Tue, Aug 31, 2004
Self-Organizing Collaboration at the World Trade Center Ruins
#
In early 2003, I had lunch with RichardGabriel for the first time, and I explained to him my desire to uncover common collaborative patterns across different disciplines, starting with OpenSource communities. Richard recommended that I read WilliamLangewiesche's American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center, a book that described the dismantling of the ruins and the self-organizing process that emerged. (2AW)
Over a year later, I finally got around to following Richard's advice, and I'm
glad that I did. Langewiesche's book is a gripping, thoughtful account of
what happened at the WorldTradeCenter site immediately following 9/11. (2AX)
See more....
/books |
Posted at 6:28pm
Thu, Aug 12, 2004
TPVortex: Intro, Call For Help
#
In my manifesto for
collaborative tools, I cited BackLinks as an example of a common, yet oft-overlooked
conceptual construct in collaborative tools. Those who know me well
know that my strategy for implementing some of DougEngelbart's ideas
(which I crafted over three years ago) has always been to create
simple, concrete tools that could easily be shoehorned into existing
applications. The plan was to start with GranularAddressability
(PurpleNumbers), then move on to BackLinks. (247)
For a number of reasons, now seems to be the right time for me to
start shifting my technical focus to BackLinks. The strategy for
doing this is to implement a generic, OpenSource, BackLink database
(dubbed "TPVortex" and
integrate it into several existing tools: PurpleWiki, blosxom,
MovableType, MHonArc. I'm looking for folks who might be interested
in participating in this project. (248)
The motivation for such a tool is straightforward: BackLinks provide
useful, contextual information. Most Wikis already implement
BackLinks. Some of them display BackLinks on the main page, which is
the correct behavior. Others (including PurpleWiki) do not. In order
to implement this properly, you need a BackLink database. (249)
Once you have a BackLink database, you might as well use it for other
applications besides Wikis, such as blogs. We have this integration
in PurpleWiki (see WikisAsTopicMaps for the resulting benefits), but
again, it would be much nicer to display the BackLinks on the page
itself rather than requiring a person to click on a link to see them.
In order to implement this properly, the database has to store
document metadata, such as title and author, not just the BackLink.
For this reason, I think that TPVortex should use an RDF database on
the backend. (24A)
Other thoughts: (24B)
I welcome help in all forms -- comments, critiques, and especially
coding. I've set up a Wiki page at the CollaborationCollaboratory --
Collab:TpVortex -- to serve as the center of design discussions. If
you're interested in contributing or commenting, please do it there.
Feel free to drop me an email as well. (24F)
/tech/wiki |
Posted at 1:17pm
Wiki Linking Using Ontologies
#
Last weekend, I posted some notes on MarkupFreeAutoLinkingWiki. The
idea is that instead of relying on user syntax for identifying and
linking to Wiki pages, the Wiki could do a linguistic scan of the text
and link words based on a site-specific ontology. (242)
I posted my notes mainly as a BlueSkyIdea, but it ended up generating
a ton of
discussion at the CollaborationCollaboratory. That discussion
made me realize that this idea may not be all that blue sky after all,
and that -- given the proper PurpleWiki:DataBase design -- we're not
all that far off from implementing something like this in PurpleWiki. (243)
/tech/wiki |
Posted at 12:35pm
Wed, Aug 11, 2004
PurpleWiki 0.94 Released
#
The latest release of PurpleWiki has mucho changes. The most visible
is customizable look-and-feel using templates (see
PurpleWiki:Templates), but there are a slew of other important changes
as well. (23X)
Thanks to a growing user base (which included many folks who tested
the beta code in live environments), many bugs have been eradicated.
The code has advanced to the point where there's only one significant
chunk of UseModWiki code left -- the database, which is on our list of
things to replace next. (23Y)
All this means two things: First, PurpleWiki is becoming a very good,
very stable, production-quality Wiki. It's not quite there yet -- We
could use a better installation script and more documentation, and
there's still some refactoring that needs to be done -- but it's
close. Second, with a lot of the grunt work out of the way, folks
hacking on PurpleWiki can start refocusing on the more interesting
features -- Purple:DistributedPurpleNumbers, PurpleWiki:TransClusion,
etc. You're going to start seeing a lot of cool stuff. (23Z)
One of these cool features is support for IdentityCommons's i-names
(see PurpleWiki:INames). PurpleWiki is the first publically available
tool to support this important new technology. (240)
/tech/purple |
Posted at 11:41am
Amber Alert in Action
#
On Monday, I found myself in the middle of a car chase. More
importantly, I saw AmberAlert working first-hand. (23L)
I was driving south on 101 to Campbell from RedwoodCity for lunch and
a slew of meetings. As I drove through MountainView, I saw an
AmberAlert on an electronic billboard, which said that a girl had been
abducted in a blue Land Rover. I noted the first few numbers of the
license plate in my head, then thought about how great AmberAlert was,
and how interesting it would be to see it in action. I was thinking
about how AmberAlert could potentially use InstantMessenging? in cell
phones when I saw the second notice on the sign at GreatAmerica in
SantaClara. (23M)
In SanJose, I merged onto 17 towards Campbell, and a few minutes
later, I saw flashing lights in my mirror. I was running a bit late
for my lunch appointment, so I glanced at my speedometer to see if I
were in trouble, and to my relief, I discovered that -- thanks to
traffic -- I was right at 65 miles per hour. (23N)
Checking my mirrors again, I noticed the blue SUV behind me change to
the fast lane. I remember thinking, "That's strange. Makes more
sense to switch into the slow lane." Yes, I can be slow at times. As
the SUV zoomed past me, I noticed "Land Rover" on the tire cover and
recognized the first few letters of the license plate. The three
police cars in pursuit confirmed what had slowly dawned on me. That
was the kidnapper. (23O)
I fully realize that if I were truly cool, I would have captured the
chase on my cell phone camera and moblogged it immediately. Folks
would have seen the chase snapshot live, rather than having to wait
for this account two days later. In my defense, I was calm enough to
do it. As I watched all of this unfold, I actually called my friend
and told him that I was in the middle of a car chase and would be a
few minutes late. Unfortunately, my cell phone is four years old. It
doesn't have a camera, and it won't connect to the Internet. (23P)
I can happily report that the police did eventually
catch the culprit (in SanLuisObispo, about five hours south of
SanFrancisco), and the girl is safe and sound. (23Q)
/personal |
Posted at 11:22am
Sun, Aug 08, 2004
Precinct Walking in Mountain View
#
November is just around the corner, and like many folks who care about
the upcoming election, I spent this gorgeous day campaigning... for my
friend, StephanieSchaaf. Steph is running for city council in MountainView. She's very active
politically, especially about environmental issues, and will make a
great city council person. She's also running a very tight ship with
her campaign, and has a large, well-organized team of active
volunteers. (22Z)
This was my first experience precinct walking, and it brought back
mixed memories of selling candy and gift wrap door-to-door for
elementary school fundraisers. Each of us had a list of registered
voters broken down by street. The goal was to visit as many of these
voters as humanly possible, and to tell them about Steph and give them
literature. It was hard and slow work. I'm in decent shape, and my
recent travels
left me conditioned to the heat (about 90 degrees today, with low
humidity), but even so, I only managed to tackle 95 houses in about
three hours. There are about 35,000 registered voters in Mountain
View. The lesson? You can't visit them all. (230)
I enjoyed the experience more than I expected. It was great exploring
the neighborhoods and interacting with the residents, even if most of
those conversations were thirty seconds at most. The few blocks that
I walked were diverse ethnically and economically, which was nice to
see. My day broke down as follows: (231)
- Visited 95 homes. (232)
- 39 people were home. (233)
- 6 people refused to talk to me. (234)
- 2 people asked questions. (235)
These numbers made me wonder how much of an impact I made. Both Steph
and her boyfriend, RafaelReyes?, who's also quite active politically,
insisted that precinct walking is extremely important in local
elections, and that the face-to-face interaction -- brief as it is --
leaves strong impressions on voters. The nice thing about elections
is that the precinct breakdowns will quantitatively show the impact
that we had. (236)
/personal |
Posted at 7:54pm
Wed, Aug 04, 2004
Job Opportunity: Identity Commons Perl/Python Programmer
#
IdentityCommons is looking to hire a Perl or Python scripter. Details
are here. Contact
FenLabalme if you're interested. (225)
/collaboration |
Posted at 1:21am
Tue, Aug 03, 2004
People Time
#
AdinaLevin quotes
PeterKaminski: (21Y)
"Time together in person is too important to spend working." (21Z)
Reminds me of something PaulVisscher and JasonCook told me when I
had dinner with
them a few weeks ago. I was asking about the hacker community in
Dayton and whether folks ever got together to do code sprints. Paul
responded, "When I get the chance to see these people in person, I'd
rather just hang out with them." Jason told a story of how he went to
one local hacker gathering, where everyone was in a circle, staring at
their laptops, something he found rather unappealing. (220)
To some degree, it shows how spoiled techies are in the SiliconValley.
There are so many of us here, doing code sprints doesn't necessarily
interfere with socializing. When SebPaquet
met up with
me in December, he had just come from MarcCanter's party and was in
awe of how easy it was to run into cool and interesting folks -- not
just techies -- around here. (Hey Marc, where was my invitation?!) (221)
/collaboration |
Posted at 4:59pm
Mon, Aug 02, 2004
Wikis And Face-To-Face Events
#
Face-to-face gatherings are very good at generating a large amount of
enthusiasm and momentum. Unfortunately, that energy usually
dissipates soon afterwards. (204)
Here's what generally happens: Folks leave the event exhilirated, but
exhausted, and return only to discover a daunting pile of work. By
the time they've made their pile manageable, the only artifact of
their gathering is a lingering feeling of, "Oh yeah, that was fun."
The work that was done and the work that was to be done is mostly
forgotten. (205)
For the past two years, I've been designing a set of processes that
use online tools to maintain and even increase that energy after an
event. I've had the opportunity to experiment with bits and pieces of
the methodology at the past two PlaNetwork conferences and the
recent AdvocacyDev
convergence
to varying degrees of success. At the MGTaylor 7-Domains Workshop
last month, I finally had a chance to test the methodology in its
purest form, and I was extremely pleased with the results. (206)
See more....
/collaboration |
Posted at 6:04pm
