James Drogan

Tyler Cowen, Economist, August 19, 2016

This, from the Conversable Economist, is for those of you who tend, or who should tend, towards introspection.

It’s hard to know when I began to think about communication in a serious manner.  I peg it at my first job out of college as a systems engineer for IBM.  I’m fairly certain that I didn’t think of it as communications, let alone conversations.  I thought of flowcharts (communicating with people) and coding sheets (communicating with computers), both of which I learned little of in college.

As my career developed I expanded my communication repertoire to formal presentations, one‑on‑one conversations with business associates and customers, writing of proposals, reports, and marketing material.

When I retired from IBM I became associated with Baruch College.  This second career introduced me in a more formal way to communicate, especially through my long association with the Bernard L. Schwarz Communication Institute.

I’m indebted to all those along the path of this journey who encouraged, criticized, taught me, and, perhaps most importantly, gave me the freedom to explore communication and its higher embodiment, conversations.  I’ve been from the Palmer Method to spark charts, from simple flowcharts to complex causal loop diagrams.  And I keep learning.

Communications is a collection of papers, blog posts, the odd e‑mail, and lecture notes on the subjects of communication and conversation.  These are presented in chronological order.  Some of this material looks incomplete.  Indeed it is.  Learning is never complete.  Minimal editing has been performed on the original material.

The first paper in this anthology was written to help me prepare for an April 28, 2006 conference.  Doubtless I will add to this collection as time goes on.

It is hoped that this collection might serve as useful reference and example.

Copies are available at www.lulu.com

"It seems to me now, with greater reflection, that the value of experiencing another person’s art is not merely the work itself, but the opportunity it presents to connect with the interior impulse of another."

Hylton, W. S. (2016, July 17). The Mysterious Metamorphosis of Chuck Close. The New York Times Magazine, 36–43 53.

Shanghai: Every five years, DNV GL publishes its Technology Outlook. This keenly awaited report is primarily intended to give customers and stakeholders a basis for discussion and insight into the technology landscape of the next decade within selected industries.

See DNV GL's Technology Outlook 2025 explores technology likely to be taken up in the next ten years on the web.

See Technology 2025: Reaction for an analysis of this outlook.

Here is a note (revised 8/3/16) I wrote on thinking about this issue.

If you are interesting in these areas you might want to tune in to this blog of Hercules E. Haralambides.  He advises:

My blog provides commentary and opinion on current developments in the global economy; international trade; shipping; ports; terminals; transport; and maritime logistics, including important business research findings, as reported quarterly in the 'Maritime Economics and Logistics' Journal (www.palgrave-journals.com/mel). © 2016 HE Haralambides, all rights reserved.

I write a lot.

From time to time I gather this writing into collections.  Examples of these include Drogan Notes: 2009.1 and Drogan Notes: Communications.

Useful Items to Pack for Your Trip (264 pages) is a set of notes covering a number of topics; ethics, critical thinking, communications, introspection, integrity, writing, vocations, relationships, and teams.  These notes are provoked by conversations with students or by ideas that come to me from time to time.  In either case the note is written first to help me think through the matter and secondly to communicate the results of this thinking to other interested people.

I am grateful to colleagues and students for provoking much of what is included here.

The notes emerge from experiences from a long career in business and higher education as well as general observations for how the world works. 

All collections are available at www.lulu.com.

...in this business [finance] are also really great writers."

"Of course, there is a lot of math behind the quant stuff, and the guys doing it are mathematical geniuses, but the best of them are also very sharp market folks, with a nose for when trades start to get crowded."

"Computers may be computers, but the people who program the computers are just human, and utterly fallible."

Jared Dillian in The 10th Man February 18, 2016

My courses are marked by a focus on discussions and an emphasis on teamwork to address projects.

Teams is intended to make clear to students my expectations regarding teams.