Today I’ll be talking to social software evangelists at IBM about some of the insights about blogging from my PhD research. While there are many things that I would love to fit in there, most of the presentation is focused on “what’s in it for me?” questions, explaining how blogging helps to develop ideas and how it supports personal networking, with bits at the end about facilitating blogging.

Slides are below, but for those of you who prefer reading instead there are also pointers for blogposts and publications at the end of this post.  Some of them are also linked from the presentation notes.

[Slides will be here as soon as Slideshare starts cooperating :) At the mean time you can download them here or here.]

• What’s in it for me?
  • Blogging for knowledge workers: incubating ideas
  • Blogging for knowledge workers: personal networking
    • In-depth on blog networking study: interview summaries and findings in detail
• Blogging in business settings
  • Key PhD findings – PhD conclusions: blogging practices of knowledge workers (also: dissertation, pp.207-216)
  • What pragmatists might want to know about blogging (dissertation, pp.228-231)
  • Facilitating adoption of weblogs in knowledge-intensive environments (dissertation, pp.231-233)
  • More specific examples about integrating blogging and work from the Microsoft study – Efimova, L. & Grudin, J. (2006). Microsoft and the art of blogging. Inside Knowledge, 10(4), 24-27.
• Things relevant to that came up in the discussion (will edit later!)
  • Re: information overload – Dealing with a network expansion and filtering information it brings
  • Blogging for myself or for others?
  • Author-centred vs. topic-centred blogging
  • Personal vs. business dimensions of employee blogging
  • Personal vs. business dimensions of employee blogging: affiliation and attribution
  • Personal vs. business dimensions of employee blogging: other bloggers

• Use of RSS in corporate settings
• Networked identity: links, relations and control
• Slow reading and knowing questions

I’m still alive, but quiet: struggling to come up with the first draft of the final chapter of my dissertation and preparing for a conversation at SPsquare research and dissertation fest tomorrow. I’ll be talking about some puzzling things in the blog networking study and my current explanations for them.

Slides and some notes are below, but since it’s very much work-in-progress it might be better to join the discussion tomorrow (20:00 GMT, Skype/phone, contact me for the details) or wait till I blog it.

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Puzzling things:

• asymmetries – see Getting to know others from a distance
• non-personal relations (“information relationships”, “no ties”) – see Dealing with a network expansion and filtering information it brings
• identity management? – see Presenting oneself trough blogging
• crossing boundaries – see Participants and their networks, Finding and being found, Presenting oneself trough blogging

Blog networking

• Finding and being found
• Getting to know others from a distance
• Bonding through interaction
• Getting things done
• Staying in touch

Publication vs. interaction – will add a link when blogged.

I use weblog of Nancy White as an example, so you may want to check it and the summary of interview with her.

Key publications I refer to:

• affinity/commitment/attention
  • Nardi, B. A. (2005). Beyond bandwidth: dimensions of connection in interpersonal communication. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 14(2), 91-130. doi:10.1007/s10606-004-8127-9
• crossing boundaries
  • Star, S. L. & Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social Studies of Science, 19(4), 387-420. doi:10.1177/030631289019003001
  • Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press.

• In search for a virtual settlement: An exploration of weblog community boundaries (draft)
• Weblog as a pen
• Visual settlements: on weblog visualisations

I did an internal talk today, trying to put in a coherent story some results from two studies and emergent ideas about conclusions for my dissertation. I’m not extremely happy with what came out of it, but in case someone wants it – it’s at Slideshare.

Some comments on the stuff covered:

• Study 1 is an analysis of my own blogging practices as related to the development of ideas for the PhD dissertation. It’s an autoethnography that uses my weblog as an input to reconstruct my uses of weblog as a personal knowledge base and as a tool to support process of idea development from early stages to final products. Lots of unsorted background reading is in PhD/Chapter 3 category.
• Study 2 is an analysis of 6320 posts of 34 KM blogs in 2004. The visuals don’t make that much sense without an explanation, which is too complicated to write here. Some background is at:
  • Weblog conversations revisited: an introduction
  • Weblog conversations revisited: is there more than one?
  • Weblog conversations revisited: conversations with self
  • Weblog conversations revisited: conversations with self vs. conversations with others
  • Weblog conversations: the big one
• The last part is an attempt to use ideas from the research about the conditions for emergent social processes in cities (background reading) to explain how satisfying personal interests results in social effects in the case of weblogs and other tools.

Both studies also exist as PhD chapter drafts that I can share with those really interested; final part will appear in some form in the conclusions of my dissertation, due end of the summer.

• On the bursty evolution of blogspace
• Matching activities supported by a weblog to different stages of idea development
• Weblogs as a conversational tool