Jay Gerland

Hype Machine just released their Top 50 Albums of 2011 list. It’s split up on to several pages so I took them all and made a full page out of it. Next step is to make a Spotify playlist out of it. Here is a Spotify playlist I made from this list: http://spoti.fi/xEwEMM - not every albums was in Spotify but most were. 537 tracks in all.

http://hypem.com/zeitgeist/2011/albums/

50 Tim Hecker Ravedeath 1972

49 Gillian Welch The Harrow & The Harvest

48 Smith Westerns Dye It Blonde

47 Cults Cults

46 Pains of Being Pure at Heart Belong

45 Wild Beasts Smother

44 Frank Ocean Nostalgia, Ultra

43 Wu Lyf Go Tell Fire to the Mountain

42 Wye Oak Civilian

41 Beyonce 4

40 Panda Bear Tomboy

39 Feist Metals

38 Nicolas Jaar Space Is Only Noise

37 Lady Gaga Born This Way

36 Cut Copy Zonoscope

35 Metronomy English Riviera

34 Mastodon The Hunter

33 Youth Lagoon The Year Of Hibernation

32 Drake Take Care

31 Florence & The Machine Ceremonials

30 Wild Flag Wild Flag

29 The Horrors Skying

28 Washed Out Within & Without

27 Foster the People Torches

26 War on Drugs Slave Ambient

25 The Roots Undun

24 Foo Fighters Wasting Light

23 Antlers Burst Apart

22 Fucked Up David Comes to Life

21 Yuck Yuck

20 The Weeknd House of Balloons

19 Kurt Vile Smoke Ring for My Halo

18 Tom Waits Bad As Me

17 Real Estate Days

16 The Black Keys El Camino

15 Radiohead The King Of Limbs

14 Destroyer Kaputt

13 Wilco Whole Love

12 Shabazz Palaces Black Up

11 Jay Z & Kanye West Watch The Throne

10 St. Vincent Strange Mercy

9 James Blake James Blake

8 Decemberists King Is Dead

7 Girls Father, Son, Holy Ghost

6 Adele 21

5 tUnE-yArDs W H O K I L L

4 PJ Harvey Let England Shake

3 M83 Hurry Up We’re Dreaming

2 Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues

1 Bon Iver Bon Iver

I wrote this a while back and worked on it for a few months, getting input and adding more “rules” as time went on. The goal here is to stop wasting time in meetings. I think it is important to get face-to-face but not if everyone is going to screw around during the meeting or deliver nothing after it is over. I think these rules apply anywhere and not just in the tech industry. Please pass this on.

1. Create an agenda
   1. These are the only topics to be discussed during the scheduled time so make sure it is complete.
   2. This MUST be sent in the meeting invite. If your invite doesn’t have one, ask for it.
2. Schedule your attendees and resource rooms properly
   1. Generally, it is not OK to send a meeting invite for a meeting on the same day. Please give at least 24 hours notice.
   2. If you do not schedule the room properly, you may not have actually reserved it. Do yourself a favor and double check.
   3. Choose the the correct attendees. Don’t invite 2 people to represent the same information.
   4. Meetings for 4 or more are proven to be less productive than those with fewer invitees. If you need 4 people, you are probably attempting to do too much and need to break it up - some leg-work needs to be done ahead of time. If you are pulling in 5% of the employees, you are impacting the overall company. Please keep that in mind.
3. Be on time
   1. Be early even. Plan to stay for the whole thing.
   2. If you can not make the proposed time, you must decline the meeting, send someone in your place or propose a new time.
4. Take notes
   1. Everyone should take their own notes.
   2. If necessary, someone should be designated as the notes-taker. This person is required to take detailed notes and share them with the other participants shortly after the meeting has concluded.
5. Stay on topic
   1. If it’s not on the agenda, it’s not a topic of discussion for the meeting.
   2. If a new topic is necessary, it should be “parked” and, if time permits, revisited at the end of the meeting. Otherwise, it should be taken off-line as an email thread or follow-up meeting.
6. Review what was discussed
   1. The meeting organizer should review what was discussed according to the agenda.
   2. The meeting organizer or designate should assign action items with due dates (to 1 owner).
   3. This way, everyone leaves with the same understanding.
   4. A follow-up meeting can be scheduled at this time.
7. Conference Call Etiquette
   1. Announce yourself after joining the meeting.
   2. Please mute when not speaking, it makes the overall call quality better for everyone.
   3. Do not put the bridge on hold, it plays hold music for everyone.

Also:

Ask yourself, is this meeting necessary? Could you gather the necessary info via an email thread? Maybe on a wiki page that everyone could collaborate on? If yes, please do so and free up valuable time for everyone else.

Laptops: A lot of people feel that laptops should not be allowed in meetings. I find them to be very useful for pulling up information that will help answer questions and solve problems quickly. If you can’t trust yourself to not surf Reddit while in a meeting because you brought your laptop, don’t bring it. I have taken to bringing a plant-based notebook to meetings to help me focus.

Short of telling you not to go to meetings without an agenda, I can tell you that if you get an invite for a meeting without one, be sure to ask for one and don’t accept the invite until you get it.

Finally, all of the above can be overruled in the interest of time and productivity but be careful, that’s a slippery slope.

Here’s a quick review of the long-awaited new Midlake disc “The Courage of Others:”

It’s a good album but after 3 or 4 listens today for the first time, I had had enough and moved on. I wasn’t expecting that reaction so in a way, I think this is album is a failure for me. It’s just way too renaissance faire to bear repeated listenings. I could never turn someone on to Midlake and have it be their first listen.

It’s solid record, it’s well recorded and sung but they just took it a little too far. They castrated “Children of the Ground” (from the live version they played on their last tour) and it would have stood out like a sore thumb if they hadn’t. Pitty. Hope they have a lot of b-side material to put out for the next couple of years.