Ingress: Open Source Organization And Organic Leadership

Team building is part of gameplay.

But leadership can not be first come, first serve. And it can not be elected. And it can not be based on AP. Some of the agents with the highest AP seem to have little interest in leadership roles. Some armchair agents seem to be the most enthusiastic about leadership functions, or at least the way they define it.

This game is designed for solo action. You just can't go wrong. Proof is that over 90% of the agents are not active members of this or that organized group in the city. Less than 10% that are also mostly engage in solo action.

The only team building seems to be that there are Google Plus groups. Those groups give you access to events. Any member can create events. If you are a L8 agent the venue and time of future L8 farm events are prized information. But for months now the Intel map has been sufficient for me to find me L7 and L8 farms. You learn where to look, what times to look. And you learn L8 ammunition is so overrated. And it is much less headache. You find, you show up, you hack to burnout, you leave. Also, I have learned the great importance of non L8 ammo. L4 resonators are just the most amazing thing. The ammo I most look for right now are (1) local portal keys and (2) very rare shields. I have not lacked for L8 ammo. I have close to 400 L8 bursters right now.

This game is not designed for a hierarchical organization. And it is not designed for hierarchical or even elected leadership. Open Source Organization is one where there is no real seniority. Organic Leadership is anyone who can put in the effort to build the knowledge base and can earn respect will get to engage in leadership functions. And anyone who has time.

Time is the most precious ammo in the game. Time and the willingness to show up. This game is all about showing up. If you can show up you win. If you can get your team members to show up, you win.

Organic leadership is that you aspire to perform leadership functions, and you put in the effort to accumulate the knowledge (this is not a complex game, there is not a ton you need to know), and you have the time to perform leadership functions. And you have to earn the respect of your team members. And, most important,  you have to know and make peace with the fact that you can not tell anyone what to do. Their following your suggestions and advice and hints is strictly on a voluntary basis. This is a game, it is supposed to be fun. Nobody signed up so you could tell them what to do.

But eager agents will listen. L1 to L7 agents might appreciate getting help leveling up. Other L8 agents might appreciate your tips and tricks. There are techniques involved.

But the bottomline is this is a game designed for solo action. You are not crippled without a team. Actually a team can get in the way of gameplay. The last time I was part of an organized team, it felt to me like all the guys did was drink beer, attend L8 farm events, and claim and reclaim their local vanity portals. At some point it starts feeling mindless. And of course Huze feels like he has patented the whole idea of L8 farms, something that is being done better everywhere else in the world. That guy's contribution to the game in the city is the whole patented secrecy paradigm, which is the reason NYC is nowhere on the global Ingress map.

Parting ways for me has meant reclaiming the fun in the game. This game helps you get to know a neighborhood like a local. I am still not done with the Financial District. I think I might need to make at least 10 more visits to undo that maze. And there are many, many neighborhoods across the city. And also team building is the ultimate challenge in the game.

You build portals. Then you build farms. Then you graduate to home territory building. That is my primary focus right now. Then I hope to move on to team building. There are only two global teams possible, but you can build as many local teams as you want.

NYC Enlightened, fear the arrival of The Squad.

The beauty of the way the game has been designed is there is no real need for The Squad to coordinate with timtomhuze, the old team that is losing territory like there were no tomorrow.

Mahatma Gandhi - "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win."

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Google Balloon: More Promising Than Google Fiber, Google Glass And Google Car

I am psyched about this, what can I say? I am as psyched as I have been about Android, perhaps more so.




Google launches Internet-beaming balloons

the flimsy helium-filled inflatables beam the Internet down to earth as they sail past on the wind. .... the balloons were the first of thousands that Google's leaders eventually hope to launch12 miles into the stratosphere in order to bridge the gaping digital divide between the world's 4.8 billion unwired people and their 2.2 billion plugged-in counterparts ..... "The power of the Internet is probably one of the most transformative technologies of our time." .... Google's balloons fly free and out of eyesight, scavenging power from card table-sized solar panels that dangle below and gather enough charge in four hours to power them for a day as the balloons sail around the globe on the prevailing winds. Far below, ground stations with Internet capabilities about 60 miles apart bounce signals up to the balloons. ..... The signals would hop forward, from one balloon to the next, along a backbone of up to five balloons...... Each balloon would provide Internet service for an area twice the size of New York City, about 780 square miles, and terrain is not a challenge. They could stream Internet into Afghanistan's steep and winding Khyber Pass or Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, a country where the World Bank estimates four out of every 100 people are online..... The signals travel in the unlicensed spectrum, which means Google doesn't have to go through the onerous regulatory processes required for Internet providers using wireless communications networks or satellites ..... in the next phase of the trial they hope to get up to 300 balloons forming a ring on the 40th parallel south from New Zealand through Australia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina. ..... "It's a very fundamentally democratic thing that what links everyone together is the sky and the winds," said Richard DeVaul, an MIT-trained scientist who founded Project Loon and helped develop Google Glas ..... they wouldn't interfere with aircraft because they fly well below satellites and twice as high as airplanes ...... The balloons would be guided to collection points and replaced periodically. In cases when they failed, a parachute would deploy. ..... "For every person online, there are two who are not. By the end of the decade, everyone on Earth will be connected" ...... "The nutritional and medical information, farming techniques, democratic principles those are the wonderful parts of it," he said. "But you also have everyone wanting to drive a car, eat a steak, drink a Coke." .... the balloons were invisible in the sky except for an occasional glint

Can Google Fly Its Internet Balloons Wherever It Wants?

a network of high-altitude balloons ...... to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster ...... balloons can be “steered by rising or descending to an altitude with winds moving in the desired direction.” ......... hundreds of balloons flying at a latitude of approximately 40 degrees south, which would take them over a lot of open ocean but also include transits over New Zealand, southern Argentina, and southern Chile. ...... “approximately two thirds of the world’s population today doesn’t have Internet access.” ..... a truly global system of Google-operated Internet access balloons

Introducing Project Loon: Balloon-powered Internet access

We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It’s very early days, but we’ve built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters. ...... how to control their path through the sky. We’ve now found a way to do that, using just wind and solar power: we can move the balloons up or down to catch the winds we want them to travel in. That solution then led us to a new problem: how to manage a fleet of balloons sailing around the world so that each balloon is in the area you want it right when you need it. We’re solving this with some complex algorithms and lots of computing power. ..... We imagine someday you'll be able to use your cell phone with your existing service provider to connect to the balloons and get connectivity where there is none today

Google Loon: Google's Second Most Important Project

a phalanx of balloons that sail in the stratosphere like low level satellites ..... winds in the stratosphere are slow and that’s what makes Loon feasible ..... balloons will use solar power to move the communications equipment between layers of slow moving winds ..... Google is wrestling with how to be an infrastructure player, in order to bring more customers to its core business. ..... Google Fiber, one of its three telco infrastructure projects, is too slow-build to matter in the near future. In White Spaces, the use of excess TV spectrum, Google is in a tight battle with Microsoft, especially in Africa where Microsoft seems to be moving ahead with rural access, much faster than Google has. ....... Samsung’s moves into 5G wireless...... Winds in the stratosphere are generally steady and slow-moving at between 5 and 20 mph, and each layer of wind varies in direction and magnitude ..... Project Loon uses software algorithms to determine where its balloons need to go, then moves each one into a layer of wind blowing in the right direction. By moving with the wind, the balloons can be arranged to form one large communications network ...... by the time it rolls out, if it works, the world will have moved beyond 3G, the capacity Google expects from its balloons ..... makes Loon Google’s second most important project, behind one that gets very little press – White Spaces for rural, developing areas.

Who Should Be Scared Of Samsung's 1Gb+ Wireless Technology?

one reaction to the news was that cable is dead..... wireless could displace fixed line, and is a threat to cable companies that have been slow to upgrade their networks .... the world’s first adaptive array transceiver technology operating in the millimeter-wave Ka bands for cellular communications. The new technology sits at the core of 5G mobile communications system and will provide data transmission up to several hundred times faster than current 4G networks…5G mobile communications technology is the next generation of the existing 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network technology. 5G will be capable of providing a ubiquitous Gbps experience to subscribers anywhere and offers data transmission speeds of up to several tens of Gbps per base station ..... over 500 billion devices to be connected to the Internet by 2020 and diversity in the network is key to enabling all that activity ..... the aim is for 10 Gbps transmission ..... Samsung has perfected an extraordinary capability to innovate and advance itself across a wide range of activities ...... developing significant and deep partnerships with telco carriers ..... direct carrier billing for apps bought via Samsung devices and services such as Hub ..... Samsung is producing a new philosophy that emphasizes end-to-end support for its carrier clients. ..... end-tend from chip to infrastructure. ..... Samsung and Google are developing a deeper partnership ...... the company most likely to produce the important innovations in display, battery and processors ..... As Google improves its own UI design capabilities, Samsung becomes better allied to what is beginning to look like the world’s leading software company. This is a significant partnership. ..... What Google showed this week and Samsung has been demonstrating for a while is that innovation is now a different game – much broader in scope, often more narrow in focus, but incredibly fast. Apple is looking outpaced.

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Ingress: State Of The Game: New York City (2)

It is fair to say the green team right now dominates Manhattan. Only a few week back they were at 50% of the territory. Now they are past 50 and still have momentum. Columbia University is solid blue, it is home territory to the top blue agent in the city. Upper West Side is also solid blue. It is home territory to the top attack agent on the blue side. But blue is shaky everywhere else on the island. I believe the green team is approaching 60% of the island by now. That is not worrying. What is worrying is they still have momentum.

When that happens there is the spillover effect. They start pouring out into Queens, Brooklyn, New Jersey perhaps. Already Kogent is talking about New Jersey on the All COMM. Manhattan is not enough territory. They are still hungry. I don't see a slowdown on their side.

West Village has become the green Bayonne. It is home to a permanent L7 farm for the green team. Only Bayonne has many fewer agents harvesting the goodies.

Queens used to be solid blue. By now it is 50-50. Downtown Brooklyn was always fiercely contested, as it is now. But southern Brooklyn is solid blue. Staten Island continues to be JPNasty1 territory: solid blue, the most unchanged part of the city for the game.

When I had a fallout with the current organized team in the city the blue team owned 66% of the city. As long as that team will focus their energies on faction chat in engaging in personal attacks on me, the other side will keep their momentum. If they still have momentum at owning 60% of Manhattan, they still have ground to cover in Queens and Brooklyn, and New Jersey is all open to crack. Arbitrage wants to buy a subway pass, Kogent wants a pass for PATH. The East Village and West Village are no longer enough for them and they are still hungry.

New Jersey's strength came from the numerous L8 farm events that NYC agents organized there. But by now New Jersey is self sufficient. It does not need NYC agents to stay strong. But I would still worry about Kogent.

Derp by now has his own private farm. It is the most efficient farm in the city right now: small and tight.

Forest Hills in Queens is one green 30 portal L8 farm in Jackson Heights taken to burnout away from being wiped out. Astoria, Flushing and Forest Hills all depend on Jackson Heights, the top Ingress destination in the borough by now.

Bronx is 50-50 like it was months ago. Not much change there.

rmazzara has done a good job of turning Long Island over 50% blue, it used to be almost 70% green, and he is not from Long Island. That change goes unnoticed. He might be the top blue agent in the city in terms of the sheer number of hours he puts into the game. Frankly, the number of hours he puts is scary to me. Maybe he is on Niantic's payroll.

What could the blue team do? What are the options?

(1) Make a team decision to stop personal attacks on me and my new, small team.
(2) The idea of me building a team is not alarming. And it is not at cross purposes. And the credit does not go to me. There are only two global teams possible. That is just the way the game has been designed.
(3) My team - The Squad - could sit on top of the organized team that exists already. The existing team was able to go to 66% of the territory in the city. Together perhaps we can go past 70% if we do it right.

Otherwise the green team could carry this current momentum for two more months at least.

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Ingress: Linking And Fielding Types

Linking and fielding has got to be my favorite part of the game. The geometry of it all gets me.

(1) One school of thought that dominates the thinking in the city (and was even more severe before links started acting as shields) is that you should not create links and fields at all, because if you do you are only creating opportunities for enemy agents to get points. I always thought that was the stupidest thing. The thinking was and is that if you want to hold your territory just do not create links and fields. You are less likely to get attacked. As if you earn points for holding onto portals. I think you should, but right now you don't.

(2) Another way is to create as many links and fields as you can. And there a simple formula is, link to whichever portal is the closest to you. That way you will not mess it up. If you link far away portals you are depriving yourself and others of link opportunities, since links can't cross each other.

(3) The most efficient linking and fielding might be the spokes to a wheel method. You pick one portal as the hub and make it deliberately weak. And you link to that one portal from all the neighboring portals. This works best for home territories where you are likely to hack the same portals again and again and are likely to have many keys to each portal. This might also be the fastest way to gain points. The hub gets captured. You capture it again and build all those links all over again. In less than 10 minutes you might end up with 50,000 points. This spokes of a wheel method of fielding also might be the most efficient use of your portal keys. And the best way to cultivate your home territory. Say you manage to build a home territory with about 100 portals, and so when the fielding is done you earn 100,000 points. And you have a local team of agents on your side. Granted all of you do a great job of hacking the portals and always having plentiful keys, you could end up with the fastest way to level up your agents. The game does not care if you are a L1 or L8. You still get the same keys when you hack portals and you still get the same points when you create fields.

Where is your hub? Do you even have one?

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Ingress: Jackson Heights Mysteries

This past weekend the Enlightened in Queens organized a L8 farm event in Jackson Heights which has emerged as the top Ingress destination in the borough, both in terms of its central geographical location and, more important, its growing cluster of portals (mostly, thank me).

I know exussum has a car, I know chicory has a car, I know Avumede has a car. I don't understand why they chose to walk. Pi and Huze disrupted them after just two hacks. In a car they could have burnt out the whole thing in 20 minutes flat. Pi and Huze showed up an hour after the green gang got started.

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