There are some points in the article I’d like to highlight.

What is creativity?

• Creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many problem
• A movie, like a software, is not only a single idea. Movies and softwares contains literally tens of thousands of ideas.
• The leaders sort through a mass of ideas (and possible designs in software) to find the ones that fit into a coherent whole, which is very difficult task
• What is the key to be able to recover from fail? Talented people! And such people are not easy to find. What is equally though, of course, is getting talented people to work effectively with one another

The roots of pixar culture

• Smart people are more important than good ideas
• It is OK to hire people who are smarter than you
• In the process of creating a new movie (software), the first versions are very rough, but they give a sense of what the problems are, which in the beginning are many. Then we have to iterate, and each version typically gets better and better.
• If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will crew it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or throw away and come up with something that works.
• Deeply ingrained in Pixar culture is that everything they touch needs to be excellent.

Power to the creatives and a peer culture

• Creative power in a film (software) has to reside with the film’s creative leadership
• The creative vision propelling each movie (software) comes from one ow two people and not from either corporate executives or a development department (this point is similar to what Fred Brooks says about conceptual integrity. I don’t completely agree with that. I also like Richard Gabriel’s vision, that there are many hidden co-authors and the things designed themselves)
• Good artists understand the value of limits. I completely agree with this. This makes me remember a phrase from my theater director. He said that “an actor has to have the German discipline with the Brazilian creativity both at the same time. Hot side with cold side”.
• Everything in Pixar is done by peer reviewing. This works because all the participants have come to trust and respect one another

Technology + Art = Magic

• Walt Disney believed that when continual change, or reinvention, is the norm in an organization and technology and art are together, magical things happen
• Showing unfinished work each day liberates people to take risks and try new things because it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time
• At Pixar, we believe in this swirling interplay between art and technology and constantly try to use better technology
• Technology inspires art, and art challenges the technology
• The most efficient way to deal with numerous problems is to trust people to work out the difficulties directly with each other

This presentation was created by Richard P Gabriel and presented at IME-USP – São Paulo on 31/Mar/2011 sponsored by CCSL

Richard’s Bio

Richard P. Gabriel (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1981; MFA Creative Writing (Poetry), Warren Wilson College, 1998; ACM Fellow) performs programming language, creativity, and software engineering research at IBM Research. He is the author of five books. He played lead guitar in a rock ‘n’ roll band for 20 years.

This presentation was created by Richard P Gabriel and presented at IME-USP – São Paulo on 30/Mar/2011 sponsored by CCSL

Common wisdom says that science and art are entirely different beasts; moreover, a similar source of wisdom tells us that science is valuable to society while art is a luxury. Why else would schools drop art from their curricula over the past 20 years? But artists and scientists approach their work in similar if not identical ways.

In this event, Richard P. Gabriel and Joe Yoder, two big names of Computer Science, bring us details about why science and art should walk together in the same path, taking students and professors to think about the universities current research and work method.

Richard will give a talk about Designed as Designer - why conceptual integrity arises not (simply) from one mind or from a small number of agreeing resonant minds, but from sometimes hidden co-authors and the things designed themselves. Joe will also talk “When Should You Consider Meta-Architectures? and the use of Meta to Scale”

The event is FREE and will be on March 30th and 31th – from 2pm at no IME-USP, Rua do Matão, 1000 – Giglioli room

More information in the event website

Richard’s Bio

Richard P. Gabriel (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1981; MFA Creative Writing (Poetry), Warren Wilson College, 1998; ACM Fellow) performs programming language, creativity, and software engineering research at IBM Research. He is the author of five books. He played lead guitar in a rock ‘n’ roll band for 20 years.

Joe’s Bio

Joseph Yoder (Founder and Chief Architect, The Refactory, Inc.; Hillside Board President; ACM Member) is a pattern enthusiast and an author of Big Ball of Mud; he programs adaptive software, runs a development company, and consults top companies on software needs. He is an amateur photographer, motorcycle enthusiast, and enjoys dancing samba. Extended Bio

Outro dia encontremo com Akita
Que mostrou pra gente a morena Open Source
Isso não se faz Akita
Nóis sêmo geek
Era só ter ponhado o projeto no git

I can extend this to every IT professional. We are tremendously focused on our heads. I admit that sometime I forget I have a body (Thankfully, not every time)! We need to start dancing!

I was used to dance forro before I’ve got married. It was a great time in my life (nothing to do with the girls I’ve got there). Now I dance with my wife sometimes, not so often, but every time it happens it’s a big pleasure and I have no doubts that, if I start to measure my productivity on week that I dance, I’ll get better results on dancing weeks.

Whatch the video, take you own conclusion and, LET’S DANCE!