Jason Unger

Do You Create, Compete, Control or Collaborate?

Posted by junger - 04/15/08 at 09:04:34 am

We ran a fascinating piece in CE Pro a couple of weeks ago, "The 4 Personalities That Lead to Innovation," that I've been meaning to highlight here.

It covers Jeff DeGraff's Competing Values, which looks at the different types of people and personalities required to make change and innovate in a work environment.

Considering that we're all entrepreneurs, understanding the different types of people one will deal with during a lifetime is crucial.

In short, here are the four personality types and what defines them:

Compete Types are intensely competitive. They are totally focused on performance and goals.

Collaborate Types are the "people" leaders who believe in something greater than the business itself and run their companies to reflect shared values.

Control Types represent incremental innovation by taking something that already exists and modifying it to make it better.

Create Types are all about creativity, innovation and growth. This is the profile associated with radical breaks from the past and breakthrough ideas.

Normally, I hate when people are put into a box. I never like to consider myself as an in-the-box person, but then again, that's exactly what my Predictive Index test said about me.

Jason will most strongly express the following behaviors:

- Flexible approach to 'the book;' often bends the rules and does things his own way. An innovative, out-of-the-box thinker who is undaunted by failure.

(I'm going to post my predictive index results in a future blog — look for it later this week.)

In any case, the article highly suggests that, when forming a team or a workgroup, you need one of each personality. And that's not easy to do, especially because we kind of like being around people similar to us.

So what are you? Do you create, compete, control or collaborate?

I Pwned Google: Other Jason Ungers Be Damned

Posted by junger - 04/14/08 at 03:04:07 pm

I officially own the entire first page of Google results for jason unger.

While not every link goes to my Web site, each result is about me: my site, my LinkedIn profile, my Facebook profile, my Geek of the Week bio, etc.

Besides being pretty cool, what does that mean?

Considering that eye-tracking studies have found that Web searchers rarely (if ever) move on to the second page of results, I am essentially the only Jason Unger most Web surfers will ever find.

That's a huge brand builder. Since I make my living working online, anyone interested in finding out more about me won't get confused with any other Jason Ungers out there.

I was just talking with Dave Weinberg and Noah Wolfe this weekend about Googling yourself (also known as egosurfing) and how well you rank in the results. Until today, the only other Jason Unger on the first page was the lobbyist/lawyer who worked for GWB during Bush v. Gore.

Apparently, Google's kicked him off of the first page of results. (Don't be surprised if he shows up again; who knows how that Google juice works.)

How do you rank in Google? Take a look and let me know in the comments.

PS – It is totally cool to Google yourself. It's not egotistical or self-centered or anything like that. It's actually pretty important to know, since anyone who wants to find out information about you is doing it.

Creepy Polygamist Dale Barlow

Posted by junger - 04/11/08 at 03:04:58 pm

FLDS followers: Barlow's marriage to Arizona 16-year-old was 'natural and proper':

Dale Evans Barlow, the man who remains at the heart of the FLDS ranch raid in Texas, was defended by the polygamous community as a victim of religious intolerance when he was convicted of a similar crime last year.

A Texas judge signed an arrest warrant for Barlow last Thursday after a 16-year-old girl accused him of marrying and impregnating her. Barlow, 50, is on probation in Arizona for a conviction stemming from his marriage to a different 16-year-old girl, with whom he has a son.

I'm as a big a believer in the freedom to practice your religion as you can get (hell, I was defending Mitt Romney), but at some point you cross the line from a religious practice to pedophilia.

I'm guessing this guy falls in the second category.

Teens Beat Girl on YouTube: But Why?

Posted by junger - 04/10/08 at 01:04:55 pm

The case of these cheerleaders who recorded their beating of a fellow teenager, 16-year-old Victoria Lindsay, and then posted the video online, has received a lot of attention in the media.

And it should. There's obviously something wrong when a bunch of kids attack another and then promote it as some sort of badge to be proud of. (I'm not going to post the video, but it's easy to find on YouTube.)

The coverage, however, seems to be only focusing on YouTube and MySpace and whether they should block these kinds of videos. The father is even "blaming the Internet" for the beating, which is about as moronic as blaming the telephone for prank phone calls.

But the fundamental question lacking in this entire storyline is an easy one: why?

Why did these teens beat up the other girl? Was it completely unprovoked? Did they do it in order to post a video and get their "15 megabytes of fame"?

(On a side note, that's the dumbest phrase ever. Seriously, stop trying to be punny, people.)

I don't know the answer — the only thing I can find is that "[the] suspected teen attackers claim the victim had been threatening them through postings on her MySpace page," according to WESH, the local NBC affiliate. The cops say they filmed it so they could put it online, but how did it come to that in the first place?

Look, obviously I'm not advocating beating up people and posting videos of it online. It's stupid, and you're going to get arrested. Cyber-bullying is a serious thing, as the family of Megan Meier tragically found out.

But the media isn't doing their duty here. Following the Internet storyline is one segment of the coverage, but every one is making the assumption that that's why they beat her up — to post a video online.

Can we get the real facts here, please?

In New York For Usability Week 2008

Posted by junger - 04/10/08 at 07:04:55 am

I'm gonna make it there. Well, actually I'm already here. In New York, that is.

I'm spending Thursday at the Writing for the Web seminar of Usability Week 2008.

Put on by the Nielsen Norman Group — yes, as in Jakob Nielsen, the guy who provides a ton of super-informative content in his Alertbox postings — Usability Week has four stops throughout the world. Well, it's silly for me to talk about it — find out more about it here.

While I can't credit all of my Web knowledge to the stuff Nielsen teaches, I've always found a way to improve my delivery with his research.

I'm hoping to get a little more "formal" education on content presentation and publishing, considering pretty much everything I know I've garnered through experience doing it … not formally learning about it.

Even though I only graduated from college 3+ years ago, it's not like there was a Web journalism path. The only Web publishing class I ever took consisted of people learning Microsoft FrontPage.

Yeah, exactly. The name of that program just shows how little Microsoft (and many still today) understand about how online publishing.

PS. To my friends in New York who I may not have told I was coming in to the city, I apologize — but I'm only here for the day and driving back home when I'm done tonight.