Metadata for the people

Après deux ans et demi de blogging erratique, dans un peu toutes les directions, j’ai le sentiment qu’Heavy Mental arrive enfin quelque part. Un territoire où confluent un certain nombre des courants qui ont innervé ce blog : connaissance, entreprise, culture, geeking, innovation, réseaux sociaux, expressions créatives et réflexions sociétales.

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.

Wordclouding

Décidément, l’automne est une période peu propice au blogging sur Heavy Mental.

Pour signifier mon retour avec panache : le nuage de mot Heavy Mental grâce à Wordle

Faites en bon usage.

Destroying happiness

A test of the new Press This WordPress feature.

A journalist asked me, Most people have a better standard of living today than Louis XIV did in his day. So why are so many people unhappy?

What you have doesn’t make you unhappy. What you want does.

And want is created by us, the marketers.

Marketers trying to grow market share will always work to make their non-customers unhappy.

It’s interesting to note that marketers trying to maintain market share have a lot of work to do in reminding us that we’re happy.

Seth’s Blog.

Paul Graham – From social shyness to patronizing

I’ve been quite upset lately by a few essays from every blogger’s darling : Paul Graham. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any problem with Paul Graham writings about start-up (there or there or there) or Lisp : his background speaks for itself, and one will hardly find any blogger offering more insight regarding these topics.

Blogroll Underground

Mack Collier from the viralgarden did something similar a while back : kick-off a meme to promote unsung bloggers.

So here is the deal : list and describe about 10 out of your blogroll, do a quick description and pingback the one that referenced your blog. Please no Seth Godin, Loic Le Meur or Stairway to Heaven here. I dont think they need any reference.

Referencing Heavy Mental

‘right : writing a blog is cool. But there are some rumours around that writing a blog that some people end up reading is kinda cooler.

So tired with having an average of 8 views per blog post I’ve decided to roll up my sleeves and dig into the subject. Believe it or not a few people decided to study the issue before me. Honest.

So here I come, SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Gaping Void : creativity on business cards

Mind the gap

Okay I know you guys gonna think I am a bit of a late adopter.

You web2.0ers may have known Hugh for ages, have your own dedicated GV business card, or even the gaping void widget on your blog. Well, that’s not my case.

I’ve landed on Gaping Voids a few times before but I didn’t really notice until today while I was reading this How To be creative post. This is one of the most inspirational posts (okay it’s a pretty big one) I have ever read.

So if, just like me, you’ve one of the last human beings on this planet ignoring what Gaping Void is and who this Hugh McLeod can be, just do yourself a favor and check it out.

Missing : Kathy Sierra

I used to be a Professional working in airline distribution system business. Man, life was great : I was making good money in the countries I wanted (I even managed to reject an offer from Qantas, stupid me) being international consultant in this niche market with old techs. Then came September 11.

Within half a day my professional skills were made obsolete (okay there were worth things around, but still : it was still bad). I then decided then to switch to new techs in general and Java Programming language in particular. I started this self-training to prepare for the Java programmer certification.

This is when Kathy Sierra came into my professional life (messiah image dressed in white surrounded with a halo of dazzling light).