Danny O’Brien presented an excellent session on life hacks. He sent out questionaires to alpha geeks who do work publicly and interpreted the results that he got back. When he asked for screenshots of said alpha geek desktop, the most common theme was shells.
And shells, and shells, and shells, and shells…
The command line is the lowest common denominator when you work publicly. The command line is also scriptable.
The other common trend was the use of a todo.txt file or something similar. Alpha geeks tend to work with tools that they know, and todo.txt or otherwise organizing life in text files. The common view among alpha geeks is to not trust your software more than you have thrown your computer in the past.
The email client is also an excellent organizational tool. Alpha geeks use it a lot. Private blogs and interntal/secret RSS feeds are also becoming more important, and often replacing email as an organizational tool. Alpha Geeks are rapidly spending a fair amount of time in their RSS aggregators, and are using the software that they trust.
I was suprised that wiki didn’t come up as an organizational tool.
Scripting the daily life is also a common theme among Alphas. Personal scripts tend to be short, for specific use, may have a limited use life, and are often embarrasingly encoded. Often a script is written, used shortly, and promptly lost or forgotten.
Danny is an excellent speaker, and it was great to peer into the minds of alpha geeks in the public space.