Tuesday, March 30, 2010

NUMMI

This American Life had a great radio show last week about New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI), which was a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors so that GM could learn the Toyota Production System and so that Toyota could learn how to apply the Toyota Production System in the United States.

It's a fantastic show and if you've read Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash from Mary and Tom Poppendieck, I think you'll really get a kick out of it.

Highly recommended.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi

So Long, Finger Poke. Later On, Weirdsies

Just about every week, Ben and I talk about how this is the week we're done with Facebook and Twitter. We talk about how big of a distraction it is, how little great information we get from it, and how things people say can get us worked up for no great reason. Tired of the .02% of your "friends" who just flood your information streams with useless status updates or political rants.

Don't get me wrong, I think that 1-2% of the stuff that I read there is interesting, nice to know or informative. But that's a pretty low hit rate for signal vs. noise.

There's this weird and unhealthy emotional attachment to it, which causes me to never hit the off button. Sometimes I feel like I've built up this big property, and I'm scared to just let it go (like there's a bunch of other jfiorato's out there waiting in line for that username). Then there's just the fear of missing something important, that I won't see anywhere else, or that I'll be doomed to find out later than everyone else.

But I don't like the way these attachments make me feel. As if we don't have to enough live in fear of these days, fearing that I'm not up to date, or fearing that I'm not marketing myself as well as I could, just isn't necessary anymore. I've just been sick of having so much of my stuff owned by others. Tired of banks owning my shit. Tired of TV owning my CPU cycles. Tired of Facebook and Twitter owning my words and pictures.

I feel like I got so much more value out of reading and writing more than 140 characters, but all these 140 character "efficiencies" have ended up paralyzing me.

But, still, unready to fully commit to anything, to test things out, Ben and I made a pact to not check Twitter or Facebook for 2 weeks (had our wives change our passwords), and then see where we're at then. Maybe after the two weeks, deleting the accounts, or maybe just leaving them there without knowing the password, not sure yet.

So, I'm hoping to pick back up here, and start really writing again.