[SoL] Cynefin Case Study: Managing Complexity
September 23, 2005 | Business & Commerce | SoL
Dave Snowden was present, but only addressed specific detailed questions. The presentation was done by the lead researcher/practicioner, Bruce McKenzie, and the client's liaison, Dr. Robert Kay, who is the Head of Strategic Thinking, and has published widely in the areas of autopoietic and social theory.
The client: Westpac Banking Corp. 8.2 million customers in Australia and New Zealand, 27,000 employees.
Project revolved around strategic risk management:
- Dealing with uncertainty
- Surfacing assumptions
- Mapping knowledge flows
- Strengthening the resilience of the organization (in the face of uncertainties)
- Strategic insurance for plausible events
Organizing companies/teams is in essence about establishing a network of knowledge flows. Corporate restructuring destroys existing flows and lowers the resilience of the company.
Can be very subtle. Gave an example about a large company where people with newish cars were concerned that people with oldish cars were not respecting the new cars (opening doors fast creating minor dents, etc). They put a policy in pace where parking was now assigned based on car age, with three categories (new, middle, old). Well, it turns out that the three top dogs at this company had been arriving at work more or less the same time every day for years, and had walked into the building together, riding the elevator, and catching up on the business they didn't have time to discuss during the day. The informal knowledge that lubricates organizations and keeps people in tune with the various distributed aspects. It also turned out that the three of them each now had to park in a different place: One had a new sedan, one had a family van, and one had a clunker. When the parking was reorganized they lost their "glue" time each day, and all three noticed that they felt disconnected from what was happening at the company. It's very hard to consider all of the side effects, and so reorganizing any aspect of an existing structure should be undertaken with great care.
The challenge and responsibility in managing complexity is moving from analyzing the past to imaging the future. The key is: Don't try to be right, try to not be wrong.
Companies have to change their cultures to move from "knowledge is power" to "sharing is power." One advantage of the acceleration of culture and technology is that knowledge becomes outdated sooner, reducing the "holding power" of individuals.
At this point there was a series of amazing charts, graphs, software screens, and analysis methods from the project that would be impossible to capture in ASCII diagrams. I believe they are going to post session materials, and if so I'll update this post with a pointer.
- Conversation maps.
- Narrative collation.
- Soft systems.
- Uncertainty/Impact matrix.
- Wind tunnel matrix.
- Knowledge interdependency map.
I think this was the most amazing aspect of the work: They have a series of processes, and custom software to support the capture and analysis of qualitative data, that generate complex yet comprehendible information. It's clear to me that if most executives were faced with the information Westpac Bank had, they would change their decision-making process to support these plausible future scenarios.
That's another thread of the work. Previous work with scenarios tended to end at the scenario generation, with the hope that line managers would Do The Right Thing. Here, tied into the management of strategic risk, the leadership team could together figure out The Plan, and use it as a focal point for implementation, modifying as they went based on changing conditions and employee feedback.
Much of the data was gathered not from sitting in the corporate boardroom brainstorming, but through interviews with front-line staff (like tellers and loan officers) and customers (who had both good and bad experiences). Hence, the scenarios and plans have a tangible, practical, "rings true" quality that you don't see from most top-down initiatives.
This work feels far from incremental, but rather a quantum lead from any type of consulting process or software support system I've ever seen. The Cynefin website doesn't do it justice, but we're told to visit again in a few months as things start to roll out. Many kudos to making such visionary work practical and tied to real-world problems, generating tangible results.
Note: Snowden is spending much of his time working with governments on the public policy aspects of this work, such as "weak signal analysis" of existing information flows looking for terrorist signals. Intelligence agencies in both the US and Singapore are engaged in this work.
[SoL] Dave Snowden and Cynifen Centre
September 23, 2005 | Business & Commerce | SoL
This was the most interesting plenary session for me, and also my most interesting parallel session (see next post). I am planning to attend a training course on this material later this year or early next. I found it a very exciting blend of quantitative analysis and phenominological source material.
"Open source Consulting" and "Noble Networks" When you join the network (by attending training and then entering a mentor program) you have Creative Commons license to the software and process models the group is developing. It's more complicated than this, but that's the gist of it.
He drew a distinction between discovering new knowledge vs. discovering existing knowledge. Academic research vs. understanding and acting on what's present.
Magic quadrant of where they're working:
Computational | Cynefin
Complex Complexity | Sense-making
Output "simulation" | "ecology"
|
--------------------|-------------------
|
Simple Process | Systems
Output Engineering | Dynamics
"machine" | "organism"
|
Simple Complex
Input Output
Similar to how many people confuse correlation with causation ("which is rampant in management consulting") many people also confuse simulation with prediction.
Three ways of sense-making:
The way things are (ontology).
- Ordered: Predictable cause and effect
- Complex: Cause and effect retroactively coherent
- Chaotic: No cause and effect at unit level
The way we know things (epistemology)
- Explicit: Documentation, databases
- Narrative: necessary ambiguity
- Experimental: How do you ride a bike?
The way we perceive the world (phenomenology)
- Information processing
- pattern processing
- Ideological patterning
Gave an example of a radiologist, who has learned ~40,000 typical possible patterns of bone breaks. They scan the x-ray, and use a "first fit" data match. They are "satisfying," not "optimizing."
Hard to label the next two quadrants, but basically I think he's showing the move from the "input" of sense-making, to the categories of sense-making.
COMPLEX | HIDDEN
UN-ORDER | ORDER
C & E coherent | C & E are
in retrospect | discernible
|
----------------------|-------------------
|
CHAOTIC | VISIBLE
UN-ORDER | ORDER
No perceivable | C & E are
C & E | ordered
COMPLEX | COMPLICATED
probe | sense
sense | analyze
respond | respond
|
----------------------|-------------------
|
CHAOTIC | SIMPLE
act | sense
sense | categorize
respond | respond
An example from the book, "The Geography of Thought:" Here are three words. Which one in unrelated?
- Cow
- Chicken
- Grass
If your ancestral roots are from one region (I forget / didn't write down the regions) you will answer "grass" because it is not an animal. But if your roots are from another region, you will answer "chicken" because the cow and the grass have a relationship. FWIW, I choose chicken.
Four aspects of narrative work:
- Storytelling: Communication with structure and form
- Resonance: Does it fit my existing patterns
- Displacement: A mechanism for sharing failure without blame. Story forms evolved to tell of our failures so others wouldn't follow.
- Ambiguity: precise vs. partial
Oral history and ethnographic research. Fascinating, not least because a recent client project of mine used virtually the same process he described, which he called "pre-hypothesis" research. The role and position of the "expert" influence the study. "Knowledge portals" fail, but storytelling works. Emergent meaning and serendipitous search. Problems to avoid: more than two interviews per interviewer (to me this seems really hard or expensive to avoid) and auto-suggestion (which is solved through training and in-the-moment discipline.
Snowden and Cynifen are trying to bring understanding to complex systems, going beyond simple or complicated systems, and avoiding trying to understand chaotic systems (which generate red herrings). In the parallel session the next day they did a case study of a significant project at a bank in Australia and New Zealand applying these techniques. All in all, a thrilling integration of quantitative and qualitative work. Cutting edge thinking on managing complexity in the real world.
Photo Overload
September 21, 2005 | Life | Site Maintenance
Since I last posted any photos to Flickr, I have taken nearly 500 new shots, but I haven't had time to sort or select any for upload. Maybe on the train to Paris Friday morning. If not, I fear it will await the weekend when I return.
First Impressions of Europe
September 21, 2005 | Life | People & Society | Travel
There are many interesting aspects of this first trip to Europe that caught my eye. Many would be worth elaborating on, but probably i won't have time and the following annotated list will have to do.
Cool small cars of Europe. Why can't we get some of these in America? There are so many kinds! Sporty, cheap, practical, extravagant. To take just one company for example, VW in America offers the Golf, Jetta, and Passat, from small to large. In Vienna, I also saw a VW Polo, smaller than the Golf, and the VW Lupo, smaller than the Polo! VW also makes the Sharan mini-van, which looks like it could compete will with the Dodge Caravan. And, a small delivery truck, and a larger delivery van around the size of the Eurovan.
Most cars in Vienna (and here in Strasbourg) are diesel, but there's absolutely no diesel smell. It's because the diesel fuel is higher quality, with lower sulfer. Why the heck can't we get better quality diesel fuel in the States? Answer: Energy lobbyists. "Too costly." Funny how smaller countries can afford it, but not the US. I think we're supposed to get low-sulfer diesel in 2006 or 2007, if they don't push the regulations back due to the costs of Halliburton's Iraq budget, the New New Orleans patronage act of 2005, and the on-going "sacrifice nothing" tax cuts for the top 1%.
Combining the two above: Wake me up when I can buy an Audi A3 four-door with a diesel engine in the US. I am prepared to sign papers immediately.
Small increments for energy savings. For instance, at Hotel Europa when you enter the room there is a key-card slot just inside the doorway, where the light switch would be. I didn't immediately notice this, but I did notice that upon arrival none of the lights or electrical outlets worked. Thinking maybe there was an outage (but i just got off the elevator, duh), I called the front desk. They asked, "Did you put your room key into the activation slot?" Uh, no. This handy convention means two things: 1) you cannot leave a light on wasting energy when you leave the room; 2) it's pretty hard to forget your room key, being that it's right next to the door handle as you exit. That's pretty cool.
Focus on style over size. Things are smaller, and things are cooler. What "things?" Buildings, cars, objects, coffee's, chairs, food portions, desserts, windows, shopping malls.
Focus on compliance over control. Two examples: 1) On the "U" (subways) you buy a ticket, but there are not always turnstiles to take them, you can just walk on. Occasionally a conductor will ask you for your ticket. If you don't have one, you are fined (somehow, I didn't learn that!). In other words, trust the 99% of the honest people, and don't slow them down due to 1% taking advantage of the system. Further, some of those 1% are, to take just one reasonable example, poor people trying to get a job – better to let them ride for free to a job interview, than to not be able to get there, eh? 2) People drink beer and wine on the pedestrian shopping street, on the subways, anywhere in public. In other words, they are not regulating consumption, but behavior. The focus is on outcome, not input. How much money might this save, were we to focus on the outcomes of our efforts, rather than the efforts themselves. Instead of hearing, "It's hard work," we might hear about tangible results, spin-free. In the world of public policy, the focus would be on governance, not politics.
Solar panels everywhere. On the train from Vienna to Strasbourg (nine hours), we saw hundreds of them. A few panels on houses, and whole house roofs covered with them. Industrial factories with solar roofs. Freestanding solar arrays near large commercial office buildings. Also, a few windmill clusters on ridge lines. This "alternative" energy thing isn't so alternative over here.
Lots of gardens. Again, on the train ride, most people had gardens, both flower and vegetable. Large and small. Elaborate or simple. Large houses or small. Didn't seem to correlate to home quality or upkeep. Just part of the fabric.
Multiple transport lanes. I posted a photo showing a lane for cars, one for light-rail trams, one for walking, and one for biking. This is common, and in addition to the energy savings, the increased exercise, and the reduced pollution, it also adds a great flavor walking around. There's just a lot more motion, of different frequencies, with different sounds, at human scale.
Summary: We like visiting here! While there's still enough oil to fly commercial airplanes, this is a great way to spend vacation dollars.
[SoL] Comments on the de Vulpian Presentation
September 21, 2005 | Business & Commerce | Cooperatives | SoL
Following de Vulpian's talk at the SoL conference, we heard remarks from Anne Murray Allen, the director for Knowledge and Intranet Management at Hewlett-Packard, and Arie de Geus, a former Royal Dutch Shell strategist and SoL co-founder.
HP is an interesting case study for what I call The Web as Organizational Mirror™. In the 1990's HP shifted from a decentralized website to a centralized website, to present a unifed face to the world. This, just as the world was discovering the joys of decentralization. They once had a decentralized team culture too, now they are trying to get it back. The web changes foreshadowed the organization changes. I salute HP for being a corporate member of SoL, and I wish them all the best – at one time HP was one of the most important scientific organizations in the world, like Bell Labs – but, like Bell Labs, I fear the financial engineers have taken over, and the best may now be historical.
HP does appear to be doing some interesting things with regard to internal social networks. In particular, two things stood out from Anne's talk. First is that they are trying hard to measure ROI on social connection systems. This is valuable work for those of us who work in the field, who have to make decisions or recommendations for clients. But, as mentioned above, the fact that you have to justify ROI on the value of sharing information with colleagues indicates that the finance types have run amok.
She also mentioned the idea of "finability" as an important aspect of the ROI work that they are doing. I perhaps misjudged the tone, but I got the sense that this was presented as a new idea, perhaps even one that HP invented. I am going to assume I misinterpreted this, because "findability" has been in regular use within my online circles for years. It might have even been mentioned in the O'Reilly information architecture book from 1996.
de Geus pointed out that people change and they change society which changes people..... This sounds obvious, but taken to the end it says that you cannot directly control the direction of societal evolution. Societies change very slowly, and the rules are set by legislation, which is sometimes referred to as today's writeup of yesterday's solution to the day before's problems. This slow wavelength change also has important impacts for corporations (some of which de Vulpian mentions in his article).
Also of note: Only people in a society can change a society. You cannot change a system from outside it. Outsiders have no possibility, and perhaps no right, to make changes to the systems of others. Another way of stating this is, Learning has to be done by the learner.
de Geus then went on to talk, of all things, about cooperatives as a mechanism of distributing power to the "ordinary people." He talked about Mondragon (wikipedia entry) the largest worker-owned cooperative, and about how the most successful management consulting firms (Booz Allen, McKinsey, St. Lukes) all created new mechanisms of power and profit sharing different from the traditional partner hierarchy. Visa International is the ultimate example of this, fully documented in Dee Hock's book, "Birth of the Chaordic Age." (Dee Hock and Arie were both instrumental in the foundation of SoL.)
There was a short table discussion that followed, around: What one question do we want to ask the presenters? Our list was:
- What are the failure modes or danger signs for societies?
- How do we change corporate governance? The vested interests have no incentive, and the "common good" has no truck today.
- How do we represent who holds power?
- Is there a limit to personal satisfaction? Or, perhaps, should there be limits? Or is society simply the sum total of all individual personal desires?
[SoL] Alain de Vulpian on the Process of Civilization
September 21, 2005 | Arts & Culture | Governance | SoL
de Vulpian provided a 25-page paper, "Listening to Ordinary People," in advance of the conference (Word doc). It lays out the main arguments of his book, "A l'ecoute des gens ordinaires. Comment ils tranforment le monde," (Paris, Dunod 2003).
Here is one of the introductory paragraphs from the paper:
I have reached the conviction that we are in the epicentre of a developmental process of civilisation that is carrying us elsewhere, transforming western culture in depth and possibly preparing the way for a worldwide civilisation. What do I mean by a developmental process of civilisation? Norbert Elias, the great German sociologist, gave body to this concept of a "chain reaction of chain reactions" that involves power holders, institutions, organisations, communications, ordinary people, manners, customs, the social fabric, technologies that are emerging or becoming established, and so on. It transforms a civilisation and gives life to a new society. No-one has designed, desired or piloted this chain reaction of chain reactions. It has occurred spontaneously, it is continuing and is now spreading to other regions of the planet.
He goes on to discuss four major areas affecting civilization in the 20th century:
- Ordinary people become more autonomous and in touch with inner resources.
- An extremely complex social fabric is self-organizing.
- Scientific and technological innovations synergize with other transformations.
- New forms of governance begin hesitantly to emerge.
He looks at each one of these in depth (summarized in the paper, complete exposition in the book), and wonders if we are engaged in a new stage in the evolution of man and society. I will quote the final paragraph of the paper:
There is an opportunity for human progress whose birth we can try to facilitate. But it is very clear that nothing is yet decisively acquired. Our hypercomplex and living society is also, like all living things, the seat of pathological processes. The therapeutic procedures, regulators or immune systems that are spontaneously developing are not yet properly effective, in particular because many governments and old-fashioned but still powerful enterprises are not playing the game of a living society. They display ideologically partisan, hierarchic or predatory attitudes, rather than therapeutic, interactive ones, and accumulate mistakes and maladaptations that encourage the appearance of perverse effects. Instead of participating in concerted, adaptive regulation, they throw oil on the fire and accentuate the turbulences. Beyond a hypothetical (because unmeasured) threshold of turbulence, the entire anthropo-sociological process could bifurcate into disastrous directions.
This work deserves a significantly longer treatment than I have energy for at the moment. Perhaps even a study group to digest the main ideas. In short, he surveys 50 years of social science and develops the main threads of societal changes that have occurred. He summarizes several different societal aspects that I had noticed, but hadn't named. He describes societal shifts that have affected both my work and my family. He provides a hopeful scenario, which I had not been able to generate based only on my own observations.
I highly recommend the paper, though with the caveat that I don't read much sociology, so I don't have much context for the work. I found it engaging, insightful, and worthy of discussion.
[SoL] Opening Session
September 21, 2005 | SoL
Notes from the opening session of the Society for Organizational Learning Global Forum 2005, Vienna Austria, September 13, 2005.
Table discussion: "What question lies at the heart of your work?"
- MJ: How to turn pattern observations into action in the world?
- Tony: How to make learning as accepted as knowing?
- Georgie: Where will the energy come from to make our public institutions value public input?
- Fred: How to make a world where you are what you do?
- Anna: How to learn together in ways that heal each other and the world?
- Glenda: how to transcend the divide of theory and practice?
- Tuija: How to bring entrepreneurial spirit to young people?
Otto Scharmer, via video, discussing the U-theory outlined in Presence. The basics of the U-theory were a shared understanding for most people at the Forum. If you haven't read this, you can skim the diagrams from the book at a bookstore, or here is an introductory excerpt (pdf) from the forthcoming book.
MJ note: Otto is a good German scientist, and he doesn't seem to be winging it. The U-theory was developed from 150 interviews with scientists, artists, and innovators in many different fields. The goal was to understand where 'new ideas' come from, and why some people are particularly good at generating them. It seems to boil down to an ability to tune into the future, that is, not "see" the future, but to "harmonize" with the gestalt or zeitgeist and act in an appropriate manner. This is my interpretation – if you have a deeper understanding please use the comments to help!
What does it take to access our deeper knowledge and experience? How do we shift the social field? Apply your tools to cultivating "culture." Think about the soil in agriculture; need to dig into it, not just put things on top of it. Work with the intersection of the visible and invisible.
Move from To
this: this:
Visible field || || /\
\/ || ||
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
/\ || ||
Invisible field || \/ ||
MJ: Reminds me of why I was interested fractals – they define the boundary between real and imaginary numbers, and have infinite length (perhaps depth).
The invisible social field is the place from where attention originates.
What's the leverage point in social fields? Our capacity to see and shift the structure of our attention.
Follow-up: Read the Brian Arthur HBR article. Brian was one of the significant learning points for the U-theory.
Two types of cognition:
- Download from someone or otherwise acquire, and apply our existing framework. So-called "learning." Profound innovations do not arise from this process.
- The other type (I missed what he named this. Might be "Seeing" or "Sensing." Might be "Generative.") a. Observe, observe, observe. Immerse yourself in the situation. b. Retreat & reflect. Create silence where knowing surfaces. c. Act in an instant. Create a microcosm where you can explore/discover the new without reverting to downloading your existing patterns/habits/memories. Profound innovations tend to happen "in an instant" after a long period of observing and reflecting.
Three thresholds "on the way down" (down the U):
- Open Mind. Move from where our perception is going to outside. From downloading to seeing. Open the "open mind." Use precise observation. Shut down the "VOJ" – Voice of Judgement, a term used by Stanford creativity expert Michael Ray. In Presence, this is referred to as "suspending." Diagram of a circle with a dot in it. Our attention is the dot, and the circle is the curtain of our habitual perception. "projecting thoughts onto the curtain."
- Open Heart/Sensing. Begin to access a different source of intelligence, including the heart. Perception begins to happen from a different place. When you are truly listening with empathy you can apprehend what they are about to say. Diagram of a circle with a dot on the edge of the circle. Our attention is now at the edge of our typical perception, looking outward. "Open the curtains to see outside."
- Open Will/Presencing. The word has from two intents. Sensing: Connect with your higher future potential. Pre: Access sensing in the present. Diagram of circle with dot outside. Our attention is now at another place, looking at our own mind in the field of all other objects. [MJ note: Worth re-reading Kegan's subject/object theory again – "In Over Our Heads" or "The Evolving Self" – to tie to this.]
Ottos's video is done. It was a short segment of a longer piece. I wonder if we can watch the whole thing anywhere. I wish he would finish his book to read more of this material!
Final notes from opening session:
- Listen to the motivation for the words, not the words themselves.
- Connected listening requires the body to be present.
- What I wrote was: Listening is harder than listening. I wonder what I meant. Maybe: Empathic listening is harder than listening.
- Suspend answers and stay with questions.
- Hold humility and set an intent to receive.
Politics vs. Goverance
September 18, 2005 | Business & Commerce | Governance | People & Society
Let me suffer the inadequate Internet connection just once more to comment on how surprising (yet welcome) it is to see opinions such as this from Newsweek.
...Bush will go down in history as the most fiscally irresponsible chief executive in American history. Since 2001, government spending has gone up from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, a 33 percent rise in four years! Defense and Homeland Security are not the only culprits. Domestic spending is actually up 36 percent in the same period. These figures come from the libertarian Cato Institute's excellent report "The Grand Old Spending Party," which explains that "throughout the past 40 years, most presidents have cut or restrained lower-priority spending to make room for higher-priority spending. What is driving George W. Bush's budget bloat is a reversal of that trend." To govern is to choose. And Bush has decided not to choose. He wants guns and butter and tax cuts.
People wonder whether we can afford Iraq and Katrina. The answer is, easily. What we can't afford simultaneously is $1.4 trillion in tax cuts and more than $1 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next 10 years...
Today's Republicans believe in pork, but they don't believe in government. So we have the largest government in history but one that is weak and dysfunctional. Public spending is a cynical game of buying votes or campaign contributions, an utterly corrupt process run by lobbyists and special interests with no concern for the national interest...
Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call. It is time to get serious. We need to secure the homeland, fight terrorism and have an effective foreign policy to advance our interests and our ideals. We also need a world-class education system, a great infrastructure and advancement in science and technology.
For all its virtues, the private sector cannot accomplish all this. Wal-Mart and Federal Express cannot devise a national energy policy for the United States. For that and for much else, we need government. We already pay for it. Can somebody help us get our money's worth?
Thanks to Laura Rozen for the pointer.
Today's News
September 18, 2005 | Arts & Culture | Life | Travel
The short version:
- Lynne has arrived.
- Over a dozen new photos loaded onto Flickr.
- The Internet connection at the new hotel is terrible, making more than brief interactions smash-things frustrating.
Monday is more Vienna, Tuesday is an 8-hour train to Strasburg France.
Transformative Questions
September 14, 2005 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | SoL
This morning I and three colleagues (from Singapore, Denver, and Boston) presented at the SoL Global Forum. The topic was "Extraordinary Leadership; Shape-Shifting and Transformative Questions as a Genesis for Change." The session was held inside the Leopold Museum, and it went well. Just over 70 people attended, out of 400 conference participants, and with ten other parallel sessions held at the same time!
Here is a panorama of the group reflecting on the characteristics of transformative questions (full-size):
Here is another panorama of the group in world cafe discussing their reflections (full-size):
When I get the session notes written up I'll post them here.
A Note on the Photos
September 13, 2005 | Site Maintenance
Just FYI: The photos I'm posting to Flickr are essentially straight from the camera. I'm re-sizing them to 800px wide, but I'm not straightening perspective or anything else. Anything I print gets a deeper treatment, but the Flickr uploads are the snapshots.
MuseumsQuartier
September 13, 2005 | Arts & Culture | SoL
I have posted three pictures from the conference site (1, 2, 3). From their website:
The MuseumsQuartier Wien first opened in 2001. It now features almost 50 different facilities for contemporary art and culture and is one of the ten largest cultural complexes in the world, attracting some 2.7 million visitors each year.
This is an absolutely amazing facility. It is a mix of galleries, event halls, dance studios, and art museums with significant holdings. It is a public space, so the conference-goers mix with a diverse population. There are restaurants, bars, an outdoor courtyard. You can see from the interior shot that even the main hall has a capital-D design. It is far removed from the typical beige hotel ballroom that hold most of these functions. An inspiring space to hold a big-think conference. I'm sure I will post more photos from here.
Jetta GLI Wheels
September 13, 2005 | Life
For those of you asking in the comments about where you can find the winter wheels for a 2004+ VW Jetta GLI, I will find the address and phone number when I return home in a few weeks. In the meantime, the part number I posted is valid, and if you can find a Macpak wholesaler you should be able to get them.
Willkommen in Wein
September 13, 2005 | Life
I arrived in Vienna last night, with something of a rough start. In Paris, the flight from Boston was 15 minutes late, and for whatever reason they parked the plane maybe a mile from the terminal - the terminal appeared as if it was a tourist sight in the distance. So we took a bus along a few runways and through loading docks and the back corners of Charles De Gaulle airport. Meaning, I missed my connecting flight to Vienna.
So after some searching about I found the right desk (the "Correspondence" desk) to make the new boarding pass. Long story short – insert several dramatic scenes here – sitting at the gate, five hours later, it turns out he wrote me a ticket back to Boston, and not to Vienna. Oh how sweet that would have been to get on the wrong plane and return home, $1,000 poorer for the privilege of five hours at the Paris airport.
But, disaster narrowly-averted, as Bob Weir might say, I got a ticket to the right flight. Of course, I had missed two flights to Vienna while I waited for the flight back to Boston....
Needless to say, my luggage didn't quite catch up to me until a few hours ago. So this morning, I had breakfast, two meetings, and lunch in the clothes I had been wearing for the past 48 hours. First impressions of Air France are not overly complimentary.
Most amazing observation yet, on this first trip to Europe: The dogs here understand German!! In fact, they understand it orders of magnitude better than me! Nurture over nature, or Viennese dogs are smarter than Notio – we report, you decide.
I'm staying at the Hotel Europa, on Kartnerstrasse, which is a very nice shopping eating pedestrian promenade boulevard. Uploaded a photo from there last night (lots of street musicians everywhere) and another photo from an open-air market where I got a quick bite to eat on the way to retrieve my luggage.
My presentation is tomorrow at 9 AM, and then I can enjoy the rest of the conference.
The Lumix Has Landed
September 2, 2005 | Life | Technology
The new camera has arrived. All other work has stopped.
Over 13% in Three Weeks
September 1, 2005 | Business & Commerce | Life | People & Society
About three weeks ago I filled up my car at the gas station and hit $30 for the first time. This is a 2004 VW Jetta, not an SUV-sized gas tank. I almost blogged it, but never got around to it, and it borders on the trivial anyway.
Today, with a tank fuller than that day, and with gas at $3.03 a gallon, the fill-up was $34.10. That's over 13% more than three weeks ago! I'm sure that's not the end of it either.
The Future of Damaged Limbs
September 1, 2005 | Science
Sunday Times: "Scientists have created a 'miracle mouse' that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals. The experimental animal is unique among mammals in its ability to regrow its heart, toes, joints and tail. The researchers have also found that when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate."
