Shirley de Rose's Weblog

So, I’m at a cocktail party and can’t for the life of me remember the dude’s name and what I learned about him at the last networking event I attended for unemployed geeks. Enter the latest cool device from MIT students which can make me seem a bunch smarter than my normal IQ or EQ. I can know the dude’s name and an incredible list of things about him posted on his LinkedIn profile and/or his facebook, etc. etc. by having it all projected onto the wall behind him so I can cheat right over his shoulder. Oh, yeah, his name is “Butch” and his wife is a geek that just got laid off at Intel. The dogs name is “Mickey” and he has two girls who take tap dancing lessons.

So far, so good. But then my device becomes useless when the projection disappears as my connection fails and I’m left standing, staring over his shoulder, straining for information about where to take the conversation with Butch after I talked about his two girls. Somehow my tap-dance never got us to the adult part about employment opportunities in the bright future that Obama promised. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the MITers to perfect their wearable computer device and see what 2013 brings around.

Check out the thing at http://tinyurl.com/btkurv

And say “Hi” to Butch next time you see him. And ask how his new job is going, if he has one with the government or something.

Beauty always catches the eye! We do that with marketing, too, at least we should most of the time. Like the old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” so how could we ever replace the beauty of snow with mere words.

Last night’s snow blanketed the ground with pristine powder that dusted everything with a coating of white. But even with those words wouldn’t you rather just see the pictures??

In keeping with my personal motto (“Be the dumbest person in the room”) I often visit events filled with geeks, and, believe me, the Lunch 2.0 qualifies. Yesterday I particularly enjoyed staying in contact with Dawn Foster and Amber Case. These two women are responsible for keeping me sane in a world of swirling intellect. I can always count on their blog posts, presentations, tweets, and other web entrees to ‘splain a bunch of stuff that always piques my interest. Other contacts proved to be interesting also once I looked thru the sites on their business cards. The OTBC director, Steve Morris was on hand to make sure everyone knew what the Oregon Technology Business Center offered in addition to the pizzas.

You’ll recognize me as the person in the red coat.

I hadn’t really thought very much about Buckminster Fuller in a few years. I was busy with my ordinary life, worrying about election rhetoric, bills, my current clients, and other assorted things. But there he was, just behind my right shoulder, whispering to me like an old friend.

“Uh-huh.” he said. “Systems thinking again. Now isn’t that just what I was talking about?! And here they are, all talking about ‘Sustainability’ like it was a new concept!” he said derisively.

Startled, I turned to see who was talking and then realized it was just the ghost of Bucky Fuller reminding me that there is nothing new under the sun, just a recycled idea or two.

I laughed at the reminder. I needed that!

Bucky played a pivotal role in my development as a thinker. It felt strangely familiar when I found myself saying to someone lately, “Just picture the thing or event completely finished and work backward – break down the parts backwards and it builds itself forward to the completed picture. It makes it easy to do anything that way.” I wasn’t sure where I got that, but then I discovered again that Bucky called himself a “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist” because he used the backwards process I had just described. To him, and then to me, looking at the big picture first isn’t backwards. It’s the only way to go forward!

So I would encourage you to become familiar with one of the original backward-forward thinkers and see if his way of looking at Earth and Sustainability don’t make sense in your life. After all, what’s at stake is your future… and your kid’s future.

Read about Bucky at
http://bfi.org/

If you live in Portland, Oregon, go “meet” Bucky now thru Dec 7 at the Armory.
It may change your life forever, especially if you go to the other public events listed.
http://www.pcs.org/bucky/

Well, you’d think we all know what sustainability is, but it turns out there are hundreds of definitions.
That’s kind like the word “green” – what kinda green? Kelly green, seafoam green, moss green, etc.
I spent most of the day studying sustainability and then put something up on the Sustainable Catering Association site that I think you’ll like. Take a look.

It’s too late to write more tonight. Stay tuned though. We’re just getting started!

Once again, Portland is the greenest city in the United States.

Crowdsourcing is a new buzzzzword you might want to be aware of. This is because you may become part of an undefined, generally large group of people which participates soon in crowdsourcing.

Author of the new book “Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe says, ”I like to use two definitions for crowdsourcing:

The White Paper Version: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

The Soundbyte Version: The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.”

Wisdom of crowds has long been debated. And we have to remember that democracy, pure democracy, is the wisdom of crowds. And then, because of human nature, it eventually becomes something very different, along the lines of “I am more equal than you.” Amazing how the human race has no collective memory and repeats the mistakes of the past over and over.

Using the internet, it turns out, doesn’t change human behavior. It just makes it more evident – quickly.