Gnodal Journal

*X-posted to Many2Many and MozDawg on DAV and Docs*

Context: I yesterday post a near-rant in my MozDawg blog; “Silo by any other name would be as …

Give 1000 people 100 communications channels and everybody may have a whole lotta fun but, really, you aren’t goint to get anything done. That ain’t rocket science.

Blogspot (multiple blogs), WordPress (multiple blogs), LiveJournal (2 accounts), FaceBook, MySpace (also 2 accounts), LinkedIn, ITtoolbox, and of course Twitter … I’m registered at more but those are the systems I used most often. What I see is a cloud of activity, 95% of which is buzz … fun, perhaps, and entertaining, to some degree, but basically it’s mostly dissipation.

How many blog comments are some variation on “That’s really good?” and nothing more …

This seems to be in the air! I was following a post over at ProBlogger and just now, looking for that link, found he’s posted another on this topic.

And now there’s also “On Mindmeister, XMIND and Mind Mapping” at CircleSixDesign.

I’ve seen a lot of folk wrestling with maps for large project or concepts and, well, their experience has tempered my enthusiasm … but for blogging? Seems that this “restricted case” is a real good fit.

For the record: FreeMind (an OpenSource project), Mindomo, MindMeister, and XMind.
Also, The Mindmapping Toolbox: 100+ Tools, Resources, and Tutorials from BootStrapping.

I didn’t find the site I really wanted to post. I recall that it’s from early 2006 … wudda been good for context. *shrug*

*X-posted from MozDawg on DAV and Docs*

I came across Joseph Scott’s “EditInPlace, New Version, New Home” and checked out the new site … which left me totally in the dark, it’s new and spartan to the point of being cryptic.
But have no fear! A set of back-links to earlier blog posts (18APR07 and 7JUNE07) and a well implemented tag system makes everything clear.
Also, Drew McLellan at 24Ways covers the topic nicely with his “Edit in Place With AJAX“.

J. Scott’s ”example” page shows what it’s all about … shows how elegant the method is, too.
Now, let’s make it accept HTML so we can really edit!

*X-posted from ”Gnodal” at LiveJournal*

Thinking about OpenSource and crowd-sourcing and all of that I found myself coming back again and again to the idea of “going Bedouin“. (Now I happen to really admire Bedouin culture and traditions, but that’s another essay.) I’m talking about foundational co-working.

Just now I realized with some shock that the concepts that are central to Bedouin-style co-working are exactly the same as what I envisioned with my first startup. (Alas, it succumbed to infant mortality.)

Back-story: in the late 80s Texas Instrument’s new generation of video chips gave rise to an awesome breakthrough in capabilities, the best example being the Amiga 2500 and the VideoToaster. Combined, video production costs were 1/10th what they had been previously. I saw that as a massive (if only transient) business opportunity.

My idea was this: provide people who were already working in video with turn-key video studios using those systems … they would rapidbly find themselves independent. But key to the franchise concept was networking: small shops off-loading cumbersome tasks or repetitive chores to one another … a sort of load-leveling. Bonus would be that projects would become networked, so contracts that might be far too large and complex for any one studio could be shared.

That was 1988.

In 2007? That, basically, is co-working … and “going Bedouin” fits perfectly with that business model.
Feeling manic? Pumped for consecutive 14 hour days? Just fine.
Distracted by some aspect of personal life? NP … 2 or 4 hours of maintenance (email and such) keeps things ticking over for a little while.

Addendum, from MozDawg comments:

Interesting that you brought up InnoCentive here … it continues the thread I’ve been working today i.e. alternative business models.
Context: looking through material on Alfresco I find that, while it promotes itself as seriously OpenSource, it is far more closed than the dev communities in, say, SalesForce or FaceBook or NetVibes. I felt like I needed a battering ram to access documentation. (Registering as a developer will do the trick, but still … odd to see their reticence.)
On the other hand, by way of contrast, I came across Automattic, who specializes in WordPress … it seems that they’re entirely distributed i.e. no bricks&mortar head office, but everybody draws against revenue.
Then reading about a new Drupal support startup, Acquia, I can’t help thinking that a lot of hours are spent doing what others are doing, and wondering if there isn’t a way of producing better results while reducing over-work.
So many people were so very busy, and pondered why collaboration wasn’t lightening the load or leading to economies of scale.

I really have come full circle, back to 1989!

*X-posted from MozDawg on DAV and Docs*

Thinking about OpenSource and crowd-sourcing and all of that I found myself coming back again and again to the idea of “going Bedouin“. (Now I happen to really admire Bedouin culture and traditions, but that’s another essay.) I’m talking about foundational co-working.

Just now I realized with some shock that the concepts that are central to Bedouin-style co-working are exactly the same as what I envisioned with my first startup. (Alas, it succumbed to infant mortality.)

Back-story: in the late 80s Texas Instrument’s new generation of video chips gave rise to an awesome breakthrough in capabilities, the best example being the Amiga 2500 and the VideoToaster. Combined, video production costs were 1/10th what they had been previously. I saw that as a massive (if only transient) business opportunity.

My idea was this: provide people who were already working in video with turn-key video studios using those systems … they would rapidbly find themselves independent. But key to the franchise concept was networking: small shops off-loading cumbersome tasks or repetitive chores to one another … a sort of load-leveling. Bonus would be that projects would become networked, so contracts that might be far too large and complex for any one studio could be shared.

That was 1988.

In 2007? That, basically, is co-working … and “going Bedouin” fits perfectly with that business model.
Feeling manic? Pumped for consecutive 14 hour days? Just fine.
Distracted by some aspect of personal life? NP … 2 or 4 hours of maintenance (email and such) keeps things ticking over for a little while.

Interesting that you brought up InnoCentive here … it continues the thread I’ve been working today i.e. alternative business models.

Context: looking through material on Alfresco I find that, while it promotes itself as seriously OpenSource, it is far more closed than the dev communities in, say, SalesForce or FaceBook or NetVibes. I felt like I needed a battering ram to access documentation. (Registering as a developer will do the trick, but still … odd to see their reticence.)

On the other hand, by way of contrast, I came across Automatic, who specializes in WordPress … it seems that they’re entirely distributed i.e. no bricks&mortar head office, but everybody draws against revenue.

Then reading about a new Drupal support startup, Acquia, I can’t help thinking that a lot of hours are spent doing what others are doing, and wondering if there isn’t a way of producing better results while reducing over-work.

So many people were so very busy, and pondered why collaboration wasn’t lightening the load or leading to economies of scale.

p.s. some things really don’t change; I just posted to the Alfresco forum about how as soon as I registered on the site I immediately banged my head on their sense of ergonomics.

On the other hand … and this is in case my comment about Alfresco being “reticent” seemed like mere petulance on my part … here’s the documentation that was presented /immediately/ after I registered, on the “My Alfresco” page:
Documentation

Webinar Slides

Technical Tips

White Papers

Community User Groups

Book Chapter Sample

WCM 2_1 Product Evaluation Guide.pdf

Alfresco White Paper – Really Simple Search.pdf

Alfresco White Paper – Really Simple DM.pdf

Rivet Logic and Alfresco14Aug07.wmv – Recording of the webinar covering best practices and lessons learned from customer deployments.

Easypress ADP and AlfrescoPartial31Jul07.wmv – Recording of the Easypress and Alfresco webinar.

RivetLogicCollaborativeCommunities.pdf

“In order to get maximum value from this ever-growing collection of ideas and information, in a real sense you have to un-manage it. It’s by un-managing it, by allowing everybody who touches it to add to the connections, to add their own links, ideas, reviews, bad ideas, good ideas, insights—that’s how the collection grows. Just as with the Web itself, it cannot scale sufficiently if it’s too centrally managed.”
–David Weinberger; interview with KMWorld: “Everything is Miscellaneous”

this thanks to FastForward Blog: “Let’s Start ‘Un-Managing’ Our Information”

“Can ‘crowdsourcing’ be slave labor?” (Nawwwwwww … and the pope doesn’t poop in the woods.)

“These initiatives typically tout the importance of companies creating new interactive relationships with their consumers in the digital age. But as Paul Boutin wrote in a recent BusinessWeek column, this concept of “crowdsourcing” is not necessarily utopian in all forms. The main reason is compensation–or, more accurately, the lack thereof.”
thanks for this to the heads up at no-spec.com

If I was ram-rodding some cheapskate chiselling VC firm, I’d find some way of having a buncha bliss-ninnies brain-storm like some derainged ADHD-stricken focus group, keeping them happy by passing out balloons and offering free refills on the helium.

Gadzooks … in the name of all that’s holy, I really am not advocating cynicism, but something approaching self-esteem with an eye to realism and pragmatism!

Yes I am blowing off steam. I’ve been drop-kicking “on spec” work for years nae decades, so the “Oooh peachy keen lets cuddle-puddle our social capital and make out like lemmings” more than triggers my gag reflex.

On the other hand, to return to no-spec.com … don’t just think about it, do it!

Grab this here logo!

various logos

Pop into that site and read … it’ll do all of us a bit of good

On the third hand, following a link from one of my Behance.net circles: MathewBrowne.com on heh sanity in an insane world. Two must must must read posts by him:

* “Automated SEO Reciprocal Link Requests” … not the stuff of humour, normally, but Matt huh huh had me cackling out loud.

* “Nightmare Web-Design Clients” … nowhere near the haa-has, but a real fine start on something like a “best practices” list.

On that second subject, something I keyboarded elsewhere today:

practically all my substantial exchanges with clients (in a consulting capacity) have their impact recorded on the Work To Be Done document. (This is a variation on “Every action item must be accompanied by initials of whoever is responsible / has signed off / will act as anchor.”)