There is no way I can make a post from it before Reboot, so just a collection of food for thought

• funny how self-employed people talk about working 9-18 (to create boundaries or simply because their clients work those hours)
• partners of digital bohemians – do you need a whole ‘bohemian’ family to have this as a life/work-style?
• I don’t think I’ll go to work for a company that requires cubicle or hotdesking (and I’m going to find a piece from in-flight magazine that says that this is not productive) – how working in a cafe on a regular basis is different?
• another perspective on using cafes with wifi for work – Coffeeshop campers & the honor system & Would you like some coffee with that wifi?

And I still have to finish that post about my dream bag. This one after Reboot.

Technorati: blogwalk blogwalkeleven blogwalkamsterdam

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/05/29.html#a1900; comments are here.

• Now in Sweden: BlogWalk 5 – blogging on the move
• BlogWalk 7: Mechelen, Belgium
• Personal KM at KM Europe

As I wrote before, one of my difficulties with ‘digital bohemians’ as a focus of this BlogWalk was it’s connotation: the term assumed lack of full-time employment. I can understand from where it comes: many organisations restrict choices in respect of what to do at work and how (when, where, with whom…) to do it. As a result for many people breaking their ties with any type of full-time employment is the way to do their work in a way they want it.

I don’t think it should be like this – that working for an organisation means selling your soul to the devil sacrificing your values and your preferred working style. The only problem I guess is finding those organisations :)

Why I’d prefer to work for an organisation?

Infrastructure that allows me to focus on my core business. I have an experience of do-everything-yourself work in an NGO. It was extremely rewarding: to do what you believe in, to see how it make the world a better place, to be proud that you did everything yourself and to have pretty good pay as well. However, I spent a lot of time doing things (accounting, for example) that I didn’t really wanted to do, but had to as they “came with the job”.

At work I’d like to focus on my core business – things that I not only can do well, but I also love doing. For example, I can program (even did freelance programming during my student’s days), but this is something that I’d rather leave to someone else. Working for an organisation gives me such an opportunity. I don’t have to do accounting anymore, technology infrastructure is just there (sure I can buy hardware, install and update software, and solve most of my own tech troubles, but I prefer not doing it), I have access to on-line libraries and can get articles that I can’t find without figuring out what I might need and negotiating the deals, I can bring my input and shape new projects, but I don’t have to deal with contracts and legal stuff, I can get my post sent, trips booked and post-its bought by someone else.

Office space: people, serendipity and energy. Although I like working at home, there are good reasons for having an office. It’s creates a low threshold opportunity for being with other people (like-minded in some respects, different in others), serendipity of hearing a comment at coffee table that just fits the missing space in the puzzle and energy of working with others.

Of course, you can do the same in a technology-mediated way, but it’s not the same (as Carla said at BlogWalk – reading blogs doesn’t replace coffee-table conversations). Another alternative would be wifi-cafes and coworking spaces, but I guess it will take a while longer to have critical mass of people working there (enough to have unplanned very work-specific) conversation.

Is there a price to pay?

Sure, working for a company sets a lot of boundaries, many of which don’t make me happy (I long for a bit more flexibility, a bit more nature, a bit more fun and struggle with invisible work ). The good point that I can stretch those boundaries – and I prefer working on that (and not on accounting:).

At the end it’s up to following your passions and taking responsibility and risks, regardless of the form of employment. I wrote about crafting one’s workplace to fit personal preferences three years ago and I still believe in it.

Technorati: blogwalk blogwalkeleven blogwalkamsterdam

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/05/28.html#a1899; comments are here.

• BlogWalk Seattle: conference attention modes
• Crafting one’s workplace to fit personal preferences
• In Full Flow: my PhD and more stories about passion at work

Ton wrote long and thoughtful post on BlogWalk facilitation, and, while I agree with most of it, there is part that I think is missing.

When we started, BlogWalks were a way to amplify conversations we had online. Most of the participants would know each other from their weblogs, not only personally, but, which is more important for this post, topic-wise.

Now things are different – the people coming are more diverse and less connected then before. Also, some of them are not bloggers, but even for bloggers things changed – how many of you moved from reading a few weblogs in depth to scanning many? So, weblog-mediated familiarity with other participants that we are started with is not there.

It’s not bad (diversity is always a plus), it’s different. And I believe it needs to be reflected in the way BlogWalks are structured and facilitated.

What I missed this time was topical awareness of others – who are the people to talk about topics I’m interested. Days before BlogWalk I went to check links behind each name, but there was a limited picture I could get from it: some people linked to their companies (so how do I know what interests them?), but even for bloggers you can get only that much by browsing a weblog that you see for the first time (before I’d read weblogs of other participants for months prior to the event). We couldn’t make it to the dinner (this is how having a baby restricts your mobility :), but given my experiences from other dinners I doubt that this would give enough of the coverage.

In fact, there was something that gave an overview of topics that people wanted to talk about – post-its on the windows wiki. However, there wasn’t an easy way to figure out who wrote those I was interested in (I still wonder who wrote the one about the ethics of oil-fuelled travelling). Taking my responsibility for my own needs I tried to take the initiative and to propose a round of a group-wide time where people could announce the topics they wanted to discuss, but Ton suggested that it wasn’t necessary and moved on*.

***

So, what is my take of facilitating BlogWalk – more structure or less? I’d say as much as needed. If we can create conditions (e.g. as Ton proposes) for awareness of each others interests and taking responsibility prior to the event, as well as structure the space to facilitate conversations, then “no structure” and “no facilitation” is perfect. If not, then there is something else to do.

Specific things that we could do better this time:

• A couple of rounds of a group-wide time (e.g. one in the beginning to announce “I would like to talk about X,Y,Z” and shorter one in the afternoon – to get on the same page before breaking into free-floating discussions again). We could think of alternative ways to create an opportunity for 1-to-all communication moments (e.g. ask people for a keyword intro to put on a wall and scheduling 5 silent minutes to look at it). Also, emphasising a bit more that signing your post-it makes it possible for others to discover you. Actually I believe that creating a space/time for a group-wide communication is something for a facilitator to be responsible, since it’s difficult for a participant to take initiative in that respect (it’s much easier to start one-to-one conversation in the corner then get attention of everyone).
• Name tags. Or printed intro of people with photos. Anything that helps to connect a face to a name during the event.

Even if there are reasons not to create a group-wide time slot, we could do something like printing out the list of participants (+making sure the photos are big enough to recognise people), hanging it somewhere on the wall and asking people to add their initial “I’m interested to talk about X” post-its next to their names. (I could even think about it before the event, but it’s easy to get your expectations formed by previous events, where something like that wasn’t needed :)

Another thing we could do is to facilitate awareness and communication prior to the event (and a follow-up of course). Ton suggest some ideas, but I guess we’ll need a bit of discussions and experimentation to see what really works – getting a diverse group of people on the same page in a technology-mediated way without much facilitation is a nice challenge to work on.

Technorati: blogwalk blogwalkeleven blogwalkamsterdam

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/05/25.html#a1897; comments are here.

• BlogWalk 2.0: personal Webpublishing for self-organized and informal learning
• BlogWalk 7: Mechelen, Belgium
• BlogWalk 6.0 – Social software in corporate settings – Chicago

I has been unsure about the title from the start – I didn’t have enough context to place it (of course, my own fault, the whole thing was just googling away). I went to Blogwalk with Ton‘s redefinition of it:

Digital Bohemiens are (relatively) young people, fully adapted to the digital lifestyle. They see a city as their home, and are connected in European and global networks. They flock to conferences as their meeting places.

However, at the meeting Sebastian brought in the context – the term came from the book, which had much more emphasis on being lack of full-time employment than I expected

Gabriela writes pretty much on how I feel about it:

We had a sort of identity problem: we couldn’t figure out if we, as a group, belonged to that Digital Bohemians category. In the original book that inspired this title, digital bohemians are living in a metropolis(Berlin) and are freelancers. Part of us have permanent jobs (actually most of us!) – don’t we qualify?! I guess this bohemianship is more a state of mind than anything else: flocking together at such unconferences on our own expense seems to be one of the features; having a digital lifestyle, trying to keep in touch with what’s going on, being open to try new things are some of the others.

I guess most of us agree that “there is something in the air” – the nature of work is changing, boundaries (work-life, geography, etc.) are getting blurred, authorities are challenged and technology has something to do with it. Talking about “digital bohemians” is one way to address it, but I could also think of calling them mobile professionals, knowledge networkers or neo-Bedouin.

I don’t know what would be a good term (I’m not comfortable with digital bohemians since there is non-employment connotation from the book and a general feeling of alternativeness and counter-culture). I can talk about my own perspective on the ingredients of it:

• Passion-driven and values-driven work that becomes part of life rather than separate “I work to earn money to have a roof over my head and something to eat”.
• Flexibility in respect to work focus, time, space, tools and people to collaborate.
• Personal responsibility. Distributed authority and decision-making.

Technology is secondary – it’s just enables more flexible and distributed way of working, but as always – it’s only what you make out of it.

Full-time employment? I’ll write another post on why I think it shouldn’t be part of the equation.

Technorati: blogwalk blogwalkeleven blogwalkamsterdam

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/05/19.html#a1895; comments are here.

• PhD conclusions in a thousand words: blogging practices of knowledge workers
• Sweeping in front of your doors
• Knowledge workers redefined: responsibility and creating value by acting on knowledge

It has been a long time, but finally BlogWalk is back – BlogWalkEleven, 18 May, Amsterdam.

The theme for this session is Digital Bohemiens.

Digital Bohemiens are (relatively) young people, fully adapted to the digital lifestyle. They see a city as their home, and are connected in European and global networks. They flock to conferences as their meeting places. If we look at this (somewhat exaggerated) portrait of the avant garde of internet users, what can we say about things like:

• the tools they use
• how they learn and develop themselves
• how they support a highly mobile life style
• the organisational models and business models that fit these networked individuals

As you see this is a broad subject that allows for enough space for wide ranging but deep conversations and dialogue.

BlogWalks are free formatted face to face salons aimed to bring together social software researchers and practitioners for in-depth conversations about their work, possible trends, and visions. They are low- or even zero-budget affairs, where apart from paying your own way for food and travel, no costs are involved.

BlogWalks are invitation-only, but it’s easy to be invited – just email Ton Zijlstra and tell a bit on why you have to be there (you can email me as well, but then it depends on how long Alexander keeps me offline :)

Other important things:

• BlogWalk participants
• We are still looking for a (baby-friendly :) venue in Amsterdam – please, contact Ton for any suggestions.
• If you live in Amsterdam and would be happy to host people travelling from abroad, please, contact Ton as well.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/04/11.html#a1887; comments are here.

• BlogWalk, BlogDay and Les Blogs
• Personal KM at KM Europe
• Now in Sweden: BlogWalk 5 – blogging on the move

These are more “notes to myself” from the discussions at BlogWalk Seattle on the nature of (un)conferences; not a coherent text.

The world is changing:

• opportunity to connect with and to meet far away people
• being there (physically or online) costs more (energy, time, money) – also because now we can connect with those far away

Getting together f2f:

• critical mass is important to make sure interesting things happen
• you want to be sure in that to get into what it takes to be there
• it’s more about opportunities, than problem, which is always difficult to justify
• so, what are the attractors powerful enough to attract “right crowd”?
  • shared goal / topic
  • strong connections with others
  • authority trusted enough to rely that the previous two will be there

Events attention models

Two extremes:

• centralised/authority – “star performers” who can hold attention of big groups with finely crafted messages and engaging interaction style
• distributed/community – “open space” – designed so everyone can attract as much attention as it’s worth in a particular group

Backchanneling – something that happens during an event designed with the centralised model in mind, but without “star performers” who can hold attention – so it’s diverted into other channels. Those “other channels” would be legitimate conversations in the “open space” case, but they are not in the centralised model – hence authority challenges and resistance.

Logistics

• Centralised attention events are easier to plan
• Distributed attention events are challenging – how to make sure that those who have something to say have an audience?
  • Enough attractors (critical mass)
  • Visibility of attractors (knowing whom to talk/listen to)
  • Movement around (being there at the right moment)

Technology actually enables a lot of that :)

More:

• inspiration – backchannel modes by Liz
• edit it as eventAttentionModes wiki page

Technorati: BlogWalk, BlogWalkSeattle, unconferences

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/09/07.html#a1658; comments are here.

• More on (un)conference blogging
• BlogWalk
• BlogWalk Chicago: colorful on white

People at BlogWalkSeattle:

• Cyprien Lomas
• Jia Lin
• Jon Husband
• Korby Parnell
• KrisKrug
• Lee Lefever
• Lilia Efimova
• LizLawley
• NancyWhite
• Nick Finck
• Phil Klein
• RolandTanglao

It was different and fun. Things to think and to write:

• conference attention modes
• most rewarding blogging experience
• need to play and authority challenging
• adult playgrounds (re: life between buildings and edges)

Add things to BlogWalkSeattleOutcomes.

Technorati: BlogWalk, BlogWalkSeattle

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/09/04.html#a1656; comments are here.

• Life in Seattle: cooling down
• Small discoveries on the way
• Reboot10 wrap up

Blog-related events in my list…

31 August, blogosphere – BlogDay2005 (via Yigal Chamish)

• link to 5 bloggers you find interesting and don’t forget to tag it – more how to instructions

2 September, Seattle – BlogWalk in Seattle: (un)conference? blogging?

• + dinner on 1 and 2 September, breakfast on 3 September – email me if you are interested to join

5-6 December, Paris – Les Blogs 2.0

• Martin, I guess I’ll get to Paris before the end of this year :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/08/30.html#a1648; comments are here.

• A bit of BlogWalk 2.0 reflections
• BlogWalk Seattle: conference attention modes
• Now in Sweden: BlogWalk 5 – blogging on the move

We were cooking it a bit on the background, but I guess it’s time: BlogWalkSeattle is planned for 2 September and I’m very glad that Nancy White joins for facilitating it.

This time the theme is (un)conference? blogging?

We are going to focus on parallels, differences and synergies between blogging and face-to-face gatherings. The topics we are likely to touch:

• what happens when bloggers who met online, meet F2F?
• blogging and OpenSpace – how is blogging like/unlike OpenSpace
• blogging (and social software in general) before, during and after face-to-face events
• backchanneling during events

As usual: you need an invitation to participate, but if you think you (or someone else) should be invited, let us know (and those people we don’t know yet are especially welcome :)

More at BlogWalkSeattle.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/07/16.html#a1612; comments are here.

• Life in Seattle: cooling down
• BlogWalk, BlogDay and Les Blogs
• Blog networking study: non-personal relations and lurking

A bit longish break after the snow of Chicago is over and BlogWalk is back. As Ton announces:

On May 20th BlogWalk 7 will take place in Mechelen. Tom de Bruijne, Maarten Schenk en Clo Willaerts have kindly agreed to be our local hosts.
The theme will be civic journalism.

BlogWalks are by invitation only, and the number of available places is limited. We are sending out invitations in the coming days. E-mail me if you’re interested to attend; usually we can fit all those who are interested.

I’m not joining this time (will be in Moscow), but there is another one cooking for the end of June, so…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/04/21.html#a1556; comments are here.

• BlogWalk: quiet
• Time in blogging: catching a moment to write
• BlogWalk Seattle: conference attention modes