The Needle
March 2, 2012
Jordan Cobb is one of the MHSAA’s superbly talented staff members; and one of his many duties may intrigue you.
Jordan watches “the needle.”
The “chartbeat” needle tells us, at any moment, how many visitors we have to MHSAA.com. It even tells us what page they’re viewing on MHSAA.com, how they got there, and where they’re located in the world.
Not so long ago, Jordan would fret on a Friday night in the fall that our servers did not have the capacity to handle all those looking for game scores. Through lots of creative programming and work-arounds, and an in-house eight-unit “server farm” that shifts and spreads loads to accommodate peak demands, Jordan now watches the needle more in wonder than with worry.
On most Friday nights during the fall and winter, and for the entire months of November and March, MHSAA.com is among the one percent most visited U.S. websites – on any topic, not just sports.
Even on a quiet weekday afternoon, there will at all times be one to two hundred viewers navigating MHSAA.com.
A decade or two ago, the MHSAA office would not receive two hundred telephone calls per day or two hundred letters per week. Now, every second of the workday and long into the evening and all weekend long, one hundred to one thousand people or more are making contact with the MHSAA at MHSAA.com.
So MHSAA.com deserves our attention and resources. It is creating first and lasting impressions. It is branding us, and doing so far beyond the walls of schools and the borders of our state.
Most importantly, it is demonstrating what we value. It is conveying messages about who we are, what we do and what we believe. And providing a stark contrast to who we are not and what we don’t do and don’t believe.
Lost in Time
August 25, 2015
So, North Korea is establishing its own unique time zone – “Pyongyang time” – named after the nation’s capital city. North Korea will fall 30 minutes behind Japan whose time zone was imposed on the entire Korean peninsula more than 100 years ago.
Actually, North Korea is more than 30 years behind Japan in almost every aspect of civilized life.
This time zone adjustment gesture is of little practical significance because North Koreans have been closed off from global interaction by the impositions of their brutal dictators since the end of World War II. It’s symbolism befitting the backward nation’s isolationism.
The negative effects of this isolationism upon the nation are visible across the Demilitarized Zone from South Korea. Behind visitors to the DMZ is the vibrant mega-city of Seoul, South Korea. Across the river is a bleak, barren landscape with no sign of life. No people, no agriculture. Just a few buildings, without inhabitants. Built only for show.
There are many lessons to be learned from this contrast, on many levels. Of course, we see how people thrive more in an atmosphere of freedom than totalitarianism. We see the benefits of engagement over isolationism. We see that symbols without substance are meaningless.
Lessons for nations, to be sure. But reminders for enterprises of all kinds, including ours.
And a note to North Korea ... Newfoundland Island has had its own time zone for many years. It’s 30 minutes ahead of the rest of North America, and a century ahead of North Korea.