ApacheCon is like being a field of locusts. You can almost hear the swarm of
chewing away at the future. There is no buisness model, no project plan, no marketing campaign. Just a hordes and hordes of dudes (though interestingly this year there were substantially more women than last) going – “Hum, I wonder what might happen if I hacked this thing together with that thing… cool, that makes me smile, that was neat.” over and over again. These are the people that take pens apart, that put light bulbs inside of other things just because they can.

Doc Searls gave a very nice talk at ApacheCon. Doc obviously has spent much of his life helping firms figure out how to tell their story so that it will go down the gullet of the media machine reasonably smoothly. Like everybody else he’s noticing that bottleneck like so many others is suffering a firestorm of disintermediation.

So on the one hand you could see him seeking a way to frame the story of what is going on here (what is the story of this open source thing) into the frameworks that his craft knows will make it an appetizing dish to place out on the buffet table where that the passing journalists will heap a helping onto their plate. One part hero. One problem, preferably dress in a war metaphore. A respoution – presumably open source. While on the hand noticing that that question is becoming increasingly uninteresting.

On the otherhand you could see he was in the midst of the puzzling out what would rise from those ashes. It was this puzzling that was delightful to observe because he is a very smart guy and he knows all the current memes with a degree of insight that’s rare. So it was just a joy to watch him reach into his bag of memes and pull one out and turn it over in his hands, say something wise about how it does or doesn’t fit what he was observing in the conference and then set it down, respectfully, and pull out another one.

For example he drew out the blogging meme. He had a wonderful slide where screen snapshots of dozens of blogs written by folks in his audience (a nice touch that) piled up on the screen. A pretty way to show the disintermediation of the traditional media. A compeling way to make clear that even the question “what is the story” is just possibly the wrong question when it’s clear that hundreds of voices are now all speaking at once telling what ever random story they might happen to want to tell.

I guess the blogs reflect that some of the locust’s are mumbling outloud as they chew.

He touched on the DYI IT meme. The end-to-end meme and it’s friend disintermediation and the many volunteers standing by offering to become the intermediary. He touched on the IP enclosure movement meme. etc. etc.

A very nice talk and in a way a very ironic one because Open Source has an undercurrent of shifting power from marketing to engineering, from the PR department alway back to the technologists in R&D. No. Not to R&D; further toward the technologists in the field.

So Doc’s presence, the PR marketing maven, in this crowd has a curious irony to it. It’s as if just as they were loading the Golgafrincham’s B-ship a few of the wisest and cleverest passengers paused and wandered back into the crowd. Thinking as they went: “My, this needs some more thought; something odd going on here.” I’m glad he came.

In a marvelously appropriate off topic posting at Gizmodo the host points out a great article on how cell phones have a corrosive effect on people’s level of engagement with the place they are actually in. It’s a much more sophisticated take on the way that virtual places are in a vicious competition with physical places than the usual ranting about cell phones going off during meetings.

Meanwhile here at ApacheCon across the room a group of ten people is gathered closely around a round table. They are all gazing silent intent into their computers.  Occasional complaints about the network’s speed are heard.

I was very discomforted the first time I went to an ApacheCon. I had large complex mental models of the other participants in Apache. Models that I suddenly had to update with unnecessary facts – A is a drinker, B is quiet, C is a fast talker, D is tall, E is cute, F is young, G is old, H has a piercing, J has white hair, K isn’t very sociable, L is very personable…

On top of that is the shift in medium problem. This person, with whom you have a complex relationship entirely in one medium is suddenly shifted into another medium. IRC or email has an entirely different granularity and nature than other mediums. I know that some number of those people across the room are in IRC, maybe even talking to other people at the same table. That doesn’t surprise me in the least.

The  literature  on communities includes the  marvelous  term “Communities  of Limited  Liability”. Such communities meet most of the common tests of “community” (for example). But their members are aware that the scope of the community is limited.

The original example was urban neighborhoods. Members of such community know they are members, can identify other members, have a common practices and stories, and will come to each other aid as well as the aid of the community. But they don’t do any number of the other things that some people might assume are implied by community membership. They share holiday meals. They don’t marry each other. They don’t know details of each other’s personal lives – jobs, families, interests. The scope of  their  community involvement is clearly circumscribed.

I like to believe that  it is  part of modernity that people are parts of dozens such communities.  Each of these community relationships is very intense but only within the limits of that community.

I still feel a bit weird about the way that ApacheCon creates connections outside of the limited liability of the open source project relationship. There are risks, and  responsibilities  in that.

But I certainly don’t feel that it’s bewildering anymore. Now I kind of enjoy the weird sensation.

And, it’s nice, I’ve gotten to know some very interesting people.