“Until you actually start making something, your brilliant idea is just that, an idea. ” Today was an interesting day. Although we had a couple of months notice that we had to shut down milSuite, on which I had worked for almost 14 years, the reality of it being shut down is going to take some getting used to. I've had a pretty stable ...

“It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” Earlier this evening I gathered with some of my teammates to shut down milSuite, the project on which I've worked for nearly 14 years. Unlike so many federal government efforts that have been recently shut down immediately and without warning, we got the word that we would be ...

“At what point does a plate become a bowl?” The subject of today's session of the Analogy, Abstraction, and Reasoning course I'm taking was abstraction, and was the source of today's quote (which won out by the narrowest of margins over "Making taxonomies is fun" for the quote of the day ;). The role of abstraction in our lives, and ou...

“Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving. -- David Ogilvy” I noticed something interesting over the weekend while watching something on one of the video streaming services, probably Amazon Video (or whatever they call their service). In addition to the regular ads that show up unless you pay an extra fee each...

“... semantically related but contextually distinct ...” Most conversations about EV charging stations these days involve fixed facilities. The closest analog is the good old gas station (or service station, if you prefer): a fixed location where the energy supply is stored and a driver goes to that location to receive delivery from th...

“We didn't come this far only to come this far.” I saw this in a random LinkedIn post (which seems to have become a common source of entries for my commonplace book). A surface reading of this could be something along the lines of, "Don't rest on your laurels," but I think it goes deeper than that. It reflects an understanding that our...

“AI is a fantastic tool for innovation, but in the wrong hands, it can be used to deceive at scale.” I saw this today in a LinkedIn post, in which the author was reacting to a video, called Don't buy stuff from old AI people, explaining how AI had been used to create a scam store front and ad campaign. Chances are you have seen one of ...

“Knowing a solution is at hand is a huge advantage; it’s like not having a “none of the above” option. Anyone with reasonable competence and adequate resources can solve a puzzle when it is presented as something to be solved. We can skip the subtle evaluations and move directly to plugging in possible solutions until we hit upon a pro...

One of the inspirations for what has become my Obey/Rebel project exploring rules in organizations was the 2010 book, Hacking Work, by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein. Subtitled Breaking Stupid Rules for Smart Results, the primary intended audience of the book is the typical employee, more specifically a typical knowledge worker, with examp...

Putting together some thoughts for a piece I was writing, I asked ChatGPT, "What is it called when you think of something and then start seeing examples of it everywhere?" To which it replied: “ What you're describing is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also known as the frequency illusion. ” "Um, what?" was my first thought. Beca...

I was at a local big-box store the other day and had the need to visit the men’s room. It is a large store and so has a relatively spacious men’s room, with the sinks just inside the entry followed by a row of four urinals. As I walked in I was struck by the fact that the four urinals appeared to be exactly the same, except for one: it...

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the St. Louis Product Management Group meetup and participate in a session lead by Hannah Davison on the topic of Psychology Principles Behind Creating Effective Products. One of the examples that Hannah brought up was free trials of software or services. You know the ones, "Try it free for 7/...

In her post, "The What Not the How of Service Design", Sarah Drummond writes: “I’m witnessing a more negative tipping point right now, when the defined discipline becomes too formulaic because it’s been commoditised and we forget, at the essence of this, it is about designing services and creatively solving problems for organisations a...

On this day in 1984, I made my fifth and final jump at the US Army Airborne School. So many stories I have, and could, tell about those three weeks, but those are for another time. I mention the occasion today only because I heard a mention on the radio that today marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day. I remember noting on that day back ...

If there is indeed a heaven, and your autistic child goes there when they die, will they still be autistic? Over the years I’ve come to believe that asking someone this question about autism in heaven is one of the best ways to understand how they view autism. Even better than asking them whether they believe that autism needs to be cu...

"Do a lot of Mexicans go through there?" was not the response I had expected. "Um...." "A lot of new immigrants from Mexico come from places where they can't do that because the infrastructure isn't good enough." As soon as she said that, it clicked. This wasn't your typical, hastily created, sometimes hand written, sign you often find...

"What's your name?" Emily asked from behind the counter. I knew her name because it was on her name tag. "Who's asking?" I responded, with a slightly snarky tone, hoping she got the joke. "I am." Duh. "My name is Brett. Why do you ask?" "I've been working here for a while now, and thought I should learn the names of my regulars." We ha...

"I know her, we were best friends in kindergarten," the first boy said, followed by something I couldn't quite make out. "I shook her dad's hand at Halloween. Gross." The two boys, age 9 or so, were sitting on their bikes in the middle of the road looking at the house contained by crime scene tape, the house where a woman was murdered ...

Next week at this time, Julie and I will be in Scottsdale, AZ playing tennis. Not just playing tennis, but playing for a National Championship at the USTA League 55 & over Mixed Doubles National Invitational. The crazy thing is that this our third national championship tournament - we played this same tournament last year and also in t...

Dave Gray was the guest of the Service Design Book Club today, where he shared insights and ideas from his book Liminal Thinking. I've had the opportunity talk with Dave and hear him speak about the book several times over the past few years, and each time I learn something new, get something useful from it. Sometimes it is just good t...

Of all the benefits of working remotely, of working at (from?) home, my favorite is the ability to just step away for a few minutes during the day. For me this generally takes the form of a short (a mile or so) walk with the dogs. Unlike a “coffee break” when at the office, stepping completely away allows me to push work to the back, o...

This past weekend I had the opportunity to present a session entitled "You should always follow the rules, except when you shouldn't" at Product camp St. Louis. My session was one of 50 proposed sessions and I was lucky enough to be selected as one of the 30 that was presented. I have to admit not being sure whether anyone would vote f...

I've been following with interest David Heinemeier Hansson's recent posts about his switch from Mac to Windows for both personal and company use. I made a similar switch myself a few years ago, albeit for somewhat different reasons to start, and have come to find many of the same benefits that he has. Although I used (still use) Window...

Today the School of the Possible held our first open house. Over 100 people joined us to hear what the School is all about and learn more about the courses that I and other faculty are working on. It was quite the undertaking, using Zoom and Mural to get that open house feeling. After a main session where Chief Possibilitarian Dave Gra...

The MacGuffin of the latest Mission Impossible film is a seemingly sentient (conscious?), all-knowing, all-powerful artificial intelligence referred to, somewhat ominously and ridiculously at the same time, as "The Entity." There is a scene about half way through the second act in which Gabriel, an agent of The Entity, tries to persuad...

There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Leap Day. Partly for the geekiness of the rules that govern when they occur, but mostly because it was on the last occurrence of this day that my younger son got married. It all started innocently enough, as these things do. The kids were looking at a late winter wedding, sometime in Feb...

As a kid I never really had a grasp of economics, of the "way business gets done". I had no real interest, that I remember, of starting a lemonade stand or any other kind of business. I enjoyed doing the work, and just kind of expected that I'd be rewarded for it. Yeah, it was as interesting as you might think it was. Interestingly, I ...

Pulling together thoughts for my proposed session at ProductCamp STL and upcoming course at The School of the Possible. Here are my four rules about rules, as they apply to an individual subject to the rules of others. 1. Read the manual (or RTFM if you prefer) 2. Consider the consequences, consider the possibilities 3. Always follow t...

I finally picked up a copy of Lou Downe's Good Services: How to design services that work. Why did y'all let me wait so long to do that?!? https://good.services/home Just over 50 pages in, and this book is in my top 3 for service design books. Truth be told, they had me at page 25 with this: “...services often keep a channel as a back-...

A few days ago I wrote a little bit about translation, specifically in the context of poetry as explored in Douglas Hofstadter's book, "Le Ton Beau de Marot." I was thinking about that this evening watching a Brazilian show, dubbed from Portuguese to English, on Netflix. We also had subtitles, in English, turned on (because we pretty m...