Nicholas Barry

I like maps - they're great examples of how to visualize things properly. Some data just shouldn't be displayed except on a map.

We have maps of Senator Steinberg's district, of course, but most of them are printed out. The maps we do have electronically are images on websites, which aren't interactive.

So I decided to create a map of Senator Steinberg's district so I could not only visualize it, but also use it.

I used CommunityWalk, an excellent website that uses the Google Maps API. I could have created and saved a map on Google Maps itself, but CommunityWalk has many more features, including the creation of different categories of markers, which can be toggled on and off. (On another blog I've written up a comparison between Google Maps and CommunityWalk.)

What's great about this map? Well, as I said, I love maps. But besides entertaining me, it also has real uses. For example, the system we use to determine whether an address is in our district or not doesn't always work - sometimes it chokes on the address, and claims the address is invalid. I can look up the address on our map, however, and find out immediately whether it falls inside our boundaries.

The map also allows us to map other points of interest within our district - for example, mapping our office locations, the locations of community centers, the boundaries of the 9th Assembly District (which Darrell used to represent), libraries, schools, the boundaries of neighborhood associations, etc.

Creating the map was an extremely painstaking process - CommunityWalk cannot import the data format most maps are stored in (I'm not familiar with that format, anyway). I had to manually enter each bend and turn of the district's boundaries, using a large physical map for guidance. Whew! But it was worth it.

I like maps - they're great examples of how to visualize things properly. Some data just shouldn't be displayed except on a map.

We have maps of Senator Steinberg's district, of course, but most of them are printed out. The maps we do have electronically are images on websites, which aren't interactive.

So I decided to create a map of Senator Steinberg's district so I could not only visualize it, but also use it.

I used CommunityWalk, an excellent website that uses the Google Maps API. I could have created and saved a map on Google Maps itself, but CommunityWalk has many more features, including the creation of different categories of markers, which can be toggled on and off. (On another blog I've written up a comparison between Google Maps and CommunityWalk.)

What's great about this map? Well, as I said, I love maps. But besides entertaining me, it also has real uses. For example, the system we use to determine whether an address is in our district or not doesn't always work - sometimes it chokes on the address, and claims the address is invalid. I can look up the address on our map, however, and find out immediately whether it falls inside our boundaries.

The map also allows us to map other points of interest within our district - for example, mapping our office locations, the locations of community centers, the boundaries of the 9th Assembly District (which Darrell used to represent), libraries, schools, the boundaries of neighborhood associations, etc.

Creating the map was an extremely painstaking process - CommunityWalk cannot import the data format most maps are stored in (I'm not familiar with that format, anyway). I had to manually enter each bend and turn of the district's boundaries, using a large physical map for guidance. Whew! But it was worth it.

In my Intersectoral Leadership class at USC, Professor Callahan asked each of our groups to choose a different article from the readings, analyze it in light of the theory presented by another article, spend 20 minutes planning a presentation, and present to the class.

I asked that our group focus on an article that exhorted the US to stop trying to create democracy in Afghanistan, and focus instead on making government function, while accepting that Afghanistan is hardly a unified state. I was interested because of my own experience teaching science in Afghanistan.

While preparing, Kiyomi, a friend and colleague of mine from Senator Steinberg's office, suggested we try to make our presentation "Sticky." Professor Callahan is a devotee of Malcolm Gladwell (as am I), and encourages us to incorporate insights from his books into our presentations, leadership style, and everyday thinking - which I think is a great idea. Gladwell's "Sticky" concept is something close to how memorable an idea is - how likely someone is to hold on to, and pass along, an idea.

I thought we could easily make our presentation Sticky by incorporating some personal story from my experience in Afghanistan. I thought about what story might be a good illustration of the points in our presentation, and finally thought of an excellent experience from a travel office. So I began our presentation with this story:

"I have gone to Afghanistan twice to teach science, and will never forget my experience there. One thing in particular that I remember is when we walked into a travel office to buy tickets back home. There were clocks on the wall displaying different time zones. The four clocks were labeled Paris, London, Tokyo, and Kabul."

I had drawn a row of four clocks without hands on a presentation pad beforehand, and I continued:

"The hour hands for Paris, London and Tokyo all looked something like this." I drew each, pointing up and to the left.

"The Kabul clock, on the other hand, looked like this," I said, as I drew in Kabul's hour hand, pointing down and to the right - in the opposite direction.

"Afghanistan," I continued, "Is on a different track from us. It isn't a westernized country like Japan or Germany that we can rebuild into a democracy. It's totally different, and we have to accept that when we are doing work there."

At the end of our presentation, Professor Callahan said, "Okay, stop. In my twelve years of doing this exercise, I have never seen so good a first presentation. The way Nick started with that story about his experience in Afghanistan grabbed you, and made you want to know more. Normally, I have the groups present right after each other. But I want all of you to take three to five minutes back with your groups to talk about how you can do what they did to make your presentations Sticky."

My personal story made our presentation stand head and shoulders above other presentations.

Thursday was the first day of my Intersectoral Leadership class at USC. One excellent thing about the program I'm in is that we do lots of activities that force us to experience the concepts we're learning about. The Dominoes and Poker Chips game created a really interesting leadership dynamic I hadn't ever witnessed before - there was an abrupt shift, before which we were operating as separate teams, and after which the whole class was unified, and I was surprised to find everyone listening to me.

So on Thursday morning, Professor Callahan began stacking dominoes and three colors of poker chips on the front table. He explained to our five table groups that we were going to play a game.

Each one of us would start with two random poker chips. Our objective was to be holding a domino when one minute was up, and we could trade chips for dominoes. Here were the trading rules:

1. You may trade three chips of different colors for one domino; you will also get one chip (of your choosing) back.
2. You may trade three dominoes for seven chips (of your choosing) back.
3. No stealing from other players
4. Anyone who does not have a domino in hand when time was called was dead.

He gave us two minutes to strategize. I was concerned people at our table would be competitive between each other, and quickly suggested that we all pool our chips to make some quick trades. I figured if we could convert our chips into three dominoes, then convert those back into more chips, we could convert our remaining chips back into four dominoes, and we'd all be set.

I don't know what other tables planned, but when he called for trading to begin, his table was mobbed. Everyone was calling for him to make exchanges for them. I had offered to be the trading rep for our table, and we got as far as our three dominoes, and exchanged them back into chips, when he called time. We had no dominoes; all of us were dead.

We all returned to our seats, and Professor Callahan counted the total number of dominoes throughout the whole class.  Only four people had dominoes out of a class of 21.

He reset the starting conditions (he took all the dominoes, and gave us each two chips), and asked us to take some time to plan again. We figured that, given the short amount of time, we should just hold on to our three dominoes and settle for one of us dying. I volunteered for that part, since I had proposed our plan, and knew I had to be willing to sacrifice, or they would distrust my call for everyone to contribute their chips.

We pulled this off, but at the end, the whole class only had seven survivors. We had done better, but no one else had. It still wasn't a very satisfactory result.

In the next planning session, and at the suggestion of one of my group members, I suggested to a group on one side that we could jointly pool our chips. They weren't interested, however, so we decided to stick with our original strategy - to no better success.

In the next planning session, Leila suggested again that we might want to coordinate with other groups, so the two of us approached two other groups that we had seen making plans together. I started talking to one of the two groups, and the other of the two started walking toward me to hear what I was saying. As the two groups converged on Leila and I, I raised my voice to be heard by both groups.

"We can all join our chips into one big pool," I began.

And in that moment, I noticed something strange and incredible. Suddenly the whole class was silent, listening to what I was saying. Everyone, including the group that hadn't been interested the round before, was suddenly a single group instead of separate pieces. There was a complete phase change, like ice cubes melting into a pool of water - a qualitative change in the nature of the group. The speed with which it happened was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life.

I don't know what exactly caused it. I'm sure it was a combination of factors:

• Everyone was frustrated, and were ready for someone who could propose a solution
• Other groups had been testing out the idea of coordinating, and were ready to try it on a larger scale when someone suggested it
• And we shouldn't underestimate the importance of someone speaking clearly and confidently - as Professor Callahan likes to say, a leader brings clarity.

We were sharing now, and everyone agreed to pool their chips, bring them to the front, and several of us would be in charge of making exchanges from chips into dominoes. We would immediately pass the dominoes back to others. When the time was up, Professor Callahan counted our dominoes. We had 9 - one fewer than we had had the previous round.

I sat down, frustrated, but fortunately was not allowed to give up, because immediately the de facto ambassadors for two other groups came over to me to figure out how we could improve. The game wasn't over, and our temporary setback didn't mean we had failed.

We planned again, refining and streamlining our process for assembling chips into piles. When we tried again, we earned 14 dominoes. The round afterward, we reached 17, and in our seventh round, we all had dominoes.

Afterward we reflected, as a class. Professor Callahan reflected that we had done relatively well (though not extraordinarily well) in terms of the number of rounds we needed to all get dominoes. He noted that every group sees a dip when it first joins as a group (which is pretty common for adopting any new strategy, not just in this game), which is discouraging, but that usually the drop is much more significant.

We also observed that once we had our strategy in place, a large number of people chose to be helpful by getting out of the way, and not clogging up the table area. Not everyone can be a leader; Professor Callahan talked about what he calls "followership," or the skill of being a good follower (even though you might also have the capacity to be a good leader), to allow things to get done. Too many cooks spoil the soup.

I noted that the task might have been significantly harder if, at the end of each round, Professor Callahan had totaled the score of each table, rather than of the entire group. We were already split into table groups, and totaling the scores in that way would have set us against each other even more.

At the end of the exercise, Professor Callahan told us to each keep our dominoes. Mine is now sitting on my desk, to remind me of that moment when we became one.