eekim.com: EEK Speaks

Wed, Aug 22, 2007

Quick Thoughts on BarCampBlock #

I emerged from my summer hermitdom to attend parts of BarCampBlock this past weekend. My favorite part of BarCamp was actually something I missed because I overslept on Saturday morning: the unveiling of the original BarCamp attendee list (photo by ChrisHeuer): (MJC)

(MJD)

This is such a wonderful picture on so many levels. Seeing it brought back vivid memories of the first BarCamp: the sense of excitement about what a few passionate folks had created in a ridiculously short amount of time, the forging of new friendships and the strengthening of old ones. This little touch created a strong sense of continuity between the first camp, this third year anniversary celebration, and everything in-between. It also demonstrated the subtle difference between holding space well and simply holding space. Masters of this art understand the importance of the artifact, of LeaveATrail. (MJE)

I didn't get to stay as long as I would have liked, but here are some quick thoughts on what I did see: (MJF)

The organizers (ChrisMessina, TaraHunt, RossMayfield, LizHenry, and TantekCelik) and volunteers did an incredible job of making everything run smoothly. The hardest part of a collaborative event isn't the process; it's logistics. In this particular case, the organizers had to deal with a sudden spike in registrations -- 900 to be exact -- with no clue as to the actual number who would show up (564 on Saturday, 260 on Sunday) and a location literally spread out over 11 locations within a few square blocks. When I saw various organizers on Saturday morning, I noted with surprise how calm everything was, and everyone just looked at me and laughed. There's a ton amount of behind-the-scenes hard work and stress required to make any event run smoothly. Kudos to all who contributed. (MJG)
There were a ton of first-timers there. I saw several people I knew, and many more I didn't. I like to see about 25 percent yield of repeat attendees at events like these, and this came close to that. I think that's outstanding. The danger of events like these is that they become cliques. That wasn't the case with this BarCamp. In some ways, I think the oversaturation of networking events in the BayArea -- including many BarCamp spin-offs -- as well as the spirit of BarCamp prevented this from happening. (MJH)
I heard a few folks comment on the lack of depth in the sessions, and I experienced some of this myself firsthand. This is common at open, collaborative events, but most folks misunderstand what this means. OpenSpace-ish events are particularly conducive to building SharedLanguage among disparate folks. Deeper learning and collaboration often occur as a result, but it doesn't necessarily happen at the event itself. You can facilitate this deeper learning at events by making them more intentional -- Internet Identity Workshop is a great example of this -- but BarCamps are more meta than that. (MJI)
I loved the ContinuousLearning?, not just from the BarCamps that the organizers had played an active role in, but from the wider BarCamp community. The demo party, for example, was an idea borrowed from BarCamp Toronto, and while the execution needed tweaking, I loved the spirit of experimentation. (MJN)

More good thoughts from Liz, Ross, and Tara. (MJJ)

/events | Posted at 7:38pm

Tue, Aug 21, 2007

Little Dodger Fan Fishing #

My nephew, Elliott, is a Cincinnati boy, but he's clearly a Southern Californian at heart. According to my sister, he immediately gravitated towards the Dodgers hat among his collection of caps. (MJ9)

(MJA)

This picture brought a tear of joy to my eye. It will also bring a dent to my wallet, as I stock up on Dodger paraphernalia for when I see him in the fall. (MJB)

/personal | Posted at 9:16am

Mon, Aug 20, 2007

Generalist or Specialist? #

DaveGray shared one of his latest visualizations, which differentiates between specialists and generalists: (MIT)

(MIU)

I like the aesthetic of the diagram (which is how I feel about most of Dave's work), but when I first looked at it, I couldn't help but think that it was off somehow. After pondering, I realized my problem had less to do with the diagram than it did with how how he frames his conclusions: (MIV)

"Generalists are best when DEFINING the problem or goal. (MIW)
"Specialists are best used when SOLVING the problem or EXECUTING THE PLAN. (MIX)

The distinction between a specialist and a generalist isn't the ability to state versus solve a problem. The distinction has to do with the kind of problems they are good at addressing. Generalists are good at defining general or, more accurately, system problems, which, by definition, cannot be solved by a single person. But a generalist isn't necessarily good at defining specialized problems. (MIY)

The diagram itself is very good. I like the dimensionality of it, which jives with our traditional notions of horizontal versus vertical thinking (or breadth versus depth of knowledge). I also like the network depiction of the generalists' plane, which emphasizes the systems view. (MIZ)

However, there are some important nuances missing. First, because of the colors in the horizontal plane as well as the top-down view, the horizontal plane seems to hold greater importance than the vertical plane. That's misleading. A true systems thinker views a problem from all three dimensions, not just one plane. I think adding some color to the vertical lines would help alleviate this. (MJ0)

Second, while I like the fact that the vertical plane depicts mostly linear problems, I think these planes should show some network characteristics. This would also help emphasize the three dimensionality of the entire space, and the need for generalists and specialists to collaborate. (MJ1)

Finally, while I have plenty of nitpicks, I wouldn't have thought deeply about these nuances in the first place if the diagram hadn't helped clarify my thinking. It's yet another demonstration of the power of VisualThinking and of Dave's skill at facilitating it. (MJ2)

/collaboration | Posted at 12:15pm

Fri, Aug 10, 2007

MySQL, Open Source, and Trust #

When JonathanCheyer wasn't working with me and BradNeuberg on HyperScope, he was scrapping away at his day job as Solid Information Technology's OpenSource community manager. Despite having to deflect my endless teasing about revoking his hacker membership card for becoming a "marketing guy," he's been an excellent source of stories and insights about the nature of OpenSource communities and collaboration. (I'm less concerned about his hacker cred than I am about him being a die-hard Celtics fan. Sad, very sad.) (MII)

Jonathan recently blogged about some controversy surrounding MySQL AB's decision not to distribute source tarballs of its Enterprise Edition. Why is this seemingly minor move such a big deal? He explains: (MIJ)

It's about the importance of being earnest in what you do. Being an open source company is about a lot more than just slapping a GPL license on your software and handing it out. It's about building a relationship with the community that is using, playing, testing, and improving your software. As anyone who is married knows well, this can only be done through ongoing, continual trust and transparency between the two parties. Trust is built by being dependable, and by telling the other person things that sound honest and real. Trust is improved by transparency, which is opening yourself to the other person. Adding an artificial means of inconvenience to the community in obtaining bits does nothing to help customers and only reduces transparency as seen by the community. (MIK)

I'm amazed at how often good companies with a strong understanding of OpenSource forget this. I think it's indicative of the ongoing tensions that businesses must balance, and it speaks even more favorably of companies that manage to consistently uphold their OpenSource values even in the face of these difficult tensions. (MIL)

I don't have any first-hand insights into MySQL as an OpenSource project. I do know that it's been a model in the community for doing commercial OpenSource for a long time, and I know a bunch of great folks who are involved in that community, Jonathan included. Jonathan sums it up best when he writes: (MIM)

MySQL AB has been working with the open source community for a long time and a lot of good things have been accomplished as a result of that. There is much to applaud. Along the way, there have been occasional mistakes, and this is one of those times. MySQL risks alienating a community that has been very supportive of them by a misguided move in in their quest to "get more customers". Make money, make as much as you can, but while you do, don't forget the lesson of being earnest in your endeavors and staying true to your community. (MIN)

/collaboration | Posted at 11:07am

Tue, Aug 07, 2007

Open Source Mergers and the Circle of UNIX #

LloydBudd wrote a post today entitled, "GPL Encourages Collaboration," that was highly serendipitous and that triggered a flood of thoughts, some of which I'll try to capture here. Earlier today, I was rereading an interview I did with SunirShah a few months back for a paper I'm writing, and I latched onto a point that Sunir made about the proliferation of Wiki communities: (MHR)

I see so many people start their own Wikis. They go to these other Wikis that are disorganized. They don't feel like jumping in and learning everything because everything's in different places, and they are not coherent. So they start their own. (MHS)

There are now thousands of public Wikis, and they are all balkanized, because no one wants to collaborate. I understand that. It's human nature. You collaborate within your group, but you don't collaborate outside of that group. (MHT)

On the one hand, I encourage the proliferation of Wikis, because if you disagree with someone, you should be able to do your own thing. On the other hand, true collaboration is showing a willingness to actually pull these communities together, a willingness to subsume your immediate need to be a true leader, build relationships, and pull people together. (MHU)

Sunir's insight is an important one. The existence of a commons isn't in itself enough to guarantee collaboration. Ultimately, collaboration is intentional. You have to want to collaborate with others, and you have to be proactive about it. And it only takes two for starters. (MHV)

That said, if you want to encourage collaboration, you have to start by eliminating as many barriers as possible. The first barriers are SharedUnderstanding and SharedLanguage. In the OpenSource community, both of these have been indoctrinated in the form of OpenSource licenses. The main reason for the effectiveness of these licenses as vehicles for SharedUnderstanding is RichardStallman. (MHW)

When RMS originally wrote the GPL, he embedded the philosophy behind the terms in the license itself. It was not simply a legal document, but an essay on the principles underlying software freedom. Regardless of how you feel about the GPL or RMS, these remain the fundamental principles behind why OpenSource works, and more importantly, why collaboration is so rampant in OpenSource communities. (MHX)

However, as Sunir notes, this isn't enough to guarantee collaboration. We see a lot of redundancy in OpenSource, just as we see lots of redundancy in Wiki communities. And that's okay. There are sometimes good reasons for this redundancy, and it's healthy to facilitate it. But eventually, you want convergence also. (MHY)

This is the crux of Lloyd's post. He writes, "Forking is good, but not as good as merging." (MHZ)

Lloyd also cites a few examples (WordPress, gcc) and asks for others. There are tons of good ones, but my favorite is a bit obscure: UNIX. (MI0)

That's right, UNIX. Yes, the history of UNIX is fraught with ugliness, some of which still continues today. But it's also one of the greatest examples of OpenSource forking and merging. This is important, because it's also the birthplace of the modern OpenSource movement. (MI1)

Here's the quick summary. UNIX came from AT&T labs, and the original license terms were ambiguous (a massive understatement if there ever was one) for a number of reasons, the main one being that most people weren't thinking about software as IP at the time. Stallman, of course, was one of the exceptions, and in 1984, he started the GNU project, whose goal was to reimplement UNIX under the GPL. (MI2)

A few years earlier at UC Berkeley, BillJoy had taken a different approach. He simply forked AT&T UNIX into what is now known as BSD UNIX. The new code eventually was distributed under the BSD license, which essentially allowed anyone to do whatever they wanted with the code, as long as they gave credit to BSD and didn't sue anybody. This led to many, many new forks, especially proprietary ones from Sun (cofounded by Joy), IBM, DEC, SGI, and many, many others. (MI3)

With the advent of the 386 in the late 1980s came a number of PC forks, including 386BSD (which begat FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD), BSDI, SCO, and MINIX (which begat Linux). At this point, most versions of UNIX were also borrowing heavily from the GNU project. (MI4)

By the late 1990s, we started seeing massive convergence. IBM, Sun, DEC (now HP), SGI, and SCO (yes, SCO) all switched over to Linux, and started merging some of their proprietary capabilities into the Linux kernel. Apple moved to FreeBSD. (MI5)

What the heck happened? You could attribute this phenomenon to market consolidation, but that would only be telling part of the story. Market forces indeed played a strong role, just as they a play a strong role in anything that involves... well, markets. But the important points are these. The ability to fork UNIX into both proprietary and free versions allowed the market to innovate rapidly, and that innovation was critical to both the success of UNIX and to the growth of the industry as a whole. However, the existence of a free version of UNIX was critical in enabling the consolidation of all of these different UNIXes, even if they weren't necessarily formal mergers. Why were all of these competing companies willing to throw their hat into the Linux ring? Because of the OpenSource license, which protected companies from their competitors hijaacking the commons and using their own code against them. (MI6)

Ironically, the story of UNIX is also one of the reasons I believe that the GPL's terms are unnecessary for the proliferation of software freedom. The BSD license enabled proprietary forks, which arguably enabled innovation that wouldn't have happened otherwise. In fact, it's still enabling this today; look at Mac OS X. In the end, however, culture won out; these same proprietary companies are all supporting OpenSource software, not because they had to (although they do now), but because they wanted to. Empowerment is stronger than enforcement when it comes to communities and collaboration. (MI7)

I can't resist one more small rant, a teaser if you will. Most Web 2.0 companies seem to have learned the superficial lessons of OpenSource, but they've missed the main point. The argument that Open APIs obviate the need for OpenSource completely ignores what history has taught us over and over again. One of these days, I'll blog about this. (MI8)

/collaboration | Posted at 9:23pm

Mon, Aug 06, 2007

Warren Buffett on Evaluation #

I read this great quote from WarrenBuffett in last week's Economist: (MHB)

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. (MHC)

It's from his BerkshireHathaway chairman's letter in 2001. (MHD)

It reminds me of one of my shocking revelations when I worked in the publishing industry. There were a lot of publishers who were, shall we say, less than competent. Or as my former boss used to say, they were "dumber than a bowl of soup." (MHE)

How had they achieved their positions of lofty import? They were lucky enough to sell ads when times were good, and they got promoted as a reward. When times were bad, they would point to their sales numbers to show how qualified they were. Of course, those numbers weren't even an accurate assessment of their sales ability, much less their understanding of the industry or their ability as publishers. (MHF)

Lest you believe I'm biased towards the editorial side of the business, there were plenty of incompetent editors, too. They didn't usually have the benefit of irrelevant quantitative metrics to hide behind, though. (MHG)

/business | Posted at 9:04pm

Sat, Aug 04, 2007

Eight Random Facts #

I'm breaking my longest blog silence in a while (over a month!), thanks to prodding from MarkOehlert, who tagged me with the "Eight Random Facts" blog meme. I actually enjoy these memes; you learn a lot about folks that they might never otherwise reveal. Plus, it's a good way to get people to post something. In Mark's case, not only were all eight of his facts interesting, I was surprised to learn that he knows how to count to eight in Korean. How many non-Koreans know how to do that?! (MFV)

Here are the rules: (MFW)

Post these rules first, then give the facts. (MFX)
List eight random facts about yourself. (MFY)
Tag eight people, listing their names and linking to them, and letting them know they were tagged. (MFZ)

I'm actually using Mark's modified rules, tagging seven people and leaving the eighth open to any and all of you. (MG0)

Here are my eight random facts: (MG1)

I sang in a Korean children's choir when I was ten. My singing career included a "music video" of me singing a Korean folk song at the beach, which played on the local Korean television station every night for a week. Unbelievably, no agents ever contacted me, and my singing career ended soon thereafter. (MG2)
My body is on the March 1997 cover of DrDobbsJournal. They replaced my head with a computer monitor, leaving me with head-image problems that persist to this day. My boss at the time promised to serve as my agent, but once again, no one ever contacted me. I tried to fire him, but he claimed that I couldn't fire someone I wasn't paying. (That, of course, was libel. I was paying him on commission.) Thus ended my last foray into what we from LosAngeles call The Business. (MG3)
I discovered a bug in the very first computer program, AdaLovelace's code for computing BernoulliNumbers, which she published in 1843. I briefly mentioned my findings in the sidebar of an article I coauthored with BettyAlexandraToole on AdaLovelace in the May 1999 issue of ScientificAmerican. Frankly, this alone should qualify me for my own Wikipedia page. Take into account my glorious accomplishments in the entertainment industry, and the fact that I don't already have a page is even more mystifying. What's up, Wikipedia community?! (MG4)
I am the proud owner of three bobblehead dolls: SteveGarvey (my favorite baseball player growing up), TommyLasorda (my favorite overweight Italian baseball manager), and MrT (everybody's favorite mohawked, bejeweled tough guy). I'm looking to add JamesWorthy (my favorite basketball player growing up) and BruceLee (everybody's favorite butt-kicker) to my collection, but I'm not sure they even exist. (MG5)
I have two non-family portraits hanging in my office: DougEngelbart and ThomasKuhn. (MG6)
My favorite book is RobertPennWarren's All the King's Men, which I read at least once a year. All of my computers are named after characters in the book. (MG7)
My secret passion: Watching cooking shows. I'm a bit of a cooking show snob. I think the shows on KQED are much better overall than the ones on Food Network. My favorites are LidaBastianich, RickBayless, BobbyFlay, JacquesPepin, and of course, IronChef. I was also a big fan of JuliaChilds, the most famous alumnus of my junior high and high school. (MG8)
My two sisters (one older, one younger) are my favorite people in the world. My nephew, Elliott, is my favorite person under three feet tall, although he's growing like a weed. (MG9)

As for folks I'm tagging, it was hard limiting myself to seven people. Please participate even if you weren't tagged! Those I chose in the end are all great people doing brilliant work and writing interesting, insightful pieces. They all also have lower Technorati rankings than me. In some cases, it's because they don't blog that often, although each of them has posted at least once in the last two months. In other cases, it's because they're not as well known as they should be. If you're not already following them, you should be. It will be well worth your while. (MGA)

/personal | Posted at 8:40pm