tacit knowledge, virtual conferences & everything is awful
CC#30 - Hardly working, moving to opportunity & schematic maps
Hey there and welcome to ✨ CuratedCuriosity - a bi-weekly newsletter delivering inspiration from all over the internet to the notoriously curious.
Things I Enjoyed Reading.
🧠Why Tacit Knowledge is More Important Than Deliberate Practice
Some things you can learn by just reading a book about how its done, for other things, however, it seems almost impossible to make knowledge explicit. This article deals with the most promising approaches to learning tacit knowledge.
There is one other reason I think it is good to explore what tacit knowledge is: tacit knowledge does exist, and understanding that it does exist is one of the most useful things you can have happen to you. Once you understand that tacit knowledge exists, you will begin to see that big parts of any skill tree is tacit in nature, which means that you can go hunting for it, which in turn means you can start to ask the really useful question when it comes to expertise, which is: that person has it; that person is really good at it; how can I have it too?
💻 Hardly Working
I have been personally looking for tools/software to increase productivity by reducing my ‘addiction’ to notifications - big recommendation for anyone who wants to find space for deep work in a jungle of Slack messages, emails and calls.
I can’t remember the last time I went into (or ordered from) a restaurant without looking up its Google or Yelp reviews first.
We have become totally reliant on external factors to tell us how to lead our lives.
Where should I go? Check Google maps. What should I wear? Check Instagram shopping. What political opinions should I adopt? Check Twitter.
I think there’s an analogue to this at work:
What should I work on? It’s become easier and easier to outsource the answer to JIRA, Slack, Notion, or some other external source.
It’s become easier to be busy, but harder to be productive. To work on the right things at the right time.
🌐 Most Virtual Conferences Still Suck
Shameless self-promotion - I wrote down my thoughts on virtual conferences and how I think they could be improved
Almost two years into remote-first, I have the impression that most (but definitely not all!) online conferences still suck at getting these jobs done. Online environments obviously don't naturally lend themselves to fulfill the need for serendipitous encounters and social connections. But I think they are actually better suited than real life conferences to disperse knowledge. And for many conferences there is still a lot that could be done to make the experience better with respect to human interaction.
Food for Thought.
🏡 Can you move to opportunity? Researchers investigated intergenerational mobility for black people that moved to richer cities in the north of the U.S. because of job availability - and found that it did not have an impact on the potential of realizing the American dream.
💀 Kind of a bit creepy thinking of all the ‘dead’ internet users…
❎ Since 2015, Taiwan has been pioneering new forms of citizen involvement by using online platforms to build consensus. Will we see other countries adoption similar measures in the near-future? (Can Taiwan Reboot Democracy? [10min Video], Uber responds to vTaiwan’s coherent blended volition [6min Article]).
Random Stuff.
🗺️ What’s the purpose of a map? I had the pleasure to listen to a talk on ‘schematic maps’ at this years Outlier 2022 conference - you can find a collection of beautiful but in a narrow sense ‘incorrect’ maps here.
🧘 Just a good reminder.
🏘️ How can we build housing that is sustainable, fosters inter-generational communities and minimizes the space needed for a fulfilling life? Definitely one big question we’ll have to deal with - discovered some inspiring, forward thinking approaches in the Danish Architecture Center, like this one in Koge Kyst.
My Update.
Volunteered at the virtual Outlier 2022 conference on Data Visualisation - as usual very inspiring & great organisation. Also prompted me to write down some thoughts and ideas I believe should become best practices for how scientific virtual conferences are organised.
Otherwise had some good weeks at work and started volunteering at a lovely cafe/NGO here in Copenhagen (Mellemrummet)- you should definitely come by sometime if you happen to be in town ☕️
Hav en god uge!