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Friday, August 08, 2008

Tourists beware BC Ferries

BC Ferries has decreed that ferry riders aren’t allowed to take pictures on board their ferries. I know, a ludicrous ruling, given that the ferries are packed with tourists all summer long, but so typical for BC Ferries. Evidently, the reason is ... wait for it ... 9/11. Yes, when all the rationale reasons fail, pull out that all-purpose American bogeyman.

Context: A friend of mine was on a BC Ferries vessel, taking some photos of the outdated portraits of various British monarchs, with a running commentary to himself about how they were missing a couple of monarchs between Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. A BC Ferries employee tells him he has to stop, IMMEDIATELY. He is threatened by staff, and supervisors are called, who also try to intimidate him into submission. When he insists on a *reason* (Yes, remember, this is Canada, and though police sometimes tazer unsuspecting tourists to death, an articulate and informed citizen has a little better chance of asking for someone to make more sense instead of just grunting out “Becuz I says so."), there are some not-so-logical, half-hearted reasons given before that all-purpose American reason is trotted out.

But this is pretty typical for BC Ferries. Consider that the rest of the travel industry gives discounts when travelers make reservations so the company can plan their loads. Not BC Ferries. Instead, they charge extra for reservations. Yes, for helping them anticipate loads, they charge extra. And they don’t create variables fares (other than weekend and weekday fares) to encourage travelers to fill up the boats that otherwise travel half-empty. Talk about counter-intuitive. Of course, this creates resentment for the people who make the reservations because half the time, you didn’t need the reservation, and if you arrive even one minute past the 30-minute window, you can’t benefit from the reservation anyhow, so what was the point, other than to line the pockets of BC Ferries? But again, they used to be government bureaucrats, and haven’t made the transition to a customer-centric organization.

Well, now you’re warned. No taking pictures on the ferry, tourists - leave your cameras in the car! And it’s cheaper to bet with ferry waits than it is to shell out close to $20 extra to make a reservation that you might not need.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Why Hasbro doesn’t deserve customer loyalty

The whole kerfuffle around Hasbro forcing Facebook to shut down Scrabulous is making me examine all my toy purchases, and I’m committed to avoiding Hasbro products for the long run. (And for those of you who know that I buy gifts on a regular basis for some 7 grandkids, a niece and a new nephew, that adds up to some serious purchasing). Let me explain.

Hasbro has owned the Scrabble brand for years, and over the years, their consecutive product managers have shown that they don’t get how seriously Scrabble players take their game. They’ve successively trivialized and ignored the dictionaries, tried to “cutisie” it up (can you imagine changing chess pieces to pop culture figurines, or changing the rules for how checkmate works? this is the magnitude of change they proposed, which you can read about in Work Freak by Stefan Fatsis). So it didn’t surprise me that they underestimated the popularity of the players wanting to play online.

A lot of little sites offer Scrabble online, but what seems to be threatening to Hasbro is a couple of entrepreneurial brothers who created Scrabulous. Because it was on FaceBook, the application was heavily used, and allowed FaceBook members to play with their friends around the world.

It’s not like Scrabulous built an application after Hasbro provided an already excellent service to their user base; instead, the brothers behind Scrabulous saw a gap and filled it. (Ironically, it’s the principal behind American entrepreneurship so their actions are quite ironic.) So what went wrong? Hasbro dragged their feet, and didn’t service their customers for the longest time. And then when they say that the gap had been filled by some entrepreneurs, then they stepped in and shut them down. Even then, Hasbro still doesn’t get it. You can’t play with friends outside of your country (with the exception of Canada and the US, I believe - see the comments in the link for more on this). And if you live in North America, you can’t access Scrabulous at all - you’re stuck with the inferior Hasbro version. It feels like being in a relationship with a rather neglectful partner; they annoy you so much that you just want them to move out and inflict their arrogance on some other unsuspecting victim.

If Hasbro is concerned about their intellectual property, they should have worked with the Scrabulous folks to do something collaboratively that would benefit both of the companies. Instead, they’re alienated lots of users who associate their tactics with the heavy-handedness of Homeland Security. I wonder if they’ll try to justify their actions with the trite old excuse (see the BC Ferries post from last week) - why not, nothing else seems to make sense from a user point of view. They’re doing what’s best for their internal needs, at the expense of their potential, now alienated, customers. And in an environment where everything is on the Web and available at a click of a mouse, it’s easy to make friend - and enemies - in mass quantities, very fast.

On a personal note, I’ve gained more time, as I no longer have a reason to go to FaceBook every day. My 350 average will probably decline, but, well, those are the breaks. This is one customer who, on principle, can’t bring myself to engage with Hasbro.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

I may never travel to the U.S.A. with my laptop again

After reading the Reuters news item about how the U.S. has decided that any travelers’ laptop is fair game to be seized, I figure that it’s not worth it to travel into the U.S. with a laptop. I may not be in the group that gets racially profiled, or even in the peripheral group, but I have that weird experience of being that person who falls within the “other 5%”. That can be where 95% of people show symptoms of a disease, and I’m in the 5% that doesn’t show the regular symptoms, so I get really sick before the doctor properly diagnoses. I’m in the 5% of people whose technology acts up and no one can figure out how to fix it - I have spent hours with various HTC, Telus, and Geek Squad members over the past month, and still can’t get my phone to sync with my computer, and now my computer won’t recognize my CD drive, either. If there’s a defective 1-in-a-thousand of a particular product, I’ll end up buying that one off the shelf. I cannot think what type of business hell I’d sink into if my laptop were to be snatched by our Big Brother south of the 49th parallel. My contacts, my email, my work ... never mind that I have an online backup and so on - they’d have all my passwords, my configurations, all those things that are so painful when you have to set up a new computer.

The only problem would be conference presentations. I’ve been waiting for the day when I could travel across the border, stick my USB drive into the projector, and present - without the need to drag my laptop along with me. (Yes, I know the arguments against using PowerPoint for everything, but last time I didn’t have slides, the audience became confused and gave me bad reviews for that very reason.) I hope that day comes very soon. Meanwhile, this is yet another incentive to make sure that any flights to Europe make connections through a Canadian airport. Too bad, because I just found a great Cathay-Pacific flight that goes direct from Vancouver to New York. But is the risk of losing all my business data worth the few hours of lovely comfort if I’m stressed about losing my data upon arrival? Nah, not so much. 

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Conflicted over the iPhone

If you’re a Canadian business person who travels at all and has a Smart phone, you probably have a monthly mobile phone bill that equals half a mortgage payment. Not surprising, as Canada has the highest wireless phone and data rates in the Western world. I found http://www.thomaspurves.com/2007/04/09/canada-worse-than-3rd-world-countries-when-it-comes-to-mobile-data-access/” title="someone who had done the math">someone who had done the math, though he got the name of the Canadian agency that regulates cellular telephone companies. It’s the Canadian Wireless Telecommunication Association. (On their site, the association claims to advocate for the industry to the CRTC, which means that Canadians aren’t likely going to get any sweet deals on wireless soon, if they have their way.)

Which brings me to my own sweet deal. I’ve been doing the annual spring conference tour, either presenting or podcasting, and as soon as I crossed the border, I turned off my phone. (This despite having a Talk North America plan, which still dings me $800/month phone bills some months. Yes, Telus, but but but ... whatever. I care about my user experience, not your business justifications.) My friend, Scott, from Indianapolis, immediately handed me his extra US mobile phone for my use during my 10-day trip. Bliss. Better yet, the phone turned out to be an iPhone. As Scott tossed me the phone, he said I wouldn’t need any instructions other than the basics. Well, I needed a few, but very few, and they were for bonus functions, such as pinching or expanding thumb and forefinger on the screen to contract or enlarge the size of a Web page.

I loved being able to use Twitter from anywhere, to connect to whatever wireless network was handy, to having virtually no extra clicks to move between applications or to confirm or close applications, no typing lag time, and best of all - unlimited voice and data plan! No mobile-use guilt while in the US. What a difference it makes when doing business.

Now I’m regretting getting the HTC P4000.  My initial excitement at getting a new Smart phone quickly dissipated when I couldn’t get the phone to sync with my computer (it seemed to be an incompatibility between Vista and Windows Mobility Centre but a system restore of my computer had the function working - for a day before it stopped working again). For a while, I carried my old phone around, just for quick access to phone numbers, but without voice activation, making calls was just too painful, and though I had my calendar appointments on the old phone, I never heard the reminders because the phone was buried in my bag. So I basically use the HTC P4000 as a “dumb” phone for incoming calls, at least until someone, somewhere can get it working. Maybe by then, Telus will get the iPhone (I’m stuck with almost a 3-year contract with them still), and I’ll be able to toss this piece of hardward that requires multiple extra clicks for every function I want to use.

Even then, I’m not hopeful that I can get it set up at all. When I called the HTC call center, the rep I had kept asking me to click on menu commands that didn’t exist in Windows Mobility Centre, and eventually he confessed that they didn’t have any Vista machines so he could follow along. (Well, they did have one in their crash lab, but he didn’t want to run back and forth to the lab.) The first Telus rep was hopeless, and the second one couldn’t help me, either, though sounded more together. I’ve been wanting to mention to them that I have to reboot the phone a lot, but fear that I’ll get an inane answer. The only folks who seemed to really be helpful was the good folks at Apex - but no matter what they did, they couldn’t crack the code, either.

So iPhone holders, keep your delightful electronic gadgets away from me. I may just drool into the keys, and then where would you be?

Monday, July 14, 2008

Pride and the nature of community

This time of year is when Pride celebrations happen at various times around North America, starting late June, and wrapping up around beginning of August. It gets me thinking about visibility and community, and I needed to share some observations and thoughts on the topic.

Last weekend I went to Victoria, where E and I had intended to take in the Pride Parade.  Who knew it was so short that by the time we wandered down to the street where it was to take place, the parade would be over? That we missed the parade isn’t the point of the post, however; it’s what happened peripherally to the event, and has become an all-too-familiar pattern.

When we got to the street where the parade was supposed to be passing by, and didn’t see signs of it, I deduced that we were either too early or too late, so I thought I’d ask someone. Across the street, I spied two women who looked like they might be a couple - definitely members of the tribe, anyways - and would ask whether we’d missed the parade. They were friendly enough with their answers, and proceeded to explain what a Pride Parade was, and about the demographic who participated in it. And as I stood there with my wife a mere few paces away, I wondered why I was so invisible to her as a fellow member of the tribe, so to speak? Granted, it was easy for my gaydar to go off - they both had very short hair with what could be called “dykey” haircuts, comfortable clothing, and carted a tie-dye carry bag. If that’s not a profile from the Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip, I don’t know what is. But I didn’t think I was so “straight-looking”. Clad in belted shorts and a plain scoop-neck shirt, ASICS runners, sans purse and a phone clamped to my belt, the only difference was a bit of eyeliner and a good haircut.

But there’s something about me that seems to bring down a straight-jacket exterior (pun intended); wherever I go, I’m taken for the fag hag or the PFLAG mom instead of my inner lipstick lesbian. A number of years ago, I was walking towards the annual Dyke March and Festival on Commercial Drive, pushing my infant grandson in a stroller. As I caught the eye of a lesbian couple holding hands, walking in the opposite direction and smiled appreciatively at their delight in one other, one turned to me and spat out, “Yes, we are everywhere!” Yes, we are, but it seems that some of us are just more myopic than others. Similar scenes have taken place over the years, to the point where I don’t acknowledge fellow (fella?) lesbians, because they generally think I’m a straight person getting my jollies gawking at them. In fact, at this point, if a fellow community member were to give me “the look”, I think I’d be so shocked, I wouldn’t know what to do. Look away? Turn around to see who they’re really looking at? Stare back, incredulous?

On the other hand, being invisible has probably kept me out of trouble. It’s allowed me to be spared the drama that many of my friends and acquaintances have gotten drawn into, over the years. Instead of getting hit on, I’ve been left in peace to work on my personal growth, build my business, and take care of my family. And fittingly, the community I’ve found has been through those venues, where business and personal and friendships meet. My community has a great mix to it, including wonderful people from demographics that are sometimes undeservedly stereotyped as homophobic, where my sexuality is simply not an issue. My circle of friends includes engineers and musicians, software developers and photographers, marketing consultants and technical writers, UX professionals and content management types, artists and executives, teachers and project managers. A few of them share my sexual orientation; most of them don’t, or, I assume they don’t; a few of them share my spiritual beliefs; most of them don’t, or I assume they don’t. What we share is often different but what boils down to having a good core, and I think it’s made me a more balanced person in the end. So in the spirit of Pride, here’s to being proud of all aspects of my life, from my family - right from wife down to my precious grandchildren - to the friends support me, whether they be near or far, and my community that surrounds me.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Heading off to what used to be home

It’s been so long since I lived in the Niagara Peninsula that I can’t really call it home any more, but it is where I grew up, and the rest of my immediate family still lives in the area, so it seems odd both to call it home and to not call it home. I rarely go there - there didn’t seem to be much once my mother disowned me the second time (long story), but now her cancer is winning, and I feel the right thing to do is to visit. No matter what her feelings toward me, I’ve never held a grudge against her, and now isn’t the time to try to prove any points about family dynamics.

I offered to take whichever grandchildren with me who wanted to meet their greatgrandparents while they cuold still avail themselves of the opportunity. Only one grandchild was able to make it, so my 13-year-old grandson and I are leaving on an overnight flight to Toronto. We then drive to an area so economically depressed that, much to my grandson’s dismay, the nearest Starbucks is in Niagara Falls. Yep, it’s Tim country, with a Tim Horton’s doughnut shop every few blocks - well, the blocks are pretty long in the rural areas.

I bought a digital photo frame, packed it up with whatever photos of the grandkids I could find, and am hoping that the peace offering will help things go smoothly. We’ll have a family visit, then spend a day in Niagara Falls, then have another visit - not overwhelming her but spending bits of time interspersed with some sightseeing opportunities for my grandson. This will be an interesting meeting of cultures, for sure.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Self-censorship in blogging

It feels like a long time since I’ve blogged.  In fact, it has been a long time since I’ve blogged about anything substantial or very personal. It’s not for lack of want; there have been things that I’ve wanted to say, but when you know that the blog gets enough Google juice to get noticed - for some reason, my personal blog occasionally jumps higher than my business blog - you tend to be careful with what you say. If the vent is about family, you don’t want to hurt their feelings or jeopardize access to the ones you love, and if the vent is about business, you don’t want to get sued because the target of your rant suddenly develops a thin skin.

So when things get tough, I get quiet. And things were tough for a while, and I became so silent I sometimes forgot how to speak. It seemed that even the most innocuous of hellos could unleash a torrent of vitriol, so it was safer to concentrate on work. Computers don’t talk back, and other than the lock-up or odd blue screen, the responses are pretty predictable.

The other impediment is mixing business and personal, which, in my generation, was scrupulously separated. I realize that is quickly becoming an outdated model, and I’m trying to relax about “people” stumbling across the complexities of what often looks from the outside to be my novelty-value life. But in a socially-networked world where you’re as likely to bump into someone on FaceBook as on LinkedIn, you can only handle these collisions with aplomb - a bit like the time I discussed my son’s academic performance , in the nude, in the locker room of the YMHA, with his grade 2 teacher.

At this year’s Northern Voice conference, I noticed that the “next generation” of bloggers - this is a reference to age, not technology - doesn’t seem to have that need to compartmentalize their lives. Uber-blogger Darren Barefoot mixes professional with personal observations on his blog, though he maintains a corporate site with a built-in blog, as well. Boris Mann, another prolific blogger, writes in several forums, and can be followed on Twitter, and so on. Point made. My personal solution, maintaining two blogs, and recognizing that both can be read by the same audiences, is my comfort level.  If I really have something I have to get off my chest that I don’t want made public, then I’ve decided that my blog simply isn’t the place for it. The rest is a “hey, if you don’t like it, there’s plenty of other blogs out there to be read” situation. There, now I feel better. Next post coming up soon.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Goodbye to some memorable books

I’ve been thinning out my books - I don’t want to grow into one of those old women who end up surrounded by stacks of books, cats, papers, and piles of “stuff” - and had to admit that there were a couple of books that I knew I probably wouldn’t read again but that I enjoyed immensely the first time around. A lot of the time, these books are picked up during my travels because I finished the book I took with me and needed something to read on the flight home, or because the topic was something I was curious about and a book came up on the topic, or because the title was just too good to walk by.

Here are a few of my faves:

Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods---My Mother’s, My Father’s, and Mine by Noelle Howey - An autobiography by a teen who goes through her adolescence (an awkward time at best) at the same time her father goes through his own form of style adolescence as he prepares for trans-gender surgery. Told with a wry sense of humour that lets you in on her adolescent angst without too much earnestness.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman - The first premise of the book is that someone will eventually ask him if he’ll now recant something he wrote years ago, that no woman could ever satisfy him, and he’s say, of course, because he’s now married. But of course, no one would ever know if he’s telling the truth because there is public pressure to say the right thing. The whole Emo angst (hmmm, there’s that word again) about fake love drew me in, and then the titles of various chapters made me curious. Lise Loeb and Ice Planet Hoth ... Toby over Moby - OK, I kind of knew who Moby was ... I felt I needed to get out of the middle-aged closet, at least a little bit. I now read way more blogs and watch a lot less TV.

Black Rubber Dress, by Lauren Henderson - A whodunnit set in London where the protagonist is a low-rent, edgy sculptor of gigantic mobiles. She’s a bit of an anti-hero, so has the usual accoutrements like a male nickname and, if I’m not mistaken, tattoos and promiscuity, not to mention recreational drug use - the better the contrast to be able to critique the well-heeled crowd that make up the rest of the crowd in the book. A refreshing airplane read.

Genderqueer, edited by Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins - I picked up this book because it’s subtitled “beyond the sexual binary” and discusses transgendered and intersexed issues intelligently, as well as the usual gay, lesbian, bisexual, and even quirkyalone, in a way. I bought it in Baltimore, where I was speaking at a conference, and used the book to describe situations where we except binaries and are made to stretch our minds when presented with more options. I was surprised at how many feedback forms involved a comment about how the presenter talked about (gasp!) sex! Really ... the inability to relate concepts ... but I digress.

Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson - I couldn’t put this book down. It’s been a couple of years now since I read it, but I still remember the characters vividly. For weeks afterwards, I would wonder what happened to Ivy, Cayce, and Parkaboy. I wanted a sequel. That reminds me to check out Gibson’s latest.

The other two boxes of books will go into the donation box without fanfare. Some are well-loved, like Ann Marie MacDonald’s books, that I hope will be equally enjoyed by their next owner, and others I hope will be better enjoyed by the new owners.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Custom songs makes for light-hearted gifts

A long while back I heard about a site called Songs to Wear Pants To. In cleaning out a bunch of old business cards, I came across the site name and thought I’d see if the site was still there, and it is!

Andrew is a songwriter who creates custom songs based on whatever criteria you provide, no matter how odd. All you need is a little pancreas? No problem. Crazy candy theme? His pleasure. Polka loca? Of coursa. Celtic techno burrito? Why sure-o. The site even has its own theme song. I have to hand it to Andrew for the longevity of the site, the way he’s found to make money doing something he loves, and for finding a way to stay good-humoured about the weird and whacky requests he gets for songs.

Considering that my family is entering “birthday season” - a few of us have birthdays between late November and end of January, then just about everyone else’s birthday is clumped together between end of March and beginning of June; something like 18 birthdays - this may be the gift that everyone gets this year!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Fitness quest update

Back in November, I made up my mind to get fit. I was tired of being hostage to my food allergies, which were getting worse, my joint pain, which was getting worse, and the excess weight, which has so much negative effect on my quality of life. A friend and client from Minneapolis had made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse - his payment terms for work done for his company would be that the cheque would be made out not to my company, but to a personal trainer of my choosing. Well, the strategy is paying off. I’m stronger, thinner, and have a better sense of balance (which I’d lost during the years surrounding my ship replacement).

It took me until January to find a trainer that I liked - I chose Matt Cole of Peak Exercise Sciences because he’s a MSc, BHK, CSCS, and RK. He’s not only knowledgeable about training and fitness and injuries and rehabilitation, but he’s experienced (he’s not as young as he looks, he assures me). And he has a disarming way about him - none of this bootcamp obnoxiousness which would have turned me off right away. As well, something that I needed was flexibility; as a consultant, I’m all over the place during the week, so I looked for someone who could train with me downtown or close to where I live, or at my townhouse complex’s fitness room when needed. He comes up with cockamamie exercises that are meant to improve my core strength, and just when I manage to master them, he finds something else that I completely suck at, and I start over again.

Yesterday, I went to The Running Room to invest in a good pair of sneakers which would accommodate my orthotics and my lift and let me get in a good workout without hurting my ankles or knees. And I put on a t-shirt I got at a conference, a t-shirt that was two sizes smaller than I usually wear, and it fit! And I put on some jeans, and realized I needed to wear a belt to keep them up, and my belt fit on my hips (a belt that would have barely fit my waist before), and I checked and I’m down 15 pounds. Whoo hoo!

I wonder why my joints still hurt. Must ask Matt about that. But hey, I’m more motivated than ever to keep going. Working out, riding my Trikke, watching my nutrition, trying to keep my stress levels under control. Stay tuned ...

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Redeeming social value of Will and Grace

My hairdresser tells me that when her sister and brother-in-law used to come to visit from Winnipeg, she was reluctant to send them out into the neighborhood - Vancouver’s West End - because of her brother-in-law’s rampant homophobia. So when they arrived this weekend to stay, and she needed them to busy themselves for a couple of hours before she could entertain them, she hesitated. But her brother-in-law said not to worry, he was going to head up the street to the local Starbucks.

Well, four hours later, when she and her sister couldn’t find him, they went on the hunt and sure enough, there he was, in Starbucks, and didn’t want to leave. Seems he was in the process of listening in on a number of conversations of the surrounding patrons and wanted to know how their conversations would end. It seems that a middle-aged gay couple was in the process of breaking up ("It’s so sad!") and a lesbian couple was talking about their impending adoption ("They sound so excited; they’ll make great parents.") It seems that after discovering Will and Grace and the humanization of the urban gay, we’re not so scary, and neither is walking around a gay neighborhood. Who knew that a TV show had such influence? Gotta love it.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Texting and driving

Note: Reposting this because I deleted it by accident while trying to delete nuisance trackbacks..

When I hear people calling into talk shows calling for bans on cell phones in cars, draconian measures such as building in phone de-activators, I roll my eyes and wonder what world they live in. Or, as they’d say in my business, they haven’t thought through their use cases, let alone the edge cases. (So even passengers wouldn’t be able to use their phones in the car? If I’m pulled over but in my car, I’d have to step out onto the highway to call for help? Now there’s a less-than-safe alternative!) Instead, I’m a believer in knowing your limits. At the point in time when I realized I could not safely dial and drive, I stopped. If I’m talking and have to attend to a traffic situation, I simply say, “hold on, hold on” and deal with whatever I have to deal with, no matter how long the silence gets. Safety first. Have I texted while driving? Sure, while I’m stopped at a red light. It might take me three or four red lights to tap out the message “very late. be there 30 mins” but the second the light turns green, I put down my phone and concentrate on the road. I never want to be like the driver of an F150 truck I saw weaving down the highway one night. I assumed the driver was drunk; when I passed the truck, I saw the glow of the open cell phone - the driver was meandering between two lanes while texting.

So yesterday, when taking the Super Shuttle from the San Francisco airport to the downtown Palomar Hotel, I was scared out of my wits. The driver was driving at 60-70 MPH over the Bay Bridge while text messaging the entire time. I was completely appalled. The other passengers didn’t say a word, which surprised me because I asked the guy next to me if he thought this was a safe practice and he was clearly uncomfortable, and it was only when I shrilly demanded that he stop that he did – until he had dropped all the other passengers off, and then he could not resist picking up his phone again while he made his way to my hotel. I don’t know if he was indulging in political discourse or an overactive libido, but it was obvious to me that whatever his motivation, it was pretty compulsive. (The hotel staff inform me that texting while driving is not legal in California, which means that his compulsion was stronger than his common sense on more than one front.)

I am returning to the airport on Wednesday but will make other arrangements (even take public transit, if I have to) to avoid such a hair-raising experience again. To their credit, Super Shuttle responded by saying that a complaint has been filed and forwarded to the local Quality Assurance manager for review, and I should get an answer within five days. Let’s see what kind of response they come up with. 

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Social networking reverting to a global local village model?

I was listening to CBC’s program, Spark, about a discussion with Washington Post’s Marc Fisher that was an editorial on a Snow Day story, where a high-achiever student called a school administrator to know why school hadn’t been canceled because of snow, and the administrator’s wife left a scathing message for the student, which got posted to FaceBook.

For me, the original story wasn’t so interesting [sidebar: Students’ judgments aren’t fully formed yet (hey, that’s why they’re students) and are supposed be learning from the adult role models around them. The administrator’s wife is evidently not fit to be one of those role models. I learned from one of my co-workers long ago that if you’re not prepared for your words to be published on the front page of the New York Times, you should abstain from articulating whatever you’re thinking. This woman learned it the hard way.] but the subtext to the story was: how technology, and in particular the social networking phenomenon, has potentially eroded our privacy, making us hyper-aware of our every move.

What’s interesting to me, being over 50 and from a small (and I mean small!) town in rural Ontario, is that what is being described is the social network from my youth, only on a much larger scale. In essence, what social networking has done is return us to the “global local village.” As Fisher was talking, I was doing a mental check in my head of the similarities.

In a rural setting, when a car drove by, you looked up and noticed who was driving by. My dad would say, “There goes old Jack. Must be going up to see Jim – heard the horse was sick.” The men of the community kept track of social comings and goings through the local coffee shop/feed store. Ours was called the Two-by-Four. When a petty crime happened, we all knew whose kids did it, even if the police could never prove anything. When I bought an experimental pack of cigarettes, the store owner told my dad. My mother’s big shame would have been for a teacher - they all lived within a few miles of there - to see me doing that. My mom told me I couldn’t wait at the corner store to get picked up from the school bus any more, with the cool kids who played the pinball game and smoked. I had to take a different school bus home now; I had to ride on her school bus. Privacy? What privacy?

We knew where our teachers lived, and they bumped into us everywhere. I took piano lessons from the prinicipal’s wife; another teacher went to the same church as my grandmother and lived two doors down from my aunt. Mornings, I walked a quarter-mile to the school bus stop, and in inclement weather, waited in the porch of the teacher who lived on the corner. There was no formal contact between teachers and students, but to be sure, students knew that their teachers were everywhere, and they were continually interacting, just as a part of their community status and part of community life. We knew lots about our teachers, all 12 of them, and they knew lots about all 350 of us.

If there were an angry outburst with a student, the next day everyone would know. (If a teacher’s wife were to have an angry outburst, that would have been unthinkable. It would have been gossip fodder for years!) In our school, the school bus was the unmediated public space – the low-tech IM - and by lunch time, all the students were mimicking the teacher’s words and tone out of earshot of the playground supervisors. Similarly, when our French teacher left his wife and children for a grade 12 student, we all knew – and he was gone. After all, you couldn’t really go far without someone seeing you and the rumors starting. And reputations were forever – the fact that I vividly remember the incident 32 years later speaks to it. The permanence lived on, just as a farm would go by the name of the owners for the last forty years, not the ones who lived there “only” the last ten. The grocer knew what you bought, and shared your reputation by the soundness of your food choices. The low-tech FaceBook was the gossip network, and it was kept active by men and women alike.

When I moved to the city, the anonymity was a novelty. The move away from local grocers to big-box stores was a novelty. Fill your cart with frozen dinners and there was no one to criticize your moral fiber. The tight weave that existed during my school years didn’t exist for my son, and other than some pre-internet circumstances that mirrored social networking (a chance discussion in a YWCA pool change room, with my son’s grade 2 teacher, both of us naked, discussing a problem my son was having, sticks out in my mind), there was little substance to the social fabric. But that has become the norm, and the norm is not easy to change. Instead of a new, not-yet-understood phenomenon, maybe we can see the social networking phenomenon as a return to the local village, albeit in a larger scale – a kind of global local village.

I recently gave up trying to keep my separate professional and private life separate, and decided to live my life the way I did as a kid in my rural Ontario roots. After all, search engines will inevitably find my personal blog when people do a search on my professional life, and vice-versa, so my best recourse is to conduct myself honorably and know that no matter what they find, there will be no embarrassing photos, no reports of unethical conduct, no blue-language rants, just me being me, going about my business, the way I would if I were driving to my parents’ farm, waving at the neighbors, and realizing that if they’re going out of their way to pass judgment, it’s just because they’ve got a little too much time on their hands. I predict that will become the new norm, and it won’t take another complete generation for the shift to happen.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

International Women’s Day

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve actually done anything for International Women’s Day other than take a moment for myself to think about the implications for my own life and the women around me. There’s not much discussion of it any more, just like there’s not much discussion of feminism any more. It drives me crazy when women say they’re not feminists, and that the feminist movement did nothing for them. (Oh yeah? Do they want to go back to the days when a bank manager wouldn’t give a woman a bank loan? Or give a woman a mortgage? Or give a woman a hassle about opening her own bank account, without the signature of her husband or father?) The completely irrational cop-out of “well, I don’t want to call myself a feminist because some thirty years ago, there was an urban myth about women burning bras that I don’t want to be associated with” drives me crazy.  The “I don’t want to call myself a [name any group] because there are some [name the fringe element to that group] that give that group a bad name” argument is so lame. I always want to respond with “well, I don’t want to call myself a lesbian because there were some incidents about man-hating separatists that I don’t want to be associated with. Apply that to religion, culture, status in life (motherhood, for example), profession ... anyhow, back to International Women’s Day.

I’m quite thankful for many of the women in my life. There are a couple that I want to throttle right now - I wish they’d renounce their womanhood so I could simply distance myself completely from them. I would like to be able to say that they have NOTHING in common with me, not even sex or gender. Well, one in particular I don’t consider to be of the same gender though she’s of the same sex. But life isn’t simple that way. We have to live with ambiguity and complexity, and interconnectedness of circumstance. I remind myself of this because even if I were able to say “we have nothing common,” it would still not give me license to hate. The difference in gender doesn’t stop me from deeply loving my grandsons. The difference in the values with which my granddaughters are being raised doesn’t stop me from deeply loving them. International Women’s Day reminds me of all these things, and more. - it’s a day for us, and for all those affected by us.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Happiness is genetic - go figure

Went to work out today for the first time since falling down the stairs. Hurt like hell, but didn’t want to leave it too long. When I came home, stiff and sore, I came up from the underground parking and saw a half-dozen robins hopping about the yard, pulling worms out. They paused when they saw me, cocked their heads to see if I was a threat or a passing phenomenon, and resumed their foraging for wriggling protein. It made me happy - spring is imminent.

Speaking of happy - I just read that British and Australian researchers have shown that half the differences in happiness are genetic, based on studies done on twins. Common genes result in personality traits that predispose people to happiness. Does that mean that certain miserable people I know will always remain so?

I wonder if they’ll ever find the tacky gene. If they do, I could certainly get behind certain pragmatic uses for genetic testing.