For us, communization does not signify some general positive positive process of ‘sharing’ or ‘making commoning’. It signifies the specific revolutionary undoing of the relations of property constitutive of the capitalist class relation. Sharing as such - if this has any meaning at all - can hardly be understood as involving this undoing of capitalist relations, for various kinds of ‘sharing’ or ‘making common’ can easily be shown to play important roles withing capitalist society without in any way impeding capitalist accumulation. Indeed, they are often essential to - or even constitutive in - that accumulation: consumption goods shared within families, risk shared via insurance, resources shared within firms, scientific knowledge shared through academic publications, standards and protocols sharked between rival capitals because they are recognized as being in their common interest. In such cases, without contradiction, what is held in common is the counterpart to an appropriation. As such, a dynamic of communization would involve the undoing of such forms of ‘sharing’, just as it would involve the undoing of private appropriation.

from “The Moment of Communization” by Endnote

I am a songwriter.

I write because I want to talk about things that matter to me in ways I think other people can understand. I want my songs to mean something (and something different) to everyone who hears them. I write verses, choruses, bridges, rhyme schemes and melodies. I steal ideas, words and melodies from other people; sometimes I use them as-is, more often I change them a little or a lot. Although I can read music, it’s faster and easier for me to learn a song by ear. I record what I think are my best songs. I sing my songs in front of other people; which songs I sing depend on who I’m singing to, and who I’m singing with. I sometimes sing other people’s songs, because I only fully understand a song when I sing it.

I am a coder.

I write code because I want to help people find things. I write code that will allow people to use what I build in ways I didn’t expect and couldn’t have predicted. I write with tags, schemas, controlled vocabularies and unique identifiers. I often borrow someone else’s code because it’s easier and faster for me to see how something works than it is to try and start from scratch; I usually change it to make it work in my system, or to make it work better or faster. When I’ve done something I’m proud of, I’ll make it publicly available so other people can use it, tweak it, or tell me what needs improving. The kinds of systems I build and the languages I write in depend on the people I’m working with and for. I read other people’s code so I can understand how they think about and solve a problem.

Songs are code/code is a song.

I am a songwriter/I am a coder.

I’m sitting at O’Hare, waiting for my return flight from this year’s Code4lib conference. Code4lib always gets me to think about things - code, community, craft and creativity, to name a few - but most of all it gets me thinking about my identity. It gets me to ask “who am I?” in subtle, complex and unexpected ways. This year at Code4lib, there was a lot of talk about “hacker epistemology,” which got me to think back over my introduction to and involvement with the Code4lib community, and how it’s transformed the way I think, learn and do. A few disjointed and undercaffeinated thoughts:

Relationships

I came to Code4lib for the first time three years ago, and I came because Mark Matienzo wouldn’t stop badgering me until I registered and bought a plane ticket. I’m really glad he did. At the time, I was a library school student, and I had a highly developed case of imposter syndrome. Mark signed me up for a lightning talk, which was one of the more terrifying experiences of the last few years of my life. Still, I did it, and nobody laughed me off the stage. And after that, the conversations were easier. I keep coming back to Code4lib primarily because of the people I’ve gotten to know. Sure, the presentations are great, but what’s even better is knowing I can grab someone in the hallway, or in IRC, or even an email months later, to ask them about something they’re working on; to get advice and feedback.

I’m convinced - as an archivist, musician and human - that human relationships are at the core of who I am and what I do. I’m better at my job when I know how to work with my coworkers; when I understand who my user community is and what they want; when I understand the lives of the people and organizations whose experiences are in The Archive, or just in the archive where I work. I can do, build and experiment more if I know people who will share their expertise, experiences and time. I’m a better musician if I understand my audience; if I know how to collaborate with other musicians; if I delve deeply into the lives, aesthetics and influences of the artists who influence me. Relationships are my consolation and my challenge. In myriad ways, they are essentially woven into not only my learning process but my very ability to learn.

Do Something

One of the things I love most about Code4lib is that anyone who sees something that needs fixing is encouraged to try and do something about it. Nobody will tell you not to do something. People will probably have (a lot) to say about what you do, but they’re also willing to put in some work to make your initial solution better. I can’t say how transformative a value this has been for me. I work in a very change-averse profession, and my personality is one that tends to be concerned with “doing things the right way.” In Code4lib, there is no right way. There is no way it’s always been done.

I’m still not brave enough to act that way all the time at my job, but I know that internalizing that model of engagement with the world around me has led me to seek out certain kinds of jobs and professional roles, and to avoid others. It has also inspired me to work differently; to iterate faster; build more flexibly; try things I’ve never done before.

Craft

One of the other values that seems to underpin the Code4lib community, although we don’t talk much about it, is craft. People don’t just want to make things, they want to learn how to make things better and how to make better things. This probably has a lot to do with the strong open-source orientation of many in the community. If you’re working with technology, particularly open source technology, chances are good that you are not the first person to encounter a particular problem. It’s also quite likely that someone has a solution for that problem, and you can probably use that solution, or even improve on it. Craft is built on a “do something” mentality and relationships: we get better at doing something if we keep doing it and work on it with others.

I learn from other people. I learn by doing. I learn by trying to do better than I did last time.

A couple of months ago, I decided it was time to redo my website. So, in an exercise to learn something new in the process, I’ve redone my site using Octopress, a simple blogging framework built on Jekyll. Although you can use a number of services to power it, Github works really well (plus it’s free). Since I’d already implemented a site for my song lyrics using Github Pages, I wanted to dig into this service a little more. It also gave me the chance to dip my toes into the world of Ruby, which I hope to learn more about at this year’s Code4Lib conference.

This was also my first time building a responsive web site. I won’t argue that it’s absolutely, totally, one hundred percent successful, but it was a good exercise in thinking differently about web development and usability.

A few months ago, I posted that I was trying to gauge interest level in a open jam at this year’s All-Attendee Reception at the SAA Annual Meeting in San Diego. I’m pleased to announce that there was sufficient interest and enthusiasm for the idea and the event will indeed be happening! A special thank you to SAA Executive Director Nancy Beaumont for her support.

In conversations with a number of my more creative colleagues, we came up with idea to have some sort of an open jam session, song circle or hootenanny (or whatever else you want to call it) at this year’s SAA Annual Meeting in recognition of the fact that many of us archivists are also musicians. The admittedly vague plan, as it stands now, is that a group of interested folks would bring their voices and/or musical instruments to San Diego so we could get together and make some music. Although no date or time has been set, it would most likely be in some way attached to the all-attendee reception (which means there would be an audience). However, before I or anyone else spends a lot of time organizing something, I wanted to gauge the level of interest in this idea.

This morning, David McClure’s blog post titled ”The anxious keystroke” came across my Twitter feed. For a variety of reasons, I’ve recently been thinking a lot about archival description and the principles that are (or ought to be) behind it, and as always I’ve been thinking in metaphors (one of the hazards of being a songwriter). I found the post resonated strongly with many of my thoughts about archival description, and in many cases McClure’s discussion of the work of programmers was directly analogous to the work of archivists.

Social conflicts arise from rivalries between those who occupy and preserve an eco-system as the place that specifies them as a family or group, and that therefore deserves every sacrifice, including sudden death. For if “to be is to inhabit,” not to inhabit is no longer to exist. Sudden death is preferable to the slow death of he who is no longer welcome, of the reject, of the man deprived of a specific place and thus of his identity.

Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology. New York: Semiotext(e), 1986. Page 78.

At this week’s Code4Lib conference in Seattle, I was scheduled to give a lighting talk on some of the work I’ve been doing with the Occupy Wall Street Minutes Working Group. However, due to the previous evening’s festivities I was, um, indisposed and ended up not giving the talk. Since there seemed to be some interest in the topic, I thought I’d write something up and post it, especially since the indefatigable Corey Harper offered me his slot (thank you, Corey, for being a mensch and stepping back so I could step up).

For anarchism today, reality is to be found in a diversity of activity we have outlined previously; anarchist living can adapt itself to a multiplicity of forms, beginning with the revolutionary demands of anarchosyndicalism and concluding with the libertarian presence in urban neighborhoods, in universities, in teaching…. The libertarian presence in neighborhoods must learn how to introduce practical activities leading to self-management. The citizen living in a particular neighborhood tries to understand the problems of that neighborhoodand what to do about them. This is the first step toward achieving a community that is controlled by the citizens who live there, rather than by leaders. This is democracy raised to its highest level. This is government of the people by the people.

from Anarchist Organisation: The History of the F.A.I. by Juan Gomez Casas.