Monthly Archives for July 2008

Licensed to marry

I think we took one just like this in 2004!What else, I asked Leanne this morning when we were in the county clerk’s office at San Francisco City Hall, can you do in a county clerk’s office besides get licensed to marry? “Register to vote?” she offered. We couldn’t think of a single other thing. Indeed, most of the couples we encountered today seemed to be just like us: going down to City Hall to get a marriage license. I never aspired to feeling so normal before, but there’s something so joyous in the fact that it is no circus, just the fact of a couple getting married, anymore.

Many of the pictures we took were nearly the exact same poses from that day in 2004 when Gavin Newsom opened up the licenses to everyone — except today when we got our marriage license, it was hardly as exciting — and yet very profoundly different. For one thing, we didn’t have to wait in line for five hours, but we simply made an appointment and showed up at 10am. For another, no news cameras. For a third, we don’t have to rush to actually have the ceremony on the same day as getting the license — and we can actually plan a wedding. Oh, and we have a four-year-old girl whom we adore (so we didn’t need the “planning for pregnancy” tips handed out with the license — thanks though!). Oh — and it’s legal.Put down the cigarettes!

It sort of sums it up, what we overheard while waiting for our form to be officialized (“now serving: number A40”): “After 20 years, I’m not nervous; I’m just excited!”

So there we have it. For the next three months, Leanne and I are officially licensed to marry. And we plan to execute it in style. Don’t worry — I don’t believe it’s lethal. In fact, after nearly 11 years together (and from those years, a huge pile of blog posts I migrated just today to WordPress that attests to how hard we’ve fought for our success), nothing could seem more regular, normal, human, and about time.

These high-riding web2 days

my ride

go ahead - take the high ride

But I digress…

Just about nothing I have ever accomplished in my near-two-decades of work in software technology in the Bay Area has been simultaneously as complicated — or as simple — as implementing a wiki community. I created, evangelized, and administered an internal innovation community where I work, and for over a year it has exhibited tremendous growth and has been a success all around. Nothing could be easier than concocting the right theme and use cases, creating a cool set of templates, applying an agile and sociable design, and harnessing the built-in wiki features that surface fresh content dynamically. Seeding content and shepherding people unfamiliar with the “wysiwig” or markup interface into the world of working in wiki has likewise been fun and dare-I-say carefree. Watching content bubble in and funnel and collect and percolate, all-the-while cross-linking and spreading connections across the organization, has been joy.

However, nothing was a harder decision than to implement a wiki, not to mention choose the “right” platform, and there is a constant education process on “why use a wiki in the first place” (once you get beyond “what the heck’s a wiki?”). Beyond that, there’s something more mysterious — particularly in the large enterprise. Something that’s still hard for me to grasp — something ethereal — that makes it hardest of all. I’m not exactly sure, but I think it has something to do with having shots of tequila as a teenager.

I have had many surprisingly heart-to-heart conversations with colleagues about “why wiki” and “why share all this stuff?” and “why does it work?”, but one of the most enduring memories is a talk about Facebook in which my pal tossed around the old “you have to watch what you say on these things — or your employers will find it and it will come back to haunt you” sentiment. At last impatient with that tired old standby, my response surprised even me. Maybe the key, I said, isn’t learning how to censor ourselves. On the contrary — maybe the key is something more like coming to the realization that a whole lot of us did shots of tequila as a teenager; that many of us are imperfect; and furthermore that instead of being a liability, these are the things that really matter. In the end, I further pontificated, perhaps the profoundest shift of “Web 2.0” is in fact just that: a broader acceptance of all of our humanness in the face of not being able to hide it anymore.

Whoops. I was going to write a post about something entirely (but not quite) different (late-in-coming, the May edition of Governing featured an article on wikis called Working in Wiki). Looks like that will have to wait just a bit longer. I guess this one needed to come out and stay out.

Did I mention Bon Iver?

We were driving down Olive street in Seattle a couple weeks ago listening to the excellent KEXP. DJ Cheryl Waters had just kicked off what was to be a great set with a sleepy kind of guitar-refrain-and -falsetto-voice song. It captured my attention; no need to do the “stay in the car till they read the track list” thing (though we did) because the station has a great playlist interface.

Bon Iver is the artist; “Re: Stacks” was the song in the set. I bought the album post-haste. While I was working at home the other day spinning this album, the song above, “The Wolves (Act I & II)” just sort of snuck up on me and now is my current obsession. It builds quite amazingly and I love the sparks / pounding / fireworks / chainsaw or whatever that towards at the end.

The backstory, also covered nicely here, is utterly captivating. Made me feel like I was right there by the campfire, decked in a blanket of raw emotion.

Recommended.