Sunday May 22, 2005
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]
