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the future of future projects 
01.12.2007, 2:40 PM
One of the most exciting things about working at the Institute is that we can propose new and interesting and run experiments without having to worry about their sustainability. Some ideas work and some don't. But when have ventured into experiments, we have always had very interesting results. I think we should work towards putting more emphasis on this methodology. Here are some ideas that I think we should explore:
* Experimental Prototyping: Of the many topics we discuss, we should look to build prototypes and releasing to the public as quickly as possible. We do not have the capacity for large software engineering tasks, so let's not. This will allow us to play with many more ideas and look at problems from a variety of angles without getting stuck with any model.
* Open Source: Launching a successful open source project is difficult. I think we should gain experience building online communities with small projects. A good start, and I think CommentPress and its derivatives will be a good start. If we have a few of these small projects under our belts, and have even just a few developers documenting, debugging or just giving us feedback, it'd be great experience for larger, more ambitious projects.
I think we could build a community of eager developers who *await* our prototypes and then run with them.
* Live Commenting: I think it'd be great if the comments appeared real time in web projects like CommentPress. It's a medium sized project with important ramifications for blogs. Example: when a user submits a comments, all other connected users to the website will get notification and the comment will appear without reloading. This will allow conversation to have more of a real-time feel to it.
* Innovative Wiki Interfaces: We love Wikis. But they have serious problems, especially in interface and ease of use for new users. I think we should experiment with a drag and drop interfaces for words (like magnetic poetry) so anyone can move words around on the document without ever having to enter "edit mode". I think this can take us into interesting directions.
* Word Level Commenting: Like CommentPress, which group discussions by ideas or paragraphs, I think figuring out a flexible way to discuss ideas at different levels is important. The "word-level" will be an important challenge.
* Document Perspective: We read documents from top to bottom. In our projects, conversations, - and believe we've pigeon holed ourselves into - happen on the side. I think we should explore depth (zooming into text, with UI cues to encourage users to read "closely" or at a "distance") as a way to show/hide discussions.
I in no way think this is all we can explore. We, to some extent work like this already, but I would to, if possible, move in this direction even more. I believe we would be able to stir things up quite a bit and build anticipation for creative projects that we produce.
Posted by eddie a. tejeda at January 12, 2007 2:40 PM