We learn lots of stuff in school about what happened last year, if we’re lucky, and more likely what happened 5 years ago. Same thing happens to a lesser degree in the workplace.
What we should be learning is how to learn. How to assimilate and inspire change quickly and efficiently. How to position ourselves at the front of the wave of change so that it pushes us, rather than us wasting time paddling like mad to climb up the back of the wave. We need to be able to quickly learn about and adopt change and just as readily abandon what we might have known or have acquired as it becomes obsolete. This is the one skill that we need to thrive as the rate of change expands exponentially as each day passes.
Learn. Adopt. Abandon. Repeat.
Now this seems much more interesting to me than the iPad for a digital signage appliance. Inexpensive, open source, open, open, open. You get the idea, I am stuck on “open” as I don’t want Apple dictating what I can and cannot do with their device. And I am especially stuck on appliances that are intended to leverage HTML content and web services rather than local, client side proprietary applications.
Watch the video, very entertaining, must say Michael Dell handle the interruption incredibly well.
Michael Dell pulls Mini 5 Android tablet from his parka, offers to put one in yours in ‘a couple of months’ video — Engadget.
Update: for more on the closed iPad see Ipad is Ibad.
Interesting post by David Haynes on his blog Nanonation jumps on iPad buzz, starts developing to it.
David is wondereing what the iPad means for digital signage and he is intrigued that Nanonation has immediately jumped to announce that they are writing a digital signage app to support it.
As much as I am a huge Apple fan, own many Apple devices and will buy the iPad and as much as I am a software developer for digital signage, I just can’t see how the iPad fits in just yet. I am sure most of my co-workers just hit the floor given my usual stance on all things Apple.
Here’s why.
From everything I have read the iPad looks to be one heck of a device but what just keeps hitting me hard is the level of control that Apple has applied to it. This is an iPhone for all intensive purposes and Apple doesn’t let anything run on it unless they approve it. They won’t even let Flash run on it because they don’t want Flash based apps circumventing their apps control.
I believe in open source, open systems, few if any restrictions and I believe in leveraging the web to reuse all resources that reside there. Putting the App store censor board between myself and my client is not something that I want to get involved in. But, if HTML5 based apps on the iPhone keep going the way they are and this becomes a great device to run a browser on, and I can point that browser to my app, then for sure I can see the iPad finding it’s way into digital signage. Till then I am playing wait and see.
Interesting implications for digital signage. We made our displays location aware so that they could show local weather based upon where the display is – configured once by the user and then sent to all displays and the content is smart enough to ask the display where it is before it goes and get’s the local weather – kind of neat, simple to do and real easy on the user.
Now with Twitter local trends you could use just that same approach. Something like show Tweets within 1 mile of the display location. Needs refinement I know, but interesting implications…
Twitter Blog: Now Trending: Local Trends.
I like to ski. I do a little coaching and instructing and allot of learning. The more I learn about skiing the more I realize it it less about strained effort and more about relaxed, quiet precision.
I think you can say the same thing about leadership. Good leaders are relaxed, supple – ready to absorb and extend – adjust whenever necessary. They are quiet – aware and listening more than shouting and flailing. They are precise – they don’t drive – they adjust and intervene when necessary.
Relaxed, quiet precision makes a good skier and an even better leader.
The world is accelerating. Change is the only constant. Our evolution is in our hands. What’s your approach to it all?
Challenge or Accept
Create or Use
Revise or Repeat
Diverge or Remain
Different or Same
Lead or Follow
Tell or Ask
Recommend or Complain
Risk or Safe
Listen or Shout
Me? I think the advantage falls to those on the left side of the “or” rather than the right. How about you?
When the best leader leads, the people say “we did it ourselves” – Lao Tzu
If you can work from anywhere, which many can these days, why go out of your way to get somewhere to do that work? Why waste time commuting? Why break that time quickening moment to get out of your pajamas’s and go somewhere?
If office face-time drives you nuts,
If your boss wants to see you because they are a control freak,
If your peers want you within arms reach because they want to socialize,
If your staff needs you to be there to work out every detail in a meeting or you just can’t trust them,
Then change something fast.
Make a drop in center rather than an office for those collaboration sessions, socialize over lunch or dinner together, and if all else fails change jobs or loose the needy peers and un-trustworthy staff.
Do something because your wasting the one finite quantity you have – time.
