Alfa Jango Blog Engineering, Software, and Entrepreneurship

Communication is about winning. Whenever you engage someone in communication, it is a competition. Who has the better story? Who can talk/write more? Who has the better code? And if you don’t win, you lose.

False.

Fact: if you win a conversation, then you also lose. This is especially true when your conversation must accomplish some achievable goal.

Actionable discussion

Let’s first define “actionable conversation” as that in which we are trying to achieve some explicit goal, whether to persuade someone of something or to find a solution to some problem.

Now, let’s divide actionable conversation topics as one of two types:

Opinion vs opinion

The majority of the time, there is no right or wrong, only opinion and differing opinion. To consider yourself right here is to disregard the differing opinion as decidedly wrong. Be careful, doing this makes it difficult to ever grow and learn.

Fact (true vs false)

Then there are topics for which there is a right and wrong. Let’s say you and I are arguing the solution to 1 + 1 = 2. You say it’s 2, but I say it’s 3. In a technical sense, you are right and I am wrong.

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We really hope this is some sort of sick joke on Mini’s part. In fact, we half-expect it is. But I would like to take this opportunity to discuss an important part of developing useful applications: Don’t waste time and resources developing something for which you have not yet solicited feedback. The trade-offs between openly sharing, and being “stealthy” can be quite one-sided. But first…

Background: Mini’s Mission Control

Typically, I am very pro-Mini. They are amazingly fun to drive and to auto-cross, and I came very close to owning one in the recent past. However, their latest feature, available on the limited Mini 50 Camden Edition, has everyone scratching their heads.

The best way I can describe Mission Control is that it’s what your car would sound like if it were a spaceship, and it had a crew of 3 people in addition to you, the pilot. It is 10% useful information read aloud to you (current fuel level, adverse weather warnings, etc) and 90% inane dialog between those 3 other crew members. And by 3 other crew members, I mean that the car talks to itself in different voices while you listen. In that respect, perhaps it’s more akin to what your car would sound like if it had multiple-personality disorder, and you were stuck in the middle.

But enough description, check out the video Oh, and this “feature” costs $5000.

Be sure to check out AutoBlog’s reaction as well

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