lifeasdaddy

lifeasdaddy - CEO blogs

Interested in CEO blogs? 

I am , and I've got a couple in my blogroll (right margin).  Dunno if Cameron Reilly would describe his blog as a CEO blog though, and besides, he's in a partnership.

There's a great list of CEO blogs in Debbie Weil's blogroll.  Check her right margin.

I already had Rich Edelman in my blogroll.  The company he heads, Edelman, is maybe the world's largest PR firm.   Debbie's list has shown me Harold Burson's blog. That's the Burson of Burson-Marsteller, another huge global PR outfit.

Mr. Burson is 85 years old.  85.  And he's writing a blog.  And a beautifully written one too, although his blog isn't link-rich.  He's also got an interesting blog post  Being in the Know where he details his information gathering techinques.  here's how he puts that information to use:

"How does reading translate to someone whose career is public relations? And why is it important to be well-read?

I have a theory that goes like this: when people meet people they make quick judgments that are continually reinforced as the meeting progresses. The first judgment (usually the prevailing judgment throughout the relationship) comes in the first thirty to sixty seconds of the encounter. A common interest is the key to bonding. Since one meets people from all walks of life, knowing a little something about a lot of things can help establish that bond. It's only natural for people to feel a kinship with someone of like interests who can talk about them.

Put another way, I frequently regard an introduction to a person of interest as an occasion that can be used to set up a follow-up meeting or assure that my telephone call is returned. I figure I have thirty to sixty seconds in which to make a positive impression. I must use that time to say something that causes the listener to think I know what I am talking about - recognizing, of course, that I must "talk the talk" the listener wants to hear rather than what I might want to say. On such occasions I have always felt my father's admonition "being in the know" better prepared me to accomplish my objective - establishing connections and relationships that might one day be useful.

One thing I can tell you: it has worked for me"

Yep.

lifeasdaddy - BBC is blogging. Why not the ABC?

Matt Foster has blogged about the BBC blogs.  Matt also makes the point that blogs "...can be built around events, or the genre of programme."

(That brings to mind a good example.  Cameron Reilly blogged about the Teradata Universe Sydney '06 meeting here.)

Here's some BBC blogs:

Nick Robinson (He's a political editor.  Informative blog. Comments from his readers are partisan, as you may expect.)

Paul Mason (Newsnight business correspondent. Currently reporting from Bolivia)

World have your say.  ( A team blog from the World Have Your Say crew of the World Service.  WHYS is a news programme with the agenda dictated by the listeners. )

Our very own ABC has embraced podcasting and pods an multitude of programmes.   The word is that the ABC podcasts have reached 400,000 per week. 

It'd be good to see some blogs comeing out of the ABC too.

At the moment of course there is a good deal of political heat within the ABC over the Government's announcement this week of the abolition of the staff-elected Director on the ABC's Board. 

[Thanks to Trevor Cook for the pointer to Matt Foster's piece.]

lifeasdaddy - La Toya Jackson needs a new stylist

eeeek.

lifeasdaddy - Optimistic about Iraq?

You won't be after you read this story by The Washington Post's Jeffrey Gettleman who gives his observations upon returning to Iraq after a year's absence.

lifeasdaddy - Muslims in Australia are a topic of interest to some.

I was searching for some statistics, and stumbled upon a website called The Forum, part of On Line Opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate.

In The Forum discussion index, the front page displays around 150 articles for debate.  There's a great diversity of topics covered by the articles.  Most of the articles recevie a mere handful of forum responses (debate posts), a handful from 50 to 70 responses.

Only 4 articles have received more than 100 separate responses by readers.

Here are the slugs for each of those items:

Sharia law and Australia  It is only a matter of time before Sharia law is proposed as a legitimate means of resolving disputes as they arise between Islamic Australians. - 22/3/2006

Sexing up stories about those 'evil Arabs'   Tim Priest capitalises on the fear factor - aiding, abetting and profiting from Australia's Arab-phobia. - 15/3/2006

Just how Aussie do we have to be?   Let's move past common stereotypes of Muslims. - 7/3/2006

The myths and realities of Islam’s Shariah law  The Shariah system of personal law can co-exist with the Australian legal system. - 2/3/2006

What do I think that means?  I think it means that people who read that debating forum are much more interested in topics relating to Muslims and their place in our society than in other topics.

The topic looms large outside Australia too.  For instance, Last Monday 27 March, the Rt. Hon Tony Blair, MP, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom made an address to a joint sitting of the Austrlian Parliament.  Of course, he covered matters in Iraq, and Islam in the United Kingdom.  You can read his speech in Hansard.  It starts at the bottom of page 2.

lifeasdaddy - Is it Christmas yet, Daddy?

This morning, while we were having breakfast Edward said to me, "Where's the Christmas baubles Daddy. I want stars and moon."

I told him that his Mummy had put them away after Christmas, and that I didn't know where they were.  I also said he could ask Mummy about it tomorrow when she returns from her trip.

At lunch time we were having fish and chips.  He piled it high in his bowl, indicated it, and said, "Christmas tree, Daddy.".

Maybe it's going to be a slow 9 months.

(Darling, if you're reading this, now you can have some time to prepare your answer.)

lifeasdaddy - learning to write & read

I wrote yesterday about tips on learning to read, and made reference to Frank Smith's whole of reading language approach.

Now, I'll sum up a couple of points Mr. Smith makes, and try not to bastardise his views too much.  Smith is generally opposed to the use of synthetic phonics in the teaching of reading to children.  In this Wikipedia entry about reading education, Smith is roughly aligned with the print exposure/cognitive aproach.  He reckons the more a child is read to and learns the format of written English (discrete words as collections of alphabet characters left to right and down the page, story structure, headlines, subheadings, pageination etcetera) the better.

In the list of NEA reading tips I linked to yestereday, the second bullet point on that list generally follows Smith's guidelines, as does the fifth point.

Gabrielle and I have discussed how we will try to help Edward to learn to read.  At the moment, we're using Smith's approach.  We're also influenced by Mem Fox's advice on reading aloud to children here and here.

We've been reading aloud to Edward since he was born. At least 2 story books per day, sometimes as many as 10.  Often when I read aloud to Ed I show him that I'm following the words I'm reading with my finger,  sometimes as a continual flow, and sometimes moving the finger from word to word and pausing briefly on the the word as I am saying it aloud.  This is to show him the relationship between the printed symbols on the page to what I am saying.  To give him a background to help him unlock the puzzle of reading.

Today I discovered that showing him how I write also leas to mimicry of my writing.

This morning I got a piece of paper and a pen, and esplained to Ed that I was writing a shopping list for the supermarket.  I sat next to him, and he started grabbing at the paper and pen saying, "I write shopping list.  I write shopping list."  I managed to quickly finish 3 scribbling three items on the list as he was grabbing the pen.  In a cursive script I wrote:

nappies

nappy wipes

sard spray

When he wrested the piece of paper and the pen from my grasp he scribbled over the top of what I had written. I was interested to see that when mimicing my writing, he used a scribble about the same size as my handwriting, and that he also kept roughly to the lines along which I wrote.

Here's a pic of his writing over the top of mine.

And here's a closer view>

He's scribbling, but not randomly.

lifeasdaddy - Ed's deductive reasoning

I'm sometimes amazed at the links Edward makes between my actions and what they mean.

I wrote here about the connection he made between seeing a tube of sunscreen cream and going to the beach.  On that occasion he was incorrect.

Yesterday morning he was right.  We got in our car which I almost always park on the street.  As I started to drive from the curb, I realised I had forgotten something.  So I reversed into our driveway and parked there.  As I started to go into the driveway Edward said, "Daddy forgot something."

How about that?

I guess I remember I need something more when embarking about once per month.  I just about always then reverse park into the driveway.  I'm a creature of habit, and Ed knows it.

lifeasdaddy - Microsoft vista

Grady Booch of IBM has a thoughtful comment on the problems being experienced at Microsoft with Vista. His comments are quite gracious under the circumstances.

He doesn't say ha ha.  He says ah ha.  What can we all learn from this.

I read Booch because he takes a wide view of the the IT world, perhaps based on his long years of experience.  No, come to think of it,  that's not why I read Booch.  I read him so I can keep up with the conversation in my family, and Booch is more readable for me than most IT bloggers.

lifeasdaddy - How to kill a Ninja

LIfeasdaddy has not been in paid employment for quite a long time.  He must keep up with happenings in the world of paid employment.

One day he may return to paid employment when his duty is done.  If so he may become a paid consultant advising on the popular culture.  As such he needs to know about The Ninja.  And importantly, how to kill a ninja. 

"... at a Ninja funeral, everybody wears black.  There is a chorus of bagpipes.  They play something by Johnny Mathis..."

(Doc Searls showed the way.)