Category: Professional

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two takes on the same experience

Yesterday I went to a seminar put on by the state board of community & technical colleges, primarily for student services types, about using the web for student services. (which astute readers may remember my mentioning earlier. It was actually only a half-day, not a full day.)

I’ve written up my professional take on the experience, but there was more to it than that which I feel obliged to write about.

Sinus headache. Everything else about the whole day has to be understood in that context. I took Excedrin, but it only ever faded to a dull roar. So I was on edge and having trouble concentrating.

As an extra bit of fun, I wasn’t able to carpool, so I took the bus to Green River…where I’ve never been before! That turned out pretty well, if a little chilly waiting at the Federal Way park & ride. I had time to read, try and make notes, try to get over my headache; although not time to eat. (Which probably didn’t help the headache any.)

Here’s a thing I don’t understand: why are (almost) all of the community colleges in this area located in beautiful spots in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE? And Green River’s campus was typically baffling in its layout too, because of *course* I’d forgotten to bring a map. A very nice librarian got me oriented in the right direction.

Afterwards, I hung out in said library for a bit, and then headed back…but with a different transportation path. Bus to train, this time, and I just barely made the train. But, wow that’s nice. Clean, comfortable, well-lit. And that odd flowing swaying motion of the train, which I’d forgotten since that trip home 13 (!!!) years ago.

Something I can’t forget, or at least would prefer not to: must bring laptop to all events which might require note-taking. My paper note-taking sk1lz remain meagre, but I (usually) take copious notes if I have a keyboard. Someday I’ll figure out why, but in the meantime, I reiterate to myself: must bring laptop.

(The evening was very nice, with dinner at the amazing Vuelve a la Vida. Do I have any readers in vicinity? It’s on Pacific near 56th. Followed by an unbearably corny Chuck Norris movie. Is there any other kind?)

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a pre-review review

I’m on Chapter 6, and I’ve realized that one of the things I appreciate about this book is his use of pseudo-code: “In plain English, this is what I’m going to do:” and so on.

JavaScript is admittedly one of my personal challenges, but I’ve already had several aha! moments, and I think I might actually know what I’m doing by the time I finish.

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I’m old now.

Okay, maybe just in blog years. This morning I went to a panel on blogging for the south Sound chapter of the PRSA, along with one of the other people in my department.

Had a bit of a conversation beforehand with a guy from Sterling Communications who was on the panel, and he thought the word originated around 2002, which I knew — old grizzled veteran that I am — that it was older. (Googling later reveals that it was either Peter Merholz or Jorn Barger, sometime in 1999, which sounds about right. Honestly, I felt like a newbie when I started in April 2001, like all the old-timers had been doing this forever.)

I also talked a little bit to Janet from Marqui, you know, the company that paid a bunch of people the beginning of last year for blogging. She asked what I’d thought, and I honestly couldn’t remember. I have this sense that my thinking had floated back and forth, but I never wrote anything about it here that I can recall. I have this vague memory of commenting on one of Shelley’s posts, but apparently not.

The third panelist was Mark Briggs (?) from the News Tribune, who really impressed me throughout. They now take comments on every single article on their site, not just the blogs, and it even effects story placement (on the site? in the physical paper?).

One nice turn of phrase: “affinity media” from the Sterling guy, although in a more pessimistic mood it can certainly mean the same thing as “echo chamber.” (As per Rebecca Blood, et al.)

One disconcerting phrase: “as more civilized folks enter” from Janet, in ref to the blogosphere (oy! I remember when that phrase first came up and was mocked roundly. And we blogged in the snow, uphill both ways.) being the wild west.

Also, she asked who is blogging now, and when I raised my hand, I said “not this exact second” which got a bit of a chuckle. Tho…I sort of missed having my laptop to be able to take really good notes instead of the half-assed ones I have in my paper journal. 😉

All in all, I’m glad I went, esp. with the co-worker — good conversation in the car back! And, whoa, a pothole (!!!!) on I5 had traffic completely stopped the other direction. Maybe the radio said pothole and meant sinkhole, because that was a humongous backup.

Anyway…a good thing, partially to see where the local PR folks, particularly the govt/edu types, are with the whole blogging experience. I didn’t hear anything that made me want to jump up and yell, “but no, you’ve got it all wrong” which is a good start.

And the funniest thing, talking to somebody afterwards and having him be all super-amazed that I’ve been blogging almost 5 years. 😉 He even asked for my blog’s name…damn it, why couldn’t I have picked a domain name that makes sense spoken aloud?!

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it’s official

I just paid for my registration and reserved my hotel room. (No, it’s not super-close, but it’s cheap.) Now all I need to do is get my flight set. Wow.

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my history with web standards

I had reason to troll through my archives recently, and found a note dated May 23, 2001 that was exclaiming my first redesign of my personal site using web standards & CSS-based layout. That’ll be five years this next spring.

Can the edge still be bleeding (so to speak) after five years?!

Also, I find it curious, but logical, that the only two trends I’ve ever been ahead of the curve on (CSS, blogging) happen to be so tightly intertwined.

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stealth evolutionary projects

I’ve threatened to write about this a few times, and here’s my first take on the topic. I know this diverges from my usual policy of not writing about work, but I’m hoping to be general enough to be useful.

One often sees projects, particularly IT projects, that are a Really. Big. Deal. As in months (years?!) of meetings, lots of angst, big expectations that can probably never be met, even by the best system in the known universe.

Conversely, these last few years I’ve had an opportunity to work on projects to which not much attention was paid, and for which the expectations are relatively low. The most interesting, to me, are the ones that have evolved over time. Here’s two examples, for which the names have been changed to protect the innocent:

Project A is an information service, designed to replace a much-maligned, but also much-loved, paper resource. It has been taken on by a department as a Project. There are Meetings and Presentations. There is an intern, who suffers muchly. (This is how I came in on the thing, through the intern; those who know me off-blog will know the project from these few sentences.) It has taken a couple of years in different iterations to get even as far as an intern with ideas knocking on my door. We get it done, but it’s a rough stretch for both of us.

Project B is almost a CMS, which I started on by creating a simplistic template to make redesigns easier. A few years later tacked a database onto it to keep track of a few extra things. Then it occured to me that I could use that same information to request updates from people who actually know things. A couple of scripts and a cron job later, and I have a way of automagically getting page updates. The next step will probably tie the navigation into the database. But I don’t know for sure, because it’s still evolving.

Actually, the funny thing about Project A is that it’s transmogrified into an evolving stealth project. Once the basic bits were running, I figured out new things to do with it. I’ve never asked for permission, nor have I needed forgiveness. Somebody has an idea, I think it generalizes and can be done, and I slide it in.

Is it an open-source ethos? I see something broken, or something that could be better, and I start futzing, and eventually the futzing either grows into a system (ala templating) or I realize I need something entirely different. (The danger, of course, is poor documentation. In the long run, the key is to have a cohort in these adventures.)

Here’s my take on it philosophically: when something becomes a Project, it gets a name. The name comes to identify what it is and what it does. Names, of course, are powerful; names are also confusing, because of the mental pictures in our heads. Soon nobody knows what the Project is supposed to do, or what’s involved in actually doing it, or why they should even care.

Futzing? Stealth projects? Evolving programs? No name, no expectation, no confusion. Stuff just happens. Learning by doing; trying, failing (or partially succeeding), and trying again. That’s what it amounts to, and I think it works for me.

I don’t know if I’ve really expressed it properly; I may give this another go again sometime later, but I wanted to get it out now while I was actively thinking about it.

(As an aside, this is where I’m at with my long-suffering Odd Review/Media Diet project. I’ve got it working and now I’m playing with features and details.)

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notes for blogging presentation

also refer to “notes I did for detray’s class”:/ew/2004/10/27/on-weblogs/

what is a blog?
* web site
* easy to publish
* organized by time

core blogging concepts
* the “post”
* syndication
* commenting
* Google effects

universe of blogs can be seen as overlapping circles
* writing about personal lives (journals), for personal growth or social interaction
* writing about professional lives, for professional purposes
* pro/am political punditry
* use of blogging tools for other kinds of content management

how they might affect our department
* students writing about their experiences
* same with faculty or employees — both in personal realm and in their professional fields (cf: interlectual, freakonomics)
* a way for us to get professional development on the cheap (design blogs, marketing blogs, and again, interlectual)
* a tool we are already using (examples!) and future use (far-out ideas?!)

our existing media outlets beginning to use weblogs. (http://www.thenewstribune.com/blogs/ — http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/buzz/)

are there new outlets we could or should be reaching? (thesubtimes.com — or individual bloggers of influence?!)

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drupal con

this has been edited, including the addition of a summary, and with the removal of some personal felbercarb. but I am leaving it relatively rambling, as that’s my style.

*summary*
* oregon is a kick@ss place for open source. (sigh.)
* the demos were awful.
* the bryght guys are very dot-com (no offense, boris)
* drupal is the new swiss-army-chainsaw
* I did actually understand the process for doing a multi-site, single-install, but I still don’t quite grok it. (Derek was muy helpful.)
* I love the idea of the ecosystem…and there would seem to be lots of opportunities there, both for the college and for myself personally.
* if I can get the kinks worked out, Drupal would be an excellent choice for us. that may be a bigger if than I’d thought, though.

had lunch with a couple of FGPDX people, which was a really excellent experience. and good food…I always have good food in Portland.

it’s dark, with the reflections of laptop screens giving faint illumination to people’s faces. I might move the laptop to my lap, as this angle is going to kill my wrists. yep, this is better.

talked briefly to a guy from a place named reallinks in cleveland.

nate from psu is going to talk…I saw him speak at evergreen about a service learning/gis project, if I remember correctly. (need to look in paper journal!)

wants to make more partnerships with oscon in future years…ah, that would be kewl. using drupal in experimental projects.

oregon is rich place for open source because of open source lab in corvallis with osu. intro scott from osu. open source gaining momentum in oregon as elsewhere. linus is here, hp, ibm have research laps. os labs happy to enable communities like this where real work is done, innovation is happening.

drupal server was shared with other sites, strained infrastructure, os labs offered place for their server, community raised $11k for infrastructure. happy to help drupal community.

bryght demo and civicspace demo — versions of civicspace. some goofiness with placement of equipment, weird down time.

oh, he started the [bryght] demo…but he’s talking too quietly. somebody told him to speak up. they’re selling the ease of use. they’re just going to 4.6 drupal as their core.

example at geekytraveller.com, 2010.dailyvancouver.com, urbanvancouver.com.

they need template designers, people to send them to…more people are asking than can be helped.

that’s the end of the demo?

q: ecommerce module? yes, will work with paypal, future to merchant accounts. but that’s the opposite direction of what this guy wants.

zach from civicspace, drupal distro geared towards grassroots organizations. talking through the install, which I tried last week.

q: role of civicspace, relationship to drupal? “distribution” — core of drupal, plus modules. fill the need of grassroots organization to do organizing online.

q: does drupal support multithreading? spread across hardware? not like java…limitation of PHP. usually scale layers underneath.

back to the install, wizard to walk through basic setup. these people are crummy at presenting.

q: service or software? we don’t provide hosting, but connect with other hosts using civicspace.

comment: problem with timeout on slow server.

attach location metadata built-in, plus mass mail system, mailing list. these are also available as modules for drupal.

okay, the bryght guys are starting to annoy.

q: location, granularity? as granular as zipcodes get. gps coordinates for center of zip code area. can be possible to add other geodata thru api. germany & canada are likely to be easiest. example: skatespot.org

drees is creator/project lead of drupal from belgium. getting phd in java?! (he was the one who answered C’s question.)

content management system (ready-to-use tool for publishing) + web application framework (use as a base for other web applications)

free! international! community!

funny slide, list of many features. jeebus.

two axis graph showing kinds of drupal usage: static sites, few contributors -> many contributors, interactive. blobs of kinds of usage. magazines, intranets, campaigns, discussion, etc. most are in top-right: many and interactive.

intra-community & inter-community features. forums, pm, blogs, etc. vs. rss import/export, dist. authentication.

history. 1999 he started it as a message board for his dorm. then made it public, shifted towards internet, adding features & functionality. became more of an ecosystem/community. I missed a question…something about backwards compatibility? if it can be better, then we’ll break the api, tho never the data.

15,000 downloads/month. 3 million page views/month. 200+ people who have cvs access.

brief summary about gnu/gpl. freedoms to: run, study, modify, share, and if you share a modified version, then you give others those same freedoms. and os benefits: cost, no lock-in, increased self-reliance, tendency to adhere to open standards, easy to evaluate & test, community. yep. that’s the happy.

free doesn’t mean no costs: may pay for customization, development, SLA, internal knowledge.

3 challenges.

# strong demand for developers, not always able to route people to resources, so need to foster a sustainable ecosystem. (recuiting/training, marketplace for developers?)
# novice users get confused. want to attract usability experts, encourage specialized distros/hosting for specialized environments.
# growing community needs resources, and thus a legal entity to donate to, and to protect the brand. create a drupal foundation?

in all points, fostering the ecosystem is the way to answer the challenges.

q: what is sharing? explained in the license itself, as distribution. if you give someone a copy, or make it available for download…but you don’t have to share. “I’m not a lawyer.”

q: what about the name? when they moved to the internet, wanted to use the name dorp.org because it means village in dutch, but accidentally transposed letters. and drupal means drop in dutch. “thought it was a funny name”

q: new person to drupal, etc.: documentation is very poor. are there people doing more about that? yes. created a documentation team, working hard on reworking drupal handbooks. books being written, too, should be available in next six mos. comment: opportunity for higher-ed folks, then, to help? yes. something out of perdue, helping with open source documentation. (what is that group?) audience member says that one will be available in November…books on demand low-volume publishing?

flows into community panel….

q (Tim): what if I wanted to send usability contacts? go to drupal.org/contact and on day 2 will be presentation from civicspace and usability work they are doing. comment from audience: expanding horizon of what usability expert looks like might help expand that group. because it’s so flexible, (adrian, install master) what’s usable for one group is totally useless or unusable for another. growing multiple ecologies.

http://drupaled.org/

break.

panel discussion, the ecology. mitch gore, designer/user, lynn s (?) web/drupal developer, andrew hoppen, civicspace, boris mann, bryght.

lynn: what does ecology of drupal mean? benign parasite, but does a lot of evangelizing, which is the role of consultants, etc…completely maxed out with drupal clients. where she sees improvement: documentation. she doesn’t like to write them, nobody likes to write them.

mitch: one of lynn’s powerusers…early photoshop maven. usability! key stumbling block. don’t want to present litany of complaints, because it’s been a great boon…but…documentation, clear understanding of what these things are and do, relationship between drupal & 3rd party groups, etc. worked with the deanspace people, with enthusiasm, but don’t even know the questions to ask. developers have to do the heavy lifting in creating a product that’s easy to use, “sailor-proof.”

andrew: also started with dean campaign. not just the free, but where the users are control of their own whatever. nonprofit filling gaps, some in development, some in evangelizing, some in connecting, creating community. help people help each other.

boris: about bryght, started last june. has theoretical technical background, but more of a jumping up and down evangelizing person. started company to help people more easily get to powerful tools. (but jeebus christ on a crutch they’re spendy. $40/mo?) needs more community: more users than developers. there’s money to be made! (hm.) when you outgrow your current blogging system, then you can come to drupal.

Publish and subscribe

lists.drupal.org

gathering requirements

get together with other folks interested in the same thing. Bryght has funding to build some of these solutions, push-button. A year of deploying, working it out.

They missed a guy (derek?) with his hand up.

Somebody said it looked cluttered, admin side. (I’d agree) Drees wants to create a mechanism for users to provide feedback, speeding up interaction between developers and users. Mitch says it’s gotten better, but finding the answer to a question is hard, knowing where you are, tho it’s gotten better.

Boris: Developers are too busy to hang out in the forums. Hard-core documentation people, but not enough. 10-15 more would be able to answer questions in tracker, etc.

lynn: biggest site is ?new homemaker? — core audience is housewives, needs to make sure there aren’t too many options. Brings readers along with her as she adds features.

Boris wants people to write up best practices…and drupal has high page rank!

Audience comment: cms market is high-end, big co’s spend lots of money on training. And this market tends to get more and more complex. Need to … lost that thought…

Human-computer interface guidelines?

Drupal channel, drupaldocs.org

learn from other communities? WP has kick-ass documentation. Yep. Need more f2f communication, meetup-style.

Thinking mambo v. drupal….

what about desktop, ajax, fads?

Brandedthoughts.uk.co

this guy keeps coming back to freaking ajax, even when someone else is talking about something else. Learning one thing at a time.

I ended up bailing on the 2nd half, because I didn’t feel like I was going to get anything out of it.

I did, however, have three good conversations before I left:
# Bill from the news tribune.
# Julian Pietras, the head of academic computing at evergreen. good chat about drupal in the .edu environment, and open source as “the right thing to do”
# Derek from REALinks, who finally worked me thru the multiple sites/one install thing, and I understand the bit that stymied me before. I still don’t know if I can *do* anything about it, but at least I understand. something to experiment with later, I think.

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decompressing

this morning I kinda had a mental breakdown, I think partially in reaction to my intense experience of yesterday. it felt like a lot, and in a good way, and today being back in my house, knowing all the work I have ahead of me this week…I melted.

so I’m trying to recover by seeing if I can reflect on the experience, summarize what I got out of it, etc.

first of all, I ::heart:: Portland. more than Seattle, seriously. cycling in Portland felt like the best most natural thing, even if I got disorientated a couple of times. (I notoriously get lost and/or turned around every. single. time. I go to Portland.) I rode all over and that felt empowering emotionally and invigorating physically. I groove on the city in ways I can’t quite articulate. plus we had a great night out on Thursday, going over to Mississippi Ave. for dinner and wandering about. plus every damn thing I had to eat was super-tasty: J Cafe, Equinox, a deli whose name I don’t remember, and Greek Cusina. (brie wrapped in phyllo covered with honey and almonds == the most amazing thing I have ever eaten.)

2nd, WebVisions has always been good to me, and this year was no exception. I had the additional pleasure of coming this time with Susan and Brian from Evergreen; they are both fun smart people, plus having the starting nub of a posse made me feel able to be more gregarious.

The panels/presentations were 50/50, to be honest, but I’d say I got something out of every single one.

# Designing for the Sandbox with Peter Merholz: excellent stuff; nothing I hadn’t really heard (read) from him before, but I enjoyed getting the message in person. Plus he’s a great presenter: creative slides and an engaging manner.
# Podcasting (Rice, Narain, & May): I had my aha! moment re: podcasting. To be honest, I don’t know if there’s any particular professional application for us right now, and I have *no* interest in doing any podcasting myself. Not a big fan of the sound of my own voice, don’t have any drive to share my rather ordinary music collection, and frankly I just prefer the written word. However, I’m enjoying Matt May’s staccato episode 20 right now…I’m vaguely aware of the issues around iTunes’ implementation of podcasting subscription, but dang that’s convenient.
# The Future of Content (Finck, Holzschlag, Smokler & Robinson): what was interesting for me about this one was the diversity of opinion I heard from other audience members. people either loved it or hated it, I think for much the same reason: it was a rambling vague amorphous conversation. also, I lost a *huge* chunk of my notes, for the precise reason that I type too goddamn fast. and what is the deal with Keith’s hair?
# I’ll get back to lunch in a minute.
# Designing for the Personal InfoCloud (Vander Wal): meh. 2 things struck me about this one: he said almost the exact same things that peterme did, but not as engagingly, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of commercial co-opting and exploitation, which is why I had to step out for a minute. although I did finally have an aha moment, which redeemed it for me.
# Why Simplicity Matters (Fogg): deeply moving. Susan said she was amazed at hearing a man express so much emotion in re: the technology; Denise similarly said that his combination of words and imagery engaged her whole brain. I totally agree.
# Why We Still Love the Web (Butterfield): this one also engaged my emotional experiences with the web, which is the reason why I keep on keeping on with this crazy thing. I realized right this minute that it’s an intense combination of a love for place, a love of a craft, and a love for specific people (y’all know who you are, right?). It was less of a presentation or learning experience than just an expression of wonder, which was a great way to end the day.

The one thing I’d really change about the programming (other than having gone to see Sarah Horton instead of Vander Wal), is that I’d’ve liked to have seen more formal opportunities for sharing/networking. One possibility that came to me this morning: one of each of the presentation slots in a room with tables and chairs, where the presenter or panel was specifically charge with making the experience more between the audience members, rather than a broadcast experience. I have a hunch that Molly was trying to do that with the future of content session, but it’s hard to get that in a darkened room with rows of chairs!

And about lunch…I had something of an informal arrangement that we were going to try to catch up with Kathy & Ann from UW, either breakfast or lunch, and Kathy brought her former colleague Denise, who came to the first WA .edu-web-people dinner. plus, in the podcasting session, Jay from Dartmouth gave me his card so I could send him my notes, so I invited him along for lunch. 🙂 which all turned out fantastic; Denise scouted us out a great deli (such good fries!), and we had a fierce rambling conversation. upshot for me, professionally, is that (a) I’m not alone in any particular thing and (b) I really need to look into drupal again.

I want to re-read my notes (wtf is going on with the paging thing in WP?!), so as to get some specific to take back to work, but in general I feel like I’m on the right track and I still have a lot to learn. which feels good.

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keynote: why we (still) love the web

my brain is almost full. luckily (?) I have a week away from work to let it all sink in, while I cut drywall and pound nails, etc.

I also have my fingers crossed that I’ll win something in the evaluation form drawing. 🙂

(hey, this multi-page thing for categories is totally broken. I’m sorry, I’ll try to figure it out this weekend.)

whoa…he’s a midget.

“people of the internets”

his early life online. dude, he must be right about my age. phish newsgroup. solving an argument about feeling earthquakes by using the net: usgs gopher/web site. on his slide: “I find my people” (precisely.)

possibility & constraint. the 5k. getting to the math part: 40,960 bits: random grid, 850 words of english, tiny picture of bridge at the huntington (!!!), powers of 2 (okay, weird stuff with hypercubes), 2^40960. more than the number of milliseconds since the big bang times the number of particles in the universe!!!!
ascii. hello: positions, binary, off/on switches.

html. layered with CSS/JS. only certain moves allowed, like chess.

what makes sense: natural language. what works. what is beautiful, in a platonic (excellent) sense.

“design is the successive application of contraints until only a unique product is left” — Richard Pew. (I’m reminded of my conversation with the artist of teeny-tiny watercolors last night.)

evolution, going from static to dynamic.

oh, hey he mentions my favorite explanation of contraints: poetry! over the 20th century artists have played with contraints.

a weird euphonia to a chunk from a book where each chapter only contains one vowel. (apparently, the “u” chapter doesn’t make a lot of sense.)

somewhat silly metaphors about creativity, I guess.

flickr group that is all images with circle in square, as a spontaneous choice for contraints. then the fibonacci spiral of square/circle photos. made by a programmer who sells them as posters for $4. limiting number that come from each individual: another constraint. (I’m tired enough, and have been typing enough, that I’m mistyping more.)

kids can’t not play, at least until 7-10 yrs, sometimes at the edge of pain, power relationships, or sexuality.

“play is the exultation of the possible” — Martin Buber

the web is our playground. (yes!) kinship with other people who know html. 🙂 but each of us can say ‘our’ and mean something different. oooh…cool image of social network.

back to the hypercube. we all occupy parts of that space (the web of a trillion dimensions)…with those connections. and that’s why we continue to love the web, even through the crash and all. Brad told him that the first WV was kinda depression, because it was right at the crash.

a wave of very intense emotion from him.

q: game neverending (?) — what happened to it? it went away, but elements of it went into flickr.

q: has college friends who are flickr addicts; do you have a sense of who is into it? UAE is apparently a big audience, like Brazil for [????]. wishing he was into golf for the social interaction, father playing bridge with people he wouldn’t just invite over to hang out. come for the photography, stay for the social relationships. a flickr marriage?! playful interface is addictive.

q: why beta? will the real version be totally awesome? at the beginning it was very different; only thing the same is the profile. stopped releasing stuff a couple of months ago because of stuff that had to happen with aquisition.

q (Molly): amazing in a year of killer apps — what do you do with flickr? hit photos for contacts page, like blogs where people emit what they want to and you can aggregate it all. better relationships, because he sees what’s going on with friends. lots of horsing around at work.

q: decision to open API? also has game neverending pedigree conceptually. realized that they had to be able to ask little questions from the server, so they had to build an API, and might as well release it. 20% of all traffic is api-based. (!) wanted people to be able to get pictures out of system, and didn’t have time to build export feature, same with other features they thought about. (some heckling re: a misspelled search term) cool, beautiful, interesting, never would’ve thought of in 10,000 years.

q: video? a good question, still figuring out the best way to do it.