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Doing it anyway

August 31, 2005 By Uncategorized

Nice story from Jon at Wirearchy today about what it means to really show up for work:

It’s the tale of a software engineer at Apple Computer – Ron Avitzur – who had been charged with creating some graphing calculator software, to ship with every Apple computer. After a year on the project he lost his job in 1993 because – he says – of internal politics at what was, at the time, a struggling company. The key thing is what Ron did next.

He kept showing up for work.

His swipe card worked, there were lots of empty offices, so he just kept going, unpaid, for months, creating a fully-fleged and entirely unauthorised skunkworks at the heart of the company.

Along the way, he roped in support from various specialist departments and, after huge amounts of work from across the company – and all without top management knowledge – he got the software shipped on every new Mac computer. The software is still going out today, although the relationship between Ron and Apple has, at last, been formalised.

Things even out in New Orleans

August 31, 2005 By Uncategorized One Comment

Is anyone else struck by the alarming symmetry of the events in New Orleans with respect to the flooding and the looting?

As the water contained in Lake Ponchartrain flows into the city, the wealth that is locked in the stores also finds its way into the streets. The looting seems so instinctive, so without purpose (except for the survival necessities of course – what is the immediate survival value of a flat screen TV and a mink coat? What value does such a thing have in a flood? Why waste time and energy acquiring something so useless when food and water is in short supply?). One wonders just how close under the surface the possibility for this lies in places where there is a great disparity of wealth.

Were there similar levels of looting in the tsunami regions of South Asia? Certainly we saw it in Baghdad when the Hussein government toppled and suddenly people who had lived without so much for so long took advantage of everything they could. The comparison between New Orleans and Baghdad has been made often. Don’t people wonder why the situations are so similar? The poorest residents of New Orleans are those that stayed and suddenly there is no law, no wealth, no restraints on them.

I am just struck, with both the water and the social reaction, at how fast something that is pent up can burst from its restraints. It reminds me of Jose Saramago’s Blindness

UPDATE: On WDSU I just heard a report that a New Orleans hospital has been taken over by people with guns. I don’t get it. The tendency towards civil war seems to lie so close to the surface.

New Orleans

August 29, 2005 By Uncategorized

I spent much of the day watching live coverage of the hurricane damage in New Orleans on WDSU. It is absolutely devastating to see the first video of the damage, and to hear the shock in the anchor’s voices as they were trying to describe what they were seeing. Water everywhere, huge fires, scads of structural damage, rooftop rescues, trees down and boats and cars swamped. One whole side of the Hyatt hotel is blasted out with hardly a window left intact. The Superdome roof is peeled and punctured. There are people huddled on the courthouse steps, surrounded by water and unable to move until the power grid is safe and the water somehow gets pumped back UP to sea level. Much of New Orleans appears to be a soup of lake water, oil, electrical wires and mud. It looks like it will be months before the cleanup is finished.

My heartfelt best wishes to any readers in that area. I’m especially thinking of those without the means to have escaped the deluge.

A small wet ball spinning in space

August 29, 2005 By Uncategorized

THis movie puts a great deal in perspective:

“The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005. Several hundred images, taken with the wide-angle camera in MESSENGER�s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), were sequenced into a movie documenting the view from MESSENGER as it departed Earth.

Comprising 358 frames taken over 24 hours, the movie follows Earth through one complete rotation. The spacecraft was 40,761 miles (65,598 kilometers) above South America when the camera started rolling on Aug. 2. It was 270,847 miles (435,885 kilometers) away from Earth � farther than the Moon�s orbit � when it snapped the last image on Aug. 3.”

Link via WorldChanging

Brilliant piece on facilitating Dialogue

August 29, 2005 By Uncategorized

I’ve been slowly chewing on William Issacs’ book on Dialogue. I am surprised that I haven’t read it before.

AS well as reading the book, I have been subscribed to the del.icio.us tag on “dialogue.” Today in the aggregator, I found a great summary of the facilitation skills needed in Dialogue. From the paper:

“There are few facilitation skills more important that the ability to keep quiet. When I teach facilitation I always spend a lot of time on this particular facilitator skill. If you are a manager, trainer, or a leader in your field, there is a good reason why: you enjoy it. You enjoy being in front of a group, orchestrating consensus and creating the magic of teamwork. This is probably how you have fun.

The only problem for you is that facilitating a group to Dialogue means: not leading. It takes great discipline to describe the process, lead a discussion on the escape routes and then abdicate your control to the group. But the discipline of keeping your trap shut will pay off. If you let them, they will come up with better ideas than you ever considered. And those ideas will be their ideas. Groups implement their ideas much more readily that your ideas. This is the hidden power of Dialogue. It is the secret to creating ownership (an over-used term). The reason most leaders can�t do it, is because they can�t stay quiet long enough for their group to rise to the occasion. A good facilitator creates a vacuum of leadership perfectly shaped not for one individual, but for the whole group.”