Open Loop 3

2012-06-20

Notes & Links

Transcript

Here is an AI generated transcript of this episode. This has not been edited or checked for accuracy, yet.

What can open up to I have this arrogant bastard?

Don’t talk about me that way and right underneath there right underneath right at the bottom.

It says You’re not worthy and so I’ve been a little intimidated by this thing Well, right I had to run all the way across town to get it for reason one And then it’s just been mocking me all day long What are you drinking the oaked?

arrogant bastard Which I think I think it means I’m just a little bit more arrogant.

I think so, too Yeah, I have a backstory to this beer Love it.

Do you know why this do you know I have this beer?

I had a big gathering It was for my birthday, you know, you were there.

It’s fantastic.

Everybody bought beer One of my friends who’ll rename remain nameless Brought this because he said that it reminded him of me Aged aged oat arrogant bastard I Took it as a mighty convo I You know, I’m a suck.

I’m a sucker for the stories and I would love to have that story on the back of of this beer bottle instead I have a six-point type and What it’s like a whole tome.

It’s it’s like Chronicles of Narnia back there.

That is the Wow, yeah, I mean that this starts with the definition of arrogance, which is a little arrogant and Then it just goes on Yeah, I mean if that might be five point I mean it’s tiny In all honesty, it’s a reason why I don’t drink as much stone as perhaps I should All of their beers have this really small huge story on the back that right there Brewed by the stone brewing company, San Diego.

This is the farthest of all of the open loops.

This is the farthest beer the beer farthest away from us and It’s so close and what does yours say the arrogant bastard would would you Know it just says I’m not worthy.

Well, no on the back under the six-point type No, wow, that must be just for the oak.

Yeah, probably But the finest barley most aggressive hops clearest water and a proprietary yeast strain and abundant arrogance You know, I think that’s maybe what my my homebrews have been missing arrogance arrogance.

Yeah, they’re far far far too approachable Far too nice.

Yes Yes, it’s a so what do you do you like it?

I Really like the nose quite a bit like the nose and yeah, I like it.

I like it.

I like it Do you like it I do We’re not drinking the exact same beer, but I think it’s okay.

I think that I think the oat, you know It’s a little hard Is it I mean I probably would we could probably switch and you would probably like this one better and I would probably like that One better.

I’m gonna imagine that it’s got a little a Little more depth.

Yeah.

Yeah, it does.

I mean it’s it’s really it’s it’s quite good.

It’s tasty Hey, I wouldn’t want it on a hot day But I have a really important question for you.

Yes.

What color is it?

It’s a really dark amber Yeah, yeah, I’m going brown brown mm-hmm full-on for the oak brown, okay, it’s good beer Minus the typography worth worth tracking down and This sits in a seven point two.

I’m assuming the oak is about the same.

Yes.

It is seven point two.

Thanks Yeah, so just a little more depth then.

Well what one day a while ago At breakfast at the breakfast table I was we were talking about what names of groups of animals are called And so I go, you know who’s gonna know this Wikipedia is gonna know this Right, so we pull up the there’s a whole page on what you know, the plural form of animals are Yeah, it’s fantastic right and so I Whipped up a blog post and You know listed my favorite top nine nouns for a group of animals and number one on that An apocalypse of snakes Oh, that’s nice.

Yeah, you know, what’s what’s even better about it is This is I just happened to catch the Wikipedia entry before that was edited out The next day it was gone.

Well, what is it?

What is what is a group of snakes?

Yeah, it’s not an apocalypse.

It’s not an apocalypse.

It should be it should be That’s way better than whatever it is.

I don’t even know what it is, but it’s better It’s probably like a hive or a pit a nest or a bed a pit Mm-hmm apocalypse I also I also like a tower of giraffes And I a cream of turkeys that’s brilliant Are those the real ones and yeah, well so this I just I’m checking it under turkey under cream It says citation needed but it doesn’t say citation needed for rafter of turkey.

So I don’t know how they’re You know You got to look that up at Encyclopedia Botanica, that’s right a cabinet of yaks That one doesn’t need a citation it’s just there it’s just there That’s a little uneven a wisdom of wombats.

That’s just in there.

That’s fake Whatever Those are some of my favorite Wikipedia pages actually the pages that are lists of things Absolutely.

There’s I mean there is a shocking number of them and and they they are just they’re brilliant You know power of power of media wiki, right?

Huge fan because it all seems like I don’t know what sort of magical extension you need to build this sweet table with links and You need lots of pain and suffering to build a sweet table That’s the worst thing in media wiki that there is building a table it’s like the most convoluted wiki text ever I’m looking at some I’m looking at the the term for This event, what am I editing?

Generic terms, what am I editing?

Editing anyway, I don’t know just hit save The table for the generic term of animals is is really like there’s a lot of pipes and a lot of brackets Yeah, that’s a table.

You know, there’s a lot of discussion well, so there’s there’s a couple interesting things with Wikipedia right now, one of them is We’ve talked about it before but semantic media wiki the extension that I look I find so useful there’s been a decent amount of discussion about putting semantic media wiki on Wikipedia and If you were to do that, you know, you could know wouldn’t that be brilliant.

I mean you could actually query it I can’t believe it’s not already Well, so a lot of which you said it’s just so so so much legacy.

Yeah.

Well a lot of wikipedians feel that it is that there’d be performance problems and So, you know, they haven’t done it but in in kind of a parallel universe to that is this wiki data initiative where you know, they’re they’re working to make you know, you know because um Wikimedia runs Commons, which is a place for image assets and other, you know graphics and what-have-you to be shared across any Wikipedia site and in fact be shared across anywhere and it’s it’s one of these like aha’s when you look at the Commons where One of the things that the Commons does is every single photo that gets uploaded to Flickr with creative Commons licensing is is copied into Media wiki or sorry wikimedia Commons and then every other Media wiki install in the known universe can say anytime an image is referenced search Commons for that image so on my wiki I could say well if I put apple.jpg and I don’t have an image called apple.jpg It will ask Commons.

Hey, do you have an image called apple.jpg?

And if it does it’ll actually not just reference it’ll copy it to my local wiki and then have it there right there And it’s actually copied with all the metadata to say like hey this image came from the Commons So like on my on wiki nosh that one that I I have kind of in in kind of you know alpha With all that food information.

I just turned Commons on so if I you know got bananas I just say banana JPEG and you know, there’s 800 pictures of bananas and boom I got a banana and it just works and it was one of those things that first kind of was this aha moment of like how media wiki does such a great job of Leveraging other instances of media wiki to kind of make this kind of you know, the sum is greater than the parts Situation is it reciprocal then to any any wiki any wiki can Be available for Commons.

So like if you had one and I had one we could set each other up It’s just a few lines in the config to make that available It’s it’s an array.

So grab from any of these or is it?

Grab from you please in this order.

No you yeah, you can specify Multiple endpoints.

I’m not real sure how it determines order I think it’s actually an array and I think it just goes through in an order what wiki data is doing is they’re they’re taking in essence a media wiki install with a slew of new extensions and they’re creating a data Commons and And looking at it the same way where they’re where you’ll have you’ll be able to reference the data That’s in wiki data on any other media wiki and pull things like, you know What’s the population of this country or how many?

Giraffes are there in Africa all this kind of stuff and it’ll be editable Actually, it’ll be editable not in wiki text.

It’ll be editable in data structure, so It’s pretty cool that multiple Commons issue it ties into a notion that comes back now and again is this this idea of less of a client-server approach and more of a peer-to-peer approach to web serving or web data web internet based information And this idea that I could say that we could link these wikis together and they could Help each other out and they could help out other wikis because the network of them Become stronger as they get more and more information and are tied together seems far more exciting to me then Just always pull in from Wikipedia.

Well, that’s actually one of the things that one of the things that Wikipedia does that’s pretty cool Is they every?

Pretty sure it’s every day if they actually run a dump of all of Wikipedia and then make that publicly available so, you know at any point you can run your own Wikipedia you just grab that file and Import it into a media wiki and boom.

You’ve got Wikipedia You know when we think about how we keep content on the web and how does that live for a very long time?

You know, it’s this great strategy of essentially saying we’ll make copies of it till the end of time make it everywhere If it’s everywhere, it can’t be erased from everywhere all at once right, one of the things that I have been thinking about doing with Both my WordPress sites as well as my media wiki sites is well why don’t I just run every night, you know just a cron job that dumps those things to a disk and puts them in a public spot and and And then makes it so that anybody, you know, just advertise.

Hey if you want to come come and copy my blog Come and copy my my wikis With the intent being that you know, if I ever lost all that data or something drastic went wrong It’s still there You know what?

It reminds me of is it reminds me of Dune the kind of the beginning of doing is that the human race is is Threatened to extinction and so the last members of the human race to ensure the survival of humanity scatter themselves to the far reaches of the universe with the intent that some of those populations of people will then multiply and Reconvene society and and and that the human race will survive and so it’s just you know It’s just kind of scatter it everywhere thing that I like and you know, I’ve both Use archive.org at times and it and I mean archive.org is cool, but it’s only one thing One of the things that makes me so unconflicted about our kind of or I guess I can’t programmatically dump stuff to it Yeah, you can’t tell it.

Hey, go.

Here’s a new thing.

Yeah, I just have to hope yeah that it captures something Yeah, oh and one of the things I got me so excited about couch DB was That it had this notion of replication baked in easy replication baked in that I could just say here’s the JSON file for My entire blog for my entire whatever and if you capture this you’ve got everything you’re talking about the syndicated blog stuff, right?

Yeah, yeah, I still think that’s it.

I mean so the the idea What if I could put in?

any number of DNS entries for my blog and I was using some new blogging package that allowed not only for you to subscribe to my blog But but specifically to syndicate it in its entirety.

Mm-hmm.

And when I would write something you would copy that Locally and then I could have five a records, you know one on One for every continent what have you and and in fact, I could even have more Replicants and I might have 30 blogs that are syndicating But they’re not in a in a I don’t consider them an authoritative so I won’t send traffic to them Mm-hmm, and I do I still think that’s a I mean, that’s what’s one direction that next-generation Blogging platforms or content platforms in general to take I think that’s a really compelling Idea on a bunch of different levels kind of on the big level the idea that you know Somebody’s writing content that other organizations governments what have you don’t like it be exceptionally difficult If everybody in the you know thousands and thousands of people said hey, I’m gonna host that content How would you shut that off?

I mean, it’s so hard Having your syndication partners serve it Authoritatively.

Yes, and not simply be a copy but actually be the real thing And you know, I mean the to me the big part that makes that work is you put public key cryptography behind it So, you know the way that the way that we agree to share that is through, you know key signing and I signed my blog post So when I send it you can’t edit it if you do edit it, you know the signature becomes invalid and I take you out of my my distribution relationship, I May be tremendously scalable just ridiculously scale.

Yeah, you’re not worried about one server going down You’re worried about all the servers going down and the likelihood of that is much much lower, right?

All this ethereal content.

I mean it all just lives on Servers and you know, I see it with my my link wiki content that is gone some of it I don’t care.

It’s just really not all that important, but some of it I do and and Dave Weiner’s talked about this at length the other hole What am I what’s gonna happen to my blog when I’m no longer here?

Well, this is where I like the idea of what Wikipedia does with a nightly dump and this is where I think archive.org is fundamentally kind of limited is that you know, it can only see what you present and unfortunately, not only does that mean that they can’t do a perfect job of Archiving your information.

They also cannot It’s also just very expensive for them to archive all of it because they’re duplicating so much And so here’s how this service should work.

I should be able to sign up for something where they define Software packages that it will take so for example, we could say like we will archive WordPress and by archiving WordPress What we’ll do is we’ll actually take a dump of your WordPress date back up and Store it and then we’ll keep copies for however long and if that ever needs to be turned into a blog You know, it’s easy enough to hydrate that and you just do that on a Now you can’t get everything But you can get a lot more than you used to be able to you could get a ton and there’s no reason you could Actually set it up so that I could upload a like, you know, if if it didn’t support You know software package X I could say here’s a backup file from software package X You don’t currently have a way to deal with this but maybe in the future you will right cryogenically freezing websites bingo Yeah, we we don’t have a way to thaw you yet.

Yeah, but we’ll freeze you exactly.

I think Bingo love it Love it.

So this is kind of related to that other thing that we were talking about the slow web You know riffing off of slow food, you know, the article made me think of how How awkward that is with email sometimes like you email somebody they email you back, you know, there aren’t emails you reply again They don’t reply You’re like what happened for years?

I’ve thought like I really wish there were an email proxy that would just variably delay my email for anywhere between 12 and 36 hours It’s on my list of projects good.

Yeah, I would like that Yeah, I mean, I think the point of the slow web kind of article was that it was pushing us to make sure that there is Real value.

Yes beyond the popcorn of Real time immediacy.

Yes, and in and in fact at times Delay things To push the value curve up.

Yes.

I like that.

You know the example of that.

I’ve done this.

Yes And how when you email in the things you’ve done they don’t appear right away They’ll appear soon But and I think that’s great because I’d email it and then I’d load up the website and hit refresh And really is it there is it there to get there and the fact that they take that away is actually kind of a nice thing Which which ties into my notion that My notion that more and more things if I just interacted with with them via email that would be fine You know one of the very last wider magazines that I ever read had this feature article with One of the etiquette people the dear Abbey’s.

All right and There was a big two-page spread and I remember On one side of the spread said we have laws so we don’t kill each other in on the other side It said we have etiquette so we don’t drive each other crazy Love that as As Kubb chucks on our Friday lunches and our on our Cuban coffees we are developing an etiquette in a culture say more To me it seems most polite For the incaster To throw the to throw his batons at what he just did.

Oh, yeah, right What’s it?

It’s either polite or it’s a you broke it you fix it Yeah, exactly exactly and and it didn’t seem like everybody at the meetup tonight had that same Part of culture I’d like to know if the statistics like I would suggest that you have a higher likelihood of hitting him because you just threw him I Mean doesn’t it make sense?

Yes Yes, yeah, well, you know the other thing I like is what you and I did the last time which I don’t know I mean, maybe you got debated a little bit but you know, we did the triple bogey for the Kubb being out Yes to you know with this specific intent that we want to Encourage aggressive play for practice, right?

Well, I did that I did that tonight in my in my game with Eric Yeah, he had two outs and I’m like no actually he didn’t he had one out and then one just a really bad throw Yeah, and I said, you know what three throw that one.

That’s ridiculous.

I’m not gonna let you like that’s Yeah, he’s like really This is a friendly said suck.

This is a friendly we should be playing most of ground Every time and all the games I played tonight.

Yeah advantage line.

That’s what did it.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah Yeah, the first team to get the advantage line I think is huge and it’s just gigantic So, you know we had our office flood and Which sucks?

I don’t recommend that you have your office flood This pipe burst on the sixth floor and it flooded the bottom six floors of the building including ours and we didn’t lose any equipment, but there was a lot of damage to walls and carpet and so we had you know, we got about 25 people and we need a place to go so I called the guys over at Coco and For those that aren’t in the know that Coco is a co-working and collaboration space They’ve been around in st.

Paul for a while now, right like a couple years or more a couple years.

Yeah, and I They were missing there.

I held an event there right after they started it when they were fantastic hosts amazing hosts and I worked for the I’ve worked with the guys on projects and I love them Yeah, and they so now they have this space in Minneapolis in the Grand Exchange building and I tell you it’s a it’s a awesome Space and it’s a perfect fit for them because you go in there and it’s just have you been in there?

It’s monumental it’s just like the ceilings are They got to be 30 feet high and it’s the old trading, you know It’s the old trading floor for the Grand Exchange and it’s also a historical site so it’s it’s actually it’s this really interesting thing because I Was talking to Kyle there that the space is managed by the Historical Society So they can’t they can’t come in there and just start ripping stuff apart Like it has to be maintained in a certain kind of structure and like they can’t be putting screws everywhere and they can’t take down all of the trading boards and so it’s it’s like almost just a perfect fit for cocoa because you know your average company wouldn’t want all that kind of stuff in there had the flood and We worked out a coffee shots for a couple days and that was not the best And so I’m gonna call the guys at cocoa and said hey, can we bring our team there?

we had the flood and We need a place to be and so we’ve been there now two and a half weeks and we’re gonna be there another three weeks No way.

Yeah, we’re actually gonna bring a bunch of our equipment over and I think this is an Excellent use case for cocoa.

It’s to me.

It’s far makes far more sense than the room to desk It’s a great opportunity for us and I’m I’m super excited.

I mean, I don’t want her, you know I wouldn’t want our space to get flooded.

I’m happy that we’re able to Leverage a place like cocoa and able to support them as an organization and I think that they are just doing amazing stuff I mean, I don’t know.

I mean, I know a decent amount of what’s going on in other Geographies and I don’t know of anything like what those guys are doing at cocoa in other places And nothing that that scale I mean, you know different venture firms will have like co-working space They share what their portfolio companies but nothing for the kind of general unwashed masses Cocoa does and I mean, it’s cheap hot coffee.

It’s not good coffee It’s I mean, I’m not gonna talk about the coffee there’s coffee And a place to work it’s been a real great thing for our team I’m finding it interesting that there are some companies who have a presence there.

They don’t really use it Yeah, yes, you know and they’re kind of I think in some I think some of them it’s they’re happy to support the space And they want to have they want their name in front of people and it’s almost a form of advertising Absolutely.

I get that impression for sure.

I think it’s fine.

Although it’s a little inefficient I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just have like some kind of a way to I mean, you know You could totally sell sponsorships or whatever.

Today’s coffee is sponsored by yeah.

Yeah, it’d have to be better coffee It would be if I was sponsoring it.

Maybe I should do that.

There you go I love the vibe.

It feels really good.

There’s energy like, you know, you go places and just you know Sometimes you just know and I’ve been really amazed.

It’s it’s busy I mean, there are a lot of people there but not in a bad way.

It’s not like a it’s so super distracting I mean, there’s a lot of space so it’s fine It’s it’s going really really well and the and just in the short time.

Are you guys in the tent?

I’ve been in the tent Yeah, you do your daily stand-ups in the tent?

Yeah, we do our stand-ups in the classroom, ah Yeah The you know today they had somebody there from the governor’s office Who was in they had the other day?

I was there and Minnesota Public Radio had somebody and doing a piece and you know They did a little interview with me and stuff and they just totally ad hoc, right?

part that I’m really sick we’re excited about is it feels like this thing that makes for a vibrant ecosystem, which is just is companies and Entrepreneurs and digital folks kind of shoved into a small space bouncing off of each other Oh as a place like if I were gonna write the American novel would not do it a cocoa Yeah, it would be distracted and and it’s not like but if I’m gonna have an idea that I want to Bounce off some really smart people and I want to be in a place where I don’t feel Like I’m the only one in the universe that’s in this spot trying to figure this out You really couldn’t be in a better spot So two things I had this conversation with one of my favorite guys in town Chuck Olson Mm-hmm, and he and he comes by to he shoots a lot of a lot of his video interviews at Coco I mean because it’s an amazing space for for doing that, right, right He said he says I love coming here to shoot the video and I love it so much that I thought about You know having a membership or I would just be here And he says but I couldn’t do the editing here And I’m like Chuck I know exactly what you mean I can’t I Can’t do the work.

I need to do in that space But for everything else when I’m not in heads-down work mode I can do it here Right and for the bouncing the ideas off.

It’s amazing for that and for the connections in the spontaneity.

There’s a part of a breakthrough idea that requires Unintended interjection Mm-hmm, and I think Coco is fantastic for that No, I mean, I think they could fix.

I think that they could make it both.

I think it’s just honestly, it’s a matter of zoning and And the right kind of set up for the space.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think if they had another annex Right, you know so they got they already have this where like when you walk in and that’s the social space Well, have you been to the the the st.

Paul location?

I have not okay it’s Much more private or at least semi private.

I hear it’s a lot less nice It is a lot less nice Yeah, but it has private workspaces.

Yes, and there are whole sections that you can say I have this entire section No one else is around me Now doesn’t that work then?

That works right to me that’s what’s the difference between that and my basement office Well, yeah, I know and this is this is the conflict I’ve always had with this Yeah, our office is 4,500 square feet.

Mm-hmm, and we have our whole team in four rows of Desks.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, it’s a space that’s probably 800 square feet probably.

Yeah, I really like what they’re doing there I think that and I think that that’s the kind of thing that’s why I volunteer With mini star helping anyway, I can with that stuff.

It’s the slow web, but it’s for like slow startup It’s not the incubator that’s gonna do a thing next month It’s the trends that over a five or ten year period Will get the flywheel going and yes things really start to happen Yes, I look at that and I just think like like how how lucky we are To have something like that and it’s interesting seeing everything else going into that building You know MHTA is going into that building right next to Coco a couple a couple other Companies like tech companies are also opening space in there I mean, it’s you know Coco is turning in to be this like anchor that other people are kind of coming there because they’re there just great.

Absolutely That’s the anchor of the episode right there Bingo bingo