My Life Blog

This is the beginnings of part 1 of the Kevin Kelly New Rules of the New Economy review series.  I introduced it here.

If you’d like to take a quick read of Kevin Kelly’s Embrace the Swarm chapter, an online version is here.

In that chapter, he has a few interesting headings (these are concept introductions or even statements outright) like "the power of decentralization", "the net is our future", "dumb parts, properly connected into a swarm, yield smart results".

One overwhelming example of his theories would have to be the evolution of Open Source in the last several years.  The Net has created the opportunity for otherwise independent and geographically disparate software developers and thought leaders to organize together and create software components that have drastically changed the face of software development.  Prior to the net, most software was either completely home-grown or built with purchases components.  We now see entire systems comprised of glued-together Open Source components.  If you aren’t in the industry, this may be lost to you, but trust me, this is really big.

Companies like Amazon, eBay, and Google who have opened up their platforms with web services which, to some degree, represents an embracing of the swarm.  This would not have been done were it not for the Open Source movement and I’m personally curious to see what interesting applications the world of creative developers create.

Blogs and podcasting are now all the rage.  While people write independently, it really turns out to be one big intertwined conversation.  Someone introduces an idea, another expands upon it or questions it, and the idea gets explored till the next idea takes priority.  For those active in the blogosphere, it is not uncommon for their opinions to be shaped by the conversations they are having with bloggers that they’ve never met.  This is in stark contrast to years ago, where opinions were probably more influenced by traditional media, friends, and family.  Now it is possible to have conversations with anyone in the world.  In my opinion, this is as big as the Open Source example and we are just seeing the beginning of it.

Kelly’s book examples draw more on connecting devices and other objects, but my examples have emphasized connecting humans.  However, we are seeing trends toward connectedness in many areas, its just that sometimes the connections are invisible or very subtle. 

Having said that, I do not think, however, that we’ve quite advanced as Kelly might have believed in making our objects connected.  I cannot really say that the gadgets that surround me are as connected as they could be.  So on that, I think we’re still waiting.

Next up, Increasing Returns…

The airline industry is in turmoil as further exemplified by the bankruptcy filings by Delta and Northwest Airlines. American Airlines has lessened their bleeding, but I believe they are still losing ground. I haven’t researched the facts, so I’m not completely sure about that, but that’s my perception.

Meanwhile, the steady rise of gas prices cannot be good. But the trend most likely to affect the airlines is probably the continuing massive deployment of broadband. With increasing deployments of broadband, it becomes possible to improve the quality of interactivity across great distances. A by-product could very well be less business travel and thus an ever decreasing source of revenue for the airlines.

But the airline industry in some form must survive. I, for one, as evidenced in my Kauai posts, like to travel, so I’m pulling for the airline industry to figure something out. My prediction is that the airlines industry will see major changes to their business models — so major that air travel will be radically different in the future.

Technology is the ultimate disruptor and I think we’re only a few years from seeing how this is going to play out. So get yourself to your favorite destination now!

Oh boy, this is going to be trouble. But since my readership is small, they’ll never know my tiny blog weighed in on such a “heavy” subject. Such is the subject of the virtues of small companies. I’m referencing the prevailing theme at 37Signals, a gracefully written counter-account from Mena at Six Apart, and a counterpoint posting by 37Signals.

37Signals is a small company and gets maximum value out of their few employees. They have several successful products and do consultancy work. From their company came Ruby on Rails and that framework is flourishing in the Open Source community.

I don’t know much about Six Apart other than what I read today and the fact that this weblog is hosted by them. The latter factor doesn’t bias me in the least. They are apparently a funded company that has grown from few to many. And like 37Signals, they are enjoying some success. I do not know the specifics of either company’s financials, I am just going on buzz and intuition.

The sparring today seemed to be based upon big companies versus small companies. But let’s face it, Six Apart only has 80 people and that’s hardly a big company. To some degree, they are unadmitted peers and I think they are in violent agreement.

The argument being made for small companies is that you can achieve as much with a small company as you can with a big company, so there’s a certain prideful feeling about remaining small and achieving perceived big things. I hesitate to say this, but I think pride and ego play a part in this tournament. And I feel its mostly from one side.

Big companies can achieve big things. Their size enables them to scale and bring much to bear on the problems that they solve. Let’s face it, if you are a small company, your potential is bound to be limited. You just cannot be Amazon with a team of five. That’s not a knock on 37Signals, its a matter of math or physics.

Achieving big things is a matter of execution. With a team of five, there are fewer connections in their network to support, so naturally communication is more apt to be efficient. Many big businesses go astray because they cannot scale their production along with their size. In my opinion, this is an organizational issue. You can structure your organization so that it efficiently handles the communications required across your vast number of employees. However, not every node will or should be connected. The goal should be to conscientiously keep the connections that matter efficient. Accountability and empowerment should be preserved in this structure. What I’m trying to say is that you can be big, think big, and act small at the same time. To me, the size of your company has less to do with what you can achieve than your ability to organize, communicate, and execute. Small teams can be dysfunctional too.

Personally, I like being a part of a small company. However, being a part of a well-run big company is okay too. Either has a chance to be successful. In my opinion, the small company can evolve to a big company and still preserve its small company culture. Growing in size is sometimes necessary to increase the potential for bigger things.

And as I’ve said before, just my opinion, I could be wrong…

I didn’t think it could be done, but they’ve found a way to add a fifth blade.  Take a look at the Gillette Fusion.  I didn’t happen to read if it vibrates, though.

And now back to technology. 

Nokia has a deep investment in ClearCase as their configuration management tool.  Trouble is, its slow, does not support remote access (well, at least), and requires a full-time administrator for each deployment. 

Its also quite complicated, based upon my perception, though I admit my view of it could be considered limited.  In our environment, many of its features have been locked down.  Some of these features include branching and merging.  We develop off the trunk which limits us greatly.  My theory is that because these features are under such tight control that developers have omitted them from their SCM vocabulary.  And as each new developer comes aboard, they are trained to do things as we’ve always done them — develop from the trunk.  Branching and merging are features not to spoken of.

But many of us in my organization do not have our heads in the sand.  We know that the Open Source world has used CVS for years and that Subversion represents and improvement upon CVS.  We see that either of these handles every single use case we could think of and so there is a grass roots move to use them.

However, in doing so, we are meeting with curious resistance.  Even though we can make an air-tight case for Subversion, we are still met with questionable reasons why we must still use ClearCase.  So now I’m wishing who these people are that say that we should continue to use ClearCase.  Are they familiar with our workflow and ever increasing need to work remotely?  Its doubtful.  I think this is a classic case of sunk-cost infrastructure.  As in, we paid for it, thus you shall use it.

Dovetailing off of my previous Thing Big, Act Small post, I think the right thing to do by our organization is to make the proper decision that suits our needs as if we were in business by ourselves.  I know that sounds like I advocate defying corporate standards, but in this case, the standard doesn’t make sense.  We require the above-mentioned features and there is no requirement to share our repository globally.  That had been one of the counter-arguments used by the other side.  But in my mind, this is akin to the errant requirement to write portable code — how often do you really port code?

So what will we do?  Probably beg for forgiveness.  I installed a Subversion repository on my laptop and hooked it into to a test project in 10 minutes — and I did so without an administrator.  Hopefully, we’ll survive the corporate paddling.  I just hope that we get to turn around and see whose wielding the paddle.  For him, her, or them, I have questions.

I read Kevin Kelly’s book New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World practically when it came out in October of 1998. It was an inspiring read back then in a world that was immigrating to the Internet.

And now 7 years later, I thought it might be interesting to see how Kelly’s strategies have withstood the test of time. So consider this an introduction to a 10-part series (11 if you count this intro) where I look at each strategy in detail.

To those familiar with the proposed rules permit me to recount them here. To those unfamiliar with these rules, allow me to introduce you.

But first, realize that these were first written about in September of 1997 in Wired Magazine (it was actually 12 rules in the article) and then later refined and published in October a year later. Try to take yourself back to a time where the web was new to most people and most people were using dial-up as broadband was nowhere in sight. Cell phones existed, but they were bigger and were good for, well, making phone calls.

Here they are:

1. Embrace the Swarm. As power flows away from the center, the competitive advantage belongs to those who learn how to embrace decentralized points of control.
2. Increasing Returns. As the number of connections between people and things add up, the consequences of those connections multiply out even faster, so that initial successes aren’t self-limiting, but self-feeding.
3. Plentitude, Not Scarcity. As manufacturing techniques perfect the art of making copies plentiful, value is carried by abundance, rather than scarcity, inverting traditional business propositions.
4. Follow the Free. As resource scarcity gives way to abundance, generosity begets wealth. Following the free, rehearses the inevitable fall of prices, and takes advantage of the only true scarcity: human attention.
5. Feed the Web First. As networks entangle all commerce, a firm’s primary focus shifts from maximizing the firm’s value to maximizing the network’s value. Unless the network survives, the firm perishes.
6. Let Go at the Top. As innovation accelerates, abandoning the highly successful in order to escape from its eventual obsolescence becomes the most difficult and yet most essential task.
7. From Places to Spaces. As physical proximity (place) is replaced by multiple interactions with anything, anytime, anywhere (space), the opportunities for intermediaries, middle-men, and mid-size niches expand greatly.
8. No Harmony, All Flux. As turbulence and instability become the norm in business, the most effective survival stance is a constant, but highly selective disruption that we call innovation.
9. Relationship Tech. As the soft trumps the hard, the most powerful technologies are those that enhance, amplify, extend, augment, distill, recall, expand, and develop soft relationships of all types.
10. Opportunities Before Efficiencies. As fortunes are made by training machines, to be ever more efficient, there is yet far greater wealth to be had by unleashing the inefficient discovery and creation of new opportunities.

I know that’s a mouthful and I will volunteer that Kevin writes wonderfully, but his words are not accessible to some people. I consider myself one of those, by the way, so you aren’t alone if you didn’t get much out of reading the list.

But if the thought of reading the series bores you, then cut your losses now, but take away the important theme — there is incredible power in the network and as such you should embrace and support any network that intersects with your life, be it your circle of friends, your family, your supply chain, or your set of gadgets.

Think eBay, Amazon, the Tsunami Relief Fund, cell phones, blog rolls, etc.

Nothing entertains me more than bathroom behaviour gone awry.  This post is for the men since those bathrooms are the only ones I have experience with.

Would someone please explain the following odd behaviors to me?

1. Washing your hands before going to the bathroom, but not after.  What?  So you can’t touch yours with the germs you randomly encounter, but you’re quite willing to leave your worst ones behind for the rest of us?
2. Flushing a urinal during midstream.  I’m not sure I understand the purpose for an incremental flush.  I further don’t understand when there isn’t a flush to bookend the experience.  Could it be splatter management?  If so, I appreciate it since I’m next door sometimes.
3. Empty urinal avoidance.  Why do some guys bypass the urinal and go for the stall?  Let’s face it, most of us are pretty lazy and a stall brings with it the possibility of having to lift the lid or close the door.  As I’ve mentioned before, some people have trouble with the former and create even more egregious sins.  I can maybe understand this is you’re a homophobe male at a gay bar wheeling up to a mirrored urinal with no divider in between.  Otherwise, I don’t get it.

Of course, someone is probably blogging at this moment on how weird the guy is who walks straight in, addresses the urinal, pees, flushes once, washes hands, and then leaves. 

Man if I’m doing it wrong, please somebody let me know.  I’m almost 41 years old and need to get it figured out while there is still time.

…it would be perfect (in my opinion).

Many of the weblogs that I read daily discuss how easy websites are to use.  And I’ve read many books on the subject as well.  To me, its almost an art form to anticipate perfectly how to build something so easy to use.  So since this is an interest of mine, I tend to notice things that are easy to do.

Pei Wei is an Asian diner prevalent in the Southwest.  Its one of my favorite restaurants mainly for the food.  However, in my most recent visit, it struck me that its designed perfectly. 

To begin with, there are two entrances conveniently market for their purpose; one is for Dining, the other is for To Go.  When you enter for Dining, you are presented with an aisle that leads you past three tall vertical menus which enable you to determine what you’d like on your way to place your order.  It should be mentioned that as you enter, you could also take an alternative path into the seating area, but a sign encourages you to place your order first.  So basically, you know exactly the order to follow.

After you move past the menu displays, you get to a twin set of registers.  Over the registers is a big sign that says "Orders".  And along the backs of the registers sit miniature menu displays to enable you to refresh your memory for what you had decided to order.  The entrees require some choices (e.g. beef or chicken, white rice or fried rice), so its handy to have the menu right in front of you again. 

If you entered through the To Go door, you would enter right at the cash register station and thereby have bypassed the standing menus.  After all, you’ve perhaps called your order in and don’t need those menus.  There’s a single register for you and chairs available while you wait. 

Back to the Diners path.  Once you’ve paid, you are given a numbered token which identifies you for order delivery.  You then follow the path to the drink station where you get your ice, choose your drink, and select any utensils or straws you may require.  You also can select your fortune cookie here.

Thereafter, you are now ready to find a table.  Once seated, you insert your token into a wire tower so that it can be seen and you wait for your food. 

You then leave through the pathway you were encouraged not to use upon entrance.

I call this pretty much a perfect restaurant design.  And oh by the way, the food is awesome too.

I guess I’m the only one who didn’t see anyone else relate Hurricane Katrina with the precosiously named 80’s band Katrina and the Waves.

Not too take this too far, but as I was readying for my jog yesterday, I turned on my iPod Shuffle and soon heard these lyrics from the Counting Crows:

i will wait for you in Baton Rouge
i’ll miss you down in New Orleans

The melancholy of Adam Duritz’s singing voice took me to a dark place and stopped me dead in my tracks.

At the risk of tending toward a gossip columnist, I’m going to do just that.

As previously mentioned many entries ago, we flew from Dallas to Oahu on American Airlines on August 26th. We were lucky to sit first class in seats 4A and 4B. In seat 3C sat none other than Samuel L. Jackson.

So what did the King of Cool do during the eight hour flight?

I won’t go into every detail about his every move, but I did notice that he read much of the time. He first retrieved a script out of a bubble-packed envelope. Sorry, but I wasn’t nosey enough to see the title, so I don’t know whether he was reading a script for evaluation or for learning. My very uninformed opinion is that he may have been evaluating since he retrieved it from the bubble-wrap.

Toward the end of the flight, he read 100 Bullets Vol. 8: The Hard Way which appeared to be like a comic book. You can follow the link to get the full details, but an excerpt of that description reads as:

This Eisner Award–winning series continues its exploration of contemporary American noir through its ingenious gimmick: mysterious Agent Graves offers a gun and 100 untraceable bullets to those who are looking for vengeance. This outing starts in a seedy dive in the French Quarter of New Orleans, a city with dark underbelly to spare.

Doesn’t that just sound perfect for him? So I am wondering if the script and the book are related — as in the script is adapted from the book.

Once again, I’m wildly speculating here because I wasn’t nosey enough to get directly in his face. I was only nosey enough to watch his every move from afar.