Superbien at Vivid Sydney
I really enjoyed Vivid this year. Sydney both lights and warms up in winter thanks to this event. Superbien’s time dilated 3D projection on the Sydney Opera House video gives you a feeling for how special it is.
Google's Self-Driving Car
We’re going through another big jump in evolution at the moment. It’s only because time seems to go slowly that we don’t see this. The internet, social media, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and activity replication are all the indicators of this. Self drive or self navigation vehicles are in that area of navigation replication that we will master over the next 10-20 years. Here’s Google’s self drive car in action which was at a TED conference recently.
The Power of Less
I’ve read The Power of Less by Leo Babauta twice now. It really cuts to the point of simplicity and the impact on productivity it can cause. Dropping a simplicity nuke into your life/business could have a big impact.
The crux of the book is identify the essential and eliminate the rest. The idea being that you are essentially knocking off the most important things first on your list and so on. Many people and organisations run with dozens of projects, tasks or work in parallel. Babauta argues for a more serial approach which I agree with. In many ways this is very similar to using Pareto’s principal to help you decide what to work on next in your projects or life that will cause the biggest impact for the smallest use of available resource. This approach also allows you to operate in a state of flow and actively tries to remove the interruption tax that causes much of the poor productivity you can see in office environments.
Image credit: Smemon
My thoughts on Wikileaks
This will end up being one of the biggest tests of democracy and ethics in governments around the world that we have seen in decades.
Governments clearly hide information and operate covertly. We all know this, nothing knew. Regardless of your opinion as to the method of information revelation, it is clearly evident this week that government are as two faced as our intuition was telling us. An integrity fail-athon.
Secondly, Julia Gillard is out defaming Julian Assange as a criminal when he clearly isn’t, he’s a conduit for information. The words “allege” need to be used at a minimum. See NSW Supreme Court Solicitor Peter Kemp’s Letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Why is it that the US seems to be allowed to repeatedly breach UN conventions? How can governments hold any credibility going forward and it seems the UN has become an un-government in recent times.
Governments around the world are pooling together like bullies and especially The Swedish government. The ABC reported last night that the Swedes wouldn’t interview Julian Assange when he was in Sweden for a month about alleged non-consensual sex. He tried to speak to them but clearly in my mind they had another agenda. If the Swedes learned he was probably innocent then it’s hard to arrest him. So my theory is that the plan was never to talk to him and instead just arrest him. Governments are looking to nuke him for any slip up. It seems the Swedes picked a team a long time ago in open versus closed government.
Lastly it’s disgraceful watching the misinformation stream. The press, governments and even companies are now pumping it for any number of motives. See this beatup up of the risk of the coca cola formula being leaked.
Seriously do these governments and companies seriously think they can outcompete the atomic level democracy of the net and it’s power to reveal the truth?
Christmas wish
Walking to work I noticed in the DJ’s Xmas display a coffee machine (right side of photo). So this is my official hint to my wife Emma that I’d love a new coffee machine for Xmas. My old one is getting very tired and making very disturbing noises.
Travel time is a good time for decision making
One of the things I get to do on trips is think about decisions I need to make. It’s easiest away from home. Having four kids and a busy life causes a huge amount of unclear head chatter in my thinking. Some quiet time to think is scarce.
Thinking results in good choices, and that is the key to business. A friend reminded me of this recently, and as he said it I new it but like many things, even the important stuff, it was tucked way under a sheet in the back of my mental attic of ideas.
In business it’s not funding, team size, location, or any of these factors. They are influencers but not the dominent cause of success. It’s about making the right choices. Understanding that choices are options in the literal financial market sense of the word is an important distinction you can make. A choice is a “right” that you own. So making a choice is “exercising” an option you own and it will have a payoff good or bad, just like options do. Good choices ends with good results, so investing time in thinking before making them is worthwhile.
Bledisloe
In what seems to be an accidental tradition in the Lehmann family we took our 4th newborn child to a Wallabies v All Blacks Bledisloe on Friday night. He slept through the whole event.
I always love going to these games. I’m a wallabies fan obviously, but of all the international teams, I admire the All Blacks team the most. I love the Harka, the type of game they play, they are simply a brilliant team.
Recently our company Saasu did a deal with an NZ company called Acclipse and just like my experience dealing with Kiwi’s at Deutsche, same applies here. Acclipse is full of really good people. NZ really does produce quality.
No. 4
We have a new baby in the house. No.4 is very special just like all the others. I’ve noticed he smiles while he is dreaming but new babies don’t smile while they are awake until older. I wonder what he is seeing and dreaming in his sleep that has him smile given how newly born he is. More to the point why is there any content at all given it’s only a few days?
Me Time
I have a very hectic 2 weeks ahead of me. So I scheduled 20 minutes of me time at the park over the road from my office. This is the view from just below my chin watching the early bird autonomous robots on their way to work.
Inevitable Future (an IF)
In a world full of variety, knowledge and potential it’s so easy to operate tomorrow how you did today, yesterday and many days before that. For most of us less than 1% of our lives is truly spontaneous or new. Life can become an inevitable future, what I call an IF. So I try to break my IF by making changes, self expressing and exploring a different way of living and working.
The picture left is one of my attempts to break my IF last year. Something a little crazy. I don’t normally go four wheel driving because I don’t like the environmental impact it has despite owning a 4WD vehicle. It was something spontaneous, a tangent from my normal life and I never regretted it. It was actually brilliant experience with some great people that asked me along (Thanks Mike and Doug).
