About this BookA lifetime tinkerer lets you see some pages from his notebook so you can share the joy he finds in tinkering. His notes about his own tinkering tell how his family, friends and his environment encouraged and enabled him to tinker from his earliest days and onward through his working life. He describes the principles and practices that he and other tinkerers follow to ensure success. The notes include stories about all types of tinkerers, amateurs and professionals, boys and girls, men and women -- people who tinker alone or in teams. Tinkerers work (or play) with the objects around them. Some tinker when they have to fix something on their own. Some tinker by rearranging things for enjoyment, trying to make them work better, (e.g., recipes, computer apps, or model train sets). Others tinker with things to understand how they work and see what else they might be able to do with "just a little bit of tinkering". Some do some serious tinkering with various sets of objects to create something totally new or different. Some tinkerers don't limit themselves to tinkering with physical objects, they tinker with ideas. These tinkerers hear or read about new ideas and they tinker with ways to combine them to see how they interact with each other. We have a new term for tinkering with ideas. We call that "thinkering" and the basic principles of tinkering apply. There are several intriguing examples of thinkering in the notes. These are the kinds of things tinkerers do. They all show up in the notes the author wants to share with you. You will see descriptions of several of individual tinkering projects. One, to invent something to solve an annoying cell phone problem. There is another where team tinkering was required and was very effective. There is a pair of stories about tinkering to get electricity to remote places and another about a business owner who must tinker to keep extending the capabilities of his basic product. And, don't miss the story about the non-stop tinkerer.As part of "Tinkering in the News", there are notes on some tinkerers activities mentioned in the press. The notes also include some aspects of past and future tinkering and how new technology is helping tinkerers realize their fondest tinkering dreams. Also, there are notes on how women tinkerers are finally getting recognition for past work and for new tinkering work that is sparking innovation in many fields. In the section called Weird or Wonderful Tinkering you will you'll find notes on some of the author's unusual tinkering ideas. They are there for you to have fun thinkering about them. When you're done, you can judge for yourself whether they should be called Weird or Wonderful.The author hopes that this book and the stories in it will aid and encourage you and others to become active tinkerers and share in the joy and adventure of tinkering.
Bill is an experienced consultant specializing in process improvement and project management. He has successfully designed, developed, implemented, and managed state, local, and federal information technology projects with a perfect record of on-time and on-budget delivery. Since retirement, he has taught project management and systems engineering for American University and the Center for Systems Management. At CSM he developed and ran a process improvement practice that has conducted over 100 process assessments. He has also facilitated process improvement workshops for government agencies and their contractors. His two prior books, Draw What You Do and WYSIWYG Tales contain stories from those assessments and workshops. He continues to be a frequent contributor to Forward Momentum, a project management blog and newsletter.
