An interesting infographic on working from home with a collection of interesting statistics. I was particularly interested to see the split of people and where they think they are most productive – pretty much a third at home, a third in the office and third at either. For me, it depends on what I am doing at the time.
An interesting article in the Wall street Journal entitled Doodling for Dollars says:
Put down that smartphone; pick up that crayon.
Employees at a range of businesses are being encouraged by their companies to doodle their ideas and draw diagrams to explain complicated concepts to colleagues.
While whiteboards long have been staples in conference rooms, companies such as Facebook Inc. are incorporating whiteboards, chalkboards and writable glass on all sorts of surfaces to spark creativity.
This is something I have noticed too. People are so distracted by technology these days that they need to be drawn into a meeting before they really engage. The most productive meetings I have are ones where there are a small number of people all contributing to a whiteboard. It’s not possible to be a part-time member of that type of meeting, you’re either in, or you are out.
The most popular posts on this site continue to be ones on Rich Pictures which is a form of doodling to communicate a concept. I regularly walk into meetings with sheets of A3 paper in order to draw out what I think I’m hearing, this often takes the form of a mind-map, but is just as likely to be a spider diagram linking together the conversations.
In a follow-up to here very popular TED talk on vulnerability Brene Brown talks about the impact of that first talk and the power of shame.
In talking about the impact of the initial talk she talks about requests from the business community to go and speak, but not to speak about vulnerability to talk about innovation, creativity and change, it’s then that she uses these words:
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change”
How true those words are.
Does the bullet point enhance the story, or destroy the story – the choice is yours.
Many things are best communicated through humour and Rowan Manahan has a great way of communicating the absurdity of much of what I see every day.
";” alt=””>
I’m not one of those PowerPoint bashers who blame the tool for the things that people create with it. People need much more help than they currently get with presentation skills. In the hands of a good presenter the tool can make the experience wonderful. I sat in a breakfast session on Saturday morning where a friend amazed us with an overview of the sun. It might not sound like the most exciting subject, but believe me, we were all transfixed. The experience simply wouldn’t have been the same without the wonderful videos and picture, there wasn’t a bullet point in sight. The point that people miss time and time again was that the presentation was complementary to the story, enhancing our experience.
(I suspect my friend wasn’t using PowerPoint, but using Keynote instead, the point still applies though. I’ve seen some pretty dreadful Keynote presentation too)
Back to the regular Friday them of how we make things more visual, today’s example is – the news.
Newsmap has been around in beta for a little while, but I’ve never written about it. Here is the news for today (4th November 2011 at 8:20) for the UK in visual form:
It’s not the only visual news site out there, but I like this one.
I have to admit though, it always makes me slightly sad, while many of these things are really important, some of the things that get people attention are not important at all.
On a lighter note: It always manages to highlight something I hadn’t seen, and that’s exciting for an information addict.
I’ve joked for some time that I’m waiting for the first leader of a business to class themselves as Emperor. It seems to me that business leader job titles have evolved from Director to Managing Director through to Chairman and on to President and more recently to Chief Executive Officer. leaving those behind them pick up the names that they have previously cast off.
Definitions are part of the world that I inhabit. Sometimes I’m required to spend more time on agreeing the definition of something.
For years now people have tried, and largely failed, to be clear about the definition of the role of ‘architect’ within the general IT arena.
My view has mostly been that in this arena definitions are pointless because they rarely have any influence on the capabilities of the people that I am working with. Solution Architect, IT Architects, Enterprise Architect, Data Architect, Information Architect, Technical Architect all seemed to result in a very similar set of capabilities in the people employed.
I’m starting to change my mind though, but not because I think that the terms themselves have any value. My change of mind is being driven by a different reason – because other people care.
It doesn’t really matter to me what ‘type’ of architect people define me as long as I get to do interesting work. The problem is that others perceive what comes with the definition. they expect a XYZ Architect to do something different to an ABC Architect.
People’s understanding of what each of these definitions actually means covers a very broad spectrum and people fight bitterly for the ‘higher-ground’ definitions.
This shouldn’t really surprise me because as I said at the beginning I live in a world were definitions are important to people.
If you still think that carrot-and-stick is still a good metaphor for how to motivate people then you should watch this 10 minute animation of Daniel Pink giving an overview of his book Drive:
Daniel Pink: Drive
A 40 minute version of the who talk it’s available here.
If you think that Daniel is being a bit idealistic in his interpretation of the science then you should also watch Clay Shirky’s presentation to TED on Cognitive Surplus.
That’s right – money doesn’t motivate other than in the very basic of activities.
I love the way that these animations are a bit like an active rich picture.
For over 25 years now I’ve worked in an environment that has meant that I’ve regularly seen something new that has got me excited about its possibilities.
I’ve become a bit more discerning about the things that I invest my time and energy in, but I continue to be amazed by the ingenuity of people.
Long may it continue.
I’ve been doing quite a lot of work recently with App-V and Office 2010. During this activity we’ve come across an invaluable article on some of the issues and limitations that you are going to face if you go down that route:
A really interesting concept video from Corning.
";” alt=””>
Much of this might seem a bit far out to many, but the reality is that much of it already exists, at least in experimental form.
The other day i was sat pondering what had happened to the identity Cards infrastructure after the project had been scrapped.
Well today I came across this video:
";” alt=””>
I’ve watched the progress of the UK Identity Cards project for quite some time, primarily because of the writing’s of Kim Cameron.
From Kim’s perspective the project was doomed from the start, because it broke the fundamental Laws of Identity.
Readers of Identityblog will recall that the British scheme was exceptional in breaking so many of the Laws of Identity at once. It flaunted the first law – User control and Consent – since citizen participation was mandatory. It broke the second – Minimal Disclosure for a Constrained Use – since it followed the premise that as much information as possible should be assembled in a central location for whatever uses might arise… The third law of Justifiable Parties was not addressed given the centralized architecture of the system, in which all departments would have made queries and posted updates to the same database and access could have been extended at the flick of a wrist. And the fourth law of “Directed Identity” was a clear non-goal, since the whole idea was to use a single identifier to unify all possible information.
It also stands out as an example of poor Conceptual Integrity – get it wrong at the outset and you end up in a complete mess.
This blog lives in the Long Tail.
If you are reading this blog you too are dwelling in the the Long Tail.
The concept of The Long Tail was popularised by Chris Anderson of Wired. There’s even a book, and it’s been around for a while now.
Here’s a really clumsy explanation of the concept. The top 20% of a probability curve of popularity are very popular, but there is more volume in the other 80% of the less popular. In other words, for those watching in colour, the yellow bit is bigger than the green bit.
I know that some people get millions of visitors to their site, and still others get tens and hundreds of thousands.
I’ve been writing it for years, and I enjoy doing what I do, but I don’t get tens of thousands of visitors. On my busiest month I got 1261 visits.
There are some pop-star blogs, this isn’t one of them, but there are a set of regular readers and I get comments from all sorts of people. I’m not invisible, I’m just out there in the Long Tail.
The other day Seth Godin talked about being Famous to the family:
The way my family plays 20 Questions is that one person silently chooses a famous person and then everyone in the car has 20 yes or no questions to figure out who it is.
A variation that was briefly popular was to redefine "famous" as "famous to the family." You could announce that you had chosen this variation and then pick, say, Ziggy the painter. Zigmund might not be known to the public or the history books, but in our family, he’s famous.
I’m fascinated by a new category, though. "Famous to the tribe." Is Xeni Jardin famous? Merlin Mann? What about Anne McCrossan? Never mind that Warhol thing about 15 minutes…
Everyone is famous to 1,500 people.
Welcome to the tribe folks it’s great to have you along for the journey.
Graham Chastney 