Organization Horsepower

Back in December I wrote a blog post that included my application to the TEDx event in Grand Rapids. I was in fact selected to attend the event with 700 of my peers on May 10th. It was my first TED event, and it absolutely lived up to its billing. It was a day filled with inspiration, hope, and ideas without the stodginess of a motivational seminar. I’m a convert, and I will contribute to as many of these events as I possibly can.

I’m sure someone will write a recap of the event outlining what each speaker said and what they got from it. I’m instead going to let you in on the nine tangents or ideas I had as a result of where I was, who I was with, and what I heard. However, I have to warn you, when I allow myself to be open to new ideas; the results aren’t always all about business.

1. Thinking about interfaces, how does silverware affect our relationship with food? Do western food implements increase the efficiency of us shoveling food into our faces? If so, what other everyday interfaces are good interfaces in terms of function, but actually feed undesirable behavior?
2. There is no such thing as south Detroit. It is a lie perpetuated by a Journey song. No one should ever tell stories about a boy growing up on the south side of Detroit; the notion is all wet.
3. There is a distinct difference between consulting and designing… and they don’t always complement each other. It’s true there may be a lot of consulting that goes into a design, but if you start to design before the consulting is done you may never find the actual problem. Sarah Bloom from Google wrote a good blog post on this last week, and I thought about it when talking about design at TED.
4. An Epic Fail is a failure so big it takes the sting out of the failure. In thinking of practical ways to force epic fails consider this: How much and how quickly could we learn by designing something to fail and then allowing it to happen? If it doesn’t sting, we could iterate on all the things logic tells us shouldn’t work only to discover a really great thing that does work. This was talked about in terms of gaming, and games done right can have epic failures.
5. I want to create a comedic character called TED Nougat. An obvious parody of Ted Nugent, TED Nougat could be the liberal alter ego with a soft fluffy center.
6. The idea of Insanely Good Process got me thinking about situations where repeating the same thing and expecting different results isn’t considered insane. Good process should always have the same steps, but insanely good process should produce better results each time you engage it.
7. Curating ideas is worthwhile whether it be material, context, or knowledge. Who said libraries can only contain books full of knowledge? One speaker at TEDx had a library of materials that could be used in packaging. What if we had libraries of stuff that had been tried before at our companies? It goes beyond knowledge management.
8. This year the number of cell phones will exceed the number of PC’s in the world. In some areas, the availability of phones will be greater than food or water. That means applications developed for mobile devices have the potential to reach more people than the computer ever has.
9. Fault does not excuse responsibility. I remember as a child thinking things were not my fault and that it just wasn’t fair that I was held responsible for things that weren’t my fault. Either because we choose to accept responsibility or because it is placed upon us, fault only speaks to fairness; responsibility trumps both.