March 24, 2005, 7.51pm • 55 comments » • 5,650 Views

At Blogs In Action

Charles Schick showing moblogging - .me showing him - crap phone

I’m at the Blogs In Action conference, arranged by Six Apart, at the Polish Club, London. Or, I was, as some of this post will have been written up after attending…

Thanks to Suw for cheekily lending me her power cord so she, I and Tom could form an unstoppable Powerbook trio in our row (leading me to question “what have I become? blogging the blogging conference, oh god”).

I already knew plenty of bits about the panellists’ topics, but the presentation by John Dale, who I’ve been consulting with over the last couple of months, on Warwick University’s weblogs went down especially well with the likes of Tom Coates and Neil McIntosh.

Had a very interesting discussion with Six Apart’s Vice Pres and Managing Director in Europe, Loic Lemeur, and Lee Bryant of Headshift about individual publishing and the democratic realm. I’m pictured somewhere in Loic’s moblog and also that of Charles Schick, who also snapped the panellists (Coates, Tosh, VNU man and John Dale).

So… lots of blah-blah blogging. Here are some very rough notes that are not to be taken as verbatim accounts of speeches and are probably rendered redundant by Suw’s demon typing hands..

Tom Coates

Putting blogging in an historical context. People have difficulty understanding weblogs because weblogs can facillitate so many uses - a “multifarious use set”. Tom started writing about what he wrote on the net, then other stuff, then coded writing for friends. Writes mix of stuff. Been doing it for five years.

Amount of weblogs with real traffic is tiny, like 1,000 - ludicrously small, but still lots of money to make. Mainstreamers publish to an incredibly tiny audience. Bulk of the internet is read by about four or five people. Sheer number of people who lurk in msg boards massively outweighs those who write.

Weblog is an extension of a person - like a suit you wear. If you want to use weblogs properly, keep the individual part of the centre of the thing, ie. Wonkette style - conversational, charismatic, Fleshbot. “A weblog is a representation of a person” trumps all other definitions (like “list of links”, “journalism”, “online journal”, “personal publishing”) - which are like saying “a car is a horseless carriage”…

this is just like I’ve been thinking recentl about “is blogging journalism?” being like “is teleophoning romance?” - it can be, when the medium is used for such, but not really

Questioner asks what about group blogs that don’t necessarily have a voice.

Tom says corporations can’t have an authentic weblog (not sure I agree with that, look at the GM VP’s blog), but individuals within organisations can |(okay, I see what you’re saying).

Neil McIntosh - Assistant Editor, Guardian Unlimited

Started in 2000 with the Weblog (no comments, no internal links, an editorial product), a repository for links. Onlineblog in 2001. All this stuff swimming about (in their heads?) and nowhere to put it. It was a Blogger.com blog (oh yes, I remember!).Newsblog, Onlineblog (”wish we hadn’t called them all “blog”). Blogs.guardian.co.uk summer 2004, also launched two more - games,

To quote one newspaper man, “these blogs, what can they do for me when I’m trying to built a brand that lasts the next 100 years??”

Dominique Busso, CEO VNUnet Europe

VNU has 20 blogs around Europe.

Blogs matched to magazine publications.
1m pageviews across Europe for blogs
Re: Gillmor “my readers know more than I do”… they launced reader expert community blogs… offered readers blogs… freelance = our bloggers.
Sounds an awuful lot like Le Monde’s blogs!)After dotcom bust, journalists felt udnerused. By launching blogs, they gave a space to print journalists to write stories - can publish stories in five minutes and very happy to see it (they got frustrated seeing stories in print after, like, two days).Instead of stories not apeparing, they now have a CMS through which they can publish tidbits easily.

CEBIT weblog.
Journos moblog the show!
Nice way to reconcilliate online/offline worlds.

One of first online publishers in Europe top move into blogs.

Questioner says a VNU writer he was talking to reported writers are very reluctant to blog.

DM says he won’t tell us there is 100% support. Most of UK people are less enthusiastic and “get it” less. We can’t force them - those who want to blog do blog.

Questioner: got any tips for writing a blog entry for the first time?

99% of blogs are personal things. DM blogged about not himself, but his passion ie. it’s very easy to blog anonymously

Loic reminds us about Le Monde’s blogs.

Warwick University blog supremo John Dale

People called them fools:

1. Can’t control students - they’re not employees
2. STudents’ lives won’t maek institution look good.Why?Giving everyone opp to publish.
University self-publishing nothing new (students always had filespace) - but 90% not technically comeptent enough.

Channel to encourage/exercise creativity.

Wanted it to foster community - be a collaborative shared space, not just singular space. ie, “all my colleagues, all my friends, all my coursemates” - read in an aggregate way - good for those new to country/community, unsure about where in social space they fit.

PDP… role for blogs to play.

Blog is a sort of portfolio? But needs to be handled with care.

Why build our own software?
Anticipated 10,000+ blogs - need scale to fit, need to make it easy to create/suspend/close blogs.
Needed tie-in to uni authentication.
Neeeded to be able to pubolish only to certain groups (prvicay), ie. only people doing criminal law, onyl people in my hall of residence (how do they do this>)
Allows fit with other services (Java), architecture. Smart choice.
Respond to neeeds and ideas.
Thought that, when they released v1.0, peopl ewould turn around and say “how could you possibly not include feature X?!?” Building own allows us to say “your’e absolutely write, we’re stupid, it’ll be in v1.1!”
They’ve built CMSs before.
Seriously entertained Typepad
Apache, Java, Oracle, Unix.

Four months to pilot 30 users
9 months to full procution - threw open doors to all who wanted a blog.

Focus groups, paper prototpyes.
Questionnarires to students - what would you like from a blog, how would you use it, requirements?>
Interfaces on paper - asked if it sufficed.
Video recorded people using system.

Large-scale marketing campaign.
Showed them the posters.

3,095 blogs
24,674 posts
51,901 comments
32,790 photos

posts-to-comments ratio - 2 per post!!

Frequency - dipped for Christmas, then increasingly popular - avg 150 entries per day, pleased with that.

Exceeded expectations.

250/300 blogs are actie on a weekly basis.

What have we learned?
Staff, students v positive.
Were concerned abot anarchy. IN fact, v positive, relaxed and courageous enough to accept criticism is part of what goes on in the community.
Lots of community stuff - org real-life social meetings through blogs.
People game the home page system. Hot topics feeds - sex, drugs topics are leveraging comments to appear on front page - doesn’t reflect well on uni.

Astonishnly, very high quality of writing.
Early gaffes - people writing “fuck” 27 times just to see if it could done.

Now… community regulates itself. No ongoing problems.

Academic use is parallel.
Academics respected in their fields don’t want to have an anarchic, chaotic system for serious resarch.

Need to help users decide when blog, forum, CMS page.

Post on “are there too many chinese students on campus” - how do we cope with that? They let the community regulate it.

“God I hate the VC’s guts” - VC’s office was very relaxed about it.

Blogging as record of research/projects.

Public/private, 2/3-1/3

People on shifts must write a blog entry at end of shifts.

(JD: Dangerous to write in Ruby because, if developer leaves, no-one to pick up.)

When students leave college, will you cut blogs off?
Students can make choice?
JD wants them to leave them there, hope to become permanent record. WIll have export facility to MT entries etc.
Also hope to offer blogs to alumni - that’s the plan right now.
Some have gone from Warwick blogs to commercial services because they offer more flexibility.

S/W…
Ideologically, no problem with making it open source.
In practice, it’s so tied into Warwick systems everyone’s run screaming.
If someone came along who knew Java, they could work something out.

Charlie Schick, Nokia Lifeblog

Mobile… more visual blogs, more immediate, done from anywhere.Mobile is liek your life recorder. Perfect medium.
Start with the content, share that.His slides aren’t going tooooo well.

anina.typepad.com

Doesn’t matter what tool you use.

More people using Lifeblog as blogging tool than social thing.

Tom Armitage - how do you see price plans developing?
Points to US - flate rate GPRS.

David Carr, director, The BIg Blgo Company & practising lawyer, veteran lawyer

Legal stuff on blog comments (
Data protection, privacy etc.Most often issue - libel, with good reason.That the net is beyond law is palpable nonsense - just ask Demon (ie. vs L Godrey).
All print laws apply.

Law position in UK (defamation act 96) is not ideal.
2000 case Godfrey vs Demon - Godfrey imitator posted to soc.culture.thailand, knocking his reputation… blah blah, old touchstone case. (what about US Prodigy case?)

Demon pleaded innocent dissemination.
Onyl works upto point they were made aware (by fax from Godfrey). - post that defence upon notice.

So position for bloggers…
must exercise caution.
Law does not require you to police your comments. But if you have comment containign libellous rules, not obliged to do anything about it until you receive a complaint. If you fail to act on complaint, lose the defence.s

Removing a comment could imply youv’e libelled the COMMENTER! Advice - have a disclaimer if you have an open comments ection - “you’re comments are here under suffrance, commenting is privilege not a right, comment may be removed at any time by editors for reasons of taste and decency, on any grounds the editors see fit” - need this caveat to cover your ass, need a policy of acting on complaints.