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Reflecting on BlogTalk Reloaded
The dust in my head settled a bit and it's time for me to actually reflect on what happened the last few days. First of all I had a good time, starting from meeting Sebastian, Anne, Jere and others Saturday during Barcamp, (lovely dinner and the last time during the week I had some decent veggies on my plate) and ending with the weirdest glass of wine and good conversations with Paolo, Monica, Matt, Thomas and Anne (again ;) ).
The BlogTalk conference was OK, but I've seen Ton being involved in figuring out the conference format and not much of the results of that discussion was implemented. A pity, and I feel disappointed for him. We started with an open formatted session, but lack of communication between Thomas, Jan and Ton left the session unfinished.
Most presenters didn't know about the format beforehand and apparantly some complained about the 10 minutes presentation, which made Thomas and Jan decide to stick with what they knew: presentations and Q+A..
To be frank, I think that a lot of people would have gotten more out of the conference if we would have continued the open formatted sessions. In the very first session of the day I picked up some interesting things during the conversations that would not have surfaced during Q+A..
During the two days of conference the format was completely confusing to me. There was no common understanding between the hosts during the presentations. So one presentor stuck to the initial 10 minutes, then the time was upped to 15 minutes and others took more time. Final disappointment was that our presentation was not directly followed by q+a but by the presentation on SIOC. Uncomparable stories and therefore the questions after both presentations were only focused on the last SIOC presentation.
I'm a person that likes to be engaged during an event such as BlogTalk. Disappointingly I didn't feel engaged this time, even though I was one of the presenters. To me the event was worthwhile for reconnecting with people I knew and the few new faces I added to my addres book.
I know that others, especially first timers, took a lot more from the conference than I did. I do want to thank Thomas and Jan for putting the thing together. In the end we wouldn't have met if they didn't make the effort.
Will there be another BlogTalk? I seriously doubt that. I think that at least the name should change (seeing that LesBlogs 3 will be about web 2.0 stuff I don't know why Loïc sticks to the name). To be attractive to the people that live and breathe social software we need to dig deeper than consuming presentations, half of which we've already heard somewhere. I know more people are digesting and contemplating a new way of connecting face-to-face. I know for sure that one day it will happen, even on a large scale.
Tags: blogtalk, blogtalkreloaded
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In Vienna
We just arrived at Pension Schoenbrunn and the wifi is overloaded already ;). Lovely being here since the weather is so nice. Good choice to fly in this weekend. No resting though, Ton wants to go to BarCamp so it's off to the station again. Can't wait to see some of our friends there and can't wait till BlogTalk starts on Monday!
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Catered office
I'd like to follow up on Ton's and Sebastian's takes on 'Home office workers unite'. I neither have an employer nor colleagues. I'm on my own in many ways, working from home most of the time, and that works fine for me, but every now and then I feel the need to get on my bike and set up office in the city center. The only thing that stops me from doing that right now is the right place (read: cafe). I'm looking for a place that attracts more people like me, either home office workers or self-employed, looking for the physical nearness of other people working / talking / doing. A place where I can come to whenever I feel the need, without having to make appointments with others.
My wish list for such a place:
- free wifi
- personnel that welcomes laptop users (instead of ignoring them as customers)
- (very) good coffee and tea
- comfortable seats (choice between couches and chairs)
- power plugs (so you don't loose me as a customer after appr. 2 hours)
- preferably serving lunch as well
I still haven't found this kind of place in Enschede. Especially the free wifi (the most important one for me) is nowhere to be found. Is there anyone who sees a business model in my wish list?
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Reboot 8 - digestion time.
Yesterday evening we arrived back home from Copenhagen. What a rollercoaster ride it has been these last five days. I guess I said something similar last year, after Reboot 7. Too badI didn't manage to do some live blogging this year. The internet connection (NOT the wifi) was a bit dodgy this time, but the people from Reboot were not to blame. So uploading was a pain and after a few hours into the conference I stopped trying. At least the backchannel was working most of the time (though it was very tame this year!)Another argument for not blogging during the event was the number of people around to have pleasant conversations with. The usual gang was there (Lee, Johnnie, James, Riccardo, Martin, Nico, Michael, Flemming, Thomas Burg, Trine-Maria (who am I forgetting?)) and new faces including all the girls I taped on video (more on that later) Peter Rukavina (missed him last year, was already asleep), Robert Paterson, Carsten Ohm, Dannie Jost, Oliver Gassner, Alper, Dan Dixon, Euan Semple, the people during dinner on the second day (did you see the bottle of wine we drank?) and so many others I shook hands with. And not to forget the lovely evening Ton and I spent with Jacob Boetter (although he's a guy that makes me feel like I've wasted so many years already ;-) ).
It's time now to digest all the stuff that I've taken in and hopefully I'll be doing that the coming week.
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Masterclass Social Software
Last Wednesday I was present at a Master class social software organised by the Digitale Universiteit. I've written a larger post about the event at my Dutch blog. I will write something about this master class in English soon, but for now I only have the energy to point to the Dutch piece. So if you're able to read Dutch, please head over to Skallagrigg. If your Dutch is not that good I can only ask you to be patient until my eye infection has gone and I can look at the screen for a longer period of time.
P.S.: Never mentioned in the literature, but having healthy eyes is definitely a prerequisite for blogging ;-)
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Dutch Business Blog Meeting
Yesterday I attended the second Dutch business blog meeting. Wonderful event, Marco did a great job organizing it. Lovely to meet Dutch blog enthousiasts (although the number of female participants was a bit disappointing, since I was the only woman in the room). No extensive blogging about the event from my side so far. It's too hot, my hay fever is at it's peak and I'm not feeling all that well. Just some quick quotes from the speakers:
Steffan Fellinger: "Authenticity is more powerful than commercial approach."
Neville Hobson: "The new watercooler: hosted blogservices."
Ton Zijlstra: "Knowledge management does not exist."
Reboot 7 - day 2
The second day of Reboot 7 arrived and we've already listened to two key notes from Cory Doctorow and Christian Lindholm. I'm still in the process of waking up. Yesterday was long, intensive, magnificent and exhausting. I takes enough effort listening to the speakers, so you'll have to wait for some notes.
Live at reboot - Johnnie Moore and James Cherkoff
Just attended the workshop from Johnnie and James on open source marketing. Excellent! No death by powerpoint! Interesting remarks:
Q: Lee Bryant - I don't want to be involved in conversations with many companies.
A: Johnnie Moore - It's a matter of choosing how open you want to be as a company. (THE PULSE) (See also what Charles Leadbeater said at CC about the continuum)
reboot 7.0 - Geek fest
I'm Sitting in the conference room for reboot and what a geek fest it is. Everyone seems to have an Apple. Hope to do some live blogging today. If you've been wondering where I was lately, I've been cut of my internet connection at home for a few days. Since my blog runs on our home server, Communigations was of the air as well. But now it's up and running again. More to come soon!!!
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!
Conference format
More and more I begin to understand that I've been spoiled with going to open space format BlogWalk meetings. I agree on everything Ton says about the Creative Capital Conference in A story of form and content. Johnnie Moore is for all I know the one that put Ton on the open space format for the BlogWalk sessions and he not only agrees with him on formatting rules for conferences, but caught himself in the act going to "exactly the kind of event [he] would avoid these days":
It's the people that show up at the same place at the same time that makes conferences worthwhile. So what would happen if as an organizer of a conference you would only state the topic you want to discuss beforehand? Wouldn't that be enough to gather the same people in the same room for conversations?
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!
Meeting Dutch bloggers
Last monday Ton and I joined the edubloggers dinner in Utrecht. To me this was the first time of meeting Dutch bloggers (now that I think of it it's the second time since two Dutch blogging students joined us in Umea). Anyway, it was nice to talk in Dutch about blogging for a change. Usually I meet in an international setting where English is required. Somehow my English blogging vocabulary is more developed than my Dutch, resulting in speaking 'Dunglish' often.
Now you may wonder why I'm meeting educational bloggers. First of all I started out studying Educational Design, Management & Media for one year before switching to Communication Studies. My goal was Communication Studies, but you needed a first-year exam to get into the program. Therefore I chose to do my first year in EDMM. I liked my first year a lot, but thought that focusing on education was a bit to narrow for me and stuck with my choice of doing Communication Studies. However I always felt connected to educational issues. That probably is the main reason for me to do this little experiment with a blog in the classroom. It connects my expertise on communication tools like weblogs with my affinity with education. Together with the start of a foundation regarding innovative education and research I thought it would be a good opportunity to meet with other people interested in new communication tools and involved in educational research. A very fruitful setting for good conversations on blogging and already I'm invited to write about my experiment involving blogs in the classroom for a magazine. Meeting f-t-f works out again!
The people that were there:
Pierre Gorissen (organised this event)
Sybilla Poortman
Gerard Bierens
Frank Benneker
Margreeth van den Bergh
Partick Klaassen
Sebastian Fuchs
Ton Zijlstra
and me of course
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!
Meeting Howard Rheingold (2)
This has been quite an experience. Flying over 2000 kilometres up north, just for meeting other bloggers in Umea, Sweden. Some last minute shopping at Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam) to prepare for expected coldness turned out to be very useful. I probably wouldn't have survived the wind on our first night up there without my newly bought winter hat. The weather turned out to be OK though, which resulted in a pleasant surprise: seeing the northern light (see the photograph in my photoblog). Anyway, now it's time to reflect a bit on the past few days.
The seminar of Howard Rheingold was the main reason for Stephanie Hendrick to invite us over to HumLab, Umea University. I think most people know who he is, but if you don't check out his personal website. I must say the seminar was not that interesting to me. As a blogger most of the things he told last thursday were already known to me, something in common with the other bloggers around I guess. One term Rheingold uses is very interesting: collective action. New communication technologies make it possible for people to connect to each other and communicate which can lead to group forming. An example he gave was the use of SMS in the Philippines to gather people in black clothes at a certain place to demonstrate. The thing we must keep in mind that these collective actions will not all be democratic and peaceful. Smartmobs can be riots as well!
During the seminar Rheingold talked about reputation building through peer-to-peer web pages, e.g. e-bay with its reputation building of sellers. A question that popped into my mind whether this peer-to-peer reputation building will improve overall quality of live. Linking this development to Habermas' ideal speech situation, acting truthfully is one of the most important things in human communication. If sellers on e-bay act untruthfully (by selling crap for large amount of money) that will show up on their record. In that respect it might be a good way to filter 'bad' people out of the system. But I can imagine that it could also be used to give bad reviews on competitors without actually buying stuff. I must honestly say I haven't bought anything through sites like e-bay so I have no eperience what actually happens on those sites. Living in a city with all stores in walking distance it's faster and easier for me to buy things in the traditional stores (OK, not cheaper, but at least I've never had any problems returning products with deficiencies).
The workshop the next morning with Howard Rheingold was supposed to be more interactive, but somehow there was only little interaction and already over before I even realized it (but maybe that's because it was interesting). A few interesting things that came about:
- Rheingold showed us how he starts his working day by skimming through blogs and other information resources. The title of blogpost is the most important factor in the decision of reading the post or not. This is a thing I never realized before, though I'm skimming through my RSS-feeds exactly in that manner. I didn't give titles that much thought up until now, but I certainly will in the future.
- Human beings are social beings that will communicate with others in order to socialize. New communication technologies support the need for socializing, but they will transform existing social networks
- Most technology is developed in terms of the developer and not in terms of the end user. During the introduction Howard mentioned that most blogging software is developed by users, e.g. to be able to publish easily on the internet. A huge research area lies within the user perspective of technology in my view. Too often they've been neglected.
All in all it was interesting to meet Howard Rheingold. I really need to read his books!
BlogWalk Notes
My blogwalk notes thusfar of this afternoon : http://blogwalk.interdependent.biz/wikka.php?wakka=NotesElmine
Meeting Howard Rheingold
Yesterday and today I'm in the fortunate position to hear Howard Rheingold speak and meet him personally at Humlab, Umea University. As a part of BlogWalk we've got a workshop with him, discussing all kinds of interesting things about the virtual world and connecting people through communication technologies. More to come today, including pictures.
Proposal BT2.0 accepted
I'm getting a bit nervous. Last night Thomas Burg announced the names of the people who's proposals are accepted for BlogTalk 2.0. And my name's in the list too! So that means that I'll have to work very hard in the next months to make a really great article out of it (not that I had other plans ;).
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!
Proposal BlogTalk 2.0
As promised I've now put my proposal for BlogTalk 2.0 online. While dropping Thomas Burg (the man behind BlogTalk) of at the railway station last friday after BlogWalk, he promised me that he will personally let me know whether my proposal will be accepted or not. I can't wait for his reaction ;-)
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.
