Persona Prime

So yea, I am kinda out there.  It doesn’t take a very sophisticated search to find some very odd pictures of me on those interwebs.

I love performing and costumes and burningman.  So last year at SXSW, I threw a party with some friends called “Pastries and Pasties. “  I wanted to do cupcakes; he wanted to do Burlesque.   Seems like an awesome mashup… Except for the fact I couldn’t get sponsors to save my life.  Evidently there are people out there afraid of boobies (except the French! Vive la France!)

I do not view our event as sexist.  In fact it is the opposite.  We typically also have male performers as well and much of it is vaudeville esque.  It does not feel like a strip club.  Strip clubs have this exclusion and separation factor that I find to be creepy.  This event was about art.  Sexy art some times but also funny art and political art and it was very inclusive entertainment.

My favorite story of the night was getting trapped in the bathroom with a group of British gals that thought the party was about cupcakes and meat pies (evidently pasties are meat pies in the UK – should have got some of them to sponsor .)  So they were talking about “hmm should we be insulted?  We wanted meat pies and there are gals doing burlesque instead…”  but they had an open minds decided to watch the show and were pleasantly surprised.  They found the variety of performers and the level of art and skill to be empowering instead of sexist.

In contrast this was the first year to me that SXSW felt too big.  And it seems to have gotten the plague that most larger conferences get.  I am talking about “booth babes.”  Ok I have been a booth babe in regards to the fact I have purposely been the person working the booth at the conference because I am an attractive female that is well spoken.  I know the attractiveness makes it easier I am not naive. But I like to think the difference is that I am very knowledgeable person to be working the booth (heck sometimes I was a founder.)  What annoys me is using a pure sexual attraction factor – I view it as exploitation or insincere advertising.  I mean what is the point of having unknowledgeable people at your booth?  To me that seems sexist.

And yet booth babes are more acceptable than burlesque?  Prudish Americans are illogical.

“You’re doing it wrong.”  I believe is one of the most counterproductive statements a person can make.

First of all – that statement gets little accomplished.  Typically it makes the person that is “doing it wrong” dig deeper to defend their work.  Why – well they are WORKING CREATING ACCOMPLISHING.  Something is vested and so therefore I must defend that time and effort on my part that I have vested.  It is a natural and some what justifiable human response.

And it be honest, “You’re doing it wrong” is typically an inaccurate statement.  Instead it should be “I think that you are not creating what I think I want.” Or perhaps instead “you are not doing what I would do.”  And sometimes “you are not doing what 99% of the rest of the world would do.”  That doesn’t actually make it wrong…  I mean Feynman talks about science being that constant challenging of norms and experimentation.  When is something actually 100% wrong?

I strive in life to be the person that helps people figure out that instead of them both fighting over the orange.  One person wants the peel while the other needs the juice.

So I am working on this citability codeathon.  It is interesting to me that many view me as dictating a standard that is incompatible with whatever they are doing and therefore my project must be competition.  This reminds me when I was at the National NonProfit Congress and I had to facilitate a discussion between two Nonprofits that were angry that the other was “stealing their poor people.”  I view this as losing sight of the cause or the reason we do what we do.

Our mutual goal is to make data citable and therefore more accessible to the people.  There are many paths there.

For the codeathon, I have several groups that will be attending.  At first glance, it might seem we are at odds.  For example everyone assumes that Joe Carmel’s Legislink.org must conflict w Citability.  He and I talked for several hours.  They don’t.  Actually citability may make his job easier.  We both know we could never get all the govt sites to adopt citability and that makes his tool quite necessary.

Also the Coins and URN:LEX crowd, those datamarkup standards can easily be added to the citability markups.  URN:LEX isn’t for everyone since it must be created and maintained by a governmental body but there is no reason why we can’t add a special parser to citability to add those fields when they are available.  Same with the semantic web.  Citability only requires 3 things: A unique location, datestimestamp and granularity.   There is so much more to be added.  When it was created, we KNEW it wasn’t perfect.

I suppose when you start a project from a point of view where you know what you are doing is not the complete answer, it makes it easier to see adaptive solutions.

I consider what we are doing with citability to be a baby step.  I don’t consider it to be right and other ways wrong.  I typically find that if we can sit down and talk there are easily ways to make things interoperable.  I believe that citability is right for a small part of what we are trying to accomplish.  I don’t think it is perfect.  Far from it.  I think eventually we will have some fascinating structures to build folksonomies, taxonomies and ontologies on top of this esp where we can specialize for different documents etc.

I know that Tim Berners-Lee is doing a huge project in the UK with Linkeddata.  I think that is awesome.  But I’m not sure about that project being available for the City of Austin anytime soon.  I am working within some very limited constraints.  I really want him to succeed. It would make many things easier if he does.  But this doesn’t mean I stop doing what I am trying to do.  It doesn’t mean our way of doing things is wrong. Life is evolution.  We use HTML 5 and XML now

But for now, I am trying to do what I believe is right for now.  Doesn’t mean I think what you are doing is wrong.  Just maybe wrong for me.  But there are so few of us creating in this space… I find it sad to argue over someone stealing their poor people…  Instead, let’s talk and see if maybe you just want juice while I am eying that orange peel.  And yes you are INVITED to the codeathon to work on your project as well just make sure it is Open Source

http://oliana0.livejournal.com/242111.html

My friend decided that what makes her happy is doing affirmations for others she knows… and Man oh man is she good at it.  The one she did for me made me tear up.

This is the best example of spreading happiness that I have found that iis also deeply meaningful.  I like this even more than the #30daysofhappiness meme.  It is what I was looking for when I started this intellectual exploration of happiness!  It makes her happy and allows her to spread such meaningful happiness.  Beyond a quick fix – this helps people create better perceptions of self and encourages them to strive further in the right directions.

Earlier I did a post on Criticism and how I don’t want to ever use it as a form of communication unless you know it is a dangerous situation. (Yes I know I’m mess up on this occasionally but it is a goal…)  This post/action of her is the perfect counterpoint!  And can be used to illustrated Affirmation as a leadership style.

Hey Girl! You hit the top of the Mazlow’s hierarchy with this one! Gold star Michelle – Gold star!

I’m watching more and more people every day getting mad at twitter and facebook. These poor misguided folk unfortunately take it out too often on associates, acquaintance, people they know or “Friends.”

Defriending is such a sad word… it implies such drama. And in the end creates more drama than is necessary.

I rarely Unfollow on twitter anymore. I used to typically unfollow out of hurt feelings for those that weren’t following me back. But I realized that relationships are often inequitable.  And that I don’t care,  I’ll follow who I think is interesting.  And I’ll friend on facebook people I have met and want to continue to connect with.

Now it is mainly a spam issue – you direct message me with spam- I will definitely unfollow you. if you spam your feed enough that I notice. I will also unfollow.  If I don’t like you or don’t remember you- I defriend you.  It’s kinda rare.

but that is about it.

So much of this defriending and unfollowing has more to do with information overload.  The overload makes us feel a need to disconnected.  So ironically to connect, we cull our lists and disconnect.  We raise the status of those we feel more connected to.  We threaten just to see who is listening. (Guilty right here I bet I can find at least 3-5 LJ entries along those lines.) We close lines of communication to others based on random rules. (I have mine I just listed one in this post.)

But before you do that… realize the reason why you are doing it.  Typically bad communication interfaces or bad privacy implementations created by software.  Not the people.  Do you really dislike me because I tweet too much about stuff you don’t understand?  See at a party – you wouldn’t care.  You would walk away and check in later.  You would be ready to talk to me when I said something interesting esp if I called your name.

I have found that currently – my biggest vector of happiness is relationships.  So many of y’all are mainly virtual these days.  But that doesn’t diminish my feelings for you.  Distance and lack of time weakens the ties sometimes that is true.  But that is just lack of communication aspects that I understand and don’t take personally.  Doesn’t mean I don’t love you (or like you my dear casual acquaintances.)

But I leave you on the list… Because I do want to leave that channel of communication open.  I followed/friended you in the first place for a reason.  To open a door.  Just because I am not listening doesn’t mean you can’t contact me directly.  I will try to respond… even if you are in my inbox for a year (sorry dave karpf.)

Unfollow me sure but realize then I can’t DM you.  Unfriend me – but then realize might be harder to invite you to a party or find your contact info.  I’ll try to not take it personally – if you do the same…

http://www.6footsix.com/my_weblog/2010/01/high-fives-for-happiness.html

Considering my earlier post about smiles and positive emotions being viral! I think this is a good plan!

I also think of it as the American version of the free hug campaign this fellow did. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 wow up to 54 million views! I cried the first time I saw that video.

The high five one is safer. It does make me smile – so that works for me…

I did a Princess and Frog rampage during the Disney movie. My girlfriends and I dressed up like princesses. You know just cause. It was big fun. I bought wee plastic tiaras and frog stickers. Asked the wee ones attending if they were a frog or a princess and gave them the appropriate gift.

It was one little gal’s b-day. Her mom said my friends and I making her feel special like that was a gift from god. Interestingly, there was one mom w 3 older girls (11-13) that was actually upset by the gifts since I didn’t work for the theatre or Disney. She made them give the wee gifts back. I thought that was sad that she lives her life in that much fear.

But I did make 30+ other little girls day esp the birthday girl.

What Random Act of Happiness have you thought of doing?

It looks to be an amazing new series on emotion and happiness on PBS

http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/series

thank you @gumption !

Watching episode 1 now…

I love the sound of trains… sad, lonely and connected
It is difficult to express the longing they trigger
and how very happy the sound makes me

I know these words do not all invoke visions of Happiness.
But I suppose it is the calm peacefulness that I feel
It reminds me of Great Grandma’s house
I feel safe, private. It is very late and everyone is asleep except me and the train conductor.

I think of my disconnected family of travelers…
wanderers
and the impossibility of the connections I feel to so many diverse people
the excitement of travel

So odd that all I do is fly…

@thenextwomen: New Article: Women on Twitter for Business Reasons Why http://bit.ly/914BaD

Made me think about my gaming days… And all the discussions we used to have about women in gaming and getting more women involved in gaming.  We noticed that games with low introduction barriers were the most popular with women and captured the casual gamer market.

Two major ones that stood out to me are Solitaire and Tetris.  (I actually had a 4am discussion about this w Alexey at Burningman this year too.  I was camped at Tetrion – a very loud camp esp once the two 40ft tetris screens were setup.  We were celebrating Tetris’s 25 yr anniversary.  Henk was the initiator of the idea and got Alexey out there in all the dust and noise.)

Alexey believes (if I heard him right – it was kinda loud ) that women like Tetris because you are constantly building/creating/fixing something rather than destroying.  I’d like to say that was true but I think it is something deeper than that.  At Dave and Busters, all the girls play Day of the Dead.  I think it is because the interface is quickly accessible.  Also you are cooperating with your partner.

So adoption…It also wasn’t a time issue – I noticed many women getting lost in those games for hours.

To me it all come around to interfaces… women have less patience with overly complex interfaces.  I found that on average men would spend more time trying to figure out an interface than a woman would.  Women seem to adopt faster when the interface is simple.  We know how to create the necessary social structures/rules so we prefer interfaces that get out of our way and allow us to do so.

I think that is why women love twitter and have adopted faster.

***disclaimer all of this is said in recognition of “Sparkling Generalities.”  There are always exceptions to the rules.  I am just mulling over a pattern I have personally observed.  I am very open to opposing evidence esp scientifically gathered!

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/dec04_2/a2338 British Medical Journal

http://web.med.harvard.edu/sites/RELEASES/html/christakis_happiness.html

Harvard Medical School Office of Public Affairs
Happiness is a collective – not just individual – phenomenon

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97848789

A Study To Smile About: Happiness Is Contagious

Course what I think is interesting is a neighbor is 34% more likely while a spouse is only 8%.  I think this explains much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

course with these little biological guys…
It can go the other way too with negative emotion.
And again – looks like us gals really are “more sensitive.” I’m betting this is one of those baby raising things again.  Biology does like for us to be more aware of the kiddo’s needs and wants.

so consider that before being a grumpybutt…  Your spouse can handle it better than a neighbor but you do have to sleep with your spouse.

Some important points to consider when pondering online identity issues…

Identity is actually a very fragmented thing.

• Contextual based on groups or audience
• Contextual based on Time – we evolve and change (try reading old blogs posts sometimes OUCH)
• Ownership of data crucial to trust
• Individual Ownership – how much does an individual own
• Mutual Ownership – sometimes different parts are owner by multiple entities for authoritative reasons
• Group Ownership – Sometime created by groups
• Groups and concepts can have multiple owners so who are the Principals?
• Multiple personas (legal in New Zealand)