PolyWogg.ca – Page 10 – The writing life of a tadpole

Managing inside/outside a cycle

September 11 2016

I’m often surprised by what topics will spark interest in people, and cycles vs. innovation/disruption would not be one on my list of topics expected to interest people. But a couple asked me if I could elaborate my example a little more clearly, and so I’m going to go for a specific example currently facing my team.

We have a large branch, some 500+ people. Before the last round of cuts and reorganization, that number was closer to 700. Ten directorates dropped to 7, we moved a lot of financial processing people (back-office types) to a service delivery branch, etc. But the part I want to talk about is the regular financing files for non-salary costs.

These costs are not extensive, maybe 10-15% of salary costs, and include things like travel, hospitality, equipment, newspapers, water machines, software licenses, training, etc. A lot of small costs that require a bit of transaction time. During the reorg a few years ago, it was felt that there were economies of scale and increased consistency to be had by centralizing the macro entry of planning figures for finances by our finance branch. They left basic processing in the branch, and each directorate has an admin officer that handles that.… Read the rest

Disruption deja vu in government

September 10 2016

While there are lots of politics watchers and lovers, my interest in government is really about public administration…structures, choices of instruments, governance processes, really anything “internal” about how the machine works. This past week ended with an expected announcement of a change in our branch structure as a result of changes in strategic direction and a rethinking of how best to meet those new needs.

However, what is of interest to me in the general sense is that some of the changes “undo” some changes that were made a few years ago. That sounds bad, but it’s really not. It’s just that some things that were changed a few years ago for very good reasons have now been changed also for very good reasons, yet environmental factors are not the only issue, nor even necessarily the driver. Some of it is, or perhaps may be, just cyclical.

Take for example programming by, well, just about by anyone delivering public services. The “best practices” are simple and ubiquitous…you want the program delivery to be light and flexible and as close to the client as possible. You ideally want the clients to have say in the design or at least feedback that can drive annual flexible tweaks.… Read the rest

Loyalty and duty…

August 29 2016

I like reading the Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA) blog even though most of it is about education administration. Their recent post is about “Carleton’s Loyalty Oath” and basically outlines how Carleton University’s Board of Governors is struggling to address the behaviour of one professor on its board. To the blog’s eye, they’re behaving like “goons” and thugs. The issue surrounds Root Gorelick as the university faculty’s representative to the Board of Governors (BoG). He represents the faculty and feels he should blog to the community about the discussions, his positions, and even his objections to Board decisions.

Yet part of being part of ANY board (co-op, school council, parliament, NGO, business, etc.) is joint responsibility. You individually contribute to joint discussions, you exercise your personal voting powers, but you make collective decisions. And once a group makes a decision, the members of that group collectively made that decision. It’s even part of your legal responsibility in some cases. And the short version is that if you cannot abide by the group’s decisions, you resign as a member of the Board. That’s the job. Since Gorelick hasn’t come to heel at the Board’s insistence, the Board is revising the Code of Conduct to make it a formally recognized duty. … Read the rest

Articles I Like: Digital formats for books

August 29 2016

Most large newspapers, journals, magazines, establishment reps all have the same view of e-publishing…a giant collective “ewww”. Like you would only do it if you weren’t any good and had no other choice. Of *course*, they sniff, you would go with whatever format your obviously large and more knowledgeable publisher would do for you. I have little time for that stupidity, so often when I see those large establishment-supporters writing, I ignore them. If I want to see what is appropriate for 1975 instead of 2016, sure, maybe I’ll read them. Right after I read the tags on my mattress.

So colour me surprised when the NYTimes feed lists “Picking a Digital Publishing Format” as a headline. Technically, no pun intended, it’s not a full NYTimes article, it’s only on the website, and a Q&A in the “personal tech” area at that, but hey, I’ll take a gander.

The question was pretty straightforward — the reader wanted to know what the “best” publishing method for digital books was in order to ensure they could reach beyond Apple devices.

The answer starts out with a simple recognition that the author should find a format that works best for their book, and I wish they spent more time on that part of the response.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 6 – Slow descent into uselessness

April 11 2016

When I left off my last update, I fast-forwarded through seven years of non-use of my french at work. Non-use is a bit of an exaggeration, I use it occasionally, but I certainly don’t “work” in French. More like active listening in meetings. It’s even worse over the last 10 years as I’m working in planning. Almost all planning in government is done in English. I had a francophone director previously, and even he said he didn’t know any of the french terms for the various documents. Phrases like the Program Activity Architecture, now the Program Alignment Architecture, are shortened in speaking even in French to “le PAA” even though the french acronym is simply the inverse (AAP). But nobody says the words that spell out PAA or AAP, and even francophones pronounced the acronym as just the letters P-A-A (not pay-ah-ah). Sad, but true. None of the inputs I receive are written in french, none of the drafts coming from other branches are in french. Once they reach a certain degree of “finality”, they are all translated, but francophones face a daunting level of anglo-ization in the planning world.

I still suck at what I call short-term transactional french. Simple interactions, short bursts, with admin staff for example are really challenging for me…I’ve always struggled that my french improves after about 3-5 minutes, but if the interaction lasts only 1 or 2, how do you “improve”?… Read the rest

Reading Lawrence Block on writing: Part 1

March 25 2016

As part of my reading challenge for the year, I added Lawrence Block’s “Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel”, an updated book from a version he did back in the 70s. Reading books on writing is a lot like the classic quote of dancing about architecture, but I’m reading more to see his thoughts and experiences than looking for a specific technique or tool.

I even love his preface where he talks about reading a book about how to write a book, and what the “method” was that was recommended:

What you did if you wanted to write a novel, I was given to understand, was to trot down to the nearest stationery store and pick up several packs of three-by-five file cards.
(Block, Lawrence (2016). Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel: Expanded and Updated! (p. 4). LB Productions. Kindle Edition.)

Many would-be writers have seen that storyboard technique used, with heavy methodology on small scenes on each card, notes for the emotional intent of the scene, sub-stories, plot points being advanced, etc. When Block read that, he just about threw up his hands because it wouldn’t work for him. Nor did it work for me when I tried it.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: A danger of identifying best practices in publishing

March 16 2016

Since I aspire to being a published writer, and will be eventually when I get some time and some butt glue to keep me in my writing chair, I haunt lots of writing sites and blogs and discussions to keep learning more about the business. Recently I came across a link to a post from Jane Friedman, one of the gurus in the indie biz talking about marketing, digital tools, and such. She was basically summarizing presentations at Digital Book World (DBW), and while I think JF has tons more experience than I, I found myself wanting to quibble with some of the conclusions (4 Lessons for Authors on the Current State of Publishing).

An author’s online presence is more critical than ever to long-term marketing strategy.

I don’t disagree that it is important, but hardly “critical” or even the greatest challenge in publishing. The changing nature of the marketplace from traditional to indie or self, the shifting weight from paper to digital, these are tectonic shifts. Self-marketing? Nowhere near as important as the primary role of the writer which is to write the best book they can first. JK Rowling wasn’t exactly burning up the digital world nor was her publisher when Harry Potter broke all the sales records around.… Read the rest

HR, crazy trains and the PSLREB

March 7 2016

I know this will come as a complete shock to those reading my blog, but I’m a public servant. (Just kidding, everyone who reads this knows that fact, it is usually pretty clear). What also becomes clear when you talk to me about HR or my job is that I’m a public admin geek. One of my favourite textbooks of undergrad, law school, or grad school was one that wasn’t on any of my course lists, but I bought as part of my research for an essay … the book is “Public Administration in Canada” by Kenneth Kernaghan and David Siegel.

I bought my copy back in 1990, the link takes you to a 3rd edition in 1995, and it is long out-of-print. Public admin textbooks are passé, it’s all digital now, plus more about a series of articles, short monographs, chapters on policy, etc. But it was my first real public admin text and I thought it was brilliant. Unlike anything I had studied, and exactly in my wheelhouse. I still own it actually. From time to time, I think, “Maybe I’ll write my own version someday”, create a PolyWogg’s guide to public admin. Then I think of how much work it would be and decide I’m just crazy.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Publishing's dominant business model

January 22 2016

I love reading Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s business blogs about the publishing business, and her latest is no exception (Source: Business Musings: Poor Poor Pitiful Me Is Not A Business Model – Kristine Kathryn Rusch). In fact, her latest two pieces are about the same thing — a recent Author’s Guild open letter of lament about the state of publishing, and how their rights are being unfairly trampled by big publishing.

I spend too much time reading policy briefs at work though because I want to take her arguments, condense them into a tight little memo to the universe, and go even further. For me, I’d pitch it even stronger.

Publishing is a business — Not just a cliche, but that publishing starts with a business contract between two business entities. On the one side, you have the supplier — the author who has created a great work, and now wishes to make money from it. And on the other, a small number of publishers who have lots of small suppliers they make deals with for product. This is not a partnership between today’s special snowflake and an evil empire, it’s two business partners coming to a deal.
Fear is frequently a factor — since there are lots of potential suppliers, and only a few get to sell to the demanders, it becomes a buyer’s market.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: The first rule of fraud – blame the auditors?

January 12 2016

I was a bit surprised by a recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision that upheld the 2014 decision against the accounting firm of Deloitte and Touche. Basically, the courts found them liable for auditing Livent Inc (Garth Drabinsky and company) and giving it an unqualified “clean audit” statement over several years despite the fact that Drabinsky and others involved were well-known for being creative with their financing and accounting. After Drabinsky sold off the business, it collapsed because it was a giant fraud.

Until these cases, there was a Supreme Court case (Hercules Managements Ltd. v. Ernst & Young) precedent that has generally been interpreted as saying “if a company goes belly up, even for fraud, you can’t sue the auditors for missing it”. Given this precedent, which has been binding for some time (1997), Deloitte might be surprised too, and chances are that an appeal will be launched to take it the Supreme Court — and with an $118M settlement against it, an appeal could be worthwhile.

Appeal court Justice Robert Blair ruled Friday that the original trial judge was correct in concluding Deloitte was negligent in its work on the audit of Livent’s 1997 year-end financial statements, as well as the interim statements for the second and third quarters of 1997.

… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 5 – Use it or lose it

December 15 2015

After all that hard work, all the stress, I didn’t use my french much at work. I really felt uncomfortable displaying my crappy language ability with my professional colleagues, and over time, I got more and more rusty. I was fine for reading, I was fine for listening somewhat in meetings (I can understand enough in context, as long as multiple people aren’t speaking at the same time and I can actually hear what is being said and it isn’t rapid fire speed!). But I rarely spoke it.

Fast forward five years, I was looking at promotions and things. And I needed to renew my oral and written french. Written was simple, a mild review and I got my B again. For my oral, I wanted to go on a refresher course before my test and my boss offered me 2 months of full-time to see if I could get my C (which I would need to move up). I figured C was impossible, not even on the radar, but a few weeks doing my B refresher would be great.

I went to a private school this time, and I was one on one with the teacher. Face to face. Nowhere to hide.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 4 – My B level test

December 15 2015

I met my tutor for breakfast, we had a quick conversation in french to get me ready, and off I went.

This was my third attempt. When we all did the first attempt, we went in cocky. We had heard there was an examiner named Jacques, “Jacques le Couteau” was his nickname, and we all wanted Jacques. We were ready, send in the heavyweight. None of us had him and we all failed. For the second test, it was just a blur. For my third test, I just wanted out. I was a bundle of nerves, and I was focused on remembering my structures, rules, stories even. I was ready, but still nervous. I was introduced to the examiner, and he said, “Bonjour, je m’appelle Jacques” and I just about soiled myself.

Jacques? Anyone but Jacques! I was doomed.

We started off a bit rusty, I was reeling with it being Jacques, but I recovered when we moved past the chitchat warmup and into the actual test. I was ready. I had my techniques ready. I knew how to tell a story, and open doors where I could talk about more in that area, while shutting others that I didn’t want to get tangled up in.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 3 – Return to Asticou

December 7 2015

I had been back at Asticou about five weeks when I realized that the passive receiver of language learning was not working for me, and I spent a weekend thinking about some of the challenges I had gone through in the previous year. I kept coming back to the tutor’s analysis — I wasn’t letting go. Except I had, at least to the extent I could i.e. the extent that was within my personality and my learning style, and it hadn’t worked. I needed a different option. Since letting go wasn’t working, what if I took full control?

Lots of people might read that sentence and think, “Oh, of course, the student has to drive their own learning, be responsible, be engaged, etc.”. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something much more dramatic.

I went into my first interview on the Monday morning and it was with a teacher I knew well. He started by saying, “Today we’re going to …” and I stopped him there. I said, “No, we’re not. Here’s what we’re going to work on…we’re going to talk about the work I do at CIDA, my three main tasks, and an experience from the past.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 2 – My first tutor

December 6 2015

Even though all of us said that we weren’t ready (My experiences learning French – Part 1), the school sent us for the oral test.

And all of us except one failed. The one who passed? The weakest one among us. Partly as her “stories” for telling what she did for a living were pretty simple in comparisons — she was a clerk who did very basic admin work. No one asked her how she answered the phone or sorted the mail. No follow-up questions, ever.

One of the other people in the group was a policy analyst, like me, and during their test, they were asked to explain “How do you go about analysing a policy?”. Umm, what? That question makes no sense. It’s like asking a car mechanic what steps they do to “mechanize” a car. Asking how to do research or do data analysis might be real questions, but an analyst couldn’t answer it well in english, let alone french.

Whatever, we tried, we failed. So back to the grindstone.

Except now that we had our reading and writing done, we could concentrate 100% on oral. This meant interviews every day, two or three per day depending on the day’s rotation.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 1 – Intro to Asticou

December 5 2015

I am a not a linguist by anyone’s definition. I’m not very eloquent in speaking English, let alone any other language. I can write pretty well in English, and I edit even better, but other languages were never my strength. I grew up in Peterborough, which was not exactly the hub of linguistic diversity. Or any other kind of diversity, for that matter, at the time, although it’s changed a lot since I was a kid.

Early learning

We started French in grade 4 or 5 as I recall. I was okay, mostly because I was a good student, not because I had an aptitude for it. One year we did “French Xmas” i.e. we made yule log cakes, basically made lunch for the other teachers and one or two parents. I don’t even remember if we got to have any ourselves, other than the cake. I do remember that we got to go into the teacher’s lounge, and for the era, being shocked to see teachers acting normal instead of like their classroom personas. Some of them laughed. One of them was smoking. But that was the only oven/kitchen in the school, so we used it.

I remember I didn’t particularly like French when I was in Grade 8, although I think mostly I was just bored.… Read the rest

Because that’s the job

November 1 2015

I’d really like to call this post something else, but it’s time I stopped holding back on what some people think is their God-given right to complain about how they think the public servant’s job should be done, and that all public servants will “obviously” agree. What triggered my lack of inhibition? Johanna Read’s incredibly biased and non-factual article in today’s Ottawa Citizen (Read: Trudeau is ready but the public service isn’t).

Let’s break her argument down, because there are very few points I can agree with as a career civil servant.

Public service has been cut too far;
Public service is gagged and under-utilized i.e. “scientists”;
Public service is demoralized by previous government;
Accountability measures created by civil servants pushed decision-making upward;
Core business is fearless policy advice;
Challenges in loyally implementing decisions;
Public service values in treating each other are lower;
No market for advice under previous Prime Minister;
Public service policy is now about power games, cliques, and close-mindedness due to empire-building;
Therefore public service is not ready as capacity has been weakened and need management agenda for culture change, including new values, new attitudes, new behaviours.

Not all scientists are created equal

Let’s start with the second one first — scientists are gagged.… Read the rest

An uneasy relationship with politics

October 20 2015

I have an uneasy relationship with politics. Some people are uneasy because they think all of politics is about sleaze — legalized lying to the voters in order to gain office. Others are uneasy with things like representation by population (or not), special interest groups, the need for compromise, the mudslinging, the promises, the need for more compromises, and the almighty need to sometimes do things that are unpopular but still the “right thing to do” to stop the majority from exploiting the minority. Those aren’t my issues. I’m uneasy because of my job. I’m a civil servant.

Note that I said civil servant, which in and of itself is a clue to my unrest. I didn’t say, public servant, which is the popular term these days. That is used ubiquitously for both bureaucrats and elected officials, which is partly why I don’t use it. I am not elected. I am hired to do a job, or to be precise, appointed under the power of legislation that delegates authority to make appointments to the Deputy Heads of organizations who then in turn delegate to underlings for regular staff appointments, overseen by the Public Service Commission to make sure processes are fair, transparent, etc, not to ensure the “right” person or even the “best” person got the job but that they were qualified.… Read the rest

A sky tour with my new setup

June 24 2015

As I mentioned earlier, I have my Celestron NexStar 8SE setup finally working (Finally learning with the Celestron NexStar 8SE). So last Friday, when the night was promising good seeing, I headed over to the local park that I frequently use for viewing. I’ll confess it isn’t a “great” location in terms of light pollution. It’s just off Knoxdale and you can see streetlights about half a block away, plus I’m in the middle of a suburb. It’s darker than most areas, and I have decent horizons, but that is in comparison to most suburban areas, not against a true dark sky site. But it’s close and I wanted to test the setup.

I did my new routine — vibration suppression pads, wifi link, app on phone, 17.3mm regular + 12 mm illuminated cross-hair reticle for centreing and aligning, stars far apart. When it finished, and the alignment was successful, I started with simply telling the scope to show me the moon. It was disappearing behind a streetlight and a couple of houses, but it was a few blocks away before the horizon interfered, so it worked well enough to show me the waxing 4 or 5 day old moon.… Read the rest

Finally learning with the Celestron NexStar 8SE

June 14 2015

I have a Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope…for those not in the know, that’s an 8″ optical tube on a simple tripod. They call them one-armed bandits (like the slot machines) because there is a single arm that goes from the tripod mount that it rests on up to the tube. Simple, easy to work, but it isn’t very stable, at least not in astronomical viewing terms. It doesn’t allow for much in the way of astro photography due to its limited ability to track the sky over time, thus limiting the photography options of long-exposures. However, there is one feature where the 8SE shines — it’s ease of use.

This was a key ingredient for me in buying a scope, based on knowledge of who I am and the patience I have. If a scope takes 30 minutes to setup, I’m not likely to use it. I need something relatively simple, and the 8SE requires you to basically setup the tripod, attach the scope to the arm, add some power and eyepieces, and you’re good to go. More or less.

The second feature that was a huge selling feature for me is what they call the “go to” feature. You run a simple alignment procedure on the scope, the computer on the mount figures out what stars you are looking at, and after that, it knows where all the other stars and planets should be.… Read the rest

A newbie’s guide to the RASC Observer’s Handbook 2015

March 9 2015

I’m relatively new to astronomy, have been involved for just over 18 months, and am still pretty limited in my knowledge. One of my learning resources is being a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC), Ottawa Chapter, and by being a member, I get the annual Observer’s Handbook.

The Handbook is a great resource. But I confess that as a newbie, it can be quite daunting. For example, page 23 of the 2015 handbook has a table entitled, “Heliocentric Osculating Orbital Elements for 2015: Referred to the Mean Ecliptic and Equinox of J2000.0”. Umm, sure. I’ll get right on reading that immediately. As soon as I finish grouting the tub at a friend’s house. And this is listed in a section called “Basic data”.

If you know what that table is about, congratulations! However, this means that this blog entry is not for you. It’s for the people who have the handbook and want to be able to use it without an advanced degree in astrophysics or spending 3 hours with a dictionary and going down internet wormholes looking things up on websites.

Getting Started

One might think that the Handbook would start with an overview of telescope options, but it doesn’t.… Read the rest