Tue, Apr 10, 2007
On Greatness: Joshua Bell's Street Performing Experiment #
My friend, Cindy, forwarded me a link to the best article I've read in a very, very long time. It's written by WashingtonPost staff writer, GeneWeingarten, and it's entitled, "Pearls before breakfast." (M78)
The essence of the article is this. Take JoshuaBell, one of the finest classical violinists in the world. Plant him on a D.C. street corner during rush hour. See if anyone notices. (M79)
Read the whole article. It's long, but it's totally worth it. It's well-written, entertaining, and profound on many levels. (M7A)
/articles | Posted at 10:31pm
Fun NTEN Video: "Next Year in New Orleans!" #
I couldn't make NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference last week, so I've been living vicariously through the various blog and Flickr posts. My favorite so far? BethKanter's really fun vlog promoting next year's conference in TheBigEasy. (M75)
Beth also won NTEN's inaugural Fantasticness Award. (What a brilliant idea for an award!) Congratulations, Beth! I haven't met you face-to-face yet, but from what I know of your work and have heard through colleagues, it is well deserved. (M76)
/events | Posted at 9:14pm
"Learning Community" Words #
DeborahMeehan led the LeadershipLearningCommunity's board through a quick exercise today that was partially inspired by GailTaylor's "love" experiment. She read us a quote from last year's Creating Space conference, then asked us to write down five words we think of when we hear the words "LearningCommunity." We each wrote our word phrases on Post-It notes, then proceeded to cluster our words on a large surface. (M6L)
There were 12 of us participating, which resulted in a total of 62 word phrases. (I split two Post-It notes into two word phrases. One was separated by a slash, the other by "and.") Out of those 62 word phrases, 10 were used more than once. They were (in order of frequency): (M6N)
- diversity (M6O)
- synergy (M6P)
- relationship (M6Q)
- sharing (M6R)
- community (M6S)
- connectedness (M6T)
- generative (M6U)
- non-judgemental (M6V)
- openness (M6W)
- wisdom (M6X)
You can see a cloud visualization of the words we chose. (M6Y)
Some observations: (M6Z)
- Only one person (me) wrote, "learning." Only two people wrote "community." That could have been because people assumed that they could not use those two words. (M70)
- No one wrote "teaching." (M71)
- The value of the clustering versus the cloud visualization is interesting. The clustering exercise (which is similar to an AffinityDiagram in the usability world) is an exercise in semantic convergence. All the cloud view does is match words, character-by-character. Both tell you different things. Both are valuable. (M72)
If we were to do this exercise again, it would be interesting to do 10 rather than five words. I think there would be more overlap in that case, although the beauty of this exercise is, one never knows. And it would be interesting to do this exercise again with the same group of people six months from now to see if the results are different. (M73)
/collaboration | Posted at 8:15pm
Mon, Apr 09, 2007
Productivity501 #
Most of the blogs I subscribe to are by folks whom I know, or folks whom are two degrees away. I don't search for interesting things to read -- way too much of that already -- but occasionally, minor perturbations uncover new and interesting things. Today, I discovered MarkShead's blog, Productivity501, via an indirect link back. It's a blog about productivity. I find productivity so important, I generally avoid spending time reading about it. However, two items jumped out at me. (M6D)
First, Mark wrote a clever twist on the Tortoise and Hare fable, set in an IronChef competition. I freakin' love IronChef. More importantly, he made a point I've also emphasized in the past -- clean working stations are a critical pattern for high-performance work. (M6E)
Second, I previously blogged MartinFowler's hypothesis that bigger screens made developers more productive. Mark cites an actual study that makes the same claim. (M6F)
/collaboration | Posted at 2:07am
Sun, Apr 08, 2007
The Fractal Nature of Large-Scale Collaboration #
Collaboration is a meta-discipline. It is usually the means, not the end. You don't collaborate for collaboration's sake; you collaborate to accomplish some bounded goal. Making the means the end is tricky business. When you eliminate the context, it's easy to shift from thoughtful practice to ivory tower jibber jabber and suffer the consequences of Professionalization. All communities and networks centered around meta-disciplines are vulnerable to this, including BlueOxenAssociates. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is my foremost challenge as a social entrepreneur and as a scholar-practitioner. (M65)
Being meta also has its benefits, however. Over the past few years, I have been helping more and more groups with the conundrum of being a top-down, command-and-control organization in a heavily network-centric world. Sometimes, this takes the form of coaching, where I talk the organization through principles and provide encouragement through what can be a painful and frustrating process. My approach is to tap into the existing organizational instinct and experience as much as possible while challenging assumptions by identifying and asking deep, underlying questions. (M66)
Other times, it takes the form of designing a convening. These convenings play the same role as my coaching does, except it accelerates SharedUnderstanding among the stakeholders and it leverages WisdomOfCrowds. (M67)
Here's where the meta-ness of the collaboration business becomes useful. The act of co-designing a highly interactive convening, then experiencing it first-hand is a smaller-scale representation of the steps an organization would go through to transform itself into something more network-oriented and collaborative. Even though these convenings are smaller than the large-scale challenges that these organizations face, the principles are the same, whether you're dealing with 20 or 20,000 people. (M68)
These convenings are never meta. They are always about something concrete that is directly relevant to the organization. (M69)
They start with the principle that everyone has different worldviews, but shares strong values. They facilitate interactivity, artifact generation, and continuous resynthesis of knowledge. (M6A)
They don't try to control participants. Instead, they let the right path emerge. They allow subgroups to form, to be creative, and to explore their own ideas and interests, without losing TheRedThread of the network as a whole. (M6B)
By helping organizations design, then experience these convenings, I am indirectly helping them understand how to transform their organization in an experiential way. That's a direct result of both the fractal nature of large-scale collaboration and the meta-ness of being in the collaboration business. (M6C)
/collaboration | Posted at 10:03am
Sat, Apr 07, 2007
Voting, Collective Leadership, and Identity Commons #
Thanks to next week's Creating Space, CollectiveLeadership has been on my mind a lot recently. It's also been a key element of the new IdentityCommons. One of the issues we've been grappling with is decision-making. To understand why this is a challenge, you have to understand the underlying structure and philosophy of the organization. (M5R)
Ultimately, IdentityCommons is a CommunityMark that represents a set of values concerning DigitalIdentity. It's a name bestowed on the community of folks who care about UserCentricIdentity. If you care about this stuff, then you are part of IdentityCommons. There is nothing to join, and you are free to use the name and logo as a way of demonstrating your support of these values. (M5S)
Why this is such a powerful and important construct is a topic for another day. What's interesting about this particular community is that there's also a corresponding legal structure, a nonprofit organization that is in the process of being incorporated. This organization consists of community "Stewards" -- people appointed by the community to represent the interests of particular sub-communities ("Working Groups") and who are responsible for managing the tangible assets of the commons. There are rules for becoming Working Groups and Stewards, but they are extremely lightweight. (M5T)
All of the Stewards comprise a Stewards Council. Each Steward has an equal vote on all matters. There is a Chair, but that position is mostly facilitative. There is also a Chief Catalyst, someone (not necessarily a Steward) who is responsible for handling the operational duties of the organization and catalyzing action in the community. (M5U)
It's a fascinating, but delicate structure. The Stewards Council has an important leadership responsibility, but that role is distributed equally among all of the Stewards. How do Stewards exercise leadership effectively given this structure? Decision-making via voting is clumsy in many contexts, and yet that's the only process that we've actually defined. (M5V)
We've had a number of interesting conversations on the topic, and the latest discussion recently surfaced a lurker, MartienVanSteenbergen, who cited an interesting reference on holacracy. Martien quotes the following excerpt (emphasis his): (M5W)
Another common question is about the "possible votes" in integrative decision making. At first it can sound like there are two possible votes on a proposed decision -- "consent" or "object" -- though that's missing a key point. Consent isn't about "votes" at all; the idea of a vote doesn't make sense in the context of consent. There are no votes, and people do not vote. (M5X)
People do say whether they know of a reason why the proposed decision is outside the limits of tolerance of any aspect of the system, and then decision making continues to integrate that new information. This isn't the same as most consensus-based processes -- either in theory or in practice -- although it does sound similar at first, especially before an actual meeting that seeks consent is witnessed. (M5Y)
This quote is keying on the difference between CollectiveLeadership and consensus leadership. They are not the same thing. With CollectiveLeadership, you are acknowledging the multi-faceted requirements of leadership, and you are empowering those best suited to meet those requirements to fulfill that leadership role. You are not voting on every decision, which would be a sure path to disaster. (M5Z)
One of the ways this manifests itself is by making decisions "without objection." This is a technique from RobertsRulesOfOrder that JoaquinMiller brought to our attention. Essentially, you empower people to act, unless someone in the group objects, at which point an alternative process kicks in. Everyone still has a voice in the decisions, but it is a proactive rather than a reactive style, and it encourages action rather than stagnation. (M60)
I believe that when you have great collaborative process, voting is a rubber stamping process, even when the topic is controversial. In other words, the actual decision-making process starts well before any vote happens. Healthy deliberation results in SharedUnderstanding, which in turn helps to surface clear courses of action that navigate through the obstacles of contradictory ideologies. When there is pressure for movement (another pattern of high-performance collaboration), then people will rally around those courses of action. (M61)
/collaboration/idcommons | Posted at 9:46am
Fri, Apr 06, 2007
April and May Gatherings #
Normally, I love to travel, but last year tested that love. I was out of town almost twice a month for work. It was exhilarating, exhausting, and ultimately, too much. I resolved not to travel for the first four months of 2007. It's now April 2007, and I've successfully fulfilled my resolution (depending on how you count), wonderfully refreshed and ready to travel again. (M5D)
As I noted earlier, I'll be in Baltimore next week for Creating Space VIII, the LeadershipLearningCommunity's (LLC) annual gathering. The theme is CollectiveLeadership. They've already got record attendance, and I believe registrations are still open, so if you're in the area and want to attend, I encourage you to register. I joined LLC's board late last year, participated in some of their gatherings, and was blown away by what I saw. Can you tell I'm excited? (M5E)
Next month, May 2-3, I'm co-chairing the CompendiumInstitute's 2007 workshop at the NASA Ames Conference Center in MountainView, California. It's going to be awesome -- highly practitioner-oriented, with lots of close interaction with some of the most experienced folks in our community. If you're already a Compendium user, or if you're interested in learning more, I strongly encourage you to register and attend. (M5F)
May 14-16 is Internet Identity Workshop 2007a, once again at the ComputerHistoryMuseum in MountainView. There will be some major IdentityCommons announcements there, as well as cool demonstrations of the latest advancements in interoperable DigitalIdentity systems. If you're at all interested in the identity space, I strongly urge you to register. (M7H)
I get a day to recover, then it's off to Montreal May 18-20 for RoCoCo (RecentChangesCamp Montreal), hanging out with my fellow Wiki compatriots and other community builders. I'll be releasing a vision paper on Wiki interoperability that same week. I've had tremendous fun researching and writing it, and I can't wait to hear my community's reaction to it. (M5G)
Finally, I just joined the advisory board of TiffanyVonEmmel's DreamFish. They'll be holding a workshop on Leadership for Sustainability on May 30 in SanFrancisco. It will feature four outstanding teachers, including AlexanderLaszlo and KathiaLaszlo, two of the smartest and most decent people I've ever met. Register before the end of this month for a discount. (M5H)
/events | Posted at 11:06pm
Otto Scharmer on Listening #
Another excerpt from OttoScharmer's new book, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, The Social Technology of Presencing. This one's about listening. (M55)
In my years of working with groups and organizations I have identified four basic types of listening. (M56)
"Ya, I know that already." The first type of listening is downloading: listening by reconfirming habitual judgments. When you are in a situation where everything that happens confirms what you already know, then you are listening by downloading. (M57)
"Ooh, look at that!" The second type of listening is object-focused listening: listening by paying attention to factual and to the novel or disconfirming data. In this type of listening you pay attention to what differs from what you already know. You attend to ideas about reality that differ from your own rather than denying them (as you do in the case of downloading). Object-focused or factual listening is the basic mode of good science. You ask questions and you carefully observe the responses that nature (data) gives to you. (M58)
"Oh, yes, I know how you feel." The third and deeper level of listening is empathic listening. When we are engaged in real dialogue, we can, when paying attention, become aware of a profound shift in the place from which our listening originates. As long as we operate from the first two types of listening, our listening originates from within the boundaries of our own mental-cognitive organization. But when we listen empathically, our perception shifts from our own organization into the field, to the other, to the place from which the other person is speaking. When moving into that mode of listening we have to activate our empathy by connecting directly, heart to heart, to the other person. If that happens, we feel a profound switch; we forget about our own agenda and begin to see how the world unfolds through someone else's eyes. When operating in this mode, we usually feel what another person wants to say before the words take form. And then we may recognize whether a person chooses the right word or the wrong one to express something. That judgment is only possible when we have a direct sense of what someone wants to say before we analyze what she actually says. Empathic listening is a skill that can be cultivated and developed, just like any other skill in human relations. It's a skill that requires us to activate a different source of intelligence-the intelligence of the heart. (M59)
"I can't express what I experience in words. My whole being has slowed down. I feel more quiet, present and more my real self. I am connected to something larger than myself." This is the fourth level of listening. It moves beyond the current field and connects to a still deeper realm of emergence. I call this level of listening generative listening, or listening from the emerging field of the future. This level of listening requires us to access our open heart and open will -- our capacity to connect to the highest future possibility that wants to emerge. On this level our work focuses on getting our (old) self out of the way in order to open a space, a clearing that allows for a different sense of presence to manifest. We no longer look for something outside. We no longer empathize with someone in front of us. We are in an altered state -- maybe communion or grace is the word that comes closest to the texture of this experience that refuses to be dragged onto the surface of words. (M5A)
You'll notice that this fourth level of listening differs in texture and outcomes from the others. You know that you have been operating on the fourth level when you realize that, at the end of the conversation, you are no longer the same person you were when you started the conversation. You have gone through a subtle but profound change. You have connected to a deeper source -- to the source of who you really are and to a sense of why you are here -- a connection that links you with a profound field of coming-into-being, with your emerging authentic Self. (M5B)
/collaboration | Posted at 10:22pm
Otto Scharmer's Theory U #
Last July, I spent a few days in Staunton, Virginia co-leading a strategic gathering with KelleeSikes for the Imergence project. I had been burning the midnight oil in the days leading up to gathering, meeting with potential partners and funders during the day, and working on my other projects late into the evening. When we arrived in Staunton in the early evening, I was already exhausted, but we had dinner scheduled with the participants, and I couldn't resist having a few beers and spending some quality time with the rest of the gang. (M4L)
People didn't start dispersing until 11pm, and Kellee and I still needed to finalize details on the next day's design. I was in a weird zone -- physically and mentally exhausted, but also on an alcohol-and-adrenaline-induced high resulting from both the social stimulation of the night's activities and anticipation for the next day's events. When I go through these phases, my guard goes down, and I am simultaneously at my most generative and receptive. I also get very punchy. (M4M)
While Kellee and I worked, MarkSzpakowski came downstairs and started listening in on our conversations. Typically, when I design a workshop, I hide the agenda from participants. However, this was not a typical situation. Mark was one of the creators of the legendary CommunityMemoryProject in the 1970s, someone whom I had interacted with off-and-on over email for several years, and someone I was anxious to learn from. Besides, anyone who's willing to listen to me babble after midnight deserves to participate in the conversation. (M4N)
I started explaining to Mark what Kellee and I were grappling with, which led to an ad-hoc discourse on the underlying philosophy behind designing emergent face-to-face events. Mark listened thoughtfully, then observed that some of the things I was saying reminded him of OttoScharmer. I had not heard of Scharmer before, so Mark drew a big "U" on a pad of paper and started describing Scharmer's TheoryU. I was fascinated and made a mental note to follow up on his work. I later blogged this wonderful Scharmer quote, which Mark sent me later: (M4O)
The essence of leading profound change is about shifting the inner place from which a system operates: the source and structure of the social field -- that is, the source from which our actions come into being. T (M4P)
Of course, I never got around to reading anything by Scharmer until he unexpectedly popped back into my life today. Next week, I'm flying to Baltimore to participate in the LeadershipLearningCommunity's Creating Space VIII conference. I'll be on a panel with AllisonFine and moderated by ElissaPerry. In preparation, Elissa sent us links to several background papers on CollectiveLeadership. (M4Q)
To my surprise, one of the links was to an excerpt from Scharmer's latest book, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, The Social Technology of Presencing. It was absolutely wonderful. My reading list is already too long, but this book has jumped up to the top of my list. (M4R)
Here's an excerpt describing the underlying motivation behind TheoryU: (M4S)
Across the board, we collectively create outcomes (and side effects) that nobody wants. And yet, the key decision-makers do not feel capable of redirecting this course of events in any significant way. They feel just as trapped as the rest of us in what often seems to be a race to the bottom. The same problem affects our massive institutional failure: we haven't learned to mold, bend, and transform our centuries-old collective patterns of thinking, conversing, and institutionalizing to fit the realities of today. (M4T)
... (M4U)
The rise of fundamentalist movements in both Western and non-Western countries is a symptom of this disintegration and deeper transformation process. Fundamentalists say: "Look, this modern Western materialism doesn't work. It takes away our dignity, our livelihood, and our soul. So let's go back to the old order." (M4V)
This reaction is understandable as it relates to two key defining characteristics of today's social decay that peace researcher Johan Galtung calls anomie, the loss of norms and values, and atomie, the breakdown of social structures. The resulting loss of culture and structure leads to eruptions of violence, hate, terrorism and civil war, along with partly self-inflicted natural catastrophes in both southern and northern hemispheres. It is, as Vaclav Havel put it, as if something is decaying and exhausting itself. (M4W)
What then is arising from the rubble? How can we cope with these shifts? What I see rising is a new form of presence and power that starts to grow spontaneously from small groups and networks of people. It's a different quality of connection, a different way of being present with one another that moves us beyond the patterns of the past. When groups learn to operate from a real future possibility that is seeking to emerge, they begin to tap into a different social field that manifests through an altered quality of thinking, conversing, and collective action. When that shift happens, people can connect with a deeper source of creativity and knowing. One they don't normally experience. They step into their real power, the power of their authentic self. I call this change a shift in the social field because that term designates the totality and type of connections through which the participants of a given system relate, converse, think, and act. (M4X)
When a group succeeds in operating in this zone once, it is easier to do so a second time. It is as if an unseen, but permanent, communal connection or bond has been created. It even tends to stay on when new members are added to the group. (M4Y)
The crux of his theory stems from his thoughts on organizational learning: (M4Z)
Having spent the last ten years of my professional career in the field of organizational learning, my most important insight has been that there are two different sources of learning: learning from the experiences of the past and learning from the future as it emerges. The first type of learning, learning from the past, is well known and well developed. It underlies all our major learning methodologies, best practices and approaches to organizational learning. By contrast, the second type of learning, learning from the future as it emerges, is still by and large unknown. (M50)
A number of people to whom I proposed the idea of a second source of learning considered it wrongheaded. The only way to learn, they argued, is from the past. "Otto, learning from the future is not possible. Don't waste your time!" But in working with leadership teams across many sectors and industries, I realized that leaders could not meet their existing challenges by operating only on the basis of past experiences. Sometimes, the experiences of the past aren't exactly that helpful in dealing with the current issues. Sometimes, you work with teams in which the experiences of the past are actually the biggest problem and obstacle for coming up with a creative response to the challenge at hand. (M51)
When I started realizing that the most impressive leaders and master practitioners seem to operate from a different core process, one that pulls us into future possibilities, I asked myself: How can we learn to better sense and connect with a future possibility that is seeking to emerge? (M52)
I began to call this operating from the future as it emerges, presencing. Presencing is a blending of the two words "presence" and "sensing." It means to sense, tune in and act from one's highest future potential -- the future that depends on us to bring it into being. (M53)
Beautiful stuff. Can't wait to read the book. (M54)
/books | Posted at 10:18pm
pageoftext.com #
GordonMcCreight showed off his latest silly creation, pageoftext.com, at the last WikiWednesday. It's a silly concept, and it's got a silly lack of features. What's really silly is how useful this silly little concept is. It's considerably simpler than Writeboard, slightly more featureful than the various Pastebins, and better than both. (M4D)
pageoftext.com is a collaborative text editor on laxatives. All features you might think you need have been flushed away to oblivion. There's no formatting, no registration, and no security. Editing happens in plain text. The URLs are human-friendly, which is good, because you'll need to remember them if you ever want to find them again. Gordon does have a remind feature, in which you describe what's on the page, and then he tries to find it for you. (M4E)
It's great for when a bunch of people -- especially normal people -- need to edit a file together quickly and easily. You don't have to go through the normal hullabaloo of logging in, because you don't have to login. You don't have to describe the markup, because there is no markup. It's totally task-focused. (M4F)
This, in theory, is what Writeboard was supposed to be, except I think it's a whole lot better. When I use Writeboard, I'm constantly reminded of what it's not, as opposed to being excited over what it is. Writeboards are no easier than a Wiki to use, but they're much less useful. (M4G)
I love pastebin (known as nopaste in some circles) for a lot of reasons. Pastebin emerged because developers collaborating on IRC needed a SharedDisplay. It's brain-dead simple, and it does exactly what it's supposed to do. pageoftext.com addresses a different goal than pastebin, but it has similar affordances, and could be used the same way. (M4H)
Gordon has been militant about feature creep, which is a good thing. That said, I started a page suggesting new features. Feel free to add those there. Or, if you prefer not to think about such esoteric things, you can add some Philadelphia-area restaurants and reviews to my Philly restaurants page. (I'm visiting Philly for the first time next weekend, and I need some good cheesesteak recommendations.) (M4I)
/collaboration/tools | Posted at 4:09pm
Tue, Apr 03, 2007
Shopping with John McCain #
Speaking of authenticity and listening (or lack thereof), check out EugeneChan's sharp commentary on Senator JohnMcCain's recent shopping trip in Baghdad. Sad, very sad. (M3L)
/collaboration | Posted at 5:58pm
The Evils of Networking #
I'm lucky to know lots of great people. I enjoy that feeling of connectedness, and most of us could probably use more of it. That said, a sure way to make me cringe is to call me a "networker," or worse still, ask me how to "network." (M38)
I hate "networking." I don't think anyone should do it. (M39)
I sometimes enjoy meeting people for the sake of meeting people, as long as they're interesting and I'm not in the middle of one of my many introverted moments. I love meeting people who are passionate and who make me think. I learn a lot from these folks. Lots of other good stuff sometimes happens from knowing these folks, some of it career-related. (M3A)
Then there are folks who have no interest in two-way conversations. They just want to be heard, or they're trying to sell something. I avoid these people like the plague. (M3B)
These people are networkers. Networking, to me, implies meeting as many people as possible in case they might be useful to you later. I never network. (M3C)
A more accurate description of this phenomenon is DriveByNetworking. I first heard the term at MattHomann's IdeaMarket last October. It describes people who approach you for the sole purpose of getting your business card so they can annoy you later. (M3D)
If you're feeling disconnected, I have three pieces of advice. (M3E)
First, avoid DriveByNetworking. (M3F)
Second, approach people because you're interested in learning, not because some self-help book says you need to know more people in order to succeed. (M3G)
Third, seek AuthenticConversations. The key to AuthenticConversations is to focus on listening, not on being heard. If you focus on the former, the latter will usually follow. If it doesn't, then simply move on. (M3H)
/collaboration | Posted at 5:41pm
Authentic Empathy and Trust #
The KathySierra fiasco seems to have reached a nice conclusion. There was plenty of thought-provoking discussion and some personal bridging between the parties involved. Perhaps this will catalyze a higher-level discourse on the Web. Even a microscopic improvement is better than nothing. (M2X)
I don't know the parties involved personally, although in this business, you're two degrees away from everyone. I was also in the middle of work hell when the madness started. Yet somehow, I found myself following the various threads closely. I was especially struck by LisaStone's analysis (including a mention of BlogHer's community guidelines) and MinJungKim's commentary. (M2Y)
Empathy, diversity, and humanity are values that are core to me and my business. It's easy to toss these words around without really thinking about what they mean or, more importantly, without living them. For whatever reason, this particular incident struck a chord and reminded me of several stories, including one that happened a few weeks ago. (M2Z)
I was having lunch with my friend, Nick, who was describing his short-lived SecondLife experience. Nick is a public interest lawyer, but he spent many years in technology, and he's not naive about these things. However, he doesn't spend eight hours a day in front of a computer either. (M30)
A colleague convinced him to try SecondLife, so he logged in and started exploring. Almost immediately, someone approached him and handed him a penis. Nick was not amused (then), and he couldn't figure out how to get rid of it. That was the end of his SecondLife experiment. (M31)
We both got a good laugh out of the story. However, I couldn't help wondering how a woman -- especially one who had previously experienced sexual assault -- would have reacted under the same circumstances, despite the fact that none of this was technically "real." I know I certainly wouldn't have been laughing in that situation. (M32)
Truth is contextual. Is it possible to make misogynistic or racial comments without being a misogynist or a racist? I'm certain the answer is yes, but it's a tricky line to walk. I've laughed at Asian jokes told by some (sometimes even me), and I've been miffed by the same jokes told by others. Am I a hypocrite, or is there something truly different about those two situations? The difference is trust. I trust that certain people are not racist, and hence, I tolerate, even laugh at the things they say. But that trust is not universal, and it's not always mutual. (M33)
The bottom line is that we need to learn how to walk in each other's shoes and truly understand and value what people who are different from us feel and experience. It's easy to be satisfied with our individual levels of tolerance and empathy, but all of us can do better. I'm not advocating a culture of extreme political correctness, either. What I'd like to see is authentic empathy, a greater understanding and appreciation for the worldview of others. With that empathy will come greater trust, and in turn, a much richer society. (M34)
/collaboration | Posted at 4:51pm
Spreadsheets 2.0 and Transclusions #
A few weeks ago, I had dinner with my old HyperScope buddies, BradNeuberg and JonathanCheyer. We talked a bit about this Office 2.0 madness, and how a lot of these Web-based applications were disappointly uninteresting. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of really nifty hacking going on behind the scenes to make this all work. But in the end, all you have is a Web-based office application. Most of these applications do little to take advantage of the network paradigm. (M2P)
A simple and extremely cool way for Web-based spreadsheets to exploit the medium would be to support TransClusions across multiple web sites. As I've observed before, spreadsheets were the first applications to popularize the notion of a TransClusion, even though they didn't call them that. When I type =E27 in a cell, it displays the content of cell E27. This, in a nutshell, is a TransClusion, and oh, is it useful. (M2Q)
With Web-based spreadsheets, if you made cell addresses universally resolvable, you could easily support TransClusions across web sites. In other words, I could transclude the content of cell =E27 from a spreadsheet hosted on my web site into a cell on a spreadsheet hosted on another web site. (M2R)
Why would this be useful? Well, why is it useful to link to other web sites? Today's Web-based spreadsheets are no more collaborative than desktop spreadsheets. In theory, they're more convenient than emailing spreadsheets back-and-forth, but they're no different in capability. Cross-spreadsheet TransClusions would break down silos and encourage collaboration. (M2S)
I would start with spreadsheet-to-spreadsheet TransClusions with an eye toward supporting TransClusion of non-spreadsheet content using PurpleNumbers or something similar. The main technical barrier is coming up with the right addressability scheme. Seems to me that the SimplestThingThatWorks would be to use fragment identifiers (which is what we did for the HyperScope). In other words, cell =E27 on a spreadsheet at http://foo/bar would have the address: (M2T)
http://foo/bar#E27 (M2U)
Eventually, you'd want persistent, non-URL-based identifiers, but first things first. (M2V)
/tech/purple | Posted at 1:40am
