Successful Blog

5 + 1 Safety Rules for Dangerous Deadlines: Finding Quality Time

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The Now Infamous Deadline Post

power writing at work

It happens often. A delicious project, a dream idea, lands firmly on our desks. It’s something we could make truly outstanding. Just as we’re about to fall in love, we find out one last detail — the inevitable string attached.

“It’s due when?”

“The drop-dead date is somewhere between ridiculous and can’t be done.”

A deadline like that is a dangerous thing.

A deadline like that puts too much focus on schedule.

Quality and Schedule

The quiet conflict between quality and schedule can be a problem on almost any project. The problem stems from a basic reality.

Schedule is something that everyone can see.
Quality is something you have to judge.

Human nature makes us want to look good in places where people look.


[Read more…]

Net Neutrality 9-14-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

New Report Skewers Telco Spin on Competition

Why has the United States fallen behind the rest of the world in accessible and affordable broadband service?

The answer, according to a report [PDF] released by Free Press, the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union, is marketplace failures wrought by phone and cable companies’ near monopoly control of last-mile broadband markets.

The 44-page report, Broadband Reality Check II, exposes the truth behind America’s digital decline: A marketplace controlled by the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast has left Americans with higher prices, slower speeds and no meaningful competition for high-speed Internet service.

It exposes the lie behind phone companies’ repeated claims that the U.S. has a diverse marketplace, with myriad broadband choices for the consumer.

It decisively skewers the notion — put forth by telco executives and their high-paid shills — that “fierce competition” precludes Net Neutrality protections.

[ . . . ]

Broadband Reality Check II also finds:

The 14 other OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] nations saw higher overall net growth in broadband adoption than the United States from 2001 to 2005.

Consumers in other countries enjoy broadband connections that are far faster and cheaper than what is available here. U.S. consumers pay nearly twice as much as the Japanese for connections that are 20 times as slow.

U.S. broadband prices aren’t dropping: Cable modem prices are holding constant or rising, and DSL customers on average are getting less bandwidth per dollar than just a year ago.

The market share of “third platform” alternatives like satellite, wireless and broadband over powerline technologies has actually decreased over the past five years.

The report contradicts the rosy picture painted by the Federal Communications Commission, by exposing the agency’s failure to rein in broadband monopolies . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Interview 9.2: Dr. Tammy Lenski, Mediator, Coach, Blogger

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How Does One Mediate from a Blog?

Dr. Tammy Lenski

Dr. Tammy Lenski helps folks sort out a dispute and converse constructively, even when they’re frustrated. That’s her role as mediator — part coach, part strategist — in helping people solve communication problems. Tammy began blogging early in her business. Let’s take a look at what she has to say about it.

Welcome back, Tammy! About blogging, how and why did you bring your business to blogging?

I heard of blogging years ago when it first began, created a Blogger account, and put up a few posts. Back then it was mostly teenagers writing about their lives and I just couldn’t figure out how to get my clients interested, so I dropped it. Then, a couple years later, I read about the ways that blogging platforms can serve as content management systems. That got my attention, because I had hundreds of e-zine articles I was trying to manage effectively on a standard website—way too much work. So, I got a WordPress account, started educating myself about blogs (the idea of business blogging had been born by then and was in its earliest stages), and jumped in. I got to write about things that interest my clients, had an easy way to manage lots of articles on my site, and could interact with and learn from my readers.

What’s been the biggest surprise about bringing your business to blogging?

How easy it’s been to create real connections with people—like you—via the digital world. Though I was creating web pages and using email very early on in the development of those technologies, I was skeptical about real relationships being possible via the web. I thought that only happened with weird people who sat alone in their apartments at 2 a.m.!

Next the challenges and important issues of a mediation business.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related Articles
Interview 9.1: A Conversation with Dr. Tammy Lenski
Interview 7.1: Meet Cat Morley, World Designer
2.1 Ellen Talks about Success
1.1 Meet Indie

Link Leak Virus Overtakes Parallel Universe!

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Everyone Knew the Time Warps Weren’t the Only Thing

If we could have as many lives to be as many versions of ourselves as we could be, what might we become? The outer limits of Successful-Blog had that conversation and weird musical sounds were heard coming from every category in the sidebar. No one actually said that an extraterrestrial would be a choice, but . . . some thoughts in that direction seemed to come up.

The Link Leak Virus was to be part of the whole operation, whether we were Mother Teresa, Mark Cuban, Lucille Ball, or Donald Trump.The Link Leak Virus is a special strain of the indie virus with blogtipping mutations that occur in threes. But we were in a summertime frame of mind.

Welcome to all of the new folks who came. It was great fun having you!

Cool links were shared.

What Actually Happened?

And this week Rick Cockrum of Shards of Consciousness found a creative way to tell the story of last night’s event.

AdLib is happy just as he is
Fresh bread close at hand, hair down to his chair
His blog back in biz, and music filling his air.

Joe is a lawman,
A wookie for real
Protecting us all with McGyver’s great skill.

Scorpia, too, is content
As she already is
Everyday fantasy is already her biz.

Liz directs song and the dance,
Electronics begone.
Children, flowers and writing Is where she belongs.

Renee comes in singing,
Dancing dog in her arms.
Man and canine alike, she soothes with her charm.

Christine’s in Missouri
Her ballads filling college breeze.
She stopped and said hi before the clock made her flee.

Chris Cree is traveling,
A hero in the stars,
Humming Led Zeppelin, escaping storms in his car.

Seanrox cooked at the barbie,
A feast he laid out
While being James Bond with a bottle of stout.

Douglas dropped in among us,
Just to say hi
Then time warped him away, away to fly.

Ben plays great hockey,
And cartoons on the side,
With Basil his donkey, round the world he does fly.

Starbucker wings in
Home from the West,
Song and dance in his soul, with his wife he does rest.

Cat steps in for a moment,
Still fuzzy with sleep,
Tea in the morning, as to bed we softly creep.

Tony’s in a time warp, two hours behind,
Somewhere he is starving
Drawing comics so fine.

Phil zips by so fast
Pac-man behind him
In a kung-fu world Donkey Kong races past.

Wendy said it was fun
From time zones away.
In the alternate world she stops by to play.

And Ellen pops in
With a comment from home
She read the discussion as a way to be grown.

So another mic closes
It was quite a feat.
We think of you often until the next week.
— Rick Cockrum of Shards of Consciousness

Thanks, Rick, for that great summary! Thanks Everyone, for coming!
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
The Mic Is On! We’re Having Parallel Lives!

5 +1 Whole Brain Steps to Believable Strategic Goals OR Find Your Bliss Without Wasting Time

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But the Sky Is WAY Up There!

Strategic Plans logo

When I introduced this series with the overview The 5 Step Strategy that Saved a Company Can Also Get You to Your Dream, Chris and Hendry Lee pointed out in the comments a mistake that is easy to fall into — setting an unbelievable goal.

After all, we’ve decided. We want to get going, make things happen, put our strategy in place. So let’s choose a goal that’s mighty, powerful, and going to get us there now. Friends and family, thinking the problem is self-estem, often advise and encourage us to do just that.

Soon enough we end up with a goal like this one.

“Find Your Bliss and the Money Will Follow.” That’s a dream — too nebulous to be a strategic goal. I can imagine bliss, sort of, but I can’t define it. I can’t put my arms around it or draw a map to show me or anyone how to get there.

The irony is that when we face an impossible goal, we become overwhelmed, lose that self-same self-esteem, and talk ourselves out of our quest, knowing we’d fail. After all, I can’t ahieve or become what I can’t define or see — I’m not foolish enough to try that.

End of quest, end of strategy to improve,.we’re left without the goal, somehow feeling less for even thinking about trying. We might even be thinking that strategy is something that other folks do . . .

Pfft! balderdash, piffle, and keruffle. All four apply to that response. Add to that . . .

Unbelievable!

We’re not what’s wrong in this picture. The goal is. [Read more…]

Net Neutrality 9-13-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Net Neutrality and the DMCA

. . . Buried deep within the legalese and copyright mumbo jumbo of the DMCA is a single but little read clause that could, in theory, have a dramatic impact on the net neutrality fight, especially if net neutrality never passes.

[ . . .]

When the DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998] (PDF) became law in 1998, telecoms breathed a sigh of relief. After years of uncertainty, it was revealed that they could not be held liable for any copyright infringement that passed through their network. As a “transitory communications” provider, all they had to do was meet a few simple requirements and they never had to worry about being held accountable.

However, it’s one of those requirements that may now prove to be a sticking point. The second requirement for a “transitory communications” provider reads as follows (emphasis added):

“The transmission, routing, provision of connections, or copying must be carried out by an automatic technical process without selection of material by the service provider.”

In short, the DMCA gave telecoms a pass on copyright infringement suits so long as they didn’t make any selection of the content that passed through their service. As long as telecoms are blindly routing requested content to its end destination, they could not be held accountable for that material.

However, the minute they start intelligently discriminating one type of material from another, their situation becomes in doubt. They no longer meet the qualifications of “transitory communications” provider and now have no clear status under the DMCA.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE