I think all of us agree that electronic communications and electronic media are making our lives infinitely better but also infinitely more complicated. Look around any conference room, restaurant or church and most adults have some sort of communication device visible if not in use. How many of our church services begin with the announcement to please silence our cell phones?
At the recent Middle Atlantic Region Leadership Orientation Seminar (LOS), I experienced two events that help illustrate the best and possibly worst of electronic media. Neither were overt parts of the presentations, but both caused me to think about the nature of electronic media and how it is changing some things in our professions and organization. The instantaneous sharing of content is something that we are just beginning to grasp as an industry and as a society at large.
Most of us who have given a presentation to a group of peers have experienced the fear that you may be asked a question to which you have no answer. I have presented to our chapter’s Winter Seminars for several years. I have a presentation on measurements and modifications to contract documents during construction and another on facility management. I’m an architect, so I was frequently asked questions about facility management that I could not answer! My advice was always the same: read the book, as the seminars are to prepare candidates for CSI’s certification exams and CSI’s Project Resource Manual is the Bible for that effort.
At LOS, our Institute Director, Mitch Miller, gave a presentation on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator for personality types. It was a good presentation and an introduction to the Myers Briggs personality types and all possible combinations of personalities. Mitch would introduce each of the 16 different types by explaining a bit about the personality type and then listing some famous people who share that type to help the attendees better understand the personality type.
After several of the personality types and their corresponding celebrities – some former US presidents, artists and musicians – an audience member raised her hand and asked if Frank Lloyd Wright would appear in one of these personality types. Mitch could not remember if Wright’s name appeared on the list or not. At that point, several of us reached for our smartphones or iPads and Google-searched “Myers Briggs Frank Lloyd Wright.” Within minutes, myself and the folks sitting behind me had the answer.
According to the web site most of us found, Wright was an “ENTP” which stands for Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving. Other ENTP’s are Danny DeVito, Paul McCartney, George Gershwin and Jesus of Nazareth. I have to assume the Gospel writers gave someone enough insight into Jesus’ personality so that we can infer Him to have been an ENTP.
During the question and answer period following Mitch’s presentation, the person sitting behind me dutifully reported Wright to have been an ENTP. After some discussion and nodding assent or quiet disagreement, the group moved on to the next presentation. I turned around and asked the source. The folks behind me citied the same source I had found: http://www.baylorfans.com/ – an online community for fans of Baylor University sports!
The other anecdote dote also involves Mitch Miller. Our Institute staff was unable to attend our LOS because they were attending the South Central Region Conference in Tulsa, OK. Staff had provided Mitch with a PowerPoint presentation to give on the current happenings at the Institute. Friday night in Tulsa was April Fool’s Day, so the South Central folks held a “Fool’s Ball” complete with wild and outlandish costumes. Prior to his presentation, Mitch took some images of various staff down from the Internet off of CSI’s Flickr account and dropped them into his presentation!
The instant gratification is what has struck me in both of these instances. Someone asked a question and poor Mitch was unable to get to a computer to answer the question but those of us who should have been paying attention to him jumped in an answered it for him using our mobile technologies. The other was the amazing turn of being able to see pictures from an event that happened 1300 miles away and only 15 hours earlier.
