Apologies, I wrote the post for last week titled Fraudsters, Cyborgs and Cheap Power and I think it failed to send as scheduled. I hope you received it yesterday.
Now on to this week’s 5 things!
Startup Ideation Workshop. I ran a startup ideation workshop for a small group recently. Great fun to teach hands-on methods to have startup ideas. Have you ever wanted to start a company but wasn’t sure what to work on? I’m hoping to run the workshop a few more times to get feedback. Email me if you want in.
Delivery-Driven Government. I had a couple of conversations this week about user-centric processes and software in government. There is still so much room for improvement. Code for America has been a great voice advocating for change from within the government. Their GetCalFresh project is a great example building in partnership with governments. Other great examples of creating frontends for government programs include Propel, Upsolve and ImmigrationHelp.org. If you want to start an org in this area, I’d like to hear about it. (BTW, a great way to start is to use no code tools like AfterPattern. Or use many other no or low code tools. Want to learn? Check out OnDeck’s No Code Fellowship or the No Code Founders community.)
Courtroom Procedural Novels. Call it cheesy, but I’m hooked on courtroom dramas or procedural novels. You know, the ones where the right questions to the key witness or the right legal maneuver wins the case? For example, Anatomy of a Murder is the one that got me started. Know any good ones? Please let me know.
GTD Flattened Context. I’ve long been a Getting Things Done practitioner. One of the insights from GTD is to keep your to-do list sorted by context. Context is a blend of location and tools available. The idea is there is rarely a reason to look at a list of to-dos that you can’t do right now. Two trends make this part of GTD less relevant: tech and work-from-home. With an internet-connected device always within reach, you can do many tasks anywhere. And if you are working at home, then you aren’t changing location much anyway. Although I will say that Agenda context still makes a lot of sense. GTD has a lot of other good concepts but this was one of the pillars and seemed weakened for my workflow.
Intellectual Sparks Flying. Hearing Tyler Cowen interview David Deutsch was such a treat. Cowen is always so prepared I’m amazed. I’m such a fan of the way Deutsch blends discussions of epistemology, physics and metaphysics. I won’t pretend to understand everything they talked about. For example, I learned I haven’t read enough Popper. Where should I start?
Until next week,
Miles