Here's a charming video created a few years ago by my friends Bill Moggridge and Bernie Roth. It tells the story of Professor Doug Wilde. Here's the movie caption from YouTube:
Doug Wilde is an Emeritus Stanford Professor who suffers from a diabetic
condition, but instead of resorting to insulin injections, he keeps his
blood sugar balanced by bicycling up a steep mountain road. When this
became a regular habit, he soon found himself picking up the trash by
the side of the road as he went along, so he has become the single
handed Adopter of Highway 84, earning a reputation with the locals for
his sterling work.
I just learned of its existence today. And I simply love it.
While I was an undergraduate engineering student I took a class on machine design. The final project was a team-based thing, and Professor Wilde placed us into teams based on data he collected about us using his principles of "Teamology", which is described as "An original transformation generates a numerical version of C. G. Jung's
personality theory as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI). The cognitive mode scores obtained are used to form teams with
desirable high scores for as many modes as possible. The scores also
guide organization of the resulting teams." It must have worked, because I got the highest grade of my undergraduate career in that class! I'd like to think it was because of my hard work, but I think it was becaues of Professor Wilde's insights. I was on a great team that made me a better engineer than I could have been on my own.
If you hang around the Stanford campus at all, you'll see Doug Wilde getting around on his bike, just as he did when I was a student there. What an interesting human being. I really dig this video because he not only has a strong point of view, but he puts it into action in a remarkable way. Doing is the resolution of knowing, and see the nice places it all takes him.
Thank you, Professor Poubelle!