I like the title of the post because it almost sounds like I am important (which I am not). I am sitting in a meeting at the Hewlett Foundation. A year and some months ago I was at the Mellon Foundation. These meetings are interesting because they are filled with very intelligent people. These individuals are here because they are the top in their areas.
I contrast these meetings with the developer meetings I usually go to. Both groups are trying to solve problems, but the approaches taken are markedly different. For developers the focus is usually on concrete problem and solution. They try to figure out the code to solve a problem. At the very least they will draw pictures and figure out how to write something.
In this meeting there is a lot more high level talk. Both approaches are valid, but as a developer it is interesting to me to see the difference in methods.
My favorite part of the meeting and the part that was worth coming too was the last hour. That is the part where we were able to figure out concrete deliverables that everyone could work on. That is the place where I live. I don’t mind chatting about philosophy and direction, but I love to figure out how to build real solutions and I love to write code to solve the problem.
We are headed to a facebook application meeting tonight. Looking forward to that.