Asymptomatic

Alex and I have been going back and forth in comments over the areas of our interest that overlap. In his recent post, he asks, "how long can organic communities self-moderate?"

I admit that I haven't read the Starfish and the Spider, although I did just one-click it into my Kindle, so it's doomed to suffer my analysis. Nevertheless, I had some comments about how leaderless organizations can thrive, particularly in open source communities, of which I happen to be a part of a couple.

Obviously, one of my passions is working with Habari and the people that have come together around that common goal. When we started, there were just four of us, each with various levels of ability and availability. I think you can pretty well call that "leaderless", since we all worked in tandem, and any small change any one person made was easily detected and reviewed by the other three. But as the project has grown, I think there is some kind of tragic irony in that the size of the operation inevitably leads toward a need for at least an informal management structure....

I'm currently at the airport in Las Vegas, awaiting a flight that starts boarding in 45 minutes or so. I figured I would take the time to write this now, because if I don't then I'll just say "forget it" like I always do, and then literally forget everything.

While I was in Las Vegas this weekend, I visited Blog World Expo. I don't even really know what Blog World Expo is. I mean, I know what it's supposed to be, but I'm not really convinced that it is what it purports.

I wouldn't be so bold as to say that social media is an illusion. That's very much not true, but I do think that people are prospecting in this space, not really knowing how to organize the people who are involved. Largely, they're preaching to the choir, or they're so paradoxically self-involved that they can't even see the "social" aspect of the industry that they're trying to form....

Ah, the heck with it. I don't write a lot about a whole lot here any more, because most of what I am excited to share revolves around Habari. But then, all of the people who talk about what to write about on a blog tell you to write about things that you have passion about. And I've never not done that, but I'm purposefully filtering out a lot of Habari stuff because I feel like my audience doesn't care. Which is just a weird thought. Anyway, no more of that madness.

Something that has been tryingly amusing lately are a certain type of email that shows up on the mailing lists. As I've mentioned to people in person a few times, Habari certainly isn't talked about as much as some other blog software, but I've been tracking the usual channels for Habari buzz, and there are usually 50 to 70 new people noticing Habari every day. Which I think is pretty good, and would love to see increase.

As a result of that ramp-up of attention, we're seeing an influx of new users. A lot of Habari's users are polyglots and English isn't their first language. So when folks start messages with, "Habari is bad," I am forced to wonder whether they're using their limited English skills as best they can, or whether they're coming from some other software and just looking to pick a fight. Either way, let's talk about a better approach....

On August 13, Berta, the kids, and I went on a cruise to the Caribbean. We made arrangements for this couple months ago via Carnival's website as our family vacation for this year. Our destination: San Juan in Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, and Grand Turk.

So on that Wednesday, we loaded our luggage into the car and drove to the port in New York City. We were running a little bit late because we had to drop off the house key with our cat sitter, and I was afraid we weren't going to make it, but we did manage to not "miss the boat". Nonetheless, that short delay did manage to affect our whole trip.

After dealing with the registration folks and boarding the boat, we were told that our state room was ready to occupy. So we went directly to our state room. What we should have done, is gone to the Phantom auditorium to watch the embarkation show. The embarkation show was a short show put on by the cruise director giving everyone the information they would need to know what was going on on the ship during the trip. Obviously, this was an essential bit of information that we somehow missed, and is really the only explanation I can see for why we hardly ever ran into any of the thousands of people who were on the ship with us....

I'm a subscriber to Pyramid magazine, and some days I think the only reason I have to do so is because it's an inexpensive, consistent flow of game news. It's because of articles like the one I read today that I fail to fathom why I continue to pay them at all when less expensive tripe can be obtained more abundantly from many other sources.

The article in question is available only to subscribers (sorry), but involves a game that I discovered while meandering around the exhibit floor at Origins. The game is Rock! by Out of the Box Publishing, and is one of the more interesting new card games I saw while at the game fair.

Here is the summary of what the article said about the game, Rock!, besides ranting for several paragraphs about the quality of the materials from which the game was built:

Sadly, the artwork and the tin are the best features this item has to offer. … Alas, Rock! doesn't really rise above its "source material," and the underlying game is an inexpensive way to pay too much for what amounts to a gimmick.

Not only does that make no sense ("inexpensive way to pay too much"?), but it's outright wrong. Let me explain what Pyramid completely overlooked about this game. more