Corporate blogging's 4 issues

After readings (old) seb's and pete's blog about k-log, here's my summary of 4 corporate blogging issues:

1. Posting is not a problem. Organizing and reetreiving information _is_the problem.
2. Majority of people _don't_like writing.
3. Good, accessible writing isn't a common, well-distribued gift.
4. The zipf's law should apply to readership too (some writer will attrack most readers)

Excerpt:

* Posting the information is a small problem. Organizing and retrieving it is a big problem. We're working on a shared ontology and RDF metadata.
* Most people don't like to write. We've had a difficult time designing interfaces that encourage adding information instead of just reading.
* There's no substitute for good, accessible writing. We have several people who write consistently for the system. The logs show that postings from one writer get far more attention and prompt far more linking than those from the other writers. "

K-log as corporate blogging ancestor

Excerpt from "What is a k-log?" http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/old/123
Use of blog as a "brain-dump" of business knowledge (which is better than no record of knowledge at all)

Four execs buy-in immediate benefits of corporate blogging

1) People publish into K-Logs what they are doing often on an hourly basis. It is a great way to keep track of what is going on (coordination).

2) Archives. Given that K-Logs are public archives, this is particularly useful when an employee or consultant leaves a company. You now have a permanent record of what they did or didn't do. It also is an easy to use repository for people that need to find answers to specific questions or specific experts that can help them out.

3) It makes it easy to share information and get discussions going (which results in better ideas). K-Logs eliminate the barriers that prevent many people from posting to a discussion group. Everyone with a K-Log has a soapbox to say something. The best ones get links from all the rest.

4) New hires. New people or people that have been recently assigned to a project take lots of time before they can become useful. Much of that time is lost casting about for scraps of information that are useful. K-Logs make that easy. All you have to say to someone new is read all the team members K-Logs for the last two weeks.

Everything is there: thinking, files, e-mails, POV, and links.

Network (counter) effect

We all know - shouldn't we?- what is the "network effect", that it's the value of a network grows proportionately to the square of the number of users. Bob Metcalfe coined this famous law (know as Metcalfe’s Law).
Knowing that people prefer knowable over unknowable risks I was wondering how this affects Open Source Software.

A monopolistic position from the network effect like Microsoft's gives competitors, like Linux's (with a smaller network) trouble enticing customers to join its alternative network because it offers lower network value. Why? Because PC users value the ability to exchange files with other users without risk of compatibility problems. Of two choices, Windows or Linux, which give the lower unknowable risks dowside? For sure, it is biased since more people know Windows, so Windows' bugs are well known. Linux's bugs is like struggeling alone in a swamp of alligators. Really so threathful? bah, when you don't know everything's possible.

The large base of Windows users drives application developers to tailor their products to Microsoft first. This also creates greater value for the users of the dominant network. A network full of prorietary softwares. And despite what you may think of proprietary softwares, it will be always at the bleeding edge - as a matter of fact, paid developpers team will outbeat any voluntary progammer remote group. At least until they stop innovating, or new features stop to be useful - then open software can close the gap and win.

Network (counter) effect isn't a small disadvantage when trying to get new users to your (alternate) own network. Open source does gain power with the network effect, for sure. In other words, sometimes the Linux network, however large, produces little value, at least not enough (yet) to supperseeds Windows' one. We shall come back later to that subject...

The Power of Plausibility Theory

A new form of decision analysis is helping executive reevaluate risk management. In a nice PDF, Tim Laseter and Matthias Hild wrote a good introduction on what might be a post-bayesian statistics applied to business decision making.

Despite the mathematical proof defending the logic of expected value, in real world, we, human, aren't much rational when it comes to making decision. We all know (do we?) current right wing ideology pretend that the market is maid of rational users. If this was true how can we explain why we are so poor at picking the rational decision.

Let's face it. If in a coin toss, I offer you $100,000 on heads but you'll pay me $50,000 on tails, few of you will rush to take the wager. Although the expected value of this bet is a positive one, i.e. ((50% x $100,000) minus (50% x $50,000)) yield effectively $25,000. At least a logical machine would bet right away. For us, mere mortals, the potential downside - loosing $50,000 - is simply too great.

That is because we do use our instinct : "how much can I lose?" "What's the likelihood of a bad resulting occuring?". Logic isn't in the radar. What I like of Plausibility Theory is that it recognizes that we people choose knowable over unknowable risk rather than a simple examination of (logical) expected value.

This explains why we do weight more risk over expected value. And sometime backing up when something new is coming. Open Source Software evangelists should take note.

Ping value

So far, the name of the game is "ping" or, down to earth, "link". Blogosphere isn't so away from Internet old static page. That's why, posting (or blogging) will remain free but, be certain, linking/pinging/backtracking will worth bonanza soon.

We couldn't stop someone to publish. For any reason, he/she wants to, Internet is the universal repository of all (virtual) mankind,s knowledge (or at least written thoughts). But at one point, he/she would like to be read. Hence the ping value : posting to Internet would be like writing on the sand without any readers.

Writers worth nothing, readers do

A sustainable programming example

Here's a good description of an early adoption of a sustainable programming in the real world : programmtion durable. Ludovic is replying my own post about sustainable programming with a example of a previous work he did that fits well with is sustainable programming

I did reply that short term is something like 5 years. And to see 100 years ahead from now should really be part of the definition of what I call sustainable programming

The sustainable programming

The original post is here : La programmation durable. I use this seminal idea of "sustainable programming" to evocate how Open Source and Open Standards should be understood as a way to keep the code for the long run.

Sustainable programming is as well a process : code reusability, plan for updatability, modularity and iteration step. It isn't unlike "extreme programming", but has a smell of higher of purpose that include also such "applicative layer" as blog, wiki and Rss.