Tuesday May 31, 2005
Tuesday May 31, 2005 Last week I wrote about the importance of creating a sense of community. I had also flagged a second key ingredient in my conversation with Hal Stern about how to foster teamwork: empowerment. When people get the backing and support they need, they are not likely to give up when they encounter obstacles, and they remain positive and creative in the face of difficulties. And, my theory goes, you are much more likely to team well with others when you're feeling empowered, rather than discouraged and impotent.
Sounds obvious, right? Well, it's also incredibly easy to get it wrong, and to take away - or never give - that sense of empowerment to individuals.
This thread brought to mind the conversation that was catalogued in Tim O'Reilly's "Architecture of Participation". It's been linked to a bizillion times by numerous bloggers, but if you haven't read it yet - please do. An excerpted quote, from Tim:
"Empowerment of individuals is a key part of what makes open source work, since in the end, innovations tend to come from small groups, not from large, structured efforts."
And then, further down in the "Architecture of Participation" article, Adam Turoff says:
"I briefly delved into Delphi many years ago. Attending a local Delphi users group had the feeling of a self-help group, where some people came across a key failing and traded coping strategies because there was no way to cause a change in Borland's product (at least for the product release in question). I've never sensed that feeling in a Perl Mongers meeting, because everything is up for discussion. Even if there's no Perl content in a Perl Mongers meeting, the sense is typically one of happiness and joy, not morbid resignation and praise/condemnation for the vendor."
The point is - we need to make sure that teams feel like empowered communities, where people feel that they can speak, that they have a voice, that everything is up for discussion (albeit constructively...) I don't ever want anyone close to me to feel that the politics are too difficult to navigate - that's a recipe for complacency and giving up and checking your passion at the door. Empowerment of individuals is key to fostering innovation and enabling teamwork. We should all do more of it.
Technorati Tag:OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag:Solaris
(2005-05-31 23:15:16.0) Permalink
Thursday May 26, 2005 Passion for OpenSolaris technology stretches across borders
Received an email from Tim Bray today titled "A note from a random friend of mine in Vancouver". Curiousity peaked, I took a quick look. Tim forwarded some great feedback from Matthew Laird, a bioinformatician and sysadmin in one of the big labs at Simon Fraser University in Canada.
From Matthew:
"On a different note, I went to the Sun Solaris 10 lecture at Habour Centre yesterday, wow, some truly amazing technology in Solaris 10. DTrace does look like a fantastic tool. And the fellow doing the tour talking about it - tell your fellow management members you want this guy being a front line spokesman for Sun more often. He's obviously smart, has a keen wit, good sense of humour and presents things well, in a way that keeps people interested. He would be a strong asset as an evangelist for Sun."
Matthew was talking about the powerhouse Bryan Cantrill, and I completely agree with his commentary about Bryan. The first time I saw Bryan present was at Brown University back in the fall of 1996 - being alums, Bryan and I traveled back to Providence together to do some recruiting for the Solaris Kernel team. I called my parents later that night and told them to expect to see this guy on the cover of some cool technology/business mag someday - not only is he a great technologist, but he can explain things in ways that keep people on the edge of their chairs - his passion is infectious.
Props to Bryan, and thanks to Matthew for the unsolicited compliment.
Technorati Tag:OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag:Solaris
(2005-05-26 11:36:55.0) Permalink
Sunday May 22, 2005 I had an email conversation the other day with Hal about how to foster teamwork and my gut level reaction was that it's about creating a sense of community among people.
People are more likely to work well together well not only when they have a common interest or shared set of goals - but also when there is a personal connection. I try to work well with most people, but I'm much more motivated to to cut people slack when I know a little bit about who they are, when I can tease them about their taste in a band called FloggingMolly, when I know that they like to delve into 1337 5p34k on occasion, or if I know that her talented brother went to RISD and is friends with the infamous creator of of Andre The Giant Has A Posse.
Caterina Fake of Flickr fame recently blogged about building a flickricious sense of community (gotta love that word) - and the importance of personal connections caught my eye. One relevant quote from Caterina - the part about personal - and authentic - communication is at the end of the paragraph:
"In the beginning, the creators of the community space have to create the tone and attitude of the place, set the parameters of what is and what is not allowed, and participate heavily, engaging directly with other people, mercilessly kicking/banning trolls, creating a real sense of there being a there there. Friendster, and the banning of "Fakesters" is often used as an example of a misunderstanding of online community -- but I think this misunderstanding went back further, to the beginning. I was an early member of Friendster and, the first message I got was from the founder. "How do you like the service?" he asked, and not -- and this is really the crux of it -- "Pynchon! Man, how can you read that stuff! DeLillo is 10X better." or "ZEPPELIN ROX! Zoso is my favorite album!!!" I'd filled out a profile. See what I mean?"
What's the conclusion? Growing the OpenSolaris community is going to involve building lots of these personal connections. Personal and authentic, not stiff and corporate. Cool.
Technorati Tag:OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag:Solaris
(2005-05-22 13:50:21.0) Permalink Comments [1]
Just last week, thanks to Sara Dornsife, I discovered the irreverant Jack, whereas Doc Searls posted a link on his IT Garage last summer!
"Inside Jack" is a laugh-out-loud flash-toon series about a coder named Jack (and "no, he will not fix your computer.") The irreverance, the creativity and the love of parody is one of the things that I like about Sun. After all, if you're not having fun when you're working hard, what is the #@*& point?
#1 - The first Inside Jack flash-toon is about the controversial, ill-understood Sun/Microsoft agreement. (Love you, man.)
#2 - This is my absolute favorite - an Inside Jack about Solaris 10. (Gold star to the first person who guesses who Mikey is.)
#3 - Inside Jack - Episode 3 is about the phenomenal Sun/AMD partnership. (Talk about a marriage made in heaven!)
[Update on 5/22/05: Latest Inside Jack now available at:]
#4 - Dual Core Sun Fire V40Z.
And just remember - no animals were injured in the creation of the Inside Jack flash animation. :-)
Technorati Tag:OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag:Solaris
(2005-05-22 09:40:16.0) Permalink Comments [4]
Monday May 16, 2005 About screencasts, del.icio.us and thlinking (no typo)
I've been trying to explain the beauty and the benefits of del.icio.us to folks, and want to share a link to Jon Udell's killer screencast that does it so very well. Udell's screencast is a powerful combination of storytelling and demo. Worth a few moments - do check it out.
And, if a software service causes someone like James Governor to propose adding a new word to the lexicon ("thlinking"), well, it's worth paying attention to. In fact, the ability to annotate a bookmark in del.icio.us with a quick one-liner explaining why you think the link matters and why someone else should care (get it? think + link = thlink) is one of the features I like best - combined with the ability to see how many other people think that bookmark matters and what they've annotated the link with. James' bottom-line comment in his blog on thlinking:
"What's my point? Insights don't need 100 pages, or even 10 pages, or even one page, to explain. Sometimes you just need to point at something and say why you're doing so."
Back to Udell's screencast. Being of sound mind, I had an epiphany[1] as soon as I saw the screencast - we should be creating screencasts for some of the cool features in Solaris (and OpenSolaris). Imagine if more people could see the users (or even the authors) of software demo it, complete with their personal stories about why it matters? To have software demonstrated by someone who truly "gets it" and can help you understand the benefits - well, that's gotta be useful.
It turns out that Jon Udell recently wrote about the value of screencasts here and that Curt Hibbs has also blogged 'Screencasts - A better way to "get" it' as well. Curt even links to a movie that he suggests had a lot to do with the wildfire spread of Ruby on Rails. And Roman Strobl has already experimented with some audio-tracked flash demo's on his blog here. The idea is clearly catching on...
I particularly like what Jon says in PrimeTime Hypermedia about how screencasting can empower people who "get" a piece of software:
"It may, however, be obvious how to use a piece of software, and yet not at all obvious why to use it. I'll give you two examples: Wikipedia and del.icio.us. Anyone who approaches either of these applications will immediately grasp their basic modes of use. That's the easy part. The hard part is understanding what they're about, and why they matter."
So - OpenSolaris engineers and fans - I entreat you - make some cool OpenSolaris screencasts, and spread the word. (And send me links, too!)
[1] Truth be told, the epiphany didn't happen until after I saw the screencast with audio enabled - the audio function is fried on my current Tecra laptop. :-)
Technorati Tag:OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag:Solaris
Technorati Tag: del.icio.us
(2005-05-16 11:36:35.0) Permalink Comments [1]
Thursday May 12, 2005 Tim Marsland posted his first blogs the other day (three in his first day!) and I have to say I was filled with glee when he told me about it. I'd like more people to get to know Tim. He is a fountain of ideas, he was the driving force behind the AMD64 work in Solaris 10, and he's a pleasure to work with. Working with Tim to solve a problem is like meandering through the woods - along the way, you explore all sorts of possibilities and at the end, you're richer for the experience. Tim was one of the key people who convinced me to lead OpenSolaris. Oh, and he has a wonderful British accent thing going for him, too.
One other important thing to know about Tim: He loves Lego. As a software engineer, well, I guess that's not surprising. After all, with Lego, as with software, you can build amazing things out of basic components and building blocks. And Tim loves to build amazing things. Don't we all?
Technorati Tag:OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag:Solaris
(2005-05-12 00:15:09.0) Permalink Comments [2]
Wednesday May 04, 2005 Props to Wired magazine for receiving the Magazine Award's top prize of General Excellence. I discovered this via Chris Anderson's posting on the Long Tail blog - a self-proclaimed "public diary on the way to a book."
The Wired team submitted the February, October and November 2004 editions. Obviously they chose well.
I assume that the National Magazine Award is for content more than cover art, but I have to point out that my favorite Wired cover artwork for 2004 was the March Googlemania cover of Larry and Sergey. Cool stuff.
(2005-05-04 16:47:27.0) Permalink Comments [2]
