Mon, Jan 31, 2005
Pizza in Cambridge, Organic Food in Oregon
#
As the SuperBowl rapidly approaches, many of you are undoubtedly
putting in your advance orders for pizza. For those of you in
Boston, I recommend Beauty's Pizza.
My old college mate, EricSilberstein, owns the joint, and if he's as
good at making pizza as he is at starting companies, you'd better get in line now. (I95)
Speaking of techie friends and their restaurants, if you're ever
cruising I-5 in southern Oregon, stop by Summer Jo's for dinner. My ex-DDJ colleague,
MikeSwaine, owns the restaurant and organic farm with his partner,
NancyGroth, and the food there is fantastic. (I96)
/food |
Posted at 12:16am
Sun, Jan 30, 2005
Leadership and Collaboration Across Different Fields
#
Today's LosAngelesTimes sports page
related
a story from HoustonRockets coach JeffVanGundy about meeting
BillClinton. Van Gundy said: (I8P)
He [Clinton] said, "We should get together some time and talk about
leadership." I said, "That would be great." He said, "Yeah, I got to
go to Asia for an economic summit. Then I got to go to the Middle
East." I was thinking, "I got TNT Thursday." This guy is talking about
real things. I'm talking about the Pistons. (I8Q)
On the one hand, it's nice to see someone in professional sports
keeping things in perspective. On the other hand, leadership in
politics isn't necessarily much different than leadership in sports. (I8R)
I was on a conference call last week with some folks who were
discussing case studies of great collaboration. The bias among the
group was that examples of collaboration in business were "concrete"
or "practical" and that collaboration in other fields were not. The
implication is that if you're interested in collaboration in business,
you need to study collaboration in business. This is certainly true.
Then there's the corollary: Collaboration in other contexts isn't
relevant. I think this attitude is crap. Unfortunately, it's widely
held. (I8S)
If people are serious about learning more about collaboration, they
need to understand it in all contexts, not just their own.
Collaboration ultimately boils down to dealing with people, which is
not a domain-specific problem. (I8T)
/collaboration |
Posted at 10:51pm
Squeezebox Digital Music Player
#
JonCheyer pointed me to his new favorite toy,
Squeezebox, from
SlimDevices. It's a small digital music player -- comes in wired and
wireless versions -- that plays a variety of audio formats: MP3, WMA,
even Ogg Vorbis and SHOUTcast. Squeezebox gets the music off one of
your computers which runs the Squeezebox server software. The
software is written in
Perl and is OpenSource. The device itself looks nice, and has both
digital and audio speaker outputs. At $280 for the wireless version,
the price is a bit high, but as Jon points out, these folks are doing
it OpenSource with all the pluses associated with that. If that's
your cup of tea, it's worth the premium. (I8I)
/tech |
Posted at 10:32pm
Thu, Jan 27, 2005
PB&J Humor
#
My first exposure to programming came in the third grade, when my
elementary school got a fresh shipment of Apple IIs. (My only prior
experience with computers was from poring over those old RadioShack
TRS-80 comics featuring Superman. Anyone remember those?) My third
grade teacher, Mrs. Keltner, introduced us to programming by asking us
to write down instructions for making peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches. After collecting our recipes, she surprised my class the
next day by literally following our instructions. Apparently, she
hammed it up, and the class had a ball. One kid wrote, "Put peanut
butter on bread," so she put the jar on top of the bread. (I80)
After going through a few recipes that were far too general, she
finally came across a working recipe: mine. Yes, I was anal as far
back as the third grade. My prize: A correctly constructed PB&J
sandwich. (I81)
I didn't get to experience the glory of winning firsthand, as for
some reason, I was absent for the first part of school that day. All
I remember was coming in later that afternoon, seeing a sandwich on my
desk, and asking my friends, "What the hell?" (I82)
That sandwich had an amazingly (perhaps disturbingly) powerful effect
on me. Years later, when I was teaching computers to kids at the
Midpeninsula Boys & Girls club, I decided
to use the same lesson. Worked like a charm. The kids had great fun
with it. (I83)
Yesterday, I spent half a day giving a group of nonprogrammers an
overview of the software development process, and I thought it would
be fun to do the ol' PB&J exercise. Frankly, I expected the results
to be about the same as it was with kids, but I underestimated these
folks. Everyone wrote nicely detailed instructions. One woman wrote
a damn treatise on the subject. I actually had to ask her to wrap it
up. (I84)
The funniest comment came from a guy who tapped his colleague on the
shoulder and asked, "Did you write, 'Call my wife'?" (I85)
/tech/programming |
Posted at 4:44pm
Fri, Jan 14, 2005
FLOSS Usability Sprint, Feb 18-20
#
BlueOxenAssociates and the good folks at AspirationTech are organizing
a usability sprint for open source
software. The sprint will be held at JeffShults's fantastic new
facility in SanFrancisco, February
18-20. Those who should apply: (HTW)
- Developers who want to improve the usability of their OpenSource
projects. (HTX)
- Usability practitioners who want to help improve the usability of
OpenSource software. (HTY)
I got the idea from a breakout session at the
Advocacy
Developer's Convergence last June. A few months later, I
accidentally ran into ZackRosen on the CalTrain, and our conversation
pumped me up about the idea. The next step was to find a partner in
this endeavour, and AspirationTech was the natural choice. (HTZ)
This event is going to be very exciting. It will be the first
gathering of developers, usability practitioners, and users devoted to
improving the usability of OpenSource software. It's going to be
high-energy and productive, as all AspirationTech workshops are. And,
it's going to have a real and immediate impact on the quality of
several applications. (HU0)
Most importantly (from BlueOxen's point of view), it will showcase
outstanding collaborative processes and tools, both face-to-face and
online. As always with BlueOxen projects, the goal is for this kind
of event to be replicable by anyone, and the expectation is that this
sprint will be the first of many. (HU1)
Go to the web site if you're
interested in participating. Contact
me if you're interested in sponsoring the event or if you have
questions or thoughts. (HU2)
/blueoxen |
Posted at 11:48am
Sun, Jan 02, 2005
Camels and Group Process
#
This morning, GailTaylor told me where she first came across the term,
"GroupGenius." From the TomorrowMakers'
FAQ: (GIK)
In 1976 I stumbled on LawrenceHalprin's personal notebooks in the
library. He had written the words "group genius" beside one of his
stories. At that moment I realized that my work was all about what has
comed to be called GroupGenius. (GIL)
The story? (GIM)
"A camel is a horse designed by a committee." (GIN)
This old saw demeans the camel - which is an admirably designed
animal (for the environment in which he lives) and the group design
process. It is not the ideas of colllective creativity which has
failed but the committee idea itself: which attempts to function
without clear understanding of the necessary processes involved in
group problem solving. (LawrenceHalprin, 1974) (GIO)
/collaboration |
Posted at 12:00pm
Sat, Jan 01, 2005
Red and Yellow Threads
#
GailTaylor likes to talk about the need for TheRedThread and
YellowThreads in groups. TheRedThread is a concept from filmmaking.
It's the tie that binds, an element found in every aspect of a
project that helps create a unified whole. AliciaBramlett, an artist
and filmmaker who often works with MGTaylor, has
written a
beautiful description of TheRedThread and its role in filmmaking. (GFZ)
Gail first described YellowThreads to me a few weeks ago as we were
discussing the participants of an upcoming BlueOxenAssociates event.
If you look carefully, you will find YellowThreads woven throughout
oriental carpets. They themselves are not apparent, but their
presence makes the surrounding colors more vivid. (GG0)
/collaboration |
Posted at 8:03pm
Phish and Collaboration
#
ToddJohnston told me a story about Phish,
which he read in NubarAlexanian's book,
Where
Music Comes From. When the band practices, one member will start
riffing, then the other ones will join in one-by-one, all with their
eyes closed. When a band member feels like they're all in sync, he
yells, "Hey!" If all the members yell at the same time, the band is
collaborating. (GFT)
/collaboration |
Posted at 7:28pm
