Wed, Nov 28, 2007
A Mommy Blog Worth Following #
My friends, Greg and Elizabeth, had their first child last month, a baby girl. It was a good thing, too, as Greg has been insufferable about Boston sports recently, and I was seriously considering downgrading him on my friends list. In addition to saving our friendship, their new daughter was responsible for another very good thing: Elizabeth started blogging. Now the rest of the world can see what her friends already knew: She's an amazing writer. I don't typically count mommy blogs among my regular reading material, but I'm constantly amused and touched by Elizabeth's stories. Plus, she occasionally pokes fun at Greg, a quality I've always heartily approved of and hope to see much more of. Take a look; it's appropriately named 4 AM Feeding. (MSA)
/personal | Posted at 3:19am
barx: A Ruby XRI Resolver #
Last month, VictorGrey and KermitSnelson announced barx, the first full implementation of the XRI 2.0 draft specification (working draft 11, for those of you keeping track). I finally downloaded and started playing with it tonight; it's very nice. Most OpenID implementations are using a proxy hack to support i-names, but as real XRI implementations start to come out, we'll start seeing many more interesting applications. (MS5)
I've started to port barx over to Perl and will hopefully have it completed by IIW next week. Yes, I'm coding again. I've been sitting on a slew of year-old ideas that need to get implemented, and I'm tired of being a preacher instead of a do-er (at least when it comes to code). It's against my instincts, and I don't have enough of an audience to leverage the LazyWeb. (MS6)
Besides, I was starting to miss it. Over the last few years, I've built a reputation as someone who knows a bit about collaboration, not just about tools, and that's been really gratifying. It's also helped me feel okay about reminding people that I still know a bit about tools as well. Plus, a lot of things have been stoking the fire recently. I was managing the HyperScope project last year and the GrantsFire project this year, both of which are conceptually and technically interesting. I never stopped reading code, and a lot of my friends are developers. What really kicked things into gear for me, though, was stepping in as an emergency developer for GrantsFire and watching LinusTorvalds's git talk. (MS7)
I started playing with a bunch of ideas at once, but I'm focusing on GrantsFire and the DigitalIdentity stuff now. Stay tuned, and if you want to hack with me over the next few weeks, either face-to-face or remotely, ping me. (MS8)
/collaboration/idcommons | Posted at 2:51am
Sun, Nov 25, 2007
Tools and Culture #
Tools reinforce power relationships. If you want a more emergent power model within a group, you have to make sure your tools support that. Git is a beautiful example of how a tool can support the right power relationships. (MRK)
However, just because a tool has affordances doesn't mean people will pay any attention to them. LinusTorvalds alluded to an example in a software development context: Giving everyone commit access to a centralized repository. He refers to this happening in companies, but there's precedent for it happening in OpenSource communities as well. For example, TikiWiki gives commit access to anyone who asks. The underlying philosophy behind this policy is very Wiki-like: Empowering everyone to make things better offsets the risk of giving everyone the opportunity to screw things up. By not imposing a power structure, the right model can emerge. (MRL)
In the case of git, the tool explicitly supports an emergent power model. In the case of the TikiWiki community, the tool's inherent model is overridden by the community's culture. (MRM)
What can we learn from this? Tools have the potential to transform culture, but transformation never comes easily. In the Wiki community, the classic case of this is when users email an administrator about a typo in a Wiki rather than fixing it themselves. We in the Wiki community use this behavior as a leverage point to explain that they have PermissionToParticipate and can change the content themselves. Once people start modeling this behavior, transformation becomes a possibility. (MRN)
When I saw MichaelHerman last month, we talked about how tools do and don't encourage emergent models of behavior and how often we need to catalyze this process by other means. Michael brought up the phenomenon of a few people gathering at a circle of movable chairs, then sitting on opposite sides of each other with many chairs between them rather than moving the chairs they needed into a tighter circle. Even though the environment was adaptable, people chose to go with the default rather than optimize it for their needs. (MRO)
I saw a similar phenomenon a few weeks ago at TAG, where I sat in on EugeneChan, LucyBernholz, and SukiOKane's session on Web 2.0 and philanthropy. They had a very interactive design, which in the context of TAG (a very traditional conference format for a very conservative community), was highly unusual. They kicked things off by doing a spectrogram. (MRP)
Not only did this establish a sense of self-awareness and SharedUnderstanding among the participants, it also got people moving (and laughing), which was especially important since the session was right after lunch. Without saying anything, it was clear that this was not going to be your traditional talking heads session. Smart, smart, smart. Then they led a discussion. They gave people PermissionToParticipate by explicitly setting expectations, catalyzed the discussion by asking broad questions, then held space and exercised self-restraint whenever there were awkward silences. Again, very nice. (MRR)
But they also did something dumb. Look at the space: (MRS)
Whereas the leaders of the session were saying, "Please talk! Participate! Learn from each other!", the space was saying, "Look at the leaders! Keep quiet! Check your email while pretending to listen!" And the space was really, really loud, much louder than the leaders. (MRU)
In fairness to Eugene, Lucy, and Suki, it would have been a major pain in the rear to rearrange the space, and there were strong disincentives to doing so (specifically, the wrath of LisaPool). But space makes a huge difference, and even super smart people don't account for this as much as they should. Even people who are in the business of collaboration and are constantly preaching about this sort of thing (i.e. me) make these mistakes all the time. Old habits and thinking die hard. (MRV)
The online tool space is rampant with these examples. How often do you see Wikis where the "Edit this page" button is impossible to find? (MRW)
Tools can encourage or discourage certain types of behavior, and it is in our best interest to choose and adapt our tools to encourage the behavior that we want. That's not always enough, but it's generally a good start. Eliminating obstacles can be as much of a catalyst as a good kick in the pants, but a combination of both is even more effective. (MRX)
/collaboration/tools | Posted at 1:33pm
Imposed Stupidity, Emergent Intelligence #
In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, DouglasAdams wrote: (MR5)
The major problem -- one of the major problems, for there are several -- one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. (MR6)
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. (278) (MR7)
I recently watched LinusTorvalds's talk at Google on git, the distributed version control system he wrote a few years ago. There are a bunch of gems in his talk, and it's well worth watching. My favorite had to do with git's views on decision-making in OpenSource communities: (MR8)
Maybe you don't have this issue inside a company, but we certainly have it in every single OpenSource community I've ever seen that uses CVS or Subversion or something like that. You have this notion of commit access. Because you have a central repository, it means that everybody who's working on that project needs to write to the central repository. Which means that, since you don't want everybody to write to the central repository because most people are morons, you create this class of people who are ostensibly not morons. And most of the time, what happens is, you make that class too small, because it's really hard to know if a person is smart or not, and even when you make it too small, you will have problems. So this whole commit access issue, which some companies are able to ignore by just giving everybody commit access, is a huge psychological barrier, and it causes endless hours of politics in most open source projects. (MR9)
If you have a distributed model, it goes away. Everybody has commit access. You can do whatever you want to your project. You just get your own branch. You do great work or you do stupid work. Nobody cares. It's your copy. It's your branch. And later on, if it turns out you did a good job, you can tell people, "Hey, here's my branch, and by the way, it performs ten times faster than anybody else's branch. So nyah nyah nyah. How about pulling from me?" And people do. (MRA)
And that's actually how it works, and we never have any politics. That's not quite true, but we have other politics. We don't have to worry about the commit access thing. I think this is a huge issue, and that alone should mean that every single OpenSource system should never use anything but a distributed model. You get rid of a lot of issues. (18:12-20:13) (MRB)
Someone in the audience asked Torvalds whether the distributed model simply shifted the political questions of access rather than eliminated them, to which Torvalds replied: (MRC)
What happens is, the way merging is done is the way real security is done: by a network of trust. If you have done any security work, and it did not involve the concept of network of trust, it wasn't security work, it was masturbation. I don't know what you were doing, but trust me, it's the only way you can do security, it's the only way you can do development. (MRD)
The way I work, I don't trust everybody. In fact, I'm a very cynical and untrusting person. I think most of you are completely incompetent. The whole point of being distributed is, I don't have to trust you, I don't have to give you commit access, but I know that among the multitude of average people, there are some people that just stand out, that I trust, because I've been working with them. I only need to trust five, ten, 15 people. If I have a network of trust that covers those five, ten, 15 people that are outstanding, and I know they're outstanding, I can pull from them. I don't have to spend a lot of brainpower on that question. (27:37-29:00) (MRE)
Power relationships exist everywhere there are groups of people. And if you don't believe they should, you're kidding yourself. CollectiveIntelligence, CollectiveLeadership, and more specifically, emergent self-organization are not about eliminating power relationships. They're about empowering the right people at the right time. (MRF)
/collaboration | Posted at 10:49am
Sat, Nov 24, 2007
Authentic Relationships and Networking #
A few months ago, I received a card from DeborahMeehan and my friends at the LeadershipLearningCommunity (LLC). It was the second card I've received from them since joining their board earlier this year, and there was a long, personal note inside. (MQV)
When Deborah and the others at LLC do things like send a card, it is a manifestation of an authentic feeling, which is a fancy way of saying that they actually mean it. Deborah is a fantastic networker, but she doesn't network. She builds real relationships. (MQW)
Contrast this to an experience I had on Facebook recently. My MO with most SocialNetwork sites is to be pretty liberal about adding people to my network. (There are exceptions to this, which are probably worthy of a separate blog post one of these days.) If you invite me, and I know you, I'll accept. If I don't know you, then you'd better have a good reason for bothering me. (MQX)
A few weeks ago, I got a Facebook "friend" request from a woman I didn't recognize. We did have one friend in common, someone I knew and trusted. However, she also had over a thousand friends, which was a tip off that I probably didn't want to deal with her. Nevertheless, I sent her a polite message asking her how we had met. She said that we hadn't. I then asked why she had "friended" me. She responded that she couldn't resist the smile in my picture. (MQY)
That lame response pretty much killed any chance of me ever giving her the time of day. Nevertheless, my curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to Google her. Turns out this woman is a "professional networker" (tip off number two for me to stay away). Even worse, one of her tips for networking is to always give people a valid reason for connecting to them. Apparently, she didn't believe in practicing what she preached. (MQZ)
This, my friends, is why I hate "networkers." You want to build a better network? Here's my two-step process. Go someplace where there are people. Have AuthenticConversations. That means, follow your curiosities and passions, and listen. (MR0)
Lest you feel this experience is indicative of the challenges of building real relationships online, let me end this post with a good Facebook experience. About a month ago, I got a "friend" request from KenCarroll. I had no idea who he was at the time, but in his initial request, he wrote a nice note explaining that he was the founder of ChinesePod.com, he was aware of my work, and that he wanted to connect. So I looked at his stuff and thought to myself, "Wow, this guy is doing incredible work. I'd love to learn more." (MR1)
I accepted his request, and we exchanged a few messages. That's all so far. But I guarantee that there will be more to this story, whether it's next month, next year, or longer. Maybe it will be a random bit of knowledge I cull from his Facebook page. Maybe it will be an introduction to another interesting person. Maybe it will be sharing stories over drinks. Maybe we'll work together on something. Maybe it will be all of the above. The bottom line is that whatever happens, all it took to start was an authentic gesture. (MR2)
/collaboration | Posted at 7:15am
Babble Voice Privacy System #
KirstenJones recently pointed me to HermanMiller's Babble Voice Privacy System. Babble is a small device (about the size of a tape player) that takes sound within a certain radius and rebroadcasts it as nonsense. In other words, it allows you to have private conversations in open spaces. (MQP)
Babble is being marketed as a privacy device, but it's actually an important productivity device. People are good at ignoring white noise. When our brains hear sounds they don't recognize, they ignore them. People are bad at ignoring recognizable sounds. Every ambient conversation we overhear is a concentration breaker. (MQQ)
The list price for a Babble is $695, which is steep for most mortals. However, there's a simple trick you can use for similar effect: music. People do this all the time on their own: When they need to concentrate, they put on their headphones. However, you can do this for an entire space as well. (MQR)
The added benefit of using music in this way for OpenSpace-style events is that you can use this as a transitional device. Raise the volume when you want people to move, and lower the volume when you've achieved your goal. MGTaylor does this all the time, but they're not the only ones. OpenSpace facilitators often use Tibetan prayer bells to signal transition. AllenGunn (Gunner) will often start singing when he wants people to transition. (MQS)
/collaboration/tools | Posted at 12:04am
Fri, Nov 23, 2007
Productivity, Working Big, and Spatial Awareness #
My colleague, JeffShults, has a saying: "Work big." Jeff is a space guru, as many of you who have participated in a BlueOxenAssociates workshop know, as most of my events have been at his different spaces. The most glaring feature of his space are the huge, movable work walls. (MQE)
Working big is important even when we're working small -- at our desks in front of our computers, for example. I've cited speculation and a study on the productivity gains from using larger screens. I recently ran across CliveThompson's New York Times magazine article that cited a similar study by MaryCzerwinski at Microsoft. (MQF)
On the bigger screen, people completed the tasks at least 10 percent more quickly - and some as much as 44 percent more quickly. They were also more likely to remember the seven-digit number, which showed that the multitasking was clearly less taxing on their brains. Some of the volunteers were so enthralled with the huge screen that they begged to take it home. In two decades of research, Czerwinski had never seen a single tweak to a computer system so significantly improve a user's productivity. (MQG)
Thompson makes a key point in his article: Productivity in an interrupt-driven world seems to be closely related to our ability to switch and remember different contexts. Bigger screens allow you to take advantage of spatial awareness to switch and remember different contexts. (MQH)
There's a corollary to this regarding complex problems. I'm convinced that the primary value of graphical facilitation is not the VisualLanguage used to capture ideas, but the relationship created between ideas and space. In other words, you'll remember the discussion around an idea better if you remember that it was the conversation that was captured on the lower right hand side of the screen or wall. This belief has greatly eased my stress when DialogMapping, as ultimately, I see my task as building spatial memory. (MQI)
That's not to say that VisualLanguage isn't important. It is, and fortunately, there's a fantastic community of folks who are exploring it. The better news is that many of these folks will be converging in SanFrancisco on January 27-29, 2008 for the VizThink conference. (MQJ)
/collaboration | Posted at 11:49pm
Cisco's Workplace of the Future #
I'm a big fan of Cisco Systems. Sure, they're a $200 billion behemoth. But they don't act like it (not in an anti-competitive way, at least). They make quality products, they acquire great companies for good reasons, and they seem to generally care about bootstrapping and collaboration. My colleagues at MGTaylor and the ValueWeb have done quite a bit of work with Cisco and JohnChambers, and they've only said good things about them. Cisco also used to have an internal research group focused on collaboration that was doing great work, although I don't know if it still exists. (MPX)
A good friend of mine works there and had been promising me a tour of its "workplace of the future" for quite some time. A few years ago, Cisco designated one floor in Buildings 11 and 14 as experimental spaces, designed to be a more collaborative environment in today's network world. My friend had spoken glowingly of portable workspaces, movable walls, and open space, and I was excited to see it for myself. (MPY)
This past Monday, on my way down to SouthernCalifornia for the holidays, I stopped at Cisco for my promised tour. As we walked over to Building 14, my friend told me that employees who worked there had complained about the space, particularly the lack of private space to get work done and a "home base" they could call their own. (MPZ)
I got my first experience of the "workplace of the future" in the lobby, where a virtual receptionist badged me. The space was like any receptionist area, except there was no receptionist. On the desk, there was a badge machine, and behind the desk, there was a large LCD screen with a camera. We pressed the button, and a person appeared on the screen. My friend identified herself, explained who I was, and out popped a badge. It was cute, but gimmicky. I'd be curious to know how much money they save (if any) by doing this. (MQ0)
Then, the coup de grace: the space itself. The first thing I noticed was the eating area, an enclosed circle at the center of the space. "A WateringHole, positioned nicely," I thought. Next, I noticed rows and rows of lockers. (MQ1)
Then I noticed the cubicles. Rows and rows of cubicles. "When do we get to see the space?" I asked my friend. Then I saw the look of shock on her face, and I realized that we were looking at it. Cisco had given up. They had listened to the complaints and had replaced their experimental space with cubicles. (MQ2)
My friend felt really bad, but I wasn't disappointed, not by the tour at least. (Not that I passed on the opportunity to poke fun at her and Cisco. "So this is the workplace of the future?" I asked. "Looks an awful like the past to me.") There were some great lessons to draw from the experience. (MQ3)
First, designing effective spaces is hard. It's one thing to design an effective collaborative space; it's another to design an effective work space for lots of people. You have to account for the IntimacyGradient, and if there's cultural change involved, you have to decide whether the cultural shift is actually desirable. (MQ4)
Second, good companies aren't perfect. I need to find out why exactly they changed the space, but the fact that they reverted to cubicles disappointed me greatly. It's one thing to make a mistake; it's another thing to give up entirely. If any of you know the story behind these spaces, I'd love to hear it. (MQ5)
/collaboration | Posted at 10:39pm
Uncle Eric Comes to Cincinnati #
Last month, I visited my two sisters, my brother-in-law, and of course, my nephew Elliott in Cincinnati. Once again, Elliott asked if he could guest blog, and I happily complied. --EEK (MPJ)
A few weeks ago, I was happily conked out in the car on the way to Musikgarten (a musical play on kindergarten). When we arrived, I groggily opened my eyes and saw Uncle Eric sitting next to me. (MPK)
It seems like every time he visits, he magically appears in the car while I'm taking a nap. Even though I'm already three years old, I still have a ways to go before I'm a bitter, cynical adolescent, so I was thrilled to see him, and I gave him a big hug. (MPM)
Uncle was wearing his Dodgers hat, so I broke out my own hat as well, and showed him that the L.A. blood still runs strong in this Midwestern boy. He also brought me a toy forklift and one of his Transformers, which he had kept stashed away in his closet for years. I don't know what a grown man was doing with a box of childhood toys in his closet. He kept mumbling something about them being worth something on eBay someday, but I wasn't buying it. In any case, he said he was even more happy to let me have them, and I can't say I disagree. (MPO)
Uncle Eric is always teaching me critical skills necessary for surviving in this world. This time, he showed me how to psych people out when they're about to give you a five and how to express satisfaction after a tasty meal ("Mmm, mmm, mmm!"). In return, I taught him how to express emotion on command. (MPQ)
In addition to these life lessons, we also spent a lot of time playing at home and in the park. (MPS)
I had fun playing with Uncle, but he seemed to sleep a lot on this trip. I told Mommy that Uncle is getting old. [True story! --EEK] She claimed that he was working a lot, which might have been true, but he is getting old. (MPU)
While we were at the park playing, Uncle had to take a call. He spent almost an hour on the phone, and he looked frustrated and haggard afterwards. So I asked him if he would carry me, and I gave him a big hug, and he had a big smile on his face afterwards. Adults are so easy. (MPV)
As always, food played a major role on our trip. Aunt Jessica made delicious muffins and cupcakes in cones, and I ate a few dozens of those. Daddy and Uncle Eric snuck out one evening for wings and beer. I wanted to go too, but Mommy somehow didn't think it appropriate for me to drink beer with them. Uncle agreed, saying I'd have to wait until I was at least five. To make up for this, Uncle made us Polish hunter's stew out of the myriad of pork products he had acquired from Chicago. Mmm, mmm, mmm! (MPW)
/personal | Posted at 12:56pm
Fri, Nov 16, 2007
Online Tools As Space #
It's late, I'm tired, and I have a workshop I'm hosting tomorrow. But, I've got to get this off my chest now. You can thank my old partner in crime, ChrisDent, for initially instigating this with his blog post entitled, People in Social Software Systems." What closed the deal for me was reading WendySeltzer's piece, "Facebook: Privacy versus cross-context aggregation." (MOZ)
I've been playing with this metaphor of OnlineToolsAsSpace for about a year now, and I've been threatening to write an essay on it for about as long. The premise is simple. We have a natural intuition for space and how it affects the way we work. Whether or not we leverage that intuition is another problem entirely, but the fact of the matter is, we do a better job of leveraging that intuition in meatspace than we do in online space. And we can leverage that intuition in online space. (MP0)
Online space is mostly equivalent to physical space, except the physics are slightly different. The folks at LindenLab have this saying about SecondLife: "It's just like real life, except you can fly." That's not quite what I mean when I say the physics of online space is different, and the statement itself is wrong in subtle, but important ways. (Yeah, yeah, I understand it's a marketing slogan.) (MP1)
Time is essentially equivalent in both online and physical space. What's different are the notions of proximity and presence. There is still the notion of distance in online space, but it's fungible. I can bridge gaps by modifying the presentation layer or by linking content, and suddenly, distances disappear. Moreover, we can take an existing online space and munge into something that looks entirely different. Since we don't have the notion of physical presence, we have to create a digital representation -- essentially DigitalIdentity. (MP2)
What are the ramifications of all of this? First the good news. Once we get past the mental roadblock that technology seems to create in all of us, we can find that -- for the most part -- our intuitions about space applies both to physical and online spaces. I can identify a good intimate or public space just by looking at it, whether it's a physical room or a web site. We just have to leverage this intuition. (MP3)
Now the bad news. The fungibility of online space and DigitalIdentity creates social havoc, largely in the area of privacy. People's blogs feel like private spaces, and so people treat them as such, but they're not actually private. People make contributions to Wikipedia, not expecting these to reveal much about their identities, yet some researchers discover that if you aggregate all this data, you can create visualizations that reveal a startling amount about a person's identity. And all of this stuff is easy to do. (MP4)
I've got a lot more to say on all of this, and perhaps one day, I'll be able to say it coherently. But now that I've gotten it off my chest, I'd love to hear people's feedback. (MP5)
/collaboration/tools | Posted at 1:45am
Tue, Nov 13, 2007
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize #
A great story from last week's Tuesday Morning Quarterback, by GreggEasterbrook: (MOQ)
Once, in Silicon Valley, I heard Joe Costello -- a founding light of "electronic design automation" and now CEO of the lowercase think3 -- give a talk about the difference between seeking success and avoiding failure. Studies of crashes during aircraft landings under difficult circumstances, he said, showed that pilots who made bad mistakes when approaching an airfield and crashed, but lived to tell the tale, reported that they had been focused on avoiding obstacles. Pilots who made difficult landings without incident reported they had focused solely on the runway. Business and artistic success, Costello continued, follow the same pattern. Setbacks result from constantly trying to avoid obstacles, worrying about what might go wrong. Achievement results from keeping your eyes glued to the prize and endlessly repeating to yourself, "I can do this." Or, as I once wrote, "Keep your gaze in the distance, and though you will stumble, you will reach your destination." (MOR)
Easterbrook told this story in regards to AdrianPeterson's ridiculous game against the Chargers last week: (MOS)
Watch tailbacks: Most are darting their heads from side to side trying to figure out where problems are. Peterson says he is always looking at the goal line and driving his legs, ignoring tacklers. His runs have this quality: maximum power toward the goal line, pay no attention to the obstacles. The great Walter Payton once said he could never remember the numbers of those who hit or missed him because he was looking down the field and the rest was a blur. (That's a paraphrase.) Peterson seems to have this same success-focused running style, plus he's bigger and faster than Payton was. (MOT)
It applies to aircraft landings, it applies to football, and it applies to life. (Would be nice to get a source on the aircraft study; if anyone has a link, please let me know.) (MOU)
/collaboration | Posted at 9:35pm
Busy People Get Things Done #
I've had the pleasure of working with PatrickCollins for the past few months on GrantsFire. I particularly enjoy one of his favorite expressions: "If you want to get something done, find a busy person." So counter-intuitive, and yet so true. (MON)
/collaboration | Posted at 5:16pm
Working Like Sheep #
An allegory, by KirstenJones: (MOI)
I have a friend who hearkens from the heartland of America, and is thus more schooled than I in the cosmic truths to be found on a farm. We were discussing the relative dimness of various farm animals, and he mentioned that sheep were pretty much the stupidest animals around. I asked why, and he said that a lamb, when confronted with a meadow full of tall grass, will eat through the grass, leaving a 1-lamb-wide path behind them. When the lamb is full, however, it is faced with a horrible situation. Walls of grass surround it on the front and the sides. After looking left and right in a panic, the lamb will start to bleat piteously, hoping for someone to rescue it from its plight, eventually sitting down to wait until it's hungry again so that it can extend the path further. I'm not sure how true the story is, but it makes for a compelling mental image. (MOJ)
... (MOK)
I frequently find myself in a position where I am trying to solve a difficult problem. The more I push, the more the answer eludes me, but I have this underlying fear that if I break away and come back to the problem with fresh eyes, I'll lose the context I've worked so hard to achieve. The reality is that I'm just like the lamb. The answer I need will only be clear when I back up. The context I've built up is broken, which is why I'm not finding the answer. (MOL)
When Kirsten first told me this story, she was specifically talking about programming, but I think the analogy holds for many endeavours. (MOM)
/collaboration | Posted at 5:09pm
Wed, Nov 07, 2007
Green Festival; SF Wikipedia Meetup #
I've enjoyed being a hermit for most of this year, but I've made up for lots of lost time this past month. Got lots of great stuff to report, but in the meantime, you can catch me in SanFrancisco: (MOF)
- 6pm, Friday, November 9 at GreenFestival. I'll be facilitating an abridged, green edition of my Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration curriculum. (MOG)
- 3:30pm, Saturday, November 10 at the SF Wikipedia Meetup. This will be a great opportunity to meet some of the community members who make Wikipedia amazing, including the inestimable PhoebeAyers. Word has it that there will be a few surprise guests, so definitely drop by. (MOH)
/events | Posted at 5:04pm
