The document is a transcript of a talk given by Pete Forde at CUSEC in 2010. In the summary: Pete Forde gives a unconventional talk where he discusses various topics in a free-flowing, candid manner. He talks about his career in software development, starting his company Unspace, his views on entrepreneurship and leadership, and his unconventional approach to life and work. He encourages the audience to see their lives and careers as ongoing 5-year plans and to constantly challenge themselves.

1. NSFW
Pete Forde
January 19, 2010 @ CUSEC
INTRO
Thanks to Andrew, Phill, and all of the other volunteers. Thanks to you
all for deciding that someone you've never heard of is a more credible
way to spend your time than listening to the latest from IBM.
R for Restricted
I'm not going to abuse your trust, but I am prone to swearing and I will
be talking about sex. If you're not comfortable with that, I'm genuinely
sorry that you have to sit this talk out. I'll buy you a Dasani later.
ALSO, don't worry about trying to take notes. First off, I'm going to
give you a full on cheat sheet version of what you're hearing. Second,
I'm trying to capture your hearts and it's a lot harder for me to do that if
you have that drone part of your brain scribbling away in Emacs.
The exception would be that guy who draws amazing cartoons and
illustrations in real time during talks. I'd love it if that guy would draw
my thought process.
SO...
Iʼm going to give a chain of consciousness talk today. I'm going to
speak about the things that make my life interesting. If you end up
thinking that my presentation style is annoying, you should know that I
almost set this entire talk rhythmically to ambient electronic music.
1

2. I'm currently a partner at Unspace, which is a successful software
development studio in Toronto...
Where I spend my days (and nights)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leftist/3413712214/
We were the first company to do Ruby on Rails full time five years
ago, and we started building large iPhone content sites two days after
the thing was unveiled in America. We do work for startups, sports
networks, banks, advertising agencies, universities, government grant
bodies, and the united nations.
However, the thing about Unspace that really matters is that we have
big ideas and bigger hearts. The desire for every day to be interesting,
leave an amazing legacy and hopefully make the world a better place
informs EVERYTHING WE DO.
2

3. ON FIVE YEAR PLANS
Deep down, I want to be a designer... an inventor of culture. I want to
invent interesting things. I have to pay attention to what I find
interesting, and I have know idea how my life will end up.
And the thing about me is that even though I have no formal training,
and I can't draw a stick-man to save my life.
Maybe that should scare me — or at least deter me — but it doesn't.
How do I beat that fear?
I treat my life as a series of 5 year plans.
At this point, I'm 31 years old. I date women, but I refuse to identify as
straight because maybe I just haven't met the man of my dreams yet.
It's also worth mentioning that I dropped out of high school before my
last exam. I told my principal that I didn't want them taking any credit
for my future success.
At the time, I felt like a real badass. Yes, I happen to work my ass off
in a field that is often self-taught. But in hind-site, I've decided that I
was being a real shit head. I mean, I had all of the attitude, but I had
no way of knowing I wouldn't end up some starving drug addict.
My course of action was not repeatable. I can't in good conscience
recommend that someone drop out of high school, regardless of how
well you think you understand the world.
3

4. I've been lots of things, and had many identities. I've even visually
changed many times... I try to switch up up my look every 18 months
or so.
An urban explorer - specializing in subway tunnels and abandoned
buildings
A rock drummer - Hotel
A zine publisher - The Mortem Post
A hobby photographer - Domainride.ca
A record collector - I love indie rock, 1960's era jazz, and hapa haole
aka Hawaiian strings
Some things last longer than others, and some cross-over. The point
is that I tried on a lot of hats, and challenged myself to try things I
knew little about to see if the shoe fit.
I encourage you all to see your lives as an ongoing succession of five
year plans. The era of the career is long over, and that's a good thing
in my books. When you realize that you've been doing something for
five years, maybe it's time for the next step?
4

5. ON PETE
My father is an engineer. Engineers are perfectionists; as well they
should be. They build bridges and rockets.
To an engineer, there's no such thing as a good job that's unfinished.
You engineers almost always end up pedantic control freaks, and the
world thanks you for that.
Thing is, I've increasingly found myself to be a starter... the ideas guy.
I tend to lose interest when I get excited about the next idea. I'd make
a poor engineer.
SO
I used to try to do it all, and finish one thing before I'd start something
else. My father was always riding my back about doing "half-assed"
jobs on things and deep down we all want to impress our parents.
The moment I realized I was a starter, I felt a weight off my shoulders.
Too bad that it took 30 years! That's a whole lot of guilt.
I realized that even if I started a new project or company every week,
I'd never finish anything at all... so long as I was trying to do it all
myself
FAIL
5

6. I needed to realize that the only way to see *any* of my ideas to
completion, I had to let go
I needed to recruit a tribe of DOERS looking for inspiration, and
instigate teams to realize these projects
Knowing that some will succeed while others will fail *grandly*
This all might sound incredibly arrogant, but I prefer to call it
audacious!
Seth Godin says that "If you're not uncomfortable in your work as a
leader, it's almost certain you're not reaching your potential as a
leader."
That's great news because I could not be more uncomfortable with the
idea that anyone would see me as a leader.
It's also worth mentioning that I'm actually really shy and introverted.
There was a really good article in the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago
called "care and feeding of your introvert" that summed me up
perfectly.
Often when I'm out at a tech event, I really have to force myself to be
a lot more outgoing than I actually am. The article talks about feeling
an almost out of body experience where you are watching someone
else talk, like it doesn't feel like you.
Then later, I just feel completely drained and I have to be alone for a
little while. You know, kind of go fetal and watch something stupid like
Fringe or Castle.
Care and feeding of your introvert
Atlantic Monthly
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch
6

7. ON SUCCESS
Happiness vs. Success
Steve Jobs secret to success: "You've got to find what you love. Going
to bed at night saying I've done something wonderful. That's what
mattered."
Thing is, a lot of people often confuse happy and successful. Some
people find a balance — usually the ones that change little and love
what they do.
But many financially successful people end up lonely and bitter. They
lose sight of what makes them feel good and convinced themselves
that the pursuit of wealth and fame at any cost was an end into itself.
I propose that we should measure our wealth by the quality of our
friendships.
7

8. And so with that said, I want to talk about an article Malcolm Gladwell
wrote recently. He's the Tipping Point guy and thinks he's pretty smart.
The Sure Thing
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25227904/The-Sure-Thing-The-New-
Yorker-Jan-18-2010
Malcolm Gladwell
So in this article he talks about how there's this common
misconception that entrepreneurs are these daring, risk taking
cowboys who sign contracts without looking at them. Instead, he's
found that most of the truly "successful" empires were built by
extremely risk averse entrepreneurs.
- Ted Turner - cable mogul
- Sam Walton - founder of walmart
- John Paulson (15bn profit, 4 personally, 1.25 in one morning) CDS
aka sub-prime mortgages
"There is almost always a moment of great capital accumulation — a
particular transaction that catapults him into prominence."
I think there's something that really needs to be injected into this
conversation. These men are PREDATORY ENTREPRENEURS.
They prefer loopholes and power-plays to innovation and integrity.
It might work, but it isn't noble. Not in my books.
I am a better man.
8

9. "You don't have to fuck people over to survive"
Seth Tobocman
"You don't have to fuck yourself over to be successful"
Pete Forde
The business world — especially tech — is full of inspiring stories like
Zappos, Etsy, and even Apple.
Steve Jobs: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."
Andy Warhol said
- Good business makes the best art
- Think rich, look poor
9

10. ON BEING AN ARTIST
I think it's great that I can bring up Warhol at a tech conference in
2010. Honestly, the guy was a total dick but he had a lot of business
smarts in him.
And he knew how to throw a good party.
He was a great artist, not because of his work — most of which he
didn't even make to begin with — but because he understood the big
picture of society and culture that enabled him to make such an
impact.
For example, he knew that if you want to build bridges, you can't just
invite artists. You need to bring in punks and bankers, politicians and
rockers, engineers and soldiers. You throw them all into a room and
see what happens.
What was the impact of this blurring of the lines? We're all artists now.
Programmers see their code as art. Arrogant programmers see their
code as poetry. Ruby programmers see their code as haikus!
But it's not just us. Do you know the names Ronald Tackmann? How
about Blaine Nordahl?
Ronald Tackmann - arrested 47 times
The Escape Artist
http://nymag.com/news/features/62893/index1.html
The Silver Thief - Stephen Dubner
http://stephenjdubner.com/journalism/silverthief.html
Blane Nordahl - $10M in silver, basically a brain surgeon of theft
They say that nobody gets to decide what qualifies as art, and I think
Warhol deserves some of that credit.
10

11. ON STARTING UP
So, how did Unspace come to be?
I started Unspace five years ago with two friends. We were sharing
about 170 square feet of closet and we had the opposite of lofty
ambitions. Everything that happened in the first two years was
basically the path of least resistance and the result of sharing common
space.
We had this weird notion that Unspace would be worth nothing and
just function as a quasi-legal umbrella partnership that we could write
off tech toys through.
I got lucky: while both of those original two partners have since moved
on, this was a classic recipe for disaster!
Starting up with a friend - Daniel Tennier
http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-friend.html
Partnerships often suck!
1. Make your agreements explicit - unspoken promises lead to sad
faces
2. Detail your agreements - it's never "too early to discuss this"
3. Don't be afraid of discussing the bad stuff - "what if..."
4. Write things down - no disagreements later
5. Don't make it work at all costs - it's your baby, but know when to
walk away
6. Don't assume things will get better with time - it's too easy to
rationalize
What do we both mean by “the business is successful”?
What do we both mean by “the business is not successful”?
What happens if one of us needs to voluntarily pull out, for any
reason?
11

12. What happens if one of us cannot work on the business anymore, for
involuntary reasons?
What are the conditions under which weʼd call the business a failure
and pull the plug?
My honest opinion is that if you don't absolutely 100% need a partner,
you should just bite the bullet and be the captain of your own ship.
The litmus test to give any potential partner is simple: can they do
80% of what I need them for as an employee?
Keep in mind, just because they are not your partner doesn't mean
you can't give them equity! But it boggles my mind how quickly geeks
cede control of their future.
At the very least, Google Chris Dixon's "Founder Vesting" post and
use that as a model.
http://cdixon.org/2009/04/21/founder-vesting/
12

13. ON PRODUCTS
So you've decided to start-up. Unless you're sitting on significant
personal wealth, you need to either borrow money or do some client
consulting work "on the side" to make ends meet.
At least, that's what you tell yourselves!
The ugly truth is that most consulting companies started as product
companies that were broke. Often times they lose sight of why they're
even there in the first place.
That's because consulting is like a drug. At first it's recreational, but
then one day you wake up and you're looking for your next fix.
13

14. ON CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
At this point, I piss people off all of the time because they ask my
opinion and I tell them to stop while they're ahead. Either they don't
have any money, they have no experience in their desired market, or
their idea just don't make sense to anyone at arms' length.
Some people thank me, others get really angry.
To everyone here, I will suggest that you read The Four Steps to the
Epiphany by Steve Blank.
He's a successful entrepreneur and investor who has identified
several trends in successful companies that he's worked with.
The sad thing is that they're remarkably obvious in hind-site. Don't be
a solution looking for a problem, that's not a scenario that you can bill
for.
Steve proposes that product development is a false-start, and that we
should engage in what he calls customer development. Start with a
hypothesis, and then build just enough product to take it to some early
clients and see if they will pay you for it.
Rinse and repeat until you have a hit — before you engage a
marketing team, and most definitely before you hire anyone to do
sales.
The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2048
Product development vs. Customer development
14

15. ON LEADERSHIP
Seth Godin says: The secret of leadership is to paint a picture of the
future. Go there.
When we first started Unspace, I just wanted to code. I'd been
programming all of my life, since I was six. It was 2004 and I'd broken
up with my girl, my band imploded, one of my best friends was dying
and I was broke.
I met this awesome dude named Ryan. He came from a music
industry background and had tattoo sleeve on each arm. He'd be the
business guy and I'd just put my head down and code.
Eventually Ryan left, and the sky didn't fall. I became a lot more
involved in bringing in new clients and I was good at it.
Meghann came on board and we started hosting events. The single
smartest thing Unspace ever did was start Rails Pub Nite in Toronto.
It's like the opposite of a user group. We just take over a pub and
socialize, we wanted to build a community. Hell — we just wanted to
meet other Ruby programmers. Remember, when Unspace started,
there was no such thing as a Ruby company. You could count the
number of people working with Ruby professionally on a few hands.
One of our clients asked us what would happen if we got killed, and
we had no answer.
15

16. Therefore, the real reason we did Rails Pub Nite was to create
meaningful competition for our company. This germanated an
ecosystem, one that we were surprised to find ourselves at the top of.
The truly Machevelian thing is that we get so much further ahead by
not calling it Unspace Rails Pub Nite. It's just a bunch of folks. Once a
month, a guy named Pete emails you a reminder, and it's usually
unforgivably late.
We've done 43 RPNs now. The mailing list has 450 Rubyists and we
get 40-50 people out each month. It's a combination of developers,
people wanting to hire them, and people doing .NET or PHP that want
in on the action.
I encourage you to return home and start your own Pub Nite (unless
you live in Toronto).
16

17. ON BUILDING YOUR TEAM
One of the best things that comes from running Pub Nite is that we get
to meet the best talent first. Probably the only thing Joel Spolsky
continues to be right about is the utter importance of hiring the best of
the best to work on your projects.
However, the way we go about deciding who to bring on is probably
not what you'd see in larger companies.
First off, we never look at resumes. Resumes are corporate detritus
from another era. They are dead and don't even realize it, yet. The
only way to hire people is to talk to them.
Hire musicians
Hire people you would take long car trips with
Don't look at resumes, look at their hair
Don't hire heroes
Perfect team size 8-14
Unspace will never grow beyond 14 people
When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do
amazing stuff.
17

18. ON GUILT
Why I feel like a fraud
http://blog.asmartbear.com/self-doubt-fraud.html
Impostor Syndrome
40% of successful people consider themselves frauds
- You dismiss complements, awards, and positive reinforcementnt as
"no big deal."
- You believe you're not as smart/talented/capable as other people
think you are.
- You worry others will discover you're not as smart/talented/capable
as they think you are.
- You think other people with similar jobs are more "adult" than you
are, and they "have their shit together" while you flounder around.
- You feel your successes are due more to luck than ability; with your
failures it's the other way around.
- You find it difficult to take credit for your accomplishments.
- You feel that you're the living embodiment of "fake it until you make
it."
18

19. ON REFACTORING
You might not know that I have perfected a new software design
methodology!
I call it... the embarrassing pattern.
http://www.vetta.org/2008/05/scipy-the-embarrassing-way-to-code/?
1. Start writing your code. 1000 lines
2. Remove there are some inefficiencies. 700 lines
3. Realize that part of your code is just running an existing algorithm,
and you can replace large blocks of code with a call to a function
library. 500 lines
4. Accept that you're really re-implementing a pattern defined in the
90s. 300 lines
5. See that the entire core can be abstracted in a general and fast
way. 200 lines, half of which is comments, and a quarter of which are
trivial supporting calls like array declarations
Now this is great in a sense. You end up throwing away most of your
code now that all the real computation work is being done by
sophisticated functions written before you were born. The bottleneck
in writing code isnʼt in the writing of the code, itʼs in understanding and
conceptualizing what needs to be done. Once youʼve done that, you
simply express this in a few lines and hit go.
The downside to all this is that you spend months developing your
complex algorithms and when youʼre done you show somebody the
result of all your efforts — a page or two of code. It looks like
something that somebody could have written in an afternoon. Itʼs a
little embarrassing.
19

20. ON GETTING AHEAD
Derek Sivers recently wrote a great article called "There's no speed
limit" which is about his music teacher promising to give him a few
years' music education in a few afternoons.
The guy threw shit down so fast and hard that it was dizzying, and
Derek picked up that shit and digested it and kept coming back for
more.
Derek Sivers
http://sivers.org/kimo
There's no speed limit
Quoth Derek:
The pace was intense, and I loved it. Finally, someone was
challenging me - keeping me in over my head - encouraging and
expecting me to pull myself up, quickly. I was learning so fast, it had
the adrenaline of sports or a video game.
Kimo's high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me “the
standard pace is for chumps” - that the system is designed so anyone
can keep up. If you're more driven than “just anyone” - you can do so
much more than anyone expects. And this applies to ALL of life - not
just school.
THIS!
20

21. We live in an era when any self-motivated net-savvy individual can
give themselves a highly customized first year university equivalent
education in incredibly niche things...
Wikipedia, Google and sites like Hacker News allow us to throw off
our own training wheels and master anything we set our minds to.
Next time you're watching TV out of boredom, just remember that it
only takes 100 hours to get reasonably proficient at a new skill.
Someone watching 20 seasons of survivor could have learned enough
about photography, cooking, caligraphy, guitar, and Spanish that
they'd be an entirely different, far more interesting person if they'd just
made better choices.
21

22. ON ADVENTURE
Few people I know take making good choices as well as Giles
Bowkett.
Giles has spoken at CUSEC as well as our own conference,
RubyFringe, where he gave far and away the best talk I've ever seen.
Giles is a really passionate guy.
He's determined to lead a life less ordinary, and he seeks out
adventure.
CLIP 11:28 - 12:55
Giles Bowkett
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/archaeopteryx-bowkett
- Giles has lost about 100 pounds since this video, which is awesome
- Giles might seem extreme, but I consider him a pure and wonderful
person
People worry about our tools becoming "mainstream"
- He says that the mainstream never catches up
- If we use tools that the mainstream is afraid of that gives us power
- It's up to us to decide if we're going to use that power for good, or for
awesome
- sit... 4 years... at a desk "who are these weasel brained muppet
fuckers?"
- we create things that didn't exist before
- when someone who doesn't have our knowledge is calling the shots,
we are working with a subset of possibility
22

23. vc: 1. economic instability 2. sock puppets
disregard vc until they come to you
build the market, then provide services
too cheap to fund, too small to see
you ARE the internet startup
a programmer is not a what but a how
apply programming to your passions
build something for yourself not for VCs
REAL ARTISTS SHIP!
Another adventure that I hope to have some day:
Traveling by Cargo Ship Around the World
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/travel/articles/travel-by-
cargo-ship-around-the-world.shtml
23

24. ON DATING
They say that if men want to date successfully online, they should first
create a profile masquerading as a woman and see what kind of
responses they get.
I posit that the same experience translates to the development world.
All you men that exhaust yourselves suggesting that there isn't sexism
in the development community, I challenge you to invent a persona: a
young, hot blonde female programmer. I dare you: set up a twitter
account, a github account, join a few open source projects or
computer security mailing lists and see how you're treated.
ON DATING WEBSITES
Your online dating website will fail.
ON BIOLOGY
The only thing worse than being lonely is being with someone who
makes you feel guilty for being who you are
Onanism
Self Love
Develop a healthy, positive relationship with yourself
I recommend that you develop a healthy appreciation of pornography
Masturbation is medicine, and it's available under the table!
Seriously though, it's probably one of the easiest things about our
body that we control and yet it's villainized by many religions and
subject to awkwardness and cultural stigma
24

25. It's considered enough of a problem by the Christian Right that they've
got activists spreading the word that people who don't masturbate will
have "Soulgasms" when they get married.
'Soulgasms' and the war on masturbation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYVicYHNrAA
What's a soulgasm? It's like an orgasm, but with God watching. Sign
me up!
MY NAME IS PETE, AND WE ALL MASTURBATE.
25

26. ON MARKETING
What social media marketers haven't figured out is that people can
sniff out why someone is asking for their attention.
Plus, too much social marketing is often counter-intuitive.
Some products or communities do better when they're smaller. More
exclusive. Harder to get into. Some communities thrive precisely
because they're small. Push to make one of these products better
known and you might just ruin the entire thing.
That's why night clubs only last for a year or two with few exceptions.
"No one goes there anymore - it's too popular."
One name that comes up a lot in marketing circles is a bald dude
named Seth Godin. He writes a lot of short books that beat you over
the head with a single interesting concept.
He's a smart guy but I think most of his books can be summarized in a
line or two. Sorry Seth!
- read "The Dip"
- succeed at life by figuring out what to quit
- talks about how the first 10% of any skill is easy and fun, the next
80% sucks ass
- skip "Tribes"
- this is the most important takeaway
People don't believe what you tell them.
They rarely believe what you show them.
Then often believe what their friends tell them.
They always believe what they tell themselves.
What leaders do : give people stories they can tell themselves.
Stories about the future and about change.
26

27. ON DESIGN
I believe that we have to shape the culture we want, and design the
future we need.
I saw an amazing talk by a British dude named Matt Webb called
Scope.
http://video.reboot.dk/video/486775/matt-webb-scope
product ideas for themselves and other people
designs products, even though he's not a designer
I think this Matt is REALLY cool.
He starts off with an attempt at nailing down what design is:
Victor Papanek says “Design is the conscious and intuitive effort to
impose meaningful order.”
you have to know you're a designer to do design
a machine cannot be a designer
Matt Webb's business partner Jack Schulze says problem solving
alone isn't sufficient to be called design
Jack says "Design is about cultural invention"
So Design has invent, to create new ways of doing things, and to
contribute to culture.
"Because when you contribute, when you participate in culture, when
youʼre no longer solving problems, but inventing culture itself, that is
when life starts getting interesting."
culture is "the things that make life interesting"
27

28. ON MACROSCOPES
Matt Webb also introduced me to the concept of Macroscopes.
John Thackara
http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20051219/john-thackara-cultural-
theory
A macroscope is something that helps us see what the aggregation of
many small actions looks like when added together.
The way I think of a macroscope is as something that shows you
where you are, and where you are within something much bigger —
simultaneously, so you can comprehend something much vaster than
you suddenly in a human way, at a human scale, in the heart.
We need macroscope ideas because when the world changes, what
we invent – as designers – needs to change too, or it wonʼt be
relevant.
There are people here at CUSEC who understand the huge amounts
of data the Web provides, and so creating macroscopes is something
we can offer culture.
Every time you learn new language or API, itʼs like you have eaten a
macroscope. You see and feel the world in a new context.
You are able to not just consume, but to produce. You can invent
culture.
Every new tool you learn is like eating an API. It becomes part of how
you think.
28

29. ON IDEAS
Applied Minds
Danny Hillis, ex-Disney and Thinking Machines
little red phone
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/06/67951
Applied Minds is a small company that invents, designs and
prototypes breakthrough products and services for both industry and
government. We are an interdisciplinary group of artists, scientists and
engineers, with skills in architecture, electronics, mechanics, physics,
mathematics, software development, system engineering, and
storytelling. Our projects range from toys to cancer treatments, from
buildings to algorithms, and from off-road vehicles to high-resolution
displays. Our team of world-class innovators enjoy building the next
industry-changing technology ideas from concept to prototype.
The Impossible Project
Dr. Edwin Land - "Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly
important and nearly impossible"
http://the-impossible-project.com/
http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2009/12/features/the-
impossible-project-reviving-instant-photography.aspx
Florian Kaps
Kacie Kinzer - Tweenbots
http://tweenbots.com/
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the
help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a
straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and
rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right
direction to reach their goal.
29

30. ON GLOBAL FABRICATION
Neil Gershenfeld
MIT Center for Bits and Atoms
http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_gershenfeld_on_fab_labs.html
We've already had the digital revolution. What comes after?
The internet of devices
The original principle of the internet (computers) and brings it down to
the physical world (devices)
You can have an unreliable computer and restore state to make it
perfect
Never understood the boundary between computer science or
physical science
Computer science might be the world thing that ever happened to
computers OR science
The killer app of fabrication is products for a market of one person,
which touches a passion unlike anything seen in the world since the
discovery of radio or flight
Empowerment => Education => Problem Solving => Job Creation =>
Invention
We are now in the mini-computer era of digital fabrication
Machines that make machines need businesses that make
businesses
It's a cross between micro-finance and VC
30

31. There's been a sea-change in aid from top down mega-projects to
bottom up grassroots microfinance investing in the roots
Yet we still see technology as top down mega projects, if this room is
just clever enough we can solve the problems and science will save
us. But the other 5 billion people on the earth aren't just technical
sinks they are sources. The real opportunity is to harness the
inventive power of the world to locally design and produce solutions to
local problems. That's not 20 years out, that's today. It seems like the
technology is the hurdle but it's actually the social engineering.
http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=10707
William Kamkwamba
The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
- famine forced him to drop out
- fell in love with science at the library
- taught himself electronics and design by looking at the pictures
- constructed a windmill that provided his family with continuous
electricity and completely transformed the way we lived
MakerBot
Robots that make things
Hacklab.to
http://www.makerbot.com/
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32. ON GRAND VISIONS FOR THE FUTURE
Walt Disney
http://www.the-original-epcot.com/
The Progress City
The Venus Project
Jacque Fresco
http://www.thevenusproject.com/
Future By Design
http://www.futurebydesignthemovie.com/
ON BEING HAPPY
Steve Jobs: "Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone
else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the result
of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown
out your own inner voice."
Jessica Hische
http://www.humblepied.com/jessica-hische/
“The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you
should be doing for the rest of your life.”
END
Who the fuck is @peteforde?
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pete @ unspace.ca
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