This is Feedwire’s seventh year providing IT support to the Academy Awards. We can’t say enough nice things about this show, our colleagues, and the other companies and vendors we get to work with. On the eve of Hollywood’s biggest night, we’d like to send a special “Break a Leg!” out to Seligman Entertainment, Sequoia Productions, DuTEL, Joe Lewis Company, The Rockwell Group, Seat Advisor, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and all of the people who make this production possible and such a joy to support. Let’s knock ‘em dead.

This is a followup to No Acronym Thursday.

Today, struggling through my first Thursday sans acronyms, I’ve been thinking about communication. What does communication even mean? For our purposes, we’ll call communication a means of transmitting an idea from one party to another via a message.

1. Alice has an idea
2. Alice encodes her idea into a message. Spoken words, email, handwritten notes, skywriting, songs, shrugs, poems, and tweets are examples of forms that messages can take.
3. Alice transmits her message to Bob.
4. Bob receives Alice’s message.
5. Bob decodes Alice’s message.
6. Bob now shares Alice’s idea.

At their best, acronyms increase the efficiency of communication. They play a role in steps 2 and 5, encoding and decoding. Acronyms can help shorten messages so they may be transmitted more efficiently. Unfortunately they only work if Alice and Bob have sufficient common background and context.

If you truly believe that improved communication is an important ingredient in promoting harmony, understanding, peace, education, intelligence and love, which I do, give No-Acronym Thursday a try. It will make you more aware of what you’re saying and of what others around you are trying to say. Join me in this exercise in semiotics. Together we might make the world slightly better, and we’ll get to have fun trying.

Spread the word about spreading out words. #NoAcronymThursday

This idea is inspired by brother, Mikey. He’s a military man. Communication in his industry is replete with jargon and acronyms. Observe the acronym decompression sequence for the PAC-3 missile:

PAC-3
PATRIOT Advanced Capability 3
(Phased Array Tracking RADAR Intercept on Target) Advanced Capability 3
(Phased Array Tracking (RAdio Detection And Ranging) Intercept on Target) Advanced Capability 3

Sure, it’s easier to say PAC-3, but if both parties engaged in communication don’t know the full expansion of the acronym, meaning is lost. Antonym homonyms are another potential source for miscommunication. Does “IRA” mean Irish Republican Army, or Individual Retirement Account? Contextual cues are usually enough, but not always. ATM Machine? PIN Number? People wouldn’t be so sloppy and redundant if they thought about what those acronyms really mean.

What can we do about this potential for confusion and lost meaning? How can we safeguard true understanding and prevent incomplete transfer of information? No-Acronym Thursday.

One day per week, let’s abolish the use of acronyms. IMAP becomes Internet Message Access Protocol, NAT becomes Network Address Translation, LASER becomes Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. If we care enough about these ideas to canonize them into our language, let’s give them one day per week when they can be expressed in their full glory. One day per week, let’s allow these memes to spread their wings.

No Acronym Thursday is now company policy at Feedwire. We welcome participants in this movement at other Information Technology firms and in other industries. Healthcare, finance, sports, education, you’re all just as guilty as we are.

No Acronym Thursday Rules

1. For the entire day of Thursday, every week, every participant in your organization will eliminate acronyms from human-to-human communication, regardless of medium or mode of communication. This applies to both spoken and written communication.
2. Every infraction requires a $0.25 donation to your organization’s No-Acronym Thursday pool. This can be used to finance any group activity – a bar tab, cupcakes, bowling, etc.
3. If you’re up for it, try to record infractions per participant per Thursday and generate a graph over time. Post the graph in a public space. This isn’t required, but will be fun.
4. Exceptions are allowed when a machine is the final recipient of the message, i.e. typing “http://…” into a browser, or saying “H-T-T-P colon slash slash” over the phone to someone typing into a browser.
5. Exceptions are allowed in life-or-death cases. Hospitals, airports, police, military, etc. have established communication protocols that include the use of acronyms. We don’t want to disrupt communication when lives are at stake.

Spread the word about spreading out words. #NoAcronymThursday

At this very moment Feedwire is, for the first time ever, servicing three cities simultaneously. Zach is in Miami, building the data network for the Superbowl XLIV Halftime Show. Chris is in San Francisco, helping Moderati migrate email from in-house Exchange to hosted Exchange. I’m here in LA, handling the rest of our customers while Zach and Chris are away.

This never could have happened without the help and support of our customers, staff, and friends. Your loyalty and appreciation has been amazing over the years. You continue to hire us, you recommend us to your friends, and you invite us into your businesses, homes, and lives. Thank you so much.

Damien

Blackberry Desktop for Mac has been available for about a month now. RIM has already released their first patch and the product seems to be stable. It provides a much better syncing experience than previous Blackberry software for Mac. Unfortunately, its default initial sync settings put your data at risk.

During your first sync, you will see the following dialog box:

Chances are, you do not want to make the default choice, “Replace device data.” This choice will erase your Blackberry’s contacts and calendars and replace it with the contacts and calendars stored on your computer. Most of us add phone numbers to our phones constantly, and many of us use the phone’s calendar. Watch out for this potentially harmful default choice.

“Merge Data” is the choice most should make. This will combine the contacts, calendars, and tasks on your handheld and your computer.

Before you embark on a new syncing configuration, be sure to back up your handheld’s databases and your computer’s contacts, calendars, and tasks. If you need help doing this, feel free to reach out to us at Feedwire. In addition to wired sync, we can introduce you to wireless sync via Google or Blackberry Enterprise Server.

Thanks so much for your help this past Sunday. I was in a terrible bind and you came to the rescue! Receiving calls from clients on Sundays sucks, I know, and I very much appreciate you making yourself available to us.

Are you a Mac user? Are you a Blackberry user? RIM has just decided that they don’t hate you anymore. They’ve announced BlackBerry Desktop for Mac, scheduled for release in September (hopefully they mean 2009.)

Third party syncing solutions have existed for quite some time for the mac, notably Pocket Mac (purchased by RIM) and The Missing Sync. Unfortunately they’ve behaved more like workarounds and hacks than solutions, causing almost as many problems as they solved. Here’s RIM’s official feature list:

• Sync your iTunes® playlists, calendars, contacts, notes and tasks
• Add/Remove applications
• Update your device when new software becomes available
• Backup and restore your device data with such features like automatically scheduled backups and optional encryption (security is #1 as always…)
• Manage multiple devices

I’m most looking forward to backing up and upgrading BlackBerry software without having to resort to using a PC. This software, if RIM delivers what they’ve promised will make our customers’ lives easier and enable us to work more quickly and efficiently for them. Combined with Apple’s Mac OS 10.6 native exchange support, life is about to get much easier for our Blackberry Enterprise customers too. Here’s to progress!