The Network Effect

See also, follow-up: The Network Effect - Part 2 (2007-06-24)

Originally posted 2007-02-19:

I have many hobby interests which have occupied my free time in the past. If you asked me what I would like to spend my free time doing (outside of work, family and spiritual pursuits) I would say squash / racquetball, hockey, electronics circuit building, working on my stamp collection, coding for fun, coding for profit, reading, gaming...

However, to describe what I have actually spent free time doing recently, I would say that Social Networking - especially on LinkedIn has dominated my spare moments. In 5-10 minutes a day and the odd day of 30 or so I have grown my direct connections to 369 and that quickly multiplies to over 50,000 2nd degree and over 2,000,000 3rd degree connections.



I am facinated by the 6 degrees of separation type observations of how small the world is in this information age. I try to practice Open Networking to link with like minded people and help the collective where I can with referrals. I've seen the value of this with interesting contacts being made by people that discover my profile through their network and in making targetted requests of my network which return results any sales/marketing team would drool over.

I made a decision a long time ago to pretty much ignore all social networking sites other than LinkedIn as I prefer to have one strong network rather than a bunch of weaker ones. LinkedIn caters mostly to professional networking and can be a very good tool in career development.

Please drop me a line if you'd like to join my network.

Happy Networking...

Cheers,
Michael.

It's time to embrace open distributed / federated identification (authentication)

Updated: Feb 3, 2008...

Yahoo has joined the OpenID universe: http://openid.yahoo.com/, use your existing Yahoo or Flickr account to login to OpenID enabled sites.

Originally posted on: Feb 11, 2007...

I won't rant about all the usernames and passwords I need to keep track of for my personal and professional use because I can already see everyone nodding.

In the past, Microsoft tried to solve this problem for the masses with their Passport authentication service (now known as Windows Live ID). The idea is that you maintain one user ID and password with a trusted site and other sites can delegate user logins to the trusted site. Anyone with a hotmail account automatically had a passport. The problem here was it was Microsoft and they were not able to overcome the paranoia / distrust / hate / etc... that many in the industry have for them. Also, if I recall correctly from when I considered adding this feature to Ticketmaster's ReserveAmerica.com, Microsoft was charging for the use of their API. However, many took notice and decided that a consortium of industry leaders should collaborate on such a service.

Thus was born the Liberty Alliance and their Project Liberty. And so I was heartened, it will take some time but this effort seemed to have some significant backing and should have revolutionized the way we manage our online identities. I was patient, every time I needed to create yet-another-login on a new site I would recall the promise of Passport and Liberty and wonder - what ever happened? As the years passed, patience turned to apathy as I gave up hope that any sites I care to visit or enterprise services I use will adopt Project Liberty. Perhaps this will yet emerge as a useful platform, or is rampantly being adopted - just not by the 7,543 sites and services that I seem to need to track my IDs on.

Today I see new hope!

Not from a press release, not from an editorial article but from a real live site (Simile Wiki) that is using an existing platform which seems poised to capture critical mass in this space.

OpenID exists today and you have your choice of authentication providers to maintain your trusted account with. It seems that adoption is still early but shows much promise with authentication services and libraries available. If you have a Technorati account then you're all set to play, just login to Technorati and then provide your profile URL (http://technorati.com/profile/<your account name>) as an OpenID identifier into any site that allows authentication using OpenID (e.g. http://www.openidenabled.com/).

I've found that the Technorati authentication is a little buggy, it claims an error but one or two browser reloads corrects the problem. This will likely get corrected soon and there are other service providers to choose from if you wish. Also, you can find implementations of OpenID libraries in most popular web development languages if you prefer to run your own server.

ClaimID can be used in the same manner as Technorati and I have found that the site I tested was able to reconcile two OpenIDs to the same account - how very cool... ClaimID authentication seems to not suffer from Technorati's bugs but does not currently support as many stored profile attributes for distribution to trusted sites when creating accounts.

Once again, the FOSS community demonstrates how it can overcome 300 pound gorillas and bring new technologies to market quicker than an industry consortium.

Hopefully this will be one way technology can begin simplifying our lives as intended, a promise long unfulfilled. Do your part by participating as a user and site developer!

Team Introduction

Welcome to the team (for me).

Taking a page from two thought leaders in the software development industry (Joel Spolsky and Reginald Braithwaite), I thought I might start posting here messages within my team that have common application. I hope you'll agree or comment otherwise :)

What follows is my introduction / team orientation message to the development team at GS1 Canada.

Day 2 dawns and I am filled with thoughts of a new business domain to master, lots of bits and bytes that need to get delivered and a new team to work with.

Please notice I said team. We all come from different backgrounds, culturally and technically, and from that diversity comes our strength - IF we behave as a team. If we do not, then we are bound to fail. It's been said many times before but bears repeating: we will succeed or fail as a team. Whether it be at an organizational or personal level, I do not consider failure an option. So here comes...

Rule #1: Be a strong teammate. We all have different titles, years of experience and contract / permanent status. I do not consider any of those important factors in the way we should be treating each other or the correctness of any of our positions / arguments. Correlates of rule #1: Open and honest communication, transparency, politeness, respect. We should not need to cut anyone off to get our point across. Be patient, listen, and respond constructively. No finger pointing.

Rule #2: Get IT done. We have lots to do. We can not sit around debating forever, if the way forward is not completely clear, go in the most sensible direction and adjust as necessary when clarity arrives. Often, clarity will not come until a direction is chosen and traveled to some degree. Correlates of rule #2: Stomp on stoppers. Stoppers are anything that prevent you from getting IT done. These can be communication inefficiencies, critical bugs, analysis paralysis, organizational bureaucracy or personal / family issues.

My job is largely to help you be as productive as possible while maintaining the overall team health. To do that I will actively be spending as much time with each of you as I can but I also need and want you to come to me with any concerns. Do not sit and stew, come to me and we will find solutions or at least we can talk.

Rule #3: Don't be afraid.

• Don't be afraid to be wrong. Ask questions that you think you know the answer to, you might be surprised by the response. If you said or did something in the past that you would like to change, don't regret it - correct it. While learning to ski I remember thinking, if I never fall then I'm not trying hard enough to improve.
  
• Don't be afraid of the code. Adhere to the XP value of courage. Refactor your code if it starts to smell. Unit test, as much as possible with automated test suites.
• Don't be afraid to question the status quo. Practice continuous improvement in your personal and professional development and in the way we exercise tools and processes to get our job done.
  

I could continue this for quite some time but I think that's enough to get the gist. More will come for sure but please remember the 3 rules and we'll all enjoy coming to work each day and achieve our individual and organizational goals.

In the spirit of 3, I have a set of 3 challenges for you and a prize for the winner of each:

• The first person to send me the name of my cat.
  
• The second person to send me an invite or respond to one I send on LinkedIn.
  
• The third person to send me their Instant Messaging contact info so we can have brief, efficient interactions that do not clutter our mail inbox.

The winner of each of these will have their pick of any item(s) up to $20 US from ThinkGeek "stuff for smart masses".

I look forward to working with you and celebrating many individual and team successes!

Cheers,
Michael.