I watched Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth over the weekend and was moved. He builds an impressive argument backed with a convincing graphical elements, personal storytelling, and an example of how to get a message out to a large number of people in hopes to reach the threshold where the message is spread exponentially. It's a lot of hard work but easy if you are passionate about a subject.

One particular example that I like was the graphic about the frog and hot water. If you dipped the frog in water that was boiling, it would jump out right away. If you put it in warm water, it would sit there and boil even if you gradually increased the temperature. The organizations and systems of today that support a business are similar. Much emphasis is placed on emergencies and triage. Is something a level 1 or level 2 fire? Real big problems that are not urgent and pressing always take a back seat. There is no such thing as proactive.

I am on the verge of continuing my journey of independence. I am close to a 3 month contract in energy market systems. I hope assignment by assignment, I can leave behind and mold a message of proactive understanding of how things work, inclusion of every resource that can help to address a system need, and the idea of a culture of abundance. An information system and culture should be able to proactively see that the lukewarm water is getting hot and do something about it before it is too late.

Started reading some new books - Genius Denied, Head First Ajax, Head First Object Oriented Analysis, Ruby on Rails ECommerce.