Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog

These notes are a best effort.

Blog your corrections and commentary.

Attendees:

• j: j
• WK: Wendy Koslow
• EY: Elaine Yuan
• AH: Ann House
• guyingreen: JP: Joshua Porter
• EG: Erica George
• DF: Deborah Elizabeth Finn
• IM: Ingo Muschenetz

Agenda:

• WK: We’re not going by the original agenda – Michael can’t make it so we’ll have to reschedule the Why Do You Blog / Blogging 101 film show topic.
• Well wishes for Gregory: He’s doing well, is home, and actually blogging some about non-lung-related stuff! Cheers for Gregory! Keep up the well-wishes though.
• j wants to talk about the blog course she’s teaching on Sunday
  • j: teaching librarians on Sunday about blogging. Mixed group in terms of tech experience, from little to very. On Blogware platform. Also showing Blogger, Manila, Frassle. Any ideas for things I absolutely must not neglect to tell them?
  • AH: Interesting to me is the amount of hesitation people have aboput how to get started
  • WK: I’d cover linking, linking policies, conventions about how people credit each other. Librarians know archiving but may not know blog culture.
  • DF: Librarians are about increasing access to information. Focus on how they can kleep learning more. As a blogger I try to think about how someone approaching my page wanting to find something will see it.
  • guyingreen: tone of posts – some blogs are very inviting, others less so, more authoritative stance. I tend to write authoritatively without meaning to when I’d rather invite conversation – is a struggle for me & prob. for others.
  • j: Easy to fall into trap of seeming too authoritative. PPl assume you agree w/ everything you link to. Librarians have lots of authority in terms of information anyway.
  • guyingreen: conversation is key
  • DF: Almost 2 blogospheres. 1, content: blogging as a cultural thing, tone, etc. 2, technology: all you’re doing at heart is posting to a website in reverse chronological order. Nothing inherent about a blog that it has to be a rich personal voice. It’s easier to set up a blog than a regular website. You can blog about a lot of very impersonal things on a blog format, and that’s OK. It can be a format for distributing news.
  • IM: No matter how you write the post, ppl are natually predisposed to flame you.
  • WK: Maybe tell people it’s OK to be flamed, don’t sweat it. People can be hesitant to put themselves out there, esp. when it’s in a professional capacity.
  • guyingreen: often feedback is brief, curt etc., but not intended negatively.
  • IM: Blog comments tend not to couch things in niceties
  • AH: figure out who your reader is, so it’s not just a broadcast with no target.
  • WK: What do you already have?
  • j: it’s a 4 hour course. First segment is my spiel on what’s a weblog, what’s a feed. Then someone talking about orgs using blogs and feeds. Then 2 hours for ppl to learn about blogging. Relying on ppl having laptops, sharing them. So having everyone do a blog post will take time with shared machines. The 2 hours will go by fast.
  • DF: Some aspects of Blogware nonintuitive, may want to explain
  • WK: Hey, Joey takes feedback…
  • j: I just use HTML rather than the WYSIWYG
• What else?
  • Tangent 1: Introductions! Yay!
  • Tangent 2: DF: Monkey college! (training assistants for quadriplegics) And they also need some IT help if anyone can volunteer. Totally fantastic organization doing wonderful things. Monkey! (another article!)
• Eat:
  • Yay, small group! We can go anywhere! We choose…. John Harvard’s on Dunster St in the square.
  • Where last week?