This is not a political message. I am going to make a point about how technology can help us collect and then connect the dots. Really. Read on.
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Indifference.
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Inaction.
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Incompetence.
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Irrelevance.
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The government response to the catastrophic natural disaster in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast has been an embarrassment to all Americans and an added injury to the people left for days to fend for themselves. It's not enough that those who claim to be public servants are running around telling us they couldn't have begun delivering food, water, and security forces to the center of New Orleans the day after the storm, while we watched news media and local workers reach the scene within hours after the eye of Katrina passed.
No, those same indifferent, incompetent "public servants" are preventing private organizations from doing the work for them.
Here's the politically necessary explanation from the American Red Cross website:
Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
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Can we find any bright spot in the dismal performance of our government? Well, maybe it's taking a very large step toward making itself irrelevant.
What's this got to do with KM, information design, collecting and connecting dots? Well, my choice of the word "irrelevant" to describe the government comes from a wonderfully optimistic view of our near future in a sci-fi novel from 1989 (NOTE: that's pre-WWW), Earth by David Brin. The society envisioned by Brin is filled with connected "interest groups" that range across scientific, social, religious, recreational, and other categories. These interest groups have evolved to the point where they identify, discuss, research, and solve problems before government bureaucracies can act — indeed, sometimes before officials even become aware of the problem. For a more current vision of what the Web can help us accomplish among groups of networked citizens visit Jon Husband's Wirearchy and Wirearchy blog.
Are we there yet? Sadly, for the people of the Gulf Coast, no.
But signs are growing out of the disaster that we may be headed in that direction. We've seen bloggers providing information from the affected areas (like New Orleans lawyer Ernest "ernie the attorney" Svenson and the annonymous interdictor - with pictures and webcams) and others discussing what the crisis means in the larger context (like Dave Pollard's Save the World). We have librarians collecting useful information links for all of us to collect more dots to help us formulate solutions (Librarians Index to the Internet - Katrina resource page).
Update (9/6/05): direct link to Librarians Index to the Internet hurricane resource page.
We know we have private organizations with the capacity to collect and apply donations (like the Red Cross, Mercy Corps, and Habitat for Humanity) — organizations that operate both on the Web and on the ground.
So maybe people - not just Americans, but people worldwide - will hear some of the angry outbursts from local officials like the Mayor of New Orleans and a local official I heard on TV (see report on Reuters) accuse the lethargic Federal government of murder. Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, spoke out on NBC's Meet the Press program [Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005 — six days after Katrina struck], after describing how one woman drowned when promised help failed to arrive:
"[Hurricane Katrina] will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history," he said."It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans," he said. "Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now."
He demanded congressional hearings on what went wrong in the chaotic aftermath of the hurricane.
"They've had press conferences. I'm sick of press conferences. For God's sake, shut up and send us somebody."
Maybe people will hear and decide that governments are too indifferent, too lethargic, too corrupt, too tied up in bureaucracy and politics to act in the face of immediate disaster. Maybe we will begin to use the resources that the World Wide Web puts — literally — at our fingertips. Maybe we can begin to live the One World vision that technology makes so tantalizingly close.
Maybe government, as we've practiced it so far, can soon become irrelevant — like the ceremonial monarchies some still cling to.
I just had to stop what I was doing and post when I had the latest CIO magazine stuck in front of me, open to an article entitled, "Needed: Good Writers" (available online). The article makes a number of good points about the importance of writing skills in work settings. But the one that jumped out at me noted the finding in a study by the National Commission on Writing that ranked "e-mail as the number-one form of writing in America, followed closely by presentation/ visual writing."
Visual writing.
As I've written before, adding graphics to writing can greatly enhance both the clarity and the brevity of the text. I hope this isn't too "male" an example, but think back to sandlot football and how much it helped in getting the play called quickly and clearly to have the quarterback diagram the play in the dirt.
I'm going to use a personal example/experiment to test my contention that adding graphics to your writing helps your audience understand the message better and faster.
The Story
Recently a good friend came up to Yvonne and said she'd just heard that congratulations were in order. Yvonne was puzzled as to which recent event the friend had in mind (we've been pretty busy starting a new business, a new blog, and so on). So Yvonne was even more puzzled when it turned out to be our engagement.
We've been engaged for more than a year. So, to clear up any confusion or failure on our part to tell any of our other friends, I thought I'd do the whole thing over:
The Message
Now, because we're both bloggers I can easily go to Yvonne's blog and pick one of her recent posts, Female-Friendly at Home (which I certainly try to be :-)) and use the track-back link to send her a "ping" and get her attention. Just in case, though, feel free to send her an e-mail or comment on her blog to let her know you saw something here that she ought to take a look at.
Once she gets here, how long do you think it will take for my message to be seen and understood?
What will she say?
Stop back and check the comments.
Wecome to new blogger, Nick Duffill and his Beyond Crayons blog, which focusing on "mind mapping" tools for visualizing information. His tag line is "Businesslike visualization for late adopters."
Nick's initial post, Time for reform in mapping legislation, compared common problems seen in PowerPoint presentations to similar information design issues in mind mapping. Here's a taste of his excellent insights:
... the threshold at which decoration interferes with content is quickly reached, and you find yourself wondering if the decoration is a substitute for content.
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... decoration must pass a simple test - does it carry any information? If it doesn't, then don't be tempted to use it.
Visit Nick's blog and you'll likely add it to your link list and RSS subscriptions, as I have.
The only thing I'd like to see him add are some visual examples of his mind mapping ideas. The MindJet software site (which Nick uses and recommends) gives some examples of mind maps, but it would be great to see just how Nick uses it in his own thinking about improving the information design of mind maps.
I've been remiss in failing to mention the Stanford Persuasive Technologies Lab's (relatively) new blog, Captology Notebook. 
Just the techie-tweaking comics in the occasional "Tuesday Funnies" posts make the blog worth checking out.
Providing yet another reason for me to be thankful I met her, my fiance Yvonne DiVita ran an interview on her Lip-Sticking blog, with "Smart Man Online" William Slawski. Yvonne's second question honed in on Slawski's discussion of credibility on his A Nasty Bit of Business blog, which led promptly to the new Captology Notebook blog.
The blog has been up since April of this year and gives a public glimpse into the work at the Lab. Because it has already accumulated some wonderful material on how information technology can be used (for good or ill) to persuade people, it is well worth browsing through the archives. To help induce you to do so, I recommend locating all of the TOP TEN "Behavoirs Web Sites Want From You." Each entry in this series describes a common tactic used on Web sites to presuade you to provide information and explains "What they gain (and you lose)." Many of these posts include screen shots to illustrate the tactics discussed.
The first post in the series, back on May 13, introduced the philosophy behind the Lab's work: "the web is about persuasion, not information. Our lab has identified the top ten behaviors that websites want from you." The last post in the series appeared on September 8. It is well worth your time to look through all of them.
In another early post, Lab Director BJ Fogg, noted their interest in the persuasive power of stories and his conversation with Jessica Hammer on the topic:
At one point in the conversation I said, "Narrative is the one persuasion strategy for which there is no defense. A good story always has an impact at some level."The Captology Notebook blog will also lead you to the site for the Web Credibility Project, another of BJ Fogg's projects at Stanford.Jessica's response was a smart one: "The only defense," she said, "is a better story."
Hope you enjoy the discoveries as much as I have. And remember, don't thank me, thank Yvonne!
Recovering attorney, serial entrepreneur, grandpa, with a passion for learning new and connecting old "dots" for creative solutions -- and helping others do the same!
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