Author Archives: scribblers

design thinking for the rest of us

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“when excellence curation is so easy it seems like cheating, MAKE THE MOST OF IT!” (old scribblers proverb)

WANT TO improve your “design thinking” skills? Need to foster a better “design thinking” workforce, enterprise, institute, community, what ev? Try this:

1). if you don’t already have a (free) LinkedIn account, create one

2). sign in at LinkedIn.com

3). sign-up for the LinkedIn Learning premium service 30-day FREE TRIAL (cancel anytime, renew subscription for ~$30/month)

4) go to www.linkedin.com/learning/ webpage; in text box at top of page, search for “John McWade” (LinkedIn Learning’s ace graphic design instructor).

5). from list of “John McWade” search returns (it will look something like screenshot graphic in this scribbles ‘n bits blog post), choose any course, press “play” and START YOUR DESIGN THINKING ADVENTURES!

NOTE: you can binge watch as many of maestro McWade’s always excellent, always well-presented, always thoughtful, always eye-opening 15 or so video courses as you want.

TIP: if you find McWade’s eminently chunkable, insight-filled design lessons interesting and/or helpful, remember: you can re-watch them! (Over & again! (Try it!))

TIP2: to ACCELERATE individual and/or collective design thinking, be sure TO SHARE. Maybe try watching these video lessons TOGETHER. Most of all, be sure to TALK ABOUT what you’re seeing and learning. (“Talk,” as we scribblers tend to say ad nauseum, is THE great learning re-enforcer, learning integrator & learning accelerator.)

Calibrate your flux-capaciters here!

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SCALED nano'clock watch prototype v2015-03-17

SCALED Nano’clock prototype for “wearable” 4:5 screens at 544 x 680 pixels, 72ppi. Licensed under Fauxpen Source Attribution 1.0 Unported License.

When Scribblers Media introduced the web-based Global Nano’clock beta last July, we knew it would be a major game-changer in extra-ultra-super-exact timekeeping (sorry, United States Naval Observatory master clock-keepers). Just as we knew our breakthrough efforts would be quickly surpassed by even greater magnitudes of chronometric accuracy. Indeed, nowadays the original Nano’clock’s 1/ten-to-the-negative-80th-power second precision seems downright loosey-goosey compared to that of some of the best time pieces out there. (Which are now well into the “point hundreds of zeroes” fraction of a second. (And we understand that today there are designs on drawing boards to take that staggering figure to into the thousands of decimal points! (Imagine!)))

We scribblers were only too happy to do our part in advancing the science of modern nano-level timekeeping. Likewise, we were very pleased to pass that torch to the next generation of nano-clocksmiths. Frankly, we had no plans to get back in the game. Until last week’s Apple Watch announcement. We immediately realized the future of nano-chronometry is wearable.

We felt the call. Once again, we were scribblers on a mission.

What ev. Above is Scribblers Media’s latest Nano’clock prototype (Beta v2015-03-17). It’s in the standard 4:5 aspect ratio screen size. Obviously, it has a way to go to be readable for Apple Watch’s smaller 277 pixel x 340 pixel (38mm model) and 312×390 (42mm) screens. (Working on it, working on it! As always, suggestions welcome.) Please stay tuned!

 

… and the much esteemed, highly coveted, very, very prestigous “2015 Difference Maker” award goes to …

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sides 1 & 2 of double-sided 2015 Difference Maker badge (“prime differentials badge”)

Scribblers Media is proud as Punch to report that our 2014-2015 Geometrical Chromatics Team has been awarded the Twenty Fifteen Difference Maker prize! This much esteemed (not to mention, highly coveted and very, very prestigious) award is given annually by the universally renowned (if somewhat fictitious) No duh Vinci Institute to “the person or group who has exhibited somewhat interesting instructional design utilizing at least three colors and displays objects aligned in a more-or-less mathematically exact arrangement–AND correctly fills out the nomination form and pays the requisite registration fee.”

The actual body of work sited for this year’s award is Scribblers Media’s Primordial Matrix Series One <hyperlinks below> In keeping with long-standing No duh Vinci tradition, each project contributor received the double-sided Difference Maker commemorative badge. <see image above>

The Difference Maker badge itself, is, to be sure, among the many works featured in the series. Various vector and bitmap “prime differentials” as the badge files are sometimes called, can be found in the Series One public online file shares.

Likewise, various iterations of “Primordial Matrix” design elements (e.g., blocks, blends, warps, hues, shades, combinations, arrangements, checkerboards, etc.) can be found elsewhere on the Net. Nearby, in fact. (At most a few quick clicks/taps/swipes from this very blog page.). And don’t be surprised to see similar “blocks, blends, warps and chex” prominently displayed in next edition of scribblers-dot-com.

So in other words,. if you’d like to check out the matrices and such, they shouldn’t be too hard to find. And if not so inclined, well, they’re easy enough to ignore. (Though if that’s the case, we hope you’ll give them another look–they may grow on you. Really–we didn’t take to them at first either!)

And this too …
The Difference Maker prize always offers a generous financial bounty. Fabulously generous, in fact. Specifically, this year’s lucky, lucky recipients need only show the 2015 badge (and, of course, make customary contribution of a Federal Reserve note) to receive an absolutely FREE bag of fries from the Dollar Menu at over 13,000 participating McDonald’s restaurants across America. (So skeptical readers may now appreciate why we claim–even aside from all the universal honor, glory, acclamation, adulation, recognition and all-around prestige–the award is so highly coveted.)

– – – – – –

HERE ARE PRIMORDIAL MATRIX SERIES ONE HYPERLINKS:

HERE ARE ICON VIEW and LIST VIEW SCREENSHOTS SHOWING WHERE HYPERLINKS TAKE YOU:

google drive shares screenshot - icons 800x600 144

“primordial-matrices” master folder at Scribblers Media Google Drive public cloud shares (icon view on 2015-02-25)

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“primordial-matrices” master folder at Scribblers Media Google Drive public cloud shares (icon view on 2015-02-25)

Most files in the Scribblers Media Primordial Matrix Series One cloud-based public share collection(s) are Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 copyright. (That is, they’re essentially public domain.) Please feel free to view, download, modify, make derivative works from, print and/or share.

– – – – – –

To learn more about Scribblers Media, please don’t bother clicking/tapping the “about us” button at its web front page–that only shows a “page under construction” image swap. (Sorry!) … As far as the “about us” stuff goes, having a look around site may help. (Or not.))

To find out more about the somewhat fictitious No duh Vinci Institute, please click HERE.

the ides of April (plus 48 hours)

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Scribbles ‘n Bits is pretty much an apolitical blog. That’s for a bunch of reasons, including the fact that we scribblers are fairly ambivalent on a bunch of important public issues. There is  something though that we’re very opinionated on. (Frankly, we can be real cranks on the subject.)

And that’s tax reform. Especially what we like to call RADICAL TAX SIMPLIFICATION. We’re all for it.

Anyway, this being “tax day” and all, allow us to briefly chime in on this date’s unofficial “buzz” theme. Here goes:

When discussing tax reform, it’s always helpful to note that it’s not just a question of HOW MUCH to tax, but also WHAT to tax. Indeed, more important than tax rates is the tax mix (as Peter Drucker himself took pains to make us be aware).

                                                                                                                             

Related links of possible interest:

more Scribblers Media tru fax

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We sure hope this doesn’t sound boastful, but we scribblers have always been proud to say that in the fourth grade we were members-in-good-standing in the World Book Encyclopedia LOOK IT UP CLUB. …If you too were a member, bet you’ll recall the club motto. To wit, We never guess—we look it up!

roll over Art Fleming and tell Don Pardo the news

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quiz 240x600


Have Fun! Amass scribbles!

Scribblers Media is deliriously overjoyed to post our FIRST EVER blog-based Scribbles ‘n Bits QUIZ!

To kick things off with a bang, we’re offering our BIGGEST JACKPOT to date: 100,000 Scribble Points!* Yes, you read that right, Scribblers Media will award 100K scribble points (“scribbles”) to any and all contestants** to correctly answer our quiz question.

Okay, got your thinking caps on? Got your favorite search engines revved up? Got yer “lifelines” on call? Ready or not, here’s the quiz question:

What number when raised to the power of the square root of negative one times pi equals -1?

On the tip of your tongue? Try these clues:

QUIZ BONUS: We’ll also award an ADDITIONAL 10,000 scribble points to any Scribbles ‘n Bits Quiz player to identify “Art Fleming” and “Don Pardo” without having to look them up. (You’re on your honor here!)

LOTS OF LUCK QUIZ CONTESTANTS! HAVE FUN, ENTER OFTEN!
                                                                                                                              

* And remember: only 100 scribble points plus US$1.00 gets you a cheeseburger or bag of fries from the Dollar Menu at over 12,000 participating McDonald’s restaurants across the USA!
** Expires on 400th anniversary of Leonhard Euler‘s birth on April 15, 2107. (So be sure to get your answers in soon!)

getting to know scribblers media (a tru-fax post)

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Here’s a link to an all-time favorite cartoon from our all-time favorite single-panel cartoonist, the great Leo Cullum. Until the adhesiveness wore out* a hard-copy version was taped to a Scribblers Media workspace wall over a long-since retired monitor. (That’s a true fact.)

If you too liked the contents of our link, you’ll probably also like at least some of these 946 (as of this posting) other items from the same artist and at the same website. Likewise, you might enjoy this new recently discovered Scribblers Media favorite (from Mr. Christopher Weyant).

READERS TIP For an enhanced viewer experience, be sure to use the image zoom tools at “jump” (just click on image). And for even more enhanced experiences, consider purchasing 40″ x 30″ framed versions of linked artwork!

NOTICE: Scribblers Media cannot be held liable for time and/or productivity lost from above or “secondary” links, either directly or indirectly, either now or at future dates. (So, if, say, your boss catches you in the act, and thinks your slacking off, please don’t try to pin it on us. Fair enough?)

That said, aside from and in addition to the humor, we think some of the web formatting and design of linked pages is well-worth noting (e.g., the customizable room views of the selected artworks).

///

Currently, the only cartoon clip on our workspace walls is a 3-panel Dilbert. (That’s another true fact.) It features a dialog between Dilbert and Dogbert. The content will have to wait another post. Here’s a picture:

scribbler workspace, Jan. 2013

scribbler workspace with highlighted wall art (Jan. 2013)

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* As the Radiohead-ers sometimes remind us, gravity always wins. Eventually, anyway. (Though wonder if the already much-missed throughout the world, Mr. Stephen Hawking, would agree.)

no claim, no promise, no guaranty

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We probably won’t hear the end of this from our way over-priced marketing/public relations advisers. They’re always telling us to never, never, never begin a message on a NEGATIVE.

Still, we feel a certain obligation to say something from the start. It’s about an important workforce development service that Scribblers Media doesn’t do. Indeed, try as we might, simply can’t do. Truth be told, not even close. And that’s to…. well, let’s try explaining it this way. Consider this common workplace scenario:

A project manager says something to a project team member. However, the team member doesn’t quite understand the manager’s message. (Maybe even has absolutely no clue what the manager meant.) The team member isn’t exactly sure what he/she’s supposed to do. (Perhaps he/she doesn’t even have a vague sense of what he/she’s supposed to do.) Something just doesn’t seem right. (Or maybe even, something seems very wrong.)

Such imperfect communications, of course, happen all the time. Anyway, what Scribblers Media just can’t do is, in such situations, to get that team member to say so much. To get him/her to say to the project manager something like: “Um, I don’t quite understand what you mean.” Or “I’m not sure what you want me to do.” Or “What you just said, makes no sense.” Or utter some similar reply. (Often a simple ‘”Huh?” works wonders.)

To get our fellow workers to consistently provide such feedback, would be, needless to say, a very valuable service. In fact, it can be inestimably invaluable.

Again though, instilling such laudable business communications habits, is something—try, try, try as we might—we scribblers can’t do. Sorry.

Actually, we don’t feel particularly abashed in admitting that. And that’s of course, because no one else seems able to do it either. Indeed, to get workers to always give such helpful feedback when necessary is kind of a Holy Grail in the business management instructor/facilitator/consultant game.

(If you find an external adviser or internal manager who can actually instill such practices in your troops, our advice is pay them whatever they ask. Whatever the expense—it’ll be recouped over and again.)

Anyway, we just wanted to mention that. (And, hey, Know what? We feel POSITIVELY relieved that we did.)

Oh, by the way, if such a service is what you’re looking for, well, best of luck in your search!

BLOG POST ADDENDUM
In addition to the above “miscommunication by omission” there’s a related, and often even more pernicious, “miscommunication by commission” that’s also rampant in modern business. (Same as it it ever was, probably.) You probably already know what we mean. Regardless, it’ll have to wait for another post. We just now realized that we were probably supposed to install the new ink cartridges and recycle the used ones, and not vice-versa.

first things first…

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12 sparks 580x200

We’d feel terribly remiss (a bit shabby, even) if we didn’t right away acknowledge (and THANK!) the wondrous WordPress wizards for these amazing blogging/content management tools. (Talk about simply ingenious and ingeniously simple media!) Those open-source poet-coders are truly the world’s partners in building a better zeitgeist! …Scribblers Media looks forward to exploring and experimenting with these—have to say it again—amazing technologies. Likewise, we hope to occasionally report back on interesting and useful things discovered.

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image with caption and border (see what we mean?)

Trubba not, world!

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“When the subject is information work, it’s never a mistake to start with some insights from the person who coined the term.” —tried-n-true scribblers’ axiom

Let’s follow that adage and see where it takes us.

Below are some key points taken from a favorite Peter Drucker article. (Incidentally, the ace business management consultant and all-around sage, also coined the term “information worker.”)

In a 1992 Wall Street Journal op-ed piece headlined “Be Data Literate—Know What to Know,” Mr. Drucker advised executives to regularly ask themselves these questions:

  • What information do I need to do my job?
  • when do I need it?
  • in what form?
  • from whom should I be getting it?
  • what new tasks can I tackle now that I get all these data?
  • which tasks should I do differently?

Questions originally asked of mainframe and Windows 3.1 information workers, are still well worth considering some twenty years further into the information age. Likewise, today’s mobile, hyper-connected, post-Web 2.0 era information workers may benefit by noting a few other questions, Drucker pointedly added:

  • what information do I owe?
  • to whom?
  • when?
  • in what form?

<Reader’s Note: hyperlink to the full article below>

Before we return to those focusing directives, here’s a few words regarding what this scribbles ‘n bits weblog is about.

Like its sister site, scribblers.com, the Scribblers Media blog explores and and tries to better understand information systems. And how individuals and teams can better use various information systems to get stuff done. (That and related matters are sometimes referred to around here as “digital work style skills and practices.”)

Said another way (and getting back to Drucker’s questions), this weblog is largely about the getting and giving of task-related information. With a special interest in the FORMS the task-related information takes.

Today, of course, more and more of the information we use to do our jobs is digital information. (At least at some stage in its life cycle.) Which means there’s all kinds of incredibly easy and amazingly powerful ways to transform and transmit it. And more devised daily. Suffice it to say here that this scribbles ’n bits blog will probe various such information tools and channels. (Reader tips and suggestions always welcome!)

wordpress edit ss 2013-04-07 800x600 160We hope, dear valued scribbles ‘n bits blog reader, you find our themes/topics/subjects of interest. And some value in some content. (Chances are good, you’ll at least find interesting and valuable links and references!)

To get a sense of upcoming scribbles ’n bits blog posts, check out some scribblers.com workshop archive pages. Look for stuff mentioned under “workshop highlights” and “more workshop takeaways” (e.g., that Michael Kinsley comment on the then-new blogging phenomenon; two highly recommended sources for training and exercising information design skills). And as you may have already figured, repackaging, repurposing, and reworking content is itself a recurring meme here.

Goodness gracious—where are our manners sometimes! Almost forgot: Welcome everyone to Scribbles ’n Bits, the official weblog of Scribblers Media!

And, as always, THANKS for your attention!

External links of relevance and possible interest: