Message
for
you
Considerations
concerning
Communication
Robert Riemann
21/09/2018 - BETA Symposium Prague
Characteristics of Communication
What is Communication?
Informal:
Formal:
Communication is when Alice tells Bob something.
Communication shall be defined as the act of passing information encoded in messages from senders through a channel to recipients.
Science:
Communication Studies or
Information Theory
Not every message contains information:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor.
gZTYz+4rrl0hurma1/9XoX7ckEkngIBF5Rn/6yiFClvvh8ffXvBpljJOcKF1Voue89cR9YVSjZ
Fun Fact
What is Information?
Information Theory:
- description of a state
- basic state: bit X = 1 or 0
- measured as entropy H
What is a Channel?
The channel is the medium that allows to convey the message.
Examples:
- over the air (speaking)
- over wire (LAN)
- electro-magnetic waves
(WLAN, Bluetooth, Satellite TV, GPS, GSM/LTE,
smoke signs)
Test.
Channel Characteristics
- simplex, half-duplex, full-duplex
- transmission range
- quality
- costs per unit of information
(the smallest unit of information is the bit 0 or 1) - volume (bits per time)
- speed (meter per time)
- distributed vs centralised (topology)
History of Channels
-
everything is small, costly and very distributed
(horse post, gossiping) -
everything is large and centralised and monoplex (TV, radio), cheap
-
everything is large, duplex (social media), high volume (big data), fast and cheap (fake news) and in High Definition!
(Essence)
Quizz
How much GiB data do you download when watching 1h Netflix in HD?
3 GiB
How much GiB data do you need to send every human being the message ‘Hello!’?
5.3 GiB
Governance Models for Communication
Inspiration: Joel Spolsky on Google Plus (2011)
- Who can discover which recipients? (Directory?)
- What format (encoding) of messages is imposed?
(length limit, text, pictures, links, video) - How is sending and receiving of messages or notifications authorised and controlled?
(per sender/receiver/topic) - Who determines sorting/priority of messages?
How are received messages sorted/prioritised? - Who pays the transmission costs?
| Mailinglist | Facebook Page | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Directory | none | (hidden) list | |
| Format | free, but rather small mails | free, but rather small mails |
constrained by Facebook |
| Authorisation | none | by list owner | FB users/none |
| Prioritisation | ordered by time | ordered by time | unknown |
| Scalability | 1-to-1 | n-to-n | mostly 1-to-n |
| Archive | distributed | central | ? |
| Authorisation Granularity |
user based | all-in | per page (topic) |
Modern Communication
| State of the Art | |
|---|---|
| Directory | yes, configurable |
| Format | free, but semantic, with search, responsive, etc. |
| Authorisation | yes |
| Prioritisation | transparent, configurable (time, popularity, topic) |
| Scalability | n-to-n |
| Archive | yes, configurable |
| Authorisation Granularity |
per user or user group, per topic, per message (mentions, subscribing to tags, topics, blocking, etc.) |
BETA Forum
- access-restricted, support of Google Login
- get access to topics per
- BETA Branch
- BETA Team
- (un)subscribe to notifications per
- topic (individual thread)
- ad-hoc groups (Forum PMs)
- BETA Branch (Forum categories and Groups)
- BETA Team (Forum tags)
BETA Forum (2)
- full-text search
- upload documents
- co-edit posts (wiki-mode)
- FAQ knowledge database
- intuitive formatting (compatible to our websites)
- app-mode (Android, iOS?) with notifications
- configurable digest mail (weekly newsletter)
- mention people to draw their attention
- dictionary of all BETA volunteers
- mailing-list mode:
beta-czech[-members]@forum.beta-europe.org
BETA Forum (3)
- Forum profile is reused on BETA website
- Forum username is used to get you a
mail address: username@beta-europe.org - BETA Forum GDPR compliance
is taken care of by BETA Europe - BETA Forum is paid by BETA Europe
(worth: 100$/month)
