Never Underestimate the Power of Fun

There's been a very active discussion among Sun's "Java Champions" (Sun's program for external Java developer/evangelists, of which I'm a member) talking about why the Java programming language has lost some luster and Ruby is getting all the coder love.

I commented to the group, "Never underestimate the power of fun." We can talk all day about how much more powerful Java is (true), how it has orders of magnitude more resources, APIs, frameworks, etc. (true), and how it's been used to solve some of the most complex, highly-scaled systems imaginable (true, think Orbitz). But in the end, even programmers are still human.

And human (mammal) brains are tuned for play. Evolution favored those with a high play drive, because play=learning, play=practice, and learning/practice=survival. Play--and laughter--sends a signal to the brain that "this is good, and it matters", which is why we're often more likely to remember especially funny things than neutral or annoying things.

But this isn't a post about programming--it's a follow-on to my previous post on brainstorming with EQ sliders. It's about adding a slider for humor or fun, where it isn't necessarily expected.

One innovative city government did just that, and they're earning a reputation as a city that does things governments "just don't DO." If you can imagine a city government trying to help its citizens "kick ass", well, that's what Bryan, Texas appears to be doing.

Jay G. Socol, the city's Public Information Officer, explained it to me:

"All cities with populations of 3,000 or more are required by law to publish and distribute (yawn) drinking water quality reports. Cities hate doing them, and residents throw them away, often without a glance. Bo-ring.

This year, we developed a mid-year calendar (who sends out a calendar in July???) that featured fun photos of out Water Services employees -- guys who never, ever get the spotlight or recognition. Yet they perform a mega-essential service. So imagine what people thought when they opened their mailboxes and found a calendar that has a cover photo of water guys synchronized swimming in a pool?

You have to open something like that and see what's inside. And that's exactly what people did. They loved the concept, the fun photos and...they even read the boring legal information. I move around town and quite often see the calendars hanging in businesses or in homes. We've had tons of requests for this thing -- even from other cities. And I believe it will change the way cities approach publications like this because they never knew that they could show a sense of humor."

(You can see some sample pages of the calendar on the Bryan government page.)

Seeing this made me think about ways to add a "fun" slider to places where fun has diminished over time (like with Java), or into places it's never been (city government). (I recommend the A Smile in the Mind book for inspiration.)

Way to go Jay Socol! I hope the next city I live in has a government with this much spirit.