Little Logos

Wish I had time to indulge an extra hobby in my life. I love LEGO and am continually amazed at the endless possibilities it provides. I am not one of those people that build the models in the set.

I really enjoy looking at the kind of work being done by people like Adrian FLorea. These types of models apeal to my love of sci-fi and put a much harder edge on the standard lego models.

If I had a clone we would appreciate knowing that one of us could have the time to do things like this.

Some very cool websites on data visualisation. These are a few that I am going to go back to for ongoing inspiration.

The work of Golan Levin (who spoke at Lotusphere 2008) and Collaborators is found at flong - I especially like “the dumpster” and “the secret life of numbers”.

I am also still reading lots of material by Tufte. I recently purchased “Visualizing Information” and this is my gobag for reading pleasure.

A lovely representation of earthquake hotspots - by Robert Hodgin can be seen on his site.

Continued good reading at Juice Analytics.

I have recently uploaded all my recent photos including the USA trip photos (awesome skiing in Breckenridge) and Lotusphere to my Flickr account www.flickr.com/betbeder. They can also be seen in this blog by going to the /img directory.

A great short punchy article by Kent McDonald on Agile Project Leadership - “What is Agile, Really??”

McDonald covers 7 areas of Project Leadership, each of these is a good reminder about key areas of team management that apply mostly to software developement but can also apply to other team-based activities.

His “Words to Lead By” are:

• Collaborate
• Iterate
• Serve the Team
• Consider Context
• Practice Excellence
• Reflect and Adapt
• Deliver Value

The general thrust here is to keep moving forward and empower the team. But the best reminder was about the importance of “Context” - and here a quote is appropriate:

Unfortunately, what works great in one project may not work as well in other situations. There are usually many environmental factors that play a large role in how effective a practice is on a given project. Because of this, I usually prefer to use the term appropriate practices or good practices to emphasize the fact that there really are no best practices across all projects.

Teams need to consider context when choosing which processes, practices, and techniques they use so they can be sure they are doing the things that will make them successful and are not doing the things that they do not need to do. In fact when it comes down to it, perhaps considering context is the only real best practice around.

A key point that may not be immediately obvious is that project teams need to determine what practices, processes, and techniques they are going to employ during a project, and be willing to change those practices as they learn more throughout the life of the project. Project teams often work within an organizationally defined process they believe they must follow to the letter, many times to the detriment of the project. Usually if those project teams examine reality a little bit, they will find they have some latitude as to what practices they adopt from the organizational method.

I think this needs to be kept at the forefront - especially when working with contractors whos last project experience context may not fit with their current project and organisation.

Some interesting resolutions from the guys at make mag… lots of good stuff here:

1. Learn something new from a child or teenager, especially in your area of greatest expertise. I find the perspective of innocent novices to be most refreshing and enlightening.

2. Revisit an old science book you read growing up and see how your (and society’s) perspective on things have changed.

3. Find someone you’ve always admired and tried to emulate, and thank them for being such an excellent role model, and ask them about some good stories about the “way things used to be done”.

4. Find an important social topic and dig as deep as you can; follow up and look for citations, references, and raw data. For example, I learned that some theorists dispute the carbon-reduction ability of certain hydroelectric technologies, because the dams flood large regions causing them to decay, releasing methane (20x more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) into the atmosphere. Global warming appears to be a very richly textured topic with lots of unintended consequences just being realized. Unfortunately, a lot of important issues are summarized with a few “talking points” by the press and political groups. As technologists, I think we have the responsibility to always question our assumptions, and to listen to both sides of the story, and to make sure that we are moving deliberately and cautiously as a society.

5. Learn a new tool. Maybe that means picking up a new programming language, or perhaps it means learning how to use a new kind of CAD software. Or maybe it means learning a new kind of calculus or statistics, or perhaps getting into the shop and using the mill you always meant to use. Putting aside your well-worn and efficient tools is often hard to do, but it’s also hard to grow when your tools limit your abilities. My new tools for the year are Solidworks and a laser cutter–I have little mechanical engineering background, and I’m hoping that learning tools like these will expand my understanding of the world and my capabilities.