Monday, December 22, 2008

Wikipedia Reflections

I have decided to stop contributing to Wikipedia for a while to reflect on the experience. I have contributed to more than 700 articles (120 of them of my creation) through 4000 edit. When I started my vacation, I wanted to evaluate this experience. Here are my findings although I haven't reached decisions about yet:

1- It kills time. Literally. Contributing to it makes time goes so quickly that you feel your life is passing by without noticing. I do not know if this is something good or bad.
2- Working with Wikipedia requires different type of mindset: unownership. You must contribute elegantly and professionally, however, you should not have a feeling that you own your work. You continuously defend the accuracy of your work. You do it, to ensure factual reality and not because it is your work. It is a new thinking that will require more understanding and research!
3- The Arab wikipedians are still in their infancy. They are not able to comprehend this new paradigm. Most articles contributed are useless. Still focuses on TV programs and football or nationalistic knowledge. While serious knowledge articles are ignored and many cases opposed. This is an interesting phenomena that is worth analyzing.
4- The Arab contributors to the Wikipedia feel proud by proofing others wrong. They just delete articles for the silliest reasons because they lack the maturity to investigate if there is validity and because, I believe, they feel proud with the number of cases they prove others are wrong! In my case, 20 articles were deleted and reinstated. THis shows that the decision of deleting them was wrong in the first place.
5- I have decided to limit my contribution to Wikipedia to 2-hours idle time (i.e. the collective minutes between actual work.) In addition, I want to make an effort to create a larger arab team to cotribute to the Arabic wikipedia.

more to come...

Vacation 2008 - Part 1

I have decided to take a VERY LONG vacation. 6 weeks. I haven't had a chance to have a vacation in the last 4 years. At all. So, I wanted to have this long vacation to re-energize (I am writing this blog on the 4th week of the vacation, but for some reason, I am not energized. I don't know why. Maybe it is age! Maybe it is lack of aligning my objectives with my dreams. maybe it is fate. I hope I will know one day!)

So, I decided to have a 7 day retreat in Hawaii in my dream setting (A bungalow in the middle of the forest with somesort of a bar where I can have a drink with an umbrella and a cherry). So, I booked for a stay in the Kahala resort and made tentive plans to rent an RV and cruise the west side of California.

But my wife had a sudden sickness due to doctor stupid decision. Nothing fatal, but forced her to stay in bed for... 6 weeks... the same duration as my vacation... fate is playing its games again... I spent the first 2 weeks of the vacation with my wife... although it drained my energy further, but it made me think more about life. I left her on her third week when she was energized and headed to Hawaii... we stayed on constant contact with the technology: MSN was on her face in the bed 24/7 and I was able to see, hear and feel everything, especially her snoring which I need to sleep.

Fate is still playing tricks... and I am still too umwise the learn a lesson... although I am trying to understand it.

Turmoil at Work

In mid November, a lot has happened at work. All were part of my plan "c" plan. Somehow, I was pushing towards it although many might think they were driving it. It has given me some insight into advanced corporate politics.

I was not happy at my work. Although I had a team I will die for, but they were incompetent. They are hardworking and loyal, but they do not help me enforce clean change. I was really getting tired working with them. Physically, mentally and socially.

At the same time, my upper management did not help me to succeed. There is lack of acceptance of strategy, positive improvement, advanced support or understanding of alignment to objectives. There is a resistance for positive feedback in the aim of improvement.

I was in the middle. In my mind, with the variables I had, My team and I did miracles. However, I achieved 65% of my objectives in double the time (4 years instead rather than the 2 years I originally planned) At the same time. I was spending my time implementing technology rather than applying it in education. This has drained my ambition.

As I outlined in the previous post, I was offered a dream job just before the development at work started. I declined one of them and the main reason is my son: he is excelling beyond my wildest dreams being where we are. I felt it is not fair for him to uproot him from his comfort zone (friends, factors of success academically and socially, successes in drama and being a celebrity, and an offer for him to continue his studies at a college without admission!) made sacrifice and decide to stay at my present work..

However, due to the support of the President, who I truly feel he is the only one who believe in positive change and has given me a lot of support, I was able to move myself in a positive way, laterally, to create a position and a department which is my ideal job: to head the first ever Innovation department. Not only head it, but create it and create an atmosphere of innovation and development among the faculty and instructor of the college. At the same time, start implementing Applied Research in Education. A dream comes true. A once in a lifetime chance.

These developments made me reflect on life in an unprecedented way. But this is another post. All I can say at the moment, is that, my energy is drained. I am still waiting on the second offer to take shape to make a final decision if I should move or not.