Tag: blogs

Experiment in knowledge scaling

we did it. our rainbow weblogs project is taking shape, and it seems bound to succeed. what will really determine our success, however, will be our ability to foster a community. i plan to attack this problem with these measures:

  • Integrate Instant Messaging
    Shared experiences, instant support, quick tossing out of ideas are just some of the more obvious uses for instant messaging. to avoid the creation of yet another “ghetto”, its important to integrate IM tightly with the web by having web clients, and archiving discussions on the web.

  • Integrate Mailing Lists
    Because email is such a handy tool, many valuable discussions are taking place via email. it is therefore important to bring these discussions on the web, to make them searchable, archive them, and accessible to a wider audience.

  • Communicate transparently
    Be it support, be it ongoing development, be it fresh ideas, most things gain value when they are unlocked from some private audience. the rule is to make it public in general, and private exceptionally.

  • Leverage RSS Content Flows
    Because activities and content are distributed,
    it is important to aggregate that content so that other can learn about it.

  • Increase Network effects
    By really pouring valuable content into the community, we hope to lower the threshold for others to participate. as more and more people participate, it becomes increasingly lucrative to do so.

marrying email & weblogs

a lot of productivity stems from the use of email. likewise, a lot of productivity is lost by having to deal with massive email archives. plus, email tends to be unmanageable for most people once it leaves their inbox and disappears into some email folder (or more likely, is deleted)

as john udell discusses in NNTP, IMAP, And The Semantic Web, email needs to be better integrated with other technologies. i have a few ideas how this might be done with weblogs.

  • mail-to-weblog gateway: converts mails to weblog posts, and replies to comments by analyzing the message id of the email
  • map email addresses of a mailing list with user accounts of a weblog
  • add a X-Topic header to email to facilitate integration into a weblog
  • assign categories to imap folders -> match with weblog
  • attach discussion on imap folder / imap messages

the goal should be to make most email traffic google searchable. google has become so important that if your content is not in google, it could as well not exist. this is exaggerated, but has a point.

Let a 1000 weblogs bloom

I have started to read the Lexus and the olive tree, a book about globalization. It has many inspiring thoughts in it. It got me thinking what i could do to unlock some value that is hidden within the brains of my surroundings. Raising literacy and the level of discourse is an obvious candidate. Therefore, my aim is to make it easier for folks to communicate their thoughts and share it with others. This comes down to setting up a lot of new weblogs, making it easy to connect them to each other, and so on. I’d like to do these things:

  • Provide an out-of-the-box weblog system for rainbow customers
  • Promote weblog usage and research into their significance through cooperation with the literature department at University of Zurich.
  • Promote weblog usage among friends and family by assisting them & teaching them
  • Move more of my communication to weblogs, ie think of ways to attach email flows to my weblog
  • Research more on the topic of management by weblog.

company weblogs expose non-performing resources

over at john robb, there is a discussion about whether having a company weblog can work.

  • Problem #1: most people are not passionate about their work.
  • Problem #2: most companies don’t see the value of having people document anything, much less their daily thoughts.
  • Problem #3: most people are not good writers.
  • Problem #4: people only have so much writing in them every day.
  • Problem #5: most people, if they write well enough and often enough to be useful, will eventually write something that the company disagrees with.

Weblogs & jabber

jogger is a new service by jabber.org that lets you update a weblog from within a jabber client. it will be interesting to watch as they release their XML-RPC API. with some work, it could probably be adapted to my favorite weblog system, postnuke it would be great if the different weblogs would align their API.

Shamiro

my brother in geekhood, ben, is experimenting with a weblog of his own. his intentions go as far as uniting all his personal data & apps in 1 portal, like email, personal files, photo gallery, thoughts etc.

i wish him luck with this endeavor, but frankly i think it a) makes no sense because a portal is not a better interface for all these (separate) requirements, b) is a waste of time given that having separate modules works out of the box, and c) is a lot of work if you plan to build what would basically be a PIM-cum-Workspace on the shaky architectural foundations of a weblog that was not designed for any serious user management issues..

Weblogs social implications

the playing around with jabber gets its first fruits in this transcript from a chat i had. it seems tools like weblogs and instant messaging really make a difference.
excerpts from a chat i had on jabber with ben today.
gregor i wonder whether the topic is above the heads of 95% of our members?
ben well, is always the same story, people fear to get involved 😦
ben it certainly is… no question I would rate it as far as 98%
gregor hmm. so basically we are doing something that is only of interest for ourselves?
ben but the real bad thing is, people don’t want to learn anymore … they are knowledge-aversive.
ben I hope not so much, people might get curios if the show is just big enough.
gregor i wonder what these guys do all day? website design with dreamweaver?
ben I’m talking about product demos, free cd’s hands-on workshops, some high-tech playground air.
gregor what is their idea of computer science? proficiency in ms office?
ben worse, number punching with AS400 @ CS.
gregor i don’t know, but i would certainly not employ one of them.
ben Well, some do know something, like christian or thomas (not the VS guy, the staff one), but they don’t care …
ben most of them are living a lonely life, girlfriend, mom, dad and one or tow guys from high-school… probably still living with their parents.
gregor ben the sociologist 🙂
ben I’m urged to be… it’s quite difficult to come to a new country, especially if the last one was .mx …
gregor actually i will have a discussion about basically these topics (interest in new tech etc) with my kpmg team on monday
ben ppl have different moral values, most are thinking in their own world, and in their heart they may even don’t like IT, but computers.
gregor its the same situation there.
ben oh, thing this is even very much worse:-)
ben I think their motivation is money, since thats what have been in plenty supply the last few years. the good ones are either those who don’t care about $, or who have it anyway.
ben /start spelling
gregor well, for my team the issue is to either: a) innovate & take great risks b) continue with building asp web applications as before.
ben 🙂
gregor i think you have a good point there.
ben we’ll see it in 2 years
ben I’d say don’t let them decide over that topic, plant a migration path to risk…
gregor you think the downturn will last 2 years?
gregor problem is, i made most of the decisions for them the last 1.5 years.
ben I mean, provide them with a framework for the next 6 month, and ask them whether they like that, or trying to find new asp client do the specs etc.
gregor they have to be committed to what we do, or else it won’t work out.
ben true
gregor we might take a bold step and go with .net.
ben how do you generate commitment and motivation?
gregor however we would have to find clients willing to pay for that.
gregor it cannot be generated, only encouraged. it has to come from themselves
gregor if i knew a recipe for that, i would have applied it countless times at icu & other places..
ben It can be generated, let the remember the words.
ben motivation by identification on mental, physical and social levels.
ben here you go
ben deep integration of the people in the community culture etc. why do you think people are visiting university?
gregor to meet their friends at the cafeteria
ben It fits into their social concept
ben right
ben why do coderz code?
gregor i have done some research on rewards in communities.
ben what the outcome?
gregor if you can get others to acknowledge you in some meaningful way, it helps a lot for motivation
gregor its like andy warhol’s 15 minutes of fame.
gregor for instance i think the tight feedback loop that is emerging with tools like jabber, personal weblogs
ben i thought about that for the ms thing
ben if their projects get out to the world they feel rewarded
gregor will really forge people together. it does for me.
ben if i.e. other colleagues use their say webservice, they’ll think is cool, we are back at social integration
gregor in fact i have already received a lot of good feedback because i share my thoughts with anyone who
gregor cares to listen.
ben yeah the feedback is important, good point.
gregor i thought for years that it’s just so much work until you have eliminated enough communication barriers to let interesting (and rewarding) discussions flourish.
ben that’s why i’m so keen about php-nuke, it helps to express people’s thoughts and it gets organized as well.
gregor same for me.
gregor and on a much higher semantical level than /.
ben yeah!
gregor basically, sites like /. are only input and gain value through digesting and thinking about them
ben well, that is a good conversation i have lacked since the departure of my dad.. thanks!
gregor in fact i have seldom come across more interesting links and ideas since i started to collect them on purpose.
ben true, and the /. community has no means of focusing on topics…
gregor you are very welcome 🙂
ben 🙂
gregor my submission queue has currently 17 items that i might write some thoughts about.
ben urg
gregor since i am in no obligation to deliver anything, this is not actually a problem..
ben I haven’t come that far, i’m currently more interested in bring the right infrastructure into place. am thinking about how to get webservices organized on php nuke
gregor its more like there are far more interesting things than time to check them out.
ben same problem over here
gregor i wanted to do the same thing. my first web service would have been a web service to full text search phpnuke
gregor however the mess that is apache soap turned me off 🙂
ben I actually envy your job, you can explore interesting topics and even get paid for it 🙂
gregor i don’t do this as part of my job.
ben is no mess, its smooth running
gregor actually at my job i am currently doing very boring things like setting up nt 4 servers because the it department cannot do it themselves.
ben my first one is running… no big deal, but my second one will be a “Sprueche” DB from ancient asian war-philosopher
ben oh, well, nt 4 ?!?
ben forget it 🙂
gregor it’s not even an operating system in my eyes, its so crappy it’s hard to believe
ben You know “Sun Tzu” ?
gregor the art of war or something?
ben war yes …
ben I’m impressed!
gregor i think this guy is standard reading in certain managerial circles 😉
ben oh it is? So that’s where you are heading 🙂
gregor no, but you have to watch out. many predatory business practices actually have their roots in some manager donkey reading up on stuff like that..
ben btw. did you read “B@ speed of thought”?
gregor no, is it any good?
ben try it, I’ve just finished it.
gregor can i lend if from you?
gregor i have some interesting books in return like goedel escher bach
ben sure i’ll cp it to you post box together with Cryptonomicon
gregor hmm. i will be gone on 24th evening..
ben so I better do i fast 🙂
ben when do you plan to breakfast tomorrow?
gregor around 9 i hope.
gregor i have to do a major part of the coding for that site tomorrow
gregor why do you ask?
ben we could meet for B and exchange books, I’ll have to visit the Kanzelei anyway
gregor ah ok, and i have to get that stupid practica sheet from ifi
ben any place ?
gregor ah i know.. there is actually a tea room very near to my place (have never been in there though)
gregor its at haldenbach station, and subtly named tea room 😉
ben so, i’ll try to be there at, say 0915?
gregor ok, i better be going to bed then..
ben uah, yea.
ben so cu tomorrow.. bonitos suenos 🙂
gregor was nice. we’ll keep it up.
ben sure
gregor gracias