BoingBoing, Enterprise 2.0 and Joho the Blog are all covering a talk given by CIA folks at the Web 2.0 conference about the Intellipedia, or how to kill a company in some easy business oriented steps. Quoting an old 1944 “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” from the US Strategic Services, they quote, most of the things we do today in business. There is a sense of Irony here, and most of it can be seen in many of the larger organizations that we either work at or have visited.
(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of per¬sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and considera¬tion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of com¬munications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reason¬able” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris¬ diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
While amusing, the scary part is that a lot of this is stuff we either see every day, in many companies, or we don’t see in smaller companies that have a well defined goal, with everyone pulling towards it. No wonder the startup community does cool things, while larger companies, or companies on their way to largeness at some point fall over and loose, until they streamline and get smaller again.
I can think of car companies, camera companies, big blue companies, software companies, and some search engines that are immediately coming to mind.
Says something about staying small.
Tags: intelipeida, cia, sabotage, business, fun, idea
Blue Print Ventures has a series of videos featuring the entrepreneur Gary Snoman, that are about fall down funny to read. Some of them are also out on YouTube, meaning you can cut and share them. So what it is really like being a Venture Capitalist, let Gary show you the way.
There is something elegant about a VC fund making a video like this. Of course a lot of this is also scary if you have ever worked with or known a VC person, they do act like some of this many times over. Then there is the downside, it is all work most of the time. Not for the faint at heart. In the mean time enjoy the laugh.
Have to admit, this makes for some serious humor.
Tags: blueprint ventures, vc, funding, money, humor, gary snoman, lots of laughs
I know it has been very quiet this week on Techwag, but what has been keeping me busy is teaching Web 2.0 to some great students over at CityU of Seattle. The video is being edited, but these are some rush photo’s from the shoot. There is nothing better than teaching students how to use a video camera, record, lights, and getting support from two program managers.
Two of the students were working out how to frame the shots when the speaker is ready to start pacing the front of the classroom. This is an excellent shot of them collaborating on how the video will be shot.
This is one of the senior faculty members giving their presentation on equity markets and debt instrument management. This looks like it will be a lot of fun, especially as they teach stock trading, debt instruments, and how to run a financial portfolio.
This is me preparing for my coverage of the information systems program at the school, in which Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies are going to be a big part of the program. I can honestly say, that this is going to be a kick butt program.
Of course it is just exciting to watch someone speak through a camera.
In all you cannot beat the experience that we had over the week, from orchestrating the whole production to actually getting to shoot and capturing video. It should be very interesting to see what comes of this project. In the longer run though even if we don’t ever use an ounce of video, or the videos are so poor that they cannot be used, this is still one great learning experience. It was also fun that CityU of Seattle would let me use their facilities to do this.
Tags: cityu of seattle, web 2.0, web 3.0, video, shoot, students, learning, education, teaching, programs, fun
Over at my other blog on ITToolbox, one of my friends got a marketing letter from IEntry about wanting to syndicate their content. I have my ITToolbox stuff syndicated by IEntry as well, and it has worked out to be great for name recognition. What is interesting is that in their marketing proposal to my friend, they compared my ITToolbox blog along with Robert Scoble.
My friend writes:
I just received a message on facebook titled “Blog Partnership with iEntry and WebProNews” where they first called me Nathan and ended calling me by my correct name (LOL). They invited me to join them and be up in the ranks with names like Robert Scoble and others as well as….you Like WOW! Are you an ‘A’ list blogger? I bask in your glory ;P
There is a lot of humor in this for me, first of all I like Robert and hope to hook up with him at Gnomedex if he is there, the second, I have never thought of myself as an A-List blogger. While stuff shows up on Techmeme, Dark Reading, ZDNet, Wired, and other sites, it was more of a matter of “hey thanks for the link, you spelled my name wrong” rather than anything else.
This raises the idea of what is an “A List Blogger”, is it more attitude or number of readers? Is it the cross links or the platform that you blog from. My independent blog here at techwag is something I do to keep track of things that are not appropriate for ITToolbox, or the niche I have carved for myself over there. Here I get to talk about all the other shiny things that I really love.
While I have my own issues with IEntry, most of which are minor, and being used for marketing purposes is a lot out of range for me, the question still remains, what makes or constitutes an “A List Blogger”. Still don’t feel one, maybe that is the whole answer right then and there. If you don’t think you are, then you are probably not.
Tags: Robert Scoble, a list blogger, comparison, ientry, webpronews, humor
In the “about time” department, Techmeme announces that they now have a search capability locally on site. This is good, bit late, but better late than never. Gabe Rivera posted on the techmeme blog today some cool information about the feature, this one caught our attention.
What’s next? Search for Techmeme’s sister sites are planned but not active as of today. Also on the way are RSS feeds for search results, the simplest kind of search “API”. Source: Techmeme
So if I want, and many folks I know are going to do this right off the bat when the Search RSS goes live is sit there like a voyeur and watch what other people search for on techmeme, not only to help us figure out what is important this moment, but using some neat programming, make a flex based feed, mapping, and just about any other kind of “twitterish” process as techmeme search helps other folks figure out what is important this moment.
This could be interesting, can we have the RSS feed now, or should we just hang out for 36 months waiting for that feature set? (This is problem, you give someone something, then they always want more, never should have posted “what’s next”).
Tags: techmeme, search,rss,watcher, people, fun
If you have ever tooled around archive.org it has some of the most fascinating materials that are available to you to watch. We ran into this video featuring Guy Kawasaki from 1996 and just about fell over laughing. You can walk away from this thinking that Guy is one of the smartest kids on the block, you can also wonder why we are dealing with the same issues 12 years later.
The video covers different ways to manage the glut of information showing up on computers and other storage devices. Demonstrations include DayTimer Organizer 2.0, Em@iler, Personal Journal, and DataTimes Summarizer. Originally broadcast in 1996.
The fun times early on in the dot com boom that was a fun time, this is a great flashback to some of the wildest times ever.
Tags: guy kawasaki, computer chronicals, dot com boom, silicon valley, fun, humor
There is something to be said for professional journalism that can come up with one of the best all time summations of an event by stating:
Faculty members tend to be professional. They also tend to be sane. Source: Wall Street Journal
The story centers around Dartmouth and an English professor that melted down on the job because the students were interacting in the class, and the instructor, Priya Venkatesan is now busy suing Dartmouth because of that interaction. While many of the college classes we take remind us of Charlie Brown’s parents in terms of what we are hearing, the idea that students were getting into the class and arguing points of order, brilliant.
The problem, the instructor could not cope.
I know that when I teach a class, I pray for interaction, and am always delightfully surprised when I get it. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, students are always worried about their grades, and getting something out of them can be like pulling teeth. I wish I had this class, it could have been a lot of fun. Rather it ends up in the courts system, with one more warning to students not to speak up.
Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
- Flannery O’Connor
Keywords: Dartmouth, lawsuit, Priya Venkatesan, English, professor, meltdown.
Like WOW! Are you an ‘A’ list blogger? I bask in your glory ;P 