AnnMaria's Blog

AnnMaria's Blog http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/ Spirit Lake Consulting's vice-president, Dr. De Mars', blog on technology, disability, small business and work with Indian nations. You may learn something useful here - but I wouldn't count on it. en Copyright 2008 Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:00:16 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Looking for the meaning of life: Is it just too old-fashioned?

A few years ago, when my best friend of over twenty years met my new husband, she asked,
"So, does she still re-evaluate her entire life every day?"

My husband laughed and said,
"At least, sometimes two or three times a day."

Today, I read an article by Alexander Astin where he discussed the change in attitude of college freshmen from the 1970s to the present. He said that, while, in the 1970s, the goal of most college students was to develop a meaningful philosophy of life, that the current generation of college students is far more likely to give their motivation for college as "To make a great deal of money."

I have never understood that motivation. Don't get me wrong, I am not living in a mud hut and going hungry. Still, the attitude that whoever has the most stuff has the better life is one that has always confused me.

Regularly, I go through my house and throw things out. The photo above is the "before" picture of my third daughter's trophies. Today, she threw a lot of them in the dumpster. She said,
"What matters isn't something somebody gave me. What matters is the training and that I was the best at that tournament at that time."

Yes, I was one of those college students in the 1970s, and I do think a meaningful philosophy of life is more important than making a whole lot of money. Figuring out what is important in life matters more than having more toys than the neighbors.

If what matters to you is understanding life, determining what you value, and you spend a lot of thought and effort over the years, I don't think you will come to the conclusion that,

"What is really important to me is having a new SUV. In fact, I think I will lie on my timesheet, take home equipment from work and put my three kids on the payroll so I have enough money to get it. Yeah, that's the true meaning of life, a shiny red SUV. "

Maybe if, as Astin recommends, we put more effort into our "interior" life than our exterior of what we own and what we wear, we would lead more meaningful, ethical lives.

As my husband and friend can attest, I am still working on the real meaning of life. Once I have it down, I'll post it here.

]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2008/09/looking-for-the-meaning-of-lif.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2008/09/looking-for-the-meaning-of-lif.html Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:00:16 -0500 Courage is Hard but Lacking It Is Even Harder
In my spare time, I volunteer as a judo coach. I was also, when I was much younger, the world judo champion, and the third of my four daughters competes internationally. In fact, she just won a bronze medal in the Olympics in Beijing.

One national judo organization, USA Judo, had a member of its board of directors, who has had multiple athletes sign notarized affidavits, some of them depositions sworn under oath, saying that he had provided them drugs and had sex with them when they were sixteen years old and younger. I have personally read no less than SIX affidavits by athletes stating that this person gave them drugs and/or had sex with them.

Years later, as often happens in molestation cases, more people came forward. They were told "You had 180 days to file a complaint and you didn't do it."

Think about that a second... so if you are molested at age twelve or sixteen years old you have six months to come forward or the person gets off scot-free !

You can read a great deal more about this case in one of the many articles by the New York Times:

Claims of molestation resurface for judo official

Judo official resigns amid claims of molestation

and there have been literally hundreds of comments on it on the main Internet message board for judo,
The Judo Forum

After the first article in the New York Times came out, as reported by the Associated Press, the board member in question resigned.

At some point, you would think that the organization, USA Judo, would conduct an investigation. Seriously, imagine yourself Joe Board Member. First, you get several affidavits saying that your fellow board member has molested young athletes and provided them with drugs and alcohol. What do you do? What USA Judo did was require that the young athletes provide sworn depositions under oath and fly thousands of miles to testify in person. Some of the athletes happened to actually be at the event were not even notified a hearing was being held. When they did not show up (in some cases, they were literally a hundred yards away), the charges were dismissed for "lack of evidence".

Years later, when more people came forward saying they had been molested or had knowledge of other players being molested they were told

"We have received no written documents."

When they received written documents, the board members then said,

"We have no complaints filed under oath in accordance with our procedures"... and so on.

Why does this happen? I believe it falls on what is one of the foremost values discussed in the Tribal Leaders training - courage .

As Jim Thompson, founder of the Positive Coaching Alliance says in his (rather long) podcast on ethics in youth sports, - "As hard as it is to stand up to your enemies, it is even harder to stand up to your friends."

Even after Fletcher Thornton resigned from the Board of Directors after articles appeared in HUNDREDS of publications about the many allegations of drugging and sexually molesting athletes, his fellow board members and the Executive Director of the organization continued to hide behind technicalities.

Why?

My belief is that they are afraid. They are afraid that they will be liable if they admit there was a cover-up years ago. They are afraid that after thirty years on the same board that Fletcher will have some "dirt" on them. Fletcher has bullied and blustered a lot of people, just like much of the problems Erich discusses in the tribal leaders course. People are intimidated.

Courage is hard. People are scared. They are scared they will lose their jobs, that unethical decisions they have made over the past few years will become public. Why not just cover it up? The victims were already harmed, nothing the board does will un-molest them - right?

The Cost of Cowardice

The U.S. has never won a medal in the Olympics in judo until this year, in China. Who won it? My daughter, Ronda, who was the person who posted on the Internet the latest revelations about Fletcher Thornton .

What about the rest of the sport? The week before the Olympic Trials, USA Judo was still calling around the country trying to find enough people to even compete. In the recent junior world trials, to select the team for the junior world championships, there were only THREE people competing in the 90 kg (198) pound division. They could not find more than three men in America under age 20 who even wanted to TRY to compete for the U.S. in the junior world championships. There was ONE woman in the heavyweight division.... and so on.

If your organization is unethical, you may not get sued. You may not be closed down like Enron and have your CEO imprisoned. What probably happens more often is that people vote with their feet, like happened to the judo organization. They don't organize protests or go to board meetings to demand your resignation. They simply go do something else - basketball, soccer, gardening.

Can this happen on the reservation, too? It's unlikely that people will go to another reservation, right? Unlikely, but not impossible. More likely, they decide to work with another organization. If the Head Start program is unethical, those motivated, capable parents you want to support you go work with the elementary school where they also have a child enrolled, and volunteer there instead. How many programs on the reservations have failed because of lack of community support, lack of participation, lack of volunteers?

What happens to unethical programs? Sooner or later, support is withdrawn and they fail.

If you are lacking in the ethical values, people may not stand against you, but they certainly won't stand for you.
judo forum Camp - 2008 058.jpg

]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2008/09/courage-is-hard-but-lacking-it.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2008/09/courage-is-hard-but-lacking-it.html Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:00:49 -0500 How Badly Do You Want an Ethical Society?
As I read the article by Eric Lemont, Overcoming the Politics of Reform: The Story of the 1999
Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, I have to admit that I became progressively more discouraged about my own volunteer organizations. It isn't that Lemont's article was a story of failure. On the contrary, the challenges overcome by the efforts of members of the Cherokee nation were great. Many times, I found myself nodding in recognition of the complete disregard for policies, procedures and any sense of fair play in the tactics that brought about the constitutional crisis. My discouragement came from the realization that this was such hard work and just such a long, time-consuming process.

After reading this article, I read the latest post on Dr. Longie's blog, Dakota Hoksina (and don't make fun of me if I spelled that incorrectly, my grandparents immigrated from islands in the Caribbean, which is about as far from Sioux as you can be without leaving the planet or moving to China).

Anyway ... Erich's point in his blog is it takes effort to be ethical. He made the point explicitly that Lemont made implicitly, that is, it's hard to bring about ethical change. It can make you unpopular. It can require changes in yourself. Ethical change is hard and it's a long process. It is not a matter of simply reading a book on Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

When I faced up to the realization of the effort and commitment change in these volunteer institutions would required, I began to ask myself, "Do I want this change badly enough to devote this time and effort? Would I be better of spending my time on different causes?" For example, there is an organization called Circle of Friends that the students in my graduate course on research and statistics will be evaluating as a community service project. Maybe I should volunteer at my child's school or my church.

Here is the point, the question I asked myself and you need to ask yourself:

"How important is ethical change in this organization or community to me REALLY?"

Do you care enough about a dysfunctional school board to try to change it? If not, what DO you care enough about?

I don't believe there is a single right answer to that last question. The only wrong answer I can think of is, "Nothing."
]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2008/09/how-badly-do-you-want-an-ethic.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2008/09/how-badly-do-you-want-an-ethic.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:12:58 -0500 If You're Not Upset, You Obviously Haven't Been Paying Attention I'm Back, Did You Miss Me?

After having retired, laying on the beach, starting another company and taking another job, I am back. What happened? Well, as often happens in corporations, I retired and was hired back part-time on a subcontract. I will be the technical specialist on the new Tribal Leaders Institute.

Traditionally, stealing, dishonesty, and disrespect toward elders were not socially acceptable in Indian country:

"Among the Dakotas lying and stealing from other tribal members was a capital offense. A person who was capable of lying was believe to be capable of committing other cowardly crimes against the tribe and was put to death to prevent the evil from doing more harm. If a person stole from another tribal member he was forever after called Wamanon (thief) and this distinction followed him for the rest of his life"

(1911The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation by Charles A. Eastman)

Over $2 billion dollars are appropriated each year for the Operation of Indian Programs by the Department of the Interior alone (H.R. 5386, 2006). This figure does not include billions of dollars that come into each reservation through grant funds from other agencies, private philanthropy, the $14.1 billion (Abrams, 2003) brought in from tribal gaming or other tribal enterprises. Much of this money never reaches its intended recipients, being lost through expense accounts being used for personal benefit and payment of individuals for hours they did not work. Ethical violations are costing tribal organizations hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Most of these costs are not in large-scale embezzlement or kick-backs on multi-million dollar contracts. Small violations on a large scale are what bleed money from tribal and federal funds.

"A staple of storytelling in Indian Country has to do with political interference in business activity. Over and over one hears of voided leases, hired or fired cousins, politicized management, and enterprises drained of funds by tribal council interference." (Cornell & Kalt, 2005).

Just think what could be done with millions of dollars more in funding. If those ethical violations could be reduced by a very significant amount, it would be like giving every reservation several extra grants.

In a nutshell, that is what the Tribal Leaders Institute is all about. My part of it will be to create the technical side - wikispaces, podcasts, forum, blogs, web pages, while Erich's will be the content. It should be fun.

Stay tuned for further information.
]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2008/09/im-back-did-you-miss-me.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2008/09/im-back-did-you-miss-me.html Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:13:27 -0500 Goodbye and Thanks for All the Fish

Supposedly, this is what the dolphins said when leaving Earth right before it was destroyed. It is also the title of one of the four books in the "Life, the universe and everything" trilogy, which could have gotten me fired. When I got the first book, I was young programmer still very early in my career. I was so into the book, I took it to work with me and would sneak it out of my desk drawer and read it when no one was looking.

Yes, the rumors are true. I am leaving Spirit Lake Consulting and starting my own company, The Julia Group. The reason I have not posted here for over a month is that I have been working on finishing the last reports for Spirit Lake during the day and working on my new company site in the evenings. We already have one course up and running, an on-line Autism for Early Childhood Educators course.

I have also have a new blog on The Julia Group site that you are welcome to check out if you are interested in what I will be doing for the rest of my life - or next week, anyway.

A lot of people have asked about the reasons for my leaving the company. The truth, I am afraid, is far more boring than the rumors. Erich is much more interested in the ethics and management training workshops where I wanted to focus on the technical aspect. With my new company there will be a lot more time to add the newest applications to our site. You'll notice we have a lot more video and links to the forum in the Autism course, and that is just scratching the surface. The first pages on the Spirit Lake Consulting site were actually an Internet course on Developmental Psychology, written using Netscape Navigator back around 1997 - the Paleolithic era in Internet time. We have been through a lot of changes - to Adobe CyberStudio - to frames - to Dreamweaver - to templates.

Things change. Erich, April and I founded the company together, I think it was five years ago. Before that, Erich and I had worked together on one project or another since 1990. That's eighteen years. I've had three marriages and none of them lasted that long! I am coming up on my eleventh anniversary this year, so I may beat that record yet.

Over the past several years we have received over a million dollars in grants and contracts. We've created a dozen on-line courses, gotten millions in grant funds for our clients, provided training to thousands of people. During it all, I learned a lot about starting a business, teaching on-line, web design, writing, documentation and a hundred other skills large and small - knowledge that is definitely the most valuable asset I take with me as I wander off into the horizon.

What will I do now? After working full-time for 34 years straight, ever since I was 15 years old, I am going to take it easier. We have collected a substantial amount of data on our research projects over the past few years which I have never had the chance to write up for publication. There are several articles I intend to submit to scientific journals, so those are high on my to-do list. I am going to finish the Developmental Psychology course for The Julia Group. This will be the first course i am not writing to a deadline, so I am going to do it exactly the way I want it. After that, I have a statistics course I want to do as well. I submitted a proposal for an on-line mathematics program, that. if funded, will start in a few months. By Wednesday I will finish the last grant I will be writing for Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc., one on which The Julia Group will be subcontracted for the web design, blogs, forums, wikis and other fun stuff.

As you can see, I have a lot planned for my "retirement", but on Thursday, the first day of my non-Spirit Lake Consulting life, I only have one item on my calendar - sleep late.

Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!
]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2008/02/goodbye-and-thanks-for-all-the.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2008/02/goodbye-and-thanks-for-all-the.html Tue, 05 Feb 2008 01:58:55 -0500 Succeeding in Business "Can I succeed in business?"

Worded one way or another, this is a very common question we get on the Spirit Lake Forum small business section. Obviously, it is impossible for me to say whether an individual person will succeed or not, especially not someone I have never met. There are thousands of books, articles and websites on what makes one succeed or fail in business. If any of them had the "one, true answer", the author would be a billionaire, everyone else would be following his/her plan and there would be no more failed attempts.

There are a few suggestions I can make, have made, in our Courageous Leadership workshop. These include taking a good hard look at whether anyone would pay you for whatever product or service you intend to provide.

I sometimes read the Idea Cafe website for small business. It is a very interesting site, visited by some very knowledgeable people and some who really don't have a clue. I would recommend people interested in starting a business go there for a couple of reasons. One is that they have some genuinely good articles and good advice. The other reason, though, is that you will read ideas for businesses that make you wonder,
"What were they thinking?!"

It's a very nice site and no one ever says,
"Are you out of your mind? No one is going to buy knitted sweaters for turtles?"
or
"Life coach? What qualifications do you have to tell other people what to do with their lives? You worked as a clerk for twenty years, lost your job and now you are going to give other people advice?"

Nope, no one says that. They say nice things about what an original idea knit caps for turtles is or assure the person that she sounds so nice and enthusiastic that, of course they are sure she will be successful in her business of offering life coaching seminars. Next thing you know, nice person # 2 is posting on the same site about her difficulty finding customers and asking for marketing advice. What I learned back in business school in the 1970's (yes, I am that old) was that the first rule of marketing is to have a good product.

It is possible to succeed in business despite ignoring a lot of the basics, like having a business plan, monitoring your cash flow and so on, although it is not the way to place your bets. I suppose the individual who posted on our website was looking for something more original than that. So, here is my two cents worth:

Make sure you have something people are willing to part with their money to get.
Learn from the failures of others. That is one reason I recommended the Idea Cafe website.

Here is one more thought to consider.... maybe those small business 'failures' really are not. Next time I will post about an alternative view of small business 'failures'.

]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/12/succeeding-in-business.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/12/succeeding-in-business.html small business Tue, 25 Dec 2007 21:50:21 -0500 Incompetence and Ethics
In my experience, the answer is an unqualified, "Yes."

Years ago, a very dear friend of mine had a very good-paying job at a major corporation. He found out that the company was engaged in fraud involving government contracts and it went all the way up to the vice-president, who had always been a mentor to him. When he confronted his boss about it, he was told to keep his mouth shut. Faced with a dilemma between going along with what he knew were unethical and illegal activities and losing a very good-paying job, he took off his company badge, threw it at the vice-president and walked out.
A week later, he had a better job.

That last line is key. For someone who knows he can find another job within the week, it is not such a soul-searching dilemma to challenge unethical behavior.

"What if I expose the number of people using using tribal property for their own benefit, charging for time they never worked and hiring their relatives who never come to work either?"

Well, what if? If you are one of those people who is excellent at their job, who is responsible and reliable, it means that you will be working at a different job next week. That may be uncomfortable or inconvenient but it is certainly not the end of your life as you know it.

On the other hand, what if you really don't know how to do that high-paying job? What if you were appointed because you were related to someone who no longer holds office, and you are just being tolerated in that job because people don't want to rock the boat? What if you pretended to have experience or skills you did not really have, as a counselor, a manager or a grant writer? You really would not want to rock the boat because if you lost that job your chances of getting another like it are not good.

You need courage to be ethical because otherwise you will only be ethical when there is no risk. As Aristotle said, Courage is the virtue upon which all others are based.

When we were writing our on-line ethics course and discussing Marianne Jennings' Seven Signs of Moral and Ethical Collapse, one of those I thought did not apply was 'Young 'uns and a larger than life CEO. Now that I think more about it, I am not so sure.

Yes, we don't see so many very young managers on the reservation and I don't see a lot of larger-than-life CEOs like the heads of Enron, although there have been some. However, what there is in common is people who get into jobs over their heads and don't speak up because they are afraid of 'being found out' or afraid that they will lose their jobs and not be able to get another one like it. So, they go along and our atmosphere of fear and silence grows.

The next time you ask,
"So what if Ernie's brother really isn't the best person for the job. All right, let's be honest, he can't even SPELL the name of this department, but Ernie is an important person to us, and really, what is the harm?"

According to the responses on our Ethical Questions forum, there can be lots of harm and an increasing likelihood of unethical behavior is just a start.

]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/12/incompetence-and-ethics.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/12/incompetence-and-ethics.html ethics Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:43:48 -0500 For Better or Worse: On-line Education Disability Access: Computer-integrated training project, I thought I would browse around the Internet and see how other on-line training is received.

One source full of supporters and detractors was Dave Taylor's Intuitive Business Blog, where many, many people weighed in on the University of Phoenix. It sounds as if, like with any institution, there are some good instructors and some bad ones. From the comments overall, the administration sounds terrible. Of course, the fact that they were fined twice by the Department of Education, once for $9.8 million and once for $4.4 million has got to make you think twice about their credibility.

I reviewed a number of sites and articles on on-line learning and distance education. I understand the profit motive, after all, WE are a for-profit corporation, but still, the bias in some of the research by people who surely no better was troubling. After a while, I could almost tell what the results of the 'research' were going to be by looking at the advertisers on the site.

It always irritates me when people say, "You can show anything with statistics."

What you ought to show is the truth, as close as you can get to it. Instead, we have people who say "there is no difference with on-line education" and then measure variables that have no difference. So far, most people really don't want to talk about drop-out rates.

It appears to me that there are significant differences in favor of classroom-based instruction for student drop-out rates. For those students who do persist and complete courses, there seems to be no substantial difference in how much they learn as measured by most types of assessment.

Still, for both students in classrooms and on-line, the number who DON'T complete courses is far, far too high. That is the problem Spirit Lake Consulting is aiming to address next.
]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/12/for-better-or-worse-online-edu.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/12/for-better-or-worse-online-edu.html Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:25:02 -0500 Thought for the Day - Web Design and Maintenance
Regardless of the year written, type of organization and topic, most of these sites have one thing in common. They are in the exact same condition as the day I left the organization.

I am not alone. It is very common to run across websites for small organizations that have not been updated in years, listing events or topics "of the week" when the week they were referencing ended June 12, 1999. For larger entities - corporations, colleges and some multi-million dollar non-profits, their websites are updated far more frequently than the little guys, so it is not so glaringly obvious that maintenance is a problem. You won't find a home page with sales prices from 2003.

What you may find, however, is an increasing number of links that don't work or documents that you download that turn out to be hopelessly out of date.

Key lesson we have learned with every web-based course or project: budget in money for maintenance. Life changes. If it cost you $60,000 in hours paid to your staff to write the content, even if you estimate only 10% of the material will change each year, that still means $6,000 per year just to keep your site up to date, never mind expanding it.

If the website was done free by a volunteer, when he or she leaves, someone will need to be found to update changes to your calendar, planned events, board of directors, contact information and anything else that might be subject to change. That "anything else" includes almost every aspect of your operation.

We are working on a new grant right now and I intend to budget about 20% for maintenance after our final draft. I am hoping that will keep us on track for at least the first two years.
]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/12/thought-for-the-day-web-design.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/12/thought-for-the-day-web-design.html web design Sun, 09 Dec 2007 03:44:47 -0500 All Quiet on the Blogging Front

These last several days are the longest I have ever gone without posting here. No, I have not quit working and become a beach bum, spending my days drinking Pina Coladas and my nights sleeping in the sand. As my lovely children commonly say,
"Dude, don't I wish!"
The sad truth is far more boring than that. We finished the final draft of the Ethics Course. That has taken a fair bit of work. Erich (a.k.a. Dr. Longie) has been working his - well, his something - off teaching workshops on every reservation in sight, snow storms or no. He has collected almost all of the data needed on the on-site version of the workshop, so, if you want to attend, you will need to go to our on-line version and enroll. It is still free until the end of January. Erich has also been going to points far and wide teaching our workshop on Special Education Rights. I think he just heard one too many stories about children not getting the services they needed or school districts not listening to parents, because he has been from one reservation to the next meeting with parents and school staff explaining to them exactly what rights children have under the law.

With Erich off fighting the good fight and collecting data at the beginning and end of each workshop to boot (the government is smarter than you think - no, I am serious - and they insist on data to show we are making a difference) - well, I have been back at the office analyzing all that data, creating a PowerPoint presentation for our webcast on December 14, analyzing the data for our final report on the Disability Access project (now renamed to the Family Life Series) and other research in progress.

I am also working on our next grant for the Tribal Leaders with Character project (Phase II) and doing a lot of minor and major changes on our website. Does it ever drive you crazy when you click on a link and it comes up "not found"? Yeah, me too. So, my helpful assistant, Jenn, found a few that I fixed. I am also working (slowly) on adding media features, especially video, to our virtual library and adding better menus to the disability-specific section of the virtual library. Okay, well, honestly, we don't have any menus for that section right now, so anything at all will be better.

With the end of the year approaching, we are winding down data collection and training a little, which allows me to get caught up. Then next year starts up with the grant due by the first week in February and I will be tearing my hair out again.

Oh well, at least there is never a dull moment around here.

]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/12/all-quiet-on-the-blogging-fron.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/12/all-quiet-on-the-blogging-fron.html Fri, 07 Dec 2007 00:40:12 -0500 I see smart people
We are also, though, a technology company that offers on-line learning, statistical programming, research and database design. As such, we are always interested in staying ahead of the curve. In my personal blog, I have been known to rant about the over-abundance of stupid people on the Internet. Today, I want to talk about the opposite, really great, intelligent blogs that I have come across lately.

The 463 blogs on tech policy. Obviously, people who are interested in tech policy will most enjoy this blog, but it has more than the subject (which does happen to interest me) to recommend it.. While policy can be deathly dull, especially when taught by some of the professors I have met, it is also what shapes the future. I have a keen interest in the future because I intend to spend the rest of my life there
I also like the writing style of this blog, where they manage to be intelligent without being impressed with themselves, example -- the detritus of the Second Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is being disassembled and packed away. (Ed note: Detritus? WTF, who is this McGuire guy?)

This blog also has a link to several others I found interesting. As much as I like the blogger interface. I have found a higher proportion of blogs of interest to me outside of blogger. Am I just searching incorrectly? Or is blogger really turning into MySpace for grown-ups?

Maybe the best thing about The 463 is that they had links to other blogs that were just as interesting

The Technology Liberation Front is another blog I am going to add to my 'to-read' list. They're opinionated. I like that. Sometimes their opinions are a bit obvious, e.g., venture capitalists are looking for killer-apps and not modest investments. Other times, e.g., their criticism of Citizendium versus wikipedia make me think about an issue in a way I hadn't really considered before. It's like being involved in an intelligent conversation without having to go to the effort to converse. If you have never felt like that at the end of the day, then you probably aren't working hard enough.

The Technology and Democracy Project is a perfect fit for me as it includes a bit of everything, from how criminals could hide their on-line activity to regulations of cable companies (I skipped that article) to the increase in broadband access, which is a very relevant point for one of the grants we currently have in progress.

So, those are my recommendations for blogs of the day. Read each of them and you may find yourself a little smarter by the end of the day, although I can't guarantee it.

]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/11/i-see-smart-people.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/11/i-see-smart-people.html technology Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:08:38 -0500 Our Split Personality

We have been planning for the last several months to split the company and go our separate ways. Oddly, the most current attempted revision of our website made it clear that a separation is inevitable. We are always trying to look at our products and services as our customers might see them. In this case, I started with the menus on our home page. We have the Caring for Our People training project for staff serving people with disabilities. We have the Family Life and Disability Series designed for people with disabilities and their families. Then, we have the Individualized Education Plan training, for parents, on guaranteeing their child's rights in special education. I set up a tab for "Disability Staff". I set up a second tab on the menu for "Family" and a third for "People with Disabilities". So far, so good, right.

Next, we have the courageous leadership project, for training managers, new employees and entrepreneurs for business success in Native American communities. Then, we have the Ethical Training for Indian Nations project. So, I could create a third tab that says "Small Business" or put them all together under "Leadership".

This would make sense if we were talking about leadership specifically in disability programs or ethics in disability services, but we're not. The Ethical Training Project is focused on developing more effective reservation programs and businesses through education in ethics, everything from working eight hours for eight hours' pay to not hiring your girlfriend. The Courageous Leadership project is related, discussing evaluation of employees, helping employees with no work experience to adjust to a business environment, starting a business - and how all of this requires discipline, honesty, courage and respect for oneself and others.

It is becoming clear that, over the years, we have gradually diverged into two separate businesses. One of those is focused on on-line education, parent education and working with people with disabilities and their families. The second is targeting leadership training with an emphasis on ethics.

So, rather than spend the time revising the website, I decided to leave it as is until we split up in a few months. Then I will have the new company site with Family, Educators, Students with Disabilities, Library and Student Union.

The Spirit Lake Consulting site will then have:
Leadership Training
Small Business
New Employees
Business Library (including reference and forms)
Meeting Room

Rather than try to merge two disparate companies into one, I think it makes more sense to split and have two companies that function well in their areas of expertise. A farmer explained it to me this way,
"Sometimes it's a mistake to combine two successful business ventures. It's like when you cross a thoroughbred race horse with a sweet little donkey. All you end up with is a jack-ass. You'd be better off recognizing and accepting the differences."

I think we are on the right path, as much work as it will be in the months ahead. I think our other option is to end up as a couple of jack-asses, and no one wants to do that.

]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/11/our-split-personality.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/11/our-split-personality.html small business web design Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:21:48 -0500 The Most Ethical Person in the Room
"The Housing Board really needs this ethics training. Boy are they unethical."

When he talks to the housing board members, they'll say,

"The Tribal Council really needs this. You just won't believe some of the decisions they make."

Talking to the tribal council, we hear,

"This is something the Project Directors could use. Some of them really need training in ethics. It's a big problem."

It's always someone else's problem. There are many aspects of this situation I don't understand. First of all, if these are such big problems and you know about them and you haven't done anything - doesn't that make you part of the problem? Everyone likes to point at the boss who is charging the tribe for days he doesn't work or took a computer home that was tribal property.

I am having difficulty writing up the by-stander portion of our Ethics course because I am trying to find a way to not make it sound too accusatory. I do understand that it is hard to speak up, to stand up, particularly when no one else is doing it. When you really are the most ethical person in a room, it can be a pretty lonely room (Erich has also written about that, which I need to find some place to include in the course).

Yes, it's hard, but it's not impossible.

As we say over and over in our course, major ethical violations don't occur in a vacuum. If someone is taking thousands of dollars in tribal funds or program funds, putting unqualified relatives on the payroll, missing work 50% of the time and still getting full pay, they need a lot of other people to turn a blind eye to it and pretend it never happened so they can get away with it.

I have to give Erich credit that he is really committed to trying to establish an Ethics education program on the reservations. He will be meeting with the Spirit Lake TERO Board at 5 pm November 13, on November 20 with the Spirit Lake Tribal Council, on November 21 with the Tribal School Board. He has already had one meeting with the Three Affiliated Tribes and is planning more, along with traveling to Turtle Mountain and other reservations.

Why? This is from the home page of our Ethics course:

Ethical violations are costing tribal organizations hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Most of these costs are not from large-scale embezzlement or kickbacks on multi-million dollar contracts. Small violations on a large scale are what bleed money from tribal and federal funds. If we are ever to move from 'survival' mode to 'success' mode in Indian country, we need to address these constant, daily ethical ''cuts" to our funding that are bleeding our tribal nations. We need to heal ourselves.

We write a lot of grants here at SLC. It is expensive, time-consuming and the grants don't always get funding. If we could cut half of those small violations and increase the percentage of money going where its supposed to go and being used how it is supposed to be used, that would be millions of dollars, equivalent to getting several new grants.

AND it would be what the most ethical person in the room would do.

]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/11/the-most-ethical-person-in-the.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/11/the-most-ethical-person-in-the.html ethics Indian reservation Sun, 11 Nov 2007 02:33:24 -0500 Research on Reservations: Indianonish, Email, and Other Surprises
Erich and I had talked a lot about the differences between what really works and how things are 'supposed' to work in conducting research and publicizing the results of that research in a way that it benefits the community. So, when was asked if we would be interested in giving a webcast on working in Indian communities, we were all set.

Yes, we can all get along, those in the field and in academia. (I even included a picture of Erich with a faculty member from UND as photographic evidence.)

In fact, rather than ordering us to do research following a diagram (like THAT'S going to happen!) the nice folks at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory recommended that we do a webcast on what we have found works and doesn't work. It will be a challenge for Erich and I to reduce all of those differences we have talked and laughed about down to an hour and a half. It will definitely be something different than their typical webcast, but I think we will all enjoy it and actually learn something.

Research and Dissemination in Indian Country: Indianonish, Email, and Other Surprises

a webcast by Dr. De Mars and Dr. Longie through the National Center for the Dissemination of Disability Research will be held on December 14, 2 p.m. Central Time.

To read more about this webcast, click below

http://www.ncddr.org/webcasts/webcast9.html

Or, go to this link to register

http://vovici.com/wsb.dll/s/12291g2e606

It is open to the public and free.
]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/11/research-on-reservations-india.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/11/research-on-reservations-india.html Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:54:47 -0500 "No one cares about Indians"

We can gain a lot by listening to young professionals, as they haven't yet learned not to be brutally honest. Twice in the last month young people have said these exact words to me.

"No one cares about Indians."

Once was at a recent conference in California. With Native Americans, as with every other group, California dominates by sheer numbers. There are over 20 million people in California, more than the population of many countries. While Native Americans are a much greater percentage of the population in North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Arizona and a whole bunch of other states, California is the state with the largest actual number of American Indians. Still, another young woman at the same conference commented,

"When people in this state see 'native' they just kind of skip over it as not applying to them. The schools, early childhood programs, social service agencies, are all concerned about Latino children that make up 30, 50 or 80 percent of the population at that school. They don't think about the two Indian kids in their school, or that tiny school out in the desert that has 97 American Indian kids in it."

The same is true at the national level. In researching the "digital divide", that is , the difference in access to technology by race or social class, I have been reading a lot of publications lately from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In their tables broken down by race under American Indian, they often have "not enough information for statistical analysis."

Call it the middle child syndrome, growing up overlooked, but I find this situation intolerable. There are 2.5 million people in this country who identified themselves as American Indian in the last census. This isn't counting the 1.6 million who identified themselves as Indian and some other race. I am not so sure about them. At yet another conference, we were having a drink after the meetings and one of the people from Spirit Lake asked a gentleman we had just met, who was obviously Native American, what tribe he was from. He laughed and said,

"Well, ma'am, even though every other white person you meet says he is part Cherokee, I really AM part Cherokee!"

Even leaving all of those people whose 'grandma was a Cherokee princess' out of it, 2.5 million is a whole lot of people to ignore. As our president, Erich Longie, said in our latest edition of Miniwakan News, there is a world of difference between complaining about a problem and planning to solve it. So, here is what we are doing this month:

I am writing a report to Southwest Educational Development Labs, funded through a NIDRR award, on the use of information technology by people with disabilities and their families who live on reservations. This report will include recommendations on effective means of reaching those families so they can receive the services that are their rights under federal programs but which many families are unaware are even available.
Erich is presenting sessions on Special Education Rights at New Town High School on November 14 at 5 pm (couldn't have much more of a specific plan than that) and again at the Eight Mile Elementary School in Trenton (date to be determined soon)
I am completing the on-line course, Ethical Training for Indian Nations which will be offered to tribal programs in the next couple of weeks.
Erich and I are preparing three articles for publication; one on information technology use by tribal members with disabilities, a second on experiences with disability services of reservation families and a third on effective and ineffective means of disseminating information on residents.
I am preparing a presentation for a teleconference/ webcast with NCDDR on working in Indian communities.

Every time we do a presentation, publish an article, submit a report, a few more people, at least for a time, start thinking about the challenges and lessons to be learned in American Indian communities. Here is what I know now as an older professional. We make big changes happen a little at a time.

]]> http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/11/no-one-cares-about-indians.html http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/2007/11/no-one-cares-about-indians.html disability Indian reservations Native Americans Thu, 01 Nov 2007 02:10:38 -0500