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Where Is Matt This Week?
Index
September 15, 2000 to January 03, 2001
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Gaudi’s masterpiece under construction
DesignShop Sponsor session
Indian Summer @ KnOwhere
This is a time of design. There are several projects underway ranging from new buildings, new furniture, new processes and inventions. It is a time of details and problem solving and shipping product. It is also a time of discovery as the search goes out for new methods and means and as we check in to see how various alternatives are coming along.
For 25 years, innovative designers, inventors and engineers have been filling the warehouse with alternative ways of doing things. Their time is coming. Our mission is to facilitate their message being heard and assist in the implementation of their work. We have spent 25 years building a capacity - a tool set. Now, the opportunity to put it to work - on the kind of projects that matter - has come.
December is my time to start this process.
June 28, to September 15, 2000
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Artist Christer Fuller made a “Mechanical Matt” to explain the Model circa 1998
James Toohey, Architect, presents a concept @ Acacia circa 1985
Lisa Piazza retrieves “Information Factory” Notes circa 1984
In this period we will come to understand what we have created. What is the “Mechanical Cat?” This phase of our Patent Pending will be done and the final issuance process initiated. We will know who our Partners will be in the making of the next generation of this work. The Business Units will be settled into their new architecture and focussed on accomplishing the last third of this year. The final debris of the 1997, 1998 years will be organized and stacked into nice little piles for final disposal. A major test of the PatchWorks design process will be completed.
In a timely manner, a gift from the past was given by Lisa creating a 16 year retrospect of our work. This is a good time for a trip to the Archives.
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A visit to Fllw’s Marian County Complex
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree...”
A space ready for a NavCenter renovation
All kinds of things seeking resolution by mid June. Most of the “End Game” Strategy worked out a year ago will be in progress or accomplished. The MG Taylor Enterprises have just about gone full cycle. Each, now, with a clear mission and team. Each, with an investment opportunity. Yet, all still works as a whole system.
The range, scale and scope of the opportunities ahead dwarf the entirety of the last 25 years. In financial terms, this means potentially more revenues and value creation in the year ahead than the last 5 years. This, however, is not the point. The point is, that during this period, the first “Level I” - full potential - work environment is being put on the drawing boards for the first time. The vision is about to be realized - and recreated.
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A lot waiting for a building
Gail starting a DesignShop session @ KnOwhere
Action under the KnOwhere dome
Maybe the wildest few weeks in the history of the Enterprise. A string of DesignShop events in three different cities mixed with our Enterprise B2B sessions and retreat. Work with existing and new clients, design time with new partners, negotiation of new Licenses agreements. A new Team forms @ KnOwhere.
Enterprises are truly living entities and it is interesting to watch and be part of them when they radically change. Ours is definitely going through a punctuated evolution phase with the emphasis on the “punctuated.” It is like my first experience riding a quarter horse.
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CAMELOT back home after a cruise
A visit to Oak Park and Frank Lloyd Wright
First DTE DesignShop event in their new home
A working visit to CAMELOT to develop IP and spend time with a new member of our Enterprise. These working sessions on CAMELOT are always refreshing and invigorating. The compactness of the experience makes it so. The space is contained yet the scope is as large as Nature. An interesting contrast which matches the work. I usually work on my computer (compact) and focus on the larger, long range design issues.
A return to Oak Park, Frank Lloyd Wright and my architectural roots. Spending an evening in one of his houses for the first time in 42 years - reliving the quality of the experience.
A DesignShop at the just finished DTE NavCenter.
A period of anticipation as new opportunities unfold and old memories are remembered.
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From Sea Loft to Eichler via Ryder
Bay Area Studio North Elevation
Sunshine checking out the Eichler floor heating system
Selling our Hilton Head Sea Loft - our home and Studio for 8 years. Getting iterations organized. Sunshine and furniture arrives at our Palo Alto Eichler. Design students from Stanford and SFIA visit the Palo Alto KnOwhere.
A repeat DesignShop event with a energetic, creative client. KnOwhere web page documentation and follow-up video product exercises the ValueWeb’s talents and push the state of the art. Design work begins for the 2000 Foresight Group Genius event. The DTE NavCenter nears completion. Yolke is incorporated.
A period of new beginnings.
January 4, to January 28, 2000
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Searching for an Eichler
A Chapel by James Hubbell in Mendocino County
A Warren Callester Church in Tiberon
A new year, new decade, new century and new millennium (although that is debated). It will be awhile before we can say that again! However, with nanotechnology we might be able to show up for the next one. We may be the first generation - at least in 10 thousand years - that actually can exercise this choice.
The formal piece of the MG Taylor reorganization starts this quarter. This will create four Business Units: MG Taylor, AI, KnOwhere and Yolke. This is going to open up new ownership opportunities as well as many new ways for individuals to participate in the Enterprise.
In addition, in this period, we are putting together our first broad-based methodology/technology License.
December 23, 1999 to January 4, 2000
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ScribeCaddy shows up as a Holiday present
Entry to our Sea Loft
Design work starts on an old concept
End of year rest, dialog and think time. Home to the Hilton Head Sea Loft. We have lived here for 8 years and this will be our last year-end retreat to our Sea Loft. Gail and I will be moving our “electronic” cottage to Palo Alto at the beginning of the year.
Time to “design” my year 2000. I remember the first time (1952) that I ever wondered if I would live to see this year. It was after I had an argument with a pilot of a F-84 if Humankind would get to the Moon in my lifetime. You can guess which side of the arguement I was on.
The year 2000 seems full of propect with many of the negative issues of 1998 nearly behind us. These days we are spending more time advancing the work and the ValueWeb than re-working old faults.
November 23, to December 23, 1999
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My WorkPod @ the Palo Alto KnOwhere Store
A CAMELOT detail
Sailing into St. Petersburg
End of the year. A strange wonderful year full of twist and turns, surprises and accomplishments. Years are like art pieces - on one hand a product of intention. On the other, serendipity. You enter a year with focus and goals and, slowly, the year reveals what it is really about. The experience emerges like an unfolding flower made of predicted and elements and total surprises.
Several new client relationships, new JV and alliances with producers, and investor commitments to be formed before the year is over - the ValueWeb is growing. This is the final piece of work to cap a year of effort.
I start my design practice course at the San Francisco Institute of Architecture.
Then, a return to Hilton Head for a work break and time for reflection, evaluation and designing my year 2000 role and activities.
November 1 to November 22, 1999
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KnOwhere gets its MG Taylor Housemark
The MagicWindow Mule is started at Glasgow
Camelot being readied for a winter season of ValueWeb use
Time now to prepare for the upcoming KnOwhere DesignShop event - our first event on ourselves since mid 1997. Over 55 people from all over are contributing several days of their time to work with us on the design of the KnOwhere ValueWeb experience. In return, they bring their own projects to work, refine, share and develop.
The first MagicWindow piece is being developed by AI at Glasgow with the goal of having a working Mule at the KnOwhere DesignShop event. RemotePresence now becomes a practical reality.
CAMELOT is ready, after years of preparation, for wider use by the ValueWeb. Her configuration, crew, location, program converge to make an unique experience.
By the end of this period, the MG Taylor ValueWeb will make a quantum change in character, makeup and value - the result of many years in formation.
Septembe 21, 1999 to October 31, 1999
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The next 120 days will be about implementing a number of Enterprise-wide strategies and projects that have emerged this year. In total, they enable MG Taylor, AI and KnOwhere to go to their next level of development. This will create a “environment, process, and tool” integration capability that has not existed before.
First trip: Palo Alto to Detroit to Holland to Chicago to Palo Alto. The Detroit Edison NavCenter - they call it the Learning Zone, Career Connection - is underway. We did a ZoomTrax with a group working on aspects of DTE’s People Strategy.
A short (mostly while traveling) planning session with Lisa to advance our End Game AndMap. While on this trip, I exchanged a series of e-mail's with Fred Stitt founder of SFIA aimed at developing a new course for his architectural students.
Saturday, Gail picked me up at the airport and we had lunch with a venture capitalist and dialoged about the entire incubation process of startup companies.
Strategy development sessions, a meeting with William Paul about virtual team design and the delivery of a new AI piece ended the week.
Second Trip: Palo Alto to Glasgow to Kalamazoo to Palo Alto. Final design touches on the next generation of AI WorkFurniture and preparations to increase the production capability at Glasgow.
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Washington D.C. Airport
workstation for a traveling drafting board
KWIB and CubeOffice System @ EY Atlanta ASE
In the first two quarters of 1999, many new things have been started. New ValueWeb relationships, new design projects - visiting two existing NavCenters, designing a new one, putting another into production. This next period is about moving things to closure, getting work into production and finishing several projects under way.
First trip: Palo Alto to New York to Washington DC to Detroit to Kalamazoo to Holland to Detroit to Hilton Head.
Second trip: Hilton Head to Waynesville to Atlanta to... to Atlanta to Hilton Head. A long heat wave across the Mid West and North East.
Third trip: Palo Alto to Detroit to Kalamazoo to Holland to Palo Alto. Getting to closure on several startups, moving to deals on several opportunities. A strategy emerges.
Fourth trip: Palo Alto to Boulder to CAMELOT to NASA Langley to Palo Alto. Finding new resources for our “End Game” strategy, developing the go-to-volume market and final development of the Foundation II Series WorkFurniture, a working vacation on CAMELOT (patents, IP Strategy, End Game Model), a seminar on ValueWebs at NASA and a return to Palo Alto to launch the End Game.
Ending in my 61st. birthday - September 16, 1999.
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CAMELOT at Useppa Island
a new space
The Redwoods at Muir Forest
A period that started with a working vacation on CAMELOT and ended with July 4th in Sonoma and the redwoods with trips to Hilton Head, Kalamazoo, Holland, Minneapolis, Palo Alto, and Tullahoma in between.
This was one of those magic periods where everything comes together and broad gains are made in many areas - business as it should be! New work, new relationships, new clients and associates. Better clarity on our Business Model and ending with one of the best quarters, financially, we have had in three years.
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Harbor Town Light Tower, Hilton Head
Barnes and Noble Book Store, Palo Alto
under the dome at the Palo Alto KnOwhere Store
This was a period of discovery and pre-development learning. A great deal of new activity at the Palo Alto KnOwhere Store culminating with the nanotechnology PatchWorks event for the Foresight Institute.
The Borgess NavCenter opened in Kalamazoo and the Detroit Edison NavCenter development got under way.
Several DesignShops in Hilton Head, ZoomTrax in Palo Alto, and first time discovery visits to several organizations.
SolutionBox voice of this document:
USING • LOGISTICS • PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT
revised November 24, 2000
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Copyright© 1999, 2000 Matt Taylor