Author: Michael C. Habib

Why Robert and Maryam Scoble Gave Me a T-Shirt, ConvergeSouth Notes, Part 2

, or, Robert and Maryam Scoble on “Ten Ways to a Killer Blog”

They began by pointing out that, as far as they can recall, this is the first time that they have given a talk on blogging together.

They set out with a simple goal, but the discussion oriented nature of the conference led to many interesting tangents. Below are my notes and thoughts on the talk.

  1. Write from the heart – I missed the actual quote, but the idea is one we have all heard before. Write what you are passionate about.
  2. “Read other blogs” – Robert points out that if you read blogs and don’t feel the impulse to write your own, then you probably shouldn’t be blogging. I can relate to this. Even though I read blogs on and off for a while before I began my own, there was always a little part of me that felt left out of the conversation.
  3. “Pick a niche you can own (be different)” Maryam pointed out that Robert always says that there are two types of bloggers. One type has a desire to change things and is writing for an audience. Robert fits into that category. The second kind are those bloggers, like Maryam, who blog just for the sake of it. Either way, it is important to hit a unique market. Robert discusses the importance of branding your niche so that people begin to relate you and you niche.I have tried to do this with Academic Library 2.0. While I cover many related topics, I always come back to this one. As Robert was discussing this, I began to think of how social networking services increasingly need to focus on niche markets.
  4. “Link to other blogs” (and comment). – When Maryam began her blog, she told Robert not to link to her because she wanted to earn her incoming links. Even so, Dave Winer linked to her blog on its first day and brought 3,000 unique visitors to her site. Don’t underestimate the power of linking. Also, don’t underestimate the power of link love. Robert points out that the internet rewards. They also stressed the importance of linking to material covering both sides of an issue because you automatically gain a level of authority above someone linking only to one side.
  5. “Admit mistakes” – Maryam said that Robert has earned her respect on this one. Robert also mentioned the importance of keeping private data sacrosanct.
  6. “Write good headlines” – Robert says that he moves items straight from his aggregator to his link-blog based on the headline alone. Similarly, he deletes most other posts coming through his aggregator because they have uninteresting or uninformative titles. Interesting to note, Robert said that he mostly subscribes to feeds for searches rather than individual blogs. I too have found ,myself doing this more and more. The eye tracking study that shows people look for keywords in headlines was mentioned. They point out that people love lists and are more likely to read posts with a list title. Jokingly they say that this is why they used a list for their presentation! Maryam points out that her most popular post is titled, “In Defense of Geeks or Ten Reasons Why You Should Date a Geek.
  7. Use other media – Robert is convinced TechCrunch was discovered because Michael added a graphic to every post.The internet is a gift economy. I contributed my story about how I wanted to share my concept models. Instead of putting them on my blog, I put them on Flickr because I new there was a much better chance of someone discovering them. In fact, I had a pretty good idea that the more well known Library 2.0 bloggers would see it there. Michael Stephens did find it on Flickr and linked to the Flickr image. I lost some traffic to my blog, but I got my ideas out there, which was most important. My basic point was that social networking services can be a powerful way to share your work. Given that more people are subscribing to searches for tags, this is even more important. Ed Cone backed me up and said it was a really “powerful point.” Then Maryam threw a t-shirt at me because of the importance of my contribution. This was especially cool because many others had contributed, but I was the first to earn a t-shirt! Robert moved from this point straight to Second Life. As he was listing all of the things that you can put in Second Life, I, given the confidence from the t-shirt, yelled out “libraries”. He spoke a lot about what was covered in an article in The Economist a few weeks ago.
  8. “Have a voice” – I think the saying they used was, “If you want to dig a goldmine, you need to use some dynamite.” Sometimes you have to take a stand for good. They discussed how Robert stood up against Steve Balmer surrounding Microsoft’s support, or lack there of, for a gay rights bill. He mentioned that he asked Maryam if it was okay to take the risk of getting fired. After she read over his post, she said it was okay. I really liked this story. It points out the importance of standing up for what you believe in, yet it also points out that sometimes you need to think of the consequences beyond what might happen to you.
  9. “Get outside the blogosphere” – Go to events. Meet people. They then ran out of time and threw up their last few slides. They actually ended up having 15 suggestions.
  10. “Market yourself”
  11. “Write Well” – Spell check, check your state of mind.
  12. “Expose Yourself”
  13. “Help other people blog” – Don’t play hierarchy games.
  14. “Engage with commenters”
  15. “Keep your integrity”– Robert said it is important that “You are what you seem you are.”

I asked the last question of the session. I asked Robert if he had any advice on how one might pitch the idea of having a public blogger. The scenario I gave him was making the pitch at a job interview with a large company. He pointed out the importance of sharing original unscripted content. He also said it is important to point out (to the company) that they can’t control the world.

Given the tardiness of my coverage, a few people already have some excellent posts up about this talk. So if you want to learn read more about the Scobles’s talk, check out mistersugar’s take on BlogTogether or Daniel’s take on Xark.

Technorati tags: scoble robertscoble maryamscoble bloggingbloggingtips convergesouth convergesouth2006

Elizabeth Edwards on Online Communities, ConvergeSouth Notes, Part 1

Please pardon any typos or grammatical errors. I am focusing my energies elsewhere, but wanted to get this out. Thanks. -Mike

ConvergeSouth 2006 began Friday night with a barbeque in Greensboro’s historic Aycock district. The barbeque was tons of fun and I got to eat with the North Carolina U.S. Representative Brad Miller. ConvergeSouth is an annual semi-unconference on blogging, podcasting, and videocasting. I say semi-unconference because the schedule was pre-determined and each session had a scheduled moderator, but was discussion oriented.

I first heard about it last year while I was taking a class titled “Blogging, We the Media, and Virtual Communities“. Unfortunately, I was unable to make it then and have been waiting ever since.

The conference attracted a wide variety of people involved in blogging. Among others, the participants included community organizers, hobbyists, consultants, politicians, and journalists. There were political bloggers from both ends of the spectrum; which proved interesting for the first session led by Elizabeth Edwards. Mrs. Edwards, who was speaking on building online communties, kept her politics out of the discussion completely. She told of how she has participated in online communities for nearly as long as the internet itself. Some of her favorite communities have included music lyric contribution sites and grammar usage newsgroups. She joked about how there were newsgroups titled both alt.usage.grammar and alt.grammar.usage. She used this as an example of how the web has helped her see that there are lots of ways to see things. It sounded as if this is one of the major ideas in her mind as she approaches the web. She has also turned to online support groups for more serious issues such as the loss of her son and her recent cancer.

Mrs. Edwards then spoke about her experiences building online communities related to political campaigns and community initiatives. One of her key points was the importance of being able to translate online community into community activism. While this could mean simply donating money through the website, it more properly refers to community members acting locally through face-to-face meetings with one another and their communities.

At one point Mike Krempasky, co-founder of Redstate.com, was invited up to the front so that leaders from both ends of the political spectrum could discuss how they deal with online community building. One of the topics brought to their attention, was whether they find posting a topic that is provocative to community members is better or worse than posting something that is agreed upon by all. It seemed that a lot of that had to do with what the particular point of the community was. In general it seemed that a post too provocative often causes more problems within the community even though it increases discussion. It sounded as though Redstate has found that topics everyone agrees upon are usually best for helping the community stay focused on its goals. This was funny in a way as Mr. Krempasky later took the opportunity to say that he “thought Brad Miller ought to be re-elected” thus provoking major online discussions. I actually went to a dinner hosted by Mike and everyone seemed to find it amusing how quickly the comments built up on the Daily Kos. It was new to me to meet political bloggers from either side and see how they use blogs. For the most part, everyone got along well and kept the discussions to the shared interests of blogging and online community.

Elizabeth Edwards mentioned that she grew up in a military community where the shared interests of cummunity members brought everyone together. She said that she is trying to re-create this feeling of community in all of the connections she makes online and off. Throughout the discussion she stressed that one of the best parts of online community is that it brings people together around a shared interest while leaving out the conflict that can arise from peripheral conflicting interests.

To a question about net neutrality, Elizabeth Edwards said that net neutrality was “enormously” important and was the, “Last town square we’ve got.”

Mrs. Edwards pointed out the importance of local bloggers and how politicians need to pay close attention to their voices. She gave an example of how her husband, John Edwards, has added an endorsement the other night because local bloggers pointed the importance of the candidate out to his staff.

While many other topics were discussed, I want to point out two discussions particularly relevant to this blog. When asked about the future of online community, Mrs. Edwards, highlighted the importance of driving dialogue to small, local, communities such as “libraries” and some other places I can’t remember.

Ed Cone told a story about how he once posted a message to a Tar Heel Basketball fan listserv asking whether they should make an exception and support Coach K in his role as coach of the U.S. team. One minute later, Elizabeth had responded, no they had to support the U.S. team despite the fact that Coach K was their coach.

In part two of my notes, I will share why the Scobles (Robert and Mary)am gave me a t-shirt during their talk.

Technorati tags: convergesouth convergesouth2006 blogging elizabethedwards onlinecommunties virtualcommunities

John Blyberg embraces criticism with dialogue

I applaude John’s effort to approach criticism with dialogue and agree with many of his conclusions. As an institution, libraries have a well established history as central repositories of physical, and now digital, collections. In my last post, I pointed out how we need to transition our thoughts of library as place to the digital world. However, John reminds me that the place is only important in so much as it meets the needs of our user communities.

To me, libraries are much more than collections, but instead represent a broader set of ideals related to universal access and intellectual freedom. As far as I am concerned libraries will live on as vital institutions as long as we embrace these ideals. John asks:

I agree on both points, especially with the ““Don’Â’t expect kids, seniors, and everyone else to trudge downtown”” part. But let me ask you this, is there any reason why a new library initiative couldn’Â’t encompass all those things? Why not subsidize wifi hot-spots around town that default to the library web page when a user first logs on? If you don’t have the money, raise it. Why not have our libraries represented on planning commission boards so that we can push for ubiquitous broadband access? Why the hell are we not the ones spear-heading these efforts?

All of those suggestions appeal to the ideals of universal access that I previously mentioned. Whenever I visit a new town, the first thing I assess about the public library is its location. I ask, “Is it accessible to those who need it most?” Oftentimes the answer is no. Contemporary information technologies offer new opportunities to distribute access points in new and valuable ways. And to answer John’s last question, I sure as heck would rather see librarians leading these initiatives than other interest groups. One of the reasons I entered this profession is so I would have a platform to get on local technology boards, school boards, and the like. I see our profession as a calling to help people connect with the information and knowledge they need to live fulfilling lives. We have a strong history of professional ethics and public service that we need to apply to these new initiatives.

John states, “The problem is that libraries are not typically aggressive beasts.” He then discusses a number of places we need to be aggressive. It seems that traditionally our value has been largely accepted without argument. As defenders of intellectual freedom, we should wonder why that is. Isn’t increasing criticism in many ways due to a more informed public? As defenders of intellectual freedom don’t we recognize the value of looking at both sides of an issue. Even if we are right, it is usually helpful to embrace criticism as an opportunity to reflect and improve. One of the ways we can become aggressive is to meet criticisms head on instead of going on the defense.

All this said, it is also important to attack these particular criticisms head on in the way Michael Stephens and Sarah Houghton have. In this case, it is clear that many of the points in the original critique were unfair to the Lawrence Public Library.

I look forward to seeing other responses to John’s essay.

Digital Library as Third Place

A few days ago, Peter Bromberg of Library Garden posted a version of an essay called “Library as Place”. I had the good fortune to meet Peter at Library Camp a few weeks ago, and I wholeheartedly agree with the arguments of his essay. However, I feel it is important that we, as librarians, look beyond the walls of the library when discussing library as place. We need to expand our vision to include digital library as place. We are already doing this implicitly by incorporating social tools such as blogs and wikis into our websites. However, by explicately acknowledging this phenomenon, we can utilize what we already know about the physical library as place when building online communities. In fact, I originally created my Academic Library 2.0 Concept Model to demonstrate the parallels between physical and virtual library places. It was only after completing the model that I took the additional step of recognizing the virtual library places as Library 2.0.

Academic Library 2.0 Concept Model Basic v2

Academic Library 2.0 Concept Model Basic v2
(green = third place)

When discussing library as place, Peter brings in the concept of “third place”. It is exactly this version of physical library as place that my model hopes to parallel in the virtual world. Peter explains:

By our very nature we offer people a “third place” (not home, not work) where they can come to explore, imagine, think, learn, play, and reflect. Our function as a “third place” has never been more important to our continued health and relevance. If libraries are to survive and thrive we must redouble our efforts and refocus our energies to ensure that we are not only “third places” but destinations of choice.

Taken in a different context, isn’t this exactly what we are trying to transform our web sites into? MySpace, Facebook, and Flickr are wonderful examples of the online third places that people spend their time. What is different about the virtual world is that it is easier to incorporate the library into other third places. For example, if a patron is on your library’s MySpace page, then it could be argued that they are both at MySpace and your Library.

For those who are having trouble conceptualizing of the web as a place, lets look at the example of Second Life instead. As a 3D virtual world, Second Life is more obviously a place. The Second Life Library 2.0 is also the most obvious example of digital library as third place. If a patron is at their house on their computer in Second Life at Library 2.0, where are they? If they are focused enough, they are at the Second Life Library 2.0. Where we are is often more mental than it is physical. By embracing this concept, we will be able to build more compelling physical and virtual places. How might we go about this? Peter asks the following:

Why would someone in our community choose to spend their time here rather than somewhere else? Related questions might be: What does the library look like, smell like, feel like, and sound like? What do our signs communicate? What kind of environment are we offering to the community and how do library staff contribute to the creation of a friendly, welcoming environment?

Outside of smell, couldn’t we apply all of these questions to our websites? To conclude, the next time you find yourself discussing “library as place”, please ask how the discussion would apply to the online world.

Technorati tags: libraryasplace library2.0 secondlife thirdplace academiclibrary20

Balkan Beat Box, satellite radio, baby, Library Camp East and danah boyd

As you may have guessed from the title, this blog post is a bit busy. Tonight, I am driving up to Brooklyn for the weekend. Luckily, I just invested in a Sirius satellite radio, so the trip should be a bit more enjoyable. Saturday night we will see Balkan Beat Box.

Then, I will drive down to Jersey to meet my cousin’s new baby! I will be away from the web for most of the trip. Consequently, the blog will be silent until the end of my trip when I plan on attending Library Camp East on Monday the 25th. I look forward to meeting some of you there. I will be checking my e-mail when I can, but may be taking a little while on my replies.

I have to head to campus now to hear a talk by social networking researcher danah boyd.