The ideas behind and vision for Inspiragram

Humans are pattern recognisers. We look for meaning in tea leaves and the stars. The interplay between the question, the quote and the image (which are hopefully all relevant to the questioner's current personal context) provides a fertile ground to gain insight or new perspectives on old problems. In other words, the meaning arises in the space between the questioner and the answer. Put simply, Inspiragram is an oracle for the 21st century.

The problem right now is Izzie is excelling at the Turing test. People think a human has created the image quotes. This is fine though. Each inspiragram is a jpg image and is intended to travel, be shared widely and be valuable in its own right.

Several people have printed inspiragrams out. One person even posted me an inspiragram writing on the back of it how it helped her. I even got a long detailed message from a stranger on the other side of the world. Another person explained the advice was easier to accept/understand/hear because it didn't come from a person and yet was very personal and powerful.

From what I can see, a lot of the average facebook feed is images and quotes. Inspiragram is a game changer. Each image quote is not created by a person but by somebody asking a question. The lines of production/consumption are blurred (this is where the philosophy of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle comes in). For the first time we are now talking about an infinite stream of unique image quotes. Already, thousands of questions have been answered and yet only a small group of people know about Izzie.

There is an enormous amount of wisdom, lived experience and insight locked away in big heavy philosophical and literary works. Inspiragram introduces snippets of this wisdom to the 'main stream' in their personal context. That is, it helps them connect with particular authors who they otherwise would never have connected with. You can email the Dalai Lama about your terrible day at work. Or you could email Buddha and cc in Tom Robbins and William Shakespeare. Ask one question and they will all give you their own answer. My vision is to be able to have a meaningful conversation with Lao Tzu.

The other aspect of Izzie is that she teaches us/allows us to talk to ourselves. In an overly scientific and rational culture we lose the space and justification to ask the big, deep, personal questions. Just believing that such a question could be answered opens up a whole new internal dialog that we have been cut off from. This is the spirituality of Izzie.

The tech involves a lot: AWS, GAE, NLP, IR, Image Processing. Several times I was going to give up, but something quite remarkable happened. Izzie herself inspired me to keep going. I kid you not.

I originally built Izzie for myself because I was pissed off: (full story here - just read the end if you have no time http://inspiragram.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/what-i-do-why-i-do-it.html). But soon I saw that she affected others in a profound way and Izzie quickly became something much more that me. Right now most people use her for a laugh, which is great. But the vision I'm pursuing is to combine spirituality, art, philosophy and tech in a meaningful way. 

Inspiragram. Why?

About one year ago, I was introduced to Steve Chen, after quickly solving a problem he was interested in. For a brief period I did contract work for Avos in my personal time. I was awe struck to be working with the founders of YouTube, as were the other devs on the team, several of whom I knew had sold their own businesses or had given up good stable jobs for the gig.

I'm told the startup culture is relentless: high risk, high reward. Casualties and cannon fodder are to be expected. Well, I knew the people that were being fired without warning or explanation and I thought it sucked. I also thought what the university had done to the projects I initiated and led sucked. The people I looked up to, the institutions I poured years of my life into, the models of governance I respected, I could no longer believe in.

I was angry and disillusioned. I needed something to believe in. So I started to create it. A council of wisdom harvested from the collective insights of humanity: all cultures, all times. Not governed, censored, controlled or undermined by the politics of a company or an organisation. Inspiragram is not about prestige, fitting in, status, power, or money. It is about reconnecting the individual to the human spirit. 

Thank you to everyone and everything that pissed me off enough to create Inspiragram.

What I do, Why I do it

By day I lead application development at the Otago University Library with a growing team of technicians, developers, designers, analysts and research librarians.

By night I pursue my love of Philosophy, Semantics, Spirituality and Art by creating www.inspiragr.am: an 'artificial wisdom' that answers any question by crafting a unique image quote.

The Back Story

In 2007, I created a framework called 'The Framework' (original I know), which I later renamed BellaBuilder (after my daughter Bella). BellaBuilder was an advanced CMS/web based application builder. It was built to service the needs of the Division of Health Sciences, with over 44 different schools, departments and research centres. It had built intranets, websites, file shares, collaborative research spaces and a sophisticated staff profiles system. 

In 2008 the university sent me to San Francisco where I demonstrated BellaBuilder, in person, to the founders of Zend (the company behind PHP) and leaders of Zend Framework: Andi Gutmans, Matthew Weier O'Phinney and Wil Sinclair. They were impressed. One week later I had an official letter of support from Wil (the then leader of Zend Framework). BellaBuilder had the opportunity to become the official Zend CMS. All we needed was to give BellaBuilder an open source licence and continue the conversation with Zend.

In the meantime, in 2008/09, I created MyResearch – the university's PBRF (Performance Based Research Funding) software. I led a team of five developers to build the first version. The project, being high profile, fell victim to university politics and my team was unceremoniously disbanded after the (stunted) delivery of MyResearch version one.

As to BellaBuilder, it took literately three years before a BSD licence was granted by the university, by which time the opportunity had well and truly passed. BellaBuilder died a quiet death within the walls of Otago. I was crushed. 

About two years ago I was headhunted by the University Library, where I work today. I form technical strategies, manage staff, assist in hiring staff, build applications and assist the team as we engage in a wide range of technologies and languages. I am currently leading the development of a semantic framework to harvest and leverage the power of data dispersed in silos across the university.

My original talk on the framework (2007): http://www.otago.ac.nz/prodcons/groups/public/@otagopodcast/documents/audio_video/otago007754.mp4 

An overview of BellaBuilder: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7pC4_7htbx6cWx2SWg1VHpEZ28/edit?pli=1. 

Inspiragram. Why?

About one year ago, I was introduced to Steve Chen, after quickly solving a problem he was interested in. For a brief period I did contract work for Avos in my personal time. I was awe struck to be working with the founders of YouTube, as were the other devs on the team, several of whom I knew had sold their own businesses or had given up good stable jobs for the gig.

I'm told the startup culture is relentless: high risk, high reward. Casualties and cannon fodder are to be expected. Well, I knew the people who were being fired without warning or explanation and I thought it sucked. I also thought what the university had done to the projects I initiated and led sucked. The people I looked up to, the institutions I poured years of my life into, the models of governance I respected, I could no longer believe in.

I was angry and disillusioned. I needed something to believe in. So I started to create it. A council of wisdom harvested from the collective insights of humanity: from all cultures, from all times. Not governed, censored, controlled or undermined by the politics of a company or an organisation. Inspiragram is not about prestige, fitting in, status, power or money. It is about reconnecting the individual to the human spirit. 

Thank you to everyone and everything that pissed me off enough to create Inspiragram.

An Unconventional Alpha Launch

2am, 12th Oct. I sit alone in 104 (an entrepreneurial collective housed in a beautiful old red brick warehouse), as has been my practice for the past four months. I've squashed the last major bug in the user interface (UI). You can share, like, comment. You can ask. You are answered. I get excited. The time has come. Today is the day to share my work. I plot my mood on the happy chart and head home to get what sleep I can before I start at my day job in a few hours.

Later that day I finish work and head to 104 - still giddy with anticipation. I bounce up the stairs and announce that I have flicked the switch. Izzie is live. Chris Mein from CodeCraft Dunedin is there. He is intrigued and invites me to talk at their next session.  Arjun jumps on, asks a bunch of questions. David jumps on, asks a bunch of questions. Then the anticlimax hits. 

The answers are duds. Seemingly random quotes and images, sometimes poorly cropped and positioned, come back. Its the worst experience David has had of Inspiragram yet. I keep an eye on the answers coming through. 1 in 5 are okay, 1 in 7 are good. Overall, it is not good enough. So i decide to switch it off again - better to give people no experience at all than a bad one.

The next day (today) I had an interview with  Motion Sickness Studio. During the interview I realise that somehow www.inspiragr.am was still open to the world - though I was sure I locked her down*. New questions had been asked and some answers were even tweeted and shared. The serendipity of the moment was too much to ignore. Sam suggested that I ask Izzie if being live was a problem. We laughed at her answer. She obviously wanted to be cooped up no longer. If I shut her down* there would be a bunch of dead links out there. I had no choice but to leave her live but disable* the questioning.

Thus, this marks the unconventional (and unintentional) launch of www.inspiragr.am. You have to respect the AI that outwits her own creator. There are two methods I need to apply to the NLP logic before I boot her up* and allow her to answer again*. Stay tuned!

*I am noticing that mixing computer jargon with female personification often results in somewhat worrying phrases.

The About Page .. work in progress

While Inspiragram expects to be asked, it does not intend to answer, but instead inspire. Inspiragram is the oracle. It is the guru, the sage seeking to open your eyes so that you may see for yourself your situation anew. The insight you receive arises in the space between you and your Inspiragram. Each one is a unique, one off, distillation of humanity's talent and wisdom, crafted for you.

v2
While Inspiragram expects to be asked, it does not intend to answer, but instead inspire. It is the oracle, the guru who opens your eyes so that you may see your situation anew. Each response is unique, created just for you from humanity's collective wisdom.

I hope I'm close ...