Today, I had an idea for coordinating the art and pictures we hang on our walls at home: a “direction room”. The essence of it is that we hang a picture on a wall oriented towards the direction where the subject of that picture is or was. This layers into the decoration of the room a sense of orientation augmented by representing the location of the subject – metadata of that subject.

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Some people say “next-gen” referencing a specific, named, defined, or bounded Generation. Other people say “next-gen” to describe something they think is on the cutting edge, representative of what is to come.

I stumbled upon the observations above while reading this HBR artilce: http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/03/twitter_sxsw_and_building_a_21.html. It is an author-cum-interviewer humbling himself before the audience, whose power he realized after underwhelming them with his interview of Evan Williams, @ev, Twitter Founder.

Haque says, “That’s how next-gen organizations take on the challenge…” It seems you could interpret this as Haque declaring there is a Generation for Organizations – either somewhat here, on the cusp, which he defines here; or, already defined. Alternatively, you could interpret this as Haque putting chrome finish on another part of the vehicle he’s driving to make a point. I think he means it casually, but he might be using the latter, buzz-word, form.

Just like neuroscientists learn from studying brains that “don’t work like others”, so to speak, I learn from studying statements that don’t work like the others. This isn’t simply picking on a buzz-word used by an HBR author. It is the prelude to the curiosity of what I wondered next. Read the rest of this entry »