SOCDIM - Mid Terms

I was absent last week due to my surgery and though my doctor assured me that I should be up in time for mid terms, I didn't expect that I would bleed continuously even when I'm asleep or simply lying in bed. Hence, I wasn't able to make it to my mid terms. And I was left with the most difficult question when I got back to school yesterday.

The task was this: Students are supposed to do an extemporaneous wherein they would try to connect two seemingly unrelated topics. Each student was given 10 minutes to prepare, and a minimum of 10 minutes to do the speech. My first thought was, "Yikes! 10 minutes is far too long!" Since I had the most difficult statements, I had the option to "Call A Friend". I chose Ms. Rhea, since she has always been my partner in class, at least for this term.

The Statements assigned to me:

1. While a company's information environment will be the site of most management initiatives, it's always rooted in the broader organizational environment, including the overall business situation, existing technology investment, and physical arrangement.


2. I am not as smart as people said a few years ago, and not as dumb as they say now.

Measurement Criteria for Grading:

1. What is the significance of the topic in your life/career?


2. How are you going to address the topic to be for your advantage?


3. What benefits will it give you?


4. How do you make it beneficial for others?

As I had discussed in the class, the one word that links the two statements is this: KNOWLEDGE. Of course, since I had to make use of the 10 minutes allotted me, I had to tell a story of my geeky childhood, my geeky college life, and equally geeky work life. By the word "geek", I did not mean that I did nothing but study. I believe the word for that is "nerd".

By "geek", I meant that I had the tools since I was a child and I knew how to make good use of them. I was the kid who had cool dot matrix reports while the rest of the class either submitted handwritten or typewritten reports. I made use of Print Shop and Print Master and since I was the only kid in class who had a PC -- green monochromatic monitor and 5+" floppy drive -- I was able to dazzle my teachers with my hi-tech presentations. I didn't have the best grades (or brains) in class, but the teachers noticed that I had smarts because they probably didn't get bored reading through my reports. In high school, I was also the first kid to have a colored printer.

This trend of impressing teachers with my hi-tech reports went on in college. I didn't enroll in a computer course because back then I only wanted to get into UP, and we all know that UP isn't exactly a school for the PC savvy. While the rest of my classmates traveled from one UP campus library to another, sometimes it'd be UP Diliman and sometimes it'd be UP Los Baños, I traveled less. I was also the first person in my block to have access to the internet. We already had it back when it first arrived in the Philippines, when 30 hours cost about a thousand bucks. I simply had the tools and I knew how to use them. And a lot of people thought I was so smart to have gotten so much information in nearly 1/4th the time it would've taken me.

How I dealt with schoolwork is basically the same as how I had fun. I was a gamer. The same tools I'd use for schoolwork are exactly the same tools I use for entertainment. I would dissect a game and analyze it, turn it inside out. I loved this hobby so much that I ended up doing review websites dedicated to gaming (and mostly anime/manga). Well, back then, I was also one of the few people in my country who actually knew HTML programming. It was this same zeal for dissecting games (and programming in general) that got me a job as a Gameplay Specialist for Level Up! Inc. Basically I was hired for my knowledge. I was hired for my adept use of the existing technology that the company had invested in. That was my role in the company's information environment.

Unfortunately, you can't always be smart or on top of things 24/7. Being in IT, one can tell when one is becoming obsolete. Our technology advances so fast that if you do not know how to cope, you'd end up with a stagnating grey matter. To rub salt into the wound, there were a lot of managerial decisions that I felt were in violation of my principles as a gamer. Somehow, I felt like I was hired for my knowledge but now the knowledge itself isn't enough. I did not like feeling like I was dumb, since I could only see one perspective. I mean, all my life I believed I was smart and resourceful, even if I'm not really as smart as everyone thought I was. To suddenly feel obsolete is just downright depressing. Especially when the kind of work you do plays a huge part in the company's information environment.

My solution? I had to step back, and try to understand the business from a whole new perspective. What is the overall business situation? What are the subcomponents that align our information environment to the rest of our organizational environment. The only way I could be of use to both myself and the people I work with is if I had another level of understanding. That was the first step in the process, realizing my shortcomings and trying to strengthen it by strengthening my natural skills. Thus comes the Masters in Information Management, which is only the beginning, I suppose. The application is the next big step in finding out if I have indeed learned anything at all. Once I grasp this, I believe I will be a better, more productive part of our organization and that would benefit me and everyone else.

So what happened to the extemporaneous? I was able to finish my speech at the 10th minute, and I asked Ms. Rhea to wrap things up at the 11th minute. I only hope that I made actual sense. Next journal entry would be about the evolution of Quality Processes. We've only discussed a bit of it after the pre-test yesterday, but we'll be doing the full blown report next week.

SOCDIM - Social Impact of the Computer

At yesterday's class, we were asked to group ourselves into five and then each group would present a drawing of how technology has affected us. The other groups then would have to interpret the artworks. We drew a scale that looked like this. My partner Rhea and I had only one thought in mind when we drew the scale: There are positive and negative effects that we try to balance out. Since it is a scale, it means that sometimes the positive would outweigh the negative and vice versa, although we both would like to look at it the way optimists would.

The group whose work we interpreted had an artwork that we summarized in one phrase: Nearly all the conveniences of the outside world within your fingertips. Everything is just a click away. Your business, your entertainment...all but your food, which was why the dude in the pic looked emaciated. He's been so addicted to his technological gadgets that he has done away with the outdated, manual way of doing things. That was how we interpreted it. But thinking about it now, I just realized that you can order food via the internet. There's this yummy diabetic chocolates (the kind that diabetics could eat) that you could get off the net.

The advancement of computers has made our life easier. We've managed to eliminate time and space barriers, and virtually anyone could do what one department in the early 1900s used to do. We've expanded industries, revitalized old business, and changed the Atomic Age into the Information Age.

Of course, we can't deny that we've become too dependent on computers that we've become lazy thinkers. (I've seen people use Windows Accessory Calculator to solve a math equation that was as simple as 4x4.) Of course, there's the thing about information overload and digital divide, which I've felt strongly when I was training the senior managers of my previous company.

As for communication processes? I don't believe this is the absolute advantage that technology has over the archaic ways of doing things. We may be able to convey messages faster, but with the informal and rather unemotional ways of communicating, I have experienced a lot of misunderstandings. I noticed that most of the arguments I had with other people were actually miscommunications that happened over chat/forum and SMS. In my personal life alone, I have noticed that many of my breakups were over my geekiness. I mean, truly, how could a man hope to compete with the attention I give my PC and my console games? I have been "married" to my gadgets for more than half my life, being attached to them for most of my childhood. I mean, it's easier. See, if your PC is acting up, you could easily replace its components or just trade it off for something better and you'd never be called heartless for it.

Hm. In retrospect, I guess this is also applicable to real life. There are new computer programs that have already replaced people. I feel that we must always keep up with technology, not the other way around. It's a vicious cycle that makes me feel older than I really am. I mean, I'm only twenty-something but I sometimes feel like I'm becoming obsolete.

SOCDIM - Making Sense of Organizations

We had a rather interesting class activity. It was a debate session, girls versus boys. The statement that we would be debating on was this:

When we do not understand system dynamics, we get trapped into cycles of blaming and self defense; the enemy is always out there, and problems are caused by someone else.

We were on the affirmative side. The funny thing about this debate was that we weren't really debating. We were arguing about two completely different sets of ideas that are related to the statements above. The girls were talking about this sentence being true. The boys were saying that to prevent people from blaming, they should do this and that. In essence, I believe the boys agreed with us, but that they were offering solutions, which was another different argument route altogether. It was rather hilarious. When the boys said that people should understand the system in order to not blame, we countered with, "But if you understand the system, you're already off the statement, for it begins with, 'When we do not understand...' If you understand the system, then that's a completely different topic altogether." Haha!

The topic for the day is Making Sense of Organizations. It's basically about human interpretations inside the organization. Everyone has an idea of how things are run or how things should run. Organizations then become complex, surprising, deceptive and ambiguous. Narrow or overly simple perspectives lead to fallacies that cloud managerial action. How this can be solved? Well, the boys actually gave good, albeit idealistic, solutions. At least, in my opinion. It's always easy to say that you should know the system, the process, but then there are many systems and processes within a company. A company's IT policy might go against its Marketing's polices. For instance, what if the rule enforcer penalizes a delinquent client under the clauses stated in the end-user license agreement, only to find that the particular client is actually favored or has connections within the organization's higher ups? Even with set rules written in stone, organizations will always be filled with gray areas.

It should be interesting to see how these gray areas are to be colored. I'd like to see different management styles. I mean, it would be boring if we all have to follow one right answer, one best way of rendering the gray areas.

RO Diaries Added

Added two more personal sites, H-Angels' RODiary and Shadow Guru's RODiary. Whew! That was a total of 29 sites all in all. @_@