Flawed article on OS News concludes that:

All users, after an initial bootstrapping phase, preferred the CLI “discussion” method for interacting. All reported that they felt more in control and better able to find things out. This probably was due to the higher amount of interface consistency and more task-based interface that the CLI tends to encourage

Ignores the biased task based examples being taught, focussing on command line strengths but not GUI strengths. Also, no mention was made of which GUI was used, so I assume it was one of those inconsistent and unintuitive Linux GUIs.

I would ideally like to extend my little trial into a full newbie computing course where I teach the command line first before moving up into GUIs. I feel that my experiences here show that the CLI provides a far better environment for first-time computer users to find their feet.

Pity, because the GUI desktop is a flawed metaphor anyway, and it would have been good to see a proposal for something better.

Perhaps these things could be combined into a new shell. One that also had a more unified method of job control, perhaps introducing ‘inbg’ as a built in function.

Getting back to community organisations from a few days ago…

Regardless of the highly toxic mix of individuals, one of the main problems of managing a co-operative or community organisation, is the inexperience of the management, and their need to continually relearn lessons. Lessons which in many cases were only just learned a year or so ago, by the previous management. This cannot be particularly conducive to streamlining the operation of the organisation, and considering that most groups struggle for financial survival anyway, it is a wonder that they still exist at all.

Another related problem is that many of these “managers” have only experienced the social side of the other managers of the organisation, and suffer what I call the “me too” effect. Several years ago, a member of an organisation I was involved with, who had no management or business experience, was placed in an important management position, along side other more experienced people. Their experience on the board consisted of simply arguing about issues which anyone with even a small amount of management experience, wouldn’t even question. Because they saw the confident way others acted, ignorant of their professional experience, this person tried to act the same way, but made all the wrong decisions. It was a waste of their talent, which lay in other non-management areas of the organisation, and bogged the other managers down with petty and time wasting infighting.

Currently, at another group I’m involved with, there is a pending purchase request for various bits of computer equipment, valued at around the $1000 mark. Unfortunately, the purchase request was put in before a quote was obtained (inexperience again), making approval difficult at best. When called upon to provide a quote (after several weeks of refusing), the value was actually much less (~70%) than the original request, and the specification of the equipment was completely wrong for the purpose it was being bought.

This then descended into arguments about who the “expert” was who put together the specification, with half the management saying they were an expert, and half saying they weren’t. This ended with a rather detailed and amusing week long argument about what the rules of the organisation say about chorums and approvals for purchases. In the end, the fight was more about getting the badly specced purchase approved, than whether it was a complete waste of money for the task at hand. That is to say, you wouldn’t buy a Holden Commodore because a Commodore driver who had jumped the odd gutter, had told you it would be best for off road driving.

Coming back to the management side of the issue, perhaps the following “out of the box” idea would be a better way of addressing the problem.

The terms “board” and “director” should be replaced with “committee” and “committee member” or “member representative”. In some community groups, these quite corporate terms (board & director) are used to describe the management, and in many cases, this seems to fuel egos. A recent amusing quote: “NO ONE – has the right to go over the heads of the board. Aren’t we the ones running the show?!”

Experienced professional company directors and managers should then be approached for pro bono directorships on a “board”, which meets every few months. Their role would be to observe and make recommendations to the committee members. The committee members would in some ways be accountable to the board. Currently, managers in community organisations tend to be accountable to nobody except themselves.

The result is that the management are closer to the ground than they have been in the past, more in contact with the membership of the organisation, and are supposedly more able to act with better guidance than they did before.

This also partially syncs with the recent Power to the Edge (thank you Nathan for the link) methodologies of the U.S. military, where basically command and control, in conjunction with senior personnel, are moved much closer to the edge of the organisation. They are then provided with information they need to better perform the tasks for which they are ultimately accountable.

Goodbye ivory towers, long approval chains and pseudo-directors with egotist tendencies. Hello warm and fuzzy feeling, making correct decisions, and helping to push the community group forward.

It is amusing, yet sad, to think that all over the world, community organisations spend a majority of their management time either arguing over petty rule interpretations, or making stupid mistakes which any professional manager would spot a mile away. Assuming that community groups aren’t just there as playpens or training grounds for would be managers, there must be a better way.

Some recent experience with a local community group I’m involved with, got me thinking about the politics of small shared interest groups, and whether anyone had done any research on the sociology or topology (for want of a better word) of community organisations.

Typically such organisations are founded on one basic principle: to facilitate the involvement of local people within a particular hobby or interest, when it is impossible for most individuals to finance or manage such a hobby on their own. Through the formation of a community group, the members may more easily participate in, and supposedly enjoy the shared interest.

Indeed there are some groups which contain like minded people, who just happen to have the same interest, such as making day trips to the country for example. However I’d argue that their raison detre is still to visit the country, and it is just that those who do not get along with the majority of the group, wouldn’t enjoy participating, making it look like the primary focus is the people. It is not, the focus is still day trips to the country.

So, assuming the point of all community groups is the facilitation of services, for whatever this interest may be, then there seems to be two distinct types of groups.

The most common, as in the case of the day trips to the country example, is where facilitation will not succeed unless particular types of people are involved. Sporting teams are a good example, as are BASE jumping and paintball. These interests force the members of the group together with a shared character trait, whether it be age, fitness, race, religion, philosophy, outlook etc. In a way, these groups self select people who will get along. If they don’t get along in such a confined environment, the group just won’t work, and like natural selection, the exceptions will leave the group before any real conflict can occur.

The other less common type of community group, is where the characteristic make up of the members is not self selecting. In this case, we find a vast range of people, with a common interest, who are required to work together for the good of the group, but may still work as individuals to varying degrees. In these cases, the common interest is facilitated for the individual, not the group (as in a sporting team), even though it is the group which manages the organisation. Such groups include community radio and television, time shared resources (lodges, communal buildings etc.) and more so in the past, computer groups.

Some groups, such as those interested in the dramatic arts for example, tend to fall into either type, depending on their particular focus.

So, due to the intense variety in the character of the members, are these types of groups doomed to fail? Not necessarily, as they do exist, and many for long periods of time. However, if my personal experience is anything to go by (36 combined years across 4 such groups), at least 80% of the time, there is some fairly intense form of political conflict. Again, from my experience, people with forceful, opinionated and more often than not black and white (one extreme or the other) personalities tend to gravitate to such groups, because they have more chance of not being refused membership. Once in the door, these people tend to move fairly quickly towards committee membership, where their real personalities start to come into play, and the membership ends up struggling to maintain both financial and political stability. With many groups, this is a continual exercise, yet they still search for a quick solution to the political problem. They typically fail to recognise that politics go hand in hand with such groups, and time spent fighting against this, is time wasted.

The other problem, and this is the same for both types of community groups, is that the primary organisers are rotated on membership appointed committees, and in most cases the committee members have no management, organisational or accountability experience. Most people with such professional experience involved with community groups, do not get involved with the committee, because the extension from their day job tends to lower their actual interest in the group. Subsequently, they either leave, or do not get involved in the politics. For the group facilitation type of community group however (sporting groups etc.), although they are faced with the same lack of experience, the close relationship of the members means that in most cases they can easily work through any issues which may arise.

With individualist groups, it is also important that they maintain some form of middle ground, both politically, culturally and operationally, as the primary premise for their existence, is the facilitation of services for a diversity of individuals. If this fails, and the balance tips in any one direction, again the politics kick in, and the group will either cease to exist, or spend most of their time fighting. As many members subconsciously realise that the group revolves around individuality, and they may not be accepted elsewhere, many of them fight hard politically to maintain the haven which they have found accepting of them.

So, in summary, individualist groups facilitate services for the group on an individual level, their members are typically a vast range of differing personalities, they are accepting of fairly eccentric characteristics, they tend to be strong minded, and in some more extreme cases, take advantage of this for their own perceived betterment.

Like I said at the beginning, this was triggered by an incident at a local group I’m involved with, where an academic psychologist joined the group, and while they seemed to have the best interests of the group in mind, they continually used their semi-professional understanding of the behaviour of people, to promote their own ascension through to the committee and a position of power. Unfortunately for them, the nature of the membership of the group (variety), which ironically facilitated their entry, did not conform to standard population behaviour, for the reasons I mentioned above, and it wasn’t long before they were recognised for what they were. This caused the group to descend again into political conflict. Fate accompli.

So I went looking for research into the politics of community groups, and surprisingly couldn’t find very much on the web. Certainly nothing that went beyond the already exhaustive studies into the nirvana that is community councils, co-intelligence and social networks for online communities, neither of which work for this type of group.

Are these types of groups destined to pop up and drop away, as political conflict is part of their social make up? Is there a magic formula for management of such groups, to prevent such conflict occurring? Are there tactics which can be employed to help identify problematic individuals or to make the politics more digestible, or is the fact that they cater for problematic individuals a key premise for such a group’s existence?

This seems like a nice research project for our friend the academic psychologist, however somehow I doubt that their limited understanding of the variety of human behaviour, especially in such chaotic group dynamics, would produce any compelling results.

More significantly, what repercussions will this have for online community groups and social networks? Do the same principles apply?

If you know of any research in this area, I’d love to hear about it. Drop me an email.

Here’s another flawed article on lowering speed limits in NSW. Peter Martin argues that data from the U.S. shows that 55 MPH (88 KPH) limits reduce the death toll by 15% from 65 MPH. What he fails to understand is that there is a minimum speed under which drivers need not learn any particular evasive or advanced driving skills, leading to more fatalities when they are faced with more difficult driving conditions. Finding the balance between a safe lower limit, and an upper limit which allows people to actually learn driving skills is the key. At the moment Australia has one of the lowest limits in the world, and our death toll keeps rising. Duh. Limits should be restored to a more balanced level, not the 50 KPH and 40 KPH now being used in some suburban areas. Banning SUVs would also lower the death toll, but if you’re going to have deaths, it’s nice being able to be selective. 🙂

Poor Niue, a small nation in the Pacific Ocean of around 500 people, and the smallest independent state in the world. Hit by a cyclone, with NZ$50M in damage. Apparently one person was killed, but so much of the infrastructure was destroyed that the cost may force them to give up their independence and return to New Zealand rule. Who else but New Zealand would allow such a small island to become independent, support them financially while doing so, and look after them through the bad times? In this day and age when invasion and virtual annexation is the norm, good on you New Zealand!

If this weren’t so funny, it would be depressing. As predicted over 20 years ago by various writers, journalists and activists, 1984 has begun in earnest. Starting today, if you’re from one of 165 countries on a certain U.S. list (really 166, but for good old American reasons the U.S. doesn’t recognise Taiwan as an actual country), when you enter the U.S., you’ll have your photo and finger prints taken. How long before the remaining 27 countries are included, and how long before they start with their own citizens. The revolution has ended, rest in peace the revolution!

A few weeks ago, I heard a well known Sydney rock muso and an apparently credible 2JJJ DJ, so credible in fact that I’ve forgotten their names, rant on and on ad nauseum about some extremely rare funk album by the Skull Snaps that few people have heard of from 1973, and how it was subsequently sampled by a whole load of recent musos who need to rip off other artists instead of write their own music (my words :-). Anyway, they kept on and on about how rare this album was, then played the classic “It’s a new day.” Well, not only is this extremely rare album available from Amazon, but today I found three copies in the $2 bargain bin at HMV Chatswood. I didn’t buy them. Good on ya Triple J, keep up the cred. Yes this record is important, but it is also extremely easy to find. more on skull snaps…

You have to wonder why on Easter Sunday, all the large stores are shut (presumably not to celebrate Ramadan), yet when they open again on Monday, they’ll be stacked full of chocolate eggs. Commercialism at its best. Somehow this reminds me of Adolf Hitler in 1936 when he finally gave in to the unions and gave them a labor day holiday, then the next day he outlawed unionism. Reminds me, but I’m not sure why…