Jon Stahl’s Journal
From Sampling to Measuring
Gavin Clabaugh’s got a fun (and wise) new riff on the larger forces shaping our world:
I see this third force everywhere. I see it hiding inside the inaccurately named thing called “social networking. I see it embedded in “American Idol.” It follows me to the grocery store. It wakes me up at night. It’s busy working away on web pages and formatting RSS feeds. It’s reading your electric meter. It’s even there when you drive into a parking lot. It’s monitoring air quality, or temperature, and it’s in that vending machine down the hall tracking the ever-so-important availability of cheese-doodles. The third force is all about the network and it’s all about the collapse of time. It’s all about a new network of machines, sensors, monitors, and even some humans, that spend their days tasting the world, and talking to other machines about what they’ve tasted. Sometimes it’s frightening. I once characterized the third force as the move “from sampling to monitoring.” I figured soon we wouldn’t need things like statistical sampling to measure our world. I argued that we were increasingly moving to “real-time” measurements to understand the world. The time and distance between action and feedback would disappear. It’s come true.Plone Training in Seattle in June!
I’m very excited to share the news that Joel Burton will be bringing his Plone Bootcamp classes back to Seattle for the third year. Joel will be offering a repeat performance of his basic week-long “Plone Bootcamp” class (June 16-20) suitable for folks getting started building Plone websites. Assuming his voice doesn’t give out after the first week, Joel will immediately follow-up with his first-ever-in-Seattle “Advanced Plone Bootcamp” (June 23-26) in which he delves deeper into programming and customization techniques for Plone 3.
I’ve watched lots of people teach technology over the years, and Joel is hands-down one of the best trainers I’ve ever seen. And at $550 for a full week of hands-on training, this has got to be one of the best deals going.
Cute house in Seattle for sale
Our old house is officially now on the market. 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, great big yard, garage and more! Loads of charm in a highly walkable area of Crown Hill. We’ve had 7 great years there; now it’s your turn!
Tags: house
Nonprofit Technology Jobs at NPower Seattle
Our awesome partners-in-crime at NPower Seattle are hiring for their fast-growing CRM consulting practice.
They’ve also got a senior position open for their Director of Services, who oversees their various consulting practices.
Both are great opportunities for nonprofit techies looking to make the move to Seattle!
Plone & Python Bootcamp-a-rama: July 2008
What happens when an irresistible force and an immovable object team up and pull in the same direction?
That’s right — Plone training legends Joel Burton and Chris Calloway have teamed up to organize two solid weeks of Plone and Python training in Chapel Hill, NC this summer. They’re delivering three classes: Customizing Plone (Joel), followed by Python Bootcamp (Chris) and Plone 3 Techniques (Joel again).
At only $500 for each full week class, this is probably the best deal going in technology training. Chris and Joel are amazing trainers. Your brain will get filled up in the (incredibly posh) classroom, and your belly will get full afterward. (Chris and Joel both love to eat and Chapel Hill is a great food town, I’m told!)
So, if you want to brush up on your Plone & Python skills, pack your bags for North Carolina this summer.
Plone Returns to New Orleans
Have you bought your plane tickets for Plone Symposium New Orleans 2008 yet? Alan Runyan, Toby Roberts and the team at Enfold Systems have put together a fantastic program that includes:
- 2 days of Joel Burton’s amazing Plone Bootcamp training — pretty much the best way to jumpstart yourself as a Plone site builder!
- 2 days of talks from Plone community luminaries and rising stars, including:
- A “state of Plone” keynote from Plone co-founders Alex Limi and Alan Runyan
- Case studies from the science, education and nonprofit sectors
- Technical talks on popular topics such as caching, relational database integration, and using WSGI/Repoze to play nice with other Python web appications.
I’ll be showing off some of the work that the Seattle Plone community has done to integrate Plone and Salesforce.com.
The Neural Buddhists
Could it be? Did David Brooks just write something fairly perceptive and intelligent?
In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.
In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.
Tags: culturalartifacts
Functionalism Metrics for Conservation Websites
My amazing colleagues Drew Bernard and Shawn Kemp are burning up the internet tubes connecting Portland to Bellingham with some great thinking about how to apply “functional thinking” to environmental groups’ websites. I love to see this kind of high-powered big-picture thinking in public.
We are not who we think we are
Thomas Friedman doesn’t write much that resonates with me, but this snippet from his column in today’s New York Times caught me:
Much nonsense has been written about how Hillary Clinton is “toughening up” Barack Obama so he’ll be tough enough to withstand Republican attacks. Sorry, we don’t need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.
Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.
Tags: politics