I’ll step away from the obvious debate and take Bob Ross as an example.

Bob Ross is very able to learn someone the TECHNIQUE of painting outdoor nature.
A creative person would take these techniques and apply them to a whole range of different projects
A ‘technical’ person would only be able to use said techniques to paint a gazillion mountain views, but would still never be able to use it to paint his/her kids or cat.

In the above example the being a “technical” person tells us nothing about whether or not this person is technically savvy in the sense of coding, constructing or calling their parents with an iphone.

Now, to come back to the original discussion: the person who posted that first remark is clearly a technical person in the sense that he knew how to cut and paste and post an email. He, or she, wasn’t creative enough to see that this message would, by the nature of the words used in it, offend the entire technical staff.

Just like Alex technically wasn’t creative enough to read between the lines of your arti.. err.. rant.

I think Robert Rodriguez meant to say that only learning the techniques of a certain trait will not help you in becoming anything else but mediocre in said field. Same as that a creative person won’t get really far without knowing the techniques of his chosen field.

Take jQuery: there’s many people using it, creatively copy/pasting stuff they find on different webpages into their own projects. But it’s only those who know the deeper techniques behind JavaScript who can use it to it’s full potential..

umm… so you say you write articles for the guardian fully expecting it to be ignored or not read? Wow, what an utterly, utterly useless position. Like to listen to the sound of your own voice much?

Hows about it’s disingenuous? You (say you) believe in the Christian god. But immediately you state that this is solely based on your geographical location. And you don’t think your god would mind?
The way you make it sound is like your religion is equal to a hype, a fad, you happened to came in contact with and liked. Or worse actually: it immediately transforms you from a human being in a simple cow, following the herd you happened to be born in.

There’s nothing intellectual about your position and for you to call it the only LOGICAL position is just laughable. Logic is when you use your brain to filter out the best possible conclusion to an issue. Logic isn’t about taking things an face-value because “it just feel right”.

As for Pascals wager, same as with the “so what”: if your god IS as omniscient as you think he is, don’t you think he’s on to you? Sees right through you? KNOWS that your believing in him is as false as the whole of your argument? If anything, it’s a ticket straight to your hell. He wants people to truly believe in HIM, take him to heart and love him with all the fibers of your being. He’s a jealous and vengeful God, he states so himself in your magic book. Your “So what?” just deprived you from a place at his side…

Don’t worry though: hell is filled to the brim with cool people, it’ll be a blast going there…

That makes you a hero! Not only for being brave, but also for bringing your money. I can imagine that a catastrophe like this is also an economic disaster on a smaller scale: hotels missing and restaurants missing out on their projected income because most tourists are pussies.

You did the right thing! kudos!

How many contacts do you have for complaining about stuff…?

The big difference between the two “fuckups” is that one is a genuinely human error (overselling your stock) whereas the other one is pretty much an ‘act-of-god’ kind of thing. It’s not like the KLM or Air France are responsible for either the extreme weather or the airports inability to respond to such weather. I doubt the latter is even possible, considering what we, as humans, are generally wiling to pay for things that only happen every so often. But still you insist THEY fucked up.

Further, you state that they failed to explain what exactly they did to make up for it. Which part in the bit about the hundreds of volunteers coming to deal with the aftermath, the bookings of hotel rooms, the update messaging on Facebook and Twitter and the sorting of the delayed baggage didn’t you get? Wasn’t that enough? Should they have carried you to the hotel and subsequently to Japan?

I understand your disappointment but I don’t think that you can say that KLM nor Air France ruined your, and other peoples, vacation. The weather did. The inability of the airports to deal with it did. The people who grounded the airplanes did.
And really, if the CEO’s had decided to put the planes in the air, against everyone’s better judgement, THEN you would have had something to complain about. Only, chances are you would be very dead and not in a position to complain.

I understand the general tenure of your article and do agree with it. You example is terribly flawed though…

Lastly.. When was the last time you (all of you) wrote in a letter to write about how good an experience you had when all went as planned? If ever? I do this quite often and the reactions I normally get from those make it clear to me these are unique experiences to most people. Complaining is easy. It doesn’t really add to your karma and it rarely solves problems.

Did you even read my post Alex?

Spy Kids? Well well obviously his words really hurt your feelings.

I will assume that English is not your native language and that you did not notice my, perhaps a little too subtle, self-deprecation and irony that I put in a post clearly marked as a rant.

And no, HIS words did not hurt me. But the timing of their dissemination through the company did!
I was on a tech team during a crucial delivery, continually forced to ask the team to put in yet another late night, all because our work had been trivialised by mentalities such as your own, and not given the time needed for our work to be a success.
[Imagine giving a "creative" 2 hours to write a concerto. That is what we faced.]

This ridiculous belief that a Technologist can never be creative is a blatant lie.

The internet, Facebook, Microsoft, linux, twitter, photoshop, all video and audio codecs and software, Apple, mobile phones, search engines, the internal combustion engine, mp3 players, aeroplanes, dynamite… the list goes on, but ALL of it was conceived of and developed by Technical people. Not creatives.

A talented, creative musician can play music by ear, without even needing the notes, on the other hand the technical bookworm will not be able to do the same, he needs his step by step guide (even if it’s in his head).

Creative people welcome problems, because they can adapt to the unpredictable, whereas technical people, when faced with a problem which they have had no previous experience meeting, no knowledge, they wont be able to produce the solution from their brain.

While it may be true that it is hard, or next to impossible in most cases, to keep the entire API of an enterprise computing language in your head, or all of the allelel sequences in a gene, the ability to use such knowledge effectively is a very similar skill to the one that you are ascribing to creatives.

I have “winged it”, or “coded by ear”, on multiple occasions coming up with innovative solutions to problems that I have not encountered before.
In fact, in software development encountering unknown problems is commonplace.
It could be considered a universal constant in the field.
I became so renowned for this in my previous role, the one this post is about, that such inventive, immediate, creative solutions to particularly thorny problems became known as “Graney Hacks“.
I cannot imagine a technical life more boring and mundane than one in which such challenges do not actually exist.
I, and every other technical person, relishes rising to the challenge of unknown problems and overcoming them with our skills and abilities.
That is why we do it.

Your analogy is invalid anyway.
It could only work if a creative person could pick up and perfectly play an instrument that they have never seen or even heard before.
And that is ludicrous.

Technicals follow a system, which can be learned – you can be a specialist at what you do but you’ve learnt the process and you’re whoopin’, congrats.
Creativity IS something a person is born with, otherwise the world would just be a mess. I have nothing against suits, who else would fulfill the boring work =)

And music is not learnt? and what about painting? Writing?
Creatives come straight from the womb carrying a Stradavarius, paintbrush or a typewriter?
Could you not call a musician a “music specialist” or a painter an “art specialist” or an author a “writing specialist”?

As I point out. You are NOT born with the innate ability to play the piano.
You have to learn to play the piano.
I will be convinced of your ridiculous argument if you presented any evidence in support of it other than hyperbole and rhetoric. But you can’t.

And I feel sad that you are so blinded by hubris that you cannot see the beauty in technical innovation.

So many technicals out there, with their success formulas, and that’s okay, but they will not be remembered. The creative will stand out, and their uniqueness will shine. Keep your faith starving brethren, the suits shall never be happy at heart as we are!

um. Again with the suits?
I have been in software development in various business sectors for nearly 17 years and one of the most consistent constants is that Technologists hate suits.
Take a look at OSCON attendees for instance… how many suits?
Are you perhaps confusing us with accountants or lawyers?

And as for being forgotten relics of the futures past;
There are many technologists who will never be forgotten.

I thought it quite self evident from the body of the post that the email was a pro-forma email sent from a do-not-reply PR department email address to a MASS of people who had complained via their website… myself included.

The email address was special_message@mail.af-klm.com but this is just a PR email and I doubt you will have any luck with it.

I used the http://www.klm.com/travel/nl_en/customer_support/customer_support/contact/index.htm website to contact and complain.

A talented, creative musician can play music by ear, without even needing the notes, on the other hand the technical bookworm will not be able to do the same, he needs his step by step guide (even if it’s in his head).

Creative people welcome problems, because they can adapt to the unpredictable, whereas technical people, when faced with a problem which they have had no previous experience meeting, no knowledge, they wont be able to produce the solution from their brain.

Technicals follow a system, which can be learned – you can be a specialist at what you do but you’ve learnt the process and you’re whoopin’, congrats.

Creativity IS something a person is born with, otherwise the world would just be a mess. I have nothing against suits, who else would fulfill the boring work =)

So many technicals out there, with their success formulas, and that’s okay, but they will not be remembered. The creative will stand out, and their uniqueness will shine. Keep your faith starving brethren, the suits shall never be happy at heart as we are!