The official page for the X-Ray Jam is now online! Check it out, invite your friends, and join us on June 9 to dig into how software works.

The premise of the X-Ray Jam is to point an X-ray at software and see how it works "on the inside". It's a riff on the Visibility topic from previous years and a refinement of what made that topic interesting.

See, the original concept of "visibility" was not about "visualization"—the point was to make visible the invisible workings of the computer. To "visibilize" it, not necessarily "visualize" it. Obviously I love what the community chose to submit for those jams, but they admittedly did not stick to that topic very well. Even my own submission to the first Visibility Jam was a tool for automatically tracing a network, not really a tool to "make the packets visible" or whatever.

We were also looking back on last year's Learning Jam and trying to decide what to do with it. We liked the concept, and the community responded well to the opportunity to learn and share knowledge. But the format was weird (two weekends?) and three jams was a bit overwhelming even with the earlier start.

But the word "X-ray" perfectly captures the best parts of each. The best parts of "visibility" were the tools people built to explore data and understand their programs. The best parts of "learning" were the write-ups exploring whatever interested them. They complement each other well and it seems fitting to combine them into one theme.

I also think that X-Ray and Wheel Reinvention are perfect for each other too. If we want to challenge norms in the software industry, we have to build new software, but to build meaningfully different software, we have to build on meaningfully different foundations. The X-Ray Jam provides an opportunity for us as a community to branch out, deepen our understanding, and learn how things work at a lower level. The Wheel Reinvention Jam allows us to put that knowledge into practice.

It reminds me of the double-diamond design process, which I first read about in The Design of Everyday Things (great book!), and which I see applications for everywhere I look. Designing anything new requires divergence and convergence—fail to diverge, and you never leave the status quo; fail to converge and all you know is trivia. Repeating this process is how we achieve something better.

Anyway, I look forward to jamming with you all in June!

-Ben