Once You’re Gone, You Can’t Come Back

Posted on July 17, 2017 by Scott Smith

(This article is about Linkedin’s publishing features, I guess the headline qualifies as clickbait, is the first time I did that intentionally, and sickened to say this, but it felt great).

For the second time, I inadvertently deleted a draft of an in-progress Linkedin article. In both cases, I don’t really know what happened. I think today the draft was deleted when I was merely trying to delete the header image.

Unlike the previous occurrence, the draft I deleted this morning was approaching completion. I had just done my final(ish) rewrite and was planning to publish the article this morning.

Linkedin’s Help section said “Once you’ve deleted your article from LinkedIn, it no longer exists on our platform and we’re unable to retrieve it.”

Hmm….that has a bit of a 20th century aroma, doesn’t it?

I acknowledge that I was controlling the mouse and keyboard, I was the user who (unintentionally) went through the sequence of events to delete the draft.

Though rewriting a nearly completed article seems like a rather severe punishment for the crime (misdemeanor?) of an absent-minded misclick. Agree?

One (3rd-party) help page suggested a work-around that would have me create a new, empty article and “just” paste the text of the deleted article.

Just? Paste? That assumes that the text of article is on my clipboard, and that I JUST copied, or JUST cut it. It’s an equally viable recommendation to say ” ‘Just’ don’t delete anything, ever.”

Perhaps Linkedin could “just” add a draft-restore feature.

I understand why all deleted content can’t be in a recoverable state until the end of time. Linkedin can’t store every byte of user-created data forever. There has to be a purge cycle.

Though, the ability to recover recently lost content seems like an expected feature of modern information systems. At least I expect it.

Perhaps it’s time that Linkedin and I had the “Principle Five” talk, about tolerance for (user) error in design. Quite simply, Principal Five of the Universal Design guidelines holds:

  • “The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.”

I recognize that not every potential user pitfall can be accounted for in testing a site as large as Linkedin. Thus, improvements are often going be the result of input from users.

On that topic, I don’t see a means to submit feature requests or to provide constructive criticism to Linkedin. It might be there somewhere, but is not immediately evident (<sigh> a Princple Three violation).

Providing users the ability to recover an inadvertently deleted draft does not have need to be a lifetime commitment for Linkedin. It seems that a predefined recovery window (one or three days, perhaps) would be sufficient.

Hell, I if I had a 45-second window to recover a draft, I wouldn’t be writing this article.

If you were fished in by the headline and read this to very end, thanks for doing so, here is a token of my appreciation;

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Content and Coffee Tour 2017

Posted on June 16, 2017 by Scott Smith

(My “Content and Coffee” tour is resuming after a brief respite. Below is a description, from article,  originally posted on Linkedin in April 19th 2017.  )

Pancakes Make People Happy

Pancakes (and Coffee) Make Me  Happy

Just got home from my second stop on my Content and Coffee Tour, meeting with Matt Patulski at Little Lucy’s CafÁ© in Grand Rapids. This meeting comes just a few days after the inaugural event with Laura Bergells at the venerable Horrocks.

Both are long-time friends with great ideas about creating, managing, publishing, and curating content, who happen to like coffee (what are the odds?). Glad to be working with both of them on the West Michigan Content Strategy Meetup.

A couple of weeks ago, I completed an engagement as a SharePoint administrator. I’d contacted a few friends (some of them are actually former colleagues and clients!) about “catching up” over coffee. Then at our content strategy meetup last week, and talking to members, the idea evolved into a listening tour where I learn, and document, as much as a I can about all forms of content.

I’m planning some more stops in West Michigan, Detroit and Chicago in the next few weeks, and possibly Whipple Ohio (the quality and volume of happy content there is stunning).

I’ll also be making a nostalgia trip to the East Coast later in the year, so I’d be up for content talk at Fenway Park, or in Bar Harbor, or at the Delaware Water Gap. I might even be talked into Glastonbury, Connecticut.

Let’s talk! I’d love to hear more about content tribulations and triumphs from all of my content friends and friends to be.

If you don’t like coffee, that is not a showstopper. We can make it Content and Skimmed Milk, Content and Sushi, Content and IPA, or Content and Onion Rings.

Because everything goes with content!

If we can’t meet in person, let’s talk via phone, Skype or your favorite communication vehicle. Please contact me here and we’ll make arrangements.

(You want that mug, don’t you? Everybody does. You can order one here. Or you can visit POSH in Chicago, on State Street, that great street…)

Posted in Content and Coffee, Content Marketing, Content Strategy | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Feeling Their Pain: Addressing Heavy-Backpack Syndrome

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Scott Smith

My son’s school held an event last week where parents were invited for coffee and conversation with the school principal.  Some of the discussions were specific to the school, though many were more-universal topics: dress codes, athletics, standardized tests… for all of these there were clear next step for action.

Heavy-backpack syndrome was also brought up. There were a few soft recommendations, but no action items.

I entered parenthood a little later than most people do, but I’d been reading about backpack burden for many years.  Until my son entered 6th grade last year, this wasn’t a proximate issue.  In 7th grade now, he is a strapping young man, bigger and taller than most of the kids his age.  His backpack, replete with books for 6 classes, change of clothes for sports, a water bottle, and homework projects, causes him pain in his neck, back and arms.

Not severe pain, but daily pain. If you’ve suffered carpal-tunnel, or other repetitive-stress injuries, minor stress on a regular  basis can become a debilitating condition.

His current daily load, weighs in at 30+ lbs. To read that term (30+ lbs) that might not sound like a significant burden. So think of this it way, imagine yourself hauling around two of these all day:

Shot put

(Source ehow.com)

When the backpack burden  comes up in conversations with schools, some talk about the future:  when all the materials will be digital and the kids will just need to lug around a tablet.

Some teachers and many parents, prefer to talk about the distant past. Back when they lugged a heavy backpack. I always grit my teeth during  the “in my day”  rants, which soon  decay into tales  of a  15-mile walk to school: barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways and they “didn’t complain!” Sounds to me like they’re complaining now, about events that years, or decades in the past.

The fact is that is students’  backpack burden is a problem that has been discussed for generations with seemingly little effort to provide solutions. Because it doesn’t directly effect those in positions of power, the adults.

It’s not enough for adults to talk about, or hear about the problem.  Change will only happen if there is first-hand experience with the burden.

Thus I propose this  empathy-building exercise:

  • For one month, school staff, and parents would be asked to lug around 25+ lbs of dead weight in a backpack and walk with it for at least 5 minutes, every hour. This should be repeated 5 days each week.
  • Provide a mechanism for participants to provide feedback and solution proposals, and establish deadline by which the feedback will be published.
  • Escalate the challenge to district leadership and establish deadlines for the superintendent to evaluate and propose solution scenarios.

If solutions involve significant policy changes, or costs, then the challenge should be made to state and federal lawmakers. Change will follow.

Posted in Education, Invisible Fist | Tagged , | 30 Comments

Who Blamed Roger Maris?

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Scott Smith

As a child, my great love was baseball.

By the time, I entered 4th grade, in upstate Massachusetts, I had played one year of Little League and was somewhat  interested in watching the Red Sox on Boston’s NBC affiliate (then later on channel 38), as long as there was not a Godzilla movie on Channel 56.  Though that year, I stumbled across a baseball book that had been abandoned by one of my older brothers (who were 9 and 15 years my senior). It changed everything for me,

The book was gloriously full of  history and statistics, through the 1961 season. 1961 is one of the most-hallowed seasons in baseball history. There is a lot written about that season, if you’re curious,  Billy Crystal can explain:

 

Spoiler alert: Roger Maris breaks the home run record.

My family moved to the Orlando area when I was a teenager and I became  less interested in baseball, because  there was no “home team” in Florida at the time.  I still liked baseball, but it had lost its obsession status.

Thus, when   I started college, a couple of hours to the north,  it was intriguing  to see pictures of Roger Maris’ record-breaking swing in a few bars around  Gainesville:

Roger Maris Hitting 61st HR

(Source USA Today)

I later found out that Maris owned and operated an Anheuser-Busch beer distributor.  I periodically saw his sons wheeling kegs of Bud Light, Busch, etc.  into the restaurant where I worked: a high-volume breakfast joint famous for its voluminous biscuits  (and had a full bar and, for some reason Chinese food).

I never thought that much about beer distributors until I was called on to change kegs in the middle of a busy shift. Then I blamed them for everything that was evil in the world.

Changing kegs was always a pain in the ass.  Getting the key to the beer-storage room, toting the keg to the bar cooler, and swapping it out for an empty one—that was always ensnared in the clutter  of barrels and knots of rubber tubing.

All the while, dirty dishes  were piling up, milk dispensers needed to be changed,  ice bins were empty, and vomit was accumulating on the men’s room floor.

One fateful night, my boss, with his Boston accent shouted to me: “Squawt, foah-get about that table, weah outta  Budwise-ah, go change that keg!”

Budweiser = Roger Maris.

The beer cooler was in its usual disastrous state. I had to untangle many lines and move several kegs just to get at the empty. I didn’t have time for this shit, but I never did.

I hissed as I unsnarled  the tap lines, and grunted with each keg I lifted. I was trying to hoist a keg over several others when I felt a familiar pang below my belt line.

It’s well-known fact that when I suffered my second (annual) hernia that night, my screams,  of  “FUCK YOU, Roger Maris!!!!!” probably could be heard for miles. I’m sure that there were reports of tremors  being felt in Micanopy and Archer.

John, the manager, who had asked me to change the keg, bolted into  the cooler, and yelled, “Who the f***  do you think you ah? Do you kiss yoah mothuh with that  mouth?”

Then he asked, “You OK, kid?”

I explained what happened and my self-diagnosis. He responded, “Oh shit, not again!”

He seemed only mildly  surprised by who I was accusing.

“You blamed Roger Maris!  That’s OK with me. If youah going to blame somebody it should be somebody who played foah those fuckin’  Yankees.”

I didn’t have the heart to remind him that Maris also played for the Cardinals, when they beat his beloved Red Sox in the 1967 World Series.

Soon after, I was on the operating table for the second time in a year. The post-surgical pain didn’t seem as bad at the previous year’s hernia. Perhaps it was because I was going to eventually receive a workman’s comp check, which would take the sting out of the missed paychecks.

I now look at that decades-ago injury and realize that I need to address a couple of things.

First, the tap lines that I was trying to disentangle when I sustained my injury included many brands of beer. I have no evidence that Maris’ distributorship was any more, or less, responsible for the tear in my abdominal wall (or the dangling intestine)  than any other.

Second, I was not even lifting an Anheuser-Busch  product when the injury occurred. Therefore, it was unfair for me to cast aspersions against the Maris, or the Busch families. I hope that they will both accept my sincere apologies.

You are hereby absolved.

Given my Irish-Catholic roots, it is difficult, physically  excruciating in fact, for me to let go of a grudge.

Though as time has gone by, I’ve come to appreciate the delicious  irony of the fact that when I realized, that my intestine was breaking through my abdominal wall (again), I was lifting a keg  with a label that was clearly labeled as Lite.

Posted in Invisible Fist | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment