The Somatic Engineer

[Daryl Kulak]

Hi,

I just recently read "The Somatic Engineer," a short article written by Peter Denning. Thank you to our Ning member, Tom Churchwell, for suggesting it.

The article talks about the importance of "value dynamics" and how Peter has been teaching it (and coaching) in his software engineering classes for many years, with good success.

Please read it and post your comments on the forum here. I'm especially interested on your views on how this relates to what we've discussed with Agile in the Bloodstream.

Thanks.

[Chuck Suscheck]

Very interesting - it makes me want to find out more about somatic methods. In the last 6 months I've been reading a number of books on formal logic, arguments, and techniques of influence - for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini. All very logical and non somatic and, unfortunately, only somewhat effective. I can see myself in the author's shoes in the "personal note" section.

I agree that the emotional and holistic approach should be another strong weapon in the quiver of influence, but it depends on who you're trying to influence, some people may well be turned off by somatic methods (perhaps I need to learn more).

As an aside, I often pass this article out to my students when I taught at Colorado State University:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/4601.html