FGOTO: proposing a new tag
Category domino
Nathan had an intriguing post today: "The Hourglass Notes Community", which was sparked by a post from Jack Dausman, responding in turn to ComputerWeekly. The premise is that the community is akin to a talent hourglass, with the bulk of the folks at either the bottom or the top... and how do we get those at the bottom to the top if they don't know we're here? The following was a comment I was about to leave on his post, until I noticed how ridiculously long it was. So I'm posting it here instead.
I originally stumbled upon the community by using "The Google". I'd encountered an obstacle: knew what I wanted to do, didn't know how. Like so many others, I searched for documentation and found what I needed - not on Notes.Net / LDD / developerWorks / whatever they decide to call it next week, but on blogs like Julian's, Jake's, and Rocky's... and from there I discovered the rest of y'all.
I like jonvon's idea of an IBM blog about the community; perhaps a searchable tag aggregator that centrally allows folks to more efficiently find the blogs that will be the most useful to them. But even in that context, it's still about asking the right questions, and bothering to look in the first place. Even without that kind of aggregation, Google will still lead them to us if we've already said what they want to hear, so to speak.
When asking developers who don't participate in the blogosphere (even in read-only fashion) why, every response I've received can be lumped into the following two categories:
- I'm too busy
- I've never found much I could use
The first is almost always refutable. With very few exceptions (i.e. personal reasons and extraordinary project load), folks that are too busy to find out what's happening in the community are too busy because they're reinventing wheels. If they knew that a technique they're spending weeks designing is already publicly available, they'd be able to free up that time, which could then be spent finding other time-saving opportunities. But many people assume they're too busy for "research". Sadly, in some cases, what they mean when they say "I'm too busy" is that they just aren't passionate enough about the craft to invest that extra time. Many people just want to clock in, do their work, clock out... and go home. That's their prerogative. Of course, if you're not driven to keep up on the latest techniques, it's quite possible you're not in the right field to begin with.
The second is trickier. With the current volume of indexed information readily available, if someone isn't finding what they're looking for, they're probably not asking the right question. That's where a more proactive approach to education from IBM would be useful. Granted, it's also where we get back to the concept of the "middle". Someone who's really pushing the envelope isn't going to blog about concepts they assume everyone should know, because it's boring: both because they figure everyone already knows it anyway, and because it doesn't give them that tingly sensation you get when you've just peeled back another layer and glimpsed the galaxy of potential that's been hiding inside.
Last year's SnTT suggestion has prompted some incredible displays of prowess... but maybe we should add a new tag, too. How about FGOTO... "Firm Grasp of the Obvious". This might serve a couple purposes: folks that don't know we're here because they're searching for things nobody bothers to mention will find us, and in so doing, discover the wealth of resources they didn't even realize was here... and we'll occasionally remind each other of basic techniques that we'd forgotten about years ago and have been over-engineering ever since.
Nathan had an intriguing post today: "The Hourglass Notes Community", which was sparked by a post from Jack Dausman, responding in turn to ComputerWeekly. The premise is that the community is akin to a talent hourglass, with the bulk of the folks at either the bottom or the top... and how do we get those at the bottom to the top if they don't know we're here? The following was a comment I was about to leave on his post, until I noticed how ridiculously long it was. So I'm posting it here instead.
I originally stumbled upon the community by using "The Google". I'd encountered an obstacle: knew what I wanted to do, didn't know how. Like so many others, I searched for documentation and found what I needed - not on Notes.Net / LDD / developerWorks / whatever they decide to call it next week, but on blogs like Julian's, Jake's, and Rocky's... and from there I discovered the rest of y'all.
I like jonvon's idea of an IBM blog about the community; perhaps a searchable tag aggregator that centrally allows folks to more efficiently find the blogs that will be the most useful to them. But even in that context, it's still about asking the right questions, and bothering to look in the first place. Even without that kind of aggregation, Google will still lead them to us if we've already said what they want to hear, so to speak.
When asking developers who don't participate in the blogosphere (even in read-only fashion) why, every response I've received can be lumped into the following two categories:
- I'm too busy
- I've never found much I could use
The first is almost always refutable. With very few exceptions (i.e. personal reasons and extraordinary project load), folks that are too busy to find out what's happening in the community are too busy because they're reinventing wheels. If they knew that a technique they're spending weeks designing is already publicly available, they'd be able to free up that time, which could then be spent finding other time-saving opportunities. But many people assume they're too busy for "research". Sadly, in some cases, what they mean when they say "I'm too busy" is that they just aren't passionate enough about the craft to invest that extra time. Many people just want to clock in, do their work, clock out... and go home. That's their prerogative. Of course, if you're not driven to keep up on the latest techniques, it's quite possible you're not in the right field to begin with.
The second is trickier. With the current volume of indexed information readily available, if someone isn't finding what they're looking for, they're probably not asking the right question. That's where a more proactive approach to education from IBM would be useful. Granted, it's also where we get back to the concept of the "middle". Someone who's really pushing the envelope isn't going to blog about concepts they assume everyone should know, because it's boring: both because they figure everyone already knows it anyway, and because it doesn't give them that tingly sensation you get when you've just peeled back another layer and glimpsed the galaxy of potential that's been hiding inside.
Last year's SnTT suggestion has prompted some incredible displays of prowess... but maybe we should add a new tag, too. How about FGOTO... "Firm Grasp of the Obvious". This might serve a couple purposes: folks that don't know we're here because they're searching for things nobody bothers to mention will find us, and in so doing, discover the wealth of resources they didn't even realize was here... and we'll occasionally remind each other of basic techniques that we'd forgotten about years ago and have been over-engineering ever since.
