Fulton pointed out that generational change, and how it is handled, is often one of the most critical moments in any organization that hopes to last more than a decade or two. In times of generational change, much of the ability for a successful transition comes from the founding DNA and governing systems that were set up at the organization’s inception.

https://medium.com/the-long-now-foundation/long-lived-institutions-205f28330f79

#googplus

In honor of the recently departed Google+ community/page here's a recent squirrel eating a strawberry from my neighbor in Montclair Oakland.

They expertly trolled the folks there with the subject "Who's stealing my strawberries!"

cc David Bresbis who I remember being a fan...

#googplus

I finally made it to the Allyship Fundamentals course. Recommended.

https://sites.google.com/corp/google.com/allyship/home

#googplus

[crosspost from industryinfo..]

One thing we at Google could do is advocate for a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit scheme for Games.

- Game publishers would put their games in Escrow when they publish.
- Google could publish a spec on how to interpret the game contents.
- 'Orphan' games would actually be preserved.
- Users that purchased the Game would then be entitled to a copy of the escrowed item, plus the design on how to run them.

This, combined with an export of user-generated data would allow for usability after Stadia or the Game Publisher sunsets the service/game.

And TBH I'd love to see this extended to all Online "Stores" that don't let you export usable contents.

Barring something like that Google could enter a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_pact with our users if we're serious about the long-haul.. For each purchase a user makes put 10x in a locked escrow fund. When the service cancels that money can be used to migrate the games to a new provider or payout back the user.

- If Stadia gets few users it's not a lot of money to exit and actually would increase satisfaction.
- If Stadia does get popular then there's an explicit feedback loop that reinforces the durability of the system and alignment of interests.

Evernote announced something like this, but never really followed through. A small company called https://www.forever.com/guarantee actually does have a preservation fund that is purpose driven.

#googplus

Happy to see this project. Looking into ways to support it, because they face a steep climb.

Inspired by the folk hero John Henry....Because, despite intelligence, physical strength and an incredible will, (1) he lacked a complete understanding of the system he was challenging, (2) he struggled alone, and (3) he struggled with outdated technology.

https://sites.google.com/corp/google.com/project-john-henry/home

#googplus

Today I attended the "Designing for At Risk Users" course. I find it incredibly galling to hear what Youtube did today given the targeted harassment and doxing.

It flies in the face of what was taught and own standards about giving targets the means to "make it stop".

https://standards.google/guidelines/google-material/usability/at-risk-users.html#user-identities

While anyone can experience a privacy or security event, at-risk users face a variety of life circumstances that might put them at unusually greater risk:

.....

Who they are: Anyone could be targeted at some point in their lives simply based on a personal characteristic such as age, gender, ethnicity, reputation, financial stability, sexual orientation, or education.

.....

Active Event

Where possible, users should be able to quickly and easily access practical guidance as they experience a privacy or security event, such as cyberstalking, online impersonation, surveillance, spear-phishing, or account hijacking. Users will likely want to understand what is happening and take steps to respond. They are likely to feel high levels of stress in this state, so easy-to-use designs will be especially helpful.

#googplus

Red Hat turns 20 so they asked former folks for their memories. Here's something I dug up that might be of interest to folks 'round these parts..

... I never got a response on this email; but that might be because Red Hat was always late paying Google Invoices..

Looks like Joan is still here. Ray does not show up in Epitaphs.

#googplus

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/introducing-auto-awesome-photobombs.html

#googplus

Before we bury G+ it might be worthwhile to collect some memorabilia...

Marc Weber from the Computer History Museum asked if we wanted to contribute Google+ artifacts to CHM. They don't care about swag, but I could think of a few things that they might be interested in:

- The Obama + Dalai Lama framed print.
- The Buffalo? (Too big?)
- The Emerald Sea painting (did anyone save it?)

Open to suggestions....

[Too bad the Apiary whiteboard is long gone....]

#googplus

So I thought I'd write an apps-script macro to help find Twitter profiles of my G+ circled people. [I'm assuming these contacts will go away on April 2nd, right Greg Wolfe ?]

Code works, but App Script barfs on the Twitter javascript used to render the follow buttons. So I just grabbed the html output and stuck it on a server and clicked the follow bu
tton...

If someone wants to poke at it and/or publish it (I have no time for either) have at it...

You can access it here:

https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbz8RJl6qIS6x1PTQss_O1Xz69l1_bp1QcyJPoxnW9qITvFYTEI/exec

And the xss-riddled code looks like this:

function doGet() {
var html = '<!DOCTYPE html>';

do {
var pageToken;

var connections = People.People.Connections.list('people/me', {
pageSize: 100,
personFields: 'names,urls',
pageToken: pageToken
});

connections.connections.forEach(function(person) {
// Skip people without URLs in their profile.
if (!person.urls) {
return;
}
person.urls.forEach(function(url) {
if (url.value && url.value.match(/twitter.com/)) {
var name = url.value;
if (person.names && person.names.length > 0) {
name = person.names[0].displayName;
}
html += '\n<br><a class="twitter-follow-button" href="' + url.value + '">';
html += 'Follow ' + name + '</a>\n';
}
});
});
pageToken = connections.nextPageToken;
} while (pageToken);

html += '\n<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>'
var output = HtmlService.createHtmlOutput(html);
output.setTitle('Google+ Follower Finder');
return output;
}

#googplus

Whatever happened to the Orkut Community Archive?

+116817942633187704506 ?

http://web.archive.org/web/20160413222454/http://orkut.google.com/en.html

#googplus

Just a reminder that if you're faced with the task of caring for a loved one at Google I am available to talk.

Also I signed up to donate my excess vacation but I've yet to participate.

https://sites.google.com/a/google.com/us-benefits/time-off/vacation/overview--emergency-vacation-don...

#googplus

Looking for a home for the public G+ Postmortems community. Is there a good place to host this? It's not a huge group, only 250 posts, but I would like to see it land in an appropriate place for the participants.

Is there a community of practice around Postmortems that I could reach out to?

https://plus.google.com/communities/115136140203018391796

#googplus

"The first step toward reversing our predicament is to recognize that being human is a team sport. We cannot be fully human alone. Anything that brings us together fosters our humanity. Likewise, anything that separates us makes us less human, and less able to exercise our individual or collective will."

In 100 psalms-like entries Rushkoff's manifesto presents a way forward for the situation we find ourselves in.

The two takeaways everyone should understand are
- The inversion of "Figure and Ground"
- Mechanomorphism - treating humans like machines.

It's a breezy, short read and has my highest recommendation. It also gives me hope that we can rediscover

Available at:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Douglas_Rushkoff_Team_Human?id=4Y5gDwAAQBAJ
http:///
https://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=4294997566

#googplus

2 openings on the Arcs team - one Android-ish, one Cloud-ish. Come work with me and the rest of the Arcs team in SFO...

https://grow.googleplex.com/jobs/e8f3fd1f-59d5-4bfe-9a95-0fb706947891
https://grow.googleplex.com/jobs/bb80a320-2a69-4236-8618-21f5799a8b15
The http://go/arcs is part of the http://go/cerebra team in Google AI. Arcs is an early stage project creating a new open ecosystem for privacy-preserving, AI-first computing. In this vision the user owns their data, software comes to the device and runs on the data locally, and data egress is carefully managed. The user has a Personal Cloud server that acts as a secure, reliable data repository while also acting as another device with greater resources (power, storage, bandwidth, etc.) than the user’s phone.
We develop software across server (TypeScript/JavaScript, Node.js, Docker, GCP, C++), Android (Java, WebView, TypeScript/JavaScript), and desktop/mobile web (TypeScript/JavaScript, CSS). Much of our work is done in the open on GitHub at https://github.com/PolymerLabs/arcs.

#googplus

Looks like you can get Play Music activity with Location History for free :-/

Visit https://takeout.google.com/
- Select My Activity
- Click on Edit products
- Toggle All
- Select Google Play Music

Downloaded Json has searches, opens and listens going back to ~ June 2017.

Here's an example:

 {
   "header": "Google Play Music",
   "title": "Listened to Wait so Long",
   "description": "Trampled By Turtles",
   "time": "2017-07-13T21:28:54.126Z",
   "products": ["Google Play Music"],
   "locations": [{
     "name": "From your current location",
     "url": "https://google.com/maps?q%5Cu003d37.804363,-122.271111"
   }]
  },

Some days I dream that we renamed Google Assistant to Google Steward,... as in:

3. a person employed to manage another's property, especially a large house or estate.

synonyms:
(estate) manager, agent, overseer, custodian, caretaker;
historical reeve
"the steward of the estate"
a person whose responsibility it is to take care of something.
"farmers pride themselves on being stewards of the countryside"

https://medium.com/s/love-hate/the-death-of-google-is-tearing-its-diehard-communities-apart-ad8332f4...

#googplus

Instead of reflecting on the past year think about what's happened for the last 50 years. I finally got around to listening to a 4 part series about computing in 1968. Highly recommended, very very well done and will blow your mind.

Makes you realize that most of what we've been doing has been riffing on groundbreaking things from that era.

Art? Computer Animation? It all started then with some #cybernetics .. (Ep 1)

https://nextbillionseconds.com/2018/11/23/1968-when-the-world-began-part-one-the-pivot/

Google Glass? Augmented Reality? Ivan Sutherland's "Ultimate Display" conceived of it. (Ep 2)

https://nextbillionseconds.com/2018/11/30/1968-when-the-world-began-part-two-sword-of-damocles/

Hangouts? Shared Docs? Remote Collaboration? Doug Engelbert's The Mother of all Demos was already there. (Ep 3)

https://nextbillionseconds.com/2018/12/07/1968-when-the-world-began-the-mother-of-all-demos/

And the impact felt, with +110664632946820915121 and others:

https://nextbillionseconds.com/2018/12/16/1968-when-the-world-began-return-to-a-square/

Sadly I missed out on the retrospective at the Computer History Museum (was fighting urgent legal/policy fires then)

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

#googplus

Trying to figure out if some Google Feed issues rise to a pageable threshold. go/whodoinotify has escalation paths, but go/news-policy is locked down.

This is regarding:

https://twitter.com/justkelly_ok/status/1076666201521180672

and some Moma searching reveals an internal escalation path here:

https://sites.google.com/corp/google.com/interest-feed/teams/quality

and another escalation doc "https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GxGqThElJyrQ0odnSYpGLx1RhRN5w4xNuzITTnOOhvE/edit?ts=5ae0ab73" I also found an A/C Privileged doc that I won't link here.

Also found a related https://b.corp.google.com/issues/29310297 in 2016, but that was before the Interest Feed reorg...

#googplus

Okay... Who's adding Snark to the training data?

#googplus

See b/121203202 about a horrific experience ordering from Home Hubs from the Google Store. Appears to be stuck over one month in Ingram-Micro Limbo-land.

The sad part is that there's hundreds of these devices in Target Stores nearby. We also happen to run a kick-ass shopping system: "Google Express".

If I felt empowered as an employee I'd buy three hubs from Target, expense them to the Google Store cost center and fix this. I hope someone on the Store team *does* feel empowered to do so; since I know that the playbook reading CSRs won't be able to...

#googplus

Looks like the old go/culture, which was frozen in amber in is here.

https://sites.google.com/a/google.com/google-culture/home/google-at-the-edge-of-chaos

Of course that site has links to some old Buzz content that's gone forever:

http://alpha-demo.focus.corp.google.com/buzz/a/google.com/lahosken/SxUWDujDXdN/I-painted-a-bike-shed...

#googplus

A good way to keep up with changes in the Ads/Sales part of the org is via go/saleshub -- click the gear icon and enable 'Receive SalesBulletin'

This week contained a comprehensive overview of all the upcoming features.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1z5_z3IgiOqwA75uj5Y-LhvNO__SIQmlGpbnXBPiczMs/edit

#googplus

This is a key insight from Nathan Schneider.

We should also ask ourselves "How do we make Google's hardware, software and services more Accountable." (and also find a metric that describes this...)

We should care less about whether something is centralized or decentralized than whether it is accountable. An accountable system is responsive to both the common good for participants and the needs of minorities; it sets consistent rules and can change them when they don’t meet users’ needs.

https://hackernoon.com/decentralizing-everything-never-seems-to-work-2bb0461bd168

#googplus

I've been involved with a number of turndowns, Buzz (1st time, and then the double-tap project). Orkut, Hangouts on Air, Google+ Stories, +1s on the web and more. As stewards of user data I would like to propose that we do something different this time.

While we can't keep the service active we can at least do something useful with the output and give back agency to the users that created the data. So here's my proposal.

1) Create the Plus Cooperative(*), owned by the users of Google+. Each post you made prior to a cutoff date gets you one share in the new entity. Decisions are one-user, one-vote.
2) Transfer the plus.google.com domain over to this new entity or redirect to a new plus.coop domain. Generate a static dump of the public** contents and transfer that to new infrastructure run by the Plus Cooperative. In addition Google provides a full dump to the Internet Archive.
3) Google funds the organization for at minimum 10 years off a one time grant.
4) Google publishes a set of identifiers/claims that would allow a user to gain access to the public data in question. The user could choose to remove data from the plus.coop domain or add their own redirect (a super idea suggested by +104122652599862501408)
5) The Plus Coop would be governed by it's user-owners and could choose how to invest in their infrastructure/product. They could create migration tools, publishing tools -- they could even revive the service starting with the seed data.

To me this is full-on "Respect the Opportunity". There are enough passionate users out there to keep the spark of G+ going; let's not get in their way.

And let's not 404 8 years of cultural history.

* There was an attempt to transform twitter into a Co-op, so this idea is not really my own.
** We could conceivably export private data if it was suitably encrypted and a user could claim it at a later point. But that's very much a stretch goal.
*** I also think that all products should buy Bonds that would fund a similar data preservation effort upon failure/cancellation.

cc: +110664632946820915121 / +115753604102260948135 / +101587921131889992978 / +110940801340246898787 / +115283013747081617765

#googplus

There's a lot that I'd like to share about recent Google+ developments, but.. cannot.. due to... reasons..

What I can do is reaffirm my faith in the team that is now running Google+. They are are smart, determined and working with a limited set of resources towards a crazy ambitious goal to improve workplace communications.

Now if I was someone like Vic I'd trot out some parable about the arch-angel Gabriel or Buffalo facing the wind... But that's not me. So I'm going to give you a few lines of the ever inspirational I Still Believe byThe Call.

If you see or work with the G+ team tell them you still believe. In their Mission; in their Work; and in the Impact they can make on the world.

But I still believe
I still believe
Through the shame
And through the grief
Through the heartache
Through the tears
Through the waiting
Through the years
For people like us
In places like this
We need all the hope
That we can get
I still believe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWhDbkTmJHA

#googplus

Gave a talk about Perkeep at the Decentralized Web conference this week. Very happy that I was finally able to re-use my "confused developer" slide from OpenSocial in a new way...

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r3hENcuI4E5uR3kFOh4eKAlm91g75sthatOZrgp2c3c/edit?usp=sharing

#googplus

*The Fourth Age of Google+*

There’s a new Google+ on the way. It’s led by new energetic people that are creating *the* Premier Enterprise collaboration system for GSuite customers. It’s my trust in these strong, capable leaders that now allows me to fade and transition to something new.

After almost 8 years working on Google+ I've decided to tackle a new role on the combined Arcs and Cerebra team in SFO. This move returns me to my roots of building open ecosystems using protocols, open source, and sovereign user data. It's an area I've always been passionate about -- working on federated es-protocols was one of the reasons I joined Google in the first place. The move to SFO also allows me to be a more effective caregiver for my family.
While tackling new technical challenges on Arcs I will continue to work on a number of critical privacy and infrastructure needs for Google+. So you’ll still see me in SVL from time-to-time as I continue my quest to slay the Oz Binary.

And finally, thank you to everyone (there are too many to name) who has helped me learn, lead and develop products that improve people's lives. I am grateful and humbled to be working with the best, and confident in the future of both Google+ and Arcs!

[1] https://arcs.googleplex.com
[2] https://cerebra.googleplex.com/
[3] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wPKmKBKXteFv-FU-18Nctx9C9ptunzIkt4V6i-MfyBw/edit?usp=sharing

*The Right Kind of AI*
Really enjoyed the wide-ranging discussion with Google's own +104315190395846060684 on the Team Human podcast. I'd love to see a TGIF covering these deep topics sometime, and hope there are more Kenrics in our midst.

You also get Douglas Rushkoff's entertaining rant on Facebook. (!)

http://teamhuman.fm/episodes/ep-80-kenric-mcdowell-the-right-kind-of-ai/

#googplus

*Incognito by Default*

Redesign all of our systems to operate without direct access to user data while maintaining quality.

This is my dream after reading https://sites.google.com/corp/google.com/quirk/ and filing data retention plans for the past month....

Ambitious enough?

#googplus

Had a Slacker Shuttle May Day treat.

Here's a Google Shuttle Bus patiently waiting for the ILWU Drill Team and Parade to proceed from the docks to downtown Oakland.

#googplus