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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=7YQSqjSh" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://mamamusings.net:80/archives/cat_conferences.php","20060207132907","https://web.archive.org/","web","https://web-static.archive.org/_static/", "1139318947"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=p7PEIJWi" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/> <title>mamamusings: conferences Archives</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907cs_/http://mamamusings.net/styles-site.css" type="text/css"/> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/index.rdf"/> </head> <body> <div id="background"></div> <div id="banner"></div> <div id="bannertext"><h1 class="name">mamamusings: <span style="text-transform: lowercase;">conferences</span></h1> <h2 class="name">elizabeth lane lawley's thoughts on technology, academia, family, and tangential topics</h2></div> <div id="blog"> <div id="menu"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/">Back to Main Page</a></div>  <h2 class="date">Wednesday, 14 December 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001187"></a> <h3 class="title">gypsies, tramps, and thieves</h3> <p>I'm on my way back to Seattle right now from San Francisco, where I was speaking at the Syndicate conference (topic: "searching the syndisphere"). It was fun to speak on the topic, which involved channeling my inner librarian in order to champion the role of the user in the search context.</p> <p>It was even more fun, however, to see some folks whom I only tend to see on the conference circuit, as well as some whose names I know from online contexts but whom I hadn't had a chance to meet in person. (I started to list people by name, but realized that I'd probably leave someone out and offend them, and that it sounded too much like name dropping...)</p> <p>As I was sitting in the speakers room (the best place to find familiar faces, not to mention power outlets near tables) yesterday morning, two people I didn't know saw each other and exchanged enthusiastic greetings. Apparently they hadn't seen each other since they'd crossed paths at another conference some months ago. One remarked to other that these conferences had become the modern day equivalent of gypsy encampments--same faces, same setup, new town, new audience.</p> <p>I loved that metaphor, and shared it via IM with my friend and <span class="caps">MSN </span>office mate Brady Forrest, who replied with this:</p> <blockquote> cables hanging from the waist instead of tiny bells <p>t-shirts instead of colorful blankets</p> <p>secrets being pilfered instead of food and trinkets</p> <p>demoers instead of performers</p> works for me<br/> </blockquote> <p>Works for me, too (although I'd probably substitute Treos for cables in the description). I love the image of a band of folks on the fringes of polite society setting up a show in town after town, gathering to entertain (and, some might claim, con) one population after another.</p> <p>I'm happy to be a part of this motley crew--they're a modern mobile tribe for me, people with whom I have a strong connection and affinity, but limited opportunities to see in person. So I'm grateful that I can grab time with them in our modern-day encampments of speaker rooms and catered luncheons.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 08:02 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/12/14/gypsies_tramps_and_thieves.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/12/14/gypsies_tramps_and_thieves.php#comments">Comments (2)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/12/14/gypsies_tramps_and_thieves.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_friends.php">friends</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Wednesday, 23 November 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001178"></a> <h3 class="title">brilliant presentation on identity</h3> <p>It's bad enough watching most powerpoint presentations in person, so I almost <em>never</em> am willing to watch a streaming video of one after the fact. But as I was cleaning out my inbox today, I stumbled across a link a colleague had sent me to a presentation at this years <span class="caps">OSCON </span>(Open Source Conference) by <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://blame.ca/dick/">Dick Hardt</a> of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.sxip.com/">Sxip</a>.</p> <p>I would have deleted it, if it hadn't included glowing recommendations from both Cory Doctorow and Larry Lessig--two people whose opinions I don't dismiss lightly. So I took a chance and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/">clicked on the link</a>.</p> <p>Wow.</p> <p>Now <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/"><em>that's</em> a good presentation</a>. Visually effective, great style, good enough to survive transformation into a low-bitrate streaming presentation.</p> <p>(Update: Had I read more of the archives of Presentation Zen, I would have realized that Hardt uses a style much like that of Larry Lessig [whom I've never had the privilege of meeting or even listening to], and which has even been named "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/10/the_lessig_meth.html">The Lessig Method</a>.")</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 03:10 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/11/23/brilliant_presentation_on_identity.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/11/23/brilliant_presentation_on_identity.php#comments">Comments (1)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/11/23/brilliant_presentation_on_identity.php#comments">TrackBack (2)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 15 November 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001171"></a> <h3 class="title">corante ssa: "is business ready for social software?"</h3> <p>This is a panel that Stowe Boyd is leading, with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://majestic.typepad.com/seth/">Seth Goldstein</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.kaliyasblogs.net/Iwoman/">Kaliya Hamlin</a>.</p> <p>Seth says that the answer to the question of "Why now? Why is business now noticing and implementing social software solutions?" is three letters: <span class="caps">API.</span> Says that sites like del.icio.us and Flickr only got interesting/popular when developers were able to create things using the <span class="caps">API. </span>(Not sure I completely agree with those examples, but I agree in concept with the importance of <span class="caps">API</span>s. What he's not acknowledging though, and what I think is also important, is ease of use and design simplicity.)</p> <p>(This is being held in a large law school lecture room, theatre style, which is not well-suited to audience engagement. These kinds of rooms trip my "bored student" switch, and I find it much harder to stay engaged.)</p> <p>Seth quotes Josh Schachter describing del.icio.us as "crystallized attention." (Ah...just realized that Seth's the president of AttentionTrust.org.)</p> <p>Stowe asks if we're going to see a backlash against these social, collaborative tools in the enterprise--will employers see this as "wasted time" because the <span class="caps">ROI </span>is less explicit? (My unspoken comment: We're already seeing that backlash with email. Also, we need research that makes that <span class="caps">ROI </span>more explicit--how does the organization (not just the individual) benefit from use of these tools.</p> <p>Seth: We <em>all</em> work for Google, whether we know it or not.</p> <p>Comment from Adam Greene in the audience--quotes someone as saying that "tags are about memory, not about categorization." Do you take the "folks" out of folksonomy when you impose tagging "rules."</p> <p>(The backchannel discussion is becoming more interesting than the panel discussion...not because the panel is boring, but because conversation is inherently more interesting that presentation in most cases. The exceptions are speakers like David Weinberger who can really grab your focus.)</p> <p>Kaliya talks about the "Hollywood model" of teams that come together for a project and then disband and go to other projects. Stowe asks how many people in the audience are working in that mode now, and a number of hands go up. In the backchannel, the question of whether this is necessarily a good thing is raised--as is the fact that key players in those Hollywood groups are unionized in order to ensure that they're compensated appropriately.</p> <p>Seth talks about AttentionTrust--says it's founded on the idea that we all are entitled to a record of our own attention. Google, Amazon, etc are doing an excellent job of recording our actions and attention data; consumers haven't had good ownership of their own data. (I'm not convinced yet that these attention.xml files are much more than a way to make it easier for more companies to have more data about me...)</p> <p>[I apologize to the panel for not better representing their remarks. Between jetlag and room architecture I'm having a hard time staying focused.]</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 07:47 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/11/15/corante_ssa_is_business_ready_for_social_software.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/11/15/corante_ssa_is_business_ready_for_social_software.php#comments">Comments (0)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/11/15/corante_ssa_is_business_ready_for_social_software.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_social_software.php">social software</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001170"></a> <h3 class="title">corante ssa: david weinberger opening remarks</h3> <p>Today I'm at the Corante Symposium on Social Architecture (hereafter referred to as "SSA"), which is an interesting collection of both "the usual suspects" and some faces that are new to me. Stowe Boyd from Corante did some welcoming remarks, and then turned things over to David Weinberger.</p> <p>David breaks the shit and fuck barriers in the first two minutes of his talk. His powerpoint is for shit, he's fucked because he dropped his laptop and it won't work now. (And by transcribing that, I've probably just guaranteed that this blog post will be filtered by most library computers...)</p> <p>David starts by saying that we're all probably tired of explaining blogs at conferences (most of us never expected that we'd be using the term "reverse chronological order" quite so often, he says). This symposium <strong>assumes</strong> that everyone here is past the point of needing to have the technology carefully explained to them.</p> <p>He says that social software is in some sense the fulfillment of the hope that the Internet could fundamentally change relationships in business contexts.</p> <p>References <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Rosch">Eleanor Rosch</a>, and says we need to start by defining what we include within the umbrella term of social software. Tosses out a list of tools (wikis, weblogs, email, <span class="caps">IM, </span>etc), then asks what these things have in common?</p> <ul> <li>they connect people to people</li> <li>they tend to be relatively low-tech, small, bottom-up, inexpensive</li> <li>very human, suffused with human voice</li> </ul> <p>He talks about the publishers' responses to Google Print, and says the stupidity of the arguments is an indication of the fear of cultural change--"both sides are getting stupider," he says, which is the indicator of significant change. The battle he sees is between centralized, controlled information and a "wide-open" model of information that the web represents.</p> <p>(My unspoken question: isn't Google Print just another form of centralized, controlled information?)</p> <p>We're moving from pyramidal to hyperlinked organizations™. Social software lets us route around the hierarchy of the organization.</p> <p>What does David worry about? Three things:</p> <ol> <li>Social software (and the net in general) has a tendency to blow apart the old ways of connecting; how are we going to reconnect?</li> <li>Social software allows us to localize, and form smaller and often transient groups. How do we get the knowledge out of the small group? How do we avoid getting too comfortable in our small groups? (The world isn't flat, he says, it's "lumpy," filled with clusters that form and dissolve...)</li> <li>Are we now forming a "new boys' network"? New groups form, and then exclude others (for the best of reasons...). Will existing patterns of exclusion persist, or will we create new ones? (e.g. those who can use <span class="caps">IRC </span>vs those who can't)</li> </ol> <p>Criticizes the "echo chamber" label, because it turns the very basis of conversation into something negative. If you look at only one site, you'll see only one conversation, true--but most people choose to look at a variety of sites. (This is a huge challenge in building the tools--how do you avoid the Memeorandum effect on conversational spaces?)</p> <p>You need some degree of sameness to enable conversation, but you need some degree of difference to even be able to approximate the truth.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 03:48 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/11/15/corante_ssa_david_weinberger_opening_remarks.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/11/15/corante_ssa_david_weinberger_opening_remarks.php#comments">Comments (1)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/11/15/corante_ssa_david_weinberger_opening_remarks.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_social_software.php">social software</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Saturday, 29 October 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001160"></a> <h3 class="title">collin brooke on blogging practices</h3> <p>I'm posting this as much for myself as for anyone reading the blog. Lately I keep coming across things that really force me to stop and think, and then they slip away and out of my attention radius. When they're here in the blog, they're less "out of sight, out of mind."</p> <p>Collin Brooke posted a nice piece tonight on "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2005/10/i_mean_to_respo.html">Blogging Practices</a>, and I found his criticisms of academia to be right on target:</p> <blockquote>I'm constantly struck by how little we seem to understand or even talk about what it takes to publish, what publishing our work accomplishes (and in some cases, how little it can accomplish), what the real costs and rewards for our work are, etc. As I was preparing that talk a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like the height of obviousness to me to describe humanities scholarship as Long Tail work, and yet, I see indications all around me that we don't want to think of our work in that way: our aversion to collaboration, our inability to aggregate, our obsession with celebrity, etc. Hell, I have to fight every day to keep those things at bay--I love to imagine being paid lots of money to keynote conferences, to have my work read and discussed far and wide, to be semi-famous. But that's a Head reward system that disguises the more modest (but potentially longer lasting) rewards at the Tail end of things.</blockquote> <p>So, I'm in a strange place as an academic. I was recently paid money ("lots" is a relative term, I suppose) to keynote a conference. Unlike many academics, I have little aversion to collaboration or aggregation. But I am a tenured associate professor with a lab of my own, and I often feel like a stranger in a strange land no matter where I am.</p> <p>Early on in my blogging, I wrote about aspects of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/02/21/synchronicity_and_collaboration.php">synchronicity and collaboration in blogging</a>, as well as <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2002/11/20/no_original_thoughts.php">my frustration</a> with the fact that I seemed unable to produce original thoughts--that my skill was in synthesis rather than creation.</p> <p>As time has passed (and I've gotten tenure, and some modicum of readership--though that's been dropping lately with my relative paucity of posts), I've started to be able to forgive myself for my lack of traditional scholarly output, and to be able to value my role as more of a human aggregator.</p> <p>I wish academia did a better job of valuing the kinds of skills I've got--sifting and sorting, connecting the dots and seeing the big picture, intuiting and forecasting. It's not that traditional research isn't valuable--it's just that it's not the only way to put education and knowledge to work. <span class="caps">RIT </span>is better than most schools in recognizing a diversity of scholarship approaches (basing its recent <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/01/reputation_and_scholarship.php">scholarship policy</a> on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.nyu.edu/cte/Scholars.html">Boyer's reasonably broad definitions</a>. But they're the exception rather than the rule.</p> <p>To the extent that I'm part of the "head," the best thing I think I can do with that visibility is connect up more people in the tail. I don't want to get stuck in an incestuous echo chamber of digerati blogs and conferences--which is perhaps why I took such pleasure in being at Internet Librarian, where I was learning every bit as much as I was teaching.</p> <p>(Collin tagged his post with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://technorati.com/tag/academy2.0">academy2.0</a>, which made me smile.)</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 11:32 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/29/collin_brooke_on_blogging_practices.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/29/collin_brooke_on_blogging_practices.php#comments">Comments (3)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/29/collin_brooke_on_blogging_practices.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_academia.php">academia</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_research.php">research</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Wednesday, 26 October 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001155"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian 05: parting thoughts</h3> <p>This is the first conference I've attended in a long time that's made me want to blog non-stop. And it's not insignificant that it's a library-focused conference that inspired me.</p> <p>When I took a job teaching information technology, instead of a job teaching in a library school, I assumed I was leaving my library roots behind. I wasn't able to justify travel to library conferences, and I felt my ties to the professions starting to dissolve. But over the past several years, with the rise in social computing as a theme in technology, I'm delighted to find the threads weaving back together. Suddenly, libarians are talking about the same things that technologists are talking about--managing information, collaborative filtering, metadata and classification schemes. And I'm in the wonderful position of having a legitimate foot in both camps.</p> <p>At the speakers' reception last night, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.tametheweb.com/ttwblog/">Michael Stephens</a> told me he was preparing to do a survey of librarian bloggers, and asked me if I'd participate. It was lovely to be thought of as a librarian in the present tense.</p> <p>And now, as I fly over Utah's extraordinarily beautiful Great Salt Lake (I've never seen it before, and am grateful for the clear skies that are allowing me this bird's-eye view...photos will be on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.flickr.com/photos/liz/">Flickr</a> soon), I'm thinking about how to keep these bonds a little tighter in the future. I really should touch base with some of the faculty I know at <span class="caps">UW'</span>s I-School, and see about maybe giving an occasional guest lecture over there. And I'll be working hard on the folks at <span class="caps">MSN, </span>whose absence was notable this week. Google's not making the mistake of ignoring libraries in their quest to win the hearts and minds of searchers, and <span class="caps">MSN </span>shouldn't be making it either. If that's the only tangible legacy I leave behind, it will have been a year well spent.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 08:20 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/internet_librarian_05_parting_thoughts.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/internet_librarian_05_parting_thoughts.php#comments">Comments (2)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/internet_librarian_05_parting_thoughts.php#comments">TrackBack (3)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_librarianship.php">librarianship</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_microsoft.php">microsoft</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001154"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian 05: search engine choices</h3> <p>Greg Notess and Gary Price, two genuine experts on search engines and our choices.</p> <p>Greg and Gary both start out by saying "Google's not the only answer." It's the job of information professionals to know all of the options, not just the most popular one. Gary notes how hard it is for anybody but Google to get the word out about their products.</p> <p>Current web search engines with unique databases<br/> * AskJeeves<br/> * Google<br/> <span class="caps">MSN </span>(says librarians really should pay more attention to this!)<br/> Yahoo</p> <p>meta engines<br/> * A9<br/> * clusty/vivisimo<br/> * dogpile (one of the few that hits all 4)</p> <p>vertical</p> <ul> <li>redlightgreen</li> <li>topix</li> <li>findory (heh...I just had dinner with the ceo of this.)</li> </ul> <p>Greg says that he doesn't like to start his searches with Google. As a reference librarian, if he starts with something other than Google it boosts his credibility with patrons--he's not just doing the same thing that they do! :) Shows the example of a discussion list posting that was only available on Yahoo (not on Google or <span class="caps">MSN</span>). If you care about comprehensivenss, you have to be willing to use multiple sources.</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.askjeeves.com/">AskJeeves</a> give you a different kind of relevance view. Says they've come the farthest on "quick info" on a search. Shows a search on "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://web.ask.com/web?q=chicago&qsrc=0&o=0">Chicago</a>" as an example. He and Gary then also show a search on "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://web.ask.com/web?q=the+beatles&qsrc=1&o=0">the Beatles</a>," which gives you a variety of useful "expand your search" options. They note that AskJeeves have reduced the number of ads on their pages, which many people don't realize. (In contrast to other</p> <p><span class="caps">MSN</span> Search is up next. Acknowledges that not all Microsoft products are best of breed. <span class="caps">BUT...MSN </span>search is no longer powered by other people's indexes, and right now they're doing a better job than anyone else of keeping things fresh. They also mention that <span class="caps">MSN</span> Search gives you free access to Encarta content. You get two hours of access each time you do a search leading to Encarta (can limit to Encarta only, or let it be part of the overall results). They haven't promoted it, but it's a feature that librarians should be promoting--particularly as a comparison to wikipedia.</p> <p>Shows <span class="caps">MSN'</span>s search builder, which is great for showing people how to build complex searches--uses drop-down boxes and sliders for ranking. They don't show start.com; will have to ping them about that, because I suspect they may not be aware of it.</p> <p>Next up is Yahoo; they recommend that people use search.yahoo.com rather than yahoo.com, to avoid clutter. Shows that you can edit the tabs (there's a tiny "edit" link up there...) to the kinds of vertical/specialized searches you want. (That's <strong>cool</strong>! I didn't know that!) If you're logged into Yahoo, the settings will follow you. In advanced search, they show off the creative commons option, as well as their "subscriptions" search, which is extremely interesting (Mary Ellen mentioned this on Monday, too). He shows the blog search stuff that's been added (that's another post that's brewing for me; I'm extremely unimpressed by their implementation of blog search). Then they show Mindset, as well--again, I don't love that shopping/research is the only axis. Shows the shift from "did you mean"</p> <p>Complains about lack of transparency in how search engines (especially Google) works.</p> <p>Damn. I need to go to the airport, and will miss the metasearch and vertical search discussion. Hopefully someone else will blog it...I'm outta here!</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 11:07 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/internet_librarian_05_search_engine_choices.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/internet_librarian_05_search_engine_choices.php#comments">Comments (1)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/internet_librarian_05_search_engine_choices.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_librarianship.php">librarianship</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_search.php">search</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001152"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian 05: google debate</h3> <p>Rich Wiggins squares off against Roy Tennant in a debate over "Google: Catalyst for Digitization or Library Destruction?"</p> <p>Rich starts off, and is utterly charming. Some funny starting slides, hard to capture in print because of their visual impact.</p> <p>Starts by talking about a similar debate they had 4 years ago. (The slides are dense with bullet points now, and I'm sitting where it's hard for me to see the screen, so I'm not going to try to transcribe them. Later I'll look for a pointer to the presentation online.)</p> <p>How many bytes are in the LIbrary of Congress? This is a non-trivial question, with lots of technical aspects. You can't gloss those aspects (resolution, color, etc) because you'll end up wasting effort. Rich cites Brewster Kahle's estimate of 20 terabytes.</p> <p>Rich says it's becoming so inexpensive to capture full-text and images that complete digitization is becoming realistic. Disk space is cheap, scanning technology has improved. He asked google what they're using, and they wouldn't answer. (Color me shocked...) I wonder whether Microsoft will be more forthcoming, considering their partnership with <span class="caps">OCA.</span> I hope so. [add musing on google's secrecy here]</p> <p>Refers the comment last night by Stephen Abrams that we spend more money getting abook through <span class="caps">ILL </span>than we do to buy it. (That's a really interesting thing to think about.)</p> <p>There are a bunch of straw man arguments here. He dismisses the preservation argument--we have better access, since you can still get the stuff online after a fire. (But what happens when the power goes out? That happens a lot more often...) Doesn't address the question of what happens when data is stored in proprietary formats--do we know what format Google will store this information in?</p> <p>His bottom line, "Google Print has taught us to 'think big.'" (hmmm. does the period go before or between the single and double quotes there?)</p> <p>Argues that this vision of digitization will have to be done by a forward-thinking company -- not by government. It has to be a company. (He claims that Google invented Ajax!!!!) Mocks Microsoft, saying they're playing catchup, and not very well. "Hmmm...Google's going to digitize millions of books? We'll digitize 150,000!"</p> <p>Now it's Roy's turn. Starts out by saying that his bottom line is "more access is better." He thinks it's great that Google's digitizing stuff, that <span class="caps">OCA </span>is doing it, that libraries have been doing it for decades. There's a lot of room for everyone to be involved. Says he's going to try to be provocative, and starts out a halloween-themed slide that reads "Google: Devil? or Merely Evil?" (I didn't get a photo of this, but would love to get the slide from him.) Says he's going to talk about the scary monsters that he sees lurking in this project.</p> <p>The first monster: the fair use problem. He's concerned about Google trying to shield themselves with fair use. Because this has pulled the issue into the courts, it has the potential to result in restriction of fair use rights for everyone, including libraries.</p> <p>The second monster: Closed access to open material. For example, there are many copies of <em>Call of the Wild</em> that are freely avaialble. But when you go to Google Print, you won't know that--you'll see the reprinted, proprietary version from a publisher, without an indication that it's in the public domain and can be found from other sources. "And to add insult to injury, they give you links to buy the book, but no links to libraries." He's been assured this will change, but it hasn't happened yet, and there's no guarantee that it will.</p> <p>The third monster: Blind, wholesale digitiazation. He's not so sure this is a good thing. Large collections in research libraries are choked with out-of-date crap, so that their collection numbers are high enough to keep them in their "tier." Also, because copyrighted information is more difficult to get to, people will rely on old, out of date information because it's free and easy to get to. Is this a good thing? (This is a great point that I haven't heard mentioned before.) <span class="caps">OCA </span>is more focused on selective digitization--for example, American literature.</p> <p>The fourth monster: advertising. How long before we see ads for antidepressant medication next to Hamlet? Google's window of opportunity to do "good things" will be constricted by their responsiblity to stockholders.</p> <p>The fifth monster: secrecy<br/> The agreements between Google and libraries have been largely kept secret. Before the announcement, the Google libraries could not even talk to <strong>each other</strong>. Michigan revealed theirs (but not until a Freedom of Info Act request forced it, and months after the project was announced). <em>Rumor</em> has it that UM has the best agreement from the library perspective, and that other libraries are agreeing to much less onerous terms. This is a hot button for me. One of the things that I really like about Microsoft is the extent to which its researchers regularly collaborate, publish, and present outside of the company. If Google's intent is purely philanthropic, why does the commitment to "provide access to the world's information" stop at their front door?</p> <p>The sixth monster: longevity.</p> <ul> <li>What do google, Enron, and WorldCon all have in common? Answer: They are or were publicly traded companies motivated by profit. Two are now gone.</li> <li>What does google have in common with libraries? Answer: They're both on planet earth. (much laughter)</li> <li>How old is the harvard library? Answer: 400+ years. How old is Google: 7. So, which of these organizations do you want to trust with your intellectual heritage?</li> </ul> <p>Now Adam Smith gets a chance to respond. Flashes a charming grin, and says "I'm not that dangerous, am I?" :) (This is what scares me most about Google. Their people and their products are indeed so seductively charming, it's easy to take their claims of purely philanthropic motivation seriously.)</p> <p>He encourages feedback and criticism--says that's how they make their products better. They launch things quickly so they can get feedback quickly. They walk a difficult path in trying to make many parties happy. Their goal is to make information more accessible, not hidden in library stacks. Says he'll be here to answer questions.</p> <p>He's asked about the scanning process--they've developed a proprietary non-destructive scanning process, but are not at liberty to disclose that. Someone asks about privacy, Adam refers them to Google's privacy policy. Someone else asks if it's true that one of the libraries requested that only manual page turning be part of the scanning, and he again invokes "no comment."</p> <p>I ask about the disjoint between the stated policy of helping the world by making information accessible and the veil of secrecy surrounding everything they do, and he's unable to respond--says he's only been there two years, and isn't really familiar with the reasoning behind their policies on disclosure. I express surprise that he hasn't asked for clarification, since I would think he's asked this fairly often, and he says he's <em>never</em> been challenged on this in a public forum before. I'd love to think that's not true, but I suspect that the Google mystique, which they cultivate so very well, has a lot to do with that.</p> <p>Lots of discussion, not all of which I capture mentally (let alone here on the screen).</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 10:31 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/internet_librarian_05_google_debate.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/internet_librarian_05_google_debate.php#comments">Comments (1)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/internet_librarian_05_google_debate.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_librarianship.php">librarianship</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_search.php">search</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001153"></a> <h3 class="title">my public apology to adam smith of google</h3> <p>So, I owe Adam Smith an apology. I was awfully snarky in my blog post last night, and somewhat unfair in my characterization. He was gracious enough to stop by to say hello this morning, after having read my post, and I apologized to him then. But if I'm going to ding him publicly on my site, I feel as though I should apologize publicly, as well.</p> <p>First of all, as many people pointed out to me this morning, he's most definitely not over 40 (while I cannot authoritatively confirm his gender, I'm still fairly confident that he's male...).</p> <p>Second, as someone representing his company, he's under significant constraints in terms of what he can say. When I went through employee orientation at Microsoft, I was warned many times about how quickly people would distort what I said or wrote simply because of my affiliation with the company. I was skeptical, but since then I've seen first-hand how that does indeed happen, and I can't fault Adam for being cautious in his responses, and sticking close to the party line.</p> <p>Finally, I have to give him (and Google) huge props for being here, and engaging in the dialogue. He's weathered a lot of criticism gracefully, and that's not easy to do even when you don't have hundreds of people watching you.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 10:16 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/my_public_apology_to_adam_smith_of_google.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/my_public_apology_to_adam_smith_of_google.php#comments">Comments (1)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/26/my_public_apology_to_adam_smith_of_google.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_unclassifiable.php">unclassifiable</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 25 October 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001149"></a> <h3 class="title">glory days</h3> <p>I'm in my hotel room, getting ready for bed while my iPod mini plays songs on shuffle. Right now, Bruce Springsteen is singing "Glory Days," a song I love but haven't listened to in ages. And it got me thinking not about high school, but about library school.</p> <p>It's odd being at a library conference without the bulk of my library posse...a group of tech-savvy librarians that coalesced in <span class="caps">LITA </span>in the late 1980s when many of us were students or recent alums of the University of Michigan School of Information and Library Studies (at least two name changes ago; it's now the School of Information).</p> <p>For years and years we've gathered at <span class="caps">ALA </span>conferences--for dinner, drinking, and occasional debauchery. During those years we've married and divorced (not each other, thankfully), changed jobs and career paths and addresses. We've gotten older, too. We don't drink quite as much as we used to, or go out quite as late.</p> <p>The part that's the hardest for me to come to terms with cognitively. We're not the young turks at the conferences anymore...we're a bona fide old guard. We're library directors, business owners, and pundits. We're the ones giving the keynote speeches. I can remember vividly the night that two of us ended up accidentally crashing the <span class="caps">LITA </span>president's reception in New Orleans, and feeling so completely out of place. Fast forward to today, when at least two of our crowd have been <span class="caps">LITA </span>presidents themselves (including my companion that night), and the bulk of us have been on the board at least once.</p> <p>Here at Internet Librarian, I see the next posse hanging in the halls. They're talking about blogs and flickr and del.icio.us. They're laughing out loud at the stodginess around them (as well they should), and carving out their own space. And I find that I'm not at all jealous. I love seeing them blaze their own paths, create their own disruptive force. I don't want to go back to who and where I was fifteen years ago. But I am oh so glad for the friendships that were forged during those conference romps, and the memories that remain. I can only hope that this new group of go-getters will have as many joys and successes in the profession that we've had.</p> <p>So here's to you, my glory day friends. You know who you are.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 10:56 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/glory_days.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/glory_days.php#comments">Comments (5)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/glory_days.php#comments">TrackBack (2)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_friends.php">friends</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_librarianship.php">librarianship</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001148"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian: the googlebrary</h3> <p>Tonight's panel is moderated by Stephen Abrams, with a number of library pundits <em>and</em> Adam Smith from Google Print. Before the presentation even begins, a young man circulates around the room handing out a glossy sheet with the Google logo at the top entitled "The Facts About Google Print." Gotta love their ability to spin things. It's not an "FAQ," it's not "information"--it's Facts.</p> <p>I've spent a lot of time over the past few days talking with librarians who are openly enthusiastic about Google's digitization project--not because they love Google, but because they desperately want this information in searchable form. This evening at the speaker's reception, someone said to me "the <em>only</em> question is when this will happen." I looked at him in surprise, and responded that I thought that an equally important question was "who."</p> <p>So, the panel's about to start...and the first thing I notice is that I seem to have been transported into a web 2.0 panel: all white men, all the time. The only difference is that all of these men are over 40. <sigh> I don't mean to denigrate any of the panel members--they're all smart, accomplished guys. Rich Wiggins from <span class="caps">MSU,</span> Steve Arnold from Arnold Info Systems, Roy Tennant from Cal Dig Lib, Mark Sandler of Univ Mich, and Adam Smith from Google Print.</p> <p>Oh...wait! Barbara Quint, editor of Searcher Magazine, is here, virtually (via speaker phone). A truly invisible woman in this case.</p> <p>Stephen Abrams is a great moderator--energetic, funny, engaging. Notes that Google's under fire from publishers and authors, and now the threat of congressional hearings. "I'm sorry, I'm from Canada. We think your congressional hearings are great entertainment."</p> <p>Starts with Adam. "I'm Adam, I'm from Google, and I'm here to give you the <span class="caps">TRUTH </span>about Google, and dispel the misinformation that's out there about Google." (Heh..."I'm from <del>the government</del> Google and I'm here to help you.")</p> <p>"We're doing this out of necessity, not desire." (They're hitting this line hard in a lot of contexts these days; I rather liked <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/i_work_for_goog.php">Nicholas Carr's comment</a> on this approach last week.)</p> <p>Shows the three "user experiences" they intend: the publisher program, public domain books, and copyrighted books. The last is the one that's most contentious. Smith says: "This <strong>is</strong> allowed under fair use." Huh. Judge and jury, case closed? If it were that clear cut, would there be this much controversy surrounding it? While they may well be right, to present opinion as fact is troubling.</p> <p>Abrams takes over again, and says that we're going to move fifteen years into the future. We've built the megalibrary, and we're looking back: what did we do right? Or...what did we do wrong? How did we get here?</p> <p>Rich Wiggins starts out. He appears to have fallen under the Google spell... "Looking back, the leading search engine company, worth billions, has digitized the world's culture." A truly utopian vision. (I like Rich, and he'll probably read this, so I'll apologize in advance--Rich, I'm criticizing the ideas and tone, not the person. :)</p> <p>Roy Tennant totally takes the other end: Google is bankrupt due to mismanagement, and the rest of the world has figured out how to do digitization well. (Adam, he says, has cleverly cashed out in 2009.) The <span class="caps">MARC </span>format is dead, libraries have discovered that systems don't integrate well, and have come to grips with how to change them. I like this Utopian vision a lot better than the last one! (He and Rich are debating tomorrow morning; I'll definitely have to attend that keynote!)</p> <p>Mark Sandler: In 2020, Internet Librarian has become the Librarian conference; <span class="caps">ALA </span>in turn has become the American Print Library Assn. (Much laughter...) Google may or may not be there--he doesn't know what the life span of a 7-year-old multi-billion dollar company is. But in Billings MT and Berea KY there are now libraries with 50 million, 100 million volumes available to their readers (from the speakerphone, Barbara's voice cries "Yes! Yes!").</p> <p>Barbara looks back from 2020 to 2006, when Google launched "Google Press" (I can't make sense of what she's saying--the voice cuts in and out...) Five years later, it is renamed the "Google Full Court Press." (wish I could hear all of this)</p> <p>Steve talks about his book, "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.infonortics.com/publications/google/google-legacy.html">The Google Legacy</a>." Says he's the only person in the room whom Sergey Brin has said is stupid. (Anybody have the cite to that? I couldn't find it in a quick search...) He says he's not interested in Google Print <em>or</em> Google Scholar, he's more interested in GoogleBase, which allows Google to become world's largest publisher of scientific information. Abrams asks him to explain GoogleBase, and he responds: "I'm not explaining Google Base. It's not my job. Sergey thinks I'm stupid, and we have someone here from Google that Sergey thinks is smart. Let him explain it." Heh.</p> <p>He makes a critical point here, though. Microsoft's products don't delight. Google's products <em>do</em> delight. (Quick round of Microsoft bashing ensues, during which I'm glad I'm not on stage. :)</p> <p>Adam gets to have his futuring moment. Says 2006 was a turning point year, where "we all worked together to do the right thing." We freed ourselves from the worries of digitization and formats. In 2020 everyone is an author, everyone is a publisher, everyone is an archivist, everyone is involved in the creative process. (He should read <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2004/01/06/justice_fairness_power_and_privilege.html">danah's post</a> from nearly two years ago... "Consumption and production are fundamentally different and there are different forms of pressure when engaging with either. There is no way that one can possibly say that the threshold for consumption is equivalent to the threshold for production.")</p> <p>(Roy suggests a round of Kumbaya at this point. I nearly fall off my chair. You go, Roy!)</p> <p>Stephen asks "what will happen to the librarians in 2020?"</p> <p>Mark says that some of them will be gone. Why would we need "local providers" when they have the WalMart of libraries? (He says this with a straight face...at least Roy seems to raise his eyebrows.) Local libraries are going to have to change their mission. It has to be about access, about pampering users and adding real value to their lives. They're going to be like "cosmetic counters". <span class="caps">WTF</span>?!? Apparently he's serious here--he keeps going on this tack, as I become increasingly astonished.</p> <p>Barbara weighs in over her spotty audio feed. (I have to ask...why are they using a telephone line run through the sound system rather than a high-quality IP solution with a direct audio line out of the computer? Skype gives far better quality than what we're hearing.) She says readers are more tightly connected to their readers, authors are building books out of Google's content. Book prices are dropping, open access keeps increasing. Librarians are helping to discriminate between good, bad, lousy and lousier materials. "when everything is digital, you're paying people to help you not read bad stuff." Librarians become <strong>censors</strong>. (Why the choice of that extraordinarily loaded word rather than the less judgmental and polarizing term "filters"?)</p> <p>Roy says he wants to jump into this "digital lovefest." Digital won't make print go away--it never will. Putting digital materials online increases book circulation. Libraries have never been just about "stuff." They're about service. That doesn't change when collections are digital. (Yay!)</p> <p>Rich says the cloudy part of the crystal ball is about how we'll be accessing this information. Display technology will change a lot about how we access things. If we have "e-paper" widely available by 2020, it changes this discussion.</p> <p>Steve says everyone in this room needs to wake up the associations and get them more engaged in the role of the library as an institution. Unless that happens, we'll have a repeat of what happened in Salinas, where the library was shut down. This is a job for everyone here to carry back to the associations and be militant about it, so we don't become marginalized. Also, the library is an institution about learning and information, not limited to a type of material. It is a manifestation of how to organize and access information, whether it works with digital or print artifacts. Having said that, he thinks there will be a "pushing down" of librarianship into some institutions (like schools), and a pushing up into businesses--but the pain will be in the middle. That's where the impact of Google will be.</p> <p>Abrams breaks in, and says Adam is an "immigrant" into the world of libraries. What does Adam think?</p> <p>Adam responds by saying that just because everything is digital doesn't mean everything is good. (Um, yeah. This isn't news to anyone in this room.) Editorial control will still be relevant and important. How do we communicate what's good, when everyone's "good" is a little different. Hopefully the "truly good" will rise to the top.</p> <p>Stephen points out that Google has two new patents for determining the "quality" of information. Asks Adam what the impact of that will be on libraries. Smith doesn't seem to really answer the question directly.</p> <p>Audience questioner takes the room to task about the fact that we're taking this very lightly; also points out that many of the panel members have a vested interest in Google's success in this space. Barbara responds (again nearly unintelligible, but seems to be focused on serials).</p> <p>Librarian from a small library says that his life isn't long enough to read what they already have, let alone adding so much more. How do we evaluate all that information? (I'd like to see more discussion of collaborative filtering here...) Mark responds that as a collection dev officer, they try to buy "all but the very worst books." Says in research libraries they've always operated on the "long tail" model--you can't anticipate what researchers might want, so you collect broadly to try to cover all the bases. Maintaining that physical collection is tremendously difficult, and makes it harder and harder to move forward.</p> <p>An audience member asks about preservation...Adams quite appropriately points to the work being done by academic researchers in this area.</p> <p>A couple of questions about digital rights management. One commenter says Michigan's agreement with google is quite impressive in this regard. (I'm starting to feel a little bad for him; the audience wants him to answer all of their questions about what they think is wrong with Google, and of course that's not fair for him.</p> <p>I ask about the fear of a single source--Steve responds that there will be at least three companies that will do this, that the market will force this to happen. Google will be one, obviously. Yahoo is looking at this as well. <span class="caps">MSFT </span>will probably be in that space. There will not be a single source, no matter how hard anyone tries. That will be emergent--the market will accomplish that. (Barbara says we have three: open content alliance with Yahoo and whoever else joins, and Amazon, and Google.) Steve disagrees--he believes there will be three, and the only one we know for sure at this point is Google. Barbara responds that right now we do have three--digitization is coming from three players, not one. Roy points out that Yahoo is only one of many players in <span class="caps">OCA.</span></p> <p>And then, as if on cue...</p> <blockquote> <strong>Big Announcement</strong> The <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.opencontentalliance.org/">Open Content Alliance</a> tonight had an official inaugural event in San Francisco--and at the reception it was announced that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051025-210127">Microsoft is joining the alliance</a>, and is funding the digitization of 150K books over the next year. Microsoft's contribution will be known as <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-26-2005/0004195020&EDATE="><span class="caps">MSN</span> Book Search</a>.<br/> </blockquote> <p>Smith's response: Google absolutely welcomes Microsoft's participation in <span class="caps">OCA, </span>because it's all about making the world a better place.</p> <p>Some discussion about what will happen to the physical artifacts? Who will take responsibility for ensuring that the books themselves continue to exist? Will they be lost in the digital shuffle?</p> <p>Roy: Librarians still have a lot to learn about Google. And Google still has a lot to learn about libraries. (he gets some applause on this)</p> <p>[Oy. I'm tired. There are other things being said, but I'm no longer able to listen and process and type. Sorry.]</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 09:47 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_the_googlebrary.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_the_googlebrary.php#comments">Comments (2)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_the_googlebrary.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_librarianship.php">librarianship</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_microsoft.php">microsoft</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_search.php">search</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001147"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian 05: fabulous flickr meme</h3> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://flickr.com/photos/tags/librarianswithgiantcalculators/">Librarians with giant calculators. </a></p> <div class="posted">Posted at 05:27 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_05_fabulous_flickr_meme.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_05_fabulous_flickr_meme.php#comments">Comments (0)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_05_fabulous_flickr_meme.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_humor.php">humor</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001146"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian 05: my keynote</h3> <p>I promised the audience this morning that I'd blog my own keynote, though there doesn't seem to be much point to it given the great coverage from so many other conference bloggers: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/librarianinblack/2005/10/internet_librar_8.html">Librarian in Black</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.librarytechtonics.info/archives/2005/10/the_future_is_p_1.html">Library Techtonics</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2005/10/25/2005102501_liz_lawleys_keynote.html">The Shifted Librarian</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://daweed.blogspot.com/2005/10/il05-day-2-social-computing-info-pro.html">dave's blog</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://library.coloradocollege.edu/steve/archives/2005/10/internet_librar_6.html">See Also</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.travelinlibrarian.info/2005/10/il05-tuesday-keynote.html">Travelin' Librarian</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.walkingpaper.org/index.php?id=245">walking paper</a>, and the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/httphttp://www.infotodayblog.com/archives/2005_10_23_archive.shtml#113027119319593381">official conference blog</a>. (I got these from Technorati and the conference blog list; if you blogged the talk and I missed your post, leave a comment...)</p> <p>Overall, I think the talk went well, though I didn't have the "high" I sometimes get when everything just clicks. Maybe it's just hard to connect with such a big room. Or maybe I actually overprepared--I spent a lot of time last night trying to organize my thoughts, but it felt like I was trying to do too much--I didn't feel as though I was delivering a clear take-away message. If I were grading, I'd give it a "B," I think.</p> <p>But for those of you who've come to the site because I promised links and details from the talk, here are the notes I was talking from, annotated with links as appropriate:</p> <blockquote> how much things have changed since the 2003 conference, as evidenced by things I overheard on Monday morning: <ul> <li>"yeah, they're talking about social software and blogs and all that stuff." -- in a classic "that's so 5 minutes ago" voice</li> <li>"I flickr'ed <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.flickr.com/photos/prettydaisies/55580934/">a photo of you and Stephen Abrams</a>."</li> <li>"it's blah blah flickr blah blah tags blah blah don't be afraid..." (literally)</li> </ul> <p>Yesterday <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://epeus.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_epeus_archive.html#113014965252163836">Technorati indexed its 20 millionth blog</a> - an <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://anquetil.canalblog.com/">elementary school in France</a></p> <p>It's hard to speak on the second day (but at least it's not the third)</p> <ul> <li>Lee Rainie took the Long Tail and <span class="caps">CPA </span>pieces - and stole my "no powerpoint" thunder</li> <li>Jenny Levine and Jessamyn West took the tagging</li> <li>Mary Ellen Bates & Gary Price took the social bookmarking</li> </ul> <p>So what's left for me?</p> <ul> <li>Long Tail details -- it's all about social/viral: this is where librarians shine</li> <li>Why do most search tools still suck? (Kathy Sierra's <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/10/the_concept_car.html">concept car image</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/10/making_happy_us.html">happy users graph</a>)</li> <li>Power of social search -- people are better filters than algorithms (myweb vs Google for "clay" or "tags"; can't link to the myweb because you have to be logged in as me for it to work)</li> <li>Trusted information sources are not the same as "buddies." What if you could syndicate your library bookmarks? What if you could provide proactive (rather than reactive) search filters? (the LaGrange Park Library <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://del.icio.us/LaGrangeParkLibrary">has started using del.icio.us</a>!)</li> <li>dark side of social tagging: What happens to the long tail? if there's not a critical mass of taggers, are the tags really helpful? Or do they end up making the long tail even more invisible? Is "majority rules" the best way to describe content? (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/20/social_consequences_of_social_tagging.php"><span class="caps">ESP </span>game example</a>)</li> <li>is continuous partial attention <em>bad</em> for us, or just bad <em>for us</em>? attention is a form of capital--we're going to have to start <strong>earning</strong> it, not demanding it.</li> <li>lifehacking is better than prozac: geek <span class="caps">GTD </span>cults, 43 Folders, Lifehacker.com, <span class="caps">NYT </span>magazine article, 10/16/05 "Meet the Life Hackers" (behind the paywall now, so I won't link to it)</li> <li>and for the person who slipped me the note at the end of the presentation, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=433">here's the link</a> to Mary Czerwinski's Microsoft Research study on how big screens make you more productive... :)<br/> </blockquote></li> </ul> <div class="posted">Posted at 05:25 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_05_my_keynote.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_05_my_keynote.php#comments">Comments (2)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_05_my_keynote.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001145"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian 05: karen schneider on blogging ethics</h3> <p>I've know <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://freerangelibrarian.com/">Karen Schneider</a> for more years than I'm willing to admit in public, and I've never been disappointed in one of her presentations...</p> <p>She shows off the newly-revamped <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.lii.org/">Librarians' Internet Index</a>, which looks great. "Websites you can trust."</p> <p>After attending the Berkman symposium on web credibility, she started thinking a lot about blogging ethics. Why do ethics matter?</p> <p>On a "micro" level, your blog represents you and everything you're connected with, including librarianship. Great quote: "For most readers, you are the last stop between the reader and the truth." From a utilitarian standpoint, being ethical is a strategic approach. Information has a long half-life. Being ethical is a form of self-preservation..."the blogosphere can be cruel. the biblioblogosphere can be crueler."</p> <p>On a "macro" level, "The harder we work to make the world a moral place, the better it is for everyone." She points out that librarianship is a profession defined by its concern for others--witness librarians' willingness to go to jail rather than provide information about patrons.</p> <p>She flashes some "rules of blogging," but they're gone before I can look up from my screen. :)</p> <p><strong>Five things <em>not</em> to say about your blog</strong></p> <ol> <li>It's only a blog</li> <li>So-and-so does it</li> <li>Everyone understood what I meant</li> <li>They can always look up</li> <li>Nobody trusts the web anyway</li> </ol> <p>Key Rules</p> <p><strong>Be transparent</strong></p> <p>Talks about the importance of transparency, quotes wikipedia ("An activity is transparent if all information about it is open and freely available.") and David Weinberger ("For most blogs, we want to know what the writer's starting point is."</p> <p>Lack of transparency can be dangerous... Talks about Jeff Gannon, a "one-man-astoturf" White House correspondent. Turned out to be, among other things, a male hustler. ($1200 a weekend?! wow...) Being transparent is pre-emptive--you take the wind out of the sails of people wanting to dish dirt on you. (Shows a photo of the real Robert Fisk, namesake of the verb "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisking">fisking</a>.")</p> <p><strong>Cite it (and check your facts!)</strong></p> <p>Talks about Gorman's infamous "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA502009.html?display=BackTalkNews&industry=BackTalk&industryid=3767&verticalid=151">revenge of the blog people</a>" article. (Aside: the best swag I'm bringing home from this conference is my "One of the Blog People" button.) She notes that he complained about blogs, but never cited the ones he talked about. Link to and name your sources and documentation. Avoid anonymous sources. Always check a secondary source (well, I'd argue that this is true only if you're asserting that it's factually true).</p> <p>"There is nothing more pathetic than a librarian who gets the facts wrong." (She says that's worse than a <span class="caps">NYT </span>reporter that does the same, and I agree.)</p> <p>Lots of good tips for how to ensure accuracy, which I'm not going to repeat here.</p> <p><strong>Be Fair</strong></p> <p><span class="caps">WHO </span>has defined fairness as "The attitude of being just to all."</p> <p>Some good tips: Let a source know when s/he is "on the record." Don't present opinions as fact. If you <strong>claim</strong> be objective, you really have to present opposing sides of an issue. Let your readers comment (within reason). [I don't know if I agree with the last one...but that debate's been held in enough places that I see no reason to rehash it here.]</p> <p><strong>Admit Mistakes</strong><br/> (tuned out for a few minutes here...sorry...mostly about how to acknowledge )</p> <p>Shows Justinland site, "brother of bridezilla" posts. Why? The unreliable narrator can be interesting and fun. April fool's is an exception.</p> <p>All in all a very good, very clear, very useful presentation for library bloggers. Brava!</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 12:09 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_05_karen_schneider_on_blogging_ethics.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_05_karen_schneider_on_blogging_ethics.php#comments">Comments (2)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/25/internet_librarian_05_karen_schneider_on_blogging_ethics.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_on_blogging.php">on blogging</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Monday, 24 October 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001143"></a> <h3 class="title">powerbook video adapter needed!</h3> <p>If any powerbook-toting Internet Librarian attendees are reading this, I desperately need a powerbook <span class="caps">DVI</span>-to-VGA video adapter for my keynote tomorrow morning. I left both of mine at home :(</p> <p>Worst case scenario, I'll borrow a laptop from someone else and load up my images from a <span class="caps">USB </span>drive, but it would be nice if I could use my Mac.</p> <p>So, if you're here in Monterey and have one of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.superwarehouse.com/p.cfm?p=123499&CMP=KA18442">these</a> that you could lend me for 45 minutes tomorrow morning, email me at myblogname at gmail dot com, or comment here, or just stop by the podium before my talk tomorrow morning....</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 09:50 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/powerbook_video_adapter_needed.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/powerbook_video_adapter_needed.php#comments">Comments (0)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/powerbook_video_adapter_needed.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_technology.php">technology</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001142"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian 05: expert panel on searching</h3> <p>This is a two-part session, so it will go for nearly two hours. We'll see how long I last. But I feel some sense of obligation to go to the search-related sessions so that I can go back and ask <span class="caps">MSR </span>or <span class="caps">MSN </span>to reimburse me for the extra day here that the conference organizers didn't cover (I get two nights in the hotel as a speaker, but if I'd only stayed for that I would have missed a lot of the most interesting search presentations on either Monday or Wednesday).</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.virtualchase.com/tvcalert/">Genie Tyburski</a> starts out by talking about "setting limits" on time, sources, email, etc...makes me wonder if this is going to be somewhat like a "lifehacking for librarians" session. (If not, that would be a great session for a future IL panel, I think. Jane, you reading this? What do you think? :) She says email is unreliable, unproductive, and distracting. (Well, you could say the same thing about people, couldn't you?) She talks about disposable addresses for logging into websites (I prefer the BugMeNot approach, when possible). Yes, this is sounding a lot like a lifehacker kind of talk. Not sure I'm going to get a lot out of it, since I'm already a faithful reader of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.43folders.com/">43 Folders</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.lifehacker.com/">Lifehacker</a>, and a recent convert to the <span class="caps">GTD </span>approach. She pushes <span class="caps">RSS, </span>but I see this as a false dichotomy. It's not an alternative to email, unless most of your email comes from distribution lists. <span class="caps">RSS </span>is great for one-to-many, but lousy for one-to-one or many-to-many.</p> <p>She talks about a tool called "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.aignes.com/">WebSite-Watcher</a>," which she runs as a desktop application to monitor websites for changes. (Ah, shades of the infamous Winer-Watcher...) I'd prefer to lean on publishers to provide <span class="caps">RSS </span>rather than using this approach (I assume this is basically screen-scraping to generate the equivalent of <span class="caps">RSS </span>updates). Also mentions one called <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://trackengine.com/servlets/com.nexlabs.trackengine.ui.ShowPage?pg=user/forms/about">TrackEngine</a>--she describes it as a similar approach, but a quick look at their site makes me wonder. They describe themselves as an "active bookmark manager"--will have to spend a little time with it to see what it involves.</p> <p>Next up is Gary Price, from ResourceShelf.com and SearchEngineWatch.com. Can't read the stuff on his screen, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://resourceshelf.com/keepcurrent_il_05.html">but it's online</a>. He reminds us of how few people have actually hear of <span class="caps">RSS</span>--the Yahoo survey said 12%. Points out how important explaining and describing this to end users is. He talks about a couple of bookmarking/clipping sites: Furl, eClips, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.filangy.com/">filangy</a> (huh...haven't heard of this last one. worth exploring). He also demos Website-Watcher, and recommends it highly. My first impression is that it's <strong>so</strong> ugly--but clearly it has devoted users.</p> <p>Whoa--he gives the first mention of <span class="caps">MSN</span> I've heard, and a plug for start.com. Nice to hear someone talk about a site other than Yahoo.</p> <p>Shows <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.indeed.com/">indeed.com</a>, a metasearch engine for job sites--not just compilation sites, but also job postings on corporate sites--here's a search for <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=microsoft&l=redmond&rl=1&sort=">Microsoft jobs in Redmond</a>. Points out that monitoring job openings can give you insight into what companies are up to.</p> <p>Recommends <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.whois.sc/">Whois Source</a> for good domain name searching/monitoring. Provides some nice tools; will have to start using this one.</p> <p>Shows a couple of useful special-purpose research and news sites:<br/> * <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.diplomacymonitor.com/stu/dm.nsf/opener?OpenForm">Diplomacy Monitor</a> for government documents from all over the world<br/> * <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/">Paper Chase</a> for legal documents<br/> * <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ihealthbeat.org/">iHealth beat</a> for health technology<br/> * <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.smartbrief.com/index.htm">SmartBrief</a>: targeted newsfeeds on industry topics (subscription required, but it's free)<br/> * <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.topix.net/">Topix.net</a>: he calls this his service of the year for 2005, the best news service he knows of--better than Yahoo or Google<br/> * <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://newsnow.co.uk/">NewsNow.co.uk</a>: awful search, but great sources and topic organization</p> <p>He's reeling off more stuff, but I'm burning out here. :/ Think I'm going to skip out on the last section, which is Steven Cohen's riff on <span class="caps">RSS, </span>followed by <span class="caps">Q&A.</span> I need the mental break more than I need more links...</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 04:06 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_expert_panel_on_searching.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_expert_panel_on_searching.php#comments">Comments (0)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_expert_panel_on_searching.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_search.php">search</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001141"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian 05: social software and public libraries</h3> <p>I'm here not so much to find out things I didn't know so much as I am to find out what a skilled, savvy librarian thinks her not-quite-so-savvy colleagues need to know. (This session is pretty crowded...a good sign.)</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://jessamyn.com/journal/">Jessamyn West</a> cracks me up. Funny, smart presentation on "Flickr, tagging, and the F-word." I walk in a few minutes late (oops), and she's talking about Flickr. Focuses on the metadata available on Flickr, particularly in the form of tags. She shows <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://flickr.com/photos/iamthebestartist/tags/library/">photos of hers tagged with "library"</a> as an example. Goes on to show other neat tag tricks--from <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://flickr.com/photos/tags/libraries/clusters/">clustering</a> to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://flickr.com/photos/iamthebestartist/tags/">tag clouds</a> to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://flickr.com/groups/foodporn/">affinity groups</a>.</p> <p>She shifts into a tagging v classification riff, in an attempt to calm ruffled library feathers. Does a brief discussion of "folksonomy" (she calls it "the F-word"). Says the most interesting thing about it in contrast to traditional classification is that it's flat. Downsides? Synonym problems (library? libraries? il05? il2005?) Who should the burden be on--the tagger or the searcher?</p> <p>Talks about "desire lines," that the paths that people put down are a clue to where the "official" paths should go. She has a number of links to related reading; will see if I can find those and add them here.</p> <p>(I love that when she's done tagging, she's available on <span class="caps">IM.</span> This is definitely a tech-savvy panel.)</p> <p>Next up is Jenny Levine, the famous "Shifted Librarian," who talks about del.icio.us. She does a basic overview of how it works, then goes to how libraries are using it. the LaGrangeParkLibrary reference librarians use it as a shared "ready reference" site. Great examples of tagging problems (dvdstobuy and dvdstopurchase...beyond the overlap, there's the time-senstivity of those tags). Thomas Ford Memorial Library web site has a live links feed from del.</p> <p>Then shows CiteULike, the academic/bibliographic version. (Doesn't show the sweet integration with existing sites like <span class="caps">ACM.</span>)</p> <p>Then it's a rapid-fire run through other tagging sites--last.fm, 43 Things, Yahoo! MyWeb, Yummy! (a <span class="caps">PDF </span>posting service--I hadn't seen this one), a few others.</p> <p>Suggests the<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html"> D-Lib article</a> on social bookmarking (by the folks at Nature magazine) for more reading, along with articles by Clay Shirky and Thomas Vander Wal.</p> <p>There's a question about what happens when people assign inflammatory tags. Jenny's sanguine--"this will work itself out."</p> <p>Jenny shows the Technology Review August issue on social computing tools, recommends it as an indication that this is a "watershed" point.</p> <p>(Am going to hit "post" and then come back later to clean it up and add links.)</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 02:58 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_social_software_and_public_libraries.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_social_software_and_public_libraries.php#comments">Comments (0)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_social_software_and_public_libraries.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001139"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian 05: 30 search tips in 40 minutes</h3> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://batesinfo.com/">Mary Ellen Bates</a>' annual search tips talk. This was a great talk two years ago, and I've been looking forward to this year's version. I just hope I can keep up!</p> <ol> <li>Mine the Creative Commons for images, audio, web site tools (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://commoncontent.org/">commoncontent.org</a> is a hierarchical catalog; <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://creativecommons.org/find/%20">creativecommons.org/find/ </a>is the CC search tool; <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://search.yahoo.com/cc">Yahoo CC search</a> is more comprehensive [search.yahoo.com/cc])</li> <li>Use MyYahoo's MyWeb 2.0 feature to search "my and my friends' sites" [Argh! Another one of my topics for tomorrow!] She focuses on the "search my sites" rather than the "search my community," though, so she leaves me a nice window.</li> <li>See also AskJeeve's <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://myjeeves.ask.com/">myjeeves.ask.com</a>, which allows you to click "save" on the search results page for the items you want. Allows you to create an "annotated webliography" (great term!)</li> <li>Google's Personalized Search; searches pages you've visited before. You can turn search history on and off at www.google.com/psearch. (Calls this and the previous two "the rise of the truly customized electronic ready-reference shelf.)</li> <li>Start searching podcasts -- podcast.net includes tags; blinkx.com searches a voice-recognition transcript; podscope.com; podcasts.yahoo.com. (Podcasts are more important now that "professional" content producers have regular podcasts--news, analysis, etc. Some content is <em>only</em> in audio form.)</li> <li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.furl.net/" title="http://www.furl.net/">Furl</a> It (I suspect she selects this rather than del.icio.us because it archives the full text of the page--which is a really nice aspect.) Mentions this is great for training, because it can sidestep firewalls. While she was talking, I found this nice piece on the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://blog.contentious.com/archives/2004/07/05/about-furl-file-sharing-and-copyright">copyright issues on Furl</a>.</li> <li>See how others search web--browse <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://answers.google.com/">answers.google.com</a>, and see search strategies at the end of the answers. You can learn from their approaches.</li> <li>Consider <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://en.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> (hits standard talking points; not a bad overview considering the time crunch; the fact that it's even being included in this talk is evidence of how much this conference has changed in 2 years)</li> <li>Use "squishy Boolean"; it's a relevance ranking. Dialog's <span class="caps">TARGET </span>command (target hybrid green clean car? ? automobile?); LexisNexis' SmartIndexing relevance threshold ( subject(cybercrime 9*%) ). She has an article in the March/April 2005 <em>Online</em> magazine on this.</li> <li>Use blogs to search hidden web content. A site may not be spidered by a search engine, but someone may well find and blog it. Use BlogDigger, BlogLines, Blogdex.net, blogsearch.google.com to find things indirectly--you're leveraging the blog experts's ability to find obscure content. (No time to dig up <span class="caps">URL</span>s...)</li> <li>Try a new search engine once a month. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://groowe.com/" title="http://groowe.com/">Groowe.com</a> helps--it's a toolbar that that lets you pick from a wide range of search engines. Also NeedleSearch, for Firefox, and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.widgetgallery.com/view.php?widget=36918">"Super Search" Konfabulator widget</a>.</li> <li>Yahoo's <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/">Mindset</a> feature (I don't care for this because it assumes everything fits on a research/shopping slider, but I do see the value in being able to reduce ecommerce sites in search results)</li> <li>Watch for video-search capabilities. video.search.yahoo.com, video.google.com, blinkxtv.com, etc</li> <li>Use search engine "hybrids" - Scirus.com (science related web sites and fee-based services), Yahoo's search subscriptions (get bibliographic info on subscription-protected material), ZoomInfo.com, RedLightGreen.com (search library catalogs around the world).</li> <li>Use BlogPulse's Trend Search to track blog buzz over time, and see the relative poularity of terms in blogs.</li> <li>Search for words likely to be mentioned on a web site (looking for information infertility drugs, she searched for the names of three different drugs from different manufacturers--this helped eliminate company web sites)</li> <li>What works best for the professional online services doesn't work well with web searching. Complex searches don't work on the web. Order of search terms matters in a web search. Forget precision and go for what will likely float to the top.</li> <li>Compare search engines. Dogpile study found 85% of results of the first page of search results to be <span class="caps">UNIQUE </span>[snurl.com/gyLg]. See missingpieces.dogpile.com (shows which pieces are unique to each service) and [eeek! missed it the next one, but it does side by side google and yahoo...which I though was a violation of Google's ToS]</li> <li>Check out Exalead.com. new-ish search engine with great advanced search features. Supports proximity search, phonetic, and "approximate spelling"</li> <li>Collect examples of site spoofingk for those "a-ha" moments in educating your clients. mypyramid.gov vs mypyramid.org; wto.org vs gatt.org (which one is the anti-WTO site?); dhmo.</li> <li>Watch for new applications of Google Map images. For example, housingmaps.com (she attributes this to Craigslist, not realizing that it's a mashup between the two sites, not a craigslist feature); traffic (traffic.poly9.com)</li> <li>Check out newer data visualization tools. Grokker.com has a demo showing data viz for Yahoo searching. This is a big change for librarians, who are used to text results.</li> <li>Other visualizations -- shows the treemap version of Google News. www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap</li> <li>Use <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://incominglinks.com/">incominglinks.com</a> to find specialized portals and directories. Intended for web managers to find places to get linked, but it's valuable as a list of specialized sources.</li> <li>Y!Q from Yahoo yq.search.yahoo.com. Contextual searching--lets you highlight text on the page to refine your search. Can search from any web page. Requires IE toolbar or plug-in for best performance.</li> <li>Yahoo's Site Explorer: siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com. Lets you search pages within a domain or subdomain. Can also generate a list of all outgoing links from a web page.</li> <li>Consider Amazon's <span class="caps">SIP'</span>s and <span class="caps">CAPS</span>; great way to brainstorm search terms from a book on a topic. Also their new Text Stats for a book ("Fog Index, average syllables per word, words per dollar and per ounce)</li> <li>Use phrase search to find specialized directories of information. Google and Yahoo syntax: intitle:"directory of" {subject word}</li> <li>Try Konfabulator widgets (yet another Yahoo property...). Includes a number of search widgets, but she talks about a wider range)</li> <li>Her favorite way to kill time when customer "service" puts me on hold: 20Q.net, or buy a self-contained version from amazon.com. This kind of machine-learning will start to inform search tools.</li> </ol> <div class="posted">Posted at 12:05 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_30_search_tips_in_40_minutes.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_30_search_tips_in_40_minutes.php#comments">Comments (3)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_30_search_tips_in_40_minutes.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_search.php">search</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001138"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian 05 keynote: lee rainie</h3> <p>I was up bright and early this morning so that I could walk on the wharf before breakfast and still make it to the keynote this morning. One of the reasons I particularly like speaking at Internet Librarian is that it consistently attracts interesting presenters (thanks in no small part to the efforts of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://dysartjones.com/">Jane Dysart</a>, the program chair). <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/a/102/about_staffer.asp">Lee Rainie</a>, from the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.pewinternet.org/">Pew Internet & American Life Project</a>, is the headliner today.</p> <p>(An aside: I <em>hate</em> conference room chairs. They're exactly the wrong height for me, so I end up with my laptop sliding off my lap. I need to get one of those <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://joi.typepad.com/stuff/2004/01/instand_1.html">nifty portable desk things</a> that I've see Joi using.)</p> <p>There's an "official" <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://infotodayblog.com/">conference blog</a> this year, as well as a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://internetlibrarian05.pbwiki.com/">wiki</a>.</p> <p>Ah, finally they've gotten through the preliminaries and mutual congratulations and moved on to introducing Lee.</p> <p>No powerpoint! w00t! (The audience applauds when he says this, including the woman sitting next to me...who's working on her own powerpoint presentation for a later talk. She seems not to recognize the irony.) He also refers to a conference where there was a projected <span class="caps">IRC </span>channel during his talk. Does a nice job of summing up the pluses and minuses of that. (He says to try googling "Lee Rainie and Yoda," but when I got online and tried it I had no luck...) He thanks us for not putting him through that hazing here.</p> <p>He asks how many people are live blogging his talk (~6), and how many plan to blog aspects (another handful)--good indicator of changes in the profession.</p> <p>He reads from a text about what happens when new technologies enter mainstream culture, the role of information gatekeepers is significantly affected. Turns out that he's reading from the history of the printing press--but it could just as easily be applied to the internet.</p> <p>What's happened over the past year, from his project's point of view? What's coming?</p> <ul> <li>More than 2/3 of internet users now have broadband access of some kind--and broadband users are very different from dial-up users. They do different things, for different amount of times, and with more impact on their lives.</li> <li>1/3 of American adults do not consider themselves internet users, and 1/5 have never used the internet</li> <li>The dial-up users of today are not as interested today as their predecessors in wanting access to lots of bits (those who wanted that access have it now; the rest don't feel "left behind" for the most part)</li> </ul> <p>Obvious place of decline is chat rooms. Blogs, <span class="caps">IM, </span>and threaded discussion forums appear to have taken up that slack.</p> <p>Teenagers and the internet:</p> <p>Kids ages 12-17 are more connected than others, more intense users. They love and use <span class="caps">IM, </span>they love and use their cell phones (only 45% have cell phones--but if they have them, they <em>love</em> them). If you combine their IM and cell phone use, <em>teenagers are redefining what it means to be present</em> (great quote). His daughter was featured in a news story entitled "the conversation never ends". 8 out of 10 teenagers play online gains (54% gain in 2 years). Also a 38% increase in getting news online; 71% growth in buying things online (up to 43% of teens). They increasingly use the Internet for health information--particularly for "sensitive subjects."</p> <p>Strikingly, teens are creating content. He says they're about to release a new report on this topic. (Yay!) New surveys show that 19% of teenagers have created blogs (3x the adult rate); an even higher % have created and worked on their own web sites.</p> <p>Teenagers are frenetic multitaskers. Hardly any of them do a single thing at a time. They've been referred to as Generation "M" (for media). When you add up the time they spend using their various forms media, it's about 8.5 hours a day--but they do it in 6.5 hours of real time.</p> <p>Question: How do teens respond to advertising? Answer is that they see it as just one more input--they're skeptical, but not as put off as adults. (That resonates with what I've seen in my kids.)</p> <p>Question: Is there less depth of contact because of "all this stimulation". (Geez, what a value-laden question.) I jump in here (because I can't keep my mouth shut, natch) about last week's <span class="caps">MSR </span>piece from <span class="caps">NYT</span> Magazine (which I refuse to link to because they've put it behind their stupid "Times Select" paywall), and the fact that we can't necessarily extrapolate from our own experiences (and limitations) to those of our kids.</p> <p><strong>Politics and Internet</strong></p> <p>(Missed some of this...)</p> <p>Tried to test for the extent to which people isolated themselves from opposing views online. They found that the internet contributed to a <strong>wider</strong> range of political views. Wired Americans, and especially broadband users, were more likely to have encountered opposing views. The Internet appears to be more of a door opener than an echo chamber.</p> <p>Stephen Abrams asks about the extent to which consumers are aware of how search option optimization has affected their information consumption? Rainie says no, most internet users are quite unsophisticated, even to the extent of not differentiating between paid and non-paid search results. Notes that there's still a huge education role here.</p> <p><strong>Internet and "Major Moments"</strong></p> <p>They redid a survey about how people used the internet at "milestone moments' in their lives--buying a house, having a child, facing an illness, etc. He cites a bunch of numbers, but I can't keep up. (I assume this will be in an upcoming Pew Report, anyhow.)</p> <p>Question: Is there backlash to the "always on, always connected" trend? Rainie says there's anecdotal evidence that's changing--from email-free Fridays to computer- and connectivity-free vacations.</p> <p>What are the key trends he sees?</p> <p>There are public toilets in France now that have IP addresses; there are golf balls with <span class="caps">RFID </span>tags. Says the <span class="caps">RFID</span>-ification of American is well underway. Mobile access is untethering us--you can start cooking dinner by sending commands from your phone, for example.</p> <p>Their numbers on content creation are nearly 3 years old; they're about to do a new one.</p> <p>Emphasizes the social dimension of search--says he sees that as incredibly important.</p> <p>What should librarians be paying attention to?</p> <ul> <li>Chris Anderson's "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html">Long Tail</a>" concept; does a good job of a quick broad brush explanation of the idea, cites <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/">Anderson's blog</a>. (Damm! I was going to talk about this tomorrow. This is why I don't prepare presentations in advance; I always end up having to change things at the last minute...) How do people discover "Long Tail" stuff? Word of mouth and reputation systems. Rainie says (and I agree) that figuring out the social network aspects of this will be fascinating and important.</li> <li>Rheingold's <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://smartmobs.com/">Smart Mobs</a>: How do people self-organize using technology?</li> <li>Linda Stone's discussion of "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/03/29/continuous_partial_attention.html">continuous partial attention</a>"</li> </ul> <p><strong>Can libraries help us find the balance between being connected and being contemplative?</strong> (best line of the talk...)</p> <p>He thinks that librarians are best suited to helping us create "information habitats" that strike this balance.</p> <p>Wow. Great presentation! Rainie's wonderful, and sets an awfully high bar for me tomorrow!</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 11:06 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_keynote_lee_rainie.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_keynote_lee_rainie.php#comments">Comments (0)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/24/internet_librarian_05_keynote_lee_rainie.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Sunday, 23 October 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001136"></a> <h3 class="title">testing flock</h3> <p>I'm up far too late, trying to get ready to leave for Monterey tomorrow, where I'll be attending and speaking at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.infotoday.com/il2005/">Internet Librarian 2005</a>.<br/></p><p>While my clothes spin in the dryer, I'm playing with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://flock.com/">Flock</a>, the new socially-enabled browser. It accesses my <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://del.icio.us/mamamusings/">del.icio.us bookmarks</a>, and lets me post to my blog. I'm sure it does additional nifty stuff, but discovering the rest of its features will have to wait until after I've packed, flown, and settled into <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.portolaplazahotel.com/">my hotel</a>.<br/></p><p>It's a three-day trip, with lots of wonderful presentations, so I expect that I'll be blogging regularly while I'm there--as I did two years ago when I attended the 2003 IL conference. One of my most-linked-to-posts ever was my live blogging of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.batesinfo.com/">Mary Ellen Bates</a>' "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/03/internet_librarian_30_search_tips_in_40_minutes.php">30 Search Tips in 40 Minutes</a>" session from that conference, and I'm looking forward to attending her session again this year!<br/></p> <div class="posted">Posted at 12:48 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/23/testing_flock.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/23/testing_flock.php#comments">Comments (1)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/10/23/testing_flock.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Monday, 26 September 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001122"></a> <h3 class="title">life is good: airborne edition</h3> <p>As I got out of my car in the SeaTac parking garage, at my feet was a sheet of paper advertising stickers from the "Life is Good" line of products. It made me smile, because lately my life has, indeed, been good. That's not to say there haven't been challenges, changes, and occasional crises. But those are part of any life, and I'm increasingly aware it's up to me to determine the level of happiness or suffering I experience.</p> <p>I'm writing this as I fly over the Cascade mountain range, en route to <span class="caps">NYC </span>via Delta's new subsidiary, Song. So far, I'm very pleasantly impressed with Song's service. They're clearly trying to compete with JetBlue, from the quirky and entertaining safety announcements (today's was done to flamenco music) to the seat-back television. The music selections are good, the headphone connections accommodate my beloved Etymotic earphones, and the overpriced food at least looks appetizing. (I brought my own snacks, though, and I've opted for party shuffle in iTunes while I type.)</p> <p>This is the first time I've traveled in quite a while; one of the great advantages of being in a major tech city like Seattle is that I don't have to leave town to interact with people active in my areas of interest. Why go to a conference, after all, when you can have dinner guests like Robert and Maryam Scoble, Buzz Bruggeman, Lilia Efimova, Nancy White, Lili Cheng and Linda Stone? In fact, it's been about five months since I've traveled for work-related reasons. This is a short trip, though. I arrive tonight at 7pm <span class="caps">EST, </span>and leave 48 hours later. Just enough time to give the opening keynote tomorrow at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.connectcollaborate.com/">C2</a>, enjoy presentations from a few other people, admire the view (I hope) from my hotel room, and then head home.</p> <p>There hasn't been much blogging in this space (or any of my spaces) recently. Not because of any conscious decision to take a break...I just don't seem to have been in the blogging mood. I've been pretty focused on building a comfortable social and professional space for me and my family, and that takes a lot of offline engagement. At home we've been entertaining fairly frequently (it's a lovely house for that)--both kids and adults. And at work, my efforts to increase my interaction have definitely born fruit--resulting in a lot less free time. But traveling always seems to spur me to write. I'll probably churn out a few posts over the next two days, both here and on <span class="caps">M2M </span>(and maybe misbehaving, even!). And there will be occasional cameraphone photos on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.flickr.com/photos/liz/">Flickr</a> (alas, I forgot my Canon <span class="caps">A95 </span>on this trip).</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 09:22 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/09/26/life_is_good_airborne_edition.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/09/26/life_is_good_airborne_edition.php#comments">Comments (2)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/09/26/life_is_good_airborne_edition.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 26 July 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001106"></a> <h3 class="title">oxford/london plans</h3> <p>My UK trip is fast approaching, and I'm having to start to think about logistics.</p> <p>I get into Heathrow late Saturday morning (a direct flight from Seattle, in fact!), and will be going to the rental apartment in London that I'm sharing with my colleague--<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.scala-house.co.uk/">Scala House</a>.</p> <p>Sunday we'll take the train into Oxford for the symposium we're presenting at (leaving my colleague's partner to play in London during our absence) and will stay in Oxford through Wednesday midday. Then we'll take the train back to London, and will stay in the apartment through Sunday, when we all head back home. (I leave early on Sunday morning. Blech.)</p> <p>So, what night is good for a London blogger/geek get-together? Should we use this post as a gathering point?</p> <p>--<br/> <strong>Updated 2:11pm</strong></p> <p>I'm going to be meeting Tom Coates on Thursday night, at a time and location as yet to be determined. Will provide more details here as I have them.</p> <p>I may be going to visit <span class="caps">MSR</span> Cambridge Labs on Friday--still working that out.</p> <p>Looks as though I'll be meeting Foe for coffee on Saturday.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 09:58 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/07/26/oxfordlondon_plans.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/07/26/oxfordlondon_plans.php#comments">Comments (3)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/07/26/oxfordlondon_plans.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_travel.php">travel</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Monday, 18 July 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001100"></a> <h3 class="title">microsoft research faculty summit: monday morning</h3> <p>I'm spending the morning at the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://research.microsoft.com/workshops/FS2005/default.aspx">Microsoft Research Faculty Summit</a>, an annual conference sponsored by <span class="caps">MSR.</span> It's an invitation-only conference attended by about 400 CS researchers from around the world.</p> <p>I'm not going to blog the whole thing (I'm not even going to attend the whole thing, since I have some meetings that conflict), but I will blog the ones that are particularly notable, starting with the kick-off event--a dialog between Bill Gates and Maria Klawe, the dean of engineering at Princeton.</p> <p>Klawe quotes statistics saying that the number of jobs in CS is growing, salaries are going up. (I need to find out where those numbers came from.)</p> <p>(Gates wants to know why <em>physical education</em> is the fastest-growing field in higher ed.)</p> <p>Klawe send a softball question to Gates--"Are you finding enough people to hire in the US?" His response is an emphatic "no." He says it's not hard to find project managers in the <span class="caps">US, </span>but it's much harder to find excellent software engineers.</p> <p>She asks him to describe the ideal engineering candidate. He says he wants more emphasis on the basic underlying mechanisms of computers and algorithms. Then he veers into selection process rather than preparation, talking about the success of the intern program. Mentions the intern dinner--apparently they bring in 300 per night, not everyone at once. He says that they ask sometimes about other companies, and then describes Google as "faddishly hot."</p> <p>K: What's your position on how interdisciplinary CS studies should be? Should students be doing double majors and application-focused coursework?</p> <p>G: There are still plenty of pure CS problems--in privacy, security, navigatio of information. (Hmmm...I wouldn't call information navigation a "pure CS" problem.)</p> <p>K: These problems will only be solved if people <em>work</em> on them. We need funding for students to do so.</p> <p>Her son is going into <span class="caps">CS, </span>but her daughter doesn't want to. One of the issues that stops a lot of women and minorities from wanting to study CS is the image of the career and perception of what a CS professional is like. She says she knows it's an exciting field that requires interaction, communication. So, how can we create a more positive image for our profession? What is Microsoft doing?</p> <p>G: Microsoft can set an example of what kind of jobs these are, and how interesting they are. He says MS can promise people that within 2 years they'll have the opportunity to move beyond basic development roles. If people really understood the jobs, they'd feel differently. He says he just "doesn't get it" as to why people don't have more interest in these jobs.</p> <p>K: Notes the increased number of women who have gone into medicine and law in her lifetime. Points out that during that time television shows and movies have glamorized those careers. Why don't we have the same thing for CS?</p> <p>G: Well, if you took a movie camera into one of our buildings, it wouldn't be that interesting.</p> <p>K: That's true for all of those other fields, too!</p> <p>moves on to next question</p> <p>K: CS is the only field in science and engineering in which the participation of women has been dropping. What would be more effective in getting women into these fields?</p> <p>G: Women need to be visible.</p> <p>K: (frustrated) We <strong>are</strong> doing that. It's not working! Things happening on the grass roots level aren't working. Every woman in the field is doing this. There has to be another way to succeed at this.</p> <p>G: (Seems at a loss for a moment.) Mentions studies showing that we lose women at every step of the pipeline, and the problem with not having reached critical mass. He asks--is this different in Asia?</p> <p>K: No. A few countries have high participation. Ireland, possibly because of the prevalence of single-sex education. Turkey, because students aren't given choices, they're assigned.</p> <p>(She's going from a prepared script, which causes some of this to sound really stilted and programmed.)</p> <p>K: What are the areas you're most excited about?</p> <p>G: What's happening in <span class="caps">MSR </span>is the most exciting, and the most interesting part of his job. TechFest is one of the "funnest" things on the Microsoft calendar. The TabletPC is cool; eventually every student will have one.</p> <p>[... lost focus for a bit; I'm watchign this on a video screen, which is less engaging than having a real person up there ...]</p> <p>Ben Shneiderman does a very <em>long</em> statement-in-the-form-of-a-question, and claims that the ocmputing fields have the highest level of introversion, which Gates and Rashid dispute. (Rashid seems to be confusing introversion with isolation, arguing that software teams have to work together.)</p> <p>Rashid points out that the social and media tools that kids are using now (iPods, <span class="caps">IM, </span>cell phones, etc) are tools created by computer scientists--why don't kids want to be involved in creating them and making them better?</p> <p>(decided I needed coffee at this point, so missed the rest of the q & a)</p> <p>Of note following the dialog: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/fundingopps/default.aspx">several new <span class="caps">RFP</span>s </a>being announced today:</p> <ul> <li>trustworthy computing curriculum</li> <li>smart clients for e-science</li> <li>digital memories (memex-like devices storing all your information)</li> </ul> <p>Later this year:</p> <ul> <li>Phoenix</li> <li>Digital Inclusion (how do you make computing affordable, accessible and relevant for underrepresented populations?)</li> </ul> <p>Also coming: "institutes" with deep msr collaboration, 3-year commitment, IP agreement. Topics being considered are mobile phones, bioinformatics, and robotics. More information will be forthcoming, but details are not yet available.</p> <p>Upcoming workshops include gaming technologies in education, and Tablet PC in education. Dates not yet finalized.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 10:32 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/07/18/microsoft_research_faculty_summit_monday_morning.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/07/18/microsoft_research_faculty_summit_monday_morning.php#comments">Comments (5)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/07/18/microsoft_research_faculty_summit_monday_morning.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_microsoft.php">microsoft</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_research.php">research</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Thursday, 19 May 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001061"></a> <h3 class="title">it's all over but the bubbling (and the kvetching...)</h3> <p>Done, done, and done. With grading, that is. Final essay exams, weblog posts, homework questions, chat participation. I've made my list, and I've checked it twice. I had a number of students who did <em>really</em> good work this quarter. And, unfortunately, several who ignored a large part of the course requirements and are likely to be extremely displeased with their grades. Tomorrow morning I'll electronically "bubble in" their grades, and then brace myself for the onslaught of "how could I get a..." that will result. By waiting until tomorrow to formally submit the grades to student records, I delay the grade announcement emails until tomorrow night, <strong>after</strong> commencement (though the students can see their final average via the courseware gradebook function if they look). By then I may have recovered sufficiently from grading-induced sleep deprivation to manage the barrage gracefully.</p> <p>Part of why I haven't been posting recently is that I've been busy--end-of-quarter work, faculty meetings, 72 hour trips to the west coast, taking care of a sick husband, etc. But part of it has also been that overall, life is good, and that isn't really fodder for interesting blog posts. Christine Lavin, one of my favorite singer/songwriters ever, has a song called "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.christinelavin.com/00100912pdmmth.html">Please Don't Make Me Too Happy</a>," with these lyrics:</p> <blockquote> Please don't make me too happy<br/> Because if you do<br/> My songwriting will suffer<br/> From the bliss you'll put me through<br/> Nothing's quite as boring<br/> As two people this in love<br/> We'll be so blinded by the stars in our eyes<br/> We won't see the stars above</blockquote> <p>There's something to that, really. Angst is a great source of creativity, and I've been awfully short on angst lately.</p> <p>The LA trip was lovely...had lunch with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://radio.weblogs.com/0108247/">Allan Karl</a>, and dinner with with someone I've known since kindergarten, but had fallen out of touch with. I also met with folks from <span class="caps">USC'</span>s Annenberg Center about a potential collaborative grant project, and then got to go to the pre-<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://weblogs.usc.edu/ssaw/"><span class="caps">SSAW</span></a> party before heading back home.</p> <p>I think I'm still in denial about the upcoming move, despite the fact that it's less than a month away. That's going to have to change, soon.</p> <p>We're mulling over car purchase/leasing options, as well as house refinancing options, as well as necessary home repairs before we leave. Ack. While next year we'll be in good shape financially, the dual salary won't start 'til July, and there are going to be a lot of expenses before then. We've got some juggling to do over the next few weeks to make it all fall into place.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 10:26 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/05/19/its_all_over_but_the_bubbling_and_the_kvetching.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/05/19/its_all_over_but_the_bubbling_and_the_kvetching.php#comments">Comments (6)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/05/19/its_all_over_but_the_bubbling_and_the_kvetching.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_teaching.php">teaching</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_travel.php">travel</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Monday, 25 April 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001050"></a> <h3 class="title">social computing symposium kickoff</h3> <p>The 2005 social computing symposium started this evening with a reception and dinner. Already I'm totally excited about the interactions I had with really interesting people. This year seems to be a more diverse mix than last year, and I've already gotten a chance to meet someone I really wanted to see--Lilia Efimova of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://blog.mathemagenic.com/">Mathemagenic</a> (as well as lots of other great people).</p> <p>It seems as though this year there's less of a sense of us vs them, academics vs practicioners, and more of a sense of fluidity. It's a little early to make that call, I suppose, but my first sense of the group as a whole was very positive.</p> <p>I've met a lot of wonderful people who are based here in Seattle, both tonight and over the past few days, which has left me feeling really enthusiastic about our upcoming move. It's so much easier to make a change like this when you know that there will be a social network to cushion your arrival in a new place.</p> <p>Despite all the goodness here, however, I'm starting to get a bit homesick. I miss my boys (all three of them), and will be glad to get back home on Wednesday morning.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 12:55 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/04/25/social_computing_symposium_kickoff.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/04/25/social_computing_symposium_kickoff.php#comments">Comments (2)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/04/25/social_computing_symposium_kickoff.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Friday, 22 April 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001049"></a> <h3 class="title">trillian feature</h3> <p>Since I'm stuck on my PC this week, I've been using Trillian as my IM client. It's a really nice multi-protocol client, so I can use it for <span class="caps">AOL,</span> Yahoo, and <span class="caps">MSN IM, </span>as well as <span class="caps">IRC.</span></p> <p>What I didn't realize until today is that it also does automatic lookup of words and phrases in your text in the Wikipedia. So today when I was chatting with someone about when the social computing symposium starts, it highlighted the word symposium for me--and displayed this definition when I rolled over the highlighted word:</p> <blockquote>Originally, the term symposium referred to a drinking party; the Greek verb "<em>sympotein</em>" means "to drink together". The term has since come to refer to any academic conference, irrespective of drinking. We have literary depictions of symposia in the sympotic elegies of Theognis of Megara, as well as in two Socratic dialogues, Plato's <em>Symposium</em> and Xenophon's <em>Symposium</em>.</blockquote> <p>Hmmm. I kind of like the original definition.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 05:26 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/04/22/trillian_feature.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/04/22/trillian_feature.php#comments">Comments (1)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/04/22/trillian_feature.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Sunday, 13 March 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001018"></a> <h3 class="title">blogging sxsw 2005 on many-to-many</h3> <p>I'm doing real-time blogging of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://2005.sxsw.com/interactive/"><span class="caps">SXSW</span>/Interactive 2005</a> conference sessions over on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.corante.com/many/">Many-to-Many</a> (in large part because of guilt over having not posted there in ages). Pop over there for my comments on what's been going on.</p> <p>Much as I enjoy this conference, I'm really missing being home. Will be glad to head back on Tuesday for a full month of no travel...</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 02:32 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/03/13/blogging_sxsw_2005_on_manytomany.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/03/13/blogging_sxsw_2005_on_manytomany.php#comments">Comments (2)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/03/13/blogging_sxsw_2005_on_manytomany.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Sunday, 27 February 2005</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="001006"></a> <h3 class="title">delta blues</h3> <p>It's getting easier and easier to see why major airlines are getting their butts kicked by companies like JetBlue and Southwest.</p> <p>I'm sitting in the Rochester airport, where Gerald and the boys dropped me at 12:30--with plenty of time to catch my 1:55 flight to Atlanta. The Delta line was extremely, worrisomely long--long enough that I wondered if they'd had to cancel a flight since I left the house (I'd checked online). But the prominently placed display screens showed my flight with an on-time departure, so I patiently waited my turn. And waited. And waited. Because they kept calling Cincinnati passengers up to the front of the line--guess being there on time doesn't pay.</p> <p>When I finally did get to the desk agent, he informed me that my flight had, indeed, been cancelled due to weather. But they were "having problems with their computers," which is why there was no public indication of that fact (which would have saved me the 45 minute wait in line, since I could have called Delta on my cell phone and made alternate arrangements).</p> <p>The next flight out isn't until 5:45pm, and it's not fair to Gerald and the boys for me to ask them to come get me again and go through the goodbyes once more. So I've settled myself into the Frontier Business Center at the airport, in a passably comfortable chair, with free wifi and power. I've got a giant latté from Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters, and enough work (and neglected blogs) to keep me busy for a while.</p> <p>This trip kicks off a busy month; I'll be in Atlanta for the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.nvhainnovations.org/2005/index.htm"><span class="caps">NVHA</span> Innovations conference on Social Network Media</a> (with some <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.nvhainnovations.org/2005/speaker_bios.htm">other great folks</a>). I get back on the 2nd, then leave on the 5th for Dubai, where I'll be speaking at the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.woibex.com/">7th Woibex Women in Business Conference</a>. I return from Dubai on the 10th, and then leave again on the 12th for <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://2005.sxsw.com/interactive/"><span class="caps">SXSW</span>/Interactive</a>, where I'll be moderating a panel entitled "Spam, Trolls, Stalkers: The Pandora's Box of Community" with panel members Jay Allen, Cam Barrett, Jason Kottke, and Steve Champeon.</p> <p>The plus side of all of this for, you my online friends, is that I'll be online and available to write and chat a whole lot more than usual. Expect to see me on <span class="caps">AIM </span>a good bit, and for blog posting to increase a bit.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 01:45 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/02/27/delta_blues.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/02/27/delta_blues.php#comments">Comments (2)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/02/27/delta_blues.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_curmudgeonly.php">curmudgeonly</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_travel.php">travel</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Saturday, 11 December 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000947"></a> <h3 class="title">"there's something big happening"</h3> <p>I'm taking a break from grading my students' web pages to read <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/003461.html">David Weinberger's ongoing coverage</a> of the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/is2k4/index.html">Harvard "Votes, Bits, and Bytes" conference</a>. Wish I'd been at the session he wrote about this morning, organized by <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethan/">Ethan Zuckerman</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/">Rebecca MacKinnon</a>.</p> <blockquote>Ethan says that we're here today to talk about blogs as bridges, borrowing Hoder's metaphor from yesterday (blogs as windows that give you insight into someone's world, blogs as cafes where people can talk together, and blogs as bridges). There's something big happening, Ethan says.</blockquote> <p>Indeed there is.</p> <blockquote>Omar from Iraq talks about the importance of blogging as a way of routing around propaganda. Then he talks about how the open comments from around the world on his blog helped his nephew "If I visited America a year and a half ago, I would have felt llike a stranger. This time I feel like I'm with friends, and that is the greatest gift I can think of."</blockquote> <p>This is how I feel, as well. From Norway to Australia, France to Japan, Brazil to South Africa...I have friends around the world now that I would never have had without this blog to facilitate connections. I can say without a flicker of doubt that my blog is the one technological tool that has most fundamentally changed my professional life.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 01:37 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/12/11/theres_something_big_happening.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/12/11/theres_something_big_happening.php#comments">Comments (1)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/12/11/theres_something_big_happening.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_big_ideas.php">big ideas</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_friends.php">friends</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_on_blogging.php">on blogging</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_social_software.php">social software</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Monday, 1 November 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000911"></a> <h3 class="title">who's going to cscw?</h3> <p>Sunday I leave for Chicago, where I'll be attending the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.acm.org/cscw2004/"><span class="caps">ACM CSCW</span></a> (computer-supported collabortive work) conference. The <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.acm.org/cscw2004/prog_technical.html">technical program</a> runs Monday through Wednesday, and I'm speaking on a panel that danah boyd put together Wednesday. The topic is "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.acm.org/cscw2004/prog_technical.html#TheUseofDigitalBackchannelsinSharedPhysicalSpaces">The Use of Digital Backchannels in Shared Physical Spaces</a>," and the list of other participants on the panel is great.</p> <p>I've skimmed through the list of speakers, and recognize a few names from both the literature and from the Microsoft social software symposium back in the spring. Who's going that's not speaking?</p> <p>And what's the chance of a blogger meetup in Chicago while I'm there? In addition to seeing the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://flickr.com/photos/akma/1170905/">information highwayman and his faithful sidekick</a>, there are a few Chicago bloggers I'd love to meet (or see again). I'll be there from Sunday afternoon through Wednesday afternoon, staying at the Hilton--and at present, I have no evening plans.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 12:16 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/11/01/whos_going_to_cscw.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/11/01/whos_going_to_cscw.php#comments">Comments (6)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/11/01/whos_going_to_cscw.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_travel.php">travel</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Monday, 4 October 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000886"></a> <h3 class="title">search champs meeting thoughts</h3> <p>So, I already mentioned my main problem with this meeting over <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.misbehaving.net/2004/10/i_feel_very_alo.html">on misbehaving</a>. And David Weinberger's posted <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/003142.html">some good observations</a> about the meeting today. But there are some other things that I'm noticing today.</p> <p>One is that there are a couple of people here who are dominating this discussion, and being heard over them is a challenge. That's discouraging. Free-for-alls aren't necessarily the most effective way to get a variety of opinions, particularl when some of the voices are convinced that they have the only right answers in the room.</p> <p>Another is that I hate sitting at a table watching people talk for hours and hours at a time. Why aren't they doing some breakout groups, so that they can isolate some of the voices, get people to talk about things that they care about and/or are knowledgable about? I'm not the right person to ask about things that are Windows-specific--but I know a lot about information-seeking behavior. Put me in a small group with the people developing the web interface aspects I'm interested in, and let the windows geeks talk about platform-specific issues.</p> <p>It's also quite clear that a room full of blogger geeks is not a good cross-section of the web-using world. Things that power users care about--from tabbed browsing to ubiquitous <span class="caps">RSS </span>feeds--aren't necessarily important to the rest of the world. My kids need a good search engine...they don't care (yet) about <span class="caps">RSS </span>feeds, and probably won't for quite some time. My freshmen students (in IT and CS) don't use aggregators. Maybe it's true that the rest of the world will follow the geeks, but maybe it's not.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 06:07 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/10/04/search_champs_meeting_thoughts.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/10/04/search_champs_meeting_thoughts.php#comments">Comments (7)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/10/04/search_champs_meeting_thoughts.php#comments">TrackBack (3)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 22 June 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000824"></a> <h3 class="title">fixin' ta go</h3> <p>My southern stepdaughter tutored my friends last year in the art of southern leavetaking. "Fixin' ta go" was a central phrase in that tutorial--since then, it's become a symbol of drawn-out, sociable preparations for departure around here. (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://weez.oyzon.com/">Weez</a> even uses it as one of her <span class="caps">AIM </span>away messages...)</p> <p>At any rate, I'm fixin' ta go to Santa Clara tomorrow morning, to attend (and speak at) <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.pulver.com/supernova/">Supernova</a>. I leave Rochester at 8:15am, change planes in Chicago, and arrive in San Jose around 12:40pm. I've downloaded a slew of entertaining audiobooks from <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.audible.com/">Audible.com</a> to amuse me en route. Still on the to-do list are backing up the computer, finishing laundry, and packing.</p> <p>See you in sunny California...</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 03:07 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/06/22/fixin_ta_go.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/06/22/fixin_ta_go.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_travel.php">travel</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Thursday, 10 June 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000815"></a> <h3 class="title">all-star blog panel @ rit tomorrow</h3> <p>Those of you in the Rochester area might want to attend the panel on "Weblogs and Cross-Disciplinary Communication" being held Friday from 4:30 - 5:45 on the <span class="caps">RIT </span>campus, as part of the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.rit.edu/~sbbgpt/mea-rit/">Media Ecology Association Conference</a>.</p> <p>I'll be chairing the panel, and the other participants are:</p> <ul> <li>Clay Shirky</li> <li>Jill Walker</li> <li>Seb Paquet</li> <li>Alex Halavais</li> </ul> <p>It will be held in the Liberal Arts building, room 06-A205.</p> <p>Hope to see you there!</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 02:13 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/06/10/allstar_blog_panel_rit_tomorrow.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/06/10/allstar_blog_panel_rit_tomorrow.php#comments">TrackBack (3)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Friday, 23 April 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000783"></a> <h3 class="title">you may ask yourself "how did i get here?"</h3> <p>One of the questions I've been asked a lot lately, mostly by full-time academics, was how/why I started blogging. It's not a quick and easy answer, but I've been asked it enough now that it's probably worth having it here in a public and somewhat permanent form.</p> <p>My blogging epiphany came about at the Pop!Tech conference in October of 2002. That was the first conference I'd been to with ubiquitous WiFi and a critical mass of people with laptops taking advantage of it, and I was intrigued. What were people doing with their computers, beyond taking notes and checking email? (Turned out that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.simson.net/blog/">Simson Garfinkel</a> was pulling <span class="caps">POP </span>passwords out of the ether, but that's another story.)</p> <p>When Dan Gillmor spoke, however, he related an incident that really struck me. Here's <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000434.html">Howard Rheingold's</a> account of it:</p> <div class="quote">The second event Dan cited was the occasion last summer at Esther Dyson's PC Forum, held in Arizona, where Joe Nacchio, <span class="caps">CEO </span>of Qwest was, in Dan's words, "whining about how hard it was to run a telephone company these days." Dan blogged this while he was listening, and immediately got email from a reader in Florida who sent him a link disclosing that Nachio had sold $300 million of stock in the company he was helping to kill. Dan blogged it, and another participant in the Forum, Doc Searls, who was contemporaneously blogging the event, took Nachio to task for it, while Nachio was still standing at the podium.</div> <p>I wasn't at all familiar with the term "blog" or with the amazing growth of blogging tools and sites, but I was <em>totally</em> intrigued by the feedback loop that Dan had described. And then I realized that everything I was hearing at Pop!Tech was also being blogged by people in the room. (In retrospect, I'd seen this mentioned on the Pop!Tech web site before the conference, but it hadn't registered as being important to me then.) I started reading the blogs of the people in the room--<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://hyperorg.com/blogger/">David Weinberger</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/">Dan Gillmor</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://ernieattorney.typepad.com/">Ernie the Attorney</a>. And as I started reading their mediated versions of what I was seeing live, I found that my appreciation and understanding of what I was hearing was deepened and extended. They had different context and knowledge to bring to the topic, links to related sites, personal experiences.</p> <p>It was a transformative moment for me, particularly when combined with Linda Stone's brilliant discussion of what she calls "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/03/29/continuous_partial_attention.html">Continuous Partial Attention</a>"--a kind of scanning of multiple open information channels that she was increasingly observing in her students as an adjunct professor. This is <em>not</em> the same thing as multitasking--instead, it's a constant monitoring, looking for content that makes it worth switching to a focus. (It reminds me of the process that directors of live television events go through...watching a bank of monitors showing different camera angles, deciding which one to bring up as the focal point at any given point in time.)</p> <p>By the time the conference was over, I was determined to go home and try this technology out on my own. I'd noticed the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.movabletype.org/">MovableType</a> link on a number of the sites I'd visited, and I liked the idea of a package I could install and play with on my own server. So upon my return, I downloaded and installed MT into my <span class="caps">RIT </span>account, and wrote my <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2002/10/22/is_this_thing_on.php">first post</a>. (I chose the title mamamusings on a whim, not realizing it would become inextricably linked with me and my online identity; after a year or so of posting to the blog, I finally registered the domain name and transfered my blog off of the <span class="caps">RIT </span>system.)</p> <p>Then I started reading--voraciously. I jumped from blog to blog, soaking up the content and context, thinking about how the medium could be used in my research, in my teaching, in my personal life. I felt very much like Alice down the rabbit hole--it was exhilarating and overwhelming. Along the way, I stumbled upon <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://joi.ito.com/">Joi Ito's weblog</a>, and noticed he'd posted about <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://joi.ito.com/archives/2002/10/26/is_diet_coke_bad_for_you.html">a scary "Aspartame is poison" email he'd received</a>. I didn't know Joi at all, but I commented on his site, and then wrote <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2002/10/27/the_power_of_fear.php">my own response to his post</a> on my site--my first exposure to trackback technology, since my post automatically "pinged" Joi's site to tell him that I'd mentioned his post. Much to my delight, this resulted in him visiting my site and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2002/10/27/the_power_of_fear.php#1">commenting on that post</a>--as well as on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2002/10/26/balancing_acts.php#2">another post</a>.</p> <p>Suddenly my experiment in blogging had gone from a monologic to a dialogic form--not only could I "scribble on the walls" of other people's sites, the walls were talking back. It didn't take me long to realize how powerful these tools could be in the classroom, so I started making plans to use blogs (MT, specifically) as a context for teaching my upcoming web design class. That first quarter I started with a class blog on which all students had posting privileges, along with having each student create their own blog for posting their in-class exercises and thoughts on the reading. I used that model in my <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.it.rit.edu/~ell/409blog/">web design class</a>, as well as in my <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.it.rit.edu/~ell/xmlblog/">xml class</a>.</p> <p>In the web design class, the individual student blogs turned out to be an excellent tool for teaching concepts like <span class="caps">CSS </span>and <span class="caps">CGI.</span> And in both classes, the dialog was greatly enhanced by the appearance in our comments by authors of books and articles we were reading. But the multiple authors on one class blog approach didn't work well in either class, so I discarded that approach. Instead, over the summer I rethought the role of the course blog, and developed the first version of the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/01/06/mt_courseware_stepbystep.php">MT-courseware</a> I've been working on.</p> <p>I wasn't just thinking about blogs in my classes, though--I was also thinking a lot about how blogs could help me to make connections in the context of doing research. I felt very isolated at <span class="caps">RIT, </span>which is a teaching institution that has only recently started prioritizing research as a faculty activity. It's very hard to do research if you don't have a critical mass of people to work with--senior colleagues with research experience in your field, graduate students interested in working in your area. I had neither--so weblogs provided me with a way to build an "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.blackbeltjones.com/work/mt/archives/000896.html">invisible college</a>" that could help me develop research-related connections, support, and visibility. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://alex.halavais.net/news/">Alex Halavais</a> and I experimented with using <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.it.rit.edu/~ell/blogresearch/">a blog</a> to record our <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.it.rit.edu/~ell/blogresearch/archives/000329.php"><span class="caps">NSF </span>grant proposal process</a>, which was helpful in many ways (even though we didn't get funded).</p> <p>Along with the external links and relationships I was forming, I was also getting a chance to write regularly for the first time since I'd been a graduate student. Having a regular outlet for "thinking out loud" turned out to be extremely valuable to me. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/03/03/an_extrovert_speaks_quelle_surprise.php"> I'm a classic "talk it out" extrovert</a> in terms of thought processes, and the blog community I was becoming a part of provided a wonderful context for doing just that. The combination of the informality of lightweight publishing and the immediate distributed peer review and feedback on ideas that blogs encourage was just the right balance for me.</p> <p>This for me is really the power of weblogs for academics--and often for students, as well. It's not about weblogs replacing journals, or becoming mass media outlets, or creating a huge personal audience. It's about finding and maintaining a community of like-minded thinkers--inside and outside of academia--who can be part of an ongoing conversation. As <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.dashes.com/anil/2004/04/16/do_you_have_a_w">Anil points out</a>, it's not about popularity, or being at the top of the power law curve. It's about being part of a community, part of an ongoing conversation.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 11:40 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/04/23/you_may_ask_yourself_how_did_i_get_here.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/04/23/you_may_ask_yourself_how_did_i_get_here.php#comments">Comments (10)</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/04/23/you_may_ask_yourself_how_did_i_get_here.php#comments">TrackBack (5)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_on_blogging.php">on blogging</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_research.php">research</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_teaching.php">teaching</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 30 March 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000770"></a> <h3 class="title">confessions of a backchannel queen</h3> <p>I'm enjoying <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://research.microsoft.com/workshops/SCS2004/">this symposium</a> quite a bit. (For more detailed coverage of content than I'm providing, try <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/002559.html">David Weinberger</a> or <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://drzaius.ics.uci.edu/blogs/danyelf/">Danyel Fisher</a>.) More than I expected to, actually. I was more than a little surprised to be invited, since most of the invitees are people who have achieved great prominence in their fields, and for good reason. They've written books, started companies, shifted opinion. On the academic side, there are people whose work has been enormously influential, people whose work I've followed and been influenced by for years, like <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~lsproull/">Lee Sproull</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/">Sherry Turkle</a>. On the non-academic side, there are people who have written books that I love (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/">Steven Johnson</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://hyperorg.com/blogger/">David Weinberger</a>), and others who have started amazingly successful companies (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://research.microsoft.com/workshops/SCS2004/speakers.aspx#scottheiferman">Scott Heiferman</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://joi.ito.com/">Joi Ito</a>).</p> <p>As if I was feeling inadequate enough in this heady company, during the breaks and meals, people keep asking me things like "So, what are you working you on now?" Seems like a simple question, no? But I'm realizing that I don't really have a "thing" that I'm working on. What I'm best at (and I've <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2002/11/20/no_original_thoughts.php">reflected on this before</a>) is integration and commentary. I'm great at assessing what's going on, finding the key components, and putting the pieces together into a big picture. But integration is very different from creation, and my sense was that this was mostly a gathering of creators. So I came in expecting to feel a bit out of place.</p> <p>In a pre-WiFi world, I would have sat quietly at my table, listened a bit, doodled a bit more, maybe contemplated (but not acted on) introducing myself to some of the luminaries in the room during breaks (I wouldn't have acted on it because that always seems to end up with me feeling awkward and goofy and inarticulate.)</p> <p>But today the room was laptop-enabled, with power and Wifi to spare...so I headed straight for <span class="caps">IRC.</span> Several of my colleagues in the social computing arena have talked about <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2003/08/social_networks.html"><span class="caps">IRC </span>channels like #joiito as becoming very much a "third place" for their participants</a>, and that's been very true for me. I don't spend a lot of time in <span class="caps">IRC </span>when I'm home or at work, but when I travel it becomes a wonderful "home away from home" for me. A place that provides familiarity in new settings, and friendly voices when I'm feeling isolated.</p> <p>At the last few tech conferences I've been at, there's been an <span class="caps">IRC </span>channel specifically to talk about what's happening in the presentations (I've blogged the various modes I've observed in conference <span class="caps">IRC </span>channels over in <span class="caps">M2M</span>), so I set one up for today's symposium, and people started trickling in.</p> <p>Now, in a face-to-face conversation with most of the people in the channel, I would have been reluctant to share a lot of my opinions about what I was hearing (good or bad), or my thoughts on related issues and links. But in <span class="caps">IRC</span> I feel much more in my element. It's a text-based environment, and text is my friend. It's a "space" that I recognize, unlike physical room that I was in. As a result, I was an active participant in the ongoing backchannel as the various speakers presented their information.</p> <p>After lunch, however, an interesting thing happened. I posted some critical comments about a speaker's presentation, and a Microsoft Research employee who I knew only by name called me out on it. He expressed concerns about whether it was "fair" to criticize someone who wasn't there to defend his or herself, and pointed out that we were a scary audience, and should be more generous. While he was right in some ways, the comment had a chilling effect, and it made me reluctant to do the kind of stream-of-consciousness chatter in the channel that I find often sparks the best responses and conversations. Context is everything, of course. People who've interacted with me over time know not to take my snarkier comments <em>too</em> seriously, and also knows how much respect and admiration I have for <em>all</em> the people who are speaking at this symposium. But this person didn't have that context, and when layered on top of my existing sense of "I don't belong here," it significantly changed my willingness to participate in the channel.</p> <p>That could have been the end of it...I could have stopped actively participating, monitored the content a bit, and done other things. But I <em>like</em> the <span class="caps">IRC </span>banter--and not just for its entertainment value. I find that <em>particularly</em> when a presentation might be rough, or something I've heard before, that the feedback loop provided by the other participants, snarky or not, often helps me see the content in a new light, and immediately increases the value I take out of the experience. (I plan to write a bit more on that process triangulation and feedback loops in conference presentations later today on <span class="caps">M2M.</span>)</p> <p>So you'll be shocked (<em>shocked!</em>) to know that I didn't take that path. Instead, I set up a new channel specifically to house the smart-ass remarks. I didn't announce this one publicly. Instead, I invited a few people to it directly--people who were physically at the event (or listening over private audio chats), and who I knew well enough to know that they (a) wouldn't think less of me for my running commentary, and (b) would participate actively in a more rough-and-tumble exchange. The back-backchannel was immediately successful.</p> <p>But when the snarkiness left the original backchannel, there were some interesting side effects. First, the original channel nearly died. The level and quality of content dropped off significantly as the most high-energy participants shifted their action to the new channel. Second, the level of "bad behavior" in the new channel escalated dramatically. By drawing attention to it, and pushing it out of the mainstream environment, it was focused and amplified. That's not necessarily a good thing. There were times when went a little over the top, to the point were people were noticing the ripples of laughter at times when laughter seemed inappropriate.</p> <p>For all that, I still found that my "take-away content" from the backchannel equalled or surpassed what I got from presentations directly. I have two sets of notes from today; one is a SubEthaEdit shared notes document that's focused on the content being provided. The other is the transcript of the <span class="caps">IRC </span>channel(s) during the talks. I can already see that there's more I want to go back to and digest, discuss, and extend in the transcript than in the notes.</p> <p>So yes, I'll be back on <span class="caps">IRC </span>tomorrow. Maybe in more than one channel again, maybe not. But I'll definitely be there. And if I'm being snarky about you or someone you admire, I apologize in advance. But I don't plan to stop. Instead, I want you to stop into the channel yourself and challenge me. Tell me why I'm wrong, not why I shouldn't be saying you're wrong. Or if I'm not wrong, use it in the spirit that it's intended--to help make your presentation better. Your audience <em>isn't</em> your enemy, especially not in a gathering like this.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 11:52 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/03/30/confessions_of_a_backchannel_queen.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/03/30/confessions_of_a_backchannel_queen.php#comments">TrackBack (13)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_social_software.php">social software</a> </div> </div> <h2 class="date">Saturday, 27 March 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000765"></a> <h3 class="title">microsoft social software symposium</h3> <p>My colleagues and students (not to mention my family) have been making pointed comments lately about my absence. And while I'm worn out from traveling, and tired of being away from home, the last few months have been a great opportunity to extend my contacts in the technical world, and get a sense of what other people are doing and thinking about in emerging technologies.</p> <p>Tomorrow morning I leave at the crack of dawn for my last scheduled trip this spring--I've been invited to the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://research.microsoft.com/workshops/SCS2004/">Social Software Symposium</a> that's being held by the Social Computing group at Microsoft Research (along with <span class="caps">IBM</span> Research and FX/Palo Alto).</p> <p>There've been <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.lazycoder.com/weblog/index.php?p=48">some complaints about the invitation-only nature of this gathering</a> , which is understandable. There's always an inclusion/exclusion issue when you try to keep a popular activity restricted in terms of size in order to enhance the quality of interaction. I know I was bummed not to be at FooCamp, or at Clay's social software gathering a while back, but I was still glad to be able to see the ideas that emerged from both.</p> <p>I am <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://radio.weblogs.com/0133184/2004/03/26.html#a94">delighted to find</a> that the symposium will be recorded, and the recordings made publicly available--and that those of us attending will be allowed/encouraged to blog and otherwise disseminate what's going on. I'll be blogging while I'm there, and hopefully using what I hear and learn to inform the things I'm working on curricularly and that I write about online (here, and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.corante.com/many/">there</a>, and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://misbehaving.net/">there</a>).</p> <p><em>Private note to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.scottkoon.org/journal/">Scott Koon</a></em>: I would like to think that I don't smell <em>only</em> of "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://scoblecomments.scripting.com/comments?u=1011&#38;p=7095&#38;link=http%3A%2F%2Fradio.weblogs.com%2F0001011%2F2004%2F03%2F26.html%23a7095">soap and old books</a>," though as a librarian and a mom, I know that I probably do carry the permanent scent of both. And while I haven't met many of the people who'll be at this symposium, I know for a fact that danah boyd, Clay Shirky, and MImi Ito are all pretty far from most people's ideas of stuffy Ivory Tower academics! :)</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 01:24 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/03/27/microsoft_social_software_symposium.php">Permalink</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_social_software.php">social software</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_travel.php">travel</a> </div> </div> <h2 class="date">Wednesday, 17 March 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000759"></a> <h3 class="title">new moveon.org ad</h3> <p>One of the talks I enjoyed most at sxsw was <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2004/03/14/democracy_in_action.html">the keynote by MoveOn.org's Eli Pariser and Zack Exley</a>. They were articulate, committed, and inspirational.I'm delighted to see that MoveOn has acted quickly to put together <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.moveon.org/censure/caughtonvideo/">an ad based on Rumsfeld's "Face the Nation" appearance on Sunday</a>. Well worth watching. Send it to a friend.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 06:35 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/03/17/new_moveonorg_ad.php">Permalink</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_politics.php">politics</a> </div> </div> <h2 class="date">Sunday, 14 March 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000757"></a> <h3 class="title">blogging sxsw (or not)</h3> <p>Obviously, I've not been doing much conference blogging on this trip. I was thinking a bit about why that was, and there are a number of factors. First is that I'm starting to oversaturate on conferences and travel, so it's harder to get excited enough to want to blog anything. Second is that while I've heard some interesting things here, not much of it has been been really new to me--there's a lot of overlap between the presentations I've heard thus far and the things I've heard at other conferences this year. Third is that there are other people doing a marvelous job of blogging some of the presentations I've been at--most notably <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.cardhouse.com/heath/">Heath Row</a>, who's blogging the sessions he attends at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://blog.fastcompany.com/">Fast Company</a> <em>and</em> the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://blog.sxsw.com/">sxsw conference blog</a>. (If you haven't seen Heath's conference blog reports before, you're in for a treat; he's amazingly good at capturing not only extensive detail from a presentation, but also the tone and context.)</p> <p>Thus far, <span class="caps">SXSW </span>for me has been less about the presentations and more about the people. I'm having a chance to meet a lot of people who I've long admired, but have never met in person, as well as getting to know some people better who I'd only met briefly in the past.</p> <p>I'm hoping that tomorrow and Tuesday bring some new ideas and inspiration--but even if they don't, the interactions and connections are well worth the trip. Relationship building, in the long run, is worth a lot more to me these days--professionally and personally--than information consumption.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 11:47 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/03/14/blogging_sxsw_or_not.php">Permalink</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div> <h2 class="date">Thursday, 12 February 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000737"></a> <h3 class="title">step <em>away</em> from the laptop...</h3> <p>I had a lovely dinner last night with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://radio.weblogs.com/0108247/">Allan Karl</a>, at an excellent restaurant here in San Diego called <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.rainwaters.com/">Rainwater's on Kettner</a>. No laptops or electronic devices of any kind were involved, which was a huge relief.</p> <p>One of the things I've found most disconcerting about this conference has been the unwillingness of so many of the participants to shift their mode from the keyboard and screen to the real world of face-to-face communication. There's great value to the backchannel, especially in conference presentations where you can't speak out loud with your neighbors to discuss what's being said. But in the hotel lobby? In the restaurants? In the participant breakout sections? I remember when Steven Johnson posted about Clay Shirky's social software gathering last year--he noted that the backchannel seemed to suck the humor out of the room and into the chat. But at this conference, the backchannel seems to be sucking <em>everything</em> out of the room and into the chat, which I find depressing.</p> <p>So, anyway, dinner. It was a great reminder of the real-world rewards of this new electronic community I've become a part of. Allan and I had a great time talking, laughing, eating, and sharing a bottle of wine. That kind of experience cements a friendship in a way that instant messenger just can't do. I don't use technology for the sake of using technology--at least, I try not to. I use it to enhance the things that I care about in my life--friends, family, my research. Yesterday afternoon I spoke to my kids over iChat audio. I arranged to meet Allan using email and <span class="caps">IM.</span> And I participated in great discussions about my areas of research interest during presentations. But all of those spill over into the real world, and I use them to enhance the real world, not replace it.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 03:32 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/02/12/step_away_from_the_laptop.php">Permalink</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_food.php">food</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_friends.php">friends</a> </div> </div> <h2 class="date">Wednesday, 11 February 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000736"></a> <h3 class="title">stop. breathe. bask. write.</h3> <p>I realized this morning that I was starting to burn out on conference and professional time. I went straight through for nearly 18 hours yesterday...starting at 7am over the conference breakfast, hitting 4 sessions in the morning, going to the conference lunch, then 4 more sessions, then dinner with conference-goers, then 2 evening session, ending after 11pm.</p> <p>So today I'm slowing down, and finding some time for myself. I skipped a couple of morning sessions (though I did go to hear <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_sess/4797">Marc Smith's great talk</a> at 8:30), had lunch with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.meskill.net/weblogs/">Judith Meskill</a> and her friend Estee in the sports bar, and now I'm basking in the sun on the steps of Horton Plaza, where I've discovered a free wifi hotspot. Sitting in the sun--in February--is quite a luxury for those of us who live in the great frozen north, so it's doing me a lot of good to spend these few free minutes soaking it up.</p> <p>I will go back for some of the presentations this afternoon, including a demo of Wallop by <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.misbehaving.net/2003/11/lili_cheng_and_.html">Lili Cheng</a> that I'm really looking forward to. Then I'm having dinner with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://blog.digitaltavern.com/">Allan Karl</a>, which I'm also looking forward. And I end the day with the women and tech <span class="caps">BOF...I </span>have no idea who, if anyone, will be there. Hope it won't be an empty room, but if so at least it means I can get to sleep a little earlier.</p> <p>More later today--or perhaps tomorrow--with some of my thoughts on what I've heard here, and the ideas that have emerged in my between-meeting chats with interesting people here at the conference.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 05:42 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/02/11/stop_breathe_bask_write.php">Permalink</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_travel.php">travel</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 10 February 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000734"></a> <h3 class="title">emerging tech miscellany</h3> <p>For those who attended my presentation this morning (the crowd was small, but engaged and interested--it was fun!), and for those who couldn't (cough...joi...cough...danah...cough), the barest of notes (well, pictures, really) are <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.it.rit.edu/~ell/etech/">here</a>.</p> <p>Tonight danah and I are doing a participant session on our blog definition/categorization idea, at 9pm. And tomorrow (Wednesday), I signed up to do a <span class="caps">BOF </span>on women and tech for those who want to continue the conversation that got cut short at the end of the presentation today.</p> <p>If you're here and haven't come up to say hi, please do...now that I'm done talking, I'm a lot happier to be here. :)</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 08:34 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/02/10/emerging_tech_miscellany.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/02/10/emerging_tech_miscellany.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Wednesday, 4 February 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000732"></a> <h3 class="title">travel insanity</h3> <p>You know you're <em>really</em> in trouble when your schedule starts to look a lot like <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://joi.ito.com/joiwiki/JoiTravel">Joi's</a>!</p> <p><del>1/29-31, Chicago (consulting)</del><br/> 2/9-12, San Diego (speaking @ <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_sess/4706">ETech</a>)<br/> 2/21-3/3, Tokyo (tourism)<br/> 3/3-6, Shanghai (tourism)<br/> 3/13-16, Austin (speaking @ <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://sxsw.com/interactive/"><span class="caps">SXSW</span></a>)<br/> 3/18-19, Washington DC (serving on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.cise.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_display.cfm?pub_id=9476&div=cns"><span class="caps">NSF ITWF</span> Review Panel</a>)<br/> 3/28-30, Redmond, WA (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/01/23.html#a6323">Social Software Symposium</a>)</p> <p>Happily, things look like they'll calm back down again after that flurry of flights. Which is a good thing, for me and my family.</p> <p>A student told me today that he didn't understand how I was able to do everything that I do--conferences, classes, family, etc. But I'm not sure that I actually do everything that everyone thinks I'm doing. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors involved. And there's also a lot of working in the spaces...multitasking during meetings and while sitting on the couch, while flying in airplanes and sitting in terminals.</p> <p>The biggest down side of that multitasking is that I'm seldom completely in the moment--my attention always seems to be diverted a bit by the things I ought to be working on, the deadlines that are creeping up on me. So I'll be glad when life calms down a bit...spring brings some relief, and summer even more. For now, I'm going to put the computer down, and step away from the keyboard for a bit.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 08:39 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/02/04/travel_insanity.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/02/04/travel_insanity.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Friday, 9 January 2004</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000706"></a> <h3 class="title">sxsw roommate</h3> <p>I'm going to be at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://sxsw.com/interactive/"><span class="caps">SXSW</span> Interactive</a> in Austin this March, and plan on staying at the conference headquarter hotle, the new Hilton. Would be great if I could find a woman to room with there. Let me know if you're interested.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 07:02 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/01/09/sxsw_roommate.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/01/09/sxsw_roommate.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 30 December 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000693"></a> <h3 class="title">travel plans for the new year</h3> <p>It's going to be a busy, busy first quarter for me, it seems.</p> <p>A trip to Chicago in January to do some consulting.</p> <p>A trip to San Diego in February to speak at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_sess/4706"><span class="caps">O'R</span>eilly's Emerging Technology Conference</a>.</p> <p>The much-anticipated <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/09/asian_travel_plans.php">Asian trip with my mother and son</a> in late February/early March.</p> <p>And I've just agreed to be on a panel ("Streetwise Librarians and the Revolution in Public Information") at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.sxsw.com/interactive/"><span class="caps">SXSW</span> Interactive</a> in Austin in March.</p> <p>Whew. I'm tired just looking at that. :/ Every one of them is a trip I'm really interested in making, but in the aggregate, it's a daunting itinerary for someone who much prefers sleeping in her own bed...</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 11:25 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/12/30/travel_plans_for_the_new_year.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/12/30/travel_plans_for_the_new_year.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_travel.php">travel</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 2 December 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000669"></a> <h3 class="title">mea conference deadline extended</h3> <p>The deadline for proposals for the Media Ecology Association conference has been extended to December 15th. The <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.rit.edu/~sbbgpt/mea-rit/archives/2003/12/02/deadline_extended.html">extensions announcement</a> has details on the conference and the kinds of proposals they're looking for.</p> <p>One panel proposal that has been submitted (and I suspect has a good chance of being accepted) is one that I'm chairing on "Weblogs and Cross-Disciplinary Communication." On the panel with me will be Clay Shirky, Seb Paquet, Jill Walker, and Alex Halavais. That alone should be reason enough for you to want to attend (or, better, yet, to propose your own presentation).</p> <p>Here's our abstract:</p> <blockquote>While weblogs have been touted as an emerging publishing medium, academic weblogs are often used more for communication and dialog with other scholars and interested readers than they are for traditional broadcast publishing. Unlike mailing lists, weblogs combine broad accessibility (unhindered by subscription requirements) with clear authorial voice on the part of the weblog writer(s). The panel will discuss the opportunities and problems presented by weblogs as a tool for cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration.</blockquote> <p>And while Rochester's weather may be slightly...well...inclement...at the moment, in mid-June it's quite wonderful here.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 08:26 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/12/02/mea_conference_deadline_extended.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/12/02/mea_conference_deadline_extended.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Sunday, 16 November 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000649"></a> <h3 class="title">rushkoff blog</h3> <p>Somehow I missed that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.rushkoff.com/blog.php">Douglas Rushkoff</a> (a professor at <span class="caps">NYU </span>in the same Interactive Telecom Program where <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.shirky.com/">Clay Shirky</a> teaches) has a weblog. (And has, apparently, since several months before I even started mine.)</p> <p>Which reminds me that I have to get moving on my blog panel proposal for the upcoming <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.rit.edu/~sbbgpt/mea-rit/">Media Ecology conference</a> here at <span class="caps">RIT </span>in June, where Rushkoff will apparently be giving a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.rit.edu/~sbbgpt/mea-rit/archives/2003/08/08/plenary_panels.html">plenary presentation</a>. It's due December 1st. Ack!</p> <p>I've noticed that when I'm on the right track intellectually, everything starts to seem connected. In this case, Rushkoff is connected to Sue Barnes, a new faculty member at <span class="caps">RIT </span>whose interests are very close to mine. He's also connected to Clay, with whom I co-author <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.corante.com/many/">Many-to-Many</a>, and to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.rheingold.com/">Howard Rheingold</a>, who I know through a couple of channels, and who's speaking this spring here at <span class="caps">RIT.</span></p> <p>All of that points to the best kind of convergence, the kind that says to me there's a critical mass of connections and content and interest to spin into something really interesting.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 01:02 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/16/rushkoff_blog.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/16/rushkoff_blog.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_research.php">research</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_social_software.php">social software</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 4 November 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000636"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian: notess on "harvesting blogs"</h3> <p>Points out that we're still in a "hunting and gathering" mode; there's no comprehensive, accurate search.</p> <p>Strategies:</p> <ul> <li>Do "collection development" to find key weblogs in your area</li> <li>Search weblog/rss search engines for both broad and specific content areas</li> <li>Wander occasionally; follow "what I read" links, comments, trackbacks</li> </ul> <p>Oh my goodness...he's showing an <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.gregbender.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=384"><span class="caps">RIT </span>student's post on LexisNexis</a>. Pretty entertaining. "I never realized that <span class="caps">RIT'</span>s library bought access to LexisNexis and any <span class="caps">RIT </span>student can log in and do searches for free." I'm delighted that the student is blogging, and that he found and appreciated the library content--but disappointed that our students don't all know about these resources. This speaks to a need for better, more targeted marketing by our library (and I know they're not the only ones).</p> <p>He mentions and demos a lot of blog search tools, some of which were new to me. I also didn't realize that Micah Alpern's <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.alpern.org/weblog/php/blogsearch/writeup.html">"trusted blog search" tool</a> could search blogrolling.com blogrolls now.</p> <p>Final points, which I may use to start my presentation:</p> <ul> <li>Be aware of blog movement</li> <li>Not always necessary</li> <li>More useful in some fields than others</li> <li>Blogs constantly changing</li> <li>One of the "hot" technologies</li> </ul> <p>(What happens if we roll back the clock ten years, and substitute "web" for "blog"? Or much further back, and substitute "book" for "blog"?)</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 07:01 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/04/internet_librarian_notess_on_harvesting_blogs.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/04/internet_librarian_notess_on_harvesting_blogs.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000635"></a> <h3 class="title">internet librarian: levine/cohen on rss</h3> <p>One bonus for me of attending this conference was getting a chance to meet Jenny Levine, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/">the Shifted Librarian</a>! (She's on the same network that I'm using ("Deep Blue Wireless", $8.95/day), so if she had a <em>Mac</em> we could use Rendezvous to share information and collaborate. But she's not. There's an amazingly small number of laptops here, and I've only seen one other Powerbook. Huge change from tech industry conferences.)</p> <p>She and Steve Cohen are talking about <span class="caps">RSS</span>;it's a basic introduction to <span class="caps">RSS, </span>for people who aren't familiar with it at all, so I probably won't blog much about it.</p> <p>Most of the presentations I've seen today, this one included, start with a list of characteristics, rather than showing the functionality first. A list of aggregators at the beginning is less helpful than a list of aggregators at the end. Start with the "why should I care"--then dig into the what and how.</p> <p>This is the first time I've ever actually seen the Radio aggregator; explains a lot about why so many Radio users tend towards the "link and comment" approach, and often incorporate large verbatim components from the sites they're commenting on.</p> <p>Didn't know that Yahoo! Groups provides <span class="caps">RSS </span>feeds. Need to look into that.</p> <p>Jenny's showing some useful sites that generate Javascripts with <span class="caps">RSS </span>feed content for your web site, complete with style info. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.feedroll.com/">Feedroll</a> is one. Seems like a good interface.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 05:07 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/04/internet_librarian_levinecohen_on_rss.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/04/internet_librarian_levinecohen_on_rss.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Monday, 3 November 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000634"></a> <h3 class="title">Internet Librarian: Greg Notess on "Google Gambol"</h3> <p>Came in late, so missed the first 15 minutes; the room is packed, probably a combination of the topic and the fact that Greg Notess (who runs <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/">Search Engine Showdown</a>) is an energetic, entertaining presenter.</p> <p>Some useful nuggets, for those who care about search engine tips and tricks:</p> <p>Google Answers is searchable--you can find the answers that other people already paid for.</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://labs.google.com/">Google Labs</a> has their 'under development' tools, like location searching, news alerts, compute, webquotes, etc.</p> <p>Be aware of varied filtering levels--by default, Google images are "SafeSearch" filtered and text is not.</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en">Advanced search</a> page lets you do things like limit to document type,<br/> but doesn't list all of the advanced techniques. "How do you search for a web page that has one word in the title, and another word elsewhere on the page?"</p> <p>Field searching: allintitle: (finds pages with all the words in title), intitle: (finds only the first word or phrase following it). Also can use allinurl: and inurl: , allintext:, allinachor:, site:, and related: (A little bit of info on this is on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/newsarchive/000687.shtml">his site</a>.)</p> <p>Can get to a cached web page by using cache:url</p> <p>Find files of a specific type by using filetype: (e.g. filetype:ppt). [Personal note--this would be really useful for finding instructional materials. e.g. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=filetype%3Appt+animation&btnG=Google+Search">filetype:ppt animation</a> for lectures on the topic of animation...]</p> <p>Can use an asterisk for a word...e.g. "Unbearable * of being"; useful for quotations, variations on a slogan, intellectual property theft/plagiarism. Can find misspellings and plural/singular within unique phrases. [For example, "Well-behaved women * make history" would find the phrase with the correct "seldom" but also the incorrect but often used "rarely".]</p> <p>Google limitations: only first 101K of a page (not the case on alltheweb). Limits the number of search terms you can use to ten. No full Boolean text searching; while OR is available, it doesn't always work properly.</p> <p>Google has multiple data centers; each data center may have a slightly different version of the database.</p> <p>I don't own Rael Dornfest's <em><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0596004478/internettraining/ref=nosim/">Google Hacks</a></em>, alas, so I don't know how much of this is also presented there... some of it is on Greg's site, linked above.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 07:00 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/03/internet_librarian_greg_notess_on_google_gambol.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/03/internet_librarian_greg_notess_on_google_gambol.php#comments">TrackBack (2)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000633"></a> <h3 class="title">Internet Librarian: 30 Search Tips in 40 Minutes</h3> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.batesinfo.com/">Mary Ellen Bates</a> on tips for searching effectively. These are <em>her</em> tips, not mine. My comments, when I have them, are parenthetical.</p> <p>I almost hate to share these, because these are the kind of tips that let people like me come across as an "angel of information mercy" to the people who ask me for help in finding things!</p> <p><span class="caps">BTW,</span> Mary Ellen is a <em>great</em> presenter. Funny, interesting, clear. She's got a free "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.batesinfo.com/tip.html">tip of the month</a>" email update, which you can also read on her web site.</p> <ol> <li>Always use more than one search engine. (You'll often get <em>very</em> different results; useful to triangulate.) See a test at www.batesinfo.com</li> <li>Use AltaVista's "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://babel.altavista.com/babelfish/kb">world keyboard</a>" to insert non-Roman characters.</li> <li>Use AltaVista's "sorted by" box to filter results. It's not an "AND", but it causes results with the sorted-by contents to bubble up to the top. "Softer than an <span class="caps">AND </span>but more relevant than an <span class="caps">OR.</span>"</li> <li>Use thesauri and web dictionaries to identify key words, put client's request in context. (e.g. Google's <em>define</em> feature, etc)</li> <li>Use spell-check to identify American-only spellings (fiber/fibre, labor/labour, etc). Type search terms in MS Word, set language to UK English, and run spell check!</li> <li>Watch for alternative phrasing (retirement/superannuation, revenue/turnover). <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.eurotexte.fr/translation/tips_brit_vs_amer.shtml">British to American tips</a></li> <li>Use Google's synonym feature. <em>~search-term</em>; e.g. ~sheep returns sites with terms livestock, lamb.</li> <li>Use "pearl culturing" (particularly in for-fee services)--look for key concepts in just the title of elements, then find the keywords assigned to that document. Use a similar approach on the web by using a "reverse link lookup"--find out who linked to a site, on the assumption they'll have more like it.</li> <li>Use Google's "related:" operator. Syntax: related:www.altvedmed.com ; doesn't find <em>linked</em> pages; finds similar pages.</li> <li>Use tools, not search engines. Open directory (dmoz.org), subject-specific directories. Use search engine to find a tool, use the tool to find the answer. Let someone else (an expert) find the most relevant/authoritative information.</li> <li>Search for sources, not just information. Assume key information will be buried in the "invisible web."</li> <li>Mine weblogs, don't subscribe to 'em. "JIT research, rather than <span class="caps">JIC </span>reading." Use daypop, technorati searches. ("Weblogs are the most efficient source of time wasting.")</li> <li>Use AllTheWeb's <em><span class="caps">URL</span> Investigator</em> ; type <span class="caps">URL </span>in search box and see lots of meta information about the link.</li> <li>Use "reverse link" searching as a citation search, and to find "more like this". Google syntax is link:www.somedomain.com Works best with less common sites. Works better in AllTheWeb<br/> #Use <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.archive.org/">Wayback Machine</a> to find deleted pages, 404 pages, etc. It now has <em>full text searching</em> which greatly enhances its value. Useful to see how an issue was treated at a specific point in time, or how it changed over time.</li> <li>Use whois to track down elusive companies. whois.sc, allwhois.com, easywhois.com. Caveat: some people lie. Aternative, Dialog's Domain Names database (file 225), which lists Who<em>was</em> records.</li> <li>Use commercial online services to search the web. Dialog, Factiva, LexisNexis. Search for keyword near multiple occurrences of "www" -- this generally leads to a good overview article, with related links.</li> <li>Use Teoma.com to identify experts' sites, link-rich pages. (Look at "resources" section on results page; these are "link-rich" sites on your topic.)</li> <li>Poke around the site. Be nosy. Use the "search this site" function, use site map, check all the pull-down menus.</li> <li>Mine Yahoo! Groups. Many groups have shared files, but you must join the group to get access. Find groups on a specialized topic, use that as a subject resource. ("Where would people with shared, obscure interests go to discuss a topic with like-minded people?") This is invisible web content; you won't find it in a general search engine.</li> <li>Buy a kitchen timer. After 15 minutes, re-evaluate your web research strategy. You can get so deep into "following the trail" that you lose your focus. (My note: Great idea for a lot of things. Blog reading, etc.)</li> <li>Use "type of document" indicators; for audio, include things like <em>listen</em> or <em>hear</em> -- for opinion pieces look for <span class="caps">PDF </span>or <span class="caps">DOC </span>files. For statistics, look for .XLS files; include <em>chart</em> or <em>graph</em> along with keywords.</li> <li>Know the advanced search capabilities of at least three search engines. Truncation? Proximity searching? Case sensitivity? Field searching?</li> <li>Use results "clustering" or refining features when you can. Example of "mooter.com", an Australian search engine, which clusters results visually. Small index right now, but the concept is very cool. (My note: This kind of clustering is what I've always liked about NorthernLight, which was my pre-Google favorite engine.)</li> <li>Search inges only show 2 or 3 results from a site; click the <em>more results from...</em> link to see (often) <em>many</em> more pages.</li> <li>Know what you're looking for. What <em>kind</em> of answer? A phone number? An expert? Search engine might not be the best tool. Think creatively about what kind of information you're looking for; where would that be likely to be?</li> <li>Use the web to find experts, then pick up the phone! Makes you "value added" in a way that matters to clients.</li> <li>Use free sources to scope out what's available, and to find problems in your search strategy-- then go to a for-fee service.</li> <li>Disambiguate. Know what you're looking for. What does "mobile messaging" mean? Net-enabled <span class="caps">PDA</span>s, or vehicles that display advertising. Always rephrase the request in your own words.</li> <li>What works best for the professional online services doesn't work well with web searching. Complex searches don't work on the web. Order of the search terms matters. Forget precision and go for what will likely float to the top.</li> <li>Some searches are simply not meant to be done online.</li> </ol> <div class="posted">Posted at 05:13 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/03/internet_librarian_30_search_tips_in_40_minutes.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/03/internet_librarian_30_search_tips_in_40_minutes.php#comments">TrackBack (18)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000631"></a> <h3 class="title">Internet Librarian: morville on "ambient findability"</h3> <p>Yes! A Boingo/DeepBlueWireless hotspot in the conference center. Hate to pay another $9/day for access (since I'm already paying in my hotel), but it's worth it to me to be able to blog the conference.</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://semanticstudios.com/about/morville.html">Peter Morville</a> is kicking off the "searching" track with a talk on "ambient findability."</p> <p>Interesting graphic showing "cells" of characteristics. Usable, Useful, Dedsirable, Valuable, Accessible, Creditble, and <em>Findable</em>. He wrote an article called <em>The Age of Findability</em> ("just <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=the+age+of+findability&btnG=Google+Search">Google it</a>," he says). Shows a great quote from a response to his article: "[This is] a case of librarians trying to muscle intot he usability field with their own spin...<b>findability</b> is just a subset of user-centered design."</p> <p>Great example of searches for information on cancer. Most people don't search on "cancer" (which would bring up <span class="caps">NIC </span>in top results), they search on a specific type of cancer, like "melanoma." NIC needs to figure out how to make their site "findable" for searches like these.</p> <p><em>Amazing</em> slide where he shows Launchcast, and says "what happens if you take away the words on this interface?"--then shows it. It becomes unusable. Wonderful way to show the importance of interface cues, as well as the importance of the text itself. Fascinating.</p> <p>Quote from Herb Simon: "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."</p> <p>Mentions the study I <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2002/10/29/design_trumps_content.php">wrote about</a> last year.</p> <p>Talks about <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://ambientdevices.com/">Ambient Devices</a>--they create items that respond to data inputs. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/orb/orborder.html">Orbs</a>, pinwheels, etc. Make the pinwheel spin faster as you get more urgent emails!</p> <p>Talks about things like "child tracking" armbands. (Missed the company name.) "We are not trying to sell this product based on the fear of parents," claims the <span class="caps">CEO. </span>(Peter pauses for effect; audience laughs...)</p> <p>We're putting more information about the physical world into the digital world, and the reverse. Ah, yes. My favorite topic--blurring boundaries.</p> <p>Tells "story of the three stone cutters." When asked what they're doing in a quarry, the three respond differently:<br/> 1) I'm making a living.<br/> 2) I'm doing the best stone-cutting that anyone could do.<br/> 3) I'm building a cathedral.</p> <p>As information professionals, we can think of ourselves as "building cathedrals" of content and information.</p> <p>"What Amazon has done has create a 'participation economy.'" (Top reviewer at Amazon is a former acquisitions librarian...)</p> <p>Talks about Amazon's "search inside the book" feature. Calls it a "major event in the information landscape." Says that preliminary info shows that books with the search are selling at a higher rate than those without. (The skeptic in me notes that the causality could be reversed; better-selling books could well have been included in full-text first.)</p> <p>Again, the boundary-blurring between the physical and the digital worlds. This is how we have to think about content integration!</p> <p>(Another note to self: Must start reading <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.boxesandarrows.com/">Boxes and Arrows</a> again. Somehow that dropped off my list.)</p> <p>In response to an inaudible audience question, Peter says "There are things we know about libraries--as distance (ie 'ease of use) increases, library use drops off sharply. One reason Google has been so successful is it is so 'close'--so easy to use."</p> <p>This talk was a great example of how a good presentation can be done without succumbing to the "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters#powerpoint">cognitive style of powerpoint</a>." It <em>is</em> Powerpoint, but extremely well done. At the end, he provides a link to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://semanticstudios.com/events/ambient.ppt">the presentation file</a>.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 01:47 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/03/internet_librarian_morville_on_ambient_findability.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/11/03/internet_librarian_morville_on_ambient_findability.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Saturday, 18 October 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000617"></a> <h3 class="title">aoir: "digital divide: opportunities and challenges"</h3> <p>Dianne Looker (Dalhousie): The Internet And The Gender Digital Divide</p> <p>Canadian study on Internet use. They looked at 15-year-old boys and girls enrolled in school.</p> <p>Findings from <span class="caps">YITS</span>/PISA</p> <ul> <li>Males <em>slightly</em> more likely to have a computer in their home.</li> <li>Males more likely to use computers in every context</li> <li>Males more likely to use the 'net for almost all tasks. (only possible exceptions were word processing and educational software) "Males use computers more and use them for more and different tasks."</li> <li>Boys feel more positively about computers. See it as more fun, more important, more absorbing.</li> <li><b>Boys rate their skills higher!!!</b> (Twice as many males as females report that they have high skills.)</li> </ul> <p>90% of boys and girls have any access. Slightly more boys have computer at home, slightly more boys have internet connections at home.</p> <p>Types of use of computer is related to home access. For those with no home access, boy and girl patterns are more similar. For those with homea ccess, there is more divergence, with boys using the computer more and for a wider variety of activities.</p> <p>Males <em>much</em> more likely to say they use the computer out o personal interest; girls much more likely to say they use it for school/study needs.</p> <p><strong>Issues</strong></p> <ul> <li>Gender has an effeect, but at-home access seems to have more of an effect. Questions about causal direction. Data suggests that interest-->access, rather than the reverse. Because boys are interested, they <em>create</em> access for themselves.</li> </ul> <ul> <li>Need more details on why and how males and females use computer and the Internet differently. Need qualitative research to fill in the stories.</li> </ul> <p>Found that it's not that high achievers use IT more...access isn't correlated with school success or involvement.</p> <p>(In a response to a questioner, the Pew researcher noted that girls are using IM more than boys, but most other activities are more boys than girls. It is in the teenage life online report on the Pew web site.)</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 04:31 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/18/aoir_digital_divide_opportunities_and_challenges.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/18/aoir_digital_divide_opportunities_and_challenges.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000616"></a> <h3 class="title">aoir: "network formations: producing and consuming online games"</h3> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://misc.wordherders.net/">Jason Rhody</a>, a talk called: /Em Speaks, Or Textual Practices, Online Communication, And Asheron's Call</p> <p>Game studies is going through a legitimization process, including a controlling vocabulary (other things, too, which I missed).</p> <p>How have games established a sense of agency within the virtual world, while maintaining a controlled environment. Persistence is a key component, a sense of history.</p> <p>How have players taken an active role in shaping Asherons Call?</p> <p>Games are social practices; online games operate within a physical and computational environment as well.</p> <p>Shows screen shot from Asheron's Call. Notes the amount of textual information still provided. Expandable chat window at the bottom, which shows status and activity as well. "Emote" function, some of which are programmed-- eg <strong>surrender</strong>, <strong>teapot</strong>. Also simple text-based emotes (which appear to work much like the /me command in <span class="caps">IRC</span>).</p> <p>"I can want to jump, but desire and action only meet when programmed."</p> <p>Non-programmed emotes demonstrate for players the limits of their control.</p> <p>Lots of discussion of interface components, focusing on user-developed tools (plug-ins) for visual display. Various pop-up windows, navigational tools. Can "hack" the data flow, reinterpret and enhance it.</p> <p>Players have been able to "penetrate the narrative" in this way.</p> <p>In game studies, "narrative" is a touchy concept. One side is more traditional (narratologist), draws from other media types. Ludologists argue that games are not narratives, that they are unlike other narrative forms. e.g. "Tetris can't be compared to War and Peace"</p> <p>Historical context for gaming is important. While games may not be narratives per se, but they can contain narratives. So Tetris may not be a narrative, but Asheron's Call certainly contains narrative.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 04:21 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/18/aoir_network_formations_producing_and_consuming_online_games.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/18/aoir_network_formations_producing_and_consuming_online_games.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Friday, 17 October 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000614"></a> <h3 class="title">aoir: interesting audience comment</h3> <p>From a questioner, who teaches at a somewhat conservative school. She showed her class the Homeless Blogger's site, and it made them <em>angry</em> -- they felt that it should be <em>illegal</em> for him to solicit for funds online, and that if he had a blog, he ought to have a job, and a home.</p> <p>Fascinating stuff. No time to think about it...another interesting speaker now.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 03:16 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/17/aoir_interesting_audience_comment.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/17/aoir_interesting_audience_comment.php#comments">TrackBack (2)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000613"></a> <h3 class="title">aoir: "Access Denied: Critical Considerations of Internet Space and the Digital Divide"</h3> <p>My notes from the <del>Saturday</del> Friday afternoon session. This was a great session, with interesting stuff on metaphors for the Internet. (Paging <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/">Dr. Weinberger</a>...)</p> <p>Annette Markham (who comes highly recommended by Jill Walker) on "Metaphors Shaping the Reality of the Internet: Tools, Place, and Way of Being"</p> <p>Argues that the way we talk about the Internet (or <span class="caps">ICT, CMC, </span>pick your word) influences the shape those technologies take. Not a new argument, but presents a framework for making sense of <span class="caps">IT, </span>and the implication that has for issues related to access.</p> <p>The metaphors we hear tell us what something is, and how it can/should be responded to. They provide a strong frame of reference, and shape the way we think about and interact with technologyy.</p> <p>(I wonder if she's read David Weinberger's <em><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://amazon.com/o/asin/0738205435/internettraining/ref=nosim/">Small Pieces Loosely Joined</a></em>?</p> <p>Take-away line: "Through our use of metaphors and language we are creating a box, and pretty soon we'll be stuck in the box, trying to think outside of it."</p> <p>(She's reading from her computer notes, which we can't see. :/ )</p> <p>We understand most technologies as tools (for magnification, amplication). Within this frame of reference, the Internet can extend reach, collapse distance. When you examine discourse surrounding the Interent, certain types of discourse become more apparent: Internet as conduit. Internet as prosthesis. Internet as container. These are more of a "root level" metaphor. (e.g. information superhighway is Internet as conduit). [So where does "Internet as place" fit? Container, I guess?]</p> <p>Internet as prosthesis is invoked when we talk about extending ourselves, our reach with the 'net.</p> <p>Conduits are means of transport from one place to another. What exactly we call it is not as important as the emphasis. Pipes, highways, etc is a focus on conduit.<br/> And yes, technically, the Internet is a medium that transports information. But the focus, when we think of/talk about conduits (more than other things) leads to a predominance of transmission as the <em>defining</em> characteristic.</p> <p>Internet as container, as something that holds something else. Emphasizes the "shape" of "that which holds stuff." Access and entry points, it can be open or closed, empty or full. Different framework for understanding and interaction. Primary in this frame of reference is "Internet as Thing" as opposed to "Internet as Process."</p> <p>These conceptualizations by their natures limit the way we are able to think.</p> <p>Ah...here we go. "Internet as place."</p> <p>Place-oriented metaphors such as community, frontier, "sociocultural space" highlight certain features again. You can't perceive the Internet as a place unless you perceive boundaries, entry/exit points, and <em>sense of presence</em>. You must perceive a shape of the place for this to be meaningful. And there must be <strong>other</strong> in order to define presence. (Hmmmm. Not sure I buy that. Is "acknowledgment of other" necessary to define place or sense of personal presence?? If I'm in a virtual forest and there's no one there to interact with me, do I exist?)</p> <p>Talks about libraries, and how we understand them. We understand scale, we understand the browsing process, the importance of proximity of items.</p> <p>Internet lets us create "electronic libraries." We "make our libraries digital." But there's a disjuncture between the electronic implementation and the physical. We see the library as a place, but our students see the electronic library as a <strong>conduit</strong> instead. Type in a keyword, get 17 hits. [Note to self: Need to go back and re-read Meyrowitz's <em><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/019504231X/internettraining/ref=nosim/">No Sense of Place</a></em>.]</p> <p>Moving towards a "way of being" metaphor.</p> <p>[Where is this paper? I want to see the paper, rather than trying to process all this audibly. I'm more of a visual learner...]</p> <p>If policymakers think of Internet as "place," then all it takes to address the digital divide is to "build or open doors."</p> <p>Questioner (who used to work with McLuhan) says McLuhan would say that the Internet is a medium, but reject the view of the Internet as a conduit. He's pontificating, rather than questioning, so I'm tuning out. Markham is responding--let's analyze "medium" as a metaphro. What's being privileged? What's hidden/absent? In communication we've used the <span class="caps">SMCR</span>/feedback metaphor for decades. In the discipline, criticism has led to a recognition that that model does not recognize <em>meaning</em> -- but even though we know communication is more complex, we still use the model. And it focuses us on the medium, rather than on the meaning.</p> <p>If we focus instead on other metaphors, besides just "the medium," we start to see different things, different facets.</p> <p>Another questioner quotes Mark Poster, who said "the internet is n't a tool like a hammer, it's a tool like Germany" Asks about the need to disentangle metaphors.</p> <p>Markham asks him to clarify. He asks if the Internet is somewhat like the rise of the nation/state. Does it change our sense of self? Markham responds that it's a great question, but not one that can be answered in the time available. (That makes it sound like she's ducking, but she's not. Just acknowledging how complex a question it is. Clearly she's intrigued.)</p> <p>--</p> <p>Next guy also is not using visuals. Hadn't realized how much visuals really help me with making sense of presentations.</p> <p>He's reading from his paper, which I hate. He's using all the big polysyllabic words that work well in written form but are counterproductive when talking to an audience.</p> <p>I give up. Will listen, but can't blog this.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 02:59 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/17/aoir_access_denied_critical_considerations_of_internet_space_and_the_digital_divide.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/17/aoir_access_denied_critical_considerations_of_internet_space_and_the_digital_divide.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Thursday, 16 October 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000611"></a> <h3 class="title">aoir: "broadening the blog panel, part 1"</h3> <p>The blog panel I was on was so big that it got split into two time slots, and the first one was from 8:30-9:45am. I took notes for that one (no WiFi at that time), but then my computer got pressed into use for projection during my panel (for Jason Nolan and for me), and I didn't really take notes much after that.</p> <p>So, here are my belated notes from session 1, featuring Cameron Marlow (of Blogdex fame), Alex Halavais, Matthew Rothenberg, and Thomas Burg.</p> <p>First Panel (8:30am)</p> <p>Cameron Marlow, before we begain: "This is a giant room and a tiny audience...probably a good metaphor for weblogs.</p> <p>Where possible, I've provided links to people's presentations (via their blogs), or at least to the blogs themselves.</p> <p>--</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://alex.halavais.net/news/archives/000657.html">Alex Halavais led off</a>, talking about Robert E. Park (then groundbreaking) description of cities as more than collections of people, but as an institutions. He speaks with a backdrop of a series of wonderful quotes regarding study of cities (Chicago School, etc). Nice comparisons drawn between cities and blogospheres.</p> <p>Move from that to "What is a 'blogosphere'? How do we study it?" What's a blog? Blogs only exist in relation to one another.</p> <p>Goes through Park's essay on cities, replacing "city" with "blogosphere".</p> <p>Focus on <strong>neighborhoods</strong>. How do you find the boundaries and the texts of the "neighborhood" in a blog context?</p> <p>--</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://randgaenge.net/stories/2003/09/30/monstermediaenglish.html">Thomas Burg's presentation</a></p> <p>MonsterMedia: the monstrosities of the blogosphere. He presents a "framework from a cultural studies perspective," using the metaphor of the monster.</p> <p>monsterTheory: impurity is terrifying, especially when two categories are represented--(human and machine). A monster is created by transgression of categories, or blending of existing (exclusive) orders. The result is fear and/or fascination.</p> <p>Is it reasonable to think of a weblogMonster?</p> <p>Question from audience (Susan Herring, I think): In what sense is linking a disruptive technology in the context of weblogs? A: The linking of content, the "tracking back" of references is a new way of thinking about content on the web, about producing content on the web. Questioner disagrees; new, but not disruptive.</p> <p>Cam chines in that he sees it as the opposite of disruptive.</p> <p>Alex responds as well--a link is not interactive. Difference between reciprocal and unidirectional links. Links can flatten hierarchy and thereby disrupt structure.</p> <p>Matthew points out that weblogs themselves have become disruptive in search processes, and the value of links</p> <p>Audience member notes that comments and trackbacks allow for disruption.</p> <p>Another question about need for reputation based filtering, a "qualitative overlay" for the quantitative information.</p> <p>Question: Why are panel members negative about social network analysis; most software for sna now does recognize bidirectional and unidrectional links. The kind of "maps" we need require multiple valences.</p> <p>Cam: In EatonWeb, people shunned categories, and isntead chose "personal" and "general". Communities are not around people, but around topics--however, people are not aware of the microcommunities around topics.</p> <p>[Reading this now, I think this is really important. Need to follow up on this.]</p> <p>Question: perhaps content is too ephemeral on blogs; are weblogs more like newspapers in their balance of ephemerality (of individual pieces of content) and persistence (of the vehicle for that information)?</p> <p>--</p> <p>Cameron Marlow (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.overstated.net/">blog link</a>--can't find his presentation there)</p> <p>Likes the metaphor of the city that Alex raises. Evolution of the city produced a new set of social organizations not possible in other environments--to some extent, weblogs further this process. With weblogs, you engage with people who are not geographicall-colocated. Geography of interests and thoughts.</p> <p>Challenges the idea that "neighborhoods" exist in the "world of weblogs" (hates the term "blogosphere")</p> <p>Weblogs are about a "culture of ego". The individual is the unit of analysis--as opposed to environment. About creating a community <strong>around</strong> the individual.</p> <p>Blogdex indexes ideas/topics spreading through the weblog world. Allows communities to form around shared topics/discussions. Individuals can find others "talking" about the same subjects.</p> <p>Claims there's not an emergence of weblog neighborhoods. No structure emerges as a "clique". It's simply a mesh of interconnections. It's not like "Small Worlds," or other networks we've seen before.</p> <p>[My anecdotal experience doesn't support this. I think we need to look at the data in a lot of ways before we assume that there are no emergent "neighborhoods" of blogs. In fact, I'm surprised that nobody mentions <em>Emergence</em> in this context...it seems very relevant.]</p> <p>--</p> <p>Matthew Rothenberg (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://faktory.org/m/blog/archives/000104.html">just started updating his blog again</a>)</p> <p>Many people maintain their weblogs in multiple formats--not just <span class="caps">HTML, </span>but also xml, rdf, etc. Why are webloggers interested in providing this?</p> <p>Highly distributed methodology--different authors, times, tools, locations. But it's a highly referential community, based heavily on links. How can we make sense of relationships?</p> <p>May be a "city", but it's one in which your neighbors are not necessarily <strong>visible</strong> to you. This is where social network theory fails in analysis of weblog links. Need to see who links to the same things you link to. This happens, though, in tools like Blogdex, "Recommended Reading", AllConsuming, feedster, etc)</p> <p>Difficult to see who's talking about a resource when you're looking at it? Talks about how to build that in automatically (My response: But do we want to do that? Regulating signal-to-noise ratio. Tools like the Technorati Cosmos bookmarklet allows for filtering/value added on that information.)</p> <p>Claims that blogs are a small, insular community. [My response: I don't buy that. Not one community, and only insular within subgroups (LiveJournal friends, etc) ]</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 08:39 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/16/aoir_broadening_the_blog_panel_part_1.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/16/aoir_broadening_the_blog_panel_part_1.php#comments">TrackBack (2)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000610"></a> <h3 class="title">aoir: "blogging: authors and consequences"</h3> <p>Elijah Wright (presenting with Lois Scheidt and Susan Herring) on the weblog genre. There's a popular view, but it represents an unrepresentative elite. Most of the bloggers mentioned in mainstream media reports of blogging are male. "Blog Research on Genre" project (BROG), with a goal of empirically characterize the "typical blog."</p> <p>[Ack! Isn't this like trying to characterize the "typical person"? Or the "typical woman"? Is there any value in an "average" representation? Why do we need to see blogging as an undifferentiated label??]</p> <p>Defined blogs as "HTML document with entries in reverse chronological order." (No mention of authorial voice here...so would a software revision list be a blog, under this definition??)</p> <p>Used a random sample from blo.gs for their analysis. Used web content analysis,through lens of web genre characterics. Coded features of blogs, quantified results.</p> <p>Hypotheses: (1) Blog content tends to be external to the author (news, links); (2) authors are typically well-educated adult males, (3) blogs are interactive, actively soliciting comments, and (4) blogs are heavily interlinked.</p> <ul> <li>Of sample, 70% were personal journals. (Numbers gone too fast to see the range for other types.)</li> <li>91% are 1 author, 54 <span>male, 60 </span> adult, 57% students.</li> <li>Gender and age of blog author varies according to blog content. (Shouldn't variables be reversed there?) Second most frequent profession mentioned was "unemployed."</li> <li><span>of blogs allowing comments: 43</span>. seems to be related to the default settings in blogging software.</li> <li>70% include external links (excluding "badges" for software developers, e.g. MT or blogger). This means 1/3 of all weblogs have <em>no links</em> !</li> </ul> <p>Blog content is mostly personal, and often intimate. authors are roughly eqully split between male and female, adult and teen. Adult males create more filters and k-logs (in fact almost all are created by males), females and teens create more personal journals.</p> <p>Conclusion: Blogs featured in contemporary public representation are not representative.</p> <p>They acknowledge that sample size is small, and is English-only. However, more recent samples seem to reinforce conclusions. Present several interpretations, but I find these overly speculative. You don't know <em>why</em> people do things until you <em>ask</em> them, or at the very least do more qualitative inquiry into the phenomenon.</p> <p>Jump right to predictions:</p> <ul> <li>Increasing mundane use.</li> <li>Increasing contentiousness</li> <li>Increasing commercialization</li> <li>Increasing non-blog use of blog software</li> </ul> <p>I am reminded of a line I heard from Pat Cadigan (a sci-fi author) at an <span class="caps">ALA </span>conference, when she warned against "the danger of predicting the future in a straight line."</p> <p>So, they ask, what then is "new about blogs?"</p> <ul> <li>Ease of update means more interactive webpages</li> <li>Creators can be itneractive yet maintain control</li> <li>Blurs distinction between traditional <span class="caps">HTML </span>documents and text-based <span class="caps">CMC</span></li> </ul> <p>That last one is where my interest lies. Blurring of boundaries (just search my archives for "boundaries" to see previous references to that theme). Susan Herring puts up a graphic showing a continuum of web pages to <span class="caps">CMC.</span></p> <p>More conclusions:<br/> * blogs may ultimately be transformative, but not in favoring a specific content, audience, or quality<br/> * rather they create new affordances that will be open to a variety of uses (cf email)<br/> * important to look at "typical" blogs as well as intersting unusual ones<br/> * look at socio-political, social-psychological, and technical implications</p> <p>I asked if they had concerns about creating a "typical" profile of a diverse population--response was that they realize they need to break it down more.</p> <p>Also asked if they might consider longitudinal studies--does content change over time? Go from externally focused to internally, or the reverse?</p> <p>(Update: Cameron Marlow has a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://overstated.net/notes/wiki/AoIRNotes">wiki page</a> with his notes on this session.)</p> <p>(Another update: Elijah Wright has <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.blogninja.com/node.php?id=30">posted the <span class="caps">PPT </span>presentation from this session</a>, so you can check my #s and find the ones that I missed!)</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 04:57 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/16/aoir_blogging_authors_and_consequences.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/16/aoir_blogging_authors_and_consequences.php#comments">TrackBack (8)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000609"></a> <h3 class="title">aoir: "hacking women"</h3> <p>Sarah Stein, <span class="caps">NCSU</span><br/> "Hacking women: media representations of the technically proficient woman"</p> <p>The Net and <span class="caps">VR5 </span>both cast women as hackers. Surprising, because women are almost absent from the real world of hackers.</p> <p>What is the effect of media representations of women "transgressing" into internet and gaming culture?</p> <p>Hacking is one way in which men enter and advance themselves in software development. Joy, passion, creativity are typically associated with the media image of the hacker.</p> <p>Why are there no female hackers? Perhaps because men are more able to find relief from fixed time schedules and daily tasks (much of the daily caretaking and routine drudgery of life falls to women).</p> <p>Shows a series of clips from both The Net and <span class="caps">VR5.</span> Interesting stuff. Will need to go back and watch The Net again. Have never seen <span class="caps">VR5.</span> Is it available on <span class="caps">DVD </span>or reruns at all?</p> <p>The women are skillful and competent with technology, but socially inept. There's teh big question: Does technological skill mean deficiency in "womanliness"?</p> <p>In both of the narratives analyzed, the women go from asexual figures, clothed in baggy garments, to more feminine and stylish apperances.</p> <p>Not sure I buy the argument that portrayals of geek guys don't lessen their sense of masuclinity...or that the portrayals of female geeks necessarily makes them less "womanly"--unless we want to buy into stereotypical definitions of what constitutes femininity.</p> <p>In both of these narratives, mothers are physically present but mentally incompetent (comatose, etc). What message does this sound? Women can go into the technical domain when they are freed from family demands--but they can only reclaim their femininity by "rescuing" their mothers, and taking on the caretaker role.</p> <p>[Will follow up with her to see if the paper is being published, or will be. Can't find a web site for her at <span class="caps">NCSU, </span>at least not via Google.]</p> <p>Audience member notes on the extent to which gender norms are being "policed" and reified in current online environments and media messages surrounding these environments. Is there any reason for optimism?</p> <p>Sarah Stein replies that the hope lies in "activist feminist" work. There's no open door inviting revisions; we have to breach the barricade and take it on.</p> <p>She references Mary Flanagan...need to find out about her work. Creating new representations of online environments.</p> <p>Audience member suggests that the Internet allows us to "escape binary gender" (updated version of "on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog"?). Can we put gender behind us?</p> <p>The problem is that nobody exists solely online--nor do they want to.</p> <p>(Note to self: Interesting to think about the representation of maternal figures in Sarah Stein's examples. Many of the women I've interviewed for the grant have described their mothers as "computer illiterate.")</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 03:22 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/16/aoir_hacking_women.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/16/aoir_hacking_women.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000608"></a> <h3 class="title">open wifi in queen street cafe!</h3> <p>I finished my presentation, and escaped in search of lunch. Wandered down Queen Street, and into the Bishop and the Belcher, a pub that had enough people inside to indicate edible food, but not so many as to make for a wait.</p> <p>And miracle-of-miracles, there's an open WiFi network here. w00t!</p> <p>As to the presentation, it went fine. Thanks for all the good wishes, and suggestions--<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.it.rit.edu/~ell/aoir2003/">slightly revised version of the presentation</a> is now up. I took lots of notes about the two blog panels, and will post them later today once I've cleaned 'em up a little bit. No networking at the conference (yet...Apple seems to be working on it, and we had 15-20 minutes of connectivity before it disappeared again), so no live blogging. If they get the wireless working later, I'll see what I can do. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://jasonnolan.net/">Jason Nolan</a> ("and his team," he said) are doing a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://edublog.com/aoir/">conference blog</a>, too.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 12:52 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/16/open_wifi_in_queen_street_cafe.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/16/open_wifi_in_queen_street_cafe.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Monday, 13 October 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000604"></a> <h3 class="title">coming up for air</h3> <p>Haven't been blogging, but I have been working. Finishing up the paper for <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://aoir.org/2003/">AoIR</a>, and putting up an MT-driven web site for my <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://women.it.rit.edu/">grant research</a>.</p> <p>I leave for Toronto Wednesday night, and once I get through the Thursday morningn presentation I'll get to relax and enjoy both the conference and the city.</p> <p>There are two restaurants I ate at when I was in Toronto in July that I'm hoping to visit again while I'm there. One is the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.toronto.com/profile/147371/">Epicure Cafe</a> on Queen Street W, where I had an excellent and surprisingly inexpensive dinner the night I arrived for <span class="caps">ALA.</span> The other was a wonderful Mauritian restaurant called <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_04.01.99/foodanddrink/food.html">Blue Bay Cafe</a> at the corner of Dundas and Roncesvalles. (I'm blogging this because I'd forgotten the names of both, and needed to have a friend remind me. Now I'll have the names and links easily available as needed.)</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 01:10 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/13/coming_up_for_air.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/13/coming_up_for_air.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Thursday, 9 October 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000602"></a> <h3 class="title">conference scheduling woes</h3> <p>Aaaaargh! I just realize that Tim Berners-Lee is speaking at AoIR. Which would be <em>great</em> if it weren't at <b>exactly</b> the same time as <b>my</b> panel.</p> <p>That is so completely and utterly unfair.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 10:28 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/09/conference_scheduling_woes.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/09/conference_scheduling_woes.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Wednesday, 8 October 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000601"></a> <h3 class="title">choosing a toronto hotel</h3> <p>I <em>finally</em> got official $ approval for my "international" travel to Toronto next week (for <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://aoir.org/2003/">AoIR 2003</a>), so I'm looking at hotel options. I've narrowed it down to two choices (neither or which is the conference hotel, the Hilton--too expensive, since I missed the cutoff for the conference rate).</p> <p>It looks like a choice between <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.metropolitan.com/toronto/">The Metropolitan</a> (looks more luxurious, and has wifi throughout the public areas, as well as broadband in all the rooms) and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.cambridgesuitestoronto.com/">Cambridge Suites</a> (appears to be closer to the conference hotel, has roomy suites and free breakfasts).</p> <p>I think I'll have to call tomorrow to see (1) if the Metropolitan charges for in-room broadband, (2) if Cambridge has broadband in all their rooms (may only be the pricier ones), and (3) what each charges for parking (which, as I recall, is a highly lucrative side business for Toronto hotels).</p> <p>Anybody have experience staying in either of those hotels?</p> <p>(And no, the paper's not done. But it will be before I get there Wednesday night!)</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 10:11 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/08/choosing_a_toronto_hotel.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/08/choosing_a_toronto_hotel.php#comments">TrackBack (2)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 7 October 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000600"></a> <h3 class="title">happy dance!</h3> <p>Received a few minutes ago:</p> <blockquote>Dear Elizabeth, <p>Congratulations!</p> <p>You have been accepted as a presenter at the<br/> <span class="caps">O'R</span>eilly Emerging Technology Conference 2004<br/> at the Westin Horton Plaza, San Diego, California,<br/> February 09, 2004 - February 12, 2004.</p> <p>The following proposal has been accepted as a 45 minute<br/> session for the event:</p> "Breaking Into the Boys' Club: How Diversifying Your Team Can Expand Your Market"</blockquote> <p>Y'all come, y'hear?</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 04:17 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/07/happy_dance.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/07/happy_dance.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Friday, 19 September 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000579"></a> <h3 class="title">amazingly useful site for academics</h3> <p>My colleague <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.it.rit.edu/~tah/">Tona Henderson</a> introduced me to an amazingly helpful site this quarter. It's called <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.papersinvited.com/">Papersinvited</a>, and it collects calls for papers from conferences and journals worldwide.</p> <p>When you register, you create a profile and tell the system what topic areas you're interested in following. In addition to the existing topical categories (I subscribe to "Library and Information Sciences," "Knowledge Management," "Communication," "Digital Arts," and "Internet and Online Services"), you can specify up to five keywords to look for in announcements (I have "weblogs," "blogs," "social software," "gender," and "women").</p> <p>Each time you log in, it shows you current announcements in the areas you've selected. You can delete them if you're not interested, or add them to a planner, which is a calendar that shows you upcoming submission dates, notification dates, and conference dates.</p> <p><img alt="papers.gif" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907im_/http://mamamusings.net/archives/papers.gif" width="400" height="221" border="0"/></p> <p>I don't know why it's free, but it is. And it's incredibly useful to those of us who are under various pressures to publish and present in peer-reviewed contexts.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 12:21 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/09/19/amazingly_useful_site_for_academics.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/09/19/amazingly_useful_site_for_academics.php#comments">TrackBack (4)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Wednesday, 17 September 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000575"></a> <h3 class="title">aoir conference plans</h3> <p>I was trying to remember which presentations at the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.aoir.org/">Association of Internet Researchers</a> conference I was planning to attend, and had to poke through my outbox to find the email I sent to a colleague about the topic.</p> <p>So to save myself that hassle next time, I'm posting it here, in an easily searchable context. External memory, indeed.</p> <p>(Caveat...all the <span class="caps">URL</span>s changed between the first time I found the panels, and the second time. Apparently the <span class="caps">URL</span>s are tied to time slots, rather than unique presentations, so if they change the schedule, the <span class="caps">URL </span>changes, too. Blech. So if they're wrong when you click on them, it's not my fault!)</p> <p>--<br/> <strong>Thursday</strong><br/> 8:30 - 9:45: The first of two panels on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/aoir2003/index.php?p=1">"Broadening the Blog"</a> -- <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://alex.halavais.net/news/">Alex Halvais</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://randgaenge.net/">Thomas Burg</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://overstated.net/">Cameron Marlow</a>, and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://faktory.org/m/blog/">Matthew Rothenberg</a></p> <p>10:00 - 11:15: The second of the blog panels, with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.livejournal.com/users/delwiche">Aaron Delwiche</a>, Taso Lagos, me, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://jasonnolan.net/">Jason Nolan</a>, and Jo Ann Oravec.</p> <p>Unfortunately, at the very same time there are two panels that I <em>really</em> wanted to go to. <sigh></p> <p>From 8:30-9:45 is a panel on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/aoir2003/index.php?p=3">Online Social Research: Methods, Issues, Ethics</a>. And from 10-11:15am are <em>two</em> things I wish I could attend, one panel on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/aoir2003/index.php?p=12">Online Research Methods</a>, and another on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/aoir2003/index.php?p=16">Identity and Gender</a>.</p> <p>2-3:45pm: A panel on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/aoir2003/index.php?p=26">Gendered Subjectivities</a>, including a presentation called "Hacking Women: How Popular Media Represent the Technologically Proficient Woman."</p> <p><strong>Friday</strong><br/> 8:00-8:30am: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/aoir2003/index.php?p=124">Blogging <span class="caps">BOF</span></a></p> <p><strong>Saturday</strong><br/> 8:00-8:30am: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/aoir2003/index.php?p=124">Blogging <span class="caps">BOF</span></a> (yes, again. don't know why)</p> <p>2-3:45pm: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/aoir2003/index.php?p=95">Expanding the Boundaries: Methodological Issues in Doing Internet Research</a></p> <p><strong>Sunday</strong><br/> 8:30-9:45am: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/aoir2003/index.php?p=115">Broadening Options and Raising Standards for Qualitative Internet Research: A Dialogue among Scholars</a></p> <div class="posted">Posted at 10:19 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/09/17/aoir_conference_plans.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/09/17/aoir_conference_plans.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Thursday, 11 September 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000569"></a> <h3 class="title">fall frenzy</h3> <p>This is a crazy quarter in terms of traveling. Normally I don't travel much, if at all, during the academic year (except during breaks). But this quarter, I have three back-to-back trips in October and November. So today has been travel arrangement day. :P</p> <p>October 16-19 I'll be at the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.aoir.org/">Association of Internet Researchers</a> (AoIR) <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/">annual conference</a> in Toronto, where I'll be on a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.ecommons.net/aoir/aoir2003/index.php?p=10">blog-related panel</a> that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://alex.halavais.net/news">Alex Halavais</a> put together. Minor detail...I need to <em>write the paper</em>. Ack. (It's based on some earlier work I did related to Usenet, so I'm not at ground zero. But I'm still a little panicked.)</p> <p>October 26-28 I'll be at a workshop in Albuquerque, <span class="caps">NM, </span>for PIs (principal investigators) in <span class="caps">NSF'</span>s <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2001/nsf0133/nsf0133.htm"><span class="caps">ITWF </span>program</a>. Everyone who's gotten research money over the past few years from that program will be there to talk about their research and share ideas, results, etc. I'm excited about this, because it's a great opportunity to get to know other researchers in the area of women and computing. However, because of the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/09/10/spam_filtering_stupidity.php">spam filtering problem I mentioned yesterday</a>, I didn't know I had to prepare a 5 page summary paper--which is due <b>Monday</b>.</p> <p>November 2-4 I'll be at the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.infotoday.com/il2003/default.htm">Internet Librarian</a> conference in Monterey, <span class="caps">CA, </span>where I'll be on a keynote panel on <del>blogging</del> "Top Tech Trends for Libraries" (sort of a 'do-over' of the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/06/24/ala_conference_top_tech_trends_panel.php"><span class="caps">ALA </span>panel I was on</a>, but sharing the podium with new people), and then doing a separate presentation on "Beyond Blogging." I'm way behind on getting the paperwork done for that, too. (If y'all are reading this, I <strong>am</strong> coming. Really. I promise I'll have everything filled out and sent back by the end of this weekend!)</p> <p>All that has to be balanced with MW afternoon teaching schedule. I <em>really</em> don't feel good about missing more than two classes a quarter (it's only a ten-week quarter, so there are only 20 class meetings). So that means rushing home on Tuesday the 28th and Tuesday the 4th (including a red-eye flight home for the latter), so that I can make it to my Wednesday 2pm class.</p> <p>Which is a very roundabout way of saying don't be surprised if blogging falters a little during the next couple of weeks. That's a lot of stuff to prepare for.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 04:08 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/09/11/fall_frenzy.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/09/11/fall_frenzy.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_curmudgeonly.php">curmudgeonly</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_librarianship.php">librarianship</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_on_blogging.php">on blogging</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_research.php">research</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Friday, 11 July 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000493"></a> <h3 class="title">do people look like their blogs?</h3> <p>Blogging has been slow this week because I've been at Supernova, trying to process the experience of suddenly meeting--in person--scores of people I knew only through "social software." It was a lot to take in. I was talking to my friend Elouise about it this morning, and she said it reminded her of "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.rit.edu/~eroics/MT/WeezBlog/archives/000087.html">meeting someone at a church social whom you'd sketched in the nude.</a>" Oddly enough, that is in fact an excellent analogy. I think many people do feel as though they're exposing themselves in their blogs, and it's disconcerting for them to then to meet their audience in a real-world social context.</p> <p>Shelley, for example, talks about the disjoint for her between her online persona (as shown through her weblog) and her real-world self. She speculates that</p> <blockquote>...those people who write weblogs read by spouses, kids, and employers tend to write differently then people like me who are, for all intents and purposes, obscured from view because we've kept the two worlds far apart.</blockquote> <p>I think she's probably right. For me, however, the real and virtual worlds have been "intertwingled" for so long that I'm not able to see them as separate worlds. And I suspect that for many of us, that will be increasingly the case.</p> <p>There's a discussion about this same topic happening on the Emergent Democracy mailing list right now. Greg Elin had this to say:</p> <blockquote>As more technology becomes more familiar and more commonplace, the dividing line between "real" and "virtual" blurs and becomes increasingly besides the point to discuss outside of specific contexts.</blockquote> <p>And in response, Kevin Marks cited Shelley's post from above, and added this:</p> <blockquote>And the way we were blurring the line at SuperNova, with blogging and <span class="caps">IRC </span>ongoing throughout, and showing <span class="caps">IRC </span>on stage at the end (which I was watching via iChat <span class="caps">AV...</span>) was very intersting.</blockquote> <p>I was the person who put <span class="caps">IRC </span>on the screen while they talked. I did that because I wanted people at the conference to see the vibrant channel of communication that was co-existing with the real-world conference in the room. And perhaps most interesting to me about the room/channel mix was the way they impacted each other.</p> <p>As I told the Supernova audience (in the less than 60 seconds that were left to me after the previous panel ran late) was that as I watched and participated in the <span class="caps">IRC </span>conversations during the conference, three modes of activity became apparent to me. When a dynamic, interesting speaker was talking (like, say, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/">David Weinberger</a>), the channel was very quiet. We were taking notes, paying attention, looking at the stage rather than the screen. When a panel presentation with some interesting topics was going on, the channel tended towards discussion of the speakers' comments, which were then augmented by comments from those not even in the room. And when a speaker failed to catch the interest of the room, rather than physically walking out, people escaped into the virtual lobby to talk about everything from socks to the plural form of the word penis. [Damn, now I've gone and tripped the filtering software again.]</p> <p>Yes, the lines are blurring. Some people already find that frightening. There's a safety, a distance, that computer-mediated communication provides. For all the talk of exposing ourselves electronically, of taking risks in our blogs, the text and the screen provide a buffer, a layer of protection. But I think that for these technologies to reach their greatest potential, they have to become integrated into our real lives, not kept scrupulously separate.</p> <p>So, even though it was scary and overwhelming to meet so many well-known bloggers at once--<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://joi.ito.com/">Joi Ito</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://halleyscomment.blogspot.com/">Halley Suitt</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://http//radio.weblogs.com/0108247/">Allan Karl</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.webmink.net/minkblog.htm">Simon Phipps</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://radio.weblogs.com/0114726/">Ross Mayfield</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://anil.typepad.com/">Anil Dash</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mena.typepad.com/">Mena Trott</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/">David Weinberger</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://alevin.com/weblog/">Adina Levin</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.boingboing.net/">Cory Doctorow</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/">Dan Gillmor</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://jason.defillippo.com/blog/">Jason DeFillippo</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.corante.com/connected/">Sarah Lai Stirland</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.corante.com/bottomline/">Arnold Kling</a>, and so many more--it was a very good thing for me, too. It helped make this world of social software more real for me, more integrated into my life, more tangible and human.</p> <p>So thanks, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://werbach.com/blog/">Kevin</a>, for making it possible for me to be there.</p> <p><span class="highlight">Update, 5:13pm</span><br/> Ross points out, in the comments, the original motivation for this post's title--which I left out in my rush to post before I left the office. Yes, several people seemed quite surprised by my appearance. It seems the coffeeshop photo on my blog doesn't accurately convey my youthful, vivacious demeanor. Or something like that. However, I suspect that they found that interacting with me in person wasn't all that different from interacting online.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 03:46 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/07/11/do_people_look_like_their_blogs.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/07/11/do_people_look_like_their_blogs.php#comments">TrackBack (2)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_social_software.php">social software</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_supernova.php">supernova</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Tuesday, 8 July 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000492"></a> <h3 class="title">ambulance chasing at supernova</h3> <p>So, I'm at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.pulver.com/supernova/">Supernova</a>, which is being massively blogged (see <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://snblog.pulver.com/2003/">the conference blog</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/">David Weinberger</a>, etc for real-time coverage).</p> <p>I, however, am <strong>much</strong> too tired to be listening carefully, let alone real-time blogging. Why am I so tired? You probably think I was out late, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://jason.defillippo.com/blog/archives/000259.phtml">belly-dancing at Joi's party</a>. Nope. In fact, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://halleyscomment.blogspot.com/">Halley</a> and I left the party early, since we were tired. A funny thing happened on our way to catch a cab, however.</p> <p>After waiting much too long for a cab on King Street, we decided to walk down King Street to find one at the metro stop, joined by <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.newbay.com/pholahan.html">Paddy Holahan</a>, a nice Irish gentleman who'd been at the party, too. When we got to the stop, there was a line of cabs...but we were on the wrong side of a wire fence, about 3-1/2' high. Halley and Paddy decided to climb the fence. Being the less adventurous sort, myself (and about a foot shorter than either of them), I decided to walk around.</p> <p>By the time I got around the fence to them, Halley was limping. Apparently she'd tossed her (spiky-heeled) shoes over the fence first, then hopped over...right <strong>onto</strong> the heel of her upside-down shoe. Yeah. Ouch.</p> <p>"When was the last time you had a tetanus shot," I asked. She couldn't remember. Uh-oh.</p> <p>Got to the hotel, and the assistant manager grabbed a first aid kit and took a look. A short look. After which he suggested it was time to call the <span class="caps">EMT</span>s. He was right...it was a nasty puncture wound. A few minutes later, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://jason.defillippo.com/blog/archives/000260.phtml">three delightful <span class="caps">EMT</span>s</a> showed up in a big-ass ambulance. Next thing I knew, I was in the front seat, Halley was in the back on a stretcher, and we were on our way to Arlington Hospital. That was around 11pm.</p> <p>At 3am, they finally wheeled Halley back <strong>out</strong> of the <span class="caps">ER, </span>heavily drugged on Percodan, and unable to walk. We called a cab (which the hotel gave us a voucher for!), and we were back in the Hyatt at 3:30am, where they even provided her with a wheelchair.</p> <p>Ever the go-to girl, however, at 8am I dragged my sorry self out of bed, grabbed some coffee, and ended up sitting between <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://joi.ito.com/">Joi Ito</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/">Sam Ruby</a>.</p> <p>Now Clay's talking, and it's (unsurprisingly) entertaining and interesting enough that it's almost penetrating my sleep-deprived brain. Sure hope the blogging accounts fill in the content blanks for me later, once I've had enough caffeine to be rational.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 10:07 AM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/07/08/ambulance_chasing_at_supernova.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/07/08/ambulance_chasing_at_supernova.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_friends.php">friends</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_supernova.php">supernova</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Thursday, 3 July 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000490"></a> <h3 class="title">california, here i come...</h3> <p>In November, that is. I'll definitely be speaking at the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.infotoday.com/il2003/">Internet Librarian</a> conference in Monterey.</p> <p>So, what's going to be the least expensive way for me to get to Monterey from Rochester? Airfare directly to Monterey from here is outrageously expensive (~$600rt), so that's not ideal. Airfare into <span class="caps">SFO </span>from here is about the same (right now; I suppose it could drop).</p> <p>One possibility is to fly JetBlue (my favorite airline) from Rochester to Oakland ($308rt), and then rent a car. Mapquest says it's 120 miles. Is that a silly thing to try to do? Will the roads make me crazy and stressed? Or would it be fun and beautiful and worth it?</p> <p>Other ideas?</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 05:07 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/07/03/california_here_i_come.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/07/03/california_here_i_come.php#comments">TrackBack (1)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div>  <h2 class="date">Saturday, 28 June 2003</h2> <div class="blogbody"> <a name="000484"></a> <h3 class="title">speaking at supernova</h3> <p>Looks like I'm going to be part of a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.pulver.com/supernova/schedule.html">wrap-up panel at Supernova</a> next month, along with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://www.dashes.com/anil/">Anil Dash</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/">Dan Gillmor</a>. Ack. A-list bloggers. And me. Kinda scary. :)</p> <p>Kudos to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://werbach.com/blog/">Kevin Werbach</a>, who's made a serious effort to include women's voices in his conference program.</p> <div class="posted">Posted at 05:58 PM | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/06/28/speaking_at_supernova.php">Permalink</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/06/28/speaking_at_supernova.php#comments">TrackBack (0)</a> <br/> categories: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907/http://mamamusings.net/archives/cat_conferences.php">conferences</a> </div> </div> </div> <div style="position: absolute; top: 135px; left: 125px; z-index: 4"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20060207132907im_/http://mamamusings.net/images/tinycafe.jpg" alt="Liz sipping melange at Cafe Central in Vienna" border="0" width="80" height="96"/></div> <div id="links"> <div class="side"> 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