Accept no substitutes

Month: October 2006 (Page 2 of 4)

Google people Today and Thursday

Today at 6:30 pm in 105 Gardner Hall, Google folks will be talking about Engineering opportunities (“job opportunities, their culture and their work environment” I suppose these are three different subjects?). Also they alert us all to visit the google.com/students site and submit applications before November 1, 2006. Unfortunately that link doesn’t work; this one does so go here if you are interested.

On Thursday, October 26 4 – 5:30 pm, Google Tech Director Craig Silverstein will be speaking as a guest of the Health Sciences Library. See this link for details.

Bloggers in the Q (NandO)

If you can find the online Q section of the News and Observer, you’ll find a pile of writing and reflection on blogging and blogging ethics by local bloggers.

Amongst those featured are Anton “Mr Sugar” Zuiker who has organized more blog meet-ups and teach-ins than anyone I know of. The short of Anton’s message “Do unto others.” There is more of course.

OrangePolitics.org‘s Ruby Sinreich wants reporters to credit bloggers when they take bits from the blogs. This is not a new complaint. OP is a rich source for local reporters who for some reason don’t think that OPers care if their community gets the credit. Note from Ruby: We do care.

Martin Kuhn, who developed his bloggers ethics guidelines in part in my seminar, has his good work summarized as part of the piece. It would have been nice, Martin might say ethical, if NandO had also linked to the blog on which Martin created his ethics outline. I will here.

A little sidebar gives brief voice to other local bloggers, most of whom I didn’t know, Sue Sturgis, Nancy Baker, Chris Anderson (of Lulu and Raleighing, not of Long Tail) and Gary Kueber. NandO does link to each of their blogs showing good form.

The main article by Eric Ferreri seems to have been inspired by the blogging of KC Johnson about the Duke Lacrosse team’s problems (KC defends them mostly) but the article grew far beyond that and is better for having done so. Eric does a good job of discussing the problems of accountability and the challenges to new blogger/journalists. Great quotes from Martin Kuhn and good research help out.

But try to find the stories on the News and Observer web site, where one might expect to see them prominently displayed. You can’t find them at all! You can barely find the Q section even if, like me, you were looking for it. NandO’s content-ignorant layout jambs the Q under Local and State in on the main page with no description or content revealed and under News as well as State and Local on the pull-down. Q however is more of an Opinion/Features/Forum section. Not exactly News and not entirely Local and State (although there are local interests and sources). Inconsistant as well as hidden from the folks who might want to read and react or just read and appreciate the discussions.

What would a blog entry be without a rant?

Poems at the end of The End

it is sad to say, almost so sad that i can barely type this, that a novel– a novel that you should not read if you are at all sensitive, a novel that ends a heartbreaking series of 13 novels, a series of unfortunate events–ends with two poems or nearly ends there as there are no true endings in the world as the narrator points out to the point of pain. you will know these poems because the are about heartbreak and because they are spoken at a desperate point in the lives of two characters–their unfortunate ends, although there are also beginnings, but not for them. these two poems are not credited directly, but i can tell you that the authors are called “associates” of those in VFD which if you have had the unpleasant experiencing the novels you will know far too much about but also not enough.

one poem is by the famous poet Francis William Bourdillon. his poem is not sung by bobby vee, a singer that once fired bobby zimmerman a poser according to vee who often claimed to be booy vee himself but later became known as bobby d taking on the name of a poet who met an unfortunate end. the poem is not the script for a 1948 movie starring Edward G. Robinson. it is a sad thing of its own from the late 1800s. it is short as
life would have it. and it is sad but true.

The other poem is sadder and truer still. it pains me to even mention it. in fact the speaker, a bit of continuous and sad evil claiming to be misunderstood, only mutters and sputters the last verse–this series being for children or at least the child-like. there are reasons not to say the first two verses that have to to with the sensitivity of our children toward language. the title of the poem is not mentioned, but you who know poetry know that the poet took his title from Robert Louis Stevenson’s own Requiem. this title and this poem are, young hipster postmodernists, what literary irony is all about–not the silly songs of certain talented but transient waifs who would title their unironic collections, ironic. i could write more but i am overcome with sadness.

let other poets and literati point you more directly to the poems in question or refer to pages 317 and 318 of The End or call your library reference desk.

back from Berry and on to NandO

My experimental use of a wiki to build a conversation into the talk I just did down at beautiful and deerfilled Berry College was a great success (for me at least). Just like SlashDot interviews, I asked the folks who were coming to the talk to post their questions. There was no voting, as in Slashdot, as we were dealing with a smaller group of people and we would be physically proximate. All questions were more or less equal.
I was able to arrange the questions by topics and then run through them in a more or less coherent way (for me at least). One result is that my answers led to further discussion among us all and it was fun too. Many folks lingered and the conversations seemed to be continuing as we left.
Brian tried to take a couple of us to Havana’s in Rome where some sort of bikini team was promoting some kind of cigars. You needed to buy so many cigars to get to go upstair and meet them. We passed and took our conversation down the street.

Next week, we’ll see how well this approach works for Craig Silverstein of Google when he tries talking to about 700+ people on Thursay October 26.

Then for Halloween, I’ll be doing a keynote at the News and Observer‘s internal training/meetings. I’ve asked them to set up a wiki there so’s we can work on (at least) Two Way Journalism. With journalists, we might need to go to the SlashDot style of interview/talk under which the folks attending post questions then vote on them then I answer the top 10 or so.

Other ideas?

At Berry College

Down in Georgia (like the Devil) at Berry College near Rome. The Georgia NorthWest Mountains are in full color and the spacious, 26,000 acre, campus is rife with deer which are more common than squirrels.
Edenic is defined here. Wireless is fine in the buildings but not in my cottage, a log cabin, up the mountain from here.
My talk is pretty organized but I’m asked to cover quite a bit in order to cover the submitted questions. I rather like the challenge.

ibiblian speakers – Tues, Wed, Thurs, etc

A lot of folks from ibiblio are speaking around this week:

Tuesday October 17, noon – Fred Stutzman will be speaking in the ISIS TechTueday series at Duke University

Wednesday October 18, 3:30 – Kristina Spurgin will talk about Personal Information Management as part of the SILS Research Colloquium in room 208 Manning Hall.

Thursday October 19, 8:45 am – Fred will be doing the keynote for the UNC Caroina Technology Consultants Conference at the Stone Center.

Thursday October 19, 7 pm – I will be speaking as part of the Evans Lecture Series on “Expression and Repression” at Berry College in Georgia. I’m building the talk from questions posed by students on a wiki.

Thursday October 26 4 pm (but come early over 700 seats will be contested) – Fred and I will be among the panelists at the Health Affairs Library presentation by Google Tech Director Craig Silverstein.

Tibetans “shot like rabbits”

When I was among the Tibetan exiles, I was amazed how hardworking and innovative they were and how positive they were. I mentioned this to my guide and friend. He immediately set me right, telling me that there is so much that was not being seen. Every Tibetan has had a family member or friend killed many times right before them, he told me. Still there we were among smiling and optimistic people.

In the past 24 hours, proof that the Chinese soldiers are still killing Tibetans in cold blood hit the news (and on youTube.) Xeni has a good summary on her Trek Blog.

PT Saga Over?

I’ve had absolutely no problems with my 2001 PT since the sensors were replaced. No more stalling and great performance. The end of this past week, I gave it the acid test: 5 hours on the Interstate from here to DC. It worked great. I of course was a little excited as I pulled off the highway to refuel in rural Virginia. I did have my AAA card out and the number on my autodial hot list. But I didn’t need it. Finally. Woo Woo!

Knowledge Trust endorses Open Document Format

This morning, we (the Knowledge Trust) voted to join the Open Document Format Alliance. Marino Marcich, Managing Director of the ODF Alliance was there to answer any questions and Pat Schroeder, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers was there to ask questions but to finally agree on the resolution which I had moved.

The Alliance began with 36 members in March of this year and now has over 320 members worldwide.

UNC Social Software Symposium – Dec 8 and 9

Fred announces the UNC Social Software Symposium on his blog:

It is my pleasure to informally announce the Social Software Symposium, to be held at UNC-Chapel Hill on December 8-9, 2006. The event will be a two day exploration of two burgeoning areas of social software: folksonomy and social networking websites. Drs. David Weinberger (Cluetrain, Small Pieces Loosely Joined), Nicole Ellison (MSU) and Cliff Lampe (MSU) will be featured attendees.

More details and more forthcoming on Fred’s blog.

Fred at Duke for TechTuesday

Cristin Paul, Program Coordinator for the Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS) program at Duke University, write with this alert:

What: ISIS TechTuesdays featuring Fred Stutzman
When: October 17, 2006, 12:00-1:15 PM
Where: John Hope Franklin Center 240, 2204 Erwin Road, Duke University, Derm, NC

Fred Stutzman, a doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, will be speaking about his work on ClaimID.com, a project that allows individuals to control their online information. Fred’s research interests include social software and networks, identity production in digital worlds and cultural effects of social computing.

The goal of the biweekly TechTuesdays lunch forum is to create a shared dialogue around innovative uses of technology that spans Duke’s faculty, graduate student, and IT development communities. In doing so, TechTuesdays seeks to fuel increased collaboration and integration among Duke’s technology developers by allowing members to pool resources and expertise. Each TechTuesday session features a 30-40 minute project presentation followed by an open discussion. Lunch is provided at each meeting. Parking vouchers are provided for the Medical Center parking decks

Berry goes Bananas

The folks at Berry College have really loaded up the wiki with questions for me to answer! Doing a talk with this kind of conversation beforehand will be really helpful in keeping me from being a expert dropped in from a plane. They are challenging me in a very good way. I’m going to have to work hard to organize the talk and to add some wisdom if I can muster any ;->

The theme is “Expression, Repression & Association: What happens when intellectual property laws, social networks and privacy collide” and the wiki/open conversation with the folks there is definitely leading to some good and open expression. I already feel an association with them (in a First Amendment sense?). What about repression though? That’s in their questions (see the wiki).

Wilson Knowledge Trust Awards

half of the award
Here in DC and wearing my tux for the Louis Round Wilson Knowledge Trust Awards ceremony over in the Willard Hotel.

Winners were/are:

Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive was cited in absentia for his important work. He’ll get his award in the Spring at the Knowledge Trust’s next meeting. He’s in Sweden at the moment.

More write-up and pictures here.

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