The pattern you see above is the result of a couple of creative minds — colleagues of mine — screwing around with their GPS-enabled wristwatch while out on a morning run.  They "wrote" a message for the rest of us at the office, and then sent us to this webpage, where via a mashup we could see their graffito.   It's a virtual crop circle, a public digital tattoo, a webified record of a few minutes of personal joy.

It's also the result of many layers of technology working together, from satellites generating the original photographic imagery to other satellites finding the wristwatch to the mind-boggling amount of digital hardware/software integration packaged so tightly into that wristwatch (and don't forget the rechargable batteries and the input/output protocols which allow this GPS data to be brought into Google Maps over the interwebs).  Basically, a ton of stuff in the technology side of the equation had to go right to enable these two guys to create this virtual crop circle.

And it's a lot of technology to grok.  Do you think any of the engineering teams behind each of the technological building blocks involved had any idea that a couple of Silicon Vallely dudes would use the sum total of their efforts toward this purely aesthetic expression of freedom, liberty, and joy?  I doubt it.  Very few "consumer" (I dislike that word, but I have to use it) value propositions involving multiple compex technologies can be created in a top down sense.  Instead, whether like Twitter they spring up while a development team is busy working on something else, or as in the case of this virtual crop circle or mountain bikes or jazz or hot rods or any pursuit born out of the venacular they just "happen", complex value propositions enabled by technology need to grow organically, with serendipity as their fertilizer. 

We can't gain wisdom about the uses of technology unless we allow ourselves time to screw around.

I had the pleasure over the holidays of reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to my daughter.  It's a wonderful piece of literature, and a great reminder that movie adaptations of great works generally pale in comparison with the original text.  Roald Dahl was nothing if not a creative genius.

A special bonus for me was the inclusion at the end of the book of this transcript of a converation with Roald Dahl.  It's an exemplary interview, focusing on his process and way of working.  In particular, I found the following passage remarkable:

…I never come back to a blank page; I always finish about halfway through. To be confronted with a blank page is not very nice. But Hemingway, a great American writer, taught me the finest trick when you are doing a long book, which is, he simply said in his own words, “When you are going good, stop writing.” And that means that if everything’s going well and you know exactly where the end of the chapter’s going to go and you know just what the people are going to do, you don’t go on writing and writing until you come to the end of it, because when you do, then you say, well, where am I going to go next? And you get up and you walk away and you don’t want to come back because you don’t know where you want to go. But if you stop when you are going good, as Hemingway said…then you know what you are going to say next. You make yourself stop, put your pencil down and everything, and you walk away. And you can’t wait to get back because you know what you want to say next and that’s lovely and you have to try and do that. Every time, every day all the way through the year. If you stop when you are stuck, the you are in trouble!

His insight flies in the face of common wisdom around this subject, which goes something like "when in flow, keep going".  In other words, stay with the muse lest it float away.  Having the confidence to "stop when you are going good", coupled with the ability to crank it up again the next day, feels like a more mature place to be in terms of one's personal creative process.  I bet it takes practice.  But, if it leads to more sleep, fewer late nights, and more perspective on what matters and what does not, I'd wager that all of us engaged in the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life would be in a better place.

I, for one, am going to start stopping!

My friend John Winsor wrote a nice post on his blog about the primacy of doing.  Here's an excerpt:

Surfing has taught me that there is no substitution to repetitive practice… Everybody loves the image of surfing. Yet, I’ve discovered there are very few people who actually surf. Why is that? There is one simple answer: surfing is hard. I have a personal theory about surfing. It takes riding a thousand waves to become a surfer. It doesn’t matter if you catch 20 waves a day for 50 days or one wave a day for a thousand days; you just can’t get around the experience of learning the hard way.

At the end of this post, John asks, "If you want to be an innovator how will you ride a thousand waves?"