rethink(ip)

Where there's passion, there's usually excellence

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at December 15, 2006 02:04 PM

When I was growing up, my father was always offering me little life lessons.  In between the tidbits like “you can’t go wrong with Craftsman,” he’d throw in some real zingers.  As an adult, I’ve really grown to appreciate the zingers, and have found myself passing them along more and more (my wife thinks I sound a bit like Kotter with his frequent stories about his Uncle Kermit, er, Max, er….).

One of my favorite zingers is this little play on the old “where there’s smoke….” axiom:  “Where there’s passion, there’s usually excellence.” 

I’ve learned to appreciate the value of that one time and again over the years…in all aspects of life.  Basically, it’s a shortcut (he had plenty of those, too, much to my mother’s chagrin).  While excellence is something that is extremely difficult to measure based on outcomes, passion is easily perceived and, as dad’s advice tells us, it’s a darn good predictor of excellence.

Truly measuring somebody or something for excellence involves a significant amount of time.  It takes a keen eye and the ability to judge without bias.  There’s no doubt that it’s a tough thing to do.  Heck, just look at baseball – even with its numbers driven assessments of careers, we still get carried away with debate about whether certain players are or were excellent (thoughts on Barry Bonds, anyone?).

But passion is something completely different.  It can’t be hidden.  It reveals itself immediately.  Passionate people exude passion.  No measurement is necessary.  Your gut assesses passion, and it does it very quickly. 

So there’s the shortcut.  If you want excellence – in a house painter, an author, or, egads, a lawyer – but you don’t have the time or desire to actually measure excellence, go ahead and take a shortcut:  look for passion.  Let your gut lead the way.  More often than not, it will point you directly toward excellence.

 

USPTO.gov feedback: Please Un-RealPlayer

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at December 5, 2006 12:50 PM

Newest addition to our list of things we wish would change about the uspto.gov website: Use of RealPlayer.

Everyone dislikes it. PC World Magazine even went as far as to label it as "#2 in its list of the 25 worst tech products of all time." (#1 was AOL, #3 was Syncronys' SoftRAM ((RAM "doubling" software))

Yet everytime the USPTO releases a video I want to watch I am forced to install RealPlayer, watch the video (and then uninstall RealPlayer). Argh.

In rethinking, size does matter

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at December 1, 2006 02:28 PM

Some rethinkers take baby steps.  Some walk at a comfortable pace.  And then there are those who leap.  Their rethinking of things forces them to bend their knees, coil up the energy in their leg muscles, and spring ahead in one giant rethinker's leap.  And those leaps let others take baby steps that benefit everyone.

Want an example?  Watch this video of Jeff Han's rethinker's leap.  Jeff is a research scientist at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.  Jeff conducts research on intuitive, "interface-free," touch-driven computer screens.  The video, taken at this year's TED conference, shows Jeff presenting his "drafting table screen" publicly for the first time.

How's that for a leap?  You can daydream endlessly about possible applications of that technology.  For example, can you imagine the power of combining a screen like that with a killer brainstorming app like MindManager?  How about a screen that takes up an entire wall...in a brainstorming session, powered by MindManager that works with Jeff's "multi-touch" technology?

It certainly will be fun watching all of the baby steps that come about thanks to Jeff's giant leap.

If you want to see more of Jeff's work, check out this video demonstration.