BlogTalkNotesPanel7

1. DW world . de (Tuesday 2pm)
2. Panel 7
1. Collective Blogging, Markus Glötzel
2. Michael Schuster: Using Weblogs as Project Management Tools in innovative projects
3. Anjo Anjewierden / Rogier Brussee / Lilia Efimova: Shared Conceptualizations in Weblogs
4. Q&A
5. Links to write-ups for this panel

Panel 7, Tuesday 06.07.04. Please complete these notes with yours!

DW world . de (Tuesday 2pm)

avail everywhere (except Peoples Republic of China)

Lots of languages on offer on DW-WORLD.DE (30, from albanian to urdu)

Specials

www.kalederblatt.de www.todayinhistory.de

www.campus-germany.de

www.germanizer.com

www.qantara.de (Islamic world site)

www.inspiredminds.com (literary content)

International Weblog Awards 2004

>>> Steph: Yet Another Weblog Award?

Best of Blog (BOB) awards
>>> never heard of them!!(heh) -- probably because no French!
goals:

• strengthen freedom of speech / info access

• exchange of information worldwide

• quality & excellence

Who can enter?

• any blog in their main language (german, english, spanish, portuguese, russian, chinese, arabic)

  Categories:

• Best Weblog

• best design

• best topic

• best weblog-innovation

• 7 times best journalistic weblog (1 per language)

Open till september (?)

Panel 7

Collective Blogging, Markus Glötzel

Data -> Info -> knowlege (according to Hellmut Willke, german sociologist, 1998, 2001: "Systemisches Wissensmanagement")

Transfer of info

info -> verbalised by A --> transmission to B (who detects)

congruent frames of ref and shared background - experience helps (as transfer of knowedge is impossible)

context transfer is impt here. (through blogging) -> an Action Research project

• 15 employees encouraged to blog

• bottom-up strategy

• 2 blogs set up (everyone has read/ write access plus ability to add categories)

• non geeks

goal: deeper understanding on how people contextualise observations (through blog)

87 entries in four months (doesn't sound a lot, but valuable entries)

method:

• entries paraphrazed and categorized

• pencil/paper survey amongst participants

• asked uninvolved person to extract context information out of the blog entries and then interviewed that person

• searching the weblogs, the person started building storylines => weblogs allowed totally exterior person to construct narrative based on what information had been stored in the weblogs

Finding time to blog was not difficult for them because blogging decreased the number of emails they had to read & write every day

Context: stored in a holistic way => easy to reconstruct context (in weblogs)

meta discussion is necessary [Horst: really?] - why, how, what (not) to blog

Markus' Proposal (pdf, 13k)

Michael Schuster: Using Weblogs as Project Management Tools in innovative projects

Slides: http://blogtalk.net/presentBT2/SchPrue.ppt

Case study:

• 24 students near the end of their studies, with experience in Project Management

• Research project on computer games (empirical market study)

to monitor the progress in the project, a weblog was set up. autonomous teams of 3-5 students

not from a business perspective (students ≠ business people) -> insight into real projects (how are weblogs used in real projects?)

2 approaches: M. Roell's approach vs. research diary (Ian Hughes)

Roell: "bulletin board to support communication and document sharing" Hughes: "record of a researcher's involvement in a project"

(Michael was part of the project team)

set up simple multi-author weblog (pretty feature-bare)

16 weeks, 24 students

expectations:

* sharing content/knowledge * different degrees of involvement * use of topics * different usage through project phases * discussion

what happened:

* sharing content, used it like a bulletin board * different degrees of involvement * hardly used topics * usage didn't change * few comments

Analysis with regard to:

Postings with

• "real" content or knowledge

• deadlines

• meta-information

Not many comments (like 2 per story), 14 postings per author on 16 weeks (66 postings for Michael!)

5 users made 66% of the postings

Most of posts had no links in them. Didn't use e-mail notification in general, didn't comment much.

Lots of non-categorized posts (topic "General" or none at all) 8 mb of data shared; postings often only to explain an uploaded file

weblogs are not as great a tool if you just set them up and don't do anything about them.

it's necessary to:

* talk with users, not about users * talk about the tools to avoid "dead data depositories" * do more case studies

Anjo Anjewierden / Rogier Brussee / Lilia Efimova: Shared Conceptualizations in Weblogs

Shortcuts:

• people - Anjo Anjewierden, Rogier Brussee, Lilia Efimova

• documents - abstract, slides (at http://sharedcon.notlong.com)

• Please, ping http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/07/06.html#a1269 if you are writing about it

Uses Is the tool useful for bloggers? Is the tool useful for companies (e.g. to “formalize” the knowledge shared in weblogs)? Can the tool be used as a “conceptual” search engine? What can weblog researchers do with it?

not a blogger, but does blog not a programmer, but does code programmes not a scientist, but does conduct research (the point being he regards himself as not a specialist in any of these three roles, but attempts to combine them)

what is a conceptualization:

• semi-formal representation of the understanding of some domain

• network of concepts

Bloggers - can you share conceptualisations and see the similarities? Is this a tool that can be useful?

Implementation Take a blog and then remove all posts, use links technology to identify concepts - automatic

sees name of a person will identify person, as well as the shortcuts and whether they are nonambiguous by having two concepts in same post you implicitly define link between two concepts if you analyse random posts they will be filtered out automatically one detail in demo - ^knowledgeand ^{knowlege management}are two terms, not ^knowledge x 2 and ^managment" x 1

Demo List of blogs blogging about KM beneath is pain showing visual representation of terms in these blogs, using absolute measure (no. of uses of a word ?)

Eg lilia uses 'knoweldge' 490 times so then look at what Lilia relates knowledge to, shows up in network

Or "blog" which is connected to K-Collector and a bunch of others terms So network needs to be kept smallish so connections are clear

then trist to see if terms have connections between themselves

Lilia is associating blogs with publishing, conferences, technorati, but also with Sebastian Fiedler, digarams shows conceptualisation of blog according to Lilia

If lilia mention "people" we don't see a definition of what she thinks people are, but we actually see the people.

Of course this can be extended, by clicking on any links in the network and seeing the conceptualation of that term related to other terms-concepts

Once interesting thing: the list of persons is empty for Denham Grey because he never mentions people.

Can then ask software to compare relationships between, say, information and knowledge,

Upper panel: blogs - people - absolute - relative Lower pannel: network relationshnip visualisation

can show strength of relationship red = strong, green = weak link ?

Look at blogs by concepts that people are creating and how they are related Find out whether people ahve conceptualisations that they share

So can cluster concepts and relationships, eg teaching and students; law and copzright

Looks like you can select a numbert of bloggers and extract data from them only, then pull out topics and examine them in more detail.

Lilia - Conclusions To tkae one step further - great tool, but what is most important is thbat it provides and alterivaive view on the content of weblogs Arvhices re rev chron order, and what are comment, but not much metadata draws out connections between them

can view single blog Interesting to see alternative access to archives using this tool because it allows you analys the way a topic develops Alternative view on connections between bloggers, looking at bgloggers base on language, not linking Alternative view on bloging ecosystem More questions then answers - how would bloggers use it? Is it useful for communties-companies in order to acces what is in a group of blogs Can it be use for conceptual browsing Lots of ideas for how it could be used in research

Slides are all online - links on Lilias blog

Q&A

Way that the data was mapped visually was interesting as presentation too for those who don't understand how info is conceptually related. Do you use this tool in that context? Trying to gain understanding about how people use blog in order to help peopel find out what thez really care about. Finding a visual metaphor for that is difficult, and harder to epxlain to someone who doesn't get it zet.

LE: research is personal km, if you have digital traces left, can you use smart cools to digest and agreggate that so that indivisuals get a better view of what thez are doing over time

How do i get the tool? AA: not sure, am going to try and get a distribution. have zip with the tool but can't give it out because it's got confidential info on. But if people email he will create a distribution for it. It's pretty big because it has dictionaries and such in it. But will release under GPL

anjo.blogs.com slides: sharedcon.notlong.com rogierbrussee.blogspot.com blog.mathemagenic.com / lilia

Q: Co/citation changes results_ AA didn't try it because time ran out. May be anomalies in the data now because can't distinguish between real post and quoted information. but if a term is used five hundred times then getting it wrong twice doesn't matter

Links to write-ups for this panel

Please add your links here if you have written about this panel on your weblog