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June 29, 2006
the visual display of quantitive information
The best thing about working from home is that when someone says the word “edutainment” in a kick-off meeting, you can mime hitting yourself in the face with the receiver for the remainder of the call and no one is the wiser. It’s not that I’m against entertainment or education or even combining the two it’s just, do we really need to make up words? There’s plenty of terrific words already out there, folks. Let’s choose ‘em wisely.
Speaking of using words to effectively communicate your goals and intentions, I like this from our friends at the Onion. I especially like: "After everyone left the room, I sat down and went through Ron's final presentation in slide-sorter view," Williams said. "Man, I gotta tell you, it blew me away. That presentation really utilized the full multimedia capabilities of Microsoft's PowerPoint application." For anyone who has gone to see Edward Tufte’s excellent presentation on visually displaying data and yet still needs to use PowerPoint on a regular basis, you will perhaps share my enjoyment. If you haven’t seen Mr. Tufte, suffice to say that he's not a huge fan. I just got a new consulting gig and I am going to do my darnedest to try and incorporate lasers, a fog machine, and rock kicks into the final presentation just to spice things up.
I have the quasi-secret goal of getting someone to pay me to blog for work. In project meetings, I tend to say things like “The importance of two-way communication and viral marketing and customer-centricity and yam yammerdoo and…heyyyyy, I know! I could write a blog!” I succeeded once with a blog about communications that was up two weeks and had at least one loyal fan. I consider that a success in much the same way I consider son of max a success because my sister-in-law laughs when she reads it, especially when I make fun of my brother (Hi Pea!) Although I’ve been writing this blog, um, considerably longer.
Thus concludes the entry where I attempt to not mention the fact that a giant baby came out of my crotch three years ago. This offspring referral avoidance is somewhat in reaction to a friend recently telling me he didn’t read “mommyblogs” and therefore didn’t ever visit my site. Boy howdy did that twist my panties! I’ve thought about why that term bothers me and I think it's because I find it both reductive and borderline sexist. Just because you are female, have a child and write a blog doesn’t mean that’s all you do or write about. I eat sandwiches, am I a sandwichblogger? I have a hound dog, should I start hounddogblog.com? Shall we refer to male blog writers as “penisbloggers”?
All right, that’s enough of that. I am now going to pour myself a delicious drink and go outside to look for fireflies. Rumor has it they have arrived here on the EC.
Posted by Max at June 29, 2006 09:24 PM
Comments
(Hi Sis-n-Law!) Pardon my short comment but I'm very busy trying to create a sentence in which I can use my new favorite word: penisblogger! LOVE IT!
Posted by: pea at July 5, 2006 02:35 PM