A September to Dismember

Dear Garo,

My b-day alarm failed last week. I leave you with this empathetic call to Met adversities:

Bearing any hurricanes to be named later the Mets have to play 34 more games this season. That's almost 300 more innings of possible season-ending incurrences to the likes of:

Anderson Hernandez (.265 lifetime in minors)

Alex Cora ($2 million this year for being 'scrappy')

Ken Takahashi (40 year-old virgin ... rookie)

Pat Misch (recalled by the big club three times since clearing waivers in June)

Lance 'Bowtie' Broadway (escaped last week's pounding by the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs by coming to big citi)

Jose 'Cameo' Reyes (significant scar tissue won't keep him from sharing pinch-hitting duties)!

Here are some of the leading season finishing options still in contention...

* Introduce pay-to-play pricing for fans who can pass the team physical and sign away their liability claims. This would bring the needed revenues to seed the depleted farm system and the necessary bodies. After all, the last 15 spots in the expanded Sep-member roster are currently filled by the remnants we have.

* Contract out Moises Alou as a fitness instructor.

* Sign 70 year-old Phil Niekro and his knucksie. He can pitch every inning, lead the league in innings (going away) and give the bullpen a well-deserved month off. Says Minaya, "We need a warm body to eat innings. It's OK if he falls apart."

* Invite Vince Coleman back to orchestrate the fireworks show for fan appreciation day.

* Introduce lotto-flavored value pricing where ticket buyers are refunded a fraction of their tickets if the occasion qualifies as a "no save situation."

* Jump start health care reform by paying players to stay healthy, not to sign in 2010 on their inflated 2009 terms.

Says our blogosphere:

"My God, I have never seen such a downright fragile baseball team in my life."

"I shudder to think about this season's cratering becoming a much larger canyon."

"There's no truth to the rumor that I injured myself blogging about the Mets."

So there you have it, G-man. These are the wounds that give life. Because (or in spite) of your suffering I am expected to fully recover and be ready for Spring Training. Happy Birthday to you and for all the healing you bring us.

Pelf-conscious Sol

A September to Dismember

Dear Garo,

My b-day alarm failed last week. I leave you with this empathetic call to Met adversities:

Bearing any hurricanes to be named later the Mets have to play 34 more games this season. That's almost 300 more innings of possible season-ending incurrences to the likes of:

Anderson Hernandez (.265 lifetime in minors)

Alex Cora ($2 million this year for being 'scrappy')

Ken Takahashi (40 year-old virgin ... rookie)

Pat Misch (recalled by the big club three times since clearing waivers in June)

Lance 'Bowtie' Broadway (escaped last week's pounding by the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs by coming to big citi)

Jose 'Cameo' Reyes (significant scar tissue won't keep him from sharing pinch-hitting duties)!

Here are some of the leading season finishing options still in contention...

* Introduce pay-to-play pricing for fans who can pass the team physical and sign away their liability claims. This would bring the needed revenues to seed the depleted farm system and the necessary bodies. After all, the last 15 spots in the expanded Sep-member roster are currently filled by the remnants we have.

* Contract out Moises Alou as a fitness instructor.

* Sign 70 year-old Phil Niekro and his knucksie. He can pitch every inning, lead the league in innings (going away) and give the bullpen a well-deserved month off. Says Minaya, "We need a warm body to eat innings. It's OK if he falls apart."

* Invite Vince Coleman back to orchestrate the fireworks show for fan appreciation day.

* Introduce lotto-flavored value pricing where ticket buyers are refunded a fraction of their tickets if the occasion qualifies as a "no save situation."

* Jump start health care reform by paying players to stay healthy, not to sign in 2010 on their inflated 2009 terms.

Says our blogosphere:

"My God, I have never seen such a downright fragile baseball team in my life."

"I shudder to think about this season's cratering becoming a much larger canyon."

"There's no truth to the rumor that I injured myself blogging about the Mets."

So there you have it, G-man. These are the wounds that give life. Because (or in spite) of your suffering I am expected to fully recover and be ready for Spring Training. Happy Birthday to you and for all the healing you bring us.

Pelf-conscious Sol

Newssift: Take No Surprises

In my professional estimation the leading cause of long walks off short search piers is a direct but elusive info-quest:

I speak not of panning for gold but dishing for dirt.

After all, the impulse being served here sits at the table of avoidance. And that dining guest we're trying to scratch off the guest list goes by the name of "surprise." We do not wish for surprise to be seated at our tables. If they arrive despite our best efforts we need to be sure we can respond to the dining conversation that surprise may throw our way.

Enter -- Newssift.

Newssift is a media coverage engine delivered on Nstein data mining technology and fueled and branded by the Financial Times. The sentiment analysis capabilities aren't new. It's been around now for about a decade and I date my own exposure back to extraction tools like Xerox Parc-bred Inxight and SRA's NetOwl.

Full disclosure: I consulted to Cymfony back in 2001 when the sentiment teams to beat were Biz360 and Intelliseek. All were search solutions seeking a business problem they could partner into a growth segment. All came with hefty price tags and too much tinkering to package them as standard fare business intelligence applications. Also, customers don't buy growth segments unless they're pre-IPO shareholders. The fact my contract came up for renewal on 9/11 closes that loop.

What's new here is that pricey is now free and this baby hums along without much help. In fact you could be out in some elliptical trance orbiting an obtuse subject and still hit pay dirt -- lots to dish and even a score quantifying the negativity that sparks that take-no-surprises impulse. For example I key in one choice four letter word:

corn

I find out that corn is not a place -- imagine that, no Corn, IA zip code to be had. I also scoop up a 'Cornelius' and a 'Cornwall' in the first and last name mappings and there are no business topics. But then I eye the themes tab and pause to slurp on the corn syrup oozing from the media pile-on for HFCS ("high fructose corn syrup"). Now my contextual moorings are chomping down on the correlated clusters of people, organizations, places, and related themes that wash out in the buzz (Cousin Michael leads the HFCS people hit parade with 7 mentions).

The most gluttonous outcome for a big corn hunter though is a click-through on the 21% of the media pie carved out to be negative coverage. A quick inventory of the body counts show slackening demand for the product, lawsuits on the horizon, and bent out-of-shape nutritionists planting doubtful stories like "Are grape jelly and chocolate milk bad for kids' brains?" In the movie version this is where the camera pans to the left and right of newspapers falling on doorsteps. Calendar pages become unhinged like the crumbling fortunes of corn empires near and far.

Newssift summation: I'm impressed with the narrative one can tell with little forethought or background knowledge on moving and complex search targets -- especially the ones we don't want to be dining on or with anytime soon.

Newssift: Take No Surprises

In my professional estimation the leading cause of long walks off short search piers is a direct but elusive info-quest:

I speak not of panning for gold but dishing for dirt.

After all, the impulse being served here sits at the table of avoidance. And that dining guest we're trying to scratch off the guest list goes by the name of "surprise." We do not wish for surprise to be seated at our tables. If they arrive despite our best efforts we need to be sure we can respond to the dining conversation that surprise may throw our way.

Enter -- Newssift.

Newssift is a media coverage engine delivered on Nstein data mining technology and fueled and branded by the Financial Times. The sentiment analysis capabilities aren't new. It's been around now for about a decade and I date my own exposure back to extraction tools like Xerox Parc-bred Inxight and SRA's NetOwl.

Full disclosure: I consulted to Cymfony back in 2001 when the sentiment teams to beat were Biz360 and Intelliseek. All were search solutions seeking a business problem they could partner into a growth segment. All came with hefty price tags and too much tinkering to package them as standard fare business intelligence applications. Also, customers don't buy growth segments unless they're pre-IPO shareholders. The fact my contract came up for renewal on 9/11 closes that loop.

What's new here is that pricey is now free and this baby hums along without much help. In fact you could be out in some elliptical trance orbiting an obtuse subject and still hit pay dirt -- lots to dish and even a score quantifying the negativity that sparks that take-no-surprises impulse. For example I key in one choice four letter word:

corn

I find out that corn is not a place -- imagine that, no Corn, IA zip code to be had. I also scoop up a 'Cornelius' and a 'Cornwall' in the first and last name mappings and there are no business topics. But then I eye the themes tab and pause to slurp on the corn syrup oozing from the media pile-on for HFCS ("high fructose corn syrup"). Now my contextual moorings are chomping down on the correlated clusters of people, organizations, places, and related themes that wash out in the buzz (Cousin Michael leads the HFCS people hit parade with 7 mentions).

The most gluttonous outcome for a big corn hunter though is a click-through on the 21% of the media pie carved out to be negative coverage. A quick inventory of the body counts show slackening demand for the product, lawsuits on the horizon, and bent out-of-shape nutritionists planting doubtful stories like "Are grape jelly and chocolate milk bad for kids' brains?" In the movie version this is where the camera pans to the left and right of newspapers falling on doorsteps. Calendar pages become unhinged like the crumbling fortunes of corn empires near and far.

Newssift summation: I'm impressed with the narrative one can tell with little forethought or background knowledge on moving and complex search targets -- especially the ones we don't want to be dining on or with anytime soon.

Failure is an Option

In fact it's not only an option -- it's a requirement.

Make no mistake, failure has gotten a bad rap.

With visions of "success factors" and "best practices" dancing in the breakout sessions of our best mental slideware, there's nothing dishonest about wanting to put our best golden feet forward.

Here's the problem. Singing one's own praises is sincere. In fact it's the most authentic form of expression an individual can communicate in public. No degree of certified witnesses, credentialing, or group affiliations can disguise the impulse for self-promotion.

The snag occurs when the message sender thinks that the substance of the message takes precedence over the messenger. This broad based and unintended conceit has been with us since April, 1939 when television covered its first event -- the birth of itself, as noted by the noted Hadley historian Andrew Morris-Friedman.

Messengers get mistaken for messages all the time. The bigger mistake is the self-delusion: that the bigger, faster, cheaper rule applies to message production the same way it does to plasma screens and smart phones. Starring in your own message works when you know your recipients. But it doesn't scale -- especially when the messenger breaks the cardinal rule of public self-awareness:

Thou cannot confer credibility unto thou self ... unless of course one's goal is shrill, pious righteousness served up with a splash of self-importance.

That's why I insist that my students share their secrets of failure. The lessons that bear repeating because the experience of them does not. I tell them I'm not interested in their search results or favorite sites but what they do with them. I’m not going to satisfy that interest unless I tell then my own failure stories – not tales of woe but uphill climb we all have.

Remember that the next time you get spammed about some upcoming webcast trumpeting a parade of unceasing success. If there's any substance there the talk will be focused on the missteps, sunk costs, and conflicting signals that their laurels are resting on.

Failure is an Option

In fact it's not only an option -- it's a requirement.

Make no mistake, failure has gotten a bad rap.

With visions of "success factors" and "best practices" dancing in the breakout sessions of our best mental slideware, there's nothing dishonest about wanting to put our best golden feet forward.

Here's the problem. Singing one's own praises is sincere. In fact it's the most authentic form of expression an individual can communicate in public. No degree of certified witnesses, credentialing, or group affiliations can disguise the impulse for self-promotion.

The snag occurs when the message sender thinks that the substance of the message takes precedence over the messenger. This broad based and unintended conceit has been with us since April, 1939 when television covered its first event -- the birth of itself, as noted by the noted Hadley historian Andrew Morris-Friedman.

Messengers get mistaken for messages all the time. The bigger mistake is the self-delusion: that the bigger, faster, cheaper rule applies to message production the same way it does to plasma screens and smart phones. Starring in your own message works when you know your recipients. But it doesn't scale -- especially when the messenger breaks the cardinal rule of public self-awareness:

Thou cannot confer credibility unto thou self ... unless of course one's goal is shrill, pious righteousness served up with a splash of self-importance.

That's why I insist that my students share their secrets of failure. The lessons that bear repeating because the experience of them does not. I tell them I'm not interested in their search results or favorite sites but what they do with them. I’m not going to satisfy that interest unless I tell then my own failure stories – not tales of woe but uphill climb we all have.

Remember that the next time you get spammed about some upcoming webcast trumpeting a parade of unceasing success. If there's any substance there the talk will be focused on the missteps, sunk costs, and conflicting signals that their laurels are resting on.

Soylent Green Energy

Besides the chilling prospect of 21st-century America morphing into a cold war state — with Sheryl Crow in charge of toilet-paper rationing — there are also delusional fears about the government tapping bank accounts and convening “death panels,” as Sarah Palin dubbed them, to exploit the cost-saving potential of euthanizing the old and disabled.

- Maureen 'Cobra' Dowd, today's NYT op-ed

Gotta hand it to the GOP-stoppers and their cradle AND grave oldies show. Defend the unborn. Protect the undead. For everyone else there will be lower taxes and the question of whether the Granny-killing current President was born in the wrong country.

Maybe President Obama needs to speechify what the town hate debates are really about -- Chuck Heston's stunning realization that the life-sustaining wafer that keeps the depraved NYC of 2040 regular is ... is ... Barak, you've got to tell them that health insurance reform is ... people!

I'm guessing that the Dems think they have this thing locked up based on two calculations:

- Their sizable majorities
- Placate wavering centralists by foregoing Single Payer (not enough cashable campaign chips from Single Payer lobby as subtext)

What if the CBO's cred is greater than Obama's charm? What if it's just simply unAmerican to spread our CT-scans, ultrasounds, and stress tests around to the swelling margins of our most compromised citizens? And how did his location folks find six African-Americans to appear in the establishing shot in Portsmouth yesterday when there are seven in all New Hampshire?

What if American employers who never signed up to man the coverage lifeboats decide they would sooner let this legislation sink than swim? Is it really in their self-interest to de-privatize the risk pool? They can always shed a few more head counts. Otherwise social capitalism takes a hit the next time the boom goes bust. Then it's gonna be more than donut holes and infirmed elders falling through those safety nets.

I hope we Americans are not as confident as our Democractic majorities. This is not our father's silent majority that needs to clear its collective throat in the cry for health reform.

I called my congressional office to see what I could do about helping the cause and my attempt fell to the bottom of one staffer's VM box who skirts in-between district offices when the future of the economic world is not at stake. I think I'll ride by bike down to the site of his telephone today. I have no tissue story to tell. But I can show up in a public setting at an appointed time.

Soylent Green Energy

Besides the chilling prospect of 21st-century America morphing into a cold war state — with Sheryl Crow in charge of toilet-paper rationing — there are also delusional fears about the government tapping bank accounts and convening “death panels,” as Sarah Palin dubbed them, to exploit the cost-saving potential of euthanizing the old and disabled.

- Maureen 'Cobra' Dowd, today's NYT op-ed

Gotta hand it to the GOP-stoppers and their cradle AND grave oldies show. Defend the unborn. Protect the undead. For everyone else there will be lower taxes and the question of whether the Granny-killing current President was born in the wrong country.

Maybe President Obama needs to speechify what the town hate debates are really about -- Chuck Heston's stunning realization that the life-sustaining wafer that keeps the depraved NYC of 2040 regular is ... is ... Barak, you've got to tell them that health insurance reform is ... people!

I'm guessing that the Dems think they have this thing locked up based on two calculations:

- Their sizable majorities
- Placate wavering centralists by foregoing Single Payer (not enough cashable campaign chips from Single Payer lobby as subtext)

What if the CBO's cred is greater than Obama's charm? What if it's just simply unAmerican to spread our CT-scans, ultrasounds, and stress tests around to the swelling margins of our most compromised citizens? And how did his location folks find six African-Americans to appear in the establishing shot in Portsmouth yesterday when there are seven in all New Hampshire?

What if American employers who never signed up to man the coverage lifeboats decide they would sooner let this legislation sink than swim? Is it really in their self-interest to de-privatize the risk pool? They can always shed a few more head counts. Otherwise social capitalism takes a hit the next time the boom goes bust. Then it's gonna be more than donut holes and infirmed elders falling through those safety nets.

I hope we Americans are not as confident as our Democractic majorities. This is not our father's silent majority that needs to clear its collective throat in the cry for health reform.

I called my congressional office to see what I could do about helping the cause and my attempt fell to the bottom of one staffer's VM box who skirts in-between district offices when the future of the economic world is not at stake. I think I'll ride by bike down to the site of his telephone today. I have no tissue story to tell. But I can show up in a public setting at an appointed time.

What's a Bad Question? Good Question.

You've heard it before -- especially in a public setting seeded with unfamiliar faces: "There are no stupid questions."

Mostly the moderator who says this is responding to a lack of feedback -- especially when the presentation they gave is either alien or controversial to at least some of the participants.

In all honesty the stupidity lies with the moderator for boxing themselves into an exchange-proof presentation. But if we were even more honest about the kinds of questions that drive search analysts and KM folks batty it's a misinformed question built on the premise of unfounded assertions, urban legends, and generalized assumptions that stretch the appropriateness of their fit too far.

For example it's entirely understandable that some rocket scientist raised on Google believes they could pepper their query with the names of propellants and launchers and then truncate on a few choice biological weapons. What's misinformed about that? Nothing if you're on the web. However if it's done on your firm's SharePoint server and rockets are not what you sell and maintain then you run into two walls right away:

1. Complex question +
2. Uncommon terms =
3. Dumb question

Of course the site admin who sees it is no likely point this out than the search tool itself. Can you imagine buying the Google appliance and for every "zero hit" set of search results the response is "Did you mean to search this on public Google?" The problem metaphorically is that Rocket Star is sticking to his guns by running an ocean-sized search request inside the information pond that is my intranet.

Here's a QA framework I developed that illustrates the response range in terms of the battles worth fighting (stay with the upper quadrants):


Short of remedial information literacy classes the best work-around is to focus on the use of one or two unique terms so that my user can see the lay of the Rocket land in my shop before plundering ahead with anything more esoteric or complex. I can also engineer a search outcome that breaks the question down in terms of the topic addressed. But that works best for blank, receptive brains -- not for domain experts.

Ultimately the best run around the no bad questions mindset is to connect people and dispense with relevancy scoring for documents. Once we're past that we can actually prove what a good question can be. But only by providing a sound answer and people deliver those better than PowerPoints.

What's a Bad Question? Good Question.

You've heard it before -- especially in a public setting seeded with unfamiliar faces: "There are no stupid questions."

Mostly the moderator who says this is responding to a lack of feedback -- especially when the presentation they gave is either alien or controversial to at least some of the participants.

In all honesty the stupidity lies with the moderator for boxing themselves into an exchange-proof presentation. But if we were even more honest about the kinds of questions that drive search analysts and KM folks batty it's a misinformed question built on the premise of unfounded assertions, urban legends, and generalized assumptions that stretch the appropriateness of their fit too far.

For example it's entirely understandable that some rocket scientist raised on Google believes they could pepper their query with the names of propellants and launchers and then truncate on a few choice biological weapons. What's misinformed about that? Nothing if you're on the web. However if it's done on your firm's SharePoint server and rockets are not what you sell and maintain then you run into two walls right away:

1. Complex question +
2. Uncommon terms =
3. Dumb question

Of course the site admin who sees it is no likely point this out than the search tool itself. Can you imagine buying the Google appliance and for every "zero hit" set of search results the response is "Did you mean to search this on public Google?" The problem metaphorically is that Rocket Star is sticking to his guns by running an ocean-sized search request inside the information pond that is my intranet.

Here's a QA framework I developed that illustrates the response range in terms of the battles worth fighting (stay with the upper quadrants):


Short of remedial information literacy classes the best work-around is to focus on the use of one or two unique terms so that my user can see the lay of the Rocket land in my shop before plundering ahead with anything more esoteric or complex. I can also engineer a search outcome that breaks the question down in terms of the topic addressed. But that works best for blank, receptive brains -- not for domain experts.

Ultimately the best run around the no bad questions mindset is to connect people and dispense with relevancy scoring for documents. Once we're past that we can actually prove what a good question can be. But only by providing a sound answer and people deliver those better than PowerPoints.

From the Tyranny of Distance to the Monopoly of Now

If we could mount several lifetimes of recorded history and gaze down at its slopes and summits we might see the collapsing of distance into an instantaneous recall of each plodding rung and liberating leapfrog up the incline. From ships to cables to wires, and lightwaves time has been beaten senseless and removed from its former station between the send key and the ear piece. Nothing new about that altercation.

The mountain climb is a treacherous and tiresome metaphor for an ascent so unquestioned gravity catches its breath long enough to wonder: was a decision even made here? As if the speed of communication would ever be left alone long enough to grow static -- even for one recordable moment?

Far greater are the chances that our species would lose all interest in reproducing. Perhaps our numbers would dwindle from forces greater than our collective will? These are less remote possibilities than bringing a halt to faster evolving communications. We can't get the news soon enough. Not fast enough? No news there.

The newest clouds that have nestled beneath this nothing-new-sun have been tagged by a more contemporary name than any timeless nature. To techies it goes by the name of SMS ("short message service"). For the rest of us last week's IM was this morning's text cc'ed as a tweet that will evolve into some other signal by the time it floods my in-box.

In the late seventies I first experienced this ancient pang for a collective human respite (was it overnight delivery of air parcels? I've lost the clock watch on that one). I railed then against the competing claim that a piece of news could be both timely and analytical. Narrowing the gap between sending and receiving does nothing to speed up the vetting, assessing, or netting out what it means.

Is it better to be in the dark?

What you don't know "may" hurt you. What you don't need to know "will" distract you. Try that rationale on for size the next time an idle moment is engulfed by a flurry of Blackberry deletions. This abhorrence of a chatter free void is not about staying on top or keeping up. It's about not ending up on the bottom -- the very place we analytical types had once vowed to occupy until we could safely say "we know when up is up."

Oh how little majesty and how precipitous the trajectory of those towering achievements. Our views of technology are positively panoramic. But united we stand -- on the shoulders of midgets.

From the Tyranny of Distance to the Monopoly of Now

If we could mount several lifetimes of recorded history and gaze down at its slopes and summits we might see the collapsing of distance into an instantaneous recall of each plodding rung and liberating leapfrog up the incline. From ships to cables to wires, and lightwaves time has been beaten senseless and removed from its former station between the send key and the ear piece. Nothing new about that altercation.

The mountain climb is a treacherous and tiresome metaphor for an ascent so unquestioned gravity catches its breath long enough to wonder: was a decision even made here? As if the speed of communication would ever be left alone long enough to grow static -- even for one recordable moment?

Far greater are the chances that our species would lose all interest in reproducing. Perhaps our numbers would dwindle from forces greater than our collective will? These are less remote possibilities than bringing a halt to faster evolving communications. We can't get the news soon enough. Not fast enough? No news there.

The newest clouds that have nestled beneath this nothing-new-sun have been tagged by a more contemporary name than any timeless nature. To techies it goes by the name of SMS ("short message service"). For the rest of us last week's IM was this morning's text cc'ed as a tweet that will evolve into some other signal by the time it floods my in-box.

In the late seventies I first experienced this ancient pang for a collective human respite (was it overnight delivery of air parcels? I've lost the clock watch on that one). I railed then against the competing claim that a piece of news could be both timely and analytical. Narrowing the gap between sending and receiving does nothing to speed up the vetting, assessing, or netting out what it means.

Is it better to be in the dark?

What you don't know "may" hurt you. What you don't need to know "will" distract you. Try that rationale on for size the next time an idle moment is engulfed by a flurry of Blackberry deletions. This abhorrence of a chatter free void is not about staying on top or keeping up. It's about not ending up on the bottom -- the very place we analytical types had once vowed to occupy until we could safely say "we know when up is up."

Oh how little majesty and how precipitous the trajectory of those towering achievements. Our views of technology are positively panoramic. But united we stand -- on the shoulders of midgets.