by , Conferences, No Comments

May 6

The Cutter Summit

by Chad, Conferences, Comments Off on The Cutter Summit

May 6

May 6, 2006

Tomorrow I head to Boston for the Cutter Summit 2006 Conference. As the description says, it’s a great place to meet great thinkers from around the world, to collaborate and share emerging ideas and to debate them as a group, to leap beyond the mainstream. As expected, it sold out quickly.

One keynote that I think will be relevant to readers of Optimal Friction is “The Changing Nature of Work”, by Ward Cunningham. The write-up says “organizational paradigm that people think of as business is changing. We’ve reached the tipping point, and the manufacturing paradigm no longer works. Today’s emerging organizational structures value a purely creative environment and self-organizing principles.”

I’ve written extensively about how the manufacturing paradigm fails miserably when applied to design work, which is what software and Information Technology is all about. I’d go farther to say that this mindset is the source of all our failures. It’s a key concept within my thinking on the notion of optimal friction – the “ideal” amount of tension necessary for successful work in today’s deadline-driven age.

    Comments are closed.