Doc Smitties

Posted on June 22, 2026 by Scott Smith

My son was 4 when my father died, so I don’t have many photos of the two of them together. I think this might be the only one where I am in the shot with them.

Photo of a middle-aged white male on the right leaning to steady a silo from the Fisher Price farm, for a baby who putting object. A 80-year-old white male, who is holding the baby by his overalls straps to steady the baby as he stands.

Smitty, Smitty, and Smitty.

This photo above was taken: about 35 years after my Chief Petty Officer  father retired from the US Navy where he served as a Hospital Corpsman; and roughly, 18 years before my son completed his Hospital Corpsman training (as I predicted my son  would be given at least two nicknames during the career: “Smitty” and “Doc.”

Both of them completed field medicine training at Camp Pendleton and became fond of San Diego (“It’s too damn cold there!” my father would say most other places in on the planet).

In between those milestones, I was born—in the same base where father had undergone his Corpsman training during World War II.

I’m glad the two of them got to hang out a few times, both seemed to have fun. Though I doubt that my father would have approved of the young ‘un wearing a Yankees hat on a trip to Boston.

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“No Openings”

Posted on June 5, 2026 by Scott Smith

In the previous millennium, when most people still wrote résumés and rejection letters on typewriters, I found an envelope in my mailbox from a company to which I’d sent my rez a few weeks prior. 

I bounded up the stairs to my apartment and ripped open the seal before I’d even closed the door. Inside the envelope was the cover letter that I’d written and signed. Somebody had written “No openings,” with a ball-point pen at the top of the letter. 

At that moment, I was infuriated. However, I later realized that they had made an actual effort to reply: writing the two words, addressing an envelope to me and getting it stamped and mailed. So many other organizations didn’t do jack shit.

In the past couple of years, I’ve read the agonizing stories of people who have applied for dozens and dozens of job postings and have received only a few replies, if any at all.

I know that there are many companies using AI to make (or influence) staffing decisions and I get why they are doing that. Though stop the damn ghosting. If you are a recruiter, hiring manager, etc. and your candidate-selection methods are AI-reliant, you absolutely should use said  AI to provide candidates with timely, meaningful updates about their status in the hiring process.

Though in this modern era of automation, you should strive for something more elegant than “No Openings.”

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Pure Substance Content

Posted on June 4, 2026 by Scott Smith

I finished up the school year yesterday and this morning I revisited something I wrote before I started working in education four years ago.

Predictions about the future have never been in short supply. However, tech predictions have seemed nearly ubiquitous in recent years.

This seems as good a time as any to  wade into the tech-prediction pool:

“Organizations that can ensure systematic and efficient reuse of content will provide clarity through consistency, and delivery of better, personalized, content experiences for consumers; therefore these organization will gain a competitive advantage over competitors in their space.”

To be honest, this is not a new prediction.  It’s from a position paper I wrote for my Dot-Com Era employer….in the year 2000 (How’s that for content reuse?).

A few years ago, I thought about that 2000 position paper, as I pondered the  current (in 2020) state of content strategy, including single-source content and content reuse.  Roughly 3,500 words later, I developed a (rather extended) chemistry metaphor which classified types of content of as:

  • Elements
  • Molecules
  • Pure Substances (which are elements or molecules)
  • Mixtures

(I’ll explain more about this metaphor in future post, but you should note that my scientific credentials are unimpeachable: I MINORED in Political SCIENCE!)

I have a bit of downtime, thus going to revisit those 3,500-ish words and harvest some of my thoughts, assuming they make sense, and are relevant. I’m going to try to express them in  blog posts, and perhaps in-person presentations. I’m looking forward to getting the thick of content strategy discussions again.

 

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Where’s The Boss?

Posted on January 16, 2026 by Scott Smith

The video of the two Target employees—who are US citizens, and minors— being abducted (call it what it was) from their suburban Twin Cities store, by ICE or Border Patrol agents  is appalling.

(I’m not going to post the video here, you can find it, and watch it, at your discretion. )

I’m equally bothered by what you don’t see: nowhere do you see Target’s floor manager, the general manager, or security… acting to halt or mitigate the kidnapping (again, call it what it is). Where’s the boss?

Yes, it did happen fast, but the incident began in the store’s parking lot, before the first child was tackled in the entranceway where a struggle ensued. Then the second youth was kidnapped (call it what it is) in the store, off camera.

There was time to intervene. Store management had to be aware of what was happening and seemingly didn’t do jack shit about it.

I don’t have much faith that the kidnappers will be charged by the federal government. Though I expect there will legions of pro-bono attorneys who will volunteer step bring a child-endangerment lawsuit against Target.

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