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
Wed, Oct 24, 2007
FLOSS Usability Sprint Seeking Great Usability Practitioners #
FLOSS Usability Sprint V is happening November 2-4, 2007 at Google in MountainView. This one is special for a number of reasons. First, it's the fifth one. Second, our project list is once again superb, including FireFox, Chandler, SocialText, and WiserEarth. Third, it's the first sprint being primarily organized by members of this burgeoning community: DanielSchwartz and JonSlenk. (MO7)
The goal of these sprints is simple: Make OpenSource software more usable, focusing especially on software for social benefit. Our approach is to bring catalyze collaboration between the usability and open source communities. The sprint takes place over three full days (November 2-4). It's fun, it's intense, and it's gratifying. It's a fantastic way to meet and work with an amazing group of people. (MO8)
This sprint is shaping up to be really outstanding. We're still looking for a few great usability practitioners to participate, so if you'd like to help some socially-oriented OpenSource projects in a concrete way, please sign up. And please spread the word! (MO9)
/events | Posted at 12:49am
Fri, Sep 21, 2007
She's Geeky, October 22-23 #
The tireless and talented KaliyaHamlin is organizing a new gathering: She's Geeky, coming October 22-23, 2007 at the ComputerHistoryMuseum in MountainView: (MLA)
The She's Geeky (un)conference will provide an agenda-free and friendly environment for women who not only care about building technology that is useful for people, but who also want to encourage more women to get involved. (MLB)
It is designed to provide women who self-identify as geeky and who are engaged in various technology-focused disciplines with a gathering space in which they can exchange skills and discuss ideas and form community across and within disciplines. (MLC)
BlueOxenAssociates just signed on as a sponsor. But, I'm not allowed to register. Why? Registrations are for women only. Am I okay with that? Absolutely. (MLD)
IntimacyGradients are critical for effective collaboration. I spend a lot of time teaching groups how to be more open; no one needs a lesson on how to be more closed. But there are times when being closed has value. (MLE)
I've expressed my admiration for BlogHer many times. Their conference has been open to both women and men from the beginning, and I think it's worked in their favor. But their ad network is for women bloggers only. Is that a bad thing? (MLF)
Similarly, whatever gets blogged or recorded on the Wiki at She's Geeky will be open to all. It's just that only women will be allowed to attend. (MLG)
Women are a huge minority in technology. Regardless of why that is, there are many good reasons why women in technology should collaborate more with each other. Sometimes, the best way to kick start that is to create a safe space. That's what She's Geeky is all about. (MLH)
Speaking of women in technology, LloydBudd recently blogged about LeslieHawthorn, another person whose praises I've sung on many occasions. Leslie is a classic YellowThread, someone who deserves much celebration. (MLI)
/events | Posted at 12:29am
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)
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, Jun 05, 2007
Wiki Developer Meeting Today; WikiWednesday Tomorrow #
Two important events are happening in Wiki-land today and tomorrow. First, this afternoon at 2pm PDT (21:00 GMT), there will be a worldwide IRC meeting for Wiki developers on #wikiohana at irc.freenode.net. The main agenda item: WikiCreole. This was one of the outcomes from RecentChangesCamp last month. The cool thing is that folks have been hanging out regularly on the channel, and that AndreasGohr whipped up an IRC logger for us. If you do any Wiki development, please join us! (MBM)
Tomorrow night, WikiWednesday will be moving to CitizenSpace in SanFrancisco, and I'll be the inaugural speaker at the first non-PaloAlto event. I'll be talking about my recent work on WikiInteroperability: (MBN)
Market growth is healthy for everyone in the Wiki world. More Wiki companies and technology means greater market awareness and innovation. But Wikis are also about community and collaboration. Are we as a community collaborating as much as we could? Are there opportunities we're missing by not collaborating more? EugeneEricKim will preview his upcoming paper on Wiki interoperability, where he describes real-world end-user pain, concrete opportunities (especially ways Wiki developers can help the entire space by improving their own tools), and a practical strategy (WikiOhana) for achieving interoperability. (MBO)
Hope to see many of you there! (MBP)
/events | Posted at 9:57am
Wed, May 16, 2007
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)
- I chatted with LarryDrebes of JanRain about Pibb, and he assured me that they would be adding PermaLinks soon, as well as other cool features such as export. Call me a convert. Now I've got to remember to talk to them about the perplog vision, and how those ideas could be integrated into Pibb to make it seriously kick butt. I'm also going to evangelize at RoCoCo (RecentChangesCamp Montreal) later this week. (MAB)
- I am really impressed with how much OSIS has accomplished over the past six months. Kudos to DaleOlds and JohannesErnst for their leadership on this project, and kudos to Dale and PamelaDingle for a really cool interop code session this afternoon. Despite some difficulties with the wireless, it looked like they got a lot of stuff done. (MAC)
- Brilliant move on Kaliya's part to invite OpenSpace facilitator LisaHeft to participate. She's an outsider to this community, but she's a wonderful observer of people, and it's been great hearing her take on things. She's also performing a nifty experiment which will be unleashed on everybody tomorrow afternoon. (MAD)
- I chatted a bit with KevinMarks this evening about microformats and his experience as a new Googler. When I think of Kevin, I don't immediately think Google, but he does work there now, so technically, Google was represented at the workshop. BenLaurie, another Googler, has also been an active participant in this community. However, as much as I generally love Google, I have been extremely disappointed in its overall participation and presence in the identity community. The Google identity experience is one of the worst on the Internet, which is all the more notable when compared to its consistent track record of superior web experiences. It's also using its own proprietary identity protocols, which is a travesty. There are good solutions to all of this, and yet, Google has thus far ignored the quality work in this community. I'd love to see Google adopt OpenID, but I'll settle for more folks involved with identity at Google simply participating in this community. (MAE)
/events | Posted at 12:29am
