walkah: striving towards mediocrity
Open, Social for the rest of the web
This past weekend, I had the privilege of being one of the chosen attendees for Social Web FooCamp. Needless to say, I was flattered and had an amazing time (thanks again, @daveman692 and @davemorin ) . One thing, however, became very apparent: the conversation, currently, is being dominated by the 'big players' (Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Myspace predominantly). In several discussions I found myself increasingly dropping the phrase:
... on the rest of the web
the big guys
First off, this is not a critique of the Google's and Facebook's of the internet. They are incredibly valuable to the growth of the openweb. The fact that Google, Yahoo and Myspace all three have various OpenID and OAuth initiatives in the wild and are actively pursuing additional ways to open their data is awesome (and Facebook wants to get there). It helps raise awareness and bring (slash confirm) "legitimacy".
The big guys also have resources. They can attend the conferences (and camps!) and have dedicated resources to write the standards, participate in the discussions and help shape the future.
However, they are only part of the discussion.
perspective
The issues the major providers face are different from the rest. They have a few sites with large numbers of users (hundreds of millions). Out here on the rest of the web, we have millions of websites, each with a "small" number of users (hundreds or thousands). We all understand the necessity for open data, identity, standards and protocols, but our reasoning tends to be slightly different.
The big guys recognize the benefit of exposing their data and most are providing OpenID and various levels of OAuth. How many are consuming it?
Sure, the big players want to be the primary authority for your identity and your information. In some cases, it is their business. But, rather than ranting against 'the man', I ask: have we - the rest of the web - given them a compelling reason to yet?
open source platforms for the open web
It's one thing for a major site (with hundreds of millions of users) to act like a silo, but on the rest of the web it amounts to isolation.
Those of us working on open source web platforms have an enormous potential for influence here. Implementing the various open standards "from scratch", while possible, is not realistic or even necessary. Increasingly, individuals have Wordpress blogs or perhaps their company, organization or club has a Drupal site. Web developers are increasingly turning to these platforms, or development frameworks such as Rails and Django. These platforms all have a real opportunity to bake in implementations of these open standards. The DiSo project offers a central place for co-ordination around these efforts.
We have data - gobs of it. We also, collectively, have the users and, in most cases, have more authoritative information about them (we know ourselves, our employees and our members).
We - the rest of the web - need to join the conversation: attend the events, participate in the mailing lists, and build the code to power the open, social web.
On Passion
Things tend to happen for a reason, right? That is certainly how last night went. I spent the afternoon at CSI and noticed several local friends all a-twitter as they showed up for the stay fresh event happening downstairs from me.
The main presentation of the night was Peter Flaschner (aka @flashlight) talking about Passion. So, I decided to crash the party.
Passion is something very much on my mind lately: specifically finding, cultivating and making space in my life for it. I am the kind of person who is cursed (or blessed) by having a really hard time doing things without passion. Lately, I've seen a dip in my personal productivity (and happiness) - not unrelated.
In his presentation (check it out), Peter talked about research from Robert J. Vallerand on the topic. Specifically, the nature of harmonious passion, and why it's so important. When we do things autonomously (i.e. not for social acceptance, etc) purely for the challenge or pleasure of it, we can achieve happiness. Happiness for not only ourselves, but those around us. Harmonious passion needs no further motivation, and the rewards are plentiful.
Tim O'Reilly has been spreading a new mantra (as he does so well): work on stuff that matters. Less catchy, but the very important first principle that Tim outlines is: work on stuff that matters to you.
Fear, self doubt, other external pressures and responsibilities, however, can make the pursuit of harmonious passion so tricky.
Both Tim and Peter bring the relevance of passion and "stuff that matters" directly to the present: the environment, society and (of course) "these economic times". We can not only make our own lives better, but affect those around us and even the world. Seems like a no-brainer, no? To borrow a tag line from Chris Messina:
This can all be made better. Ready? Begin.
I am hereby actively renewing dedication to my harmonious passions. Are you?
SXSW '09: Meet Me in Austin
In a few short hours, I'll be on a plane to Austin, TX for another edition of SXSW Interactive. I'm looking forward to connecting with a bunch of folks that I don't otherwise get to see often. Here's a list of things I'm hoping to catch (in addition to the on-schedule panels):
- Activity Streams meetup - looking forward to diving into more DiSo :-)
- XMPP/Jabber Meetup - I still believe that XMPP is one of the most important protocols moving forward on the 'net. Looking forward to syncing back up with this community.
- OMB Meetup - I'm excited to help bring OpenMicroBlogging to Drupal via the Knight Initiative.
I'll also definitely be at the party that Lullabot is co-sponsoring : 32bit.
If you're in Austin for the next few days - ping me on twitter or identi.ca.
Off to finish packing :-)
Why I Hate Drupal
I'm back home from a truly spectacular DrupalCon DC and have been reflecting this morning on some of the feedback from my talk: Why I Hate Drupal.
See the slides and watch the video
I first got the idea for this talk several months ago watching the DjangoCon 2008 keynote Why I Hate Django by Cal Henderson. I had several ideas for things to address, but aside from the session description I intentionally said very little about my talk publicly. This, of course, lead to some interesting speculation and negative feedback. All part of the plan.
As it turned out, I was not lynched and nothing rotten was thrown.
What I was not expecting (and what the video doesn't capture), though, was all of the interesting discussion that followed. I was overwhelmed by the positive response and the number of people who agreed with several of the points I tried to make:
Drupal is not a product. To grow into a "movement", we should focus on becoming a better platform, adopt some better practices around development, be a better framework, and create more space for the creation of "products" (install profiles, etc) on top.
What do you think? How to we "fix" this project?
the tools i use
I spend a lot of time routinely tweaking various tools and configurations on my desktop environment. Frankly, I think those of us who spend our days in front of a computer owe it to ourselves to make it a pleasant experience. I tend to write about various tricks here, but feeling inspired by merlin's desktop tour, I may try to do so more regularly. Here's a quick rundown of the apps I've added lately:
- 1Password has had the most impact in terms of daily use. Fix your password habits. Seriously.
- To stay focused, I've been using using a combination of SpritedAway and Isolator - the former hides apps I'm not currently using, while the latter let's me focus on a single app (usually writing a document).
- I've been keeping an eye on noisy fans and run-away processes with iStat menus (hat tip: @jjeff).
- Mail is probably my biggest area of tinkering... I'll try to write up my current setup in more detail, but MailActOn 2 and DockStar are working well for me.
Probably my biggest change recently, is to switch back to much heavier use of emacs... more on that later ;-)
How about you? What are you using to make your (computer) life a little bit better?
DrupalCon is Coming with lots of OpenID
In just a few days, most of the drupal community will be headed to Washington, DC for DrupalCon. As the conference draws closer, I always get excited to see friends I don't get to see and share exciting ideas, but this time there is a lot of growing interest and activity around OpenID.
As has become a bit of a tradition, I'll be giving my 4th OpenID talk. This year, I'm hoping to focus a bit on the exciting new developments from the OpenID community and looking at some of the things being built on top of OpenID (like the OpenID/OAuth hybrid model and the DiSo project).
Also, Chris Messina will be one of the keynote presenters - also talking about online identity. We had Chris on the lullabot podcast this week - be sure to check it out!
Finally, for those of you coming to DC - I'm going to round up interested parties on Saturday for an OpenID code sprint. Hope to see you there!
image module: end of an era
A few weeks ago, I very quietly made a (personally) significant move in my Drupal life. I "officially" transferred the project ownership of the drupal image module to Daniel "sun" Kudwien. Truth be told, I haven't been the primary maintainer of the module for over a year. That job has been admirably handled by drewish. However, both drewish and I have a lot else on our plates and one of Drupal's most used modules has not gotten the focused attention it deserves.
Now, as Angie will tell you, Daniel is a fantastic Drupal contributor - worthy of the praise he receives. But, I'd like to give a personal shout out: he has helped to take the image issue queue from over 12 pages long down to 3.
Nice work, sun. The community thanks you :-)
happy 8th birthday, drupal!
Man, we're getting old!
Today (January 15th) is the 8th anniversary of the day Drupal 1.0 was released. Although Dries had no idea at the time - it was a move that would not only change his life, but mine too...
January 2009 also marks the 5th anniversary of my starting to work on Drupal full time (after a few years of "hobby" involvement). My first project (at the time, actually a re-launch) still stands as one of my favourites: http://www.terminus1525.ca/ . Since then, Drupal has defined my career: from co-founding Bryght to my current life as a Lullabot. The community is home to some of my best friends and people I love.
Five years - full-time. No wonder I feel old.
Using Drupal or Look, Ma, I'm on Amazon!
In my usual heard-it-hear-last style... I was out to dinner this week with my friend, Phillip, who was apparently unaware that Lullabot had written a book(?!?) and I was one of the authors.
Well, for most of last year (plus) most of us over at lullabot spent sleepless nights putting together Using Drupal. It went to press in early December, and is indeed on amazon and even on shelves.
I'm personally pretty proud of the book. It's the first Drupal book by O'Reilly and the first to take a comprehensive look at building a "real" Drupal site with heavy emphasis on CCK, Views and the rest of drupal contrib.
I have to say, too, that O'Reilly was a lot of fun to work with. There's a reason they have a reputation for having the top tech books. If you missed it, @eaton and I did a live webcast with O'Reilly which was their biggest ever. Kool-aid for everyone!
If you don't have a copy yet, what's wrong with you? ;-)
hello, 2009
Well, this post - much like the first five days of 2009 - has not gone as I'd planned.
Looking back on 2008, it was another year of intense growth and change - as they all seem to be lately. I moved again, did a lot of travelling and had a pretty big year as a Lullabot (1 major event, 1 book, 1 DVD, 7 workshops, and countless hours of getting people over their Drupal hurdles).
2009 holds lots of opportunity, potential and continued opportunities for growth and change. As far as resolutions, however, I have just one:
get healthy
That's right, the usual sleep more, eat better, exercise (period), go to the doctor, see a dentist, take time off, look out for me kind of just get healthy.
Ready? begin.
James Walker
