I have been looking around recently at social networkings systems, focusing on freely available ones, such as Elgg (which powers the rather lovely UnLtdWorld, and which has its proper v1.0 release out soon) and PeopleAggregator. The other option I had thought of would be to fashion something out of Drupal.
Platforms like WordPress and Movable Type democratized the process of self-publishing. With these tools, everyone could be a publisher and it didn’t require advanced technical expertise to do so. Now, the next revolution for publishing is to bring that same ease of creation to the process of building social networks. With Six Apart’s recent release of Movable Type 4.2, that revolution has begun. The new release provides DIY tools for building your own social networking platform which includes member profiles, forums, friending capabilities, rating of content, and more. WordPress isn’t too far behind, either – a new platform called BuddyPress, is being built on the WordPress core. Is this the future of blogging? Or is this the future of web publishing altogether?
I had been aware of BuddyPress for a while, but whilst I have noted Moveable Type’s development, I’ve never really go into that platform, for some reason. I think the Buddy/WordPress approach is sound, though, not building up the core functionality of the platform, but adding the social networking features as add-ons. If you want it, it’s there to use, otherwise you don’t need to be troubled with it.
BuddyPress is sadly some way from being production ready, so for now I’ll stick with the dedicated social network platforms. But in the future, rather than learn a new system, it will be a lot easier to use one I am familiar with to develop exactly what I need.
Simon Berry’s ColaLife campaign is a truly wonderful thing, a real example of using the groundswell to develop an idea into a campaign and then, hopefully, into action.
I was always at a bit of a loss, wanting to help out more than just joining the Facebook group, but not knowing really what I could do. Other than build websites, of course…
So that’s what I did. ColaLife now has an external web presence, so people can find out about it without being a Facebooker. I made the site deliberately simple to navigate, hiding the blog bit away and relying on images to help get the message across. Another great example of WordPress as CMS…
We’ve imported all the posts from Simon’s personal blog onto the site, so it can become the central repository for all things ColaLife. In the meantime, do register your support by joining the FB group and the Google email group.
I was delighted to be a part of the winning pub quiz team at WordCampUK, not least because it meant that I won a wicked cool dark green WordPress tshirt. I asked the now-legendary quiz host Jon Bounds for a large, and a large was what I got.
Only, it’s in the ladies style, which makes it significantly smaller than me.
So, there is a free WP tshirt going spare to any suitably sized female who wants it. Let me know in the comments or by email. See the photo of Automattic dude Sam Bauers below, who is sporting the manly version.
I am typing most of this on the train back from Birmingham, where I have been attending WordCampUK, a two day conference on all things to do with the greatest online publishing platform, like, ever. It was great to meet new folk, and friends too and as always, the value for me was in the conversations snatched over a cup of tea rather than the official sessions themselves.
Part of this was because WordCampUK was a curiously formal affair, with a proper agenda and with everyone attending all the same sessions, by and large. It was, I think it is fair to say, a lot more word than camp. One thing I couldn’t really understand was that there was a room available that wasn’t used at all, that would have been perfect as a breakout room for people to have off the cuff discussions and practical sessions.
I suppose it is a rather peculiar thing to try and form an event around a platform – the one thing we all had in common was the tool we use to get lots of wildly different stuff done. Finding common ground was therefore always going to be tricky, which made the lack of an official breakout space more of an issue.
Something that could be improved for next time would definitely be to introduce some flexibility into the agenda – at least to make people feel that they are able to leave a session in the main space if they don’t think it is really for them. There also needs to be enough room for manoeuvre in the sessions themselves, to let them fly off in a different direction than may have been originally intended.
The one session that was clearly missing was a show-and-tell – “Cool Stuff I’ve Done With WordPress” – give everyone who wants it five minutes to show off something they have done. Simon Dickson did a bit of this during his great session – the only one that really had everyone buzzing at the end. Presenting is clearly not as easy as it seems.
Some other positive stuff:
The WordPress community in the UK is beginning to shape itself. I picked up several business cards from techie types which could well come in very handy in the future. I don’t see my future as being too much about building stuff, rather enabling people to realise how the social web can help them, and maybe joining the folk up who can get stuff done. Knowing the people with the skills will be vital.
There was a very interesting discussion around SEO, on which I made some notes on this blog. The key message was to make sure your content is well written and interesting. There is still a lot for government to learn about this stuff, as Paul Canning often says – maybe we should call it findability or something, though.
Jon Bounds is a ludicrously amusing quiz show host. His quiz was pointlessly hard, and yet somehow the team I was on won. Huzzah! One green WordPress tshirt for me – lets hope it fits.
There was much twittering going on, and despite the use of the hashtag, the most useful way of monitoring it all was a SummizeTwitter Search for the wordcampuk tag. It did descend into snarkiness on a couple of occasions, but that was probably necessary at that particular point in time. Twitter is like passing notes round class for the 21st century, and was laugh out loud funny on occasions
Simon’s announcement that the new site for 10 Downing Street will be running on WordPress drew several gasps from the attendees. It’s big news for those trying to sell the use of WP to large organisations: after all, if it’s good enough for Gordon…
Some stuff needs to be done to develop the community, to draw others in that couldn’t make the event and to really make the most of the connections being made.
Let’s get a WordPress UK planet of blogs set up, so we can all keep up with what one another is saying
Let’s get a community network built, where we can all list ourselves, our interests, skills, knowledge, availability etc
Let’s start planning the next event, and make sure it’s flexible, informal and fun
So well done to those who organised the event, but I guess the real work starts now.
