Chris Heuer's Insytes

6pm – Discuss the current situation with regards to the many types of BrainJams out there, where it is going and where we see BrainJams fitting into the picture. Figuring out what can we do to serve as a catalyst furthering this understanding with a wider part of the population.

630 – Discuss next BrainJam Event – Overview of situation

640 – Discuss logistical needs and responsibilities

700 – Blogging to promote the event, blogging to capture best practices form other events (interview via skype or AudioBlog perhaps?)

7ish – Pizzas

730 – Content for next event – what is it we really want to change in the world?

8 – wrap – another brainjam sort of event is going on down the street

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc+collaboration, brainjamming, brainjams, brainjams:3dec2005, brainjams:bayarea, brainjams:planning, The+Open+Web

I said that about a week ago when a friend’s sister had not shown up for a party she was expected at and then was not heard from again (despite numerous calls) for several days. She was starting to worry about her, and where she might be and if everything was ok or if she has been in an accident or something terrible happened. Once she finally got her on the phone after some prodding from me, her sister was pretty nochalant about the whole thing – it was then that I realized – anger is a better emotion than worry…

It is an interesting question I think – what are you mad about? when you look out at the world around you, is it the environment, your industry, the government, your neighborhood, or an issue of great personal importance? What systems do you feel are broken that could be made right through the use of Web 2.1/Open Web/Social Media technologies? There is a huge opportunity to work together with the open source community to help non-profits and people with ideas cross their traditional organizational boundaries and connect their knowledge to make things right.

Chris Messina is working on a big part of this with a project called CivicForge that will be a big step forward towards connecting those Noble Pursuits with people who have the technology skills to make it happen. Since we are moving towards collaboration with BarCamp in this regards, I thought it might be best if we spend the first half of the next event BrainJamming in small groups figuring out what is really making us angry. Then we can spend the second part of the day talking about available technologies and open source approaches that can be key contributors towards making it right. When we leave the next BrainJam, we can all blog about what makes us angry (start that now), what is needed, the insytes we developed together and how we would like to go about solving that problem. By doing this we are communicating to the open source community our ideas for projects that need their support. Closing the loop from problem to solution.

It doesn’t always have to be this way – we will make a difference.

I am still thinking about doing 1on1 BrainJamming around passions – perhaps these emotions can be used the same way in this regards – being passionate about solving the problem because you are mad as hell may be an even more powerful way to think about this.

This approach does more than support our broader goals of making the emerging media and community tools more accessible to a wider array of people. It is almost like demand aggregation for CivicForge – a call to arms across the communities of poeple who care as well as the organizations. A way to bring them together across all boundaries except the one that unites us all.

This approach will also support what Jeff Jarvis is doing with Recovery2 and what TechSoup is doing with so many important projects like NetSquared (which you should all attend on Tue8nov2005:6-8pm). It is quite amazing because we are all working towards the same goal, and are able to do so in the commons that is tagging, blogs, wikis and issue focused communities.

There is no more time to worry – it is time to get angry and time to do something about it to make it right.

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc collaboration, brainjamming, brainjams:3dec2005, brainjams:bayarea, CivicForge, NPTECH, open source, Recovery2, The Open Web

I am down here in Las Vegas this week helping a friend with his new startup, seeing how we might work together more regularly. The meat of our work will start popping out today, but in the meantime, I have finally made some progress with the next BrainJams event.

The first piece to get out the door is a new home page for the Web2point1 site – the remainder of those pages will be done tonight. Tomorrow, hopefully just in time for our FR night planning meeting for the next BrainJam on 3Dec2005, I will have a new BrainJams site together. Please do visit the Web2point1 site though for some important updates on the next event, along with photos of the SRI facility in Menlo Park where we will be holding the next event, thanks to the efforts of BrainJam1 alum David Gutelius.

You can’t miss the headline walking through the airport – “Attack of the Bloggers” – having read Eran’s notes on the matter from Super.C.illio.us, I had to buy it. I had started reading it online thanks to the account sharing site BugMeNot which Steve Wrubel shared. But actually feeling it in my hands was quite a different experience. It was much worse than I had thought it could be.

So much so, that when I started reading it, I could not help but thinking – they did this piece, with this tone, with the intention of stirring the hoornet’s nest of hard core bloggers and increasing their reputation before blogging crosses the chasm. So far, it seems to have worked. I hate linking to it here, but you need to read the story yourself for context (go to BugMeNot for a password). I feel even more terrible about playing into their hands by buying the issue, but when you plan on doing a ceremonial burning, you need to have something to burn. just kidding – but that is the sort of vitriol that increases readership, profits and relevance – despite being mostly irrelevant.

Another thought on the matter is that this could be considered a defense of the traditional publishing model – a way to taint the idea of blogging, and the identity one may associate with being cool by blogging, so that more of our fellow citizens don’t become bloggers and compete for the attention that traditional publishing is now losing so rapidly. Whether or not that is the intention, that is the affect – and it is irresponsible of them. I expected better from such a well-regarded source.

I have met some great smart people who work there over the years, and my opinion of them as a decent business magazine does not change, though I have never read them regularly. One bad piece of journalism after this many years does not a downfall make – though perhaps there are other similar stories of which I am unaware where they were equally unbalanced and unfair. I will be more skeptical of their reporting now and don’t plan on picking up a subscription anytime soon. I don’t want to protest it either, as that will just have the opposite effect – playing into the ‘any press is good press’ model, but will probably need to at least address it as we move forward with plans our BrainJams national tour. (More information on that will be forthcoming after this weekends SuperHappyDevHouse when I meet with some other key supporters)

A word of caution for anyone upset by this terrible piece of journalism – however you feel about it, don’t call them names, (especially the author, editor and Forbes himself). Don’t use silly arguments to demean them personally, or go on the attack or anything else like that other than talking about the positives. If you attack, you would just be proving their point, which is perhaps another piece of their strategy – to show they are speaking the truth to the rest of the world that does not yet understand the potential for great advancement that can come from more truthtellers joining the conversation.

We need to lead by example – please remember that.

While their reporting completely missed the mark, they do bring up an issue I have been thinking about a lot lately – how does a person’s bad reputation spread in an appropriate manner? LinkedIn only allows ‘endorsements’ and everyone is afraid of being sued for libel etc… It would have been interesting if they took the perspective of how the people attacking unfairly might have a bad reputation established and be proven wrong. I would really like to hear more discussion on this matter. David Brin has some interesting thoughts on dispute resolution that may be of note here, especially when thinking of how it might be applied in the commons to deal with the sort of matters they discussed in the article – to really get at the truth, which is what most people I know really care about.

Stereotyping people because of a few assholes who share some common interests/characteristics is just plain wrong, no matter who does it.

For the past several weeks I have been thinking a lot about tagspaces and have organized these thoughts at TagSpaces.org as an open proposal as a new way to think about tagging that does not require the rel tag, new technologies or drastic changes in human behaviour (though it still requires us to evangelize tagging of course). In my view, tagspaces are the glue between people identifying something and those seeking it out – the tag agreed upon by a particular community of users for how to desribe something, provide it context and perhaps even include the ID/reputation of the tagger.

In a sense, it is a human powered, open subsidy for search technology as well as tagging technology – but that is not important, what is important is that we can collectively improve search with a very minor modification to our current behaviour. I actually first blogged about this last week in regards to how I was going to use tagspaces for BrainJams so people with different levels of interest regarding the event, the planning and the content could follow what was important to them more easily (i.e. BrainJams:Planning, BrainJams:BayArea)

Some other examples of tagspaces might be:

PHOTOOF:chrispirillo@starbucks=chrisheuer
of:tagcamplunch
Photo:bestburrito#john@brainjams
at:starbucks:in:seattle=chrisheuer
FOR:brantrustlist*[email protected]

The beauty of this is people can use it now without any code deployment on the part of anyone and existing search technologies can understand it to produce better results today. All people need to do is start using the format and try to figure out what works best for them. All I am asking of you my dear friend, is to consider the idea, contribute your thoughts to the process via our Wiki and if it feels good to you, start using this loose format for tagging posts, photos, podcasts or whatever else – then share with us which tags you are using and under what conditions and we will probably figure this out together pretty easily. After all the tags are simple, readable, understandable AND parseable by machine.

Or we could form a steering committee, talk about it for a few months, argue with each other, fight over our egos, hold on to the old way of things and do nothing that advances our cause while investing our energy in mental gymnastics. As the world of Web 2.0 has shown us – get it out there in the hands of the users and see what they do with it – engage with real people to understand their needs and adjust your solution to meet them. But we, the creators, need to let go of the idea of total control over users in an open wooly environment created by folksonomies rather than top down taxonomies.

Another benefit to this approach is that it need not exist as a rel link on the page so people need not give Google Juice to technorati or anyone else – it can just be a string of text inside of your post, or in the keyword field, or in the rel tag area – almost like SMS shorthand (CUL8R), but for tags. The pattern reads as seemingly normal text so I think a lot of people will get it, but that is what I want to find out. It need not work, it need not be called TagSpaces in the end, what is important is that we started the conversation with people who use tags to figure it out together.

Identity could be a part of it, but it does not have to be. It also does not need to rely on people to have an iName. While they wont get the persistent identity benefits of a registered digital ID which I do think they would benefit from, an email address is plenty of identity for many people in the world and has been for over a decade. For some people their email address is the equivalent of a URL pointing to them so why not accept it and stop trying to force change on people who don’t want, or need to change. We should just embrace the chaos and accept that some people will tag things properly, some won’t, some will make typos, others will simply have another way of referencing the same thing.

So let’s not only teach people how to tag, let’s teach them how to search – this is the power of TagSpaces as I envision it.

If we plant a seed of intention, in the form of examples spread across the entire ‘tagging universe’ other people (even our grandparents) will be able to understand it and perhaps, start using it. What I want to do with tagspaces.org is create a place where people can talk about which tagspaces they use, how they use them, identify synonyms and create relationships between tags. A sort of wiktionary for tagging based around some commonly agreed upon principles. But, please do understand this is not about me, it is about doing it right and coming together to refine it as we conduct an open alpha release to better understand how to do it best.

In conclusion, the approach I am suggesting requires no technical changes to any of the current technologies. There are problems with it, but they do not make this idea any less useful considering the current tagging landscape. But in all actuality, this is just the recognition of an emergent pattern within tags and a desire to help seed the idea towards a better solution – the downside is no worse than where we are today…

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc+collaboration, Google, insytes:models=chrisheuer, tagspaces:examples=chrisheuer, tagcamp, tagspaces:organization=chrisheuer, The+Open+Web

This has been a constant theme for me over the past week or so. In this emerging era of Internet innovation, more people than ever are concerned with promoting the value of our new tools into the minds, hearts and hands of real people – to cross the chasm and digital divide to increase participation, collaboration, connectedness and ultimately the value of the web. Phil Wolf even spoke of forming a “PR Working Group” – which is what we have proposed out of BrainJams – so this is a really cool trend that is emerging.

I think the real solution though is relatively simple, we need to develop the use cases, the user stories, the anecdotes for how regular, non-technical people use and benefit from these technologies. To leverage my other new meme, all we need to do is claim a TagSpace and start blogging and tagging all the stories we have. A planetblog aggregator could manage the feeds and everyone can start to read them. On top of this, we can use a Wiki to collect the “use cases for teaching others”. We can set this up at TagSpaces.org or any place else. The tagspace I suggest for the stories is:

TAGS:userstory

An interesting, and seemingly unrelated, but totally relevant book I read a while back was the Pentagon’s New Map – it spoke of global conflicts as being byproducts of the “non-integrating gap” – essentially those countries in the middle who are not participating in the global economy via trade or cultural exchange not understanding or gaining value from getting along with everyone else. It may be a stretch, but I see this as analgous to what we are talking about here. It might be an interesting read if you have an interest in spreading the word. Think of it as a similar pattern rather than getting focused on the defense/war aspects of the content.

Technorati Tags: tagcamp TAGS:userstory usecases nptech brainjams tagspaces

As someone who is terrible at citing research in my posts I am acutely aware of this problem (mostly because I don’t index what I read well and because linking is still hard for most tools, though I am migrating to Ecto and perhaps Flock once stable). This is why I am often very careful in giving out props to people who have inspired the things I think about. I find the more people I talk to, the less this is happening – some people believe all ideas have been invented before – I believe that the perspective going into the sharing of the idea from a unique perspective can often be an original detivitive work.

But I dont want to get that technical with it – I just want to encourage people to give props out to others when they are inspired to a new idea… I will certainly be doing my best to do so as my blogging evolves. For instance, I still need to build a list of thanks to all the people who are helping organize the next BrainJam, which will be coming tomorrow after TagCamp.

No let’s see if anyone else over at rel=”tag”>TagCamp is actually interested in this. It will involve a lot of people letting go of the illusion of control over user experiences and other fascinating things.

What it means to me is the beginning of truly people powered search – one of the catalytic elements required to solve the search problem and so much more…

Join me in talking about it over at TagSpaces.org

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc+collaboration, barcamp, brainjams, insytes:models, tagcamp, tagspaces:organization=chrisheuer, The+Open+Web, Web2.1

Tagspaces is an open variant on the original idea I had for Insytes. While I pitched Insytes as the Web 2,0 replacement for comment systems, it was always much more. Another description I often used was as a personal organizer of knowledge with group capabilities as well as public sharing/publishing. But it also was for building reputation and claiming subject matter expertise that would be validated by a conversational community around topic tags with some conversational agreement by users rather than creators. After all isn’t that why we have found that folksonomy works and taxonomies often fail? .

But even that is not enough. As I was reminded the past 2 days at the IIW2005 – Internet Identity Workshop, you must consider the matter of verifiable Identity – which then must be considered in “context”. What the industry refers to as context (a view of a builder talking about you) I consider it the “situation” because that is where I see people looking out – from their unique situation. Others might want to call it a scenario, or perhaps a use case, though that is too specific I feel, but as some very smart people have said, (Was that Doc Searls?) it does not matter what you call it, just as long as other people understand what you are referencing.

The situation/context of identity for Insytes is what I consider the Open Commons of Knowledge, Information and Wisdom– in this context, people would be opting into the system because they want to be known for who they are. The social and economic capital derived from being ones self is invaluable. Speakers, bloggers, writers, video journalists, vloggers, podcasters, photographers, designers – everyone who creates something for more than just themselves. Of course I know of the exceptions where anonymity is a necessity (whistleblowers, oppressed citizenry etc…) but if someone has a legitimate reason to be playing in the commons and creating stuff, they more often than not want to be identified with the work – or at least a claimed pseudonym as authors have often used in the past.

This is why I still think that Creative Commons needs to be the identity provider – people would be willing to trust them, the license is in wide use and gaining wider adoption and it would make validating a work that much easier for the legal system. Of course, I also think there needs to be Commons Licensing Bureau that manages the sale/licensing of the works to others, but we can talk about that later….

Ok moving past the IIW2005 influences, later today I will be posting the initial draft to serve as a starting point for TagSapces.

(PS – need to adds more links to this article in next rev)

I have received some good private feedback, but not much in terms of public contributions. So onward I press. And press onward I must.

Was just reaching out to someone I met online over the summer to see if they might be able to help in some way with BrainJams. Phil has a great blog called GeekyInfo and works with the Northern Community Church of Christ down in Austrailia. He lokes gadgets, games, knowledge, helping people and mindmapping – a lot like me.

Anyways the point is that I think I have finally simplified the mission statement and really, really need to hear back from you on this one. For me, it is a one liner that has the right focus, attitude, intention, description and everything else.

BrainJams are events that connect people, resources and ideas to make the world a better place.

Ok, so the last bit could be more directed perhaps, but it feels a lot better to me than the other ones, though there is more to take from those still so please do consider those statements as well.

The struggle with the mission statement stems from the seemingly still to be decided question of Web2.1 vs. BrainJams. Web 2.1 focused on Web 2.0 technologies and the need to really put people at the center of the design/development process – going even beyond user centered design. I think it is important to include the idea of having the “bllinking 12’s” and the “technogeeks” learn to speak the same language, trust one another and collaborate, but that is not the core idea. The core idea is embodied in that statement for me. “Connecting the dots”, helping each other solve problems, gathering new Insyts and sharing our experiences. The core idea for me is positive intention towards contribution from everyone and cross-boundary, ad-hoc collaboration.

Think how powerful this can be if we seed the world with local BrainJams, bringing people together from the Government, the Community (NGO), the Business world and the world of technology (open source software in particular) – ad-hoc collaboration focused around the conversations that lead to right action in the world. An organizing principle of the event, and an implicit focus for the conversations of that day can certainly be centered around using technology systems to enable these connections, but it is not necessary to receive the benefits of getting together and jamming.

This is why I specifically thought of doing BrainJams rather than just joining BarCamp and helping them out. For me it is about spreading this deep belief in the power of sharing knowledge and collaborating in the commons beyond the open source community. It is about the fact that I believe the knowledge you need at this very second to do whatever work you are doing even better is out there somewhere – it is simply a matter of making the connection. It is what I have been doing since kindergarten, sharing what I have with others.

What I hope we get from BrainJams is a community of people experimenting and sharing what they learn from bringing people together for local, cross boundary, unconference, open demo, knowledge networking sort of events. Whether it is called SeattleMinds, BarCamp, TagCamp, TechCamp or a Meet-Up BBQ is not the point – it is not about being the be all, end all in this emerging event space, it is about making sure the intentions of the original idea stays true, helping facilitate the connections between people, resources and ideas by getting people together and talking.

Whether it is specifically focused on making technology more accessible, establishing systems for disaster preparedness/recovery or coming up with new ways to combat global warming, BrainJams are valuable for all those purposes. It could even be used as a format for a community of practice like a Macintosh User Group (MUG) though the intention is cross boundary collaboration. So perhaps it might be more interesting if the MUG got together with a PCUG…

They are also valuable with no purpose at all, but the types of BrainJams I will be personally involved with are ones that address how we can increase technology accessibility, awareness and usefulness – particularly in regards to what people call “Web 2.0” and what I call “The Open Web”. For me, it is particularly important to get the right strategic and technical knowledge in the hands of people who can benefit from a deeper understanding of what’s possible. The people who ‘get it’ and can go back to their office on Monday and use the new knowledge to make an immediate and lasting impact on their organizations and the world around them.

So while the verbiage around the idea increases, the idea simplifies – now more than ever, it is clear that this is merely one aspect for the vision i had for The Noble Pursuit.

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc+collaboration, brainjamprocess, brainjams, brainjams:bayarea, The Open Web, The+Open+Web