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Archive for January, 2007

Jan 30

Science of the Soul

Narina Pallot likes hugging trees, reading The Guardian, and Freeview television. She travels on public transport, and hit the shops before gigs. Jacobs Creek fuels the set and numbs the nerves. She is, at heart, a hippy and emulates the 60’s peace movement in her style and lyric. Family is even closer to heart, and even closer to the exit door selling t-shirts and memorabilia. Love plays out in her story – love lost, love gained, and well, you know, the other stuff associated to that. The reference was made many times; 57 I counted. Narina Pallot has just been nominated for a Brit, but remarked that this is only good for selling a few records.

I learned all this yesterday evening whilst watching Narina play at the Manchester Academy. Each song was punctuated with a colourful story. It was far from scripted, and often more entertaining than the music; although I must confess this was good too – great in fact.

So, Social Computing woven into a performance?? The stories are removed from the blog and brought to life on stage. It is about life in the end, and opening up more meaningful interaction when you are with people, even an audience. Reflection allows us to paint a colourful story, computing is the messenger, and social is just that – social.

http://www.nerinapallot.com/pt/blog/

Jan 27

2 Comments

Long Live the Book

The humble book was possibly the most disruptive technology of all. An emergent consequence of the printing press. The proliferation of words and ideas caused people to be burned at the stake, wars to start, and society to ask big questions of itself.

Jan 12

Ideas not Doctorates

To all aspiring business and management academics, I plead with you – read Mintzberg’s ‘Managers Not MBAs’. I looked at the title myself the other day and without reading the text I wrote the following statement on twitter – “Managers not MBA’s. Does this mean Ideas not Doctorates?”. For once, I may have been right. I’m not saying I agree with everything Mintzberg puts forward. Sceptics might suggest he is trying to push his research focus, management, back into the mainstream of business school education and thought. However, I think this would miss the point. What Mintzberg offers the next generation is an opportunity to do something different…the industry has being doing the same thing for almost 100 years. So let us take the chance and break away from our industries paradigms. Can it be any worse than what we already have? It might be, but we should at least capture our enthusiasm and energy on entering the Doctoral programme, hence the following set of statements will be fixed to my office wall for the foreseeable future:

Putting the Passion Back In

(summary of Mintzberg’s presentation to the Organisation and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management Conference, 1996)

  • Screw tenure. Better to be able to look yourself in the mirror than to hang your head in the faculty club.
  • Publish only when you have something to say. You will be even happier as a reader.
  • Say it all at once, right, altogether. Take a chance at becoming famous instead of fractured.
  • Never set out to be the best. Do your best.
  • Create Knowledge. Discover something new; most everyone else is redigesting what is old. Something new is probably staring you in the face right now (like Fleming with that mold). The little boy in the Hans Christian Andersen story did not have the courage to say that the emperor wore no clothes; he had the courage to see it. After that, saying it was easy.
  • Write for the thoughtful practitioner. Falling over the vertical of academic irrelevance is no better than sliding down the slippery slope of easy practicality. Stay up on that ridge; it’s an exhilarating place to be, less dangerous than either side. Your reasonable colleagues will respect you for it.
  • Get close to action. Not “the” action, just action. Surprise yourself. Then maybe you can surprise others.
  • Be passionate about what you do or get out.

Jan 4

4 Comments

Where sits the future?

I find this picture (taken on New Years Day) fascinating, and I imagine it holds serious implications for game designers. Where does the future sit? One half the room was gunning for traditional board games – they demanded social interaction, tension, and laughter. The other half of the room remained quiet – they had, actually, for around several hours. Having said that, all sorts of complex mechanisms were enacted when playing ‘Bomber Man’ (four player game). The kids were developing the art of strategy, competition, and even cooperation to reference the ideas of John Forbes Nash.

My question is, and I leave this open for debate, where sits the future? Do game designers continue to innovate in the left of the picture or do they look to the right to better understand the importance of social interaction?

games

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