Comments on: Not blogging this

By: Curiouser and curiouser!

Curiouser and curiouser! — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 09:22:30 +0000

Helping mayflies on the web
Time in blogging: catching a moment to write .

By: Mathemagenic

Mathemagenic — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 07:42:07 +0000

Time in blogging: catching a moment to write
There is at least one nice effect of not being able to blog

By: Alex Halavais

Alex Halavais — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 18:31:13 +0000

A number of people have been emailing me since I posted this. It looks like what I mean :) is a focus on collaborative texts, with “texts” taking as open a definition as possible.

Yes, I agree: not papers but projects and experiments. BUT, I am thinking that we might put together a set of collectively authored pieces that would document the conference in a way that articulates us with more traditional academic practices. I’ll post a new entry on this shortly, maybe moving us off to a wiki space (?).

By: david

david — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:44:57 +0000

“one that looks generally at the social edge experiments and the communication technologies that support them.” — Alex: can you elaborate a bit? what do you mean?

i’ve been thinking about a conference like this too. instead of papers, people present experiments or PROJECTS.

By: torill

torill — Sat, 25 Sep 2004 17:22:04 +0000

It may be difficult in England, but the network at the college here (which is outside USA) covers all of (admittedly a small) campus and is split in a student and a faculty network. Giving people access to the student network for a conference would be no big deal. The faculty network is the one where you can access the private information, so you would not get access there. But that’s not what you want either.

And I totally agree on that conference. Not a blogging conference, social texts – or steal the Bergen conference theme: Digital and social.

By: KF

KF — Sat, 25 Sep 2004 16:39:19 +0000

Absolutely interested — particularly if the “social sciency end” could perhaps be stretched far enough to include the cultural-studies end of the humanities…? I’d love a gathering in which to think more about the effects of such social software on collaborative writing and other new forms of the literary. Particularly if we can persuade Jill come talk more about distributed narrative, too.

By: Alex Halavais

Alex Halavais — Sat, 25 Sep 2004 15:27:09 +0000

Matt (& Jill): Thanks for your comments. I don’t mean to imply that blanket WiFi is necessarily easy. Nothing worthwhile is. But I do get the impression, mainly from talking to some of the organizers, that it was not a priority. WWW wouldn’t even consider hosting in a venue that didn’t provide good access. Why would a group like AIR not place the same priority on access? That the beach in Brighton had free WiFi but the campus did not is very odd indeed.

My complaint may be related to the size and complexity that the conference has attained over the last few years.

A couple of readers have now contacted me about the possibility of doing something on a smaller (if more wired) scale in Mexico next year. If folks are interested in something that looks at new forms of social organizations, collaboration, creativity, and the tools that support them, do get in touch. There are lots of conferences that look at these issues on the techy side: I’m hoping to focus on the social sciency end.

By: Jill

Jill — Sat, 25 Sep 2004 09:56:35 +0000

Love your adjustment of my t-shirt, Alex. I wish I could photoshop my physical t-shirt as easily :)

By: MAtthew Allen

MAtthew Allen — Sat, 25 Sep 2004 03:39:38 +0000

I appreciate the value of wifi totally – I would have loved it. I even arranged to stay at the one hotel (in Brighton) that claimed wifi (it didn’t have it!!!). However I’d challenge Alex’s assertion that “It’s not really that hard: just make sure that there is a surfeit of Wifi and power. I get the feeling, though, that many of the old school researchers consider bloggers and blogging as somehow beneath their dignity. Maybe that is a misperception on my part, but I don’t think it is a difficult thing to read from them. ”

Firstly, wifi is actually quite HARD to organise. We’d hoped that by having the conference at a university we would have that possibility but it was not to be. There are usually very strict legal issues (especially outside of the USA where laws concerning defamation etc are much stricter), about who is permitted to access a network. So, there was a wireless net in Sussex and while I don’t why it was inaccessible, I can imagine some of the reasons (having been through them on my on campus). But, let’s be practical: what do we do next time? Well, two things: (a) moving to a hotel (as in Toronto) should help take care of the net access in rooms problem, since we will be able to choose one with inbuilt, if wired, BB. Second, we could probably arrange an access point. but the question is: will members and attendees accept the increased expense? Because, alas, one of the problems with the hype around wifi and ubiquity is that it runs into standard issues concerning economics and politics…. So, in sum, Alex, you are dead right…blogging the conference would be great…I’d strongly support it; but at what cost? PS, I don’t know whether I am old school or new school – not sure it really matters though.