Apple (and others) have made industrial design sexy. Who knew that rounded corners and black borders held so much cachet? On top of that, beautification and style are the predominant themes coming out of the tech world these days. Form over function to some extent. How are you doing with industrial design around your real…
Software personalities are different from brick and mortar personalities #CRE
Tech and real estate seem to be trending topics wherever you look (assuming you are looking in the same places I am at least). But the more I’m living in between these two groups I’m seeing potentially insurmountable differences. A lot of it I can tie back to people who think physically vs. those that…
What is a “location”? #cre
To most it should seem obvious what a location is. It’s where we live, work, play, eat, sleep, whatever. A location is an address or a building or some other physical point in space. But what happens when we step back and a location becomes something more. Location could be a community, city or metro-area….
A helium shortage and clown-hating scientists #slashdot
Via slashdot I just read about how (some) scientists are upset at the amount of helium wasted in party balloons each year. I’d read somewhere else in the last few months about a helium shortage but had never really thought much about it. Helium is one of those things a lot of us just take…
The Amazing Disappearing Meeting… #productivity
There seems to be a relationship between the length of time you’ve been with an organization and the number of daily/weekly/quarterly meetings you find yourself regularly invited to. Having one of those cancelled in the middle of the day is an instant and wonderful productivity boost. Do yourself and everyone a favor – cancel those…
Sometimes doing your best really isn’t good enough
We’re all taught from a young age to just “do our best.” As long as we give it everything we have that’s all we can do. I’d like to call bull****. Doing your best and still failing implies that there are opportunities for improvement. Doing your best also implies that you should do it yourself….
The law of three and posts
(I just reread the title of this and it doesn’t seem to make any sense but I like it anyway so it stays!) Whenever a random topic comes up three independent times over the course of a 2 day span there’s a pattern. It means it’s time to post it and put some thoughts down…
Over thinking what you work on can be a real problem.
We can all fall into the trap where we think our jobs are hard and that every project requires rigorous planning. Let me tell you a secret: most jobs aren’t hard once you’ve been there awhile. The basics of any project are going to be the same. Looking for deeper meaning or complexities is more…
If Traveling Salespeople were to sprout wings and buzz…#wired
Fascinating study reported on by Wired.com on the traveling salesman problem and bees. This is important for any organization that has a supply chain. Identifying the lowest cost connections between the many numerous interactions can have significant cost implications on the overall business. My interpretation of this study: a little trial and error can go a long…
For what it’s worth on Revolutions
The thing that people forget about industries that have been upheaved, business models that have tanked and new products that changed the world: No one saw it coming It started underground The doubters exceeded those that participated It isn’t until the end that people saw it and jumped on board. Most of the articles and…