Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Source: [ShowUsYour-Blog!] Team Development Guide. [ per ScottW ] This document provides development and procedural guidance for project teams building .NET applications with Visual Studio .NET and Visual SourceSafe. It discusses the processes, disciplines, and .NET development techniques that team members must adopt in a team development environment.[Microsoft Download Center] UPDATE: Looks like it has a chapter devoted to BuildIt. I haven't read it yet or tried BuildIt, but both look interesting.   [.NET Weblogs]   8:15:03 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Oh my this is such a great topic and the real world example is awesome and something I can really relate to in my own life. Source: [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog] But what did you do wrong?. Come On, Share Your Mistakes. During last year's Energy Law Institute, Christian E. Liipfert, Managing Attorney, Special Projects and Transactions, at BP America Inc., presented his paper "Knowledge Management within a Multi-location, Multi-discipline Legal Function." As in-house counsel, Mr. Liipfert knows all too well the problems inherent in managing knowledge among lawyers within a multinational corporation like BP. One of Liipfert's most important points is the importance of not only making mistakes, but also sharing mistakes with colleagues. Knowledge sharing is successful when partners point out the "mistakes" of inexperienced associates. Difficulty arises, however, when a partnership hires lateral partners. In this situation, a newly hired lateral partner will be less receptive to hearing an existing partner point out his mistakes. [excited utterances] Before commenting, let me just say that Joy is on a roll. Not sure who her sources are, but she is consistently finding better links to critical scholarship on KM in services firms than I've seen anywhere else. Hope she's getting paid well at her new gig... Anyway, I had a real-word example of this last month. I'm in the process of finishing my basement. (For those that know me: yes, this is, um, surprising. My family is a lot of things. Friendly with power tools was not one of those things.) I've never worked on a project of this scope - when completed, it will add about 700 square feet to our house. Fortunately, a friend of mine is a contractor in town. He came over on a Saturday morning and took me to Home Depot. Showed me which supplies I'd need, helped me pick out the metal studs, track, etc. He lent me some tools, including the .22 caliber Remington nailgun for driving the track into the cement foundation - and then proceeded to teach me what I needed to know to get started. He showed me just enough to be self-sufficient. And I figure he saved me about three weeks of frustration in the process. Because he shared with me mistakes he'd made throughout his experience, he was able to help me figure out how to develop my own style without having to make the same mistakes. My work was the better for it - all because I wasn't afraid to make a mistake and because I knew which ones to avoid. It seems to me that's a basic element of successfully transferring knowledge.   7:31:48 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Source: [Ming the Mechanic] Be afraid, be very afraid. Sorry about all the war stuff, but it is encouraging that there is an increasing amount of excellent coverage in the mainstream U.S. media. Like a couple of Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times, such as Saying No to War: "Given the corner Mr. Bush has painted himself in, withdrawing troops even if a considerable slice remains behind would be an admission of failure. He obviously intends to go ahead, and bet on the very good chance that the Iraqi army will fall quickly. The fact that the United Nations might be irreparably weakened would not much bother his conservative political base at home, nor would the outcry abroad. But in the long run, this country needs a strong international body to keep the peace and defuse tension in a dozen different potential crisis points around the world. It needs the support of its allies, particularly embattled states like Pakistan, to fight the war on terror. And it needs to demonstrate by example that there are certain rules that everybody has to follow, one of the most important of which is that you do not invade another country for any but the most compelling of reasons. When the purpose is fuzzy, or based on questionable propositions, it's time to stop and look for other, less extreme means to achieve your goals." and The Xanax Cowboy: "Bush officials believe that making the world more scared of us is the best way to make us safer and less scared. So they want a spectacular show of American invincibility to make the wicked and the wayward think twice before crossing us.Of course, our plan to sack Saddam has not cowed the North Koreans and Iranians, who are scrambling to get nukes to cow us.It still confuses many Americans that, in a world full of vicious slimeballs, we're about to bomb one that didn't attack us on 9/11 (like Osama); that isn't intercepting our planes (like North Korea); that isn't financing Al Qaeda (like Saudi Arabia); that isn't home to Osama and his lieutenants (like Pakistan); that isn't a host body for terrorists (like Iran, Lebanon and Syria).I think the president is genuinely obsessed with protecting Americans and believes that smoking Saddam will reduce the chances of Islamic terrorists' snatching catastrophic weapons. That is why no cost shattering the U.N., NATO, the European alliance, Tony Blair's career and the U.S. budget is too high." [Ming the Mechanic] 1:10:26 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Source: [Ming the Mechanic] Dee Hock on Democracy. Dee Hock sent a fascinating e-mail to Joi Ito, commenting on emergent democracy, blogging, power and other interesting things. Dee Hock is the father of chaordic thinking, and the guy who created the VISA organization. And this is delightfully subversive stuff. " It is futile to directly challenge such institutions, political or commercial, for they have an oligopoly on power, money and instruments of compulsion. Nor do they hesitate to use them if threatened. However, they will prove to be vulnerable, rusted out hulks if confronted with new and better ideas of organization which transcend and enfold them. Ideas that excite the very people they expect to remain passive. What they cannot resist is the searchlight of informed public opinion. Once the public begins to withdraw relevance from them they are helpless, as Gandhi so ably demonstrated in India. While I don't begin to understand Blogging, your paper set something turning in the back of my mind that whispers it may be one of the keys to the puzzle.I wonder if you realize that a dozen or two people like yourself with the right combination of communication, technological and organizational skills could design and implement a global government without the consent of any present form of organization and provide it with the neural network to insure its success. A government that could continually evolve to ensure that no matter affecting the public good or the health of the planet fails to be disclosed, examined and understood. Or that any existing organization could escape being confronted with synthesized opinions and alternatives that would swiftly emerge. Such an organization based on rights of participation and withdrawal and consent of the participants could be something entirely new in this tired world. Now that would be something truly worthy of the best within us and the best among us." He's not talking about a traditional government, you know, that wields power over people. What he's saying is that a few dozen dedicated people with fairly modest funding could change everything, by setting up a system that analyzes and understands all matters and activities important to society, and shares the information openly and widely, so that people can make informed decisions by themselves, based on the truth. He's right. Everything would change. I think that is an extremely profound vision and observation, and a very worthy goal. [Ming the Mechanic] 1:08:25 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Knowledge sharing is one of my favorite things about Weblogs/Blogs. The amount of information that I can find is mind boggling. Everyday I find something new that I would never have found on my own. Source: [Ming the Mechanic] Blogs and Knowledge Sharing. Ton Zijlstra says a lot of good stuff about knowledge sharing and blogs, like here and here. "Sharing knowledge is where a storyteller recounts a story that is particularly relevant to the listener at this time, otherwise it would fall on deaf ears, and no sharing would take place, only broadcasting. Knowledge sharing takes place in dialogues, wether in real time or not, where all parties take on the role of both story teller and listener. In practice this is not often a clear cut case: I acquire knowledge by listening to different storytellers, with knowledge sharing moments on parts of the eventually obtained knowledge. Knowledge sharing is sort of information bartering.From any piece of knowledge I cannot describe who shared it with me: it is the resulting amalgam of all information inputs on a certain subject, of listening to multiple storytellers. Sometimes I can name influential sources, sometimes I cannot. Learning is mostly a voyage of discovery, a journey of listening, where only in the end, not along the way, I might have something to say on what brought me to my goal. It is an evolutionary process, with no clear view of what will be the red thread and what will be dead-end sideroads at the start. What can help me along on my road of discovery is relationships, storytellers who can point to other storytellers." Also, look at the KnowledgeSharing wiki page started by Denham Grey.   1:07:21 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Source: [Ming the Mechanic] Synergetic organization. Timothy Wilken writes in Dymaxion: Doing More with Less: "When we examine the biological needs of a number of single celled organisms surviving as individuals versus the needs of the same number of cells working together within the body of an organism, we find the cells working together are able to reduce their biological needs by 100 to 1000 times. The bodies of all living systems are organized synergically. That means the cells work together and solve the problems of survival as a unified team. Imagine, what could be possible if the entire human species were a single organization. The synergic strategies of Ortegrity could be used to organize all of humanity into a single level 12 Ortegrity up to a limit of 13,841,287,201 humans. In our present world, with its obsession with growth and growing larger, whenever I have presented the Ortegrity to business people, they have been excited by the possibility of increasing production. However, they tend to overlook the point that these systems could be 100 to 1000 times more efficient. Now being more productive doesn't mean you have to produce more. It also means you could produce what you need in less time and then have more time for yourself and your family. Being more efficient means you can do with a lot more with less energy and matter. ...What this efficiency means is that the ecological footprint of 6 billion synergically organized humans could be as low as that of 60 million to 6 million of today's adversary-neutrally dis-organized humans." I believe that. Of course we need to be organized synergetically. And, for that matter, I don't think we inherently need to have ANY footprint. The rest of nature recycles everything. Timothy is inspired very much by Bucky Fuller and Alfred Korzybski, who are two of my heroes as well. There's a whole book in that Ortegrity link, with lots of neat stuff. "Ortegrity" refers to a way of organizing, supposedly scalable to the size of humanity. I don't quite understand it, even after looking over the document. And, well, despite that I agree in the aim of helping humanity self-organize in a synergetic way, I'm very skeptical of any scheme that involves numbers that are too neat. You know, people work together in group of so-and-so many, that are part of bigger structures with so-and-so many elements. And I'm skeptical of the intention to avoid conflict. There is productive conflict and unproductive conflict. Personally I enjoy having a good argument once in a while, and I think more gets done if there's a healthy element of competition. Synergy doesn't mean lack of conflict in my book. 1:03:15 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Source: [Archipelago]   Are We Having Fun Yet? The March/April issue of Fine Woodworking magazine has an interview with James Krenov, a well-known and influential woodworker. Among his other comments he notes: I will always believe that it is a part of the human need to do something well and to be proud, rather than ashamed, of the work that you're doing.   Are you proud of the work you're doing today? Are you having fun doing it? As Pete McBreen is fond of saying: it it's not fun, you're not doing it right.   Too many people that I've met are quietly ashamed of their projects—maybe they blame their management, or their tools, or something else in the envrionment. They are certainly not having fun. 12:21:04 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Source: [X-log] Drivel:  I have just posted a list of blogging software that I am going to start tracking.  You can find the list in an outline here.  Please let me know if I have missed any of the blogging applications that are currently available.  I have also added blog editing applicaitons to the list, such as FMRadioStation and Archipelago.  I am compiling this list to in order to begin tracking the progress of each of the applications. 12:16:18 PM    trackback []     Articulate []