Scicamp
I just got back from a manic weekend with scicamp. It was an awesome event and the energy and enthusiasm that was there was just amazing. I was really happy to take part, though by no means was it easy nor all pleasant. Indeed, it was gruelling. But I felt enthused having done it.
There were seven projects for consideration and I chose we-need.org. I chose it because it seemed really simple in what it wanted to do. I know I've tried to explain to knirirr why he's wrong to be a libertarian and why I can't agree with him, and I've had to accept that he's crazy and he's not going to ever listen. However, the free-market theory of socialism I created for myself to explain to him why he was wrong was something eye-opening, and it's relevant because, with the exception of one or two projects, all the projects at scicamp are some attempt to create a social needs-based market. we-need.org was that in its very pure expression. Not only that, but it was aimed towards local government, which takes the approach of: here's how much we pay, here's what we offer and here's how we shoe-horn people into those categories. Once it was explained to me, even I can see that the current system is dreadfully inefficient. Plus, of those involved in local government who do want to make a difference, many of them have no idea how to gather the information to make good decisions on. Therefore they're crippled.
Anyway, to sum it up, it was about visualising need so that local government authorities could take better action, plus setting the stage to create a market that would reduce the local authorities involvement, encourage social entrepreneurship and just get individuals involved as well.
At the end of the weekend, we'd produced a simple map where there were people shown on it with needs based on simple hard-coded categories. We didn't win, but the team that did deserved it and, I don't think this project will die.
The process of getting there was interesting, and what I got out of it was interesting too.
It all started in the pub on Friday. I was thinking of going home, having talked to some cool strangers, and before I did, I wanted to talk to the guy in charge of we-need.org, as that was the project I favoured. I tried to get an idea of what he wanted me to do technically. He tried to sell we-need.org to me. I got annoyed and stuck my heels in. He increased his sales pitch. We got no where, very, very fast. Eventually, I drew a diagram of how I thought it looked like. This diagram would then go on to be presented at the presentation Sunday. In terms of the sum work I did, it was the most I contributed to the project. Saturday morning started with a really cool discussion about everything, showing my diagram (newly modified) to the rest of the group, having it being debated and then accepted and going through convoluted discussions of the business phase and technical phases. I was clearly the one who understood best what the technical side of the project was and I knew how it should be done and divided. I had this feeling that I could see all the pieces of the project fitting together in my head and if someone just gave me a team of talented programmers and a few weeks, I could have delivered it all.
Once the technical phase got underway, I was useless. Worse, I let the uselessness get to me and didn't do the simple things I could have done. We had Ruby on Rails specialists, so I decided that we would use that instead of anything else. But once we did, I lost control of the techies and became useless. I tried to learn and catch up, but I couldn't learn fast enough to be of use. So I switched to doing some HTML and CSS, but I was too rusty to do even that.
So, out of it I got three things:
I learnt how to work in a team, particularly a team comprised of non-techies, and I enjoyed that part of it extremely. Especially learning how to co-work with a particularly strong and sometimes overbearing leader who didn't understand my part in things. This is not to say that the leader was bad, in fact he was inspiring, but it took me a lot of effort to work with him and it felt like progress was bashing my head against the wall.
I learnt that my ability to plan and project technical work is extremely strong. I'm naturally good at it and maybe I should have a think about developing that more.
I learnt that my techie skills in terms of web application leave a lot to be desired. There are a lot of talented people out there who do it as part of their work and I compare very badly to them, plus I'm seriously out of practise. I want to work on my HTML and CSS skills (it was particularly in demand and I could almost do it) and learning Ruby on Rails would be good.
There were seven projects for consideration and I chose we-need.org. I chose it because it seemed really simple in what it wanted to do. I know I've tried to explain to knirirr why he's wrong to be a libertarian and why I can't agree with him, and I've had to accept that he's crazy and he's not going to ever listen. However, the free-market theory of socialism I created for myself to explain to him why he was wrong was something eye-opening, and it's relevant because, with the exception of one or two projects, all the projects at scicamp are some attempt to create a social needs-based market. we-need.org was that in its very pure expression. Not only that, but it was aimed towards local government, which takes the approach of: here's how much we pay, here's what we offer and here's how we shoe-horn people into those categories. Once it was explained to me, even I can see that the current system is dreadfully inefficient. Plus, of those involved in local government who do want to make a difference, many of them have no idea how to gather the information to make good decisions on. Therefore they're crippled.
Anyway, to sum it up, it was about visualising need so that local government authorities could take better action, plus setting the stage to create a market that would reduce the local authorities involvement, encourage social entrepreneurship and just get individuals involved as well.
At the end of the weekend, we'd produced a simple map where there were people shown on it with needs based on simple hard-coded categories. We didn't win, but the team that did deserved it and, I don't think this project will die.
The process of getting there was interesting, and what I got out of it was interesting too.
It all started in the pub on Friday. I was thinking of going home, having talked to some cool strangers, and before I did, I wanted to talk to the guy in charge of we-need.org, as that was the project I favoured. I tried to get an idea of what he wanted me to do technically. He tried to sell we-need.org to me. I got annoyed and stuck my heels in. He increased his sales pitch. We got no where, very, very fast. Eventually, I drew a diagram of how I thought it looked like. This diagram would then go on to be presented at the presentation Sunday. In terms of the sum work I did, it was the most I contributed to the project. Saturday morning started with a really cool discussion about everything, showing my diagram (newly modified) to the rest of the group, having it being debated and then accepted and going through convoluted discussions of the business phase and technical phases. I was clearly the one who understood best what the technical side of the project was and I knew how it should be done and divided. I had this feeling that I could see all the pieces of the project fitting together in my head and if someone just gave me a team of talented programmers and a few weeks, I could have delivered it all.
Once the technical phase got underway, I was useless. Worse, I let the uselessness get to me and didn't do the simple things I could have done. We had Ruby on Rails specialists, so I decided that we would use that instead of anything else. But once we did, I lost control of the techies and became useless. I tried to learn and catch up, but I couldn't learn fast enough to be of use. So I switched to doing some HTML and CSS, but I was too rusty to do even that.
So, out of it I got three things:
I learnt how to work in a team, particularly a team comprised of non-techies, and I enjoyed that part of it extremely. Especially learning how to co-work with a particularly strong and sometimes overbearing leader who didn't understand my part in things. This is not to say that the leader was bad, in fact he was inspiring, but it took me a lot of effort to work with him and it felt like progress was bashing my head against the wall.
I learnt that my ability to plan and project technical work is extremely strong. I'm naturally good at it and maybe I should have a think about developing that more.
I learnt that my techie skills in terms of web application leave a lot to be desired. There are a lot of talented people out there who do it as part of their work and I compare very badly to them, plus I'm seriously out of practise. I want to work on my HTML and CSS skills (it was particularly in demand and I could almost do it) and learning Ruby on Rails would be good.