Stephanie Booth's online ramblings since summer 2000
Social media, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, web design, and all the stuff that isn’t here yet. Subcategories highlight some areas of particular expertise.
[fr] Une page sur le marketing expérientiel, en anglais seulement j'en ai peur. Feedback bienvenu.
There, here we go. I’ve written up a page on Experiential Marketing for my new Focus section. Feedback, ideas, reactions, etc… all welcome here in the comments.
And please, don’t hesitate to be critical if you think it’s required. Just stay constructive — thanks.
[fr] Quelques citations (audio et texte) de Stowe Boyd sur ce qu'il appelle "experiential marketing" (marketing expérientiel en français). J'ai eu quelques discussions récentes avec des clients pour des mandats de cette nature, et je prépare une page d'explications à ce sujet pour ma section Focus (pas encore en français, désolée). Si vous êtes curieux, manifestez-vous dans les commentaires, ça me donnera probablement l'occasion de parler de tout ça en français!
I’m preparing a page on experiential marketing for my Focus series, as I’ve been in discussion about this kind of work with a couple of clients lately. It’s a term/concept coined by Stowe Boyd (not to be confused with the related but different independently named experiential marketing you can read about on wikipedia), so I dug around in his archives to see if he had blogged anything significant about it.
I found a few quotes in blog posts, but most interesting was this audio interview he gave Daniela Hinrichs in April 2006. Start listening just before the middle of the interview (the first half is about other stuff). Oh, and keep on listening after they’re done on the topic of experiential marketing — Stowe tells the story of why he wears a cap. 😉
It’s interesting to see how the idea evolved from the moment of this interview, just after he came up with the idea, and subsequent incarnations which he blogged about between then and now. Here are a few quotes I picked up:
Experiential marketing — as an increasing social consciousness pervades the online marketing world, advertisers will realize that ads are becoming less effective, even when streaming and animated. One answer is what I am calling experiential marketing: individuals or groups will be solicited and directly compensated to try out products and blog or otherwise chronicle their use. With highly trusted advocates acting on behalf of the community these campaigns will become a mainstay of product marketing 2.0.
So, I will be posting on this “experiential marketing” project over the next few months, as I attempt to follow the advice of OpenBC’s staff and most knowledgeable users about how to achieve these aims, and I will examine everything involved: from the creation of a detailed profile, to developing a personal network, and the ins and outs of trying to use the system to accomplish real business goals. Because my goal is to spend more time in Europe, I am calling this the “More Europe” project.
As I said, I will be candid and critical. If I think some aspect of OpenBC’s user experience is dumb, I will say so. If I start drowning in social spam, I will write about it. If I get no traction on my plan, I will chronicle that.
As I announced a few weeks ago, I am doing a new experiential marketing program for the folks at Blogtalkradio.com, one that entails me running a talk radio show. The first show was Thursday, and I had a great time interviewing Ted Rheingold of Dogster about Online Community (see /Talkshow Tomorrow: Ted Rheingold of Dogster on Online Community).
I started using the term experiential marketing a few years ago, in a project I was doing for GoToPC, and then again last year in the “More Europe” project for OpenBC (now Xing). The premise is that true understanding of a product or service can’t be gained from a half-hour demo: it requires hours, and perhaps weeks of use.
In this project I will be running a web-based talk show relying on the Blogtalkradio.com technology platform. Along with doing the show, I will be writing up my experiences with the software, recommendations for its improvement, and guidance for others trying the software.
More details on all this when I put the Focus page online!
If you read this blog “on the blog”, and look at my very cluttered sidebar, you probably noticed there is a feed of my “shared items” from Google Reader hidden in there (grab the feed!). “Sharing” is the reason I switched to Google Reader over a year ago.
I’m sitting in a workshop about UWA widgets at Paris Web, which had me looking at netvibes again. Even though it never clicked for me, I know lots of you use it (I check my stats, yes I do).
So, here we go. One thing leading to another, I created a widget with my shared items in it. It’s more for fun than because it’s really useful, as you netvibes users can create it really easily — but hey, here it is:
Update: how disappointing! I thought it was going to look like this in the blog post:
Not there yet, it seems.
Update 2: something I’ve been wanting to do with netvibes (not sure how feasible it is, actually): create a tab with “my stuff” in it. See, I’m scattered online. And the stuff I “share” is also scattered. If I found it through my feed reader, it’ll appear as a whole post in my shared items. If I was randomly browsing around, it’ll be in my del.icio.us links. If it was a video I watched on YouTube, it’ll end up in my VLog. If I wanted to share a quote, it’ll be in my Tumblr. Creating something to collect all these “things of others that I consider worth passing on” would be really nice. I wonder if a netvibes tab would be a solution — and if people would use it at all.
[fr] Notes d'une conférence que je viens de donner en Serbie sur ce qu'est le travail d'une "consultante en blogs" (notez les guillemets). Je préfère en fait me définir comme une spécialiste de l'internet vivant (celui des dialogues et des relations humaines) et de sa culture. J'interviens partout où ce genre de connaissance est utile à mes clients.
Here are some rough notes of the talk I gave at Blogopen, reason of my presence in Novi Sad, Serbia. I hope they can be useful to some. Number between square brackets refer to slide numbers (presentation on Slideshare embedded below).
If you have notes of this talk or by any chance have recorded it, please leave a link in the comments.
update: yay! some short recording snippets. see the end of this post.
[1] [2] Two years ago I was a teacher, and if you had told me then that I would be here in Novi Sad, talking about what it is like to be a freelance blogging consultant, you would probably have seen me make a face like this:
[3] Later on I’ll tell you about what a “blogging consultant” like me actually does, but first of all, here’s my story. I grew up with computers in the house, discovered the internet in 1998 and soon after created a website. I started blogging in 2000 and gradually built a small reputation for myself online. By the time the Swiss media discovered blogs in 2004, I’d been at it for a while. When they started looking for Swiss blogs, they found me, and the phone started ringing.
You know how it is with the media: once one journalist has written about a person or a subject, all the others follow. I started giving interview after interview, exciting at first, but somewhat tedious after some time. But I was lucky to have very good local media coverage, which did help people find me or hear about me.
Just before the press started to show an interest in me (and blogs), a friend of mine asked if I could explain to her how to make a website. We sat together for two hours, and I told her how the internet was made of servers, and websites were in fact files that lived on those servers, files you can make in a text editor with special markings known as HTML, with CSS to control the visual aspect. She said “wow, you’re really good at this, you should get people to pay you to do it!” I was a bit skeptical, but thought it would be cool. So just before my first appearance on TV, I created a professional website (just a few pages, and if you look at it now, it’s really out-of-date — I’ll be working on it during the “Website ‘pro’ day” in a bit over a week). And on that website, I made a page saying something like “I’ll explain to you how to make a website, this is how much it’ll cost”.
Shortly after my TV appearance, I was contacted by a school who wanted me to come and talk about blogs to a class of teenagers. It went surprisingly well and I really enjoyed it, so I added an extra page on my professional site saying “I give talks in schools”. Little by little, through word of mouth mainly, I started having clients. And at one point about 18 months ago, I started having enough clients that I could consider quitting my day job (teaching).
That’s how I became a professional blogging consultant.
[4] So, what does a “blogging” consultant do? It’s not just about blogs. Actually, one of my ongoing struggles is to find a “job title” to define myself. “Blogging consultant” already existed, and people knew about blogs, so it wasn’t too bad.
[5] Blogging is more than it seems. It’s a tool, but it’s more than that. It’s also a culture, and if you’re a company or an institution, blogging is a communication strategy. We see companies and media corporations using the blog tool to publish press releases or official documentation. That’s using the tool, but they don’t get the culture, and they haven’t changed their strategy. (You might want to see the notes on my talk “How Blogging Brings Dialogue to Corporate Communications” if this topic interests you.)
[6] One expression we hear a lot in this kind of context is “social media”. Traditional media go in one direction. Journalists write, people listen (or put their fingers in their ears). It looks like this:
With social media, on the other hand, we have a new type of media (well, reasonably new) where conversations take place. Communication goes both ways:
So basically, being a “blogging” consultant has a lot to do with social media. (Understanding and explaining it.)
[7] All this kind of stuff is explained in a great book that everybody should read: The Cluetrain Manifesto. You can read it for free on the Internet or buy it as a real book if you prefer. The Cluetrain Manifesto was written in the year 2000, so quite some time ago, but it’s still spot on. It tells us how people are sick of being marketed at and talked at, and how people are already having conversations everywhere about brands, companies, and these conversations are happening on the internet. Companies, politicians, and media empires would be smart to step in and join the conversation. Anyway… read the Cluetrain Manifesto if you have any interest in what’s going on on the Internet.
[8] So, in my job, I don’t just work with blogs. In addition to blogs, sometimes solution require wikis, podcasts, or social networks. [9] Using these tools brings up values like dialogue, transparency, authenticity, and often leads to rethink strategy. [10] Finding a solution for a client can be helping them re-organise their e-mail, set up a mailing-list, or simply build a website. Maybe it requires social tools like Twitter or Dopplr, or they might even want to know about virtual worlds like Second Life.
This is clearly not just about “blogging”. It’s about this bigger world blogging is an important part of.
[11] I like to think of myself as a specialist of the living web and its culture. The living web is the internet of people, conversations, and relationships.
My work is anywhere people need this kind of knowledge. Who needs this kind of knowledge?
[12] Schools, politicians, companies big and small, freelancers, non-profits, media, startups, people…
[13] Here’s a little more about what it means to be a freelancer consultant in today’s world.
[14] The Balance of the Soloist according to Stowe Boyd:
The most difficult challenge for soloists is to find a balance between the various activities that must take place to survive. I like to oversimplify these down to three:
- Doing The Work — The heart of consulting — of whatever description — is delivering the work. A soloist has to deliver value to the client in order to make money. Most consulting-oriented people start with this capability: it’s the other two that cause problems, in general.
- Marketing and Networking — I have already noted that I principally market myself through blogging, and that I attend conferences: those are the outward signs of a willingness, or even an obsession with networking with likeminded others. When I find out about a web product that sounds interesting (my beat), I sign up for the beta, fool with it, write a review, ask for more info, and very soon I am involved in a direct communication with the company’s management. I read other people’s blogs and comment on their ideas. When attending conferences I try to chat with both old friends and folks I have never met before. I know many consultants whose natural introversion makes such activities difficult if not impossible. But these interactions are just as critical to being a soloist as performing the work, and are likely to take up just as much time!
- Prospecting, Contracts and Cash Flow — I am always happy to talk about money, and as a soloist it is imperative to get what you are worth, and then to collect the fees. This is a blind spot for many, and a make-it-or-break-it issue. I know a lot of folks that find it hard — even with people they know well — to ask for a project, an engagement, whatever, and to demand payment later on. It may seem obvious but many consultants only get involved with this as a necessary evil, but it’s not. It’s just as central as delivering the goods and networking.
Stowe Boyd, “Going Solo: A Few Words Of Advice”
These are the three skills the freelancer needs. Often people drawn towards freelancing are people who are good at doing something (the work) and reasonable networkers — and the third part (money) is the most difficult.
[15] the work
This will of course vary from person to person. Depending on your skills and abilities, you will be doing different things. For example:
[16] Marketing
[17] Cash
Often a difficult point, as I mentioned.
In addition to this, going freelance might mean you have to think about:
And also… balancing your personal and professional life. All this “taking care of your social capital” does tend to blend the two — in a good way, often, but also in a way that makes taking days off or going on a real holiday very difficult. Pay attention to that.
[18]-[23] So, looking back… After my initial “no way!” reaction to the idea of being a “blogging consultant” two years ago, even though I went through phases like this
and this
and this
and even
overall… I’m pretty happy about my life as a blogging consultant:
note: I took all the rather cheesy “emotion” photos myself the morning before the talk, because I didn’t have the time and resources to go hunting for good “emotional faces” stock photography… I hope you’ll forgive me!
You can find more stuff about consulting in my del.icio.us links.
Thanks to everybody who attended my talk and gave me kind feedback. Many Serbian bloggers also mentioned my talk in their blog posts, but I’m afraid I can’t understand any of it! Here are the links, though:
As far as I can tell, some posts simply mention me. But if there’s anything said worth to be translated or paraphrased, feel free to do so in the comments! (Just tell me what link it’s about…)
Update:
Thanks a lot to darko156 who filmed two short video sequences and uploaded them to YouTube. Here they are. The first video is slides [4]-[7] (what exactly a blogging consultant is, social media, The Cluetrain Manifesto):
The second is slides [7]-[10] (Cluetrain, social media tools and values — dialogue, transparency, authenticity, strategy…):
Curious about what I was waving in my right hand?
Here are my notes of Jeremy Keith‘s session. He’s somebody I always appreciate listening to, and he also happens to be the creator (and provider) of Buzzword Bingo. Play with your neighbour when keynotes or sessions go down the buzzword path.
My notes are as correct as I can make them, but they may be missing bits and pieces and I might even have misunderstood stuff.
First define. Who knows about beauty? The poets.
John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
William Blake: Auguries of Innocence. “To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.”
Looking deep beneath the surface. Close-up sketch of a flea. Micrographia. Beautiful. Viewing source. This is how we see the beauty of things.
This whole web2.0 stuff is not about details. We’re not using microscopes, but telescopes, looking at the “big picture”. Telescopes can be good: think “Galileo”.
He brought upon the world an a priori change. A new way of looking at the world, though the world had not changed. The earth revolves around the sun, and not the opposite.
Darwin: the world didn’t change from one day to the next when The Origin of Species was published, but our view of the world did.
We want to think about structure. How is the house built? It’s when you understand the structure that you can build solid houses. Same with web pages. This is where web standards come in.
Separation. Before: all mixed up (html, css, js). Now: separate. (cf. http://nataliejost.com) Progressive enhancement. An a priori change to how you design websites.
a) begin with your content
b) structure it (HTML)
c) think about how it’s going to look (CSS)
d) think about the behaviour (DOM Scripting)
If you remove any of these layers, it will still work. It won’t look pretty, it won’t behave as well, but it will still “work”.
CSS
# in a separate document!
p { }
#foo { }
Then, add rules using selectors. From general to specific.
DOM
Very similar approach. Make it external. You don’t put it in the document. The vocabulary is different, but you also reference elements in the page pretty easily
document.getElementsByTagName("p")
documnet.getElementById("foo")
School of thought called “unobtrusive scripting”, “unobtrusive javascript”
Beware
First structure, then presentation. If you catch yourself doing this…
<a href="..."> # wrong!
If you put behaviour in here, you’ve wasted a hyperlink.
Slightly better… but still bad
<a href="#"> # JS equivalent of using the style attribute
steph-note: I’m learning stuff about JS! yay!
Bandwidth benefits in doing things the right way. Process benefits, you can separate the work. And also… the beauty of it. Flexibility. See how it reacts in situations you haven’t accounted for? It won’t fall apart if somebody accesses with no CSS, no JS, no images…
So, is this about making site accessible? Kind of. Note: go to the talk on accessibility Thursday morning.
Jeremy is talking more about universality. You’re not shutting out devices. Mobile. Search bots. Screen readers.
W.B. Yeats (April 1916) “All is changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”
Ajax
Wonderful, beautiful, but can be terrible depending on how it’s used. steph-note: reminds me of what we said of JS in 99-00
The key to Ajax is about asynchronous communication with the server. XmlHttpRequest.
Jeremy’s definition: “A way of communicating with the server without refreshing the whole page.” Just part of the page.
Buzzword Hijax.
Here is how Jeremy thinks we should build an ajax application.
a) build a website in the old-fashioned way — buttons, links, for interaction with the server
b) then, come along with ajax — which parts of this page benefit from just being refreshed separately, and intercept the links/events. Hijack the requests. Bypass the whole page interaction.
Progressive enhancement rather than a terrible beauty that locks people out. Switch off JS, and everything still works.
Where? When?
Patterns: when I click a link/form, and when I submit it, I return to the same page with almost nothing changed.
“Web 2.0” is not about web applications versus documents in the old “Web 2.0”. It’s a sliding scale. Most sites are somewhere in between documents and application. Applications work with documents! It’s not an either… or thing.
This kind of Ajax is more on the document side of the scale, roughly mid-way to the application end. Doesn’t scale to “more application”.
But at that point, why the hell are you building that with HTML, CSS and JS? The reason to use them is that they degrade gracefully. If you decide that all three are required, maybe you need to use another technology, like Flash. These technologies have their place for applications which cannot degrade gracefully. Flash is made for building web applications! But there is an insistance in building “2.0 Apps” in HTML/CSS/JS.
Maybe hesitancy because Flash isn’t a standard in the same way as HTML/CSS/JS?
Standards: you know your stuff will work, you know there’ll be support there. The best thing that Adobe could ever do in Jeremy’s opinion is to open it up truly (steph-note: if I understood that correctly).
History of standards.
ISO, ECMA, W3C…
Open data. API. RSS. XHTML.
If you’re going to release and API, look at what Google and Yahoo are doing and copy. Build upon existing conventions. Your own format is not going to make it.
If you allow people to access your data like that, you start to see emerging patterns.
Microformats! steph-note: yay!
Machine tags! steph-note: yay again! There is a machine tags wiki.
Jeremy, like many of us, really hates the “Web 2.0” label/buzzword. It had its place a few years ago, but now it’s really putting us in a box. Ajax is a good buzzword, because it allows to talk about a certain technology in a snappy way. Whereas Web2.0… ask ten people, and you’ll get 10 explanations.
Web2.0: people.
But we don’t need a buzzword for that. We already have a word for “leveraging collective intelligence”: the WEB!
Combine looking through the microscope and looking through the telescope.
[fr] Le texte et la vidéo sont fondamentalement différents. Je ne pense pas qu'il soit possible de "recréer" un dynamique comme celle de Twitter avec du contenu vidéo.
So, now that I’ve discovered what Loïc‘s startup, Seesmic, is about (thanks to Ben twittering his tests), here is my initial reaction to reading about it on Techcrunch.
I’m not certain a “video-based Twitter” is a viable concept: the huge difference between video and text is that the latter is scannable, and that’s precisely what allows the presence/flow dimension in Twitter. You can “keep an eye” on a stream of text, but can you “keep an eye” on a stream of videos? Also, it takes much less time to keep up with a stream of text than with a stream of videos.
Now, not to say that Seesmic is doomed (that would be a bit pretentious of me) — and I haven’t checked it out directly — but I do want to go on record saying that the dynamics created by Twitter and other flow/presence apps with text cannot simply be transferred to other media.
If it turns out I’m right, I’ll be able to say “I told you so” — and if I’m wrong, nobody will care. 🙂
[fr] Etat des lieux sur mes recherches de fonds et exploration du monde de l'édition pour mon livre sur les ados et internet. Envies de publier (via internet) des livres avec mes photos, aussi.
A month or two ago, I was chatting about my book project and decision to find funding to Joi. He suggested that a trip to the Frankfurt book fair might be useful.
First on, the Messe is just huge. I spent a morning there and just walked, and walked, and walked. Overall, I found my visit rather disappointing, though I did learn some useful things (though they weren’t exactly what I wanted to hear). Here’s the information I gathered, from a visit to the Swiss booth and discussions with a few people.
So, where do I go from now?
Language? Isn’t it kind of weird I’m speaking about this in English? On the other hand, I don’t want to “cut out” my English network by blogging exclusively in French about this book project.
All this thinking about self-publishing has given me the desire to put together one or more photo books. I’ve barely been printing since I went digital, and it’s nice to have photos in physical form too, as Moo‘s success demonstrates. My friend Andrea Lindenberg has put together a collection of her best riding show photographs — if you like horses, you should definitely check it out. She’s very talented.
My Flickr photo collection is approaching 10’000 photos. So, again, the inevitable choice problem. I’ll certainly make a book of my best Indian photos at some point (most of them aren’t on Flickr but are either slides (first trip), negatives (second trip), or digital-dumped-in-directories (third trip). I have a set called My Favourites, but it’s very out-of-date and doesn’t contain any recent photos. I can probably dig out the photos I use for Moo cards or stickers and add them, though.
Any opinions? If you see any photos of mine that you think deserve ending up in the (a) photo book, don’t hesitate to tag them “forthebook”. Thanks!
[fr] Un premier jet de ce que pourrait être une présentation de mon projet de livre, en anglais.
// Here’s a first draft of what a short presentation of my book project would be. Comments and nitpicking welcome. Is this convincing? Does it sound solid?
Teenagers are very active internet users. Parents and educators, however, less so. There is often quite a bit of confusion over what teenagers are doing online and how risky their online occupations are. Attitudes range from complete lack of interest (probably fuelled by fear of technological incompetence) to outright panic (particularly about sexual predators, with complicity of the media).
Adults who are not particularly internet-savvy (and even those who are familiar with it) need a sane guide to precisely what all this “online stuff” is about. What is beneficial? What is harmless? Where are the real dangers? How does being “totally wired” (in Anastasia Goodstein’s terms) influence relationships and social life?
This book will be is a guide to understanding today’s online world, aimed at parents, teachers, and educators. It will helps them make informed educational decisions about teenagers’ use of the internet. The focus will be is on de-dramatizing a lot of the “risks” the mainstream media have been very vocal about (sexual predators, for instance) and on promoting a deep understanding of how online and offline are integrated in teens’ lives. This brings about new issues with are maybe not dramatic, but which can be challenging for our youth, and which they should not have to face without the support of the adults they love or trust in their lives.
Part “tourist guide to the online world”, part essay, this book should be is a precious ally for those living or working with teenagers, and who sometimes feel at loss with what the internet is all about;, as well as contributing it also contributes to a more general understanding of how the internet is changing our lives.
Stephanie Booth has been a very active and respected online citizen for close to ten years. After graduating in arts (Indian religions and culture, philosophy, French), she worked first as a project manager and then as a middle-school teacher. She left teaching in 2006 to devote herself exclusively to helping others understand internet culture and technology, and make good use of it.
An important part of her work has been giving lectures in French-speaking Switzerland about “the living internet” (blogging, instant messaging…) to teenagers, parents, and schoolteachers. Her extensive personal experience of “internet life” married to a strong academic background and her ability to explain tricky concepts to a variety of audiences in a down-to-earth and convincing fashion have led her to be recognized by both the media and school authorities as an expert on “teenagers and internet” issues.
She has been writing regularly on her blog Climb to the Stars for over seven years, both in English and in French. A lot of her thinking about the internet can be found there.
[en] The story of how I took an interest in teenage blogging, and from there, teenagers and the internet. It involves a difficult first year of teaching and a naked bottom on one of my students' skyblogs.
// Entrée en matière possible pour mon livre, dans le genre “premier jet écrit dans le train”. Commentaires et suggestions bienvenus, comme toujours.
Au début des années 2000, je me souviens qu’on plaisantait entre blogueurs en se rappelant que d’après les quelques enquêtes disponibles sur le sujet, le “blogueur type” était une lycéenne québécoise de 15 ans. On était un peu consternés par la quantité d’adolescents blogueurs et la futilité (voire la bêtise) de leurs publications en ligne. “Complètement inintéressant, le blog est bien plus qu’un journal d’adolescente!” On continuait à bloguer dans notre coin, et les ados dans le leur.
// Voir si j’arrive à trouver des références à ça.
J’étais loin d’imaginer que cinq ans plus tard, les blogs d’adolescents m’auraient amené à changer de métier et à écrire un livre. Ce livre, vous l’avez entre les mains.
La genèse de mon intérêt pour la vie adolescente sur internet mérite d’être racontée. Elle permet de situer ma perspective. Mais, plus important, elle et illustre assez bien un des “problèmes” auxquels on peut se heurter si on fait l’économie de comprendre comment les adolescents vivent leurs activités sur internet.
Il y a quelques années de cela, j’ai quitté mon poste de chef de projet dans une grande entreprise suisse pour me tourner vers l’enseignement. Forte de mes respectables années d’expérience personnelle de la vie sur internet, je me suis lancée dans un projet de rédaction de blogs avec mes élèves.
Ce fut un désastre. Si j’étais bien une blogueuse adulte expérimentée, je me suis bien vite rendue compte que les “blogs” que je leur proposais avaient bien peu à voir avec ce dont ils avaient l’habitude dans leurs tribulations sur internet. Certains d’entre eux avaient des skyblogs (des blogs pour adolescents et jeunes, hébergés par le groupe Skyrock).
Munie de l’adresse d’un de ces skyblogs, j’ai commencé mes explorations du monde en ligne de mes élèves. Peut-être qu’en me familiarisant avec ce qu’ils faisaient déjà sur internet, je réussirais à mieux les comprendre, et trouverais ainsi des clés pour remettre sur pied un projet qui battait sérieusement de l’aile. Chaque skyblog arborait fièrement une liste de liens vers ceux des amis (“hors ligne” aussi bien que “en ligne”). Il suffisait de cliquer un peu pour faire le tour.
Sur ces skyblogs, comme je m’y attendais, rien de bien fascinant à mes yeux: beaucoup de photos (de soi-même, des copains et copines, du chien, du vélomoteur), du texte à l’orthographe approximative, voire carrément “SMS”, des appels aux commentaires (“lâchez vos coms!”) et, justement, des commentaires (souvent assez vides de contenu, mais qui jouaient clairement un rôle côté dynamique sociale).
Soudain, catastrophe: je me retrouve face à une paire de fesses, sur le skyblog d’un de mes élèves. Et pas juste des fesses d’affiche publicitaire pour sous-vêtements, non, les fesses d’un de ses camarades de classe, qui les expose visiblement tout à fait volontairement à la caméra.
Que faire? Intervenir, ou non? Ils ont beau être mes élèves, alimenter leurs skyblogs fait partie de leurs activités privées (par opposition à “scolaires”) et je suis tombée sur cette image un peu par hasard (ce n’est pas comme si un élève m’avait donné directement l’adresse pour que j’aille la regarder).
En même temps, puis-je ne pas réagir? Si cette photo était découverte plus tard et qu’elle soulevait un scandale, et qu’on apprenait que j’étais au courant mais que je n’avais rien dit… Je me doute bien qu’il y a derrière cette photo un peu de provocation et pas mal d’inconscience, plus que de malice.
// Retrouver les dates d’expulsion des lycéens français — est-ce avant ou après ça?
Jeune enseignante inexpérimentée, je me tourne vers mes supérieurs pour conseil. On discute un peu. On ne va pas en faire un fromage, mais on va demander au propriétaire du skyblog de retirer cette photo inconvenante — ce que je fais. Il accepte sans discuter, un peu surpris peut-être.
// “Pour conseil” c’est français, ou c’est un anglicisme?
// Un autre élément qui est rentré en ligne de compte est que les photos avaient été prises (visiblement) dans les vestiaires de l’école. Pas certain que ce ne soit pas durant des activités extra-scolaires, cependant. Est-ce un détail utile?
Une semaine plus tard, la photo est toujours en place. Je suis un peu étonnée, et je réitère ma demande auprès de l’élève blogueur. “Oui, mais Jean, il est d’accord que je laisse cette photo sur mon blog, ça le dérange pas, hein.” J’explique que là n’est pas la question, que c’est une demande qui émane de la direction, et que d’accord ou pas, “ça se fait pas” pour les élèves de notre établissement d’exposer leurs fesses au public sur internet.
// J’ai l’impression que je traîne un peu en longueur, là. On s’ennuie? Les détails sont-ils utiles? Faut-il raccourcir?
Le lendemain matin, je me retrouve littéralement avec une révolte sur les bras:
Je suis sidérée par la violence des réactions. Certes, ma relation avec ces élèves n’est pas exactement idéale (c’est le moins qu’on puisse dire), mais là, ils sont complètement à côté de la plaque. Si l’élève en question avait affiché la photo de ses fesses dans le centre commercial du village, auraient-ils réagi aussi fortement si l’école (représentée par moi-même, en l’occurrence) avait demandé leur retrait?
// Comment on dit “challenging” en français? (Pour décrire les élèves sans utiliser l’affreux “difficile”.)
*// Le temps de narration change durant ce récit, vérifier si c’est “utile” ou si c’est “une erreur”.
Visiblement, ils considéraient ce qu’ils publiaient sur internet comme étant “privé” et semblaient ne pas avoir réellement pris conscience du caractère public de leurs skyblogs, ou du droit de quiconque d’y accéder et d’y réagir. Et pourtant, j’avais passé plusieurs heures avec ces mêmes élèves à préparer une charte pour la publication de leurs weblogs scolaires. Nous avions abordé ces points. Ils “savaient” qu’internet était un lieu public et que tout n’y était pas permis. Qu’est-ce qui s’était donc passé?
Cet incident particulier s’est terminé par une intervention énergique du directeur qui a remis quelques points sur quelques “i”. Restaient cependant deux problèmes de taille, que cette histoire avait rendus apparents:
La première question est du ressort des autorités scolaires, directions, enseignants — et je ne prétends pas apporter grand chose à ce débat ici.
La deuxième question, par contre, est l’objet de cet ouvrage.
[fr] Malgré l'excellent travail de danah boyd et le livre d'Anastasia Goodstein ("Totally Wired"), je pense que mon projet de livre sur les adolescents et internet tient encore la route. Une petite argumentation à ce sujet.
// After complaining for weeks that I wasn’t making any progress in writing my book proposal in preparation for the Frankfurt Book Fair I’m leaving for tomorrow, I finally started writing on the journey back home from London. Here’s some stuff in English. Your comments and suggestions are welcome, as always.
I know of a couple of people in the English-speaking world who are doing great work on teenagers and the internet. One of them is danah boyd. She has traveled all over the US and interviewed dozens of teens for her PHD. Another is Anastasia Goodstein, who has written the excellent book “Totally Wired“, aimed at parents of today’s connected teenagers.
While reading “Totally Wired”, I have to admit I started rethinking my book project. I took the decision to write “The Book” because I noticed a huge void in the French-speaking world. No danah or Anastasia that I know of. Parents and educators need a sane book in French on teenagers and the internet, written by somebody who actually knows and understand the online world. Why not simply translate Anastasia’s book?
I’ve thought about it. For personal reasons, I do want to write a book, and this seems a good and useful subject for one. But is my personal desire to be a published author getting in the way of doing what makes most sense, and putting my energy where it will really be useful? I see two reasons for which this is not the case:
As a friend of mine told me, “this is important enough that we need more than one good book on the topic”. I can’t, of course, guarantee that my book will be “good”, but I promise that I’ll do my best. 😉
Parents and educators of Francophonia need a guide to their teenagers’ internet. And beyond that, we need to understand the impact all these technological spaces are having on the way we build relationships and relate to each other.