You need to be a neighbor, not Vince from ShamWOW (who I think is AWESOME, but not a good example of starting/having/maintaining/sharing a conversation). If all you do is pitch AT them all day, they will tune you out. If you spend at least half of your time celebrating them, encouraging them, recognizing them, sharing with the rest of the community what they are doing/have learned/successes/challenges, then they might listen to the other 50% of your “stuff”.

Link Love is described in Wikipedia as “the effect that web pages rank better when they have more and higher quality links pointing at them.” It is partly about attribution (making sure you acknowledge where a discussion or quote came from), but it is also about sharing these connections that you value with your users – and hopefully they will check out those links. This is a powerful gesture, because in the digital space, links are a currency. They have intrinsic value, links are an outward, public display of paying attention. Says Doc, “In simpler terms, humans are distinguished no only by their ability to talk, but also by their ability to point.”

Some real examples of Link Love:

• Blogrolls are Link Love: they share with the readers of any given blog the other “voices we like”.
• Trackbacks are Link Love: they create a connection between my blog post and another blogger’s post – a discrete, ping-based connection that says to the user and the blogosphere “hey, these things are related”.
• Twitter posts are Link Love – I think enough of what someone is doing to share it with my circle of followers/friends
• Comments (although sometimes NOT counted by Google thanks to comment spam) are Link Love – I think enough of the ideas in this post to not only leave a note, but also where I can be found later for thanks/feedback/comments/a beating.

How do we connect in with this link economy? Where does Reciprocity fit in?

We need to link to the voices and ideas outside our “four walls”. If our blogroll only contains the other blogs our company has created and not the blogs of the users then we aren’t using that currency properly. If we only comment on other corporate blogs, then we aren’t connecting with our community. If we have a twitter feed with thousands of followers, but only following a few users, then we are missing out on an opportunity to participate. As publishers/pundits/journalists/program managers and “experts” we need to send the link love out there first (real, authentic), without expectations that it will be returned until we have earned it – and earning it is completely in the mind of the user. You either add value or you don’t. You are sponge-worthy or you are not (to use a Seinfeld reference). Reciprocity in this context is less about obligation (“oh hell, he linked to me, so now I need to link to him”), and more about attention and intent (“X is paying attention to my ideas”, or better yet “wow, those guys from Company Y spend a lot of time talking about what the members of their community are doing”). Its about adding enough value that others think you are worthy of their currency (links, attention, comments – whatever your measure of success is).

One of the clearest, fastest ways of seeing the 50/50 Rule in action is on Twitter with users like Richard @ Dell and Zappos. Richard@DELL is one of the leaders in corporations working with social software like twitter and making business personal. He spends as much of his time sending users to other voices and links as he does “Dell Business” with his twitter feed. Zappos uses his tweet time to talk about the people he is meeting with and interacting than he does his own site (along with DMs to users who ask questions about Zappos.

Liz Strauss has this to say in her killer blog post about the 25 Twitter Traits/ Twitter Folks she admires:

Certain value and actions make people who care about having relationships and conversation before transactions easy to spot…
5. talk mostly about the accomplishments of others….
12. shout out good news, help in emergencies, and celebrate with everyone.
16. offer advice when people ask. Help whenever they can.

If you want people to talk to you and about you, then link to them for all the right reasons. Spend the time and the social capital to celebrate what they are doing. Show where you see the value in them. If you want them to link to you, give them lots of opportunities to find something valuable in what you are doing. A shout-out is a personal gesture regardless if it comes from the DJ booth, the radio or a blog post.

Thing to do:

1. If you are building a community anywhere (twitter, facebook, ning, wordpress, Meetup, etc.) spend the time to look at how much you are talking about “Me Me Me Me Me” and course correct NOW.
2. If you have nothing to to link to (don’t really have a relationship with the users beyond their consuming your “stuff”) then start that conversation NOW.
3. Use the features of the community to connect with users: ask them if they have blogs and add ‘em to your blogroll (or have a special blogroll for your community members), send Link Love to them through microblogging platforms like Twitter, use the forums as a commons for discussion and to point out the achievements of the users
4. Celebrate your users and set an incredible example that shows the rest of the community just how much you appreciate them – small, simple gestures can have a real impact.
5. Reciprocity is like love – it isn’t an obligation, but something freely given. Hope but don’t demand, ask, but not too often.
6. Be “linky”, use the currency of the web to show your users what/who you think is valuable.
7. Be real. Don’t engage in linkbait, users notice and your credibility will suffer as a result
8. Send half of your time talking about the users, the community, the people outside your org, company, startup (the 50/50 rule)

This is another LONG video (1 hr), but there is a really great discussion here.

Does your Social Media effort do the same?

Networking in your business life is a great parallel to Social Media Outreach. With Networking, you find people with interesting or similar ideas/thoughts/backgrounds/experience and add those people to your personal network. In the process, you become a member of lots of different communities/tribes/circles. You manage, maintain, grow and tend these connections and relationships because its important, because no one can be an island in business and because we are social animals who can always learn something from someone else.

A Social Media Effort, if it wants to succeed, needs to connect with the users in lots of different communities/tribes/circles. Conversations can’t happen without people. SoMe efforts need to build/maintain and tend these relationships in order to get noticed, stay relevant and keep the conversation going. If users/voices/people are the fuel in the social media “engine”, not working at connecting with them is nuts.

Are you identifying the places and spaces users frequent that fit within these themes? Are you connecting with the thought leaders, active participants and old hands in these communities, sites, forums, comment streams? Are you actively listening to these voices and their blog posts, twitter feeds, Flickr pools and Del.icio.us links? Are you managing your network, er uh, Outreach program to get in touch, stay in touch and contribute to their conversations as well as your own.

Are you paying forward into Social Media’s equivalent of a 401k (relationships) by being an active participant? Or are you waiting and wondering why more users arent joining in?

To Do:

Build an RSS feed of users who you would WANT to follow you AND LISTEN TO IT

Build an RSS feed of the users who ARE following you AND LISTEN TO IT

You are joining multiple communities, think like a NEIGHBOR NOT A MARKETER

Listen to what they are talking about (twitter, blogs, facebook, flickr), what they are passionate about – NOT JUST THE MENTIONS OF YOUR URL OR BRAND NAME

Say Thankyou for their Follows, Comments, mentions, trackbacks, blogposts

Comment on their ideas, as Bob from INSERT MASSIVE COMPANY HERE, not a pseudonym – bait and switch is not a sustainable strategy

Respond to their Tweets, comments, forum posts, flickr pool additions

Encourage them, give support, add value, say something. Or, as Mark from My Tropical Escape likes to put it, “BE HUMAN”

Point out what they are doing at least 50% of the time

Send the link love (attention is a currency)

Let them see there are real people behind your Social Media effort

Long before the cocktail parties, schwag distribution, mixers or tweet-ups or blogger meetups, you need to connect with real people and not only what Valleywag calls The 250. Influencers are important, but there are more regular Joes out there than all the A-listers in the world. You need to develop relationships. You need to build a network, through Outreach, around your social media efforts.

The same determination and discipline you apply to maintaining your network you need to apply to your company’s outreach program. Because its ALL NETWORKING

Past Is Prologue
-William Shakespeare

I had a conversation with my buddy Craig the other day and we discussed how these platforms and models were changing how users interact and part of the discussion touched specifically on:

Right now, every kid under the age of 18 in the US has grown up with potential access to the internet either at home, school, rec center, mom’s office, etc.

For the most part these kids are creating online identities in a ton of places, some are throwaway (to get access to a concert video), and others are permanent (tell my niece she has to quit MySpace and you will end up in a fight).

These kids are getting their own computers (cell phones), self-organizing digitally

They are making their own media (audio, photo, video, text) daily

They are connecting with their friends on these platforms and using them to stay in touch, bully each other, make new friends, etc.

Potentially, this generation will never lose touch with anyone they grew up with – EVER. They graduate from High School Facebook to College Facebook to Work/Life Facebook (or whatever the social platform/graph/grid/mesh evolves to). My niece will be able to keep in touch with, ignore and more importantly, have status on every single kid she is going to high school and college today. I can’t remember every single kid I went to grade school with, but I could probably find a bunch of them on Facebook if I looked hard enough.

Networking? Sure – having the world’s largest, distributed address book in history will make keeping and making connections more interesting.But what happens when you have persistent status of people you know, what they are doing, where they are /were/will be? What happens over time to this data, when it becomes the past tense (was doing, was at, was with)?

Doc Searls has said in a previous VRM meeting that he wants to see a day when the customer can have their own TOS (terms of service) that gives them the right to “nuke my info off your system if I want to quit your proprietary aspect of data”. Outside of the NUKE option (which I think we need), what about an expiration date on my status/intention/attention/media? 15 years from now, does Johnny really want his new girlfriend to see his “Growing Up Gotti” haircut from back in the day? Are those funnel photos from the Preakness really going to be appropriate when your kid decides to “see what mom was like when she was my age”?

Carrying off on this point is a really great and creepy PSA out about kids and the things they are posting to the web:

It changes the game because WE ARE ALL MAINTAINING THE STATUS over our attention/intention/action as well as that of others. There are no reporters, I dont have a secretary, no one is “going to the archives” to find out what I did last week – they just need to follow my twitter feed (which is hooked up to my friendfeed and facebook and wordpress blog) to see what I was doing. Its all in the cache/cloud/reverse chronological order. All someone needs to do is connect the dots (which is getting easier every day).

Your ideas, photos, comments, videos are out there, in the cloud/cache, forever. A persistent, ongoing record, distributed amongst different platforms and social graphs for the world to see. Add in face and voice recognition and that protest rally you went to in college, because that hippy chick you were dating at the time wanted you to go, might become a problem 20 years from now when you run for office, or a job, or meet a not-so-hippy chick. You didnt shoot the video, you didnt know you were on camera, yet it is part of your history. Lots of folks are getting gigs BECAUSE of their participation on these platforms. There are already stories in the “news” (and I do use the term loosely) about how kids are getting turned down for jobs because of things on their myspace page, beauty pageant contestants are losing their crowns because there are embarrassing photos of them on the web, kids are videotaping crimes to get on YouTube.

I hope you know this will go down on your permanent record
- The Violent Femmes
Kiss Off

Things to think about:

Will our past actions prevent us from trying for a job (even Vice President) because we know what closets our skeletons are in (“I told the candidate I could not accept the VP nod because I want to spend more time with my family, and because there are some raunchy pictures of me at my roommates’s bachelor party 17 years ago”)?

Will individuals guard their expressions more closely and be more conscious of their attention/intention/status?

What happens when we run into a “blank slate” who doesnt have a facebook history or is tagged in flickr sets? Will we give them the job/trust/reputation? Will they be a social media pariah?

Will I be able to find a “cleaner” to get rid of all traces of Spring Break 2012 in Cancun before my bride-to-be finds them?

Will there be a “Identity Bankruptcy Court” that will order these graphs and platforms to nuke all traces of someone?

the first post I find dives into another aggregator/platform Ziki

http://thew0rd.com/2007/06/25/zikicom-releases-v2-of-their-digital-identity-management-suite/

these guys should check out the conversation Doc is leading in VRM
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/

The content management system is a whiteboard and photos
The content layer is not done in xml, its a dry erase marker
The whiteboard isn’t a whiteboard, it’s the top of her refrigerator

For the whole amazing thing, check out the site here http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

Thanks to the amazing blog of Warren Ellis for the pointer (he was pointing out the recommendation for his new, highly anticipated new book Crooked Little Vein… which is how I find most of my links – by accident/link hopping/recommendations from voices i trust)

I love print. I love magazines that commit and pay for long articles and long fiction. The web rewards neither approach. It’s a packeted medium, a surf medium. Short bursts are the way to go. The web isn’t a replacement medium — it’s *another” medium.

(my bold)

From his blog

Everything is neatly tucked away, including cables and compartments for peripherals. Oh, and did I mention it has a fish tank? A fish tank!

Rosedale and other executives say they fully expect there eventually to be multiple virtual worlds that use Linden’s code, or that at least are interoperable with Second Life, so avatars can pass from one world to another. Says Rosedale: “Say IBM builds its own intranet version with our code that’s somewhat different from Second Life. But it’s probably not that different. A user may say ‘Wow, this virtual thing IBM’s built is pretty cool. Now I want to go the mainland.’ And we have another customer.”

Sounds like the kinda thing Marc Canter would dig.

Open source, open standards, open ID, and now… OPEN WORLDS. Taking SL out of one set of servers, distributing it, making a community of second lives – furries in one (or 100), builders in another (or 1000), designers in another,  regular folks running through all – different social mores, codes of conduct, experiences, platforms…

Article here.

Now it seems that with the exit (ouster) of Jon Miller, Jason is moving on. I’ve been saying this a lot lately (Dave Winer, Salim, Steve Gillmor, Chris Pirillo), but the interesting thin about this story is what he will work on next.
Story here:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/16/jason-calacanis-resigns-from-aol/ 

Welcome to C-Ville – Where Choices Define You

C-Ville is an all-Flash site that teaches kids/teens about the risks of smoking, why making good choices are important, and why choosing not to smoke is important short and long term.

While I agree with the message, the execution is what really stands out. From the music to the grapihcs, the video shorts used in the production, the overall look and feel just clicks. It is fun and immersive and gives users a reason to explore and click and check things out with a really open and not-intuitive-in-a-good-way navigation. The look and feel brings you in, feels immersive and has a ton of objects on each screen to play with.

From the AdRants post:

Final Cut’s Carlos Arias explains the approach saying, “Kids are so sophisticated these days so we don’t need to make the message obvious. This is a new way of communicating with youth — by not spoon-feeding them.”

Kudos to these guys for coming up with a smart design, solid execution, good message and real appreciation and respect for the user. While the site loads slow on the network here in the bunker, the video encodes are really tight and the payoff is there – it frickin works.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=110404 

What’s special here is us participating in a new phase of the social-networking evolution,” said Mr. Schionning.

2 things have happened post-gnomedex that need to be pointed out above all the news (how big Second Life is getting) and non-news (the discussion over Sen Edwards going to Gnomedex).

1. Dave and Blake and Us and Firefox and Gnomedex

During Blake‘s discussion on the bottom-up marketing of Firefox on Saturday, Dave asked a great question about what Mozilla would do to represent/support/show the love to users. Blake was taken aback, Dave pressed the issue, the crowd got snippy and disagreed with Dave with a couple of rounds of applause (which I think was against the rules). The discussion topic was how they spread Firefox through the community. Blake should have laid down the law (like Niall did at Bloggercon the weekend before) as the discussion leader and continued talking about Firefox marketing. Instead there was some energy-sapping back and forth between Dave and Blake and the crowd and it ended on a down note (we didnt get to spend all of the limited discussion time on FF marketing).

Dave talks today about how he and Blake kept the conversation going.

Anyway, the tale has a happy ending, imho. We’re going to work on this stuff, to help make Firefox stronger, and in the process make the users stronger, to set an example for how software can be responsive to the needs of the users.

There was miscommunication all around (Dave, Blake, Us) – but it is being addressed. This is an indirect example of Mike Arrington’s discussion at Bloggercon about civility in the blogosphere. They are working it out. I think it would have been great if Blake kept us on track with his discussion and then there was an immediate breakout discussion to discuss Dave’s question (a suggestion I am making in my freedback to CP on this years Gnomedex). Kudos to Dave and Blake keeping the conversation going (instead of festering or letting a flamewar start).

2. Scoble Banned From Second Life.

So Robert Scoble, ex-Microsoft geek blogger and new member of the Podtech team, was recording a podcast during the lunch break on Day 1 of Gnomedex in the Bay room. (I was having lunch with some guys from McGraw Hill, Yahoo, MS, and USTA at the time). During Scoble’s podcast, his son was building some objects in Second Life. Scoble is a huge fan of Second Life and has blogged and podcasted about it frequently (see TWIT or Scoble‘s blog).

Now in the past the guys from Linden Labs have let Scoble know that kids under 18 are not allowed in the main part of SL. He has let his son use his account (under his supervision) in the past. There is a Second Life for 13-17 year olds, but it is moderated for content (the main part of SL has areas with content and action that could best be described as adults-only). Linden has the rules in place because of the threats of lawsuits.
So while his son was using Scobles account during the podcast, Beth from SL basically let them know they were in trouble and Scoble’s account was going to be cancelled (he had been warned before).

What did Scoble do? Did he complain? Did he start a “boycott SL”? Did he give Beth crap for calling him on it?

Nope – he recorded a discussion with her immediately after his podcast finished. Then he blogged the following:

Anyway, it’s a good lesson for Patrick to learn. There are consequences for breaking the rules. “It’s your fault,” Patrick just said, in defense. I did tell him to do it on stage. But, even that’s a good lesson for him to learn. If his friends tell him to break a real law, that won’t be an excuse in front of the judge.

Maryam tells him “that’s a lesson for you, Daddy’s not always right.”

No, I’m not. So, now what? We have to apologize to Linden Labs and appeal their decision and promise not to break the rules anymore.

He didn’t blame Linden Labs. He didn’t cry or complain. He got caught, discussed it with the crowd (and Beth), and admitted he screwed up (publicly). Scoble has invested tons of personal capital in Second Life (through his use of the service and unpaid evangelism) as well as paying over $100 bucks for objects within the second life environment. He stood up and admitted he made a mistake – setting a great example in the process.

Take-aways?

• Sometimes the blogosphere is less of a conversation and more like a really big and loud family dinner (where not everyone in the family gets along, or listens and someone screwed up and sat aunt Sally next to uncle Jimmy)
• Cool people are working out issues and working on new things
• SL has rules and enforces them
• Personal responsibility isn’t dead (especially at the Scoble house).

Avatars

Construction

Land

Cool spaces (art gallery, fan-built MYST game, record label online with lounge for listening to artists)

Quick primer on buildinf objects in 2L

AWESOME – easily the best pres so far today

building out infrastructure for what we want to see for ourselves

making money and ads – hodlover form the old way of thinking

how to do it without a liquidity event

want to talk about boring things – prob where people think you need to have a success – not the case

53k – the size of our echo chamber – how do we find work that is rewarding AND makes a difference

the power is with us

gnomedex is inncore nerds

OPEN ID

cant argue against open or closed

what should be sanitized – the line drawn for services that are maintained for their own

where do we share features and call our own

every vendor needs way to differentiate

for the end users – at what point is it appropriate to be standards based, and yet at what point can we be unique to differentiate

getting in and out – portability for my data

FOAF – friend of a friend – file format or data struct

format – sharing standards but then stealing it

calendars – how to get the standards to be simple to integrate – standards comm keep adding features

real value in the data or the services?

ecopsystems and portals/ways to make money – business model for what they want to do

no proprietary file format – using standards – if people care join cal connect .org

attention and monetizing, and management – wittness in 6 months the evolution of the attention standard – makingthings available in attention.xml right?

attention economy – next big thing

for marc all about open standards

canter wants pickets when people close things up

being closed is the opposite of open

social capital person invewsts in friendships are thiers – by myspace not supporting export delet that -

what about publishers?

canter – provide compelling experiences to users

exp around it – digital lifestyle aggg – portal – if 5 pubs send out the same stuff

how do you make the economic case – do something with the open standards?

show how elegantly to move

all about the end user experience

if your clients are in the chess game – see 5, 7, 12, 25 moves ahead

inc leverage game off y and a saying they want to be open, MS swaying, google throuwing shit in the wind

giant dinos – innovative small companies are pushing process forward

open standards the bridges and causeways that interconnect these islands

80s – sw corp would have mult prod, mult features – during the bubble – all told it was ok to go pub with 1 or 2 fetures

hack up a few features – lots of small products, not products, small sets of features – standards to interconnect the pieces off the puzzle – making archipelagos -

room for small guys and we are waiting for the big guys to crush us

The Discussion Leaders did a great job starting things off and keeping them going. Dave Winer organized the conference (with help from Sylvia Paul, CNet and a ton of others), Doc Searls saved us all from carpal tunnel as the technographer (recording the discussions in OPML), the CNET/Jake Luddington team kicked butt on the stream/ MP3 version of the event and Kevin Marks provided video for the different sessions he attended.

I am putting together a compilation of links (mp3, video, transcript) below. It would be cool if you could have a timestamp associated with the opml technography file (I do not think this is built into OPML – not required but more like a nice to have). This would enable you to synch up the audio/IRC/technograph of the event (if you even wanted to).

Unconferences are more free form and open. Fewer rules, but also more participation (and direction from the assembled – see when Dave asked us to vote on whether or not).

Day 1 Notes:

National Anthem (Dave’s kickoff)

We started with the groundrules of Bloggercon and what was expected (Its a conference FOR users BY users – no product pitches, no shilling, everyone is a participant, no audience, discussions shouldnt be too technical, everything is _on the record_)
A tradition at Bloggercon is a song at the beginning. This year we opened the conference with the Hokey Pokey.
MP3

Notes

Tools with Phil Torrone
I actually missed most of this session due to a client conference call – here are the highlights from the notes (thanks again Doc!):

Phil is a Senior Editor at MAKE Magazine and writes How-To’s (I also think he used to work with the guys at Engadget). He did a great job last year at Gnomedex (during the conference and at the Friday night party) giving presentations and demos between the panels. During his session he and the crowd discuss screencasts and their value to users. The discussion went from hardware to training to software. Buzz Bruggeman discussed how he spoke with a law firm about Wikis and how the law firm didnt get it – the firm didnt really want the lawyers sharing data amongst themselves. We then were discussing the kinds of tools folks are using for recording and editing podcasts (hardware and software).
MP3

Notes

Citizen Journalism with Jay Rosen
Jay Rosen is an author and professor of journalism at NYU. His personal blog is Pressthink.org. His bullet points for the presentation are here:

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/23/lv_blgrc.html

The main thrust of Jay’s presentation was: How do we actually do “Users know more than we do” journalism and break news with it, proving that social networks can provide kickass reporting?

Discussion covers collaborating with the readers, how the MSM is traditionally top-down. Ken Sands from a newspaper in Portland discusses how his paper has brought bloggers onto the team, podcasts from the editorial meeting, gets more horizontal and less vertical. Discussions about how the Wikipedia model, while not perfect is ‘helpful’. Also the issue of credit came up, and recognition of the role/support/contribution bloggers are making to the news process. Doc asks that the newspaper industry as a whole open their archives – its like a wikipedia over time, not another revenue stream. Discussions over how a story today is different, how it lives beyond its published date. How it is bigger than just the person writing the stories because _all_ of the perspectives have a stake.
MP3

Notes

Users In Charge with Chris Pirillo
Chris is the founder of Lockegnome, used to be a host of the Screensavers (damn you G4-surrender-monkeys) and runs my favorite conference Gnomedex. His discussion was about the user (you, me, my mom). His stance: “you have as much right to contribute to the product or service as the development team. Are you taking advantage of that right, that position?”

We talk about how sometimes we dont express our frustrations to developers to our ownwordpress or firefox). detriment (or because we dont want to criticize). We need to both call them out when we have a problem and we also need to evangelize when we find something we like (like

We then got into a discussion about user data, and what Lisa Williams calls “Roach Motels”. Users want their data, even if they might not be able to do anything with it – its giving them the choice/trusting them/having a relationship with users. We need to have a greater connection between users and developers (Dave Winer’s old saying – Users and Developers Partying Together).

We get into some discussions over blogging tools and software problems. Discuss the needs for users to be more vocal, more demanding. We get into a discussion of platform lock-in (iTunes and the iPod), Jay Rosen points out how MS dropped the ball with IE and tabs in the browser.

Bloggercon is run like a clock and this session ends on time.

MP3

Notes

Video

Standards For Users with Nial Kennedy
Nial Kennedy, ex-technorati, now-Microsoft employee lead the discussion on Standards for Users. This is meant as a discussion of what standards are, things we hate about standards, the things that we love about standards and what kinds of things that need to be standardized.
MP3

Notes

Video

Emotional Life with Lisa Williams
Lisa Williams has been blogging since 2000 and her discussion is about why people blog, whats the most personal thing members of the conference have ever blogged and the best personal experience the other attendees have had.

Some folks talk about Blogging as something that goes with their career. Terry Heaton, who consults for local TV stations on how to collaborate with their communiteis in social media efforts, talks about finding his wife dead, and how he blogged about it and how it affected him, and the response he got from the folks who know him in the blogosphere. He points out that blogging is a social phenomenon more than a technological one.

Chris Pirillo talks about he has led a pretty public and bloggish life (even before blogging was popular), and how when his marriage broke up, he took heat for it thorugh his blog (from his readers).

Others talk about how Blogging, while part of their life, is compartmentalized — they do it for work, or as their passion and dont let other aspects of their life get involved. Some dont talk about their families, or _only_ talk about their families. Doc discusses how when he ‘came out’ as a pacifist, he took a ton of personal attacks (up to maybe including stalking). He has since stopped discussing politics/pacificism for his own piece of mind. Nial discusses how he has stopped talking about members of his family on his blog.
Lisa discusses the rules she follows: “Dont blog what you dont own” – living up to the trust you have in your family and vice versa.

Some discussion of the darker side of blogging. Getting people in trouble. “Pre-firing” yourself for positions taken on your blog. “Permanent Record” and the google cache are mentioned as well as potential lawsuits which might result from what you have written.

Jay Rosen talks about how he doesnt blog about personal issues, but there is still a huge emotional aspect of blogging. He calls it his “little first amendment machine”.

Dave Winer calls it the “unedited voice of a person”.

MP3

Notes

Video

Day 1 Post Game Show with Doc Searls
Doc Searls (Cluetrain Manifesto, http://doc.weblogs.com/) does a wrap-up of the discussions for the day (Dave Winer does the technography).

Doc compares blogging to a snowball – once it starts rolling downhill it continues to grow – and once you let it go it is no longer yours.
Doc wants to know how we are going to change the world.
Chris Pirillo talks about empowering users – how he has an idea for Freedbacking.com – Free Feedback for everyone.

Kevin Marks discusses microformats. How they can free our data, and make it easier to protect and share.

Terry Heaton talks about how there is a sense that the institutions of our cultures have failed. We should be looking to building new things – not rebuilding these old institutions.

WIll Pate thinks these objects that we are talking about – RSS, blogging, video blogging need to get 500% less geeky. We are raising barriers with the geekspeak.

MP3

Notes

Video

Day 2

Haftime Show with Dave Winer
Dave discusses how developing software is hard. And how sometimes we put the people who develop the software on pedestals. Dave asks the developers in the room what they are looking for from users – what kind of feedback, what kind of loops.

We get into a discussion of jargon and language. How sometimes we use jargon as a kind of code to keep those out of the know. The ‘priesthood’ of development doesnt want to be transparent – like medicine, advertising or religion. We wrap what we do and say is words that are indecipherable to the layman. Sometimes on purpose. Sometimes by accident (or happy accident).

What happens when the people in the street figure it out – part of what we need to do is foster, encourage more transparency.

MP3

Notes

How to Make Money with John Palfrey
John Palfrey is a professor at Harvard Law and the Director of the Berkman Center – focusing on internet law, intellectual property and the power of technology to strengthen democracies. John’s entire presentation is about making money with blogging, whether it is direct revenue (advertising or sponsorship) or indirectly (improving a consulting career, connecting with new clients, getting a book deal, etc.).

We discuss making money on a hyper-local basis (big part of the conversation – both local blogs, local advertising and connecting with local businesses). Making money for non-profits. Making money on affiliate marketing deals, etc.

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Building Bridges with Elisa Camahort
Elisa is a blogger and founder of BlogHer. Her discussion was about building bridges – specifically in the blogging community and conference system. There are tons of great women bloggers and speakers out there, and how do we get more of them into the system.
Discuss how blogging and conferences like Gnomedex, Bloggercon, BlogHer didnt exist a couple of years ago. We talk about how Mary Hodder, after a conference last year, set up a Wiki for women speakers (to communicate to the conference community – there are women out here and they are great for panels, etc.). Part of the discussion was about how women speakers need to get out there and let people know they exist.

Blog her is a big step towards all of that.

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2008 Election with Lance Knobel
Lance discusses politics (non partisan, although there were a lot of examples used from the Dem election in 2004) and how blogging/social media can help/harm/enhance.
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Video Blogging with Ryanne

Ryanne did a tremendous job discussing Video Blogging (vlogging) both from a high level and from a nitty gritty, tools perspective.

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Core Values with Mike Arrington
Mike Arrington of TechCrunch discusses civility and standards of behavior in the Blogosphere. Both how we act and conflicts of interest.
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Fat Man Sings with Dave Winer

Dave Winer closes BloggerconIV with a discussion of the success of this year vs. past years. Dave discusses the fact that he will quit blogging this year – maybe do something new, maybe write a book. There is some discussion of what Bloggercon V would look like. We discuss how in the beginning there were blogs (text), moblogs (mobile blogs via wireless handsets w/ cams, etc.), podcasts (audio) and now vlogs (video).

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Net-Net

This event rocked. The room was energized, the discussions were great. The crowd was totally welcoming, and I got to hang out with a bunch of people who I see every day in my aggregator.

Flickr Feed for BloggerconIV

Flickr Feed for Bloggercon

Bloggercon official site.

Frappr Map for the attendees.

same growing pains as podcasting and blogging

what is bloggin doing to push the medium forward?

not just podcasting

what do you want to do?

really have the world open to you

what do you want to see happen

what does video add – whats exciting, whats the potential?
video adds experience

descriptions/pictures

do people need to have media wranglers

all issues – writing x 10

wants to start out doing things and then branching out

lots of ways to participate

some more comfortable to write or others done

tools to make videoblogging more prevalent

taking assets – dropping it in

adobe premier not easy for mortals

jmpcut, ispy, dabble, motionbox
itags? centralized way to coordinate tags between systems

How the “Priesthood” gets involved, protects its interests, creates coded communications for their own protection/support/continuation of their architectures of control.
What we dont discuss is how sometimes this is unintentional or a byproduct of what we are doing. Yesterday we discussed OPML, RSS, ATOM, HIG, Blogging, VLogging, DOCSIS and a ton of topics that Joe SixPack wouldnt understand without explanation. Were we talkin in Jargon? Yes. Could Joe Sixpack get it?

ABSOLUTELY
One of the tenets of unconferences is that there is no audience – its one big conversation (its less of a conference than a living blog). In my opinion, we dont need to wait for TIME magazine to put out the definition of what RSS, Blogging, Podcasting, Vlogging, etc. mean. Thats _our_ job. We need to make this stuff clear (in my case, to my mom, clients, etc.). Yesterday at Chris’ discussion about Users we talked about how users have a right to complain and stomp and shout and demand.

We also have a responsibility to evangelize and make this stuff more accessible.

Outstanding sessions

Interrupted by a conf call with the client

Hung out with Ashish and Guarav from TEKRITI! Very cool guys (who are doing tons of cool stuff)

Darn good crowd

Doc doing a kickass job as technographer (which is diff from other conferences I have been at)

Webcast workin well (according to Dean)

Dinner – going “rogue” with Marc Canter – ordering off the menu instead of the rest of the dinner – awesome selection.

Marc explained his vision for the People Aggregator (which launches next week at Gnomedex)

Doc Searles joined us for a little while

Awesome Awesome Awesome conversation (cant wait for gnomedex now)

Session Notes:

National Anthem (Dave’s kickoff)

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Tools with Phil Torrone

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Citizen Journalism with Jay Rosen

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Users In Charge with Chris Pirillo
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Standards For Users with Nial Kennedy
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Emotional Life with Lisa Williams

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Post Game Show with Doc Searls

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It is HYSTERICAL.

Not kinda funny.

Not sorta funny.

Not dry british humor.

It is priceless.

Episode 1 December 5 2005
In which Ricky, Steve and Karl discuss …
the pros and cons of technological invention, leading on to Karl’s Malthusian concerns and a possible solution. There’s a digression into the extra sensory perception of early hominids. Oh, and some Monkey News of course. Plus strange tales about lethal drinking vessels and stately homes.

I love his original version of The Office. The guy kills me. His partners on the podcast are funny. He plays off them well. The only thing about it that i hated was that it ended.

One of the reasons I just bought my slick iPod video was that he was podcasting. Ricky says this the first in a series of 12 podcasts, so I am not sure of his long term plans, but it is up there on the iTunes most popular.

Check it out here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/rickygervais

LiveBlogging is tough. Its tough on the guy trying to capture everything being said. Tough to add your opinions to what is being said. And tough to keep track of the crowd.

I learned this the hardway at Gnomedex ’05. I asked no questions, kept my head down and tried to keep track of the stage and the room. I didn’t intend to liveblog, I was just trying to take notes for myself. JD had pointed out on his blog what I was doing and it clicked… I am writing for me but sharing with everyone. As a result I spent hours digging through what the other Gnomedexers were writing about (and podcasting and vidcasting). I wanted to see the other SIDES of the story.

Its tough on the guy live blogging.

Its even tougher on the event organizers/company you are liveblogging. Because you give up control. Because you are letting the cat out of the bag. You cant spin the message or the events the way you used to. You are being held to a higher standard, in both content and presentation.

25 minutes into it, all we’ve heard so far is marketing hype. They haven’t shown or said anything new yet. They need to read my How To Demo document. The people in this room are tough customers.
-Dave Winer

Cause we all have a little Dave in us. And now we let him out

Of course, I already subscribed, just to see if it works out (reading a book thru the feed) . I am not sure if the book would be better released as an OPML file (structured data – see Marc Canter’s post). But it is still another pretty cool application of RSS.

Doctrow is a big proponent of Creative Commons (he has released all of his books under a creative commons license) and is a European rep for EFF. He is also one of the authors of BoingBoing.

Link from BoingBoing
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/20/corys_latest_novel_a.html

Surfarama’s post (which PSFK pointed to)
http://www.surfarama.com/?p=242