Inspiration to learn about yourself

During the #openfood campaign and hackdays in Lausanne and Zürich in Switzerland, I heard / read / saw relatively little about people working on hacking / rethinking / improving farming. There was one initiative, though, that I found fascinating: OpenFarm, using which you can see on a map where local food producers are located. Read more about it here   and here . In this posting, I would like to offer some more  inspiration on farming innovation - in terms of research I have done on the topic.  What interests me is not least how we can use technology to create more value in farming / agriculture.   Just so you know it, I grew up and have lived in cities for most of my life, so I have relatively little experience with farming / agriculture. In other words, please go a little easy on me when / if you give me feedback ;-) Happy reading.

Did you know that chocolate and blue cheese share at least 73 flavour compounds? I learned that as I read this article  article in nature.com   which Barnaby Skinner shared on Slack  during the Open Food Hackdays challenge . Reading this article, I also learned that the average number of ingredients in a recipe is around 8, and that we - using apps such as  foodpairing  and/or  food2vec  - can learn to combine food ingredients / flavours in surprising / unexpected ways. I need to admit, straight away, that I do not do much experimenting when I am in the kitchen cooking food. Usually, I stick to recipes I know, for example good old Danish meatballs . I have been making those for years in more or less the same way. I learned how to make meatballs by 1) watching my mother cook them, and 2) searching on Google to find out how others make meatballs. However, I would think that with useful apps that help us quickly combine food / food ingredients in well ...

Reflecting on the work #makezurich  participants did with different sensors and doing some research about why measurement is important, I stumbled upon this sentence here : Measurements can tell a story . I found the expression quite captivating. Why? For example because I have learned that it can be very helpful for us to see measurements as feedback to use for continuous improvements .  Doing  research about storytelling for some time, not least inspired by Nicole Bittel and other storytelling experts, I learned that telling stories - negative as well as positive ones - can be quite useful in helping shape and make sense of changes. Negative stories can be effective in getting our attention, shaking us out of our daily routines and complacency. And positive stories can, for example, show us how to solve problems in creative ways and bring back beauty in our lives. Great stories such as this one by Wienke Giezeman about building an open Internet of Things Network for...

At the open food hackdays in Lausanne and Zürich on February 10th and 11th, more than 300 people with many different backgrounds will work on developing new solutions for a transparent, efficient and innovative food industry based on open data. To learn about what is going on and participate, you can, for example, use the hashtag #openfood . I learned that to help make innovation happen - including developing applications and innovative projects aimed at improving people's diet - the openfood.ch database can be a helpful tool . In this regard, knowing more about what we are buying / eating can help us develop more healthy eating habits. Think, for example, about how you may change your buying habits / food consumption habits when it is easy for you to get information about how much sugar there is in various cereal products. The open database openfood.ch includes data on more than 14,000 barcoded food products sold in Switzerland. The database is programmatically accessible t...

3 short stories from #makezurich about how we learn: Story # 1 During #makezurich, I had the possibility to chat a little with Pance and Phaki , who work for Netcetera   and whose ancestors come from Macedonia and Sri Lanka respectively. I learned, for example, that people, who work for Netcetera, like to use skype   to communicate with each other as well as with external people they solve problems with. I also learned that they use Plaza, an intranet solution / internal social network developed by Netcetera using which people can, for example, document work using wikis. It was great to experience that to learn from / engage with people, Netcetera associates also use a variety of social media such as Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn . Story # 2 Malik and Said, who come from Algeria , studied / study in Turkey, Spain, and Germany. Malik explained to me that when he studied in Turkey, he liked that he could speak informally with teachers / professors and learn with them...

In this short video , you can get a little impression about how people participating at the #makezurich hackathon  worked. Both individually as well as in small groups of 2 to x people, they learned / developed / made things - s tanding up, sitting down in different ways, and moving around.     Writing about the #makezurich hackathon, Walter Bernet correctly pointed out in his interesting article  that hackathon participants  shy away from the use of hierarchies. As there  are  several problems with hierarchies , it is understandable that people try out other ways of organizing to enable that work can be done in more agile   ways. I t is fascinating to experience how people move to organizational forms through which they can be more productive, work more creatively, and create more value for more people. In this regard, it was, I believe, a wise decision that representatives of several companies participated at the #makezurich hackathon to lear...

Many different languages were used during the #makezurich hackathon last week. I heard people speaking with each other in English, German, Swiss German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Tamazight .  Listening to people, I learned that - in general - when people express themselves in their native language compared with a secondary language, they can express themselves more precisely. That said, I also found out that with language and translation apps such as Google Translate and Duolingo , that are continuously improving and getting more useful for people, we can learn about words / expressions faster and better. Malik, for example, told me that when he moved from his native country Algeria to Spain to study, he learned to communicate in Spanish using, for example, Rosetta Stone . Participating at the #makezurich hackathon, I also learned that we need to think broader when we think languages / communication. In this regard, I found out that coding / programming languages are qu...

With the development of the Internet of Things, nearly every object you can imagine will be connected to the Internet . That means that, globally, billions of things will be connected to the Internet. In this posting , this posting , and this posting , I read that, increasingly, we can use our smartphones / tablets / notebooks to, for example, turn lights on and off, lock and unlock doors ,  roll the window blinds / curtains up and down, increase and lower room temperatures, get a notification if the refrigerator door is open after x seconds or if the stove is still on after y seconds - even if no pan / pot is on the stove. get a notification when someone rings the doorbell. find out - due to sensors in lights - how much and how a space is being used.  With this information, technology can help us, for example, turn off lights in locations that are not being used or inform us where, in particular, we need to use the vaccuum cleaner and mop to clean. In  this ...

At a #makezurich event the other day at Impact Hub Zürich , I had a fascinating talk with a couple of people from India. They had some brilliant ideas, I think, related to recycling. I understood that they wanted to measure, for example, when containers at the recycling spaces / "Sammelstellen"   are ready to be picked up. During a short brainstorming session right in front of boxes with different sensors in one of the workshop rooms at the event space, we ping-ponged a few ideas about what sensors would be relevant to use for the task. One person had an idea to use some kind of a light sensor that measures when things, that people put in the containers, have reached the top of the containers - meaning that the light from one side of a container to the other side of the container would be permanently interrupted / blocked. Another had an idea to use a sensor measuring weight. As we chatted about this idea, we talked about that that would probably work quite well for glass....