The other night I sat up late reading this Richard Waters article (FT). It’s not a bad article. Unfortunately it tries too hard to make a story out of something and in the process it unnecessarily polarizes the situation. Maybe I’ve lost my sense of humor… but Waters seems to be taking the issue seriously.I know, I know, I’ve read journalists before, they’re under a lot of pressure to create good stories. I should give Waters credit for looking into the issues of online collaboration and social media.

I should ignore Waters’ subtle cartoonization of things. Yet for reasons of style and context, it’s exactly his subtlety that concerns me. Waters seems to be crafting an innocent narrative, chock full of objective sounding references and name checking. He’s commanded a large piece of space on the front page of a section in the Financial Times. This isn’t a place for absurdist opinions. And so it’s almost as though the piece was designed to discredit some of the serious thought happening around these issues.

From the Waters article:

“On one side of this divide are the idealists who believe that individual expression and mass online collaboration, freed from the traditional constraints found in the offline world, can yield incalculable benefits. Traditional deference to expertise imposes a huge tax on society, argues Shirky - by concentrating perceived wisdom in a small number of people, it limits the flow of ideas. According to this view, the experts represent a ruling caste whose main interest is in protecting their own privileges. The internet offers a historic opportunity to undermine that authority.” Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s as good as any other day for buying second hand crap. Maybe better.

I’d love to call it Goodwill Tuesday, but it doesn’t roll. Goodwill is on my mind recently and I’m talking Goodwill Industries. I hear they’ve built a dynamic culture within the organization. It sounds like they’ve implemented several progressive management strategies. They’re also bringing in talent.

Black Friday is now known as Buy Nothing Day. Cyber Monday is a scam and should be rejected. And now we have Thrift Town Tuesday. This is holiday shopping at it’s finest. As is merchandise, no returns, no packaging, no big screen tvs, no fistfights, no stampedes. Tighten a few screws and clean it before you wrap it. Good as new.

No, better.

Thrift Town Tuesday has absolutely nothing to do with Goodwill Industries. They are both great places to buy stuff.

[tags]Thrift Town Tuesday[/tags]

Happy Thanksgiving!

Retailers are fighting back against Buy Nothing Day.

One interesting ad shows a graphically ugly view of a woman cleaning the inside of a turkey. The narrator says something about how seriously important it is to be up at 5am preparing the bird. It’s an American cultural tradition of family devotion and love.

The narrator goes on to tell us how the tradition now includes 5am shopping the day after Thanksgiving.

Huh. I’ve never met anyone who actually enjoys shopping crowds the day after Thanksgiving. No doubt there are people who want to start at 5am. Who are they? Where does their joy come from? Is it true that they just can’t sleep through the excitement of deals on big screen tv’s?

Sears can influence customer behavior. It’ll be interesting to see if their 5am promotion is a success.

[tags]Thanksgiving, big screen tv, psychological methods to sell, buy nothing day[/tags]

My neighbors have begun converting their garage into the new internet. They’re calling it version 6.0.

Unbelievable!

I mean, didn’t we just start talking about version 3.0? The pace of change is something you could talk about for hours and hours and hours. Holy crap. It just keeps changing!

Big and little blogs have been writing about 3.0. The more it gets mentioned, the closer it comes to be. Some people want it to be, others think it’s a joke.

What do I think? I think I’ve fallen in love with the internet. It’s the one place where we can all get along and agree about everything. It is so so special.

And the myth about Silicon Valley garages? Loving it more than ever. Just imagine: if my neighbors can build web 6.0 in their garage, you might be able to build 6.1 in yours.

Call it version 10.0. Round numbers are easier.

And the I beams? Those are the pipes, the plumbing, the backbone. Ignore them, they’re purely semantic.

Besides, the garage won’t look anything like version 6.0 until it’s saved for web. Trust me. This is how innovation happens.

See also.

[tags]web 6.0, building consensus, web safe[/tags]

Someone tipped me on Bikely.com earlier this year, and I’ve finally taken the time to create my first route. It was fun and easier than I had expected. A couple people in particular inspired this ride. First, Tricky Coyote at Pleasant Revolution. Second, my former neighbor George Khouri. TC posted a route on Bikely not long ago; and the first half of the route I posted was a recommendation from George. Thanks George!

The new improved route is Garfield Square - Twin Peaks Loop.

[tags]Bikely, San Francisco bike route, Garfield Square Park, Twin Peaks[/tags]

Couple months back I posted an idea related to data center cogeneration. It was part of the IBM innovation jam. Some people have come here looking for more information. I’m not an expert. If you are searching for that type of info, here are a few resources that might help you along.

First is an interesting forum thread about managing themodynamics in computers. I liked the suggestion that product designers might consider using the vertical plane of a laptop screen for heat dissapation. This seems like a likely future scenario, especially if designers could develop an approach that incorporated the CPU into the area behind the screen. There are pro’s and con’s to this approach, and computer designers ought to comment on the thread I linked to.

The simplicity of this design change is that using the vertical surface makes it easier for heat to rise and enter the surrounding airstream. It suggests that perhaps data center racks would benefit from physical reconfiguration to allow for better thermal management. Have they been designed this way already? Are they being designed to channel the heat to a specific location, or only “away from hot spots”? It seems like designers could aid the process by thinking about the next steps in the thermodynamic management chain.

I had the chance to explore this option recently as it relates to a power supply in a PV solar manufacturing site. The design of the system called for a power supply system to be located in a basement room, and the unanticipated amount of waste heat was causing problems for the designers. The concept now being considered is how components in the power supply can be designed to (A) reduce waste heat, (B) enable better heat dissipation, and (C) provide design features that facilitate waste heat management. The management concept is the part I’m most interested in now.

I’m beginning to understand now how a power supply transformer can be designed to channel and thereby better manage waste heat. It starts at the selection of raw materials, and extends beyond the transformer itself. I’d like to understand if similar thinking can be applied to server racks. Ideally there could be a system to manage waste heat at the processor level, server level, server rack level, room level, until it arrives at the heat exchanger or generator.

SearchDataCenter.com compiles information related to “The New Data Center: Strategies for Today and Tomorrow”. A search of their site for “cogeneration” yielded this 2005 article about cooling technologies by Luke Meredith. They suggest cogeneration as an option to reduce net energy expense by selling any excess power back to the local utility.

Quote from IT consultant Bob McFarlane:

“Overdone air conditioning in an attempt to cool isolated hot spots, by throwing air into a room, is an extremely inefficient and costly way of not accomplishing your goal, because in most cases it simply doesn’t work.”

The article goes on to discuss liquid cooling, fan boosting, and other technologies to mitigate server hot spots. These technologies tend to be optimized to move heat from one area (CPU) to another (heat exchanger). How would the design of these technologies change if the goal was not to dissapate the heat into the air, but to harness the heat energy into some type of power generator? Read the rest of this entry »

Giovanni Rodriguez:

“A leader among peers must join her peers and act in a way that – to borrow a time-tested business cliché, coined well before this uncertain era – adds value.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky:

“But, prince, if you knew, if only you knew how hard it is to get money nowadays! How is one to get it, allow me to ask you? The answer is always the same: ‘Bring gold or diamonds and we’ll give you something for them.’ That’s just what I haven’t got. Can you fancy that? I lost my temper at last, after waiting and waiting. ‘Will you give me something for emeralds?’ said I. ‘Yes, for emeralds too,” said he.”

Matthew Lesko:

“Billions Of Dollars Are Given Out Every Year To Ordinary Citizens!!! Find Out How You Can Get Your Share!!”

The Rodriguez post is here as a recommendation. “The Idiot” link is here for context. The Lesko link is meant to illustrate that it’s not only gold, diamonds, and emeralds that sell.

Rodriguez’s post is a great overview of the leadership challenge as seen from the eyes of corporate social media strategists. In the past I’ve referred to it as distributed strategy making. He’s more specific. He calls it peer production, adjudication, communication, storage/retrival, and aggregation.

There are people who would like to dumb down the blogosphere. I appreciate that Rodriguez is not leading us in that direction. The market rewards a lot of different types of behavior. Select your peer group, get to know your community, and figure out some way to make an interesting if not meaningful contribution.

On a somewhat unrelated tangent, I’m impressed by the SEO people who’ve figured out to how to get the Farmer Brothers site into the google top slot. Same with the guys who helped Lesko tie down “question mark suits”. It must have been a tough struggle against the joker crowd.

On a somewhat related tangent, there’s something counterproductive and anti-intellectual about ivy league Russian lit bashing, but let ‘er rip, you know I won’t sweat it for a minute. Everybody needs a windmill, and everybody loves a train.

[tags]Peer Value, Russian lit, Pattern Language, The Idiot, The Joker, Free Money[/tags]

Hello Dear Database Enabled Grassroots Political Organizer(s),

Congratulations on all of your hard work around the 2006 election cycle. I support your goals of increased political participation. I’m pleased with the progress you’ve shown over previous elections. Good job.

Here are a list of thoughts that you can review at your leisure. Don’t review them during dinner time. Don’t interrupt your workday. Take a convenient moment, whenever it works for you, and give these thoughts a quick read. There’s no rush. No pressure. No partisan bias. Be calm. Take my thoughts in the spirit that they’re intended, as positive constructive feedback, composed with love, from me, your socially networked friend and compatriot of legally registered voting status in the fine State of California.

It’s time you gave my poor inbox a breather. Please. You’ve been pumping me with messages for a long time now, and I’d appreciate a break in the action. Don’t you ever slow down? Seriously. We’ve hit a climax. Let’s enjoy it together - if you’d shut up for a minute I’m sure we could both relax and maybe even feel good about the process. Peacefully. Stop acting so insecure about where we’ll be come next elections/petition/meet up/whatever. Be calm.

I’ve created a list of six database refinements that you can use to do better next time. Don’t read them at dinner time. In fact, don’t read them if you don’t want to. For real though. The list will be here when you’re ready for it.

Database tip #1: It’s crucial to optimize the subsets of your membership body. Find a way to respectfully connect with those members whom only want infrequent executive summaries. There are people, like myself, who resist and dislike repetitive messaging. Don’t take it personally. I like what you do. I don’t always like the way you do it. It shouldn’t be hard for you to tag my record so that I only receive the types of messages I appreciate. Do that, and I’ll reciprocate with respectful support.

It’s pretty hard to imagine that you don’t already have an elaborate subset of filters. If so, please keep refining them. I’ve recently received a large number of messages that actually made me feel alienated from what you’re trying to do. Some of those messages came from celebrities. One of them was a joke message that appeared to come from the opposition party. These types of monotonous and childish messages are not the way into my heart.

I want positive messages. Let the tv people obsess over the celebrities. Give me something with substance. Seek the high ground. Ignore what any analysts might say about reaching the broadest audience possible. Refine your filters and membership subsets. Your analysts are right that my preferences are different from the public at large. Fine. Allow for diverse subsets of member preferences. Give us all what we want. You know you want to. It doesn’t seem like it would be that complicated either. Databases are powerful tools and you have a powerful organization. Work your majik. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m passing along a great letter on behalf of Mark Mazziotti. Check it out, and please consider going to this page of the NextAid site, and clicking the “Donate Now” button.

In 1997 I spent 3 months studying economic development in southern Africa. At one point in the trip I became an honorary member of a Northern Sotho tribe in the region where NextAid’s project is taking place. My experience was that I left the community with a far richer experience than I had brought.

It was no surprise to hear identical thoughts when I had the unique luck to discuss the region with Mark and Joseph Kennedy (lead architect for the NextAid Dennilton project). I know they’ve both sacrificed a lot to be involved in this project; and I know they’re gaining invaluable wisdom in return.

If you choose to contribute, you’re reaching out to children who will greatly benefit from your support. You’re also making it possible for people like Mark and Joe to bring deep learning back to their communities at home.

Here’s Mark’s letter:

Dear friends and family,

[On November 1st] I’m returning to South Africa to continue work on a multi-purpose center for children who have lost their parents to AIDS. I’m very excited to remain involved with this project, which will serve as a model ecovillage for other communities around the world. I’m writing to fill you in briefly on my plans and to ask for your support.

Read the rest of this entry »