Images starting in late 2004...
And ending in 2009. It's interesting to see what caught my eye over the years over 1396 separate posts.
The high resolution images are available as a Flickr Set (5120x5120). The collages were made using Google's free Picasa 3 gallery program, sampling directly from the image directories I maintain for each year.
SUMMARY: I'm at the end of my first five years of blogging, and with the dawn of a new decade I'm wondering what the next year is going to be about. More daily conversations, I think, are in order. If you're here for just productivity talk or design, update your RSS subscriptions to the topic-only feeds listed in the sidebar.
SUMMARY: Dave decides that he needs to return to a more conversational model of blogging, rather than focus on a niche that fits the needs of his apparent global microbrand within the productivity genre. Which is to say that Dave would prefer his microbrand to be a certain kind of conversational approach to living.
I've been contemplating one of my Groundhog Day Resolutions today: "figuring out how to be a full-time writer and content creator". I like the idea more and more. I'll still get to make things so what I've learned up to now will not go to waste. However, it means establishing myself in a new niche. I could just jump on in and flounder around for a while, but I have a preexisting commitment to a personally important project. Therefore, it makes sense that I establish the new niche while maintaining my old one.
There have been a few new topics that I've been interested in writing about: motivation, relationships, and real-life stories. Motivation probably can fit in with the Productivity writing, as it is one of the assumed prerequisites for wanting to be productive in the first place. I already blog about this topic indirectly under Introspection too. The two new topics, relationships and real-life stories, are a little different because they are not about me or my direct experiences, but are about other people. Much of what I write about now uses myself as the reference point for discussion, because the only person who might get embarrassed is me; no one else is likely to get hurt or feel under the spotlight. I also can safely use my experiences as the basis for drawing whatever conclusions I have, so long as I am clear that this is where they're coming from.
There's a voice in my head that is telling me that when I start to write about other people, I need to keep this content separate from what you're reading right now here in the main site and feed. There are several assumptions that I'm making:
Assumption 1: People are subscribed because of the productivity and process investigation, and skim through the occasional article on whatever crazy thing is on my mind.
Assumption 2: Adding content outside of this is somehow not desirable, because it further clouds the nature of the content on the website.
These assumptions have constrained my writing in the past several months, as I've struggled both with my own identity as a creator and freelancer. I also know that I get a lot of traffic from productivity-oriented websites. More recently, however, I've come to the conclusion that I should just write about whatever happens to be on my mind, just like the old days, and just try to entertain and inform as I indulge my whims. The reason behind this conclusion is pretty simple: writing something is better than writing nothing. But even that statement requires contextualization; my value system tends to emphasize the production of anything interesting over the production of the right things. And from a marketing and branding perspective, writing about a multitude of topics just clouds "my online identity", which is bad when it comes to helping consumers make the decision whether they are interested in reading or not. Ideally, my writing would convey a clear message with an identified need, focus, dream, and vision of the future. Therefore, it makes some sense to metaphorically create a new product line for stories and reporting, a spin-off if you will, to neatly contain my journalistic intentions. This keeps the main niche "safe" by not muddling with it, allowing the new niche to develop its own following while drawing on the existing associations of the parent brand.
The other approach is to not worry about "packaging content for the efficient consumption by market segments" and just assume one thing: continuity trumps categorization. That continuity is me, my voice, and my perspective. This presumes--and I feel kind of embarrassed to even suggest this--that the reason people are here is because they just like reading about what's on my mind, and that is enough. If that's the case, I could write about anything I want, so long as I maintain the continuity in whatever way makes sense. For me, I think that comes down to the core beliefs that I have: sharing inspiration where I find it, documenting what I've learned, and being supportive of anyone who is trying to make a go of it. I really don't write about productivity at all: I write about people who happen to be trying to be productive. What's interesting to me is the motivation behind the productive urge, which is one reason why I want to start collecting more stories. Creating the tools that allow people to be more productive, myself included, is really an exercise in creating our own life stories.
However, not all stories have any relevance to anything. For example, today I heard a good one while hanging out at Starbucks, where someone was complaining about how she hates it when someone doesn't leave the towel in the bathroom after taking a shower. I nodded in agreement, but then I realized that there was an variation in domestic household operations at work here: some families share one towel. You're clean coming out of the shower after all. This was news to me, as my family has always had separate towels for each individual in the house. We took an impromptu poll, and apparently the "One Household, One Towel" rule was not uncommon in the very small set that we were able to sample. The very idea of a single-towel bathroom seems incredible to me, as I personally like my towel to be my own. My sister would probably agree, because she goes to great lengths to ensure her own towel is fluffy and maximally dry; she would become very upset if someone else used it "by accident". But I digress...the point I'm trying to make is that this little side trip into communal toweling has nothing to do with what I topically write about. It's just interesting to me. The "gracious host" in me imagines people who are patiently waiting for that software update to the Emergent Task Timer Online going out of their gourd every time they read a detailed article about how sharing towels is OK, but sharing facecloths is not (FYI: I am just taking a stand here on that issue). If he's got the time to write about stupid towels, he certainly could be updating something USEFUL instead...
So I'm torn. I'm leaning toward NOT worrying about branding as the motivating force for a redesign, but nevertheless creating a separate content blog (accessible through this site, of course) for story collecting, random encounters, road food, and visits to new places. Some existing categories would also move, such as the Encounters category. If anyone has any strong opinions or insights into what the best approach would be, I'm all ears. The issues boil down to this:
Friday is my last day in San Jose, which was pleasantly sunny but chilly--chillier than I expected, actually. I shouldn't complain since I have been hearing that New England is getting hammered with snow. Here's hoping that I don't end up camping out in the Chicago Midway airport Food Court tomorrow. On the plus side, Midway has a pretty decent food court, as airports go. But I digress! Here's what's going on:
We had a small gathering of five productivity nerds on Thursday night, meeting at an open air mall called The Pruneyard in Campbell, California. My fellow productivity enthusiasts informed me that The Pruneyard is a popular meeting place for events in Silicon Valley, particularly because there are several good restaurants right there. After convening at The Coffee Society, we moved on to a diner-like place called Hobee's, where I had a club sandwich served with TORTILLA CHIPS on the side instead of fries. It's these regional differences (or perhaps it is just a Hobee's thing) that I find fascinating about new places.
The conversation opened up with an inquiry into The Great Big Mess that all the information capturing we do seems to create. After a great deal of inquiry about job text, performance metrics, and the tossing around of the word "orthogonal" more than a few times, we came to a tentative conclusion that the ideal system would have the following characteristics:
This is the DREAM SYSTEM, and on first glance it seems untenable. Note taking is essentially the entire scope of information capture; anything we think we should be able to recall later is fair game. This includes conversations in the hallway, planning meetings, things on the Internet, email email email, and pieces of documents scattered across dozens of computer systems. A great deal of our time is spent processing all this raw input into useful resources (or it should be); the seminal information system designer Douglas Engelbart had observed that much of our time is spent just doing clerical work. TThe percentage of time spent being CREATIVE (like, actually making something) is pretty small. Once you have your nuggets all in a row, you naturally want to have them accessible. This is a form of magic. I think the reason devices like smart phones, PDAs, and even Moleskines and Hipsters are so popular is because they are arcane artifacts in a mundane world filled with ordinary information. At least they would be, if they actually worked. Right now, these systems function because we spend a lot of energy maintaining them with methodologies like Getting Things Done and 7 Habits. That isn't quite magic, though...what we want is something we DON'T have to work at constantly, because we're lazy and believe we have better things to do. Even if we force ourselves to do them, we don't enjoy it.
I've written about productivity systems in the past in terms of the importance of context, but lately my emphasis has shifted to continuity as being even more fundamental when it comes to doing stuff.
The better user interfaces I've seen have addressed context through intelligent screen layout and functional grouping, but I haven't seen anything that really pays attention to continuity. My paper-based tools tend to enforce continuity probably because I need it; I don't have a manager who's job would be to direct my energies along fruitful paths. The modern knowledge worker has so many things going on that it's impossible to maintain continuity of everything, so you're forced to do it very badly or learn to shut things out. For people who want to do more, they turn to a methodology that ensures that they ARE maintaining continuity; this is one of the strengths of GTD, though it doesn't help you with WHAT you should be doing to achieve your desires. That's a different system.
After realizing that we were chasing a system spec that was basically asking for the moon, our brainstorming became more animated. Some of the suggestions (that I think I can share):
Maintaining several distinct information data streams, based on "beautiful filters", that create themselves without you having to be involved. Instead, you use days of the week as continuity. When you need information from a particular area, you go and dip back into it.
Creation of a universal work/life filtering language that imposes a standard continuity description language on different information sources.
Capture metadata about the day by recording what you see throughout the day with Tivo-like camera glasses; when something important happens, you press a button to timestamp that moment and say something about what it is. Since a lot of interesting information is recognized only after it has been observed, the digital rewind capability ensures you don't miss anything.
Get email programs to re-implement really excellent conversational threading, and provide a visual overlay tool that you can use to create a continuity of relevance and context. In other words, methods of organizing who conversations, not just tagging individual items. Nerd analogy: Sort of like using Ethereal to isolate HTTP packet traffic, filter out the non-http stuff, and reconstruct the actual back-and-forth between client and server.
Create "Project Manager ELIZA", a chatterbot that can be used as a tool for continuity reflection and conversational memory storage. The theory is that maybe all we need is someone to talk to about what we're doing, constantly, to maintain our own continuity. ELIZA is known for taking the user's text input, extracting nouns and ideas it recognizes through simple pattern matching, and then spitting back a canned reply using those words. The results can sometimes be very insightful, and certainly they are just as good as the average "bad project manager" :-) Combine this with conversation logging, and the ability to just tell the chatterbot to remember things for you, and you might have a pretty decent personal assistant that doesn't cost you anything.
There were various products mentioned throughout the night in this context: OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, Microsoft OneNote, 37Signals Basecamp / HighRise / Backpack, That Mac Program That Keeps Track Of What You Are Looking (name?), Tablet PCs, and Moleskines are what I remember.
Some readers have had problems with the RSS feed updating multiple times for the same article. I've started seeing this too in the email subscriptions, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why certain posts kept reappearing. I finally dipped into Expression Engine's RSS template and looked around to see what actually goes in there, and after some reading have tried changing:
<guid>{title_permalink=blog}#When:{gmt_entry_date format="%H:%i:%sZ"}</guid>
to
<guid>{title_permalink=blog}</guid>
From what I can tell about RSS feeds, the "globally unique identifier" (GUID) is supposed to be unique but is otherwise just a string. I don't know if there are strange inconsistencies happening in the way {gmt_entry_date} is producing its output as a HH:MM:SS...maybe my server is wobbling slightly on the way seconds are being reported. And wouldn't the date of the post be a more stable GUID string? Anyway, I just nuked that whole part and I hope the RSS problem fixes itself.
Two culinary food finds on this trip. First, this is an excellent spicy hot sauce:
My cousin Ben, who tries every hot sauce he comes across, turned me on to this. He warned me to use only a little bit. I spooned on just a bit more than he suggested, and my mouth was scorched in the most loving yet alarming way. The entire top of my scalp started to sweat profusely and my eyes filled with tears of joy and consternation. At the same time, it was more than just heat...there was flavor and warmth and a feeling of some accomplishment. The heat lingers too, becoming stronger over the next 5-10 minutes, so be careful. Really yummy.
We also had lunch at a place called Plaza Garibaldi in San Jose, which had these tacos:
They were good in a way I didn't expect: as an ensemble cast of ingredients, each offering its own contribution to the overall taste. For me, my reference point for tacos are Taco Bell and the numerous so-so Mexican restaurants scattered around New England. The tacos were not intensely flavored, and because of that there was a much more interesting flavor arc. It was subtle like a quiet passage in a piece of classical music, requiring you to listen carefully so you can catch what is going on. I liked them quite a bit, but in a reflective way.
October 15th is Blog Action Day, and the topic is The Environment. Now, I like a nice tree as much as the next fella, maybe even more. I once lived for 10 months in central Florida and what got to me wasn't the incessantly warm weather or lack of decent Chinese food within 100 miles of me. To my surprise, what I missed the most were the trees I used to see in New England. I remember the first time I saw a tree when I was 32 years old. Sure, I'd seen trees before, but I'd never really looked at what they were. I had been spending way too much time in front of the computer bringing my creative skills back up to par after a disheartening experience of being a manager. My friend Alen took me to the Winchester Reservoir, perhaps the first time I ever voluntarily went into the outdoors. I remember walking among tall pine trees on a fragrant (and i don't mean in a good way) bed of needles and moss, wondering what I had gotten myself into and hoping I didn't step in anything. Then we came into a small clearing and could see the lake for the first time. The sun was shining brightly, streamers of light slicing through the trees and scattering upon the shimmering surface of the water, deeply reflecting the blue of the sky and mirroring the puffy clouds floating lazily above it all. I was transfixed, and the first thought that burst upon my conscious was I need to buy a much bigger and brighter computer monitor. My second thought followed logically: There is no way that any computer in the world could match this. I have been wasting my time.
Since that day, I've decided that trees are really important to me, though I actually don't go out of my way to do anything about this. I just like to have them around me. I guess this is similar to people who prefer living in the city for the "people energy" that charges them. This doesn't necessarily mean they like to socialize with those people; it's just that the energy feels good to them, and motivates them on some primal subconscious level. And so it is with me and trees.
The rest of the time, I don't even think about them. I take those lovely trees for granted, probably because I spend most of my time living in my head and looking at people. I'm not a naturally outdoorsy person, so the environment isn't something that I think of as a destination or activity in itself; it's just the backdrop against which all the other interesting things happen. And there are so many interesting things (social and otherwise) going on that I forget about the trees, the wind, and stars, and the water. It is only the sun that I have a daily relationship with, because I like sitting outside Starbucks in the morning, catching whatever feeble rays manage to hustle their way into the New England sky, before we get our 5 month quota of snow, mud, and slush.
So the question is: should I care?
The responsible person, conditioned by years of primary and secondary school education, of course cares about the environment. We're supposed to. We've heard a lot of reports about how nature is going to hell in a hand-basket due to our shortsighted abuse of resources, our wastefulness, and our callous disregard for ecological balance. I also am skeptical of activist-sourced claims because they are sometimes dramatically---how do I put this delicately---trumped up based on the artful manipulation of statistics and made to evoke a knee-jerk reaction in people. However, even in the case of tainted data analysis, it comes down to this: the environment is pretty darn cool, and we actually do have to live in it. More importantly with regards to me, I need to live in it. Even more specifically, I need to be aware of it. From a purely selfish reason, there may be secrets in the Environment that will help me in much the same way that hike through Winchester opened my eyes to just how much more glorious Nature could be, and how I could be bound with it.
I recently started a daily gym habit, which I've adhered too for the past 3 and a half months. One of the things that I learned about the gym was that when you start, your mind and body lie to you. I would hop on a Stairmaster, and about a minute in my muscles start going, "hey, HEY. What are you doing? You should know that I am officially complaining about this additional work we were not planning on doing." My mind reacts, "Oh yeah, we should stop. Besides, you WANT to." If my trainer had not told me that I had to do a minimum of 30 minutes a day for the exercise to mean anything at all, I probably would have stopped. But I didn't, and I didn't die, and at the 2.5 minute mark my muscles are going, "Ok, ok. We get it, so I'm going along with the program. However, you should know that I'm officially burning and am going to make you feel it. Just so you know." and my mind again goes, "Hey, wow. The body is making noise, and we probably should stop." And again we go through that whole "at least 30 minutes" thing, and I push through to the 5- and 10-minute marks. I eventually figured out that by really listening to my body, I could have an actual conversation with it. At first, I didn't know how to interpret the sensations coming from my muscles as pain or discomfort. I also didn't know that my mind and body could be so easily convinced to keep going; the body is designed for this, and exercising that conversation between my mind, my body, and my will has become something I look forward to every morning.
It occurs to me that I could apply the same lesson to the environment, but what do I listen for?
I once worked on a couple of interactive kiosks for the Boston Museum of Science about "bird language" and walking through the woods. As a regular person walks through the woods, birds keeping watch are constantly sounding alarms and other THERE'S AN ENEMY HERE. The space immediately around the person, however, is silent; this is the so-called CONE OF SILENCE. An expert nature walker, however, knows how to move through the woods in a way that doesn't set off the birds. They meander. They move without rhythm. They can more truly experience the life of the forest, because they have learned how to become part of it.
I am unlikely to become part of the environment in this way, but perhaps there are small ways that I could learn to engage with it. How do I make nature relevant to myself in a daily manner?
I could start by just looking at the trees a little more closely, and trying to understand why I like them so much. Thus, by forming a bond with the trees, I might be more inclined to be good to them.
I could learn to feel a sense of ownership by thinking of the Environment as my neighborhood. This would be a stretch for me, I think.
I could just start finding parts of the Environment that I really like. There are a few places that speak to me: kayaking on the reservoirs with ducks, seeing the sky open up wide as you drive into New Hampshire, and watching the trees change their colors over the seasons.
The above reasons feel a little weak to me, but it's what I can come up with right now. First, I need to just pay attention and maybe introduce myself. Hi, I'm Dave! I live a few doors down from you, have seen you every day when I go out for work, and have thought that you were really interesting and that I'd like to spend some more time getting to know you.
One of the best days of my life, though I didn't fully appreciate it until months later, was when this website was accepted into the 9rules Network. What was exciting to me then was that I had found an online oasis of people who believed in creating original quality content. What was even more remarkable was the member agreement, which basically said (paraphrasing wildly): You keep doing what you're doing, we'll do what we're doing, and with luck something good will happen for everyone involved. If it doesn't work out, no hard feelings. It was an agreement that was written by someone who knew how to negotiate the win-win scenario, by speaking plainly and putting intentions as simply as possible. And, it was the first time anything I had done personally was recognized for what it was: my attempt to create something original that spoke for me. Being accepted as part of the Network was an affirmation of my new creative direction.
In the two years since that day, the 9rules mission has changed...or more accurately, it has been clarified. In the beginning, the network was based around the loose idea that if you collect quality content all in one place, you create something special. No one knew exactly what that special something would be, which was readily admitted by the 9rules founders. This didn't prevent armchair analysts from trying to guess what the "end game" might be:
The answer? Not on purpose :-) It depends on your perspective:
If you're a zero-sum game type of thinker, the type of person who understands success to be achieved only at the expense of someone else, then the answer is yes. That's because ANYONE who is successful in your field of endeavor is perceived as a threat. The pie of success that you are sharing must be split into thinner slices for all participants. Or, it means you have to work harder to maintain your share.
If you're a win-win strategy type of thinker, then you see the existence of a network like 9rules as expanding the pie of content goodness. There's nothing stopping YOU from continuing to create the best content that you can. Everyone benefits, because more good content creates more opportunities for connections, and it raises everyone's game.
Off the Internet, where grabbing eyeballs costs real dollars, the zero-sum thinking is much more applicable. There is a limited pool of "attention" available, and the real estate where the eyeballs are looking will command premium advertising dollars. It's very expensive. However, on the Internet, content creators have the advantage of search engines. Good writing coupled with a bit of search engine optimization will allow people to find your content. I'm not quite sure to what extent the pie can keep growing, and your level of optimism is probably dependent on your content development end-game; if it's defined in terms of revenue per click, then you're probably not too keen on the existence of a site like 9rules. On the other hand, if you're after reputation and personal satisfaction, there's nothing stopping you from continuing to plug away at developing your site.
The history of 9rules, in my mind, is comprised of three stages. The first stage focused on quality content, gathering websites that represented the best writing on the web, because that's what a lot of us appreciate the most. However, 9rules came to be seen as a "label of quality" that drove traffic and reputation. The second stage, codenamed "Ali", launched the community aspect of the site, introducing Notes where anyone could comment and discuss what people were interested in. Content served as the anchor that kept people coming, and Notes gave everyone a voice. The third stage, which is marked by yesterday's launch of "Ali 2", is about connections. It turns out that quality content and community really aren't the point after all; what we are all after is making a quality connection with other people. The new member agreement stipulates that 9rules members participate in some way; in other words, you've got to want to talk to other members. You can't have a community without participation. By emphasizing content and community, what 9rules has created is a vibrant space where you can meet conscientious, passionate people with something to say about topics you are interested in. And it's the connections I've made, both incidental and personal, that have really helped me clarify my own vision and direction.
Congratulations, 9rules, on the launch of Ali 2! I'm optimistic that the world will be made a better place, one person at a time, through the many new connections we will all make.
I got a nice email from Leo over at Zen Habits telling me about Blog Action Day, which is coming up this October 15th. The idea is that bloggers can collectively converse on a topic of global relevance. You know, the power of the blogosphere, much mocked by the so-called Old Media, but reaching a more literate and plugged-in demographic. I've been experimenting with more community participation activities as part of my social networking goals for the year, so I figure participating in Blog Action Day will help me along in unpredictable and exciting ways!
The topic of this first Blog Action Day is something that is not on my mind a lot: The Environment. I suppose the reason this is the case is because I live in southern New Hampshire, and we like the Environment just fine so long as it doesn't get in the way of our civil liberties, or people from out of state tell us how we should be taking care of our own backyard, thank you very much. But that's politics, which is another topic I avoid thinking about unless it is actually in my way. What's more interesting to me is how The Environment affects people personally, and therefore how our manipulation of The Environment can be a course of action.
I'm open to suggestions on some topic related to The Environment to write about...if anyone would like to toss me a few challenges to write about in the comments (kind of like what we did with The Bee Story a few months back), this might be a fun way of getting even more people participating. So go ahead, make some outrageous, silly, or even serious claim or statement (it doesn't matter if you believe in it or not)...the challenge will be to integrate everything into some semblance of coherent speech.
You can read more about Blog Action Day over on the official website.
I have, lately, been feeling constrained by the existing structure of this web site, which has been bothering me for a long time. The main problem is the lack of navigation; it's basically one giant scrolling chain of articles, with some slapped-on navigation at the bottom of the page. The user experience is quite awful for the casual visitor.
Despite knowing all this, and having an idea of what I need to do to fix it, I've been kind of stuck on it, because the number of options I have in making changes is incredibly broad. I'm thinking of splitting the site into multiple blogs, one each for Productivity, Design, Personal, and Making. Also, a general article area will become the new repository for content like The Printable CEO, so there's always ONE updated location for every tool. To enable all these changes, I'm going to use the Expression Engine content management system; the main reason is that the integration with the forum and wiki modules with multiple blogs will make it easier to start deploying software products that need user authentication. However, this new arrangement will require me to handle all the old incoming links (pointing to the old blog) so they're pointed at the new one or ones.
As a result, I have not been feeling like blogging. The ideas are still here, but the thought of putting them into the existing blog structure makes me feel a bit ill. I am actually forcing myself to finish this post, because I think I need to write it.
Normally, when I'm in this situation, I redefine the rules such that victory is achievable through some other means. For example, I am thinking that the new structure will be a big pain in the butt to create (recall that I don't particularly enjoy working with CSS). It probably isn't, if I define a smaller subset of features that absolutely need to come over.
Another approach I've taken is to whittle away at the problem by doing a Q & A with myself. Right now, I am not sure how to move everything from WordPress to Expression Engine...I just know it's going to be a pain in the butt. If I ask myself a single question at a time and write down the answer, I can maintain the focus and eventually get to the point where I run out of questions.
Yet a third approach is to apply time blocking and just work on the site for an hour at a time, just fixing whatever I see here and there. This is not a particularly focused way of working, but sometimes that's the mood I'm in. I figure anything is better than nothing.
There comes a time, however, where you just got to make the big push. The last major thing I need to find out is how to create multiple forum installations and to transfer existing users to the new structure. Sigh.
The main problem, I think, is that I'm feeling the weight of the existing content and registered users, and I have to figure out a way of making sure everything merges neatly together. While I think this is a necessary step, I'm not particularly excited about implementing it. Having written that, though, I think I'm probably overestimating the difficulty involved.
Anyway, perhaps this weekend I'll make some progress on this. The website may be acting a little flakier than usual over the next week.
As some may have guessed, I've been spending some time playing WoW---more importantly, I've been building the guild website and posting in the forums and wiki. I also had a full week of work and after-work meetings, and I ended up not blogging a whole lot at all. This week I'm hoping to restore the balance between work, socializing, and now simulated company building in WoW.
If you're wondering where all that writing energy went, it's gone into the guild forums, which I've left readable by the world so people can get an idea what's going on. My thoughts are that the transparency of guild operations will be part of its appeal, and it's a way in which I can start to define my philosophy of leaderership as I learn to practice it.
Some of the particularly-interesting threads, phrased in more traditional "business terms":
The Company Handbook - Where the rules and ideals of our mission are taking shape.
Corporate Identity - The debate of how our "guild tabard"---the symbolic piece of cloth that our characters wear in-game that signify our membership---should look rages on here.
Career Advancement - Every guild has a number of "ranks" of achievement. When you're first brought into the guild, you start at the lowest rank and can work your way up. I've designed it to reward behavior that is of benefit to the guild, and have started establishing the public feedback mechanisms that make advancement "real".
On a side note, I built the guild website on Expression Engine Personal + Forum module ($149) so I could finally learn it, and I have to say I like it a lot. It's taking some time to get used to, and I haven't yet customized the appearance of the site or fixed navigational issues, but overall it's pretty cool. The forum module is pretty darn nice, with membership management integrated with the wiki and blog modules. This is the first wiki I've come across that actually has a decent Markdown Extra Plugin that works seamlessly; once I tweaked the Wiki CSS slightly, it produces very readable output.
I'm finishing up some photography of some of the myndology notebook samples that the company generously provided, so I will likely have that up after I finish some work this week. And Groundhog Resolution Review Day #4 is coming up on June 6th (here's what I wrote in GHDRR #3)...yikes!
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