Small insignificant ideas...go places

Journey onwards

sallyb — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 03:13:06 +0000

I’m off! My time is up…I must away. I’ve added a Blog Photo section in the sidebar, to show how the blog grew visually over the week.

Assignment finished, conversation in abeyance. We’ll talk again some time.

This photo was taken of me, on a glorious summer’s day in the Greek islands. Don’t look back – so much lies ahead.

Conversations [Example Two]

sallyb — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 07:57:13 +0000

Finally getting around to Jean, yet my week of conversation is nearly done. Jean was also a speaker at the First Person: International Digital Storytelling Conference. A post on her blog (reproduced below) reflects her thoughts on weblogs as valid, academic research forms.

Jean’s post is in response to ideas raised by three academics on their blogs. One of those blog posts is from Jill Walker. An extract from a book by Walker and Mortensen propelled the sallyb blog project in the first place and connects most of the ideas and people mentioned throughout this weblog ‘assignment’.

The network of blogs (the blogosphere), with a plethora of themes, ideas and reflections, provides the opportunity to debate issues, challenge systems and contribute to a ‘mass’ media without gatekeepers.

Blogging for credit?

March 5 2004

Sebastien Paquet wonders, along with Andrew Chen, Jill Walker, and Professor Bainbridge about the benefits of research blogs as opposed to formal academic publication. I don’t quite see why it’s an either/or situation – for me, a research blog is a thinking, talking, networking tool and a shared interest magnet; academic publishing is a more rigorous (but far slower) way to disseminate concrete findings and test well-thought out arguments – and of course, formal publication is an absolutely essential CV building exercise.

The question in most of the above discussions is whether the public engagement, reflexivity, and contribution to current or emerging knowledge that come out of blogging should be CV-builders too. Perhaps, as others have said, in these ways blogging is analagous to giving conference presentations. I think that genuine research blogging should be a recognized part of each individual’s overall research profile. It isn’t entirely clear how something parallel to the peer review process can be shown to have taken place – but I think that weblogs could easily be asessed for quality (in terms native to the web, not to the print journal) and weighted accordingly. Sadly if this shift does take place, it won’t be soon (ah, but when I run the world…).

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Blogs – Theory lesson!

sallyb — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 10:09:39 +0000

A quickie…just read this and need to add a bit of theory to my blog:

Exhibit A

A blog post is, relatively speaking, highly granular. It is highly chunked. This means it is, broadly, highly self-contained – you could read just this post and it will make sense. You don’t need to read the entire blog. This property means that it is very easy to link it into other semiotic or syntagmatic chains. Low granularity, for example imagine an entire book, means you can point to or refer to the object, but you can’t really insert it, whole as it were, into other chains.

Adrian Miles

Isn’t that just such an entirely sensible explanation of the how ‘weblogs are densely interlinked…anchored in the public arena as part of a ‘communal discourse’ (Mortensen & Walker)?. I’ve inserted part of someone’s blog within my blog. Both blogs continue to function as independent publications, yet can intersect and merge as well.

Fragments, tendrils, roots, cross pollination…

And read some more:

Exhibit B

There are four themes that seem to form a core set of practices and beliefs among bloggers: the networked nature of communication, the opportunity for engaging in ongoing conversation, easily produced microcontent, and transparency.

These four themes are not unique to blogging. They apply more broadly to systems that support social interaction, including user-editable sites (wikis), tag-driven sites like del.icio.us and Flickr. The community that makes use of weblogs tends to be among the first to take up other social technologies as well. Though it will almost cer-tainly change over time—and the word “blog” may disappear from the vocabulary—these larger themes seem to have taken hold socially and are likely to continue to be influential.

Alex Halavais

Alex is a lecturer at the University at Buffalo in the United States. I like the way he contextualises these themes within the broader sphere of social interaction and technology. He concludes the article by suggesting that, ‘weblogs represent a relatively open and unfiltered view of thinking-in-progress’ (Halavais). Echoes of the ‘project as I move through it’ comment I made an earlier post.

Conversations [Example One]

sallyb — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 06:59:47 +0000

Under the category ‘Blog theory’ on Adrian Miles’ vlog 3.0 I read about a new anthology on blogging called Uses of Blogs, edited by Axel Bruns and Joanne Jacobs. Adrian has contributed a chapter to the forthcoming book and provides a link to a page on Snurblog, where details of the first chapter, contents pages, and contributors to the book are listed. Bruns and Jacobs argue:

it is the specific implementation of a blog that determines its value: its operational structures and response mechanisms, as well as the style of writing and method of recording ideas, commentary and institutionally relevant information, all influence the significance, reputation and success of a blog. There is a clear need to interrogate the range of blogging styles used by different disciplines and cultural groups and to develop a lexicon to articulate the most effective blogging mechanisms for different contexts (Bruns & Jacobs 3).

I’m researching the way academic blogs are linked and how blogs transcend conventional academic/audience relationship. How does this follow my conference conversation, mentioned in an earlier post? Axel Bruns is a lecturer in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Another contributor to Uses of Blogs is Jean Burgess – a doctoral candidate in Creative Industries Faculty at QUT. Jean was a speaker on the panel at the First Person digital storytelling conference and posted a comment (number two) to Adrian’s “prat’ blog entry.
Jill Walker (on my blogroll), is listed on the ‘community blogroll’ at Axel’s blog and is the person who provided the quote that started off my first blog post Beginnings!

Enough work for one post. Am not adhering to my ‘short bursts’ of writing too well. Will look where Jean leads me next post…

Conference Note

sallyb — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:22:37 +0000

Okay, I’ve pasted below the vlog post (dated 8 Feb) that caught my eye, and the comments that it generated. My response (No 7. dated 13 Feb) was a tad late. Do crossblogger comments ever happen well after the post has been made? Must investigate…

February 8, 2006

Prat

Last Sunday I was one of the speakers on a panel at First Person. I was with Barbara Ganley (who is doing wonderful things with blogs and teaching) and Jean Burgess (who is writing the book on the intriguing question/problem of vernacular creativity). I got to go last. I was embarrassing.Now conferences are microcommunities. A good conference is like a nomadic tribe. They come together, hang out intensely, basically talking, arguing, eating and drinking together, then disperse. During this, a culture develops. Each conference has its own culture, though as some tribes meet regularly, some standard totemic lines form. Unfortunately I could only attend for my one session on the last day. This means I have no sense of what has been spoken of, the tenor and culture of the conference. So I come in, and talk about my stuff, without the context of knowing what others have already said, have already discussed. That’s the first problem. You appear as full of yourself and only yourself. And I probably was.The second problem was that I acted out the role of the speaker who comes in only to immediately leave. I have seen others do this. They are brash, rude, overly confident and glib. I managed all four. I imagine some in the audience may have had longer lists.I was a prat. Was a good, though painful lesson.

Comments

Hi Adrian,Actually missed you presenting in Mooloolaba so was glad to see you on the presenters list. Would love to have picked your brain after the session but alas will have to leave that for another time.Don’t feel too bad about the session. You had some interesting things to share which got me thinking. That is what I expect from any presenter. If I walk away and have learned nothing new or fail to at least look at my own practice THEN the presentation was a waste of time.Look forward to monitoring your vlog.Cheers!Adrian (another one)p.s. Regarding…“They are brash, rude, overly confident and glib. I managed all four. I imagine some in the audience may have had longer lists.”Have seen much worse!! Comment by Adrian Greig — February 8, 2006 @ 7:55 am

Adrian! You were not a prat! I was personally glad of your intervention – if digital storytelling is going to be something other than home-made television, then it needs to be understood in the context of what is (or isn’t, but could be) new about new media!I felt just as weird about trying to make ‘academic’ arguments in that context, btw. I should blog about the conference, and I will.Comment by jean — February 8, 2006 @ 8:29 am

Adrian, I enjoyed your presentation and felt it had a great fit with Barbara’s work. Nothing pratly about it at all, and I noted other presenters throughout were happy to make some tough remarks about their work from time to time too. (If all of my piece on Screen Hub about this gets up, you may see that.)Comment by genevieve tucker — February 8, 2006 @ 9:31 am

hi Adrian,Of all the panels that I attended at that conference I found that the one yourself, Jean and Barbara were on was the one that spoke to me and my research/teaching interests the most (perhaps not directly but thematically).That was in no small part due to your discussion of using blogs in teaching and your approach to understanding emerging “media”.I think it’s fair to say that this panel came across as far more… academic… than many of the other sessions but then I think that’s because the tone of the conference came across as being more about using digital tools democratically in the wider community, rather than a rigourous thinking through of these kinds of issues.As for your actual presentation, I don’t think it was bad. You were giving a presentation and engaging the audience, instead of just reading from a sheet of paper and hoping your visuals distract the audience (I saw the latter approach a fair number of times over the weekend).As another previous commenter typed, I’ve seen much worse as well (I almost fell asleep during another different session that very same day).yeah, so I enjoyed the panel. thanks for sharing. – adam mComment by adam m — February 8, 2006 @ 11:19 am

Yes you were all of the above – you forgot bored, your furtive glances at your watch when others were speaking indicated you would much rather be somewhere else on a Sunday morning – with your family????However, having sat through all the presentations – your was one of the most engaging – the content was excellent concise and to the point. I walked away thinking differently about blogging and hence here I am – a non blogger responding to you as a result of your wonderfully arrogant and entertaining performance “got to give good blog to get good blog…. – nice is ever so boring to watching…Your students must enjoy your performances!Comment by Helena Bezzin — February 10, 2006 @ 6:23 am

Nah, the watch glancing is a nervous habit which happens before speaking iin front of a crowd, and because I couldn’t find a pen to take notes from Barbara and Jean (who made points I wanted to keep!)Some others think I was overly harsh in my self assessment – personally I think I was a bit light so thank you for a) affirming this and b) letting me also see that it is not all or only negative.Comment by Administrator — February 12, 2006 @ 3:47 pm

Hey Adrian,You weren’t that bad! Methinks you are too hard on yourself! I enjoyed the session with you, Jean and Barbara. I agree with adam m and had felt like dozing off at some of the other sessions during the weekend, which I found ‘folksy’ rather than ‘cutting edge’.In fact I had dozed off on the opening night and was rudely awakened when the person next to me wanted to grab my hand. I gather people were under instructions from John O’Neal, the keynote speaker, to share the love, or vibes, or something. Actually made me wonder if my expectations of the ‘conference culture’ were way off the mark! Only your session and the one including Ana Serrano really impressed me.Am in your Integrated Media class in first semester and currently using your blog for a summer school blog/essay. So, from a purely selfish perspective…thanks for eating humble pie and providing material to assist MY work!Comment by sallyb — February 13, 2006 @ 12:46 pm

sallyb — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 02:37:59 +0000

Choices

sallyb — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 17:35:11 +0000

My direction has changed already!

Relative to the quote,’Weblogs are densely interlinked. This anchors blogs in the public arena, as part of a communal discourse” (Mortensen & Walker p 259), I initially wanted to discuss a variety of blogs styles (professional, academic or personal), showing how writing style and visual representation (colour, format, images, video) in used in different contexts.

However, ~~randomness~~, I prefer serendipity, plays a big part in Web research. While exploring several blogs, I read a post that relates intrinsically to the area I want to explore – ‘fragments and the flight of thought’, and resonants in my own recent experience in the ‘physical’ world.

What sparked my interest, was the candid ‘confession’ from a blogger, Adrian Miles (Vlog 3.0) and the ‘cross-blogger’ comments his post generated. Adrian writes from the same University as myself – he as an academic, while I’m an undergraduate student – both linked by the same school. I also attended the First Person: International Digital Storytelling Conference referred to in Adrian’s blog and wrote about it in my ‘other blog’ (nope – not giving that one away just yet!). I’m part of this particular ‘communal discourse’ and, in this blog, an observer of it.

Adrian’s ‘spontaneous writing’ is an integral part of blog culture. It’s immediate, personal publication, that’s in stark contrast to the historicised, immutable form of print media.

I aim to make a case study of this conference conversation: tracing the academic weblog tendrils that spread out into ‘communal discourse’. ‘A paragraph is enough and there is no more needed’ (Mortensen and Walker 259), to set off on a different journey. Am I Sancho Panza following someone’s wild imaginings or Don Qiuxote himself, involved in a noble quest?

Blogging is about interconnectedness
The media landscape is under renovation
the relationship between scholar and audience is mutating

Let’s see what’s being said…

What blogging means…to me

sallyb — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:09:24 +0000

What’s blogging to me? A communication tool, which encourages debate and leads to other ideas and research. A chance to get the notion of ‘me’ to ‘you’ – commenting on the things I read about or see and sharing my discoveries by linking to others. I’ve set up guidelines, done some research and explored possible themes. Reading is an intrinsic part of writing a blog. You ‘link’ to share what you’ve seen or read about. Blogging celebrates the marginality between private and public spheres: it’s a public thinking space.

Weblogs structure by time; document chronologically; give rise to random thoughts; and ultimately dissolve into each other through cross-posting and creating links to external websites or other blogs.

Tabula Rasa

sallyb — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 17:37:46 +0000

With the essay quote in mind, I’ve decided to set myself some boundaries in the pursuit of this new research form. It’s ironic that I set ‘boundaries’ in a medium that is in a constant state of ‘becoming’. Maybe ‘guidelines’ is a better description.

Apart from the original article found in my Network Media Course Reader, no resorting to books. That’s so I keep to my promise on thinking, reading and writing ‘online’ – a different headspace.
Keeping things brief, yet constant – the core of blogging: allowing for short bursts of attention.
Datestamped – to show how the site builds up and grows.
Focus – with a wealth of resources at my fingertips, that’ll be a challenge.
Snapshots of the blog as it develops.
Deadline – blogging is all about immediacy. In this instance, the ‘sallyB blog exercise’ has a one week time frame to connect ideas and establish links.

Beginnings

sallyb — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 09:27:31 +0000

Jill Walker (jill/txt.. Weblog) and Torill Mortensen (Thinking with my fingers. Weblog) used a blog (blogonblog. Weblog) in the process of researching and writing the article ‘Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool’. (Mortensen & Walker). The following extract from this article is the catalyst for my final assignment for Networked Media and informs my decision to present my ‘essay’ as a Weblog.

Weblogs are densely interlinked. This anchors blogs in the public arena, as part of a communal discourse. Posts to a blog can be very short and unpretentious. The threshold for publishing a single post is very low. This allows single, small, insignificant ideas to be expressed and formulated. Sometimes these thoughts are left as they are. A paragraph is enough and there is no more needed. Other times, the ideas grow. Someone links their site to the first post, comments on it, and a conversation grows forth. The initial post, or follow-ups, are linked to a web site or a newspaper article or something else. Links are like roots, tendrils, reaching out between fragments, creating a context for bits and pieces that at first glance may seem to be unconnected fragments.
Mortensen and Walker. p259

So what is blogging?. Evan Williams, co-creator of the blogging tool Blogger, defines the blog concept as: ‘Frequency, Bevity, and Personality’ (Turnbull). The word ‘Blog ‘was coined by Peter Mierholz in 1999 – the same year that the genre began a ‘speedy growth’ (Mortensen & Walker 254). Rebecca Blood wrote “Weblogs: a history and perspective.” Rebecca’s Pocket. 9/7/2000, an acclaimed article on the history of blogs in 2000, while the first academic article on weblogs, ‘Blog this: digital renaissance’ Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and Their Impact. Cambridge, MA: MIT. February 2002,was published by Henry Jenkins.

I’ve written research journals for other academic assignments; laboriously mapping my research design and using that information to formulate the outcome (be it a report, essay etc). I discovered that the ideas these journals explored were often more illuminating (for showing my random thoughts) rather than as an broad outline of the project outcome. My lecturers read these seminal ideas, but only as background notes to the main project. What if those ideas could be kept somewhere public?

Could these ‘fragments’ provide the reader with more insight into my work; contextualise my findings in relation to each other, or even provide links to assist someone in their own research or interests? How refreshing it was to read Mortensen & Walker, “in our blogs, we allow ourselves to write half-thought, naked ideas and show them to others rather than saving them for fully fleshed out carefully thought through papers (Mortensen & Walker 267).

Blogging is a new genre that needs a new approach. With Williams’ blogging definition in mind and my own head swimming with ‘naked ideas’, I’m adapting my critical thinking, writing and researching methodologies to experiment with ‘blog think’ – not whipping my ideas into shape for a final product, but seeing how the seemingly unconnected ‘fragments’ might coalesce as product in my blog.

Blogging, dispenses with the dichotomy between thought and action, due to its positioning on the border of what’s private and what’s public (Mortensen & Walker 256). They offer the chance to turn an internal monologue into a dynamic dialogue, where ideas change and develop throughout the process. My research, the initial goals and the project itself are all interconnected and equally weighted.

The shaping of the final outcome of the project is dependent on the context in which it is written. This assignment gives me a useful perspective on my academic work – the project as I move through it.

My leitmotif is: ‘Blogs are a way to trace the flight of thought rather than the chain of thought’ (Mortensen & Walker 268). The keyboard is my pen; the weblog my blank piece of paper. Let’s see what I discover…