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My greatest hits, or 6 head injuries worth noting.

Punctured head of John LeMasney
Punctured head of John LeMasney
Punctured head of John LeMasney
Punctured head of John LeMasney

I was diagnosed a couple of years back with Adult ADHD. This was a surprise to me, but not especially for those who knew me and the sometimes chaotic way in which I respond to visual stimuli.

I did not remember ever having been hyperactive as a child, and attention did not seem to be an issue for me, though later in life, I found myself having trouble focusing on one task at one time, which sometimes made it hard to carry out tasks. Often, ADHD is lifelong, and does not typically just show up without an external source.

When researching possible causes for a late appearance of Adult ADHD, there is some evidence to support concussions and head injuries as a culprit. This made me think of the sometimes funny, often scary stories I have told of the many times I’ve been hit in the head. I’m going to tell those stories here, finishing with the most recent head injury, which happened just the other day.

1. Little league baseball.

I was not very good at baseball, and as a result, I ended up in the outfield. During practice one year, the coach was hitting out a practice pop fly, I did not have my glove in the right place, and the next thing I remember is waking up with everyone around me in the outfield.

2. Little league baseball, year 2.

That’s right, the same thing happened two years in a row, and I’m pretty sure I dropped out of little league after that.

3. Parks and Recreation.

The first time I ever got stitches was when I worked for my township’s Parks and Recreation department. Mostly, the work was emptying 50 gallon drums of empty beer bottles and cans in parks, with grass cutting in the summer, but we also maintained the playground equipment. One day, I was replacing a chain net on a basketball hoop by myself on a saturday. In order to get the hooks open to hold the net, you sometimes have to use pliers to open them a bit. I misjudged my grip and the pliers went into my head with all my might. Blood started coming down my head, and I went to the hospital. The diagnosis was a concussion.

4. Moving day.

When I moved from Levittown, PA to Ewing, NJ, we got a moving truck from the storage place we were using to hold our house’s contents between the residences. I was standing on the ground behind the truck when a wooden Ikea shelf fell over and hit me in the back of the head. We rescheduled the move, went to the hospital, and the diagnosis was a concussion.

5. First week at Princeton.

I was excited to be working at Princeton University, and was going to lunch with a friend. It was raining, and I was suffering from cataracts (I’ll explain in another post) and I misjudged the last step of a set of steps down into Woodrow Wilson Hall. I went headfirst into the glass and metal door at the entrance, and a girl who saw it shrieked. The blood flowed. I decided to forego a visit to the nurse, but I probably should have. The hit was at least as damaging as my previous injuries, and likely a concussion.

6. The occasional chandelier.

Most recently, I stood up too quickly into a chandelier and blood started to flow. I do these kinds of injuries from time to time, but this one made me think of the others.

I guess more than anything, I just wanted to note the history of these injuries, but I do wonder if they have anything to do with my recent discovery of ADHD.

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Collaboration channels: On the way that we work together now.

A funny thing happened in planning the Forum

I was fortunate to be asked by Sophie Brookover and Library Link NJ (visit them at http://librarylinknj.org/ for great Library resources, insight, and help, especially for New Jersey Libraries) to co-host a Facebook Forum on effective Social Media for Libraries, and in the post-show we had a discussion about other topics for future events. We discussed a few things, but one interesting topic that came about was the idea of the ways that we had worked together to plan and collaborate for the Forum. In case you want to see the record of the forum, please visit the status update where that discussion lives.

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Fr...
Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Français : Logo de Facebook Tiếng Việt: Logo Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At any rate, in planning for the event, we used five communication/collaboration channels, all interesting and useful in their own right. I’m writing this to organize my thoughts for the potential future products we talked about, and to give you some insight into our process. I talk about each of these in increasing order of communication channel richness. In other words, as we progress in this document, the capabilities for more sensory information increases.

Facebook discussion

Facebook Notifications Management (Mark as Spam!) In Facebook, each status update has a discussion attached to it. There, we can have a social gathering complete with links, pictures, video, text and other media types. If you can digitize it and produce a link to it, it’s fair game, though Facebook does a very good job of presenting the visuals right inline in the discussion. The key reason that we used it was because we wanted it to be open, sharable, publicized, fairly rich, archived for posterity, easy to use and join, and able to join people from all over. One unexpected benefit was that Sophie and I were both kind of sick with colds, coughing and sniffling, but no one had to suffer through our potentially contagious presence!

Google Drive

LT - Google Drive - Files Vs Docs Since the forum is run on inquiry and discussion, we needed a planning document, and Google Drive provided a perfect platform for us to write our questions, rules, and reminders together both synchronously and asynchronously. Since Sophie and I both have and use our Google accounts, it was no effort or question. Plus, we got to see what each other was writing as we wrote it, discuss the changes by phone, add links, quotes, formatting, and photos. We would have lost the ability to format properly or keep easy track of the document if we used Facebook messaging or statuses, for instance, and the privacy settings of the document are quite flexible.

by-Phone

Car Telephone
Car Telephone (Photo credit: bjosefowicz)

Because writing in text makes it very difficult to emote, and writing planning documents and discussions can easily trigger miscommunication, missed messages, and general confusion, we opted to talk by phone as we planned our Forum. Even though our voice based communication was sparse as we typed, it allowed for easy and quick clarification, justification, and suggestion with the added benefit of those temporary notes not being archived and cluttering our documents. We also had the ability to smile, laugh, end our sentences in a question tone, and show other emotions to underline our feelings as we spoke.

Google Hangouts

During the Forum itself on Facebook, Sophie and I used Google Hangouts as a rich backchannel to add all the benefits of phone communication with a video layer on top. Seeing a raised eyebrow, a smile, or a shake of the head during discussion added yet another layer of communicative understanding to our backstage work. I noted that it was a bit strange for us to use such a rich method for our backchannel of two participants while using a relatively thin channel in Facebook for the real event, when typically thin channels like Twitter are used for backchanneling while the main event is fairly rich. In this particular case, though, it was absolutely perfect. She and I were able to note changes to each other, clarify responses before typing, and give insights into the participants’ history and experience without anyone hearing our chatter in the public facing Forum.

In-Person

Handshake

Before the first planning event, Sophie and I happened to both be presenting at the NJLA Adult Services forum and we got to see each other, greet each other, reinforce our in-person friendship and camaraderie, and have a rich discussion in real space. It was convenient that we both happened to be scheduled to speak and had the time to talk for a few minutes, because although this is by far the richest collaboration and communication channel it also represents the most effort. She and I probably both had to drive for 40 minutes to get there, spending time, gas, money, and planning, and if we hadn’t been going to this event anyway, we likely would not have had the opportunity to meet. In fact, while I list Sophie among my most valuable and respected colleagues, I have probably only been in the same physical space with her a handful of times. This shows the value of our other methods here, for sure.

How about you and your collaborators?

201107029

What methods do you use for communication and collaboration, and what benefits do they bring? Are you using email, Facebook messaging, Twitter DMs,  or other methods to work together? What has worked best for you and what was the context of that success? What might Sophie and I have done instead of this and still get all the benefits of these various channels? List your answers, feedback and experiences in the discussion below!

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Introduction to Arduino: 7 things you should know

Arduino Duemilanove
Arduino Five Ten Egg Timer circuit – John LeMasney
Arduino simple circuit by lemasney
Arduino starter project 09: Motorized pinwheel

Introduction to Arduino

Last night I gave a talk on Introduction to Arduino at Princeton Public Library as part of their technology class offerings. I thought I might recap the talk here and invite you to come and visit the next time we offer it. For more information about their free and public classes, please click here:

Getting started with Arduino is the presentation I gave, complete with links, videos, photos, and other information.

What is Arduino?

Arduino microcontroller / Arduino Uno microcon...
Arduino microcontroller / Arduino Uno microcontroller ATmega328 / Arduino Mega 2560 / Arduino Nano ATmega328 / Arduino Pro Mini ver.3.3V ATmega328 / Photo by Arkadiusz Sikorski https://www.arq.pl/ (Photo credit: Arkadiusz Sikorski vel ArakuS)

Arduino is an open source hardware platform for learning and prototyping electronics projects. It’s open source in that the design of the board itself is shared so that you can build your own if you are so inclined. The software and scripts used to program it are also open source. It benefits from a strong worldwide community of developers, programs, and resources, including books, videos, and classes. It is an Italian project, co-founded by Massimo Banzi and others, and is designed to help people learn easily, even from a very young age. http://www.arduino.cc is the homepage for the project. You can get an Arduino Uno, one version of many good for getting started, for around $30.

Where can you get an Arduino and Learn more?

You can buy Arduino products in many places, including online on Amazon.com, element14.com, and in brick and mortar stores like Radio Shack.

http://youtube.com has thousands of videos on Arduino projects

http://element14.com is a learning community about projects like Arduino.

http://learn.adafruit.com/ is a learning community and store about projects like Arduino.

http://makezine.com is a champion of projects using Arduinos and other open platforms.

What are inputs and Outputs?

Inputs are ways for the Arduino to get information. These include sensors like motion detectors, cameras, compasses, GPS, touchscreens, buttons, and many of the same kinds of sensors typically found on a contemporary phone. You use pins on the Arduino to connect them, and use scripts, called sketches, to tell the Arduino what to do with the signals.

Outputs are ways for the Arduino to send back information or do actions. Examples include Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), speakers, motors, and fans.

You can use inputs, outputs and sketches to scratch your own itches, often for a very low price. If you want a station that feeds your cat once every twelve hours but only if it hears a meow or when the cat comes near, you might use an arduino, an RFID (proximity) sensor, and a motor or latch to make it so that if the cat’s collar with an RFID chip in it comes close enough to the station, once in 12 hours time, the container of food has a door that opens for 3 seconds and closes again.

How do I get started with Arduino?

Cover of "Getting Started with Arduino (M...
Cover via Amazon

There are many fantastic books, websites, videos, and communities of practice that focus on Arduino. Here’s one video that tells you how to get started with an Arduino. If you search for ‘Arduino tutorial’ on Google, YouTube, Element 14, or Adafruit.net, you’ll find many more.

How do I work with an Arduino?

The key to working with Arduino is writing sketches. You can use the Arduino program (an IDE or integrated development environment) based on an open source application called Processing to write sketches. Get it from http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

The most common starting example, with very simple capabilities is the Blink example. You can open the Blink example from file/examples/basics in the application.

https://lemasney.com/consulting/2013/11/05/introduction-to-arduino-7-things-know/ Arduino setup for the Blink sketch (Arduino.cc)

“/*   Blink
Turns on an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.
This example code is in the public domain.  */

// Pin 13 has an LED connected on most Arduino boards.
// give it a name:
int led = 13;
// the setup routine runs once when you press reset:
void setup() {
// initialize the digital pin as an output.
pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
}
// the loop routine runs over and over again forever:
void loop() {
digitalWrite(led, HIGH);
// turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1000);
// wait for a second
digitalWrite(led, LOW);
// turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1000);
// wait for a second
}”
~ Arduino – Blink –

What kinds of things can you do with an Arduino?

Here is a fun example that shows what you can do with the Arduino, with others in the presentation linked above:

Is Arduino related to Raspberry Pi?

Arduino and the Raspberry Pi are often talked about together, but they are very different devices. The Raspberry Pi and Arduino are both open source hardware, but aside from that they have very little to do with one another. While the Raspberry Pi has pins that you can use to manage electronics, the main purpose of the Pi is to have a $35 computer that you can use to connect to a TV or monitor via HDMI or composite jack and to a keyboard and mouse with USB. The Arduino would need to be very heavily modded to allow for anything like that. The Arduino is primarily an electronics prototyping platform.

 

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On why I use the Google Ecosphere: 10 things I like about the Google workspace

 

Any of you who know me know very well that I am drinking the Goog-Aid. I believe in the company, give them the benefit of the doubt when they profess that they are not evil, and in general, agree with their business, technology, and work philosophy. Today, I thought I’d share why and how I came to this conclusion.

 

  1. Their stuff is free (as in free pizza). Google’s products, for the most part, are free. While there are usually optional upgrade costs, such as more storage, they usually offer the fully featured product at no cost to users. Their business model is advertising based, and so the more eyes that look at their products, the more money they get. I can get behind that, especially because it means that I can suggest a Google based solution to a client or colleague and not have to explain why they have to pay a fee. See also my support for Inkscape, GIMP, Open Office, and so on.
  2. Google Code
    Google Code (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    Their support of open standards. When I work with others, it often means that I have to decide the best way to deal with them. Do we use the same applications, services, and methods, or do we need to find a bridge between us? With Google, their products often use and support open standards and methods, such as XML, HTML 5, SVG, ATOM, and others, meaning that as long as another product (even proprietary ones) can understand the standard, we are good to go.

  3. Open Source Logo
    Open Source Logo (Photo credit: phradaka)

    Their support of open source. In answering the mobile platform question “Why do you love Android so much?” my first answer is always “Because it’s open source.” Many people wonder why I care so much about open source (the source code that is written and compiled into the binary application is distributed along with the application), especially since I’m more of a user than a developer with most application code. The answer is that because developers get access to open sourced code, screen it for flaws, integrate improvements and can shape the code themselves, they act on my behalf. We all benefit from the changes that developers make to open sourced code. With proprietary solutions, those same developers are often cut off from adding their own code, seeing how it works, or checking it for flaws. Google uses open source in many of its projects, and supports its distribution through Google Code.

  4. Music Beta by Google (aka Google Music)
    Music Beta by Google (aka Google Music) (Photo credit: pmsyyz)

    They offer portable music, documents, photos, and bookmarks, automatically backed up. I have a music collection of many, many gigabytes. It once was available on only one of my machines. When Google Music launched, it allowed me to upload all of my music to their service for streaming and download to any device that could visit their website, meaning every computer, phone, tablet, and set-top box I owned. They back up my music collection  automatically, and make it available wherever internet access is present, which for me is nearly everywhere, anytime. Oh, and this goes for every photo I take with my phone, every document I write in Drive, and every presentation I’ve given for the last 5 years.

  5. Google Plus logo
    Google Plus logo (Photo credit: Bruce Clay, Inc)

    Google Plus, Hangouts, and YouTube. Google launched Plus, a social layer for its services a little while back. The obvious suggestion by critics was that they were trying to oust Facebook as king of social, but they are doing something different. They are making it easy to unify their services, share the products you make with them, and house it all under one roof: Plus. One feature of Plus, in particular, stands out as a disruptor: Hangouts. Hangouts, the ability to have up to ten people collaborate on documents, video chat, and more, has an on-air feature, with which you can do a live broadcast to thousands, archive the broadcast, and share it with people via YouTube. 5 years ago, it took a technologist with system administration skills to do this. Today, you just click the Hangout button on Plus.

  6. They make it especially easy to share and collaborate. Because I use Gmail, and have for a very long time, practically everyone I’ve exchanged email with or gotten a business card from in the last ten years is part of Google Contacts. Anytime I want to share a photo, document, spreadsheet, music, or other item with any of them, Google offers their contact info from my contacts just by starting to type their name. In many cases, I can invite them to collaboratively, virtually meet and work on the item in real-time, with voice, video, and screen actions.
  7. Logo image created by Matt_Stang for the Andro...
    Logo image created by Matt_Stang for the Android Open Source Project and XDA community. Source: https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=545151 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    The Android operating System. I’ll write on this at length in the future, but for now I’ll just say that excluding the Ubuntu mobile operating system, no other phone OS even begins to tempt me.

  8. The Chrome Operating System. I have a Chromebook. In fact, I have two. I bought them each used for $100. They both do only one thing: run the Chrome browser on a thin sheet of Linux. I can tell you from a lot of use that often that is all that you need to get work done.
  9. It extends my senses, my memory, and my ability. When I want to know more about a topic that came up in conversation, I Google what others concluded about it. When I want to see all the photos I’ve ever taken of myself, I open Picasa, and look at the photos that Picasa found my face in. When I want to read a book on any topic, I go to Google Play Books or Google Books, or Google Scholar to investigate it. When I sign into Google, I am just a few keystrokes away from learning, knowing, or remembering it all.
  10. Google Self Driving Car
    Google Self Driving Car (Photo credit: loudtiger)

    The Glass project and self-driving cars. Glass is a wearable computing platform that heralds the next big change in computing. Many are already dismissing it as too weird for mainstream use, but if we can get used to Bluetooth headsets, I think that wireframes that look like glasses without the lenses but that give you a heads-up-display on the world with camera, mic, and sound (powered by Android) would be worth the average person’s cultural shift in visual acceptance. And of course, any company that allows a blind person to drive himself to the store is a company that I stand behind.

 

I could go on, but I’ll stop here for now. If you are interested in how I think you could begin to integrate the Googleverse into your business workflow, please give me a call. I’m at lemasney@gmail.com and 609-553-9498

 

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The Customer and the Service: Episode 21

on idea
on idea (Photo credit: lemasney)

In this episode, Sean and John talk about ethics in service, determining brand, and new ways to pick up merchandise.

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On teaching leaders about organizational communication

20110816
Apple by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org

I have spent most of my career as an instructional technologist. When I accepted my first job at a university in this role, I was not entirely certain of what instructional technology was, but I was able to answer all the important questions.

In short, Instructional Design is the important work of integrating technology in a teaching and learning environment, and all that goes with that process: research, troubleshooting, experimentation, problem-solving, system administration, programming, design, and being creative. It is, without a doubt, the best job in the world for someone who loves this list of job attributes.

As it turned out, I was perfectly suited for instructional technology, also often called academic technology, educational technology, or instructional technology & design, because I am a versatilist (I know a little bit about a lot of things in my expertise), media producer, technologist, and teacher, and am passionate about these attributes.

From supporting teachers to teaching

In the last few years, I have been fortunate enough to experience the faculty side of this process as a professor in the graduate program I graduated from, the MA in Organizational Leadership at Rider University. I teach students in this program about change management, communication, media creation, media transliteracy, convergence, and effective use of social media. I was recently invited back to teach my third class in the program, and have been working on the syllabus. I like to think of success in course development as making a class that I would be very excited to take. I have done at least that here. I’m sharing the core topics from the course below, and if you have any thoughts about the lineup, feel free to share in the comments!

Weekly topics:

  • Getting started. Introduction to the class, WordPress account setup, and first posts.
  • WordPress best practices | WordPress Getting started codex | WordPress demo
  • Personal and Organizational Branding | Seth Godin lit review | Facebook Demo
  • Convergence, mobile technologies, and platforms | Google Glass lit review | Google Plus App demo
  • Creating, gathering, and sharing visuals | 3 tutorials for Inkscape | Inkscape demo
  • Effective Social Media presence for leaders | case studies for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
  • Virality, ethics, and balance | Kony 2012 | Basic concepts of headlines/Case study for American Apparel marketing methods
  • Basic web creation literacy and development | Codecademy assignment | Codecademy assignment review and discussion on practical use of code as literacy
  • Staying aware of trends, ideas, news, and contacts with social media platforms |social media dashboard lit review | Hootsuite demo
  • Legal issues for individuals, organizations, and society regarding new media | articles on firings, etc, Organizational  Social Media policy | best practices document from Princeton
  • Creating, gathering, and sharing audio via podcasting and other platforms | Stitcher assignments | Audacity Demo
  • Communicating, embracing, and navigating change with a comprehensive organizational communication plan | case studies | Google Drive demo
  • Creating, gathering, and sharing motion visuals | YouTube assignments | editing video
  • Critical literacy, Transliteracy project | presentations
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