Context is Key

Blogger's Note: Again, from my publications management class. I think posting this item here helps prove my point that some individual blog entries, like this one, can't be considered publications on their own, because there just isn't enough context here.

The temptation with a question like this is to create a list of what is a publication and what is not. Probably what is more helpful is to develop a philosophy of what a publication is. My definition is going to hinge a lot on context.

A publication is any photograph, illustration, text or other communicative medium or combination of media that with little or no additional context successfully communicates its intended messages to an audience.

Thus, websites are publications. Some individual website pages are publications. Individual photographs are publications. As are some e-mails, some book chapters, some illustrations. Then there are the obvious: Books, indeed, are publications. We can dicker a lot here. In the original French, for example, Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" is published in two thick volumes, not the skinny book we all read in high school. One volume, without the other, does not make sense contextually, so only both volumes together are a publication. Yes, you may have one volume, it's all bound and neat and pretty and full of way too much information about Napoleon, but without the other volume, the data in only one volume isn't complete. You need both to have the needed context, so only both, together, are a publication.

I know from experiences in thise coursework that context is critical. I have, for example, a photograph of graffiti showing the face of a monster, done on a stalagmite in a cave. When I used it in a class project this summer, though I understood the context well, the rest of the class had no idea what they were looking at. It was too abstract on its own. Only when I explained the context, and showed other photographs, did the class understand what the picture was.

But there has to be room in the definition of abstraction in publications, or else we get things like Edvard Munch's "The Scream" or Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," or even Chuck Jones' "Nude Duck Descending a Staircase" falling outside the realm of what is or is not a publication.

So it all comes back to context -- If the audience has enough context, you have a publication.

So, for most messages in this class -- I'll say at least those that start discussion threads -- they could, independently, be considered publications. The added context of comments is great, but not entirely necessary. Those comments, taken individually on their own, don't work as publications, because the context is not there.

For those outside the class, however, more context than individual threads is needed to understand our "publication" here. So, if we were to publish what takes place in this class, we couldn't just cut and paste what appears here and hope it would be understood, because it would not. We'd have to add more context.

Then I want to talk about value. This ties in with the “successfully communicates” part of my definition. Most of us here blog, for example. Maybe we have a few individual posts that can stand on their own as a publication. But to successfully communicate with our audiences, we depend on them to read many, many posts, on differing subjects, each bearing their own levels of context. Those who read many posts get more value out of our “publication,” so for the most part, I’ll argue blogs as a whole, and not blog entries, are publications.

This idea of value also applies to the cave photos I’ve mentioned. While the monster graffiti photo is striking, it’s more valuable to the audience when presented as a photo set, showing the photo in context with the rest of what’s in the cave.

Same applies for the postings in this class. To us, we can pick out the value in more minute portions of the publications management class as a whole. But for others, the value isn’t on that micro level.

I'll stop here because I’m on the verge of babbling.

Dirk's Fancy Toidy Room

I recently completed remodeling our upstairs bathroom. It feels absolutely luxurious. 45 square feet of Laguna Bay-colored ceramic tile on the floor. The new vanity is made of rel maple. At least the front and sides, while the rest is of particleboard covered with some kind of paper-plastic veneer. We even have -- get this -- a new threshold, covering up the joint between the new tile and the berber carpeting out in the hallway.

And I didn't even have to trim the closet door or bathroom door to make them fit over the new floor.

We spent nearly $600 on this adventure, stimulating the local economy while doing so.

Now U.S. Interior Secretary (and former Idaho Governor) Dirk Kempthorne has his Interior office bathroom remodeled. To the tune of $236,000. Now, I can't blame him. This is all General Services Agency-approved, part of a multi-million dollar remodel of the Interior Department's building. They removed lead paint and asbestos fibers. THey repaired aging plumbing.

They put in a refrigerator and freezer, which, heaven knows, no bathroom should be without. And floor-to-ceiling wood wainscotting -- which you can't exactly call wainscotting, can you -- and fancy tile. Plus enough money left over for monogrammed towels for a guy who's going to be out of a job come Jan. 20.

I won't say another word.

No Pee-Wee Galaxy Ours

It appears our own Milky Way Galaxy isn’t as twee as we once believed.

Not that I, nor most of the inhabitants of this planet, for that matter, fret even a little about the size of our galaxy comparative to others in the neighborhood. But, given the trend of late of trimming and reducing the size and quantity of things in our little corner of the universe (I’m still upset about the demotion of Pluto, mind you) it’s heartening to hear that the Milky Way might indeed be as massive as the Andromeda Galaxy, heretofore thought to be the Big Brother in our local galaxial group.

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics recently completed measurements of the movement of areas of prolific star formation to determine how fast they were moving. They discovered, according to this article, that the Milky Way is spinning at about 600,000 miles per hour, or 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously thought. Using the arcane voodoo of mathematics, which kept me from my childhood dream of becoming an astronomer, they have determined that, given the faster rotation, the Milky Way must be about 50 percent heavier than previously thought, putting our own galaxy on par with the mass of Andromeda.

Another interesting finding:

Reid and his colleagues found other surprises, too. Measuring the distances to
multiple regions in a single spiral arm allowed them to calculate the angle of
the arm. “These measurements,” Reid said, “indicate that our Galaxy probably has four, not two, spiral arms of gas and dust that are forming stars.” Recent surveys by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that older stars reside mostly in two spiral arms, raising a question of why the older stars don't appear in all the arms. Answering that question, the astronomers say, will require more measurements and a deeper understanding of how the Galaxy works.

So the galaxy isn’t even as boring as once assumed – a mere two-armed bipedal octopus spinning through oblivion.

It’s often been a dream of mine to fly out over the Milky Way and look down at its spinning disk and revel in watching its bright arms spin gently against the blackness of outer space. It’s happened a few times in my dreams – always starting with a gigantic leap from the trampoline in the backyard of my boyhood home, where I soared for a while admiring the stars above, only to turn earthward and admire the roofs of our chicken coop and that of the neighbors’ until I soared higher and higher and higher until the earth was gone and the galaxy’s arms swam beneath me. Then I read that Albert Einstein often wondered what the universe would look like if he could travel through it at the speed of light on a motorcycle. Maybe that’s all it takes – Einstein wasn’t very good at the mathematics, either.

So I’ll keep dreaming about that galaxy of ours. Someday, I’ll see it from the perspective I desire.

Knowing What I Know Now

This itouch (or as the snobbier Mac purists insist on calling it, the iPod Touch - though it's clear they can't yet agree on capitalization) could grow on me -- however, it does have one flaw. The wi-fi. Well, the wi-fi works fine, no question. But considering that I work in a rural area where the Department of Energy has made significant investments in fiber optics, I have no wi-fi options for the three hours I use to commute to work every day. Of course, the itouch is more than Internet access, but for the other primary feature -- music -- I already have that trusty ipod that's already beat up enough for the bus. And the laptop, though heavier than this thing, is handier for text processing and movies. I'm not ungrateful for the itouch by any means, it's just that I'm typically a little slower than most to see the utility of such things.

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Soooper Geeenyussss

Wile E. Coyote, managing a publication.

Blogger's note: Yes, it's class time again. More obscure postings here, reflecting the musings I make in class -- this time, it's on publications management. Expect many pontifications.

My first reaction to this question was this: I have no publications management experience.

Then I realized, sitting here at my desk, surrounded by the fruits of my publications management labors, that I am grossly in error. The error of my thinking: Limiting what a “publication” is. Publications are more than books, magazines, artsy-fartsy catalogs, coffee table things and other folderol that get magically produced, printed and sold. The procedures I write and edit at work are publications – they’re published when the final product is posted to our internal document server, when they’re printed in the field, when they’re read by their intended audiences. The web sites I work on – uncharted.net, my own personal blog – are publications in their own right, and must be managed in a publications management sort of way. I want them, after all, to look good, to be useful, entertaining, inspiring, adequate, whatever adjective you may choose. My error in thinking about what a publication is hinged suddenly on the temporary, short-term nature of the publications I work with. A long-term thing like a book, with many pages, colors, photographs, and the like, felt more like a publication than the stuff I do every day. Wrong. Each thing I work on is a publication, I said to myself, thwacking my forehead in exasperation (figuratively; we try to avoid forehead-slapping where I work). So what if some of the things I work on have a shelf-life of a week, a month, or, in a few cases, hours, before the next iteration has to come out? Each one has to be managed with care to make sure it does what the client wants it to do. Even when the client is me.

But, there are aspects of publications management I know I can learn: Wrangling with those long-term projects. Budgeting.

So, publications management, to me, is this: Working with clients to find out what they want their publication to do, to say, to mean, and then delivering on that. Working with the people who will use the publication to find meaning the clients may not consider. Plus all that numbers stuff. Yeek.

First Itouch Blog Entry

Well, we'll have to see if this works.

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9 AM

For those of you unfamiliar with LDS Church doctrine, one of the church's truths is that every year the congregation you meet with changes its meeting time. This year, we've gone from meeting at 1 pm to meeting at 9 am, which has its benefits but also its various pitfalls.

First of all, when the alarm goes off at 7 am (alarms? On a Sunday morning?) it's still dark outside, this time of year. Reminds Michelle of waking our daughter for school a few months ago. Lexie was indignant that Mom was "waking her up at midnight!" to go to school. Michelle explained that it wasn't midnight, that it was, in fact, 7:30 am, and that it was time to go to school. Disbelieving her mother, Lexie looked out the window at the darkness still enveloping our little warty city and shrieked, "Then why is school starting at midnight?" That's how it was this morning. Dark as a black cat. Cold, too, five below zero, with the carbon monoxide alarm going off because the cold was driving the smoke DOWN the chimney, rather than up it.

(An aside: I used to laugh when Bill Cosby described, in one of his comedy routines, having to tell his children to use soap when they bathed. I don't see the humor in it now, as our oldest has now taken two baths this week without the benefit of soap.)

So the kids eat their breakfast while I go out to start up the van. Yes, it's only two blocks to church, but in this booger-freezing weather, walking to church simply isn't done.

But now we're home. Have been for nearly four hours. That means that, on our old schedule, we'd still be at church. I'm glad we're not.

Cul de Sac

When the local paper started running this comic strip, "Cul de Sac," I wasn't quite sure I liked it. I do now. While the strip doesn't quite take the puckish approach to childhood that "Peanuts" took, but the strip still does explore the odd little ins and outs of childhood through the eyes of the children. As with Charles Shulz' characters, these kids participate in the world adults have created without really understanding the whys of what they're doing, as in this sample strip here. I also appreciate that, like Schulz, Richard Thompson, the artist and author, allows his characters to be intelligent. They use big vocabularies. They think things through, logically, almost getting away from the life of adulthood towards which they're racing at light speed. Thompson has hit a good vibe with me here.

In reading Chuck Jones' autobiography Chuck Amuck, I've had a peek into what he considers comedy, and Richard Thompson certainly picks up on what he says. Comedy, Jones says, starts with sympathy with a character in any kind of situation. Since there are times even as an adult I don't understand the whys and wherefores of this adult world I'm supposed to be a part of, I can easily sympathize with a character who is obsessed with learning how to wink and whistle just for the fact of being able to do so, not because she understands why it's important. (And adults, watching her struggles, may not understand that in the kid's point of view that being able to whistle and wink are important as steps toward adulthood. This sentence is getting way convoluted.)

Sunrise over Ballerina

Originally, I had planned to use this drawing, "Sunrise over Ballerina," by Lexie, age 6, as either the last entry of 2008 or the first entry of 2009, but circumstances conspired against us and that entry did not take place in the timing I had hoped. So here it is now, Jan. 2nd. I still think it's a cute picture.

I have to make this entry a quick one. I've got a small bucket of grout curing upstairs as I type, and in about six minutes I have to head upstairs to apply it to the final joints in the bathroom. This morning, I completed installing the toilet and re-hung the doors. Neither needed an adjustment, which was my greatest fear, since I have no tools with which to adjust them. I'm thrilled with how the bathroom looks. It looks so much cleaner than with the old floor and cabinet.

I am fighting leaks, just like Richard Nixon, however. That's the trouble with plumbing, especially sink drains. Everything is all nice and happy with the old setup, but when you have to dismantle it to fix it or, as in this case, replace everything, there are always leaks. I hate them. I may have conquered them this morning, but I can't be sure. I go by the old Davidson Leak Test: Put a towel under the offending spots and tighten everything until the towel remains dry for at least six hours. Of course, with the nature of leaks, even this test is not foolproof, as I have had things look copacetic (damn James Michener for bringing that word back into my vocabulary) for a day or two and then suddenly it's Niagara Falls, Frankie Angel.

Well, the grout calls. Gotta go.

Happy New Year

For the curious, this is how the Davidsons spent their New Years Eve, right up to and past the point when midnight occurs and everyone is supposed to get so damned excited:

• Dad plays possum in bed up until shortly before 10 am as Mom and the kids make and prepare to eat breakfast. He emerges reluctantly but alertly from bed in time to eat two pancakes.
• Dad moutels (a Dutch word, forgive me on the spelling, I only know it phonetically, meaning putter or procrastinate) aobut the house before starting to grout the newly-laid bathroom tiles.
• The tiles get grouted. The family cleans up in preparation for a trip to Iona to celebrate the new year with two folks in their late sixties and early seventies. This is the kind of party family we are.
• We visit Lowe's to determine if they have a bathroom cabinet that will fit our needs. They do. We then go to Home Depot, return the defective carafe (cabinet, I mean) then go back to Lowe's to buy said cabinet.
• We then proceed to Wal-Mart where Michelle wanders around in desperation for fifteen minutes looking for the rest of us, while we drive aimlessly through the parking lot hoping she'll emerge from the store.
• We finally make it to Iona. We eat dinner.
• We watch the Spongebob Squarepants Movie.
• The kids go to bed, at approximately 10 pm.
• We watch something called "Speeders" on the television, while Michelle's parents go to bed.
• When fireworks begin exploding outside the living room window, we check our watches. It is indeed midnight. We yawn and go to bed.