I plan to pay a lot of attention to this “distributed activism” panel since I have to lead a similar session next week!
Continue reading “Network centricity”
Category: Tech
community application of technology for public benefit
Dan
Talking about those stupid phones with cameras, so I had to use mine…
Thinking good thoughts
I enjoyed eating lunch with some of the brilliant minds of Beaconfire Consulting. I geeked out with Tim of fiercefamilies.org who also reminded me of CSS Zen Garden, which is an excellent site demonstrating the power and beauty of style sheets.
Need a makover?
I went to a session about “persuasive storytelling: sharpening your message.” It sounded interesting, but it turned out to be about writing proposals to foundations. Six of us jumped up and left when we hard it was about fundraising. Now I’m watching an “extreme website makeover.”
Training on training
I’m in a session on how to do effective trainings now. They started by showing how NOT to do it, which was pretty funny.
New word for the day: “androgogy” = adult learning.
Continue reading “Training on training”
Mena speaks
- Mena Trott started her keynote with apologies for her presentation. I hope this just self deprecation and not a sign of things to come.
- She shared some amusing examples of bloggers helping who are not that much in need of help: save karyn, the star wars kids.
- Blogs are sites that:
– have chronology
– are frequently updated
– archive content
– media rich (photos etc.)
– are easy to use & maintain
– updatable via web, clients, mobile
– easy to parse, read, and follow– are maintained by inexpensive tools
* capture personal voice
Who else is blogging NTC?
I have added a page on the NTC wiki for anyone who is blogging the conference to add themselves.
Maybe next year we’ll get our act together and have an RSS feed.
Fun @ the Science Fair
I’m already having a great time at the NTC and it has barely started. The vendor exhibit, they call it the “Science Fair,” was much bigger and more interesting than I had expected. I met some nice people and got some good schwag. I met the director of the Public Interest Registry, they are responsible for policy oversight of all .ORG domain names!
Continue reading “Fun @ the Science Fair”
I’ve got class
Today I taught a class on blogging to grad students in Comm. 144: Communication & Information Technologies at UNC. Here are my rough notes from the discussion.
what makes a blog? how is it different than other web pages?
- first-person voice
blogs increasingly have more credibility than the MSM because they are more authentic and believeable. - community dialogue
either through comments on the blog, or discussion between blogs - archive & permalinks
archives by date and sometimes by category or by author as well. permalinks allow others to refer directly to a specific post, encourages inter-blog dialog. - database back-end
this may be the least important, but is essential to emerging tools like aggregators that use syndicated content
history of blogging
- personal publishing in mid-90s. Justin Hall’s homepage
- blog software started in the late 90s
- mostly personal at first:
1. personal journaling
2. geeks geeking out - growing in popularity around 00/01. exploring new uses like photos, family/social updates, specialty topics.
- Dean campaign in 03 -> explosion in popularity especially in politics.
- now: growing role as media and government watchdogs. MSM losing credibility.
current uses and future potential
- journalists vs. bloggers (where does “jeff gannon” fit in?)
- journalists AS bloggers, see Greensboro News & record
- blogging integrated with other social tools like friendster (which is apparently like the face book, news to me!)
- moblogs, photo blogs
- syndicated feeds (RSS and atom)
does it matter?
- bloggers are influential (Pew study, IPDI report [pdf], social capital)
- the long tail, memes
Values
A number of people here have been saying that decentrized networks (a.k.a. bottom-out, network-centric, etc.) are inherently progressive. But those who make the tools claim they’re value-neutral.
The right wing has made great use of grassroots. Look at churches, or
the school-board takeovers of the 90’s. I hope these geeks don’t think
they’re making social change just because they’re making tools.
Bill says he doesn’t care who uses his tool. Would he do business with the Christian Coalition? I hope not.