Category Archives: negotiation

When a Citizen Dialogue is really just a Mob

Two years ago I wrote this piece outlining how Citizen Assemblies violate the conditions Surowiecki outline as necessary to create a wise crowd. My point was to show how there is a fine line between when a dialogue becomes a group monologue, or worse, just a mob. Those who engage in policy discussions need to be aware of where this line lies lest they accidentally confuse consensus and agreement with silent coercion.

I experienced this problem a few months ago while attending an Imagine BC Leaders’ Summit, A Dialogue on Habitat, Health and Livelihoods :10 Big Ideas to Shape a Resilient Future. The day long event included 180+ leaders and interested parties from different sectors and was supposed to cap off discussions that had been going on about the future of British Columbia. But rather than be an open dialogue, the discussion was intensely closed and, to be frank, bordered on fascist.

Things started off innocently enough. The conversation opened up with a number of participants strongly advocating that British Columbia, and the world, needed a zero growth economy. The term was never explained or explored, but it was made clear that continued economic growth was impossible and threatened the plant. I felt concerned that a group of people who could afford to take an entire workday off to talk about the future would suggest that a zero growth economy was necessary (as quickly as possible) especially in a world where over a billion people live under $1 a day. I suspect that the underlying interest in zero-growth had to do with environmental sustainability but nobody used an alternative term such as a sustainable economy, ecologically sensitive economy or carbon neutral economy. No, it had to be zero-growth. Such an outcome is great if you’ve already got wealth, but it necessarily marginalizes those that don’t. The topic however, was less important than the process. A few people (including me) voiced our concern over the zero growth term in a smaller breakout session but never in the plenary discussion. I asked some of the other concerned voices why they didn’t speak up: most had concluded within the first 30 minutes of the day that speaking out on environmental issue simply wasn’t safe. I had to agree – I wasn’t speaking up either.

Of course, once a group appears to have consensus – because alternative perspectives have censored themselves – it doesn’t take long for the conversation to move into some disturbing places. Back in the plenary discussion the group had concluded that imminent environmental catastrophe was the pressing issue of our time and all other issues were subordinate or secondary. The conversation then quickly shifted to assessing why people outside the room (the general public that is) didn’t feel the same sense of urgency. In a conversation that would have made the authors of The Death of Environmentalism shudder with familiarity, at no point was there any introspection about how the people in the room had failed t engage others effectively. Instead, exogenous factors were immediately cited. Specifically, two emerged as key problems. First, the educational system wasn’t advocating “the groups” point of view sufficiently and second, the political structures discriminated against their issue specifically. The conclusion, the school system needed to be taken over so as to appropriately educate people and the electoral system needed to be reformed so as to produce outcomes the group favoured.

If that doesn’t sound like a scary or fascist conversation, imagine the same conversation structure, but with this subject.

In a dialogue setting a group of evangelical Christians determine that most pressing issue is the fast approach day of rapture and, due to lack of awareness and concern, many souls would not be saved. They conclude that the reason people don’t care about the rapture isn’t because evangelicals haven’t been effective at reaching out and engaging people but because a) they don’t control the educational system, and b) the political system is structured to not favour their issue. They conclude that must take over the schools and so kids can be taught Christian values and that the electoral system needs rejigging to produce outcomes that favours “Christian” issues.

Same conclusions, different subject matter.

This is why dialogues have to so carefully facilitated. It isn’t hard for them to become a mob and for the discussion to get angry and totalitarian.

Oh, and a final note. During the afternoon, in a moment you couldn’t have scripted, the fascist subtext of the conversation became explicit. During the Q&A after Thomas Homer-Dixon’s presentation, one participant asked “Your data on ecological collapse is terrifying. But enough isn’t being done. Do we have to take a page out of history and get the jackboots and the brownshirts out and just mobilize aggressively?” (I really almost lost it when this question was asked). Homer-Dixon, to his credit, was clearly taken aback and ran the other direction outlining that such an approach was not an appropriate solution. Jackboots? Brownshirts? We weren’t a dialogue anymore, we were a mob. At least now it was explicit.

SXSWi Panel: Fostering Collaborative Open Source Communities

Yesterday I saw this academic journal article and was reminded about how an individuals behaviour can negatively impact and groups productivity. In his article “Overlooked but not untouched: How incivility reduces onlookers’ performance on routine and creative tasks.” in the Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (109: 29-44) Amir Erez describes how even just witnessing rudeness resulted in diminished creativity, increased one’s own negative behaviour, damaged productivity and short term memory.

This is a perfect example of why I believe we need open source communities to foster collaborative cultures that nudge people to engage in positive and constructive ways.

In pursuit of talking about this more, I’ve put together a presentation proposal for SXSWi in which I’d like to build on my FSOSS presentation (which has logged over 15000 views since going up on SlideShare.net two years ago) on how the skills and tools from the field of negotiation and collaboration can help improve community management and productivity in open source communities. If this sounds at all interesting to you, I’m hoping that you’ll consider going to the SXSWi Panel Picker website and voting for this panel.

Since FSOSS 2008 I’ve done more research and work in the area and so have more examples to share out of the open source space. In addition, I’ve been working with Diederik Van Liere at the University of Toronto’s business school trying to get data around how behaviour impacts a open source community’s effectiveness.

Title:

Fostering Collaborative Open Source Communities

Description:

Community management is a core competency of open source. So what skills, tools and culture can facilitate and enable collaboration? Drawing from negotiation theory David shares what open source project participants can do to foster sustainable and effective collaborative communities where conflict is productive and not soul-sucking or time consuming.

Questions Answered:

What skills does an open source project leader need

How to a minimize destructive conversations?

How can I encourage participation in my open source project?

How do enable members of my open source community to work together better?

What is negotiation theory?

Someone is being a troll in my discussion group. What do I do?

How can I attract more users to my open source project?

How can I make my open project contributors more effective?

I don’t like arguing with people, what should I do?

I think I may be abrasive, what should do?

Category:

Community / Online Community, Open Source, Self-Help /Self-Improvement, User Experience

Creating the Open Data Bargain in Cities

Embedded below is the talk I’ve given to both community hackers (at Open Web Vancouver) as well as City of Vancouver Staff regarding the opportunities and challenges around open data and the open motion. (Here’s an update on where Vancouver is at courtesy of some amazing work by city staff).

For those willing to brave through the presentation (or simply fast forward to the end) one piece I felt is most important is the talk’s last section which outlines what I term “The Bargain” in a reference to the informal contract Clay Shirky says exists between every Web 2.0 site and their users.

The bargain comes last, because it matters only if there is a promise (open and shared data) and a set of tools (applications languages) that are already working together. The bargain is also the most complex aspect of a functioning group, in part because it is the least explicit aspect and in part because it is the one the users have the biggest hand in creating, which means it can’t be completely determined in advance… A bargain helps clarify what you can expect of others and what they can expect of you.

– Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody (my italics, page 270)

I believe that in an open city, a similar bargain exists between a government and its citizens. To make open data a success and to engage the community a city must listen, engage, ask for help, and of course, fulfil its promise to open data as quickly as possible. But this bargain runs both ways. The city must to its part, but so, on the flip side, must the local tech community. They must participate, be patient (cities move slower than tech companies), offer help and, most importantly, make the data come alive for each other, policy makers and citizens through applications and shared analysis.

Creating a City That Thinks like the Web (Vancouver Remix)

View more documents from David Eaves.

Negotiating – how not to manage tension

Last week Rob Cottingham pointed me to ReadWriteStart piece entitled Learn to Negotiate and Close. It’s filled with some good – if unfortunately titled – advice particularly around focusing on listening and not derailing a deal by talking too much (“Two Ears, One Mouth”) as well as speaking to your client/prospective partner’s interests (“Wait Until You Hear Them Scream”). One section, however entitled “Using Tension to your Advantage” felt problematic and tweaked the negotiation consultant in me.

For example, in that section they advocate:

Donald Trump (the real-estate developer), in his book “The Art of the Deal,” talks about guiding the other side to the point that they really want the deal and think it is in the bag. Then he backs off and demands major concessions. Smart buyers everywhere have learned some variation of this tactic.

This is when you get a knot in your stomach and may witness table-banging and raised voices. All of this unpleasant stuff is good news. Experienced deal closers recognize these as signs that a deal is closing. The absence of these signs is actually a cause for concern!

One thread running through all good negotiations is some sign of real pain from the buyer that leaves you confident you are not leaving too much money on the table. Of course, the buyer knows you will be looking for this and will send signals that you have reached their limit. The skill comes in differentiating between fake pain, as in “This is well above our budget, and my boss will kill me if I agree,” and the real thing. The buyer will also be looking for the same signs from you.

From my experience negotiating, this statement is fraught with problems – and can be downright dangerous as advice. Here are a few reasons why:

Shifting Goals

First, unless you are a deeply skilled mind reader, “reading the signs” isn’t an executable strategy. Indeed, the real risk with this strategy is that by adopting it, you shift your goal. You cease to be focused on creating a deal that you would find acceptable and start trying to identify the deal you think your counterpart will be willing to accept. You metric for success moves from what you want (or need), to what you think you think they will accept.

The fact is, you will never know the limit of what you counterpart is willing to accept until they are walking away – and even then, maybe it’s all part of an act? This belief that a good negotiator can tell the difference is simply untrue. Maybe you can read when they are bluffing and when they are not… but I’m willing to bet that however good you think you are, you can’t read them that well. Indeed, you probably have no idea what is going on in their head (just like they probably don’t know what’s going on in your head).

Promotes poor communication

This is the other part of this approach that is problematic. It promotes poor communication, and to be blunt, lying. If I think you are looking for signals that I’ve reached my limit – I’m going to send you those signals, whether you’ve reached my limit or not. In essence, I’m going to lie to you. And if I’m lying about that… what else might I be lying about? This is the dynamic that this approach helps reinforce. Rather than a negotiation that allows us to brainstorm creative solutions or identify what is really important we spend our time dancing around the issues and pour our energy in to focusing on “what signals we are sending?” and trying to “read” them.

The fact is once you tell me something is a deal breaker, and then you compromise on it – I learn that dealbreakers for you aren’t really dealbreakers, they are just efforts to manipulate me. Do that more than once and my trust in anything you say will quickly erode… which will inevitably lead to me to ask myself: why am I doing business with you?

Break down trust

The fact that poor communication breaks down trust isn’t academic. Good negotiations can only occur if there is some basic degree of trust. My willingness to share information, to brainstorm, to see the problem from your perspective are all made easier if I believe I can trust you. Breakdown trust, and you breakdown the very environment needed to create wealth and good outcomes.

If Trump tried to pull that last minute deal changing arrangement on me I’d consider walking away or throwing a bunch of my own last minute demands into the mix. Indeed, I’ve had this happen to clients before and I advise them to say: “Wow, it sounds like you’d like to change the terms of the agreement I thought we’d already agreed upon. If you aren’t happy with those terms I’m willing to reopen the negotiation over them, but have a bunch of terms I’d like to see renegotiated as well. If those issues back to the table, I think I’ll bring forward a number of my own as well.” This usually shuts this strategy down – while they may want to renegotiate pieces of the deal they aren’t thrilled with, they probably aren’t willing to do so at the risk of also renegotiating the parts of the deal they are thrilled with. There is a reason you’ve both come this far – you both believe the deal is mutually acceptable.

The real danger with the Trump strategy however (and the reason I’d seriously consider walking away) is that it underestimates the risks of exploiting the tension. While some people might cave to Trump, I’d be asking myself the question: do I want to do business with someone who is going to constantly try to exploit me rather than work with me? Maybe Trump’s deals are always purely transactional and he’s never going to work with his counterpart on an ongoing basis. But many deals I work on don’t complete the relationship between the two parties, they start the relationship. Do you want a business partner you can trust, or one that is always seeking not to create wealth, but hive it off for themselves? Worst still – what I am teaching Trump? Every time he adds last minute changes, even if I only cave on one or two of them, I’m teaching him to make last minute demands. I’m helping make this problem worse in the future not better. All this to say that if you don’t have some basic level of trust in the person you are going to work with, are you going to share critical information? Are they going to share it with you? What is the likelihood of your business taking off in that environment? Not that good, I suspect.

Stay focus on your interests and goals

For me, exploiting the tension runs real risk of derailing the negotiation or worse, the relationship with your counterpart (nothing is more toxic than an agreement between two parties in which they hate each other/don’t trust each other, it’s pretty much guaranteed everybody will lose money in that situation). Obviously I have lots of advice around negotiating, but two things I like to keep front and centre are:

First, identify what will make you happy. In short, know your goal – what you need and why. Money is important, but so are other things: stability, duration, trust, good process, the capacity to withstand surprises. All of these (and countless others) might be important to you – figure out what really matters. In addition identify external benchmarks – outcomes from other similar deals – that you can use as reference points. Few deals are genuinely new, most deals are structured around what has occurred before. These are powerful reference points that can be persuasive to the other side (and to your own sense of fairness)

Second, create conditions for a good negotiation. The how you negotiation is as important as the what you negotiate. What irks me about the above advice is that is advocates for a how that promotes poor communication and erodes trust. You and your counterpart can set the rules for how you are going to work together – make sure you do. And remember, you are constantly modelling behaviour regarding how you expect your counterpart to act. Ultimately, some negotiations are going to get nasty – but they don’t all have to be that way and it starts by not assuming they have to be nasty.

Ultimately you can spend your time trying to “read” your counterparts or your can create an environment where you can just ask them. My preference is to focus on the later. In doing so you’re more likely to develop creative outcomes and grow the value of the deal.

sell big-ticket deals, you don’t need that many to reach your revenue targets. If you are getting venture capital to power your dreams, you may need to close only one deal for your venture to succeed. But these deals take a long time to close, almost never less than three months and often twelve months or more. By the time you enter the “closing zone,” you and your teammates have expended a lot of time and energy, your company is relying on you to close the deal, and you are starting to think about what you will do once the deal closes.

This is an exhilarating, scary, dangerous time. Exhilarating because you are so close to a big “high five” success. Scary because if you lose now when you can almost taste success, the disappointment will be bitter. Dangerous because a smart buyer could easily exploit your intense desire to close the deal and force major concessions out of you.

Donald Trump (the real-estate developer), in his book “The Art of the Deal,” talks about guiding the other side to the point that they really want the deal and think it is in the bag. Then he backs off and demands major concessions. Smart buyers everywhere have learned some variation of this tactic.

This is when you get a knot in your stomach and may witness table-banging and raised voices. All of this unpleasant stuff is good news. Experienced deal closers recognize these as signs that a deal is closing. The absence of these signs is actually a cause for concern!

One thread running through all good negotiations is some sign of real pain from the buyer that leaves you confident you are not leaving too much money on the table. Of course, the buyer knows you will be looking for this and will send signals that you have reached their limit. The skill comes in differentiating between fake pain, as in “This is well above our budget, and my boss will kill me if I agree,” and the real thing. The buyer will also be looking for the same signs from you.

Losing your temper is usually not good. It implies a lack of control and usually signals fear and weakness rather than strength. However, sometimes it can be very effective. Negotiators use many tactics to simulate table-banging without killing the deal. You can use the old good cop/bad cop routine, or the “My intransigent boss will never agree to this” line, or you could use a stalking horse to lay down a negotiating line.

Your tactic will depend on the specifics of the sale, but the one constant is that when your stomach gets in a knot, you have probably entered the closing zone, and that is good. We were engineered for fight or flight for a reason!

why collaborative skills matter in open source

For the past several years now I’ve been talking about how community management – broadly defined as enhancing a community’s collaborative skills, establishing and modeling behaviour/culture and embedding development tools and communications mediums with prompts that “nudge” us towards collaborative behaviour – is imperative to the success of open source communities. (For those interested in this, my FSOSS 2008 on the subject has been slidecasted here, and is on on google video here.

Re-reading Shirkly’s latest book, Here Comes Everybody, has re-affirmed my thinking. Indeed, it’s made me more aggressive. Why? Consider these two paragraphs:

This ability of the traditional management structure to simplify coordination helps answer one of the most famous questions in all of economics: If markets are such a good idea, why do we have organizations at all? Why can’t all exchanges of value happen in the market? This question originally was posed by Ronald Coase in 1937 in his famous paper “The Nature of the Firm,” wherein he also offered the first coherent explanation of the value of hierarchical organization. Coase realized that workers could simply contract with one another, selling their labor, and buying the labor of others in turn, in a market, without needing any managerial oversight. However, a completely open market for labor, reasoned Coase, would underperform labor in firms because of the transaction costs, and in particular the costs of discovering the options and making and enforcing agreements among the participating parties. The more people are involved in a given task, the more potential agreements need to be negotiated to do anything, and the greater the transaction costs…

And later, Shirky essentially describes the thesis of his book:

But what if transaction costs don’t fall moderately? What if they collapse. This scenario is harder to predict from Coase’s original work, at it used to be purely academic. Now’s it not, because it is happening, or rather it has already happened, and we’re starting to see the results.

My conclusion: the lower the transaction costs, the greater the playing field will favour self-organizations systems like open source communities and the less it will favour large proprietary producers.

This is why open source communities should (and do) work collectively to reduce transaction costs among their members. Enabling the further collapse of transaction costs tilts the landscape in our favour. Sometimes, this can be down in the way we architect the software. Indeed, this is why – in Firefox – Add-Ons are so powerful. The Add-On functionality dramatically reduces transaction costs by creating a dependable and predictable platform, essentially allowing coders to work in isolation from one another (the difference between collaborative vs. cooperative). This strategy has been among the most successful. It is important and should be pursued, but it cannot help collapse transaction costs for all parts of a project – especially the base code.

But what more can be done? There are likely diminishing returns to re-architecting the software and in finding new, easier ways, to connect developers to one another. The areas I think offer real promise include:

fostering cultures within open source communities that reward collaborative (low transaction cost) behaviour,
promoting leaders who model collaborative (low transaction cost) behaviour
developing tools and communications mediums/methods that prompt participants to improve the noise to signal, minimize misunderstandings, limit unnecessary conflict, and help resolve differences quickly and effectively (the idea being that all of these outcomes lower transactions costs).

This is why I continue to think about how to port over the ideas, theories and tools from the negotiation/collaboration field, into the open source space.

For open source communities, eliminating transaction costs is a source of strategic advantage – one that we should find ways to exploit ruthlessly.

Bureaucracies and New Media: How the Airforce deals with blogs

A friend forwarded me this interesting diagram that is allegedly used by the United States Air Force public affairs agency to assess how and if to respond to external blogs and comments that appear upon them.

It’s a fascinating document on many levels – mostly I find it interesting to watch how a command and control driven bureaucracy deals with a networked type environment like the blogosphere.

In the good old days you could funnel all your communications through the public affairs department – mostly because there were so few channels to manage – TV, radio and print media – and really not that many relevant actors in each one. The challenge with new media is that there are both so many new channels emerging (YouTube, twitter, blogs, etc…) that public affairs departments can’t keep up. More importantly, they can’t react in a timely fashion because they often don’t have the relevant knowledge or expertise.

Increasingly, everyone in your organization is going to have to be a public affairs person. Close off your organizations from the world, and you risk becoming irrelevant. Perhaps not a huge problem for the Air Force, but a giant problem for other government ministries (not to mention companies, or the news media – notice how journalists rarely ever respond to comments on their articles…?).

This effort by a bureaucracy to develop a methodology for responding to this new and diverse media environment is an interesting starting point. The effort to separate out legitimate complaints from trolls is probably wise – especially given the sensitive nature of many discussions the Air Force could get drawn into. Of course, it also insulates them from people who are voicing legitimate concerns but will simply be labeled as “a troll.”

Ultimately however, no amount of methodology is going to save an organization from its own people if the underlying values of the organization are problematic. Does your organization encourage people to treat one another with respect, does it empower its employees, does it value and even encourage the raising of differing perspectives, is it at all introspective? Social media is going to expose organizations underlying values to the public, the good, the bad and the ugly. In many instances the picture will not be pretty. Indeed, social media is exposing all of us – as individuals – and revealing just exactly how tolerant and engaging we each are individually. With TV a good methodology could cover that up – with social media, it is less clear that it can. This is one reason why I believe the soft skills are mediation, negotiation and conflict management are so important, and why I feel so lucky to be in that field. Its relevance and important is only just ascending.

Methodologies like that shown above represent interesting first starts. I encourage governments to take a look at it because it is at least saying: pay attention to this stuff, it matters! But figuring out how to engage with the world, and with people, is going to take more than just a decision tree. We are all about to see one another for what we really are – a little introspection, and value check, might be in order…

Blogging: Dealing with difficult comments

Embedded below is an abridged version (10 minutes!) of my 2009 Northern Voice presentation on managing and engaging the community the develops around one’s blog. Specifically, one goals of this presentation was to pull in some of the thinking from the negotiation and conflict management space and see how it might apply to dealing with people who comment on your blog. Hopefully, people will find it interesting.

Finally, a key lesson that came to me while developing the presentation is that most blogs, social media projects, and online projects in general, really need a social contract – or as Skirky describes it, a bargain – that the organizer and the community agree to. Often such contracts (or bargains) are strongly implied, but I believe it is occasionally helpful to make them explicit – particularly on blogs or projects that deal with contentious (politics) or complicated (many open source projects) issues.

At 8:43 in the presentation I talk about what I believe is the implicit bargain on my site. I think about codifying it, especially as a I get more and more commentors. That said, the community that has developed around this blog – mostly of people I’ve never met – is fantastic, so there hasn’t been an overwhelming need.

Finally thank you to Bruce Sharpe for posting a video of the presentation.

So, I hope this brief presentation is helpful to some of you.

Dealing with Difficult Blog Comments

View more presentations from David Eaves.

(Notice how many people are coughing! You can tell it was winter time!)

Negotiating in Coalitions: some thoughts

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A few people have asked me about the how to handle negotiations in coalition like the one proposed by the Liberals, NDP and Bloc. Here are a couple of thoughts.

First, coalitions like these are very different then alliances and partnerships in the private sector. This is, most importantly, because corporate alliances and partnerships are very rarely zero-sum games. Usually, the total amount of money to be made is not fixed. So if every one cooperates, everyone stands to make more money. This is a strong positive incentive. (It also creates incentives for free rider, but this is another issue)

While political alliances are not entirely zero-sum, they are much more so. The benefits to be accrued for the country by cooperating are potentially unlimited, but the benefits to who ends up being credited with creating these benefits is are not. Specifically, there are a fixed number of seats in the house and so, benefits to one party necessarily come at the expense of one of the other parties. Were the downside only to be experienced by the Conservatives, this wouldn’t be a problem – potentially all coalition members could increase the number of seats – however, there is real risk for all coalition members that they will lose seats to another coalition member. Should one party be seen as making particularly strong gains, the coalitions will likely become fragile or will fall apart all together. This means – paradoxically – that success can be as much a threat to the coalition as failure. One question I might have is: have the parties talked about how they will manage success?

The second challenge has to do with unknowns. On the one hand the Liberals, NDP and Bloc have been wise to craft a deal that is narrow in scope (my understanding is that it focuses largely on creating an economic stimulus). However, the challenge for any alliance or partnership is not dealing with knowns, but dealing with the unknowns. Further economic turmoil, a terrorist attack, an international crisis, all of these events demand – a sometimes very quick – response from the government. And these are extreme examples, bad press on a failed program can, on its own, generate a political crisis. A coalition posses real challenges to the capacity of the government to react, especially if there is disagreement among coalition members. Have the parties talked about what their deal breakers are? About a process for responding to crises?

Finally, there is the simple capacity of managing a coalition government. It is one thing for a leadership cadre to negotiate an overall agreement for how to work together in the face of a common threat. It is something else for the working members of groups to cooperate and negotiate on a day to day basis. The leaders may have forged a common bond and understanding, but it probably does not trickle very far down into an organization – particularly partisan organizations which are used to working against one another. While one small challenge or disagreement is unlikely to derail the coalition, a series of them can be devastating. Is there a process and guidelines for how MPs might handle disagreements and does the leadership have a plan for how to deal with them? This challenge may seem simple today, but as the immediate threat of the conservatives disappears it becomes increasingly problematic.

I remain skeptical that a coalition government this diverse can function for any period of time (especially if the press starts assigning “winners” and “losers” early on, or if polling data shows the public breaking towards one party. That said, it is possible for such a coalition to function, but it will take incredible negotiation skills and discipline, particularly among the parties leadership (including political staff) but also among its rank and file.

Also a postscript, I’m a big beleiver that sometimes as Eisenhower out it”If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.” The biggest problem for this coalition is that it could defined by being anti-Conservative as opposed to “the coalition to rescue Canada’s economy.” This is why, although it would create some more challenges, it might also cause everyone to reframe what the coalition is about if they followed Kinsella’s advice and brought some conservatives into the fold.

Wikipedia: Community Management as its core competency

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Last week Paul Biondich lent me The Starfish and the Spider and I just finished reading it (I know, I didn’t put it in the sidebar). Indeed, a number of people I respect have had great things to say about it – John Lily suggested the book ages ago and I remember reading his review and wanting to pick a copy up.

Tons of exciting ideas in the book. One that excited me most related to an idea (articulated by many people) that I’ve been trying to advance – namely that Community Management is core to open source. Specifically there was this exciting piece on how Jimmy Wales, the “catalyst” behind Wikipedia, spends his time:

Jimmy focuses a great deal of attention on maintaining the health of the Wikipedia community. “I go to speaking engagements all over the world at conferences, and everywhere I go I meet Wikipedia volunteers,” he told us. “Usually we go off to dinner and talk shop about Wikipedia. The Wikipedia gossip is the same all over the world-just the characters are different. The problems that affect community are always the same problems.” When he doesn’t meet the members in person, Jimmy spends “a ton of time writing e-mails internally, to the community, touching base with people, discussing issues that come up on the mailing list.” But “as far as working with Wikipedia, I don’t write articles. Very, very little do I ever edit. But I do engage with people on policy matters and try to settle disputes. (page 112 – paperback edition)

It could be that in starfish organizations the role of managers and leaders isn’t to tell people what to do, but help settle disputes, grease the wheels and make sure that groups are working well. Is this to say other expertise are not needed? Not at all. But it is great to see another take on how soft skills such as dispute management, facilitation, negotiation and mediation may be essential for sustainable success of starfish organization (like open source communities).

so dave, what do you do? (or my life, on a powerpoint slide)

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So more than once people have asked me what I do… and sadly the answer is never easy. All the titles I’ve heard feel a little overwhelming, mostly because I don’t think I’ve done enough to earn any of them: public policy entrepreneur, public thinker, writer… Indeed, I most often use negotiation consultant and public policy analyst – but these fail to capture the threads of ideas that I’m attempting to weave together.

Herein lies the main challenge. Because I have picked up a number of diverse threads, my life sometimes looks scattered. (Admittedly, occasionally it is). But I see the connections between these disparate areas and I draw strength and ideas from the connections between them. Consequently, I need to do better at explain these connections, and why the matter, to others.

In pursuit of this goal I’ve created a map of my (work) life. Outlined are the three main themes I focus on and then, to show how my activities map against them I’ve listed a) some of the issues I tackle, b) the organizations I work with, for or sit on the advisory boards of, and c) some conferences where I give talks. Some stuff may be missing (indeed, if you see something please send me an email or comment below).

Better, I hope this might inspire you to map your own life. If it does please let me know, I’d love to see it and link to it.

At the very minimum, I hope this leaves you understanding me better.
note: you can click on the image to make it bigger

eaves.ca

if writing is a muscle, this is my gym