de Bono codes

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Comment by Phil Bachmann on May 4, 2009 at 13:42

I've just been checking out the action codes:

Action Codes

They are just what I'm looking for just now - all of them belong in the list of "codes particularly suited to the de Bono Society".

I don't know whether this is Kosher, but I would like to use the phrase, "Give me your dBc 3 on this", meaning please scan the list of de Bono 3-x codes and choose one which best summarises your current position.

We can waste a lot of time talking to people with nothing but nice things to say (nothing wrong with that) but who have no intention of doing anything (new). "Give me your dBc 3" might be a good way of flushing them out.

Comment by Phil Bachmann on May 4, 2009 at 13:14

Thanks for the response Will,

I have spent the day implementing an OpenSearch provider (with suggestions extension). Basically it means that you can go to the search box of your browser and type say "information" and any de Bono codes containing the word "information" will appear in a drop down list (note I only entered a few codes for the purpose of demonstration). Clicking on an entry in the list goes to the corresponding page on www.debonocode.org.

Obviously the de Bono codes are copyright so I won't be making this public, but if you want to evaluate it for yourself I can provide a link. If you want to use my source code, you're welcome to it (but it's Microsoft stuff - you probably ain't interested).

Also this only works on IE and Firefox, so has less value than I'd imagined when I started playing with it this morning.

Nevertheless for the people who are sitting at their browser in thinking mode, trying to remember a quote from Shakespeare or a de Bono code, being able to press Ctrl+E, type part of a phrase and see a list of possible matches is a blessing.

To get the link, they scroll down to the intended match, hit Enter and arrive at a detailed page where they can press "Copy Link".

It's not friction-free, and maybe the best idea is to have a user press a hot-key and select lookup quote and then type the phrase and then copy to clipboard. Of course that's a Windows application that needs to be tested and debugged on many machines, leaves Mac users with nothing and let's just forget that for the time being.

By the way, I noticed the title attribute in your link tag when you entered dBc 7/12 makes the popup work properly - good one.

Comment by Will Devine on May 4, 2009 at 2:55

One more thing, both myself and Dr. de Bono believe that the translation of the codes are essential to the de Bono codes adoption by the wider public. With translations people can use the codes internationally. The code becomes a meta-language, one which has an alphabet of 10 numerals, easily recognised by speakers of nearly any language, to speak it you only need to recognise and pronounce around 30 or so numbers.

Regards,

Will.

Comment by Will Devine on May 4, 2009 at 2:50

Thanks for the feedback Phil, I'm looking for some dbc7/12

I will shortly add the embed code on each page to make this process as easy as possible.

In relation to adding codes, I completely agree with you. A process will have to be put in place to add new codes so as to make sure they are of the highest standards.

Please do continue to make your list of codes that may be useful on this site. That has given me an idea to allow users to creat different lists of codes to use in different situations/forums.

I will post here when I have added the embed code onto the pages.

In relation to your search idea, I do not fully understand the idea but it does sound interesting.

Regards,

Will.

Comment by Phil Bachmann on May 3, 2009 at 23:44

Will,

Thanks for the contact, I had forgotten about the create page. However, the links created paste into an application (Email etc) but not into text boxes on this website, which is the problem I was trying to address (hence the cumbersome 4-step process I describe above).

The other thing I wanted to do was help people find the code they wanted. I did not feel comfortable nominating myself as a code chooser, promoting some codes over others as more suitable for users of this web site. On the other hand, I wanted to see something happen and wrong actions can be corrected but no action leads to apathy and despair.

>> When somebody hovers over these links the code description pops up.

I wondered why the links were so ungainly.

Re: Your points:

1. Fine, but really what I think should happen is that someone should build an service (me maybe), which:
- Is quick to get to.
- Has a simple search box into which user types a word or a code.
- Matching entries are displayed. These entries come from all sorts of sources, including www.debonocode.org but also quotes from Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain and the rest.
- Once an entry is selected, further buttons are enabled: (1) See more (visits the site from which the information is sourced) (2) Copy link (suitable for embedding into email) (3) Copy raw link (suitable for embedding into web page).
- Copyrighted material is distinctly marked as such.
- Possibly has potential to make "new famous quotes".

A quick search of the web has revealed that the people at cite bite have kinda already done something like this. A more detailed search may find that this idea is already well and truly established.

www.wikiquote.org is another example of possibilities. They already have several de Bono quotes.

No doubt it is worthwhile pondering the questions of what is needed and where everyone fits in the medium to long term.

2. I've already struck situations where I haven't found what I wanted amongst the existing codes, but I feel you really need to work with de Bono on this. It would not help at all to have extra codes that are just slightly different from the existing codes, or new codes categorised so that no-one can find them. On the other hand, if the codes can't be expanded to embrace important concepts that have been missed, they may be underused. Also people would be motivated by the prospect of one of their ideas being included - nothing like getting people a bit pregnant.

It seems to me that there might be a secondary list of "prospective codes" which Dr de Bono might alter/choose from in augmenting the official list, deciding which number to assign. These might have incremental numbers like p1, p2 with the p prefix indicating "prospective" or "potential" or "po".

eg. p1= "This thing (tool/situation/person) is not nearly as good as it should be, but I persist with it because everything else is worse."

3. Translations into other languages will presumably follow naturally from increased use in English.

4. You need to spell out the purpose of registration.

Comment by Will Devine on May 3, 2009 at 18:55

Hello Phil and Kim,

I am the administrator of debonocode.org, I'd like to apologise for the difficulties in signing up on the site. At the moment registered users cannot do anything that non users can do. I should probably send all the people that registered a short email, explaining the situation.

The project is still in a development phase, but at least the codes are out there. I am very happy to discuss the development of the website, and the codes with you all.

Phil, I have developed a way to easily create messages using the code. It can encode the links into the format you want.

If you go to the create page you will see a text box on the page and a a flash application above it, click on the button 'enter code'. From here you can navigate to all the codes, when you click on one of the codes it adds a link to the text box below. You can then copy this text and paste it into a word doc or your email client directly with the links and information.

When somebody hovers over these links the code description pops up.

This is not clear at the moment, I will make up a video to demonstrate this process shortly.

Some Ideas I am working on:
1) On every code page I will have the embed code to paste the link into forums/this website/im's.

2) The ability for people to suggest codes and then vote/discuss these codes - I would like the code to be active and comprehensive.

3) Translations of the code, this is crucial.

4) Actually allowing people to register (once again sorry about that)

I'd like to get your feedback on this, I am currently working on a different project for the next week or two, but should get some time to get back to the code.

Regards,

Will Devine.

2) A

Comment by Phil Bachmann on April 23, 2009 at 22:19

I tried once and got did not get approved either. I assumed that Dr de Bono had other people in mind for that site - but it's also possible that they have technical issues.

I've added dBc 9/9 to the list.