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ALT-C. Be there or be… anywhere September 18, 2009

Posted by Steve Boneham in : social media, conferences , 1 comment so far

altc09.jpg

Despite not making it to ALT-C this year, I still felt more involved than I have at some events that I actually attended thanks to the formal and informal amplifcation of the event. These are my notes on the pros and cons of being a remote participant in a tech-enhanced conference.

In an attempt to give the live sessions my full attention, as I would at the conference, I booked out time in my diary as being ‘at‘ ALT-C. However, there were still lots of ‘…but you’re not really there, are you?‘ interruptions (quick questions, phone calls…) that you avoid when you’re actually away. So my first lesson learned for next time is to get out of the office and watch somewhere away from these distractions.

I’ll confess I didn’t help myself here either by giving in to the temptation of checking the occassional email or getting on with my ‘real work’ that I would have felt guilty about doing in a live audience. I consider myself to have a reasonable attention span, so was disapppointed by my lack of discipline online. I think this, like the last point, highlights the need to change peoples perception of what being ‘at an online conference’ means - including my own.

The onscreen experience of the live sessions was pretty good - certainly better than I’ve had from the back of some conferences. Using Elluminate for this was perhaps a case of sledgehammer to crack a nut, but it worked once you’d jumped through the hoops. Just as useful though was the informal streaming from participants, like that of the VLE is dead debate, by James Clay. This was a far simpler approach, but arguably a better experience. I’ve been skeptical about the quality of this approach, but in the right circumstances and with a bit of thought, it can be very effective.

As always, Twitter enabled commentary from the live audience and those watching remotely, giving an insight into their thoughts. The conference #hastag was very active, as shown by Brian Kelly’s analysis. A downside of this was that it provoked the worst influx of trending topic spam I’ve seen, but I think this remains a price worth paying to keep the discussion public.

However, for me, the real difference was not what happenend at the conference, but what happened next. The reflection and discussion taking place after the event have in some ways been of more value than the conference itself. Reading blogs posts from different viewpoints, seeing what I thought to be minor details be picked up and expanded into detailed arguments, commenting and discussing the issues, has all helped to consolidate my learning.

What this has also made me realise is that the value I place on the social web for helping me feel part of the community is in part an inditement of the fact that until recently I haven’t been - or at least, not part of the right community. With conferences and events being one way to achieve that, I think it’s clear I need to get out more!

Clay Shirky on the power of social media June 16, 2009

Posted by Steve Boneham in : Twitter, presentation, social media, conferences , add a comment

Interesting TED talk from Clay Shirky on how media has changed to social media and the impact of that on citizens, institutions and government.

Podcast: Introduction to Podcasting March 26, 2009

Posted by Steve Boneham in : podcasting, HowTo, social media, Training, JISC , add a comment

podcasting microphone

A brief introduction to podcasting and the training offered by Netskills recorded for JISC RSC-Eastern. It’s always painful to listen to yourself, but I hope it’s less painful for you!

Listen to more podcasts from JISC RSC Eastern

photo credit: gpl via stock.xchng

Survival of the Twittist February 11, 2009

Posted by Steve Boneham in : Twitter, social media, science , add a comment

darwintweet1.png

Charles Darwin has always been a hero of mine (I was a science geek before I became a tech geek), so it seems fitting to post something relevant to his work on the great man’s 200th birthday. So, here’s a quick take on how natural selection could apply to Twitter.

In The Origin of Species, Darwin defined the characteristics of the environment that enable natural selection to drive evolution. With a little imagination, we can find similar processes at work in Twitter.

Excess production: Just as far more organisms are born than go on to reproduce, so far more tweets are written than are ever read.

Variation: Although a tweet is only 140 characters, that’s more than enough to allow for an almost infinite variation in meaning (phenotype). Many tweets are trivial and go unnoticed, but some have certain traits that mean they get attention.

Competition: Each tweet must compete to be heard amongst the noise of so many others. As most of us can only follow a limited number of people and read limited number of tweets, we tend to be selective in what we read.

Selection: A tweet with traits that are well suited to their environment - that is appeal to the followers of the person that created it - are successful. They get read. Successful tweets give feedback to the person that created it in the form of@replies, clicks on links, retweets and new followers. As a result, subsequent tweets are more likely to have similar traits, allowing for cumalative selection. Unlike the genetic world where we have to swap DNA to pass on traits, in the Twittersphere traits can be adopted and spread quickly through cultural evolution (e.g. #hashtags).

Time: I’m sure I’m not alone in spending what seems to be an enormous amount of time on Twitter. If we extrapolate from (Stephen) Fry’s Law of Digital Time, a second in twitter could equate to years in the real world, so there’s ample time for selection to operate.

Changing environment: Traits that are successful now almost certainly won’t be in the future, so remember, it’s not the strongest or most intelligent that survive, it is those that are the most adaptable to change.

And if you want to know what the great man would make of this, or anything else, you could always follow Charles Darwin on Twitter.

Disclaimer: Unlike Darwin’s work, this post wasn’t informed by years of painstaking observation and reflection. Nor did I face the anguish of sharing a great truth despite it undermining my own beliefs. But then, that’s what made Darwin a truely great scientist and me an ex-scientist who writes stuff like this!

Twitter badge without @replies January 13, 2009

Posted by Steve Boneham in : Twitter, HowTo, social media, RSS , 16comments

I’m a recent convert to Twitter and was looking for a way to display my tweets elsewhere on the web - such as on the sidebar of this blog. However, I wasn’t happy with the standard Twitter badge, which mixes tweets on ‘What I’m doing’ with ‘@replies’ intended for individuals. Don’t get me wrong, I value @replies, I just didn’t want them on my badge. If you don’t either, here’s how to filter them out with Yahoo Pipes.

Shortcut: copy the pipe

If you don’t want to spend time building your own pipe, all you need to do is create an account, copy the pipe and point it at your twitterstream.

How it works

I used Pipes as it provides a simple way to manipulate RSS feeds. If you want to know more about how this works, read on.

In the Twitter RSS feed, each item is prefixed with your username. That’s useful when you’re mixed in with tweets from other Twitter users, but in a badge where all the tweets are from you, it’s a bit redundant. So we’ll strip that out too.If you ‘re familiar with pipes, then the screenshot below shows you what you’re after. The notes following this give more detailed instructions.

twitter pipe

Creating the pipe

You should now see a preview of your filtered twitterfeed at the bottom of the Pipes window. This should not contain any of your @replies and your username should have been removed too.

Using the pipe

You can now use this feed to create your Twitter badge as follows:

Credits

This pipe is a simplified version of the Twitter Feed without Replies pipe created by Emil S

For Pod’s Sake: making better podcasts December 2, 2008

Posted by Steve Boneham in : podcasting, HowTo, projects, social media , 1 comment so far

I recently developed a podcasting workshop for Netskills that’s turned out to be one of our most popular events and certainly my favourite to run (thanks for the funding Lawrie!). So, based on what I learnt from putting this workshop together, here are a few tips for anyone thinking of producing a podcast.

Understand the medium: When done well, podcasting is engaging, entertaining and educational. However, podcast directories are full of podcasts that only a mother could love. So, how do you keep it interesting?

Get the right equipment: You don’t need to a sound engineer to produce a professional sounding podcast, but knowing a bit about the hardware will help you get a good, clean signal that your listeners will thank you for:

Present like a Pro: The best equipment won’t help you if you can’t use it to communicate effectively.

That’s a wrap: But the work doesn’t stop at recording. The post-take edit is where you can tweak your content with tools like Audacity to make it really sparkle.

Get it out there: Of course, the final step - publishing your polished podcast - is the most important, but is usually the most simple. It certainly is if you use a free podcast hosting service like Podomatic, to which you just upload your content via a set of forms and through the magic of RSS, your podcast will find its way to your listeners. There are of course lots of ways to host podcasts, but that’s another post.

If you want to know more about podasting, check out the links below, get in touch or come on one of our workshops!

I’m aware that it’s a little ironic to blog about podcasting, so I will eat my own dogfood and do a podcast version of this post soon.

(photo credits: All images downloaded from stock.xchng)