Fresh Lime Soda Episode 5: Multitasking and Dragon [en]

[fr] Un nouvel épisode du podcast que je co-anime avec Suw Charman, Fresh Lime Soda. En anglais.

Finally, Suw and I have got episode 5 of Fresh Lime Soda ready for public consumption. We talk about a bunch of things, including (but not limited to): Dragon NaturallySpeaking, multitasking, writing and blogging, tinnitus, guilt, and shitty first drafts. As you’ll understand if you listen to it, everything is related. If you don’t want to download the 12Mb MP3, you can listen to it on the Fresh Lime Soda site with the embedded player.

As I was in London, we shot another video episode (wayyy more informative than the first, episode 4), which should be up… shortly. 🙂

Brainstorm/Discussion — The Future of Blogging Technology (Gabor Cselle) [en]

[fr] Le futur du blog... discussion.

blogcamp.ch notes, may be inaccurate

with Gabor Cselle

Barcamp: talk about stuff. Where is blogging technology going to go? What are the trends?

Future of blogging conversation/brainstorm

Blogging software is about adding features, growing ecosystem (technorati, digg etc. steph-note: god am I sick of those popularity things), pseudo-blogging things (Twitter etc. steph-note: I don’t agree with Twitter being called a “microblogging” platform.)

Who writes for who? (Twitter: an individual writing for a small bunch of friends.)

Getting paid for blogging? Ads… or indirect revenue. Micropayments (indiekarma — looks interesting).

steph-note: this is going to be more about my ideas following the discussion more than an account of what is said

Where I see blogging technology going: ajaxy flickr-like interfaces (the death of the admin panel for posting and editing), smarter privacy management (Ă  la Facebook: blog tool knows who you are and shows you stuff you are allowed to see based on your relationship as defined by the blog author), of course, smarter language stuff. Maybe smart internal linking: post something, and have the blog tool dig through old posts, offer you possible related material to link to (yes, there are already related posts plugins).

Wiki and blog technology will not merge, because blogs are about the person behind it, and wikis are about diluting authorship and crowd-voice.

Dannie Jost — Blogging is not about blogging [en]

[fr] Bloguer, c'est une histoire d'expression personnelle. Une discussion lors de la rencontre BlogCamp Ă  ZĂŒrich.

Notes from blogcamp.ch presentation. May be inaccurate.

(steph-note: it’s a discussion, so a bit hard for me to blog — particularly as I’m participating.)

Dannie Jost -- Blogging is not about blogging

Why do people blog? Different reasons. Asking the audience. Blogging isn’t about blogging, it’s about expressing yourself. It’s about personal expression.

Blogging is about communication.

It’s a evolution (from a communication point of view, the biggest since the printing press): instantaneous access to a global readership. Being heard is a different bag of beans.

Another element of revolution: community. A single blogger with hot news means nothing and achieves nothing, before the network comes into play to make the news float to the top.

Blogging: technology (easy!!) and culture (more complicated) steph-note: exactly what I try to explain to my clients…

Shift of power. For Dannie, it hasn’t really happened yet, except some small cases. cf. phase transformations in chem/physics. My comment: the shift has already started happening, it’s not because it hasn’t impacted events the mainstream press reports on much that it doesn’t mean it’s having much impact.

Ideas//crystals.

Self-organisation.

Introducing Fresh Lime Soda with Episode 3 of the Suw+Steph Podcast [en]

[fr] Notre podcast anglophone (Ă  Suw Charman et moi-mĂȘme) a maintenant son propre nom de domaine (histoire de fĂȘter son baptĂȘme et l'Ă©pisode 3): Fresh Lime Soda.

As twittered yesterday, Suw and I are very proud to announce the christening of our previously unnamed podcast: Fresh Lime Soda. As you can see, it has a domain and blog of its own (hosted by WordPress.com), on which you can read the shownotes and of course listen to (or download) the podcast itself:

You’ll certainly want to subscribe using the RSS/atom (FeedBurner) feed, possibly subscribe in iTunes directly so that you never miss an episode!

The Podcast With No Name (Steph+Suw), Episode 2 [en]

[fr] Nouvel épisode du podcast conversationnel que je fais avec mon amie Suw Charman.

Long, long overdue, here is Steph and Suw‘s Podcast With No Name, episode 2, February 15th, 2007. Some rough shownotes, with some links. Hope you enjoy it, and let us know what you think. We’re down to 35 minutes! Show notes might suffer updates…

  • conferences: LIFT’07 and Freedom of Expression
  • not everybody has the internet (God, I need to stop laughing so loud when we’re recording)
  • mobile phones in other cultures (e.g. Nigeria)
  • “technology overload” at LIFT’07 turned into “internet addiction” (interesting Stefana Broadbent
  • note-taking on a computer: expected in some contexts, but feels really out-of-place in others (cultural issue)
  • do we end up publishing our handwritten notes? trade-offs: handwritten and rewriting vs. direct blogging (Steph’s crappy workshop notes)
  • scanning vs. photographing written material, document management and shredding
  • GTD status update (inbox zero…)
  • FOWA coming up and other fun London stuff
  • Wedding 2.0 will be blogged on CnV, but will there be a webcast?
  • technology as a way to stretch our Dunbar number, wedding 2.0 with IRC backchannel and crackberries galore
  • the Wedding Industrial Complex, trying to find an affordable venue in Dorset
  • IRC or SL would be cheaper, but is SL a registered venue?
  • physical words for “virtual” places
  • gap between us heavy users, and people who get a few e-mails a day, book holidays online and that’s it
  • exploring how new tools could help us — most people aren’t curious about new stuff
  • winning over new users: finding holes in people’s processes
  • Facebook is really cool, very usable, and for keeping in touch with people you know (has smart walls and smart feeds)
  • who’s on Facebook? on the non-desire to join new social networks…
  • LinkedIn for business
  • Facebook as a mashup to keep up with what your friends are upto — but isn’t that what blogs are for?
  • outlet overload, tools need to talk to each other (holes in buckets), profile multiplication, Facebook share bookmarklet to “push” stuff
  • clumsy wrap-up and episode three when we manage!

Did you miss episode 1?

Note: PodPress seems to have collapsed, so here is a direct link to the 14Mb mp3 file just in case.

Steph+Suw Podcast: First! [en]

[fr] Suw et moi avons enfin enregistré le fameux podcast-conversation dont nous parlons depuis notre premiÚre rencontre, en mai 2004. C'est en anglais et c'est assez long, mais on s'en est pas trop mal sorties pour une premiÚre!

Each time Suw and I meet, we talk about recording a podcast together. We met for the first time in June 2004, and if I believe the Podcasting and Beercasting Thoughts I wrote a little less than a year later, that was indeed when we first started talking about using audio to record conversations.

I’m definitely sure that we talked about it at BlogTalk 2. I don’t think Skype was in the air then, but we talked about hooking up our phones to some audio recording device, and left it at that. At that time, people were getting excited about “audioblogging” (did we already talk about “podcasting” back then? It seems a long, long time ago) and we agreed that were audio really became interesting was in rendering conversations. (See the Podcasting and Beercasting Thoughts post for more about that.)

Anyway, now we have Skype, and Call Recorder (which reminds me, I need to write up a post about the ethics of recording audio conversations), and we finally got round to doing it. It’s a bit long-ish (40 minutes — not surprising if you know us!) and has been slightly edited in that respect, but honestly, it’s not too bad for a start.

Here is roughly what we talked about.

  • San Francisco, web geek paradise
  • City sizes (see this London-SF superimposition map)
  • Segways
  • The cat/geek Venn diagram (Twitter error message)
  • I really want a Wii
  • IRC screen names
  • The difficulties of pronouncing S-u-w
  • When geeks name children: A unique identifier or anonymity?
  • Stalkers and geoinformation
  • Perceptions of security
  • Giving out your phone number and address, and personal boundaries
  • Airport security (background…)
  • Risk and expectations of risk
  • Death, religion, and the medical industry
  • Naming our podcast… something about blondes, apparently
  • Clueless marketeering from the Fabric nightclub in London
  • The repercussions of having a blog that people think is influential (even if
    you don’t think it is)

Let us know what you liked and didn’t like! View Suw’s post about this podcast.

"Learning Blogs": GWNG Meeting Presentation [en]

[fr] Présentation donnée vendredi passé au GWNG à UNAIDS.

Here are the slides I used as a backbone to my presentation of blogs as educational tools during the Global Net Manager Networking Group last Friday at UNAIDS. You can download them in three formats. As specified on the presentation, they are licensed CC by-nc-nd.

Surprise Meet-Up Last Night [en]

[fr] Une rencontre totalement imprévue avec un pote d'IRC qui était à Lausanne pour la semaine. Je l'ai appris par hasard la veille de son départ -- du coup, on est allés faire un tour en ville!

So, last night, before the sad news hit me, I was just hanging out online while digging through the bottom of my GTD inbox when I was drawn into #swhack by a highlight. (If you don’t live on IRC, you probably don’t understand what I’m talking about — don’t fret.) Usually, highlights in #swhack mean the bots are getting chatty, but anyway, I peeked in. An irrelevant mention of Bugs Bunny (now you can guess what I highlight on) was all it was, but as the channel seemed alive for once, I stayed to exchange a few words with those who were there.

The conversation topic quickly drifted to Switzerland, and for some reason I didn’t quite grasp straight away, people were suddenly very interested in the fact that I was in Switzerland, and, more than that, in Lausanne.

A few lines later the penny dropped, and I realised that crschmidt was chatting with me through the free wifi provided by my hometown! He had been here all week for the FOSS4G conference. He works for MetaCarta, who were sending him there.

Half an hour and a park name confusion (my mistake) later, we were meeting up in Parc Montbenon. We went out for a drink, a stroll in the Roman ruins and a short photo session by the lake. We talked about History classes in Switzerland and the States, looked at satellite maps of Lausanne (blurry) and Geneva (I got to see the building the coComment offices are in!), and all sorts of other things that add up to enjoyable conversation without having to be blog material.

Before I knew it we had chatted away until past 1am and my tiredness reminded me that I had planned to go to bed early. But nevermind! It was worth it, nice to be able to meet Chris before he left this morning. Hope you had a safe trip home!

Chris and Steph in Vidy
Proof of meet-up!

Femina: une promesse de blog [en]

MalgrĂ© tout le mal que j’ai pu dire du site de Femina, il s’y trouve une page qui me paraĂźt fort prometteuse: nos potins.

A premier coup d’oeil, ça ressemble à  un blog — enfin, ça en a la mise en page. C’est joli, c’est aĂ©rĂ©, on a envie de lire. Le ton est personnel, assez informel, authentique, comme celui du magazine, d’ailleurs.

Si on regarde de plus prĂšs, cependant, on remarque qu’il manque un certain nombre d’Ă©lĂ©ments pour que cette “promesse de blog” (dixit Anne Do) puisse ĂȘtre vĂ©ritablement un blog digne de ce nom. Ce n’est pas juste une question d’appellation (surtout pas, en fait!) mais de rĂŽle que devrait pouvoir jouer une telle publication.

A quoi peut donc bien servir un “blog de la rĂ©daction” pour une publication comme Femina? Un blog, c’est bien pour un certain nombre de choses:

  • communiquer de façon transparente, directe et immĂ©diate avec le “public” (les clients, les lecteurs, les Ă©lecteurs…);
  • crĂ©er du dialogue, de la conversation avec le “public” et d’autres acteurs de la blogosphĂšre (qui ne sont pas nĂ©cessairement des lecteurs du journal, par exemple) — ce qui renforce la “communautĂ©”;
  • indirectement (car c’est une consĂ©quence du succĂšs dans les deux points mentionnĂ©s ci-dessus), augmenter sa visibilitĂ© dans les moteurs de recherche, avec toutes les consĂ©quences rĂ©jouissantes que cela peut comporter.

Pour qu’un blog puisse mener à  bien cette mission, il y a un certain nombre de prĂ©-requis, techniques et Ă©ditoriaux:

  • chaque billet doit avoir une adresse web stable et unique pour qu’on puisse y rĂ©fĂ©rer (le fameux “permalien”);
  • idĂ©alement, les visiteurs doivent pouvoir laisser des commentaires ou au moins indiquer qu’ils ont Ă©crit une rĂ©action sur leur propre blog au moyen d’un trackback;
  • le billets doivent pouvoir ĂȘtre rattachĂ©s à  leur auteur (un ĂȘtre humain!), plutĂŽt qu’ĂȘtre anonymes ou “collectifs” (on tombe alors dans la situation peu agrĂ©able oĂč c’est l’institution ou l’entreprise qui parle);
  • le balisage (HTML et CSS) doit ĂȘtre structural (et non prĂ©sentationnel) afin d’accomoder les moteurs de recherche comme Google, mais aussi les outils plus spĂ©cifiquement axĂ©s “blogs” comme Technorati, coComment, TailRank, ainsi que les divers annuaires rĂ©pertoriant les blogs;
  • le blog devrait Ă©galement ĂȘtre disponible sous forme de fil RSS/atom afin qu’on puisse s’y abonner et le suivre sans devoir se rendre sur le site lui-mĂȘme;
  • ĂȘtre trĂšs ouvert par rapport au contenu du blog et des commentaires: Ă©viter la censure ou les lourdeurs Ă©ditoriales MarCom ou RP;
  • la rĂ©daction et la tenue du blog prend du temps; il faut prĂ©voir du temps à  y consacrer pour qu’il reste vivant.

Il y a sĂ»rement d’autres choses, mais avec ça, c’est dĂ©jà  bien parti. Difficile? Non. Il suffit d’utiliser pour son blog un outil de blogging, plutĂŽt que de s’amuser à  vouloir rĂ©inventer la roue. La plupart des outils de blogging ont derriĂšre eux plusieurs annĂ©es d’existence et des Ă©quipes de dĂ©veloppeurs enthousiastes — il est un peu illusoire de penser qu’on peut faire mieux seul dans son coin, surtout si l’on ne baigne pas dĂ©jà  dans la blogosphĂšre. Donc, si on ne dĂ©sire pas une solution hĂ©bergĂ©e comme WordPress.com ou TypePad, on installe sur le serveur de son site WordPress, DotClear ou encore MovableType (liste non exhaustive, bien sĂ»r). Comme ça, on est sĂ»r d’avoir sous la main le kit du parfait petit blogueur.

Je reviens à  Femina. Voici ce qui manque à  mon avis cruellement à  la jolie promesse de blog pour qu’elle puisse dĂ©ployer ses ailes et occuper la place qu’elle mĂ©rite dans la blogosphĂšre romande:

  • des permaliens
  • la possibilitĂ© de laisser des commentaires et des trackbacks
  • le nom de la personne qui a Ă©crit le billet
  • cĂŽtĂ© “derriĂšre la scĂšne”: fil RSS/atom, balisage correct, service de ping…

Ce qu’il y a dĂ©jà ?

  • un ton de proximitĂ©, oĂč l’on sent bien que ce sont des gens qui parlent
  • une jolie mise en page
  • la volontĂ© de faire un blog 🙂

Alors, Femina — si tu relevais le dĂ©fi?

Blog pour les nuls [en]

Un dĂ©nommĂ© Petzi, lecteur de ce blog, a laissĂ© ici un commentaire me demandant quelques conseils pour blogueur dĂ©butant. Je tente de rĂ©pondre Ă  sa demande ici. (Soit dit en passant, merci Ă  mes lecteurs d’Ă©viter Ă  l’avenir squatter les commentaires de n’importe quelle page pour des communications gĂ©nĂ©rales — Ă  la diffĂ©rence de Robert Scoble, je reçois une quantitĂ© tout Ă  fait gĂ©rable d’e-mail, mĂȘme si je tarde parfois un peu Ă  y rĂ©pondre…)

Tout d’abord, Petzi me demande si j’ai un livre Ă  recommander. Personnellement, je n’ai pas lu beaucoup de livres sur les blogs, mais ce que j’ai lu de Blog Story Ă©tait tout Ă  fait bien. C’est une bonne intro gĂ©nĂ©rale au “phĂ©nomĂšne blogs”. Mais ce n’est pas exactement un livre de recettes.

Quel que soit le blog que l’on dĂ©sire faire, je crois que mes conseils principaux vont se rĂ©sumer Ă  ceux-ci:

  • parlez de quelque chose qui vous passionne
  • si vous ĂȘtes dans les domaines politiques ou professionnels, Ă©vitez la langue de bois, la poudre aux yeux, le language marketing — bref, parlez comme un ĂȘtre humain et non pas comme une agence de comm’
  • encouragez la discussion: lisez d’autres blogs, commentez, rĂ©agissez, interpellez vos lecteurs

Ensuite, un peu d’Ă©tiquette:

  • soyez respectueux des autres blogueurs, que ce soit dans leurs Ă©crits sur leurs blogs ou dans vos commentaires
  • ne “cassez” pas la conversation en effaçant commentaires ou billets auxquels d’autres auraient pu rĂ©agir (trolls exceptĂ©s)
  • Ă©vitez trop d’auto-promotion directe

Quelques infos techniques:

Et un mot de prudence:

  • n’oubliez pas que tout le monde peut techniquement lire votre blog (sauf si vous lui mettez un mot de passe!) — n’y Ă©crivez donc rien qui vous mettrait dans l’embarras si vos parents, amis, voisins ou employeurs tombaient un jour dessus!

VoilĂ  , Petzi — j’espĂšre avoir un peu rĂ©pondu Ă  ta question. Quant Ă  te donner un exemple de blog suisse comme modĂšle… je suis un peu empruntĂ©e, parce que je ne comprends pas assez clairement ce que tu dĂ©sires faire comme blog. Mais tu peux toujours aller fouiller sur SwissBlogs ou blog.ch.

Happy blogging!

Mise Ă  jour: Il y a de longues annĂ©es, j’avais Ă©crit Conseils Premier Blog sur SpiroLattic. C’est un peu basique, mais c’est encore actuel…