Craig’s Musings

Not to forget that today is Earth Day, I’m reminded of being exposed to Chris Jordan’s photographic art during a flight I took, I think, last year. His images stuck with me, and several seem very fitting to draw your attention to today:

• Plastic Cups, 2008 (60×90″, depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours): fit image, partial zoom and actual print detail
• Plastic Bottles, 2007 (60×120″, depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes): fit image, partial zoom and actual print detail
• Toothpicks, 2007 (60×99″, depicts 8 million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees harvested in the US every month to make the paper for mail order catalogs): fit image
• Cell Phones, 2007 (60×100″, depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day): fit image, partial zoom and actual print detail
• Paper Bags, 2007 (60×80″, depicts 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags, the number used in the US every hour): fit image, partial zoom and actual print detail
• Plastic Bags, 2007 (60×72″, depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.): fit image, partial zoom and actual print detail

Of course, there are many more works by Mr. Jordan, and I encourage you to experience them–at least online, if not in person.

Ever since we produced an object model poster for EMC Documentum 5.3, folks have requested more such posters. So, when DFS released with EMC Documentum 6.0, we thought it made sense to pursue a data model poster.

Thanks to the work of Oleg, Meir, Patricia and others, I’m pleased to report that the DFS data model poster for the 6.0 SP1 release is on its way to the printers. You can download its PDF rendition here.

Also, if you’re coming to EMC World next month in Las Vegas, it’s my understanding that there will be a large number of posters available to attendees–not to mention a number of presentations and a hands-on lab concerning DFS.

Cheers!

Now that Michael has publicly posted the official news in the Confluence wiki for Omea and in the newsgroups (i.e. coyly here via a three-part post featuring Esperanto and Alice in Wonderland), I want to also draw attention to this important open source event: http://svn.jetbrains.org/omeaopen.

I caught word of this milestone coming via Jeff Loftus. Serge was kind enough to cut Jeff and I in a couple of days early on the SVN link via the Omea multi-user chat room. (Using Miranda to access the MUC was painless).

I see, too, that David and Dmitry have picked up the news.

It took almost ten months since I posted my open letter to the Omea crew, but they have delivered.

Looks like I need to demonstrate “Omea Master” status.

IDC just published a white paper, sponsored by EMC (my employer), to update its initial forecast last year concerning worldwide information growth over the next few years. This year’s update forecasts through 2011.

You can find both white papers here, and there is no need to register first. Since this year’s paper is an update to last year’s inaugural paper, I recommend that you download and read both papers.

So, Andrew Chapman picked up my recent blue ocean post and thought aloud about document authoring practice today in that light.

Having recently read Beautiful Code and being in the process of reading Beyond the Desktop Metaphor, I think that what Andrew may be touching upon is the need for the editor. Each of these books represents an edited collection of research, and while the individual research contributions (chapters) undoubtedly have value standalone, the editors add value by balancing individual and collective “voice.”

Andrew may also be touching on something else I’ve thought aloud about: what is the natural unit of written collaboration? Is it the paragraph, the section, the chapter, the document, the slide?

He also seems to raise the question, what is the point (in authoring this document) here? Is the document a means to ends or is it becoming an (over-engineered, dead) end in itself? If organizations seek agility shouldn’t they expect the same characteristic from their documents, authoring and collaboration?

I’m still striving to realize a more fluid, goal-oriented authoring process–at least for product documentation and community guidance. When I raised the cry wikify Documentum already, some of the initial internal reaction had to do with the role of the technical writer. For example, does the role transition to that of pure editor? If so, is that good or bad? What is lost? What is gained (e.g. new bandwidth to focus elsewhere–like community enablement)?

Clearly I have more questions than answers…