Build something cool in 24 hours

Kathy Sierra writes:

"The notion is this: stick people in a house for 48 hours, with a goal to have something created at the end. Depending on the nature of the goal, participants may be collaborating (like building a game together) or working alone (musicians composing, writers writing, etc.). The key is the process--a process that forces you to supress the 'inner judges' that stifle creativity, and gives you not just permission but an order to create as much as possible, as fast as possible... even if what you end up with is 97% crap.

The point is to learn something valuable from the experience... something you'd likely never get to in your day job, even when--as it is for Squirrel and his game developer cohorts -- what you do in the jam is what you do in your day job. In other words, by working under the ad-hoc/jam constraints, you're able to 'improve your craft' and discover things about yourself and the work that you might never find in your traditional work environment. It takes the idea of rapid iterations to a completely different (dramatically compressed) time scale. What could take weeks, months, or years to evolve suddenly happens in hours. And the work never leaves your personal brain RAM! No more cost of switching contexts as you go from personal life to meetings to actual work to commuting to whatever... this is 100% being in the zone, where each hour spent in one of these jams is worth perhaps 10 or more hours at work in your usual environment.

The idea can be mapped to virtually anything for which you want to encourage maximum creativity, innovation, and most importantly... getting something done. While it may be a Big Deal to start your own Foo/Bar-style self-organizing conference, the total immersion 'ad-lib jam' model is something we can all start in our home town, wherever that may be. All you need is a handful of participants (maybe 4-8), some delivery/take-out menus for chinese food and pizza (revise to reflect what goes for 'fast delivered food' in your culture), maybe a few pillows and blankets, a whiteboard and some markers, and whatever other tools of the trade your participants need to make things.

(Sidebar: out of the 15 or so people at Squirrel's informal session, the most engaged participant was Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.)"

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I think I need more than "a whiteboard", but that's just me. YMMV. . .

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Organize like Noah

"My Guide to Being Organised is really nothing more than a series of easy, simple lifestyle changes which can help you organize every aspect of your life. Your model when dealing with large amounts of data should be the biblical character of Noah, who you will recall built the ark and saved all the different animals. By utilizing a simple organizational system of collecting two of each animal, a male and a female, Noah was able to make sense of the chaos, convince others of both the seriousness of the situation and the efficacy of his solution and impartially sidestep many personality conflicts (“I’m sorry, we already have two elephants”) and ultimately end up on a leaky boat with thousands of defecating animals for many days. Noah’s system not only helped him organize his life, but also rejected any input which did not fit into his system, which is why you’re never gonna see no unicorns. In actual fact, as I look back on it, Noah makes a really terrible model for personal organization; it was a bone-headed idea in the first place and I apologize for it, since none of us is getting any younger over here, tick, tock, tick.."

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I have never tried this model, but I think I know a couple of people that have. . .

Technogly Sith?

Seattle PI's Microsoft blog:

"'Microsoft is full of a lot of really good technologists. Probably one of my most exciting parts of the job is just how many people get technology at Microsoft and how fast they understand it."

Bill Hilf, former IBM linux specialist who now heads Microsoft's Linux and open-source lab as the company's director of platform technology strategy.

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Alas, if they only used their power for good and not evil. . .

(my alternate caption was: "sounds like there is a new replacement for the keg party! Good news: savings on health insurance pays for it; glaucoma at an all time low.")

Unfortunately, it is fun to slam Microsoft but it probably is not completely true. I don't doubt that the average worker is very smart. I don't think they are all Sith. Most of Oppenheimer's team really got the science; they just failed to realize how profit, greed, and shortsightedness would misuse their efforts.

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NCAA, Indian Nicknames, and priorities.

Gov Bush was quoted by Sports Illustrated on the NCAA ban of Native American nicknames:

"'You know what they ought to be worried about? The graduation rates of most college athletes,' the second-term Florida governor said. 'Maybe if they had some suggestions on that, that universities could apply and could implement, they could be doing a service to all of us.'"

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I really think this should be left up to the tribes and the institutions and not the NCAA. Perhaps their should be binding negoiations or arbitration with a deadline that would allow all to have their input and then take action. But the NCAA needs to spend time on other things.

Don't you just hate it when Jeb Bush is smarter than a bunch of College Presidents and PhD's. . . (that one is for my mother and father-in-law!!).

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