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Moving to WordPress

February 27, 2006 By Uncategorized 2 Comments

I’m switching over to WordPress, and so blogging might be light until I can get everything tweaked just right.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Blogger for five years of great free services. I have had very few problems with Blogger over the years, and I’ll still be using it for several blogs and bits and pieces I’m working on.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to using WordPress and I ask your indulgence to bear with me through this change.

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What’s up with Blogger?

February 23, 2006 By Uncategorized One Comment

I’ve been losing posts somehow. My post on waiting and emergence shows up in my archives, but not on the front page here or in my dashboard.

Anyone know what’s up?

Time for a move to WordPress?

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MashupCamp uses Open Space

February 23, 2006 By Facilitation, Open Space

Here’s a great story from MashUp Camp on how an Open Space Technology unconference worked. The article concludes with this quote:

‘The amazing thing about these camps, using open space methodology, is they shouldn’t work,’ said Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext, which makes social software for collaboration. ‘Like a wiki, it turns out that some very simple and open rules have shockingly positive results–because people, on the whole, are good. Open events like these have become almost commonplace in the Valley. In fact, I’d say they are a key driver for the current wave of innovation. One part wiki, one part space and two parts people, add water, and voila!’

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Strengths and weaknesses of volunteer networks

February 16, 2006 By Organization

I’m reposting this list holus bolus from Peter Levine’s blog. It’s an excellent summary of what we can expect from volunteer networks, and very top of mind for me at the moment:

1) Volunteers will plan and run meetings and conferences, even doing hard, detailed work on invitation lists, agendas, and menus. But they will not reliably write up the results of meetings for public distribution. After a meeting, writing feels like a chore, and there’s usually no specific deadline. Therefore, many meetings leave no tangible public record.2) Volunteers will write grant proposals, because proposals are plans that determine the work that will actually be done later on. However, they will not do the other work involved required to obtain grants, such as identifying potential funders. If they have their own contacts with foundations, most won’t share them.3) Volunteers will handle pleasant human interactions, but will avoid difficult relationships.

4) Volunteers may provide regular, written information under their own names and control, but few will contribute in a sustained way to collective writing projects. That problem can be overcome with scale but is serious in small networks.

5) Volunteers will generate wonderful ideas but are much less likely to implement them.

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RIP Jockey Shabalala

February 15, 2006 By Music

Jockey Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo has died at age 62. Even people who are not fans of world music know the legacy of this man’s work. Jockey was the founder of LBM, although he took a backseat to his brother who sings the lead for the group.

According to a report on CBC today, he chose the name because “Ladysmith” was his home township, “Black” was for the colour of the strongest oxen, and “Mambazo” means to cut down with an axe, a reference to the fact that the group started out singing in contests and that it would lead its competition in shreds.

Here is a track to commermerate Jockey’s passing.