Mi spiace, è in riunione

Bernie DeKoven ha una bella pagina con una specie di tassametro che ti permette di calcolare il costo di una riunione, secondo per secondo. Molto istruttivo.

Se vuoi approfondire trovi anche un sacco di links utili sull’argomento, e uno studio dell’Università della California del sud a Los Angeles che ne 1993 ha scoperto quanto segue:

  • The average meeting takes place in the company conference room at 11 in the morning and lasts an hour and 30 minutes.
  • It is attended by nine people — two managers, four co-workers, two subordinates and one outsider — who have received two hour prior notification
  • It has no written agenda, and its purported purpose is complete only 50% of the time.
  • A quarter of meeting participants complain they waste between 11 and 25 percent of the time discussing irrelevant issues
  • A full third of them feel pressured to publicly espouse opinions with which they privately disagree
  • Another third feel they have minimal or no influence on the discussion
  • Although 36% of meetings result in a “complete” resolution of the topic at hand, participants considered only one percent of those conclusions to be particularly creative.
  • A whopping 63% of meeting attendees feel that underlying issues outside the scope of the official agenda are the real subjects under discussion.
  • Senior executives spend 53% of their time in meetings, at an average rate of $320 per person hour.

Allora tutto sommato non fanno male le società giapponesi a tenere le loro riunioni di sera, davanti a un bicchiere di birra, parlando del più e del meno. E’ così che raggiungono le decisioni importanti.

One OS to rule them all

Ti giro uno snippet dalla Langa List molto inquietante:

Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows CD. To my astonishment and distress he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned it on. I was upset because the CD had become precious to me, but he said ‘Do not worry, it is unharmed.’

After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said ‘Take a close look at it.’ To my surprise the CD was quite cold and it seemed to have become thicker and heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, in lines finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

4F6E65204F5320746F2072756C652074

68656D20616C6C2C204F6E65204F53

20746F2066696E64207468656D2C0D0A

4F6E65204F5320746F206272696E67

207468656D20616C6C20616E6420696E

20746865206461726B6E6573732062

696E64207468656D

‘I cannot read the fiery letters,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says”

‘One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,

One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
….”

If you can imagine yourself not doing what you are doing, do something else

A Mark Pilgrim, un anno fa, è stato chiesto di non bloggare più:

“As I write this, the year is 2000, and the Internet is a battleground of intellectual property disputes. Some people would like you to believe that, without proper financial incentives, music, literature, and computer software would disappear. After all, who would make music if they can’t make money on it? Who would write? Who would program? I know the answer. The answer is that musicians will make music, not because they can make money, but because musicians are the people who can’t not make music. Writers will write because they can’t not write. I’ve been programming for 16 years, writing free software for 8. I can’t imagine not doing this. If you can imagine yourself not doing what you’re doing, do something else. Do whatever it is that you can’t not do.”

Yo-Yo Ma and the Silkroad Project

Concerto inaugurale della stagione delle Serate Musicali, ieri sera a Milano con il violoncellista Yo-Yo Ma (Stradivari Davydov-DuPre del 1712) Ma e il Silkroad Ensemble, composto da:

Gevorg Dabaghyan, duduk

Joel Fan, pianoforte

Jaime gonzalez, oboe

Joseph Gramley, percussione

He Cui, sheng

Colin Jacobsen, violino

Jihun Kim, Kayagum e voce

Shane Shanahan, percussione

Wu Man, pipa

Il programma:

J. del Enzina: Levanta Pascual, Levanta (1492)

Jia da Qun: The Prospect of Colored Desert (2000)

Vache Sharafyan: The sun, the Wine and the Wind of Time (1998)

Jee-Young Kim: Tryst (2001)

M. Ravel: Trio per violino, violoncello e pianoforte in la minore (1914)

Insomma, hai capito che non si trattava di un concerto qualsiasi, anche solo per l’ensemble di strumenti e per i brani proposti.

Yo-Yo Ma


Poi mi piace molto l’idea di un progetto ampio, multiculturale, che impegna la vita di questi artisti per un lungo periodo e per un lungo percorso; non quindi girando per le sale da concerto del mondo secondo un calendario prefissato dalle agenzie molti anni fa, in un rito forse un poco stanco, un poco ripetitivo.

Poi sono bravissimi, tecnicamente mirabolanti: Wu Man con la sua pipa, liuto cinese dal manico corto (primi riferimenti all’epoca della dinastia Tang), ha fatto cose… che non si vedono neanche sugli anelli di Orione.

E Dabaghyan con il duduk? un suono malioso che avevo già sentito usare da Peter Gabriel in alcuni suoi pezzi molto “atmosferici”, se mi passi il termine.

Il Ravel finale, dopo tutta la musica orientale, diventava molto più chiaro e comprensibile.

Infine un bis con il gruppo al completo, con una danza Turca molto ritmata, allegra e decisamente ballabile. Morale: mi sono divertito come un matto.