Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog

Livejournal has a reputation as a hotbed for irrelevant material. A
‘typical’ livejournal blogger is typecast as someone who blogs about
trivial things: the teenage girl blog, or the cat blog. Yet
livejournal has been immensely successful within its chosen niche. Why
are livejournal users the AOL users of the new era? Is this reputation
deserved? What technology does livejournal possess that caters to and
attracts these users?

In this meeting we will examine the livejournal blogging/aggregation
platform with a specific focus on its success as a social networking
tool. We’ll spend about fifteen minutes on a presentation, and hear
from a couple hardcore livejournal users from within our group. Then
we’ll open up the floor to discussion.

Come to this meeting thinking about this question: what features would
make your blogging / aggregation platform a more valuable tool for
communicating with your friends? We’ll look at how Livejournal
succeeds through this lens.

Date: Thursday, June 19 7PM
Cost: $0! We often go for dinner afterward which is Dutch Treat.
Directions: Berkman Thursday Meeting Info
Moderator: Josh Ain (Weblog: Josh Ain’s Inspiration and Humor)
Berkman blog group weblog with meeting notes and info: Berkman Blog Group Meetings
Participate remotely? Yes!
To listen: http://rura.org:8000/stream.m3u (only during meeting).
To ask questions: Meeting IRC chatroom. Directions: Berkman Thursday Weblog Meeting IRC chat
Audio archives: We attempt to archive audio of meetings so you can listen after the fact. Scan this blog for news of newly uploaded audio recordings of sessions.

Sam Klein, Wikipedia maven, will try to give us a flavor of the world of Wikis — the collaborative, cathedral-like information structures of the web. Sam will also cover access control and antispam techniques for Wikis that keep these cathedrals from turning into an info-landfill. Sam has a weblog, SJ’s Longest Now, but you can get a feel for the variety and quickness of his intellect by visiting his page on Wikipedia.

Details: Berkman Thursday Bloggers’ Meeting
Berkman Center for the Internet and Society
Cambridge, MA
Date: Thursday, June 23 7PM
Cost: $0! We often go for dinner afterward which is Dutch Treat.
Directions: Berkman Thursday Meeting Info
Moderator: Sam Klein (Weblog: SJ’s Longest Now)
Berkman blog group weblog with meeting notes and info: Berkman Blog Group Meetings
Participate remotely? Yes!
To listen: http://rura.org:8000/stream.m3u (only during meeting).
To ask questions: Meeting IRC chatroom. Directions: Berkman Thursday Weblog Meeting IRC chat
Audio archives: We attempt to archive audio of meetings so you can listen after the fact. Scan this blog for news of newly uploaded audio recordings of sessions.