Steve Barth | Reflexions

Adobe’s latest creative suite

I've been thinking a lot lately about how documents need to be richer, more compelling and more evocative artifacts of knowledge work from page design to writing style. This week Adobe took the wraps off Creative Suite 4, which includes all of the company's flagship products for design and production. In July, I was invited to a special NDA workshop at Adobe's San Jose headquarters, previewing CS4's tools with demos and briefings directly from each application team.

I'm really excited about new things people will be able to do in terms of both performance and productivity in CS4: swift workflows for interactive documents and rich knowledge assets rolling seamlessly from page to screen to portable devices. In particular, I was much less intimidated about how non-fulltime designers—amateurs and accidental art directors such as myself—can still leverage the professional power even if they only spend a few days per month on organizational newsletters, websites or multimedia productions.

Captor & Captive

In a fascinating demonstration of perspective shifts, two stories caught my eye/ear over the past few days. John McCain has talked about how self, God and country crystallized during his captivity and interrogation at the Hanoi Hilton in the late 60s/early 70s. In Saturday's New York Times, reporter Seth Mydans talked to Tran Trong Duyet, who ran the guard unit that tortured McCain but now considers him a friend and roots for his victory in November.

"I used to meet with him in my office at the end of the day and debate with him," Mr. Duyet said. "We debated quite fiercely, but there was never any personal prejudice between us. The debate was between two men in a manly style. But after that we were quite friendly. We didn't take it personally." For his part, not surprisingly, McCain has said he will "hate them for as long as I live."

Contrast that with the experience and perspective of Joshua Casteel, who served as a US Army interrogator at Abu Ghraib. I heard this Tuesday night on WUNC's The Story. Casteel joined the Army at 17, after growing up in an evangelical community that equated patriotism, militarism and gospel. He prayed three times a day, while threatening the families of 130 Iraqi prisoners who had no knowledge of insurgent activities. But when he finally interrogated a young Saudi who freely confessed to joining the insurgency, Casteel was confronted with a surprising revelation.

Somewhere in the conversation he said, "You know you're a funny man. You say you're a Christian, but you don't do as the one you call Christ. You don't turn the other cheek. You don't pray for those who persecute you." After five months of harassing Taxi drivers, I was speechless. Here I am being taught the Sermon on the Mount by a self-declared jihadi. Casteel left the room, said he was too personally involved with the prisoner to interview him, and filed for status as a contentious objector.

The Agile Warrior

In 2001 I wrote an article, "The Agile Warrior," about how the US military was pouring billions into research about knowledge management, organizational learning, and related topics such as leadership and teamwork. Much of what they have learned is available and adaptable to other industries, organizations and activities. The article had very bad timing, as it was scheduled to run in the October issue and the magazine closed its print publication on September 6. A few days after that, everything changed. Download the article here.

Alpenglow as prelude

We arrived at Glacier Point moments after sunset—the end of a long day driving and hiking through Yosemite southward from Tioga Pass. Alpenglow resonated off Half Dome in a way that hushed the crowds looking for seats on the granite boulders.

We spread our picnic on the precipice. About half an hour later, the moon rose to the east, just off full. Even though I was watching for it, I gasped at loud when it appeared. We watched it rise to spill into the valley 3200ft below.

Despite its brightness, many stars came out. We were especially surprised to see stars twinkling across the faces of Half Dome and El Capitan: headlamps from climbing parties bivouacked on their way up.

Moonrise photo after the break.

Traffic Delay

So the clogged arteries that are the Southern California freeway system are notorious, but this is ridiculous. Last night we wanted to see Wall-E at a discount movie house in Huntington Beach. Just to remind myself of how much time to allow getting there, I entered the address into Google Maps on my smartphone.

Start Point
    My Location
End Point
    Beach Blvd & Warner Ave,
    Huntington Beach, Orange, California 92647, United States
Distance: 12.1 mi
Time: 17 min
Traffic Delay: 49710d 6hr 28m

Here--it happened again a few days later. Google says they've never seen it before. Have you?