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Innovation is about arguing, not brainstorming.

the idea behind brainstorming is right. To innovate, we need environments that support imaginative thinking, where we can go through many crazy, tangential, and even bad ideas to come up with good ones. We need to work both collaboratively and individually. We also need a healthy amount of heated discussion, even arguing. We need places where someone can throw out a thought, have it critiqued, and not feel so judged that they become defensive and shut down. Yet this creative process is not necessarily supported by the traditional tenets of brainstorming: group collaboration, all ideas held equal, nothing judged.

Buzzwords are a load of bull

OK so some of use management speak and some of us cringe when we hear it. I’m a little scared that I am becoming immune to it. Turns out using those business buzzword phrases may impair your message, as reported in the SMH today.

A 2010 study conducted at New York and Basel Universities observed the effect linguistic influences had on judgments of truth. The research indicated that when a statement was expressed in concrete language, it rated as being more truthful and authentic than when it is was expressed in abstract language.

Varnish caching for noobs

For a while during my time at Daemon I could talk geeky with the best of them – well at least follow the conversations. Jason Barnes, Daemonite development manager was filling me in on what the team had been up to recently. This included their visit to cfObjective conference where Geoff (head Daemonite) gave a talk on Varnish. The slides are online (nice HTML 5 slide deck btw). I was like Varnish!? What the? No longer working with developers means I no longer get to learn geeky things through osmosis. A hello ping on IM resulted in my schooling in Varnish – a service that simply makes websites, like Facebook and Twitter serve content fast.