A cartoon about how we live & work in a digital world
This could also have been a bunch of disembodied hands holding devices, but that might have felt creepy. (Not to mention spooky, mysterious and ooky.)
Updated: And speaking of the Internet of Things, here’s a great consumer-friendly article by Dan Tynan explaining the basic concept and setting out a few of the issues around it.
So now we know that the NSA isn’t just mining mobile phone metadata. They’re mining World of Warcraft gold.
I suspect their people are a lot less clueless than my cartoonist’s heart would like to believe. Sure, I’m tickled at the thought of James Bond flailing helplessly in mid-air for hours in Second Life. But even as someone whose knowledge of the intelligence community is largely informed by Michael Westen‘s monologues (see previous cartoon), I’m pretty sure these folks are used to adapting quickly to different cultures and unfamiliar environments.
And intelligence work in a MMORPG probably isn’t much different from intelligence work anywhere else: building relationships, gaining trust, listening carefully, and doing a lot more boring sifting through data than you might think. (So online community managers, you can probably expect a call from a CIA human resources officer any day now.)
That doesn’t mean the execution went off without a hitch. According to the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, there were so many intelligence agents in the virtual field that a “deconfliction” group had to keep them from wasting time infiltrating each other. Not that there aren’t folks who use Second Life as a way of infiltrating each other, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic. And the ProPublica article on the Snowden revelations suggests strongly that terrorists weren’t actually using World of Warcraft or Second Life except for recreation and getting one’s freak on.
What the article doesn’t address, and what I suspect the biggest danger posed by MMORPG ops, is mission creep.
Anyone who has missed work to finish a quest, or looked up from an online melee to realize it’s four in the morning, knows what I’m talking about. Intelligence agencies used to have to worry about field agents “going native”; now they have to worry their loyalty could be divided between their country and their guild. Yeah, you’re pretty sure that mage is MOSSAD, but she’s awfully handy with a Frost spell, so now she’s in your questing party. And maybe you haven’t come up with a lick of actionable intel in three years, but you’ve kept Al Qaeda off the leaderboard, and isn’t that what really matters?
Incidentally, there’s also the massive violation of privacy (and community). Wouldn’t it be great if there was someone trying to do something about that?
Three of my colleagues are currently witnessing my full-on panic attack at discovering I’ve been locked out of #Facebook.
— AlexandraSamuel.com (@awsamuel) November 29, 2013
And cue the Burn Notice theme music:
When you’re locked out, you’ve got nothing. No friends, no third-party apps, no timeline. You’re stuck on whatever social network you get dumped in. You rely on anyone who’s still connected to you. Your mouse-happy ex-boyfriends. An old friend who’s informing on you to the NSA. Google+…if you’re desperate.
Bottom line is, until you figure out who locked you out, your Klout isn’t going anywhere.
Until Michael Alex is reinstated, you can find her on Twitter and Google+.
(Yes, cheap shot on Google+. But it fits in so well there…)
Updated: She’s back!
Updated again: I just had to.
How long before someone has a viable business helping parents choose names for their kids based on low-competition, high-value search terms?
GTD, baby. GTD.
—
After drawing this, my inner Beavis and Butthead have reared their heads, and everything I say about my iPhone suddenly seems filled with innuendo. “Multi-touch.” “Pinch to zoom.” “Mind if I… plug in to charge?” “71:40 aspect ratio.” Uh, huh huh. Huh huh huh.
—
In barely related news, I finished reading Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse a little while ago. I recommend it: it’s highly entertaining, and for days after reading it, you’ll be acutely aware of just how many microprocessor-controlled gizmos surround you… and the damage they could do if the silicon chips inside their head got set to overload.
I have to think Siri in particular could cause some havoc. Enough misunderstood phrases and mistranscribed messages (“‘Have socks tonight?’ What the hell?”) and humanity could probably be pushed over the brink.
Oh — once you’ve read Robopocalypse, watch this video. Maybe just before bed. Good luck sleeping.
—
While I’m recommending things, the kids and I have been hugely enjoying Noelle Stevenson’s webcomic Nimona. The eponymous 14-year-old shapeshifting girl with anger management issues signs on as a sidekick to supervillain Ballister Blackheart. In a medieval world where dragons, magic and plasma rifles coexist, Nimona and Ballister plot to thwart the evil Institution — pitting them against Blackheart’s nemesis and one-time bestie Ambrosius Goldenloin.
That description can’t begin to do the comic justice. It’s all tongue-in-cheek, except for Nimona’s anger and pain. That, Stevenson treats with great care and respect. Her cartooning, humour and storytelling chops started strong and have been growing by leaps and bounds since the cartoon debuted in the summer of last year. If anything in that description triggered even a tiny endorphin surge, go check it out — I hope you enjoy it.
I just had another one of those Skype conference calls: the ones where some people can’t get video, others can’t hear, and still others inexplicably lose their sense of smell. For my part, I lost all feeling below my waist. (I think that’s because of how I was sitting, with one leg tucked up under my bum, like a stork who happens to have been given an office chair.)
I gather this happens to everyone now and then (the Skype issues, not the loss of sensation in their legs). So here’s a quick troubleshooting guide to ensuring a crystal-clear Skype call:
I’m happy to share my other Skype tips any time. Just find me on Google+; we’ll do a Hangout.
I will consider it a personal failing if I can’t get a Ouija board with a pipe character, angle brackets and shebang up on Etsy by the end of the year.
By the way, the Ouija board was one of three options I was considering for this caption. I’d sketched up a corpse being reanimated…
…and a seance…
…but landed on the Ouija board. That was partly on Alex’s recommendation, and partly so I could draw it while the kids were falling asleep without scaring them into a night’s insomnia if they happened to catch a glimpse.
A disclaimer: there’s some good stock imagery out there. Some really lovely stuff.
But there’s just so much derivative crap: flat, uninspired knockoffs of other flat uninspired knockoffs. Oh, look! It’s a smiling person with a phone headset! It’s three people gathered around a laptop, one pointing, the others listening attentively, and all of them smiling! It’s a meeting of half a dozen ethnically diverse people, smiling! (Don’t want smiles? There’s a dramatic variation where they look determined! Although they could break out in smiles at any moment.)
I wish iStockphoto would label all of that stuff so people who want the old standbys could find them quickly and easily, and people who want anything but that style could filter it out of their search results.
Meanwhile, an offhand tweet of mine last week griping about all of this got a response from David Sherry:
@RobCottingham We're working on it! http://t.co/ovRAZHCEnx
— David Sherry (@DavidSherry36) September 4, 2013
And so he and collaborator Allie Lehman are. Death to the Stock Photo is a project that drops a tidy pile of lovely photos in your inbox every month for your enjoyment and use, at no charge.
Free high-res lifestyle photography sent to you monthly, to do whatever you please. For your website, social channels, mockups or even to hang on your wall if you’re so inclined.
No catch. Join us to rid the world of bad stock photography.
This cartoon came about because I came across one app too many asking for outrageous access and permissions: see my contacts, tweet on my behalf… stuff that’s becoming numbingly routine, but which the app really has no need for.
I know the platforms often don’t make it easy, but I’d love developers to go beyond just saying they want this access; tell me what you’ll do with it. Are you going to store my list of contacts locally and offer to autocomplete names as I enter them? That might be cool. Are you going to email everyone I know each time I defeat a level boss in Avatar Vs. My Little Pony? Not so cool.
And I’d like fewer vampires and more houseguests. Invite a vampire into your house once, and that permission’s apparently irrevocable (or so a lot of late-night movies would have me believe). But a houseguest has to ask permission every time they drop in, and that’s what I’d like to be able to opt for with some apps. One example: I’d like to require a passcode entry before enabling Facebook and Twitter “integration” on kids’ games, so my little ones can’t gunk up my updates (and your news feeds) with useless status updates unless I say so.
One last thought about the cartoon: what are the chances there are already apps out there performing surreptitious surveillance? Or maybe, what are the chances there aren’t?
This is the bonus cartoon I promised after folks kindly pushed the Noise to Signal Facebook Page past the magic 2,000-Like mark. (That may seem like an arbitrary number, but it really isn’t. I’m now officially entitled to a friendly nod and a “S’up?” from Mark Zuckerberg if we ever walk by each other.)
Unfortunately, it’s late, because the server crashed under mysterious circumstances. I choose that wording deliberately, because it suggests the involvement of nefarious forces, which has more cachet than “I have no idea why this is broken; maybe some disk corruption or a squirrel got into the datacenter.”
Now, however, I have resurrected the server (with lots of encouragement from the good folks at Linode!), so we’re back up and running. Better yet, we’ve made the leap from Ubuntu’s Karmic Koala to Raring Ringtail, completely bypassing Maverick Meerkat, Tempestuous Tapeworm, Obsequious Okapi and Passive-Aggressive Porpoise.
What will this mean to you? Well, other than a possible Funny Ubuntu Animals cartoon in the offing, maybe nothing. Or maybe it will mean shorter load times and an undefinable yet undeniable sense of well-being. Let me know.
I don’t believe in chasing metrics for their own sake. I really don’t.
But for the past month, Noise to Signal has hovered tantalizingly close to 2,000 fans on Facebook, and dammit, I really like it when the cartoon reaches more people. If an arbitrary number can help make that happen, then by god, I’ll embrace that arbitrary number and tickle it under its chin.
So I posted that if we can crack that 2,000-fan barrier tonight, I’ll post next week’s cartoon today:
I have a cartoon that I’m planning to post next week. But if you fine people can convince 18 more people to like the page and crack 2,000, it’ll go live RIGHT AWAY. (Why? Because I like round numbers and because my subconscious is convinced that more Likes mean I won’t die alone and unloved someday.)
And my old friend Kevin Marsh from my Queen’s Park days replied that he might be game for it if I post a cartoon about my subconscious. And here it is.
The offer still stands. Next week’s cartoon awaits just 18 more Facebook Likes.
(In case you’re wondering, yes: I went back and forth over whether to say “shitload”. I ultimately went with it because I think it’s funny as hell when a monk says “shitload.” In many ways, I never really stopped being 12.)
I heard about Microsoft’s acquisition while I was still bleary-eyed and uncaffeinated. So my brain ran down a few blind alleys trying to figure out how I could parlay that basket of old Nokia equipment up in our deprecated tech cupboard* into some serious money.
I’ll say this, though: the Nokia 5190 was genuinely life-altering. Long battery life, excellent signal quality, the game “Snake”… combined, those features freed me from my desk for the first time. I’m prepared to make the case that this is where the mobile revolution truly began.
I wouldn’t be surprised, by the way, if there is in fact a hoax circulating about Microsoft paying big bucks for old Nokia handsets. For any of a dozen possible reasons, tech hoaxes are especially virulent — from the old modem tax to the “Obamaphone” myth. Let me know if you spot one. (I’d offer a signed print to the first confirmed sighting, except… oh, just Google “perverse incentives.”)
* By which I mean “one of our many deprecated tech cupboards”.
Quick public service announcement: upload a profile photo. Anything other than that default egg icon. Take a picture of an actual egg if you have to, and upload that — it’s still an improvement.
Thanks to my peeps* on Google+, who helped me sharpen the caption. (And Alex, for gently letting me know it might need it.)
* See what I did there? Eggs, Easter, peeps? This is the kind of multi-layered writing you won’t find on your newspaper’s comics page, bubeleh. (Then again, you won’t find too many cartoons there these days, either.)
Alex (that’s right, the Alex) suggested this one. I’m not sure which thought appeals to me more: that I could wander around with dynamic metrics projected over my head, or that administering psychopharmaceuticals to my web server could increase the average visit duration.
Warning: If visit duration exceeds two hours, consult a sysadmin.
If you draw cartoons, the idea of a book is probably rarely far from your mind. And if you draw cartoons in the year 2013, the idea of using Kickstarter, Indiegogo or something similar to fund that book is probably snuggled right up next to it.
Well, while you’re mulling (and by “you” I mean I have a habit of projecting), here’s another way to use crowdfunding. If one of your inspirations for drawing cartoons was a man named Gahan Wilson, do I have a Kickstarter for you.
And meanwhile: if you have a favourite creative/artsy/social-good Kickstarter/Indiegogo/Razoo/etc. project to pitch, feel free to leave a link in the comments!
P.S. – Yes, I know sound wouldn’t travel in space. She’s using Bluetooth.
Some people tan at the drop of a hat (and towel). Me, I go bright, radioactive red unless I’ve used sunscreen with an SPF somewhere north of “concrete”.
When I was a kid, summer was the season of peeling: nose, ears, arms, legs. (There’s a kind of fascination to stripping off all that skin, maybe something resonating with that dog-eared copy of the How and Why Wonder Book of Reptiles and Amphibians.) I can still remember lying in bed trying not to move, beet-like and on fire except for the areas that had been covered by my shorts and shoes on the Metres for Millions walk one year.
Nowadays, though, I know more about the damage the sun can do, from the cosmetic ook of leathery skin to the real risk of cancer. And peeling looks a lot less rite-of-passage-like on a 50-year-old than someone 35 years younger. Which is why I’m writing this from deep inside a cave, waiting for October to come.
That’s right — the autoresponder’s on BRB, the phone’s on DND and my notifications are switched to FOAD. Noise to Signal is on holiday this week.
Suddenly, it seems like people everywhere are on digital fasts. They’re unplugging from the Internet, turning off their mobile devices and contemplating the role of online devices, services and relationships in their lives.
I get it. Sometimes you need to step back, look at where something fits into your life, and make some changes. And a break from digital notifications sounds pretty appealing.
But a lot of the folks who tune out, turn off and drop the connection talk about it the same way you might talk about kicking smoking or booze. “I’m going to focus on my real relationships, not my Facebook friends,” they’ll say… on Facebook. (That’s one reason I love Alexandra Samuel’s first point in this blog post.) Or “I’m going to concentrate on what really matters.” Which, it’s hard not to infer, is entirely and exclusively offline.
And that, I don’t buy.
By all means, take a break from your gadgets and screens. Notice what you’ve missed while you were playing Warcraft or live-tweeting Dexter… but also the meaningful things you discover are missing during your fast.
Put the online world’s role in your life into perspective — not just where it distracts you from what matters, but where it connects you to it. Again, I’ll point to Alex:
When we’re online — not just online, but participating in social media — we’re meeting some of our most basic human needs. No, not the need to read the latest Lindsay Lohan update. Needs like creative expression. The need to connect with other people. The need to be part of a community. Most of all, the need to be seen: not in a surface, aren’t-you-cute way, but in a deep, so-that’s-what’s-going-on-inside-your-head way.
Digital connections are the vector for only some of the many insidious distractions rearranging our priorities and distorting our perceptions of the world. So once your e-break is over, try a few other fasts: Don’t answer your phone for a week, and ask people to email or message you instead. The next week, switch to blocking out the news media. The week after that, no shopping.
And as you do the work of putting your digital connections to work for you, instead of the other way around, don’t forget the digital tools that can help. Learn the settings that will tame the notifications on your smartphone, Facebook and elsewhere — and while you’re at it, switch off the email notifications that flood your inbox. Look into settings and apps that can let you focus on the task at hand, whether it’s full-screen mode for your word processor or a utility like RescueTime that helps you figure out where you’re spending your online hours. And schedule some time to review all of this regularly.
That sounds like a lot of work, and it is. Deciding where and how to direct your attention takes real effort whether it’s online or offline.
So while I wish you all luck with your digital fasts, the people who really impress me are the ones who can do that work in both worlds, regularly and well. Disconnecting for a little while is just a first step, and only one of several options at that. It’s what you change when you plug back in that will make the biggest difference.
Update: A lot of tweeting today of this article by Baratunde Thurston on his 25-day Internet absence. It’s well worth a read, especially because of the insights he draws from the experience, and how they shaped his re-entry into the online realm.
We finally got Esperanto, people! Apparently it’s spelled “e-m-o-j-i.”
This is kind of the flip side of Monday’s forgotten-password cartoon. Which makes me wonder: how long before emoji character sets are incorporated into passwords? That’s 722 more characters to confound would-be fraudsters and thieves, magnifying the difficulty of brute-force attacks. Your next password may be something like “9L#$jvf]OJ6TD%WR Face Savouring Delicious Food p*35.”
Here’s a theological puzzler for you: will our software, data and gadgets pass along with our souls to the next world?
I’m especially concerned about password utilities. It can be awkward if your admission to the kingdom of heaven is riding on your defence of a tweet that looks pretty awful, except you know there’s a little context that could explain why it’s actually really funny — if only you could log into your Evernote notebooks to refresh your memory.
So, 1Password, get on that. It could be the feature that lets you survive the Mavericks upgrade.
(Alex suggested this cartoon. And as luck would have it, she’s also the person who got me using 1Password, a program that saves my fanny on a regular basis. If you need to juggle passwords for a number of accounts and websites, 1Password may save yours too. Check them out.)
This was inspired by a conversation I had with the brilliant CBC journalist and tech visionary Nora Young last June. We each spoke at the Fireworks Factory conference on Galiano Island (we’ve been on the same agenda once before, and I took maximum rhetorical advantage of it).
Afterward, I happened to notice a bracelet she was wearing. Naturally, as a Spark listener, I asked her what it did beyond, you know, braceletting. She maintained its mandate was limited to looking lovely (achievement unlocked!) and I took her at her word.
Part of me still suspects that while she was saying that, telemetry from the bracelet was being relayed to a HUD projected on the inside of her cornea, giving her a readout of my pulse, respiration and radio listening habits.
(By the way, the character in the cartoon was originally based loosely on Nora, but early on my portraiture skills took a stroll somewhere. Do not attempt to pick her out of a crowd based on this cartoon. You will fail.)
One more thing: Nora Young’s book The Virtual Self: How Our Digital Lives Are Altering the World Around Us is terrific. Do check it out. And tune in to Spark!
When I say I’d be thrilled if my kids grew up with some degree of hacker ethic, I don’t mean I want them breaking into credit card files, downloading password lists or making every traffic light in Tacoma flash “POOPYPANTS” in Morse code.
I want them to see the instruction manual as a starting point, as training wheels, as the prosaic preface to the poetry of “Now what else can we do with this?”
I want them to see a gleaming new gadget (or a bashed-up older one), and look for the retaining screws… and a matching screwdriver.
I want them to see two utterly disparate machines, systems or ideas, and start dreaming up ways they could mesh.
I want them to be able to quell the inner voice that says “That’ll never work,” and seek a path around, over, under or through.
And one of the things that makes me happiest is that I see that in them already, every day. Not just with technology, but with words, ideas, relationships, images and much more.
Which probably isn’t a great surprise, if you’ve met their mother.
(I reeeealllly want to pitch this to Roland Emmerich.)
I get the appeal of the App Store worldview. I really do. For users, it’s knowing that every piece of software on your device has been vetted – and having a simple, trusted way to manage it.
And Apple’s App Store is a thing of grace and beauty, as you’d expect from Apple. It’s a pleasure to use.
But it’s a gilded cage. Apple isn’t just deciding what’s safe for your device. They’re deciding what will and won’t be to their business advantage. They’re deciding which areas of functionality they’re willing to open up to competition, and which they want to keep as a monopoly. They’re deciding what’s easy to support, and what could cost their call centers and Genius Bars more time (and therefore money).
They’re deciding what maximizes their business partners’ ability to profit by controlling your access to their content, and what gives you too much freedom to copy, remix, edit and share.
And they’re deciding what range of choice is safe to offer you: not just to protect your security, but also to protect your user experience. And if the user experience they think is best doesn’t work that well for you… well, tough; they can’t design for every edge case.
App stores like Apple’s aren’t just about you knowing you can trust your device. It’s about Apple knowing they can trust you to make the choices that support their business model. When adults tell kids “you get what you get, and you don’t get upset,” it isn’t just a way of forestalling a tantrum; it’s preparing them for the next era in digital living.
All of this happens without any real accountability. The appeal process (and this applies to most walled gardens, whether it’s Apple’s App Store or Facebook’s… anything) makes the Star Chamber look like an unconference.
Of course, nobody’s stopping me from installing whatever I want on my Mac laptop. There’s an App Store, but I can download and install software from anywhere… or code it myself. (The latter doesn’t offer much functionality beyond launching a “Hello, world!” alert box… but that limitation comes from my lack of programming knowledge, not the platform’s restrictions.)
For now.
But it’s not hard to think of pretty likely scenarios where that could change. A botnet attack that does serious economic or physical damage would have a lot of politicians calling for safeguards to protect the Internet by imposing restrictions on software and hardware capabilities.
That might sound farfetched, except governments have been willing to criminalize a lot in the name of protecting the commercial interests of the media industry from online sharing. Vendors like Sony have already tried to sneak in certain restrictions through trojan horse techniques.
Cory Doctorow makes a persuasive business case and an absolutely compelling human rights case for the critical importance of user overrides. And that strikes me as a best-of-both-worlds approach: an App Store for security and reliability, but the option to leave the sandox for the swings or the slide… or, hey! leave the playground altogether and head over to play with the penguins at the zoo!
This is what popped into my head the first time I heard about “the quantified self”. How hard can it be? I figured:
But once disabused of that notion, I realized the idea has a powerful appeal for me. I love chasing digital metrics as it is — pageviews, Twitter followers, Facebook Likes — and illustrating a book about measurement has only made that appetite grow.
So the prospect of applying the same principles to my own health that I’ve used to increase my Klout score is overwhelmingly tempting, and it’s only a matter of days before I get a Flex or an Up or a Basis or just have a netbook hot-glued onto my back which, judging by some of the prices at NCIX these days, may be the most economical option. (Plus, that’s a one-kilo weight I’ll use all day long to strengthen my lumbar muscles. Win!)
A quick public service annountment: the Electronic Frontier Foundation does great work on this and many other issues. Learn more about the implications of NSA surveillance, and then take action to protect your privacy.
“Why are people so up in arms about government surveillance, when they already share all this stuff on Facebook anyway?”
That’s what someone asked me a few days ago. I argued that what people get to choose what they share on social channels (at least in principle), which got an eloquently unconvinced silence in reply.
Which is strange, because I don’t think anyone would have suggested a few decades ago that because you write letters to the editor or call phone-in shows, you should never have any privacy ever again.
Maybe it reflects an appetite out there for retribution against the Twitter generation for burdening the rest of us with their status updates about lunch. “You wanna live-tweet tonight’s episode of The Mindy Project? Ha! Surprise! Now the government knows about your walnut-shell fetish.”
Or maybe it’s that people aren’t really thinking through what a tiny proportion of our lives is still getting tweeted, pinned, blogged, uploaded and shared. I’m not posting “@robcottingham: Still asleep. Posted at 3:03 am. @robcottingham: Still asleep. Posted at 3:04 am. @robcottingham: Half-awake. Bladder full. Get up, or try to press on until 7? Posted at 3:03 am.” (That may be because I haven’t yet acquired a Fitbit Flex, and connected it to IFTTT… so stay tuned.)
Then again, a lot of our activity is getting shared with others. Just not with our friends and contacts. It gets shared with data warehouses, advertising vendors, telecom providers, search engines, and the rest of that long list of businesses that have found a way to mine profit out of the information we often don’t really know we’re handing to them.
Hey, big thanks to the crowd at the Noise to Signal Facebook Page, who helped me choose a caption for this cartoon! You can see the runners-up here.
Hey, Noise to Signallers… I have a favour to ask.
My wife, partner and unindicted co-conspirator Alexandra Samuel has just released a new e-book today, Work Smarter with LinkedIn, published by Harvard Business Review Press. (It’s the latest in her Work Smarter with Social Media series.) It’s a short guide, packed with practical advice on using LinkedIn to be more effective on the job and out in the world.
If you wanted to buy a copy, that would be fantastic. But even if you don’t have the four dollars (or less!) the book costs, would you be able to take a few seconds to help spread the word about it right now?
Those links all point to Amazon, but the book’s also available on iBooks, Kobo and the HBR site itself (where you can get PDF, mobi and ePub versions).
Oh… and here’s a lightly-(cough)-branded version of the cartoon you can share on your Pinterest or Pinstagram or whatever it is the kids are using nowadays.
Many, many thanks, people.
This cartoon is drawn in honour of David Eaves, who just celebrated his birthday (a day after mine!) and who is one of the most articulate, effective advocates out there for open data.
Reading Dave’s stuff will leave you alternately inspired by the possibilities of open data and APIs; boggled at the intransigence, turf-guarding and possibly outright greed standing in its way; and challenged by questions about where this all takes us.
So go read his blog, follow him on Twitter, and urge your government representatives to make the kind of changes that will mean open data activists can spend more time imagining great uses of information (and preventing less-great ones), and less time suspended from cables.
Fun fact: Prism’s “Armageddon” tour is the first rock concert I ever saw. ‘Twas up at Camp Fortune; The Pumps opened for them.
How many more victims, PowerPoint? How many more?!
This week, my daughter turned in a piece of homework that would have been denounced as witchcraft in my day. (“What deviltry is this?! These images doth move, and verily, text appeareth on them in a gradual manner, and then doth disappear gradually in turn!”) But behind the technological razzle-dazzle, it was marvellously creative and, yes, made me proud.
Previously on Noise to Signal: Mayor Subramaniam emerges gingerly from the LeapAhead room, thinking at first his vision is clouded by a residual layer of hibernation gel. But no: it’s the thin, acrid smoke that permeates the air of New Cantilever, five centuries into the future. Back in the present, Candace is barely keeping Devon from activating the Norton decontamination protocol, and with Adriana’s presence looming, a bunk on the Misanthrope is starting to look awfully appealing to both of them. But Misha’s new handler has other ideas, some of them involving Akinyele – and when the Mayor’s mobile phone rings at an especially awkward time, it gives the phrase “blast from the past” a whole new meaning.
The Nonprofit Technology Conference had everything you could want: WiFi that worked! Great sessions! Handsome sleep-deprived gentlemen roving the halls and sketchnoting those sessions!
But they also had a puppy to skritch, cuddle and fawn over during the breaks! That was in return for a small donation to an animal charity – a lovely approach to fundraising, and a great way to relax a little before learning more about crowdsourced story-centered fundraising in the cloud. (No… wait… that was last year’s session…)
If I had to draw this again, that python’s head would be at a slightly different angle.
It was a lovely conference, even from afar (thanks, Maddie Grant and team, for a great online stream!).
A major storm slammed the Midwest, including my wife’s flight home – which was supposed to arrive around dinner, giving us a few hours together before my red-eye to Toronto and then Minneapolis. Then Alex’s flight home was delayed…and delayed… annnnnnd… cancelled. She got herself on another flight.
Meanwhile, I learned at 8:30 pm that my flight the next morning from Toronto to Minneapolis was also scrubbed. Unable to get through to Air Canada by phone (“Owing to greater than normal call volumes,” normally the bullshit line to end all bullshit lines, was probably true that night), I headed to the airport on spec. Thankfully, the Air Canada ticket agent cheerfully found me another flight – later in the afternoon, but it meant that I finally made it to the Nonprofit Technology Conference, bleary-eyed (I had plenty of company on that score) but intact.
Ticket agents, by the way, put up with a lot of crap for circumstances completely beyond their control. Be nice to them.
Here are my sketchnotes from the 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference. The sessions I drew include panels on:
And then there were the keynotes:
It’s my favourite conference of the year… even if (see next cartoon) I spent an awful lot of this year’s edition in airports, waiting for the weather to clear.
Pace Scott Stratten, sometimes the QR code saves the kitten from a potentially dangerous respiratory illness.
—
Previously on Noise to Signal:
There is no exact word for this kind of silence, defined less by any notion of “quiet” and more by a handful of conspicuously absent sounds. No ratcheting click of the sweeping sensor antennae on a Qaos Quartet hunter-killer droid. No distant rumble, minutes long, signalling the arrival of another Observatory atop another doomed city. No shambling syncopated steps to tell me that Candace – even Candace – proved as susceptible to the Night Heron’s heterogeneity field as the Night Heron himself. No cries of hope choked off with that tell-tale hum and final gasp, no rattle and clank of battle armour as futile as tissue paper, no inhuman chuckle from the skies.
The word I should use for this silence, I suppose, is “victory.” But tonight, surrounded by crates upon crates of Blue Epsilon that just three hours ago would have commanded a price exceeding the worth of entire nations – crates that would now be worth more empty – “victory” is the furthest thought from my mind.
— from Mayor Subramaniam’s Memories of the Oncoming
Few people felt the loss of Google Reader as keenly as Alexandra Samuel (and I say that as someone who has fantasized publicly about a code extraction team liberating Reader from the Googleplex before they can deliver the coup de grace.)
My wife and partner relies heavily on Reader as part of her workflow, so when Google announced that Reader is going the way of the dodo, the passenger pigeon and Wave, her anger and grief spilled freely – and eloquently – into her Twitter stream.
I’m not sure if Google’s leadership has any appetite at all for revisiting that decision – it’s not the sort of thing they’ve backed down from in the past. But I hope they’ll consider the fact that Reader can still inspire this kind of loyalty.
Meanwhile, these tweets inspired me to draw this. And while I drew it for her, it’s for everyone who feels this way.
(#GoogleReader OR (#Google AND #Reader)) AND (“shut down” OR closed OR cancelled) AND (sucks OR stinks OR stupid).
— AlexandraSamuel.com (@awsamuel) March 14, 2013
I’ve got that feeling when you wake up sad and remember, oh yeah, it’s cause I just got dumped. In this case, by #GoogleReader. — AlexandraSamuel.com (@awsamuel) March 14, 2013
I’m so mad about the end of #GoogleReader, I’m going to stop googling things and go back to AltaVista. #LookItUpKids — AlexandraSamuel.com (@awsamuel) March 14, 2013
One of our #socialmedia assistants just asked “Why are they closing #GoogleReader?” Reminds me of @lilsweetie asking “Why do people die?”
— AlexandraSamuel.com (@awsamuel) March 15, 2013
A cartoon for everyone who’s fighting the good fight against feature bloat and scope creep.
Previously on Noise to Signal: Candace’s last-minute change of heart has repercussions well beyond the blast radius, and triggers a free-for-all among the Qaos Quartet. Vasily sees an opening – but the Night Heron moves just as quickly to close it. Has the Crossroads Directorate really anticipated this all along, or is Adriana just a better improvisor than anyone suspected? Either way, it forces Ivana’s hand – the one holding the vial of Blue Epsilon. Akinyele has no choice but to activate the last five sleeper agents… and is as surprised as anyone when the voice at the other end of the comm link is Mayor Subramaniam’s.
Thanks to a Twitter feature update, you can now include line breaks in your tweets. Judging by some of the reaction out there, t may mean a monetization opportunity – “Read your Twitter stream: Free. Read your Twitter stream minus line breaks and animated GIFs: $50/month.”
I for one like ’em. (And animated GIFs, actually.) Sure, we’re likely to see a lot of annoying uses. And let me be the first to predict that the phrase “Best. (Insert noun). EVER.” will soon become
Best.
(Insert noun).
EVER.
But in a medium that gives us the Emoji character set, I don’t see this as the straw that line-breaks the camel’s back.
Many happy carriage returns, people.
* * *
Previously on Noise to Signal: In a very special episode, Mayor Subramaniam finally asks Candace the question we’ve all been waiting for – but is it really Candace? Or has the long-predicted Multiplicity Convergence finally struck? That nagging doubt propels Adriana to strike prematurely against an old foe, winning her a new but unwelcome friend. As the Shadow Nations finally take notice, the dive team approaches the Misanthrope‘s wreckage in a desperate race against the Qaos Quartet. Time is the real rival, though, and nobody is expecting the answer Candace ultimately delivers… or the warhead it’s scotch-taped to.
Instead of the sobbing rant that I feel like writing about Google Reader’s impending demise, I’ll leave it at this: it’s the one service I use absolutely every day. More than Facebook, more than Twitter. A key part of how I engage with the open web has just given notice, and I’m not sure yet how I’ll replace it – especially with something I can use across apps and platforms.
On the upside, I finally have a cartoon that looks like it might be part of the Previously on capsule summaries. (Please note the sidearm pictured fires Chuck-style tranq darts. If that.) My hope is that these two are actually Googlers themselves… and that turns out to be an officially sanctioned mission. It wouldn’t be the first time.
* * *
Previously on Noise to Signal: The abrupt collapse of the Vector Proximity has enemies and friends alike scrambling. Misha’s shaky alliance with his former Chrysanthemum Project teammates suddenly looks like the one stable link in the chain. So why is Vasily so pleased to see Akinyele get his hands on the third piece of the cipher key? Is it because he finally noticed Mayor Subramaniam’s uncanny resemblance to Candace’s half-clone son… or because he hasn’t yet?
Previously on Noise to Signal: The source of that thumping inside the casket becomes clear – and it ain’t Mayor Subramaniam’s pet chinchilla, which commandeers the International Space Station on a heroic but doomed effort to thwart the Oncoming. At the last minute, the Anvil betrays Ivana for what he believes is the last remaining dose of the Blue Epsilon antiviral agent… but is in fact Vasily’s spirit consciousness downloaded to nanobot form. Candace, seeing clearly at last, makes a desperate move for dispensation from the Crossroads Directorate to activate her H.A.V.O.C. protocol. The Directorate agrees, but at a price that could be fatal to the one she loves the most – and to Indira’s shock, it isn’t her.
Apple takes its role as walled gardener pretty seriously. They want you to see your iDevices as safe places that would never do you harm (well, other than taking you to the In-App Purchase Cleaners with children’s games… but that’s a rant for another time).
But they’re a cop without a judicial or legislative system. There are some guidelines — but they’re often vague and inconsistently applied. There’s a sort of court of appeal — but not the kind that holds public hearings or issues helpful explanations of their rulings. And some rules seem to be aimed more at protecting themselves from controversy (or perhaps market reprisals from miffed government officials) than protecting users from malware.
I feel for the iOS developers out there who want to try something genuinely innovative in an area that hasn’t been mined to death already. There’s that very real risk that they’ll invest time and imagination into a ground-breaking app, only to have a reviewer at Apple come up with a reason to block it… or at least take long enough to approve it that the project falters.
Not that it happens all the time, or even most of the time. But enough that I worry it chills innovation, and tempts adventurous developers to play it a little safer, and stick to the stuff Apple’s known to approve.
This one’s in honour of the news that Shel Holtz is going be teaching a graduate course on social media at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University. (FAQ: Q. “But the cartoon looks nothing like him.” A. “That’s because it’s not supposed to be him.” Q. “…Oh.”) If you have any kind of involvement in social media at the organizational level, you’ll want to check out For Immediate Release, the podcast he and Neville Hobson have been doing for more than eight years now. (What am I saying? You’re already listening to it, right?)
Meanwhile, in case you missed the last episode…
Previously on Noise to Signal: “Chorizo” McGee – now barely human as the serum takes its terrible toll – triggers the fiscal cascade. With the global banking system hanging in the balance, Ivana makes a fateful call and tells Candace everything (or so she thinks). The tables are soon turned, though, as the Brahms Task Force makes landfall and takes on the Night Heron’s extraction team, and when the dust settles, nobody’s sure exactly who has the iridium casing for the Cantilever Device. In the ensuing scramble, the portal opens at last, freeing both the Qaos Quartet and the secret Vasily has spilled so much blood to hide. For Mayor Subramaniam, it’s an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past, reconcile with Montenegro and – could it be at last? – reclaim that one great lost love. But that comes at the price of the third piece of the cipher key, and a broken oath with deadly consequences for everyone… even the reputedly immortal Children of Darkwood.
Find out more about GNU on their site or on Wikipedia. Find out more about gnus on Wikipedia or the IUCN Red List. Get the latest gnus about gnus here.
(To the best of my knowledge, GNU Appreciation Day is a figment of my imagination, and not an officially sanctioned event. There will be no sack races in Farmer Stallman’s field, and ribbons will not be given out for the Biggest Code Commit Grown From Seed. Not this year, anyway.)
By the way, in the spirit of things, that image isn’t governed by the Creative Commons non-commercial license. Apart from GNU’s usage requirements, use it however you’d like.
I like to picture the two trolls as Thurston Howell III and Lovey. “Oh, darling, we must join the mob.” “But what does one wear to a pile-on? And where is my solid silver pitchfork and torch-holder?”
And in case you missed the last episode…
Previously on N2S: With the laboratory in ruins and the virus now live, Morgan had to make a heart-wrenching decision… leaving control of the Bureau of Nine in the hands of the one woman Vasily truly fears, Candace. But when Natasha springs Darius from the Sanctum, nobody — least of all the Arundel Contingent — understands how this plays into Adriana’s master plan. Scuttling the Misanthrope turns out to have been a mistake, though, when Akinyele discovers not only the Yellow Team’s diary but the second piece of the cipher key. Forced to move up his plans, Min-jun activates the orbital android bases — prematurely, it turns out. That leaves only Mayor Subramaniam standing between Earth… and total annihilation.
Happy New Year, amigas and amigos!
It’s been a few weeks, but Noise to Signal has returned from mid-season hiatus. If you’re just joining us, here’s what you missed from last episode’s exciting cliff-hanger:
Dietrich revealed to Melanie that he, not Colin, stole the launch codes from The Dervish’s courier. The Cloaked Figure (or was it?!) overheard their conversation and repeated it to Central – where double agent Candace quietly shredded his report (or did she?!) so the extraction team would go in unaware of their true mission. That triggered Erin’s long-dreaded transformation, and as Mayor Subramaniam pondered a city-wide evacuation, the Violet and Yellow Teams suddenly changed course… and Codename Spanakopita’s final plan became apparent to all. Except he had one more trick up each of his three sleeves.
We pack a lot into one panel.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been posting cartoons I drew for Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, by Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine. I blogged about the book a while ago on Social Signal, explaining why I love it.
This is the final cartoon in the series. So go buy a copy right now so Katie and Beth will have to write another book! And then make effective measurement one of your new year’s resolutions.
>>> *** <<<
Chapter 14 is the conclusion, and it’s both the most inspiring and the scariest part of the book. Inspiring, because it’s about your organization’s fundamental goals. And scary, because it’s about whether you’re achieving them – or, in the inspired words of a New Yorker cartoon, whether it’s “just so much pointing and clicking.”
Maybe that’s ultimately why so many of us still resist measurement. The warm, furry comfort of thinking we might be making progress is a lot more alluring than the threat of cold, clammy certainty that we’ve been spinning our wheels. Not that we’d make that calculation consciously; it just makes us that much more willing to postpone thinking about something as big and daunting as a measurement strategy.
Which is why Beth and Katie’s book is important. Really important.
It’s important because it breaks the enormous idea of a measurement strategy into far more manageable pieces, each with its own practical steps and potential wins. And for managers and leaders who can never seem to set aside a huge chunk of time and attention, that means a chance to at least take the first step, and then the second… until you’ve made enough progress to make a more ambitious commitment to measurement possible. (Crawl, walk, run, fly, as Beth says.)
And it’s important because while we do need a little fear to push us — when the monster in the closet is real, pretending it’s imaginary doesn’t work — we also need the pull of inspiration. In case after case, Katie and Beth show us how using measurement in an intelligent, thoughtful way can mean we have more impact, in terms of genuine meaningful change.
We can identify the tactics that aren’t working and redirect their resources to tactics than do; we can take strategies built on wishful thinking and ground them in certainty. And whether we measure the resulting progress in lives saved, jobs created, houses built, animals rescued, crimes prevented, wells dug, gardens tilled, hectares set aside for conservation, families lifted out of poverty or children united with new parents, we can know – know – that we are changing the world.
Have a fantastic, inspiring and measurable 2013.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been posting cartoons I drew for Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, by Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine. I blogged about the book a while ago on Social Signal, explaining why I love it.
There’s only one more cartoon left to post! Quick, go buy a copy right now so Katie and Beth will have to write another book!
Over the next several days, I’m posting cartoons I drew for Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, by Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine. I blogged about the book a while ago on Social Signal, explaining why I love it and why I think you should go buy a copy right now.
Over the next several days, I’m posting cartoons I drew for Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, by Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine. I blogged about the book a while ago on Social Signal, explaining why I love it and why I think you should go buy a copy right now.
↑ N | W———•———E | S
Chapter 11 is called “Understanding, Visualizing and Improving Networks,” is your introduction to the world of network analysis. That’s a dry-sounding term for a truly juicy topic: mapping and understanding your organization’s network of support and attention.
Why juicy? Because mapping your network takes an abstract concept and makes it visual – and once it’s visual, you can draw sudden, unexpected, profound insights.
For example, thanks to that map of Middle Earth on the opening pages of my copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I knew long before any of the other characters that one really doesn’t simply walk into Mordor. (Also, that a horse-drawn wagon had jacknifed on the Old Forest Road and that drivers should take alternate routes to Mirkwood.)
Possibly more relevant is your ability to see who the hubs and influencers in your network are, and who’s on the periphery – where growth can take off. You can find gaps, identify weak and strong ties, and start measuring the value of your network. You can use something as sophisticated as an Excel plug-in, or as low-tech and analog as sticky notes.
Best of all, you can have a perfectly rational reason to create one of those Carrie-Mathison-style walls-of-clues-and-connections of your own. (Disclaimer: this is insufficient justification for doing this on behalf on your organization. But what you do on your own time is your own business.)
Over the next several days, I’m posting cartoons I drew for Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, by Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine. I blogged about the book a while ago on Social Signal, explaining why I love it and why I think you should go buy a copy right now.
<3 <3 <3
Chapter 10 takes you into advanced measurement, starting with how you measure relationships. Relationships are at the heart of social media; they’re the nucleus around which all else revolves. You can’t make the piñata of change without the papier maché of relationships – and yes, that metaphor is available for re-use under a Creative Commons license. You’re welcome.
But how do you measure relationships, and the value they offer? The book points to the surprisingly straightforward approach pioneered by professors James and Larissa Grunig, and how organizations can apply it to their own relationships. And as for value…
“Make a friend before you need one,” my communications mentor Dennis McGann used to tell me, and two anecdotes from the book bear his wisdom out: one, the online conversation that ensued after the accidental death of a SeaWorld trainer, and two, the way the American Red Cross was able to turn a Twitter misfire into a fundraising opportunity.
The latter incident saw a staffer tweet about getting drunk on Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer. Normally, that would be fine, except the employee used the official Red Cross account, which usually uses hashtags like #hurricane or #relief, and not – let me just check the spelling – #gettngslizzerd.
The organization responded swiftly, deleting the tweet but also explaining it wittily. Dogfish Head, meanwhile, encouraged its followers to donate to the Red Cross. They raised nearly $10,000, briefly crashing the Red Cross server and helping #gettngslizzerd to trend on Twitter.
The lesson is clear: when life gives you lemons, make beer.
Over the next several days, I’m posting cartoons I drew for Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, by Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine. I blogged about the book a while ago on Social Signal, explaining why I love it and why I think you should go buy a copy right now.
/\/\ __/ =ºi º= / ww--ww
In Chapter 9, “Measurement and the Aha! Moment: Using Your Data to Tell Stories, Make Decisions and Change the World”, the rubber really hits the road. And because we’re changing the world, both the rubber and the road are made from reclaimed and recycled materials; the vehicle is electrically driven and charged from a wind-turbine-powered grid; and it’s actually not on the road at all because we’re taking modern commuter rail instead.
This is where you dive into the data and find actionable insights.
Side effects of reading this chapter include dramatic improvements in organizational effectiveness, and a compulsion to construct bar graphs out of Cheerios at the breakfast table – kind of like Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, only with data visualizations rather than perfectly-scaled replicas of Devil’s Tower.
And as with Roy Neary, your loved ones will still think you’re nuts, and your living room will end up filled with mud and the neighbours’ shrubs. (Actually, the mud may just be because I’ve misconfigured Google Analytics.)
In fact, one of the more exciting things you can find is a Devil’s Tower-shaped plateau in your metrics: not just a short-lived spike, but a significant, sustained increase in some measurable variable that matters to you. One such Devil’s Tower led Beth to start regularly posting Fun Geeky Friday Shares on her Facebook Page.
Also in this chapter, Katie makes a pretty compelling case that measurement is hawt.
Over the next several days, I’m posting cartoons I drew for Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, by Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine. I blogged about the book a while ago on Social Signal, explaining why I love it and why I think you should go buy a copy right now.
___ ___ < • > < • >
Chapter 8, “Measurement Tools: How to Choose and Use the Right Tool for the Job,” will break your heart in two short sentences:
Many nonprofits think that fancy analytics or monitoring software will provide them with actionable information with just a click or two. This is seldom the case.
Dang. (By which I mean something less family-friendly.)
Fortunately, the work involved in turning data into insight can be actual fun. Katie and Beth walk you through choosing the tools to use (web analytics? a survey? content analysis?) depending on your goals and strategy, with an overview for each one. The section on surveys alone may be brief, but it’s worth the price of the book for anyone who’s been fumbling uncertainly with SurveyMonkey and wondering why they get such poor results.
Meanwhile, allow me to deploy a tool of my own to better understand my readers. By completing this survey, you’ll be entered to win a… um… uh… another cartoon tomorrow.
