Ambient Orb - The Cool Dashboard

We live in a visual age.

How do you deliver complex data intended to change behavior? Ambient Devices (with a cool website) has developed a unique and strangely effective tool.

Plenty, a media source for sustainability, explains how Southern California Edison experimented with the Ambient Orb reduced energy consumption by 40%.

What additional uses can you think of?

• Product managers could see if they were on target by the color of the orb.
• Safety goals can be displayed with the orb.
• Company carbon objectives can be tracked.
• Customer satisfaction and the list is almost endless.

What metrics can you think of that would communicate the success or struggle of a project?

Consider the mindshift this represents for communicating complex data in an immediately accessible and intuitive way.

Doing well... by doing good - Interface

Leadership, change and a higher call.

Those involved with Mindshift have described our challenge using these kinds of words and ideas. How do you (we) change a complex industry, highly entrenched in outdated methods, habits and interests? For Ray Anderson it started with a personal challenge - and subsequent transformation. Kyle Davy shares some of this story in his book, Value Redesigned.

“In August 1994 Ray C. Anderson embarked on a journey that would transform him as well as the company he founded 20 years earlier. That company, Interface Inc., is the world’s largest producer of contract commercial carpet. Anderson’s wake-up call happened as he prepared to deliver a keynote address to an Interface task force charged with responding to customers who were asking what Interface was doing for the environment. At first he approached the question from a conventional manufacturer’s viewpoint that focused on compliance… However, in the midst of his preparation, he happened upon Paul Hawken’s book, The Ecology of Commerce. Reading the book “changed my life” he notes. :

The company conceived and began implementation of a new business model, which Anderson broadly described as, “We will do well…very well…by doing good.

Over the next decade, Anderson and Interface continued to pursue this mission, establishing a new web of relationships linking thought-leaders in the sustainability movement with industry participants (customers, builders, regulators). The company’s promotion of learning about sustainability issues and sharing ideas and best practices spread its influence significantly beyond the boundaries of its core business.

The collaboration with other leaders has lead to the company’s Pletsus Web site for gathering and sharing “Practices Leading Toward Sustainability.”

Design Build or Integrated Practice

Those in the design build world are finding opportunities created by the dysfunctions of the conventional delivery process.

Is design build moving toward Integrated Practice? Or is it just another spin on a current model with the architect at the lead?

Here is an article from a recent conference on Design Build and Integrated Practice. This article was written by Cindy Frewen Wuellner, FAIA and PhD, a virtual contributor to Operation Mindshift.

Here is a quote from Markku Allison when I posed the question to him. Markku leads the effort for Integrated Practice through the AIA.

"Actually, architect led design build and integrated practice are NOT the same thing. Integrated practice is not a delivery method; it’s the term coined by the institute to describe how industry transformation will shake out for architects, and is a set of values and beliefs about practice. Industry consensus for the "name" of the delivery model behind integrated practice is integrated project delivery, which is also not the same thing as architect led design build."

I'll be curious to hear what others think.

Mindshift's mission involves understanding the technical elements of delivery, the models but as Markku points out - going deeper to the paradigms that frame and condition our models.

World Future Society's Top 10 Forecasts for 2007

I just returned from the 2007 conference in Minneapolis. Here are some of the top forecasts from the society.

There were several interesting session including a new paper soon to be released mapping body chemistry and brain orientation to Meyer's Briggs.



This link provides a written version.

Consider the worldshift!

Pause and consider. This is not a ripple. This is a rip.

Here is a link to the site if the video above does not work for you.

The New Platform - Web 2.0 - or just call it BIM

I've just returned from the BIM conference in Anaheim. Well... Building Information Modeling has hit its tipping point.

BIM has reached a 20% penetration. But most are still in the BIM 1.0 phase - 3D modeling, concept and design.

BIM 2.0 is still an early adopter application and should take off in 2008 as interoperability standards solidify. We will then reach a point where objects tied to data = budgeting, analysis and decision making as never before.

BIM 3.0 makes the revolution complete. BIM 3.0 promises complete virtual simulation and collaboration; from design, construction through life-cycle performance.

BIM exploits the shift from HTML to XML. What????

Sorry - this video will help you see the significance. Look for this tag line - "content is not longer tied to form." Information can be tied to any object or relationship within BIM. You might just call this intelligent design.

I watched the video three times before it sunk in. There's a lot going on but its worth watching.

We are Smarter than Me - Collaborative Book

"The central premise of We Are Smarter Than Me is that large groups of people ("We") can, and should, take responsibility for traditional business functions currently performed by companies, industries and experts ("Me")."

Management and Leadership, once the funnel for innovation, can often become the bottleneck for innovation.

Click here

"What do we mean? Let's look at some recent examples:

Procter & Gamble is recruiting 600,000 housewives to help market its products through word of mouth. In return for much greater reach and impact, the company is giving up control of the marketing message, relying on its community of customers/marketers to craft their own message in the most appropriate fashion.

Microlending websites provide the ability for individuals to lend to small businesses directly. The underwriting decisions (assessing the risk of each loan) are made by individuals, and the price of loan is established through lender bidding. We expect these lending decisions to be superior to the same decisions currently made by experts at banks.

Patients faced with rare diseases are increasingly turning to internet discussion groups to learn more about risks and treatment options, and as a result are participating with doctors more actively (in some cases much more actively) in decisions regarding their care.

A few books have recently been written on this topic, but they all fail to confront one central paradox. While they extol the power of communities, they were each written by only one person. We're putting this paradox to the test by inviting hundreds of thousands of authors to contribute to this "network book" using today's technologies."

We are seeing a sea change. This collaborative thing is gaining momentum, openness is becoming a must, command-and-control is giving way to front line empowerment and a new generation is right behind us who think this is the way things actually work. (And if they run into a roadblock they hack, mod and remix).