Optimal Friction

Review of the Hawthorn Inn, Camden Maine

Every year during the delight of the Fall season, I return to Camden Maine to spend a special 1/2 week with friends and attend a favorite conference: POPTech.

I'd have to say that aside from the town and the event itself, much of the reason why I return year after year is the Hawthorn Inn. From the first time I stayed in the Turret Room 6 years ago, I realized I was in a special place. The inn itself is simply a treasure. Beautifully appointed, immaculate, and with a spirit and energy that exudes comfort and a feeling of being home.

Maryanne Shanahan is the soul of this special place. She is one of the kindest people I've ever met. Her guests begin a wonderful experience from the moment they walk in the door. Weary travelers will find a warm and inviting presence and a sense of having arrived to a cozy haven surrounded by a beautiful setting. Your cares evaporate, life slows down, the mind becomes calmer, and the heart opens. It's hard to explain how and why this happens; suffice to say that it's simply the energy and warmth of the home and the person who makes it that way.

But let's talk about food for a moment! OMIGOD. I once thought to myself that if I weren't in my current profession, that I would loved to have been in the culinary arts. I say it that way because breakfast in Maryanne's inn is an incredible culinary experience. Our group which returns year after year, echoes "ooohs" and "aahhhs" when Maryanne describes what we're about to be served. When the food arrives, the facial expressions are... well, you will have to make these same faces yourself someday.

As to the surrounding area of the lovely hamlet of Camden. It is a picture-perfect quintessential Maine coastal town. From the delightful back deck, you amble through a beautiful garden and yard to the rear gate, stroll a few steps by the Camden library and in moments, you behold the most picturesque view of Camden Harbor that you can imagine, decorated with magnificent sailboats. Take a short walk through a lovely park, and continue to take in the harbor view - and voila! You're right in town, with excellent restaurants and fantastic little shops at every turn.

That's the essence of it for me. I looked over what other travelers had to say and you'll find other experiences that tell a wonderful story. For example, my friend who sprained his ankle last week wrote about how a bad experience getting injured was turned to one of caring and compassion once "nurse Maryanne" tended to him. If there was a place to be so well-cared for under such fluky circumstances, it might as well be at the Hawthorn with someone like Maryanne. But I don't recommend stepping in potholes to find out :)

Just go to the Hawthorn and enjoy the experience, and you will know what others know. (I confess that a part of me wants to keep it a special secret, though.)

Posted by Mike at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2007

POPTech: Caleb Chung - Furby Inventor

Caleb Chung - toy inventor - isn't just a modern day Gepetto as his POPTech bio describes. After a few minutes of being on stage, it's clear that he also channels his inner Tom Hanks character from the movie, "Big." He's a playful man-boy in an adult body - inventing toys, and clearly a genius at that.

He took the POPTech stage and immediately brought a laugh to the audience by making reference to his unusual name: he confides that he's half Chinese and half German, meaning that about an hour after eating, he gets hungry for power :)

I always love these kinds of sessions at POPTech. First, we have the quirky genius persona. The last time we may have seen this was when Richard Alley spoke on the Greenland ice-core project 2 years ago. Secondly, the subject matter is about tech and design (hey-cool! - not just the POP). It's less about global warming, the ravaging diseases in the Third-world, or the destruction of the rain forests and oceans. I feel less overwhelmed with planetary problems for a moment while listening to Caleb. Just for a moment, we step away from "the-planet-is-doomed" topics, and get to think about - TOYS. It makes me want to play, and not kill myself. (Kidding...)

What's so invigorating about this session is seeing and hearing from the inventor himself about what it's like inside the creative process. We witness the sheer talent involved with this, as well as the engineering discipline and drive that it takes to bring a huge hit into existence, from scratch. People like Daniel Pink and Richard Florida have said that the Creative Economy is the true successor to the Agricultural, Industrial, and the Information economies. There is a phrase, "the future belongs to those who can create new things." Caleb Chung is this personified, and he is showing us how, by first sharing the story of how Furby was bought to life, and then the insider's view of how he invented Pleo, a life-like baby dinosaur about to hit the shelves this Christmas. Take a look:

But let me tell you why I think Caleb Chung is a man to be listened to carefully. For most of the session, the audience experiences pure entertainment. He tells jokes, brings out his inner man-boy when demonstrating prototypes, gives us a sneak peek inside his lab/design studio/garage, and shares wonderful family images of him as dad with his children.

But at one point in the presentation, he gets pretty serious - it occurs when he talks about why he is so passionate about his life's work. He says that the raising of children has a crucial element - enabling them to experience the emotion of EMPATHY. He says that empathy is vital to the development of a child, and that giving them something to experience feelings of compassion and nurturing is what his toys are all about. (Not everyone can buy a real animal for a pet, or an unusual life-form like a Furby, so a proxy-droid is the next best thing. Plus you don't have to clean up after it poops on your rug.)

This is a key theme that I'm not sure people caught as I looked around the audience after he said it. I believe empathy is an emotion that all of history's prophetic figures - religious or otherwise have told us about. Would you hurt, injure (or heaven forbid) kill another (i.e. think Ten Commandments) if you had empathy for their life? Does empathy enable us to transfigure our life's grief and life tragedy, into compassion for others, as Buddhist teachings suggest? Isn't empathy the ability to see your own humanity and pain in the life of another human? ("Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone...") Is empathy a part of saving lives - animal and human - when we see disease and environmental destruction in the world? Is empathy a crucial part to being a "spiritual soul undergoing a human experience?" Is empathy an aspect of experiencing love?

I think these are some of the big questions in life, and I am appreciative that Caleb Chung gave us the opportunity to consider them, all in the context of making toys for children (and some of us adults). Who would have thunk?

Posted by Mike at 07:34 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2007

POPTech: Read Ethan Zuckerman's Blog

Not many people are as amazing at blogging (POPTech or anything else for that matter) as Ethan Zuckerman. If you want an accurate and articulate description of almost every session, go here. Ethan and I are from the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, and live only a few minutes apart. He's amazing at listening, interpreting, and writing in human simulcast. He confessed that it's because he appreciates the value of unplugging from talking, and going into this "zone."

We all benefit from his gift.

I'm shifting to selective blogging from here on out so that I can listen more attentively, make mind-mapping notes by hand, and taking photos. My posts are going to have as many images as I can muster. Also, my brain is starting to seriously churn and assimilate what all this here at POPTech means. It's more a reflective mindful experience than a reporting one. I plan to bring more of that soon, but it takes time to incubate.

So if you would please excuse me, I'm going to listen more right now, and multi-task less.

Posted by Mike at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 19, 2007

POPTech: Carl Honore on the Slow Movement

Carl Honore is taking the stage about the Speed of Human Culture. I'm a great fan of Carl, and I highly recommend his book, "In Praise of Slowness" which is taking the Fast World by storm.

He starts by talking about how people told him he’d love Maine because it’s so slow. I am noting that Carl is a very fast talker for a guy who espouses slowing down. He begins making his point about the perils of constantly being "plugged into" technology, by telling a a true story about a couple where the man realized things were very wrong when his fiance checked email on her Blackberry during lovemaking. (Did you know that 1 in 5 people surveyed stop sex and take the call when their cellphone rings?)

Carl describes speed walking, speed dating, and even speed yoga at a gym near his home, for time-starved professionals in this Road-Runner culture.

We are so caught up in the dash of daily life. We lose sight of the damage that it does to our health, work, relationships, to our environment. A wake up call is often in the shape of an illness. Or a relationship ending. Carl's wake up call was around bedtime stories with his young son, where he found himself speed-reading Snow White. His son often arguing about dad reading too fast. "Why are there only 3 dwarfs?," he would ask. He realized he had gone off the deep-end when he found that a book entitled “The One Minute Bedtime Story” had some appeal.

That was his moment of epiphany. He started looking, traveling, and finding people everywhere slowing down. However, rather than discover that things would fall apart when people slowed down, they found the opposite to be true - things got better. Hence the Slow-Movement.

Example - Food: The virus of hurry has infected everything in our food chain. How we grow it, how we make it, how we eat it. We lose the nutrition, the pleasure, the social connection of food. Slow Food actually started in Italy. Carl says that we get more pleasure health and meaning when we change our relationship with food.

The Slow City movement is also happening, reconfiguring the urban landscape. Park benches, roads closed to traffic. Both are Italian, but broader than just that.

Yoga, Tai Chi, is now prevalent. They foster not only physique, but an inner calm. Being “in the zone.” Time slows down. He talks about slow medicine: alternative therapies, acupuncture, massage. These things work.

And fast sex? Carl's not just referring to the tidal wave of porn on the net. He gives us a sad statistic - 20% of those surveyed are willing to interrupt lovemaking to take a cell-phone call. In the current culture of Men's Health magazine, he made reference to an article byline that read "Bring Her to Orgasm in 30 Seconds." How ridiculous, as though that's what any woman might want. On the other hand, there is a significant movement around slow lovemaking, including more awareness of Tantric lovemaking techniques. If it's good for Sting, why not the rest of us?

Children need slowness even more than adults do, as those more sublime experiences provide children opportunities fo develop and understand relationships. Some schools are telling parents that children need more down time - away from homework and scheduled activities. Even Harvard University sends out recommendations that their incoming freshmen encouraging them to find ways to slow down.

All this is fine for personal life, but what about the workplace?

In the 21st century, in many ways it's a given that companies and organizations have to be fast, but you can’t be fast ALL THE TIME. In the world of work, there are 3 strands of discussion that Carl makes about this:

1) Working less is happening in the Nordic countries. Yet they rank consistently high at the top of the corporate world. Example: Nokia
2) Working more slowly. The brain needs moments of slowness to drop into nuance and moments of creative thought. Sometimes you can't rush creativity.
3) Renegotiating our relationship with gadgets. Use the OFF button. According to an internal communication at HP, they've informed employees that the constant barrage of tech stimulation can drive IQ down about 10 points in a day. That's double the drop from smoking marijuana.

Wherever you look, we are finding that less is more. Slower can be better. In the early days of our speed culture, the pace of acceleration may have been good, but speed now is doing more harm than good. This message to rethink speed is spreading everywhere. It’s not extremist. It’s about relearning the lost art of shifting gears. Learn how to be fast AND to be slow.

Does it work in practice?

Yes. Carl cites his own life as an example. Yes, he still loves hockey and living in fast-paced London. But he is also making peace with his "inner tortoise." He has more energy. He finds himself more productive, and having more time to grapple with the big questions like, "Who am I? What am I doing here?" And his bedtime ritual with his son? It's far better, and he now reads to his son at his son's speed. Conversations happen that he didn’t have before.

One final personal Carl Honore story – after the book came out, his son came downstairs to give a homemade card to his daddy just as he was leaving for the airport on a trip to the U.S. It wasn't a farewell card, but one that thanked him for being the best story-reading dad in the world.

Posted by Mike at 05:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

POPTech: Not Just Mars and Venus

Louann Brizendine, M.D., a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, is the founder of the Women’s and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic. Her message to us is that there is no such thing as the unisex brain, and that because of this there are new understandings about how men and women think,feel, and act as a result of our physiology.

While all brains in the womb start out as female, after about 8 weeks males testes releases surges of testosterone that bathe the brain and dramatically alter its development. Similarly, female brains are awashed in progesterone and estrogen, shifting their direction in powerful ways. Many of these shifts start in the womb, but continue long after birth, and especially during puberty when girls and boys experience dramatic physical changes.

Brizendine put up a slide describing the age window of 10-15, and I found myself noting that my daughter Tara is fifteen, and my son David is eleven - right in that window. I was struck that the hormonal factors Brizendine was describing dramatic affect growth of different areas of the brain and the wiring of its synapses. For example, in boys, the amygdula -- a pear-shaped clump of tissue above the brain stem -- is significantly larger in boys. It reacts quickly to perceived threats as though tigers are indeed in our midst, setting off the fight-or-flight response that triggers the release of adrenaline and other hormones into the bloodstream. (That helps us also understand the men who rushed in to save those in the burning towers during 9/11 - even though they were not related.)

Females on the other hand, have high amounts of oxytocin, “the pair-bonding molecule.” Females experience this starting from menses. Women's brains as a result are generally better at emotional detail and non-verbal communication. (But these are not absolute. My son seems to have high emotional richness in his communication, and a high degree of empathy - traits that can easily be present in males. He'll be a real catch for a lucky girl someday... At the same time, many females have positive traits frequently attributed to males. Both my daughter and her mom are simply amazing at math.)

But these kinds of conversations are always risky - witness the end of Lawrence Summers tenure as president of Harvard when he attributed women's lesser involvement in math and science fields as being related to gender differences. Louann also takes chances here by using satirical slides where SEX on the brain is spelled out in huge letters, referring to the notion that testosterone makes the area that processes sexual desire twice as large in males. She also teased women showing areas of the female brain having large sections devoted to shopping and jealousy. Maybe it's all in the spirit of levity and fun. But I think the important thing is to be mindful of potential reductionism by this theory. It's easy to fall into a rabbit hole where gender differences can be expressed as either/or or better than/less than, illustrating a tension between man and women.

But Louann closes on a very inspirational and positive note. She explains that in 1900, women averaged 14-15 pregnancies and 10 childbirths. The average lifespan was 39 or 40 years old. Today, 50% of the smartest people in the world are women, and lifespans are 30-40 years beyond childbearing years, and that they have control over their fertility [in many parts of the world]. Louann says that both men and women can combine their collective intellectual capital to solve the problems that humanity faces, end war, foster kindness, and make the world a better place.

Posted by Mike at 12:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 18, 2007

Jessica Flannery of Kiva.org

Jessica Flannery (www.kiva.org) is speaking during the "Innovation From the Bottom Up" session and is wowing the POPTech audience. Her enthusiasm is infectious; she's vibrant, passionate, and articulate about what she and her husband Matt have done to enable *anyone* to make a business loan (with as little as $25) to entrepreneurs in Third-world countries, enabling them to rise out of poverty.

From Kiva's website: "Jessica first saw the power and beauty of microfinance while working in rural Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda with Village Enterprise Fund and Project Baobab on impact evaluation and program development. Jessica has spoken widely on microfinance and social entrepreneurship, and has shared the vision for Kiva.org in more than 30 countries worldwide. Jessica holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from Bucknell University."

However, what you get from hearing Jessica speak firsthand, and not just from reading the Kiva description on the web, is how one person's vision can make a difference, impacting the world in an incredibly positive way. When I first pondered the theme of this year's POPTech, I was bracing for the "downer" of how humanity is negatively impacting the planet as we expand and consume more and more. But then one gets to listen to this young middle-class woman from the Midwest, and how she made her vision come alive to positively impact people's lives far and wide, using the Internet.

What also impressed me was how her life was changed just from hearing one person: Muhammed Yunus, the founder of the Gremeen Bank. She said that hearing him speak and getting to talk to him was what inspired her. She ended up quitting her job at the time and moving to Africa to do her dream, which was to work in microfinance in Africa.

Pretty amazing...

Posted by Mike at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)

Chris Jordan's Visuals at the POPTech 2007 Conference

Chris Jordan is using the medium of photographic arts to show us the sheer scale and magnitude of waste from consumerism. I just saw a photo of what two million plastic bottles (used in the U.S. every five minutes) looks like. The reason he uses photography to convey his message about the impact of human waste on our world is to try and move people emotionally, instead of just intellectually. It's working.

Chris' current exhibit, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, is about the impact American consumerism and greed have on our culture and our planet: “Collectively we have given in to greed and made the gaining of wealth our cultural priority. This comes at the expense of what some people hold most sacred: our connectedness to ourselves, to each other, and to our planet.

What strikes me is that we have 300 million people in the U.S., and an export of a consumerism philosophy that is spreading around the planet. As I look at his images, I realize that the waste being depicted is but a fraction of what the world produces. For example, China and India have 3 billion people adopting our American way of life; they alone represent half of the planet. These countries want American prosperity too, and the impact of consumerism from these populations hasn't even begun to be felt yet.

He asks us to consider how many of these millions of plastic bottles are for... water, which we Americans can get out of our tap that is better quality than what has been flown/shipped by airplane from other places in plastic bottles. Did you know that "Dasani" water is bottled by the Coca Cola company, with much of it sourced from the Detroit River? When you drink Dasani, you're getting tap water from Detroit.

Why not buy something like a Nalgene bottle, and fill it/reuse it with water from home?

Posted by Mike at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)

POPTech Conference 2007 - "The Human Impact"

I'm BACK! It's exciting to be here at the POPTech Conference. It's my annual pilgrimage to take in ideas and images from remarkable speakers from all over the world, in the tiny hamlet of Camden, a beautiful village with a delightful harbor halfway up the Maine coast.

This year's theme is "The Human Impact" - exploring some of the many ways human beings impact—and are impacted by—the world and each other. This is the description of the conference from the Poptech website:

The dialogue will cover a wide range of topics, from new ways of measuring humanity’s global impact and the promise of bottom-up solutions to global poverty, to the future of the oceans and the dialogue between Islam and the West.

We’ll get a deep look at where ideas come from – reviewing startling new scientific insights into the mind and brain, and examine the origins of creativity, innovation, and the essence of human nature.

Next, we will turn our attention to where our ideas are made real: the “systems of civilization” that govern our lives. From human habitats, resources and material culture to the political processes that frame our shared agendas, we’ll take stock of where we are and where we’re going.

We’ll conclude by looking at the inspiring ways new ideas, technologies, and approaches are being used to transform the world—from the bottom up (versus from the top down).

As always, there will be incredible performances, spirited discussions and surprises woven throughout. We will leave Camden with a reframed sense of ourselves, the systems we rely on, and the dynamics of positive change.

It's my 8th year at POPTech, and it began with a homecoming of sorts at the Hawthorne Inn and the wonderful feeling created by the proprietor, Maryanne Shanahan. She is wonderful, and her inn is also a special reason for my journey every year to Camden.

Posted by Mike at 02:17 PM | Comments (0)

October 01, 2007

Is The World (Really) Flat?

This coming Wednesday Oct 3rd at 6pm, I'll be giving a talk at the Chicago SPIN about whether the "Flat World" according to author Thomas Friedman, is really flat when it comes to complex technology projects, especially those involving software.

This presentation was really popular when I delivered it as a Keynote Address at the IT Association of Galway, Ireland a while back. Just for kicks, I plan to show data on Agile Development projects to juxtapose two of the powerful trends in technology today. I'm not saying that either is better or worse per-se, but they are strikingly different in their philosophy and their outcomes. For details, see the abstract and directions to the event below. You might also want to read an interview that I did on this subject by clicking here.

Hope to see some of you in Chicago this week!

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Abstract

In “The World Is Flat,” author Thomas Friedman describes how a “connected” world has made it possible to do almost anything collaboratively with people around the planet. This globalization has driven companies to not only to distribute low-wage manufacturing around the world, but also high-end design and knowledge work as well, like software development.

But is the world really flat when it comes to creating and designing software? Labor rates are but one dimension of outsourcing. What does a worldwide database of actual completed projects show compared to what people expect? Do apparent cost savings reflect similar outcomes for time-to-market and quality? Are companies satisfied with their ability to achieve all of their outsourcing goals? Do companies that have already outsourced intend to stay the course or switch? What are some of the implications of Agile development and outsourcing?

This talk will answer these and other important issues that senior executives need to consider when evaluating their options, using benchmark statistics compiled by recent research of several hundred companies that have made outsourcing a part of their global development strategy.

About the Presenter

Michael Mah is a contributing author of "IT Measurement, Advice from the Experts", Prentice Hall ©2003, and an in-progress work entitled, "Optimal Friction, People Dynamics at Work in the Information Age.” (His blog is at www.optimalfriction.com) Michael is a senior consultant with the Cutter Consortium, where he is director of the Measurement and Benchmarking Practice and senior consultant for the Sourcing & Vendor Relationships Advisory. He is also the managing partner of QSM Associates Inc. in Pittsfield, MA USA, a firm specializing in software metrics and project estimation (http://www.qsma.com).

Michael's work merges concepts in benchmarking with negotiation for IT Outsourcing and Relationship Management. Michael's particular interest is in people dynamics and the complex interactions involved in global software development. He is a featured industry speaker and writer on outsourcing and software productivity at events such as the Carnegie Mellon SEI Conference, the Cutter Summit series, the Better Software Conference, the TPI Outsourcing Conferences, and the Sourcing Interests Group (SIG). He has worked with a wide range of international clients such as Rockwell, Intel, HP, JPMorganChase, BellSouth/AT&T, and others.

He has a degree in electrical engineering from Tufts University with a focus on electromagnetic physics and Far Eastern history. He is trained in mediation and conflict resolution from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Driving and Parking Directions

From I-90 Northwest Tollway, exit North on Barrington Road. Take Barrington Road to Lakewood Blvd (2nd light) and turn East (right) onto Lakewood Blvd. Turn right into the AT&T Campus Center’s West Employee Entrance (the first entrance past Eagle Way) and follow the signs to the West Parking Structures.

Parking is available in upper level parking lot W1 or covered lot W2. Look for parking spaces towards the west end of the parking structures. The Institute Building, located across the road (west of the parking structures), is approximately a 3-5 minute walk from the parking structure. Visit http://www.c-spin.net for a map of the AT&T Campus Center.

Posted by Mike at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)