This morning I received an email from my cousin that I was added to his family tree on a service called Geni.  It said it was private and I was intrigued so I clicked on the link.  It showed a segment of my family in Flash and immediately satisfied me in multiple ways.  It was personal, accurate, well designed and had a bunch of actions I could click on.  I didn’t need any training.  It presented me with a modal asking for my relations. (Siblings, wife, children, etc).

I added in those people and realized that I had just emailed them with the same email I got from my cousin.  Wow! That was the easiest socialization in an application I have ever seen.  It was better than Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter.  It was so streamlined.  In the morning, there were just a handful of connections in the tree.  Now there are 43 46 people and growing.  It’s fascinating.  My aunt’s family tree goes back to 1791!

There is obviously a ton of functionality here and I have barely scratch the surface.  However, I have to give A+ marks to Geni for thinking through the completely interaction design including multi-user editing.  I never heard of this thing 12 hours ago, but I predict alot of people will hear of it pretty quickly.

I don’t know if this is something that affects other people.  However, I find that if I spend too much time on a single thing, my creativity levels go down.  I start to run out of inspiration and general energy.  When I can rotate my crops, and work on different things each day, then my energy level goes up and my creativity levels are much higher.

I think it is because of how I like to make connections between different worlds.  For example: Fixing someone’s computer helps me switch my context enough so that user interface design becomes easier.  Lately, as Marketo has grown, my role has been focused more and more on product design.  There is less need to build desks, install software, troubleshoot for customers.  Now there are people who are in charge of those details.  This is a natural and good thing for a company growing.  However, it’s having a negative effect on my creativity.

I need to find ways to rotate my crops, so my creative soil doesn’t become fallow.  Are there people who gain energy by focusing on one topic?  I wonder what the population breakdown of this behavior is.  Asking this question is a good way for me to think about something different.  The answer isn’t the point.

I just finished reading Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.  It should be mandatory reading for anyone who presents anything, ever.  There is so much goodness in this book about communication and it’s so short.  I would classify it similar to Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.  A quick read that gives immediate value.  Highly suggested.

My favorite part is about the beginner’s mind, which I posted about previously.  I think it’s brilliant.

I think I am going to change my slides in my presentations to use full screen pictures instead of using the PowerPoint frames and shadow effects.  I definetely like the way they look.  Of course, someone has to ask me to present again to utilize this newfound power.

I was actually just reviewing someone else’s presentation and it looked horrible to me.  I think the book has raised my expectations and now even my own slides look amateurish.  Even lessons that I knew about, I had broken repeatedly.

Anyway, good book.  Highly suggested.  Now I just need to finish the rest of the books I am mid-stream on.

I just love, love, love the ingenuity and creativity of the human mind.  Well, I also hate, hate, hate the ingenuity and creativity of the human mind when it’s applied to torture and cruelness, but that is another issue. In this case, it is applied to something dear to my heart, the environment.

Check out this story about a synthetic tree that sucks up carbon dioxide 1000x faster than a normal tree.  It costs $30,000 to produce one currently.  However, if the U.S. government funded it, I imagine it could be brought down in price dramatically.  If the government spent, let’s say $20 billion dollars on this technology, and assuming some efficiencies of building these things to scale, then we could make an immediate and ginormous dent in global warming RIGHT NOW.  This seems like a miracle cure for global warming.  It would eliminate smog in Mexico City and Los Angeles.  It would fix up the arctic ice shelf.  What are we waiting for?  The money is nearly irrelevant to the U.S. government.

However, this is a sad commentary on our world.  How can we get the government to have the WILL to spend money on global warming?  Here, we have a miracle cure and all we need is the will to make it happen.  Good ideas and great inventions are not enough.  We need political courage in our leaders.  We need to value the “right thing” more than the “convenient thing”.  Our values have to turn into leaders by voting for people who believe in the future of great ideas.

This goes for companies just as much as government.  Does your company put a great invention on the shelf?  Does it squash a good idea in its infancy?  Does it value creative and inventive thinking?  Are you enabling a meritocracy or are you clinging to the safe, well trod path.  What is the leader of your company doing?  Do your part.  Maybe, if we work together, we can save the world…or your SaaS product.

UPDATE:  Slashdot reports a scientist who developed a battery that lasts 10 times as long as Lithium Ion.  So that’s electric cars that go 2000 miles per charge and synthetic trees that eat smog.  Come on people!

I work with some great engineers.  One in particular is fantastic, named Crash.  He is a backend guy, doesn’t touch the UI much.  A demo to him is all accomplished at the command prompt.  He said something yesterday that was abaolutely brilliant and summed up my admiration for him.

When I add a new feature, I try to leave the code base smaller than when I found it.

How awesome is that?  It speaks to the Zen principles of simplicity.  Less can yield more.

Once I asked Crash for the letter X.  He provided me the whole alphabet in multiple languages just in case I needed a few more letters.  Consistently, he thinks past the short term requirements and achieves much more than what is asked.  He produces extraordinarily quickly considering the high quality.  With a dozen such men, one could rule the world.  Or at least code it.

I should put this into a LinkedIn recommendation, shouldn’t I?

I am reading Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.  So far, its fabulous and I would suggest it to everyone.  Early on in the book, there is a small section on The Beginner’s Mind. Some summarize the concept this way:

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.

I think I am fairly good at this and it has been one of my core traits, my entire life.  It got me thinking how one would get good at this.  It got me thinking how I became good at this.  I believe practice makes perfect, so I must have practiced this technique accidentally.  Speaking with Katie, I think I discovered where the practice came from.  Puns.

For as long as I can remember, I have done this mental trick.  When someone speaks, I hear their words and in the back of my mind, I rhyme words to mirror like a U.N. interpreter.  Words, Birds, Turds, Blurbs.  When doing this, I often would see patterns in the rhyming and that would spur thoughts. Look at the words I rhymed again…now think about what you are reading.  If you like it, then lofty statements like birds words would spur to mind.  If not, maybe turd words or just blurbs of words.  These phrases can often form puns from double meanings.  Often, they are very funny.

The technique is basically to let your mind wander when experiencing ideas.  It doesn’t mean to pay less attention.  It means to pay MORE attention to what is being said so you can follow and explore at the same time.

Sometimes I call this “Squinting”.  Squint your eyes at the screen right now and imagine what COULD be, not what IS.  Squinting allows you to explore ideas based on imagination, not the limited view of what is in front of you at that moment.  In the show House, the “insight” often comes from someone saying a sentence completely unrelated to medicine, but our “genius” House is always looking for inspiration and his mind makes the connection.  The beginner’s mind allows simple unrelated ideas to inspire very relevant insights.

Everyone has something to do, every day.  Try to let go of the way you are doing it, ease your mental grip.  Let your mind wander about it.  What are some completely crazy ways of doing it…ways that are “impossible” but would be cool if it were possible.  Rhyme words with the task at hand for fun.  Set your mind free and it will reward you with a valuable insight.  I do this every day, and I promise you that there are rewards.  Whether the reward is a breakthrough product or a great funny pun; you will get something out of it.