The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • “Us” vs. “them”

    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.

  • Imagination research

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    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!

  • Coming up on 100

    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.

  • Quote

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    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

  • Stop clapping, this is serious

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    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.

  • Not your regular office christmas party

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


  • I got a gig in Istanbul

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    I’ll be speaking at the 11th. human resources conference in Istanbul on February 22nd and 23rd 2006. The conference has a very interesting theme called Manifesto: A Fresh Look into Organisations, People and Leadership. The themes are:
    * Discovering successful organizations with unconventional management approaches in place
    * Exploring complexity science and its relationship to organisations
    * Bringing a different look into organisational development, human capital management and work culture
    * Changing our minds about our firms: human corporations, companies as living systems, adaptive enterprise
    * Redefining leadership

    Sounds cool to me :o)

  • Olive solitaire. Olitaire?

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    This made me laugh. Clever.

    Via BoingBoing.

  • Death to PowerPoint

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    Creating Passionate Users is the best blog I’ve found recently, and Kathy Sierra’s post on how not to use PowerPoint is very funny and smart.

    Sometimes the best presentation is… no presentation. Ditch the slides completely. Put the projector in the closet, roll the screen back up, and turn the damn lights back on!

    Especially if the slides are bullet points. Or worse… paragraphs.
    …
    The second you dim the lights and go into “presentation mode” is the moment you move from a two-way conversation to a one-way lecture/broadcast. It’s hard to be interactive when you’re behind your laptop, at a podium, watching your slides on the small screen.

    Read it!

  • Quote

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    So, I’m saying, “This I believe: I believe there is no God.”

    Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

    Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

    – Penn Jillette

    This I believe too. Read the rest of it here.

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