<%image(20080327-Howarde_Avatar.jpg|230|201|Ceci n'est pas Howard)%>There’s a photo of me in the current Information Week. Only it isn’t a “photo,” and it isn’t “me.”
Tag: snapshot
Collaborative initial connection
Sometimes someone tickles a bug, and you find you cannot connect to the Collaborative at all. I that happens, send mail to croquetcollaborative at charter dot net and we’ll reset it.
But even when things are working, it can often take as much as three or four minutes to connect. Here’s why.
KAT positioning
I don’t get to spend as much time as I’d like on the Collaborative for Croquet, but I’m still pleased with progress on our software. A lot of people are trying it out from all around the world (ain’t the Internet grand?), and it’s standing up pretty well. Time to clarify expectations. (The punchline at the end is that you have use the latest version.)
User-Added Value
It is a popular misconception that technological progress happens in a user-driven way, by “finding a need and then finding a way to fill it” as the inventor in the animated movie “Robots” says. My interpretation of Kuhn is that true paradigm shifts come from a radical concept that comes first and then gets matched to a following, often in the form of solving a problem, but sometimes through what is essentially fashion.
You’d be amazed at how many technologies are developed without actual users at all. Most of these technologies fail, of course. One needs users, but shouldn’t be entirely need-driven. The best chance of success comes with an idea that is validated and refined by actual users.
I’m still trying to figure out what we’ve learned from our users, but initial thoughts are:
Inventing the Future: learning the system
Dear Diary,
I’m off to Japan Tuesday for the big conference. Better take a snapshot of what I’ve been doing, because I expect my world to change by the time I get back. My first six weeks on this radical Croquet project were spent with very general learning of what’s what. Drinking knowledge from a firehose. For the next six we’ve been prototyping some of the features from conference papers written by my boss, Julian, and his counterpart at U. Minnesota. We’re going to demo these at the conference, and we go on right after Alan Kay’s keynote address. Yikes. Good thing Julian gives great demos! I imagine the conference organizers know that and put him in that slot accordingly. (Cast of characters here).
[details below the fold]
-
Collaborative initial connection
Sometimes someone tickles a bug, and you find you cannot connect to the Collaborative at all. I that happens, send mail to croquetcollaborative at charter dot net and we’ll reset it.
But even when things are working, it can often take as much as three or four minutes to connect. Here’s why.
KAT positioning
I don’t get to spend as much time as I’d like on the Collaborative for Croquet, but I’m still pleased with progress on our software. A lot of people are trying it out from all around the world (ain’t the Internet grand?), and it’s standing up pretty well. Time to clarify expectations. (The punchline at the end is that you have use the latest version.)
User-Added Value
It is a popular misconception that technological progress happens in a user-driven way, by “finding a need and then finding a way to fill it” as the inventor in the animated movie “Robots” says. My interpretation of Kuhn is that true paradigm shifts come from a radical concept that comes first and then gets matched to a following, often in the form of solving a problem, but sometimes through what is essentially fashion.
You’d be amazed at how many technologies are developed without actual users at all. Most of these technologies fail, of course. One needs users, but shouldn’t be entirely need-driven. The best chance of success comes with an idea that is validated and refined by actual users.
I’m still trying to figure out what we’ve learned from our users, but initial thoughts are:
Inventing the Future: learning the system
Dear Diary,
I’m off to Japan Tuesday for the big conference. Better take a snapshot of what I’ve been doing, because I expect my world to change by the time I get back. My first six weeks on this radical Croquet project were spent with very general learning of what’s what. Drinking knowledge from a firehose. For the next six we’ve been prototyping some of the features from conference papers written by my boss, Julian, and his counterpart at U. Minnesota. We’re going to demo these at the conference, and we go on right after Alan Kay’s keynote address. Yikes. Good thing Julian gives great demos! I imagine the conference organizers know that and put him in that slot accordingly. (Cast of characters here).
[details below the fold]