“New” in the sense of starting today, of beginning here, now.

Right now. When this post is uploaded.

“New” in the sense of being unprecedented. Unlike anything else I’ve done, and as far as my friends and colleagues have seen it, unlike what’s been done before.

“New” also in the sense of renewal, of becoming better.

I make it sound hard to explain. It’s not complicated. But better if I show, not tell, in the next few days. And I’ve given myself seven years to get my story straight.

A year ago I found that I could answer the question, “What would the ideal workplace be for computational science and engineering?” It would be like a conference. Like an Extreme Programming workshop. Like a glass-walled online laboratory knitted together by deep and wide-ranging collaborations.

It would leave room for generalists, adapt dynamically to permit enthusiasts their passions, and foster productive exploration and innovation. It would somehow balance exploration and exploitation. It would be some kind of “agile research”, reducing the risk of planning and fostering rapid, small releases of useful progress.

Something new, in many ways. Not the Academy. Not Industry. And definitely not consulting. Researchers don’t have customers, after all: we have patrons.

But more than anything else, I realized that we might be able to corral and limit “work” to what we have always imagined it should be: to thinking, exploration, explanation, modeling, simulation, writing, and only the most fulfilling form of collaboration.

Those of us who have worked in industry, in the Academy, we should learn how to keep work from eating our real lives. Those of us who have been consultants—proper highly-paid consultants, like I have been—well, we need to keep our work from eating our customers’ lives.

My ideal workplace is the one that integrates into my real life, seamlessly and innocuously. It’s the place that allows me to do what I can and should do, with grace and style and balance.

It needs to reward me with more than just financial capital, in other words.

So that was a year ago. 13 July, 2006. I stared out an airplane window, and wrote some notes on a yellow pad. I spent the next three months trying to tear the core ideas apart, undermine them, find their weak spots… and it changed deeply and improved. I spent three months in turmoil caring for a dying relative, realizing that our normal lives cannot survive “leaves of absence” and the bureaucratic infrastructure that we’ve built… and it changed deeply and improved. I spent six more months talking, and writing, and throwing away as much as I could… and it becomes simpler all the time.

And for no better reason than anniversaries are easy to remember, today it begins. It’s called Coscience. From 13 July 2007 through 5:30pm 12 July 2014, my job is to change the world and see what happens.

Now I suppose you’ll want to know what it is.

But I’m going to go out on this lovely sunny evening, and spend it with my wife and friends in town. The world will change as easily tomorrow… most of the work’s already done.

Keep that in mind. And go out and enjoy your time as well.