June 17, 2003
Three hats
I went checking in the mail archives, and I was really surprised to see it has been only about 6 weeks since I was voted as the Cocoon PMC chair. It certainly feels much longer, and at times it is difficult to judge whether this feeling should be evaluated as positive or negative. Especially with my other hats, the one of running my own company with a precious friend of mine, a company now involved in a larger business consortium, and the one of being a Cocoonie with lots of passion for the project and its community, I often feel like a precious juggling act. It's not about three parallel storylines which I need to develop and keep internally consistent, since there is only one, and it reflects my core values, ambitions and capabilities. One of them is an, even if sometimes unobvious, essential modesty towards life. I often feel like these people in that cave as explained by Plato, watching the world go by as projections on the cave's walls. Not in terms of passiveness, but in a sense of humility. I live a normal life, as a normal human being, and I often don't see what all the fuzz is all about. As much as I can be passionate about interhuman relationships and community hiveminds, I often feel a sense of distance when watching the movie of my own normal life, and I end up making fun of myself when I cannot resist to participate in some obvious Alpha Male behaviour.Over time, I'm trying to learn to contain these eruptions, and use the energy involved to focus on precise communication. In a world where 90% of communication is based on electronic means, it is often easy and dangerous at the same time to be imprecise in sending and receiving messages to other folks. While I used to be pretty confident about my e-communication skills, I know see the value of many people watching you, sometimes looking over your shoulder. I'm more careful now. I try to detach from the means of communication and really envision the person I'm talking to. The only problem is that writing mails now takes much more time. But this should be time well spent, since hopefully, it shows some respect for the message recipient.