full posts
What I'm doing when I should rewrite my thesis
I changed the design of my blog a bit. I thought it was too cluttered and too full. So I looked around a bit and came up with this design. It's no major change, the basic structure is still the same. I found the round cornered boxes via Jill Walker. Her blog was the inspiration to get rid of the table design I used as well. Hope you like it, at least I do:)
Some days you have it all
Martin Roell came over to our place for a quick visit on friday, hopping of the train for a stay at our place for a night before joining his parents for a holiday in Friesland. Ton thought it was a good opportunity for us to go there too, so we dropped Martin off in Sneek and we drove to one of the lakes to enjoy the wheather and have a look at all the boats. Luckily the wheather was really nice and warm in Friesland despite the warnings of bad wheather coming in from the south.
When we drove back at the end of the afternoon the wheather started changing and we had some showers on our way home. When we got back, Ton and I had just enough time to walk into town for an icecream and back. At one point I looked back and this gigantic black sky was rushing towards the city, doing lots of damage in different places in the western part of Holland. The shapes of these clouds were something we hadn't seen before. We had a few minutes to take some pictures outside before it started to rain. We checked the wheather radar and we could see that it was just this one strip of rain and nothing else that was filling the sky. Fortunately for us the force of the storm and rain had already tempered when it got to our place, so no bad things happened here. A strange ending of the day after such a warm, sunny day at the lakeside.
Arranging ideas
Here's some food for thought from Amy Gahran: Arranging ideas: knowledgement in human terms. Haven't read it thoroughly, but looks interesting.
Where's the wifi?
You can work in the car, reflect on your notes taken during BlogTalk, write notes on BlogWalk. The only thing you can't do yet is publish it on your blog whilst driving. So when will we be able to connect to the internet from our cars?
Reflecting on BlogWalk 3.0
Driving back from Austria gives me the opportunity to do a little bit of writing in the car. I haven't had the chance to reflect on BlogWalk yet. Now's a good time to do that, before everything slides to the back of my head. I've been in the fortunate position to attend all BlogWalk meetings held sofar. That brings me in a position were I can compare the different meetings. Let me first say that BlogWalk 3 has been a wonderful meeting, a good opportunity to get to know people who also would attend BlogTalk beforehand. The downside of the meeting was that the group was too large, which led to not knowing everyones name by the end of the day (what did happen in the first two meetings). Nevertheless I had some really good conversations during the day. I was able to talk about my masterthesis (including Habermas) and it helped me in preparing for my presentation at BlogTalk, since I had to translate everything I've been writing and talking about into English within a week. Thanks to everybody who was willing to listen to me!
There is only one conversation that I can remember at the moment, with Gabriela and Therese. Many people I talked to in the past few days are so amazed with the open atmosphere among the bloggers. The bloggers meeting up at BlogWalk and BlogTalk all seem to have this open attitude towards eachother. What I questioned during the conversation with Gabriela and Therese was whether the bloggers that meet eachother in meetings such as BlogWalk have this positive voice, because that is the only way you can build networks and be sociable. That would mean that blogging in a negative voice doesn't result in the forming of networks through blogging. I'm not sure whether this is true, but it would be an interesting topic to dive into. Surely there must have been done research already in psychology and sociology regarding the way people bond together and the language that is used in this bonding.
In the end I've come to realize how good and deep the conversations were at the first BlogWalk meeting. It was a smaller group of people, the topic was more focused, maybe that ads up to the depth of the discussions. All in all I've enjoyed every meeting sofar. I wonder when I will join another BW meeting. Hope it will be soon!
Wandering around Vienna
The problem with Vienna is that it's the same everywhere. I really ejoy the atmosphere of the city, but there is to little variation between buildings. Everyone seems to live in huge appartment blocks, every building has many ornaments. I think I prefer a bit more variation.
Tomorow we will leave for Holland. On our way home Ton and I will drop of Sebastians jacket in Nuremberg (it's a long story). Although I had a really good time in Vienna I'm glad we'll be heading home. The stable environment of my own home will probably create more space in my head to reflect on BlogWalk and BlogTalk (and time to read the books I bought ;).
Some ideas from BT2.0
Yesterday was hell! After three days of intensive conversations (including BlogWalk 3) with so many people I was so exhausted that I hardly could do anything. My brains were shut off for the day, so there was absolutely no chance for me to blog anything. Yesterday evening we went to bed really early and this morning I woke up feeling a little bit more alive, but only just a little. Nevertheless I have some energy left to finally do a little bit of a summary and reflection on BlogTalk.
The first day of BlogTalk started with a keynote from Mark Bernstein. He stated that we should go beyond explaining why blogs matter, since we've already reached a critical mass of people who realize the importance of blogging. As I said at the beginning of my presentation I didn't agree with Mark. There still are so many people who don't even know that blogs exist and therefore can't know of the beautiful things blogging can do for a person. Many bloggers experience difficulties in explaining to their employees why blogging is a good thing to do and not a threat to the organization they work for.
Other things during the first day I found really interesting were the Scandinavian researchers on my own panel (nice touch, a complete female panel :). Thanks for the good presentations Stephanie, Therese and Lisbeth. I wasn't able to take notes during the panel (somehow I got nervous for presenting at an international conference for the first time in my live), but I'm definitely interested in your papers.
Interestingly enough Jorg Kantel somehow thinks of reading Habermas again. He sees a lot of parallels between my research on Habermas and his own vision of blogging. I wish him good luck with this light reading ;). I'm sorry to say I missed the beginning of Torill her keynote. Therefore it was a bit of gues what the outline of her story was, but it was clear to me that she really knows what is going on in the blogosphere, picking up the topics of interest (e.g. emergent behavior).
I recieved many compliments on my own presentation. It was the first time I had the chance to talk about my research on weblogs to people who really know what is going on in the blogosphere. I was a bit scared that somehow I got it all wrong and that nobody believes in my research. Fortunately I got so much positive feedback on my research that now I feel a bit more confident. All the conversations I had during the day and during dinner really helped me for the final revision of my thesis. Some things I should explain more (e.g. the difference between blogs and fora) and thanks to the need for preparing a presentation I have a clearer view on the red thread in my document (the most important thing missing according to my committee).
The second day of BlogTalk started with a keynote from Mena and Ben Trott, the co-founders of Six Apart, the company behind Moveable Type and TypePad. A nice observation from Mena that in the end she didn't want to be famous through blogging, but wanted to write for a small audience that really knows her. I think that really coincides with my own feeling of blogging. Not that I want to write for friends and family, but for a group of people that are interested in the same things as I am. Ben and Mena held a nice presentation, but it wasn't really a keynote presentation. They weren't opening up the discussion and that was probably the cause no questions were asked to them during the discussion.
One presentation that cought my attention at the second day was that of Lee Bryant. I talked to him after dinner on tuesday and already told him that I'm impressed with the huge project he has on his hands, introducing blogs to a whole network of organizations. I'm intrigued by this project and could only wish I could join such a project after finishing my masters. Thanks for the case-study Lee!
During the day it became harder to follow the presentations of the panellists. Some moments not only my notebook switched to stand-by, my brains did too every now and then. I did pay attention to Barbara Ganley and Tom de Bruyne though. They gave some really nice insights how to use weblogs in scholorly environments. Barbara noticed that her students (literature btw) took over the class and that one student said to her that actually they learned more from eachother than from the teacher. A nice case of emergent behavior.
Tom talked about the fun they had during the blogging and teaching. The class meeting reinforced the blogging and the blogging reinforced the class. Tom backed me up in my own ideas in multichanneling. Some things are better coordinated using a different communicationchannel, e.g. fora or mailinglists.
All in all it has been quit an experience. I've met so many interesting people, had so many interesting conversations. I can only thank everybody attending this event for making it such a fruitful place for good conversations. A special thanks to the organisation for creating surroundings in which good conversations can take place. Will there be a BT3.0? If so, I'll definitely be there!
Presenting at BlogTalk 2.0
So this afternoon I presented the preliminary results of my thesis. You can find the slides here. I think it went pretty well. Due to presenting in English I might have been a bit strong in my statements, not being nuanced enough. I can only hope people understood the main points. After my stay in Vienna I will have to rewrite my thesis and then I will publish the results in my blog. Hope you drop by in the upcoming weeks and read more about my research. It will probably be a startingpoint for more discussion ;)
The references I promised to publish:
- J.A.G.M. Van Dijk (1999), The Network Society: An Introduction to the Social Aspect of new media, Sage Publications Ltd.
- J. Habermas (1985), Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (T. McCarthy trans.), Beacon Press.
