mostly research stuff
okay, some clarification for folks who keep reading about “primary and secondary” research all over this site (including folks who were emailing me)…Primary and Secondary Research explained: (warning to you overly sensitive types: though folks might disagree with me here, the following definitions are usually well-suited to describe Primary and Secondary research and might help site visitors who are not familiar with these terms) Read the rest of this entry »
“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.” - Mark Twain
I was delighted to read Michael Moretti’s recent piece on CI in the hiring process, as well as the related piece which he wrote over at HR.com. For those interested, there was also a piece about CI for HR published last year by a SCIP member from Oracle called, ‘CI to see them.’ And for those who didn’t make it to SCIP ‘04, Paul Houston and Vicki Griesinger presented a workshop on this exact subject, CI for HR. It went very well, and in fact resulted in intense hallway discussion afterward that got us all booted away for making too much noise (which is a good thing).
This is a very new area of interest for several major corporations, though intelligence gathering in general is old news to corporate HR. Historically, HR has worked with myriad consulting providers to examine compensation and benefits, technology for HR, as well as all other critical operations such as staffing, labor relations, compliance and policy. Even so, this still leaves deep information gaps and perplexing blind spots. It seemed that it might be of interest here to examine several major areas of emerging interest to corporate HR executives in the area of CI - without talking ragtime. This list is not all inclusive, and these are in no particular order: Read the rest of this entry »
i was reading all about x1.com over the past few months, wondering why anybody would bother buying, since both apple’s os and microsoft’s longhorn are releasing better integrated local client search utilities…oh, and also because there are already a bunch of other companies going after this market for desktop search…namely el Goog …oh, and also because hotbot has been doing this for free since ‘98. so yeah, figured i’d find a way to crap on it without even installing…so gosh, here goes!
first thing that i noticed when i perused their slow site (after the stupid $99 dollar magic price) was this little link to idealab, the parent company. not familiar with them? they’ve created tons of crapola companies - mostly just one guy, bill gross, who investors already tried to fire… they’re one of those incubators that basically takes the name of anything (from 97-present) and tries to make an online business out of it. kinda like if martha stewart could find a way to make lawn ornaments out of dog shit i suppose. i read a while ago that bill likes to copy old master paintings brushstroke by brushstroke and give ‘em to friends. please read that sentence again, folks. a serial entrepreneur with a passion for copying the work of others? exactly.
this brings us to x1. to understand the degree of potential suckitude, one need look no further than Read the rest of this entry »
good lord, i can’t get enough of the oracle … feel like a dog on the arm of a new sofa when i’m at this site! …oh, the point - - now that kerry has picked that what’s-his-name guy for veep, i was just wondering why he didn’t work that whole kevin bacon connection, since we know that kevin is highly influential in international politics - and i just want to add to that original piece a little factoid overlooked in the kevin bacon/saddam discussions moving around major hollywood circles: kevin was in Live from Baghdad in 2002, with tom foley, dick cheney, and george bush as well as bernard shaw (cnn anchorman who interviewed saddam).
you gotta go back a little for this one, like way back to when kerry was at that anti-vietnam rally in 1970 with jane fonda (in that particular picture he’s neither the cool hippie nor that skynrd fan on the right, but rather the squinty guy behind her who’s like, ‘dudes, i got hurt three times wicked bad and now i’m totally down on riverboats, plus i need some alone time with jane’).. and of course, Jane Fonda was in Searching for Debra Winger (2002, it sucked) with Meg Ryan…and meg was in In the Cut (2003, mostly sucked) with Kevin Bacon... that gives kerry a solid bacon number of 3…though as described above, bush has a bacon number of only 1, so it’s not too late to get kevin bacon into the running game for either party. this is very big news for nuevo-political types like the olsen twins (which one is the wicked skinny one again?).
…oh, and donald sutherland was at that pot-for-all rally too - donnie (mind if i call him ‘donnie’? thanks) was in in JFK (1991, overworked, and dvd should have cool alternate endings i think) with Kevin Bacon, so clearly bacon is all about the dem party thing.. as is demonstrated by his total dedication to the global warming issue… and this sutherland connection lowers kerry’s bacon number to an almost-coulda-been-bacon-for-veep number of 2… Read the rest of this entry »
Albert Einstein once mused, “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?â€? You have no idea, Steiny, no idea.
When it comes to profiling executives – and people in general - you’ve really got to pause up front and make a clear choice between the deep ocean or the big blue sky. With the Internet and a few hundred dollars in hand, there is almost no limit to what you might uncover about any individual. Start by listing what you need to know, then add in what you’d like to know, and get rid of what you do not want to know – unless you’re particularly curious, or unless that is your real goal.
There is a big difference between personality profiling through primary research and profiling people through secondary research (namely online and database resources). Most importantly, a profile in either case is not a deep background check. A deep background investigation Read the rest of this entry »
this blog is mostly safe for work, though i sometimes throw around a 'fuck' or two. you'll find a bunch of my articles from CI Magazine, SCIP online, other research pieces and some other crap. enjoy. there's lost of content here related to getting information about, around, from and through people and organizations...