James Fallows talks to David Allen

David Allen on How to Fix Your Life - The Atlantic

And as we seem to do here at SJN Sales, they review some of the causes and costs of "busyness" we all wokr through, if we are lucky enough to have fulfilling jobs we can do sitting down.

Insights from two very smart guys. As they say, read the whole thing.

Scanning copy makes it more than words

Court Hands Huge Victory to Universities' Digitization Efforts - The Atlantic

That first victory -- that search capability is "transformative" -- is what has scholars in the burgeoning field of digital humanities cheering today... The search capabilities of the HDL have already given rise to new methods of academic inquiry such as text mining." Just because the digitization process does not add anything "new" does not mean the work has not been transformed. Purchasing more copies of the books -- even infinity copies -- would not make search possible.

 The significance of this reading of copyright law can't be overstated. It ties into a debate about whether and by what precise mechanics today's most popular forms of culture are 'new'. For more on that notion, the always-insightful Nick Carr.

Social media mentions: All good?

Well, THAT was ugly.

At least my mom didn't read Kitchenaid's tweet about Obama's grandmother.

Because she'd be out in her yard shooting the mixer.

SJN Sales has a client whose product is an innovative social media tracking tool, TrackingSocial.com. When we describe it to social media and web managers, they typically respond, 'You can measure that?'

Well, yes, and it appears that you may need to have some charts, graphs and objective stats to justify the expenditure on your social media efforts.

Wonder what the mentions and re-tweets of that blunder were? How do you measure your social media investment's results?

Just how relevant is social media for work?

Well, that clearly depends on what your job is.

As seen in this Slate piece on California's attempt to legislate a solution to Klout-based discrimination, there are legit hiring qualifications connected to competence with social media.

However,  there are troubling questions about the use of a scoring system. What was left untouched by this article was how a rating on a social scoring system is distinct from a job-related skill--it's third-party and subjective. Code isn't objectively measuring anything by virtue of automating the measurement--someone has to decide what to measure and how to weigh those indicators.

Regardless of the interest Klout has in asserting that its ratings are a yardstick, it's important to note that in truth they're just a stick. And the prospect that they could be used as a proxy, to slide age or sex or racial discrimination in hiring past regulators, is a real problem.