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Planzai knowledge sprint

Aug 1, 2011 | 0 comments

The secret revealed: @dalerocks directly uploads his thoughts to the internet #plansprint

I’ve been in Belfast for the past weekend, doing what we came to describe as a ‘knowledge sprint‘. My friend Rich Dale (pictured above, uploading his brain to the internet) is co-founder of a startup called Planzai. I’m on their board of advisors.*

Planzai is a web application that helps people do things, with easy-to-follow expert guidance. It’s like having a project management plan for whatever you want to get done – growing potatoes, training for a marathon, creating a personal budget, organising a wedding… but with someone who knows what they’re doing there to guide you along the way.

Planzai provides the platform, and experts create ‘blueprints’ – step-by-step plans that do the guidance, make sure you don’t forget anything, that you do them in the right order, allow enough time for each thing and perform the tasks in a timely fashion.

You tick off the steps as you go along, and the steps are explained and demystified as you encounter them.


Example Planzai blueprint for making a music video for your band

But they need more of these blueprints – and they need them soon, and so originally, I was asked to help run a workshop that would allow us to quickly generate more of these plans. A “knowledge sprint” to create as many useful blueprints as possible over a weekend.

Instead, I suggested that we do a workshop to generate the perfect ‘How to make a Planzai blueprint’ blueprint. The “meta-blueprint”, if you like… so that we can always quickly and dependably source more blueprints using a system that had its own quality control and step-by-step guidance built in.

This, for these guys, made perfect sense. It would mean that anyone with a bit of specialist or expert knowledge in any field could follow the instructions and generate a Planzai-quality blueprint for others to use.

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The Creatures of Belfast

Jun 29, 2008 | 0 comments

I’ve just spent four days in Belfast hanging out with musicians, sleeping on their couches and spare beds, going to gigs, doing a spot of consultancy and speaking at a music industry seminar. As you’d expect in Ireland (and under those circumstances) there’s no shortage of stories to tell.

I thought I’d start with one told to me by Walter the Goon from the band John Shelly and the Creatures. It explains the origins of the band’s name in a bar in Berlin some years earlier.


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I stayed the night at Walter’s house, watched a bit of Glastonbury on TV, ate Chinese food and drank American beer. The next morning, we did the full Ulster Fry breakfast including farls, strolled through the Botanic Gardens and finished off with a pint of Guinness at a very traditional establishment, before I jumped on the bus back to the airport.

NZ readers might be interested to learn that John Shelly and the Creatures were the support band of choice for the Brunettes when they played in Ireland.

Lovely man – and very hospitable. If you ever want to go freeloading in other countries, my tip is to seek out musicians. Here’s what the band sounds like. The single ‘Angeline’ is coming out in September.

[audio:angeline.mp3]
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