Before I started innberg and innvire I used to dive. As a matter of fact, I was very much in love with diving.
I really like to swim and to sail. Never got the hang of wind-surfing, but the few times I dallied in surfing, I also really liked it. I guess I am just a water guy..
So from 2000 to about 2005 I dived quite a lot. Really enjoyed it too. I am a firm believer of the DIR way of diving.
Recently I felt a really strong urge to be under water again. So I decided to dive again, and being a DIR diver, it is more or less an all-or-nothing approach. I started biking more often, I recently started doing regular Pilates work again, and plan on diving again. A lot.
I find this new activity gives me lots of energy and takes my mind of things, allowing me to focus better and in general be more productive..
So stay tuned for some diving experience updates..
First off, I am beginning to hate flash. It happens too often that my beta flash player completely crashes my browser.
This is very conflicting because I think Flash brings so much to the web…
Anyway, I was halfway writing this story when it crashed right from under me… Boring…
As I was saying, A few books i recently “read”. Reading in quotes because I am addicted to audio books. I commute quite a lot. Almost always an hour or more. Sometimes its too early to bother friends, colleagues or clients and then it is nice and productive to listen to an audio book.
As I am a readaholic this is perfect.
7 Habits
The first book i ploughed through is the unabridged twelve hour “The seven habits of highly effective people”. I didn’t think I would like this book as the author is very religious, and this does not sit well with me.
But as it turns out, I got a lot out of the book. Be proactive, Start with the end in mind, Put first things first, Think win-win, Try to understand first then to be understood, Synergize and Sharpen the saw. They are actually helpful and form a good basis to organise your life.
The best tidbit I got out of the book: “Love is a verb, not an emotion”. Love the emotion is the result of Love the verb.. This makes a lot of sense to me. I am married to my lovely wife Veronique for over ten years. And we are together for 18 years. That means that almost half of my entire life I have been with this woman. Next year it will be exactly half, and after that we will have been together longer in our life then apart. We are still very much in love, and love each other very much. But it is not always the emotion of butterflies. The butterflies can be caused by other things and people. But Love the verb is always there. But I digress..
A whole new mind
This book is a bit over the top. It claims we are entering a new era, the conceptual age that follows up the information age. Caused by outsourcing, automation and abundance. It’s over the top because I think abundance is maybe not really true. With the rising prices of raw materials, the Peak-oil phenomenon etc. etc. What is interesting is the emphasis on whole mind (left and right directed) thinking. Critical for innovation and very much the substance of my companies iSchool offering.
The six senses: Design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. It makes much sense to me and is nice to hear examples and stories about it.
From good to great
This was given to many employees at a company I coached on user experience, Exact Software. I borrowed a copy and I am in the middle of it.
I really liked what I read so far. I will give a full update soon.
I promised a write up of this excellent book. In short it’s a great book.
Unfortunately I don’t have it anymore. But it’s for a good cause. I gave it away to the Asia Europe Institute in Kuala Lumpur.
I was there in the beginning of March as a visiting professor, teaching “Designing for User Experience”. I also lectured about the importance of design thinking. It was a great opportunity to interact with post grad students from all over Asia. It was good to be back after an absence, I was there in 2003 and 2004.
I will write more about it when my course module for next year reaches completion. Anyway, I have to find myself a new copy of Designing interactions…
It was quiet also, and there was too much wind. Anyway, I tried to drop onto the straight bank from the ledge….
I landed with too much weight over my front wheels, and was launched. Launched onto the flat where I neatly landed on my side.
My right elbow was under my ribcage, and the impact forced all the air out of me. I gasped then hurled, scaring all the kids.
A bmx Grrl came up to me and asked: “are you ok, Mister”. I was, as i hadn’t broken anything. But later on I found out I bruised two ribs. Such slow and painful agony… Now two weeks later and it is almost manageable, but still, it hurts quite a lot, and lifting things or grabbing things, or just sleeping is not fine and dandy.
So, although this homeskillet won’t be riding anytime soon…
Today was the 16th of December, about a week away from the shortest day of the year.
We had a long long stretch of bad weather in the Netherlands, but today the sun was out! It was cold, about 2 or 3 degrees (celcius of course, you barbarian!). But the sky was crystal clear, blue and beatiful.
We had arranged a longboarding meet, some call it a bomba :), with the excellent folks of www.longboarden.nl and it was fun! We were supposed to go to the “vlasakkers” and even though we had checked in the week, it was closed today :( Dissapointment. But the “dode weg” (dead road) was really cool!
This is a picture i made, but the battery on my canon died too quick :(
What was really cool about today is that i succeeded to slide!
I started out to slide on my trusty Jason Lee Blind, which was not only apreciated by me today.
I succeeded to perform stand-up slides, backside slides, and even a semi succesful frontside!
I really wanted to slide my Dervish also, even though the wheels are basically much to soft, BUT, I succeeded. It seems that once the edges of the wheels are a bit worn, it begins to move easier..
now its practicing time, and before you know it, i will be sliding like this:
I know some pictures were made of me, so I am waiting to include these, stay tuned…
I haven’t read anything of this author, yet. But the promise of his latest work is very good.
Gary Hamel has apparently written other best selling books on new management styles, but I don’t read a lot of those.
Some quotes in his upcoming work The future of management captured my interest however, because it resonates very much with what we propose with the innvire concept.
His key message to leaders is to shift from a culture of control to one that embraces personal creativity, posturing that this is the only path to future innovation, growth and prosperity.
Some choice quotes:
“You can buy obedience and diligence and even intellect almost anywhere in the world for next to nothing.”
“We’re going to have to get people to bring to work their initiative, their creativity, their passion, and those are human capabilities that cannot be commanded. Those are gifts that people either choose to bring to work or not.”
“The existing management model was built to drive alignment, enforcement and control. What management tried to do over the last 100 years was to regularise the irregular, to drive the variety out of processes…we happen to live in a world today where it’s irregular people with irregular ideas who create all the new economic value and the wealth.”
“Organisations are less human than the people who work there. [people are inherently creative and innovative] but somehow when we get to work that adaptability, that innovation literally gets bleached out of people between 9 and 5.”
“The ability to aggregate human capability via the web, that’s not going to go away.”
This is exactly the stuff we are fighting against with the innvire product. We want to bring creativity, adaptivity and innitiative back to the work floor. We want to help managers give employability a new meaning, by facilitating knowledge workers in their information transformation work. Exchanging ideas, explaining concepts by sketching, stoking each other again.
Let me know if you read the book, what did you learn from it? Should I read it? What do you do to bring creativity back to the workplace?
My company, innvire participated in a competition: the most innovative workspace.
This is really exciting because it will give us a lot of visibility. I also think we stand a good chance to do good. That may sound cocky, but if you read about the competition and what the jury is looking for it is almost as if the competition was created around the innvire products.
Go ahead, see for yourself on the competitions page. Be sure to vote and check out the others, and let me know what you think.
This is the movie we linked to, Eelco made the images, I did the editing. Together we choose the music, and worked on the concept. It was great fun preparing our entry:
I only rode it a teeny weenie bit today, but I really enjoyed that little ride. Tomorrow I will ride it harder, do a bit of downhill, and maybe even try out my slide gloves…
The whole thing is loaded to GO! There is a slight discoloration in the board, but I don’t really mind…
Let me know what you think, and what tricks i should learn first. Dying to learn cross-steppin and chopping-wood.
Oh, by the way, the asphalt underneath that Derwish is the brand new stuff of the biggest skatepark of the Benelux, right here in my hometown of Amersfoort.
“Today was a good day”, you know that tune by Ice Cube? That is what is buzzing through my head at the moment.
This morning i got up, saw it was nice weather again. Breakfast with the family like it is supposed to be.
Then i jumped in the car and drove to “Vlasakker”, a military training park where the army learns to drive with tanks, and probably all kind of different things as well. This place is BIG.. Check it out on google maps
And here is a picture:
The orange lines are very mellow donwhills, you really need to pump or push to get some speed.
The green lines are a bit better, but you don’t have to slide or break anywhere…
What is very nice about it, is the total quietness of the place. No cars, hardly anybody around. I even saw some wildlife.
Cruising here on sunday morning was awesome..
Here is how it looked today, iphone is great for taking pictures :)
I even started to learn skogging although i do it different, regular pushes and then a a couple of switch mongo pushes.
Ideal for going up these slight hills.
The walk back up the long green line took me 10mins. The view there is awesome, check out the pano over on flickr.
After that i went back to the Amersfoort Schothorst Pool, aka Kippen Pool (chicken pool).
I took a snap of that too:
And guess what, i could at last carve the basic line. Drop in in the corner, carve frontside through the pocket you see, and then backside around in the other side of the pool. My lungs screamed and i felt my muscles “souring” up. But that’s ok cus:
It’s quite unbelievable. Last week I started rolling again. This morning i was googling to see if there were any boarders around whose Loaded i could use.
What do i find to my great surprise; Amersfoort, the city I live in has its own skate pool. This is so strange. I used to dream about skating in such a park.
And today dropped in. It was such an adrenalin rush, dropping in, carving. I even pulled a 5-0 the guys there told me.
A 5-0 is when three of the four wheels leave the ramp, or pool.. Anyway, it is briliant, i am going to skate there much more…
This is a video from that pool:
and an image
I also found out that Amersfoort will host one of the largest skateparks in the benelux, 4000m2. Just beside my house! Too crazy.
It hasn’t been constructed yet, but i went there today. A huge asphalt slab. Lovely to carve around on… I will keep you updated.
The last thing i found out was that there is an army base with a huge downhill just outside my town. I think i am going to ride there tomorrow…
If my muscle ache will permit it, because all that pushing is really hurtin.
A good SL friend of mine talked to me about this quote. And it is such a great one.
Guess whom it is from. I said guess, not google.
So you googled right, Charles, or, Ray Eames. The beautiful furniture and house designs of this couple always fulfilled me with a sense of simplicity, happiness, beauty and joy. In short, happiness.
And now they also gave me a great quote.
It will go right along with Walt Disney’s: “You can’t put a price tag on creativity”.
Charles and ray, being happy, getting inspired by having fun, and for a change not linking to wikipedia.
As i am head of interaction and service design at my company, innberg I just had to get this book, designing interactions.
I just started reading it and have so far only flipped through it, but I already like it very much… I will update this article soon once i read it, and will let you know my thoughts on it.
for now I will say it looks magnificent, and a lot of my heroes are featured in it….
I have had a Treo for the last two or three years and was quite hooked on it. But the iphone is in such a different league, it does not compare.
I find that the keying is quite manageable, because i would thumb texts already. As someone who does not only write English you definitely have to get the fix for the auto correction thingy…
What I like most about it is the BIG screen, and the fact that it has Wifi. Everybody complains that it does not have UMTS, but who cares. My Treo did not have it, and the way iphone pulls in mails make it feel snappy…
Plus today i viewed an PDF presentation on my iphone, it just WORKED like it should, fantastic. I wonder if it also works with word or powerpoint attachments… But the fact it works with PDF is actually all that is needed….
It is so smooth to sync my contacts and calendar… Everything works and I just love the simplicity and elegance of it.
I am so happy with it… Oh and in case you wondered, i live in the Netherlands, and i run vodafone on it….
it rocks!
The pictures are not half bad, as you can see by my girl here playing TV with an Bol.com (dutch amazon) book packaging.
I might change the name of this category to gadgets :)
Last week I saw an movie clip of Adam Colton riding a longboard.
It got me so stoked i started riding again. I first went to the attic where i had to move a ton of junk to get to my old skate stuff.
I finally found the little shoe box with spare parts. I needed that because the Mark Gonzales paris board i have is from when I was focused on streetskating. But i also had a really really old Jason Lee Cat in the Hat model from Blind skateboards.
I took that, put a pair of thunders underneath, mounted a couple of slimeballs i still had and hit the streets. I almost slammed straight away, but then i got the hang of it. I skated my lungs out, carving and sidewalk surfing. It was a blast.
Today it was nice nice weather again so when i went to the playground with my wife and daughter I decided to ride there. It was nice. My three year old daughter wanted to skate also, which made me feel very proud :-).
I love the feeling i get from the films of Adam Colton and the films on the Loaded site. I am sure i want a long board, just for cruising and sidewalk surfing.
I am doubting between the pin-tail, the dervish or the vanguard. What would you choose and why?
Update:
Wow, thanks for all the advice.
It seems the Dervish wins hands down for being a better all rounder…
I actually mailed Adam Squared and he hinted that the vanguard might be more comfy…
I will have to find a shop and try both.. If i fail to do so i will go for the dervish :)
Here are the other 
