Pieces of the Puzzle

I like to do jigsaw puzzles. I start puzzles with the standard approach: organize the mass of pieces by colors and find the border pieces. The borders are the easiest shapes to identify because of their flat edge. Putting the border together frames the problem space and gives me a foundation on which to build. Sometimes there’s a very distinctive color or object in the middle of the puzzle that can quickly be identified and cobbled together. As the puzzle fills out, things get easier. Pieces that when viewed in isolation are meaningless blobs of color suddenly snap into place. The full picture is rapidly coming into view… until you figure out that you have a missing piece. Then it’s time to scramble, crawl onto the ground, check your pockets, quadruple check the box... 

This is a lot like building out a big technical project. You have your vision (picture on the box), your assumptions & infrastructure (border pieces), and your core components & requirements (pieces lumped together by color). The early stages seem to take forever. The final components/code start to fall into place rapidly. The dreaded missing piece is always looming though. The final 10% of a project could take 50% of the time, but with good planning & thoughtful design you can avoid a monthslong search for piece #999 & #1000. 

We’re in the rapid assembly portion of the Geo Web’s beta product build. The large portions of the puzzle are coming together. We’ve noticed a few pieces on the ground right by our feet, but we’ve mostly kept our puzzle space tidy. Here’s to it staying that way! 

On to the updates...

Technical

• Set self assessed value and pay license fees when claiming new land (core-contracts #6)
• Add new license info metadata to subgraph (geo-web-subgraph #7)
• Begin work on beta Cadastre UI (cadastre/mvp)

Community

• We had a conversation last week with a mentor that mostly consisted of him asking really tough questions about the Geo Web’s mechanism design and governance choices. It was great! Attempting to build something like the Geo Web takes conviction, but conviction doesn’t mean ignoring all other inputs and feedback. We know that “something like this” is needed for the next personal computing paradigm (smart glasses). That conviction makes it all that much easier to truly listen to feedback and questions to improve the product/network. 
• We’ve started actively recruiting within our personal networks to build out the full-time team. We’re mostly focused on adding some front-end talent, but we’re of course open to all sorts of skills and backgrounds. If you have React, GIS/mapping, augmented reality, or related background reach out to us at info [at] geoweb.network!
• The Geo Web team is applying for the RxC Fellowship Program. As we’ve written previously, we’re big fans of the RadicalxChange team, ideas, and mission. If we end up qualifying for the fellowship, we know that we’ll get a ton of value out of the program (and hopefully return a lot of value to the RxC and society—that’s the whole point afterall.)

On Deck

• Continue development of the beta Cadastre UI