Good morning. I am Critt Jarvis, and this is Conversation Base.

I want to suggest four conversations this week, each sparked by recent conversations I’ve had with trusted friends.

War in the context of everything else

On Facebook last week, longtime friends Julia Wasson (a.k.a. @OrganicPlanet)and Cassandra Woel, unknown to one another, each shared an anti-war clip entitled, “Amazing Speech by War Veteran.” I’ll hold my reactive thoughts to this piece, but let them develop in their own time.

Going forward, for ground, we’ll use Tom Barnett’s memetic premise, “Disconnectedness defines danger,” to begin drawing a “new map for peace.” That’s what we ought to be working toward, I think.

As soon as I’ve published the post, I’ll come back here to provide a link.

Envisioning information, thoughts illustrated

Friend Dave Davison has a passion for the language of illustration, its utility. One such post last week, “What makes good information design?” evoked a WTF! response from mutual friend, Mark Safranski (a.k.a @zenpundit). So begins the conversation of learning to envision and express information. More to come, Wednesday.

Honduras, connecting in conversation

I have an affinity for Honduras, which began a few years ago, evoked by the stories I heard at the annual Conference on Honduras, in Copan Ruinas. Plenty good things are happening in Honduras, and I want you to know about them.

But first, take a reading from Honduras Weekly, Making a Case for the Return of NGOs to Honduras, to gain a fresh perspective.

Thursday, I’ll write about my affiliations and interests. Again, I’ll link from here, as well.

Bounce: Conversation Base is back

I once owned the domain name conversationbase.com, but managed to let go of it in spectacular failure. However, now, bouncing back, I’ve decided it’s the right thing to do–build my online brand as Conversation Base.

Of course, I Googled “conversation base” to see what I’d find. Much to my chagrin, the name is again available… for $2495. It’s not within my means to acquire it from its current, clever owner. But Hey! We can check in from time to time, see if the name really has EXTREME BRANDABILITY. Hooah!

On Friday comes Conversation Base. Nouns and verbs and illustrations, combined to tell a story. Ought to be fun, you know?

As always, feed back is encouraged and welcomed. Simply leave a comment, or send me an email.

Thanks :)

… asking questions, within a framework.

Critt’s Cube is a map for Explorers

I’ve used it on expeditions such as …Discover The Rules, and now I want to journey the world.

It’ll be helpful to recruit some curious folk to begin. Old friend Larry Dunbar’s usually up for this sort of gig, so let’s see if we can snag his attention, with Twitter.

Figuring out a few basic things I can do to consistently produce good video.

<--- The Man Behind The Curtain

Heh.

Comments,as always, can be sent to me via email or simply leave a comment below.

<--- Critt Jarvis (is listening) :)

But, what exactly is he pointing to?

Monday’s coming…

If you have ideas about how to make this better, you can send me an email or leave a comment on this post.

For this test I embedded from YouTube, but I want to experiment with other hosts, too.

Let the conversation begin :)

The bread of life, matrix

2006, recalling context from the Annual High Performance Computing and Communications Conference:
Main Street Supercomputing: The Convergence of HPC and Grid Computing

Cloud computing…

High performance computing, grid computing…

Grid of grids, a matrix.

Contextualizing conversation. Coming soon.

Grid

High performance computing: the grid, or perhaps a grid of grids; a matrix, running in the cloud.

The matrix, coming soon.

Connecting Counterpartners

Doctors Without Borders

Haiti: HOWTO set up a plug-and-play hospital – Doctors Without Border

Exit Strategy

JACMEL, Haiti — Haiti has approved plans for more than a dozen sprawling tent cities in and around Port-au-Prince, the first step in an epic relocation effort that could reshape the country as up to one million people displaced by the earthquake find new places to live.

Full text

Strong ties

Highest level of Trust attention, though not necessarily vis-à-vis.

How that works in my day to day life

Though we’ve never met in person, I have a high level of Trust for friend, Rob Paterson; and I read Rob’s Twitter stream daily, then. It’s reasonable to say that, within my social network, I have a strong tie to Rob.

This morning, one of @robpatrob’s tweets led me to Jacob Morgan’s post on Social Media Today, Why Dunbar’s Number is Irrelevant, a title which betrays Jacob’s conclusion.

Let Rob tell you why

Jacob reports, “I recently finished reading Morten Hansen’s fantastic book on Collaboration in which he states that the real value of collaboration and of networks doesn’t come from strong relationships and networks but from weak one’s. In fact one of Morten’s network rules is actually “build weak ties, not strong ones.” According to Morten: “[ ] research shows that weak ties can prove much more helpful in networking, because they form bridges to worlds we do not walk within.”

Thus Jacob concludes, “We shouldn’t be trying to figure out how we can maximize the number of strong relationships we can build or how we can beat Dunbar’s number; that task is as fruitless as it is irrelevant. Build weak ties where you can because they are extremely valuable, more so than strong ties.”

However, as Rob comments, illustrating the leverage inside the parameters of Dunbar, “[although] you are correct about the value of weak ties – they are as you say very useful.”

“But if you wish to have influence, the Trust is the key.”

Disclosure: I knew Chris Brogan *before* he was famous

That is, before the first Boston PodCamp, anyway.

Once upon a time, we’re in Austin, on the way to San Marcos and Blogtoberfest. After lunch, with @conniereece and @Pistachio, Chris and I are walking across the parking lot to my rental, and I tell him, “I think you–what you do–is more important than Scoble, what Scoble does.” Why did I think that, then? Because Chris was busy walking in worlds Scoble did not walk within, leveraging his strong ties to include networks of weak ones.

And that’s how, now, in a world of worlds–influencers influencing influencers–Trust is built. And, evidently, it’s working out well for all of us :)