Thank you SOK 2019-2026. Got my own company banner, or to be more precise, a gonfalon! A new word that I just learned from Wikipedia! And now you know it too!

Anyway, this particular gonfalon-banner made me feel very happy and complete, because in the Finnish culture, banners are earned. Though these days, they are not really a part of the culture anymore, which I find a bit sad. Both of my grandfathers had a couple of banners, and that's how you knew they were good people who had done a good job sometime during their life.

   

Yeah, I know, there is actual value in boredom as well. One exercise that we do frequently when learning long form improv is that we try to do examine what boredom feels like, and how we cope with that. Boredom creates breathing space; it is the stuff that makes the busy days feel meaningful. It is so easy to dig out your phone and just be mildly engaged with endless short form videos, which creates a new level of a boredom continuum, one in which you don't realize you're bored.

But still. I'm thinking that many things that we do might not actually be that necessary. They are just "form over function", rather than a load- or joy-bearing component of the world. So rather than "optimize" them using AI, perhaps we could just not do those things at all?

(I'm being purposefully a bit vague here, since I don't want to point to any particular thing and say that that's useless. That would probably go into a tangent. But you can imagine stuff. You're human.)

   

And I realized there was so, so much left on the table. His topic was interesting, his presentation style was engaging, and yet he chose to fade the interesting part to the background: the human.

So I decided to run a bit of an experiment: I have been practicing improvisation theatre for the past two years. It's been absolutely wonderful engaging with people, shedding insecurities, making mistakes, and just playing and having fun. It has given me confidence about myself and how I engage with people, both in person and when on stage. And one thing I've learned is that humans are interesting. It's absolutely fascinating to just concentrate and watch a person do stuff. (If you like to go on Twitch and watch people play a game instead of playing it yourself you know what I mean.)

Oh yeah, the experiment! I was asked to run a five-hour workshop on the use of Artificial Intelligence for some of SOK Retail Technology folks, and I went in with a slide deck filled with blanks. Yes, there were some in-between illustrative slides, as well as some "additional information" -class slides, but I tried to make sure they were at the absolute minimum.

So, I flashed a blank, black slide on the screen, took a deep breath to quell my nerves, and started talking. And as I watched each person in the audience, letting my gaze wander from eye to eye, seeing them staring at me intently, I could feel a connection unlike in most presentations, where you can see their eyes darting between you and the screen behind you. It was glorious. It was fucking terrifying. It was very... human.

After lunch, I even did a small group mentalism exercise; something that most of them had never seen before, and I had never tried with a big crowd before. I tried to reach into their brains with my words and... try to let them experience something wonderful about themselves as humans. It was not a test, it was just a small gift that was in my power to give. Some accepted it, some did not. Anything and everything was all absolutely fine.

Afterwards, 19 out of 20 rated the presentation 5/5.

I'm so going to do this again.

   

X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

header.

Why?

Because this is the kind of shit that people do, as opposed the kind of shit that machines don't. Because it's an internet meme. Because it lets me honor a great writer. Because it probably irritates people who deserve to be irritated. Because I find it silly and funny. And because I can.

Okay, but what does the GNU and 'clacks' mean? Let me quote:

"A man is not dead while his name is still spoken." --Terry Pratchett: Going Postal

(You may think that Janne has probably been reading a lot of Pratchett lately, and you would be correct. I decided to read through his entire catalogue a few months ago. Still a couple of Rincewind novels and the entire Witches series left, but I've read almost everything else now.)

   

Yeah.

They're right. It's not possible to read it all. What I practice is just following my nose and reading whatever smells interesting to me. (Note: I read. I don't in general listen to many podcasts, because they're linear and hard to just skim and browse. I prefer to use my time to think, and I find that reading allows me to think. I just pause, lift my eyes, process the thoughts the text gave me, daydream a little, then continue simply by lowering my eyes back on the book. None of that pause-rewind -cycle that podcasts make you do.)

So, as you see, I just basically cheat and skim a lot. You see - if something is important, it will surface in so many places that it probably passes by my eyes at some point. And I trust my instincts on whether it's worth my time or not.

And – this is important – I don't need to know everything. I don't need to even read full articles. I don't need AI summaries. I just skim, read a sentence here and there and piece together an idea. And if that idea is interesting, then I read more. I wrote earlier about bead curtain shaped people. That's how you get one.

It's a version of "passive research" - that's when you turn on the TV and learn about whatever happens to be on. (In the old days you could learn about giraffes; these days you learn a lot about the social behaviour of young adults in zero clothing. It's interesting too, in its own way.) If I recall correctly, Esa Saarinen (a famous Finnish philospher) does a version of this method too where he just opens a book randomly and just reads a few paragraphs and then closes the book. Just enough to get an idea.