Ryan Barrett of Cheap Thrills had an interesting idea, and whether you're a contributing author to Age of Conversation 2, I think you'll enjoy her effort.
She's collecting passages from the different authors' chapters.
If you wrote a chapter, please go on over and post a brief snippet from your work.
If you just want a sneak peak, this is the place to get it.
Enjoy! - Cam Beck
Here's an interesting video about fully utilizing the technology that is available today to disrupt and break through the restraints of the traditional classroom environment in the hopes that it will enable our kids to learn. There are going to be a lot of people who reject the concept because it's not what they had to do to learn.
Before we go off on a tangent about how stupid our kids are and so forth, we need to check ourselves first. Are we willing to challenge our own assumptions?
The world is different than it was 30 years ago. Shall I list a few significant ways this world come together to evince a design to compete for the attention (and the education) of our kids?
Don't look at this as a plea for a return to a bygone era. That's not the point. It isn't that kids aren't learning, anyway. It's that they're not learning what we want them to in the manner we want them to learn it.
The point is that, for good or ill, the world has changed, and we'd best be prepared to deal with it. Today's tools give us the ability to play in the same space our kids want to play in. We have the technology. We have the wealth. Why are we withholding it?
Thanks to Mike Sansone for the video. Thanks to President George W. Bush for the quote that just keeps on giving. And most of all, thanks to the teachers who won't quit on their kids and who won't quit learning. - Cam Beck
For more information on learning, please see my brother's article, "Your Education Plan," in which he also pays tribute to one of our learning heroes, George Cressman - our grandfather.
While I enjoy performing research, one of the most rewarding parts of my job is finding interesting solutions to business problems that the research uncovers. The process itself can be at once both stimulating and tedious. You have to enjoy the process, though, because you're not always going to be able to apply solutions you might dream of because budgets, timelines, and narrow-minded thinking might prohibit it.
Here's the dilemma: Agencies typically bill at an hourly rate, not at the rate of innovation. So if in the process of developing and selling a solution that is workable within the scope of the project, you happen to make a highly innovative but simple connection of two disparate ideas that will help you more quickly solve a different problem you might encounter on another project, for another client, to whom does that idea belong, and what can you charge for it?
The Client Owns the Idea
You could make the argument that the company that you billed the time to while you made the discovery owns the idea, but in some cases it was never even presented -- it was just one of the paths you went down when you were looking for something else.
The Agency Owns the Idea
And you can also say that the agency owns the idea, except many times key stakeholders aren't really aware that the idea exists. All they are aware of is the final outcome, which they may or may not be satisfied with, either of which they can usually live with if the client is happy and pays their bills on time.
Plus, since the innovation initially occurred on someone else's dime, the apparent cost may be disproportionate to the time billed on it. Since the idea is far more valuable than the time spent on it (for this project), how can the company in good conscience bill another for an idea when they have agreed to pay based on time spent? (Answer: They can't.)
The Employee Owns the Idea
Companies provide resources and create an environment where connections can be made, but ideas are not promulgated apart from people.
If the idea is that innovative and the employee recognize it, the enterprising employee may look to advance himself by assuming the risks, breaking off to form his own company and sell the idea on the open marketplace.
Or he may use the idea to advance the company for which he works (and his own status within it). This is especially attractive if
Learn, Practice, Practice
Lewis Green includes this anecdote in his email signature. It represents an exchange that allegedly occurred between Pablo Picasso and a patron who commissioned Picasso for a sketch that Picasso quickly executed:
And what do I owe you?" she asked.
"Five thousand francs," he answered.
"But it only took you three minutes," she politely reminded him.
"No," Picasso said, "It took me all my life."
Reflecting on this recently, I started to wonder: In a marketplace where ideas, not time spent, are the chief source of prosperity, why do we bill hour time hourly?
Rather than measure our success by number of hours billed and the rate at which we can bill it, a more telling metric would be to measure the number of useful ideas generated and cataloged per project.
I suspect that the company that established a way to catalog, recognize, reward, and recall such ideas as needed would eventually build a surplus of useful innovations in the course of a project that would benefit them and their clients tremendously.
The Copycat Web
The truth is that ideas are promiscuous anyway, so claiming exclusive ownership of them is problematic. The guy who first called the home page the home page is not living a life of luxury because he collects trademark fees from everyone who has a home page.
Ideas aren't spread because you spent a lot of time on them.
They aren't spread because you bill a high hourly rate.
Ideas spread because they're useful.
So why do we continue to bill by the hour? Maybe because that's the most reasonable accord clients and vendors can reach.
Or maybe it's because we lack the imagination to think of something better. - Cam Beck
It's a day late, but I wanted to make sure we really sit to reflect on just how many lessons Moms teach us in a 24-hour period. Enjoy!
- Cam Beck
The brilliant and indefatigable Arun Rajagopal requested that I share my media consumption habits.
Books
I read mostly nonfiction -- focusing on business and marketing, history and current events, self-help and philosophy --, but I've been trying to break out of that by reading a little more fiction. To that end, I read The Sea Wolf by Jack London last month. I just finished The Christian Husband 2 nights ago. Currently I'm making my way through the excellent *Personality Not Included, for which I will write at least one review when I finish, and Hitler 1936-1945 by Ian Kershaw.
News
I admit it. Although I love newsprint for reasons David Reich, Bob Glaza and Tangerine Toad all expressed at one point or another, I still get most of my news online. I regularly check USAToday.com, MSNBC.com, WorldNetDaily (plus its print monthly, Whistleblower), and various news aggregation websites such as The Drudge Report and Scott Baradell's Spin Thicket, both of which often take me to news stories on websites I would not have otherwise found. I also pick up whatever is lying around here in the office. There is usually a Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Dallas Morning News, and a USA Today around here somewhere.
RSS Feeds
Podcasts
Who's Next?
Now I'm going to look to the younger generation to see what our future holds. I'm interested in what media Nathan Snell, Ryan Karpales, The Great Haw, and Mario Vellandi are consuming. And because I need some help in speaking and writing (and because I've found their contributions very helpful), I also want to hear from Lisa Braithwaite and Kristin Gorski.
Step up to the plate. Time to share. :)
- Cam Beck
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