Back from Ethiopia

No great problems on the trip.  Court and meeting girls and meeting birth mother (widow) all went about as well as they could go.  Actually, the whole thing went a lot better than I could have possible dreamed.

Will pen something for Monday, maybe.

The key news:  Metsewat Akelu and Abebu Akelu are now legally our children, per the court proceedings in Addis Ababa on 30 June.  Metsewat is estimated at just over four, but struck me more as 3-and-a-half.  Abebu was estimated at just over three but struck me more like 2-and-a-half.  The birth estimates carry considerable swag, and we'll have to adjust those--per our best judgment--as we eventually apply to have birth certificates generated here in the US as part of the re-adoption process in US courts.  No hurry there.

Their legal names, as we now plan them, will be Metsewat Akelu Barnett and Abebu Akelu Barnett.

Metsewat is pronounced as MET-sue-what and Abebu is pronounced as ah-BAY-boo.  We plan the nicknames as Sue and Abby, respectively.  Their current last name, to become their middle names, is pronounced ah-KAY-loo.

They are exceedingly beautiful souls, as is their birth mother.

We are currently scheduled to return to Ethiopia in early August for a set embassy date regarding the immigrant visas, but there is some vulnerability there regarding reduced staffing that month (corresponding to reduced Ethiopian government operations that month, as is the custom).  We should know more in the next couple of weeks, but we are hopeful the scheduled date will hold.

I am now the father of six children.

The PNM-Wikistrat connection

Got email a while back from Joel, Australia-born, now living in Israel after some schooling there.  He says he has all the books, reads everything I write online, and brags that he's seen the brief well over a hundred times (none live).  

Then he explains how he and three other twentysomethings have created a start-up company (incorporated 6 months ago) that seeks to adapt the Wiki platform to a competition-of-the-fittest-style generator of strategic planning within organizations (companies, government agencies, etc.).  After two successful pilots using mostly Israeli intell types, the company moves toward marketizing the offering.  In some ways, it reminds me of using GroupWise in the Naval War College economic security exercises I led atop the World Trade Center with Cantor Fitzgerald pre-9/11 and in other ways it reminds me of when email first starting hitting command post exercises at combatant commands in the mid-1990s (creating this fascinating individual-based work-around and highly competitive intellectual network that quickly trumped the formal thought-gathering processes).  In both instances, you escape the limits of hierarchical conversations (often broadcasts by the most authoritative figure in the room) and tap into the wisdom of crowds under conditions of much tighter latency (less time involved to reach effective decisions after weighing alternative pathways).  In a sense, a way to both speed up (under the necessary scenarios) and improve the usual pick-option-B mentality that prevails.

What attracted me was Joel's description of how the company has used my vertical-versus-horizontal-scenarios thinking to customize the system with all manner of prompts to analysts to think in both dimensions--so highly interdisciplinary.

The basic conceit is, unlike traditional wikis, we're talking more than one page per analytic target--hence a competitive environment.  What often happens in these decision-making environments is that a core group is assembled to put together the options PPT package, and a tremendous amount of poorly thought-out necking down of pathways ensues.  By creating a more horizontal playing field, freed from hierarchical bias (i.e., the guy with the most stars on his shoulder boards must be the smartest, right?), the primary intellectual traction points become the linkages between the competing options pages.

That's a thumbnail description that does not do the effort justice.  Go the company's site to see more in-depth presentations.  

Two ways this interests me:

1) Strategic consulting in the private sector requires--more than ever--some connectivity to solution-delivery, meaning almost nobody is paying the old top-dollar for PPT slide decks and reorg charts--only.  Instead, companies want your interaction to come with some technology solution that simultaneously empowers them to deal with the issue in question.  Advice just isn't enough anymore.

2) Governments as a whole struggle with these problems, and are always looking for new tools to empower individual workers while connecting them to the wisdom of crowds, whether it be fellow bureaucrats (where a tremendous amount of wisdom truly resides) or with the citizenry (their natural counterparty).

So check out the site if you're interested.  I am happy to connect anybody to Joel (although I'm sure his site has a contact function) for whatever can be arranged in demos/dialogue.

Naturally, I got a kick hearing about how the vertical/horizontal scenarios-&-thinking stuff resonated so nicely with someone in the private sector, so I'm happy these young fellas out.

Plus, does it get much cooler that seeing your ideas expressed in an Israeli start-up?

The parish festival: the face-painter goes incognito

The guy who always helps me face paint likes to do himself up big-time. He's not all there, but he's a sweet man. Bit of a sci-fi nut.

The blog strikes again!

Just our luck:  a longtime reader with the exact Ethiopian experience we're looking for--Sidamo.

She and her husband are willing to talk to us tomorrow.

Detail freak that I am, I am eager for the data dump.

Long live the blog!

Choosing my girls over the Global Forum

Original generic-but-copyrighted photo found here (not the international adoption agency we're using).  

I blanked out the faces lest anyone think I was posting actual pictures of the two girls we're adopting, because there are hugely strict privacy rules involved.  So consider the shot, which is beautiful (alas, not as beautiful as the two girls we're adopting!), as a placeholder until the legal proceedings are completed later this month.

Well, Monday afternoon we got word that our referred case now has a court date in Addis Ababa in late June. Although I had long considered the odds of that date interfering with the Time/CNN/Fortune Global Forum to be quite low, it managed to force an untenable choice:  I could make the court date but would miss the long trek south by car to first meet them in person.  Absent the meeting, a whole different visa pathway would ensue.

That's the technical issue.  

The personal issue would have been not being with my spouse on such an important trip deep in the middle of Africa. Remembering what it was to go to Nanchang and meet Vonne Mei alongside Vonne, I decided I simply could not miss this moment in my life as a husband and father.  The Global Forum would have been fabulous, and very good for my career, but lying on my deathbed decades from now, I won't be saying, "If only I got that one extra fab speaking gig!"  I'll be remembering beautiful moments like the first time I laid my eyes on my African daughters.

So an easy decision to make, if hard to execute.  This is only the second gig in about 15 years that I've ever cancelled (the other being over kidney stones--another birth-like process!), and I have gone on stage no matter what through more sinus infections and migraines than I can count (thank God those days are over). But again, you're not who you say you are, you're what you actually do or choose to be through your actions, and I choose husband-father when push comes to shove simply because I dig those roles so much more than my career.

Details:

• Thanks again to the three individuals who sent us otoscopes from Amazon.  If you want to help us out with donations, there's still plenty of time before we take the second/bringing-them-home trip in July/August. See the FAQ page for details on how to send us donations.
• I will be building up the blog queue for the duration of the trip, so it'll be a bit more latent than usual (understanding that this is not a breaking-news blog). I will not attempt to keep the usual frequency of posts, because there is just too much to do in the few days before we leave.  I will have my biz manager Jenn handle approving comments while I'm gone, because the access over there will be spotty and I don't want to spend my days there working the blog.
• I will try to tweet here and there, understanding that any pics will be generic travel photos and I won't be sharing any details on the girls or our time with them.
• I will likely make a trip post when I get back, although that too may be awfully generic for privacy issues.

That's all I can think of for now.  We are gearing up mightily, as we leave in a matter of days now.

Great thanks to two individuals who sent us medical instruments for orphanages in Ethiopia

Our thanks to the two individuals who sent us medical devices so far.

For anybody interested in donating medical devices or children's clothing (Land's End, Hanna Anderson, Gymboree), click here for instructions.

Thank-you's hundreds of languages found here.

Don't stare into her eye!

I call her Rasputin, because she's Siberian too!

That's Sasha, our oldest of three Siberian cats.  Her right eye is permanently dilated--a defect from birth.  We noticed it when she was a kitten, and after a visit with a vet eye specialist, realized it was a rather harmless imperfection that could not be corrected.

Frankly, you forget about it because her eyes are rather dark to begin with.  

But then you snap a flash like that and see the flackback from the back of her retina and it's rather eye-catching!

Holiday observed: Have a nice Memorial Day!

Pic here

A scene from my youth, although I never had the hat or the shorts.

Best to you and yours.

My regular WPR column will be posted near the start of the non-business day.

A day long anticipated

Tonight, on my 48th birthday, my 16-year cancer survivor graduates from high school with academic honors.

For parents who worried about the long-term impact of chemotherapy on her cognitive abilities, her department award in Japanese (memory, concentration) was especially gratifying.

When I waited for Emily to come out of that original, dangerous surgery to remove her kidney, this was one of the days I dreamed about. 

Reader-requested new glossary entry: Zero-sum versus nonzero-sum

Zero-sum versus Nonzero-sum

Zero-sum refers to situations/transactions/environments where the resource in question is actually or just perceived to be fixed in size and therefore cannot be enlarged.  As a result, competition is more intense:  If I get 80% of the resource, you can only have 20%, or everything that I "win," you must "lose."  Humans tended to view economics exclusively in this manner until the Industrial--and "industrious"--Revolution began at the start of the 19th Century.  A good example is the concept of mercantilism--as in, the only "good" trade is that which generates a surplus of a precious commodity (throughout history, the focus here was on accumulating gold, a perceived fixed-sum resource because the world's supply grew irregularly).  Until the Industrial Revolution alerted humanity to the possibilities of escaping the limits of organic growth by creating new resources (i.e., the 19th century is considered the century of chemistry, resulting in all sorts of new chemicals and compounds, as well as substances and production processes made possible by them), Malthusian logic held (the notion posited by scientist and philosopher Thomas Malthus that wealth and demographic growth were inversely related--meaning, the more people a society accumulated, the poorer it became in aggregate, because there was only so much wealth to go around).  But with the Industrial Revolution, the causal relationship between population and economic wealth was broken: portions of humanity (primarily the West) got very rich and populous (exporting immigrants globally).  Now, as globalization spreads to those parts of the world previously denied deep economic connectivity, new Malthusian fears arise, creating suspicions of future zero-sum contests over resources.  But, as in the past, such fears will prove groundless:  when certain resources become "exhausted" in the sense that the cost of accessing them becomes too high (like oil), humanity will move on to new technologies that exploit resources in different and more efficient (and less pollutive) ways.  As a final note, when it comes to matters of threat, consider defense to be more zero-sum in perception (i.e., the more defense I have, the less you perceive yourself to have), while the interdependency of globalization shifts the matter from individual (or even collective) defense to that of shared security, which is truly nonzero-sum (i.e., the more security I build into my system, or into yours, the safer we both are). 

We accepted the referral for the international adoption

Reviewed all the records presented, and had them analyzed by a doctor who specializes in advising adopting parents who are considering children from Africa.  Sum result was that we collectively saw nothing to prevent us from accepting, weighing all the risks for the kids themselves and our extant family of six (3 biological kids, one adopted Chinese daughter).

So we notified our agency of our acceptance of the referral of the two girls--sisters.

We anticipate an initial trip in mid-June, based on a scheduled court date in Addis Ababa, and a return trip in mid-July to pick up the girls.  

The doctor thought they were really quite beautiful.

Again, if you want to help, see the FAQ page for the listing of desired children's clothes and medical diagnostic devices you can buy online and send to us for carriage over and delivery through our agency (an unusually savvy and long-experienced bunch in-country).   For the June trip, we'd need stuff to us by the beginning of June.

We now consider ourselves a family of eight and have already initiated our plans (furniture-wise) for a reconstituted girls' room  (Mei Mei and her two younger sisters) in the biggest kids bedroom in the house--the one our oldest daughter loses when she heads off to college in August.

The transition has begun . . ..

Got my Chinese-edition copies of "Blueprint for Action"

Twenty copies in the mail, right on the heels of getting 4 copies of the Turkish edition of the same.

In sum, I now have The Pentagon's New Map in Turkish, Chinese and Japanese, and Blueprint for Action in Turkish and Chinese.

Great Powers already sold to the Turks, and I have high hopes a Chinese edition will follow with its usual deliberate speed.

Shots of the Chinese edition of Blueprint:

I showed Vonne Mei a copy last night and she hugged it until she fell asleep with it in her arms.

I will take that as a thumbs-up!

When people offer to help on the adoption

Simplest and best route is to offer to buy supplies for the orphanages involved.

My spouse Vonne suggests the following:

The ideal donations are new, long-lasting clothes like Hanna Anderson, sizes 80-140 cm. Lands' End also has long-lasting kids clothes (to be bought in the same size range).   No winter clothes, just the summer variety.

An important donation to improve the medical diagnostic process would be stethoscopes and/or otoscopes like the Littman Master Classic II Stethoscope and the Pro-Fiberoptic LED Otoscope (Amazon links).  

If you want to help us out, the process would be to buy them directly yourself and ship them to us (c/o Barnett Consulting LLC, PO Box 970, Franklin IN 46131). We'd then carry them over in our luggage on either the early-mid June or early-mid July trips, dispensing them to the orphanages via our highly-reputable agency.

I'll put this post on the FAQ page as well.

Thanks to anyone who chooses to pitch in.

Feel like look-and-feel finally set

The tale goes as follows:

I start with the "empire" template (don't even comment on that . . .) and first thing I do is create the banner in PPT, using the map, the two globes figure and my fave portrait of me.  Going back to layout design, I decide for wide main column sided by two nav bars where I'll put all widgets (search, archives, Twitter, etc), and top nav bar under the header.  I saved original banner as tiff file (mistake) and eventually shifted to PNG with help of Bradd Hayes.  Over time I cut the pixel width down to 800, which is max size suggested by Squarespace for any web image.  Original one was 1248, and I think the size was mucking up some presentations for people (hoping that's fixed).  I made everything originally to fit my big iMac screen, but now have it shrunk down to point where it comes up on my 13" MacBook with about 1 inch grey margins on each side.  Looks good also on my smart phone (BB Storm).

When I get banner down to 800px today, it was aligned left on page and looked off-center.  After a support ticket query, I was able to center by maxing the internal pad on the left, and then maxing the border and making both the same color, which I approximated to match the bulk of the landforms in the map on the right.  The border approximated the blue ocean on the globes.

Once I got the basic look and feel of the front page set, I imported the old blog.  By doing so, I automatically created a "journal" (blog) inside the site.  When I started making up new posts within the site, I unthinkingly created a second journal.  I have since merged them so the archives would be whole--and singular.  I did this by reclassifying the 50 or so posts as belonging to the larger, archived blog journal, and then I renamed that "globlogization" (it was originally called "imported-20100505########/"--a truly charming URL).  I have since created two additional "hidden" journals (not appearing on the top navigation bar):  one for my Blueprint for Action htm-pages-turned-now-into-simple-posts and one for my Naval War College project pages-now-being-turned-into-posts.  I will likely create one for media, the New Map book, and ultimately for Vonne's poetry (which I made into a series of hidden pages).  Ultimately, I want as few pages as possible and to put as much as possible in hidden journals.  Size doesn't matter much here (except in pricing) because it's all cloud computing (for example, all of my old images are now stored in this manner).

Style-wise, I did make almost everything too big at first (some complaints), which--again--was superb on my big-screen iMac at home but bad on my small laptop.  Scrunching things down a bunch, I've now decided on 16pt text for the body, 14pt for all links (a compromise, because I'm simultaneously sizing the ones in the navigation bars and the posts' body), 28pt for post titles and most everything else (small stuff on margins) 12 pt.  Only two fonts used:  Times New Roman for titles and section headers and Lucida for everything else.  Putting the banner aside, only five colors are used (besides the background white):  

1. True black for top nav bar background, Twitter background, day banner background and basic post text
2. A dark, navy-ish blue for post titles
3. A slightly purplish blue for all links, date-stamp on posts and sundry post details at bottom, plus all borders and underlines and dark backgrounds
4. A dark grey (matching for side background panels) for all highlighted (and backgrounded) text.
5. An off-white for all text that's highlighted by dark backgrounds and for all light backgrounds.

So, basically black, white, grey and blue--sticking with the empire template but altering the colors slightly and then making them uniform throughout (amazing how many little formats you have to alter for true consistency throughout).   So if you forget the extra color in the banner and stipulate that you'll have black and white as basics, the site is really blue and grey, my two favorites colors.

Actually, come to think of it, my entire dress wardrobe (setting aside ties) basically equates to the site's color scheme, right down to the rare use of the tannish brown.

Once I figured out how to do backgrounds for the quoted text, I ditched the terrible idea of italicizing them instead.  I really prefer a light color background, especially when you excerpt at length.

So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it--unless my Aunt Mary still has problems reading the blog on her WebTV, but I'm hoping that's fixed now that I got the banner down to max suggested width.

Big news, bigger decision-point

Got a referral today (two hours ago, actually) for two Ethiopian sisters.  Won't offer any more details than that.  We started this particular process 9 months ago, but we have been in various processes for close to five years now, so disappointment and patience have been our watchwords for so long that this news--this possibility--comes at us like an Indiana tornado.

We have days to make a decision, which will include remote consultation with an international adoption specialist physician.

If we say yes, we travel for the first time--probably--in June for the initial court date.  We would then return within weeks, following the completion of local legal proceedings.

They are distinctly beautiful children, with lovely names.

We are decidedly forward-leaning on this decision, but this is our fourth country try after being ruled out--by new rules--passed in China shortly after we adopted Vonne Mei.  

That just means we know what it's like to have it all work out, and what's it's like to have it all fall apart.

You don't just adopt two sisters, you bind your family to a number of Ethiopian relatives for the rest of your collective lives.

It is a big decision, then.

So we are guarded but optimistic--excited yet mindful.  International adoptions are--by definition--a collision of significant tragedy and supreme hope.

Welcome to the new site!

 

Thought I'd welcome you with the classic glassy-eyed, grizzled and casually-dressed blogger pose. 

Boy, looking at the shot, you can really that my right eye's significantly higher than my left.  All my life I wondered why binoculars never worked for me!

The process of moving the blog and site was a lot smoother than I had hoped.

Last weekend I got all my posts teed up on the old site through yesterday.  Then I the first part of the week's spare moments getting my account set up at Squarespace.com and going through all the tutorials.  Then I designed the blog page and all the linking architecture that will appear throughout the site (top nav bar, and side bars).  Spent a bit of time designing the banner on PowerPoint and then having my colleague Bradd Hayes clean up and size it correctly in Photoshop.  By very late Tuesday night I was ready to transform my trial account into a real one.  I then exported my entire blog from the old site into a TXT file (37GB) in a matter of seconds, and then uploaded that to Squarespace in a matter of minutes.  Then the site took over the job of importing everything into the new site--entries, comments, pix and all links.  I woke up Wednesday morning to find it all in place and working fine.

So Wednesday, during breaks, I teed up the first posts for today.  I took my time because I was just getting used to the system here, and I'm categorizing all posts for the first time (basically, citation posts versus What Tom is up to posts versus WPR columns versus Esquire Politics Blog posts, etc.) and using tags for the very first time (trying not to accumulate too many or use more than three per).

What I love about the site?  The WYSIWYG post-entry window, where the pics go right into the body without you having to make all the code happen somewhere else and then copy it over.  The uploading function is very neat and easy to use.  I can also embed video (although I will have to learn how), something I will consider off the phone on trips, or maybe--under the right special conditions, right out of my office.  I can also set up to blog off my phone, which is making the Droid look more attractive by the day for its physical keyboard.

Something also new and different (meaning an adjustment), but which I think we'll both enjoy:  the post entry format comes with a reference field that allows me to type in the URL, title, author, date and pub very quickly.  It appears at the bottom of the post now, meaning you'll have to click on it to look it up.  That means I need to offer some scant reference in the body so you know what I'm working off, but it presents a cleaner look and it's an easier entry process, much like the graphics now (which I will provide a link on if they don't come from the referenced piece--as before).

Three other new things:  1) recent comments will be listed in the left sidebar; 2) since my quotes won't be highlighted with background but just indented, I'll italicize those; and 3) most important to me, I can actually sked posts into the future on this site, which is essential for my traveling (old site didn't allow).

As before, all comments will be moderated.

Anyway, so that was Wednesday night mostly, and then I spent time getting the left and right sidebars populated--into Thursday.  Then Thursday and Friday were non-stop page recreating as I could find time.  Watch the top navigation as new pages come online.  I'll be at this for weeks before everything's done.

Anyway, here we are and here we'll stay for now.

Feedback appreciated.  Just understand that a shake-out cruise is inevitable.

Oh, and note that I did not import any comments made between 5 May and 10 May inclusive.  Those are lost to the wind.

About Twittering . . .

First BB Storm I had came with it on the main menu.  So I tweeted a lot and liked it.  Then I had to ditch the phone and next one didn't have it, so I got out of the habit.

Now that I'm in the new digs and playing blogmaster to myself, I found myself wanting to go back to the micro-blogging for stories I felt some desire to comment or quip on, but not enough desire to log in and make the posting effort.  So I get it on my latest BB Storm, which I don't love and will soon turn in for a Droid, methinks, because I want the mechanical keys back, plus I add the Twittering widget at the top left on the new site, displaying the last five tweets.

My promise:  Once the site fully up and I get all caught up on my regular sources, I will work hard to tweet more, using it, often, to clear my in-box faster.  This way, you have the main blog in the middle, where I won't try to stay that terribly current, and the micro-blog on the left, where I can sound off more in real time.

Best of both worlds, I'm hoping.  Especially as Steve and I gear up to do more consulting as Enterra's technology continues to mature and thus allows us a bit more scheduling freedom, it'll be helpful to have both cylinders firing in terms of mental output.

Your choice:  follow the widget's postings as you come to the blog on your sked, or follow me on twitter directly (see the link above at the base of the Twitter widget).

Okay, domain switched, now waiting on remapping to work its way through Internet

 

Used the Nettica presents to create Host A record for thomaspmbarnett.com and an alias CNAME for www.thomaspmbarnett.com, linking both to the appropriate 
Squarespace addresses.

When I check the set-ups at Squarespace, I get an incorrect mapping response for now, but I only made the change around 0830 and it can take up to 24 hours to work its way through the Web.

My assumption right now is, I don't have to do anything more to make this happen. It will just occur sometime in the next 23.5 hours.

So cross your fingers!

No switch to the new site today, but probably tomorrow

Domain re-registration in the works, and guaranteed by midnight tonight. Tried to expedite, but it's a machine's timetable.

So I stay here one more day, pushing back my debut posts a day on the new site and satisficing here with this pathetic entry, the long interview below (really, one of my best ever, so I'm more than happy to share here today), and the usual Monday morn link to the WPR column (above at 0900).

Sorry for the delay. But it gives me 24 more hours to get as many pages recreated as possible. Good news: I like the new host a lot and I think you'll like the layout much better there, to include an on-page Twittering widget that I promise to exploit, as I just got Twitter back on my BB after a long absence.

Note now that comments from 5/4 to 5/10 now will be lost on the new site. I've altered too many blog posts to re-import the last few days. Apologies to any who are offended.