Theory that in markets displaying the Network Effect, early success translates into more and more success (momentum), resulting in significant marketshare concentration. (more)

Ecologist My interdisciplinary research encompasses a broad area of environmental, Energy, food, population, economic and public policy studies, ranging from quantifications and modeling of global biogeochemical cycles to long-range appraisals of energy and environmental options. I have been also applying these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~vsmil/ (more)

book by Jane Jacobs, 1969, ISBN:0-394-70584-X (more)

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental, modeling language in the field of software engineering, that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system.[1] UML was originally motivated by the desire to standardize the disparate notational systems and approaches to software design developed by Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh at Rational Software in 1994–1995, with further development led by them through 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language

The Ny CTO Club heard a presentation on MDA (Model Driven Architecture) by Michael Guttman today. Unfortunately, the presentation was rather canned, and too broad to generally convince skeptics in the group who have been burned by architecture-tools in the past. But there may have been some interesting bits.... (more)

Sean McGrath on hiding custom XML within MicroFormat structures. XML, RDF, UML and so on are not formats so much as meta-formats. Consequently, built-in knowledge of any of these does not amount to zero complexity. XML is not a file format. It is a file format for file formats. This distinction is all important when calculating complexity... Perhaps we can hide custom XML languages inside these standard XML languages, using them as general-purpose semantic containers. We could arrange that XHTML files or ODT files look and feel like ordinary files to XHTML-aware or ODT-aware tools and yet, inside these files we can hide the semantic information we would normally use a custom XML schema for.

Jeffrey P Shell on Agile Modeling, Extreme Programming, and UML. At Zope Corp, we were never able to come up with a really good system that would let an engineer jump right in easily, even using a Python friendly tool like Object Domain... And since it was so quick to start up, work on, and print out, I have no real strong ties to it - I know that changes to the design will be easy to record and reflect, and not take up too much of my time away from producing the software I'm expected to produce. This ultimately means that I'm more likely to either keep the diagram up to date, or discard it when it's no longer needed.

for Fractally Generative Pattern Language... (more)

The obsolete framing of a lifetime of Making A Living as a coherent controllable activity. :) (more)

Dave Winer has suggested this occasionally, e.g. for Microsoft. (more)

Eric Ries model for Start Up Product Development and Customer Development (more)

This specification provides a model and grammar for representing the structure of information resources used to define topics, and the associations (relationships) between topics. Names, resources, and relationships are said to be characteristics of abstract subjects, which are called topics. Topics have their characteristics within scopes: i.e. the limited contexts within which the names and resources are regarded as their name, resource, and relationship characteristics. One or more interrelated documents employing this grammar is called a "topic map." (more)

Collaboration guru (more)

A nasty area of Project Management is handling the Portfolio of open and future Projects. (more)

See Auteur Theory

In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a film reflects the director's personal Creative Vision, as if they were the primary "auteur" (the French word for "author"). In spite of—and sometimes even because of—the production of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through studio interference and the collective process... Starting in the 1960s, some film critics began criticising auteur theory's focus on the authorial role of the director. Pauline Kael and Sarris feuded in the pages of The New Yorker and various film magazines.[5][6] One reason for the backlash is the collaborative aspect of shooting a film, and in the theory's privileging of the role of the director (whose name, at times, has become more important than the movie itself). In Kael's review of Citizen Kane, a classic film for the auteur model, she points out how the film made extensive use of the distinctive talents of co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and cinematographer Gregg Toland... In 2006, David Kipen coined the term Schreiber Theory to refer to the theory of the screenwriter as the principal author of a film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur_theory (more)

Now It's Democrats Who Feel Their Values Threatened—and Are Voting (more)

Johnstown Never Believed Donald Trump Would Help. They Still Love Him Anyway. (more)

Caught the Tom Peters act courtesy of SyBase/AvantGo. Would have gotten a free copy of his book, but couldn't stand to sit through the rest of the day of sales hooey. Some semi-quotes: (more)

Here's a Blog Thread to follow: (more)