Chris

Sponsor me in the 2015 Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride!

Did you know that the word ‘prostate’ means “One who stands before, protector, guardian”? That’s a pretty big role for a part of the body we don’t much talk about. Let’s change that. Help me spread the word about the importance of the prostate and raise funds for prostate cancer research. Sponsor me in The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride 2015!

Last year I grew a terrible mustache and wore a great suit. This year I’m upping the ante.

Donation levels!

$5 – Just for donating, I will gift you with a big sweaty hug after the ride.

$10 – I’ll send you a glossy 8 x 10 print of one scantily clad sexy beast – that’s me – posing with the bike. Yes, I’m serious.

If you do not wish to have this glorious image thrust upon your eyeballs, you can opt to have a mutual friend (It can’t be a stranger, that’d be weird) receive this great gift. If they wish to avoid eye strain from such a beautiful image, they can make a donation and nominate one of our mutual friends to be the next victim. And so it goes…

$25 – I’ll let you sit on the bike. Seriously, I don’t even let Jackie do this. Plus I’ll throw in the 8 x 10.

$50 – I’ll buy you breakfast the day of the ride (or other day if you can’t make it) with me.

$100 – Really? Ok. If you donate 100 bucks I’ll let you decide my attire. Do you want me to wear a pork pie hat, vest, and skinny jeans? How about tails and a top hat? A monocle and a mustache? I can even dust off the Colonel Mustard suit from last year. We have to keep it classy, but you get to pick.

Have I piqued your interest? Hit the link below and help me out.

https://www.gentlemansride.com/rider/Ckoerner

This Must be the Imposter Convention

It’s hard to look at my impostor syndrome as the worst thing in the world — it has spurned me on to do better, work harder, and aim higher. On an emotional and mental level, however, it has been debilitating and difficult to get past. I’ve gone entire days without writing a meaningful line of code due to my lack of confidence. Other times I take that feeling and crush it by overcoming development obstacles.

If a person like David can be as successful and well-known as he is and still feel the haunt of the imposter syndrome, then I’m in good company.

To exercise belief in circumstances other than personal knowledge

“I am sad we are still in a place where women aren’t believed when they come forward about sexual assault, and that it’s such a matter of fact of our culture that The Onion can satirize it. I’m sad and sorry for the women who had to wait until a man came forward to call out Cosby in order for the cultural tiller to shift in their direction.”

John Scalzi on the New York Magazine cover.

The response certain people have to women – not just in large, public cases such as this one – who claim to have been assaulted is abhorrent. I still believe that those who err to the side of disbelief and skepticism as a default reaction to any claims of such sad behavior are not living their life in a happy way. Presenting a lack of compassion and empathy describes someone who is unhappy with their own life and, unfortunately, do little to improve the situation.

Having spent a little time peeking into toxic communities (or anti-communites as it were) I only see folks that seem dissatisfied with aspects of their life. Maybe it something small that happened to them in the past, maybe it’ a lack of success (however they measure it, not I), or maybe it’s a strong conviction that blinds them, but regardless, they can’t be an ally when they aren’t content themselves.

Something grinds against these disbelievers and “Hold on a moment!” types that prevents that compassion and empathy. Why? What do they lack? How can they be helped? How can we progress?

The victims of this class of crimes need more people on their side. There are too many who are not, and that I don’t understand.

SMWCon Spring 2015 in Review

In early May I helped to organize the Spring Semantic MediaWiki Conference or SMWCon. We had 25 people from around the world come together for three days to learn and share about Semantic MediaWiki and it’s use in various industries. It was an honor to host such an event here in my hometown of St. Louis. I wanted to take a few minutes to share my experiences as an amateur event organizer and reflect on one of my personal accomplishments for 2015.

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When planning an event my mind always goes to the worst possible scenarios. What if people don’t come? What if they can’t find the event location? What if the food is terrible? What if the presentations are off-target?

For the most part, if you worry about these things and do something to address them, you’ll be fine. Don’t be overly anxious. Writing things down and keeping “To-Do” lists really helped keep things organized. Remembering to follow-up with people (venue folks, caterers, etc.) will prevent miscommunication and last-minute dashes to fix things.

Another tip? Make sure you have coffee and snacks around. Nothing fancy is needed. We made a trip to Costco the day before the event and grabbed some mixed nuts, granola bars, chips and soda.

I’m glad to say that everyone appeared to have a good time and everything ¹ generally went off without a hitch.

I was an attendee at the last Spring SMWCon. Since that was also my only SMWCon experience, I based a lot of my work off of the great organizers that hosted us in Montreal. One thing I didn’t go a good enough job on was encouraging diversity in the audience and in speakers. What we had wasn’t bad, but man I would have like to have more unique voices present.

That said, we did have one of the most diverse group of industries represented. eSport statisticians, geneticists, geophysicists, independent developers, Tibetan Buddhist philosophers, MITRE, NASA, NATO, SNPedia, and more represented the diverse use of Semantic MediaWiki. We actually remarked during one of our sessions that this SMWCon had a much more ‘enterprise’ vibe than past conferences. It’s remarkable how many wikis exist behind firewalls that the public never know about and what amazing things people are doing with the software.

This lead into an interesting discussion around future of SMW and SMWCons. The discussion is ongoing, but the consensus is that there should be more events around enterprise ² MediaWiki usage.

All of the presentations were interesting and chatting with some of the attendees opened my eyes to new uses and interests I never knew existed.

Some of my favorite sessions are listed below. We recorded the presentations and they should be up online soon.

smartMediaWiki

Wolfgang Fahl presented on an idea he has called smartMediaWiki. His tutorial was in-depth and allowed for all attendees to participate. While some of his concepts are beyond my meager understanding, the amount of effort he put into his presentation is commendable upon itself.

Cargo and the future of SMW

Yaron talked about his new extension, Cargo. It’s an alternative to SMW, which is interesting as it’s a much smaller code base, but nearly just as powerful. His approach to semantic data is different (standard database schema instead of triples) and the history of his involvement with SMW made for an interesting talk. Where Cargo (and SMW) go in the future is still very much unknown, but Yaron brings forth the idea that both can live in harmony.

The Why and How of Wiki Farms

Cindy’s presentation on the interworking of MITRE’s Gestalt framework was eye-opening. I manage two independent wikis and have never though much about the complexities of running dozens – or hundreds – of wikis. Her talk covered how one might manage multiple wikis without going insane – and still leaving plenty of room for customization and uniqueness.

SMW Grammars & Variables

John McClure is not a man to shy away from big challenges. His presentation tackled the promise of a semantic web – multiple independent sites interconnected among one another with a common ontology. His passion was present and his goals noble. The conundrum is who is willing to do the work? So many wiki folk – yes even those within the Wikimedia movement – are rather ‘heads down’ on what they’re working on. John’s vision is of a standard grammar we can all leverage to systematically interconnect the various repositories of information we all maintain.

Quantifying Accountability

James and Daren gave a great ad-lib presentation ³ on how they use MediaWiki to help document information around the training of astronauts for their EVAs. Their presentation was a great example (among many) of folks who are not ‘wiki people’ leveraging the software as part of their jobs. Both are engineers and training astronauts is their primary career. Even with that full-time gig they find time to develop their own extensions and adapt the SMW platform to fit their needs – all while releasing their code to the public.

How to get your bug fixed in MediaWiki

Mark gave a great overview on how to take a PITA bug and get it fixed. His introduction to the MediaWiki bug ecosystem was really helpful. I now feel more confident in submitting bug reports and improving the software.

We had a panel on the third day around the topic of “The Future of the Semantic Web, SMW and MediaWiki”. The three panel members ⁴ did a great job discussing the changes yet to come that will impact us all.

I love the SMW and larger MediaWiki community. There are a lot of good people involved. Each working hard in their respective industries trying to not only accomplish the work before them, but giving back to the community as well. If you have an inkling of interest in attending (or organizing!) a SMWCon I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The Martian

At the urging of my dad I recently read Andy Weir’s The Martian. His recommendation was well deserved. It is a great book – not a great ‘sci-fi’ book, but a great book period. It’s a little geeky and a whole lot of human.

Lost on Mars, astronaut Mark Watney struggles for survival with limited resources and unlimited imagination. The character is sharp, funny, and witty. The book has an interesting narrative as most of the action is from report logs Watney is leaving after doing something. Watney tells you his plan and then in the next section tells you what happened. With every turn you’re left asking “Will he make it?” It’s a cliché description, but apt in this case – a total page turner.

Ridley Scott is making a film starring pretty much everyone in Hollywood. It looks great and, like the book, the technology is near-future and very believable. I can’t wait to see this one in theaters.