Ignite LX and Livesketching

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Last tuesday (this means may1st) I went to my first Ignite event (in Lisbon).I knew some friends were working on it and I offered to help because:

A – I love helping to set stuff up, stressing out and getting my hands dirty (It reminds me of my times at Natwerk. Which rocked)
B – It was hosted by some people I really wanted to meet.

The energy of the whole event was fantastic, filled with people that are jobless and yet not really feeling depressed about. I saw a lot of active people with potential and drive, and honestly, I couldn´t help but to think of the suckers (yes, i mean this) that let them slip under the radar and out of their previous jobs.

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Differentiate & Integrate

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Have you read “Flow” from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? Well, I just recently found out about it and even more recently, read it. In very brief terms, Flow is the state you are in when you are ” in an activity, fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity” (wikipedia).

For instance, I like to draw, and often try to draw difficult perspectives. Most of times I dont really end up satisfied, but in the process, it is quite common that i lose some track of time and have total focus on the task and each time I get better. You could argue that for a moment, I was in Flow. Does it make sense?

A cool aspect of Flow is that it tends to lead to growth. You reach Flow and it is likely that you learn something (not always a craft, mind you). This growth happens in two ways that must co-exist: Differentiation and Integration. By learning something new, you differentiate yourself from you previous self and from others around you. And when you integrate this knowledge, when you give it some order, it becomes part of you and sets the now larger limits of your existence. I´m really not into esoteric stuff and if this post is sounding like anything of the sort, well…Cskiszentmihalyi wrote a nice book about the topic that should set the record straight. Flow is about psychology. Not the dark arts.

Why am I talking about this?
Because “growth”, in the context of Flow, reminds me of the Design profession and how it keeps on expanding its skillset and integrating imported methods into its broader definition.

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Entrepreneurship Bootcamp and a new project

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For the past few months I´ve been taking a more active approach to learning the ins and outs of business. And although there is a ton you can learn by reading, it is great to have a structured program to follow, with a real project and the support of proven mentors. That is why I enrolled in the Energia de Portugal bootcamp series (Run by a leading newspaper, the national energy company and a national bank). It felt great to know I made it to the selected 200 (we were 1723 at the beginning, so yeah, im happy). And now I have a new project, Apps Freely.

AppsFreely is a place where as a developer you can promote your smartphone apps and as a user, you can get credits for trying them out. These credits can then be redeemed for premium apps of your choice.
(Gonçalo, our app developer already made the website, I can´t take the credit for it)

They say the team is more important than the idea, and I got reasons to like mine. We have an experienced application developer, an IT management consultant, a digital entrepreneur and yours truly (full disclosure: I´ll be handling research, usability and design).

The program lasts 9 weeks (two gone by) and places the biggest focus on the teaching of actionable skills. It is not about “getting people excited about entrepreneurship” but more about “teaching the right tools to take off”. It places a big focus on understanding the market with plenty of mentions to “research”, “testing” and “iteration”. Now this is something I definitely want to get more of.

In the last session we worked with the Business Model Canvas to structure our approach and now it is time to hit the road. And we will need some input, so if you feel that you can help us pick a name, there is a place for that:

Google Forms App name selection
(sorry, the explanation is in Portuguese, but just remember what i said above)

Also, you can sign up for the beta, either as a developer or user, so waste no time:
AppsFreely

So, let´s see where this goes! For now it has been great to meet new people, which as usual in these community, are damn optimistic, active and interesting!

Two writing voices

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Well, screw it. I was doing something else, mildly urgent but this just came up to my mind.
I´ve noticed that I have two writing modes that I most often use:

  • Very structured and efficiency-biased for “technical stuff”, gradually uncovering how I got there
  • A more loose “hook and bait” approach, that leans a bit on a narrative flow

I use the first to explain ideas and projects, so that busy readers will get the gist of it very quickly (focused on result and not process). Typically I´ll have a “if you got 5 minutes” section where the whole thing is compressed in and then little by little talk about my approach, methods and the little steps that informed the final decisions.

The second is the one I try to use when writing about more abstract topics. Here in the blog, this how I try to make it. Most often it starts with a curious fact or statement and then moves on to the step by step justification (I´m a sucker for validation).

I´m quite sure this is not rocket science, but I think it is interesting that I´ve never consciously noticed I had these two modes. Of course I knew I had different priorities when writing, but this is the first time I see them side by side. Oddly enough there is a consistent focus on aspects of structure, flow and justification. I wonder what would happen if I were to write short stories. Would these characteristics remain?

Interesting how our writing style so closely follows how we think.

Designoteca.com is live

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Henrique (his personal website) is a good friend with a solid, consistent passion. He likes open design, co-creation and participatory approaches. And this is why Designoteca.com exists. Designoteca is a an open design repository, connecting designers and producers, with a strong focus on digital fabrication.
Henrique dedicated the past few months, along with the good help from Heraldo and a bit of my input, to make Designoteca happen.

Designoteca home page

Designoteca has been online for a while, but just last week released the new paypal enabled functions. You can now effortlessly upload a design, establish your price and immediately be ready to start licensing your designs. And the whole thing helps you select the right type of license, from the Creative Commons catalog.

On the website you can upload editable and non-editable file types, set up a description, indicate which technology should be used to fabricate your products and even use tags
to group similar ideas. It really has come a long way.

The whole idea is that anybody can give shape to their own ideas, and be able to make a living from them. In order to help people getting into digital fabrication, Designoteca has introductions to the topic, what processes and software one can use to model and produce her ideas. And has the site grows, it should become a meeting place for people to work on similar projects, each one contributing with a part. Right now, e.Moped the open source electrical bicycle is asking for help, maybe you can drop by and lend a hand?

There is a lot of talk at Designoteca.com on how to make it better, so if you got suggestions, fire away!

Subtlety is a compliment

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The other day I re-watched Dr. No. It had been on my list for a long time due to its cultural relevance. One of the things that struck me in this film was the balanced use of plot cues. Things are simply not explained ostensibly, which gives the alert viewer enough time to process information and come to her own conclusions. The beautiful thing is that even if you don´t immediately understand what is happening (e.g. some specific gadget is used and you don´t know what it is), later in the story this will be explained in a very natural way.
It´s a win-win. If you pay attention to details you get the plot earlier, if you don´t, you won´t be insulted by patronizing explanations that break the flow of the narrative.

This got me thinking about subtlety and why I appreciate it. I suspect that most people that appreciate it do it for similar reasons, but maybe I´m wrong. If you think so, please just hit me up on the comment box below.

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Piracy control and the rise of Openness

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Heads up: I´ve been reading Kevin Kelly´s “What Technology Wants” and I thoroughly recommend it. Some of the ideas I discuss here (such as the importance of language for progress) are discussed in his book. 

Language is arguably the single most important human invention. It freed us from being isolated in our own minds and opened the doors for sharing, debating, teaching and learning. It allowed us to pool our experiences together and participate in the making of culture. It was the invention that led to other inventions and their successful spreading.

Yet, today, we see a strong movement to wall up Intellectual Property and to better defend it against piracy. PIPA and SOPA have been dropped for now but I would not be surprised if these media-corporation-backed laws were to emerge again, with slightly different provisions. ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) can be used to frame, from a legal point of view, generic drugs as counterfeit drugs. It could also potentially allow for the search of laptops and media players at border controls (There is some discussion on this one). Right here in Portugal, police traffic patrols are checking vehicles for pirated media and everybody is warned not to have anything suspicious on their car.

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