Category: Tech

Thinking More About Foo Camp

Rogers (via a comment and this post) and Stowe disagree with me about Foo Camp.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am deeply anti-gatekeeper and highly interested in inclusion for all in the blogosphere. Some tease me that I am talking my position, and that’s both fair and funny. But my position has been generally consistent regardless of my position on blogger’s hill.

Having said that for the record, Rogers and Stowe make some good points that I want to address.

My comment this morning was not intended to be a defense of Dave Winer specifically as much as a denunciation of cliques and exclusionary tactics that I honestly believe are better suited for kindergarten playgrounds than a medium populated by right-thinking adults. But Rogers’ explanation and Tim’s prior explanation make sense to me- at least with respect to Dave. I’m sure Dave would tell a different version of the story, but thus far I have not been able to get Dave’s side of the story beyond what he posted in the open letter that kick-started this conversation.

I would point out, however, that you can exclude a troublemaker without making your party an invitation only event. The exclusivity issue and the Dave issue are connected, but distinguishable.

Nevertheless, Stowe makes a good point:

“But, candidly, I don’t get it. Why can’t we have closed meetings? Can’t a company like O’Reilly invite a bunch of people to get together and talk about issues that are important to the company’s future business? Does everything they do have to be open to the public, just because they are influential?”

My answer is yes they can, as long as they don’t embrace, directly or indirectly, the implied flag of importance and exclusion that some attendees will proudly fly. To put it in another context, I am perfectly fine with the fact that rich people belong to exclusive country clubs, at least until they wave that fact in my face over and over. At that point the value of the club is not that they are in it, but that I am not.

When a Foo Camp invitation becomes the Black American Express Card of the blogosphere, then something is amiss and needs to be fixed. The card members don’t see it as a problem and so the criticisms have to begin from without. Can that sound like sour grapes? Absolutely. Is it? Probably yes in some cases and no in others.

The other, perhaps unavoidable, problem is once you decide that only certain people get invited based on subjective criteria, someone has to (or more often, gets to) decide who’s in and who’s out. It’s another example of the “who decides who decides” dilemma that I have written about. With the privilege of deciding comes both the responsibility to decide fairly and the opportunity to not.

The question becomes, given the theoretically open nature of the blogosphere and the potential for misuse, is it wise or even acceptable to continue to have exclusive conferences, or should the conferences be open to the public, with the adoption of rules to prevent disruption.

Stated another way, is it better to throw out the bathwater with the baby in the name of a cry-less experience for the lucky invitees, or is it better to address the baby and the bathwater separately?

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Morning Reading: 8/31/06

Thomas Hawk begins a living post about computer problems.  This is a good idea and it’s comforting to know that I’m not the only geek who gets whipped by his computer every now and then.  My personal burden is the power supply that is happy one moment and dead the next.  It’s especially fun when that happens on Friday night of a three-day weekend.  My solution- I have a spare power supply sitting in a box in my study.  In fact, at one point I had two spares.

I have longed for the union of Blackberry and Treo for so long that somehow this seems anticlimatic.  Why is this limited to the Treo 650?

 More RIAA foolishness: a suit against a woman who alleges she “has never even used, or even turned on, a computer.”

Rogers Cadenhead on a rumor that Warren Buffett got married. The Omaha World-Herald confirms.

This won’t be of interest to many, but it will be beloved by a few.  I came across a fantastic series (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) last night on the Nashville Rock Scene, post 1978.  People outside of Tennessee don’t realize it, but Nashville has a tremendous rock scene.  Of the bands mentioned, I watched Jason and the Nashville Scorchers, the Dusters, Raging Fire (the talented and delightful Melora Zaner worked for Microsoft last I heard), the White Animals, Web Wilder, and John Jackson and the Rhythm Rockers.  Others I would have mentioned include Dave Olney and John Scott Sherrill.  Wasn’t there also a band called the Shades that played at the Villager a lot?

Dave Winer posts on Foo Camp.  If people were really interested in effecting positive change, the blogosphere would get together and boycott invitiation-only throwbacks like Foo Camp.

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YouTube Lobs a Bomb at Facebook

Download Squad is reporting that YouTube, taking a page out of Google’s playbook, has launched a service to compete, at least on some level, with Facebook.

Colleges on YouTube is a closed community for college students. You must have an .edu email address to join. College students who are already members of YouTube under another email address can confirm their .edu address and gain admission to the community.

The list of colleges is limited at the moment, but more colleges will be added soon, according to a note on the Colleges on YouTube page.

What remains to be seen is what features other than uploading and commenting on videos will be offered by YouTube. If the college site looks like the rest of YouTube, then it will be more of an addition to Facebook than a direct competitor. If more features are added, it may be game on.

I think it’s a clever move on YouTube’s part to try to expand its reach into the social networking space, particularly for college age kids and recent graduates, almost all of whom seem to have some online networking presence.

I suspect more will be revealed about YouTube’s new venture in the coming days.

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9 Thoughts About 9 Thoughts

Shel Israel posted 9 random thoughts about blogging the other day. It’s an interesting list. Here are some thoughts.

1. Law of Diminishing Share

I hadn’t thought of it like that, but at first blush, this makes sense. Maybe that explains why some of the big fish keep trying to recreate the blogosphere in a manner than protects their position. On the other hand, my guess is that if you break the blogosphere into major interest groups (tech being the one most of us reside it), the law of diminishing share is mitigated. Yes Scoble and Mike and all those guys will reach a smaller percentage of the entire blogosphere over time, but the people who end up in the tech corner will still eventually find those guys. The bigger question is whether Scoble and Mike and all those guys will be able to capture the same percentage of new arrivals as subscribers.

2. The Buck’s Not There

I gave AdSense a try for about a month, and what I found is that it takes a buttload of pageviews to get a handful of clicks. I have been consistent in saying that trying to make money blogging is like trying to play in the NBA. It looks like a sweet gig, but very few people make it. In the blogosphere, unless the bloggers who control the mega-blogs get behind you and toss you a rope, you’re going to be, at most, a quick detour on their way to the bank.

3. Size Isn’t Relevance

I agree that who your readers are is more important that how many you have. One Om Malik is worth a thousand MySpace users. The fact of the matter is that, just like MySpace, the blogosphere depends on connections. All the talk about who links to who sometimes overshadows the more important function of links- serving as evidence of a mutual interest and the shared blogging experience. It’s hard not to view links as valuable in and of themselves, but I’d rather have one link from a dedicated blogger or journalist than 1000 from splogs and other non-conversational sites.

4. Give to Get

I think Shel’s three sentences sum up the process of building a blog as well as any I have ever read. Having said that, I think some of us could work a little harder at recognizing the contributions of newish bloggers. It takes about 5 seconds to add a relevant link to a post. People can say what they want, but too many people are far too stingy with their links. When you think about it for a second, that is both self-defeating and silly.

5. It’s the Conversation

I agree with the first part- I became a devotee of the Amy Gahran school of thought a long time ago- blogging is all about the conversation. Having said that, the fact that I live in Texas and not on the west coast shouldn’t be a huge impediment to becoming friends with Shel and other bloggers. Of course I’d like to see some of these folks in person, but that’s not always feasible. On a related note, I’m going to be in San Francisco in early November. I’d love to meet some of the guys I blog around with while I’m there. It will be interesting to see who takes me up on it (more about the trip in a later post).

6. Blogging is Multi-Sensory

I didn’t believe this for a long time. Now I do. Podcasting and other audio-video blog content are big now- and I’m convinced the trend is just starting.

7. Blogging is Like an Elephant

There’s no doubt about this. Sometimes I feel like the blogosphere is a warm and embracing place and other times I feel like it’s a club that I wouldn’t want to join even if I did get an invitation. The one thing I have concluded about the blogosphere is that, just like in real life, there are a lot more good talkers than good listeners. A good listener is a rare and wonderful thing.

8. ROI is Priceless

Like we talked about in my Who Do You Write For series, bloggers write for different reasons. I still contend that acceptance is a common denominator for all measures of success, but I fully agree that you can get a good return from blogging that doesn’t appear in link counts.

9. Any Blogger Can Be Heard

I don’t completely agree with this. I think the return on content investment in blogging is pretty low. Sure, if you are determined and patient, you can get a seat at the table, but it still strikes me as harder than it ought to be. Seth Finkelstein is probably the smartest person blogging today (forget about whether you agree with him and just look at the way he writes), but he has a hard time getting involved in day to day conversations. I have been blogging hard (hard, I tell you) since June 2005 (before that, I was merely using a blogging platform to manage content on my web page) and while I have scratched and clawed my way to decent link and reader numbers, I still feel like an outsider in the tech space. Most people will respond if I put a worthwhile post right in front of them, but I’m still not really part of the club. And, candidly, if I haven’t completely earned my stripes after all this time, is is reasonable to think that a brand new blogger could waltz up blogger’s hill and take a seat at the table without a lot of help from established mega-bloggers? Sure, it’s possible and it may happen, but the odds are strongly against it.

Those are my thoughts. What do you think?

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When the Echo You Hear is Not Your Voice

There’s a lot of good conversation going around today about eliminating the echo chamber- the blogosphere phenomenon where one person says something and tons of others more or less repeat it back to her in a responsive post, like some geek chorus. Chris Pirillo started things off with his 10 Ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber. Mathew Ingram, Darren Rowse and others added their thoughts.

echo chamberAvoiding the echo chamber is a blogospheric phrase than means write good, original and interesting content. It means doing more than just tossing up a link and saying “me too.” It’s the same principle that applies to old media writing- what’s interesting in print is interesting online, and vice versa.

But as many of the commentators point out, it’s hard.

It’s hard mostly because it’s just hard to write what I call the 10/90 post every day, or even every week. Additionally, a little echo is inherent in the written word. Unless you are writing a completely original thought, something inspired you to write your post. Since the person reading your post may not have read the post that inspired you, good writing skills and fairness require that you summarize and attribute your starting point.

The trick is to do it briefly, without making the summary the principal part of your post. It’s not always easy, but I try to summarize and attribute in no more than a few sentences. The first paragraph of this post is 3 sentences and 61 words long- and that might be stretching it. The important part is that, after the summary and attribution, you go on to add a new thought or perspective to the conversation- one that goes beyond restating what has already been said.

It would be a mistake, however, to take echo-avoidance too far, since doing so could lead to a failure to recognize those who laid the foundation for the discussion. It could also play into the hands of those who try to pervert the conversational nature of the blogosphere for their own purposes. It would be easy, as well as dishonest, for those who argue that links are dead to appropriate echo-avoidance to further their hidden agendas- which generally involve self-aggrandizement and control. Believe me, my children don’t fight over their favorite toys the way some of these people fight to maintain their self-proclaimed status in the blogosphere.

More importantly, links and affirmation are the way we listen to each other in the blogosphere. And for the new bloggers out there, the best way to get inbound links is to link like crazy to other good content.

The take away is that you can join existing conversations, link, summarize and attribute without creating an echo if you do it correctly. In fact, if you don’t try it, you have jumped from the echo chamber onto the island.

While I agree with much of Chris’s advice, I am troubled by his advice to stay away from your RSS feeds. For me and many others, the beauty of blogging is the distributed conversations it engenders. Don’t confuse conversation with echoes- they are not the same thing.

On the other hand, Chris’s advice to step outside your comfort zone is great advice. I can’t tell you the number of times I have made last minute edits of my posts in the name of comfort. While you need to be logical and at least somewhat consistent, the posts that make you the most uncomfortable are often the ones that generate the most conversation.

But there’s another aspect of the echo chamber that I find even more troubling- when the voice that comes back from the cave is not your voice, but that of someone else repeating what you said without attribution.

Shelley Powers has a post today about this very issue, in the context of that blogosphere country club equivalent, Foo Camp:

“I read in comments this week about how a recent attendee at Tim O’Reilly’s FOO camp was the originator of all the discussion about there not being enough women in tech conferences such as Tim’s camp. I was surprised, and yes, hurt to find out that it only takes about 6 months and 100 weblog posts or so to wipe out all I’ve written on this issue. It’s humbling to realize how easily you can be forgotten; humbling and clarifying because you realize that history in weblogging is fluid, and always being re-written; usually by the same proponents of how honest and decent this all is.”

An echo chamber is one thing, but assuming someone’s position in the debate is something else entirely. The former is not ideal. The latter is simply wrong.

Adding insult to the injury is when the assuming voice the tries to exclude the original voice from the conversation. Shelley continues:

“I also had to face this week the fact that my views are unwelcome in several weblogs and by several webloggers. It bothers me less to not be linked than to not be part of a discussion.”

It’s not gatekeeping- it’s worse.

I don’t know the specifics of the Foo Camp business because I don’t get invited either, but I have seen this sort of thing happen many times in the blogosphere. Sometimes it’s inadvertent, but sometimes it’s not.

So while I’m all about good writing and avoiding unnecessary echoes, let’s be thoughtful about it.

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Morning Reading: 8/30/06

Fred Wilson on Spiral Frog: “I actually don’t want free music, I want to pay for music without copy protection on it.”  Marshall Kirkpatrick‘s take: ” SpiralFrog will offer free downloads wrapped in a still undisclosed form of digital rights management technology. How tired.”   Amen brothers.

Finally, a thesis (and prize-winning at that) someone might actually read. (via John Dvorak)

From the Perky Little Article Department: 20 things you don’t know about death.

Here’s the 2006 Ultimate Developer and Power User Computers Utilities list.

URL Investigator looks like a pretty cool service.  Page ranks, whois, link counts and more.

LibraryThing– catalog your books online.

Zoli Erdos on the Wikipedia Enterprise 2.0 debate.

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Overtaken By Events: When Good Posts Go Bad

Dave Taylor and Amy Gahran are thinking about how and to what extent bloggers should edit or update blog posts when subsequent events cause the posts to be incomplete or inaccurate. Dave call this OBE, or overtaken by events.

Dave uses a timely example- yesterday’s news that the blogosphere’s favorite whack-job, John Karr, did not kill JonBenet Ramsey. Granted, it was obvious to many that he was very likely lying just to get attention long before yesterday. But at first the breaking story sounded promising. Dave wrote an early post about it that was later picked up by a newspaper. Once it was clear that Karr was not going to be charged, the question became what to do about the original post.

The accuracy of original posts is important, since many older posts continue to draw get traffic thanks to inbound links and search results. For example, my post on deed copy scams still gets a lot of traffic because of its place in search results.

Dave suggests adding an update to the bottom of the original post, with a link to a newspaper article or other content explaining the new developments. Amy reminds us that the blog’s feed will pick up the edit and republish the original post and suggests that to make it easier for your feed readers you put the update at the top. Everyone agrees that the changes should be made via an “Update” with an explanation, and not by simply editing the post to correct the content.

I think it’s a very good idea to edit stories that are still ripe, much the way Dave suggests. While I understand the logic behind Amy’s suggestion to put the Update at the top of the post, I think most people are conditioned to expect an update when an old post it republished in a feed. When I see a post for the second time, I scan down the page for an update. If I don’t see one, I assume it was a feed glitch or merely an edit to correct a typo (like I did yesterday when I was embarrassed to notice that I have been spelling Hugh‘s last name wrong).

I agree with Amy that traditional news stories are not as cast in stone as they might have appeared in the past. This blurring of the line between traditional and distributed media will continue as more and more old media embraces blogging, both as a platform and method of distribution. As such, I agree that traditional news stories, at least the online variety, should be updated as circumstances dictate and retitled as “Updated:” when republished. At a minimum, news stories, both the online and print versions, should have a list of edits at the bottom, ideally with a brief explanation.

It is harder to keep up with older posts, that are no longer ripe. In fact, when I look through my old archives, I often come across posts that I don’t remember writing. In those cases, I rely on the publication date and the intervening time period to lead the reader to understand that the article, while hopefully accurate when written, has been affected by subsequent events.

In order to promote and encourage the acceptance of distributed media, there needs to be some sort of de facto standard for editing and updating articles.

I’m glad people are thinking about it.

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Morning Reading: 8/29/06

Flickr now has geo tagging. I’m not that excited about it for my photos, but it could do wonders for guided tours of cities and other attractions. Zooomer has had geo tagging for some time. The next big feature should be audio tagging- hosted or linked audio files describing the photo or the location.

My dog has been after me for years to give him driving lessons.

Jeneane Sessum on the Attention Deficit Economy.

Dave Rogers and Seth Finkelstein on the divine right of kings.

Jim Thompson mines a YouTube gem. Someone should start a movement to get as many WWII veterans as possible to record their stories.

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Dave on the Why

Dave’s response to my why question.

I agree that blogging from a handheld via email is not a perfect solution either, which is why I rarely do it. For one thing, I don’t trust the email post to show up on my blog the way I intend it to. Plus, like Dave, I like to edit my posts, add links, etc. It’s hard to do that via email on a handheld. I suspect it’s also pretty hard to do it via blogging software on a handheld (maybe that’s why Dave didn’t link back to my post when answering my questions). In sum, neither posting via email nor posting via a handheld is anyone’s idea of a great time.

With one notable exception, I don’t generally share the need to blog in line at the store, on ski lifts, in restaurants, cabs, buses, etc. Having said that, if Blackberries had decent cameras, I can imagine posting interesting photos from time to time.

The bottom line is that I’m all for increasing the internet and blogging functionality of my Blackberry. I’m just not convinced that it’s something I’ll use much.

On the other hand, anything that can be done to allow easy access to text based content via a handheld will be appreciated. Getting quick, text based content via a handheld is a lot harder that it ought to be.

I’m sure Dave is hard at work on a Newsome.Org river. We’ll see how that looks and take it from there.

Two more questions for Dave:

First, I note that at 2:06 p.m. (EST), the most current story on the NYT river is from 10:38 a.m. Is this a time zone thing and, if not, is there a way to make the news river update faster?

Second, the top two posts are links to audio content, which I’m pretty sure you can’t play on a Blackberry. Is this just because those items happen to be in the NYT feed that feeds the river or are you adding audio content by design?

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Morning Reading: 8/28/06

While I love the show, I too was disappointed in the Deadwood season finale.

According to Download.Com, Yahoo Finance now has free streaming stock quotes. Note that streaming does not equate to real-time- they are still delayed by 15 minutes.

Jeneane Sessum to Robert Scoble: “Close the Dave Winer playbook and be yourself.” Sounds like good advice to me. Follow up.

And on the topic of Scoble, this post criticizing him for not allowing his content to be stolen and reused without attribution is either a weak stab at satire or the most ridiculous post ever. James Robertson agrees. Scoble responds. Thankfully, the offending blog seems to have been suspended by its ISP.

I missed the whole Lonelygirl15 debate, but Mathew Ingram has a good primer on it, including links to a couple of others speculating on whether this is a real person or some sort of viral marketing. I watched about 10 seconds of one episode on YouTube, and lost interest- in the video itself. But it does occur to me that too much artifice in the name of viral marketing would dilute the beauty of video blogging as a medium.

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