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Aug 7, 04:34 am: Marshall says the Blogher conference rocked!

I’m sorry I missed this year’s Blogher conference. But I’m happy that I can follow up online and get to read reports like Marshall’s:

So many tech related conferences are completely imbalanced with 90% or more male attendees and speakers. It was fantastic to be at an event that was split the other way. Conversations were very friendly, the content was broader in concerns addressed than at many tech conferences and there were any number of psycho-social ways this conference was different that I as a man won’t even try to describe. It was great and I highly recommend attending next year’s conference to anyone able to do so.

Right on!

tagged: blogher, conference, reports

Sep 27, 10:56 pm: Blog and community, White's White paper

(Because, really, who can resist that pun. And I know about the “enough already.” My last name is Webb. Believe me…)

Nancy White’s Blogs and Community: launching a new paradigm for online community? is worth more than a quick link. Here’s the abstract:

Online community has been an important part of the Internet, mainly forming around email lists, bulletin boards and forums. In recent years, the ascendancy of blogs has introduced a new platform for communities. This article looks at some of the emerging patterns of blog based communities and raises some questions for their strategic application.

I always like things that raise questions.

tagged: nancywhite, blogs, nptech, community

Sep 9, 05:52 pm: Ready for another round of the Nonprofit Blog Exchange?

Emily sez it’s time:

It’s time for Round 4 of the virtual event of the
Nonprofit Blog Exchange. If you are interested in
participating in this round, you must fill out the
”>form by Friday, September 15th. I will be closing the
survey/form on the 15th (at the end of the day).

If you decide to participate in this round by writing
about another blog, I will be e-mailing you the
information about the blog you are to write about
during of September 18th. Once you recieve this
information, you can begin blogging. Remember there is
no deadline to when you post the entry, but try to
post it within a month.

tagged: nptech, blogging, npblog

Aug 18, 03:52 pm: Should you let your employees blog?

That’s the question that came up when I did the Collaboration 2.0 talk at the Alliance.

Let.

Really? Let.

I get the question but “let” is way too late. Your employees are blogging. You might not know it. It might be to a closed network but they are blogging. And you can say they shouldn’t. Or you can make your organization as transparent as possible to people that work there. So that when they do blog, they are engaged and they get it right.

Everyone — everyone! — is on your communications team. Hell, everyone is your communications director.

tagged: blogging, change, organizations, nptech, net2

Jul 17, 06:18 pm: What do you want from this BlogHer session?

With Charlene Li and I are tackling Tagging, Tracking…and what’s this structured blogging? on day one of the upcoming BlogHer conference. Elisa Camahort, one of the three BlogHer founders and an conference speaker session powerhouse, was kind enough to serve as focus group of one during a phone call with Charlene and me last week.

When we started talking about what attendees might get out of the session, Elisa started asking why should she care. I think, a piece of what she was asking, was: How can integrate this into my blogging workflow in way that increases my effectiveness? What tool(s) should I consider using and why and (by the way) can give you me enough detail about this all means so that I don’t feel like I’m doing algebra homework? You know, doing things with imaginary numbers and people keep saying, It doesn’t make sense now but if you get into more advanced maths you’ll understand the application of this.

So, to broaden the focus group a bit, what would you like from this session? Doesn’t matter if your attending BlogHer or not (though you should be attending!). BlogHer is recording and sharing the conference sessions so I’d love it to be valuable for a wider audience.

tagged: blogher, tagging, microformats, structured_blogging, blogging

Jun 13, 06:29 pm: Is a blog the right thing to start?

Ruby, who knows more about blogging a community than almost anyone I know, shares some great advice in “So you wanna start a local politics blog”: http://lotusmedia.org/so-you-wanna-start-a-local-politics-blog. As I read it, though, I wondered is a blog the best thing to start.

I mean, Ruby talks about the fact that Orange Politics is not trying to be a newspaper. As she says, they are ”...not trying to be objective or journalistic.”

But still, it seems that there is a lot of information out there about almost any location. Go ahead: plug your city into the search on flickr, del.icio.us, or technorati. You’re going to find a lot.

There’s a role, I think, for organizing the information that is already available. It’s not easy enough yet — it’s about cut-and-pasting or learning about tools like Drupal. More and more, I’m thinking that this step — information aggregation and organization — is the step that comes before blogging.

tagged: blogging, information, aggregation, issues,

Mar 30, 04:12 pm: What appears to be a bug

I haven’t had time to dig into to it but I seem to be experiencing a performancing bug. When I’ve used it to make posts, I lose the permalink (which means that folks can’t make comments). Two examples? Trying out the blogging tools and Out and About. Both look to be correct (the post goes to the main page and is archived appropriately in my CMS) but the URL takes you to an error page.

tagged: blogging, tools, performancing, bug

Mar 21, 02:01 pm: Trying out the blogging tools

I’m increasingly looking for ways to integrate blogging into my browsing experience: I want the two to work together seamlessly. In this pursuit, I’ve been a fan of flock. In part, because it’s lovely to look at.I’ve also kept the Performancing extension in Firefox. I’ve just upgraded Performancing to version 1.1 and am giving it a bit of a test.

It’s not really fair to compare the two. Flock does much more than allow you to post easily to your blog.  The new version has very nice, drag-and-drop integration with flickr.

Technorati Tags: performancing, flock, blogging, tools

Mar 13, 02:37 pm: Blogging for Business

Or any number of other things – like nonprofits. Alliance of Technology and Women is hosting Blogging for Business: An Insider’s Look at How to Use Blogs at Your Company, Business or Non Pro. I’m guessing that “Non Pro” is a trunciated “nonprofit.” Our own Britt Bravo is one of the panelists. If only it didn’t coincide with NTC.

tagged: event, blogging, nptech, silicon_valleynptech

Mar 10, 06:13 am: It's e-democracy and it's tasty!

Corante has a new blog in town: Civic Minded. I’m lucky enough to be working on it with Alex Samuel, Steven Clift and Stephen Coleman. Drop by and check out the conversation.

In the next couple of days, I hope to be tweaking together a nice little reading list that contains the sources I’ll be scouring for that blog. I’ll share it with y’all as soon as it’s done.

tagged: corante, civicminded, edemocracy, civicengagement, blogging