A basic lesson in design and the importance of non-functional characteristics from Jony Ive: “What we tend to focus on are those attributes that are easy to talk about, and just because we talk about them doesn’t mean that they’re the important attributes. All that means is they’re the ones that are easy to talk about.”
I’ve been trying to figure out what makes for the best kind of professional working relationships. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t and sometimes they really take off.
I didn’t think I’d live to hear one, but WIDI is a German language podcast (by Igor and a different Johannes) about technology that adds a unique perspective and a more systemic approach to the mix. If they manage to keep it niche, this will be a must listen for a German language audience.
I think it’s lovely that you can do stuff like this these days in Jira (Cloud at least) but given the choice I still would pick more or less anything else.
Unexpected but more than welcome that The Verge would bring the story of Ramsey Orta, the person who filmed the killing of Eric Garner by NYPD and is now facing prison time and harassment for it.
A thorough and hugely insightful breakdown of six software rewrites with the conclusion that you can always create something new without throwing away the value you already have.
I choked and turned tail, fled once again, fled faced with myself; I left at a run; there are things that can’t be fixed. Actually, nothing can be fixed.
But other foxes say that in that brief second the man realizes that physical life is a stupid and shameful mistake. And the first thing he tries to do is to thank the fox who has opened his eyes. And after that he corrects the error of his own existence.
Facebook did a half-hearted push towards a more messaging focused experience during the conversational boom, but didn’t manage to make any inroads and abandoned the effort. Whatsapp could have been the beachhead but with the original leadership and vision gone, nothing interesting will happen there. Instagram (also without original leadership) is slowly being turned into sludge by whatever PMs Facebook has left.
Circumstances here on the continent are of course nowhere near as dystopian as in the USA but nevertheless a lot in this bleak and harsh piece about midlife crises rings true.
The origin story of Notion is pretty wild but all of the recipes in it for deep collaboration and radical iteration make a lot of sense. When I briefly tried out Notion, I was struck very much by how tight both its vision and its execution were.
A lot of sense and clear rules about tool usage in this article about remote native organizations by Pablo Carranza. It makes me itch to go back to working remote however much I’m enjoying my current office setup.
A well written defense by Markthalle IX in Berlin that sounds good but still paints a much more rosy picture of reality than is justified. Let’s be totally clear: removing the ALDI will advance the area’s socio-economic cleansing.
Reality captured in photos by Istanbul cab driver Sevket Sahintas. There’s an equivalent series here in Berlin that is not being captured as far as I know.
As soon as AOC got the nomination I already had a strong hunch that she was the real deal. Turns out I had no idea how much of a deal she was going to be.
Watching this level of conflict photography always gives me the itch (and there are tons and tons of stories not being caught still even in this age of ubiquitous digital) to start shooting again. RIP Yannis Behrakis.
After listening to this very enjoyable episode of @ tech_done_right, I’m left wondering which companies here on the continent implement the hiring best practices (standardization, diverse panels, take-home alternatives) mentioned in it.
I didn’t think I would be working with MISP, a threat intelligence platform written in PHP but now I am and here you can read a bit more about the various things we’re doing with it.
An excellent talk by Tanya Reilly about the career impacts of technical and glue (non-technical) work especially for underrepresented groups: “Being promoted is diversity work.”
I’m not a data scientist but I’ve been trained for it (as part of my computer science degree) and I’ve worked in a bunch of related fields. I wholly endorse this take by Vicki Boykis on the state of data science and what you need to be successful at it.
I really like this way of looking at team success, but I’d clarify that success means that a team not only holds each other accountable but me as well.
A very necessary housing revolution is underway in Berlin that has the potential to halt market forces that are running amok. After Barcelona, now Berlin. Who’s next?
This description of the Goldsmith MA Design Expanded Practice is more or less also how I prefer to work whether in my own practice or anywhere else. An exposition of how to redesign design education that is well worth reading.
Analogies always deceive more than they reveal; I am no fan of analogies, I do not use them. Even metaphor, that mental operation we use with almost every word we speak, is slippery and deceptive. I always speak as plainly as I can.
First, they spent most of their efforts building strong relationships between Griffin’s tribal members—its employees, volunteers, and patients. Second, instead of telling people what to do, they engineered experiences (such as the retreats) in which staff members would look at the same issues they were dealing with, so that strategy became everyone’s problem. Third, they got out of the way and let people contribute in their own way to the emerging tribal goals.
I grabbed the code I had lying around for last year and without too much trouble ran the same analysis for the books. The graph is not that dramatic this time though for some reason I did not read much during summer.
We hope only that we have not obstructed or weakened the power of these teachings. May they help to liberate all beings from the warring evils of the setting sun.