In this lesson, we hear from Mark Anderson, a long-time Tinderbox user (circa 2004) and author of A Tinderbox Reference file, otherwise, know as the aTbRef†. Mark demonstrates how he has collected and curated thousands of notes (n=7,195) in Tinderbox from years of papers published from the ACM Hypertext Conferences††, and how he has created and contributed new insights from this dataset using various Tinderbox methods.
Mark explains his strategies for normalizing author names, applying prototypes, creating lookup tables, and linking notes by abstracting values from attribute lists. He also explains his use of export templates to publish the notes and their link associations to an interactive online link visualization tool††† and to a standard JSON file format.
Thanks. Weird watching oneself feels a bit odd, but for something that we did essentially ‘cold’ (i.e. rolled in without any set-up/practice), I’d like to think it worked quite well. The TBX shows us the result, but the discussion of the ‘how’ of getting there and the ‘why’ of doing so are, I feel, equally useful to the viewer.
@satikusala and I did this as an experiment but I think, my ‘ums’ and ‘errs’ apart, it is a model we—as a user community_could roll out to cover a wider audience with different needs and styles. OK, not everyone has data they can show live (but, with trust, recording & redacting some on-screen text is work—but not infeasible).
Knowledge work, unlike most other tasks I’ve encountered is (or should be!) open-ended. Thus seeing others address problems we ourselves can’t approach—or didn’t know could be approached—is powerful. Seeing someone explore knowledge is a step-difference to watching another un-boxing video (aka review).
So, my thanks to @satikusala who did all the hard work here of recording/preparing the video (and having to sit and listen to me talk on for 45 mins!).
Do check the links at the end. I had a URL-snafu and so the big ‘ball-of-twine’ visualisation didn’t open during the recording. If that visualisation looks complex and lacking in immediate meaning, I’d agree! These sorts of tools are in their comparative infancy and involve work done outside Tinderbox. The reason I mentioned that experiment was to show that, with a little thought and not much effort, your Tinderbox can feed all sorts of cool communications methods to put your insights in front of a larger and less ‘technical’ audience.
