I was tickled the other day to hear from an old colleague via Linkedin. She kindly reminisced about how in bygone days I taught her something about SQL, and now she is mentoring others. While I remember working with this person, and distinctly recall that she was worth the investment of time to explain things to (which is high praise, as there have been too many who have not reached that bar), I cannot recall what it was that I might have helped her learn. It was just normal, professional experience stuff.
Author Archives: Stan York
Oops! Not Again!
Lest I seem to be judgmental, let’s start out with a professional revelation: I probably make hundreds of mistakes a year. In fact, it is possible I picked my career—one where mistakes are so intrinsic we call them “bugs” instead —because of a summer day when I was around ten, tossing a game of catch in a narrow NYC street. You see, I observed the dense proximity of windows all around and wondered how it was I hadn’t broken one yet. Within 5 minutes of that very thought, an errant throw of mine went through a neighbor’s window. Oops! I knew then and there I was going to make plenty of mistakes.
Motivating through Gameplay
I think most people who are responsible for gathering and capturing data will tell you it is a pain to do. And costly. Therefore, it is generally recognized that the job is easier if you can make the work into a game or competition that motivates people to help out, sort of how Tom Sawyer motivated others to paint his fence.
Awe Thanks
I recently enjoyed reading The Healing Power of Nature, an article in TIME magazine by Alexandra Sifferlin. One of the points in the piece was that a study found that people who spent 60 seconds looking up at towering trees were more likely to report feeling awe than those who looked at equally tall buildings.
A New Modest Proposal
These days, it seems that comedians have an ever increasing role in social commentary, bringing a voice and attention to important issues that are otherwise often ignored. YouTube commentary by John Oliver typically gets more than 4 million views—an interesting contrast to the less than 100,000 typical views for YouTube content from Rachel Maddow with MSNBC.