Codecademy / Code Year (2012)

I’ve recently been following Codecademy‘s ‘Code Year’ project:

Code Year is a series of weekly emails, starting at the beginning of 2012, which support (but are not necessarily exclusive to) people who have made new year’s resolutions to learn (at least the basics) how to ‘code’ (when I was at school, in the UK, we used to refer to this as programming, which I assume/understand to be broadly the same), starting with JavaScript.

Timelapse Frankfurt, by ‘ALPHAPIXELS’

In a similar vein to a previous post, Frankfurt/Main by ‘shootingnik’, I recently came across this excellent timelapse video by @alphapixels, which I like, and wanted to share – again, I think it’s a great ‘advert’ for Frankfurt, highlighting its diversity and beauty, and the v ideo visits a number of Frankfurt’s key landmarks:

“Timelapse from our beautiful city Frankfurt am Main.

Shot by Canon 5D Mark ll 24-70 f2.8 L and some (Nikon) Stuff…

watch in 720P HD”

Tristan Rösler

https://twitter.com/alphapixels
http://www.facebook.com/fotograf.roesler

Music: Down To The Cellar — Dredg

Considering differences between forecast predictions and scenarios

Apple has announced that it will shortly hold a special media event, regarding a development in their business model (such events seem to be partly for benefit of consumers, shareholders, suppliers, etc. as well as, seemingly, laying down a challenge to their competitors) – per AppleInsider:

Apple on Wednesday sent out invitations for a special event next week on Jan. 19 in New York City, where it has promised an “education announcement in the Big Apple.”

This announcement has resulted in increased speculation (there was already plenty of speculation before the announcement) of Apple’s potential future success.

Based on the rumors of the forthcoming event, many are predicting that Apple will now take over the text book industry, and some going as far even as saying that Apple will in future dominate the publishing industry.

AppreciaTED – a longer term perspective on nation states and the global economy

TEDxBrussels, which I attended earlier this week (November 22, 2011), had the tagline “A day deep in the future” – the talks covered a broad range of perspectives around this theme, covering “Technology”, “Science from Fiction”, “Science”, “Made in Belgium”, and “Politics and Economics” – within this last category, Paddy Ashdown gave an excellent 18 minute talk titled “Why the world will never be the same & what we should do about it” (click on the video above to watch the talk).

Where do ideas come from?

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/Tommydickson

I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot recently. In a way, it is the ‘holy grail’ of innovation, one that many innovation books are trying to answer, or help you with – if you can understand where ideas come from, and refine that, so you get better ideas more often, then one can win notoriety/fame and fortune.

As with many things however, it’s just not that easy. Coming up with ‘good ideas’ is an art. Sometimes we think they ‘pop’ into our heads, and we don’t quite know how one minute we had no idea, and the next we are empowered by a thought that we want to develop and share with others.

From reading around on this, and thinking about it, one clear message appears to come out – ideas are often (but not exclusively) not things that come quickly, from a single person in a single moment (as many people believe, in a sudden ‘Eureka’ moment, or having an apple fall on your head), but rather ‘grow’ over a period of time from a network (it’s only the ‘realization/awareness’ of the idea, the ‘connecting of the dots’, that appears sudden).

An amazing (“amaz[on]ing”) customer service experience

This morning (Sunday morning, ca. 7.30am my time, middle of the night in the U.S.A.), I went onto Amazon.com‘s website, to follow up on a question that I had about my Kindle (an eBook reader device that I had purchased from Amazon.com). The process was slightly different to what I was expecting, and also different to what I had experienced with Amazon in the past. More to the point, it left me quite amazed – I’ve never experienced such a high quality customer service response before.

In the past I remember even struggling to find a telephone number or email address on the Amazon site, in order to contact them with a customer service matter. While I found a telephone number this time,  I turned out that I didn’t need it; Amazon called me.

“Brainstorming doesn’t work”?

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/DrAfter123

I recently wrote a post titled “Thoughts on ideas, brainstorming, facilitation, and crowdsourcing“.  In that I wrote “I love brainstorming”. And I still do (for the reasons given in that last post).

Interestingly however, since writing that post, I’ve come across a number of opponents to brainstorming, most recently with the recommendation to search for “brainstorming doesn’t work” in Google – in true Google style, there are “About 7,030,000 results (0.21 seconds)”. In contrast, Googling “benefits of brainstorming” yields only about 4,200,000 results …

So what’s wrong?

Are enough people benefiting from your performances?

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/podgorsek

There are already many great performances that are recorded and available on the web that will improve the lives of many (enjoyment, education, informative, etc.). Live performances that are great, but are not recorded or shared, will however most likely not be remembered – the presenter will not achieve the reputation or legacy that they are potentially capable of, and the potential maximum audience that that could have benefited from hearing/seeing the performance (and enjoying it, or learning from it) won’t have done so.

It frustrates me that ‘great’ training performances aren’t leveraged for the benefit of others; it frustrates me that only live participants benefit from great conferences or leadership updates (is there really such a premium on live attendance that means those unfortunate not to be able to attend should pay the penalty of missing out?).

Given readily available tools to enable the recording and sharing of audio and video recordings, I feel we have reached an important stage of development, where we can all benefit from sharing our performances more often and more widely.

Curious about … Birth rates, and the demographic-economic paradox

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/YsaL

In the last few weeks I’ve heard two very contrasting interpretations of forecast birth rates. Both are largely based on the same facts, however with somewhat contrasting perspectives.

1. The first interpretation, concerns itself with declining birth rates in the major, ‘developed’ economies, asking the question, if populations aren’t growing sufficiently (and in some cases, like Germany, aren’t even replacing themselves), how will future economic growth expectations be met?
2. The second interpretation concerns itself with massive recent (ie, over the last 100 years) global population growth, and the potential consequences for earth’s finite resources (water, food, fuel, metals, etc.).

I’ve read around these concepts on the internet and set out, in the remainder of this blog post, some thoughts on what I’ve found, including the demographic-economic paradox,  the demographic transition, sub-replacement fertility rates, and suggestions of the ‘tabu’ of discussing population growth.

ps. The title of this post is made in hommage to The Curiosity Chronicles, a Tumblr blog by Paul Bennett, Managing Partner and Chief Creative Officer of IDEO. I encourage you to take a look at his posts, if you’ve not seen them yet.

Thought leadership insights – not just a sales tool!

A friend recently shared with me a thought leadership article (cover shown above) from Accenture, a consulting firm.  The article shared views and insights into factors determining the adoption of electric vehicles, and future direction in which they will likely develop. These views were supported by a study/survey that Accenture had undertaken.

The article addresses a topic that I am interested in, and so I was glad to be informed of the article. What’s even better, the article was free (but was still comparable in quality to what one might find in leading professional media publications).

This highlighted for me an interesting development. Professional service / advisory firms are generally keen to prove their abilities, highlight their knowledge and expertise, and often do this by preparing thought leadership articles. These articles are often freely available on their websites (sometimes on request or after registration).