Mogic thinks

It's blurry, but there it is.

As I waited for the green light at the intersection, I wondered if I would have slowed down my bike if I had known that I would have to go back more than 30 seconds and wait for the red light before turning the corner.

If I had known that I would have to wait, I would have paddled slowly instead of rushing.

If we had a curb mirror, we would have been able to see a little further, but without a way to know what the future holds, we optimize our actions with the information we currently have.

If you are heading to some destination in the near future, and the machine knows the future status of your route, it seems to me that you can arrive with an assist and a green light all the way.

Eventually, the more shopping, cooking, cleaning, housekeeping, investing, and side hustles are predicted and optimized, the closer our lives will become to algorithms.

The process becomes smoother and smoother as the best answer is chosen from the huge number of branches predicted in advance.

However, the algorithm is not a panacea and will over-optimize for the current situation, which can be fatal if it is not updated when the external situation changes.

It is like being assisted without knowing that the switching time between red and green lights has been changed.

So, while living a life made convenient by algorithms, we need to pay attention to whether the foundation of the algorithm has changed.

In addition, it is important to pay attention to whether the algorithm has been secretly changed to something malicious.

What is good for someone else can become bad for you.

As I put my foot on the pedal again, I realized that I don't have to live my life with green lights all the time, but sometimes I have to stop at red lights.

Let the plants grow.

It's that time of year again when we begin to replant and prune the plants in our office.

We wandered around looking at the plants, muttering about how big they had grown or how weak they were, and carried them up to the roof.

As the Golden Week holiday season approaches, the number of sunny days will increase, and working in short sleeves will be just fine, if a little sweaty.

There is a store near Shakujii that sells rare plants and trees, so I tend to have a variety of plants that I don't see every day.

Recently, the number of plant pots with good texture has increased, so if you are particular about what you buy, it will cost more than the plant, and you will be disappointed.

Pampas grass has weakened this year.

It is a plant with large ears, so large that it has a common name, "ghost silver grass.

Originally from South America, such as Brazil and Argentina, it was introduced to Japan during the Meiji period as an ornamental plant.

I bought a large silver grass a few years ago because it looked interesting to have in my office, but it gradually lost its vigor because it loves sunlight and is always indoors.

I decided to give it to a room with a balcony for light and let it grow.

They will cut off the long, thin, dead leaves, check the root system, and figure out how to adjust the soil.

That's how I look back on the year's growth as I work on various plants.

Of course, in each room with plants, you can naturally feel the growth of the members.

From a survey of management concerns

Before I created my company, I had been looking at surveys on entrepreneurship and management conducted by chambers of commerce and ministries.

A quick look shows that the company has three main problems: inability to develop new customers, inability to hire good people, and cash flow problems.

I thought that would be true, and also wondered why it all came down to these three things.

Are you unable to hire good people because of cash flow problems?
Is it because you can't find new customers that you have poor cash flow?
Are you unable to develop new customers because you don't have the right people?

It would be an understatement to say that they are mutually influencing each other, so we will try to deepen the information so that it will be useful to us.

If we assume that there are three countermeasures: A) inability to develop new customers, B) inability to hire good people, and C) cash flow difficulties, the lack of funds in C) is just a matter of not spending money for the time being, and the inability to hire good people in B) is just a matter of doing your best for the time being.

All that remains is A) to develop new customers. It's just a matter of managing this task.

However, after all this time, I finally realized that I don't really know what a "new customer" is.

We use them because we don't know what they are, more than words.

The word "new customer" is also used from the seller's point of view, so I really need to imagine a better image of the person I am signing a contract with.

And so another new challenge is born.

What is the expectation that makes you want to sign a contract?
What is the normal level of satisfaction after signing a contract?
What is more than normal satisfaction?
Do you want to be more than normal and satisfied all the time?　etc.

Running a company allows us to create our own agenda as much as we want, and that is what makes it fun.

What you see in the subtraction series

There is a theme called the subtraction series, where we try to subtract "what seems most important" from "what is obvious" and see what is left.

It's like what happens when you remove the bean jam from anpan.

You are free to think about whether it will be just bread or air bean jam.

I quote in the beginning from a book I found on what happens when you subtract year-over-year sales and quarterly targets from capitalism.

nbsp...
Minority Design
https://wrl.co.jp/2020/12/25/minority-design/

Since I was a child, I have been saved by many creators.

omission (of middle part of a text)

However, when I jumped into society, I realized that people in all industries and professions called "creators" were tired.

The reason for this is that the economy is trying to eat up all the talent we have.

omission (of middle part of a text)

But on the other hand, I think people are starting to realize this.

I realized that it's not all about achieving a 10 "1" percent increase in sales over the previous year, or meeting a "quarter" goal.

As the workforce shrinks, the domestic market shrinks, and various disparities widen, we realize that we will run out of steam and go under if we only try our best to meet short-term goals.

One of my juniors tweeted something like this.

Where the hell is capitalism going?

......

One answer is that "capitalism" - "sales and profits" = "realizing the importance of minorities.

When sales and profits are left alone, they approximate the focus on the majority in terms of efficiency, and therefore tend to give less consideration to minorities.

This may also be the reason why we dare to set up something like the SDGs.

There is no specific answer, but if you subtract "dreams" from "life," "your rights" from "society," or "the president" from "the company," you will notice things that you may have been blind to.

Why we have an office in Shakujii

It's been ten years since we opened our office in Shakujii.

Recently, I've been asked a lot in interviews, "Why do you have an office in Shakujii? I'd like to explain why.

There are so many that it is difficult to explain verbally.

Why do we have an office in Shakujii?

Because it was a place with a lot of greenery and a relaxed atmosphere.

After the Great East Japan Earthquake, I thought it would be better if everyone's home and office were closer together.

There are almost no IT companies in Shakujii, and it seemed that we would soon be the number one IT company in Shakujii.

There are no other companies to compare with, and they don't seem to be working too hard.

I wanted to question the "common sense" of setting up an office in the city center.

When I thought about 20 years from now, I felt that the city center would not be the only office.

Because I wanted to do something together with local people.

I thought I could contribute to local restaurants by increasing the number of people working there.

We wanted to use the savings to provide benefits to our employees because the cost per square meter of office space is lower than in central Tokyo.

I didn't have to ride the commuter train.

In the beginning, we used to have meetings at a family restaurant in Shakujii.

In order to do something that is not common sense, you need to think about the rationale for it from various angles.

With all these reasons, there is still room for people to ask, "Why not take the plunge and go to the countryside? I'll answer that question.

A company that uses a lot of IT inevitably needs web engineers, designers, directors, and planners, so from the perspective of the economy of accumulation, it was not a good idea to set up a base in a regional area from the beginning. It is possible in the future, but we thought we should use the power of Tokyo for the first step.

It will be.

After weighing the advantages of the city center (people experiencing the IT lifestyle) against the advantages of the countryside (more space and time to live), I decided that the best place to live would be around 17km from the city center.

Well, I think I'm overthinking it, but as it turns out, I had a lot of unexpected fun when I look back on it.

And now that we have a number of subsidiaries, we will have to come up with ideas for new developments.

Infodemics and News Deserts

With the pandemic caused by corona, a great deal of information has been flooding the Internet.

This phenomenon is called an epidemic of information, or infodemic.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has an interesting page on infodemic research.

The current status of information distribution on new coronavirus infections
Current Status of Information Distribution on Novel Coronavirus Infections
https://www.soumu.go.jp/johotsusintokei/whitepaper/ja/r02/html/nd123100.html

According to an estimate by Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting (2020), the world's ability to communicate information has expanded 68 times since the 2002 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic.
Woohoo!

And although it depends on the method of calculation, the title of Detroit Tohmatsu's research report is "The power of information transmission increased 1.5 million times in a century - the rapid contagion of information "infodemics". In particular, the amount of information and the number of contents seem to have had a major impact.

While there is a flood of information, there is also the problem of news deserts.

This refers to the phenomenon of local newspapers in the U.S. disappearing rapidly due to the rise of online media and the lack of necessary news for local residents.

Infodemics where information floods in and news deserts where local news dries up.

It would be nice if human cognition could increase 1.5 million times in a century, but given that it hasn't changed much, how can we cope with "swelling and drying information"?

I think it would be good if there was a subject called "Information Cooking" at least from elementary school.

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
Reference information: Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Promotion of Information Education
https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/zyouhou/detail/1369613.htm
Information

Bottle mail Message in a bottle

Now I am just called "representative" anymore, and I rarely have the opportunity to teach interns and new graduates directly.

There may or may not be one after the first month of employment.

The executive officers and chiefs of staff are following up well, so there's no room for error.

That's all well and good, but I'm feeling a little rusty and have started to create a column site that only people who work at Mogic can read.

There are a lot of miscellaneous topics, such as basic knowledge as a working adult, worries about job hunting, things to think about in your 20s, the three major expenses in life, the story behind the creation of Mogic, and the stance we look for in our employees. In total, there are probably about 200 articles.

The atmosphere at Mogic is a bit different, so I hope you'll take a look when you find yourself wondering, "Why are there so many events and education? I hope you will take a look at it when you have questions like "Why so many events and education?

Writing a column for a member who will come in the future is a strange feeling in itself.

However, like the bottle mail that people in the past used to put letters in small bottles and send them out to sea, I hope to deliver a little bit of today's exuberance along with it.

How to match the rhythm

At the center of the computer is an integrated circuit called the CPU, which performs various calculations.

In addition, there is memory for temporary storage, a hard disk for long-term storage of large amounts of data, and external connection terminals, all of which work together in a complex manner.

There is a secret to cooperation, and that is rhythm.

Since a large amount of processing is done at the same time using electrical signals, it is completely useless if each part is out of sync.

The electronic circuit has a rhythm maker called an "oscillator," which taps out an accurate and fast rhythm.

Quartz is a thinly cut quartz crystal that vibrates when voltage is applied to it.

I also use rhythms that I created by applying them.

I read a paper the other day that said the hippocampus, the part of the brain related to memory, has a rhythm of 4 to 8 Hz.

It seems that rhythm is important for the brain to link the parts of the brain that are divided by function, such as vision and hearing.

However, there seems to be some debate as to whether it should be managed centrally like a computer, or whether it should be combined in a decentralized manner by taking advantage of functional localization.

Thinking about such rhythms, I wonder what the rhythms that make a company function should be.

Mogic has never had a numerical goal or roadmap, and each person or team brings up an idea at their own time, gets feedback, and then, poof, they're gone, so I guess you could call it a discrete rhythm.