Roosevelt Finlayson (of the Festival in the Workplace) called me from the Bahamas yesterday to catch up. During our talk we discussed my future plans (among many other things) and he challenged me to document the process I’m currently going through. That’s a great idea and what better place to do it than right here on the blog.

And what better way to start than by telling the story so far. So here it is, the story of the geek who:

• Co-Founded a very different kind of IT-company
• Went from trying to grok tech to trying to grok people
• Left IT and found his calling
• Founded possibly the world’s strangest company/organisation/movement
• Gave 3 years of his life to make people happy at work
• Worked for free for 3 years, and calls at i huge success :o)
• Is now leaving this project and has no idea what’s next

Read the rest of this entry »

I just discovered The Great News Network:

Despite all the negativity broadcasted in news today there is progress being made to better our planet. The Great News Network exists to report it.”
- Ryan Logtenberg, Founder GNN

Some recent headlines:
* Congress presses for torture ban
* A Wide Range of Endangered Animals Given Conservation Boost
* Bangladesh Seizes Rare Wild Birds From Market
* Deforestation rates decrease in the Amazon

Here’s something funny: When I read that last headline, my mind did this trick where it read the first part and then:
1) Assumed that the rest of the headline would be about bad news
2) Started to skip towards other headlines

This tells me, that we (or at least I) have been heavily conditioned to expect bad news in the media. I read half a headline, noticed it was about deforestation in the Amazon and just KNEW that it had to be about a bad situation getting worse.

And the second part of my reaction, the looking away, may explain why people are retreating from many important issues, from rain forest shrinkage to world hunger: The current media coverage has taught us to think, that it’s all bad and getting worse. So why get involved? Why even take an interest - it’ll only depress me.

You could argue, that reporting the bad news leads to increased awareness about the problems. That’s true. But reporting almost exclusively on the bad news leads to a feeling of helplessness that has us giving up BEFORE we ever do anything.

And that’s why we need a new kind of media that is willing to report on the good news. Good news gives us the energy and optimism to do something about the bad news.

When you look up Encyclopedia Britannica in Wikipedia you get this excellent article.

When you look Wikipedia up in the Encyclopedia Britannica you get this:

Sorry, we were unable to find results for your search.

Please consider rephrasing your query. For additional help, please consult Search Tips & Advice.

And people PAY to use the Brit?

Wikipedia is an organism. Encyclopedia Britannica is an artifact.

Nature had researchers blind-test articles in Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica looking for errors. The result:

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.
…
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.

This might seem surprising, knowing that the brit is written and edited by experts while Wikipedia is written by, well, us.

There’s been a lot of Wikipedia-related FUD in the media lately, especially over the Seigenthaler hoax. Here’s my point of view: Hoaxes like that are going to happen. Changing Wikipedia to make this impossible would kill it. It’s a trade-off: On the one hand Wikipedia adds new complexity at a fantastic rate precisely BECAUSE everyone can contribute. On the other hand this will lead to inacuracies, pranks, hoaxes and vandalism. However: Wikipedia has shown itself capable of dealing with most of this - it has in effect developed a highly capable immune system.

The Imagination Lab Foundation is an independent, non-profit research institute founded in 2000 and operating from Lausanne, Switzerland.

Its raison d’étre is to develop and spread actionable ideas about imaginative, reflective and responsible organizational practices. The Foundation’s underlying philosophy is to value imagination as a source of meaningful responses to emergent change and play as an effective way to draw on this human capacity.

Go visit them and be sure to check out their amazing collection of articles. Grrrreat stuff!

Book review number 100 is on it’s way. Yaaaaay! I’ve been holding back on the 100th review, until I found a suitable book. I’m now halfway through it and a review is coming real soon. And I can safely say, that this is one of the best and most important books about work I have ever read.

The first 99 book reviews are here.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

- James Carse in Finite and Infinite Games

A great interview with Tom Lehrer. Sample quote:

It’s 50 years since Lehrer’s first recordings, and 38 years since his last album of new material, yet word that we’ve secured an interview has people around the office launching into such unlikely yet infectious ditties as The Vatican Rag, Smut and Lehrer’s ode to spring pursuits, Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.

It also has people asking with a surprised tone: “Is he still alive?” Yes, Lehrer is very much with us, despite being quiet for so long (he once told The New York Times he had encouraged rumours of his demise in the hope of cutting down junk mail).
…
“With audiences nowadays I see it with these late-night [TV show] people, Jay Leno, David Letterman and so on the audience applauds the jokes rather than laughs at them, which is very discouraging.

“Laughter is involuntary. If it’s funny you laugh. But you can easily clap just to say [deadpan]: ‘A ha, that’s funny, I think that’s funny.’ Sometimes they cut to the audience and you can see they are applauding madly. But they’re not laughing.”

Tom Lehrer is one of the funniest people I’ve ever heard. Check him out. Here’s another interview with Lehrer.

What is the christmas office party like, when you work for the Happy at Work Project? Well, it might go a little like this: