The Moonlighting Student

Caught in the flow with rapids ahead

March 4th, 2010 10:10 pm —  5 views
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So this is supposed to be spring-break for us graduate students. For me it’s a week where I’m able to concentrate on work projects without too much of an academic shadow. And I have, leveraging skills learned over the last couple years.

But right now, even though I could be working on a white paper draft due in less than two weeks, I’m watching cartoons. It’s not like the paper doesn’t have a good start, we’ve already drafted a good part of it. So I watch episodes of Cowboy Bebop that I’ve seen at least twice already. While scheduling group meetings for the weekend.

Judging by how few of my classmates I see online, I suspect they are occupying themselves elsewhere. Hopefully they’re watching alligators or enjoying live music or exploring another country. Seems like a classmate is in Ireland at the moment.

I’m in my basement office, thinking about how value is created. Thinking about how value is created through the tools and resources we use and wondering how to find where things can be improved. Kind of abstract, but I’m working at it. Project’s need direction, attention needs focus. Evolution is driven by competing forces.

So easy to get caught in the raging flow. Swept along. Forced by the current, the circumstance.

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Engagement Platforms Require Interaction

February 17th, 2010 7:23 am —  14 views
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On January 18th I cleaned up my work bench area in the basement and put up this canvas and set out these tubes of oil paint. That was nearly a month ago to this day. And there they sit. Since then, there has been no engagement. It’s a matter of priority I tell myself. School, work and home stuff have the upper hand for the time being.

The marketing strategy class I’m taking has me working on a white paper whose purpose is to identify areas of engagement in a certain business or industry, the value gained from those engagements, and how to increase the value to those involved. These areas of interaction can be with customers, other businesses, other business units, departments, teams, and coworkers. You get the picture, the blank canvas.

This blog is an engagement platform. It is an unfolding story where we can co-create value. Granted, it’s in the form of page reads and the coveted comment, but there can be value in both writing and reading a blog…and not always at the same time. These types of ramblings aren’t entertaining to everyone. Writing has a certain voice…and some voices are just annoying.

Getting back to creating valuable experiences through things that allow people to connect…

The experience of interaction, the accessibility of information, the structure of an interface, these things  play a critical role in creating valuable experiences. An equally critical role, and dependent upon the aforementioned, is the coming together of interface with interested party.

That’s when cool things happen. That’s when an engagement platform becomes the structure to a more meaningful experience, be it a blog, a web site, a portal, a program, computer, a mobile device. At that point they are vehicles connecting people, allowing experience to unfold, allow value to be created collaboratively.

Or it might be a white canvas of potential, waiting patiently for time and attention to come together in a way that engages the soul. It’s a tall order. But being the viewer, and being engaged, should be enough to start with.

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Approaching User Experience

February 5th, 2010 7:41 am —  8 views
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As we reach the 1/3 point of this semester, there isn’t much let up. It’s going to be a lot more exercise problems, reading, group meetings, and paper writing.

In between school and the whirling dance of complex interactions that is software development, I find myself making connections to things I’ve studied during the the last 7 semesters1.

Whether I’m talking to a classmate, sharing insights on group dynamics, or discussing how to implement new features in an existing product interface, the principles, questions, concepts, and lessons learned on perception, cognition, architecture, collaboration, design, and innovation all come to mind providing me with words to better articulate or question.

So that’s a long winded way of saying that this school stuff might really work. Education isn’t a tangible thing. Sure, there’s a piece of paper that can be framed and hung on a wall somewhere, but that piece of paper doesn’t solve problems. Education, besides expanding the mind by exploring the depths of the world, builds in our minds a lens that can be used to find new ideas.

The lens in my mind has been focused on how people use technology to get things done. Fundamental to using technology is the interaction, the engagement, the experience of it.

To understand experience is to understand multiple perspectives and circumstances. Insights can come from watching the experiences of others. It can also come from experiencing something oneself. Experience resulting from interactions with products and services all happen within certain constraints. The establishment and modification of these constraints is one side of the innovation coin. The other is finding those ideas nobody else can see.

And that’s where the lens I mentioned comes into play.

Time for me to go to work. I feel a little like I have a cold starting to form in my sinuses and throat. That’s not cool.

Image: Took this in the lowest level of the U of M Law Library while searching for a bathroom. The place is freaky huge. And lots of green carpet.

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  1. 7 semesters = Fall 2006 – Spring 2010 [↩]

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Co-Creation and Dependent Arising

January 20th, 2010 7:27 am —  16 views
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Here it is, 3 weeks into winter semester. I’m driving into Ann Arbor more than I have in a couple years. At least 3 times a week, at most maybe 5. Feels like I have a part-time job on campus.

The two classes promise to educate and awaken my brain. In one class I’m learning to summarize and describe comparative relationships among relative events and in the other I’m learning that relating people to events involves interaction and value. Create an experience. Recognize and cultivate the relationship.

What is the probability that a person will develop loyalty and become a proponent and user of a particular product or service if those creating the product or service involve them in its creation and use?

It seems intuitive. It could be compared to tending a garden. Learn to recognize a thirsty plant and you’ll know when to water it. Watch the conditions in which your plants grow and watch the plants themselves. They communicate their needs in ways that require study to understand. They can’t text our phone to tell us they’re thirsty or that beetles are eating all their leaves and they need help. Those are just technical problems that can be solved by creative computer engineers.

Which brings me to the title of this post. It occurs to me that the notion of co-creation1 bears resemblance to the idea of dependent arising in Buddhism and its perspectives on cause and effect.

Granted, one is about value and efficiency, the other about dealing with the suffering associated with being an intelligent and aware species. Then again, maybe their underlying goals aren’t so dissimilar.

Recognition of quality is critical to survival and adaptation. Quality and value are closely related. We must learn to see what matters and what needs attention.

Image: A picture of the coffee stop I stop in on my way to class in the mornings. I took pictures periodically while walking to class yesterday, a montage of sorts.

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  1. …as being taught by Dr.Ramaswamy in a similarly named course. [↩]

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The January Cold and Lonely

January 11th, 2010 9:56 pm —  29 views
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It’s pushing ten o’clock on a Monday night near mid-January. I’ve been studying how to use the program “R” for the last hour and a half.

Today was cold and miscellaneous. Lots of things working to get traction, most things slipping and gripping for purchase.

As I wind down my studying, I can’t help but miss that cat that used to lie on my desk pushing pens and pencils around, biting at stuff. I looked through pictures of him (a mistake) and now I’m sitting here, tears pouring down my face, pissed at the futility of it. It happened so fast. And I knew I’d miss him particularly bad once school started. He was a nice study companion.

I’ve tried to avoid mentioning it. I think about him every day. So does W. We try not to talk about it. Time is helping, but the pain just doesn’t go away. It sits there, lurking, ready to surprise you when you forget about it for a second.

I can’t speak for anyone else. I can only imagine there are others feeling a pain similar to mine. The pain of losing of a loved one, a beloved pet, or something you treasured that will never happen again. We suffer because we become attached to things. It happens.

During the lonely and cold days of January winter, while I’m studying in my cold basement with a space heater barely keeping me warm, I think about things that aren’t frozen and miss things that were warm and fuzzy. I know missing and mourning is normal and will weaken eventually. It still sucks.

And I study statistics, and plotting, and R. Things like: sqrt(sum((weight – xbar)^2)/(length(weight) -1)). Soon I’ll be studying and probably writing paper for a class on marketing and the co-creation of value for businesses. Not sure what that’s going to be about, but it sounds interesting. The first class isn’t until this Wednesday evening.

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