Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 21:13:22 -0400
Mr. Rod Welch
The Welch Company
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111 2496
rowelch@ibm.net
| Subject: | Phase II NSF Proposal 9961176 |
|
Communication Metrics |
Good Morning Rod,
The links [in your letter on July 10, 1999] are extremely interesting for me. I will be looking forward to understanding the architecture of your approach to time tracking.
My intuitive guess, based upon last night's conversation, and what I see in the links above, is that Communication Metrics has important applications, particularly in software development. Or, for that matter, in any design effort that must build on a timeline image common to a group of contributors to that image.
Web access to this related design conversation, within a software team, for example, would be a boon to artifact coordination and refinement, which is presently found to be an extremely difficult process. Such an application is a direct complement to the Network Bookkeeping System I will be building.
Naturally, people are going to shy away from seeing their conversations published in a public forum. But refining what belongs in the public view, and what does not, I believe, is a very important part of your product development. People have these same concerns relative to Community Based *Bookkeeping*. But the problem is no more difficult to resolve in bookkeeping than it was in Community Based *Banking* which everyone accepts as routine. But the community doesn't yet know that computerized communication and bookkeeping have that ability to insure privacy.
I suggest that a product application that demonstrates the power to differentiate a public forum from a private communication, as happens in public and private banking and bookkeeping is a large priority. Differentiating public and private views, in my experience, is extremely complex, and is resolved by using holistic pattern languages that I talked about last night.
Sincerely,
Dan
Dan Palanza
dan@capecod.net