I have built a lot of my career on being vocal in different online forums since my first job back in the days. Online bulletin boards is a nice way for people to collaborate and for different types of people to discuss different topics. Bulletin boards and discussion forums are no longer as hot and are replaced by different types of social media. Services such as Twitter and Yammer. Can such services shape or change the culture of a company?

Q&A Tuesday - On Mortality I have had the pleasure of seeing James Victore do talks at the amazing Reason To Be Creative conference in New York. Amongst the many things he does is something called “Q&A Tuesday” where people send questions on anything and he answers. This time it’s my question and I think some of the advice is pretty great. “Get off the fucking phone” and “wake the fuck up” is sound advice.

“Needs to be outgoing and positive”. This is a phrase most job ads contain in our industry. At first glance one wouldn’t think anything special about it. Why wouldn’t you want positive and outgoing people? The past couple of days I have been painting our apartment. While doing so I tend to be accompanied by the BBC World Service. The other day there was a mention of a study by Joe Forgas which shows that “Being grumpy is good for you”

I’ve come to realize, however, that while technology may make it more convenient to communicate, it doesn’t improve our ability to get a point across This is a quote from John Maeda’s book Redesigning Leadership. I think it captures the essence of the problem we have today with communication. We have all these amazing tools which enables just about anyone to potentially communicate with millions of people around the globe.

Watching a documentary from the Ferrari factory who makes the body for the FF model I notice something interesting. When they craft the aluminum parts for the body the narrator says: “each part is welded together by craftsmen”. That quote implies that repetitive tasks performed day in and day out are indeed something that requires a genuine craftsman. Now compare that to how the software industry tends to portray a craftsman coder.