jameswang.net » Things I’d like to do

Genius Machine

James Wang — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:52:13 +0000

I love playing with ideas. I’m definitely an idea guy. Unfortunately, though many of them do, many of them also don’t tend to ever see the light of day. I was reading Jason Curlee’s blog and saw this post recently talking about the book Genius Machine. Here’s quoting his analysis of it.

Ideas enter the process fuzzy, weak, and partially baked. Using the eleven steps–

Distinction (seeing something new),
Identity (knowing who you are and why you are driven to share your idea),
Implications (exploring every possible consequence of your idea),
Testing (find the breaking point),
Precedent (who else has done something like this),
Need (who will it be most valuable for / focus on your audience),
Foundation (discover the underlying principles or rules),
Completion (can your idea stand on its own),
Connecting (flattening the learning curve),
Impact (is the impact of your idea in alignment with your goals)
and Advocacy (you must champion your ideas)

You can check out his post here and while your at it, check out the rest of his site. I regularly find myself saving his stuff to think about and chew on for later.

TED Thursdays: Tim Ferriss – Smash fear, learn anything

James Wang — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:35:16 +0000

I thought overall he has some very motivational things to say. A lot of what I got from him is, if you are scared, ask yourself why and what’s the worst that could happen. Learn from the best. Reading some other people’s comments, he might over simplify some things in the sense that they may not be exactly reproducible. Specifically, he learns japanese, buuuuut he says it was because he had a kanji poster that helped him narrow his problem space. Having a poster on my wall of stuff might help but the fact that he was also living IN Japan AND living WITH a japanese family probably helped a little too. I do agree with narrowing and breaking down your problem space though and also that attitude is a huge part of achievement and success. He’s got a great amount of attitude, achievement and success.

Like his talk? Check out his book:

The Future of Education

James Wang — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:54:21 +0000

I wonder if this group has a US sister organization. I love what they are envisioning and definiteyl want to check out some more of the resources on their site. Excellent ideas for any educator. It would be so cool to see some of this integrated into our Sunday School Program eventually. I think the keys are that the web and technology is leveraged to allow deeper participation and more any time anywhere learning and faster acquisition of knowledge. Fantastic stuff.