Hell really hath frozen over. Apple has released a Windows application. iTunes!!!!! Just used it on a Wintel box and it’s IDENTICAL to the Mac version. There is a bit of discrepancy in the OS controls – I guess those that are iTunes specific are Aquafied and Mac-like and those that are dependent on the Windows Toolbox, for efficiencies I imagine, are, how should one say this, uhhh – butt ugly. As in, those bits look like other Windows apps. For example, the Preferences panel. The tabs and buttons and sliders are from the Windows Toolbox, whereas the Equalizer uses MacOS controls. At any rate, the Windows world finally gets to use an application that has been thoughtfully designed for human beings. And iPod owners finally get to throw away MusicMatch forever. Well, you can put it in the Recycle Bin (which means you plan to reprocess, reuse, etc). What were the folks at Microsoft thinking (or smoking) when they were copying the MacOS’s Trash?

Ejaz suggested I write about this issue …

– Begin Ejaz –

Project Managers and Management

didn’t find enough time to write some more? :$ alright, I was thinking that what is management got to do with project managers or other form of managerial posts? Coz over the couple of months, I have found them complaining about resource management, HR management and time management problems. Well if they can’t MANAGE, what else have they got to do?
So this could be the preamble of sabeen’s next blog entry? so here we go!

– End Ejaz –

Hmmmm …

Management is typically divided into a number of categories. Usually, the more hierarchy there is, the more mis-managed the business. b.i.t.s. is run like a pancake – totally flat. Structures, wherever they exist, do so only to facilitate teams, make quick decisions, respond to clients, and sign cheques

Managing financial/technical resources, time, and human beings is extremely complex. Adding more and more managers to meet deadlines or achieve success or whatever one is trying to do, is not the answer. IM(not so)HO, it’s about building a culture of ownership, responsibility and respect. EXTREMELY hard to do but not impossible. Of course it helps if the company is small. A Project Manager or any kind of manager needs to have emotional intelligence, common sense, an understanding of the big picture, and a burning desire to get the damn job done.

Senior management often tends to micro-manage. Very dangerous. Taking risks is extremely important. People need to be given a chance to prove themselves and if they feel trusted, they often surprise everyone, including themselves. When we started b.i.t.s., we expressly decided not to hire a Project Manager. As a result, everyone learned how to manage tasks, provide feedback, work in teams, handle criticism, and face clients. Now that we’ve grown, we have a couple of people handling projects, but they wear other hats too so we still don’t have a “whip” standing over people, forcing them to get things done. Everyone is “conscious” and “aware” of their responsibilities.

It has been hard and arduous – getting this far. We have “managed” to do so because we are a learning organisation. So-called senior management is not afraid to admit to follies, bad decisions, or that some potentially good idea back-fired and didn’t quite work as expected. We constantly review our practises, processes, and methodologies and fine-tune them based on feedback. Another thing that helps is when management puts in the same kind of hours as the rest of the team. It is an amazing way to bond and to feel connected.

Ejaz, what you are talking about is a result of management not being self-aware (my favorite word these days). It’s easy to blame and point fingers and find scapegoats. Obviously the job of managers is to handle all of the things you mentioned. If those areas remain issues, then management has failed. If it also fails to introspect, the hurdles become more and more insurmountable.

More later … if you want …

Instead of hyperlinking references to the names of artists, as I said I would, here’s a small selection of art in the form of a prev|next slideshow. Yes, there ought to be an index page with thumbnails, because blah, blah, yadda, yadda. OK, whatever …

View Images

One little story about Pablo Picasso’s “Mother and Child” that I wanted to share … Picasso was a brutal editor of his own work and originally, the Mother and Child also had a Father!! However, for some inexplicable reason, he sliced the canvas and got rid of the dad.

A little bit about the painting: it represents a woman seated on the seashore holding a baby in her lap. The naked child leans backward, reaching his hand up toward the mother and she gazes down and into his eyes. The woman is dressed in a simple white gown reminiscent of the clothing of the ancient Romans or Greeks.

The painting, what was left of it after dad was eliminated, found its way into the Art Institute of Chicago, in whatever usual way art finds its way into galleries and museums. Some chap, a few years later, visited Picasso, I think in Paris, and took along a catalog of the Art Institute and said, hey look, your painting is up there, isn’t that cool? And Picasso said, wait a minute, and pottered off to the back of his studio and emerged with the bit that he’d chopped off and said, here, you can give this to them to hang up as well!

So now, what visitors to the gallery see are three discrete pieces that comprise the Mother and Child …

1. The mother and child
2. A description of what happened (not all of what’s written above but some of it) and a proposed intersection – a line drawing, joining the two pieces with an additional prop in the form of a fish in the father’s hand, which he is dangling playfully just above the child’s hand.
3. The father

The Art Institute has some very insightful “liner notes” that make the experience more meaningful. Also, I was lucky to catch the tail end of a lecture that was being given to high-school students about this piece so managed to gain a little extra information.

Spent the day at the Art Institute of Chicago – obviously I am aging as I didn’t RUN to the Contemporary/Modern galleries. Meandered very leisurely through European Painting … and took in loads of Manet, Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh …

Bartolomeo Manfredi’s “Cupid Chastised” was really awesome. Mars, the god of war, beats the crap out of Cupid for having caused his affair with Venus, which exposed him to the derision of the other gods.

Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” was spectacular. He is surely the ultimate pixel pusher.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Moulin Rouge renditions were very bizarre and intriguing. Lucian Freud’s “8 Legs” was a bit weird and disturbing. A naked figure poses awkwardly on a bed holding a dog. Another pair of legs protrudes from under the bed. The dog is asleep, but the man holding her is awake and staring away from the viewer. Huh?????

Got a super surrealism fix – Dali, Duchamp, Magritte – loved Dali’s “A Chemist Lifting with Extreme Precaution the Cuticle of a Grand Piano”.

Marc Chagall has done a fantastically huge tribute to America in stained glass and celebrates the greatness of the United States and acclaims it as a country of freedom, liberty, culture and religious tolerance. Good thing for Chagall that he’s dead and doesn’t have to suffer through what America has now come to represent.

Quickly raced through an interesting exhibition – Intimate Encounters: Paul Gauguin and the South Pacific which marks the centenary of Paul Gauguin’s (1848 -?1903) death by celebrating the Art Institute’s recent gift from a Chicago collector of 40 drawings and prints by the great Post-Impressionist artist. Represented are works created during his first Tahitian sojourn (1891-93), the Paris interlude (1893-95), and his final years in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands (1895-1903). This body of work reveals the artist’s search to put a face on the South Pacific culture he encountered during his last years.

Warhol’s giant portrait of “Mao”, nearly 15 feet in height was very powerful. Andy Warhol strove to examine every aspect of mass culture through silkscreened images of products, celebrities and political figures.

OK. The art in the museum is phenomenal. However, at no moment in time did I have a sense of where I was and where I could potentially go next. It was a totally disconcerting maze and I nearly missed the modern/contemporary galleries altogether. I could never decipher the Floor Plan and as a result was drifting from one space to the next like a lost soul. For years, we have, as creators of interactive virtual realities, striven to reproduce the museum experience. WELL, as an Information Architect, I was constantly conscious of the complete lack of Info Architecture in the Art Institute and longed for a navigational structure of some kind, breadcrumb trails, You Are Here, sensible cross-selling, contextual links … I also really believe that sometimes less is more and the hugeness of all things American really boggles my brain.

Will hyperlink images to the above references at some point.

Cheers!!