rodcorp: rodcorp: Projects and teamsProject management, team managementBlogging as inhibitor (Gibson) or catalyst (Doctorow) for writing- April 27, 2003 William Gibson says he's stopping blogging so that he can write. In an interview with Karlin Lillington for the Irish Times WG said: "If I expose things that interest or obsess me as I go along, there'd be no need to write the book. The sinews of narrative would never grow.". And on his own blog he warned readers he'd stop once it was time to start the next book: One thing that was immediately clear to me, from the first blog, is that this is not an activity, for me, that can coexist.http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_04_13_archive.asp Chris Sells: My first week at Microsoft- April 27, 2003 "I learned that the internal resources for MS employees are unbelievable. I could work their my whole life and never take advantage of all of them" via Scoble Kind of related: review of an Interviewing-at-Microsoft book, How Would You Move Mount Fuji, and onwards from there, Malcolm Gladwell asks What do job interviews really tell us.http://www.sellsbrothers.com/spout/#myFirstWeekAtMs Vodafone sees user experience as the battlefield, Microsoft as the competition- April 27, 2003 Microsoft is our main competitor as much of the strategic position will be in controlling the user experience more than the network. Under this point of view we see a serious danger as we could be marginalised as ISPs have been. Judging from the experience of using Vodafone Live! over GPRS, there is much work to be done.http://www.mobitopia.com/20030408.html#193035 Most significant technological revolution in TV has by far been the remote TV control- April 27, 2003 Ever notice, for example, that network series rarely have theme songs like in the old days Thank the remote. Notice that there are no commercials between the end of one network show and the beginning of the next one Thank the remote. Notice (if you're old enough) that the commercials themselves are more sophisticated and less annoying than the ones the TV blared in the '70s Thank the remote. Notice those endless headlines crawling across the bottom of your screen Thank the remote. Notice...http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-ca-baker13apr13,0,2459991.story Doctorow on Shirky at ETCON2003: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy- April 27, 2003 Notes from Clay Shirky's talk at ETCON 2003. If you're going to design a piece of social software, design for: All groups have a Constitution: formally instantiated in code, informally instantiated in social norms Handles for the user that matters. Anonymity doesn't work well for large groups, neither does weak pseudonymity. The world's best reputation system is in the emotional center of the brain. Almost all reputation systems are trivial or bad or both. Some people cheat on their wives..http://craphound.com/shirkyetcon2003.txt Ricardo Semler on peopleware: Idleness is good- April 18, 2003 Ricardo Semler's methods at Semco may seem nutty (you can choose you own salary and manager, everyone can see the company financial accounts), but apparently they work. Semco's staff work in small, autonomous units of about a dozen (the size, says Semler, of a close family group). They make the decisions, choose their leaders, set objectives and decide who they need and what they should be paid: someone who wants too much pay for what they are doing might be frozen out by the group. "From a...http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,938216,00.html |