Jay Miller - circus scrum master

I took Patrick to Jay Miller's circus last Sunday. We absolutely loved it. A thought struck me while I was watching - a circus is lot like a high-productivity software team - a group of highly expert, highly professional, highly motivated individuals, with a variety of different talents, coming together for a specific purpose. Hours and hours of deliberate practice behind the scenes. Clowns providing plenty of fun. A ring mistress lightly controlling the whole show. Out of sight back-room staff doing all the lighting, sound, and fake smoke wizardry...
My best moment of the whole show was a failure. Henrik (not Kniberg) the extreme juggler bounced balls off the ground rather than throwing them up into the air. It was just amazing. A complete blur of motion. Then he tried some extra balls. And then some more. And then he dropped two. He turned to the audience with his arms out as if to say "this is hard you know". And the audience gave a big cheer. It was a great failure. If you want to do something spectacular you have to be prepared to fail.

Contact cards

A while ago I decided my old business cards were rubbish and I threw them out. They were boring, and like many software applications, full of stuff that rarely, if ever, got used. Who cares what my business is called? Who cares what my "title" is. I think part of the problem is the phrase "business card" and in particular "business". The card does not get you any business! It's simply for making contact. So now I have Contact Cards. I read Dan Pink's book A Whole New Mind a while back and in it he recommends drawing yourself in 5 lines. I found my attempt and used that. My friend Richard at Express Print in Taunton did all the rest.