Category: Weblogging

Recovered from the Wayback Machine

A few weeks ago I was approached by a person (who has asked to remain anonymous), about holding a two-week clinic for webloggers and those who read webloggers and even those who don’t but still manage to use the web without stumbling all over us. He would provide the funding and I would manage the rest, with the stipulation that the focus of the clinic was on community participation, contribution, and benefit.

After a bit of chatting with some other folks, we came up with the idea for the IT Kitchen an open participatory clinic that makes use of different technologies to facilitate interaction.

The clinic will start on a Monday and continue until Friday, the following week. Each day we’ll feature a different topic (a preliminary list is at bottom of this post), which forms the basis of the essays contributed that day. There will be different weblogging tools installed to meet people’s preferences, and an online aggregation of the different posts to one specific page. So if you want your weblogging tool installed, just volunteer to write an essay on any of the days, and we’ll install it (unless there are licensing issues associated with the tool and the tool vendor won’t waive licensing for this effort).

In conjunction with the weblog postings, I’m setting up a Wiki for Weblogging, which splits each topic into sub-topics on separate pages. The sub-topic could be from a specific question a person has, and needs more detailed information; or it could be specific categories that others want to address. On the day that the topic is released, people are encouraged to basically swarm the topic and sub-topics for that day, and add or edit the information. They can also, of course, add and edit information for the previous days’ writings, too.

During the clinic, we’ll also have an IRC channel to facilitate realtime conversations, and forums for those who prefer a more linear conversation.

Those who love photography will be asked to contribute photos to be used for the background on all of the pages, and those with design skills will hopefully volunteer to help design one or more pages.

By the end of the clinic, the writings from the weblogs will be grouped into a nice downloadable format and released online. If there is enough interest, the weblogs will be kept alive, for additional contributions over time, or as training tools for those who want to learn more about the tools. The Wiki for Webloggers will definitely be kept alive, and we can only hope, flourish with the same energy that has fed the role model for this effort, the Wikipedia. The same can be said for the IRC and the forums.

To ensure that the material can be re-used, all contributions to all of the pages will be licensed to allow copying and re-use, but not commercial sale. The wiki will, of course, also allow modifications, as will the site designs and CSS, but the weblog essays will be released, as is, without modification unless each individual author specifies a more general license at the end of their text. The same applies to the photographs and other graphics – copy and reuse with attribution, but no modification unless the contributor states such.

In addition, if anyone else would like to add technology to the environment in order to facilitate the enjoyment and enrichment of all those involved, send me a note and we’ll see if we can incororate it in.

Does this whole thing sound ambitious? Frankly, it is, and has a real potential to be chaotic, too. However, I think that chaos would be a better result than the opposite, which is little or no community participation. I will admit, my initial reaction about this clinic was nervousness, because a workshop that’s based on community participation can fall flat if enough of the community doesn’t participate. But I felt that if the topics were of interest enough, and the technology and facilities were open enough, the subjects broad enough to reach out to people with different levels of expertise, there would be enough participants to at least have a fun time, if not more.

After the initial nervousness, my next reaction then was to think about who I would invite to participate – who I would extend invitations to, to have write an essay or manage a particular topic at the wiki, or join in on the IRC channel setup for the clinic. After all, the key attraction to these events is the names of the people who participate. Gotta have names. And since most of these names are good people who share of their time willingly, I felt fairly confident that most would accept.

However, lately it seems all that weblogging has become is a cluster of very well known people, each with his or her cloud of semi-anonymous supporters. We complain about not hearing new voices, but we don’t give new voices an opportunity to participate in many of the events we hold: the conferences, the talks, the meetings, the online collaboration and group efforts. We foster the very illusion we would hope to break–that weblogging is primarily a small, visible group of ’successful’ bloggers, and a much larger number of other people who aren’t read, according to a recent New York Times article.

Well, pish tosh on that. Instead of inviting specific people and making much of them, giving them the star treatment, this entire effort is completely open: from the essays written at the weblogs, to the IRC channel and forums, and especially the Wiki for Webloggers. Everyone is invited to participate, and for those looking to extend their readership, hopefully this will be a good way to do so. Even if you’re not looking to extend your readership, think of this as a new challenge leading to personal growth; or a way of making new friends, and helping other folks int he community who are not as knowledgeable about all the ins and outs.

I still hope that several names will choose to volunteer, because most are very interesting and likable people who have a lot to contribute ; but if they do so, they’ll be a part of the Kitchen Crew – no more, no less.

(Note, though, that if you have expertise with any of the technologies mentioned here, I may ask for help if you don’t volunteer. You know who you are. Might as well volunteer and get hero points, and spare yourself my wheedling.)

The site that is hosting all of this is called the IT Kitchen, but people don’t have to be technical experts to participate. I hope that there will be those who write expertly on comment spam or issues of accessibility and CSS; but I’m just as much interested in the human aspect of all of this, including anecdotes about experiences. The only limit on your participation is your time.

As to the dates this clinic is being held: We’re starting it October 25th, and it ends November 5th, 2004. Yes, the clinic takes place at the exact same time as the US elections this November.

The reason we picked this date, specifically, is that weblogging is in real danger of becoming too US centric, and far too focused on the American political system. Though this is a topic of interest, and one that can have serious impact beyond just the US borders, it’s still just one component of the rich world of interaction that attracted most of us to weblogging in the first place.

It is a gamble holding the clinic at this time, but a good one we hope. One that re-affirms that there is more to all of this than picking one man over another in an election.

(That’s not to say that there won’t be discussion about politics during the clinic. For instance, the use of weblogs for politicians could be covered, as well as some of the work currently being done to ensure the accuracy of this election. But these will be sub-topics, and given no more prominance than any other topic. )

I’ve started a preliminary list of topics, below, and hope to get some feedback on them. I also hope to start getting volunteers for writing essays in the weblog, as well as suggestions for good sub-topic ideas for the wiki. I particularly need help now with setting up the infrastructure of all this, designing the pages, and kitchen and food-related photographs for the sites. And I need “Vounteer for Kitchen Duty” buttons that can be placed on web sites to promote this in weblogs and other sites.

(Attribution will be given to all those who participate. And a great big virtual hug from me, too.)

Thanks and I hope that you’ll all consider volunteering for Kitchen Duty.

Possible Topics:

Languages? We gotcher languages here! Programming and scripting languages used with weblogging

Many Cooks are Good! Collaboration and social software

Frying Spam ’bout what you think it is, comment, email, and referrer spam

The Stylish Webber Site design and CSS and issues of accessibility, because every stylish webber follows accessibility guidelines

Slice and Dice Syndication and Aggregation and Promotion

The Kitchen Tools Weblogging tools, how-tos, introductions, migration, porting, templates

Beyond The Kitchen Tools Extending the tools through plugins, embedded scripts, direct database intervention

Pretty as a Picture Photography and graphics, including Flash

Basic Ingredients What makes a web site tick, and what you can and cannot control, such as htaccess, hot link prevention, and so on

Movable Feast Uses and issues of moblogging, audioblogging, streaming, video blogging

Salt and Pepper Are there ethics in weblogging? Rules and regs, or is this the ultimate free environment?

Open Kitchen Two days set aside where any topic related to weblogging is welcome

Suggestions, please! Help, please! Send beer!

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

As Matt Mullenweg said recently in comments about another post, this is wrong on so many levels.

Both Biz Stone and Robert Scoble have a ‘How to Win the Blogging Game’ entries, except their posts are titled, Promoting your Blog and How will your blog get discovered. There is much in what both write that I can agree with; but there is an underlying implication with both writings that the act of having our participation discovered is more important than the act of participating, itself.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

I do agree that webloggers can help themselves be discovered by pinging the recently updated services such as Pingomatic or weblogs.com or Technorati. Unless you’re writing for a closed audience, and aren’t interested in new readers, you’re going to want to ping when you post. Same can be said for making your site search engine friendly, though many of us are taking a closer look at the viability of this.

I also agree that comments are a wonderful calling card for other webloggers. I think that almost all of the people I read now I met at one time or another through links in other weblogs or through comments: in my weblog or other weblogs. I still think this, and links to specific posts, are great ways of connecting with new people.

I also see the benefit of putting your weblog on your business cards or email signature, or attaching it as part of your profile – if you want the extra visits (not everyone does). And of course, providing interesting material is always helpful if you want readers.

But Scoble talks about linking to other weblogs just to get them to notice you, and that reminds me of the kids we all knew back when we were young who would bring candy in so that the other classmates would be friends with them. And I also think this is much of a reason why many of the top webloggers are in the A-lists – because they have buzz and people want in on that buzz, not necessarily because anyone is that interested in what the person is saying.

He follows this with a suggestion to ‘hang out with’ the bloggers you want to connect with, such as Glenn Reynolds, or the gang that ended up at FooCamp. Leave aside that geographically, webloggers live in cities other than Boston, San Francisco, LA, Seattle, New York, London, and Tennessee, all this will do is give even more ego gratification to those in the upper echelons of weblogging. Bluntly, he’s advocating groupie behavior.

Wanting to meet people who you’ve come to know over time on weblogs is not only natural and healthy, it can be an exciting prospect–think about meeting people for the first time when you’ve read their writing for years.. And wanting to spend time with someone you admire or are interested in is a great way to grow personally and intellectually; isn’t this the main reason why we weblog? But wanting to ‘hang out’ with someone specifically to get your weblog noticed? Sad stuff. Very sad stuff.

I am more ambivalent about Scoble’s suggestion to do things for people and they’ll remember you. I happen to think it can be very satisfying doing things for others, but to do so primarily because you want to get more buzz for yourself or your weblog–well, all I can say is there is a fine line between whoring and marketing. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with marketing your site, your abilities, or something you believe in; I don’t do it enough, myself. But marketing should be peripheral when you’re ‘doing things for others’.

I remember conferences and going to this bash or that put on by a company. This was expected and accepted as such – none of us believed that the invitations and gifts were personal. But to do something, personally, for others, personally, purely for marketing purposes can lead to mixed messages and confusion about the reasons you’re doing what you’re doing. There’s few things I can stand less than a person who is acclaimed a ‘hero’ for helping others, when the only reason they did their ‘good deed’ is to add to their own status.

Someone bringing martinis for a group of people in a biz-tech environment can be seen as indulging in friendly marketing without any confusion about motives. But taking a weblogger out to lunch just to chat, or exchanging books or gifts, or even dating a person–that’s personal. If you do this just because you’re trying to get hits and buzz, that’s cheap. And pretty sleazy too.

As for pitching your site or a post to others–that’s a tough call. Sometimes we want something we believe in to have a wider audience than we have ourselves, and I can’t help thinking this can be a good thing. But pitching something just to get links: see above.

Biz Stone had some of the same suggestions as Scoble, but he also gets into type of weblog posts and following memes.

Like Scoble’s suggestion on doing things for others, I am ambivalent about Stone’s suggestion to follow the memes that circulate throughout weblogging. On the one hand, they can be a lot of fun and a great way to connect with others. He mentioned the Friday Five, but I’ll also add the Carnival of the Cats, which has been nothing but fun when I’ve participated with it recently. The Ecotone projects that people participate in also seems to provide a very positive kernel to some very interesting writing, as well as a way of finding great new folks to read.

But in each of these cases, the people participating are doing so based less on hits and more on interest. The interest is in the topic of the meme, not the fact that it is a meme. I think that someone participating just to get noticed is going to come across phony – as if they’ve studied weblogging as a genre and are now applying the ‘Ten rules to become an A-Lister in 6 months or less’.

As for style of weblog writing, Stone wrote:

Keep your posts and paragraphs short. Note the brevity of the aforementioned Kottke post. People will come back daily to read your fresh new work but spare them the one thousand word diatribes. Strive for succinct posts that pump pertinent new information into the blogosphere and move on. Keep it short and sweet so visitors can pop in, read up, and click on. Think of you[r] blog as a cumulative effect. This doesn’t mean you should never practice some long form writing now and then, it’s just something to keep in mind.

This is wrong on oh so many levels. (I love this phrase, and I’m not even sucking up to Matt. Honest.)

You, who ever you are, do what you want; but if you’re only here to be the next Kottke, or Scoble, or Stone, quit now. You’ll never get to their position aping their behavior or their rules; you’ll just end up miserable because you’re not writing the way you want, and for the joy of the act. Fuck me, too many sheep in this environment. How can your ‘ba-ah-ahh’ be heard when you’re surrounding by people bleating the same thing?

Someone let in the wolves – it’s feeding time.

Of course, you have to take what I write with a grain of salt. Domestic, refined, mined salt. I’m not as popular as Robert Scoble or Biz Stone, so one can assume that their suggestions work, while my ‘long form diatribe’ won’t do you a bit of good if all you want is to be known.

Or as a friend (someone who I actually like and respect as a person, regardless of how many hits he could send me) says: do what you want, anyway, because we’re all just making this stuff up.

Use of surnames does not imply lack of friendly feeling towards those who have been referenced in this weblog entry. Just a quirkly thing I feel like doing today.