This week has been rather busy and exciting for me.
Mike (from http://www.thejudopodcast.com ) and I have launched a new website http://martialconversations.com a social networking site for Martial Artists.

The catalyst for this was the launch of the European Judo Unions "community" social network. I had been aware the EJU site was coming since Bath when I had seen some info on it. I also know the British Judo is looking at social networking too, though via FaceBook.

We were really impressed with the vision of the EJU to create a social networking site, though the site itself annoyed me a bit. It was rather... well rough around the edges. And closed to people outside Europe (though I gather this has changed). It was also (obviously) Judo only and also limited to the EJU and it's member organisations, be that implicit or explicit.

So Mike and I said "well hell, lets create our own site and see what happens", so, here we are on Friday and the site has been live a couple of days and all is good. We have a few members on the site and the buzz is starting to grow.

For me personally it's the sort of project I love, working with someone else, working fast and hard. Making it work. It was enjoyable also as it forces me to learn something new. Prior to this week, I had never installed WordPressMU before or BuddyPress. We have pushed out our first Judo specific modification to the software, so I have had to learn how the BuddyPress code works and how to modify it. I love that!

Lance

This week I am doing some interesting things for www.PlanetJudo.com starting with the server move and launching the Spanish language site to the public.

The second part has been making a iPhone friendly version of the site available. Which I have now done... at least a first stab at it.

I have basically done a very lazy hack to make it work, which is this. I created in Dashcode a Web Application that uses the RSS feed to create a iPhone web app. It is pretty easy, there are a few little gotchas, but overall it's nice and easy.

Then I created a little PHP redirect that detects the iPhone browser and when it does it redirects Safari on the iPhone to the iPhone specific site, it is a one liner so that was pretty cool.

Whilst I was getting used to Dashcode I realised I could create a Dashboard widget for PlanetJudo also... so I have done that too. I want to make it a bit shinier, but soon it will be put up on the site.

Overall, I have to say I really like the Apple developer tools, I have played in XCode in the past and liked it, this is the first time I have played with Dashcode and it was really nice to work in, so I shall be doing more with it in the future I am sure! :-)

It is nice to work with these development tools, it is only Wednesday and I get to say I have worked in Perl, PHP, Dashcode this week... what will that list look like by the end of the week, a bit of Scratch no doubt, what else, Ruby, Smalltalk? Who Knows! :-)

What I must do is look at NoseRub again this week and try and add some more services if nothing else.

I have also finally managed to get the TV next to my desk hooked up as a second display for the laptop, the resolution is rubbish, but fine for video, or the iTunes visualizer! ;-)

Productive week so far... nice!

Well after two weeks in Bath and a week on Holiday in Devon, it's time to return to the real world. I need to get some client work done and more client work in the door.

I have quite a bit of work on, partly stuff I have already been paid for and some that is being done "pro bono" and some that is business development stuff.

Anyway, lots of blogging to catch up on over the next few weeks, not to mention 17,000 words of University of Bath assignments to write.

So, if you don't hear much from me, now you know why.

Lance

Hi everyone,
I am now in Bath for two weeks attending the last of my residential blocks for my BSc. in sports Performance (EJU Level 5 Judo coaching course).

As such, I most probably will not be blogging here for the duration of the stay. I will be blogging daily over at www.judocoach.com/blog making the 5th year that I have blogged everyday of my experiences at University of Bath.

I shall also be twittering (of course), so follow me there. Here is a twitter widget:

So... recently I have been spending time in the world of forums (Judo forums) and have managed to engage in a couple of flamewars. :-(

There is a thread in one forum about respecting Judo "high grades" on the forum (or the lack of respect given to them on the forum). The other one I have in mind is one I was/am engaged in where someone else mentioned my insane amount of Judo websites as a reason to give more weight to what I post.

It has had me considering how reputation works in this networked society we live in and within smaller niche communities.

Here's the thing, I respect some people based purely on the content they make available online. For example Cory Doctorow, Bruce Schneier in the geek world. In Judo world Mike Darter, AnnMaria De Mars have the same sort of status for me.

None of these people I have met in person, yet I hold them in a higher regard than many people I do know personally. Why? Because these poeple share a large amount on a regular basis online. They share in terms of Quantity, Quality and Openess.

You have probably guessed by now, but I try to live in a similar fashion. I try to be open and share regularly via my blogs and my podcast. At present I aim to post something online 6 days a week. I try to share in an open way, I use my real name and try and share openly and honestly.

This is not all entirely philanthropic, I've watched "My name is Earl", I am hoping that this is a Karma thing and that if I give away as much as I can, good things will happen.

In the age we live in, and my children will grow up in, I think our position in the world will be more and more driven by our online reputation. Wuffie may be something beyond my generation, but from now on you had better believe that your blog and other online content is how you'll land the next job in your career, James Urquhart is perhaps the example I would cite. I met him several years ago in Minneapolis when he worked for Cassatt, whilst there he started blogging and that lead to him, I think, ending up where he is as market manager for the Data Center 3.0 strategy at Cisco Systems and blogger on CNet.

So... as we go forward, we need to look at creating our online reputation, we should be open online, be honest and transparent. Produce lots of "content" and keep the quality up of course.

This goes for individuals of course, but even more so for organisations. Which brings me back to the flamewars. Most of the criticism I give is aimed at the BJA (British Judo Association), who IMHO fail to produce much in the way of content, they produce very little and not very often and they are far from open and transparent.

They will change eventually, it will hopefully be sooner rather than later; for their sake. Corporations and charities are starting to get a clue, especially in the USA. We see more company blogs, we see companies on Twitter. They are getting the idea, that they need to be open and share content.

For me, I see it now and try to push the vision to people and also organisations I am trying to help, including the BJA.

I am fine, but trying to bring others along for the ride is harder than I expected.

Ahh well... I feel better for sharing anyway. :-)