Chris Heuer's Insytes

I was supposed to be leaving this evening for Northern Voice 2006 in Vancouver, but I have finally succumbed to the fact that I should not go. Yesterday evening, the occasional hacking cough went deeper and now today I am running a slight fever with body aches and general tiredness.

The importance of this great blogging conference is high for me – not only is it a chance to see friends I have not connected with personally for many months, but I was also planning on debuting a very early release of our BrainJams Unconference Community during my talk at MooseCamp tomorrow morning. On both a personal and professional level, I can not begin to tell you how disappointed I am that I will not be there. One of the worst things at the moment is that my head keeps telling me I am good enough to go, and I do indeed feel better at the moment, but my heart says I should stay home…

Normally, like many others I know, I would still go to this conference. However, I have made a commitment to myself to live from principle centered leadership – and stopping the spread of germs is a principle that has begun to mean a lot to me as I see more and more people playing the role of martyr in the work place, riding public transportation and going into work, spreading their illness to countless others. In this age of potential flu pandemics, in a world that is wired as it is, there is no reason, however compelling, to put myself on an airplane and attend a conference, further spreading the germs that inhabit my body – especially with the chance of getting my friends sick.

I respect them and myself too much to let this spread further – so off to bed I go, for rest and recovery, even though choosing not to go means I am also pissing away several hundred dollars (US) for the hotel and airfare costs.

I don’t hold any bad feelings for anyone (especially friends) who may have done this recently themselves – I just wish more people would make the hard choice and stay home, despite the perceived social/business value of going out into the world while sick. Personally, I feel bad enough about having gone out yesterday not realizing I was actually sick – so to the friends I saw yesterday down in Palo Alto, my sincerest apologies to you, I hope you have good health and avoid this nasty bug.

Technorati Tags: brainjams, MooseCamp, northernvoice2006

Much thanks to Bill Allison for working very diligently over the last couple of weeks towards securing the UC Berkeley Office of the CIO to sponsor our next event on campus. We are awaiting final contracts on the room before we can announce exactly where on campus, but I can say that the room being secured is perfect for us.

In addition to being very excited to have a space lined up this far in advance (over 2 weeks ahead of time!), I am completely stoked that this simple idea has garnered such incredible support. I am continuously humbled by the fact that people like Bill are out there contributing their time and effort to help make these unconferences happen. Of course, it would not have happened if the UCB CIO, Shel Waggener did not get behind the idea and agree to pay for the costs of the room rental – he and Bill are even encouraging key staff to participate, which should bring a great perspective to the day.

This next event will be bringing together the old and the new (more announcements to come shortly) – so it is particularly gratifying to know that one of the reasons Shel agreed to sponsor the event is because he is working hard to ensure his team is committed to technical innovation while still effectively managing their large, industrial-scale information systems.  That is the sort of leadership that is sorely needed from IT around the world – the reaching out beyond the walls of traditional silos to connect with other types of people, gaining a deeper understanding of what people need from different perspectives.

Kudos and thanks to Bill, Shel and the rest of the IST Department.

With Lockergnome / Gada.Be sponsoring lunch, Rate-it-All sponsoring Refreshments and Laughing Squid as a supporting sponsor covering administrative costs, we are actually able to get everything paid for and set up in advance without the last minute stress we have experienced in the past. This one is going to be fun and probably full, so please go register today…

Technorati Tags: brainjams, brainjams25feb2006, brainjams:patron, brainjams:planning

Great news to share with you. I have just returned from a meeting with Lee Felsenstein, one of the original founders of the Homebrew Computer Club. Lee has agreed to collaborate with us on a few ideas of mutual interest and to co-facilitate our BrainJams25Feb2006 event in Berkeley, CA.

In many ways, Lee’s facilitation was a crucial aspect of empowering the PC revolution that created so many incredible (and large) companies we now take for granted. When I first met Lee at the SDForum Collaboration SIG event a few weeks ago, I was left speechless when I discovered that what we are doing with BrainJams and BarCamp is pretty much just following in their footsteps. Since they are pretty big shoes to fill, I thought it might be a good idea to bridge the 30 year gap between our foundings and try to learn as much as we could from what they did back in the day.

I can’t begin to tell you how honored I am that he said yes and how much I look forward to learning from him, and collaborating with him in the near future. Thank you Lee for being so generous with your time today and with the goodwill you are showing BrainJams in our endeavours.

PS – the photo is one that I took wtih Kristie of an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History – yes, if you did not know previously, what Lee did with his cohorts back in the day via the Homebrew Computer Club is that important.

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc collaboration, brainjams, brainjams25feb2006, brainjams:bayarea, unconference

Was taking a moment to check the RSS feeds for BrainJams posts when I ended up on Swicki’s aggregator search page – forgot I set this up a while back. While it still needs some beefing up, it is actually a pretty cool way to get an insightful look at key concepts I have previously written about across the blogosphere. Well, at least for me it is…

From the looks of it, the people wanting to ensure ‘Equal Employment Opportunity’ (EEO) are really mucking things up for everyone, including the people they want to serve most. From this article on CNN Money, I was shocked to learn of the new requirements for both employers and job seekers which seem extremely confusing and difficult. Perhaps it is even not to ensure EEO, but rather to make it more difficult. Regardless, it is the exact sort of excessive regulation we should be striving to push out of government.

According to the article, one of the elements of the new regulations you need to watch closely concerns:

Keep your resume up-to-the-minute current. “The rules allow companies to pick a random pool of applicants by searching the job boards for ‘most recent’ qualified applicants,” Crispin [Gerry Crispin from CareerXRoads] notes. “In those cases, no one will even look at a resume that is more than two or three weeks old.” Yikes.

Hopefully, I won’t be searching for any ‘real’ jobs in the near future…

Technorati Tags: jobhunting

On Wednesday I got some fantastic news via an email newsletter. JazzFest is on this year for the last weekend of April (4/28-30) and the first weekend of May (5/5-7). My first thought was “let’s go down there and organize a BrainJams between the two weekends”. After some back and forth with Kristie concerning our hectic travel schedule for the first half of the year, I took the plunge and have made all our travel arrangements. Now all we need to do is find a venue.

This is a fantastic opportunity for us, and incredibly good news for one of our favorite cities in the world. Given my feelings about how everyone screwed up on every level of government down there after Katrina, this is a good chance to move beyond the couch potato rhetoric and contribute to the solution instead of the volume of complaints. Of course, it also a great chance to have an incredible time listening to some great music. I feel very blessed that I was able to see NOLA before the Hurricane, going to Jazzfest last year for the first time.

We would very much like to have a discussion about the best way to approach this very special BrainJams. It would be great to perhaps revive the discussion around Jeff Jarvis’ Recovery2 and perhaps Sam Perry’s work on Reliefopedia. Then again, we could just focus on how people can use technology to rebuild their society after a disaster. Of course the great thing about holding BrainJams is that we don’t really need to figure that all out until everyone gets in the room together, but I do think we need to set our intentions around an organizing principle first and foremost.

Regardless, we need local volunteers to help coordinate logistics, we need a space for 120 people (if interest is high enough, perhaps double that) and we would like to very much involve the local government, chamber of commerce, non-profits, musicians and technologists. If anyone knows someone from BamaWorks, we would really like to get them involved too.

If you have any interest in being there for this incredible event, I recommend booking now since our hotel is already sold out for those dates and airfares are still relatively inexpensive.

Technorati Tags: brainjams, brainjams04May2006, brainjams:neworleans, NPTECH, reliefopedia, Recovery2

I have a lot of blog posts I am working on, but this is so sad and funny, I had to get it out right away. So I was talking with Greg Narain on our cell phones a few minutes ago, and the connection just went bad – it was all static and dropped words. So rather than trying to call each other back, I just sat down at my computer and we switched to Skype. The clarity was 10x better than mobile and it makes me think I will one day soon be using Skype as my primary channel of voice communications…

Technorati Tags: skype

Our BrainJams here in DC on Monday validated many key ideas and taught us many lessons. While we had expected around 35 people or so, 16 (plus Kristie and myself for 18) showed up for the morning BrainJam, in which I was finally able to participate. The good news is, it is a start – and a good one at that. Everyone I spoke with thanked us profusely for doing this in DC and was really enthusiastic about the format, the people and the insights shared. The afternoon Breakthrough sessions began with two groups, one for newcomers and one for more advanced discussions, but they merged during the course of the afternoon.

I have lots to share that I learned from the great people in attendance, as well as thanks for each of them for coming out on a Monday, even though many said “I didn’t know what to expect, or even what it would really be”. A few photos are on Flickr, but we did not get a chance to take many since we were so involved in the conversation.

Yesterday and today, I received a few emails which really tell the story of the event better than I can.

Matt Gallivan from NPR said:

“It was a great chance to meet a lot of interesting people in the community and to talk about a lot of interesting stuff.”

Mirsada Pasalic, an emerging ‘fresh face for aging advocacy’ said:

“First of all I want to thank you for a FABULOUS day yesterday. I truly enjoyed myself and learned a lot. It was a great mix of people and the “energy” was all good, so thank you for putting it together!”

Camille Preston, an insightful leadership coach, said:

“Thank you so so so much for a truly powerful, inspiring and learning day! As I was describing it to a friend last night, all I could say was that it was fabulous and that my mind was literally truly jammed with so many new insights and perspectives. (as an extraverted nerd – I loved the intensity of learning and wished I’d planned to join the evening!) It was a truly wonderful opportunity to jump into something I “knew I should be doing”… but didn’t know where to begin! There are a few things I’m ready to dive into – and I know that the learning will continue.”

So all in all, BrainJams30Jan2006 makes it way to the win column. Best of all, it seems as if there will be a community of people willing to do what it takes to do this again and again…

I am delighted to tell you that Grace Davis is organizing Woolf Camp down in Santa Cruz over President’s Day Weekend. She is opening up her house to other bloghers (and bloggers 😉 to just come together and be. Her original blog post is a good indicator of the wonderful energy she is cultivating.

Come, evolve with us. Come teach, come learn, come eat a lot of M&Ms, come hang out.

World peace through blogging,
GraceD

Besides Grace being a great writer and all around cool person, she has doubly blessed me by citing BrainJams as one of her inspirations (along with BarCamp) and dubbed me as one of the “techies who are not afraid to be human”. Ever since I first saw that kind tribute, I have been wanting to hang out with her and get to know her better. Now Kristie and I have our chance and we are really looking forward to it. Might even go down FRI night beforehand and stay somewhere on the beach…

Will be a good chance to work on posting some of my old poetry and perhaps writing some new stuff. But given the wonderful home spun schedule she has proposed, I just might be too busy “Invent(ing) entirely new art forms and genres of bloggity literature or maybe doing something “workshoppy” while “shyly wander(ing) onto (her) flower-filled deck”.

Technorati Tags: amateurevents, brainjams:bayarea, brainjams:related, socialconference

Wow! Once again I am amazed at how people can just come together without a lot of planning and make something cool happen. After reaching out to a few of our former Patrons to help with DC and Berkeley next month, things are feeling really solid.

Not only will be have the right sort of people showing up (including a few Web 2.0 luminaries and a few main stream journalists who really get it), but Lawrence Coburn from Rate It All just stepped up to sponsor the refreshments for BrainJams DC on Monday and to be a supporting sponsor for our Berkeley BrainJams on Feb 25. Shortly after hearing from Lawrence, I got a call from Scott Beale at Laughing Squid who also just signed up as a supporting sponsor for both events. Both have been with us since the beginning and I cant thank them enough.

And now the link love is growing and the word of mouth is spreading…

I am writing another post to go deeper into what we are doing Monday, but in the meantime would like to hear your feedback on this idea: At traditional, academic conferences, researchers submit papers for consideration by the conference. Why not borrow a little from this idea to create a better framework for our conversations at BrainJams? So for Monday’s BrainJams event, I propose that everyone submit a Blog Post for consideration by other participants concerning what you want to talk to people about on Monday. Once you do so, please tag it forBrainJams30Jan2006 (just copy and paste the code below into the bottom of your blog post if you do not know how to tag blog posts yet). Another alternative is to write the blog post and then tag it on Delicious or Furl or wherever you place your social bookmarks. Alterantively, you could tag something that has already been written elsewhere that you would like to discuss or just submit the link to the blog post you want to talk about in the comments to this post.

I have already tagged 2 posts to Delicious I think would make for good conversation and am working on writing an original one – so what do you want to talk about?

Technorati Tags: brainjams30jan2006, brainjams:patron, brainjams:planning, forBrainJams30Jan2006