Coping with Newtown and a modest proposal

It's now 3:14 am and I can't sleep, obsessing about Newtown. As a parent, the horror of what happened gives me pangs of irrational fears about my kids. As a regular guy, I am immensely sad for all those involved. As a libertarian at heart, I struggle to come up with a balance on the nature of the 2nd Amendment and the need to protect society from violent acts.

As more details emerge from Newtown, there's several aspects that make this a more complicated case than just 'people shouldn't be able to buy assault weapons' or 'we should have psych evaluations prior to selling guns' or even 'let's ban all guns':

• The more powerful Bushmaster .223 rifle was found in the car - apparently not used. This means it may not have played a part in this tragedy and legislation to ban it would have been of no consequence in Newtown.
• The school HAD a recent security system installed. Why did it fail to stop him? Was it malfunction, operator error (since it was new) or did the killer just slip in before the system activated at 09:30am or otherwise bypass it?
• The two guns used - 9mm Glock and 9mm SigSauer - were legally purchased by his mother and, barring any additional information, were kept in accordance with state requirements for safe storage of firearms.
• The gun laws in Connecticut are already considered some of the most stringent laws in the country. Needless to say, the suspect violated state carry laws.

Banning all guns is not practical, period. There are over 300 million firearms in the US and the right to have a firearm is an integral part of American society for over 400 years. To me, it would be easier to convince people to switch to a monarchy before taking away the right to own firearms.

All this is not to say that Newtown will be just another statistic: the indiscriminate killing of children in what society considers one of the safest environments possible - an elementary school in a peaceful suburban town - is so against everything Americans (and others, of course) hold dear that there has to be a policy response of some kind. This was not university students (adults), temple worshipers (adults), shoppers (adults), movie goers (mostly adults) or even high-school students (older kids). Please excuse me not mentioning the adults that died, but these were 5-10 year-old kids, for goodness sake!

I don't know what the policy outcomes will be. Outright gun bans, banning assault rifles, adding security guards to schools (think TSA-style guards at every school), etc... are, in my opinion, doomed from the start. 

I want to offer one suggestion, though, that I think can help: Just like 9/11 resulted in mandatory reinforced cockpit doors on airplanes, Newtown should result in state laws with requirements for MANDATORY biometric+PIN locks for gun storage safes for ALL firearms, at all times, with stiff penalties for violation. It matches the spirit of the 2nd amendment (people are allowed to bear arms) but also restricts access to firearms with a stronger '2-factor authentication'. It would have likely prevented this tragedy.

We all love our kids and want what's best for them. In this case, I think it means facing the reality that gun culture is here to stay, but that Newtown was not just another incident and that adjustments need to be made.

OK, signing off, with a very heavy heart thinking about what happened, hoping I won't have too many nightmares.

Fernando

Self-education with Coursera

One more weekend has passed and again I was singing the praises of Self-Education and Coursera to my friends. I'm guessing many of them are fed up with me talking about it. Sorry everyone... just too excited... :-)

If you're not familiar with it, Coursera is one of the leading providers of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), basically a platform for universities to offer free access to some of their coursework online, to anyone with an Internet connection and a desire to learn.

Take a look at one of the founders' TED presentation.

For me, with my never-ending quest (obsession?) of self-development, this is an absolutely AMAZING opportunity. There's currently nearly 200 courses available on a variety of subjects, just waiting for the eager student. They currently have students from all over the place...







So, what do I find so nice about it?

• In my opinion, it offers a great balance of self-education with a little bit of structure. Each course is divided into lectures which themselves are broken down into segments. Watch each lecture, answer quizzes or do assignments, participate in forums, ... and you're on your way...

• At the same time, it is 'freeform' enough that you can speed through content you already know or watch it on your own schedule.

• The number of course options is enormous. Coursera has close to 200 courses from approximately 30 universities, covering 18 different areas. From Music to Biology, from Economics to Circuit Design, there's bound to be something that interests you...

• The format is great, the selection is ample and the quality is top notch too. Content is well-designed for the delivery format, teachers are articulate and engaging, plus the exercises are relevant.

I've now had experience with 6 courses in Economics, Statistics, Finance and Investing and I'm enrolled in a few more. History, Cryptography and more Econ/Stats/Finance are on my horizon.

So, how do I find the time to study for this?
First of all, I study in the evenings, after wife and kids go to bed. 2-3 hours a night and that's easily 15 productive hours to learn something or refresh old content.
To get those 2-3 hours, I've severely limited my TV time as well as cut back on social networking (fewer Facebook discussions! :-) ) and other distractions. Each one is different, but this is what worked for me.

Improvements
As with everything, there's a couple of things about Coursera courses that I wish could be improved upon:

• First, for now, all courses have a scheduled date, often many months in the future. I understand this is done to match the academic schedule, but perhaps over time Coursera might offer a more 'on-demand' model.
• There is minimal interaction with the teaching staff. This is understandable, as some courses can have 100,000 people or more registered. In many cases, the best option you have is hope the teacher or one of the teaching assistants participate in the discussion forums that exist (which they often do, but not the same as asking question in class...)

"So, I get to be a <insert university name> student for free?"
One key point is that courses offer minimal, if any, official status. What this means is that attending a course taught by Stanford faculty, for example, does not make one a Stanford alumni or imply any other relationship. The reality is that each course is free to issue whatever type of status they want. Some offer nothing whatsoever, others may offer an electronic statement that you completed the requirements for the course, while others may even consider issuing 'credits' towards their existing programs.
I have seen people add to their Facebook profiles that they were 'alumni' of those institutions. They're NOT. Don't make the same mistake.
In my case, what I've done is that I have added Coursera courses to my LinkedIn profile, but under the heading of 'Independent Coursework'. This still shows that I'm pro-active in my self-learning but that I also recognize the limits of the MOOC system.

As you consider Coursera, I leave you with two parting thoughts.

One, that Coursera is but one of many offerings in this space. Other notable options include Udacity (mostly computer technology related material), EdX (an upcoming partnership between Harvard, MIT and Berkley) and Khan Academy (more focused on, but not limited to, high-school level across several subjects). Good link for these and other options here.
I still think Coursera towers above them in terms of breadth and thought leadership.

Finally, Isaac Asimov's popular quote: "Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” Not much else to say, is there?

Syncing Multiple Google Calendars to iOS devices

With the complexity of home life increasing - our son grows up and has multiple activities, we all have doctor's appointments, fitness, travel plans, etc... - we have been using shared Google Calendars for a long time. What works well for us is:

• Mom's and Dad's work calendars get uploaded via GoogleCalendarSync
• We use shared Calendars for each child (daughter still too young for one), plus one for the family as a whole and one for 'Home Maintenance' things.
• We also have a calendar for friends/family birthdays (the actual date, not any celebrations, which go into the 'family' calendar)

For some reason, one of the things left out of the configuration efforts when we both started using iPads was syncing those multiple calendars. We easily synced our main calendar and that was it... Life moves fast and sometimes 'good enough' is good enough.

Well, complexity caught up with us and now I needed to find a way to look at these alternative calendars without the hassle of opening the Google Calendar page (via Safari or a HomePage link)... I wanted to see them on the native iOS Calendar app.

It was VERY, VERY easy to do (easier than I thought), but took a little searching.

Short version is: starting from a setup that already has the main Google Calendar synced to the iOS device, just go to https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect and choose the other calendars you wish to see. Next time you iOS calendar app syncs, either they should appear automatically or just refresh the calendar list from the 'Edit' section on the app.

I got this from Google's Help section at CalDAV Calendar Sync - Google Mobile Help. While it talks about setting up the account as CalDAV explicitly, it just worked with the 'regular' GMail account.

This is likely old news for many people, but I was pleasantly surprised. :-)

Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

1949-2011

I feel I should say something about Christopher Hitchens, the brilliant mind that has left us way too early. There have been many tributes to him on virtually every newspaper I read today, all of it well deserved.

I first learned of him after having read, enjoyed and agreed with most of his thinking in 'God is not great'. As I learned a bit more about him, I became a fan. I would invariably take the time to read his Salon column every Monday morning (it would arrive via RSS) and always come out impressed with the breadth of topics he would cover, the poignancy of his comments and clarity of his thinking. I deeply admired his stance as his own man, not simply aligning himself 'right', 'left' or anything in between.

Watching him (unfortunately never live, but online or listening afterwards via podcasts) on debates such as Intelligence Squared and the Munk Debates was uplifting: here was the personification of 'applied intellect' - the perfect combination of erudite knowledge, moral clarity and unflinching delivery. One would almost - almost - feel bad for the opposing side. A lot more to be found at http://www.intelligencesquared.com/people/h/christopher-hitchens and google elsewhere.

There's surely others who will write much better prose to honor him, but let this be my simple contribution. Some of us will praise him for his positions, some won't, but we should all praise him for his courage and contributions.

Thanks Hitch, we'll miss you dearly.

Instapaper or Read it Later? Both!

As I battle to keep up to date with everything that happens in my industry (IT, specifically security/networking), one of the best tools I use is a 'to read later' application: basic premise is that if you come across something that you think might be interesting but you just don't have the time (or resources) to check it out now, you can mark it for later. Then, when you have moment (yeah, right...), you just go back through your unread list to check them out.

There's a few of these apps out there - Apple actually included the functionality in the latest Safari with iOS 5.0 - but the ones I'm more familiar with are Read it Later and Instapaper. They both have support for tags, multi-platform support and free/paid versions (though Instapaper offers virtually all functionality for free so 'paid' really means donation, which I find totally worth it).

One of the more interesting thing about both of these apps is that they have a stable API so other applications can hook into them. This has led to a variety of applications supporting direct "one-click" integration, allowing things like sending a link to the 'to read later' queue while browsing your Twitter feed or Facebook news, for example.

That - sending off to 'to read' list while browsing Twitter - is primarily how I use this functionality. My preferred Twitter client is 'Oosfora HD' (paid) on the iPad and I'll happily bookmark links for reading later from within that app.

But which one do I use? The answer (as per the title of this entry) is both! Wait, what? Why both? Heresy!
<sarcasm>
As with every other 'battle' in IT (Windows or Mac? Chrome or Firefox? iOS or Android?) there *must* be one choice. Your entire self-worth as an individual is tied to choosing the ONE app that is clearly BETTER.
</sarcasm>

Well,no. One of the benefits of using BOTH apps at the same time is that you can easily curate your collection so that you end up with two distinct 'flavours' of bookmarks to check out and can then review them according to your mood, resources at hand, etc...

As an example, I use 'Instapaper' for industry-related links that I either have to be in the right mindset to review or that I want to take notes into my Personal Knowledge Management system (future blog post...). I use 'Read it Later' for more 'generic' links that I want to check out but not necessarily 'study'.

Why not use one and just tag things instead? Simple answer: the process of tagging something is not well integrated into the other apps I use and frankly just slows down the process. It is a lot easier to just select 'Read it Later' or 'Instapaper' from a pop-up than actually type a tag.

Anyway, I hope this helps others who face similar situations.

Dashboards and my Weekly Planners

I mentioned before that I'm a huge fan of mindmaps for personal organization. My tool of choice is MindJet's Mindmanager, which I bought out of pocket for back in 2001 and never looked back.

One of the things I've done recently is to finally set up a couple of dashboard mindmaps - for me, maps that summarize what I have to worry about as it relates to a particular topic and jump-off points to other locations, from other maps to Web sites out there. The benefit of dashboard mindmaps is that I can quickly glance at them and take in all the relevant information about something.

My first dashboard is business-specific (sorry, not meant for publication): as a Sales/System Engineer (see my LinkedIn profile here), I need to keep track of business contacts and current business opportunities. A couple of maps - one for the business contacts, with linkages to account-specific maps, and one for the opportunities themselves - let me have a great summary of my territory. Some of the benefits I get from it are:
- Quickly identify key people I need to get in touch with.
- Have an at-a-glance summary of opportunities I need to focus on in the short term.

My second dashboard is 'personal', meaning it tracks everything in four main categories: work, personal, career and home (family, kids, etc...). I use it as a scratch pad for things on my radar (in addition to my detailed task list in MyLifeOrganized). See my earlier posts for some description of how I work.

Here's a high-level view of my personal dashboard:

Well, one thing I added to my personal dashboard is a weekly planner. This is simple but very useful. In a nutshell, I now have an easy to view/edit location where I consolidate information from many sources:
- My personal and business calendars (Gmail and Outlook, respectively)
- Key tasks I want to achieve on that date (manually, but taken from MLO)
- Additional tidbits not available elsewhere that I think are relevant.

Here's a redacted example:

The nice thing is that I also have not only similar views for upcoming weeks (as you can see in the image) but also a 'weekly template' (not shown) that I can just copy over to a new week.


Like I said, this is simple stuff - maybe old news to more experienced mindmappers - but still something that helped me organize my affairs better. Hope it helps others too.

Until next time!

Looking at one's career - part 1 of ?

In a continuation of my series on looking at career (started here), where I describe some of what influences me) I want to address the notion of improvement. Keep in mind these are my thoughts without explicit linkage to existing theories/content/... out there. I'll be more than happy to point out additional resources as I find them.

Continuous Improvement

First and foremost, I am a strong believer in the fact that constant improvement is essential, non-negotiable really, if one wants to achieve and at a minimum maintain (never mind increase) the means to function as a professional in modern society. This does not necessarily mean "working" all the time, taking courses like there's no tomorrow and throwing work-life balance out the window, but the deliberate pursuit of improvement in at least the following contexts:

• Tasks - The specific actions one needs to take to fulfill their responsibilities to their employer. 
• Job - The things that are relevant to one's present employer, be they "external" - everything related to how that employer interacts with its customers - or "internal" - how to function effectively as a member of the employer's organization.
• Skills - Your specific abilities related to your field of expertise or your capabilities to be a functioning individual in modern society.
• Career - The progression of roles within one or more organizations over a period of time.
• Area - The broad knowledge field(s) in which one operates.

Ultimately, I think "taking care of one's career" is the constant, never-ending balancing of improvements in each of the areas above. Neglecting any one of them for the benefit of others will result in heartbreak:

• if you ignore the Tasks, you can't actually *do* what you're supposed to do and may end up dismissed for not adding value.
• if you ignore the Job, you may end up a sub-par member of the organization, either at risk of losing your job or stuck in the same place until obsolescence.
• if you ignore Skills, whatever you know or know how to do may not be transferable to other scenarios, be they in your current organization or elsewhere.
• if you ignore Career, your work history may be a series of roles with no distinguishing growth. It may be OK for some, but rarely the stuff people aspire to.
• if you ignore your Area, it becomes difficult to identify and understand the impact of larger trends in your industry on what you do and on your plans moving forward.

What do I mean by pursuit of improvement? There's several alternatives, including but not limited to:

• Formal training: academia, continuing education, corporate training, private courses, tutors, ...
• Self-study: reading books, joining study groups/lists online, watching/participating online training (I *love* the Khan Academy as an example, or AcademicEarth.org), keeping abreast of developments, news, etc...
• Practicing: volunteering (offline or online - Livemocha is a good example of online volunteering for language training), internships, hobbies, side businesses, etc...

The amount of time one dedicates to this will naturally fluctuate: from extra-hyper crazy days/weeks at work to dealing with family commitments or even one's own motivation peaks and troughs, there will be times where one can dedicate 'x' hours per week on a set schedule and there will be times when one is lucky to get 15-30 minutes without distractions.

Wrapping up, the key ideas I value are:

- keep improving

- balance it with the rest of life, but don't neglect it

- balance it between all the contexts I mentioned above

- balance it between the ways to improve I mentioned

- keep improving

- keep improving

- ...

:-)

Looking at one's career - part 0 of ?

In having a conversation with someone whom I deeply admire, the topic of career planning and progress came up. In trying to summarize my points, I realized that I was having problems explaining my positions, so the idea of putting things to "paper" came to mind.

This post is the prologue to the series of articles I plan to write to help me crystallize the concepts running around my mind. Yes, it can be thought of as narcissistic of me, but I've made my peace with what and how I write (cue in the scene from "Top Gun" where Maverick admits being arrogant... :-) )

Influences...

I am an avid but not very methodical student. For years I've been digesting all sorts of interesting ideas through books, magazines, articles, audiobooks, mailing lists, webminars, courses, conversations, blog posts, tweets, ... but have only been moderately successful at storing that information in an efficient format. This is a constant work in progress - a common theme to my routine - but some key ideas stick around without the need for elaborate systems.

First and foremost, I am heavily influenced (though not limited by) the examples I had at home when growing up. My mother and my stepfather have had long and distinguished careers in academia, while my two younger brothers have followed on that example much more than I did (both have advanced degrees in their respective fields, while I focused on a career in the private sector). I grew up with mom and my stepdad dedicating a significant amount of time above and beyond "working hours" to studying, preparing lectures, coaching/mentoring others and taking visible satisfaction/enjoyment in doing so.

At some point - after the early career years where everything is a blur - I found myself interested in personal improvement on my own terms: I thought of academia as too stifling and of typical corporate training as too tactical. At the time I considered going for an MBA (still haven't ruled it out completely) but in one of those fortuitous turns of life I came across the "Personal MBA" (www.personalmba.com) initiative. It really deserves its own blog post - coming soon - but for now think of it as a collection of recommended readings on key areas typically found in most MBA programs, with a slight bias towards small-business entrepreneurship. It literally changed my life.

Over the past few years, I've read - in whole or in part - many of the books recommended there. Here are some of the key ideas I have taken as key influences in my thinking:

- From Jim Rohn (motivational speaker), there are several quotes, but two stuck with me:

     "Work hard on your job and you can make a living. Work hard on yourself and you can make a fortune..."

     "Don't wish it were easier; wish you were better. Don't wish for less problems; wish for more skills. Don't wish for less challenges; wish for more wisdom."

- Mastery, by George Leonard

     The basic notion of mastery being a never-ending journey of constant improvement.

- Now, Discover your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton 

     That developing strengths rather than fixing weakness leads to much greater outcomes.

- Getting Things Done, by David Allen. 

     Providing a system for not only managing "to do"s, but the concept of thinking about things in multiple layers (50,000 foot-view, 20,000, 10,000, ...).

- Lead the Field, by Earl Nightingale

     Attitude! - You are responsible for how your life turns out, and your attitude shapes that life for better or worse.

Other influences not from the Personal MBA recommendations include:

- The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Galloway

     After proper deliberate practice, let go of trying to control things and trust your training.

- Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell.

     The incredible results one can achieve with a bit of luck and a lot of practice.

Yes, to many people, all these ideas are relatively simple and straightforward. Great ideas usually are, they just need the right context to make all the difference.

More on next posts...

Healthcare

And so my political posts begin... As I said elsewhere, this blog is also a soapbox. Caveat Lector.

I have a different opinion on healthcare than many Canadians, including some in my own family.

I believe in providing some level of care to all, regardless of ability to pay BUT I believe that a single-payer system such as the one we have in Canada is unfair and fundamentally broken.

Unfair because it restricts choice. In essence, why can I choose to send my kids to private school but not have the option of sending them to a private doctor, to be paid either out-of-pocket or through a private insurer?

I find it utterly unfair as well that there IS a two-tier system already, but one where the privilege is obtained with influence, not money (which happens to be a lot more 'democratic' than "who you know"). Professional sports athletes, politicians, cases handled by the WSIB (Workers Insurance Board), etc...

Or worse, the issue is addressed based on political concerns. The recent saga of approving Herceptin is an example. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/03/21/herceptin-coverage-caner.html

Broken because it costs too much and has no real incentive to improve. I tend to agree with the notion that once we stop having to pay for something ourselves, we lose the interest into how much something costs, hence costs skyrocket.

On that notion, I appreciated two posts I came across recently:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2011/03/things-people-believe-that-make-no-sense.html

And
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2011/03/health-care-fail.html

There's a lot to discuss about healthcare, but as Canadians (and Ontarians) we should be concerned of surrendering freedoms to government under the mistaken impression that, when the time comes, the government "will be there" to support us to a level we want.

iPad - Part 3 of ?

Hi,

I thought I'd do a brief update on how iPad usage has changed over the past few months. As we got more familiar with the device, usage changed a bit.

• I use the iPad every single day as the primary tool for consuming content updates from social networks. I use Osfoora HD as my Twitter client, FeedlerPro as my RSS reader and Friendly as the Facebook client. I still use ReadItLater as the 'catch-all' for content I want to check later. 
• One thing I did is that I purchased the 'Digest' option for ReadItLater. It aggregates links in a magazine-style layout, similar to Flipboard. Very, very nice, well worth the $4.99 or so.
• My routine is such that I am used to a few minutes of iPad screen-time just before going to sleep and a quick check of things in the morning as I wake up. Just a bit compulsive, eh? ;-)
• I use SoundNote, SimpleNote and Evernote to store meeting notes, depending on things like the surrounding environment (recording sound with SoundNote might not be viable) or the need for more permanent storage (Evernote) or something I'll delete after dealing with it (SimpleNote).

Finally, I share my iPad with family members a lot more now... :-)

• My wife still uses it rarely - she has her trusty (but long in the tooth) Sony eReader - but she enjoys a quick game of FlightControl HD.
• My son (just shy of 6 years old) really took to several of the games on the iPad - Angry Birds, Angry Birds Season, Dots Free and now Puppet Pals HD.
• I have loaded several "educational" apps for him and  he enjoys using them every now and then: "Stories", "KidCalc", "Sight Words" and "Kindergarten" are a few of them.

All in all, nicely integrated into our home life. I followed the iPad2 launch and I am curious about it as a possible replacement for my wife's Sony eReader. We'll see...

Online Safety Tips for Parents

Hi!

In one of my first forays into volunteering in the Parent Council for my son's school, I'll be working with other parents on a presentation on Internet Safety, Social Networks, etc... to be delivered in early Februrary.

Yes, I've lived on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for a long time now, but it's one thing to be comfortable in it and another to give advice to your peers. In my case, I'm at a disadvantage because my son is just 5 (still in SK) whereas the parents of the school have to deal with pre-teen and teenagers as well. Just like I learned a lot about parenting a toddler, then a pre-school kid, I'm sure I'll learn a lot as both our kids grow up...

Needless to say, I started my research early. I'm still working on the presentation, but one resource I wanted to share with EVERYBODY is Connect Safely . Lots of wonderful content and links to other sites - NetFamilyNews and SafeKids come to mind.

I don't know what content I'll include in the presentation - there is SO MUCH to talk about and we only have one hour - but I know for sure I'll refer to the advice posted there.

Thank you to Anne Collier for all the assistance and a big thanks to Lenore Skenazy of FreeRangeKids for pointing me in the right direction.

Fernando
PS: FreeRangeKids deserves a post on its own. Soon....

WikiLeaks...

I've been thinking a lot about WikiLeaks recently. So many things to discuss... I'll summarize my position and the point to other articles I liked.

I think that what WikiLeaks did can be considered an act of information warfare and should be dealt with as such. The alleged source (Private Bradley Manning) should be charged with treason and sabotage, but WikiLeaks certainly aided in that regard and should be held accountable. I find it appalling that many in new and old media are justifying WL as transparency, etc... The WikiLeaks organization claims to be a "news" organization but also claims to be an "activist". Sorry guys, one or the other...

Check my FaceBook profile for links and comments I've done there. Also, I am particularly grateful for the ongoing discussion with Lillian over at The Atheist Conservative. Check out the following links for some of my contributions:
- My initial comments on http://www.theatheistconservative.com/2010/12/03/thanks-to-wikileaks/
- Two comments on http://www.theatheistconservative.com/2010/12/04/title-5/
- Two comments on http://www.theatheistconservative.com/2010/12/08/revelations-of-wickedness/
- Two comments on http://www.theatheistconservative.com/2010/12/10/the-leaking-ship-the-captain-and-the-kids/

I've also written some thoughts as part of a conversation with a friend. I've posted these here.

Some of the links I've shared or would like to share about the topic include:
- http://conflicthealth.com/how-did-manning-steal-the-cables/
- http://www.frumforum.com/the-unintended-lesson-of-wikileaks
- http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/04/charles-krauthammer-violate-u-s-security-and-suffer-no-consequences/
- http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/11/29/frum.wikileaks.iran/index.html
- http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/11/30/10_conversations_that_just_got_a_little_more_awkward
- http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/11/30/how_disastrous_is_wikileaks_for_the_state_department

As always, I enjoy discussing these topics and will gladly continue to do so. Just comment on the blog or get in touch with me.

Cheers,
Fernando

Wikileaks discussions

[ Over the course of the next little while I'll post content or links to discussions I've had or I am having on the whole WikiLeaks situation. ]

This first one is a debate I'm having with a friend on Facebook. His comments/questions in italics.


Hi Fernando. You said "I fully support prosecuting WikiLeaks and anyone else involved in this to the fullest extent of the law." Who is anyone else? I'd think it is The Guardian, The New York Times, and the people that talk about those news, including you and me, right? what he did was to disseminate relevant information, like any other journalist would do. The  difference is that he was just smarter an more effective.

There's a lot of assumptions on your statement that I think needs to be looked at.

First of all, there's fundamental differences between WikiLeaks and real news organizations:
- Assange himself refers to WikiLeaks as "activists", with an "agenda" for transparency (watch the TED video again). They also want to "punish" the US for starting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
- The news media - Guardian, NYT, ... - use information to publish news articles, not just release the raw data. Personally, I find it objectionable that sites such as the Guardian are publishing the whole cables now, but in reality I don't think they could be prosecuted for it. It is interesting to see that the Guardian makes an effort to distance itself from WikiLeaks in describing how they scrub information more thoroughly that WL.
- Also, WikiLeaks has *threatened* to release passwords to an already distributed "insurance file" in case of severe harm to the organization. How is that compatible with responsible behaviour in news media?

In essence, I don't look at WikiLeaks as "any other journalist": they may have wanted to be that, but by releasing cables with the explicit objective of changing foreign policy, they become activists and not media.

One thing not being taken into account is that the State Department ITSELF publishes ist cables, but usually after a long (25 years+) period just to avoid compromising foreign policy. Who the hell does Assange think he is in deciding for himself that foreign policy is best served by publishing the data now? He doesn't seem to care that policy initiatives will have to changed/scrapped, that people will have to be reassigned, that careers may have been cut short.

To me, "all involved" are:
- the original leaker, for espionage/treason
- those who designed and/or operated the secure networks that allowed this to happen, for gross negligence.
- WikiLeaks, for aiding in espionage/treason. I don't know what specific charges should apply here. Actually one of my links recently was on the complications of prosecuting WikiLeaks. I just think there has to be a way to prosecute someone who engages in this type of "information warfare" action against the national interests.

Actually he has a political agenda, and interestingly he takes full responsibility for that. On his interview on TED (http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html), he said "if a government is making an  effort to conceal an information, releasing it is probably good". In contrast, my personal conversation with my wife would not make the news... (unfortunately :) even if Assange released it.

In my opinion, by having a political agenda, he gives up the protection of being "press". He can't have it both ways. (see above).

Funny enough that he himself seems to take secrecy pretty seriously. When asked about the irony of WikiLeaks being so secretive, he sidestepped the question answering that there hadn't been any leaks at WikiLeaks yet. It'll be interesting to see the fallout of some people at WikiLeaks leaving because of him.

As for that quote, to me Julian Assange has no idea of what he is talking about, and that quote summarizes it perfectly.

Does he not recognize that within the sphere of international relations, governments have ENEMIES, publicly declared or not? Does he not recognize that the relationship between governments and individuals is ABSOLUTELY different than the one between government themselves?

I can see value in investigative reporting and denouncing specific crimes/coverups, such as Watergate, but where is the investigative reporting in exposing to the entire world the opinions of State Department officials about things?


Now let's look at HR. Why would someone want to hide the fact that an overqualified immigrant recently hired makes half of his peer's salary? This loaded question has the answer... Have you ever used that website that tells you what is your car dealers margin (confidential information), so you can negotiate with him and get a more "fair" price? It seems to me that more "advanced" companies are more transparent, so they focus their efforts on building their values, and not on perceptions. The same may happen with society.

Well, I could argue that the company has evaluated that the immigrant is not competent in negotiating a better salary and should not be paid more, or that the other peer offers more benefits to the company (maybe he has better relationships with others in the industry, maybe he has more experience with the company's products, etc...). As a shareholder in that company, I want it to make the best business decisions that will maximize the business benefits: it has to balance how much to pay staff to ensure that works gets done (products are released) and morale and quality don't suffer (so the company can profit).
When I bring up the HR example is this: how does your opinion of your colleagues changes if you know how much they make? To me, the disruption on the workforce would be significant.

What WikiLeaks appears to fail to understand is that international diplomacy is based primarily on NEGOTIATIONS, and revealing the internal discussions of one of those sides can compromise their position.

I think that equating the business relationship between an individual and a company with the diplomatic relations between countries is nowhere near appropriate.

As someone in the auto industry, you may know that the relantionship between the dealer andthe manufacturer is a lot more complex than just the "margin" the dealer gets on the invoice, right? There's joint marketing costs, factory assistance to dealers, documentation fees, prep fees, etc... I doubt any dealer will open up the entire accounting to you to negotiate a deal.

I think transparency is great, if handled properly. What I don't want is that being decided by the leader of an activist organization with no accountability to anyone but themselves.

However, our world may not be ready (yet) to deal with this level of transparency. We will keep following on the news. One thing I am sure, our society will still "function", even if it is with a different distribution of power.

I can go on a tangent here and say that this 'distribution of power' you speak of may end up being extremely negative to the Western values we live under. That's for another discussion, if you wish.

Now if we have to think too much on how to prosecute wikileaks, that suggests a witch hunt. I'd ask something different instead "why does wikileaks make us so uncomfortable"? 

I think that not a witch hunt, but the realization that the legal methods to hold someone accountable for their actions have to match the reality of the 21st century. Not sure how to do that yet...

As for what makes me uncomfortable about WikiLekas:
- the apparent inability (or unwillingness) of the government to hold accountable someone who is clearly attacking it.
- the celebration of this attack by so many in the Western world as "speaking truth to power" when in reality it is an almost anarchist organization doing damage with no regards for consequences

Thanks for the discussion!

Getting to know me - 25 things (Facebook)

Back in February 2009, there was a chain letter going around on Facebook where you were asked to post things about yourself so your friends could get to know you better. I decided to reproduce it here.
This being almost 2 years later, I chose add some commentary where appropriate.


Here we go, enjoy...


-----------------------------------


Hi,

OK, 25 things. I normally don't do chain letters but this one has a nice overall purpose - getting to know your friends better.

Rules:
Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)


Here goes:

1- I love to sleep, but I'm comfortable both working early in the morning or late into the night. Trouble is when I do both... :-)


2- I once walked home from work after an all-nighter in the office - 7.5 Kms. Felt like a lot more...


3- I love current events, especially global/national politics and economics. 2008 was great in the sense I followed news on US election, Canada election, the whole economic crisis, etc....
[ 2010 - Interesting things throughout: Middle East conflict, sovereign debt crisis, recently the WikiLeaks Cablegate, ... ]


4- I lost a ton of money on the stock markets in 2008. I'm a long-term investor, so I'm not too worried, but it's painful nonetheless.
[ 2010 - recovering, but still not where I was a couple of years ago ]


5- I am immensely proud of my brothers: one is a diplomat and the other on his way to becoming a brilliant academic.


6- I love golf but I play it terribly. I do have a goal of improving though.


7- I really enjoy puns and wordplay and keep trying new ones often, much to the despair of my wife and friends who end up cringing at some of them. "Why do the french only eat one egg? Because one egg is an oeuf..."
[ 2010 - the love of puns helped me name this blog... :-) ]


8- I like to spend time alone and reflect on things, from the trivial through the "big questions".


9- My favorite type of dessert is anything cold/chilled and moist - think chocolate mousse, ambrosia, etc...


10- I used to love movies but now that I'm not the target demographic anymore I can't watch half of them.


11- I've never done drugs or gotten majorly drunk in public.


12- I try not to dwell on things too much, but I often daydream about going back in time and "fixing" things -  middle school, high school, college, whatever. Never mind I dislike stories that involve time travel because of the obvious paradoxes.


13- I'm economically/fiscally conservative - small government, lower taxes, ... - but socially very liberal. Kind of a strange mix.


14- I'm kind of stuck in 80s/90s music.


15- I get distracted easily, so I'm quite interested in self-organization/productivity/... I read GTD and follow many of its principles. My inboxes are usually zero or very close to it, but the to-do list is big, of course.


16- I love to understand technology, but I'm becoming impatient at taking time for the little things - building a new PC for example. Nowadays I'll probably just buy one and use my time to do something else.


17- I love quotations - it is my way of using someone else's eloquence to say what I think.


18- My home office is a mess, and no matter what I do it keeps reverting back to this state after a few days.


19- I often get emotional when watching corny displays of heroism, altruism or adversity in movies. Think "Independence Day" (I memorized the President's speech), "Pearl Harbor", Armaggedon (I really wish they would relase the audio track of the president speech without the "that's your daddy" part in the end) and such...


20- I have a deep admiration for the United States and its founding principles. The past administration made that a very unpopular position to take.
[ 2010 - Unfortunately, I think the current administration is/was popular but is not doing well. ]


21- I believed there was enough evidence to suspect there were WMDs in Iraq and that the invasion was justified. The aftermath was - and is - a complete mess though.


22- It took me 10 tries to get a full driving license in Canada. 7 tries for G1 exit and 3 tries for G2 exit. That's what 10 years of bad driving habits do to you. Only 1 ticket in almost 20 years though...


23- I want to learn French, Mandarin and Spanish.


24- I love mountains. One of the most beautiful sights I've seen was flying close to Mt.Rainier near Seattle.


25- I'm a bit claustrophobic. I have an irrational fear of caves.

Self-development

"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival." 
W.E.Deming

One of the most important things I've realized over the past few years was that any complacency one has towards self-development is just a self-inflicted wound.

I strongly believe that life does not owe you anything: it is up to you to leverage your strengths, manage your weaknesses and work hard to achieve what you want. Along the way, it is up to you to decide what to do with your time. Over the past few years, I started to focus more on self-development. 

My personal journey of self-development is rooted on consolidating what I know/learned as well as picking up new topics/tools/areas of knowledge that are either of great interest to me or something that I want to be able to apply in my life. Some of the topics I've taken a great interest on include:

• Finance and Economics - Personal Finance, Investments, Economic Trends, ...
• Personal Development - Career, Introspection, Parenting, ...
• Others - Politics (world affairs, Middle East, ...), Science, Mathematics, Religion, etc...
• Network & Security Technologies - my professional area.

Along the way, I found some amazing resources. Here's a small sample:


PersonalMBA - This is the site that got me started. The premise is simple but immensely powerful/liberating: while the whole experience of an MBA program can't be reproduced, the actual contents of an MBA program can be picked up by reading the right books and committing to applying what one learns. The site has an amazing manifesto, as well as several lists of interesting books in many areas.


Academic Earth. A portal to FREE courses posted online from hundreds of universities world-wide. The same content is also available in iTunes. I've watched courses on Game Theory, Languages, Financial Markets, Psychology, ....


Khan Academy - I am relearning math - from reviews of Trigonometry and Algebra through to Calculus. Hopefully I can make it into more advanced math, as well as other subjects.


There's certainly more to write on this topic...

My Personal (Dis)Organization System - 2 of 2

Hello again,

In the first post, I described some of the high-level concepts I use to organize things. Now, on to specific tools...

The two tools that I can' live without - ok, a bit melodramatic, but you get the point - are MyLifeOrganized (MLO) and MindJet's MindManager. I have gladly paid subscription/software fees on both tools and will continue to do so.

MyLifeOrganized is a VERY capable to-do manager with superb outline capabilities. It allows for nested tasks, advanced recurrence schemes and is quite fast and inobstrusive to use. Without going into too many boring details, I use it to keep track of everything that "needs to be done" in my life. I have four master "branches" in my overall task list:

• Work - this is where I keep track of everything to do with my job - customers to follow up with, administrative tasks, etc...
• Career - this is DIFFERENT from work - here I keep track of my own personal development independent of work-specific topics. Certifications, professional memberships,etc... come up here.
• Home - this is a biggie: everything around the house, from keeping track of finances to household chores. One of the things I've done over time is to create "Prep Lists" for key times of the year that really streamline what needs to get done.
• Personal - this is for own projects, tasks, etc.. that are, well, personal. This is where I track specific birthdays or key dates to remember, fitness goals, self-study goals, etc...

How do I use MLO? Well, it is the central storage system for every task I need to do. Usually, I will add tasks to it from a variety of sources:

• After scanning inboxes - Google Mail, Outlook (MLO allows drag and drop from outlook, nice!), voicemails, even feeds such as Twitter or RSS.
• Directly into it from a Rapid task entry system tray icon.
• Directly into the main interface and being able to add details such as recurrence, dependencies, ...

For those familiar with mind-mapping, Mind Manager should need no introductions. It is a professional-grade (i.e expensive... :-( ) mind mapping application for Windows - there's a version for Mac too - that has a ton of features. I rely particularly heavily on linked maps and hyperlinks. To make a long story short, I create mind maps of any topic I'm working on as a way of organizing the information in whatever format makes more sense. Some of the maps I've created over the years include:

• A whole process of how to study for certification exams. This actually became a guest post on Mindjet.com (thanks Michael!).
• Personal and professional dashboards - usually single maps with a high-level view of things going on with links to specific maps or other files (Excel, Word, ...) as needed.
• Status maps, presenting in a single, clear page all the relevant for status for initiatives, from the state of personal finances (my wife and I review them regularly) to a project status report at work.

Mind Manager is the central repository for distilled information - anything I learn, anything I think about in a structured fashion, etc.... I have several maps on topics ranging from golf to mathematics, from wines to study notes, ...

There's still other tools out there that I use more or less on a regular basis, but I'm still trying to figure out how to best use them:

• Evernote shows great potential as a knowledgebase, but I still need to figure out how to best interface it with Mind Manager, which is my primary study tool. I also use it as a bookmark organizer, but certainly not to its full potential.
• Read it Later is great as a repository of "should check out" links that may eventually make their way into Evernote or some other repository.
• I like Google Reader's "Star" option for marking posts for later reading, but these usually just end up accumulating with limited follow-up. Gotta thing about this one...

So, I'll stop here on this topic... for now. I keep trying to optimize how I use these tools, so expect changes next time I come back to this topic...

iPad - part 2 of ?

So, continuing my iPad usage adventures...

I've talked about my usage of the iPad as an e-reader and as a limited Web browser. On to other things...

• Study / Research - I am an avid mindmapper - I've been using this tool/concept/methodology since 2001 in all areas of life and will write about it soon - and I was looking forward to using my iPad for mind mapping as well. There are several mindmapping apps, but iThoughtsHD is what I chose and use on a nearly daily basis. My main use of mindmapping is that I use iThoughtsHD on the iPad to capture notes/concepts as I absorb them being presented elsewhere - from watching Khan Academy videos on my iPhone to listening to podcasts or sitting on a meeting. It works extremely well and I can easily upload the maps I create to my PC(s) using Dropbox. iThoughtsHD also supports saving on native MindManager format, so I can easily incorporate the results in my other personal tools.

• Chess - I try to be mindful of not frittering time away playing games - I think there's WAAY too much interesting content to be absorbed to just spend time on games - but I do find myself playing a fair bit of chess on the iPad - tChess Pro is what I use the most. I'm really just a low-mid level amateur on the game, so no deep insights into other apps other than to say that tChessPro has a fantastic interface and that even my 5-year-old son loves to "play chess on Daddy's book"...

• On the topic of chess, I also rely on a "Home screen bookmark" (basically a Web bookmark that shows up as a regular icon on the OS) to take me to RedHotPawn.com, where I play correspondence chess on a regular basis. The RHP people are savvy enough to have an iPhone/iPad version of their site that shows up beautifully and invites gameplay... Recommended!

OK, iPad usage to continue on another post! I hope this is useful to people.

Adventures in Recycling!

 = 

While I am quite skeptical/opposed to much (if not all) of the environmental activism out there - one day I'll write about the Climate Change / Global Warming / ... -  we do recycle things at home and try to be mindful not wasting too many resources. With that in mind, this past Saturday I took some cardboard to the one of the local recycling depots (Unionville).

As I went to drop off the cardboard, I noticed a wall with hundreds of books people left to be recycled - everything from fiction (hardcover and paperback) to academic books, computer books, college and high-school textbooks, ... ALL FOR THE TAKING.

According to the nice people who run the depot, one can just go there and pick anything they want. The remaining books are recycled (thrown in with the cardboard) about once a week or so.

I spent a good 15-30 min there going over everything they had, both in the shelves and on boxes in the ground, and walked off with about 20 books or so. It's the closest thing I've come to a "free lunch" - if I like the books I keep them, if not I just go back there and recycle them!

Among my finds, Jim Collins' "Good to Great", Tom Clancy "Debt of Honour", a nice Weight Watchers cookbook, several books on investments, text books on Math, Statistics and Accounting, plus many others.

Needless to say, I strongly suggest people take a look at their own centres to see if something like this is available! Certainly not as diverse as a library (we use the Markham libraries a LOT), but a great way to get some free books!

My Personal (Dis)Organization System - 1 of 2

I'm always curious about how people organize themselves in this day and age - e-mail, tasks, contacts, etc... - so I can continue to fine tune how I do things myself. I once heard the term 'productivity pr0n'. I don't think it applies to me, but almost... :-)

I decided to break down this post in two:
- a high-level overview of key concepts.
- a description of tools I use to implement my system.

I have read - and heartily recommend - David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD). Some people treat it as gospel - it does have a cult-like following - but I took some things from it and that was that. More than anything, I liked the concepts of:
- Recognizing one's "Inboxes".
- Breaking tasks down to actionable items (define what the "next action" is)
- Having a specific method of handling incoming things: Do now, Delete it, Delegate it, Store it for Reference, Treat it as a Project, move to a "Someday" area of your system.
- Doing periodic reviews.

I also embraced the concept of 'Inbox Zero'. This is extremely liberating - I know that anything not in my Inbox is properly captured elsewhere in my system and I can clearly see what is new.

Finally, I need somewhere to keep the information I accumulate. I would like to build something like a Personal MemEx, but my system is far simpler.

So, to end this post, the key concepts I use are:
- I have multiple (but clearly defined) Inboxes: personal and work email, social media (FB,Twitter,RSS), personal and work voicemail, my own ideas, etc...
- For everything that comes in I process it the same way, deciding what I need to do with it.
- I keep track of things on a somewhat coherent personal knowledgebase.

More stuff on the next post.