Mathemagenic: Mathemagenic

13:51 11/06/2004 Mathemagenic: Mathemagenic

Mathemagenic
...giving birth to learning...

Mathemagenic

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

PhD crisis...

I know it's coming... I know I'll get through... Still feels scary...

It's about loosing focus and finding it again. Not really loosing, but realising that my current scope is too wide and that I have to find a way to narrow it down.

To be more specific it's about finding out what shape my personal KM model should have:

who needs it: so far I was talking about contribution to the theory (which of course I need anyway), but I'm realising that my main driving force is about providing practitioners with a framework for thinking about knowledge work, their own or others', to be used to identify directions for change or technology fit

how deep/detailed it should be: how far should I go into describing specific activities and their relations? how do I know that I'm 'there' and the model is good enough to stop

what specific questions should I asked in my weblog studies to be able to integrate the results into the model

And - something else - if you are native English speaker and have time this Friday you can help me a lot by reviewing a paper I'm writing right now. It's an improved version of Discovering the iceberg of knowledge work: A weblog case... I was planning to take more time finishing it, but I just found out about paper submission deadline too good to miss, so time is short (as usual :)

So, in case you are ready to help and don't know how to contact me: email or Skype

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Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Blog networking, blogwalking and being a boundary subject

Just a few semi-related things:

1. For my thinking on weblogs in relation building (re: one-way relations and online/offline differences): links to AOIR stories about meeting other bloggers by Jill Walker, Torill Mortensen, Anders Fagerjord and Tracy Kennedy. It's a nice reading if you want to have a pause with a smile :)

I managed to talk to many others from AOIR 5.0 bloggers list, but my personal fun stories include:

turning participant badge to see if someone I suspected to be Alex Halavais was him,
discovering Axel Bruns because someone next to me was heavily typing on Tablet PC,
jumping around impatiently before I could say to Jill Walker that I was "Lilia from Mathemagenic",
chasing Eugene Gorny and Lois Ann Scheidt as I knew they were there, wanted to talk, but had no idea how to find them.

But to be fair I enjoyed most the moment when Alex said that my weblog was more serious than me :)

2. BlogWalk/AOIR intro experinces: weblog title may say more than your real name...

3. An observation: while on this trip I met two groups of bloggers (BlogWalk crowd and AOIR bloggers) that have some interconnections within they seem not to be connected. I experienced two different sets of references to blogging experiences and other bloggers... Doesn't mean that they do not have anything in common (they do, as bringing Alex Halavais and Matt Mower for a dinner shows ;), just seem to live in different parts of the blogosphere.

And, as I belong to both groups I could proudly call myself a boundary subject, which is a living version of boundary object :)

4. Of course, weblogs are good for relation building, but f2f is so much fun... What could be better than sharing food and BlogWalking around London? For those interested (before the official announcement ;) - next guided tour is November 11-12 in Umea, Sweden.

This post also appears on channels BlogWalk and AOIR

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More on: blog communities blog networking community straddling

Time in blogging: writers time and readers time

This is the second piece on time in blogging and it's about time in reading weblogs (you may want to read the first one - Time in blogging: catching a moment to write).

To start with: a piece from our paper on distributed apprenticeship

Next to the real-time interaction and learning that weblog networks can facilitate, they have an interesting potential as a mean to "preserve" authentic experiences over time, so future generations of employees can learn from them. While real-time reading of a weblog seems to provide a good view of blogger practices illustrated with unfolding stories, it is not clear if these effects would persist while reading a weblog written several years (or even months) ago.

This question came back during Jill's talk on distributed narratives and made me thinking about (at least) two dimensions of time.

First, there is a writer's time: weblogs stories often do not come as one piece, but instead emerge as a results of narrating personal life, thinking, bits and pieces of conversation with self. Of course, you can make it more complex and add other dimensions of Jill's distributed narratives, distributed space and authorship, and then end up with conversations with others and blogosphere stories. In any of these cases writing is distributed over time.

Second, I'd think of a reader's time: time of reading a story distributed over time (by writers). Reader's time could be distributed and (almost) synchronous with writer's time: for example, me reading Jill's posts over months, almost as soon as she writes them, or following a weblog conversation as it is unfolds. But it's not necessary: I could go to the archives and read everything at once or (given tools that we don't have) go through a weblog conversation a few months after it finished, collapsing writers' time at a moment of reading, so it's not that distributed any more.

So, to be more specific, this post is about readers' time, distributed/synchronous or collapsed. I woke up with it today, thinking about differences between those two. So far I can think about two: gradual learning and participation.

It's not a secret that learning takes time, but in many cases learning also requires time distributed over time. For example, one week of intensive training in a gym wouldn't bring you the same results as an hour every other day for a year. I guess there are many other cases where you need gradual learning, so your brain or body has time in between to absorb and adjust.

Participation is another difference. Think of watching news vs. watching a documentary. Documentary is about history that you can't change (of course you can, but it's another story :), while news are about something that happens now, so it makes much more sense to do something about it. Or - as news is not an "actionable" example for many - there is a difference between watching your child putting metal in a microwave and finding it out (here) a few years later.

Coming back to weblogs. Regular reading of a weblog (distributed/synchronous time) is about gradual learning and opportunities for participation (that's why some people so addicted to their RSS readers :)

Of course, I can go on writing about implications it has for conversations, relation building and weblog research, but probably I have to take time to think of it making my writer's time distributed :)

This post also appears on channels weblog research and AOIR

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More on: AOIR blog reading blog research blog writing blogging conversations

Monday, September 27, 2004

Time in blogging: catching a moment to write

There is at least one nice effect of not being able to blog a conference: over time bits and pieces start to merge revealing underlying themes and turning reporting into reflecting.

This time it's about time. Somehow different things get together: BlogWalk discussion on a need for time to blog before getting new ideas, AOIR session on time and responsiveness, Jill's talk about time as one dimension of distributed narratives, time of not being able to blog, time to process blog post piling up in my news aggregator...

I guess I'll do a couple of posts. This one is about time in writing a weblog (see also Time in blogging: writers time and readers time).

Alex Halavais on not blogging (and go there to read the rest and to see new t-shirt of Professor Walker :)

During one of the sessions on the last day of the conference, Nancy Baym, president of AIR, suggested that someone was going to set up a web page with postings related to the conference. This followed her request at one of the keynotes that people write up their notes and post them to the AIR-L list. I noted that Lilia had already set up a Topic Exchange channel to collect bloggers' thoughts. At the end of the conference, I ran into Nancy again at Falmer Station. She noted that most of the posts so far were just complaining about the lack of access. "Don't worry," I said, "when people get back to somewhere with access they'll post." As I watched her cross over to the other platform, I thought: what a stupid thing to say.

When people get back to wherever they are going, chances are good that their minds will have switched gears and they will have more current things to post about. I am sitting on notes not only about AIR (which I will post since they are required reading for a class I'm teaching), but on notes from a conference on Informatics a week earlier. Blogging, as a practice, tends for many people to be off the cuff, and the values of timeliness that apply to journalists everywhere apply even moreso to bloggers; we operate on a 30 minute news cycle. I think it's fair to assume that under those conditions, most people won't post-post the conference.

Thinking about my own experiences I guess Alex is right: time is crucial. Being able to blog real-time (even almost real-time: no wifi, but connection during breaks) changes my motivation to write, adding a flavour of instant gratification of "serving the world" with current news that makes me writing a bit more, a bit better and investing in finishing posts.

It's different when I can't post. I still make notes, but do not spend time making them into something more or less finished, they pile up, I hope to work them out later, but it doesn't happen often. I guess there are two reasons:

When "instant gratification" is not there it's about discipline it takes to finish notes (of course if there are no other "drivers" as Alex' example of his blog posts as required reading for a class).
It's also about making an effort of delaying new things that come and wait for your attention. Like now, I feel like finishing and posting my notes from AOIR, but there are other things to do, so I'll be lucky if I manage to write an overview of most important things (fingers crossed: if it doesn't happen within next few days the time is lost).

There is another aspect of being able to blog. For me blogging is as much about releasing ideas from my brain as about reporting interesting news to others. I blog bits and pieces of ideas to get rid of them on the path to what I want/need/have to do in the moment.

For example, now I really want to work on a paper on personal KM, but I have all these ideas about time, weblog research and corporate blogging on the way. I don't want to lose them and I can't switch to something else when they are still on my mental radar (so much that I woke up with ideas for blog posts :), so I'm blogging instead of working on the paper. In this case blogging is pretty much similar to filing things into 43 folders (see also: Getting Things Done) so they get out of your way :)

This post also appears on channels BlogWalk and AOIR

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More on: AOIR blog writing BlogWalk time

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Invisible work

I'm on a flight back from London and finally I'm able to switch from intensive conversations to thinking and writing.

It was a good trip with a blend of fun and work that I like so much. However I had an underlying flavour of guilt building up. It's something to do with invisible work as Suw labelled it.

Talking about blogging at last BlogWalk we went into discussion of how "not serious" blogging and especially reading weblogs looks from outside, an attitude I encounter pretty often – "you are probably not that busy if you find time to blog".

Sure it doesn't look like work – browsing through a bunch of websites that doesn't look work-related and writing informal posts. Even when it is an important part of my work – a way to watch trends, to find references, to test my own ideas with a community of experts that you would probably pay to get into – even then it doesn't look serious for an outsider.

I guess it's something to do with expectations. For those who have work-life balance work is something you do in the office, sitting on your desk with serious face (even if you are actually checking for movies to go to tonight ;). Or, even better, work is about meetings that hijack you schedule, so you have to run around for the whole day. Even a coffee-table discussion looks good – everyone knows that a bit of socialisation with colleagues helps at work. Somehow all visible activities look more serious and more like work.

Having a work-life balance implies that you don't bring work home – evenings and weekends are protected and only emergency deadlines can break through. It also means having fun at courses and conferences – a way to get out of usual environment and learn new things without a pressure of deadlines...

So, here I am coming back after 10 days of travelling with that "guilt flavour" that comes not from feeling that I did something wrong, but from thinking that from outside it looks like I had fun instead of working in the office. Feels funny to be guided so much by my imagination of expectations of others, but at the end we are social animals, aren't we?

I know that most of work I do during travels is invisible. Like this time. Comments on my last paper over dinners that I probably wouldn't get by email, a day at BlogWalk that left me more exorsted as any day in the office would, 5 days of AOIR with sessions that saved me time sifting through the web in search of people, papers and ideas, meetings with London-based bloggers that gave away secrets of implementing blogs in companies and created ground for future joint work, writing in trains, and, of course, email at all brief moments when I got a connection.

I probably did more this week than I would if I would stay in the office. Being visible at work is a good shield for procrastination that hits me from time to time, while I feel responsible for delivering visible results every time I work in "invisible mode", at home or on the road. I know that the only way to deviate is to show that you do your job well :)

What strikes me is that I feel guilty, but also this strange paradox that in the era of knowledge work, era of invisibles and intangibles – ideas, trust, reputation – my work is still guided so much by "visibles" – being in the office during work hours, looking busy and doing something perceived as serious...

Discussions during this trip made me realising something that was implicit: my interest in blogging comes not from believing that this technology is better than others, but from sensing that it has a potential of changing working practices and workplaces to accommodate people with passion for work they do. Part of these changes is about learning to appreciate the invisible and to find a good ways to "manage" it. My quest for discovering the knowledge work iceberg is an attempt to make workplaces a bit friendlier to new ways of working, but it's also very selfish – I want to work in the environment where I don't feel guilty doing work I'm passionate about in a way that works for me...

Finally, after writing all these I feel peace inside instead of feeling guilty. I'm in a train half way home where I can finally unload my laptop from writing waiting to be posted, so I can think of my next paper, think of connecting the dots of knowledge work theories with my own experiences hoping that it would make work more fun. It means working on Sunday (again :), but ideas are funny creatures – they come to visit without thinking about appropriate time and place and they tend to choose moments when I'm relaxed and receptive – so I don't feel like respecting work-life balance instead of thinking and writing. Passion for work could be a curse, but I choose to believe it's a blessing ;)

This post also appears on channel BlogWalk

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More on: knowledge networker no work-life balance passion PhD transparency

Monday, September 20, 2004

AOIR 5.0: Keynote by Ted Nelson,

Listening to Ted Nelson and to discussions about his keynote made me realized once again that I'm not well connected to the field of internet research yet: I had no idea who he was :) Anyway, he was talking about "my" things, so I was able to connect easily.

The main Ted's thesis is that "today's computer world is based on techy misunderstandings of human life and human thought…" He suggests that current computing is based on a paper metaphor of a document and hierarchy as a way to organize documents.

Ted says that "documents are representations of human thoughts" and that they are supposed to facilitate travel of ideas from one person to another, at the moment or over time. I can't agree more with my "artifacts as knowledge representations" :) Ted argues that using paper metaphor for designing how computers work with documents doesn't fit the way we think and communicate as "paper is a prison that holds thought". He talks about parallel thinking instead of hierarchy.

Of course, Ted goes into discussing an alternative, talking about transliterature and showing a few prototypes (I'll dig out links once I get more time online). In brief it comes to "true hypertext", with bidirectional links and transclusions.

Although I share Ted's understanding of problems with current ways of organizing documents, I don't think that solutions that he envisions would work. He is criticizing tech-geeks developing interfaces too complex for a normal people, but he does the same in another dimension (I'd call him mind-geek ;) by proposing easy interfaces that require complex mental structures. For me it comes to the discussion with Adrian Miles in Lugano, where he admitted that not many people are able to appreciate "true hypertext" literature.

Ted suggests that he aims to develop a system that allows people to use computers to support their thinking and says that it would be flexible enough to accommodate as much structure as a user would want. Again, I agree with need for more flexibility, but I'm not sure how easy it will be for people to use: Word has enough features to be flexible, but most of the users use just a few, sticking to uses and metaphors they are familiar with.

One of Ted's demos allowed you to browse through multidimensional relations in a very nice way, but then (again :) those relations has to be defined by a user explicitly. I'd say there are at least two problems with it. First, explicit effort to define relation usually do not work (people do not add metadata). Second, most relations are not explicit, but fuzzy and multidimensional as well.

And, to finish with criticism, Ted haven't said much about social life of documents and how it could be reflected in the systems he proposes.

Despite all my disagreements I like it a lot. Ted is engaging and mind provoking speaker, so I'm going to look into his work more…

This post also appears on channel AOIR

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Saturday, September 18, 2004

AOIR 5.0: Bloggers

List of bloggers at AOIR 5.0 (in no particular order):

Theresa Senft
Jill Walker
Torill Mortensen
Anders Fagerjord
Lisbeth Klastrup
Axel Bruns
Alex Halavais
Lois Ann Scheidt
Sarah Ford
Paul Hodkinson
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Tracy Kennedy
David Brake
Brian Dennis
Eugene Gorny
AngeLina (sorry, Cyrillic doesn't work here :)
INCITE bloggers
Mia Consalvo
Jakob Linaa

Sorry, wasn't connected, so it took some time to update...

If you are writing about AOIR 5.0 please notify http://topicexchange.com/t/aoir/

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Friday, September 17, 2004

BlogWalk 4.0

BlogWalk 4.0 is over. This time it was without Sebastian and Ton, so instea(d of our usual team I was on my own, which was a bit scary and really exiting :) Thanks to Johnnie Moore for joint facilitation, taking care of local logistics and sharp questions about uncertain...

And, of course, thanks for all who was there or just dropped by for food and drinks:

As usual, please notify topicexchange.com/t/blogwalk if you are writing about it.

PS I'm barely connected, so you have to be patient for the rest :)

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Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Beyond personal webpublishing: An exploratory study of conversational blogging practices

Efimova, L. & de Moor, A. Beyond personal webpublishing: An exploratory study of conversational blogging practices. Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), IEEE Computer Society Press, 3-6 January 2005 (forthcoming).

Abstract. Although initially developed as low-threshold tools to publish on-line, weblogs increasingly appear to facilitate conversations. The objective of this study is to identify practices of conversational blogging. This paper presents results of an exploratory qualitative analysis of a weblog-mediated conversation case, focusing on participation rhythm, media choices and specific linking practices. Based on our findings we propose attributes of conversational blogging: linking as conversational glue, tangential conversations and interplays between conversation with self and conversations with others. Finally, future research directions are discussed.

This is my second paper with Aldo de Moor. You can check our earlier paper An argumentation analysis of weblog conversations, but it's probably more fun to read my struggles with thinking on weblog conversations (and hopefully I'll fix topics fast enough, so you can actually do it :)

I probably shouldn't annouce a paper in a post dated almost two weeks ago, but it was drafted there and anyway I will return to it often enough to get you bored :)

This post also appears on channel weblog research

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More on: blog research blogging conversations

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

How using (or not) a particular technology influences content of a weblog and social dynamics around it

This is a piece from a paper, slightly edited, on how using (or not) a particular technology influences content of a weblog and, as a result, social dynamics around it. It's a bit strange out of the context, I know :)

One of the ways to identify if there is a connection between two weblog authors would be to analyse blogrolls or link sidebars. Does link in a blogroll indicate a connection between bloggers? Not necessarily.

First, links in a weblog text could indicate a connection between bloggers as well and including them into the analysis gives totally different dynamics.

Second, not all weblogs have blogrolls or sidebar links. Does this indicate that a weblog author does not have relations with others or do not read other weblogs? Not necessarily. Bloggers could be connected via their RSS reading lists, as this quote from Jim illustrates:

Seems to me that blogrolls made sense in a time before RSS aggregators. If you use other blogs and sites as triggers for your own writing, then a blogroll serves as a useful way to organize your surfing. When you shift to an aggregator driven strategy, your subscriptions file becomes the equivalent of your blogroll. Of course, your subscriptions file is invisible while your blogroll was public.

In many cases links are not just pointers to additional information, but also "currency of the web" that helps to improve visibility of a page being linked to or, especially in a context of weblogs, signs of value and personal recommendation. In this case understanding why specific weblog or group of weblogs do not include sidebar links changes the way how readers interpret links and may change, as a result, the dynamics of interactions.

Another example of dependencies between (often invisible) uses of specific tools and blogging dynamics includes awareness of a blogger about incoming links. For example, if weblogs linking to each other have trackbacks enabled, bloggers and their readers have a visible trace of connection between posts. Although there are a variety of tools for finding incoming links, being aware of them and using them can change a way a blogger interacts with her audience. Finally, using news aggregator to monitor weblogs of others changes the awareness about their contribution as well.

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More on: blog research technology adoption

Weblog as a pen

A piece I guess I have to cut out from a paper I'm trying to finish:

Weblogs serve many purposes. Like a pen could be used to write a diary, a novel, a letter to a friend, or just a shopping list pinned to a fridge door, weblogging tools can be used in a variety of ways. For instance, they can provide a venue for self-expression, serve as a community space or be used to publish formal corporate news.

That was my reaction on the whole "weblog as a genre" discussion. Do you study "pen as a genre"?

Monday, September 13, 2004

Soon in UK: BlogWalk 4.0, Internet Research 5.0 and ?

What am I going to do after I'm done with my current deadlines? A bit of travelling :)

17 September, London - BlogWalk 4.0

After many uncertainties it is confirmed: BlogWalk 4.0, 17 September, London, UK. The focus this time will be on the future of work under influence of social software, e.g. blogging within the firewall.

If you think you should be there, please, contact me or Ton.

18-22 September, University of Sussex - Internet Research 5.0

Internet Research 5.0 is a 5th annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (of which I'm a proud lurking member :)

23-26 September - ???

Don't have return ticket yet (love budget airlines :), so would consider opportunities for meeting f2f people from UK weblog crowd or discussing/presenting work-related stuff (social software/(personal) knowledge management and whatever other topics you've seen in this weblog ;).

Any suggestions are welcome...

It's going to be a nice trip: UK was my first trip abroad more than 10 years back and I haven't been there since...

This post also appears on channels BlogWalk and weblog research

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Sunday, September 12, 2004

Personal KM model: new version drafted

I had a growing dissatisfaction with the way my 3 circle personal KM model (one of drafts, final version is here) represent my ideas, so the discussion on it during my PhD presentation last week was the last drop...

One of the problems with current representation seems to be the fact that this is a Venn diagram (didn't know it was called that way, thanks to Jonathan for alerting), which is supposed to represent overlapping sets. I didn't intend to use Venn diagram for my model, it just came to be an easy way to organise my ideas. Last few days I was playing with some other ways of stucturing them. This is what I've got so far:

It describes what is managed within personal knowledge management (or functions of one-person enterprise). I'm aware that 'managed' is a wrong word - many of activities happen implicitly - but I don't have a better one yet.

Still not happy. Some concerns:

me
- Don't know if I should keep individual as in the earlier version.
ideas
- I'd talk about knowledge here, but it has too many contradictory definitions.
- Also use of knowledge would create a problem with the whole model as, for example, relations include knowledge about another person and awareness could be defined as knoweldge about contexts.
others
- Have communities & networks in the earlier version. Not sure what is better: of course, one can think about relation with a community, but it's more about one-to-one relations.
artifacts
- Actually here I think about knowledge representations, but this label has the same problem as knowledge.
- Also has something to do with information, but more of "information in a specific form" as knoweldge representation
- One more problem with artefacts: they could easily be pieces of conversations (e.g. e-mail) or relations (e.g. business card). Same as with knowledge...
- Not sure it's a good word anyway. Sylvie is looking for synonims too.
awareness
- Simply defined awareness is knowledge about context. Critical for knowledge work, IMHO.
- Awareness is even less likely to be 'managed', most of it is about implicit learning and picking cues from the environment. More on it to come - I'm digging out relevant research.

Your comments are welcome (I know that posting it on Sunday doesn't help getting feedback, but I have to get it out to be able to focus on other things :)

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More on: knowledge networker personal KM model personal knowledge management

Friday, September 10, 2004

'Trying to be a researcher' confession.

When I was in school I was always more interested in finding a way to solve a math problem than in documenting and justifying the solution.

The same with doing research: I have more fun connecting ideas into a whole than proving them with carefully designed, carefully implemented and even more carefully documented studies. I tend to take shortcuts and it takes a lot of discipline to explore and connect all the loose ends.

Useful as an exercise, but don't think I'll enjoy doing it for the rest of my life. Hope I'm patient enough to finish my PhD :)

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Thursday, September 09, 2004

On definition of a friend (Re: FOAF ;)

Paolo Valdemarin:

Tonight I'm picking up Marc & family at the airport in Treviso. We'll spend a few days together, have good food and even a microcontent dinner in Trieste on Saturday.

In these days, everytime I mention I'm a friend of Marc, whoever I'm talking to says "yeah, me too". Then I have to explain that I don't mean in the Orkut of Friendster sense...

Marc Canter:

Real friends pick up their friends at the airport.

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Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Micro-content dinners with Marc Canter

I had a pleasure of joining two micro-content dinners with Marc Canter (one and two). These dinners are part of Marc's summer04 Roadshow (not finished yet, so you can catch up with Marc on 11 September in Trieste and 13 September in London).

Being familiar with Marc's online personality I was curious to meet him in person. That was worth it :)

Marc is here on a mission: making Digital Lifestyle Aggregators real. It looks a bit complex once Marc dives into technical details of specific projects, but the idea is simple: turning technologies we use into "an open, decentralized, semantic, service oriented, fun world". Think of the blogosphere and aggregation as a model...

Next to good food in a good company and unexpected connections I found one more side of these dinners fascinating: meeting Marc's family, Lisa, Mimi and Lucy, and observing Marc weaving tech-talks and singing with his daughter into a coherent whole. It's pretty much about digital lifestyle :)

And - Marc, Lisa, thanks for hosting me!

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Monday, September 06, 2004

Our BlogTalk paper: Shared conceptualisations in weblogs

Here it comes: paper on our work presented at BlogTalk.

Anjo Anjewierden, Rogier Brussee and Lilia Efimova (2004). Shared conceptualisations in weblogs (.pdf). Presented at BlogTalk 2.0, 5-6 July 2004, Vienna, Austria.

Abstract. In this paper we investigate how conceptualisations can be identified in weblogs using language technology (automated text analysis). We focus on getting a handle on both the concepts bloggers use and the way they think these concepts are related. The analysis of these conceptualisations can then be applied to a single weblog, resulting in a visualisation of potential conceptualisations the blogger wants to share with the outside world. Another type of analysis is to determine the overlap, or sharedness, of conceptualisations between bloggers. We have implemented both analysis approaches in an interactive tool.

The tool we presented, Sigmund will be made public, but Anjo is still working on it.

This post also appears on channel weblog research

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