After our planning meeting last week, I have been thinking a bit about the best uses for the wiki, the blog and the other key services of the Open Web. On Monday I spoke with Rachel Murray about the potential uses/users of the site and how to best configure the knowledge/community system. One overriding theme kept coming back to me over and over – use your own tagspace and create a published key. Almost like an API for knowledge objects as it relates to us. We would use Basecamp for our pre-planning discussions, documents, flyer versions etc… (the behind the scenes stuff being treated more like pieces of art in progress rather than private)
In reviewing the future spread of this usage within the commons, it becomes apparent that we must self-regulate the space so as to not have it interfered with, while at the same time establishing laws against those who will utilize it for blog spam and other unwarranted activities that would impede upon the good purposes within the commons. Like keeping graffiti off the city streets and buildings. Rachel has put the beginnings of this idea in place on our wiki, and we would love you to contribute as well.
But I digress, and I am out of time, so let me get to the point of the post – how we will be experimenting with our own tagspace and key, integrating dynamic, tag based feeds easily available from the key itself.
Our TagSpace will be based on the domain name in a sense – brainjams:
Some keys will be
- brainjams:planning
- brainjams:tour
- brainjams:bayarea
- brainjams:miami
- brainjams:sandiego
- brainjams:patrons
- brainjams:resources4u
Eventually from the site, you will be able to quickly and easily access all related items, learn how to easily tag your posts and join us in figuring out how we can best use these tools together, and how we can make it easier for toher to lean how, to contribute their experience and constantly work to improve with deeper understanding of what works best.
As it stands now, there are really 4 spaces we will be playing within (though this will likely grow as more cool tools are developed):
- Blogs Blogs are to be used for places to present new ideas – the posts themselves get tagged so as to be included in the appropriate tagspace and easily findable by all through our interface or on their own RSS subscritions to the tagspaces. Conversations about the ideas should hopefully take place around that blog posts, through the comment system – perhaps with another tagspace applied to help make sense of the comments (based on my Insytes models perhaps)
- Flickr – Flickr is a place for presenting models, frameworks, diagrams and the like – or photos from the events themselves to be connected to all the other media about the event from the tagspace. Again here we can use Flickr’s comment system to connect the dots to other pieces of information that support the model/ideas or perhaps even leap from one version to the next
- De.licio.us – Delicious allows us to tag important resources for the projects so that other people on the project teams and working towards the same goals within the same tagspace can all keep up to date. When one is very urgent, someone can email it, IM it, or tag it FOR:username. The Flock browser as it gets more stable will be perfect for these things.
- WIKI – The Wiki will become the primary resource locater pointing to codified, accepted wisdom on the things we are discovering and working through the other methods. Not only pointing out best practices, directory information, and other relevant knwoledge, but being constantly improved as our experience grows and we develop new insytes. The best practices and resources and models will point back to the source materials and thoughts that are throughout the commons.
And it is all possible because of tags. We need to work to ensure that this critical interface element is used properly – don’t know what or how yet, but I am putting it out there for inclusion in this conversation so that we dont miss something big here. At present, it is an open system that any group can just create and hold on to. Perhaps we need a registry of some source, a commons registry, an extension if OPENIdentity. Maybe we can talk about this at IIW2005.
For now, though I need to run to the TechCrunch event – running late – want to talk about this with the good folks there…
One more thing I wrote earlier, but needed to pull out of the main text – I am done with Web 2.0, Web 2.1. Web2point1, Web 3.0, Web37.0 – From here on out, I am going to call it “Open Web” now instead of Web 2.0 I know there is a company with that name, but in the context of “the OpenWeb” we might be ok – won’t you join me on stomping out Web versioning for good? After all, that is what we are really talking about right? A commons open to all, based on standards (as lessig says “Network Neutral“)
Technorati Tags: ad-hoc+collaboration+collaboration, barcamp, brainjamknowledge, brainjamming, brainjams, open source, brainjamprocess
