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BlogWalk 11: Freedom??
Freedom was for me one of the key terms coined during the session. Freedom to follow your passion. During the day the idea of being a freelancer was a bit romanticized. I feel the need to de-romanticize being freelancer a bit.
At one point in time I decided not to work for an employer, because I could feel nothing but negative energy reading job descriptions in my field of expertise. Becoming independent created a lot of intellectual freedom, but it limits the freedom in other areas, travel for instance. Being in the starting phase of my own company, I don't have money to spend on trips for fun. Even with the steady income of my husband, we have to restrict the money we can spend on ourselves. Freedom has a price attached to it. I can only afford not to be paid through pay checks because my husband earns enough to provide the two of us with food and shelter (ok, and a little bit more than that, I mustn't complain ;-) ).
I do believe some people who freelance are being exploited. Seeing some of the tariffs some freelance journalists receive for their work, makes me wonder how they can afford to make a living. It might have something to do with abundance of journalists in The Netherlands, but I think that there is also a group that is not really aware of their own value and not good at negotiating with clients.
You can also ask the question whether all freelancers are consciously independent? For some it might be they're forced to take freelance contracts, because nobody wants to hire them otherwise, or because they're fired and passed a certain age. Are those people free? I guess some of them can make something good happen from a negative experience, and some of them have to work for any money people are willing to pay for their services.
Like everything else in life, the choices you make have consequences. All humans compromise at points and choose the options that they feel most comfortable with in pursuit of happiness. I chose my path, which at times drives me nuts just the way a 'normal' job would drive me crazy. I made a choice within practical limits. As soon as this path doesn't make sense anymore (hey, life is full of uncertainties) I will choose another one. That's why I made the remark in the afternoon that if I were given a million Euros tomorrow, I quit what I'm doing. Right now I'm figuring out a way to market myself/make money by fitting my knowledge and experience into a mold that others can understand and are willing to pay for. Having a million would make the path of figuring out how to earn my own living superfluous. At the same time a certain amount of money creates space for more (intellectual) freedom which will spark new ideas and create new paths into the future.
tags: blogwalkeleven, blogwalkamsterdam, blogwalk.
Blogwalk 11 - Amsterdam
This morning I went through the blogs of the participants of Blogwalk, next Friday. Interesting list of people. Some I know very well, some I know by name (or reputation :-) )and others are new to me. Exciting!
Really looking forward to the event. It's been quite a while since the last one I attended. Good to notice that it's a nice cultural mix as well in contrast to the one in Mechelen.
The BlogWalk train continues - Civic Journalism
And the BlogWalk train has come to Mechelen. Topic: civic journalism. First time a BlogWalk meeting was held in my native tongue (although there was one non-Dutch speaker called Brice with whom I unfortunately didn't talk). Again a day full of interesting conversations, however the discussions were all over the place, not focusing on the topic. I haven't learned new insights in the topic and no answers to the basic questions I have: Why is this an interesting topic? Why is this an issue? Are bloggers the right people to discuss this topic with?
Maybe the lack of answers had to do with the group that was attending. Previous BlogWalk meetings I had a clear idea beforehand of the ideas and opinions on the subject of the others attending. This time it was harder to prepare since I didn't know most of the Belgium guests, and their blogs (if they had one) were mostly personal, without professional focus. And there was no get together diner the night before. Therefore it took time to get to know the other participants first before we could get the discussion going. Besides the time to get to know each other I got the impression that the topic could be interesting, but there was a lack of good basic questions that were being asked. We didn't focus on terminology and didn't lay out the field so we had a clear understanding what we were talking about. Or is the topic simply too big (or too small!) to handle?
Although the discussions might not have lifted my spirit, it was very nice to meet new people and reinforce existing contacts. Yesterday, I learned about the subtle differences between the Dutch and the Flemish. And had lovely meals and beers in the cute town of Mechelen. Next stop: Innsbruck.
BlogWalk 7 - preparation
Ton and I are right now in Mechelen, in preparation for the next BlogWalk meeting. Am looking forward to meeting new people and reinforcing existing contacts. Anyway, the local brewery is excellent and we're staying at Hotel Carolus, tucked in by the brewer ('slapen onder de wol bij de brouwer'), with a wifi connection (although unstable). More to come in the coming days, so stay tuned!
Meeting in Traveler
We just had our first virtual BlogWalk meeting in Traveler, a digital space. It was way too short (only one hour) to come to a real discussion, though it was good fun. One really gets a feeling of presence of the other, more than through using the telephone (or Skype). That also makes it harder to multitask through the proces. It was difficult to make notes in the wiki and try and join the conversation at the same time. As soon as I leave the screen of Traveler, my avatar's eyes are closed so people can see I'm doing something else. That doesn't feel very comfortable. Some of us didn't try the space out beforehand so it took some time for people to get used to it, but it amazed me that it was not that hard to have conversations with six people regarding server delays. Sometimes people start talking at the same time, but we already knew eachother from the 'real' meeting so that didn't feel rude or uncomfortable. Great to experiment with and do more in the future!
BlogWalk Five
Since we were joining the workshop from Howard Rheingold, we only had an afternoon of discussion in a BlogWalk session. Since there were only eight participants it wasn't necessary to split into groups and do an open space session. This time we discussed all together on mobile blogging. The notes I've taken pretty much sums up what we've been discussing. I added the last pointers since last time I blogged them from Umea. Although we were with so few I think we did some really good work on unraveling the term mobile blogging. We came up with several lists for motivations for mobile blogging, requirements for moblogging and the tools we need to be able to moblog. The list with tools isn't completed yet, but we're planning on discussing that a little further in the virtual world. Stephanie came up with a great idea to meet up in Traveler, an on line virtual space in which you can talk to each other via voice using a 3D environment and avatars. We're trying to meet with the same group as during BlogWalk and see whether it's a good way to virtually communicate in a group and be able to pick up where we left in the face-to-face meeting. I installed the program yesterday and you need only half an hour to get used to it and get comfortable with the environment. A very interesting experiment I think!
To me it was very worthwhile to come all the way to Umea. Meeting Rheingold was very interesting, I enjoyed the afternoon BlogWalk session, I loved the clean smell of winter and seeing a tiny bit of Swedish culture. A big thanks for Stephanie for letting us stay at her place and for getting us up there!
BlogWalk Notes
My blogwalk notes thusfar of this afternoon : http://blogwalk.interdependent.biz/wikka.php?wakka=NotesElmine
BlogWalk 2.0
Finally a bit of blogging after quit a while of silence. Last week I joined the BlogWalk 2.0 meeting at Nuremberg. Leaving on thursday and coming back on sunday, it were four days of intense conversations. I really enjoyed meeting new people. Since there were many Germans around, some people I talked with even heard of Habermas (a German philosopher) before. I'm not sure whether I picked up much ideas from the discussions on the topic of this meeting, but I certainly had the opportunity to talk about and explain my research project on weblogs during the day (thanks to Jan for his patience in hearing me speak about Habermas during our walk :). It really helped to sharpen my thoughts!
Special thanks to Sebastian for hosting this event (and to his parents for providing Ton and me with excellent 'B&B'). Hope to meet y'all in Vienna again! (check out topicexchange for more voices on BW 2.0)
Observations on BlogWalk1.0
Being the last guest in Enschede, Martin has left this morning and that means that finally our BlogWalk meeting is over.
There are a couple of things that I've noticed during the last four days. First of all it is interesting to see that people who (mostly) know each other only through their weblogs are very capable of having really interesting discussions in real life. Through reading eachothers weblogs there seems to be a certain shared set of values and common use of terminology which makes it relatively easy to discuss certain topics in depth within minutes.
Secondly, to reach such in-depth discussions you need to have face-to-face contacts. The interaction through weblogs is relatively slow, because of the time and space distance you have to bridge. Therefore meeting with webloggers face-to-face really strengthens the bonding between people (which is not very surprising) . Meeting f-t-f with people means that you have a clearer understanding of the context of a person (also read Lilia's reflection on this). Not only the physical aspects of someone such as the way someone walks and talks, but also the things about one's personal life and interests are very important to be able to understand the things people write on the internet (and shows that you can have clear misconceptions about a person, e.g. when age is considered :-). That means that it would be highly adviseable to all people involved in the blogospere to try and organize meetings every now and then (in a relatively small setting), just to be able to understand more about eachother and have real intens discussions.
Personally, I'm motivated to get more involved with KM. The things that were being discussed last friday really appealed to me. Thinking about how organizations could (and maybe should) use the opportunities that e.g. weblogging offer for knowledgesharing. Another thing I'm highly interested in is personal webpublishing and the initiative for all kinds of action starting with the individual: I write about my own interests. Making those interests publicly means that I create opportunities for myself. I can be reflective on my own work and other people can connect to me through those interests. That means that any contact with other people evolving around my weblog is initiated by myself and therefore I've got the feeling that those contacts are more truthfull. Being truthfull is something that is missing on all kind of places in our society, especially within organizational settings, and maybe the use of weblogs as a tool for personal webpublishing can bring back a little bit more truthfullness in our lives, regardless of the opportunities the internet creates of being untruthfull in every aspect. However, regular meetings between bloggers can easily overcome problems whith 'virtual identities'.
Conclusion of all this? We really need another BlogWalk meeting!
The perfect guests
 | Just hook 'em up to your broadband connection and you won't even notice that you're having guests at your house. The internet is all the food they need :-)) (except for a little breakfast maybe). |
BlogWalk 1.0: aftermath
I'm not quite recovered yet from the overwhelming experience of meeting so many new people and having very intense discussions with them about weblogs and KM at BlogWalk. It was really nice to meet bloggers in the flesh and being able to interact with them more than it would be possible through blogging or other forms of mediated communication. I was the youngest participant (I knew I would be beforehand) and therefore I was not quite sure whether I was able to contribute much to the discussions going around. It turned out that I'm more 'knowledgeable' than I thought I was. Not that I've got much practical experience in the workingfield, but my education at least brought me a vision about organisations and how they should work. Yesterday for me was very much about listening to people with far more experience than me, asking them questions about their vision and comparing that with my own ideas.
Meeting with Aldo de Moor, a future blogger :-), was very interesting to me because he's more involved whith Habermas' theory in regard to collaborative working on the internet. He will try to introduce me to someone at his university (I've forgotten the name) who is very knowledgeable on Habermas. Aldo told me that this person is looking for someone who would take up a PhD position in case his request for funding is accepted. A year ago I already had in mind to go on in the scientific world, but during the year I gave up hope since there is so little money available for research nowadays (it seems to me that universities have to fund all research with external money). Maybe a glimpse of light in the darkness of not knowing where I will be after I've finished my masters (though I've little hope of success). The thing that helped me most was that Aldo thought my masterthesis was very interesting and that was just the thing I needed to hear. To me it was a very succesfull meeting.
If you want to read more about BlogWalk, surf to the Topic Exchange. There are pictures around too at Andy's and Ton's.
