Why it Matters: Google+ and Diversity, part 2
Over the past 50 hours I’ve lost a lot of friends here, and all of my transgender friends and family and all the older gay activists I was sharing with have all quietly mothballed their accounts. They can’t have their “real” names out there – they work with human rights organizations and do HIV/AIDS activism, etc.
— Violet Blue, in a comment thread on Google+
Just a few days before Google+’s doors officially open on July 31, Google’s latest communications from Vic (via Robert) and Bradley on the raft of account suspensions and “common names” policy seem unlikely to put the “identity crisis” to rest.  It’s certainly a positive sign that they’re engaging, and process changes like giving people with names Google doesn’t like a week to change their account name before suspending them are certainly improvements. That said, the impression they’re giving is that they’re going to try to hold the line with the current policy even knowing that it targets transgender people, human rights activists, people at risk for stalking and harrassment domestic violence survivors, HIV/AIDS victims and caregivers, people with names that sound weird to Americans (or for that matter people in Hong Kong who would rather go by their English names) …
Hey wait a second, I’m noticing a pattern here.
So yes indeed, as I predicted a week ago in A Work in Progress, it’s a crucial time for diversity on Google+. Given which it seems like a good time to step back and talk a bit about a couple reasons why diversity matters. For me, it starts with some very intensely personal things.
Google+ and diversity: A Work in Progress (part 1)
With over ten million users in just two weeks, and plenty of rave reviews, Google’s latest foray into social networking is off to a great start. Ever since it launched, I’ve spent most of my online time on Google+, and so far am very impressed from both the software engineering and business strategy perspectives. I think it’s on track to be a big success, so expect me to be talking about it a lot.
Unsurprisingly, I’ll start with diversity.
Notes from Underground: The Union of Bliss and Emptiness
A lot’s happened since Anomalous: Seattle Startup Weekend, a friend’s wedding, Pink Saturday and Pride in San Francisco (with sets by Liam Shy and Psysas!), Death Guild, Spook at Synchronize, Strangelove, the SF Mime Troupe in Dolores Park on the Fourth of July … after 10 days in San Francisco, we drove back to Seattle early last week. And oh yeah, Google+ launched, and seems likely to integrate question-and-answer functionality soon — impact on qweries to be determined, but certainly cause for some rethinking.
So I was ready to dance, and DJ Anomaly once again obliged with a killer set at The Atrium. Work was on my mind a lot more than I had inspected; no surprise, really, since that’s where the big open question in my life is at this point.  But once again the decor was great at the Atrium, candles and black light, reflections stretching out to infinity — and lighting that makes everybody look good — so for most of the night I was able to leave day-to-day concerns behind and get into the music and vibe. Continue Reading »
Weekend Projects: my Seattle Startup Weekend pitch
Seattle Startup Weekend starts tomorrow, and right now I really wish I had a good checklist for what I should be doing to prepare and what I should bring. Power supplies, internet connectivity in case wireless goes down, post-it notes, my GitHub and WuFoo passwords, juice … what am I forgetting?
Oh yeah, that’s right, my pitch!
Notes from Underground: Anomalous at the Atrium
Tonight’s the Atrium’s official opening night, with DJ Anomaly headlining. The venue’s really taken shape over the last few months and it’s been great to be a part of it.  There’s so much to like about it, including the way the lighting makes everybody look good. Four friends drove up from California, reminding us of other good times with friends coming to town for shows. The weather’s great in Seattle this weekend, too, so it should be a great night.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, working on qweries‘ next prototype, cleaning up around the house, and looking forward to Startup Weekend.  It’s mostly been good, despite a lot of fighting with buggy software and even some hardware. Thanks to Insinkerator’s Disposer Doctor, though, I was able to unclog the disposal — I felt like such a guy!
The next several weekends will be pretty crazy, so this seems like a good time to step back. Almost halfway through the year, how am I doing? Pretty well, I think — although of course there’s certainly room for improvement.
Looking at my New Year’s resolutions, I’m doing well on almost all of them. Have more art, beauty, and fun in our lives? Check. Listen to new music? Check. Hang out more with friends? Check. And the list goes on. I’m even making progress on “get more sleep, work out, meditate regularly, and do the other things i know i should be doing to reduce stress” — and conveniently enough, thanks to qweries next prototype I’ve met some amazing women who have mad skills at helping people make these kinds of lifestyle changes.  So with any luck at all, progress will really accelerate over the rest of the year.
And at the risk of sounding like a mid-year review, I’ve also made great progress on three of my five goals: qweries, family, and activism. g0ddesses.net is harder to calibrate; I’m really happy with the re-outlining I’m doing, but it’s taken a lot longer than expected and I’m not sure how much time I’ll have during the second half of the year for revising it.  We shall see. Still, I’m very pleased with where I am overall; and once again, looking forward to things accelerating — especially with qweries, where co-founders and partners will be a big help.
All in all it’s been a great first half of the year, plenty of wonderful time (although never enough) with my closest friends, and the 25th anniversary of our first date. Oooh! So I’m in a great mood, and am looking forward to turning my mind off and enjoying the weekend. This afternoon, I’ll go for a walk and enjoy the sun. And then tonight at the Atrium, getting into the music, and falling through the limitations of intelligence into pure and simple creativity.
Who knows what DJ Anomaly will be up to but I’m sure it’ll be amazing.  To commemorate it I’m working on some new poems, remixes, and a collection, tentatively titled The anomaly at the atrium. Stay tuned for more!
Communications tools for Startup Weekend: some recommendations
— Startup Weekend Uncensored, Marina Martin on Marina’s Musings
With Seattle Startup Weekend only a week away, I’ve been thinking about a lot about ways I can get the most value from it — as well as set myself up for what my brother Greg calls a happy accident, where everything just magically aligns. How cool would it be if I wind up as a part of a team of amazing people coming together around a great idea and functions like a well-oiled machine almost from the get-go? So it’s worth spending a little time up front thinking about how to make that more likely — making my own luck, as Isaac Elias might say.
One thing I’m doing is roughing out a pitch, keeping the suggestions in What makes a good 1-minute Startup Weekend pitch? in mind, and thinking about how to make it appealing. A consistent theme in the dozens of posts I’ve read about Startup Weekend experiences and lessons learned is that you get a lot more out if it if you pitch an idea … so I will.  Aaron K Whyte has more in Why I’m pitching at Startup Weekend.
Tools are the other area I’m putting time into. What can I say: I’m a tools kind of guy. The right communications tools make teams much more effective and pleasant; the wrong tools increase miscommunications and tensions. With a team of people who haven’t worked together before, there will be plenty of challenges. And with only 54 hours, every minute counts. So time spent in advance can make the weekend much more productive.
Just two weeks until Seattle Startup Weekend!
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This was my first This will be my first Startup Weekend as well, and I’m looking forward to being actively involved as well. For one thing, I’m already working on a startup, qweries, so it’s a great opportunity to discover some potential co-founders or early employees. I’ve also got another idea that might be worth investigating (more of that soon); perhaps others will be interested as well — or I’ll find out where it needs to improve. There are lots of other great reasons to participate in Startup Weekend, so it should be a good time!
If you’re a marketing/business dev/ideaman type of entrepreneur looking to go make things happen at a similar event (like the one coming up in San Francisco on May 6 – 8), I want to help you get the most out of the experience. So, here are a few tips and insights to give you a leg-up before you start-up.
1. You are a dude going to “ladies night”.
— Isaac Elias, BizMonkeys and IdeaMen at StartupWeekend – Don’t Waste Your Time
Changing the Game: Charting a Path Beyond Comment Threads
Is it a “game changer?†Not every entry we support will be, but we should all be looking for ones that may be.
— from the review criteria for the Knight Foundation/Mozilla Beyond Comment Threads innovation challenge
Some consistent themes are emerging from the excellent Beyond Comment Threads suggestions, pointing to a radically different user experience from today.  Here’s the new world people are describing:
- people owning their own comments with comments as first class citizens, more visibility for the best ones, the article as “first of equals“, tags and themed geographical and topical communities, inline commenting and annotation
- plugins for different kinds of community moderation and feedback: flagging and favorites, Slashdot-style voting and meta-moderation, fact-checking and crowdsourced debugging, recommendation, reputation, metrics
- alternate user interfaces with new forms of navigation and interaction, tailored for devices, allowing for audio as well as textual input, designed for listening and chatting as well as debating
- federated across multiple websites with a “web of comments” that is no no longer limited to a single site
It seems to me that an API and a family of open-source implementations (in Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, .NET on the server side and HTML5 on the client) supporting all of this, with accessibility and multi-lingual support designed in from the beginning, would be a great project for the innovation challenge to support. And there are a couple things I’d add to it as well:
- support for various business models including subscription, advertising, sponsorship, app sales, etc.. A great discussion area should be a profit center for a news organization, and participating actively in comments should be a way for small businesses to help promote their products and for participants to help their careers
- designed and implemented by a diverse team, and with a goal of prioritizing diversity — something along the lines of Dreamwidth’s diversity statement and How would Quora be different if it prioritized diversity? Many discussion forums today are dominated by a handful of loud voices and/or overwhelmingly male. Diversity’s like security, you can’t add it in after the fact, so it’s crucial to design it in from the beginning.
2011 05 22
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Notes from Underground: Retox, the Nexus Fire Ball at Space 550, and DJ Anomaly at ‘Beyond Rapture’
So between activism, NWEN, and qweries, I’ve been working hard but not killing myself — and still taking lots of time to have fun, hang out with friends, and get sleep. And the universe has been aligning. Life is good.
Life has continued to be good in my month-long road trip since DJ Anomaly’s last gig at the Atrium. First I spent three and a half days taking the train across the country, then a week in Folly Beach South Carolina with my Mom. Next it was out to LA with her and hanging out there with her, Greg, and her family for a week, and then driving up to Hollister for lunch with D’s family.
By the time we got to San Francisco last Friday, I was very ready to dance, and the fates obliged: Alchemy “pre-party” at Retox, the Nexus Fire Ball at Space 550, Death Guild at DNA.  Yay! It was a real flashback weekend, back to the days of 2003/2004 when rationality wasn’t looking so good and we spent a lot of time at Space 550 and DNA.
Alas, some aspects of rationality still aren’t looking so good: if it hadn’t been for Save the Rave’s activism, Friday and Saturday nights would have been illegal, and I would have had to go through a metal detector and ID scanner in order to go a goth club. And surprise surprise, the government lies: it seems like the PATRIOT Act will once again getting extended without a real debate. Sigh.
On the whole, though, I’m in a much better space these days — and looking forward to the future even more than I was back then.
After recovering for a few days and then making our way up from SF to Seattle, I’m once again very ready to dance … and once again the fates are obliging! DJ Anomaly’s kicking off another residency at the Atrium with “Beyond Rapture”. [Speaking of which, the world did not in fact end at 6 p.m. today. Whew.] Somewhat incredibly, we got a special sneak preview last night: DJ Anomaly texted D around dinner time saying she was thinking of heading up to Seattle from Portland, D offered her our spare bedroom in case she wanted a place to crash, and then next thing you know we were listening to new “anomalous tracks”. How cool is that?
Beyond comment threads: any ideas about “game-changers”?
One of the best things about the web is that it enables many voices to be heard. Blogs, comment threads, forums, and social networks empower people to take part in new kinds of discussion, dialogue, and debate….
With all that activity happening across the web, how do we enable more coherent, elevated discussion?
The latest Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership (aka MoJo) “Innovation Challenge” is intriguing. The deadline is this Sunday, May 22, and they encourage different kinds of entries: a concept brief or blog post explaining your idea (500 words or less), an embedded video or link to a slidecast (“extra points for explaining your idea this way!”), an early software demo, proof of concept, prototype, wireframes, mock-ups … “anything, really—be bold!” For that matter, “the challenge brief, resources, and stimuli are all suggestions. Be bold! Color outside the lines.” Cool!
My summary on Storify has a lot more info, including links to Wendy Norris’ notes from an in-person brainstorming session in the Bay Area and online discussions on Mozilla’s site, Hacker News, and Slashdot. The challenge brief has some pointers to emerging technologies, and highlights a few questions. Where do you see the next radical improvement in user commentary? How do we go beyond end-of-story comment threads? How do we make commenting more social?
It also describes the criteria the reviewers will use:
Will Facebook “archive” the One Million Strong for Barack group?
With Facebook announcing an “upgrade or die” policy for old-style groups, it’s a stressful time for One Million Strong for Barack. As the Erratic Synapse writes in Facebook Stands Poised to Take Our Group of Over 980,000 Obama Supporters… Back to 0 on Daily Kos,
Here’s the problem: our group may not be eligible for upgrade. Furthermore, any group that fails to upgrade is “archived”, where it is converted to the new format anyway, but we lose all of our members.
Bummer.