Needed: A Culture For Wave Developers

[paramendra]

Wave developers are not on the Google payroll, although many will make
a ton of money. Wave developers do not reside at the Googleplex. But
Wave is the first instance for Google when outside developers will
play a key role in how the product is ultimately consumed by the
masses.

We are all aware of Google's unique corporate culture. I wonder if
there is a need for a culture for the developers out there. Or not.
There is going to be a developer community. Does that community need a
defined culture? Or not?

The Google Corporate Culture
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2009/06/google-corporate-culture.html

[Brian Kennish (Googler)]

This forum is for developer support. Please stop using it to promote
your off-topic blog.

[paramendra]

Brian.

I was expecting someone to spring forth and say something like that.

Maybe we are both right, and there is another cyber space for my kind
of talk. Vision, culture, stuff like that.

But I will have to disagree. I think culture/ethos and product
development have to go hand in hand on this just like for Google
Corporate. The developer community is going to be in the tens of
thousands. A community needs a culture, a value system. It is just
that the concept is more nebulous for something not housed on a
campus.

Paramendra Bhagat.
http://technbiz.blogspot.com

On Jun 14, 3:45 pm, "Brian Kennish (Googler)" <byoo...@google.com>
wrote:

[paramendra]

https://twitter.com/ronnyderosa/status/2169182418

[Mark Murphy]

> I was expecting someone to spring forth and say something like that.
>
> Maybe we are both right, and there is another cyber space for my kind
> of talk. Vision, culture, stuff like that.
>
> But I will have to disagree. I think culture/ethos and product
> development have to go hand in hand on this just like for Google
> Corporate. The developer community is going to be in the tens of
> thousands. A community needs a culture, a value system. It is just
> that the concept is more nebulous for something not housed on a
> campus.

All true. However:

1. This is a list in support of the Google Wave APIs. Maybe at some point,
the Google Wave folk will create a "watering hole" list where random
musings can occur. However, it is well within the rights of the Google
Wave team to try to keep this list on topic, and your posts have had
little to do with Google Wave API Q&A, near as I can tell.

2. You seem to be aiming for some sort of "thought leader" role. Usually,
in these sorts of developer communities, that role is earned through
production: answering technical questions, offering up source code to
implementations, releasing products, etc. In other words, it's more or
less a meritocracy.

Case in point: over in the world of Android, I'm a medium-sized fish in
that small-but-growing pond. That's after three books, close to 100 blog
posts on AndroidGuys, a thousand or so questions answered on the Android
Google Groups, etc. And even there, my whuffie is modest, so I can
occasionally steer questions of community ethos, but not too terribly
often. Here, in the Google Wave community, I'm just some schmoe...until I
build up local whuffie through answering questions, et. al. With luck, in
a month or two, I can start doing some of that.

I look forward your efforts to build your whuffie.

BTW, all the "whuffie" references are because I'm a few chapters into Tara
Hunt's _The Whuffie Factor_, so the noun is on my mind...

--
Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy)
http://commonsware.com
_The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development_ Version 2.0 Available!

[casey dunn]

Thank you, Mark.

Paramendra, really. read that post a few times.

The S/N is pretty bad around here at the moment.

but, I thought you could only find whuffie in the magic kingdom?

-casey

[Chris Marino]

Yes, thanks Mark.  You're much more diplomatic than I would have been.

But let me add that I'm always open to be distracted by insightful analysis and creative contributions. Unfortunately, from what I've read on the blog so far, its neither....

So, Paramendra, either kick it up a notch or two, or move on.

CM

[Brian Kennish (Googler)]

On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 4:00 PM, Mark Murphy <mmu...@commonsware.com> wrote:
> 1. This is a list in support of the Google Wave APIs. Maybe at some point,
> the Google Wave folk will create a "watering hole" list where random
> musings can occur. However, it is well within the rights of the Google
> Wave team to try to keep this list on topic, and your posts have had
> little to do with Google Wave API Q&A, near as I can tell.

Thanks Mark et al. for the thoughtful replies. I just want to clarify
one thing: I'm less concerned about the off-topicness -- I'd rather
let the community decide what's relevant -- than I am about
Paramendra's repeated use of this group to promote his blog. If
everyone sent a link every time they blogged about Wave, this would
turn into an awful noisy place.

Paramendra, you got a friendly warning from me earlier and then posted
more links to your blog, so I'm removing them. Next time, you get
banned.

If you want to have a discussion about these topics, have it here and
your fellow developers will determine whether it's worth their while.

But, if you want to promote your blog, do so elsewhere. There are
other, appropriate sites for this purpose.

[Alex Tkachman]

Sounds fair

[paramendra]

Brain. Or maybe you should just go ahead and ban me since looks like
you deleted my past three or four posts.

I started this thread that in its title very clearly says this
particular thread is about the community aspects, not the code
aspects. So those developers who are only interested in the code
aspects will not even bother clicking on this thread. I thought t-h-a-
t was fair enough.

I have been in the process of establishing the fact that code and
community are both important. That has been true for Google Corporate,
and the open source communities. That is going to be true for the
Google Wave Developer community as well. Google Corporate is 20,000
strong, about 50 out of 20,000 devoted to Wave. The Wave developer
community on its own is going to be larger than 20,000. And you are
going to tell me talking about code is enough?

I don't know where you stand in the Google Wave Corporate hierarchy,
but the official Google Wave Developer Blog has linked to my blog
posts on the importance of a culture for the developer community at
the bottom of every single of their posts as of now. Go take a look.
http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com

And my original Google Corporate Culture blog post that you so derided
has been a hit on Twitter, and is at the bottom of all the latest 30
plus of the posts at the official Google Blog itself. http://googleblog.blogspot.com

Now can we please repost my posts at this thread that you went ahead
and deleted?

And how primitive is it to suggest you can post words but not links to
your blog posts? Links are what the internet is all about. How, Sir,
did you miss that part? Links are the center of gravity in Google's
PageRank concept. Links are what make Twitter Twitter, it is not the
140 character limit.

I have come to this Google Group with a very clear goal, which is to
share in the excitement of Google Wave - the next big thing in web
technology - and to help shape its developer community, especially its
culture aspects, and to try and spot and popularize trends related to
Wave, especially as they might sprout out from the developer
community.

Your basic respect for free speech would be much appreciated.

I just went around and looked at the subject titles of many of the
other threads at this forum. My thread is more on-topic than most.
Most of the threads so far seem to be about wanting in on a Google
Wave account. That's code talk? Come on, man.

Paramendra Bhagat
http://technbiz.blogspot.com

[codedread]

Paramendra,

The message is this: We don't want to see links to your blog post
again.

I haven't seen ANYONE on these threads respond favorably to your
continued, incessant posting. You are making enemies, not friends.

Regards,
Jeff

On Jun 15, 11:25 am, paramendra <paramen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Brain. Or maybe you should just go ahead and ban me since looks like
> you deleted my past three or four posts.
>
> I started this thread that in its title very clearly says this
> particular thread is about the community aspects, not the code
> aspects. So those developers who are only interested in the code
> aspects will not even bother clicking on this thread. I thought t-h-a-
> t was fair enough.
>
> I have been in the process of establishing the fact that code and
> community are both important. That has been true for Google Corporate,
> and the open source communities. That is going to be true for the
> Google Wave Developer community as well. Google Corporate is 20,000
> strong, about 50 out of 20,000 devoted to Wave. The Wave developer
> community on its own is going to be larger than 20,000. And you are
> going to tell me talking about code is enough?
>
> I don't know where you stand in the Google Wave Corporate hierarchy,
> but the official Google Wave Developer Blog has linked to my blog
> posts on the importance of a culture for the developer community at

> the bottom of every single of their posts as of now. Go take a look.http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com

>
> And my original Google Corporate Culture blog post that you so derided
> has been a hit on Twitter, and is at the bottom of all the latest 30

> plus of the posts at the official Google Blog itself.http://googleblog.blogspot.com

[Pete]

Can we have a vote to ban him?

[paramendra]

First it is, this group is about code, not community. Then I went
ahead and established you can't separate the two. So now the goal post
has been shifted. Oh no no, it is not about code or community, it is
about your blog. We don't like your blog. If you don't like my blog,
why not not visit my blog? How is that not simple?

If you don't like links and blogs, go buy a book on Amazon and get
curled up on your sofa. Get offline.

[paramendra]

And what is this enemy talk? Can't have an intelligent conversation?

(1) Code and community go together.
(2) I expect to be one of the people who also spot trends in the code
department as the developer community does its work over the next few
months.
(3) People have the option to stay away from this thread focused on
the community aspects.
(4) Don't click on links you don't want to click on. That is Web 101.

Paramendra Bhagat
http://technbiz.blogspot.com

PS. Grow up, people.

On Jun 15, 12:32 pm, codedread <codedr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[paramendra]

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Einstein.html
When a pamphlet was published entitled 100 Authors Against Einstein,
Einstein retorted "If I were wrong, one would be enough."

On Jun 15, 12:32 pm, codedread <codedr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Paramendra,

[Jeff Schiller]

Paramendra,

The point is that you are making it difficult for people to follow
relevant discussions when none of your posts are not about the Google
Wave API. I can ignore your blog by not clicking, I cannot ignore you
because you have free reign to self-promote in this group.

I'm not blaming only you Paramendra,

Personally I think it would have been good to limit this group to only
those people who have wavesandbox accounts - that would have instantly
limited the discussions and made them relevant. Instead there are
more discussions about getting accounts, spam, self-promotion and
creating a culture than there is about the Google Wave APIs
themselves!

Anyway, I've now contributed to the mess because I'm responding in a
flame war, so I'm going to shut up now :)

Thanks,
Jeff

[paramendra]

Jeff: "there are more discussions about getting accounts, spam, self-

promotion and
creating a culture than there is about the Google Wave APIs
themselves! "

Jeff. Thanks for a respectful post. Believe me, I feel your pain.

My question: Why not avoid off topic threads? Threads have clear
titles.
My suggestion to the group moderator: Why not pin up about five more
threads that are to do with hard core API talk? They get to stay at
the top of the pile. Any posts not to do with API would be deleted
from those particular threads.

But I think we should tolerate some talk about people wanting Wave
accounts - sharing excitement - and the very legitimate talk of code
plus culture/community.

[paramendra]

Jeff. I wonder if another problem is if the majority of the people
here access this group through their email inboxes instead of the web
space for the group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-wave-api
like I do. When you access the discussions from the web space, it is
so easy to ignore threads you wish to ignore.

I have taken the "No Email" option.

[Vision Jinx]

I must say this group is getting frustrating and my phone keeps going
off every time I get flooded with these emails. I am ready to opt out
of this group as I came here to follow the wave technology and since
it is in it's infancy I am interested in keeping up with the
technology and what people are doing with Wave.

Paramendra, no offense intended but I do not find your repeated posts
helpful at all and this group is getting flooded with spam, people
begging for invites when the Googlers made it clear they will add more
people as soon as they are able to, and your excessive self promotion
in this group.

But some potentially helpful information for you, the Google blogs are
not intentionally linking to your posts because they find them useful,
it is a feature in Blogger called "backlinks". >>
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=42533

Additionally, if you think this is helping your page rank well think
again as these links all get rel="nofollow" added to them.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html
"when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those
links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search
results."

Also, your links in this group get the same rel="nofollow" so your
page rank is not going to benefit from it at all.

People here have tried to be patient and polite, but now this is just
getting very frustrating, most people here are developers looking to
help progress the Wave API, test for bugs, develop applications for it
and help with the technology in general etc, these constant posts
flood peoples in boxes with emails (regardless if we click your links
or not) and take away from people doing more important things and
developers like me are ready to opt out from this group.

You are free to start your own Google group and community (and those
interested will follow), but please stop spamming this group with your
self promotion.

Regards,
Vision Jinx

On Jun 15, 10:25 am, paramendra <paramen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Brain. Or maybe you should just go ahead and ban me since looks like
> you deleted my past three or four posts.
>
> I started this thread that in its title very clearly says this
> particular thread is about the community aspects, not the code
> aspects. So those developers who are only interested in the code
> aspects will not even bother clicking on this thread. I thought t-h-a-
> t was fair enough.
>
> I have been in the process of establishing the fact that code and
> community are both important. That has been true for Google Corporate,
> and the open source communities. That is going to be true for the
> Google Wave Developer community as well. Google Corporate is 20,000
> strong, about 50 out of 20,000 devoted to Wave. The Wave developer
> community on its own is going to be larger than 20,000. And you are
> going to tell me talking about code is enough?
>
> I don't know where you stand in the Google Wave Corporate hierarchy,
> but the official Google Wave Developer Blog has linked to my blog
> posts on the importance of a culture for the developer community at

> the bottom of every single of their posts as of now. Go take a look.http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com

>
> And my original Google Corporate Culture blog post that you so derided
> has been a hit on Twitter, and is at the bottom of all the latest 30

> plus of the posts at the official Google Blog itself.http://googleblog.blogspot.com

[Pete]

Some of us want to be a part of the meaningful conversations through
out the day via email. I don't want to visit the the groups page every
time I want to follow the communication.

If you really think your threads are meaningful, then why not take a
vote and be open to a ban if people don't want you here.


Cheers!

On Jun 15, 9:57 am, paramendra <paramen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jeff. I wonder if another problem is if the majority of the people
> here access this group through their email inboxes instead of the web

> space for the group athttp://groups.google.com/group/google-wave-api

[paramendra]

(1) I have been aware of the trackback/backlink thing and the no
follow thing. But the Google blogs weed out backlinks regularly. Mine
have not been weeded out.
(2) Even if you choose to follow this group through email - I follow a
few other groups that way - those emails still give you thread titles
so you can avoid those you want to avoid. No?
(3) My states goals of (a) sharing in the Wave excitement, (b)
contributing to the culture of the larger Wave developer community,
and (c) trying and spotting trends as developers hack away over the
next few months tell me I belong at this group. That (c) is in the
code department, (b) is in the community department, and (a) is in
both.
(4) I have inserted links to some of my blog posts. There are things
you can put in a blog post that you just can't put in a message post.
And my practice is also respectful of people's space and time. Instead
of reading five paragraphs and then realizing you might have wanted to
skip all of them, why not take one look at the blog post title, and
then quickly decide if you want to click on the link or not. Web 101.

Let's take code and community together. It is not just you, I am also
angling to follow some of the code related conversations. Why not
switch to posting stuff about code? I'd like to read some of your
messages to see what's going on.

[Alex Tkachman]

Are you real person or spam robot?

[Bastian Hoyer]

> (4) I have inserted links to some of my blog posts. There are things
> you can put in a blog post that you just can't put in a message post.
> And my practice is also respectful of people's space and time. Instead
> of reading five paragraphs and then realizing you might have wanted to
> skip all of them, why not take one look at the blog post title, and
> then quickly decide if you want to click on the link or not. Web 101.

1. Maybe you haven't noticed that there are also topics in this
forum.. so you can read the subject of a post and skip it if you don't
want to read it. Many of the developers here are using the mail
function to read and answer the posts with their mail client, or even
with their phone. Reading mails is easy with the phone, reading
external blogs depending on their layout not.

2. This is a discussion group. It's easy to qoute a posting from
someone else and answer paragraph by paragraph. Quoting from blog
posts is not that easy and most people here don't want to do that.

> Let's take code and community together. It is not just you, I am also
> angling to follow some of the code related conversations. Why not
> switch to posting stuff about code? I'd like to read some of your
> messages to see what's going on.

3. Feel free to post your ideas and discussions here.. but please
don't link to external blog posts.

[Alex Shneyderman]

> Personally I think it would have been good to limit this group to only
> those people who have wavesandbox accounts - that would have instantly
> limited the discussions and made them relevant.  Instead there are
> more discussions about getting accounts, spam, self-promotion and
> creating a culture than there is about the Google Wave APIs
> themselves!

I was about to skip this but then what the heck. I am going to vent my
frustration here and now. Most of those "irrelevant" posts are brought
upon Google Wave team itself. First they give a fantastic presentation
and put it on youtube (or shall I say make it public). Make me and
many others salivate over a promise of technology and wish to try it
out only to find out that access is only for a chosen few. Sorry, I
got no halo around head.

I can understand not wanting to overload the system while it is fresh
but then make the server code available for people to try until you
can accommodate all the ppl who want to run it on your cloud.
Alternatively, do not make presentations only to offend the bigger
portion of your audience with your access to the chose few crap.

> Anyway, I've now contributed to the mess because I'm responding in a
> flame war, so I'm going to shut up now :)

Likewise,
Alex.

[Alex Tkachman]

Could someone please ban this Spam Robot from the group. It became not funny already.

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 9:54 AM, paramendra <param...@gmail.com> wrote:

The Google Wave Developer Community Will Be Vibrant
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2009/06/google-wave-developer-community-will-be.html

I suggested at the Google Wave API Google Group that code and culture/
community are both important. I stand by that assertion. But that is
not to say I want to focus on community talk and not code talk.
Actually my primary motivation for joining the group has been to
follow, and to an extent contribute to the code talk primarily to be
able to spot trends in the developer community as Google Wave readies
for the masses in a few months. Code talk is important to me.

I want to do my homework to be able to participate in the code talk to
the extent that I am in a better position to be able to spot trends.

[Brian Kennish (Googler)]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 2:20 AM, Alex Tkachman <alex.t...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Could someone please ban this Spam Robot from the group.

Done.