“LiveGuide: An Online Guided Tour” Goes Live

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

After many months of development, I am pleased to announce that my latest project – “LiveGuide” – is finally online.

 

LiveGuide is a new design of online tour, intended to more closely mimic the features of a real world guided tour of a location thank traditional virtual tours.  In particular, LiveGuide focusses on the narrative and interactive elements of a live tour to deliver a more complete experience for the online tourist.

 

In the course of researching this project, it became apparent that there is a tendency when communicating factual information online to using hypertext to provide a lot of the contextualization for the information.  However, in the real world, this contextualization is often supplied by narrative – as in a guided tour.  LiveGuide is an experiment in combining the functionality and flexibility of hypertext and the stricter structure of a narrative.  The tour has a defined tour route, around which the narrative is structured, but there are also opportunities to pause at particular locations and select from a range of options so one can explore the space on a thematic basis.  This balances the expectations of online users – who are used to the freedom of hypertext – with the need for narrative to make sense of the space in context.

The tour design also includes a live chatbot, named Tour Guide, who is programmed to answer any questions the tourist may have during the course of the tour.  The training for this is ongoing, so I am able to review its responses and improve the quality of its comments the more people interact with it.  The bot is also able to engage in conversation, as would a real tour guide, to enhance the user’s personal experience of the tour.

 

The tour design – featuring a 35 minute tour of the World Heritage City of Bath – is currently on show here.  You will require headphones or speakers to listen to the tour and the latest version of Flash Player.  This is a test version of the design, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA in Creative Writing & New Media at De Montfort University, Leicester.  I would be interested to hear about people’s experiences/reactions when taking the tour and invite comments either on this blog post or by email to: custard@custardether.co.uk.

NLab Social Networks Conference – Panel

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

The conference concluded with a panel session consisting of Roland Harwood, Chris Meade, Vijay Riyait, Andrea Saveri. Here is a brief summary of the questions raised and some of the responses…

 

o.    How do you get people to see that these tools are not just time wasting devices?

-       more conferences

-       more opportunities for people to get together and learn form each other (both small and large businesses)

 

o.    What social networks would you keep?

-       Roland = Twitter and Facebook

-       Andrea = del.icio.us and blog aggregator

-       Chris = Facebook and the blog (as a platform for everyone to have their say)

-       Vijay = Facebook and Twitter

 

o.    What is the killer reason for cash-tight, small businesses to use social networks?  What is the commercial incentive?

-       depends on the business

-       saves money

-       most businesses are already doing social networking offline, but now they can do the same thing cheaper and quicker online

-       you wouldn’t expect a return on the plumbing, but the business cannot function without it

-       expand markets and jump out of small market niche

-       getting information/feedback

-       collaboration

 

o.    Do people get fed up?  Users are more savvy and will spot the agenda

-       people still want stuff and want it sold to them in a way that is authentic and relevant

-       there is always a competition when new technological developments come along, so it will sort itself out

 

o.    We haven’t addressed the massive shift in landscape (China has more graduates than we have children).  How much do you think social media will support this shift in landscape?

-       China has the large number of bloggers, so they are participating

-       The collaborative nature of the net means that people will swarm together

-       Anyone on the internet can make a change that will affect everyone else on the internet

 

o.    Social networking enhances relationships with customers and forces traditional businesses to think about how they do business.

-       we need case studies from academia to businesses

 

So, the final thoughts for the day?

 

Lots of mystique gets built up, but Andrea recommended that businesses pick one small, low risk thing to experiment with to find out what’s right for their business.

NLab Social Networks Conference – Jim Benson

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

The concluding keynote for the day came from Jim Benson, who discussed how to get the most from your social media experience – given that small businesses do not need more stuff to do!

 

He used a flow diagram to demonstrate that if you want benefits out of a community, you have to put stuff in.  You can get good business advice from a system like Twitter, if you participate in the community, but you have to be clear what are you seeking from the community, whether it is a tangible or an intangibles benefit.  You also have to be aware that you cannot just be a leach – because people will pick that up and you will not get the benefit of the community, as it is not community behaviour.

 

Benson emphasised that it is important to know your limits in relation to social media.  He advised businesses to recognise which networks are appropriate to their needs and to experiment.  This was one of the most important messages of the day for many of the delegates – the idea that you do not have to be on and involved in everything going!  Benson explained that simple, “old fashioned” emailing lists are often the strongest social networks.  His advice was straight-forward: start small and work your way up… directing your use to your immediate needs, your business and your business’ personality.

 

The personality of a business is important.  All businesses rely on their proximity to clients and to information – the community involvement needed to get these things may be in different geographical areas and social networks can lower the costs in achieving these things.

 

This all lead to a discussion about over-hyped social networks, whether all of the tools are appropriate to every business’ needs and how businesses have adapted their use of these services to meet their own needs.

 

The key idea that I took away from this discussion was the view that social networks are a mechanism for saving money as well as a way of making money.  An idea that many of us loose sight of in our quest to monetize every second of time we spend working.  Later, Andrea Saveri would crystalise this for everyone by pointing out that plumbing is essential for all businesses, but you wouldn’t expect to make money out of it.  Social networking is exactly the same – essential, but not necessarily a means of directly generating income.

 

I went on to participate in Jim Benson’s workshop entitled “Dealing with the Negative: What to Do When Social Media Bites You”.  In my own business experience I have found that the mental barrier many people face is the idea that people can “say” bad things about your company online and it appears in print for the whole internet to see for all time.  One of the aspects of the Women, Business & Blogging conference that interested me most was how to deal with negativity, which can inevitably occur, and I didn’t feel that I was fully equipped to deal with this, despite extensive discussions – focussing mainly on cyberbullying.

 

In the workshop people discussed their own worries and business circumstances in relation to this issue and we were able to formulate some conclusions about good ways to mentally and actually handle negative comments made online.

 

1.            Monitor reviews – reach out the individuals when things go wrong and try to undo the damage by responding constructively.  Not only will this help to resolve the problem for the individual who has had a bad experience of your company, but will also look good to others – showing you care and will act if things go wrong.

 

2.            Search – the Americans use a website called “Yelp”, which collects reviews of businesses.  Make searching part of the process (an element of PR) to ensure that you stay on top of things and can therefore respond

 

3.            Be present and engage with people – I have observed quite horrific amounts of negative press against a company in one social network, the company response to which was nothing… nowt! They just ignored it and hoped it would go away.  However, part of the point of a social network is that people want to be engaged – they want the conversation!  They will certainly not think better of you if you are not prepared to enter into the discussion with them.

 

4.            Recognising that actually, negative criticism is useful because it is an untapped area of feedback – giving you the opportunity to respond and correct an issue.  If people say it online, you can generally find it.  If they say it on a bus or over dinner with friends or in the pub, you have no way of accessing that feedback and acting on it to improve your business.

 

 

5.            The Net appreciates openness.  Hands up if you get it wrong, and discussion all the way – it will help to build a relationship with your customers and foster trust.

NLab Social Networks Conference – Ken Thompson

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

I was very interested to hear Ken Thompson’s talk, having read his white paper about the concept of Swarm Teams and explored his website, which goes into the biological parallels of his system in more details.  Swarm Teams is a text message-based system, similar to Twitter, but based on the way teams work in nature.

 

He posed the question: What can we learn from nature’s social networks?

 

To address this question, he started by describing the traditional team model that we are all very familiar with – the Military-style team:  getting people to do what they don’t want to do and if in doubt, don’t do nothing.

 

In comparison, he then looked at biological teams and the way they operate.  He described how he got into this line of thinking when designing online systems, starting out with the creation of the Bumble Bee blog to collect articles about using biology to improve teams, then leading to Swarm Teams – a text message system enabling people to operate like a bioteam.

 

He highlighted the main benefit this system can have for small businesses – namely getting small businesses together to go for big contracts by creating a network. 

 

In addition, he described SwarmTribes – a version of the Swarm Teams concept – which is used to connect the likes of musicians with their fans – developing a degree of intimacy between bands and fans.  This is aimed mainly at small bands who want to develop their fan base and interact with them – having a conversation as Steve Clayton described earlier in the day.

 

The main benefits of swarms are:

 

1. You can ask the network
2. When one knows, all knows
3. Mobile co-invention

 

Thompson then demonstrated SwarmTeams by getting us to join his swarm using our mobile telephones and sending messages (on silent mode!) comparing soccer teams with work teams

 

He pointed out that no one gets as excited about their work team in the same way as they do about their football/sports team.

 

He moved on to talk about collective leadership – noting that natural teams are not lead by only one single leader the whole time.  Instead, they work on the principle of the right leader, for the right task at the right time… single leadership teams are not relevant in nature.

 

He explained that short messaging is what creates dynamic mobile teams both in nature and in human interaction, compared to document messaging, hence a surge in sms messaging – this is a natural, instinctive form of communicating and disseminating information.

 

The structure Swarm Teams is designed to mimic works on the principle that you should not try to broadcast to the whole group – but instead go to the best communicators.  The whole principle of mimicking the way communication works successfully in nature seems completely obvious when it is explained, but for some reason it is not the way our management structures and work teams work. Thompson’s advice was to treat social networks like living networks and to remember the very poignant statement that: “The most successful teams on the planet are not human teams” when using social networking to develop cohesive teams and communities online in our business practices.

NLab Social Networks Conference – Andrea Saveri

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

Andrea Saveri from the Institute for the Future had so many fascinating things to say that my note-taking rapidly descended into desperately trying to write down everything she was saying. 

 

Her theme was the amplified individual: the superheros within organisations.  She also explored how the practices of amplified individuals and the tools they use can benefit organisations. 

 

The trick is to use social networks and the associated amplified individuals to actually to amplify what small busineses do well – build relationships, understand niche markets, be agile in exploring new areas – and to help make up for what small businesses lack – management expertise, training, access to capital, limits of small business infrastructure (a negative from the perspective of the rest of the market).

 

She went on to describe amplified individuals in slightly more detail.  Amplified individuals are highly social – using social interaction to filter information and deal with information overload.  Online, this can mean the use of social tagging (i.e. del.icio.us) to see who else tagged pages and go talk to them, whilst filtering information to find what is meaningful.  It can also include sharing photos and using tagging in Flickr, engaging with social objects around which people gather such as a product, visual stimuli etc, using aggregators like Digg to filter information or Twitter, which gets businesses into a social network and is a quick way to source, filter and disseminate information (such as during the fire disaster in San Diego recently).

 

There are other ways in which social networking tools can be used by amplified individuals to benefit business.  Social networks enable people to collectively solve problems using intelligence of crowds – effectively expanding staff, without hiring staff (a huge benefit to a small business) – and collaborative activity. Wikis are great for exploring new areas – asking people to contribute to a knowledgebase.  In the words of Harold Rheingold: “get other people to scratch your itch”.  There are also market predictions aggregators available, which are good for small businesses to gage market predictions rather than having to do all the research in house, which is obviously costly. 

 

Social networks also enable businesses to tap into crowd spirit – running competitions asking customers to submit design ideas, which can be voted to be produced in prototype can engage the customer and aid the again otherwise expensive process of product development within a small business.

 

Saveri also advocated putting out problems to attract creative minds – possibly offering payment – who could provide a solution to a specific problem.  This gets people out there with skills to start submitting solutions – effectively leveraging intelligence to get it to your problem.

 

Another suggestion involved using alternate reality games for training and development in a cost effective way – creating them in such a way that people have to collaborate to solve the problem/mission/quest rather than working alone, thereby using a game framework to get people to learn.

 

But this is getting away from the theme of the amplified individual and on to the myriad of ideas for the application of social networks.  Back to the main thrust of Saveri’s speech:

 

Amplified individuals are highly improvisational.  They are also highly augmented – using different tools to enhance cognitive abilities and coordination skills.  Small business employees and leaders often wear many hats, so need these skills to context-switch, often using devices to enhance memory, concentration etc.  Life Hacker is an example of such a system, featuring anti-procrastination alert.

 

Saveri noted a number of emerging super-powers of amplified individuals:

 

Mobability – they work in large groups, organising and collaborating with lots of people simultaneously.

 

Influencing – they are persuasive in multiple media spaces/contexts

 

Ping quotient – they have a high ping quotient, in other words they are responsive to other people’s requests for engagements

 

Protovation – they are fearless innovators, working in rapid iterative cycles

 

Open authorship – they are comfortable creating content resources for public consumption and modification, particularly given that lot of online work is about putting up drafts or perpetual beta versions

 

Multi-capitalism – they are aware of the many different forms of capitalism and their respective values – be it natural, intellectual, social or financial capitalism… with particular understanding of the notion of reputation as a currency (social capitalism)

 

Longbroading – they are able to think in terms of higher-level systems and see the big picture

 

Effective signal to noise management

 

Cooperation radar – they are good at spotting the best collaborator for a particular task within a social network

 

These skills things all amplify small business’s ability to increase their scope – working around the constraints of big business.

 

Saveri concluded by explaining that it is about economies of sociality, not economies of scales, and about asymmetric power – i.e. using these tools to amplify your impact, even though you are small, and using tools to be responsive to niche markets and also resilience when these disappear by identifying new niches.

NLab Social Networks Conference – Roland Harwood

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

Harwood’s whirlwind talk collected together lots of thoughts, research and parallels considering the question: “Are social networks the new cities?”, a title which Harwood noted is more than just a metaphor. Social networks are already starting to fulfil some of the functions that grow cities – creating a networked business economy and fostering public characters, who act as connectors within communities, developing common experiences and associations for those within the community.

Harwood referred mainly to two texts: Jane Jacobs’ “Death and Life of Great American Cities” and Steve Johnson’s “Emergence”. He talked of the rise of urbanism in the world and the way in which technology changes places. People who study urban growth, look at the rule of technology. He also noted that we are only at the start of understanding how the web is changing places…

In a quote from Jacobs, Harwood explained that the essence of cities – why they are exciting – is the freedom to walk around the busy streets – in a car-dependant society you are isolated from other individuals, whereas whilst walking the streets in a city means there is interaction and changed behaviour in response to your actions and those of others.

What interested Harwood about social networks is the way you interact with people you don’t know well – the weak ties. I referred to this recently in my post Translating the Reality into the Virtual when I noted that we have taken the “Christmas card list” social convention online. In online social networks you can build relationships with people who are on the periphery of your network –sometimes building relationships before you meet people.

Harwood went on to say that social networks allow communities to form in our pockets, which replaces the isolation of cities. For communities to develop, there has to be a balance between the quality of interaction and the convenience of interaction. Cities erode both of these elements, whereas social networks help replace them.

NLab Social Networks Conference – The Opening

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

Well, it has taken a little longer than I anticipated to formulate my account of the recent NLab Social Networks conference, held at DMU on 19th June, following the IOCT Salon.  However, I have finally made sense of all of my notes!  So, without further ado, as they say….

The Opening Address

 

Professor David Asch opened the conference by briefly putting Leicester in the context of the day’s theme of social networking – a diverse community working to connect and network to build cohesion.  He noted that there is a need to academically examine how social networking is affecting us – whether it is making life better or more complex.  He highlighted the role of DMU in this process and the academic work going on here.

 

Professor Asch’s own research covered business competitiveness at the turn of the millennium – looking in particular at the impact of the Internet on the way companies compete in terms of economic theory. He noted the difference between searchable and unsearchable items in relation to internet sales: searchable items have defined and can therefore be purchased online or offline.  However, if you are purchasing an unsearchable item (usually a service) – how do you know what you are buying or whether what you have bought was the best that you could?  Asch’s interest was therefore in the way in which the internet and social networks have developed to address this problem since he was researching the issue from an economics stance in the late 90s.

 

What became apparent throughout the day was that the development of social communities on the internet does not just benefit those purchasing “unsearchable” items.  Social networks allow internet users to get advice and recommendations about all types of retailers, and to make better informed decisions about which retailers to trust, regardless of the type of product they are buying.  The key to the day was developing an understanding of how to harness this proactively both for marketing purposes and for the management of company image….

IOCT Salon – 18th June 2008

 

 

 

The recent IOCT Salon was a great opportunity for students from the Online MA in Creative Writing & New Media to show case their most recent work. It featured inspirational performances from Chris Meade and Christine Wilks, fascinating talks from Toni Le Busque, Claudia Cragg and Alison Norrington – and a bit of waffling from me!

The event was organised by Chris Joseph as his last salon at the IOCT, as his time as digital writer in residence nears its end. Both past and present students were invited to show their work to a public audience, showing the range of artistic endeavours covered by the course and where these can lead.

Chris Meade has recently published a report commissioned by Sue Thomas titledDigital Livings, examining how digital writers, like us, might be able to monetize our work. Together with launching the report, he gave a performance of his creative non-fiction piece “drumming – becoming – forgetting”. I had only previously seen this piece as a blog with YouTube clips of drumming which could be left playing whilst one scrolled down to read the text. In the live performance, Chris read the text whilst playing a small drum. This interlocked with the audio and visuals from the YouTube clips to create far more complex texture. I have to say that this was quite a surprise for me – not because I didn’t enjoy Chris’ writing on its own previously, but because I had not considered how much a live performance like this could enhance a piece of new media writing.

In a similar way, Christine’s performance of her piece “Fitting the Pattern” brought the text element to life. Again, I had seen this during the workshop stages and enjoyed the tactile nature of the user engagement with the piece, which is built in Flash and requires the user to mimic dressmaking processes such as cutting, pinning and unpicking to reveal sections of the story. I remember that I was totally absorbed by the themes of fabric and family, but in the live performance I got a much stronger sense of place. This was particularly apparent when dialect terms arose such as “let’s bray her”, which Christine put across with far more expression than my internal voice could have managed.

In contrast, Toni gave a talk about her work throughout the course and some of the factors she considered when developing her creative practices – specifically with regards to copyright and fighting the battle against the “you’re out to destroy the book” gang. She showed us her final dissertation piece “Drunkalogue” as well as some of her more recent work using the Sophie software developed by The Institute for the Future of the Book. She gave us a quick demo of the software, showing how easy it is to create multimedia projects and share them with others. She made the very valid point that there are lots of emerging platforms that enable writers to create media-rich work without learning Flash or other complex programming skills.

Claudia also picked up on this theme in several of her observations throughout her talk about her Laboratory project “Twitter Suu”. She noted that beautifully designed websites alone are not the key to getting real involvement in a project, and programming skills are not necessary when using new media. Claudia spoke of the resistance she experienced from journalists who did not understand the role social networking tools like Twitter can play in generating support for a cause, and of her findings when researching where to focus her efforts to attract people most likely to rally in support to a cause. Her insights were particularly relevant in context of theNLab Social Networking Conference the next day.

Alison also spoke about the use of social networks in relation to her work – particularly the lessons she learnt from her Staying Single project, where she attempted to use a very wide range of social media to generate interest in her blog-based fiction. Alison gave us a sneak preview of her latest project “I ♥ NY” and how the lessons of Staying Single have informed her plans for this story. She is very enthusiastic about the ways that new media can be used to bring people into a story from different places, but also realistic about the amount of time that this type of promotion and networking can involve. She aims to be more focussed in her future efforts, rather than spreading herself too thinly across lots of networks – again, relevant to many of the discussions which followed at the NLab conference.

My own talk was a slightly waffly account of my current dissertation project to create an online tour of Bath – informed by an analysis of live guiding techniques. I demonstrated a couple of examples of existing virtual tours and talked about the importance of narrative when guiding an audience around a physical space. The project is in the early stages of development, but I was able to show the draft design, which features a chatterbot programmed to answer simple questions (although a failed wifi connection made this impossible to show). I also showed a clip of the tour itself, complete with animation.

In addition to the range of presentations, Dr Jess Laccetti had produced a critical essay considering the work of all the MA students. You can read is essay here. Greetings also came from many of the students who were unable to be present, including Janine, who despite being on her honeymoon was with us in spirit in the form of copies of her fanzine, produced as part of her Laboratory project and available for sale throughout the salon.

Many thanks have to go to Chris Joseph for organising this great showcase, and to Sue Thomas, Kate Pullinger and Jess Laccetti for all their efforts. It was a fascinating evening!

Moving On From Manvers Street

I have recently launched my digital documentary Moving On From Manvers Street as part of my ongoing studies in New Media writing at DMU.  The trailer is very tongue in cheek, but that is characteristic of the tone of the whole piece.  

The documentary focuses on using Web 2.0 principles to present the story of the first bus station at Bath, which was located in Manvers Street until its demolition in July 2007.  As someone who both worked there and has an interest in the way buildings fit into our culture, I wanted to examine how this functional building would be remembered and how people would engage with those memories in a digital format.

Defining and designing a digital or Web 2.0 documentary was a challenging process.  How and where does one present a Web 2.0 documentary?  What should it look like?  How will people interact with it and contribute to it in the spirit of Web 2.0?  What features of a traditional documentary should be retained? What elements of Web 2.0 philosophy should be included to make it a web-native design, rather than an online version of a traditional documentary?

 

I had two options: producing my own website enabled for user interaction, or making use of existing Web 2.0 tools such as aggregators, which would involve sacrificing an element of control over the content and design, but provide pre-existing mechanisms for collating and disseminating information – common purposes of documentaries.

 

I experimented with two similar aggregating tools – PageFlakes and Netvibes.  Both involved layouts that comprised of boxed widgets for live feeds, which would mean that I and others could add content about the Manvers Street Bus Station at various locations (such as YouTube or blogs) and it would automatically be collected and presented by the aggregator.

 

There were several issues:

 

-       Although feeds were easy to set up, both platforms had limited customisation facilities and it was difficult to add static elements other than text or still images.  The latter was particularly problematic when considering how to add the commentary element of the documentary, which would provide the context for all the content sources.

-       The commercial nature of the sites meant that templates and features could change, so the way the project would appear over time could change without prior notice to me as the creator.

-       There are also issues of ownership of content involved not just in the aggregator interface, but in every individual widget – I needed to manage accounts with several content hosts (such as YouTube, Flickr etc) and to have investigated the degree to which they individually claim ownership of content stored there.

 

I therefore opted to design my own site and instead consider how to integrate Web 2.0 principles and facilities into its design.  I really focused on interactivity and user-generated content as the two main features that I needed to work into my design. 

 

The first consideration was integrating the piece with existing Web 2.0 facilities.  I developed a trailer for the project, which I uploaded to Daily Motion (a video hosting site) and disseminated via Facebook.  I also uploaded interview clips to this service so that the participants involved can embed and forward the clips of themselves to their contacts – all with a link to the URL for the project.  This was partly a promotion strategy, but also established a connection between the project and an audience who are already familiar with interactive sites.

 

Within the site itself, I added several opportunities for contribution.  I invite people to contribute to the Wikipedia article I started, detailing the history of the bus station, and provided a blog with short posts posing questions, which invite comments.  This use of a blog was inspired by Sue Thomas’ use of her blog The Wild Surmise as a research tool.  In both instances I used the <iframe> tag in html to allow the external site to appear within a page of my own – thus helping to retain the audience, rather than allowing them to wander off into other sites.

 

The remainder of the design featured video clips of me presenting the content of each page, thus providing a narrative to the site and a cohesive gel to the content without masses of text.  Within the piece I cast myself as the presenter, but my overall role varied from page to page – sometimes I was a writer (Wikipedia, The WTF File), sometimes a archivist (Interviews), sometimes an editor (The Last Day), sometimes a facilitator for audience participation (Memories), sometimes a composer…

 

 As a documentary inviting audience contributions, I felt it was difficult to be overly analytical or probing in my narrative.  Instead, I opted to raise issues in the introduction, then simply present the different view points and contributions so that the audience can mull over whether I had a valid point that functional buildings, like the Manvers Street Bus Station, should be remembered and what we miss by dismissing them as ugly.  Several of the responses I received were quite insightful on this issue, but several interviewees did have difficulty separating the Bus Station from being “on the buses”.  This confirmed for me that culture – which has moved and lives on – was the integral feature of the building, not its fabric.

 

The documentary can be found at www.manvers-street.com.  Any contributions to the project, or thoughts about the issues raised here concerning the design of a digital documentary, are very welcome!

 

Blogging an Event

The experience of participating in an event, whilst drafting a blog post about it, was an interesting one.  In many ways, I wish I had done it at some of the various events I have attended over the last year of studying New Media as well, but in other ways I found it a difficult thing to do whilst being actively involved.  There is also something that feels very rude about typing whilst someone is talking – no matter how discretely one can do so.

 

The recent posts detailing the events of the CWNM Creative Retreat were written live, as it were, during proceedings.  I started out on the Friday making hand written notes throughout Professor Leahy’s lecture, but ran into difficulties when writing these notes up into cohesive prose.  My scribblings never quite make sense afterwards and my memory for the details of the convoluted arguments and discussions that evolve amongst this particular group of people is not great.  Therefore constructing a blog post as a running commentary as such discussions develop seemed like an obvious way of ensuring that I can capture more detail.  Throughout the remainder of the weekend I was therefore attached to my Mac, clicking away…

 

Summarising key points of discussion into sentences instead of note points whilst people were talking involved starting the sentences, then revising them as my understanding of the point clarified.  Using a computer to do this – with the flexibility to delete and re-jig – made this easier and less destructive in a way than using a note book – where crossings out (and the doodling temptations these inevitably lead to) can be quite an obstruction when reassembling notes in a logical format at a later stage. 

 

Generally I stuck to recording turns in the discussions and any key points/quotes made by specific participants – with very little reference to my personal views or interpretations.  The only account that differed from this method was my account of Christine’s talk, where she showed us a lot of her work.  This was a far more subjective talk to start with (being geared towards viewing art), so my own take on what was going on formed the bulk of this account, as I could hardly interpret it in any other way.  One method is obviously better than the other from an impartial, journalistic point of view, but that raises the question as to whether I was blogging about events at the retreat from a purely journalistic stance to provide information to those unable to participate, or whether I was blogging with more discursive intentions. 

 

As for feeling rude?  Well, I found myself consciously typing very lightly and looking up at the speaker far more than I would normally do whilst sitting with a paper notebook.  There was no doodling to be done.  There also appears to be a culture of multi-tasking with laptops during events surrounding New Media (as was apparent at the Women, Business & Blogging conference in the summer), which seems to be accepted by speakers and other participants without question.  Maybe we all just understand each other’s need to be plugged in?  Anyway, seeing others around who were far less visually engaged with the speaking event at the front (although obviously engaged in terms of content, as they were googling and following links through that were directly related) made me feel a little better about occasionally bashing out a quick sentence, then sitting back to listen again.

 

Maybe this means I am now firmly pacing the road towards becoming a conscious blogger?  Awareness of the process when writing any thing is usually the first step to acquiring the genre’s ice-skakes…