After Jonathan Leathwood’s outstanding debut at London’s Wigmore Hall earlier this week, I was lucky enough to meet a hero — the guitarist Julian Bream, one of the great figures in the rebirth of the guitar as an instrument taken seriously in the world of classical music.
Odd how an idea that brews for a while is suddenly thrown into prominence.
With some 30 others I was delighted to be part of the Educating Programmers summit, organised by Jason Gorman and held at Bletchley Park last week. The very next day (it really couldn’t have been timed better) Eric Schmidt, in the McTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh Festival, generated significantly more awareness of the woeful state of computing education in this country:
You need to start at the beginning with education. We need to re-ignite children’s passion for science, engineering and maths … I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn’t even taught as standard in UK schools. Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it’s made.
It really began with the ants. We’d returned from a Saturday shop to find an outbreak of the flying variety in our kitchen. I’d had a day or two of feeling that maybe the dry and dusty conditions in London had left a few more things than usual floating in my eyes, but it was then that I suspected something else might be the matter, as despite the deployment of powder, sprays and a vacuum cleaner to the invaders, I was still seeing little black things, moving into and out of sight in the periphery of vision. At this point, nothing else: I resolved to call in to the doctor on the following Monday.
Prompted by Scott Berkun’s recent post on thinking in desire paths, here’s a picture of a Finnish equivalent:*
Santa came early, and delivered Stephen Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat — lyrics from the musicals from 1954 to 1981, with (as the subtitle puts it) “attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes”. If you’re at all into theatre, musicals, music, or just writing, you’ll enjoy this book immensely (it’s nicely produced, too, and would make a great present - and no, I don;t have shares). But a couple of general things stand out.
“Agile is like tango - it’s about the passion, not about the steps” (Jeff Sutherland, tweeted by @jaredrichardson)
Wrong on many levels, Jeff. Oh, it’s a neat soundbyte, and if you don’t know tango and are feeling enthusiastic but anxious about agile it might give you a bit of a buzz. But saying tango is “not about the steps” is like saying music “is not about the notes”.
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A delicious quotation from Ian Nairn, in a letter to the Guardian this week (from Andrew Huxtable).
Diana Larsen recently tweeted about an ideal team being one which everyone can be a coach — a mutually coaching team. There’s an important corollary to this: such a team must be a team of people willing and able to be coached. Often not a characteristic of software developers (and — dare I say it — not as prevalent amongst coaches as we’d like it to be). Requires humility, a willingness to accept that someone else’s way of doing things might be better than yours, a readiness to learn (yes, maybe from someone younger than you, or who you consider to be less experienced) and to change.
Ever since hearing about the architecture of rapid change and scarce resources I’ve wanted to talk to Maurice Mitchell, one of its leading advocates. I was delighted when he agreed to give an invited talk at SPA2010.
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I spent a fair amount of time last year participating in, and running, games of one sort or another. It’s always interesting introducing games into a team or organisation: you run the risk of appearing “out to lunch”, and you can’t, in the end, force a group to have fun and learn at the same time. You need to be sensitive as to what will work with a particular team, and maybe more to the point find a context to introduce a game or simulation where it makes sense as part of a team’s practices. Retrospectives are clearly a good place to start, as are any more-or-less formal workshops or training sessions you’re running.
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| I'll be telling Startup Stories at Google Campus in London, Monday 22 April, 6.30 PM! |
| On Friday 8 March. 16:30, I'm speaking on a panel at the International Live Music Conference, on "The shape of things to come". Drop by and say hello if you're there! |
| I'm more excited than I can say about our new venture, Vyclone. I'm CTO, supporting an inspiring pair of founders and working with a great team on an amazing product. Watch this space! |