The Helsinki Bus Station Theory An Article by Arno Rafael Minkkinen www.fotocommunity.com Stay on the bus. Stay on the f*cking bus. Why? Because if you do, in time you will begin to see a difference. The buses that move out of Helsinki stay on the same line but only for a while, maybe a kilometer or two. Then they begin to separate, each number heading off to its own unique destination. Bus 33 suddenly goes north, bus 19 southwest. ...It’s the separation that makes all the difference, and once you start to see that difference in your work from the work you so admire (that’s why you chose that platform after all), it’s time to look for your breakthrough. Suddenly your work starts to get noticed. Now you are working more on your own, making more of the difference between your work and what influenced it. Your vision takes off. creativitypracticephotographyexperience
Nobody gives a hoot about groupthink An Article by Baldur Bjarnason www.baldurbjarnason.com Two relatively common ‘fashions’ today are real-time collaboration and shared data repositories of one kind or another. Both increase productivity in the naive sense. We work more; everybody is more active; the group feels more cohesive. The downside is that they also both tend to reduce the quality of the work and increase busywork. On that of the highest authorityPersonal Information Management (PIM) productivitycollaborationinformation
On that of the highest authority The consequences of this design should be obvious. The group’s opinion will converge on that of the highest authority present. As soon as an authority of any kind makes their opinion known, the group will shift in that direction. Even the most rational will tweak their responses after that. After all, who wants to risk going up against an authority? Interns will hesitate to comment. All objections will be a little bit more qualified or toned down. Generally speaking, if you are writing a document and want to get the most out of a group’s feedback, each contributor should be able to form their opinions independently and give their responses without fear of social or community repercussions.
Personal Information Management (PIM) Organising information so that it’s easy for a group of people to find the documents they need is very hard. The alternative is to solve it the same way we did with email: shared data, individual organisation. You don’t need to know how your colleagues organise their email. You only need to know that they get it and respond. The same applies to most work documents. In Personal Information Management (PIM) this is often called “the user-subjective approach”.