Think Tank!

I wanted to show you a special room in my office that I call "Think Tank"

My "Think Tank" is an ordinary office with one extra-ordinary feature. It does not have a computer on the desk. Sure it has a phone, and paper and pens and a desktop calculator, but no computer. The only data processing allowed in this room is mental, and the only communication that happens is verbal, and the only database it has is hand written. Yes, those are Atari cartridges.

This is my cozy office above. This is my cockpit. This is the nerve center from which I command an empire, defeat raging threats, and conquer new territory. I also have a tendancy to Facebook, Tweet with the Twitter, and check my email which invariably sucks me into LinkedIn, The Blaze, Drudge and SodaHead, among other things. The problem is not so much the time wasted on distraction, but the lack of focus it causes. I used to keep looking around my desk, wondering what the heck I was working on. Sometimes I would have a couple of post-it notes stuck to my monitor (actually you can see one on the 2nd to the left) stating simply, what I am doing right now. Not something I need to do, or need to remember, but what I am doing RIGHT NOW. I would keep forgetting what I was doing at that actual moment.

^ Incidentally, this is what my office desk looks like from the inside.

So, across the hall from me is the THINK TANK. There is only a desk, a phone, a pad of paper, and drawing boards. Mainly, NO COMPUTER. There is a spiral bound notebook which contains everything that is happening, or might happen, on any given day. It is littered up with post-it notes containing updates or comments that don't really need to be committed to the pad.

On the back wall of the Think Tank (or TT, as I like to call it) is a dry erase board with a list of all ongoing projects, contact name, status, and notes. I had to add this because we are getting busier (which is great) but because of the Great Recession we are now operating with minimal staff. Prior to the Great Crash of Ought-Niner, I didn't know who most of my clients were! That wasn't my job. I was just the primadonna developer. That's different now. I even answer the phone now, can you believe that?

In this luddite sanctuary, one sits and thinks. Then, orders are written and a file folder containing those orders, along with any supplemental materials, notes, names and numbers is dispatched to the battlefield where they are faithfully carried out. Me, at my desk, with my four monitors, at war.

I write follow up info on those orders, for instance, today I scrawled

"#1 finished!"

"#2 - bad audio, redo" 

"#3 - done!" 

"#4-#8 Sorry didn't do!"

The folder is returned to the Think Tank, and if it is after hours, like it is now, placed on the chair for when the commander (me) returns in the morning to Think Again.

Finally, in this room there are also inspirational decorations here and there, to remind me of past success. Things that say "This Worked!". Brochures from past campaigns or products are taped to the wall, Dr. Evil stands by the lamp (long story), the original hand drawn schematic of something great from a yellow legal pad, and some product diskettes on the dry erase board shelf. There are some incredibly mundane things that may only mean something to one person, like the original install diskette for CompuServe, and one big thing that impacted the lives of millions of people:

These fossils under glass are the only surving pieces of a one mighty 200 seat call center from around 1995. They tell a decade-long story of grand, grand success at the hand of just a few human minds. These pieces were part of the first detonator of a big bang that is still exploding outwards in more ways than I can probably begin to imagine. This was Tony Amico's dialer.

I like to eat, eat, eat, apples and bananas.

When something seems like too much of a challenge, you are supposed to stand in front of this picture, squinting through your hand like a telescope, and slowly land on the carrier during a WWII sea battle. THAT was hard.

This post-it note has been here since 2008. Nobody knows what it means, other than there was some bug that needed to be fixed, and it had something to do with "Conf". Maybe, as the economy recovers, we'll find out.