The Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center was lit last night. As is my tradition from years past, I grumbled about the crowds and traffic and meandering tourists during my evening commute out of the city. But I have to admit I appreciated the tree's colorful lights on this dark, rainy morning coming into the office. The season of celebration and gift-giving is here, after all!


By some coincidence (or was there some holiday magic involved??), I was listening to a podcast on my morning commute about Agile adoption and creating an organizational 'gift' culture. Bob Payne discussed Seth Godin's book Lynchpin, and the 'emotional labor' necessary to sustain a transition to Agile practices.

In the gift economy, you are rewarded for generosity, i.e., sharing your unique ideas, passions, energy, and talent with others. As you give freely without strings attached, you in turn receive assistance, recognition, credibility, information, and more. The health of the community that you support also benefits you. You can see this gift economy working on open source software projects, across social networks, and on successful Agile teams. Its not about you.

It seems fitting at this time of year to take a step back and ask whether you've been naughty (and hoarding your gifts for your own benefit) or nice.

Download the podcast from the Agile Toolkit website.

Crowd funding for orphanages in Haiti

I was lucky recently to travel to Boston to join a group of colleagues for a volunteer hackfest to build a website to benefit Haitian orphanages.  After a week of concentrated effort, there is still work to do, and the site is under construction.  ReliefHub, the nonprofit startup behind the site, is moving forward in establishing their operational capacity as well.

The hackfest team accomplished a lot, however, in a short amount of time. Pat Shaughnessy's blog describes the experience well, so I won't attempt to improve on it!

http://patshaughnessy.net/2010/11/1/reliefhub-hackfest-helping-orphanages-in-haiti

To learn more, or to make a donation to the effort, see http://www.reliefhub.org/

Innovative Uses of NYC Data

New York City's 311 call center recently received its 100th million call, and each call is logged and mapped by neighborhood. Needless to say, these calls have generated an enormous pool of data that provides actionable insight into how to improve quality of life in the city.

This fascinating map is from a recent Wired magazine article shows the potential of data visualization. (See the article to check out complaints from your NYC neighborhood).

This data is available for Mayor Bloomberg's NYC BigApps contest. The contest awards up to $20,000 in cash to groups who come up with the most useful, impactful mobile app using city data.  Entrepreurial types can register online until Jan 12, 2011.

See also:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/New-York-City--104861239.html

Celebratinig hands-on innovation

The Maker Faire is coming this week to the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York. The family-friendly festival attracts thousands of visitors in events across the country, and brings together people who are enthusiastic about creating 'stuff' with technology. It promotes hand-on, grass roots innovation in a spirit of fun and collaboration.  Projects range from the serious (e.g., robots, tools) to ridiculous (e.g., computer-controlled singing fish choir).

I'm looking forward to bringing my children, and seeing what captures their imagination.  I also love the idea of people pouring their personal time and creative energy into projects they're passionate about. There may not be a practical goal in mind from the outset, but the out-of-the-box thinking just might lead to the next big discovery.

Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of MAKE magazine, talks below about the how the festival evolved. This presentation was made to the Kaufman Foundation for entrepreneurship.




See also:
Punkin Chunkin (www.punkinchunkin.com)- Its a bizarre, pointless, and funny annual event, but it draws 20,000 people and has an oddly addictive show on the Science Channel. (Could I really be thinking of going to see this in person?)  People build enormous catapults to see who can chuck a pumpkin the furthest distance.

Make stuff

SchoolTools is an open source system designed to help remotely-located schools in the developing world share data with national governmental ministries of education. Like public health projects with similar goals, SchoolTools uses Ubuntu and SMS.



I stumbled on the following video about SchoolTools on Makezine website. "Make" is for people who - as you might guess - like to make things with technology in their spare time.  I'm looking forward to the upcoming family-friendly World Maker Faire in New York on September 25 and 26.  I think its a great opportunity to get my kids excited about experimenting, inventing, and creating with no exams or grades involved. I'd like them to appreciate school and learning from teachers, but also have confidence that they can learn a lot just through their own independent explorations.

Expect Humans, Not Heroes

I had a great evening in the city recently catching up a pair of finance professionals establishing a nonprofit consultancy. I walked away believing more than ever that we desperately need superheroes - in business or society - yet we are all mere humans. As a result, we build networks and collaborate to solve big challenges. The media loves lone heroes – the billionaire entrepreneur, the celebrity humanitarian, the mad scientist - but we rarely see the army of supporters behind them.

I met the two business partners through a mutual friend who is a part of both the Coro NY Leadership Center and Teach for America alumni communities (a kind of “bridge” between networks). They nurture and develop social interest startups by supplying much needed capital, as well as business and banking expertise, to early stage social entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs they help are extraordinary people - talented, driven and passionate - yet they cannot be expert in all things. These business partners use their private sector background to ask the right questions and advise on business planning, management and finance so that “big ideas” can grow and have real impact over time.

In my own efforts to get technology-related volunteer efforts started at work, I’m discovering the importance of finding the right partner. It’s clear where we’re strong as volunteers and what we have to offer, as well as our constraints (e.g., time, work demands). A partner can be a non-profit that is experienced in managing skilled corporate volunteers, or possibly another like-minded business that is already involved in its own pro-bono efforts. The right partner is able to get maximum benefit from our skills while working within our limitations as volunteers.

I’ve had the pleasure of talking to several fantastic organizations doing great work while investigating volunteer options. However, I have to admit it’s been more of a challenge to find an arrangement that is sustainable for the volunteers and our department, and more benefit than effort for the recipient. Luckily, we have a couple experiments in the works that seem to put us in the right direction.

Finding Your "Why"

In my last post, I discussed that even unglamorous, low profile 'dirty jobs' can be rewarding. According to a new book profiled in CIO Magazine, "The Why of Work", even 'happiness' is optional. It all comes down to finding a sense of purpose, i.e., knowing why you do what you do.

In this long period of tough economic times, many company perks that supposedly made people "happy" are no longer available. Budgets are lean. As news headlines constantly remind us, basic job security can't be assumed. An atmosphere of persistent stress and worry takes its toll, and "The Why of Work" warns that employees can experience an internalized "psychological recession" that endures even after business begins to recover. The authors are encouraging us to shake it off and get back to living with abundance.

I'm reminded of a book that had a big impact on me in college, Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning". As both a psychiatrist and a prisoner in a WWII Nazi concentration camp, Frankl observed that prisoners who felt a deep sense of meaning had a better chance of survival. Some extraordinary people responded to their hard times by becoming even more generous and concerned for others, even though they had every reason to be self protective. Obviously, this is an extreme case (and hopefully your work doesn't feel like a prison camp!!). But it shows that while we may not choose our circumstances, we are free to choose our response. It also shows that purpose can't be dictated or taken away by an authority. Its uniquely individual and belongs 100% to you.

Helping employees find meaning in work is good for business, though. Connecting work goals to a larger personal purpose builds resilience, and allows people to stay creative and engaged in times where change and uncertainty is constant. The catch for managers is that you cannot tell people what their purpose is, and finding purpose can take hard work, exploration and introspection. Its not as straightforward as providing financial incentives, casual Friday, free snacks, or other perks.

At my workplace, two colleagues are tasked with the daunting challenge of 'inspiring' our department. They are wisely avoiding a prescriptive approach, and instead opening some great opportunities for people to explore and share what is meaningful to them. (The Why of Work offers tools like checklists and questionnaires that can be helpful for some people, as well).

I wouldn't say I'm always in touch with my purpose, but I'm getting better at it. A big 'aha' moment was when I started volunteering my professional IT skills towards global health projects and supporting science/technology education. Volunteering is a passion, and it often makes me happy. But it also takes money and precious personal time away from my family. What drives me to make the sacrifice is the realization that I can have an impact on issues that matter. My purpose is aligned personally and professionally. Volunteering builds my capacity as a private sector professional, and professional growth at work means I have more to contribute to social impact work. I'm better able to provide for my family, while actively living and demonstrating my values in action for my children.

Everyone will find their own source of inspiration, but I appreciate that I work in an environment that supports diverse interests. We recently had a 'Take your Daughters and Sons to Work Day". I wonder (somewhat tongue in cheek, of course) what a "Take Yourself to Work Day" would look like. Who would we meet?