Coworking Institute...a site on collaboration, tools, best practices, and social processes. The links section offers detailed exploration of elearning, virtual communities, coworking, etc. Good resource site.

12:50:19 PM    

James Farmer is on a wiki run: What do I want in a wiki?, choosing a wiki, and more wikis. Good resources to bookmark.

12:49:34 PM    

Coming Sunday I'm joining CPsquare open house meeting in Amsterdam. Next to an opportunity of meeting great people and learning about CPsquare I'm bringing my interests in communities (see posts on communities to get an impression :) Of course, my main interest is on social ecosystems that emerge around weblogs and their dynamics.

My experience shows that it's difficult to explain to people new to weblogs that (in some cases :) weblogs are more than a bunch of linked egocentric websites. This time I'll try to use pictures. I know this is powerfull: my collaboration with Aldo de Moor on weblog conversations has started from one of these images ;)

My main points:

1. Weblogs are online identities of their authors: by reading a weblog we learn about and connect with another person

2. Networking. By reading a weblog a reader gets introduced to a blog author network

3. Weblog networkds serve as peer-filtering and recommendation engines: they help interesting ideas travel faster

4. Distributed conversations. Weblog conversations do exist, but they are distributed, difficult to track and different from other technology-mediated conversations

5. Connecting with community. By connecting with several weblogs belonging to a dense weblog network new blogger connects with a community.

Further reading:

Earlier ideas of 1-4 are described in section 2.2 of Learning webs: Learning in weblog networks (more)

A bit more elaboration on weblogs for relation building - in section 4.3 of Discovering the iceberg of knowledge work: A weblog case (more)

More on weblog conversations: An argumentation analysis of weblog conversations and posts on weblog conversations

My thinking about weblog networks as communities is still in progress, so Communities, shared spaces and weblog reading is the closest explanation so far. For a background start from Blogs and CoPs: Can blogging replace communities of practice? by Martin Dugage

And some other posts on weblog ecosystem :)

Disclaimer: I haven't invented all of it myself; these ideas have grown from discussions in my weblog ecosystem and work of other weblog researchers. Check links in posts and references in papers :)

This post also appears on channel weblog research

12:47:02 PM    

Some ideas for the paper: on how people follow weblog conversations.

There is a substantial difference between abilities to follow a conversation between its participants and outsiders, as well as between following unfolding, real-time conversation and returning to it back after a period of time.

When the conversation unfolds its participants can use numerous tools to find out who commented to their weblog. Comments in weblog itself could be send by e-mail and/or shown in "recent comments" section on weblog homepage. Links from other weblogs could be found via trackbacks, referrer logs, Technorati (or other tracking services), which most of weblog authors will check regularly. In many cases participants of a conversation are connected via their own subscriptions, (e.g. they are likely to read weblogs of other participants), so they just find posts in their RSS readers. (Sidenote: I guess that weblog conversations are more frequent in existing network of weblogs connected via regular reading. Would be nice to check...)

Outsiders have fewer opportunities to follow a conversation: usually they cannot see referrer logs or receive e-mail notifications about comments on someone else's weblog (even if it will be possible there are not many people who want to follow all links/comments to a weblog, and tools for selecting specific posts to follow are not there yet). They can follow links to earlier posts and trackbacks and use tracking services as well, but the latter requires extra clicks. They can also observe the conversation in their news aggregators, but they are likely to miss comments and trackbacks, as those are not part of RSS feeds in most cases (and most of "local" conversations in comments develop after regular reader was there).

Following a real-time weblog conversation is a challenge by itself: one needs to combine several tools to find out all the leads. Following a conversation after some time is even more difficult. Usually referrer logs and many tracking services provide only newer links and do not keep archives. News aggregators do not help much as well as they show recent updates. So the only thing that is left for someone who wants to trace a conversation which is a few month old is to rely on trackbacks or hope that posts were indexed by Bloglines or Blogdex.

See also: Weblog conversations are flows in a river delta (thinking aloud about different degrees of visibility of arguments in a weblog conversation) 

12:45:02 PM    

Another piece of thinking aloud for the paper (triggered by Denham's comment:)

Weblogs make a very funny conversational tool:

Bloggers say they write for themselves, but they also care about their audience. Or, they write for an audience without really knowing for sure if there someone reading. In other words, they write for a change to be read.

Weblogs can provide immediacy of instant messaging (e.g. sometimes people comment on your post within minutes), but usually communication is asynchronous. (Sidenote. Would be interesting to study the timeframe of links/comments to a post: earliest comment time, longest comment time, average. Something like: "most of comments to a post are written within 1-15 days interval, so if you really want a feedback to your idea and waiting for a two weeks already, rephrase it and post again" ;)

Weblog conversations can be very intensive and develop fast much like mailing list or forum discussion (see the paper for an example).

Unlike mailing lists or forums, which require membership for participation, weblogs are open for everyone to comment. But not all commenters are equal: those with their own weblogs can make "global" contribution and engage their own audience in a discussion, but "blogless" people have to comment in the original weblog, where comments are secondary. (Of course, everyone can use e-mail to comment, but it's another story :)

Weblog conversations are public, but they are still hidden in a sense: it's too difficult to find all the pieces and it's even more difficult to get an overview (e.g. comparing to forum discussion). I would say that weblog conversations are like books in the library: only well-trained people can find them ;)

(One more sidenote: Don't know why I'm getting into writing mode when I should be sleeping. Hope I will not be sleepy in the morning ;)

12:44:02 PM    

D. Keith Robinson is Sick of Web Standards, and to a certain extent, so am I. Like Keith, I'm not sick of standards themselves; I've been using them for over two years now and couldn't conceive of developing without them. Unlike Keith, I'm not tired of advocating them - but I thoroughly believe that it's time to extend the discussion.

As web developers and designers, we face an abundance of challenges. Sites must be fast, accessible, usable, well designed, findable and search engine friendly, with smart URLs, well managed communities and maybe even a sense of humour. Most of us find ourselves taking on the role of copy editors, programmers, designers, information architects, and much, much more. In addition, we frequently run in to problems that have no correct answer (font sizing is a classic example). Trade-offs have become a way of life.

It's time to extend the discussion. Web standards are a small but vital part of a larger solution, something I like to think of as web development best practice. Let's face it: web standards are boring! Focusing discussions on them is like taking cooking lessons from a chef who only ever talks about food safety; sure they're important, but there's so much more involved in creating a decent meal.

There are plenty of benefits of re-framing web standards in the larger context of best practice. Firstly, discussions get a lot more interesting - as I've just demonstrated, there are enough facets to creating effective sites to keep us talking for years to come. Secondly, wrapping web standards in the larger context of industry best practices makes them a much easier pill to swallow. "Our site doesn't validate" is a turn-off. "Let's follow industry best practice" is far more appealing.

As a community, we need to work together to discover the best ways of doing things. We've discovered web standards: let's move forward to the other pieces of the puzzle.

12:16:41 PM    

The link to the Contemporary Practice site is not working as of 6/13. Gives me an error message as if the URL is wrong. This happens whether going from Michelle's links or from Jim's. Try again Monday.

Showcasing Effective practices. I ran across this again via Jim Farmers weblog (while on a wiki chase) Stories of Contemporary Practice at Deakin - 2003 Online Teaching & Learning Fellows. I really like the format of these case studies.. they provide a synopsis of the work, showcase the faculty member, and link to asssociated resources. This is close to the model we're looking... [Michelle's Online Learning Freakout Party Zone]

12:12:47 PM