I know this is off topic on this blog, but I have to post it anyway. This is one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen, and when I saw it the first time at TED I seriously doubted that there is any hope for mankind. I think that everyone has to see this to better understand what man is capable of if we don't actively try to be good.
Philip Zimbardo on the psychology of evil
Noteworthy is that the slide show shown in the talk was actually much longer. It just kept on going, beyond the point where I got sick to my stomach... It shows pure evil originated from ordinary people like you and me who where put in extraordinary situations. That's worth taking a moment to think about...
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Meeting with the Red Cross in Stockholm
Yesterday me and Peter was in Stockholm to talk to the Red Cross about our project. This was the first time we talked to any organization that will be on the receiving end of our project, and naturally I was looking forward to hearing what they had to say... I mean, if the Red Cross where to say "You may not unleash this abomination upon the world!!!" we would have to think things over one more time ;)
We meet up with Robert Cederlund and presented the project and got great feedback. He seemed genuinely positive and wanted know when we could start a proof of concept or a controlled test of this together. When we started talking about this I thought a) "Fantastic! The Red Cross is positive! We're getting traction!" and b) "How can we develop something when we don't have money to do it?". I think I have to speed up the fundraising a bit, and I hope that the meeting with Peter Rohmée will help out with that.
To summarise: Fantastic news! The Red Cross wants to move forward with us on this project.
We meet up with Robert Cederlund and presented the project and got great feedback. He seemed genuinely positive and wanted know when we could start a proof of concept or a controlled test of this together. When we started talking about this I thought a) "Fantastic! The Red Cross is positive! We're getting traction!" and b) "How can we develop something when we don't have money to do it?". I think I have to speed up the fundraising a bit, and I hope that the meeting with Peter Rohmée will help out with that.
To summarise: Fantastic news! The Red Cross wants to move forward with us on this project.
QDay in Lund
Last week I was at QDay in Lund with Emil Eifrem and Peter Neubauer. I got to know of the conference from Therese Karlsson whom I meet at TED@Aspen and she said that they where doing a TED-inspired thing in Lund... QDay was a really nice event made to broaden once mind and thing in new ways. There where speaker who talked about innovation, climate change, the US election, tourrettes syndrome etc. All and all it was a great evening which I would recommend anyone to go to.
When mingling with the other participants I landed at the same table as Rolf Hedman. He was a great guy who was very interested in what we do and how we work. When I talked to him about Jayway he got all fired up and exited about our culture and manners (he got interested enough to contact Thomas Dagsberg afterwards to get a meeting and talk about how we work). I also told him about our project and once again he got fired up. After the conference he connected me with Peter Rohmée who specializes in fundraising and works for Brakeley. I'm meeting him in a couple of weeks and hopefully he can help us to get fund for our project.
Going to QDay the absolutely the right thing to do. I turned out to be both productive for the project and a great evening :)
When mingling with the other participants I landed at the same table as Rolf Hedman. He was a great guy who was very interested in what we do and how we work. When I talked to him about Jayway he got all fired up and exited about our culture and manners (he got interested enough to contact Thomas Dagsberg afterwards to get a meeting and talk about how we work). I also told him about our project and once again he got fired up. After the conference he connected me with Peter Rohmée who specializes in fundraising and works for Brakeley. I'm meeting him in a couple of weeks and hopefully he can help us to get fund for our project.
Going to QDay the absolutely the right thing to do. I turned out to be both productive for the project and a great evening :)
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Now anyone can comment
This is just a short post to state that from now on anyone can comment this blog. I was alerted to the fact that you needed a Blogger account or an OpenID before, which simply is a mistake from my part. Now it's changed, so comment on!
Thursday, September 11, 2008
We're buidling a prototype with the help of Neo and Jayway!
Great news! After my latest post here Emil Eifrem, a friend and the founder of Neo4j, mailed me and offered to help out with a prototype. Emil said that he and his colleague Johan could set of two to three days to get a prototype up and running. I talked to Thomas (Dagsberg, CEO of Jayway) and I got yet another great guy, Jan-Olof Eriksson, for a couple of days. All of the sudden we're a "prototeam" of four people on one weeks notice... Cool! And today we've started... one guy stronger then planned since Mattias from Neo also joined us :)
I had two days to prepare for a 3 day prototype spike. What do you need to land running? This is what I brought to the table:
When we meet up today we started out by getting a collective feel for what we want to accomplish. The mock-ups and the user stories where good as a starting ground for both the API, the domain and the boundaries of the prototype. All and all we kept it simple and focused on a prototype and not the full implementation, and I think we managed rather well. At 11:00 the first lines of code were written (we meet up at around 09:00) and I have a good feeling about this :) Next week I hope to be able to show people a functional prototype, describing what it is we work on!
I had two days to prepare for a 3 day prototype spike. What do you need to land running? This is what I brought to the table:
- Short user stories of what we are going to prototype
- Lo-fi mock-ups of the visual parts
- A sketch of an initial "meta" node space to define the domain
When we meet up today we started out by getting a collective feel for what we want to accomplish. The mock-ups and the user stories where good as a starting ground for both the API, the domain and the boundaries of the prototype. All and all we kept it simple and focused on a prototype and not the full implementation, and I think we managed rather well. At 11:00 the first lines of code were written (we meet up at around 09:00) and I have a good feeling about this :) Next week I hope to be able to show people a functional prototype, describing what it is we work on!
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Contact with Johan Sellström and the power of a prototype
A couple of month ago I sent out a mail to a couple of people that I met at TED this year informing them that I had started with my project. I basically said that I'm looking for money and if anyone wanted to know what I was going to do they could send me a mail. Surprisingly I didn't get that much feedback ;) In hindsight I can compare it with sending out a mail to publishers saying:
"I have this great script for a book! It's about a guy who's running from the law even though he is a good guy... and the a lot of cool stuff happens and there's a twist at the end... I can't really tell you more about it in this mail, but let me know if you're interested in knowing what it is about!"
Anyhow... Yesterday night I got a mail from Johan Sellström, co-founder of Icon Media Labs, who was one of the people that I mailed. It turns out that he is also doing a non-profit at the moment... He sent me a link to a prototype of his project and I understood it right away (and it fits very nicely with what we are doing)... This got me thinking of my own project. I said early on that if we have a prototype it would be soooo much easier to communicate what it is we want to do. The thing Johan showed me was pretty rough, but it absolutely did the job of communicating what he wants to do. This is noteworthy, I think...
After looking at Johans project I sent him a a document describing our project and asked if he has any connections that might be interested in funding it. Hopefully he knows someone that is, but either way I think our two project can have some nice effects on each other.
"I have this great script for a book! It's about a guy who's running from the law even though he is a good guy... and the a lot of cool stuff happens and there's a twist at the end... I can't really tell you more about it in this mail, but let me know if you're interested in knowing what it is about!"
Anyhow... Yesterday night I got a mail from Johan Sellström, co-founder of Icon Media Labs, who was one of the people that I mailed. It turns out that he is also doing a non-profit at the moment... He sent me a link to a prototype of his project and I understood it right away (and it fits very nicely with what we are doing)... This got me thinking of my own project. I said early on that if we have a prototype it would be soooo much easier to communicate what it is we want to do. The thing Johan showed me was pretty rough, but it absolutely did the job of communicating what he wants to do. This is noteworthy, I think...
After looking at Johans project I sent him a a document describing our project and asked if he has any connections that might be interested in funding it. Hopefully he knows someone that is, but either way I think our two project can have some nice effects on each other.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Waiting for TED
This week I'm hoping for Kelly at TED to get back to me regarding the three minute talk that I'm shooting for. It would be sooooo cool to get a mail which said "We think your project is really interesting and would love to give you a chance to present it at TED."... But then again, what are the odds? I mean, next year the theme of TED is "The Great Unveiling" and they sent out requests for projects and products that hasn't been presented before. You can imagine that they got quit a lot of answers on that request ;) But I'm still hoping for the best...
When we're on the subject of presenting... I attended a presentation workshop last week and saw myself present this project on video for the first time. My God, I'm ranting! I realized after this session that I have to be so much, much more structured then I am today when I talk about this. All the details are clear in my head and on paper, but I have to disregard them and present the big picture to get people on track with what it is we want to do... Some really clever colleges where in the room and they said afterwards that "Well, the first half of the presentation I got, but after that I kinda' lost you."... and that's not what you want to hear. At least I know what I did wrong and am able to change it to the better :)
On a different note Peter Neubauer is setting up a meeting with the Red Cross in Stockholm and I hope to get some great feedback from them. Hopefully they like what they see...
When we're on the subject of presenting... I attended a presentation workshop last week and saw myself present this project on video for the first time. My God, I'm ranting! I realized after this session that I have to be so much, much more structured then I am today when I talk about this. All the details are clear in my head and on paper, but I have to disregard them and present the big picture to get people on track with what it is we want to do... Some really clever colleges where in the room and they said afterwards that "Well, the first half of the presentation I got, but after that I kinda' lost you."... and that's not what you want to hear. At least I know what I did wrong and am able to change it to the better :)
On a different note Peter Neubauer is setting up a meeting with the Red Cross in Stockholm and I hope to get some great feedback from them. Hopefully they like what they see...
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