I’m reading Surprised by Hope, the latest book by N.T. Wright, which is about the Resurrection and how it should affect our worldview and the church’s mission on earth. I like this quote from a chapter entitled “The Strange Story of Easter.”

And the question of Jesus’s resurrection, though it may in some senses burst the boundaries of history, also remains within them; that is precisely why it is so important, so disturbing, so life-and-death. We could cope-the world could cope-with a Jesus who ultimately remains a wonderful idea inside his disciples’ minds and hearts. The world cannot cope with a Jesus who comes out of the tomb, who inaugurates God’s new creation right in the middle of the old one.

An Open Letter to the Web Analytics Professionals at Nashbar.com:

I’m sorry. Really. I realized today what I’m doing to you, but I can’t stop myself. I’m messing with your metrics. At least let me try to explain.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you know that I recently took up cycling. I’m training for RAGBRAI, as a matter of fact. Naturally, I need a few things: shorts, jerseys, a new helmet and a bike rack for my car. The problem is that I’m a really picky shopper.

You can’t track this, but several friends told me about your site, so I started there first. That was probably a week or so ago, but I still haven’t bought anything. Like I said, I’m a picky shopper. I can’t decide which jersey I want, but I’ve got a few in mind. They’re all open in different tabs in Firefox. And almost once a day, I sit down at the computer and try to choose. All I’ve really done is end up with different items in each of the different tabs. Until two days ago, when I added a pair of shorts and a helmet to my cart! Maybe tonight I’ll complete my purchase, but please don’t get your hopes up.

I know this is causing you all kinds of problems. I’m sure you use persistent cookies, so if you want to track me from start to finish, you can find out my initial visit was direct. But you’ll probably notice a few abnormalities–visits supposedly referred by your own site, for instance. Or a high number of days to purchase or visits to purchase. On the flip side, if you’re measuring Engagement, you might want to thank me. Visit duration, page views, recency… it’s all there in spades.

All in all, one of the metrics that matters most will come your way soon: conversion. Hopefully you’ll forgive me for the trouble I’ve caused to your other reports. Or maybe I’m not that unusual after all…

My younger brother is a history buff. The kind with bookshelves full of obscure titles about Russian history and his other personal favorite, Napoleon (they’re both short and aggressive). Now he’s tackling a subject a little closer to home — a biography about our father.

They were sitting at my kitchen table yesterday afternoon, going over a rough timeline of my father’s 20 years in the military. My dad loves to tell a story, so there were a lot of interesting and funny anecdotes shared. He’s never talked that much about his military service, but he fought in Vietnam and served tours in Germany and Korea. One of the stories he shared really struck me as a great example of his restraint and convictions.

For a while he taught a rifle course at a college in Pittsburgh and had his uniform spit on by a student in an elevator. The young woman said something to the effect of “if we didn’t have to pay for all you people, we could go to college for free like they do in Russia.” I can imagine many people would’ve told her to catch the next flight over. Not Dad. He stayed silent and let the woman go on her way, probably feeling smug about her personal protest. Dad’s perspective was different, believing that anything he might have said or done in response would have only reflected poorly on himself or his country.

Tim Ferriss and Seth Godin are conspiring to change office life around the world. Well, maybe not, but they both wrote posts this week examining new ideas about what matters in the workplace and what shouldn’t. Seth took the first shot, on Monday, when he wrote about the new standard for meetings and conferences. I can’t put it any more eloquently than this:

If you’re a knowledge worker, your boss shouldn’t make you come to the (expensive) office every day unless there’s something there that makes it worth your trip… It’s hard for me to see why you’d bother having someone come all the way to an office just to sit in a cube and type.

On Thursday, Tim Ferriss started a series of interviews with the geniuses behind Best Buy’s Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) initiative. If you’re not familiar with ROWE, get the scoop straight from the creators or read this Business Week article. Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, who created the program, told Tim that ROWE is not only transforming business results at Best Buy, but also the personal lives of their employees:

Six months after teams go live, they are asked how much more productive they perceive they are on a scale of 0-100%. Then managers are asked how much more productive the team is according to actual business results. If perception and reality match, that’s a winner. Under this model, ROWE teams show an average increase in productivity of 41%. It makes sense.

On the personal side, ROWE has transformed people’s lives. We’ve heard stories about ROWE saving marriages, allowing people to be better parents (and opened the door for some to actually be parents), get in shape and give back to their community.

In part two of the interview, they encourage readers to start thinking about what it would be like to truly control their own time:

At 4:00 p.m. on a sunny Friday, your boss lets you leave early. Goody, right? Wrong. This is a school kid’s view of time, not an adult’s. If you’re getting your work done, then why should someone have the right to tell you where to be?

Indeed. I count myself as a knowledge worker. I don’t believe that I was hired because I could fill a cubicle for 40 hours a week, but rather because I have a certain base of knowledge and can provide insight and new ideas, think critically and help accomplish business goals. ROWE should be perfect for people like me. However, I can’t imagine ideas like that capturing the minds of mainstream corporate management.

What do you think? Can you imagine ROWE ever working in your company?

According to his blog, Ron Paul’s new book is going to hit the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List this week. It’s also currently the #14 book on Amazon, and the #1 book on their political list. That’s what I call hope for America!

NPR interviewed Dr. Paul yesterday about his book and his continued (no, he never dropped out) campaign for the Republican nomination. The web version of the story includes a great excerpt from the book. Here are a couple of my favorite bits:

A substantial portion of the conservative movement has become a parody of its former self. Once home to distinguished intellectuals and men of letters, it now tolerates and even encourages anti-intellectualism and jingoism that would have embarrassed earlier generations of conservative thinkers.

When we agree not to treat each other merely as means to our own selfish ends, but to respect one another as individuals with rights and goals of our own, cooperation and goodwill suddenly become possible for the first time.

My message is one of freedom and individual rights. I believe individuals have a right to life and liberty and that physical aggression should be used only defensively. We should respect each other as rational beings by trying to achieve our goals through reason and persuasion rather than threats and coercion. That, and not a desire for “economic efficiency,” is the primary moral reason for opposing government intrusions into our lives: government is force, not reason.

In case you’re wondering, yes, The Revolution is on my Amazon Wishlist.

The Association of Visual Artists (AVA) Gallery on Frazier Avenue is now featuring an exhibit called “Design @ Work”, sponsored by AIGA. The exhibit features commercial graphic design case studies, including one co-developed by yours truly. The case study, developed with my friend (and future business partner… shhh!) Wes Barker, examines our packaging revamp/re-branding for the flagship Clarity Professional telephone. The exhibit is open through the end of June and also features design work by the illustrious local firms Coptix, Widgets and Stone and Tricycle. If you’re on the North Shore, stop in and take a look.

Note: I haven’t had a chance to snap any photos of the exhibit, but I’ll post some as soon as I can.

My high school roommate (seriously… that was over a decade ago?) Raman has a funny post about his daily desktop architecture projects. I have some catching up to do in the stylish cubicle department. In other Raman news, he has finally succumbed to Twitter.

The always interesting Seth Godin encourages the New York Times, and all of us, to “do what you’re great at.” It’s a simple, but often ignored, branding concept. It’s much easier to expand, expand, expand than to maintain a tight focus. I love his two suggested opportunities for the Times to excel at: what is true, and what is important. He puts it best when he says that there is “Lots of noise online, not so much truth.” I’m tucking those two away for an upcoming collaborative blog project.

Finally, did a leaked AT&T email reveal the launch timeframe for the 3G iPhone? And, should I be getting my Apple news from Fake Steve Jobs? Well, he’s a heck of a lot more entertaining than the dedicated Apple rumor blogs. Just look at this post about “the Hildebeast” bowing out.

Paths Forward is my new recurring series featuring interesting links and stories from around the web. Woohoo! Let’s get started:

The Accuracy of Web Analytics (Marketing Pilgrim) takes a look at research on whether you should implement your JavaScript tag at the top or bottom of your page source, depending on the load time of your page. It’s interesting, and I’m all for greater accuracy in measurement, but I can’t help referring you to Accuracy or Precision, which is jump-started from Jim Novo’s theory that precision (repeatable and reproducible) is more important than accuracy (error-prone and doubtful). I happen to agree. Web analytics data isn’t 100% perfect, but if you can generally expect it to be imperfect in the same ways, so you should be able to derive the actionable insights you need.

Penelope Trunk shares Research That Reveals News Paths to Productivity. The most interesting to me was the suggestion to “stop obsessing over your choices and just decide” since most people tend to overestimate the regret we’ll feel after an emotionally involved choice.

The Dieline has a great post on Sennheiser Eco-Friendly Packaging. It’s a couple weeks old, but I was really excited about it for a couple of reasons. One, it’s consumer electronics, and that’s the industry I spent two years in doing graphic design, including packaging, among other things. The second reason is that as much as I love The Dieline, they seem to focus primarily on food and health/beauty products. It was great to see a change of pace.

Finally, Get Rich Slowly has a post on Personal Currencies. My personal currency for many months was, of course, the iPhone. That is, until my lovely wife bought me one as a “Christmas/Birthday/Anniversary” gift.

We Interrupt This Program…
Originally uploaded by JHawbaker1800

Genia and I are in New York City through Monday to celebrate her 30th birthday. So, to keep up with our travels, check out my Twitter feed or check my photos on Flickr or Facebook (links at right).

I have some cool post ideas in the works, but regularly scheduled FNR content is on hold until late next week.