1. Sep 16th, 2006

    Rounded Corners – 23

    Diversify. Chris Messina: The Future of White Boy Clubs. Not to pick on any one conference, but this is a serious problem in our little corner of the tech world. It doesn’t represent the world we live in, and we’re all guilty of being oblivious. We need to change.

    Part of the game. Lots of bits moved over the Digg behavior controversy, this being my favorite read so far. But are they talking about the game, or are they part of the game? Digg’s system is prone to influence, and that’s what makes it so influencial. The conformity in Diggs works when readers come in looking for conformity. Why else would I be reading what everyone else is reading? If Digg was a truely fair system in some mathematical sense, would anyone care to read it?

    Be a better developer. Including: “Understand customer wants != customer needs.” I find it interesting that developers are growing aware of user needs vs wants, usability and accessibility, and building simple solutions for big gains. But where are the CEOs and Project Managers in all of this? Or is the Web making big companies and high flying positions immaterial? (Via Raganwald).

    What enterprise can learn from the Web. I usually disagree with Dion Hinchcliffe: too many bouts of architecture diagrams. But this post is definitely a good read.

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    1. Sep 16th, 2006

      Mike Schinkel

      Regarding your comment “I usually disagree with Dion Hinchcliffe”, I’m curious if you could give examples. To date I have been very impressed with his posts but I’m always interested in understanding alternate viewpoints in case I might be missing something.

    2. Sep 16th, 2006

      Assaf

      Mike,

      I consistenly disagree with his diagrams, and often enough with his articles, but I think the diagrams draw a better picture (pun intended) for our different points of view.

      When you’re drawing a diagram that tries to fit as many buzzwords as possible into a limited rectangle, you end up having to simplify things for the sake of non-overlapping text labels. Counter that, you’re also creating an overly complex picture to fit all these buzzwords inside. It looks impressive, but does it mean anything?

      “Agile/lean methods, though increasingly popular in the enterprise, are often tame compared to Web 2.0 methods.”

      The Web 2.0 methods I’m seeing, especially where innovation is taking place, have much more creativity, fluidity and intuition than depicted in the diagram. That, of course, makes for very boring architecture diagrams. But it leads to better solutions.

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