What makes something revolutionary?

Totally disrupts the established order replacing the established order with a new order changing the dynamics of everything around it

Turn Capabilities into Opportunities

Revolutions don't happen when society adopts new technologies, they happen when society adopts new behaviors .

Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

What if I told you

Behavior is the product of three factors

b = m a t

Motivation Ability Trigger

Mid Aughts

Back it up

The response has been enormous and shows how badly JavaScript programmers want a better library for writing code with.
John Resig, first blog post jquery.com

Simple solution

(ability)

Good Documentation

(ability)

An invitation to participate

(motivation and trigger)

Michael Geary contacted me today to let me know that he’s finished the first third-party jQuery plugin...I’m planning on opening up a plugin repository soon, so that plugin authors can submit their code, have an area for documentation and comments, and allow for patches.
J.Resig, second blog post

jQuery Success

#1 OOS framework in use

  1. a simple approach
  2. good documentation
  3. an invitation to participate
npm is the heart of node.js. It’s the secret to node’s success: a package manager that learned from its predecessors and got an enormous number of things right...You’re cooking with jet fuel, jet fuel provided in little modular canisters by hundreds of strangers who like to share their codefuel with everybody else... NPM lets me give back ...[it's] the secret advantage of node

CSS is PAINFUL

Circa 2007

Status of our stylesheets

  • 960px all my designs rock
  • IE 6, 7, 8, 9, FML
  • CSS3, I think my problems are solved!

  1. CSS PP
  2. DT CSS
  3. CSS Preprocessor
  4. CSS Cacheer
  5. Switch CSS

There’s reason to try out both Sass and Less. For some people, the syntax and new ideas in Less are most important. For others, the power and maturity of Sass are better. Hopefully as time goes on, both projects will continue to learn from each other and grow to serve the needs of CSS designers as well as possible.

Game Changer 2014

.Net Award

Shortlisted for best Open Source design project, too!

Compass provides direction

Pave the Cowpaths

influencing parent language

Institutions

We don't need you!

It's a bottom-up, participatory innovation it's democratic , it's chaotic, it's hard to control. It's not bad, but it's very different…the traditional rules that we have for institutions don't work anymore , and most of us here operate with a different set of principles.
Joe Ito, Director MIT Media Lab

New Behaviors

  • We’re enabling groups and individuals to try radical things by removing any barriers to collaboration
  • We’re creating an environment in which people who want to get something done can in a timely fashion
  • We’re creating encouraging and supportive environments that nurture creativity and individuality

Collective Participation + Collective Action

Required ingredients for change

Changes of scale mean that improbably theories become likely and that unlikely events become certainties

[T]here is less harm in indulging the spurious impulse for a time than in thwarting the impulse which is genuine.

This artist's impulse is a thing of infinite value to the individual, and often to the world; to respect it in oneself and in others makes up nine-tenths of the good life.

Bertrand Russel, Individual Liberty and The Public Control, 1963

It's about Humanity

No Cliques

A very wise person once said

Yes

we are succeeding

Designed for Resilience

Small World Networks

Evolutionary advantageous

  1. Resistant to Damage
  2. Information dissemination

We have a lot to contribute

Citizens calling for change

So how do we start building cities that make us care? Cities that value their most important asset: the incredible diversity of the people who live in them? ...if we want to change what our cities look like, then we really have to change the decision-making processes that have given us the results that we have right now. We need a participation revolution, and we need it fast.

[The web] is the largest human powered information network in history. It has a culture, a history, and a social structure. It's organic and only problems of a region's development or a government's interference limit it...It's uncontrolled, even out of control, and that's its real power.
Alfredo Lopez, The Organic Internet

Create opportunities

where they matter most

What matters most now is our imaginations. What we do with the opportunities before us will be determined largely by how well we are able to imagine and reward public creativity, participations, and sharing.
Clay Shirky, Our Cognitive Surplus

Make Shit Up

The Front-End Revolution

Claudina Sarahe | @itsmisscs | @oddestbirds

Thanks To

  • Organizers of this conference for prioritizing community
  • Ben Melancon, Jack Aponte, & Mallory Knodel and other Radical Techies who introduced me to the value of FOSS and worker-owned/people powered communities
  • Sass, the queerest, most radical community yet. <3 you.
  • my mom for having all the books on Network Structure and for Bertrand Russell.
  • all those marching in protest for what they believe in. Now and throughout history.