Our long-awaited presentation we are doing at this year’s Northern Voice has finally appeared on their website. As an all-volunteer conference, I really appreciate all the work and efforts the organizers are giving to make this year’s personal blogging and social media conference a success.

My session will be on Friday, February 22, 2008, from 14:00 - 14:30 (2:00-2:30pm) in a new track–Internet Bootcamp. Entitled Liveblogging 101, it is meant to introduce newbies to liveblogging.

As a technologist and qualitative researcher, I am really interested in how liveblogging is an act of involvement and participation. It is not a narrative of the events–that is stenography. It is an interactive co-creation of the event itself from the perspective of an active participant. This in fact summarizes what my blog title, Silence and Voice, is all about. With liveblogging, the silence is ended as participants take up and use their own voices to record the event as they experience it.

Liveblogging:  Unfiltered. Raw. Authentic. If you want it nice and neat, buy a book.

Technorati Tags: nv08,Northern Voice,liveblogging

Have you ever had an experience like this Dilbert comic?

This reminds me about working in a new company, or on a new team, in a new department, with a strict union, etc. Strange how complicated work and relationships / territory / job security / sense of worth or importance can make some things that seem to be easily understood into situations that are much more complex. Power and positionality in organizations are often more complex than they seem at face value.

Perhaps the lessons here will help reveal us to who will win in the next presidential election?

“We ask jurors in the hallway to come back into the main room. Have a seat and make yourselves comfortable.”

Here we all are, waiting . . .

“This is the end of your service.” Hurray!!!

They are going to give us a “Proof of Service,” which means that we do not have to serve again for a minimum of 2 years, and realistically we will not be called again for another 6 years. According to the laws of the State of New York, we will not again have to serve for 2 years. However, it is the practice within the County of New York (which is comprised of Manhattan) that we will not be called back for 6 years.

Wonderful!

Wait.

Waiting.

Stay here and wait.

Go to lunch and then come back here to wait.

So are the challenges of being on jury duty for a second day.

So far they have kept us here without any new cases and, in fact, little indication of what to expect for the remainder of the day. This seems like it would be a wonderful activity for a contemplative or meditative sort, one who uses such times as opportunities to reflect and grow internally. I wonder if they ever considered yoga sessions here, since people have been surprisingly quiet.

Granted, I see myself as a reflective practitioner, both theoretically as well as practically. I like the act and reflect and revise and act cycle (which can also have evaluative elements, among others, included), but there is a limit to the amount of computer work I can do while using an insecure wifi connection that has been iffy at best today. Of course this could always be worse, and I did use lunch as an opportunity to eat in Little Italy today . . .

Ahh, there was just a call from a courtroom, so they will again shuffle our ballots (like shuffling cards, literally) and call a group of us.

I will hurry and post this and then continue to post, as possible, via Twitter. I have grown to like that microblogging moblog application!

I learned two strategies for handling jury duty:

1. Be among the last into a courtroom. If they run out of seats, you get dismissed and sent back to the larger pool.
2. If when they call your name in the larger pool, if you are not present (perhaps in the restroom), they send somebody else and you remain in the pool.

Whatever the case, those of us still in this room were just dismissed for lunch.

BTW, I am making even more entries in this liveblogging experience with Twitter, where I can be found at

I just uploaded my last liveblog post using ScribeFire, and will have to use it a bit more before I state that Windows Live Writer (WLW) is easier to use. I really liked Ecto, but without future Windows development and new features in WordPress that it does not support, why would I want to continue using that? Ecto is a really great program, but it needs a new version. BTW, I would gladly pay for it . . .

I just got a firewall notice that it just defended me against a cyber attack. That is ironic–criminal and malicious cyber attacks

while serving in my role as a prospective juror.

They are finally calling us . . .

While wifi worked well for a short time this morning, it seems to now be down. I will continue to liveblog using Windows Live Writer and upload as network access becomes available.

I am typing this in a small room they have off to the side with some cubicles and some laptops. Very glad I brought my own.

Now that I am thinking about this, I believe my liveblogging experience here during jury duty will help my upcoming liveblogging presentation at Northern Voice 2008. I was planning to just talk about liveblogging using Ecto (formerly my favorite liveblogging and offline blogging application), but Ecto has not been updated in some time and does not run very well with Windows Vista. Their website states it will be updated, but the only indication I have for this is the set of Mac-based screen shots. I will thus plan to learn a lot about Windows Live Writer as a liveblogging tool, and will probably explore FireFox’s ScribeFire more as well.

Wifi is available again, so let me post this . . .

We handed in our jury selection paperwork and were explained as to our functions and the particulars about serving jury duty for the New York State Supreme Court. We were told how we will be expected to sit in on a number of trials until either we get selected for one or get dismissed tomorrow afternoon.

At least they allow computers and have freely available wifi. Nice to see my taxes at work. I just hope I get either dismissed or otherwise able to get to my new Business Communication class I am teaching on time tonight.

Technorati Tags: liveblogging, jury duty

I arrived to 111 Centre street for jury duty. After going through security and having my bag x-rayed, I arrived on the 11th floor and was greeted with a documentary film on justice. Ed Bradley narrated this film and spoke about trial by ordeal, the Code of Hammarabi, and justice during Medieval France and England.

The film is surprisingly good. There are video and movie clips, an engaging explanation of trial by ordeal (including a movie clip of being bound and thrown into the water to see if the person sinks and is therefore innocent). I learned about the important role of a jury, and how jurors are the only ones in the system who are entrusted with the ability and responsibility to determine truth and falsehood according to the laws and how people do and do not act in accordance with them.

This will be an interesting experience, and I will attempt to liveblog it as much as possible. I am using Windows Live Writer for this.

Technorati Tags: liveblogging, jury duty, justice