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Community and social computing
Posting on the Net and Image control
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  trust_models community web_2.0 blogging social_computing 2,661 Views
Michelle Conlin's Businessweek article You are what you post,talks about the troubles of growing up in the Net generation. With theadvent of search engines being so "efficient" that it can find any kindof information that is associated with your name, people are startingto find that others including their bosses, potential employers, orclients can find out all kinds of information from your past. Anythingthat you might post online can show up including embarrassing orprivate facts about yourself, even things others might saw about you,whether true or not. How can you possibly know what is harmful to yourcharacter or can be misunderstood by others, tomorrow or even ten yearsfrom now?
This is causing fear and panic amongst individuals, companies and PRagencies worldwide. The idea that you image is always at risk on thenet. In fact, the rule of thumb is usually to always assume that "ifyou post it, they will find it." To some that means, "don't use theInternet". However, the right reaction is not to stick your head in thesand and assume that it will simply go away. It is to be proactive.
Michelle actually points out an important fact that is missed by many:there are two "yous", the physical real-world you, and the online imageof you (or what others learn about you from info online). Because yourphysical person is always with you (duh!) it's usually possible to knowwhat's happening around it. However, it usually not possible to knoweverything going on around the online you. The Businessweek articlepoints to five ways to manage your online doppelganger, which aredefinitely helpful hints.
My thought on this line however, is that companies and people may eventually realize that the online you isjust as important as person to maintain. The best way to do this is tohave an online tool to keep track of that you and what happens. What'smore, it becomes the basis of how others can communicate with theonline you. It's not only nice to have that tool but imperative, if youwant to have a proactive say around what the "online you" really does.Otherwise, you are at risk of leaving it in the hands of what anyoneelse may say about you.
In terms of philosophy (in the classical Greek sense), this is mind-bending in terms of what that persona is becoming: all that is online you is what others see around you. You don't have strict control of it, but you can contribute to it.
Aside from a tool, the other idea this points to is that it's unlikelya single individual will be able to know what the best ways ofpresenting themselves is. It's a brand new online world, and most ofthe social rules are still being figured out. The best way is to havesomeone who watches and understands the behavior across the net toprovide advice on how to use the tools according to the properfunction, and more so, in the most effective manner. In the physicalworld, these people are often called image consultants, PR agencies,etc., although that's really the extreme end of a business that isgeared specifically to your own needs.
Another way to look at this is in terms of getting people to understandor even share your views. If you're interesting enough, you might evengain a fan club of your own (the goal of many bloggers). Yourreputation helps build an implicit or even an explicit community aroundwhat you are or what you're doing. I, for one, don't believe anyone cantruly force others to agree with them wholeheartedly; therefore toconvince others on your view, you need to be persuasive and use theright tools and right means of persuasion. Thus, you should take a lookat this from the perspective of how to develop this community aroundyou.
The root of all this is your reputation online and how others see it.Take charge of your online reputation because, whether you like it ornot, it has or eventually will have a direct impact on your future.
In summary, the online you is already being "created" on the Web bywhat you and what others post about you online. You should considertaking an active part of owning and operating this "online you", andhandle this from the perspective of trying to build a community aroundyou.
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Profile overload and aggregation
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  semantic_web identity peer_networks 2,279 Views
Reading this story on Red Herring about the Socialstream project over at Carnegie Mellon, reminded me of three other things. The story is about a graduate student project that aggregates "any" social networks. What that means is obviously vague but it's getting some press due to the Google funding it received. It partially hints at the ability to aggregate a user's profile from across multiple sites. That in itself is not that unique.
The first thing it reminded me of is ZoomInfo, a site that conducts a web search for a person's name and makes correlations, and creates a single profile for all the related info that match that person. It isn't all that accurate and sometimes gives multiple hits for the same person (e.g., "Rawn Shah" a name that as far as I have searched is currently unique in the world). It also can give results for multiple people (e.g., plenty of "Michael O'Connell"s out there), and I'm guessing that sometimes the entries cross over between profiles inaccurately. It doesn't quite merge profiles from multiple social networks as much as take raw information, do some semantic processing looking for similar context, contact information, and references.
What would help ZoomInfo is more contextual or semantic declaration of information, in other words, it is an application just waiting for the Semantic Web to rise. There are other examples like the real-estate mapping and pricing site, Zillow. Both search multiple sources for particular type of information and then aggregate them in some meaningul way to do what they do. I know what you're think: "Isn't that just a mashup?" And you'd be right, but this kind of mashup becomes more useful if given the semantics of the situation.
This leads me to my second thing, the Semantic Web, which we talked about just recently at work. Conceptually, it means applying more specific information to any piece of knowledge so that it can be handled by software agents trying to understand the context and semantics. This is the current work of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the originator of the Web. I think we even have a podcast interview him on dW where he discusses this. This has also been referred to more recently as "Web 3.0", although the Semantic Web seems a more accurate and less self-aggrandizing title. To get to this level, there are a number of protocols, in particular the Resource Description Framework, that need to be much more widely applied to web information. There's a more complete diagram on that Wikipedia entry for it.
But returning to the topic of "aggregating" social networks, the third thing I recall is what Marc Canter, founder of MacroMedia and current CEO of Broadband Mechanics, wrote on CNet: "...it's clear that folks are interested in connecting together some of their disparate accounts on a wide range of social networks." Having worked on standards before I know how much messy politics go into it more often than good information. Marc's focus here again is also on connecting the profiles across multiple networks, and separately connecting the social networking tools they use and the information they generate.
My point of view, all three (profile, SN tool, information) are part of the same set, and should probably go together, not in terms of actually being on the same application, but in terms of the same presentation. In the background, all the data in the set can come from multiple application sources, even multiple sites. Don't force people to switch tools and interfaces constantly so they have to go from e.g., their blog to their wiki to enter different kinds of information. The same for profiles, you can have multiple profiles on multiple sites, but even switching between different sites to get to your profile in each community/social network system you are part of is cumbersome, when you need to change some basic information, e.g., your job title. It's also hard to track.
Is there a solution?
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Qualities of different social experience models (why there is no single idea behind "Community")
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  structure governance social_experiences culture 1 Comment 5,239 Views
I read Jonathan Trenn's recent posts on the fallacy of community (and more on it) which seems to argue the concept of community but combine a number of different elements together: culture (mostly), governance, and structure. T
It seems we often argue about "what is community" quite frequently but the arguments are on different levels because they argue on different elements. Some arguments are on structure: Are blogs, delicious, wikis, yahoo/google answers, or discussion forums all communities even though they are structurally different? Some are on how people work in those communities and governance: only I run my blog, vs many people editing a wiki? It's not just a matter of access but rules of how people work together in those governance scenarios. The most difficult to differentiate is culture which comprises unique elements like ideology, social norms, acceptable behvaior, etc. for each instance. On a cultural level, is a blog where only one person talks but others can comment, still a community or just a following? Does it matter?
My previous post showing my list of different modesl for social experiences focuses just on the structural component. I have other models for governance (but not yet for culture). These look at the different ways social sites/experiences are structured from the owner's point of view. They can map to multiple types of social tools (e.g., a defined group can be a forum, chatroom, Q&A system, etc.) Some social tools can be used in multiple ways to map to different experience models (e.g., a wiki can be an Individual, Social network, Defined-Group or even a Community experience).
I added a social network as a separate model from the Individual expereince (since that last post). The definition here is the specific network connected directly to a single individual through bidirectional agreement (both shake hands to be friends), or by inbound agreement (people following you). For one it is certainly beyond the scope of a Personal experience. It isn't quite a group experience because each person's social network may be different. In the group models (defined group, community, mass collaboration) there isn't a definite "center of the universe" as there is in the Personal, Individual or Social network experience. There can be centers of mass around key influencers in those group models, even leaders but groups aren't necessarily only about a single individual. They can be (e.g., fans around a celebrity), but this is always the case.
Here's my table of different qualities of each model:
I think most of the qualities are self-explanatory. Relationship engagement focuses on the key type of relationship the social experience enables: to who or with what a visiting user becomes engaged. Loyalty here is a summary description of what causes a person to stay loyal to the experience.
I'm begining to think I need to switch places of Social Network and Individual; there's possibly a relative scale in there, although not necessarily in terms of size, but in terms of radiance from the person, or how well one knows all the members of the population in each experience. There's also an aesthetic separation of three individual-focused experiences on the left, and three group focused experiences on the right, but that's coincidental. After all more models may upset this in the future.
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Rational Software Development Conference 2007 space
The new space for the Rational Software Development Conference 2007 is now live and full of details and links to podcasts, announcements, SecondLife activities, Rational Tube, highlights from the dW Rational Zone, blogs, and more. We'll be updating this space during the week of the conference itself as it progresses.
I should also mention that we're doing RSDC in SecondLife such as the casting the main tent into SL during the conference, the IBM CODESTATION and Labyrinth challenge, and on June 21st, we will have a developerWorks Technical Briefing in SL that I will be co-presenting alongside Alfredo Gutierrez.
- rawn
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Recognizing the importance of social computing
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  social_computing community 1,946 Views
Good news for social computing: people are finally believing in you.
Forrester Research has published a 24-page report on Social Computing tying innovation to this topic. (This is a paid report)
Even within our own IBM Global Innovation Outlook 2.0, innovation through social computing is one of the top subjects.
The general feeling has gone beyond "there's something important there" to "how can we make use of that"?
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Roblimo's recipe for newspaper survival in the Internet age
Roblimo of Slashdot fame brings out some useful lessons learned about the use of the Internet and the fate of newspapers in his Slashdot post today.
The lessons point to some of the underpinnings of Web 2.0 that many organizations are just not quite ready or fully comfortable to handle yet: direct participation from the community.
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RSDC 2008 here we come
RSDC 2007 is over and I have a few hours to kill, probably by the poolside. It's a little warm and humid compared to Tucson but not too bad.
At the conference close, I sat with Frank Schophuizen, along time Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest user who recently started a new dW space on Configuration Management, and was asking what he should do to promote awareness of his space. He just started but has already populated it with a lot of information.
Anyway, justa few minutes after asking, our GM, Jim Corgell, pointed out his space to the large audience as an example of the level of involvement our customers were participating on our site. Very serendipitous.
Sometimes it's things these things shared by a key person at a key moment that make a difference.
I would link to his space right now but it's not easy to blog from IE on a mobile phone...possible but not easy... maybe I should switch to twitter for this.
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Runamok peer networking and contact dbs
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  peer_networks 2,034 Views
I came across a box of old business cards from the days I was afreelance writer and editor (7-10 years ago I think). There's probably200 very outdated business cards in there, some famous, somenot-so-famous, some not-famous-anymore, some too-famous-to-remember-me,all in IT business one way or another and most during the heyday of thefirst Internet boom. I'll mention some of the companies not names:dimensionX, network99, TurboLinux, RandomNoise, WebLogic, Sendmail.com,Axcess magazine, Axil Computer, Net-It Software, Artisoft, MaxSpeed,dozens of book and magazine publishers. The funny thing is that I canstill remember a lot of these meetings that I've had. I keep themaround as a sort of memorabilia, I guess.
About two or more years ago, I started using LinkedInto try to keep track of contacts, but even that takes work. I just cameback to take a look at how many people I know have joined the site, andit's just grown enormous; almost too many people to find particularones. I went ahead and tried to refresh some of the entries and addnewer names, anyway.
The kinds of Peer networking and contact systems like LinkedIn, and OpenBC,all serve a very good purpose in themselves but I think that they willsoon start to relive the problems we had with contact managementsystems of the past, on a whole new level. We can exchange contact infonow with standards like vCards, but peer networking introduces manymore capabilities that become relevant in a social network context thatsooner or later will need to interact between web sites.
Rather than importing/exporting data, the greater significance is theability to exchange data through some services endpoint. XML-definedentries (I'm not sure if vCards can do that) that can be accesseddirectly for more specific information, all with the right accesscontrol.
The good thing is that this issue will take some time to hit: when manymore companies not only consider the use of peer networks, but rely onthem for their business. This is starting to happen in at least a fewsites: Alibaba.com, even eBay to a degree. However, they haven't quitegone the full depth of peer networking towards degrees-of-separation,detailed contact history, message propagation through peers, etc.
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Russian IPTV beats my cable box
Well, I'm back from vacation and in Tucson, after a few weeks in Austin and Ft Myers to see the folks. My mom in Austin saw the baby for the first time, and so did her dad in Florida. Her dad in fact, got to relive an experience he last had many years ago: changing a diaper. Florida was nice and warm. We even got to spend a day at the beach, which started out with a few people but was completely packed by the time we left. We also drove down to Marco Island to visit my old friend Tom and see their new baby Grace (and their new house).
In any case, back to the topic...
I recently got my first glimpse of practical IPTV in action in the form of Russian TV channels that you can watch over the Internet. Both were streamed down from other countries: Russia and Canada. Considering that I have a very common cable modem set up here, the quality of the picture was amazing. On my big screen TV, one of the streamed video came down at 640x480 size (I'm guessing) as a media player in the web browser. Completely clear, no jitters, no lost data or any kind of performance issues. The other IPTV service was from a site in Canada I believe and that was an even larger picture, 4:3 proportion but taking the full height of my 46" TV. The wonder was that this looked even better than some of my local (non-digital, non-HD) cable channels.
I'd have to see it again during busy net times like Monday morning to see if there are lags, dropped packets, etc., but I think I'm pretty sold on IPTV. YouTube is complete rubbish compared to this. If the two were cities, YouTube would be like Dhaka (overpopulated and a complete mess), compared to the Singapore quality of these IPTV stations. Now if they only had more stuff worth watching than Russian news and TV shows. I'm sure I'll have to hunt around.
The Consumer Electronics Show is also underway in Las Vegas this week and according to CNet, IPTV is one of the lead topics, with speakers like Bill Gates, Bob Iger (Disney), and Leslie Moonves (CBS) all on it. I wonder how much longer it will be before IPTV streaming through a media device like the SlingBox--letting me combine not just my own AV sources at home, but also those from the net--becomes a reality?
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same thing, different views
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  virtual_environments 1,889 Views
My Linux mug is starting to crack.
It's not really a Linux mug, but Joe Barr gave me this present some years ago (when I was still with LinuxWorld), which was an oversized coffee mug with handpainted penguins and snowflakes on it. It's now starting to show some cracks after many, many times in the microwave.
My wife thinks its a Christmassy thing since it has snowflakes and penguins on it, although I think of it as a Linux thing because of the penguins and snowflakes (it's cool!). Funny how different a meaning it gives to each of us.
Also years ago, I tried convincing an analyst that there was a market for multi-player games. In 1995 that was a hard thing to prove. PC and console based games were far ahead of the text-based MUDs, MOOs, MUSHes, etc. that were around. However, a PC player long used to playing by themselves would either get it (fun with friends), or miss the point entirely ("this is so graphics-primitive!"). No one quite believed that people would actually pay to play on a regular basis.
By 1999 the time finally came for a new generation of graphical multiplayer games and MMORPGs. Another 5 years later it's widespread. In five more years it'll be almost difficult to consider a world without MMORPGs.
I guess I hadn't quite learned the business-language needed to convince folks.
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Second life
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  virtual_environments 1 Comment 2,587 Views
I started out on the game Second Life justrecently to investigate how it works. It's not really a game per-se inthat it is not a goal-oriented activity like other 3D games. However,it can be pooled together with the other Massively multiplayer onlinerole-playing environments. It's free to try out, so I registered,downloaded the game, created a character and walked around. It's a 3Dworld like many others. However, the here the point is more that youcan create objects, buildings, vehicles, toys, clothing, etc. I'm stilllearning how to move my avatar around so I haven't taken any photos yet.
What struck me is the similarity to the concepts in LPMuds where Ispent some years playing away in. LPmuds had a C-like programminglanguage that (once you've been promoted to a wizard) you can use tocreate any kind of event-driven software objects. Essentially, the gamehandles much of the work for you and you define the behaviors of theobject. In SL you can also draw and visually create the object as well,starting from simple generic shapes.
For a developer, this is really a bit of virtual heaven. You can pretty much build any kind of object (a primor primitive) you can conceive of and utilize it. E.g., some peoplecreate clothing fashions for the characters, others create new actionsthe characters can do, yet others create houses, buildings, cars, toys,etc. In fact, when you first enter, you are on Help island, wherenewbies go. Here, you can experiement with your own prims or you cantry out some other prims that others have created. For example, thereis a Simon game (remember those), a Sudoku board, a mahjonggtile-matching game, and an arcade Space Invaders style game. These areprims that others have created that allow your avatar to manipulate toplay; so you are playing a game within a game.
For each prim, you have a scripting language that looks similar to C,Java or Python, familar control structures, a library of functions forstring manipulation, math, communication and lists, an event system,and system standard constants. A number of other functions areparticular to the 3D environment and geometry.
All that is not surprising to build into a game these days, but what issurprising is the economy and the impact of retail activities...(continued).
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Second life virtual economy
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  virtual_environments 1 Comment 2,617 Views
In Second Life,the economy is based on Linden dollars (named after Linden Labs, thecompany that created it). This isn't unusual in itself, but thedifference here is that there is an actual exchange rate from Linden$to US dollars, about 300 to 1. Thus, if you sell something in the game,you can make money. Right now it's small change, but what is happeningis that there are enough players that are interested in there where youcould technically make real income from it.
The way it works is that every player by default earns a certain amounta week. A first basic level membership is free for anyone and gainsthem L$50 a week. A premium player paying US$9.95 a month getsL$500/wk. With this ingame dollars, you can buy things from otherplayers or the game itself. You can also create prims and sell those toothers for L$. It's market-driven based on what others really wouldbother to pay for your creation.
These creations really come from two types of labor: visual creation,and/or programming effort. The former is what the object looks likeusing the 3D basic shapes. There are some cute works of art, but itcould also be a house, a park, a toy, etc. The latter is what you cando with the object based on its programming. Most prims are somecombination of both. Even those that don't really do anything have somedefault code.
It takes time, effort and brainpower to build anything since the mostbasic shapes you have are cubes, spheres, pyramids, cones, and otherpolygons. You can grow, squeeze, extrude and combine multiple shapes tomake more complicated ones, then apply colors or textures to it. Usingsuch building blocks, you can make more and more complex objects. Thus,any developer working on a prim would need some level of drawing skilltoo. Any object you create is yours alone, but you could allow othersto copy it, or if you really want to risk it, edit it. More on thislater...
This is a pseudo-real currency (like the Reward points etc fromAmerican Express or other credit cards, or airline mileage cards)because of the tie to real-world currencies. You can extract some ofyour L$ to real currency via Paypal or credit cards, that Linden Labspays you. Thus, if you have earned L$3 million, you have just made$10,000. (Not that that's trivial to do). If the BusinessWeek articleis correct, some of the top players have made hundreds of thousands ofUS dollars from things they have created and sold in the game.
The economy is smart enough and the world is well-managed enough thatthings don't go awry easily. E.g., you can't kill anyone and take theirprims and/or money. It doesn't work that way, and in fact, just bumpingpeople can start raising eyebrows until you get banished.
First thing to note: Linden Labs gives you $50/wk or about $200 amonth. That's about US$1 a month that they have to put into the game(since that dollar could get extracted from the game by the player).That's quite trivial in real dollars but what it really does is incentyou to play the game. You can think of it as a customer-acquisitioncost which at just $1 is really low. A premium player gets more like$10/mo, which is about what they pay in real dollars for their accounteach month.
Technically with the ability to create and sell a prim, it is possibleto mint your own money. The practicality however is that with asufficient number of players, you have a large number of producers, andthe consumers have a lot of choice on what they want to spend theirmoney on. Also it takes time and effort, thus, nothing is really free.Still, the amount of currency in the game is based on two factors: howmany premium players are in the game and how many active basic playersexist. The total wealth increases every month in proportion to this.Not all players are active, and leave after a while (you have to appearon the game each week to gain your L$ stipend).
However, when it becomes really successful, and Linden has a millionactive basic players, they'd have to pay a million dollars into thegame each month, which can be quite expensive. However, the truth isthat more of the active players would likely go towards premiummembership.
So far, I haven't talked about how Linden Labs itself makes money.... in the meantime, you might want to read this article on Virtual Worlds, Virtual Economies.
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SecondLife, playability, Nintendo Wii and the Age of Conan
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  games secondlife 2,301 Views
Eric Sniff and I were having a conversation on MMORPGs today starting with Age of Conan and eventually ending at SecondLife.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (AoC) is an upcoming MMORPG that is based on the character and fantasy world created by Robert E Howard back in 1929. They are doing several things fairly interesting with this MMORPG starting with how you get into the game: you start off isolated in single-player mode within a fixed area playing until you develop your character to a certain degree and generally become familiar with the controls. It then transitions into the multiplayer world alongside everyone else. It solves a common current issue of game development and getting started on multiplayer games (dealing with noobs). The game is visually gorgeous, on par or perhaps better than Oblivion, one of the top single-player games of 2006.
One interesting aspect of the game is that rather than fixed predetermined attacks ('press this button for "slash"'), it is much more analog allowing more realistic combat. This means you actually have to direct the sword where to hit. This exact same feature is what I liked about another game available for the Nintendo Wii, Red Steel. (ok so I really do like swordfighting, and not just in real life)
The Wii itself is raising a new phenomenon in game, that of 3D motion-sensitive game controllers, where you have to move the controller around to perform an action, rather than simply a joystick or by pressing buttons. The Wii Remote and Nunchuk is changing how people play games rather than what they play. For example, if you're playing tennis, you have to wave the Remote around like a bat. Just look at what everyone is doing with it: tennis, bowling, fishing, swordfighting, etc.) It's only starting out and there's not a huge selection of games, but I for one am excited that this new direction is succeeding. Rather than playing an ever increasing war of more complex systems--not that I mind the improvements in graphics--Nintendo came up with real outside-the-box innovation. Now if it will only spread to PCs and other consoles.
This kind of playability got us talking about other issues of MMORPGs. This introduces even more information about each player's movements that have to be conveyed across the network to other players. It would be interesting if it strikes a good balance between playability and performance with this level of complexity. Some of it lies in the problem of managing servers... I'll come back to that.
Where most MMORPGs require a lot of work in development is filling out the world. SecondLife which is not a game in particular but still a MMO system solves this by letting users develop the world. That however results in a wide variety in the environment from the well-made to the random garbage and litter. But the question remains: can you design an MMO where the game is networked and functions peer-to-peer style, rather than a multi-server based system run by a company like most MMORPGs.
With most true peer-to-peer systems, each client itself is smart enough to provide the application environment and only the peers that interact exchange traffic, rather than a more centralized system of servers (even if distributed). Games like AoC have the capability to display everything in one user's direct view in 3D, but it works well when all that data is local on the drive. If new data was available (new buildings, environment features, etc.) in each peer, they would need to be transferred to other peers that interact with them, and in a 3D world, that may be a lot of data.
SecondLife does a slightly different model I believe (I only understand the server system on a basic level), where each island is a server and all avatars on that island are essentially on the same server. When you move off an island by walking, flying or teleporting, it transfers the avatar object to the other island. This can be slow in redrawing all the details when receiving the data a bit at a time. This isn't bad or incorrect, it is a matter of complexity and traffic.
Who knows? The net certainly has grown by a billion percent since the old days of text muds with a max of 3000 simultaneous players. Game development has reached magnitudes of greater sophistication. MMORPG players today simply demand a lot more and there are a lot more of them. They're certainly taking over or replacing other forms of entertainment (in terms of dollars).
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Sharing the reward is a problem whether an MMORPG or in a coporate division
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  ratings games reputation 1 Comment 3,515 Views
It's interesting to see the evolution of reward mechanisms in MMORPGs. In multiplayer situations, it is often difficult to tell who completes a task when there are a number of steps involved. For example, in a raid on WoW against a single monster, who gets recognition for the kill when it takes 40-80 people working as a team to kill that beast? It's defined now in WoW but this same problem existed all the way back to the days of text MUDs.
In the first generation, essentially there was no thought involved in this. Whoever made the killing blow got the points for the kill. Very primitive and the cause of many an argument. The next few improvements--it came in several different ways--was to add a list on the create being attacked where it kept track of who the attackers were and distribute the points based on how many points of damage each person made on the creature, so the distribution of experience points for the kill was more even. WoW provides a newer version of this whereby each person engaged in the raid gets dollars per kill, which once the creature was dead, they could spend to buy the reward items.
However, this still raises a problem when there are items that several people want to share from the common pool of rewards. In the people-administrative way, the guild--there's usually a guild involved--makes a decision on who gets what. This is where it breaks down again: what happens when there is an item so unique that the top contendors or leaders will argue for it. As my friend Eric described, that is the death knell of many a guild.
If you think this is a situation limited to MMORPGs and games, you're mistaken. This same situation exists when you have a community that is working for a shared goal, and there is some reward that needs to be distributed across the membership. In team scenarios in corporate environment, that is not very different than negotiations for annual bonuses. The differentiating factor is that in MMORPGs as in other communities, the group of people are not part of a single formal organization with defined managers and advocates. Instead it is up to each person to argue their own case. In other words, it is even more difficult in communities.
I don't have any answer here, but it is important to recognize that the situations are similar here, and compare what methods of distribution or approaches people take.
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short: 10 most beautiful social networks
Mashable published this list of what they call 10 most beautiful social networks. The emphasis is on visual presentation and prettiness rather than value to the user I guess. This is still useful for designers and Web 2.0 developers to consider the design elements.
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Situational applications rising
Cnet's article on Small is beautiful for Web 2.0 start-ups gives attention to the growing sentiment that the application development process needs to become more lightweight.
This is something that can go in several directions:
While Jason Fried of 37Signals believes the idea of enterprise software is "dead", it's more likely a space that small projects just don't play in. Also there may be a great many more small projects going compared to large projects but it's difficult to argue either way that a number of small projects equals one large project or vice-versa. (Obviously, I'm not defining what "small" and "large" means; think of those as what they mean to you)
On the other hand, small projects may be a difficult idea for some organizations to handle, especially when they are focused on going for large ones. It's a matter of overhead; With each small project, the relative size of the overhead for running the project may seem a lot higher than the overhead of a large project.
However, the techniques needed to operate a large project many not be the same as the ones needed for small ones.
The real winner is the one who figures out what kind of project management techniques are most appropriate for any given project, anticipating its complexity and size. Of course, if you could see the future and know how much work was involved right away, it'd be a simple trick.
-rawn[Read More]
Snowing in Tucson!!
rawn 100000R0P5 1,456 Views
It's SNOWING in Tucson right now! Off for fun... photos soon.
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SOA Compass book still in the lead
Our SOA Compass book is still going strong after one year on bn.com and on Amazon. It changes places sometimes when new books come out, or with events, but I'm just glad to see it in the top ten for SOA books. It's been a year to this month that the book went out and we've had quite a few comments, reviews, and questions about it over the year. . In that time, the number of SOA books out there are rapidly climbing and as this technology (or is it business?) evolves, I'm sure even more will emerge.
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SOA Compass going international
I'm told our SOA Compass book ( Barnes&Noble , Amazon)has been translated into Korean and will soon be available, withJapanese and Russian versions down the line. Now, I can pontificate inlanguages I don't understand. :) [My Japanese is too rudimentaryto read this level of text] Nonetheless, I'm going to get a hold of acopy just for keeps. It does well still I believe, but I only get realdata twice a year, and not again until October.
The funny thing is that the five authors (Norbert, Marc, Sanjay, Keithand myself) have yet to still get together in a single face-to-facemeeting. We all live in different parts of the world and we justhaven't had the chance to find a common event we can all go to. Isn'tglobally distributed collaboration fun?
PS: Also check out other IBM Press books and the latest addition to the developerWorks line under it, Visual Modeling with IBM Rational Software Architect and UML, by Jim Palistrant and Terry Quatrani.
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SOA Compass in Russian and Japanese
Our SOA Compass book is out in Russian and in Japanese, on different international book vendor sites. These were translations done from our own English version and released just recently. Norbert from our author team, indicated that they tried to translate the meaning of the title rather than a literal translation. Our names are also translated phoenetically according to Norbert's wife who learned Russian in school.
Now if I can only figure out the web site enough to purchase a few copies for myself... Can anyone translate?
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Social call-graphs to map relationships between developers
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  community virtual_environments 1,979 Views
Carol Jones mentioned the Ariadne project in her recent blog post which I find very, very interesting.
It uses graph theory (Computer Science) to help draw a call-graph between the people involved in a project. This is just the kind of tool one could use to build a Friend-of-a-Friend or Degrees-of-separation system. This application focuses on the relationships between developers working on an Eclipse project, but the ideas could be extended for determining the relationships in any network.
-rawn[Read More]
Social computing adoption issues due to scale
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  social-computing scalability population social-software blueiq e20 size 1 Comment 10,049 Views
On returning from the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, I had time to reflect on the scaling issues that come up in social software adoption across an enterprise. In watching Gentry Underwood's excellent presentation on how they designed the social computing environment in IDEO, I tweeted to him that new issues start to pop up when you move from an enterprise social environment for 500 people to 200,000--or in IBM, nearly 400,000 people in 170 countries. This is not a bragging point, rather a one of frustration.
There certainly are other large or technological-oriented companies deploying social environments, but from my experience in hearing from others, no one has hit some of the scale issues that we have in IBM. Obviously we are talking about an enterprise's deployment rather than a social site like Facebook; they're very different issues for each.
For one, while employee profiles and directories are starting to become commonplace in other enterprises, we have had one for well over a decade in one form or another. We've already gone through the issues and practices others have found: (a) include everyone; (b) prepopulate with relevant contact, work info, projects, etc; (c) popularize it as the place to look up data; (d) integrate into or make it THE basis for contact info for other existing internal and extranet Web apps; (e) invite partners,contractors and suppliers; (f) tie to enterprise-wide LDAP and single-sign on; (g) integrate into common work processes and behaviors. In fact, the last I looked, we had nearly 600,000 profiles in our Bluepages (including employees, supplementals, contractors, bots, some partners and suppliers).
While the Bluepages system certianly popular, it is but one of several dozen commonly used social software tools, some of which in themselves have hundreds of thousands of unique users. We have thousands of smaller communities and wikis some of which have tens of thousands of members. The multiple tools comes out of our laissez-faire attitude to allow many software ideas to emerge, and through our user base test and advocate the best ideas.
The population size of this system isn't quite the issue, but I put some thought into what enterprise 2.0 deployment issues might appear with scale and came up with the following chart. I hope this can help other maturing e2.0 environments consider some of the issues they may be coming up agains
A. distribution of people across time zones
B. distribution of people across cultures / countries
C. distribution of people across physical locations
D. distribution of people across job categories or dissimilar job roles
E. projects people work on are very different in nature
F. distribution across access devices (desktops, laptops, mobile)
G. many separate (non-integrated) social tools, or different interfaces
H. many separate databases as information sources
I. many separate or isolated social instances
J. number/reach of boundary-spanners
PS: Thanks dW folks for migrating my blog over!
Social computing models used in retail
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  book social-computing retail woot social-experience groupon 7,564 Views
For folks who've asked me about social computing and the
retail industry, I'd like to describe ideas in use. Some of you may already be
familiar with these. First of all, there's the "w00t" idea, most common in the US
as the site www.woot.com and even featured
in campaigns with American Express and others. It's fairly simple, every day
they list a limited quantity of a single product (at seemingly random) at a
good deal of discount. Its success depends on mixing in very popular items with
some of the ordinary ones at many different price points, spread across a wide
range of product categories. The social element here is in competition to get
one which often heats up considerable. Folks have even created bots or software
applications to beat others to the purchase. To spur this competition on, there
is constantly updated "sales snapshots" of the purchase experience for that
item: a map of the US where it's being purchased the most, sales per hour, the
number of times the purchaser has bought from the site before, how many the
bought, etc. Finally, the discussion thread often gives social input or
feedback to what others think of the product. Other companies have tried this,
for example, I recall seeing it on American Express shopping as Deal of the Day
where they had a Honda Civic Hybrid as the deal for almost 60% of the sale
price. The key element is the competition, limited quantity and
thus exclusivity of the items of the site. All the social input exists to feed
the competitive basis unlike other online retail sites, where this is not at
all emphasized. Rather they take the stance that there is always some quantity
available. However, the competitive element of woot combined with a surprise in
random but in-demand items, is what turns the social elements into a game-like
structure, and most importantly: bring people back to the site. This method
isn't new by any means, but the online environment makes it easier to spread
the word and increase the likelihood of sales. The social experience model here
is a mass collaboration with swarm leadership and combative aggregation. (if
this doesn't make sense to you, please read my book). Unconfirmed, but did the jargon term "w00t" originate from
"iwoot" = "I want one of those"? See http://www.iwantoneofthose.com which is not this above model, and closer to what
is now "traditional" online retail, purchasing with ratings and comments. Or is
it a derivative, if I remember right, of the "woof, woof" sound made popular
back in the 1990s by the Arsenio Hall show. Groupon (www.groupon.com)
is another form of social computing applied to coupons for services within your
city (again mostly in the US). Essentially, it takes the woot model to a new
level, requiring people to invite enough members to qualify for the coupon. The
time limit is again one day only, and it is specific to a city. So, if a user
really likes the coupon promotion, they may need to try to get their friends or
others of like interest to also vote for the promotion, or just wait to see if enough
people from their city vote, before they can even take advantage of it. Here, the social experience is not entirely a mass
collaboration like woot, because people do not necessarily work entirely
independent of each other. It allows two choices: you can bring your friends as
a small community to vote and get the coupon, or you can vote and hope that
others join in. In other words, it's a hybrid of a mass collaboration and a
community. The leadership effects are also swarm-like, with no single person in
charge and each person making their own choices (typically to vote positively
for the item). However, this is not combative but consensus aggregation.
For folks who've asked me about social computing and the retail industry, I'd like to describe ideas in use. Some of you may already be familiar with these.
First of all, there's the "w00t" idea, most common in the US
as the site www.woot.com and even featured
in campaigns with American Express and others. It's fairly simple, every day
they list a limited quantity of a single product (at seemingly random) at a
good deal of discount. Its success depends on mixing in very popular items with
some of the ordinary ones at many different price points, spread across a wide
range of product categories.
The social element here is in competition to get one which often heats up considerable. Folks have even created bots or software applications to beat others to the purchase. To spur this competition on, there is constantly updated "sales snapshots" of the purchase experience for that item: a map of the US where it's being purchased the most, sales per hour, the number of times the purchaser has bought from the site before, how many the bought, etc. Finally, the discussion thread often gives social input or feedback to what others think of the product. Other companies have tried this, for example, I recall seeing it on American Express shopping as Deal of the Day where they had a Honda Civic Hybrid as the deal for almost 60% of the sale price.
The key element is the competition, limited quantity and thus exclusivity of the items of the site. All the social input exists to feed the competitive basis unlike other online retail sites, where this is not at all emphasized. Rather they take the stance that there is always some quantity available. However, the competitive element of woot combined with a surprise in random but in-demand items, is what turns the social elements into a game-like structure, and most importantly: bring people back to the site. This method isn't new by any means, but the online environment makes it easier to spread the word and increase the likelihood of sales. The social experience model here is a mass collaboration with swarm leadership and combative aggregation. (if this doesn't make sense to you, please read my book).
Unconfirmed, but did the jargon term "w00t" originate from "iwoot" = "I want one of those"? See http://www.iwantoneofthose.com which is not this above model, and closer to what is now "traditional" online retail, purchasing with ratings and comments. Or is it a derivative, if I remember right, of the "woof, woof" sound made popular back in the 1990s by the Arsenio Hall show.
Groupon (www.groupon.com) is another form of social computing applied to coupons for services within your city (again mostly in the US). Essentially, it takes the woot model to a new level, requiring people to invite enough members to qualify for the coupon. The time limit is again one day only, and it is specific to a city. So, if a user really likes the coupon promotion, they may need to try to get their friends or others of like interest to also vote for the promotion, or just wait to see if enough people from their city vote, before they can even take advantage of it.
Here, the social experience is not entirely a mass collaboration like woot, because people do not necessarily work entirely independent of each other. It allows two choices: you can bring your friends as a small community to vote and get the coupon, or you can vote and hope that others join in. In other words, it's a hybrid of a mass collaboration and a community. The leadership effects are also swarm-like, with no single person in charge and each person making their own choices (typically to vote positively for the item). However, this is not combative but consensus aggregation.
Social entreprenuerism is not just an activity for rural environments
I ran into someone who was taking an honors class in Social Entrepreneurism at the University. Their focus is on rural education and micro-economic enablement through micro-loan systems. If you have not heard about this concept, it was pioneered by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh a number of years ago and has since become a worldwide phenomenon.
As I was describing to them, however, social entrepreneurism (SE) isn't limited to helping the poor. There are other groups of people out there who need help and education just as much. Even dW is a form of SE in terms of helping emerging topics and technologies grow within the realm of software systems.
There are a great many valuable ideas out there initiated by people who know a lot about technology and software. However, not every developer knows what to do to keep a project running, sharing it with others, or getting recognition for their efforts.
We hear of many successful and innovative open source projects created purely on the basis of successful leadership, and even a hefty dose of good luck. However, there are tens of thousands of other projects which fall off the grid because the lead(s) of the team simply don't know what to do to get it to the next level.
Many technical people simply say "Oh well that's a marketing thing to get more people to use it", but that's only one element of it.
Towards that goal, the idea of dW started as one whereby we could help that kind of project that either came out of IBM or one we were involved in to help them grow and become more successful. It has grown in many ways beyond just the needs of IBM and we think that is a good thing for the whole industry.
Our community areas are no different. Our SE role is in the same domain: helping projects, topics and ideas to grow. That means we need to focus on providing tools, knowledge and other forms of assistance to fuel this.
Obviously, with a limited team there's a limit to how much you can do for anyone one group, and it always depends on the leaders of that group. However, by documenting successes, identifying best practices for different situations, we think we can help the situation for others. The learning and education here is not just in terms of solving a particular technical issue but addressing how to actually improve the human side of the equation.
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Social leadership models: who can decide vs. how they decide
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  book models leadership social 10,036 Views
In working recently on the topic of leadership and decision making processes in social environments, I thought I'd clarify something per my book. Quite often I see these decision-making methods split into simple categories--centralized versus marketplace (or distributed)--when there is so much more. Additionally, the way how people work to produce results is not the same as who is involved in making the decisions.
One milling question from those who've looked closely at my book, Social Networking for Business, is that leadership and decision-making processes seem to appear in two different areas: the chapter 3 "Leadership in Social environments" and then later again in the section "Describing the Form of Aggregation" in Chapter 4 on Social Tasks. I should explain the key differences here.
Chapter 3 focuses on six different common leadership models: Centralized, Centralized w/ Input, Delegated, Representative, Starfish and Swarm. These models focus on who is allowed to participate in the decision making process, set direction for the social group, and select leaders. These range from those with very strongly centered to very distributed leadership.
The Aggregation methods on the other hand describe how these decisions are made or this work executed: Independent, Autonomous, Consensus, Deliberative, and Combative. These again are alternatives to each other to create results.
Very briefly:
Certain pairs are more likely to occur: e.g., a swarm is likely to use the Independent aggregation where only the combined results (voting) across many members result in a single value. A delegated model is likely to have autonomous decisions spread across the different domains delegated across the leaders.
The moral here:
Social Learning - a quick look at measurable events
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  learning measurement metrics social-learning 7,587 Views
In looking at @prem_k's
mindmap on social learning today, I spent a few minutes considering what events
can be measured relative to this topic. Unfortunately, I cannot embed the
diagram in this blog but please take a look at his
mindmap first.
I came up with the following measurable elements and hopefully most are self-explanatory. The mechanics of how you actually measure these items can very from trivial counting exercises to some fairly complicated metrics for mapping networks and measuring influence and sentiment. However, I think most of it has been done before, perhaps just not applied specifically to learning and pedagogy. So who's up to that challenge?
I'm also just starting on Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia) and Tony Bingham's book, The New Social Learning (ASTD & Berrett-Koehler, Sep 2010), and I expect I'll be learning a lot from it too.
Dissemination patterns
- disemmination relative to origin (generalized SN diagram)
- disemmination of topics across overall network (generalized SN diagram)
- rate & velocity of disemmination
Acceptance/Recall patterns
- Resharing/promoting (e.g. RT, citing, linking)
- Tagging
- Acknowledging/rating (e.g. +1, stars)
- Relationship effects - Friending/following/connecting, or unfollowing/negative externalities/outcomes
- Searching / search results (text, tags, social searches)
Information organization patterns
- Adding tags, metadata
- Formalism, creating definitions, dictionary/encyclopedic entries
Recall patterns (after some period of time from original creation)
- Citing, linking
- Searching / in search results
- Tagging
Iteration patterns
- Commenting-adding info
- Commenting-debating/negating
- Repurposing content (into new channels, new formats)
Metadata about on learning network
- Demographics/segmentation of overall network / population and of participants in a networked learning activity
- Topic popularity, aging, trends over time
- Share of total voice on subject per content source/person
- influencers and detection
Social network analysis story in Fortune
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  social_network_analysis peer_networking 3 Comments 2,811 Views
Every time I see another piece or book on social network analysis, I have to say something, particularly because the term is used so often these days.
There is definitely a science behind social network analysis that has existed for years. In simplest form, it maps the relationships between different people in a group, and draws the connections between folks. This contrasts against the hierarchical structure in most organizations and companies. In other words, the actual way people connect and interact in a group can often be very different than reporting structures and formal relationships between different teams. SN analysis examines these relationships and helps to point out bottlenecks, misdirections, and point out key people in your organization.
However, the shortcoming of this approach is, first, it requires that the members in the group all participate and respond to a questionnaire (and honestly) on who they interact with. The truth is that we may remember the first set of fewest people we interact with the most often (e.g., those folks on your speeddial, "myFaves" in Tmobile, etc.), but there are many others who we do not interact with so often but still hold value. So what SN analysis uncovers is frequency more than accuracy. That's the second part, accuracy implies quality, and the quality of relationships between folks are hard to determine, especially when you consider that people rarely record and evaluate every single interaction they have with others.
The diagram on page 99 of this month's Fortune magazine is pure fantasy--it is not on the online version of the story. It is unlikely you will ever uncover this kind of information, mostly because it is very invasive and raises many privacy concerns. Don't get me wrong; there are probably people who really do try to create such a map, but it can get horribly complicated over time and with larger populations. The reality of what you can get is shown in the article, luckily.
The article does however, point out the reality: there is a hidden network of how people interact in a workplace. You cannot directly measure this to a really fine degree and probably shouldn't even try. Every manager knows that they should get to know their employees to some degree; some managers can remember more about the work relationships and history of their employees than others; in that way, they build their own mental map of their surrounding hidden workplace.
How does this relate to "social networking" in the Web 2.0 sense (i.e., blogs, forums, wikis, tags, etc.)? When you get frequent and regularly participating members in any community, you have this same kind of invisible relationship network. I won't say it is impossible to map this out; someone might eventually prove me wrong. Software makes it easier to track interactions since there is a "written record" somewhere. Smart software may be able to automatically analyze your interactions with other folks to help you keep track of your own social circle. I have seen this at work already. It can look at how you email, instant message, chat, online event, blog comment, forum reply, etc. that you make with each individual and create a map for you. This is harder than it sounds because it means the software has to look in many places. It also means that the analysis software needs to be compatible with each of these applications which you use; since most people don't use the same set of such tools that may not even be in the same site or organization, it is really hard to track.
This points out to keep track of relationships more than messages. While we still tend to think of email as the main way we communicate online, this is already starting to spread to many other types of applications. Eventually email may no longer be king; even if that day is a long way off.
This also points out another behavior that is an unfortunate side effect of the availability of peer networking social tools like LinkedIn. The value of social network comes from deep or meaningful realtionships with others, not quantity. It may be a while before this sinks in so reiterating it frequently is a public service. It's not how many people you connect with but how many of these are meaningful. Quality over quantity.
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Social networking brewing
Publish magazine recently had this article on on IBM's activity in social networking. The topic as a whole is having a bigger impact on how to get interesting ideas to emerge out of organizations.
They also recently also wrote about why corporate blogs are boring.
-rawn[Read More]
Social perspectives and governance
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  social_context governance 3 Comments 3,930 Views
It has been an interesting time at the Social Networking Conference in San Fran this week. I ran into some great folks on many fronts including mobile social networks, social software in the Air Force, in GE, in GM, and much more. I did my presentation on how to help teams decide on the base level of social context that they may be interested in.
In quick step, this is what you consider instead of picking a tool right away. It is the vocabulary that you need to define the perspective that you want your social group to see as well as the rules on how the group should interact. The five social perspective models I highlighted are the:
PS: You can also follow some of my tweets on the conference sessions.
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Social software approach to identifying spray-paint taggers and vandalism
rawn 100000R0P5 5,302 Views
I learned the other day from a friend that taggers—the spray paint kind, not the online variety—are often quite predictable. If you look at a map of the locations where they tag, you'll often found a common radial pattern of increasing density of their tags. The closer to the center of that circle is the general vicinity or even the very house that the tagger lives in.
Applying some social computing to the idea, I could see a useful mass collaboration social experience, where the task is to allow anyone to submit smartphone photos with GPS locations of where they see a tag. You can then plot this on a geo-map and over time create a result of frequency of occurrence. Social sites like Brightkite and Foursquare that let you share your location prove that it's quite possible to create such a map.
So, there's a possible project that can apply to any location
really, with the help of any willing citizens. There are some practical issues:
identifying the actual tag signs from different taggers, collecting enough data
for useful information, and cooperating with the police to utilize this
information. However, these are not insurmountable and it would help the community
in general.
Someone's failed podcast strategy
Again with Business 2.0's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business. This time #53 on podcasting strategies that don't work.
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Spaces for projects
I came across this recently: ProjectSpaces, a hosted service offered by a company called Forum One Communications seems worth a look.
They actually charge for a hosted space that features, a contacts db,calendar and scheduler, tasks list, document library, and discussions,with each space allowed 1 GB of storage (sound familar Google?) andunlimited members. There's a pricing sheet starting around $129/mo perspace.
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Starfishes, spiders, oh my
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  peer_networks books community_building 2,126 Views
The books just don't stop coming. I've found three more titles that may be worth reading in relation to online communities and the evolving notions around them: The Starfish and the Spider, Wikinomics, and The Wealth of Networks. (See my amazon list for link info).
The first book focuses more on the ideas of spreading organizational behavior from a top-down model to a non-centric or peer-networked model. This sounds like an interesting idea for organizations with many peers doing similar jobs (e.g., consulting), but I have yet to read it to understand how it works on a large scale operation.
Wikinomic's from Don Tapscott is likely a must read for me to learn more from this semi-socialogical study of wiki behavior.
The Wealth of Networks was on the list of best books of 2006 from the magazine Strategy+Business, alongside other books like The Long Tail (also on my amazon list). It takes a macroscopic look at peer-networking inside and outside organizations, and the impact of those relationships on a business.
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still climbing
Okay, I take that back. We're not behind Stephen King. Right now it's #21, ahead of Jim Collins' Good to Great.
-rawn[Read More]
Still Snow in Tucson
As I woke up this morning, there was more snow all around. Last night's snowing stopped after about an hour and melted but we got fresh snow early in the morning. Everything is till clouded over to the point that we can only see a mile away. Snow here happens maybe twice a decade but I've only seen this much snow in town once before. It's nothing by Minnesota standards but here it's probably the most snow in town in two decades.
Baby's first snow (okay, I 'm having more fun than he seems to be there :)
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Strong ties keep communites going for decades
Our martial arts school, the Kodenkan of Tucson is hosting the Ohana celebration this weekend. Over 600 Students and students of students of the late Prof. Okazaki who created Danzan-ryu Jiujitsu are gathering to celebrate his birthday.
Okazaki was an innovator of his time in the 1930s and 1940s, living in Hawaii. He was a practitioner of traditional Japanese homeopathic medicine but also started a martial arts school on the side and become one of the first Japanese to teach traditional martial arts to foreignors and to women. It was quite a differentiating at the time.
His innovation paid off. Today some his students are in their late 70s and 80s and have taken his teachings to form schools of their own across the US.
With any martial arts, the regular weekly practice helps to build strong ties between teachers and students. Once you get advanced enough, it is in the practice amongst equals that brings people together. The advanced (black belt) ranks operate more like an academy, learning from each other while in practice.
While the teacher-student element still exists (it's still a school), the cross-training between peers is what helps to energize and develop the study.
The same goes for pretty much most communities. You learn the basics--it can take years--and advance enough to consider new perspectives and situations, or help others with issues and problems they are facing.
Carry this on for a few years successfully and it will last a decade. Carry it on for a decade or two, and it will last for generations. You just have to carry on the philosophy of sharing and learning.
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sword cutting science 101
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  swordfighting 1,957 Views
I was reading over the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts site the other day on The Myth of Thrusting versus Cutting swords and What did historical swords weigh? Both are excellent pieces from a european weapons background. The first describes the classic question of swordfighting on which attack style was more effective. European swords diverged early in the medieval period into war weapons and lighter weight day weapons, until the Rennaisance era espoused the benefits of a light thrusting point as the most effective in terms of speed. This light weapon which we today see in the rapier, epee and foil became the weapon of choice for the gentry; nothing as crude and barbaric as a heavy war weapon. In modern terms, it's the equivalent of arguing on if you are Heavy Truck Guy, or if you prefer nimble sports cars.
In terms of effectiveness, the thrust can be quite a damaging attack since it sinks deep, can puncture multiple layers of tissue and organs. It creates a small open wound (rather than the blood-splurting everywhere Quentin Tarantino/John Woo-sytle), but without modern medicine, a strike at the torso could easily become lethal. On the other hand, if you don't hit an important spot, the opponent is still there. This works great for gentlemenly duels but not very practical in actual combat.
The cut or slash takes more strength and physically takes a greater distance of sword travel to be effective, but if it didn't totally amputate something it would eviscerate the muscle and probably break the bones, essentially disabling that body part. You may need more strength with this but that depends upon your weapon's weight and fighting styles.
European heavy weapons were not generally huge and weighty but ranged around 3 pounds and certainly less than 6 pounds for most backswords, broadswords, and such. This is still more than most katanas that are around 2.5 pounds. Also the katana is primarily a two-handed weapon, thereby balancing the weight more evenly, whereas a 3lb backsword is still much heavier to carry on one hand, even 2.5 pounds.
I've never weighed my own primary katana precisely but it's probably about 2.5 lbs, maybe a little more. I do cut single handedly with that but it takes a lot more control with finer muscles. Two hands gives not only more strength but also more importantly better control of the weapon. While the first article talks about the katana being a very effective thrusting weapon, we primarily teach only a single type of thrust or tski.
I was watching National Geographic Channel the other day, a show called Fight Science. This was a really good show but when it came to the bit about the dynamics of swords, I was again disappointed by the poor technique they presented. The thrust for example was shown as an underhanded (rather than overhanded) one, and with the elbow even bent some. This technique simply ignores the skeletal structure, body positioning and only uses muscle to power the thrust. In other words, it takes more strength than necessary to be effective. Thus it would take an extremely fit 200 lb man to deliver the same blow as something a medium fit 100lb middle-schooler could do. (We have had both 300lb 26yr old football players and 80lb 15yr olds in our class, and they both can do almost the same level of attacks). One thing we tell our students is not to waste energy if you don't need to. All you need is one really good hit.
I was really impressed with their Kyudo (archery) demonstration in the show. I'm unranked in Kyudo since I never carried the practice very far, but it looked very serene. Yoga joke: After many hours of yoga practice in a full room, the one person that remains still standing on one leg tree-pose shouts out: "I AM THE SERENEST!" :)
Unfortunately the martial arts world is full of people with heavy egos. The dedicated ones feel slighted if you debate with them, but their intentions are still true: they want to interest and excite more people into their field of study. Even the own style I learn could do a lot more than focus on good cutting techniques. It could do well with more stamina building, more groundwork, more balance work, more disarms and trips, etc. All in good time and there's plenty to learn from. It should be interesting as we go to start an entirely new class/club at the U of Arizona this Fall.
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Tag-based ad-hoc communities
In a discussion with erik_k of help.com it seems apparent that tag-based communities are one of the premier forms of ad-hoc community building.
Rather than a formal process to start a community, people create tags around what they are working on or are interested in and it matches the folksonomy of others with the same tags, and what they collectively post about it.
This form of tag-based community isn't unique to help.com; there are other sites like 43 Things, del.icio.us, jeteye.com, etc. that all allow people to "bubble up" a community based on what they tag.
If people use the same keywords, they automatically become a collective or group of participants around the topic. With sites like Jeteye, you can create multiple types of content elements in each tag. Still others allow member of a shared tag to start a discussion area, etc.
This kind of ad-hoc process allows a population to rapidly organize and create communities around what they are working on. You can build quite a sizeable community this way if you have a general purpose site like help.com or del.icio.us.
The downside is that it can be chaotic and hard to track. Some tags get buried under others; there can be many, many tags that refer to the same thing but are disjoint, simply based on how you word the tag; there may not be a central or high-level navigation system. Finally, it's hard to "value" what one person creates over another.
The alternative is to have a formal community creation process and then build community tools around the created entity. This also has its weak points which primarily center around the fact that the process can become bureaucratic.
This isn't limited to just information, but also to other scenarios such as situational applications, where people get together to quickly prototype or build an application in a group setting. More on that later.
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Tagging real books?
I tend to markup the books I read. After a while, it just became easier to use those little 3M strip stickers and highlighters to index a book my way. I used to use different colored strips for different ideas: "hot idea", "case study", "problem point", etc. But eventually, I realized that it'd be easier to actually write specific words onto the strips. Guess what, I'm just doing something exactly the way I do online, but in a more primitive, and less easy-to-search way. I loose a lot of knowledge this way, or at least track of it.
So my wish here is that there would be some way how I could tag the content in any book I find into an online, searchable way, and perhaps share it with others. My thought is that there are several possibilities:
For 3 & 4, a side note: Safari is still hanging on but it is has a good approach to online books. You pay a service fee to be able to "borrow" books from their online library and can swap out your bookshelf over time; just requires a regular fee.
I think the idea of ebooks is great in terms of technology like digital ink that requires really low power consumption and can run for many hours at a time, but I think the need to be able to correlate or search related information, tagging, color images, etc. all require a net conneciton and better graphics support. In other words, the device just becomes a browser anyway, and the worst you have to do is keep recharging the device.
Take the iPod Touch or iPhone example as a browser people actually want to use and has some degree of a readable screen (compared to other phones). I don't have one, but I think you'd be able to access books from Safari and have a way to tag information. Ebooks (e.g., Sony Portable Reader System) have more screen real-estate, typically about the size of a paperback book. I think visually the iPod Touch
/iPhone is still a little small to read and chews power like candy, but it's much more capable in terms of enabling the reader or researcher.
Any ideas for other possible solutions?
- rawn
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tags, taxonomies, etc. cont'd
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  unstructured_knowledge tags 2,653 Views
Continued from my previous post...
As I said, we already have an internal taxonomy data structure that is used for our internal search engine, for categorizing our content, etc. It's crucial to keep this or things start going array when those tools are used. Each item in that taxonomy is used as a tag for marking items.
Now for dW Community, currently only the bloggers have their own "Category" tags, which are separate from the dW taxonomy. Because each blogger can create their own tags personally categorizing any of their posts, this can result in many variations of the same tag (same idea, different names), conflicts in the semantic usage of tags (different ideas, same name), and even ownership of those categories. Thus, you can think of these tags as having their own "individual scope" and exist in a different tag space than the full dW taxonomy.
Thus, there are now two scopes of tags: personal, and dW.
Next comes the issues with the big improvements coming in 2006. The plans for 2006 have been laid out but we haven't completely worked out the full tasks and implementation model. Hence, I haven't really described it yet... BUT it is coming and it will have a BIG impact in change! (we hope for the better in many ways)
So, with the new plan, we will start considering another scope of tags: those that span community-wide as a general folksonomy (see previous post).
In this scope, dW Community members can create a tag that exists in the public scope that anyone else can add, modify or even delete items from. This is where we start trusting our users to do what's best for themselves.
With any folksonomy there is potential for abuse and disaster when:
Thus, a pure folksonomy can become total chaos if the facilities to backtrack, undo, alert, or generally administer those tags are not available.
Yet another way to do this is to introduce a new type of scoping. You still have a folksonomy, but you subdivide topics at a high level, and break them down into groups. Each group can have its own tags created by anyone in that group. It's folksonomy in limited scale and actually breaks the original idea some, but limits widespread chaos.
So thus the potential is that there may be a number of scopes: individual, group, dW, global
How do you refer to each of these scopes?
Globally-unique naming of each scope is usually enough.
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tags, taxonomies, keywords, etc.
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  unstructured_knowledge tags 2,159 Views
With our shift towards the more social interaction of Web 2.0, we're currently trying to figure out what makes sense in terms of defining topics and taxonomies in developerWorks.
We already have an internal taxonomy which is used as a table of data in things like our search boxes (see the choices for "topics").
Now we are tackling the issues of how do we build a new taxonomy-like structure that also allows community members to contribute. This is very much in the folksonomy concept in sites like: del.icio.us, flickr, 43things.com, etc.
First, a quick review of things that contribute to complexity of these issues.
There are a number of faces of the same thing which I'll define to point out the differences:
In addition to these concepts, dW itself has some concepts we use regularly, primarily the zone which covers a major topic that we want to publish information on. Thus a zone is a variant of a topic. We also have had "special topics" (smaller than a zone), an "area" (also smaller than a zone), a "station" (guess what: smaller than a zone).
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Taking Web 2.0 to work
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  web_2.0 conferences 2,598 Views
Our technical briefings team is hosting a special event in September; actually two of them in the US, one in Raleigh, North Carolina, and another in Austin Texas. It's a free event, and the idea is to get a lot of thought going on around the topic of putting Web 2.0 into action in the workplace, in a more general way, beyond just startups and special projects.
Here's the info on the event:
Join us for a special event to learn how you can start bringing Web 2.0 into your organization, or as we say, 'Take Web 2.0 to Work.' During this day-long technology event from IBM, you'll see demos of the hottest technologies and participate in interactive breakout sessions - a large part of the content will be driven by you and the other attendees as we go along! The day will be full of live demos and true attendee participation!
You can register for this no cost conference today at: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/offers/techbriefings/details/web20.html
Raleigh, NC (September 12, 2007)
Austin, TX (September 18, 2007)
During the day, you'll not only hear from IBM Execs like Rod Smith, IBM Software Group, VP of Emerging Technologies and David Barnes, Program Director, Emerging Internet Technologies, IBM Software Strategy based out of Austin, TX, but also rub shoulders with other developers in your community, IBM's key system architects, developers and researchers from our R&D labs and some of the lead developers that created Lotus Connections. There will be plenty of time to dive deep into several different topic areas in breakout sessions including:
Collaboration (Social Networking applied to the Enterprise)
Application Creation (join in the creation of mashups and wikis)
Information Technology (see new ways to unlock information using emerging technologies like "Many Eyes")
The day will be heavy with demos and conversation, not slideware. Please join us on our conference Wiki to give suggestions on what subjects you would like to see and hear about, prior to the event at: http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/web20work/
The day-long conference will close with a discussion focused on not only where we've been and where we're going, but also on what you can do to start bringing Web 2.0 into your organization.
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The CR's State of Community Management report
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  analyst-report community-management community 6,179 Views
The folks over at The Community Roundtable have released a new report on The State of Community Management which I thought was quite good.
A key takeaway from this report that I find quite revealing: it contradicts the common belief that all communities develop into a 90-9-1 rule (90% lurkers, 9% contributors, 1% authors). Per the report: "As the community management discipline matures, there is increasing understanding of where certain rules of thumb like this apply and where they do not." I've once looked at the origins of this meme, and other than the Pareto principle, in online communities it dates back to specific posts in a Usenet newsgroup around the early 1990s. I need to find that link again. We now think of much more than just contributors and lurkers since there are many other ways to contribute as well which are not so obvious. That is a distinguishing mark that elevates the level of insight that this report brings above others.
What thrills me is that of the eight competency areas within, only on area focuses on tools. The majority of the focus lies in business principles: strategy, leadership, culture, policies, etc. The general media and blogosphere is always fascinated with new tools and toys but the real value is in understanding the almost unchanging business principles many of which are outlined in the list of competences. Each of the sections on these competencies specifically identifies lessons learned directly from the real life experience of members of The Community Roundtable.
I've talked before about the value that community managers bring to organizations, so I have to point out a specific section the role and issues of Community Management which can help current organizations understand the heavy demands of this role. Perhaps, with this insight, more organizations will take to heart that Community Management is not a part time, or a junior role in the organization. It takes a lot of people and relationship skills that develop with experience, and in doing so creates the same qualities we ask of our business leaders.
The Economist Jan 21st issue on The New Organization
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  community web_2.0 virtual_environments 2,359 Views
The Economist issue from last week has an 18-page in depth section on how people and organizations are evolving in the face of globalization, online Web 2.0 technologies, and changing ideas on organizing teams. This is one of the best articles I have seen on the subject (even better than Friedman's "The World is Flat")
You will need to be registered to access this premium content online, unfortunately.
-rawn[Read More]
The last webcast
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  podcasts webcast community_building 2,460 Views
The Webcast on Social Networking and Software as a Service is available for playback. It has a free registration link there.
I also did a developerWorks podcast with Scott in that same week, and the feature article on our main site, all about what we are doing with creating communities with Web 2.0.
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The Living Web: Is it a generational thing?
Cyberspace, The Virtual World, The Matrix, Mainframe, ENCOM, etc. Now The Living Web.
For being part of a generation that has grown up with online games,books, stories and movies about virtual worlds and moving at the "speedof the Net", it seems like it is taking quite a bit of time to get tothe idea of having such a world in common use (and hopefully not adystopic vision like that in The Matrix). I get the feeling we arelooking so far ahead that we are not focusing on taking the stepsinvolved in getting there.
Most of the mainstream media (books & movies) still focus on the 3Dworld, because obviously it's cool to imagine an alternate reality thatyou can actually move around. Even games tend toward that directionbecause it is the environment that can more easily excite people. Theyall talk about having a persona that moves and interacts with thisworld and the other personas in it. In fact, in the Matrix, the worldis so real, it is the "real world" as we know it; it's only when youunderstand the actual world of the Matrix behind it that you can dointeresting things like defying gravity.
The truth is probably a little depressing. Most of the virtual worldthat we know as the Web is 2D; in fact, by just a guesstimate, I'd sayover 98% of all the info we have online is in text. I also think for along time to come, the virtual world will still be overwhelminglytext-based for decades to come. To get to that futuristic vision asportrayed in the media, a lot of work behind the scenes still needs tohappen.
Ten steps (not in order) to get to virtual worlds:
Don't get me wrong: in limited areas, most of these properties alreadyexist. In particualr I'm talking about online games and MMORPGs.However, they are limited in the sense that they create a separatefictitious world that you have to apply your context to. In otherwords, yes, it's make believe, which is also why it is fun. Also theyare limited in the sense they exist almost entirely within their owndomain. You don't see characters moving outside a game like Everquestand moving onto World of Warcraft; or even any reason or correlation todo so.
In terms of people and businesses however, the information is real (notartifically created to role-play) and pervasive across wherever you go.The good news is that some of these items are already starting tohappen, as you can see per what Newsweek describes as The Living Web.What's more, these personas are a limited thing. My belief is thatpeople in general do not want to have to maintain multiple personas,for the same reason, people do not really want to have to keep track ofmultiple email accounts.
So there you have it. There's much work to do in the middle to get to pervasive virtual worlds.
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The most expensive coffee I've ever had... ($150/lb)
rawn 100000R0P5 Tags:  caffeine 3 Comments 4,483 Views
My friend John--also known as Action Figure John but that's a different story--brought by the most expensive coffee I'd never heard of until then. This coffee is so hard to produce that I doubt Starbuck's or Peet's could ever list it on their boards.
Jamaican Blue Mountain, you say? Pshaw... that's middle class stuff... :)
Around $150 or more a pound for the roasted beans, this coffee has to be shipped directly from the plantation. It is the legendary Kopi Luwak... and here's where the snickering begins.
This exotic coffee from Indonesia can only be found on plantations in Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi. Not only do they have to grow a good bean but it requires the assistance of Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, the Palm Civet (/snicker). This small mammal is common in many parts of South-East Asia and does the very important function of eating the raw red berries, digesting them, and then pooping them out! (/snicker /snicker) The enzymes from the digestive tract apparently help to break down some of the bitter proteins. The happily fed mammal then walks away to eat another day. Farmers collect the beans and give it a light roast, then vacuum pack it and ship it to coffee extremists worldwide. John ordered it from AnimalCoffee.com I believe.
I just had to try this out, even though I'm not a coffee drinker myself.
For our afternoon of watching the Tivo'd new season episode of Battlestar Galactica, John brought his pristinely packaged poo poo coffee, along with his shiny brass coffee pot and burner, which he uses to make Turkish/SE Mediterranean coffee (yes, the true gritty stuff).
John ground a handful of beans in his brand new matching brass hand-mill coffee grinder, since it gets smaller grains than an automatic mill. It takes about a good 5-10 minutes of grinding to get it that way though. Then with some fine drinking water for fewer impurities, boiled over a small alcohol stove, the coffee came out quite nicely.
Not being a coffee connoisseur--here's a link from someone who's more in tune with it--allI could tell is that it was still a little bitter but had no harshness atall. It was strange to me but the others liked it.
He thinks we stillneed to refine how much coffee to water and how fine to grind it. Thegrit was not as fine as the Turkish coffee he usually drinks (about 2pots a day). But as you can see none of it went to waste, and people quite enjoyed it to the bottom. (/snicker)
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The Psychology of new-product adoption
rawn 100000R0P5 2,926 Views
The HBR June issue has an article(requires subscription) by John Gourville which is one of the firstI've read to explain so clearly the issues behind the psychology ofadopting new products. I take this to mean not just products but alsoservices from any organization.
In summary, the idea was raised by the Nobel-prize winning psychologistDaniel Kahneman that explores why people deviate from rational economicbehavior. This combined with other work, on how individuals valuechoices in the marketplace, define the basis on how people handle theintroduction of a new product or service.
The four behaviors that arise are: people evaluate new product asalternatives, based on perceived value rather than subjective value;they consider new products relative to points of reference to existingones; they view such references as benefits/gains orshortcomings/losses; and finally, the most important behavior, losses have a far greater impact than gains.
This leads to the endowment effect whichthe author reports as the behavior where people hold things theyalready have in much greater value than those they don't. In fact, itleads to a multiplying effect in the market where consumers value theirexisting holdings as three times more valuable, while organizationswith new ideas/products value their own holdings as three times asvaluable. Thus, to convince consumers to change from the old to the newproduct may require up to nine timesthe improvements over the older product. As the author explains, AndyGrove of Intel has held the belief that an innovaion that can transformthe industry rapidly needs to offer a 10x improvement over existingalternatives. (I know my Sharp Aquos HDTV doesn't quite reach thathigh, but I still like the switch over from my 25" inch Sony tuber :)
The author continues by giving several categories of probability: the Sure Failure, the Easy Sell, the Long Hauls, and the Smash Hits. AnEasy Sell indicates limited (small) changes to the existing product andlimited changes to the behavior necessary. A Smal Hit has significantchanges to the product but only limited changes to the behavior.
I strongly suggest you pick up a copy of the HBR to understand the full extent of this article.
This has direct impact on any new technology, a topic of constant focusfor us at dW. Every company wants the smash hit, but for many it ismore by accident than on purpose. However, often they focus onimprovements to products based on what they think is important, andduring the product development stage do not really consider the factorsof user adoption behavior because it is so hard to measure. I've comeacross so many cases where the technology is considered quite advancedby the technical team that develops, supported by surveys of groups ofthe bleeding edge customers who are already raring to use it; but, theyfall short when they call out to the general market which issignificantly slower to adopt the idea.
In fact, in some cases, the improvements are just not enough (per theabove marketing theory). In other cases, the perceived value of theproduct is just conveyed either adequately to the consumers, or by the right influencers who can change perception. Ittakes the right mix of technical know-how, eloquence, stubbornness,ingenuity, and charm to find the proper evangelists for a project. Butfirst you need to be able to find those who are fans of the idea in thefirst place (goes back to my other thought on building a fan-base); theevangelist themselves must be a convinced fan, or others willeventually consider them a sham.
This theory applies to the tens or hundreds of thousands of newprojects that start up on the internet. A product manager needs toconsider if the product falls into the win category of Smash Hit or will be a Long Haulsell as much as the innovation of the product itself. This meansunderstanding the user behavior and need for the product in the firstplace. The difficulty lies in quantifying the improvements.
In some cases, you can do it by this process:
The impact of the endowment effect is the old adage: people fear change.It's not fear per-se, but more inertia. To overcome the inertia, youneed to change perceptions. To grow customers and fans, you need tobuild the audience and community around the idea, to build up momentumof understanding and acceptance to overcome this inertia. (I mentionthat this is a crucial second step of the Open Source business model earlier)
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The silliest open source strategy
rawn 100000R0P5 1,353 Views
Business 2.0 list of 101 Dumbest Moments in Business #43. I don't like sniping at others, but that's just so darn funny.
-rawn[Read More]
The too-much-infomation society
rawn 100000R0P5 980 Views
As our developerWorks Community Editor, I'm faced with issues which are part talent management and part information management. Aside from all the regular issues of focusing effort and developing content to build a stronger community, I'm facing a happy problem of having so many enthusiatic contributors: what happens when there's too much to read?
It isn't hard to see this problem is evident; just try googling on a topic and see how many hits you get. Would you really want to read anything more than 100 entries?
In talking with James Snell and others a few weeks ago regarding corporate blogs, wikis and other such tools, we agreed that there are typically two ways of looking at who should contribute. We both agree everyone should be able to do so; but when you start running into large numbers, how do you organize this information?
First, there's the top-down approach where you pick the topics and find people to contribute to each category. This is quite commonly used; dW does this in our many zones.
Then there's also a bottom-up approach where you want topic experts to self-emerge from a population.
This second approach is harder to figure out, but the answer may not be as complicated, especially when you have a large population and numbers on your side.
I think the idea lies in building a Reputation network, modeled on trust. Each individual essentially would rate how a particular interaction with a potential expert turned out (in two types of trust, which I'll discuss later). You can then average all the trust ratings per candidate to determine their reputation. The number of interactions combined with this average trust rating describes their reputation.
Those with higher reputations automatically emerge as "experts" in whatever categories they want to focus on. The process is democratic and self-emergent within the community. For that matter it also automatically helps to define topic areas that people are interested in.
That's the basic principle. I'm quite sure there are many ways of looking at this, so I'd be curious to hear counterpoints.
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text:
The resolution came on the news the last few days the media are doing Chal Hull. Akkineni soon host family ceremony. He was engaged to be shot on the 9th of December, Nagarjuna says. The movie wills also know things related to the wedding. To be married in the next …Read More »
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