More learning from the reunion...

One of the things I learned about my 2003 experience at Berkman at the reunion last week was the disconnect between a research center that was about doing more than studying technology, as Berkman was in 2003 and 2004 when I was there, and the fact that terms were limited, in theory to a single year, although most people I know who participated were there for more than a year, some considerably more. That so many were renewed for so long confirms that the one-year model was basically unworkable in something as new and flexible as the internet was and still is. The pull to do was too strong, had so much potential, and the doing because of the nature of the net was based on working with other people.

The problem is that if you do something in your term, and it works, and then have to leave, what becomes of the work? Can you take it with you? In my case, not really. A lot of it depended on being anchored in a university. It probably could have been moved, not much of it depended on Harvard, or even being in the northeastern US. But I didn't begin to know how to find a uni that could adopt such a project (very likely one did not exist). But that might be something you want to attach to a Berkman, a way to evolve out of the incubator to a teaching hospital for tech.

Why do you want to continue? Because in tech, you're never done. People still think there's such a thing as an invention. It's a process.

You're always learning from users, and new ideas for applications come from use of the previous layer, working with other projects to build new interop, and all the while maintaining freedom to choose for the users. It's always bootstrapping. Learning from learning. OMG in just 1.5 days I learned more about my work there than I had in the previous 20 years. That's a tragedy. A machine was set up and just stopped.

Instead we left all this work ready to be picked off by the VCs and that's what happened. You got Twitter and Facebook, AWS, Spotify, etc instead of more BloggerCons. Our path was cut off, ready to be taken over by Google Reader, without the ability to offer an open alternative that could not be erased by the whim of a billionaire founder. Why did we let that happen and why are we not examining that to avoid doing it again?

In all the discussions at the Berkman reunion, no one considered the possibility that what they call capitalism would take over open tech was anything other than inevitable. Sad, because it wasn't inevitable. Proof -- we got it right with podcasting. It has not been taken over. We learned from our experience with blogging, and we were able to build on that, and with just one little iteration we were able to do something that I'm totally sure we could have repeated. But we didn't. All we did was make sure the users knew they were entitled to choice. That stuck with podcasting to this day. That's why it worked.

There were others, staff -- who had indefinite appointments, who unknown to me continued some of the work. But news of this didn't make it to me until 20 years later at last week's conference. We have to do better at this. The irony is we developed fantastic communication tools, and then failed to use them effectively.

I think more and more the model of a teaching hospital for technology is what makes sense.

Berkman had half of it right, bring in people who see parts of the net that need building, who are willing to contribute their time for little or no money, with no chance to make billions like Zuck, a student at Harvard at the time, and then have a path to continue the work after the appointment.

It's understandable that this didn't work well the way Berkman was and is structured, the people who ran it are academics, and they have different skills and goals, which I know very well because my father was a college professor, and while interested in what I did with outliners in the 80s (an understatement, they fit his mind as well as they fit mine, same genes) didn't have the chutzpah and drive to have made the products work in the market. That isn't part of the academic culture, it kind of clashes with it. But we have to learn how to get over that, and work with each other, because we need all of it.

I believe more and more the ideas in Developing Better Developers, both versions, are the right approach to meld academia and tech.

Also I learned in the last few days that UC Santa Cruz is already going down that path. More on that as I learn more.