What to do? Another snow day...

Once again nature is being a real mother and has left us here in Minne-snow-da with a few more inches of the white stuff, whipped into some rather amazing drifts. As readers know, I love a snow day. Here is how I plan to spend mine:

1. Review the materials for my ISTE SecondLife presentation this afternoon/evening. I am really looking forward to this and hope that both the curious and the knowledgable about cloud computing and GoogleApps for Education attend. I promise to be both tall and blue. The event is free and open to ISTE members and non-members.

2. Work on my TEDxASB talk, slides for which are due next Monday. I am pretty nervous about giving this talk. (Reminds me of preparing for a graduation talk a couple years ago.) Why is it more difficult to do a 15 minutes talk than a six hour workshop?

3. Clean out my hard drive. If you don't read Blogg-Ed Determination by Steve Taffee, you should. His "Delete This Post" is a great example of his common sense, humor and thoughtfulness. Why clean up your data act?

And if you’re still not convinced that it’s time to give your hard drive a thorough scrubbing, think of this: Your hard drive has been subpoenaed by the district attorney, and all will be revealed in court! Or imagine your children having to go through all your files when you’ve passed on. Or perhaps the video crew from a new reality TV show arrives on your doorstep, and the host barges in, ready to do an “intervention.” Scary!

4. Move the electronic version of my book Machines are the Easy Part; People are the Hard Part to my website. Why? I'm going to do a little Seth Godin-type experiment. I will continue to give the book away for free in its electronic version and still sell the print version on Lulu for a modest mark-up over the cost of printing.

Almost no one has purchased the print version, I think, since the electronic version is so convenient. (This book is growing whiskers so I was not expecting any big sales - but at least a few!) What I think might be interesting is to see if the book sales increase if the electronic version is a bit less convenient although still free. I guess what I am trying to figure out is whether to work on a book published by a commercial publisher or self-publish. Of course, if I spend all my time dinking around writing blog posts, the question will be moot.

5. Get outdoors. The LWW bought us snowshoes for our anniversary. A walk across the lake to Dinosaur Island is definitely in order.

Stay warm. Hope to see some of you tonight in SL.

Deductive reasoning and exit strategies

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?  Arthur Conan Doyle

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song? Sesame Street - Joe Raposo and Jon Stone

A technician is a basically a good detective. When a problem with any technology pops up, most of us run through a little mental flowchart, eliminating possible causes until we are left with the real reason for the trouble. (It is only on very rare occasion that I consider myself a technician -  I'm not that bright.)

The first question most of us ask is: Is the problem in the chair or on the desk?

It's human nature: If you are a user, you assume the technology is at fault (on the desk); if you are a tech, you assume the user (in the chair) is the problem.

I am guessing that in reality, tech problems can be divided pretty much 50-50 chair-desk.

User error (chair) can again be divided between "the dog ate my homework" excuses and lack of knowledge. Unfortunately, many of us tend to assign some sort of deliberateness to problems when we hear "I didn't get the e-mail telling me the report was due." As the Church Lady would have said, "How convieeee -nient!" While deep our heart of hearts we may think this is the case, such assumptions are unprofessional and accusations are never productive. Remember Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Technology problems (desk) are really much easier and more fun to explicate. If the problem seems to be happening to lots and lots of people on a regular basis, we look at the system. Chances are a simple search of the help forums for the product or service will turn out others who have experienced the problem and in a high percentage of the time, present a fix.

If the problem seems to happen rarely or only to a small percentage of people, then we look to see how these individuals differ from the masses. If the e-mail went to 100 people and did not get to two people, logic tells us that the there is something about the configuration of those individuals' computers or software or e-mail setting that is causing the problem. Or the problem is in the chair.

It's tough, but everyone will be happier if we who provide support eliminate any problem with the desk before we start pointing fingers at the chair. Even when the problems happen to our most incompetent, most unlovable users. Like tech directors.

________________________________________________

It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.

- Donald Rumsfeld

Henry Thiele posted this most excellent post, Exit Strategies and Google, yesterday. He writes:

A question that I am hearing a lot about lately is: with all of these schools jumping on the Google bandwagon what do we do if Google goes rogue and becomes EVIL?

We leave.

and reminds us

To do this we need an exit strategy. ... This isn't a question that just just be asked with a Google product, or a product in the cloud. This is a question that I ask with every piece of software we purchase: "What is the cost of leaving this product".

And I would suggest there are "costs" not just in hardware and software, but in training and morale as well that need to be considered.

Henry, you are a good manager as well as visionary!

Oh, my personal exit strategy, if GoogleApps goes bad here involves a passport in another name, lots of unmarked cash, and a secret passage in my basement to a cave where I have a motorcycle stored. Something I learned as a Boy Scout growing up on the prairie.

Augmented reality

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery - creating a mixed reality. - Wikipedia

I'm currently reading Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta in anticipation of my trip to Mumabi in a couple weeks. Whether a longer work like Maximum City or Michner's Poland, or just a travel guidebook or hotel description on TripAdvisor, I always read about the places to which I travel prior to going there.*

Why? Because, of course, it "augments" reality.

Knowing the stories of a place give visiting it meaning. A temple, a fortress, or a house is just building materials unless one thinks about the people that have worshipped, fought or lived there.**

Reader/travellers have always known that reality is better augmented with information. Even before iPods.

* I believe this trait may be hereditary. I sent grandson Paul a kid's guide to DisneyWorld a couple months before we visited. He had the facts about every attraction memorized before stepping foot inside the parks.

** The opposite holds true as well - visiting a place can augment reading. On leaving a tour of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, my then teenage son turned to me and said, "I didn't realize Anne Frank was a real person." I'll bet he's not the only student who's had that misconception.

The 2007 version of augmented reality.