Third Ways

An exercise in rapid drafting an article for open working

The past.

I have done a lot of development work in the past, systems, technologies processes, teams. Always as part of a team and in areas I knew quite well. On this project I have two big differences, I have almost no team and I don't know anything about the subject area. A recipe for success?

I know nothing.

Its not just that I don't know about Community Tech, I don’t know about catering, or public procurement, or farming or coding APIs …. and I don’t have anyone to ask.

Ways in

The advantage I do have is the cohort of folk who are with me on this programme. From the earliest intro chats I started picking up ideas and resources to explore. It was actually quite difficult to stay focussed on the problem I am supposed to be working on. I did feel a bit lost at several points — not least because there are so many organisations leading the programme and so much material appearing on different platforms.

Chasing rabbits for fun and profit.

I did indulge my distraction dragon for a few days. Just so that I could understand the programme and draw together all the components (honest guv), I decided to lean how to use Notion as my personal record. Its a fun tool if you like making structures but I very quickly wanted to create a graphical representation of my pages.

Diving straight in I asked the Notion AI to help me use Mermaid code to build a mind map. It did a reasonable job initially but the code kept throwing errors — trying to build an organogram instead of a mind map. Eventually I found a Mermaid coded example of a mind map and gave it to the AI as a reference. Spookily (or perhaps unsurprisingly) the AI used this to fix the code it had written for me. I do accept that I might not need Mermaid again but I did learn a few things about the platform and prompting AIs to code.

No sounding board

I do miss working with a group of different brains, most of the best things I have worked on have been at least collaboratively developed (or simply stolen). To fill the gap I have been playing - and I do mean playing - with AI for a couple of months. Mostly ChatGPT and Midjourney but while I was using Bing search to find leads on Community Tech and Food Supply Chain Management I started chatting with Bing — first in text and then with spoken languages. It/She/He was consistently interested in my project and asked endless helpful questions, eventually opening up my search to European and Canadian projects I don’t think I would have found otherwise. The thing is nowhere near as useful a critic as a real colleague but Bing (ChatGPT 4) is quite coach-like and (unlike me) is rather well informed. It will be interesting to see how this and other tools develop and how they change my experience of working.

Soft underbelly

So this is open working. Admitting that I am so overwhelmed and isolated as I take on this project that I have to find solace in the distractions of artificial colleagues and pretty pictures created by machines. Oh that it should come to this! So, what’s your embarrassing secret?