Cross-post

The first of what will be an ongoing series of technical video-casts from the founders of MindTouch. This short video provides a quick overview of the new DekiWiki “Hayes” architecture and explains some high level details of DekiWiki’s unique and powerful design.

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I've just returned from The Casbah. The Casbah is only a few blocks from my home and is the <alleged> "happening" club in San Diego for indie rock music. It's been around for quite some time and boasts a long list of made bands that have graced the stage. Initially I was impressed with the club. It's intimate with a maximum capacity of 200+, has two bars, and has a long entry hallway that provides a partial view of landing airplanes at the San Diego airport.

The first band up this evening was Silverbird. They were OK. Folk-rock is how I would describe them, but I was playing billiards in the other room and I didn't give them a proper assessment.

Next up was Get Back Loretta. Kick ass would describe them accurately. So too does "best unknown band". They were young, fresh, enthusiastic and authentic. The lead singer and bassist was passionate and charismatic to an extent rarely seen. The drummer was a bad-ass. He kind of looks like a white Webster.

Last up was the main event. San Diego's sweetheart Dirty Sweet. This is when the evening took a turn for the worse. The small venue packed with prissy teenie-bopper preppy girls with ass-crowns, fancy-night-out-garb, and unfit shoes for a concert, who must have been drawn by the Dirty Sweet's general handsomeness. Now, full disclosure, I appreciate music and I believe showing appreciation for the band is important. I do not stand docilely by while a band rocks the house. It's important to respect the band by showing your enthusiasm for the music. For me this typically takes the form of quasi-head banging and exuberant bouncing. Bands are most often very appreciative of my enthusiasm because it's regularly infectious. Dirty Sweet did rock and I rocked with them for a short time. Nonetheless the docile cattle-like audience that consisted mostly of the aforementioned prissy and preppy looking young ladies and their hipster boyfriends were not fond of any general enthusiasm. Therefore I left early. It's difficult to enjoy a band when those around you don't understand that bands, especially hard driving rock bands, want to be shown your appreciation.

Dirty Sweet has a good sound. Very Southern Rock. Perhaps not the most original, but I'm sure the pretty young ladies they seem to intentionally court will carry them through to, at least, regional popularity if not beyond. Don't get me wrong, Dirty Sweet really did tear it up and I only caught part of their first set. I recognize the band was probably still just warming up. I think the band has talent even if the lead singer seems to wear eyeliner. I left early out of disgust for the band's audience who were appalled by any modicum of enthusiasm and The Casbah's staff who were equally ridiculous, which, I suspect, is an indication of just how un-happening the place actually is.  

In summary, The Casbah is not as nice a venue as I was led to believe. I liked the venue's intimacy, but I was very turned off by the general conservativeness of the place. It seems to be in identity crisis. On one hand it's positioned as the edgy hard rocking venue that Nirvana once played in the late eighties and on the other hand it had a largely preppy audience that freaked out when anyone got rhythmic with the music. In fact, a gaggle of attractive, prissy young ladies insisted that they didn't want any "hippy dancing" around them and heralded a bouncer at one point who mindlessly obeyed them to reign-in enthusiastic audience members. I'll give both the venue and band another chance, but my initial experience was not that positive However, Get Back Loretta is definitely worth catching. Sure, they're not as generally handsome as Dirty Sweet; so, you might not see as many prissy young ladies, but they were original and enthusiastic in a Modest Mouse sort of way.

I grew up in Morgan Hill, CA. It’s just south of San Jose. When I was a kid Morgan Hill was mostly orchards and fields. My family's home was nestled at the base of the Santa Cruz mountains just north of town. There were lots of plum orchards, grape vines, lettuce fields, and other agriculture. I just came across the following Morgan Hill public service announcement from 1938 that played at the old Granada movie theater.  Watch the video. It's about local businesses. The only business I think that's still in operation today is Guntner Brothers feed store. The business that stood out most to me was "Morgan Hill Sanitary Bakery". If I recall this put out of business  the "Morgan Hill Contaminated Bakery".

The last time I was in a theater with my father was at the Granada. It was "Ground Hog Day". Great movie. That was also the year I graduated from high school. Cool movie. Thanks a bunch to the dude who posted this on YouTube. Also, thanks a bunch to Stephen Musgrave & Tim Roach who are the two dudes who run the Live Oak Alumni Network, which is how I indirectly learned of this video.

I just had one of the most enjoyable weekends I can remember. I wasn't traveling. I even had an entire day with nothing planned. Most of all I just had a great time with my girls. San Diego is lovely as always. It's been in the 80s F for the last couple of days. On Sunday the family went to Baby Loves Disco. This is a national phenomenon that's now in over twenty cities. Hip night clubs are transformed for an afternoon into a child proof discoteque for toddlers, pre-schoolers and parents. It's a DJ spun affair with bubble machines, a play room, snacks, hair stylists, masseurs, and yes a full bar. It was…how shall I say…kick ass.

 

The event was held at Aubergine in the Gas Lamp, which ordinarily is a place far too hip for me to set foot in. In front of the club the velvet ropes that would normally wind the line of clubbers around the block instead formed a protective barrier for dozens and dozens of baby strollers. I can't believe I didn't take a photo of it. Tara, Ashby, and I were accompanied by Mitch, Magda, and Xander. Inside the club there were toys strewn about, several kid sized tents, books, silky sashes, and noise makers. We were in the front third of the club for the about forty-five minutes before we even realized this was only the play room and the disco dance floor was actually in the back of the establishment. I was stoked by the play room, but the disco floor provided even new wonders for Ashby and Xander. Bubble machines, a DJ, and a wall sized projection of wildlife. The place was packed and the event organizers seemed to have their hands full. There were several event sponsors. These included the The W Hotel, Metromint, Baby Legs, Rattle-N-Roll, and Black Wagon. Tara and I left the event with five or six pairs of Baby Legs, which were being used by almost the entire Aubergine staff as a fashion accessory. I almost bought some of these a few weeks ago off the website for Ashby. I'm glad I waited, free is better.

If you have a Baby Loves Disco being organized in your town and you have little ones, go. If there isn't one organized yet, start it.

I was recently notified that I'm currently being honored with a photo in Sitterson Hall, which is the Computer Science building of my alma matter UNC Chapel Hill. You can see the photo to the right. I'm holding up one of our early DekiBox prototypes. This was before the front had a custom chrome bezel and before our primary focus was on MindTouch Deki the software appliance product. The photo was taken in September, 2006 at the DEMOFall conference. I'm really flattered by this. I've been in some newspapers and magazines, but nothing beats being on the wall of Sitterson Hall. A place I spent many many all-nighters sweating blood, studying, and writing code.  I'm not sure who suggested they put up a photo of me, but thanks to whoever it was. This is very cool.

I just returned from NEXPO, which I'm told is the largest newspaper conference. The exhibition floor was the largest I've ever seen. There were several huge printing presses there. The event was definitely different from the conferences I'm accustomed to attending. There may have been five geeks in total. It was entirely business and traditional media types and I've been on the road so long I haven't had a chance to get a much needed haircut. 🙂  I did have a great time. We were demoing MindTouch Nexus (see press release below). MindTouch Nexus is a wiki based community service geared to online media, publishing, newspapers and ecommerce. This provides the third component readers expect from online media and newspapers when they visit their website or online properties. Already these sites have trusted editorial content. They're also fulfilling the syndicated content requirement. With Nexus they can provide what their readers are demanding: the ability to participate in a very real way; specifically, in the creation of the most comprehensive encyclopedic directory of local resources. This is about getting the community involved in helping to create the most comprehensive hyper-local content repository.

We presented two properties at Nexpo: AmplifySD and the Orlando Sentinel Wiki. The AmplifySD site is almost certainly already the most comprehensive resource for local music, bands, and venues in San Diego and will continue to grow. The Orlando Sentinel Wiki is a generic proof of concept site we launched in just a few days prior to NEXPO, but it's been very well received and already has some great hyper-local content.

There was a ton of talk at the conference about hyper-local content and empowering communities. Most traditional media outlets are beginning to understand the need and value of this. Newspapers are realizing they have to own the local content space if they wish to be viable. Other online media, publishing, and ecommerce sites are realizing the power and benefits of enabling a community. Most of the folks I spoke with at NEXPO either have blogs and forums attached to their web properties or are just now beginning to launch these tools. Blogs and forums are a great start, but a wiki makes a lot more sense if you want to encourage participation, and if you want to own the local content space.

Blogs are great for one person or a few people to publish to many readers. This is really about providing a rapid publishing tool mostly for featured topics and enabling your audience to comment. This is great for reviewers, critics, etc. However, this enables very limited community participation (comments only) and information is only able to be presented anti-chronologically. This is to say that the most relevant information is always the newest. In reality blogs are a single thread forum engine. Forums are wonderful for question/answer kind of topics. However, forums too are limited to an anti-chronological information architecture. Both forums and blogs quickly become difficult to navigate and find what you're looking for. Neither technology is suitable to collaborative authoring or developing a reference site. Enter wikis.

Wikis are wonderful for online collaboration and are the obvious choice for developing reference sites. Take Wikipedia for example. Newspapers that deploy wikis can provide a very useful service to their readers. They can give them the opportunity to participate in creating the most comprehensive encyclopedic directory of local resources. This benefits everyone. Newspapers can't do this alone. They couldn't afford it and it wouldn't be authentic. Moreover, the community would have difficulty creating a "localpedia" without the help of the newspapers. Newspapers can provide the infrastructure, editors and journalists to assist in shaping the quality of the content, the very important initial or seed content to get the wiki started, and an incentive for local businesses and community members to participate. It's a mutually beneficial partnership.

For newspapers a "localpedia", whether topic specific or generic in nature, might be the holy grail with which they can empower, reward, and benefit from citizens' input. Local businesses benefit by having a medium to make their presence known on a contextually relevant basis to readers who are seeking their services. Readers benefit by having a useful and comprehensive encyclopedia of local events, businesses, history, places, sports, and whatever else. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be vacationing in San Diego and to have a wikipedia like resource of local events, places, and historical reference at your finger tips to guide your planning?

I mentioned previously a "localpedia" that might be either topic specific or generic. I think this is keenly important because the more narrowly you focus your "localpedia" the less seeding of content is required. For example, the AmplifySD site focuses solely on local music, bars, bands, and venues. The San Diego Union Tribune only had to seed content on these topics. It's critically important for them to do so because when readers/participants visit the site they need a framework to operate in; otherwise you run the risk of confusing them. The San Diego Union Tribune is launching many narrowly focused "localpedias" using MindTouch Nexus. Also, by focusing the topics there is a lower barrier for the users to contribute–they have to think less. Moreover, if they've arrived at a narrowly focused "localpedia" they've almost certainly done so because it's a topic that interests them and the content is focuses solely on this topic; therefore they'll be more inclined to participate.

NEXPO 2007

MindTouch Nexus is a turnkey hosted service that integrates with SignOnSanDiego’s website and publishing system. It enables SignOnSanDiego readers to easily contribute content on subjects that interest them and collaborate with other readers and editors with an intuitive WYSIWIG editing tool. They can post text, images, video and MP3 clips. MindTouch Nexus provides many tools for SignOnSanDiego editors to manage how user-generated content can be blended with editorial and syndicated content on the site. Pages can be set to edit, comment or read-only mode, and are indexed and linkable, searchable and taggable. Contributions can be submitted on their own or in context of an article or other editorial content.

“We believe MindTouch Nexus will generate large volumes of fresh content which will in turn build traffic, increase the ability to post more targeted advertising and deepen our connection with the dynamic San Diego County community,” said Chris Jennewein Vice President, Internet Operations of Union-Tribune Publishing Co. “The need to harness user-generated content is the new reality for all online media, and MindTouch Nexus provides us with a powerful tool to fulfill that need in a controlled way.”

The agreement with SignOnSanDiego calls for a continuous rollout of sites and topics, starting with AmplifySD (www.amplifySD.com), a site dedicated to the vibrant and influential San Diego music scene. Visitors to the site can post articles, images, video and MP3 clips of their favorite bands, and i
nclude their history, music reviews, tours, discographies and more. MindTouch Nexus provides a central platform for music lovers to edit or comment on each other’s contributions and interact with the musicians and others involved in the business. Its targeted launch is in May, 2007.

“We selected MindTouch due to its extensible technology, customer-friendly business approach and business model,” said Ron James, Content Manager of SignOnSanDiego. “MindTouch Nexus does not require any capital investment or large upfront expenditure, and is immediately deployable with an attractive pay-for-performance model. All these factors made its selection easy for us.”

“We are proud to have SignOnSanDiego, a well-known innovator in the online media world, as our launch customer for MindTouch Nexus,” said Ken Liu, MindTouch’s CEO. “We are excited by how their long-term vision for community-generated content meshes with our capabilities, which we will showcase in a continuous stream of new features and launches in the coming months.”

Why would a newspaper, online publishing/media, or ecommerce site use MindTouch's technology over the countless open source wikis and few other commercial vendors out there? There are many reasons why MindTouch Nexus makes the most sense. Visit www.MindTouch.com for a complete picture or contact MindTouch directly (866) MindTouch or (866) 646-3868. I'll mention just a few reasons why Nexus is the best choice here. The first reason is that MindTouch Nexus is a platform that has been specifically designed for the needs of this space–it's completely customizable and easily integrated with existing systems. The product is vendor backed and you have multiple support options. MindTouch Nexus and other MindTouch wiki products are the most easy to use in this space and this means the barrier to participate is dramatically lower than other offerings. Try out the competitions' offerings and you'll undoubtedly agree. Also, and perhaps most importantly, MindTouch Nexus is designed to make it very easy to integrate with other systems. Not just for things like single-signon, but also to weave the community content into the editorial content and vice-versa.

The following are the three most asked questions about MindTouch Nexus at NEXPO:

Will we have to change our existing systems? Absolutely not. MindTouch Nexus is easily integrated into all of your existing systems and MindTouch can turn on a new in a few hours to a few days depending upon the level of integration and customization. None of your existing technologies or tools need to be changed.

If I launch MindTouch Nexus as a hosted service does this mean I will have new or different traffic analytics, different ads, and will I still get traffic rank increases from this new property? MindTouch Nexus will integrate with your existing analytics, advertising engines and you will receive the Nielson or Alexa ranking for the traffic. If you're new to this space and need help with analytics or advertising MindTouch can help.

How do I control the community? Without getting esoteric on controlling a community I'll just state succinctly: MindTouch gives you very fine granularity in controlling who can edit what. You also have the ability to create trusted users that don't get put into moderation. Moreover, MindTouch has been doing this community thing for a while now and can help in establishing the best strategy to creating a successful deployment.

If you have more questions about MindTouch Nexus or another MindTouch product email sales@mindtouch.com.

PC World

I downloaded MindTouch Deki, which lets you collaborate on documents wiki-style. I expanded the archive and then double-clicked on the resulting file. The appliance booted its operating system, configured itself, and was ready to use in about a minute.

Looks like PCWorld picked up the MindTouch Deki piece too.

Macworld

Virtual Appliance: VMWare’s virtual appliances are fully configured and ready-to-run software programs—such as MindTouch Deki, shown here—that you can download.

MindTouch Deki was recently used to demo the new VMWare Fusion on MacOSX. I heard from some friends they had seen this in the print magazine. If I heard correctly, I also heard it was in a presentation somewhere. Very cool.

I just had the good fortune of meeting Ross Mayfield. I’m speaking on a panel with him at the Gilbane conference today. I introduced myself to him. I told him I was glad to finally meet him. He then proceeded to tell me that I am his "industrial troll". I don’t know what this means. He also told me that I am "full of shit", or maybe it was that everything I say is "bullshit". I asked him what he meant. He said everything I write on my blog is "bullshit" and "no one cares about me anyway". I asked him what he meant. He said "no one reads my blog anyway". I asked Ross what he thought was "bullshit" that I had written on my blog and Ross Mayfield said: "I’m a PR whore". I think he said "whore". He walked away from me before I could clarify. I wish I was popular like Ross, _sniffle_. Could someone clarify for me what an "Industrial troll" is?

Update

I finished the Wiki Executive Panel a moment ago. During the panel I was thinking: "what is an industrial troll"? Is this an insult? He did say: "You are my industrial troll". Maybe I misread his derisive tone and sneer. Uhh…I don’t think so. Also, someone who read the initial post thought Ross was asserting that I was a "PR whore", if in fact the word he used was whore (I’m pretty sure it was). No, he was asserting that I had called him a PR whore.

Anyway, Ross did a good presentation during the panel. He has some good things to say. He’s done a lot to move wikis into the mainstream (we’re not there just yet). I appreciate this. He’s also a strong advocate of open standards. It seems, to me anyway, that Ross and I should get along. We have similar interests. I get along quite well with every other wiki vendor I’ve met. Mike at Atlassian is super cool. Isaac Garcia at Central Desktop is witty and fun. The guys at eTouch are cool. I just spoke with a dude from iUpload, really nice guy. Customer Vision–what’s her name–is really funny and nice. I guess I’m not "cool" enough for Ross. By the way, Ross again asserted Socialtext was the first Wiki company. I’m pretty sure he’s wrong about this though. I think this title goes to either Customer Vision or Atlassian. However, I will assert MindTouch is the bestest! 😉

This is a cross-post

Steve and I have been tossing about this idea for an Open Web for some time now.

What is Open Web?

Open Web is a collection of technologies and standards that enable individuals to disclose their identity, feeds, activities, friends, and social networks, while preserving their ownership over this information and enabling them to keep their privacy.

What is NOT Open Web?

Anything that is proprietary, locked in in format or provider is NOT Open Web.  Open Web is about open, extensible, and license free standards.

In short this is a collection of technologies and open standards that enable individuals to disclose their identity, feeds, activities, friends, and social networks, while preserving their ownership over this information and enabling them to keep their privacy.

The goals are to enable you to:

1. Claim who you are without being locked into a proprietary stack (i.e. you own your identity)
2. Reveal as much or as little about your identity as you like
3. Associate feeds with your identity
4. Associate other identities with your identity
5. Claim membership of social networks, associations, groups, and other collective structures
6. Act as a repository of your activities, attention, and content

This will all be built on existing, open standards. The following lists technologies that are being considered as building blocks for Open Web.

• OpenID for identity
• Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) for activities
• FOAF for personal information and information about relations
• OPML for feeds

You can think of this as the nexus of your identity. You own it. You can take it with you in a simple XML file and anyone could write a client that will give you some very cool benefits based on this. I’ll not get into too much wand waving about what this will/can enable just yet, but just use your imagination for a moment. The social network becomes implicit to the Internet itself. No need for these walled garden social networks. Your identity isn’t being sprinkled about countless buckets in which you have no control. Content is mobile, Identity is mobile. Later we’ll talk about how behavior can be mobile too. The user is in control. Ok, enough wand waving for now.

I spoke with Elizabeth Churchill about this last month at Community 2.0. She’s brilliant. She immediately plucked from thin air an analogy about getting directions in Japan. Beware, I’ll likely get this partially wrong. In Japan it’s the case that directions are often given at different levels of granularity. So, when you get directions you get to the region, then you get regional directions, then you get local directions. etc. Applied to a person’s identity or content this is powerful stuff.

If you know of me you likely know I live in San Diego. If you have met me you know I live in downtown San Diego, maybe even that I live in Little Italy. If you came looking for me in Little Italy, because I’m pretty extroverted, you may find someone who could tell you I live on Kettner Blvd. But you’re not going to know my building our condo number unless I want you to know it or you shake down a good friend of mine. Unfortunately this is not currently the case on the Internet and we really need this.

We need to be able to own and protect our identities. Also the same is true for our content. For example, I don’t want everyone to have access to photos of my daughter. I want to be able to stipulate if you can view my content, how you can use, or reuse my content. All of this is especially prescient in light of the recent Kathy Sierra…uhhh….I don’t even know what to call it…incident. Here are the official statements, and here and here two posts from Sierra.

Steve and I have some ideas about how an Open Web can improve the current state of affairs, perhaps even solve some of these fundamental problems with online identity and our content. Some of the interesting side-effects will be baking a social network into the fabric of the Internet, making it possible to more easily layer Semantics, giving an infrastructure that would enable us to discover (and be discovered by) services, and as previously mentioned this will make content more mobile than ever, identity mobile for the first time, and even make behavior mobile. We’re not inventing a lot of this stuff. We’re just cobbling it together. Sound interesting? It damn sure should. Let’s start talking. It’s time for an Open Web and the technologies currently exist to make it a reality. We propose an Open Web Iniative realize this dream and we’re actively putting this together. We want help. We just launched a public wiki on the topic here. We’ll be fleshing this out as quickly as we can. It’s a busy month ahead for us, but this is too important for us to sit quietly any longer.