I've been a slacker posting up the ?YouTube videos of each week's This Week in Google episode, so I'm getting back to it. This past week was particularly fun for me because Jeff, Leo, and I were joined by Kevin Purdy, my colleague from Lifehacker who shares my enthusiasm for Android. The TWiT folks also tell me that TWiG video is now available in the iTunes Store as well; here are the feed links for TWiG video both large and small.

I’ve been thinking recently about the relationship and dynamic between the corporations and “enterprises” which participate in and reap benefits from open source/free software and the quasi-mythic “communities” that are responsible for the creation and maintenance of the software. Additionally this post may be considered part of my ongoing series on cooperative economics.

When people, ranging from business types, to IT professionals, to programmers, and beyond, talk about open source software we talk about a community: often small to medium sized groups of people who all contribute small amounts of time to creating software. And we’re not just talking about dinky little scripts that make publishing blogs easier (or some such), we’re talking about a massive amount of software: entire operating systems, widely used implementations of nearly all relevant programing languages, and so forth. On some level the core of this question is who are these people, and how do they produce software?

On the surface the answer to these questions is straightforward. The people who work on open source software are professional programmers, students, geeks, and hacker/tinkerer-types who need their computers to do something novel, and then they write software. This works as model for thinking about who participates in open source, if we assume that the reason why people contribute to open source projects is because their individual works/contributions are too small to develop business models around. This might explain some portion of open source contributions, but it feels incomplete to me.

There are a number of software projects that use open source/free software licenses, with accessible source code, supported by “communities,” which are nonetheless developed almost entirely by single companies. MySQL, Alfresco, and Resin among others serve as examples these kinds of projects which are open source by many any definitions and yet don’t particularly strike me as “community,” projects. Is the fact that this software provides source code meaningful or important?

Other questions…

1. If there are companies making money from open source code bases, particularly big companies in a business directly related to software, does this effect participation of people who are not employed by that company in the project?

   In my mind I draw distinctions between technology businesses that use/sell/support open source software (e.g. Red-Hat, the late MySQL AB, etc.) and businesses that do something else but use open source software (i.e. everyone with a Linux server in the basement, every business with a website that runs on Apache, etc.)

2. Does corporate personhood extend to the open source community. Are corporate developers contributing as people, or as representatives of their company?

   I largely expect that it’s the former; however, I’d be interested in learning more about the various factors which affect the way these contributors are perceived?

3. Do people participate in open source because it is fun or for the enjoyment of programming,

4. Has software become so generic that open source is a current evolution of industry standards groups. Do we write open source software for the same reason that industries standardized the size and threading of bolts?

5. Are potential contributors disinclined to contribute to software that is controlled by a single entity, or where projects

6. Is the cost of forking a software project too high to make that a realistic outcome of releasing open source software?

   Conversely, were forks ever effective?

7. Do communities actually form around software targeted at “enterprise” users, and if so in what ways are those communities different from the communities that form around niche window p managers or even community projects like Debian?

I don’t of course have answers yet, but I think these questions are important, and I’d love to hear if you have any ideas about finding answers to these questions, or additional related questions that I’ve missed.

My latest two videos are up at Fast Company: one's on firewalling your attention with time blocking, and the second is on three ways to use Google Wave in your business.

The time blocking piece is actually a personal confession about my hermit tendencies. Sometimes I just shut everything off, fall off the face of the planet, and have some uninterrupted me-time. I've had co-workers say to me, "Um, where did you go today?" and the answer is usually "To my happy place, a distraction-free zone." As you'll hear in the video, at my last office job, I actually used to schedule a meeting with myself complete with a conference room to get away and focus on something for awhile. Here's the 2 minute, 37 second clip.

Read the whole script at Fast Company: Avoid Office Distractions with Time Blocking.

The second clip is my quick answer to the age-old question about Google Wave: "But what do you actually use it for?" Here are three use cases for Wave in your business.

To dive deeper into Wave use cases, check out 8 more in Chapter 10 of The Complete Guide to Google Wave.

37signals' new book Rework is a fast, inspiring read for anyone who's thought about starting a business but froze at the idea of quitting their job, getting investing, and working 24-hour days.

As they do every day at their blog, in Rework the Signals break down their minimalist philosophy into a series of essays written in uncompromising language. Expect a table of contents full of sections entitled things like "Learning from mistakes is overrated," "Planning is guessing," "Outside money is plan Z," "Throw less at the problem," "Skip the rock stars," and "Meetings are toxic." While it's billed as a business book, at its core Rework is a get-up-off-your-ass, stop-talking-and-start-doing book--a productivity book that uses 37signals as its main case study.

People who follow 37signals online know that they are opinionated and contrarian--sometimes to the point of abrasive. At least one person thinks their small business philosophy is downright dangerous. Personally I give 37signals credit for having a strong point of view, a well-executed shtick, and for having shipped some fantastic software products. (At Lifehacker we lived in Campfire.) My advice? Take the book with a grain of salt. After reading it you don't have to cancel every meeting you have at your company. But, if you shorten a few, you've gotten something out of it.

To get a taste of how the book reads, download this PDF excerpt with essays on why workaholism, business plans, and meetings don't work. The book is available today in bookstores and on Amazon.

Rework

After I shared The Shy Presenter with 200 people at last Wednesday’s Ignite Toronto, Rohan Jayasekera told me that he was happy to see how I’d grown so much as a presenter. He’s known me for almost four years now, I think, and has seen many of my talks. He told me that I sounded a lot more relaxed now. I had more of a flow and a rhythm, and was starting to resemble professional speakers. In fact, he joked that I might be getting too good to inspire people to take that first step towards public speaking,

It’s been almost ten years since I gave my first public technical talk on August 25, 2001. I’ve experimented with:

• trying to read my slides without glasses (doesn’t work)
• wearing contacts (okay, but a hassle)
• using bullet points (doesn’t really work)
• having my computer talk me through my presentation (actually works, with Emacs and speech synthesis)
• writing my talks out as blog posts first (works)
• storyboarding my slides (works)
• using full-screen images (stock photography kinda works, Flickr is more fun, but this “look” is getting much too common)
• using only text (works)
• lowering my energy level (doesn’t work)
• sharing my presentations online (works, and reaches way more people)
• using short URLs in my slides (somewhat works; some companies block these URLs)
• encouraging re-runs and revisions (works)
• taking advantage of my blog archive (works)
• shortening my talk and using more time for Q&A (works)
• using the backchannel for more interactivity and learning (works awesomely)
• using the webcam for remote presentations (works awesomely)
• using a hat to balance out  harsh-top lighting when needed (works)
• professional editing help (kinda works)
• shorter scripts and more improvisation (works; tested with Ignite presentation)
• scripting with a target words-per-minute count (probably works, although I haven’t tested the results yet; should follow up with recordings)
• limiting travel and focusing on local or Web-based presentations (works)
• watching excellent talks for inspiration, such as those from TED and Slideshare (works)
• focusing on concrete next actions instead of general theory (works)
• strict presentation constraints (works; tested with Ignite and Twitter-paragraph-length presentations)
• using a hat or distinctive suit to make me easy to find at a face-to-face conference (works)
• easier-to-remember URLs (sachachua.com is hard to spell; ?LivingAnAwesomeLife.com is long but easy to remember; livingawesomely and liveawesomely don’t quite roll off the tongue)
• posting reflections on what went well and what I can improve (works awesomely)
• speech exercises (kinda works; need more practice)
• reading tons of books about public speaking and presentations (works)
• submitting proposals for conferences, just in case (works awesomely)
• making it easy for people to find previous talks (works)
• drinking lukewarm water (works)
• telling stories (works, want to do more of it)
• using stick figures (fun to make, faster than finding pictures, and makes people happy; works awesomely)

I’m looking forward to experimenting with metaphors (both visual and verbal), humour, stories, more content, and animation. =)

Someday, when I save up for it and decide that it’s a good thing to spend on, I’d like to get a tablet PC and figure out how to use that for presentations. (Wouldn’t that be awesome?) I remember seeing Tom Wujec show us this totally awesome drawing / storyboarding tool, which I unfortunately forgot to get the name of, but if anyone’s familiar with the Autodesk suite of tools and remembers some kind of index card thing…

It’s been eight and a half years of deliberate practice. I’ve come a long way from the nervous speaker who stuttered her way through her first talk and panicked when she saw only one person attending her second. (The rest had been late from lunch, and had politely stayed outside the room when they saw me sitting down and chatting with the lone audience member.) I’m going to keep working on this because it’s fun to learn something well enough to explain it to someone else, and this kind of sharing helps me scale up and help hundreds and thousands of people at a time.

I probably take a lot of things for granted now, so it’s a good thing I’ve been sharing some of my notes along the way. This is why it pays to share what you’re learning, because after a while, it gets hard to explain how you got from point A to point B.

I want to help lots of people learn how to present well. Eventually I may become a polished, well-practiced presenter like Seth Godin or Dan Heath, and then it will be harder for people who are just starting out to think, ”Hey, maybe I can learn to speak too.” But then I can help figure out what “awesome” looks like, and that will help other people build on it and figure out what “more awesome” looks like. So it’s all good.

How are you growing? Share your notes in the comments! =)

Thanks to Rohan Jayasekera for the conversation!

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Experiments as a presenter

Panic is a software company that makes useful tools like my personal favorite, Transmit for the Mac. They've also made a beautiful project status display that helps their team keep on top of what they're working on, and what important dates are coming up. Click on the thumbnail to see the full version. The board is actually an internal web page that auto-updates support email queue numbers, how far along each company project is, day over day revenue comparisons, the company calendar, and Twitter messages. Here's the effect it's had on the team:

Les, one of our support guys, said it best after a week: “That board is like magic.” Our support turnaround time is faster than it’s ever been. Just the simple act of “publicizing” those numbers — not in a cruel way, but a “where are we at as a group?” way — has kept the support process on-task and, I think, made it a bit more like a video game. (It helps that when all the boxes are at “zero”, a virtual bottle of champagne appears on-screen, and a physical one is likely removed from the fridge.)

Brilliant! I am dying for one of these for my own personal use. Panic, will you add that to your project list? For the nitty gritty on how this board was built and what kind of display it's on, check out the full post at the Panic blog.

The Panic Status Board [The Panic Blog]

I’ve been thinking about how ideas, projects, and ideas scale a bit in the past few weeks, and as usual, I wanted to collect a few of these thoughts. This post is generally in my series of posts of “Extrapolations from Systems Administration.” Inspirations and origins of these ideas come from, in part:

• My Tumblr Killed the Tumblelog Star post.

• My Google reader unread count.

• Savage Minds Post on Social Enterpernurship and Anthropology post.

• All the television I don’t watch.

• The nginx HTTP Proxy module.

• Seeing the Forest for the Brand

The internet is a big place, you don’t need me to tell you this, but I think that it’s really incomprehensibly big. Even the small corners of the internet that we (well, I at least,) inhabit contain vast amounts of information and it’s very difficult to keep your head above water, to feel like you’re in touch with what’s happening. Strategies for managing this information successfully are as concerned with “figuring out what to ignore,” as they are about figuring out how to absorb information successfully.

Scaling an idea or a concept (like a blog, or a piece of software or a web server) to be able to address problem sets (like an audience, or a given set of data, or both) of different sizes is just as difficult. It’s tough to get a web server to be able to host really large loads, its difficult to be able to write a blog that appeals to a huge audience: the this nexuses of related problems are quite large.

I think, however, we can begin to draw some conclusions. I do hope that you’ll be able to help me add to this list. Perhaps in a wikish page.

1. Be the biggest fish in the smallest possible pond.

   The core strategy here is to avoid having to figure out how to scale up to “full speed,” by reframing the problem set. You don’t have to become the most popular or widely consumed blogger/novelist: you just have to become the most popular blogger about cyborg philosophy, or the political economics and philosophy of the open source world. You have to become the most popular post-colonial historiography space opera novelist.

2. Don’t participate in the proliferation of crap: only build/use what you need to.

   I see lots of people say something along the lines of “I want to make a websites for all of the people interested in what I’m interested in, and we’ll need a wiki and some discussion forums, and some sort of blogs, maybe a lot of blogs, and…” This inevitably leads to a bunch of organization and building of things for their websites, and then everything is built and… no one is interested in using the crap.

   This is a classic premature optimization problem. Don’t build things that you think you might need later. Build things that you need now. Or things that you really needed last week. Focus on the thing you do, and build the infrastructure as you need it, when you need it.

3. Work in a scalable and sustainable manner, and assume that other people will need to pick up on your projects.

   While you shouldn’t expend the effort to scale before you need to, because that could end in failure, it’s common sense to approach your projects with the assumption that other people might have to finish them for you, if things take off and you need to delegate later you’ll be ready for them. Consider the possibility that you might need to scale a project when you’re in the initial planning stages and avoid getting backed into a corner by a decision.

4. Ignore everything you can possibly stand to.

   There are so many things that you could be doing with your time. There are so many distractions. Email lists, RSS feeds, the work of other people in your field. Charity projects of one sort or another. All of these things are important and you should participate fully in the communities that surround your work, but be fully aware that humans as individuals don’t scale well, and succeeding at your project is dependent upon your ability to ignore everything that you can stand to.

5. Consume information on your terms, in the formats that make the most sense to you.

   As a corollary to the above, the way to successfully engage and manage everything that you can’t possibly stand to ignore is to as much as possible engage on your terms. Figure out what your terms are first, and then work to consume content in these terms.

6. Use technology and media to build relationships rather than accumulate information.

   Too often, I think, the geekier among us (and I count myself among this number) are interested in technology because it’s cool, and we’re tempted to solve technological problems and learn about the inner workings of stuff because they interest us. And that’s okay, as a hobby: in the pursuit of doing work, technology is only useful insofar as it allows you to get things done. And in most cases, the core function that technology provides is to enable relationships. So focus on that, and fiddle with the technical underpinnings, only when you must.

Onward and Upward!

Ever since I installed a barcode scanner app on my phone, I see QR codes everywhere--so naturally I wanted one of my own. If you too are a barcode-scanning fool, point your phone's camera at this QR code and you'll get a link to my personal web site. Fun!

A QR ("quick response") code is a square barcode that makes getting URLs, location coordinates, any text or contact information onto a phone quickly. With a barcode scanner app installed, you just point your phone's camera at the code to read its contents. Here's what reading this QR code looks like on my Android phone, using an app simply called "Barcode Scanner."

To find a scanner application, Google "QR Reader" and the model of your phone. (If you've got a favorite scanner app that you're using, let us know in the comments.)

Encoding a regular URL is a fine use of QR codes--especially lengthy and complicated URLs on movie and event flyers--but one of my favorite uses of QR codes is swapping mobile app recommendations with your friends. Since you can't search the Android Market on the web or in desktop software, you're always stuck tapping in search terms by hand. The App Referer app generates QR codes for every one of your applications. So if you want to "give" that app to a friend, you call up the QR code, and your pal can scan your phone's screen.

You'll also see QR codes on web pages, in store windows, on business cards, and on conference badges. You can generate your own QR code with the information you want others to be able to read onto their phones quickly too. This QR code generator can embed a URL, text, a phone number, or an addressed and ready-to-send SMS message into a QR code.

If you Google "QR code generator" you'll find others, but beware of generators that force a redirect through their site when someone scans the resulting code and gets a URL. (For example, this generator has options to encode Google Maps coordinates, social network information, and Vcards and can print t-shirts and stickers from the codes it generates, but if you enter a simple web site URL it creates a redirect through the qrstuff.com site.)

Speaking of stickers, now I just need to print a few with my code to stick on my laptop, phone, and conference badges.

From last week’s plans:

• Work
• [X] Prepare overview of Sametime Unyte and Lotus Connections Communities for my second-line manager
• [X] Facilitate Idea Lab and summarize results
• [X] Write about Idea Lab refinements
• [X] Revise Innovation Discovery wiki
• [X] Make UK travel arrangements
• [X] Learn tons of cool stuff at The Art of Marketing
• [X] Talk about productivity with mentees and contacts

Relationships

• [X] Try a new recipe
• [/] Finalize care package
• Enjoyed being taken care of by W- after my wisdom teeth extraction: pureed congee, oatmeal, egg custard, cheesecake, Jello… mmm

Life

• [X] Participate in Ignite Toronto
• [X] Have wisdom teeth taken out
• [X] Test evening themes for working on short-term goals
• Biked again – yay! 8km
• Simplified my wardrobe and donated a lot of clothes
• Read the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, thanks to W-

Plans for next week

Work

• [  ] Help with re-run for Remote Presentations that Rock
• [  ] Branding / social marketing chat with IBM AU/NZ social media marketing folks
• [  ] Prepare collaboration presentation for UK workshop
• [  ] Finalize UK workshop travel arrangements
• [  ] Prepare for trip

Relationships

• [  ] Explore more recipes
• [  ] Sort out photography
• [  ] Host tea party
• [  ] Tidy up some more

Life

• [  ] Go for follow-up appointment with dental surgeon
• [  ] Recover from wisdom teeth extraction

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Weekly review: Week ending March 7, 2010

Donald Knuth, originator of TeX and METAFONT, for typesetting, and for the concept of "literate programming," lamented the dirth of reusable software. Knuth is a brilliant guy and a great thinker, and although I've yet to read Coders At Work, thinking about software as reusable (which is certainly a prevailing trend,) and the possibility that this might be regrettable has certainly given me something to chew on.

Knuth is without question an Artist and a master craftsman. I suspect that the "regrettable" aspect of reusable computer programs for Knuth, is not that reusable programs are technologically flawed but rather that reusable programs mean that users of computers--cyborgs--can use their machines, and interact with technology without ever needing to know how the underlying technology works.

I don't know if I can add a lot to this idea. I think it's interesting and useful to think about addressing technological problems with human solutions in some cases. I think particular around the problem domains of desktop software and systems administration, we've stopped "learning how to develop single-use programs," and have relied on reusable programs. The result is that desktop computer users, don't know very much about the administration and development of the applications they use, in nearly all cases from advanced users to rank beginners.

My perspective might be skewed because, in the broadest sense possible, my work is focused on answering the claim that "free software is hard to use," by educating users rather than developing software that makes technology easier to use by removing choice and options.

I think the design philosophy of Arch Linux follows this philosophy. The lack of anything resembling a "standard" configuration in emacs supports the goal of "learn how your technology works," philosophy.

Returning to "reusable software," for a moment, I'll make an argument against myself (in comments), and say that in a lot of situations, the solution to a specific problem is often best solved with specific solutions. If software isn't going to be reused, and we accept that the writing and rewriting of software is a constant process, I think the result is much more simple programs. Programs that need to only do one thing, or part of one thing well. Programs that are more simple. Better separation of programmatic interfaces and user interfaces. In point of fact, more software that's built using bits and pieces of existing code.

And above all, more proficient (and arguably happier) users. That's a good thing indeed.

Hello and Welcome!

This post has been a long time coming and I'm glad to finally be able to write it.

The Cyborg Institute is this crazy idea I got during the dark winter of 2008/09. I'd been blogging for some time my personal blog about really technical topics, about the interactions between culture and technology, about using technology more effectively, and about working "better." And I was getting the feeling that a lot of readers (and friends) were getting a little tired of hearing me blather about these somewhat esoteric topics.

I took this as a sign, and this is the first inspiration for the site you see before you. Thus the Cyborg Institute is a platform to explore these ideas in greater depth, and provide a context for people to record their thoughts and learn more about these issues.

The second kernel of inspiration was a growing--and at the time, somewhat disorganized--consulting practice that I was surprised to find myself in the center of. Working with technology and cyberculture is nearly reflexive for me, and never thought "I think I should do consulting work," nevertheless, there I was. As it turns out, I find working with amazing people to help them achieve their goals more effectively to be an amazingly rewarding and educational experience.

In this vein the Cyborg Institute is an attempt to make this consulting practice more concrete and make it possible to collaborate with other awesome people who have supplementary and complementary skills and specialties.

The final piece of this puzzle is about communities:

Since I started "doing this website thing," many years ago, when I was embarrassingly young, my projects have mostly been about coordinating efforts with other like-minded souls, collaborating with awesome people, and building infrastructure to promote communities. A significant portion of what I hope this site will become originated when I said, "wouldn't it be cool, this happened," or "hey, we should do this," and so via the Cyborg Institute, I'm stepping up to bat and doing these things.

One of these "wouldn't it be cool, if" things is this blog, which I hope to update a couple times a week with cool links, meditations, suggestions, and reflections on "cyborg stuff." Another is the wiki which I hope will become a collection of knowledge, forum for discussion, and platform for the development of grounded theory. Others still in their infancy include a white-paper series, git-hosting, discussion listservs, and regular group-chats. Time will tell. If there's a project that you'd like to contribute to, or if you'd like to join our team, do be in touch.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!

It's amazing to be standing here, looking over this awesome site we have here, and be in a place where I feel comfortable enough with where we are to be able to welcome you to the site and introduce you to the project.

Welcome!

The Cyborg Institute is born out of the idea that there are other people in the world, on the Internet, who are as fascinated with how other people use computers as I am. I was talking to Joe about file systems and file organizations a few months back (what do you do for fun?) and I said, "dude, wouldn't it be awesome if we started some project to figure out these questions and help participate in the solutions." Or some variant therein.

And then a lot happened. I was looking for more serious employment in this area, but I was working on a number of fairly disjointed projects, and then I upended myself for six weeks for a family thing, and then I was looking for consulting work in cyborg-related areas, and then got a job, and moved across the country, but I've been hacking away on this site, on the content, on the systems all the while, and my project list has dwindled down to almost nothing.

That's a lie.

My project list has dwindled down to the point where I can't fathom holding anything back on the account of the remaining to-do list. I've been doing this website thing for a long, long time and if there's one thing that's true, it's that they're never really all the way "done."

Epically this one. With a wiki, a blog planet, and a blog like this one, "constant evolution and development" is the nature of the beast. So I'm going to keep working on things, and I'd be very appreciative of your contributions, comments, feedback, or even simple attention.

I feel as if I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a few key influences on this project. First to Amber Case for reintroducing me to Donna Harroway's essay, and expanding my mind about the possibilities of Cyborg Anthropology and scholarship (and also for being generally awesome). Secondly, to Sacha Chua for keeping a really amazing blog that has really helped to advance my thinking in a number of ways.

And of course, thanks to you for reading this and to everyone who I've bounced ideas off of during the development process for this site. I'll be posting things a couple of times a week, so please subscribe and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

It's the end of the week and although the blog posting has been minimal round these parts (but that's ok, there's plenty of other people blogging, to pick up the slack), we haven't been totally asleep at the wheel, so I wanted to post notices of a few things that I'm working on, for your edification and commentary.

The first project is still very much in progress and needs some better explanation. I'm calling in the Sygn System, and the intent is to build a distributed database/"Social Networking Tool" that would specify a structured format for people to share information about themselves and their work, but more importantly provide a standardized framework for these "profiles" to be aggregated into useful collections of data to address real needs and problems.

The example posited in the document, was the problem of connecting potential users of free software and open source software with potential users of that software. Sygn would be a way to allow these people to connect in a distributed and platform/context-agnostic framework. Read the wiki page for more information.

I should, fully acknowledge the pivotal role that Carlos Perilla (or deepsapwn) has had in the formation and review of this idea. (Thanks!)

My (our?) work on this project is going to be in the direction of addressing:

• More example profiles. I created a quasi-fictitious example profile to illustrate what I saw in my mind, and to provide visual context for what a YAML-formatted profile would look like. While this is a good example, I need to generate more as an example to of what this system might be capable.

• The beginning of the document describes the entire thought process, and presents a (somewhat abstract) use case. I think at this point what we need is both the broad overview of the projects goals, which the existing text almost accomplished, and a number of more specific use cases.

• I need to firm up how the web-of-trust model would work. Full key-signing is a really high burden for a system like this (imagine if everyone you needed to verify legal names and picture ID for everyone you followed on twitter or friended on facebook?) I need to figure out if there's a way to endorse a sub-key without signing the master key, as a way of making the burden for signing in this context less intense.

• The current document proposes deploying specific technologies in the implementation that--upon review--do not seem entirely crucial to the infrastructure of Sygn. While I think YAML (a human readable, cross-language data-serialization format.) is a great technology for this use-case, most other aspects of the implementation are secondary to the functionality, and are included in the current document as touchstones to describe functionality that I think is important. Must edit this out.

• I need to write blog posts here and for tychoish describing these use-cases and the project, both to become more clear on the subject myself and to figure out how to communicate this in additional contexts.

If you're interested in this, feel free to contribute on the wiki, or if that's too daunting (it should be! ), then feel free leave feedback in comments to this post.

The "Agile" part of the title simply refers a little mini-series of posts that I've posted at the end of this week on tychoish about "What it means to 'Be Successful' on the Internet," and what this means in context of buzzwordy-concepts like "Community Develop" Those posts are:

• "Levels of Success," about community and the progression of success.

• "Agile and Iterative Sauces," about about the process of development, and the nature of improvement, with lessons from modern software development processes.

• "The Collapse of Marketing," about marketing, self-promotion, and advertising.

I think they all have, at least some appeal from a cyberculture perspective, and also insofar as, particularly the middle one, applies ideas about software development to new realms beyond software development. This sort of expansion and elaboration of technical concepts in new contexts is an incredibly exciting part of this whole "cyborg thing."

We'll be in touch. Thanks for reading!

I suspect that this will become something of a regular feature, but I've realized that given how I tend to concentrate my blogging energies on the tychoish.com project, even for subjects that would be relevant to the Cyborg Institute blog^[1], that it would be useful to create a semi-regular Cyborg Institute feature to keep you all up to date on what's going on beyond the scenes.

On the Wiki

• First, I've been doing some revisions with the wiki, and the good news is that everything works. I though everything worked when I started out, but it turns out OpenID was a bit buggy, and I had some problems with the git interface, but everything seems to be in order now. My general move has been to de-clutter some pages--the index primarily--split up things that went on too long in a given page (i.e. the current work on Sygn).

• I've been working on consolidating, clarifying, and tweaking the Sygn System pages to be a bit more organized and descriptive.

  If you didn't notice, Sygn is a project to create a federated social networking data standard. This sounds really geeky and more "technological," than "cyborg," but in point of fact the "geeky" parts are (relatively) simple, and the implications and applications Sygn are very "cyborg." Ongoing work on the wiki and the sygn chat room and we hope to begin work on a test implementation soon.

• I started working on some exploration for a wiki project hosted under the umbrella of Critical Futures, to explore the ways to do fiction and creative work using wiki as a tool. This is Cyborg if ever there was one.

• I've moved the Content Incubator off of the main page, and done a little bit of work to consolidate the initial footprint of the wiki and make the whole thing a bit more approachable.

General Site Things

• I've enabled a couple of sub-domains to work a little bit better for people who might be interested in various Cyborg Institute related projects therefore (.net and .org domains, at the moment are all identical to the .com):

  • The Cyborg Institute Planet: http://planet.cyborginstitute.com

  • The Cyborg Institute Wiki: http://wiki.cyborginstitute.com

• I'm thinking about giving up the pretense of the blog, as a first class publication of the Cyborg Institute and trying to fold the content into the wiki, and do more posts along the lines of this post.

  In pursuit of this I've imported the backlog of posts that were really just sketches of one sort or another into a personal sketchpad in the wiki. You can find that here.

  Thoughts?

Do be in touch, and thanks for reading.

one tries them.

The truth of the matter is that, no one really cares how your website works as long as it does. Well almost no one: I think I'm an exception to this rule, but then I've been looking at websites for a long time, and have a lot of opinions on the matter. Given that the Cyborg Institute Site is rigged together in a reasonably unusual way, I think it's worth a bit of (potentially ongoing) discussion.

Lets start with what you can see: the theme. Our theme is a pretty straightforward derivation of the hemmingway theme for wordpress. Mostly I just changed the font and took out a lot of features that I didn't need or like, and did some minor tweaking to other aspects of the layout. I wanted a simple, basic theme, that was easy to navigate through but that could handle a lot of different kinds of content, and I think I succeeded at that. I'm not a graphic designer, and I prefer to leave that kind of work up to the professionals.

The second thing that you might notice is that the site isn't powered by WordPress. Don't get me wrong, ?WordPress is great software and it's perfect a great many sites. I recommend and do a lot of consulting around ?WordPress, but the truth is that ?WordPress is developed to power blogs, and while you can use it to manage other kinds of blogs, the harder you push the less effective it gets to be. When I'm working on a ?WordPress project I try to be really mindful of ?WordPress' strengths, and it's never let me down. At the same time, I knew that this site was the kind where I'd have to push a lot, so I took a different strategy.

While the Cyborg Institute has a blog the central focus of the site isn't the blog. In fact, most of the content on the site is pretty static. Pages about what we do, and our projects take prominence over "the latest blog post." While these pages might change from time to time, they don't change much. And then there's the wiki, which is also full of pages that don't change very often. Not to mention the rest of my list of "things to do with the website" which are also not-blogs. I fear I'd be spending more time fighting with ?WordPress than actually working and writing.

I wanted a system that was flexible enough to deal with new kinds of content and information as I needed to deploy them, but that was also lightweight: I didn't (and don't) need a modular plugin architecture, database server, and template API to regenerate every page every time someone views it for a website that changes a few times a week (at most.)

My solution? I'm using a number of tools to generate static content that the web-server just hands out as is. The result is a site with pages that load very quickly, and a collection of tools that are all ideally suited to the task they perform, rather than being suitable as a result of their integration with ?WordPress (or the CMS of choice). I'm using Jeykll and ikiwiki at the moment, and I hope to continue to extend their use and find other tools that work similarly.

I think as we begin to be able to more accurately interpret our needs for websites, as network services mature, and as the web continues to develop, these kinds of "ad hoc"/"lo fi" systems will become increasingly more attractive.

At the same time, there is a cluster of functionality provided by high-powered content management systems beyond simply managing "managing content" that alternative systems need to address in some way.

1. Editorial administration, content workflows, and user account registration: Traditional content management systems (CMS) make it easy for site owners to administer their sites, to delegate responsibility to an editorial team, and make it possible for users to authenticate with the website.

   • Ad hoc systems like the one that the Cyborg Institute uses don't require users to authenticate with the website, verifying identities by way of Open ID, or direct authentication with the server itself using secure encrypted connections for editing content directly.

   • Without user accounts it's difficult to delegate editorial responsibility without a central administrator needing to review any changes additions. While traditional CMS's relieve stress on a central editor, they add more than an equivalent amount of stress with regards to their technical upkeep. This trade off is more than acceptable, in the ad hoc case, particularly given that on low volume sites with small editorial teams, centralized workflows are almost always preferable.

2. Uniformity and Template Systems. Traditional CMS's make it possible to easily implement a uniform template so that all pages on your site "look the same," and that if you change the template for one page the entire site can change.

   • It turns out that designing an effective template system is incredibly difficult. If it's too flexible, it's easy write templates that don't work consistently across all pages, and if it's not flexible enough users won't be able to produce the necessary outputs.

   • Generally, the best strategy that leads to separate content from both the structure of the page, and the presentation (CSS), and any content/structure/presentation that's common to more than one page should reference the same copy of the content. This is quite easy to accomplish using simple includes (transcludes?) and other methods of static page compilation.

3. Traditional Content Management Systems provide a framework for commenting on content and facilitating other interactive features for readers to participate in ongoing discussions. Which is easier to do with dynamic pages and user accounts.

   • Services like Disqus, and ?IntenseDebate demonstrate that it's possible to "outsource" some of these features and experience an increase in functionality. Even more, they show that we don't really need to have "content" and "interaction" in the same system for effective content publication or discussions to take place.

   • Facilitating participation is always a social problem rather than a technological problem, and there are ways of facilitating discussions in any technology.

So that's what we're working with. While this is very much a "meta" conversation, I think that this site is interesting not just because it's awesome (heh) but because I think it bucks the conventional wisdom regarding the kinds of web-infrastructure needed to run a site like this, and thus raises some interesting questions about the best ways to present and organize information. Thoughts?

In 2008 and 2009, I gave an average of one talk every two weeks. It was really more bunched-together than that. Sometimes I’d do back-to-back presentations, like the four presentations I gave in March 2008 (conference season!). Other times, I’d have a bit of a breather before starting things up again.

With the general move away from face-to-face conferences and my decision to cut down on face-to-face speaking, I thought that would lead to a lighter year. My goal was to do one presentation a month, which was really just half of what I did last year. I successfully held it to one major presentation each for January and February, postponing things as needed.

Then March came (Why is it always March?), and I got lots of invitations to speak at things that sounded really interesting.

1. There’s a client workshop in the UK at which I’ll do a short presentation on collaboration and culture change. That’s work, so there’s no rescheduling or referring that.
2. There’s another internal teleconference that wants to re-run my “Remote Presentations That Rock”. There are actually two of these, but the other one’s fine with the recording.
3. I’ve been invited to speak to IBM social media and marketing folks in Australia (teleconference) about people and the IBM brand.
4. I volunteered to give a presentation about presentation tips at IgniteTO, which was on Wednesday. I wanted to try the Ignite format and listen to the other presenters.
5. I’ve been invited to do something at PresentationCamp, and I’ll probably build on the talk I’m giving at IgniteTO.

And that’s after I’ve tried referring as much as possible to other people, such as a social media speaking thing that would be a great fit for one of my friends.

Greedy learner that I am, it’s really hard for me to resist the temptation to learn not only from the process of preparing the presentation, but also from the participation of interesting people during the delivery and post-presentation conversations.

Also, the talks all fit into what I want to talk about in 2010. Amazing how that works out.

What am I learning from this?

• March is typically crazy.
• Even when I don’t submit abstracts to conferences, speaking opportunities come anyway.
• Putting together and sharing as much information as possible makes things easier for me afterwards, because people can now ask me for presentations based on previous presentations or blog posts, and those are less work than completely new things.
• Even when I say no-travel-except-for-work-presentations, local and remote speaking opportunities come up.
• I still haven’t figured out a good way to tell myself no. But it doesn’t cut into work or living yet, so I think it’s still okay.
• Even though I mock-gripe about the time it takes to figure out my key message and how to illustrate it, I still think it’s a good use of my free time.

So now I can deliberately practice clarifying my key messages, illustrating my slides, and reusing things from my blog and my past presentations. I also want to get better at collecting stories and videos.

Maybe I can get better at asking:

• Are there other people who can do this presentation?
• Are there other dates on which I can do this presentation?
• What new insights do I want to capture and share?

Next talks I want to develop about presentations:

• How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar (Why remote presentations can be great and how to make the most of the backchannel), or
• Presentation kaizen: Relentless improvement and the art of public speaking, or
• More for your money: Increasing your return on effort on presentations

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

An abundance of opportunities

How much of a role does luck play in success? A lot. Malcolm Gladwell goes into this in great detail in his book Outliers, which explored the systemic, situational factors that contribute to people becoming wildly successful.

To call it just luck is to ignore the hard work that people put into recognizing and taking those opportunities. To shrug it off as a life lottery shuts one to the possibilities that stretch before them. We have many, many stories of people who have changed the world from unconventional starting points.

Stop worrying about luck. You’re always luckier than someone and not as lucky as someone else.

When I was growing up, I used to feel pretty darn lucky. I stumbled across computer programming at an early age. I had an aptitude for it, which developed into a passion.

Then I heard about people my age—or younger!—in other countries doing even incredible things, and I felt insecure. Maybe I’d missed out. Maybe I’d never be able to catch up.

It wasn’t even the bright stars like Marcelo Tosatti, who became the Linux 2.4 stable kernel maintainer in 2001. We were both 18 then, and he had attained my then-pinnacle of geek coolness. It was the fact that in other places, ordinary students were hacking on incredible things. I remember feeling despondent about the fact that our operating systems course in computer science had a reputation for being more theoretical than deep-in-the-guts-of-an-operating-system practical, and I felt envious of universities like Georgia Tech, where undergraduates experimented with Linux on the Compaq iPAQ PDA. The Internet could get me curricula and whatever resources people shared, and it could let me participate in open source development, but it couldn’t give me those hallway conversations and interesting project experiences people no doubt enjoyed there. There were the coop opportunities that I would never get to explore, because I wasn’t in Silicon Valley or Waterloo. People I wouldn’t bump into. Mentors who might never find me.

Then I decided I wasn’t going to let being in a third-world country stop me. And I learned, and I hacked, and I ended up committing code to the Compaq iPAQ bootloader, which was actually my first public commit with my name on it and which made me feel that hey, I could stand up there with everyone else. (Story: I had sent in patches almost every day for a week. This was either final exam week or the week before that, so coding was a great way to procrastinate studying. It got people’s attention, and Jamey Hicks of the Compaq Research Labs actually called me up, long-distance, to find out who I was and how they could help me keep hacking. That felt awesome.)

And then I decided to stop stressing out about prodigies and possibilities and uneven distributions, and instead work on helping people surpass me by sharing as much of what I learned as I could.

After I finished my degree, I taught computer science in university to students who grew up with even better tools and better resources than I did. The things I helped them learn how to build in first year were better than what I built in first year. Awesome!

Do I feel a twinge of envy when I see a 12-year-old girl publishing books and speaking at TED? Yes, a little bit. But it’s drowned out by a feeling of inspiration for doing it, pride that the world makes it possible, and excitement about what can come next.

You know what’s even more inspiring? The people who discover their passions late in life, and make a difference anyway. The people who develop and deepen their understanding into something that changes the world. Life is not a sprint. It’s a marathon, and we’re all in it together.

There will always be someone luckier than you are, and someone less lucky. There will always be someone who knows more and someone who knows less. It’s what you do with what you have that makes you who you are. It’s okay if you didn’t start ten years ago. Start now. Find and develop your passion.

Thanks to Mylene Sereno for the nudge to write about this. Hang in there! Everyone starts somewhere.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

On circumstances and somebodies

I had all four of my wisdom teeth taken out this morning to avoid complications later on. The anaesthetist (a woman named Sandra) wired me up with a blood pressure monitor, two heart rate monitors around my forearms, and an oxygen-level monitor on the tip of my finger. She numbed me with nitrous oxide (laughing gas), which brought on a stronger version of the light-headedness I feel when I hyperventilate. She then stuck an IV into me and gave a powerful sedative. As promised, I was completely out, and I woke up in the recovery room with W- holding my hand. (Win!)

I’m sure I’ll find out what the oral surgeon was like over the next few days. I hope he was great. Although it’s hard to imagine anyone being as great as W-. If you need to be stuck on a liquid/creamy diet, I recommend finding someone like him, because he’s going to make it awesome.

Lunch was congee made with the chicken/turkey stock, soft glutinous rice disintegrating on a still-numb tongue. I ate it very carefully because I didn’t want any rice getting stuck in places  that would be hard to clean, cooling my congee to avoid burning myself. For dessert, there was leftover filling from a lemon meringue pie.

Two acetaminophen-codeine phosphate painkiller pills and a nap later, it was dinner time. (Just like Timecat!)

When I woke up and headed downstairs, I found egg custard and egg tarts cooling under cookie sheets (to protect them from curious cats), lemon filling in the making (to use up extra tart shells), Jello in the fridge, and rice pudding in the planning. W- had been busy.

There are all sorts of soups in the pantry, too. I’m looking forward to raiding our stash of cream of mushroom soup.

Dinner will be congee (pureed this time), and there are all sorts of things for dessert.

It would be such a hassle to go and find restaurants that could accommodate my eating restrictions, taking the painkillers, and making it back to the car and to the house despite the drowsiness.

This would have been even less fun on my own. Or worse: battling for fridge space with housemates.

It still hurts to swallow. I’m still looking forward to my next dose of painkillers. I still hope don’t end up with dry socket, which appears to be the major complication. It’s reassuring to know that dry socket only happens in about 5% of cases and I don’t have any of the aggravating factors that typically bring it on.

All of my work is taken care of, I’m being taken care of, and life is good.

Now to explore the food options…

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

A little less wise, a little more awesome

When I talk about Sacred Harp singing with my friends from college, they all look at me like I’m crazy. “Right, I go sing 18th century hymns set to music in the 19th century (and later,) with my hippie and queer friends in quasi-archaic harmonies. It’s a blast!” This isn’t my tradition, both in the sense that I don’t come from a sacred harp singing family, and in the sense that I come from a particularly unobservant Jewish family.

There’s something about Sacred Harp, that I think is hard to describe. Everyone comes to it for different worlds, and there are a lot of people who grew up with it and/or identify as Christian in the community. While I think most people who sing Sacred Harp find it a deeply fulfilling experience, for many its as much about the shared experience, the guttural experience of the chords, and the “sacred/special space” as it is about the texts. This is something that I think is pretty difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t felt a singing.

I mentioned a while ago my interest in writing hymns in the tradition of the sacred harp, and I don’t have anything to present to you yet, or even some example of what I’m playing with, as I haven’t actually constructed anything. I do have the following observation.

The texts and aesthetics of the Sacred Harp is encapsulated with what I think is probably a not very contemporary view of the divine. In my reading, the texts display a relationship to the divine that is distant and detached. I might even say reserved and tentative. The speakers in the text are not individuals but more collectively constituted persons–this fits well with the way the music is sung–and the speakers generally do not interact with or speak to the divinity directly, except possibly to give thanks or appreciation. Like the harmonies themselves, the texts are spare and stark; indeed I suspect their simplicity makes the tunes easier to sing (words are almost always easier to sing than shapes,) while being very careful to not distract from the tunes.

As I said, this isn’t my tradition, at all, in addition to the structural constraints of the form (common meter, for the most part,) I think the stylistic constraints present the larger challenge. I’m trying to figure out how to write text that isn’t cloyingly spiritual, and that fits my own worldview (such as it is,) but that also respects this kind of spiritual aesthetic, for lack of a better term. I’ve been reading up on various religious phenomena, contemplative orders, and the Religious Society of Friends. Because it seems appropriate.

As is, I think always the case, minimalism is always a lot harder than it looks. I’ll keep you all posted!

I learned a lot from the Art of Marketing conference even before it started. To take advantage of someone else’s affiliate link discount and the group ticket purchase, I coordinated a group purchase with two friends, saving ourselves $100 each. It was easier than I expected, thanks to the joys of broadcasting on Twitter and receiving money through Interac.

CONTENT

Mitch Joel: New media isn’t like old media. Why are we still using old-media paradigms of broadcasting? Reboot your marketing. Interesting stories/points: Burning the ships, SnapTell, more grandparents than high school students (comments point out logical flaws in the headline, though), 40% sleeping while watching TV, negative review converts more readily to a sale, semantics: negative review can be great, 20% completely new searches on Google every day, Journey and Arnel Pineda

Seth Godin: Be an artist instead of a cog. Solve interesting problems. Risk getting booed off the stage. Invent the next step. Work around your lizard brain. Characteristics of indispensable people: connected, creative, able to handle complexity, good at leading tribes, inspiring, have deep domain knowledge, passionate. Ship. Thrash at the beginning, not the end. People say: we need you to lead us. Work can be a platform to create art.

Sally Hogshead: Factors of fascination: Mystique, power, lust, prestige, alarm, vice, trust. People will spend a lot on things that are fascinating or things that help them become fascinating.

James Othmer: Not about campaigns, it’s about commitments. Persuasion – voice – engagement – immersion. Create a story that invites people in. Learn from movies and entertainment. Pay attention to continuity. Create a story that hangs together.

Max Lenderman: Be compelling, contextual, visceral. Story about skits in rural India, virtual ary, branded spaces, Camp Jeep, Flame (Whopper perfume), Kwik-E mart (7-11), Tide free laundry

Dan Heath: Change: Find the bright spots. Not recipe, but process. Skip true but useless knowledge. Focus on the signs of hope. What’s working right now and how can we do more of it? Direct the rider, motivate the elephant, shape the path. We change behavior by working with the elephant. See – feel – change. Find the feeling. Shape the path: Tweak the environment. Amsterdam urinal spillage story (fly). Most people try to change 5-7 times before they succeed. What makes you think you’ll get it on the first try?

PRESENTATION

Video can be a shortcut for sharing emotional stories.

Slick ad-like animations (soundtrack only, no voice) detract, though. The shift in attention is a jarring.

Some professional speakers read slides, apologize for themselves, turn their backs on the audience, have low-contrast slides, use ineffective fonts, use jargon, get lost without notes… Plenty of opportunities here.

Big difference between people who give lots of presentations (ex: Seth Godin, Dan Heath, Mitch Joel) and people who haven’t given as many.

Vivid language, metaphors, stories, funny pictures = awesome.

Key message and simple framework essential for helping people follow what you’re saying.

Good talks are focused on you, not the speaker.

Well-chosen transitions/animations make a presentation look extra-polished. (Dan Heath – good example.)

Meta

1600 people filled the auditorium. Lots of need for insight.

Choice of topics shows that audience is still mostly struggling with shift to digital.

Advantages of attending conference over reading business books: see what speakers focus on, watch videos illustrating stories, pick up presentation tips.

Got so tempted to dig into some presentations and experiment with their structures. May want to turn that into presentation coaching someday.

—

I liked Dan Heath’s content the most. I like Dan’s presentation style and Seth’s presentation style about evenly.

Next actions for me: Track down stories they shared; collect interesting stories, videos, and pictures; continue learning and sharing material.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

What I learned from The Art of Marketing

I couldn’t find any Free Software to back up my Android phone contacts list. After some stumbling around and reading a ton of instructions (none of which got me where I needed to go), I came up with a simple way to do it by hand.

Use adb shell to get to the phone, then do “su” followed by “dd if=/data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts.db of=/sdcard/contacts.db”.

That will put your contacts on your sdcard, where you can adb pull it with “adb pull /sdcard/contacts.db”.

Replace ‘pull’ with ‘push’ to put contacts on the sdcard, then replace if and of in the dd command to put the db back in the dir where the phone expects it.

The whole thing should be rather easily scriptable if you’re so inclined.

About a week I stumbled on this interesting manifesto by Tim Maly on why we should unlink our feeds. I recommend you read the full article, but the heart of the matter is that you’re making a terrible mess of things by sending your feeds from one social network to all the others. You do a disservice to people who are following you on one network (by making them see everything else on all your other networks) and you spoil the mood and general atmosphere that you’re dumping into.

While I agree with the theory in general, I can’t bring myself to go the whole nine yards and completely disconnect everything. A related article by Alexis Madrigal argues that the unlinking doesn’t work with Twitter. Twitter has no memory and Twitter is most useful when you have other meatier services (like a blog, website or even just Facebook) that give people a better idea of who you are. The author argues that Twitter’s relative impermanence means that it’s worth piping your Twitter stream into something more permanent. For my part however, I see things the other: I want Twitter to be my catch-all because it is impermanent.

The New Old Deal

Here’s the deal: I accept that cross-linking feeds leads to some amount of pollution and that’s not something I should be subjecting my friends too. My friends on Last.fm don’t care about how many billions of floating point calculations I’m running at the moment and the readers of this blog probably don’t care about my thoughts on modern instrumental music. But as Madrigal puts it, Twitter is different. I feel uncomfortable calling Twitter a social network. To me it’s  more like a broadcast service. You send out little snippets and anyone connected can read it. Of course you could have a private feed and carefully control your followers, but I feel like that’s just a holdover from email (where spam is a clear and present danger). Also, Twitter is not email. It takes far less overhead to skip something that you don’t care about and personally at least, I don’t feel the same pressing urgency for my Twitter inbox as I do for my email.

When someone follows me on my Twitter account, I want people to understand that they’re getting the whole deal. They are getting my 140-character updates (which make up the bulk of my stream) but they are also getting my regular tech-related articles as well my discoveries online. Tim Maly notes that time is precious and accounts are cheap and it seems that he was talking primarily about other peoples time. While that is true, my time is also precious and so is my mental overhead. As an example, I take myself.

Account Overload?

I could, right now, split my Twitter stream into at least three separate accounts: one for updates only, one for my blog and tumblelog and one for my Last.fm feed. Thanks to Twitterfeed, I can set things up automatically to post to whichever account I want. That’s all fine and dandy and I’m really tempted to do it. But what happens when I have a thought about music that isn’t engendered by Last.fm? Does it go into statuses, music or both? Do I really want to tell my close friends that they now have to follow me on three different accounts to get everything (not to mention the overhead of @-reply conversations that could easily start crossing accounts)? Should I have a fourth account that pulls everything in for those who want it? I’ll be the first to admit that my example is somewhat contrived and probably a worst case scenario, but it deserves some thought. I would rather have Twitter collect everything with a disclaimer that people might be getting more than they bargained for.

As for pulling out of Twitter to somewhere else, I’ll agree that’s just a bad idea. Twitter has grown it’s own syntax with @replies and hashtags and the like which really make no sense elsewhere. The only place that you should even consider piping Twitter to is your Facebook status. As a friend of mine said when he dabbled in Twitter briefly: “It was like setting my Facebook status, except that’s all I could do”. Point taken. Even then, it’s a good idea to sanitize your stream to remove all the Twitter-speak. I use the Tweeter application which gives you some good filtering abilities.

In conclusion

• Cross-linking your social networks is a bad idea.
• Except for Twitter. It makes a certain amount of sense to pipe your feeds to Twitter.
• Exporting Twitter to elsewhere is also a bad idea, because of Twitter-speak, except maybe for your Facebook status, if properly sanitized.

As an addendum, if you do decide to use Twitter as your catch-all, I suggest you standardize on a solution. Many services give you the option of piping to Twitter from within the service yourself. That may be fine if you have one or two services and want your posts to appear immediately, but the overhead grows as the number of services grow (and each service has the options in a different place). I recommend using RSS as your glue and piping things through Twitterfeed. There will be a short delay, but I don’t think that will much of an issue for most people.

Did my first Ignite talk last night, at Ignite Toronto 3. It was fun! Scary, yes. But fun, and I hope I convinced at least one person to share more of what he or she knows. Here are some things I learned along the way:

Five minutes will fly by. Don’t worry. All you need to do is do a commercial and point people to where they can find out more. You have plenty of time to make an impression. TV spots are typically 30 seconds long. You have the equivalent of 10 TV commercials to make an impression in. You can do it.

Instead of starting with a bigger presentation and trying to squeeze it into five minutes, start with your key message and expand that to fit five minutes. It’s easier that way.

Write your script, plan your slides, plan a key point for each slide, and then let go of your script. Focus on getting your key point for each slide across, and improvise whatever you need to make it shorter or longer. This means you don’t have to stand around waiting for a slide to change (you can always just add more detail!) or stress out if your slides seem to be going at lightning speed (just say your key point).

Don’t put a lot of text on your slides. If you can, don’t put any text on slides shown when you’re speaking. Text makes people read. Reading makes people stop listening. You’re going to be too nervous to give them time to read. Make it easy for people to focus on you.

You can either apologize for mistakes or focus on getting your message across. Focusing on communicating your message is more useful and fun. People don’t expect you to be perfect.

Put your notes or script online so that people can read the things you forgot to say. You can post it after the session if you don’t want to spoil your punchlines.

An easy way to remember your slides: Figure out your key point for each slide and the transitions between them. It’s easier to remember when it all flows. Tweak it until it feels natural. Then review your slides. For each slide, practice remembering your key message and the transition to the next slide. That way, you always know what the next slide is.

Practice the timing so that you can get a sense of how much can fit into 15 seconds. More important: practice the timing so that you can get used to recovering from timing errors. This is really helpful. People don’t mind if your speech isn’t perfectly synchronized with your slides. If you can keep it reasonably on track, that’s great.

Use a short description and bio, to keep the flow smooth.

Make a placeholder entry on your blog and use that link in the bio so that organizers can link to your speaker notes / presentation without having to make last-minute web updates.

Watch other presentations for inspiration. Plenty of great examples out there.

How to deliberately practice timing (very handy!): Print out your script, notes, or slides. Set up a 15-second looping countdown presentation. While this is counting down from 15 to 1, practice “scenes” from your presentation. You don’t have to do them in order, and you don’t have to do them all the way through, although that helps. I find it useful to repeat one scene until it feels okay, and then move on to the next one. It’s also helpful to run through the entire thing at least once.

You can reuse the timing presentation to help you keep track of time during your talk. But five minutes goes by really quickly, and if you’re making eye contact, you’re not going to look at your timing laptop. Don’t worry about getting everything perfectly timed. Focus on getting your message across and to adjusting as needed.

You can practice outside an Ignite event by recording presentations. You can also practice by doing your talk for a friend. Tag a fellow presenter and work out those butterflies by practicing with each other.

Another long reflection on my process: Thoughts on preparing an Ignite-style presentation

More specific notes for myself:

Things to remember for future versions of my talk: introverts aren’t likely to be out at a bar with 199 other people. They’re going to be at home, waiting for the Youtube replay. Like, duh. Maybe a different way to frame these presentation tips?

Also, raise-hands polling is hard with a harsh spotlight. I couldn’t see anyone until I shaded my eyes and adjusted to the darkness.

Next for me: Remote Presentations That Rock (March 8, rerun), branding (March 8 PM), client workshop (March 18-19), then PresentationCamp on March 23.

Video to be posted in the next three weeks, I think.

Fun!

Great stuff from other people: How to give a great Ignite talk

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Presentation lessons from Ignite; deliberate practice

This post represents two major ideas, first of ”app stores,” and second of “Sass” or “software as a service,” which seems to be the prevailing business model for contemporary technology companies that aren’t stuck in the 80s. With reflection on free software, open source, and the technology industry as a whole. Because that’s sort of my thing.

On the one hand the emergence of these tightly controlled software distribution methods represent a fairly serious threat to free software, as does SaaS particular insofar as SaaS exploits a GPL loophole. On the other hand these models, potentially, represent something fundamentally awesome for the technology and software world, because it represents a commonly accepted paradigm where users of software recognize the value of software, and the creators of software can get compensated for their work. It’s not without its flaws, but I think it opens interesting possibilities.

Free and Freedom

Obviously app stores present a quandary for those of us involved in the free software world. On the one hand app stores are not free, which is a trivial complaint. It’s not the cost, around which “free software” is truly centered, the true failing here is that creators of software cannot choose to participate in an app store system and distribute source code: the interaction and relationship between developers and users is very scripted and detached. These issues all grow out of the reality that app stores–by design–are they’re controlled by a single institution or organization.

Which isn’t itself a bad thing–there are contexts where centralized organization means things get done more effectively, but centralized authority is not without risk. So while this question isn’t resolved, it’s also the kind of question that requires ongoing attention and reflection.

Paying for Software

At the same time, I think it’s very true that the “app store model” and indeed the more successful “Web 2.0” business models (e.g. new businesses on the web, post-2003/2004) have posited that:

Software is a thing of value that users should expect to pay for.

And that’s not, at least to my mind, a bad thing for the software world. Free or otherwise. Or not always a bad thing, particularly for end-user software. For larger pieces of software (in the “Enterprise”) money is largely exchanged for support contracts and for services related to the software: custom features, IT infrastructure, etc. For end user software, support contracts and custom features don’t tend to make a lot of sense in context: so perhaps moving back to the exchange of money for software isn’t a bad thing.

The connection between “value” (which software almost certainly creates), and currency in the context of software is fraught. Software isn’t scarce, and will never be (by nature.) At the same time it does have value and I think it’s worth considering how to arrange economies that involve exchanging money for software. There are a lot of factors that can effect the way that app stores might work, and I think given the possibility for causing interesting things to happen we shouldn’t dismiss them out of hand.

Related Reading

Despite my (potential) lack of clarity at the moment, I think the following posts reflect some of my earlier thoughts on this subject.

• Package Management and why your Platform Needs and App Store

• iPad Reactions

• Free Network Businesses

• There’s a Widget for that

• Owning Bits

In the wake of recent disasters in both Haiti and Chile, the lack of working telecoms infrastructure has greatly hindered local communication. The first relief workers to hit the ground had trouble talking to each other (let alone the outside world), and that was very bad for the relief effort. Inefficiencies that retard relief efforts result in more death and suffering in times of crisis.

There are two problems that contribute to broken local telecom systems. First, there wasn’t much infrastructure to begin with. Haiti is a poor nation with political risk, and like many such nations, the environment doesn’t easily support investment in large ISP infrastructure. So Haiti had some slow access, but even before the devastation, local infrastructure could not easily handle the increased demand presented by the people flooding in to help.

Second, what little access existed was not designed to withstand natural disasters. Service providers in Haiti are like commercial ISPs everywhere. They favor centralized networks that are easily maintained and controlled (and thus easily monetized). But all those profitable choke points are also centralized failure points, And those
central points of failure are tragically vulnerable at times of natural disaster.

That’s not to say the ISPs are malicious. Various telecoms companies and charities rose to the challenge and poured a lot of effort into rebuilding the local infrastructure. Their approach, though, is to do what they do best: construct big, expensive, centralized investment that will fall over quickly when stressed.

The better solution is for people to use mesh networks (ideally, to be using them even before disaster strikes), in which computers network directly with each other instead of going through the centralized ISP intermediary. Mesh networks are ad-hoc and self-healing, hop out to the world wherever a connection is found, and don’t depend on centralized choke points. If mesh networks were in place in Haiti and Chile, everybody’s laptop would be part of the communications infrastructure, and at the very least people on the ground could talk to each other. Mesh networking is a technology that could save lives.

What’s more, meshes are cheap to deploy and they don’t require centralized ISP investments. That makes them perfect for markets that aren’t supporting the investment necessary to provide the more usual centralized broadband access.

Mesh networking is maturing (see this Ars Technica state-of-the-industry piece on the subject). It’s time to make mesh capability a standard part of everybody’s setup, both to bring access to under-resourced areas and more importantly because doing so will save lives at times of crisis.

It’s incredible to watch the company grow. For example, take these recent discussions of a proposed change in Web policy to filter bandwidth-consuming content. The web filtering pilot was not widely announced, but it came to people’s attention through social networks. People’s responses were grounded in two of IBM’s core values dedication to every client’s success (including automotive and beverage clients!) and trust and personal responsibility. On seeing the conversations going on, the policymakers not only listened to the discussion, but acknowledged the need for people’s input. Thanks to the discussion, the pilot has been postponed until a more acceptable solution can be found.

Isn’t that amazing? Here are some of the things that I think we at IBM are doing really well:

• We care about our values. We know them, we’re passionate about them, and we can cite them when things don’t feel right. In this case, it’s easy to understand the conflicting needs: the need to deal with waste, and the need to feel trusted and personally responsible. The discussion brought up many alternative ways to shape behaviour that are more in line with our core values, such as sharing information and helping people self-regulate. Our values aren’t a dry corporate-written list hidden three levels deep on a rarely-visited website. They matter to us.
• We’re not afraid to share our thoughts and work towards a solution. Can you imagine what this would have been like in an autocratic organization? There would be quiet grumbling, frustration, and attrition. Or can you imagine if we were all emotionally detached already, thinking: It’s just work, who cares, I’m out of here anyway? It’s fantastic that people are not afraid to share their opinions through our social networking tools, and they do so in a non-blaming, constructive way.
• Leaders listen. Can you imagine how this could’ve gone other ways? If the team had gotten defensive and entrenched in their position, then there would’ve been a deadlock on policy. The people who were passionate about this topic might have been seen as time-wasters and encouraged to leave. Instead, the policymakers listened, participated in the discussion, and saw there was a need for more thinking around this topic.

We don’t need to be a full democracy – that would require a lot of time and engagement! – but we become smarter as an organization when people have voices and the desire to make things better.

I wonder if this approach could extend to other aspects as well. Right now, for example, resource actions trigger that fear and demoralization. What if the thinking processes leading up to resource actions could be as open as this? Could we collectively find alternatives that are more in line with our values? Will we feel better about any necessary cuts knowing that we were involved in the process and it really is the best option?

There are so many possibilities. I love what we’re doing. I think it’s amazing. I want to help more parts of IBM have these conversations, and I want to help clients transform their organizations too.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Change, culture, consensus, and the company we live in

During the Art of Marketing lunch break, Alan Lepofsky wanted to know how I got to know his team when he was at IBM. I explained that Matthew Starr had invited me to the IBM Web 2.0 Summit even though I was just a graduate student doing research, and that was when I got to meet Carol Jones and Alan’s other colleagues. When he heard that, Alan told me this story about the word “just”, from when he was twenty-five years old.

One of his mentors had taken him to a very exclusive restaurant, the kind that looks like a home. It was a scene right out of the movies. The waiter greeted his mentor by name and offered his mentor’s usual table. His mentor ordered a drink. When the waiter asked Alan what he would like, Alan said: “I’ll just have a Diet Coke, please.”

After the waiter left, Alan’s mentor told him to never use the word “just” to make himself or his decisions smaller. Instead of saying “I’ll just have a Diet Coke”, Alan could say, “I’ll have a Diet Coke.” There’s a subtle difference, but an important one.

Reflecting on this in the afternoon, I couldn’t help but be struck by how many of the presenters apologized for themselves. It was casual — self-deprecating humour, apologies for slides or technique, apologies for nervousness — and almost unconscious, like something that people say to cover up gaps. Perhaps they thought of themselves as “just” themselves, too.

How many times have I asked for just water at a restaurant? Perhaps it’s to forestall the questions: Perrier? Carbonated water? Bottled water? But it seems even more awkward to clarify with “regular water” or “house water” or “tap water”. (What do people ask for?)

How many times have I described myself as just a lucky newbie? I often feel that I am. I feel like that child in the IBM Linux commercial, receiving insights from all sorts of amazing people. But to call it luck would be to frame this experience as difficult to reproduce, and
to call myself just a newbie dismisses the beginner’s mind that I deliberately develop and maintain – the one that lets me focus on learning and sharing as much as possible instead of staying within my comfort zone.

So who am I, if not just a newbie?

I am excited and amazed by the opportunities that I have. I am doing something incredibly right. I want to figure out not only how to do even better, but how I can share that with as many people as possible and help them do their best.

And yes, I am going to change the world. =) Why not? It’s possible. How wonderful can it be?

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Not just a word

On Hiatus

Over the past several years, this blog has gone from something that a few patient friends read to something with farther reach than I ever hoped or intended. This has been, alternately, flattering, infuriating, exhilarating, and terrifying.

I write for myself. Always have, always will. Writing helps me structure my ideas. I sit down to write when I’ve had something kicking around in my head that just won’t quit nagging at me. By the time I’m done, I can put that idea to rest and move on. Unfinished thoughts structured via writing yield catharsis. Ideally, this is how the process works for me.

Lately, I’ve found the cathartic returns from blog-format writing to be diminishing. The ideas I’m trying to express never really get put to rest in my head when I write, now. Instead, they spark whole conversations that I never intended to start in the first place, conversations that leech precious time and energy while contributing precious little back. Negative responses I can slough off, but the sense that I’m not really crystalizing my unset thoughts by writing here is what bothers me.

So. It’s time for me to take a break from blogging for a while.

What Might Have Been

This is a hard decision. Right now, I have a number of posts queued up:

• One about how developer platforms are communities first and products second, and about how healthy platforms grow and mature organically.
• One about the creative possibilities of the iPad, as a sort of counterweight to my criticisms of the device’s closed design.
• One about how Objective-C has been successful despite being a fairly limited programming language, and what other language and API designers can learn from that unlikely success.
• One about the necessity of treating the creative process behind technology as if you were performing magic, and the worth of opening your mind to unorthodox methodologies and approaches.

When I think about not publishing these things, I’m a little heartbroken. I enjoy sharing ideas, even when my ideas are shot down. I try to get better at communicating, at arguing, at persuading. But lately, I’ve been caught in a rut. I feel as if my writing isn’t really improving thanks to blogging, certainly not to the degree that bloggers I admire like Mark Pilgrim have improved in the time I’ve been reading them. I feel as if I stumble from one unintentionally inflammatory post to the next without gaining any particular insight.

A feedback loop of positive emails and tweets has kept me blogging despite my frustrations, but I find I’m no happier after I finish a post than when I started. If anything, blogging leaves me stressed out, disappointed, or just stuck with the sense that I’ve wasted my time. That’s why I need to take a public step back from writing here for a good long stretch.

What May Yet Be

I want to focus my creative energies outside of work on something more substantial than blogging. Co-authoring Programming Scala was deeply rewarding in a way that few other things in my life have ever been. I have another book project in the works, and I’d like to embark on that in the near future. It’s big project, though; daunting. I’ve been using blogging as a way of putting it off while still satisfying my itch to write.

I’ve also been a lax open source citizen. My coworkers at Twitter are cranking out great open source code. I’m not pulling my weight in this respect – only one of those great projects on Twitter’s open source page has my avatar next to it. I have at least as many open source projects queued up as I do potential blog posts, and those projects may be a better illustration of how I view the craft of programming. Code can speak louder than words.

I’ll still contribute to Graceless Failures, the group blog of Scala tips and tricks I started in 2008. I’ll probably write for the Twitter Engineering Blog on occasion. I may yet find another outlet for my writing on programming, particularly as it pertains to the study of programming languages; a simple and frictionless format like Reg Braithwaite’s homoiconic is appealing. In the past, I’ve found it useful to have a dedicated place to dive deep into a particular topic of interest. This particular blog has always been too “general interest” to get highly technical.

Of course, I’ll be tweeting away. Over time, I’m coming to realize what sort of messages I can communicate effectively via Twitter, and what sort I can’t. Twitter works least well for me when I try to cram big arguments down to 140 characters. Every medium has its particular sweet spot for a writer, and I’ve found that a combination of geeky humor, technical information-sharing, musical recommendations, and tidbits about my travels, drinking, and dining seem to make for the happiest followers on Twitter.

The Next Few Months

There are still friends who read this blog to hear about what’s going on in my life.

In about two weeks, I’m getting married to a sweet, funny, smart, beautiful woman that I met while living here in the Bay Area thanks to OkCupid. When we started dating, marriage was the furthest thing from my mind. True love will sneak up on you. Let it.

We’ll be wed at San Francisco City Hall on Friday, March 12th. That night, we’ll celebrate over cocktails at a local restaurant with our friends and family. A couple of days later we get on a plane for Saint Lucia, where we’ll spend a week in quiet paradise.

In May, my then-wife and I will be moving to Portland, Oregon, where I’ll continue to work for Twitter. Portland and the Pacific Northwest captured my heart and imagination in the time I’ve spent there, and I’m eager to get involved in the local community (tech and otherwise).

After all that, who knows. Maybe by later this year I’ll be ready to write here again. Maybe I’ll be in midst of researching my next book, too heads-down to come back to blogging. I’m not sure. But I thank you for having read this far, and I hope you’ll be generous enough with your time to read again, someday.

I said to a new writing friend ”I’m young, particularly given that anyone under the age of 40 in the science fiction community is considered ‘a young writer.’” Which is, more or less true (on both counts,) and brought on a couple of trains of thought that I’d like to explore in a bit more depth:

1. The “youth” of a writer is long, indeed much longer than one would expect.

2. I’ve found a community of science fiction writers. Admittedly I’m new and very much on the outside, but I find it delightful that all of the “things I do,” are part of communities one sort or another: Sacred Harp singing, Morris Dancing (in the Midwest, particularly,) Contra Dancing (on the East Cost, particularly,) Free/Open Source software, blogging, and apparently Science Fiction writing.¹

The Portrait of the Author During Youth

I’ve written here before about the challenges and inherent problems of “being a writer:” the work we do is potentially hard to understand, good writing is more than the sum of its parts, and because writing is a sign of education for most people, sometimes it’s difficult to figure out (even those of us who “are writers”) to figure out what’s “writing,” and what’s just throwing words together.

Now to be fair, I’m not complaining that the period of “youth” as a writer is so long. This standard seems wrapped up in the idea that a large component of being a “real writer,” is having lived long enough to have enjoyed a great deal of unique experiences (which can inform your work,) and also to have had enough time writing “crap” to be able to have the (learned) skill of being able to construct quality texts.

It’s really hard to tell people, epically the young, that they need to “wait until they’re older.” But I think once we (I) get done with the pouting, there’s a pretty strong silver lining: the extended adolescence of the writer provides a longer window to read, to experiment, to apprentice to other writers, and to grow as a writer. Additionally, if the “youth” of a science fiction writer is longer than it is for writers in other fields (and I suspect it is, slightly,) the science fiction community has created a way to compensate for the exclusion of science fiction from most academic writing programs. These are all largely good things, to my mind.

Community Discourses

I think communities are fascinating, and I’m delighted to touch so many different and interesting communities. It seems to me that the formation of communities is very much not a project for youth. As young people, our communities are local, and based on where we go to school, where we live, even where we work. The communities I’m thinking about there are, in turn based on what we’re interested in and what we love to do. Although there’s a potential for insularity and self-selecting qualities, there’s also a great potential for diversity. There are a lot of different kinds of science fiction writers, sacred harp singers, folk dancers, open source hackers, and so forth.

There’s another interesting set of common factors for these communities: they’re all built around shared experiences and activities in the “real world” (as it is,) but the members of these communities tend to be scattered across a given geographic area. Though I don’t have much to compare this to, personally, but I think the ways that these communities are supported and connected through the Internet. As much as Facebook irritates me on a technological level, its done it’s job.

The principals under which communities function and adhere are not something I have a terribly firm grasp of, I must confess, but I know what I find myself in one, it’s a good thing indeed.

If depression has an evolutionary purpose, it's certainly not obvious. Depression makes people consider suicide and less interested in sex, which does not encourage the species' survival. But two evolutionary psychologists theorize that depression's purpose is enhanced mental skills. Sadness focuses the brain's attention on a conflict, and makes you better-equipped to make good decisions.

A fascinating New York Times magazine article entitled Depression's Upside explains that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) is the part of our brain that controls what we pay attention to.

Several studies found an increase in brain activity (as measured indirectly by blood flow) in the VLPFC of depressed patients. Most recently, a paper to be published next month by neuroscientists in China found a spike in “functional connectivity” between the lateral prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain in depressed patients, with more severe depressions leading to more prefrontal activity. One explanation for this finding is that the hyperactive VLPFC underlies rumination, allowing people to stay focused on their problem. [...] Human attention is a scarce resource — the neural effects of depression make sure the resource is efficiently allocated.

Therefore, when you're depressed, your brain kicks into total-focus mode, and sets you into a cycle of rumination on the problem at hand.

The downcast mood and activation of the VLPFC are part of a “coordinated system” that, Andrews and Thomson say, exists “for the specific purpose of effectively analyzing the complex life problem that triggered the depression.” If depression didn’t exist — if we didn’t react to stress and trauma with endless ruminations — then we would be less likely to solve our predicaments. Wisdom isn’t cheap, and we pay for it with pain.

Not everyone agrees with the positive spin on why depression exists, mostly because there are so many different types of depression--some triggered by events and problems, and others that persist for years without an obvious cause.

Ed Hagen, an anthropologist at Washington State University who is working on a book with Andrews, says that while the analytic-rumination hypothesis has persuaded him that some depressive symptoms might improve problem-solving skills, he remains unconvinced that it is a sufficient explanation for depression. “Individuals with major depression often don’t groom, bathe and sometimes don’t even use the toilet,” Hagen says. They also significantly “reduce investment in child care,” which could have detrimental effects on the survival of offspring. The steep fitness costs of these behaviors, Hagen says, would not be offset by “more uninterrupted time to think.”

Still, those who suffer from depression do get the benefits of enhanced mental skills.

Joe Forgas, a social psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, has repeatedly demonstrated in experiments that negative moods lead to better decisions in complex situations. The reason, Forgas suggests, is rooted in the intertwined nature of mood and cognition: sadness promotes “information-processing strategies best suited to dealing with more-demanding situations.” This helps explain why test subjects who are melancholy — Forgas induces the mood with a short film about death and cancer — are better at judging the accuracy of rumors and recalling past events; they’re also much less likely to stereotype strangers.

These mental boosts are often responsible for quality creative output.

In a survey led by the neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen, 30 writers from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop were interviewed about their mental history. Eighty percent of the writers met the formal diagnostic criteria for some form of depression. A similar theme emerged from biographical studies of British writers and artists by Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, who found that successful individuals were eight times as likely as people in the general population to suffer from major depressive illness.

(Emphasis mine.)

Even though I quoted it at length, this whole article is worth the read, especially for folks who tend toward depression. Knowing about the ways sadness can benefit you just might make you feel a little better.

Depression’s Upside [NYT via]

I’ve been thinking about essays on and off for the past few days. It all started when I was in the process of updating my static HTML website that I call Basu:shr. I have a section called essays which is currently populated mostly with papers that I wrote for various courses at college. Looking over some of my older work I realized that I didn’t really write longer pieces anymore. This blog is my primary writing activity at the moment and most of my posts are in the 700 to 1000 word range. I’m perfectly happy writing short articles because I’ve always admired brevity and conciseness (which is why I like Twitter as well). But at the same time, I’m slightly worried that I might be losing the ability of writing longer, more detailed pieces.

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

As I’ve pondered before, life is short and it takes a fair amount of dedicated effort and time to come up with something beautiful and useful. With the rise of the Internet and instantaneous communications, we’re becoming a culture that is very much used to continuous streams of small information packets. The essay is becoming a holdover from the old days when having long periods of times to do nothing but sit and read was common. However, there are a number of really good essayists alive today, and a lot of them are on the Internet. There’s Paul Graham, whose essays are practically the stuff of legend for programmers. There is also Steve Yegge who seems to have retired, but left behind a fairly large collection of essay-length material (including an article on why you should write a blog). Outside the Internet there is Warren Buffet who has written long detailed letters to shareholders for the last 32 years each of which is an education in and of itself (and I can’t help but wonder how many shareholders actually read through them all).

I don’t think I’m making a mistake when I say that the essay is still alive and well today, albeit in somewhat modified forms. But the fact remains that putting out something of such length and depth takes up a lot of time and energy (not to mention the countless hours that go into accumulating the knowledge and organizing the thoughts that must flow into such a work). In many ways, writing an essay is similar to a software project. There is planning and preparation that must happen upfront, but nothing is really for certain until you sit down and start writing. Writing a good essay that other people will want to read and tell their friends about is no easier than writing good software that others will want to use.

Blog meet Essay

The blog and the essay are fundamentally different things. A blog is a magazine compared to an essay’s book. The blog as a format is great for some things: without easy blogging I probably wouldn’t be writing at all. But the rise of blogs (and accompanying software) has left the long form essay in the dark. You could simply write long articles and put them on your blog like Steve Yegge. But reverse chronological ordering really isn’t the best format for a collection of essays. For small numbers, a simple list of titles, maybe with a blurb is probably the best. Once you get to a larger number (Paul Graham for example), a simple list doesn’t cut it any more.

There is also the actual writing experience. Whenever you write a longer piece over the course of many days, you start to go back and visit the old parts. Part of it is for editing, but you also want to read what you’ve read before so that you know you’re keeping your essay coherent. Blog software doesn’t easily let you do this. I know ?WordPress stores revisions, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy, upfront way to see diffs of different versions against each other. I suppose a wiki could be better as an essay platform. Dokuwiki has excellent visual diff function and Writeboard also lets you compare versions.

Perhaps we do need some sort of specialized software for writing essays. Something that puts drafting editing at the center as opposed to at the edges. Personally I’ve been using Emacs with Git to get some of the same result, but I would really like to see a webapp that can do something like that. After all, there isn’t much use in writing an essay if no one is going to read it (and how better to get people to read it than to put it out on the Internet).

I, Essayist

Even though there may be no quick-and-easy publishing solution like ?WordPress for essays, writing an essay is far less dependent on tech tools than most other things today. Like I said before, Emacs and Git do a fairly good job together. I would like to be able to put all my drafts online with some sort of commenting system so that people can see the evolution of my essays, but I’ll settle for just being able to show a final product.

Separate from showing the essay is the mental exercise of actually sitting down and writing the essay (and then revising and editing). That’s something that I’ll have to get back into the habit of doing and will probably take time. Subject matter is also an issue, but a good starting point would be to simply expand on the themes that I cover in this blog, while making sure that people who read my blog can read my essays without getting bored (and vice versa). Expect my first essay to be on essays, sometime in the next few weeks.

Creativity loves constraints, and the Ignite style of presentations has lots of constraints. Your speech has to fit into five minutes. You have room to make one point and perhaps tell one story. You have twenty slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds, although you can slow down by duplicating slides or speed up by using timed animation. You’re giving your presentation to a live audience, so you need to be part actor and part stand-up comedian. Oh, and you’re just one in a long line-up of five-minute speeches, so you need to stand out if you want people to remember your point.

My first Ignite-style presentation will be The Shy Presenter, which I’ll share at IgniteTO this Wednesday. It’ll be a fun experiment that builds on a lot of things I already do for my regular talks.

Full notes

So let me take apart my process to see how I can improve it, or if I’ve picked up any tips that other people might find useful.

I write about a topic before preparing a talk for it so that I can find out what I know, whether it’s useful, and whether I care enough to invest a few hours into preparing a presentation. (Yes, it’s that old skills-needs-passion sweet spot. Handy!)

Ideally, I’ll have blogged about a topic often enough to figure out the key points I want to communicate, and then it’s just a matter of reviewing the previous posts, summarizing them, and editing the points. Not having lots of blog posts about a topic is often a danger sign, as I learned two years ago:

But sometimes an interesting presentation opportunity comes up, and I’ll flesh out new material after people have okayed my title/abstract.

I’ll mindmap what people come in with, what I want them to leave with, and what I can put together to help them along the way.  I also find it useful to braindump a quick list of points I might want to make.

I like making my talks short. I usually try to fit my talks into 7-15 minutes, which is good practice in finding the core of a message and putting together a few supporting points. A good way to estimate this is to take your target words per minute and multiply it by your time, adjusting for pauses. I usually aim for 150wpm (in the middle of the 140-160wpm often suggested by books on public speaking), although I often end up speaking at 180-200wpm. Then I read things through and tweak the text until it fits.

Keeping it short and simple also makes it easy for me to remember. The shorter it is, the more I can improvise to fit the needs of time.

I post my speaker notes online. It lessens the surprise, but it makes the notes easy to share, search, and get feedback on.

Then I split my notes/script into segments. For Ignite, that’s about 37 words per segment. Editing smoothens things out.

At this point, I can usually think of a few simple ways to illustrate each segment. Sometimes I write out the visual sequence and then storyboard it. Other times, I go straight to the storyboard. Sometimes images or segments pop into my imagination, and I rework my writing to include it.

Then I draw the pictures and make slides. I usually use Inkscape because that makes it easy to edit my drawings to reasonably resemble my imagination. I’ve been experimenting with ?MyPaint lately, though. It takes more work, but it’s interesting.

I post the slides on Slideshare and add it to my blog post, again trading surprise for sharing, search, and feedback.

Once I’ve boiled the idea down to slides, I can work on remembering the key points for each slide. If the key points flow together and people get interested in a topic, they can always look up the full notes on my blog. That means I don’t have to worry about following the script word for word. So if it turns out I have less time than expected, or more time than expected, or I forget something or people want to learn more about something, I can adapt.

And then there’s the blog post on the day of the presentation, and the blog post following up on what I learned from the presentation, and the blog post following up on people’s questions, and the blog post about any revisions, and the blog post about process or content tips (like this one!), and the tweets and Slideshare embeds and all of those other things that mean that the four hours or so invested into preparing a presentation pay off several times over…

Here’s a totally numbers-from-a-hat estimate:

So that’s how I generally prepare my talks. =)

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Thoughts on preparing an Ignite-style presentation

Ok, so not really.

This post is mostly about playing a head game with yourself, in an effort to get more organized. But not “head games” in a bad way. On my to do list for the past few weeks I’ve had something like “write a blog post about todo list item titles,” because in light of this post about org-mode it seems like a topic in need of further definition. Basically my goal is to explore, the best way to think about what we have to do, to allow us to accomplish what we want to. The GTD system which so many people are enamored of present a few ideas on the topic, and while the GTD way is a good place to start thinking, it’s not a good place to stop thinking.

We’ve all done it. Made a todo list that we didn’t end up using for one reason or another. Todo lists, need to be useful: they should help us organize our day, and help us keep track of all the things wee need to accomplish. In a lot of ways, maintaining focus over our day and all of the tasks that nag at us are contradictory, so todo lists are failed by design.

The first, and frequent issue in my own organization are lists and plans that go too far and list too many “actionable items.” This divides your time and actions into too many little pieces, leading to a number of outcomes. The first risk is that you might start to ignore the list entirely because it’s too long and complicated, even if it’s an illusion caused by the size of the items on your list. Ergo, the total length of the list you “work off of,” needs to be manageable and comprehensible.

The second risk, is that, an overactive todo list is one where you over plan for yourself, such that your list–while accurate and comprehensible–isn’t useful. Beyond simply providing “outboard memory,” the best todo lists allow us to structure and make plans for our working time. When working (e.g. writing, at the computer, etc.), I like to have my projects chopped up into pieces that can conceivably get done in the time I have to work on them, but that give me the time and freedom to bury myself on a side project, or follow inspiration or a train of thought to its completion when needed. While effective todo lists help you structure your time, flexibility is still valuable.

There are issues on the other end of the spectrum as well: when lists are too short, and the “actionable items” on a list are too conceptually large, the effectiveness of lists is degraded as well. A reminder to “write a novel,” even a specific novel, is less than helpful for helping you accomplish something in the moment. Even a dozen items, on a list where you end up checking something off once every day or two doesn’t help you figure out “Ok, what do I need to work on now.” Besides the chances are, if the items are too large and the list is too small, that you probably have it memorized anyway.

Right? Other strategies?

My first full month back in Canada this year was packed with goodness. I dove into interesting challenges at work, presented The Shy Connector to an international audience, and wrote a lot about writing and presenting. One of my mentors gave me a fantastic opportunity to learn not only about interviewing skills but also about Smarter Cities by taking me along on his interviews. I learned a lot about life, too, and got back into the swing of preparing lots of stuff ahead so that life runs smoothly.

What’s up for next month? Lots of work involving documenting and organizing assets, connecting the dots, and sparking people’s imaginations. I’ve also got three presentations scheduled: The Shy Presenter (IgniteTO), a presentation on collaboration for a client workshop in the UK, and an internal IBM re-run of Remote Presentations That Rock. I tried to keep it to one presentation a month, but sometimes opportunities are hard to pass up.

Blog posts:

Sharing what you know

• Personal blog? Don’t worry about your strategy
• It’s not what you can’t write, it’s what you need to share
• Writing for love and fun
• The Shy Presenter: braindumping an introvert’s guide to public speaking

Work

• Thinking about indexing and connecting the dots
• Wiki organization challenge – thinking out loud
• Wiki information architecture thoughts
• The sweet spot at work
• Moving from testing to development
• I’d like to build the post-connector workplace
• Learning more about interviewing

Reflections on presentations

• Harvesting the backchannel bazaar of insights
• Lessons learned from microblogging talk
• Survey responses for TLE: Remote Presentations That Rock
• Kaizen: WITI: The Shy Connector

Wedding planning

• On vintage portaits and wedding photography
• Getting ready for a new adventure
• Patternicity, how things come together, and happiness
• How not to propose marriage

Life

• Seeds
• Circuses, pots, and cathedrals: three key stories
• Experiments in awesome
• Visualization of my blog categories

Weekly reviews

• Week ending February 7, 2010
• Week ending February 14, 2010
  Week ending February 21, 2010
• Week ending February 28, 2010

Misc: Winter, Fixing SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 132 for Karmic wireless on Asus Eee 1008HA, ACM Hypertext conference in Toronto this June; paper deadline Feb 14, Bug-hunting spreadsheets, Teapot, Always look on the bright side of life

Last month’s highlights: January 2010

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Monthly review: February 2010

Plans from last week:

Work

• [X] Conduct IBVA interviews (eep!)
• [X] Finalize preparations for Idea Lab
• [/] Create leader guide for Discovery Workshop
• [X] Finish UK visa application
• Also: Put together ID overview

Relationships

• [X] Bake more pies
• [X] Send invitations to my family
• [X] Assemble more things for care package
• Also: Stocked the fridge and freezer with lots and lots of make-ahead food (apple tarts, empanadas, pot pie, pasta, rice and beans, pandesal), yay!
• Treated W- to Toronto Opera Repertoire’s performance of “Marriage of Figaro”

Life

• [  ] Survive having my wisdom teeth extracted – Postponed to March 5 because of dentist’s schedule
• [  ] Re-explore a liquid diet =( – Likewise!
• Also: Learned how to make pandesal. Mmm
• Signed up for Ignite Toronto and prepared The Shy Presenter talk
• Refreshed part of my wardrobe
• Maxed out my RRSP for this year and next year
• Wrote a Perl script to automatically renew our library books using WWW::Mechanize

Plans for next week:

Work

• [  ] Prepare overview of Sametime Unyte and Lotus Connections Communities for my second-line manager
• [  ] Facilitate Idea Lab and summarize results
• [  ] Write about Idea Lab refinements
• [  ] Revise Innovation Discovery wiki
• [  ] Make UK travel arrangements
• [  ] Learn tons of cool stuff at The Art of Marketing
• [  ] Talk about productivity with mentees and contacts

Relationships

• [  ] Try a new recipe
• [  ] Finalize care package

Life

• [  ] Participate in Ignite Toronto
• [  ] Have wisdom teeth taken out
• [  ] Test evening themes for working on short-term goals

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Weekly review: Week ending February 28, 2010

Want to get started in public speaking?

There are thousands of books and blogs and classes with advice. To save you time, I’ve summarized them all for you:

Figure out your key message. Come up with a catchy acronym. Be clear.

Find a surprising fact. Tell a story. Ditch the bullet points. Use a clever title. Make your slides prettier. Use full-screen images. Use no images. Draw your diagrams.

Go to Toastmasters. Practice in front of a mirror. Practice with a friend. Practice with a small group. Videotape yourself.

Make eye contact. Don’t stare. Imagine your audience naked. Don’t read the slides. Watch others for inspiration. Practise. Practise. Practise.

Did you get all that? Are you ready?

Right. So let’s talk about what you need to know in order to get started. You can figure out the who and when and where. You can learn the how. But there’s a huge gap here because of two questions no one can answer for you:

Why would you get up there in the first place?

And what do you have to say?

Why speak? Why spend hours putting together a talk? Why risk stage fright, stutters, stammers, technical difficulties, hecklers, off-topic questions, incorrect information,  embarrassment, rejection?

There are lots of surprisingly good reasons. It doesn’t have to be about promoting yourself or working on your career.

Me, there are two reasons why I give presentations. First: I love learning. And short of making something a life-and-death matter, there’s nothing that makes you learn something more than teaching it to someone.

Second: I’m an introvert. It’s so hard for me to walk up to one person and say hello. You know what’s easier than that? Talking to 200 people. Particularly if I can rehearse first. Then people have an excuse to talk to me if they want to. So if you’re an introvert, give it a try. And if you’re an extrovert, give it a try too.

That’s why I speak. Learning is fun. I want to teach what I know. I want to learn from others, but I hate starting conversations.

What’s your reason? Why are you going to get up and speak?

For you, that question could be the worst question to ask. Here’s a surprise. That’s because you might not be able to find out your why until you figure out your what.

Don’t wait for some grand passion to sweep you away. Don’t wait for  the aha! moment. You’re not going to suddenly “get it”. Don’t let that stop you.

You won’t know why until you begin. It’s not going to become fun until you’re doing it. (And sometimes not even then). Just treat it as an experiment. A way to improve your communication skills.

How do you start?

You need to figure out what you have to say. This is very useful.

Now someone said, “I need you to do a presentation on X,” problem solved. But you’re probably starting from scratch. Try this simple question instead:

What do you know that someone else doesn’t? Write it down or go tell that someone about it.

What do you know that you didn’t know yesterday? What else do you know? What do you keep saying? What are you curious about? Share.

You don’t have to be an expert. You just have to help.

True story. The only reason I got started in public speaking was because some friends of mine were organizing a conference. By the third call for speakers, they sounded pretty desperate. I said, hey, I’m just a student, but I can talk about this if you really can’t find anyone, and I’m playing with that as a hobby. They booked me for two talks. I learned that even as a beginner, you can help other people learn.

Now you’ve got the raw material for a presentation. You’ve got the what. Share it and see how it makes people’s lives better. You’ve got the why. The when and where and who and how – that’s easy, once you get over that gap.

So think about this: What did you learn? How can you share it? Why does that matter?

Figure out your what and your why, and everything else will follow.

What can I help you learn?

Draft of upcoming talk for Ignite Toronto based on previous braindump. Short enough to fit into five minutes, I hope. If you like this, you might also like The Shy Connector. Have fun!

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

The Shy Presenter: Why conventional advice on learning public speaking sucks, and how to really get started

In his web-site-turned-book Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far, Stefan Sagmeister says keeping a diary supports personal development. I couldn't agree more. Writing is a form of thinking, and journaling is a great way to help yourself think personal issues through.

I've fallen off the journaling wagon lately though, but inspired by former Lifehacker editor D. Keith Robinson's tweet tonight, I'm getting back on using Buster Benson's 750 Words webapp. The concept of 750 Words is simple: every day, you type 750 words--the equivalent of three pages--of stream of conscious, whatever you want, free writing. You earn points and badges for every day you type any number of words. Your entries, which are private by default (despite the somewhat alarming Facebook Connect login), can be exported at any point. Buster's one of the kings of personal data visualization (just look at the guy's homepage), so it makes sense that when you're done writing you get all these interesting analytics and charts about your piece, like how long it took you, what words you used the most, and what you talked about. Explore the public stats page to get a taste. Here's a screenshot of the data I got after writing my first entry tonight, a literal braindump of the most random thoughts I had about today.

Despite just completing a 39,000 word book manuscript and spending four years blogging daily, writing those 750 free-think words tonight wasn't easy. Still, I signed up for the 750 Words March challenge, promising myself a mint chocolate chip shake if I file 750 a day in March. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, thanks to Buster for creating such a quirky-cool webapp. Looking forward to spending time in it this month.

750 Words

I didn’t think about weddings when I was growing up. I didn’t clip pictures of pretty dresses or fantasize about flowers. I thought I had to choose between making a big difference and living a “normal” life—with a great relationship, perhaps, but still constrained by the obligations of joint decision-making. I didn’t dream of white gowns and lace. I dreamt of living in an apartment, perhaps near a university or a library, and perhaps with two or three cats.

I was surprised to learn that a great relationship can help you grow in unexpected ways.

For example: I was beginning to feel the tic of stress building up around the typical tensions of planning a wedding. We had wanted to keep the guest list small in order to avoid overwhelming ourselves and our guests. Limiting the guests to just our families seemed to be the easiest and least stressful way to do it. A clear boundary. No difficult decisions about who to include and who not to. And perhaps W-, I, and our two families would get to know each other better without the distraction of other friends. I still wanted to host a get-together thanking my friends for helping make Toronto a second home, but a second party could do for that. Limiting the wedding and the reception to family seemed like the least stressful way to plan that day.

Then my mom asked if we could invite four close family friends, people she hadn’t seen in a while but whom she has kept in touch with and who have been wonderfully supportive throughout the years.

I wavered. Should we offer to host another party? Should we include them, even if they might feel a little left out? Should I then go ahead and invite some of my closest friends as well?

I explained the situation to W-.

He said: “It’s their wedding, too.”

In that moment, all that stress went away. All it took was the right perspective.

As much as all those wedding planning websites and blogs would have us believe that it’s our day—or worse, that it’s the bride’s day—our families are the reason why we’re celebrating a wedding instead of heading down to City Hall with two witnesses.

It’s our wedding. By that, I mean it’s not just W- and my wedding, but it’s our families’ too. And friends. And worlds.

(Friends are wonderful and I’d love to include as many as possible, too, but once I start including friends, I get tempted to throw a party for 150+ people, and then my introverted side hides under the imaginary table and eats chocolate. So we’ll plan one party at a time, and maybe have lots of small parties instead of one big one. =) And there are even more friends I’d like to include as a way of thanks for helping me get here as well as for future insights and advice. Challenge: I don’t know everyone. It’s said that it takes a village to raise a child, and y’all are an amazing village.)

English is quite limited when it comes to this idea of “ours”. A tangential story: My mom once told my sister, “We’re going to Hong Kong.” My sister was excited about the idea of going there. My mom clarified: “No, we—your dad and I—are going to Hong Kong.” In Filipino, it’s the difference between kami and tayo. We-exclusive versus we-inclusive. Namin versus natin. Our-exclusive versus our-inclusive.

And I love that W-, for  whom English, Cantonese, and French do not capture that distinction between our-exclusive and our-inclusive,  reminded me of that and helped me get an even better perspective on things.

See, this is one of the wonderful things that gives me a lot of hope about the scary thing called commitment. Making decisions with another person, having another person’s perspective, sharing experiences with another person, and being inspired by another person—by golly, that really can make life even more amazing.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Getting ready for a new adventure

With my dad and my sister both professional photographers, I have a deep appreciation for the way pictures can bring a story to life.

W- and I are getting married on August 21. We’ve been thinking about whether we want to do the full-blown wedding photography package or go with something simpler.

I don’t particularly feel the urge to have every little detail of our small ceremony memorialized. Pictures would be a nice way to share the spirit of the celebrations with friends who couldn’t make it, but then again, we’ll probably have plenty of snapshots from both our camera-happy families. Given a choice between budgeting for fancy photographs (which can go well into thousands of dollars) or, say, helping my family come and experience Toronto, I’d pick snapshots + experiences.

I do want to have some formal pictures, though. I’ve always liked the look—no, more than that, the story—of vintage photographs in family albums. Pictures of parents and grandparents when they were young and just starting out.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

Photo uploaded in 2007 by dlisbona – Creative Commons Attribution Licence 2.0

Photo uploaded in 2008 by Spiterman – Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic Licence

And just imagine, now, people can actually smile instead of holding a stiff expression for minutes!

I’m happy to skip all the other typical wedding pictures – the rings casting heart-shaped shadows on a book, the bridal party getting their hair done, the bouquet, and so on. I just want a few good portraits of us and of our combined families. Given that people managed to take these great photos back when they didn’t have speedlights or Photoshop, it should be so much easier now.

But I’m having a hard time looking for a photographer who’s okay with large groups and simple set-ups, who knows a lot about working with light, and who’ll do just a few set-ups instead of a full wedding package.

It would be nice to have a picture with everyone. If we have to, we’ll fiddle with the self-timer or remote. There’s gotta be some way to do this. We’d be happy to pay someone a reasonable amount to get great pictures with less stress. So, know anyone who can make ~25 people in Toronto look timelessly good?

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

On vintage portaits and wedding photography

Why speak

• You’ll learn even more about your topic
• You’ll meet lots of people without having to start the conversation
• You can make a bigger difference

Challenges

• Don’t know what to share
• Don’t know how to share it
• Don’t know whom to share it with
• Anxious about reception

Typical approach (scary!)

• Practice with friend or mirror
• Join Toastmasters and other speaking groups to work on confidence and delivery
• Typical advice doesn’t help you figure out what you want to say, how you want to say it, and how to get up there

Here’s another way

• Write (journal or blog) until you figure out what other people ask you for help about or something that can save other people time
• Test your material by writing a blog post.
• Share a lot of blog posts so that there are plenty of opportunities.
• When you see that there’s interest, test your topic again by making a short slide deck. Share this on Slideshare or some other presentation site. Keep your presentation short and simple. Less to remember, less to forget.
• Share lots of those and see which take off.
• Based on interest, decide which ones you want to turn into a webinar. Webinars are a good way to start because you can refer to your notes and not worry too much about body language.
• Propose your webinar to a virtual conference or webinar series organizer.
• If accepted, revise your slides, rehearse your ideas, and go for it!

Why this works

You’ve already done the hard work of thinking through your topic, checking for interest / sense, and preparing your slides.

You don’t have to worry about people not being interested or people not finding value in your work because you’ve tested the topics beforehand.

You can connect with a friendly audience before and after your talk.

Next steps

Make a list of things you know that other people might benefit from.

Write a journal entry or blog post that explains one of those things. Repeat.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

The Shy Presenter: braindumping an introvert’s guide to public speaking

This is part of my research on the social gravity of Facebook and its affect on user actions. This is only an analogy and topic to explore. Please do not take it too terribly seriously.

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Because of my presentations and my “Enterprise 2.0 evangelist” description in our corporate directory, people e-mail me to find out about Web 2.0-related resources. I usually don’t have the experience or the materials they’re looking for, but I can often refer them to someone who does.

If I’ve seen documents matching their interests (usually through people’s shared files and on wikis), I point them to those documents directly. If I don’t know of any relevant resources, I direct people to the large Web 2.0 for Business community, sending them a link to my tips for asking communities for help as well. I also help by posting the help request for them, if they are unsure about posting in communities, and by following up through e-mail if they don’t get enough response.

W- and I often talk about “indexing” resources, like the way a search engine indexes web pages. When we go to a new store and we have some time, we usually walk the aisles. We aren’t planning to buy anything, but we want to get a sense of what’s out there.

I index information as well. I’ll read a lot of things that may not be immediately useful because I may be able to connect the dots later on. I slurp in computer help files, lists of available software, nonfiction books, other people’s blogs, and so on. I don’t remember all of it, but I usually remember enough to point people in the right direction.

If lots of people ask me similar things, I build better pathways. I bookmark resources that I refer people to so that I can find things faster next time. If I frequently refer to those bookmarks, I might create a wiki page or blog post that organizes information better. If I find myself connecting dots even more frequently, I document what I know and push that out into the community. That way, I focus my resources on things that are frequently used.

My role takes advantage of this strength, which the Strengths Finder book describes as the strength of Input. I create and organize enablement material, reach out to subject-matter experts, and help people answer all kinds of questions. I help other consultants find material and people for workshops, and I occasionally facilitate workshops as well. Because I can pull examples and ideas out of my collection, it’s easy for me to respond to people’s questions or build on people’s thoughts.

There are a number of ways I can get better at this:

• I can cast a wider net when learning about resources. For example, I read almost all the blog posts inside IBM when the volume was still manageable. Now that the internal blogging platform is too lively to watch, I can use filters to focus on topics I care about. I can also look at other places like shared files and profile updates.
• I can keep track of mavens and connectors in other areas. Being able to go to other people to learn more about their specialties saves me a lot of time and helps us all create more value. If I can figure out who’s passionate about what, that helps us optimize the network.
• I can braindump more, and I can organize those thoughts more effectively. The more I write down and share, the more efficiently I can look things up again, and the more people can help themselves.

I really like exercising this strength at IBM. There are so many resources and so many talented people around the organization. Because it’s such a large company, people can’t hold the entire network in their head or remember where all the assets are. There’s also a lot of infrastructure that helps us connect people, with a culture of strong communities and emerging tools for social networking.

So that’s one of the things that I get to do at work, how I do it, and how I can do it better. =)

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Thinking about indexing and connecting the dots