blogtalk – Climb to the Stars

Being My Own Travel Agent With Kayak [en]

[fr] En mars, je vais en Irlande, puis à Austin (Texas), puis à San Francisco. Ça fait pas mal de vols à organiser. L'agence de voyage que j'ai contactée me propose un circuit à CHF 2800. En utilisant Kayak, j'arrive (non sans mal, sueur, et heures investies) à faire le tour pour CHF 1650.

Cet article est le récit de la façon dont j'ai procédé.

I have some **serious travel** planned for March.

First, I go to Cork, Ireland, for [Blogtalk](http://2008.blogtalk.net/) and the preceding [WebCamp on Social Network Portability](http://webcamp.org/SocialNetworkPortability), from 2nd to 4th.

Then, I head for Austin, Texas for [SXSW Interactive](http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/), from 7th-11th.

I’ll be **speaking** in both places.

As I’m in the States, I’ll then head out to spend two weeks or so in San Francisco. Here are what my travel dates and destinations look like:

– 1st: GVA-ORK (ORK is Cork, yes, funny)
– 6th: ORK-AUS
– 12th: AUS-SFO
– 25th: SFO-GVA

I chose the 25th to go back because it seems to be the cheapest day around there. The other dates are fixed by hotel or event constraints.

After fooling around with [Kayak.com](http://kayak.com) for a fair number of hours, and finding it a little confusing (I’ll detail below in what way), I caved in and **called a travel agent** in Lausanne to ask them to sort it out for them.

They got back to me, speedily and kindly, but with a surprising price tag: **2800 CHF** for the whole thing. That’s $2400 for those of you who like dollars.

Now, even though I wasn’t very happy with what I came up on Kayak, I had figured out that this trip would cost me around about 1200$. Not the double.

So, **back to Kayak**. In the process, I’m starting to get the hang of how to do searches for long, nasty, complicated journeys, so I thought I’d share it with you.

A side issue before I start, though: flights to and from the USA have a **much more generous luggage allowance** than flights elsewhere (20kg + cabin luggage). If the first leg of a journey to the USA is inside Europe, though, you still get the “US” luggage allowance for that flight. I was hoping I could make things work out to have the more generous luggage allowance for the GVA-ORK part of my trip too, as I tend to have trouble travelling light (particularly for 3 weeks). But it seems that won’t happen.

As I understand it from the kind explanations a few people have given me, the GVA-ORK part of my journey is considered a completely separate one from ORK-AUS, AUS-SFO, and then SFO-GVA. In short, I’m dealing with **four separate flights**.

So, let’s do the obvious thing first, and **ask Kayak.com to do all the work**. My dates are fixed, but I’m open to the idea of using nearby airports. This is what I gave Kayak.com:

And here is what I got:

Oops. It seems Geneva dropped off the map. If I select the “neighbouring” airport LYS (Lyon), I get this. Slightly more encouraging, but…

…slightly expensive. Roughly what my travel agent told me, actually. Gosh, I wonder which part of the journey is costing so much? **Let’s try and break things down.**

**First, GVA-ORK:**

Wow, is that their best price? $384 and 9 hours of travel to go from Switzerland to Ireland? I should be able to find something better. So, I hunted around a bit on my own. I know I can get to London for around $100 or less with [easyJet](http://easyjet.com), so what about the other low-costs? From the Cork airport site, I got a [list of airlines flying there](http://www.corkairport.com/flight_info/airlines.html). Then I went to individual airline sites — I’ll pass you the details, save to say that [RyanAir](http://ryanair.com) has got some “virtually free” flights (1 penny + taxes) but as they only allow 15kg of check-in luggage (I can make sacrifices and try to stick to 20, but 15 is really low), flight + excess luggage fee actually comes down to not-that-cheap.

Oh, wait a sec! Let’s enlist Kayak’s help for this. Here are GVA-LON flights, according to Kayak:

That’s helpful, actually. I wouldn’t have thought to check [BA](http://ba.com). The flight is way too early, though. And Kayak.com now gives results with European low-cost airlines — I don’t recall it did this early December when I first tried.

What about LON-ORK?

I removed RyanAir from the results (they were the cheapest, around $48 — plus extra luggage tax!), and the winner is… [Aer Lingus](http://aerlingus.com)!

So, if I manage to get the timings right, and accept that I’ll have to pick up my luggage and check in again in London, I should be able to get a better deal than the $384 Kayak suggested “out of the box”.

Oh, another idea. Let’s tell Kayak I’m flying through London, and see what happens. Here are the results for GVA-LON-ORK:

Still no luck. The first flight is the same as the one I got when I asked for GVA-ORK. Clearly, Kayak introduces constraints (like… airlines must be working together) when asked for a trip. That probably explains why my total trip seems so horrendously expensive.

Right, now we’ve dealt (more or less — at least there seems to be hope) with the first part of the journey, let’s look at the rest.

**ORK-AUS-SFO-GVA:**

ORK-AUS: $509

AUS-SFO: $125

SFO-GVA: $530

Adding all that up, we’re quite far from the $2400 my travel agent or Kayak suggest for the whole flight.

Now, let’s dig in a little further. How about I ask Kayak for ORK-AUS-SFO-GVA? I’ve already identified that the GVA-ORK part was problematic, so maybe… maybe:

$1029! And all with American Airlines! That sounds nice. Add to that a bit less than $200 for the GVA-ORK bit, and I should manage to do all this flying for roughly $1200. Much more reasonable (though still a big hole in my ~~bank account~~ credit card, given the sad state of my finances these days).

So, ready for the details? Because, no, in case you were wondering, the fun doesn’t stop here. Sick around, there’s still work to do.

**First, GVA-LON-ORK.**

London has a problem: it has too many airports. Aer Lingus fly out of LHR to Cork, so ideally, I should plan to arrive there. I don’t think I want to go through the fun of commuting from one airport to another if I can avoid it.

That unfortunately rules out easyJet, who don’t fly to LHR. They fly to LGW, Luton, Stansted, but not LHR. So, let’s check out BA, who were actually cheaper (though at an ungodly hour, and for LGW).

Right, so for 144 CHF, I get to fly out around 10am, which is actually quite nice. I land around 11am. Let’s look at Aer Lingus flights to ORK, then:

I’m very tempted to take the 14:05 flight instead of the 18:05 one, **but**. That would leave me with only 3 hours in LHR to get my luggage, go from terminal 1 to terminal 4, and check in again. The London crew on Twitter tells me it’s a little tight, though others seem to think it’s OK.

So, well, that would be it for the first part of the journey.

Now for the rest.

**Then, ORK-AUS-SFO-GVA.**

Here are the details I get from Kayak for this multi-city journey:

As you can see, American Airlines seem to like Chicago airport, ORD. [Dennis Howlett](http://twitter.com/dahowlett) warns me against going through that airport, but it seems the other options are going to cost me an extra $1000.

But that’s not all. What exactly are the “layovers” here? I’d assume they are plane changes. But 55 minutes in Chicago and 1h35 in Brussels on my way back don’t really seem to allow time for that. Chances are I’d miss the connection — but then why would Kayak.com (and AA!) suggest this kind of combination?

It’s not the end of the world if I get home a day late, so I guess that for $1000, I’ll take my chances.

Let’s not stop there, though, shall we? I decided to dig a bit deeper into all this. See, for example, I tried asking Kayak.com about:

AUS-SFO-GVA: $1669

Why isn’t Kayak coming up with one of the (obviously cheaper) combinations for the SFO-GVA leg? Why is BA suddenly the cheapest option? I don’t get it.

See, for example, this flight option for SFO-GVA, $550, is much more exciting than the AA one via ORD and Brussels:

Just one change in Newark. And it’s a shorter overall flight, too.

That means I need to get the ORK-AUS-SFO part separate. Let’s look at it now:

The cheapest deal is $624 with AA and Frontier, which is an immediate (and logical! what a surprise!) combination of the two cheapest deals for ORK-AUS and AUS-SFO taken separately. I don’t seem to gain anything (financially) by booking them together.

Now, the problem here is that the flight times are really long (20h). I’m quite tempted to force my journey through some European city other than London and see what happens.

A quick trip to the Austin airport site seems to say there are [no direct flights there outside the US](http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/austinairport/nonstops.htm). I can’t find that kind of information for DFW, unfortunately. I’m keeping an eye on [DFW](http://www.dfwairport.com/) because I could land there and take a road trip to Austin with a friend. It’s 3.5 hours on the road, though, so I need a flight that lands early enough.

For example, let’s take Dublin, as I’m already in Ireland.

Here are Kayak flights from DUB to AUS: most interesting deal $484 with Delta for a 19h flight:

Come to think of it, you know what I’d like? I’d like to be able to place all the flights on a chart, with for example “price” on the x-axis and “total flight duration” on the y-axis. I’d be willing to pay $50 extra or so to cut of a certain number of hours of travel, but as of now there is no way to visualise this kind of thing easily. The “Matrix” tab in Kayak has a promising name, but all it does is give best price and number of stops per airline. Not very exciting.

What about ORK-DUB? Well, the fine folks at Blogtalk recommend [Aer Arann](http://2008.blogtalk.net/travelling) (they have a great “travelling” page, btw, I’ll have to take example on them for [Going Solo](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/announcing-going-solo/):

Cheap flight, $36. What would Kayak say?

Well, RyanAir is cheaper but I don’t want them, and the Aer Arann flights are there, but a bit more expensive than what I found. Hidden costs, maybe? Or maybe just an update glitch — I’m aware it’s difficult to keep everything perfectly in sync.

Gah. This is turning into another nasty headache.

Let’s go back to letting Kayak take care of ORK-AUS-SFO. I had a look at flights from [Shannon](http://www.shannonairport.com/), but the price difference is not worth the couple of hours by bus to get there. I also considered SAT (San Antonio) but it’s really out of Austin, so not interesting. I’m willing to fly in another airport than SFO though.

Sidenote: this is where I discover I can “favorite” flights in Kayak. I should have started doing that hours ago. So, here’s the flight I’m favoriting for the ORK-AUS segment. I don’t want to land at 12:15am in Austin, so the choice is easy to make. Will have to get up early in Cork, though. Ugh.

You know what would be really cool? If I search for ORK-AUS-SFO, I’d like Kayak to let me know which flight combinations contain that flight I’ve favorited. I wonder if it does that. Let’s see! But before that, I’ll go and favorite the flight I want for heading over to San Francisco. So, here is what Kayak gave me for that segment, remember?

The cheapest flight is $125, but if you have a close look, you’ll see that all these are either dreadfully early, or quite late. I’d rather leave sometime later in the morning. Luckily, Kayak provides a “filter” that allows me to select that. (Remember, earlier on, I was wondering why Kayak was suggesting routes with 55min stopovers? Well, there’s a “stopover length” filter too that I could have used to avoid that.) Here’s what happens if I decide to leave between 8 and 10am:

For roughly $200, I get to sleep a bit more. This is another case where the price/something-or-other graph would come in handy: it would help me visualise how much I have to pay to leave later. (I’m learning to factor in cab fares and stuff like that when making flight decisions.)

So, back to our combined ORK-AUS-SFO trip:

By playing with the time sliders for flights 1 and 2, I managed to filter out the flights that didn’t contain my two favourites (at no surprise, Kayak doesn’t tell me that this “multiple flight” actually contains a single flight that I favourited… too bad). Result: $695 and decent flying times.

**So, let’s recap.** (I’m going to be doing the actual booking tomorrow, it’s getting late and I’m tired, which is usually a recipe for mistakes. Also, the prices the airlines and Kayak give could be slightly different, so this is an approximation.)

GVA-LHR: BA, $125
LHR-ORK: Aer Lingus, $60

That’s $185 for me to go to Cork.

ORK-AUS-SFO: AA and Frontier, $695

SFO-GVA: United and Qatar, $550

Total: $1430 = 1650CHF

That’s a bit more than what it seemed I’d get away with at first, but there are less stopovers and the flying times are nicer than the cheapest deal. That’s worth a couple hundred $.

So, thanks Kayak. That’s more than 1000CHF less than my travel agent came up with. But God, did I have to work hard for it. There is definitely room for improvement in the business of helping people sort out their travels.

While I was writing this post and [twittering about my trials](http://twitter.com/stephtara), [Bill O’Donnel](http://egopoly.com/) (find him [on Twitter](http://twitter.com/agentbillo), he’s the Chief Architect at Kayak!) sent me a message saying he [wanted to read my post](http://twitter.com/agentbillo/statuses/524594472) when I was done. He also added that he was [forwarding my twitters to the UI team](http://twitter.com/agentbillo/statuses/524596032). So, guys, hope you enjoy the free [experiential marketing](http://climbtothestars.org/focus/experiential-marketing/)! In a way, only — it’s not really an experiential marketing campaign because nobody asked me to do anything, but this is typically the kind of stuff I *would* write up in such a campaign, and an example of *authentic user behaviour* that experiential marketing “re-creates”.

So anyway, hope you enjoy this tale of user experience. And I also hope my fellow travellers will find useful input here to help them sort out their travels.

Thanks to everybody who answered or simply put up with my numerous questions and tweets during the process of sorting out this trip.

BlogTalk 2008 Proposal — Being Multilingual: Blogging in More Than One Language [en]

Here’s the proposal I just sent for [BlogTalk 2008](http://2008.blogtalk.net/) (Cork, Ireland, March 3-4):

> The strongest borders online are linguistic. In that respect, people who are comfortable in two languages have a key “bridge” role to play. Blogging is one of the mediums through which this can be done.

> Most attempts at bilingual (or multilingual) blogging fall in three patterns:

> – separate and independent blogs, one per language
> – one blog with proper translation of all content, post by post
> – one blog with posts sometimes in one language, sometimes in another

> These different strategies and other attempts (like community-driven translation) to use blogging as a means to bridge language barriers are worth examining in closer detail.

> Considering that most people do have knowledge (at least passive, even if incomplete) of more than one language, multilingual blogging could be much more common than it is now. The tools we use, however, assume that blogs and web pages are in a single language. Many plugins, however, offer solutions to adapt existing tools like WordPress to the needs of multilingual bloggers. Could we go even further in building tools which encourage multilingualism rather than hindering it?

> —-
> Extra material:

> I’ve gathered pointers to previous talks and writings on the topic here: [http://climbtothestars.org/focus/multilingual](http://climbtothestars.org/focus/multilingual) — most of them are about multilingualism on the internet in general, but this proposal is for a talk much more focused on blogging. Here is a video of the first talk I gave in this series (by far not the best, I’m afraid!) [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2096847420084039011](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2096847420084039011) and which was about multilingual blogging — it can give you an idea of what this talk could look like, though I’ve refined my thinking since then and have now fallen in the grips of presentation slides. I also intend to base my talk on real-world examples of what bloggers are doing in the field.

> Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you would like more details for evaluating this proposal.

We had a long discussion on IRC about the fact that the submission process required a 2-page paper for a talk (in all honesty, for me, almost the same amount of sweat and tears as preparing the talk itself — I’ll let you figure that one out yourself). BlogTalk is a conference which aims to bridge the space between academics and practitioners, and a 2-page paper, I understood, was actually a kind of compromise compared to the usual 10-15 page papers academics send in when they want to speak at conferences.

The form was changed, following this discussion, to make the inclusion of the paper optional. Of course, this might reflect badly on proposals like mine or [Stowe’s](http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2007/11/proposal-for-bl.html) which do not include a paper. We’ll see!

I’ll also be speaking on [structured portable social networks](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/08/16/we-need-structured-portable-social-networks-spsn/) during the workshop on [social network portability](http://webcamp.org/SocialNetworkPortability), the day before the conference.

A l'étranger jusqu'au 4 [fr]

[en] Off for Shift and Blogtalk. Be back on the 4th. Catch me by e-mail or SMS if you need to communicate.

[Comme prévu](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/08/29/travel-plans), je serai absente jusqu’au 4 (conférences [Shift à Lisbonne](http://wiki.shift.pt/) puis [BlogTalk à Vienne](http://blogtalk.net/)).

Pour me joindre durant ce temps, e-mail et SMS sont les moyens les plus appropriés.

Petite anecdote dans le genre “j’y crois pas”: train Lausanne-Genève, 9h du matin. J’ai enlevé mes tongs et je me suis roulée en boule sur le fauteuil pour vaguement faire la sieste. Le contrôleur vient gentiment m’expliquer que je ne peux pas mettre mes pieds (même tout roses et fraîchement douchés) sur la banquette sans utiliser un papier de protection. Il est sympa, il a amené une serviette en papier et la dispose sur le siège au bon endroit.

Par contre, mon sac de voyage qui a traîné sur des sols plus que douteurs, il n’a pas besoin de papier de protection, lui. J’ai fini le voyage les pieds de retour dans mes tongs.

Banalités: shopping en ville [fr]

[en] A few hours shopping in town. Won't make for fascinating reading, I warn you.

Retour d’une balade en ville, dont le but premier était d’acheter mon billet de train pour rentrer à temps de Vienne ([BlogTalk](http://blogtalk.net “Conférence sur les blogs, 2-3 octobre.”)) pour la journée des responsables informatiques vaudois du 4 octobre. Du coup, allez, un petit détour par la FNAC pour ramasser le [pilote de Battlestar Galactica](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314979/) que j’avais commandé il y quelque temps. La FNAC, c’est fatal — impossible d’en ressortir en moins d’une heure. Je traine dans le coin des séries TV, [Les Experts (CSI)](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247082/) c’est trop cher, 90.- la saison — pire que [Stargate](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118480/) ou [X-Files](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106179/) que j’ai renoncé à acquérir à cause de leur prix. [Farscape](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0187636/) coûte toujours 269.- la saison et je ne comprends pas pourquoi.

J’ai pris le bus pour aller en ville. Du coup, les manchettes de [20minutes](http://20minutes.ch) avec leur [“serial pédophile”](http://www.20min.ch/ro/suisse/story/16368962) m’ont suivies durant toute ma promenade. J’espère que l’expression “serial pédophile” vous fait autant rire que moi (un peu jaune, bien sûr, et en faisant totalement abstraction de ce à quoi il fait référence).

Un petit saut chez Krieg (j’arrive toujours pas à dire “[Kramer-Krieg](http://www.kramerkrieg.ch/)”) pour chercher le coupe-papier que j’avais commandé et dont on m’a annoncé l’arrivée dans le courrier de ce matin. Je ne sais pas si coupe-papier c’est le bon mot, c’est une guillotine sans guillotine, si vous voyez ce que je veux dire. Et si non, euh, c’est pas comme si c’était vraiment très important.

L’autre motivation officielle de mon expédition urbaine de ce matin était l’acquisition d’un sac à main plus grand que celui qui m’accompagne depuis quelques années. En effet, si l’on ajoute l'[iPod](http://www.apple.com/chfr/ipod/ipod.html “Mon dernier jouet.”) et le [Hipster PDA](http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-pda/) sont venus rejoindre l’appareil de photo, mon cahier de notes et tout mon chenit de fille… Voilà. Conclusion définitive sur la question tirée hier soir lorsque j’ai dû vider la moitié dudit sac à main pour payer une rissole à la viande (dingue, maintenant vous savez même ce que j’ai mangé). Du coup, j’ai décidé d’en acheter un qui serait juste assez grand pour contenir [le MacBook](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bunny/212512075/), parce que j’en ai franchement marre de me promener avec deux sacs la moitié du temps.

Surprise: à peu près le premier sac que je vois à la Migros fait parfaitement l’affaire. Juste la bonne taille, noir, il a l’air solide, quelques poches intérieures, pas cher. Et j’hésite, parce que prendre une décision, pour moi, ça veut dire peur d’avoir fait une erreur, mais bon, je me donne un coup de pied mental aux fesses et je passe à la caisse. C’était le premier arrêt de mes courses, ça commençait bien.

Quoi d’autre? Eh bien oui, depuis le temps que mon téléphone mobile rend l’âme, passons à l'[Orange Shop](http://www.orange.ch/vrtmobilephones)! J’y étais déjà passée une fois il y un bout de temps, et j’étais repartie toujours aussi indécise: je veux un téléphone mobile qui prenne de bonnes photos, avec lequel je puisse aussi faire de la vidéo, et qui corresponde encore à tout un tas de critères impossibles à vérifier sans utiliser le téléphone durant une semaine. Bref, tout ce qu’il faut pour rendre le choix impossible.

Cette fois-ci, pas de bol, je tombe sur le pauvre gars qui est juste là une semaine pour remplacer. Après l’avoir méchamment embêté avec des histoires de qualité photo (“Non, la qualité ce n’est pas les mégepixels, ça c’est la taille”) et d’offres (“Comment ça, je dois payer minimum 20.- pour chaque offre à laquelle j’ai droit? Je peux pas avoir de téléphone ‘gratuit’?”), j’ai pris un magazine (histoire de découvrir les tarifs MMS et UMTS par moi-même) et remarqué qu’il y avait un coin info où l’on pouvait surfer tout seul sur le site [orange.ch](http://orange.ch) afin de voir les téléphones à disposition. Malheur de misère, impossible de me connecter à [Mon Compte](https://www.orange.ch/vrtmyaccount) pour voir de moi-même à quelles offres j’ai droit, je me retrouve sur la page d’accueil en allemand lorsque j’essaie de taper mon mot de passe.

Découragée et un peu assoiffée, je remets le cap sur la maison pour étudier tout ça depuis chez moi. En chemin, [MobileZone](http://www.mobilezone.ch/). Allez, je suis plus à ça près. On va leur demander aussi. Quel contraste! La vendeuse savait exactement de quoi elle parlait (je déteste quand les vendeurs répondent à mes questions en lisant les descriptifs des articles pour trouver les réponses — ce n’était pas du tout le cas ici), m’a confirmé dans mon pré-choix de téléphone, et a vérifié que j’avais en effet droit à une offre pour celui-ci qui ne correspondait pas à ce qu’on m’avait dit dans l’Orange Shop. Elle m’a même laissé tester la compatibilité du téléphone avec mon MacBook (que j’avais avec moi, pour choisir un sac de bonne taille, vous vous souvenez?) Je suis donc repartie avec un [Nokia 6280](http://www.nokia.ch/french/phones/phone_models/6280/index.html) tout neuf et un grand sourire!

Je sais à quoi je vais passer mon après-midi…

Travel Plans [en]

[fr] Prochains voyages: Lisbonne puis Vienne à la fin du mois de septembre, et peut-être l'Inde cet hiver si j'ai les sous.

– (25)26-30th September: [Shift](http://wiki.shift.pt/) in Lisbon, Portugal
– 1st-3rd October: [BlogTalk](http://blogtalk.net/) in Vienna, Austria

I’ve more or less got the trip to Lisbon and the return from Vienna sorted out. I’m in trouble for getting from Lisbon to Vienna during the week-end without emptying my bank account. Anybody else doing this? Got ideas where I should look? (Trains, planes, coaches?)

I’m also tempted to go to India for two months over December-January (get back here in time for [Lift](http://lift07.org/) early February). The problem there is finances: I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to afford it. One idea would be to try and get some consulting work over there (Delhi, Pune, Bangalore…) — if the rates in the industry are worth it. Anybody know what opportunities a videshi bloggy consultant might find there?

Do speak up if we’re going to be in the same place at the same time!

Ces blogueurs qui arrêtent… [fr]

Pourquoi les weblogueurs cessent-ils de bloguer? Par manque de lectorat, certes, mais je me demande si une attitude de l’ordre de “que vais-je donc écrire sur mon blog aujourd’hui” ne joue également un rôle dans le risque d’abandon de weblog.

[en] Why do bloggers stop blogging? As Stefan mentioned at BlogTalk, lack of readership and feedback is certainly a factor in weblog abandonment. Remembering a question I answered the day before the conference on a weblog survey, I wonder if a "what am I going to blog today" attitude doesn't increase the risk of weblog abandonment (as opposed to bloggers who just have stuff in their head that needs to get out.) What do you think?

Ça revient régulièrement sur le devant de la scène: le blog-blues. Tel ou tel ferme son weblog, arrête de bloguer, quitte la blogosphère à grands fracas (pour parfois revenir ensuite) ou s’en va à pas de souris. Pourquoi les blogueurs arrêtent-ils?

Lors de BlogTalk, Stefan Glänzer s’est posé la question: Does Blogging Suck?

Sur 20six.de, il semblerait que 82% des bloguers abandonnent leur weblog au bout de quelques mois.

Sans lecteurs, on ferme. Epitaphes-type:

Y’a quelqu’un?
test test test
J’ai besoin d’une pause… je reviendrai… à un moment ou un autre

Je vois cependant souvent des weblogs “bien lus” fermer. C’est en général de ceux-là qu’on entend parler, inévitablement — les lecteurs se plaignent! La grandeur du lectorat n’est certainement pas le seul facteur, et j’ai ma petite hypothèse sur la question.

En écoutant la conférence de Stefan, j’ai repensé au questionnaire sur les weblogs que j’avais rempli le soir précédant. Une des questions m’a frappée — elle disait à peu près ceci: “Lesquelles des sources suivantes consultez-vous régulièrement afin d’y trouver des choses à bloguer?” (suivait une liste de genre de sites susceptibles de servir d’inspiration au bloguer qui en manquerait).

Et là , je me suis retrouvée perplexe. Je ne vais jamais à la recherche de matière à bloguer! Je ne me demande jamais de quoi je pourrais bien parler aujourd’hui. Soit il y a quelque chose qui me trotte dans la tête et je l’écris (ou pas), soit il n’y a rien et je n’écris rien. Jamais je ne vais activement chercher un sujet de billet.

Je me demande donc s’il y aurait pas une corrélation entre cette attitude (“chercher quoi bloguer”) et le risque d’abandon du weblog.

Qu’en pensez-vous? En ce qui vous concerne, est-ce que vous cherchez des sujets de billet, ou bien est-ce qu’ils “viennent à vous”? Vous demandez-vous ce que vous allez bien pouvoir écrire aujourd’hui? Ce que vous avez à dire à ce sujet m’intéresse grandement.

The Lee Bryant Experiment [en]

An account of the “Lee Bryant Experiment”, where I posted his write-up of his talk into SubEthaEdit bit by bit as he was talking. Some ideas about note-taking, talking, presentations, and write-ups.

[fr] Lorsque Lee Bryant a donné sa conférence à BlogTalk, j'ai collé la version écrite de ce qu'il disait dans SubEthaEdit, à mesure qu'il parlait. Cela paraissait une idée intéressante à expérimenter quand j'ai offert de le faire, mais l'expérience n'était pas concluante. Cela m'a cependant amené à m'interroger sur les rôles respectifs du discours proprement dit, du support visuel (dias, présentation), de la prise de notes, et de la publication par écrit du contenu d'une conférence.

So, what was this “Lee Bryant Experiment” I was talking about? No, we did not replace Mr. Bryant by a cyborg-lee during the conference so that he could go and have coffee during his own talk. We simply pushed the whole collaborative note-taking experience one step futher.

Lee mentioned during the first afternoon or BlogTalk that his talk was a bit long, and that he was debating whether to rush thr0ugh it or cut stuff out. I of course suggested cutting things out, but then, that meant that some of the things he wanted to say would not reach the audience. Then we had this idea: paste a written, more detailed, version of his talk into SubEthaEdit while he was talking. I offered to do it. We would annotate his notes, and then stick it all up on the wiki. It sounded like a great idea, and a fun thing to do.

I had a few doubts about it in the morning (so had Lee), worried that it would divert the “note-taker’s” attention from what he was actually saying. However, we decided to go ahead and do it, to see what happened.

I didn’t have much trouble keeping up with Lee’s talk and slides and pasting chunks of his text into the common document as he talked. However, I quickly noticed that this completely killed the note-taking. And it got me thinking.

Was that a problem? Is note-taking important, if you get a transcript or detailed paper of the talk afterwards? I think it is. I think that note-taking as a process is important. I know I listen differently whether I am taking notes or not. There is something to be said for reformulating what you’re listening to on the fly. To me, it clearly aids the integration of what is being said. Now, to what extent does collaborative note-taking defeat that? Open question.

Notes are also more succint than the presentation. One interest of note-taking for me is that I summarize in quickly-readable form what I got out of the presentation. Great for refreshing memories.

So yes, I think that was a problem. I don’t think it’s a good idea to give the audience too much text to read during a talk. That goes for slides too. For me, slides should give visual cues to help the audience keep track of where we are in the talk, and what is being said. They shouldn’t contain “stuff to read while you listen” — you can’t read and listen at the same time. If slides are content-heavy, then the talk should be a comment of the slides, and not something done “in parallel with the slides in the background.”

I think a written version of a talk, especially if it is more detailed than the talk itself, should never be made available before or during a talk. I was told that, by the way, in the 3-day project management course I followed while I was at Orange: when presenting something, don’t hand anything out to people unless you want them to stop listening to you.

What would have made more sense, in hindsight, would have been to put up the written version of Lee’s talk on the wiki in parallel with the notes we would have taken, and allow people to comment the paper. Another thing to try, maybe, would be to put only the outline in the SubEthaEdit document — but then, I noticed that when people are writing they rarely scroll down to see what is written below in the document. Note-taking in a text editor does tend to remain a pretty linear operation.

To summarize, I would say that for me, this experiment was a failure. It was not a failure in the sense that we managed to do what had planned to do, and that it worked, but it was a failure in the sense that what we did failed to give any added value to Lee’s talk.

Think otherwise? Open to discussion.

Life and Trials of a Multilingual Weblog [en]

Here is an explanation of how I set up WordPress to manage my bilingual weblog. I give all the code I used to do it, and announce some of the things I’d like to implement. A “Multilingual blogging” TopicExchange channel is now open.

[fr] J'explique ici quelles sont les modifications que j'ai faites à WordPress pour gérer le bilinguisme de mon weblog -- code php et css à l'appui. Je mentionne également quelques innovations que j'ai en tête pour rendre ce weblog plus sympathique à mes lecteurs monolingues (ce résumé en est une!) Un canal pour le weblogging multilingue a été ouvert sur TopicExchange, et vous y trouverez peut-être d'autres écrits sur le même sujet. Utilisez-le (en envoyant un trackback) si vous écrivez des billets sur le multinguisme dans les weblogs!

My weblog is bilingual, and has been since November 2000. Already then, I knew that I wouldn’t be capable of producing a site which duplicates every entry in two languages.

I think this would defeat the whole idea of weblogging: lowering the “publication barrier”. I feel like writing something, I quickly type it out, press “Publish”, and there we are. Imposing upon myself to translate everything just pushes it back up again. I have seen people try this, but I have never seen somebody keep it up for anything nearing four years (this weblog is turning four on July 13).

This weblog is therefore happily bilingual, as I am — sometimes in English, sometimes in French. This post is about how I have adapted the blogging tools I use to my bilingualism, and more importantly, how I can accommodate my monolingual readers so that they also feel comfortable here.

First thing to note: although weblogging tools are now ready to be used by people speaking a variety of languages (thanks to a process named “localization”), they remain monolingual. Language is determined at weblog-level.

With Movable Type, I used categories to emulate post-level language awareness. This wasn’t satisfying at all: I ended up with to monstrous categories, Français and English, which didn’t help keep rebuild times down.

With WordPress, the solution is far more satisfying: I store the language information as Post Meta, or “custom field”. No more category exploitation for something they shouldn’t be used for.

Before I really got started doing the exciting stuff, I made a quick change to the WordPress admin interface. If I was going to be adding a “language” custom field to each and every post of mine, I didn’t want to be doing it with the (imho) rather clumsy “Custom Fields” form.

In edit.php, just after the categorydiv fieldset, I inserted the following:

<fieldset id="languagediv">
      <legend>< ?php _e('Language') ?></legend>
	  <div><input type="text" name="language" size="7"
                     tabindex="2" value="en" id="language" /></div>
</fieldset>

(You’ll probably have to move around your tabindex values so that the tabbing order makes sense to you.)

I also tweaked the wp-admin.css file a bit to keep it looking reasonably pretty, adding the rule below:

#languagediv {
	height: 3.5em;
	width: 5em;
}

and adding #languagediv everywhere I could see #poststatusdiv, so that they obeyed the same rules.

In this way, I have a small text field to edit to set the language. I pre-set it to “en”, and have just to change it to “fr” if I am writing in French.

We just need to add a little piece of code in the form processing script, post.php, just after the line that says add_meta($post_ID):

 // add language
	if(isset($_POST['language']))
	{
	$_POST['metakeyselect'] = 'language';
        $_POST['metavalue'] = $_POST['language'];
        add_meta($post_ID);
        }

The first thing I do with this language information is styling posts differently depending on the language. I do this by adding a lang attribute to my post <div>:

<div class="post" lang="<?php $post_language=get_post_custom_values("language"); $the_language=$post_language['0']; print($the_language); ?>">

In the CSS, I add these rules:

div.post:lang(fr) h2.post-title:before {
  content: " [fr] ";
  font-weight: normal;
}

div.post:lang(en) h2.post-title:before {
  content: " [en] ";
  font-weight: normal;
}

div.post:lang(fr)
{
background-color: #FAECE7;
}

I also make sure the language of the date matches the language of the post. For this, I added a new function, the_time_lg(), to my-hacks.php. I then use the following code to print the date: <?php the_time_lg($the_language); ?>.

Can more be done? Yes! I know I have readers who are not bilingual in the two languages I use. I know that at times I write a lot in one language and less in another, and my “monolingual” readers can get frustrated about this. During a between-session conversation at BlogTalk, I suddenly had an idea: I would provide an “other language” excerpt for each of my posts.

I’ve been writing excerpts for each of my posts for the last six months now, and it’s not something that raises the publishing barrier for me. Quickly writing a sentence or two about my post in the “other language” is something I can easily do, and it will at least give my readers an indication about what is said in the posts they can’t understand. This is the first post I’m trying this with.

So, as I did for language above, I added another “custom field” to my admin interface (in edit-form.php). Actually, I didn’t stop there. I also added the field for the excerpt to the “simple controls” posting page that I use (set that in Options > Writing), and another field for keywords, which I also store for each post as meta data. Use at your convenience:

<!-- BEGIN BUNNY HACK -->
<fieldset style="clear:both">
<legend><a href="http://wordpress.org/docs/reference/post/#excerpt"
title="<?php _e('Help with excerpts') ?>"><?php _e('Excerpt') ?></a></legend>
<div><textarea rows="1" cols="40" name="excerpt" tabindex="5" id="excerpt">
<?php echo $excerpt ?></textarea></div>
</fieldset>

<fieldset style="clear:both">
<legend><?php _e('Other Language Excerpt') ?></legend>
<div><textarea rows="1" cols="40" name="other-excerpt"
tabindex="6" id="other-excerpt"></textarea></div>
</fieldset>

<fieldset style="clear:both">
<legend><?php _e('Keywords') ?></legend>
<div><textarea rows="1" cols="40" name="keywords" tabindex="7" id="keywords">
<?php echo $keywords ?></textarea></div>
</fieldset>
<!-- I moved around some tabindex values too -->
<!-- END BUNNY HACK -->

I inserted these fields just below the “content” fieldset, and styled the #keywords and #other-excerpt textarea fields in exactly the same way as #excerpt. Practical translation: open wp-admin.css, search for “excerpt”, and modify the rules so that they look like this:

#excerpt, #keywords, #other-excerpt {
	height: 1.8em;
	width: 98%;
}

instead of simply this:

#excerpt {
	height: 1.8em;
	width: 98%;
}

I’m sure by now you’re curious about what my posting screen looks like!

To make sure the data in these fields is processed, we need to add the following code to post.php (as we did for the “language” field above):

// add keywords
	if(isset($_POST['keywords']))
	{
	$_POST['metakeyselect'] = 'keywords';
        $_POST['metavalue'] = $_POST['keywords'];
        add_meta($post_ID);
        }

   // add other excerpt
	if(isset($_POST['other-excerpt']))
	{
	$_POST['metakeyselect'] = 'other-excerpt';
        $_POST['metavalue'] = $_POST['other-excerpt'];
        add_meta($post_ID);
        }

Displaying the “other language excerpt” is done in this simple-but-not-too-elegant way:

<?php
$post_other_excerpt=get_post_custom_values("other-excerpt");
$the_other_excerpt=$post_other_excerpt['0'];

if($the_other_excerpt!="")
{
	if($the_language=="fr")
	{
	$the_other_language="en";
	}

	if($the_language=="en")
	{
	$the_other_language="fr";
	}
?>

    <div class="other-excerpt" lang="<?php print($the_other_language); ?>">
    <?php print($the_other_excerpt); ?>
    </div>

  <?php
  }
  ?>

accompanied by the following CSS:

div.other-excerpt:lang(fr)
{
background-color: #FAECE7;
}

div.other-excerpt:lang(en)
{
background-color: #FFF;
}

div.other-excerpt:before {
  content: " [" attr(lang) "] ";
  font-weight: normal;
}

Now that we’ve got the basics covered, what else can be done? Well, I’ve got some ideas. Mainly, I’d like visitors to be able to add “en” or “fr” at the end of any url to my weblog, and that would automatically filter out all the content which is not in that language — maybe using the trick Daniel describes? In addition to that, it would also change the language of what I call the “page furniture” — titles, footer, and even (let’s by ambitious) category names. Adding language sensitivity to trackbacks and comments could also be interesting.

A last thing I’ll mention in the multilingual department for this weblog is my styling of outgoing links if they are written in a language which is not my post language, using the hreflang attribute. It’s easy, and you should do it too!

Suw (who has just resumed blogging in Welsh) and I have just set up a “Multilingual blogging” channel on TopicExchange — please trackback it if you write about blogging in more than one language!

Taking Collaborative Notes at BlogTalk [en]

A detailed write-up of the collective note-taking operation we ran at BlogTalk. We took notes together using SubEthaEdit and then posted them to a wiki so that they can be further annotated. The story, and questions this experience raises for me.

As many of you now know, a bunch of us were taking notes together with SubEthaEdit during the BlogTalk 2.0 conference. In this post, I’d like to give some details about what we did, how we did it, and what can be said or learnt about our experience.

I’d like to stress that this was not my idea. I think this collaborative note-taking is a very good example of what happens when you put a bunch of people together with ideas and resources: the result really belongs to all, and credit should go to the group (even though in this case, I don’t think I can identify all the members of this “group”).

The Story

At the beginning of the conference, I was discovering the joys of RendezVous and eagerly saying hi to the small dozen of people I could see online. Sometime during the first panel, I was asked (by Cyprien?) if I had SubEthaEdit, because they were using that to take notes. I downloaded it (thus contributing to the death of wifi and bandwidth), and after a brief struggle managed to display a RendezVous list of users on the network (shortcut: Cmd-K) currently running SubEthaEdit.

I joined Lee Bryant‘s document, which was open for read/write sharing. It contained text (what a surprise!) mainly highlighted in yellow (Lee’s colour, the main note-taker). We were four or five in there at that point. (From Lee’s first publication of the notes I gather that the two others were Roland and Stephan — or rather Leo on Stephan’s computer, like later in the day?) It took a couple of minutes for me to feel comfortable in there, and I started contributing by adding a few links I knew of, on the subject of video blogs. The act of writing in the document made me feel quickly at home with the other note-takers. At some point, I started actively pestering those logged into RendezVous so that they would join us if they had SubEthaEdit (particularly if they were already visible in SubEthaEdit!)

Lee wasn’t there at the beginning of the third panel, so I opened up a document myself in SubEthaEdit, and with a little help managed to open it up to others for reading and writing (File > Access Control > Read/Write) and “announce” it so that other participants could see it. There had already been some hurried talk of publishing our notes, and at some point, Suw (who was keeping up with what was going on on my screen) suggested we should publish them on a wiki. After a quick check with other participants (and with Suw: “you don’t think Joi would mind, do you?”), I grabbed Joi’s wiki and started creating pages and pasting the notes into them.

We continued like that throughout the afternoon and into the next day. As soon as a speaker would have finished and the note-taking seemed to stop, I would copy and paste everything into the wiki.

Update 17:30: Malte took a screenshot of us taking notes in SubEthaEdit. It will give you a good idea of what it was like.

Reflecting on the Experience

So, now that I have told you the story, what can be said about the way we worked together during this conference? I’m trying to raise questions here, and would be really interested in hearing what others have to say.

Working as a team to take notes has clear advantages: Lee was able to go out and get coffee, and catch up with the notes when he came back. When I couldn’t type anymore, Suw took my computer over and literally transcribed the last couple of panels (OK, that could have been done without the collaborative note-taking, but I had to fit it in somewhere.)

Still in the “team theme”, different roles can be taken by the note-takers: sometimes there is a main note-taker (I noticed this had a tendancy to happen when people wrote long sentences, but there might be other factors — any theories on this welcome), sometimes a few people “share” the main note-taking. Some people will correct typos, and rearrange formatting, adding titles, indenting, adding outside links. Some people add personal comments, notes, questions. Others try to round up more participants or spend half a talk fighting with wiki pages 😉

At one point, I felt a little bad as I was missing out on the current talk with all my wiki-activity. But as Suw says about being part of the hivemind, I don’t think it matters. I acted as a facilitator. I brought out notes to people who were not at the conference. I allowed those more actively taking notes to concentrate on that and not worry about the publication. I went out to try and get other/more/new people interested in collaborating with us. I said to Suw: “keep on tzping, and don’t worrz that zour y’s and z’s are all mixed up because of mz swiss kezboard layout,” while Horst patiently changed them back.

What is the ideal number of note-takers in a SubEthaEdit session? Our sessions ranged from 5-10 participants, approximately. When numbers were fewer, a higher proportion were actively participating. When they were larger, there were lots of “lurkers”. Where they watching the others type, or had they just gone off to do something else, confident that there were already enough active note-takers?

The “Lee Bryant Experiment”, which I will blog about later, set me thinking about the nature of note-taking and notes. What purpose do notes serve? Is it useful to watch others taking notes, or does it really add something when you take them yourself? How concise should good notes be? How does a transcript (what Suw was virtually doing) compare to more note-like notes?

Formatting is an issue which could be fixed. SubEthaEdit is a very raw text editor, so we note-takers tend to just indent and visually organise information on our screen. Once pasted in the wiki, though, a lot of that spatial information is lost. It got a bit better once we knew the notes would be wikified, as we integrated some wiki mark-up (like stars for lists) in our notes, from the start. What could be useful is to put a little cheat-sheet of the wiki mark-up to be used inside the SubEthaEdit document, for the note-takers (just as I defined a “chat zone” at the bottom of the working document, so that we could “meta-communicate” without parasiting the notes themselves).

Some have found the notes precious, others wonder if we were smoking anything while we took them. Nobody really seems interested in editing them now they are on the wiki — or is it still a bit too soon after the conference? Here is the Technorati page for BlogTalkViennaNotes.

How groundbreaking was what we did? How often do people take notes collaboratively with SubEthaEdit in conferences? It seemed to be a “first time” for many of the participants, so I guess it isn’t that common. Have you done it already? What is your experience of it? How often do people put up notes or transcripts of conferences on wikis?

Discipline is needed to separate the actual notes (ie, “what the conferencer said”) from the note-taker comments (ie, extra links, commentary, questions, remarks). This isn’t a big issue when a unique person is taking notes for his or her private use, but it becomes really important when more people are involved. I think that although we did do this to some extent, we were a bit sloppy about it.

Information on the wiki page, apart from the notes, should also include pointers to the official presentation the talker made available (not always easy to find!), and I’m also trying to suggest that people who have done proper write-ups of the talks (see Philipp’s write-ups, they are impressive) to add links to them from the appropriate wiki pages (Topic Exchange is great, but lacks detail).

Participants, as far as I could make out, were: Leo, Lee, Roland, Cyprien, Horst, Mark, Malte, Björn, Omar, Paolo, Suw and myself. [to be completed] (If you took part in the note-taking, please leave a comment — I’m having trouble tracking you all down.) I did see Ben Trott online in SubEthaEdit while he and Mena were giving their talk, and was tempted to invite him into our note-taking session — but I was too shy and didn’t dare. And thanks to Joi for being so generous with the Joiwiki!

BlogTalk 2.0, Compte-Rendu [fr]

Un compte-rendu en français de la conférence viennoise sur les weblogs à laquelle j’ai assisté en début de semaine. Beaucoup de conférences intéressantes, beaucoup de gens, une utilisation intéressante de la technologie, et beaucoup d’idées pour des billets à écrire!

De retour juste à temps pour mon 30 anniversaire après l’excellente conférence Blogtalk à Vienne, il est temps que je tienne ma promesse à Pascale et que j’offre pitance à mes lecteurs francophones. Cela d’autant plus que je crois bien avoir été la seule représentante de la blogosphère francophone à cette conférence (pas que je prétende à une quelconque autorité officielle pour la représenter) — j’adorerais apprendre que je me trompe.

Un mot tout d’abord pour dire que je regrette l’absence de Loïc à cette conférence. Premièrement, cela aurait été sympathique de pouvoir faire sa connaissance, et deuxièmement (comme je le mentionne plus haut), la francophonie était clairement sous-représentée lors cet événement de portée européenne. Sans vouloir faire de Loïc le porte-drapeau de la blogosphère francophone (loin de là !), je pense que la présence d’un weblogueur francophone tel que lui, médiatique et de surcroit propriétaire d’une entreprise comme U-blog, aurait amélioré la visibilité de cette conférence auprès des blogueurs francophones, contribuant par là à ouvrir notre petite blogosphère parfois un peu trop ronronnante à ce qui se passe ailleurs en Europe. Weblogueurs francophones (Loïc ou autres!), je compte bien vous croiser à BlogTalk l’année prochaine!

Alors, de quoi ça a parlé? De nombreuses conférences, que je dois encore digérer, et dont je tenterai de vous rapporter les plus marquantes au cours de ces prochains jours; mais surtout, les conversations informelles naissant des rencontres de couloir, que ce soit dans le cyberespace ou l’Urania proprement dit. C’est ce côté “social-geek”, que j’ai énormément apprécié au cours des quelques derniers jours, que je désire partager avec vous aujourd’hui.

Les personnes avec lesquelles j’ai le plus parlé et passé du temps, clairement, sont Lee Bryant, Suw Charman, et Horst Prillinger (Horst est sans conteste le meilleur guide dont on puisse rêver pour visiter Vienne, y manger et s’y déplacer). J’ai rencontré et parlé avec bien d’autres personnes intéressantes durant ce séjour, évidemment. Je tenterai de vous parler d’eux ces prochains jours. Disons pour le moment que ce fut un réel plaisir de discuter avec autant de gens intelligents, cultivés, et comprenant les weblogs et la technologie.

J’avais déjà brièvement rencontré Suw à Londres et nous parlons régulièrement sur IRC depuis de longs mois. Quant à Horst, habitant Vienne, il avait posté un grand nombre d’informations utiles sur la page wiki BlogTalkVienna. Après une journée à marcher seule à travers Vienne jusqu’à plus de jambes, je lui ai envoyé un mot pour proposer que l’on se rencontre (je me souvenais également que Suw allait loger chez lui). Lee, dont Suw m’avait parlé puisqu’ils s’étaient retrouvés dans le même avion, est une rencontre que je dois à RendezVous (RendezVous existe aussi pour Windows et Linux) et SubEthaEdit, deux jouets geek pour OSX qui m’ont rendue encore plus contente qu’avant de faire partie de la Communauté de la Pomme.

Que sont donc ces deux jouets? RendezVous permet de connecter et de rendre visible les uns aux autres les différents utilisateurs connectés sur un même réseau local. Concrètement: BlogTalk, comme toute conférence geek qui se respecte, fournit wifi et connection Internet à ses participants. Une fois connectée au réseau, je lance iChat (le programme pour AIM fourni avec Mac), et j’ouvre la fenêtre RendezVous. Je vois automatiquement une liste des autres personnes sur le réseau ayant effectué la même manipulation que moi — comme on voit ses contacts sur ICQ ou MSN, à la différence qu’ici, il n’y a pas besoin “d’ajouter les contacts”: on se retrouve avec une liste de noms dans sa liste, inconnus ou non, à qui l’on peut envoyer des messages.

Ma première mission a donc été d’aller dire bonjour à la petite dizaine de personnes connectées, puisque je ne connaissais personne 🙂 — j’ai été très bien accueillie. Au cours d’une conversation, quelqu’un (je ne suis plus sûre qui!) m’a demandé si j’avais SubEthaEdit, parce que Lee Bryant y avait ouvert un document dans lequel on pouvait tous prendre des notes ensemble, en collaboration. Ni une, ni deux, j’ai téléchargé et installé le programme. SubEthaEdit, c’est comme un Notepad multi-joueurs, ou une page wiki instantanée. On peut afficher une liste des membres du réseau ayant SubEthaEdit en train de tourner, et ouvrir les documents partagés par ceux-ci. Des couleurs différencient les différentes personnes en train d’éditer un document, et tout se passe en temps réel: on voit les gens taper.

Assez vite, la petite équipe qui prenait des notes s’est mise d’accord pour les mettre en ligne. Suw a suggéré de les mettre sur une page wiki, afin que les personnes sans Mac ni SubEthaEdit (dont elle faisait partie — mais elle a promis qu’on la verrait l’année prochaine avec son propre iBook ou PowerBook!) puissent également contribuer à l’effort collectif. Sitôt suggéré, sitôt fait: au fur et à mesure que les conférenciers terminaient leur présentation, je mettais nos notes en ligne sur le wiki de Joi. Les notes sont pour le moment mal formattées, et bénéficieront d’un peu de jardinage afin que d’autres puissent les compléter, ajouter leurs commentaires, des liens vers leurs comptes-rendus ou encore les présentations mises en ligne par les conférenciers eux-mêmes.

Histoire d’éviter de donner à ce billet une longueur parfaitement indigeste (si le mal n’est pas déjà fait!), je terminerai en mentionnant les thèmes de conversations informelles que j’ai eues et qui m’inspirent pour des billets ou autres écrits (pas toujours en français, malheureusement).

Problèmatique des weblogs multilingues, et comment un outil comme WordPress peut être adapté pour les gérer; ce qu’on peut faire pour rendre un weblog multilingue plus sympathique à ses lecteurs monolingues (attendez-vous à des changements par ici!
Reconnaissance vocale, ce que j’ai accompli avec, et ce que je pense que l’on devrait pouvoir faire avec cette technologie dans un futur proche.
Langues et Internet: frontières, langues minoritaires. Réflexions sur la “blogosphère suisse” — existe-t-elle seulement?
Comment faire une présentation de qualité à une conférence (Suw et moi avons un article en préparation sur le sujet).
Suggestions pour organisateurs de conférences pour geeks (inévitable).
Réflexion sur les différents vecteurs et supports de contenu entrant en jeu lors d’une présentation orale.
Weblogs et enseignement, bien entendu…
Une expérience organisée avec Lee, consistant à coller à mesure ses propres notes dans le document SubEthaEdit
Rencontres diverses

(Je mettrai des liens quand les billets seront écrits, si j’oublie, rappelez-le-moi!)

Tag: blogtalk

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