Odmah da kažem da me u ovom trenutku ne zanima vlasnička struktura kompanije, niti da li je taj mlađahni Vlahović sposoban ili ne da vodi tu kompaniju. Ne poznajem ga, niti znam išta o njemu, a ’81 godište može da znači i da ima 10+ godina iskustva u biznisu, isto kao da je tatin sin kome je dato na upravljanje veliko preduzeće. Zato bih ostavio da se ovime bave specijalizovani mediji, blogovi i uopšte oni koji imaju mogućnost da dođu do više informacija. Siguran sam da ćemo vrlo brzo sve saznati

Ne zanimaju me ni trenutni problemi sa očitavanjem kartica. To je tehnički “hiccup” koji će se rešiti – ne znam sistem koji je zaživeo prvog dana i lepo radio sve vreme. Sigurno da ih ima, ali tehničke izazove na samom početku rada sam spreman da oprostim.

Gužve za izdavanje kartica – imali smo nekoliko meseci, bili smo lenji, nemamo pravo da se bunimo što ta firma nije pre 2 meseca rekla da će biti -15 u poslednjoj nedelji pred start rada sistema

Privatnost podataka i ostale paranoje? Dajte, ljudi, manite se brige… Jedan od retkih državnih službenika koji radi svoj posao savesno i u kojeg imam bezgranično poverenje je upravo Šabić koji se bavi ovom temom. Siguran sam da će on izaći u medije i reći da se oni igraju Velikog brata, ako dođe do te situacije.

E sad, ako zaboravimo sve ove hejtove na prvu loptu – ono što mene zanima je sam sistem, koji smo tako dugo čekali i kojem smo se radovali (bar ja).

Sistem kao sistem ima potencijala kol’ko hoćeš. Uzet je iz Istanbula, gde funkcioniše odlično (živeo tamo, ne pričam tek tako), i unapređen je tehnološki (kartice i kolor ekrani plus GPS servisi umesto tzv “akbil” privezaka i metalnih kutija), tako da sistem u ovom slučaju nije problem. Problem je to što su ga Beogradu prilagođavali oni koji se ne voze prevozom, bar ja tako to vidim.

Prvo, autobus treba da ima samo jedan aparat za validaciju, i to na prednjim vratima. Ovi kod nas valjda misle da smo mi stoka razmažena i da nećemo prihvatiti da ulazimo samo na prednja vrata? Ne znam samo kako se tako lako prilagodimo kad odemo u neki drugi grad ili državu? I ne, ovo ne usporava sistem – dokazano u Istanbulu gde svi lepo ulaze na prednja vrata i otkucavaju svoju kartu na način sličan ovome. Da, ovo švercerima smanjuje mogućnost švercovanja, ali o njima ovaj sistem i ne treba da vodi računa, zar ne? Za one koji ne mogu da priušte da plaćaju gradski prevoz – o njima Grad treba da povede računa na drugi način.

Drugo, ako su već stavili aparate za validaciju kod svih vrata, onda je potpuno nebulozno da zahtevaju od ljudi da validaciju urade dok je autobus na stanici. Ideja je i u ovom slučaju, pretpostavljam, da se spreče oni koji bi kupili nepersonalizovanu karticu i otkucavali je samo kad moraju. Da su ti bajni konsultanti razmislili malo, ili pak izašli iz svoje kancelarije i uložili par hiljada eura da obiđu par gradova i njihove sisteme javnog prevoza, videli bi recimo sistem u Pragu gde ti možeš da otkucaš kartu kad god hoćeš, a kontrola kad uđe u bus svojom karticom blokira ceo sistem tako da ne možeš da otkucavaš kartu kad oni jednom uđu. Jednostavno i elegantno rešenje. Ja sam i dalje za ono prvo za validacijom na prednjim vratima i pri ulazu u bus, ali i ovo može da bude dobro rešenje.

Treće, ja stvarno ne mogu da verujem da su digitalizovali sistem, a da ti i dalje naplaćuje 60 dinara svaki put kad promeniš prevoz. To je stvarno bullshit i to moraju pod hitno da menjaju. Ne znam nijedan uređen gradski prevoz (a ovo pretenduje da bude baš to) da nema karte koje traju 60 ili 90 minuta. Naročito kad imaš ovako sve digitalizovano, to je bar lako uraditi. Taj isti sistem iz Istanbula ima ovu opciju, pa ne mogu da se vade da nije moguće trenutno to uraditi i sl.

Ostaje da se nadam da su ovo sve samo tehnički izazovi, te da će greške ispraviti. Ovako mogu samo da sabiram 2 i 2 i skontam šta 3x više aparata za validaciju i jednokratne karte mogu da znače – cash cow wannabe. Voleo bih da me ubede u suprotno, ili da se opamete, jer komunalnih policajaca za legitimisanje nema dovoljno, a ovakav sistem podstiče na šverc u najmanju ruku (a koliko vidim, klinci divljaci su već počeli i da lome aparate).

Wohooo

Dobih pre par dana informaciju da će Share Conference biti i ove godine i to 26-28. aprila. Sad videh da i na sajtu stoji taj datum.

Pisao sam opširno utiske i izveštaj sa prošle konferencije, pa se podsetite, ali ukratko se najiskrenije radujem ovoj konferenciji. Prošlogodišnja je bila baš sjajna – potpuno drugačija od svih na kojima sam bio, odličan spoj zabave, znanja, druženja i skup najneverovatnijih vrsta ljudi na jednom mestu.
Usudiću se čak da kažem da je model konferencije uticao i na dosta drugih konferencija koje su se desile u 2011, i to pozitivno. Odjednom, predavači nisu više samo iz regiona (ne kažem da iz regiona nema dobrih predavača, naprotiv), već su sa svih krajeva sveta. Neka od imena koja smo imali prilike da vidimo i čujemo mogla su sama da prave konferenciju oko svog dolaska. Šer je pomerio standarde, to valjda hoću da kažem.

Sada, skoro godinu dana kasnije, jedva čekam da saznam koga su organizatori uspeli da dovuku ove godine. Verujem da su bili na slatkim mukama kako bi napravili bar približno kvalitetan program, jer očekivanja su ogromna (no pressure ), a mnogo toga se desilo u 2011. godini po pitanju aktivizma (verujem da nije potrebno objašnjavati koji deo Šera mi je najzanimljiviji) – ACTA, PIPA, SOPA, Anonymous-i, Occupy Wallstreet, whistleblowers, Assange, Arapsko proleće, Ushahidi, ludi Šveđani koji su file-sharing registrovali kao religiju… Činjenica je da države i uopšte zakonodavci postaju sve agresivniji pod pritiskom velikih korporacija i uopšte željom da vladaju na način od pre 50 godina, a da sa druge strane ljudi postaju sve obavešteniji i traže sve veću transparentnost i države i biznisa. Evolucija i borba protiv promena kojoj tradicionalno teže državni službenici. I dok neki hrle ka kapitalizmu (ili islamizmu u nekim zemljama), negde drugo pokušavaju da kapitalizam promene, prevaziđu ili bar prilagode i obuzdaju. Društveni mediji su postali mainstream, nisu više zezalica ili alat plebsa za borbu protiv zlih vladara. I političari i biznismeni sve češće pokušavaju da iskoriste moć ovih medija da kreiraju promene – najčešće je, doduše, u pitanju kreiranje neke nove istine, ili pokušaj da se opravda istorija…

No, šta je – tu je. O svemu ovome će se razgovarati na Share Conference 2012 – možda ne u glavnom programu (pojma nemam kako će agenda izgledati), ali ako bude slična prošlogodišnjoj, onda ćemo nadugačko i naširoko pričati o ovim temama i na predavanjima i tokom pauza. I tome se jako radujem, jer nemamo mnogo prilike da pričamo uživo o ovim temama. Nekako se svi pogubimo u svojim nišama ili pak u dnevnopolitičkim temama i preživljavanju, da ne stignemo da se dotaknemo ovih krupnijih tema i često uzimamo zdravo za gotovo ono što nam se servira (bilo da je to novi zakon, ili pak borba protiv nekog zakona, bilo da je to EU ili borba protiv EU). Ako dodam da će izbori u Srbiji biti tu iza ćoška u vreme konferencije – biće još zanimljivije

Bilo bi sjajno da i među učesnicima (a ne samo predavačima) bude stranaca, verujem da bi to donelo novi kvalitet celoj priči. Ako ništa drugo, pozivam ovim putem barem drugare iz regiona da dođu – nije skupo doći u Beograd, a zabavno je sigurno (prošlogodišnji “noćni program” je takođe bio vrhunski)

Vidimo se uskoro!

*Update: Program konferencije je objavljen, pravac http://www.shareconference.net/rs/program

Nakon višegodišnjeg blogovanja gotovo isključivo na engleskom, od danas počinjem paralelno da pišem i na srpskom.

Zašto?

Pa, rekao bih da je razlog taj što sam osetio potrebu da blogom malo više komuniciram sa ljudima iz našeg regiona. Uključujem se u dosta aktivnosti u poslednje vreme, pratim veliki broj tema i jako često pomislim “uh, napisao bih nešto ali je glupo na engleskom jer je tema prilično lokalna”, i onda odustanem.
Blog na engleskom je od mesta na kojem sam delio iskustva sa putovanja i života u Istanbulu, počeo da mi služi da svoja razmišljanja i teme, koje su mi u određenom trenutku važne, podelim sa prijateljima širom sveta, i toj svrsi služi savršeno. Međutim, dobio sam dosta povratnih informacija od prijatelja sa prostora Jugosfere da su im teme koje obrađujem super, ali da ne vole da ostavljaju komentare na engleskom jer misle da ne mogu dovoljno dobro da se izraze kao na srpskom. Iako ih uvek pozovem da napišu slobodno na srpskom, to se najčešće ne desi, pa ostanem uskraćen za vredno mišljenje, a tema zamre.

Iz tog razloga sam iskoristio i šansu koju mi je ponudio Nebojša aka @eniac, da na njegovom blogu gostujem tekstom o sjajnoj inicijativi “Stvarno važno” Fondacije Divac. Tekst je naišao na lep prijem, pa eto dodatne motivacije da što pre pokrenem i blog na srpskom.

O čemu ću pisati?

Kao i do sada, šta god mi u određenom trenutku bude bitno&važno. Gledajući o čemu sam pisao do sada, verujem da će to biti teme iz oblasti aktivizma, društvenog preduzetništva, društveno-odgovornog poslovanja, razvoja ljudi i organizacija, ali i tehnologija, sport, politika… Dakle, široko, pa dokle stignem.

Srpski vs engleski?

Za sada će tekstovi biti izmešani na blogu, ali sam uveo jezičke kategorije, pa ćete kroz navigaciju na desnoj strani moći lako da filtrirate samo tekstove na srpskom, ili pak na engleskom, ako uopšte bude potrebe. Videćemo kuda će sve ovo da ide, pa ko zna, možda i razdvojim te dve priče na 2 bloga…

I tako… Wish me luck… Ovaj.. Poželite mi sreću!

Emel did it again! Twice, that is!

After receiving great feedback for her first Post-it notes Story (The Story of a Man, His World and his Wall), she decided to “try her luck” once more, embraced her talent and created these two great short stories. I’m sure you’ll be able to connect to at least one of them, if not both like I do…

I’ll keep posting Emel’s stories here on my blog, until I manage to convince her to start her own…

Enjoy!

The Magic of 5 minutes

The New Hire

Emel Ozturk is one of my best friends from the time when I lived in Istanbul. She is an incredibly smart and talented young lady and has now decided to amaze me once more by writing her first short story on Post-it notes!

It’s called “The Story of a Man, his World and his Wall”, and I found it beautiful and inspiring, as it reminded me on exactly what’s happening in our lives.

Way to go Emel, looking forward to more stories!

We all were once children. Some of us still are.

And we all had dreams. Some came true, some we forgot about, and some we are still dreaming and expecting to happen. Or we’re working hard to achieve them.

Of course, this is not always easy. One should earn enough for a living, you know,  for children’ education, new shoes or vacations. Each and every one of us has a thing or two that distract us from those bold goals we set when we were kids – to be pilots, doctors, firefighters, teachers… To fly to the moon. To make a summer vacation last for 3 months, they way it’s meant to be. To simply do what we love to do and be happy.Of course, that’s far from easy.

And if  you live in Kosovo, it’s even harder.

Everything around you tells you that you should stop dreaming – poverty, politicians who are playing their game with your life in stake but for their own short-term and personal gain, life that is “neither here or there”, and above all – uncertainty. You’re waiting to receive some help or humanitarian aid, waiting for some of the numerous international organizations to hire you (because they are the only ones hiring), waiting for the whole situation to just finish already and your life to finally settle. You’re simply waiting.

But you want to believe! And you are hoping!

Because faith and hope are the main drivers and motivators of people to persist and fight in order to be able to experience sometimes the chance to do what they love doing, and there is no environment bad enough or the darkness that dark to kill this faith and hope in people.

Ramonda Serbica is a flower that perhaps describes the best what I am talking about – it’s a rare plant, found only in certain parts of Serbia and it’s very specific: even if it is completely dried, it miraculously comes back to life when watered. Some say that this special attribute helped it survive the ice age. This ability to return to life was discovered by the Russian botanist Pavel Černavski who had this plant placed in a herbarium back in 1928. And when he accidentally spilled some water on the herbarium, previously completely dried plant suddenly bloomed. Magical.That is why people never stop struggling, never stop trying to survive, and always  believing and hoping that someone will appear and spill, accidentally or not, a drop of water in the direction of a forgotten flower archived in a herbarium long time ago. And when something happens by accident, maybe in the form of your brother’s friend, who accidentally discovers that, in all this darkness around, you’re creating beautiful origami models in all colors and shapes, and when this brother’s friend again by chance has something to do with “The Week of Japanese Culture” in Gracanica, you realize that this is your drop of water, the chance that something that waited patiently in the herbarium finally blossoms, be noticed and light up the whole surrounding with it’s beautiful glow.

Meet Mateja, my nephew.

He lives in Kosovska Mitrovica and a few days ago he had his first solo exhibition of origami models in Gracanica, where he also tried to demonstrate his skills and creativity in order to motivate and inspire a crowd of children to, regardless of the overall darkness around them, they still need to keep doing what they love doing and never give up.

By the way, Mateja is the cute little guy on the photo. He is 9 years old.

I am convinced that he is a drop of water for many kids in Kosovo.

Check out all photos here.

Note: this is a translation of my text written in Serbian for 365lepihdana.rs (365 beautiful days), which is a “river of optimism” of people that strongly believe that, despite all the pessimism and criticism around us, we are still surrounded by so many wonderful things that we simply fail to articulate and notice. Therefore – 365 blog posts for 365 days this year, to remind us where we really are living.

 

What an extraordinary experience!

And I’m not saying experience just like that… This was simply all but a usual conference. It’s so different (to anything happened so far in Belgrade) that I continuously struggled to explain people where the hell I am and what kind of a gathering that is. Even now, after the conference, I had to go to their website – www.shareconference.net – in order to find a proper description

“…is a unique educational platform that represents new forms of social activism, and promotes internet, new media and music related contents, a feat done for the first time in the region.”

So, take a bunch of social and internet activists and media artists, put them in a fantastic new setting of recently renovated Dom Omladine (Youth Center), organize free WiFi, get connected with the internet community to create a hype around it, create a fantastic night program throughout the conference and add a thing or two in the halls to make the atmosphere relaxed and enjoyable, and there you go – Share Conference has begun its, we hope, long and prosperous life in our capital.

The whole program of the conference can be seen on their home page, along with the short biographies of speakers and explanations of almost all sessions, so I won’t go into detailed explanation of all of them, but I’d like to point out a few memorable ones. Memorable for me, that is…

Day 1&3: ImprovEverywhere – Causing a scene

Brian Fountain i Robyn Sklaren shared a story about all the famous videos and activities most of us already knew about (Frozen Grand Central, Grocery Store Musical, Best Buy etc), but now with an extra flavor – background stories, anecdotes, results…

All in all, a hilarious presentation that culminated 2 days later when they organized one of their activities with all of us in downtown Belgrade!
We gathered in front of Hotel Moscow where we were instructed briefly to split into 3 groups and get into 3 positions downtown respectively. The idea was to create a Mobile Club downtown, with all the possible things one awesome club usually has – walls, great people, music, light show, queue in front, security in dark suits and dark sunglasses, foursquare spot , and of course a fantastic atmosphere. And what a party it was! Before the videos are out by the organizers, check out a couple of photos here:

Photos credits: ShareConference on Flickr

Day 1: Face2Facebook - Paolo Cirio & Alessandro Ludovico

Now these 2 guys are completely nuts! They followed the same path Facebook had when being developed – they downloaded 1 million (yes, one and six zeros) photos from cca 250.000 Facebook profiles, ran a special face recognition algorithm to divide faces into various groups (by facial expressions) and then built a dating website around these photos.  If you’ve seen The Social Network movie, you probably know that Zuckerberg did pretty much the same when he built FaceMash.

The theory behind this idea is that Facebook already plays a role on the thin line between a social network and a dating website, because if you look closely into

what kind of data are we asked for and how technology within Facebook is directed into making it easy for us to share photos, statuses and communication in general about our relationships, then it’s easy to draw a conclusion that one of the main things Facebook is being used for is to be a platform to build relationships.

Website they built  - www.lovelyfaces.com – did not last long (nor was it supposed to), and they are still fighting legal battle with Facebook (and their accounts were banned for good ), but nevertheless they are very happy about the outcomes of the project. Along with other initiatives at that time, they succeeded to force Facebook to change their claim over users data, which is a huge success.

During the Q&A session, they didn’t want to reveal future plans, as they are not sure whether they want new legal battles before they finish with current ones

Day 2: The Copyfight – Peter Sunde (PirateBay & Flattr)

I have to admit – when I checked out the program of the conference for the first time, I did not recognize Peter’s name. Never heard of Flattr before neither. But then, just before his lecture, I realized that it is actually Peter Sunde, one of the founders of ThePirateBay.org, which is, in a way, guilty for almost 60% of today’s internet traffic, as it played a crucial role in popularizing torrents which are today the most popular peer2peer way of sharing files on the internet.

Peter told us about the history of PirateBay, about their legal fights with providers, courts, governments, about how they tried to buy Sealand and were followed by private investigators (stupid ones, but nevertheless), even how Belgrade played a role in the whole story when famous PirateBay bus was hidden in Belgrade during the trials etc.

Don’t know the age span of the participants, but I’m sure that I was not the only one thoroughly enjoying this fantastic story and smiling stupidly as a sign of being happy that I live in this time and that I was a part of the whole story around PirateBay, at least as a simple user of their revolutionary website. My Serbian readers will understand what I’m trying to say if I compare this smile with the one that only those who were old enough to see and actually enjoy the 3 point shots of Djordjevic with Partizan and Serbia can have.

Peter also shared with us that they are not putting almost any effort in maintaining the website (hence the prehistoric

al design , and that they would probably shut it down if the server broke today. They are basically keeping it alive because it’s still in top50 sites worldwide (!!!) and people simply use it.

A part of Pirate Bay, he is mostly into developing Flattr.com these days. It’s a social micro-payment/micro-donation system that allows users to put a monthly amount/credit on flattr.com and then user “flattr this” button (similar to FB Like or Google +1). In the end of the month, the credited amount is donated to the flattered websites per flattr-ing ratio. The idea is that they make donations as direct as possible, without expensive middle-men etc. It’s a great project, and I would love to see it working in Serbia soon.

Day 3: Technologies of Empathy – MIT Media Lab - Chris Csikszentmihalyi

That’s what I call a special guy! He is a director of MIT Center for Future Civic Media, which develops new technologies and techniques to strengthen local communities. Pretty cool, huh? I mean, just mentioning MIT was enough, right? But that’s not the only thing he is special for. Check out his style on this photo and video and you’ll understand why we all tweeted frantically about him for the first 10 minutes of his lecture

Jokes aside, he was awesome. He spoke honestly about projects they are trying to do to re-balance power between citizens on one and corporations and political factors on the other side. He reminded us that MIT became so big and important because it is one of the biggest defense contractors of the US Army. He also reminded us that most of their work was inspired by the fact that during the Bush rule, government did not share much information about it’s activities, and yet wanted to have and control the data about everyone and everybody. We’re talking about pre-Web2.0 time, of course. Now, Chris argued that government did not ask us whether they can use that info, so what would happen if we just took the info from the government and used it in any way we can think of?

This way of thinking inspired many activities and serviced in the years to come, including Txt2Mob which was a java applet that helped sending SMSs to many recipients via foreign countries’ servers, and all because government instructed phone companies to shut down services protesters in the US used to organize them

selves. There’s apparently a rumor that the source-code of this service was used when Twitter was being developed. How cool is that?

Chris mentioned many more services and you can explore them at their website, but the one that I loved the most is SourceMap which runs under a motto - “We believe that people have the right to know where things come from and what they are made of”. It’s basically a system that allows you to map literally anything in a structured and organized way. You can also browse many maps that are already in the system, and that are really detailed. I believe that no-one in the room felt completely comfortable after Chris has shown us a video of where and how certain materials that exist in all our smartphones are made. Check out this intro video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g30laGwoYTU

All in all – a great lecture. He definitely marked the day with showing off all the amazing work they do at MIT Media Lab and certainly left many of us drooling and dreaming about being part of it.

Day 3: Deconstructing the role of social media in Tunisian Revolution – Global Voices – Sami Ben Gharbia

Sami is Tunisian, but lives in exile in the Netherlands where he works as Advocacy director at Global Voices, which “seeks to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.”

He got one of the longest applauses on this year’s conference and for a reason – he deconstructed, step by step and in details the whole story – what, when, how and why it happened. It’s really not easy to explain the whole story in a few sentences, and for that you’ll have to wait for the organizers to upload all lectures (yes, they promised to do so shortly after the conference), but let me just tell you that it was proven that Facebook is good to start the revolution, but Twitter is the one that really brings it to another level (Facebook is a closed platform, you need to be registered and also friends with people or a member of groups if you wanna see news, while twitter is a completely open platform).

Also, it was all about strategy, not tools. Sami presented the 3-way ecosystem, where Facebook, Twitter and other tools is just one part, while 2 others are organizations supporting these kind of activities (human rights, big NGOs etc), and classic media, such are big media networks (CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC etc). As Milos Djajic nicely put it today – it’s about finding a way to get published in influential media. So it’s not just about organizing protests, it’s about creating a hype around it, so that people and organizations get interested continuously. I mean, if 30.000 people protests against Gadaffi and no-one know about it – technically Gadaffi can kill these 30.000 people in a matter of hours probably. But if the eyes of international community are at Libya, then it’s not that easy anymore.
And it helps when government makes stupid steps, like trying to censor internet and specific tools like facebook or posterous, which only brought more people on these platforms.

And this strategy is different in all places – i.e. Facebook and Twitter revolutions were good for Tunisia, but are unlikely to work in Gaza, where internet connection is not so good.

We all followed the situation in Tunisia, but when someone puts it in such a cool presentation and explains why something happened in certain moments, then you realize it’s pretty much modernized version of what Otpor (Resistance) did in Serbia while fighting against Milosevic. As someone putt it nicely – if we had social media back in the nineties, Milosevic would be gone by Dayton Peace Agreement (1995 – Peace in Bosnia).

A really great lecture it was. Too bad that organizers could not set up a video link with Dalia Ziada – an Egyptian blogger and human rights activist, would be cool to hear Egyptian part of the story too…

Conclusion

To conclude, there were more really cool lectures, some I visited and enjoyed (News Analysis, Visualization and Summarization by Institut Jozef Stefan, or Belgrade, beyond an image of a party city by Viktor Markovic from Belgraded.com, Istinomer (Truthmeter)) and some I unfortunately missed (Crisis mapping in Action by Jaroslav Valych, or What makes a movement by Sam Graham Felsen).

And I’ll just say once again how great and inspiring this experience was, that I’m happy that Belgrade and Serbia were hosting such a fantastic conference and that I’m really hoping it will become a tradition.

It’s been some time since I wrote about HR and related topics and people already started asking me if I have changed my field of interested or whatever happened to me…

Well, nothing special, just had to go through a period of fighting against cognitive dissonance and making big decisions. Am still fighting it though, but now that I know the enemy, I also know the way through.

So, what is Cognitive Dissonance anyways? Festinger says it is:

The feeling of uncomfortable tension which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time. Dissonance increases with:

• The importance of the subject to us.
• How strongly the dissonant thoughts conflict.
• Our inability to rationalize and explain away the conflict.

Basically, it is a psychological phenomenon that happens to everyone and quite often. The easiest way to recognize it is the uncomfortable feeling when confronted to an information that is in discrepancy with what you already know or believe. The reaction to this uncomfortable feeling can be both justifying your action/belief or justifying someone else’s. Let me give you a couple of examples for easier understanding:

• some people take home office supplies. They know it’s wrong, and they feel uncomfortable, but they still do it and justify it with “I’m not paid enough anyways”;
• someone you dislike very much does something very nice for you in the office. Feeling awkward is almost granted, and you usually get out of it by either counting it as an exception that proves the rule or even worse – you take is as intentional to make you feel bad. (source and more examples here)

Sounds familiar? Sure it does… But these are just simple examples and they can be much more serious and dangerous for your psyche. Just today I recognized much stronger examples in 2 of my colleagues and they are as strong as my own example I’m fighting through lately. Why are they so strong and dangerous? Well, they tackle your personal beliefs and are challenging your career to date. Imagine having a job that you can’t afford to quit, and you are at this position for some time already, doing your job very good (praised by superiors, praised by colleagues from your expertise from other companies etc) and you get a new boss that tells you that everything you did so far is bullshit and he tells you to do it in a way that was modern 20 years ago (however not effective even then). What do you do? It confronts your beliefs, it degrades everything you did so far, it makes you wanna cry. Yet you can’t quit your job. You’re not a kid anymore… There’s mortgage loan, there’s leased car, whatever… So do you justify your boss’ opinion? Do you accept it as a must do since you can’t quit your job and therefore degrade yourself and your personal beliefs?

That, my respected readers, is cognitive dissonance.

Now how do you deal with it? Festinger has 3 ways:

1. One may try to change one or more of the beliefs, opinions, or behaviors involved in the dissonance;
2. One may try to acquire new information or beliefs that will increase the existing consonance and thus cause the total dissonance to be reduced; or,
3. One may try to forget or reduce the importance of those cognitions that are in a dissonant relationship.

In case of important decisions and big dissonances, I suggest analyzing it thoroughly. In some of my own cases, I decided not to justify crap and I quit smoking (justifying smoking is the most common cognitive dissonance) and changed my job.

What about you? Examples? Currently facing one?

Remember Bobby McFerrin, the world famous author of “Don’t worry, be happy” song?

Well, if you are aware of him and his work, you also know that he is more then just a singer. His style and approach is very unconventional and his music cannot really be put under any of the genres, which makes him unique and which brought him 10 Grammy awards, invites to play with most famous orchestras in the worlds etc.

But not only… Recently he got an invitation to participate at the World Science Forum and its Panel “Notes and Neurons – Search for the Common Chorus”, which aimed to find answers on questions like “Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined?” or “Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment?” as well as to illustrate “music’s note-worthy interaction with the brain and our emotions”.

And he did it in his own way. They told him that not everyone is musical. His answer was to show the power of pentatonic scale:

See full coverage of the panel here.

Now, this video is fun to watch for anyone, but if you think a little bit about it, it’s much much more. It shows how wrong and limiting our education system is… Imagine if education was there to really support your creativity and not to limit it within the curriculum made in 1960. or whenever… Imagine if teachers were talking to us instead of lecturing us?