MashedPotato Tech

[Originally posted 11/17/09 in my work blog, but it still rings true today] It’s amazing how restricting the amount of space you have to express a concept crystalizes what is truly important about that idea. Recently, in my ‘community’ Twitter list, Holly Seddon asked a very good question which helped give me one of those ‘A-ha’ moments: ‘In one word, what should using an online community feel like or give you?’ I loved the challenge of coming up with a single word to describe a key benefit to participating in community. After some reflection, the word that popped into my head was ‘perspective’. When communities are functioning at their peak (and I think this is true even of ‘development’ communities), one of the most powerful things you can glean from your participation is the perspective of one or more of the other community members. Being able to look at business problems, source code issues, or any other medium within a community from a different angle is incredibly powerful. As ...

I hope that title caught your eye because it is a great jumping off point for something that has become readily apparent to me in the last several years of my career. Now that I'm in a consulting role (services) as opposed to previous internal development roles, I've begun to get a new appreciation for just how different the sales and services/consulting camps are. In addition, I've seen how Dr. John Gray's provocative metaphor, first brought to light in his book 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus,' also applies to what many perceive are diametrically opposed groups in any community. Now, don't get me wrong, there usually is (by necessity) a LOT of synergy between any of these two camps, but there is also a fundamental mindset difference that can easily throw an unproductive wedge between the two groups. I'll admit that I'm as guilty as the next person for not always recognizing this, and I'm sure it doesn't help that as a former so...

I've seen a lot of information recently in social media spaces and RSS feeds I follow that portends a bit of a change in the way people approach social media, and the inevitable ' information overload ' we've all heard so much about. A lot of people compare today's information environment to a stream, and I think that's a very apt analogy. There are two primary ways that people seem to be reacting to this glut of information: more filtering or scaling back who they attempt to have 'relationships' with online. I honestly believe the answer to this dilemma is to incorporate both approaches. In a nutshell, the way I've always approached 'social media' is to remember first and foremost, it's about people and relationships, not about how high you can drive your Twitter, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, or Facebook follower count. It's also important to utilize tools to help you filter out the most important pieces of information. One of the most...

Like many Americans, I tried to keep today, Memorial Day 2009, focused on those who have served (and continue to serve) in our armed forces. Whatever your political leanings, I think we can all agree that we owe a huge debt of gratitude to those brave men and women to put their lives (and their family's livelihoods) on the line everyday. So, what does this have to do with technology, Open Source, and social media? Given that I'm helping create a new initiative ( Forge.mil ) to enable those building technology for our troops do so in a more efficient manner, I think there is a strong connection. It should go without saying that our armed forces deserve the absolute best technology to help accomplish their mission and keep them safe. I'm heartened by the fact that technologies and methodologies that we in the consumer space take for granted are now starting to be accepted in the Department of Defense as the most expedient way to help build out the tech that our warfigh...

The concept of a 'back-channel' during presentations, meetings, classes and similar events has been around for a while (the analog version was called 'passing notes', and who knows, maybe even the cavemen did that during boring recitations on hunting/gathering strategy :)). The modern equivalents started with email, but now even that quaint old service is derided as 'too slow' in the world of instant messaging, and more recently, Twitter . There are two types of back-channel - private (usually in instant messaging), and public (Twitter). I know very few people who don't utilize the former during long conference calls (especially if they are with clients, and you need to address something that came up during the call privately with a colleague). This can be a huge advantage if someone can go off and get an answer/research an issue while the call continues. I can easily see a role for junior-level associates to perform this function, as I think it makes go...

Lance Armstrong , one of the people I admire most in this world, wrote a book called It's Not About The Bike . It is a good read, and I enjoyed the main point he made in it - namely, his life and his fight against cancer are about so much more than how fast he can ride his bike, or how much he enjoys the 'tech' of cycling (or tech in general - check out his Twitter Feed ). I was thinking of Lance and that book when I read Fred Wilson 's latest blog post, entitled It's About People, Not Technology . He makes his point by pointing out Twitter, and how it has grown to be more than the sum of its technology - I'm an avid user, and I would tend to agree its importance in the social media landscape is directly derived from the users of the tool that post interesting things. The definition of 'interesting' is different for everyone, but the fact that people are forming ad-hoc 'communities' by who they follow, and their use of Twitter 'hash tags...

Stormy Peters, the new Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation , penned an interesting blog post today on how she got started in the computer field. Reading through it, I was struck by how similar some of the aspects of her beginnings in the industry were to mine. It is kind of scary actually. :) I fell in love with using an Apple IIe in the A/V room of my high school, and found every excuse I could to go down there between classes and at lunch to play with 'peek' and 'poke' (and yes, write everyone's favorite BASIC program which loops the phrase 'I'm awesome' forever). :) The fascination of holding data and programs on a 5 1/4 floppy drive was something I'll never forget. I too 'graduated' to IBM PC's, and wrote some early graphics programs (but, they looked kind of hokey on the 'green screen' monochrome monitors). I was very fortunate, in those early days, to know that this is what I wanted to do with the rest of my li...

In today's installment, we go in search of... well, code. This being a technology blog, searching for answers in codes seems like a natural thing to do. :) In the last year or so, I've become more convinced that detailed, accurate code search technology is critically important to developer productivity, code reuse, and helping to squash pesky bugs on projects/pieces of code that have subtle inter-dependencies. I also believe that, properly implemented, social knowledge management/networking can be applied to further enhance the benefits of accurate code search. First, let's start off with the major players: Google (of course) Krugle Koders (now owned by Black Duck Software ) Google does a fairly good job of indexing existing Open Source code from the net, but their interface relies too heavily (in my opinion) on regular expressions, and doesn't provide the flexibility of search targets that Krugle and Koders do. Additionally, Google currently doesn't offer an E...

As most of you might guess from reading this blog, I'm big on social collaboration and ' crowdsourcing '. I've mentioned Dash Navigation in the past, since I think they epitomize that notion quite well. Gizmodo had a blurb about Dash's first major software/traffic model update today. Quoting from the article: "The Dash Express GPS just received its first historic traffic model update using the live Dash data gathered by users. That'll help predict traffic in areas where no Dash or other trusted data sources have been in the last 15 minutes. By end of month, a software update is coming with tweaks in performance, stability and routing." I for one certainly hope that Dash becomes more successful and ubiquitous, not just for the cool collaborative traffic and their other features, but mainly for the ability to update maps over-the-air. I have a Nissan Murano with a built-in navigation system that works well (for the most part), but on a trip to Ren...

My colleagues and I have a standing joke when we talk about what makes social networks/collaborations/knowledge management work - it's everyone's favorite radio station, WII FM (What's In It For Me). To be sure, there are some social/crowdsourcing applications out there that people contribute to purely for altruistic reasons, or to share things with their friends. However, the vast majority of attempts to harness the 'group collaborative', or 'hive mind' for business purposes or knowledge management have failed unless there was a clear win in the WII FM department. Two examples of applications where WII FM makes a huge impact are del.icio.us (social bookmarking), and Dash Navigation (crowd-sourced realtime traffic). In both of these cases, there are clearly benefits to the users of the respective applications, and the participation engendered by that benefit is the main reason the systems produce good data (search and traffic, respectively). It is very...

Those of us who love mashed potatoes (and as this blog's author, I of course do :)) have inevitably had both good and bad batches of the glorious puffy starch. The common theme, though, in both the good and bad batches, is the mix of ingredients. Good batches are creamy, light, perfectly seasoned, and, depending on personal preference, may have unique spices, or vegetables mixed in. Bad batches, on the other hand, are usually ruined by too much, or too little, of one or more ingredients. Now, those reading this may wonder when I'm going to get to the comparison of mashed potatoes to startups. Well, to illustrate my point, have a look at this recent blog post by one of the guys at 37signals , a cool and successful 'semi-startup' that focuses on collaboration and development tools. The author's point is somehow missed in several of the comments, which lambast him for being 'reverse-ageist,' etc. Thankfully, some of the other comments are from folks who u...

I stumbled across the blog of David Jakes ( Strength of Weak Ties ) today, and found the following entry to be a great read. Warning: it is a little long, but I think the themes that he mentions are very valuable, not just in his workspace of education, but also in the professional world as well. I like David's approach to learning (RSS feeds, 'meatspace' publications, collaboration), and I love this quote from him: "Successful technology coordinators are leaders, and leaders understand that leadership is about relationships. Having relationships with people that understand you, and support you, are required to be truly successful, but this only comes with honoring and understanding them first." I think that there is so much truth in that, especially in a world where we like to substitute technology for personal relationships. Technology should be about augmenting those relationships, and helping others - tools such as del.icio.us are a great example of this ...