Tag: conference

Taking Photos at Supernova [en]

[fr] Je suis toujours à la conférence Supernova, où je prends des photos plutôt que des notes (vu l'état).

I’m still at Supernova (gosh, third day!), feeling a lot more human now but still taking more photos than notes. I’m sitting in the second row now, so we’ll see. I might take notes. Do check out my photos, though — as for Reboot, I’ve organised them into sub-sets and one general, recapitulative set which contains all the photographs. Here are the sub-sets so far:

Supernova Open Space 7
Supernova 2007 Open Space

Supernova Twit Jaiku Party 1
Jaiku/Twit Party

Supernova Cupcake Party 52
Cupcake Party

Supernova Cupcake Party 29
Just the cupcakes…

Supernova First Day 1
Supernova, First Day (today!)

Update, Friday 21st

Please add tags as you look through them (particularly names of people, I really don’t know everyone!) and if you take photos of Supernova, consider opening up tagging to the whole Flickr community.

San Francisco Skyscraper Party 62
Reception in a skyscraper, with a view you shouldn’t miss!

San Francisco Skyscraper View 44

Reboot9 — Lee Bryant: Human Need (Kozarac) [en]

Here are my notes, unedited and possibly misleading, blah blah blah, of the Reboot9 conference.

Why adoption is not an issue when the use case matters.

Lee Bryant

Where the use case matters, people will make it work, no matter how crappy the system is. Inspired by Sugata Mitra’s “hole in the wall” presentation at LIFT. “Life will find a way.”

About a town called Kozarac in northern Bosnia. Returnees to a town from which they had been chased. One of two towns in Bosnia which was inhabited almost only by one ethnic group.

Challenges:

  • town destroyed, people imprisoned, thousands killed and others expelled
  • perpetrators stay in power, and control local authority, and don’t want the inhabitants back
  • need to go back and rebuild from scratch

How can an online community support real community (protect, develop…)

Return begins around 2000. 2002-05: rebuilding. 2005-07: reclaiming presence.

Three sites.

For a period of town, the websites were the town. The town only existed in virtual space.

Online space shows high degree of consensus. All discussing the same issues.

Top forum topics: #1, taking the piss out of their own leaders; #2, fire engines.

Practical outcomes? Fire engines: bootstrapping their town, had no support, and were actually opposed. Funded stuff themselves, expat communities contribute through the forums. Fire engines were one of the first priorities. Funded and organised the fire brigade with the help of the diaspora on the forums.

Memorialisation campaigns. Basketball. Identity in the diaspora. We know people in the diaspora tend to become more “old-fashioned” or radical in their national identity. The website allows young people to access the “real” town, and know what’s going on there. Keeps the diaspora connected.

Emin, traumatised survivor, was able to open up about it through the site that he discovered recently.

Bridging can also be physical, structural holes in the physical world. Preservation of memories and culture, specially in a context where teachers, doctors, etc have been targeted for execution. Some people from the town are dead, and nothing exists or remains of them besides what is said or put online about them.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Lessons?

  • scale: small intimate spaces can have a huge effect, more effective at supporting collective action (would this happen on MySpace? no)
  • common purpose: if people share a need, they are more co-operative
  • hooks into RL
  • motivation: real needs => positive behaviour

Reboot9 — Marko Ahtisaari: Attention! On the Near Future of Marketing [en]

*Here are my notes, unedited and possibly misleading, blah blah blah, of the Reboot9 conference.*

Blyk. Open marketing. Not pushing Blyk, but this is the example he knows best.

1. Interruption culture
2. Traditional marketing/media
3. Software as service
4. Small advertisers
5. Interruption vs. conversation
6. Open marketing

Marko Ahtisaari

*steph-note: didn’t get the last ones*

Is media a unique place to interrupt? How about interruptions in conversations? Linda Stone anecdote with crackberries: checking e-mail all the time, then want to go to the bedroom and have sex immediately. (Their wives’ points of view: not really.)

Traditional media is funded by a mixture of models. The mainstream media is starting to acknowledge the conversation (cf. Time’s person of the year.)

*steph-note: je décroche… and some code-switching in there while we’re at it.*

Service marketing: if the service itself is interesting, people will talk about it. If possible, make your product or service distributable (open distribution).

Use of mobile phones by teens:

1. look at the clock
2. text
3. call

*steph-note: sorry, real crappy notes.*

Reboot9 — Opening Talk [en]

[fr] Mes notes de la conférence Reboot9 à Copenhague.

*Here are my notes, unedited and possibly misleading, blah blah blah, of the Reboot9 conference.*

Compare the heat coming out of your laptop and the inside of your head. Laptop is hotter, even though brain power is much much greater.

Opening Talk Reboot9

Low heat: greater efficiency, because all the operations in our head are accompanied by meaning and value. Emotions are more efficient than intelligence. *steph-note: read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell*

Experiential money: people will accept to lose money to ensure fairness *steph-note: cf. Stowe’s bank system for splitting dinner costs.* The computer doesn’t understand fairness.

The gift economy is personal, whereas markets are anonymous *steph-note: Cluetrain says they are somewhat personal, though…* Gift economy has organised the scientific community. Very good at exchanging information, whereas the money/market economy is better at exchanging things. The gift economy is entirely based on relationships (relationships/emotions).

Roszak: Person/Planet — 1979 (if the planet is in crisis, the people are in crisis too). Cost-benefit vs. common sense in dealing with climate issues.

Being human means cherishing some of the irrational/intuitive/emotional stuff which machines are not capable of. Also, humans are not things. “We are like flows of water and fire.” 1.5 tons of matter goes through us every year. 98% of the atoms in our body are replaced every year. “How can the potatos I had for dinner remember my childhood?”

We are like digital media, and yet we build a world of things. *steph-note: I don’t get this “we’re like digital media” thing.* We’re misfits, we don’t look like our civilisation.

If we want to get sex, we need to save the world. A guide to saving the world and getting laid.

Civilisation 2.0 — expansion of the idea of Web 2.0. We are now at a changing point in the development of human society. Moving towards solar energy, new&old social order (P2P, bottom-up, no HQ), become nomads again.

We need to go with the flow instead of trying to stop it.

Civilisation 1.0: depots, headquarters, solid objects and things.

Civilisation 2.0: P2P, flow, links (something that started last year, 2006, when we understood the climate crisis and the importance of the internet)

Civilisation 0.5: 1.000.000 years ago (fire)

Let’s use the tools of Web 2.0 to facilitate the creation of Civilisation 2.0

This is The Link Age.

Human? Links, relations and emotions are central.

Barcamp en terre francophone (WineCamp) [en]

[fr] [WineCamp](http://winecamp.pbwiki.com/WineCampGenevaLake) is a barcamp-like event which will take place June 15-17 just on the other side of the lake from Lausanne. If you watched [the Zurich BlogCamp](http://barcamp.ch/BlogCampSwitzerland) go by, yearning for something similar but closer to the beautiful French-speaking part of Switzerland, here's your chance. Add a slightly green colouring to the event and wine-tasting, and there you are!

Il n’y a pas longtemps, je me suis rendue à Zurich pour Blogcamp (où j’ai d’ailleurs fait une présentation sur le multilinguisme dans le monde des blogs).

Dans un billet qui est passé à la trappe (encore un! décidément, je crois qu’il y a plus de billets que je n’écris pas que le contraire) je comptais parler un peu du fait qu’un événement de type barcamp a inévitablement une couleur très locale, et que malgré ses ambitions européennes, la rencontre de Zurich était en fait toute suisse-allemande, avec quelques visiteurs “étrangers” en provenance de francophonie.

Donc, si vous déplorez qu’il n’y ait encore rien eu de ce type en Suisse Romande, faites un petit saut de l’autre côté du Lac Léman pour vous rendres à WineCamp, édition Léman. Voici ce que dit l’annonce de l’événement, qui aura lieu du 15-17 juin à Saint-Paul-en-Chablais:

Les passionnés de nouvelles technologies (geeks) et les acteurs du monde associatif (ONG et associations à but non lucratif) du monde entier sont bienvenus!
Toute personne qui veut partager, apprendre et contribuer à l’optimisation du potentiel que représente l’utilisation des nouvelles technologies pour le monde associatif et les acteurs humanitaires.
Tout activiste du mouvement open source (du monde du logiciel libre) qui pourra être présent.

Tout cela dans le but d’explorer comment la nouvelle vague des applications sociales qui sont si proches et si chères aux yeux des développeurs actuels peut aider à participer à une évolution des outils utilisés par les associations à but non lucratif. Et, idéalement, la plupart seront ou deviendront libres, open source…

En plus de fonctionner comme un barcamp (auto-géré, informel, très ouvert), vous pouvez y ajouter:

  • une focalisation sur les besoins des associations à but non lucratif et ONG
  • un environement loin-de-la-ville
  • un premier jour sans wifi
  • une ambiance de camping avec du bon vin, de la bonne nourriture et un feu de joie
  • un deuxième jour avec du wifi

Ça vous dit? Filez vite vous inscrire — ou mieux, proposer une présentation. Je ne pourrai malheureusement pas être de la partie à cause de mon départ imminent (le 18 juin) pour San Francisco.

Blogging 4 Business Afternoon Keynote: Michael Steckler [en]

Gossip: casual talking, especially about other people’s affairs.

SN are a large and highly engaged audience, so there is a great advertising and branding opportunity there. Rules?

Blogging 4 Business

…

75% use SN to keep in touch with family and friends.
62% for being nosey
55% express my opinions
49% meet people with similar interests

steph-note: totally tuned out I’m afraid. I think the initial idea of viewing social networks as advertising space put me off, to the point I’m not even sure if he’s saying if it’s a good or a bad thing. Today I just feel like telling people to ride on the Cluetrain.

Personal spaces set up by a brand.

How do you get into that personal area?

  • understand consumers’ motivations for using social networks
  • express yourself as a brand steph-note: I’m wondering if people shouldn’t just forget about brands a bit — not that they’re totally useless, but branding for branding gets tiring
  • create and maintain good conversations
  • empower participants

Participation ecosystem. Recommendations based on personalities.

steph-note: did a really shitty job of taking notes. I’m getting worse and worse today.

Early adopters, onine mavens, online connectors (really important!), followers.

How to? create your own community, find influential bloggers, segment existing customers, attack the niche, start the gossip, reward customers… steph-note: this is exactly the war-marketing vocabulary/mentality the Cluetrain speaks against… Eek.

Summary: SN = large and engaged audience => huge opportunity for branded content and advertising, but there are strict guidelines to how to approach this.

Blogging 4 Business: part 2 [en]

Next panel: Heather Hopkins, Kris Hoet, Scott Thomson, Simon McDermott, moderated by Mike Butcher

steph-note: again, partial notes, sorry

Blogging 4 Business

Simon McDermott: Attentio monitoring all this social media stuff. Analyse the buzz. Identify what influencers are saying about your product. What are the popular bloggers saying? Reputation monitoring. What issues are being raised?

How to interact with this media?

  • monitor and analyse brands
  • identify influencers
  • communicate with key influentials

Case study: Consumer Electronics Player — monitor buzz around gadget with lower momentum than other recent success story. Better understand online consumer opinion and identify key forums and bloggers. Delivered a dashboard with relative visibility and trend information, etc.

Mike’s question to Heather: what would Hitwise do differently?

Heather: blogs are a rather small category. Two examples: one (Sony Playstation virus or something) story which spread like wildfire amongst the blogosphere (hardly anybody has heard about it in the audience here) and the Coke-menthos video (many more people). Use Technorati, del.icio.us.

Kris: Microsoft go to blogger events, try to keep conversations going — for that, they need tracking (what are people saying about Hotmail?) Also use Technorati and del.icio.us, comment tracking (steph-note: with coComment maybe?) Best way of tracking is to read all these blogs, of course, but it’s a lot of work.

Moderator (Mike): comments very influential!

Kris: Comments can influence what the blogger writes, so it’s important to engage there. You don’t need a blog to engage with bloggers. Leave a comment. Everybody is a customer.

… steph-note: sorry, tuning out

Woman from public: blogged about her Dell nightmare (computer broken after guarantee), and was tracked down two months later by Dell, comment with apologies for the delay in tracking her, got somebody from the UK office to call her, pick up the laptop, repair it free of charge, and then ask her to get back in touch if there were any problems.

Simon: if Dell had been monitoring 18 months earlier, they would probably have saved themselves some trouble — they grew very fast and customer service didn’t follow.

Question: tracking in different languages. Short of one person for tracking each language in each country, what can we do?

Simon: solution is identifying top 5 bloggers in the area we want steph-note: not sure I agree with that

Kris: if you’re in contact with bloggers, ask them if they know anybody else who might be interested in joining the conversation too. They know each other.

Blogging 4 Business Conference [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Blogging4Business à laquelle j'assiste en ce moment à Londres.

So, unless some miracle happens, I’ll be blogging this day offline and posting it tonight when I get back at Suw’s. There seems to be no wifi provided for conference attendees unless you are willing to shell out £25 for a daily pass. (Actually, it seems there were a certain number of passes available.)

I would honestly have expected an event titled “Blogging 4 Business” to be “blog-aware” enough to realise that providing free wifi to connected people will encourage blogging of the event. Granted, most of the people I see in the room are taking paper notes (not that there is anything wrong with that) — this doesn’t seem to be an audience of bloggers. But wouldn’t it be an intelligent move to encourage the blogging public to “do their thing” at such an event?

I missed most of the first keynote and panel, spending time in the lobby chatting with Lee and Livio of Headshift (my kind hosts today), and Adam.

Panel 1 incomplete and possibly inaccurate notes (they’re more snippets than a real account of what was said, partly because I don’t understand everything — audio and accents)

How do you respond to crisis online? (cf. Kryptonite)

Ged Carroll: In the 90s, faulty lock was broadcast on consumer TV. Mistake: didn’t tell the blogs that they were monitoring what was being said in that space, and that they were working on a solution (they were in fact acknowledging the problem, but hadn’t communicated that state of things to the public).

Moderator (Paul Munford?): how do you prevent something like that from being so predominently visible (search etc.)?

Darren Strange: owns his name. Same if you type “Microsoft Office”, his blog comes up pretty quickly too. Blogs attract links, good for search engine ranking.

Question: brands need ambassadors, OK, but where’s the ongoing material to blog about Budweiser?

Tamara Littleton: brand involvement in the site keeps things alive and happening. Reward ambassadors with merchandise.

steph-note: on my way to London, I was reading the Cluetrain Manifesto (yeah, I’m a bit late on that train) and was particularly inspired by the part about how most of traditional marketing is trying to get people to hear a “message” for which there is actually no “audience” (nobody really wants to hear it), and so ends up coming up with ways to shove it into people’s faces and make them listen. This idea is kind of trotting in the back of my mind these days, and it’s colouring what I’m getting out of this event too.

Question: transparency is a big thing… “creating ambassadors” (*steph-note: one “creates” ambassadors?!)… where is the space for disclosure?

Tamara Littleton: it’s about creating an environment, not saying “if you do this you’ll get that reward”. Rewards could be access to information about the product. Invite people to take part in something.

Ged Carroll: two types of rewards: merchandise etc, and also reputation-ego. Doesn’t have to be tangible.

Darren Strange: trying to have non-techie people try new releases of Vista, etc. Installed everything on a laptop, shipped it to the people’s house, and gave it to them. “Take the laptop, use it, blog if you want to, write good or bad things, or send it back to us, or give it to charity, or keep it, we don’t really care.” Huge debate about this. Professional journalists will be used to this kind of “approach”, but bloggers are kind of amateurs at this, they don’t know how to react. Disclosure: just state when you received something. steph-note: and if you’re uncomfortable, say it too!

Panel: Lee Bryant, Adam Tinworth, David ??, Olivier Creiche

steph-note: got wifi, will publish

Blogging 4 Business

Lee presenting first. Headshift have quite a bunch of nice products in the social software department. “It aint what you do it’s the way that you do it, and that’s what gets results.” (Bananarama)

Concrete business use cases.

Olivier talking now. “To blog or not to blog?” Simple answer: blog. Serious Eats. Citrix: a lot of knowledge disappeared when people left the company — a lot of knowledge out there that is only waiting to be gathered out of people’s e-mail boxes. Used Movable Type for that.

Another case study: AEP, also wanted to prevent e-mails from being the central repository of company knowledge (e-mails are not shared spaces!) Start small, experimental. Need to find the right people to start with. Another one: Arcelor/Mittal merger. Decided to communicate publicly about the lot of stuff. Video channel. Wanted to be very open about what they were doing and how, and answer questions. Good results, good press coverage.

David: allowing lawyers to share their knowledge and expertise, not just in their offices. Blogs, RSS, wikis allows time-critical sharing of information. steph-note: like I’ll be publishing this as soon as the panel is over… Catch things on the fly and make them available over a very short period of time.

Adam: starting to roll out business blogs just to allow communication. Bringing about profound change. steph-note: very bad account of what Adam said, sorry — audio issues. Other problems: educational issues. Best to not force people to use this or that tool, but open up. Share. Get people inside the teams to show their collegues what they’re using.

Question (moderator): a lot of evangelising going on in terms of blogs. Do blogs/wikis etc deliver on the promise of breaking down barriers, etc, when it comes to internal communication.

Lee: not a simple black/white situation. It comes down to people. Big problem: people bear a high cost to interact with communication systems and get no feedback. But with social tools (lightweight), we get immediate feedback. Integration with existing corporate systems.

Question: is social media the end of communications as we know it.

Lee: every generation of technology sees itself as a ground-breaker. But they’re all layered on top of each other. We have technology that delivers on the initial promise of the web (equal publication, sharing, etc) (steph-note: yay! I keep saying that!)

steph-note: more northern English please 😉

David: now, using the web to create communities of practice, getting lawyers to communicate with people unthought of before.

Question: how do you deal with outdated material.

Lee: with mature social software implementations, any piece of information gathers its own context. So what is relevant to this time tends to come to the surface, so out-dated material sinks down. More about information surfacing when it’s time than getting out-dated stuff out of the way.

David: social tools make it very easy to keep your content up-to-date (which was a big problem with static sites).

D'où vient cette idée de livre? [en]

[fr] An attempt to start book-writing. How I came to the field of teenagers and online culture, and what questions the book will try to address.

L’obstacle majeur pour l’accomplissement d’une tâche est souvent simplement de se mettre au travail. Il en va de même pour l’écriture. Il m’a fallu près d’un an pour commencer à écrire mon mémoire, et un peu plus d’un mois pour en achever la rédaction lorsque je m’y suis finalement mise. J’ai appris et compris, à cette occasion, qu’écrire n’importe quoi c’est déjà commencer. En particulier, raconter comment on est bloqué et ce dont on voudrait parler si on parvenait seulement à écrire, c’est déjà un excellent pas en avant.

Au milieu du mois d’octobre passé, j’ai réalisé que j’avais la matière nécessaire pour écrire ce fameux livre dont j’avais toujours dit que je l’écrirais un jour, mais que je n’avais aucune idée de quoi il parlerait et que dans tous les cas, je n’étais pas prête à me lancer dans une opération de cette envergure. Depuis, j’ai fait un plan, j’y ai beaucoup pensé, j’en ai beaucoup parlé, j’ai pris la décision ferme de l’écrire, et je l’ai annoncé sur mon blog. Mais je n’ai pas écrit une seule ligne.

Oh, c’est clair : début d’une vie professionnelle indépendante, les mains qui font mal, quarante-six mille autres projets… Plein de bonnes raisons objectives, mais surtout, il faut bien l’avouer, une bonne vieille trouille de me jeter à l’eau. Maintenant, le Dragon est installé sur mon Mac, je suis en Angleterre pendant deux semaines, et il n’y a donc aucune raison objective de ne pas commencer.

Donc, je commence. Et je commence par vous expliquer ce qui m’a mené à écrire ce livre, dans l’espoir que cela éclairera — et me permettra de clarifier — la problématique que je désire aborder et le traitement que j’en ferai.

Début 2004, suite à mon apparition à l’émission télévisée Mise au Point, on m’a demandé pour la première fois de venir faire une conférence dans une école. Il s’agissait de parler à une classe d’élèves et de leur expliquer ce qu’étaient les blogs, à quoi ils pouvaient servir et surtout, de les rendre attentifs au fait qu’il y a des limites à ce que l’on peut publier sur Internet. L’école en question s’était en effet retrouvée confrontée à quelques débordements de ce côté-là et à l’incompréhension des élèves (leurs protestations vigoureuses, même) lorsqu’il lui avait fallu intervenir.

Durant les mois qui précédaient, jeune enseignante, j’avais en effet découvert les élans blogueurs de mes élèves, et par extension, ceux de toute une population adolescente que j’avais largement ignorée jusque-là. J’avais commencé à m’y intéresser et j’avais déjà tiré quelques conclusions concernant les causes des incidents dont les médias se régalaient, et qui impliquaient des publications d’adolescents sur des blogs. Quelques problèmes de cette nature auxquels j’avais été directement confrontée avec mes élèves de l’époque m’avaient aussi donné une expérience personnelle de la situation.

Ma première conférence en milieu scolaire a été extrêmement bien reçue. On m’a demandé d’en faire une deuxième, puis une troisième. D’autres établissements scolaires m’ont contactée. J’ai commencé à parler non seulement aux élèves, mais également aux enseignants et aux parents. Et les conférences, ça va dans les deux sens. Je viens pour donner quelque chose, mais en retour, il y a toujours des conversations, de nouvelles personnes à rencontrer, des histoires à entendre, bref, des choses à apprendre pour moi.

En parallèle, les médias ont commencé à faire appel à moi régulièrement pour toutes sortes de sujets touchant aux blogs, mais principalement (au début en tout cas) dès qu’il s’agissait de blogs et d’adolescents. Prof et blogueuse assez en vue, c’était visiblement un mélange détonnant.

Au fil de mes contacts avec le monde des gens qui connaissent mal les blogs, j’ai pris conscience que beaucoup de choses qui pour moi relevaient du sens commun n’allaient en fait pas du tout de soi. J’ai réalisé que j’avais des choses à dire, et même des tas de choses à dire, et que ces choses étaient utiles à autrui. En fait, j’ai pris conscience que nous étions face à un problème à grande échelle, touchant une génération d’adolescents et de parents, ainsi que les éducateurs, et que j’étais en train d’y proposer des solutions. Les solutions que je proposais étaient bien modestes : il s’agissait simplement d’informer chacun selon ses besoins et préoccupations, de leur communiquer ce que je savais et j’avais compris de cette culture numérique, celle des blogs, du chat, de l’Internet vivant, et de l’impact que cette culture était en train d’avoir sur notre société.

Voilà donc de quoi je veux parler dans ce livre. Quel est ce problème exactement ? Que peut-on dire de ses causes ? Quelles sont les conséquences que nous voyons aujourd’hui ? Que peut-on faire, que doit-on faire pour y remédier ? Je vais essayer de répondre à ces questions dans les grandes lignes lors de mon prochain billet.

Couverture presse: contente! [fr]

[en] Two press appearances I'm really happy about. One is a radio interview about the usefulness of blogs in a corporate environment. The other is a half-page article covering the talk I gave about the internet to parents of teenagers in Porrentruy.

Là, franchement, chapeau bas à Jean-Olivier Pain (RSR1) et Sébastien Fasnacht (LQJ). Je suis absolument ravie des résultats de la fameuse (double) capsule et de la couverture (une bonne demi-page si je vois juste!) de ma conférence pour parents d’adolescents à Porrentruy. Bon, ça fait beaucoup trop de liens, ça. Ne vous prenez pas le chou et allez voir ailleurs:

Ça me fait très, très plaisir. Si en règle générale mes contacts avec les journalistes sont tout à fait plaisants, il est rare que je sois carrément épatée par le résultat final, comme ici!