Josh Shear

Chris Brogan's video comes along at the right time for me and for some people around me.

Take-aways: People only know what you've done. You know, more or less what you're capable of, and beyond that, you might even surprise yourself while in the process of showing others what you can do.

I'm going to start a couple of series here on the blog: "What I'm learning about at work," and "Geeking out at work."

The What I'm learning about series will be roughly monthly. The April 2010 edition is live over here, and you can get links to monthly installments from the day job page.

The Geeking out series will be an occasional thing, whenever I find something I actually do find interesting, be it a term on one of the wikis (wikiMHEDA and GAWDAwiki, currently), or an industry headline, like the acetylene gang that is breaking into banks and jewelry stores in the Philippines.

Take five minutes to watch this presentation. Thanks to Susan Hall (Twitter) for passing it along.

First let me say that that newspaper is gorgeous. Decorate-your-wall gorgeous. And if you transfer those infographics to the web, they'd kill on digg. And yes, I'd probably buy it with some sort of consistency, because I like pretty things.

I wrote about 2,000 words about why I think this wouldn't work in the U.S., focusing on the fact that people who read newspapers like to read stories and people who write newspaper stories like having a place to show off their writing and more and more, the stories in this paper are being told with photos and graphics.

But I realized as I was writing, it's fairly obvious that readers don't enjoy reading quite as much as writers enjoy writing. So the fact that there might be no more than 200 words on a front page or 500 words in any interior spread isn't a problem for me.

I do, however, think it has a magazine-like quality that makes it less attractive as a daily news source and more appealing as something to look at slowly throughout the day or week. It makes me want to admire the artwork, not find out what's going on at school board meetings – I think I'd be distracted from the news.

But then, maybe that's just me. I like news, and I like the written word. Perhaps people would get more out of bigger graphics and shorter stories, though – USA Today has done very well on that model, and it's not a paper I pick up at all, which means I likely wouldn't be the target audience for something like this.

What do you think?

New Year's Eve saw a windfall for the Josh's Beard project, thanks largely to the efforts of Chris Kirkegaard. Chris reached out to me on Twitter in the morning and said he wanted to try some sort of challenge, so we came up with the 100tweets100bucks challenge, and asked people to post a message to their Twitter accounts.

Bottom line: We started the day at $578 to fund research into childhood cancer, and by the time I woke up in 2010, we had $1,207 – that's $629 in one day.

In case you're not aware of the project, I'm raising money for the St. Baldrick's Foundation. They make grants to fund research into cancer in children, and their signature event is called a shave-a-thon. People donate money for their friends to shave their heads.

Since nobody's going to spend money to see me shave the little bit of hair I have, I've decided to grow a beard. I am posting a photo a day and a video a week to show my beard's progress, and, while nobody's taken me up on it, for a larger donation I'll happily wear your t-shirt or hold up your book, do crazy things to my beard (including sticking a business card in it or simply dying it), and generally tell people how wonderful you are, like I'm doing with Chris.

There's also a Facebook page, in case you have photos, videos or things to say about my beard (unless you're the sports editor of the local paper – you're not allowed to tell people how scary my beard is).

So we've hit $1,000. Pretty darn awesome. We're still a long way off from my $25,000 goal, but the momentum is growing. We have a fundraiser scheduled for March, and one in the works for February. I hope you'll get involved by giving if you're able and definitely by spreading the word.

And if you have ideas for getting more money to the organization, email me.

» The first $100
» Introduction to the project

there are few things that look so forlorn when not fulfilling their purpose as swings. an empty swing, whether still or moving on a breeze or the momentum of only recent abandonment, is incomplete and can only wait for its complement.

when people go unfulfilled, they either fake fulfillment, convincing themselves or others. when puppies feel unfulfilled, they try to find a human or toy to fill in the spaces.

swings just wait.

labor day is the unofficial end of summer. the leaves are changing in central new york. the mornings are chilly. autumn is coming on quickly. more and more swings will spend more and more time unfulfilled.

when a swing is fulfilling its purpose, it helps a person accomplish things. long looks at the sky, long looks at the ground. the freedom of movement. defeating gravity, if only for moments at a time.

swings often rest above soft ground, and so, when still, are forced to stare at the footprints of the last person to walk away until the next person comes.

won't someone please think of the swings?

photo credit

Last week's Weekend Edition puzzle was awesome. It was the 20th anniversary, and the whole crew turned out.

I hope you read my post yesterday on the newspaper crisis hitting close to home.

Assuming you did, you probably realized that I was writing about the privately-held company I work for.

And you probably realized that I know at least a little more than I shared.

If you've ever worked for somebody else – either as a full-time employee or an independent contractor – you've probably signed something that said you won't give away company secrets.

OK...but how do you know what's a company secret?

Basically, if you can't verify it independently of internal communications within your company (including face-to-face meetings or phone calls), it's a company secret.

And if you have a blog, or a Twitter account, or a Facebook account, or a MySpace page or a... you'd better be damned sure what's a company secret and what's not, because you're Google-able. And expendable. Just sayin'.

That's why I made sure to link to a publicly available source for any news about the company. And while I do have some other information, I'm not sharing it. That's part of a balance you need to know – and as more graduates enter the workforce for the first time in a we-share-everything-because-we-think-it's-only-for-our-friends environment, it's something worth thinking about, both as a potential employee and as a potential employer.

Jill talks about this a lot at panels and in classes – about making yourself available, but not laying it all out there.

It really is a fine line you have to walk, but it's really important that you walk it, erring on the safe side.

It's one of those gray late-winter days in Central New York. This is actually a color photo.

The water is high and fast at Ryder Park.

The paths are unpassable, the benches unsittable.

The ducks are skittish, the robins hopeful, and I am leaving nothing but footprints and taking nothing but photographs.

I have a rule about taking photos on film: I don't bring the rolls in for at least a week. I took two rolls of black and whites; I expect they'll be ready for viewing sometime mid-April, long after I remember precisely what the subjects were.

I also found an old roll of color film I had taken. I have no idea what's on it.

I envision it will be an interesting spring, photo-wise.

Update: The digital photos from the morning are on Flickr and the mobile photos are on TwitPic.

Photo by ziggy fresh, used under a Creative Commons license

For the past three years, I've played tennis with a bunch of guys older than me – most in their 50s and 60s, some into their 70s and 80s.

There are 21 of us, with 16 playing each week. It's what's called a ladder league; we are spread across four courts by winning percentage, with the top four playing on court one, the next four playing on court two, etc. We start with the top and bottom player on each court paired up against the numbers two and three, play one set, and spin for the next partner.

Most weeks, we get three sets in, so we all get to play with each other. Some weeks, when the sets are close (and therefore, frequently longer), we only get two in [the club gives us 90 minutes; after that, other leagues are on].

With anywhere between 20 and 50 years fewer on my body than the other players, I'm the fastest, and I'm among the strongest. But I'm also the least experienced, and I wind up learning a lot – about strategy, positioning, and, what I find important, the gentlemanly aspects of the game.

Tennis is a sport in which, in organized play, players are penalized points for ball, racket, or verbal abuse. In the pros, they can be fined. Player clothing is generally conservative, although Andre Agassi changed that in the 1980s – but still, most people wear collars, and the Wimbledon Club still requires all white.

There are occasional arguments over calls. We're all male, the testosterone flows, it gets competitive, and you have to take into account what could be going on in people's lives, especially when you're talking people who either are retired or are nearing retirement in a market like this.

But tonight we actually called it a night early, when players on either side of the net got downright nasty. Expletives were flying, someone got hit with a ball intentionally, and the two of us who were getting along had to separate them, twice.

I'm not alone in being one of the people who plays tennis to relax. And I'm lucky in that I get my gym membership on trade; I wouldn't be able to afford to play there otherwise. I can't imagine why you'd drop all that money and be prepared to throw down.

And we're talking guys who are 50ish. They're no longer young and stupid.

We decided it was better for everyone if we went home early.

I got home a bit wound up (it's a four-minute drive, not exactly enough to cool down), and started to put away some of the clean dishes.

I've been moving from place to place with a set of decent glasses, and while I've dropped some of them from low heights, I've never so much as nicked one.

And one of them fell out of the dish drain, and positively shattered.

Some glasses break into a couple of biggish pieces and a few small splinters. Not this one. There was nothing left that was recognizable as having once been a glass.

One piece looked like a small bit of rock candy, but the rest was just decimated. It took almost 20 minutes to clean it up, about long enough to listen to WAER's pre-game show, ahead of the Syracuse-Connecticut basketball game.

And about long enough to wind all the way down.

I'm hoping for a more peaceful night of tennis next Wednesday.