Tag: blogging

Just because something is easy to measure doesn't mean it's important (Seth Godin) [en]

[fr] Citation du jour de Seth Godin, dont je suis en train de devenir fan: "Ce n'est pas parce qu'une chose est facile à mesurer qu'elle est importante." (Contexte: nombre de visiteurs d'un blog/site.)

After having abandoned Google Reader during the crunch weeks preceeding Going Solo Lausanne, I heard about Feedly, installed it, and started to love it. (I’ll blog about it in more detail in a few weeks, but it’s a Firefox extension which piggybacks upon Google Reader.)

With Feedly, I’ve started reading blogs again — and also blogs that I didn’t read regularly. More and more, I end up reading posts by Seth Godin, and I’m becoming a fan. A few weeks ago, How to Organize the Room but in clear writing something I’d noticed before (atmosphere and interaction are better if people are a bit cramped). Saying thanks in a conference presentation gave me inspiration for how to do things properly next time around. And today, in Who vs. how many, he picks up on Robert Scoble’s post against the rush to audience and provides us with this “quote of the day” gem:

Just because something is easy to measure doesn’t mean it’s important.

Seth Godin

This reminds me of what I was trying to say in Twitter Metrics: Let’s Remain Scientific, Please!, when I got annoyed by numbers thrown about under the assumption that they meant anything. (The post is mainly a video because I couldn’t type at the time, but I’ve been told it was well worth watching.)

Angst: My Categories are Still a Mess [en]

[fr] Mes catégories, c'est toujours le chenit. J'ai les outils qu'il faut maintenant pour faire le ménage, mais il me manque l'essentiel: quelles catégories un monstre comme CTTS devrait-il avoir?

My categories are a long-standing source of worry.

They were created in an unenlightened effort to “go ontological”, when I switched to Movable Type. By the time I switched to WordPress over four years ago, I was already thinking about cleaning up my categories (lo and behold, the birth of Batch Categories — I didn’t waste any time, did I?)

My categories are still a mess. WordPress has had native tagging for a while now (I’ve happily retired the Bunny’s Technorati Tags plugin), Rob has taken over Batch Categories, so it now works rather than just sit there in lists, and Christine from the Internet has written a nice Tag Managing Thing (which seems a bit broken in 2.5.x but might still work).

So, I could use the category to tag converter and get rid of all my categories. I would feel much lighter. Then I can use a combination of Tag Managing Thing and Batch Categories (which allows search by tag, and, actually, I see it now, allows not only addition of categories to selected posts, but tags, so maybe I don’t need Tag Managing Thing for this, and this sentence is a bit long so it’s going to end here, sorry) to re-create nice categories for my blog.

But as always, here is where I stall. What categories should a monster like CTTS have?

Want to listen rather than read? It’s here:

Against Threaded Conversations on Blogs [en]

[fr] J'avoue une préférence marquée pour les conversations linéaires plutôt que hierarchiques (en arbre). Les conversations linéaires génèrent peut-être moins de commentaires, mais elles ont un rapport signal/bruit plus favorable, n'encourageant pas le hors-sujet. Elles sont plus faciles à suivre et me semblent plus adaptées aux blogs.

So, now that Going Solo Lausanne is behind me and I can come back to a slightly more sane pace of life (and blogging here, hopefully), I’m starting to read blogs again, a little. Don’t hold your breath too long though, contrary to popular belief, I’ve never been much of a blog-reader.

Blog commenting

One topic I’ve read about a bit, and which is of particular interest for me, is blog commenting. Aside from the fascinating topic (I’m not kidding) of blog comment ownership, which I touched upon myself more than 18 months ago, there is the age-old debate: threaded vs. non-threaded comments.

On the backdrop of my break-up with coComment (impending, in the process, fresh) and their post about commenter’s rights, I’ve taken a closer look at Disqus. It looks promising, it does some stuff I like, but also stuff I really don’t like, like the dreaded threaded comments.

So, here’s an attempt to try to explain why I think that threaded comments in a blog context are not necessarily a good thing — although popular wisdom would have that they are “better” than normal, flat, conversations.

I did a little research to see if I could find anything solid to back up my claims (if anyone knows of proper research on these issues, let me know), but I didn’t find anything really solid. So, I’ll just have to try to make this logical enough that it can be convincing.

The appeal of threaded conversations

Threaded conversations are as old as the internet itself. Usenet, e-mail discussion list archives. So, they’re nothing new, and have been around a while.

When blogs started including comments — oh yes, there were blogs way before there were comments, and the commenting script I used on this blog was for many years a popular destination — so, when blog started including comments, those comments were not threaded (in the sense that they allowed hierarchy in the comments, or branching off, or a tree-like view).

For many years, all I saw on blogs was linear conversations, as opposed to threaded, tree-like conversations. Most forum software also functions like that.

Then, of course, with some regularity, I’ve heard people asking for plugins to make the conversations on their blogs “threaded”. And I wondered. Why the attraction to hierarchical conversations?

When we have a conversation, be it with a single other person, or around a big table, it flows in one direction: the direction of time. There is before, and there is after. One might say “you said something 10 minutes ago that I’d like to answer” — and we’re quite capable of following this kind of conversation. We do it every day.

If we chat, be it on IRC or on IM, or any other kind of chatroom, we know that there are often multiple intertwined conversations going on at the same time. With a bit of practice, it doesn’t bother us too much. But the important point remains: the conversation is ordered chronologically.

So, be it offline or online, most of the conversations we have are time-ordered.

I think the appeal of threaded hierarchical conversations lies in the fact that they seem more “orderly” than one long stream of posts, ordered not necessarily by the logic of the conversation topic, but by the flow of time in which it takes place. It’s hierarchical. It’s organized. It’s neat, mathematical, logical. Algorithmic. Computer-friendly.

But is it brain-friendly?

Human-friendly conversations

Human beings do not think like computers. Though some human beings who spend lots of time programming or give excessive importance to logico-mathematical thinking might like approaching problems and the rest of life in a binary way, that is simply not how most people function. (Literary backdrop for this paragraph: A Perfect Mess.)

I think people who like threaded conversations like them because they have a higher order of organisation than non-threaded conversations. And better organised should be… better.

You won’t be surprised that I disagree with this. A good conversation online, for me, is one that can be easily followed, caught up with, and participated in. In that respect, a linear suite of comments is much easier to read or catch up with than a huge tree. When it comes to participating, the linear conversation offers only one option: add a comment at the end. In the tree, you first have to decide where in the tree you’re going to post. (Literary backdrop for this paragraph: The Paradox of Choice.)

How the format impacts the conversation

Another way to tackle this is to examine what impact hierarchical and linear comment threads have on the conversations they host.

Hierarchical – Threaded:

  • off-topic comments branch off into separate conversations
  • overall, more comments
  • lots of parallel conversations

Linear:

  • conversation stays reasonably focused
  • less comments
  • limited number of parallel conversations

I personally do not think that “more comments = better”. On a blog post, I like to see the conversation stay reasonably focused on the initial topic. For that reason, I think that linear comments are best on a blog.

More conversation is not always better

Of course, there are always parallel conversations going on. On Twitter, on FriendFeed, in IM windows I’ll never know about. As a blogger, I would like a way to point to these conversations from my post, so that a person reading could then have access easily to all the public conversations going on about what they read. Conversation fragmentation is not something we’re going to get rid of, but we can try to minimize it.

Increasingly, our problem is becoming one of signal-to-noise ratio and chatter. These are subjective notions. My signal is somebody else’s noise, and vice versa. I’m happy that there is chatter and small talk in the world and online (it’s a big part of human interaction and what relationships can be made of), also about what I write. But on my blog, I’d like to keep the chatter somewhat down, even if that means my “number of comments per post” or “conversational index” is not high. I’d rather have less conversation here, and give it a chance to be more interesting and accessible to outsiders, than huge 50+ comment threads that nobody is going to read besides the hardcore die-hard social media types.

More reading and listening

You’ll find some of the links I found on del.icio.us. If you’re into videos, the topic was raised about 6 months ago on Seesmic. Here’s what I had to say at the time:

I’ve also dug up a few quotes I found in some old discussions on MeFi. They’re in my Tumblr, but as Tumblr tumbles along, I’m reproducing them here:

If you’re trying to build community, it is clear that linear, non-threaded discussions are superior. There is a good body of research on this – it’s not new, it’s not a novel idea. For tech support stuff, hierarchical tree structures are better, in general.

Micheal Boyle (mikel)

One of the arguments for adding any feature that is designed to hide noise is that it gives it a permanent home. When Slashdot added moderation and auto-hiding to their threads, they gave the -1 NATALIE PORTMAN’S BOOBS brigade a permanent home on the site.

I checked out digg’s new setup earlier this week and 75% of all the comments were complaining about mod points. I don’t know if that’s an improvement.

Matt Haughey

This place is like a pub.

One does not have threaded conversations in a pub.

five fresh fish

Interesting [en]

[fr] Avez-vous aussi remarqué que plus on attend après avoir écrit son dernier billet sur un blog donné, plus il est difficile d'écrire ce fameux "billet après la pause"?

Have you also noticed that the longer you go without writing a blog post on a particular blog, the harder it is to write that first post “after the break”?

Interviewed About Multilingualism by Andrea Vascellari [en]

[fr] Une interview qui date de novembre, mais que je ne regarde qu'aujourd'hui (à ma grande honte). Andrea Vascellari m'a attrapée à Berlin lors de Web2.0Expo, et m'a interviewée sur les questions de multilinguisme en ligne que j'affectionne. Il a ajouté au début une petite partie sur Going Solo, donc si vous avez déjà vu mon discours donné à LIFT, sautez sans arrière-pensée les premières trois minutes de la vidéo. La suite est nouvelle, je vous rassure!

At Web2.0Expo in Berlin, last November, I met Andrea Vascellari. He’s Italian, lives in Finland, and does a regular video podcast on Vascellari Media Channel — VMC. I was speaking on multilingualism at Web2Open, so we sat down in a corridor (we thought it would be nice and quiet, but we picked a spot just near… the loo/bathroom/restroom/toilets) for a little chat on the topic of languages online.

Upon editing, Andrea added a few words about Going Solo and inserted my speech about it — so if you already saw the LIFT08 speech, feel free to skip the first 3-4 minutes. There’s a whole bunch of new material waiting for you after it.

VMC #30, where Andrea introduces Going Solo and makes me talk about multilingualism online. Andrea clearly knows the art of making his guest look good — thanks a lot!

End-Of-Travel Musings [en]

[fr] Peu de photos, d'articles, ou encore de vidéos de mon mois de voyage en Irlande, au Texas, et à San Francisco. Thierry trouve dommage, mais pas moi. J'apprends à prendre la vie un peu plus à la légère, à ne pas me mettre sous pression plus que nécessaire pour tirer toujours le maximum de profit de tout ce que je fais, tout ce que je vois, tout ce que je visite, chaque personne que je rencontre. A force de documenter sa vie, on court le risque d'oublier de la vivre.

Retour de San Francisco le coeur un peu lourd, car j'aime cet endroit et il abrite des gens qui me sont chers, mais heureuse de rentrer à Lausanne, que j'adore, et de revoir mon chat, bêtement. J'ai appris à "lâcher prise" concernant mon réseau social éclaté, à moitié en ligne, et dispersé aux quatre coins de la planète. On se recroisera, je le sais. Dans une conférence, lors de mes voyages ou des vôtres. On est à quelques clics de souris en ligne, jamais très loin. On est partout, au fond.

These two weeks here in San Francisco have been really nice. I got to relax and catch up with some friends (not all of them, unfortunately, and some less than I wanted to), make a few new ones, and also make good progress in the work department. I caught up with most of the stuff I’d fallen behind with during the previous month (stress and travel), and amongst other things, this means that Going Solo is now ready to accept sponsorships. It’s also time for us to strike up some media partnerships — get in touch if you’re interested. For media partnerships: [email protected] — that’s me! — and for sponsorships, [email protected] — Lily Yacobi is managing sponsor relations (she’s great!).

My travels started in a rather intense manner, with BlogTalk in Cork and SXSW in Austin. Two conferences back-to-back, one presentation on a new topic to speak about for me, two panel moderations (I’d never moderated a panel before), and a conversation to co-host (great format, by the way). Lots of people, new and known, two 2-hour nights before even landing in the US — I can tell you I reached Austin in a sorry state. Thank goodness I had a little halt in Dallas (thanks again, Adam!) to help me land.

As I mentioned, the solution I found to survive SXSW without burning out was to keep a low profile and go with the flow. I kept that up somewhat in San Francisco: not too many plans, low expectations on what I wanted to accomplish, no frantic blogging/photographing/visiting/videoing. Some people think it’s a shame, but I don’t.

Sometimes documenting your life can get in the way of living it, and I know that the pressure I put upon myself to “make the most” out of every occasion, every trip, every conference, every visit, every relationship, and simply every moment of life is wearing me down. I’ve been learning, over the past six months, that I need to cut myself some slack. Miss out on things.

So this trip, I hardly took any photos. I didn’t do any tourism. I stuck with what and who I knew, mainly. There is a whole bunch of people and businesses I regret not seeing/visiting (have I said it enough), but I don’t regret pacing my life so that I can leave here more rested than I arrived, and less stressed.

Going Solo is a lot of work, but though I have a great team of advisors and helpers, I remain the only one in charge, and I’m slowly learning how to delegate. Delegating is not something I’m familiar with or ever really had to do in my life, so I’m learning the skill — and it’s not easy for me. In the end, I end up with the feeling that I’m carrying too much weight on my shoulders, and that giving some of it to others creates even more. (See the idea?) Not to be dramatic, it’s a great experience and I think I’m doing well with it — it’s just not a trip to the beach (who would have thought that!?)

So, here I am, terminal A of San Francisco airport, at the Firewood Grill, where they make pretty decent cheeseburgers. I’ve eaten here before, I remember, a bit over a year ago after my first trip to San Francisco “in this life”. I like the music they’re playing on the radio, and I’m trying to sort through the mixed feelings in me.

I’m looking forward to going home, of course. I’m very attached to my hometown, as many of you have noticed, and whenever I’m away, I miss my cat a lot. It’s silly, but oh well. My brother will be home too, after a year spent in South America. It will be good to see him again.

But I’m leaving San Francisco with a heavy heart, too. I’m leaving behind the sunshine and people who are dear to me, as well as a community (however you want to understand that word) which means I get to bump into people I know when I go to parties. This happens in Lausanne, too, of course — bumping into people I know. Lausanne is a small village. But strangely, the San Francisco geekworld seems even smaller. And I like it. To state the obvious, “things are happening” here and it’s nice to be around. I like the city, too — even if I sometimes struggle a bit with the differences in culture between here and where I grew up and live.

I think I’ve become more relaxed about when I’ll see people again. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I will be. I’ll bump into you at a conference, or at a geek dinner somewhere when we’re both travelling. Maybe we didn’t get to say goodbye, but we’re just a few keystrokes away online anyway — so is it really that important? I don’t know what my life will be like in a year, and neither do you, probably. We live and work in this fast-changing world, somewhere on the edge, and we eat Black Swans for breakfast.

We’re everywhere.

Anna Rogozinska: Everyday body regimes: the construction of self in weblogs about dieting (BlogTalk 2008, Cork) [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence BlogTalk 2008.

Live blogged notes of Anna’s talk, might be inaccurate. Some video footage will follow when exported and uploaded. Don’t hesitate to add links to other coverage. Slideshow.

Adding to the Polish invasion of Cork/Ireland.

Identity as a construct, a reflective project. Fluid, fragmented and ever-changing. We’re not born with it, and we’re not given it. It’s self-constructed.

Narrative identity. Identity is a set of biographical narratives, reflected through lifestyle choices and the way we treat ourselves.

Gender play. Concept of multiple selves. Problematic line of research which originates in MUDs (virtual identity). Also, view of identity as constructed through text, and doesn’t take other media into consideration.

We need to look at the material aspects of constructing our identity online. Other problem: easy to draw on social theories to analyze life online, without actually checking if the theory fits in that particular context.

So, start with the content/context, and then think of possible theories, instead of the other way round.

Writing the self as a cultural practice. Many contexts: linguistic, social…

Tickers (days on diet, days left until wedding) are also a way of constructing one’s identity.

Methodology: academic objectivity makes one hide behind the role, and sometimes forget oneself as a person. Doesn’t necessarily make what we say better.

Dieta.pl founded 8 years, ago, blogs one year ago. Polish dieting portal. 60K registered users, 82% women, young, from rural areas or small towns.

Lots of calorie counters (how much do you burn with one hour of passionate sex?)

To become and author on the portal, you need to register and enter personal data. You are a “chubby”. You need to measure yourself and stuff (height, weight, etc).

Active forum: I’m starting tomorrow, I want to lose weight. Each person can start their own thread.

Weblogs. Ticker. General information about the life of the person. Gives bodily information (period coming, so 1kg above what she should be, etc — very close to the body).

Another blog: detailed account of what she ate, the exercise she did, the excuses she comes up for eating more than what she should have.

Counting calories. 4-5 meals a day, food always on the mind. Dieting: where do you eat? which restaurant? what dieting supplements?

Identification through one’s body. Always under watch. Always too much of that body, and never perfect enough.

My weblog is the space where I set the rules, even if I obey conventions (calorie tracking, excuses). Also a means of making technology mine. Blogging and dieting structure one’s life. Intertwined genres.

Fixed set of themes and categories. No additional widgets one can use. Expression limited by technology, and their ability.

Comparing the blogs with the personal threads on the forums. Monologue and dialogue. The forum is more about interaction, and the blog more about a presentation of self (monologue) in a narcissistic way (even though they allow dialogue, of course). My space is a blog space, and Our space is the forum space.

Identity of a diet blogger constructed through person use of technology. How temporary are those blogs? When are people going to stop? When they stop being read? When they have lost their weight? Will they keep on writing their blogs?

The identity of the blogger refers to other users, but not as much as on the forum. Interesting: how the dieting blogger refers to other identities of hers/his. Am I the same on the blog, on the forum, on Flickr, on Last.FM? steph-note: yes, same person, but emphasis on different aspects of my identity

Stalling [en]

[fr] Trop à faire. 5 jours avant mon départ pour près de 4 semaines, et les priorités sont toutes conflictuelles. Aaaah! (Mais bon, je me connais, je vais m'en sortir.)

Gosh, I haven’t published in ages. Scary. I’m stalling. Too much to do, too little time, not sure where to start. Well, life is deciding for me, because I have 5 days left before departing on a nearly 4-week trip, and there is only so much one can do in 5 days. So, some news and some thoughts.

  • Going Solo: things are good. 25% of tickets sold in less than a week. Video of my speech finally made it online. Don’t miss Early Bird price until March 16th. In one word: register. Reminder: stay up-to-date on Going Solo by subscribing to the Going Solo blog or the Going Solo Twitter feed — much better source of news than CTTS.
  • 5 talks/things in less than two weeks. A talk for parents of teenagers in neighbouring France Thursday evening. A session at WebCamp SNP. A panel to moderate at BlogTalk. Co-hosting a core conversation at SXSW and moderating another panel (both multilingual stuff). I should blog about these more in detail. And more importantly, I have quite a bit of homework to do to prepare the four last ones. And I’m a bit anxious about how moderating panels will go — never done that before.
  • travel: Cork (Ireland), Dallas-Austin (Texas), San Francisco. That means I need to sort some stuff out before I leave for nearly a month (clean the flat, do some paperwork, pay bills, see people). I’m going to have to pack <shudder> — and I still need to unpack. I’ll be in San Francisco for two weeks, so maybe I want to organise a dinner or something there. I’ll be distributing Going Solo moo cards all along my journey. I’m apprehensive about all this travel. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here, curled up on the sofa, with the cat purring next to me. But I’m looking forward to seeing people I like.
  • work to do for Going Solo: not the least, unfortunately. Sort out the programme. Get back to all the people who sent in speaker proposals. Get sponsor/partner documentation and contracts sorted out so that the partners waiting in the lobby can be let in. Promote, promote. Worry about WiFi a bit more. Happily, video filming, venue set-up and design, and some offline promotion do not depend entirely on me. Prepare a “dossier de presse”. Finish rounding up media partners. Promote, promote.
  • blogging: posts piling up in my head. About books I’ve read or am reading: The Paradox of Choice, A Perfect Mess (got a post brewing about GTD and messiness), and The Black Swan of course. Need more time to read. More time to write. Can’t keep up.
  • misc: photos to upload, podcast to edit, other sites to update, e-mails to answer (I’m far from zero right now), plants to water, a life to live…

This roughly sums up where I’m at right now.

Pas Superwoman! [fr]

[en] I'm postponing the blogging seminar (similar to the surprisingly successful one I gave at LIFT08) I was planning to do at the end of this month. I can't both promote Going Solo and this seminar correctly at the same time -- there aren't enough hours in the day and I'm not Superwoman. If you're interested in such a seminar, get in touch -- and when I have enough interested people I'll set a date. In English or French!

Contrairement à l’image que certains me renvoient, je ne suis pas Superwoman. Et souvent, j’ai les yeux plus gros que le ventre.

Tout comme j’ai mis le projet “livre” un peu sur la touche pour me consacrer à des activités plus directement lucratives (vous savez que ce n’est que l’appât du gain qui me motive), je me rends compte que je n’arrive pas à faire la promotion de Going Solo (les inscriptions sont ouvertes, profitez du tarif spécial de cette semaine de lancement) et faire également la promotion du cours d’initiation aux blogs que je comptais organiser le 26 de ce mois.

Vous noterez donc l’usage subtil de l’imparfait dans la phrase précédente, qui vous indique que je reporte ce cours. Comme je l’ai déjà écrit ou du moins dit, les personnes qui vont s’intéresser à ce cours ne sont probablement pas des lecteurs de ce blog. Cela demande donc que je fasse de la pub plus “active” que ce dont j’ai l’habitude — et en ce moment, j’avoue que promouvoir Going Solo me prend toute mon énergie (je passe les négociations avec les partenaires, un nouvel afflux de demandes de conférences, voyages prévus et conférences à l’étranger, sans compter que je n’ai encore quasi rien blogué au sujet de Going Solo en français, bref).

Donc, plutôt que de faire les choses mal, que de persévérer à vouloir maintenir une date parce que je l’ai fixée, je préfère carrément la faire sauter (parce que, regardons les choses en face, avec le peu de pub que je vais pouvoir faire, le cours ne sera pas assez plein, et je vais devoir faire sauter de toute façon).

Sur le concept, par contre, je persiste et signe. Mon workshop à LIFT (exactement la même chose, mais en anglais) a suscité un nombre tout à fait satisfaisant d’inscriptions et de participants (pas forcément les mêmes) — d’autant plus pour une conférence branchée “technologie” comme LIFT — et la formule a parfaitement fonctionné. Retours très positifs de la part des participants (même ceux qui n’avaient pas amené leur ordinateur, un comble!) et une invitation à donner ce genre de séminaire à la Réunion (j’y réfléchis sérieusement, ça peut être sympa d’allier le profitable à l’agréable).

Voici comment on va procéder (j’ai mis à jour la page des séminaires pour refléter ça): les personnes intéressées me le font savoir. Je garde une liste de ces personnes. Quand il y en a assez pour organiser un cours (disons, 6), j’organise. Et pour ceux qui auraient des besoins urgents de cours de blog, on peut toujours s’arranger.

Sur ce, la Pas-Superwoman va aller s’occuper de sa pile d’e-mails, et se nourrir. A plus, et n’oubliez pas de promouvoir Going Solo autour de vous. Si, si — ça me rend grandement service!

Busy! [en]

[fr] Je cours, je cours! Pas mal de nouveau sur le site de Going Solo. J'espère mettre les billets en vente dès mercredi!

Gosh, have I been busy these last weeks. My “one post a day minimum” resolution kind of evaporated when I started running all around town looking at venues for Going Solo.

Well, we have a venue now, and today I spent a fair amount of time playing with Expectnation to try and get it ready to open registration less than two days from now (fingers crossed).

We also have
badges to display in your sidebar (thanks, Carlos!) and more content on the Going Solo site. [Pulled the badges after some feedback. New ones soon!]

I also seem to have found our fourth speaker, which I’m quite excited about (no, not telling — both parties are going to chew on it a little before we make it offical).

Now, I just need to sleep, prepare my workshop, rehearse my Open Stage speech, announce the Lausanne blogging seminar for 26th February and figure out how to market it.

Uh-oh! Night night everybody.