http://www.gapingvoid.com

…mostly because this will be really cool to look back on a few years from now as I’m combing through my archives.

Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late. There’s a small price for being too early, but a huge penalty for being too late.

…another quote from Seth Godin’s Tribes.

Download a free copy of Tribes from Audible.

Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow them.

from Seth Godin’s book Tribes. Brace yourself. This book is talking to me.

Download a free copy of Tribes from Audible.

Our friends in California will vote next Tuesday on Proposition 8. The issue is whether residents want to overturn recent rulings that support same-sex marriage in California. A yes vote means you don’t want same-sex marriage. A no vote means you support same-sex marriage.

What happens if this legislation fails? Quick! Exactly.

Let’s take it a step further. Below is a commercial originally created by folks supporting the “yes” position on this issue. They are really worried about this bill failing. Of course, in today’s world, those on the “no” side of the issue have remixed this video with a slightly different message…replacing the same-sex references with interracial messages. These folks are also really worried about the implications of this legislation failing.

I’m most worried, however, about the 50% of people who lack the critical media literacy skills will vote end up voting the wrong way. You do understand what I mean, don’t you?

Are you sure?

Related: Do you let kids watch YouTube in your school?

This 2008/9 Wikipedia DVD Selection is a free, hand-checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia, targeted around the UK National Curriculum and useful for much of the English speaking world. It has about 5500 articles (as much as can be fitted on a DVD with good size images) and is about the size of a twenty volume encyclopaedia (34,000 images and 20 million words). Articles were chosen from a list ranked by importance and quality generated by project members. This list of articles was then manually sorted for relevance to children, and adult topics were removed.

Our students are so alienated by education that they are trying to sneak right past it.

and

We love learning. We hate school. What’s worse is that many of us hate school because we love learning.

Strong.

I’m not going to get much done today.

Link.

A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.

I highly recommend popping this episode of This American Life into your iPod and learning about what the heck is going on with the economy.

Another Frightening Show About the Economy is the follow-up, recorded recently as the $700 billion bailout bill was working its way through congress.

Interesting new data point on “Where are your students looking for their information?”

Come on. It’s kinda funny. A few others. NSFW.

Paddington owned Christopher Columbus this national holiday. Happy 50th birthday, traveler.

Below is a link to a Google Spreadsheet. Each figure is the enrollment of a school. I want these to show up on some cool graph that may (does it?) show up on some sort of “bell curve”. The horizontal axis has the schools (small on left, big on right), the vertical axis is the number of schools (few at bottom, many at top). The curve will show me the “average enrollment” at the middle/high point of the curve. The statistical “standard deviation” stuff will go out 2 steps left and right, banding the school enrollments into like groups.

In other words, I think I know enough to know what I want, but not enough to know how the heck to do it.

Take a shot at it for yourself.

http://tinyurl.com/3va7hy

1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

(Link: Official Google Blog: What makes a design “Googley”?)

How to Have Smarter Conversations.

1. Understand why what you’re offering to do for other people is interesting, important, meaningful etc then start telling people about it.

Think about this one. Hard. If you don’t know, then how will other people know? Exactly. They won’t.

2. Live like you know the difference between remarkable and unremarkable, like it matters to you.

The more ‘remarkable’ matters to you, the more likely that it will appear in the product you’re selling. The more likely other people will notice it.

3. Seek out the exceptional minds.

This is my basic mantra. It’s a good one to have. Not everybody gets it. Their loss.

4. Start a blog.

Blogs are funny things. Say something smart, people pay attention. Say something dumb, you’re ignored. We big media folk just can’t seem to get our heads around that concept, for some reason. Regular blogging can help train you to better discern between to discern between smart and dumb. Makes it easier to extend this to the rest of one’s business.

5. Ruthlessly avoid working for companies that ‘don’t get it’.

Yeah, you may have to turn down a few gigs, and that can really hurt when the rent is due. Still, anything that’s easy to get isn’t worth having.

6. Ruthlessly avoid working for companies that think they know better than you.

Luckily, if you get the whole ’smarter conversations’ thing, their ‘Yes, Buts’ will just seem rather empty. Making them easier to ‘toss out like old furniture’.

7. Be nice.

Smarter conversations are fueled by goodwill. Lose it and die.

8. Be honest.

Again, smarter conversations are fuelled by goodwill etc.

9. Karma is key.

But you already know that. Or you’re stupid. No middle ground on this one, sorry.

10. Listen.

Tongues are dumber than brains, brains are dumber than ears etc.”

(Link: gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”: the hughtrain)