Archive for Mar 2011


GRAMA and Cost

Speaking before the GRAMA working group today, Craig Call said "informed people make wise choices says." This is a great way to look at open records and open government. Another thought "GRAMA reduces the need for litigation and thus reduces overall costs." We should view open records as a responsibility of government, not a burden. That said, GRAMA is the worst way to get open government. GRAMA ought to be the way exceptions are handled, not the way routine access to data is made. Exception handling costs any business money. Government is no different. The rule ought to be
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Social Media as Enterprise Exception Handling

Kaliya sent me notes by David Terrar from talks by JP and John Hagel from the Dachis Business Summit. Good stuff. Here's a quote from Hagel that caught my eye on social media and exception handling: Where can I maximise impact from this deployment? He suggested the richest area is around exception handling, which he called the shadow economy of the enterprise. He suggested 60-70% of knowledge workers is devoted to exception handling, and this is the ideal place to use social tools to find the right people and connect to the data. From Dachis Business Summit - you
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Pictures from Kynetx Impact

Doc Searls took some great pictures of Kynetx Impact last week and posted them. There are some fun shots in here. I'm disappointed its over and looking forward to next year already. Here's one of me and Craig Burton from Doc's set:
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Killing Conspiracy: WikiLeaks and GRAMA

Over the last decade, I've lived my life more publicly than I did before thanks to the rise of technologies like blogging and Twitter. Many of my friends don't understand the level of information I'm willing to just put out for the world to see or what motivates it. The primary motivation--at least the primary reward--has been a life that is richer and more fun because of the connections I've made, the discussions that have ensued, and the friends I have who I'd have never known without blogging and Twitter. That said, like most people, I chose what to
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Clean Sheets and APIs

David Barrett of Expensify just led a session at Kynetx Impact on APIs. His talk was listed as "When APIs go bad. APIs are powerful, but when should you consider not providing an API for your data." He followed Sam Ramji who gave an updated version of his Darwin's Finches talk. The updates are recorded in two recent articles The Building Blocks for a Successful API Strategy and With APIs It's Caveat Structor - Developer Beware. Consequently there was some good discussion and interaction from the audience. David's main point is that building an API isn't free and for
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GRAMA, Open Government, and Privacy

I'm been asked to serve on the working group to understand what, if any, changes need to be made to GRAMA, the Government Records Access and Management Act--Utah's version of the Freedom of Information Act. This issue has been of considerable interest to me since it came up in the final days of the 2011 legislative session. The Utah lesiglature passed a bill, HB477, that restricted access to records by making some communications something other than government records (and thus out of the perview of GRAMA) and making others specifically protected. The bill also tries to deal with cost
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Leave the Services Clients to the Services and Build Something Really Interesting

Twitter's Ryan Sarver made news when he posted a message that asked developers to stop developing Twitter clients. There's been a lot of talk about this and certainly, if you're the developer of a Twitter client this isn't good news. Still, it seems like a natural idea to me. The providers of services like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare are likely going to be the dominant providers of clients for those services. But clients for a single service are the least interesting clients and provide pretty low value to their users. Where the real value lies, and something the services
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Come to Impact and Learn About the Future of the Web

In about two weeks on March 22 and 23, Kynetx will be hosting our annual Kynetx Impact conference. You can register for Impact here. We have a great slate of keynote presenters and a great program all about the Live Web. If you're not familiar with the Live Web, listen to Doc Searls descibe it in the following video: The Live Web gets beyong the static architecture of the current Web (yeah, with all it's dynamicism, it's still pretty static). The Live Web promises to give users access to relevant information and services from dozens or even hundreds of
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