I’m pretty sure Daniel’s last three tweets are the future of the hashbang.
Tag: Daniel Bachhuber
Are Jobs Obsolete?
Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff — it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.
Douglas Rushkoff – Are Jobs Obsolete? via Daniel
Personal recommendation of support documents
Earlier today Daniel posted this idea:
Prioritize frequently asked questions on an external facing documentation site based on how often the questions get asked in support tickets. Show the number of times a given question was asked this month as a way of indicating to the customer that the answer probably already solves their question.
It gave me a quick idea to jot down: personal recommendations for support docs. The idea would be to take something akin to the Like button on Facebook or WordPress.com but turn it into a way for users to say “This doc answered my question.”
Really low friction interaction is the goal. One click should register whether it helped the user and then display their Gravatar next to the doc to show that it worked for them. In a way this would be turning the vetting of documentation into a user-facing feature.
The data would be public. Having a publicly displayed list of those users whom the doc has helped may convince future users that the answers are found in docs. Sort of a “Oh look, it worked for these 150 people, maybe it’ll work for me” scenario.
To take it to the next level you could aggregate a list of vetted docs for each user. This way they could look back and see which ones they’ve found answers in before. Maybe they have a repeat question and you just saved them half an hour of searching.
Mt. Adams
Last weekend Daniel, Adam, Jon, and I hiked up Mt. Adams, a 12,000+ foot glaciated peak in southern Washington.
It was one of the more physically demanding things I’ve done in my life and, even with crappy visibility on summit day, was way worth it. Adam, Jon, and myself made it to the summit but Daniel was hiking in ski boots so that didn’t work out so well. 🙂 He got a few turns in on the way down though.
We left Portland Saturday morning and started hiking around 3pm. We went up to 8200 feet and camped about 45 minutes short of the Lunch Counter. The mountain was super crowded. At times we counted 50 people just within eyesight.
Sunday morning we got an early start around 4:30am and started up for the summit. Adam, Jon, and I hit the false summit around 10am and then hit the summit about 90 minutes after that.
The way back down was considerably quicker as we glissaded down to about 9000 feet. Adam took an 8 minute-long video of the longest slide which was pretty cool.
After packing up camp we got back down to the car at 5600 feet around 5pm and then drove back to Portland.
Reading isn’t just viewing content in reverse chronological order
Reading isn’t just viewing content in reverse chronological order.
Daniel Bachhuber – Status.
Disrupting College
It’s taken a while but I got around to reading the Center for American Progress report, Disrupting College. 1 It was a really fascinating read, highly recommend it.
One quote particularly stood out. While describing the disruption that occurred in the computer industry the authors characterize the old mainframe model by writing:
We had to take our computational problems to these centralized computer centers where experts solved them for us.
This contrasts with the current smartphone era. We now have the computational power for many daily tasks residing in our front pocket. This all got me thinking about college.
With the traditional college system we have the same mainframe model. We take our knowledge problems and inexperience to a centralized place where experts with many years of training help solve them for, or in the best case with, us. Carry the analogy from mainframe computing over to education and holy mind explosion Batman! If we could even achieve half of the transformation accomplished with computers we’d be in for some wonderful times.
A future where the tools for education are accessible on an individual scale and where geographic location is no longer a limiting factor makes me really excited.
Notes:
Thoughts on TKE initiation at Whitman. Go read that. Then read this. Much respect to Daniel for publishing that and for being interviewed by the Pio.