14Ga, my latest book

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Simplicity

Every bell and whistle is another wrong button to press.

Personalism

Divinity is every version.

A temple is every one.

Worship is your every thought.

Ritual is your every action.

Scripture is your every word.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
– George Bernard Shaw
Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 – 1950)

Internet: It’s Complicated

There is a problem with the internet.  It has forgotten its roots.  It has forgotten HTML.  It has forgotten LaTeX. It has forgotten WordPerfect.  It has forgotten television.  It has forgotten radio.  It has forgotten film.  It has forgotten phonographs.  It has forgotten photographs.  It has forgotten the Gutenberg Press.  It has forgotten the Alphabet.  It has forgotten Arabic Numerals.  It has forgotten Hieroglyphics.  It has forgotten music.  It has forgotten speech.

The internet is fascinated with digital waveforms.  They don’t realize that digital waveforms are phenomenally primitive.  As a consequence the internet is phenomenally complicated.  We have a whole generation trying to use metaphors of analog media equipment represented on digital media equipment.  It is complete crap and it does not occur to anyone.  Word processors are crap.  Spreadsheets are crap.  Presentations are crap.  Vector Graphics are crap.  Audios are crap.  Videos are crap.  Their formats and editors are crap.  Complex useless crap that many people are making a good living making more complicated to guarantee their meal tickets and they don’t even know it.  They use words like “organic”, “innovative”, “2.0″, “web”, “village”, “technology”, “entertainment”, “design”, “thinking”, “visual”, “global”, “climate”, “change”, “open”, “source”, “search”, “apple”, “i”, “my”, “face”, “google”, “twit”, “social”, “network”, “pirate”.  They hire lots of “numerati”, “literati”, “vidirati”, “audirati”, “timerati”, “grapherati”.  The words are meaningless and the people don’t know their assholes from first base.  They measure their credibility by their credit rating.

You ask them a “Simple” question and you get the “Complex” answer.  They don’t hear the question and don’t speak the answer.

They are shotgun happy pretending to be rifle sad.

Simplicity eats when it is hungry, sleeps when it is tired, doesn’t work or play.  Simplicity never leaves and never arrives.  Simplicity neither asks nor tells the time.  Simplicity is the crooked path that is the shortest distance.  Simplicity is periodic and chaotic.  Simplicity folows but has no leaders; leads but has no followers.

Design: Business Design Induction/Deduction

This is my latest incarnation of the Business Design Process.  Induction (Brainstorming–generation of ideas) is Counter-Clockwise.  Deduction (Refinement–elimination of ideas) is Clockwise.

Below is the Intelligence Architecture:

Here is the Media Architecture:

This is the Data Architecture for this model.  Note that all values are accepted even if they are wrong:

Below is the Network Architecture of this model.  Note that the values are unique (nodes) and they are sequential (edges):

Here is the Text Architecture:

Here is the Numeric Architecture:

Here is the Octonion Architecture:

Design: Business Design Dimensions

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In my previous post I was thinking about the fundamental components of a business.  Now I want to think about the fundamental contexts and the four dimensions of each context.

Over the next few posts I will be exploring each of these contexts and dimensions.  Personally, I think current data warehouse design is a load of bullshit.  Relational business intelligence is an oxymoron.

Design: Business Design

In an earlier post I was reflecting on the concept of a curriculum shared by Tim Brown of IDEO on his Design Thinking Blog.  At that time I shared a list of areas I felt would compose a curriculum.  I have continued to reflect on this and I have come up with the following table:

The rows in the above table are the market segments the columns are the market segment actions.

Good Design: System International Units

I have been working to accept nature as it is. I found myself looking at the System International Measure Units:

1. Prediction – Radiation – Mission – Art – Visual – Eye – Video – Candela
2. Harmonization – Vibration – Strategy – Science – Tempal – Ear – Audio – Celcius
3. Synchronation – Duration – Tactics – Design – Signal – Nose – Events – Second
4. Information – Distance – Operation – Engineering – Gradual – Throat – Graphics – Metre
5. Validation – Mass – Product – Skill – Technical – Jaw – Text – Kilogram
6. Transaction – Current – Service – Training – Clerical – Body – Equations – Ampere
7. Satisfaction – Molarity – Price – Education – Medial – Thumb – Numbers – Mole

I am of the opinion, if we stick to the basics we will develop better systems.

Links:

• System International Units

Twitter Business: Migrations, Trees, Eggonomics

Migrations: Project Management

So, you use Twitter and are yelling into space that you just flushed the toilet.  Who gives a damn?  Your boss should.

Twitter is one thing and one thing only:  A status reporting service.  And that is all it needs to be.

I have analyzed, designed, developed and implemented project management systems over my entire 25 year career.  When I look at Twitter, I see gold–not gold–diamonds.

One of the biggest challenges for the project manager is status estimates and actuals.  Twitter provides a platform for immediately updating both.  It would allow project team members to enter estimates and actuals on the fly in real time.  Calendaring and timesheets could become obsolete.  Twitter could drive projects, payrolls and billing, inventories, transactions, heuristics and algorithms dynamically by doing one thing, reporting status.

All a business has to do is create Twitter business accounts for all its suppliers, employees, distributors, even customers and then follow their business tweets.  Plug them into Project Management: Instant ROI.

Every single Twitter to date has just been a bunch of playing with Twitter technology.  But status is at the heart of all business planning and tracking.

Trees:  Multimedia Networks

Yes, status reporting is all you can produce as a node, however the other product is you can link those nodes and the statuses themselves and statuses are of an array of media types now which can also be linked. I think Barabasi’s book “Linked” is very relevant here: http://blog.grantczerepak.com/2009/01/20/barabasi-scale-free-networks/. Tweets are not stand alone statuses, tweets are now multimedia status networks. Call them “twigs”, “branches”, “trunks” and “trees”.  A gaant chart is a means of viewing that network. People, Media, Events, Locations, Reasons, Methods, Currency are an accepted ontology for the types of statuses that can be linked. These could be called “flocks”, “tweets”, “seasons”, “nests”, “migrations”, “rituals” and “eggs” respectively.   And they are all in trees.

A gaant chart is a “project management tree”.

Eggonomics: Gratitude, Sharing and Caring

But Twitter, to be fully realized as a business application has to develop one thing more, an economy.

We should make it possible for everyone to set the price of their tweets as easy as possible.

If you want to tweet for free, just set the default to zero.  However, if you come up with a goody it should be just as easy to set a tweet price, egg value, you want.

If Google can make it possible to display and bid on advertising on the scale they have set up, it would be just as easy for Twitter to make all “flocks”, “tweets”, “seasons”, “nests”, “migrations”, “rituals” and “trees” valuable monetarily in “eggs”.

What is an ad but a tweet?

The result would be a global circulation of capital that would make international free trade in Twitter a major contributor to a new economy.

Twittering does not want to be free.  Twittering wants to have the price the market will bear.  And you and I and everyone should see the value in gratitude (acknowledgment and credit), sharing (advertising, pro bono and branding for identity) and caring (buying and selling for sustainability) through Twitter.

Need and want are different.  There is nothing wrong with taking all you need from the world, that is gratitude.  Taking less than you want is sharing.  Giving what you want is caring.

You have just had the Twitter future revealed to you.  You have seen it here and heard it from me. First.

Grant Czerepak

Creativity: Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert discusses overcoming the fear of creativity.  Click on the image to watch the TED.com video.

Link:

• Elizabeth Gilbert Writer