My other podcast

I have a bicycling podcast
This is a lot of fun for me. I really enjoy doing this. It is a great way to showcase a passion of mine, my great friends, and a great solution to some vexing problems our society has. Anything that helps resolve the energy, fitness and the obesity problems we have is a great thing to be involved with

My Bicycle Club podcast:

• HTML Version
• RSS "Podcast" Feed

Oh yea, it is also on iTunes!

SJSU Reflection

It is Spring Break
This is the wettest Spring Break I recall. It is cold, much more like January than the end of March. Normally winters here are so short, not this year. The halls are empty on campus. I can hear footsteps echo as we walk. It is quiet time, the puddles are undisturbed. It's a great time for reflection and enjoying them.

Goodnight Knight Ridder

San Jose Mercury News Employees Seek to Save Paper and Their Jobs
Employees of the San Jose Mercury News, fearing that the planned sale of their newspaper will lead to staffing and coverage cutbacks, launched a website that asks readers to push for a new owner committed to high-quality journalism. The website [Link] appeared just four days after McClatchy Co. said it intended to sell the Mercury News and 11 other papers around the country as part of its $4.5-billion acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc., a San Jose-based chain that owns 32 daily papers.

Today at SJSU

Podcast: CSUEU Board of Directors Meeting Mar. 04

CSUEU Board of Directors meeting, March 4, 2006
These conversations were recorded at the CSUEU Board of Directors, SEIU Local 2579, meeting in Sacramento, California. It is about 45 minutes long. It is made up of three seperate recordings.

1. CSUEU President Pat Gantt's president's report to the board.
2. A recorded conversation with CSEA President J.J. Jelincic.
3. J.J. Johnston SEIU's California Area Director's presentation on the International's review of local jurisdictions in California.

To listen to this podcast, click on the podcast button immediately below this text, Podcast here:

Technorati Tags: unions, CSEA, CSUEU, SEIU, ssloansjca

Thinking of the passing of my sister

Thinking of passings
The following started out as an E-mail to a friend who lost a loved one and ended up as this blog post:

With today being the one-year anniversary of the passing of my sister Lura, I have been thinking about the passings that we all have in our lives. I have been there at the beginning and at the end of life in this world. What I keep coming back to is the transience of much of what, in the moment, seems so important and the preciousness of what, in the moment, seems so expendable. We spend so much of our time focused on our work and tasks we let take precidence of how we spend our time. Yet, the most precious commodity is the time we spend with those we love. Too often we let that slip through our fingers thinking we can get it back "later."

The most important aspect of life is love and precious moments lost can never be recaptured.

Protest at SJSU

Faculty, students and staff rally for higher quality
Today at SJSU a group of faculty, students and staff spoke out on issues related to quality education at our university. They spoke in opposition to higher fees, reduced class availability and more crowded classrooms and in favor of better wages and working conditions for faculty. It seems amazing to me that in a flat world where our citizens are having to compete on a global scale that we are cutting education and making it more inaccessible. It seems to me we should be going in the other direction. The group of about 75 marched on the office of SJSU President Don Kassing.

Technorati Tags: unions, CSEA, CSUEU, ssloansjca

Emerging Technologies of Importance for Labor Unions

Emerging and Disruptive Technologies
Emerging technologies represent a new paradigm that at first grows on the edge in relative obscurity and often seems to be of no threat or even of little utility to users of the sustaining technology. Then through development of new features and unexpected capabilities relative to the previous paradigm, the new emerging technologies disrupt and supplant the existing technologies. These kinds of technologies are called disruptive technologies and their utility makes them impossible to avoid. Preparing for these new technologies is the key to making the best use of them and perhaps gaining a strategic advantage with them when dealing with institutions that may not be prepared for them.

• RSS, (Really Simple Syndication)
  
  Positives:
  • E-mail is broken
  • E-mail is insecure, RSS is a trusted source
  • Combines push and pull technologies
  • Client centric packaging and consumption
  Negatives:
  • E-mail is ubiquitous
  • RSS has an adoption curve ahead
  • Requires act of subscription
  • Requires client software (aggregator) and configuration
    
    
• Podcasting
  Really a subset of RSS & Blogging. Can be thought of as audio/video blogging.
  
  Positives:
  • Video or audio
  • Puts human voice and/or face to union
  • Allows for conversations
  • Capture of oral history
  • Bandwidth forgiving
  Negatives
  • Requires either a fast or a pervasive Internet connection to move files
  • Not indexed
  • Time consuming
  • Production considerations


• Blogging
  (Duplication is intentional)
  
  Positives:
  • Hierarchies based on time
  • Conversational
  • Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies
  • Eases publication of web content
  Negatives:
  • Hierarchies based on time
  • Conversational
  • Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies
  • Eases publication of web content


• Portable device technologies
  A whole range of technologies associated with affordable portable devices:
  • Camera Phones
  • Text messaging
  
  Positives:
  • Puts the power of documentation in our members hands
  • Enables instant access
  • Can group send information
  • Smart Mobs
  • Smaller, cheaper devices than computers
  • Extends reach of Internet
  Negatives
  • Requires having, charging and using portable devices
  • Small devices easy to lose
  • Time consuming and learning curve
  • Generation gap with this technology
    
    
• OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language)
  
  Positives:
  • Hierarchies can be linked, mapped, imported/exported
  • OPML files can be linked to form a tree of information
  • All kinds of things relate to hierarchies
  • With an intuitive taxonomy it is easy to find information
  • Can share & import lists of RSS feeds
  Negatives:
  • Hierarchies need to be intuitive
  • Not clear that symbolic links are supported
  • Grafting and pruning issues
  • Very new, spec subject to change
    
    
• VoIP (Voice/Video over Internet Protocol)
  
  Positives:
  • Can allow personal video and/or audio conferencing
  • Clients like skype are free
  • Can save us gobs of money in travel expenses
  • Collaboration is greatly enhanced
  Negatives:
  • Human interaction critical
  • Initial cost a barrier to entry
  • Considered a peer-to-peer technology may violate acceptable use guidelines
  • Can be bandwidth intensive
    
    
• Other Web 2.0 technologies
  The web as a platform
  • Social Networking (FOAF, XFN)
  • Wikis and other collaboration software
  • Mapping

In conclusion
Most core technologies that we now use and consider part of our daily lives were once "nascent" and were considered emerging technologies. For example, 100 years ago the steam powered passenger train was the primary mode of interstate travel and automobiles and airplanes were nascent technologies. The same can be said for the telephone, the personal computer, the Internet and the Web. In time these technologies evolved and the previously existing paradigm was disrupted and devolved. This is the lesson of history. The advantage goes to the person who sees the change when it is on the horizon and is prepared to timely apply the new technology.

Link to PowerPoint file for presentation [ppt, 204KB, link]

Technorati Tags: unions, CSEA, CSUEU, ssloansjca