Baked Idea
Had to communicate a high level roadmap to some stakeholders. I’m quite please how i managed to simplify the complexity of the situation in this diagram, so thought i’d share an anonymised version of it.
I don’t know what it is about simple geometric shapes but i keep using them to try to simply explain situations, opportunities and concepts to stakeholders (and more importantly, to myself). Here is a new one
I seem to be drawing a lot of pyramids lately. This one was drawn to help give some focus to a discussion about introducing a brand new function into an organisational unit. There was a lot of discussion around requirements at different levels of capability maturity. I drew a basic pyramid on the board as a way of focusing our minds as to what are the fundamentals and how they relate to the high levels of maturity (essentially repurposing a hierarchy of needs). I then sat down and my colleagues used the pyramid as a framework to guide and document their discussions.
I like using the pyramid as its simple, easy to understand and also lends itself to breaking out (see the badly drawn left hand side of the photo) into a roadmap.
My daughter brought this picture home of a beach. There was something about the simplicity that really struck me. Sand, sea, sky and sun. The essence of a beach experience in 4 abstract components. Interesting how complex interactions and environments cn be rendered simply thru abstraction.
I had a conversation with a colleague the other day about change design vs delivery phases. Leaving aside the (hopefully) iterative nature of these things in practise the interesting point was around the various change ‘actors’ (in a togaf sense) in an organisation would have very different views of what the scope of the responsibility is and what other functions responsibilities are. This sort of continuum came to mind (its not an original continuum, i’m just re-jigging it). I imagined different actors placing themselves and other functions at different points across this continuum, almost like an enterprise ‘pin the tail on the donkey’.
If there isn’t clarity on the interplay and collaboration between change agents within an organisation then there will be a) more Politics, more innefficiency, more latency. Maybe using this sort of technique is a way of ‘simply’ getting to some form of consensus or, highlight the lack of consensus.
I know i’m a bit late but freakonomics has been on my to-read list for ages (its a long queue) and i finally got round to reading it last week.
In summary i’m a bit dissapointed for a number of reasons:
- It is really really short. Without the ‘bonus’ materials and articles it would be half the thickness
- The structure is really poor, there are duplicate sections throughout the book. There are sections that appear to be leading somewhere and then stop….and are then picked up 30 pages later.
Some of the content is interesting, some of it is thought provoking but at the end of the day the experience of reading the book just isn’t satisfactory.
Last night i published an ebook on leanpub. It isn’t so much an ebook as a bit of conceptual art (*cough* wanker). I thought I’d elucidate on what its about.
I have always been mildly fascinated by the fad diet industry. Not only the contradictory information contained within the books that are peddled (and the amount of money that is made), but also the need that these books aim to satisfy in the minds of the readers. The need as I see it is to wrap up the dieting endeavour in a story that talks about a fictional shortcut.
The ebook has 2 steps, 2 pages and 4 words and yet the simplicity uncovers a hidden contention. The fundamental difficulty of the endeavour, the difficulty that is glossed over by the stories told by fad diet books with their promises of a solution.
The ebook as Art is a reaction and comment on the Con, the self-deception and resentment that is involved in this relationship between author, book and the books owner. I guess at its heart its a piece of work about Authenticity
Today is a good day for me. I have just published the first version of my ‘How To Be A Dick’ ebook. Its been a really fun experience pulling the ebook together. It is very short (only 34) pages, but is meant to be more like a succinct manual (hence the bullet point format).
I am charging $3.99 for the ebook, but making money isn’t the primary motivation. As with my recent Songs As A Service challenge, my motivation was to
a) Learn about how to write and publish an ebook, in case i have ideas in the future
and
b) Just create something for the fun and challenge of creating something
(Plus maybe there was an element of catharsis in turning experiences of ‘dick-ness’ into instructions in this manual :) ).
I’m really looking forward to (hopefully) getting feedback on this first version, i’m hoping to make regular updates, should there be interest. If anyone reading this post fancies sharing their experiences of working with a dick then please use #howtobeadick on twitter. I may well work your example into the next version of the ebook (with an acknowledgement of course!)
bought this book for two reason 1) I think in pictures 2) I can’t draw very well 3) I often draw ad-hoc diagrams to explain problems or concepts in my work as an enterprise architect, I think building up a visual vocabulary for me to express things will be very useful 4) I might also let my daughter have a look at this as she loves to draw :)
It is interesting to me how really good design gets hidden in our experience of the product or services. This is a photo of a cardboard packet of smarties, having done away with the plastic caps at the end the packaging designer is left with the problem of how to re-seal an opened packet using just cardboard. The solution is a tiny lip and a tiny fold of card on the inside of the lid to make a catch. Simple, effective, and something that just works without the user being cognizant of it. (Unless you look for these things like me :) ). The next time I design something ill keep this example in mind.
This sound evokes my childhood. What is it?
Spent the evening mucking around with cover images for the ‘how to be a dick’ ebook that i’m working on. This is my first attempt, not bad considering i have no idea how to use GIMP :)
