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Thu, Aug 31, 2006

Aandehul    #

About a month ago, I mentioned to my friend, BettyToole, that I was going to Copenhagen, and she suggested that I touch base with her friend, SorenRiis, a lifetime resident of the area. Soren and I met up on Saturday, August 19, and he gave me an amazing walking tour of Copenhagen. He's a teacher by trade, he's very well traveled, and he is completely in love with his native land. The way he talked about Copenhagen reminded me very much of how I feel about California.    (L4G)

We walked for about five hours with Soren feeding me detailed accounts of the history and architecture of the city intermixed with personal anecdotes. For those of you who know nothing of Danish history, let me just say this: Christian IV is very important in Denmark.    (L4H)

The highlight of our tour was the Royal Library Garden, which is nestled between the Royal Library and the Parliament building. Copenhagen is a bustling town, full of pedestrians, bikers, and even the occasional car. It is physically small, easily walkable, and while it's not hectic, it's not quiet either. We had already walked for several hours, and as we neared the Parliament building, Soren proposed that we visit his namesake, Mr. Kierkegaard.    (L4I)

Parliament is currently out of session, and there was loud construction going on behind the building. We walked past the noise, slipped into a courtyard, and suddenly, I was transported out of the city and into this beautiful, private garden.    (L4J)

   (L4K)

Literally five seconds earlier, my ears were hurting from sounds of large trucks hauling asphalt. In the garden, I heard nothing but the water trickling from a large fountain and birds chirping softly and contentedly. The back of the Royal Library stood guard over a large grassy courtyard, with pockets of colorful flowers dotting the garden and the occasional tree providing shade for the weary visitor. Although there were others milling around the garden, they were irrelevant. I stopped, looked around, and breathed in the sweet air.    (L4L)

"Aandehul," said Soren. "It literally means 'hole to breathe in.' There are lots of spaces like this in Copenhagen. This is one of the best."    (L4M)

ChristopherAlexander describes the patterns found in these spaces as CourtyardsWhichLive, QuietBacks, and PositiveOutdoorSpace. I had seen similar spaces like this the day before -- buildings surrounding serene CourtyardsWhichLive, parks enclosed from the rest of the city. They are wonderful, rarely found in cities in the States, and the Royal Library Garden is the best of the aandehul.    (L4N)

These kinds of spaces play an important role in MartinHeidegger's work, where he describes walks through the forest suddenly leading into these open spaces surrounded by trees. It is in these spaces, according to Heidegger, where we become fully aware of ourselves -- Dasein.    (L4O)

Epilogue    (L4P)

The following day, I was describing my experience at the Royal Library Garden to AlexanderKjerulf, who had never been there, and I mentioned "aandehul." Upon hearing the word, he gave a start, then laughed. While metaphorically accurate, the word is also used to describe a whale's spout.    (L4Q)

/personal | Posted at 10:51am

Wed, Aug 30, 2006

WikiMania Interview with Ward Cunningham    #

My interview with WardCunningham at WikiMania 2006 is now available as an MP3. Many thanks to the folks who made it available!    (L4F)

/talks | Posted at 2:57pm

Mon, Aug 28, 2006

An Evening with Danish Bloggers    #

   (L3I)

You can't truly know another country until you know its food and its people. Thanks to ThomasMadsenMygdal, I had a chance to do both last Friday in Copenhagen. Many thanks to all of you who came (14 in all!) and shared your stories and good vibes (and restaurant recommendations). EvanProdromou teased me later about having a Danish posse. Well, you all can consider me part of your American posse.    (L3J)

I arrived in Denmark two weeks ago knowing almost nothing about the country, much less the goings-on there related to my professional world (other than Reboot). I left a week later, not only personally and culturally enriched, but also professionally enriched. There is a lot of interesting thinking going on in Denmark, and while the startup culture is not as active as it is in SanFrancisco or even other European countries, the desire to do with the group I met was very strong. That's not always the case at these blogger meetups (which is why I generally avoid them, at least here at home.)    (L3K)

The evening began casually (other than a minor mixup over the meeting place) with drinks at the Barbar Bar in Vesterbro. We then walked over to Carlton for an excellent dinner. I had told myself beforehand that I wasn't going to stay out too late, but I was enjoying myself too much. The whole group shifted to JoachimOschlag's place (which was conveniently just upstairs from the restaurant) for more beer and conversation. It was hyggeligt!    (L3L)

Ah yes, hyggeligt. Hygge is a Danish word for... well, apparently, it's hard to translate, and I'm not sure I fully grasp it. According to the English Wikipedia, hygge is equivalent to the German word, Gemuetlichkeit. Hygge denotes a sense of intimacy and closeness, and is often used to describe gatherings of people, where you share a sense of familiarity and fun with those around you. Think "hug," but not as wishy-washy. It's a sense of wholeness that comes from being around others, and there's a strong association with the space that helps create this wholeness. You can see why I like this word. The notion of hygge resonates strongly with community, and I would argue that it's a common pattern in HighPerformanceCollaboration as well as another aspect of QualityWithoutAName.    (L3M)

I've got pictures of the gathering buried in my Copenhagen Flickr set. MichaelAndersen also posted some pictures as well as a blog entry.    (L3N)

I can't possibly do justice to all of the conversations I had that night, but here are some highlights:    (L3O)

Reboot and OpenSpace    (L3P)

A lot of these folks were intimately familiar with OpenSpace. A few of them knew GerardMuller, founder of the Danish OpenSpaceInstitute and co-facilitator of the OpenSpace at WikiSym with TedErnst. Thomas had tried incorporating OpenSpace into Reboot a few years back, and it apparently did not work well. We talked a lot about success patterns in group process, especially hybrid processes.    (L3Q)

One of the biggest challenges with network as opposed to organizational events, where your participants feel compelled rather than obligated to attend, is getting people there in the first place. Most people interpret "emergent agenda" as "no agenda," and they treat such events as networking rather than learning events. This is exacerbated by the length of the event, which is optimally three days for emergent group processes. (See MichaelHerman's TwoNightRule?. I'm starting to realize that many people -- even those who are very good at group process -- are unaware of the forces underlying the TwoNightRule?, and it affects the design process.)    (L3R)

Framing the invitation is a critical component for circumventing this challenge, but it's not easy. I urged Thomas and the others not to give up on more interactive processes, and suggested as a possible framing question for an event, "What could we accomplish together in three days?" I proposed linking such a Danish event with a similar one here in the States, perhaps associated with our "Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration" workshops.    (L3S)

Semco SA    (L3T)

Several people told me the story of the Brazilian company, Semco SA, and its CEO, RicardoSemler. Semco is a remarkable study in decentralized, emergent organization. It's a relatively large company, with over $200 million in revenue and 3,000 employees, and it's aggressively decentralized and transparent. Employees set their own hours and salaries. Workers evaluate their bosses, and they regularly mix with others, regardless of projects, thus developing multiple skills as well as a greater appreciation for the many roles that are required to make an organization tick. It's really an amazing story. Semler has written two books, Maverick and The Seven Day Weekend, both of which I plan to read.    (L3U)

I did some followup research, and I was surprised to see how widely known the Semco story seems to be. I follow this space closely, and I also did a considerable amount of research on Brazil for my Brazilian OpenSource adoption study published in May 2005, but this was the first I had heard of the company or of its CEO. It's yet another example of the group being smarter than the individual.    (L3V)

Knowing What We Should Know    (L3W)

Speaking of which, I chatted quite a bit with RaymondKristiansen, a vlogger, about how to get more people aware of the stories they should be aware of. It's a very difficult question. On the one hand, the notion of CollectiveWisdom? does not mean that every individual needs to know everything. On the other hand, it does imply that we should be able to quickly learn what we need to know when we need to know it.    (L3X)

We talked about the FeaturedContent? pattern as a way of trickling up useful content. It's an especially important pattern with blogs, which are great for tracking conversations, but -- like MailingLists and forums -- tend to obscure older, but still relevant content.    (L3Y)

On a related note, Raymond also kicked my butt about not creating screencasts. I promised Raymond that I'd have my first screencast up before the end of September. There, it's in writing now.    (L3Z)

AlexanderKjerulf    (L40)

I'm a little reluctant to single Alexander out, because I walked away profoundly affected and impressed by many people. Nevertheless, he and his blog, The Chief Happiness Officer, get special mention (not that he needs it; his blog is far more popular than mine!) and soon, a blog post devoted entirely to our conversations for two very important reasons. First, he recommended a number of excellent restaurants in Copenhagen, and we ended up eating at two of those together.    (L41)

Second, every time we chatted, I found myself scurrying for my pen and notecards. It will take me three freakin' years to follow-up with all of his stories and ideas, generated over maybe 12 hours of conversation. I plan on trying anyway, because there was a very high degree of relevance and profundity in everything he said. He is a plethora of ideas, knowledge, and -- as his title implies -- positive energy. I urge all of you to check out his blog, and to make an effort to meet him if you're ever in Denmark.    (L42)

/events | Posted at 9:54am

Sat, Aug 26, 2006

People Encounters in Copenhagen    #

Last Friday, mostly recovered from my jetlag, I set out to explore Copenhagen in earnest. I began my day walking up Norrebrogade towards Assitens Kirkegaard, a public cemetery and park where SorenKierkegaard, HansChristianAndersen, and NeilsBohr are buried. All along Norrebrogade were small ethnic shops and places to eat.    (L33)

I slowly ambled up the street, watching the other pedestrians go about their business, stopping often to window gaze. There were a number of Middle Eastern butcher-shops, and I stopped and stared at one of them. (What can I say? I love meat.) A few minutes later, I broke out of my trance and noticed a mother and her toddler son standing outside of the shop, seemingly waiting for someone. The mother was dressed in Muslim garb, with a long black dress and a striped head-scarf. The boy was watching me, and when our eyes met, he smiled. I smiled back and waved, then looked at the mother, who also smiled.    (L34)

The next day, SorenRiis, a friend of a friend, took me on a fantastic walking tour of Copenhagen. Towards the end of the day, we came across a young woman on a bike, who stopped to let us cross the street. I looked at her and smiled, and she smiled back. Soren saw the brief exchange, and quoted another great Dane, VictorBorge: "The shortest distance between two people is a smile." Thinking back to my encounter with the woman and her son, I decided on a corollary: If you can be smiled at by a young child and not feel your mood instantly buoyed, you are either not human or are severely emotionally repressed.    (L35)

I was so enjoying my walk through Norrebro, I decided to walk past Assitens Kirkegaard and further explore the neighborhood. I finally circled back on Hillerodgade and started walking through Norrebroparken, a peaceful haven away from the hustle and bustle of the main street. I saw some magpies in the park and stopped to take some pictures. I had never seen a magpie before, and I wasn't sure what they were at the time. As I concentrated on the near impossible task of getting a good picture of these birds on my pocket camera, I failed to notice a scruffy, older man approaching me. It was just after 11am, the park was mostly empty and enclosed on all sides, and he reeked of beer.    (L36)

"Oh," he said, "You can see the picture on your camera!"    (L37)

I looked up and instantly tensed, but maintained my cool. "That's right," I responded, "this is a digital camera."    (L38)

"Remarkable!" he exclaimed. "And you're taking a picture of our jacktals. Are you just walking around exploring then?"    (L39)

"Yes," I responded. "Copenhagen is a beautiful city." I smiled when I said it, and the smile was real, but strained, bearing little resemblance to the easy, buoyant smile that had appeared on my face a few hours earlier. The old man said goodbye, then continued on his way. I felt a small pang of guilt. He had been pleasant and looked no scruffier than I often do walking around SanFrancisco, yet I had braced myself for the worst. Yes, he had beer on his breath, but this was Copenhagen, where everyone drank openly on the streets. I pride myself on my openness towards others, and when I meet strangers, I'm willing to assume that they are trustworthy, good people barring any evidence to the contrary. Then again, I also pride myself on my street smarts.    (L3A)

I quickly shook off the guilt. I looked back at the man, who had walked away as quickly as he had appeared, took a few more pictures of the birds, then continued my exploration of the city.    (L3B)

/personal | Posted at 11:35am

Denmark Assessment: What a Week    #

Damn. I've been back in the States for a little over 24 hours, and my body is still in pain. My Copenhagen trip last week started off great. It was mellow, I was walking around, exploring a new country, a new city, living in the moment while digesting my new surroundings. Then I started to meet people, passionate people full of energy, enthusiasm, and goodwill. You spend a few hours with these folks, and they blow your mind.    (L2Y)

That's how it all started. The brain, which I had previously set to passive mode, kicked into active gear. Then WikiSym happened, and for three days and nights, I was constantly surrounded by another group of brilliant, passionate people. The brain kept consuming, and when the little safety valve in the back of my head told me to slow down, the brain kicked that valve shut and kept cranking. After dinner on the last night, slowed by a newly acquired cold and a week of little sleep, my body told me to shut it down. My brain just laughed. "You'll be traveling for almost 20 hours tomorrow. Suck it up."    (L2Z)

So I sucked it up. Went out for beers with a large group of people, closed down the bar, then headed to the hotel casino with the remnants of the group for a fresh batch of conversation. Shut down the casino too, and finally went to bed. A few hours later, I was on a train back to Copenhagen, and 24 hours later, I was back in SanFrancisco.    (L30)

Back in the day, I used to flaunt my endurance. Late night bull session? A mere jog in the park. All night work session? If the work was interesting, I'd gladly go two. Back in the day, I could back it up. Now, not so much. But old habits die hard, and now I'm paying the price. I'm suffering from severe jet lag, the cold has kicked into second gear, and I now have a stack of new information and experiences to digest into knowledge, in addition to the piles of work that were already waiting for me when I returned home.    (L31)

And you know what? I don't regret it one damn bit. I had an outstanding time in Denmark. I saw many old friends, and made many new ones. My mind is churning with ideas, and I got a lot of work done. Sure, I could have stopped and smelled the roses a bit more than I did, but the roses are still around, and I'm smelling them now. Sadly, my body finally beat my bravado, and I'm missing the one year anniversary of BarCamp this weekend, but it's a fair tradeoff. Besides, that's what the Wiki is for.    (L32)

/personal | Posted at 9:47am

Thu, Aug 17, 2006

My Danish Adventures, Day 1    #

I arrived in Copenhagen today, a few hours late thanks to a caterers' strike, which forced the plane coming to pick us up to stop first in Oslo for food. International travel never seems to be smooth, and that's not even accounting for the terrorist scare.    (L2A)

The craziness started this morning (or rather, yesterday morning). My shuttle was supposed to pick me up at 5am, but at 4:20am, the dispatcher called me and reminded me to be ready in 15 minutes. I had just gotten out of the shower after a whole hour of sleep, and I responded drowsily, "You mean 5am."    (L2B)

"No, 4:45am."    (L2C)

After complaining for a few moments about the miscommunication (definitely their fault), I said no problem. After all, I was up, although it was a good thing I had decided to set my alarm for 4am and not 4:30am. I was out the door by 4:35am, just in time to see the shuttle pull up even earlier than expected.    (L2D)

My flight to Dulles was uneventful, and my delayed connecting flight to Copenhagen was a blessing in disguise, as it gave me more time to adjust my internal time clock. I fell asleep as soon as I got on the plane and got another three hours in before waking up at 6:30am Denmark time. My flight arrived at 10am.    (L2E)

ScandinavianAirlines is an excellent airline. The lady at the counter was friendly, professional, and apologetic for the delay, and she gave us all food vouchers, even though the delay wasn't too bad. The plane was relatively spacious, and the seats had individual screens with a selection of movies and views of cameras attached to the bottom and front of the plane. There were also bottles of water in each seat, a welcome amenity given the recent ban of carry-on liquids. It may seem like an obvious thing to do, but United didn't do it, and I'm willing to bet that most of the other major U.S. airlines don't either. Its terminal at the Copenhagen airport even had these beautiful hardwood floors. (I'll remember to take a picture when I return.)    (L2F)

I bought a calling card from CallingCards.com prior to leaving, but I couldn't figure out how to dial the local access number, and the woman at the airport couldn't figure it out either. Phone numbers are the next great frontier for standardization. We've got international standards for email and the Web, but I can't figure out how to make a damn phone call in a cosmopolitan European city.    (L2G)

I'm staying at the Ibsens Hotel in Norrebro, historically the working class district of Copenhagen, but on the verge of gentrification today. The hotel itself is nice with helpful service at the front desk and free WiFi (in theory). However, I've only managed to find decent connectivity in one tiny nook near the hotel lobby. I get zero access in my room, which is a pain in the rear.    (L2H)

My room wasn't ready when I arrived, so I slipped away to nearby cafe, Cafe og Ol-Halle for lunch. The cafe is a former workers' bar dating back to 1892, with a cozy interior. "Cozy" seems to be a good word to describe a lot of the local eateries and cafes. I had three kinds of smorrebrod and a Carlsberg pilsner. I was a bit disappointed by the smorrebrod. They tasted fine, and I had to try them, since they're a Danish staple, but I saw other patrons eating dishes that looked much tastier.    (L2I)

On the way back to the hotel, I passed Israels Plads, a local park. There was a large asphalt playground with kids playing basketball and soccer, and several stalls selling flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Near the park was a church, Bethesda, that advertised free Danish classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I saw that and thought to myself, "Excellent, I'll stop by and learn a bit of Danish." Sadly, it was not to be. When I returned to the hotel, jet lag and the lunchtime beer caught up to me, and I fell asleep while researching dinner options. That's right, I was figuring out my dinner plans right after eating lunch. What can I say? I like food.    (L2J)

I forced myself to wake up after a few hours, took a shower, bought some toothpaste (currently banned from planes) and brushed my teeth, then set off for Galathea Kroen dinner. "Galathea" is the name of several Danish boats that have pursued long scientific expeditions over the past 150 years. My pocket guidebook claimed that the cafe served Indonesian food, but they only had Malaysian food and Danish meatballs. I had the meatballs, which were quite good, and another ubiquitous Carlsberg pilsner.    (L2K)

Copenhagen is eminently walkable, and it has this wonderful medieval quality. The city has this very old quality, but it's vibrant and alive at the same time. It's unlike any other city I've been to. Bikes and pedestrians own the road, with plenty of carless roads. Curiously, less than half the parked bikes I saw were locked. Walking to dinner, I passed Copenhagen University, the Nationalmuseet, the Christiansborg Slot, and other old buildings and squares. Although there are over a million people living here, it has a small-town feel, which I like.    (L2L)

Copenhagen is super liberal, moreso than SanFrancisco. According to my guidebook, Denmark legalized same-sex marriages in 1989. According to this week's TheCopenhagenPost, Denmark has been the world leader in foreign aid for three years running. Convenience stores have a revenue cap. If they exceed it, they have to cut back their hours. This prevents large chains from obliterating independent markets. I appreciate the spirit, but the means offends my conservative-leaning economic sensibilities.    (L2M)

Yet for all its progressive politics, Copenhagen feels very proper. People in SanFrancisco are wacky. We dress all sorts of ways (or not at all), homebrew bikes and Segways are ubiquitous, and there's always a protest happening somewhere. People here just quietly go about their business. I wouldn't have guessed the area's political leanings had I not read about them beforehand.    (L2N)

Tomorrow, I'm going to pay my respects to SorenKierkegaard and HansChristianAndersen at Assitens Kirkegaard, and then I'm going to cover as much of the city by foot as possible. In the evening, I've got the Danish bloggers meetup. I may skip Tivoli entirely on this trip -- it feels too touristy -- but if I go, I'll go on Saturday night, when they have a "toy soldier parade." It's also supposed to be beautiful there in the evenings.    (L2O)

/personal | Posted at 4:07pm

Tue, Aug 15, 2006

Denmark Meetup This Friday    #

ThomasMadsenMygdal and other good folks have very graciously organized a blogger meetup in Copenhagen this Friday at 6pm in my honor. I'm really looking forward to mind melding with some of the Danish thinkers and do'ers in this space and seeing what happens. Looks like there's going to be a great crowd, and I hear Danish beer is outstanding. If you'll be in the area, please join us! You can RSVP on Thomas's blog.    (L26)

/talks | Posted at 8:51am

The Essence of Profound Change    #

From MarkSzpakowski comes this wonderful quote by OttoScharmer in Principles and Practices of Presencing for Leading Profound Change:    (L23)

/collaboration | Posted at 1:54am

Mon, Aug 14, 2006

HyperScope at WebMonday Tonight    #

I'll be doing an informal presentation on HyperScope at WebMonday (SiliconValley) tonight at 6:30pm at SocialText in PaloAlto. See the WebMonday Wiki for more information. Hope to see you there!    (L22)

/tech/hyperscope | Posted at 12:36pm

Thu, Aug 10, 2006

The In-N-Out Test    #

EstherSnyder, the founder of In-N-Out Burger, passed away last Friday. (See the LosAngelesTimes obit.) For those of you who haven't heard of In-N-Out, it's a legendary burger joint that originated in California, but that's now all over the western UnitedStates. I'm from LosAngeles, so In-N-Out is part of my blood (literally -- I've eaten tons of their burgers), but it also served as an interesting business thought experiment when I was founding BlueOxenAssociates.    (L1I)

On August 14, 2002, TheNewYorkTimes published an article on In-N-Out, one that had me asking several colleagues, "Would you rather have founded In-N-Out or McDonald's?"    (L1J)

Here's the tale of the tape:    (L1K)

• They were both founded in LosAngeles in 1948.    (L1L)
• In-N-Out remains privately owned. McDonald's is a public company with franchises world-wide.    (L1M)
• In-N-Out did an estimated $160 million in sales in 2001, meaning it has grown in revenues 10 percent a year. McDonald's did $40.6 billion in sales in 2001.    (L1N)
• According to a FastCompany article last year, In-N-Out is now a $310 million company. In-N-Out does very little advertising. McDonald's spent $1.5 billion on branding in 2004, yet its per-store revenues are only slightly higher than In-N-Out's.    (L1O)
• In-N-Out's menu is largely unchanged over the past 50 years.    (L1P)
• Even EricSchlosser of Fast Food Nation fame endorses In-N-Out.    (L1Q)

I started asking a bunch of my colleagues this question, and the responses were interesting. The most interesting response in favor of McDonald's was that McDonald's has had a positive systemic effect on society by giving millions of people their first introduction to the working world and management skills.    (L1R)

Can you guess my answer to the question? What's yours?    (L1S)

/business | Posted at 3:45pm

Tue, Aug 08, 2006

WikiMania 2006: Quick Hits and Final Thoughts    #

I really enjoyed WikiMania, but it felt distinctly different than last year. A big part of it was personal. The conference was held in Cambridge, my home for four years, so the location itself was familiar and uninteresting. I was only there for three days, whereas last year I came early for Hacking Days, where I had a chance to get to know people better at my leisure. I also had much more on my mind, whereas last year, I was fully present the whole time -- morning, noon, and night.    (L0E)

Part of it was the conference itself. It wasn't as international as last year, but it was still quite good -- one out of four attendees were from outside of the States. There were also more visitors, folks new to Wikis who came to see what this stuff was all about. Several of these people were fairly high-level, described by JasonCalacanis as "folks who ride on the back of builders."    (L0F)

The same held true for RecentChangesCamp earlier this year, except the spirit was quite different. There, the visitors were eager to learn and to participate, and the community embraced them. Here, many visitors stayed at arm's length, choosing to observe from afar rather than immerse themselves in this wonderful community. At WikiMania last year, a different group of us would go out every night, laughing, sharing stories, mixing with other groups. This year, there were more clusters, more silos. I saw people -- especially the visitors -- sticking with the folks they knew, rather than mixing with others.    (L0G)

That is not our community's way, and I found it mildly distressful. To some extent, it's the price of success -- especially true in the case of Wikipedia -- and the result of the culture that those not acclimated to Wikis bring to the table. To a large extent, process is at fault. I find it fascinating that a community schooled in self-organization and the value of emergence continues to organize top-down gatherings. If it's not careful, WikiMania may eventually go the way of LinuxWorld, Comdex, and many other conferences that began as a wonderful, generative community gathering and eventually became a meeting place for fast-talking salespeople.    (L0H)

Despite my standing in the Wiki community, I'm an outsider to Wikipedia, and I only have three ways of encouraging a shift in how WikiMania operates. The first and best way is to become active in the community and in the planning of the next conference. In an alternative world, this would have already happened, but the reality is that it's not likely. The second and worst way is to preach to the folks in the community, which I've been doing. I find this distasteful. It's my personality to effect change, not to talk about it.    (L0I)

The third way is to create a space where people can learn for themselves and to catalyze that learning as much as possible. This, in a nutshell, is the purpose of BlueOxenAssociates. I've had some success in this area. The FLOSS Usability Sprints exposed some folks to effective collaborative processes, including one of the original BarCamp organizers. I was then able to point to BarCamp as a model for the RecentChangesCamp organizers, who wanted to bring OpenSpace to the Wiki community. Both the usability sprints and BarCamp helped spawn DCamp, the BarCamp for the usability community. Our "Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration" workshops have inspired a number of people to pursue similar event models.    (L0J)

In addition to helping the tech community learn about face-to-face collaborative processes, I've also helped other communities -- from Planetwork to the WorldEconomicForum -- learn how online collaborative spaces can complement physical ones.    (L0K)

All of this is just the start. I have bigger and better things in the works. More importantly, the meme is starting to spread. I've helped initiate some of this, but there are many other sparks, and others are starting to fan the flames. We will learn how to collaborate more effectively. But it will take time.    (L0L)

I'm sounding a bit ominous, and it's an exaggeration of how I actually feel. As I said before, all in all, WikiMania was wonderful. When you bring great people together and get out of the way, great things happen. Even if there are minor obstacles, great people will find a way around them. This has held true not just for the participants at WikiMania, but for the organizers. I am amazed at the efforts, commitment, and passion of SamuelKlein, PhoebeAyers, DelphineMenard, and the many, many others who worked ridiculously hard to make this conference happen. The whole community deserves tremendous praise. I hope it continues to do what it does well, while unabashedly exploring ways to improve.    (L0M)

One goal that the WikiMania organizers should have for next year is improving conference Wiki usage among the participants. Effective self-documentation via Wiki is a staple of BlueOxen's processes, and we've managed to influence many others about it, including BarCamp and the Aspiration events. But the best Wiki usage at an event I've ever seen was at RecentChangesCamp. The community was already steeped in Wiki culture, and the process encouraged self-documentation. The fact that neither WikiMania nor WikiSym has seen effective conference-wide usage of Wikis is an indicator that something is blocking the community's natural instincts. It's also a lost opportunity, as those who attend the conference seeking to learn about Wikis miss out on the chance to experience them first-hand.    (L0N)

Quick Hits    (L0O)

• I was amazed at the number of speakers who exclaimed how honored they were to be there. Some of them were merely experiencing the euphoria of speaking at a gathering of their peers for the first time. Others were hardened veterans of the speaking circuit, including YochaiBenkler and DavidWeinberger. Yochai even interrupted his traditional two months beach getaway to speak at the conference.    (L0P)
• Speaking of DavidWeinberger, I saw him talk for the first time, and now I know what the fuss is about. He's a wonderful speaker -- self-deprecating, sharp wit, great sense of humor, and very thoughtful. He did a MontyPython-like parody of LawrenceLessig's presentation-style that had the entire audience rolling with laughter, and he managed to slip in references to Hegel and Heidegger without sounding pretentious. But I had two beefs with his talk. (Boy, I'm just Mr. Negativity today.) First, he disputed the notion that knowledge is just in people's head, citing all the knowledge associated with the artifacts that surround us. I understand the point he was trying to make, but I didn't like how he made it. Artifacts are not knowledge. I generally find myself taking the exact opposite stance as Weinberger -- emphasizing that knowledge is in our heads, because it stresses the human element we so often forget when we think about our relationship to knowledge. Second, he made a hypothesis about Wikipedia editing behavior that practically everybody in the room knew was wrong. He admitted that he was speculating, and gracefully acknowledged his error when informed of it, but he never should have made that mistake in the first place. There were many people he could have simply asked before making such a claim.    (L0Q)
• The best talk from someone I had never heard of was by SethAnthony, who spoke about Wikipedia editing patterns. See RossMayfield's notes for a summary.    (L0R)
• FernandaViegas and MartinWattenberg, the IBM researchers who created History Flow, gave an outstanding talk where they demonstrated some new visualizations of Wiki usage. Some of those visualizations are available in my Flickr collection. I particularly found their visualizations of user behavior interesting, because of past suggestions that such visualizations could be a powerful way to help casual readers determine reputations. The biggest obstacle (besides the computing power required to generate these visualizations)? Privacy. Even though these visualizations were based on public data, that does not automatically make it okay to make those visualizations available. Witness AOL's recent fiasco (and read TomMaddox's commentary).    (L0S)
• I caught up with DennyVrandecic towards the end of the conference, and I'm glad I did. He gave me an in-depth demo of Semantic MediaWiki, which he had first proposed (but had not coded) at last year's WikiMania. The notion of encoding link types in Wikis is not new, but up until I saw the SemanticMediaWiki, the best implementation I had seen was EvanProdromou's WikiTravel. I think the SemanticMediaWiki is a better approach. It's less expressive than WikiTravel, but more likely to be widely adopted. I plan on experimenting with it and incorporating some of its capabilities into my own Wikis.    (L0T)

/events | Posted at 1:33am

Mon, Aug 07, 2006

Web 1.0 VC Pitch Champions    #

The highlight of my WikiMania experience came at the party on Saturday night, when RossMayfield and I won the Web 1.0 VC Pitch competition, judged by MitchKapor, BrewsterKahle, and JackHerrick. The pitch? Ross's first startup, which at one point had a market cap of $1 billion and a fat $60,000 in total revenue. Gotta love the bubble, baby! As Jack said when announcing the results, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.    (L02)

I did my part by doing my best SteveBallmer impression, only ignorant and more obnoxious. We may have been the only pitch that the judges actually heard, thanks to our shouting and gesticulations. Here we are proudly showing off our spoils -- WikiMania staff T-shirts and Wikipedia lanyards:    (L03)

   (L04)

Ah, sweet, sweet victory. If only it really were 1998 again....    (L05)

/events | Posted at 7:11pm

Creole Wiki Markup, WikiOhana, and More Ward Wisdom    #

Several folks asked me on Saturday what I thought about the conference, and I kept saying, "It's been great, except I haven't had any interesting conversations about Wikis." That changed in an unexpectedly generative way on Saturday afternoon, resulting in a new little cooperative effort we're calling WikiOhana.    (KZ1)

At Thursday night's conference party, I got reacquainted with ChuckSmith, whom I had met at WikiMania last year. Chuck is the founder of Esperanto Wikipedia and was the one who first introduced BrionVibber -- now the lead developer of MediaWiki -- to the Wikipedia community. At the conference last year, Chuck met ChristophSauer, a German Wiki researcher, and the two of them started working together.    (KZ2)

At the party, Chuck told me that he and Christoph had been working on a proposed WikiMarkup standard, and I loudly grimaced in response. At WikiSym last October, I made it clear to several people that I thought trying to standardize WikiMarkup was a noble waste of time.    (KZ3)

First, people are really attached to their own markup. Previous discussions about standardization usually started and ended with, "Great idea. Let's just standardize on mine."    (KZ4)

Second, WYSIWYG in theory obviates the value of a standard markup from a user's perspective. It seemed more valuable to work out a standard interchange language, which WYSIWYG widgets could use to interact with different Wiki engines and which would make data migration between different Wiki engines easier. It also seemed like it would be easier to come to agreement on an interchange language. In fact, folks have already worked out a good proposal for an XHTML interchange language on the Interwiki mailing list (now migrated to the wiki-standards list) and on CommunityWiki.    (KZ5)

What made all this talk worse for me was that I thought that people were trying to go about this the wrong way. We were not going to come to agreement by group authoring a spec, then getting everyone to agree on it. The only way this was going to work was if a few Wikis came to some agreement and actually implemented the changes. This wouldn't necessarily result in a standard, but it could act as a catalyst that could lead to a standard. SunirShah has been advocating this approach for a long time, to no avail. I would have organized such an effort myself, except that I didn't think it was important enough to spend any time on it.    (KZ6)

Chuck and Christoph changed my mind. Chuck explained that he and Christoph had extensively analyzed existing Wiki markup, and they had taken pains to come up with a small subset of things that would be as noncontroversial as possible. (There had been a similar effort by others to do such an analysis before, but it hadn't gotten very far.) They were going to present the results at WikiSym in a few weeks, but they had prepared a poster for WikiMania. Still clucking my disapproval, I promised Chuck that I would check out his poster.    (KZ7)

On Saturday, I finally made some time to check out the poster. I studied it and found myself thinking, "Hmm. This isn't bad." Chuck came over later, and we started going over it in depth. I still have some issues with it (discussed below), but I told him, "You know what, this is almost good enough for us to adopt in PurpleWiki. But you really should find one or two other Wikis who might say the same." We kicked a few ideas around, and then I said, "Let's go see what Ward thinks."    (KZ8)

So we rounded up WardCunningham, and he took a look and started asking questions. He seemed to be okay with the answers, because he said that if someone were to write a Perl function that converted from his markup to the proposed markup and vice versa, he would consider incorporating it into his Wiki.    (KZ9)

CreoleMarkup    (KZA)

Well, you know me. Low-hanging fruit, a spare hour before the next party. The long and the short of it is, half of the converter now exists. It's called Creole, and it's written in Perl. Currently, it consists of a brain-dead simple script that converts Ward's markup into CreoleMarkup (Chuck and Christoph's proposal) and some tests.    (KZB)

The name was Ward's suggestion. Rather than call it "pidgin," which is what it actually is (a non-native language cobbled together from two or three other languages), we chose to optimistically call it "creole" (a native language that emerges from a pidgin), which is what we hope it will become.    (KZC)

I have three issues with the current proposal. First, I don't like the exclamation point syntax for headers, not because of the character itself, but because of the numbering:    (KZD)

!!!Heading 1
!!Heading 2
!Heading 3    (KZE)

As you can see, you need to remember that a top-level header has three exclamation points, not one, and you are only capable of having three levels of headers. The advantage of the equals syntax:    (KZF)

= Heading 1 =
== Heading 2 ==
=== Heading 3 ===    (KZP)

is that the heading level is represented by the indentation.    (KZQ)

Second, there needs to be a proposal for preformatted blocks.    (KZR)

Third, the spec isn't rigorous enough. You have to answer questions like, "Will italics work across multiple lines or blocks?" The reason I didn't write a Creole-to-Ward converter was that these questions were not yet answered.    (KZS)

Most of the time developing the Creole converter was actually spent reverse engineering Ward's markup. Ward pointed me to a LiterateProgramming version of his source code -- implemented in a Wiki, of course -- which helped a lot. As it turns out, Ward's been thinking a bit about how to write a good markup parser recently. Parsers are often on my mind as well, as we've been talking about rewriting the PurpleWiki parser forever. Plus, the topic came up at Hacking Days among the MediaWiki developers before the conference. We'll probably noodle on this problem a bit both before and during WikiSym. Fortunately, Ward knows a lot more about writing parsers than I, as anyone who's seen the PurpleWiki code can attest.    (KZT)

WikiOhana    (KZJ)

When we were discussing names, Christoph proposed "ohana," which means "family" in Hawaiian. It has a wonderful connotation -- respecting our individuality while emphasizing the bonds that keep us together in a positive, welcoming fashion. It's also consistent with Ward's original naming convention, as "WikiWiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian.    (KZU)

We decided to call our little cooperative effort, WikiOhana, of which CreoleMarkup is a first project. We hope the family grows over time.    (KZV)

More Ward Wisdom    (KZK)

While retelling an experience he had writing a parser, Ward said, "That's when I learned how to write beautiful code: Get it working, then spend the same amount of time making it better."    (KZW)

/tech/wiki | Posted at 6:11pm

Yochai Benkler and Rishab Aiyer Ghosh at WikiMania 2006    #

On Saturday morning, I had the pleasure of attending talks given by two very important contributors to my field. About a year and a half ago, shortly after I first met KatrinVerclas, Katrin started telling me, "You've got to read YochaiBenkler." I'm pretty sure that she ended 90 percent of our subsequent conversations with, "You really should read Benkler." When Benkler came out with his book, Wealth of Networks earlier this year, everybody else in the world seemed to echoed Katrin's advice.    (KYH)

I knew that Benkler was speaking this weekend, so I finally downloaded his book and started reading it on the plane. Unfortunately, I only got through the first chapter. You can imagine how lame I felt when I found myself having dinner with him on Friday night. Fortunately, Benkler himself gave a thirty minute synopsis of his book on Saturday morning.    (KYI)

(As an aside, Benkler unintentionally scored some major geek points, when his laptop revealed that he runs Linux with KDE. There are a lot of outsiders commentating on OpenSource these days, but most of them do not actually run Linux themselves.)    (KYJ)

Benkler's thesis is that technology has enabled unprecedented forms of large-scale cooperative production, what he calls "commons-based peer production." Think Wikipedia, think OpenSource, think MashUps?, etc. According to Benkler, these non-market activities are no longer on the periphery, but form the very core of economic life for the most advanced societies.    (KYK)

Technology is largely responsible for our ability to behave this way, but only partially responsible for the authority to behave this way. The latter is a cultural phenomenon that has been catalyzed by the technology, but is not entirely causal.    (KYL)

The question is, is this behavior an outlier, or is it economically sustainable? Benkler didn't talk a lot about this -- this is why I need to read the book -- but he did cite numbers such as IBM's revenues from Linux-related services, which far outpaces its revenues from IP licensing. (This alone is not evidence; smaller OpenSource companies like MySQL are making significant revenue from dual licensing, a lesser known fact of life for many OpenSource companies.)    (KYM)

Benkler touched a bit on the importance of humanization in commons-based peer production, which he said is the focus of his current research. He also cited the reemergence of a new folk culture in society today, something that LawrenceLessig also talks about.    (KYN)

There was a minor hullabaloo between JasonCalacanis and Benkler during Q&A. (See AndyCarvin's description, plus some background and commentary. It was entertaining, but low on any real controversy. Benkler acknowledged that the interface between market and nonmarket interaction is not well understood right now. There are good examples of how paying people kills the community dynamics, but the patterns are not necessarily discernible yet. However, RishabAiyerGhosh, who spoke after Benkler -- made it crystal clear that those citing numbers about how a small number of people are responsible for a large percentage of work are missing the point. If you pay for 75 percent of the work, you end up with a three legged chair, which is worthless.    (KYO)

Ghosh has done some of the best quantitative analysis on OpenSource communities, and he's been doing it for a while. The BlueOxen report on open source communities was heavily based on work that Rishab had done.    (KYP)

Ghosh kicked off his talk by talking about JamesWatt's exploitation of the patent system, and argued that Watt's significantly slowed innovation with the steam engine and thus was partially responsible for delaying the IndustrialRevolution.    (KYQ)

(I didn't find Ghosh's argument particularly compelling or relevant, but it was a good story. Patents give folks monopolies, and monopolies are bad for markets. We know that already. But patents are also supposed to incentivize innovation. Ghosh was insinuating through his story that patents were not a strong motivator for innovation in this particular case, but I have trouble believing that. ChristophFriedrichVonBraun wrote an excellent, but dense book, The Innovation War (1997), where he explained how difficult it was to correlate patents to innovation, either for or against. And von Braun barely touched on software, which adds even more complexity to the question.)    (KYR)

Ghosh then went on to talk about FLOSS developer motivation and described his value-flow and cooking pot analogy for how markets can sustain this type of behavior. He also pointed out that the collaboration is not new, but the scale is.    (KYS)

Ghosh continues to do good research, much of which is hosted at FLOSS World.    (KYT)

/talks | Posted at 2:53pm

WikiSym 2006 Program    #

The WikiSym 2006 program is set. Guess who's keynoting (with DougEngelbart). That's right, I'll be talking Wiki philosophy and showing off some HyperScope goodness. I'll also be moderating an interactive session on the Future of Wikis, featuring the other WikiSym keynoters (WardCunningham, AngelaBeesley, MarkBernstein) and the illustrious SunirShah.    (KY0)

I got back from WikiMania late last night with much news to report, and I'm really looking forward to WikiSym in two weeks. I was originally skeptical about having two Wiki conferences in a month, but now, I'm looking forward to continuing some of the conversations we had this past weekend as well as seeing many other core members of the Wiki community. Plus, the program looks fantastic and there will be an OpenSpace component as well, organized by TedErnst and facilitated by GerardMuller.    (KY1)

To top it all off, it'll be in Odense, Denmark. I'll be in Copenhagen from August 17-20, so if you'd like to meet up earlier, drop me a line. ThomasMadsenMygdal, the creator of Reboot, has graciously offered to organize a meetup. More on that as details come.    (KY2)

/events | Posted at 9:32am

Welcome, Jonathan!    #

JonathanCheyer has joined the blogosphere. In addition to being a great guy, a friend, and sometime basketball partner, he's a longtime member of the CollaborationCollaboratory, a core HyperScope contributor and the OpenSource Community evangelist at Solid. And as the tech lead for the ComputerHistoryMuseum's NLS/Augment Restoration Project, he's indisputably the most knowledgable person about DougEngelbart's Augment under the age of 40. Welcome, Jonathan!    (KXZ)

/personal | Posted at 9:22am

Sat, Aug 05, 2006

Good Personal Information Hygiene    #

ChrisDent and I were chatting about my recent forays into DavidAllen's GettingThingsDone, which led to this classic line from Chris:    (KXN)

Consider this post a poop.    (KXP)

When we founded BlueOxenAssociates, we were supposed to be a place for those on the cutting edge of collaboration. I quickly discovered that most people who want or claim to be on the cutting edge are held back by poor PersonalInformationHygiene. People need to start with themselves before they worry about the group if they want to improve their ability to collaborate. (This is a general theme that extends beyond KnowledgeManagement.)    (KXQ)

Signs of poor PersonalInformationHygiene:    (KXR)

• Not keeping track of action items. (Not delivering on them is a sign of poor work discipline.)    (KXS)
• Constantly asking questions that have been answered before. (This is also a great sign of poor CollectiveIQ?.)    (KXT)
• Asking to resend an email rather than looking things up yourself.    (KXU)
• Losing track of email (including not responding quickly).    (KXV)

I have good PersonalInformationHygiene, with two exceptions: I don't answer email promptly, and I have a poor paper filing system (hence my recent foray into GTD). My digital information repository, on the other hand, is excellent -- well linked and decently refactored. I generally find what I'm looking for and sometimes even find things I'm not looking for. I've started collecting some of my habits on my public Wiki at LifeHacks.    (KXW)

(BillSeitz has often strongly expressed a similar view -- that good organizational KnowledgeManagement needs to start with good PersonalInformationHygiene. See his Wiki page on PersonalKnowledgemanagement.)    (KXX)

/collaboration | Posted at 12:02pm

Fri, Aug 04, 2006

Bah! FreeLinks!    #

   (KXK)

PhoebeAyers and SamuelKlein show off their WikiMania T-shirts sporting FreeLinks? (bah!). Then again, it's better than StaFf?. (That one's for you, Pete.) Photo courtesy of BetsyDevine.    (KXL)

/tech/wiki | Posted at 10:54pm

WikiMania 2006, Day One    #

Day one is over. Brain is overloaded. Very tired. Attending conference during day/evening, then working late into night -- bad. Law school dorms with no air conditioning in Cambridge in August -- also bad.    (KWO)

Still, much to share. And amazingly enough, I will -- at least a bit. There's something about this conference that actually gets me to blog, rather than simply promising I will. Besides, I'm going to set a new record for responsiveness to TomMaddox, even if it is via blog.    (KWP)

It is incredibly surreal to be back at my alma mater surrounded by post-college friends and colleagues. What makes it even more surreal is that folks from all facets of my professional life seem to be here, not just Wiki folks. I mentioned having my fingers in a lot of pies, right? Well, all those pies are unexpectedly well represented this weekend. It started yesterday when I discovered that ChrisMessina and TaraHunt were on the same flight to Boston, and culminated at dinner with GregElin (whom I first met at the FLOSS Usability Sprint, and who invited me to join him for dinner), DanielPerry (a lawyer who's been an important contributor to recent IdentityCommons discussions), TomMunnecke (first introduced to me by JackPark when I was just starting BlueOxenAssociates), and DocSearls (who needs no introduction). Also at the dinner: EllenMiller, MicahSifry, DavidIsenberg, BrittBlaser, and YochaiBenkler. Quite a contrast from last year, when I was hanging with grassroots Wiki peeps every night. I'm not complaining, though. The conversation was fascinating, even if we didn't talk much about Wikis.    (KWQ)

Keeping with this theme, I didn't hear much about Wikis today, other than my interview with WardCunningham. I kept my questions pretty basic, as a lot of folks there had never heard him speak, but I managed to slip in a few probing questions for myself. I asked Ward about the evolution of Wiki culture, and I specifically mentioned the culture of anonymity that he strongly encouraged in the early days, but that seems mostly absent in today's Wikis. Ward seemed resignedly ambivalent. I asked him about what makes a Wiki a Wiki, and he was decidedly agnostic in his response: anything that facilitates a permissive spirit and mode of collaboration. I'm not sure whether he was being political or whether he truly feels this way. My guess is a bit of both, but I'll press him on this if I get a chance later this weekend.    (KWR)

I showed up late to LarryLessig's keynote, but I was unconcerned, as I had heard him give his Free Culture speech before. It's excellent, but he recycles it often. Sure enough, he was doing the same speech, and I started tuning out. Fortunately, my brain was paying partial attention, or I would have missed what may end up being the most intriguing development of the conference.    (KWS)

Larry started talking about the interoperability of licenses, and how it was silly that the FDL and CreativeCommons BY-SA licenses could not be relicensed interchangeably, even though the two licenses were equivalent in spirit and intent. He then proposed an interoperability clause as well as a neutral organization whose purpose would be to classify equivalent licenses. His talk was followed by a really good panel discussion between him and EbenMoglen. This stuff is really complicated and important, but it looks like Larry and Eben are serious about working together towards a common solution. Apparently, JimboWales deserves a lot of credit for getting these two to cooperate. Did I mention that I love this community?    (KWT)

Quick hits:    (KWU)

• I shared a flight and T ride here with ChrisMessina aned TaraHunt. (Chris was presenting on BarCamp.) Chris extolled the virtues of VoodooPad, which apparently has autolinking features a la my MarkupFreeAutoLinkingWiki idea.    (KWV)
• Was excited to see two of my roommates from last year: KurtJansson, a German doctoral student and president of the German chapter of WikimediaFoundation, and JuanDavidRuiz, a Chilean lawyer.    (KWW)
• Saw ErikZachte in the morning, who does awesome Wikipedia work. Erik immediately told me about two cool projects I had never heard of: FON and Wikimapia.    (KWX)
• Caught up with RoryOConnor after my session with Ward. Rory's a filmmaker who came to last year's WikiMania to make a documentary on Wikipedia. What I didn't know was that he was so inspired by the proceedings, he decided to release all 13 hours of his footage under a CreativeCommons license to encourage folks to mix their own documentaries from the event. Check it out, and mix away! There's some interview footage of me somewhere in there, and I make a cameo in Rory's 11-minute rough cut, in the background of Jimbo's interviews yukking it up with JohnBreslin.    (KWY)
• Somehow, I got recruited by multiple Wikipedians to help with the lightning talks due to my process expertise. My expert advice: "Move those chairs into a circle, and be firm with the time limit." Yes folks, this is why I get paid the big bucks.    (KWZ)
• Briefly got a chance to chat with TimStarling about the OpenID integration in MediaWiki. Tim explained that they're going to unify the user databases across all the different Wikimedia properties. This was further validation that Yoke's identity proxy approach is useful. Of course, one of these days, I'm going to have to actually write down what that approach is, so that I can convince people of its utility.    (KX0)

/events | Posted at 10:09pm

Thu, Aug 03, 2006

OpenID 2.0 Developer Day, August 10    #

Two important OpenID developments to announce. First, there are a bunch of $5K bounties available for folks who integrate OpenID into OpenSource projects. You heard me right -- you can get some cash for doing something you probably want to do anyway. Second, KaliyaHamlin announced an OpenID developer day in Berkeley next Thursday, August 10, from 6-9pm. The lineup includes DavidRecordon, AndyDale, MaryHodder, and ScottKveton. I'm going to try to show, and I hope many of you do the same.    (KWN)

/events | Posted at 12:49am

Wed, Aug 02, 2006

Welcome, Gabe!    #

GabeWachob is back in the blogosphere. Let's hope he sticks around this time. Gabe is the co-chair of the XRI Technical Committee, and he recently left Visa to become the new CTO at Amsoft. Once he recovers from his jetlag, I'm going to corner him and force him to hack some identity code with me, so look out world. (Actually, it will happen in reverse, but the end result will be the same.)    (KWH)

/personal | Posted at 1:03pm

Tue, Aug 01, 2006

BlogHer 2006: Thoughts from an Observer of Observers    #

I was bummed that I couldn't make the BlogHer conference this year. Last year, I had project commitments up the wazoo, but I made some time to meet up with NancyWhite at the conference site, whom I had never met face-to-face. We sat at a table outside of the SantaClara Convention Center and embarked on a fascinating conversation. As we talked, more and more folks -- all women -- saw us, said hello, and joined us, further enriching the conversation. A few hours later, I had to rip myself away from that table to make it to my next meeting, and I swore that I would attend the following year.    (KVL)

Well, I didn't. I was in Staunton, Virginia for the 1Society team retreat. I was even more disappointed after having met ElisaCamahort, LisaStone, and JoryDesJardins at the June Collaboration SIG meeting.    (KVM)

Fortunately, as you might expect, folks blogged about the conference. Here are some of my thoughts on their thoughts.    (KVN)

WelcomeNeighbors?    (KVO)

NancyWhite shared this gem from CatarinaFake:    (KVP)

It's another instance of the WelcomeNeighbors? pattern!    (KVR)

ChristineHerron    (KVS)

Christine deserves her own category, because I've been relying more and more on her blog for her excellent summaries of other gatherings. We haven't actually met, although she blogged one of my talks way back when.    (KVT)

Christine wrote about community design and evolution and the importance of constant engagement:    (KVU)

Listening was an ongoing theme in a lot of the BlogHer summaries.    (KVW)

On communities and continuous learning:    (KVX)

Finally, Christine blogged about a session on identity that actually had something to do with identity!    (KVZ)

Conversations and Conferences    (KW1)

TomMaddox also wrote about the prevalence of listening at the conference:    (KW2)

I'm of two minds of this reaction. BlogHer is a traditional, hierarchical gathering, but there's obviously a strong culture of participation and interaction. Culture goes a long way. If you have good culture and good people, it's hard to throw a poor gathering (although it's certainly been done).    (KW5)

However, just because you manage to throw good, even great gatherings, doesn't mean that you can't do better. As I wrote last June:    (KW6)

My not-so-secret plot is to suck Elisa, Lisa, and Jory into the growing BlueOxen community (probably starting with the next "Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration" workshop), so that we can all learn from each other and leapfrog the great work that many of us are already doing. Be warned, ladies!    (KW8)

/events | Posted at 11:09am

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