Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

This is something we need. Shopping centers, please read.

I’ve seen it many times. An adult steps out of their car in the shopping center parking lot. They have two or more small children with them. All the children are strapped into car seats. Let’s see, unbuckle the oldest child first, or is it last, let’s go with oldest first. Tell that child to stay still in their seat. Move to the next oldest. At the youngest, pick up the child and hold it. Now in ascending order, have the next child exit the car and stand still in a safe place. All the kids are out. Oh wait, is their a purse or something? How about the keys? Are all the doors closed? Where is the key fob to lock the doors? Okay, settled?

After shopping, repeat the process in reverse order. There are, however, all the grocery bags to put in the car. Kids first. Youngest to oldest or is it the other order?

And then you are wary of pickpockets or whatever we call folks who grab and run in the parking lot.

How about a parking lot concierge? This is someone in uniform who helps the adult in the parking lot before and after shopping. Perhaps the concierge can hold a child. Perhaps not. We can be touch less. The concierge can stand watch and prevent children from wandering into traffic and prevent theft.

However it works, the concierge is there to assist. Once in practice, adults will start to recognize the concierge and trust grows.

We can do this. Shopping centers with parking lot concierges will have more business. It will become an expected service. Please. Read and heed.

by Dwayne Phillips

Back to a basic: write with nouns and verbs. It brings us closer to brevity and clarity. Those are pretty good places to be.

I was reminded of this short and powerful writing tip this past week. And yes, it was from Strunk and White. They used the title of the post in their essential handbook.

A couple of colleagues were debating about keeping or dropping an adverb. One felt that the verb by itself was too weak. The other felt brevity was better. Both were right; both were wrong.

The better way is to find the right verb. There are plenty of verbs in the English language. For example, instead of “walk quickly” we could write “dash.” If we wanted a longer and more picturesque phrase, we could write, “he moved from his desk to the exit like a man seeking a hundred-dollar bill transiting a parking lot.”

Then again, sometimes we just want to put something on paper, check the “done” box, and move on. Oh wait, “move one” is worse than adding an adverb—it is a verb-preposition in place of the right verb. Sigh.

We can do better. Let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes we get a bit carried away with this idea of being a data-centric organization or data centricity or data driven or whatever.

It seems that everyone wants a data-centric organization (and I don’t like that term because the computer marks it as a misspelled word). We need to have data centricity (another word marked as misspelled). We should base all decisions on data!

Wow. Cutting edge.

Not.

When I was a kid, my mother would drag my brothers and me to the grocery store. That was a necessity for her, not a choice. She would pick up one can of pork and beans. 39¢. She would pick up the next can of pork and beans with a different label on it. 49¢. She bought the 39¢ can based on data. She was running a data-centric family.

Now come the “yeah but.” That was a silly example. Yeah, but that was how it was. For a few years my mother was really data driven as she carried a little clicker that kept a running total cost of the what was in the grocery cart. Aha! Cumulative data.

My mother was far ahead of her time in this data stuff.

There are organizations out there that are run by the seat-of-the-pants or some other cliche meaning they feel their way through everything and never consider any numbers. Being in engineering, I have always worked with measurable quantities (6 volts, not 8 volts), calculations, and results.

Data can be important. It was important to my mother as she didn’t have much money. People have used data daily to decide which way to go. Data-driven decisions are not new. Let’s not get carried away with this as a new driver that drives us in some great direction.

by Dwayne Phillips

Are you not a writer? Really. Just type the words you say.

“You must understand, Dwayne, you are a writer,” several people over the years.

Yes, I am cursed or blessed to be “a writer.” What do I do? I put my fingers on the keyboard and type the words that come mind. That’s about all there is to it as I sit here in Starbucks sipping coffee and thinking about stuff. Tap the keys. There, I wrote.

I encourage others to “write.” I suppose I am not a good encourage-er as few of the folks I encourage go on and write.

Still not encouraged? Try this one: dictate to the computer. The computer types the words onto the screen. Not good grammar and punctuation and such? Paste the dictated stuff into ChatGPT or Bard or something and let it fix up the words.

There, you talked about what you thought and the computer made it look like you wrote it. That’s about it anyways, words that you thought.

Try it. You will probably help the rest of us with your words.

by Dwayne Phillips

Let’s not get carried away with things like “data visualization.” We’ve been looking at data for a long time.

I have heard a lot lately about data visualization. This blog post should indicate that I have heard far too much lately about data visualization.

The folly hit me recently as we were discussing a timeline or graphic to show a set of events in a project. The graphic would be simple. It would show a line with dates. Here and there would be major events on the line. Wow! Upper managers would love this. They love to “see” something instead of reading the words. I didn’t mention it, but when we read we are seeing data and that is data visualization, too.

The timeline graphic would be … yes, data visualization. And that brings us to the calendar. It is data visualization. We put data on a piece of paper that has a grid showing dates. We can stand back and look at the visual. Amazing, right?

Some research shows that some researchers believe than humans have used calendars to visualize data for about 4,000 years. Pretty good data visualization, huh?

I always think of my mother-in-law. Each year, she would buy a calendar that showed all twelve months on one long piece of paper laminated in plastic. She would write the birthdays of several dozen family members and friends on this year’s calendar. That was an annual ritual she never missed. Data visualization at its finest.

Silly notion? Maybe. Nevertheless, let’s not get carried away with this notion that we today have created data visualization and utilize it more than anyone in history. We have been putting information on something that we can see with our eyes for a long time. It works. That is why we still do it.

by Dwayne Phillips

To write is to be misunderstood. Gosh, not very optimistic but it is realistic. We should constantly ask, “Did my words make sense?”

“Never mind what it says, we know what we mean,” said an optimist about something we were reading.

Yes, we did know what it meant. We read it half-a-dozen times and discussed it more. It would have been nice if we only had to read it once and not discuss it. Gosh. You can’t have everything, so just do the work and move on.

How about we simply do better? Instead of having 50 persons each read it half-a-dozen times and discuss it for an hour, I’ll write it half-a-dozen times by myself so that the 50 other folks only have to read it once. That would save us 51 folks a lot of time and angst.

Perhaps I am too optimistic. Perhaps my concern about not wasting money is silly. It seems, however, that we could do better. Let’s try.

by Dwayne Phillips

Facilitated learning sessions offer big benefits. They are not as easy to arrange, but are much better than other methods.

There are various ways to conduct classes and learning. The usual method is to have one teacher and nine students. The teacher talks, the students listen (we hope), and the students learn (we hope).

Another method is to have a facilitator. This person asks the students things like, “What strikes you in this material? What does it mean to you? How will it change your life?”

The students talk along these lines. The students teach one another what the material means to them. Hmmm, catch that? “The students teach one another.” There are now nine teachers.

And all nine students and the facilitator learn from one another. There are ten learners.

Funny how this math works. To me, ten learners is much better than one teacher and nine students. Try this. I find it worth the effort.

by Dwayne Phillips

There is the meta-plan or the plan about the plan. There is the meta-rehearsal or the rehearsal for the rehearsal. There are many other meta-this-and-that. They are quite useful.

My wife and I have been married since 1983 (40 years as of the writing of this post). I recall our wedding rehearsal. I recall the rehearsal for the rehearsal. We sat with my father (the person who married us) and talked about the rehearsal. Guess what? The actual wedding rehearsal for several dozen participants went quickly and without confusion or angst.

There is planning to plan. Before a planning session with lots of folks working, be sure to have all the resources on hand. That way, people don’t stand around waiting for someone to find a white board and marker.

There are many other of these meta-things.

• prepare to prepare
• practice to practice
• outline how I will outline
• meet to meet
• run a tournament to run a tournament
• write to write
• blog to blog

I could go on. Sure, we could take this to the extreme and rehearse to rehearse to rehearse to …

There are advantages to simply start something without preparing for it. Some folks do that quite well. Most of those folks, however, have done the exercise many times and are always prepared to do it. Some folks are simply well prepared to be unprepared. They do that quite well.

The rest of us? Let’s rehearse to rehearse and so on. I need to do that sort of thing. I’m not smart enough to “just do it.” Let’s all admit when we are in the 98.6% and have to do these meta things. We can all do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

BYOD or Bring Your Own Data is a big deal. It has been in computing since the start of computing. Nothing new here folks, but it is still important.

Everyone is a data scientist (sort of). Everyone works for a data-centric organization (sort of). Data is the new oil (sort of). Data is the new … well pick your favorite cliche’.

And there are these tools that tout “bring your own data” or BYOD. What is that about?

I have been bringing my own data to computers since I owned my first one in 1983. Yes, I am that old and I was late to owning my own computer. (Many computer users bought home computers in the late 1970s. I was too tired at the end of the day to do more computing.) I had a Kaypro II—an outstanding CP/M machine.

I used BYOD software called WordStar. My data were my words. I put my words into WordStar, WordStar saved my words for updating later, and WordStar formatted my words for printing (on an IBM dot matrix printer). It all worked quite well.

An earlier use of BYOD was the American census of 1890 where Herman Hollerith used punch cards and machines to process the data that were brought to them. It all worked quite well.

But, but, but… cry the marketers of today’s BYOD products. We’re talking about something else, something better, something you should buy from us.

Of course BYOD means different things to different people. Let’s, however, not be carried away with our own hyperbole. Users of computing machines have been “bringing your own data” since they have used computing machines.

by Dwayne Phillips

People have their own experiences. Assuming their experience denies them as a person. Try to avoid such.

Each person has their own experience with something. It is often the case that several people have similar experiences. That gives me the luxury of describing some “average” experience and continuing to satisfy the “average” person.

Nevertheless, the individual’s experience is their own. Denying their experience denies them as a human person.

I had this happen yet again recently. Someone showed my their documents. I told them, “I had to study this back and forth for hours to understand it.” The person assured me that the documents were easy to understand and that everyone understood them quickly and easily.

That person denied my experience. They also assumed my experience. I was part of “everyone,” so my experience would be just like everyone’s experience. Trying to have my own experience was me just being difficult.

Life and work can be difficult. I work on something and explain my work to others. They look at me and tell me that they don’t understand what I did. WHAT? IT’S PERFECTLY CLEAR! THEY DON’T SEE THE GENIUS IN MY WORK!

I am denying their experience. I am assuming what they should experience. I need to breathe, pause, and learn something from them. And, in the final analysis, I need to decide if that person is worth my efforts.

Gosh. This is more difficult than what they told me in college.