Poynter Online - Taking Tsunami Coverage into Their Own Hands

Steve Outing posts an interesting article on Poynter Online - Taking Tsunami Coverage into Their Own Hands: "

The world turns to citizen journalists for eyewitness accounts and more as the crisis continues to unfold.

The earthquake and tsunamis in South Asia and their aftermath represent a tipping point in so-called 'citizen journalism.' What September 11, 2001, was to setting off the growth and enhanced reputation of blogs, the December 2004 tsunamis are to the larger notion of citizen journalism (of which blogs are a part).

If you think about it, this worst natural disaster in a lifetime is an amazing media story. (And that's not to discount the horrible human tragedy of it, only to focus here on the media angle.) It's not only that it will occupy traditional journalists for months and even years during the recovery. What's amazing is how many of the people who experienced and survived the disaster -- spread across several countries and thousands of miles -- were able to share their heart-wrenching stories, photographs, and videos with the rest of the world."

John Seely Brown on conferencing and collaboration

I missed this one last fall while on the road. John Seely Brown on conferencing and collaboration: "John Seely Brown on conferencing and collaboration

Conferencing and collaboration have come a long way, but the technology has a long way to go before it becomes truly useful. John Seely Brown, a visiting scholar at the Annenberg Center at USC and former chief scientist at Xerox Parc, joins us to discuss what's good, and bad, about current conferencing and collaboration technologies."

Michael Sampson's 2005 Top 5

I'm dumping links... too many posts that are in draft form, so I'll just post them without much comment. Here's another look forward from Shared Spaces Research & Consulting

Top 5 for 2005
1. What Becomes of Presence....
2. Collaboration Auto-Discovery....
3. New Integrated Collaboration Environments....
4. Maturation of RSS...
5. Microsoft’s Collaboration Roadmap...

There are some interesting notes that go with these five things. Check it out.

Web And Video Conferencing Systems Requiring IE To Work: Time For Strategy Review - Online Collaboration and Web Conferencing Breaking News - Kolabora

Robin Good roles out a list of which collaboration software vendors work with Firefox and which don't. I can tell you, I'm a much happier user when they work with Firefox. This is a useful list if you are shopping for systems. Web And Video Conferencing Systems Requiring IE To Work: Time For Strategy Review - Online Collaboration and Web Conferencing Breaking News:

"Internet Explorer has been rapidly loosing market share since the beginning of 2004 and in just the last 12 months it has left on the table over 20% of its previous loyal users.

The trend, now that FireFox has released its final version 1, has only increased its speed with IE 6 having less than 60% of my publishing network market share in these last weeks of December.

The issue is of particular concern to Web conferencing, collaboration and live presentation companies who have been betting their cards on technologies that heavily rely on IE presence (e.g.: ActiveX) and which may find that their strategic choice in requiring Microsoft internet Explorer is gradually becoming a critical marketing liability that they hadn't planned for.

The full list can be found in Robin's article.

Academic Blogging via Lore: An E-Journal for Teachers of Writing

There looks to be a feast of 13 articles, none of which I've read. (Do you hear that tone of self-frustration? Yup.) Academic Blogging:

In the past few years, blogging has become something of a national pastime, and academics are becoming a core group using blogs for personal and professional reasons. Yet even though many people embrace blogging, many others have no idea what it is or why anyone would do it. In this issue of Lore, we explore the role that blogging plays for academics both in and out of the classroom.

Here are the article titles:

On the Subject of Blogs
Laura C. Berry, Associate Professor, University of Arizona

"I Don't Really Want to Go into Personal Things in This Blog": Risking Connection through Blogging
Carlton Clark, Professor, Collin County Community College

How I Became an Academic Who Blogs
Billy Clark, Senior Lecturer, Middlesex University, London

Knit Blogging: Considering an Online Community
Amy E. Earhart, Lecturer and Coordinator of Instructional Technology, Texas A&M University

Trying It On for Size
Nels P. Highberg, Assistant Professor, University of Hartford

The Bane of the President's Existence
Dennis G. Jerz, Associate Professor, Seton Hill University

I Blog, Therefore I Am
Angelina Karpovich, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Aboard the Ideological Hot Air Balloon
Nicole Converse Livengood, Ph.D. Candidate, Purdue University

Blogging from the Bottom: A Cautionary Tale
Eric Mason, Ph.D. Candidate, University of South Florida

Blogging Back to the Basics
Jeff McIntire-Strasburg, Assistant Professor, Lincoln University, St. Louis, MO

Between Work and Play: Blogging and Community Knowledge-Making
Clancy Ratliff, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Minnesota

Practicing What We Teach: Collaborative Writing and Teaching Teachers to Blog
Cathlena Martin, Ph.D. Candidate, and Laurie Taylor, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Florida

Having a BALL with Blog-Assisted Language Learning
Jason Ward, Instructor, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

RIT's List of Social Computing Researchers

Researchers - LSCWiki: "This is a directory of researchers interested in social computing topics. Feel free to add yourself or colleagues who you think belong here. We've seeded the list with LSC faculty and attendees from the 2004 Microsoft Social Computing Symposium."

Are you a Social Computing Researcher? Not on the list? Add yourself.

Rheingold: Mobile and Open: A Manifesto

TheFeature :: Mobile and Open: A Manifesto:

"Only a cockeyed optimist would forecast an open, user-driven, entrepreneurial future for the mobile Internet. This should not prevent us from trying, however. Sometimes, envisioning the way things ought to be can inspire people to work at making it that way. That's what manifestos are for."

Rheingold goes on to say that "A future where mobile media achieve their full economic and cultural potential, requires:"

• That people are free and able to act as users not consumers
  
• An open innovation commons
  
• Self-organizing, ad-hoc networks
  
• the freedom to associate information with places and things, and to access the information others have associated with places and things.

I'm wondering what the definition (or scope) of the mobile internet is. Do you know?

Randall Moss and Non-Profits

Stowe Boyd, on Operating Manual for Social Tools comments on a comment Randy Moss left for Stowe (how is that for a convoluted explanation. More chocolate!) Randy suggested that the goals of public social networks are important in different ways than business networks.

I agree with the business and economic motivations of corporate driven social networks, but I feel that there is a middle ground between the Enterprise and Individual supported networks. This middle ground is populated by non-profits.

Non-profit social networks aim to influence behavior but it may not always be for financial gain. Health related networks may look to raise awareness of disease, or influence behaviors to improve health. These activities are fulfilling the goals of the organization but it is a far cry from corporate sales, and profit margins.

This is often true in the international development world where social networks are increasingly seen as an effect medium for change because the NGO doesn't own them. The NGO taps in, but the network itself determines the outcome. This creates possibility for sustainability, change and development that reflects the users of what is being developed. It is more than participatory development. It is network owned development.

The barriers to these sorts of networks are still often forms of government controls, either of resources, communications channels (no VOIP in X country), or policy that makes the desired change illegal.

Lilia BLogging from HICSS-38: Persistent conversations workshop

Lilia

: "Conference blogging is always a balance: finding a ways to combine your personal goals and informing your readers, choices between f2f time and time needed to reflect and write, balancing fun of being in the flow of discussions and discipline of writing things down. Don't know how it will go this time, but I'll try..."

Technologies for Online Public Engagement

Lars Hasselblad Torres of AmericaSpeaks, shares this fantastic grid of Technologies for Online Public Engagement (PDF). Entitled "Approaches to Online Public Engagement", the grid summarizes 17 organizations that offer tools for online public engagement. Some are familiar to many of us, like Weblab. Others are unique tools developed by local and national government.

ne question I had for Lars was an indication of the underlying technologies offered — all they all home grown or based on commercial or open source products? Lars thought most were homegrown. If you know more, I’d love to know more! Likewise, Lars says he’d love feedback on any parts of the chart. He can be found at lhtorres at americaspeaks.org

As I scan the chart, I can't see some of the emergent technology efforts I hear about from folks like Jon Lebkowsky. CivicSpace Labs, and the work that Jerry Michalski and co. are doing at Yi-Tan. With a little thinking, I’m sure others comes to mind. I suspect this is because these folks have not been oriented specifically towards online consultations which is a very specific online interaction domain. They have been more in the activist domain.

That said, I sense there is a lot of opportunity bridging between the two domains.

New Page for the Journal of Computer Mediated Communications

The JCMC has a new home, and a new edition chock full of interesting articles. Here is the latest table of contents:

Volume 10, Issue 1, November 2004

• The Internet and Social Participation: Contrasting Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analyses Irina Shklovski, Robert Kraut & Lee Rainie
  
• Cosmopoliteness in the Internet Age Leo W. Jeffres, David J. Atkin, Cheryl Campanella Bracken & Kimberly A. Neuendorf
  
• A Typology of Virtual Communities: A Multi-Disciplinary Foundation for Future Research Constance Elise Porter
  
• Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online Catherine M. Ridings & David Gefen
  
• ‘Other People Benefit. I Benefit from their Work.’ Sharing Guitar Tabs Online Thomas Chesney
  
• Friendships through IM: Examining the Relationship between Instant Messaging and Intimacy Yifeng Hu, Jacqueline Fowler Wood, Vivian Smith & Nalova Westbrook
  
• Effects of Perceived Interactivity on Web Site Preference and Memory: Role of Personal Motivation Hwiman Chung & Xinshu Zhao
  
• The ICT Enabled Virtual Collaboration through Trust Liaquat Hossain & Rolf T. Wigand
  
• Interactive e-Commerce: Promoting Consumer Efficiency or Impulsivity? Junghyun Kim & Robert LaRose
  
• A Methodology and Investigation of an eLoyalty Metric, Consumer Bookmarking Behavior Jamie Murphy & Charles F. Hofacker
  
• Strategic
  Choice of Electronic Marketplace Functionalities: A Buyer-Supplier Relationship Perspective Shan Wang & Norm Archer
  
• The Impact of Internet-Based Communication Systems on Supply Chain Management: An Application of Transaction Cost Analysis Sung-Yeon Park & Gi Woong Yun
  

Rethinking What "Restoring" Means

There have been many voices who are looking to understand how the post-tsunami relief efforts can be a chance to create positive change for the affected community. Rife in this idea is the challenge of knowing what is positive and to whom. How local communities can voice what is right for them.

How many meal time conversations have been brewing in homes and communities miles away, wanting to be a positive source of ideas and energy. How do these ideas surface and find fertile ground? I don't know. But I figure blogging some ideas is one way as a blog post can have an amazing power to connect to a network. So I share some ideas from my friend Larry Warnberg, a steward of the earth if there ever was one. Larry's passion is toilets - toilets that save precious water and steward the ground. He and his partner, Sandy Bradley, are role modeling sustainable living and gardening practices on Washington State's Long Beach Penninsula on Willapa Bay.

Here is what Larry emailed me (posted with permission). Larry has been contacting relief agencies to offer his expertise with solar composting toilets:

Hi Nancy:

Thanks for your help with networking. The only response so far to dozens of inquiries has come from Scott Mantz at Care to Help. But, hey, it's a start.

I shouldn't be surprised by the lack of interest in composting toilets among NGO's. Among the few Emergency Sanitation programs I've discovered so far it is apparent that the agenda is set by the pipes-pumps-tanks promoters, sponsored by Engineers and suppliers, supported by the IMF and World Bank. The Hudson Enterprise Institute has media watchdogs patrolling for incursions on their turf, promptly ridiculing any barbarian who foolishly suggests a regression to primitive unsanitary fecal disposal. They nailed me twice.

Corporate control of sanitation development projects is nearly complete. From what I read in some groups, much of the US aid money will go to pre-selected products and services. I struggle with how composting toilets might eventually get on the purchase list (assuming I could even get a foot in the heavily guarded door), since there is no need to sell anything. I see it more as an educational process, a packet of learning on not fouling one's nest, saving water, preventing pollution and disease, and returning valuable nutrients to the soil. A bucket is cheap and readiliy available, but the ancient wisdom is not widely accessible. Can it be packaged? The Humanure Handbook is available in several languages, a valuable resource and guide for many. But it is just a drop in the bucket compared to the overwhelming need for better sanitary facilities not only for tsunami survivors, but wherever sewage-borne disease is a problem.

Persistently, Larry

The interior of one of Larry's latest solar composting toilets - complete with a sink.

Technorati Tags: compost, toilet, tsunami

Hearts and Minds: Carnival of the Capitalists!

I am feeling a bit embarassed... I have a pre-press copy of Lisa's Hanberg's new book, High Impact Middle Management to read and review, and I haven't done it yet. Then today, via a separate blog link, I tracked back to her site and a rather amazing weaving of ideas in her Carnival of the Capitalists!project. It starts with this poem, which resonated with me (all things in the world and my life considered!)

Brains and Hearts

With brains and hearts we plunge into the future
Hoping to better our lives and realize our dreams
Sorting through endless possibilities, digging deeper
Questions, contemplation, and impassioned screams

Spiders spin, gibbons swing, whales breach, ants build
Race horses and sled dogs thrive only when in full stride
With brains and hearts we carve a life fulfilled
Thinking, creating, and contributing to life’s joyride

Lisa Haneberg

APPLY NOW!: Networking Award in honor of Frank Burns

Lisa Kimball just pointed me to a networking award her company, GroupJazz, has created in honor of online networking pioneer Frank Burns. Act now: the 2005 deadline is January 7th!

The Group Jazz Meta Networking Award in honor of Frank Burns: "We have established the Meta Networking Award to honor Frank and to carry on the work he started in the way he taught us to do it. We hope that this award can play a small part in making the power of networking media available to people and organizations who might not otherwise be able to take advantage of it to leverage their goals.

Each year we will make at least one award to an organization or project that is committed to doing something aligned with the original mission of The Meta Network - closing the gap between the human condition and human potential. The selected organization or project will receive a full year of consulting, services, and access to online media and other tools to enable them to design, launch and implement a network that can play a key role in supporting their purpose. Our goal will be to help the network be self-sustaining by the end of the award year."

SMS in Disasters: Alert Retrieval Cache (ARC)

Posted by Jon Lebkowsky on WorldChanging: .

Could SMS be used effectively to send alerts about impending disasters and coordinate disaster relief after the fact? Some of the people behind the SEA-EAT /Earthquake and Tsunami Blog though so, especially given the effective use of SMS in the region by people like Morquendi. A system's already being built – you can see incoming messages here. For testing purposes, they're asking people to send messages to +44 7890 716 820. "While testing, it would be great if they could mention which cell phone service they are using. People sending messages from Sri Lanka will have their messages posted directly. People posting from other countries will have to prefix the message with ARC." [Link to post at SEA-EAT Blog] | [Link to more information about ARC]

Wherever we can be more creative about our use of technology in serving the community, the better.