The Rise of the New Groupthink

21 Jan 2012

The one important exception to this dismal record is electronic brainstorming, where large groups outperform individuals; and the larger the group the better. The protection of the screen mitigates many problems of group work. This is why the Internet has yielded such wondrous collective creations. Marcel Proust called reading a “miracle of communication in the midst of solitude,” and that’s what the Internet is, too. It’s a place where we can be alone together — and this is precisely what gives it power.

via The Rise of the New Groupthink – NYTimes.com.

Inception at the office

21 Dec 2011

By Dominik Schwind

I might have mentioned it before – either here or over on the Twitter – that I am working at a rather noisy office. It’s just something that happens when you put four guys in a room. Someone is always eating something or mumbling or drumming on the table. Keyboards aren’t that silent, either and don’t get me started on scroll wheels. It just can’t be helped.

And then there are discussions. Usually about work-related stuff, but also all too often about why thing X sucks or why people who do thing Y must be stupid.

So, at some point, one either gets used to it, tries to mask the noises with music or tries to find some other way to cope with the constant audio distractions.

This afternoon, I decided to go and check what happens when I run the Inception App at work. And the results are pretty astonishing, really. Stuff that would usually annoy me – nuts getting taken out of an aluminum bag and chewed noisily, random sighs and curses – turn into weird, yet beautiful soundscapes, the distraction becomes audio art.

It’s still distracting as hell, though and I don’t really get any work done because I am too busy listening. I guess I’ll have to think of something else.

The manic, unbalanced voice

12 Sep 2011

By Dominik Schwind

It was the manic, unbalanced voice of somebody on the verge of madness, trying to escape office life through the magic portal of Twitter. It was great.

Bobbie Johnson

Gruesome

07 Feb 2011

By Dominik Schwind

Not only since Elvis one of mankind’s greatest fears is to die while on the toilet. It’s hard to think of a less dignified place to spend one’s last minutes.

The second greatest fear and probably the only reason humankind ever decided to invent ways to create fire and thereby artificial lighting is of course – being eaten by a grue.

Now for whatever strange architectural and/or psychological reason someone decided to turn our office toilets into a torture chamber that combines mankind’s two foremost fears.

As you can see, if one is minding his own business, at any given time it might happen that someone switches off the light. And yes, there are two door between the business man and the bringer of darkness. Sometimes this is enough to drown out all kinds of heavy cursing that might happen.

And then what?

You’re sitting there, in the darkness. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. On the toilet. What will the obituaries say? And who would think of bringing a torch or a match to the bathroom? It’s not very safe to bring those to a location with a high probability of highly flammable gases.

I guess all one can do is send a tweet about it.

Office Soundscapes

12 Oct 2010

By Dominik Schwind

Having recently moved to a new office with new office mates¹ I started to notice how different the soundscapes of offices can be. While the office before was a rather small thing with four developers who mostly worked on their own code and only had discussions about concepts, I’m now sitting in a rather big room with a bunch of agile people, who do quite a lot of pair programming and a bunch of marketing/product people walking in and out of the office.

And yet it manages to feel less loud and disruptive – I’ve been almost scarily productive the last few days. So, ever since I’ve noticed that,² my productivity went down again, as I tried to identify the reasons why the soundscape in this office seems more ambient.