mohandis Thissen

[twicr]

At a Japanese restaurant in Thailand, you can get served by this samurai warrior robot, which is totally not creepy at all. 

(Pouch via Kotaku)

[yannomanno]

This is the ultimate cool

[busybuildingthings]

Einstein: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Mark Twain. What is one thing these three visionaries have in common?

They all had very messy workspaces.

Mark Twain and...

[yannomanno]

Ah!

[monaeltahawy]

Under President José Mujica, who took office in 2010, Uruguay has legalized marijuana and same-sex marriage, while also enacting one of the region’s most sweeping abortion rights laws and sharply boosting the use of renewable energy sources like wind and biomass.

[smithsonian]

Introducing Smithsonian X 3D

It’s here: Browse, manipulate, download & print 3D models of some of our artifacts and research objects for free with our new Smithsonian X 3D program

[yannomanno]

Wow!

[dunk3d]

[ianus]

Percussive maintenance: A supercut of fixing broken things by kicking them. dunk3d

[yannomanno]

Ok, tumblr IS fun!

[yannomanno]

The flu finally got me. As usual one of the last and having the worst of it during the weekend. But, i've done all the work for tomorrow, all I can remember that is. I'll just drug up tomorrow and be there. Speaking of the flu. I'm pretty sure I caught it during a good, albeit smoky, meeting with projcomm 7 last wednesday when the university was shut down to sympathise with the US citizens. During this meeting I sensed another virus catching on: they are actually getting it. Good insights, good sharing, yay! The next day I sensed The same in group 6, although they were still having some attendance issues. If this virus continues, i'll be a very happy tutor at the end. If I survive this week.

[yannomanno]

group dynamics - cultural dynamics

The teams seem to be getting somewhere at the project. Great! There are some unspoken difficulties though which are common in a way, but very new to me as well. First: they're not working as teams yet, more like individuals who, it has to be said, want to get the best results possible. In that quest it seems that the bold and outspoken students take the lead and the others are trying to catch up being intimidated a bit. 

Second: there seems to be some other form of intimidation at play as well. Not in an active way, nobody is consciously intimidating anybody, but more in a passive way. Some behave intimidated by the actions and words of others. The active, more outspoken students are not just the more 'assertive types', they are also the students who are native speakers of English. This year is the first year that I find more than one student from the US or the Commonwealth in my groups and it is great. Conversations are context rich, funny and abundant. As a non native English speaker I am also aware of a subconscious process within me. Because of their fluency and natural accent (just like the movies!) I tend to take them more seriously. This is unwanted but very natural and it probably also happens when non native Dutch speakers talk to me in my mother tongue. I wonder if the students, all students realise that a dynamic like this might be taking place. What would it be like if they did realise and have a conversation about how they unwontedly effect each other? 

If they read this, I hope it can be an opening or conversation starter in their next meeting. This article (please click) may also help in pointing out what might be happening. If they don't read I'll certainly start with it in our next tutor meeting.

[yannomanno]

emerging after a midweek of ethnography

Last week I wasn't active on #projcomm13 because I attended The Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC http://epiconference.com/2013/). The conference was a treat, daily keynote speakers, well presented papers and pechakucha's and cool people talking about themes like: big data and how to interpret that (vs Thick data), the role of qualitative research in design and policy making and emerging areas of interest. A fine gathering of academics, independent UX people and corporate user researchers.

Tricia Wang started with a provoking keynote on how we are depending too much on measurable data to make decisions, being not much farther from the times of the Delphi Oracle. Or..

She studies the impact and use of technology especially in youth groups. I really liked her description of formal identities and informal identities, especially online. Sometimes we want to show our formal self to people we know ('hey look how great my life is, I got married/a new job/to go on a trip') which is used by the bigger providers of platforms to sell for advertisements. And sometimes we want to share stuff with people we don't know, or just a small group of people, or we just want to experiment with a different side of our personality (I can be a 14 year football hooligan on tumblr or reddit) on a platform that allows anonymous registration.

I like this concept of 'elastic self' a lot and it made me think: when we study or try to build online communities, do we ever consider using more playful ways? Why not have an online meeting in Haris Pilton's bar in Wow? 

It was all too much to talk about in a blog, and besides there are some really comprehensive ones about the conference already. So I'll end with my learnings:

quantitative research is gaining momentum in design and industry

design can help society (or societies) towards a better world, but often makes it worse (great talk on the Brixton pound) when users are not considered

Unilever wants to quantify and structure ethnographic research 

Lord Byron seems to be behind every single piece of modern pop culture

project groups get lost when not led firmly in the first weeks of a project

Skype is terrifying because for the first time in history we are witness to our own behaviour when communicating to others

in multi cultural environments joking is still very dangerous

Magic can be the key to better technology

[yannomanno]

blabla showing stuff

[yannomanno]

Eye of the storm

It is quiet now, but I think I'm in the eye of the storm, a well deserved relaxed weekend after the hard work of preparing for the new academic year and the introduction week. This is the first week of Project Communities 2013. We, the tutors, are all set, the new students seem to be an eager group... I can't wait to see what will happen in the next 8 weeks. What will I learn more about online communities? How will the students surprise me? How will they learn to cooperate?

I expect to learn: 

better fluency in this wordpress thing

letting the student groups figure it out by themselves, without leaving them in the dark

discipline in weekly grading and blogging

lots and lots about the thoughts and behaviours of young people from other countries and cultures

more in depth knowledge pumped into my brain by Nancy

  I already learned how to let go of control  Thank you Laura, Nancy, Alan and Shahab.

  Let's see what tomorrow brings!

[yannomanno]

[yannomanno]

edges

Chris' video for week 3 of project community really clarified a lot of my former work to me. I've had many teacher trainings and train the trainers, but nobody ever made it so simple and so clear. I applaud his 'groups of one'. During our (former job) Influencing for results training we had a home base room. All the mini lectures (with flabbergasting 4-flip -over-stands-presentations!!!) would take place in here. But also the book table was in this room as well as all the resources. And, distributed along the wall were work places for the attendees that we called 'learning satellites'. They could use this for reflection, journalling or whatever they needed. They would be facing the wall, on which they could share anything that came up about their learning. Very much like the way we use the tumblr blogs in our course now. F2F isn't that much different from online facilitation, come to think of it.

If you want to know about this training course on infuencing, Walt Hopkins just published his book about it. http://www.libripublishing.co.uk/management-policy-and-education/influencing-for-results-in-organisations

[yannomanno]

Boss

What is a boss? I never consider myself to be a boss, but I realize that some of the people I work with do. I admit that I have responsibility and when there's no consensus I decide. Yet somehow I see myself as just another colleague, albeit a nice one, with a different role. Even if I do appraisals. 

I was reading A visit from the Goon Squad, the excellent novel by Jennifer Egan (http://www.amazon.com/Visit-Goon-Squad-Jennifer-Egan/dp/0307592839) when I came accross this sentence in a story told by a twelve year old girl

It hit me like lightning. People do follow me all day long with questions. And usually I like that, at least, I like to be able to answer them. And than I thought to myself... Do I make them ask questions, or is it just part of the process? And if it is partly my own behaviour. Is it a good or a bad thing?

[yannomanno]

First full day of the Project

I am exhausted, but it was good to see some groups really jumping into the group work (or what they thought it was). I think that within a week they will already be more confident on their theme and the subject of course.

I really didn't realize before that so little people know about the millennium goals. And although these goals are not the subject of this project I do hope for collateral value in the sense that they will know about them.

Stars of today: Janneke, Nancy, Tsvetelina

This is what it looked like Nancy! (The lovely back is Laura's by the way)

[yannomanno]

[yannomanno]

start of the new academic year

I'm very excited to start with our course: online communities for IDE/Open Innovator