Dan Bricklin has a good piece on What we learn from the Convention blogging:

The Convention brings in a new element. There are 15,000 paid professionals covering the event. There are live and edited TV feeds produced by thousands more. These full-time people had time to prepare. They are used to covering such events -- that's what they do for a living year after year. What should the role of the blogger be? Their readers may or may not have seen any of those other reports. How do you integrate that in?

Bloggers who are used to commenting on a day-by-day world, thrust into covering a huge event, need to adjust. Unlike a normal conference or family event, with a single speaker, a single party, and a single hall to schmooze in, a convention has high-power meetings everywhere, media extravaganza presentations with waving signs, and thousands of interesting participants including some you only see on tabloid covers or the evening news and many, many others whose personal stories are gems. And it's something new for almost all of the bloggers.

I've been following some of the blogs from the convention and have some thoughts myself which I may expand on later, particularly on what we get from reading weblogs that's different than what we get from the traditional media. Bricklin said that one of the things that distinguished bloggers from print media was emotion. Bloggers aren't objective; they don't claim to be. Bloggers provide both a camera-eye and a tight-third POV and it's usually easy to tell them apart. Corporate spin and cynicism and 'just another event' aren't yet big factors for bloggers (and, one hopes, they won't ever be because when they are, it won't be blogging anymore).

The Democractic National Convention has credentialed a number of bloggers. Their access to the convention, the delegates and the activities will be essentially the same as the traditional media. Dan Gillmor has a good take on what this might mean:

Where Big Journalism remains mostly a lecture, blogging is more a conversation. The bloggers are individuals, moreover. Some are experienced political journalists. Many in Boston will be neophytes when it comes to national politics. All, however, speak with genuine voices from their blogs -- voices their readers have come to know and in many cases trust. Blogs are simultaneously immediate, intimate and subtle.

Due to the very nature of blogging, they'll be reporting from the edges of our increasingly ubiquitous data networks. I hope they'll experiment with the tools of this emerging trade. Technology has given average people new ways to collect and distribute information to global audiences, and this is an opportunity to show how grassroots journalism can be created and, crucially, seen in new ways.

There's a list of credentialed bloggers at CyberJournalist.net. And you can check out this aggregate feed for convention bloggers' posts as well.

Via Clay Shirky at Many to Many, here's a list of mobile social software from elastic space.

Jeff Jarvis posts some thoughts about how a programmer's society would differ from a lawyer's society:

Lawyers are necessarily a suspicious breed. They live by rules. They think in terms of us vs. them. They think contention. They argue for sport. They always think they can appeal to a higher authority. They aim for victory. They are patient.

All those traits have an impact on American society -- many or most of them not good. The fact that lawyers run government is at the root of many of government's problems: Government has become all about arguing, little about serving.

But now imagine if former programmers start rising to the heights of American business and government and cultural life.

Programmers are logical. They believe in cause and effect. They believe any problem can be solved if you just find the cause. When they do battle, it's with a mistake, not a person. They live in the details. They believe in openness and transparency. They also believe in following rules but the rules of reality -- what a machine can and can't do -- over the rules man made up. They believe in planning. They, too, are patient. What else?

Interesting followup comments from Ernest Miller at The Importance of... and Rick Klau at tins (quoted below):

For me, it’s all about transparency. If Jeff’s right (and I’d like to think he is), then the biggest difference will be a shift from the old-boy’s guild that the legal profession maintains to the open source model that encourages disclosure, rewards iteration, and hides nothing.

Dan Bricklin has an interesting essay on the need for Software That Lasts 200 Years. Among his criteria for what he calls Societal Infrastructure Software:

• Meet the functional requirements of the task.
• Robustness and long-term stability and security.
• Transparency to determine when changes are needed and that undesired functions are not being performed.
• Verifiable trustworthiness of all three of the above.
• Ease and low cost of training for effective use.
• Ease and low cost of maintenance.
• Minimization of maintenance.
• Ease and low cost of modification.
• Ease of replacement.
• Compatibility and ease of integration with other applications.
• Long-term availability of individuals able to train, maintain, modify, determine need for changes, etc.

Privacy is one of the biggest issues in making the web as interconnected as we hope someday that it will be--and in particular, privacy that is under the user’s control. In face-to-face interactions even people who know our names don’t know all of us. I present a different ‘face’ to my boss than to my mother. The people I go tracking with on Sunday mornings know different things about me than the writer’s group I meet with on Sunday nights. The internet, which has the potential to interconnect everything, to remember everything and to make it searchable can reveal parts of me that I would prefer not be revealed. Things that are not private, but are not public either. Things that for most people could be filed under--none of your business. The different facets of our persona is ours to reveal or conceal as we wish; it shouldn’t be constructed by web spiders with equal emphasis on one-time rants and lifetime dedications.

And yet, reputation systems are becoming increasingly important as ways to help people cut through information clutter, to provide ranking mechanisms for goods and services and for other uses that we haven’t realized yet. At Many to Many, Clay Shirky points to a post by Ben Hyde on an anonymous reputation system that relies on group recommendations:

Let's say I have an excellent reputation in some community. I request that community write me a letter of introduction to the anonymous community. This letter says nothing more than the bearer of this letter is a good guy. I take the note to the anonymous community and they provide me with an reputation/identity that I can use to on anonymous actions. Recipients of those actions can then check that anonymous reputation. If I act badly in that persona then they place bad marks on the anonymous reputation; but it these do not go back to my original reputation - there is no back pointer. The only back pointer available is the link to the original community. I have damaged the reputation of my home community, and only that.

It's an interesting cryptographic design problem. Could we design a system where sufficiently bad actions on the part of the anonymous actor can be feed back to his original persona but that does not require that we trust the anonymous reputation communities to guard his privacy otherwise.

For discussion of persistent identity and privacy, see this post from last year on the Augmented Social Network.

Good article at HBS Working Knowledge about why innovations sit on shelves instead of getting implemented and used.

The problem that Ludwig faced—leading an organization that didn't have the ability to conduct candid conversations about internal problems—is common. Worse, it's also the reason why many technically excellent innovations get stuck inside an organization and never make it to market.

According to our studies, the most effective way for a leader to realign his company is to facilitate open and honest conversation about any barriers the organization is facing. For the most part, this requires management to look closely at the roles of various parts of the business and alter the way employees interact. Increasing the pace of business innovation almost always requires reallocating decision rights and, more critically, power. Speeding time to market means delegating authority to heavyweight product development teams. But senior functional leaders, used to making key decisions, are likely to resist.

Tris Hussey talks about using Convoq ASAP to make a meeting work:

So picture this, me and my two colleagues are on the conference call with a potential client (three people in one person's office) and listening to him struggle with typing in the case sensitive meeting information. He's not doing well and the frustration in his voice is coming through loud and clear. Side note here: One thing that really helped save the day was that my two colleagues and I had an open MSN IM session going so we could chat without the client knowing, or "hearing" the panic in our typing.

Now as any six year veteran of the Boy Scouts would, I had the backup plan ready. I had already converted the presentation into ASAP%u2019s Flash-based format and set up a meeting in ASAP. I had also used the "Prepare a meeting" function so the slides were all queued up and ready. Before we lost the client in a fit of frustration, I invited my two colleagues via IM and the client via e-mail into the ASAP meeting. In less than two minutes the meeting was back on track. I gave a quick wave on the camera, then went full screen on the presentation. Technologically, the rest of the meeting went off with out a hitch.

In an earlier post, there's some discussion about taking an initial look at Convoq ASAP and Macromedia Breeze.

Music and learning:

Duke University freshmen will get something even more trendy than a Blue Devils T-shirt when they arrive next month: a free Apple iPod digital music player.

I've been talking up RSS feeds that include the full entry body and how much I like them, particularly for weblogs (versus more 'straight news' sites). And it occurred to me (thanks to a timely comment from Jack Vinson) that, gee, maybe I ought to offer full feeds on this site.

So, now they are here. And also as a link on the main page--'Subscribe to the full feed.'

Online Journalism Review has an article on whether to use RSS feeds or not and whether they drive more traffic. It doesn't say anything particularly new, but it lays out some of the issues people have with RSS and the talk of including ads.

One thing I found noteworthy in the article was this comment:

But there is a downside compared to e-mail. "You don't have much control over how it's presented so you can't feature an article or a package in the same way you can in email and say it's the single most important thing of the day," Bauer said.

In RSS feeds, all headlines look the same and are given equal weight. Some sites are learning to pay particular attention to the blurbs that can accompany headlines knowing that may be the key to enticing readers.

To which I would reply, well...yeah. It'd be nice if content providers would entertain the possibility that some people like that, that we'd prefer to decide for ourselves what news is noteworthy and not have people pushing Scott Peterson or Kobe Bryant or some other not-very-interesting 'number one story' twenty-four hours a day.

Two concerns people who don't use RSS have about using RSS are that people will stop visiting their site and that RSS feeds won't convey the context of the information it's compliing. BusinessLogs addresses this issue in Fear of RSS:

In the worst case scenario when using RSS a reader will never again visit your site. Since I am unable to track usage patterns for all RSS readers I don't know how often this happens, but I can tell you from the statistics from my sites (including this one) the number of visitors goes up monthly even with full content RSS feeds. And even if they do not visit your site again, at least they are still reading your content. This increases the odds that they will link to you from their site or spread the word about your site.

...via The Shifted Librarian

Bill Ives promises to tell us the History of Knowledge Management in Six Parts:

This serialized work attempts to puts the current state of knowledge management in context, providing a brief historical overview of knowledge management and communication media, and offering a framework for examining issues based on cognitive psychology. Key questions and challenges are offered at the end of most sections. It begins tomorrow with %u201CHistory of KM Part 2: The Early Days.%u201D In this case we are talking about 4000 BC, not the mid 1980s.

...via elearningpost

We've been using Breeze Live for a few months now (and using Breeze for over a year for some specific applications). Here's a very interesting article on one person's specific experiences with Breeze Live:

Over the past couple of years, I investigated whether to use web conferencing software as part of my business. While I was excited by the potential, I weighed whether the costs would outweigh the benefits for my small company. The opportunity to try Breeze Live gave me compelling evidence that such a technology is a necessary part of my business.

In the following sections, I explain how I used the Breeze Live trial to deliver the following communications:

• Ten, two-hour developer seminars
• Six client meetings
• Three conversations with my remote developer teams
• Two conference talks

There's lots of good and useful detail about organizing and delivering, what works well, and how to make a successful presentation.

There's also a terrific checklist for presenters:

Preparation Checklist for Presenters

1. Turn off the screen saver in presenter machine.
   
2. Set the screen to a low resolution (such as 800 x 600).
   
3. Clear and organize your desktop.
   
4. Shut down non-essential applications (including IM, MSN, and so forth).
   
5. Turn off your telephone. Close your door and hang a “Do not disturb” sign on the outside.
   
6. Start the applications that you will share.

...

...via elearningpost

Infoworld offers a brief article on a couple of companies who have released products that I'd call knowledge management for the individual.

Near-Time, is offering Flow--a "peer-to-peer CM (content management) and KM software that allows users to access, manage, and repurpose content using a range of standards."

Learning Management Solutions has a product called KnowledgeWorkshop--which "allows users to create personally relevant associations and connections between information drawn from a variety of sources, including Web pages, e-mail, documents, PowerPoint slides, databases, and spreadsheets."

At Many-to-Many, Liz Lawley points to an online journal, Into the Blogosphere, with a wealth of academic articles on weblogs and the nature of the blogging community.

Articles include:

• Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the Julie/Julia Project
• Culture Clash: Journalism and the Communal Ethos of the Blogosphere
• Weblogs and the Public Sphere

And, BTW, the University of Minnesota offers weblogs to any faculty, staff, or student who wants one through UThink, University of Minnesota libraries project:

UThink is available to the faculty, staff, and students of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and is intended to support teaching and learning, scholarly communication, and individual expression for the U of M community.

Back in 2002, I wrote:

One of the ways that it’s possible to decide what sites are worth visiting often, for example, what sites provide a broad, filtered range of new content and what sites provide an interpretation of content on the web based on specialized expertise, is to develop a set of trusted sources. Trusted sources may be people who share the same interests you do and who link to and recommend sites that you find generally interesting and useful. A trusted source may also be an expert in a particular field. One way to locate trusted experts is to find someone that you personally know or that you have located through a personal chain of experts, peers or colleagues.

The criteria for judging trusted sources on the web are the same as those for selecting friends and trusted experts face to face. Who is this person? What do I know about them? What kind of information are they presenting? How does the information fit with other things I know? How reliable has past information been? Key factors for evaluating trusted sources include: credentials, references, usefulness of the information they filter, recommendations from others, strong, clear writing, and personal glimpses of the person behind the information. This last factor is increasingly critical.

Corporate voice helps to add to the information that’s available, but it doesn’t help us evaluate what information we should use to make decisions. We need to know the people behind the web site, we need to know who they are and how they think in order to help us evaluate the specific usefulness of the information they’re presenting us. We need particularly to hear their individual voice before we can give them trusted source status. And we need sites that are built by ‘this-expert-we-trust’ as well as sites that contain a range of published resources from a large organization.

Who do we trust online? It'd be nice if we trusted Extension because Extension has a 100 year history of providing unbiased, research based informaiton, of educating people in practical ways that make their lives better, of developing leadership and community. But every Extension agent and specialist I've ever met has said at one time or another, "Extension is the best-kept secret in our state."

We can develop trust with new audiences when they can find us (Reason one), when we're willing to interact with them (Reason two), and when we do so as individuals with our own knowledge, personal attributes, and connections to others.

An interesting article on situational control and design.

Ross Mayfield talks about the increasing number of large organizations who are encouraging (or at least adopting a 'let's see what happens' attitude toward) blogging. In specific, he talks about Standard Weblog Employee Policy:

What's missing is a standardized weblog employee policy. Today, major tech companies like Microsoft and Sun are embracing external blogging and beginning to realize its benefits. Right now many companies are considering similar moves, but are held back by what they see as a legal grey area. We have been through most all of these issues before, as the web publishing, newsgroups and email are a virtual sieve. But blogs are newer every day and with all the hype its hard for people to get that they are simple tools.

He cites companies that currently have blogging policies. Check out:

Sun Policy on Public Discourse

Think About Consequences The worst thing that can happen is that a Sun sales pro is in a meeting with a hot prospect, and someone on the customer’s side pulls out a print-out of your blog and says “This person at Sun says that product sucks.”

In general, “XXX sucks” is not only risky but unsubtle. Saying “Netbeans needs to have an easier learning curve for the first-time user” is fine; saying “Visual Development Environments for Java suck” is just amateurish.

Once again, it’s all about judgment: using your weblog to trash or embarrass the company, our customers, or your co-workers, is not only dangerous but stupid.

Groove Weblog Policy

In general, the company views personal websites and weblogs positively, and it respects the right of employees to use them as a medium of self-expression.

If you choose to identify yourself as a company employee or to discuss matters related to the company's technology or business on your website or weblog, please bear in mind that, although you and we view your website or weblog as a personal project and a medium of personal expression, some readers may nonetheless view you as a de facto spokesperson for the company.

The Corporate Weblogger Manifesto

1) Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway.

2) Post fast on good news or bad. Someone say something bad about your product? Link to it -- before the second or third site does -- and answer its claims as best you can. Same if something good comes out about you. It's all about building long-term trust. The trick to building trust is to show up! If people are saying things about your product and you don't answer them, that distrust builds. Plus, if people are saying good things about your product, why not help Google find those pages as well?

3) Use a human voice. Don't get corporate lawyers and PR professionals to cleanse your speech. We can tell, believe me. Plus, you'll be too slow. If you're the last one to post, the joke is on you!

Yahoo has added RSS feeds for Yahooligans Joke of the Day, Ask Earl, Word of the Day, and SAT Tip of the Day.

foe romeo says:

What next? I think there's a lot of potential for giving child-safe news, search and directories the RSS treatment. Many parents only let their children navigate to sites they've already bookmarked together. Perhaps a daily stream of sites recently added to CBBC Search and the Yahooligans directory, combined with quality news sources (National Geographic Kids, CBBC newsround...), would give kids that much more to explore. Combine this with a facility for their parents, teachers and friends to bookmark their own finds (a kind of semi-private del.icio.us), and you've got an information-rich, safe, social space for children.

...via The Shifted Librarian

[Been out of the office and upgrades have been performed, including moving Movable Type to a new server. But I haven't forgotten that I still have three more reasons to talk about]

We like to talk about young people online, but some of those 'young people' have been online for twenty-five years, starting with FidoNet and BITNET and others. They represent people our Extension mission tells us we want to reach--lifelong learners, community participants, those who can't get out, and those who live in places there is no 'out' to get to.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life report on America's Online Pursuits (pdf):

• 63% of adult Americans use the internet
• More than 8 out of 10 Internet users have searched the web for answers to specific questions
• Over half of all Internet users have done research for school or training online

In the talk I mentioned previously about characterizing an online audience, the presenters indicated that 75% of the people who asked questions on the web and responded to their followup survey were new to Oregon State Extension.

In Counting on the Internet (pdf), another Pew Intenet & American Life project report, the principal authors claim three important conclusions:

• most people expect to find key information online
  
• most do find the information they seek online
  
• many people now turn to the internet first when seeking information

The Internet can't be our only tool. Weblogs can't be our only tool on the Internet. But weblogs can provide fresh content that people want, can help build communities of experts and trusted others, and can bring new voices and participants to the table. People can't find us if we aren't visible in the places they look. Organizational web pages are critical to this effort--they provide stability, high production values, and clarity. In addition to these organizational webpages, blogs can ialso ncrease our visibility to online audiences (given, for example, the other reasons I've been talking about) in ways that organizational web pages don't.

The BBC has put out a (big, long) document about Building public value: Renewing the BBC for a digital world. I haven't read the whole thing (did I mention it is big and long?) but here's a couple of interesting bits:

At the heart of Building public value is a vision of a BBC that maintains the ideals of its founders, but a BBC renewed to deliver those ideals in a digital world. That world contains the potential for limitless individual consumer choice. But it also contains the possibility of broadcasting reduced to just another commodity, with profitability the sole measure of worth. A renewed BBC, placing the public interest before all else, will counterbalance that market-driven drift towards programme-making as a commodity. Only a secure and adequately funded BBC can ensure that broadcasting retains its cultural (in the broadest sense) aspiration.

And...

The BBC will launch a Creative Archive – free access to BBC content for learning, for creativity, for pleasure. The BBC’s programme archive is owned by the British people. Until now it has remained largely inaccessible as there has been no cost-effective mechanism for distribution. Digital technology removes this barrier

The creative archives mean that BBC content is available to the public for use in creative projects, for building more intellectual property and for learning. There's also some interesting stuff in the document on public value, public responsibility and a digital future.