announcements

Indefinite Leave

After a lot of thought and consideration, I’ve decided to put All About Work on indefinite leave.

I started writing this blog in March 2012. I wanted a place where I could write about topics related to my academic work, but in a less formal, more accessible style. Business media are dominated by conservative voices that generally support employers, so I also wanted to provide an alternative, worker-focused perspective on work and organizations.

I’m very mindful that the education I’ve been so fortunate to acquire has all been acquired in publicly-funded institutions. In my view, that creates a responsibility for me to give back to the community and the public. All About Work is one way for me to do that: by sharing news, information and opinions that might help people, or encourage them to think about things in a different way.

All About Work was not set up to generate income. I pay for the site hosting and for WordPress features like an ad blocker, so ads won’t be randomly inserted into posts that you’re reading. But I don’t include affiliate links in my posts, or use any of the other methods of monetizing blogs. All About Work is very much a labour of love, and I’ve continued running it because I enjoy doing it.

However, in the last six months or so, I’ve seen increasing numbers of referrals – the sources of clicks on posts – from AI-driven tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity. These tools scrape and synthesize information from publicly available sources on the Internet, without any compensation to authors and creators. Sorry, AI tech bros, but “exposure” is not enough – and the amount of content from this site that shows up on AI searches goes far beyond any reasonable definition of “fair use“.

The content on All About Work is publicly available for free, but it’s also copyrighted. I strongly object to for-profit sites and services using my copyrighted work without my permission, without credit, and without payment.

In my limited experience with AI, I’ve also seen my work misrepresented. I’ve seen posts on All About Work cited as sources for information that is misleading, or even worse, completely wrong.

Unless WordPress comes up with an AI blocker, I can’t stop AI from stealing my work. But I also don’t have to feed AI by creating even more content for it to steal.

I thought about closing the All About Work site and deleting all 373(!) posts, but I’ve put a lot of effort into this blog and am proud of what it’s accomplished. Also, there is content on the site that as far as I know is very difficult to find anywhere else (such as the diagrams of figures from figure skating tests that no longer exist).

So the All About Work site will stay online. The posts that are already posted will still be available, and I can still be contacted through the site. And I’ll continue to run my other blogs, which for some reason attract almost no AI activity. But until there are some significant changes to how AI operates, I won’t be posting anything new on All About Work.

Thanks to all of the blog’s many supporters and readers over the past 13 years.

 

New Book Announcement

Happy New Year! I’m delighted to announce that my new book, a biography of the band Fountains of Wayne, will be released by J-Card Press on March 13. It can be pre-ordered directly from the publisher, and from online retailers around the world.

All About Work’s Winter Break 2024

As 2024 winds down, it’s time to look at which posts on All About Work were most popular this year. In order, they are:

– Mapping Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada [the map that this post discusses has just been updated, and now includes data from April through June 2024]

– Vocational Awe

– Bob White and “Final Offer”

– Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule” Doesn’t Add Up

– Compulsory Figures: Technical Guidelines, Diagrams, and Tests

I wish I could share a lovely photo of snow-covered scenery in my neighbourhood, but all we’ve had so far this winter is rain. So instead, here’s a photo of one small part of the spectacular holiday light display in my city.

Lights at Lafarge (credit: @TourismCoquitlam on Instagram)

I’ll be taking some time off to mark the end of the year, and I hope you’ll be able to do the same. Thank you to everyone who has read, commented on, or shared posts from All About Work in 2024. All the best for whatever winter festival you celebrate, and for a happy and prosperous 2025. See you next year!

All About Work’s Winter Break 2023

I’ll be taking the next couple of weeks off to rest and relax. I hope that all of All About Work‘s readers will have some down time too.

This has been a busy year on the blog, which always makes my work on it worthwhile. The most popular posts, in order, were:

Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000-Hour Rule” Doesn’t Add Up

Compulsory Figures: Technical Guidelines, Diagrams, and Tests

Bob White and “Final Offer”

What’s A Rotating Strike?

Vocational Awe

I wish you a happy wintertime celebration – whichever one you observe – and a happy and healthy 2024. See you next year!

Winter sky, Robson Square, Vancouver, December 2023. (credit: own photo)

All About Work’s Holiday Break

Snow on the decorated tree in my yard. (credit: own photo)

A phrase I’ve heard being used a lot to describe this time of year is, “Well, we made it.” The world certainly wasn’t a happy place in many ways in 2022, but….well, we made it. Here’s hoping that 2023 is a little less eventful and a little more empathetic.

I’ll be taking a few weeks off from All About Work to rest up and recover. I hope you’ll have some time to relax as well. Here are the posts on the blog that got the most traffic this year:

1) Bob White and “Final Offer”

2) Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule” Doesn’t Add Up

3) The Joy of Figures

4) What’s A Rotating Strike?

5) Compulsory Figures: Technical Guidelines, Diagrams, and Tests

See you in 2023!

MIXTAPE, My New Book

I’m delighted to announce that my new book MIXTAPE: 21 SONGS FROM 10 YEARS (1975-1985) is now on sale, at the retailers listed here. It was a lot of work to write but also a great deal of fun. I hope you’ll check it out!

“All About Work” is 10 Years Old

March 2022 (March 16, to be exact) is the 10th anniversary of All About Work.

It doesn’t feel like 10 years have gone by, but who doesn’t say that on an anniversary? When I started this blog, I didn’t have any goals about keeping it going for a certain length of time. I decided to just start it up and see what happened. I wanted to have a place to discuss work and organizational issues in a more informal style than academic writing uses, and where I could write for whatever length I thought was appropriate, without external editorial constraints like the dreaded Reviewer #2.

Writing and running All About Work has been an incredible education. I’ve learned a lot about how online publishing works, and about how to communicate ideas in different ways and to different audiences. I’ve written nearly 350 posts on this blog over the past 10 years. Some of them have had almost no readers, and some of them have had thousands of readers. All About Work has also been an opportunity for me to explore ideas and information beyond my work-related interests, and I appreciate the faithful readers who are willing to take a look at a post regardless of its topic.

I learned enough from running this blog to start a second blog, Writing On Music. As its title suggests, that blog is more focused on my freelance music writing career. In the 10 years since this blog started, some bloggers have moved over to more writing-focused sites like Medium, or started producing email newsletters using something like Substack. But I like the format of blogging on WordPress, and I like not being tied to a regular schedule and having the flexibility to post whenever I have something to say.

All About Work has been a little quiet of late because I’ve been working on a major project. I hope to wrap that up soon and start posting more regularly. But in the meantime, I want to express my thanks to everyone who’s read, shared, or commented on All About Work posts over the past decade. It’s been a trip, and it’s one I intend to continue.

All About Work’s 2021 Holiday Break

As I usually do at this time of year, I’m taking a few weeks off to rest and recharge. The most popular posts on All About Work this year were: (more…)

Change

As of May 31, I’ll be retiring from my position as Professor in the School of Business at the University of the Fraser Valley. I’m moving to a part-time position at the BC Council on Admissions & Transfer, which administers BC’s post-secondary transfer system.

But this blog will continue. This is a very interesting time for work and for organizations, with the changes that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about. A lot of fundamental assumptions about how and why we work are being questioned, and there is lots to think and write about.

I’ve been posting irregularly of late, but I hope to post more regularly once things have settled down. Thanks to All About Work‘s readers, followers, and commenters for your continued support.

Cleaning out my office (credit: own photo)

All About Work’s Winter Break

2020 has been…..quite a year. So All About Work is taking a much-needed break for the holidays.

The top five posts for this year were:

  1. Bob White and “Final Offer” (hint to students looking up this post: your essay will get a much higher grade if you actually watch the film)
  2. Why Academic Freedom Is Important to Everyone (Not Just Academics)
  3. Population Ecology in Real Life: How the Globe and Mail Misunderstood Its Environment
  4. Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘10,000 Hour Rule’ Doesn’t Add Up
  5. What’s A Rotating Strike?

Thank you to all the readers and commenters who, in spite of everything else that happened this year, showed that respectful, thoughtful discussion still has a place in the world.

I wish everyone a happy, restful holiday, and a healthier and saner New Year. See you in 2021!

Decorations at the Ivy restaurant, Chelsea, London, December 2018. (credit: own photo)