First up was Starting with Fire: Why Stories Are Essential and How to Blog Effective Tales by Julie Leung. There was something very refreshing in the presentation style (pure images, a pointed presentation lacking word bullet points. The imagery was moving, but it seemed a bit to go more on about the virtues and values of storeis and less about how stories are donw via blogs. There were a handul of blog examples tossed up at the end (hope I got the URLs correct):

• http://www.blogs.salon.com/0003522
• http://www.theworldisnotflat.com
• http://mysonnicholas.blogspot.com
• http://www.2020hindsight.org/category/1945
• http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com
• http://ferrytale.blogspot.com
• http://postsecret.blogspot.com
• http://unkemptwomen.blogspot.com

I would have liked ro see more on this and the hows, methods, etc. She did offer up a delicious tag stream of references:

http://del.icio.us/julie_leung/storytelling

The next headliner was Sifry on the Blogosphere, Dave Sifry interviewed by Tim Bray. Now these are headliner names, and there were a handful of memorable (well I thought they were) on spam, the future of networks, but all in all, I got little out of this. It was pretty much a commercial focus, advertising, etc. All this talk of the web as an eoosystem, and I thikn someone should tell the big residents that us little insetcs crawling arounf on the forest floor are not doing this for revenue, for fame, etc.

http://cogdogblog.com/wp-content/audio/nancy_white_nv06.mp3
[52 minute MP3, 24 Mb]

Some sloppy written notes as well are below, most likely she will post on her Online Interaction blog

updates feb 20 2006:

• Nancy posted her slide images– not as some bloated PPT but as a flickr set. Rock on!
• Nick Noakes combine the slides and audio into a windows media video (weighing in at 112 Mb) available at http://www.archive.org/details/ConferencePresentation
• Beverly Trayner listened to the audio and posted a distilled series of summary notes and comments.

First, share the chocolate!

Struggled with facilitating online community in mid 1990s. Why did what worked in f2f world fail in online?

Why the Story?- increasing poepls’ access to online life at faster rate than any other tech– need fo competencies
Things that choke us in online life
Speed = good;
new medium allows lateral travel- distruptive to hierarchial model

using blogs as data annotation (Mark from genomic research org) – new funding model that data needs to be open

Need to change organizational culture

Competencies are emergent

Seven Comptencies (yes she started with number 2)

2. Online Communications —
scan (when to scan, when to go deep)
see patterns (global vs sequential thinkers)
write
image-inate (writing beyond words)
vocalize
intuit (bring it online, check it differently)

skills to increase:
write/blog daily
read/vary diet
test
draw
record
wummarie
listen

3. Learning with Others (sociality of everything we do) lurkers are force that can change the world
learning as practice
gift economy (approach with open hand- holds more sand than closed fist)
collaborate
open hand

Ben Ramlinger – 6 Network Functions
filters
amplifiers
convenoirs
faciliators
investors
community builders

Skills: (funny photo of small girl with marker and baby sister with drawings all over face)
listen
filter, search – tag annotate, blog
be unknowing
reciprocate

4. Facliitation for relationship. identity/reputation, presence, flow

skills
the classics – shouting in the room vs shouting online
informaed by ICT
space-holding
improvosiational
creatively anrasive (Dorothy Leonard) – how to disagree for the purpose of constructive
building

Convening Conversations
invite (how to create one that people will respond to)
name the question (starting point but give up control)
initiate
design for local choice
nurture

Like Open space – www.openspacesworld.org

5. Intercultutural Antennae
broadly defined
speaking not from “default” culture – leanr to speak/listen from other places (e.g. getting women to tech conferences, but speaking to men as a woman)
heart variations
biggest challenge

Skills
Look / read
live/work/play
fala! (speak in portuguese)
become a bridge (a little part of)

6. Tolerance for Ambiguity
ok with “not in control”, not knowing
move forward w/o certainty

Dancing with ambiguity skills
improvivisation
“yes, and…”
ask questions
new advocacy
Shift
Flow

Do we have more than one domain?
Engineer Economist Artist
need to tap into other channels of ourselves

7. Ability to switch contexts
multi-membership mavens (we have many different personailities in different communitiies)
connectors
networkers
multiple perspwctives
Outsiderness — it is a gift, we are all outsiders, if we embrace it we can see the world in different ways. Magic of the periphery

1. Finally, most important… Self-Awareness
need to look inward to understand others
understand strengths, joys
some media support self-absporoption not self awareness

So What?
undeterred by failure
care for the whole – systemic point of view, not the tool
willing to be vulnerable
value the human system first

There are two ways
of spreading the light;
To be the candle or
the mirror that reflects it
(Edith Wharton)

It started with the EduBlogger Hootenany, with fellow blogmiesters Brian, D’Arcy, and Scott. This was in some sense a secondary follow-up of the Social Software Salon we did yesterday at UBC.

Instead of carefully planning out a scripted presentation, we set up in the middle of the room, joked around and almost spontaneously, a conversation started from the audience. I am thinking more about this as conference sessions as conversations rather than transmissions. It was extremely rich, and ended all too abruptly. D’Arcy has already posted a nice comprehensive summary. There is more too here I watn to let distill, what I find as a disconnect of what we call blogging, a false monoliithic vision whne people talk about blogging, and an artificial separation of blogging inside and outside of education.

Next up was AJaX for Geeks by Dave Johnson of E-Business Apps, a company that actually is in the AJAX business. The presentation is available. My big colusions:

1. My current knowledge of JavaScript is decrepitly ancient.
2. I hope to do something about number 1.

Structured Blogging and Microformats by Bryan Rieger who is part of the creative force beyond the nifty nifty Yiibu. He used those nice lego graphics to contrast the monolithy of blog content once pulbished versus what might be possible with microformats. There was a lots of interesting discussion about merits versus the overheads of having people fill out motre forms, and whether there should be mroe in the tools hands to facilitate.

There was a momemtn when I was partly distracted when he referred to D’Arcy, Brian, and myself to speak about the folly that was meta data for (ugh) learning objects in that the form filling that was asked was overbearing. Alas, it moved on, but it was even more mindblowing that he knew of our work. Turns our Bryan was among my pre-blogging online communities around Macromedia Director, and had nice things to say about the old Director Web.

After lunch I was present in the room for Blogging and the Future of (the) Media by Kurt Cagle. I have no recollections of this presentation and its reverences to Marshall McLuhan.

Next was Nancy White’s Community Building with Blogs session. This was the day’s highlight so far, because it was all conversation, it was people talking about what they considered online community and what sort of stories they had from their blog community. And there was chocolate shared.

There were two excellent PhotoCamp sessions led by Kris Krug, full if tips and massive in the room expertise on digital photography. And a room full og high end digital SLRs and big monstrous lenses. I picked up a few tips myself, and am going to aim for a better Canon 50mm lens, start trying some ND filters, and amining to do more experimentation in manual exposures. but frankly, bottom line, I just like taking photos, not the frittering over techniques or post production– I just like the capturing an idea, and seeing if it worked or not.

Another gem was the last session on Great Podcast Sound for Cheap with Bruce Sharpe, who is a volunteer sound editor for ITConversations. This was very practical stuff, and I learned I was doing almost everything wrong in my use of Audacity. He has some free tools and Audacity plug-ins at Singularproductions.com. The major tips for cleaning up audio include:

• bandpass filter
• noise reduction
• snap, crackle, pop removale (Click removal)
• EQ (maybe) over-rated?

Also suggested was Mp3 Gain – an open source tool that normalizes the sound levels for a group of files.

Rest of day: End of Camp. Walk to Stanley Park. Eat a Sausage. Be very Cold. Go Back to brians home. More beer. And Fish Tacos.

Sleep.