Building Buildings in Google Docs

Everyone who knows me knows how excited I get about collaboration - and how especially excited I was when Google Docs' drawing tool was launched as a collaborative editing surface. On a few occasions, I've initiated collaborative scribbling sessions with 3 or 30 people simultaneously, just for the creative kick we all get out of it (an especially active session was triggered by my favorite web-tech blogger, when her quick ping to her followers triggered a flood of creative participants).

When I saw the quality of content a few others had created when we added drawings to the Google Docs Template Gallery, I was inspired to try some myself. So, for a few moments (ahem) per day over the past week, I ventured on a more soloist approach in an attempt to create some useful and realistic-ish drawings of some great city landmark buildings. I initially set out to draw, in rough form, just the Empire State Building. Hmph... that was easy enough - so I just kept going. Transamerica was a bit more challenging, and the Space Needle required some artistic license. My favorite building (second of course to my real favorites), the Chrysler Building, almost made me cry give up - but I persisted and even got that into a form which (when squinting) is acceptable...

So the template drawing is in the gallery (full preview here) - enjoy it, use it, laugh at it, or make fun of my rare obsessive behavior which resulted in these drawings. Maybe next time I'll invite a few dozen of my closest artistic friends to collaboratively create every other landmark building in a tenth of the time ;)

Heaven on Earth for some of us

There's a special place, near Princeton, NJ, which my Dad and Mom discovered (as far as I'm concerned, it didn't exist until they discovered it). They would go there together constantly, as it was close to home for them - in fact, it was 'home' for them (if, like my Dad, you listen to Roger Waters and believe that "everybody got somewhere they call home").

There's art amongst the trees and ponds and open fields. There's vision and beauty and mystery. There's love and friendship and childhood dreams. It's practically an imaginary place you'd visit in your dreams - but it's all right there for you to touch and experience with people - which is probably the part that makes it so special. It sheds the one most regrettable part of a great or mysterious dream - the inability really share the experience with anyone.... At this place, called "Grounds For Sculpture", you can share it.

That's what my parents did. They shared this place with each other and they shared it with us ("the kids")... My Dad always told me about this place and gave me that "Jonathan... in your wildest dreams..." pitch (which I just loved), but, regrettably, I never got to experience it with him... so I guess that part will always make this place seem just a bit dream-like for me.

On the day these photos were taken - which, by the way, don't do justice to the place like my Dad's photos did - we happily and permanently made this a place to share with my Dad. We dedicated a bench to him - at his favorite spot, overlooking the sailboat in the pond, in the foreground of the painter's scene. His best friends and family helped make this happen - and now, we all have a new place to sit... a new home...
Thanks, Mom.

Product Managers aren't exactly artists... but...

Making my first foray into the art world this weekend, I went to a demonstration by an artist, Elizabeth Pruitt, in a gallery near my home. It was intriguing... to watch someone slowly turn blotches of paint into a practically alive version of still objects. And, while watching Elizabeth, an analogy of painting artists to software product creators came to me quite clearly.

Elizabeth set up her still life model to be a pre-defined image of what her product would become. If you didn't like the way the roses sat atop the box, or if you just don't like brass urns and grapes, than you know in advance that you probably won't like her finished product - even before her brush hits the canvas. On the other hand - if you love the way these objects fit together the way she has created the physical model, and you've already enjoyed the beauty of her other paintings, than you will love this particular painting when done (which we did!).

The point is (yeah, I'm finaly getting there) that Elizabeth defines her product well before she paints it. She figures it all out before any tubes of paint are even opened. The objects, their relationship to each other, the colors, the shadows, the light (!), "the story" (as she puts it). Do all painters work this way? I think not. I'm guessing there are some which start painting without a real vision of where they'll end up...and while they still may achieve brilliance, they couldn't convince anyone else of that until the work was done.

It seemed so clear to me that product managers - at least in the software space - also work closer to one of those methods or the other... either diligent about defining every behavior of their finished product, every graphic, every navigation, every functional feature - or - loosely outlining only the highest level definition of what they are creating (uh..."web-based collaboration", as an example)... while most fit somewhere in between these two extremes (guess which side I am closest to ;)

As I thought about this blog entry - it also ocurred to me that this line of thinking is very close indeed to a brilliant Malcolm Gladwell speech (a rendition of which I heard at a sales conference about a year ago) which expands on the concepts put forth by David Galenson in his book "Old Masters and Young Geniuses".... Here's a quick excerpt from his site:
"Experimental innovators work by trial and error, and arrive at their major contributions gradually, late in life. In contrast, conceptual innovators make sudden breakthroughs by formulating new ideas, usually at an early age."

Seems like analogies come easy when comparing creators in any medium - just took my a bit by surprise at first since it seemed painting was so far from my work for me when I first stepped into that gallery.