My desk is still a littered mess. Not with articles and textbooks, but things that need sort of need my attention…but not immediately.

A couple weeks ago I received my degree in the mail. Everything was spelled correctly with fancy paper and lettering. When I received it I was pleasantly surprised for some reason. Maybe because I wasn’t really waiting for it. Already it seems a long time ago.

My days are filled with meetings followed by bursts of engagement and interaction with multiple subjects, people, machines, and information. All working on the same things, but only some see the connections. I see some of these connections nobody else can see. It makes things more interesting. And more challenging.

This morning I have a meeting with about 15 people scattered around the globe, all remote via audio, at least 6 with video, sharing a desktop view on the presenter’s computer. I have three monitors so the middle panel is the shared view, the two outside monitors for docs, taking notes, chatting with coworkers, monitoring systems, etc. This lasts an hour. During this hour I’ll present on a research paper four of us collaborated on over the last couple weeks. But mostly the last two days. For me it was into last night.

It’s a lot like school. But it’s more work. And there’s never enough time.

And I can say just finished, even though it was 47 minutes ago¹. That’s is nothing compared to how much time has passed since I posted my first blog entry after having attended my first graduate degree lecture. My brain was on fire. I was seeing collections everywhere. I had a noisy Dell tower keeping me warm and I thought it was awesome.

That was a long time ago. I wondered how long so found a site that would calculate the date from my first post to this post. Here it is, the time spent indentured to the pursuit of a Masters degree nobody understands and a blog that is marginally entertaining.²

3 years, 7 months, and 14 days
(114,220,800 seconds)³

I made it through. I learned a lot.⁴ I understand so much better the connected world accessed through designed interfaces. From the infrastructure, to the design, to the psychology, to the usability, to the study of what works and what doesn’t when people and computers come together. Nerdy IA/UX stuff that people building stuff should know and understand.

And it’s changing all the time. People are connected through technology in ever increasing ways. Regardless of device we find ways to stay connected, to communicate, to interact synchronously and asynchronously. This is leading to more connected social networks with broader reach and dispersion.

Someone who understands and can adjust to the ramifications of a connected society while leveraging available technology is needed in virtually every industry. At a high level, that’s what school has trained me to do. All along I’ve been exercising that training in the real world, in my real job.⁵

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next. In the mean time, I should probably mow and do some vacuuming or something. Maybe eat some lunch.

Image: Taken walking to one of my last sessions at the B school last week.

1. …according to my status on Facebook.
2. Not entirely true, but I recall most reactions when I’d tell someone my specialization. It wasn’t like being told you’d won a pony or a spaceship.
3. Summers are counted because the shadow of fall class looms distant, on slow approach.
4. And recently about alots.
5. The same job from which I took a vacation day today to focus on my last take home final.

But in reality, I don’t have a ton left to do. The presentation is coming along as well as can be expected given the circumstances. It’s not a significant portion of our grade but I still want it to be good. Our research isn’t terribly interesting, but we’re exercising skills we’ve learned over the last 12 weeks, so that’s something.

Less than two weeks until the focus of the last four years comes to an end. Then a fast week wrapping up stuff, getting commencement tickets, a gown, and preparing the house for guests…then graduation.

You want it. I want it. It’s time. Is it going to matter?

Classmates over the last few years are now working for Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft. I work for a pretty big company already.

Will I be able to leverage my usability, design, and development skills to blaze a brighter future? I sure hope I get the chance. Time will tell.

Every student has a laptop and seems to pay more attention to it than the professor.³ The professor has cleverly taken to using an online tool called LectureTools.⁴

With LectureTools she can post slides of the lectures. We can basically annotate the slides to leave notes. It also allows her to post questions which we can answer during lecture.⁵ She’ll ask us to answer a question then will call up the results.

When she asks about the answers nobody wants to admit having answered. Nobody responds. The look on her face is like, “Seriously? I know you guys are here, you just voted. Hello?”

I think she’s on to something though. If you’re all going to be in a room together where you can see and hear but are also networked, make use of it for learning. LectureTools holds a lot of promise, keep at it Lada.

It’s easy to get distracted though. At one point the prof (running her lecture off her laptop) switches to an email to find a link to something funny and relevant…I forget exactly what it was because I got lost for a second.

Understand that if the professor mentions a famous person, theory or event, many of us launch a browser tab and Google it. The next 5 or 10 seconds spent skimming data. Augmenting the lecture with facts, figures, pictures.

I started skimming this blog of “indescribable awesomeness” and almost bust out laughing. With practiced discipline I brought my facilities back to lecture. Just barely. A few days later W. and I are looking at some of the older posts and were laughing so hard we were in tears.

But anyway, back to school stuff, this blog, and it’s final days.

There are basically four more weeks of classes. The fourth week is committed to a take-home final in statistics. In one of my classes, I have only 3 more weeks. So even though it’s four weeks total, it’s less than that even. The next 2 weekends are going to be all about writing final reports, wrapping up a 25 page white paper, and a couple more problem sets for stats.

After that I graduate and move on.

Image: Taken on the way to study group and a group meeting in the Ross Business School. This is looking through the class toward a huge granite staircase.

1. Before I had my first class with her, I remember an email being sent to SI students to vote for her on Wired.com.
2. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that many are there because statistics is a requirement.
3. Except for one person who shares with a friend for LectureTools stuff.
4. It was a rough start, but a couple weeks into class she went to a session on how to use it and things improved considerably.
5. We can also post questions which she checks every now and then to answer.

A glance at the clock. It’s 11pm. I usually try call it a night by 11pm. The last couple nights I’ve seen 12:30pm before I made myself stop looking at the clock. Just had to get some stuff done.

Sometimes I think it’s because I have to serialize myself through this keyboard. Kickin’ it QWERTY style. If only I could find that gadget to keep me connected. Maybe it’s time for the iPhone. I want to be able to talk to something and have it sent me an email of what I said. I want my house to listen and respond to information requests. That’s probably a way off though.

Sought some decompression today through golf. It was sunny and warm. First round of the year. The next won’t be for another month. I golfed with a retired aero-space engineer and an incredibly fit asian neuro-surgeon medical student who will learn tomorrow where his 7 year neuro-surgery residency will be. His first choice? John Hopkins in Baltimore. He golfed par. I don’t know what I golfed. I didn’t keep score.

It’s been a long hard road the last few years. Taking classes to fulfill this degree has been arduous. I’m a better person for it. I’ve learned a lot and have been applying what I learn as I’ve been learning it. But still, something is missing. I think it’s interaction, engagement, co-creation. I’m not sure. I’m getting closer though. I love creating things that are useful and get people to interact.

Apparently my personality is one that thrives on feedback and interaction. I need feedback to make good decisions. Otherwise I feel like I’m wandering aimlessly, lost. I find it hard to get people to give you their feedback straight up. Not everybody is a waltzing bear.

W. was asleep when I got home tonight. She mumbled acknowledgement when I rubbed her leg so hopefully she doesn’t wake up later and wonder where I am. My mother used to have us wake her up when we got home late from babysitting. She didn’t want to wake up later and wonder if we’d made it home. She’d say weird things though, dredged from whatever dream she was having.

I didn’t leave the B school until about 10:00pm. After chatting with classmates and walking across campus through throngs of drunken beaded students wearing alls kinds of green I didn’t get home and connected until about 10:40pm. Surf the nets, look for feedback, then give some. Capture the moment.

I’m listening to Sade. I’m tired. I have class tomorrow morning. I have lots to do at work. Spring is parked out front. The living rushing by. Missing my cat every day.

Image: I just like this tree and building. Took this picture last week walking to West Hall.

1. Sade, Soldier of Love, “Long Hard Road”

But right now, even though I could be working on a white paper draft due in less than two weeks, I’m watching cartoons. It’s not like the paper doesn’t have a good start, we’ve already drafted a good part of it. So I watch episodes of Cowboy Bebop that I’ve seen at least twice already. While scheduling group meetings for the weekend.

Judging by how few of my classmates I see online, I suspect they are occupying themselves elsewhere. Hopefully they’re watching alligators or enjoying live music or exploring another country. Seems like a classmate is in Ireland at the moment.

I’m in my basement office, thinking about how value is created. Thinking about how value is created through the tools and resources we use and wondering how to find where things can be improved. Kind of abstract, but I’m working at it. Project’s need direction, attention needs focus. Evolution is driven by competing forces.

So easy to get caught in the raging flow. Swept along. Forced by the current, the circumstance.

The marketing strategy class I’m taking has me working on a white paper whose purpose is to identify areas of engagement in a certain business or industry, the value gained from those engagements, and how to increase the value to those involved. These areas of interaction can be with customers, other businesses, other business units, departments, teams, and coworkers. You get the picture, the blank canvas.

This blog is an engagement platform. It is an unfolding story where we can co-create value. Granted, it’s in the form of page reads and the coveted comment, but there can be value in both writing and reading a blog…and not always at the same time. These types of ramblings aren’t entertaining to everyone. Writing has a certain voice…and some voices are just annoying.

Getting back to creating valuable experiences through things that allow people to connect…

The experience of interaction, the accessibility of information, the structure of an interface, these things  play a critical role in creating valuable experiences. An equally critical role, and dependent upon the aforementioned, is the coming together of interface with interested party.

That’s when cool things happen. That’s when an engagement platform becomes the structure to a more meaningful experience, be it a blog, a web site, a portal, a program, computer, a mobile device. At that point they are vehicles connecting people, allowing experience to unfold, allow value to be created collaboratively.

Or it might be a white canvas of potential, waiting patiently for time and attention to come together in a way that engages the soul. It’s a tall order. But being the viewer, and being engaged, should be enough to start with.

In between school and the whirling dance of complex interactions that is software development, I find myself making connections to things I’ve studied during the the last 7 semesters¹.

Whether I’m talking to a classmate, sharing insights on group dynamics, or discussing how to implement new features in an existing product interface, the principles, questions, concepts, and lessons learned on perception, cognition, architecture, collaboration, design, and innovation all come to mind providing me with words to better articulate or question.

So that’s a long winded way of saying that this school stuff might really work. Education isn’t a tangible thing. Sure, there’s a piece of paper that can be framed and hung on a wall somewhere, but that piece of paper doesn’t solve problems. Education, besides expanding the mind by exploring the depths of the world, builds in our minds a lens that can be used to find new ideas.

The lens in my mind has been focused on how people use technology to get things done. Fundamental to using technology is the interaction, the engagement, the experience of it.

To understand experience is to understand multiple perspectives and circumstances. Insights can come from watching the experiences of others. It can also come from experiencing something oneself. Experience resulting from interactions with products and services all happen within certain constraints. The establishment and modification of these constraints is one side of the innovation coin. The other is finding those ideas nobody else can see.

And that’s where the lens I mentioned comes into play.

Time for me to go to work. I feel a little like I have a cold starting to form in my sinuses and throat. That’s not cool.

Image: Took this in the lowest level of the U of M Law Library while searching for a bathroom. The place is freaky huge. And lots of green carpet.

1. 7 semesters = Fall 2006 – Spring 2010

The two classes promise to educate and awaken my brain. In one class I’m learning to summarize and describe comparative relationships among relative events and in the other I’m learning that relating people to events involves interaction and value. Create an experience. Recognize and cultivate the relationship.

What is the probability that a person will develop loyalty and become a proponent and user of a particular product or service if those creating the product or service involve them in its creation and use?

It seems intuitive. It could be compared to tending a garden. Learn to recognize a thirsty plant and you’ll know when to water it. Watch the conditions in which your plants grow and watch the plants themselves. They communicate their needs in ways that require study to understand. They can’t text our phone to tell us they’re thirsty or that beetles are eating all their leaves and they need help. Those are just technical problems that can be solved by creative computer engineers.

Which brings me to the title of this post. It occurs to me that the notion of co-creation¹ bears resemblance to the idea of dependent arising in Buddhism and its perspectives on cause and effect.

Granted, one is about value and efficiency, the other about dealing with the suffering associated with being an intelligent and aware species. Then again, maybe their underlying goals aren’t so dissimilar.

Recognition of quality is critical to survival and adaptation. Quality and value are closely related. We must learn to see what matters and what needs attention.

Image: A picture of the coffee stop I stop in on my way to class in the mornings. I took pictures periodically while walking to class yesterday, a montage of sorts.

1. …as being taught by Dr.Ramaswamy in a similarly named course.

Today was cold and miscellaneous. Lots of things working to get traction, most things slipping and gripping for purchase.

As I wind down my studying, I can’t help but miss that cat that used to lie on my desk pushing pens and pencils around, biting at stuff. I looked through pictures of him (a mistake) and now I’m sitting here, tears pouring down my face, pissed at the futility of it. It happened so fast. And I knew I’d miss him particularly bad once school started. He was a nice study companion.

I’ve tried to avoid mentioning it. I think about him every day. So does W. We try not to talk about it. Time is helping, but the pain just doesn’t go away. It sits there, lurking, ready to surprise you when you forget about it for a second.

I can’t speak for anyone else. I can only imagine there are others feeling a pain similar to mine. The pain of losing of a loved one, a beloved pet, or something you treasured that will never happen again. We suffer because we become attached to things. It happens.

During the lonely and cold days of January winter, while I’m studying in my cold basement with a space heater barely keeping me warm, I think about things that aren’t frozen and miss things that were warm and fuzzy. I know missing and mourning is normal and will weaken eventually. It still sucks.

And I study statistics, and plotting, and R. Things like: sqrt(sum((weight – xbar)^2)/(length(weight) -1)). Soon I’ll be studying and probably writing paper for a class on marketing and the co-creation of value for businesses. Not sure what that’s going to be about, but it sounds interesting. The first class isn’t until this Wednesday evening.