What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas? Not necessarily…

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Joe

Long before it was the title of a movie, it was a fairly well known saying.

In the UK it was more likely to be ‘What happens in Blackpool, stays in Blackpool’, or, as time passed, what happened in Estonia stays in Estonia. I was a mark of secrecy that was usually associated with the ceremonials of secret societies; it didn’t matter that you’d abseiled down Blackpool Tower naked except for a sock on your head, carrying a crate of beer and singing ‘Unchained Melody’ at 3am. If you found your boss in flagrante delicto with Myrtle from accounts, playing strip-poker, well, that’s something you were not going to be allowed to use in blackmail. Because of the simple, unwritten law of the hard playing world of the works outing / stag weekend / hen weekend / mate’s trip to Skegness.

‘What happens here, stays here’.

It used to be up there with the other rules of social nicety. Basically, if you did get up to alcohol fuelled high jinks on one of these events, you were OK. It wouldn’t get home or back to the office (unless you contracted some social disease, got pregnant or turned up in the local Magistrate’s Court or A&E). You might have shown yourself to your friends and colleagues as a hypocritical, deceitful, lecherous alcoholic but you were given the ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card of the event falling under the rule of ‘What happens here, stays here.’

Just to be serious for a moment, there are even ‘legitimate’ versions of the rule – self-development weekends, religious retreats, etc. What happens there, stays there, unless you want to share your OWN experiences – but no one else’s.

It’s an incredibly sensible rule for the latter type of event, and to be honest I reckon it can be a reasonably sensible code of behaviour to abide by for participants in the other events mentioned above.

And it’s a way of life and social behaviour that is slipping away. Whenever you go out these days there will inevitably be someone taking photographs which within 30 seconds show up on Facebook. I’m one of those people who hate having a photo taken – apart from looking 20 pounds heavier than I am, I always get photographed with a stupid expression on my face or doing something daft. That sort of thing showing up online is OK to deal with – it’s the other stuff that gives the running commentary of what happened, who spoke to who, who sat next to whom – even for a few minutes, etc. The minutiae of a social event that to be honest is of fuck-all relevance to anyone who wasn’t there. Those who are there, know what happened. Those who weren’t there, rarely need to know what happened except out of vicarious curiosity (OK…nosiness!)

I don’t necessarily want to be photographed when I’m slightly drunk at a non-work related, social event when I take a quick trip and spill drinks. What would once have been a momentary source of amusement for all who witnessed it that you probably wouldn’t even have remembered the following day now becomes a cast in stone moment on Facebook. If you’re REALLY unlucky and surrounded by geeks, it will also be Tweeted – which isn’t as bad as the Tweetstream is pretty ephemeral – but you get the idea.

Please people – just go back to taking and posting a nice big group photo at the beginning, share any candid snapshots between you and people who were there directly rather than through your 200 friend Facebook page, and let what happened in the pub, stay in the pub, in 2010.

Garden Party…

Posted on October 20, 2009 by Joe

I’ve always been one of the world’s great hoarders…one of those folks who hangs on to things because they may one day be useful, one who starts something and then has to sweat cobs to get it finished.

I guess it’s when I noticed I had 3 pages of accounts, user names and passwords that I thought I might have some issues of spreading msyelf a little thin around the online world! A few more minutes of checking some of the accounts out – and finding that I’d last used them constructively maybe 3 or 4 years ago – made me realise that dragging behind you a load of digital deadwood is similar to having an attic, cellar, garage or study full of physical junk. And the nature of the online world is that it’s really difficult to get back to where you left off – even if the site’s still up and running. 🙂

We’ve recently been spending a lot of time tidying up around the Towers here – sorting out books, clearing out old stuff, and it struck me over the weekend that maybe I need to get some online tidiness and focus as well. And the relevance of the blog item title? I’ll get there eventually….

So…what to keep, what to throw, or is it what parts of me to keep, what parts of me to throw away? Ironically, especially considering my previous posts on the subject, top of the keep list are Facebook and Twitter, followed by this August publication that you’re reading right now. My plan is to:

Suspend my accounts on various discussion forums, and focus on stroking my ego through my Twitter and Facebook accounts and this blog. 🙂 Seriously – I think I am spread waaaay too thin out in cyberspace and really want to be in a position to publish some ‘words with weight’ when I want to.
Close the shutters on a few hobby sites I’ve run for a few years. They’ve never attracted much traffic and I’d rather take them ‘off the grid’ rather than leave them looking forlorn. Good backups will ensure nothing is lost, and who knows, one day they may return – alternatively they may simply be allowed to disappear forever. My last shot at an Online Community – Coffeehouse Chat – is already mothballed. Shame on you who offered support and never came… 😉
There should also be a commensurate loss of email accounts. I don’t know abouyt you but I find that whenever a new web site gets set up you almost always set a new email address up to go with it….
Kill off the accounts on any number of sites that I’ve tried before buying and found wanting – The well, LastFM, Ecademy, etc. Probably even Linked In and other business networking sites. I don’t believe that my brand is, as yet, ‘hot’ enough to warrant being on these sites. I get buried under all the other software developers, wannabe entrepreneurs, etc.

I suppose my bottom line realisation in the last 12 months is that a lot of my current online (and offline) world is of greater relevance to the Joe Pritchard of 5 or 6 years ago than the Joe Pritchard I live with today. It can’t possibly be healthy to live in the past – there’s not going to be room or even inclination to move forward to fresh fields and pastures new if your world is already full. Various things have conspired to chop off quite important anchors to my past, and I’ve become increasingly aware that people have impressions of me that are no longer true, but are like looking at some image of me in some sort of Dorian Gray style painting of how I was some years back. Hopefully, by clearing out the crud I’ll give my self space to move on to new things, whilst still keeping in touch with the people who really matter to me in the here and now.

And the title of this piece? Rick Nelson bought it all home to me in these lyrics:

I went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories and play our songs again
When I got to the garden party they all knew my name
But no one recognized me I didn’t look the same

But it’s all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see you can’t please ev’ryone so
You got to please yourself

Smart bloke. Time to re-invent.

Am I a twit not to Twitter?

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Joe

OK….I remember a year or so ago saying i’d never join Facebook, and then making myself look a pudding within a month or so when i started using Facebook to keep me in touch with friends after I stopped using another online service.

Now, around the same time I also made a brief investigation of the Twitter service – some more information here. Whilst I can’t argue that it’s popular, and has attracted a vast amount of traffic and interest, including being used in the Australian bushfires and the Mumbai terrorist attacks, I’m still yet to be convinced of the value of telling the world precisely what I’m doing in 140 byte chunks.

Let’s face it, I’m too busy / idle to maintain my Facebook status more than once a day on average, so the idea of me managing to ‘tweet’ happily several times a day on the Twitter system is probably minimal. And I’m not convinced of the overall value of most of the content that seems to be generated on Twitter; allow me to explain.

Too short!

To begin with, 140 characters is shorter than an SMS message, and unless you’re skilled at putting highly informative short messages together, the informational content of such messages is limited purely by the size of the message, unless you send a string of such messages.

Too distracting!

We then move on to whether Tweeting encourages the attention span of a boiled potatoe; it’s a disruptive technology in all the wrng ways – it simply disrupts your attention by a string of pointless inanities appearing in your Phone, Twitter client or web browser.

What does it do that other media doesn’t?

In terms of brevity you have SMS messages or Facebook statuses. In terms of information content you have Email, blogs or Forum posts. Tweets are ephemeral – they’re not naturally persistent and are as short lived as real birdsong.

So, what the Hell is it all about? I’m aware of the use of this sort of technology in crisis situations but is this genuinely making appropriate use of the available technology? I’m yet to be convinced that Twitter is anything but another toy for the technorati, and one whose lifespan in it’s current form is probably going to be limited by the emerging financial realism in the world. I’ve heard of alternative uses – people using hardware to automatically place Twitter messages in to the ‘twittersphere’ form such things as potted plants and the old standby of IT departments, the drinks machine. These messages are then picked up by a piece of software listening on Twitter for ‘tweets’ from the appropriate account. This is nothing different to using UDP packets, for example, but at least there’s a more easily accessible interface here.

But I’m not convinced – someone, anyone, convince me of the value of this application, PLEASE!

Salad Bowl or Melting Pot?

Posted on May 9, 2008 by Joe

The other day I was reading an old favourite of mine ‘The Networking Book’, by Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps
http://www.netage.com/pub/books/NetBook/netbook.html

In one chapter an interesting observation was made about the nature of networks; should a network be regarded as a salad bowl or a melting pot?

Before you start wondering whether you’ve encountered the rogue ramblings of a wannabe chef, I should explain; a ‘salad bowl’ network is one where the individual members retain their identity and collaborate together, much like a well designed salad’s ingredients do. The ‘melting pot’ network, on the other hand, is one in which the individual members no longer retain their individuality but become ‘one’.

This observation was made about a ‘real world’ network, but it is equally applicable to online networks and communities. My own preference is for the salad bowl, but with a few safeguards. After all, whilst it’s great to have the individual flavours of the ingredients of a salad be distinctly noticeable, if whole cloves of garlic and a few anchovies were to be added to a salad bowl supplying a whole table, those who didn’t want the strong flavours would be rather annoyed. So, it kind of makes sense to not throw all the strong ingredients in to the bowl when only a few may want to have them; why not have a few alternative salad bowls, or even small side dishes with garlic cloves and anchovies in (and a further dish with walnuts for those of us suffering from nut-allergies) that diners can take from at their leisure without inflicting their tastes on others.

Electronically, therefore, the analogy would be create a community that meets the needs of the vast majority of people, whilst either providing sub-sections of the site for specialists, or even pointing those who require something slightly spicier to other sites.

A classic example here is the frequent cry for ‘Adult Sections’ on web sites, or ‘Games’ sections to include Flash or other online games. These would, to me, be the garlic cloves or anchovies; a ‘Warez’ section or part of a site that suggest locations for illegal copies of media would be ‘Walnuts’, as such a section is likely to get you in to big trouble with the authorities, just as a walnut where it’s not expected can cause serious illness for an allergy sufferer.

My own approach is that there are already many sites offering these options for people; rather than re-invent the wheel, it may well be better to direct people away from your salad bowl to someone else’s.

Online Culture and the Law of Two Feet

Posted on May 5, 2008 by Joe

Well, after 4 years I recently left an Internet Forum which I’d grown very attached to. The reason I left was pretty straightforward to me, and in my ‘Bye Bye’ post I simply commented that I was leaving because the culture of the site had changed. I’d always told users of the site that if they didn’t like the place they should just move on rather than throw hissy fits at how the place was run, so it would have been hypocritical of me to do anything else!

I thought that I’d made my reasons pretty clear, until a user of that Forum posted a comment questioning what I meant by culture. And it’s a good question, that has set me thinking. So, for what it’s worth, here’s some thoughts on online culture and when to move along. So, here’s a few thoughts.

First of all, what is meant by culture in general? As always, you get a lot of choice with definitions. I liked these three:

a particular society at a particular time and place; “early Mayan civilization”
the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group
patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. …

I believe they apply equally to an Internet Forum as they do to a ‘real world’ community; what differs is the way in which the culture is expressed. Online it will be in words and other media, either in real time or time-shifted; offline it will be in words, media, activity and face to face interaction, again either in real time or time-shifted.

I started also considering ‘Ethos’:

“The disposition, character, or fundamental values peculiar to a specific person, people, culture, or movement “

so I guess that the Ethos of an Internet site is the outward manifestation of it’s culture?

Which led on to ‘Rules of Conduct’, which I’ve always regarded as the stick with which to support the two previously defined carrots. Within any comunity, there are always rules of conduct backed up by consequences which help maintain the culture. On an internet site these rules of conduct may range from none existent through to fairly tight. Ignoring for the time being the ‘Laws of the Land’, I think it’s fair to say that in general terms the Rules are rarely required if all users of an Internet site follow the Ethos of the site and respect the underlying culture. This is, at least, what I’ve always thought to be the case.

Culture isn’t static; it evolves. The degree of evolution (or even revolution) depends, I believe, on the following:

Rate of turnover of users of the site
Strength of the culture and the degree to which the ‘Site Elders’ (old established members and the controlling authorities of the site) support the existing culture.
The comfort of the vast majority of users with the existing culture.

When the culture changes, there is often going to be a correspoinding change to the ethos of the site, and hence eventually to the Rules. Should the cultural change be the equivalent of a ‘hostile takeover’ then it is up to the elders to apply the rules of the site to maintain the culture; should the change be evolution or the acceptance of the need and desire to change by the population of the site, then the role of the elders is simply to accept the cultural shift and smooth through it’s effects by amending the rules.

My own feeling is that whatever the cause of the change, changes to Ethos and Rules are a given if cultural change takes place or is allowed to happen. Should those changes not happen, the result is a community which is almost schizophrenic; the culture may have changed but the public ethos and rules may not have altered to go with that change, resulting in inconsistency.

And so to the rule of two feet…

The ‘Rule of Two Feet’ or ‘Law of Two Feet’ was something I encountered many years ago; “If something isn’t working for you, go somewhere else and find something that WILL work for you”. Another, rendition of this Law is “The people who attend are the right people”. It is a Law driven by culture and ethos; if follwoed by people it does tend to prevent cultural change and development in a community except in very specific ways.

If enough people walk away, the culture may collapse or be changed to stop the loss.
The people who walk away may, if sufficient in number, gather together to form a new culture with which they are happy.

What usually happens to people who follow the Law is that they find communities with cultures and ethos’ that suit them.

Which brings me to my final observation…why, if an online community has a culture and ethos that someone finds unbearable, do they spend large amounts of time and energy fighting to change it? Why not go and establish oneself elsewhere?

The Bus Book – w/c 24th March – The Social Entrepreneur: Making Communities Work

Posted on April 1, 2008 by Joe

Andrew Mawson (now a Cross Bencher in the House of Lords) has written a very important book with this work. It chronicles his experiences in Bromley-by-Bow, an impoverished area of East London, from his arrival there as a United Reform Church Vicar in 1984 through his driving of the the development of social enterprises, health centres and other vital services to this community – with the whole hearted support of the community and despite the best efforts of local and national Government.

I picked this book up almost by accident and I’m so glad that I did. I found it incredibly motivating – whilst there are some good, practical hints in there it’s more of a history and how problems were coped with as they arose – I think the author should settle down and write a further book ‘Practical Lessons from Bromley-by-Bow’ – I would certainly buy a copy!

Rather than pontificate too much, I’ll refer you to an article by Andrew Mawson himself:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jan/09/socialenterprises.regeneration

I have to say that the experiences he documents reflect the sort of experiences I’ve had in a much smaller way with many funding organisations and local authority, national Government and EU bodies over the years. This was the original impetus for my CommunityNet and CommunityHost projects, and reading this book has made me want bigger and better things for the projects that I’m involved with.

I agree with Mawson’s basic tenets; it is essential that anyone wishing to develop their community needs to get buy in from the bottom up – from the people who are suppsoed to benefit from the efforts being expended. This means involving these people, and letting them become the architects of their own solutions – not watchers and observers. This is the ‘CommunityNet Philosophy’ that I elaborate on here; I now feel in excellent company.

An excellent and motivational book; one that I whole heartedly recommend!

Will no one think about the children…

Posted on March 31, 2008 by Joe

I’m a big fan of ‘The Simpsons’ and in one episode there is a morally outraged female character who keeps screaming the expression ‘Will no one think about the children’ whenever something crops up.

I was reminded of this sort of ineffective moral indignation when I encountered this article in The Sunday Times about the suggested censorship of sites such as Bebo, MySpace and acebook.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3635685.ece

Whilst I can see that there are posts and material that do require removing, I’m less convinced of the suggested ‘Remove within 24 hours of complaint’ approach. A concerted effort by a few hardliners in some of our less liberal religious and social movements would soon have the websites removing all sorts of material.

Nothing is mentioned of appeal processes, etc. and as many of tehse sites are based in the US there is the US Constitutional Issue of Free Speech, as enshrined in the 1st Amendment. The solution that I would adopt were I a US web site owner confronted by this sort of daft legislation from Nanny Brown’s Government would simply be to block access to the site form any UK based ISP.

And the comment about allowing children un-supervised use of the Internet not being like TV, but like letting your children play outside un-supervised is yet another issue. When I was a child, from the age of about 10 onwards I WAS allowed to roam locally, in daylight, unsupervised. Along with most other children of my generation. However, I was responsible enough to have earned the trust of my parents.

Perhaps a major thing for HMG to take away from the curent fetish with protecting our children is that responsibility and supervision begins and should, under normal circumstances, end with the parents. The state has no role unless things have gone very wrong; perhaps the fact that such studies are being commissioned indicates that several years of politically-correct nannying by this and previous Governments has generated a generation of parents who’re scared to actually be parents and state clearly to their children what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.

Reluctantly joining Facebook….

Posted on March 28, 2008 by Joe

Sigh…..

That it should come to this. Unfortunately a group I belong to is going to be using Facebook, and given that I’m supposed to be the IT guy, I am expected to know how it works.

So, I’ve registered and am working out how little I need to put up there whilst still making any use of it whatsoever. I have to say that you won’t find much in the line of my social and business calendar up there – I cannot understand for the life of me why people publicise where they’re going to be and when they’re going to be there!

Or am I missing something?

People I know have started increasingly living their lives through bloody Facebook and so as these folks are fairly normal, well balanced individuals I assume that there must be something there that I’m not quite getting. I’m not at all convinced that social networking sites are going to be with us for much longer, and I await to be convinced by my experiences on there.

Having said that, I just encountered this story on the BBC Website, which points to a future in terms of more local social networks. Sort of like sites like Sheffield Forum or any other site of a similar nature that’s been around for 5 or 6 years. There genuinely is nothing new under the sun…

So, poke away – I’m to be found here.

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