I have some interesting scrawled notes from a train conversation with Richard earlier today. He was talking about software engineering management (don’t go away, I’m going to relate it to other things in a moment), and how there is a scale upon which you can slide too far one way and things go wrong. This is about varying how much managers tell their staff about what is happening:

Insufficient information given to workers < ----------> Too much information given to workers

The information here is detail about goals and motives, about why the software is to be like the spec/design. If you tell them too much about this, rather than just giving unjustified orders, then they spend ages worrying about it and don’t do their job. If you give too little, they will either not do what you say, or worse do exactly what you say, obeying your precise orders letter for letter. Either way the software won’t achieve the goals because the programmers can’t incorporate them in every creative decision they make at every level. Richard says this is what goes wrong with most software projects.

Here is another way of looking at the scale:

Hierarchy < ----------> Network

One way of analysing political power is to think of it as coming in three forms. These are hierarchies (think inside a multinational corporation or scientology), networks (think an old boys club of company directors, or a workers co-operative), markets (think buying vegetables from a choice of farmers). These all mesh in a great recursive tangle with each other, which I won’t get distracted into describing now.

Now, just ordering your workers about without explanation is an extreme form of hierarchy. Letting your workers know everything that you know, and letting them make all decisions is an extreme form of a network. The slider is the same, and it applies to any organisation.

It also applies inside you, yourself, and how you decide things:

Acting on gut instinct < ----------> Thinking hard, getting too much info

Some people are prone to over-analysis and never take any action. They are stuck too far to the right of the scale, investigating in detail the causes, theory, opinions on a political issue before actually doing anything about it. Of course, you can never fully understand everything, you are always riddled with doubt, and so you do nothing.

On the other hand, many unthinkingly sit on the left of our scale. They always do what comes naturally to them, so are over-exposed to, say, advertising and other manipulation by the society that they live in. They probably make good soldiers, or good hedonists.

There’s a sweet spot in the middle where you balance action with research. If you are working alone, you have to go further to the left or else you’d never get anything done. If you are a large corporation, you can go further right because of division of labour, and the extra benefits of scale when you do improve something by thinking harder.

Final amusing thing. Even the most junior programmer is really a manager whose staff are stuck infinitely far to the left on our scale. The computer obeys their exact orders, taking no account of the programmer’s goals, to the absurd extent of crashing and failing in a way even the most obedient soldier never would. When you manage people, you are working more over to the right. Perhaps this partly explains why programmers who become managers instinctively manage without giving information about goals, as that is how they are used to “managing” the software that they write.

Software is totally obedient < ----------> People think about what you tell them

Imagine that someone owned a patent giving them the exlusive right to know how to make a piece of toast, or how to lock a front door. Everytime you did one of these simple actions, you risk being sued and forced to pay huge damages for patent violation. In the world of software developers, this absurd situation is about to become a reality.

Public Whip is “suspending services” for a few days, while the EU Council of Ministers is taking an important decision on software patents. If the directive in question is passed, it will make it very hard for small businesses to make software, and will make it risky for people like me to make websites like The Public Whip.

Of course “suspending services” is just a euphemism for a “strike”, but people might start thinking of 1980s miners if I use that word. It’s not quite the same. Read the details here, or indeed on any page of Public Whip this weekend. It says how you can help.

The media is an interesting and double edged sword. Newspapers and TV can act for freedom and democracy, unearthing problems in government, championing what the common man would do himself (if he had the time and the contacts). On the other hand, they can be a divisive barrier, splitting us apart from our elected representatives, devaluing politics into gossip and invented entertainment.

Here’s something a bit different. It’s a project I’ve been working on in my spare time the last couple of weeks, and it’s been launched tomorrow. Downing Street Says is an easy way to read what the Prime Minister has said about the issues of the day. And – the twist – anyone can comment on what he is saying. In some ways this bypasses the media, but we’re hoping that it will also empower them by providing juicy source material.

The genesis of the site is mildly interesting. Tom Steinberg from mySociety.org had the idea (“PMOS briefings as a blog”), and it was so pure and obvious it almost demanded to be done. One lazy Saturday afternoon a few of us in Cambridge felt compelled to hack it together. These things can be much cheaper and more effective than many expensive government projects. It’s turned into a kind of trial mySociety project in its own way.

Head on over to Downing Street Says, read what the horse says, and add some informative new information of your own.

Exciting national media fame. Yesterday, the Independent newspaper printed a story about MP voting records (view it now before the Indy charge you for it next week). It’s entirely based on data from Public Whip. I made them a special report of the voting record for the 2002-2003 parliamentary session. You can find the full figures in an unlinked page on the Public Whip site.

Some of my blogging energy has been siphoned off into an irregular newsletter for Public Whip, the MP voting website that I do with Julian. I just sent out the second issue. You can read it here. You might want to sign up if you like what you see.

This week we released the game that I’ve been working on. It’s called FleaFall, and it rocks.

Try it out!

Naturally, now comes the job of marketing. You don’t understand capitalism until you’ve had a go yourself.

Most of us are quite isolated in corners of a hierarchy somewhere. We’re not really sure what the organisation we work for is doing or why. I could never get to the bottom of what was happening at Creature Labs over the last couple of years, and there were only 50 people there to analyse. Once I even went to visit the CFO to ask him who owned the company, how, on what basis and for whom decisions were made. The answer had little connection to the impenetrably complex political reality. Luckily I’ve never had to find out how it feels in a multinational corporation.

Programmers take particular advantage of this comfortable bubble to be able to ignore what their financiers and marketing departments are doing on their behalf. Or if they’re more socially or morally aware, to avoid having to understand why their managers are doing that on their behalf. It’s a kind of faustian pact. They get paid some of the money which could be used to pay us more, and use it to manage all the capitalist stuff for us. We get to not worry about it, to enjoy the friendly, honest and sharing atmosphere you find in an office of geeks. Happy in our co-operative mini-utopia.

This deal is very popular, even though it masks reality. Eventually you do get notification that something important has been going on outside your attention. Your company collapses, your pension fund becomes worthless or you find yourself living in a war-torn world full of environmental degredation. Morally, shouldn’t you be prepared to do anything yourself which your bosses or your workers are doing on your behalf? Even marketing.

So go play FleaFall Apprentice, it’s really very good. Easy to learn, requires you to press just two keys, but gorgeous to master. The multiplayer mode rules, so why not break your solitary internet-surfing habit? Get two or three relatives or colleagues over to your computer keyboard. You can have fun now! Then buy FleaFall Champion, and get your friends to as well. It’ll make a grand Christmas present.

Sarajevo (first photo) was absolutely astonishing. I arrived unknowningly some way out of town at an eastern bus station, and was amazed by the taxi ride through what seemed like a teaming metropolis. I’d expected it to be rundown and wartorn, but by night it was a thriving European capital. After leaving my luggage at the private room I was staying in, I walked round the town to find somewhere to have dinner. I stumbled upon the most beautiful mosque (Gazi Husref-Bey). The courtyard was tranquil, with a few people sitting about in quiet contemplation.

The next day I went on a tour out to the famous tunnel. During the siege of the city in the early 1990s this was the only route in and out, for supplies or people. Before the attack by the federal Yugoslav government the citizens didn’t even have an army, but they managed to hold out their defences for years. It’s truly astonishing, and more so that the city has rebuilt so quickly. There are a few buildings left scarred with mortar fire, but most have been repaired or reconstructed.

I was most surprised that Bosnia felt in such better condition than Albania. Albania did have a small civil war in 1997, but nobody was killed. Bosnia suffered years of war and genocide. Somehow the international community is paying attention to Bosnia, with EU grants for reconstruction, a large UN presence, and busy aid agencies. Albania didn’t have a noticeable foreign presence, despite its recent relation to the Kosovo war. I speculated that Sarajevo would be such a pleasure to live in, a real ancient European city, whereas Albania was more like a run down desert. Perhaps this influences which country creates the largest sentiment in donating western Europeans, and which country diplomats and aid workers prefer to have to go to.

Next I went to Ljubljana for just an evening, to visit the castle. I really enjoyed Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho whose opening scene is signficantly set there. Ljubljana is a gorgeous city, nestled in trees, small and approachable in size for a capital. The view from the castle (second photo) was gorgeous.

Then I wound my way back by train to London, stopping to visit my brother in Switzerland for the weekend on the way. Amusingly the only transport in my whole journey that was significantly delayed were trains in Switzerland and Paris. So much for their reputations for ever-punctuality.

The highlight of the trip was definitely Gjirokastra in Albania. It really was worth travelling overland, to see a few places near borders that you would never otherwise visit, and to visit interesting countries you wouldn’t otherwise get round to. My mind has a better sense that the world is continual. That you could walk out my house down the road, cross the sea, keep going. Not so far away, you can end up in war-damaged and poverty-stricken places.

I quickly visited the ancient ruins of Butrint in the south-west, which were a bit disappointing. Tirana, the capital of Albania, was even more so. I arrived too near sunset, with the guidebooks both warning you to be careful going out at night, at least in the suburbs. In a rush, I found a decent hotel and then went out to buy a newspaper and get some food.

Shortly after leaving the Tirana International Hotel, where I had bought the Guardian in order to read about Tony Blair’s testimony to the Hutton inquiry, a man started talking to me in Albanian on some pretext. I replied in English, and he looked all surprised, and flatteringly said back also in high-quality English that he had thought I was Albanian. He muttered something about the world service, and then started chatting to me. He was a teacher.

I was wary, but he seemed safe and interesting, and I agreed to let him sit with me while I had my dinner. Before I knew it, some inverted version of the Albanian hospitality laws, meant that I was paying for his dinner. This I could just about cope with. Then he strangely said that I could ask him anything I liked, as long as in return he got his two minutes. So I naturally asked him to say his piece immediately.

He had already mentioned his kidney was damaged, and explained that he had travelled all the way from the south-west to the capital for medical treatment. He had bought 450 euros, and spent it all on doctors fees, and didn’t even have enough money to go back to his old mother. He was asking me for 10 euros to pay for his transport and some cheap food to have on the way. I was very suspicious, partly because I was in a twitchy mood, but also because it all seemed too convenient that he had found me.

I thought about it a while, and ate my food. In the end instinct kicked in, having been bought up in the liberal tradition of giving to charities rather than individuals. I waited until we had finished our meal, paid for it (so he got a meal out of me), apologised and left. I’ll never know if it was true, how can you know? Or the consequences of my inaction if it were. How many people are really in that sort of situation every day, in the whole world? Even one is too many.

Not to my surprise, I was again approached by the teacher the next day. Again, just after having left the Tirana International Hotel (to ask where I could change money on a Saturday). I looked at him, and he seemed calm and slick, so I asked him to leave me alone and went my way.

I spent a weary day in Tirana, and then a sleepless night listening to the dogs bark from the lots that they were guarding in the nearby streets. I got up and left the hotel at half past six, walking to the street where buses to Shkodra leave. To my amazement I was the person who filled up one of the minibuses, so it left immediately and I was at the northern capital by nine o’clock.

Not sure how to make my way on to the Montenegro border, I asked a lovely couple who ran a shop selling cheese pies for help. The nice thing about travelling here compared to Asia is that even with no languages in common, you have enough words and part-words from your common Latin and Greek heritage that it is remarkably possible to communicate. After a few phone calls, they found me a car to go all the way to Podgorica, including the border crossing, for 30 euros. Expensive business this Balkan country hopping. And I had a fine cheese pastry for breakfast.

Montenegro feels immediately different from Albania. The cars more expensive, the roads all in good condition and painted with signs. The people don’t seem quite so pissed off, and there is a fair mix of men and women in the streets. In Albania most folk wondering about were male, with women more found working in the security of a shop.

I’m now in Kotor at the head of the deepest fjord in southern Europe. The photos are a view from part way up the hill beind the town, and the incredible walled fortifications that cover the hill. They spiral and zigzag on the steep slows, with castles and forts. Quite why anyone built them when the hill itself looks impenetrable is beyond me.

My plan is to go to Sarajevo tomorrow.

Land borders are always fascinating places, and the one between Greece and Albania was no exception. The bus services are awkward or non-existent to border posts in this part of the world, so you have to hire a taxi to drop you off there.

After crossing the Greek checkpoint on foot there was a long stretch of no-man’s-road divided by a tall wire fence. Alone, I trudged my way up it towards the Albanian border post. Twenty or so Albanian men were hanging out there slouching by the road, shouting out names of places as I past. It was creepy. Usually borders are bustling places full of local trade, people too busy crossing over to do business for them to even notice me. I said I wanted a lift to Gjirokastra, and somebody called to his friend on the other side of the wire. He slipped through a small hole, and became my next driver. So much for the border controls – it would be easy to smuggle anything into Albania through that hole, and I don’t have much faith that the guards were watching it.

Gjirokastra is a fascinating old town, tumbling down a mountain into its newer buildings by the main road below. At the top is an old castle commanding a view of the entire wide and sweeping Drino valley. Eagles circled, hanging in the thermals above the mountains. At least that’s what my guide book said, but I’m damned if I could see them. Eagles or no, you really could imagine both the Italian and the German tank-armies respectively thundering along the valley into Greece during WWII.

The castle has lots of curious history and uses, as you can see from these photos. The picnic tables are a derelict cafe, perhaps from when tourism was growing before the 1997 civil war. There are now again some day-trip tour buses from Greece. The strange dome is a theatre, used for the revived four-yearly Gjirokastra folk music festival. It was rusted and ruined. I had great fun poking round the deserted place. Examining the downed US fighter plane the communists proudly put up here in the 1950s. Trying to not be too scared of the gatekeeper’s dog, who hid barking in the dark depths of the arches, which contained a WWII weapons exhibition. Creeped by the too-recent barbed wire and cell courtyard, where the dictator Hoxha kept, and miskept, political prisoners.

The town itself is eerily quiet. Shopkeepers are pleasant and friendly with their modest wares. I sat watching the sunset chatting to the lad who was running the guesthouse. He and his cousin pay 300 euro a month to the owner. My excellent quality room cost 10 euro for the night. In winter they have more trade for some reason, and this is profitable, in summer things didn’t look so good.

Upstairs there was an eighty year old lady, who had hung numerous banners out of and around her window. They were all ragged and torn, made of old sheets with scrawled writing. Like something from the Collection d’Art Brute (a gallery of modern art made by insane people) in Lausanne, rather than for a clear and controlled purpose. The lad explained to me that she’s mad, and said that the posters talked about Albanian justice. She’s 80 years old. Anyone who’s lived through the last 80 years of Albanian history, particularly in Gjirokastra, seems remarkably clear-headed to me for still hoping for Albanian justice.

Just a quick post, as internet access is expensive here. Or at least it feels expensive as you have to put coins in a slot. I’m in Kalambaka towards the north of Greece. The attraction here are the impressive Meteora, huge pillars of rock topped by 14th century monastries.

The Byzantine empire was collapsing, and as the surrounding lands became more dangerous the monks fled further upwards. They used retractable ladders and windlasses to climb to their retreats; now you can go by bus on a tarmac road, and climb steps hewn into the rock. I took the much more enjoyable route on foot, which involved scaling winding paths through the trees between the rocks, suddenly to emerge next to huge greek coach parties and stalls selling refreshing water and slightly dodgy spinach pies.

The monastries are spectacular anyway, the more so for their location. Very impressive paintings, and in one an almost cathedral like vaulted ceiling. I sat watching the views across the plain below, suddenly realising just how big the European Union is. And that’s before the new countries join next year. I can legally and with no visa application get a job here, and yet the landscape seems as vast and far away as China.