Abbas Al Lawati is the Gulf News reporter from Dubai who was on the Freedom Floatilla as it steamed towards Gaza.

What is the role of the reporter?

To report?

To be an observer?

To tell a story?

Abbas found himself in the not too uncommon situation of not only reporting on a story but becoming a part of that story.

At one point it was his BlackBerry that allowed him to continue to file his reports as he saw people die around him.

Where do we draw the lines between objectivity and subjectivity in journalism?

How do we deal with emotion?

Can we realistically expect journalists to compartmentalize their emotions? Do we even want the journalist to be an emotion free recorder of what is happening around them.

Abbas tells an interesting story of his time on the Freedom Floatilla as he navigated between reporting on and being the news.

A conversation with Abbas Al Lawati about his time on the Freedom Floatilla.

I love the commuter and don’t leave home without it, and I put a 17 inch machine into it!

Simply a great product!

What makes it great is the designers have thought not only about the look and feel but also about the utility of the product and it simply just works very very well.

Over and over again I have told my students that what we learn at school is secondary to the process.

Sure there are some exceptions but they are not as glaring as you might think.

What is important in our education is that we learn to follow through, meet deadlines, dare, challenge and ultimately get the tools to know who to ask and how to ask for help and guidance when we need it.

Sure some may disagree but that disagreement is fueled more out of fear of a change in the way we deliver education than the reality of the suggestion.

Last night I spoke to Iman Ben Chaibah about the creation of Sail magazine.

Iman Ben Chaibah on SAILemagazine.com

Nightline a Conversation

What is interesting is that Iman studied computer science and works in the computer industry, NOT the field of communication and journalism.

Yes there is no question Iman is a journalist!

The point of all this is wandering off the path is what education should be all about, getting us to explore and follow our gut feelings no matter how far from what we are trained to do it is!

This is the question that we constantly find ourselves asking, especially when you are looking at an employment contract and deciding whether to continue to negotiate or take it.

The problem we face as a workforce is, as Seth Godin put it in a recent blog post, that we migrate between hourly and linchpin work.

I would add that as we migrate between the 2 types of work, hourly and linchpin, we get confused.

But Godin’s example makes it all very clear. You have talent and you need to find the avenue to exploit that talent. And you need to be aware of the need and value of your particular talent that can be translated into a product or service.

I had a college professor who did engineering consulting. A brand new office tower in Boston had a serious problem–there was a brown stain coming through the drywall, (all of the drywall) no matter how much stain killer they used. In a forty story building, if you have to rip out all the drywall, this is a multi-million dollar disaster. They had exhausted all possibilities and were a day away from tearing out everything and taking a loss. They hired Henry in a last-ditch effort to solve the problem. He looked at the walls and said, “I think I can work out a solution, but it will cost you $45,000 if I succeed.” They instantly signed on, because if he succeeded, the project would be saved.

Henry asked for a pencil and paper and wrote the name of a common hardware store chemical and handed it to them. “Here, this will work.” And then he billed them $45,000. That’s quite an hourly wage. It’s also quite a bargain.

As a professor I look at this and say EXACTLY!

Education is not a career for a mega salary, BUT, if you have your eyes wide open there are opportunities where added value can be delivered from the academic experience of the professor.

The problem is HOW to tap into linchpin elements of a situation. Unfortunately too many academics have their eyes wide shut and miss the opportunities in front of them.

Confident? Totally.

Driven? Totally.

Proud? Absolutely.

So why are more women not looking at her and just going for it?

Nayla started at HCT in the UAE and learned her film craft at Ryerson in Toronto Canada.

Yes she has a company and yes she has made a handful of shorts.  What I find really interesting is her role at giving back and helping to craft the UAE’s film industry.

She has helped to create a taste for film through the Scene Club and she is also rallying several groups to help fuel an indigenous UAE film industry.

Nayla is bold and pushing the film boundaries in the UAE from the creation to the consumption.

Listen to my conversation with Nayla.

We need to ask what the purpose of our time investment is!

No purpose, why do it!

First the professor starts thinking about the 7 weeks of vacation that is staring them in the face. Yes academics are not the most highly paid people on the planet BUT they do get great holidays.

The second thing that happens this time of year is students begin to stream into academic offices asking what they can do to get a better mark!

I wonder where we are going wrong!

Why do students think after a final assignment they can do a bit more to fix the failures of their judgement when it came to presentations, assignments and exams.

Tom Peters in his daily cube bomb summed it up nicely today.

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
–Tom Peters

In my case for either 8 0r 18 weeks I have been teaching my students to arrive to class on time, give 100% and hopefully learn from each experience.

For my part I have arrived on time, sat in my office during office hours, provided a learning experience that is unparalleled and been totally up front with the simple fact that at the end of the course I expect student work that is exceptional, based totally on the student putting in the time and applying the weekly lessons (some lessons lead to a success and some a failure but all are lessons to be applied).

As Elizabeth Gilbert says in her TEDtalk, “I have done my part.”

While many of my students do their part there are still some who are not applying the lessons along the path and figure that anything can be fixed later with a little extra work.

WRONG!

But why wouldn’t a student treat every piece of work like a life or death situation? In many cases those grades and the cumulative grade point average could be a death sentence in the academic world.

Is the classroom suppose to, at the least, have a bit of continuity to the real world?

-arrive on time

-be accountable 100% for work output

-rewards for exceptional work

-incentives to not follow the mediocre crowd (most work is mediocre in quality and creativity these days)

-the only second chance is on the next assignment and there is always an end

Fortunately many educators agree that whether we are training students for a vocation or a lifetime of academics we need to work to the reality of the world we will eventually find ourselves in!

I cringe at the professors who treat the students in a University like grade 5 students, and many do, this does the university student no favours and really makes a clown of the professor.

Then again everyone likes a good circus.

Trust in ourselves is as far as I’m concerned one of the greatest lost commodities today.

We spend way too much time wanting people to tell us what we are doing is OK.

Are you telling me you do not know when your work is sub standard?

Are you telling me you can not read instructions, look at a situation and craft what is necessary and maybe even beyond expectation?

Exactly! Somewhere along the line of growing up, and I put the blame squarely on the social education process, we have been duped into thinking that we just don’t have the ability to trust our own instincts.

Well this lack of self trust doesn’t just come to fruition in the classroom but throughout society and this is a frightening thought.

But what is causing some people to stop and think today is the simple fact that we are giving up our role as parents to books, the net and other sources that suggest to have the answers to how to bring up our children!

Well, Lenore Skenazy has a few ideas about parenting and the general need to trust ourselves!

I spoke to Lenore on Nightline and the leadership lessons are brimming from our conversation.

Lenore Skenazy on Free Range Kids

Nightline a Conversation

You know I am a TED fan and will be going to TED2011 as well as co-curating TEDxDubai this coming December.

But there is another group that you might not have heard of and need to also look at!

GEL  Short for “Good Experience Live”

You are scratching your head right?

Well here is what it is all about.

Gel is a conference and community exploring good experience in all its forms – in art, business, technology, society, and life.

Gel was founded by Mark Hurst in 2003 and has run a spring event in New York City each year since. Gel 2010 was the 8th annual event.

Instead of focusing on just one thing (design, technology, user experience, business, etc.) like many conferences, Gel touches on many things. This challenges attendees to find, and learn from, the patterns that underlie good experience, even in disciplines vastly different from their own.

The best way to understand the Gel experience is to attend.

I have not attended yet BUT like TED I do love the videos.

You can find the videos on VIMEO

One of the recent greats is this one!

Matt Haughey

Founder, Metafilter.com

Tags: business, community, technology

Posted: 05/26/10 | Recorded at Gel 2010

As the founder of Metafilter.com, Matt Haughey has created one of the most successful and vibrant online communities in the world. At Gel 2010 he describes some of the lessons he’s learned along the way. Matt is a longtime Gel attendee and it’s a privilege to spotlight his outstanding work.

(Coincidentally, just days after Gel 2010 the online community of Ask Metafilter stopped a human trafficking attempt in New York City. See also the Mother Jones article on the incident.)

See also: Matt Haughey on Twitter

The point is there are a bunch of people doing great things and making it available, live, learn and pass it on!

I really love this little talk and for me it frames a lot of where I think education in the field of media needs to be going and fast.

David Bornstein at Gel 2010 (author, “How to Change the World”) from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Wealth, education, power, military, population or none of the above?

I  am a bit slow on the uptake but have really come to realize that the success of a nation is directly proportional to the ability of a population to laugh at itself.

Sounds silly but think about it for a moment.

We need to be serious but there is always a lighter side, a human side that we also need to show.

So how do you laugh at yourself, with others, and still maintain your dignity?

I think this is where Canada is without question a world leader.

My sister-in-law sent this recording along and I have no idea who it is BUT it is a master class in how a nation can laugh at itself and still maintain  the dignity needed to be respected globally.

The master class in how to laugh at yourself and still have dignity.

The UAE example would easily be Freej!