Friday, April 16, 2004

4/6/04: What is Journalism? 

Doc Searls: "Technologists have a high need for thoroughly informed dialog and a low tolerance for rhetorical packet loss." 

JD Lasica: "What really set me on edge was the notion that we should return to the days when only big-J journalists practice journalism and bloggers, well, whatever they did, it certainly wasn't journalism." 

Chris Nolan: "Blogging can be a form of journalism." 

Zawodny: "Even Tim O'Reilly seems to be sucked in by Google's reality distortion field now." 

Three more faculty changes to announce later. Just heard from Jay, and the webcast issues are solved thanks to help from Advance.Net.  

BBC: "EarthLink said it uncovered an average of 28 spyware programs on each PC scanned." 

Jay Rosen: Brain Food for BloggerCon. "Blogging is not journalism." 

My response: Jay, I didn't ask if blogging is journalism. 

I didn't leak it.  

RSS in Vietnam, in Vietnamese. 

The day has arrived. The first official BloggerCon II event is tonight at 7PM at the Durgin Park restaurant in Faneiul Hall.  

We're still looking for help with the webcast. I'm going to try to get through to someone at Real today to find out if we can get a temporary renewal for our license. Bob Doyle is exploring other ways to webcast, but the Real method is the one that we've used for all our webcasts, it's the software that's installed on the laptops, it's by far the simplest approach. It's possible to do the job using someone else's Real server. If you can help, post a comment or send me an email. 

Snarky fooles 

It seems every time I go to a conference there's some guy who has a low-flow blog devoted to saying snarky stuff about me. For some reason these people always feel they need to introduce themselves. I can see it coming by the look on their face, it's a sense that they are my nemesis, my joker, my Lex Luthor, my Kryptonite. They feel a special place in my heart. Oh if you only knew my true feelings. I know that when you point to me I get 3 hits, and most of them are from your IP address.

It's a sick thing to define yourself in terms of the misery you think you're creating. It's the kind of misery someone creates when cutting a really stinky fart. Yeah, I know I'm going to survive this, but couldn't you just skip the farting part. Hey couldn't you just skip the introducing yourself part?

Remember typewriters? 

What happened to people who use typewriters?

In the 80s, during the rise of personal computers, they were very outspoken.

You'd see pictures in news papers of people using their type writers to write their articles and columns. "There's nothing like a typewriter," they'd say. "You can have your personal computer, but I'll keep my typewriter. Writing is better with a typewriter. I think more before I write. There's something wrong about being able to revise constantly. I know when I'm done. I have a life."

I'm paraphrasing of course, trying my best to tell it like they did.

Now you don't hear this any more. What happened? Did they die? Did they convert? Or did they tire of the arguing?

Someday I hope to meet someone who's never seen a typewriter.

Someday I hope to meet someone who doesn't know what a typewriter is.

Someday I hope to meet someone who is impressed that I've actually used one myself.

Mainframes are computers too 

I was talking up the Personal TV Networks idea last night with Jim Moore. He asked what they are. Well, they don't exist yet. But think about mainframe computers, centralized beasts, controlled and owned big faceless corporations, and how all hell broke loose when people could buy a personal computer for a couple of thousand dollars. Same idea. More and more, the media is owned by big faceless companies who can be manipulated by the government. Blogs are great, they're like personal magazines. This is no longer a vision, it's reality. So if you want to publish an idea, go ahead. You don't need to sell it to a publisher. The next step, which we're on the cusp of, is video production and distribution using RSS and BitTorrent, and perhaps other P2P methods. Adam Curry, who began his television career working for one of the behemoths, has become the visionary for the personal television network of the future. Of course that's one of the BloggerCon sessions tomorrow afternoon at 1:30PM, Pound 200.

Thanks to Berkman Center 

Over the next few days I'm going to call out some of the people who made this conference happen.

First thanks to Berkman Center. Before coming here I had talked about doing conferences, since the early 90s, but it took the support of John Palfrey to get me to actually take the chance. I remember standing in his office last spring, about a year ago, asking if he really wanted to do it, and he said in Paltreyesque fashion "Desperately." Desperation, that's a good motivator!

Thanks to Catherine Bracy and Wendy Koslow, who cheerfully navigated the emergencies, brownouts and weirdnesses of doing a blogger's conference at a big Ivy League school. It's the first time I've worked with Catherine, and the second time with Wendy. This conference wouldn't have happened without their help.

Thanks to the Berkman Thursday group. To Jay McCarthy, who's responsible for the technical aspects of the conference, to Lisa Williams who is doing the User Vision session, and helped out in many other ways, to Jessica Baumgart for leading the Librarians session, Sooz for organizing the Durgin Park dinner, Mike Walsh for help organizing and to all the regulars who participated in the process.

It takes months of hard and creative work and lots of support to pull a conference like this out of thin air. If it works, it's a miracle. Knock wood, praise Murphy, I am not a lawyer, my mother loves me, it's even worse than it appears.

A plan for the day 

A weird idea from 2001. Let's be nice to someone today. Ask them how they're doing. What's up with you? Listen. Tell someone you like them. Did I ever tell you how much I enjoy talking with you? Go for a walk. Look up, what do you see? Greet a stranger. Hello there. Pet a pup. Hello nice doggie. Want to fetch something for me? Good job. You're a smart dog, yes yes. Make this day about someone other than you. That's my plan.