Technology Blog

Only a week at home before I leave again. This time to Banff, for the ACM Computer-Supported Collaborative Work conference (also known as “CSCW”).

I leave Saturday, and on Sunday I’ll be doing a tutorial on folksonomies with David Millen from IBM Research. Then two days of conference-going, and a redeye flight home Tuesday night (ugh) so I can be in class on Wednesday.

Happily, the conference I was supposed to speak at next Thursday in Toronto has been postponed until the spring, so once I’m back from Banff I’ll have some breathing room.

source: more conference travel

I’ve got two big tasks to complete before tomorrow, which means I’m going to have to skip this afternoon’s presentations and focus on my work. I need to get in-class exercises updated, expanded, and uploaded/mailed for my classes tomorrow, and I need to get at least the basic framework of my keynote for tomorrow done. (It will inevitably change as I listen to some of tomorrow’s speakers, I’m sure, but I need to get at least some of it out of my head and into the computer.)

I couldn’t work on the first task this weekend, as I’d planned, because I foolishly forgot to install the necessary software (Photoshop and Fireworks) on my Vaio before heading out of town. Thank goodness for our support staff at RIT, who fedexed me the install discs and registration codes.

On top of that, I feel rotten. I think I may be coming down with a cold. Either that, or I’m not dealing as well with jet lag as I usually do. Either way, I feel groggy and out of sorts, and that’s not going to help much with the tasks I’ve got in front of me. I think I may skip some of this evening’s events, as well—including, alas, the panel on scholarly search that includes Microsoft and Google reps. I’m hoping someone else will blog it so that I can at least get some vicarious information.

source: internet librarian 06: brief interruption in coverage

This year, my Internet Librarian keynote is on Wednesday afternoon—I’m the closer. So my husband quite reasonably asked why I was going out on Sunday. There are two reasons. The first is that when you’re the closing keynote, you really have to attend the conference and listen to the speakers who precede you, so that you don’t end up replicating content attendees have already heard. The second is that this is one of the few conferences I attend where I get more information than I give.

So, as usual, I’ll try to blog the sessions I attend. Thank goodness for my Verizon broadband card, which is giving me net access even in the Marriott ballroom, which doesn’t have wifi for conference attendees.

source: blogging internet librarian

The symposium wrapped up on Tuesday night, and I took yesterday off—went to Pike Place with my family, played some WoW, and made every effort not to do a post-mortem until I’d had a little rest. But this morning, it’s time for me to think about what went right and what went wrong and what I’d do differently if I were to do it again.

For those of you not interested in this kind of navel-gazing, I’ve placed the rest of this post “below the fold.” And for those of you who would prefer to read about the content of the event rather than the process, I strongly recommend Tim Burke’s excellent series of “liveblogged” entries.

I’ll start with what went right. The mix of people was very good, and the nearly unbridgeable gap we had between academics and practicioners in 2004 was not nearly as much of an issue this year. I saw a lot of connections get sparked between people who normally wouldn’t encounter each other in professional settings, and the interaction energy level never seemed to drop much— when I let people go early on Monday afternoon, 80% of them stayed in the (windowless) room and kept talking with each other.

Also good was the overall format that we used—30-minute panels with short (~5 minute) presentations, followed by self-organized discussions sessions led by whomever in the audience (or from the panel) wanted to propose a topic. This was by no means a true “Open Space” event, but it was far less structured than most other conferences and symposia I’ve attended. That was pretty scary to do, but overall I think the basic structure was extremely successful. One of my barometers of success was the backchannel, which long-time readers of this blog (and many-to-many) know was quite the contentious component in past events. This year we did have an IRC backchannel, but for the most part it was low-traffic, on-topic, and snark-free. (And no, for those of you who asked, I’m not aware of any “back-backchannels” that emerged.) Why? Well, it’s very hard to participate on an active backchannel and pick up anything from a 5-minute talk. And it’s nearly impossible when you’re in a discussion group and actively talking about a topic you’re interested in.

I have to give huge props to Jim Crawford and Shane Sears from MSR’s technical support group (aka AV_Squad on the backchannel), who pulled off something I didn’t think would happen by providing a live (well, 27-second-delayed) streaming webcast of the event so that the people unable to attend in person could see and hear what was going on (at least during the panels—there was no easy way to make that happen for the discussion sessions). Combined with the IRC channel, it meant we could have people participating remotely, which was great.

But enough of all that good stuff. What went wrong? A few things.

The hardest part about doing an invitation-only event is not being able to invite all the people you’d like to have there, and all of the people who’d like to be there. This year I was trying to get as many new voices into the mix as I could, and to put people together who normally wouldn’t have an opportunity for professional interaction. But for every new person I added to the list, I had to drop a name from previous years. (Of the 60 non-Microsoft invitees, 23 had been to one of the two past symposia, and 9 had been to both.) This year we also tried to focus the event more narrowly on a few aspects of social computing (online ‘third places,’ and mobile technology). As a result, a lot of people, many of whom I really value and enjoy, didn’t get invited. While some of them (like Nancy White, Kevin Marks, and Tom Vander Wal) were active participants on the backchannel, I know that’s not the same thing as being part of the on-site event. In retrospect, I wish I’d been better at communicating with some of the people I didn’t invite, and clearer about the invitation process.

The ad-hoc discussion group idea worked on a lot of levels, and overall I think it was better for this group than the longer-format presentation style we’ve had in the past. However, there were a number of things that would have made it run more smoothly. First, there should have been clearly marked locations (separate rooms, or at least numbered tables) associated with each of the sessions, so that people who’d signed up for a topic could find each other—that created some stress. Second, I wish I had clearly communicated the need for someone to be a note-taker/reporter for each group, so that discussions weren’t so ephemeral. Third, I probably should have drawn more on some of the core open space aspects—like the law of two feet—to help foster better interactions in the group.

I didn’t build in enough contingency-planning into the schedule, so when one of our keynote speakers lost his passport and had to cancel, I didn’t have a good “plan B” in place to manage that. And while I delegated it to the best possible people, I should have communicated more with them so that I’d know what the new plan was rather than being caught by surprise.

One of the biggest problems was that despite the many new connections and conversations that took place, there were a number of newcomers to this even that I think felt awkward and out of place, even by the end. The format made it easy for natural extroverts to seek out and connect with other people, but very difficult for the introverts. One thing I’d like to do next time, which was suggested in the feedback session on Tuesday afternoon, is a little more in the way of icebreakers and structured facilitation of one-on-one connections. Maybe that means the “speed dating” intro approach that one person suggested, maybe it’s an explicit buddy system for newcomers, maybe it’s something I haven’t thought of yet. But it’s definitely an issue.

I screwed up at the end and didn’t thank all of the people who’d been involved in helping to plan the event—danah boyd, Linda Stone, Randy Farmer, Elizabeth Churchill, and Jonathan Grudin in particular. I’m planning on sending out a follow-up note to all the participants to help correct that, but I’m kicking myself for not doing it on-site.

I’m sure there will be other things that come up over the next few weeks, as I get feedback from participants.

Overall, though, I feel as though the event was truly a success, and I’m so delighted and grateful to have been able to play a role in bringing such a wonderful group of people together.

source: symposium reflections

The folks at MSR don’t seem to have put the necessary information on the event web page (that will hopefully be fixed soon), but we do in fact have the live video feed running at http://131.107.151.221/scs (with about a 27-second delay due to routing and restreaming issues), and the IRC channel will be irc://irc.freenode.net/#scs2006

Join us!

source: symposium online access

This year’s social computing symposium is the first event I’ve ever had primary responsiblity for running, and it’s been quite a learning experience. I have to say, doing something like this at Microsoft, where the quality of administrative and technical support is so high, makes it a whole lot easier. Even so, it’s more work than I initially anticipated, and I’ll be very glad when all the prep work is done. (I don’t want to say “when it’s over” because I’m so looking forward to the event!)

We are planning on webcasting the event outside of Microsoft, so you’re welcome to sit in on the talks remotely, and to participate on the backchannel (which I’m tentatively planning to have at irc://irc.freenode.net/#scs2006).

I do want to make a point of thanking MSR for its willingness to support this event. It’s not cheap to put on a conference, particularly when you offer travel support to all the speakers and students attending, and don’t skimp on food and drink. When you’re the person in charge of the budget, it becomes much clearer just how much it costs to put on an event of this sort. Could it be done less expensively? Sure. But MSR was committed to attractomg and bringing in a wide range of participants, and providing an environment conducive to discussion and interaction, and provided the funds to make that work as smoothy as possible. That includes the funding to webcast the event, which is a non-trivial exercise, and allows it to be open to far more participants than we could squeeze into one room.

It’s not just MSR that’s been supportive. Several product groups stepped up to help support this event, including Windows Live (aka MSN), which is sponsoring the dinner on Monday night, and Channel 9 (and 10), which is sponsoring the reception on Tuesday evening. Many thanks to both of those groups for their recognition of the value of this event and the conversations it enables.

source: symposium countdown

This last panel—”The New Media Age: Surviving and Thriving in a World of Changing Technology“—is moderated by the very entertaining Dennis Kneale, the managing editor of Forbes. Speakers are:

• Peter Chernin, President and COO, News Corp.; Chairman and CEO, Fox Group
• Robert Iger, President and CEO, The Walt Disney Co.
• Jonathan Miller, Chairman and CEO, AOL

Moderator: Are we really at the digital revolution now, or are we still a decade away?
Chernin: There’s been unbelievable change over the past ten years, but that the pace of change will only accelerate from this point. People are still desperate to see stories, to see content, to consume information. They want to be entertained, be informed. (Wow. Amazingly passive view of the audience.)

Moderator: Is Disney catching up to online piracy, or are they still trying to stop it the way Disney tried to stop the VCR?
Iger: We’re not playing a game of catchup, but we do need to get on board the train, so to speak. Otherwise the consumer will simply pass us by. Technology to media companies is what refrigeration was to Coca Cola.
Miller: The old projections were that the new media would replace the old media. But that’s not what happens. The new doesn’t replace the old, but things rebalance. What’s going on now is real convergence. People are being convergent—they are multimedia, multidimensional, in ways they haven’t been before.

Moderator: Is the video industry doing a better job than the music industry?
Miller: We’re not stupid. We see what happened to the music industry!
Iger: WE’ve got to get with the program—the barriers we’ve perceived are dissolving, and we have to occupy this space.
Chernin: We as an industry were better positioned to deal with piracy. You get piracy when price points and access aren’t acceptable to the market. The video industry has a long history of tailoring products to different needs and different markets (PPV, DVD, theatres, HBO, etc). They understand that different platforms require different price points.

Moderator: Have any of you visited YouTube? 40 million viewings a day of tiny little web-based videos. All from users. The revolution is happening from the bottom up—how do you deal with that?
Chernin: The incredible pent-up demand for video is amazing to see. Most of the favorites on YouTube are copyrighted material. There’s a huge demand for our video product.
Iger: User-generated content, as ridiculous as it is (he’s talking about America’s Funniest Home Videos, which he first started at ABC), is endlessly fascinating to people. It won’t put us out of business. We’re living in a world where people are spending more time consuming media of all kinds—for companies int he business of creating media, that’s a good thing.
Miller: Amazon didn’t replace WalMart. YouTube won’t replace current content creators. The big question is how do you find the things you want? Your social network becomes important as well as formal guides.

Moderator: Are the movie studios the ones who will create this content? Or will other, younger people need to do it?
Miller: The history of the media world says that the great broadcasting companies didn’t create the great cable companies, and neither of those created the great internet companies. New companies tend to arise, while they may well later combine.
Chernin: MySpace cost 540 million, and was probably the best deal they ever made. He asks the moderator why the edge he seems to have about MySpace—is his profile not attracting the kinds of people he wants?

Moderator: The decision to put Disney/ABC shows on iTunes was stunning. How many conversations did they have with affiliates over this?
Iger: None.
Moderator: Excellent!
Iger: Of course new delivery puts a strain on existing channels. But asking permission would have resulted in it never getting done. We create a lot of value for the stations when we create these shows, and the stations still get to show them first. What the music industry ignored is that the customer had a lot more power over how they got and used music in a digital age, and ignoring that power shift was their biggest problem. Disney’s not going to ignore that power shift. We’re going to continue to make moves for the big screen, but they’ll move onto new media more quickly.
Chernin: Fox is trying to do a 60-day post-theatrical high-def release. That’s a better direction than trying to have the two compete with each other. “My job is not to protect the existing business, it’s to maximize the current business and find ways to grow the new business.” You have grow more than you erode, or someone else will be sitting in your chair. We won’t replace the billions in revenue from theatrical releases until we’ve got something that will generate more revenue.

Moderator: What’s happening with new development in content?
Miller: New kinds of music content—downloadable music videos and concerts. You can’t put music on TV and get good ratings, but you can put it online and “cum” (as in “accumulate”) an audience over time. A big question is how do you find content? They want to make video search as good as text-based search.

Moderator: If I can download a show without commercials for $2, aren’t you undervaluing commercials?
Iger: We’re selling a few things. Convenience is critical (mobile, time-shifted). The experience is good, but not nearly as good as what you’ll get on a big HD TV. Their experience has been very positive. They put a $9.99 movie called “High School Musical” on iTunes, and it was incredibly popular.
Moderator: What more are you doing with properties like High School Musical?
Iger: It’s out on DVD this week—you can buy it at WalMart. We’re also looking to turn the company into a more global company—we have great brand depth but not as much breadth as we’d like. They’re releasing it in other languages, they’re releasing materials for schools to be able to do it as a school play. The soundtrack album went double platinum in 7 weeks.
Miller: Disney has always set a standard of multiple platforms for products. These things are additive, not subtractive. They grow the reach of the property. The fact that something’s been viewed 30 million times on YouTube doesn’t mean they won’t watch more of it on TV. It may make them more likely to watch it on TV.
Chernin: We’re thinking a lot about different media for delivery. We’re thinking a lot about interactive aspects of delivery. We invented “Mobisodes” for wireless. That’s about as exciting a platform as exists. There are twice as many cellphones as televisions in the world, and probably 3-4x as many as there are computers. Our new affiliate deal lets us run shows not just after they run on the network, but also run it before it’s on the network for a higher fee. Are there people desperate to see the finale of a show, and willing to pay $4 for it. In return, they give the network affiliates a 12% share of that first year’s revenue.

Moderator: Bob Iger, are you cutting a share of your extra revenues to your local affiliates?
Iger: Not from our iTunes downloads. We have a very different relationship with our affiliates than Fox has. ABC pays compensation to their stations already, whereas Fox gets paid by their affiliates.
Miller: If you think about what Google did, they cut everybody in on the action. Because of that, everyone put that box up there and it kept spreading. The web model says figure out how to cut everybody in on the action and they’ll be your distribution path.

Moderator: Is Google a distribution rival?
Iger: We don’t see them as a rival—perhaps that’s a mistake. They’re a tool that consumers can use to find our content. Google is both distribution and content; search results are a kind of content. They have become a real force in the advertising world, for good reason. Advertisers are paying extra to advertise in the Internet-based distribution. They won’t be able to charge for shows that force you to watch ads. But other choices for download may well be for pay (downloadable, archivable versions, for instance).
Miller: Internet advertising is becoming as expensive in CPM terms is comparable to many cable channels. Search fragments things—it sends people in lots of different places. In a world that fragments, the people who have things that are truly unique stand out the most.
Iger: In a world with much more choice and fragmentation, the value of brands will increase. Most of our investment is in brand.
Chernin: Traditionally, CPM have tracked audience size. Advertisers are so desperate to get video advertising on the web, they’re willing to now pay a premium for getting those ads online.

Moderator: Most of the time our ads don’t hit people when they most need them. Google does this perfectly—you see the ad when you’re engaged in the shopping behavior. It’s more targeted, shouldn’t it be more expensive?
Miller: If someone visits a car site, they’re 10-30% more likely to click on a car ad the next time they see it.
Chernin: That’s a very simplistic view of advertising. Ads aren’t just to sell things. Some are there to build brands, some are intended to generate interest, others to sell a specific product.
Iger: I agree completely.
Miller: Google ads can’t, be definition, be underpriced—they’re offered in a marketplace, and you pay what the market thinks it’s worth.

Moderator: Why the $2 price for television shows? Why not higher?
Iger: Well, these were things that were already available for free the night before. You’re going to watch this on a much smaller and lower quality screen than your television. They felt they should be reasonable in their pricing.
Miller: The scarier thing would be will anybody buy it? Will they buy something they could get for free on their TV?

Moderator: What are the obstacles? Does anybody really want to watch Gary Coleman in a rerun on their cell phone?
Chernin: None of these models work at all if there’s rampant piracy. [missed some here]
Miller: The biggest obstacle is making great experiences. People want what they want when they want it…moving media across platforms is not fluid and easy now. What Jobs and Apple did was they made it great, they made the experience great. Great experiences lead to adoption, and then the money follows.
Iger: Conflict and competition among channels and retailers. We want to create more value for our shareholders, and we’re not sure we can grow these new channels without damaging existing ones. We need to stay in touch with the consumer in this ever-changing world. It’s not an obstacle, but it is a challenge.

Moderator: Was their internal opposition at Disney to these changes?
Iger: Of course. Change results in fear, but you have to overcome that. That’s why I’m charged to do, really, more than anything else in my role as CEO. You can’t ask all the questions and get all the answers before you make these decisions…you have to take some risks and get things out there. We have to give people what they want often before they know they want it.
Chernin: The most positive thing happening right now is all this experimentation. There’s very little first mover advantage now, we can steal ideas that work from each other. (laughter) The growth of the distribution model benefits the content creators.

Moderator: I’m fascinated with “sellavision”, the 24 promotion. How did that work?
Chernin: I thought it was both a brilliant idea, and a dopey idea. Cell phones aren’t great platforms for narrative content. But it allowed them to learn a lot about how to deliver short-form content. This is a rush hour medium—people are watching on trains and in airports.
Moderator: what wins? Cell phones or ipods?
Iger: They all win. They’re all important. And cell phones are enormously important in helping them to enter global markets with branded content.
Miller: We still don’t know if cell phones are a derivative medium (a tiny TV), or a truly new medium. We’re focused on mobile search right now more than mobile content. (Wow, search is a big theme for AOL in today’s presentations. Fascinating.)

Moderator: So, if this new distribution takes off, who loses? Does Comcast lose?
Iger: Not if they migrate off their traditional approach and start to deliver to multiple platforms—they could be fine. But he’s not focused on who loses, he’s focused on who wins. Content companies are well positioned to win.
Chernin: The losers are those who are trying to protect rather than grow their businesses.
Iger: “You’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, the times they are a changin’…”
Miller: Is geography now a limiting factor or an enabling factor for companies? That’s shifting.

There’s some brief Q&A at the end, but I’m all typed out.

source: milken conference: media moguls on parade

I’m not quite sure what the title of this panel has to do with the description they’ve provided, but the lineup of speakers was interesting enough that I wanted to check it out.

• Mark Burnett, President and Founder, Mark Burnett Productions Inc.
• Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President and COO, AOL Media Networks
• Kevin Corbett, Vice President, Digital Home Group, and General Manager, Content Services Group, Intel Corp.
• Blair Westlake, Corporate Vice President, Media, Content and Partner Strategy Group, Microsoft Corp.
• Moderator: Ken Rutkowski, Host, President, KenRadio Broadcasting

Westlake talks about the NAB conference—notes that HD was a huge focus, but the conference seemed light in terms of people.

(The moderator is extraordinarily annoying. I suspect he may have been a used car salesman before he became a radio announcer.)

Programming, search, playback, monetization—these are the important aspects of video that the AOL guy identifies. He leaves out things like “creation,” of course, because this panel is clearly about the Internet as a broadcast tool. (The description begins with the outrageous line “The Internet is finally emerging as a true entertainment medium.”) The world is divided up into “content owners” and “consumers.”

Burnett says the “new primetime” is 9-to-5, because so many people in offices have broadband access and use it constantly to access content for personal reasons (chat, email, shopping). But there’s “nothing to watch or do,” he says, which is what he sees as his job to remedy.

(Must. Not. Speak.)

Am looking around the room…once again, I seem to be the only person with an open computer. The free wifi has disappeared, much to my chagrin, but I’m using Ecto to write this so.

Moderator raises the “user generated content” flag—“what about YouTube? Will it make you more accountable?” Mark Burnett says he thinks YouTube is great. Why would anyone who’s a professional content maker fear user-generated content? In the end, it makes you better at your job, which is to give the advert-watching public what they want. And there are incredibly talented undiscovered filmmakers out there, who are using YouTube to get things out.

Burnett claims that the Intenret will allow us to know everything about who’s watching what. The complete disregard for privacy issues here is stunning. He dismisses those trying to block this kind of surveillance as blocking inevitable progress. “Of course we need to know exactly who’s watching.”

Burnett again: “Who would buy a computer without Intel? They’d be crazy to do that!” (Oy.)

AOL guy says “Version 1 of the internet was about typing in a URL and going to what we think of as an immersive experience.” (Huh?) New profiles are people who aren’t interested in going to a URL and being in the environment you create—they want the material made available to them (widgets, gadgets, etc). I think what he’s trying to describe is the aggregation process—people wanting to pull in your content into “their” space (MySpace page, etc). Ah, yes. Now he uses the “Web 2.0” term.

They’re all convinced that text gives way to audio which gives way to video—and that everything’s about video. Why would anyone want audio when they could have video? (And, implied, why on earth would they still be bothering with text?)

Blair gets tagged on DRM. “Unfortunately it’s gotten a bad reputation.” Notes that the Sony root kit was a big factor in making the perception more negative, but says the root kit was not DRM, and that those shouldn’t be confused.

AOL guy says this is a non-issue, that we just need a “rebranding effort” around DRM. All DRM is intended to do is establish some business rules. If you get it right, you can have new business models (like pay-per-view).

Burnett says he’s not concerned about illegal downloads. “Nobody up here is missing any meals as a result,” he points out to laughter. The opportunities to sell more content are massive, he says. Bigger than ever.

“It’s gone from the information superhighway to the content superhighway,” says the Intel guy.

The AOL guy says they’re building an interactive programming guide to online content. Search and browse becomes the organizing principle for finding interesting timely content. (That’s not an organizing principle!)

At this point I think I’ve heard enough. I’m off to take a break before the last panel of the day.

source: milken conference: “internet from 10 feet away”

There are disappointingly few people in this room, but the panel is a great lineup:

• Ronald Packard, Chairman and Founder, K12 Inc.
• Stephanie Rafanelli, Science Teacher, Menlo School
• Sally Ride, Former NASA Astronaut; President and CEO, Sally Ride Science
• Jane Swift, Former Governor of Massachusetts; Managing Partner, WNP Consulting LLC

It’s wonderful to hear these accomplished, articulate women speak.

Ride and Swift both do an overview of the depressing statistics on the underrepresentation of women in STEM education and careers.

Swift points out that our educational offerings are failing to engage girls (and boys) in science. She says that dramatic reform typically doesn’t come (from government) unless there’s a cataclysmic failure, a train wreck. The problem they’re talking about here is a quiet disaster, and hasn’t galvanized a response. She criticizes the assumption that if we focus on the needs of girls, and create separate learning spaces for them, that we shortchange boys. The point is to create complementary environments that are designed for learning needs, not to create an either/or dichotomy.

Packard talks about key approaches. You need to make science interesting through hands-on activities. Very few primary education teachers have science or math degrees, so their comfort level is low for teaching this material. His company has been developing materials to support teachers and increase their confidence in teaching science and math. He points out the problem with the lack of visible role models for women and minorities. They’ve been working in Philadelphia to highlight real people in scientific jobs to help change the perceptions of kids.

Last speaker is a high school science teacher who’s quite engaging. She’s taught at an all-girls’ school, but now teaches at a co-ed school. She asks her students every year to draw a picture of a scientist. Even in the girls’ school, these 7-9 graders almost always draw men with stereotypical ‘mad scientist’ characteristics. She’s never had more than 22% of her students in a given year draw pictures of women. Cultural perceptions aren’t changing. Even her school, which is highly supportive of her work and speaking, has only now (after 11 years) thought to have her speak to her colleagues about these issues.

She makes an important point about the extent to which the girls she teaches perceive their math and science skills as being weak. They’ll say they’re not good at math, when their grades contradict that. But once they’ve convinced themselves that “math is hard,” they start opting out of science and math classes.

An audience member—Paula Stern—asks what opportunities are out there inciting girls to involve themselves in math. She also plugs NCWIT’s upcoming town hall meeting.

Rafanelli makes a great point about kits and toys for teaching science—to attract girls, they need to be social. Girls want to do things with their friends, and if the kit is designed for one person it won’t be as attractive. Ride points out that science itself is collaborative and communicative, and the teaching tools need to reflect that.

Packard talks about the importance of contextualizing science education so that girls see the relevance to things that they care about.

Packard also says his experience is that if you don’t test something, it doesn’t get taught. If you’re going to test, you have to test everything—not just literacy and math. Rafanelli says that very few primary teachers do “real science” in their classrooms, because they’re having to teach to the tests, and the tests don’t include science. (They’re not arguing for the value of testing—they’re saying that if you’re going to have testing, you can’t have it focused so narrowly and still have broad education.)

source: milken conference: sally ride on engaging girls in science

As promised in our panel, here are our blogs:

• Mine (oh, wait, you’re already here. never mind)
• Adrian Chan
• David Weinberger
• George Siemens
• Will Richardson
• Doug Thomas

source: milken conference: our panel

We’ve got audience response devices here at our lunch table—apparently we’re being quizzed as we go along, and each table can “vote” on the correct answer.

The moderator for this panel is Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor for the Wall Street Journal. He begins by talking about GDPs, import capital, China-US trade balance, and a variety of related economic indicators. What are the prospects for the world economy? How sustainable is the current rate of expansion? What is the impact of the current world security situation on economics?

Panelists are Gary Becker (Nobel Laureate, Economic Sciences, 1992; University Professor of Economics and Sociology, University of Chicago), Vaclav Klaus (President, Czech Republic), and David Rubenstein (Co-Founder and Managing Director, The Carlyle Group).

Klaus is the first speaker. He says he’s somewhat reluctant to discuss “global, cosmic, somewhat undefined topics” because they’re too often a way to avoid talking about specific issues that we can do something about. It reminds him of the old communist days where they were unable to discuss problems at home, but they were encouraged to discuss the problems of Indian peasants and the miserable living conditions of the American middle class.

He says we should not listen to those who want to block globalization and open society. His experience of living in a closed communist society has taught him the importance of ideas (ideals?) and openness.

Communism has gone, but liberty and openness have not become the guiding principles of the world today. There are still many attempts to restrain freedom, which he sees most clearly in Europe. Its current social and economic system is not about freedom, it’s about regulation and protectionism.

He dismisses the centrality and importance of most “global issues” being discussed here, and says the real challenge is in the dearth of new ideas. The problem is in political correctness, fair speech rather than free speech, special interest politics, the ambitions of those who consider themselves better than the rest of us and believe they should be our teachers, guides, and leaders.

Next up is David Rubenstein. He quizzes the audience on things like “how many think the stock market will be higher in a year,” and “how many of you would vote again the same way you did in the last presidential election.” The economy of today is not the one we grew up in. The US is no longer the principal economic engine. What happens outside the US is as important now as what happens within. Today’s economy has been globalized and “internetized.”

Last speaker is Gary Becker, whom the moderator introduces as, among other things, a “pioneer blogger.”

Great productivity growth in the US economy, starting around 1995. Productivity drives growth, and he thinks productivity gains will continue into the foreseeable future.

Talks about China and India. Shows workforce comparison between China and India. China has double the GDP, more women in the workforce, smaller % of children (10-14) in the workforce, much higher literacy rate. But he focuses on reduced protectionism, and the importance of providing a good environment for commercial interests.

He thinks the real economic risk is generally that the government tries to do too much, and tries to do things that it’s not capable of doing—at least not efficiently.

Gigot asks Becker if he’s worried about incipient inflation. Becker says inflation is largely determined by monetary policies. This discussion then heads in a direction that’s somewhat over my head, so I’m not going to try to summarize it. (I’m suddenly remembering why I switched majors from Econ to History when I was a junior in college…)

(David Weinberger, as usual, does a better job of capturing key content.)

source: milken conference: “global overview” luncheon panel

I’m at a table up front for the conversation between Andre Agassi and Lance Armstrong, moderated by Diana Nyad. There’s quite a crowd here, so I doubt I’ll bringing back a Lance Armstrong autograph for my younger son. But I’m close enough to snap a cameraphone photo, and to feel engaged with what’s going on here.

(There are a lot of recognizable names at the tables around me; I literally tripped over Richard Riordan’s feet on my way to my seat…)

Nyad starts with a retrospective of Andre Agassi’s career, with photos projected to illustrate it. Mentions that he’s raised 52 million dollars to help kids through his charitable foundation. That’s followed by an equally rich intro of Armstrong’s career. (He was a world champion triathlete at 16!) I didn’t realize that his testicular cancer had spread to his lungs and brain when he was diagnosed. She notes, quite rightly, that this is one of the most impressive athletic achievements ever.

She asks Armstrong to talk about the talent necessary to be an endurance athlete. He’s often asked whether the physical or mental aspects are more important. They’re both necessary, he says. You need to be born with the physical capability—but the mental capability is, if anything, more important.

Upon reflection, it’s not being int he best shape of his life he’ll miss the most, nor is it the glory of being on the winner’s stand. He’ll miss the dinner with the 8 guys on his team, those moments at the end of the day, even more.

Armstrong describes himself as “old” at 35…and Andre says wryly “Yeah, I remember that.” (At which point Armstrong, not jokingly, describes Agassi as his hero.)

Nyad poses a similar question to Agassi—are his talents something he was born with? Or is it something you can learn? He was born with athletic skill, but his skill was nurtured properly by his family. He was never taught things that held him back down the road. (He’s quite engaging and funny—I’m utterly charmed.) About his playing style, he says “The most important point to me is the next one.”

She asks him how you keep focus when you’re older and have a more complicated life. He says that having good people around makes all the difference. A wife that’s willing to travel with him. A business manager that’s been his friend and partner for decades. It’s not (just) a sport where you have to train, it’s a sport where you have to recover. (Interesting; I hadn’t thought of it that way.)

Is it tougher to recover now that he’s older? Yes, absolutely. But you get smarter, too, and can train smarter as a result. “A strong body obeys and a weak body commands.” Now that’s a quote worth posting over my mirror. He says he’s very goal-oriented, but his goal is tomorrow, not Wimbledon. Tomorrow is the next step to Wimbledon, perhaps, but that’s not the whole focus.

(I note that Nyad and Armstrong are both wearing jeans, which makes me feel oh-so-much better about not wearing a suit today.)

Nyad asks Armstrong how age has affected his performance. He says the most valuable thing you can have as an athlete is experience. Cycling, he says, is made up of the three things—marathon (because it’s grueling), NASCAR (importance of drafting), and chess (tactics are crucial). Life is harder now that he’s not racing—racing is simpler. All you have to do is eat, sleep, ride (as long as you’re wearing the yellow or holding the cup over your head, he notes wryly).

She asks Agassi about the state of technology in the sport today. He’s known as someone who researches every aspect of his sport—so where is he now with that? He was ahead of the curve in terms of the importance of physical training in his sport. When he started nobody did weight training, for example. Tennis doesn’t have an off-season, so you have train differently. Equipment has made tennis a ballistic sport—it’s violent, he points out. When you can serve at 150mph, what does that mean for the person on the receiving side?

Armstrong responds to the same question—talking about the fact that cyclists want a weight lifter’s legs on a jockey’s body. (“My soulmate!” cries Agassi, to much laughter in the room.) Keeping your weight low is the most important thing. After the illness, he was 15-20 pounds lighter, which made a big difference. The bike he rode for his first win was 22 pounds, and the bike he rode for the last win was 14 pounds. His team spent lots of time on technology to lighten the weight—clothing, gear, etc.

One last question for Agassi—what was it like when he was at his lowest. “I never played a match I expected to win. I never took one thing for granted.” Most importantly, he said, he never tried to be more than one day better each day. Each day can be better, but you have to take it one day at a time. He never knew where he’d end up, but he knew that tomorrow he’d better than today, because that was in his control.

And a last exchange for Armstrong about his commitment to cancer survivors. The fans move on to a new sports hero. But what you do off the sports stage is what will matter for the long term. This army of people, this family of cancer survivors, those are the people you have to make time for. She asks if cancer will be solved in his lifetime. “While we’re sitting here,” he says, “there’s a 47 year old woman dying in a hospital here, leaving 3 children behind.” Why is he here and she isn’t? Because each of these cancers is a different disease, and we need to be working to understand and treat all of them.

Nyad closes by saying that in sports there are many winners—but few champions. And both of these men are champions.

source: milken conference: agassi, armstrong, and nyad

First I ended up in the wrong session this morning. Then I got stuck waiting forever for the shuttle from the Century Plaza (I got put in the “overflow” hotel) to the Hilton, and by the time I arrived the afternoon session on Educational Philanthropy (with Andre Agassi as a panelist!) was already full, so I’m stuck out here in the lobby.

On the plus side, at lunchtime I stopped by Macy’s, and found a lovely suit on sale, so I’ll be wearing it tomorrow in order to blend in better with the natives. I also acquired a USB cable to charge my phone with—I forgot to bring a charger with me, and the phone was nearly dead.

Agassi and Lance Armstrong are speaking this afternoon, in a larger room (which I’ll get to early, thankyouverymuch), although it’s on a health topic rather than education. (Diana Nyad is moderating their conversation; quite an all-star lineup!)

I’m debating whether or not to attend the dinner event tonight. The topic is “the future of space,” and that’s not something I have a burning interest in. But the introductory remarks are by Leonard Nimoy, and that’s oh-so-tempting. My guess is his remarks will be short, however, and then there will be two hours of dinner conversation with people I don’t know. My inner introvert is lobbying hard for a food court dinner at the mall followed by an early night in the hotel.

source: frustrating conference day

I’m having a serious “how did I get here” moment…

This conference is nothing like any I’ve been to before. I may be the only person here not in a suit—and that includes all the staff members at the registratio desk. I’m typing this in the “AOL Pavilion,” an ultra-modern tent that feels more like an electronics store, with multiple TV screens showing news, sports and weather, loud upbeat VH1-style music that I think is supposed to show all these staid business people what “the kids” are listening to these days, and a variety of odd and uncomfortable workstations with computers where those same staid business people are checking their mail and forgetting to logout. (I’ve seen a staffer stop at least 3 people to tell them they really need to log out…)

There is no wifi, at least not here in the pavilion. Instead, we have to use these public workstations, which are running “AOL Explorer” as their browser. I’m hoping I might find a bit of wifi in the main hotel, since it’s a Hilton, but I’m not holding my breath.

I’m headed to a series of talks today related to corporate partnerships with education, in hopes of getting tips on how to increase external funding for my lab at RIT; if I can do that, going back there (as opposed to staying at MSR) would start to look much more attractive.

So here’s the question—do I go shopping for a suit today? Or just stick with what I feel comfortable wearing? I can argue it either way. “Be yourself” or “When in Rome?”

Wifi or no wifi, I’ll be blogging a lot of what I see today. I don’t often get to attend conferences with speakers like Lance Armstrong and Leonard Nimoy. Should be quite an experience…

source: milken institute global conference

This panel starts with Juan Gilbert from Auburn, whom I wrote about yesterday. He’s editing a new IEEE computer society “Broadening Participation in Computing” series. The inaugural issue will be in March 2006. This helps to bridge the “real research” gap. (The article announcing the series, linked above, is excellent.)

He also recommends a number of other publications, starting Communications of the ACM (ITWF PI Roli Varma has an article in the February 2006 issue on making computer science minority friendly). Other journals he mentions are Jorunal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, ASEE Journal of Engineering Education, International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering, Int’l Journal of Eng Ed, IEEE Transactions on Education. Most journals ask for suggested reviewers—and he strongly suggests that we use other people from this research cohort.

How do you make your research “count” for promotion and tenure? Funding helps enormously. (Amen.) As a faculty member, you have to do research, service, and teaching. Leverage your graduate students. (“Am I overworking my graduate students? No! I’m introducing them to reality!” )

Shows a Flash-based game he built to teach algebra with rap, hip-hop. The game is absolutely fabulous. I want this for my kids!!

Next up is Margaret Ashida from IBM, talking about increasing diversity in industry. Discusses an article by David Thomas on “Diversity as Strategy” in the September 2004 Harvard Business Review. It costs $6 to buy the reprint from HBR, or you can read the free interview with Thomas on the IBM web site.

Last speaker is Revi Sterling, whom I first met at MSR. She left Redmond for Boulder last summer, though, to become a PhD student at UC, and it’s great to see (and hear) her again. She talks about some of Microsoft’s initiatives, both internal and external. Getting businesses to look beyond the ROI-driven, quarterly mindset to longer-term intiatives with slow payoffs is a challenge. Focusing on concepts like “infrastructure” and “end-to-end solutions” gets more positive response from technology organizations. It’s about contextualizing properly. She encourages more creative thinking and bolder partnerships. (She’s amazingly articulate and poised, even in the face of often inaccurate criticism of “industry” generally. Makes me sad that she left Microsoft before we had a chance to work together more closely…)

source: itwf 06: dissemination to and priorities of industry

I’m not blogging most of this, but I’m super-impressed by what’s happening with Auburn University’s Scholars of the Future program. Going beyond understanding why to fixing the problem is refreshing to see. And I really enjoyed the presentation by the PI, Juan Gilbert (despite his obviously inaccurate assertion that Auburn is the “flagship” institution of the state. ;).

One important takeaway was the value of supporting students’ attendance at Tapia, a conference on minority involvement in computing that alternates years with the Grace Hopper Conference on women in computing. (I’m going to Grace Hopper this year, and will be looking for ways to take as many RIT students as I can…)

source: itwf 06: afternoon presentations by 2004 grant recipients

The best part of SXSW isn’t the panels (though there are often excellent presentations). It’s the serendipity. The hallway/restaurant/party connections and conversations. The friend-of-a-friend introductions. The silliness and the creativity and the laughter.

I slept late this morning, and made it to the conference in time to bump into Justin Hall, who led me to where Joi was speaking—so I got a chance (after what I think has been nearly 1.5 years) to give him an in-person hug and hello. After that I was hungry, and couldn’t find anyone who wanted to eat (even using Dodgeball didn’t yield its usual excellent results), so I wandered off to Iron Works BBQ for one last hit of regional food. As I sat down, Lili called out my name—she, Jenny, and Scoble were there, along with Craig Newmark (yes, that Craig), and Cathy Brooks. It was a lovely lunch, with lots of laughter. One lunch like that, and the camaraderie it fosters, is worth the price of the trip to Austin.

This afternoon I’m sitting in the overflow room for the Burnie Burns keynote, getting caught up on email and blog posts and text messages. At 3:30 I’ve got to decide between games and stories, and then I’ll grab my suitcase and try to catch 20 minutes of Bruce Sterling before I head for the airport, and back to my family and bed and kitchen and other comforts of home. As always, I’m glad I was here, but I’m also more than ready to head back home.

source: sxsw serendipity

Yes, I made it safely to Austin. Blogging silence was due to massive overcommitment on Saturday (I ended up speaking on three panels), and then massive decompression on Sunday (I didn’t even attend one panel, though I did make an appearance at a couple of receptions before turning in early again).

The panel I was most worried about, the book digitization panel, went (I thought) extremely well. Daniel Clancy from Google, Bob Stein from the Center for the Future of the Book, and Danielle Tiedt from Microsoft’s book search program were my fellow panelists, and we tried to involve the audience heavily in the conversation. We capped it off with a delicious bbq lunch at Ironworks. The panel I didn’t expect to speak on was danah boyd’s “Designing for Local and Global Social Play,” which went really well. The highlight was a game that we played called “the secret game” which I’ll describe in a separate post.

Today I’m trying to shift back into conference mode, starting with Peter Morville’s talk on “ambient findability” (the subject of his new book, which I really need to get and read). Peter and I went to the same library school, a few years apart, so while we don’t know each other except peripherally, I’m always happy to see how well-respected his work and ideas are in the tech community.

As usual, Peter’s doing a good job of using PPT as a way to show useful graphical examples, rather than bombarding us with bullet points. Yay.

He’s talking about search right now, and about search as a system. He notes that companies spend more time on tweaking the search interface, and not nearly enough on the results interface. This includes not just ranking and clustering algorithms, but also the interface design that lets you pick out key information from the results screen.

He cites Marcia Bates’ work on information seeking behavior, and points out that it’s much more complex than search engine designers typically recognize. Search is an iterative process—searches don’t exist independently of that iterative, linear process.

Talks about the problem with the term “usability”—what does that mean? What are the components of a good user experience? (Lists useful, usable, findable, valuable, desirable, accessible, credible as a few criteria.)

(I’m not providing a lot of the details, because I’m assuming that much of this is in his book…)

He shows some examples that he provided to NIH regarding searches for cancer-related information, and notes how many searches on cancer are done in public search engines as opposed to on their site, which doesn’t come up high in the rankings. (Where did he get these search term frequency figures from August 2005? Isn’t this the kind of data that the government requested and that everyone was so concerned about being provided?)

Finally gets into the ambient findability piece (halfway through the talk). “The ability to find anyone or anything from anywhere at any time.” Hmmm. That doesn’t sound so great to me, actually. The panopticon has a very dark side. (He does acknowledge that, to some extent, though without as much reservation as I feel at the prospect.)

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” (Herb Simon) [searching on that phrase pulls up some interesting sites on attention…]

Shows a device intended to be locked onto a kids’ arm to track their location and give you access via a web interface. Discusses the strong emotional response people have to this. Interestingly, he says, reviews on Amazon complain primarily about it not working well enough, not about potential privacy issues.

Cites David Brin’s book The Transparent Society, with a long quote on “reciprocal transparency” that I don’t have time to write down. (I didn’t know about this book; will need to track it down)

What’s going to solve information retrieval challenges, help us make the needle in the haystack bigger? He doesn’t think it’s going to be artificial intelligence (ms bob isn’t going to save us), nor is it going to be information visualization (which is beautiful but not always useful; shows treemaps as an example). Even with maps—the applications are beautiful, but often not nearly as usable as we need. Most people jsut want to get from point a to point b—and they use the text directions more than the map itself. Collective intelligence and user participation need to be in the solution. (Hmmm. I can think of refutation to this…)

So, who’s going to help us? the librarians, of course. (Puts up a slide with “Revenge of the Librarians”—where have I heard that before?) Has the web turned us all into librarians? (“Metadata is sexy now!” he proclaims.)

We should be careful not throw the old ways of organizing information out as we adopt the new ways. Quotes David Weinberger: “The old way creates a tree, the new way rakes the leaves together.” What happens to piles of leaves, he asks? They rot, and become food for new trees.

(There’s more to this presentation, but I tuned out for a bit while i dealt with incoming IM and email and text messages… My guess is this is one of the things that will end up with the podcast up on the sxsw podcast page, so you can watch it yourself if you’re interested…)

source: sxsw 2006 update

Back from ApacheCon!

I’ve got to say, I found it really useful this year. Last year, I
was pretty new to the ASF, and found that my expectations of
ApacheCon didn’t quite match reality; it wasn’t a rip-roaring success
exactly, for me, as a result.

However, many details of how the ASF works — and how the conference
itself works and is organised — are much clearer after you’ve spent
some time lurking and absorbing practices in the meantime. (The
visibility one gets into the process as a member of the ASF makes
this a lot easier.)

Result: it was much more of a success for me this time around.
Plenty of networking, putting faces to the names, hanging out, and
discussing many aspects of our work.

The hackathon really worked out, too; while we didn’t produce a hell
of a lot of code per se, it made for a good ‘developer summit’ and I
think we established solid agreement on SpamAssassin’s short-term
directions and goals. (summary: rules, and faster).

On top of that, I got to meet up with Colm
MacCarthaigh and Cory
Doctorow for discussion of Digital Rights
Ireland. Looks like I’ll be
spending a bit of time on that next year

Finally: Solaris. On Monday night, I got to sit down with Daniel
Price, one of the kernel engineers behind
Solaris Zones, work
through a quick demo of a bug I was running into with chroot(2) and
zones on our rule-QA buildbot
server, and watch as he
visually traced it through the OpenSolaris kernel
source on
the web. From this — and from talking to Daniel — it’s pretty clear
that things have changed at Sun. Pretty much the entire Solaris
operating system is now a full-on open-source project; it’s not just
a marketing gimmick. The source is up there on the web, that’s the
source for the code they’re running now, and there’s no half-assed
‘freeze it, cut out the good bits, and throw it over the wall’
fake-open-source tricks.

The concept of getting this level of access to Solaris source code
and engineers, would have blown my mind when I was Iona’s sysadmin
back in the 1990s I’m very impressed.

apache apachecon apacheconus2005 asf conferences open source opensolaris solaris spamassassin sun virtualization zones

This post was written by Justin, source: My ApacheCon Roundup

I’m on my way back to Seattle right now from San Francisco, where I was speaking at the Syndicate conference (topic: “searching the syndisphere”). It was fun to speak on the topic, which involved channeling my inner librarian in order to champion the role of the user in the search context.

It was even more fun, however, to see some folks whom I only tend to see on the conference circuit, as well as some whose names I know from online contexts but whom I hadn’t had a chance to meet in person. (I started to list people by name, but realized that I’d probably leave someone out and offend them, and that it sounded too much like name dropping…)

As I was sitting in the speakers room (the best place to find familiar faces, not to mention power outlets near tables) yesterday morning, two people I didn’t know saw each other and exchanged enthusiastic greetings. Apparently they hadn’t seen each other since they’d crossed paths at another conference some months ago. One remarked to other that these conferences had become the modern day equivalent of gypsy encampments—same faces, same setup, new town, new audience.

I loved that metaphor, and shared it via IM with my friend and MSN office mate Brady Forrest, who replied with this:

cables hanging from the waist instead of tiny bells

t-shirts instead of colorful blankets

secrets being pilfered instead of food and trinkets

demoers instead of performers

works for me

Works for me, too (although I’d probably substitute Treos for cables in the description). I love the image of a band of folks on the fringes of polite society setting up a show in town after town, gathering to entertain (and, some might claim, con) one population after another.

I’m happy to be a part of this motley crew—they’re a modern mobile tribe for me, people with whom I have a strong connection and affinity, but limited opportunities to see in person. So I’m grateful that I can grab time with them in our modern-day encampments of speaker rooms and catered luncheons.

source: gypsies, tramps, and thieves