My plans for 2016

Long sto­ry short: my plan is to make plans.

Hub­bub has gone into hiber­na­tion. After more than six years of lead­ing a bou­tique play­ful design agency I am return­ing to free­lance life. At least for the short term.

I will use the flex­i­bil­i­ty afford­ed by this free­ing up of time to take stock of where I have come from and where I am head­ed. ‘Ori­en­ta­tion is the Schw­er­punkt,’ as Boyd says. I have def­i­nite­ly cycled back through my meta-OODA-loop and am firm­ly back in the sec­ond O.

To make things more inter­est­ing I have exchanged the Nether­lands for Sin­ga­pore. I will be here until August. It is going to be fun to explore the things this city has to offer. I am curi­ous what the tech­nol­o­gy and design scene is like when seen up close. So I hope to do some work locally.

I will take on short com­mit­ments. Let’s say no longer than two to three months. Any­thing goes real­ly, but I am par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in work relat­ed to cre­ativ­i­ty and learn­ing. I am also keen on get­ting back into teaching.

So if you are in Sin­ga­pore, work in tech­nol­o­gy or design and want to have a cup of cof­fee. Drop me a line.

Hap­py 2016!

Orientation is the Schwerpunkt”

Putting this here so I can point to it. Such an impor­tant con­cept that has real­ly changed the way I approach deci­sion mak­ing. I used to oper­ate in some­thing like an observe-decide-act man­ner. But under­stand­ing that you can ori­ent to change your options is cru­cial for the abil­i­ty to win.

Ori­en­ta­tion is the Schw­er­punkt. It shapes the way we inter­act with the envi­ron­ment — hence ori­en­ta­tion shapes the way we observe, the way we decide, the way we act.

Ori­en­ta­tion shapes the char­ac­ter of present obser­va­tion-ori­en­ta­tion-deci­sion-action loops — while these present loops shape the char­ac­ter of future orientation.

—John Boyd, Organ­ic Design for Com­mand and Control