Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog

There will be no Webcast.

Agenda

Notes:

• j probably will not be at the meeting, but hopefully can meet the group for dinner. Can someone else please take notes and monitor the IRC channel? Can someone please ring j when it’s time for dinner?
• Resurrecting the dead: where has Mike Walsh been and what can he tell us about his travels, on or off the record?
• Off the record / On the record blogging
  • bloggers lose credibility and hurt sources when they blog off the record things
  • AC: credentials aren’t a right
    
  • AC: what kind of standard do I adhere to when I’m blogging on the side of an activity, not covering something as a blogger

  • DW: does on & off the record only apply to bloggers trying to be journalists?
  • j: No. I don’t consider myself to be a journalist, but I won’t blog things someone says is off the record.
  • EG: what’s public/private space? A private conversation in a friend’s living room could turn into something public if a friend blogs it.
  • MMG: people don’t always understand the consequences of their stuff going public
    
  • AC: there’s an ethic about what you can take from the private sphere and put in the public sphere. Sure, someone has the First Amendment right to take something I say in conversation and post it publicly, but does that mean I’ll like that, talk to the person again.
    
  • BI: Am I going to read about our date on your blog tomorrow?

  • MM: You put blogger in your match.com profile. Is that good or bad?
  • LW: I only blog what I own. If I “share content” with my husband or friends, I won’t blog it. I share a lot about myself. I’ve probably been fired from four jobs I don’t have yet so far. We grow up a little when we blog. People who are in the media are human just like us.
  • DW: a culture of transparency requires a culture of forgiveness
  • JD: Isn’t this worrisome, though? What about Eason Jordon? At conferences, people make statements to make suggestions and explore. It doesn’t mean they believe what they say.
  • LW: what we’re going through is a media adolescence where everyone’s voice breaks and has acne and people get hurt for no reason
    
  • RM: on Eason Jordon the blogger was just pointing it out as an issue he hadn’t heard about before
    
  • RH: we’re shocked to learn journalists have opinions

  • RM: a frustration I had a journalist is that it’s hard to be human; I couldn’t talk about a lot in public, fearing what would happen if it got repeated; things may not be balanced anymore; any news organization is a group of flawed human beings with limited tools, time, and resources; mistakes happen, but people can’t talk about that
  • MF: journalistic impartiality is a myth
  • MMR: people seem to expect the truth from bloggers, but not from the media
  • AC: is trying to change all of that, blogging with lessons
  • MMB: revealing things can be tricky “Do I reveal something to be true to my audience or do I keep a secret to be true to my source?”
  • AC: mutually assured destruction
    
  • JM: finds it fascinating that bloggers are so obsessed with journalists

  • MF: I’ve been a journalism junkie for a long time I’m going to keep writing about journalism it’s not something that started because I began blogging
  • AW: blogging is like going out into the street with a bullhorn to have a conversation
  • MM: don’t spit in the soup, we’ve all got to eat
    
  • JA: can something that’s out there and googleable be off the record? what about surveillance cameras?

  • AC: the Kurt Schilling thing discussed on our list
  • RH: what about terms, though? some forums have terms is that legit?
  • AC: these rules are a gray area it’s similar to posting something on a public bulletin board
  • MMB: there’s a fundamental human thing to talk freely among friends what’s it like in Washington where people can easily zip an e-mail off to Wonkette that will change how people go to cocktail parties does there need to be a talk speakeasy?
  • BI: what about model releases?
  • AC: yes, National Geographic employees must get people in films to sign releases
  • j: yes, some news organizations are bound by law to get releases, especially if an organization is going to profit from the selling of the person’s likeness. This is particularly true with well-known people, like athletes, actors, etc.
  • RM: why do film crews have to get permission to be on campus, but bloggers don’t?
    • perhaps it’s because of a difference of use people using photographs, etc., for personal use don’t need to get permission to photograph on campus whereas entities on campus for news or commercial purposes need permission two things: it might be assumed that bloggers are doing things for personal use in the same way someone taking photos of campus buildings can post them on a Web site without consent bloggers are also still flying under the radar in many places
  • LW: conversations about blogs devolve into conversations about fear people could totally humiliate and make a fool out of me and no one has
  • AW: I’ve seen the other side you’re lucky
  • LW: unless you are out there in public, no one will probably find your weblog
  • DW: the thing that holds the blogosphere together is not links it’s connected because of people it’s held together by shared interest, shared caring although there are flareups of jerkhood people are eager to connect with each other
  • AC: many times, the mainstream media picks up something because a blogger has torn something down major blogs, blogs changing the world like Ethan’s aren’t going to be in the media
    
  • MMC: (world changing) if you aren’t talking about what we’re doing, you don’t believe in what we’re doing

  • AC: how have bloggers done all of these things? blogging still seems to be about tearing down other guys according to the media the media isn’t going to cover someone who’s just an average blogger
  • EG: but the media doesn’t cover average people anyway
  • **noise ensues**
  • EG: everyday life isn’t newsworthy
  • DS: how can we get average bloggers in the news? news is often about conflict bloggers that aren’t conflicted aren’t newsworthy
    
  • MMB: bloggers have an advantage journalists don’t bloggers don’t have to deal with the PR flack like journalists do as people start realizing the power of blogging, companies will begin revising their policies regarding blogging someone will get fired for talking to someone who blogs

  • EG: what happened to the sacred core of privacy
  • AC: what’s wrong with asking “Can I blog about that?” and if the person says, “No,” the line’s been drawn
  • JM: celebrity and blogging lots of costs of celebrity and only some of the benefits enough people know your business
  • EG: You don’t have the money to stop the stalkers
  • RM: people you don’t know know you
  • j: people get a disporportionate interpretation of your life based on what we blog
  • JohnD: why meet?
  • sj: share content, share ideas
  • j: it’s a blog and bitch like people have a stitch and bitch only different
  • AG: blogging lets people get to know a real person
  • RH: how can I do things better? technical ways as well as practices
  • MF: it started as a support group for bloggers on Harvard’s server and has morphed into an activity for people with impaired social lives no one knows where we’re going with it
  • BI: it’s a forum for people to share a common interest
  • JM: Dave Winer started it many of us were beginning to blog when it first formed. maybe collectively we have a lot of influence perhaps 200,000 unique visitors to our blog
  • JohnD: has our presence here effected the conversation
    
  • the room: of course! for one thing, we had a really big turnout
  • What’s the policy for meetings?
    • j: It’s long been the policy of the group that anything stated at the blog meeting and who attends the meeting is on the record unless otherwise specified. We used to be pretty open about this when we first began meeting, but it’s been a long time since anyone has said anything about that policy of the group. When in doubt about whether something’s on or off the record, it’s always a good idea to ask.
    • j: The attendance list is posted on the Web. If anyone who has attended in the past or who attends a meeting would like her/his name removed from the list, bug j. If someone attends the meeting and would like her/his presence to remain a secret, it would be wise to state that to the entire group. Some people blog about the meetings and mention who was present.
    • j: Seemingly random statements at the meetings make it into the minutes. It is always smart to specify that something intended to be off the record is indeed off the record.
  • What’s the policy for dinner?
    • j: The same policies that we’ve been operating under for the meetings apply to dinner.
• New Projects for the Berkman Group
  • Blogging 101
    • MF: we’ve got stuff, but it needs to be updated
    • LW: not everyone who wants to get into blogging can get into this room
    • LW: documentation for blog systems sucks we can do better
    • AC: we also need to figure out how to teach organizations what they can do with a blog
  • Envisioning the future of weblog software, take 2
  • Blog conference in the late spring/early summer?
  • other proselytizing?
• Frassle alpha 9 demo?
  • Using Frassle’s content studio to build custom aggregators and RSS feeds
• What else?
• Eat
  

  • Nightline very graciously covered dinner at Smile Thai. Thank you!
  • Cambridge Common again last time