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I’m About Done With “Un”

Nov 17, 2009 / Social Media / Trackback

DSC_0135I have decided I am giv­ing a last hur­rah to “un”. It’s not a pos­i­tive pre­fix. While every­one is cham­pi­oning the descon­struc­tion of con­fer­ences I’m embar­go­ing the con­cept. I don’t expect it to be pop­u­lar but I never was a cheer­leader or prom queen so I’m OK with it.

My last unen­deavor is an unblog post, a ran­dom stream if con­scious­ness, no structure.

There are no social media experts, there are mar­keters, PR, HR, Recruiters, peo­ple who use social media appli­ca­tions to do what they have always done. This is just another tool. I went to the local com­mu­nity col­lege today and spoke with 8 sin­gle moth­ers try­ing to make a life for them­selves by jug­gling par­ent­ing, school and work. They were scared. They meet weekly to dis­cuss life skills, I’m glad because they need it.

A local museum is clos­ing due to State bud­get cuts, that’s not good for chil­dren who take field trips there to learn his­tory and cul­ture. Danc­ing with the Stars is rein­vent­ing Kelly Osbourne, she is matur­ing before my eyes. There must be a bet­ter alter­na­tive to the cat lit­ter cur­rently avail­able. When I lived in Mex­ico there was no cat lit­ter, I used to go the lum­ber mill and get bags of wood shav­ings. Sarah Palin just doesn’t go away.

Recently I pur­chased a Nikon SLR starter cam­era, a D3000 and I think I have a future in food pho­tog­ra­phy. I took a photo of a tray of canoli today that I couldn’t stop star­ing at. I don’t sleep much dur­ing the week because I have a lot I want to accom­plish but I make it up on the week­ends. When some­one asks me what keeps me up at night I can’t come up with any­thing. Noth­ing is worth los­ing sleep over.

Homes in Europe and other places last hun­dreds of years because they are built of brick and stone. Why are we like ger­bils spin­ning wheels build­ing houses of wood that get ripped apart in hur­ri­cane zones, rot and get eaten by ter­mites. Aren’t we smarter than that? Why do I get mail order cat­a­logs with web­site URLs in big let­ters on the front cover?

Hav­ing to renew dog licenses every year is ridicu­lous. Why are human births and deaths reg­is­tered but not those of other domes­ti­cated ani­mals unless they are pedi­gree? I’m try­ing to fig­ure out what law of physics gov­erns indi­vid­ual strands of fur to find one another and clump together to cre­ate fur balls, same with dust bun­nies. Some enter­pris­ing per­son should go around neigh­bor­hoods and offer main­te­nance con­tracts just like condo com­mu­ni­ties have. I would pay it. Kind of a one stop shop for yard work, handy­man stuff, snow removal, house­keep­ing, secu­rity, etc.

I want a neck­lace with a pen­dant that is a hard drive and mobile phone that I can acti­vate by the sen­sor read­ing my thumb print and it pro­ject­ing a touch screen mon­i­tor and key­board on the sur­face of my choos­ing. I want seam­less appli­ca­tions. I don’t want to have to sync my smart phone with my com­puter and I don’t want to have to carry them around either. I like to travel light. It needs to be scan­able to pay for pur­chases and be styl­ish. It should be cus­tomiz­able like a locket with inter­change­able cov­ers to match your mood or your cloth­ing. Actu­ally, I’m dis­ap­pointed. We have put peo­ple on the moon and we don’t have this yet? I’m sens­ing our pri­or­i­ties are mixed up.

Shouldn’t world hunger have been solved by now? I’m not a speciesist and I  view eat­ing ani­mals the same as can­ni­bal­ism. If I had no food choices I might eat another ani­mal to sur­vive but I would only do it for sur­vival. I can’t wrap my mind around mur­der­ing, cook­ing, eat­ing and say­ing yum.. I think maybe it’s why noth­ing keeps me up at night.

I can be as abstract as the next per­son but I want some struc­ture back in my con­fer­ences. Not lec­tures pre­cisely, more work­shop style. I feel like I’m uncon­fer­enc­ing all the time, it’s one of the things social media is good for. If I want to have a dis­cus­sion with like minded peo­ple I start a thread some­where and now a wave, and ask peo­ple to join in. I don’t need to fly or drive some­where to do that. To me that’s just good old net­work­ing so lets call a spade a spade..

That was cathar­tic. Now it’s time for some sleep.



  • http://karlaporter.com/ Karla Porter

    @Taina — Those brown­ies needed to be cap­tured dig­i­tally for all eter­nity — that’s how good they were =) You have given me addi­tional moti­va­tion to pho­to­graph more food!

    @bronze_pendant_lights — Thanks for tak­ing an inter­est in my posts, you are wel­come to come back to my vir­tual home anytime.

  • http://www.bronzependantlights.net/ bronze_pendant_lights

    This is the great blog, I’m read­ing them for a while, thanks for the new posts!

  • taina

    Nice photo, I want a taste of whether those pieces of choco­late in the mid­dle of the nam

  • taina

    Nice photo, I want a taste of whether those pieces of choco­late in the mid­dle of the nam

  • http://karlaporter.com kar­la­porter

    Stephen — Did you check out the pic of the cel­ery? I feel like the Food Net­work is call­ing my name. I’m not a fan of any kind of sync­ing, even wire­less. I mean come on now, can’t this stuff just sync itself hourly? What about those men we put on the moon? Please don’t start talk­ing to me about con­spir­acy the­o­ries and the need to out­wit the Russians.

    Shen­nee — I’m a 24 hour news junkie! I don’t have cable or satel­lite TV & I have never seen Big Love.

    Meghan — Your com­ment is like sweet­ened con­densed milk, boiled down leav­ing just the good­ness. Bril­liant is the obser­va­tion you made that every­one quickly jumped on the band­wagon and now we’ve been left with fly­ing to cities to meet in big rooms to break out in groups to have mod­er­ated con­ver­sa­tions. I haven’t gone to many of them because I couldn’t be able to sleep at night ask­ing the orga­ni­za­tion I work for to pay expenses for that. I am con­sid­er­ing get­ting some inter­ested mid-Atlantic peers together to plan a unique pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence at a very cool place in the Poconos. ~Help your­self to a canoli!

    Joan — After reflect­ing on your com­ments both here and on Twit­ter I am con­sid­er­ing post­ing a monthly ran­dom stream of con­scious­ness. How­ever, if I wrote every blog post like that I would quickly become know as that crazy cat lady, don’t you think? Jump­ing off the deep end is haz­ardous… you know the ben­e­fits of mod­er­a­tion. You’ll have to share the cano­lis with Meghan but I think there are plenty to go around :-)

    Jerry — I have no idea what my sleep num­ber is. I fig­ure when my num­ber is up I’ll know it. Pan­dora is cool, I like Slacker too. I only get worked up by thing I can con­trol not those I can’t. I earned a marks­man­ship rib­bon years ago but I keep my gun locked up. I would only use it for self defense or mat­ters of national secu­rity. I wish you very bad luck hunt­ing my friend. I still like you :-) Cool got luke­warm quickly. It’s time for the next new concept.

  • jer­ryal­bright

    I’m going to call my dad today and let him know I need some help win­ter­iz­ing our camper. I’m pretty sure I know how to do it — but I like the times where he is still bet­ter at things than I am. We camped all the time while grow­ing up. It is by far my favorite way to vacation.

    So there I was. Sit­ting in my deer stand this past Sat­ur­day. I noticed some tall weeds start to move a bit. Over the next 5 min­utes or so a buck moved out of the weeds and into range. I’m not what you would call a “tro­phy” hunter. Old bucks just taste bad. I passed him over. I’m pretty sure I’ll take one dur­ing the next week or so. In fact I’m ready right now — look­ing out my office window.

    I’ve also been a bit unsure of the whole uncon­fer­ence thing. The idea was cool initially.

    Speak­ing of sleep — what’s your sleep num­ber? I’m a 70.

    Pan­dora is by far the coolest shift in music — ever. Well maybe the CD was just as sig­nif­i­cant but you had to buy them. Now I just pick a favorite band or song and Pan­dora feeds me a con­stant stream of songs that are sim­i­lar. For free. UN believable.

  • Joan Gins­berg

    This ran­dom stream of con­scious­ness post actu­ally sup­ports the uncon­fer­ence phi­los­o­phy. With­out the struc­ture you are con­sis­tently bril­liant and engag­ing. If you had writ­ten a struc­tured post about the evils of the uncon­fer­ence, my guess is that it would not have been nearly as wonderful.

    I want a can­noli. Now.

  • meghan­m­biro

    Fab­u­lous thoughts here Karla. I par­tic­u­larly like the tags you shared for this = entirely ran­dom (danc­ing with the stars meets veg­e­tar­i­an­ism). There are flashes of cre­ativ­ity + bril­liance in randomness.

    The poten­tial down­side with “un” is derived from the con­cept that the alter­na­tive in now offi­cially gone main­stream in many dif­fer­ent ver­ti­cals. When every­one is spon­sor­ing + mar­ket­ing an “un” you run the risk of dilut­ing the real value + mean­ing. I would pre­fer to attend one or two select “un“s a year that fea­ture a cul­mi­na­tion of our thoughts and offer me an oppor­tu­nity to spend qual­ity time with my col­leagues + friends in per­son. The term “net­work­ing” has sim­ply been replaced by “con­nect­ing” via social media chan­nels. You are right on — call it what you want — it’s the same behav­ior tied to dif­fer­ent buzzwords.

    Un” stands for a col­lec­tive (we the peo­ple) scram­bling to mea­sure + cre­ate mean­ing for con­cepts + new tools we are not yet able to link to spe­cific met­rics. We sim­ply need more time to pass and we must con­tinue to lis­ten. “Un” is com­ing from a place of ambi­gu­ity, I sup­pose we can even say it’s random.

    Can you please pass me a canoli? Grazies!

  • shen­nee

    Karla–
    Your topic of “UN” was Fab­u­lous. I really like your thoughts on the sub­ject. There needs to be a bit of struc­ture in the daily process. I too lack the nec­es­sary num­ber of hours of required sleep. Noth­ing spe­cific keeps me awake at night, and the 24 hour news just dri­ves me insane.
    You have inspired my next post. Look for it soon.
    Cheers!
    Shen­nee

  • Pingback: Tweets that mention I’m About Done With “Un” | KARLA PORTER | Human Capital & New Media -- Topsy.com

  • Stephen Moyer

    That looks like a stock photo. Very nice pic­ture!!! I would never have guessed you snapped it! Also if you buy an iPhone you can wire­lessly sync.


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