Fri, Feb 29, 2008
Key Questions for our First Gathering #
It's morning here in Patna. I slept for about five hours last night, and I'm finally starting to feel adjusted. I'm also starving, always a good sign, and I'm craving something new and delicious. Now I'm shifting around my room, trying desperately to find a consistent WiFi connection so that I can publish my entries of the past few days. (MWU)
In a few hours, our first workshop starts. My main goal for these next two weeks are to meet as many of the leaders as possible, to learn what makes this community tick, and to think about ways to further catalyze it. In particular, I'm wondering what words like "community," "collaboration," and "leadership" mean to these folks, and I'm looking forward to their stories. (MWV)
/blueoxen/ldm | Posted at 6:11pm
Arrived in Patna #
We arrived safely in Patna a little after 9pm, after enjoying a very tasty airplane meal on a flight that was just 90 minutes long. Every airline should serve Indian food. They also handed out these chewy, tangy tamarind candies. I'm not usually one for sweets, but I tried one at Cheryl's insistence. They were tart and delicious. I'm going to have to see if I can buy a bag. (MWQ)
We stepped off the plane into cool, misty air. Patna is in the state of Bihar, which is north of Delhi, and the weather is noticeably cooler. There were a number of mosquitoes milling about, making me glad that I'm taking my malaria pills. (MWR)
NarendraGupta explained that Bihar has some of the richest agricultural lands and natural resources in the country, and yet historically, it has been one of the poorest states, with a history of violent tribalism. Many of the fellows who are participating at tomorrow's meeting work in rural areas of Bihar and have given up their weekend and travelled far to attend. (MWS)
/blueoxen/ldm | Posted at 6:09pm
Jor Bagh #
I spent the afternoon working in IIE's Delhi office, located in Jor Bagh, a charming residential district that contrasted sharply with the Delhi I had seen the night before. On the ride over, Sanjay explained India's political situation regarding health care, education, and other infrastructural challenges. (MWF)
India is a study in contrasts. There is tremendous economic disparity. Over a million people in Delhi (about eight percent of the total population) live beneath the poverty line. The infrastructure is poor, to say the least. The roads are bad, the power unreliable, the water scarce and undrinkable. And yet, India has a burgeoning population of skilled and intelligent KnowledgeWorkers, especially in technology. (MWG)
To its credit, the current government is trying to do something about its infrastructural woes. It has committed to tripling its expenditures (percentage of GDP spent) in health and education over the next five years, and similarly increasing its expenditures in other areas, such as potable water. (MWH)
After enjoying a delicious lunch of samosas, dhokla (which I tried for the first time), and gulabjamun, CherylFrancisconi rejoined us and introduced me to AjitMotwani, the new head of IIE India, who regaled us with stories of his eclectic past and who introduced me to lime water, water with lime juice, sugar, and salt, sort of an all-natural Gatorade. (MWI)
In the afternoon, Cheryl and I took a taxi to the airport, where we experienced an incredibly surreal traffic moment. At one point, we crossed a six lane bridge, with rickshaws and buses pulled over on the sides and middle of the road. No one was paying any attention to the lanes, and no one was slowing down either. It felt like I was playing one of those racing video games, except with quadruple the traffic. And yet, it didn't feel disorderly either. Somehow, everything just worked. (MWL)
As we watched similar madness in the terminal later, I observed to Cheryl that OpenSpace must feel comfortable to folks in India, because they're so used to ordered chaos. That sparked a long conversation about process and culture that continued well into our flight to Patna. (MWM)
At the airport, we met up with SanjayPandey and NarendraGupta, who will be a guest participant at the meeting over the next few days. Narendra is from Chittorgarh, a small town in the state of Rajasthan, and his background is fascinating. I'm looking forward to chatting more with him and watching him work tomorrow. (MWN)
/blueoxen/ldm | Posted at 6:07pm
The Game Plan #
I met with CherylFrancisconi, the leader of the LDM project, first thing this morning to go over the game plan. Cheryl is wonderful, a smiling ball of positive energy, and it felt great to see her in person and to give her a hug after many months of remote communication. (MW9)
Shortly afterwards, SanjayPandey, the LDM country manager for India, joined us. Sanjay is coolly competent, and his demeanor belies his passion and vision. It's clear that the LDM community in India is ahead of the game in terms of building stronger ties and working on projects together, and Sanjay has played a huge role in facilitating this. (MWA)
I'm really looking forward to learning from the leaders both here and Ethiopia. That may sound weird, coming from the guy who's supposed to be the consultant on this project, but the reality is that this community knows far, far more about what it wants and needs and how to get there than I do. I'm here to learn from them, to share what I learn, and to connect people and ideas where I see fit. (MWC)
My schedule is packed solid, with constant meetings and travel in-between. I will not be doing much sight-seeing. It's a work trip, after all. Then again, I'm here to learn about the people and the culture, and I expect it to be incredibly enriching. Both Cheryl and Sanjay expressed regret that I would not have more time to explore the country, but I quickly dismissed them. I'm getting a chance to see parts of the country that most people never get to see, places like Patna (where I am right now) and Ranchi, and to spend quality time with amazing people on the ground whom I would never otherwise get to meet. (MWD)
If I have any regrets, it's that Sanjay is taking care of me too well. I haven't had to worry about lodging or food or transportation. My trip has been completely stress free. I will have zero advice to offer future visitors (including myself), because I haven't done a damn thing myself. (MWE)
/blueoxen/ldm | Posted at 6:06pm
India First Impressions #
My plane arrived in Delhi last night at about 9pm, local time. Other than lucking into some additional leg room, the flight was uneventful. I had carefully planned my 20 hours of travel so that by the time I arrived, I would be somewhat acclimated to the timezone. That meant eating and sleeping at designated times. I wasn't quite able to stick to the sleeping plan, but I felt adequately tired when I arrived. (MW3)
The India experience began as soon as I stepped off the plane and got a whiff of the air. The pollution here is extraordinary. The haze is palpable, even at night. I'm from L.A., which makes me a hardened smog veteran, but the smog here is ten times worse. (MW4)
After picking up my bags and going through customs, I found my taxi driver from the hotel, and kicked things off with my first cultural faux pas. He stuck out his hand, and I shook it. He looked at me in surprise, then chuckled. He wasn't introducing himself; he was asking for my bags. (MW5)
Even though it was late, I got a good taste of the city on the ride to the hotel. It's crowded here. Over 20 million people live in Delhi, almost double the population of L.A. in a slightly larger physical area. What I saw initially was generally run-down, with broken, dusty sidewalks dotted with stores, slums, and shacks. It reminded me of the slums of Tijuana. (MW6)
You need to have a death wish to drive here. Lanes and stop signs are not instructions. They're more like guidelines, and most people choose to ignore them. We almost took out several auto rickshaws, three-wheelers with trademark green and yellow sidings, and we were almost taken out ourselves by a large truck. About fifteen minutes into our drive, I spotted my first cow literally walking on the sidewalk. I knew to expect this, and I've seen pictures of this, but somehow, it amused me to see it for myself. (MW7)
I arrived safely at the hotel, marveling that I was still alive. I'm staying at the Qutab Hotel, which is clean, comfortable, and modern. I went to bed at about 1:30am, exhausted, but pleased that I had tricked my body into thinking it was night. Or so I thought. Three hours later, I was wide awake. It's about 2:30pm now. I've been running most of the day on adrenaline, and I'm starting to fade a bit, but I'm sure I can make it until evening. Maybe then, my body will finally be convinced that it's night, and I can start feeling normal again. (MW8)
/blueoxen/ldm | Posted at 5:47pm
Thu, Feb 28, 2008
The Biggest Adventure of my Life #
Blog silence here tends to mean that I'm busy, busy, busy. Long trips help me break that silence; there's nothing better than a long plane ride to write blog posts. Well, I recently completed a very long plane ride to kick off the dooziest trip of my life. I'm sitting in a hotel in Delhi, getting ready to embark on a two week adventure across India and Ethiopia. (MV3)
How the heck did I end up here? For the past few months, I've been working with the InternationalInstituteOfEducation (IIE) and their leadership development initiative for mobilizing reproductive health in developing countries (LDM). LDM is one of four PackardFoundation-funded initiatives to train emerging leaders in reproductive health. (MV4)
The project is simple. Since the PackardFoundation began these programs in 1999, there have been almost 1,000 graduates spread across five countries: Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Philippines. There is massive potential for learning and collaboration to emerge from this diverse, growing network. IIE has been charged to figure out how to kick-start this process. That's where I come in. (MV5)
I like projects that are big, challenging, and important. This one fulfills all three requirements and then some. One challenge is that you literally can't just throw technology at the problem. The infrastructure just doesn't exist. I've long maintained that the DigitalDivide is a red herring when it comes to large-scale problems, and this is an opportunity for me to put my money where my mouth is. (MV6)
The biggest challenge is cultural. We're dealing with five very different countries. Each country consists of many different microcultures, so simply focusing on intra-country collaboration presents a huge challenge. Finally, you have the microcultures of skills and background among the leaders themselves. And to top it off, I know practically nothing about any of these cultures. (MV7)
That's the main reason I'm here. I know a lot about facilitating large-scale collaboration, enough to know that the path towards fulfilling this objective must come from the participants themselves. I know about patterns and creating space and process and tools. I don't know how much of my knowledge in this space is dependent on the cultural norms with which I'm familiar. I'm looking forward to finding out. (MV8)
Over the next two weeks, I'll be exploring Delhi, Patna, and Ranchi in India and AddisAbaba in Ethiopia. I expect Internet access to be shoddy, but I'll post my learnings and experiences when I can on this blog, on Flickr, and on Twitter. And if you have experiences in these countries and cultures or other thoughts you'd like to share, please drop me a line. (MV9)
/blueoxen/ldm | Posted at 5:44pm
The Technology Understanding Gap #
Technology is insidious. It has a way of dominating a problem the way nothing else can. If you understand technology, it's hard not to see everything in that light. If you don't understand technology, it's hard not to be overwhelmed by what you don't know. (MUK)
I've known these things for a long time, and I often talk about these things, but I saw the latter phenomenon in a way that really affected me last month at the PackardFoundation gathering on the future of network impact in philanthropy. On the first evening, ClayShirky gave a preview of his book (available now), Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (which sounds like it's a real winner; can't wait to read it). (MUL)
One of Clay's contentions was that projects that worked in large-scale networks shared a happy medium between a Promise, a Tool, and a Bargain. In the case of Linux, LinusTorvalds's Promise was to build "a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." (Note how small and concrete the original Promise was, compared to what Linux has become.) The Tool was source code control (specifically diff and patch in the early days). The Bargain was the GPL, which stated that if you contributed your work, others would as well. (MUM)
A lot of my work centers around facilitating collaboration in large-scale networks, so I found this contention particularly interesting. The following day, I co-led a session on this topic with AngusParker. Two of the participants were dealing with the specific challenge of connecting members of a national network of leaders in reproductive health, so we used that as a case study. We decided to use Clay's contention to frame the problem, resulting in this whiteboard: (MUN)
What do you notice about this picture? (MUP)
Obviously, the Tools column is completely empty. That's a dead giveaway that I'm facilitating this discussion. (That and the horrific handwriting.) Figure out the basics first. Don't let the question about technology drive the discussion. (MUQ)
During the discussion, one of the participants asked, "What tools can we use?" (MUR)
I responded, "Let's not worry about that now." So we kept talking and talking, and I noticed the two non-technical participants in the group squirming like crazy. (MUS)
So I stopped, noticed how gaping the Tools column looked, and said, "You're uncomfortable about not having discussed the tools, aren't you." (MUT)
She nodded. (MUU)
"Don't worry about it," I responded. "The tools part will be easy, once we figure everything else out." (MUV)
"Easy for you, maybe," she said. "You already know what goes there." (MUW)
That was not quite true, but I got her point, and the force of it struck me so hard, I had to stop for a moment. I looked at the gap, and I saw possibilities. She looked at the gap, and she saw a void. That was upsetting for her. It made it hard for her to think about the other aspects of the problem. (MUX)
It made me realize how much I take my technology literacy for granted. But it also created an opportunity to discuss how easily we are sidetracked by technology. "Tool" does not have to mean software, and making that assumption prevents us from exploring other viable, possibly better solutions. (MUY)
I had two takeaways. First, I had previous explored doing a basic technology literacy workshop as part of BlueOxenAssociates' Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration series, but I was not particularly motivated to do it. I'm now rethinking this. Second, if I ever do this exercise again, I'm not going to include the Tools column initially. We can throw that in later. (MUZ)
/collaboration/tools | Posted at 4:31pm
The Chandler Project #
Almost 20 years ago, in my old stomping grounds at DrDobbsJournal, MitchKapor published an article on software design. He wrote: (MU0)
The lack of usability of software and poor design of programs is the secret shame of the industry. Given a choice, no one would want it to be this way. What is to be done? Computing professionals themselves should take responsibility for creating a positive user experience. Perhaps the most important conceptual move to be taken is to recognize the critical role of design, as a counterpart to programming, in the creation of computer artifacts. And the most important social evolution within the computing professions would be to create a role for the software designer as a champion of the user experience. (MU1)
His manifesto stuck with me over the years, and when I started organizing the first FLOSS Usability Sprints with Aspiration, one of the first people I contacted with Mitch. Mitch not only agreed to sponsor our event, but he put me in touch with MimiYin and KatieCappsParlante, two of the leads of the Chandler project. Both Mimi and Katie were enthusiastic about working with us, and Chandler became one of our first participating projects. (MU2)
At the time, Chandler was a lot of design and very little code. What intrigued me, though, was their design approach. They were aggressively committed to UserCenteredDesign, which was totally unique for an OpenSource project. In many projects, OpenSource or otherwise, interface design plays a secondary or worse role in the overall project. The interface is often designed after the fact. With Chandler, interface design played a core role in the overall design. (MU3)
Last fall, Chandler participated in the fifth incarnation of our sprints, and it was amazing to see how much progress the team had made. Not only was there working code, but there was an active developer and user community, and there was an ongoing commitment to their design approach. The project was also about to face a major transition, having reached the end of its incubation phase under Mitch. (MU4)
After reconnecting with Mimi and Katie, I decided it was time for me to start using Chandler. The timing for me was good. I had been a very happy user of todo.txt for personal use and a reluctant user of Basecamp for group projects. I wanted something that could replace both. The fact that it was a cross-platform desktop application was also appealing, because I regularly use three different platforms (Linux, Mac, and Windows) and because some of the people I'm currently working with do not have consistent access to the Internet. (MU5)
The Why of Chandler (MU6)
At its core, Chandler is a task manager in the spirit of DavidAllen's GettingThingsDone methodology. You have items that you can organize into collections and prioritize as "Now," "Later," and "Done." If you add a date to an item, it will appear on your calendar. And you can assign items to others. (MU7)
You can view your list of "To Do" items by collection, in a calendar (if they have dates), or in a dashboard view that provides an overview of all the different things you have to do. (MU8)
Simple, right? Well, yeah. That's a good thing. But if you dig a bit deeper, you can see that this simple design has some very powerful consequences, and it all centers around this notion of the item. (MU9)
Items have titles and descriptions, which are free-form text. They have priorities and possibly dates. Items can belong to as many or as few collections as you'd like. Items can be shared with or assigned to others. (MUA)
The notion of an item is pretty generic, and in fact, you can see it in a lot of other applications as well. Email is the classic example. An email message can be thought of as an item. In fact, many people use their email as task managers. If they want to share an item, they email it to others (which is how Chandler works as well). If they want to categorize an item, they move it to a folder. If they're lucky (for example, if they use Gmail), they can give an item multiple tags. (MUB)
But email has downsides. The interface is not optimized for task management, although there are plugins that help. Most clients do not support tagging, which means that you have to copy items to multiple folders, and those items do not stay in sync. And email messages are static, whereas an item should be able to evolve over time. (MUC)
Other applications that use this exact concept of an item are, well, other task managers: Basecamp, Remember the Milk, Bugzilla, RT, Trac, etc. In many ways, these are competing products, but in the Chandler world, they are actually complementary products. (MUD)
This is the hidden beauty of Chandler. Chandler recognizes that people will be using a lot of different tools, from email to RSS to other task managers. It doesn't try to be The One Tool. Instead, it is designed to be interoperable. You can write plugins that synchronize items in other applications with items in Chandler, so that you can use Chandler to do what it does best, and other applications to do what they do best, and all the data stays in sync. (MUE)
Chandler essentially becomes a dashboard for knowledge work, a place where KnowledgeWorkers can live and get things done. Right now, email fulfills that role for most people. A tool like Chandler has a very good chance of supplanting email in this department, because it offers an interface that is more in line with what KnowledgeWorkers want to do. More importantly, it works with email rather than trying to replace it. (MUF)
Chandler works right now. I use it every day, and I'm productive in it. However, its great potential is still largely unfulfilled. The interface is still rough, and there are very few plugins that take advantage of the synchronization capabilities. Every once in a while, I find myself longing for todo.txt (although it should be relatively straightforward to write a command-line based interface to Chandler that emulates it). (MUG)
However, I believe that this roughness still works in Chandler's favor. Why? Because as I noted earlier, Chandler is perhaps the only OpenSource project in existence that aggressively integrates OpenSource development principles with user-centric design. What we're seeing right now is a spike, a product of ReleaseEarlyAndOften?. But if you follow the design discussions -- and you can, because it's OpenSource -- you can see the ethos of UserCenteredDesign come through. The interface for the upcoming 1.0 release is going to be significantly better than the current design (0.7.4.1), and that will merely be scratching the surface of what is to come. (MUH)
Chandler has the potential to be a really great tool relatively soon. It's not there yet. But if you're excited about the idea that an OpenSource development process can actually result in better software for real people, you should take a look now. More importantly, you should participate in the community, which is fantastic, thanks largely to the expert guidance of TedLeung? and the development team's active participation. Chandler is definitely a project to watch. (MUI)
/collaboration/tools | Posted at 11:19am
Wed, Feb 27, 2008
Twitter, Facebook, and Social Boundaries #
Speaking of tweets and Twitter, I finally succumbed and activated my Twitter account a few weeks ago. Come follow me! I had many reasons for doing so, but the kicker was probably learning that Twitter is in fact for old people. Seriously, my main reason was that I've been blog-free for many months, and I wanted to maintain a lighter-weight VisiblePulse for sharing ideas and letting people know that I was still alive. (MTL)
Unlike my experience with this blog, I initially found it hard to start tweeting. I love to share ideas, but I don't like talking about myself. My blog has been great for that, and I figured I'd use Twitter the same way. But it's hard to do in 140 characters. It's much easier to mention what I had for breakfast than it is to share some brilliant new insight, although simply tweeting "Eureka!" probably fulfills the latter need quite nicely. (MTM)
So to get going on Twitter, I used a trick that I never had to use with my blog. I built an audience. I started following people, and many of them reciprocated. Now tweeting was about having a conversation with the people in my network. I didn't have to do this with my blog, because I was motivated enough to start sharing my ideas without it. Getting that audience simply furthered that motivation (the past few months not withstanding). (MTN)
This is obvious stuff to people who already blog or tweet regularly, but it's not obvious to those who don't, and when it's explicitly understood, it can be used to your advantage. This is why PatternLanguages are so useful. (MTO)
It would be interesting to do some analytics on tweeting based on size of social networks. For example, do people with larger social networks tweet more? (MTP)
Another nice Twitter pattern is the character limit: ConstrainedSpace. Many people have told me that they find blogging intimidating, because they feel a lot of pressure to actually write something. The character constraint relieves that pressure. It's easier to come up with a 140 character message than it is to fill a blank slate. Size of space matters. (MTQ)
The issue I'm now having with Twitter is with social boundaries, and not surprisingly, the cause of this isn't Twitter at all. It's Facebook. My close colleagues know that I am obsessed with Facebook, not because of some deep seeded need to feel like I have a lot of friends, but because I think it is one of the most well-designed online tool I have ever seen. There are all of these well thought out social patterns deeply embedded in the tool. (MTR)
Because of this, it's no surprise that so many people across so many different networks use it. My pattern for studying SocialNetwork sites has always been to only connect to people who connect to me first, then to watch what happens. With the vast majority of sites, it's the same group of people end up pinging me. In other cases, certain niches become apparent. Facebook is the first SocialNetwork tool I've used where people across almost all of the different communities of which I'm a part have found and reached out to me. (MTS)
The problem is that SocialNetworks are not frictionless. You can't just mix them all up and expect everything to be wonderful. A while back, PamelaDingle told a great anecdote that wonderfully portrayed some of the unsavory consequences of these boundary issues. (MTT)
One of the things that exacerbates Facebook's challenges with SocialNetwork friction is its open API. For a lot of reasons, Facebook has encouraged people across many different networks to intentionally come together in a shared space. However, its API allows people to bring new networks to the same shared space unintentionally. (MTU)
I enjoy the status updates on Facebook, and so when I started tweeting, I decided to sync Twitter with my Facebook status. By doing so, my audience went from a somewhat closed community of folks who speak the same SharedLanguage to a much larger community of folks, many of whom think I've gone nuts. These include people like high school friends, most of whom find the idea of posting a picture that's not hidden behind a password absolutely ludicrous. (MTV)
Those of us who have been part of IdentityCommons for a long time have been talking about these issues for ages, yet it's fascinating to experience them firsthand. I don't find them that big a deal, because I have well-defined boundaries that I think work with my different networks. I don't mention people by name unless I know they're comfortable with it or I'm attributing an idea to someone. I'll happily write about what I had for breakfast (Tartine bread and gruyere this morning), but I won't write about my dating life. (MTW)
I don't know how long the Twitter experiment will last. It still feels a bit uncomfortable, but it's been fascinating, and I probably won't stop anytime soon. (MTX)
/collaboration/tools | Posted at 2:15pm
The Artist in All of Us #
HowardRheingold's tweet last week about his mother reminded me of a story CharlieDunton told me last fall. There was a guy who used to go around elementary school classrooms to talk about art. After introducing himself, he would ask all of the artists in the room to raise their hands. What he found was that, up until the third grade, almost every student would raise their hand. Everyone saw themselves as artists. After the third grade, however, almost no one would raise their hands. The artist in each of them had been socialized away. (MTI)
I wonder what the world would be like if more of us viewed ourselves as artists. (MTJ)
/forbenefit | Posted at 2:06pm
