Category: General

A couple of experiences in the past few days have made me realise that the worlds of technology and business are converging in a way that technology companies are maybe not realising. The first was Seedhack, where 120 folk put in a weekend's work to try to develop out new business ventures based on technology, … Continue reading The Business/Technology split

As part of a presentation I'm giving tomorrow, I've pulled together a timeline that shows the release years of key devices, software and services in the past decade. It's interesting... how we forget that iTunes came before the iPod; that the first BlackBerry phone was only in 2003; that the current crop of games consoles … Continue reading A decade of devices and services

I spent this evening at the first Seedhack event, a weekend hackathon organised by the start up organisation Seedcamp. I was doing a bit of thought-provoking, which it's always fun. The event format, which will be continuing over the weekend, began with a series of short talks, some about specific technologies some about industry sector … Continue reading Seedhack

I've been thinking and talking a lot in the past few weeks about a concept that I picked up on from a Malcolm Gladwell essay that I read last year... the distinction between mysteries and puzzles. The short summary is that a puzzle is something that had an unknown but fixed solution, whereas a mystery … Continue reading More mystery than puzzle…

I've written about the Dan Gardner book Future Babble a couple of times... if you want to find out more about the underlying research, then the new Freakonomics Podcast covers much of the same ground in 58 nicely produced minutes of radio. Well worth a listen.

Attended a great talk this morning given by Aaron Bjork and Peter Provost about Agile development (and what support there is in the new versions of Visual Studio). The talk should be available soon on http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/TOOL-793T, but in the meantime there were some great headlines about core principals of Agile development that are worth sharing. It's … Continue reading Ten points on Agile Development

I was listening to the Guardian's Tech Podcast this morning, and there was coverage of the new Amazon Kindle device that will be shipping in the US later this year, and next in Europe. From the sounds of it, there is another competitor on the block for the tablet/PC/slate/phone/reader showdown that continues to bounce around … Continue reading Device types and business models

I wrote a few weeks ago about what motivates people in general, and software developers in particular, to improve their performance. Since then, I've been reminded about a conversation I had about a similar topic with a recruiter a few years ago. Many organisations provide benefits to their staff that are related to their products … Continue reading The Chalmers/Clarkson Index

There is a way of thinking about how we influence people that distills styles of influence into "push" influence and "pull" influence. Push influence, either through straight assertion or logical argument, tends to be focused on telling people what to do. Although it can have success in the short term, over time consistently pushing people … Continue reading Push me/pull you