log.illsley.org

One of the perks of working at Hursley is the occasional trip to the pub at lunchtime. Today was one of those days, and in-keeping with previous trips with that particular group, I got a bit of a ribbing about participating in a relatively small number of social networking type activities. First I think it was blogging (the, um, rabble rouser of the group now has a blog), then it was having a SecondLife avatar, and facebook, and today it was twitter.

Every time I start by defending the technology because I’m under (gentle) attack and feel I should, then sip on a pint and the discussion disappears so we never really address the issues. This is a brief attempt to do just that, because I think it’s an interesting discussion, not because of the comments.

Blogs - I think the potential value of blogs is clear. My blog is generally of interest to me, and occasionally to others. There are other blogs, written by authors, politicians, technologists, and CEOs which get these people closer to those who are interested and have opinions than before. A good thing.

SecondLife - shrug It’s an interesting experience, and probably represents a style of interface we’ll use regularly in the future. I’m not at all hooked and may never log in to that particular metaverse again.

Facebook - An excellent way to keep in touch with friends I don’t see every day, or indeed very regularly at all. Useage has dropped off a bit recently, but that’s at least in part because I’ve been experimenting with twitter. It’s a closed data platform which really isn’t something I’m comfortable with. I want to own my social graph, so facebook having proved it’s value to me, I’ll probably move as much out of their environment as possible.

Twitter - It’s been nearly 2 months, and this experiment is ongoing. I’d liken this to working in open plan writ large. I know what lots of people are doing. Lots of it is unexciting, and easily ignored. Some of it’s interesting, and stimulates ideas or laughter, and even seems to foster a sense of team… see the #currentcost activities in hursley spilling onto twitter as an example. Twitter deserves a full post at some point, but the short version is that while it’s quite compelling, at least over the short term, I don’t really know where it goes from here.

[UPDATE] The other interesting thing about twitter from a work perspective is that it’s large scale consumer pub/sub and event notification.

Dopplr - Every so often I get a notification that someone else is sharing their trips with me. I don’t travel enough for this to be interesting to me, though I know some people who do, so I should probably speak to them to work out if it’s as useful as the theory sounds.

So some successes, some not, and some undecided. Overall, I’ve got what I wanted from them. These technologies/services are all a means to a particular end for me. The end? Fun experimentation and keeping an eye out for interesting technology trends. I don’t need these technologies to be great for the experiment to be worthwhile.

I’d been playing around writing a python WS-Policy framework a couple of months ago and put it down because of other things going on. Google then announced AppEngine, and, being the only python code I had lying around thought I’d put it up. The result is a very experimental WS-Policy implementation deployed on AppEngine, available at wspolicy.illsley.org

I’ll follow up with my thoughts on AppEngine in another post, once I’ve experimented a little more.

Triggered by a tweet, I re-read roo’s blog on backchannels today. The only backchannel experience I’ve had was on the W3C WS-Addressing Working Group. W3C Groups share information and take minutes straight into an IRC chat. ‘/me’ messages are considered to be out-of band comments, and are not included in the minutes. The IRC chats are used in both telecons and face-2-face meetings, with slightly less going on in them during the face-to-faces, though the IRC may be on a projector.

Initially I didn’t really understand the way it is used, particularly some of Paul’s comments.

In both scenarios, it’s really useful to type while others are talking if you’re looking for a clarification, or have a useful comment to share, and don’t want to interrupt the flow or someone talking… which is particularly difficult to do on a call anyway where you can’t see how people are reacting. It is also used on occasion to undermine people and arguments before they are fully formed which can be useful or really frustrating.

The third use, that Paul is particularly good at is lightening the mood. Often with truly awful jokes. Nevertheless, even a bad joke can jolt bored people into life again, and reinforce the idea that we’re humans working together, rather than faceless representatives of our organisations. With the ‘/me’ notation, these jokes are very easily ignored if you’re not interested, so they are very low cost.

I miss all of these uses when on telecons without a backchannel, which is most that I’m involved in at the moment. In those that do have backchannels, the same social norms about the channel aren’t the same, particularly there’s no recognised way to indicate that your comment can easily be ignored.

All that I can take from that experience to the idea of a conference backchannel, which is a slightly different environment is a belief that it’s probably a useful idea, that social norms can prevent abuse, and that including a mechanism to allow ignorable comments to be easily identified would probably be important.

I guess IBM like announcing things with similar numbers at the same time… also April 1 seems to be a favourite.

The WebSphere Application Server v7 Open Beta which contains the fruits of my, and many other peoples labour (including multiple open source communities) has been announced for May.

Additionally the WebSphere MQ v7 release has been announced for June. There’s been a lot of pizza consumed getting that release ready, so congratulations to everyone on the second floor for getting it done.

I’m back in the UK, and now living in my flat, but updates are sparse because I don’t have internet access in the flat and work is a little busy - that’s what happens when you’re out of the office for 5 weeks!

This morning I got up and put on my Scotland rugby shirt…. no real reason, just seemed like a good idea.

I’m now sitting in the very friendly cafe in the Hideout Theater in Austin, and noticed that Scotland won the Calcutta Cup!

A real coincidence, and a good day.

Was what I heard when I picked up the phone a moment ago. Happily I had an easy out given that I’m not able to vote tomorrow.

Having been in Texas for 2 weeks, it’s been almost impossible to sit through an ad break on TV without seeing an ad for one or the other, hence I now have a strong opinion. FWIW (and it’s worth nothing), if I had a vote in the Democratic primary tomorrow I’d be voting for Barack Obama. Why? Because I think he’d more likely to succeed in the change both he and Hillary Clinton promise.

So I am now, fundamentally in debt… good debt, I think, but debt.

How? I’ve bought a flat in Winchester. Yes, I’m in Texas, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem in this day and age.

Now I just have to wait 3 weeks before I’m back in Winchester to see if it is anything like I remember.

See, no need to bring Tea with you to America!

Last night I arrived in Austin, Texas, my home for the next month!

More later….