Imagine clear white board with big letters "E=MC^2" on it. Is that your notion of innovation? Do you think that innovation is somehow pure and untethered? That is the romantic notion of innovation that I secretly cherish. This morning my views have changed after I watched the following talk:
The talk is about Voyager Flight, the first-ever, non-stop, non refueled flight around the world. What does this have to do with innovation? This guys set out to do something nobody has ever done before. They took a risk by setting an audacious goal. They followed through despite all the odds. I want to learn to be like that.
I found it fascinating how far away they have deviated from their original design. Only the core of the idea survived: the non-stop, non refueled flight around the world. The plane design has undergone a number of major revisions.
This talk introduced some new ideas and reinforced some of the thoughts I mentioned earlier in [1]:
Focus on the goal/problem
If anything will survive, it is going to be the core of the idea. That should be the focus of efforts. There is no need or reason to cling on to design decisions that are not optimal. However, it is important to keep track of what works and what does not.
Iterative development
The initial design of Voyager was totally wrong in retrospect. Even the initial metrics for choosing components were wrong (weight vs. in-flight efficiency). However, those were best decisions at the time. Test flights proved indispensable in learning what work and what does not. Keeping an open mind for change is crucial. They learned from each iteration.
Attitude is key
Despite of all the test flights and advanced calculations there were a lot of unpleasant surprises during the flight. Some of them seemed fatal. At times pilots were saved by pure luck. At other times, they saved themselves by reconfiguring the internals of the plane (the fuel system) in flight. Had they given up, they would not have made it.
Another interesting idea that Voyager design is tied to is creativity in the presence of constraints. I plan to learn more about this idea as well.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Economies of Focus
How can small start ups compete with blue-chip giants? I've always wondered about that. Being somewhat of a (recovering) pessimist, it always seemed to me that the little guys have not chance. Yesterday, I watched this video:
The video is about a small company BitPusher that provides web operations and consulting services very similar to big players like IBM. The speaker isn't great, but the lessons are interesting:
This video echoed few thoughts:
Focus is crucial.
Small businesses should focus their efforts (only big businesses can afford to diversify). For me that means that I should try to implement the core of my idea. I often find myself coming up with ornaments that make the idea look more appealing. I guess I am counting on some sort of synergy between small ideas. This presentation is yet another reminder: stay focused.
Extract instead of inventing.
This idea isn't new either, but we make this mistake of putting the cart before the horse way too often. People in the computer science love to invent architectures and frameworks. However, only a tiny portion of these end up being used anywhere. Agile development and extreme programming books stress the same aspect: abstractions and generalizations should be driven by demand only. Which brings up to the next point.
Keep a log.
There is nothing groundbreaking here either. This guideline just says that one should learn from history. If some practice (or an idea) has been proven inconvenient (or inaccurate) note it. That way you'll have a list of things you can reconsider later.
Use your log.
Clearly keeping a log isn't going to solve any problems by itself. However, it helps you see the patterns. You'll know what you need to fix. The important thing here is to review your log regularly and to apply changes to your process.
The video is about a small company BitPusher that provides web operations and consulting services very similar to big players like IBM. The speaker isn't great, but the lessons are interesting:
- start out focused on a small set of services
- acquire and/or develop human expertise
- naturally migrate from one off to automated solutions
- one off -> copy & change -> template -> automate
- IMPORTANT:
- avoid temptation to automate things right away
- systematically keep track of all internal complaints about the current process
- prioritize: upgrade only parts of the process that really need upgrading
This video echoed few thoughts:
Focus is crucial.
Small businesses should focus their efforts (only big businesses can afford to diversify). For me that means that I should try to implement the core of my idea. I often find myself coming up with ornaments that make the idea look more appealing. I guess I am counting on some sort of synergy between small ideas. This presentation is yet another reminder: stay focused.
Extract instead of inventing.
This idea isn't new either, but we make this mistake of putting the cart before the horse way too often. People in the computer science love to invent architectures and frameworks. However, only a tiny portion of these end up being used anywhere. Agile development and extreme programming books stress the same aspect: abstractions and generalizations should be driven by demand only. Which brings up to the next point.
Keep a log.
There is nothing groundbreaking here either. This guideline just says that one should learn from history. If some practice (or an idea) has been proven inconvenient (or inaccurate) note it. That way you'll have a list of things you can reconsider later.
Use your log.
Clearly keeping a log isn't going to solve any problems by itself. However, it helps you see the patterns. You'll know what you need to fix. The important thing here is to review your log regularly and to apply changes to your process.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Creative perspective and intentionality
Perspective can make or break a photograph. The choice of perspective is only second to the choice of light: perspective does not matter in complete darkness. However, with enough light for an exposure perspective begins to matter.
I like photography because it taught me to enjoy the world around me more. I enjoy noticing subtle and saturated colors and neat juxtaposition of things. However, capturing these ideas in photographs requires finding the right perspective.
As I walked around back streets of Escondido I saw a raw guard poles and a number bent ones. I thought to myself: "There are some bad drivers here!" I decided to capture that idea in a photograph. My goal was to capture it in such a way that the concept of bad driving would be immediately apparent to someone viewing my photograph. I walked to the side of the road and took the following shot:
This shot captured the scene, but failed to convey the idea of bad driving. In addition to having a busy background, this shot did not emphasize the crookedness of guard poles enough. As the result, I decided to show that poles are not aligned on a straight line by standing in line with them:
These shots showed that poles were uneven. There was enough variation in locations of poles that bent poles have disappeared among other poles. Again, not exactly what I wanted.
For my next shot, I moved a little to the right to visually align the poles with each other:
I generally liked the alignment of the poles this position produced, but there were too many elements in the photo that competed for view's attention. In order to make the lines of poles into the central subject of the photo, I got a little closer and to tilted the camera and placed the poles onto a diagonal:
I was finally happy with the result. The focus of the image was clearly on the crookedness of the poles.
Related links:
I like photography because it taught me to enjoy the world around me more. I enjoy noticing subtle and saturated colors and neat juxtaposition of things. However, capturing these ideas in photographs requires finding the right perspective.
As I walked around back streets of Escondido I saw a raw guard poles and a number bent ones. I thought to myself: "There are some bad drivers here!" I decided to capture that idea in a photograph. My goal was to capture it in such a way that the concept of bad driving would be immediately apparent to someone viewing my photograph. I walked to the side of the road and took the following shot:
This shot captured the scene, but failed to convey the idea of bad driving. In addition to having a busy background, this shot did not emphasize the crookedness of guard poles enough. As the result, I decided to show that poles are not aligned on a straight line by standing in line with them:
These shots showed that poles were uneven. There was enough variation in locations of poles that bent poles have disappeared among other poles. Again, not exactly what I wanted.
For my next shot, I moved a little to the right to visually align the poles with each other:
I generally liked the alignment of the poles this position produced, but there were too many elements in the photo that competed for view's attention. In order to make the lines of poles into the central subject of the photo, I got a little closer and to tilted the camera and placed the poles onto a diagonal:
I was finally happy with the result. The focus of the image was clearly on the crookedness of the poles.
Related links:
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Prefectionism, Elliot Erwitt, and brake pads
Perfectionism can paralyze photographers. It crops up as a desire to take a better picture. It makes you jaded. It makes you avoid taking a shot: "The light isn't quite right", "The background is too busy", "The subject is uninteresting". My perfectionism was certainly getting to me. My perfectionism got worse as I got better. I felt the need to make every next shot I take better than my previous shot. At some point I felt unable to take pictures. At times I would carry my photo backpack on a trip and never take my camera out because "there was nothing interesting to shoot". However, the truth is that I was afraid of failure. I was afraid of taking a mediocre picture, because that would make me a mediocre photographer in my own eyes. If I don't do anything, I can't make mistakes, right?
While browsing Magnum Photos last night I came across a slide show of personal favorites by Elliot Erwitt narrated by the author. I've enjoyed the subtle humor of Erwitt's photographs before. However, his unassuming attitude got my attention this time. I decided to try to let go of my fears.
As the first step of breaking out of the chains of perfectionisms and accepting that every one of my photos cannot be perfect I uploaded a bunch of photos from my cellphone. Since only amateurs take photos with a cellphone, there can't possibly be any good photos there, right? I was ready to see a bunch of my own bad photos. And, indeed, there was a lot flawed photos. However, I was surprised to realize that all these photos meant something to me. These were random photos that collected in my cellphone since I got it almost 2 years ago. There were a lot of hardly discernible (due to low resolution, noise, and motion blur) yet memorable moments captured there. I was enjoying looking at these fragments from my past! It didn't matter if the composition was "compelling" or if the exposure was "on the spot". I simply enjoyed looking at these photos, they brought back memories. I felt liberated.
Despite my fears, I found that many of the images were sufficiently well composed by my own standards. I took these images out of boredom while playing with my cellphone or just in a spur of a moment. Since I got my dSLR, I've been shooting very much with my head: "how will this look?", "how do I compose this shot?", "should I change the angle to get a better perspective?", "is this background ok?", "can I avoid these wires/branches/cars/people/etc?", "what aperture/shutter speed should I use?". If I am shooting landscape subjects or still life, I usually take time to answer these questions. My cellphone photos were not taken with nearly as much thought, yet they many of them were clearly good enough for me to enjoy. The lesson was clear: I should trust my gut more.
During the slide show mentioned above, Elliot Erwitt conceded that it is hard to get excited by the everyday environment even for him. Luckily, an opportunity to escape Mira Mesa came up today. My friend was planning to change his brake pads at a shop located in Escondido, CA. Even though Escondido is not known for great vistas or large social gatherings, I decided to take advantage of this opportunity and went along with my friend.
Here is the result of my trip: Escondido, CA. There is a number of photos there that I took just because I wanted to. Some of them may require some thought. Some are just want they are. You might notice that I could not escape perfectionism completely by looking at the "Bad Drivers" series. However, I decided to upload the multiple "Bad Drivers" shots to show how my thinking about the shot progressed before I got to the final one.
While browsing Magnum Photos last night I came across a slide show of personal favorites by Elliot Erwitt narrated by the author. I've enjoyed the subtle humor of Erwitt's photographs before. However, his unassuming attitude got my attention this time. I decided to try to let go of my fears.
As the first step of breaking out of the chains of perfectionisms and accepting that every one of my photos cannot be perfect I uploaded a bunch of photos from my cellphone. Since only amateurs take photos with a cellphone, there can't possibly be any good photos there, right? I was ready to see a bunch of my own bad photos. And, indeed, there was a lot flawed photos. However, I was surprised to realize that all these photos meant something to me. These were random photos that collected in my cellphone since I got it almost 2 years ago. There were a lot of hardly discernible (due to low resolution, noise, and motion blur) yet memorable moments captured there. I was enjoying looking at these fragments from my past! It didn't matter if the composition was "compelling" or if the exposure was "on the spot". I simply enjoyed looking at these photos, they brought back memories. I felt liberated.
Despite my fears, I found that many of the images were sufficiently well composed by my own standards. I took these images out of boredom while playing with my cellphone or just in a spur of a moment. Since I got my dSLR, I've been shooting very much with my head: "how will this look?", "how do I compose this shot?", "should I change the angle to get a better perspective?", "is this background ok?", "can I avoid these wires/branches/cars/people/etc?", "what aperture/shutter speed should I use?". If I am shooting landscape subjects or still life, I usually take time to answer these questions. My cellphone photos were not taken with nearly as much thought, yet they many of them were clearly good enough for me to enjoy. The lesson was clear: I should trust my gut more.
During the slide show mentioned above, Elliot Erwitt conceded that it is hard to get excited by the everyday environment even for him. Luckily, an opportunity to escape Mira Mesa came up today. My friend was planning to change his brake pads at a shop located in Escondido, CA. Even though Escondido is not known for great vistas or large social gatherings, I decided to take advantage of this opportunity and went along with my friend.
Here is the result of my trip: Escondido, CA. There is a number of photos there that I took just because I wanted to. Some of them may require some thought. Some are just want they are. You might notice that I could not escape perfectionism completely by looking at the "Bad Drivers" series. However, I decided to upload the multiple "Bad Drivers" shots to show how my thinking about the shot progressed before I got to the final one.
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