etcon:2003:day4:geoff cohen

i joined this talk late…and there is a real chance based on my first five minutes that i will not understand very much of this…so stay with me if it starts to get a bit wobbly….

another five minutes have passed and it is fair to say that on the surface of it, the presenter is speaking clearly but my brain is not capable -

ok so this is last resort reporting…i will comment on the presentation values rather than the content :)

nice visuals – drawn from pop culture
lots of jargon pop jargon
gigaware – mass use software – requires internalisation, accessibility, and apparently special requirements for women users !!

aspect oriented programming.

power usage

the data is more important than your program…plan for the demise of your software but the perpetuity of the data.

etcon:2003:day4:david weinberger

what groups will be
www.evident.com
well anyway…[joke]

learning from experience is the worst possible way to learn – clay shirky

why is that we refuse to learn from our experiences in groups?
*health warning* this presentation

group = a set of folks that know one another and have an awareness that they are in a group

community = a group that cares about one another more than they have to

the central premise is that groups are really important
the secondary premise is that the web is really bad at facilitating my participation and management and even understanding of my set of groups.
decentralisation serves the purpose of building the connections necessary for forming groups but that same decentralisation means that the net is poor at managing those groups.

(reads law)

example:
friendster
[laughter cos screen isn't working so david is painting a picture in words...screen fades in and he is pointing at exactly the right place on screen]

friendster’s limitations
- is that you only have a binary relationship – either friend or not friend…no room for associate, new peer, etc
- the interests page is really a marketing tool…you are marketing yourself and therefore being highly selective about your choices that you list.
- also it assumes that there is only one “me” and does not cater for the multiple modes of my existance.

the current environments do not encapsulate the wildly complex nature of self description and relationships.

david wary of environments that seek to service all types of relationship building and management.

explicit and implicit -
most of the tools requires that we make things explict…he posits that in doing this you lose the context required and the ambiguity of implicit (ambiguity adds richness in social contexts – i think that was the position).

what comes first – the group or the constitution that governs the group?…david argues that you cannot establish a constitution initially as the relationships ie. the group has to drive and direct the constitution. also building constitutions requires explicit statements (i think he is using explicitness in the context of actually stating things) which we don’t like as it is an act of violence ?? – i think he means that we are uncomfortable defining instrinsics…implied.

knowledge management – the big problem with km as social software is that it ignored the value of ambiguity – really trying to understand what exactly he means by this statement…??

km devised to help try and find the diamond information in the rough..problem with information is that it takes on diamond value to someone while having coal properties to someone else. it ignores the social value in context. you therefore end up with systems that are self delusionary.

it was also devised to capture individual knowledge bases ie. a person’s knowledge. it also failed cos most knowledge bases ie. people don;t have the skills necessary to make that knowledge explicit.

if ambuigity (ahh…i think he means that when something remains in its context it remains ambiguous).

good social software allows structure to be developed while understanding that this is inherently an unnatural/uncomfortable experience for groups.

the same point being made that real needs/real context drive groups

1. there will be tons of services for group use
2. the coming age of dID maybe we will think less about managing groups and more about managing our various selves in the public of the web.
3. we are at the beginning of this whole social software – why is it that we are still only at the beginning…why a buzz now – maybe, the reason that we are now buzzed about ss is that we are coming out of our infatuation with binary thinking – maybe we are moving/ready to embrace the ambiguity inherent in “webs” and social networks.

questions/comments:
metadata is crap – context is hugely important – pn. this is really interesting but surely context is just another metadata variable…these folks are having fab conversations about metadata….implicit and explicit – david argues that explicit metadata is crap..reputation models floating in my head…not sure why.

there is a buzz about the netscan presentation yesterday

we need to liberate groups/individuals from db…

finishes by saying that the future of ubiquitous group transactions is the use of something like threadsML!

ETCon:2003:day4:iCan

authored by alice:
After a hiccup’y start with matt’s laptop refusing to show the slides he and james have sweated over for the past 48 hours (ad-hoc ad-libbing), the iCan presentation bursts into technicolor, startling matt into some ad-hoc air-guitaring.

No need for notes, just see the presentation… meanwhile, an excerpt from the etcon rolling irc channel..

malaclyps> _joshua: there’s some geo stuff in the BBC i-can talk
malaclyps> “Tipping points trialled with local action groups” – the bbc is trying to kickstart local democracy
Schuyler> amazing
Schuyler> and they’re government funded
* _joshua is bitter
malaclyps> Schuyler: no, they’re charter-funded. it’s different.
Roger> Isn’t everything in the UK government funded?
Roger> ;)
* Alice chuckles
malaclyps> it’s like the judiciary is “government funded”
Schuyler> the US federal government would never support something as CRAZY and FOOLISH as this
Schuyler> Charter-funded …?
Roger> Who funds the charter?
malaclyps> Schuyler: it’s funded by a licence fee provided by royal charter. govt. has little to do with it.
Schuyler> hmm
Schuyler> you mean, it’s paid for with voter tax dollars BY ROYAL FIAT?
malaclyps> yep
Schuyler> yow
malaclyps> think of it as another wing of government in the wider constitutional sense
[ snipped mini discussion on value of monarchy & description of charter funding ]
Schuyler> this is great though
Schuyler> their project is fscking huge
Schuyler> but, properly funded, it could work!

etcon:2003:day4:demand for innovation

demand for new things – what is it and how do you measure it.
sri are trying to characterise the demand for innovation.

they are focusing on national populations – and then segmenting out the different types of innovation seekers.

existing approaches include
demographics
past purchase behaviour
etc

however demographics and behaviours can mask important differences.
sri seek to insert personality traits into the mix.

how do you systematically characterise populations so as to be able to predict likely response to innovation.

the tricky part is coming up with relevant personality traits to characterise appropriately.

SRI’s approach is called VALS.
teh vals tool has two levels of segemtnation
- primary
- niche

they have identified three primary motivations groupings:
ideals – inner driven, internalised, principles, seek understanding
achievement – goal orientated, peer group driven
self-expression – action orientated, adventurous

on the other axis of segmentation is resource availability -
resource include
income but also things like education, self confidence etc.

the segmentations then fall into the following groupings -
thinkers
believers
survivors
strivers
achievers
experiencers
makers

this is very tool based discussion…

this is really about further defining the early adopters group or conceptual understanding of a group.

interesting use of group definition – they use the groups to help understand and motivate product designers (much like we use personnas).

etcon:2003:day4:google and innovation

how do they innovate?

first – they have a clear and universally understood mission statement
“organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”

keeps them on track and focused but gives them enough to get on with for …oh…200 years :)

second – do things that matter
this means that people want to work for and with google.

third – relentless focus on the user
eg. google labs, usability focus

fourth – recruitment – brilliant people have good ideas!
hire the right, smart people.
attracting these folks means thinking about environment but more importantly ensuring that they have interesting things to do.

fifth – creative environment.

so the process is -
recognise that ideas come from everywhere
- both inside and outside the company

design for users!
- keep the interface and usability at the heart of the product. it is thought about right from the beginning. this requires work.
example: the original homepage was so easy, simple and fast.

compile, discuss and prioritise
- top 100 – a list of the most important projects that google would like to do. It doesn’t represent all the projects they are doing but what they want to do.
compilation means gathering ideas. they have explicit tools that allow folks within the company to submit and record ideas.
discussion takes place in discussion forums (f2f) – these don’t eleminate ideas but serves to flesh them out and give feedback to the creator.
prioritise – they use the market to re-prioritise these ideas. every week they meet to prioritise ideas.

how then to deliver -
small teams are fast and agile
and they have really small teams – 3 people from start to finish and management after launch. this is a great motivation for staff.

communication is key
small teams are really good but it does have challenges when you have maybe 100 teams. it is therefore really important that broad, regular communication is encouraged. original design specifications are shared with the entire company – and discussion is encouraged. groups must share techniques, experience and ideas. they do really regular codereviews – this is a way of communicating activity as well as ensuring that code is not reinventing the wheel. they also do usable code reviews – focuses on commenting etc.

they have explicit teams that are responsible for processes – these teams are volunteer positions – ie. they have to commit to time away from their projects.

tech talks – folks speak about their projects. these are recorded and put up on the web. this is really useful for new staff to catch up on projects.

tools to organise -
they have tools that allow for idea capture, knowledge management ( a search engine!), tools that communicate weekly updates and reports that allow comments to be added.
blogs – use internal weblogs

test, experiment and iterate
first user study – they used to put it on the web but now they do smaller studies before release.
experiment – they use google labs to experiment.
iterate – they iterate again and again.

He reiterates again the importance of recruitment. they have a small hiring committee that oversees all the recruitment – they separate the head count growth need from the recruitment processes in order to ensure the best possible staff. they have a very conservative hiring process – this has meant that they have only had 2 folks that haven’t worked out.

what makes this process work. ..
management open to ideas, clear recruitment goals that hires folks that sustain the culture, processes and ideas generation, all the food you can eat whenever you want it :)

staying true to their mission!

question:
management of ideas is handled by gatekeepers – it is not a democracy, the system is based on trust that ideas will be heard – and evaluated by people capable of evaluating and trusted by others to do so against relevant and understood criteria.

what are the limitations to developing this kind of culture -
must hire against criteria.