Category: BlogPage 1 of 9
I was taught to start my music practice by playing my scales. Starting with your scales: Starting with your scales doesn’t just apply to instruments. It applies to any…
The wind was getting up. The waves were starting to blow in from different directions. The sea scape seemed to be changing at random. The day before, the…
Today’s post picks up on yesterday’s theme of riding the waves of human energy in our work. The idea is to create a cycle of working that tunes…
I spent most of yesterday afternoon up to my middle in waves learning to surf. (I’ve got a long way to go). So it is no coincidence that…
John Crace’s book Harvest provides fascinating portrait of rural life in England just before the start of the Industrial Revolution. What is so striking is the way the…
One of earliest childhood memories of travel is riding in the back of the car driving along a motorway in mountains in the north of Italy. To traverse…
My favourite board game is Go. A 19 by 19 board. White stones versus black. You win by surrounding your opponent’s stones before they surround yours. The game…
Inputs Outputs KPIs Tools Models Performance Quantitative analysis Scaling up Accelerator Dashboard Timesheet Human resources Bottom line When we think of our work as the work of a…
For two minutes we sat there on Zoom and said nothing. We had just concluded a period of intense conversation. Thrashing out details. And then words escaped me….
Do you work with metal? Wood? No, I work with knowledge. I mine it, I process it, I chop it up into tiny pieces, I study it, I…
At the start of my how to have ideas workshops, I ask where do people have their best ideas. People often say things like running, taking the dog…
Engineers have announced today some astounding new breakthroughs in their latest version of i. This technology is completely free and open-source.
Dear reader, Thank you for following my writing. It means a lot to me. To mark my 18th year of blogging, I am writing 100 posts in 100…
Whenever I enter a period of calm, a quietening, I instinctively want to turn to reflective writing. Writing like this. It feels like I am speaking to an…
When it comes to regenerative design, it’s not just where we make but also where we take that matters. For the last two decades, engineers (and other humans)…
Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the launch at Parliament of Building Blocks to Transform the Built Environment – a manifesto to turn the climate emergency into…
2024 2023 2017 2013 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2004 2001 2000 1999 1990
While it is possible to go direct from Bristol to Edinburgh, and from Bristol to Glasgow with one change, it is a long route and involves spending a…
It’s a funny question. How much does my website weigh? Is it heavy? It is light? I have no way of knowing. But I like the question, because…
Having ideas can be hard, especially when we already have a first idea. How do we trick our brain into thinking that we should go in search of…
It is a simple question. What if every time we built something the world got better? Not just in the places we construct but in all the places…
What if, every time we designed a building, the world got better? This post explores the transformative potential of regenerative design, a paradigm shift from construction that contributes…
Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Sir Misha Black Awards, which celebrate excellence in design teaching. And even more so, the pleasure of hearing last…
An abundance mindset is a key tool for the regenerative engineer. It gives three things. The first is the ability to see the richness of the situations we…
There’s a magic about boarding a night train in a big city terminus. At that hour, some people are ending their nights out. For others their night out…
Every system has a song. Whether that system is the collection of components in an engine. Or the hum of a collaborative team. The tap-dance of ants in…
We see patterns. We think in patterns. We create patterns. A pattern is something that repeats. A drum beat. An oscillation. Patterns make things regular and therefore intelligible….
France is well-known for its TGVs. But there is a place in my heart for the ‘trains classiques’, the older, long-distance trains that still trundle round the older…
In this post I share some initial thoughts on how using ChatGPT to generate ideas changes creative thinking for engineers, and other humans. My simple model for idea…
This afternoon I met with two trustees of Hazel Hill Wood to develop some ideas for a funding bid to support more regenerative use of timber to maintain…