eekim.com: EEK Speaks

Tue, Feb 28, 2006

Einstein on Online Facilitation #

This gem from NancyWhite (via Hetemeel.com) cracked me up: (K9U)

I don't know, Nancy. Physics is pretty damn hard. (K9W)

Mon, Feb 27, 2006

No SDForum Talk Tonight #

Unfortunately, JeffConklin had to cancel tonight's talk due to flooding near his home. We wish Jeff the best, and will reschedule him for sometime in the near future. Sorry for the change in plans! (K9S)

/talks | Posted at 10:43am

Tonight: Jeff Conklin on Dialog Mapping #

Update: Unfortunately, Jeff cannot make it tonight due to flooding near his home. We'll reschedule him for another time, and I'll post the new date here. (K9T)

JeffConklin, facilitator extraordinaire and inventor of gIBIS and DialogMapping, will be giving a talk tonight for the SDForum Collaboration SIG in PaloAlto, 6:30-9pm. Be there! Jeff is an awesome speaker, and -- as with all of our events -- there will be a great interactive session, where you'll get to experience DialogMapping first-hand. (K9Q)

Also, podcast from last month's meeting, "How Hackers Collaborate," is now available. See ScottMcMullan's commentary on the event (and another event I co-organized, "Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration,", which I'll blog about soon). (K9R)

/talks | Posted at 1:16am

Purple v0.9 #

After RecentChangesCamp earlier this month, I drove up to Seattle to visit ChrisDent and others. Chris and I spent a day talking shop and life, and also taking care of a few things that we've been discussing for a while. The biggie was extracting the PurpleNumber generator from PurpleWiki into its own library and creating a RESTish front-end to it. The result -- Purple v0.9, available on CPAN. (K9N)

Not only will Purple make it easier for folks to incorporate PurpleNumber generation in their own software, it will also enable us to start properly experimenting with distributed PurpleNumbers. Right now, I can transclude content between this blog and my Wiki. With Purple, I'll be able to transclude from Chris's blog and any other sites using these PurpleNumbers (including all of BlueOxenAssociates's collaboratories. (K9O)

It was very cool to get this done, and more is to come. Chris has already started to incorporate it into PurpleWiki, and PaulVisscher has already started to incorporate it into perplog. You can read Chris's commentary and follow more on the ChurchOfPurple's progress at the Purple collaboratory. (K9P)

/tech/purple | Posted at 12:57am

Sat, Feb 25, 2006

Dumbells and Collective Intelligence #

I've been a member of 24 Hour Fitness ever since I moved out here, mostly frequenting their MountainView location. Now that I'm in SanFrancisco, I go to the location on Ocean Avenue (when I'm not sitting on my lazy butt, that is). Here's the amazing thing about that location. It's about three times as big as the MountainView location, with about three times the number of dumbells. And yet, it is impossible to find the weights you're looking for there. They're always scattered all over the place, and no one ever racks them where they're supposed to go. (K9J)

TonyChristopher once told me a story about this timeshare cabin he and his family rent. Someone (the owners I think) had the bright idea of actually labelling the drawers so that all of the inhabitants know exactly where to find the silverware and where to return it when they're done. Brilliant, right? And it works for Tony and his timesharing cohorts. (K9K)

All gyms already have this for their free weights. And most gyms I've been to are decent at keeping their free weights in order, although this is partially because they have some staffer reorganize them on a regular basis. Well, this apparently doesn't happen enough in SanFrancisco, and for whatever reason, those who frequent that gym aren't smart enough to put things back where they belong. And all of us suffer as a result. (K9L)

This is as good of a metric for measuring a group's CollectiveIntelligence as any: How well does a group keep its tools or its artifacts in order? There are two approaches to rating high on this metric: imposing discipline on a group from above, or hoping that your group is smart enough to figure it out on its own. When the latter happens, you've got self-organization, and it's much more compelling than the top-down alternative. This, of course, is what makes Wikis so interesting. (K9M)

/collaboration | Posted at 3:38am

Clean Hacking Stations #

Fun Fact About Eugene #322: I'm obsessed with cooking shows. There's nothing I like better on a Saturday morning than rolling out of bed, turning on PBS, and watching JacquesPepin work his magic. What's amazing about these chefs is that they always have a clean cooking station. Always. It's apparently a principle they teach at cooking school, and it makes a lot of sense. It also seems to apply to other areas of life. GettingThingsDone. ProjectManagement. And of course, hacking. (K95)

IngyDotNet (The Hacker Formerly Known as BrianIngerson) was in town this past week, and we hacked a little bit on Wednesday night. "Hacking" with Ingy for me so far has mostly consisted of me watching him in action, catching a typo here or there and occasionally pursuing some philosophical disagreement. But it's cool, because I enjoy watching other folks code, especially folks who are better than me. (K96)

(Earlier this month, while working on the Ruby YADIS library with BrianEllin, I learned for the first time about command completion in Emacs using meta-backslash. Emacs has been my primary programming environment for about 15 years, and yet, I never knew about this. Very embarrassing.) (K97)

One thing that surprised me about Ingy is that he doesn't code very fast. On the other hand, one thing he does incredibly well is that he always has a "clean hacking station." Even when he creates temporary directories or inserts debug statements in his code, he does it in a very clean way. It's a practice I'd like to do a better job of emulating. (K98)

/tech/programming | Posted at 3:13am

The Pete Paradox #

PeterKaminski has a great maxim, which those of us who know and love him commonly call ThePeteRule: (K8N)

"Time together in person is too important to spend working." T (K8O)

I think it's a great rule, but there's a corollary, which I'll call ThePeteParadox: (K8P)

Time together in person is the best time to work. (K8Q)

I actually had a specific experience with Peter last October that led me to think about this paradox. (K8R)

At RecentChangesCamp earlier this month, I faced this paradox first-hand. On the one hand, I didn't want to waste the opportunity to really get to know some of the excellent folks in the Wiki community who aren't local to the BayArea. On the other hand, I had some specific things I wanted to work on -- namely SisterSites with WardCunningham and other Wiki developers and a YADIS implementation with the good folks at JanRain. Working on these projects meant breaking away from the larger group, popping open the laptop, and focusing on the work at hand. (K8S)

The paradox resolved itself to my satisfaction. I got both projects done. We implemented SisterSites in PurpleWiki and a bunch of other Wikis, and BrianEllin and I wrote a YADIS library in Ruby. I met several interesting and cool people for the first time, including Brian, and, I got to know folks like BayleShanks a lot better. On the second night, after the conference party, I decided to go to the main ballroom to check my email, even though I was exhausted. The ballroom was empty at first, but about half an hour later, Bayle showed up. We had met at WikiSym, but this was the first time we had a chance to sit down and really talk, and we stayed up past 3am. That was excellent. I had already known that Bayle had done some cool stuff, but it was great to dig deeper into his ideas as well as to talk about non-Wiki stuff. (K8T)

I even got to discuss ThePeteParadox with Pete in person. (How's that for meta?!) And here's how I finally resolved it in my head. Both ThePeteRule and ThePeteParadox are about maximizing engagement. When you are working closely together, you are engaging in a way that is not only more productive, but more meaningful. Face-to-face time spent working can be a waste, but face-to-face time spent truly working together usually isn't. (K8U)

/collaboration | Posted at 2:52am

Thu, Feb 23, 2006

Speed Geeking #

Speaking of giving credit where credit is due, I love the fact that the SpeedGeeking meme is spreading. And I would love it even more if people credited superstar facilitator AllenGunn (Gunner to those who know and love him) and his superstar organization, Aspiration, for coming up with the idea and gifting it to the world. (K8K)

/collaboration | Posted at 2:57am

The Price of Openness #

By many accounts, MashupCamp was pretty cool. But there were elements of the event that were most definitely uncool. (K83)

RyanKing, one of the instigators behind the original BarCamp, said it best: (K84)

On news.com.com.com.com today, there's a pretty silly puff piece about the camp, focusing mainly on David Berlind, one of the organizers (who happens to work for the same company as the publication who published the article). (K85)

The article talks about the unique nature of MashupCamp, how it was somewhat free-form, where the attendees created the experience as the event unfolded, rather than having it all planned up front. And the article makes it sound as if David Berlind invented the concepts. (K86)

That's bullshit. (K87)

It most certainly is. Other BarCamp instigators, such as ChrisMessina and AndySmith, expressed similar sentiments. (K88)

These folks have every right to feel annoyed. Hell, even I'm annoyed, and all I did was attend the first BarCamp. But my annoyance is tempered by the following knowledge. (K89)

First, you pay a price for openness. People often talk about how credit is currency in the OpenSource world. That may be true, but there's no guarantee that anyone gets paid. (K8A)

For example, given the sudden interest in these so-called unconferences, you would think that HarrisonOwen would be a household name. But he's not. Who is Harrison? He invented OpenSpace, and rather than trademark it or try to own it in other ways, he gifted it to the world. Most of these gatherings are using some form of OpenSpace. Has Harrison gotten his due reward for this great gift? (K8B)

Second, in the end, the cost of openness is worth it, because authenticity always wins. (K8C)

I stayed away from MashupCamp, because it didn't feel authentic to me. That's not to say that it wasn't valuable, or that there weren't great folks involved. Quite the opposite. They did a lot of the things that are critical for throwing great events. And if you examine the Wiki, they credit BarCamp and OpenSpace. For all of that, I applaud them. And if other types of gatherings do the same, we will all be better for it. (K8D)

But what most people fail to get is that you can't just steal the name and the format, slap together a Wiki, and expect to replicate the spirit of the original event, just as you can't just slap an OpenSource license on a piece of software and expect the hacker community to shower you with love. You need to be authentic. (K8E)

The original BarCamp organizers were motivated by the beautiful things that happen when brilliant people gather to share their knowledge and passion, unencumbered by traditional boundaries and hierarchies. Not unexpectedly, some folks saw their success and saw dollar signs. Bully for them. That's what the market system is all about, and I'm a capitalist through and through. (K8F)

But retaining the original spirit can be a tricky thing, and it's impossible if it's just not in you. And if that spirit is not there, then you lose something critical. Maybe that's not important to some, and in the short term, it may seem even less so. But in the end, authenticity always wins. For every MashupCamp, there's a RecentChangesCamp, gatherings that not only embrace the original spirit, but take it to new heights. If I were a betting man (and I am), I'd bet that the gatherings that capture that original spirit are the ones that will be around five, ten, twenty years from now, in some form or another. (K8G)

/collaboration | Posted at 2:50am

Sat, Feb 04, 2006

RecentChangesCamp Caricature #

Hello from Portland! RaymondKing organized a clever and fun activity at RecentChangesCamp. He took mug shots of everyone who arrived, then sent those to an artist in California, who whipped up caricatures of everyone. Here's mine: (K5F)

(K5G)

What do y'all think? Does it resemble me? (K5H)

(K5I)

Update: As Raymond points out in the comments, the artist is RhodaGrossman. (K80)

/personal | Posted at 7:27am