B. Mann Consulting

Tools never change anything. It is people seeing opportunities and grabbing them with those tools that change things. Ton's Interdependent Thoughts: Three years ago today...

This is a great quote from Ton, as he posts on the three year anniversary of blogging. I'd like to think that I'm interested in making tools that make it really easy for people to see opportunities. That flexible tools can help people. But without the people, the tools can do nothing -- we are not like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, with dancing brooms toiling away. In man vs. machine, I am on the side of man....except I still try and build a better machine, and delete in the tinkering involved. Every new bolt I add, I see a new opportunity open up, and hope by making those tools available, people's opportunities will expand.

Happy anniversary, Ton. May every tool you choose open new opportunities.

I didn't get nearly as much time (hardly any!) to talk to Ton Zylstra at BarCamp Amsterdam as I would have liked to. He's continuing the conversation on his blog, with this post about P2P social networking:

I would like to have a true peer to peer social networking platform. Also I'd like to have my own spiders and agents.

FOAF isn't ready for this kind of thing I think, but we might look to an existing p2p infrastructure like Skype to be a carrier. Boris Mann pretty much repeatedly said Jabber can do anything during BarCamp, and seemed to be only half joking. Ton's Interdependent Thoughts: How to Get P2P Social Networking

You're right, Ton, I was only half joking. I think real time is very important. If the "IM Wars" have shown us anything, it's that we need to have common standards and formats. For XML message passing, including IM, Jabber is the answer to this (and might be the answer for voice and video as well, but I've got more to write about this later).