested. Matthew Yglesias’ article in Vox notes a fundamental approach to Apple’s structure I was not aware of: that their structure is more akin to startups that group people functionally by expertise…
On my Twitter feed, I frequently use the hashtag “#futureTV,” because I’m borderline obsessed with how TV is transforming, both in terms of how it’s getting made and how it’s being viewed (or “consumed” if you want to be extra biz-speaky). So this past holiday weekend, while our Netflix connection seemed to strain under the weight people travelling to Stars Hollow, I re-read Todd VanDerWerff’s piece in Vox about how Netflix –and cord cutting in…
This is the 26th entry in a surprisingly long series of posts about Star Trek’s future and its fandom called Crisis of Infinite Star Treks. Short version: It’s been a while since my last entry in this series. An article by Molly McArdle in GQ about Star Trek fandom spurred me to reflect further about the current state of Trek and Trek fandom. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, Fall is in the air. And here in the…
One area where I am very partisan is that citizens should be able to vote and have their vote counted. Besides my general Capra-esque take on civic duty, I served as an election official for a number of years (i.e. one of the people who check you in and staff the voting machines). In part because of those experiences, I was very happy to see today’s Google Doodle: It takes you to a tool which…
2016 really isn’t getting any new fans as our cultural icons continue to shuffle off this mortal coil in a manner that befits the most macabre dance number imaginable. Playwright Edward Albee is dead, as reported by NPR, the New York Times, and others. I suppose he wouldn’t mind, what with his work exploring death, gloom, and despair. He was also 88, which I’m sure actuaries would assure me is “pretty old,” statistically speaking. I…
I meant to post this earlier, but life keeps on getting in the way. Or maybe it’s bills to pay, and I’m not as clever as Max Bialystock at how to pay them. As has been reported in the Washington Post, AP, Variety, and elsewhere, Jerome Silberman aka Gene Wilder passed away last month, on Sunday, August 29th. He was 83. 2016 has proven to be lethal to the cultural icons many of my generation…