Wikis and the Critical Path

A friend forwarded this article to me last week entitled “Democratizing Knowledge at NASA and Elsewhere.” It is a short discussion about the idea of using wikis to ‘democratize’ knowledge at NASA. The author explains,

“A couple of years ago, I assigned a case study on NASA’s approach to knowledge management to several teams of MBA students as a final exam. As part of the exam, the teams were expected to make recommendations for how NASA should revise its approaches to knowledge. One MBA team suggested a major change in direction. Their recommendation went something like this: “NASA should abandon its current systems and approaches to managing knowledge and adopt a series of wikis instead.”

The author doesnt actually refer to any NASA-specific practices or challenges, and didnt seem to have even taken the time to speak with NASA about these ideas. However, he goes on to explain that while the utopian vision of wikis is great and all, it wont work for NASA. Why? “It would seem irresponsible,” he says, ” to treat all knowledge equally where lives and very large amounts of resources are at stake, as they are on all NASA space missions.”

This kind of thing drives me nuts, as it’s a response I often see to the idea of making NASA’s content and processes more transparent and accessible. How could we let a bunch of teenaged hackers develop code for the space station?

Well, guess what. Inviting contributions from an unrestricted audience doesnt mean decisions about those contributions dont go through the same quality control and approval processes as closed, proprietary work does. If anything, it means that maybe more of the “bugs” (conceptual or technical) will have been found ahead of time.

“… It is not a good idea for NASA to adopt a fully democratic approach to knowledge… [in] situations in which there are clear right answers and where some people are more likely to provide those answers than others.”

This is exactly the kind of thinking that wikis are designed to weed out. space exploration and settlement is one of the most important long-term challenges of our species. We can’t stick to what we already know or think we know. Every mission or spacecraft ever lost was the result of applying what we thought were “clearly right answers,” from the people we were told were “supposed to be” providing them.

If we want any chance of innovating outside the constraints of our traditional thinking, and breaking through age-old challenges of space exploration such as launch technologies, cost, and life support on other planets, we need to be open to answers from unexpected places. Wikis are just one of a suite of technologies
NASA should be employing to make room for and embrace those inputs.

Repairing Broken Windows

The Broken Windows theory states that the behavior of actors within a particular situation is a function of its external environment. The theory was explored in an article in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly where the authors write:

“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.”

These examples articulate the power of context within one’s external environment and the sliding scale of socially acceptable behavior. But it isn’t just social behavior, it is behavior in general. Systems thinking states:

“The behavior of a system is a function of its structure.”

There are many ways forward to try to create a desirable behavior and/or external environment. A systems thinker can take a highly complex system and analyze the relationships between its constituent variables to gain increased understanding on which variable to alter. But I also attest that you can take the power of context to slowly shift the scale of socially acceptable behavior.

Science, Sustainability, and Settlement

If NASA is evolving into an agency serious about bringing humanity sustainably into the cosmos, there are some very serious challenges to create this future over the coming decades. While NASA leadership should determine an approach from the high-level, civil society should bring this meme into the public consciousness, and internal NASA should begin to change its external environment so this may become a reality.

From Space to Safety to Settlement?

Let’s start with the notebook. It is a little thing in the external environment which can be used as a barometer for when the NASA employee earned their chops and rose up through the ranks. If you witness an employee with the Government Green notebook from the 60s, then it is either a scientist who went to grad school during Apollo, someone dreaming of the Apollo times and wishing they were there, or someone that was part of the Apollo program. But the message is the same: Apollo Redux.

Another favorite of mine are the middle managers who went through Franklin Planner mandatory training in the 80s and 90s. They sure are organized taking notes in pencil and highlighting actions.

But what about me? I have my laptop out in all meetings. But sometimes do have a notepad for lists, actions, drawings, sketches, etc.

So, in the 21st Century, what type of notebook should we use? Can it embody the image of Sustainable Settlement? Should it have watermarks on each page for a twitter or a blog post? Should there be quotes at the bottom of each page from prominent historians which embody the image? What type of structure should we put down on the notebook to encourage the behavior we are looking for?

It is the little things that matter; the little things can create the slight possibility for a desired future. Plus, if it is cool enough, then it can get into the geek culture then become trendy.

Report on the future of Virtual Worlds and NASA’s Role

I’ve finally compiled a report on the open discussion we held a couple of weeks ago in Second Life to begin brainstorming where virtual worlds are going, and how NASA can and should shape its contributions to this important emerging technology. From the draft report:

The strongest messages that came out of the discussions was the absolute requirement for an underlying architecture for virtual environments and immersive 3D experiences that is independent of the content or browser technology used. This would underpin all 3D content on the web, and allow it to seamlessly integrate with online technologies that exist today.

This is an ongoing collaborative process. You can find the rest of the report, in both PDF format for easy reading, and wiki format for easy contributing, online here.

We are also in the early stages of organizing a weekend workshop at NASA Ames for December on virtual worlds and virtual environments. If you have ideas for speakers or topics, suggestions are most welcome. Please contact me.

Rationales for Open Source Release

recently a colleague sent an email out to an agency discussion group about open source, asking about rationales for open source release. his management didnt see the justification for his request to release his software under the NOSA. it’s interesting that although, as someone in the resulting discussion pointed out, NASA’s own charter states that it shall “provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof”, open source software release is, in many instances, still seen as more of special case, than as a natural way to minimize overhead while maximizing the aforementioned dissemination (among other things).

last year i did a series of interviews with a cross section of developers, engineers, managers, and lawyers at Ames about open source. from there, i compiled the rationales they offered as the motivation for their interest in open source. i think it’s worth noting that none of these are unique to NASA per se, but i do consider all of them strong reasons in their own right for open source release and/or development, and certainly together they present a strong argument for encouraging open source release as long as there is no explicit reason not to.

1. Improve the effectiveness of collaborations with other NASA Centers, space agencies, universities, and contractors
2. Cost Reduction: Leverage the free and open source development process for projects that normally cost millions of dollars in development and testing
3. Improve quality and functionality of existing products
4. Provide opportunities for broader involvement in the space program
5. Distribute NASA’s public software to as wide an audience as possible.
6. Encourage adoption of common practices and open standards
7. Provide an opportunity for others to add value beyond what was planned or unexpected.

the order above is roughly commensurate with the relative relevance most people cited.

i would like to see a world in which the default release for government information of any kind, not just software, is open. while i realize that may not be immediately feasible or practical, there are concrete steps we can take to at least move incrementally in that direction. while general education and awareness are foundational to any strategy, streamlining the release process itself is something that would significantly ease the overhead of learning about and going through the open source release process. more thoughts on that another time.

BarCampBlock in Palo Alto

I attended BarCampBlock in Palo Alto yesterday, which could have been the largest BarCamp to date with over 800 people in attendance.

“BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. The name BarCamp was inspired as a complement to FooCamp.”

With these unconferences, the attendees are the ones who create the content, and the organizers create the environment. Organizing an unconference does require a similar amount of preparation, but the experience by the attendee and the community which is created is special and inspirational.

Last week, I received an e-mail from a HQ supporter about potentially inviting some attendees from the Participatory Exploration Summit to the October 23, 2007 Space Shuttle Launch. Since Shuttle launches are notoriously delayed due to Florida’s weather humor, attendees normally plan to stay a few additional days after the scheduled launch date to increase the likelihood of witnessing the launch. Since I have never been to the Cape, it is my understanding that this is a time to socialize with fellow watchers or network with fellow VIPs, depending on your vantage point. This leads me to the obvious gedanken of encouraging NASA to host a ShuttleBarCamp.

I will be in HQ next week to explore this idea with people. I most likely will not have the bandwidth to organize the ShuttleBarCamp, but as in all BarCamp organizing, it is a community effort. I have no doubt that the community will organically form given the opportunity.

creative commons for government?

i was in a meeting today where we were discussing the legalities surrounding open government-sponsored collaborative websites. that is, a NASA site facilitating open collaboration between NASA employees and non-NASA individuals or organization. what happens to intellectual property that comes out of that site? can the ideas be copyrighted? patented? should the ideas, content or inventions that come out of these collaborations be required to be openly accessible? can they be used commercially? and whatever decision is made, how is this communicated and enforced?

in general, we want to be as hands-off as possible. it should be up to groups and individuals collaborating on the site to decide when and if their content has gotten to the point that they want to (or that it justifies) being copyrighted or patented. however, as the sponsors of the time and resources that go into building and supporting this collaborative environment, NASA would expect a license to use any copyrighted or patented inventions or content.

this is exactly what happens with government contracts today where new IP is created. the contractor is given first rights to patent a new invention, but if they elect to pursue a patent, the government must be given an indefinite license to practice/use that invention.

although ‘indefinite right to use’ is a standard clause of government contracts (it’s a direct requirement of 1980′s Bayh-Dole act), what’s different here is that the content in question has been developed in a public forum. thus, it is already open content. given that, it’s most likely this collaborative site would encourage the use of creative commons licenses, which allow those who came up with an idea to retain their copyright but allow others certain rights as well– to use, re-use, and/or re-mix according to certain conditions you specify.

does retaining the right to use or practice IP created on this site require a new kind of CC license? it is a bit of a unique situation. traditional government licensing practices specify the indefinite right to use because otherwise the content/invention would be inaccessible to them. but open/public content under a CC license is available for anyone to use. so NASA shouldnt need to explicitly retain that right.

the gray area arises when people take ideas or projects from this site and patent or copyright them (or some close derivative). the current CC license that would ensure derivative content remains open is the share-alike license. however, what NASA would like to do is instead more closely approximate the traditional licensing scheme– requiring only that derivative works be made available to NASA, in order to leave room for commercialization or other forms of business development as appropriate. but then again, in some ways the viral nature of this requirement goes beyond even the current government licensing stipulations.

it seems to me that if it’s decided to only require that the government can continue to use the content as it exists on the site, then existing CC licenses are sufficient. however, if the government wants the rights to use content derived from the site, then a new kind of license may be required.

it’s exciting to look at new models for collaboration with and within government. what we’re talking about is an extension of traditional collaborative relationships, which are usually contractually bound and occur behind closed doors, by formalizing a way to instead collaborate in open and informal ways. its not clear to me if this situation, which will come up for other government agencies as well, does or does not require a new twist on the existing CC licenses. but having a way to formally support open collaboration with government would be a hugely exciting step.

help brief the director on virtual worlds

we had our third luna philosophie on july 30^th with bruce damer. he gave a great talk about the history of virtual environments and all the amazing work his company Digital Space has done with NASA over the years. It’s interesting to see how closely coupled that evolution has been to supporting the simulation of space environments. Ames Center Director Pete Worden attended the salon, and afterwards requested a briefing on virtual worlds and where we thought the Center should and could be directing research to move forward state of the art in this area. I’m organizing an in-world (Second Life) open meeting tomorrow (tuesday, august 7th) to have a discussion about this, and will follow up with a meeting at Ames. this work is also expected to go towards a director’s weekend workshop at Ames about virtual worlds, likely sometime in december.

more info about the meeting (copy and pasted from announcement email):

my rough intention is to discuss the future of virtual environments as a platform and their role in human society (think: next 100 years) and key trends that this will leverage and extend. i think this is useful because as virtual worlds in general grow and mature, the opportunities for supporting space exploration will also grow and mature, hence thinking beyond where we currently are to where we see things going in the future.

from there let’s back up and think about how these capabilities do/should relate to space exploration, where any gaps are in terms of ongoing research/development, and where NASA and the space community have a comparative advantage in contributing to these areas. let’s discuss both underlying platform development issues as well as activities within these environments.

our goal here is to propose a cutting edge research program that will both help to advance the state of virtual environments as well as leverage those environments to support exploration and settlement.

some food for thought. feel free to contribute to this agenda. we will aim to start right at 10am and finish by 1130am.

visit the NASA CoLab salons page for the SLURL and details on getting to the meeting.

community content and project hosting

as most people know we are working on putting together an open source development site for nasa ames. these tools would support active open source development, as opposed to just release, by providing technical tools as well as a collection of written resources and documentation about the institutional, legal, and technical challenges, existing precedence, best practices, and general community support and interaction.

for a long time i’ve thought that we should create one comprehensive open source space community site, with the written resources and community interaction as the overarching element of a site that also hosts numerous individual projects and the respective tools to support this (wikis, issue tracking, subversion, etc.).

i’m having second thoughts about this combining these two. The intention of this effort is really to be an enabler for nasa projects and programs to better understand their options, the rules and regulations surrounding those options, how to navigate them, how to find support and encouragement, and basically to do what they want to do more easily and, hopefully, more effectively.

I dont see why we should try to constrain or purport to even try to offer “the” perfect workflow. once people are enabled with the knowledge, i believe the CosmosCode site can offer suggestions and links to a variety of options, one of which could be an offer to host these projects. there is still, after all, the unmet need of a project hosting site whose contributor agreement doesn’t require the user to indemnify the hosting entity against potential liability incurred as a result of their software. i’m happy to be one of the places that does meet this requirement, but dont see why others couldnt also do it, perhaps offering different toolsets more appropriate for different projects.

the second reason i think we may not want to try and host encourage all space-related software projects to be hosted on one site is because i dont think you can draw a clear envelope around “the space community” or “space related software” in the same way you can draw one around say, a community of people developing plugins for firefox. space-related is a much more open and fluid concept. while flight software or mission operations software has a clear “space” theme, something else like biology software designed to analyze results from biology experiments on the ISS is also “space related” but doesnt have a clear common interest with the mission ops software. we should be running around wildly creating community where it simply doesnt exist.

i’d be happy to hear comments of feedback from people on this. but for now, this is the direction i am going to be moving in. my main focus is on the enabling information, and ensuring project hosting is available which meets the needs of government, but not necessarily aim to be the primary provider of said hosting.