John Sumser

The questions we ask change the world we see.
Threads = @johnsumser

Principal Analyst, Senior Fellow, Conference Board.

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

"How Referrals Work" by @JohnSumser on @LinkedIn http://t.co/03PGx48AFB

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

I’ve started writing regularly again.

https://t.co/nSmFQ6VVCl

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

Checking in.

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

All About That Bass - Postmodern Jukebox https://t.co/aO7nvLJ619
@animal @sbrownehr @SylvieDahl @MichaelKannisto

[Pam Stevens @Pam_Stevens]

⁦The always captivating ⁦@heatherbussing⁩ packs the house for pay equity insights ⁦@HRTechConf⁩ Women in HR Technology Summit! @experianemployerservices applauds👏

[Sylvia Dahlby @SylvieDahl]

Time of The Season - Company of Thieves (Live from Daryl's House) https://t.co/Hbl2TNlHGx #HRMusicShare @JohnSumser @animal @sbrownehr

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

Joe Craven & The Sometimers Friend of The Devil #deadcoverproject https://t.co/QRP5wamdAj amazing interpretation of asrandard @animal @SylvieDahl @sbrownehr @MichaelKannisto

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

But, just because you can’t measure it doesn’t mean you can’t nurture it

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

"If you can measure it, you can nurture it." - Nela Richardson, ADP Research Institute. #adpaday

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

Shady Grove .., Joe Craven and the Sometimers. @SylvieDahl @animal @sbrownehr @MichaelKannisto https://t.co/rreSfOeEfj

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

The heart of ethics in AI implementations is meaningful representation of a full range of lived experiences in the product design process. The ADP management team is diverse in ways that make it likely that their tools will be effective in ways that others can't yet. #adpaday

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

We spend a lot of time and energy making sure that our sellers are in the right opportunity with the right tools at the right time. #adpaday

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

Every HR organization reflects the nature of the company it serves. Best practices are better understood as performance-enhancing options than mandatory maturity targets. #adpaday

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

the analyst community, which has been historically male dominated, has a majority female representation at #adpaday a very welcome change

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

#adpaday An interesting development as systems change from pure transactional to more human/more intelligent. The data that informs transactions is beginning to take on fluid characteristics. A gestalt is becoming observable: every transaction has an emotional, personal element

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

#adpaday People analytics began as a separate data function that accumulated info from applications. That's changing.

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

https://t.co/OCM01wyoiW

[Dave Winer @davewiner]

We should retroactively free Americans who were enslaved prior to the 13th Amendment. They should be thought of today as full citizens of the United States to whom unthinkable harm was done.

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

@heatherbussing

[The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor]

What the hell is an ampersand and why does it look like that?!

The first thing you need to know is that "&" used to be the 27th letter of the alphabet...

But there are three parts to this story. And the first begins over two thousand years ago in Ancient Rome with a single word: et. It's the Latin for "and". At some point Roman scribes started combining the two letters of et into a single symbol, which was the ancestor of our modern &.

The earliest example of the "et" symbol is actually from graffiti in Pompeii. In any case, it did not disappear with the fall of the Roman Empire.

Latin survived as the language of the Catholic Church and of scholarship in Medieval Europe. Scribes during the Dark Ages continued to use the & symbol. It evolved down the centuries, in places losing any semblance of the letters e and t whatsoever.

The second part of the story is that during the 18th and 19th centuries, as education and the teaching of literacy spread, & was added to the end of the alphabet as a sort of 27th letter.

On a related note, although "et cetera" is now usually just abbreviated as etc., for a long time it was instead abbreviated as "&c". The & was for et and the c for cetera.

The third and final part of the story is about how the alphabet was taught to children — and how it was read out loud.

As this 1822 Glossary of Words and Phrases explains, it had been normal during the Renaissance, when speaking the alphabet, to add "per se" before any letter which could also be a word on its own — "per se" means "by itself" in Latin.

Take the letter A, which can also be a word of its own. When reading out the alphabet people would say "A, per se A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, per se I..." and so on. O was also considered a word of its own.

Which means, when people got to the end of the alphabet, with & being the 27th letter, they would say: "S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, and per se &."

When this old way of reading the alphabet was taught to children in the 18th century and they were reciting it aloud, they would garble "and per se " into what eventually became... ampersand.

A Dic­tion­ary of Slang and Col­lo­quial Eng­lish from 1905 relates some of the many other pronunciations school children apparently came up with:

"Am­persand. The sign &; am­persand. Vari­ants: Ann Passy Ann; an­pasty; an­dpassy; an­parse; aper­sie; per-se; am­passy; am-passy-ana; am­pene-and; am­pus-and; ampsyand; am­pazad; am­siam; am­pus-end; ap­perse-and; em­per­siand; am­perzed; and zumzy-zan."

Well, of all the many pronunciations that might have stuck, it was "ampersand" which came to be accepted and is now the official name for &... rather than zumzy-zan. So, from hurried Roman scribes to unruly school children, that's where "&" came from.

[Dave Winer @davewiner]

If slavery was so great, why doesn't Desantis offer slavery to white folks? His kids should be slaves right? Why wouldn't they want to be slaves? They should be be lining up.

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

@heatherbussing @megbear After model collapse, creators with a real POV rooted in experience will become invaluable.

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

Cc @heatherbussing @megbear

[@timnitGebru (@dair-community.social/bsky.social) @timnitGebru]

We received this heartbreaking email by someone who was falsely accused of using "AI" to generate an essay & got a ZERO on their assignment. How many people's lives are being ruined like this? This should be unacceptable. Are there any journalists investigating stuff like this?

[John Sumser @JohnSumser]

@heatherbussing @megbear Thinking beyond education....It's going to be impossible for companies to avoid using generative tools to create content. Knowledge-organizing entities (search engines/social media) will figure out how to detect and evaluate content by production method with the same accuracy.