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	Phil's Blogservations Monday, July 14, 2008 Posted by philgomes 10:27 PM Gone Fishin' No Internet. No cellphones. Smoke signals don't even make it to the altitude I'll be at. See you July 21. | Tuesday, July 08, 2008 Posted by philgomes 8:36 AM The Vanishing "Hero Inventor" It's always fascinated me that people know the names Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, but give blank stares at mention of Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby. The two men invented the integrated circuit "separately together" — Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor, Kilby at Texas Instruments — and are pretty much responsible for damn near everything you currently enjoy that has an antenna or wire coming out of it. It's a shame that we don't lionize inventors the way we used to decades ago. However, if pressed, I'll admit that interest in Dean Kamen's work comes close. While on vacation, I've been devouring books about the history of microelectronics. I just polished off T.R. Reid's The Chip, about the work of Noyce and Kilby. Just before, I finished Broken Genius about William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor whose ill-considered passion for eugenics eventually overshadowed his fundamentally groundbreaking work. Perhaps we live in different times. To illustrate, I offer this passage from The Chip, about when Diane Sawyer interviewed Jack Kilby after his induction into the Inventors Hall Of Fame: "I mean, if you have to think of one thing that kept the United States at the forefront of technology," Sawyer said, "it was really your invention." Kilby paused, stewing it over. "Well, I hadn't thought of it in those terms," he said quietly. "Have you made money from this invention?" Sawyer asked. "Some, yeah," Kilby replied. Things were just starting to get interesting when Sawyer got a signal from the director: time to move on. She turned quickly to the camera and said, "Coming up in a moment, Dr. Jerry Brodie on how to handle the death of a pet." Jack Kilby's moment in the sun was over. So it goes. Technorati Tags: history, electronics, robert noyce, jack kilby, media | Sunday, June 29, 2008 Posted by philgomes 5:38 PM "Giving Back" I often have a strong negative reaction when a business leader talks about "giving back" to a community. This tacitly assumes that achieving business success means that something must be "taken away" from that community. Further, it downplays the value that a successful business offers in terms of jobs, government revenue, increased prosperity, and so on. This attitude, in turn, plants the seeds for confiscatory, redistributionist tax policies, unnecessary regulation, and so on. Consider this, though: I consistently avail myself of the donated efforts of open-source programmers around the world. At home, I run Kubuntu 7.108.04, compiz-fusion, OpenOffice, GIMP, and a host of other applications developed in the free-as-in-speech-and-beer universe. And I, for one, am not a programmer. Further, my perso-professional priorities pretty much preclude me from taking a lot of time to learn. (Time spent learning, say, C++, could instead be put to learning Portuguese, which I so desperately need as I write this from my wife's grandparents' house in Rio.) So, how does a non-programmer contribute back to open source? Here are some ideas. Marketing/evangelism: This is, quite simply, not an option for me at this point in my life. Not a matter for discussion or debate. Testing: I'm torn on this topic. On one level, it's not only quite exciting to be testing fresh software, but proper testing is an exceedingly important part of a project's success. However, a lot of the time, I'm working on stuff that simply won't tolerate a memory allocation error or buffer overflow as just-one-of-those-things. Documentation: This is a part of the volunteer effort that I think makes the most sense for me. I'm a decent writer, I think, and open-source efforts can always use better documentation. So, I guess I should look for an open-source project to contribute documentation to. Watch this space for more. Oh... And here's some background as to why I use Linux. And a video: Technorati Tags: linux, foss, opensource | Thursday, June 19, 2008 Posted by philgomes 7:48 AM PROpenMic's "Ask Phil" Group Reaches 100 Members Many thanks to the students, faculty, and practitioners who have made this experiment such a rewarding experience for me. Of course, a special thanks to Robert French for taking the initiative to get this all started. Technorati Tags: propenmic, pr, publicrelations, education | Monday, June 16, 2008 Posted by philgomes 7:26 PM Re-Exploring "The Uses Of Argument" (NB: This has been cross-posted to Authenticities, the Edelman Digital blog.) As many who know me have heard by now, I harbor a somewhat strong dislike for marketing books. This aversion started around 1995, when I was first exposed to the genre, and has only softened occasionally since. (The most recent concession: Matt Mason's excellent The Pirate's Dilemma, after enjoying a speech by the author at a client event.) That's not to say that I somehow believe such works don't have value. It's just that I prefer to obtain inspiration from other corners. Often, I hope that I can move forward by going back, "fishing where the fishermen ain't" as I've alluded to before. I discovered the work of logician Stephen Toulmin from one of my college professors, Dr. Barry Eckhouse, who has built a career in part by applying the precepts of classical rhetoric to modern business. His book Competitive Communication, now in its third edition, is an essential tome. (I should say at this point that I prefer the less-pejorative connotation of "rhetoric" as "the art and, to some degree, science of persuasion". Unfortunately, the term has been somewhat sullied, with most believing it to solely mean intellectually dishonest, jingoistic, podium-pounding oratory.) While I haven't studied the art of rhetoric with sustained academic rigor, it occurs to me that many commonly taught models of argument — if any are taught at all — suffer from a fatal flaw: they don't anticipate that your audience might talk back! This I find to be a strength of how Toulmin looks at argument — a far cry from the insular "Socrates is a man / All men are mortal / Socrates is a mortal" logic. Arguably, Toulmin appeared to have dissected some element of the Conversation Economy long before the Web or the modern computer, to say nothing of Web 2.0. Toulmin's The Uses Of Argument (first printing: 1958) is a dense but rewarding read. The meat of the work is in Chapter III, which begins: An argument is like an organism. it has both a gross, anatomical structure and a finer, as-it-were physiological one. He next outlines a simple-yet-comprehensive framework for constructing an argument: Claim: What is it that you set out to prove? Data: What material supports this claim? Warrants: What makes the data at all true to the claim? Backing: What gives the warrant any authority at all? Rebuttal: What might the reasonable person counter with? How might you respond? (I'm over-simplifying, of course.) In all of the excitement around Crossing The Chasm, Unleashing Your IdeaVirus, Tipping, Blinking, Cluetraining, Groundswelling, Long-Tailing, or what-have-you, a fundamental truth is often forgotten: We're in the business of making a case, persuading an audience, and articulating a point of view. QED. Sure, one might say that reading these marketing books is my responsibility as a professional communicator. After all, one must keep up-to-date in one's field and be able to communicate in the latest metaphors that field's participants develop. The fact is, though, that enough of you read these books and, in so doing, have become my "information processing nodes" for that content as you blog, discuss, Twitter, incorporate invoke, and reference such works. I hope, perhaps, that I've kept things in symbiotic balance by, in turn, processing a book you haven't read in some small way. So, I'm saying this: By examining what makes for a truly persuasive argument in today's world, we can once again focus on mastering chess instead of trying to be the best at checkers. The basics are decades-to-centuries old. Perhaps in adapting them, we'll find new truths. Technorati Tags: rhetoric, writing, books, persuasion | Sunday, June 01, 2008 Posted by philgomes 10:22 AM Economist On Paths To The CEO Suite Great article in The Economist (sub req'd when archived) on current trends in terms of how folks get to the CEO chair. The report cites a variety of studies. Some highlights: The value of company loyalty: "Lifers" in America and Europe take 22 years and 24 years, respectively, to get to the CEO position, whereas "Hoppers" who bounce around between four or more firms take 26 years. Reflecting faster times: In 1980, it took an average of 28 years to reach the top spot. In 2001, it's been compressed to 24. Average time in each interim position is four years, with the number of interim positions going from six to five. Easier on our side of the pond: 26% of Americans are "lifers", versus 18% in Europe. CEO turnover is higher in Europe (17.6%) versus US (15%) and Japan (10%). Most interestingly: 37% of the European CEO turnover was due to firings, versus 27% in US and 12% in Japan. The cited cause: Shareholder activism. Of course, there's an inherent flaw in the wrap-up of these various studies: As our European CEO David Brain once told our U.S. leadership "There's no such country as 'Europe'." Comparing "America" to "Europe" seems kind of funny, on the face of it. That said, if it feels like modern business is getting faster and faster, you need only look as far as the compressed career path. Cynics might say that, with a progressively shorter path to the top, leadership quality diminishes. There may be some truth to that. I choose to believe, though, that leaders learn more in a shorter amount of time. Technorati Tags: ceos, industry, careers | Thursday, May 22, 2008 Posted by philgomes 9:17 AM George Wright Of WillItBlend.Com Answers PROpenMic's Questions I offered the PROpenMic membership an exclusive opportunity to get questions in front of George Wright, the man behind BlendTec's successful "Will It Blend?" videos. The following was recorded (and edited in under an hour... buya!) at John Gerstner's "Executing Social Media" conference in Pasadena this week. Find more videos like this on PROpenMic Technorati Tags: propenmic, george wright, willitblend, blendtec, video, viral video | HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil's demented imagination. Hell, to be perfectly honest, even Phil disagrees with what he thinks sometimes. This site has virtually no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Clicking on a link doesn't automatically send a 1/2-cent donation to UNICEF. You can't buy, sell, auction, swap, find a date, win friends, influence people, cross the chasm, or decode the human genome using this site. You won't get free email. You won't win a PalmOne Treo or a Playstation2. This site will not end world hunger, foster peace in the Middle East, help you smell better, teach you how to swing dance, or move the global economy from petroleum to hydrogen fuels. You'll learn a lot about this site's master, though, which amounts to a haphazard collection of strange and useless facts that pretty much won't help you at all.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This is the blog of Phil Gomes, VP with Edelman Digital and senior advisor to the Society for New Communications Research. This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. Phil currently resides in Chicago, IL. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes.com View my page on PROpenMic SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. 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