We don't yet know what the steady state of the blogosphere is going to look like. As has been snarkily reported, lots of blogs die on the vine. Of course plenty don't, and there's also a steady influx of new voices. Here are three that have enriched my daily trawl for ideas and perspectives.
Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and architect of Mozilla:
The challenge for Mozilla and other open source projects is not to "react to Microsoft", any more than it is to "react to Macromedia". MS and MM are reacting to the same fields of force that govern everybody. The prize we seek is a better way to develop common kinds of networked, graphical applications. [Brendan Eich: roadmap]Amen. Brendan's roadmap blog is a great way to continue the tradition of the Mozilla development roadmap.
Martin Roberts, enterprise architect:
When a Process fails where do you need to route the fault to? Normally a human - so why do most tools make this a cumbersome task? Why do these so called next generation tools find dealing with people such an alien idea? I believe the answer lies in the fact that most of these emerging tools have been built by people used to handling classes that rarely touch humans directly. They tend to be focused on the J2EE/.Net like frameworks which are low level in the inspirations and have failed to take into account the gains of the 4GL world of the early 1990's. [Martin Roberts: Architecture Musings in IT]I met Martin at XML 2003 and we had a fascinating hour-long conversation. The point he makes here -- that humans are the exception handlers in automated systems, and that we need to design accordingly -- is one I've made too. But my perspective doesn't include experience building enterprise apps using Oracle Workflow. Martin's does. (He currently holds forth at blogspot.com which offers Atom only, no RSS, but you can get an RSS translation of his Atom feed here, thanks again to www.2rss.com.)
Evelyn Rodriguez, engineer turned freelance marketer:
Have you ever watched a start-up make that corporate transition from the inside? It's not just that the dogs and beer bashes go, but something subtle, intangible seems to shift. The palpable energy evaporates. It's not the transparency that's at issue. Maybe not even the quarterly view of the world (most start-ups have to watch their cash closely anyway and thus balance the short-term and long-term). It's more the unspoken effect and influence of "best practices" and the pressure to conform to a more respectable and familiar culture that are the hallmark of measurable metrics of Wall Street. Who knows what SAS's life-friendly practices are worth? Just looks like a cost to me on a balance sheet. Giving Googlers 20% of time to goof off on pet projects? That's productive time being wasted! [Evelyn Rodriguez: Crossroads Dispatches]Evelyn is another conference acquaintance of mine. I find her perspectives on entrepreneurism, marketing in the blog era, and human potential to be consistently valuable.
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/05/06.html#a990