Author: Geoff

Chris Guillebeau: The Art of Non-Conformity

Chris Guillebeau: The Art of Non-Conformity

Creator: Chris Guillebeau, Fighter of the Status Quo
Purpose: Live life on your terms whilst making a positive difference in the lives of others at the same time.

Manifesto

The Art of Non-Conformity

  1. Set Your Own Rules
  2. Live the Life You Want
  3. Change the World

Principles

  1. You must be open to new ideas
  2. You must be dissatisfied with the Status Quo
  3. You must be willing to Take Personal Responsbility
  4. You must be willing to Work hard

11 Ways to Be Unremarkably Average

  1. Accept what people tell you at face value.
  2. Don’t question authority.
  3. Go to college because you’re supposed to, not because you want to learn something.
  4. Go overseas once or twice in your life, to somewhere safe like England.
  5. Don’t try to learn another language, everyone else will eventually learn English.
  6. Think about starting your own business, but never do it.
  7. Think about writing a book, but never do it.
  8. Get the largest mortgage you qualify for and spend 30 years paying for it.
  9. Sit at a desk 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work.
  10. Don’t stand out or draw attention to yourself.
  11. Jump through hoops. Check off boxes.

Sources

Website: http://chrisguillebeau.com/
Pdf Download: A Brief Guide to World Domination
Book: Chris Guillebeau, The Art of Non-Conformity, Perigee, New York, 2010, Page 9

Architectural Centre Manifesto

Architecture Centre Manifesto

Creator: The Architectural Centre is a voluntary organisation of architects, artists, designers and the like with an interest in the built environment in Wellington, New Zealand. They formed in 1946 with the aim of creating a manifesto, although nothing was completed or published. This one was completed on the 60th anniversary of the organisation in 2006.

Purpose: The general aim is to improve the urban environment in Wellington, New Zealand.

Manifesto

The Architectural Centre: Manifesto for Architecture

  1. Architecture must be better than what it replaces. (Fresh air is better than some buildings)
  2. Architecture relies on intelligent government. (Mindless bureaucracy will only create mindless architecture)
  3. Architecture needs an assertive public. (Architecture will only thrive if the public demands this)
  4. Urban Environments must be planned (but not only by planners)
  5. Recycle Architecture; Good architecture is elegant environmentalism (Continued human existence relies on having planet earth in our future: ditto for the next planet)
  6. Architecture must facilitate better living. (The delights of good design – light, warmth and pleasure etc – must be cherished)
  7. Bad building must be eliminated. (Wellington is too important for soulless buildings; buildings designed heartlessly for profit are not architecture)
  8. Architecture must be celebrated. (New architecture is our future heritage)
  9. Architecture has an obligation to challenge (Controversy has a positive role in architecture)

Sources

Architectural Centre Inc: http://architecture.org.nz/about/

Image: Geoff McDonald, Walter Read Reserve, Oxford Street, Sydney

Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto

Boccioni - Elasticity - Futurist ManifestoCreator: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, published in French as ‘Manifeste du futurism’ in Le Figaro on 20 February 1909.
Purpose: To launch an art movement that celebrates speed, machinery and the modernisation of Italy.

Manifesto (extract)

The Futurist Manifesto

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.

  1. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
  2. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
  3. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
  4. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
  5. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
  6. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
  7. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
  8. We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
  9. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
  10. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Sources

About the Manifesto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_Manifesto

Full transcript: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html

Image: Clipped section from Umberto Boccioni ‘Elasticity’ 1912.

New Rules of Golf Instruction

Charlie King's New Rules of Golf Instruction

Creator: Charlie King
Purpose: To raise the standard of golf instruction so you can become the kind of golfer you dreamed of becoming.

Manifesto

The New Rules of Golf Instruction: A Quantum Shift in Instruction Ideas That Puts the Power in YOUR Hands

Sources

Download the 60 page ebook: http://newrules.reynoldsgolfacademy.com/new-rules-download/

As mentioned in Ann Handley and CC Chapman’s book Content Rules: http://www.contentrulesbook.com/

Ban Comic Sans

Ban Comic Sans Manifesto

Creator: Holly and David Combs
Purpose: To ban the use of the font Comic Sans and preserve the quality and traditions of typography.

Manifesto

Ban Comic Sans Manifesto

We believe in the sanctity of typography and that the traditions and established standards of this craft should be upheld throughout all time.

From Gutenberg’s letterpress to the digital age, type in all forms is sacred and indispensable.

Type is a voice; its very qualities and characteristics communicate to readers a meaning beyond mere syntax.

Early type designing and setting was so laborious that it is a blasphemy to the history of the craft that any fool can sit down at their personal computer and design their own typeface.

Technological advances have transformed typography into a tawdry triviality.

The patriarchs of this profession were highly educated men.

However, today the widespread heretical uses of this medium prove that even the uneducated have opportunities to desecrate this art form; therefore, destroying the historical integrity of typography.

Like the tone of a spoken voice, the characteristics of a typeface convey meaning.

The design of the typeface is, in itself, its voice.

Often this voice speaks louder than the text itself.

Thus when designing a “Do Not Enter” sign the use of a heavy-stroked, attention-commanding font such as Impact or Arial Black is appropriate.

Typesetting such a message in Comic Sans would be ludicrous.

Though this is sort of misuse is frequent, it is unjustified.

Clearly, Comic Sans as a voice conveys silliness, childish naivete, irreverence, and is far too casual for such a purpose.

It is analogous to showing up for a black tie event in a clown costume.

We are summoning forth the proletariat around the globe to aid us in this revolution.

We call on the common man to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance.

We believe in the gospel message “ban comic sans.”

It shall be salvation to all who are literate.

By banding together to eradicate this font from the face of the earth we strive to ensure that future generations will be liberated from this epidemic and never suffer this scourge that is the plague of our time.

Sources

Website with Resources: http://bancomicsans.com
As mentioned in Simon Garfield, Just My Type

Charlie Sheen’s Life Manifesto

Charlie Sheen's Life Manifesto

Creator: Charlie Sheen
Purpose: You choose…To create a new future, to make a public spectacle of yourself or just a public rant.

Manifesto

11 Point Life Manifesto

1. No panic. No judgement.
2. Leave marriage to the amateurs and the Bible grippers.
3. Don’t stress the fools and trolls who lay down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children and look at their ugly lives.
4. You have the right to kill, but you do not have the right to judge.
5. Don’t give interviews. Leave warnings.
6. Either love, or hate. But you must do so violently.
7. Hate everybody that’s not in your family because they are there to destroy you and they will come at you in all forms and shapes.
8. Don’t live in the middle. That’s where you get slaughtered. Where you get embarrassed in front of the prom queen.
9. Hang on to your resentments. They fuel your attack. They fuel the battle cry of your deadly and dangerous and quiet battle soldiers.
10. Look fear right down the barrel.
11. The only thing you should be addicted to is winning.

Sources

http://www.pajiba.com/miscellaneous/charlie-sheens-11-point-life-manifesto.php

Ainslie Hunter: Courses That Matter

Ainslie Hunter: Courses That Matter

Creator: Ainslie Hunter
Purpose: Start an online Education Revolution – to improve membership sites, and the calibre of teaching within those courses.

Manifesto

Courses That Matter: Teach people, not topics

Teaching matters so turn up.
Reach out. Communicate. Transform.
Value contributions. Plant seeds.
Online communities are living beings.
Feed them your best: best knowledge, best ideas, best of you.
Support members to construct their own knowledge, solutions to their own problems.
Design a safe space with shared interest and connections.
Real learning is driven by students, nurtured by teachers.
Learners are hungry. Learning is messy. Make it matter!
Provide more doing, less reading.
Be personal.
Content that explodes onto screens.
Experiences that stick and spread.
Provide social and personal opportunities.
Be open to transformation.
Be ready for personal connections.
Take time to learn yourself.
Your learners will become teachers to new learners.
Encourage this ripple effect.
It can all be achieve online.

Sources

Manifesto: http://coursesthatmatter.com/about/
Interview: http://geoffmcdonald.com/ainslie-hunter-courses-that-matter

Agile Software

Agile Software Manifesto

Creator: In 2001, 17 people from various software companies met in the mountains of Utah.
Purpose: Need for an alternative to documentation driven, heavyweight software development processes convened.

Manifesto

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  • Responding to change over following a plan
  • That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Principles behind the Agile Software Manifesto

We follow these principles:

  • Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
  • Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
  • Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
  • Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
  • Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
  • The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
  • Working software is the primary measure of progress.
  • Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
  • Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
  • Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.
  • The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
  • At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Sources

More details: http://agilemanifesto.org/
Thanks to Chris Curnow for pointing this one out.

The Wellbeing Manifesto

Wellbeing Manifesto - Australia Institute

Creators: The Australia Institute
Purpose: Governments in Australia should be devoted to improving our individual and social wellbeing.

Manifesto

The Wellbeing Manifesto proposes nine areas in which a government could and should enact policies to improve national wellbeing.

  1. Provide fulfilling work
  2. Reclaim our time
  3. Protect the environment
  4. Rethink education
  5. Invest in early childhood
  6. Discourage materialism and promote responsible advertising
  7. Build communities and relationships
  8. A fairer society
  9. Measure what matters

Sources

Complete manifesto: http://wellbeingmanifesto.net/

The Four Hour Work Week

Timothy Ferriss, The Four Hour Work WeekCreator: Timothy Ferriss and published as a book, The Four Hour Work Week .

Purpose: Have us rethink our 9-5 Monday to Friday, live for the weekend deferred lifestyle.

Manifesto

Tim Ferriss’ book title is a great manifesto snapshot:

The Four Hour Work Week : Escape the 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich.

Ferriss calls for an end to:

  • The 40 hour work week
  • The live for the weekend culture that works five days then has only two days off
  • And an end to the live-to-work deferred lifestyle. Why work the best years of your life? Why die waiting to retire? Or why retire and be too old to do anything?

Tim’s deal is er… TIM’s DEAL. He identifies three lifestyle currencies that you need to manage to live your ideal lifestyle:

  1. Time (Non-renewable)
  2. Income
  3. Mobility

And he has identified four ranked, intra-dependent steps:

  1. Define : Define your ideal lifestyle.
  2. Eliminate : Eliminate everything extraneous.
  3. Automate : Build an automatic, sustainable source of income.
  4. Liberate : Be mobile and free yourself from your location.

Sources

Book Website: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/
For a great summary of Ferris’ manifesto, grab the Book Rapper issue The Four Hour JOLT!

More

Remote Year Values – living and working remotely while holding down your job and building you career

Manifesto for Smarter Working (remote work in organisations)

Haydn Shaughnessy – The New Work Manifesto (addressing the lack of engagement in the workplace)