In almost every organization there are heroes. Heroes are the people who "go the extra mile." Extending themselves to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. Everyone either looks up to them or are jealous of them. We hold well known examples up before our children and encourage them to "be like Mike." The heroes often reap great rewards when they succeed and when they fall, suffer great disappointments. It is as though we worship manic depressive behavior.
With our current organizational models, we need heroes to "cut through the red tape" that keeps most people from accomplishing very much in their routine day to day work. The heroes become the heroic leaders in our organizations and are greatly sought out. Or organizations would fall flat without them. In a sense, successful organizations have become addicted to these heroic leaders.
This addictive behavior is a two way street. The heroic leaders cannot be heroes if the organizations were not structured to need them. How can one person standout so much if the organization allows everyone to be effective to their full capacity.
How often have you seen ideas and work by an average employee ignored and belittled when the same idea and work by one of these heroic leaders is readily adopted and heralded as brilliant. If organizations were able to listen to everyone there would still be differences in performance/rewards between people but not to the extremes we see today.
This pushing up the hero and pulling down the average person, creates a self fulfilling feedback loop, pushing the heroic leaders ever higher while demotivating and demoralizing the rest into an ever lower state. Following the basic yin-yang principle of the universe, we see that by needing and creating heroes, in balance, we also create the opposite in everyone else.
With this reinforcing loop in place, it becomes ever more difficult to break free into a more effective overall organization. So heroic leadership and organization need for heroic leadership is a co-dependent relationship.
Lets imagine an organization that did not need or have heroes, what would it look like.
First, everyone would have a voice that would be heard. Everyone would be treated as a valuable sensor of the part of the organization within their scope and have input to organization respected as from that scope. No one would be able to get their way based on ego values, but instead on the effect it would have on the organization to move forward towards meeting its purpose. No longer can an idea from someone be shut down by the fallacious argument of "I don't see it." This collective voice is not one of consensus (everyone agrees that it is good) but of consent (no one can see a definite harm.)
With this lower bar for decision making, it becomes easier to make most decisions. When decisions are easier, the risk and cost is lower to make most decisions. This leads to a feedback loop of making more, smaller decisions rapidly allowing the organization to vault up on the agility scale.
Next we would see that the leadership positions would not be overloaded to funnel more power and decisions into one person, but distributed over each team member and distributed over the entire organization increasing capacity accordingly. Information would not flow up and down at through one individual any point who could alter it or choke it. Direction and motivation would flow down through one person to a sub unit of the organization but feedback and sub unit health needs would flow back up through a different person. This would create a balance between the needs of the higher level to meet its organizational purpose with the needs of the sub unit to maintain a healthy environment to support those needs.
It should be easy to see that changing the basic organizational assumptions like this would reduce the dependence of heroic leadership, self empowering everyone in the organization to be engaged in the purpose of the organization, greatly increasing the capacity and agility of the organization without increasing the staff.
All of this is just a part of a new organizational operating system called Holacracy.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Medical Records
As part of being alive, most of us have had some contact with the medical profession and institutions. I have been around long enough to have seen many changes in medical technology. One area that seems to drag slowly behind in the US is electronic standardized medical records. As a long time computer technologist, it seems a natural progression. So why is it taking so long.
I have seen the advantages of electronic records and standardization in the very conservative financial industry. Transactions are defined by an international standard and you can send funds and other financial information almost anywhere in the world very quickly. The process is automated and even has the common term of Straight Through Processing.
Recently, I have experienced the transition from paper records to electronic records in some of my Doctors offices. In one office after about 4 months of pain during the transition, the office went from 45 or more minute waiting time in the reception area to about 5 minutes. All due to gains in efficiency. I have not experienced any loss in quality, in fact the visits seem a bit more relaxed and personal.
So why do some offices show so much resistance. I observe fear. I have talked to some Doctors about it and have seen the fear in their eyes. Fear of change. Fear of the cost to convert and maintain the new system. Fear of the pain during the transition as the staff and patience adjust to the change. Fear of lowering the quality of care. Mostly just a fear of the unknown.
But we do have some real world examples. Back in the late 1990s, Denmark starting converting to an National online medical records system so we have well over a decade of data from it.
The Danish system reports an average of 50 minute a day per Doctor reduction in administrative work. With a population of 5.5 million, it has saved the equivelent of $120 Million a year. Translate those saving to the US population and that is almost $7 billion each year.
We in the US spend a lot of money to provide a high quality of care. Health care in the US costs $7,290 per person (16% of GDP). While in Denmark it is $3,362 per person (9.8% of GDP). But what does that buy us? Life expectancy in the US is 78.1 and in Denmark it is 78.6, not any significant difference.
To get the full value from electronic records, it must be standardized, portable and accessible by appropriate medical providers.
Imagine being unconscious in an ambulance. In the current system, no one know what medications you are on or conditions you have requiring special care, unless you carry that information all the time. How many of us do that. Being able to access your history would allow the best cars in the shortest time.
Imagine the data mining applications to help improve the medical industry once we have built up a few years of records.
I see two points to push for this situation. One, lobby every Doctor office to implement an electronic records system. Two, push for a standard at the National (or even better international) level to allow for seamless exchange.
I have seen the advantages of electronic records and standardization in the very conservative financial industry. Transactions are defined by an international standard and you can send funds and other financial information almost anywhere in the world very quickly. The process is automated and even has the common term of Straight Through Processing.
Recently, I have experienced the transition from paper records to electronic records in some of my Doctors offices. In one office after about 4 months of pain during the transition, the office went from 45 or more minute waiting time in the reception area to about 5 minutes. All due to gains in efficiency. I have not experienced any loss in quality, in fact the visits seem a bit more relaxed and personal.
So why do some offices show so much resistance. I observe fear. I have talked to some Doctors about it and have seen the fear in their eyes. Fear of change. Fear of the cost to convert and maintain the new system. Fear of the pain during the transition as the staff and patience adjust to the change. Fear of lowering the quality of care. Mostly just a fear of the unknown.
But we do have some real world examples. Back in the late 1990s, Denmark starting converting to an National online medical records system so we have well over a decade of data from it.
The Danish system reports an average of 50 minute a day per Doctor reduction in administrative work. With a population of 5.5 million, it has saved the equivelent of $120 Million a year. Translate those saving to the US population and that is almost $7 billion each year.
We in the US spend a lot of money to provide a high quality of care. Health care in the US costs $7,290 per person (16% of GDP). While in Denmark it is $3,362 per person (9.8% of GDP). But what does that buy us? Life expectancy in the US is 78.1 and in Denmark it is 78.6, not any significant difference.
To get the full value from electronic records, it must be standardized, portable and accessible by appropriate medical providers.
Imagine being unconscious in an ambulance. In the current system, no one know what medications you are on or conditions you have requiring special care, unless you carry that information all the time. How many of us do that. Being able to access your history would allow the best cars in the shortest time.
Imagine the data mining applications to help improve the medical industry once we have built up a few years of records.
I see two points to push for this situation. One, lobby every Doctor office to implement an electronic records system. Two, push for a standard at the National (or even better international) level to allow for seamless exchange.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Innovation not equal Ideas
I have worked in a few large companies over the past few decades. Every so often they each would go on an innovations kick. Every time they would trot out the same old tired pony. The suggestion box.
The first few times in each company that I worked, I would get a bit excited that maybe something would happen with the suggestions. But after many years and a number of innovation initiatives, I guess, I have become a bit skeptical. After all how can I expect the company to do anything I put in the suggestion box when they have effectively ignored most everything I have proposed in my day to day work. I have hundreds of ideas every day, but rarely have the bandwidth to action only a few a year.
I got to the point where if I had an idea, I would jot it down and file it in my filing cabinet. Then, usually 3 to 5 years later, when everyone was in a panic and willing to try almost anything, I would go to my file and pull out an idea that would help solve the problem. Often the idea had been proposed and rejected earlier.
I never used all the ideas in my filing cabinet, but enough were useful to make it worth while to keep putting ideas into it. But it did illustrate that simply more ideas is not innovation. There were a lot of ideas in my filing cabinet, but simply sitting there caused no innovation.
My interpretation of an organization that every time it wants to innovate, the major thrust is to call for ideas is that the organization is simply insane. One of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." So I think that it is organizational insanity that causes this belief that this action of thrashing and rehashing is the same as making effective progress. If an organization cannot make use of the ideas that naturally occur in day to day work, how can it have the bandwidth to handle opening the flood gates by calling for ideas.
One problem, I have seen in some companies, is that the call for innovation is filtered through the requirement that the idea be fully formed, with little or no risk and is a home run of at least a value of 100 million before the company would consider any investment. There are a few companies willing to invest in small or partially formed ideas, 3m a few decades ago and Google recently. But it is a rare attitude.
Let's take a closer look at why so many companies cannot take advantage of the day to day ideas for improvement. 20 years ago a good friend of mine, Jeff Rosenberg, made the observation while we were going through another reorganization to implement the management theory of the day that "organizations do what they do because of the structure of the organization." Recently, I heard Brian Robertson, the founder of Holacracy, say that "organizations are perfectly organized to produce the results that they do." Given the current top down command and control organizational structure, with the decisions made towards the top and actions separated from the decisions and performed at the bottom, we have an organization that perfectly suppresses ideas from the bottom and separates the hands on learning and experience at the bottom from the decision makers at the top. This structure tends to calcify the organization, forcing it to do the same things over and over. To simply say "lets have all your ideas" without addressing this calcification perfectly meets Einstein's definition of insanity.
To be fair, working with in the conventional business framework, the suggestion box seems to be the only (easiest) way to break through these layers of calcification. But it rarely shows any significant results as it does not address the fundamental problem with the distribution of power.
Some of the organizational work at Toyota moved some of the decision making down to the line workers with a great increase in quality and production because some of the innovative ideas of the line workers was not lost through the filters of going up then back down through a fully calcified organization. Agile software development expanded some of these principles into the line level programmers, also with a substantial increase in quality and productivity. Holacracy is the leading edge of this wave, formalizing the ideas of distribution of power and dynamic organizational self modification for any type of organization. Holacracy is now formalized into a constitution that can be legally adopted by an organization.
Of course, full adoption of Holacracy would give the greatest benefit to any organization able to make the transition. However if that is not currently possible, a deep study of Holacracy and understanding its principle can help inform better decisions when there is an opportunity to decide between options when adjusting or working within a traditional organization. I do the latter almost every day.
The first few times in each company that I worked, I would get a bit excited that maybe something would happen with the suggestions. But after many years and a number of innovation initiatives, I guess, I have become a bit skeptical. After all how can I expect the company to do anything I put in the suggestion box when they have effectively ignored most everything I have proposed in my day to day work. I have hundreds of ideas every day, but rarely have the bandwidth to action only a few a year.
I got to the point where if I had an idea, I would jot it down and file it in my filing cabinet. Then, usually 3 to 5 years later, when everyone was in a panic and willing to try almost anything, I would go to my file and pull out an idea that would help solve the problem. Often the idea had been proposed and rejected earlier.
I never used all the ideas in my filing cabinet, but enough were useful to make it worth while to keep putting ideas into it. But it did illustrate that simply more ideas is not innovation. There were a lot of ideas in my filing cabinet, but simply sitting there caused no innovation.
My interpretation of an organization that every time it wants to innovate, the major thrust is to call for ideas is that the organization is simply insane. One of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." So I think that it is organizational insanity that causes this belief that this action of thrashing and rehashing is the same as making effective progress. If an organization cannot make use of the ideas that naturally occur in day to day work, how can it have the bandwidth to handle opening the flood gates by calling for ideas.
One problem, I have seen in some companies, is that the call for innovation is filtered through the requirement that the idea be fully formed, with little or no risk and is a home run of at least a value of 100 million before the company would consider any investment. There are a few companies willing to invest in small or partially formed ideas, 3m a few decades ago and Google recently. But it is a rare attitude.
Let's take a closer look at why so many companies cannot take advantage of the day to day ideas for improvement. 20 years ago a good friend of mine, Jeff Rosenberg, made the observation while we were going through another reorganization to implement the management theory of the day that "organizations do what they do because of the structure of the organization." Recently, I heard Brian Robertson, the founder of Holacracy, say that "organizations are perfectly organized to produce the results that they do." Given the current top down command and control organizational structure, with the decisions made towards the top and actions separated from the decisions and performed at the bottom, we have an organization that perfectly suppresses ideas from the bottom and separates the hands on learning and experience at the bottom from the decision makers at the top. This structure tends to calcify the organization, forcing it to do the same things over and over. To simply say "lets have all your ideas" without addressing this calcification perfectly meets Einstein's definition of insanity.
To be fair, working with in the conventional business framework, the suggestion box seems to be the only (easiest) way to break through these layers of calcification. But it rarely shows any significant results as it does not address the fundamental problem with the distribution of power.
Some of the organizational work at Toyota moved some of the decision making down to the line workers with a great increase in quality and production because some of the innovative ideas of the line workers was not lost through the filters of going up then back down through a fully calcified organization. Agile software development expanded some of these principles into the line level programmers, also with a substantial increase in quality and productivity. Holacracy is the leading edge of this wave, formalizing the ideas of distribution of power and dynamic organizational self modification for any type of organization. Holacracy is now formalized into a constitution that can be legally adopted by an organization.
Of course, full adoption of Holacracy would give the greatest benefit to any organization able to make the transition. However if that is not currently possible, a deep study of Holacracy and understanding its principle can help inform better decisions when there is an opportunity to decide between options when adjusting or working within a traditional organization. I do the latter almost every day.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Red is Green
Like many people, I try to be environmentally conscious. Minimize my impact on the environment by following the principle of reduce, reuse, recycle, etc. I drive a hybrid car. If I don't plant a at least a few vegetables in my vegetable garden every year, I feel useless.
About two years ago I discovered vermiculture. Yes, composting with red worms. I had always had a pile of shredded leaves etc in my back yard that I dabbled with composing. But with vermiculture, I could have some new and strange pets and be more involved in composting my kitchen vegetable waste all indoors! Yes, indoors! I have a year round sun room off the kitchen where I can keep my worm bins making it easy to deliver the kitchen scraps right from the kitchen. Some people do keep bins in other places in their houses, including the kitchen.
I started two years ago with a couple of standard (cheap) storage bins with holes drilled in the bottom for drainage and around the top for air. You can see dozens of these setups in amateur instructional videos on YouTube. These do work, but I was not happy with mine. They tended to stay too wet which can cause problems. I even had a die off right before a party and almost threw everything out. These cheap bins can get heavy and awkward to work with. So around Thanksgiving I invested in a Worm Farm.
The Worm Farm has multiples stacking trays of a reasonable size to handle, much better drainage and liquid collection system. The liquid that collects in the bottom is called worm tea and when diluted, makes a great natural liquid fertilizer for your plants (indoors or out.) The final product, worm casting, is a very rich fertilizer as well. With the improved drainage and ventilation of the Worm Farm, the moisture level is more easily maintained at the proper level, no more die offs or offensive odors, the worms are happy and thriving and I am very happy with it.
I would highly recommend that any one with a little space and the inclination, to try vermiculture. You do not need to have a garden (vegetable or flower.) With a little asking around, I am sure you would find someone who would make great use of the worm casting as they are rather expensive in a garden store.
About two years ago I discovered vermiculture. Yes, composting with red worms. I had always had a pile of shredded leaves etc in my back yard that I dabbled with composing. But with vermiculture, I could have some new and strange pets and be more involved in composting my kitchen vegetable waste all indoors! Yes, indoors! I have a year round sun room off the kitchen where I can keep my worm bins making it easy to deliver the kitchen scraps right from the kitchen. Some people do keep bins in other places in their houses, including the kitchen.
I started two years ago with a couple of standard (cheap) storage bins with holes drilled in the bottom for drainage and around the top for air. You can see dozens of these setups in amateur instructional videos on YouTube. These do work, but I was not happy with mine. They tended to stay too wet which can cause problems. I even had a die off right before a party and almost threw everything out. These cheap bins can get heavy and awkward to work with. So around Thanksgiving I invested in a Worm Farm.
The Worm Farm has multiples stacking trays of a reasonable size to handle, much better drainage and liquid collection system. The liquid that collects in the bottom is called worm tea and when diluted, makes a great natural liquid fertilizer for your plants (indoors or out.) The final product, worm casting, is a very rich fertilizer as well. With the improved drainage and ventilation of the Worm Farm, the moisture level is more easily maintained at the proper level, no more die offs or offensive odors, the worms are happy and thriving and I am very happy with it.
I would highly recommend that any one with a little space and the inclination, to try vermiculture. You do not need to have a garden (vegetable or flower.) With a little asking around, I am sure you would find someone who would make great use of the worm casting as they are rather expensive in a garden store.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
When Did I Really Start?
I was participating in a Holacracy community of practice Forum thread about implementing Holacracy and I realized that many contributors were dancing around the question of what really constitutes practicing Holacracy. They were saying things like "We do this and that, what do we need to add to really be practicing?" I believe that asking that question misses the point. Just like the ancient Zen riddle about the finger pointing at the moon, when you ask that question, you are focused on the finger not the moon.
Holacracy is practice and as all there is a common framework progression exhibited by most of the practices I have followed that we can put into context for Holacracy.
When starting a practice, there are a number of techniques or actions that you must learn to follow. You won't really understand them, but they seem to have some positive effects so you trust that and continue to practice the techniques by rote. At this point the techniques seem like a simple cookbook that if you can just do them enough, you will perfect them and reach some high but not well understood goal. In Holacracy, the basic techniques have been described in a 9 page introduction document. With the guidance of someone experienced with Holacracy, most circles can do the work of rote practicing these techniques fairly well. Some start with one or a few of the techniques and slowly add more as they become too comfortable, others jump in with both feet. Either way it is hard work to process a few tensions at a time, but as the effect become apparent, most are encouraged to keep moving forward.
After a while, with each success processing a tension, faith increases, capacity to sense and process increases, you begin to trust the process in your gut. The tendency is to stop falling back to old way and more naturally express the new way. As your capacity to process tensions increases, so does the capacity to sense tensions. At some point it will seem like you are fighting the Hydra, with every head (tension) you cut off 2 more take its place. The practice will seem to be getting harder not easier as you expected. You struggle taking great effort to chop of the heads. The tensions take effort as they are still seen as mostly problems to be solved and put to bed. But have faith.
Eventually, tension process starts to seem like a natural rhythm, not taking much effort to process each one. It actually starts to seem a bit easier. It is as though you are smoothly skiing through the process.
Some where along the way, you start to notice a change in your perception of the tensions, they stop being problems you need to get out of the way to get real work done to being opportunities for real work to be done. You switch from the sense of tensions having negative drag on you to being a forward force drawing forward to more and better work. Here is where deep internal understanding has developed. Here is where the process is no longer a rote step by step process, but more of an energy flow.
Is this last stage where you can say that you are starting to really practice Holacracy? In my opinion, this may be the point where you can look back to where you first made the commitment and stuck with the practice and say that in retrospect that the point of commitment was when you really started to practice.
Keep practicing and everything will develop!
Holacracy is practice and as all there is a common framework progression exhibited by most of the practices I have followed that we can put into context for Holacracy.
When starting a practice, there are a number of techniques or actions that you must learn to follow. You won't really understand them, but they seem to have some positive effects so you trust that and continue to practice the techniques by rote. At this point the techniques seem like a simple cookbook that if you can just do them enough, you will perfect them and reach some high but not well understood goal. In Holacracy, the basic techniques have been described in a 9 page introduction document. With the guidance of someone experienced with Holacracy, most circles can do the work of rote practicing these techniques fairly well. Some start with one or a few of the techniques and slowly add more as they become too comfortable, others jump in with both feet. Either way it is hard work to process a few tensions at a time, but as the effect become apparent, most are encouraged to keep moving forward.
After a while, with each success processing a tension, faith increases, capacity to sense and process increases, you begin to trust the process in your gut. The tendency is to stop falling back to old way and more naturally express the new way. As your capacity to process tensions increases, so does the capacity to sense tensions. At some point it will seem like you are fighting the Hydra, with every head (tension) you cut off 2 more take its place. The practice will seem to be getting harder not easier as you expected. You struggle taking great effort to chop of the heads. The tensions take effort as they are still seen as mostly problems to be solved and put to bed. But have faith.
Eventually, tension process starts to seem like a natural rhythm, not taking much effort to process each one. It actually starts to seem a bit easier. It is as though you are smoothly skiing through the process.
Some where along the way, you start to notice a change in your perception of the tensions, they stop being problems you need to get out of the way to get real work done to being opportunities for real work to be done. You switch from the sense of tensions having negative drag on you to being a forward force drawing forward to more and better work. Here is where deep internal understanding has developed. Here is where the process is no longer a rote step by step process, but more of an energy flow.
Is this last stage where you can say that you are starting to really practice Holacracy? In my opinion, this may be the point where you can look back to where you first made the commitment and stuck with the practice and say that in retrospect that the point of commitment was when you really started to practice.
Keep practicing and everything will develop!
Friday, December 16, 2011
Recovery...
Wow, it has been almost 2 years since I last posted to this blog. In addition to working a full time job almost 200 miles from my home, health issues reduced my available energy, Google acquired Blogger which locked me out for a long time, and I picked up an Android phone and started programming apps on the side. Yes, I have 2 apps in the Android market place, the first is doing well with a solid community using it on a daily basis, the second is only a couple months old and is doing well in it's community. Go to market.android.com and search for: pub:"Michael Dobbins"
Holacracy is still important to me and I am still very active in the community. My current paying job does not give me an opportunity to fully practice, but I do my work based in the principals of Holacracy. One of the tenets of Holacracy is that you start from where you are and apply the principle that work in your current environment. No matter where you work or what job you have, you can always focus on the next action and work to accomplish that as quickly as you are able. From doing that next action look for feedback that can help adjust the follow on action. Look to give feedback to any larger plan you may be following. Notice and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment as you complete each small next action. Notice that you are creating momentum towards the larger goals. Notice that you are keeping a productive state of mind by not stressing out about an overwhelming larger goal. After a few days, you will see that you are reaching your goals faster and with a happier mind than you ever did before.
What Can I Do? I ask myself this question all the time, it is how I apply what I have learned from others. I propose that you ask yourself, What can I do in my current position to use this focus on next action. Try the experiment. You can only gain from the experience.
Holacracy is still important to me and I am still very active in the community. My current paying job does not give me an opportunity to fully practice, but I do my work based in the principals of Holacracy. One of the tenets of Holacracy is that you start from where you are and apply the principle that work in your current environment. No matter where you work or what job you have, you can always focus on the next action and work to accomplish that as quickly as you are able. From doing that next action look for feedback that can help adjust the follow on action. Look to give feedback to any larger plan you may be following. Notice and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment as you complete each small next action. Notice that you are creating momentum towards the larger goals. Notice that you are keeping a productive state of mind by not stressing out about an overwhelming larger goal. After a few days, you will see that you are reaching your goals faster and with a happier mind than you ever did before.
What Can I Do? I ask myself this question all the time, it is how I apply what I have learned from others. I propose that you ask yourself, What can I do in my current position to use this focus on next action. Try the experiment. You can only gain from the experience.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Stone Soup
This article is my experince in participating for the past 25 years in the self organization of an online community centered around the 4000 year old strategy game called Go.
Being a computer scientist working on computer networking I quickly can in contact with an emerging online Go community shortly after learning the game in 1984. In the mid 1980, the online Go community was centered aroud the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.go. At that time, Usenet consisted of a loose mesh of computers at universities and research labs in business which periodically connected with each other using dialup connections to transfer accumulated newsgroup articles and email. With this technology, information propagated relativly slowly through out the network. Newgroup postings were on the order of a couple a day. The population was small and a very homogonous demographic of technical people. With the Japanese Go culture of politeness, this community was very calm and friendly so it was not noticed that there were no formal controls or moderation on the content being posted other than an admonishment of being off topic by other posters. A public shame approach.
In the late 1980s into the 1990s, The dialup connections were being replaced by dedicated links and eventually TCP/IP networks. This sped up the comminucation and increased a population a little but the community did not change much in it's friendly flavor.
1991 saw the introduction of the first Internet Go Server. Knowing the developers personally, I was able to participate in the development and debugging of its first rating algorithm. These were very exciting times watching a new era being born. Control and content moderation was enforced by the owners of the Server with a few of the users being punished with banning or ejection from the server. Most existed peacefully with this, but a few felt that free speech rights were arbitrarily trampled.
Approaching the mid 1990s, when Al Gore invented the Internet, there was a steady change in the demographic on the newsgroups. The internet is starting to open up to people outside of universities and research labs and into the general public. Traffic increased, but since Go is not well known, the population on rec.games.go is still relatively polite.
In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, the population on th einternet and also the xposure to rec.gammes.go explodes. This brings in spammers and people who were only interested in disrupting the community. With no formal controls, rec.games.go becomes a wild west shootout and is essentually unusable for the average Go player.
In the 2000s, there were a few attempts to compensate for the problems with rec.games.go. A very successfull wiki named Senseis Library was created to act as an online repository of Go information. This was very useful but did not satisfy the conversational need previously provided by rec.games.go.
About 2006 GoDiscussions forums was created by a single individual and quickly became the premier spot for Go conversations. The forums had moderators that kept spam, flaming and off topic under control. A very cohesive community collected there and it was very successfull. Late 2008, the owner stopped working on the site and became unresponsive. Features started break and the sit slowly degrated until it was almost unusable in the fall of 2009. At the end of 2009 a few users went on a crusade to raise money to move rehost the site. Calls were made to turn the control of the site over to the community so that it could support itself. Early 2010 when all of the logistics were worked out the owner steps back in to reclaim the site and does execute the rehosting of the site bringing it back to a minimal level of functioning again. The majority of the community decides to stay hoping that the owner will take interest in the site again. But in mid April, the site fails. A partially complete replacement had been setup by another member of the community during the earlier problems with GoDiscussion at LifeIn19x19. Since the owner of LifeIn19x19 expressed a desire to open control to the community and even turning it over to the community if we can determine how to do that, a core of network developers, who offered services to GoDiscussions and were largely ignored, jump on LifeIn19x19 and brought it up to and surpassed the functional level of GoDiscussions in 3 days. Within a week that majority of the active participants from GoDiscussion had transitioned to LifeIn19x19.
What does the title "Stone Soup" have to do with all of this?
"Stone Soup" is parable that goes like this:
There once was a traveler who carried a large pot. He stopped for the night at a common traveler gathering spot, filled the pot with water, put it on a fire, added a single stone and sat back and waited.
Shortly, another traveler stops by and asks "What are you doing?"
The first traveler, says "I am making stone soup. It is the most delicious soup you could ever taste. If you want some all you have to do is contribute a small amout of food to the pot."
The second traveler decides to contribute a few carrots he is carrying for chance to try this mysterious soup.
This scenerio repeats with each new traveler that appears until there is about a dozen people, each who have contributed a small bit of food, waiting for the stone soup to be ready. The group starts various conversations while waiting, some singing and some telling stories.
After the meal, every traveler expresses thanks for the delicious meal, noticing how the stone soup was so much more satisfying than the little scrap of food would have been if eaten alone. Not only the combining of the food, but the spontainious creation of community.
The lession from this parable is that by creating a container and interest in a possibility, the possibility can easily and spontaneously appear. Life self organizing.
With rec.games.go there was a container and interest. Early on the community thrived. Later with no controls of what people can put in the container, a few started throwing in stick, mud, and even vile poisons. Thus the community was destroyed.
With GoDiscussions there was a container and interest. There were also controls to keep out the destructive contributions. But the owner failed to maintain the container, and when the container failed the community dispersed.
LifeIn19x19 improves on GoDiscussions with a shared access to maintain and improve the container. This should lead to a longer and more successful life for this community.
Enjoy your "Stone Soup".
Being a computer scientist working on computer networking I quickly can in contact with an emerging online Go community shortly after learning the game in 1984. In the mid 1980, the online Go community was centered aroud the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.go. At that time, Usenet consisted of a loose mesh of computers at universities and research labs in business which periodically connected with each other using dialup connections to transfer accumulated newsgroup articles and email. With this technology, information propagated relativly slowly through out the network. Newgroup postings were on the order of a couple a day. The population was small and a very homogonous demographic of technical people. With the Japanese Go culture of politeness, this community was very calm and friendly so it was not noticed that there were no formal controls or moderation on the content being posted other than an admonishment of being off topic by other posters. A public shame approach.
In the late 1980s into the 1990s, The dialup connections were being replaced by dedicated links and eventually TCP/IP networks. This sped up the comminucation and increased a population a little but the community did not change much in it's friendly flavor.
1991 saw the introduction of the first Internet Go Server. Knowing the developers personally, I was able to participate in the development and debugging of its first rating algorithm. These were very exciting times watching a new era being born. Control and content moderation was enforced by the owners of the Server with a few of the users being punished with banning or ejection from the server. Most existed peacefully with this, but a few felt that free speech rights were arbitrarily trampled.
Approaching the mid 1990s, when Al Gore invented the Internet, there was a steady change in the demographic on the newsgroups. The internet is starting to open up to people outside of universities and research labs and into the general public. Traffic increased, but since Go is not well known, the population on rec.games.go is still relatively polite.
In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, the population on th einternet and also the xposure to rec.gammes.go explodes. This brings in spammers and people who were only interested in disrupting the community. With no formal controls, rec.games.go becomes a wild west shootout and is essentually unusable for the average Go player.
In the 2000s, there were a few attempts to compensate for the problems with rec.games.go. A very successfull wiki named Senseis Library was created to act as an online repository of Go information. This was very useful but did not satisfy the conversational need previously provided by rec.games.go.
About 2006 GoDiscussions forums was created by a single individual and quickly became the premier spot for Go conversations. The forums had moderators that kept spam, flaming and off topic under control. A very cohesive community collected there and it was very successfull. Late 2008, the owner stopped working on the site and became unresponsive. Features started break and the sit slowly degrated until it was almost unusable in the fall of 2009. At the end of 2009 a few users went on a crusade to raise money to move rehost the site. Calls were made to turn the control of the site over to the community so that it could support itself. Early 2010 when all of the logistics were worked out the owner steps back in to reclaim the site and does execute the rehosting of the site bringing it back to a minimal level of functioning again. The majority of the community decides to stay hoping that the owner will take interest in the site again. But in mid April, the site fails. A partially complete replacement had been setup by another member of the community during the earlier problems with GoDiscussion at LifeIn19x19. Since the owner of LifeIn19x19 expressed a desire to open control to the community and even turning it over to the community if we can determine how to do that, a core of network developers, who offered services to GoDiscussions and were largely ignored, jump on LifeIn19x19 and brought it up to and surpassed the functional level of GoDiscussions in 3 days. Within a week that majority of the active participants from GoDiscussion had transitioned to LifeIn19x19.
What does the title "Stone Soup" have to do with all of this?
"Stone Soup" is parable that goes like this:
There once was a traveler who carried a large pot. He stopped for the night at a common traveler gathering spot, filled the pot with water, put it on a fire, added a single stone and sat back and waited.
Shortly, another traveler stops by and asks "What are you doing?"
The first traveler, says "I am making stone soup. It is the most delicious soup you could ever taste. If you want some all you have to do is contribute a small amout of food to the pot."
The second traveler decides to contribute a few carrots he is carrying for chance to try this mysterious soup.
This scenerio repeats with each new traveler that appears until there is about a dozen people, each who have contributed a small bit of food, waiting for the stone soup to be ready. The group starts various conversations while waiting, some singing and some telling stories.
After the meal, every traveler expresses thanks for the delicious meal, noticing how the stone soup was so much more satisfying than the little scrap of food would have been if eaten alone. Not only the combining of the food, but the spontainious creation of community.
The lession from this parable is that by creating a container and interest in a possibility, the possibility can easily and spontaneously appear. Life self organizing.
With rec.games.go there was a container and interest. Early on the community thrived. Later with no controls of what people can put in the container, a few started throwing in stick, mud, and even vile poisons. Thus the community was destroyed.
With GoDiscussions there was a container and interest. There were also controls to keep out the destructive contributions. But the owner failed to maintain the container, and when the container failed the community dispersed.
LifeIn19x19 improves on GoDiscussions with a shared access to maintain and improve the container. This should lead to a longer and more successful life for this community.
Enjoy your "Stone Soup".
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