Posts from — July 2003

AO Reflections.

Settling in after some very intense days at the Always On Innovation Summit.  It was a great experience, excellent networking and a different use of Social Software for events.  Socialtext provided an integrated video/chat/wiki conference support system. 

During the first day, wifi was frustratingly spotty, so the bulk of its use was from remote participants.  High quality video streaming allowed people to listen, the BackChat allowed people to interact and the wiki to annotate.  Unfortunately the lack of in-room connectivity led to less wiki collaboration and public blog posting right at the time when it usually engenders wider participation.

But the real dynamic took hold on the second day, wifi enabled, where it became part of the program.  The Remote Posse and the people Blogging Always On really had an impact.  The BackChat was particularly vibrant, with in-room and remote participants (from as far away as Tokyo and the Netherlands) exchanging commentary.  A big font version of the chat program was projected on to the big screen, the feedback loop was complete: 

• BackChat participants kept the discussion relatively high brow.  They fact checked, posed questions, had side discussions that were pertainent and in general participate without denegrating into vulgarities or
• Moderators fielded questions from the chat, particularly with the open source panel
• Panel members interjected requests to respond to things on the chat and in general were kept in check from being to commercial, not revealing bias or ducking questions.
• One member of a panel noticed that people were paying more attention to the BackChat screen than the panel itself.

The golden moment was at the end of the show, when I had them project JoiTV.  We caught Joi in his underwear and the heckler became the hecklee.  Joi waved, we all waved back.  Some folks told me that was when something clicked with them about how large the room really was.  And many of the remote posse enjoyed a richer participation experience than they have had before.

You have to hand it to Tony for having the vision to run with an untested mix of video with our conference system.  You also have to hand it to him for having the grace to extend blogging passes.  I hope he has set a precedent for other events.

A bit on some of the folks there.   Chris took great photos.  Scott posted beyond the limits of connectivity. Jason had his camera phone (took a nice snapshot of me, Pete & Adina).  Ev wore a blogger shirt.  Dave left shortly to do other things.  Adina kept it real.  Esther is community.   Ramana gets information flow.  Richard gets biology.  Zack was fully on.  Edward is still settling in.  Keith is into real-time people.  Eric, Larry & Sergey still don't have a blog but that's okay.  Dan is our hero.

 

Chat with Google Founders (photo by Chris Gulker)

And remote posse awards go to Greg, Ed, Kevin & Joi.

[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

Hmm, i wonder if they'd want to do this at Internet Research 4.0 this year, it looks like great fun.

The Revolution Will Be Bitmapped. Yesterday I posted an essay on the fact that the user experience of the Net is ripe for revolution, and proposed that we start telling the world that if they use any browser but Microsoft Internet Explorer, they will have a better browsing experience. A couple of people proposed graphics, here they are, along with an invitation for more…. [ongoing]

a revolutiona day keeps the doctor away, says this safari user

Cory points at How the Nerds Were Having A Perfectly Good Time Until The Businesspeople And Lawyers Showed Up And Ruined Everything, saying

Lisa Rein is slowly uploading her footage from last month's ILAW conference. She posted a real prize today: Jonathan Zittrain and Terry Fisher's talk: “Domain names – How the mess came about” or “How the Nerds Were Having A Perfectly Good Time Until The Businesspeople And Lawyers Showed Up And Ruined Everything.” Brilliant stuff.

[bOing bOing] [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

this is interesting stuff, it could easily be used in a course.

Depublishing: Editorial Policies for Blogs. Last November, I posted on Kairosnews a link to Dennis Jerz's Literacy Weblog post regarding Blood's blogging ethics. Pretty tame discussion then, but if you've been following the discussion about depublishing (see Ten Reasons Why) then you know why this is an issue worth discussing further (and are probably not surprised that Dave Winer is at the center of it: and he wonders why people don't trust him to have so much hold over the RSS standard?).

Anyway, Ten Reasons Why has written up an editorial blogging policy for his site. Seems like a good document for Kairosnews to develop (perhaps we could ask Greg Ritter for permission to work from his draft as a starting point?).

What do you think? [Kairosnews - A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy]

interesting, but policies are problematic, the good folk don't need them and the bad folk don't care, so i prefer to think in terms of guidelines

tax cuts for everyone. A University, far away. Tens of thousands of U.S. students will lose most or all of their financial aid. [MetaFilter]

nothing new here, those that do not vote, do not get benefits, and by voting i mean give 10000 minimum to the victors campaign.

And now, they'll be visiting all of you for reading this. FBI questions man for reading a critique of Fox News. Marc Shultz, a freelance Atlanta writer was reading a print out of this article in a coffee shop when another patron reading over his shoulder apparently found the content seditious enough to deserve a quick call to the Feds, who sent out two agents to check it out. [MetaFilter]

reading is not sedition, ever, get the government out of the libraries and bookstores, have they pay attention to real behavior, not assumed behavior.

the dog ate mother's toes. Dave Barry posts a letter in his weblog encouraging users to submit poems to poetry.com containing the phrase “the dog ate mother's toes” under the penname of Freemont. Hilarity Ensues. [MetaFilter]

this is great stuff

The Open Society Institute (OSI) has just released …. The Open Society Institute (OSI) has just released revised and updated versions of its two business planning guides for open-access journals. One guide is for launching new open-access journals (also in PDF), and the other is for converting conventional journals to open access (also in PDF). At the same time, OSI has produced a companion volume, Model Business Plan: A Supplemental Guide for Open Access Journal Developers & Publishers (also in PDF), which helps open-access journals develop a sustainable business plan. All three guides were written by Raym Crow and Howard Goldstein of the SPARC Consulting Group. Quoting SPARC's Rick Johnson from the press release: “These Guides answer a tremendous need in the scholarly community.” [Open Access News]

interesting stuff, i'm not really sure that it should be a business model.

World Internet Conference.

 ”M”

International Conference of World Internet Project 16th – 19th July 2003 at Oxford University. Social scientists representing 75 percent of the world's Internet users will be at the Oxford Internet Institute to compare Internet use and non-use on five continents. The participants are linked together in the World Internet Project (WIP: http://www.worldinternetproject.net/); each is involved in conducted representative national sample surveys in countries as diverse as China, Germany, Japan, Korea, Russia, Sweden and the United States. For more information please email Programmes Assistant (mailto:programs.assistant@oii.ox.ac.uk). Alas! I will be unable to attend.

[Wealth Bondage]

hmm, this should be good. i wish i was going.

Pffft to PDF.

PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption:

Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation.

I couldn't agree more.

[Electric Venom]

hmm, i think this is quite true… i find them irritating.