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An irreversible allocation of resources
CEO on phone to Management Scientist "Hello my favourite data scientist". Management Scientist (MS): "Mr CEO, I'm not a data scientist, that's a pejorative term - I'm a management scientist". CEO: "OK, what can I help you with?". MS, "Well, that decision you have before the board, I just want to let you know that not making a decision is still a decision". CEO: "How so?" MS: "If you decide not to allocate resources to the decision before the opportunity to do so passes, then it will be irreversible, and you may not have the opportunity to do so later". CEO: "Oh crap".
The premise that charts, tables and graphs are inhumane and the proposition that visualisation systems immerse you in the data in such a way that you can process charts, tables and graphs subconsciously.
Marketing Manager walking to a WIP (work-in-progress) meeting "Oh no, not another meeting pouring over slabs of paper filled with Excel tables and pie charts". Data scientist walking alongside: "Don't worry, we've moved all the reporting into a Humanising Data visualisation system, I think you'll find it very easy to find the data points you're looking for. Manager as they both walk in the meeting room door, looking at the three newly installed large format touch-screens: "Oooh, this is nice".
Sort of like a gap year, combined with a geek year and a leap year because its a very long and geeky gap year taken by a Free Open Source Software (FOSS) developers to focus on FOSS development full-time. Usually crowd funded, or something done by engineers with rather large bank balances after cashing in their options.
Random Frat Dude at a data science Meetup: "So, what do you do?". FOSS Programmer: "Me, I'm taking a Geep Year!" Random Frat Dude: "Oh cool dude, what are you working on?" FOSS Programmer: "oh you know, saving the world, fixing the ridiculous NTLM v1.0 password hash problem." Random Frat Dude: "Wow cool dude, what's your GitHub sponsors page or do you have a GoFundMe?"
An ornamental decoration applied to software to give a false sense of security.
Locksmith on phone to Security Operations Centre: "I'm pleased to inform you that we have finished converting all your door locks to password boxes". SOC Manager: "yeah thanks, they are both just as useful as each other" *hangs up*. CEO walks in and overhearing the question asks aloud "Why haven't we made 2 factor compulsory for all password boxes yet", and then everyone in the SOC runs from the room.
A linear algebra reference to the Excel SUMPRODUCT() function, known coloquially as SUMTOTAL, and that Google search queries or Facebook Marketplace clickstream data from 10 years ago is being used to make judgements about you today.
May also be applied to text message content, telephone call verbatims, click stream data, IEMI GPS location data data from cell-towers, and lists of contacts in cloud storage.
Engineer from some latest tech startup having bevvies at The End-Up in SF leans over to an obviously NSA guy: Hey bro, you like my new t-shirt? NSA dude sees in big print "I am not the sum total of my search queries" then runs.
Virtual virtual, virtual virtual virtuals.
A reference to the many layers of abstraction, emulation and virtualisation now present in modern computers, so much so that the latest generation of computer science students have no idea how computers really work. This hiding of the inner workings of computers has been done so students can work with high level languages and abstractions to deliver significantly more function points of software behaviour with very little effort.
Professor at an IEEE conference on Software Engineering leans over to his colleague and says "I hear the latest round of students are so bad they barely understand what a virtual machine is" colleague: "Yeah, if we keep this up they will all soon be in The Matrix". Nearby student overhearing says "Professor, what do you mean?" Professor: "shut-up and get back in your virtual", then colleague whispers: "I bet he doesn't even realise his i7 chip has hidden 128-bit registers". Now grumpy professor to student: "You are all in a virtual!"
A reference to the classical Advertising text 'Ogilvy on Advertising', in which David Ogilvy describes the power of persuasion with a good long-copy ad.
So just putting it out there: in this 280 characters or less world, I'm still an "Ogilvy on Long Copy" kinda man.