BVD Experience

What is BVD?

BVD stands for Brainstorm, Vote, and Discuss. This is a process to narrow and focus on a specific solution. The idea being that there are likely to be several solutions, and trying to adequately discuss all of them is very difficult and unproductive, especially when there are time constraints.

First, the teams brainstorms on an open question, but one that hopefully can lead to direct action. Then, all the ideas are collected on a whiteboard or some central location and each team member votes for his or her top two choices. Finally, the direction for the rest of the meeting is dictated by the popular choices.

Brain-storm

Vote

Discuss

Hello World

Introduction

42: Answer to life, the universe and 
everything. Also, I'm being a bit of
an ass here.

Hello, my name is Zach. Welcome to my brand new blog. I started this mainly because it's a requirement for a class. I'm a new student at BGI. However, expect to see some entries that aren't completely class driven. There will probably be a wide range of topics (apparently this is a blogging no-no, but we'll see where this goes). Politics and economics will be regular topics. Mostly because, well, I've got a lot of problems with you people! And now, you're ganna hear about it. Also, I'll probably add some entries on tech topics. It seems that there is some basic interest in Excel tips and tricks, using RSS, synchronizing iCal and Google Calendar, just to name a few ideas.

The Yellow Slime

Yellow slime is a little more than a random, nonsensical name. Upon a recent trip for school, we learned all about yellow slime. This stuff is actually a large colony of single-cell organisms that work together. These molds can exhibit amazing communal intelligence, organizing for the benefit of the group over the individual. The experiment pictured below saw a slime mold map an efficient route to food and mimic the the train system around Tokyo. The New York Times has a great article about this.

So, yellow slime is a lot smarter than we would normally expect from a mold. And it does so through teamwork. That's a powerful idea, and an inspiring one for me. As for "cogitations," well, that's just an elitist word for "thoughts." But, it sure sounds sticky, so it seemed fitting for some slime. There isn't really any deeper meaning than that, or, well, I don't know.

A slime mold at Channel Rock

        

Slime molds mapping efficient routes.
(Science Magazine)