Around the Office: Reverse Psychology Saves a Library, The Universe in a Flash App, Process Improvement, and more

We were all impressed with a campaign that saved a Troy, Michigan, library from anti-tax groups in the area who pressured citizens to vote to close it. In an effort to swing the vote, Leo Burnett Detroit started a reverse psychology campaign with yard signs that read: “Vote to Close Troy Library on August 2nd – Book Burning Party on August 5th.” Since no one wants to be a part of a town that burns books, citizens unanimously support a slight tax hike and the library’s survival.

“To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour,” wrote the poet William Blake. This verse came to mind when Roberto showed us a Flash application showing the scale of the universe from the smallest sub-matter to the immensity of the known and unknown universe.

This week, Brent attended a seminar on process improvement by Whiteboard Consulting. The goal: to get better, faster and cheaper. It turns out that business problems can be revealed through process mapping, which involves identifying and assessing touch points, duplication, and bottlenecks. Identifying inefficiencies and revamping a business can help make an organization better, faster and cheaper: what’s not to love?

Daveed has been impressed with Angular.js 1.0, a framework that helps developers easily add structure to their applications, avoiding sprawling “spaghetti” code. Angular.js lets developers use standard HTML as your template language to express application components clearly and succinctly – which can be a huge challenge for large web apps.