Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104

a2b3 lunch non-summary August 16, 2007

We had about 35 people for lunch at Eastern Accents. The question of the day way "what event is on your calendar" - here's the results in the simplest most basic format w/links to Arborwiki for detail pages.

in the rough order of the events

tomorrow procrastination

every Thursday a2b3 lunch at Eastern Accents (arrive early to avoid a line)
every Friday coworking at Pure Visibility in the a.m.
Saturday music event at Great Oak Cohousing starts 11am
Saturday Facebook event in Chicago
this weekend Ypsilanti Heritage Festival
Monday deadline for "stick around Ann Arbor" story
Tues UPA Generational Design in Livonia (carpool available)

Aug 24 Dexter Cider Mill opens. Fresh, hot donuts.

Aug 28 Leaders Connect / Connect Ann Arbor event
Aug 30 Lansing-Mackinaw City bike ride

After Labor Day back to school, 1st day kindergarten
1st weekend September AAUW book sale at WCC

Oct 13, 20 Ruby conference sponsored by Ruby user group
mid Oct MyReggae launches

Oct 27 ArbCamp - Bar Camp Ann Arbor at WCC Morris Lawrence building

Nov 30, 31 NSFNET Legacy 20th reunion in DC area

when this note shows up on Facebook I'll tag it with some people and we can generate the corresponding events there.

thanks all for an awesome lunch.

Chicago trip Monday, Feb 5 2007

I'm planning a trip to Chicago on Monday, 5 Feb 2007 (as of this writing that's this coming Monday). My return travel is out of Union Station at 6pm, so I'm organizing a meetup starting at 4:30pm or so somewhere near Union Station. Details on upcoming.org: Meet Ed Vielmetti in Chicago near Union Station. RSVP whatever way suits you best.

Technorati Tags: chicago, meetup, upcoming.org

Creativity is an import-export game (Ronald Burt)

How to get a good idea? Take a good idea from outside your group and bring it in. The quote is from Ronald Burt, U Chicago Graduate School of Business. Some resources and links:

Ron Burt's home page.

danah boyd's 2004 blog post on Ronald Burt, Structural Holes and Creativity.

NY Times article Where to get a good idea: steal it from outside your group. ($$)

"Structural Holes and Good Ideas," American Journal of Sociology (2004). In a few years it will be available on JSTOR, but not yet.

UPDATE:

Dale Hunscher writes about Open Source Science and how ideas from open source software development can spur scientific innovation. He quotes an Harvard Business School Working Knowledge interview with Karim Lakhani which says in part

"Innovations happen at the intersection of disciplines. People have talked about that a lot and I think we're providing some systematic evidence now with this study," Lakhani says.

ok, more - on the topic of user-driven technical invention (where the "outsiders" are the customers and the "insiders" are the company) - from the manifesto of Lakhani's userinnovation web community

Empirical research is finding that users rather than manufacturers are the actual developers of many or most new products and services – and that they are a major locus of innovative activity in the economy. This finding opens up new questions and avenues for exploration in fields ranging from economics to management of technology to organizational behaviour to marketing research. Examples are patterns in innovation by users, characteristics of innovating users, design of a user-centered innovation process, economics of a distributed innovation process that includes users as innovators, and social welfare implications of innovations by users.

(the site is currently throwing errors, but what a great idea...)

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