“With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding.” Sandra Lake With travel comes the understanding of so many things: The world is small (but time zones are many).The human body was never intended to sit in a metal canister with dozens of close strangers for hours on end.It's ok to latch on to something (a…
Blog Posts
Making a Difference (and Building a Network)
“If our hopes of building a better and safer world are to become more than wishful thinking, we will need the engagement of volunteers more than ever.” Kofi Annan When friends and relatives ask, given my travel schedule and the strange interactions I have with technology and people, what it is I do for a…
Continue reading ➞ Making a Difference (and Building a Network)
The Meaning Behind Meeting Minutes
This post is an expansion on something I raised a few months ago in my post "Herding Cats": If it isn’t written down somewhere that stakeholders can get to it, it didn’t happen. Even if it is written down, if it’s not well indexed, it still didn’t happen. I'm going to start by assuming that…
Making Decisions
“You are always saying yes to something.” Jen Casey I recently listened to a podcast ("The Inner Boss"by Jen Casey, episode 152) that made me think about how I approached decision making. I was originally going to say “consensus-based decision making” but really, this applies to any decision making at all. From what to have…
Herding Cats
"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up."Oliver Wendell Holmes My experience of working with globally distributed, multistakeholder, volunteer communities to make things happen. The short, short version: Time zones suck. There's no way around that. Plan for duplication of information so that you can respect time…
The Fun Inherent in Asynchronicity
On May 9, 2019, I participated in my first "Tweet Jam". What glorious chaos! The topic was the upcoming Identiverse conference, and the goal was to get people thinking about the topics that will be touched on during the week of the conference itself. The concept of a structured and yet free-flowing conversation with all…
Where in the world is …
I have a wealth of informative conferences and meetings coming up. These are where the Internet is made. ConferenceDates / LocationSpeaking / FacilitatingTNC1916-20 June 2019Tallinn, EstoniaREFEDS3B. Are we done with T&I yet? The Solution for IdP Discovery and the Exploration of the Next Big ThingIdentiverse25-28 June 2019Washington, DCKeynote (with Sarah Squire) - Building Identity ProfessionalsThinkNEXUS10…
It Takes All Kinds
"Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life." – Amy Poehler People often ask me what it is I actually do for a living. What do I do that lets me travel the world for 35-40% of the year, and…