Werd I/O

You know, on one level, I just want to say "fuck everything", hold up my hands and walk away.

This closing piece on Groklaw is well-thought-out, considered, and gut-wrenching. "But for me, the Internet is over," Pamela Jones writes. Perhaps it should be over for many of us; as she points out, the founder of Lavabit, which shut down recently in response to an NSA search warrant, has stopped using email entirely. "If you knew what I know, you might not use it either," is the pull quote. Jesus.

This isn't about the Internet as such. It's about surveillance, for sure, and the chilling effects it has on freedom of speech, on freedom of thought, and the inevitable march we're all making to a new kind of distributed society. We're all connected to each other now, and the cat's not climbing back into the bag. Music was disrupted; movies; business. Government will obviously be disrupted by the new kind of interconnectedness we all share. Some have argued that it's happening already. In that context, it should be no wonder that all of this is going on. The change is inevitable, of course, just as the disruption of the entertainment industry was inevitable, but we're dealing with powerful structures.

We're all making it easy to be surveilled, by placing our data into silos, and putting so much of it on the Internet at all. Moore's Law was the only real limit to mass surveillance, and we're there. We're awash with data. Phone calls are routed over IP. How many of us send personal letters anymore? Not that it matters, because guess what, that's being logged too. (And sure, most of these news stories are coming out of the US, but don't let that fool you. We've see stories from elsewhere, too, and we know that the different agencies share information with each other.)

"Friends don't let friends use cleartext," my friend Marcus Povey writes. I'd argue that friends don't let friends put their trust in algorithms that can be backdoored, socially engineered and compromised without our knowledge.

I no longer buy the idea that we can code our way out of this. Not entirely.

Here are two things I would love for everyone to do; I'll start. The first is to publicly declare the jurisdiction in which you live, and in which your data is hosted. That way, people can make an informed decision about how to communicate with you. You can do it like this:

Hey, everyone! I live in California, my email is hosted by Google, I keep documents on Dropbox, and my server is hosted in Dallas, Texas.

Now you know whether to email me. And it also gives me some motivation: to move my email away from Google (hopefully with Mailpile's help, and to set myself up with something like ownCloud in place of Dropbox. (Of course, I'd declare where I hosted that, too.) I'm going to place this notice in my profile.

The second, and most important, thing is to take proactive, real-world action.

None of us can afford to be apolitical anymore, and we can't afford to be sidetracked by ridiculous political sideshowing. You might be a libertarian or a conservative; I'm a liberal who likes to call himself a social capitalist. It doesn't matter. What matters is everyone coming together, in conjunction with organizations like the EFF and the ACLU (and Open Rights Group and Liberty), and actively protesting. Get on the streets, tell your friends and neighbors what the problems are. Do it rationally and non-violently, but raise awareness however you can.

We have to learn how to play politics. There will be voices who call for revolution, or who publicly declare that playing this game is tantamount to aligning ourselves with government. I don't believe that these are productive discussions. (Although, I'll restate my belief that government will be subject to the same forces that other sectors were. The Napsterization of democracy will be good for all of us.)

Still, I think it's more practically possible to make freedom a mainstream political force again, and it seems to me that the best way we can do that is on the streets, in the real world. It's baffling to me that this should be necessary in America, whose self-labeling as "the land of the free" now seems wilfully Orwellian. Nonetheless, we need to deliver a clear message that only the politicians who actively support our civil liberties will, in turn, receive our support. The aforementioned organizations, as well as groups like Demand Progress and Restore the Fourth are already doing great work on this.

Even more than that, in our own actions, we have to conscientiously object. Buy services from countries with a good civil liberties record over countries that don't. Store offline. Opt out of services that track you for no good reason. Support anti-tracking measures, and projects that seek to put your own data under your own control. Support Manning. Support Snowden. Support journalists like Glenn Greenwald.

We get the world that we deserve. Some of our greatest minds have been focused on how to make extensive silos of data that infer things about our behavior, often without our knowledge or consent. They've disrupted music; they've disrupted movies; they've disrupted business. It would be very nice if we could all disrupt that last great gatekeeper - just enough so that the balance of power rests in equilibrium.

One-liner: a gaggle of inept public servants attempt to maintain a fully-functioning Orwellian dystopia. Or, Yes, Minister meets 1984. Or, Little Britain meets Brazil.

It's the near future, or an alternate present, or our present, or even the recent past - we're never quite sure. The government is doing everything in its power to spy on its citizens, as well as any visitors hapless enough to wander in through the borders, in the hope of retaining the status quo.

Scene: Etonian public servants attempt to run sham coffee shops at the G20, in order to dupe attendees into sharing their state secrets over the wifi. None of the public servants have the first clue about how to run a coffee shop.

Scene: journalists are detained at Heathrow. There's no good reason to keep them there, so cue awkward, protracted explorations of the contents of their luggage, as if Harold Pinter had written the Generation Game.

Scene: the government erects an Internet filter, recording all data traffic going in and out of the country, despite nobody in Whitehall quite knowing how to use a computer or how the Internet works.

In other words, the premise is that the government is inept, hopelessly bureaucratic, and catastrophically bad at running the dystopia it so badly wants to call its own. And how could that not be hilarious?

Software developers are not technicians. Whereas technicians are employed to do practical work involving technical equipment, the development process is more akin to writing. Paul Graham was absolutely right when he pointed out that:

[...] Of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike.

What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. They're not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they discover some new technique, so much the better.

Making requires concentration, creativity and skills. In turn, those things require the right environment, talent and practice. All three can be cultivated.

As a CTO (and, in effect, product manager), part of my role is to protect the team I work with and ensure that they have the right environment to do their creative work. Depending on the startup, the resources and the context, how well this works is a mixed bag.

Most developers I know work with great big headphones on. This isn't an accident; think of all those scenes in The Social Network where someone can't be interrupted because they're "in the zone". It's a great big social signal that says, "I'm working". Completely understandable: regaining your concentration after an interruption can take a very long time.

More than a set of kick-ass headphones, though, a productive environment needs to be cultivated. Here, asynchronous communication becomes important - developers tend to prefer communicating by email because they can do it in a natural break, without replying right this second. Similarly, meetings need to be scheduled carefully. Non-developers sometimes have trouble with this, and perhaps see it as an anti-social trait. It's not: you've got to leave people alone to work. If you're looking for a frenetic pace and for something to always be going on, I'd hazard to say that a software company shouldn't be your first port of call.

(The flipside of this is that developers have to remember to send those emails and be communicative. Nobody likes a black hole in their team.)

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and would love to hear your thoughts:

If you're a developer, what do you do to maintain your concentration?

If you're a CTO or a product manager, what do you do to help ensure that your team has the creative space to do their work?

If you're a non-technical manager, how do you prefer to interact with your technical teams?

#productivity #productmanagement #development

It was an honor to present Idno to the W3C Workshop on Social Standards: The Future of Business in San Francisco last week.

My position paper, The Indieweb as a Minimally Viable Platform, was previously posted on this site. It speaks for itself: the decentralized social networking technologies evolving as part of the #indieweb, I believe, are perfect for exploring and testing new social workflows and interactions without significant resource expenditure. In enterprise situations, this is key: too often, technology stacks are dictated by committee, and user experience becomes subservient to a growing list of untested needs. Silicon Valley startups know that you need to validate your ideas before you invest too heavily; it's time that enterprise caught up to this approach.

Conversely, larger organizations do have a different set of needs, and it's important to incorporate those into software designed to serve them. Security is often paramount (as it should be), and most large organizations won't consider running software on third-party clouds, or that "phones home" with aggregate statistics about their data. As it happens, those are some of the values that the #indieweb shares. It's also Elgg's largest market, and it's clear that there's still a need for a simple to use, off-the-shelf, fully self-hosted platform that enterprises can use to facilitate social communication internally. Idno's intent as a replacement for Elgg that works with modern web standards continues to be vindicated.

Some comment was made about how the #indieweb presenters at the event had to overcome their fear of the enterprise to get there. That's very far from the case. I've been working on easy-to-use enterprise software for almost ten years, and I continue to be passionate about bringing the ease of use and fluid social interactivity of the rest of the web to that market. I believe that the #indieweb community's work is very applicable, intend to help get it there, and know that I'm not the only one.

Thanks to Harry Halpin, Mark Weitzel and the Programme Committee for inviting me. I learned a lot, and had fun meeting everyone.

Also posted on IndieNews

In 2004, I quit my job and spent six months working on Elgg full time, burning through my savings. My living room became my office, and I quickly learned I had to find a way to stay motivated and un-distracted.

I'd worked from home once before, of course, when I was doing my degree. As a student, my brain was scattered; I never figured out how to block out the world around me and concentrate on what I had to do. Partially that was because I was still figuring myself out as a person; partially that was because the Edinburgh University environment itself was sub-optimal for me. It often seemed like nobody was concentrating on the work they had to do.

For the first month or two, I'd sit and stare at my computer, make myself some food, listen to music, go for a walk - anything but actually get started on work. It'd sometimes be 3pm before I put down a single line of code or even write an email.

For the nine years since then, I've mostly had to be self-motivating. I've learned a series of very simple techniques that keep me working, let me achieve my tasks, and allow me to stay relatively sane while spending lots of time by myself. Some of them probably work just for me; some of them might be more universally helpful. Everybody's different. Nonetheless, here they are.

Don't be macho. Burning the midnight oil on a project makes you sound like you're super hard working, and it can be pretty satisfying while you're doing it. But not taking care of sleep, exercise, nutrition and your social life will very quickly impact your performance. You'll probably find that your work from 3am isn't quite as awesome as you thought it was at the time - and you'll struggle to concentrate for at least the next couple of days. Keep relatively regular hours, and take care of the rest of your life. Take regular vacations, too; downtime is good for your creativity. (The one semi-macho thing that works really well for me: sprinkling my day with regular exercise. I always walk 10,000 steps a day, and if I start my day with 100 decline crunches and some push-ups, I feel much better than when I don't. It's not hard to work yourself up to that point, either; trust me, I'm hardly what you'd call athletic.)

Drink water. Sounds dumb, right? But drinking water improves concentration. For one thing, you're keeping your brain hydrated. But coffee - or worse, sweet drinks like cordials and sodas - will set your off on a spike-and-crash pattern that gets in the way of steady thought. Bonus: drinking plenty of water through the day will also help you sleep, which also helps with concentration. It's the little things. And for the same reason:

Don't eat junk. I mean, duh. I've found that eating lighter food during the day, with plenty of vegetables and protein, results in much better work. (If possible, cook for yourself.) Actually, my biggest problem is not eating enough: it's easy to under-consume calories when you're eating things like salad. You need to give yourself enough fuel. Meanwhile, while I think they're delicious, meals with a lot of meat or carbs tend to send me to sleep. Not useful.

Find music you love. Now that we've taken care of your body, let's talk about removing all those distractions. For me, that means plugging in some ear buds (or immersive headphones; the point is to block out exterior noise) and sticking on a playlist. Usually, I'm into artists like Ani DiFranco, Hamell on Trial and Eels, but when I'm working, those don't work for me at all. Instead, I've found - and again, this is purely subjective - that the best concentration food for me is stoner music. Groups like Nightmares on Wax, Mr Scruff, Lemon Jelly: perfect. There's something about the slow beats that block out the rest of the world and promote concentration in just the right way. I consider my Spotify subscription to be one of my most important productivity tools. I've built a coding playlist, which I often use to seed a radio station. I guess one reason why stoner music works for me is that a continuous sense of calm is helpful. (It's worth saying that I don't actually get stoned, and don't recommend it.)

Don't be interrupted. Turn IM, IRC, your phone, off off off, unless you absolutely have to be contactable. If you share your home with others, let them know that when you're working you shouldn't be interrupted unless it's really important. That can be really hard to understand, and I've seen (other peoples') entire relationships disintegrate because of it. It might seem like a small thing to people who aren't in the zone, but it can take 30+ minutes to regain your concentration after you've been interrupted. (I find that even seeing people around me doing non-worky things is disruptive.)

Sit up / stand up. Working from the sofa doesn't work. Don't try it. And get up and walk around for at least 5 minutes out of every hour.

Accept that you're human. If you're bashing your head against a problem or a piece of work that doesn't seem to be budging, there's nothing to be gained by continuously, fruitlessly hammering away at it. Go for a walk; have a glass of water; focus on something that isn't your screen. When you come back to it, you'll have a much better chance of getting something done. Furthermore, everyone has bad days, and they don't make any of us feel good; if you're really getting nothing done, it's okay to go get some fresh air instead (if you can).

Find your motivation. Finally, figure out what makes you excited to work. For me, that's getting feedback, so I'll often release my work early - sometimes a little too early. Knowing that there are people - a manager, a client, users - looking forward to seeing the work I'm doing is spectacularly motivating. Other people are motivated simply by creating something beautiful, or finding an elegant solution to a problem. Again, everyone is different. It's important to understand your own goals and desires. It may help to figure out how to mark your own progress, beforehand, so you can maintain a sense of momentum.

This is probably the most important thing for me. It's not enough to have a job; I've got to be working on something that has meaning for me, in a situation where it's possible to make an impact. If I believe that the project I'm working on isn't important, or there's no way to succeed, it's all over for me. Nobody likes working on a treadmill.

All the usual advice about working with great teams comes into play here: if you're working with other people, make sure they're great people. One bad apple can poison a team, and I've certainly seen situations where one guy's poor attitude ruined an entire startup. Working at home is still working - in addition to the above, all the usual workplace tips apply.

Finally, regarding keeping your brain running, this article from the New Scientist is pretty good. I don't think I like the idea of smart drugs, but there are some solid tips here.

Written with the help of Georgie St Clair, Jonny Miller, SamarKaushal, Jaqueline Png, Danae, Joachim, Julien Genestoux, Paul Birch, Domenico Perri, Jamie Bullock, Annalyn Aguilar, Ahmed El Gabri, Kristian Kruse, Linda Mork, Zoe M. Gillenwater, Gordo, Mike Sirrah, 不能淋雨的眉毛, Niall Thompson, olga_zagorzelska, Antonella Iselli, Jack Smith, ntlk, Aisha Rawji, Lowfill Tarmak, sanjaypoyzer, Thomas Kjemperud, Chloe Nicholls, Paul Sturrock, Stef Lewandowski, Johnathan Leppert, damnitnicole, Robin Lynch, Emarcroft, fee plumley, Jeri Dansky, and Erin Jo Richey

The photo was taken in 2007, when I was working on Elgg.