professional specialization summary, interests, and weblog.

For my current résumé, curriculum vitae including working papers or just to discuss shared interests, please feel free to contact me. Wenn sie mit mir in verbindung treten möchten, klicken sie einfach an mein email address - rrneal@hotmail.com.

Professional Prime Focus:

a) An admitted fascination with organizational behavior attributes of idiosyncratic corporate cultures and the effect as well as efficacy upon employed work systems (both human and technical).

b) Web2.0 to Web3.0 transition: developing advanced search capabilities feeding predictive services for increased sentience across the Internet (online intelligence).

Interests:

a) Vertebrate Paleontology: Member, Kansas Missouri Paleontology Society; H.M.S Beagle Science Society; KU Paleontological Institute Volunteer. Subspecialty: Ceratopsia (Cretaceous)

b) Astronomy: Meteorite Hunting, NEOs (including Meteoroid/Satellite Tracking/Orbital Mechanisms); study of Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event. Amateur Photoastronomer: member, Slooh.com.

c) Amateur Inventor (patents pending).

Weblog:

[05/2008] Alternative to Corn Ethanol - The current corn ethanol subsidies being employed by the United States Government are creating a speculative replanting of crops on finite farm capacities. This is having a negative affect on other food staples and causing an increase in food costs through these abnormal market-skewing forces. As a result, there is a growing voice in Washington to kill the EPA mandate on increasing the amount of biofuels placed into the American energy supply. Instead of the government killing the biofuel agenda which will help us meet a (future) mandate in curtailing carbon production (read: doing something about global warming), why not simply expand the foodcrop under the biofuel banner? Sugar. Sugar production can be efficiently ramped up with marginal costs in countries already offering a sugarcane crop (e.g.; Brazil). This also serves as a viable alternative to other forms of farming that have been underwritting the horrible cut-and-burn tactics in the Amazon forest. Presently, sugar as a commodity is at an extremely low price point. More importantly, sugar-based ethanol is a more efficient energy source than its corn-based cousin. By making the biofuel registry more diverse than simply corn (sugar, switchgrass, etc.) the costs involved with growing bio-energy are better distributed without causing the artificial market influences that are being experienced from the corn subsidies right now.

[03/2008] Research Attempts to Define Happiness and its Not Acquired Through Acquisition - A study published in Science suggests that the acquisition of material things generally provides little in the way of happiness while the altruistic giving away of money triggered much more in the way of contentment and pleasure. The study looked at a number of situations in an attempt to get a handle on what makes people generally happy and discovered that in a wide variety of situations the act of giving to someone or some cause engendered more pleasure and happiness than spending the same amount on oneself. The study looked at people of modest means, those with some wealth and students as well as people with significant degrees of wealth. Granted, the measure of happiness was self-reported but even if people were responding as they thought appropriate (ref. survey-bias) there seemed to have been real improvements in self satisfaction and well being.

Analysis offered by Lawrence, KS.-based Think Tank, Armada Corporate Intelligence (intel@strategic-briefs.com): There are any number of conclusions that can be drawn from this study and researchers have ventured some assessments as to why the level of satisfaction goes up. One theory is that acquisition usually involves some degree of disappointment in that what is acquired is somehow less satisfying than anticipated while the act of giving can remain somewhat unsullied by reality. What the recipient does with the money or gift seems to be important in that the less one knows about what happens next the better. It has also been suggested that giving money demonstrates that the giver is not as bad off as those receiving, helping people maintain a sense of well being as compared to others. Still another theory suggests that people interpret the whole process of giving as protecting themselves in the long run. If they are generous and help someone they assume that their generosity will be reciprocated when they need the help. And maybe it is just that people really do want to help others. One interesting side note – it was discovered that when the donations went to something connected to animals the pleasure factor increased dramatically. (quoted from Dr. C. Kuehl)

For true happiness, consider donating to http://www.wildaid.org and/or http://www.emergencyanimalrescue.org,

[05/2007] The world of Web 2.0 is still in its infancy. True digital sentience – defined as the ability to see or perceive your space in the online world in comparison with other spaces (or even the web as a whole) is still a novelty. Thus far, we’ve the functionality to understand user’s behavior on a website but no real perception beyond this. Advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Search in combination with increases in raw computational power have set the stage for a true understanding of ideas, thoughts and expressions (collectively known as “memes”) of online users. The ability to track the genesis of a meme, mark the exact tipping point when it derived systemic acceptance (or denial) coupled with understanding the evolution this took to reach critical mass is the underpinning of a new online search-related industry. Holistic sentiment can now be derived marking the onset of sentient technology. The potential impact within marketing, political campaigning, corporate identity valuation, crisis management and intranet/portal management remains great.

[12/2006] A Maturational Comparative: Human Biological Systems to Business Organizational Systems -- Most recently, I had the opportunity to be contacted by a small eBusiness company (<100 employees) looking for project management and performance improvement. Happily accepting their friendly overture offering an interview, I learned that this company was in a heavy growth phase and was feeling the obligatory “[growth] pains” associated with this augmentation. I was instantly struck with the thought that the parallel between growth patterns in an individual (human) and that of an organization (company) are too similar to be casually disputed. An adolescent human being is caught in a systemic conundrum of reaching a high maturational level in some ways (sexual maturity) while remaining relatively immature in others (emotional, for example) - this is called "heterotopy" or development in an "other place". This has an uncomfortable effect on the individual not being truly cognizant of this discrepancy in maturation which easily lends itself as a logical reason why being a teenager is so often a trying time. The same can be said for this small eCommerce company. As the pineal gland signals the onset of sexual maturity, it has no way to correspond this growth to the amygdale (the seat of emotion in the brain). Similarly, as the more experienced personnel understand the requisite “next steps” (in this case it was HR) in the evolution of this organization, they often have no way to relay this critical data to the individual hiring managers who understand and perform at a more basic level of business (often illuminative of having a limited breadth of experience outside of small companies). From my observation, irrespective of the experienced HR team, this company’s current revenue generation has severely outgrown its maturational capacity to understand the need for organizational change in order to properly capture and accelerate said revenue generation. “Our processes/compensation model/knowledge development scale perfectly” was the repeated answer to my questioning around adjustments needed to meet the described growth. Interestingly enough, what was offered on how these elements scaled presented something other than perfection but rather illustrated cultural artifacts being grasped tightly (the common quip of "it worked for us in the past, why shouldn't it work for us in the future" instantly came to mind). Was this hiring manager simply reflecting his organizational customs (culturally communicated behavioral mimicry also referred to as "memes") or was there something more here? At this point, I didn't feel the need to press for any further descriptions. Whether the present, mounting conundrum being experienced is about confusion around growth or a simple case of resistance to change or a combination of both, gaining enough traction towards alleviating the heterotopic maturation is necessary to grow this company from a small organization to a medium-sized business. This will hinge solely upon leadership being able to make the necessary changes to organizational culture (& structure) - which is why this company's developmental phase is identified as experiencing endemic "growing pains".

[12/2006] The command-and-control configuration (having military origins spanning back centuries with popularity in the civilian workforce reaching an apex in the 1950s & 60s) is still prevalent in a few contemporary organizational structures. Primarily seen in very small, entrepreneurial endeavors where a single leader oversees all efforts as well as in very large, mature industries (and governments) where change remains slow – command-and-control techniques are seen and experienced by many in the new millennium. Unfortunately, this age old method often fails to meet the needs of modern-day business (specific to the larger companies still engaged in C&C). A recent case study of mine illustrated an established company in a market which had remained completely static for decades that suddenly found it competing against an increasing number of new-comers across the entire spectrum of the company’s product (service) line. Facing an environment of price commoditization brought about by a growing multitude of market players, this company remained stubbornly married (through sickness and in health) to its increasingly dysfunctional culture (summarily identified through an ingrained resistance to all change). An attempt to exert (more) control through increased financial metrics and motivational incentives haven’t yet triggered the intended behaviors. Employee engagement scores fell flat. Attrition has since begun to rise (slowly). Quarterly earnings warnings are becoming de facto. Most recently, leadership has visibly begun to switch to a visionary style of direction in an obvious attempt to push the cultural pendulum out of its present well-worn arc. A fundamental question remains - how much more external market pressure can this company take before engaging in a painful, requisite downsizing cycle?

:: "Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times." — Niccolo Machiavelli

[11/2006] In the field of organizational performance improvement, the theorem of Occam's Razor (the simplest answer is usually the best answer) rarely works towards creating or invigorating a healthy organization. Over-simplistic sound-bytes incessantly circulate about how to manage towards org excellence from a single dimension (IT, accounting, sales, etc.). However, even the worker-bees understand that any medium-to-large company requires a multivariate approach towards performance improvement by fully engaging all organizational resources (people, processes, budgetary, and management systems) as a requisite first step on the critical path towards meaningful change. These employees live in a hyper-matrixed work topology (concurrent multiple projects, multiple stakeholders - sometimes with opposing interests, and often while reporting to multiple managers) where it is easy to see the effects of cascading dependencies and the resulting shared critical risks at a most granular level. Unfortunately, the majority of Corporate America's thought leadership remains woefully ignorant to this fact. Ironically enough, the most simplistic answer for pursuing real organizational performance improvement can be defined via one word: holism.

Miscellaneous:

:: Interesting tidbit - from famed Biologist E.O. Wilson during the 2007 TED Conference. As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we're still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; yet we're still steadily destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), using the acronym HIPPO, and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere.

:: Interesting tidbit - from Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He was the founding VC investor in Hotmail (MSFT), Interwoven (IWOV), and Kana (KANA) - "Wondering about gray goo"? (Jurvetson, 2006)
Here’s the conclusion from an analysis of the prospect of Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators: ”The smallest plausible biovorous nanoreplicator has a molecular weight of ~1 gigadalton and a minimum replication time of perhaps ~100 seconds, in theory permitting global ecophagy to be completed in as few as ~10^4 seconds. However, such rapid replication creates an immediately detectable thermal signature enabling effective defensive policing instrumentalities to be promptly deployed before significant damage to the ecology can occur.” In summation, the analysis calculates that the max speed for which self-replicating nanobots could eat the planet Earth is 2.78 hours. It must be noted that the analyst takes comfort in the notion that this nanobot feast generates a lot of heat, which could alert and trigger “defensive measures.” It is interesting to point out a speculative parallel between a rising global mean temperature and the outlined increase of nanobot-driven kinetic energy .... hmmm.

:: Interesting tidbit - Excerpt of Al Gore's comments around several important contemporary topics, captured at the X-Prize Executive Luncheon...
On Climate Crisis: “We have a global emergency. Our planet has a fever. If your child has a fever, you do something about it. If your child’s crib is on fire, you don’t ponder ‘is my baby flame retardant?’”
“We operate the planet as if it’s a going out of business sale.”
“We are putting 70 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per day. 25 million of those tons are absorbed by the oceans, forming carbonic acid. The shell-making of zooplankton and coral depends on free-floating calcium carbonate. Since 1850, we have changed the pH of the oceans worldwide. If we continue at our current rate, the oceans will become so much more acidic that we will disrupt marine life. So, even if a future planetary ‘albino effect’ shields us from the sun, the CO2 will still poison the planet and lose its habitability for us.”

:: Interesting tidbit - from Dr. Howard Bloom, author of many excellent books (The Lucifer Principle, Global Brain, etc.). The following excerpt is from a recent paper offered by Dr. Bloom speculating on an evolutionary continuance upon modern human beings - ergo, Homo Urbanis. "The dominant view in today's evolutionary psychology is that our instincts were stamped into our DNA during the infamous EEA, 'The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness.' This is generally reckoned as a roughly two and a half million-year hunter-gatherer phase that ended before the climax of the last Ice Age. Since then, our genetically preprogrammed heritage has supposedly been locked in stone (or better yet, in an amino acid code). We are, so says the current argument, tribal hunter-gatherers decked out in modern clothes. However a strong case can be made for the possibility that human biology has continued to evolve during the ten thousand years since Jericho's builders erected the first city walls. Genes change far more speedily than most evolutionary psychologists realize. Natural selection has had 400 generations to rework our bodies and our brains since the days when Catal Huyuk, Suberde, and Tepe Yahya joined Jericho's mesh of intercity trade. Four thousand years before the rise of the Sumerian cities of Ur, Uruk, and Kish, Stone Age metropolises from Anatolia to the edges of India were already rich in challenges and opportunities. These urban traps and niches may well have been selectors forming much of what we are today. Homo urbanis has not only arrived, he has long since elbowed Homo tribalis far off to the side."
Obviously, it doesn't take a great jump in reason to envision the parallels between a "caveman" pushing through a throng of his tribe attempting to grab a sizable chunk of the latest kill with that of a ill-tempered man pushing his way through a crowd eagerly awaiting the Christmas stock of a new video game at Walmart. The adage "what is old, is new again" takes on prehistoric context here. I agree with the overall points on current evolutionary changes with the knowledge that such change remains extraordinarily subtle in its present phase (and, no, this isn't a compliment to humankind).

:: Interesting tidbit - The Singularity is "technological change so rapid and so profound that it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. Some would say that we cannot comprehend the Singularity, at least with our current level of understanding, and that it is impossible, therefore, to look past its 'event horizon' and make sense of what lies beyond" (Kurzweil).
Ray Kurzweil, renowned techno-poly-author, defines a point in the intermediate future where the amalgam intelligence of humans is no longer consider of a "fixed capacity". In the future, intelligence is enhanced via upgraded biology (biotech - computer/mind fusion) which enables assumed processing limitations to be ignored - ergo, an hour of thought is equivalent to a century of cumulative thinking, etc. This overclocked intelligence evolves into a flurry of action pushing human advancement into a time/space singularity. Given the oxymoronic nature presented with most of human progress (Nuclear energy as Hyperion [light] and Acheron [death]) the singularity, in its present understood version, will most likely provide for a scenario reminiscent of our elemental, binary code of existence - 0 off/1 on. This abstraction carries a logical equivalence to eternal bliss or extinction synonymous with aged stories of Armageddon. ...fingers crossed for tripping the switch to 1.

:: "You took the good things for granted. Now you must earn them again…. For every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every hope that you entertain, you have a task that you must perform. For every good that you wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice your comfort and your ease. There is nothing for nothing any longer.”
A 1910 quotation from Walter Lippman.