Wandering the streets of Prague on a misty morning, I was struck by the beauty of the cobblestones beneath my feet. Some cities and towns have uniform cobblestones; Cobblestones in Prague vary from big to little, bordered to uniform, light to dark, and smooth to rough. I became aware of what I was stepping on. Berlin yields some surprises. The cobblestones of Melbourne’s Federation Square are a riot of pattern and color.

Art is where you find it.

When you encounter something that’s yes or no, with nothing in between, you’ve found fundamentalism, the bi-polar oversimplification of a situation that’s the stock and trade of fanatics. Or perhaps it’s just a naive interpretation by a shallow thinker. Or the agenda of a true believer that sees you as either one of us or one of them.
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A business ecosystem

Ten years ago I fell so deliriously in love that I neglected my work, lost my job, and flew to a Caribbean island to sort out my priorities. My mistress was the web, and I love her still. She’s been very, very good to me.

The concept for Internet Time Group popped into my head whilst sitting amid the Mayan ruins on Cozumel. My calling would be to help people learn to do fulfilling work and lead satisfying lives. I intended to challenge the conventional wisdom about how adults learn. Often networks are at the heart of it instead of classrooms.

The net has been my benefactor and my connection to thousands of colleagues and friends. You helped me learn. You provoked me to explore eLearning. You anointed me the Johnny Appleseed of informal learning. Now you’re goading me help organizations survive and prosper in the unpredictable, post-industrial age ahead. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The pace of change is white hot and getting faster by the moment. I’ve written several books and chapters for half a dozen others but I do not expect instructional books to be around much longer. They can’t keep up. The publishing industry has not made any breakthroughs since the 1490s. I’m excited to be working on an alternative.

Today I completed the first release of my un-book. It’s a modern-day Whole Earth Catalog which provides access to tools for improving individual and organizational performance. The un-book’s content changes day to day; the hard copy portion is printed on demand. The printed pages are the tip of a heap of resources on the web. A parallel community provides the opportunity to suggest improvements and additions, and to network with other subscribers. The un-book will always be in beta, forever an unfolding experiment. I expect to release the un-book within ten days.

I’ve been meeting with many organizations and groups lately, but I’m trying to do more than just talk at their people. My mission is to inspire people to apply frameworks that unlock innovation. Sometimes this requires F2F meetings. Increasingly, it’s short bursts of advice over the phone or in net meetings. It’s not just me; half a dozen colleagues are collaborating to bring more than a single viewpoint to workshops and change events I orchestrate.

When I began blogging (in the last century!), my friends didn’t “get it.” When I started writing about eLearning, people said it would never replace the classroom. Skeptics told me it would never work. Brandon Hall emailed me that he didn’t like the term; it wouldn’t stick. Traditionalists were not pleased with my contention that “Courses are dead.” People put down informal learning, saying it lacks rigor and is uncontrollable. I enjoy being contrarian just to poke reality from the edges, but it’s wonderfully reinforcing when history proves me right. To the naysayers, I have but one thing to say: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Now I’ll go out on another limb. I believe we are at the gates of a new era of human consciousness. Everything is becoming connected. All is intangible. Connections are overtaking nodes. The global brain is kicking in. The global heart won’t be far behind. I’m really looking forward to our next ten years together.

We arrived in Berlin last night. The temperature outside is about 300 degrees: celsius or fahrenheit, it no longer makes a difference when the humidity is this high. Yesterday we were in Dresden. Prague the night before. Cathedral, museum, cobblestone alleys, souvenirs, streetcars, maps in 6-point type, plazas, Starbucks, palaces, historic markers, photo op, statue to martyr, and musician with his hand out. I am the Johnny Mnemonic of tourists: so many impressions and ideas swimming around in my head but too little time/bandwidth to let them out.

Here’s the last three days:

A week ago, we flew into Zurich, rested up a couple of days, drove to Chur and on to Andeer.

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Andeer is a beautiful village and the source of the Rhine; it’s but a trickle here. It was warm the day we visited: every other block along the cobblestone streets, I would scoop up a handful of cold, pure water from an open-air fountains. Andeer has been a stopping place for people crossing the Alps since Roman times. Tourist season has yet to begun, so it was just us and the locals wandering among the graffiti-covered houses along cobble-stone streets.

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Alpine wildflowers are in bloom, making for a colorful drive from Splugen to Chiavenna on mountain roads so obscure that I can’t find them in Google Maps.

In late afternoon, we arrived at our resting spot for the next four days: the tiny village of Soglio. An hour’s walk from Italy, Soglio is perched on a hill above groves of chestnut trees. Fewer than 200 people live here. Cars are not permitted; most of the streets are only five or six feet wide. Houses and barns are typically constructed of stacks of local rock. People have lived here since 1350. The internet has yet to arrive.

Walking paths overlooking the valley is the primary activity here, so when heavy rain made the Panoramaweg impassible, we drove down to Italy for lunch

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Twenty-two years ago, Uta and I happened upon a delightful restaurant high up a hill in Tremezzo, overlooking Lake Como and Bellagio. A favorite family photo shows three-year old Austin at the table to the left as Uta writes postcards. Al Veluu is still picture-perfect. The food was simple, fresh, colorful, and delicious. There was only one other patron, so we had the place to ourselves.

The fried zuchini that accompanied my grilled lavarello was so tasty, we ordered a platter. I cannot remember a tastier, more delightful lunch.

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The Giacometti family hails from Stampa, a village several miles to the north of Soglio.

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Yesterday we drove the length of the Engadine Valley, from Maloja to St. Moritz, Zernez, and Scuols, and thence to Innsbruck and finally Salzberg, where we’ll be for a few days.

My freshman year at Paris-American High School, our general science teacher told us that several times a month he would forgo drinking orange juice with breakfast. He didn’t want to habituate to it. I’ve been off the grid for five days. It’s pleasant to skip sorting through dozens of meaningless emails every morning. I don’t need newspapers and websites to give me the same daily news again and again: politicians are corrupt, military dictators violate human rights, Mother Nature causes catastrophes, the health advice you’ve heard since childhood was wrong, Democrats hate Republicans, Republicans hate Democrats, the Middle East faces thorny problems, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I’ve been drawing pictures for a story I’m developing: My Life as a Node.

But for now, we’ve got sites to see. Auf wiedersehen.

A time and motion study was conducted in the 1940s to identify ways to improve the efficiency of firing a mobile artillery piece — either to speed up the number of rounds in a given time and/or decrease the required number of people it took to do it – almost a classic definition of “productivity.”

As part of the analysis, the researchers examined the carefully orchestrated movements of the gunnery crew – a total of five soldiers as I recall – as they loaded, aimed, primed, and fired the gun. The process had been carefully choreographed over time for maximum efficiency and speed.

Watching, and later filming, the dance of the gunners, the analyst was puzzled by what seemed to be a series of wasted and wholly unnecessary steps. Two of the gunners, in fact, seemed to do nothing half the time, while the other three worked their respective asses off. Just before the gun was fired, these two soldiers just stepped back, one to either side of the gun and simply stood there; watching the other three work. Once the gun was fired, they stepped back in to help. It was obviously part of the carefully choreographed routine, but it made no sense.

Puzzled, the analyst queried other gun crews looking for an answer. The whole loading and firing process was carefully scripted, extremely orchestrated, right down to individual movements and roles. There had to be a reason why two of the guys just stood there half the time. Nobody seemed to know why; they just all agreed that it had to be done that way. It was the way they were taught, and that was the way it was done, period.

Finally the researchers asked an old colonel of artillery, someone who had been around for a while, and someone that actually trained the younger gunners. The veteran knew immediately. “They’re holding the horses,” he said. “What horses,” asked the researchers. “Why the ones that used to haul the guns. Each gun was hauled by two horses. If you didn’t hold them steady when the gun fired, they would bolt.” Of course, the horses had been replaced by mechanized artillery years before.

Identify the people in your organization whose jobs are to hold the horses. Many are probably “controlling” things they have no control over. Or perhaps they are monitoring the trivial. So many things are self-correcting these days, it’s often worthwhile to convert these superfluous observers into productive workers.

Story from a blog post by Gavin Clabaurg’s Digital Diner

(Fortune Magazine)

The Times of London calls C.K. Prahalad “the No. 1 most influential management thinker in the world.” I wouldn’t argue. And he’s about to contribute another important idea to business.

The buzzword you’ll be hearing and using a lot more is “co-creation.” It’s the latest addition to the Prahalad lexicon, which you’re already employing, perhaps without knowing it. If you’ve ever talked about “core competencies” or “strategic intent” or “the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid,” you’re using terms he invented (with Gary Hamel in the first two cases). Co-creation is a key concept in his just published book, “The New Age of Innovation,” written with M.S. Krishnan; Prahalad and Krishnan are professors at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

C.K., it’s about time. I’ve been rattling on about co-creation for more than five years, and I was hardly the first.

Informal Learning – the other 80%

Thursday, May 08, 2003

“learning (co-creation of knowledge)”
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On Saturday afternoon, a dozen of us talked about inspirational encounters with art. Art, and I refer to high Art, once intimidated me. I spent time trying to figure out what made it great. In time, my attention drifted from the art itself to people’s relationship to the art. Hence….

Dejeuner sur l’Herbe

Jackson Pollack and me

Couple in Toronto

Matisse, Musee d’Orsai

Van Gogh, Musee d’Orsai

Monet, Musee d’Orsai

Uta and Isamu Noguchi

Le Salon at the Met

Giacometti at MOCA

It all depends on how you look at it.

I bought a Flip camcorder last week from Amazon and took it on a weekend trip to Point Reyes National Seashore. It is almost impossible to believe something this small, lightweight, and cheap can pack so much power and fun into a unit that slides into your shirt pocket.

Check this out:

Product Features

• Simple to use, pocket-sized camcorder with one-touch recording and digital zoom
• Holds 60 minutes of full VGA-quality video on 2GB of built-in memory; no tapes or additional memory cards required
• Convenient USB arm plugs directly into your computer for easy viewing and sharing
• Built-in software lets you easily e-mail videos, upload to YouTube and AOL, and capture still photos from video
• Watch videos instantly on TV with included cable

Specs

• Recording time: Up to 60 minutes
• Internal memory: 2 GB
• Screen size: 1.5 inches (diagonal)
• Resolution: 640 x 480
• Low-light sensitivity: Very high sensitivity (>2.0V/lux-sec)
• Frame rate: 30 frames per second (constant)
• Video bitrate: 4.5Mbps (average–auto adaptive algorithm)
• Video format: Advanced Profile MPEG4 AVI
• Interface: 8 buttons (Power, Play, Delete, Record, and 4-way navigation)
• Time from power-up to record: Less than 3 seconds

Flip Video Camcorder. $129.99 at Amazon.

Here’s what Flip video looks like under fluorescent light: