Published on
March 28, 2006 in
Business.
Yesterday the 3rd Webmonday in Cologne took place. Again we arranged the Hallmackenreuther for this get together, but this time they decided to put us in the cellar (which is a nice location for maybe 50 people, but not 70 or 80; see the images).
People start to get familiar with each other. I think I like that development very much. What I don’t like is when the presentations take more than one hour alltogether or a single presentation lasts any longer than 10 minutes (including Q&A!).
I took some time to ramp up the feedback section on the Webmontag Wiki. Feedbacks are now grouped by city (and not spread over all event pages). There is a feedback page for the Cologne events and a new page collecting general feedback about the Webmondays.
Published on
March 26, 2006 in
Design.
I started a new weblog about the project seminar titled »Sound«. It’s a seminar covering sound design, corporate sound, sound in film, sound art, etc.
Published on
March 26, 2006 in
Business.
There is another »Webmontag« event ahead tomorrow in Cologne. There are around 54 people planning to attend right now (and another 26 more unsure). I think I need to walk over to Hallmackenreuther and issue a warning.
This appears to be a funny note, but actually it is really something ultimately true: Unskilled and Unaware of It.
Justin Kruger and David Dunning made several studies to support following concepts:
1. Incompetent individuals, compared with their more competent peers, will dramatically overestimate their ability and performance relative to objective criteria.
2. Incompetent individuals will suffer from deficient metacognitive skills, in that they will be less able than their more competent peers to recognize competence when they see it—be it their own or anyone else’s.
3. Incompetent individuals will be less able than their more competent peers to gain insight into their true level of performance by means of social comparison information. In particular, because of their difficulty recognizing competence in others, incompetent individuals will be unable to use information about the choices and performances of others to form more accurate impressions of their own ability.
4. The incompetent can gain insight about their shortcomings, but this comes (paradoxically) by making them more competent, thus providing them the metacognitive skills necessary to be able to realize that they have performed poorly.
If self-assessment is a crucial part of learning, then gaining insight about own shortcomings (and a good judgment about if and what to do about it) seems to be key.
The longer more detailed article from several years ago is here.
Published on
March 14, 2006 in
Politics.
Like Michael Moore once said: »If you want to bomb a country you should at least be able to point it on a map!«. I would add you should at least be able to name some kind of reason. Just watch this video:
It’s a little bit hard to see in the video: These people don’t recognize the displaced country names on the map. Maybe half of the US public thinks Syriana is the name of a country?
Update on 05/16/06: After more than three years of combat and nearly 2,400 U.S. military deaths in Iraq, nearly two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 24 still cannot find Iraq on a map, a study showed. [Source]