Mobile technology and mediation

Giuseppe Leone

Giuseppe Leone of the Virtual Mediation Laboratory in Hawaii continues to lead the pack in testing and demonstrating innovative means to give people around the world access to the mediators they want to work with. Initially, he and volunteer mediators have been showing how online video technology allows parties and mediators to talk and see each other with an Internet connection. Now he is exploring mobile technology to the same end for those with PCs, Macs, or smartphones. Here’s a 19-minute YouTube video showing how it’s done:

Some Observations

1. Not all mediators work in the way demonstrated in the video. The outcome here is essentially similar to what could be achieved in litigation but with greater efficiency and less cost. Apart from those benefits, nothing essential has changed for the parties in terms of dealing with the effects of conflict on how they see themselves or others. Relational mediation addresses these effects directly. For example, rather than relying on the mediator to gather information and clarify issues, the empowerment of the parties is supported to whatever ends the parties themselves decide is important to them. When parties control the process and take ownership of it, personal strength is enhanced rather than diminished by having a third person direct the resolution process. And individual strength and responsibility may lead to greater openness to the other which in turn may facilitate a constructive outcome, if that’s what the parties want
2. With mobile technology, parties and mediators can be connected irrespective of what devices and operating systems are being used, whether PCs and Windows, Macs and OS X, iPhones and iOS, or smartphones and Android systems.
3. In the same way, that phone numbers no longer are associated with locations but rather with people wherever they find themselves, face-to-face mediation no longer is yoked to meeting in a room, but can be held through the virtual presence obtained by these new forms of connection.

These are exciting new developments that mediators can now offer to clients.

Related articles

• Honolulu’s Giuseppe Leone launching Mobile Mediation (bizjournals.com)

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,900 times in 2010. That’s about 14 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 42 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 202 posts. There were 10 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 815kb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was January 5th with 140 views. The most popular post that day was Positive Effects of Conflict.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were mediate.com, ht.ly, twitter.com, mail.yahoo.com, and mediationchannel.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for positive effects of conflict, mispronounced words, living together after marriage, dialogic, and union mediation process.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Positive Effects of Conflict June 2009

2

A List of 51 Mispronounced Words December 2008
1 comment

3

Top 10 Reasons for Hiring Me February 2010

4

About me October 2008

5

Stages in the Mediation Process November 2008
1 comment

The Costs and Effects of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

(from The Global Sociology Blog)

Decluttering Web Pages

Arc90 is a New York based application and design firm that has an extremely useful tool for reading web pages. It works with Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox.  Watch this video to learn more:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Readability – An Arc90 Lab Experiment“, posted with vodpod

P.S.  “Readability” is designed to work on individual pages.  If you want to use it on this site, click the article heading first and then click the “Readability” bookmarklet on the bookmark toolbar.

PC vs. Mac

OS X Date & Time Preference

There’s an additional second being added to tomorrow, New Year’s Eve.  The atomic clocks that are used to track time degrade in a stable pattern while the earth’s rotation is not as regular.  So, from time to time, an additional second is added on, like this year 2008, in order to reconcile things.

Of course, if you’re running OS X and you’ve got your Mac pulling time from Apple’s time servers (that’s the default setting in the Date & Time preference pane), you’re taken care of.   And if you’re on Windows, well, er, we’ll let Microsoft explain:

“The Windows Time service does not indicate the value of the Leap Indicator when the Windows Time service receives a packet that includes a leap second.  (The Leap Indicator indicates whether an impending leap second is to be inserted or deleted in the last minute of the current day.)  Therefore, after the leap second occurs, the NTP client that is running Windows Time service is one second faster than the actual time.  This difference is resolved at the next time synchronization.”

Uh. We think that means you’re fine. But maybe you want to keep a fire extinguisher on hand…just in case.

@dialogicmed. . .

. . .is Twitter syntax for my Twitter account where you can follow my mini-posts that answer the question, “What are you doing now?”  I’m still trying it out because I remain unsure whether it’s a good fit with development of my private mediation practice.  In any case, here’s another excellent video by Lee Lefever that explains Twitter in plain English.

(H/T: Eamonn Fitzgerald’s Rainy Day)

Computer Mouse is 40 Years Old

This is a X-Y position indicator for a display system invented by Doug Englebart.  Although the patent on it was filed in 1967, it was not until December 9, 1968 that it was publicly announced, which is 40 years ago tomorrow.

(H/T: David Akin)