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KAYO books in San Francisco has discovered a wonderful way to make a very ordinary storefront feel lively and inviting. A lot of good thinking and a little work makes the store stand out on a street where a lot of signs compete for your attention. The design works because the designer decided to stand out by thinking orthogonally.
Are you designing anything? If so, take a moment to think of a really simple way to make your design stand out from the pack. Is there a way your design can be "orthogonal" to its competitors?
Think orthogonal.
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Too many distractions, too little time. Co-developed with Merlin Mann of 43 Folders.
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Yes, the Toronto Globe and Mail has proclaimed me the grand-pappy of business visualizations.
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I just had dinner with Evan Williams and his lovely fiance Sara Morishige. Somewhere between the kalua pig and the bannana bread pudding, Evan gave me a hot scoop: his company, Odeo is about to launch a new service called twttr. It's pronounced "twitter" and you can find it at http://twttr.com (If you're less hip and more literal, like me, you can also find it at http://twitter.com).Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.
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If you're reading this and it's Sunday June 11th, then I am loose in London.
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Cllick here to read more notes and commentary, and to add your own!
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Why doesn't the typical meeting work for you anymore?
Why, when you see the laptop come out and the lights start to dim, do you feel a vague sense of dread?
Maybe it isn't so vague?
Maybe you've become used to a different way of interacting; a different kind of media. Social media.
What is social media? I think of it as a group of media producers that is primarily it's own audience.
I was first introduced to this idea by Alex Vieux of Red Herring, who defined the Red Herring media ecosystem as a global social network of entrepreneurs, technologists, and financiers who were primarily interested in each others' activities and ideas.
A short while later I sat next to Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, who for three days running attempted to convince me of the power of wikis -- I am sad to say, without success. Those of you who know me are aware that I can be quite slow on the uptake sometimes.
Later I met Jerry Michalski, who is so passionate about social media that he named his company Sociate.
You wouldn't be reading this if you weren't already connecting to the world of social media. Which is why, I submit, that meetings of the traditional type don't work for you any more. You're no longer a couch potato, watching TV in the evening, being spoon-fed your media. And you don't want that role in your business meetings either.
You've become a part of the social media ecosystem. In addition to being a consumer of media, you're now also a producer. You've become accustomed to having a voice in the conversation. Social media is a clear phenomenon and it isn't going away.So you can imagine my surprise when I searched the web for a simple, clear definition of social media and came up empty.
My definition is in the picture above.
What's your definition? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.
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As you may know I recently attended Meshforum 2006 in San Francisco. It was a wonderful event -- I took a lot of photos, and copious notes on index cards.
A few people joined the event late and asked what they had missed. Instead of trying to explain it I was able to hand them a stack of index-card notes. The notes gave me a way to share personal impressions of the event without losing my focus on what was currently happening.
I have taken photographs of the events and put them alongside the index-card notes, in roughly chronological order. Looking at the photos and notes in sequence may give you a feeling for a personal experience of the event -- I hope you enjoy it. Take a look.
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Peter Renshaw uses Lego building blocks as a visual thinking tool.
Lego blocks allowed Peter and Russel to clearly visualize what they were trying to do. Think of it as three-dimensional sketching for object-oriented programming.
Assemble a whole lot of modules that can be plugged together to accomplish something.
Peter and Russell were inspired by SAP, the global enterprise software company. Over time, SAP has compiled a tightly integrated grid of modules which can be plugged together in various ways to build solutions.
Here's Peter on how they do it:
"There's no special meaning to the choice of colour or size of blocks, aside from the fact that we join the blocks together to see, and, more importantly, think, how they can come together. Each block or module is uncoupled. That means it does one thing and one thing well.
This is the advantage of using blocks. Click them together to see what you need to acheive a particular task. Its not quite UML and we may miss something. But its cheap, and if used intelligently, does the job."
Click here to look at the annotated photo and read more thoughts from Peter.
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I asked Robert Scoble how he handles comments on his blog. His answer above. He calls it "the living room test."
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I am in DC today (Friday) and Saturday. Send me an email if you would like to hook up Saturday at dgray [at] xplane [dot] com. Cheers!
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