Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips We have emotions. That is fine. Feel fill-in-the-blank fully and deeply for ten minutes. Get over it and move on. About ten years ago I was writing proposals for a company. The day before I had finished a couple of pages for a proposal. New orders came down. “We decided to change […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are many ways to show respect. One is simply to be one time for interviews and other meetings. I hope to be employed by an employers by the time this post is posted. I have interviewed with many people these last six months. Some folks are courteous and respectful. Some, well, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Forget the term “social media.” We are fussing about society media in which everyone in society has a tall soapbox on which to stand and shout. And many of us don’t like that. It’s not social media—it is Society Media, in which everyone can now shout as loud as Walter Cronkite used […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When someone is quite specific in what they convey, they often mean the opposite. “I will inject some humor here,” often means that nothing funny will be said. “I don’t care about the money,” often means that I really do care about the money coming my way. “We are transparent here,” often […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Let not check a communications channel using that same communications channel. It is pretty silly to do so. Since the great pandemic of the early 2020s, I have been part of countless ZoomerTeams meetings. Almost every one starts with, “Can everyone hear me?” Let’s pause and think. If a participant cannot hear […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we just don’t understand when someone else doesn’t understand. I was recently attending a meeting online. This was one of those ZoomerTeams things where the PowerPoint was on the screen and the presenter was talking in a room with one of those microphones on the conference table. I couldn’t understand what […]

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by Dwayne Phillips In our personal lives, we often take all the risk without asking others to share it. The basic, but rarely asked, question is, “What does each person have to lose?” I am sitting here sipping coffee pondering what to do. Someone is asking me to wait, and wait, and wait. Perhaps they […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If someone asks a question in English, please answer in English. Please avoid some other private language. In recent conversations, I asked, “Your research, how far ahead in time are you working? Your work may become reality in 1, 5, 10 years?” The answer was, “TRL 4.” (see this for a translation) […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Perhaps this is the complaint of an old man, but all the Zoomer Teams meetings just aren’t getting it done. The title of this post is an old expression from an old time. We used to talk with people on the telephone. That worked to a point, but we couldn’t “picture” the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Automation and artificial intelligence promise to take away the bane of some work and make us free for more meaningful work. Do we want that? Automation frees us from that old work that is just the same old same old. We will have time on our hands and be free for more […]

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