Tantek's Thoughts

6th blogiversary

Tantek Çelik — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:23:00 -0700

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The sixth year of blogging felt very different than the fifth. Clearly the in-the-moment interfaces of Twitter, Flickr and Brightkite have become an alternative outlet for the desire to capture life's moments and the frequency of my lengthier, more considered pieces has dropped.

In some ways, with these new tools I feel like I'm capturing more, and yet, I can't help the feeling that something has been lost. The bigger, more in depth thoughts keep coming, and I capture and assimilate them into my "blog-this.txt" file which seems to just grow and grow.

I feel like I can blame some this, at least for the past few months, on a conscious decision to face and confront a lot of emotional challenges, some old, some new. As a result, I've collected faster than I can process (in a GTD sense), and I haven't processed my "to-do-inbox.txt" file down to empty in over three months. This past week I did find a night or two to make much more headway into it than I have in a while, and I have a renewed sense of hope that I'll empty it, perhaps by the end of the weekend.

One thing is for sure, I'm juggling a lot of tasks and projects right now, and my monthly (have never quite gotten to weekly) GTD review of my next-actions and projects makes that quite clear to me. In recognition of both the excess (or perhaps excess growth rate) of both my to-do-inbox.txt and my next actions/projects lists, I've been spending more time recently on filtering and prioritizing, respectively. Of course as I figure out better strategies for each, I've been taking notes, where else, but in my "blog-this.txt" file. Hopefully in this seventh year of blogging, I'll have the chance to share more of what I've figured out.

Busy, blurring, and behind

Tantek Çelik — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:59:00 -0700

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personal

More than a month has passed, with nary enough time to reflect, process, and synthesize all the days' happenings into a sensible narative. Searching just my thoughts and memories rather than my archives, a few things come to mind.

BarCampSeattle

BarCampSeattle was excellent. The trip involved facing a few personal challenges, which I took as an opportunity to push myself further and lead two sessions on more experimental topics: "Buildering 101" on Saturday where a bunch of us climbed the Fremont Troll, and "How to be a superhero" on Sunday where I led a discussion on the many dimensions of what it means to be a hero, and how superheroes are different in each of those dimensions. Surprisingly, not only did I find that a lot (most?) of the sessions participants related to the topic in a very personal way, but also strongly encouraged me to propose it for SXSW Interactive 2009.

Supernova 2008 and Open Flow

With just a flight and a night to reset and recover, I met up with Jeremy Keith and hiked through the transitional badlands of China Basin to Supernova 2008. We serendipitously ran into most of the other panelists fo the Open Flow track and wrapped up final details. The next day the track itself exceeded my expectations thanks to the incredible panelists and their upfront and no-holds barred discussions.

In particular I want to thank David Morin, Joseph Smarr, and Kevin Marks for their direct and honest dialog (even if got a bit heated at times) which was the hilight of not only their "Whose Social Graph" panel, but perhaps the whole track. All three of these guys are smart, believe in open standards, are working very hard to make implement them, and are fighting a lot of short-sighted fear and pressure inside their respective "big companies" to do so and should be commended for their accomplishments in the face of such inertial opposition.

Microformats.org turns 3

Microformats.org's 3rd birthday was celebrated humbly with a gathering in San Francisco's Westfield food court, and a birthday cupcake, assembled from a coconut cupcake and green M&Ms, purchased moments beforehand at the Bristol Farms in that very food court. In addition, I kicked off a series of weekly microformats meetups to help with community dynamics. I've noticed that people are nicer to each other online when they've met in person, and thus the hope is that by increasing the frequency of such interactions, we can grow a more sustainable and increasingly healthier and stronger microformats community.

July

I last month I knew June was going to bring new levels of personal challenges and it did, to and thru the very end which culminated with yet another intense LifeCamp. And that was just June!

I was traveling and away from home for half of both May and June, thus I decided to "work local" and stay home for both July and August which was absolutely the right decision.

July I had the opportunity to host and hangout with a few friends that were traveling through town, and it was a nice change of pace to spend some quieter more indepth time with them, talking about a wide variety of cares and concerns. No conferences or speaking in July and yet, so much of this month was a blur, I have trouble recalling much more. I did visit my sister's family in Mountain View to celebrate Nephew 2.0's birthday where he attacked his chocolate cake as only a one year old could.

I still feel like I have a lot that is unresolved (certainly as indicated by the remaining size of my inbox.txt file), mostly personal. Looking forward to August, I'm not sure how I'm going to process (much less actually complete) it all, especially with speaking opportunities coming up at both WordCamp and An Event Apart San Francisco - each of which I'm preparing new talks for.

Start

In addition I've volunteered to help out my good friend Jeff Veen at his new Start Conference, which promises to be quite the event, judging from the quality of speakers and topics alone. The home page makes the message quite clear: "Quit your day job." and encourages "smart, talented Web people to take hold of their ideas, follow their dreams, and start their own companies." Perhaps they'll provide some inspiration to start focusing on dreams instead of worries, to spend more time building instead of just reflecting and resolving.

BarCampSeattle and Supernova 2008!

Tantek Çelik — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:11:00 -0700

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Two excellent conferences coming up in the next few days that I strongly encourage you to attend.

First, this weekend, the very first BarCampSeattle takes place at Adobe's offices in Seattle. The intro session starts at 10am Saturday (tomorrow) so be sure to get there early beforehand to get your badge etc. Watch Robert Scoble interview lead BarCampSeattle planner Tara Brown about what's in store for those that join us for BarCampSeattle.

Join us for the informal BarCampSeattle pre-party tonight: Thingamajiggr and follow barcampseattle on twitter for updates.

Second, next Monday through Wednesday is Supernova 2008 in San Francisco. Organizer Kevin Werbach has done a great job of bringing together an incredible set of speakers and participants and continuously evolving Supernova's format.

Kevin asked me to help out this year with organizing and chairing the Open Flow track which takes place on Tuesday the 17th (I've been organizing it on a wiki page of course where you can view the latest updates and details. We've got good contrasting discussions planned on the topics of what do large companies mean by "open" since they seem to act so differently, what are the realities of "open" as a business model, what is the independent developer community doing to push "open" forward, and finally a session to throw all those viewpoints together and see what happens.

Just this past Tuesday we held a teleconference preview on Open Flow. You can download the MP3 (109 minutes) and view the log of the simultaneous IRC chat as well. See also Christopher Carfi's blog post on the telcon.

Follow supernova2008 on twitter for updates and hope to see you there!

8 steps to participating in the funeral of a close friend

Tantek Çelik — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:01:00 -0700

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"Death is a natural part of life. ... Mourn them do not, miss them do not." — Yoda

While a mythical Jedi Master may have achieved a level of inner peace to handle the loss of a close personal friend with such calmness and dignity, the rest of us must simply do the best we can and perhaps cope by sharing. I decided to Twitter not just my experiences the day of Erdal amca's funeral, but also a realtime construction of a series of steps that came to mind (a protocol if you will) for handling such an event. As tweeted:

Step 1: Get off the couch. Out of bed. Etc. Though an alarm or sunlight might wake you up, you need to take the initiative to get up and face a challenging day. Live in the moment as you do so, as you convince yourself to get up, and remember that feeling of acting on your will. This small act of will power is representative of many things that will require you to push yourself and just do it, and keeping that feeling in mind will help you with the more challenging tasks to come.
Step 2: Warn your followers. If you are twittering your thoughts and actions about such an emotionally heavy event, I think it is only polite and considerate to warn your followers that you are doing so, so that those who may already be overwhelmed by their own personal situations and unable to bear any additional emotional load, can "leave" you for 24hours. For while it is good to share important events good and bad, it is also good to take steps to care for your friends and maximize their happiness.
Step 3: Dress in black. Tie optional. If you lack sufficient black clothing, choose nice, clean clothing with dark muted hues.
Step 4: Pack tissues and music for the drive. Here are the CDs I brought and listened to, in order:
Step 5: Attend funeral, give a moving speech, comfort their family, share stories. Be ready to perform whatever role is asked of you at the funeral, whether solemn bystander or pallbearer, accept it gracefully. Reach out with your feelings and give a speech from the heart. Keep it short. Afterwards, when attending the postceremony feast, tell stories of how your friend inspired you (continues to inspire you). Repeat the aforementioned warning to your Twitter followers, as some may be just joining you (from other timezones etc.).
Step 6: Talk with your family, tell them you love them. Take scenic route home. One good way of coping with loss is acknowledging and appreciating what you have, and recognizing that appreciation out loud. Tell those that matter to you that they do matter to you. After such an emotionally strenous day, it may help if you can take a path home that presents you with beautiful views.
Step 7: Plan exercise to metabolize emotion related neurochemicals. We are but biochemical machines, our emotions mostly ephemeral expressions of specific neurochemicals, and as such, subject to some degree of control. Physical exercise raises your metabolism which helps process those chemicals faster, as well as provides you natural pain-relieving and other neurochemicals which can help lift your mood.
Step 8: Cook a simple meal at home, talk to friend, fall asleep watching a familiar hopeful movie, sleep-in. Eating a simple healthy meal can help improve your mood as well, and is especially well received by your body after physical exercise. Despite the steps you've taken, there's bound to be feelings left bouncing around your head. Talk with a friend or a few about them. Don't be ashamed of what you are feeling, be open and honest. Your friend(s) will understand and help you think through and process your feelings. A familiar hopeful movie can help reset your emotions a bit which will help you sleep. As the day has undoubtedly drained you, give yourself the next morning to sleep-in however long your body wants to.

I leave you with a few positive paths.

Honor your close friend by remembering and repeating the inspirations and lessons you have learned from them.
Push yourself to complete a goal in their name.
Shape your feelings of loss and mourning over their death into a renewed awareness and appreciation of your life and those close to you.
Spend time with those close to you, tell them how you feel about them.
Live your life to its fullest.

May

Tantek Çelik — Sat, 31 May 2008 23:59:00 -0700

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May has been a much more personally challenging month than I could have expected. I set out to switch my focus from internal to external and made it less than halfway thru that transition.

It started out with a wonderful spontaneous trip to Seattle, having a great time hanging out with Tara Brown and Ryan McMinn (thanks for hosting!), and a day of last minute meetings with many other Microsoft folks discussing microformats and evolving Communication Protocols for greater efficiency and productivity. Returning for mere hours in San Francisco I managed to repack for New Zealand and go climbing before jetting off to the other side of the international dateline.

The microformats workshops in Wellington and Christchurch went very well (thanks Webstock folks! Natasha, Sue, Mike), and I had a wonderful time in New Zealand exploring streets, cafes, climbing gyms (thanks CJ and Simone!) etc. A week was just enough time to feel familiar with a few things, meet some wonderful people and leave me wanting more.

I hadn't been home for more than a day before having the chance to return the place-to-crash favor to Ryan. A few days later my parents visited with some friends of theirs wherein I played impromptu tour guide and even got them to hike up Lombard street!

The next day a peaceful sunny hike in Muir Woods helped with reflecting and processing many thoughts.

A few days after that Jason DeFillippo successfully introduced Shayla and me to skateboarding. By the end of a couple of hours of practice we could do laps in the parking lot. Neighbor and relatively recent friend Micah helped me fix/tune-up my bicycle so I could put that to use as well. Learning a new physical skill (or refreshing old skills) increases cognitive alertness.

That week my dear friend Micki and I spent a day at the NetSquared conference (an annual source of inspiration for us both), and perhaps more importantly had the chance to catch up on many things during our drive to San Jose and back. That evening we got to meet up with Tara and Sean (near the end of their roadtrip from Seattle to LA) and few more friends to enjoy fake meat dishes at the vegan restaurant appropriately named "Enjoy Vegetarian".

Good conversations with many friends on many topics. As much as I tried to focus externally, I kept finding more and more that challenged me internally. At home I managed to get rid of several boxes of stuff (gave away to friends, set aside for BarCamp, donated) which helped lighten the load. Reducing physical clutter helps to reduce mental clutter.

At the end of the month, Tara stopped by SF for a few days. We celebrated Juliette Melton's birthday with some excellent Rock Band at Trammell's place and more conversations with good friends.

On this last day of May we packed in quite a bit. In another instance of facing something I've found uncomfortable or disliked in the past, with Tara's encouragement I jogged (most of) a mile to Jamba Juice in the Inner Sunset and back. I want to be able to run, at least short distances (a few miles) without difficulty, perhaps even sprint a mile if necessary, and clearly I have some work to do to get there.

We had planned to go to the Union Street Faire. However I finally followed up on a voicemail my father had left me (my sister txted me and told me I should call because "It was important" - always an ominous phrase), and found out that my adopted uncle Erdal amca had just passed away. As much as I tried to hold it together I couldn't. I broke down and was very lucky to have a friend like Tara around to comfort me, give me hugs and tell me it was going to be ok.

Eventually we made it down to Coffee To The People where we intended to just get coffees to go but ran into Eran and his friend Nina who had apparently also done the Seattle to LA roadtrip - 10 years ago - and thus much happy serendipitous conversation took place.

With the clock passing 5 the window had effectively closed to attend the Faire so we decided to be spontaneous. As we hit the road the skies opened up, the clouds cleared away and minutes later we found ourselves in Sausalito where a little walk along the Bay with hot cocoa/tea helped put things in perspective.

Rushing home to change for the Laughing Squid party we took the Presidio exit after crossing the Golden Gate bridge and despite not having the time to do so, stopped by to see Yoda for answers and inspiration. Drove directly to Blowfish Sushi meet up with Tara's friend Matt (another ex-Microsoftie who also worked in the Mountain View campus who I also never met and yet we both knew enough people in common to share tons of stories). Skipped changing and just went directly to the Laughing Squid party a couple of blocks away. The evening ended with an informal escape to a nearby bar with the usual suspects where we didn't stay too late since we both had things to do early the next morning.

This month went by so much faster than I expected. I think I predicted about 50% of what happened, and the other 50%, suffice it to say nearly knocked me off balance and probably would have, had I not had the support of my family and so many good friends (and perhaps an increasingly strong sense of balance from all that rock climbing). I can only hope I can provide my family and friends the same or better support myself.

I learned I had more vulnerabilities than I thought I did, and also learned that I had it in me to face (rather than deny, avoid, or suppress) new and different levels of emotional discomfort and pain, learning lessons, and growing stronger in the process. With rock climbing, often times you have to push yourself thru physical pain or exhaustion in order to make progress, to finish a climb, to develop your technique, get stronger, and gain confidence. It seems this is true in matters of the heart as well.

On the other side of confronting, facing, and understanding pain are new levels of strength, whether physical or emotional. Though self-realization of greater emotional strength and stability is its own reward, even more rewarding is putting such strengthened abilities to use and providing even more open and solid support to your friends, especially those you care deeply about who may need it the most.

Next month I have only one trip planned and two conferences and I think that will be plenty. I'm continuing to push on with focusing more externally but I have a feeling I'll continue to be personally challenged as well. Despite not knowing exactly what form they'll take, after facing May and coming out stronger than I went in, I can truly say I am not afraid.

Bring it on June, I know you will, and I will seek out and face your challenges with open eyes.

Transitions and Flow

Tantek Çelik — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:57:00 -0700

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I attended the Diggnation party at Mighty tonight. Having driven yet not had dinner, did not partake of the drinks offered. Earlier I had tended to a few appointments and the Data Portability meetup on rel="me" - Chris Saad had invited me to attend and help with Q&A.

A number of things happened over the course of the evening which made me think. Most of them were events occuring in a longer sequence, pieces that helped complete thoughts in progress. I won't go into details but suffice it to say it has inspired a change in focus. Here are some of the topics.

I had most of a blog post written about the etiquette / apparent rules that I'm using for accepting / following / leaving / blocking people on various (semi)real time services like IM, Twitter, Pownce, Dodgeball, Dopplr, and most recently BrightKite - this was going to be my SXSW Tip #2 (and may still be). However, since such rules are always in evolving and changing as new situations occur, I realized that the documentation of such etiquette is much better suited to a wiki. A couple of mini-tips for now: add nice people that you meet in person, drop people if they're mean or noisy (by your judgment).

Such etiquette inevitably touches on the topics of friendship and flirting, two things that I'm still learning lessons about, and as a self-acknowledged late blooming introvert, will undoubtedly continue to do so. However I've learned enough to share, and again, will do so via wiki. Until posted, I'll leave you with the principles of transparency, respect, and compassion.

As can be easily concluded from the above, for a while now I've been very inwardly focused.

I've made progress on some key areas: GTD, fitness, fear, insecurity, will power, assertiveness, and focus. While still "in progress", I know the improvements are pronounced enough to affect changes I myself have noticed in things like my average comfort level across a variety of situations, and even punctuality.

In mid-April I went to New York City to see my sister in a play ("Paris Commune" at The Public) and ended up packing nearly hour with various informal meetups and appointments. The part that stood out for me personally, besides getting to meet and hang out with great friends old and new, was that I made it on time (often with many minutes to spare) to every appointment. Doing so consistently for a week was a total first for me, and IMHO is a reflection of increased abilities in the areas of will power, assertiveness, focus and having a better sense of time's flow. Perhaps the pulse of NYC helped. By no means have I conquered punctuality for good, however I feel it is finally within my grasp.

March and April were very much months of transition for me, to make key decisions, be more assertive, be more spontaneous, and be more open about recognizing and openly declaring my own limitations to friends and business contacts, especially limitations to do with expectations, obligations, and dependencies.

In continuing with this transition, I've realized that it's time to turn that inward focus outward. The Data Portability meetup hosted by LinkedIn (thanks to one of the leading microformats implementers Steve Ganz) really helped me realize just how much work there is still to be done with making microformats as easy to understand as possible, not just for publishers and implementers, but for users as well.

I've decided to immediately increase my travel to spend more time with those that matter to me, and share the messages on the efforts I care about.

I'm looking forward to the next couple of months. May for me will be a bit of a microformats sprint. I've already arranged meetings with a major software company on Friday. Workshops in New Zealand after that, and issue resolution meetups when I return to San Francisco. June will bring more travel, with BarCampSeattle, and a return to San Francisco with the Supernova Conference (get tickets before a) prices go up, and b) it sells out!), for which I have the honor of chairing the "Open Flow" track. Coincidentally the book I'm currently reading is titled "Flow", thanks to my new super friend Tara Brown, who somehow knew exactly where my head was at and gave it to me to read just last week. It's a really good sequel in many ways to David Allen's Getting Things Done that I previously mentioned. Give them both a good read, try incorporating elements of both into your life, and then let's chat.

SXSW Tip #1 what to pack

Tantek Çelik — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:04:00 -0800

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I've seen numerous people twitter wondering what to pack for SXSW today. Per my communication protocols, I'm blogging my answer. Note: I'm basing this purely on my personal packing list, so if you're a girl, or wear something other than black, you may want to check other suggested packing lists as well

First, you must unpack what you have packed.

If you are one of those urban superheroes that walk around with useful gadgets like swiss army knives (or any kind of knives), and allen wrenches (or anything that looks like it could be used to take apart an airplane), remove them from your utility belt, your jet pack, and any other part of your supercostume. Unless of course you're willing to pack a bag to check-in (which I highly recommend avoiding, due to risk of loss etc.).

Wear the essentials

The key to being prepared is wearing the essentials. This seems obvious but perhaps that's why it comes next.

plain black socks, underwear, and t-shirt (American Apparel works well).
plain black pants. either simple work pants, like Dickies, or black jeans, but flexible enough for any number of emergency activities, like running and climbing obstacles to ditch crazy stalkers or emo drama queens. Volcom slacks and jeans have a good fit.
plain black belt (you never know when you'll need to cinch around something to hold onto, and also a useful yoga prop), consider a solid heavy belt buckle that you can swing around on the end of your belt like a mace if need be.
plain black shoes (must be very walkable, I'm very happy with my Keens, and apropos for SXSW, they even have a new "Austin" model which I may just have to pick up).
plain black hoodie (again, American Apparel comes thru, though some OBEY hoodies are also sufficiently dark).
plain black coat, preferably something waterproof or water resistant. it rained today in Austin and last year it rained several days. Spiewak has some good options.

Fill your pockets with:

sunglasses (prescription or clipons if necessary)
some sort of smartphone, one you can easily and rapidly text message. phone calls just don't work at SXSW because it is nearly always too noisy, and too rude (you're nearly always around other people) to talk on the phone. texting is where it is at. and your old dumbphone won't cut it. T9 = FAIL. Get something with a full QWERTY keyboard and an unlimited (or at least 1000) texting plan. BlackBerry is the best option here IMHO. We'll see how well those with iPhone touch keyboards do under the pressure of SXSW.
small digital camera, including spare battery and SD card. My trusty Canon SD400 is still rocking out. If I were to buy a new one, I would get the SD1000.
lip balm. yes it can get dry in Austin. no one even likes looking at cracked lips much less anything else. Burt's Bees lip balm is a good one.
small pen and paper pad. sometimes low tech works really well. redundancy is a good thing.
small iPod (or other music player) with earphones - fully charged. helps discourage the crazies/beggars from hassling you when you're darting between venues.

Over the shoulder equipment

With the above outfit, you're fairly set to survive a variety of temperatures, climates, and social situations. However, you really need a few more things to make it through an event as geeky and lengthy as SXSW. Pick out the items (or their equivalents) from below, and then find a small (yet robust) backpack / messenger bag like thing (I prefer Boblbee backpacks) that will fit them, and will of course fit fully underneath the seat in front you.

small flashlight - like a mini maglite - test before leaving
ocular backup device. in other words, if you wear glasses, pack contacts and sunglasses too, if you wear contacts, pack glasses.
simple hat/cap - for use in the cold, extreme sun, or if you happen to skip a shower (e.g. because the city turned off the water to your hotel, yes I've had this happen before).
laptop, with power supply, and recovery/boot CDs/DVDs.
small DVD case of videos (e.g. exercise like yoga or pilates - Kristin McGee's MTV Yoga series is excellent, and maybe a movie or two).
USB cable to charge your phone and download photos from camera to laptop
noise cancelling earphones/headphones - these really help on the flight.
secondary communication device. a 2-way, or a spare cell phone with EVDO.
a book to read on the plane. I recoomend either "Getting Things Done" (even if you've read it, reviewing it helps), or "Snow Crash".
minimal bath kit: toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, contact lens fluids/case, shaver
a minimum of two (preferably four, one for each day) changes of socks, underwear, tshirt. tightly rolled to take as little space as possible. buy a SXSW interactive tshirt at the show and wear it home on the Wednesday flight. get free tshirts at parties etc.
a couple of energy bars, e.g. Clif bars.

Rollaway the remainder

The above is pretty minimal for a four day conference. If you want a bit more flexbility in outfits, or are staying through SXSW Music, you're going to need to pack another bag, and might as well make it a rollaway. In addition to shifting the clothing, bath kit, and perhaps some of the powersupplies from the above to the rollaway, you'll want to include:

expanded bath kit. fingernail clippers, perhaps some hair product (essential for music) and whatever else you would include in a larger bath kit. maybe some extra vitamin C and Advil.
extension cord and powerplug splitter (so you can turn one outlet into four or more for all your power supplies / devices).
Airport Express - so you can create your very own wifi-cloud from the Ethernet provided by the hotel, since many hotels have very spotty wifi in the rooms.
power adapters/rechargers for your phone, camera battery, secondary communication device.
audio/video cables to connect your laptop to a stereo/tv/flatscreen/projector. Some hotels have the ability to connect to the in-room TV and use it as a second monitor. And if you have DVI/mini-DVI out rather than VGA (e.g. a Mac laptop), bring an adapter that will let you connect your laptop to VGA.
half a dozen energy bars, like Clif bars (I recommend the apricot Clif bars, or chocolate Clif builder bars) to hold you over when you inevitably forget or skip meals.
more clothing: a plain longsleeve black t-shirt (again, American Apparel helps here) for another layering option (over or under t-shirts), a second pair of pants, a second black hoodie, a second (perhaps lighter) black jacket, and maybe a few stylistic t-shirts that express thin-slices of your personality.
swim suit. most hotels have pools, even hot tubs. put them to good use.
thin black sweatpants (American Apparel) - for sleeping in if it gets cold, doing yoga or pilates and just lounging around your hotel room.
climbing shoes. see GeeksLoveClimbing.com. Enough said.
business (e.g. Moo) cards, stickers to promote your product, your company, your personal brand, or all of the above.

Start with that and iterate. See what you missed having with you this year, make a note of it, and bring it next year. Finally, if you lack any of the above, call your hotel and ask them for their "shipping address" (typically it will be "Attention: Your Name" followed by name of hotel and their normal address). Then order whatever you need from Amazon.com and have it shipped overnight or second day air directly to you at your hotel.

Three Human Interface Hypotheses Update: Email is Efail

Tantek Çelik — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:59:00 -0800

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A year ago I published Three Hypotheses of Human Interface Design which in short provided some analysis that demonstrated that the simpler and faster a user interface is, the easier it is to use. The response has been quite amazing, with over a hundred blog posts and comments across various sites (Digg, Reddit etc.)

I was particularly humbled that Ev Williams incorporated a summary of the three hypotheses in a few of his talks last year: Web 2.0 Summit (referencing slide) and LeWeb 3 conference (see video discussion starting at 6:00). Ev is the rare "serial entrepreneur" that can be proud of that label, having successfully founded and sold two innovative ground-breaking companies (Blogger, Odeo) and now working on Twitter, a feat far more impressive than a few hypotheses in a blog post.

Last year when I posted The Three Hypotheses, they very much helped me explain why I was finding email so much less useful/usable than instant messaging (IM) and Twitter. Since then, I have found that while I can keep up with more people contacting me over IM and following more people on Twitter, email has simply become less and less usable, but not for reasons of interface, as I'm using the email application now as I was a year ago.

I'm probably responding to less than 1 in 10 emails that are sent directly to me, even fewer of those that are sent to a set of people or a list. The usability of email for me has deteriorated so much that I exclaimed on Twitter recently: EMAIL shall henceforth be known as EFAIL.

I think there are a number of factors why email is failing for me while other communication methods such as IM and Twitter are scaling. However, I think two specific reasons in combination account for most of the problem.

1. Point to point communications do not scale.

All forms of communication where you have to expend time and energy on communicating with a specific person (anything that has a notion of "To" in the interface that you have to fill in) are doomed to fail at some limit. If you are really good you might be able to respond to dozens (some claim hundreds) of individual emails a day but at some point you will simply be spending all your time writing email rather than actually "working" on any thing in particular (next-actions or projects, e.g. coding, authoring, drawing, enjoying your life etc.) and will thus experience a productivity failure. The obvious solution is to push as much 1:1 communication into 1:many or 1:all forms such as public blogs and wikis. My CommunicationProtocols wiki page describes this preference.

However, while 1:1 email is not scaling for me, I feel like 1:1 IM is scaling which would seem to refute the above reasoning. There are two reasons why this is not so:

You are only busy with instant messages (IMs) from people when you are active in your IM client. People can only send you IMs when you choose to be online, rather than whenever they choose to do so. This gives you much tighter control over both how much and when you IM, as opposed to email which continuously piles up whether you are online or not.
Perhaps IM simply has a higher scaling limit than email. That is, per the three hypotheses, since IM is much more usable than email, perhaps there is a factor of 10 or more in terms of the number of IMs you can receive and respond to as compared to email. In otherwords, perhaps IM also has a 1:1 scaling limit, but just one that I haven't encountered yet.

The second reason that I think email is becoming a worse and worse problem is directly due to its higher usability barrier, that is:

2. Emails tend to be bloated with too many details and different topics.

Email requires more of an interface cognitive load tax than IM (as compared to the time spent on writing the content itself), thus people naturally put much more into an email (perhaps in an unconscious effort to amortize that interface tax overhead across more content). People may feel that since they are already "bothering" to write an email, that they might as well take the time to go into all kinds of detail, and perhaps even add a few more things that they're thinking about it. Such natural message bloat places additional load on the recipient, both in terms of the raw length of the message, and in terms of the depth and variety of topics covered in the email. This results in a direct increase in processing time per email thus making it even harder for people to take the necessary time to process and respond. I know I've left numerous emails grow stale because there were simply too many different things in the email that required a response, and I didn't want to send a response without responding to everything in the email because then I would inevitably receive yet another email response without being able to file the original as being processed and thus have the situation worsen!

I don't have answers to all of these problems. I do have some suggestions that appear to be helping, though I'm far from solving the larger problem of scaling communications in general.

Publish how you prefer to be contacted. E.g. here are my preferred communication protocols.
Move as much 1:1 communication into 1:many or 1:all mediums. Rather than email or IM someone specifically (even in response), push yourself to publish things publicly somewhere with a permalink (wiki, blog, twitter). This does two things:
1. It increases the chance that someone else that might have asked you the same question may find your answer on the Web, and thus avoid a 1:1 contact.
2. For those that don't find it and ask you the same question anyway, it provides a URL for you to quickly send to them in a reply.
Reduce your use of email as much as possible. This is definitely a work in progress for me. See my Email Reduction project for what I've done, and am doing to puruse this goal, as well as references to others' work in this area.
EMAIL is EFAIL. Pass it on. There is a strong cultural bias among technology workers (and perhaps most tech companies, at least from my experience, e.g. Microsoft folks love email) to use email as the default solution for all communication, whether 1:1, signing up for services, or registering to leave a comment on a blog. Most of the signup/registration cases can be (and are being) replaced with URL based solutions like OpenID and hCard profiles. But we must actively fight this cultural bias for email. Yes, we have to tell people that they are wrong, that their cherished communication tool is inefficient and does not scale. We have to stand firm and let emails die or at best respond to them slowly, letting urgent matters find us via other preferred methods of communication. People will learn and adapt.
Remember there are worse things than email. Long before email failed to scale as a communication medium, other methods failed first (exceptions in parentheses). Faxes (legal matters only). Printed letters (handwritten letters still have value). Phone calls (limit them to: close friends, family, and last minute event coordination only), and of course voicemails (don't bother, send a text message instead).

One year wikiversary

Tantek Çelik — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:22:00 -0800

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My personal wiki turned one year old today. That was fast. As I've picked up and used additional tools such as a wiki, Twitter, and perhaps most recently Pownce (congrats on the public launch BTW!), I've found that each serves a specific purpose in my life, and that's ok, there's no need to try to force each to be all things. See my "Identity facets" sidebar for the full list of sites I'm currently actively using for various publishing purposes.

My wiki (hosted by the nice folks at PBWiki) has mostly served as a place for me to record notes, incomplete thoughts, works in progress that may help other folks out. I've also used it as a place to keep current contact information, work on some collaborative efforts (such as the upcoming Body Optimization session at SXSW 2008), and other projects.

It's also a place I've kept notes or documents that I expect to keep current / update in place, as opposed to blog posts, which are more like snapshots of thoughts in time. For example I put bug reports and feature requests on my public wiki, rather than hassling with the login and TOS hurdles of the myriad feedback systems of the products and services that I use.

I've shared my wiki password with a few friends, a few of whom have made edits/fixes here and there. I'd like any friend or colleague that I'm currently collaborating with on a project to have access, so, contact me for the password.

I've found a personal wiki very useful for publishing information that I felt needed to be published but couldn't quite figure out where to put it. The beauty of it is that if/when I do later find a more "proper" place for the information (such as a feedback forum on a product site), I can simply put a URL to the page with the information on my wiki, which I can then update as necessary without worrying about checking yet another forum site.

I recommend that everyone start their own personal wiki for capturing and updating these kinds of random thoughts. Go to PBwiki.com to get started.

Open as possible means public domain plus a strong community

Tantek Çelik — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 19:46:00 -0800

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My journey implementing and/or iterating/improving/creating "open" standards began almost 10 years at Microsoft when I was assigned the area of CSS support in Internet Explorer for Macintosh. Along the way I've learned a lot about the longterm value of open standards, open source, and open content, and as a result the plethora of "open" licenses out there. Having seen real difficulties that different "open" projects have had working together due to license (or even philosophical definition of "freedom") incompatibilities, limitations, friction, barriers to developing derivative materials to help "open" projects, and even FUD used inside many corporations to limit use of "open" resources, it led me inexorably to one conclusion.

If you want your "open" project to be as open as possible for maximum benefit and reuse, you have to (a) release it to the public domain, and (b) depend on the community for strength of cohesion and identity. Both are important, and only recently (the past few years) has the latter been made truly possible by the Web, blogs, and real-time search and update services.

Perhaps the most common question I've been asked in response is whether I'm worried about someone (or some organization) taking such material in the public domain and "abusing" them, whether creating a incompatible variants (of formats), forking, commercially benefitting etc. The latter is the easiest to address. Standards work best when there is commercial incentive to implement them and implement them interoperably. The former aspect requires analyzing underlying assumptions.

The implicit assumption in the questions of the form "what if someone/something takes your work and does something bad with it" are as follows:

your - implies a personalization of the work. Standards work because they are easy for others to use and implement interoperably. Not you. Inventing a standard for yourself is not really that useful (though many standards efforts seem to be of that nature, a person or company inventing a standard just for themselves, perhaps as an academic challenge of sorts). A true test of the effectiveness of a standard invented/created by person A, is whether person B and person C can (at least semi) independently create interoperable implementations of that standard. As a result, lone-inventor standards almost always fail.
bad - assuming we've already disposed of implied "bad" uses which actually are not bad (and perhaps even good for a standard, such as commercial use), that leaves the implicit assumption of recourse, and the implication that without public domain you would otherwise own a copyright or some other legally enforceable intellectual property (IP) right that you could use to retaliate or curb such "bad" behavior, effectively at that. This is a very bad assumption. The reality is that unless you are very wealthy with deep pockets, pursuing legal action to fight abuse of a standard is a futile effort. Even with legal funding, the progress of such recourse is so slow that the battle is often already won or lost in the marketplace, leaving legal victories typically pyrrhic at best. These days, perhaps the strongest actor in that "marketplace" battle is the community built around the standard, and the realtime feedback and coverage they can provide as mentioned earlier.

Rather than grasping at the false sense of security that copyright or other IP protection seems to afford, the irony is that it is actually stronger to affirm and accept that for practical purposes (given time and costs of enforcement) there really isn't much IP protection available to individuals or open source projects, and thus you must depend on the community built around the standard. This open acknowledgment of dependence on the community and absence of any other support provides much more open incentive for the community to stay cohesive, rally around, and strengthen itself in order to preserve the openness and fidelity of a standard.

Thus, on this "Public Domain Day" as noted by the Creative Commons blog, I encourage anyone and everyone creating or developing an "open standard" or "open data format" to do so completely in the public domain.

If you're going to start a new wiki, whether for a new web standards effort, or for a random community topic, consider requiring that all contributions be placed into the public domain. The Body Optimization wiki (first to do so AFAIK) notes this requirement in its PBWiki login form with a reference to the Creative Commons Public Domain license (CC-PD), and has so from its inception.

If you are leading an existing "open" standards effort, whether for a data format or protocol, I encourage you to strongly consider doing what we did with microformats:

(a) requiring any new contributions be placed into the public domain (per CC-PD or any future version).
(b) encouraging existing/past contributors to explicitly agree to release all past, present and future contributions (with some reasonable time to do so)
(c) afterwards, going through and cleaning previous contributions as necessary to place all the work into the public domain.

Everyone that works on any open standard can make a big difference to the greater body of open standards that all of us depend on to freely build use and iterate upon tools that interoperate. Make it one of your new years resolutions to either take the leap to public domain with your open standards efforts, or at least take some of the above-noted concrete steps toward doing so, and make your open standard as open as possible.

Wrapping up 2007: microformats public domain contributions and LifeCamp

Tantek Çelik — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:51:00 -0800

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It's been quite the eventful year, so perhaps it is only fitting that a couple more big things got squeezed into the last few days.

Requiring public domain contributions

As of December 29th, all new contributions to the microformats wiki are required to be released into the public domain. This has been a project that I've been working on for microformats for quite some time, was much harder and took much longer than expected, and was really important to me personally.

See the blog post on microformats.org for more details, reasons why, and historical events leading up to this first of a kind decision to make a standards effort as open as possible.

What are you doing with your life?

Aside from the party going on (that I'm briefly hiding from to write this up), this year concluded for me with LifeCamp, a BarCamp/Foocamp-like event 12/30-31 that focused on one question: What are you doing with your life?

My friend Julie and I thought this up when discussing end of year rituals, and threw it together quickly and roughly in a matter of days (like the first BarCamp). We invited a bunch of people (also coarsely brainstormed, certainly not comprehensive), a few of whom were actually available to attend, and shared an incredible two days of reflection (what did you do) and projection (what are you going to do).

We quickly decided at the start to make the event both off-the-record by default (similar to Foocamp and a few other such conferences) and even fairly "in-confidence" to create a more comfortable and safe environment for sharing personal, sensitive, and vulnerable aspects of ourselves. However we also decided to very much document the abstractions about the event, in the hopes of improving the replicability of the event, both for ourselves, and for anyone wishing to organize a LifeCamp in their own town, with a few of their trusted friends and colleagues. Check out the LifeCamp wiki.

I've got more thoughts on the microformats example of making open standards as open as possible, and the LifeCamp variant of Barcamp that I'll post in the new year. For now, there is champagne and sparkling cider to hand out.

Happy New Year and see you in 2008!

NaVloPoMo: Bulldozer crossing on 3rd street

Tantek Çelik — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 02:05:00 -0800