What would it mean if women were paid as much as men? (DRAFT)
Draft! Please do not link here!
Update, April 20: Rrevised version has been posted on Qworky’s blog, Better Software/Better World
{ Category Archives }
Professional
Rant: I still hate software (DRAFT)
Draft! Work in progress! Feedback welcome!
Revised version intended for Qworky’s blog Better Software/Better World
If you’ve got any examples of or stories about software you hate, please leave them in the comments!
Celebrate, brainstorm, anticipate: asset-based thinking 2009/2010
Judy Dubin of the Cramer Institute suggests looking at a meeting as a musical performance of classical music.  Via that lens, the asset-based thinking discussion list’s last conference call for 2009 was a work for guitar, four voices, and keyboards. It featured a prelude (Eve and I chatting while waiting for others to show up), three movements titled celebration, brainstorming, and anticipation, and a coda (this post and the ongoing discussions).
For abtdisc’ers who couldn’t be there in person, here are some of the highlights.
Whether or not you were there, please share any additional celebration, anticipation, updates, and brainstorming thoughts in the comments … and have a great holiday season, a wonderful end to 2009, and an even better start to 2010!
jon
Third time’s a charm: “The Ad Astra holiday special 3.0”
So it’s a golden opportunity for that classic TV holiday special. You know, the one where production costs are virtually zero because it’s mostly reused clips and stuff shot on one big party set, and various people show up and say hi and we get to hear about what they’re doing now — and their favorite moments from the last year. “A chance to say hi to old friends — and maybe make some new ones????â€
— “A very special Ad Astra holiday” , December 2007
For those of you who have gotten to know me over the last few years, Ad Astra (Analysis and Development of Awesome STRAtegies) was a grassroots strategy/culture change project I led at Microsoft.  Our charter to pursue game-changing ideas, positive focus, and attention to diversity — along with a cool logo and hot pink posters and beanbag chairs — attracted some amazing people. So every year around this time I say hi.
For those who knew me then …
Hiiiiii! (waves)
What’s up?
jon
PS: I hope everybody has a great holiday season, a wonderful end to 2009, and an even better start to 2010! Â Where’s the eggnog?
DRAFT: Want to make meetings better? Qworky is recruiting for a diverse open source project!
Update, December 17:Â Thanks to all for the excellent feedback, here and in email!
I’ll be splitting this into two posts, which will appear on the Qworky blog
Thanks also to those who expressed interest … if you’d like to get involved, stay tuned — or get in touch via the contact information at the bottom of the post.
As a company we view diversity as a vital ingredient to sustained business success. We value unique perspectives and traditionally under-represented viewpoints in the software design process. We welcome collaborators from every walk of life. We welcome people of any gender identity and expression, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, experience level, discipline, educational background, culture, and political opinion.
— Qworky’s draft diversity statement
Continue Reading »
Qworky: the adventure begins!
Welcome to Qworky!
Pardon our construction, we’re busy designing software to revolutionize the way people work together.
Software doesn’t have to suck. Instead, it should fit in smoothly with your work life — and make you more efficient so that you can get your weekends back. By listening to you and focusing on your needs as an end user, and working closely with a diverse community throughout the design process, we’ll build products that work with how people get their jobs done today.
The startup I’ve been hinting at for the last couple months finally has a name. w00t! We’re at a very early stage: just starting the research phase for Qworky Meetings, the codename for our first product. In parallel, we’re working on creating our community, deciding on our technology base, putting together a business plan, and developing our strategies.
A #diversityfail as an opportunity: guys talking to guys who talk about guys
How can an entrepeneur planning a startup that’s going to develop some revolutionary software that relates to how people work together discover truly game-changing product and business model possibilities? One approach is to look at a situation in a different way than everybody else. Easier said than done, typically … unless you’re lucky enough to discover a collective blindspot in current thinking.
Scott Page’s book The Difference highlights the importance of diversity in situations like this. The way I think of it is that a non-diverse crowd will fail to explore a lot of the possibilities. Strategically the best opportunties are likely to be in the areas that the are getting marginalized today. So whenever I see a #diversityfail related to the “web 2.0” and mobile technology/business world, my ears perk up and I start paying attention.
Ethnographic observations and you!
An as-yet-unnamed potential startup company is planning to develop some revolutionary software that relates to how people work together. One of our first steps is to set set up a research community and making some ethnographic observations — in other words, getting an understanding of how people work today. We’re especially trying to get a diverse set of participants: not just techies, not just straight white guys, not just Microsoft-related people.
At the end of the first round of observations, we’ll provide all the participants with a summary of our findings. And as a way of showing our appreciation, we’ll also give each participant a free copy of our first product once it’s available.
Interested in being a part of it?
To start with, we’d like to spend about half an hour on the phone with you interviewing you about your experienes related to meetings. We’re very early on in our thinking about product lines, so it’s important for us to hear a lot of different perspectives.  We’ll also ask you to spend a couple of minutes online after the meeting: quickly double-checking our notes, filling out a quick survey, and sharing any additional thoughts.
Pyr0 on “the art of espionage” at Shakacon
Sarah Blankinship and I are presented Securing with the Enemy: Social strategy and team of rivals at Shakacon today. More about our talk later; this post has notes from the keynote presentation on The Art of Espionage, by Luke McOmie (aka Pyr0) of British Telecom.
Luke’s consulting includes “real world risk assessments”, which sometimes involves breaking into his clients’ companies to test their security. So it’s a great opportunity to hear about the kinds of techniques the real bad guys use. Fascinating stuff!
2009 06 11
entertainment
meta
Professional
Tales from the Net
Uncategorized
Comments Off on Pyr0 on “the art of espionage” at Shakacon
Guest-blogging mania! New posts on Twitter activism and innovation
I’ve got a couple of new guest-blog posts up elsewhere:
- Skittles and infowar: #pman, disinformation, and trolls on The Seminal continues the “Lessons from Skittles for poets and activists” series, focusing on the Moldovan protests. This week’s lesson: Expect interference — and have a plan to deal with it. I posted an earlier draft here; there’s also some background information in the comments of Twitter *is* a strategy.
- A collaborative journey … on The Ideators’ Journey kicks off a new series exploring product and business opportunities for web-based collaboration tools. Along the way, if all goes well, we’ll design and perhaps even prototype a free tool, and recruit some early users. If that sounds interesting, please join us! There’s an earlier draft of this and the second post in the series here.
Thanks to Jason Rosenbaum of The Seminal and Eve Enslow and Michael Foster of The Ideators’ Journey for the opportunities!
Change the way you ask for help (DRAFT)
DRAFT! Work in progress, feedback welcome! See the first comment for some specific questions
Revised version to appear on The Ideators’ Journey, kicking off a series on collaboration and innovation, perhaps as two posts.
Eve’s Ask for help makes a great introduction to a series that Mikal Lewis and I will be kicking off on collaboration. Eve, Michael, Mikal, and many of the other people you’ll see participating in this series met on the Ad Astra (Analysis and Development of Awesome STRAtegies) project I led at Microsoft.
During this series, we’ll apply approaches from Change the Way you see Innovation to a real-world problem: designing a free web-based collaboration tool, while simultaneously exploring business opportunities in this space. In this post, I’ll lay out an initial scenario, and Mikal will take it from there. First though a little background for people joining our journey in progress.
#women2follow: collaborative empowerment on Twitter
Today, on Twitter, I saw another woman, Allyson Kapin (who goes by @WomenWhoTech), get frustrated when she saw a list of “top” folks in social media that, once again, omitted all but one woman…. Soon after, a discussion ensued, and, within minutes, Kapin started a new “event” on Twitter…
— Denise Graveline on The Eloquent Woman, February 25
The idea behind #Women2Follow Wednesdays is straightforward: to recognize and promote women in the technology and social media field — and help people find each other. If you’re on Twitter, it’s easy to participate.
- Tweet a list of one or more women on Twitter you think people should follow, along with some info about why. Make sure to include the #women2follow hashtag!
- Watch others’ recommendations and find interesting people to follow
Like I said, easy. Here are my recommendations over the last three weeks.