CPsquare open house was an interesting experience: the fun of meeting new people and discovering new connections between ideas. I also couldn’t avoid mental comparison with things we do at BlogWalk ;) Thanks for being open for newcomers!

Some ideas:

Weblogs and personalities of their authors. We had an interesting discussion about weblog vs. forum/mailing list choice. One of the things that came on the way is a distinction between global and sequential thinkers, foxes and hedgehogs, generalists and specialists. First operate in “clouds” of ideas, spanning boundaries of different fields, picking out relevant bits everywhere and connecting them into a whole. Second follow the trail of their chosen field, focusing and digging deeper. (Of course, it is a continuum :)

Many webloggers say that their weblog serves as a one place to collect their ideas. It make a good sense for those thinking global, so they have a Home to bring ideas from travelling to different online spaces, many of which are strange and exotic. Keeping track of different combinations of ideas and spaces they come from can be too complicated without weblog as a base camp.

In contrast, for those who focused in their quest for knowledge, participation in different online spaces may not be a big problem: at least their line of enquiry is clear, remembering spaces from there ideas come it not that difficult.

Think of organizing a collection of travel photos from two people: one interested in things people do differently in different cultures, and another, who travels across the globe in search for best waterfall shoot.

Weblog introduction. Weblog practices differ in different weblog neighborhoods, so to a great extend a newcomer experiences of blogging are shaped by bloggers around. One gets exposed to practices of using different tools, to different writing styles and to social norms in a community and is likely to pick up some of those. If someone starts with an idea that weblogs are easy webpublishing tools and do not upon a weblog neighborhood with different practices, he may never discover the fun of social connections arising from weblogs.

Of course, I’m still thinking about the city metaphor for blogging. Just imagine what you will think of Amsterdam if you walk into the red light district after arriving and get hooked into it, never discovering museum quarter or business areas?

An illusion of shared experiences of in online communities. We think of a online community as a whole and talk about shared experiences, but at the end each member sits in front of a computer and experiences something totally different from others. Whose experiences are rarely shared (unless members get involved into a reflection on it; I’m thinking of meta-blogging posts that sometimes reveal how differently people embed blogging into their daily routines). See also: Nancy White about it.

Distinction between a (social) network and a community. We tried to draw the line between those two, but didn’t get very far (at least I don’t have a convincing distinction for myself :). The criteria suggested for a community during the discussion: leadership, ownership, shared practices, greater accountability, shared purpose, many-to-many relations (vs. a system of one-to-one relations).

We also talked about differences in constructing someone’s identity, accommodating different cultures (national, professional, early adopters vs. majority), the core and the fringe of a community in context of welcoming newcomers and many other topics… They landed somewhere in my thinking cloud, somewhere in those areas that are not ready for words yet :)

Quite a few people from the group are presenting at Virtual Communities conference today and tomorrow, so I joined them for dinner in The Hague as I had to stay overnight as well to get a Swiss visa. Nancy White, John Smith and Alasdair Honeyman are presenting on improvisation and design in communities, so yesterday evening was pretty much in Improv style: getting Indonesian food from nearest gas station and eating it in front of five star conference hotel followed by rehearsal of their presentation. That was a lot of fun, so I do not really feel that bad typing this in a café while waiting for my visa, instead of being at the conference :)

See also: notes and pictures by Ton Zijlstra, summary by Erik van Bekkum, notes by Nancy White

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/06/14.html#a1241; comments are here.

• I-KNOW: morning thoughts
• How Technorati works?
• Feed your blog to tOKo and see what comes out

It feels so good finding many comments and blog-related e-mails after a long off-line day. It feels like being connected, like being a part of this very strange tribe where weak ties are often stronger then strong ties…

May be the greatest reward of blogging as you feel and not caring much about your audience is in the feedback you get. It gives a feeling of being accepted as you are, without a need to conform, to behave, to play others’ rules…

Thanks to you all :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/02/02.html#a1068; comments are here.

• My bloginality
• Why I blog more than write scientific papers
• The role of chocolate in PhD research

Wizbang! by Kevin Aylward, Don’t tell me how to blog:

I’ve been at this blogging thing for a relatively short period of time compared to many of the other bloggers I know. In that time I’ve seen bits and pieces of a set of norms, or “rules” if you will, scattered around the blogosphere. These “rules” are mostly unwritten, but some are buried in the archives of the blogosphere. For new bloggers they lurk like tiny land mines waiting to be stepped on.

[...]

Wizbang is whatever I feel like it should be that: week; day; or post. Nothing more, nothing less. Some day’s it will be funny (I hope), other days it will serious, some times it will get personal, often it may be lame (sorry). One thing it will never be is sanctimonious. My way of blogging works for me, your way works for you. I’m not going to tell you how you’re doing it is wrong, and you sure as hell better not try to tell me I’m doing it wrong.

I will listen the views and thoughts of those I respect and make changes to how I blog at my discretion. If I want to pull cheap stunts to drive up traffic; I will. If I want to start posting the Communist Manifesto one page at a time; I will. If I want to start posting my breakfast menu; I will. In short, I’ll do what I please, thank you very much…

[...]

The one rule I will respect is the NIMBY rule. I’ll treat your blog like it is your house; I’ll wipe my feet before entering and not make a mess while I’m visiting. But at my blog I’ll lounge around; leave trash and laundry on the floor; forget to mow the lawn for a few weeks, etc. if that’s how I’m feeling. I expect you to treat my blog like I would treat yours. Sorry, the only one who gets to leave dirty dishes on the coffee table is me.

I wonder how many bloggers share this position (I do :) vs. writing for the audience and closely monitoring what the audience wants…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/02/02.html#a1067; comments are here.

• Withdrawal from blogging: broken routines
• How to become part of a blogging ecosystem?
• New Bloglines

Playing with old quote by Sebastien Paquet in blogs and Googling people (cited a lot by others):

Finally, I note that blogging itself is actually in the process of making people as easy to find as web pages on Google — it turns them into web pages!

I think the opposite is more important: blogging gives voice and face to web pages and turns them into people.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/10/14.html#a799; comments are here.

• Personal publishing vs. engaging in dialog
• The role of chocolate in PhD research
• Reading blogs in the morning

Compare and contrast :)

Guardian Unlimited: Why blogs could be bad for business by Neil McIntosh

While blogging’s earliest advocates operate on the “information wants to be free” principle, many businesses would shudder at the very thought.

“Information is power” is a more likely mantra in many organisations. Whenever you hear those three words, you’re hearing the signal of the kind of closed information culture where there’s also a heads-down, bunker mentality utterly unsuited to the openness required for a convincing weblog, be it an external PR effort, or knowledge-sharing internal one.

There are plenty of areas of business where people are judged on their knowledge, and the competitive edge – and thus the safety of everyone’s jobs – is the thickness of a single good idea. Share it all on a weblog, with competitors or (worse) an office rival? You must be kidding.

Robert Scoble, very passonately, about “why do you weblog instead of doing something to get rich?”

So, why do this if not for money? Well, I started doing this mostly for myself. I am a news junkie. A community junkie. A computer junkie. I wanted a way to keep track of the sites I visited that I found interesting. I wanted a way to keep track of people I find interesting. I wanted a way for me to talk to the world about my point of view. I wanted a way to change the way corporations talk with their customers.

[..."weblogs and Miscrosoft vision" and more...]

But, no, there’s lots of people out there who think there just is no value in having a conversation with customers. Don’t worry. There were people in the 1970s who thought the idea of a personal computer was wacky. I know that people asked Steve Wozniak “why don’t you do something with your time that has a chance of making you rich?”

I think we all know the answer. I’d rather change the world, thank you very much.

I agree with Neil McIntosh that weblog use in companies depends on their culture or, I would put it more specific, on having a critical mass of individuals that can change it. He is right that bloggers tend to be “knowledge-sharing is power” people (e.g. personal characteristics that support blogging). But the question is: if people believing in the cluetrain manifesto are anomaly or early signs of changing balance between businesses and their customers?

And it also comes to more fundamental question: do you believe you can change the world?

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/10/05.html#a782; comments are here.

• Finding confidence
• Klogging roles
• Weblogs are technologically simple and socially complex

During last few days I was browsing many BloggerCon-related weblogs (If you are interested, you can check BloggerCon webcast, aggregated blogroll (RSS) and Feedster BloggerCon buzz)…

Betsy Devine notes on educational panel

Dave Weinberger, JOHO: Is it the opinion of the panel that weblogging is a life skill, and everyone should learn it? Or is it like singing, that not everybody should do it in public? [...]

Kevin Marks, Epeus Epigone: Blogging is not selective by race, it’s selective by electricity. Also, you can’t really blog if you haven’t mastered the basic skills of reading and writing.

…and on Cluetran 2003 panel

Adam Curry: When you talk about what people are doing with the web now, think about the way the telephone was used when it was new–to call ahead and tell you that a telegram is on the way. [...]

Ted Henderson: People have compared weblogs to the telephone. I don’t know many people, except maybe teenagers, who pick up the telephone and dial random numbers to get their message out. [...]

Kevin Marks: The net is too big for us to see all of it. It’s like Caliban’s mirror, because you see what you’re loooking for. If you look for dark things you’ll see dark things.

Lis Riba

Blogging is just a technology. It doesn’t make us better people, doesn’t by itself improve our lots or say much about ourselves.

Lis again

I raised my hand to ask a question, and by the time I finally got to speak, began with a statement that garnered applause and I’ve now seen quoted on several other blogs: ‘We’re a roomful of people used to writing monologues trying to have a dialogue.‘ As somebody else pointed out, the key question is often who can speak when; with weblogs, it can happen in parallel.

Lance Knobel

I have never been to a conference where there was such easy intercourse between panel and audience: everyone was truly a participant, in the best sense of the word.

Part of the explanation was the generally high standard of topics and panels. But I think there is something more fundamental. Since everyone (or just about everyone — I found one exception) at the conference was a blogger themselves, everyone is comfortable with voicing their views, and is generally pretty cogent in the way they do it. It makes for a very potent mix.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/10/05.html#a780; comments are here.

• Without a blog, you’re just a lurker
• The future is in the hands of those who can operate a press
• Site statistics for weblogs

Hairdressers can do magic. They look at you, they find out something that you don’t even know about yourself and they work to make it visible. It may be something you always wanted to be or something that you tried to hide from yourself, but after being in good hands for your haircut you always come to know something new about yourself.

This seems to do nothing with knowledge management, learning or weblogs, but I kept on thinking about it yesterday reading Small pieces loosely joint (thanks, Ton) at my hairdresser and thinking about the quote by Susan Mernit [via Just a Gwai Lo]:

The topic of privacy and what you do and don’t write on your blog–both your personal blog and a workplace blog–interests me as a question of privacy, but also of voice, of how bloggers present themselves. After all, blogs are personas. We emphasize particular aspects of ourselves, allow things we want to share to be revealed, and try to obscure those we consider private, want to hide, or are not aware of.

We can try writing to show part of what we really are, but I have a feeling that weblogs disclose more of us then we are aware of. A good reader can tell me something that I don’t know about myself as my hairdresser makes visible the part of my personality that was hidden from me. It can be scary, but for me learning is always worth the risk.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/10/05.html#a779; comments are here.

• Without a blog, you’re just a lurker
• Reading blogs in the morning
• My bloginality

Maria reflects about time for blogging:

When blogging is not part of your work it is sometimes difficult to make good partitions in your time. To find time for blogging is often connected with some compromises. The choice between blogging during working hours or blogging when your family waits for you can’t be made easily.

[...]Simplifying the idea, I think the ideal blogger is an independent worker without family. A university profesor, a consultant, even a journalist or a researcher. Single or at least living alone. Therefore, it would be interessant to know whether there is an over-representation of independant single workers among bloggers.

This could be true… I’m getting more and more convinced that personality is important for blogging. One more question to add if I do a follow-up of my BlogTalk paper.

[See also personal characteristics that support blogging]

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/05/30.html#a634; comments are here.

• BlogTalk paper:
• BlogTalk paper: need your help to contact
• Why I blog more than write scientific papers

Dina Mehta, Why do i Blog – 2:

“The blank page gives us the right to dream.” — Gaston Bachelard

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/05/01.html#a568; comments are here.

• Finding confidence
• Reading blogs in the morning
• e-Learning Curu

Claudia Musekamp asks me by-mail:

Are you familiar of any statistics on Webloggers? For example: Percentage of male and female bloggers, age, social status etc.

Any hint will be highly appreciated.

I’m not an expert of that, so I came with a few names from my readings:

Phil Wolff collects data about numbers of existing weblogs at Blogcount (about it).

Ross Mayfield posts something from time to time on weblogs trends and statistics in his weblog (recently Annual Weblog Growth and Live Journal Over Time, for the rest I guess you have to search his web-site).

Sébastien Paquet did a survey of 170+ weblogs, you can find some insights there. Do you know more?

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/04/16.html#a553; comments are here.

• Revealing part of yourself without knowing it
• Finding time for blogging
• Random BloggerCon quotes