I interpret this as a message from Roy Fielding: “REST has a peaceful effect on your physical and emotional health.”

I have mixed feelings about Chad’s presentation. On one hand, discussions along the lines of career development and life decisions are needed in the programming community. On the other, the subject areas of “life balance” and “passion” are very tricky to present. They are inherently subjective and philosophical.

Some of the content of Chad’s talk reminded me of the philosophies of Tim Ferriss which I find half-useful and half-not. I welcome discussion and even polarizing figures. But over time, I would prefer that Ruby conferences draw from a wider base of philosophical inspiration than just one popular and self-admitted master of self-promotion.

I find it telling that in the Ruby community, we’ve seen several successful Rubyists talk about life balance issues: DHH (RailsConf, a few years back), Chris Wanstrath (at RailsConf this year), and now Chad. These have been talks based in personal experience, and I have enjoyed them.

The issues of developing careers and finding meaning are well-worn topics. Just look at the shelves at any bookstore. Great thinkers and everyday people have struggled with these issues for thousands of years.

I hope we beware the echo-chamber effect — where Rubyists form little enclaves and isolate ourselves. We should seek out many voices: not just the ones of us “at the top” and not just programmers. If we Rubyists are truly interested in these subject areas, we should seek out a broad variety of thinkers and invite them to our conferences. I think we’d be better for it.

I’m not star-struck by change.gov. Yes, the team is iterating quickly, doing good technical work, and rightfully impressing some people. Their progress is incredible by government standards. Let’s give them credit for that. But change.gov should also measure itself according to a broader perspective. The team behind change.gov should challenge itself by asking “What is possible in the field of online participation?”

The field of online participation is relatively young. I’m not sure that anyone who watches this space really knows what is possible. So I don’t think we know what the “bar” for achievement should be. Randy Pausch probably said it best: “You obviously don’t know where the bar should be, and you’re only going to do a disservice by putting it anywhere.”*

I’ve got questions about the big picture of change.gov, where it is going, how internal decisions get made, and what organizational capacity backs it up. You can see some in my prior blog post. Every question seems to lead to another.

Asking these questions comes naturally to me, but I also want to:
1. Find out the answers to my questions
2. Find out if change.gov is asking these questions of themselves
3. If not, find a way to bring up the questions to the change.gov team

How can I accomplish these goals? Here are some ways:

1. Write. Blog. Tweet. Argue. Persuade.

I’ve done some of this and could do lots more. I’ve got all kinds of energy and ideas pent up. You can get a small dose if you follow coinsight (my account for Collective Insight LLC) on twitter.

That said, writing is only the beginning. I don’t think I’m going to be satisfied unless I can convert these rants into action!

2. Put pressure on change.gov to improve.

Perhaps I could join forces with an organization that can help. This is a good idea in theory, but I’m not sure that I’m going to find an organization that is ready to ask the tough questions and apply the kind of pressure I’m talking about.

To the average bystander, change.gov is kicking butt: why criticize something that is working just fine?

On the other hand, those who are tuned into e-government, online participation, and wisdom of the crowds see the imperfections in change.gov. Despite this, I suspect that these mavens are quite pleased with the progress so far. They are hanging back and holding back their criticism. For now.

I must admit that I don’t just want to criticize for its own sake. I want to engage in a discussion for the sake of improvement. I want to criticize because it is the first step to rethink, restructure, and rebuild.

3. “Work around” the problems of change.gov.

It is possible that I could find ways to improve change.gov indirectly. For example, I could build a companion Web site — perhaps it could screen-scrape to get the underlying data from change.gov and package up that information in a more usable way. The Sunlight Foundation is an inspiration in this regard — checkout their post about Opening Your Seat at the Table.

I like this approach, but it has some limitations:
1. You have to work hard to get traffic and attention to the companion Web site
2. It is a second-best use of resources (it is inefficient)
3. The companion site may be brittle (a change to the original Web site can break the interconnections)

4. Join the change.gov team.

This would be awesome. It is easy to be an armchair quarterback, but there is nothing like being on the actual team. Sitting down and understanding the vision and constraints that the change.gov team faces would be eye-opening.

Now I just need to figure out how to make it happen! If you have suggestions, please let me know.

Perhaps my chances are unlikely. Still, I’m confident that my background and experience would be useful to the team. You can find my professional details, including my resume, over on my personal Web site.

Notes

* You can get the back-story about the Randy Pausch quote by watching watching his last lecture.

All in all, it is a politicized perspective of the Fannie Mae situation and who is to blame. Which is fine; I believe in free speech. I just hope that educated people – i.e. people reading this blog – will think critically about it. (Clarification: due to a comment I received, I realize that my word choice here might have had implications I didn’t intend. I hope all people think critically, period. Also, I did not mean to imply that readers of this blog are necessarily ‘educated’, not did I mean to imply that people who don’t read this blog are not.)

The presentation has some serious factual errors, as well, which I am not going to go into here.

More importantly, I hope people are especially skeptical of email forwards. It is no coincidence — here’s why forwards are dubious: Often, there is no master source. As different versions circulate, the author loses control — the recipients can change the text however they want. Accountability is lost, because the original author hasn’t kept control. Perhaps there have been corrections or updates — but it doesn’t really matter, because it is hard to find the most up to date version.

Who is Dennis Jantz?

Being a good skeptic myself, I originally wondered if the author of the presentation (cited as Professor Dennis Jantz) really existed! I expected that a professor who was willing to attach his name to a presentation would be relatively easy to find on the Web. However, I did considerable searching but didn’t find anything conclusive about a “Professor Dennis Jantz.”

On a hunch, I emailed Instructor Dennis Jantz of the UNLV English Department this morning. I didn’t expect it to be the same guy — the title didn’t match, and I didn’t expect the author of a presentation about Fannie Mae to be at the English Department. (A clarification in response to a comment: I have nothing against departments of English or people who work at them. I am only saying that, at the time, I did not expect an English professor to spend considerable time focusing on financial or governmental issues.)

He wrote me back and claimed ownership of the presentation. He clarified something to me in the email:

For the record, I am an Adjunct Instructor at my University, not a full professor. My Masters is in Educational Leadership … The views expressed are solely mine as a private citizen, and in no way intended to represent any position of the university or its staff.

I’m glad he cleared up his title. It is not a good idea to let a misrepresentation of one’s title persist. In academia, there is a significant difference between an instructor and a tenured professor.

I wrote back to Jantz and said:

In the interests of increasing public debate, I would ask if you would be willing to:
1. post an authoritative version on the Web, preferably as a Web page where one doesn’t have to have PowerPoint.
2. take credit for it publicly, so that people know who you are and what perspective you bring
3. open it up for discussion using online tools, such as discussion boards

In order to follow the spirit of learning, sharing, and teacher, Jantz should make his writings available on the Web on a place where he takes ownership and accountability for what he writes. He should open them up to scrutiny and debate.

In this day and age, anyone who is serious about sharing their work (especially someone at a university) knows how to give it a permanent location on the Web so people can find it. Spreading information through email with no “master” source is the stuff rumors are made of.

When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. … The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.

I think Carr’s article is a must-read. It covers a lot of ground, and I do not have the time or space now to address all of its points one by one.

But let me say one thing: I am saddened to think that the Net itself, driven by its current revenue model of advertising and ad click-throughs, is probably profiting from the ADD of its viewers. This is why I believe that people must guard their attention and spend their time with Web sites that provide real value. I also hope that the next round of Internet entrepreneurs will offer Web experiences that truly enrich people’s lives rather than sending them careening around the Net aimlessly.

I don’t know how other people feel about this, but it seemed like an unwelcome departure from the tone that I’m used to on Twitter. Some of these messages are from people that I respect and like very much. But I don’t like the direction it is going.

The world has, more or less, figured out the norms surrounding email, instant messaging, and IRC. But we have some learning and back-and-forth to do when it comes to Twitter.

I guard my attention. When the noise-to-signal ratio increases, a communication channel becomes less valuable.  When a threshold is crossed, I turn it off. On Twitter, that means that I’m not going to follow people that generate too much noise. Especially if that noise is impersonal marketing.