1. Christine Henseler - Select Papers & JenX67.comAs the year unwinds, we thought it would be fun to spend the next couple of weeks reviewing some 2010 highlights. The Leadership Playlist has brought us down a winding and intriguing path, and who better to celebrate our experiences with than all of you. To kick things off, this week we put together a list of the top sites our writing and research has introduced us to. Enjoy and, as always, sling over your thoughts, comments and additions.
With all the work we've put in to exploring generations, the essays at Christine Henseler's personal site have managed to stand out. While there are certainly other tidbits worth poking around at (such as The Hybrid Story Spaces Project), Henseler's focus on Gen X is a "must explore." Raw and experimental, her efforts speak to the generational challenges that Xers continue to face. Her multimedia approach is laudable and suitable for the sentiments she strives to capture, and her uplifting overtones will prove warm and fuzzy for any Xer out in the cold. Academic in tone, Henseler raises a number of captivating concepts and ideas, and will take you down a critical road of nostalgia and sentimentality.
Like Henseler, Jennifer James, aka JenX67, also focuses on issues pertinent to those classified as Gen Xers. While the technical name for Jennifer James's blog is "are you there God? It's me, generation X," her posts range from personal to career, cultural to religious. James's recent topics included her dismay about the current crop of Gen Xer congressman who will shortly storm D.C. to herstruggles to find a church that's best for her daughter. More than anything, James consistently displays arefreshing optimism for the potential of Generation X, a knack for looking beyond some of the larger challenges that our generation will be faced with, and a hope for the role we might play in leading the country to a better place.
2. USGovernmentSpending.com
This site deserves a shout out for its ability to capture complexity with simplicity. Focused on how the government spends the country's cash, the charts and search options make federal finance look easy. This is a must-have resource for writers, scholars and government enthusiasts alike, as information about federal and state spending is simply accessed in user-friendly fashion. You could spend hours here. Whether you're checking out government spending through the decades or comparing education with defense budgets, USGovernmentSpending.com has an overwhelming amount of information and is a great starting point for anyone researching how leaders are doling out tax dollars throughout the country.
My favorite statement in this post is “the ability to capture complexity with simplicity”. This is a problem many fields today are dealing with, and may not be dealing with effectively. Communication is an extremely important aspect in any field, and companies with successful communication to their intended audiences will be successful. This comes from the government spending website, but companies should use this as a model; that difficult ideas to understand are not always difficult to communicate.
ReplyDeleteSullivan is groundbreaking, imagine creating your own blog and having it receive more thank 10 million views a day less than 3 years later. He basically just posts what he thinks is interesting and the public loves it. Personally I have never heard of it until this blog article. But I am taken by the ideology of this site and how it blossomed from just another blog to something 10 million people look forward to reading on a daily basis. Sullivan has hit a gold mine and he did it by hardwork, dedication, and maybe pure luck; but it is definitely paying off.
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