[caption id="attachment_24" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Wave Tank Studies"][/caption]

Real world physical examples based on tesla's earthquake experiments.

1. I was enjoying our cheep sams intex 18' dia pool and I was the only one in it. and started to exercise my arms against the water. I just can't get it out of me but I turn everything into an experiment. It is a round shape and from a perfect calm I watched the wave action interact with the sides as I used my hand to instigate a wave front. As the first wave makes it way back to me at least 10 to 15 wavelet are crossing over one another. Here is where the wave increases or is canceled out. I wonder in an infinite pool size how far the wave would go? The side are not solid, they rebound and effect the energy of the wave too.

I can make a simple feedback circuit - my hand is frequency input, my eyes are loosely connect to the wave height but not effect them and my brain adjusts the timing and frequency. The new input needs to be just as the wave rebounds away from me and behind it's crest. ( Note: If you try this at home you not want to have anybody watching, way to hard to explain if they don't understand. ) The important thing to remember is that my ability to increase the wave height is not based on water density, volume or depth or size of the pool, temperature, etc... Just the feedback of information. The other thing observed is that to much energy put in just was wasted as heat ( my muscle and tiredness ) too much frequency or too much breaking of the waters tension ( splashing ). So how little energy can I put in and get a satisfying wave height? You just have to get good at the timing.

2. Months later setting at my old 3' x 5' particle board desk at work which has a typical loose plastic cam lock holding it all together. and about 50 lbs of monitor and computer on it. I watched my coffee in the cup slosh back and forth when I bumped the side of the desk. Hum... same thing as the pool, bumping the desk at different frequencies the slosh got nulled out or magnified. The deck had a harmonic frequency. The loose frame, the size of the side board combine with the weight. "Pendulum" the coffee cup was just the detector. or was it involved?

3. NASA and other researchers have reported the the study of the suns surface has a fluctuation, vibrating as it where. And we have all heard about the background noise from the universe. As pointed out that basicly everything is singing with it's own tune. Just like in "Happy Feet".

4. In an episode of Mythbusters. they used an electromagnetic weighted oscillator and tuned it to different frequencies and had it clamped to a bridge to test the earthquake principle. but I say the critical element to all these experiments, is that you have to listen. They got the bridge to vibrate a little but no real result. Not as the tesla report that the whole area where the building he was at was about to crumble. Is the report exaggerated? I don't know.

5. One of my volunteer jobs that I enjoyed was running a soundboard. This is great practical experience with feedback the one thing you do not want as a sound man. Understanding it is a key to stopping it in sound reinforcement. We want our HHO electrolysis to "squeal". This is the absolute answer to making these things work. Uncontrolled feedback is very powerful and capable of damaging speakers and ears but remember the gain is not any higher. So output is greater than input. As the cascade of loops build upon themselves, only the new input is added to the whole. Gaining power on each pass thought the amplifying system. but how does it know how to add the power at the right time? Because it only accrues at it's room harmonics. So by parametrically eqing or "target out that frequency" you drastically remove the potential for it bother your audience. Can we do the opposite and get the squeal we need or to say it like Stanley Meyers did let the voltage do the work.

Compliments let me know I'm doing my job.

A career in journalism, especially in the beginning stages, isn't based on hard numbers - it's not black and white. It's creative, interpretive and subjective. It receives judgment and criticism.

That's what runs through my head every time I e-mail a completed assignment to my editor at The Fort Pierce Tribune, and I always slightly panic. Clearly I need compliments.

Usually an e-mail back from her saying she likes my story or it's good suffices. But nothing beats praise from her through other reporters.

I received a message the other day from a former Scripps reporter telling me that I made a good impression as a reporter there, and he thinks they'd hire me as soon as the economic situation improves. Today a long-time Tribune photojournalist told me that he heard about me from my editor - in a good way.

But it's also great to get compliments from those I actually interview. The main source for an assignment I covered today e-mailed me to tell me again how much she appreciated me taking time late the night before to interview her. I got the main information for the story before the program today so that I wouldn't take away from her time teaching the kids.

All that matters is that I'm doing something right.

I've been a PR flack for three decades.* I know this work inside and out, and I'm even getting up to speed when it comes to some of the newer communications technologies being embraced by our field (because they are being embraced by our stakeholders).

But I have to admit that sometimes I realize during a communications campaign that the most basic communications -- that with the internal stakeholders -- has been insufficiently nurtured.

Learning the hard way. My office is currently working on a project that has mutiple players: admin staff, program staff, various managers, outside consultants and, of course, our constituents -- the folks for whom we are doing this project. The program staff has done an outstanding job of finding out what our constituents want in the way of an interactive communications vehicle.

All of the staff involved in the execution of the project, some who started the project and have left the organization and some who have more recently come on board, have put a lot of love and care and professional know-how into making it relevant and useful for the constituents.

But I learned earlier this week that we -- I -- did not create enough opportunities along the way for the entire group to regularly check-in on the project's progress. The project is quite salvageable. It may even turn out better than I initially thought it might -- with more bells and whistles -- and value for users.

But getting to Gilead will be harder than it had to be, because the internal communication was not managed as well as it could have, should have been.

What have I learned/relearned? 

1. Put it in writing: I have created a form (I know, stuffy but it works!) that we usually use when the communications team sits down with our internal clients. It outlines the project's goals and scope, the needs of the various constituencies (including internal ones), the roles and responsibilities of staff and a timetable for progress. Put all of this information in writing even if the players are close colleagues.
2. Be clear about the decision-making process. Work out who provides input and who has final decision-making responsibility and authority.
3. Provide regular written updates. Chart it, graph it, use narrative, even go for Visio or Gliffy (free!). Just make sure everyone involved receives regular updates in writing.
4. Schedule regular project team meetings. These provide opportunities to discuss changed goals, technical snags, shifting priorities and any bumps in the road. It also gives you a sense, as a team, of what you are accomplishing.
5. Immediately flag any problems. Don't wait for the weekly update or meeting. Make sure everyone on your team has a chance to weigh in and is aware of each other's position. 
6. Avoid unilateral or bilateral communications that make changes on the "fly." Confused? See # 3 and 4 above.

Other suggestions? I'd love to see them, because I want to make sure this communications veteran has no more memory lapses when it comes to remembering just how important good internal communication is to a solid institutional communications program.  

PS -- I'll let you know how we do with our project.

* I was just a babe (a term used rather inappropriately, I believe, by a delegate Wednesday night to describe a certain pol) when I started.  ;-)

 After you've given a presentation or workshop do you ask for feedback?

Many people try to avoid feedback because of fear - "what if they didn't like my presentation".

But isn't it better to know that people didn't like your presentation so that you can improve on it?

I love feedback and constantly ask for feedback whether I've given a 10 minute presentation or a 60 minute workshop. Whenever I pick up the feedback forms the first place I look at is, "what could have been improved" or "what was not covered that you think should have been covered"

Feedback allows me to gauge what is or isn't working from the audiences perspective.

When asking for feedback, as for what you did well and what you could have been improved on. You may want to focus on a few specific areas to begin with:

• * body language
• * vocal variety
• * eye contact

Once you've worked on the basics, you can then look at other areas such as:

• * content suitability for your audience
• * language (words) used
• * amount of content

Start off by asking a valued friend or colleague for feedback.

Remember that feedback is not a criticism, it emphasis your strong points and points out areas for improvement.

Good feedback from the outside is an excellent opportunity to improve from the inside.

Keep speaking - Carrol

But here's your chance to help us decide what to do in future programs:  Do we continue including puns?  We know they're corny, but hey, puns are meant to be.  And if a majority of you don't want 'em in the show, well, we may just take 'em out.

Carl Azuz, Anchor (sans humor...)

So we decided to put audible feedback to work.

All our projects get continuously built by two servers in parallel. The first server checks for compilation and test errors, just like a good CI server should. The second server applies every quality metric we found helpful to the code and spits out huge amounts of numbers for every single build.

We identified the numbers that really matter to us and established a simple mechanism to scrape them from the result web pages. Then we associated a sound sample with all possible changes and plugged some speakers to our feedback server.

So now, expect our projects to clearly articulate their news.

To give you an idea of how it sounds, here's a short list of possible audio samples:

• Fixed an important bug: "Impressive"
• Reduced code crap: "Excellent"
• Introduced a bug: "Humiliation"

Imagine the words spoken like in an old Quake game. Now you can have an eventful build and be yelled at like "Impressive Excellent Humiliation".

We reserved the biggest coding failure we can imagine happening here to a special audio sample. If somebody introduces new code crap (as determined by Crap4J), he gets ordered to "CUT THE CRAP!" at incredible volume. We used the voice of the inventor of XFDs, Alberto Savoia, taken from his delightful training video for management by numbers (position 2:03ff). The audio quality isn't convincing, his command surely is.

If you wonder what it's like to be suddenly interrupted by different voices rebuking or praising you - it's healthy. You get used to it very quickly, yet the information always catches on. And the information is always relevant.

We call it our "audible remorse".

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