zwilichkl made me do it

[lorimt]

At dinner today, I was talking w/zwilichkl about environments that are conducive to "doing stuff". She described a lab instrument as (to paraphrase) not so new you were afraid to poke at it.

This reminded me of some architecture reading I did a while back. The guy was describing how this wood frame "temporary" building put up during WW2 produced lots and lots of interesting science because people weren't afraid to swap spaces or cut holes in the walls or basically do whatever they wanted. This was contrasted with the building that later replaced it, which was carefully designed to be an ideal workspace, but which the occupants didn't like nearly as much.

That reminded me of a student group I belong to (LEM), whose atmosphere encourages people to take on projects or just go ahead and make something happen, regardless of whether they're officially leaders, which is an atmosphere I really enjoy. (It doesn't hurt to have a productive place to use avoiding-thesis energy, nor that the group is fantastic in a number of other ways.)

We also talked about how this manifested at Mudd. For me, it was mostly the ability to go buttonhole profs in random departments and ask them things. I have one particularly clear memory of charging down from Time Suck to the Physics dept one afternoon carrying the clock, which we'd suddenly realized we only partly understood. Eventually we had a couple profs drawing on the little magnet-donut with markers, working out exactly how it was moving with each tick.

(I also know a number of do-stuff people, but that doesn't spill over in exactly the same way.)
[EDIT: that should read]
I also know a number of make-stuff people, but their activity doesn't spill over in exactly the same way. (Some other entry I'll write about my longstanding admiration of make-stuff people or the distinction between do-stuff and make-stuff)


Anyone else have have examples of "do stuff environments"?

(And now enough provisioning of procrastination, back to work with me)

Comments

[cmouse.livejournal.com]

Media Lab.

[lorimt]

Yep. Jason mentioned this when I was telling him about the architecture stuff. Definitely a spiffy place. :)

confidential to LMT:

[zwilichkl.livejournal.com]

btw I figured out what was confusing, you were saying do-stuff people instead of make-stuff people, which is your usual terminology.

The world will never know...

[lorimt]

I have the power of EDIT!

Yeah, I definitely meant make-stuff above. Do-stuff people are also spiffy, and they do tend to get other people to take part as well, but they (like make-stuff people) don't necessarily cause people around them to have a more do-stuff (or make-stuff) attitude. I think that spillover takes a certain type of leadership, but that too is something that will have to wait for another post.

[zwilichkl.livejournal.com]

I think the Mudd manifestation was different for me, it was in being able to get reimbursed for stuff with minimal hassle, it was thinking "this class should be taught" and then teaching it. Or thinking "this would be a neat thing to study" and having Prof. Haskell somehow manage to get me a sample the next week.

The Martinos Center had the benefit of having a lot of world experts in a small area, however there was the definite drawback that most of them had more important things to do than fix your problems (though learning how to write kick-ass bug reports and being shameless did wonders for getting more attention).

[lorimt]

::nod:: I didn't do as much of those types of things, which I _think_ was because I didn't do as much official leader-y things, and so didn't know as much about what was going on, or who to talk to to make things go. Definitely a nice atmosphere, though.

As for the Martinos center, I feel the same in some ways about MIT. It just isn't as easy to wander around and find a prof to help you out with something. (Pesky research and grad students to attend to...)

re: mudd manifestation

[lorimt]

Although in a non-academic setting, there were a couple times when Dean Guy or Dean Chris definitely said "sure, I can help you do X".

[gigglefest.livejournal.com]

Hello! I know you through LEM (and would love to hear the ways you think it's fantastic, next time you feel like procrastinating). Just saying hi. :)