Wed, Mar 31, 2004
Cool Friends, Cool Work
#
I have several friends who do very cool things, but have a fairly
small presence on the Internet. So, I'm going to do my part to make
their presence a bit larger by promoting some of their recent
activities here. (1A9)
I've mentioned
JohnLy?'s Canine Cliques before, the
premier source of luxury items for your dog. John recently added a
new feature that allows you to create personal Web pages for your very
special pooch. (1AA)
GregCorbett? -- my roommate for all four years of college and living
proof that honest lawyers do exist -- recently coauthored an article
for Legal Times entitled,
"Patent and Antitrust, Happy Together?". (1AB)
Finally, StephanieSchaaf is running for MountainView City Council.
MountainView residents, check out her platform and vote for her in November! (1AC)
/personal |
Posted at 12:58am
Talk: Cheap, but Necessary
#
JohnStafford had an interesting
response to my recent blog entry,
"Million
Dollar Dialog." John said, "The problem with dialogue is that talk
is cheap," and then proceeded to tell an anecdote about a series of
town hall meetings on education that led absolutely nowhere. (19U)
Before I respond, I want to share TomMunnecke's
thoughts,
which I liked a lot. Tom wrote: (19V)
It strikes me that we could have a lot more talk in many circumstances: (19W)
Physicians could take more time to communicate with their patients (and be given it in their schedules) (19X)
Parents could talk more with their children. (19Y)
Americans could talk more with Europeans, instead of letting their leaders or the media do the communicating for them. (19Z)
Muslims, Christians, and Jews could talk more. (1A0)
... (1A1)
Seems to me that we should be talking about the quality of the communication and the "rightness" of the action, not simply trying to pump up "action" at the expense of "talk." (1A2)
I agree with both John and Tom. Talk is cheap, but it's also
necessary. Talk leads to SharedUnderstanding, which is an absolute
prerequisite to effective collaboration. One of the biggest mistakes
people make when trying to collaborate is confusing talk with lack of
action. The two are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they are highly
complementary. (1A3)
See more....
/collaboration |
Posted at 12:33am
Wed, Mar 24, 2004
President Barbershop in Palo Alto
#
The good folks at PresidentBarbershop on University Avenue in PaloAlto
are essentially perfect barbers. First, they do a great job cutting
hair. Anyone who knows what I look like knows that I'm very low
maintenance about my hair. I like it short and clean-cut.
Nevertheless, finding someone who can cut hair like this properly is
amazingly difficult. I've been to countless barbers all over the
country, and the folks at PresidentBarbershop are without question the
best. (19H)
Second, they are friendly and laid-back. When I feel like talking,
they're more than happy to chat, and the conversation is always fun
and good natured. (I've always said that the best source of
information in the Silicon Valley are barbers. After all, everybody
gets their haircut, and most people talk to their barbers. I've heard
some very funny stories about some high-profile Silicon Valley folks
while getting my hair cut.) More importantly, when I feel like
sitting back and spacing out, they don't bother me. (19I)
Third, they have excellent taste. Their TV is always tuned to a
sports game or the History Channel. Naturally, they are also avid
Stanford fans. Having grown up in the Southland, I have mixed
feelings about this, but I don't begrudge their loyalties. (19J)
Fourth, they are the penultimate neighborhood business. I recently
learned a few new things about the place from an excellent
PaloAltoWeekly
profile. Moe Sanchez has co-owned the shop since 1960. Moe is also
retiring. So, if you're already a patron, give Moe your best wishes.
If you're not, go there. You won't be disappointed. (19K)
/personal |
Posted at 9:10pm
Social Wave Communities 1.0 Released
#
A few months ago, I mentioned SheldonChang's SocialWave project. Sheldon recently
announced the first
release of his communities, the flagship of which is
Social Wave Campbell. (19G)
/collaboration |
Posted at 8:50pm
Million Dollar Dialog
#
I was at a party this past weekend, and a group of us started
discussing the following question: If you had a million dollars to
spend on saving the world, what would you do with it? (196)
Not surprisingly, there was quick consensus on investing that money
into improving education for kids. Then we got into the details.
Where do you invest that money? How do you maximize the effectiveness
of that investment? How do you measure effectiveness? (197)
I've played this game several times before, and although it's never
boring, I'm rarely surprised by what I hear. What surprised me this
time was how much my own answers have changed from the last time I've
played. It's indicative of how much TheBlueOxenWay has infiltrated my
thinking. (198)
How would I spend that million dollars? I would use it to start a
nationwide dialog on improving education. I would involve parents,
teachers, administrators, and especially the students. It seems like
students are often left out of these dialogs, when in fact their
insights are as profound and as important as those of adults. (199)
See more....
/collaboration |
Posted at 8:45pm
Mon, Mar 15, 2004
Fen Labalme on SharedID
#
FenLabalme posted some
comments on SharedID, an authentication service for sharing personal
information across different web sites: (16M)
While this sounds promising, unfortunately SharedID is exactly the wrong thing. First off, it's centralized (ug) - all authentications go through the SharedID site (another hideout for Big Brother?). Further, and this is a problem with FOAF in general, profile sharing is at FOAF-file granularity, which means all my info, friends, etc. in my FOAF file will get shared once the cantralized authentication happens. I've heard some of the FOAFsters talking about how one might have several FOAF files, but then you've got data replication problems. (16N)
Fen is the primary architect of the IdentityCommons protocols.
IdentityCommons is a chaordic organization founded by OwenDavis that
is designing and building an infrastructure -- both technical and
legal -- for federated digital identities and profile sharing. How is
this different from MicrosoftPassport or LibertyAlliance?
IdentityCommons is designing its protocols so that individuals
retain control over their personal information. (16O)
I think IdentityCommons is a wonderful project and Fen is the perfect
technical lead. He's been working on privacy issues for 25 years and
is the founder of the OpenPrivacy initiative. BlueOxenAssociates is a
member of IdentityCommons and plans on being one of the first sites to
use the protocols. (16P)
/collaboration |
Posted at 3:47pm
Thu, Mar 04, 2004
What I Want To Be When I Grow Up
#
There were two good posts on careers in the blogosphere recently.
RossMayfield advises future entrepreneurs in a piece entitled
"Budding
Entrepreneurship." I liked all of his points, but my favorites were: (15C)
- Change your major. (15D)
- Take responsibility beyond your years. (15E)
- Have fun with failure. (15F)
- Do different. (15G)
- Be a businessperson. (15H)
AlexPang offers a much different, much more personal take in his
essay,
"Journeyman: Getting Into and Out of Academe." Alex's post resonated
strongly with me, but before I talk about his essay, I first have to
commemorate this moment. We haven't actually crossed paths physically
before (as far as I know; we both happen to be frequent patrons of
CafeBorrone, so it may have happened), but we've crossed paths
spiritually in many ways, and this will mark the first time we cross
paths online. (15I)
See more....
/personal |
Posted at 1:59pm
Wed, Mar 03, 2004
Chaordic Commons Revisited
#
TomMunnecke (a member of our CollaborationCollaboratory)
posted
some thoughts on Chaordic Commons. Tom, who's currently working on a
project called GivingSpace, worked with DeeHock on a health care
venture a while back and has some interesting insights into Dee and
the Chaordic Commons. (14T)
I want to take issue with something he said about DougEngelbart,
however: (14U)
As a student of visionaries, I am interested in how far-sighted individuals succeed or fail in getting their ideas across. One of the patterns I see is the degree to which the visionaries are able to dissociate their own identity from the ideas they are promoting. Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not name it "Tim's Web" - but rather gave it away to be "the World Wide Web." However, "Ted Nelson's Xanadu" and "Doug Engelbart's Augment" and "Dee Hock's Chaordic thinking" got tangled up in the charisma of the visionary. The really successful visions, I think, embed the charisma in the vision, not the visionary. "Success has many parents, but failures are an orphan. (14V)
This may be true of Dee's work, but it doesn't apply to Doug. How
many people have heard of Doug? Not enough. How many people know
what a mouse is? Quite a few. (14W)
Anyone who attended Engelbart's Unfinished
Revolution symposium at Stanford in 1998 knows how many important
thinkers Doug has influenced over the years. More telling is that
Doug insisted that his name be removed from the followup
colloquium held
at Stanford in 2000. His reasoning? It's not his unfinished
revolution; it's ours. (14X)
/collaboration |
Posted at 11:11pm
