• 20 Key Questions on Motivation and Habits, Answered
  (tags: simplify life)

• Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Making a travel checklist
  (tags: RTM travel)

The IBM Academy of Technology used to have an Annual General Meeting where the 300 or so members, along with guests and senior IBM executives, would spend three-plus days in intense interaction, setting our agenda for the next year and taking advantage of chance meetings. Oh, and socializing. It was a highlight of my year.

That, of course, was before the economic meltdown.

Last year’s meeting was cancelled on fairly short notice; instead, we used teleconferences and Second Life to hold the meeting; it was an uneven experience (but having the meeting cancelled did make it easier for me to enjoy a very nice tour of New York, so I wasn’t completely unhappy about the substitution).

I’ve attended a couple of meetings using the behind-the-firewall version of Second Life this year, and, as I’ve written here and here, I found the experience less than thrilling.

This year, they made the unsurprising decision not to hold a physical Academy meeting, which meant that I could expect to spend a significant part of three days in the internal Second Life environment. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but I didn’t see any alternative — especially after they got the code working with Snow Leopard, depriving me of what seemed like a great excuse not to participate.

I’m still not a big fan of the virtual environment (and am very happy that one of the nine mini-plenary sessions was held at Almaden so I could see some of my colleagues in person), but it was a far less unpleasant experience this year.

As before, I think that the very best feature of the environment is the spatial high-fidelity sound, which makes conversations, even in a group, much more realistic than a teleconference. In public areas, the sound tended to carry a bit too far — this was good when it let me eavesdrop (and choose to join) a group conversation with a very senior executive; it wasn’t as good when there were a lot of conversations in a small area, as happened during the closing social event.

The team who put the conference together did some innovative things, like setting up the poster sessions so that each poster was in a sound- (but not sight-) isolated room — you could easily have a discussion without being drowned out by conversations in the hall or at an adjacent poster, which is better than a real poster session, but you could see who was in a room as you walked by (one definite improvement this year was the integration with our LDAP directory, so everyone’s avatar was identified with their real name). And poster presenters were given better instructions, too — many came with one-sheet posters which you could actually read in the environment, rather than trying to show a series of slides which needed more screen room than was available.

I still found many aspects of the virtual space to be distracting or counter-productive — there was a lot of tedium involved in getting from place to place, and watching a slide show in-world is not an inspiring experience.

Another interesting choice was the way video messages from senior executives were played — you went to a theater, sat down, and watched as a video was played (at a low frame rate and resolution) on a screen at the front of the room. It reminded me of Apple’s first Mac commercial; I think the video would have been better served up without the trappings (and outside the virtual space, at higher quality).

One social hour went very well — the space was arranged so that I was able to position my camera overhead; I could see the names of everyone who was there, and when someone talked, the green-bar animation made it clear who it was (and the audio quality made dealing with accents much easier, too). And there was even room for a text chat on the screen, for additional comments (both public and private). It beat the hell out of a teleconference.

Using a big screen (relatively speaking — 20 inches, 1600×1200) instead of the laptop’s screen made a big difference; I didn’t have to squint to see things (and I was able to do other stuff on the laptop screen). Using a headset also helped, because then the sound was properly aligned with my vision — the first day, I used the external screen but the laptop’s speakers, and that was a problem. And having a new MacBook Pro with the fast graphics chip helped, too, though it did a number on battery life and made the machine run hot.

I still found no reason to spend any time or effort customizing my avatar, though if it had been completely generic, I might have wanted to do something to make it more recognizable at a distance, but I was fortunate enough to have been used as a test case for “realistic” avatars earlier in the year, so I was already wearing a distinctive aloha shirt. Nor did I see any reason to drink virtual drinks at the socials (though many people did — and some lucky folks were at home with real drinks available).

I’ve been using Lotus Notes for more than 15 years, and I’ve gotten fairly good at making it do what I want — but, with apologies to my Lotus friends, it’s not a tool that I really like. I expect that the same thing will be true about meeting in virtual spaces — it’s going to have to be part of my toolkit, and I’ll get better at using it, but I don’t expect to become a fan. And I look forward to the time when those who are enthusiasts stop trying to convert skeptics and settle for helping us become competent enough to get our work done.

Now, can I tell you about this wonderful Mac-only application I just started using?

I spent today at the CIO Council; the session was devoted to Enterprise Architecture, a subject on which I am most definitely not an expert, so I stayed relatively quiet much of the day.

But the first speaker, Gary Hamel, wasn’t focused on Enterprise Architecture (I won’t abbreviate it, because when I see “EA”, I think of “Extended Attributes” and OS/2). His talk was on the need for “Management 2.0”; the basic premise is that management, as it evolved at the end of the 19th Century and the first part of the 20th, is no longer delivering significant improvements in organizational performance. Like many other technologies, its development has been in the form of an “S” curve, and it’s reached the flat part of the “S” at the top.

If this were a “normal” technology, you might expect a disruptive innovation to surface, probably courtesy of a small start-up company (see Clay Christensen for much discussion of this), but that’s unlikely in this case. Instead, management needs to transform its own practice.

Gary mentioned three challenges to management in the 21st Century:

1. How do you build a company that can change as fast as change itself?

In particular, he asked a rather pointed question: how easy is it for a first-line worker to get a small amount of money and time to experiment with an idea? Some companies make experimenting everyone’s responsibility (Google’s famous “20% time”), but most companies don’t — instead, they’re monopsonies, organizations where there’s only one buyer/funder for innovation, and “no” is the default answer.

2. How do you build a company where innovation is everyone’s job?

Knowledge is becoming a commodity — creativity is the differentiator. How do you encourage creativity throughout the company, and speed up the process of bringing innovations to the market?

3. How do we build organizations which inspire extraordinary contribution?

He posited a hierarchy of employee contribution:

    passion
    creativity
    initiative
    intellect
    diligence
    obedience

and noted that the bottom three are becoming commodities, and that the top three are “gifts” — they are not something an organization can compel.

Management was originally invented to turn people into semi-skilled, programmed robots who fit into the org chart and the assembly line, but this is no longer the problem that organizations need to solve. Instead, we need to get employees to commit to organizational goals, and that’s a voluntary activity. Open Source projects are a common area where we see this kind of voluntary commitment, but there are for-profit companies which make it explicit, too, such as Gore and Associates, where employees are explicitly empowered to say “no” to any request, and there are no “managers” (just leaders of self-organized teams). He noted that Gore and Associates hasn’t had a losing year. Ever.

Gary finished by talking about the two dimensions of improvement that management provides: amplifying individual human flexibility and ability and aggregating individual contributions at scale; he claimed that social networking will make it possible to do both more effectively than existing models (the market, which majors in improving flexibility, or bureaucracies, which major in aggregating at the cost of flexibility).

Definitely an interesting talk, and worth the price of admission (which, for me, was the loss of a day at work and four meetings).

The rest of the day was much more focused on the problems of Enterprise Architecture and organizations, and, while the discussions were of interest, I didn’t find myself writing down nearly as much as I did for Gary’s talk. The hallway discussions were, of course, best of all!

And I must say I could get used to the food and drink at the Four Seasons.

It was definitely an informative and interesting day; I’m hoping to be invited to another session.

Kelly Forrister, @GTDCoachKelly, ran a guided mindsweep on Twitter last week. I found it useful, and thought it might be handy to be able to repeat it (using her prompts and timings), so I threw together some truly awful HTML and JavaScript to do so.

Here it is.

Welcome

Welcome to a self-running GTD mindsweep. The prompts and timings here were captured from @GTDCoachKelly’s Twitter mindsweep on October 15, 2009. Click the “Speed Up” button to run the mindsweep at ten times normal speed; click “Slow down” to return to normal speed.

This is utterly miserable JavaScript, and not very good HTML; the visual effect is pretty lame, too. Consider this page a proof of concept…and click “Start mindsweep” to start.

We knew we’d have to get up fairly early on Monday to make our flight home, so we decided to practice by setting an alarm clock for Sunday morning, too. It wasn’t too painful.

Since Yelpers had praised Melissa’s breakfast, we decided to go there — our timing was great (maybe the clock was a good idea after all), since we didn’t have to wait at all, but by the time we finished, there were at least a dozen people waiting for tables. The food was OK (next time, I go for the waffle with blueberries), and the coffee was very good.

On our way back to the hotel, it started to rain — just a couple of drops, but as soon as we got to our room, the skies opened up. So we packed and checked out, borrowing an umbrella from the hotel for the rest of our time in Banff (and it worked wonderfully — we didn’t see another raindrop when we were outside…of course, we spend most of the time inside). We wandered around and did some shopping (not much buying, though); then we had lunch at Evelyn’s Coffee Bar. I thought about having dessert there, but I’d had my eyes on Cows the entire time we’d been in Banff; they had reviews in their window calling them out as equal or even better than Bertillion in Paris, and I was ready to put them to the test. They didn’t come close to living up to the reviews, but the ice cream was perfectly acceptable; nonetheless, I’m going to go elsewhere next time I’m in Banff.

And with lunch and dessert finished, we decided it was time to hit the road. Our rental car, a Toyota Matrix, didn’t have a cargo cover, so I was reluctant to go anywhere busy, but we weren’t quite ready to go to the airport, either. We decided to drive the Minnewanka Loop, which turned out to be a nice way to cap off our visit. We drove to Lake Minnewanka. We didn’t have the time (or the cargo cover) for the lake cruise, but just walking around the section of the lake near the parking was very enjoyable and scenic.

When we left, we decided to finish the loop instead of driving right back to the highway; we didn’t get very far before running into a goatjam on the road, so we parked and took a few photos, too.

We made one more stop on the loop, near mountains whose name I don’t know.

And then it was time to return to civilization. Soon enough, we were back at Calgary Airport and ensconced in our room at the Delta Calgary Airport Hotel, which was pleasant enough, though the views left everything to be desired after three nights in Banff. We’d returned our car, so we were limited in our dining options; the airport didn’t entice, so we ate dinner at the Compass Restaurant in the hotel, which was somewhat overpriced and too noisy (thanks to the TV in the YYC Lounge, adjacent), but tasty enough.

And that was basically the end of the trip; Monday morning, we walked across the road to the terminal, checked in, cleared customs, and flew back to SFO, picked up our car, had lunch, and drove home. No excitement, no photos.

Saturday dawned early, I think; we didn’t.

We decided to try somewhere else for breakfast, and, based on the bartender’s suggestion on Thursday (and some Yelp and Frommer’s research), we settled on Coyote’s. The place was nearly full when we got there, but there were spaces at the counter, so we squeezed ourselves in and enjoyed a tasty meal. I had, and can recommend, the Smoked Salmon Scrambled Eggs; Diane went for the Vegetarian Frittata, and she seemed happy about her choice, too. By the time we left, there were a few people waiting to get in — go early (in our case, that meant 9am).

After Friday’s excursion, the last thing we wanted to do was take a long drive, so we chose a target closer to hand — Tunnel Mountain. We parked at the lower trailhead and climbed to the upper one; that was probably the steepest part of the climb (and the least attractive, too).

Once we’d gotten to the “real” trail, the views improved.

The single biggest human-created artifact that we could see was the Banff Springs Hotel.

But, of course, there were much larger and more majestic objects visible!

After a while, we climbed high enough that the trail took us to the back side of the mountain, and we could see the other half of the Bow Valley, including the Fairmont’s golf course, which looked awfully appealing (and I don’t golf)!

Eventually, we made it to the top of the mountain.

And, a bit later, and after more nice views of Mount Rundle

we eventually found ourselves back at our car, in search of lunch. We drove back to the hotel and walked into town, unsure of what we wanted, but hungry. We wound up at Balkan, drawn in by the lunch specials on the blackboards outside. The food was OK, but not outstanding — but the prices were very appealing!

We decided not to have dessert in town; instead, we walked to the Fairmont to look around, especially in the terrace garden

and enjoy afternoon tea, which more than made up for any calories or money we might have saved at lunch. It’s not something I’d want to do every day, but it was fun!

We’d picked up a Banff trail map while we were downtown, and decided that rather than walk back on streets, we’d explore the Bow Falls Trail. We walked down to Bow Falls

and then retraced our steps towards downtown.

We weren’t quite ready to go back to the hotel, and the map showed that if we followed the Bow Falls Trail through downtown, we could walk all the way to the Cave and Basin National Historic Site, which sounded interesting (our hotel had a pool modeled after the Cave and Basin).

But we didn’t get there. We had just left the Banff Recreation Grounds and turned onto the trail to the site when we encountered an elk.

We decided he had the right-of-way and headed back into town, and trekked back to our hotel…and then back into town again for dinner, along with thousands of other tourists. We looked at a few places, but the lines were long, and eventually settled for Tommy’s Neighbourhood Pub, immediately beneath Balkan. The food was simple (I had a buffaloburger; Diane had elk (I think she wanted revenge!)), the beer was decent, and the service reasonably quick. I’d go back.

One final trip back to the hotel, and we were ready to call it a night. The pedometer read over 34,000 steps for the day — that seemed like enough!

Friday, we enjoyed not setting an alarm clock, but still woke in plenty of time for the hotel’s continental breakfast, which was OK but no more. The weather looked promising, so we took off for a full day of exploring, with the Columbia Icefield as our goal.

We left Banff on the Trans-Canada Highway and made excellent time until we hit the construction zone — they are “twinning” the highway through the rest of Banff National Park, and there’s construction between Banff and Lake Louise. But it wasn’t too bad, and soon we were at the Parks Canada information station in Lake Louise. The view from the parking lot wasn’t too bad, either.

A few minutes later, we were on the way again, turning onto the Icefields Parkway, which would take us the rest of the way. Even though it was a two-lane road, it was easy driving (I’d hate to try it in a storm, though!), and the scenery was nothing short of spectacular.

Eventually, we pulled into the Icefields Center, our goal for the afternoon. The Athabasca Glacier was just across the road.

We had a quick, overpriced, mediocre lunch at the Icefields Cafeteria, then purchased our tickets for the tour to the glacier itself. After a brief bus ride, we boarded our Ice Explorer.

The on the vehicle reminded me of Star Tours, but this was not a simulation. And we did jounce a lot on our way to the glacier itself, where we disembarked and frolicked in the cold and rain for a few minutes.

As advertised, the glacier itself seemed blue at times, and there was some melting.

There was even more melting outside the graded area where we were let off, and some people drank the meltwater — I might have, but I didn’t feel like freezing my lips!

Outside the graded area, you could really see the contours left by weathering.

And you could also see the moraine left by the glacier.

But soon, we were back in the car and heading south. This time, we were in even less of a hurry, and so we made more stops to enjoy the scenery, including one at the “Weeping Wall”.

And another stop near Num-Ti-Jah Lodge, where we had a good view of Crowfoot Glacier.

If you search the web, you’ll find thousands of photos of Lake Louise. Here are four more.

From Lake Louise, we took the Bow Valley Parkway back to Banff. It, too, was beautiful, but we didn’t take any pictures (or stop, for that matter) — and the only wildlife we saw was a couple of birds.

After a brief stop at the hotel, we hoofed it to Melissa’s Missteak for dinner, which was definitely the best meal we’d had all day, though ordering dessert wasn’t the best choice we could have made. Finally, we walked back to the hotel (via downtown Banff), and called it a night.

About three years ago, I participated in a workshop at CSCW on “Revisiting Online Trust.” When the workshop ended, we left with plans to work on a special edition of a journal, but that didn’t happen. What did happen, though, was that I was thoroughly impressed with the venue, the Fairmont Banff Springs, and its setting, Banff, and thought it would be great to come back some day, with my family.

Time passed.

This year, we discovered that the IBM Silicon Valley Lab, where Diane works, would be closed for an extra day to do some major power work, so that she had a four-day weekend. And IBM Yorktown, where I get my VPN connection for the Mac, would also be closed for the long weekend, while they did major power work, too. We tossed around a few ideas, and eventually settled on a trip to Banff, which had the extra advantage of renewing our United miles for another 18 months.

We left on Thursday, arriving at SFO with plenty of time for a leisurely lunch and trip through the
“Wright at Home: Modern Lifestyle Design” exhibit before boarding our Air Canada flight to Calgary. Calgary was suffering from very strong winds, but we had a pretty smooth flight — however, flights had stacked up and we had to wait about 45 minutes in the line at the Canada Border Services Agency. On the other hand, our luggage was waiting for us as soon as we’d been cleared, and Customs itself took the usual 12 seconds.

Hertz slowed us down again — the first car they gave us was almost too filthy to drive (those strong winds had brought a dust storm), and then it turned out that it had been smoked in, so I swapped it for a Toyota Matrix (nice car, but I wish Hertz had sprung for the cargo cover so we would have been able to stop without all of our stuff being exposed) and we set out for Banff.

Most of the Trans-Canada Highway in Alberta is a four-lane divided highway — except, of course, for the section in Calgary, which is a busy urban street with badly synchronized traffic lights (it reminded me of Stevens Creek Boulevard, in fact). But eventually, we left Calgary behind and headed to Banff at 110 km/h (or so).

We’d chosen The Fox Hotel & Suites based on reviews from Frommer’s and TripAdvisor; it was pricey (but everything in Banff is pricey), but very comfortable, especially after we moved to a room that didn’t face Banff Avenue. The hotel is about a 10-minute walk from the central business district; they offer complimentary bus passes, but we didn’t feel the need to take them up on that. The hotel’s restaurant was a Chili’s — we don’t eat there at home, and didn’t see any reason to do it in Banff, either, so we set forth for dinner, planning to go downtown. But we didn’t get there; instead, we stopped at The Meatball and had a pleasant dinner (and a very pleasant bottle of wine) — then we walked the rest of the way into town, looked around, and headed back to the hotel.

Both my MacBook Pro and my 20″ iMac are running Leopard 10.5.8. On both machines, it’s easy to turn off the Airport from the command line:

sudo ifconfig en1 down

On the MacBook Pro, it’s also easy to turn the Airport back on in the obvious way:

sudo ifconfig en1 up

But on the iMac, nothing happens if I issue that command. I don’t know why, but tonight I discovered how to get the job done:

sudo networksetup -setairportpower On

Why did I care, you might ask? Until 10.5.8, the iMac wouldn’t reliably join the network after the machine woke from sleep (or rebooted), and I had to turn the Airport off and on — I could turn it off easily enough from the command line, but I had to use the GUI to turn it back on, which seemed silly. Now I can do the whole thing from the command line (but with luck, I won’t have to).