Archive for March, 2008

Fave idea of the week : March 28, 2008

Friday, March 28th, 2008

When Ryan said…”it wasn’t innovative…but it was innervative” It got me thinking…first of all, I didn’t really know what innervative meant, but I thought it had something to do with reaching out, stretching across, activating…like nerves. But it was an interesting idea, a great contender for the favorite of the week.

When I went to look it up, I found 2 words, “enervate” and “innervate” and the I didn’t know which one Ryan meant.

Innervate :
1. to communicate nervous energy to; stimulate through nerves.
2. to furnish with nerves; grow nerves into.

Enervate :
1. to deprive of force or strength; destroy the vigor of; weaken.  

Totally different meanings.

I went with enervate (gut feeling, but sadly not what Ryan meant) because I think that’s how businesses that can’t innovate think: if you can’t out-think the competition, then focus on squashing it into the ground by any means necessary. That’s a sad thing. But interesting to explore in a sketch. That’s where the anvil comes in…

update 

 

Here’s the re-do of the week with what Ryan really meant, just to balance things out.

Posted in random thoughts, sketchbook, fave ideas | 1 Comment »

I’m a thinker, not a feeler

Sunday, March 23rd, 2008

Peter blogged about his empathy quotient, and a bunch of us joined in the test. I ranked low, which didn’t really surprise me. I was a 36 out of 80. Apparently I don’t care about people around me. Which is funny, because I think I do.

Then I took the Systemizing test and realized what all those brain parts that aren’t being empathetic are spending their time doing…they are looking at the world and being curious about how it works. My score on this was 73. The authors of the test had this to say about the score:

“51 - 80 is very high (three times as many people with Asperger Syndrome score in this range, compared to typical men, and almost no women score in this range)”

Great. So I’m an asperger guy trapped in a woman’s body. Thanks, test.

Posted in random thoughts | 1 Comment »

Fave idea of the week: Mar 21st 2008

Friday, March 21st, 2008

Happy 7th Birthday Adaptive Path! Seven years ago, Seven intrepid explorers founded a great company. One where people take their work seriously, but not themselves. Where egos are less important than getting the best ideas out into the world, and where work+life balance and being a human being always trumps making the big bucks. And for seven years, the magic has grown and spread.  

Case in point: the date of the big party was drawing near, and we thought maybe it would be a good idea to have some kind of nametag for Adaptive Pathogens at the party. But nametags are boring. Enter Rachel G., with her brilliant concept of meme pins. Another favorite idea from Glaves.

Check out the photos of the mad button makerz and party festivities.

Posted in creative projects, fave ideas, work | No Comments »

Fave idea of the week: Mar 14th 2008

Friday, March 14th, 2008

We’re working on a cool project at Adaptive Path, and during the week of March 14th, we had an open design session to collaborate on ideas about the project. Much of our work lives in the digital realm, so it was a rare treat to have a physical maquette to play around with. It was astounding to me how many ideas we had just by holding, folding and cutting up the paper model. Alexa takes the cake in pushing the ideas pretty far out there.

Earlier in the week, I brought in some of my treasured paper-arts and pattern books. A partial list is below.

Plaything:

Paper Engineering:

Fun with word and pattern:

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Fave idea of the week: Mar 7th, 2008

Friday, March 7th, 2008

I continue to try to find the balance between control and non-control, and when it’s clear that control is killing an idea, I fight hard to get others to let go. The economy of control just seems to be wacko to me…so many times, control is a myth in the first place. Peter’s great essay was the inspirational idea for the week.

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Fave idea of the week: Mar 1st, 2008

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

      

At the beginning of March, I started a project to sketch my favorite idea of the week. I do these each Friday. There are so many smart folks at Adaptive Path who have great ideas, it’s often hard to pick just one. It’s funny how just the sketch can bring me right back the moment of the idea.

I love the idea of information as a coral reef…an ecosystem that supports all kinds of life, color and movement. What would a user-generated content site be like that was built to emulate a reef system?

Posted in neat things, fave ideas | No Comments »