[CC licensed image by draggin] 

Despite suffering from a lack of focus (or an essential pointlessness… take your pick), false analogies, and that old-man odor and monochromatic hue that comes with too much time inside the “Golden Age” fallacy, David Alpaugh’s article “The New Math of Poetry” is worth a few quick minutes of any poetry reader’s or writer’s time. Or, for that matter, any writer…

For the poetry reader, Alpaugh’s article represents a common paradox: he at once bemoans the lack of gatekeepers that we had in the good old days while bewailing the efforts of those very kind of gatekeepers in the modern, leaden era. It seems to me that Alpaugh’s thesis of a sea of mediocrity is belied by a bit of simple browsing. It’s not hard to find good writing… and not that much harder to find great writing.

Sure, it’s easy at the library—or even the stacks of your nearest chain bookstore—to find great writing from the past, because the effects of time and limits on shelf space have contributed to a winnowing that has resulted in the small set we see on the shelves. If Alpaugh thinks the filtering through publishing was effective X number of years ago, he ought to visit a library or collection that truly reflects what was published and shared in that time… I’ll bet dollars to donuts that he’ll find then, as now, that Sturgeon’s Law was true and reflected clearly in what was published.

For the poetry writer—actually for one who wants to publish, since the two activities aren’t absolutely intertwined—it’s a common (but I think easily solved) dilemma. We can mourn the passing of artificially, extremely limited channels of publication… or we can undertake to participate in a new model based on a culture of abundance. The latter demands that we first question what the point of publishing is: to reach readers or for some kind of cachet, whether cultural or academic? Do you want readers, or do you want entries on your vitae? Do you want to write or simply be known as a writer?

If the answer is to reach readers, then (the first steps of) the solution are obvious: stop trying to publish within the new mechanism as if one is inside the old. Stop “publishing” with the idea in mind of one-off, static publications that appear slowly and disappear quickly. Think instead of participating in your publication, allowing for (and responding to) comments, creating anthologies and remixes, and publishing and promoting the work of others alongside your own. If you publish in traditional outlets, ask for the right to publish to the web using a Creative Commons license—simultaneously or later. Create a presence through social networks and social media to get the word out about your work and, more importantly, to facilitate (mostly incidental) promotion of your work by others. It’s not rocket science, it’s diligence.

There’s no question that there’s a lot of bad writing out there. The proportion of bad writing to good writing is arguably the same; the sheer volume is inarguably greater. But Alpaugh doesn’t seem to recognize that filtering systems have also evolved. When I say that it’s easy to find good poetry with a bit of browsing, I’m not referring to searching Google for the word poetry. I’m talking about being a participant in the vibrant and constantly growing poetry “infosphere,” which sets into motion mechanisms of reputation and referral not unlike what is still the most reliable way to discover great poetry: word of mouth. I can find good poetry any time by seeing what poems are being touted and Twittered and what publications are being fondled and Facebooked. A web feed reader allows me to quickly identify the work that is being loved and linked within a vast network of blogs of all kinds (those of writers, those of readers, those of collectors) by people interested in poetry from the ancient to the avant garde. The key in this new world is participation, not continuing a tradition of passivity.

[CC Licensed image by everythingnewisdangerous] 

As my disillusionment with the profession of education (and technology in education) deepens, my interest in very particular, sometimes tangentially related topics, is growing quickly. One of the topics bubbling to the top is the way our language is changing through our engagement with technology.

I think both of the most obvious “sides” in this discussion are correct. Language changes for many reasons, including the insinuation of communication technologies and their features, and that evolution isn’t coherently characterized as a net “loss” except through some particular personalized view. But that’s the rub… language is one of those cultural resources that is both shared and intensely personal at the same time. So the loss is incurred by these changes can be, at a personal level, very real for any one of us as individuals, as well as for any group that is defined with enough clarity to identify shared language characteristics.

Naturally, writers of various kinds make up many of the groups that feel the effects of evolutionary change most keenly and, by nature of their (pre)occupations, perhaps have an outsized voice when it comes to writing (and griping) about them. So Clive Thompson’s recent review of three books that—in whole or in part—speak to the area of technology and language was a pleasant surprise, providing a balanced view of the topic and three books I now need to read.

It may come as a shock to anyone who reads my writing here, but when it comes to “creative writing” I generally prefer brevity to expansiveness. I prefer poems that are under a page, right down to Haiku, as broken as the traditional American view of them is, and American Sentences. I love prose poetry and flash fiction. The speed with which technology lets us communicate (making it easier to and less time-consuming to communicate multiply rather than collectively) combined with technologically based limiting factors (from the UIs in composition spaces to literal limitations and their derivations as seen in SMS text messaging and Twitter) has facilitated a compression of language that I find equal parts maddening and fascinating.

It helps that Thompson writes with a clear prose and is very clever… many will know him ideas like his analogy between Twitter as a part of our social sense analogous to our physical sense of proprioception. For example, in the review Thompson makes this point about Twitter:

“…Twitter is training millions in the compressive skill of newspaper-headline writing—ironically enough, at precisely the moment when actual newspaper-headline writing seems at the point of vanishing. And consider the odd literary function of the link: a tool that lets you compose a status update that’s suggestive and intriguing but incomprehensible unless you follow the link itself, at which point the sentence’s meaning is revealed.”

There’s a lot to think about in this area… not just in terms of compression, brevity, and references/referents, but also how these can be (and are being) considered collectively– whether deliberately or haphazardly, and whether as part of authorial intention or audience invention.

… we’ll always have informal learning networks…

[CC licensed image by KraetzschePhotography] 

Brad Ovenell-Carter (aka @Braddo) was kind enough to bring his 2010 Prediction for K-12 Education to my attention. While they’re labeled "K-12" they are also relevant, in different ways, to higher education, and each stimulated some thinking on my part.

Prediction #1: "School administrators will enter the conversation."

This is precisely apt for higher education: administrators are having a conversation… but it’s not the conversation they need to be involved in. The current conversation administrators are taking part in is instead happening mostly in parallel with that of the practitioners and innovators within the space(s) they administer. Of course I worry about the effect administrative realities have on innovative activities– Christensen’s work on disruptive innovation is frighteningly relevant– but at some point what is learned and practiced on the edge needs to make its way into the fabric of the institution. Or maybe it doesn’t have to, but I’d like it to since I plan to remain working within one of those institutions.

Bringing ReadWriteWeb.com’s Top 5 Web Trends: 2009 into play (Structured Data, Real-Time Web, Personalization, Mobile Web / Augmented Reality, Internet of Things) as part of this prediction interests me. How many educators would list ReadWriteWeb’s five as the most important web trends of 2009 w/r/t their work? If we’re talking about a top 5 in terms of importance to education, then I propose:

• real-time web – setting aside subtleties and arguments about these roles, this is more important for educators and their professional communities than their students’ educational world(s)

• "cloud computing" – I use the term haphazardly to include both educational institutions increasing move toward enterprise-level cloud computing services as well as the march of end-user applications and activities from specific desktop to Internet applications such as Google Office

• distributed, synchronous conferences – perhaps organizers for events in other areas can afford to attempt to corner their audience into over-priced and under-valued face-to-face offerings, but education isn’t one of them

• personalization – this will be important, but mostly in its effects on privacy and identity…it will be two or three years before we seem integration of scattered, siloed information to a point that the grander ideas of personalized learning is possible (if it happens at all)

• tablets, netbooks and iPhones (oh my) – most of the activity in this area will continue to focus on simplistic content provision and access to "materials," but I suspect the Apple tablet will result in a tectonic shift in the fundamental landscape just as the iPod and iPhone have. Netbooks will be the next Trapper Keeper.

If I’m not limited to explicit technologies, then I add:

• open education/openness – this is fundamental to the visions of many innovative educators, sometimes without those same educators knowing it. The traditional models of content-centric OER creation and provision will continue to die-off and become less relevant. But there’s significant danger here if we aren’t successful in refocusing and reshaping the energy of open teaching and learning as a fundamental way of working.

• new literacies and information fluency – yes, there’s more information and means of expression, but digital literacy just doesn’t cut it. I may be early on predicting serious, practical movement in this area, but it will be a top-flight concern nonetheless.

• intellectual property and copyright – alternative licensing will continue to grow in importance, but media convergence and mobile growth is going to act as a serious counterbalance. I expect significant legislation and wrangling in this area… and net neutrality!

Prediction #2: "Everyone will wake up to the idea that students are not digital natives."

I’ll quibble with the absolute nature of this prediction. I’ve shifted a bit on my position regarding use of the phrase "digital natives" but not at all on the reality that the label (as typically used) refers to characteristics accurately representing an important– if small– set of learners that I encounter in every class I teach.

Who are myriad prognosticators thinking about when they roll out their predictions about personalized, individual education, if not those who are outside the fat belly of the bell curve? “Digital natives" are, to me, similar to what other gifted groups are: a small set of students with outstanding skills and experience that are not being served by middle-of-the-road educational experiences.

We can dispense with the phrase, but those students exist, just as do many other "outliers" in any community of learners, and I, for one, am really tired of the immense leveling effect that comes as a byproduct of terminology crusades.

Prediction #3: "We’ll put philosophy back on the table."

I sure hope so! The "participation and presentation" circle of my information fluency Venn diagram is predicated on the idea that we are recognizing and teaching the practical ethics and evolving morality and mores of the webby, netty world.

With no experience in K-12 education beyond experiences with my own children, I can’t speak to the needs there, but in higher education this means taking into account creeping relativism (and I am, by most standards, a relativist– or more specifically an ironist) and at least being aware of the constant conflation of ideology and philosophy.

The recent "openness debates" provides a stark illustration of the difficulty of 1) engaging the philosophical in an edtech world heavily biased towards traditionally pragmatic concerns, and 2) finding productive means of doing so.

[1/27/10 - edited for grammar]

[beware, barely baked thoughts below]

Umberto Eco’s book The Infinity of Lists (a great read, btw, basically being an extended essay on the idea of lists in art and literature accompanied by a fantastic collection of examples both written and visual) is based on a foundational theme reminds me of the swelling openness debates (see my last post for thoughts and links).

The “infinity” Eco is writing about is a function of the framing devices used for different kinds of art and, by extension, lists in art. One basic model is to create a work that doesn’t encourage us to look beyond the frame. Eco uses examples such as the larger universe of the story told by the engravings on Achilles’ shield in the Iliad or the landscape behind the Mona Lisa. Though there is a world that continues beyond the frame, it’s irrelevant to the work at hand and the artist has no interest in piquing our own interest in that world. The point of the work– and a key to enjoying and understanding it– comes from the finiteness, the staking of a particular set of claims in the face of potential infinitude.

The second model is one of infinity, or art that purposefully invokes, as Eco puts it, an “actual infinity made up of objects that can perhaps be numbered but that we cannot number.” Consider Homer’s list of ships and captains in the Iliad in which his list cannot be complete, by his own admission, but exists in part to allude to the practically infinite strength of the Greek army, or Kant’s apprehension of the sublime triggered by gazing upon the starry sky…

It would be fool’s work to argue that either of these basic modes of creation is inherently superior to the other. They are each different. They are each necessary. Much of the recent open debate– including my minor contribution– has focused on philosophy vs pragmatics. When the heat of the engagement passes, and if we separate some of the personalities from the claims, almost everyone recognizes the need for both, often within the same person.

So I wonder if Eco’s breakdown isn’t more apt for the situation faced by the philosophical and pragmatic open-nauts. Perhaps the argument is, in most cases, less about taking a philosophical or pragmatic approach than it is about whether the work we want to engage in is meant to operate– and be understood– largely within a particular frame of action (pragmatics) or is intended to invoke– and is thus misunderstood outside– the theoretical constructs of openness (the philosophical).

Eco uses an example:

In literature, when reading in Stendahl’s The Red and the Black that Julian Sorel’s first shot at Madame de Rênal in the church of Verrière misses, we could fantasize (as some have done) about where that first shot struck, but in reality the question is irrelevant: from the standpoint of Stendahl’s narrative strategy that detail is insignificant. Those who wonder about the first shot are wasting their time and are giving up on understanding and enjoying the novel.

There is philosophy (ideas) and pragmatics (narrative) in Stendahl’s work… as there is in any novel. Both naturally occur in the work of open education as well. But if you are– or see yourself– engaged in primarily the pragmatic work, in which the infinite outside is essentially irrelevant, then all the yammering about the philosophy is misdirection… not to mention potentially threatening in the way it diverts attention and energy from what matters. And if your intent is to engage in the open sphere in a way that invites– and depends upon– that infinite outside, then the pragmatic frame is unnecessarily limiting… if not threatening in that it can easily circumscribe the engagement, robbing it (in a very different way) of its power.

In this manner I find sympathy with– and truth in– both “sides” of the current debate. Jim Groom’s pioneering work with UMW Blogs is a powerful activity that puts a philosophy to work. Assailing it from the outside with appeals to making it a nexus of radical philosophy is to wonder at Stendahl’s unelaborated first-shot. George Siemens’ call to philosophical arms is, as I see it, one to create and work outside that frame, in the theoretical infinite, even though it’s an impossible task, just as Homer notes in the Iliad before his own engagement in just such allusive work:

I shall not call the host by name, not even had I ten tongues and ten mouths.

We need more da Vinci and more Stendahl in open education, not to mention the rare Homer and Joyce who can manage to work and manipulate both inside and outside the frame.

Reading through the original post by George Siemens (“Open isn’t so open anymore”), the long comment thread that has ensued, and the many fine follow-ups (see: David Wiley’s response and response to responses, Martin Weller, Brian Lamb, Pontydysgu, Always Cool Alan, Jim Groom’s response and a response to the response to his response, Graham Atwell, etc) and I’m left wondering what’s really going on here?

Is there more than just a little bit of mixing the message and the messenger? I like George. He’s a friendly (and dare I say open?) guy who has continually done hard, influential, thinking in areas important to everyone participating in these discussions. But I also recognize that George is, in a genial way, a provocateur and a self-promoter. George demands attention and isn’t afraid to be the contrarian. I find his manner of doing so mostly productive though—quite unlike some others (paging Gary Stager).

I find it hard to believe—interpreting George’s original post through my own selfish lens—that there’d be quite such an uproar if just about anyone else who’s been involved in the conversation had essentially made the same claims:

• We need more sharp, radical thinking about a concept that clearly (and I submit as evidence this discussion itself) isn’t simple or characterized by mutual understanding of terms that those who promote open education.
• Open teaching & learning, and openness as a posture, and etc etc etc are in danger of seeing what is most important to us co-opted and ultimately retarded by commercial entities for whom openness isn’t a way of acting, teaching or living, but a means for increasing profits.

The implicit binary conception of philosophy and pragmatism in some of the responses is questionable—even disturbing. I’ve come to accept the healthy position of being disinterested in one or the other—Alan Levine’s usual take for example—but that’s very different from maintaining that either philosophical investigation or pragmatic work are unnecessary. Aren’t many of the most influential agents in the area of open education people who consistently engage in both? Who has done more to advance both the philosophy and practical work of Open Education than people like David Wiley, Stephen Downes, Jim Groom, Brian Lamb, Scott Leslie, and so many others? Even if you are one who isn’t (or is less) interested in the abstracted aspects of the discussion– variously characterized as philosophical, ideological, or academic, depending on if one intends to support or disparage them—that work is important because its product filters through the network/ecosystem/rhizome, into your work in open education. One way or another, whether you like and want it to or not. There are many jobs, roles and activities I find uninteresting, distasteful, or frustrating while recognizing their importance to my life and livelihood… why the need here to pummel those who wish to engage in them? Why the need to stamp our feet and cry “just do it!” when, in fact, they are in most cases crying out to/at those who are already doing it?

The issue of co-option and institutionalization is complicated and confusing. If we were gambling with one-sided coins in a zero-sum game, I’d go with pragmatics and simply let the philosophy evolve as a byproduct (what a meager way to live!). But I agree with what I take to be George’s position here: if we don’t advance the thinking in our own field, then we unnecessarily leave our fate to the will of others. I’m not suggesting that institutions—be they Blackboard or Facebook or Universities—are spending time cornering the market on the philosophy and ideology of openness and thus we better get rolling before they use up all the paper and bits we need to do so ourselves. But ignoring those activities and hoping that pragmatism will rule the day, that openness will prevail solely through each admirable educator lighting their own little open candle and letting it shine, and that this is sufficient for a productive and lasting conception to emerge isn’t supported by the history of education nor the history of the culture in which it’s embedded (in the West anyway). Driven by profit and a desire for increased reach, institutions will fill up the empty spaces, influence the minds of the important mass of those who engage with the concepts casually and/or incidentally, and smother what could well be seen a decade from now as just one of dozens of other fads that will have passed their expiration dates and disappeared. I can think of no better way to help make that happen than to ignore either the theoretical investigation or the practical engagement. And I fail to see how more thinking about openness must somehow result in less being done as part of it. Why is a call for deeper exploration into a relatively young—and potentially revolutionary—kind of cultural engagement perceived as a slight against—or a theft from—those who prefer to prioritize praxis?

And make no mistake: there are no guarantees that open education and open teaching & learning will take significant root. It’s mindboggling to me that—assuming one has taken a cursory glance at the history of revolution and reform in education—there are people maintaining that the important work is done, that openness has “happened” or that it is on an inevitable path to becoming an intrinsic part of educational practice. Open education is a tiny niche activity and body of practice residing within an only slightly bigger group of enthusiastic educators. It’s barely a blip on the horizon outside our tiny communities, and where it is noticed that notice tends to come for the wrong reasons.

Even if academicization (oh baby) and institutionalization of “openness” involves a large group of people not really getting it the way we, the real open education people do, it’s better that they have a shallow understanding and misguided sense of purpose that stems from—or involves—our deepening conception of what open education and open culture means than leaving it to the forces of the marketplace. Most of the administrators in my own institution have little idea what open education is about… but the same could (and in many cases still can) be said about their understanding of social media and networks, to name just one important area of educational theory and practice. But the work that so many have done to both think through the theory of—and practice within—these complex areas has had a generally positive effect, allowing for a trust that even if they don’t delve deeply themselves, there’s something useful and worthwhile there that goes beyond the profit-motives of the companies that are (or claim to be) engaged in the same area. The result? I (and my colleagues) are in more cases able to move forward in our practical, everyday work and in more positive ways.

[CC licensed image by Greg Gladman]

Danah Boyd’s story of her painful experience with a (projected) presentation backchannel have generated a lot of feedback. As you might expect, some of the commentary has been more thoughtful than others. Some has been rather overblown, falling into the "Bad! No, good! No, bad!" kind of exchange that gets us precisely nowhere (and is, in any case, not doing Danah’s thoughtful post any favors).

What I hope can come from this is some renewed attention to a perennial theme in the blogging, twittering and hallway conversations of those who attend or promote educational conferences: transforming the conference presentation model from narrating PowerPoint slide shows to… well, something else (see end note). There’s been a lot of talk about how horrible many presentations are and much table-pounding and bellowing that something needs to be done, but where can we see any evidence of change? I don’t need all of my digits to number the "presentations" I’ve seen or attended that have subverted the standard model to a significant degree, coming from the likes of Nancy White (visual facilitation), Dave Cormier (you make the slides), Alan Levine (campfire storytelling), and Brian Lamb (DJ extravaganza).

This isn’t easy stuff. It’s a lot easier to talk about transformation than to engage in it. I’ve used backchannels– projected and not– as well as live wikis and chat rooms, visual facilitation, and U-Stream + Twitter combinations… and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. In the end I, like many, essentially conform to expectations and work to achieve a passable result in the limited time I’m willing to give to presentations where all that’s expected is something "acceptable."

But even if I could– and did– go completely crazy and figure out something new, creative, and engaging, do those putting on the events want the result? Will they provide for the "extra" needs some of these methods might require? Will my proposal even make it past the check box stage of the submission process when I can’t honestly choose presentation, panel or round table?

And how about the audience? It’s often been my experience that those in the audience are– like many students– uncomfortable when challenged by a "presentation" to engage and participate rather than sit back and passively receive (at best). Will they– most thinking at least as much of what they are going to do at the end of the day as they are the session they are about to attend– choose an offering that sounds out of their normal range of experience and is likely to personally challenge them over the one they can use to check their email while promising themselves they’ll download the slides later? And even if the audience members’ energy and desire isn’t in question, they are often in the room, or at the conference, because they expect an expert to fill them in on something they don’t already know– or address the nuances and complexity of something they do.

Of course Danah’s experience is confounded by other factors: most obviously the poorly thought-out physical setup, her celebrity, and the nature of the audience at a conference like Web2.0 Expo (the most savage– and funniest– backchannels I’ve ever seen have been at high-functioning geek conferences like O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference). That’s why I’m personally less interested in it as a specific example than I am that it has created a moment in which perhaps we can move past simplistic arguments about what is "good" or "bad" and into how we can move forward to something more interesting and powerful than we typically see at conferences now.

Given the alternative of death by PowerPoint, I’d often prefer a speaker simply pull up a chair and have a conversation with the group. Some of my best conference experiences have been as part of facilitating a conversation. But the richness that’s possible with readily available technology is tantalizing. No matter how well- or ill-considered the implementation, and whether it is made visible or not, the presence of a presentation backchannel indicates a desire to get away from the tired conference-standard. The backchannel should only be a beginning.

NOTE: I’m not discounting the standard conference presentation model entirely. Give me a powerful, highly informed speaker with some stage presence and set the expectation appropriately and I’ll be a happy audience member. But, as with acting or singing or any other kind of performance, not that many people are adept at the performance that is an engaging presentation. And surely no one really believes the routine conference presentation represents the best method for every need?

Reading Johanna Hanes’ paper “Google Wave: A Revolutionary CSCL-tool or Overestimated Hype” (PDF)—a nice combination of personal experience with Google Wave, light theoretical foundation, and a decent suite of links and resources—and ruminating on how I might position Google Wave for my students has reminded me yet again that I’m still not sure what to make of Wave.

As a client—a working app—Google Wave is a pretty sad affair. I can reasonably set aside some gives given that Wave is a very beta (alpha?) release, but I remain surprised Google would roll a service out even as widely as it has while in such a shabby state.

The real question is what Google Wave the client offers that might be useful in supporting my work and other activities. Now that I’ve taken part in a number of waves, some of my own creation and some not, I can give a current answer: not much. Perhaps my biggest functional problems will be resolved as the client evolves, such as:

• Performance! Wave is terribly slow and laggy—and it just gets worse as conversations reach any productive length.
• Simultaneous editing: good idea, poor implementation… engaging in simultaneous editing often leads to lost edits or completely lost entries.
• Inconsistent and painful UI—many functions are hidden in keyboard shortcuts and available no other way, others seem only available via mouse and in mysterious contexts. Mouse handling in the conversation space is often-nonsensical. Given how much information is being packed into one place, use of screen real-estate is poor.
• Conversations are awkward due to lack of good navigation and inability to “split” conversations. At least as far as I can tell.
• Practically speaking, conversations are subject to length limitations (due to performance, screen real-estate and lackluster navigation) almost as restrictive as those in email clients. Breaking into multiple waves helps, but adds to the clutter and disconnected feel of the semi-conversations that typify wave-based conversations.
• Keeping a history is a good thing, but the “playback” feature is the kind of thing that looks cool in a presentation but is rarely of practical use.

The most interesting aspect of Wave is the potential for real-time collaboration using multiple media in a single location… but at this point it’s only potential and other products can meet those needs. For asynchronous collaboration the options are numerous, including Google Docs (for basic documents) and wikis of various kinds  (that can incorporate a wider variety of media). Etherpad actually gets simultaneous editing right; I hope the open-source release means Etherpad will be readily available until Google’s snarfed up the interesting technology and used it to make Google Wave work. Group Discussion tools provide 90% or more of what Google Wave provides while being readily available, stable, etc.

I thought Google Wave was a solution in search of a problem. It’s probably more accurate to say Google Wave is (thus far) a clumsy solution to a very small problem that can be productively solved with existing, better performing tools—including a few applications provided by Google itself. This may change in the future: I can understand, even if I don’t buy, Google’s positioning of Wave as an email killer, combining functions of email communication with rich media, chat and wiki facilities. But for now it’s simply a slow, buggy, painful experiment for which I’ve yet to see a practical use with benefits enough to outweigh the cost.

However, as Alan Levine’s helpfully reminded me (and the world), Google Wave’s real promise may lie in its place as a platform. I’m not so sure Wave is a client with the future of the text browser or the protocol quite as important as http (and being of more promise than Wave’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad client is a pretty low bar), but the potential power in the combination of features and functions the API can bring together is great.

[Side-note: the debut of highly hyped products like Google Wave tends to bring the worst out of many in educational technology, (sometimes inadvertently) confirming the unfortunate characterizations of my community by those outside. First are those who immediately start looking through the wrong end of the telescope and start conversations based on questions like “how can we use Google Wave in education?” It’s not that this is, at heart, the wrong question, but in posing it that way we appear to be the very “geeks obsessed with every shiny new toy” that many think we are. Second are those that latch onto features provided by a product and highlight/elevate them without any evidence of their value in the first place. For instance, Wave may very well be useful for collaborative note-taking, but what supports the contention that collaborative note-taking is of any value in the first place? Just because a cool product does it?]

[photo by Eclectic Echoes]

The Alaska Coffee Roasting Company (ACRC) produces, without a doubt, the best freshly roasted coffee in Fairbanks and– in my experience– the state. But the owner is, to put it as kindly as I can, a smug, self-satisfied jerk of a mini-tyrant who suffers from a short man complex. From what I have seen and overheard, his attitude is a combination of barely tolerating customers combined with deep regret at having to put up with them at all rather than just have their money magically transfer from their wallets to his. Thus the nickname for his establishment: bad man, good coffee.

So I had to laugh this morning when I came for my morning cup (I won’t even go into how much money I put in his coffers each month given that I stop almost daily with my son before school) and saw that the owner had gone to some expense to put locking covers over all the outlets so none of those malicious computer users could plug-in while using the wireless internet connection he ever-so-reluctantly provides. It reminded me of the time many years ago, before the days when laptops were common, when little big man told me I couldn’t plug my laptop in because it would use too much energy.

The power prohibition put into place by the Napoleonic roasting man makes no practical difference to me– I spend most of my time writing on paper and my netbook has a 5-8 hour battery life– but it’s just the kind of petty action that typifies his operation. I’m guessing it stems from the same reasoning behind his refusal to fix the wobbly, ratty tables that date back to about the time my son was born.

The funny thing is, these kinds of anti-customer moves only hurt the business. I’ve been coming to the Alaska Coffee Roasters since the first week they were open and I see customers come and go. Few of the lingerers plug-in (there were hardly any outlets to begin with) and the cost of those who do is minimal. Those who are here using the wireless are buying his product. And in this instance wireless is a low fixed cost anyway: judging by the performance he clearly has the whole place on a crappy consumer plan suitable to a household not a business, and I know the router he uses is one of the lowest-grade consumer routers you can find (if you can find it anywhere outside of closeout sales).

It’s strange to me that the owner of the Alaska Coffee Roasting Company understands quality product so well while his understanding of customer experience is on par with a 3rd grader. Here are some fundamentals:

• Provide robust wireless or don’t provide it at all. Providing free, flaky service is worse than no service at all. Hear me, Barnes & Noble?
• If the cost of providing the wireless service is too great (in this case the annual cost is probably less
  than the owner’s unfortunately form-fitting body suit he uses when
  racing his appropriately tiny race cars), institute a fee… there are plenty of easy ways to do so, including systems that tie access to a purchase.
• Energy use costs almost nothing in this case… a back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that at the local cost ($0.1642/kWh) and assuming every available outlet were being used to charge a computer for 16 hours each day (a great over-estimate on every dimension), the cost would be well under $4 per day.
• Computer users aren’t the enemy. The real “drain” on this store’s capacity to generate turnover comes from large groups of casual talkers. Computer users rarely gather in large, sedentary groups. As I write this there’s a table with 9 high school students who have two small drinks between them. I bring headphones just to tune out the various groups of old-philosophers who congregate here to share their solution to all the ills of the world over their single small cups of plain coffee. People aren’t turning away from this store in droves because tables are filled (though on any given day you will see plenty of people walking in the door and turning around and leaving due to the length of the line).

And here’s the simplest rule of all:

• Don’t be a dick. Why squander the (remaining) good will customers have with petty moves that accomplish nothing except stroking one’s already inflated ego? Customers aren’t the enemy (your loud complaints and ill-chosen characterizations of the many customers constantly demanding an affinity program notwithstanding).

Bad man, good coffee, indeed.

In late October I had the privilege of presenting at WCET on the topic of digital literacy, new media fluency, and secondary orality ala Walter Ong. Thanks to the able help of Jared Stein (who had his own very well-received presentation) I was able to stream the session live in a format that made a bit more sense to me than the mere talking head and allowed more than 30 people outside the room to participate.

It’s immaterial whether Ong is “right” or “wrong” because his theory is important as a lens. If it reveal something useful, then the specific composition of the lens is, pragmatically, irrelevant. And the theory of a secondary orality is, as I tried to bring out in my presentation, both fantastically relevant to many different areas of the current information ecology/arena (not least in that it might present an opportunity to cut the Gordian knot of digital/media literacy/fluency confusion/conflation – how’s that for slashing a sentence?) and distinctly under-studied.

So, here’s the video (the setup Jared Stein came up with worked well… the only change I would make would be to use a detached cam instead of the built-in web cam… and figure out a way to mic the audience for questions):

And because some of the slides are hard to read on the web-video, the slides: