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 8 Jul 2004 @ 00:31, by koravya. Visual Arts, Graphics
Sounds to me (Reads to me) like part of what’s going on here amongst the participants of the NCN blog-o-sphere, amongst the necessary preoccupations with global and national political and economic events, and the spirituality, art, and poetry and all that sort of thing that comes through, and the challenging intellectual revelations and go-arounds, are various this-is-what-my-day-was-like kinds of entries, which, within the context of the overall purpose and direction of this community, fits right in. Now and again are posted discussions about who’s participating and who’s not participating (who cares?) and how much these ones or those ones are or are not throwing logs on the fire. Always gotta be somebody prodding at the embers, stirring up another flame, and that is a good thing. From the point of view of someone who is half-in and half-out, I currently don’t feel like I currently have anything particular to say, so here is this little what-my-day-was-like ramble. What is this about? It’s about this is who I am, and I’m in here reading you people, you (hyper) active, to me, participants in this bonfire, and I want you to know that I appreciate you, even if I’ve got not much to say. That book of poetry and pictures was my thing. Whatever comes after that is pot luck. More >
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 7 Jul 2004 @ 16:50, by ming. Technology
Inspired by the experience at Blogtalk, in part with the 'backchannel' interaction, I can't help but brainstorm a bit on how better tools and organizing can make it better.
First I must mention that there's of course not any panacea in all this computer use that is going on in a setting like that. No guarantee that it is all useful. I'd really much rather have some really good dialogues and small group discussion, without any particular need for computers. But no matter what goes on, there are certainly ways it can be made more rich through the information infrastructure that supports it.
Somebody mentioned that at the previous conference it was new to have WiFi networking and that kind of thing, so it wasn't really used as intensively. But here people really used a bunch of tools that way, in a more active manner. Which means that it is a key part of the conference itself, and should really more formally be made part of the process. I.e. not just try to provide an open connection and leave it at that. But also establish the necessary feedback loops.
The presenters felt a little left out, as they couldn't see what people were chatting about while they were speaking. And the people who didn't bring a laptop felt left out. Or the ones who hadn't discovered the wiki and the IRC channel. Or those who didn't know how to get on IRC. Or those who didn't have Macs so they were missing a couple of the tools used, Rendezvous and SubEthaEdit. So therefore various people got various parts of it, but maybe not all they wanted. OK, the collaborative tools like the wiki are meant for tying the strings together, and people can now go and see notes, and can read other people's postings, to see what they might have missed, etc. But should it maybe be more formally organized? Like a designated note organizer, and somebody who archives the chat transcripts. Somebody who makes links on the big screen available in clickable form in one of the side channels. Somebody who gets questions from those channels back to the presenters.
Anu Gupta has some good comments on some of these things.
Another subject. Despite a number of supporting ways of knowing participants, like them having listed their names and blogs in a wiki page, it can still be difficult to keep track of who people are. It would be useful if there were a uniform list with profiles. Little pictures of each person, liking to a profile with who they are and their blogs, etc. The information is mostly there, but it is scattered in various places. Like, even if I have a link to somebody's blog, it might or might not tell me quickly who they are. I might have to browse around for a while, which takes attention away from other things. I've done events where we took a picture of everybody at the entrance, if they didn't already have a participant profile, and the list of people was made available, and could be checked afterwards. I learned that from Sergio Lub of Friendly Favors and it can work very well.
Presenters put up slides on a big screen. I'd quite likely want to click on their links, but I'd have to type them in first, and the slide has probably changed before I get them all. They could be provided in a side channel, for example by somebody who had the job of typing in all the links as they happen. Or, better yet, the slides on the screen are presented in real-time by a feed, so that I can both click on it, and keep it, instead of trying to frantically re-type it. OK, I don't know how likely it is that one can export PowerPoint to a feed, but it is an idea.
The idea applies quite well here that everything should be a feed, and everything should be aggregatable. There could be one overall feed that shows everything that is happening. Who's speaking, what are they showing on the screen, updates to wiki or to notes, new blog postings from participants, new profile information about participants, etc. Instead of having to jump around and refresh pages, looking for things that are changed.
Self-organization can be fun and useful, but can also be messy and distracting and waste a lot of energy on duplicating efforts and trying to find out what is going on. The experiences acquired can well point out what emerges as being useful, and those things could well be phased into a more organized and stable form. More >
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 7 Jul 2004 @ 10:17, by jazzolog. Personal Development
Part 1 of this topic has become a bit heavy to lift for those of us with dial-up Internet Service Providers. For those of you coming in from the outside, the link to that thread~~~ [link] You may prefer to continue the discussion here if you like or if convenient.
The photo is of a sculpture by Toots Zynsky (American, born 1951) and is titled Night Street Chaos, from the series "Chaos," 1998. It is made of fused and thermo-formed glass threads, 7 1/8 x 13 x 7 inches
Collection of the Tampa Museum of Art
To inquire after the truth, groping your way through the underbrush, is for the purpose of seeing into your true nature. At this very moment, where is your true nature?
---Tosotsu's First Barrier
If you realize your own true nature, you are free from life, free from death. But when the light of your eyes is failing, how can you be free from life and death?
---Tosotsu's Second Barrier
If you have freed yourself from life and death, you know where you will go. When earth, air, fire and water separate, where are you off to?
---Tosotsu's Third Barrier
I have a comment myself at this point which I shall post as the entry. I put "NCN Happiness" as the title to all this not because I was inviting further comment about the site itself, which is a topic many of us feel has been talked to death. However new people come in and are noticing things for the first time, so it is good for there to be an outlet for what they have to say. Nor did I put NCN in the title because I think a dogma of positive thinking power is insisted upon more here than anywhere else. The United States is full of it these days, and we have a legion of spin doctors to prove and enforce it. More >
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6 Jul 2004 @ 23:45, by ov. Preparedness, Self-Reliance
I've been getting a lot of pressure lately from a certain friend to "do something", it doesn't particularly matter what, or if it is relevant or significant, or if it is the right thing to do or the wrong thing, just as long as it is "doing something." I reply that I am doing something, I'm thinking, I'm reading, I'm analyzing, and once in awhile I write something and it goes out on the web. That doesn't seem to count, it's simply talking, he wants me to do something.
This seemed to be to be one of the central themes, or issues, in Hermann Hesse's "Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game", this differentiation between the world of mind and the world of action. Why is there such an animosity towards the intellectual? Why is it such a taboo to keep digging until you get to the root cause rather than running around trying to stomp out the symptoms? Why does something have to be empirical and destroyable before it is acknowledged as being an action?
Or we could talk about Hesse's book. I know that Ming already has a topic about a game that was inspired by this book, but we could talk about the main concepts of the book itself. More >
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 6 Jul 2004 @ 07:25, by scotty. Personal Development
If you were to ask me to describe myself one of the first things I’d say is ‘I’m quite a friendly person’.
For almost my whole life being ‘friendly’ has been a kind of a shield for me to protect myself from others with.
Some of the layers of this shield are dropping away now – little by little every day - and I’m just begining to feel a space in which I realise that I am becoming ‘enough unto myself’.
In this ‘space’ a more open and less fearful connection is happening - and yet I still see myself not being totally authentic and real.
Why the heck is this so difficult?" More >
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 5 Jul 2004 @ 17:29, by ming. Technology
Now, those of you don't go to tech conferences, or who haven't recently, might not be aware of how it works nowadays. In a conference that has a significant number of bloggers present it would now be completely unheard of if there weren't an open WiFi network in the conference room. Which means, essentially, you open your laptop and you're on the net. Which means that about one out of two people there has a laptop running. The lucky people who manage to grab a seat at the two rows of tables at the front can actually sit at a desk and are most likely to be able to plug in. And now, this is suddenly a different kind of audience. They look up people's URLs right away, they browse the scheduled program, reference materials, check the validity of what people are saying, and share maps for the suggested lunch locatioin. There's a wiki with information about participants, which anybody can update. There's an IRC chat channel, so one can talk to each other, both people who're there, and those who watch the live feed at home. People on macs (more than 1/2) automatically see other people there on iChat, and can collaborate on writing notes in SubEthaEdit. If people are bored with the presentation, they check their e-mail or browse the web for totally unrelated things. A bunch of people blog live right there. I.e. they write about what they hear, and have often posted about a talk before it even is done. Based on the trackback mechanism, others can see which weblog postings have happened that refer to the conference, right away, and will most likely have read it shortly after it appears.
Is that all useful? In many ways it is. It provides more channels of information, and makes what otherwise would be a one-way speech into something more interactive. You can discuss amongst yourselves, voice your opinion, your disagreements, provide contrasting information, etc. You can also miss half of the talk, of course, but somehow you're likely to get it back from other channels.
It doesn't always work. The net connection was obviously rather overloaded here half the time. And people now take it so for granted that any problems tend to be met with a lot of comments and postings about the outrage of providing only a spotty connection.
Anyway, those of you who go to these things know all this of course, so this was more for the benefit of those who might consider such a format strange and unexpected.
More from another angle from another participant, Suw Charman, here.
Wien in general has excellent public connectivity. There are a large number of open WiFi networks. You can sit down at many cafes or squares and plug directly into the net for free. And this hotel I'm at has a free network you just plug into. Many other cities could learn from that.
OK, I did have some problems at first. I had somehow packed a little quickly, and somehow got off without an ethernet network cable, and I somehow grabbed the U.S. type power cable for my laptop, without getting a converter plug. So the first evening I couldn't get into anything. I tried some of the public nets, but the one at the nearby Museums Quartier was incidentally down at that time, and when I found one by a McDonalds, it turned out to be one of those one had to register for, even though it was free, and I couldn't get the code without an Austrian cellphone. But I got all that remedied in the morning, after a quick trip to a computer store. More >
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 4 Jul 2004 @ 09:55, by quinty. Violence, War
For you students of human nature who may be attempting to reasonably comprehend the madness in Iraq here’s a thought provoking piece by David Mamet, the playwright.
Here’s the piece: Bring It On
Violent Movies - And War Movies - Give us the Thrill of Victory. But What Happens When War Becomes a Reality? by David Mamet
Hunger, a study for the Love Peace Hate War murals by Luis Quintanilla
And here, if you’re interested, are some comments: More >
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 3 Jul 2004 @ 10:28, by jazzolog. Music
you ask why I perch on a jade green mountain?
I laugh but say nothing
my heart free like a peach blossom
in the flowing stream
going by in the depths in another world not among men
---Li-Po
The final mystery is oneself....Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
---Oscar Wilde
What I am I am, and say not. Being is the great explainer.
---Henry David Thoreau
Singer Karrin Allyson digs in at the Great Bend Jazz Festival
This is an actual review of 4 new CDs, something I guess I should do more of given my lifelong interest in music. The title refers to an older generation's jazztalk to describe a female singer, specifically a girl who travels with a band---and in those days, that meant an orchestra of 15 men. In other words, a chirp is a jazz chick who sings...and clearly at first glance, as with much jazz slang, it looks neither complimentary or politically correct. Life on the road, particularly with a busload of men---even if every one were in superb emotional condition---is grueling work, and developing some kind of life with dignity in it is not always achieved. Perhaps because of this, and some of the casualties of such a life, to my generation lady jazz singers generally are treated with the highest respect we jazzfans can muster. More >
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 3 Jul 2004 @ 00:26, by nemue. Counseling, Psychology
This morning I was in one of my local shopping centres. I am off travelling tomorrow so needed to pick up a few things before I leave. I popped into the supermarket and came face to face with a sad looking man, he appeared to be African. I smiled (as I am prone to do) and his face lite up with this wonderful smile in return. He asked how I was – we exchanged a few words and each went our way. More >
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 2 Jul 2004 @ 21:04, by b. Liberty, Sovereignty
Well, this blog will take a different tack now. To present time USA 2004. I’d like to thank all of those NCN members who restrained themselves from commenting on my Saint Hill, Sea Org and Commodores Messenger Org(First Messenger) stories.
With these next entries please feel free to comment. The Earth we live on is precious. She nurtures all needs. More >
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