My Silence usually indicates sloth, but this week it means we've
been getting something done. As you may have heard from Doc
and Flemming
both have been guests in our apartment here on E 43rd St. Flemming was
here from Wednesday through Saturday and Doc got here Friday night just
in time for a briefing on our work. As he reported, we got the DIY DigID
routine worked out, as the first step for the Xpertweb reputation engine.
Bloggers ranked by verbosity
I really enjoy working with Flemming. I can't imagine anyone better equipped
to bring the Xpertweb code into final form. He's mastered the two characteristics
central to the project.
God's in the Details
Flemming's programming skills are wide and deep, going back to high school
in Denmark, where he learned on the same HP mid-size computer as Anders Hejlsberg,
who was a year behind him. Anders was the creator of Turbo
Pascal and is now Microsoft's
lead on C#. I knew that Flemming had written his own blogging software,
but I was blown away by the range of features and ease of use he's built into
it. Flemming has also created an online community called the New
Civilization Network. What I didn't know is that every member of the network
gets a ready-to-go PHP-based dynamic data blog using a system Flemming wrote
long before web logs showed up on the radar. Here's the user interface:
Slick, eh? Hidden away in a corner of the Internet is a clean,
complete and indulgent blogging tool no one's heard of, written by Ming the
Mechanic before blogging was a word. He may call himself a mechanic, but I say
he's Mr. Goodwrench.
Flemming has built other engines to help people publish web pages,
and has dealt with most of the nuances we'll need to finish up Xpertweb. I hope
to address some of these points at OSCon,
at Doc's suggestion.
The Real Deal
The second part of the requirement to finish the Xpertweb engine
is Flemming's broad vision and commitment to building an environment that serves
the deeper needs of its users, not just help a couple of us to trade work for
money. Flemming's experience in building communities helps him see important
connections that I was willing to leave to the community to generate. For instance,
we fleshed out a way that trading partners (anyone who has built a grading relationship
with each other) will be able to name each other as partners in a new project,
with explicit roles and compensation flow. Or they can be named subcontractors.
This kind of explicit relationship management resonates with much of the important
work that the folks in the social software movement have been working on. As
Doc says, the market is even more than a conversation, it's relationships.
Further, Flemming has designed a superior data architecture and
emphasized the importance of using any kind of currency, including unconventional
forms of money. I'm especially partial to the cowrey
shell. The world's gone downhill since we stopped using pretty shells for
money. Actually, it's an important subtlety. Since our aim is to make reputation
more important than money, we're better off if trade is by any means of exchange.
It also means you can exchange a spare computer for some work, without the need
for an intermediary.
Flemming has a deep understanding of human nature as well as the
dirty secrets of the economy. In fact, Google considers him to be the world's
leading authority on money
velocity. Never mind that this Google "I feel lucky" link
is mostly a quote from me, Flemming really is out ahead of us in realizing that
there's a powerful similarity between an open-handed Love&Peace economy
and a conventional one with high money velocity.
We can trust Flemming to ensure that Einstein's truth will be
observed, and we'll strive to count the things that count, rather than counting
the things that don't count.
