Arach Tchoupani

The front side has my contact details and  the back side has all the electronic parts soldered.

 

Front side, with the contact information  (phone number censored in the image)

 

Back side, with the soldered parts.

Here's why. Facebook is wildly successful because its founder matched new social media technology to a deep Western cultural longing — the adolescent desire for connection to other adolescents in their own private space. There they can be free to design their personal identities without adult supervision. Think digital tree house. Generation Y accepted Facebook as a free gift and proceeded to connect, express, and visualize the embarrassing aspects of their young lives.

Then Gen Y grew up and their culture and needs changed. My senior students started looking for jobs and watched, horrified, as corporations went on their Facebook pages to check them out. What was once a private, gated community of trusted friends became an increasingly open, public commons of curious strangers. The few, original, loose tools of network control on Facebook no longer proved sufficient. The Gen Yers wanted better, more precise privacy controls that allowed them to secure their existing private social lives and separate them from their new public working lives.

Over the last six years we’ve gone from open plan, to all closed offices and then to a combination of both. I’ve paid close attention to the pros and cons of each layout, and I’m convinced that closed offices are the best layout for a software company.

The reason for this is fairly simple. It’s all about removing distractions. Jobs like software development, design and copywriting often require juggling lots of different things in your head at once. Getting to this point doesn’t happen immediately either, it might take 15 minutes to really get your head around a problem. That’s when the good stuff starts flowing and can make all the difference.

While open plan might make communication easier, it makes distractions just as easy. The trade off isn’t worth it. Closed offices let you shut your door and get focused. Unless you’re sure your question is more important than what someone is working on (it rarely is), don’t interrupt them. Come back later or better yet, send an email instead. I think in many cases closed offices make communication better. Instead of interrupting someone to ask a question, you have to write it down. That takes more effort. It forces you to edit out the crappy stuff and focus on what’s important.

Closed offices doesn’t mean anti-social either. I can’t understate how valuable it is that we all eat lunch together every day and get out of the office regularly. It provides a nice balance to the closed offices, and it’s amazing how much more open and relaxing a conversation can be over a meal rather than a workstation.

The corridor outside some closed offices.

Yep.

Funny. 'Cause it's true.

I have taken a creative writing class or two (can you tell?) and do you know this thing they teach you? "Don't end your story with all your characters being dead." It is like cheating. It is worse than cheating! It is the wussiest thing a writer can do. And these smug dickheads went ahead and did it.

I remember finishing an essay by having a character wake up from a dream in grade 9. I got served a righteous sermon from my English teacher explaining how that was a lazy and disrespectful trick to use. Grade 9.

So all my dear friends who've watched Lost for years, it appears the writers have bitch slapped you with the cheapest trick possible.

I'd be pissed.

Hilarious!

Daft Punk’s Around the world

You guys helped inspire me to fire this up! I look forward in helping you out!

In reply to Yannick Gingras: "You guys" are the Montreal-Python sprinters. Cool!