Plugged Up and Plugged In: Productivity in a time of sniffles

The connectivity-productivity equation

We don’t need desks and four walls to get things done, just a little cloud

Hamilton Spectator, March 9, 2015

By Randy Kay

Is there a correlation between time spent at a desk in an office and productivity?

I have a terrible cold. Mucus is the focus of my fevered body. In PJs, with a box of tissues and a mug of hot tea, I call in sick then crack open my laptop. I send some work emails and then update the website. I upload an article emailed by a volunteer to a blog. I book the data projector for a volunteer using a cloud-based calendar.

I can Facebook, tweet, and Instagram for work and play, measuring reach using analytics. After padding around in slippers feeling sorry for myself, I upload a video created by another volunteer to our YouTube channel. I scan some paper documents I brought home, transfer them to Google drive and then upload them to our online history blog. Then I have a coughing fit.

Two new volunteers filled out an online form, both of them requesting work they could do remotely. I may never meet them in person, yet they will create posters, Facebook banner graphics, edit newsletter copy. I have a few valued volunteers like that: I've never met them, they live in different parts of the world. They are part of our connected world. I rely on them as I do other volunteers.

I am down with a virus, but technology allows me to contribute despite the phlegmy cough. Not infecting others is just a side benefit, plus they don't need to see my ravaged face, unless you want to Skype. Is this really a sick day?

I schedule some face-to-face appointments for later in the week when I hope to feel better. What is an office for? Is it really a place to do your most focused work?

My workplace functions as an office with large desks, a small resource library with books, magazines and videos and, with some dragging of furniture, a cramped meeting space.

We keep regular hours in the McMaster Student Centre, Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sometimes the office closes for an hour for a staff lunch.

Does productivity or inspiration happen during those five to six hours? Are we overvaluing time spent at a large desk over the ninja world of mobility? No, and I think so, respectively.

Not many people are signing out books or even videos from our collection these days. Could it be that streaming and podcasts and a host of on-demand online resources are in practically everyone's pocket? Why trek through the snow and cold to the student centre to search for a DVD — flash drives are replacing optical drives, making the future of DVDs a question of obsolescence anyway — when you can stream that same documentary in the coffee shop, a co-working space or even the bus on your laptop or phone?

Libraries have adjusted to the new realities, creating space for collaboration, recording studios with editing software, movie sets with green screens for video production, signing out everything from camcorders and microphones to bicycle helmets. Books? They still have them, but expectations are evolving.

Sari Feldman, president-elect of the American Library Association, sums it up with her observation that "in the future libraries will be less about what we have for people and more about what we do for people."

Why cling to outdated modes of filing? I have a dedicated team of volunteers working on our history archive. They have consigned drawers full of paper documents — stretching back into the 1970s — to the recycling bin of history. Instead, they scan documents and put them online. Now searchable on a blog, valuable for research or for sharing on social media. That grey filing cabinet taking up a corner in our small office just became obsolete. Everything is now stored in the cloud, safe from the ravages of time, mould, dust and neglect.

I'm not arguing that technology should replace the office or that I want to stay home on the couch every day, but technology can transform how we use the real estate formerly called "office" — creating more versatile space for a wider range of activity.

I used to prepare weekly event listings to send to email subscribers, copying and pasting text, adding hyperlinks to a table of contents, it took hours each week. Now it's all done by an invisible script running behind the scenes on our website.

With new free time I've started hosting weekly drop-in sessions with free coffee and tea for volunteers. We create a small space for idea exchanges, using old technology such as sitting in a circle, writing notes on a whiteboard, telling stories, listening, making connections. Desks are just in the way.

It works because technology creates opportunity. Turn on, tune in and pass the tissues.


Randy Kay has been OPIRG McMaster’s co-ordinator of volunteers since 1998 and remembers nervously sending his very first email from the work computer and worrying about what might happen. Now he tries to keep up with the plugged-in students in a variety of software environments.

That's A (Bus) Wrap!

Transit inglorious 

Travelling about Hamilton in a massive advertisement on wheels

By Randy Kay

It was an inspired moment. It was late, there was no transit, I was walking home with a long way to go, tired and hungry. Then I saw the neon pizza parlour sign: In a master stroke of slacker verve, I went in and bargained to get myself delivered home with my pizza. 2 for 1.

That was a couple decades ago and I figure it's a short step from savant to sucker. Now I find myself sitting on an HSR bus that is, from the outside, a giant Gino's Pizza advertisement. The entire bus is wrapped, including the windows, which obscures my view as we ascend the escarpment.

Since when did advertising on buses begin to displace the rider's experience, and maybe take a slice or two of their dignity? In the pursuit of advertising revenue, has the transit system gone too far?

Inside the bus I can take the advertising signs above the windows. These interior ads are mostly "freebies" for city services — practise safe sex, that sort of thing explains Andy McLaughlin, senior manager of transit at the HSR.

Since when did advertising on buses begin to displace the rider’s experience? In the pursuit of advertising revenue, has the transit system gone too far?

Outside the bus, large exterior ads, the kind that often see the bus "wrapped" with vinyl graphics, are not even aimed at HSR customers, but instead at traffic beside and behind the bus.

The driver's side is the most sought after mobile billboard space to catch the SUV driver's eye, since it is uninterrupted by bus doors. In transit advertising parlance, this is the domain of the "King Card."

You can advertise in the space for "cards" or go for a wrap. The curb side goes by the tag "70 Card" for a 70-inch advertising space, the rear of the bus is ripe for a "tail wrap." Other mobile ad-lingo includes "Partial Mural," "Side Mural," "Full Wrap," "Super Tail," or the "Full Back."

Three sides of the bus can be wrapped in ads, and wraps are outpacing smaller advertising cards on the sides of buses, says McLaughlin. After all, why take 70 inches when you can take a full canvas for a triptych of advertising glory as buses trundle through town.

Only the front of the bus is free of sales rental space, to allow for considerations you'd expect, like driver's vision, and to give passengers at least a glimpse of fleet colours as they await the festooned flyer.

Ads are administered by a third party, Streetseen Media, which sells the ad space and provides an "annual minimum guaranteed payment" to the HSR of $440,000 a year, says McLaughlin. The HSR nets 60 per cent of revenue over and above that threshold.

The HSR receives occasional complaints from riders who don't like their view obstructed since people often use landmarks to determine bus stop locations.

Buses already have a bad rap (pun intended), even among some "higher order" transit advocates, so covering sleek paint jobs and a chance for some city/transit branding is being sacrificed to sell other people's products. Even pizza.

McLaughlin has an administrator's eye on the money, as he should. Any move to limit advertising would mean a hit on the revenue that the HSR has come to depend on. But if City Hall would use revenue from federal gas taxes meant to lower greenhouse gas emissions on transit, rather than roads, we could get some pizzazz rather than pizza ads.

There are some spectacular rides on many routes. Any route up or down the Mountain will give panoramic views of the lower city, splendidly splayed out with the blue centre of the bay reminding us that the city is built around (and on top of) water.

One of my favourite bus routes for diverse city views is the #4 bus. Hop on downtown and trip through high energy Jamesville, past Pier 4, along Burlington Street through Steel Mills, past the Hells Angels Club House on Gage (is that a tourist attraction?) over to Woodward and end gloriously atop Mount Albion.

The HSR could even invest in smart technology to enhance the untapped educational and tourism potential of fixed route buses. Bring some of the history ("Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie played here for striking Steelworkers in '46"), and current events (to your left you see the new GO Station being built) in a way that adds value to the experience of riding the bus.

As it is now, riders are an afterthought to poorly considered advertising.

http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/4628332-transit-inglorious/

Photo by Randy Kay (did not appear with article)

The Con in Conservation?

A happy ending for conservation lovers, as the Hamilton Conservation Authority Board buys into removal of Maplewood Hall (and the long roadway and parking area) to rehabilitate the natural lands at this beautiful property.

Money from private donors saved the day, swaying the HCA Advisory Board to finally agree to what the HCA staff report had previously unequivocally determined was the best course of action.

Yet this victory for nature leaves me somewhat disconcerted about how this all played out, and what it might mean for the HCA's future.

Here's how I interpreted the chain of events: Maplewood is losing money, the HCA decides to examine it's future. HCA staff prepare a detailed report outlining various options and recommend removing Maplewood and naturalizing the area as the preferred option. The HCA Board decides to wait and seek other options, though it seems there was no formal process to seek options. At some point Tony Evans of the Dundas Montessori school gets told about Maplewood and after seeing it for the first time, decides it would be a perfect place for his private school. Discussions take place privately between HCA and Evans.

The strange thing to me is that the HCA seemed to be encouraging this option, which was roundly denounced by environmentalists from the venerable Hamilton Naturalist Club, to Thomas Beckett, the HCA's first chairperson and the person who arranged for the purchase of the property in question when he was chair. The only people speaking in support of private school use were Evans and the person who built Evans' school playground. Their claims that the school would save the conservation movement were bombastic and self-serving.

The Dundas Valley is a special place, thanks to people like Mr Beckett, Joanna Chapman and others who share a vision of the common good and are willing to speak up and defend conservation principles, even when the Authority won't.

The people who are putting their money on the line to ensure the HCA protects the valley are people with a long and proven commitment to conservation. It is wonderful that they are able to offer resources to see the right thing is done in this case. Yet two things jump out at me here. One: if the HCA had acted on the staff report, and not bargained with Evans, these folks might not have had to pledge to the cause. Does this mean if the HCA makes another questionable call they will be expecting citizens with money to buy the right decision? Or two: will the HCA take money if the offer is sweet enough to trade some land for private uses that may or may not be compatible with principles of conservation?

I'd like to have full faith in the HCA to do the right thing. At this point, I'm not sure which way this could go.

[first published at DundasWalks]

The Art of Sinking

When it sinks in. 

When it sinks in that visiting artist Gregg Schlanger chose to focus his considerable talent on McMaster's Parking Lot "M" for his contribution to the Mapping Paradise show, it ignited a thrill in me: here is art speaking a new language on a current environmental issue.

That the issue is central to what I've been working on for the past several years felt like affirmation, yes, but more, like a new force has joined the cause, which has grown to include so many within just the last year.

Gregg's work entitled "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" is the central defining artwork in a lively show of student work from Judy Major-Girardin's ART 2ER3 "Environmentally Responsible Studio" class at McMaster University.

The form is a low wood frame box filled with water in the middle of the gallery, with a raised, flat platform - like an oil rig in the sea -  standing over the water. The platform is at first unfamiliar, until we see it in the shape of McMaster's Parking Lot M in the west campus.

Water bubbles up and breaks through the flat platform like mini geysers or springs. The work reminds us that the parking lot is built atop the floodplain of Ancaster Creek, and that the ripples of this environmental degradation still flow outward, to actively reach out to us from below. Subconsciously perhaps, for some, and more immediate for those who know the story of how Coldspring Valley Nature Sanctuary became a parking lot. The paving of this bit of Cootes Paradise came around the same time that Joni Mitchell released her classic "Big Yellow Taxi" in 1970 with the refrain:

Half Capacity: Zero Problems

Usually, standing on the median between the northbound/southbound lanes of Cootes Drive would be an unnerving experience, due to the high speed traffic clocking in at 80km/hour and more.

But during road construction, the closure of the southbound lane of Cootes Drive has calmed traffic speeds and made the road quieter and safer.

With Spencer Creek and ponds to the left of the road, and Cootes Paradise Nature Sanctuary wetlands to the right, the inhabitants of the natural environment fare poorly when forced to interact with traffic. The huge distance between the shoulders of the road are a major barrier for amphibian and other wetland species, including species at risk like Cootes Paradise's turtle population.

When the road was built in 1936-37, it was built as an example of the new modern highway design: divided lanes with a grassy median, easy curves and low grades. These innovations were achieved in this instance by removing hills and then using the soil to fill in the marshy low ground, creating a dead-zone for wildlife. We have been paying the environmental cost ever since.

Radio Free School

This is a warning: there will be late nights, struggle, challenges missed and met. There will be satisfaction and joy, but no money for your efforts.

Creating a weekly half hour radio program on campus/community radio is like running down a train track with your pants around your ankles and a locomotive on your heels. It requires focus and energy and a dose of humility. It’s like raising children, like most things important, actually.

I can’t really complain, since I suggested combining our educational pursuits for our never been to school daughters-three with my love of campus radio: the adventure truly picked up steam the moment we were welcomed to the airwaves on 93.3fm at McMaster’s CFMU, and for the next six years Radio Free School was our learning juggernaut.

We touched fossilized mammoth excrement in the office of a world-renowned geneticist researcher, hiked forest trails with loving ecologists, belly-danced, scuba dived and searched the galaxies with a range of experts and doers who shared their knowledge and passion. Week after week, the shows we created were guided from the outset by our children’s - and our own -  interests. There were no boundaries about what we would study, the only constant was constant learning; that, and the weekly deadline to complete the show. 

We would take our video camera everywhere, recording field interviews then using the audio mixed and edited with music at home to produce the show, with a heavy dose of children’s voices, voices so rarely heard on radio. Not just heard, but in control, both of content, and simultaneously, their own learning. 

Using digital audio editing software meant we could prepare our half hour shows and then upload it from the comfort of home. Posting our shows to the very useful and alive radio4all.net where we were quickly picked up, to our astonishment, by an internet station in Japan, a pirate radio station in Santa Cruz California, then Fredricton, New Brunswick’s campus station CHSR 97.9 FM, and several other stations around the world over the show’s tenure from May 2002 until we folded shop in June 2008 with a last show on one of our favourite and oft repeated topics: Math!

We didn’t really stop there though, but gone were the weekly midnight editing sessions the night before the show aired. We kept our web presence, and of course our interest and growing experience with alternatives to what has become the standardized education system. In the process we had advanced our understanding and knowledge, and shared our progress weekly with our listeners and friends. We had, along the way, spoken to some of the best minds and commentators on the topic of learning outside of regular school.

Since we sidestepped schools for a different model of learning, we were conscious that we were not separate, not above, just different. We were trying our best to find out how to allow our children, and ourselves, to experience our own worlds, with our own unique minds and talents. It is in this spirit that we come to you now. 

Armed with over 200 shows - almost 7,000 minutes of material, we want to bring together some of our most challenging and insightful guests in book form. To bring the airwaves to your library.

Randy Kay

May 2012

WHITE AND WILD: Gearing Up

The sharp sound of scraping ice from windshields, the spine twisting toss of heavy snow to free your trapped vehicle, the smear of salt and sanded snow spray as your wipers drag and push, these joys of winter are unknown to the winter cyclist.

With frosty plumes of warm breath punctuating their progress, these most hardy of souls pedal year round, thumbing their cold noses at arctic temperatures and fluctuating gas prices.

A psychology professor at McMaster University, Reuven Dukas skirts his 2005 Corolla in the driveway as he settles onto his mountain bike for the 5 kilometer ride to work from his Dundas home. Matters not if the winds howl and the snow swirls.

“If it's not ski-able, it's bike-able,” is his motto. He puts on fresh “aggressive, off-road” tires in December to traction his way through the cold.

“Cycling enables me to be outside everyday, which I like, and I get my daily exercise”, says Dukas. So important is his daily ride, that he researched bike routes to his work when looking for a home.

Sure, it's not for everyone, pedaling through snow drifts and over black ice. Yet despite the perception of snow-bound Canadian winters, there are many days when roads are dry and clear, which leaves riding in winter largely a matter of bracing for the cold.

Daunting double digit drops below zero may strike fear, but novice riders may find themselves overdressing for the cold. Advances in gear technology mean keeping warm and dry on a bike is easier, and sleeker, than ever if you are willing to invest. And why not? A good waterproof, breathable, reflective cycling jacket and pants can keep the elements out, all for a little more than a year's worth of oil changes for your car. Throw in some extra protection with a thin fleece cycling balaclava to fit under your helmet, special “lobster claw cycling mitts, and maybe even some waterproof shoe covers to keep your toes dry, and you are practically climate controlled.