San Francisco – Page 6 – Eugene Eric Kim

Notable December Events

Published December 1, 2006 by Eugene Eric Kim

There are several notable events this month. Next week is Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) 2006B at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I’ll be speaking on Monday afternoon about Identity Commons. There will also be an Untalent show on Tuesday night, which promises to be spectacular. (LKV)

Starting Wednesday, December 6, Lisa Heft will be leading a three day Open Space Technology Workshop. Those of you interested in learning more about Open Space should really attend. Lisa’s a long-time practitioner and thinker, and she is very well-respected in the community. (LKW)

Allen Gunn and company are throwing a San Francisco Nonprofit Technology Center Holiday Party on December 13 at their new space on 1370 Mission. Anyone who’s ever been to one of Gunner’s parties know that this is not to be missed. (LKX)

Finally, Todd Davies and CPSR are sponsoring Technopolitics Camp in San Francisco on December 17. (LKY)

Happy December! (LKZ)

FLOSS Usability Sprint III

Published October 26, 2006 by Eugene Eric Kim

This weekend, Aspiration and Blue Oxen Associates are once again co-hosting FLOSS Usability Sprint III, the pre-eminent event for bringing usability to Open Source projects. This year, we’ve moved venues from San Francisco to Mountain View. Thanks to Google and especially Rick Boardman for sponsoring the event! (LET)

As always, we have a great set of participants, and it should be both productive and fun. What’s even cooler for me this year is that one of my projects, HyperScope, will be a participant. I love it when things converge! The other projects are Drupal, Social Source Commons, Socialtext Open, and Sustainable Civil Society. Really looking forward to it! (LEU)

Something Special in St. Louis

Published October 20, 2006 by Eugene Eric Kim

There’s something special brewing in St. Louis, and it ain’t Budweiser. My side of the story begins in the Bay Area. We’ve got this special culture here in California. It’s a culture of openness, of collaboration, of entrepreneurship, and of tolerance. Combine that with a wonderfully diverse and intellectual community, and you get a tremendous amount of good vibes and innovation. The Bay Area is so wonderful, most of us don’t see any need to go anywhere else, and those who do often experience severe culture shock. Yes, Virginia, not everyone is like us Californians. (LBJ)

In some ways, that’s a good thing, but in many ways, it’s sad. True, California is beautiful. True, the people here are brilliant and wonderful. But, there are brilliant and wonderful people who live outside of California, and there’s no reason why those folks can’t enjoy the same community vibe that we do out here. The Internet allows us to transcend geographical boundaries and form a virtual community with a similar vibe, but it still pales in comparison to the experience of being physical immersed in this type of environment. The barrier to this sort of vibe emerging in a geographical community is usually culture. (LBK)

Is it possible to shift the culture of a community (or an organization) to be more collaborative, more tolerant, more innovative? Absolutely. It’s not easy, but it’s possible, and like all great things, it starts with great people, and it has to start small. (LBL)

St. Louis has these ingredients as well as a growing consciousness about what is possible. The right people are there, and they are starting to discover each other. If this growing community fosters these opportunities, a wonderful prairie will emerge. (LBM)

This past Wednesday, I did my part by co-facilitating the first gathering of the St. Louis Collaboratory, which was formed by Kellee Sikes and three of her colleagues (Mark Richman, Donna Mickens, and Valerie Hartman). (Pictures from the event.) The gathering was modeled after the “Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration” (TCC) workshops I co-organized with Jeff Shults earlier this year in San Francisco. Kellee attended our second workshop, and enjoyed it so much, she decided to try and bring a similar experience to her community in St. Louis. (LBN)

(LBO)

Kellee, Mark, Donna, and Valerie recruited a fantastic and diverse group of participants. We had folks from both non- and for-profits, from large and small companies, from technology, health care, and organized labor. These people were thoughtful and open-minded. They came into the workshop with a healthy dose of skepticism, but also a willingness to play. What surprised me the most was that several of them had thought as deeply about collaboration as anyone else I’ve ever met. (LBP)

I learned a tremendous amount listening to this group and watching them work. I could write 50 blog entries about the things I learned, stories I heard, and insights I gained. (I’ll be happy if I manage three.) (LBQ)

At dinner later in the evening, I told several people that it would be a travesty if they did not continue engage with each other. You can do amazing things in a day. My goals were to expand their consciousness, to make them aware of each other, to start seeding Shared Language, and to give them an opportunity to experience a different kind of collaboration. We met these goals, but they barely scratch the surface of what’s possible. (LBR)

The opportunity is there. Kellee and company are planning another workshop in January, and hopefully some of the participants from this week will play a more active role in designing the next event. Moreover, there are complementary events cropping up in St. Louis. (LBS)

Through a serendipitous conversation with Jay Cross last month, I discovered Dave Gray, the founder of St. Louis-based XPLANE, which does visual modeling and facilitation. Dave introduced me to Matt Homann, a lawyer by trade who recently formed a company, LexThink, to organize more collaborative gatherings. Matt has been experimenting with a different kind of networking event in St. Louis known as Idea Markets, and the second one just happened to be this past Tuesday. It was an excellent event, and I’d encourage people from the area to go. This style of event is a dime a dozen in the Bay Area, but we rarely see the mix of people that Matt managed to draw. (LBT)

(LBU)

What’s different about St. Louis Collaboratory and events like Idea Markets is that they’re not about Drive-By Networking. They’re not about, “What can you do for me?” They’re about, “What can we do with each other?” That, my friends, is what collaboration is about. I’ll be watching these developments closely to see what emerges. (LBV)

An Evening with Danish Bloggers

Published August 28, 2006 by Eugene Eric Kim

(L3I)

You can’t truly know another country until you know its food and its people. Thanks to Thomas Madsen Mygdal, I had a chance to do both last Friday in Copenhagen. Many thanks to all of you who came (14 in all!) and shared your stories and good vibes (and restaurant recommendations). Evan Prodromou teased me later about having a Danish posse. Well, you all can consider me part of your American posse. (L3J)

I arrived in Denmark two weeks ago knowing almost nothing about the country, much less the goings-on there related to my professional world (other than Reboot). I left a week later, not only personally and culturally enriched, but also professionally enriched. There is a lot of interesting thinking going on in Denmark, and while the startup culture is not as active as it is in San Francisco or even other European countries, the desire to do with the group I met was very strong. That’s not always the case at these blogger meetups (which is why I generally avoid them, at least here at home.) (L3K)

The evening began casually (other than a minor mixup over the meeting place) with drinks at the Barbar Bar in Vesterbro. We then walked over to Carlton for an excellent dinner. I had told myself beforehand that I wasn’t going to stay out too late, but I was enjoying myself too much. The whole group shifted to Joachim Oschlag‘s place (which was conveniently just upstairs from the restaurant) for more beer and conversation. It was hyggeligt! (L3L)

Ah yes, hyggeligt. Hygge is a Danish word for… well, apparently, it’s hard to translate, and I’m not sure I fully grasp it. According to the English Wikipedia, hygge is equivalent to the German word, Gemuetlichkeit. Hygge denotes a sense of intimacy and closeness, and is often used to describe gatherings of people, where you share a sense of familiarity and fun with those around you. Think “hug,” but not as wishy-washy. It’s a sense of wholeness that comes from being around others, and there’s a strong association with the space that helps create this wholeness. You can see why I like this word. The notion of hygge resonates strongly with community, and I would argue that it’s a common pattern in High-Performance Collaboration as well as another aspect of Quality Without A Name. (L3M)

I’ve got pictures of the gathering buried in my Copenhagen Flickr set. Michael Andersen also posted some pictures as well as a blog entry. (L3N)

I can’t possibly do justice to all of the conversations I had that night, but here are some highlights: (L3O)

Reboot and Open Space (L3P)

A lot of these folks were intimately familiar with Open Space. A few of them knew Gerard Muller, founder of the Danish Open Space Institute and co-facilitator of the Open Space at WikiSym with Ted Ernst. Thomas had tried incorporating Open Space into Reboot a few years back, and it apparently did not work well. We talked a lot about success patterns in group process, especially hybrid processes. (L3Q)

One of the biggest challenges with network as opposed to organizational events, where your participants feel compelled rather than obligated to attend, is getting people there in the first place. Most people interpret “emergent agenda” as “no agenda,” and they treat such events as networking rather than learning events. This is exacerbated by the length of the event, which is optimally three days for emergent group processes. (See Michael Herman‘s Two Night Rule. I’m starting to realize that many people — even those who are very good at group process — are unaware of the forces underlying the Two Night Rule, and it affects the design process.) (L3R)

Framing the invitation is a critical component for circumventing this challenge, but it’s not easy. I urged Thomas and the others not to give up on more interactive processes, and suggested as a possible framing question for an event, “What could we accomplish together in three days?” I proposed linking such a Danish event with a similar one here in the States, perhaps associated with our “Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration” workshops. (L3S)

Semco SA (L3T)

Several people told me the story of the Brazilian company, Semco SA, and its CEO, Ricardo Semler. Semco is a remarkable study in decentralized, emergent organization. It’s a relatively large company, with over $200 million in revenue and 3,000 employees, and it’s aggressively decentralized and transparent. Employees set their own hours and salaries. Workers evaluate their bosses, and they regularly mix with others, regardless of projects, thus developing multiple skills as well as a greater appreciation for the many roles that are required to make an organization tick. It’s really an amazing story. Semler has written two books, Maverick and The Seven Day Weekend, both of which I plan to read. (L3U)

I did some followup research, and I was surprised to see how widely known the Semco story seems to be. I follow this space closely, and I also did a considerable amount of research on Brazil for my Brazilian Open Source adoption study published in May 2005, but this was the first I had heard of the company or of its CEO. It’s yet another example of the group being smarter than the individual. (L3V)

Knowing What We Should Know (L3W)

Speaking of which, I chatted quite a bit with Raymond Kristiansen, a vlogger, about how to get more people aware of the stories they should be aware of. It’s a very difficult question. On the one hand, the notion of Collective Wisdom does not mean that every individual needs to know everything. On the other hand, it does imply that we should be able to quickly learn what we need to know when we need to know it. (L3X)

We talked about the Featured Content pattern as a way of trickling up useful content. It’s an especially important pattern with blogs, which are great for tracking conversations, but — like Mailing Lists and forums — tend to obscure older, but still relevant content. (L3Y)

On a related note, Raymond also kicked my butt about not creating screencasts. I promised Raymond that I’d have my first screencast up before the end of September. There, it’s in writing now. (L3Z)

Alexander Kjerulf (L40)

I’m a little reluctant to single Alexander out, because I walked away profoundly affected and impressed by many people. Nevertheless, he and his blog, The Chief Happiness Officer, get special mention (not that he needs it; his blog is far more popular than mine!) and soon, a blog post devoted entirely to our conversations for two very important reasons. First, he recommended a number of excellent restaurants in Copenhagen, and we ended up eating at two of those together. (L41)

Second, every time we chatted, I found myself scurrying for my pen and notecards. It will take me three freakin’ years to follow-up with all of his stories and ideas, generated over maybe 12 hours of conversation. I plan on trying anyway, because there was a very high degree of relevance and profundity in everything he said. He is a plethora of ideas, knowledge, and — as his title implies — positive energy. I urge all of you to check out his blog, and to make an effort to meet him if you’re ever in Denmark. (L42)

People Encounters in Copenhagen

Published August 26, 2006 by Eugene Eric Kim

Last Friday, mostly recovered from my jetlag, I set out to explore Copenhagen in earnest. I began my day walking up Norrebrogade towards Assitens Kirkegaard, a public cemetery and park where Soren Kierkegaard, Hans Christian Andersen, and Neils Bohr are buried. All along Norrebrogade were small ethnic shops and places to eat. (L33)

I slowly ambled up the street, watching the other pedestrians go about their business, stopping often to window gaze. There were a number of Middle Eastern butcher-shops, and I stopped and stared at one of them. (What can I say? I love meat.) A few minutes later, I broke out of my trance and noticed a mother and her toddler son standing outside of the shop, seemingly waiting for someone. The mother was dressed in Muslim garb, with a long black dress and a striped head-scarf. The boy was watching me, and when our eyes met, he smiled. I smiled back and waved, then looked at the mother, who also smiled. (L34)

The next day, Soren Riis, a friend of a friend, took me on a fantastic walking tour of Copenhagen. Towards the end of the day, we came across a young woman on a bike, who stopped to let us cross the street. I looked at her and smiled, and she smiled back. Soren saw the brief exchange, and quoted another great Dane, Victor Borge: “The shortest distance between two people is a smile.” Thinking back to my encounter with the woman and her son, I decided on a corollary: If you can be smiled at by a young child and not feel your mood instantly buoyed, you are either not human or are severely emotionally repressed. (L35)

I was so enjoying my walk through Norrebro, I decided to walk past Assitens Kirkegaard and further explore the neighborhood. I finally circled back on Hillerodgade and started walking through Norrebroparken, a peaceful haven away from the hustle and bustle of the main street. I saw some magpies in the park and stopped to take some pictures. I had never seen a magpie before, and I wasn’t sure what they were at the time. As I concentrated on the near impossible task of getting a good picture of these birds on my pocket camera, I failed to notice a scruffy, older man approaching me. It was just after 11am, the park was mostly empty and enclosed on all sides, and he reeked of beer. (L36)

“Oh,” he said, “You can see the picture on your camera!” (L37)

I looked up and instantly tensed, but maintained my cool. “That’s right,” I responded, “this is a digital camera.” (L38)

“Remarkable!” he exclaimed. “And you’re taking a picture of our jacktals. Are you just walking around exploring then?” (L39)

“Yes,” I responded. “Copenhagen is a beautiful city.” I smiled when I said it, and the smile was real, but strained, bearing little resemblance to the easy, buoyant smile that had appeared on my face a few hours earlier. The old man said goodbye, then continued on his way. I felt a small pang of guilt. He had been pleasant and looked no scruffier than I often do walking around San Francisco, yet I had braced myself for the worst. Yes, he had beer on his breath, but this was Copenhagen, where everyone drank openly on the streets. I pride myself on my openness towards others, and when I meet strangers, I’m willing to assume that they are trustworthy, good people barring any evidence to the contrary. Then again, I also pride myself on my street smarts. (L3A)

I quickly shook off the guilt. I looked back at the man, who had walked away as quickly as he had appeared, took a few more pictures of the birds, then continued my exploration of the city. (L3B)