Nov20,2007

Agenda

• Order beer
• Update on wireless mesh networking/meriaki units
• Update on marketing (posters)
• Creation of Projects
• Discuss compensating presentations longer than 20 minutes with a beer

Presentation

The presentation will be called "Life Hacks" (a la the website Mind Hacks). I am going to propose a practical methodology for dramatically improved quality of life via improved processes. I suspect that I will use a software development analogy - drawing parallels from my work in software engineering and quality and process improvement to the subject of life re-engineering. A bit of psychology wrapped around a geeky metaphor.

What I propose each potential attendee do is prepare one Life Hack that has dramatically improved the quality of your life that we can discuss after my presentation.

Format for your Hack:

1. Describe an area of your life that you determined needed improvement. Try a one sentence description that is clear (and catchy!)
2. Describe the technique you used to try and improve the area.
3. Describe the results of your life hack...

Thats about it - I will talk about a particular process for increasing the quality of life (which I will invent this weekend) We can share about different Life Hacks that we have tried out and the results of them -perhaps we can come up with a plan to try out someone else's hack in your life for the week...

This will be documented on the project page: Debugging_our_lives

Meeting Minutes

• We had two new members at our meeting
• add a link to wiki syntax guide
• Our presenter proposed flash cards, but other members proposed we install SVN or some type of CVS, and start to log our bugs.
• We now have a dedicated table if we call on Tuesdays, and even better, we get half price apps if you're with the Yashy Idea Society!
• We discussed project planning your life, vs some members who live mostly by participating with chaos
• There was a recommended book, "Your money or your life"
• We should agree on how IP issues will be handled, it was suggested we use creative commons for our meetings, the same as is used on this wiki.
• At the beginning of our meetings, we will now have a language portion, where all members say a word in a different language (or something like sign language), to be used by the end of the meeting
• We discussed if we would compensate speakers with a beer, and voted against this idea

It was propose that we follow the software development piece of debugging, for debugging our own lives.

• ban the word "and" from bug reports, otherwise it could be multiple issues, and perhaps even E-prime
• bugs (problems needing debugging) must be atomic + consice
• We tend to prioritize elsewhere, and often debugging ourselves is not even on our priority list
• one of the challenges is determining the actual bug, and not looking elsewhere
• evaluate/debug your marriage annually
• ask an expert to determine a bug
• get someone else to debug your bug
• try cognitive therapy instead of traditional
• you choose your own bugs and prioritize them, no one else cares about your bugs but you
• choosing the right tool, such as:

painting
intuition
meditation
dreams
luck
prayer
reading 
luck
consulting with experts

• find bugs that have already been resolved

We agreed that reflection/meditation time should be a required part of your day, and most of us don't dedicate any "quiet time". It was suggested that getting to know your intuitive, non-rational side should be more of a priority, and only using your rational side as a tool. One member mentioned that for any irrational fear he has had, he challenged it head on and it resulted in great growth. We touched on the term "Social currency" which I would like to see the group discuss further, perhaps it will tie in with the image consultant next week.