Google Reader

Google Reader

Am using Google Reader at the moment as the new version of NetNewsWire, which I foolishly downloaded, seems to have problems doing anything.

There’s a number of new features that I need to investigate that weren’t around when I last used the service, like notes on shared items and friends lists. I tend to share the stuff I think worthy of comment via del.icio.us, which posts directly to this blog once a day, but in case I start sharing bits, the URL is http://www.google.com/reader/shared/08096379081421145011. As soon as I have shared something, I will stick it up on my FriendFeed too.

Healthy scepticism

One of the problems of being a new media fanboy like me is that we sometimes get a bit too excited about this stuff, and fail to see some of the downsides of web 2.0. That’s why I have a copy of Andrew Keen‘s Cult of the Amateur on my bookshelf – I like to pick it up now and again to remind myself of the other way of thinking about using the web to increase participation and engagement. I might not agree with Keen, but it’s important to take a regular dose of what he has to say, I think.

In all of the pro-web 2.0 literature (Here Comes Everybody, We-Think etc etc) Wikipedia is often cited as an example of mass-collaboration in action, which of course it is. But I often wonder about how relevant Wikipedia is as the poster-child of genuine distributed organisation. This comment from Andy Roberts puts it pretty succinctly:

It was set up and continues to be run by a multi-millionaire advocate of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism philosophy.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Wikipedia is a great thing, and it’s usually one of the first resources I turn to when I need to get the skinny on something. But I do have concerns about it being held up as being a model to follow for other online communities.

Part of this is because of the complicated relationship between Wikipedia and Wikia, the for-profit site which provides wiki spaces for groups to produce content together. Wikia is developing a search engine, using Wiki technology with various ties into Wikipedia. There has been much comment on the fact that Wikia seems to be using the freely provided work of volunteers to power a project intended to make money for Wikia.

A great source of information, opinion and gossip about Wikipedia, Wikia and the search project is Seth Finkelstein’s Infothought blog. You don’t have to agree with everything he says, but his dissident viewpoint is often refreshing. I recommend you subscribe.

Quick Question on Tagging

Just a quickie, this: when you are assigning tags to a piece of online content, how do you prefer to segregate different items on the list:

  • with spaces – like del.icio.us
  • with commas – like WordPress
  • with spaces but with multi-word tags in speech marks, like Flickr?

Would be interesting to know people’s thoughts.

Happy birthday to me

It’s my birthday today, I am now in my 30th year. 29 years old! Hopefully this won’t mean lots of pontificating over the next 12 months about what I have achieved, and what I am going to do with myself in the future.

Anyway, I had some lovely gifts, including a top selection of dead tree web 2.0 reading material:

The Future of the Internet Everything is Miscellaneous Groundswell
The Future of the Internet
Johnathan Zittrain		 Everything is Miscellaneous
David Weinberger		 Groundswell
Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff

Plenty to get my teeth into there.

I also got lots of lovely birthday well-wishes via Twitter and Facebook – so thanks to everyone for that. Best of all though was this from Paul Caplan via Flickr:

Birthday greeting from Paul

Some stats

Inspired a little by Jeremy’s post on his blog’s first birthday, I thought I might have a little dig into the numbers for this blog. It’s only been going since November 2006, so about six months and frankly was going nowhere until barcampukgovweb mania gave it a bit of a bigger profile, which then was further extended in the wake of the Civil Surf affair. Anyhow, here’s the facts:

  • Feedburner says I have 122 susbcribers here
  • The site itself has seen 8,422 hits
  • Best day ever was March 11th with 423 hits
  • Best referrer (ie the place that people come to DavePress from) is Twitter (298 referrals) followed by Civil Surf (thanks Simon – 297 referrals)
  • My top posts in terms of visits are 8 Tips for Beginner Bloggers, Public servants must blog and my About page

Connecting through communities

I love the way that the social web creates connections between people, and allows us to pass those connections on to those that we think might be interested.

I had a great chat today with a guy called Peter Haine (note the ‘e’ – it’s not him). I first came across Peter because he had posted in the forum on the Improvement & Development Agency‘s website, asking for feedback from people about how they have found success or otherwise in online communities. A fascinating topic, and even better, Peter is based at the Techno Centre in Coventry, just round the corner from where I work.

Peter works at the Applied Research Centre for eWorking, part of Coventry University, and as a result the office in which he works is chock full of neat little gadgets to make working outside the office easier: digital pens, laser keyboard things, ludicrously tiny keyboards. As a gadget-freak, it was a kind of heaven for me.

The research project into online communities that Peter is currently engaged in is funded by JISC, through their Emerge programme. The report is coming through shortly, and I am really looking forward to reading it. Whilst there is a real determination in both the private and public sectors to try and engage with communities and to take a community based approach to increasing participation, engagement and brand loyalty, there isn’t, as far as I am aware, much in the way of research into both how effective it actually and and how that effectiveness can be achieved. Hopefully this work will help start this process develop.

Peter did let me into a couple of points that he had discovered from his research. He did admit that some of it might seem obvious – but of course that doesn’t make it invalid nor does it mean people always remember to do it!

  • Purely online communities are unlikely to succeed – you need some kind of face-to-face meetings to build a sense of belonging and trust in other community members
  • Communities need a defined sense of purpose and a way of measuring achievement of that purpose
  • Active facilitation is required in seeding discussions, getting folk involved and keeping things on the right track
  • Nobody is satisfied with the tools they have available!
  • Barriers to entry must be as low as possible. Choose the most basic tool you can get away with – people may be happy to give up their time to take part in a community, but not if they have to spend hours learning the platform
  • Payback – what’s in it for the community members? Whether financial, reputational or whatever, there needs to be something positive that those involved can get – even if it’s just a warm fuzzy feeling inside

So, Peter gave me plenty of useful, interesting information. What I gave him, hopefully, was the benefit of some of my connections, most notably Steve Dale and Ed Mitchell, who I later introduced to Peter in a couple of emails. Hopefully they can help Peter, and him them, in the future.

OrgLite – an open presentation

The Online Information conference is coming up again in December, and having attended it last year, I was determined to actually present something this time around.

David Wilcox and I have been talking a great deal in recent times about the ideas around ‘organisation lite’ – using social tools, whether on or offline, to help organisations get it right in terms of platforms, roles and worldviews. We thought this would make an excellent topic for a joint presentation.

So, we’ll be talking Shirky, Leadbeater et al, with plenty of real life examples and case studies.

So far, so pretty normal. But we want to try and walk the talk ourselves, and so we are developing our submission, paper and presentation out in the open on a blog. We’ve been doing bits and pieces on there already, but with a week to go till the submissions have to be in, we need to get this out and get others involved.

So, please visit the blog and leave feedback, suggestions and examples of stuff we might be able to use. As we write bits of the paper and develop the presentation, we will be publishing them on the blog for folk to comment on and, hopefully, improve. Everyone involved will, of course, get credit, and we’ll be publishing the finished stuff under Creative Commons, so hopefully everyone will be able to benefit.