Tag: books

Joy, Inc.

So last night’s excursion was actually pretty fun. It turned out that we were going to see Rich Sheridan ([twitter.com profile] menloprez), president of Menlo Innovations. He was talking about his book (Joy, Inc.) and how to build a culture of joy in the workplace. Not, as Gill was hoping, creating a culture. When you build a culture, you get to start from scratch, but often when you’re creating a culture you have to fight against the old culture.

So the presentation was at the Adobe building in SF but was actually presented by the Bay Area Agile Leadership Network. I think it was Gill’s first time at one of their meetups but she did recognize a few people from other meetups in the area. I got to introduce myself as her “plus one” and I finally came up with a good way to describe my work: 60% sitting around researching & planning and 60% climbing ladders & cutting lumber & painting. I don’t know where they got the pizzas that they provided, but I had a slice of a fig and bacon pizza, with balsamic vinaigrette and goat cheese that was just heavenly.

So the crux of Rich’s philosophy was that by creating an atmosphere of joy, where employees and customers came together to actually enjoy the work they were doing, that they could create better work. I was particularly impressed by his description of the technology anthropologists that his teams employ to study how the users work in the real world. And any culture that allows and encourages parents to bring in newborn children must be doing something right. I’m doing a bad job explaining it, but I was far more interested in what he had to say than I thought I would be when I got there. The entire presentation was recorded for later broadcast, but for now Rich put together a little page with some brief introductory materials.

Writer’s Block: The Hunger Games

As a kid I would have loved to have seen an adaptation of Diane Duane’s So You Want to Be a Wizard. As an adult I’m afraid it would have gotten so screwed up, especially back in the late eighties and early nineties.
Now, I think I’d still be tickled to see an adaptation of Bunnicula or The Westing Game, although I think the latter would be better as a mini-series.

Just finished reading: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by Frederick Stonehouse
25th Anniversary Updated Edition

This was an interesting read, originally written just two years after the sinking.  The author’s account of the events leading up to the sinking was a quick read, only about a hundred pages or so.  The rest of the book, including the updated sections, was mostly reprints of official documentation or commentary on it.  However, it was a fascinating explanation with little bullshit or speculation.

Current Mood: 🙁morose

Just finished reading: Flotsametrics

Flotsametrics and the Floating World, by Curtis Ebbesmeyer & Eric Scigliano

Fascinating book about one oceanographers discoveries about the gyres and currents that shape the ocean.  Ebbesmeyer is the scientist who brought fame to the floating toys in the Pacific back in the 90’s.  Part memoir, part scientific primer, and part manifesto it really brings home how important the ocean’s currents are to history, life, and even death.

Current Mood: 🙂impressed

tagged by sandboxdiva

the rules:
1. Grab the nearest book. Beat it against the desk until it submits.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people

“As the information age made authoritarian regimes and their associated command economics untenable, so the advent of knowledge-based societies will make command education obsolete as well.  We simply will not be able to carry out our most important task – education – without effecting in it, too, an equivalent democratic shift: making students into partners.
Introducing market forces and participatory democracy into education is an even more daunting challenge than converting communist autocracies to free market democracies.  At least the communist world had the United States and Western Europe to look to as models, albeit imperfect ones.”
– Somebodies and Nobodies, Robert W. Fuller

Free book from Bookcrossing, still haven’t read it yet.  Gill skimmed it and proclaimed it crap, so it’s towards the bottom of my pile.

Current Mood: awake