eekim.com > EEK Speaks

Mon, May 28, 2007

WikiClock: The Next Killer Wiki App    #

Got back from Montreal and RoCoCo 2007 last Friday with a pile of notes and a case of the flu, which pretty much killed my productivity this weekend. Fortunately, spring conference season for me is over, and I'm boycotting all summer conferences with the possible exception of WikiMania in Taipei this August, which means I've got plenty of time to digest and regurgitate. As usual, it'll come in bits and pieces, starting with this post.    (MAV)

RoCoCo pretty much kicked butt. Much props go to EvanProdromou, AnneGoldenberg, AntoineBeaupre, and the entire Montreal Wiki community for pulling off such a great event. Lots of participants traveled to attend, including several Europeans, which made the experience much richer. This included representatives from every PHP-based Wiki (TimStarling of MediaWiki, AndreasGohr of DokuWiki, ReiniUrban of PhpWiki, PatrickMichaud of PmWiki, and MarcLaporte of TikiWiki), which was awesome. I was happy to see old friends from afar and from not-so-far, and I met several great new folks. WikiOhana is a wonderful thing.    (MAW)

The best session was Evan's, "Wiki And...," which he nefariously scheduled at the same time as my Wiki Interoperability session so I couldn't attend. That didn't prevent me from learning about his incredibly brilliant idea: WikiClock, made possible by GordonMcCreight's most excellent service, pageoftext.com.    (MAX)

What is WikiClock? It's a clock on a Wiki that tells you the current time in GMT. How does it know the current time? Someone edits the time. Who edits it? Whoever feels so motivated.    (MAY)

WikiClock is a great example of a totally ludicrous application of a Wiki. The point of Evan's session is that Wiki-enthusiasm can lead to overly narrow thinking. Wikis are great, but they're not the end-all-and-be-all of collaborative tools. There are a whole slew of good tools out there. Use the right one for the right job.    (MAZ)

The story doesn't end there, however. What makes WikiClock all the more ridiculous is that people are actually using it. You heard me right. The buzz from Evan's session started propagating pretty quickly. If you check WikiClock right now, chances are the time is correct. And if it's not, well, correct it!    (MB0)

WikiClock is that rare breed of joke, where you laugh, then you stop and think, "You know, it's really not that bad of an idea." Next thing you know, it's no longer a joke. I know of only one other joke like it: Parrot, the virtual machine for dynamic languages that started off as an April Fool's joke.    (MB1)

/tech/wiki | Posted at 11:22pm

Wed, May 16, 2007

Aldo de Moor and CommunitySense    #

My friend and colleague, AldoDeMoor, has left the hallowed halls of academia to join my world of research-consultancies. He's started a company based in the Netherlands called CommunitySense (an excellent name!), where he will apply his considerable knowledge on community informatics to real-world problems. Check out his company web site and his papers.    (MAR)

/collaboration | Posted at 1:10am

Internet Identity Workshop 2007, Day Two    #

My big takeaway from this rendition of the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) continues to be the growing maturity of this community as well as the influx of new faces. This manifested itself in interesting ways in OpenSpace today. As PhilWindley noted in his excellent synopsis of the day, almost half the room stood up to propose sessions, which was quite stunning.    (M9Y)

While there were a number of interesting topics posted, most of the ones I attended were more bull sessions than work sessions. That's not a bad thing -- talk is necessary for building SharedUnderstanding -- but you also want to make sure that the folks who are in a position to work are working. And that's what happened. There were a lot of ad hoc, project-oriented meetings and plotting happening outside of the sessions.    (M9Z)

This is a good lesson on the nature of OpenSpace, especially when these gatherings occur repeatedly in a community of practice. Norms emerge and evolve. Communities go through cycles, and the OpenSpace experience shifts with each cycle.    (MA0)

I managed to eavesdrop on part of a conversation between LisaDusseault and LisaHeft about OpenSpace and this conference in particular. LisaDusseault was bemoaning the lack of SharedUnderstanding among all the participants, and explained that at IETF and similar gatherings, there was always a baseline of knowledge across participants, because there were papers, and people were expected to read them ahead of time. Pre-work is not anathema to OpenSpace, and it's great if you can get folks to do it. In this particular community, I think it's possible. But you still have to be careful when considering other ways of designing for this challenge.    (MA1)

A few weeks ago, AlSelvin told me about his experiences at CHI conferences. The first time he went, he was new to the field, and it was a wonderful learning experience. The following year, he attended again, and the experience was not as good. Why? Because it was essentially identical to the previous year. People were basically the same things as they had before.    (MA2)

What's the difference between what happens at OpenSpace versus most academic conferences? Co-creation -- aka collaboration aka real work -- is a key part of the process. People, both old and new, get together to evolve their SharedUnderstanding and something new and wonderful emerges from that. You have both learning and co-creation, which are really two sides of the same coin. Sadly, many conferences are all about one-sided coins.    (MA3)

I think there are ways to make the first day even more effective for new members of the community. We heard some great ideas for this at KaliyaHamlin's session on this topic, and I expect her to do great things with this feedback.    (MA4)

Speaking of community, I held a session on IdentityCommons. A lot of folks who have been active in the creation process participated, as did key members of our community. One of the things I wanted to make crystal clear to folks was that ultimately, IdentityCommons was simply the name of this community. As it happens, this name represents both the intent and values of this community (or in chaordic speak, the purpose and principles). What's really unique about our values is how we collaborate with each other. There is in fact a legal entity called IdentityCommons, but it is extremely lightweight and open. It's sole purpose is to manage the shared assets of this community in an open, grassroots way.    (MA5)

The organizational elements of this entity are fascinating in and of themselves. The challenge that most organizations like IdentityCommons face is, how do you embrace an identity (which implies creating a boundary between you and others) while remaining open (keeping that boundary permeable and malleable). (Boundaries and identity as they pertain to leadership were major themes at the LeadershipLearningCommunity Evaluation Learning Circle last January, yet another instance of all my different worlds colliding.) Complicating all of this is the challenge of sustainability.    (MA6)

In order to make decisions, a community must define who its members are. Most organizations define membership as some combination of vetting, voting, and payment. I believe that a pay-to-play membership model is the main source of problems most organizations like these face. It's simply a lazy approach to sustainability. There are other ways to be sustainable without destroying the integrity of your community.    (MA7)

I could go on and on about this, and I eventually will, but not right now. The challenge we currently face is that the growth of the community outpaced the reformation of the new IdentityCommons. While we were busy gaining a collective understanding of what we were trying to do, a process that took well over a year, the overall community grew on us. Now, we're faced with the challenge of getting folks to think of this community as IdentityCommons, rather than as some entity that a bunch of folks are working on. I like to call this going from "they" to "we."    (MA8)

Conversations with folks about this today made me realize that I was overthinking the problem. (Shocker!) The problem is as challenging as it was before, but I think the solution is relatively straightforward: good ol' fashion community-building, starting with the existing social network. As complex and multilayered as all this stuff is, I think we can keep the message simple, which will greatly aid our cause.    (MA9)

Miscellaneous thoughts from day two:    (MAA)

/events | Posted at 12:29am

Tue, May 15, 2007

Internet Identity Workshop 2007, Day One    #

Quick thoughts from day one of the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW):    (M9G)

/events | Posted at 1:12am

Sun, May 13, 2007

Bucky Fuller, Trim Tabs, and Trains    #

One of my great deficiencies is my lack of literacy regarding BuckminsterFuller, someone who has greatly influenced many people in my sphere. Last Friday, I was having lunch with KaliyaHamlin, KarriWinn, and TiffanyVonEmmel at the beautiful Thoreau Center in the Presidio. Kaliya was explaining my philosophy about identifying the pain points in order to catalyze a system, and Karri responded, "Oh, like a TrimTab." Kaliya and Tiffany both nodded their heads, while I just looked confused. So Karri explained to me what a TrimTab was, and it is an apt metaphor indeed. Bucky Fuller explained it best in an interview with Playboy in 1972:    (M8W)

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary -- the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab.    (M8X)

It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.    (M8Y)

So I said, call me Trim Tab.    (M8Z)

(I did a little research after lunch that day, and ended up incorporating what I had learned into Wikipedia.)    (M90)

The TrimTab story reminded me of a puzzle I heard on CarTalk almost ten years ago. A train with 750 cars has stopped in a freight yard. It starts to move, when the engineer realizes there's a problem with the caboose. The engineer stops the train, they remove the caboose, and the engineer tries to start again. But the train doesn't move. What happened?    (M91)

The train doesn't move because the couplings between each car are rigid. When they're rigid, the engineer is essentially trying to move the entire train at once. You have to back up before you can move forward. This loosens the couplings. Now, when you start the engine, you're pulling one car at a time, building momentum as you go.    (M92)

The lessons?    (M93)

/collaboration | Posted at 11:59pm

Medical Expertise and Patterns    #

Another comment my friend Ed made about medicine last month that stuck with me was that he could easily tell whether or not a doctor was a newbie or an expert by reading the diagnosis. Rookie doctors are afraid of making mistakes, so they list everything they see in great detail. They basically overload you with information, and it's not helpful. Experienced doctors recognize patterns, and they tend to get to the point quickly and concisely.    (M8V)

/collaboration | Posted at 11:42pm

Thu, May 10, 2007

HyperScope Sprint this Saturday in San Jose    #

BradNeuberg, JonathanCheyer, and I will be meeting at Jonathan's place in SanJose this coming Saturday, May 12, at 10am for an ad hoc HyperScope sprint. Please join us! This will be an outstanding opportunity to meet the team, learn about HyperScope, and help us move the project forward. If you'd like to participate either face-to-face or remotely, please drop me a line or RSVP on Upcoming.org. Hope to see you there!    (M8T)

/tech/hyperscope | Posted at 1:41pm

Wed, May 09, 2007

Medicine and Continuous Learning    #

Last month, after Creating Space in Baltimore, I decided to go up to Philadelphia to visit my friend, Ed. Ed's a radiology resident at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. He was on call for one of the days of my trip, and he let me join him and observe.    (M8J)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/248/459503759_52687c321c_m.jpg    (M8K)

Radiologists study medical images -- X-rays, CT scans, etc. -- and make diagnoses based on what they see. As you might imagine, the practice of radiology changes dramatically as technology progresses.    (M8L)

When they're on call, radiologists camp out in a tiny, dark room surrounded by super high resolution computer monitors, tracking an ongoing stream of images from patients coming to the emergency room. They study the images and make diagnoses using voice recognition software. Occasionally, other doctors will come by and consult with the radiologists, but for the most part, it's a lonely endeavour.    (M8M)

When I joined my friend, he was examining the scans of a young man who had been shot in the torso. It was a serious case, and Ed was examining different scans from all angles, speaking into his microphone in a language that was completely foreign to me. The kid was extremely lucky; no vitals were hit, and he was going to be okay, so Ed walked me through what he had done, deciphering the scans, explaining the workflow, and showing off his tools.    (M8N)

It was a fascinating and sobering experience. Doctors epitomize high-performance knowledge workers. The field is incredibly complex and is constantly changing. Moreover, the stakes are extremely high: people's lives and livelihood. It requires years of training and practice, and the learning doesn't stop when you graduate from school or complete your residencies.    (M8O)

As you can imagine, the language is extremely specialized. I had to stifle a laugh the first time I heard Ed speak in the microphone. It literally sounded like he was speaking in a different language, even though I was pretty sure he was speaking English.    (M8P)

Radiologists in particular use cutting-edge technology, and the technology is constantly changing. I was particularly impressed by the user interface for examining scans and by the workflow. There were some deficiencies in the software, and the voice recognition software in particular seemed disappointing. I thought that Ed could have typed his diagnoses in the time it took to review and correct the transcripts. One thing that helped a lot were reporting templates. Ed told me that some doctors literally had hundreds of templates for all sorts of situations, and that they saved a lot of time when used judiciously.    (M8Q)

I was particularly impressed by the amount of continous learning required to stay on top of the field. Not only is medical knowledge constantly progressing, but the tools are constantly changing. As a result, doctors are constantly studying. They may graduate from school, but the learning doesn't seem to slow down much.    (M8R)

Medicine is a great model for what's in store for other types of KnowledgeWorkers in this rapidly changing world. I know very few KnowledgeWorkers who spend as much time learning and honing their skills as doctors do. Can you imagine what we could accomplish in this world if we did?    (M8S)

/collaboration | Posted at 1:33am

Wild Animals and a Memento Moment    #

I had a series of strange run-ins with animals over the past week. Last week, I was up late working, when I heard a rustling on my balcony. I peeked outside and was surprised to see a racoon bustling about. I live on the top floor of a five story building, and there is nothing in the way of food up here. Nevertheless, there he was. I turned on the light and stared at him, and he stared at me back, completely unconcerned. Then he continued on his way, apparently practicing an anaerobic version of parkour on the various roof tops in the OuterRichmond.    (M8D)

A few days later, I was driving up to SanFrancisco from MountainView, and I hit a heavier-than-usual patch of traffic on the 101. I assumed there was an accident, and sure enough, a few miles later, I noticed what seemed to be stalls in the two left lanes. However, I was surprised to see that neither car had their emergency blinkers on. As I drove nearer, I saw the culprits: A duck and two small ducklings, casually meandering around the fast lane of the 101 during rush hour.    (M8E)

Yesterday, towards the end of the day, I decided to take a walk on the Land's End trail, which is a few blocks from where I live. On the trail, I passed a guy holding a chicken. That's right, a chicken. I looked at the chicken, looked at the guy, shook my head, and moved on.    (M8F)

As I was walking back to my apartment, I thought about each of these amusing animal moments, and decided to blog about them. Then I looked to my right and noticed something unusual on the sidewalk. It was a dead, featherless chick, which had apparently fallen out of its nest. I thought to myself, "I think I'll leave that out of my blog entry." My other run-ins had amused me. This one bothered me, and I preferred to forget about it.    (M8G)

Then I wondered whether I would remember the dead chick anyway when I reread this entry, whether I mentioned it or not. It reminded me of the final scene in the movie, Memento. I was essentially trying to rewrite history by changing the artifact. However, artifacts have a strange way of triggering complex memories, whether you want them to or not. I guess I'll never know for sure.    (M8H)

/personal | Posted at 1:00am

Work Rhythms    #

I've been absent from this blog for almost a month, which is unusual for me. It started with my trip to Baltimore last month for Creating Space, the LeadershipLearningCommunity's annual conference, and it ended with the CompendiumInstitute workshop last week here in the BayArea. In the middle, I cranked away on my projects and spent some quality time with friends and family. I didn't get much reading done, but I got a whole lot of good thinking done.    (M7Z)

NancyWhite recently wrote of the challenge of balancing work and life, of the nitty gritty and the big picture:    (M80)

Because I fear that if I allow myself to be consumed by work, I will not achieve what I aspire from my work: to add value to the world. Work with a capital W. Some days lately I feel I'm tottering on a "check the box" mode of working. That is when learning stops and, to me, my ability to add value stops. It is a fuzzy line and easy to miss. It is when the quality of attention shifts. Diminishes.    (M81)

I want the shift to always be towards the side of learning, not just getting things done. Of attention and reflection, not forgetting.    (M82)

Her words resonated with me (as they often do). Last year was ground-breaking for me in this regard. For the first time since founding BlueOxenAssociates, I started to build in time for deep reflection about what I was doing and why, and about whether I was accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish.    (M83)

When I was in college, I used to lift weights with a buddy of mine who was an ex-football player. We were both intense guys, and when I'd get in one of my workout grooves (not that often), we'd lift almost two hours a day, five days a week. I got much stronger pretty quickly, but I also peaked quickly as well. I blamed it on the irregularity of these workout grooves.    (M84)

My junior year of college, I started lifting with a neighbor of mine, a big guy who was fanatic about fitness. In one of our early workouts, I complained that I never seemed to get any stronger. "How often do you lift?" he asked. Upon hearing my response, he told me to shorten my workouts -- three days a week, no more than 45 minutes a day. I was extremely skeptical, but I tried it, and to my surprise, it worked amazingly well.    (M85)

I've written previously about the cycle of thinking and doing. When you're designing for collaboration, you need to take these natural cycles into account. Doing so usually requires a lot of discipline, especially because it requires fighting workaholic instincts.    (M86)

One of my epiphanies last year was that I wasn't doing a good job of practicing what I preached, of living what I knew. In particular, I was getting too caught up in the nitty gritty and not spending enough time reflecting. I was getting too deeply involved in too many things, and I was overscheduling and overcommitting.    (M87)

I decided to make four major changes. First, I was going to cut down on the number of projects I would take on simultaneously. That meant saying no more often, and fighting the instinct to get deeply involved in everything I did.    (M88)

Second, I was going to cut down on the number of events I attended, especially those that required travel. Because most of the events I participate in are intense experiences (I rarely participate in networking events), I decided that I would schedule an equal amount of time for reflection. In other words, for every three day workshop, I would need to schedule three days for reflection and processing.    (M89)

Third, I was going to go on more walks. Not only is this a great way to get exercise and think, it's a great way to think with others. It's no coincidence that Aristotle and his followers were known as Peripatetics. Instead of constantly meeting folks in coffee shops, I started telling people to join me on walks instead, a trick I picked up from HowardRheingold. Fortunately, SanFrancisco has a number of gorgeous places for short, casual hikes.    (M8A)

Fourth, I was going to spend more meaningful time with people. This nicely aligned with my walking edict, but it also meant interacting with less people overall.    (M8B)

I've been good about doing all four of these things. Not great, but good. As with the weightlifting, doing less still feels counterintuitive. And just as with the weightlifting, doing less has generated the desired results. This has manifested itself in a number of ways. I've only gone on one work trip so far this year, whereas last year, I averaged a trip a month. I've blogged more consistently. I feel more connected with colleages and with friends. I've had time to really develop ideas and projects that are core to my mission. Most importantly, I feel LessDumb, which is one of the main tenets of TheBlueOxenWay.    (M8C)

/personal | Posted at 12:37am

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