Categories
agile architecture lean pearl

Improvement Board

Henrik Kniberg says that Squads at Spotify are using Big Visible Improvement Boards that focus on one to three Actionable Accelerators like:

  • What is blocking us?

Also, the board shows a Definition of Awesome that includes things like:

  • Really finishing stuff.
  • Easily ramping up new team members.
  • No recurring tasks or bugs.
Categories
architecture chaordic computing creative english network open source smart software typography

Levitated | the Exploration of Computing

levitated-critters.png

Stumbled across a wonderful website yesterday with a lot of awseome and open source Flash applications that produce wonderful graphics, many of them fractal, complex. [http://levitated.net/ Check out Levitated.net]—a friendly company.

Categories
architecture chaordic chaorganization computing english network peer-to-peer smart software

SwarmOS Demonstrated at Idea Festival

[http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/17/1724253&from=rss SwarmOS Demonstrated at Idea Festival]: “PacoCheezdom writes ‘Intelligent Life has short summary of a demonstration by MIT professor James McLurkin of his new group-minded robots, which run an operating system called ‘Swarm OS’.

The robots are able to work together as a group not by communicating with all members of the group at once, but by talking only to their neighbors, and model other similar behaviors performed by bees and ants. ‘[http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/17/1724253&from=rss Read more of this story] at Slashdot.

(Via [http://slashdot.org/ Slashdot].)

Categories
architecture computing english innovation language network open source peer-to-peer smart software

Groovy Actors

[http://www.groovyactors.org/ ]

Refreshed my link with Gerald “[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity tensegrity]” de Jong, triggered by a blog entry from TED titled [http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TEDBlog/~3/152990430/theo_jansen.php Creatures on the beach] from the Dutch sculptor Theo Jansen which instantly reminded me of Gerald’s [http://sourceforge.net/projects/fluidiom/ Fluidiom] and [http://www.darwinathome.org Darwin at Home] projects.

Gerald’s email signature also mentioned [http://www.groovyactors.org/ Groovy Actors]:
:In a nutshell it’s a natural next step, building further on object-oriented programming (OOP), where objects become active talkative peers.
:Imagine running thousands of concurrent programs on one computer where each program instance represents something or someone in the real world. Some things are passive and only react to events but lots of real world things also take initiative.
:That’s why parts of this kind of system can better be represented in software by “autonomous agents” or “actors” which frequently interact with each other.

And built using the Groovy language.

Just wondering why ”’Groovy Actors are limited to a single computer”’ rather than ”’autonomous peers distributed across thousands of computers”’. Love to have concepts from [[Erlang]] and [http://javaspace.org JavaSpaces] built in.

Love to see the Groovy Actors’ [http://www.groovyactors.org/examples/02.html Hello Storage] example implement the story of [http://wiki.aardrock.com/Wizard_Rabbit_Treasurer The Wizard, The Rabbit, and The Treasurer].

Categories
aarde architecture chaordic computing conscious computing consciousness english spiritual whole world

Conscious Computing

Now that the world is heating up, so are the discussions and debates on reducing resources required for computing. Reduced power, reduced heating, sleeping and suspending processors and processes.

Effective and efficient handling of our computing needs at minimal resource consumption in the complete life cycle of a network of computers has become the focus of attention. I call this ”’conscious computing”’ across the board—and my dream is to have a ”’Conscious Computing Award”’ for those solutions, projects and companies that will startle our view in this area and provide unprecedented breakthroughs in the area of smart spiritual software.

I will start tracking ideas, initiatives, programs, projects and inspirational sources on this topic. Here are the first two:
#[http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/power-plays.ars Power Plays: How power consumption will shape the future of computing] on how Intel is using smart self-organizing principles on chip-level to maximize the performance/power ratio in favour of green or ”’conscious computing”’.
#Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz on [http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/size_matters Switching Subjects] to drastically simplify cabling and reducing power and cooling requirements in massive data centers in their ”’Project Magnum”’ and ”'[http://www.sun.com/servers/hpc/SunConstellationPreview.jsp Constellation System]”’. Good that Sun has ”’Andy Bechtolsheim”’ back on board. Do you know that [[Andy missed his plane and changed his name]]?

Categories
agile architecture chaorganization holacracy smart software

Innovation and Agility

Jim Highsmith on [http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CutterConsortiumEnterpriseSuite/~3/127107226/apm070621.html Innovation and Agility]: I have always maintained that one characteristic of a good agile leader is the ability to balance: up-front planning with on-going planning, early architecture with evolutionary architecture, and innovation with efficiency. It is a difficult balancing act. If CEOs can’t seem to get the balancing right, how can a project manager or development manager?

(Via [http://www.cutter.com/welcome.html Cutter Consortium: Enterprise Suite].)

Categories
architecture chaordic english whole world

Aperspectival photography and imagery

toogle-logo.png
aperspectical-ca-image.png
Harry van der Velde pointed me to Spiralized, a cool and clean introduction to Spiral Dynamics. Next, click Basics, then click on the yellow part of the spiral, only to find that network art like Toogle and—Wolfram-based—aperspectival photography and images are considered “yellow” imagery. Exciting. Makes The Nature Of Order more whole.

Categories
architecture chaordic english whole world

Integral Architecture—The Timeless Way of Building


You’re cordially invited to attend the CHE Salon on Integral Architecture, inspired by Christopher Alexander’s The Timeless Way of Building and The Nature of Order.

May 11, Centrum Venwoude, Lage Vuursche. Free for friends of CHE.

Succes en plezier

Martien.