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Digital generations bring knowledge to life

Volume 1
Brain-computer
Issue 2 interface
MAY 2009
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Unmanaging
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How to tell the boss
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Knowledge
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Six part
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begins irrelevant to today’s
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Volume 1
Issue 2
MAY 2009

Cover story
LEARNING 4 The Learning
Factory: K-12
8 Wide variation 11 Open source education irrelevant
in education Networking Student brains
This study provides evidence the technologies in higher are filled with
command-and-control style of ed enable students government-
education in the U.S. isn’t working. in four colleges defined
to collaborate curriculum and
9 Classroom 2.0 on a search for tested to the
University students apply avatar- Walt Whitman’s uniform standards
based technology to the service democratic spirit. of quality control.
sector. Unfortunately, technologies
not possible in most enterprises.

Also in this issue LIVING

Eight norms of readers3
The Knowledge Factor 40
KM Six Pack
The first of a series of six
articles introduces newly
engaged employees and
managers to the basics
of knowledge-based
enterprise.
12 Power of story
Son’s job hunting experience while in the Persian Gulf leads two consultants to
stop lecturing. Now the messages are in the stories.
14 Better at texting
When men and women talk through technology, it’s the
women who are more expressive.
15 Digital networking increasing
Access to digital media is taken for granted – including
mobile applications. Networking enhances quality of
life.
16 Personal development for smart people A cleaning lady at
NASA was asked
One of the most successful personal development
“What is your job?”
bloggers advises you to think of what you do in terms of She replied, “I’m part
your message, not your medium (your job). of the team that will

18 Wisdom of send a man to the

moon.”
the crowd
. . . in your head. How to
think and rethink using a
‘herd’ in your head.
SMART PEOPLE 1
SMART PEOPLE

CHOOSING CHOOSING

20 Unwitting 24 SNs 26 No time

errors trump for
Expectations and email reflection
judgments are Social Tweet this: Rapid
formulated networks and fire media may
by quick blogs are now confuse your
intuition the fourth moral compass.
and most popular Admiration,
slower online activities – ahead of personal compassion take
reason- email. time.
ing. The context will frequently
dictate your interpretation.
25 Job networks
23 Estrangement Major job boards will die within a
from nature decade as social media-driven sites
Technology is great but and tools take over.
virtual is a threat to
the real deal! We may
develop an insensitivity
to what’s happening to the
natural world.

CREATING
28 Extrasensory 31 Comic books 101
perception Academic course uses an
A student uses a brain-to-computer innovative way to explore
interface to Tweet. Hope for people multiculturalism. Finds important
whose bodies don’t work. social issues in ‘old’ media.

WORKING
34 Unmanaging 37 Ace a job
knowledge interview
You’re engaged in Here are seven powerful ways
to make the first seven seconds
knowledge work
and you’d like to a positive first impression. 39 Intellectual capital?
Smart People living proof of the
tell the boss to back
value of IC. Undercapitalized
off. What do you
financially. Rich in intellectual
do?
capital.

2 SMART PEOPLE
 SMART PEOPLE

About Smart People

Following the eight norms of our readers
The editorial policy of Smart People magazine follows the “Eight
Norms of Net Geners” as described by Don Tapscott in his book
Publisher
Grown Up Digital. We include Digital Pioneers and Catching Up
Jerry Ash smart.guy1@verizon.net Digitals.
Managing editor
This is a new media publication in every sense of the word. It
Michele Ash mlinnash@verizon.net is published online using the interactive channels of Web 2.0 to
Technology by
enable ‘prosumers’ – people who want to have a hand in shaping the
Boris Jaeger boris.jaeger@web.de magazine – to collaborate on content and direction.
Graphic design by
The Eight Norms we use as our guidelines are:
Associated Professional Services Freedom: Net Geners demand the freedom to choose. The more the
designer_aps@verizon.net
better. The Internet has enabled that right and we eagerly compete in
Social network hosts that environment.
Facebook Ning Customization: The magazine will continue to evolve as Smart
Daniel Delgado Jerry Ash
People representatives host discussion groups in the social networks
Linkedin Twitter and advocate changes in the magazine.
Skip Boettger Jack Ring
John Veitch Alice MacGillivray Scrutiny: We expect smart people to examine our value and
MySpace Xing determine whether our magazine is unique and worth time and
Alan O’Neill Boris Jaeger money. And, we expect to be continually tested.
HR and Learning Integrity: To earn your trust, Smart People must deliver quality,
Noreen Kelly relevancy and truth by sharing the best of knowledge and
information from the most reliable of sources.
Entire contents copyrighted, 2009, by Associated Collaboration: Smart People magazine has been developed in
Professional Services, publisher. All rights are collaboration with social networkers in an open, online worksite.
reserved. Contents may not be republished (in print
or electronically) without permission of the publisher. Our prosumers continue to be our ‘board of directors.’
Opinions expressed are those of the writers and may Entertainment: We learn and we do our best when we’re having
not represent the opinion of Associated Professional fun. Smart People magazine is deliberately quick and lively and full
Services or Smart People magazine. of meaning, all at once.
Smart People magazine Speed: No one ever said magazines were speedy. But they’ll say it
Associated Professional Services
1811 Atrium Drive about this one. The magazine may be a periodical, but the flow of
Sun City Center, Florida 33573 conversation is now.
Phone: 813.634.4397
Innovation: There’s never been anything like Smart People magazine.
We dare to be different because we think differently and we urge
our readers to think differently too. We heed the Eight Norms
www.smartpeoplemagazine.com because we believe in them.

Tom Davenport David Gurteen Alice MacGillivray Robert Wendover The Smart People Magazine Board of Directors is being carefully and
Information Knowledge Smart People Generational
Technology Management Networkers Studies methodically constructed to assure broad representation of the personal
and professional interests of our audience, ranging from experts to
ordinary smart people. We invite suggestions and assistance. Contact
Jerry Ash: smart.guy1@verizon.net

EDITORIAL BOARD

SMART PEOPLE 3
COVER STORY
The Learning Factory
K-12 classrooms irrelevant to today’s environment
By David Warlick
There is a commonly told
story, usually attributed to
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology’s Seymour Papert.
It states that if a doctor from
the 1890s were to suddenly be
time-warped into a modern
twenty-first century hospital,
he would not recognize how
patients were being healed.
The same would be true of
office workers, farmers or
4 SMART PEOPLE
most other professional or
occupational environments.
However, if a schoolteacher
from the 1890s were to
step into many of today’s
classrooms, he or she could
easily pick up where she left
off.
This is a bit of an
exaggeration, since most
classrooms today are
equipped with at least one
computer, printer and access
to the Internet. A growing
number of classrooms now
feature permanently
mounted LCD projectors.
Yet, even in classrooms
where each student walks
in with a laptop under
his or her arm, the model
of teaching and learning
continues to be largely
unchanged. The teacher
lectures and the students
use their laptops to take
notes.
They memorize the
answers for the tests which
they practice, performing to
expectations and according
to standards, and they move
along the path of formal
education.
Our schools and
classrooms continue
to reflect an
industrial model.
Our children
move along an
assembly line, from
kindergarten to
Grade 12, where
we install math,
reading, science,
and social studies
– in compliance
with government
standards – blueprints that
define and sequence what
our students should be taught
during their years of formal
education. At the end of
each year, they pass through
quality control, where we
use precision instruments
to measure each student,
assuring that they know the
same things and think the
same way.
Education still reflects
the industrial model.
In the industrial
environment that gave
rise to today’s education
system, when a majority of
students followed schooling
to manufacturing jobs, we
needed a workforce of people
who knew the same things
and thought the same way.
But in a time of rapid
change and globalization,
the value we bring to our
endeavors comes not from
what we know that is the
same as everyone else. Today,
value comes from what we
know that is different and
how we think that is different.
A new model for
schooling is desperately
needed. But, most of the
teachers and principals in
today’s schools grew up in the
twentieth century. According
to the Digest of Education
Statistics: 2007 (latest data
available), 55 percent of public
school teachers in the U.S. had
at least 10 years of experience.
At best, they received their
professional education when
 COVER STORY

DOS was still a prevailing a dramatic shift in the (ICT) have

computer operating system. A workplace, which now values changed how
quarter of U.S. teachers had at the employee’s ability to we accomplish
least 20 years of experience. self-direct, communicate our goals.
These, the most effectively, collaborate and Computers
experienced and influential innovate. Yet, these skills have advanced
teachers in their schools, continue to be unvalued in our from great
learned their profession schools. behemoths,
when personal computers Perhaps the greatest locked away
were still a rare and exotic barrier to retooling classrooms in climate-
technology for the elite. The is the landmark legislation, controlled
same report indicates that No Child Left Behind. The law rooms, to the David Warlick has been an educator
school administrators have attempted to assure that all for more than 30 years. He is also
small and
a celebrated software developer,
an average of 21 years in the children learn basic reading lightweight
author, and public speaker,
education field. Although and math skills by requiring notebook I use presenting to audiences throughout
there are isolated pockets of states to test all students – and to write this the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, the
creative and forward-thinking by labeling schools that fail article while Middle East, and South America.
practices, the prevailing spirit to reach government-defined sitting in a Web site: http://davidwarlick.com
of formal education is to expectations. coffee shop.
maintain old and comfortable With the greatest and most These changes
models, rather than innovate. honorable intentions, the law have occurred since the day
We now find ourselves has demoralized teachers, and I entered the classroom as a
facing increased evidence that de-emphasized and reduced history teacher more than 30
the education experiences funding for other subject areas years ago.
of our children are not – not the least of which are One consequence of
preparing them for the physical education and the personal computing is the
challenges of today’s and creative arts. At best, we are shear volume of information
tomorrow’s workplaces and doing a better job of preparing that surrounds us. A 2000
lifestyles. study, by the University of
In 2008, The At best, we are doing California – Berkeley, found
Partnership a better job of preparing our that in one year (2000), the
for 21st world produced between
Century children for the 1950s. one and two exabytes of
Skills, unique information, which
a coalition of almost 40 our children for the 1950s. is roughly 250 megabytes
corporations, commissioned Three converging for every (person) on earth.
a survey of employers from conditions have emerged By comparison, printed
across the U.S. to identify over the past 10 to 20 years, documents of all kinds
the skill sets that entry-level conditions that education, comprised only 0.03 percent of
employees need for today’s as an institution and its the total.
workplace. governance have largely Just two years later, an
Asked to rank the skills ignored. Understanding this update found that the world’s
in order of importance, convergence is crucial to production of information
they indicated that retooling our classrooms. increased to five exabytes,
professionalism, oral and with only 0.01 percent of that
written communications, Condition #1: A new future information being printed. It
teamwork and critical It is difficult to find would require 37,000 Libraries
thinking now trump reading an aspect of our culture of Congress to hold that much
comprehension. Certainly this today that hasn’t changed information.
does not mean that reading dramatically in the past 30, But in 2007, the IDC was
is less important than it was. 20, or five years. Advances commissioned to conduct a
The opposite is true. in information and
What it indicates is communication technologies NEXT PAGE

SMART PEOPLE 5
COVER STORY
CONTINUED
similar study. They found
that in 2006 161 exabytes
of information had been
generated. This represents
three million times the
information in all the books
ever written.
The amount of
information that constitutes
today’s environments of work
and play are only part of the
changing landscape. But it
leaves us with a future that we
can not clearly describe. For
the first time in history, we are
educating children who will
live and work in a world that
is unknown to us.
We have always been able
to confidently describe the
lifestyles and work settings for
which we were preparing our
children.
Consequently, mapping
the knowledge and skills
needed to prosper in that
world was not a challenge.
That we cannot today clearly
describe our students’ future
has profound implications in
terms of what and how they
learn.
Inept attempts to
create different games
and social networks
to serve existing
educational standards
is viewed as “a creepy
treehouse.”
Condition #2: A new
generation of learner
A number of books have
been recently written that
describe what is often called
the Millennial generation.
But anyone with children
younger than 30 can attest to
6 SMART PEOPLE
a dramatically new kind of
generation.
They are the “baby-
on-board,” IM, MySpace
generation who carry their
conversations in their pockets
and play in the virtual fields
of The SIMS, Halo, and World
of Warcraft.
Marc Prensky, in a 2001
paper, called today’s students
“digital natives,” while he
characterized their parents
and teachers as “digital
immigrants.” Our children’s
native information experience
is so different and foreign
to that of their parents that
it seems we grew up in an
entirely different era.
Many schools are starting
to recognize these distinctions
and are attempting to adapt
by integrating secure social
networks and educational
video games into their
instruction. But simply
replicating our students
games and social networks
only produces what they call,
“a creepy treehouse.”
It is more important
that we try to identify and
understand the unique and
fundamental qualities of
student experiences and
integrate those into our
classrooms. Among qualities
of the native information
experiences are that they:
n Provoke communication
– Social networks and
networked video games are
played through rich webs of
conversation. In the traditional
industrial classroom, the
learner is quiet, listens and
follows instructions.
n Are fueled by questions
– The top 10 Web sites on
the Internet, according to
Alexa Internet, Inc., include
Google, Yahoo, Windows
Live, Wikipedia and Baidu.
com (Chinese language
search engine). They surf the
Web to answer questions. In
their classrooms, however,
it is the teacher who asks
the questions, and students
are expected to be their own
Google.
n Are responsive – Video
games are built around
responsive information
experiences. But social
networks are about writing
– with the full expectation that
your ideas will be responded
to by peers. In school, students
write what they think the
teacher expects to read and
only for a grade.
n Demand personal
investment – Even though
video games seem to be about
instant gratification, our
students are eager to invest
hours, days, even weeks
into achieving the level or
wealth that is their goal.
They work, learn and perfect
their technique so they can
accomplish that goal. In their
classrooms, their question is
not, “How do I do my best?”
Instead, it is “How many
pages?” Their technique
is about finishing – not
achieving.
n Value safely made
mistakes – It’s one of the
defining qualities of most
video games, that when you
make a mistake, you get
to back up and try it again
– carrying a new piece of
knowledge with you. In
classrooms, all answers are

graded with little opportunity
to go back – with little
opportunity to make “good
mistakes.”
n Rewarded with
audience and attention
– Social networks are
about attracting attention
and earning response. In
classrooms, the expected best
work of our children is seen
only by their teacher.
Continuing to treat students as empty vessels to
be filled with government-defined curriculum is
irrelevant to today’s children and their future.
Condition #3: New
information environment
The enormous and
unprecedented growth
of information, discussed
already, indicates a new
information environment that
not only facilitates this kind
of unimaginable growth, but
also fuels it.
Consider how our
information experiences have
become social. We no longer
merely read the newspaper
in our own quiet. Instead,
we read it, email a story of
interest to our friends, attach
our comments, and read and
respond to comments left
by other readers. In some
instances, stories are ranked
based on how much attention
we are paying as readers.
Because of this new digital
and networked information
environment, we can do
things with information that
were impossible only a few
years ago.
Consider the two tag
clouds painting a picture
of the Democratic Primary
Campaign debates of Barack
Obama and Hillary Clinton
< http://www.pollster.
com/ObamaTag.php and
http://www.pollster.com/
ClintonTag400.png>.
Because the information
is digital, it can be analyzed,
compared, arranged and
rearranged in ways that add
value to the content, putting a
new lens on the information.
An information landscape
where all information (text,
images, sound, video) is
digital, makes information
a raw material, not just a
consumable.
Conclusion
Each of these converging
conditions forces us to
struggle with important
questions.
n How do we teach a
generation of networked
learners?
n How do we address and
leverage a dramatically
new information
landscape?
n What do our children
need to be learning to be
ready for an unpredictable
future?
The traditional schools
and classrooms that most of
us attended were fashioned
during an industrial era
based on an industrial
design. Today’s schools and
classrooms must reflect a
different time and a different
environment – one not
based on in-line repetitive
performance of distinct
tasks, but on an increasingly
global and rapidly
COVER STORY
changing economy where
communication, collaboration
and innovation are the fuel for
success, both personally and
in the market place.
Continuing to treat
students as empty vessels to
be filled with government
defined curriculum is
irrelevant to today’s children
and their future. Although
there are certainly critical
essentials that all students
must learn, schools should
respect and empower
learners as equal partners
in their education. Teachers
must become facilitators of
learning, creatively crafting
and cultivating powerful
learning experiences for their
students rather than lecturing
and worksheeting them into
submission. We know what
the alternative looks like and
the research supports it.
Books about the Millennials
Millennials Rising (2000) by Neil Howe
and William Strauss
Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning
(2006) by Marc Prensky
Growing up Digital (1999) and Grown
Up Digital (2008) by Don Tapscott
Born Digital (2008) by John Palfrey
and Urs Gasser of the Berkman Center
for Internet & Society at Harvard Law
School
SMART PEOPLE 7
LEARNING
Wide variation in educational quality in U.S.
LEARNING The U.S. approach to education is a command-and-control style, using standardized tests
that become the object of the educational process. This study provides more evidence
that it isn’t working.
Most American first-grade
classrooms are pretty happy
places to be. Children smile
and enjoy working with one
another and have positive
interactions with their
teachers who recognize their
students’ cues for help and
offer timely responses.
But that doesn’t mean
all students are getting
the academic content they
need, according to a new
study being published by
two University of Virginia
researchers in a recent issue of
The Elementary School Journal.
Robert Pianta, dean of
the University of Virginia’s
Curry School of Education
and director of its Center for
Advanced Study of Teaching
and Learning, and Megan
Stuhlman, a senior research
scientist at the center, based
their study on data collected
from direct observations of
820 first-grade classrooms in
nearly 700 private and public
schools in 32 states.
8 SMART PEOPLE
Trained raters used
scoring guidelines to assess
the types and frequency
of social and instructional
interactions between teachers
and students. A teacher
ignoring a student with a
question would score low on
“sensitivity,” while a teacher
who responded quickly
would score high.
Based upon those
observations, Pianta and
Stuhlman grouped the
classrooms into four major
categories. Teachers who
worked to both create a
positive social climate and
strong instructional support
– 23 percent of classrooms –
were given the score of “high
overall quality.”
Twenty-eight percent
of classrooms had teachers
scoring just below the mean
and were thus deemed
“mediocre.” Seventeen percent
of the classrooms were “low
overall quality.”
The largest category,
accounting for 31 percent of
the classrooms, was labeled
“positive emotional climate,
low academic demand.”
Stuhlman explained
that in these classrooms,
teachers interacted warmly
with the students and did
not discipline with threats.
However, “low academic
demand” was revealed in
their tendency to not give
constructive feedback.
“We found that quality,
particularly instructional
features of teacher behavior,
was rather low across the
sample,” said Pianta, the
study’s lead investigator.
“In other studies, we have
demonstrated the connection
between these teacher-child
interactions and student
learning gains. So what we
are seeing here may influence
the extent to which children
can perform at standards
consistent with accountability
frameworks such as No Child
Left Behind.”
Part of a 17-year
longitudinal study funded
by the National Institute of
Child Health and Human
Development, this study
sought to identify factors
that measure teacher quality
based on the evidence in the
data collected from the large
classroom sample.
Interestingly, the study
found factors traditionally
thought to influence quality,
such as class size and
teacher credentials, had
little influence on classroom
quality. Instead, the study
found that high classroom
quality is linked more
strongly to teachers who are
both creating a positive social
climate and offering strong
instructional support.
“To increase the chances
that more children will
receive a high-quality
education, we have to provide
teachers with effective and
targeted support to help
them promote their students’
learning and understanding,”
Pianta said.

Classroom 2.0
Students apply avatar-based technology to service sector
Students from Indiana University’s
Kelley School of Business worked
in synch – virtually – with
cohorts at North Carolina State
University’s Jenkins Graduate
School of Management this past
spring to learn about service sector
innovation without ever leaving
their campuses.
Instead, they used a collection
of Web 2.0 technologies, such as
wikis and the 3D virtual world
Second Life, to hold meetings and
collaborate on team projects.
Learning to navigate the
unchartered territory was one of the
goals for the 42 students enrolled in
the new course, “Service Innovation
Over the Lifecycle,” offered jointly
for the first time this spring by
faculty at both schools.
While students adopted new
technologies, their professors
watched to see how they leveraged
the avatar-based environment. The
feedback from all involved in the
class – students, companies that
provided class projects and the
professors – was good, so plans are
to offer the class again.
Web 2.0 technologies can add interactivity and
engagement not currently possible in most enterprises.
Riley Gaddy, one of the Jenkins
Graduate School students, said he
and his classmates “could definitely
see possibilities for use of the new
technologies, particularly beyond
the classroom. Just as the Internet
has given companies a new channel
to interact with customers, I believe
the Web 2.0 technologies can add
interactivity and engagement that
is not currently possible with the
current set of company Web pages.”
“I have discovered a lot about
how the younger generation uses
technology, and what kinds of
technologies provide value,”
explained IU student Linda
Rasmussen. “I have already shared
my team’s business case with
my current employer’s training
department to get them thinking
about the advantages.”
Anne Massey, Dean’s Research
Professor of Information Systems
at Kelley, and Mitzi Montoya,
Zelnak Professor of Marketing
and Innovation and director of
the Service & Product Innovation
Initiative at NC State College of
Management, created the co-
laboratory that included a virtual
class supported by Second Life and
OnCourse, IU’s course management
system.
“Our goals for this class were
to help the students understand
the services lifecycle and
identify opportunities for service
innovation,” Montoya said. “The
service sector is the dominant
driver of today’s global economy
and emerging technologies are
an important part of innovative
service offerings.”
An IBM faculty award
supported curriculum development
for the Service Innovation Lab
portion of the class, during which
students worked on projects for
two companies exploring ways
to stimulate service innovation
– Target Corp. and a Fortune 100
financial services firm.
The course also gave students
“the opportunity to learn and use
the new Web 2.0 toolkit, including
leading edge technologies like
virtual worlds,” Massey said.
LEARNING
“Today’s students need to
develop skills that will enable
them to be effective collaborators,
particularly in the context of
technology-enabled ‘virtual’ teams.
“Web 2.0 and 3D virtual worlds
offer an emerging platform for
collaboration within a company
and a new platform for interaction
between the
company and
customer,”
Massey added.
The
student
teams were
tasked with
making the
business case
for delivering
a service
innovation Massey’s avatar
in Second Life.
Throughout the semester,
“faculty and students used avatars
to meet in Second Life, with the
student teams using webinars, open
source document repositories, wikis
and other tools to collaborate while
working on corporate sponsored
projects,” Massey said.
The course culminated in a case
competition among the teams. “The
competition lasted for seven weeks,
which is the first of its kind for me,”
explained Kelley student Prasanna
Veeraraghavan. “We had many
deliverables which gave our efforts
a predefined structure.”
Rasmussen added, “We really
believe that our business case
provided a good basis for the
client to work from and hope they
implement the proposed solution.”
About the virtual environment,
she said, “It was a challenge to
present with other team members
NEXT PAGE
SMART PEOPLE 9
LEARNING

Zero hour
Video game trains America’s EMS medics
George Washington University’s National EMS Preparedness Initiative
announces the launch of Zero Hour: America’s Medic, a high-tech video
game-based learning tool that is designed to train first responders through
a series of virtual simulations based on the 16 national planning scenarios
developed by US Homeland Security.
When playing the game and confronted with biological, explosive,
chemical and earthquake disasters, first responders must meet the challenges
they would face during an actual disaster.
“This is the first-of-its-kind training tool,” said Gregg Lord, associate
director, GW’s Office of Homeland Security.

Students apply avatar-based technology to service sector

CONTINUED
we hadn’t met, but we had
practice sessions using
conference calling and Adobe
Connect. It ended up working
well.”
Gaddy, who received
his MBA in May from NC
State, said he thinks “it will
take some time before the
general public
has enough
understanding It’ll be some time
of these enough understanding and capabilities to use –compliance
technologies so these technologies. But the potential is there. with medication
that companies
can effectively
introduce new services.
Many of these applications,
especially virtual worlds,
have hardware and graphical
requirements that many
household PCs do not meet. ”
The class experience,
however, enabled him to see
the potential for this new
technology in the growing
services industry. Initially
Gaddy, a senior clinical
data scientist with a major
pharmaceuticals company,
said he did not see “much of
a fit between my career in
pharmaceuticals and service
innovation until I started to services along with actual
understand more about how
service innovation can affect
businesses.”
“The pharmaceutical
industry is currently
before the general public has
undergoing vast changes,”
he said, “with most of the
blockbuster drugs either off
patent already or coming
off in the next four to five
years. This will require
companies to develop new
business models and activities
to simply maintain their
positions. With the advent
of genetic technology, drugs
are being developed that are
more effective for specific
patient populations. In order
to identify these populations,
companies would be able to
develop testing and screening
medications.”
Integration of services and
Web 2.0 technologies might
also be helpful in responding
to another problem facing
the healthcare
industry
patient
regimens, he
said.
“Web 2.0 has been
evolving and 3D virtual
worlds are rapidly emerging as
a way to enable collaboration,”
Massey said. This virtual class
is an outgrowth of research
projects Massey and her NC
State counterpart have under
way with the support of Xerox
and IBM through NC State’s
College of Management. 

10 SMART PEOPLE

Open source education
Trend in higher ed embraces Walt Whitman’s democratic spirit
In the U.S., the National
Endowment for the
Humanities recently awarded
Matthew K. Gold, assistant
professor of English at
New York City College of
Technology (City Tech) a
grant for his innovative digital
humanities project, “Looking
for Whitman: The Poetry of
Place in the Life and Work of
Walt Whitman.”
The project focuses on
a new kind of interactive
learning, made possible by
recent advances in social
networking technologies,
that are gradually reshaping
academia by expanding the
boundaries of education
beyond the “walled garden”
of traditional academic
disciplines, classroom
activities, and online learning
environments.
Web site connects
four colleges
At the center of the project
is an open-source Web site
that will connect classes
from four colleges
(City Tech, New
York University,
University
of Mary
Washington, and
Rutgers University,
Camden), each of
which is located
in an area central
to Whitman’s
life and work.
As students
explore
those locations, they will
document and share their
research experiences with
one another through Web 2.0
platforms such as WordPress,
MediaWiki, Flickr, Twitter,
YouTube and Google Maps.
City Tech students, for
example, will investigate the
Fulton Ferry Landing, which
Whitman described in his
famous poem, “Crossing
Brooklyn Ferry.” They will
share the photos and videos
they create there with
students from other classes,
who will similarly share work
from their own locations.
“Humanities research
and teaching need to shift
in response to technological
innovations that have made
new kinds of collaboration
possible,” says Gold. “Writing
and reading have changed,
and the academy has to
respond.”
In keeping with
Whitman’s diversity
Building a community
of learners from a variety of
institutions and with very
different life experiences is
very much in keeping with
Whitman’s democratic
spirit, Gold adds.
“Whitman
believed that
America’s strength
came from the
diversity of its
citizens. When
he wrote the first
edition of Leaves of
Grass, the political
and economic
strains leading to
the Civil War were pulling the
country apart. He desperately
wanted the country to cohere
LEARNING
and hoped to enable his
fellow citizens to think
beyond divisions that
separated them.”
The project takes
advantage of City
Tech’s proximity
to the Brooklyn
waterfront,
where Whitman
worked early in
his career. The
school is “two
blocks from
the site where the
first copy of Leaves of Grass
was printed, a short walk Matthew
from the Brooklyn Bridge and Gold holds a
close to the many Brooklyn computer with
locations where Whitman an image of
lived. Walt Whitman
“There is so much history
here,” Gold observes, “but
our students often don’t know
about it. I want to connect
our learning to these places,
to get our students out of the
classroom and into the streets,
into the archives. I want our
students to see the streets
themselves as archives.”
Links to libraries, historical
societies, museums
In addition to the
collaborative efforts by
students from the four
colleges, their professors will
work with libraries, historical
societies and museums to
identify and make available
site-specific resources and
archival projects. Together,
they are developing courses
for each location that will help
students experience the value
and excitement of literary and
historical research.
SMART PEOPLE 11
LIVING
LIVING Power of story
Sense making comes from son’s Persian Gulf experience
By John and JoAnn Girard
For several years, we have had
the great pleasure of speaking
to groups of organizational
leaders about knowledge
management.
Specifically, we speak
about how leaders may
reap the benefits of creating
and sharing organizational
knowledge.
This journey has taken
us to destinations across the
United States and Canada
as well as Europe, Asia,
South America, Africa and
Australia.
In fact, Antarctica is the
only continent where we have
not spoken about knowledge
management – we await an
invitation!
Over the Gone are the days where ships pass in the night played an
years, our
talks have without notice. Gone are the days when
changed. ships rely on semaphore or even radios
Initially,
we spoke
about rather
complex cognitive theories
with the hope folks in the
audience would take our
words of wisdom and single-
handedly transform their
organizations.
After many sessions
of watching yet another
audience grin politely as
we delivered our sermon,
we realized that we were
contributing to one of the
common themes of our talks
– information overload.
As it turns out, much
of what we were talking
about was simply lost in the
translation.
12 SMART PEOPLE
At first, we wondered if it
were the audiences because it
certainly could not be us!
After each presentation,
we would spend hours
answering emails from
individuals with questions
such as “I really enjoyed your
talk; however, I am not really
sure how to implement the
ideas you were discussing.
Do you have any examples of
these ideas in action?”
After many nights
of responding to similar
questions, we realized
(finally) that we were making
the whole thing seem very
complicated.
We began to respond to
questions with short stories
that illustrated the point we
to stay in contact.
were trying to make. One day friends and family back home.
we had an epiphany: why wait
until after the presentation
to share these stories? We
decided to transform our talks interconnectedness of the
into a series of stories that
explained the (unnecessarily)
complicated theories we were
describing.
The story that follows is
one of our favorites.
Not that long ago, our
son, John, was serving
aboard a Canadian warship
in the Persian Gulf, as part of
Operation Enduring Freedom.
His ship was part of a
larger formation known as
the USS George Washington
Battlegroup, aptly named
because the lead ship in the
group was the aircraft carrier
USS George Washington.
All total, there were six
ships in this futurist flotilla,
each of which was in constant
contact with the mother ship.
Gone are the days where ships
pass in the night without
notice. Gone are the days
when ships rely on semaphore
or even radios to stay in
contact.
In fact, today’s modern
warships are one the
best examples of virtual
collaboration in action. Each
ship is inextricably connected
to the remainder of the flotilla.
At the personal level,
technology
important role
in ensuring our
son was able to
stay connected
with his
In modern navies, this
homeward- bound connection
may be as important as the
operational ships. Though it
may be true that Napoleon
armies could “march on
food,” today soldiers, sailors,
and airmen and women are
probably more concerned
about staying connected than
they are about the quality or
quantity of their food.
If you are in doubt, simply
ask a soldier if he or she would
rather have a MRE (meal ready
to eat, which is actually an

oxymoron) or a five-minute
phone call home.
One day, during his six-
month “cruise” in the Persian
Gulf, our son decided to
explore other opportunities in
the military.
Although we are not
entirely certain what
triggered this sudden quest
for knowledge, we were
very impressed that modern
satellite technology allowed
him to search the vast stores
of data on the Defense Wide
Area Network.
He was able to access,
almost instantly, all the
information he wanted
to decide what military
occupation would be of most
interest to him.
He was able to read
factsheets and download and
watch videos that described
each job. Essentially, he had
access to everything that
would have been available
to him if he were back home
– very impressive.
He also had access to
vast volumes of regulations
that explain the process for
changing careers.
As you can imagine, it is
a very bureaucratic process to
change careers in the military.
There are many forms to fill
out and many deadlines to
meet. As he continued to
navigate through this maze of
knowledge, he began to trip
upon contradictions.
He found different dates,
different processes and
different approval authorities.
The more he searched, the
more contradictions he found.
Soon it became clear he
would not be able to rely
on the data he was finding
– it was simply impossible to
determine which documents
LIVING
were up-to-date and which want, organizations should
ones were dangerous old relics consider investing in systems
taking up valuable space. to facilitate this human-to-
At the end of the day, our human connection.
son contacted us for help. So what are you doing to
He knew we would know ensure you remain connected
someone who would have the with people? Do you rely
real knowledge he needed. on technology to facilitate
Indeed, he was correct and connections?
after just a couple telephone We encourage you to
calls, we were able to connect connect, collaborate and
with the person who knew communicate with other
the real procedures. Smart People – start today
This is a great example by following Smart People on
of how knowledge flows Twitter <http://twitter.com/
in many organizations. Smart_People>.
Frequently it
makes more
sense to find
a person who
knows what
you need to
know rather
than search
volumes of
uncontrolled
content on
corporate
intranets.
So what
is the moral
of the story?
Well, the
first lesson
we learned
was the
power of story to help people
understand and remember Adapted from John and JoAnn’s
book, The Leader’s Guide to
complex issues.
Knowledge Management:
The story clearly Drawing on the Past to Enhance
reinforces that organizations Future. John Girard, PhD (john@
should have procedures for johngirard.net) is cofounder
content management and and chief knowledge architect of
digital asset management; in Sagology, a firm that focuses on
short, someone should own connecting people with people to
all data and be responsible to collaborate and share knowledge.
maintain it. JoAnn Girard (joann@joanngirard.
However, technology net) is the cofounder and managing
alone will not suffice. We partner of Sagology.
learned that often people
prefer to connect with
other people rather than
with data. To satisfy this
SMART PEOPLE 13
LIVING
Better at texting
Women push computer-mediated communication
The book Men Are from Mars,
Women Are from Venus and
its gender stereotypes on
how the sexes communicate
remains fodder for debate,
but two Indiana University
researchers have confirmed
one thing: When men
and women talk through
technology, it’s the women
who are more expressive.
In an article in the
latest edition of the
quarterly journal Written
Communication, Indiana
University researchers
Susan Herring and Asta
Zelenkauskaite show that
while men historically talk
more in public settings,
when exchanges occur via
text messaging in a public
venue – in this case, Italy’s
real-time interactive music
television channel Allmusic
– it is the women who push
their messages closest to
the character-count limit,
14 SMART PEOPLE
who use more abbreviations
and insertions, and who
implement more emoticons.
“The messages are very
flirtatious and have nothing to
do with the television show,”
said Herring, a professor in
the IU School of Library and
Information Science.
“In the linguistic
marketplace there have
always been different
values associated with
standard and non-standard
language; here we have
found results that are
paradoxical and opposite of
recognized socio-linguistic
gender patterns.”
Symbolic currency
Women use standard
language more than men,
in part because it is seen as
a type of symbolic currency
used to acquire upward
mobility.
“Women have
historically used standard
language when they are
social aspirers, or want to
be perceived as above their
station,” Herring said. “Men
talk more; women are more
polite.”
But that historical footnote
falls apart under the influence
of computer-mediated
communication such as short
message services and text
messaging, researchers found
after looking at 1,164 gender-
defined messages posted on-
screen.
Expecting findings
consistent with past research
on gender-patterned public
communication, Herring
and Zelenkauskaite were
predicting men would post
more and longer text messages,
and would also employ more
non-standard techniques.
Instead, the opposite was true.
The study found women
used more non-standard
language such as abbreviations
or expressive insertions that
represented characteristics
including enthusiasm, sadness,
emphasis and individuality.
And while women were
both more economical and
expressive, they also came
closer to maxing out, or did
max out, on the 160-character
message limit more often.
Cell phones popular
“Since iTV is based on
texting, which was marketed
extensively in Europe, it is
extremely popular,” said
Zelenkauskaite, a doctoral
student and Lithuania native
who has spent more than
two years studying at Italian
universities.
Now the researchers
say they want to explore
whether they could identify
similar amounts and types
of non-standard language
in text-messaging when
different topics available for
interactive, public discussion
– like politics or news-oriented
programming – are studied.
“There are news shows
in Europe where viewers can
comment through iTV but
we have not analyzed any
of those yet,” Herring said.
“There are different linguistic
marketplaces, and politics is
one of them, just like dating
is.”

Digital networking increasing
Strongest in family and friends, leisure and well-being
A new Internet study
published in Bonn titled
“LIFE – Digital Living” shows
a clear international trend
toward broad usage of digital
media and the spread of
networking into all areas of
our lives.
More than 10,000
consumers interviewed in
Germany, France, Great
Britain, Hungary, South
Korea and the U.S. – plus a
panel of 56 experts – see this
development as particularly
strong in the areas of family
and friends, leisure and
well-being. Roughly half
of the respondents were in
Germany.
According to the study,
intuitive usability, speed and
personalization will be the
core criteria for successful
digital networking products
in the coming years. Mobile
access and stylish product
design will play increasingly
important roles.
The “LIFE – Digital
Living” study was designed
and conducted by Professor
Dr. Thomas Hess, director of
the Institute for Information
Systems and New Media
at Ludwig Maximilian
University
in Munich
LIVING
in collaboration with today’s Internet services and The full report
‘zehnvier’ strategy consultants. technical devices enhance (in German
their quality of life. Owning and English)
Digital ‘avantgarde’ a stylish device is important
is available
The study concentrates for 66 percent of the digital
on the use of digital media avantgarde, and 62 percent
at www.
today and in the future. It also state that design is just as studie-life.de
analyzes in depth networking important as functionality.
Access to digital media is taken for granted
– including mobile applications.
Networking enhances quality of life, lifestyle
is becoming more important
in the areas of leisure and Broadband and mobile growth
wellbeing, family and friends, Experts forecast broadband
work and study, material and access in Germany will double
financial matters, security, to 36 million access points
society and community life, by 2015 and anticipate data
and health and fitness. transfer rates of over 100 Mbits.
Along with results gleaned Experts also believe the number
from answers given by of UMTS access points in
consumers in six countries, mobile communications will
the study singles out the double by 2010.
group known as the “digital Fifty percent of Germans
avantgarde” in order to show surveyed belong to an online
that the digital future is social network in Great Britain
already reality among today’s 61 percent are members, as
trendsetters. are 68 percent of the digital
Around 85 percent of the avantgarde. Around one-
German respondents state that quarter of German respondents
the use of digital media has who belong to a private social
become a natural part of network use the network to
their lives. Over 50 share photos, as do 47 percent
percent use mobile in South Korea and 48 percent
access to their of the digital avantgarde.
to their technical devices, More than 56 percent of
as do 85 percent Germans surveyed would like
of the digital to have individualized services
avantgarde. tailored to their interests, as
Sixty-four would over 70 percent in South
percent of Korea and 84 percent of the
the digital avantgarde. Ease-of-
German use is an important aspect:
respondents 79 percent of Germans want
believe that intuitive services.
SMART PEOPLE 15
LIVING

Part I: The medium vs. the message

Personal development for smart people
Steve Pavlina is recognized as one of the most successful personal development bloggers on the
Internet, attracting more than two million monthly readers to his Web site, www.stevepavlina.com.
He has written over 700 articles and recorded many audio programs on a broad range
of self-help topics, including productivity, relationships and spirituality.
By Steve Pavlina Job title is a medium blogger, speaker, web developer,
Now let’s apply this to your entrepreneur, computer
This article is designed to get you career (or any other part of your life programmer, etc. Or I can
thinking about your life from a new for that matter). In most cases, your more broadly say that I’m a
perspective. job title represents the medium of communicator. But that would
For the sake of clarity, we’ll your career. mean defining my career as a
focus primarily on your career, but Career media include being medium – an empty container. It’s
by the time you’re done reading, an attorney, a salesperson, or a like saying I’m a microphone.
you should be able to apply these computer programmer. Think of The message, as opposed
ideas to other areas of your life as your career medium as the vessel to the medium, is what specific
well. through which you work. information I communicate through
Consider a physical recording Much like a recordable CD, these various vessels. What am
medium like a CD or DVD. By itself your career medium is an empty I saying? What information is
it’s an empty vessel. container waiting to be filled. If traveling through the microphone?
The “message” is the you identify yourself as an attorney In my case, the message is that
information contained within that or a salesperson or a computer I’m here to grow and to help other
medium, whether it be music, programmer, that doesn’t give you people to grow.
a film, software, or some other any sense of the value your work The media I use to convey this
information. provides. message will change and evolve
The message is what provides Those professions are conduits over time, but the message is a
the value – the actual recording for providing value, but they constant.
medium is often inconsequential. contain very little value in and of And the message is a much
You may pay $20 for a CD that themselves. Some attorneys earn better description of my true career
contains music, or you may pay $100/hour while others charge than the media that I currently use
$300 for a CD that contains certain $1000/hour. to express it.
software. But the physical CDs are It isn’t hard to recognize that
essentially identical except for the the primary value comes from the Risks of the medium
information they contain. message of your career, what you Chances are you currently think
This price difference isn’t due bring to your career. It’s what fills of your career primarily in terms
to a difference in the medium but the otherwise empty container. of the medium (i.e., your particular
rather due to a difference in the For example, I can identify job) rather than the message (i.e.,
message. my career as being a writer, the unique value you bring to your
work).
Your value comes not from the medium of your There are unexpected benefits
when you shift your focus and
career (i.e., your particular job) or your life, begin thinking of your career
but from your message. primarily in terms of the message.
Conversely, there are two
significant risks that come from
defining your career in terms of
your primary medium (i.e., “I’m an
attorney” or “I’m a programmer”).

16 SMART PEOPLE

The first risk is that you’ll
unnecessarily limit yourself. You
will only recognize opportunities
that present themselves in the form
of a nail because you’ve defined
yourself as a hammer and nothing
more. You’ll fall into the trap of
thinking, “Dammit, Jim! I’m a
doctor, not a bricklayer!”
As a human being, there are
many ways for you to express and
deliver value to others. The current
medium of your career is only one
of them.
When you think of your career
as being greater than any single
medium, you’ll open yourself to
new opportunities that lie outside
your current primary medium.
When you put the medium at best.
before the message, you
define your life in terms your career as the
of the container instead the medium, you’re
of what fills it.
The second risk is that by
focusing too heavily on a single
medium, you’re likely to lose sight of message of personal
your message.
Your message is far more
important than any one medium,
so by putting the medium first,
you’re likely to suffer from a gradual speaking, blogging, or
decline in motivation regarding
your work. You begin a new job,
and it’s very exciting at first, but
the longer you work at it, the less
enthusiastic you become. Does this
seem familiar at all?
Changing perspectives
Today you’ll find people who
define their careers as professional
bloggers (the medium), and so they
blog about anything and everything.
But after several months or perhaps
a year of this type of work, it isn’t
uncommon to see them becoming
apathetic and even depressed about
their work.
LIVING
Why? Because the medium (in
this case, a blog) is hollow by its
very nature, and something hollow
cannot provide lasting motivation. Watch for Part
When you put the medium II from Steve
before the message, you put Pavlina in the
emptiness before fullness. And this next issue of
can lead to procrastination, lack of Smart People
motivation, and low energy. Magazine.
How motivating is it to define
your career as being a
professional blogger (or
any other arbitrary job
title)?
On a scale of 1-10,
maybe it would start at
around an 8-9 the first
few weeks, but where
will it be after five
years? Probably a 4 or 5
But by defining
message instead of
probably in the range
of 8-10, and five years
later you can still be up
there. In my case, the
development is indeed
a 10 for me.
My level of
enthusiasm for writing,
programming waxes
and wanes over time,
but my interest in
personal development A cleaning lady at NASA was
remains perpetually high. asked “What is your job?” She
replied, “I’m part of the team that
Get Steve Pavlina’s new book, will send a man to the moon.”
Personal Development for Smart
People, and learn the Seven
Universal Growth Principles (truth,
love, power, oneness, authority,
courage and intelligence) to achieve
major breakthroughs in your habits,
career, finances, relationships,
health and spiritual development.
www.stevepavlina.com/blog
SMART PEOPLE 17
LIVING
Wisdom of the crowd?
More accurate answers come from ‘herd’ in your head
The findings of a psycho-
logical study indicate the
dialectical bootstrapping
method (that is, thinking
about why your own answer
might be incorrect and then
averaging across estimates)
resulted in more accurate
answers compared to simply
making a second guess
without considering why the
first answer may be wrong.
Yet, herd mentality. Angry
mob. Mass hysteria.
As these phrases suggest,
we are not always confident
that a large group of people
will come up with the
smartest decisions.
So it may be surprising
to learn that numerous
studies have shown that a
crowd of people usually gives
more accurate responses to
questions compared to a mere
individual.
Averaging the responses
provided from a group
18 SMART PEOPLE
increases accuracy by
canceling out a number of
errors made across the board
(such as over-and under-
estimating the answer).
But what if you don’t
have a group?
What happens when
we are on our own? What if
there is no one else around to
consult with before making
a judgment – how can we be
confident that we are giving a
good answer?
Psychologists Stefan M.
Herzog and Ralph Hertwig
from the University of Basel
wanted to know if individuals
could come
up with better
answers using a
technique they
designed and
called “dialectical
bootstrapping.”
Dialectical
bootstrapping
is a method
by which an
individual mind
averages its
own conflicting
opinions, thus
simulating the
“wisdom of the
crowd.”
In other
words, dialectical
bootstrapping enables different
opinions to be created and
combined in the same mind.
In this study, participants
were asked to identify dates of
various historical events.
After they gave their initial
answer, the participants were
asked to think of reasons why
the answer may be wrong
and were then asked to come
up with an alternative second
(dialectical) answer.
The results, reported
in Psychological Science, a
journal of the Association
for Psychological Science,
reveal that the average of the
participants’ first answer with
the second answer was much
closer to the correct answer,
compared to the original
answers on their own.
Averaging beats
second guessing
These findings suggest
that dialectical bootstrapping
may be an effective strategy
in helping us come up with
better answers to many types
of problems.
The researchers note that
while it may be frustrating
going back and forth between
two different answers, “as
dialectical bootstrapping
illustrates, being of two
minds can also work to one’s
advantage.”
They conclude, “Once
taught about the tool, people
could make use of it to boost
accuracy of their estimates
across a wide range of
domains.”
For a copy of the article “The
Wisdom of Many in One
Mind: Improving Individual
Judgments with Dialectical
Bootstrapping” and access to
other Psychological Science
research findings, please
contact Barbara Isanski at
202.293.9300 or bisanski@
psychologicalscience.org
 LIVING

No one told them to do anything. But when David Shepherd and Travis Price
heard how a Grade 9 student was treated on the first day of school for wearing
a pink shirt, they sprang into action.
The then-Grade 12 students from Cambridge in Nova Scotia’s
Annapolis Valley went to a nearby discount store and bought 50 pink
shirts to distribute to their friends to wear to school the next
day.
They emailed classmates to get on board with an anti-
bullying cause they dubbed a “sea of pink.”
That wave of pink turned into a tsunami: hundreds
of students showed up to Central Kings Rural High
School wearing pink duds. And now pink is the official
color of a Nova Scotia-wide Stand Up Against Bullying
‘We’ thinkers Day, held on the second Thursday of each September.
Michael Ungar, a social worker, family therapist and professor with Dalhousie
change ‘me’ University’s School of Social Work, calls the two teens “we thinkers.”
In his new book We Generation, he says we thinkers like David and Travis
thinking ways can help their parents’ generation “rethink some of our own me thinking ways.”
Chapter by chapter, Dr. Ungar illustrates how parents can nurture we-
thinking in their children, for example, by lavishing them with physical affection,
by noticing the good things they do, by giving them responsibility and making
them accountable for their own mistakes.

Pride undeserving of negative reputation

The age-old question of
whether pride is the seventh
sin or an adaptive virtue
has been answered by two
Northeastern University
scientists.
Contrary to popular
belief, the researchers
found that pride not only
leads individuals to take on
leadership roles in teams,
but also fosters admiration,
as opposed to scorn, from
teammates.
“We found that pride
is quite undeserving of its
negative reputation,” said
David DeSteno, associate
professor of psychology and
co-author of the study.
“Pride actually constitutes
a functional social emotion
with important implications
for leadership and the
building of social capital.”
DeSteno and lead author
Lisa Williams designed
an experiment including
individual and group
activities.
For the individual
activities, certain participants
were induced to feel proud.
Participants next interacted
cooperatively on a problem-
solving task and were asked
to evaluate their partners’
leadership and likability.
The participant who
received the pride induction
took on a dominant role
and was perceived as the
most “hands-on” during the
activity. In addition, their
teammates viewed them as
more likable than the other
participants.
“These are some of the
first findings that show
functional outcomes of
pride within the context of
actual social behavior,” said
Williams.
“Although when taken to
extremes, pride can certainly
be maladaptive, this research
demonstrates the emotion’s
potential for fostering
successful interpersonal
interaction.”

SMART PEOPLE 19
CHOOSING
CHOOSING Unwitting errors
Dialogue between great thinkers helps you too
By Rachel Kaberon
I’m betting that you would
love to be able to make better
decisions. That if you could
really choose, you would
prefer to avoid painful,
costly mistakes and want the
everyday bets you take to
succeed,.
Sadly, this may be a
sucker’s bet and one that Taleb
Nassim, author of the Black
Swan, has willingly taken on.
What he has learned from
his years as a quant (expert
in math) and more earnest
informal conversations with
Daniel Kahneman can help
you too, that is if you’re game.
Tim Geithner, U.S.
Secretary of the Treasury, and
for that matter Bernie Madoff,
facing fraud charges in the
U.S., are both pretty smart
guys, yet each of them made
some serious mistakes.
20 SMART PEOPLE
Rather than debating
how intentional their errors
were, I’d like you to consider
that both of their errors in
judgment were unintentional.
Being smart doesn’t always
align with whether we made a
smart decision.
“It’s not what we don’t know that gives us
trouble. It’s what we know that just ain’t so.”
Your consciousness
unwittingly biases your
judgment and leads to error.
Will Rogers said it: “It’s
not what we don’t know that
gives us trouble. It’s what we
know that just ain’t so.” The
growing evidence compiled
by behavioral economists
and their counterparts in
psychology or cognitive
science has begun to further
our understanding of series
of unconscious biases that
compromise judgment.
Central to the arguments
on the irrationality of human
decision-making is the
work of Amos Tversky and
Daniel Kahneman, winner
of the Nobel prize for their
pioneering work in Prospect
theory.
Your ignorance of the
odds is not the only reason
you consistently
favor small steady
returns over
one time
windfalls
and prefer
when you
have to
lose, to lose
everything
at once. When it comes to the
likelihood of losing gradually
and all at once, the odds are
indifferent.
This inconsistency in our
risk-taking behavior reflects
a wiring problem, or a lose
screw. Decisions require us to
assess the likely frequency or
probability of a given event.
A series of three available
shortcuts simplify the task
and simultaneously result in
further error as we naturally
tend to ignore relevant
information.
Expectations and
judgments are
formulated by quick
intuition and slower
reasoning. The context
will frequently dictate
your interpretation.
Our judgment is
formulated from two systems
which develop expectations
very differently. Your intuition
is fast while your rational,
reasoning side is a bit slower.
These systems are
constantly searching for an
explanation, the rationale for
the information you encounter.
The intuitive part of the brain
responds and seeks to match
to existing patterns – the test
of ‘representativeness.’ We also
attempt to form associations

with information that was
heard or observed most
recently – the availability
heuristic.
The final shortcut occurs
when we assign meaning
by anchoring. If the input is
similar or familiar, you may
oversubscribe meaning to it;
precisely because it happens
so instantaneously, you barely
have time for awareness.
In this ever-ready state of
forming associations, the
context will frequently dictate
your interpretation.
The more associations
you form, the greater your
confidence in knowing what
you know. Though you
ascertain the knowledge
remains valid in the current
setting, you act on what you
feel or sense which is what
results in your mistakes.
This was Tim Geithner,
Bernie Madoff, many of his
investors and probably your
own experience. We all ignore
in part what we know, but not
necessarily consciously.
This explains why
machines and simple
data models consistently
outperform expert
professionals who, humanly,
make more mistakes.
Machines have no
intelligence, but their
Built into the duality of intuition and reason
is our fallibility and the source of our unwitting
bias that is prone to error.
advantage of reliability,
accuracy and consistency
makes them much more
responsible than the experts
with which we put great faith.
Experts can just as readily
be fooled by their intuition
or misled by their reasoning
especially if it’s limited
to infrequently occurring
outcomes, or predictions.
If the economic crisis is
truly a rare event, then how
much experience or expertise
can anyone
really have Machines have no intelligence, but they outperform
creating
proven
experts who humanly make more mistakes.
successful
responses?
So what does it take to be
smarter?
In some realms this task is chance at more rational
relatively easy. Mathematical
word problems, or unfamiliar
situations or circumstances
require our involuntary,
reasoning, rational system
to step in and develop an
expectation or assessment of
how and what to do next.
The problem, as you will
see, is not that we are lazy,
but that the rational system
response is voluntary, a little
slower to execute and requires
effort.
By contrast, our intuitive
system is fast, automatic to the
point of making associations
and fitting information into
patterns often without any
consciousness on our part.
Built into the duality of these
systems is our basic fallibility
and the source of our
unwitting bias that is prone to
error.
Taleb, a very vigilant
student of rare events, accepts
the challenge but not the
risks associated with this
very human shortcomings:
CHOOSING
“We tend to view the world
as more explainable than
it really is, and look for
explanations even where
there are none.”
Having a consistent
set of systems in place pre-
empts the call for judgment Rachel Kaberon
or choice and helps reduce is managing
errors. Likewise for a fighting partner of Arkay
Solutions, an
thinking, you need to change independent
or expand your frame of strategy
reference, challenge yourself consulting firm
to test the context in which that operates from
you operate, the one that the perspective
forms the basis of your initial that learning is
decision. what separates
Finally, practice flexibility good from bad
and adapt a willingness to business. She
consider more than the first can be found
possibility that presents itself, in Chicago and
thus slowing down your welcomes your
decision making and that comments at
in itself may improve your Arkayuno@gmail.
personal odds. com
References
n To read more about Taleb, I suggest an old
Malcolm Gladwell piece from the New Yorker
that appeared April 22 and 29, 2002 entitled
“Blowing Up.”
n Or if you are a more audio-visual learner
you can hear a nice exchange between
Daniel Kahneman and Taleb Nassim at:
http://fora.tv/2009/01/27/Nassim_Taleb
_and_Daniel_Kahneman_Reflection_on_
a_Crisis#chapter_01
n Or for the technically inclined you can find
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s
original papers on judgment heuristics that
appear in one volume entitled Choices,
Values, and Frames.
SMART PEOPLE 21
CHOOSING
Social networking breeds careless management
of words. And your words are your personal
representatives!
If words were people, then
“eloquent,” “love” and
“symphony” would get dates
most Friday nights.
Sadly, “vomit,” “moist”
and “puke” likely would stay
home alone, wondering what
went wrong.
Which begs the question:
How are words pretty or
ugly?
That’s the question Robert
E. Wolverton Sr., a Mississippi
State University classics
professor, recently asked in a
survey of some 75 students in
Publisher’s note: Choosing words is both
an art and a strategy. Yogi Berra, who
may not have been as inept with words
as he was thought to be, once said “I’d
like to thank all the people who made this
day necessary.”
He meant “possible” but think about
the significant meaning – intended or not
– in the choice of a word.
Writing in Communicating the Ideas
of Liberty, Sharon Harris councils the
Advocates of Self Government that word
choice mistakes can cost them dearly in
lost communications opportunities.
Unfortunately, social networking
breeds careless communication. Many
areas of the Internet are pits of mindless
words. Don’t fall into that pit. Choose
your words wisely and edit them carefully
before hitting Send. Your words are your
representatives.
22 SMART PEOPLE
his classes. Developed from
Wolverton’s natural academic
curiosity, the poll is part of
the foreign language faculty
member’s “semi-frequent”
examination of how students
at the land-grant university
view widely used terms.
Of the 148 different
“beautiful” words submitted
by students this year are
several listed multiple times:
eloquent (six), love (four) and
symphony (four). Beautiful,
lavender and tranquility each
received three mentions.
Of the 138 “ugly” words,
the following are mentioned
multiple times: vomit (six),
moist (five), puke (five),
phlegm (four), slaughter
(four), snot (four), ugly (four),
damp (three), and mucus
(three).
Also, the name of a
football team may make an
ugly word for some, while
food types have the sound of
beauty.
Wolverton also asked
students to spend some
time thinking about what
makes a word either pretty or
unattractive.
The association between
words and sounds, while
being pronounced often,
factor into how they are
considered, Wolverton said.
The same can be true of
a word’s language of origin,
Wolverton noted, adding that
many words viewed as pretty
“often have Greek or Latin
origins.”
In general, the short,
monosyllable words seemed
to be viewed as ugly, while
polysyllabic words seemed to
have more likability, based on
years of the survey’s results, he
said.
Compared to previous
years, one difference in the
2009 survey results involves
the selection of religious-
themed words as pretty.
According to Wolverton, fewer
students listed them this year.
Expressing surprise, he
observed that “so many of
our students come from small
towns. For many of them the
church is the social center.”
Also, “mellifluous”
and “lullaby,” two words
consistently considered pretty
over the years, dropped off
this year’s list.
“Susurrus,” which
describes a soft, whispering or
rustling sound, made the list
for the first time, however.
Wolverton said he thinks
the increasing number of
iPhones and other modern
communication technologies
may be providing students
with “greater word diversity
on a regular basis.”
This year’s class survey
is the fourth for the veteran
educator. He said he didn’t
have a specific goal when he
created it, just an interest to
see what his students were
thinking.
“I was just curious to see
what would come out of it,” he
said.

Estrangement from nature
Technology is great but virtual is threat to real deal!
There are Web cams focused
on falcons, ferrets and fish,
virtual tours of the Grand
Canyon and Yosemite, and
robotic dogs, seals and even
dinosaurs.
But what about the real
deal – observing animals in
their natural habitat, hiking
the John Muir Trail or a
playing with a live pet?
Modern technology
increasingly is encroaching
into human connections
with the natural world and
University of Washington
psychologists in the U.S.
believe this intrusion may
emerge as one of the central
psychological problems of our
times.
And the consequences
may be bad news for Mother
Nature – an insensitivity
to what’s happening to the
natural world around us.
“We are a technological
species, but we also need a
deep connection with nature
in our lives,” said Peter
Kahn, a UW developmental
psychologist and lead author
of a new study exploring how
humans connect with nature
and technological nature.
Writing in the current
issue of the
journal Current
Directions in
Psychological
Science, Kahn and
two of his UW
graduate
students,
Rachel Severson and
Jolina Ruckert, look at the
psychological effects of
interacting with various forms
of technological nature and
explored humanity’s growing
estrangement from nature.
The UW researchers cite
earlier experiments conducted
by Kahn’s laboratory, one with
a plasma display “window”
and several with AIBO, a
robotic dog.
The plasma window study
showed that people recovered
better from low-level stress by
looking at an actual view of
nature rather than seeing the
same real-time high-definition
television scene displayed on
a plasma window.
“What do we compare
technology to? If we compare
it to no nature, technological
nature works pretty well.
But if we compare it to
actual nature, it doesn’t
seem to provide as many
psychological benefits,” Kahn
said.
The AIBO studies showed
that children were in some
ways treating the robots as
other beings. But compared
to interacting with a real dog,
their interactions with AIBO
were not as social or deep.
“Robots and virtual
pets are beginning
to replace children’s
interactions with biologically
live pets,” said Ruckert.
“The larger concern is that
technological nature will shift
the baseline of what people
perceive as the full
human experience of
nature, and that it will
CHOOSING
contribute to what we call
environmental generational
amnesia.”
This concept of amnesia
proposes that people believe
the natural environment
they encounter during
childhood is the norm,
against which
they measure
environmental
degradation later
in their life.
The problem
with this is that
each generation
takes that degraded
condition as a non-
degraded baseline and
is generally oblivious
of changes and
damages inflicted
by previous
generations.
“Poor air quality is a
good example of physical
degradation,” said Kahn.
“We can choke on the air, and
some people suffer asthma,
but we tend to think that’s
a pretty normal part of the
human condition.
“Some people get the
idea on one level if they are
interested in environmental
issues,” said Severson.
“They see the
degradation, but they
don’t recognize their own
experience is diminished.
How many people today feel
a loss such as the damming of
the Columbia River compared
to a wild Columbia River? A
lot of us have no concept of it
as a wild river and don’t feel
a loss.”
SMART PEOPLE 23
CHOOSING
SNs trump email
Social
networks
and blogs
are now the Networks, blogs growing twice as fast
fourth most Time spent on social networks
popular and blogs is growing twice
online as fast as any of the other
activity four largest sectors (search,
– ahead of portals, PC software and
email), according to The
personal Nielsen Company’s “Global
email, Faces and Networked Places,”
Nielsen a comprehensive report
reports. revealing the new global
footprint of social networking.
Networking fundamental
“Social networking has
become a fundamental part of
the global online experience,”
says John Burbank, CEO of
Nielsen Online. “While two-
thirds of the global online
population already accesses
member community sites,
their vigorous adoption and
the migration of time show
no signs of slowing. Social
networking will continue to
alter not just the global online
landscape, but the consumer
experience at large. This study
explains why.”  compared to 19 percent in
24 SMART PEOPLE
According to the Nielsen
report, Facebook – the world’s
most popular social network
– is visited monthly by three
in every 10 people online
across the nine markets in
which Nielsen tracks social
networking use.
Orkut in Brazil has the
largest domestic online reach
(70 percent) of any social
network in these markets.
The report, available today,
provides insights into the
changing size and audience
composition of the global
social networking audience
and the increasing share of
Internet time for which it
accounts.
Other key findings
include:
n One in every 11 minutes
online globally is
accounted for by social
network and blogging
sites.
n The social network and
blogging audience is
becoming more diverse in
terms of age.
n The biggest increase in
visitors during 2008 to
“Member Community”
Web sites globally came
from the 35-49 year old age
group (+11.3 million).
Mobile implications
Mobile is playing an
increasingly important role
in social networking. Nielsen
found UK mobile Web users
have the greatest propensity to
visit a social network through
their handset, with 23 percent
(2 million people) doing so,
the US (10.6 million people).
These numbers are a big
increase over last year – up
249 percent in the UK and 156
percent in the US.
“Social networking isn’t
just growing rapidly, it’s
evolving – both in terms
of a broader audience
and compelling new
functionality,” says Alex
Burmaster, author of the
study and communications
director across EMEA for
Nielsen Online.
“We felt compelled to
analyze the state of the
social networking market
globally and consider what
implications this has for our
publisher and advertiser
clients,” says Burmaster.
Among the markets
Nielsen measured,
penetration of visits to social
networks and blogs was
highest in Brazil, where 80
percent of the online audience
visits such sites.
The share of overall
Internet time for which social
networks and blogs account is
also highest in Brazil, where
nearly one in four (23 percent)
of minutes spent online is
spent on these sites.
Find more insights from the
study and download the full
paper for free on Nielsen’s
blog at http://blog.nielsen.
com/nielsenwire/nielsen-
news/social-networking-new-
global-footprint/. 
 CHOOSING

Job networks
A major
paradigm
shift in
Major job boards to die within a decade online job-
Submitted by Greg Morrison what we refer to as their digital n 2009 Online Job Hunting searching
Smart People prosumer* presence,” Hansen says. Report: The Long, Slow moves
“As job boards diminish in Death March of Job Boards closer to the
Online job boards will be gone importance and effectiveness, ­-- and What Will Replace
within a decade or sooner. and hiring decision-makers Them. URL: http://www.
mainstream
That’s the assertion of a shift their approaches to quintcareers.com/job- as Web
new report and e-book on the connecting with talent through board_death_march.html 2.0 social
state of Internet job-hunting online searches, a digital n No-cost e-book (ISBN- networking
from a leading career Web site. presence becomes a must.” 10: 1-934689-08-4): The sites and
Taking their place, a wave The 2009 report, sixth Quintessential Guide to Job second
of new social-media-driven in a series of annual reports Search 2.0: Advancing Your
generation
job-search sites and tools is published by Quintessential Career Through Online
arriving online, expected to Careers covering the major Social Media. URL: http:// job boards
change how job-seekers and trends in online job-search, www.quintcareers.com/ gain
employers find each other. includes findings about how Quintessential_Careers_ traction with
“Just as the major job employers and job-seekers are Press/Job_Search/ employers
boards revolutionized how connecting online: and job-
job-seekers searched, applied, n Job boards will be gone in Quintessential Careers,
founded in 1996, is a member seekers.
and found jobs more than a 10 years or sooner.
decade ago, a new crop of Web n Digital presence, of a network of empowering
sites is arriving that will once “findability,” and search- sites, EmpoweringSites.com.
again change the job-search engine optimization More background about
landscape,” says Katharine (SEO) increasingly are Quintessential Careers can be
Hansen, PhD, creative director standard operating tools for found at www.quintcareers.
for Quintessential Careers jobseekers. com/home.html.
and author of the report titled, n Social-networking, *Prosumers are consumers who
“The Long, Slow Death March people-finding, and micro- want to have a hand in shaping the
of Job Boards – and What Will blogging participation are product. Smart People prosumers
Replace Them,” as well as co- becoming critical to help ensure that the content and
author of the accompanying the job search. direction of the magazine is shaped by
no-cost e-book. n Blogging is seen as a both its readers.
“While traditional job a way to demonstrate
boards will still play a role expertise and learn more
in how job-seekers find jobs about and connect with
over the next few years, social- employers.
networking sites and second- n Integrating multimedia
generation job boards are into the job search -- a
quickly gaining inroads, and controversial trend -- is one
we can expect these and other to watch.
emerging job-search sites to
replace the big job boards More details:
within a decade,” Hansen
stated.
“One other element at the
heart of this paradigm shift
is the empowerment of job-
seekers to create and manage
their online career persona,

SMART PEOPLE 25
CHOOSING

No time for reflection

Tweet this: Rapid-fire media may confuse moral compass
Emotions linked to our moral sense awaken compelling, real-life stories to induce admiration
slowly in the mind, according to a new study for virtue or skill or compassion for physical or
from a neuroscience group led by corresponding social pain in 13 volunteers. Brain imaging showed
author Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and the volunteers needed six to eight seconds to fully
Creativity Institute at the University of Southern respond to stories of virtue or social pain. However,
California. once awakened, the responses lasted far longer than
The finding, contained in one of the first reactions to stories focused on physical pain.
brain studies of inspirational emotions in a field
dominated by a focus on fear and pain, suggests Emotional cost of snippets
digital media culture may be better suited to some The study raises questions about the emotional
mental processes than others. cost – particularly for the developing brain – of heavy
“For some kinds of thought, especially moral reliance on a rapid stream of news snippets obtained
decision-making about other people’s social and through television, online feeds or social networks
psychological situations, we need to allow for such as Twitter.
adequate time and reflection,” said first author “If things are happening too fast, you may
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang. not ever fully experience emotions about other
people’s psychological states and that would have
Admiration, compassion take time implications for your morality,” Immordino-Yang,
Humans can sort information very quickly a former public junior high school teacher who
and can respond in fractions of seconds to signs of pioneered a doctoral thesis track on learning and the
physical pain in others. brain at Harvard University, said.
Admiration and compassion – two of the social Clearly, normal life events will always provide
emotions that define humanity – take much longer, opportunities for humans to feel admiration and
Damasio’s group found. compassion. But fast-paced digital media tools may
“Damasio’s study has extraordinary direct some heavy users away from traditional
implications for the human perception avenues for learning about humanity, such as
of events in a digital engagement with literature or face-to-face social
communication interactions.
environment,” Immordino-Yang did not blame digital media.
said media “It’s not about what tools you have; it’s about how
scholar Manuel you use those tools,” she said.
Castells, holder Castells said he was less concerned about
of the Wallis online social spaces, some of which can provide
Annenberg opportunities for reflection, than about “fast-moving
Chair of television or virtual games.”
Communication
Technology and Effects of violent media culture
Society at USC. “In a media culture in which violence and
“Lasting suffering becomes an endless show, be it in fiction or
compassion in infotainment, indifference to the vision of human
in relationship suffering gradually sets in,” he said.
to psychological Damasio agreed: “What I’m more worried about
suffering requires is what is happening in the juxtapositions you find in
a level of persistent, the news. When it comes to emotion, because these
emotional attention.” systems are inherently slow, perhaps all we can say
The study’s authors used is, not so fast.”

26 SMART PEOPLE

House calls and high tech
Just a spoonful of knowledge helps the medicine ….
Today smart patients enter the
doctor’s office with a lot of information
about their symptoms and their
diseases, gathered from reliable
sources on the Internet or from
networking with others.
But rarely do they have a
similar level of information
about their own medical
history.
A unique medical practice
in Jupiter, Florida, U.S.,
and MedeFile, a company
specializing in portable
electronic medical records,
have teamed up to enable
patients to not only access to
their medical records but they
can carry them with them
wherever they go!
MedeFile and Dr. Lorne S.
Stitsky – known as the house
NowPublic
Recognized leader in emergence of citizen journalism
We were searching for a little story
on prosumerism when we came
across the NowPublic Blog, a
participatory news network which
mobilizes an army of reporters to
cover events that define our world.
NowPublicBlog is a
recognized leader in the
emerging field of citizen
journalism.
By harnessing the wisdom
of crowds and tapping into
the news by making reporters
of the hundreds of millions
of Internet users, bloggers
and photography enthusiasts,
NowPublic (NP) is changing
the way news is made as well
doctor – hosted a special
two day event in April to
celebrate the official grand
opening of Personal Choice
Family Practice (PCFP), a new
concierge family medical
practice.
The boutique family
medical practice was founded
to “practice medicine the old
fashioned way.” By limiting
his practice to only 400
“personal patients” who pay
an annual membership fee
for guaranteed personalized
medical care, Dr. Stitsky is
free to focus on meeting the
health and wellness needs
of each patient enrolled in
one of several individual and
family plans.
Members of PCFP
enjoy house calls, same day
as distributed. NP claims to
have become one of the fastest
growing news organizations
with thousands of reporters in
over 140 countries.
During Hurricane
Katrina, NP says it had more
reporters in the affected area
than most news organizations
have on their entire staff.
CHOOSING
appointments, extended office MedeFile
visits, but they also have new system: www.
fangled instant access to all medefile.com.
their medical records through
MedeFile, a proprietary
system for gathering and
digitizing medical records so
individuals can have access
to a comprehensive set
of their medical
records 24
hours a day,
seven days a
week.
In addition, members can
carry their entire medical
history and emergency
information wherever they
go on a unique spoon-sized
device called a MedeDrive
– a proprietary USB drive
designed to be carried on a
keychain.
NowPublic Technologies, Inc. is a Vancouver,
Canada-based company – www.nowpublic.com
SMART PEOPLE 27
CREATING
CREATING Extrasensory projection
Student uses brain-computer interface system to Tweet
In early April, Adam Wilson
posted a status update on
the social networking Web
site Twitter – just by thinking
about it.
Just 23 characters long,
his message, “using EEG to
send tweet,” demonstrates a
natural, manageable way in
which “locked-in” patients
can couple brain-computer
interface technologies with
modern communication tools.
A University of
Wisconsin-Madison
biomedical engineering
doctoral student, Wilson
is among a growing group
of researchers worldwide
who aim to perfect a
communication system for
users whose bodies do not
work, but whose brains
function normally.
Project was to simply move a cursor on a
screen. But people with locked-in syndrome
wanted more – the ability to communicate.
Among those are people
who have amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS), brain-stem
stroke or high spinal cord
injury.
Some brain-computer
interface systems employ an
electrode-studded cap wired
to a computer.
The electrodes detect
electrical signals in the brain
– essentially, thoughts – and
translate them into physical
actions, such as a cursor
motion on a computer screen.
“We started thinking that
moving a cursor on a screen
28 SMART PEOPLE
is a good scientific exercise,”
says Justin Williams, a UW-
Madison assistant professor of
biomedical engineering and
Wilson’s adviser.
“But when we talk to
people who have locked-in
syndrome or a spinal-cord
injury, their number one
concern is communication.”
In collaboration with
research scientist Gerwin
Schalk and colleagues at the
Wadsworth Center in Albany,
N.Y., Williams and Wilson
began developing a simple,
elegant communication
interface based on brain
activity related to changes in
an object on screen.
The interface consists,
essentially of a keyboard
displayed on a computer
screen.
“The way this works is
that all the letters come up,
and each one of them flashes
individually,” says Williams.
“And what your brain
does is, if you’re looking at
the ‘R’ on the screen and all
the other letters are flashing,
nothing happens.
“But when the ‘R’ flashes,
your brain says, ‘Hey, wait a
minute. Something’s different
about what I was just paying
attention to.’ And you see a
momentary change in brain
activity.”
Wilson, who used the
interface to post the Twitter
update, likens it to texting on
a cell phone.
“You have to press a
button four times to get the
character you want,” he says
of texting. “So this is kind
of a slow process at first.”
However, as with texting,
users improve as they practice
using the interface.
“I’ve seen people do up to
eight characters per minute,”
says Wilson.
A free service, Twitter
has been called a “micro-
blogging” tool. User updates,
called tweets, have a 140-
character limit – a manageable
message length that fits
locked-in users’ capabilities,
says Williams.
Tweets are displayed on
the user’s profile page and
delivered to other Twitter
users who have signed up to
receive them.
“So someone could simply
tell family and friends how
they’re feeling today,” says
Williams.
“People at the other
end can be following their
thread and never know that
the person is disabled. That
would really be an enabling
type of communication means
for those people, and I think
it would make them feel, in
the online world, that they’re
not that much different from
everybody else. That’s why we
did these things.”
Schalk agrees. “This is one
of the first – and perhaps most
useful – integrations of brain-
 CREATING

computer interface techniques refine development of the in-

with Internet technologies to
date,” he says.
While widespread
implementation of brain-
computer interface
technologies is still years
down the road, Wadsworth
Center researchers, as well
as those at the University of
Tübingen in Germany, are
starting in-home trials of the
equipment.
home technology.
“A lot of the things that
we’ve been doing are more
scientific exercises,” he
says. “This is one of the first
examples where we’ve found
something that would be
immediately useful to a much
larger community of people
with neurological deficits.”
Funding for the research
comes from the National

Widespread availability of the first integrations

of brain-computer interface is years away, but in-
home trials of the equipment are underway.
Wilson, who will finish Institutes of Health, UW-
his PhD soon and begin Madison Institute for Clinical
postdoctoral research at and Translational Research,
Wadsworth, plans to include UW-Madison W.H. Coulter
Twitter in the trials. Translational Research
Williams hopes the Partnership in Biomedical View and download a video of Wilson using the
Twitter application is the Engineering and Wisconsin brain-computer interface to post to Twitter at http://
nudge researchers need to Alumni Research Foundation. nitrolab.engr.wisc.edu/media/P3Twitter.mov

Exercise produces brain cells for learning and memory

An enzyme researchers have studied for years because of
its potential connections to cancer, diabetes, heart disease,
hypertension and stroke, appears to have yet another major role
to play: helping create and maintain the brain.
When scientists at Washington University School of Medicine
selectively disabled the enzyme AMP – activated protein kinase
(AMPK) – in mouse embryos, overall brain size was reduced by
50 percent, the cerebrum and cerebellum shrunk, and the mice
died within three weeks of birth.
Researchers showed the version of AMPK they disabled
was essential to the survival of neural stem cells that create the
central nervous system.
Many scientists believe these same cells also regularly
produce new brain cells essential for learning and memory and
the general upkeep of the adult brain.
Jeffrey Milbrandt, M.D., PhD and Biplab Dasgupta, PhD,
showed that when activated AMPK gets into the nucleus of stem
cells, it inactivates the retinoblastoma protein, a master regulator
of cell reproduction.
This allows neural stem cells to survive and proliferate.
“Inhibiting AMPK is something that most cells don’t like,
Dasgupta says. “It can lead to a variety of consequences,
including cell death, but many cell types can tolerate it. In
contrast, neural stem cells undergo catastrophic cell death in the
absence of AMPK.”
Dasgupta calls the new finding particularly interesting given
previous connections between AMPK and exercise.
“Exercise activates AMPK and improves cognitive function,”
says Dasgupta. “Our results suggest brain function may improve
because additional activated AMPK makes it easier for adult
neural stem cells to reproduce and become new brain cells.”
Milbrandt plans to learn more about how production of
different forms of AMPK is regulated.
“Manipulating this regulation may enable us to encourage
the development of new brain cells,” he says.
“We might use that not only to treat medical conditions
where brain development is hampered but also to improve
cognitive function generally.”

SMART PEOPLE 29
CREATING

The European Year of Creativity and Innovation

European Commission gives special designation to 2009
The modern world puts emphasis on better use of
knowledge and rapid innovation. It, therefore, requires a
broadening of the creative skills base involving the whole
population. In particular, there is a need for skills and
competencies that enable people to embrace change as
an opportunity and to be open to new ideas in a culturally
diverse, knowledge-based society.
So says the European Commission – executive
branch of the European Union – in proposing 2009 as
the European Year of Creativity and Innovation.
Ján Figel, commissioner responsible for
education, training, culture and youth, believes
the year is “an effective way of helping to
meet challenges by raising public awareness,
disseminating information about good practices,
stimulating education and research, creativity
and innovation, and promoting policy debate
and change. By combining action at European
Community, national, regional and local levels, it
can generate synergies and help to focus policy
debate on specific issues.”
The activities of the year will focus on
creating an environment favorable to creativity
and innovation and become a strong impetus for a
long-term policy priority.
Go to www.create2009.europa.eu for more
information.

People power
Ideas give credit-crunched UK companies the edge
For further Businesses battling the
information downturn could be missing
contact: a recession-busting trick
Anthony according to the national
Denatale:
association of suggestion
anthony@
schemes.
ideasuk.com
Or visit Ideas UK says bosses who
www. bank employees’ bright ideas
ideasuk.com can save up to £40 million a
year – and there was no better
time to start tapping into that
workplace talent than during
International Ideas Week May
11-15.
Ideas UK launched the
first National Ideas Day in
2001 to mark the anniversary
of Einstein’s birth. This year,
events were held across
Britain for a whole week on
the theme Ideas, Innovation and
the Current Economic Crisis.
Anthony Denatale,
operations manager for Ideas
UK, says: “In tough times it’s
vital businesses take every
opportunity to become leaner
and more efficient. Setting
up a staff suggestion scheme,
creating an office think
tank or holding a weekly
brainstorming breakfast could
help generate cost-cutting
ideas, improve service and
boost the bottom line all using
an existing resource – people.”
In 2008, Ideas UK
members saved over £40
million and saw a return
on investment of at least £5
for every £1 spent through
their staff suggestions
schemes, according to the
organization’s annual survey.
Employees are ideally placed
to identify opportunities for
improvement as part of their
daily working life; some of
the most impressive savings
result from small, simple
suggestions.
Free events in London,
Manchester, Edinburgh and
Cardiff offered advice and
practical examples from
organizations that have made
employee innovation an
important part of the business.
Denatale adds: “Good
ideas aren’t just for the good
times. The recession makes
it even more important
for businesses to build
suggestion schemes into their
management strategies and
encourage their employees
to identify efficiency savings.
And you might even generate
a Eureka moment – the bright
idea that helps your business
boom.”

30 SMART PEOPLE

Comic books 101
An innovative way to explore multiculturalism
Academic course examines how comic books and graphic novels
reveal the important social issues of our time.
Tucked discreetly between
the pages of X-Men, Green
Lantern and other comic book
adventure stories are themes
that delve into more than
extraordinary feats of strength
or superhuman powers.
Oftentimes, socially
relevant messages of the time
are delivered to readers of all
ages, albeit, in an untraditional
often unintended fashion.
The environmental,
racial and political issues
of yesterday and today are
brought to life colorfully and
creatively through a popular
medium that has stood the
test of time for more than 60
years.
Comic books and graphic
novels do more than create
a fantasy world where good
simply conquers evil through
the superheroes created by
companies like DC Comics
and Marvel Comics.
Through the
interdisciplinary course, titled
Race and Graphic Narrative
in the Postwar United States,
students and professors alike
at Misericordia University,
Dallas, Pennsylvania, U.S. are
exploring multiculturalism
and other important social
issues that are addressed in
comic strips, comic books and
graphic novels.
Allan Austin, PhD,
associate professor of history,
and Patrick Hamilton, PhD,
assistant professor of English,
designed the English 415/
CREATING
History 320 course by utilizing by Dennis O’Neil and Neal
their common interest and Adams, Maus: A Survivor’s
professional backgrounds. Tale (Vol. 1), My Father Bleeds
“One day, Patrick came History by Art Spiegelman and
into my office and asked American Born Chinese by Gene
if I’d ever seen the New Luen Yang, and writing brief
Guardians,’’ Dr. Austin recalls. weekly papers, longer essays
“He showed me a blog that and classroom participation.
was just horrific. Out of that, Each text allows students
we started saying there’s to view relevant social
something to teach here. issues through a different
“We’re both really prism. Superman comic strips
interested in issues of race, and Citizen 13660 engages
ethnicity and identity, and them in Japanese American
we’re trying to find ways to concentration camps during
draw students in,’’
adds Dr. Austin,
an avid collector
and reader of
comic books since
he was six years
old.
“It seemed
we could use
comic books
as a medium
to discuss how
terribly wrong
multiculturalism
went in 1980s
comic books as
well as other
issues of race since
mid-century.’’
The new
course has been
fully rostered for World War II, for example, and
the spring 2008 and spring spawns scholarly discussion
2009 semesters. on the controversial topic.
Coursework includes “I was very surprised that
required readings of La ethnocentrism played a role
Perdida by Jessica Abel, Citizen in some of the comics,’’ says
13660 by Miné Okubo, Green
Lantern/Green Arrow (Vol. 1) NEXT PAGE
SMART PEOPLE 31
CREATING
CONTINUED
Marissa Miller, class of ’09, an
English major who is enrolled
presently in the course.
“I was aware from reading
a few graphic novels on my
own that the environment
and multiculturalism can be
found in this written form, but
Publisher’s note: This innovative course
on comics and graphic novels is a prime
example of academicians who are first
learning from students in order to provide
innovative and dynamic ways to encourage
an environment of learning, not teaching.
And then they help students to view relevant
social issues through a different prism.
It is learning, not lecturing that students
long for in the 21st century and it’s learning,
not lecturing, that engages students, boosts
comprehension and enhances knowledge
retention. It is the excitement of discovery that
fuels smart people. And it is the multiplying
factor of knowledge sharing that makes us
all smarter.
While formal education struggles
against tradition and regulation, independent
learning has never been more energizing and
empowering. And it has never been more
widely embraced. People want to learn. And
learning has never been more meaningful
than right now when the urgent need to know
is so bountifully served by the search and
networking capabilities of the Internet.
Founded and  sponsored in 1924 by the
Sisters of Mercy, Misericordia University is
Luzerne County’s first four-year college and
offers 31 academic majors on the graduate
and undergraduate levels in full and part-
time formats.
32 SMART PEOPLE
I was happily surprised to find
depth and focus.
“Miné Okubo’s Citizen
13660 deeply moved me
and I gained a great amount
of knowledge about the
‘internment’ camps that the
Japanese Americans were
forced into because it had
never really been addressed
in depth in any of my other
history courses in college or
high school,’’ she adds.
In recent years, comics
and graphic novels have
been looked at more critically
in academia, similar to the
way traditional literature is
reviewed.
Instead of stereotyping
the boom!, bam! and splats!
of action comics, high school
teachers and college professors
are using them as a gateway
to engage their students
in discussion, debate and
scholarship.
“We try to get them to look
at these with a more critical
eye in terms of what sort of
ideologies and ideas they are
exposing,’’ says Dr. Hamilton,
who began collecting Marvel’s
Avengers series as a young
child.
Before the spring
semester, the majority of their
students didn’t believe comics
addressed race, ethnicity or
event historical movements.
“The things that we look
at are immensely a product
of those same issues that we
often see comics and pop
culture in general divorced
from,’’ Dr. Hamilton explains.
“Things like the New
Guardian series that we
deal with are an attempt at
multiculturalism that goes
horribly awry.
“They don’t exist in a
vacuum and I think that
ties into breaking down
boundaries.
“Whether it’s literature,
comics or film,’’ he adds, “they
are products of what’s going
on in culture generally. What
are the intellectual, social
issues?’’
Through the course,
Misericordia students become
more critical consumers of
media by understanding
historical context and literary
criticism, and are able to apply
these tools, according to Drs.
Hamilton and Austin.
“It is vitally important
that one never writes off a
form of information based
on its outside form,’’ says
Miller, explaining the lessons
she learned from the unique
course.
“My grandparents were
initially very shocked that I
was taking a course on comics
and graphic novels because
they didn’t understand the
hidden depth and history
behind the works.
“After sharing what I’ve
learned with my family and
friends, they’ve accepted
that I am genuinely learning
from a worthy academic
course. I firmly believe that
if an individual is to grow
they must step outside of the
confines of a set environment
and venture into unknown
territory,’’ she adds.
 CREATING

‘Next gen’ Google

Web site gives answers to life’s personal questions
A groundbreaking new Web
site, eXtension.org, promises to
be a gateway to answering all
of life’s little questions – from
parenting, to saving and
investing, entrepreneurship
and vegetable gardens.
eXtension experts are the
brains behind eXtension.org,
a sort of “next-gen Google,”
where curious minds can
find a range of information
including how to calculate
their retirement readiness
score, tips to easing credit card
debt, how to grow the best
tomatoes on the block or ways
to set a schedule for a new
born baby.
Even better, if the
consumer can’t find the
information he or she
is looking for, real live
authorities in their area of The service is unlike
interest monitor and answer any other search engine or
questions through the Web information-based Web site.
site. And all of eXtension’s It’s a space where university
resources are available to content providers gather and
knowledge-seekers at no cost. produce
eXtension is affiliated new
with Cooperative Extension, educational
a nationwide, non-credit and
educational network. Each information
U.S. state and territory has a resources
state office at its land-grant on wide-
university and a network ranging
of local or regional offices. topics.
Due to its relationship with Because
Cooperative Extension, it’s available
eXtension.org is able to pull to students,
the best, most researched researchers, clinicians,
knowledge from the smartest professors, as well as the
land-grant university minds general public, at any time
across America, connecting from any Internet connection,
knowledge consumers with eXtension helps solve real-life
knowledge providers. problems in real time.

Harmful monopolies
Patent and copyright laws block innovation and choice
Abolishing patent and copyright
law sounds radical, but two
economists at Washington
University in St. Louis say it’s an
idea whose time has come.
Michele Boldrin and David K.
Levine see innovation as a key to
reviving the economy. They believe
the current patent/copyright
system discourages and prevents
inventions from entering the
marketplace.
The two professors have
published their views in a new
book, Against Intellectual Monopoly,
from Cambridge University Press.
“From a public policy view,
we’d ideally like to eliminate patent
and copyright laws altogether,”
says Levine. “There’s plenty of
protection for inventors and plenty
of protection and opportunities to
make money for creators. It’s not
that we see this as some sort of
charitable act that people are going
to invent and create things without
earning money. Evidence shows
very strongly there are lots of ways
to make money without patents and
copyright.”
As examples of the failure of
the current system, Levine and
Boldrin point to students being
sued for ‘pirating’ music on the
Internet and AIDS patients in Africa
dying because they cannot afford
expensive drugs produced by
patent.
Boldrin says, “Intellectual
property is in fact an intellectual
monopoly that hinders rather than
helps the competitive free market
regime that has delivered wealth
and innovation to our doorsteps.”
Boldrin and Levine promote a
drastic reform of the patent system
in their book. They propose the law
should be restored to match the
intent of the U.S. Constitution which
states: Congress may “promote the
progress of science and useful arts,
by securing for limited times to
authors and inventors the exclusive
right to their respective writing and
discoveries.”
Professors Boldrin and Levine
maintain a blog on this topic:
www.againstmonopoly.org.

SMART PEOPLE 33
WORKING
WORKING Unmanaging knowledge
How to tell the boss to back off
You’ve got a pretty good boss, yet
he or she still heeds the traditional
creed of command and control.
But it doesn’t work for you. You’re
engaged in knowledge work and
you’d like to tell the boss to back off.
What do you do? Explain it to the
boss first chance you get. Here’s a
good way to do it.
By Charles (Kalev) Ehin
Are you a fully engaged
knowledge worker? If the
answer is “No,” then the
boss needs to know why
knowledge workers can’t be
managed in the traditional
sense.
Here’s the message you
need to convey to your
employer.
The need for change to
modern management is firmly
grounded in our increasing
insights regarding the
power of “emergent” human
behavior.
Therefore, let’s briefly
explore the importance of
sharing “tacit knowledge” in
the innovation process and
make explicit certain key
organizational principles
that need to be adhered to,
especially when dealing with
knowledge workers.
Unmanaging knowledge
In the Industrial Age (and
still in many instances today),
people were primarily hired
for the use of their hands and
feet instead of their minds.
The thinking and
directing was mostly the job
of management. The workers
34 SMART PEOPLE
also needed various forms of
equipment and tools that these
organizations owned in order
to make a living. In other
words, they had to have access
to “means of production”
since, with rare exceptions,
they couldn’t afford to acquire
the necessary tools on their
own.
Knowledge professionals
of today, who constitute
almost half the US workforce,
are faced with a completely
different yet subtle situation.
What is subtle is that they own
their means of production
– the gray matter between
their ears.
Consequently, when they
decide to join or leave an
organization, they carry their
means of production with
them.
Knowledge workers
are an investment rather
than an expense. They not
only desire considerable
personal autonomy but
also the responsibility and
accountability for running
at least some part of an
organization. They need
to be treated as partners or
associates and not as typical
Industrial Age employees.
As partners, knowledge
workers are more likely to
share their tacit knowledge
(their smarts) with the people
around them.
Hence, we need to develop
organizations and networks
that continually nurture the
collaborative best from all
members and, in turn, reward
them equitably and not just
from a monetary standpoint.
The bottom line is that
tacit knowledge cannot be
“managed out” of people.
It must be allowed to
emerge within co-evolving
and mutually beneficial
relationships.
Essentially, tacit
knowledge encompasses
ideas and abstractions at
the individual level. More
specifically, it is implicit
knowledge that is:
n Grounded in personal
experience and innate
predispositions.
n Carried by people in their
minds, which is difficult to
access or share.
n Difficult to transfer to
others without extensive
personal contact and trust.
n Based on habits and
culture that we do not
recognize in ourselves.
n Stored in a different area
of the brain than explicit
knowledge.
n The wellspring of new
codified or explicit
knowledge.
Tacit or unrelated
knowledge comes to the fore
serendipitously and becomes
explicit as individuals or
small groups confront new or
unanticipated situations.
Tacit knowledge
is a dynamic resource
indispensable in the
innovation process.
Further, tacit knowledge
must be allowed to
“emerge” through voluntary
collaboration or self-
organization. People are

seldom aware of exactly what
unrelated knowledge they
possess until confronted with
a problem or an opportunity.
Therefore, in order for
tacit knowledge to properly
emerge, people must first be
surrounded by a supportive
environment.
Organizational sweet spot
In such an environment,
we will understand and
respond positively to formal
organizational goals and
initiatives.
Also, in the process the
organizational ‘We’ should
remember that the more
people are given a voice and
implicit control in managing
a venture, the more the
informal networks (present
in every entity) will begin to
function more in the open
and start making appropriate
connections with other
emergent groups.
The organizational sweet spot
is like the sweet spot on the
strings of a tennis racket. In a
general sense, the sweet spot
of the racquet is the area of the
string bed that produces the
best combination of feel and
power. In an organization,
the sweet spot is created by
the overlap of a formal and an
informal system.
Most importantly,
under the right conditions
the informal components
will begin to overlap more
and more with the formal
elements of an organization.
This overlap is a very
desirable state for any
enterprise. That spot, in
essence, represents the
area where the formal and
informal systems of an
organization have reached
WORKING
“a meeting of the minds” from my perspective, fall into
over the fundamental goals, the following two general
policies and processes of an categories:
organization. n Controlled-Access System:
What is particularly Where access to the
noteworthy about this resources of a group and
agreement is that it’s not its activities are controlled
reached through any sort of by one or a few select
formal negotiations. Rather, it individuals.
is emergent. n Shared-Access System:
It is a natural outgrowth Where resources of a
of day-to-day interactions, group and its activities
or self-organization by the are impartially dealt with
people representing both by all members of an
management and the informal organization.
networks of a given venture.
That’s where you can deliver
your message.
Clearly, the larger that
overlapping area is, the more
engaged and productive
people are within an
organization.
I have labeled this place
of common agreement as
the “shared-access domain.”
More fittingly, the overlapping
area is best referred to as the
“organizational sweet spot.”
Organizational context/
ecologies
So, how do we expand the
organizational sweet spot?
It’s not easy, especially when
people are accustomed to the
Industrial Age management
processes.
Fortunately, it’s definitely
worth the effort especially
since we are already in the
Knowledge Age. What we
must keep in mind is that the
sweet spot can’t be managed.
What can be managed or
adjusted is the organizational
context or ecology that
surrounds the sweet spot. In this classification
As I’ve suggested in scheme, a controlled-access
Unleashing Intellectual Capital system, whether tall or flat, is
and in Hidden Assets (www. an organizational framework
UnManagement.com), wherein one individual or a
organizational ecologies, NEXT PAGE
SMART PEOPLE 35
WORKING
CONTINUED
very limited number of people
exclusively control access to all
major resources.
All other members of the
organization must first get
approval from these executives
before any of the assets can be
used.
In a controlled-access
system position power is the
predominant force behind all
key decisions; hence, “open”
self-organizing arrangements
are not encouraged or valued,
limiting the development
of voluntary co-dependent
relationships and the sharing
of tacit and explicit knowledge.
Compliance instead of
commitment is prized in such
organizations. As one might
infer, such an organizational
ecology doesn’t do much
for the expansion of the
organizational sweet spot.
Conversely, in a
shared-access system, all
organizational members
have considerable autonomy
in decision-making and in
resource allocations. In a
shared-access system, expert
power instead of position
power dominates.
Major emphasis is placed
on situational leadership,
open book management, and
self-organization in solving
problems or in pursuing
opportunities. Such an
arrangement clearly benefits
from the continuous sharing of
tacit and explicit knowledge.
Here, personal
commitment rather than
compliance is the dominant
success factor. That, of course,
enhances the expansion of the
sweet spot.
Basically, a shared-access
system minimizes or avoids
many of the knowledge
36 SMART PEOPLE
sharing “killers” that are
prevalent in a traditional
organization.
For example, knowledge
workers in a controlled-access
setting are continuously faced
with some of the following or
similar problems:
n I would like to download
a free Web resource which
will help me perform
my job better, but the IT
Department will not allow
me to do that.
n I would like to work
cross-domain, in an
interdisciplinary way,
with colleagues in another
department, but my
manager refuses to give me
permission to do so.
n I would like to have access
to cost information that
pertains to the resources
that I am currently using
so that I can make more
judicious use of them. The
Accounting Department,
however, has informed
me that such information
is available on a need-
to-know basis only to
managers and I am not a
manager.
In a controlled-access
system the upshot, from a
human nature perspective,
is that people are more
concerned with their own
welfare instead of their co-
workers or the organization as
a whole.
Depends on smart people
Whether we like to
admit it or not, all activities
and interactions between
people are governed by
emergent relationships or self-
organization.
Therefore, we need to
place greater emphasis on
developing constructive
social contexts that support
the dynamics that allow
people to establish meaningful
relationships and in the
process share tacit and explicit
knowledge to the fullest extent
possible.
Complex adaptive systems’
thinking is vital today in order
to properly address never-
before anticipated problems or
new opportunities.
Thus, where conventional
approaches consistently fail to
bring success, more pragmatic
approaches need to be found
and applied.
Multiple perspectives
consistently lead to fresh and
more insightful solutions than
simply putting new faces on
old failed concepts.
In the end, it all comes
down to smart people
dealing realistically with
the unavoidable realm of
“social emergence” and
supporting the expansion of
“organizational sweet spots.”
Professor Charles (Kalev) Ehin is an
author and recognized management
and innovation dynamics authority.
He is emeritus professor of
management at Westminster College
in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S., where
he also served as the dean of the
Gore School of Business. He is the
author of Unleashing Intellectual
Capital (Butterworth-Heinemann,
2000), Hidden Assets: Harnessing
the Power of Informal Networks
(Springer, 2005), and his forthcoming
book The Organizational Sweet
Spot: Engaging the Innovative
Dynamics of Your Social
Networks (Springer, 2009). Contact:
kalev1@msn.com; Web site: www.
UnManagement.com.
 WORKING

How to ace a job interview in seven seconds

By Carol Kinsey Goman, PhD
You are at a job interview; the interviewer looks up as you enter the room. Now, count Carol Kinsey Goman,
slowly to seven. In that time, you will have been evaluated – and decisions will have PhD, is an author and
keynote speaker who
been made about your credibility, trustworthiness, confidence and competence.
addresses association,
According to research at New York University, you’ve got just seven seconds to
government, and
make a lasting first impression. While you can’t stop people from making snap decisions business audiences
– the human brain is hardwired in this way – you can understand how to make those around the world. Her
decisions work in your favor. Obviously, you won’t impress anyone by what you say in latest book and program
seven seconds. In fact, it’s all about what you don’t say – your body language. topic is The Nonverbal
A poor first impression is hard to overcome, no matter how solid your credentials. Advantage – Secrets
Here are seven powerful ways to make a positive first impression at your next interview: and Science of Body
Language at Work. 
1. Adjust your attitude. People pick up your attitude instantly. Before you enter an office
For more information,
for that job interview, think about the situation and make a conscious choice about
contact Carol by
the attitude you want to embody. Attitudes that attract people include friendly, happy, phone: 510.526.1727,
receptive, patient, approachable, welcoming, helpful and curious. Attitudes that are off- email: CGoman@
putting include angry, impatient, bored, arrogant, afraid, disheartened and suspicious. CKG.com, or through
2. Stand tall. Your body language is a reflection of your emotions, but it also influences her Web sites: www.
your emotions. The next time you go into a job interview, you can start projecting CKG.com and www.
confidence and credibility by standing up straight, pulling your shoulders back and NonverbalAdvantage.
com.
holding your head high. By assuming this physical position, you will begin to feel surer.
3. Smile. A smile is an invitation, a sign of welcome. It says, “I’m
friendly and approachable.” Smiling directly influences how
other people respond to you. The human brain prefers happy
faces, recognizing them more quickly than those with negative
expressions. In fact, research shows if you smile at someone, it
activates the “reward center” in that person’s brain. It is also a
natural response for the other person to smile.
4. Make eye contact. Looking at someone’s eyes transmits
energy and indicates interest and openness.  A simple way to
improve your eye contact in that first seven seconds is to look
into the interviewer’s eyes long enough to notice what color
they are. With this one simple technique, you will dramatically
increase your likeability factor.
5. Raise your eyebrows. Open your eyes slightly more than
normal to simulate the “eyebrow flash” that is the universal
signal of recognition and acknowledgement.
6. Lean in slightly. Leaning forward shows you’re engaged and interested. We naturally Every interview is
lean toward people and things we like or agree with. But be respectful of the other an opportunity to
person’s space. That means, in most interview situations, staying about two feet away. increase your skill
7. Shake hands. This is the quickest way to establish rapport and the most effective. at making a positive
Research shows it takes an average of three hours of continuous interaction to develop first impression.
the same level of rapport you can get with a single handshake. Just make sure you keep You’ve got just seven
your body squared off to the other person – facing him or her fully, that you have a firm seconds - but if you
(but not bone-crushing) grip with palm-to-palm and web-to-web contact. And hold the handle it well, seven
other person’s hand a few fractions of a second longer than you are naturally inclined seconds are all you
to do. This conveys additional sincerity and quite literally “holds” the other person’s need!
attention.

SMART PEOPLE 37
WORKING

What is an improvement?
Not LEAN (less employees are needed) or ‘sick sigma’
By Jack Vinson, Knowledge Jolt are established with little This doesn’t prevent
http://blog.jackvinson.com/ thought as to how they will experimentation and
function with the rest of the trying new things. But the
There are plenty of things I organization. As a result, the experimentation isn’t to be
do individually and that I see CI organization goes about considered improvement
in business that make things aimlessly “improving,” with work.
better. Better financially, lower no bottom line results from It is simply “research”
personal stress, fewer steps in their effort. No results = no which might lead to
a process, etc. buy-in. No buy-in = resistance something that looks like an
But there seem to be just to change.” improvement.
as many, if not more, activities This is why we have Woeppel posits some
that are merely a change elements of making this
acronyms like LEAN = Less
without any obvious benefit. work that boil down to
Employees Are Needed,
Here’s some interesting the improvement center
or malapropisms like “sick
thinking about Continuous or improvement projects
sigma” for Six Sigma.
Improvement organizations having direct buy-in from
How many improvement management, including a
from long-time Theory of projects have you seen that financial element.
Constraints thinker Mark were just shuffling of the deck If the improvement “saves”
Woeppel. chairs or moving money from money, then the budget should
“Continuous Improvement one pot to another?
be reduced by that amount of
(CI) organizations must be The point of any savings. Right? If this is a real
profit centers, not cost centers. improvement project should improvement, then the money
Too often, these organizations be to make things better. won’t be needed.

Phantom Champ
The boss goes undercover to inspire knowledge sharing
Told by Simon O’Neill on Linkedin we could achieve if no one cared and packrats and admissions
Smart People Magazine Group. who gets the credit.” that competition to be recognized
The next morning, there was had been slowly strangling the
Competition is outrage across the organization and organization.
probably one of the eventually the penny dropped as to And when people came round
biggest killers who was responsible. to such a thing as collective credit,
of ‘smartness’ When confronted, the chief ‘us’ versus ‘me’, ‘we’ versus ‘me’, the
around. replied, “Think about it – in the organization took off.
A few years last week you’ve all come into my
ago, we got a new office wanting to share your ideas Publisher’s note: Simon O’Neill is a
chief of staff and after and tidbits, etc., but I’m not the one knowledge management professional
his first week, he you need to be sharing with. If you in New Zealand. He is also a Smart
came in one all stopping holding onto ideas and People Magazine prosumer. A
night and information because they’re ‘yours’ prosumer is a consumer who wants to
posted signs and spread the love, we’d be world- have a hand in shaping the product. A
all over the beaters. Questions?” Smart People Magazine prosumer has
building Talk about turning an a hand in shaping editorial content and
that said organization around overnight, the future direction of the magazine.
“Imagine demolishing stovepipes and
how much doing away with info hoarders

38 SMART PEOPLE
 WORKING

Intellectual capital?
Smart People living proof of the value of IC
In the short term, and in the long, the Smart People balance sheet will show value and ROI in
terms of intellectual capital investment.
When organizations talk about ‘intellectual capital,’ These five IC contributors have pledged to work
what do they mean? Well, they are talking about on a contingency basis during the one-year beta
a so-called ‘intangible’ asset – in the way that startup of the magazine. They speculate they will
knowledge is one of the many valuable factors eventually be paid when Smart People reaches a point
on earth that cannot be seen, touched, manually of financial viability . . . but there is no guarantee. In
possessed or physically counted. Yet IC exists, and fact, they know it’s a long shot . . . but they are taking
its application has immeasurable value. it because they believe.
The idea of managing intellectual capital Together, they are investing raw intellectual
(knowledge) has had hard sledding so far because capital (with an intent for a return on investment)
management has been about tangible assets in the tens of thousands USD. It’s a hard figure we
– valuables with a physical presence like cash, can book as a real asset. But, the ultimate value of
equipment and real estate. While accounts receivable their IC will not be known until the results are in
aren’t physical, they have been counted as real assets – until Smart People reaches its goals – including
because they can be counted, if not counted on. profitability.
The ‘fuzziness’ of intellectual capital has been Add to that the IC value of our eight volunteers
the bane of knowledge management champions – Smart People representatives in social network
because the concept seems so fanciful when spaces. Please see their names on Page 3. These
presented to a no-nonsense decision maker who people are contributing their intellectual capital
freely mouths the old PR slogan, “Our people are without any expectation of compensation. They do it
our most important assets,” but then books them as because they believe in the purpose of Smart People
a liability on the balance sheet. Magazine and because they are learning from taking
Intellectual capital can never be visible, but it can part in this grand initiative.
be envisioned – much like accounts receivable – and When the worth of the magazine is finally
there could be no better demonstration than Smart known, 99 percent of it will have come from
People Magazine’s quest to build a publication almost intellectual capital. We’ll be booking that on our
entirely on intellectual capital. The financial capital balance sheet! Jerry Ash
investment is in the thousands; the intellectual
capital investment in the tens of thousands!
Meet the IC investors.
Five professionals are contributing professional
services for which they are normally paid. Jerry
Ash, publisher (U.S.), is a former business executive,
15-year veteran of knowledge management and
former editor of Inside Knowledge Magazine.
Michele Ash, graphic design (U.S.), owns her own
company, which recently celebrated its 25th year.
Joanna Goodman, editor (UK) is a freelance
editor/writer with extensive experience in Europe.
Boris Jaeger, technology (Germany), is a veteran
developer and IT manager with a very busy
consultancy. And Diane Hiner, circulation (U.S.),
is a full-time Disney employee working for Smart
People in her spare time.

SMART PEOPLE 39
KNOWLEDGE FACTOR
KM Six Pack #1
THE K FACTOR Brainwork is a fact of life for the 21st century enterprise
This is the first in a series of six articles introducing newly engaged employees and managers
to the basics of knowledge-based enterprise.
By Jerry Ash
The importance of
knowledge as a resource is
nothing new, particularly
when an industry relies
heavily on research and
innovation.
Yet, knowledge
management (KM) now has
the attention of a wide range
of business thought leaders as
never before. KM is not a fad
and it won’t disappear as long
as knowledge matters and it
matters now more than ever.
The stock values of
companies in the 21st century
predominately reflect
intellectual capital, not hard
assets. That is why stock
market values are far higher
than the material value of the
companies they represent.
Microsoft was once listed at 10
times its “real” value.
Knowledge, unlike a
physical resource such as oil,
is a renewable and limitless
asset. Resource poor regions
like Southeast Asia and India
are eagerly embracing the
Global Knowledge Economy
where the raw material
(knowledge) is cheap and the
payoff big.
The modern focus on
knowledge began over 50
years ago when Peter Drucker
first wrote of the knowledge
worker. He predicted
technology and a service
economy would change
everything; that organizations
and individuals would have
to change the way they
40 SMART PEOPLE
managed and worked. KM
is about that change. While
the knowledge resource
was vaguely recognized in
the Industrial Age, it was
not understood and very
little thought was given to
managing it. Management
focused on tangible assets
– money, inventory, property,
physical plant.
People showed up on the
liability side of the balance
sheet – costs, not assets. Many
companies discouraged
individual thought and
initiative by filling heads
with standardized training
and judging performance
against prescriptive job
descriptions that reflected “the
company way.” They managed
people like machines. It
was (sometimes still is) a
throwback to the Industrial
Age where management
theory held that people were
not hired for what they knew
but what they did.
On the other hand, if
people were expected to use
the considerable knowledge
they brought with them, there
were no specific processes or
support systems in place for
them to do so. On the human
side, people had to engage in
“workarounds” to do their
jobs better.
Unfortunately, people
did these workarounds in
secret and, therefore, believed
“knowledge is power.” They
hoarded personal knowledge
to build self-worth, improve
chances for advancement and
enhance job security. People
worked in relative isolation,
compounded by vertical
organizational charts that left
interdisciplinary collaboration
next to impossible in a
structure of disconnected
silos. As a result, most
knowledge was either buried,
of limited use, or lost when
people moved on to other
jobs or responsibilities. Vast
storehouses of knowledge
went untapped.
Early attempts at
knowledge management
failed to address these issues.
If managers saw the value
in human knowledge at all,
their instinct was to capture
it, codify it and brand it
as the firm’s “intellectual
property” (IP). Technology
vendors loved that strategy,
repackaged information
management software and
marketed it as “knowledge
management platforms.”
Companies invested heavily
in such software but it was not
workable.
The next five installments
of this series will provide
a quick summary of the
emerging standards of practice
in knowledge management.
Today, everyone is a
knowledge worker or manager
whether he or she knows it
or not; therefore, this series
is for you. Together, the six
articles are a KM primer that
will provide you the basics.
With them in hand, you can
take your next steps into the
Knowledge Age.
 Once upon
a time
there was
a prince
. . . whose knowledge capabilities were trapped inside his own skin.

Along came a gi f t subscrip t ion

to Smart People Magazine and he was forever powered by kisses.

10 kisses (issues) sold here for $ 50 $ 25 USD

Limited time only

Smart People magazine is a new media publication that will awaken in

your prince the power of knowledge much sought after by employers
worldwide. The power has always been there but
the Web has multiplied it a million times and,
unknowingly, your prince is using his
smarts (and those of others) every day
– living, learning, choosing, creating,
working.
Help the prince wake up to the
power.
Subscribe now: www.
smartpeoplemagazine.com
Available in three formats:
Online flipblook, html and pdf
 If you believe in Smart People, raise your hand!
The people behind this magazine are the vanguard of a volunteer
community intent on helping people leverage the knowledge
and networking power of the Internet to make living, learning, choosing,
creating and working better for all of us. It is an enormous task
we undertake and we need you.
Marketing professionals • Social
networkers • Community leaders •
Prosumers • Writers • Subject
Experts • Collaborators • Partners •
Affiliates • Communicators •
Researchers • Champions •
Leaders • Activists •
– and just plain ordinary smart people

Contact Jerry Ash, Volunteer #1

smart.guy1@verizon.net

P.S. As in all sharing, you will get more

than you give by being a part of this grand
project – if you value the learning, growing
and experience to be gained here.