03/25/2004 Meeting Notes
Posted by j, 3/25/04 at 7:02:48 PM.
Weblog Writer's Meeting on 2004/03/25
- Disclaimer
- These notes are a best effort.
- Blog your corrections and commentary.
- Email me for removal of crediting.
- Attendees
- JM: Jay McCarthy
- SZ: Sooz
- JB: Jessica Baumgart
- TG: Tom Griffin
- SR: Shimon Rura
- VN: Vernica Downey
- DW: Dave Winer
- SN: Sun
- CJ: Critt Jarvis
- RH: Rick Heller
- MW: Mike Walsh
- GE: Garrett Eastman
- BS: Bob Stepno
- MF: Michael Feldman
- RM: Rebecca MacKinnon
- LW: Lisa Williams
- Proposed Agenda
- A meeting next week without Dave?
- Dave will not be here next week.
- Wendy the Redhead is able to run the meeting
- BloggerCon II
- Laundry list of things we need to make the room work
- Webcasting equipment
- Projectors
- More comfortable chairs
- Plants
- Schedule
- Dave’s reviewed the schedule and provided some more information about the sessions
- He said he’s strategically leaving the last session blank for now–waiting to see what’s going to happen
- If the crowd thins enough, we might all fit in the same room
- Great for an informal discussion, tying up loose ends
- Party before the conference and brunch afterwards
- Mike’s ideas for Friday night socializing and brunch on Sunday
- Dim sum on the 18th after the conference
- “Food for Thought” dinner groups like last time
- Pick leaders based on who has a recognizable Weblog/Famous bloggers
- People will kinda know what the discussion might be about, but aren’t stuck with a particular topic
- How to get people to sign up?
- blog posts?
- wiki?
- someone needs to pick restaurants, make arrangements, etc.
- Sooz volunteered to make arrangements
- Lunch
- There isn’t enough time for us to go offsite.
- How do we get lunch to come to us?
- Mike suggests a boxed lunch
- interested people can pay for it
- people who don’t want to pay for it have other options
- not realistic because caterers need arrangements and money in advance
- Session proposals
- Bob and journalism?
- RM and her session about professional reporters
- How does it differ or conflict with Jay Rosen’s session What is Journalism?
- International journalism/foreign correspondents
- Why are bloggers more believable than journalists when they’re covering foreign events?
- State of blogs in China
- SL: His Chinese blog was shut down
- The blog servers had to shut down to clean up the blogs
- His blog didn’t have any controversial content, but he suffered because of others’ content
- Once the blogs with prohibited or controversial content were fixed, the servers came back up
- Iranian blogs are also interesting
- Iranian blogger can’t come to the US, even though the Berkman Center wrote a letter on his behalf vouching for his purpose to visit the US
- DW: revolt in countries because of battle between bloggers and government control?
- JB: librarian session
- Dave asked about other sessions for Pound 202
- RH: writing/literature blogs
- LW: photography and moblogging
- DW, RM discuss who should lead moblogging
- DW: If we can get someone really dynamic to lead the session, it’s on. Find a moderator.
- DW: Michael Watkins and his session about blogging on intranets
- LW: Visions from users
- JM & SR’s lists of comments about the future of blog software discussed previously
- LW omitted comments from aggregators
- DW: no commercials reminder
- DW: What’s the point of this session?
- refine the list?
- get more input?
- our chance to shine; let’s do something really special
- SR: long-range vision; user wants to do something that’s inconceivable given the current tools
- refine the vision
- DW: you’re a software designer; it’s up to you to sort through what your users want. Sometimes they ask for difficult things. It’s up to you to figure out what they’re asking for and if it’s possible to give it to them
- If the original commenters are there, it’s easier, but they probably won’t be there
- DW: software people have to do a lot of listening
- LW: Is it better to get at motivations than specific feature requests?
- LW: several times, people have used things she’s created in manners entirely different than what she envisioned
- if she knows their motivation, she can design better
- DW: story time: programmed some outliners for some company
- added some slide-building component
- user printed a slide, then drew on it to show Dave what he wanted in presentation software
- DW: the real miracle is if you can scratch your user’s itch
- DW: challenge: come out with the next generation of blog software and its features
- LW: differentiating the central from the peripheral; separating good features from what’s really needed
- Educators
- If a moderator steps forward, this session might happen
- Monitors
- We need more
- Mandatory training on Friday, April 16
- Monitors watch the IRC channel and help run the session
- IRC–DW is working on getting four tracks going–one for each room
- Volunteers
- Critt wants to talk about thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog after he arrives later (8 pm?)
- Eat
- Cambridge Common last week
- Several people have said they’d suggest places if they knew more about restaurants in the area. Eating has information about area restuarants.
