(no ducks today:)

Every time someone gets in trouble or is fired for mouthing off about a boss or employer on social media people go up in flames citing their right to Freedom of Speech, but guess what?

The First Amendment doesn’t cover the workplace.

According to Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Janice Bellace it just ain’t so.

She says in the U.S., anyone trying to challenge such a practice in court would have almost no legal ground to stand on. “People think they have more rights than they actually have; they seem to think they have rights that are just not there.” For example, she notes that employment law for decades has said that non-unionized workers could always be fired for taking actions that publicly disparage their employers.

Does the First Amendment protect candidates when they are asked for access to their social media? Probably not.

“It has always been the case that employers could ask others about you for a reference and, if you refuse to give them names, they can refuse to hire you.”

For years I’ve enviously read about privacy rights in Europe and watched the European Union enforce them, no matter the political/economic clout of the companies.

And for years friends and business associates laughed at my concerns and cited the First Amendment as our best protection.

While it is marvelous protection for political and religious freedom, it would be wise to remember that it has no protective power in the wonderful world of work.

Sure, that may change, but you have to function in the current reality no matter how hard you are willing to work to change it.

Flickr image credit: William F. Yurasko

Have you ever wondered what people will make of the first Twitter messages in 30 years? Will there be another wave of technological change that makes that world radically different from today?

Long before Twitter and social media there was Usenet; a communal meeting place for scientists, developers, hackers and other early adopters.

Along with the more mundane Usenet was the place of firsts, including some of the most amazing technological announcements of the last 30 years.

Usenet offers thousands of “first mentions,” including Microsoft MS-DOS, MTV, fax machines, Lisa, Macintosh and Apple’s original Super Bowl commercial and a review of the first IBM pc

For $ 1,565 you get a keyboard and logic unit with 16K RAM and a Basic interpreter in 40K ROM.  A cassette interface is built in, I think; but no diskette or monitor at this price — you use your TV set. … A “business configuration” with 64K, dual diskettes, printer, and “color graphics” goes for about $ 4,500.

Among the many ‘firsts’ are some that boggle the mind.

In 1991 there were two that forever changed our world.

Tim Berners-Lee posted an executive summary for a new idea and invited people to “mail me with any queries.”

WorldWideWeb – Executive Summary: The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system.

Linus Torvalds announcement provided jet fuel for the open source movement.

“I’m working on a free version of a minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers.  It has finally reached the stage where it’s even usable (though may not be depending on what you want), and I am willing to put out the sources for wider distribution.”

Read the ‘firsts’ timeline at Google Groups.

Hat tip to TNW Insider for introducing me to the Usenet Firsts.

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

So much of Twitter use in the US is banal, but the rest of the world is finding serious use for those 134 characters, like fighting crime. An administrative chief in a Kenyan village does just that using it to find stolen cows or sheep and even thwart a home invasion.

When the administrative chief of this western Kenyan village received an urgent 4 a.m. call that thieves were invading a school teacher’s home, he sent a message on Twitter. Within minutes residents in this village of stone houses gathered outside the home, and the thugs fled.

It’s fortunate that I’m extremely healthy, because I’m not a lover of the medical world. Individuals do great things, but I don’t trust the profession as a whole and those feelings have been reinforced by the secrecy surrounding the connections between doctors and pharmaceutical companies, but that’s about to change.

Under the new standards, if a company has just one product covered by Medicare or Medicaid, it will have to disclose all its payments to doctors other than its own employees. The federal government will post the payment data on a Web site where it will be available to the public.

Household vinegar has long been the go-to ingredient for a host of household cleaners and solutions to everyday problems (just ask Heloise). Now humble, cheap vinegar is saving lives (not in the US, of course).

…a remarkably simple, brief and inexpensive procedure, one with the potential to do for poor countries what the Pap smear did for rich ones: end cervical cancer’s reign as the No. 1 cancer killer of women. The magic ingredient? Household vinegar.

Crowdsourcing is making waves in many areas, from funding startups to improving government processes to jump-starting medical innovation. Who knew?

“Offering a $100,000 prize has yielded ideas in six months that would have taken four to five years to develop at ten times the cost,” said Sanofi’s Dennis Urbaniak, VP US diabetes.

If you read nothing else today I hope you read this final link and consider registering. After all, can’t hurt and could save a life.

Q: What do you get when you combine a driving entrepreneur with a mission and an algorithm?
A: The National Kidney Register and the longest domino set of transplant surgeries to date; 64 to be exact!

Chain 124, as it was labeled by the nonprofit National Kidney Registry, required lockstep coordination over four months among 17 hospitals in 11 states. It was born of innovations in computer matching, surgical technique and organ shipping, as well as the determination of a Long Island businessman named Garet Hil, who was inspired by his own daughter’s illness to supercharge the notion of “paying it forward.”

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

In spite of Monday’s post I’m still ambivalent about social media and I’m not just thinking about Facebook, Twitter and their ilk, but also blogs and other commentary.

Part of my ambivalence is from the anonymity available. Mark Suster defends it and I understand the necessity in places where dissent is dangerous.

But what works and is necessary in dissent is destructive when embraced by local gossips.

One thing social media guarantees is that at one time or another politically correct attitudes will fall prey to actual attitudes and reality can be pretty ugly.

Bloggers have long argued that they deserve the same protections as journalists, but in most cases I disagree. While there are a few exceptions, most bloggers have neither the interest, ability nor resources to do in-depth research of a subject; what we produce is commentary and opinion pieces, so I am glad when a truly destructive blogger is sued and loses.

Of course, a primary reason for my dislike of social media is that it brings out so much human unthinking, me-focused stupidity. Seriously. If you thought distracted driving—email, texting, talking etc.—was bad try distracted doctoring!

And while Facebook and Google initiate efforts to become forces of good, not all twenty-somethings-and-up feel the need. (I have company:)

Crowdsourcing is a new wrinkle in the social world and one that I find positively uplifting. Join me next Saturday for a look at it.

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

As most of my readers know, I’m not into social media; I am on LinkedIn and my company’s new product Option Sanity is on Facebook and Twitter, but other than the blog posts, I can’t say that any of them are particularly active.

I also freely admit that I don’t really understand how to use them for business (I have no interest in building my ‘personal brand’).

The negative side, especially the bullying, personal attacks, hate and amazing level of active stupidity, that I read about dismays and disgusts me. Beyond the negative much of what I heard was just totally inane; granted, I’m not a celebrity watcher and wouldn’t care what God had for breakfast, assuming h/she bothered posting the information.

Then came the so-called Arab Spring and suddenly social media showed a decidedly positive side.

Right around Thanksgiving I read about Amit Gupta’s friends who started reaching out after he was diagnosed with leukemia.

And so his friends set up a website, amitguptaneedsyou.com, to encourage donor drives, during which the tissue type of potential donors is collected with a cheek swab. The site links to the National Marrow Donor Program website. It provides instructions on hosting a bone marrow dive and provides PDF fliers to promote the events. Yes, there is a Facebook page. Twitter blew up with news of the drives and Gupta’s health. And, of course, there’s a Twitter hashtag (#IswabbedforAmit).

When word of Gupta’s need for a match started circulating, unique visits to the marrow donor program website increased from about 16,000 on a typical day to 40,000. “That’s 21/2 times,” says Dr. Jeffrey Chell, the donor program’s CEO. “That’s impressive.”

I found many other stories of social media’s impact, and lives saved, as a result.

It’s good to know that social media, especially the 5000 pound gorillas Twitter and Facebook, can facilitate more real good than just keeping families in touch.

I guess the good offsets the bad.

Of course, the real problem is the humans that use it; they are just the same as they’ve always been—social media just makes them more so.

Flickr image credit: PUBLISYST Comunicaciones

Jim is definitely off on new (married) adventures, so we’re finishing out the year by dipping into the archives. Today’s choice is a reflection of tomorrow’s post; I think you’ll enjoy it. See all mY generation posts here.

I love words; I love putting them together to express my thoughts and I love how others do the same; especially when they do it with the skill and flair of H. L. Mencken. I like Mencken because he is the best type of cynic and also has a wonderful flair for irreverence.

Let’s start with his definition of a cynic, “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.” That’s Mencken, pithy and to the point.

He also offers a wonderful explanation of criticism, one that bosses and parents would do well to consider, “Criticism is prejudice made plausible.”

Mencken said “A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.” It makes you wonder what he would think of Twitter and its ilk.

His commentary on business success is certainly proven daily, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”

The next time you hear someone say they’ll “fix it, no problem” you would do well to remember this immutable Menckenism, “There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.”

Finally, in a salute to himself, Mencken declares, “All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.”

Join me next week for a tour of Mencken’s irreverent view of politics and democracy that will  provide great zingers for holiday get-togethers and leave you chuckling.

Image credit: Wikipedia

It has always amazed me how many entrepreneurs honestly believe that the people they hire will morph into a creative, productive team with no management effort.

They class themselves as “leaders,” but see “management” as a need and function of large/old companies—not startups.

They say they hire self-starters and these people don’t need to be managed; as long as they understand the vision they are self-propelled.

They talk about connecting their people through social networks, Twitter, texting and other modern tools.

And if (when) that doesn’t work they term them fools and dump them.

But the old adage “give a fool a tool and you still have a fool” still applies.

First, for them to actually be fools means you hired fools.

If you don’t believe that you are guilty of hiring fools then what you have are talented lost souls looking for a path to productivity and personal satisfaction.

People want to do their work well and they want to feel good about what they do; they care about their company’s success.

It’s not simple or easy or even much fun, but your real job as a founder is guiding your people out of fooldom and into becoming a powerful team.

Not every startup succeeds, but no startup succeeds sans management—whether you call it that or not.

Flickr image credit: PUBLISYST Comunicaciones

Beyond anything you have, your most valuable possession is your mind. It is the source of your past, present and future; it can attract or repel; both pain and happiness reside in it, along with all other emotions. Your mind is magical, cherish it.

Buddha understood this when he said, “The mind is everything. What you think you become.”

Plato had an unusual view of the mind’ action that I really like, “When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.”

James Dewar reminds us of an important prerequisite of successful mental effort, “Minds are like parachutes, they only function when they are open.”

And Henry Ford tells us that learning is what keeps us young, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”

But it is William Shakespeare whose words are most appropriate in these days of Facebook, Twitter and all things social, “Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.”

Flickr image credit: saurabhmyworld

Twitter, twitter little star,
how I wonder who you are…

You’re not above the world so high,
nor a diamond in the cyber sky.

What twends are up in Twitterland?

Here are a few of the most unusual…

Twitter turned five last Monday, which also happened to be World Poetry Day (sponsored by the United Nations), so, of course, the potential of 140 character poetry and literature is being explored—and argued.

Tweeting offers a good deal of instant gratification in the form or strokes, cheers and feedback, but all that where-I-am and what-I’m-doing is fueling stronger feelings of envy than old school wish-you-were-here cards and emails.

In a new (as far as I know) twist on hiring a Minneapolis ad firm used Twitter to source this summer’s interns.

People often say that the instant responses they get when they ask a large number of people what they think helps them make better decisions. But does it? The answer may surprise you—seems like all that information has a similar effect to ice cream—brain freeze.

In case you don’t feel connected enough via Twitter, Facebook and other social media there’s an app for that. Yes, now several sites offer you the opportunity to share your browser history, so your everybody will know every cyber-move you make. Oh joy…

Finally, on to the sex; and today the sex is courtesy of Zynga, maker of all those cutesy games like FarmVille, CaféVille and, now, FrontierVille. And thanks to its obsession with data and a happy accident, it has updated the old “sex sells” to “innuendo is shared.” Perhaps the next game should be called “Ka-chingVille.”

Image credit:  MykReeve on flickr