For those of you who are interested in the case method as a tool for teaching and learning, David Garvin of the Harvard Business School has an excellent article in the September-October issue of Harvard Magazine. Better yet, it is available online:

All professional schools face the same difficult challenge: how to prepare students for the world of practice. Time in the classroom must somehow translate directly into real-world activity: how to diagnose, decide, and act. A surprisingly wide range of professional schools, including Harvard's law, business, and medical schools, have concluded that the best way to teach these skills is by the case method. [Making the Case: Professional education for the world of practice]

Garvin's research and writing have focused on organizational learning long before it was a popular buzzword. This article offers extensive background on the origins and history of case method teaching as well as insights into how it is evolving.

8:35:25 PM •  • comment  

Power to the Edge:  A new book by Dave Alberts and Richard Hayes - open sourced in its entirety by CCRP. 

This book is truly a must-read for anyone interested in decentralization and the social and organizational relevance of shifting power to the edge, whether in a commercial or a defense context.  As you read about the technology enablers of the edge, it'll become clear why products such as Groove - as COTS enablers of the fully-networked collaborative environment - have such immediate relevance to the defense community.

A debt of gratitude goes to John Stenbit and Lin Wells for catalyzing the creation of this tremendously timely, useful and relevant piece of work. [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]

Something to add to my high-priority reading list (as opposed to my much longer "get to it someday" readling list). There's certainly major new possibilities in organizational design that make it feasible to distribute decision making more widely and the competitive environment makes that distribution much more strategically relevant.

5:38:43 PM •  • comment  

Classic Video Games And Computers. While looking up music lyrics i found myself clicking on one 1980s site's link to classic video games. They turned out to be implemented in Flash -- yuck, but in the usual Net way it lead to me reading up on early VideoGameHistory. The real gem on that front is Stewart Brand's 1972 article from Rolling Stone, on Spacewar and computing in general:

I asked Alan Kay if Spacewar had been played over the Net.

Since I was looking for emulators anyway, I also dug up the most recent version of VICE, which among other things emulates the CommodorePet, my first computer. [AbbeNormal - Abbe Normal]

Another example of all the good stuff you can find on the web. Brand's Rolling Stone article is one of those classics that I've been wanting to lay my hands on for a while.

Of course, this is available as a labor of love. While you're at the site, check out the rest of the coverage about the original Spacewar.

3:31:59 PM •  • comment  

RSS feeds galore.

Dan Bricklin has finally attached an RSS feed to his blog.  Thanks, Dan.  Over the past year, the number of Web and eMail holdouts has been steadily (and thankfully) decreasing.  A few remaining that I'd love to see embracing RSS in their subscriber notification & distribution models:  Mark Anderson's SNS, Esther Dyson's Release 1.0, Dave Farber's IP.  C'mon, Mark, Esther & Dave ... it's truly a "reader-friendly" approach. [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]

I've been reading all my news exclusively via my Radio aggregator for sometime now.  One site I really miss - is "Good Morning Silicon Valley". I really wish they had an RSS feed.

[Marc's Voice]

Another blogger sees the light.

As Ozzie says, RSS is "truly a 'reader-friendly' approach." If making it easier for your readers is one of your priorities, there's no excuse for making them come to your site if they want to focus on your words and ideas in an aggregator.

3:07:57 PM •  • comment