A-Listers : éloge de la transdisciplinarité et de l’action

Ce qui fascine chez les A-Listers, ces bloggers incontournables de la blogosphère anglophone : le caractère multiple de leurs compétences et le fait qu’il s’agit de personnalités qui, au delà de la réflexion, sont en permanence dans l’action.

La richesse de leur parcours improbable leur donne une perspective originale et une meilleure appréhension des choses électroniques. Et cette compréhension intime des changements sociaux que nous vivons  leur confère une plasticité professionnelle et une aisance naturelle pour ré-inventer continuellement leur vie avec des activités où s’entremêlent recherche, écriture, business, consulting, art et technologies. La vie 2.0, quoi.

Cela nous change un peu du classique bipartisme de la pensée-2.0.fr : d’un côté les universitaires qui refont le monde depuis leur chaire d’ivoire, de l’autre les entreprenautes ramenant la société electronique à une guirlande de buzzwords pour vendre du vaporware.

Heavy Mental l’avait énoncé dans sa profession de foi : nous ne retrouvons pas cette pertinence dans la blogosphère.fr, et le sentiment est qu’indépendamment des raisons évoquées alors, un motif supplémentaire est ce manque de compétence transdisciplinaire au service de l’action.

Jason Fried Web 2.0 Keynote – Be a Software Curator

How many of you are in software? You’re lucky. All you have to do is type. You don’t have to worry about physics. What you work on is easy to change. It’s not like you’re building a house. You can build software anywhere, in your house, in a plane, inside outside. Doesn’t matter you can build software. You’re lucky you can do all these things.

Watch Jason Fried @ Web 2.0 Expo. 20mns on why you should take care of your software product as a curator does for his museum : keep things out.

Check out report by Kris Jordan Jason Fried Web 2.0 Keynote – Be a Software Curator | Kris Jordan.

David Heinemeier Hansson @ Startup School 08

Big up to the great OMNISIO service for offering amazing video for Startup 08 conferences. Great web app, no question why Google bought this startup.

David Heinemeier Hansson is a partner at the 37Signals start-up extraordinaire.

In this presentation (A Secret to making money online) David goes through the business model and beyond that, all the basic principles that have guided 37Signals to become beyond the very successul company, a genuine example for the whole industry.

This is amazing stuff. Do yourself a favor and spend these 35 minutes with DHH, this is priceless in particular if you’re in the startup business.

Mark Richards – Core Memory

Having all the means available to be connected on a permanent basis seems so natural for us today. No one really is interested in the gory details of the infrastructure world (the infraworld indeed) of the machines, network and all these different technical assets that makes our many different electronic lives possible.

Mark Richards Core Memory project is a tribute to this infra world. Some kind of still life to the unsung heroes of the information age : the electronic machines and devices. (Thanks again SignalVsNoise for the link !).

Pop Songs Illustrated

Phineas X Jones posted an article on Signal Vs Noise on his art work for a folk rocker CD cover, his first ever. Phineas goes through every steps of the realisation, from the main idea to the twicky bit of photoshop. It is quite interesting to see how the idea blossom and how internet drastically speeds up the process.

But the truth is : the result is disappointing (and I wont show it here). Too complicated and technical, too many different colors and items. We just dont see what the real point is.

Hypertext Weekly #2

It’s that time again : when, running out of ideas and/or time, Heavy Mental multi-twitters.

On the (pretty geeky) menu : high scalability, graduating Vs startuping, Web 2.0 Noise, OS/360 Tar Pit and a rock solid business model there for the taking : God Bless HTTP !

37Signals : Alternative Software Business

Code will tear us apart

There is this Alternative rock scene that blossomed back in the late 70s/early 80s on the ashes of the punk music. This encompassed bands like XTC, Wire, The Cure or Joy Division in the UK and Husker Dü or R.E.M in the US.

They basically had the energy and the DIY approach of the punk bands but as opposed to the latter they have a much more realistic view of the business, were not so self destructive (except maybe Joy Division Ian Curtis).

They had a proper plan : offering an alternative to mainstream (hence the name) pop music, driven by their vision of what it should be : quality pop song with an attitude, with an independent (hence Indie in the UK) artistic approach, ignoring business driven advices from major record companies marketing executives.

Viewing this Jason Fried (co-founder of web2.0 start-up extraordinaire 37Signals) video, I thought of the many similarities of their business approach in the software industry with that very musical vogue. Thinking about it, this analogy also gives some hints on 37Signals success …