Peduto Proposes Pittsburgh Bike Racks

City Councilman Bill Peduto proposes mounting bike racks with advertisements onto existing parking meters, per the Post-Gazette.

As a bicylist, this is awesome: any time we have a proposal for more bike racks it's a great thing. Almost anything that supports or encourages bicycle riding is beneficial: one less car, one less parking space, and it's a way for somebody to get to work.

Too often when we think of bicyclists and bike commuters we think of skinny people with high-end bikes, high-viz clothing, water-bladder backpacks, mean-looking sunglasses, strange shoes with cleats, and wearing - let's call it what it is- tights. I mean, Batman and Robin blend better than these folks.

But Actually, the majority of bike commuters are what Bicycle magazine refers to as invisible riders, the people who ride bikes because that's what they have to do to get through the week in the rough economy they're working in. Those riders are working.

We see the high-viz skinny guy, but the half-dozen working guys on Huffys and dark jackets tend to blend and our awareness doesn't lock on to them. It's an economic and class filter.

I applaud Peduto's initiative. Bravo, Bill Peduto. Two minor kvetches: the advertising is going to look tacky, and when the outsourced solution provider folds we're going to revert back to where we are now.

Here's an alternative: give a green-light to business owners sponsoring bike racks in front of their establishments, have city crews install them free, and then the businesses will get to choose whether to have a bike rack out front, and people who appreciate the bike racks will favor the businesses that took the extra step. With the Three Rivers Bike Racks from Bike-Pgh, the design invokes Pittsburgh's iconic Three Rivers, and the quiet colors blend better than garish advertising. And it'll be a Pittsburgh project rather than a San Diego startup.

I'm just saying.

Non Essential Just Once - Snow Days and Delays at School and Work

The whole "snow day" thing is fascinating and mysterious. Can we have a little more transparency on the school snow delay process, please? Who are the people that make these decisions? Can I see a Google Image of their driveway? I ask, because it seems like they sometimes play CYA chicken - as in, last one to cancel wins.

I've got a collateral duty at my day job: I'm the guy who declares, two hour delay and/or non-essentials stay home. It's got a lot of faux-angst, sort of psuedo-verklempt. Often you do (or don't do) make the call when others would have gone the other way -- I'm okay with that, that's what judgement calls are all about. It's not rocket science. (I worked on a website for NASA once, their folks would say 'actually it is rocket science', they loved saying that.)

It's a funny thing to call somebody and say, non-essentials stay home, this means you. Nobody wants to be non-essential - non-essential people are downsized and let go - but everybody wants to stay home. I guess we want to be "non-essential just once".

I think delays and closures get so much attention because it makes all of us school children again in a way; we get to monitor the radio internet and see if the mysterious Delay Deities have smiled. It's the opposite of force majeure: an act of God that works to your advantage. It's like waiting to see if Santa came.

(146 delays/closings for Wednesday at this time.)
(Accolades to Center School District, first to announce a full closure.)

Corporate Blogging Policy

One of the big questions that cause PWJ (people with jobs) to pause before blogging is the absence of clear corporate policy on personal blogging. It's pretty simple when Mary in Operations has a blog about her ice hockey team, but then something happens in the media and Mary chooses to post a blog entry about TheBusiness, or about TheIndustry, or about TheProduct. Then a corporate toady googles the company name, finds Mary's blog, and all of a sudden there's uncertainty. Is Mary in trouble?


So Mary's Boss punts to HR, and HR kicks the can over to Legal, and Legal says "no employee can make public comments about the company without prior approval". Although people at every step know Mary meant/did no harm, they worry about the message it sends. How will they stop the next blogger if they look the other way this time? It all gets very squirrely, and it teaches the culture to avoid embracing Web 2.0. Look at what Mary went through.


I'd like to offer my notion of Social Media policy: communication policy is device-neutral and medium-independent. Doesn't matter if it's a blog, a twitter, a fax, a letter, a speech, a chat room - inappropriate is a constant.

Witness the recent brouhaha over a senior ad agency VP who's driving to a client meeting. He sees an ugly conflict and twitters a negative comment about the area. A client employee sees the Twitter and circulates it throughout the company. A Client VP sends the Agency a stongly-worded letter asking why do we give you big bucks every year and you're dissing our town? The AdAgency VP posts an explanation, and even his wife blogs about it (and let me say, he married well).

None of this conflict has anything to do with Twitter, or Twitter's 140 characters vs. SMS's 160 characters, or blogging. It does, however, have a lot to do with what our parents taught us:

• If you can't say anything nice, don't.
• Don't write down anything you wouldn't say to their face
• Don't do anything you're not willing to see on a headline YouTube.
• You can't be too clear or too generous in a context-free message.
• Praise liberally, criticise constructively

But, to the rescue: we've seen some excellent Corporate Blogging Policies. The IBM Social Computing Guidelines offer a clear, commonsense approach to blogging, twittering, facebooking - by ignoring the medium/device and focusing on appropriateness. The Yahoo blogger guidelines are excellent, and they stress that they're guidelines not rules. The BBC guidelines are very very British. The wonderfully-named blog Gruntled Employees offer a two-word guideline: Be professional.

Your US Air Force has provided a flowchart which leads their people through a structured decision making process regarding blogging.

This is the best blog policy I've seen, and it doesn't surprise me because I believe these things about the military: (1) they've got a lot of bright, clever people, (2) they do a very good job of communicating simple, extensible expectations, and (3) they're better than anybody at directing and guiding young people - because that's what the military does.

Edited 4/25/09

Information Science 101

I had a very exciting experience Saturday when I received a courtesy copy of a recently printed textbook, Information Science 101 by Dr. Anthony Debons, who is one of my teachers.

The goal of the book is to produce a "101" textbook for information science, just like the 101 textbooks for computer science, library science, etc. With such a book, high school seniors can take an AP-type Intro to Info Science class, hopefully leading to increased enrollment in undergraduate Information Science programs.

I was fortunate to be able to make a very small contribution to the first chapter and it was gratifying to see things in print. Fortunately, I once worked at a newspaper and I became used to editors changing my perfect words actually editing, so I'm okay with that, too.

Gallery Crawl Pittsburgh Cultural District

Had a new experience / small adventure Friday evening, I met my friend Mark downtown and we participated in a Gallery Crawl. It was an excellent time and, remarkably, free.

There's a bunch of participating galleries and you walk from one to another, they all have signs outside identifying the place as part of the Crawl, you can go inside to see the artwork and often speak with the artists. Lots of different kinds of art - photography, drawings, music performances, installations, and there was an intensive fog-noise-lights room.

It was a very mixed crowd - a mix of black clothing, pierced/tattoo'd people, lots of university types, lots of 30-somethings, and a fair number of fogies.

What really impressed me was the organisation - there's a website with a PDF map of the various spots, with parking marked - it made going downtown and participating very easy. There were a lot of people there, and it was nice to see downtown thriving on a Friday night.

The most Pittsburgh-kitschy piece of the night had to be the Steelers Creche:

which I post here in my on-going campaign to prove that I haven't really been excited about a sports team since the 1969 Mets.

I hadn't seen Mark in a while, after we saw most of the galleries we had dinner at Tambellini's on Seventh and it was an excellent meal, I've never eaten there before. Very nice. The whole evening left me with "I should do this more often".

The next Gallery Crawl is Friday, July 17, 2009 5:30 PM. If you're looking for an evening's diversion and seeing a lot of different things, I recommend it.

Pittsburgh is NOT going to the Super Bowl

Actually, Pittsburgh is NOT Going to the Super Bowl.
The Steelers are going to the Super Bowl. Pittsburgh isn't going anywhere.

First, let's get past the terminology. Using Pittsburgh to refer to the Steelers is an example of the lesser type of synecdoche, where the whole of something is used to refer to a part of it. You might go further and suggest that using Pittsburgh to refer to the Steelers is a metonymy, but let us not mince words.

Second, let's be clear on where Pittsburgh is going.
The city is in receivership.
Toledo (aka Frog City) has a bigger population.
Buffalo has a busier airport.
Pittsburgh's air is ranked among the nation's worst.

The Steelers are a business. An entertainment business. Just like the Civic Light Opera or the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. It's a stage, not a field. (edit)

For some reason, we teach our children to identify with this Steelers business in a way that they never identify with Bayer, Alcoa, Westinghouse, or any outfit that might someday employ them. Our schools have days when students wear Black And Gold™ and we indoctrinate them so they grow up to be Steelers fans, and - unless they move away to find work - our children grow up to support the taxes, subsidies, and give-aways that our politicians provide to this business. Good little Steelers fans!

There is very little new under the sun, and this maneuver isn't new either. Juvenal used the phrase bread and circus to refer to the Roman practice of providing welfare and entertainment as a means of gaining political power through populism.

...Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.(Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81) (credit)

Juvenal also said, "It is hard NOT to write satire", when speaking of the Rome of his day. When the Boy Mayor changes his name to SteelersStahl, how can we see ourselves as somehow different from other decadent, frivilous societies?

Pittsburgh's population is half that of 1950.
Young people continue to leave to find work.
Pittsburgh has no semi-unique economic niche.
Downtown is abandoned and shut down at night.

The insane multitude of interlocking and overlapping municipalities, each well-supplied with nepotism, corruption, and incompetence makes regional progress a fantasy. This is the exact situation Micheal Heller calls The Tragedy of the Anti-Commons and is the topic of his recent book, The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives. (edit)


The short list above consists of the local items.
We are losing young Americans each day in war.
The financial sector is tanking.
Our automotive and other manufacturing businesses are failing.
We hand Senate seats out as perks of celebrity or family.
Businesses abandon commitments in bankruptcy and expect public subsidy.
We're about to spend borrow our way out of a financial crisis.

Don't pay attention to all that boring stuff.
Sing along: Here we go Steelers, Here we go!

Dress for Success and Bourgeois Angst

In my day job, I wear appropriate business attire at work because it's a cultural expectation and a condition of employment. I'm ok with that; I wore uniforms in the Navy, I can easily adhere to dress codes. Although I've always acceded to it under protest, this last week I saw that I've integrated the "dress meme" into my own thinking, and I'm wondering where that puts me on the Pragmatic vs. Bourgeois spectrum. I wonder if I've become "the organization man".


I resisted the "dress meme" for a long time, but one key event (and subsequent experience) a long time ago taught me that clothing and appearance do, in fact, matter - although I really would prefer that they didn't.

I was working an office job, dressed in office-lite (dockers, button-downs, necktie) and on the way home I stopped at an auto-supply warehouse for a two muffler clamps and a pipe sleeve - my Isuzu pickup's muffler pipe had rusted through, and I planned to repair the hole rather than replace the muffler.

Somehow, the parts man behind the counter was quite put off. He couldn't tell me what size exhaust pipe I'd need from his manuals (although I know it's in there), was generally uncooperative, said they didn't have pipe sleeves and ended up telling me, "Sorry we can't help you".

I went home, changed out of my work clothes (slacks, tie) for my work clothes (worn jeans and my high-school gas station shirt) and I got under the truck, wrestled with the muffler, and got the measurements I needed. When you do muffler work in a driveway, you get covered pretty thoroughly in the rusty flakes that fall down on you.

I went back to the parts warehouse hoping to catch a different guy, but it was late in the day and he was the only one left working the counter. I approached him cold and said I need a 3.5 inch pipe sleeve, and wire-hanger brackets for either end of it. He looked at me, with my gas-station shirt and rusty head, smiled and said "Sure, hold on a minute". He came back, gave me all the parts I needed - all the nuts and washers were there; he wrote up a discounted bill, charged me, and told me to have a nice day. It was obvious he'd never connected the Tie with the Mechanic.

I took the parts home, played amateur with the hacksaw, and repaired the exhaust pipe. I spent about $10 and avoided a garage bill. I carried that truck for years of rusting away. Later on I thought about my two very different experiences at the parts store.

Same guy, same request; very different appearances yielded very different results. When I thought about it I hated it, because until then I'd rejected the "dress for success" mindset. Now I know that people who know you evaluate you for who you are and what you do, but people that don't know you will absolutely draw clues from your appearance. It took a counter man in a parts warehouse to convince me.


So I took the lesson as learning and acted on it. I thought it was a silly thing but something I could live with, an anthropological oddity like saying "God bless you" each time somebody sneezes - dubious but harmless.

That was a long time ago. I don't have the pickup anymore, and I don't fit into my high school mechanic's shirt anymore. This week I saw myself as the guy on the other side of the desk. Usually by the time I recognize things about myself, the condition's not new.

I was scheduled to interview a candidate. Good resume, solid references - I'd called them and they spoke well of him. I left him waiting in the foyer while I reviewed his resume and the requirements one last time. My boss, who generally avoids meeting applicants, saw him waiting and was so impressed at the appearance - obviously shined shoes, a pressed suit, a recent haircut - it was such a contrast to a lot of interviews that we see, that my boss went over and introduced himself and spent a few minutes with him.

The interview went very well. Afterward I realized that he had us all at the first impression, and that impression shaped every subsequent interaction. It wasn't just the spit-and-polish; the interview was excellent - he showed a lot of preparation, a serious and disciplined approach, a mature perspective - you'd want this one working with you. But I allowed the first impression to set the tone.

When I consider how I've clearly moved into the paradigm I once rejected, I wonder if I've become that guy, as in "don't be that guy". I've taken Tom Rath (the man in the gray flannel suit) as my exemplar as a counter point to the organization man, and I wonder about compromise and corruption.

I'm a Slasher, as in job1-slash-job2

Started: One Person/Multiple Careers

I started reading One Person / Multiple Careers (Marci Alboher). It's time for me to admit it: I'm a slasher. You probably know some slashers. They're plumbers-slash-artists, or lawyers-slash-farmers, or pilots-slash-information architects.

I'm a slasher.

A lot of people are slashers. When I meet somebody, the reach question - the question that might be uncomfortable to ask but could be a breakthrough to discuss - is, What else do you do? It's awkward to hear, this is the only thing I do (not that there's anything wrong with that), but more and more people have more than one gig going on, and it's really telling to know where their other foot is.

I came across this book here, and it promises to be all about what I'm in the middle of - running two careers in parallel.

Slashers have multiple situations, and one (dangerous, I think) possibility that intrigues me is developing multiple personas, one for each niche. If the manager/ wears button-downs while the /artist wears black, and their attitudes shift with the garb, that would be problematic, a Jekyll-and-Hyde that switches with the sections of a Franklin Planner. So it's multiple jobs but just one you, I would think. I'm looking forward to reading this.

Maybe Pittsburgh is a slasher town - we're an educational-slash-medical community.

Riding the Sigmoid Curve

Career planning was easier when the life expectancy was 42. You worked as a kid, you moved into somewhat better-paying jobs, you probably stayed in one field unless you were thrown out of it, at 38 you were diseased or maimed, and at 42 you died. Not a lot of room for strategic planning; survival was tricky enough.

Now we live longer, way longer. 70 years (even 80 years for women) is not unusual. Back in the old social compact you had one career in your short life expectancy. In the new economy with the new life expectancy it's extremely unlikely for one career to cover the years. We need a new career strategy.

In nature and in life there are cycles. For instance, in the economy there's a business cycle - periods of growth, periods of decline, booms and busts. Charles Handy says there are cycles or curves in life and in business. He refers to a "Sigmoid Curve" of low growth, steady growth, wealth and success, and decline.

The best short read on this may be the Google Books excerpt of the Encyclopedia of Leadership, pages 73 to 75. The title is: "The Sigmoid Curve: Anticipated and Preparing for Change Despite Current Success". Also, see The Toolbox for Change, pages 23-27.

The Sigmoid Curve is an expression of success over time. The success can be measured in terms of profit, money, power, influence. The object considered can be a country, a society, an individual, or a career. In this discussion, I'm going to consider the Sigmoid Curve of Career Success over a person's lifetime. ( credit)


When a person starts in a career, their productivity and effectivess is usually negative, and it often gets worse before it gets better. There's an initial loss to the company (salary without revenue) and to the individual (education, clothes, relocation, etc).


After a while, the learning curve reduces, the person figures out how to succeed, and "success" (however measured) increases dramatically.


Given the initial loss or investment in a new employee, the break-even point of a new hire is the point at which the area of the pink triangle below the curve equals the area of the shaded "loss" above the curve.


The region of "increasing" success can be drawn, and if you note the slope of the curve as it moves from left to right, you'll see a mid-range inflection point in the slope of the curve.


The region of "increase" can be split into two significant sections at the inflection point; the two sections represent "growth" and "maturity". During the growth period, success increases at an increasing rate, and in the maturity period success grows in real terms but at a decreasing rate.


This chart indicates the characteristics of the person and the person's situation during the growth and maturity stages. (credit)



What does up must come down, or it least it probably will, and the sigmoid curve of this career ends in decline.


Research and experience suggest that the person receives positive feedback throughout the level-off, ambiguous signals at initial decline, and negative messages only when the nose-dive has begun. The person will not be warned of their demise until it is no longer avoidable.


We are not doomed. During the growth period, the person has many assets at their disposal - money, time, benefits, training, a network - and can use their situation to prepare for another career. (credit)


The strategy is to jump off the about-to-decline sigmoid curve and land on the bottom of a new sigmoid curve. The "sigmoid mindset" suggests that whenever times are good, success is climbing and your required effort is somewhat reduced, it's time to heed those footsteps you should be hearing and start planning for the next thing. The new curve could be a complete redesign of your current job, or a new job, or a new company, or a new industry.


In a perfect world, you'd start preparing for the career jump just before Career-A shifts from growth into maturity, and you'd accomplish the jump to Career-B close to the time that real success in Career-A starts to decrease.


The time spent between the intersections of Career A and B (see the above chart) can be difficult and stressful. People who are invested in the present career's version of You will resist the change. Complexity and stress will be high. Those about you who see the declining rate of growth may attribute it to your new "hobby", to the extent that they know about it.


If you buy the sigmoid concept, jumping the curve is the only successful option. You can ride the declining side of the first curve, struggling gloriously and making a lot of noise, but it won't change the result.


Near as I can tell, this is where I am. I've had a wonderful ride on Career-A, and I've been preparing for quite a while for Career-B. It's a bit scary, but most of the good things are.


Companies can make the sigmoid jump by redefining their products or industry. Countries can do this by redefining their economy (China) or realigning their alliances (Eastern Europe). I think it would be very hard for a declining city (Pittsburgh) to find a new curve to jump on to, unless external changes serendipitiously provide the new curve.


I suspect this also has implications for other endeavors (ie, marriage) and it suggests that you've got to mutually redefine it at the 20-year point but and that scares the hell out of me.


This sigmoid-curve-jumping is not a one-time trick; a long timeframe may call for successive sigmoid jumps. What most intrigues me about this depiction is that if you compare the segments spent in one curve with the segments spent between two curves, it looks like half the time is spent in ambiguous transition. (credit)


Here's an interesting use of the Sigmoid Curve to demonstrate the life cycle of Web 2.0, which moves into maturity and decline as the Web jumps onto Web 3.0 - click the image for full-size, opens in a new window. (credit)

For more info:
• http://www.prelude-team.com/organisational-development/strategy/sigmoid-curve
• http://www.envisioning.nl/publ_elf-paradox.pdf
• http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/

Cleaning the Cache and Small Amusements

In geek-speak, a cache (usually rhymes with trash, sometimes with face-sh) is a RAM memory junkyard, a pack-rat's trunk of small temporary essentials; once needed, now unused, never deleted. Programs need to stash a lot of things, they accumulate, and the memory starts resembling my basement. Periodically the system needs to clean out the cache.

Here's a few things from my blog cache that I present here as small amusements:

Its Not It's. I seriously need this.

Bank Robber Hires Decoys on CraigsList, confuses local police. This isn't what they intended with Web2.0

Beware of the Dog House This is what Microsoft wanted the Jerry Seinfeld ads to be.

The Blood Puddle Pillow

Out With the Old Bookmarks, In with the New Bookmarks

Ah, New Years Day, with a whole year stretched out in front of us as tabula rasa. People mark the occasion differently. Some people jump in the Mon. Some people ride their bikes. Me, I re-organize my Bookmarks in my browser.

This blog's namesake, Vannevar Bush wrote an article, As We May Think in The Atlantic Monthly in July 1945 speculating about where all our technology would take us. He described a machine called the Memex, which was a hyperlinked information system and the conceptual forerunner of the World Wide Web.

Bush connected numerous existing technologies, projected reasonable advances, and described an information system based on "associative indexing", where you could read one article of interest and have connections developed automatically and instantly. He thought that people would mark up significant finds, add comments, and contribute their own thoughts and conculsions. He was Web2.0 before there was Web1.0.

Vannevar Bush predicted that the "trails" between these documents would be significant, and would be recorded and retrievable by the device. Speaking of mankind, Bush wrote:

He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

Bush said that the record of trails might be passed down from as an inheritance, and I found that to be a significant notion. So I categorize my bookmarks by year and topic. Each year I start a new set of bookmarks, moving the previous year's folders into a "2008" meta-folder. Each new computer I've moved through gets the previous bookmarks. It's a reading list of where I've been. I don't know that it'll be of any value, but if might be interesting and it's certainly not expensive to maintain.

Bush wasn't right about everything. His memex, for instance, was an optical rather than a digital repository, and the record was stored locally rather than on a network. His words provide rich evidence of the gender and class assumptions of a patrician society. But He described the web in 1945, and described it as part of the hope of mankind, and he came out of the war mentality with positive hope for the future. A man could do worse. Few have done better.

So today, I lift a grateful thought to Vannevar Bush and start a set of bookmark folders based on year and topic - 2009 Me, 2009 kids, 2009 news, 2009 blogs, 2009 web design, 2009 programming, 2009 aviation, 2009 Pittsburgh, 2009 bike trips, etc - and start populating a new record of this year's resources.