Maven - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You may find yourself asking the question, “So What is a Maven?” as you attempt to break down the title of this Blog MavenMappers.

The definition as provided by Wikipedia offers a history and usage. For our purposes, I’ve taken the word Maven and applied it in the context of the book The Tipping Point (Little Brown, 2000) - Malcolm Gladwell describes a maven as a person that naturally and intensely gather information and are quick to pick up on new trends. The book also describes people known as connectors that in an essence gather connections with people. The third group is a charismatic group of ‘Salesmen’ that have the ability to influence others.

When functioning together, a maven can identify a trend, share it with a Connector, that will know the right people to exploit the trend and a Salesmen will be able to close the deal or sell the results of the trend on society.

Ergo the word Maven for this blog represents people that gather information.

I’ll save the description of Mappers for another post, however, it might already be somewhat apparent how this begins to fit in for Mavens. After all everyone needs the right tools to compliment their personality.
maven
Malcolm Gladwell

Page Popularity for Site: 3% [?]

You won’t see too many $10,000 bills floating around. Not because your poor and not because the local gas station doesn’t have the capability to break a $100,000 bill. The main reason is that the Government has instituted a number of banking reporting requirements and controls that require financial institutions to report on transactions that exceed $10,000. In fact recent changes over the last few years, also require car dealers and other groups to report large transactions that can include amounts or combinations of amounts in the $2,000 - $3,000 range.

So if the treasury department were to print off a large number of these big bills, it would make it easier for certain nefarious types to exchange funds without having to go through a financial institution where a record can be made and reported up the chain.

Now on the other hand, if the US were to undergo a period of severe inflation or hyper inflation that resulted in a $10k dollar bill being worth what a dollar bill is worth today, they might have to print some of these bills off a little faster, so that you wouldn’t have to feed 50,000 $1’s into a change machine to wash your car.

(Not a real likely situation in the world today)

That scenario isn’t likely to happen as easily as it might have 90 years ago. As we have moved off the gold standard, it makes it easier for commodities prices to fluctuate with the fluctuation of the value of the dollar. However, during a time of severe destabilize such as was seen in Germany around the turn of the 20th century, it could be possible.

Never the less, its interesting to see one of these bills. Pictures of this one are floating on yahoo’s most viewed photos page .

$10,000 bill
Money Laundering

Page Popularity for Site: 4% [?]

(click image to see larger version)
FORTUNE: Trapped in cubicles - Mar. 9, 2006:

“A 2005 survey by Milwaukee’s Dieringer Research Group reported that 26 million Americans use broadband to do work from home. Sales reps and consultants have always worked remotely; now finance people, lawyers, administrators, researchers, and creative types can too. Just as infotech has enabled companies to offshore white-collar functions, it also untethers Stateside employees from their cubes.”

This article gives a nice history of the invention and roll out of the cubicle into Office culture of the late 20th century. Towards the end of the article it starts to point towards where the trends might be going. How congressman Frank Wolf (R) of Virginia has made telecommuting a pet project for federal workers. How companies from Cisco to HP and many others are saving a great deal of money on real estate by allowing more employees to work from home.

For those of us who work or have worked from home, many of the benefits are obvious. No commute, less wasted time preparing in the morning. More comfortable and spacious environment to work & typically a window to look out of. The obvious downside is that sometimes face time is important. Gathering a team together for a meeting where everyone is present and not conferencing in remotely is almost impossible these days.

We are all realizing how beneficial it is to get out of the cubicle. Next, we have to start sharing and benchmarking on some of the methods that make telecommuting successful.

At the end of the day, it does a company little good to have 25% of their work force banging away at a keyboard to generate reports that are never read in full or powerpoint presentations that cannot be viewed by the entire team. We have to focus on those practices, technologies and concepts that enable us to communicate as effectively from a distance as we can in person.

Video conferencing has improved significantly but has not been integrated well into all systems and cultures. Remote web conferencing programs are very beneficial, but often plagued with minor on the spot technical glitches that detract from a presentation, Plus they are expensive as a service offering!

Word documents generate too much text that never gets the full in depth review it deserves by too many team members, and PDF documents which provide the ability to lock down text and prevent manipulation can sometimes be even more problematic as they do not scroll as easily as a word document. Too often PDF documents get printed, wasting paper, just because its less efficient to view them on a computer.

Websites are a boon, as they are becoming much more interactive at communicating ideas in through multiple vehicles from text to pictures, sound, video, slide shows and animations. They also require an active navigation of the user. However, if the user gets off the recommended path in a website, they may miss something very important.

This all leads up to one of the core tenants of Maven Mappers. There is a telecommuting benefit in utilizing mind maps to communicate an idea. Maps provide the path and connections through which a user can navigate. They incorporate some visual ques along the way to speed recognition and comprehension. Future versions will carry sound and video embedded options as well.

Telecommuters need to utilize tools such as mind maps to insure that their ideas are communicated fully at a glance when someone views their work presented in a map form.
telecommuting
cubicle history
cubicle purpose

Page Popularity for Site: 3% [?]

The Korea Times : LG.Philips Develops 100-Inch LCD

Why did LG Philips develop a 100 inch LCD? This can’t be targeted to very many consumers. I know there is a plethora of 5,000 square foot plus homes being built all over the place, but is this really necessary.

I’m missing something important maybe, as all the LCD producers are trying to one up each other. Where does this end? Will we some day have a 50ft TV in every home. Parents of the future might warn their kids to back away from the TV, at least 50ft away so that they don’t develop eye strain.

I just don’t get it. Now if this were a 4′ tall 8′ long interactive Table PC to substitute for a white board or chalk board, it might make more sense. Put it up in a university lecture hall or something.

This gets press every time someone adds 3 more inches to the width of a TV, but after you’ve seen an 80″ TV is it that much more earth shattering to go see a demo for a 100″ TV. What type of warranty do these TV’s come with? Will your home insurance cover your loss on a $50,000 TV if your kid puts a baseball through it?
50ft tv

Page Popularity for Site: 4% [?]