I was reading a book by Steve Yastrow this week entitled, “We: The Ideal Customer Relationship,” when I stumbled upon this insight… we are defined not by the things that make us similar, but by the things that make us different. Brilliant! The great corporate, philanthropic and personal brands that come to mind are theRead… Read more »
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein 1. Spend an hour a week thinking of new ideas you can implement at your federal place of employment without being asked — and present them to your manager. 2. Get in the habit of skimming a lot of publicationsRead… Read more »
Not this urn… It’s December, and Brits and Aussies alike have turned their thoughts to Christmas, family, parties, holidays and travel. There’s also a very special content underway down-under between Britain and Australia, consuming the thoughts of millions. It all revolves around a very particular type of urn… An urn containing the ashes of AustralianRead… Read more »
Code for America has lots of projects. These projects are written in different languages, hosted in different places, and have different levels of complexity. When I joined CfA in October, a few of these apps used New Relic and a couple were monitored via Pingdom. It important for us to have a basic view ofRead… Read more »
We are storytelling animals. It’s what differentiates us from our primate cousins. We are literally Homo narrativus. We use stories to assign meaning to our lives, transmit vital information and communicate with future generations. Without our storytelling ability, we would never have evolved out of the jungles of Africa. Human history begins with stories, likeRead… Read more »
We recently saw a post on LinkedIn from the good people at the Open Space Institute about a great opportunity that we wanted to share. They are giving away copies of The Practice of Peace by Harrison Owen, one of the creators of Open Space Technology! But this offer will only last until December 31st,Read… Read more »
NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space have opened the International Space Station to stem cell research in a move aimed at addressing medical conditions both in space and on Earth. Scientists can study non-embryonic stem cell properties using the ISS U.S. National Laboratory’s microgravity environment, NASA said Friday. NASA intendsRead… Read more »
Someone asked for comment, I offered it. The background: A gentleman who makes a living “reducing complexity” for IT systems keeps running into some of us on Twitter who study complexity. You can imagine the entertaining exchanges, which led to his posting these observations on his LinkedIn group. The ask: There is a group ofRead… Read more »
Government agencies regularly report “incident” data, such as the number of burglaries, house fires, cases of food poisoning, bankruptcies, workplace injuries, and more. While these data can be used externally for accountability, they can also be used internally to predict and prevent these kinds of incidents. These days, more detailed, near real-time data can beRead… Read more »
Social doesn’t want to talk to your minions People always talk about how “it’s a small world” and to a large degree it is…and getting smaller as advancing technology, social media and other forces help us connect with others and stay connected. Many organizations are racing to implement technologies and processes to meet this challenge.Read… Read more »