Working Up

Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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You Do Not Know With Whom You Speak

December 7th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips A text without a context is a pretext. Know the audience. Sorry, these are old basics but they still apply. “Do you know who I am?” That question is a biting indictment of a person who approaches another in ignorance and starts talking in grand fashion about what might be grand ideas, […]

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Tags: Communication · Context · Information · Knowledge

50% of 50%

October 26th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Let’s pay attention to some basic math. We don’t like that, but we are adults, so let’s behave accordingly. In some respects, asking, “What is 50% of 50%?” is silly. Ask a mathematician that question. I did recently and the response was a laugh. The answer is 2,500%%. Huh? Everyone knows that […]

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Tags: Adults · Approximation · Clarity · Communication · Data Science · Knowledge · Science

Data Visualization (A Calendar)

September 7th, 2023 · No Comments

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 […]

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Tags: Calendar · Communication · Data Science · History · Journal · Knowledge · Technology · Visibility

The Screen Still Isn’t Big Enough

August 14th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We seem to think that everything will be on the screen and we don’t need to use pieces of paper. Years ago, we didn’t have the computers we have today. How many years ago? Twenty? Ten? Two? Years ago, some of us would take great pains to put lots of information on […]

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Tags: Clarity · Humility · Information · Knowledge · Notebook · Technology

Flexibility and a Foundation of Fundamentals

August 7th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips To be flexible enough to do new things, I often need a foundation of fundamentals in place first. If I am standing on shifting sand, I have to be flexible to adjust my stance and upper body so I don’t fall. Flexibility is required just to stay in place. If I am […]

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Tags: Agility · Experiment · General Systems Thinking · Knowledge · Testing

Understanding What I Should Understand

July 10th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Meta understanding is understanding about understanding. This is rarely practiced. That lack of practice is perilous. I once worked with a man who had a high school diploma and nothing else as far as formal education. Still, this person rose in the ranks of government service to the level of Senior Executive […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Knowledge · Leadership · Learning · Management · Thinking

No, You Don’t ”Know”

July 6th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sorry, we (you and me) don’t “know” as often as we like to think. When I ask a person a question and their eyes look up, that means… Hah! Silly notion. I know what this means. I know what that means. I know what the other person is doing and thinking and […]

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Tags: Communication · Culture · Knowledge · Learning · People

Don’t Believe…

June 8th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We live in a world of fake photos, videos, voices, and accounts. Go back to some old country wisdom I heard as a teen. We can fake videos. We can fake voices. We can fake photograph. We can fake entire people. We can fake fake detectors (Does that make sense? Yes, it […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · General Systems Thinking · Knowledge

Everybody Is Chattering (not)

May 25th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Let’s curb our enthusiasm about these chatbots and large language models multiplying productivity and costing jobs. I just saw another article about how ChatGPT and the like are being used in yet another field of endeavor with giant gains in productivity. We won’t need half the people we have in the office […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Breathe · Change · Chaos · Fear · General Systems Thinking · Knowledge · Learning

Symbolic AI, Machine Learning, and Cows

May 18th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The old ways of doing AI are still better than some of the new ways in some cases. The answer, of course, is to combine the best of all to do something better. Feed the following into a chatbot: “The cow jumped” The chatbot will finish with “over the moon.” That is […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · General Systems Thinking · Knowledge · Language · Learning · Machine Learning · Word