Category: technology stewardship

Enter the NetSquared Mashup Challenge

I’ve volunteered to be an advocate for the NetSquared Mashup Challenge. It is time to SPREAD THE WORD to all my non profit friends! Here’s the scoop:

Mashup innovators and inventors! Now is your chance to create social change with your unique mashup idea, and have an opportunity to win cash prizes and attend the NetSquared Conference (N2Y3).

The NetSquared Mashup Challenge Project Submission Form for the NetSquared Mashup Challenge is up. Submissions will be accepted until March 14, 2008 at 5 PM PST.

Before you fill out the submission form, we highly recommend that you:

1. Register and log into NetSquared.org. You must be logged into NetSquared.org in order to submit a project to the NetSquared Mashup Challenge, and to edit your mashup project page once it is submitted.

2. Review the NetSquared Mashup Challenge FAQs and the NetSquared Mashup Challenge Community Guidelines.

Questions? Join the Mashup Challenge Live Chat today from 2-3 PM PST at http://www.netsquared.org/mashup/chat. Billy Bicket and Marnie Webb of the NetSquared Team will be onlihe to answer your questions. You can also email us at net2@techsoup.org

Enter the NetSquared Mashup Challenge Today! | NetSquared, a project of TechSoup.org

northernvoice wiki / Multilingual blogs

northernvoice wiki / Multilingual blogs

I have some notes up – not edited yet, but if you are interested in multilingual blogging and websites, check it out. It would be great if you added examples, links. We have a tag going multilingual_bloggers on del.iciou.us

Live blogging caveat applies to live wiki-ing as well. I WILL make typos, miss things and make mistakes. And I won’t write down what I said.

Hopping Between Notetaking and Backchannel Conversations

One of the practices that is part of my daily routine in communities and teams which use phone calls for meetings, is to take notes in a chat environment. I am really good at capturing notes so I’m often one of the note takers. I find typing increases my attentiveness and listening. Otherwise I’m prone to multitasking (email, checking twitter, writing blog posts. Should I admit I started writing this post while on a telecon?)

What I’ve noticed is that I’ve started to use the chat as back channel for voicing my own input and thoughts. This is more like the “backchannel” used by techie communities, particularly during face to face events. It is another layer of conversation that enables more than one person to “talk” at the same time. It is also useful in web meetings. Back channel, of course, has it’s risks too — fractured attention and a channel for mocking etc — but it is different from the note taking practice. One is a record, the other is part of the conversation. One represents the voices of others, the other IS the voices.

When I mix the two, I start wondering, am I compromising the note taking with my comments and input? Or am I adding richness and voice to the proceedings? Am I strengthening the conversation by adding text input and not interrupting, or am I undermining the speaker? All these are possible. So how does this inform my choices in my practice?

This duality reminds me of this “two hatted” feeling I get when I am in a facilitator role. I often feel I am not fully devoting myself to facilitation if I put my participant hat on. When I do, I do it explicitly. I am wondering, should I do that when I shift in chat, or does that just add more noise to a fast flowing chat?

What do you think?

Photo by Salvor

What should be in my blog feed?

When I transitioned from Blogger to WordPress for my blog, I had a fresh chance to look at my RSS feed options. On blogger, I had a ton of buttons for people to choose different options. At the time, people NEEDED more options. Now services like Feedburner help consolidate options into one service.

In the transition, I could redirect my Feedburner burn to my new blog page (new url!) and hopefully those of you following via FB had uninterrupted service. But what about everyone else? Some of the other RSS methods were confined to the old URL, so I just posted a post on my old blog asking people to resubscribe to the new one. I suspect I lost a lot of subscribers.

In many ways, this is just like cleaning out old email addresses that people don’t use anymore. I suspect many of those subscribers no longer followed the blog, so it was good house cleaning. But I’ve heard from a few people that they just lost me off their radar screen. I haven’t quite figured out what to do about that.

In all this review of feeds, I also played with my Feedburner feed which allows you to include things like your del.icio.us tags and Flickr photos. I wondered if you, dear readers, found those helpful or not. Last night I got some feedback that the photos were not so great – not that the person didn’t like my photos, but in the context of expecting blog posts, they felt out of place. I tend to agree.

Then I thought, I should ask you. What do you like in the feed? What would you prefer taken out? If there is a strong consensus, I’ll plan accordingly. If no one cares, I’ll pull out the photos for now and see if that “feels” better!

2 Tips for making your blog easier to read in my feeds




Your Number 2

Originally uploaded by Erik Mallinson

Yes, it is all about me, me, me, today. Well, it is also about you if you write a blog that I want to read or you want me to read. I was scanning through my blog reader today – doing some work avoidance and blog catch up and a few things, so here are two quick set up tips for those who want others to read their blogs – including in feed readers.

1. Have full feeds. Some of you still don’t have full feeds, just teasers or headlines. Sorry, but I’m not reading you. The time it takes to click in accumulates for people like me who read lots of blogs. So either I’m just skipping the tantalizing teases, or I’m unsubbing.

2. Put your name in your blog title, or at the least, in your blog title feed. I appreciate your clever blog titles, but I’m senile and face it, I care more about you than some clever title. I subbed last week to a blog of someone I really like but then saw this odd title in my reader and kept thinking, “huh, I don’t know what that is so I’ll skip it for now.”