Jim Grisanzio

Nice time today at the Japan OpenSolaris User Group meeting. Check out this schedule — several sessions. Very cool that the JPOSUG is big enough now to have some break out sessions. There were about 45 people there, and what`s even better is that there were a lot of new people who stopped by. Building for the future. I did a short talk on community building and the upcoming website transition, and then there were some deep dives into OpenSolaris internals and installation with the Tokyo OpensSolaris Study Group. Some guys went out for a nijikai afterwards, but I didn`t. Gotta catch a plane to San Francisco tomorrow. 

Interesting little video about the world learning English. And check out China. My goodness. Are they motivated or what? They view learning English as pure opportunity. Very interesting perspective.

Last year when I went to OSDevCon in Prague and did some interviews as a life experiment. Seriously. I challenge myself from time to time, so I figured what the hell. I’m far from home. Who’d know, right? Generally, I will do almost anything to avoid a live camera. Stills I’m fine with. Heck I take a lot of stills myself. But live cameras scare me to death. Live microphones too. Bad. Anyway, in one of the interviews I spoke with Kelly Nishimura. She’s the Sr. Engineering Program Manager on the OpenSolaris project in California. Those are the guys who build the OpenSolaris distro. Deirdré Straughan shot the video, of course, and most recently she had the conversation translated, so we are in six languages. That’s cool. Just click on the “captions” button in the upper left corner for the subtitles. Now, I don’t expect to ever do this sort of thing again. I mean, really. I suck at it. But I must admit it was fun to do. Once. I just have to stay clear of Deirdré because she has one of those “live” cameras …

Going to CommunityOne in San Francisco next week? Here’s the schedule. Don’t forget the "deep dives" they have in there, too. You can register for those sessions right here. It’s free.

Out of all the photos I took at BarCamp Tokyo last week, this is the most popular image by far — Hiroshi Chonan’s computer.

See Hiroshi’s OpenSolaris Live USB Creator (Windows/.NET)

The planning for BarCamp Tokyo Fall 2009 is starting now. I’ll be on the organizing team again. We have more time. We’re going bigger. And better. Should be cool. Check back often. And if you are in Tokyo you can get directly involved. What’s cool about BarCamp is that, quite frankly, no one is special. Instead, everyone organizes and everyone presents. Everyone is special, actually. Everyone has something to contribute.

Some Obama Enemies Are Made Totally of Straw — New York Times

“Here’s the trick: Take your opponent’s argument to a ridiculous extreme, and then attack the extremists,” said William Safire, the former presidential speechwriter who writes the “On Language” column for The New York Times Magazine. “That leaves the opponent to sputter defensively, ‘But I never said that.’ ”

The telltale indicators that a straw man trick is on the way are the introductory words “there are those who say” or “some say.”

“In strawmanese, you never specify who ‘those who’ are,” Mr. Safire said. “They are the hollow scarecrows you set up to knock down.”

This is such a common rhetorical technique. It has been used for thousands of years, and virtually everyone who talks in front of audiences uses it to one degree or another — especially your friendly neighborhood politician.

There`s not much you can do when some pol says these silly things because they are generally pretty well protected and rarely have to justify their statements. But when regular people talk like this in meetings or when you are being lectured at by someone standing on a soapbox within arm`s reach, you can actually protect yourself from this verbal manipulation without leaving yourself vulnerable. Here`s how: just ask some painfully obvious question — who says? where? when? Etc. Most people using the straw man technique will not be able to answer the question to any level of detail, so the more detail you ask for the more you can undermine the statement. Ask if those so-called "those who say" sources are enough to justify the generalizations. They won`t like this questioning at all, by the way, so ask nicely. There`s no need to be hostile, and you don`t want to get in over your head. The questioning alone is generally enough to get your point across.

So, as speakers create and attack straw man extremes at the edges, you can calmly drive right up the middle and ask for the details. Try it. It`s fun. This little counterattack works great on rumors, too.

More here.

As everyone knows, we are rapidly approaching Phase 1 of the website transition: making the new authentication and authorization application live. We call this new application "Auth" and it`s basically our new user management system. The current target for this Phase 1 move is late June. Then we plan to roll into Phase 2 with the migration of the site’s content to XWiki in late August. Hopefully, that part is starting to resonate at this point. If not, that`s ok. We have some substantial communications planned to keep driving the schedule forward.

Also, during the period between the two initial phases, the existing site will be adapted to use the new Auth system. Leaders of communities, projects, and user groups will be able to add and delete users, create new repositories, and provide access to repositories and web pages just as before. Some of these actions will be performed using the new Auth system, so we will provide documentation outlining the new system shortly.

However, during the interim period, we will not be able to support the creation of new communities, projects, and user groups on the site. The technical difficulties involved will preclude us from being able to support this activity during this critical period, so we will have to put in a temporary moratorium on creating new groups. Fortunately, very few new groups are being created on the site at present, so it shouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience for the majority of the community. For those community members who might be inconvenienced, though, we certainly apologize up front and we ask for your patience as we enter this complicated transition period. We have been planning and building this website replacement for well over a year now, and we are getting close to the final implementation. Once we are running on the new site, we will be able to offer everyone a much more flexible environment to grow well into the future.

So, if you were thinking of opening a new project, community, or user group this summer, please get your proposal approved and a request to the project-setup list now. The deadline for new group requests to the project-setup list is June 15th, and the moratorium on creating new groups will run until the end of August when we move to XWiki. Note that this moratorium will not affect the creation of new Mailman lists.

Website Transition Documentation | Auth System Beta | XWiki Website Beta | Program Roadmap

I used to be in the construction business, so I used to build things. But I also did some demolition, too. Taking stuff down. Ripping things out. Breaking things. Cleaning up. Carting away. Very cool. And that`s sort of what we are doing with the opensolaris.org website transition project. We are building a new site, of course, and part of that will involve taking down the current site. The sequence of events is pretty complex because we have to maintain current operations while we do our construction and demolition, but I think we have a handle on it. Mostly, anyway.

The website transition project is split up into a few phases: Phase 1 is the transition to the new membership management application for user authentication and authorization (Auth), Phase 2 is the migration of the current site`s content to the new site using XWiki for content management, and Phase 3 is the integration and migration of the remaining client applications to the new Auth system. There will be a couple of interim periods between phases where we`ll be living in two worlds, no question about it. Should be fun.

After Phase 1 of the website transition to Auth in June, we`ll start finalizing preparations for the Phase 2 content move to XWiki in August. We have already built content migration tools and tested them internally, but we`ll do some external tests as well. More on those tests soon.

But to start getting ready for the content migrations later this summer, I am trying to encourage everyone to dig around your communities, projects, and user groups and clean things up a bit. In other words, if you know you have content that is out of date and will eventually be deleted, there is really no reason to migrate all of that stuff to XWiki. Just delete it. Or archive it off the site on your own system if you want. We have about 10,000 pages on the site, so if we can trim some of the dead content that would be good. And don`t forget to look at your attachments. There are about 5,000 attachments on the site, but only 1,500 are linked to web pages so I would imagine that some of those attachments have been forgotten along the way and can be trimmed. We are doing our own audits of the non-collective common pages on the site and looking at where we can cut and consolidate and move stuff around.

The same goes for any dead projects or mailing lists you have. I have been working with some groups recently to help clean up their unused infrastructure, and we have already deleted 15 lists and a few forums and projects. I have a list of another 20 mailing lists that were opened long ago but are not being used any more, so I`m working my way through those as well to find owners and check status. We are happy to provide website infrastructure, but this is valuable stuff and we ask that it be owned and properly maintained. Use it or lose it, basically.

And finally, there are 33 unopened projects and 6 unopened communities on the site. If you proposed any of these groups and got them approved but have them in a hidden state, ping me on project-setup so we can get these things opened or deleted. We are not going to migrate unopened groups. Some of these groups have been in this dormant state for years now, so I`ll be working my way through that list in the next week contacting people to check status.

So, let`s all help clean up before we move to our new home. Should make the moving a bit easier.

Website Transition Documentation | Auth System Beta | XWiki Website Beta | Program Roadmap

I`ll be doing a talk on the 30th of May at the next Tokyo OpenSolaris Study Group meeting. Stop by.

Don’t forget to stop by Brisbane in mid July …

I’ve been the Facilitator for the Advocacy Community for many years now. Since the beginning, actually. And I think it’s time for someone else to take over. It’s an opportunity to contribute in a substantive way, and in a way that is badly needed. We need more facilitators on the project generally. Anyone interested?

Technically, the OGB is supposed to appoint Facilitators, but if someone is serious about it and wants to jump in I’m sure it would be fine. The initiative would be appreciated, actually, and a fresh perspective would be welcome, too. We’d just have to inform the OGB and the Facilitation Project about the change, and then we’d have to work on some transition items. There can be only one Facilitator, but there is plenty of work for many people to do. If no one is interested, I’ll just ping ogb-discuss and inform the OGB of my decision and see if they have anyone in mind to take over.

I’m giving up this role because my job continues to evolve. Plus, I can no longer work the hours I’m working — especially given the time zone issues I deal with every day. I have visited many hospitals in the past, and I don’t intend to visit more in the future. The change is focus I am driving is interesting and planned in detail. The core of my job has been shifting to website transition projects for some time now, and that is the direction I will continue moving as I begin focusing 85% of my time there. Also, my community development work, instead of being general in nature and Advocacy-focused, has been shifting toward direct organizing with multiple communities in Tokyo — which is a gigantic market with impressive opportunities. Both of these moves are by design, and they are both related to each other as well. I will continue to work on community building projects, but much more from the perspective of my core website development projects. Put simply, I’m focusing directly on where I’m needed most and where I can be most effective for OpenSolaris, so I can move faster in the direction I’m going. Focus is critical. And so is speed.

So, what’s involved in being a Facilitator? Well, it depends on the community and it depends on you. Make it your own. Basically, the Facilitator is a Core Contributor who serves as the main communications link between a Community Group and the OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB). That`s the most important thing. And it`s specified right in the Constitution at sections 7.4 and 7.5.

So you`d maintain the Advocacy governance records — Contributor and Core Contributor status, basically, which is actually taken care of automatically in the database but it needs someone to follow up on who requested what status and if things were voted on properly and sent to the OGB for processing, etc. You`d facilitate governance discussions related to Advocacy, too, and participate in election planning and implementation (that last part is a very big deal). You`d update web pages, too, and there is a lot of that work that needs doing here. Also, Advocacy endorses a few projects and over 120 user group projects, so you`d have to be on all those lists (yes, all of them) so you can properly communicate with everyone on a moment’s notice. Granted, the OSUG leaders are all supposed to be on osug-leaders and advocacy-discuss, but that’s not always the case, leaders constantly change, and as Facilitator you simply need to be everywhere. That’s my view, anyway. Also, user groups and projects go dormant from time to time, so there is a lot of work to help find new leaders and maintain the leaders grid. Updates to the news page are badly needed, too. You may want to maintain an event’s calendar, too, for conferences and user group meetings.

Regarding new projects: I have been setting up user group projects inside Advocacy all along, but the proper place for that task is on the project-setup list so it needs to move there. So you`ll have to interact with people who are proposing new projects and user groups and manage the threads on advocacy-discuss, and then when final voting is done send the approved request in the right format to project-setup. I currently staff project-setup for the creation of all projects on the site, and I will continue to do this. Oh, regarding the advocacy-discuss mailing list: you’d be the new list administrator.

Another issue that comes up from time to time is when Sun sponsors programs to distribute items to the community — OpenSolaris User Group Starter Kits, basically. There is actually a lot of communications involved with implementing these
programs, and the Facilitator can help a great deal (since you will know everyone since you will be everywhere).

Advocacy is home to about 5,000 people at the moment. It’s the largest Community Group on the site, and the potential for growth in the user space around the world is gigantic. So, this is potentially a pretty big deal if someone wants to take it and run with it. You have to be serious and see it as an opportunity, though. Coming and going will not work. You need to be consistent. This is a leadership role. Leaders don’t dabble around back. They drive right up front. I`ve certainly taken it as far as I can go given my circumstances and goals and plans, so it`s time for someone new with new ideas and new perspectives. Now, there is no particular process for making a transition like this, so if multiple people are interested we`d have to figure out a simple and fair process to manage that so we can choose.

One last thing: when we start migrating to the new site this summer (which is where I’ll be spending all of my time), there will be many issues to consider for Advocacy since the community owns so much real estate on the site. So, we’ll be working together closely. And you`ll have to like communicating, too. Facilitation really is communication and implementation. It’s project management, basically — with a healthy dose of leadership tossed in.

Want to give it a shot? Ping advocacy-discuss on this thread.

Amazing day at BarCamp Tokyo all day Saturday and well into the evening. I got home totally exhausted. This event was wonderful because it was organized by volunteers, the corporate sponsors were interested in supporting the community, everyone cooperated and participated, the talks were diverse and interesting, the venue was cool, and we filled the place with about 100 people from many international and Japanese communities in Tokyo. It`s all about the community. And the community led in every way. Over time we should continue moving in this direction and mixing among as many communities as possible. Tokyo is a very large hub in the global community, no question about it. More here on BarCamp Tokyo

I went out to the Tokyo Beers for Books event the other night at Genius Tokyo in Ginza to see John Wood, Founder of Room To Read and author of Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. Fun nite. Great cause. Special thanks to Gary Bremermann for organizing the event with several hundred of his closest friends.

Very cool to see 11 sponsors contributing to BarCamp Tokyo this Saturday …