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Posts Tagged ‘startingsomething’

Stop Stealing Dreams

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Seth Godin is a leading voice in area of marketing. He write a daily blog with has a huge following, and has written several books. His main viewpoint is that the social contract that brought the mass market into existence had a key component around the construction of schools and education for all. The factory owners not only needed a market for the product that the industrial revolution made possible, but they needed a supply of workers educated sufficiently to enable them to be good factory operators.

The world we live in today is no longer that world. The manufacturing sector has disappeared and we no longer need to educate our kids with the knowledge that they will need for a factory job. In fact, the social contract said give us your kids and we will train them and guarantee them a job. They will then have income and also become our customers. And, you will gain by having product available and an improved standard of living.

The world in which those rules were made, and the world we live in today have diverged, but the structure of education hasn’t. It still compulsory and we are teaching our kids and preparing them for a world that no longer exists. We are lying to them.

Seth has just finished writing a manifesto on education: Stop Stealing Dreams. Please take a few minutes and take a look, and share your comments with me. What are we going to do about it?

Defining your own job.

Friday, February 24th, 2012
Image: Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image: Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When most people look for work they pick from the menu of jobs that are already on offer and enter a “career” based around already established roles.

Another way is to write the menu for yourself, and develop a meal that’s never been tasted before. It’s a harder job, because you’ve only got your intuitions guiding you, and the relationships you have in place with others supporting those directions that you want to move it.

However, I reckon that ultimately it’s more rewarding, as you get to define your own role and identity, instead of living your life through roles defined by others. At the end of the day you get to say “I lived my own life”.

Beginning to think about feedback in agile software development

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I thought that as an exercise it would be interesting to explore in a series of small blog entries the nature of feedback in dynamical systems, and the implications that that has for an agile delivery methodology. So, stay tuned if you’re interested, as that’s what I’ll attempt to do over the next few days and weeks. Feel free to chime in, so I’m not just talking to myself :).

Untangling my thoughts – kick starting this blog.

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

Aaarrgglle. That’s what goes through my head every time I think about my blog.

Actually, that’s not quite true, but I’ve been finding it tough getting some momentum behind it, even though I’ve been feeling for a long time that it’s really important for me to develop my written voice. I’ve been really frustrated at my inability to get it together.

Many times during any particular day I can generate quite clear and focused thoughts; hey if I was able to write those directly into my blog – mind recorder stylee, wow! That would be great. Ideal!

But here, at the computer, I have far too many thoughts all competing at the same time. Arrrrrgglle. How do I get them all down, or even get just one clear thought down? I find it so difficult. It’s taken me the best part of an hour (ok, two hours now!) just to get to here. At this rate I’m not going to get anything out.

Right. So here’s the deal. I’m going to use this blog to tease out the various threads of conversations that I have been having with myself for years, that I’m kinda afraid to put out there in public. I want to get good at it, and not have to take hours and hours agonising over every sentence. I want to get it all out, so that it isn’t just bouncing around in my head consuming me on a day to day basis. Maybe no one will read it, or maybe everyone will and I’ll be the laughing stock. You know, that’s life. Not everyone is going to agree with everything I say, and not everything I say is going to make any sense… but I think that enough of it will, that this is worth doing.

So, please, I would be very grateful of any support, advise, critisism that you can offer me. And, bear with me when I start waxing lyric on topics that seem crazy. They are! I have crazy thoughts…. crazy enough to maybe actually change the world, one day. Who knows? What I do know is that they never will unless they get out of my head and into the world where they can make a difference.