Affiliations

Blog: Life With Alacrity
Alacrity Management Corporation
Alacrity Ventures
Skotos Tech

Bio for Publication

Entrepreneur, Advisor & Technologist

Brief Bio: Christopher Allen is an entrepreneur, advisor and technologist and has been working in the area of social software and online trust for over 26 years. He founded Consensus Development in 1988 as a groupware engineering firm; Consensus later went on to develop the SSL standard with Netscape Communications, a security standard which is now at the heart of all secure commerce on the World Wide Web. He later founded Skotos Tech in 1999, an online game channel centered on creating online communities. More recently, Allen consults for social software companies such as SocialText, Opinity, and various other startups, and speaks on the topic of collaboration, trust, privacy and security at various conferences. Since 2003 Allen has been sharing his experience by writing in a blog Life With Alacrity, where he covers a variety of topics including entrepreneuring, collaboration, groupware, social software, online communities, facilitation, wiki, internet security, trust, cryptography, privacy, interface design, internet media, internet tools, and other topics that he's passionate about.

Popular Articles by Christopher Allen:

Some of his most popular articles have been: Tracing the Evolution of Social Software, Four Kinds of Privacy, Intimacy Gradient and Other Lessons from Architecture, Progressive Trust, On Being an Angel, a series of articles on the Dunbar Number, and a recent series of articles on types of Collective Choice.

Christopher has a proven record founding, growing, managing, and selling technology companies, and is available for speaking engagements or as an advisor, consultant, interim manager or executive for a visionary technology company. If you want more information about Christopher's background or are interested in contacting him please use his LinkedIn Profile.

Interests: groupware, collaboration, consensus, security, cryptography, SSL, TLS, IETF, social software, blogging, internet, architecture, interface, design, programming, technology, social games, online games, role-playing games, books, movies, hand-drumming

Contact Information

Email: ChristopherA@AlacrityManagement.com
Blog: Life With Alacrity
Work phone: 510-649-4030

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Blog reactions to http://www.LifeWithAlacrity.com/
- David Galbraith’s Blog
  Bike snob NYC Blue Collar Scientist BofG Clusterflock Cynical C Entropy Bound Epigenetics News Free University Good Math, Bad Math Greg Laden’s Blog Improbable Research Information Processing Lebbeus Woods Life With Alacrity
- "What is important about weak ties is that studies show (pdf) that opportunities and knowledge flow..."
  “What is important about weak ties is that studies show (pdf) that opportunities and knowledge flow to you much more through weak ties than through the more insular strong ties of your trust circle.” - Life With Alacrity: Community by the Numbers, Part II: Personal Circles
- links for 2008-11-26
  Community by the Numbers, Part II: Personal Circles
- Ideal Size of an Online Community
  The Tipping Point. Robin Dunbar, a British evolutionary biologist, looked at the tribe size of non-human primates and estimated that humans could maintain stable social relationships with approximately 150 people. This number has been twisted
- Castle Marrach Essay
  Chris Allen
- On complex opinions
  clear criteria for different ratings, a desire to influence the displayed score, shameless promotion, spite, and so on. Whatever the reason, the end result is that many rating systems are essentially a thumbs-up, thumbs-down proposition and often give misleading information. Fortunately, the lack of sophistication doesn’t carry over from quantitative ratings to text-based reviews. From what we’ve seen in the distribution of ratings, we might expect text-based reviews similarly to espouse straightforward points of
- Record as I Am
  sessions with existing contacts, rather than those within the Yuuguu client. Coupled with the earlier launch of a Flash-based viewer, this helps to broaden the usefulness of the service as its reach extends beyond previous technical barriers. Life With Alacrity: Collective Choice: Rating Systemsin depth look at the strengths/weaknesses of various online rating approaches. The DCenters: On the Houston Louis Crayton Incident (A DC United Blog)Dynamo President Oliver Luck has not tried to play some silly PR game to save face. He manned up and
- References - Personal Publishing Environments
  tinyurl.com/6gyzgdAllen, Bob (1998): "100 Years of Magnetic Recording", AMPS URL: www.amps.net/newsletters/issue27/27_poulsen.htm Allen, Christopher (2004): "The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes" URL: www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.htmlAllern, Sigurd (1999): "Fortsatt et «topptungt» kildeutvalg", Pressens verdier, stemmer selvbildet?, Intitutt for journalistikk URL: www.ij.no/publikasjoner/pressens_verdier/filer/alt.pdfAMLA : "Media Literacy", Alliance for a Media Literate America
- Group Size and Startup Dynamics
  insightful post on group size and dynamics. He specifically looks at size thresholds that act as breakpoints beyond which groups generally have to behave very differently than when they were smaller. This view of group size dynamics has a lot of potential
- Fumbled Mumblings
  Community by the Numbers, Part One: Group Thresholds I Think I am Voting for Obama Think Again Reverse auctions Couldn't The Taxpayer Make Money From the Bailout?