Back on the ball

Its been a while since I've added anything to the blog. As you know I was traveling a good bit in Ecuador and now I'm back stateside and I've settled in the SW. Now this is a big deal for a few reason's:

1) The desert - I spent a portion of my upbringing in FL and I don't mind the heat. As a matter of fact, I like heat and humidity. The heat without humidity worries me.
2) The wife begins a PhD program and this means a lot of hard work for a long time.
3) This is a "small town" and this worries me the most.

Not that there is anything wrong with small towns, coming from DC, I think it will be a challenge to get used to "the volume" of interactions. If you take the law of large numbers into consideration, it will take longer to make contact with that one meaningful person if there are fewer interaction (because there are fewer people). This particularly of concern because I gave up a job in DC and now I must find work in Tucson.

So, I hand it over to you all, how do you find that one meaningful interaction when there are fewer interactions taking place? What is the best starting point in a close nit community?

PS: The posting will happen more frequently now that I'm back on the ball. Thanks for the patience.

A Personal Entry

As I mentioned in my last post, I am not in the United States and this has posed a few challenges these last few weeks - internet access being one of them. Its taken me a while to figure it out, but internet access is only part of the problem. I am worried about loosing people's interest by getting too personal. Thus, I am hesitant to blog about myself and my personal life.

Now, you must understand that I am usually motivated to write a post by what happens around me daily - pretty personal if you ask me. But, I still don't know how much of myself to leave on this blog. Since I'm not in an office surrounded by the daily conversations about managing a business, nonprofit, or IT infrastructure, my only source of inspiration is my family and my vacation. And, it just happens that the recurring issues that we addressed at NPower DC aren't necessarily relevant in Cuenca, Ecuador.

So, I turn to you all for advice, how much of your personal life do you leave on your blog? Since this isn't a blog about the latest and greatest in video cards (or anything of the sort), I have the freedom to diverge from the tone of the standard business blog. Right? Either way, I am attaching a photo of our challenging hike in Cajas National Park (Ecuador). You'd be surprised at how little oxygen there is at 14,900 ft. Thanks for reading!

Far Far Away

I find myself outside of the United States and I am suffering due to the lack of access to information - internet is hard to come by. Needless to say, its been hard to post. Fear not, I have not gone away.

Peace
-GM

Front page of the Washington Post: In U.S., a Multitude of Forces Drains the Spirit of Giving

This was on the front page of the Washington Post this AM, right below the fold. I guess they didn't like the AP story either.
In U.S., a Multitude of Forces Drains the Spirit of Giving

The slowing economy has a greater effect on the little guy: How charities and Foundations cope with fewer donations

The free Washington Post newspaper, Express, is the highlight of my morning commute. Usually I stick to the hilarious stories of incompetent burglars or misbehaving pets, but on Tuesday a particular article caught my eye, "Charities Detect ‘Disaster Fatigue’: Catastrophes in China and Myanmar prompt little giving in U.S."* I was a bit shocked, to say the least. I know these kinds of dramatic headlines are important to grab a reader’s attention, but this one hit a nerve.

I work for a Nonprofit IT consulting firm and I KNOW charitable organizations. I hear a lot from food banks that report a decrease in food donations because of the slowing economy and foundations are experiencing decreased numbers of grant requests because taking on new programmatic initiatives is hard to pull off when you don't know where the money is coming from. We are all tightening our belts and preparing for harder times.

There may be some disaster fatigue going on but the slowing economy is effecting charitable giving all across the nonprofit sector. It’s short sighted and premature to imply (by the headline at least) that multiple natural disasters are the only effect on charitable giving. The slowing economy is effecting us all but the under resourced, underprivileged, and undeserved are always hit the hardest.

For all nonprofits out there my headline would be; ‘The slowing economy has a greater effect on the little guy: How charities and Foundations cope with fewer donations’

* The exact story can be found in the May 20th edition of the Express. The following link is exactly what was found in the Express (by Lisa Tolin) but with a different headline: "Disaster fatigue' leads to drop in giving"

Open Source Cooperation - HA! I told you so!

There is too much incentive to "not cooperate." See this article: Why Linux isn't yet ready for synchronized release cycles. As much as it makes sense to cooperate, its too hard to pull off, even amongst Linux hippies. This IS prisoner's dilemma.

Tell me if its time to get over open source cooperation and move on.

Can open source survive?

I have this friend from high school who is probably a genius. Both his parents have advanced degrees in economics and this kid used to take derivatives of functions while his dad walked him home from the fourth grade. He really is brilliant.

Back in High School when we were all taking our International Baccalaureate exams he presented this paper to the accreditation board which analyzed the behavior of a community of "genes." These "genes" were instructed to cooperate or cheat in order to maximize individual benefit. Ultimately the goal was to see if these would "genes" create a community or if they would take on the world alone. After creating this complex algorithm to model their behavior, he found that these millions and millions of "genes" all tended toward cooperation.

This was an amazing revelation and we were all really excited for him. At first it was the wild wild west until the "genes" understood that they all could benefit more from working together. But, after millions of "turns" one "gene" would always cheat and it would throw everyone off and the whole group would loose big except the cheater. Essentially the "genes" would end up in a prisoner's dilemma like scenario were no "gene" could trust another "gene." In essence, this cycle would repeat over and over. Chaos, cooperation, cheating, etc.

Now let's replace the word "gene" with "open source developer". We have come to this point where more and more people finally appreciate the benefits of "open" development and everybody cooperates. But, we may be at the beginning a stage where "cheating" or changing the rules yields HUGE benefits. I think open source is going the route of these little "genes" from my friend's high school experiment. Don't believe me? Check out this article from GIGAOM.

The good news is that at some point we will circle back to cooperation. We also tend to remember being cheated better than these "genes" did and hopefully we can avoid the same pitfalls in the future.

Absent some sort of regulation or governing body, open source initiatives are very susceptible to the ebbs and flows of the "gene paradox." There may be nothing we can do to prevent it because we are all part of the problem. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.