Calling the Lurkers from Out of the Woodwork

One of the accepted norms of social media behavior is that the ratio of producers to consumers is roughly in that same ratio as inspiration to sweat (something like 10:1). That means there are lots of folks who read our stuff but don't write back. Perhaps me and my logrolling doesn't earn a place on your own blogroll. But while you're not inspired to engage directly you may well respond in a more passive mode.

A new way to uncover the untold legions of closet taggers is a new gadget called Deliciousify. It activates in the results window by flagging own the number of instances where your blog is worthy of placeholder status. It doesn't give you the actual taggers and you need to drill down in native Delicious to meet your fan base.

Here are a few other means to find folks who connect with your opinions by tagging your posts:

I suppose that the shortest possible answer is Technorati. I've got to say that I'm consistently underwhelmed by its search capabilities and the slop that passes for its index. If you're not vigilant about your ranking your will be yesterday's news regardless of how timeless your views may be.

Actually the inanchor: syntax in Google is pretty exhaustive (unlike Google's reluctance to be a good social media citizen when it comes to supporting any meaningful form of link analysis research). If you enter your handle it looks like this:

inanchor:attspin

The problem is that if your blog is your twitter is your music site is your travel planner is your local business forum handle then you're no further along than a new point of maintenance for managing all your online identities vis-a-vis friendfeed. While its a capable platform for aggregating multiple streams it is also self-referential. You get your facial 'friendeds.' You get your network. But you miss the periphery. Those touch points that are united by the power of an idea, not a location, habit, or common affiliation.

On the aggregate level there many analytic tools that can decipher traffic patterns and run free diagnostics. One useful tool here is XINU Returns which performs a fairly thorough link analysis but nothin' doin' on the passive machine-to-human social media path.

One parting question here: do we engage directly the people our ideas connect to first? I think not. But depending on what else they're linking to you can always add them to your network on Delicious.

Calling the Lurkers from Out of the Woodwork

One of the accepted norms of social media behavior is that the ratio of producers to consumers is roughly in that same ratio as inspiration to sweat (something like 10:1). That means there are lots of folks who read our stuff but don't write back. Perhaps me and my logrolling doesn't earn a place on your own blogroll. But while you're not inspired to engage directly you may well respond in a more passive mode.

A new way to uncover the untold legions of closet taggers is a new gadget called Deliciousify. It activates in the results window by flagging own the number of instances where your blog is worthy of placeholder status. It doesn't give you the actual taggers and you need to drill down in native Delicious to meet your fan base.

Here are a few other means to find folks who connect with your opinions by tagging your posts:

I suppose that the shortest possible answer is Technorati. I've got to say that I'm consistently underwhelmed by its search capabilities and the slop that passes for its index. If you're not vigilant about your ranking your will be yesterday's news regardless of how timeless your views may be.

Actually the inanchor: syntax in Google is pretty exhaustive (unlike Google's reluctance to be a good social media citizen when it comes to supporting any meaningful form of link analysis research). If you enter your handle it looks like this:

inanchor:attspin

The problem is that if your blog is your twitter is your music site is your travel planner is your local business forum handle then you're no further along than a new point of maintenance for managing all your online identities vis-a-vis friendfeed. While its a capable platform for aggregating multiple streams it is also self-referential. You get your facial 'friendeds.' You get your network. But you miss the periphery. Those touch points that are united by the power of an idea, not a location, habit, or common affiliation.

On the aggregate level there many analytic tools that can decipher traffic patterns and run free diagnostics. One useful tool here is XINU Returns which performs a fairly thorough link analysis but nothin' doin' on the passive machine-to-human social media path.

One parting question here: do we engage directly the people our ideas connect to first? I think not. But depending on what else they're linking to you can always add them to your network on Delicious.

The Mets Warp Inside Citi Field Corp

At no point last week in my first visit to Citi Field did I connect to being a Met fan or being at a Met game. Based on the interchangable and coloreless feel of the place my Met host Garo and I boarded the 7 Train secure in the knowledge that unlike its naming rights-of-way this 47 year-old franchise is not too big not to fail.

Citi Field feels less like the new home of the Mets and more like a vist to a retro ballpark chain. You see it in the Disneyesque Main Street USA feel. The lighting is arranged in a bulb-like bouquet -- how quaint. How inappropriate. The homage to Jackie Robinson is fine as a traveling exhibit -- but not as a Met shrine. Considering the scale of his achievement it deserves a full entourage before coming to rest in Cooperstown, not Flushing.

Bal and I've actually visited two retro ballpark branches together --both which felt a lot more respectable and unique than this one (Camden Yards in '92 and PacBell in '99). Canuck praises Safeco and new Tiger Stadium for their local views both of the city and pride in their teams reminders. But if you ever believed in the "Orange and Blue" you can terminate this belief at the next Citi ATM.

I'm not nostalgic for Shea -- nothing that transparently reactive. But the pump-me-ups were complete artifice. And I'm lovesick mad for the community of Met legends that have been banished to the right field gate. Seaver, Piazza, Hernandez, etal. are not even in the building. They inhabit banners that suggest a passing reference to the backfold of an old game program:


National League Stars Coming Soon to Shea
-- but that means McCovey, Gibson, Aaron and Rose -- not the M-E-T-S Mets. Not the ways of Shea, indeed. Also, the end of the horseshoe design scheme brings two unwelcome changes:

1) You can't see out. There's no skyline. There's no bay. There's not even the Flushing junk yards to remind us of the ash heep that sprang into Phoenix-like action when the original fairgrounds were razed.

2) The PA announcements have the power to curb all spectator conversation like ... being indoors. Remember when we lamented the LaGuardia flyovers as rally deadoners? Well the park's been re-routed but there are no rallies left to deaden. Really.

The one fresh departure from symetrical stupor is an inverted richochet inducement in right field. If any live ball caught that carom, any self-respecting pinball point system would say 'game over.' Yes it's self-conscious. But a quirk is still a quirk no matter how storied the franchise or fertile the benefactors of new ballparks. No one's turning pre-retro any time soon.

At least not until the prequel but whose narrative will that be? Surely not the franchise I once knew.

The Mets Warp Inside Citi Field Corp

At no point last week in my first visit to Citi Field did I connect to being a Met fan or being at a Met game. Based on the interchangable and coloreless feel of the place my Met host Garo and I boarded the 7 Train secure in the knowledge that unlike its naming rights-of-way this 47 year-old franchise is not too big not to fail.

Citi Field feels less like the new home of the Mets and more like a vist to a retro ballpark chain. You see it in the Disneyesque Main Street USA feel. The lighting is arranged in a bulb-like bouquet -- how quaint. How inappropriate. The homage to Jackie Robinson is fine as a traveling exhibit -- but not as a Met shrine. Considering the scale of his achievement it deserves a full entourage before coming to rest in Cooperstown, not Flushing.

Bal and I've actually visited two retro ballpark branches together --both which felt a lot more respectable and unique than this one (Camden Yards in '92 and PacBell in '99). Canuck praises Safeco and new Tiger Stadium for their local views both of the city and pride in their teams reminders. But if you ever believed in the "Orange and Blue" you can terminate this belief at the next Citi ATM.

I'm not nostalgic for Shea -- nothing that transparently reactive. But the pump-me-ups were complete artifice. And I'm lovesick mad for the community of Met legends that have been banished to the right field gate. Seaver, Piazza, Hernandez, etal. are not even in the building. They inhabit banners that suggest a passing reference to the backfold of an old game program:


National League Stars Coming Soon to Shea
-- but that means McCovey, Gibson, Aaron and Rose -- not the M-E-T-S Mets. Not the ways of Shea, indeed. Also, the end of the horseshoe design scheme brings two unwelcome changes:

1) You can't see out. There's no skyline. There's no bay. There's not even the Flushing junk yards to remind us of the ash heep that sprang into Phoenix-like action when the original fairgrounds were razed.

2) The PA announcements have the power to curb all spectator conversation like ... being indoors. Remember when we lamented the LaGuardia flyovers as rally deadoners? Well the park's been re-routed but there are no rallies left to deaden. Really.

The one fresh departure from symetrical stupor is an inverted richochet inducement in right field. If any live ball caught that carom, any self-respecting pinball point system would say 'game over.' Yes it's self-conscious. But a quirk is still a quirk no matter how storied the franchise or fertile the benefactors of new ballparks. No one's turning pre-retro any time soon.

At least not until the prequel but whose narrative will that be? Surely not the franchise I once knew.

The Clarifying Power of Verbs

I notice that whenever I give my S-Y-N-C talk the note-takers reach for their pens when the discussion comes to verbs. The action-based taxonomy that I advocate is a simple and effective way to anticipate (and eliminate) some common barriers to enterprise architecture before we crash into them:

* Hair-splitting -- The chances for semantic quibbling over what to call stuff are greatly reduced when things become actions. There are many fewer ways of describing a predicate than a subject. The likelihood for shared agreements increases.

* User-centric -- Instead of fighting over what to call things an action-based taxonomy helps us agree on how and why our customers draw on our content supply.

* Reporting -- You can't plot the outcomes you're supporting (new IP, project requirements, business development) without building an architecture atop the actions needed to trigger those developments.

* 80/20 Rule -- If every 80/20 rule lined up in single formation they would all be parading to the battle hymn of mother necessity; that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In our marching orders action is the most telling of all metadata elements because it reveals those deepest and fleeting mysteries of all uncharted KM waters -- who wrote this sucker and who was their intended audience? Figure out that side of the shipping manifesto and: (1) you're 80% of the way from content supply to knowledge demand; and (2) your cargo gets unpacked. Why? Because it has an identity that speaks to users.

* Disambiguation -- Probably there is no greater praise for verbs than giving some long-delayed respect they deserve for disambiguation. Next time you hear yourself mutter: "use it in a sentence" tell me the word that drives you to the home of understanding isn't a verb. And while it may be their job that's no reason to overlook their vast powers of clarification.

The Clarifying Power of Verbs

I notice that whenever I give my S-Y-N-C talk the note-takers reach for their pens when the discussion comes to verbs. The action-based taxonomy that I advocate is a simple and effective way to anticipate (and eliminate) some common barriers to enterprise architecture before we crash into them:

* Hair-splitting -- The chances for semantic quibbling over what to call stuff are greatly reduced when things become actions. There are many fewer ways of describing a predicate than a subject. The likelihood for shared agreements increases.

* User-centric -- Instead of fighting over what to call things an action-based taxonomy helps us agree on how and why our customers draw on our content supply.

* Reporting -- You can't plot the outcomes you're supporting (new IP, project requirements, business development) without building an architecture atop the actions needed to trigger those developments.

* 80/20 Rule -- If every 80/20 rule lined up in single formation they would all be parading to the battle hymn of mother necessity; that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In our marching orders action is the most telling of all metadata elements because it reveals those deepest and fleeting mysteries of all uncharted KM waters -- who wrote this sucker and who was their intended audience? Figure out that side of the shipping manifesto and: (1) you're 80% of the way from content supply to knowledge demand; and (2) your cargo gets unpacked. Why? Because it has an identity that speaks to users.

* Disambiguation -- Probably there is no greater praise for verbs than giving some long-delayed respect they deserve for disambiguation. Next time you hear yourself mutter: "use it in a sentence" tell me the word that drives you to the home of understanding isn't a verb. And while it may be their job that's no reason to overlook their vast powers of clarification.

Enterprise Search Plummet

I take no satisfaction to in repeating back what one CEO from an Israeli startup told me but I had to agree: "complete meltdown."

He was referring to the lack of imagination, attendees, and reasons for showing up at Information Today's Enterprise Search Summit. Much of the dour story is told through realities that no event planner can possibly correct. I saw the low numbers at the Boston Gilbane show last December and that was sobering. Still given the strong concentration of media/finance/law/consulting communities in and around NYC I thought enough of a core group existed to attract the vendors and analysts -- maybe even some splashy announcements.

Nothin' doin'. No luminaries -- The Steve Arnolds, Sue Feldmans, Oz Benjamins -- all no shows. Even the vendor speakers seemed in a hurry to finish their sessions so that we'd have more time to mix. Precious little was said or speculated on concerning FAST and its place in the Microsoft search arsenal. Even less was offered in terms of SharePoint customizations, 3rd party tools, and what's worth planning for in the new release.

As an Information Today subscriber, contributor and speaker I have no incentive to trash their earnest efforts to stage an influential and instructive conference. It's equally true that I did get value from going. Even in a lean year I benefitted much from exposure to Lou Rosenfeld who I had interviewed but never seen shine in a conference setting. One of the keynoters, a guy named Jared Spool gave a spot-on repudiation to the vendors; that the search bar is not the common ally of the uninformed masses but actually a tool of last resort. The guy I was teamed with on the interface track, John Ferrara, laid out an astute and telling case for the suggest function.

That said perhaps it's time to rethink why we used to come each year. Maybe its time to consider how those reasons might be wearing thin while others that go begging could be answered in future forums?

For starters there's very little give-and-take between attendees in terms of first-hand feedback on their specific deployments. Why not an open mic night version for info-geeks? We could kick the vendors out (or they could forget booth-sitting and pay the sponsor for eavesdropping privileges.

Another improvement would be to attempt some prototyping among breakout groups that try to advocate on behalf of their mock project. Another team could shoot it down on numerous grounds and both teams could learn a thing or two about implementation politics that are not so obvious when sequestered behind your own firewall. Dave Snowden does a far better job of describing and staging this exercise in the Art of Ritual Dissent.

Finally if I put on my dust-laden vendor cap I can imagine how these gatherings could be used to test drive my MRD requirements: what user pains are consensus-forming and which ones only apply to fringe customers? Where should I aim my priorities for upcoming releases? A face-to-face test lab might do the trick.

Enterprise Search Plummet

I take no satisfaction to in repeating back what one CEO from an Israeli startup told me but I had to agree: "complete meltdown."

He was referring to the lack of imagination, attendees, and reasons for showing up at Information Today's Enterprise Search Summit. Much of the dour story is told through realities that no event planner can possibly correct. I saw the low numbers at the Boston Gilbane show last December and that was sobering. Still given the strong concentration of media/finance/law/consulting communities in and around NYC I thought enough of a core group existed to attract the vendors and analysts -- maybe even some splashy announcements.

Nothin' doin'. No luminaries -- The Steve Arnolds, Sue Feldmans, Oz Benjamins -- all no shows. Even the vendor speakers seemed in a hurry to finish their sessions so that we'd have more time to mix. Precious little was said or speculated on concerning FAST and its place in the Microsoft search arsenal. Even less was offered in terms of SharePoint customizations, 3rd party tools, and what's worth planning for in the new release.

As an Information Today subscriber, contributor and speaker I have no incentive to trash their earnest efforts to stage an influential and instructive conference. It's equally true that I did get value from going. Even in a lean year I benefitted much from exposure to Lou Rosenfeld who I had interviewed but never seen shine in a conference setting. One of the keynoters, a guy named Jared Spool gave a spot-on repudiation to the vendors; that the search bar is not the common ally of the uninformed masses but actually a tool of last resort. The guy I was teamed with on the interface track, John Ferrara, laid out an astute and telling case for the suggest function.

That said perhaps it's time to rethink why we used to come each year. Maybe its time to consider how those reasons might be wearing thin while others that go begging could be answered in future forums?

For starters there's very little give-and-take between attendees in terms of first-hand feedback on their specific deployments. Why not an open mic night version for info-geeks? We could kick the vendors out (or they could forget booth-sitting and pay the sponsor for eavesdropping privileges.

Another improvement would be to attempt some prototyping among breakout groups that try to advocate on behalf of their mock project. Another team could shoot it down on numerous grounds and both teams could learn a thing or two about implementation politics that are not so obvious when sequestered behind your own firewall. Dave Snowden does a far better job of describing and staging this exercise in the Art of Ritual Dissent.

Finally if I put on my dust-laden vendor cap I can imagine how these gatherings could be used to test drive my MRD requirements: what user pains are consensus-forming and which ones only apply to fringe customers? Where should I aim my priorities for upcoming releases? A face-to-face test lab might do the trick.