Joel Patrick

Diaspora as powerbase

Is there a CICS Diaspora?

There is a fascinating podcast from Jon Udell. It fits rather well with the match for the concept we have occasionnaly discussed with regard to the extended CICS network or "Distributed Collaborative Community" as we have called it. There is emerging evidence that we are seeing a real sea change in the way the world is starting to work. In the podcast is with blogger Jim Russell who is a geographer fascinated with the extended community related to Pittsburgh (home to Carnegie Mellon University).

The talk is very interesting and provides a lot of seminal thinking about what technology is doing to human cooperation today.

A related thinker is Richard Florida. Listen to his amazing talk at Pop!Tech on IT Conversations, a web service you should know.

Finished my assignment...

I spent a little time with the folks at HFI this past Friday. One of the things we agreed to do is to start documentation of the existing blog system. It is all based on the 3.2 version of Movable Type by blogging powerhouse Six Apart. It's always been the blogging platform I have known the best. In our case it is customized to get the united site, so there is definitely some assembly involved. It is still pretty low-grade stuff, but it is not always easy to find time to deal with it when things get intense in the Fall.

In my note on the Wiki, I discuss the SQL statements that make up the custom lists on the homepage and the scoreboard (see my previous blog entry). Hopefully we will be adding some more documentation as we go along.

Scoreboard back in working order

Each year getting the tracking system back in shape is the last bit of business. The scoreboard is working now. Basically it allows Dr. Gillette to associate a number with the blogging rate for the individuals. I do not like to put the link in the interface, because it is a bit mechanical. Alas, it is a necesary evil of teaching.