I’m planning to attend DemoCampToronto17 this coming Monday and StartupCamp in Waterloo Tuesday night. You should too.

As Edwin Hutchins writes, cognitive anthropology “turned away from society by looking inward to the knowledge an individual had to have to function as a member of the culture. The question became ‘What does a person have to know?’ The locus of knowledge was assumed to be inside the individual….But knowledge expressed or expressible in language tends to be declarative knowledge. It is what people can say about what they know.”

So what am I rambling about? As far as I can tell, cognitive theory itself only recently, early 90’s, turned away from focusing solely on the individual and what a person knows. They’ve since developed the notion of socially distributed cognition. The concept I love is that the cognitive properties of a group is NOT simply the sum of the cognitive properties of the individuals.

Software is facing parallel false assumptions now. Is there any software being built that focuses on socially distributed cognition? I’m not talking about web 2.0, groups, friends, tags, etc because that ain’t it. Ya sure, it’s a leading question and I’m talking out loud about what we’re working towards with brainpark but isn’t that what this medium’s about? Software that supports cognition in the context of an individual is good, but it would pale in comparison to software that tackles socially distributed cognition….maybe…..I think…..but I’m just one person….

Mark recently came out of the closet in mentioning that he is focusing “100% on leading Brainpark, Inc. a new software venture targeting the small to midsize company with a suite of networked collective intelligence solutions. More to be revealed soon…”

While it’s not news to most, I’m coming out as well. I’m spending parts of my current life supporting Mark and Bobby with product design and development. In doing that, I think we’re taking a unique path in product design. Unique in software, not so unique in every other industry.

What’s unique about it? We have yet to use a computer in any form. We use a LOT of paper, pencils, and pens. We are working hard to involve community members continually from day 0. The result is a rapidly iterative design process that’s highly participative from a user perspective. The hope is that we learn a lot as early as we can from real users.

Number four is booked for Wednesday Jan 23rd, once again at the Albion. Please sign up here to attend. Please come and check it out. If you’re interested in demo’ing, contact me asap.

Lists, lists and more lists. Instead of going to the effort of creating yet another list for you, I’ll take the even lazier route and paste someone elses…

“Software Engineering tips
Tip 0: You must have code
Tip 1: You must have a technical co-founder
Tip 2: Hire A+ engineers who love coding
Tip 3: Keep the engineering team small and do not outsource
Tip 4: Ask tough questions during the interview
Tip 5: Avoid hiring non-technical managers
Tip 6: Cultivate an agile culture
Tip 7: Do not re-invent the wheel”

We’re still looking for designers, see description here. We’re hoping to hold a group gathering late next week with people who are interested. If you’re interested, and haven’t contacted me yet, please do so asap.

I’ve never owned an Apple, and have never had the urge to, so I can’t comment but Dave Winer‘s story sounds insane to me. Apple’s clearly making some mistakes in my limited opinion.

$160 for a possibly used 80GB drive and then you ‘trick’ the owner into signing away their old drive? That’s just ballsy….

I’m on the hunt for designers. I’m actually really interested in finding some people with traditional design experience who are looking to make the jump to software design. Check out the description here and if it interests you in the least please contact me!

We’ll likely host some sort of group evening early Jan to meet all the people interested but we’re still working out those details.

Yes, I’m rereading a lot of Paul Graham today. Paul makes a great point about interesting projects.

“Before ITA (who wrote the software inside Orbitz), the people working on airline fare searches probably thought it was one of the most boring applications imaginable. But ITA made it interesting by redefining the problem in a more ambitious way.”

Some may think that our BrainPark project is boring old knowledge management for the workplace. Well technically it is, however, we’re spending these early days exploring the problem space to find the right problem to solve. I think we’ve managed to find it and part of the requirements was that it’s one we’re all excited about.

I have a sad history of hobby based research into company compensation and rewards plans. One concept I’ve always been attracted to is that of gainsharing. The basic concept being to tie any form of compensation to actual productivity. When actual productivity increases above a baseline then the people making it happen see some benefit instead of only the so called powers that be.

The only formal plan I’ve researched in any depth is one called The Scanlon Plan. Years ago I found a used copy of an out of print book on the plan. I believe this is it, since reprinted.

“The Scanlon Plan was developed from the innovative work of Joseph Scanlon during the 1940s and 1950s. Joe’s experience as a steelworker and union leader during the Depression prompted him to conclude that a company’s health, indeed its very survival, required a climate of cooperation rather than competition between labor and management.”

Joe Scanlon worked very closely with Dr. Douglas McGregor in the development of the plan. If you haven’t read McGregor’s 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise, I highly recommend it.

What’s my point here? Sorry, don’t have one, just some links and references to old reading.

Some Links…

• Is Gainsharing for You?
• A 1955 TIME article about Joe Scanlon