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.

• Links
• Weblog as a research notebook (3): my own experiences
• Weblog as knowledge networker instrument: questions

Quiet… For me BlogWalk 1.0 came to be a five days long event. It started from meeting Sebastian and Aaron on Wednesday, walking and talking in Utrecht about the power of weblogs for reflective learning, and ended today as Sebastian and Martin stayed over the weekend…

Face-to-face time feels great. You learn more about people, start to recognise their voices, connect with their personal stories that do not get to their weblogs… It feels rich and rewarding. Meeting amplifies conversations, mixing and moulding them better than any post could do, simply by bringing people in a same space. Even when you are not talking to everyone, walls with post-its aggregate ideas floating around. Finally you get something better then posts in your news aggregator, you get an overview that deepens your understanding of connections between ideas and takes you further…

I need more time for feelings, impressions and ideas to settle down, so just outlining two main themes I took from these days:

1. I guess I know better now what keeps me interested in weblogs enough to do PhD research – strong beliefs in empowering people. Weblogs just happen to be a good case to study it :)

2. If you ask my advice about implementing weblogs now I would say start from matching practices. Weblogs disrupt existing practices and this is an opportunity and a challenge at the same time: while introducing weblogs you do not just bring new tools, you change the way people do things. This makes implementation difficult, so I would rather start from finding cases where weblogs would not disrupt, but extend existing practice. For example, thinking of weblog use for reflective learning in corporate settings I would look opportunities to embed them into action learning and coaching programs.

This post also appears on channel BlogWalk

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/03/21.html#a1132; comments are here.

• On definitions: personal perspective at work
• Collaboration tools in relation to the level of trust
• BlogWalk has started

Some of my colleagues are starting weblogs. Last week we had a walk-through TypePad session. I consider it to be the easiest weblog tool and I was surprised how difficult it was. It’s not much about usability, it’s about learning the whole new domain: posts, permalinks, trackbacks, pinging… It’s could be so confusing…

Today we had a Bloglines intro. I’m always talking about RSS and news aggregators and I guess that my colleagues know the mantra “do not start a weblog without RSS feed”, but still… reading and hearing about it is one thing and watching one click subscribe and one page picture of who is updating is different.

Jill is right, you need to walk this country to see it. If you want to help someone starting blogging, do not spend time talking. Sit next to them when they register and make their first post. Be a guide – experience better than words…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/02/17.html#a1091; comments are here.

• Introductory texts for would be bloggers
• BlogWalk: quiet
• BlogTalk proposal submitted

RSS A Love Story by Brian Lamb [via Roland Tanglao: KLogs]

A Beginner’s Guide to Blogs by David Wiley [via Brian Lamb]

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/08/08.html#a709; comments are here.

• You need to walk this country to see it
• Earning with your blog
• Blogging: storytelling and listening (2)

I’m missing some presentations because I’m finishing my slides (I present a paper in a couple of hours). It’s quiet in conference “e-mail room” and I’m happy to have a bit of time to check my news aggregator and to think.

Yesterday evening our discussions were jumping to blogs from time to time (at least after yesterday’s presentation of Jay Cross people know the word :) I talked about my experiences and most common reply was “it sounds interesting, but I don’t have time”. I tried to explain that I don’t have time too and that blogging works for me when it integrates with or takes place of other activities. But still people are sceptical and don’t see the real value of blogging. I’m used to it and this just confirms my earlier observation: blogging value is difficult to explain to non-bloggers.

It’s pity that I’m not presenting about weblogs :) There are a couple of nice examples:

1. Dina points to post of Microsoft employee, John Porcaro, who says:

Frank Maslowski, another stellar Microsoft employee (who happens to report to me) started up his blog. I’m officially adding blogging to all their review objectives for the new fiscal year! I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say, you’ll want to stay tuned to this one. And I expect a good dose of humor sprinkled throughout.

2. This is a nice illustration of speed and feedback loops in the blogosphere: David Buchan comments on my conference postabout ontology building. David, thanks, I’ll come to it later.

Something else: I love this conference as it’s not only about KM (and blogging), but also about meeting great people, dancing, learning how to make sushi and a lot of fun. Will turn back to my presenytation now…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/07/04.html#a659; comments are here.

• Introductory texts for would be bloggers
• KM and learning + I-KNOW conference
• I-KNOW: Track 2

Few weeks ago I made a presentation for my colleagues about weblogs. It was an introductory talk for a quite technical audience. I’m waiting for an agreement to make this presentation public, but I hope that it’s not a problem if I provide here a piece of it.

In the presentation I distinguish between four things you can do with weblogs and explain how it is done. These four things (without screenshots and with only a few links) are below.

1. View

• Weblog usually has
  • Posts, usually arranged in a reverse-chronological order
  • Often it’s possible to add a comment to each post
  • Each post has permalink, permanent URL for linking
• Archives
  • Pages with all posts for the same day / week / month
  • Calendar or list to navigate
• Menu
  • Some information about the author and weblog, links to other pages
  • Links to other weblogs (blogroll), other webs-sites
  • Search and subscribe forms
  • List of categories/ topics, often “recently updated” list
  • Link to RSS feed
  • Buttons, thanks, disclaimers, copyrights, etc.

2. Publish

• Blogging software
  • Hosted on your desktop or on server (your own or provider’s)
  • Keeps “raw materials” of your weblog: database of posts, templates
  • Allows adding/editing/deleting of “raw materials”
  • Makes HTML pages out of it and uploads them to your server (your own or provider’s)
• Metadata/channeling
  • Categories – each post can go to several categories
  • Topics/keywords

3. Discuss

• Finding weblogs
  • Weblogs directories, Google
  • Links from weblogs you read
• Finding new things in weblogs you know
  • Browsing their pages
  • Subscribing to RSS feeds using news aggregators
  • Subscribing by e-mail
• Discussing
  • Using comments of original weblog
  • Citing and commenting in your own weblog

4. Search and track

• Searching
  • Weblog-level search: blogging software function, special software, Google site-level search
  • “Blogs I read” search: Trusted Blog Search tool
  • Across weblogs: Blogdex, Technorati, Daypop…
• Tracking
  • Most referred pages across weblogs, for a specific weblog
  • Links to and links from, referers
  • Revealing groups of weblogs
  • Finding similar weblogs
  • Word bursts (heightened usage of certain words in weblogs)
  • Conversations across weblogs

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/05/08.html#a584; comments are here.

• Manila for school districts and Russian dreams
• Styling weblog quotes
• On human voice, non-tech bloggers and linking

Ready! I submitted BlogTalk proposal and posted it on-line as well – Blogs: the stickiness factor.

In this paper I intend to apply the framework I try to develop in my PhD research (no references yet) to compare bloggers and “would be bloggers”. When I hope to find what inhibits adoption of blogs by “would be bloggers” and suggest what can be done about it.

Many of the points that I’m going to touch are discussed in the blogosphere, so I don’t expect to find many new ideas. I’d like to get a snapshot of practice to see if we are right or there is something missing.

Next steps:

• finish and review the questionnaire
• get answers (could be a challenging task to find “would be adopters :)
• find appropriate writing style
• analyse-write-revise
• make a page with extra resources and references

I also hope to find something to answer Matt Mover’s questions about klogging context

Expanding on my thoughts of a couple of days ago I am still wondering: What is the specific context in which someone who is not a k-log enthusiat, believer, etc… will actually use a k-log?

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/02/27.html#a477; comments are here.

• Four things we do with weblogs
• BlogTalk: back home
• Legitimised theft: distributed apprenticeship in weblog networks

Pat Delaney shares A proposal for school district deployment of a CMS [via Sebastian Fiedler]

Great example for those who want to start. It includes:

• Capabilities & benefits
• Examples
• CMS Selection & Pricing
• Security
• Training scenarios
• Infrastructure requirements
• Process for school participation

I have to check if Manila supports Cyrillic (Radio doesn’t :(. If so I have a great idea in mind: my monther is school principal in Russia…

Yesterday I searched for blogs in .ru and found out that blogging is taking off in my own country, but more in the “personal diary format” rather than in “k-logging format”. I really want to introduce blogging to Russian professionals and I have ideas for several projects in mind. Now it’s a matter of time and finding tools that will work in Russian.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/01/17.html#a413; comments are here.

• Back
• Between cultures
• Added value of knowledge sharing