Eventyr

Informing Myself

• Phase 1: Read PhD comics and note the similarity.
• Phase 2: Realise that (although you tell other people to use information radiators or, more generally, ensure they have an informative workspace) you do not practice what you preach.
• Phase 3: Clean the shared office whiteboard, only to realise it is still inconvenient for your purpose.
• Phase 4: Locate where you left your mobile whiteboard, and move it to the right office.
• Phase 5: Lose time struggling to re-assemble it single-handed.
• Phase 6: Create a system so you can see the work you have planned for the next week/fortnight/iteration
• Phase 7: Hit your head on the desk repeatedly now you can see how you over-planned.

Well, that was my day anyway. 

Office Space

Until a couple of days ago Office Space was a film I hadn't seen.  I was prompted to watch it once too often, and a need to understand cubicles drove me.  I'm very glad I did.

Until I entered discussions* at Agile 2007 I had never really focussed on cubicles.  They mean nothing to me, are something I haven't seen anywhere I have worked.  They were some comic creation that no-one really has in any quantity. 

I was astounded to find that apparently they are ubiquitous in the US - anything else is rare.  Until I realised this I had no understanding that some of my talk had been mispitched, as I had expected everyone in the room to have some concept of what an open plan office looks like.

Thankfully I had the chance to help model alternatives.

Am I spoiled that my concerns revolve around how open an open plan office should get for optimal communication?    Very probably.

I am grateful that I have so soundly missed working with them, and now I fear to see them everywhere.

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* Both at my open workspaces talk and at the designing collaborative workspaces session.

Simply Buy Tickets

Ticket sales are properly launched for the upcoming Brighton Coding Dojo night which will be held at the Creativity Zone at Sussex on 10th May as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. Tickets are £3/£2 and the night includes a full buffet (making it a real bargain). 

Public, students and professional programmers are all welcome (although some knowledge of programming constructs is preferred).

Come and join us, and tell your friends.

Office Mess

One statistic found that, “The average desk worker has 36 hours worth of work on their desk and wastes up to 3 hours a week just “looking” for STUFF!” Finding stuff on my messy desk bears out that statistic. Being disorganized is responsible for a lot of wasted time.
10 Tips To Help Keep Your Desk Clean

Been thinking a lot about workspace and order recently. Is mess unproductive or just comfortable and homely?  What defines the turning point from one to the other?

Feedback Devices

I really wish that I could be at OOPSLA this year, just because I would really love to be able to attend Rachel and David's Creating an Informative Workspace Workshop, which is about one of the new XP practices that I am particularly fascinated by:

    "The practice is to build feedback mechanisms around an agile team that support them in their daily work. These feedback mechanisms can take the form of visual displays (Information Radiators) that are manually updated by the team or electronic eXtreme Feedback Devices (XFD) such as lava lamps or audio signals linked to automated processes. It is vital to ensure that feedback mechanisms are easy to interpret, low maintenance and adapted to local practices."

I find it interesting how XFD approaches can be naturally introduced into a company process - such as Future Platforms' Nabaztag.  It makes me wonder if the top ten cool workplaces have such items.  I certainly hope so.

Hopefully, Rachel's new informative workspace repository will prove visually revealing about XFD and Big Visible Chart practice once it is fully up and running.

Studio Learning

Brief notes on studio learning - after an interesting workshop session for the CETL from Greg Hooper, RF in the Interact lab visiting from Queensland University of Technology.

Studio Learning traditionally involves:
- Persistent Space
- Tasks over long length of time
- Exploration of design space
- Wandering Master
- Subject to the Scrutiny of Peers
- Defense of Own Reasoning
- Process Production

Studio learning is thus public; necessarily involving production and reflection, and giving and receiving criticism.

It helps to develop individual expression as well as a cohort or social network of peers.

Collaboration Parallels

I am seeing interesting parallels between the collaborative learning effect expected in the coding dojo (origins in martial arts) and the studio-based learning approach (origins in art education). 

Both have the potential to encourage participants to develop 'hidden' skills such as communication, collaboration, cooperation, and self-direction - all skills which are becoming more and more vital for those entering the IT industry. 

Space and approach seems vital to many things.

Either way parallels are being drawn between programming and art in both cases.