Fun with robots and fire at Yahoo!

This week has been a VERY cool work week. Closing out my first week, I attended an amazing lunch-time presentation by Mark Pauline, founder and director of Survival Research Labs, a talk put together by my boss Bradley Horowitz as part of a regular series here at Yahoo!

How to describe SRL? Well, you could look at the description on their site:

Survival Research Laboratories was conceived of and founded by Mark Pauline in November 1978. Since its inception SRL has operated as an organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare. Since 1979, SRL has staged over 45 mechanized presentations in the United States and Europe. Each performance consists of a unique set of ritualized interactions between machines, robots, and special effects devices, employed in developing themes of socio-political satire. Humans are present only as audience or operators.

For me, it was just as interesting to look at the Flickr tag “srl” and the related tags:

The last performance SRL did was in downtown Los Angeles (covered nicely on BoingBoing), so if you look past the location tags (“downtown” and “losangeles”, of course), you’re left with art, performance, machines (like the deliciously insane Pitching Machine), robots, and fire. That sums it up to a certain degree, but it wasn’t your typical pretentious run-of-the-mill performance art. What Mark Pauline really is is an extraordinary hacker whose work has artistic implications, but with absolutely zero pretention. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from someone who others might describe as a “performance artist,” but he had the demeanor of a very thoughtful and determined hacker who really enjoyed working with people to build cool stuff and make it work. I left the session inspired and excited to get back to work. (It sure as hell beat the lunch-time “Getting the Most out of Microsoft Word” sessions offered at most companies.)

Of course, Yahoo! is doing a lot of hiring, so if you’re passionate and talented and this is the kind of thing that inspires you and gets your creative juices flowing, be sure to search the jobs database. If you need more encouragement, read this interview with Prabhakar Raghavan, our new head of research. I read this interview right after I accepted the offer from Yahoo! and it left me with one thought: get me there now.

First two days at Yahoo!

I was really honored to see Phil Windley’s post tonight in which he called me “one of the good guys.” Phil, the feeling is definitely mutual. Phil has that rare mix of humility and expert knowledge that I wish all technologists I work with had. I’m looking forward to reading his Digital Identity book when it comes out. Phil closes his post by saying: I hope he enjoys the new gig. Well, I already am enjoying it!

My previously-former-InfoWorld-and-now-Yahoo-colleague Matt McAlister did a good job describing the first day of orientation already, so I won’t go into that here too much except to say that everyone I met made me feel very at home. I’ve been in high-growth environments where rapid hiring was used as an excuse to handle things sloppily, but I experienced none of that in my first day yesterday — everything ran smoothly. I haven’t even had any parking problems, so I haven’t availed myself of the complimentary valet parking yet, either. I am a member of the Cult of Diet Coke (no coffee for me) so I have been pumping myself full of the free fountain Diet Coke in the cafeteria. I was able to have lunch today with my good friend and fellow Yahoo! employee John Allspaw, which was the icing on the cake on a day where my brain just started to feel the sweet overload of Really Interesting Stuff.

There’s a lot going on here, and I can’t wait to get even deeper into it.

Joining Yahoo!

Yes, folks, I announced today that I am leaving InfoWorld after four and a half amazing years to join Yahoo, working within the Technology Development group in the Search division (Jeremy gives a few hints as to what we’ll all be doing over there). I’m particularly excited that I’ll be spending some time working with the fine folks at the brand-spanking-new Yahoo! Research Labs Berkeley, a nicely bike-able 1.3 miles from my house in Berkeley (and not too far from the beautiful mountain bike trail in Tilden Regional Park you see in the header graphic on my blog).

My second-to-last column at InfoWorld (“Exiting in good faith“) came out today and talks about the right way to leave a job — a really important topic that I could only write once (my last column will, of course, be a tearjerker). After I finish up at InfoWorld at the end of this week, I’ll be taking a short break before starting at Yahoo on August 15 — expect heavier posting here shortly thereafter. My personal e-mail is chad -AT- chaddickerson -DOT- com if you would like to say hello between now and then — please do.

Update: Thanks to everyone for their congratulations and well-wishes in IM, phone calls, e-mail, and blogs (Matt, Jeremy, and Mike). It’s great hearing from old friends and exciting to think about making some new ones in the new role.