I went to the Tokyo2Point0 event last night.
There were 250
people there, so it was a packed house for sure. Really nice to catch up with a
bunch of people. I haven't been to one of these events in many months.
Just been too busy. It was also to good to see Michael Sullivan do a
short talk on the OpenSolaris
Bible Translation Project, too.
Tuesday Feb 09, 2010
The OpenSolaris Community in Japan will participate at the Spring Tokyo
Open Source Conference with three talks from Keiichi Oono, Kenichi
Mizoguchi, and Masafumi Ohta on February 27th. See Ohta-san's announcement in Japanese and English.
- New public information screens displaying much more detail about user, collective, and governance relationships (these screens will be accessible via each XWiki Collective in the near future as well).
- The ability to download the data from the public info screens in multiple formats.
- New screens in each private user account displaying summary data from all the user's relationships with start and end dates.
- The addition of eight languages (so Auth is now localized into 25 languages).
- Some miscellaneous bug fixes and probably some stuff I missed.
And finally, there has been a bit of confusion on some lists recently about how the community is organized and the various roles/rights people have on the site. If anyone has any questions, please read the Roles & Collectives document first. It's the only document on the site that explains all the roles and all the collectives and all of the website and governance privileges. Send questions to website-discuss.
Sunday Feb 07, 2010
It matters greatly who wins the war because the winners write the
history and they rarely -- if ever -- characterize events accurately.
That's what makes history fun. It's a puzzle and it's always changing. In this case I'm talking
about Caesar, who in 58 A.D.
destroyed the Celts in Gaul (France), killed and enslaved millions,
took the gold, propagandized the history, and went on to rule Rome as
Emperor. Nice guy. That is of you like vicious dudes running psychotic
military dictatorships. But whatever. The point is that the Romans won,
so their view of things survived throughout the ages. But I'm more interested in what was lost? What did the Romans conveniently leave out of their history?
For that, check out The Primitive Celts, an entertaining and fascinating look at the Celts, who the Romans say were mere barbarians. But were they? Seems some archaeologists are discovering the Celts actually had a highly developed society with the most advanced calender at the time and a sophisticated economy based on a variety of trades. They minded gold all across Europe, and they built a vast network of roads to facilitate international trade. Generally, the contrast to Rome was nearly total. Where the Celts decentralized things into a web and community-like structure, the Romans centralized them into a rigid hierarchy. And that proved a critical and fatal difference -- at least in ancient times. Centralization won. Big time, actually.
But I wonder if that distinction remains true today. What's the better concept around which to build a society in 2010? And, more importantly, who wins the war when these differences collide for whatever reason? Surely the world today is substantially different than when the Romans were wrecking the place two thousand years ago, but would their systems prevail today? You can look at this from the perspective of a county or a company or even a project. It's just the management of resources to achieve a goal. Nothing more. But my question asks which is better and who wins now?
Saturday Feb 06, 2010
Here is a nice example from Serbia demonstrating the value of building a local OpenSolaris community. It can lead to some very interesting organizations paying very close attention to what you are doing. Congrats, guys! Some of the OpenSolaris User Groups are doing some really interesting work out there, and they are contributing to the overall community in a very big way.
Friday Feb 05, 2010
- Japan's techies strive to bridge culture gap (January 2010)
- Tokyo 2.0 a buzzing hub for online communities, entrepreneurs (April 2009)
Wednesday Feb 03, 2010
Works for me. I already use both systems and participate in both communities.
Monday Feb 01, 2010
There's a new element coming to the OpenSolaris Bible translation project. Michael Sullivan, an OpenSolaris developer in Tokyo, has joined the project started a few months ago by Ken Okubo. Michael is building a series of technical presentations based on the book to help validate the translation into Japanese and also help get the book's content out into the community. He'll be talking about the idea at various community events in Tokyo (Tokyo2Point0, Tokyo Linux User Group, OpenSolaris User Group) to get people involved, and then we'll schedule the presentations as part of the Tokyo OpenSolaris Study Group meetings (date TBD). Discussions are also taking place in the community (here, here) about this latest phase of the project.
There were two sessions (beginners/advanced) at the monthly Tokyo OpenSolaris
Study Group on Saturday:
A third concurrent session will be opened hopefully starting in
February or March. More info soon. Subscribe to ug-jposug
and ug-tsug
to participate.
More info about the OpenSolaris communtiy
in Japan here. More OpenSolaris photos here.
How could I not read an article in USA Today with a headline like this? Psychologists: Propaganda works better than you think.
It's true, of course. I find propaganda is a remarkably effective tool, and it's far more sophisticated in democracies than it is in totalitarian societies (see Chomsky here and here and a million other places, and also see David Barstow's reports on the media and the Pentagon -- video, article, article -- for a well-known and recent example). But what I found most interesting in the USA Today piece was the assertion that accurate information may not counteract propaganda very well and actually could help transmit it. If that's true, would it make sense to be more assertive in communications to drive the agenda and then to ignore critics (or at least the vicious and extreme ones)? I suppose this strategy wouldn't necessarily work in all cases, and there are certainly some very effective techniques to deposition attackers. But just tossing out good information in a attempt to thwart the bad stuff may not be a good use of time. Having the good information well documented so you can rapidly point to it for those interested is required, of course, but it's the never-ending iterative arguing that I think I'm done with. I've been trying this for about a year now, and I find it more effective than my earlier pattern of responding to everything in an attempt to change minds. I gave up. Plus, it's not as exhausting.
Propaganda fascinates me. I keep track at this tag: http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/tags/propaganda
Sunday Jan 31, 2010
So many people claim they lead. Maybe they have a big hairy title or powerful position or know someone special, or maybe they just have lots of cash and feel we should all follow along quietly. There`s even a whole industry of "leadership" with books and seminars and all sorts of guys spinning up what it means to lead. I used to think all that was pretty cool (or interesting to study, anyway), but not any longer. Spotting leadership is simple. Look around the room, look for who`s talking and for who`s doing. Follow the ones doing. Chances are those people won`t bark orders to you, but instead they`ll encourage you to work right along with them and you`ll want to. You see, real leaders don`t duck when things get hot. They don`t get hard to find when things get confusing or uncertain. They don`t tell others what to do, either. They just step up and act because things need to get done. Leadership is demonstrated via action, and anyone can lead because anyone can act. Everything else is chit-chat.
Friday Jan 29, 2010
Thursday Jan 28, 2010
Earlier today I was thinking about the original "good luck" email I
sent to the OpenSolaris Pilot Community just before we opened the
project in June of 2005. Fortunately, the opensolaris-discuss public
archive actually goes back 9 months before we launched, so this
mail survives in the open and from the other threads you get a glimpse into some of the very
earliest conversations taking place when the project was private. Anyway, what
strikes me is how different the situation was back then, how utterly
conservative we were, and how my thinking has changed as a result of my
experiences all along the way. A day after I sent this email, we
opened. See my opening blog
here, and the
result of that opening announcement here. History. Always
enlightening.
[osol-discuss] Good Luck and Thank You
Jim Grisanzio Jim.Grisanzio at Sun.COM
Mon Jun 13 17:27:01 PDT 2005
Hello, OpenSource Pilot Community. I just wanted to chime in before the fur really flies around here: Good Luck, and Thank You! You all deserve Sun's thanks for your efforts and your patience this year. It should be wild day tomorrow, for sure, so light up those blogs and start talking, guys. The engineers are leading this launch tomorrow, make no mistake about it. Oh, and if you want to bring someone into the program, you *don't* have to call me and sign another f****** NDA. Just do it. I can't tell you how happy I am to not have to dig out another NDA. Not that I could read the damn thing but whatever. It's such a cold way to start a friendly little conversation, don't you think? Also, I've tried to honor as many of your requests (and those from internal people) as possible to get people into the program. We ended up with 145, but quite frankly, dozens and dozens of developers never made it in due to lack of time or resources. We even had a dozen Chinese engineers all briefed, translated, and NDA-signed but couldn't get export control approval in time. It drove me nuts for three months. I'm more than a bit pissed about that one. Anyway, I hope you are happy with the results of what we are all releasing. The core team here has worked almost non-stop for weeks on this to get ready for the final push. We wanted to do more, you know that, but hey, look at where we were last year and look at the potential tomorrow brings. Also, the OpenSolaris team internally really has been genuine in their intentions, I can assure you. At times we've not been as open as we could have been -- we get that -- but I hope you believe me when I say that many people on the team fought hard on your behalf all year long. Every time you told us we were full of shit on something we took it to heart and it went up line. There were a few, ah, heated, conversations regarding some of the issues that were discussed in the pilot. We won some and we lost some, but every time we moved a little closer to our goal of openness. As you've seen, this stuff takes time. I wish we could have exposed more of that process to you. Next time it will probably be easier to do that. As this program has grown it's garnered attention from all across Sun and from Sun's competitors and supporters. Just recently, I've heard from executives and engineers traveling to South America and to Asia, and they report that there *absolutely* is massive community interest out there. Even Wall Street has noticed. Some people are probably a bit confused since the Solaris community was supposed to be dead by now. Well, too bad. It's too late. They lost their window of opportunity to crush us. Our next step is to stay positive and to engage the interest we know is there, make it tangible, and grow this OpenSolaris community. In a very real way, you've all been part of something special here. You've helped change this company and potentially an entire market along the way. Some people may not know this quite yet, but they'll surely find out tomorrow. You are some of the most knowledgeable people in the world about Solaris, and you've help make OpenSolaris a possibility. Congratulations and we'll see you on the other side. Jim
Wednesday Jan 27, 2010
McNealy's bittersweet memo bids good-bye to Sun: "Scott McNealy, the smack-talking co-founder and long-running leader of Sun Microsystems, has bid adieu to his company in a memo that mixes nostalgia with a rallying cry for employees about to become part of Oracle. The memo, sent Tuesday under the subject line 'Thanks for a great 28 years,' has more genuine emotion than you'll see in a year's worth of official communications from most corporate leaders." -- Stephen Shankland
I think those of us who have worked with Scott or interacted with him in any way would agree. It's something you feel and you feel it right away.
Tuesday Jan 26, 2010
Spent some time cleaning up the content in the Website Community
yesterday. The transition to auth/xwiki is over, so I rewrote a lot of
the content we had pointing to the project management docs and moved
some content to archive to clean up the nav. I cut the amount of
content on the top level page in half. Roadmap & Announcements
updated too. Over the last few months, we've accumulated a huge amount
of information about the website project and various community
processes. Still streamlining. Next needs to address the front page of the site.
"We don't want our babies to die, and we want our children to go to school"
That's what motivates Greg Mortenson to build communities because
that's what women tell him in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They don't want
their kids to die. So to help out, Greg builds schools -- in a region
of the world that has known only war and poverty for generations. Hear
Greg tell his story to Bill Moyers on PBS.
There are many more videos
and articles
about Greg and his foundations and books. Just a wonderful story
all around. Even the highest levels of the U.S Military are now reading
his book -- Three Cups of Tea -- and
they are listening to him in the field because he knows more about the
culture on the ground than most Americans involved in the battle over
there. He's not fighting terrorism, tough. He's building community.
There's a difference. The first action is defensive, based on fear, and
short term. The second is offensive, based on inspiration, and long
term. One breaks. The other builds. But this no hand out from some rich
guy in the West or even a government program. Greg is not rich and he
built his organization from pretty much nothing. And people of modest
means -- and kids with pennies!
-- create and drive these programs. Not the rich. Not the governments.
In this case, individuals make the difference and that's why it's so
inspiring. And the schools have to be earned, too. Educational
leadership and resources are contributed from the outside, of course,
but things are distributed and managed locally as well. Land is given
for free and so is labor. This way the local community owns what they
build.
This guys knows what he's doing, and he figured it out in real time. I
just tripped over him today, but he's been doing this for sixteen
years. I will study him closely. Everything he does represents a
repeatable model for building community anywhere in the world for any
purpose. Think you can't do something? Think it's too hard? You must check this out. Very cool.
Saturday Jan 23, 2010
The first two images are from the bathroom at the Sun building in Yoga
looking down on
the rooftop tennis court and hot tub next to the Tomei Expressway.
Then these two are from my office (which is a tiny cube) looking down on the tollgate sucking money out of the cars flying by on the Tomei.
Then later on I almost got clipped by a masked man driving a little scooter down at street level in Jingumae. He probably buzzed me since he saw me earlier stepping out into the street to take his picture.
Some images from the OpenSolaris Night Seminar in Tokyo earlier this evening with presentations from Junko Yoshida, Mami Sueki, and Shoji Haraguchi. Video from Shoji Haraguchi here.
Hundreds more images from the OpenSolaris community in Japan right here.
Friday Jan 22, 2010
I like this old tower much better than the new one being built, but I suppose life moves on.
Thursday Jan 21, 2010

Sunday Jan 17, 2010
The latest version of
auth.opensolaris.org is now in the Community Translation
Interface for a localization update, and we are also now starting
to localize repo.opensolaris.org as well. Because of many community
contributions recently, auth.opensolaris.org already lives in 17
languages. It will be good to get the SCM Console at
repo.opensolaris.org localized into a bunch of languages via the same
process as we continue updating that application in the coming months.
See the announcement
from Ales on i18n-discuss for details about contributing to these
these two website projects.
The localization of opensolaris.org -- which is
currently 15 applications -- will come together over time and in
various stages. But I really would like all of it localized into at
least two dozen languages by the end of this year. Should be doable.
So, if you are interested in participating, I wrote an outline about
how we are breaking this into pieces and how you can get involved: Localizing
Website Content. I will update the document as the project evolves.
See the Internationalization
& Localization Community for even more projects and
information. Subscribe
to i18n-discuss. Thanks.
Friday Jan 15, 2010
Shoji Haraguchi just announced the next OpenSolaris Night Seminar in Tokyo. It will be on January 22nd in Jingumae. On tap will be Crossbow and Solaris Containers. Register early. These seminars generally fill up pretty quickly, and there's only room for about 100 people in the room. You know, we really could use some bigger conference rooms to hold these events. Lots of people are interested in OpenSolaris in Tokyo. See you there.
Wednesday Jan 13, 2010
Nice article on the brain biology behind how scientists actually
create science. Accept
Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up. Recognizing anomalies,
making mistakes, being challenged, and engaging in conversation are all
critically important elements that make science work. Context and
perspective matter greatly as well. Seems all very human to me. I`m not
so much interested in the brain chemistry that influences behavior in
science (you
can see this in partisan politics as well), but what fascinates me
more is the notion that with this awareness you can dig yourself out of
the natural traps that catch most people, and that can lead to new
opportunities that only a few generally see. From the article:
| Modern science is populated by expert insiders, schooled in narrow disciplines. Researchers have all studied the same thick textbooks, which make the world of fact seem settled. This led Kuhn, the philosopher of science, to argue that the only scientists capable of acknowledging the anomalies — and thus shifting paradigms and starting revolutions — are “either very young or very new to the field.” In other words, they are classic outsiders, naive and untenured. They aren’t inhibited from noticing the failures that point toward new possibilities. |
The "acknowledging the anomalies" bit from Thomas Kuhn is key. It may enable
you to jump
paradigms or start revolutions, which is very cool, but in the process
it also gets you a lot of knives
buried deeply in your back. So acknowledge carefully. More than a few
people have ended up dead challenging paradigms throughout the ages.
Granted, the deaths are at the extreme, but why go through all that if
it`s not necessary. Start small. Pick off what you can. Even though
most people usually can't change the paradigms in which they live, they
can change the small things in their world by recognizing and resolving
anomalies that crop up every day. Then,
hopefully, over time the small changes add up to big changes. And
when you are focusing on this process, you are more apt to spot big
paradigm shifts coming along and you can jump when the opportunity is
right.
So, don`t be afraid to poke around and change your position and screw
up from time to time. Failure
is important. It helps you succeed.
Tuesday Jan 05, 2010
Some images from Shogatsu
2010 from Kijima and Nagano Japan ...
あけましておめでとうございます
A short 14 second video from Zenkō-ji.
Shogatsu tag from previous years: http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/tags/shogatsu.
Tuesday Dec 22, 2009
The OpenSolaris Community will participate at 2010 Japan Developer Summit in Tokyo February 18-19. Subscribe to ug-jposug and ug-tsug for more information.
It's cool to see the localization of the OpenSolaris distribution moving right along with contributions going directly into the development builds. [i18n-discuss] The 2nd translation cycle of OpenSolaris 2010.03.
This blog is copyright 2010 by jimgris (Jim Grisanzio). The text and images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Credit Jim Grisanzio and point back to this blog.

















































































































