The series of O’Reilly hacks books is tons of fun. Despite how you don’t want to hear about hacks for certain things (Brain surgery, Nuclear weapons, etc.) the idea of sharing the high leverage little tricks is awesome.

So here’s Part 1 of what will be a series on writing hacks: this first one is about getting started.

Writing hacks, Part 1: Starting

Posted in Essays, On writing | 21 Comments »

Foo camp is an annual O’Reilly unconference event and I was fortunate enough to be there again for foocamp06. It’s an invite event, but all the details, notes and summaries are public at the event wiki.

Disclaimer: If ra-ra reports annoy you, skip this post - I’m positive about the whole thing. Yes I’m an O’Reilly author, yes I think the FOO gripes are mostly noise, and Yes I realize how convenient these opinions might appear to be.

Highlights:

• My best unconference experience. I had conversations with so many good people outside my circles it’s beyond comparison. It was an intensely fun, intellectually challenging, and an entirely social weekend - I finished off a Moleskine with all the notes, contacts and ideas I found.
• There were often a dozen simultaneous sessions (plus various interactive machines, projects, and, well, people) and I gave into chaos and jumped in: there was no right way, a metaphor for many things. I missed lots, but didn’t mind.
• Random cool memories (skip if this annoys): Learned brain memory tricks from IMDB’s s HB Segel, had red wine spilled on me by Brian McLaughlin, sat across from Ray Ozzie as he showed me the history of shorthand, had an awesome audience including Kevin Kelly and Hal Varian listen to my innovation talk (can you say role reversal?), learned a new world of termenology for novel sex acts (innovation comes in all kinds), waxed philosophic by the fire till 4am with the folks from Poly9, and got to talk about Hyper-G to someone other than my dog.
• Most people let me pick their brains for the innovation book - some even tracked me down after my session (it’s not too late), including Backyard Ballistic’s author William Gustelle, a work I’m a huge fan of - I had no idea its author was in the building. I highly recommend his work.
• Joshua Schachter’s “That sucked” session, where the floor was open for people to tell tales of things gone wrong. Every conference in the world needs a session like this: we learn more from failure than success. Paul Graham’s tale of the bug that caused a plotter pen to fly across the room will stay in my mind forever.
• The fact that i was so caught up with cool shit that, despite my best intentions, I missed Jane McConigal’s Zen Scavenger hunt for the second year in a row.
• Jogging Saturday at 8am on the awesome trail behind the apple grove. Awesome because I was 1) actually up at 8am 2) actually running and 3) had it mostly to myself.

Innovation session:

• Was fun and friendly with lots of discussion. Had about 15 people which was perfect.
• Dion Hinchcliffe videotaped it, and offered to send me a link. I’ll post when I have it. Catarina Flake has her notes from the session.
• If you were there, I want to know your name so I can thank you, let you know when the book is out, or possibly get you a reviewer copy. Please say hi.
• Known participants (thanks!): Hal Varian, Kevin Kelly, Chromatic, Catarina Flake, Rob Hayes, Jennifer Tidwell, Gina Trapani, Havoc Pennington, Tara Hunt, Paul Hammond, Dion Hinchcliffe.

Lowlights / Observations:

• The variance in session quality is astronomical: which is amazing as this had little impact on my total FOO experience. However a “how to run a good unconference session” tip sheet with light touch advice and examples would close the gap (draft in progress).
• It’s my own fault, but I realized towards the end there were no writing focused sessions. With dozens of other authors/writers running around, something literary would have been fun.
• I’m guessing fewer sessions were recorded or taped this year. I don’t know why, but the vibe was much less about blogging, posting and publishing in real-time than last year. Maybe this is not a lowlight - not sure.
• Missed FooBarCrawl. Hadn’t even heard of this until I got home. Would have planned for it and went even though I live in Seattle. Awesome idea. If I’m invited back next year, I’d definitely do this.
• Need to ask people who run sessions to do a better job capturing whatever was there: the post session notes are sparse, despite the wiki living on forever. Its sad to look up an amazing session I missed, or could have post hoc contributed to, only to hear the crickets of a blank wiki page.
• (Fantasy) Wished for an audio/video wall between FOO and BAR camp, by the fire. Plus there should be a planet wide primal scream done simultaneously by all campers world wide.

I’m still jazzed about the whole thing: I haven’t stopped writing since I got home Sunday night.

Thanks to Tim, Sara, all the people who brought cool things to share and everyone who makes this thing happen.

foocamp06

Posted in Innovation, Teaching/Training, Travel | 5 Comments »

If you like the original british series w/David Brent, you’ll dig this:

Part1 and Part2

(link from Ario, Rbanks)

Posted in Management, Microsoft, Teaching/Training | No Comments »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion group:

We’re early on a project and doing lots of prototypes and crazy UI exploration. But as the design manager, I know its almost time to turn the corner and focus. My problem is my team is in love with how they’re working, and I don’t know how to harvest the idea farm, without killing the morale of all the farmers.

How do I turn down the velocity on idea generation without turning it off? We need to get at least one level deeper in focus and stop thinking broadly, but I don’t know how to safely make that happen.

- Harvesting the idea farm

Posted in Design, Innovation, UX-Clinic | 1 Comment »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I manage a rapid prototyping team in for a major consumer software product. We partner with real dev teams from around the org, and explore out ideas they don’t have time for. The group is new and I’m under continual pressure from above to justify the group’s existence (a task of many middle managers) -  I’ve asked my team to think about ways to measure value, but I get the risks: people may game the measurements, or the measuring may kill the creative work - - but I’m asking anyway as I can use the ammunition.

So my challenge is how to satisfy the view of big management, which is measurement centric and the language of VPs, but also satisfy the needs for innovation, protecting the environment from passion killing rules and structure.

How can I be the bridge between these two views without being two-faced or deceptive about what’s going on? Or is this exactly what managers of innovative teams in more production centric organizations always have to do?

- Looking for the benevolent Janus

Posted in Innovation, Management, PM-Clinic | 1 Comment »

Mindcamp, Seattle’s un-conference event, opened registration today. The conference is Nov 11th/12, Saturday/Sunday, $29.00.

I had fun at the first two, and if you’ve never done an un-conference before I highly recommend it (write-up’s for mindcamp 1.0 and 2.0).

MindCamp 3.0 Registration

Posted in Seattle | No Comments »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion group:

We’re supposed to be designing a short tutorial for an on-line banking web-app. One of our designers made a kick-ass prototype that centers on humor (excellent cartoons of dropped ATM cards, customers crying after early withdrawls, etc.) - but the rest of the team is afraid to use it. Everyone from marketing to management has no experience using humor in design, and I need some help.

I think it’s totally appropriate, but I can’t for the life of me think of other examples where humor has been used in mainstream designs.

Can humor be appropriate in design? How do you decide when? Do you know of any examples of mainstream designs that use humor, even in documentation or support? Or are there good reasons why 99% of all design work everywhere is humorless?

Posted in Design, UX-Clinic | 5 Comments »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

The manager for my team is one of the company founders. He’s smart, but oh man, is he annoying. He has a litany of habits that make my life, as a team leader, frustrating: from disrupting my authority in front of others, to changing his mind and then changing it back, to just being downright egotistical, snide and resistant to ideas from others. He is smart and does contribute, and listens about 1/3rd of the time, just enough to prevent the other founders from doing anything about him.

So I have to work with this man: he’s not going anywhere, and he has significant power over me, my team, and the company. So how can I protect myself and my team from his many less than delightful habits?

- Stuck in Annoyanceville

Posted in Management, PM-Clinic | 2 Comments »

We’re almost there - thanks to many of you the interview count for the innovation book is now nearly 85. But being the lunatic that I am, instead of cashing out on my bets, I’ve doubled down. I now have most of life savings on the line, betting, with your help, I can break 100.

Up for grabs are:

• a $150 gift certificate
• A subscription to O’Reilly’s Make Magazine
• A selection of O’Reilly books
• A $50 gift certificate
• The good mojo that comes with helping a writer write a book

If you miss the deadline, I’d still love your interview. I just can’t give you any prizes (other than the mojo of course).
So please, if you have opinions on innovation, take a moment and help me out.

Posted in Innovation, Uncategorized | No Comments »

One question that’s coming up in in writing the innovation book is this: when has an innovation taken away something from your life that you valued?

For example: I used to love making funny answering machine messages. But now my wife and I have cell-phones. Few people call our home number anymore. The joy of having a shared message, a shared way to greet people, and the fun of making silly messages together, is gone.

Cell-phones are good - but just because they’ve progressed us in some ways doesn’t mean they haven’t left some good things behind.

I’m looking for examples of how innovations have eliminated things you miss, for any reason (I mean, I still miss rotary phones for some strange reason, so nostalgia counts).

Reasons you might miss something:

• It was actually better than “the innovation”
• It had some good qualities the innovation doesnt have
• The older style appeals to you
• The older thing is more reliable or durable
• It reminds you of good things (memories, times, people) the innovation doesn’t

Have any examples? I’d love to hear ‘em. Please name the new thing, the old thing, and why you miss it. thx.

Posted in Innovation | 21 Comments »

So far more than 40 of you have taken a few minutes to add your thoughts to mine for the innovation book I’m working on. You guys rock! But… but I need more of you.

You see, in a writerly stupor, I placed a rather large bet with some dangerous people that I could get at least 50 people to fill out my crazy interview form by Friday - and I’m getting nervous. And there is nothing less useful to the universe than a nervous writer.

So please, if you have opinions on innovation, take a moment and help me out.

If you’ve already taken some time, thanks! But do consider who else might enjoy adding their thoughts, and spread the word.

Posted in Innovation | 4 Comments »

We all like to think we’re good at spotting BS, but how is it done? and why do people make stuff up to begin with? I take a shot in 2000 words.

Essay: How to detect bullshit

Posted in Essays, Management, philosophy | 3 Comments »