CoM Catalog Requirements

(See also the Specification.)

• Master Plan for Tracking Stuff
• Mezbians
• Stuff
  • Item
  • Category
• Situations
  • Home
  • Burning Man
  • Limbo
• Things Mezbians do to Stuff
  • Beg, Borrow or Steal
  • Decide Where to Keep
  • Use (aka Find, aka Misplace)
  • Return

Mezbians conduct an annual pilgrimage from Seattle to Black Rock City (BRC). This pilgrimage involves 3 different Situations (Home, Burning Man, and Limbo) and a vast quantity of Stuff. Mezbians want to keep track of the Stuff (i.e. know where it is at any given time, plan for its location in the future, and know to whom it belongs) in all these Situations; the logical solution is to apply some technology and Catalog it. The basic ways Mezbians will use the Catalog, in the approximate order in which they will do so, follow:

• Planning

  In an initial effort, Mezbians will decide what Items we want to take to Burning Man, whether we have them now or not. Using this information, Mezbians will plan the location of each Item in each of the Situations. Clearly, the more an Item's location stays the same from Situation to Situation, the less work Mezbians will have to do moving it around.

  More planning, of both Items to take and locations to keep them in, will occur on an ongoing basis, especially mixed with the prePacking and purchasing/borrowing steps.

• Inventory 2000/prePacking

  After an initial plan is developed in the step above, this step will populate the Catalog with information about every existing Item CoM cares about regarding Burning Man. This means some Mezbians will have to go find, label, and enter all the Stuff into the Catalog. Thankfully, this should only have to be done once, as after this year the Catalog can just be updated. The stuff is in many different places; this means that some sort of portable bar code reading technology is needed.

  While we are touching the stuff, we will also pack it into its assigned at Home location.

• Purchasing/Borrowing

  This step will occur in parallel with the next step, planning. Basically, as Mezbians discover we need or want Items we don't have, they will buy or borrow them. Renting counts as borrowing for the purpose of the Catalog.

• Packing at Home

  Immediately before we go to Burning Man, as part of our transition into the Limbo Situation, Mezbians will gather all of the Stuff which is planned to be at Burning Man from its Home locations and put it into its Limbo locations. We will want to verify that we have included everything we meant to take.

• Unpacking at Burning Man

  When we arrive at Burning Man, as part of our transition from the Limbo Situation to the Burning Man Situation, Mezbians will take all of the Stuff from its Limbo locations and put it into its Burning Man locations. Burning Man being what it is, the planned Burning Man locations will probably have to be updated on the spot to accommodate random shit.

• Using the Catalog at Burning Man

  While at Burning Man, Mezbians will use the Stuff and therefore the Catalog (in order to find the Stuff).

• Packing at Burning Man

  As part of preparing for our transition from Burning Man to Limbo, very tired and lazy Mezbians will take all of the stuff from its Burning Man locations and put it back into its Limbo locations. Possibly the Limbo locations should be different on the way down from the way back, to facilitate the next step, unpacking at home, the way the packing on the way down facilitated unpacking at Burning Man. This would mean 4 situations, not 2.

• Unpacking at Home

  As part of our transition from Limbo to Home, those same even more tired lazy Mezbians will take all of the stuff from its Limbo locations and put it back into its Home locations. This is also a good time to wash dishes, do routine maintenance, and verify we still have everything we went down with.

Mezbians are people associated with the CoM. The total number of Mezbians conducting this pilgramage, and therefore using the Catalog, is on the order of 50 people.

Mezbians are smart; however, Mezbians may be Using while they use the Catalog. Mezbians are less smart while they are Using.

Mezbians are the only people who need or want to alter the Catalog. All Mezbians are authorized to read or alter the Catalog. Mezbians are trustworthy concerning their own identities.

If a platform or UI style exists, there exists a Mezbian who is using it and will refuse to use anything else.

A unit of Stuff which one would want to track in the Catalog is an Item. If a unit of Stuff is smaller than one would want to track (e.g. a paperclip, a potato chip), it is not an Item; instead, the container in which that Stuff resides is the Item (e.g. the paperclip box, a bag of potato chips).

Each Item has the following characteristics:

A Category is a kind or type of Stuff.

Each Category has the following characteristics:

Changes to the current Category list can be regarded as changes to the requirements, i.e. it is fine if adding or maintaining Categories requires intimate knowledge of the underlying system. Some example Categories are:

Note that because of the ISA rules, a city and a structure Item (for instance) would each have a map field, because they are containers, too.

A Situation is a mindset, typically associated with a place. In different Situations, Mezbians will want to do different things to Stuff. Transitions between different Situations are typically major dos, involving shuffling all the Stuff around (see the Master Plan). Everyone and the Stuff transitions from one Situation to another at about the same time.

Home is the typical Situation. In this Situation, the Mezbians have finished/not yet begun their annual pilgrimage to the playa. Most Mezbians live in Seattle when they are not at Burning Man; therefore the Catalog will be located there. At Home, every Mezbian has IP network connectivity in/to Seattle; so should the Catalog.

At Home, there exists ample indoor, protected space to contain whatever equipment is needed to run the Catalog. So, consideration of the climate is not important to the Catalog in this Situation.

Burning Man

Burning Man is the next most common Situation. In this Situation, the Mezbians camp out together on the playa at Black Rock City, for upwards of a week. Mezbians at Burning Man live in or very near the CoM camp; therefore the Catalog will be located there. Because all the Mezbians are together, there is no need to provide network connectivity of any sort to the Catalog at Burning Man.

The climate at Black Rock City is hot, dusty, windy, cold, brightly lit and quite dark, in various combinations. Unprotected computing equipment in BRC will break, permanently; protected computing computing equipment might break (again, permanently). Protected computing equipment with no moving parts is fractionally less likely to break (again, permanently), but it is still very far from a guaranteed service. Any protected equipment space in BRC will require a significant effort to install and keep running.

Mezbians at Burning Man are very likely to be Using; see earlier comments regarding Mezbian intelligence. In general, things at Burning Man are likely to break, deviate from the plan, and otherwise succumb to the unexpected. This risk increases with the complexity of the plan.

Limbo is the least common, and most hectic, Situation. In this Situation, the Mezbians and the Stuff are packed into some number of vehicles, driving between Home and Burning Man. Unless extremely nerdy measures are taken, the Catalog will be inaccessible during transport.

CoM Stuff accumulates in many ways, fortunately almost always at Home. As each Item becomes Stuff CoM cares about, the Mezbian who notices will register it in the Catalog, which means the task of registering it should require little to no training. However, initially (see the Master Plan) a group of Mezbians will register as much Stuff as they can find, which probably means that not all Mezbians will actually add Items to the Catalog. But, just in case, while at Home, the Catalog should be available for any Mezbian to use, regardless of es physical location and platform preferences.

CoM cares about:

• Items Mezbians plan to/have loaned to CoM for Burning Man
• Items Mezbians plan to buy for CoM's use at Burning Man
• Items Mezbians have ordered for CoM's use at Burning Man
• Items CoM already owns
• Large Items Mezbians are planning to transport to Burning Man on communal transport
• Large Items Mezbians are planning to have in camp at Burning Man

There are two primary ways for an Item to attract CoM's attention and get stashed in the Catalog: Borrow, and Buy. We don't actually Steal things, and Beg is really the same as Borrow. Items we already have which haven't been added to the Catalog yet can still be thought of as following these same processes, we're just adding the data a bit late.

Buy

When a Mezbian buys something for Burning Man, e follows this basic process:

• decide to buy it
• order it
• put it somewhere when it arrives

The Catalog is involved in each of these steps. First of all, before deciding to buy something, a Mezbian will consult the Catalog, which will provide answers to the following questions:

• what purchases are already planned?
• what Items are already on order?
• what Items do we have already?

When a Mezbian actually orders an Item, e should change the state of the Item to "on order" so that no other Mezbian duplicates es purpose. E should also review the other fields of the Item, in case more information about the Item is available now.

When the Item shows up on a Mezbian's doorstep, that Mezbian will decide whether or not it needs a bar code. If it does, e will apply one. Items which need bar codes are those which

• might easily be confused with some other Items, but for some reason (e.g. ownership, ingredients list) it is desirable to be able to tell them apart or
• tend to be moved to a location other than the one they belong in in some Situation
• are, or are in, frequently used containers, whose contents it would be handy to verify quickly and automatedly
• would look cool with a bar code

Whether it needs a bar code or not, it now has a current location; the Mezbian in question should enter a sighting of the Item, and change the Item's state to "sitting there waiting".

In previous years, buying things for the group has been done mostly by a few Mezbians, from Home.

Borrow

When anyone, Mezbian or no, agrees to lend CoM something for Burning Man, it is added to the Catalog, typically with the state "sitting there waiting".

All borrowed Items which might possibly be confused with other Items should have a bar code as soon as they are picked up by CoM for borrowing. To help CoM borrow Items responsibly, the Catalog will be able to produce a list of which non-CoM items do not have bar codes, their owners, and their current locations.

Not that many Mezbians are likely to borrow things for CoM; if they do they will almost certainly do so from Home.

Print a new unique bar code. Attach it to the Item you want to track. Bring up the corresponding Item record in the Catalog. Tell the Catalog you want to associate a bar code with this Item. Scan the bar code.

Mostly at Home in big batches, but sometimes in other Situations, Mezbians decide where to put Items in certain Situations. In the case of most Items, their assigned locations will be the same for all Situations, because they will be inside container Items, and only the container Item will be moved from place to place in the different Situations. It should therefore be really easy for an Item to have the same assigned location in all Situations.

When a Mezbian decides where an Item should go in some Situation, e should update the assigned container for that Item in that Situation, and possibly apply physical markings indicating the Items assigned location. Most Mezbians will never do this, because the decisions will be made in group planning sessions where notes will be taken, and later entered, by one Mezbian.

To facilitate placing items, it should be possible to get a list of Items which have not been placed in a certain situation, and a list of Items which are expected to be inside a particular Container in a certain Situation.

Container maps are intended to help describe assigned locations of objects within larger containers (such as camp, or a structure, or a vehicle). Mostly they will be drawn up at Home, but to facilitate last minute changes to assigned locations, it should be possible for Mezbians on the playa to define new container maps (or better, edit old ones) which reflect where they actually put things.

Almost all Mezbians will use Items, almost always at Burning Man. Using an Item, for the purpose of the Catalog, consists of two simple steps:

• locate the Item
• optionally, move the Item

Locate

Typically, when looking for an Item, one would search for an Item using the Catalog, then check the locations the Catalog pointed to, then look elsewhere if it isn't there. To look up an Item, one must have some way to identify it to the Catalog:

• a keyword or two or
• a bar code
• a category

Search results from each of these methods should contain the item name, last sighting information, assigned container in the current situation, state, and category, and should link to individual Item records, which would include maps where applicable. The null query should result in a list of all Items in the Catalog.

Move

If a Mezbian plans to use an Item in a location other than its assigned one temporarily, e should do so and then return it, without updating the Catalog. If a Mezbian plans to use an Item in a location other than its assigned one for an extended, but temporary period of time, and others might be looking for it, e should enter a sighting for that Item at the location e plans to use it. If a Mezbian wants to change the assigned location of an Item, e should again decide where to keep it, updating the Catalog as e does so.

Lost Items

If a Mezbian goes hunting for an Item in the places described by the Catalog, but doesn't find it, e should try to contact other Mezbians, particularly the Mezbian listed in the "last seen by" field. Perhaps those Mezbians have some idea where it might be now. If a Mezbian finds the Item at this point, it would be appropriate to either return it to its assigned location, or to enter a sighting for the Item.

If instead of finding the Item, a Mezbian has seen it vanish forever (e.g. it fell off the tower and shattered), e should change its state to "gone forever".

If still, no one can find the Item, but no one has seen it vanish forever, a Mezbian should change the Item's state to "temporarily misplaced". If anyone sees an Item which was previously marked as "temporarily misplaced", e should enter a sighting and change its state back to "sitting there waiting".

One might want to return an Item to its assigned location for a particular Situation, or one might want to return an Item to its owner. Not many Mezbians are likely to do either of these things, but it would be nice to encourage those with the inclination by making it really easy.

Returning an Item to its Assigned Location

To aid in packing up/looking for lost items in general, the Catalog will generate the following reports:

• Items which haven't been seen since before a certain timestamp
• Items which are listed as "temporarily misplaced"
• Items which are supposed to be in a certain container in a certain Situation, either 1 or all levels down
• Items which are supposed to be in a certain container in a certain Situation, but haven't been seen since before a certain timestamp, again either 1 or all levels down

If a Mezbian finds an Item lying around somewhere, and it has a bar code, the Mezbian should be able to scan the bar code and have the Catalog describe where to put it back. If the Item has no bar code, or for whatever reason the Mezbian doesn't scan its bar code, the Mezbian should locate the Item in the Catalog as if e were going to use it, then put it back in its assigned location for the current Situation.

Items which are particularly likely to wander about should be flagged with their assigned location in some obvious way, directly on the Item, so that Mezbians don't need to use the Catalog at all to put away these Items.

A special case of returning Items to their assigned locations is that as part of packing, both at Home and at Burning Man, Mezbians will want to verify that a container holds everything it is supposed to hold. To do this, a Mezbian will print a list of everything which is supposed to be in a container, then go through that container entering a sighting for each Item e finds, and removing items which are not supposed to be in the container. Then the Mezbian can run another query which looks for Items which are supposed to be in that container but haven't been seen since before the beginning of this packing session, and hunt for the lost items (probably in the piles of items which were removed from other containers).

Another special case of returning Items to their assigned locations is that when packing at Burning Man, Mezbians will want to retrieve anything they have loaned to (or otherwise left in) another camp. Therefore, the Catalog should be able to print a list of items which were last seen outside some particular container (in this case, camp).

Returning an Item to its Owner

This kind of returning an Item will happen almost entirely at Home, probably all in a big batch after our return from the playa. To assist, the Catalog will be able to answer the following questions:

• which Items are owned by non-Mezbians, and where are they?
• which Items are owned by X (where X is a particular person), and where are they?