Consider for a moment the following headlines.

Now read Twitter's official policy position.

If the hypocrisy and cruel irony escapes you, it may be wise to check the news more often.

Facebook and Twitter have recently banned a variety of voices, including that of President Donald I. Trump, from their platforms. They claim falsely that the President actually invited the violence that occurred at the Capitol last Wednesday. He certainly did not help, but it's a major leap to accuse him of giving the criminal trespassers on the Capitol actual marching orders. To arrive at that level of blame, we must also hold a variety of politicians to blame for the riots in a variety of cities throughout the year 2020.

Then as a result, Apple, Google, and Amazon decided to pile onto the virtue signaling censorship movement and shut down Parler, the open social media competition. The violence at the Capitol gave all these players the pretense to silence their political enemies, and the results in Georgia assured them that nobody in Washington would hold them accountable. All impediments to their fascist rage against the right being removed, they acted swiftly.

But apparently the global policy boys at Twitter object to the same thing happening to their users as a consequence of the actions taken by a totalitarian regime in Uganda. How ironic. The Twitter pot seem to be calling the Twitter kettle black. 

I'll copy a comment I made in reply to a comment made on another post:

If we can't tolerate speech with which we disagree, we can't have freedom of speech. In high school, at the height of the cold war, our American Studies teacher asked if we were willing to allow the Communist Party to operate as a political party in the U.S. I was the only one who raised my hand. My classmates booed. My teacher chided them and gave me a guaranteed A.

If we begin to stifle speech because we fear it, rather than countering it with persuasion, we will produce a violent and unpredictable response from radicals who have been shut up rather than simply beaten on a fair and open playing field of ideas.

Will the rash actions of social media and other big tech players have unintended consequences? I think that is certain. Have they signed their own roadmap to decline and failure? Time will tell. Freedom will ring. Freedom will prosper. History is clear. Those who suppress the voices of millions are doomed to eventual failure. 

Recently I came across an interesting list of top ten time wasters at work. I jotted them down but have lost the source, so I apologize for not providing the link. Here’s their list:

1. Instant Messaging
2. Over-Reliance on Email
3. Meandering Meetings
4. Short Gaps Between Meetings
5. Reacting to Interruptions
6. Ineffective Multi-Tasking
7. Disorganized Workspace
8. Personal Communication
9. Web Surfing "Breaks"
10. Cigarette/Coffee Breaks

It’s a decent list that one might find on many top ten sites, I’m sure. But it’s not terribly accurate. You see, the biggest time waster in the enterprise is the Meaningless, Meandering Meeting Machine. So here’s my revised list:

1. Thinking about meetings.
2. Planning meetings.
3. Doodling in meetings.
4. Talking about meetings.
5. Scheduling and rescheduling meetings.
6. Meetings.
7. Follow-up meetings.
8. Looking or asking for minutes from meetings.
9. Assuming people will do what was agreed to in meetings.
10. Making lists about meetings.

I have seen good, productive employees become consumed by the Meaningless Meetings Machine. It is an endless recursive function leading to enterprise stack overflow. Sometimes executives are lost for months in the Machine and when employees smart enough or lucky enough to stay away from the Machine are asked if they have seen Mr. Soandso, they say, No, and hurriedly move on lest they too be sucked into the Machine.

HaHa! HaHa! HaHa! HaHa! HaHa! Ha!

To the Mac community, all I can say is, will you now please SHUT UP about your “secure” OS.

Welcome to the real world of being a target and having to take measures to protect yourself. Now that you have realized your security was never security but obscurity, perhaps we can all have an adult conversation about battling the bad guys together instead of us having to listen to you crow about your false sense of superiority.

A project manager, a software architect and a programmer are on a plane heading to nowhere in particular.

Suddenly the pilots (testers of course) leave the cockpit, don the only parachutes, and jump out of the plane.

The project manager schedules an emergency landing planning meeting.

The software architect suggests the team follow a new process to avoid crashing.

The programmer disclaims responsibility and points out that automated landing was not in the requirements.

Which of these survive?

(scroll down for the answer)

All of them. Apart from some scrapes and bruises for the testers, who take it like troopers as always, everyone is fine. The plane never left the ground. Are you kidding? No software takes off without crashing a few times first.

And sometimes, the plane really does take off. And that is why I do this.

We are looking for a very technical enterprise meetings architect for a large, well established organization in the Washington, DC area. You need to have extensive meetings orchestration experience and be an expert with PowerPoint-centric meetings architecture. You should also have some experience with multimedia animations playback. Advanced direct, teleconferencing and mixed-setting slide or teleprompter reading skills also desired.

A qualified candidate should be an expert in all aspects of the PowerPoint slide development process, including advanced transition and animated playback techniques. Candidates must possess dynamic monotonal verbal script delivery skills and be able to work well within large and sparsely attended meetings. Candidates must be able to translate business meeting requirements into technical meeting architectures and designs while leading a team of meeting engineers in the rapid development, testing and deployment of complex, content rich PowerPoint presentations.

Candidates must have a real passion for PowerPoint and be self-directed, confident and able to perform the task of expanding relatively simple content in thousands of pages of written documentation to accompany large slide decks packed with dense, monotonous text. Candidates should have a face and be able to articulate the written word clearly and in bold tones. Candidates should also be familiar with modern pointing devices such as laser pointers in addition to traditional uses of the stick and index finger to provide emphasis when presenting the finished meeting product.

Meetings Architect Specific Duties:

• Mastery of building and maintaining enterprise meetings frameworks in response to business needs.
• Mentor meetings development staff while implementing best practices and improving meetings design and development processes.
• Work closely with business principals to understand enterprise meetings requirements.
• Translate meeting requirements into workable meetings architectures.
• Present tested, production ready meetings to executive staff for deployment in the field.
• Accompany executive presenters in the field to provide advanced PowerPoint backup and support in critical presentation delivery scenarios.

Required Skills and Experience:

• Ability to apply a broad array of skills and technologies to solve meeting presentation problems.
• Ability to utilize PowerPoint, all versions, and Windows Paint and screen capture tools.
• Ability to rapidly convert a one page outline or two minute conversation into a 60 slide presentation and 230 page accompanying notes and documentation handout.
• BS in Library Science or English or equivalent technical training and professional work experience.
• A minimum of 8+ year's cumulative experience developing enterprise meetings on the Microsoft PowerPoint platform and other technologies i.e. Windows Paint, etc.
• Ability to troubleshoot and diagnosis complex PowerPoint problems.
• Strong composition and obfuscation skills, as well as excessively verbose written and verbal communication skills.

Submit your resume today!