2024-05-07: Community, Trouble, Anytype
(If you work at FF/FFDW 🄽 links will send you to a local, editable page in the Filecoin Foundation Notion. If you are in the Filecoin ecosystem, you may be able to join the #monologue-danny Slack channel where I answer questions, take meeting bookings, talk to myself and the other voices in my head. In the glorious decentralized ocap-enabled future, such data-hoardings will be a thing of the past, but we live for now in a fallen ACL world.)
Three Things I Did
1. Communed
It’s our quarterly Social Impact Community call, which is a combo of lightning talks and breakout groups with some of the smartest people I know. We heard from Authors Alliance 🄽 (”I had no idea creators were fighting DRM”, said a happy free software coder), Flick.org (talking about the idea of Data Lifeboats 🄽 ), and Ushahidi, who are kind of lifeboating their electoral data.
2. Troubleshot
I basically just sat on a call and looked stern for this one, but when one of our social impact projects was struggling with some technical issues at a Filecoin storage provider, it was good to see that we (well Porter Stowell 🄽 and Brynn O’Donnell 🄽) could escalate it to the top.
There’s some complex social thing going on here that requires a bigger post than these updates, but I do hold back saying “oh just ping some [RANDOM HIGH-POWERED PERSON]” to solve your problem because of the frequent feedback “yeah, but why would they listen to me?”. The potential answers to that are all over the place: acknowledging my own bombastic privilege at this point, but also noting that flatter social hierarchies actually make this more possible than in other spaces, but also noting that there’s still a subtle art to it, but also noting that part of that art is being willing to risk being seen as an ass, but also noting that open tech communities don’t see being forward as being particular assy, but also noting that it can, in fact, be assy, despite the obliviousness we all pretend to treat it with. I think the probable right way of framing it is “if you feel you are being stymied by the system, it’s okay to switch to poking people directly instead.” If they react badly to you trying to solve a problem, it’s ok. If they’re ok people they will reset after the initial defensiveness (me included).
Actually, as I was writing this, I was doing just what I prescribed — deep breath and poking somebody who I feel a bit scared of, pointing out a problem. They appreciated it! And it was about communicating more! RECURSION
3. Worked Late At Night
Probably not something to encourage, but I did have an amazing nap from like 5PM-8PM, and I love the quiet of 11PM, with just me and Norton Computer For Peace. Must not end up still on couch at 3AM.
TIL
- Every time I write these posts, I feel a wobbliness about depending on Notion. I would really prefer to be stockpiling this info in something more open in every sense — and using the Filecoiniverse stack too. I like the look of Subconscious / Noosphere 🄽, but Anytype 🄽 is further along, and more obviously a Notion-replacement. I should start trying to use it in parallel. Ironically, it’s probably their per-user charging that keeps me away from playing with it more.
Links Du Jour
- Cory Doctorow 🄽 namechecks Seth Schoen 🄽 and Robin Berjon 🄽 in this fine rant about treacherous software.
- Tim Bray 🄽 notes how vulnerable cloud storage is to disruption. Here’s hoping!