Category: Uncategorized

Reading Novels is Good for You

kramerbooks

Is reading online actually reading? An article in the New York Times recently addressed that very subject, profiling the reading habits of teenagers and their parents. Many educators are concerned that kids would rather read off a glowing screen than dead trees. What kind of effect is this having on the ability to concentrate and absorb information? Even some adults are wondering if Google making us stupid.

The truth is that the generation that grew up with the internet has different information processing and communication skills and preferences. They are digital natives who are hunters and gathers of information from multiple sources, technologically adept creatures who then want to mix and remix what they’ve discovered into their own stories. Rather than being engrossed in the linear narrative of a dead author, they want to collaborate with their peers on fluid, hypertextual adventures, such as fan fiction.

Yet, let me rise to the defense of the novel. And not just because it’s an important art form that needs to be preserved. Novels teach essential skills, such as concentration, careful reading (not skimming web pages) and the ability to frame and express a story. These are vital for everyone, whether you’re a college student writing a paper or an executive making a presentation. The New York Times article has a great example on the importance of reading novels:

Literacy specialists are just beginning to investigate how reading on the Internet affects reading skills. A recent study of more than 700 low-income, mostly Hispanic and black sixth through 10th graders in Detroit found that those students read more on the Web than in any other medium, though they also read books. The only kind of reading that related to higher academic performance was frequent novel reading, which predicted better grades in English class and higher overall grade point averages.

So here’s to the novel! Not only is reading Hemingway, Faulker or Fitzgerald a good way to spend an afternoon, it will also make you smarter.

StrengthsFinder 2.0

I took the StrengthsFinder 2.0 test. It asks you a series of questions on how you like to work, how you get along with other people and how you’ve organized your life. You have 20 seconds to answer each question because they want your gut responses, without a lot of thinking. The same kind of questions are asked again and again, in slightly different formulations, to find out how strongly you feel about something. When answering, you choose a range of responses from “agree strongly” to “disagree strongly.”

When you’re done with this online test (it takes 20-30 minutes to complete), you’re presented with a list of your top five strengths.  Here’s mine:

  1. Input
  2. Strategic
  3. Intellection
  4. Maximizer
  5. Learner
I took this test three years ago, when it was part of Now, Discover Your Strengths.  Interestingly, I had the same five strengths when I took it last, just in a slightly different order.
What’s different in StrengthsFinder 2.0 is, along with a list of your strengths, it provides a couple of additional tools to help you become happier and more effective. The first is a personalized guide that contains:

• Brief descriptions of all five of your strengths

• Your Personalized Strengths Insights, which describe what makes you stand out from others with the same theme in their top five

• Some examples of what the theme “sounds like” — real quotes from people who also have the theme in their top five

• Ten very practical ideas for action for each strength

• A Strengths Discovery Activity to get you thinking about how your talents and your investment work together to build strengths that you can apply to your work and personal life

• A Strengths-Based Action Plan for review with a friend, manager, or colleague.

There’s also a simple online tool where you can pick from their suggestions on how to improve yourself and build a custom guide of practical ideas for you to follow.

If you’re a compulsive planner, StrengthsFinder 2.0 is for you. But I think it’s also useful for people going through a career transition or just wondering if they’re in the right job.

I strongly agree with the core philosophy of StrengthsFinder – you should concentrate your efforts on what you’re best at, rather than trying to improve upon your weaknesses. Not only is this a more efficient use of your time, it’s more likely to lead to happiness.

DC Shorts – It's On!

I’ve been involved with the DC Shorts Film Festival as a film and screenplay judge for the past couple years. It’s such a good time.  The movies are interesting, the parties are awesome and there’s a very friendly, constructive buzz about the whole affair. This isn’t Hollywood – these are real people, just like you, who make great short films

DC Shorts will take place Sept 11 – 18 and will feature more 100 short films from around the world plus parties, seminars and a screenplay competition. I was a judge for this year’s screenplay competition. From dozens of submissions, we selected six finalists – these are short scripts which will be read aloud at a staged reading during the festival. The audience will get to vote on the winner, who will receive $2000 to turn their script into a short film.

All the action takes place at E Street Cinema downtown and nearby venues.  If you like booze, creative people and interesting films, then it’s an excellent festival to attend.

http://www.dcshorts.com

 

 

Friday's Links

Here’s what interested me this week:

As any visitor to DC can attest, this area is not known for customer service. Still, threatening a customer’s privates is probably not the way to encourage repeat visits. 
The New Yorker Pretends to be the Onion
My friend Colin takes on the whole Obama/New Yorker controversy and makes a comedic stand for free speech. 
Generation Y Perspectives at NASA
This presentation has been routed at another acronym, NOAA (where I work). If you’re young or Internet-savvy, there’s a lot of “well, that’s obvious” moments in this presentation but the unfortunate truth is that government is not doing these things.

SnagFilms Rocks

Ted Leonsis, rich with AOL money has been plowing his considerable fortune into the documentary business.  Today, he launched a new web site called SnagFilms that allows you to watch great documentaries for free online. One of the first docs available is DIG! This should be required watching for anyone who thought it would be cool to be in a band. It follows the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre as they fight it out for indie music success. One band makes it, the other collapses into drug-fueled insanity. And while it may not be pretty, both bands created some great music.

Leonsis has always been tech-savvy and his site features tools that allow you to easily embed links to your favorite docs, whether you’re on Myspace, Facebook, iGoogle, Blogger or have your own web site.  Like so:

Screenplay Updates

It’s been a busy summer and I’ve continued to write and enter screenplays in contests.

Accept All Changes
This somewhat saccharine short script is about a romance between a bike courier and a bored technical writer. I was inspired to write this after being a judge for the DC Shorts Short Screenplay Contest. After judging other people’s work, I wanted to see if I could write a cute short script. Accept All Changes is a Quarterfinalist in the American Gem Literary Festival.

Mount Pleasant
Despite winning the Film DC Screenplay Competition a couple years ago with this feature-length script, I’ve continued to enter it into well-known screenplay competitions to get the word out about this urban drama. I learned recently that Mount Pleasant is a Quarterfinalist in the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards. 

Both of these scripts are set in DC, where I live.  Write what you know!

Friday's Links

Here’s what interested me this week:

Ghost Bike in Honor of Alice Swanson
This was an awful tragedy in an area I know well. A young woman on a bike was killed by a garbage truck near Dupont Circle.

Metro Station Prostitution Ring
They won’t give you change. They can’t get the trains to run on time.  But, they’ll find you a prostitute.

Let Our Congress Tweet!
In another story that makes you go, “duh”, Congress wants to ban itself from using the tools everyone else in the world uses. 

 

Should Government Employees Blog?

This is 2008.  Everyone these days has a blog.  Yet, within some sectors of government, there is resistance to using this not-so-new communications tool.  Why?  What are the “perceived risks”?

We don’t trust our employees.  This comes across in two ways.  

First, some federal agencies block all social networking sites (YouTube, MySpace) and this includes any blog with a wordpress.com or blogspot.com address.  While there are acceptable use policies on using government computers which spell out, basically, don’t screw around at work, some IT managers take things a step further and ban all social networking sites.  

This prevents inflows and outflows of communication. How does this effect government employees charged with communicating with the public?  Let’s say you’re a climatologist within a government agency. You need to write a report on the Arctic but you can’t get information on a recent mission there because it’s on a Blogger site.  Conversely, you can’t communicate to an audience who would be interested in your work because they’re a Facebook group.

Second, some unenlightened communications departments don’t trust ordinary employees with communications.  Talking to the public requires highly skilled professionals, in their view.  When they learn that non-communicators are communicating without permission, their first instinct is to shut things down. After all, these people may be off-message and may describe their work without the appropriate context.

Yet, these fears are really just “perceived risks” – they’re not actually risks.  Fear of Facebook is unwarranted.  An appropriate use policy and occasional monitoring will prevent the abuse of social media privileges.

And communicators in government must learn this is the Age of Authenticity.  Readers want unmediated information.  Gatekeepers and middlemen from every industry have given way to the masses, like it or not. Everyone is a communicator now. Communications departments should be training employees, not trying to censor them.

Blogging is just another communication tool, analogous to publishing a paper, giving a presentation, writing an email to a group or publishing a web page. It’s just another way to share knowledge with the tax-paying public.

Efforts within government to ban blogging and block social media do the public a disservice, because they prevent communication with the people who pay the bills.

Me, Schmap and the iPhone

Schmap publishes a series of local city guides.  They found some of my pictures of DC and elsewhere on Flickr and used them (with my permission) in their local guides.  They just released Schmap Guides for the iPhone, basically iPhone optimized versions of their guides.

What was slick and considerate of them was that they emailed me about their new guides.  And, even better, they included a link so that I could see what my pics looked like in the iPhone versions.  They didn’t have to do that – they already have my permission to use my pictures – but I think it’s pretty smart to do so.  Being an iPhone user myself, I was impressed that they had converted their guides and my pics over to the iPhone.  It sounds cheesy but seeing my pics on a mocked-up iPhone on a web page really made me feel special.  I’m sure it’s done with a big database but this little bit of personalization broke through my cynicism.  It was a well-executed bit of one-to-one marketing.