at Beecraigs Country Park, in the rain, with Team Watkins. Fresh as a daisy!

Posted via email from theweir's posterous

Life in a Corporate

Let's be clear, I work for a reasonably large Corporate. I work in an area of that Company that interacts with employers, including large Corporates.

All that said, I really enjoyed watching this video interview with Douglas Rushkoff on the Colbert Report. He was talking about his new book Life Inc. the author does well to handle the interviewer, and clearly this is not an irrational anti-capitalist, but someone with a passion for more fulfilling (and local?) lives than we have right now.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Douglas Rushkoff
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum

I've been meaning to read some of Rushkoff's written and video content from Boing Boing and just never got round to it. I think this might encourage me to do that now...

What do you think? Are we "ruled by corporations" or are we free to do what we like. I really like the idea of doing nothing being rebellion against the ruling Coporate class - not because I want to do nothing, but because I think we can live far more intentional lives than we do. At least, I think I can lead a more intentional life!

Real Fiction

A few months ago, I watched the film Stranger than Fiction and loved it. I was really surprised how much I loved it.

I think it was the mix of a great plot, some lovely cinematography and a few really cool mashups of design/technical drawing/schematics and real-life. Loved it.

So then I saw the video embedded below and was reminded of that film - as well as appreciating the message. I might not be Canadian, but I totally get the point of this:

Hellmann’s - It’s Time for Real from CRUSH on Vimeo.

I think I also loved that this was from a HUGE corporation (Hellman's is a Unilever brand). I wonder how much of this is reflecting their corporate mentality...? Oh and it doesn't make me want to by their product. But that's not the point, right?

H/T http://infosthetics.com/

Typefaces give us signals

A while back I made up some posters for our area at work. When they were printed, the font was wrong.

While it was not ideal for the trees, I fixed the problem and got them reprinted. One of McColleagues laughed that I was so concerned with the font.

My reasons for wanting the font to be right. Aside from bringing some balance to the design, consistent fonts make a difference. They give us signposts as to what we are looking at. Subliminal or not.

So, you can imagine my delight when Garr Reynolds shared this:

Typefaces give us signals from erik spiekermann on Vimeo.

(here is the source is you can't see the embed)

A nice little tune, a bit of humour and a simple point well made. I love it.

What do you think?

Typefaces give us signals.

Opening the floodgates?

The Guardian reports that Tesco, everyone's favourite Evil Corporate Giant, is making an API available for it's online store. (here's what an API is).

While this might seem a little of a "so what", there's a few things that makes this powerful for me:

1) Tesco are crowd-sourcing ideas and technology. a brave move for a Corporate? I'd love to know how they're legal teams are feeling right now...

2) It means that Tesco might not try and develop their own apps for iPhone/Android/Firefox but allow the wider development community do this for them. Especially when you see they are doing TJam

3) If it takes off (and if third-party apps for a communication tool like twitter are anything to go by then it will) then we may well see the continued de-centralisation of information from the Corporate to the user. if this becomes mainstream, then you can see Tesco looking to exploit it (and that means across all their product lines) and also that people will expect it. If companies don't provide the tools for Third-Party apps, will they look like cave-dwellers?

That's my first thoughts on this a few minutes after I read the article. What do you think?

Can you see other uses for this or challenges we might face as a result?

behavioural change

here's a thing.

I was listening to Mark Driscoll talking about the heart. Not the physical part of our anatomy that pumps blood, but the core of our being.

I might not agree with everything that is said, or maybe just how it was said, He made an interesting point about how we try and *fix* things about us we don't like. Often what happens is we make changes to our behaviour as that's what we want to be different. Seems logical, right?

As someone who has often wanted to change things I do (like get back into running at lunchtimes when at work, or spending more time reading), I have often thought there's more than simply fixing one thing or another, but there's something more.

Mark Driscoll pointed out that in many cases, what we do with our time/energy/thoughts is actually an outworking of something deeper. I completely agree.

Where is my heart? That's where my treasure is. Am I actually interested in learning or just making myself look good? What's my motivation?

My hope is that my motives are mainly okay, but it's good to be clear on what's going on in your life and why.

I'm no where near sorting this out, but with one thing I'm clinging to right now is that I believe that my faith in Jesus has seen my motives being renewed. Being reborn and, let's use a theological term - sanctified.

So I'm challenged to be real about what my motives are and deal with those. My prayer (yes, I'm doing more of that these days) is to see more of my deep motives come to the fore and impact the way I live.

first time eating sashimi. looks terrific. can't wait!

Oversharing

Following up my recent post about generational differences, I read this on the Ryan*MacMillan blog and thought it was relevant to the conversation!

enjoy: http://www.rmmlondon.com/archive/oversharing-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-causing-dilemmas/

comments welcome as ever!