Archive for the 'Arts' Category

Put yourself in a radical new environment to stimulate creativity: I am going to India in one week

Published January 24th, 2006 in Arts and Other. 11 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

Many creative people will tell you to change your environment, in a radical way, to find inspiration and to stimulate your creativity. That way new sensory-motors inputs will be processed by your brain and could lead to radical new ideas. Amy Tan said: “Memory feeds imagination”.

It is what I am going to do: feeding my memories with new sensory-motors inputs: views, smells, noises, tastes, touches, social interactions, etc. Four months of new social interactions, of new visions of the world, of new ideas, and all this in a constantly changing environment.

I am thinking about this trip for about 2 years now; things changed many times since then: I was going… I was not going… I was going… I was not going… etc. However, I told me: Fred, if you want to make it, you have to take the time, however you will never do it. It is what I decided: I will take the time. I will be in India for the next 2 to 6 months.

Do not ask me what I will do in India, what my itinerary is, or anything else: I have no idea. The only thing I know is that I arrive in New-Delhi. Why bothering to plan a trip when you know that nothing will go as expected, particularly in India. Go with the flow and take opportunities, this is the only way you can live fabulous things in your trip. So, this is how I see it, this is how I will live it.

So, what happen with my blog, with Talk Digger, and all the other things I work on since 6 months? In 2004 there were 50 000 cyber-coffee in India. I would bet that there are approximately 75 000 in 2006. India is the country with the greatest number of Bachelors in the World. So, do not worry, I will keep myself informed of what happen. If something goes wrong with Talk Digger, I will be able to fix it without any problems. The only thing vis-ŕ-vis Talk Digger is that I will not add new features as long as I come back in Quebec.

The content of this blog will change a little bit. Right now it mostly talk about social softwares, the semantic web and related technologies, and Talk Digger. For the next months, I will try write about the IT industry in India. This is one of the goal of this trip: trying to understand how the IT industry in India works, how the management works, how they are able to efficiently work with people coming from everywhere in India: how they manage around 200 religions of above 1 millions and more adepts, 150 languages and dialects, people from different casts (yes, cast system is always present in the Indian culture and society: a Brahmin is a Brahmin and an Untouchable is an Untouchable).

Probably that some Indian people will read my entries (yup, I have you in mind Sudar) and laugh at my prejudices and misconceptions: please forgive me and correct me with a comment on these blog posts. In fact, India is quite mysterious to the Occidental world. Rare are the people that have been there and few know what happened and what is happening in the country. One of the things that make the headlines News in America is the Indian outsourcing industry. People do not understand it and do not know what it is all about. The only thing they say is that: they pick our job and this is bad. The only thing that they forget is probably that the Canada, specially the Quebec, is the #1 outsourcing country for the United-States (with the IT industry at least). So, it is what I will write about in the next few months on this blog: Who is the emerging middle class? How is it possible? How the IT (outsourcing) industry works? How do they manage their people (in relation with their multiple languages, religions, casts, etc)?

So, I hope that you will like what I will have to write about in the next few months.

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The slow and powerful process of creation

Published November 20th, 2005 in Arts and Talk Digger. 4 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

I am probably reading one of my best book in the last years. “If you want to write – a book about Art, independence and Spirit” by Brenda Ueland.

Praise to art, creativity, imagination, life, works, and self. I have been astonished to read what is her way to create, to incubate ideas, to think without thinking about ideas that are true and imaginative:

“In the same way what you write today you thought and created in some idle time on another day. It is another day that your ideas and visions are slowly built up, so that when you take your pencil there is something to say[foot note] that is not just superficial and automatic, like children yelling at a birthday party, but it is true and has been tested inwardly and is based on something.

[foot note] Though remember this: you may not be conscious, when you sit down, of having evolved something important to say. You will sit down as mentally blank, godnatured and smiling as usual, and not frowning solemnly over the weight of your message. Just the same, when you begin to write, presently something will come out, something true and interesting.”

It is the exact process I used to create Talk Digger. It is the exact process I am using to create the next generation of Talk Digger; that will be release in the next 3 months. I know, since some years, that it is the way my mind works, it is the way I can create things and find solutions to my problems. I let the flow of information get into my mind, then I incubate it for weeks, months, even years and somewhere in the future, I know that a seed idea will pop-up in my mind and that that seed idea will flourish in something true, imaginative and useful (at least for me). The seed idea was the alpha version of Talk Digger (in fact I wrote Beta, but it wasn’t, my unconsciousness probably knew that it wasn’t, but my consciousness thought it was a beta version because he didn’t know what was coming); now the real Beta version is coming… something new, something true, and something imaginative (at least for me).

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Thinkers, doers, taking risks and creating your future

Published November 7th, 2005 in Arts. 5 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

Once opun a time, a young boy sent a letter to Peter F. Drucker to ask him a simple question:

“Mr. Drucker, how can I create something that will change the world?”

The answer of Mr. Drucker was as simple:

“Young boy: by thinking about something that would help people; and by doing it.”

There are thinkers, and there are doers. Thinking is great, many people have great ideas to change the, or their, world; but what these ideas worth if nobody is doing them?

If you have an idea to change the World, or an idea to change your world, the only person that can make it happen is yourself. You have to do it to make it happen: this is the only way. People can help you, sure, but the only person that can archive it is the idea’s originator, the person that has it and believes in it.

Doing something also bring risks. All actions have his lot of risks. Any action you undertake can lead to a success or a failure. The risks that you take are that the actions undertook failed.

Personally I see failure as an essential part of learning. I fail therefore I learn. It is probably why I take risks and that I can live with my failures: because I know that I learned from taking these risks, doing these actions, and failing in some way.

However, is because you do not take risks that you do not fail?

“People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
- Peter F. Drucker

Taking risks, doing actions, succeeding or failing, will inevitably change your future. However, what this future will be? What it could be? Will it be better or worse than your current situation? Will you be happier or not?

“The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.”
- Peter F. Drucker

Personally I believe in something: if I take risks, if I make decisions, if I do actions, and if I succeed or I fail, I do it for one thing: to try to predict the future to make me liking my life.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
- Peter F. Drucker

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
- Steve Jobs

Finally, you have to do it for yourself; you have to get rid of the social pressure that could urge you to do what everybody else does. Live your own life, not the one of your society, your neighborhood, your friends, your family or parents wants you to have.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ”
- Steve Jobs

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Go big, vision, and actions: Change the World

Published October 27th, 2005 in Arts. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

If everything goes fine, everybody have between 60 to 100 years to spend on this planet. What people will do with that time will depends on their personality, their goals, their environment, etc. A fact persist, we will all do something with it (even if you sit on a chair during 100 years you are doing something: sitting).

From school to business startup, from the poorer to the richer neighborhood, everybody can have the same attitude: Go Big, Have a Vision, Take Actions, and try to Change your world or even The World.

Why thinking small when we can think big? I mean, this is just thinking, everybody can think, this is a question of mind-shift and focus. If we have the biggest vision and the biggest goal to drive our life, we will also try to do the actions to reach these goals. Our vision will drive our actions to reach our goals.

It is sure that it is not easy to live like that, but why don’t we try? Why everybody is not trying? It is sure that a really, really small percentage of people will reach their Big Goal, but I think that everybody that try the experience will earn something by doing it.

Chris Sacca had done a good speech at the Startup School, some weeks ago, at Harvard. He discussed of Google, how the company works, what is the life at Google, etc. However, a good part of his speech focused on how Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google (from a couple of borrowed computers at Stanford to a multi-billionaire business).

They had a Vision: Go Big!
They had a Goal: Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
They Take Actions: spend many sleepless night to create the first prototype of Google in a dusty sleeping room.

They think Big:

[World’s best engineer]–[Biggest infrastructure]–[Big problems to solve]

These guys where probably saw as geeks, hackers, and psychologically unbalanced by their entourage (it’s a guest, I have no idea if it is true). They thought big, they tried to solve the biggest problem that afflict the information world they tried to do something, and they success.

Finally, why don’t we try that tactic too?

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Reading: mind’s fuel

Published September 1st, 2005 in Arts. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

I have been really busy in the last weeks. In fact, it is since I started to develop Talk Digger. Once the design was finished, the only thing I had to do is to program it: a technical task that only take time. All my time was spent to develop it, debug it, and to finish some other pending contracts.

I like to read and I read a lot. I learned the power of reading over time. When I was child, I was like any other kids: reading is for others. I needed to work in a Library to start liking books, what they smell and look likes, to start to read. Since then, I buy and read at least a book per week: science-fiction, management, combative, psychology, polar, suspense, politic, anything.

The current fact is that I was not able to read that book in the last weeks. The way my mind think changed, my ideas and visions flowed differently. The mind is a muscle: the tasks you will perform will make it think differently. It is why an engineer will not think like a sociologist.

Now I need to take some time to read, read books and articles. I need to train my mind to think differently, to see thinks in another angle. That way I will be able to focus on problems with a new eye, to try to find new type of solutions to the current problems I try to resolve. I need to make a mind shift.

Some days ago, NewScientist published an article called “Most scientific papers are probably wrong”. Slashdot reported that a senior editor of a scientific journal says that scientists are already aware of this:

“When I read the literature, I’m not reading it to find proof like a textbook. I’m reading to get ideas. So even if something is wrong with the paper, if they have the kernel of a novel idea, that’s something to think about.”

All the vision in a single phrase: it is all about finding ideas. It is exactly why I like to read science-fiction books: because it is a way to find new ideas. When reading, you mind think about all the stuff you read and try to correlate it with the other knowledge you have. This correlation will let new ideas, related or not with what you are reading, emerge. This is the exact reason why science-fiction books are so important in my creative process: this is an entertaining way to find new ideas, to train me brain differently.

Let begin that new training program with a book called “Grammatical Man, information, entropy, language and life” by Jeremy Campbell

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Choice, fear, life and act

Published August 26th, 2005 in Arts. 2 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

Why some people act, and other don’t? Why some people succeed and other don’t? Why some people sometime take risks and other don’t?

  1. Fear
  2. Lack of self-confidence
  3. Lack of knowledge
  4. Trying to do too much alone
  5. Trying to do too much
  6. Loss of self
  7. Lack of energy
  8. Lack of reward
  9. It can’t be done

I urge you to read the explanation of these 9 points on Dave Pollard’s article. It is all about life and understanding. It is to understand your reactions and the reactions of others in certain situations.

The most important point is the number one. Dave resumes it by writing:

Fear: We are legitimately afraid we will fail, or that we don’t have the needed skill, or that others will criticize us. We are afraid, most of all, of the consequences of failure — humiliation, ridicule, loss of financial or employment or social status. It isn’t risk we dislike, it’s failure.

I would add something to that description: the fear of passing by something that could bring you more joy, better life, more wealth. This situation arise when you have a choice to do in you life, any choice, professional or personal. You can gather all the knowledge you can put the hands on, you can make all the scenarios you want, spend years to analyze the situation and take your decision, and pass by anyway. The thing here is that you can’t choose the optimal choice each time you have a choice to make. The life is like this and only one certainty exist: we born to die. All the things between these two boundaries are totally uncertain and unpredictable.

You are on the principal road. Eventually you have an opportunity to turn right. What will you do? How to know if it is better to continue on the current road, safe but not necessarily optimal, and the new road, one that you have no knowledge on. You need to act, you need to make a choice, but which will you choose? The know or the new one? The first point of Dave will force, most of the time, people to continue on the main know road instead of choosing the new unknown path, in fear of failure: the failure of having make a non-optimal, less rewarding, choice. Sometime it could be the right thing to do, but have in mind that other time you also take that decision to do that instead of something you should do.

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How to Win Friends and Influence People: A list in 28 points

Published August 7th, 2005 in Arts. 10 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

I just finished reading this book: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I want to resume it, and to do so, I wrote this list of each important point Mr. Carnegie discuss in the book. The first time I ear about that book, I was skeptical. The title could seem selfish and pompous, but it is nothing like this. This book is about out to be more human and a good citizen; it is about being nice with people and how to work with them.

  1. Do not criticize. “Criticism is futile because it puts a man on the defensive, and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a man’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses his resentment.” – Dale Carnegies. Related quotes: Criticism
  2. Give honest, sincere appreciation. “Dr. Dewey says the deepest urge in human nature is ‘the desire to be important.’”. Related quotes: Compliments
  3. Get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle. The thing here is to give to your interlocutor what he wants, and not what you, you want. Related quotes: Desire and Others’ view point
  4. Become genuinely interested in other people. Related quotes: Interest
  5. Smile.
  6. Remember names. “Remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in the English language.
  7. Be a good listener. “Encourage others to talk about themselves”. Related quotes: listen
  8. Make the other person feel important. “And do it sincerely”

This is the most important points he talk about in his book. However he added other sections that goes in that trend.

Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking

  1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it
  2. Show respect for the other man’s opinions
  3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically
  4. Begin in a friendly way
  5. Get the other person sating “yes, yes” immediately
  6. Let the other man do a great deal of the talking
  7. Let the other man feed that the idea is his
  8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view
  9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires
  10. Appeal to the nobler motives
  11. Dramatize you ideas
  12. Throw down a challenge

Nine ways to change people without giving offense or arousing resentment

  1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation
  2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly
  3. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
  4. Let the other man save his face
  5. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in you approbation and lavish in your praise.”
  6. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
  7. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
  8. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest

Are you interested in that book? Then I would suggest you to buy one of the first edition. I got a 1937 one on Alibris (make an advance search with edition books from 1935 to 1940). That book is near a century old, it smells the old and it was a real please to read.

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What creativity is for Steve jobs? It is all about experience connectivity

Published July 23rd, 2005 in Arts. 4 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

“To design something really well you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something – chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough dots to connect, and they en up with very linear solutions, without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have.”

– Steve Jobs

I agree with that quote. This is the real value of experience, and it is what differentiates it from knowledge. People can have a great lot of knowledge, but no experience. This experience will show him how he can, and cannot, use that knowledge. Connecting all pieces of knowledge in an effective way is only possible with experience.

Steve talks about the IT industry. The experience he is talking about, is not just one of software development, it is about all life’s experiences. Past jobs, past studies, past human interactions, etc. Everything is knowledge, all experience is good, the only thing people have to do is to connect them to create something in a non linear fashion, to see a problem with a broaden view.

I got this quote from the book The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun. He say about that quote:

“The only criticism I have of this quote is that it implies something special about creative people that can’t be obtained by noncreative people. I don’t believe people are born into one of two exclusive piles of creative geniuses and unimaginative morons.”

I think that Scott wrote this because of this: “[...]When you ask a creative person how they did something [...]“. But if I read a little further: “And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have“. So, I do not think that Steve said that considering that there are only two classes of people: the creative ones and the unimaginative morons. The only think that differentiate a creative person from the unimaginative one is their experiences. So you have the creative person and the uncreative one, but in the middle, you have all the others that have more or less experiences. There is a lot of different grey between the black and the white.

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A knowledge worker’s new creativity exercise: photography

Published July 20th, 2005 in Arts. 2 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

Since the beginning of humanity, we always needed creativity to solve the problems that we encountered. Creativity has many faces. Each person has his own definition of what creativity is. All these people also have their own tricks to exercises it. Effectively, creativity is like the brain or muscles, if you train it, it became more effective at his task.

Some people think that creativity is only good for art freaks; thank God, it is not. As a knowledge worker, I face many problems that I need to solve. I not only need my knowledge to solve them; I also need to arrange that knowledge in such a way that it will resolve my problems. For me, this is one of my definitions of creativity: a way to organize the knowledge I have to try to solve a problem I encounter.

As I said before, you could train your creativity. Why do I train my creativity? To be more effective at arranging my knowledge; to train me to see the problems I face differently, to look at them from another point of view. I need to check out-of-the-box.

How do I train my creativity? There are two main things I do to change my mind and train my creativity. I discovered the first one many years ago: it is fighting. I already talked about it in a little essay I wrote on the combat’s rhythm. I discovered the second 312 days ago, when I started to write daily (for this blog). It forced me to concentrate on the task, to try to say exactly what I think with the words I have. I needed to get these words (pieces of knowledge) and organize them (creativity) in such a way that people would understand me (solving the problem).

Tonight I discovered a new one: photography. The night was beginning; I had nobody with whom drinking a beer to check the evening pass. Then I got the digital camera I bought for my India trip, put it into my packsack, and I assaulted my city. I live here since about 13 years, and I never done this before. In fact, it is the first time I really get the time to take pictures (the last time was 5 years ago in my European tour). What a discovery. I saw the city, which looked at me growth since about 13 years, for the first time. I was looking everywhere, I wanted The picture. I checked people wandering in the street: I was practicing my creativity in such a way that I saw things differently; I checked out-of-the-box. It is really new to me. Then, the next time I will have a mind block; that I will not be able to get any inspiration in fighting or writing, I will get my camera and see at things from another point of view; see things from the digital window of my Kodak camera.

By the way, I will put some of these pictures in the headline of this blog probably tomorrow.

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Inspiration is a bitch

Published June 13th, 2005 in Arts. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

It comes and goes. I cannot grab it: it is like a ghost. My mind is like a haunted house where ghost of inspiration lives. Sometime you see it, but when you hunt it you never found it.

The last time I had such a lack of inspiration it was when I got sick. Last week-end I had a total lack of inspiration because all my time had been invested in a single project last week. It drained all my inspiration… and my will.

You are thinking: yeah, but he blogged a lot last week, did not he? Yeah, I do, but I emptied my ideas sheet. There is the problem. I grabbed and stroke all the ideas on it without adding new ones. It is why I say that the ghost is currently hiding somewhere. I need to stimulate my inspiration; I need to hunt and find that ghost. I am a ghost buster, am I not?

It is what I am doing with now; I hunt it by writing these sentences. It is a trick. Sometimes it works, other times it do not… any idea of how I could re-populate that sheet?

PS: I also had a lack of inspiration for my title: is it appropriate? I mean, I took the first thing that comes up in my mind and I wrote it… it was that one.

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