Nine Shift

This Week: Time to Take Action

“What’s even more fun than making the predictions is seeing them come true.”  Julie Coates, May 2011

This week we feature actions that institutions have to take - - now.

Photo: One room school house built in 1908.  Photo by Nine Shift blog photographer Doyle Darvis.

Could the white board replace PowerPoint?

Could the white board replace PowerPoint?
   A Gen Xer in a meeting recently endorsed the white board over PowerPoint, saying the white board is more interactive and engaging.  “When PowerPoint appears, I start texting my girlfriend,” he noted. 
   PowerPoint is of course linear, one-way communication that has become deathly boring in the hands of many Boomers.
   Could the old fashioned white board replace PowerPoint? There are online white boards of course. But this was the old fashioned kind. What do you think?

Organization Chart Collapses

So fun to witness the collapse of the Organizational Chart and dominance of the Network.
    We were at an organizing meeting for a citizens election organization in the recall election of our Tea Party state senator.
   The participants were discussing how to structure the informal organization.  An organizational chart was suggested, with span of control and no more than 5 people to be supervised by one person. Then someone else drew a network on the white board. A debate began.
   Afterwards Julie found research on the advantages of networks over organizational charts. There are more lines of communication.  And the lines are shorter.  So communication is far superior.  At the next meeting everyone approved a network structure.  This is how history is made, before your own eyes.

Photo: Local citizen at organization meeting with outline of one of two proposed structures.

Does working alone suck?

What do you think? Does working alone suck?

The people at NextSpace think so.  It's an alternative to the Internet cafe, public library, and your home office. Except it costs money.

Check out the USA Today story here and see the space with a 3 min video.
Then come back here and comment and tell us whether you do (or would) prefer to work alone, or with others.

Why Europe will beat the U.S.

Here's why Europe will beat the U.S. economically in the 21st century.

1.They know of, speak about, and embrace the Knowledge Society and knowledge workers.
2. They have universal health care.
3. Crime is low, guns not allowed.
4. Wireless Internet access and speed is a national priority, not a private enterprise concern.
5. Military and war expenses are low, security and anti-terrorism work is a high priority.
6. They take care of the environment better, waste less, pollute less, look to green sustainability.
7. They have trains and light rail.  Really fast trains too.
8. They have a better tax structure that creates more equality in society.
9. Governments set limits on the private sector, creating a better balance between business/private good and the societal good.|(last in our series Europe beating America)

Young people love Europe. Photo in Gardens of Luxembourg in Paris, by Julie Coates.

Politics: Don't Be Like Europe

   America has its envy eye in all the wrong places.
   Americans think the global competition is China, when it is really Europe.  Americans disdain a “socialist” Europe as the wrong example, when in fact Europe is doing almost everything right.  It has a high standard of living, is competing globally.  It is taking over the New York Stock Exchange, how’s that for in-your-face symbolic realism. And yet Americans still don’t get it.   Politicians scare Americans by telling them we are becoming like Europe, and I just hope we wake up and start becoming like Europe before we fall too far behind.  (second to last in a series on Europe beating America)

Hat store window in Paris, photo by Julie Coates.