February 23, 2009
Random, Strategy
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Regurgitate (definition 3 from TheFreeDictionary.com)
3. to reproduce (ideas or facts) without understanding them [Medieval Latin re- back + gurgitare to flood]
Please note… I had an idea here, but it ran in several threads and they didn’t all quite join up.
I read blogs, I read articles, I watch many RSS feeds.
Some people create new stuff but mostly they just regurgitate it. I get the same story from 4 or 5 sources and not one of them has added anything new or original, okay some may have re-written the words but they have not added to the story, they haven’t done any extra research and furthered the cause, they have just passed it on, and sometimes without even adding any attribution to where the story originated! I mean I’ve already read it three times so I know you didn’t write it.
I guess not everyone has a million RSS feeds they watch so some people will only see it once. Twitter seems to be the same, or in fact worse. As a few people post a story the rest clamour to show how up to date they are by passing it on as quickly as they can.
I am worried. Whilst I love the power people now have to create, edit and publish whatever they like whenever they like it I’m just finding more and more that the circle keeps closing. I think this circle will close up even more as everyone starts to ‘life stream’ we’ll end up with a big brother (TV show not 1984… or well both…) where all we do is watch someone watching someone else… until we get bored and stop watching and move up the chain, to watch what the other person was watching… but who’s at the top? and what happens to those that feel they can’t live without being followed. (Well it might not take off and the few that do will be Snowcrash style Gargoyles.)
Take on board other peoples ideas and opinions but don’t just copy! create something new, create something you can be proud of… yes, babies repeat words back when they are learning but they learn pretty quickly to talk for themselves. It’s about reaching that next level, push yourself, learn, read around a bit more, add something of yourself, express your opinion. Make everyone elses life more interesting and re-open the closed loop of inward looking story regurgitation, this is what Editors used to do at the newspapers but now you, dear reader are also the writer, the editor and the publisher you must think more about the other roles. I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy it more in the long run if you create your own work and you’ll certainly have more people reading your work, as it will provide them with original insight.
July 24, 2008
Books, Strategy
1 Comment
It’s been a couple of months since my last post, which I guess I blog years is a long time! It’s been pretty hectic really, and still is.
But I had to come online to say that Josh Kaufman, The Personal MBA has updated it’s reading list for 2008.
I think a nice addition would be to say what’s changed and why, which I couldn’t see immediately when I looked through the list earlier. All the ones in my ‘still to read’ stack are still in there, but will probably remain unread until, well, until I get them out of storage! Ain’t moving house brilliant.
May 12, 2008
Development, Strategy
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In my previous post I said (right down at the bottom) that the only thing I missed about home working was the social side of going to work. I’ve been thinking about this and I think it has more to do with removal of stimuli (yeah, bear with me).
Working from home is great, I get loads done and a lot of this work (despite being mostly programming work) requires communication. We mostly use chat (or email if anyone’s away from their machine) but there is a sterility in the chat conversations, most of them are one on one aimed at finding something out, and I think this along with familiarity, which may turn to cabin-fever, of spending more time than ever at home (yeah I do go out and I do have my ‘work room’ so I don’t feel like i should constantly be working) is leading to a state where there is no more stimulation.
How to overcome this…
- Meet up with work colleagues, try for once a week (it depends on how remote you are!)
- Have informal group chats on the go as well as the get to the point one to ones
- Don’t forget that the person hasn’t turned into a robot just because you talk to them by computer!
- Use Skype/ googleTalk etc to actually talk, even if it may take longer
- Get out! go see people, I do an art class, photography workshops and go down the pub, everyone needs people! It’s all things I did before I started Home Working but without them I think I’d go mad! make sure you leave the house every day even if it’s just to walk round the block.
- Keep learning, and keep sharing what you you learn.
It’s been nice having the chance to do some home working and I think there are loads of situation where it’s advantages are huge. One idea I had to encourage the social side of work yet keep the ‘home’ ease was to have local centres, you could have a community hall, or a purpose built one, but having a local hub where you can get a coffee, some technical help, access to some of the kit you may not have at home and… people. The hub could be a business centre with all the facilities like meeting rooms or it could just be a glorified network coffee shop or internet cafe. I know that there are some remote trading floors where the traders work from their towns trading floor instead of going in to the City, they still get the social, and the tips! but don’t have to commute (as far), so why not expand this for anyone who doesn’t need to be in the office.
Anyway I’m starting a new job in a few weeks, office based, but with developers working from two locations so the remote working skills and discipline will be handy.
May 6, 2008
Development, Strategy
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As I’ve said in previous posts we’ve been retooling so we can work remotely and more efficiently as a team.
So here’ a bit of feedback on how it’s all been going.
There have obviously been a few teething problems but in general its been great. We were lucky in that our team was all working centrally to start with so we have a good team bond and know each other well.
We’re using Google Apps for business and have transferred our e-mail over to them (after a bit of an MX record phaf) and now that is working nicely, once you get used to the way Google groups your e-mail (no problem to me as I’ve been on gmail for a while but some of the others did think they’d lost email). The Google Docs suite seems to be upgraded frequently and with Google Gears for offline sync is just totally awesome. We do still pull documents down and format them in Word to send out to clients but in Google apps we can all get stuck in and get the content right.
The problems we did have were that our source control was on a local server which we couldn’t make accessible to the whole world, and we didn’t realise that our RDP to our remote server and remote SQL access were locked to our old office IP address… good security not so good for remote working) all easily overcome though.
We’re using Clocking IT for time management and tracking projects which is also going really well, as long as everyone ensures the log their time and keeps their projects up to-date, and with a Google gadget in our Google Apps start page we can see what’s on at all times, great integration.
We have all now moved out of the office and productivity is still high, chat (with logging into gmail) is great just like in the office, but now I don’t have to commute!
What I do miss is the social side, whilst we do have offline chats, it’s not the same as going to make a brew and putting the world to rights, the range of music that people brought in to share (although I suppose we could still do that) and the people at our building who we didn’t actually work with… hmm yeah and sharing a building with a chiropractor was always handy!
March 27, 2008
Random, Strategy
1 Comment
I went to the British Library last night to a tlak given by Charles Leadbeater called WeThink to go with his new book.
The book was written and published on the web for feedback, this feedback and collaborative editing was then used to rework the content and presumeably add a little more based on the experience. The talk was about the book and the process and how we can collaborate on a much greater scale in the future. The idea is that we will think collaboratively, not as a Borg mind but as individuals within a network, and that new ideas are not necessarily invented in our heads but the real tangile outcome is created at the point where conversations, ideas and discussion cross.
Collaboration can work for real, serious projects such as Linux, Wikipedia and Encyclopedia of Life. There are many experts willing to give their time and effort for ‘free’ to contribute, they in turn get their position as an expert reinforced. In all these cases structure has formed to create the necessary environment for the collabortion but it has remained flexible.
There are arguements both ways on responsability. By collaborting you are in direct contact with people, readers, user etc, so you can’t, like an old school journalist, send out you story from on high and ignore the responses. But at the same time, who is legally responsible, in this world of ligitation and recrimination who would be held accountable, would it be everyone involved? the originator? perhaps this is a good thing.
I’m also reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends.. at the moment and was interested to read that this book was written collaboratively too (at least that’s what I read into it). He said that he wrote a presentation, gave it, got feedback, improved it, wrote notes and hand outs, got feedback on it all and eventually all of this collaborative work went in to form a best seller. An interesting idea is that of ownership, who owns the ideas and concepts that have been generated collabortively, well no one and everyone (as in the paragraph above with responsability) but at some point someone will take the idea to fruition, whether this be Charles Leadbeater, Linus Torvalds, Dale Carnegie or indeed artists, it’s amazing how little some of them do, or did, they have the idea but are basically art directors who put their name to a work which has usually be created by some other skilled crafts people, whether it be a bronze smelter and caster or an artist who specialised in painting hands back in the Renaissance, who we may never have heard of but we’ve seen their brush strokes. With the new collaboration, there needs to be much more recognition of the individuals involved, this is what people thrive on, if they are recognised within their group/network/society then they will be happy to contribute.
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