Being Observableculture, environment, habit

Jon UdellTUG2010October 2010http://jonudell.nethttp://delicious.com/judell/tug2010

“The women could bring their crafts out into the communal yard, to chat and help one another as they worked and watched the children play.”

“The children, in turn, could play at helping, pretending to do what the big folks do, as children will. ”

“Such play can function as a sort of vocational kindergarten, teaching the children the basic steps in processes that they will have to master in earnest later. ”

He drives to the office in the morningand comes home at night.1960

2010(imagined)

what does daddy do for work?

You can see for yourself! It’s all online! But basically he writes articles and software, and …

2010(actual)

He sits in his office at home and talks on the phone and types on the computer

JL: My father documented his work in the arts and trades. He was a commercial artist through the 20s, then shifted into furniture and buildings at the craftsman/artisan level.

JU: And he left behind detailed logs of his practice?

JL: Yeah, detailed files of every project he ever worked on. So I learned that as part of my carpentry and woodworking, growing up in his shop, and continued it when I left his shop and came east to work on old buildings.

jim mcgee: knowledge work as craft work

john leeke: craft work as knowledge work(corollary)

themes of john’s work (and mine)

narration of work

network effects

text, audio, and video

tacit knowledge

We've been using this tool since November, internally at UserLand. We shipped Radio 8 with it. When we switched over our workgroup productivity soared. All of a sudden people could narrate their work. Watch Jake as he reports his progress on the next project he does. We've gotten very formal about how we use it. I can't imagine an engineering project without this tool.

- Dave Winer, 2002

narration of work

tacit knowledge

tacit knowledge

what is it like to be a ________________?teacherfarmerprogrammerscientistdoctorsocial worker

joe gregorio

Theory Practice

jon galloway

“Hopefully it’s helpful to you, but I know that there are folks out there with some real skill at diagnosing application performance issues, and there are better debugging tools available, too. How would you go about diagnosing something like this?”

Troubleshooting an Intermittent .NET High CPU problem

chris gemignani

Task: Recreate a New York Times infographic using Excel

New York Times version Excel version

looking over chris’s shoulder

(mistakes included!)

why do many software people work observably?

we created, and are comfortable with, the technologies of observable work:

web publishing

blogging

microblogging

podcasting

digital video

tagging

syndication

our work processes, and products, are fully digital:

design discussion

source code

documentation

tests

executable code

we practice, and value:

feedback

iterative refinement

testable outcomes

If I type for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, for the next 44 years, that means there are 198M keystrokes left in my hands. That's a ceiling of 168M more words I can type in my lifetime.OK. So now, next time someone emails you ask yourself "is emailing this person back the best use of my remaining keystrokes?" Instead, consider writing a blog post or adding to a wiki with your keystrokes, then emailing the link to the original emailer.

but not all software people work observably

UPDATE: This is about reach and effectiveness vs. efficiency. If you email someone one on one, you're reaching that one person. If you blog about it (or update a wiki, or whatever) you get the message out on the web itself and your keystrokes travel farther and reach more people. Assuming you want your message to reach as many people as possible, blog it. You only have so many hours in the day.

(message not received)

(scott hanselman’s message re: “Count your keystrokes!”)

why don’t most people work observably?

“I’m too busy to blog”

“I don’t publish half-baked ideas”

“I don’t get paid to do it”

Subtext

Text

“I am not a performer”

an exception to the rule: lucas gonze

an exception to the rule: dan meyer

an exception to the rule: sal khan

not avoidable!

not observable!

friends

coworkers

an imaginary business awareness network

(from Shane Pearson, VP of Marketing and Product Management for BEA, via Phil Windley)

an open and syndication-enabled shared data space

feed<item> <title>Hawaii Reggae Guild</title> <pubDate>Sun, 03 Oct 2010 22:52:21 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.delicious.com/url/d107b1cb6d87eb32858daa7fa25b68a9#alohavibe</guid> <link>http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/usb3tucgslji5pdrfgf1luij94%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics</link> <source url="http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/alohavibe">alohavibe's bookmarks</source> <category domain="http://www.delicious.com/alohavibe/">trusted</category> <category domain="http://www.delicious.com/alohavibe/">ics</category> <category domain="http://www.delicious.com/alohavibe/">feed</category> <category domain="http://www.delicious.com/alohavibe/">category=music,reggae</category> <category domain="http://www.delicious.com/alohavibe/">url=http://hawaiireggaeguild.com</category> </item>

messagedata

feedurl: http://www.google.com/.../ical.basic.icscategory: music,reggae url: http://hawaiireggaeguild.com

John LeBlanc added a feedfeed to the Honolulu hub

messages to people, data for systems

another open and syndication-enabled shared data space

… items omitted …

ad-hoc webhooks

message from a person

messages from a computer

mashing up messages

actual webhooks