Communication and innovation

Created on 2021-07-29 15:23

Published on 2021-07-29 15:55

More than a year ago we were talking about backups. My solution then was something based on duplicity and rclone and I was explaining it to one of my colleagues who had another approach. I was pretty happy with it although it had some quirks. Then one of the other colleagues asked us: "Have you tried restic?". I did not know about it and I found it quite interesting. Months passed and I had to implement again an off-site backup system. Although I had the old tools in the pocket I remmembered restic and I soon realised that is the perfect fit for my incremental backup task.

I imagine that I would have lost probably some days trying to use other tools and craft an adapter layer on top of the old tools. Listening to others brang me pretty much advantage both in terms of efficiency as well as in terms of knowledge - another tool on my belt.

One thing that I miss while working remotely is the posibility of sharing knowledge in an informal way. When enginers discuss around the coffee machine some crazy geekish ideas (from Raspberry Pi autonomous lawnmowers to a new programming language) or they lucidly dream some interesting features in their code then innovation is about to happen. Many things that are in an incumbent state are hard to find in mainstream publications and blogs but sometimes there is one who has a passion about "obscure-ish" (eg. https://qconsf.com/system/files/presentation-slides/control_theory_in_container_orchestration.pdf) subjects and a wise remark at the right moment can cut months of development because that insight solves in a creative way an otherwise hard task.

I had my share of these happenings: timer_fd (simplified state machines), NancyFX (instead of all OWIN stuff), Swig (for genetrating bindings) and many others but the key fact was that I was among peers who gave me back at one moment valuable information. This is one of the things that videoconference/Skype/Meet still cannot substitute yet. They are fantastic tools for this time but unfortunately they are still unable to create the context for this kind of communication. I remember that many ideas that were later translated into patents emerged in this kind of informal gatherings and sometime a "What about..." created the spark.

I have also found an interesting article (https://theconversation.com/companies-are-trying-to-connect-remote-workers-with-virtual-water-coolers-but-its-harder-than-it-sounds-146505) that reaches almost the same conclusions - apps cannot really mimmick spontaneity and generate context for innovation.