May 29, 2006
Returned From Kauai
I went to Kauai with some friends. It was, as you might expect, excruciatingly lovely. Being there had a devastating effect on any sense of peace I might have had about my lifestyle choices. (Q3T)
Some pictures illuminate. (Q3U)
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travel
May 12, 2006
Next Great P2P Application
I'm at work, where most of us telecommute and never see one another, and devised the following application to enhance productivity and shareholder value. Maybe you can use it in your distributed workplace too. (Q3A)
Because, as myth has it, I hate everything and everyone, I tend to be quick on the anger draw. So in an effort to create a less hostile work environment I implore you to help me build the next great p2p application. Everyone in a team runs it on their workspace. You turn it on when you start work, it finds your peers. (Q3B)
The system is based on a therapy that some Obsessive Compulsive Disorder people may use: They wear a rubber band on their wrist and snap it when they are doing "the bad thing". (Q3C)
When a member of the team starts doing a "bad thing" someone else on the team, may, at their option, snap the offending teammate. The offender will see on their screen a big rubber band come in from the back of the screen and arrive at the front of the screen with an audible snap. (Q3D)
With this we can snap each other when we aren't helping to increase shareholder value. When I'm getting angry too easily or being overly sensitive to some bizarre concept of justice, when Bob is talking too much, when Joe is yelling, when Ned storms out, when Barb doesn't read or write, when Norman is being "too mean", when Francine gets her math wrong, when Susan is too slow, when Barry is too indirect, everyone will be able to move on and get shit done. (Q3E)
Or collapse under a hail of thunderous snapping. (Q3F)
Clearly this thing needs a name. (Q3G)
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collaboration
May 04, 2006
Feedback is Leadership?
Morning rambling. Take with drugs. Your milage may vary. (Q2Z)
Feedback, in some fundamental way, is at the core of a successfully collaborating system. This was the fundamental insight of Wiener and his cybernetics. Whatever else we may think about what it has to say about life, the statement that information dispersal and feedback go hand in hand is one of the major intellectual contributions of the 20th century. (Q30)
A collaborating system of any kind--ants, people, network services--is made of individual entities producing and consuming information. Individuals are the core contributors to the system. The sum of their amassed contributions may be greater than the parts, and often is, but at base it is the individual pieces and parts that are creating and contributing: having inspiration. (Q31)
What those pieces and parts create and contribute is shaped, refined and eventually defined by feedback from the rest of the system. (Q32)
No person is an island. (Q33)
In an activity group, initial contributions are themselves feedback to some thing in the system: a catalyst. A meme or goal that becomes a leader, or is installed by a leader (which itself could be meme, goal or person). Activity (information) crystallizes around the catalyst, accretes around the growing mass of the signal which is the product (some fun, a paper, a tool, a house, a brand new idea) of the group. (Q34)
If the growing product is not headed in the right direction how do we know? Feedback. How do we know where to go get headed in the right direction? Feedback. From the system itself. (Q35)
If the system is insufficiently mature or the initial catalyst insufficiently clear (thus not really a catalyst) the meme, goal or person must be clarified, buttressed, tuned to be a true catalyst. That tuning is feedback, observation from outside the confines of the system, and is leadership. (Q36)
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collaboration
