Nollind Whachell

The following is what I believe Six Apart’s Project Comet will entail (and a lot of it equals the approaches that I’ve been researching myself). I started writing this out earlier today and it kept getting bigger and bigger in detail. Too big actually. Therefore, here is the extremely short version (which is still lengthy).

Instead of breaking a single blog down into parts using category tags, think instead of creating small focused micro-blogs or “streams” that are connected together (like the strands of DNA) into one overall encompassing blog. Yes, we’re talking small pieces loosely joined again. These streams can be anything and everything. They could be a micro-blog specifically focused on web design, cooking, restaurants, movies, music, books, your podcasts, documents, whatever! The idea here is to break down your thoughts into these basic building blocks of streams which you then combine together to create your entire “river” of thought. Of course what was stopping people from doing this before in the past (as I tried to do it myself more than few times) is some way of connecting or aggregating these streams (which TypePad now has incorporated within their system).

What’s the big deal? Why break content down in these streams? Well since they are the basic building blocks for a website or blog, you can mix and match these streams anyway you choose and even more importantly you can create multiple dynamic blogs on the fly to better suite their intended targets. For example, lets say I talk about web design, gaming, cooking, travel, and then the typical stuff like movies, music, and books. I decide to create a stream for each of these topics. From the backend management tool, I just manage all of these separate streams from one location. From the front end though, my visitors actually see three different websites that I’ve dynamically built using these streams. My web design site uses a techno design and template to show off my web design, movies, music, and books streams. My social weblog utilizes a stylish lounge design and template to show off my cooking, restaurants, travel, and music streams. And finally my gaming blog utilizes a kick ass gaming design and template to show off my gaming, movies, music, and books streams. In effect, I’m using the same content streams but reconfiguring them together in different ways to match my target audience.

Of course the next step is community aggregation. Let’s say I have couple of friends who also do web design but they have streams that talk about gaming, movies, music, and books as well. I think their content in these streams is great so I ask them to collaborate with me on it, invite them to my gaming blog via the backend system, and voila their streams (which they manage from their own backend panel) are inserted and mixed with my own stream automatically. Now we have a group weblog on gaming that is starting to kick ass with our combined content. Whoa, wait a minute were doing so good that we start getting decent traffic. Wow, it looks like a lot of traffic. So we decide to throw up some Google ads to see if we can make some money. Wow, we do! Hmm, but how do split the money we make? No worries, the system has already figured that out for us by calculating how much we’ve made and dividing those funds proportionally between each stream based upon the traffic and popularity of the content from each one.

I think you can figure the rest out now with regards to how families would create their own private dynamic sites with their collective streams on pets & animals, books, movies, and so forth. Also, to start doing working with streams right now yourself (no matter what blogging software you’re using), all you need to do is divide up your content into these micro-blogs (like different channels on a TV set) and then find some way of aggregating your latest content from each of them on the homepage of your site (either via server side scripts software or maybe something like FeedDigest). BTW one of the nice side effects of this approach is that not only do you get a focused feed for each stream but you also get a separate focused feed for the comments for that stream as well.

With the strike of single match to light a candle in my den, a feeling of warmth and home surrounds me with the sight of it. With the smell and sound of the igniting match, thoughts of camping out in the woods as a kid beside a crackling fire come flooding into my mind. Therefore, with but a single simple action, I have become connected to so many meaningful things relating to my life. This is exacting the feeling and experience I want in linking my thoughts on this site. A single thought or experience should allow me to go back and see all of those meaningful thoughts that relate to it. How to do this is another story though. 🙂

While visiting Mena Trott’s weblog yesterday, I stumbled across a picture that showed a Six Apart office scene of people sitting around a table, chatting it up, while behind them, on a wall, was what looked like an assortment of randomly printed pages all grouped together beside one another on the wall. Of course, while these pages may have looked random, they obviously related in some way, which is why there were grouped together. In fact, what this image made me realize is that we are constantly trying to find meaningful relationships in everything we do every day.

You see after seeing that picture above, I immediately thought of FilmLoop which is soon to be released software that will allow you to not only loop (or group) a series of images (possibly into a story) but you can also get other loops from other people using the system as well. Therefore, I could get loops from my various family members and they would be constantly updated over time showing an ongoing story of what is happening with them. Again what is being done here is a loop (or stream) of different images grouped together to show a meaningful relationship and/or story.

Finally I realized where this was all going and the meaning of these seemingly random thoughts that I was trying to put together myself into some sort of meaningful relationship. What I’ve just described above relates to tagging. More specifically, it relates to why tagging just never seemed to work for me and why I couldn’t ever figure this out until today. The reason being is that while tagging does categorize and group related information, a lot of the time I find that the information isn’t meaningful and is therefore often useless to me. Sure I can look at all of my tagged “Web 2.0”, “Technology”, or “Culture” posts, yet when I look at them all, even though they all related, they still look like a series of random posts that don’t connect meaningfully with one another.

You see I want information, that when grouped together, shows a “meaningful” relationship in some way that is like reading a story of my ongoing journey of discovery. I don’t know how to do describe it any better than this, other than to say that when I look at items that have a meaningful relationship with one another, it almost seems as though that grouped information is alive with life, whereas when I look at generically tagged information, it seems sterile, dead, and useless to me.

Just to give you a small example of what I’m talking about here, I went to see a couple of movies at the Hollywood Theatre last night with my wife. They were March of the Penguins and Mad Hot Ballroom which were both excellent movies (and probably the best movies my wife has seen in a long time she said). March of the Penguins was more than just an enjoyable movie for me though because the story told within it connected and had a meaningful relationship with what I’m talking about here on this site about culture and connectedness. So for someone else viewing the movie, it was just an enjoyable movie that they would have tagged with “movie” on their website. For me though, it answered some thoughts I had and raised a bunch of new questions in my pursuit for understanding people, their culture, their communities, and their relationships in interacting with one another. Again, while someone may tag that as “people”, “culture”, “communities”, “relationships”, everything I’m talking about here relates to how people can utilize the Web, with possibly existing and newer technologies such as Web 2.0, to collaborate and communicate with one another on common world goals. Therefore, you could also add on tags such as “Web”, “collaboration”, “communication”, “technology”, “Web 2.0”, “World” and maybe even more that I’m not seeing.

Now if you add up all of those tags to define what I’m talking about in a single post, do you see the absurdity and uselessness of having them all? The more tags you have to add to specifically define what you are talking about, the less useful those tags become. It is like the Zen master telling you the absurdity of trying to describe a beautiful setting sun. You can’t because the more you try to describe it the less justice you do to it. The beauty is in observing it in it’s entirety. Therefore, to relay that beauty and feeling you would need to do it in such a way that it is communicated as quickly and with as few words as possible. This reminds me of another great movie Contact when Jodie Foster’s character glimpses for the first time the amazing and beautiful sights of stellar constellations up close and says, “They should have sent a poet.” Indeed, for only a poet could describe something so amazing and all encompassing in so few words.

So how do I describe or tag a collection of meaningful and related posts in as few words as possible? Instead of giving it a generic tag, do I give it a story title instead? I mean we’re not talking about just generically categorizing a group of thoughts but threading them together in an ongoing story of exploration and discovery. I’ll definitely have to think about this some more but one more interesting thing to note though. Is it just a coincidence that when you talk about something meaningful to you, it is more often than not something that is very emotional for you as well? Again, this relates to my statement before of wanting to “feel” connected to the world. More importantly though, maybe we just want to “feel” more connected to those even around us in our daily lives (i.e. friends, family, and lovers).

Hehe, wait a minute. I just noticed something both funny and interesting. Go back up and look at that Six Apart office picture once again. Noticed how I’ve highlighted the sheets of paper on the wall and dimmed out everything else in the room? Well reverse it now so that the people in the room become highlighted and are the focal point. What do you see? I see a group of seemingly random and diverse people all grouped together in a meaningful relationship working on something of emotional importance to them.

In blogging off and on over the years, I would have to say that the one thing that I have still not been able to achieve is a good structure for my blog (compared to standard product sites which have always seemed easy for me to structure). With a good site structure everything just falls into place and seems well connected. With a bad site structure everything seems disconnected and out of place. That disconnection is my greatest problem that I would like to overcome because without that structure I feel like I’m travelling down a river without a map to guide me.

One reason I have stopped blogging repeatedly in the past (but then started up again) is because I have yet to find a good structure that can sustain me. As I’ve indicated before, I dislike the standard layout and structure of weblogs (i.e. content in the middle with a sidebar holding the latest posts, archives, and categories on the side) because of the lack of reference it gives to the content on the entire site. In effect, when you visit most blogs, all you see is the content they are talking about right now (i.e. the last 5 or 10 posts). Well, often that is quite inadequate because it doesn’t capture the entire persons thoughts and interests. Therefore, what I’m looking for is some way to show my current thoughts visually connected to my overall interests and goals.

The best example I can give again is using my river vision whereby the river is your flow of thoughts or conversations about something in particular. Well with the default setup of blogs, when you visit someone’s site all you see is a closeup of them on one point in the river. That’s it. It doesn’t give a reference as to where that person has been on the river or where they are headed. What I would like to see is that closeup still exist for the person, showing what they are involved with now on the “river” but I’d also like to see a sidemap that shows there previous journey path and their destination (or goal) of where they are headed.

Now what complicates things even more is that each river that a person travels upon is really a collection of different thought streams. Each stream may focus on a different subject but they all form together to create the encompassing river. Looking at my history, I was fascinated with fantasy stories and artwork as a kid. This interest and imagination exploded with the introduction of the personal computer which allowed me to enter these imaginary worlds and interact within them. With the advances in computing, this exploration moved online to allow exploring and interaction with other people with me eventually starting to explore communities and their cultures not only in gaming but on the Web itself (utilizing web development to do this). Over time, I found the boundaries of gaming to be limiting to my interest in culture and I started looking at how culture affects the entire world, especially with regards to how the Web itself is changing our culture. This has now pushed me to seeing how we can utilize the Web to help connect communities and to foster a better culture within them to make the entire world a better place.

Now what I’ve just explained above is many separate streams of interests such as fantasy, artwork, computers, technology, gaming, communities, culture, the Web, and finally the world. And yet what I’ve also done is show how each separate stream of thought is actually connected to one another and supports my overall interest in trying to better the world through culture and community (with the help of technology). That is exactly the same thing I would like to achieve within my site with regards to my structure. I want to not only be able to see where I’m going and where I’ve been with each separate stream of thoughts but also where I’ve been and where I’m going with the entire collection of thoughts (forming the river that I flow within). Showing the relationship and reference of my thoughts to one another and creating that structure to support them is what I am currently trying to achieve. Without that structure right now though, I feel like I’m lost on a river, not knowing where I’ve been and where I’m going.