Two birds, one stone thinking
by August 9th, 2008 Patrick GreerI was watching a recent episode of NOVA, a science show on PBS. The episode, called Car of the Future focused on advances in automotive engineering. One segment stuck out with me and it wasn’t because it involved a radical design or fuel but rather using carbon fiber materials for it’s frame. This not only makes the car itself more lightweight thus saving fuel but also reduces production costs in terms of machinery needed. I’m totally fascinated by the uses of carbon fibers and my town, Greenville,SC could potentially be a “new textile capital of the world” because of initiatives like ICAR and the automotive companies located here like BMW and Michelin. As a company that has “spinning silk” as part of it’s name I am excited that the new carbon materials are practically a new “silk” that is lightweight yet very strong.
What kind of ideas are you coming up with in your company or personal endeavors that solve multiple problems at once? What kind of things are you investing in that make your efforts work for themselves? One reason we say we are “New Media Developers” rather than “web designers (about 80% of what we currently do) is while the web is the hub of our expertise we also recognize that as time progresses people do not want to be forced to sit in front of a laptop or desktop computer to access information or conduct transactions. I have some visions to do some radical things with photography and audio recording via the web. It’s more than showing family pictures on an iPhone or similar device. I want to explore innovative ways images and sounds can be captured, transcribed into searchable data and organized with minimal manual work. Online services like Evernote and Jott are already doing some of these things.
Some everyday “two-bird” thinking examples are;
- Cleaning house, having a yard sale and investing the income
- Getting some exercise and listening to educational podcasts at the same time
- Printing to PDF instead of paper - saves space and is searchable too.
- composting appropriate organic waste and capturing rain water to help with a home vegetable garden
- Blogging as a way to “draft” a book or other collection of compiled information
Take a little time to make your own list of ways you can be more efficient in your business? Can a web site, blog, podcast, online photography, etc. help with that? Just asking because that is what we do and wonder how do it better for ourselves and our customers.
No birds were harmed in the writing of this blog post.
