permaling

Just got my new Kryptonite fagettaboutit New York bike lock....

Fri, 04 May 2012 14:09:27 +1000

Just got my new Kryptonite fagettaboutit New York bike lock. Good luck stealing a locked bike out of my garage now, thief! Only problem is that it’s heavier than the bike frame.

Why languages and matter

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:24:00 +1100

Why languages and matter:

Aka Revenge of the Nerds. A classic from Paul Graham on why languages matter and why the pointy-haired boss will trend your organisation to the middle. Maybe posting this is my self-justification for embarking on building my web-app in Clojure. Stay tuned for the announcement.

World wide as many as 50% of plant species face extinction. The...

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 22:01:00 +1100

World wide as many as 50% of plant species face extinction. The Royal Botanic Garden needs to raise a big chunk of cash from donors to close the funding gap for a world-class research center to bank Australia’s precious seeds as a hedge against extinction.

PlantBank at the Australian Botanic Garden will safeguard the future of our precious plant species through ‘seed-banking’, research and information-sharing. This facility will bring together the best science and the best scientists to recover degraded landscapes, generating new knowledge for better conservation planning and responding to climate change.

If you’re searching for the perfect future-proof Christmas idea, make a gift in support of Plant Bank. (The donate button is a bit hard to find. It’s the text bubble, or just click here.)

Friedman on Gilding vs Hagel

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:24:54 +1100

Friedman on Gilding vs Hagel:

When you see spontaneous social protests erupting from Tunisia to Tel Aviv to Wall Street, it’s clear that something is happening globally that needs defining. There are two unified theories out there that intrigue me. One says this is the start of “The Great Disruption.” The other says that this is all part of “The Big Shift.” You decide.

A nice follow up to an earlier post. I can see innovation exploding all around us while we are living at 140% of the Earth’s carrying capacity. Will we mobilize around the opportunity to innovate bring things into balance? We have the ability but the consciousness and the mindset isn’t there yet. I’m with Paul Gilding when I’m not trying to code my way to the Singularity.

Workshop to Transform the Leadership Mindset

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:58:00 +1100

I’ve been collaborating with leadership expert Peter Rennie and many others around Australia on a unique workshop From Bystanding to Understanding & Action. I run the workshop with Peter in Sydney, and Peter has partners in many other locations.

This workshop teaches leaders powerful techniques around engaging people in an organisation and increasing the levels of awareness. At its core, it promotes group learning and partnership as the mindset for bringing about system change. It is a practical workshop in which you spend most of the time experiencing and participating, yet it is also well-grounded in theory. Both attending and subsequently partnering with Peter on this workshop has helped me tremendously as both an organisational leader and social change agent.

We practice what we teach and the workshop has gotten better each time, and we have some amazing testimonials.

Please join us if you can on December 15 & 16. If you know of any others, please forward them on the link to the website. You can now register straight on the registration page. You still have another week to get the early bird booking, and there are group, pension and student discounts as well.

I hope to see you there.

I had a blast this weekend at #launch48syd, one of a growing...

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:22:00 +1100

I had a blast this weekend at #launch48syd, one of a growing number of startup weekends. The teams #socialsitting #locongo #happytribe #giveteams all did an impressive job getting a plausible business launched. Here’s the writeup.

I’d give Lacongo special praise for having having a working product at the end of 48 hours. Of course, Sinatra on Heroku is always a smart way to go ;)

In the photo, we are, former and current @atlassian engineering VPs @sharner @jmwind at closing pitches. We were both mentors: Jean-Michel talking about his experience innovative in small and large environments. As the IBM Jazz architect coming from the OS world, this guy knows dev tools.

It was a chance for me to reflect a few things: First, deadlines, parallel processing ideas and tight feedback loops can really propel an idea forward. Second, it is easier to give great advice than to take it. I woke up Monday morning realizing I’m not following half the advice I was giving. I immediate jumped into customer development work on the yet-to-be-annouced BillMate app.

Common Sense Reasoning in Logic

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:17:26 +1100

In 1999 I took John McCarthy’s course, CS323 Common Sense Reasoning in Logic. At the time I was heading down the road of being a probabilist, and I’ve wondered over the years about the role of logic, as I’ve become more aware of my own mental biases. Or maybe the heuristics of common sense are a performance optimization. Or maybe all that subconscious mental computation is smarter than logic. I don’t believe we ever got beyond Missionaries and Cannibals.

It was the point in which John McCarthy, who died today, intersected my life, briefly. He brought us LISP, timesharing, garbage collection, and changed the way we think about human intelligence. These huge impacts were just side-effects of pursuing AI.

Enhancing Agile to solve wicked problems

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:32:00 +1100

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the what the post-Agile age will look like. Maybe I’m just getting tired and a bit cynical of writing things on cards, writing tests and the emphasis on practices within the Agile community.

How well does Agile help us solve the important problems? I’d say it’s a good start but we can learn a lot from change management and system thinkers that can deepen and enhance our understanding. In doing so, the Agile practices serve the mindset and not the other way around.

I’m interested in how software helps us solve wicked problems:

Rittel and Webber coined the term in the context of problems of social policy, an arena in which a purely scientific-rational approach cannot be applied because of the lack of a clear problem definition and differing perspectives of stakeholders.

Wikipedia goes on to say:

Thus wicked problems are also characterised by the following:

The solution depends on how the problem is framed and vice-versa (i.e. the problem definition depends on the solution)
Stakeholders have radically different world views and different frames for understanding the problem.
The constraints that the problem is subject to and the resources needed to solve it change over time.
The problem is never solved definitively.

Sound like any problems you’ve worked on recently? Compared to, say, even 5 years ago, software developers are taking on more of these multi-stakeholder problems because organisations are getting pushed in this direction through the emerging forces of social media, corporate social responsibility and a great emphasis on networks in business.

For software developers, we’re building systems in the context of much greater social complexity. There needs to be a much great awareness on our part of what is emerging around us.

I took a stab at capturing this in the context of Agile Planning:

How to Plan Agile Iterations

Agile lends itself to dealing with high social complexity due to the emphasis on self-managing teams and collaboration. The feedback loops in the Agile planning process provide the means for co-creating the solution with the stakeholders.

Retrospectives are an important part of this. In this presentation, I emphasis that a retrospective isn’t about learning from the past:

A retrospective can and should be used for incremental, iterative stakeholder engagement, which, to borrow from Theory U, taps a different source of learning. It is an attempt to tune into the future that is emerging around us.

No Bystanding: Learning to Change Society One Organization at a Time

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:28:20 +1000

No Bystanding: Learning to Change Society One Organization at a Time:

The ‘bystander phenomenon’ is a well recognized and studied pattern of human behaviour both within social and organizational settings.

Once we understand more about the bystander phenomenon we can begin to develop solutions to many problems, including concerns about how to galvanize people to work together to solve critical issues threatening our earth, health, wealth and organizations.

Key to understanding why people ‘stand by’ is an appreciation of the hidden social structures that unconsciously shape our behaviour. With this lens we can look for more enabling structures. But what structure best supports engagement, empowerment and action?

All of us have a ‘bystander within’, and all of us have a ‘leader within’ (even a small ‘l’ leader.) Join me and a group of other remarkable people for a series of interactive workshops we’re doing around Australia. I believe leadership is about the inner transformations you help others make. You will learn how to unlock your inner leader and help others change their behaviour. Help us create a no bystanding movement!

Creating Climate Wealth Australia Innovation Lab

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:18:00 +1000

This Thursday and Friday I’m attending and helping facilitate the Carbon War Room Innovation Lab for creating climate wealth, here in Sydney. It’s a hands-on workshop in which we’ll be designing our low carbon future with experts from a range of industries. Tracks include Energy Efficiency, Aviation, Capital Quest, Shipping, Distributed Generation, Construction and Agriculture. Speakers include Sir Richard Branson, CEO of the Carbon War Room Jigar Shah and Allan Jones from the City of Sydney. I’m looking forward to it, and I’ll let you know if we solved it!

Our carless family gets some press

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:22:41 +1000

Our carless family gets some press:

Alas things ended badly today with someone breaking into our garage and stealing Sylvia’s electric bike.

Friedman on Gilding on Friedman on Gilding

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:18:07 +1000

Thomas Friedman on Paul Gilding:

The Earth Is Full

Then in Paul’s book, pg. 87, he quotes Thomas Friedman in this editorial.

What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

in which Tom quotes Paul:

He has a name for this moment — when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once — “The Great Disruption.”

In systems language, this is a feedback loop. I’d still recommend the book.

Dan Pink on Purpose Driven organisations and motivations,...

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:13:39 +1000

Dan Pink on Purpose Driven organisations and motivations, mentioning my old team at Atlassian and FedEx day.

I’m now looking at this through the lens of Learning Organisations: how we look at creating a culture of learning in teams emphasising systems thinking and personal mastery. FedEx day is individuals: how do you instill it in healthy teams? Practice. This has huge benefits for aligning software teams and management teams through healthy dialogue. It is also crucial in building the types of organisation and community we need to transition to a sustainable and resilient future.

"I’ve written thousands of posts, millions of words, about things. Usually things with electricity in..."

Fri, 13 May 2011 12:02:05 +1000

“

I’ve written thousands of posts, millions of words, about things. Usually things with electricity in them. Doing this for a living, on and off, for the better part of a decade, has greatly—perhaps fundamentally—changed how I perceive the world around me. I can no longer look at the material world as a collection of objects but instead see interfaces, histories, and materials.

To be soaked in materialism, to directly and indirectly champion it, has also brought guilt. I don’t know if I have a right to the vast quantities of materials and energy I consume in my daily life. Even if I thought I did, I know the planet cannot bear my lifestyle multiplied by 7 billion individuals. I believe this understanding is shared, if only subconsciously, by almost everyone in the Western world.

”

- Joel Johnson /via @toolmantim writing in 1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who’s to Blame?

As we learn to think in systems, as Joel does in this article, we see that assigning blame doesn’t make sense. Each of us just needs to do something to close that gap between the world as it is and how we envision it should be.

Just prolonging my iPad2 guilt.

50 sails in partnership with the wind. One dominator with a...

Sun, 08 May 2011 14:38:15 +1000

50 sails in partnership with the wind. One dominator with a rumbling outboard motor disturbs our peace.

Transform Australia

Tue, 03 May 2011 08:06:42 +1000

Transform Australia:

Over the last few months I’ve been working with some incredible people to launch Transform Australia. The goal of this group is to create a national movement towards a healthy and ecologically sustainable society. It’s been my first direct experiment with self-organising groups: the people involved are all working on their own projects yet we come together to form the Transform Australia network. We share ideas, collaborate on projects and help each other succeed.

I’ve been too problem focused. He’s an oldie from...

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:33:00 +1000

I’ve been too problem focused. He’s an oldie from 1994 on why visioning is powerful, positive and practical.

Safe Cycling in Sydney

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 12:43:00 +1100

Probably about 100 people join the Rally for Safe Cycling yesterday in Sydney. We started at the RTA HQ in North Sydney at 101 Miller St. Like many cyclists I talk to, I believe the RTA is a laggard in responding to the need for better cycling infrastructure.

We road to the Harbour Bridge to learn about Harbour Link project, which would replace the 55 stairs we climbed to get up to the harbour bridge. I often ride a cargo bike. My wife rides an electric bike. In both cases, they are heavy and getting them up the stairs is tough. When I take the kids over the bridge on their bikes, I need to make 3 trips. It’s great exercise but its not good for the wider adoption of cycling. If you live on the lower north shore, please follow these instructions to show your support.

Thank you Clover!

At Town Hall Lord Mayor Clover Moore addressed the group. Understandably, this group loved her for the 10km of separated cycle paths many of us use every day. She talked about the beating she’s taking from shock jock Alan Jones, who makes it sound like cycle paths will destroy the city. That seems unlikely whereas business as usual will lead to $16 billion by 2020 in congestion. What I see from my saddle are normal people on bikes getting places more quickly and less expensively while improving their health, inflicting less harm on the environment and saving municipal costs per km traveled.

We got a special treat. Bicycle infrastructure champion, Former Mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa, addressed us. In Columbia, they built one of the most extensive network of cycleways in the world, with 500km of cycleways connecting the city. He pointed out that a person on a bike is every bit as important as a person in a $40k car. I wonder if he removed more zeros than Jaime Lerner in Curitiba.

NSW Greens Senator Elect Lee Rhiannon addressed us in front of the department of planning and talked about the Greens proposal to create a shared zone on Bourke St. I’m not sure I support replacing the Bourke St cycleway with a shared zone, but having lived in Germany I’ve seen how shared zones in residential areas are great part of the solution. She also spoke up for 40km/h on city streets, which would be a huge win for safety. Studies have shown that a small reduction in speed makes a huge improvement in safety for pedestrians and cyclists.

At our final stop at Parliament House CEO BNSW Omar Khalifa addressed us at and talked about the huge need for organisation and advocacy. We had a friendly bicycle police escort the whole way. I was amazed at the diversity of people and the gender balance. We had people of all ages, roadies, commuters, folding bikes, a few electric bikes, mountain bikes, people with kids, etc.

Thanks Adam Butler for organizing. Well done! It was nice seeing everyone. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning!

Cut two zeros from the budget

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 09:37:25 +1100

A TED Talk from Jaime Lerner helped put me on the path that I’m on. I was preparing a talk on innovation in software for the European Commission, and his line, which ran something like “Creativity begins when you cut a zero from your budget…” caught my attention. This was the story I wanted to tell, and it applied to software.

This Future Lab article states it again as a miracle of the commons. Jaime Lerner again:

Creativity begins when you cut a zero from your budget. Sustainability, when you cut two. When dealing with “smart system” technologies, we must always remember to bind our solutions with a commitment to simplicity. Also, having in mind that sustainability is an equation between what is saved and what is wasted. If waste is “zero”, sustainability tends to infinity.

Those of us in the IT sector especially need to be reminded of this, maybe even more than city planners and local government.

"The three countries which have been the largest drags on the global mitigation effort are the three..."

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:42:02 +1100

“The three countries which have been the largest drags on the global mitigation effort are the three highest per capita emitters amongst the developed countries—Australia, Canada and the United States.”

- The Garnaut Climate Change Review Update

Axis of Fossils?