Wiki

WikiNews from WikiMedia

Chris Jefferies — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 17:14:00 GMT

Wiki what?

You may be asking what a wiki is. A wiki is a web site that anyone can edit. I have one you can use at: www.jumano.com/wiki

The folks who set up one of my favorite wiki sites www.wikipedia.org, an online user built encyclopedia are considering setting up a user built news site.

The are soliciting your opinion about whether or not we should have a wiki News site. Read about it at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews

Blogon 2004 - the conference

Chris Jefferies — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:55:00 GMT

On Friday, I attended the BlogOn 2004 conference that was held at the Haas Business School on the UC Berkeley campus.

The morning started with a session titled “Defining Social Media“ which was moderated by Ross Mayfield of SocialText. The panel had some insights that I found interesting. One idea was whether social software is a product, or a feature of other products. In the HR space, it seems that blogs and wikis could be an addition to the portal which enhances corporate communications.

Another idea was that the load of media from digital cameras will fuel a need for blogs as people look to fulfill a need to express themselves with their new media.

Reid Hoffman (CEO of LinkedIn):

“Any large company, if they're not searching the blogs for what people are saying about their products and organizations, are fools. If you don't have some kind of blogging strategy -- much less response -- you need to think about that.“
“Brand value and trust will evolve completely. Individuals will become brands.“

The second session was titled the “The Dark Side of Social Media“. Danah Boyd was the moderator and was philosophical about this subject by thinking of the “Dark Side“ as being like the Dark Side of the Moon or “that which light has not yet been shed upon“. We should be vigilant and watch for the abuses possible in blogs and wikis. Another concept of the dark side was the fear of corporations who may feel that they are losing control of their corporate message. Here are some tidbits about how corporations should deal with social media:

watch and learn - fear shows deeper corporate problems - lack of transparency and flexibility
evolve what you're doing - Tickle vs LinkedIn - different users, different functions
copyright is dead, long live copyright - copyright to protect creators and encourage distribution
fan fiction - variations on Harry Potter stories by youngsters
corporations start with a deficit of credibility - social media helps build credibility

The final morning session was titled “Business Transparency“. It included a demo of the Microsoft Channel9 site by Jeff Sands and Robert Scoble. It is a forum that includes blogs and wikis and is a mechanism for Microsoft to provide corporate transparency to it's clients. Channel 9 is the channel used on airplanes for passengers to hear what the pilots are up to; hence the site name. Another form of transparency for the passengers. The second half of the session was about SixApart's customer relations nightmare that was eventually resolved by the use of blogs (which they market as Movable Type).

The afternoon sessions were about the business of social media and included the tried and true models of user subscriptions vs advertising. There was some discussion about the technologies of RSS news feeds and filtered content, but these discussions seemed to drift into standards issues.

The final closing session was titled “Who's Investing in Social Media?”. It was a panel of investors who talked about what they find interesting in the social media business. While most of them seemed to say that the social media firms were already in place, there was a ray of hope in an idea that would bring focused information from my friends on a local basis. Some examples were allconsuming.net and weatherbug.com. They also said there was too much money chasing too few companies.

BlogOn 2004

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:02:00 GMT

I attended the opening reception and a panel discussion for the Blogon 2004 conference this evening. It was held at the UC Berkeley Faculty Club. I got there about an hour early and took some time to read the conference notes in the Faculty Club bar. $2.50 for a pint of beer. I think I'll stop in there again at some point in the future.

The panel discussion set the tone for tomorrows sessions by positing issues of concern in the field social media.

Moderators were:

Chris Shipley - Executive Producer, Blogon
Susan Mernit - Partner, 5ive

The panelists were:

Scott Gatz, Yahoo
Tony Perkins, AlwaysOn
John Roberts, CNET Networks
Bill Schreiner, AOL

The issues ranged from business models of blogging sites to branding and forms of advertising.

An interesting point was made by someone in the audience that branding used to be pre-defined and was delivered as a finished concept. Now, it develops as users respond to the product. Branding is no longer a promise, it is a fulfillment.

There was a general consensus that, just as CNN cable news slowly sapped the traditional networks of viewership, so too will independent journalism in the primary form of blogs take away readers of traditional news channels.

The opening session tomorrow starts at 8:30am. A bit early for me. I think it indicates that we have more business types than techies running this show .

Jumano Forums

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:30:00 GMT

I've set up a web forum for discussion threads at: http://www.jumano.com/Forums

Please visit the forums and start up or join a discussion.

MoveOn.org - 50 Ways to Love Your Country

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 01:57:00 GMT

This evening I attended an event at Black Oak Books in Berkeley, Ca. It was a panel discussion and book signing with 3 of the authors moderated by Gary Krane of PartyForDemocracy. The book is a collection of 50 things we can do for social change written by 50 members of MoveOn.org. The panelists were:

Authur Blaustein - spoke about community service and volunteerism and has a book titled “Make A Difference“

Skip Robinson - is a retired lecturer on conflict resolution at Sonoma State and spoke about ways to communicate with friends and neighbors. He recommended a Google search including “Abraham Lincoln and precinct organization“.

Michael Rosenthal - spoke about how to be strategic with your time and money in the upcoming election. He has a site of resources at www.mikepac.org.

Finally, Gary Krane summarized with an overview of hosting house parties and conducted an excercise to get attendies to commit to some form of action; from volunterring time to the campaign, to donating money, to providing services.

I have started a wiki site to facilitate the organization of house parties and other MoveOn.org events at:

http://www.jumano.com/wiki/default.aspx/MoveOnOrganizing.HomePage

New Wikis on Jumano

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 20:13:00 GMT

I set up some wikis on the Jumano server today. I created a single wiki in January, but now there are 3 with specific categories.

Jumano Wiki - for general use; probably won't change much except to cover generic wiki issues
- FreeRanger Wiki - for FreeRanger notes, ideas, stories and Big Bend news, etc.
- Lazy Boys Wiki - for music collaboration

Briefly, a wiki is a document (web page) collaboration site where anyone can edit the pages. You can read about how the wiki I set up works within the existing pages, but you can read a more thorough history about wikis at:

WikiWikiWeb (the original wiki)
Wikipedia (a very large wiki based online encyclopedia)

Please take a tour and see what you think...

Jimmy Bruno's new job - new song

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 11:31:00 GMT

I got a call from Jimmy Bruno today. He said he got a job at a music distributor named Saga Music. He has a new song titled “Ray Took a Slug in the Leg“. I'll post a link when he sends it to me.

Here is an MP3. (approx 6.2Mb)

Here's a wiki page about it.

Wiki

Chris Jefferies — Mon, 12 Jan 2004 01:12:00 GMT

Tonight I created a wiki site at: www.jumano.com/wiki

A wiki is a site that encourages collaboration by allowing all users to update the content of the site. The site also contains a simple way to cross-reference information. Go see what you think.