Katie Gore, John’s wife, swung by the Table XI office today. She is getting a masters in speech pathology at Northwestern and as part of her studies needs guinea pigs on which to perform “Oral Mechanism Exams”.
Part of the exam includes measuring diadochokinetic rates. This is a measurement of how fast one can articulate distinct sounds like “puh”, “tuh”, “kuh” and the combination of the three.
Okay, so not all of Ellen’s kitchen exploits turn out so well.
Alinea serves a dish called “Black Truffle Explosion“. This is Ellen’s variation on that theme:
Broadly speaking, Table XI makes its living solving organizational problems. Here is “the management” applying those talents to our own internal challenges:
I have tried for two weeks to write this post but couldn’t figure out how to do so without gloating. It’s hard enough to humbly write about the daily meals we have cooked in-house… but when your boss flies the entire company to Costa Rica for a week, how do you say that without sounding smug?
I decided the best way is to pretend I am objective news reporter. So this is me, as unemotionally as possible, reporting the facts:
On Saturday February 27, the 13 members of the Table XI team and five of their significant-others will fly to Costa Rica. The hope is that a reprieve from the Chicago winter and a week of rejuvenation, strategic planning, team building and corporate reflection will make Table XI more successful as an organization and better able to serve our clients.
We will be staying near Playa Grande and the town of Tamarindo.
The opinions expressed in this post are the sole opinions of its author and are not representative of Table XI as a whole.
That’s because I seem to be the only one around here excited by the iPad. Most of the time (well, all of the time) when I’m in disagreement with everyone at Table XI over a technology issue, I’m wrong. But it was an article from Paul Buchheit, creator and lead developer of Gmail, that finally gave me the courage to go public with my beliefs.
His post, entitled When your product is great, it doesn’t have to be good, argues that the iPad’s success will be because of it’s limited functionality, not in spite of it:
I believe this “more features = better” mindset is at the root of the misjudgment, and is also the reason why so many otherwise smart people are bad at product design… What’s the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product — the rest is noise.
I realize the irony of this post immediately following one on fighting obesity.
One of the favorite run-in-the-background-while-you-work activities at Table XI seems to be listening to TED Talks. If you’re not familiar, TED is a well produced lecture series of really smart people giving short 20-minute talks on interesting subjects.
If you are a returning visitor to this site then you must have at least a smidgen of interest in food and cooking which means you’ll find this clip on Jamie Oliver’s efforts to fight obesity fascinating.
We are the first generation in modern history to have a shorter life expectancy than our parents. Jamie says that if he were holding the cure for AIDS or cancer, we’d be scrambling to get to him. But the greatest killers in the US are dietary related… and they are all preventable.
Of particuar relevance is his argument that companies should be providing healthy meal options to their employees. I swelled with TXI pride.
Take 20 minutes and watch this (or listen to it in the background)… especially if you have kids.