Photo by Michael Heiss A popular mantra the past few years is that “software is a collaborative game”. However in a large organization or project, is this really possible? When things get big and the number of communications lines exceed what is possible to handle for an individual, is it really possible to collaborate? A behavior of teams when things get clouded is to construct a world which is tangible and possible to manage.

When you’re in the phase of building something new I think the most important thing is to have a clear focus on who you’re optimizing for and why. You could optimize for the creators happiness, future résumé and his or her opinions on what is The Right Way (which usually translates into the authors subjective opinion on The Right Way). Or you could optimize for speed. You can optimize for rewriting the whole thing later on.

Just because you’ve seen a lot of porn doesn’t mean you know how to make love Me Too many coders and product developers think they know something about Ux or graphic design just because they’ve seen a lot of it. This is naturally just plain false. All you’ve got is the same skills as a parrot who speaks. You can repeat what has been already told you. However you can not create something original.

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.