| February 23, 2000 | 03 00050 61 00022301 |
Mr. Richard Karpinski
dick@cfcl.com
Computer Generalist
5833 Ross Branch Road
P.O. Box 262
Forestville, CA 95436-0262
| Subject: | Project Plan |
Dear Richard,
Thanks very much for your interest and ideas on SDS, and thanks, too, for the invitation to attend the ACM event next month. I am scheduled to be out of town the week of March 14. But if that falls through, as happens on occasion, I would be pleased to accept your invitation to hitch a ride with you.
Sounds like you are becoming more comfortable with how SDS is used, based on the scenario, and from interacting with SDS on the web. You have not mentioned reviewing the SDS record structure and schematic. If you have not done so, and time permits, it will help in understanding SDS.
As you requested, please do provide the SDS scenario to the Colloquium and/or others you feel may benefit from this solution. It is more effective coming from others than from me. You have a strong flare for language that can help people from the perspective of a non-expert, which, at this time, is everybody in the world. You can try out your ideas for more powerful ways to explain the solution to meaning drift, besides "alignment," which you noted in a letter today.
I appreciate your constructive analysis of the letter to Ray Levitt at Stanford. He has been trying to market his own brand of communication metrics, but did not do well because, as you noted in a letter on Sunday, it is "tricky" for people to understand a sophisticated solution to a complex problem.
Occasionally, the ISP server fails. This may account for difficulties accessing a record which you encountered. The problem is usually cleared in an hour or so, although I think in this case, it took more like six hours.
The notice of errors you have submitted on content are very helpful. It would expedite corrections if you could provide the record ID and a line number, or language that helps locate the problem. Some of your submissions have done this, but others have not.
You hit the nail on the head in thinking there is a lot of work to keep up with your letters. This work, however, provides an opportunity to further expose the SDS process explained in POIMS, about plan, perform, report. With this experience, perhaps you have a better feel, i.e., are better prepared, for doing a preliminary product plan, which we discussed on Friday.
Your letter to the Colloquium on January 25 recommended that a first step is to plan the project. You have advanced arguments for an Open Source effort; a
general plan would show what that might entail. What are the big decisions and initial tasks that need to be accomplished to make SDS a Windows app, for example. What skills and level of effort might you contribute, and what additional skills and help would be needed, based on experience with prior projects? How would your PEARL ideas fit the plan?If you could rough out a preliminary "plan," it would address your question about who will produce the next version of SDS.
For guidance, the objective is to create an enhanced wordprocessing capability by adding the dimension of time to the current practice of using alphabet technology for generating information. Adding time to information creates a spreadsheet for knowledge that forms the core of a more powerful operating system for people and organizations. This is so, because humans think by experience, which is the accumulation of information over time processed by intelligence into connections of cause and effect.
Please call if you have any questions.
Again, your interest is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
THE WELCH COMPANY
Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net