This is How to Make a Public Service Commercial...

Our Galaxy...

Reader Paul H. sends this along, I suspect thinking that I might have missed APOD because of our user conference.  This time APOD has more than just a pretty picture – it links to this interactive sky survey, which is sort of like having an excellent pair of binoculars and a perfectly clear sky, from the comfort of your chair...

Americans vs. French...

Peggy Noonan, totally resonating with me:

America was immediately sympathetic to the underdog. The impulse of every media organization, from tabloid to broadsheet to cable to network, was to side with the powerless one in the equation. The cops, the hotel's managers, the District Attorney's office—everyone in authority gave equal weight and respect to the word of the maid. Only in America (and not always in America) would they have taken the testimony of the immigrant woman from Africa and dragged the powerful man out of his first-class seat in the jet at JFK.

In France, the exact opposite. There, from the moment the story broke, DSK was the victim, not the villain. It was a setup, a trap, a conspiracy. He has a weakness for women. No, he loves them too much. Hairy-chested poseur and Sarkozy foreign-policy adviser Bernard-Henri Levy sneeringly referred to "the chambermaid," brayed about DSK's high standing, and called him "a friend to women." Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, sniffily asked why "the supposed victim was treated as worthy and beyond suspicion."

Why wouldn't she be treated as worthy, buddy? One is tempted to ask if it's the black part, the woman part or the immigrant part.

As David Rieff wrote in The New Republic, to French intellectuals, DSK deserves special treatment because he is a valuable person. "The French elites' consensus seems to be that it is somehow Strauss-Kahn himself and not the 32-year-old maid who is the true victim of this drama."

Americans totally went for the little guy. The French went for the power.

Much more, on different topics, in her whole piece...

Rumors of My Demise...

...are slightly premature.  I wasn't amongst the departed, I was just busy. 

For the past three days, I've been part of the team at my company putting on the Knowledge11 User Conference.  It was a fantastic experience, but exhausting.  My own participation is typical; over 100 of our employees were there.  I gave two presentations on my own, one presentation as one of a group of presenters, and was a moderator in two roundtable discussions.  All of these were well-attended, and very intense experiences.  I learned a lot, and hopefully so did the customers who attended.

But the best part of the experience, by far, was the one-on-one meetings I had with customers.  The roughly dozen pre-arranged time slots were all booked before the convention even began, but we managed to put together about two dozen more meetings ad hoc.  All told, I had 38 organized meetings with customers, and probably half that again that “just happened” in the hallways (and in one case, the restroom!).  Even after a night of sleep, my head is still spinning with all the things that I learned, and ideas that I got from our customers.

Part of me wishes that these events happened more than annually, and part of me is glad I have a whole year to rest up for the next one.  Except...I don't.  We have a second event happening later this year in Europe.  Woo hoo!