Going Tribal

January 26, 2010

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. - Jane Howard (1935-1996), Families

Author and professor David Logan described five levels of tribal behavior at TEDxUSC in 2009:

  1. Life sucks. I despair, and therefore am actively hostile. (2%)
  2. My life sucks. I am a victim. While life could be good, I haven’t got X, so it isn’t. (25%)
  3. I’m great (and you’re not). I’m focused solely on my own accomplishments and goals. (48% of employee tribes are here.)
  4. We’re great. I’m a tribesman, part of something greater than myself. (22% – think Zappos.)
  5. Life is great. I approach the possibilities of life with wonder, bringing tribes together for the joy of something even greater. (”Only 2% – and those are the ones that change the world.”)

(Posts by Matt Corker and ThinkAtheist helped me sum these up.)

Author and journalist Jane Howard described what made a family work:

  1. Leadership. A chief who sets a great example.
  2. Organization. A manager who minds calendars and keeps the history.
  3. Mythology. Organically developed rituals, and a person who keeps them.
  4. Hospitality. Willingness to give of oneself to each other.
  5. Freedom. While being important to its members, it believes in life outside too.
  6. Honesty. Dealing straightforwardly with the bad things in life.
  7. Affection. Tangible, physical love.
  8. Home. A sense of place.
  9. Respect. Homage to elders.
  10. Connection. Helping the young, the future, come into their own.

What does this mean for the groups you’re part of, how you motivate people, and how you can do greater things?

  • Look critically at the tribes you’re part of and see which you are proudest of – which matter most to you. Groucho Marx said “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” Are you sure you want to belong to the tribes you’re in?
  • Speak on whichever level is necessary. People can only hear one level above and below where they are. If they’re mired in despair, you can’t wrench them up to global philanthropy, but you could help them see that other people are part of something cool. You have to help people move slowly up into higher-level tribes.
  • If you care about the tribes you’re a part of, you need to help each of those ten attributes develop.

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Mistaken Identity: Episodes 226-250 – Contact!

January 23, 2010

  • Forwards that Libby wanted to send her son’s girlfriend and that Paul wanted to send to every variant of Other Me’s email that he could think of are keeping my inbox full of cutesy and festive sparkly graphics. Which is about as delightful as you are imagining.
  • Dana is helping Pittsburgh Other Me apply for a Department of Human Services Scholars in Local Government fellowship. Good luck!
  • An Other Me of undetermined locale joined Facebook. And has a lot of friends accepting her friend requests. A lot.
  • Another Me joined ooVoo, but I have to say, she picked a really dumb password.
  • Seattle Other Me continues to be very involved in the local arts scene.
  • Other W. Me of Virginia continues to fly United frequently, hopefully with no problems caused by the fact that I’m getting all of her communications about said flights. Her vacation plans do look lovely though – I hope she’s having fun in Italy.

Yes, there’s much afoot at the start of the year. Three of particular note follow, saving the BEST ONE EVER for last.

* * *
From: Richie
Subject: Image Magazine debs photos

Hi Girls

Hope you all had a great night at the debs. I have attached a contact sheet of pictures if you would like to get prints.
Image printed different colour dresses so there was a lot of nice shots that didn’t appear in the magazine.

If you would like any prints just email me

Talk to you soon

I haven’t included the contact sheet because it’s a bunch of teenage kids and their full names. But it’s fun to see an Other Me. She has great taste in dresses and a very cute boyfriend, kind of Jonas-Brothers-y. But – I thought debutante things were from the Southern U.S., not England? Is this not the case? Did I not pay enough attention watching What a Girl Wants?

Did I just admit that?

Ahem. Onward.

* * *

From: Jenny
Subject: Indoor soccer

Sarah

Here’ the link to register for indoor if you interested. IF you are interested you will want to go online & register. Come 15 minutes early. Please have Delani wear a white tshirt. I have a blue jersey if we wear thoughs for her. I will also be forwarding you more messages that I have recieved. Any questions call me.

Thanks

Jenny

So if anyone else is having trouble finding the registration tab like I did, here it is [REDACTED]. You can pay your fee online, but it only lets you pay a max of $40.

Norma/Mark,
I paid the $40 online and will have the difference with Maddie on Saturday. :) Thanks for doing this another session.

Stacie

I’m leaving out the subsequent indoor-soccer-scheduling drama, but suffice it to say that Delani is a very busy little girl.

* * *

From: Gary
Subject: FW: Country T-Top model information

Hi Sarah… you have a Country wood stove, which is great.. A very robust wood stove with a great reputation for heating. Do you know how old it is? Lennox bought Country a few years ago. The stoves are built in Auburn, Washington, not far from Bainbridge. The unit is likely an EPA certified unit , depending on age. It should have secondary air tubes on the ceiling of the unit. When you damper it down in the evening it goes into a secondary burn , which burns all gases and gives a longer burn time. If you send me an exact model number I can send you a owners manual.
Regards Gary

Okay, so this isn’t thrilling, I know.

BUT.

It’s the very first time an Other Me has made contact!

From: Other Me with an S at the end
Subject: Re: Country T-Top model information

Dear Sarah,

Thanks again for forwarding the wood stove email.

I just checked out your blog, and have to claim Mistaken Episode #203 (boating class) as intended for me as well. However, there must still be a different “Tacoma Sarah” out there, as I did not run in the Turkey Trot. Inspiring to know that someone with a name so close to my own is participating in charity runs, though. I’ve always thought I’d have to work my ass off to be in shape enough to run a race–now I realize that I just have to work my s off.

Take care,
Plural You

I love her! You love her too, don’t you? Of course you do! But of course you do. How could you not be fabulous with a name like ours?

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The Matt Hall Questions: Visual Literacy

January 21, 2010

What’s this all about? Who’s Matt Hall? Check out the series:

  1. Blogging
  2. Twitter
  3. More on Twitter
  4. Organization
  5. Lists

I’m going to be starting my PhD in the fall and I have a chart of all the things I’m interested in for research. One of them is visual literacy. I’d love to get your take on this. I’m trying to see it from an educational perspective (lesson design, interactive white boards, enhanced version of writing, etc…)

First, it must be said, I was never so happy / relieved / exhausted / elated as when I finished my master’s thesis. Despite having the best thesis advisor in the world. Hi Dr. L! So the concept of a dissertation boggles my mind. Seriously. Boggles. Like, presses it down and pops it up and rattles all the little bits around.

But that’s not really the point here, is it? Visual literacy. That’s the point. So. There’s two sides to how I’m thinking about it.

The first is the individual. Am I visually literate? Are you? How does a teacher decide if a schoolkid is? How do you score someone’s visual literacy as a capability of a human?

The other is the technology. Will this gizmo enable visual literacy? Does it make it easier to intake information? How do you score something’s visual literacy as a capability of a technology?

But the thing that’s more difficult than either of these sides of the coin, is the fact that the overall concept is a moving target.

  • Visual literacy now can mean learning how to design and interpret infographics, or being a technology that enables their creation. Five years ago, nobody knew what an “infographic” was.
  • It can mean editing YouTube videos. Ten years ago, the only people who needed to know how to make a video narrative cohesive were professional film editors.
  • From the professional world down to grade school levels, visual literacy now includes a fluency in PowerPoint. It didn’t exist a few decades ago – presenters used index cards and transparencies on an overhead projector.

So my main point, regarding visual literacy, is the difficulty of defining and measuring a moving target. Schoolchildren will need to be literate in an entirely different way in the next generation than they were in the last one, and it will continue to change. How do you track that, and make sure it’s keeping pace with society? I don’t know the answers.

That’s why I’m not doing a dissertation.

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