Introduce yourself šŸ‘‹

Say hello! Tell us who you are, and what you do.

Links to your business are welcome. Show off! At some point Iā€™ll create a dedicated show ā€™n tell channel.

Hi there @clappingcactus, @JBLaing, @andre.ct, @SleepyMagic, @Bart, @Rickenharp. Welcome! Can you all see this okay?

Yes, I can see this okay.

Hi, everyone. My name is John, Iā€™ve worn many hats, and for the next 5 years I promised myself to get one very specific ā€œbusinessā€ off the ground.

Scientific reproduccibility is a hard problem. No one ever knows if a piece of data is dependable. Some times not even the producer of the data. This results in two mentalities. The ā€œthatā€™s what publication is forā€ mentality, that posits that putting the data out into the world for review, rebutttal and perhaps validation, is the correct way forward. The other approach is ā€œletā€™s do another experiment ourselves to validateā€ which mires research teams in years of cyclical thinking, trainee churn, and lack of recognition. Iā€™m hoping to build the third approach. I have many ideas about the exact form it takes, but none are exactly right yet.

Looking forward to meeting you all, having your input, and perhaps building a small community together!

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Oh thatā€™s cool. Iā€™m a deep science nerd (physics/astronomy) so this is a fascinating idea. Iā€™m familiar with the ā€˜replication crisisā€™.

Looking forward to helping in some small way. So this sounds like the sort of business that will be very online/mental vs. in-person/physical? Over time Iā€™d love to build a library of ā€˜shapesā€™ of business, so we can better tailor the system to them specifically.

Iā€™d be over-stating my confidence if I said ā€œyes.ā€ Of course the business will lean heavily online, so that someone across the planet ought to still be able to see the data of interest and give input. But the incentive structure for both local and external ā€œauditorsā€ of the data must be ā€œlocally beneficialā€ or at least as ā€œlocally beneficialā€ as keeping your data secret.

Itā€™s going to be a software-forward solution, but I actually see it as a suite of packages that run up the scale from individual data alignment, to local-first presentation standardization, to FAIR-standard online access. I think the sweet spot will be somewhere where social credit is the reward and expectation of ā€œwhy send it out into the worldā€ rather than professional credit.

Thatā€™s one of the reasons I call it a ā€œbusinessā€. If I focus too much at first at making the initiative sustainable or bootstrappable I enforce a limit of ā€œthe data has to make it all the way out into the worldā€ unintentionally. But if it starts out as user-friendly, lab-group-first standard, then the broader community can start building tools on top of that.

Hi everyone,
Iā€™m Hans. I studied human geography, worked in geospatial IT and web development, built a few (small) houses and some furniture, and am now working to get a business off the ground informed by that broad experience.

I want to make ā€˜spacesā€™ work better for people. Whether thatā€™s spaces of information or physical spaces. ā€˜work betterā€™ might mean: being a delight to use and operate in; be secure, safe, pleasant, private, well-ordered; it might mean physical products that are built to last, or it might mean data sovereignty.

Thatā€™s all still very broad. I have some ideas on where to go with that, and am developing those. But in the meantime Iā€™m trying to apply this perspective in the freelance work I do (mostly web development, also furniture), and learn a bit each time my idea(l)s encounter reality.

Iā€™m struck by what I percieve as a resonance with @clappingcactusā€™s explanation. I read a concern for something at a deeper, more universal level than just a viable business, which is also how Iā€™m approaching this. Similarly to how I take @johnnydecimal to be doing things. Thereā€™s a basic common good regarding ownership of data and/or processes. Helping people see that is step one. Business comes on top of/after that. Or do I misrepresent your perspective?

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I think this may just be a side effect of any theoretically viable business being a mixture of identifying a need, and trying to design a system within that need that can close a loop of self-sustenance/world-improvement.

I definitely canā€™t realize any part of my plan without having a business to fuel and sustain databases, indexing, data manipulation etc. I just also donā€™t think thereā€™s any value in being business-first about the problem. It may be bad business sense to not validate against a market of ā€œcustomersā€, but product-market fit, for a market where lack of faith is the problem, ought to anyway skew atypical.

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I think if every ā€˜businessā€™ was held to this standard the world would be a much less interesting place. It feels like a very old-fashioned way of thinking.

Sure, when you had to manufacture and distribute product, you wanted to make sure that there was a customer there to buy it. But when knowledge became a product, I think that all changed.

Also: chaos! And play, and exploration. Thatā€™s where the interesting stuff liesā€¦

Update: Johnny.Decimal came from a bad business. We produced a contemporary dance performance for friends of ours. Turns out their business was a shambles, which we found out too late. Everyone lost money; thankfully ours was just lack of earnings rather than an actual material loss.

But from that, Johnny.Decimal was born. A happy accident from a failed business.

Welcoming @Jayde20, @juliegrassi30, @Adam, @vics, @mikelittle, @_fj, @hans to the group!

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of course. Focussing on deep, universal needs makes most business sense! And making people feel like they have ownership.

As long as you can find your niche, or your niche can find you!
And a bit of education, I think. Helping people see what they need ā€¦ Or that there is a solution when theyā€™ve lost faith ā€¦

Welcome @Tjoenk and @eby. :smiley:

Hi everyone! Iā€™m ThorbjĆørn, and I work at a power plant where I oversee our CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) as the administrator responsible for managing the structure of approximately 30,000 components, organized via the KKS standard. Soon, Iā€™ll be part of the team tasked with building our new CMMS system, which will include developing workflows, defining data quality standards, establishing clear roles and responsibilities, and setting up comprehensive documentation.

A significant challenge weā€™re tackling involves SharePoint, which has become a bit of a maze due to multiple sites for each department. Iā€™m hoping to soon launch a pilot project to restructure our SharePoint environment, as our current setup often confuses users and hinders access to essential information. Ultimately, my goal is to create a standardized, company-wide structure that ensures consistency across all departments. Looking forward to learning from everyone here and bringing some Johnny Decimal insights to the mix!

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Hi ThorbjĆørn. Welcome. Sounds like a fun challenge :grin:

Iā€™m curious if youā€™ve been using JD for a while what you think about 13.11. Do you see your department as one system, or do you see your department as multiple systems?

I see my departement as part of a system. Our whole organization is multiple companies, and based on my current knowlegde I would make a system for each company, but heavily standardized. Our companies already have numbers like X20, X30, X40ā€¦ so it would be fairly easy to have systems with X#0.AC.ID. One challenge is that company X50 and X60 are two different power plant blocks at the same address, and they would share 80% of the files/documentation related to procedures and standards.

Interesting. If Iā€™m following your thread of logic, this would then make individual working groups or teams in your division a single ID at the decimal level? Really useful for mergers and acquisitions ā€¦ (Iā€™m joking). Do you plan to sub organize each ID or kind of leave that to teams to figure out a natural internal system?

Some of the structure IDs will be common for more than one team, Iā€™m still in the idea phase. But I might standardize further under the IDs, so same type of data will be subdivided the same way company/organization-wise. My first challenge is to sell the idea of a pilot project to build a POC.

Hi everyone,
Iā€™m Mike Little. Based in Stockport in the UK.
Iā€™ve done a few of things over the years, almost always in software development. Iā€™m looking forward to organising 20+ years worth of digtal ā€œstuffā€ scattered across numerous locations.
I am currently delving into home lab / self-hosting to move away from reliance on cloud-based solutions.

Welcome @sglyon!

Welcome @adrien :wave: