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Jaikido Blog

Exciting news: Google has bought Jaiku today.

What does that mean? First and foremost, we’re of course continuing to support our existing users. So fear not: your Jaiku phone, the Web site, IM, SMS, and API will continue to work normally.

Congrats to Andy and Ralph and the folks over there - I hope Google (perhaps nokia linux etc etc) can provide open alternative and elegant devices to those closed type systems like the i-phone which are great - but - man i wish they were more open. I think mobile data is going tot get very interesting.

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I have recently been on the road so I’ve hadn’t had a chance to address a posting By Dries, founder of the drupal project. Before I do, I think it might be enjoyable to provide some context on my thought about what I think are some important questions.

There are several projects and concepts which I have been working on in my last couple of years of service.  One of these it the idea of Open Technology Development and a new approach for governments and public institutions to go about acquiring and participating in the software business ecosystem.  Fundamentally these concepts have to do with understanding the nature of “enterprises” and their relationship to better and more sustainable processes.  FLOSS and some floss projects represent reference models and potential supply chains for such approaches.  But this conversation is one that in many cases is in its infancy and is not particularly well understood.

This is especially the case because another part of my job has been to spec out and design software systems that can leverage and use the web in new ways.  Call it what you will, web 2 ohhhhhh  or some other marketing term, the idea of using web native architectures inside the enterprise is also part of the equation.  Part of what makes the design discussion important is that

1. FLOSS enables by dramatically reducing the cost infrastructure
2. FLOSS provides design patterns and reference points because of its highly Darwinist nature
3. FLOSS projects are communities and are unique yet similar and exist at different levels of maturity and have diffrent cultural practices
4. FLOSS projects exist at different states in maturity (i.e apache vs mysql vs cake php)

SO evaluating FLOSS as an enterprise and understanding which FLOSS projects ought be part of your OTD projects are dependent on both the internal factors of a given project, but also a series of economic and external drivers of evaluation that are diffrent than the traditional build vs buy evaluation criteria.  Evaluating what you what to “assemble and extend” becomes a matter of asking question like “Can I work with the people in this community?” and “Is community size more important than say prefernce in something like programming language?”

Now the later question immediately will strike many a programmer and participant in FLOSS projects as odd.  But the point is that these are decisions about joining communities not being made by programmers or traditional participants but instead by people in charge of the economic considerations, and not just the technical, of acquiring and adopting technology on behalf of enterprises.  This is an important thing to understand, especially because these issues are about sustainability and long term return on investment.

And this lead to another part of the work I have been in involved in which is capability building.  What does that mean then?  Using OTD to build capability for partners that leverages web native approaches to technology?  In one sense I think it has to do with this concept of what I call “microinfrastrcuture” - that in a very real sense is concerned with the similar concepts to microlending. In other words the seeding of capabilities of a technological nature that allow for the emergence of the economic connective tissue that results in local capability which in turn can become a participant in a global framework like the web.

There are several very interesting dynamics at play in this type of work and only some of them have to do with technology per say.  Many of them actually have to do with the ability to miniaturize and make accessible the social and institutional frameworks that have taken root in other contexts.  Microlending for example is a miniaturization that is made locally relevant, of lending and credit institutions that allows for access at almost any level of wealth, to the global financial framework - it gives people a stake.  What then constitutes, in terms of features, maturity and community, the sets of capability for entering a similar technological framework - and for which actors?

It is why question of features like internationalization and localization, like the ones Dries is addressing, provide gateways into new kinds of relationships and can begin to introduce and provide access to capabilities that  address the very real relationship of globalization to FLOSS communities.

At the same time, features alone are just not enough.  The technological abundance that has created the twitters and myspaces and facebooks is too socially disconnected, too economically disconnected, from many of the institutions and places that could most readily take advantage of such capabilities.  And while much of this is a natural process of technological and economic dissemination, its also a conscious act of effort and investment to bridge and create access to these types of technology supply networks.

The possibilities to bring together participant actors across enterprises, FLOSS communities and folks such as NGO’s universities, and people in emergent economies, are vast. It is a multifaceted dialog in which technologists and  FLOSS communities, in my opinion, ought actively engage.

He! brilliant.  She’s quite good - I for one love the sake set she made me.

Liliana, our new pottery artisan is originally from Argentina.

I agree the iphone (or its logical equivalent) will change everything and tie toegther the web with a range and in a way that it hasn’t been done before. (buttressed by social filtering, lbs, and data serendipity) - but as I mentioned before it is very important to understand what and open data telephony device network might be and to ensure that it is in fact open.

Steve Gillmor’s GestureLab » iPhonomics

The secret of the iPhone is that Gears and Dish and Google Reader, Docs, and Gmail and AppleTV are all peripherals for the iPhone. iPhone therefore I am.

Chris Johnson pointed me to this article.  The notion that communications technology has had a qualitative impact on the nature of discourse, and that that impact is negative I find a bit strange. The below quote from Habermass ( a philosopher, and critical thinker I like quite a bit) seems to both:

1. misunderstand the nature of systems like the internet, which increasingly are “free” and which in actuality focus conversations in quite concentrated ways. (if you look at clustering coefficients, power distribution laws and the science of the behavior of complex adaptive systems)
2. Seem to be more driven by an irrational fear that intellectuals supply chains to the power to mold ideas are threatened by these technologies.

‘Amateur’ charge infuriates blogosphere - CNN.com

“The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the Internet is the decentralized access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus,” Habermas said in a 2006 speech.

The later argument is weirdly Focualtian, namely that the more egalitarian the access to the “market” of discourse, the less power an “intellectual” has to focus a narrative or frame ideas.

I think that it is disconcerting to see transparently the conversations of many people, and that having visibility into those conversations might elicit a snobish standoffishness resembling Darcy at a country dance.  All that crap, whispered in different social spheres and in conversations that were inconsequential because they were distant or unknown and private not out of desire but out of the physical constraints of place, is now public.  And perhaps we find it embarrassing that our collective private selves exposed resemble Britney Spears more than Bach.   But it also provides us a kind of collective and yet individualistic insight into imperfect and yet explicit models of how we engage in discousre.  Can it really be said that egalitarianism of access to discourse and quality or intellectual focus are at odds in this environment?  And what of the insights we gain from better understanding the contexts of our discussions, do not these infact enrich the qaulity and dicsoure of our conversations (here I think i’m making the argument Habermass made in the PDM, this evolution of discourse represents a very modern progression and feedback loop.)

Still the questions remain as a they ought to: What is the intellectuals role in this kind of noise, and what is an aesthetic for quality in this type of conversation? 

Ben Hyde makes an interesting point by talking about talent as a resource pool and the economic nature of talent (at least I think this issue is implied if not overtly stated).  Talent without skill and exercise I think he argues, decays and loses all value  - and Open Source may be a “market” whereby the “talent resource” can find a sustainable way of addressing market imbalances in its acquisition (usually and unfortunately the labor market and hiring tries to do this on the software profession through the context of purchasing skills)

Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm » Blog Archive » Sharing as exercise

The resource that drives open source is talent so the question naturally arises at this point does this model have something to say about sharing around the creation of these knowledge pools?

Some issues come to mind - First that for a certain type of worker or type of work, working, has benefits beyond remediation - it is its own reward.

Second, that the recognition of the seemingly ancillary effects of work, can lead to the formation of new economies, for which capital is a poor metric. 

Thirdly, that our current job markets are really quite poor at recognizing and creating valuations for the distinction between the purchase of a skill, and the ability to match talent with interest to maximize economic effects.

Adopting an open source strategy as a company ought to take this into account.  Having mechanisms that allow for for  “talent markets” (oh cringe that sounds like management consulting speak ;P) to be accessible at many levels ought to be increasingly important because it reframes the the employee, employer, open source contract.  I think this will be increasingly important for the future of work.

I think it s really important to see maturity, trust and quality emerge as driving cultural values in an open source community.  And while I always hope that these will not be barriers to entry or make anything less “fun”  Its also nice to see as higher and higher levels of investments in certain open source projects take root, voices emerge calling for awareness of these issues. 

Perhaps this is niche is now best filled by commercial companies like SpikeSource or Red Hat or Coverity etc… But it can be nothing but positive when the community itself culturally decides quality craftsmanship and consideration for the users and investors in their projects (and by extension realize that the individualist scratch an itch motivation for a lot of FLOSS development is more expansive, connected and communitarian) should become core values.

After all, after having done some management consulting, culture is the key driver for ensuring scalable quality, and processes such as those specified by ISO9000 or TQM or Lean Six Sigma, become empty cargo cult exercises unless the essence of the organizational cultures drive them.

When it comes to FLOSS, and quality - projects like to think of themselves as community.  Yet one has to ask what is the difference between a project and a community? I would think these projects/communities, already drawn together, often by cultures that support innovation, should, or could, be very effective in embracing additional cultural values such as quality and empathy.  Furthermore - I reject the notion that such values are somehow limiting to individualism - in fact I think they are the epitome of a mature individualism as opposed to an adolescent one.

Conversations like the one below - are extremely important - Because culture emerges, not from dictate or money, but from things like language, shared narrative, metaphors and common history.  I look forward to seeing FLOSS culture continue to evolve.

Gold stars for Drupal contrib modules — and how to get one | B.Mann Consulting

What would be the long term effects of individual developers and consulting shops adopting such a model? How much would the code quality improve over time? On the second project that you start, where 80% of the modules are the same as the last one, which now all have simpletests available, how much time would you save?

I must confess I have a prince’s tastes and a pauper’s pocket. This particular impedance mismatch is displayed quite nicely and obviously in my single malt scotch collection. I was first introduced to blended scotch, Scorsby to be exact, when I interned in Monterrey before my senior year of college and stayed with a crazy-man (Kevin).  The times were good, but the scotch wasn’t…

Later I became a fan of dewars which tasted pretty good considering the other options on flights. But over the last 3-4  years I have developed a much deeper interest, and have forsworn anything blended for Single Malts and begun a collection.  Here is my current list:

Murray McDavid- Laphroig 88, Caol Ila 93
Springbank 15 - (My current favorite)
Balvenie Single Cask 15, and Port Wood 21
Lagavulin 16
A James Macarthur - Glentauchers

I also recently tried a Glenrothes 91 which I think will be very nice for someone who doesn’t enjoy the Islay peaty stuff and has a really nice bottle. (the Balvenie is also beautifully packaged).

I have tried a few others - Glenmorangie (which was good but I didn’t personally find remarkable), Ardberg (which will be in the collection again soon and I like very much), Bruichladdich (which I liked but as with the Glenmorangie, didn’t register with my attention - I may give it another try sometime perhaps) Smokehouse, which was more gimmicky and was so massive in it ssomkiness that i once had a glass and Monica accused me of smoking) and Bunnahabhain (which like Lagavulin has some caramel coloring which i don’t like but is also less remarkable in my mind.)  I was also pleasantly surprised by the Japanese Suntory single malt I tried in Brussels. (tasted a lot like an Islay)

In any case, so far I seem to be focused on the Speyside and Islay Scotches.  Of course I’m always open to suggestions, (since a Campbeltown is my current fav) so if you have any, let me know if there is something I should try…

So this captures why i have been pushing for design the way i have and why I think modeling at the logical layer is where the real value in IT is.

Application Platform Strategies Blog: A Career in Modeling

The idea behind SOA is to create layers of abstraction, with well-defined schemas and contracts, behind which systems can be loosely coupled.

and here is Microsoft talking about a design pattern for doing it.

nice from Pete Lacey

What happens when really good work is done outside the conventions that exist for its validation? And how can we recognize the influence of these conventions and trust ourselves to judge things for what they are and not for what the surroundings tell us they ought to be? Reading this article sparks two emotions. One a vain one perhaps (certainly?) absurd in its presumptiveness, which assumes affinity with the virtuoso and wonders if my current work is like playing Bach in a subway. Such arrogance is perhaps necessary to justify effort in the face of what seem like futile causes. After all why does Sisyphus not give up pushing the rock? (perhaps he thinks at the next push he will fool the gods once more)

The other I hope is more reflective, which is to assume commonality with the passers by and wonder, had I been there, had I not known or recognized the man, would I have been capable of recognizing the uniqueness of the situation and evaluate what I was seeing and hearing for what it was? Conversely, where I in a music hall, and what I heard was terrible, would I also have the bravery to defy the convention and state that? And what is that thing by which we measure our aesthetic judgments and can trust regardless of the conventions that surround it?

How many works of inspired genius have I walked past numbly, I wonder.

In any case its worth reading this article about what happens when a virtuoso musician plays in the subway.  Interesting and slightly depressing I think.

Pearls Before Breakfast - washingtonpost.com

Pearls Before Breakfast
Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.

By Gene Weingarten
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page W10

HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L’ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.