This might sound like a good idea on the surface, provide incentives to those closest to the day to day operations of government, but if you look a little deeper it could seriously backfire.

First, spend a few minutes brushing up on the latest phsycology of motivation.  Here’s a quick video of Dan Pink speaking about his research:

What Dan Pink has found, is that for anything other than basic assembly line type production, fincancial incentives always result in LOWER productivity, and worse moral overall.

It sounds counterintuitive, and I bet that’s what the government hopes you will think as well. It seems to me more and more that the Conservatives are a govern-by-gut party that has little interest in evidence-based descision making. Better to go with what feels right.

Now government operations not only have to worry bout how thier actions might look politically, but how anyone inside the organization might try to turn anything they do into a financial witchhunt, so they can make a few bucks. I can see how this would result in very tense working environments, and really discourage good people from entering into management.

It’s like the larger problem in our society; why would a smart kid choose engineering when she can make 10 times more money going into financial services? Great for her, but with our dwindling production of things, we’re looking at a dark future for growth if we don’t get more smart kids inventing stuff people want.

I’m sure Mr. Day thinks this is a great idea, and I’m sure many Canadians will too. Who knows, it might even work; hey, you might win the lottery too. But the evidence seem to say this just will not work at best, and at worst, toxify the public service working environment.

I found some frozen blueberries in the freezer and so I decided to make blueberry scones.

But I had no idea how to do it well. So I asked the internet and it had the answers!

Here’s my new favourite scone recipe:

Dough

• 1¾ cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ cup white sugar
• pinch of salt
• 5-6 tablespoons butter FROZEN
• ½ cup milk
• ¼ cup sour cream

Filling

• ½ cup FROZEN blueberries

Egg wash

• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon milk

Here’s the instructions:

FYI: This works best if all the ingredients are COLD.

1. Preheat oven to 400° F (200° C).
2. Sift and mix the flour, baking power, sugar and salt into a bowl.
3. Shred FROZEN butter and then let freeze again for 5-10 min before quickly adding to the dry mixture, get it all the little butter shreds a good coating of flour.
4. Mix milk and sour cream together well, then add it to the dry mixture.
5. DO NOT OVER MIX. Get it all just incorporated, then STOP. You don’t want to damage or melt the shreds of flour coated butter.
6. Flour your work surface and your hands well, and empty the mixture onto your floured surface. It will be very sticky, so use more flour when needed.
7. Use a rolling pin to gently roll out the dough into a rough rectangle, around 1cm thick.
8. Cover the bottom 2/3 of the rectangle with blueberries, press them gently into the dough, and leave a 2cm boarder around the edge for sealing it up.
9. Fold the bottom 1/3 up over the blueberries, then fold the top 1/3 down to make a rough envelope.
10. Use your flowered hands to seal up this envelope and sort of shape it into a sort of oval log.
11. Cut the log with a sharp knife into 3-4 smaller rectangles, then cut them diagonaly into triangles
12. Place onto a greased cookie sheet or silpat.
13. Lightly beat the egg, add the tablespoon of milk and brush this egg-wash onto the scones. Then sprinkle sugar onto them (use white or rough sugar here)
14. Bake for 10-15min or until lightly golden.
15. Cool for about 10 min before enjoying!

The following Youtube video shows the some of the techniques I used, although the dough recipe is different and she did a few extra steps to layer the butter. I didn’t do this and they still came out spectacularly.

I love the internet because it’s probably the most signifiant wealth enabler in the history of mankind. At least since the invention of stone and then metal tools.

When I sit in front of my screens and bang out line after line of code, I’m doing more than just building web properties. I’m creating wealth!

Not only that, when I make a web property or service that people want, I deliver to all customers at once. Unlike a blacksmith who creates wealth one horseshoe at a time, I make one horseshoe and as many people who want it get it at the exact same time; with zero incremental cost of delivery. This kind of wealth multiplier has never existed before. It has a dark side of course; every mistake is multiplied as well, but the positives far outweigh the negatives. You can respond extremely quickly and cheaply to people’s changing wants.

This is not news, but I’m working hard with my team on building our digitalOttawa.ca startup. we’re moving into our new offices downtown this week, and I’ve been reading and watching all kinds of business wisdom & inspiration to get me pumped up about pushing forward.

Here we go!

space dock

I think this indicates a significant change in the WordPress direction. There are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of active WordPress driven websites out there; what WordPress.org does inevitably shapes the web.

It seems to me that the WordPress CMS is changing from an “instant-on blogging platform” to an “instant-on open social network framework”. One that uses open protocols and may even be getting ready to play nice with wave.google.com, which could very well be the future of ALL social media platforms.

I’ve been playing around with Buddypress.org recently and I think whatever it becomes over the next 18 months is what will replace “blogs” over most of the web.

Since WordPress might be integrating the best of buddypress, WordPress.com will become much more like Facebook soon. Being able to instantly “spawn” your own “Facebook” that connects and syncs with any other WordPress setup on the web (and other SM like twitter, flickr and Facebook) will be what someone might call the “post-blogosphere”.

Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Flickr are all great, but they are at their core very similar to AOL in 1999. A walled garden that will inevitably choke itself to death.

The good news is the mainstream inside-out social network is coming very soon. One where semantic data & relationship links IS the network, not your list of users, and the more that linked network is open, the more value it will have. Just as the post AOL internet took all their users.

I’m currently providing web comms consulting to The Public Health Agency of Canada. We’re in the midst of the Swine Flu outbreak, and I have to say I’m extremely impressed with how things are being managed.

I’m also really excited to be finally executing a lot of the social media plans we’ve been evangelizing about over the last year. We’ve got the agency Tweeting news updates as they happen, syncing all social media activity across the .gc.ca site, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. We also put together a live webcast in record time (John, you’re wicked).  I’m hoping to add some more of our ideas in the next few days.

I think Canadians should be proud of the way PHAC has been managing this issue, so many people here are working so very hard 24/7 to ensure Canadians stay informed and the governement acts in a proactive manner.

Kudos GC.

A few weeks ago I planted the first of our seeds; two kinds of heirloom organic tomato. We got the seeds out of some local tomatoes we really liked last summer.

Magda’s cousin recently worked on a local seed farm, and sent us some of his seeds. So we’ve added three more kinds of tomatoes, and several other veggies. So far we’re planning:

• Tomatoes
• Carrots
• Beets
• Fennel
• Radish
• Rutabaga
• Strawberry (planted last year, cloned about 20 daughters)
• Bell pepper
• Hot pepper
• Snow pea
• Lettuce
• Herbs
  • oregano
  • parsley
  • cilantro
  • basil
  • sage
  • chive
  • thyme
  • rosemary
  • mint
  • lavender

As soon as I can work the ground I’ll be regrading the yard, and building the raised beds. Apparently lettuce and radish like cooler soil to concentrate flavor and prevent bolting.

groan!

It’s suppose to refer to how short twitter/sms-like status updates are starting to replace blog posts and comments as way people share their thoughts across social networks.

I’ve been saying for the last year that users syncing updates across all socail platforms would be the big thing. Maybe I should start referring to it as everyone’s syncosphere? My syncopshere includes Twitter, Facebook, jasonprini.com, and my mobile device. But I have several syncospheres. For example workstudents.ca auto syncs updates with Facebook and Twitter, and can be easily pushed by users to other networks like LinkedIn.

But really, do we need these buzzwords at all? Maybe once “social media” jumps the chasm and turns back into just “media” again, we’ll be able to move on past these word-crutches. But probably not.

The Conservatives are saying that the Liberals are getting in the way of the “letting the money flow”. But as I understand it, you can’t spend next year’s money until it is next year.

What’s more interesting to me is why “shovel ready” projects that already had money allocated this year are being canceled to role that money into next year’s stimulus.

Whaaa!?!

Case in point, the Renfrew water treatment upgrades. The project meets all of the requirements of the stimulus, and already had money allocated. But it’s been canceled to divert that cash to next year’s stimulus package, which won’t get money to the shovels until the fall at best. Why?

My faith in the Conservatives was actually growing, until that economic update in December. They seem to have compromised almost all of their values and ideals to hold on to power by the fingernails. Now they’re posturing to appear “strong”, but to me it looks like they’re desperate to look like they’re doing something.

I now envision the Conservatives as slaves to their database. The big database they maintain of thousands of Canadians and they use to simulate different policy strategies and tactics. Example: mandatory sentancing won’t do anything to reduce crime, but it poles well with middle-aged suburban women.

Ignatieff should ignore Harper completely and speak directly to Canadians. Just like Obama ignored McCain’s attacks and made him look stupid. The Liberals may not be ready to lead today, but a lot can happen in a very short time in politics.

I hope the majority of Canadians are where I am; thinking that the old partisan, childish, attack-ad ways are just not acceptable anymore, period.