March 15, 2006
I'm halting my personal blog, for now...
'Twas a noble experiment, 270 Entries and 1,529 Comments later, and it was great for me to experience this medium from the inside out, in my limited way. I'd probably continue it in some form, if I didn't have a multitude of other things to do that are taking priority. It's another time I need to practice my own GTDing and renegotiate my own commitments with myself to stay up with my changing world. What with our Connect membership service coming out of the gate soon, our new Workplace Learning division getting a whole new GTD program ready for internal corporate distribution, lots of new educational and desktop products in the works, a full new RoadMap seminar tour, and expanded speaking requirements, I'm just too stretched to keep enjoying the luxury of late-night college-student-union chatting (blogging).
One interesting thing that I didn't expect was that many people were using my blog as their "intro" to our work. So, as my personal "between the lines" it was beginning to possibly misrepresent the value and nature of The David Allen Company. Another hitch has been that my site and blog have been so popular (in terms of hits), it got big time on the radar of the spammers, and we've spent countless hours filtering and finding the real comments in the spam-catcher, so they weren't lost.
I've reinstated a kind of What's New at DavidCo page on the web site, to assure everyone that we're real people, living our lives in real time, and for the more company-focused "between the lines" kinds of updates.
I'll leave this post and the blog functional for a while, to give everyone a chance to unhook and not be surprised if you're no longer receiving a feed. If you want to continue RSS feeds from updates and changes in the DavidCo site and other blogs, go to this link.
Thanks to all of you who have come into the "salon" and contributed to the dialogue. My apologies for not responding to them all - I would have loved to, had I had the time. I'm not going away - just reconfiguring the channels a bit...
Posted by David at 11:52 AM | Comments (24)
March 06, 2006
In defense of capitalism, and some real black history...
Great essay in the current Atlantic by Clive Crook, marveling at how little "awe" we have for the success of the free market and it's comcomitant freedoms. It's called "Capitalism: the Movie" on page 46 of the March issue. Nice to have a good reminder that if we take what we enjoy a little too much for granted, we are in danger of letting it slip away. His point is basically that there is an underlying assumption in our culture (demonstrated through the movies) that business and the free market is a bad thing, and the heroes are the ones who escape being downtrodden by it. He ends with this paragraph:
How about a movie in which a firm prospers under threat of competition by selling things that people want at an affordable price, paying its workers the market wage, and breaking no laws, thereby advancing the common good? Well, you see the problem.
And by the way, right after Crook's essay the Atlantic reprinted articles they published originally by Frederick Douglas in 1866, Booker T. Washington in 1896, W. E. B. Du Bois in 1897. and Martin Luther Kind in 1963. Though I was an American History major in college, reading those again from my present state of awareness was pretty awesome...
Posted by David at 07:18 PM | Comments (9)
