Today is the last day to nominate weblogs for Best of the Blog award. Although I can think about many really good weblogs, I nominated only two…

Both weblogs are Russian, both are powered by LiveJournal (which is most popular blogging platform in Russia) and both are examples of “more than a weblog”…

The first one, Moskva kotoroy net (“Moscow that do not exist” literally, but I’d translate it as “Dissappearing Moscow”) is a journal from the site with the same name. It’s about historical buildings of Moscow that are being destroyed or reconstructed in a way that there is not much left…

This journal gives voices to buildings – those that do not exist any more tell their stories and those that are threathened cry for help – so more people hear those voices and then words are turning into actions that help to save some buildings… For me this is one of the most powerful examples of “weblog activism”.

The second one, We are successors of our Victory is a LiveJournal community (working as a group weblog) for Our Victory. Day by day project, which portrays Second World War through the eyes of people. The weblog is there to collect stories of people participated in the war and their families…

Most of stories are written by people of my generation, telling stories of their grandparents. The stories are very different, but all make that war very personal and very close… And, between other stories I found a story from memories of Michail Katukov, which added another dimension to the street named after him where I lived for almost 20 years…

It’s pity that most of you don’t read Russian – these two are powerful examples of what weblogs could do…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/10/17.html#a1390; comments are here.

• Defining weblogs
• Ideas turning into actions: BlogWalk and more
• How do you want research results to be shared?

I’m struggling with something and need your thoughts. Aldo and me has written a paper on weblog conversational practices (this is a follow-up for the earlier paper; includes in-depth analysis of actionable sense conversation). It’s under review, but (of course!) I want to share it.

I think that the most interesting part of the paper is the analysis of actionable sense conversation: it provides an image of the conversation and illustrates some patterns that would feed well into several discussions around (at least into: complexity of weblog conversations, comments or not, tracking weblog conversations).

There are several options of posting the paper (or parts of it) online:

• full paper in .pdf (.doc; .html)

• pro

• readers can get an overview of the whole thing

• it’s not a final version yet, so it’s likely to be changed
• there are only a few people who would read the whole thing
• linking to/commenting on the whole paper is difficult

• pro

• one place overview of things interesting for the blogosphere
• easier to link

• still too large: less readers
• commenting is difficult

• pro

• small pieces: easy to link, to comment and to integrate in other discussions

• overview is lost

At this moment I’m trying to choose between last two options (I’ll post full paper later anyway), so if you have any preferences, please, let me know.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/07/12.html#a1277; comments are here.

• Personal vs. business dimensions of employee blogging: my weblog
• Implicit structure and the dynamics of blogspace
• Finding blogs linking to a specific blog post: test results

It feels good then plans are turning back into reality: BlogWalk is getting more real.

BlogWalk is a series of face-to-face meetings aimed to bring together weblog researchers and practitioners for in-depth conversations about their work.

The intention is to complement BlogTalk with smaller scale opportunities to meet and to talk. The idea was in the air for a few months already, but we couldn’t start working on it. Then one late evening Sebastian Fiedler came up with this great name and it went rolling. Walk means that we will be “walking” around places and have fun there. It also means that meetings will include walking in and out of pubs and nice places to eat because everyone knows that alcohol and good food fuel conversations. Note: this fun side is about complementing hard reflective work together and not replacing it :)

BlogWalk 1.0 will be focused on weblogs in KM context and will be held on 19 March 2003 in Telematica Instituut, Enschede, Netherlands (this is where I work :). I’m looking forward for this opportunity to meet KM bloggers in a real life next to our virtual conversations.

And, a couple of days before Sebastian Fiedler and me will present on weblogs and learning in Utrecht University. Hopefully, we will also find time to work on a paper on weblog apprenticeship :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/03/04.html#a1109; comments are here.

• Re-reading my own weblog and research blogging
• More research questions about blogs
• BlogWalk Chicago: colorful on white

What a blog is? discussion at misbehaving turns into actions: Liz Lawley and danah boyd are starting research in order to come up with weblog definition for research purposes. The discussion is worth reading, but I don’t have much time for a summary now.

Would be interesting to know how these ideas could be connected with upcoming paper on framework for analysing weblogs by Kaye Trammell and Urs Gasser.

This post also appears on channel weblog research

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/01/20.html#a916; comments are here.

• Blogging about disabilities
• How do you want research results to be shared?
• Researching blogs and blogging research: synergies of colliding worlds

I know that I’m not going to catch up with all interesting posts from Internet-cafe, but I’m still trying :)

John Moore (and long chain of others) point to a quote from Art & fear:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the quantity group: fifty pound of pots rated an A, forty pounds a B, and so on. Those being graded on quality, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one – to get an A. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the quantity group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the quality group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

John adds a connection with the book Changing Conversations in Organisations by Patricia Shaw.

This is such a fantastic book I can’t do it justice here, but essentially Shaw discusses

(moving from a) thought-before-action, design-before-implementation, systematic, instrumental logic of organizing, towards a paradoxical kind of logic in which we see ourselves as participatingin the self-organizing emergence of meaningful activity from within our disorderly open-ended responsiveness to one another

Shaw is talking about how we talk to each other, the story is about making pots; they’re both about recognising that it is misleading to think we can entirely separate thinking from doing – an insight that may trouble a great many management thinkers.

At the same time Martin Dugage writes about smart people driving out action linking to Why Can’t We Get Anything Done?

All those provoke many ideas for my thinking on learning vs. doing and would provide an interesting angle to look at the actionable sense story, but I guess I’m not writing on it now :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/01/05.html#a893; comments are here.

• My pattern-recognition techniques
• Survey on informal learning
• Synchronicity

My news aggregator slows down, showing that people are doing other things than blogging. I should be packing for my flight to Moscow, but I can’t help my “almost end of the year” mood, so I’m writing.

For me 2003 was a year of learning to make choices for the things I’m passionate about. I always knew that dreams come true if you chase them, but knowing is not the same as doing.

A year ago I didn’t believe that weblogs could become a part of my PhD and a part of work I do. It’s happening. I couldn’t imagine the power of professional and personal connections I’ve got now with people around the globe. Connections that are starting to turn into joint actions.

Last year made my implicit beliefs very obvious and more sharp. Now I not only know that life is too short to do things you don’t enjoy, but I’m also learning not to be afraid of making choices and taking risks to follow my passions. Both professionally and personally.

As usual, I’m not alone thinking about it. And my weblog is reminding me about a post almost a year ago – Plan for 2003: follow your passion

OLDaily comments on How To Succeed in 2003:

Here’s a better plan: find something you’re really interested in, learn as much as you can about it, and start working on it. Don’t worry about the money, the money will come. Invest your time and your energy in your passion, not your job – reinvent your job if you have to, or plan to leave it if you can’t.

It worked!

I guess the next year will be an actionable sense year. Learning how to act together with other passionate people :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/12/23.html#a887; comments are here.

• IFTF’s Map of the Decade
• Playing with forces in a middlespace
• Wish you to take courage to follow your passions :)

Brainstorming degrees of (weblog?) networking:

• no – you don’t exist in my world
• awareness (~familiar stranger?) – I know that you exist (weblog: finding someone who links to my weblog)
• interest – I start learning about you (weblog: RSS subsription?)
• occasional conversations – we start talking (weblog: commenting)
• regular conversations – we start relying on each other in thinking together (weblog: regular commenting, blogrolling)
• occasional actions – sometimes we do things together
• regular actions – we often do things together and rely on each other

Moving from regular conversations to occasional or regular actions is a core question of the whole actionable sense conversation (1, 2, 3), which has resulted in establishing Actionable sense Socialtext space (which deserves another post, but probably not today :). I still suspect that weblogs are not good for it.

This post also appears on channel weblog research

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/12/21.html#a882; comments are here.

• Developing ideas in a weblog: show vs. tell
• Crossing boundaries: A case study of employee blogging
• Perseus weblog study

Still thinking about networking effects of weblogs (weblog as networking instrument, easy way to stay in touch, “fuzzy” profile).

What weblogs create is two way awareness. If I read someone’s articles online or check personal pages or “know” a person by reading comment in online discussion, in most cases this is one-way “getting to know”: this person is not aware that I’m learning about him or her. Weblogs change it: if another blogger links to your weblog as least ones, he is likely to get on your radar. Of course, it happens if you pay at least some attention to referrers, trackbacks, Technorati, ecosystem tracking tools, but most bloggers do. With a weblog you have the power of tracking an interest to your writing and thinking and links give an estimation of how strong is this interest (related Links and Power: The Political Economy of Linking on the Web).

This awareness creates something that I don’t have a good name for. It’s close to familiar stranger, but there is some kind of interaction (or, may be linking is similar to looking at person a physical environment, you don’t expect a feedback, but another person is likely to notice that you have looked). I would say that this connection is one degree stronger than “familiar stranger” connection. And then this connection may turn into something stronger – “weak-tied” conversations, with one more degree stronger. Then it may result in joint actions and “strong ties” at the end.

So, what we have is a continuum of getting from no ties to weak ties to strong ties and our “around blog” relations. I wonder if someone is looking at it and how it can be studied (there are too many things relevant for my PhD :)

This post also appears on channel weblog research

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/12/21.html#a881; comments are here.

• Finding confidence while bridging multiple research practices
• PhD defense
• Facilitating adoption of weblogs in knowledge-intensive environments

One more weblog discovery: Piers Young, Monkeymagic – thought-provoking and fun writing on creativity and thinking (also revealing that the author seems to like tea :) Between other things – do “question memes” travel the same way as “answer memes”?

A comment to my note that “the microcontent nature of weblogs is an important component of the mix that makes them so powerful”:

Which made me think that in many ways weblogs are like the blurb on the backs of books. They offer a quick, personalised insight into a bigger piece of content.

Which in turn made me wondering what are those “bigger pieces of content” touch while reading weblogs? Our bigger canvas? Ourselves?

Sometimes I feel that weblogs are “blurbs on the backs of books” without books themselves. I read a “blurb”, get interested, but I hardly get an opportunity to read the “book”: weblogs provide many “blurbs” about our bigger canvas and hidden agendas without making them explicit.

Weblogs are good as personal profiles, but the impression they give, although very much holistic, is still difficult to put in explicit words. It’s like an abstract art – you can get the meaning from a few lines, but it’s difficult to explain explicitly and you are never sure that this “clear picture” that you have inside is the one that the artist had in mind.

I guess I’m trying to explain something I can’t explain yet :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/12/19.html#a877; comments are here.

• Weblog reading: 96 second per weblog
• On weblog audiences…
• Third culture kids and research kunstkamera

To continue The power of visible loose ends (1) and (2).

Gary Lawrence Murphy, comments:

In most cases, the necessity comes first, and that’s when we will overcome all barriers to make it happen. When someone has a specific goal, especially a paid goal, others can clear their date-books and engage, and any frustrations of distance or bandwidth vanish proportional to the value of the collaboration [...].

But in all cases, we don’t create the team and then see what happens (Andy Warhol excepted) but we find the purpose and then staff a solution. It’s my observation that, by being the wide-sweep distant-early-warning radar, the skin of humanity, blogspace is spontaneously very good at identifying each itch, and from that point, coordinating the hands to scratch it is almost trivial.

Thus I don’t agree that we need to be “writing about future plans” as our starting point. What we need is an articulation of the goal state, the concrete world scenario that describes the itch scratched, what it would look like when done, and from that visioneering the scratching will begin. This is what happened with the blog-spam problem, the trackback problem, even the RSS vs Atom debate is all from bloggers having touched some problem, articulated the itch, and spread fragments of plans to scratch it until it gelled.

Ton Zijlstra, continues:

I think the writing about future plans, especially if they’re pretty concrete like Lilias possible conference calendar, can join up with coordinating the hand to scratch an earlier identified itch easily. Probably some or all of your plans are connected to identified itches, announcing them makes it possible to get other bloggers to go along for the ride.

And another, independent stream. Julian Elve, Actionable Knowledge (see comments as well, coming to “safe places in the middle” point):

After I’d let these posts mull around in my mind for a day or two, the first thought that came to me was this – just because I don’t neccessarily blog about actions I have taken as a result of blog-inspired knowledge creation, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t actionable knowledge created!

[...]But just because I blog carefully (or not at all) about those areas of my life does not mean that I don’t derive actionable knowledge from blogging that I can apply to those domains. The dilemma though is how to report that back? Some actions won’t make it through my blog-filters; others may be delayed or distorted; in either case there is a break in the learning cycle with my blog learning colleagues.

This is not about the trust I have in the people with whom I have blogosphere conversations, it is more about who else is eavesdropping. Is there any way to resolve this whilst still using an open channel? I’m not convinced there is – the contradiction we need to resolve is that a completely public channel will inevitably cause us to filter what we write, whilst part of the power of the blogosphere is the opportunity to discuss ideas with people from very different contexts.

I guess this conversation (and especially it’s hidden part) is a good example of tensions between “thinking together” and “doing together” as well as tensions between private and shared. To give you a feeling of the hidden part: some of the invisible activities related to this conversation (hope nobody gets angry about the disclosure):

• e-mailing between Ton, Martin and me about what researchers and practitioners can do together
• e-mailing+phoneconferencing with Sebastian Fiedler and Sebastien Paquet on writing a proposal for Symposium on weblogs and learning at ED-MEDIA
• e-mailing+Skyping about SocialText workspace offer by Ross Mayfield (see more details about it by Stuart Henshall)
• me talking about this whole story with a colleague from another university resulting in our decision to study if/how weblog conversations (do not) support actions

So I guess it’s possible to get something actionable from our weblog connections, but weblogs are not the best instrument for it :)

I wonder why do we make choices for other tools as “actionable” spaces. Is it because their support for collaboration is better? Or – do we need more privacy than we can get in our weblogs? Or may be we just don’t know a good way to use weblogs to come up with joint actions?

This post also appears on channel weblog research

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/12/05.html#a858; comments are here.

• Weblog research ethics
• Studying weblogs at Microsoft: one page overview
• More on reading weblogs