January 3, 2009

gee and i've only met barlow once


gee and i’ve only met barlow once
Originally uploaded by xian

was JP Barlow idly doing the comparisons today, or is this more like secret-admirer spam?

November 6, 2008

evangeline


evangeline
Originally uploaded by xian

she is the queen of make-believe

my new electric uke (hollowbody tenor ukulele with pickup)

October 30, 2008

Briefest annual birthday blogging yet

Started blogging on birfday in 1997 (called it “doing an online journal then”).

11 years later I’m still (sorta) at it.

Happy birthday to us!

October 15, 2008

About this new book I'm (co-)writing

As you may know, I am writing a book with Erin Malone called Designing Social Interfaces for O’Reilly Media.

Erin is the the founder of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library and hired me to be its third curator. Today she is a partner at Tangible UX, a consulting firm, and I maintain the library as a YDN design evangelist on Micah Laaker’s Yahoo! Open Strategy (YOS) team, in collaboration with Luke Wroblewski’s Front Doors and Network Services (FDNS) team.

The top of my agenda in the past year has been to identify, gather, and document a family of social design patterns: observed practices that work well in resolving common design problems in social applications. I’ve been looking for and teasing out patterns that enable social environments to thrive and sustain themselves.

Fortunately, I had a leg up or two. While there were very few documented community or social media patterns in the library, there are a wealth of specs, papers, patterns, presentations, and guidelines scattered around the intranet, and there was Matt Leacock’s first take on a social media toolkit, shepherded together on an internal Yahoo! wiki.

More importantly, I looked out across the landscape of the web and drew on my own personal experience as a user, analyst and addict of online social experiences.

At BarCamp Block last year I facilitated a session on social media patterns (at least that’s what I was calling them then) and the net takeaway was an amazing mindmap of potential patterns. Quite a few of them turn out to be social moments, social behaviors, or social objects; or scenarios that illuminate patterns without being patterns themselves. But the outline and cloud diagrams we built from that brainstorm helped get me started sorting out some possible organizing structures beyond what we had internally a Yahoo.

This mindmap went through a series of iterations and refinements. Meanwhile, I started presenting on the topic of social patterns at BayCHI, at South By, at the IA Summit, at Ignite and more recently at TechPulse and soon PLoP and Interaction09.

Taking your half-baked ideas on the road and presenting them to a demanding crowd of payng customers is a great way of figuring out which ideas have resonance and which miss the mark. Presenting ongoing work in progress is tough: you make yourself vulnerable and open to criticism. But the criticism will come eventually anyway. Why not hear it now while you can still address it and incorporate the best ideas of others into your work?

For that matter, I feel it’s essential to be clear about one thing: almost none of this work on social design patterns is original. Yes, of course I am naming patterns and writing them and perhaps throwing in a nugget of experience here and there, but for the most part I am still curating these patterns. I’ve been stealing from everybody!

We hates plagiarism so we cite sources and point back to originators where applicable. I’ve proposed that the nascent PLPL (Pattern Language Markup Language) standard include an attribution element, with a common structure for reflecting sources, reuse, derived work, and licensing matters.

Furthermore, in our book we are inviting a wide range of leading practitioners, thinkers, and bloggers to contribute essays on one or more of the pattern families we’re developing for the book. Because, yes, the book is in many ways an offshoot of this ongoing social pattern collecting effort. And in that same spirit we’re both interested (Erin and me) in experimenting iwth methods of opening up the writing process and seeking feedback, correction, criticism, and contributions before the book’s ship date.

We’ll probably post patterns in progress on a wiki and in the meantime we will both be posting thoughts about the chapters we’re working on on our blogs. I’ll also post some draft patterns here at least until we have the wiki process figured out.

My next post in this series will be about a set of fundamental social design patterns I’m pulling together in Chapter 2.

October 14, 2008

Too risky!

Looks like Jay Smooth has decoded the McCain ad strategy:

(via Vivirlatino via Jenternational)

September 26, 2008

Get Your War On says time for us to come together

to kill all the bankers and steal their money:

September 13, 2008

Girl Talk at Yahoo!


Girl Talk at Yahoo!
Originally uploaded by kentbrew

I do the white man’s overbite. Please @kentbrew, point that camera over at @cynk. ah. better. thnaks!

September 12, 2008

Design hacks with stencils and patterns

These are the slides I worked from today in my talk at Yahoo! Open Hack Day 08, Design Hacks with Stencils & Patterns:

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: openhack08 hackday)

Open Hackday 08 begins


hackday stage
Originally uploaded by xian.

I’m going to name the robots Foo and Bar. We still haven’t announced the musical act that will be performing on this stage tonight.

So far I’ve heard Cody Simms and Neal Sample (Cody and Neal, hmmm….) give a great overview of YOS (with great visuals by Micah Laaker), and am now listening to Allen Rabinovich explain how to hack with Flash and Flex.

At 2pm I’ll be talking about patterns and stencils and how they can help coders build better interfaces.

August 1, 2008

Great way to showcase a redesign

I love this animation Delicious designer Bernard Kerr made to introduce the user interface improvements incorporated in the design of Delicious 2.0:

July 15, 2008

Apps I've downloaded onto my iPhone so far

twitterific.pngTwitterific would like to use your current location!

Shazam didn’t recognize John Cage last night.

Facebook is slick.

OmniFocus is my new Obama.

Google app is weak (brings up a tiny serp?) but at least it exists.

Pandora would be perfect if faster and also not crashy.

You had me at NYTimes.

Loopt does what now?

July 7, 2008

...and we're back

Holy Christ that was a giant pain in the ass.

On the bright side I may have gotten a whole chapter for my book on presence, all about what it’s like to have a longstanding web presence offline for six weeks or more. As far as the Internet is concerned you might as well be dead.

Maybe I’ll get some more blogging in now that I am alive again.

Did you hear me?

I… AM… ALIVE !!!!1!

May 6, 2008

Playing around with Utterz

Posted a thought via mobile that popped into my head driving to work this morning, part of an ongoing imaginary argument:



Mobile post sent by xian using Utterz Replies.  mp3

May 1, 2008

System going down in 10 minutes. Please finish up....

This blog, this domain, and all of my other Mediajunkie domains are going offline for about a week. We are retooling our server, migrating from RHL to Ubuntu, and generally tightening up security.

If I have a burning need to blog while this site is down, I’ll do it over at Vox.

See you in about a week or so.

April 24, 2008

I'm helping Sir Christopher Wren build this here cathedral

Or should I perhaps have found an anecdote with a bazaar in it for my title? I’ve been enjoying watching a lot of my fellow Y!OS cow-orkers “decloak” if you will and proudly announce to family and friends that yes, this Yahoo! Open strategy is what we’ve all been working on:

April 23, 2008

Ignite was fun


My Ignite talk, Grasping Social Patterns
Originally uploaded by duncandavidson.
Here are my slides.



Audio when it’s available (video too).

UPDATE: and here’s some YouTube video shot from the audience (the very beginning of my talk is cut off):


April 22, 2008

Three talks for the price of, well, none

At the IA Summit a week ago in Miami, I co-taught two full-day workshops (on patterns with Erin Malone and Lucas Pettinati, and social design with Christina Wodtke and Joshua Porter), moderated a panel (on presence and other aspects of social web architecture with Gene Smith, Wodtke, Andrew Hinton, and Andrew Crow), and gave a presentation with Austin Govella from Comcast on designing with patterns. (Phew.)

I finally got my slides posted to slideshare today from the panel and the presentation. (Eventually, if and when audio becomes available, I’ll sync them up.) You’ll notice if you look at my recent talks that I am remixing a lot of the same points. I am trying to learn to be more shameless about this, since the material is usually fresh for each new audience until it’s fully distributed.

In that same vein, if you’re in SF you can find me at Ignite SF tonight doing a five minute talk (yes, covering some of the same ground as my BayCHI talk in this case) on the topic “Grasping Social Patterns.” I’m nervous as hell, not least because the lineup of other speakers is so incredible. So even if I bomb, you’ll get some pretty inspiration stuff from the likes of Kathy Sierra, Annalee Newitz, Lane Becker, and others.

For now, here are my summit talks:

and

What is
Radio Free Blogistan?

Radio Free Blogistan was a group weblog published by Christian Crumlish (xian for short), and written by xian, filchyboy, Andrew Bayer, Liza Sabater, and Rayne.

The purpose of this "web blog" (that's a joke, son) was to discuss the realm of blogs, personal publishing, microcontent, nanopublishing, syndication, online community building, and related topics.

Since the heyday of blogging about blogging the authors of Radio Free Blogistan have neglected their duties here and in a palace coup the founder of the blog, xian, has turned it into an aggregator containing more or less the same content as xian's running monolog, wrapped up in the familiar crusty old RFB design. This way folks who were subscribing to or visiting the site can get all the boring, er, interesting new blog posts from xian without having to poke around to see where he's doing his occasional blogging nowadays. I, I mean he, will look for ways to incorporate RFB content as well, but the first cut may limit it to just xian content. All the old stuff will stay, and the sidebar will get mangled, no doubt.

Recent Entries
gee and i've only met barlow once
evangeline
Briefest annual birthday blogging yet
About this new book I'm (co-)writing
Too risky!
Get Your War On says time for us to come together
Girl Talk at Yahoo!
Design hacks with stencils and patterns
Open Hackday 08 begins
Great way to showcase a redesign
Apps I've downloaded onto my iPhone so far
...and we're back
Playing around with Utterz
System going down in 10 minutes. Please finish up....
I'm helping Sir Christopher Wren build this here cathedral
Ignite was fun
Three talks for the price of, well, none
Social design patterns slides from BayCHI last week
Talk back to presenters with Ted Nadeau's patented* Reaction Deck 1.0
These are your most powerful and trusted friends
Great, now I have to keep up with Bucky
Social design patterns talk at BayCHI next week
Mediajunkie blogs to go offline for about a week
Testing Anil Dash's text-embed idea
If I have to appear in Valleywag this is the way to go
Talking patterns and social design at the IA Summit
I'm speaking on presence and reputation with Ted Nadeau at SxSW
insert Microsoft overlords joke here
Notchup invites a cock-up?
Etymology of monk dimin'?
Help me write my book about presence
Question about OpenID data policies
The twelve-month review
Calendar made of people
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Most Popular Entries
The day the blogging died
Radio vs. Movable Type
Blogger vs. Radio
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On this day in 2007
How do UX roles intersect?: A while back I wanted to comment on Elton’s entry, Information Architecture updated to 3.0, and draw on a post to the IxDA list by Jay Fienberg, talking about the Venn diagrams that might show how the various user experience roles and practices tend to overlap. It seems that each... (Design)
On this day in 2005
More to Wikipedia than meets the eye: Quoting Simon Willison's Some notes on Wikipedia: I've been driving myself crazy with coursework over the past couple of weeks, and since it's always good to have something to take your mind off things I've also been spending a fair amount of time lurking around the beautifulWikipedia. Here are a... (the power of many)
More to Wikipedia than meets the eye: Quoting Simon Willison's Some notes on Wikipedia: I've been driving myself crazy with coursework over the past couple of weeks, and since it's always good to have something to take your mind off things I've also been spending a fair amount of time lurking around the beautifulWikipedia. Here are a... (the power of many)
Shirky's response to Danah Boyd on the recent Wikipedia debate: Andy Baio says (in Shirky's response to Danah Boyd on the recent Wikipedia debate): Clay on Danah on Clay on Sanger; a great debate Definitely an interesting discussion but I wonder if we are making a category error here. Talking about wikipedia in terms of its authoritativeness seems a bit... (the power of many)
Here come the reputation brokers: Quoting from Are You Reputable? by Jed Miller (blogging at Personal Democracy Forum): Media research company Bacon's Information says it will be watching "the most reputable online news blogs" in order to help their subscribers "determine the possible impact on business decisions and company reputations."The Bizwire announcement doesn't specify quite... (the power of many)
On this day in 2004
GOP Team Leader talking point: Condemnation of Hitler ad and MoveOn.org.... (the power of many)
Craig Newmark to help SF with problem-tracking: craigblog: reinventing government? or, am I fooling myself? Hey, if you're curious, I've just agreed to help the city take a look atthe way SF city departments plan to use information tech to provide bettercustomer service and other stuff. Specifically, the biggest deal is a problem tracking system for the... (the power of many)
Is physical presence necessary for community?: Tom Coates has thought a lot about moderating and facilitating online communities: A few months ago I responded to a site that claimed The Internet is Shit with a reposte designed to illustrate that although our networks might contain difficult and unpleasant material, they also contain enough of value and... (the power of many)
FriendRank: Like most normal people, I was just having an interesting telephone conversation with a friend of mine (at 2am) about Google, Yahoo, Friendster, on-line marketplaces, approximate searches, and some secret stuff. Along the way I got to thinking about some of the fundamental similarities between Google (those who mapped... (the power of many)
the {fray} begat fray day: Derek Powazek, of fray.org and many other community projects, announces his engagement on his personal site: She Said Yes. Probably want to talk to him at some point.... (the power of many)
Progress report: I had three goals for today: Blog the whole backlog of links (accomplished)Contact everyone needed for Chapter 2, and as many other desired names as possible (partially complete so far).Outline Chapter 2 (accomplished, at a high level). I expect to write about ten pages a day tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday,... (the power of many)
More online politics: Pete: Donald Wildmon is the founder of American Family Assn, , has a big Action Alert network and is very effective at getting members to communicate to politicians. Lou Sheldon is chairman of Traditional Values Coalition. I don't know about TVC's grassroots success or effect, because Sheldon is a very... (the power of many)
Family links: Pete: Various sites are set up for kids to go and play, chat, learn, build their own webpages. Some also act like personal organizers. A friend pointing me to Kiddo Net led to me finding that they're categorized on Google as Kids and Teens: People and Society: Online Communities On... (the power of many)
Sports links: Pete: Almost every kids' soccer league in California has its schedules (field and referee assignments, dates/times) and tournament data on a website: CCSL, Yourth Soccer. Little League online, not much more than info. Tons of companies offer Web site construction and forum/community tech for sports teams: eTeamz, League Pro, HotStat.... (the power of many)
Local politics links: Neighborhoods online e-Democracy... (the power of many)
Charity link: CHARITY: Potential main case study: breast cancer two-day walks. ... keep track of meetings, arrange buddy training walks, enlist donor pledges there.... (the power of many)
Arts links: Pete also wrote I found the "arts orgs go online" reference that's been nagging me. It's an old program, though, no longer kept up: OpenStudio. I knew of a couple of Bay Area theater groups that explored this in the late 90s; I remembered it as more "connected" than simply... (the power of many)
Community links: online chat sessions with local candidates or candidate info Online high school Online help (with audio) for students who failed state testing Sierra Club. International has a page to let visitors send boilerplate letters to politicians on various topics. N.J. chapter has a Sierra Activist login feature but I didn't... (the power of many)
GiveLife.org: Pete wrote: Another possible case study (though it's yet another big organization instead of a grassroots effort) is the American Red Cross: they use their database to send reminders to blood donors, to schedule appointments at the next blood drive, and to recruit donors to other activities like disaster preparedness... (the power of many)
potential anecdote re the downside of decentralizing: moveon.org gets dinged by fox and the WSJ for having a short movie on their site that compares Bush with Hitler. Could be an anecdote re the risks of decentraliziation -- they had no idea the movie was even posted, but folks react as if they'd made the movie themselves.... (the power of many)
Best practices for Yahoo! Groups: Bob Jacobson, from Dean Leaders, notes: It's amazing how little examined Yahoo Groups are, given their centrality to the Dean campaign. I did a search and turned up this moderated Yahoo group, ">Online Faciliation, which I've joined. (I've not yet confirmed.) The messages are rich, plentiful, and from recognized experts.... (the power of many)
Blah! USA: Rodney pointed out this game/chat/virtual world service: welcome to blah! usa.... (the power of many)
Open source peer-to-peer democracy: Aldon Hynes (of Connecticut for Dean and DeanSpace and Tech4Dean and Greater Democracy) outlines some of the principle of Open Source Peer to Peer Democracy at the Greater Democracy group-blog website.... (the power of many)
Upcoming.org: Andy Baio's open, RSS-generating shared event-scheduling service, Upcoming.org.... (the power of many)
The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Eric Raymond's famous The Cathedral and the Bazaar essay on open-source philosophy is often quoted by people in the Dean campaign's tech corps (and probably the Clark people as well). Rayne of Rayne Today, one of my contributors at RFB, pointed to it as a good template with many political... (the power of many)
Someone at OSI?: A reminder to try to contact someone at the Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network, possibly my old schoolmate Justin Burke, who works at Soros Foundations Network. George Soros would be a great name to write a foreword, but then again someone like Craig Newmark may have even wider,... (the power of many)
Weblog strategies for nonprofits: My own essay from Radio Free Blogistan continues to generate new incoming links, from increasingly influential nonprofit- and activist-oriented weblogs, such as this one: WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Weblog Strategies for Non-Profits... (the power of many)
Emergent democracy STATUS: Publish: Mitch Ratcliffe is working with Jon Lebkowski on an Emergent Democracy book project for O'Reailly: RatcliffeBlog -- Mitch's Open Notebook: Some notes on emergent democracy... (the power of many)
Ten Questions to Kick Start Network Centric Campaign Planning: Network-Centric Advocacy: Ten Questions to Kick Start Network Centric Campaign Planning, from Marty Kearns.... (the power of many)
The Marketing of the President: Ed Cone's hugely influential article, The Marketing of a President covers a lot of the key elements of the Dean Campaign case study (along with the subsequent Wired article, blogged earlier - I'm catching up on the our email backlog of link-exchange that preceded the book proposal).... (the power of many)
Automated trend discovery for blogs: Howard Rheingold writes, My name is Howard and I am a Technorati addict in BlogPulse: More Emergent Stuff, a journal entry at TheFeature (motto: It's All About The Mobile Internet). Also via Susan Mernit.... (the power of many)
FOAF-based people network: PLINK - People Link (via Susan Mernit's blog)... (the power of many)
It's the people, stupid (part ii): John Robb points out that intentional actions are required, and not just a hub-and-spoke architecture. (via buzzmachine)... (the power of many)
A heavy dose of social bullshit: David Weinberger (guesting at Many-to-Many) points to a problem inherent to social software: [R]eal social networks are always implicit. The ones constructed explicitly are always - yes, always - infected with a heavy dose of social bullshit. It’s like thinking that the invitiation list for your wedding actually reflects your... (the power of many)
Make certain the story is not used: From dmasson on the Well: This looks like a mistake. In case the link is taken down, it says: AP Kills Limbaugh Painkillers Story The Associated Press Saturday, January 3, 2004; 5:06 PM WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Please kill the story Limbaugh-Painkillers, V9991. Rush Limbaugh has not been charged... (memes)
On this day in 2003
Saw you with a ticketstub in your hand: I'm so out of it. After returning from a week and a half in New York I'm still reading The Gawker but without that same sense of immediacy (not that it matters where you are when you read about New York, and not that that prevents me from reading the... (writing)
Slate adopts our lingo: It looks like Slate launched a feature called Meme Watch back in November and refers, semifacetiously, to a MemeTracker&tm; device. Hey, as long as they pay us royalties! No, honestly, the more of us tracking memes the better. Timothy Noah's latest column observes the ups and downs of the "Lucky... (memes)
I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords
Steenkin' Batches
blogchalk: xian/Male/36-40. Lives in United States/Oakland/San Antonio and speaks English. Spends 60% of daytime online. Uses a Fast (128k-512k) connection.
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