Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog

Howdy! Long time no meeting …

Let’s gather on Thursday, December 10, at 7 pm at Aiyara, 16 Eliot Street, in Harvard Square to catch up. It’s where Smile Thai used to be. Mark your calendars!

* What’s new?
* How has the economy impacted your work?
* What new tool or gadget has influenced you in the last year?
* How have you used social media in your job search or your hiring process?

Erica and I are changing the blog group meeting schedule. Instead of meeting weekly, we’re going to meet monthly or as appropriate. We’ll try to publicize meetings in advance in this space and through our discussion group.

This week, Steven Clift of E-Democracy.org is in town. So we’re hosting a Roundtable Discussion: Social Media and Local Public Life at blog group.

Steven Clift is with E-Democracy.Org, which hosts a 15 community/neighborhood, 3 country online Issues Forums network started in 1994. 

Join us on Thursday, 7:00 – 8:00 p.m., followed by optional dinner/drinks out in the area
Berkman Conference Room – 23 Everett Street, Second Floor, Cambridge

For more info, background, etc., see Steven’s post.

Upcoming meetings & events:

• TBD: Renee Lloyd on women in technology & brainstorming about the “She’s Geeky” conference in Boston.
• 4/25-26: BarCamp Boston
• See the Berkman Calendar for other upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Neither Erica nor j can run the blog group meeting this week.

As always, we’re open to suggestions about topics and speakers and activities. Please let us know if you have something in mind.

Upcoming meetings & events:

• TBD: Renee Lloyd on women in technology & brainstorming about the “She’s Geeky” conference in Boston.
• 4/25-26: BarCamp Boston
• At some point, we should take advantage of Berkman’s RockBand set and have a music party in lieu of a normal meeting.
• It’s getting to be time to have another dim sum gathering, too.
• See the Berkman Calendar for other upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

There’s an offsite Berkman staff retreat today and I’m not sure when I’d be able to head back to the office, so let’s not meet this week.

If you’re itching for a weekly hit of blog/tweet/socmed goodness try the Tweetup Forrester is hosting at Redline in Harvard Square tonight: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1496553

Upcoming meetings & events:

• TBD: Renee Lloyd on women in technology & brainstorming about the “She’s Geeky” conference in Boston.
• 4/25-26: BarCamp Boston
• At some point, we should take advantage of Berkman’s RockBand set and have a music party in lieu of a normal meeting.
• It’s getting to be time to have another dim sum gathering, too.
• See the Berkman Calendar for other upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Tonight, Berkman needs the conference room to host the Harvard/Yale/MIT Cyberscholars group – and so blog groupers are invited to join in! Topics for tonight are:

• Cybernetics and Revolution – Eden Medina
• Platform Studies and the Atari VCS (Atari 2600) – Nick Montfort
• Video Games and Pro-Social Development – Gene Koo

For more detailed info, see the main Cyberscholars event post.

Upcoming meetings & events:

• Wedesday 2/25: Pecha Kucha Boston 8! (Our own Brett Stilwell is an organizer).
• TBD: Renee Lloyd on women in technology & brainstorming about a possible “She’s Geeky” conference in Boston.
• 4/25-26: BarCamp Boston
• At some point, we should take advantage of Berkman’s RockBand set and have a music party in lieu of a normal meeting.
• It’s getting to be time to have another dim sum gathering, too.
• See the Berkman Calendar for other upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Take advantage of Ignite Boston 5 coinciding with this week’s meeting.

“The fifth Ignite Boston will be Thursday, February 12, from 5pm to 9pm at The Hooley House in the Faneuil Hall area of Boston.”

O’Reilly requires an RSVP.

Upcoming meetings & events:

• 2/19 – Probably blog group will host the February Cyberscholars event.
• TBD: Renee Lloyd on women in technology & brainstorming about a possible “She’s Geeky” conference in Boston.
• 4/25-26: BarCamp Boston
• At some point, we should take advantage of Berkman’s RockBand set and have a music party in lieu of a normal meeting.
• It’s getting to be time to have another dim sum gathering, too.
• See the Berkman Calendar for other upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

This week, we’ll welcome Yvette Wohn to discuss the Korean news & social site Ewhaian.com: “Integrating hyperlocal news with social networking”

From Yvette:

In 2001, three seniors at Ewha Women’s University launched a social networking site for students of their school. (Ewha is one of Korea’s top universities and the largest women’s univ. in the world) With campus media subsidized and screened, this online portal took off not only as a networking site but also as an independent news and information portal. With 50,000 active user accounts (mostly current students) and an average of 8,000 concurrent users, the site is a forum for synchronous and asynchronous communication.

Although there are “staff” members for a news section, most of the interesting content is user-created– ranging from lecture evaluations to peer counseling and serial fiction. The content is not only self-created, but also self-moderated. Despite the high web traffic and massive hard drive management, the site is profitable–not relying on advertisements, but rather on offline events, which works in not only generating revenue, but also keeping the community together.

I believe Ewhaian is a great model for regional news sites, social networking sites that have a tight geographical focus, and could be the next step for Facebook in expanding its business/services. I wish to talk about how this site got here, what worked and what didn’t, and why after several years, it’s still thriving when so many similar sites failed.

As always, blog group meetings are at 7pm in the conference room of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, at 23 Everett St.

Upcoming meetings & events:

• 2/12 – Go to Ignite! Boston 5: sign up in advance to be sure you get in.
• 2/19 – Probably blog group will host the February Cyberscholars event.
• TBD: Renee Lloyd on women in technology & brainstorming about a possible “She’s Geeky” conference in Boston.
• At some point, we should take advantage of Berkman’s RockBand set and have a music party in lieu of a normal meeting.
• It’s getting to be time to have another dim sum gathering, too.
• See the Berkman Calendar for other upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

While we had a great program last week about real estate (Thanks, Bill!) and Erica tells me she has something fabulous for next week, we didn’t have any brilliant thoughts about this week, so we’re canceling the meeting in the hopes that we’ll encourage more of you to attend next week. Besides, who wants to go out in the slushy, icey cold? Stay home, have a warm beverage, and do something offline or go contradancing to warm up.

See you next month!

Our own Bill Wendel of Real Estate Cafe will lead a session with many special guests on the changes in real estate in the online era. Real estate is one of the industries most in flux right now, due not just to the financial crisis but also to the shift in roles of realtors, homeseekers, etc in the internet age.

Guests include:

• Tim White, of ISellBoston, will present his guest perspective which was selected as the best in the Roadmap to Recovery contest sponsored by Inman News.  Tim hopes to launch a new venture in first half of 2009.
• James Shiner & Greg Afarian of ZIPVO who led a session at REBarCampNYC on distributing your video to the world. Syndication, social media, etc. We will be there to talk about video, social media, and distribution of videos/listings.
• Tony Longo, Founder of CondoDomain and Erica Farthing, Director of Social Media  were to co-facilitate a round table on the future of buyer agency, alternative brokerage models at REBarCampNYC (but were unable to make it).  CondoDomain is a leading flat fee business model, which has bootstrapped an expansion into 10 markets in little over a year and has plans to expand to 33 U.S. markets in 2009.
• Bill Wendel, who founded Real Estate Cafe in Cambridge in 1995, will present preliminary results from UNOFFICIAL survey regarding 12 reforms proposed at ConnectNYC by Brad Inman and economist Robert Shiller.

More info at http://planyp.us/plans/709252100420-real…

Upcoming meetings & events:

• February 5: Yvette Wohn on the Korean news & social site Ewhaian.com: “Integrating hyperlocal news with social networking”
• TBD: Renee Lloyd on women in technology & brainstorming about a possible “She’s Geeky” conference in Boston.
• At some point, we should take advantage of Berkman’s RockBand set and have a music party in lieu of a normal meeting.
• It’s getting to be time to have another dim sum gathering, too.
• See the Berkman Calendar for other upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.